12 gibson.indd participatory action research approaches and methods sara kindon, rachel pain & mike kesby (eds), routledge, new york & london, 2007, 288 pages this book, published as part of routledge’s studies in human geography, is useful well beyond this discipline, as it provides a welcome review of participatory action research (par). in three major sections, beginning and ending with ‘reflections’ that bracket the ‘action’ section, this edited collection provides a timely overview of the current status of this methodology, as well as many useful examples of applying par as a research process. the papers build on the work of cooke and kothari (2001) and others who forced us to take a fresh look at the par approach. the collection addresses the ideological concept behind participatory research and adds reflection and experience to outline a tangible method that can be described and evaluated, and consistently applied. the book documents the shift from a focus entirely on scientific outcomes, to a focus that includes process as part of research outcomes. to start, the authors provide a useful overview of par methods, tracing their disciplinary and scholarly origins. the list of the various schools of par and their theoretical sources and origins is both a helpful review for practitioners, and a fine introduction to those newly approaching this area of knowledge and practice. the second chapter is a useful reminder to practitioners of the unexpected and often invisible results of our research, in terms of power differentials and hierarchies, including timely warnings about the potential for unwitting coercion, and other factors in the research relationship. a critical discussion of the concept of empowerment forces the reader to be reflective and mindful with current research projects, since ‘it is more productive to conceive the modalities of power and empowerment as entangled’ (p. 23). another key point is contributing to theory, as par has often been considered a-theoretical. in par the voice of the participants is included, giving rise to a range of challenges around confidentiality for academic ethics boards as they address this approach to research partnerships. some papers provide guidance for very current challenges such as consistency of process versus uniformity of practice in ethical review and accountability, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 185–186 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 nancy gibson university of alberta 186 | gateways | review and researcher safety, a topic rarely addressed. the second section of the book is focused on action, and includes a number of case studies with a range of participants such as new england fisheries, communities in peruvian national parks, children in zimbabwe and kenya, and groups such as youth, disabled people and migrants. each case study illustrates one or more par methods as applied in these unique environments. tools illustrated include body mapping, peer strategies with youth, participatory art, diagramming, theatre and cartography, social auditing and photovoice, even participatory gis. the third section underlines that par is a process for learning for all participants, particularly the researchers. as an example, ‘the different knowledge of parents, service users, service providers and researchers can be negotiated and boundaries collapsed’ (p. 195). the authors also emphasise the importance of representing and communicating par; they advise researchers to check and doublecheck with all participants regarding the language and potential stereotyping in publications and other vehicles of dissemination as we link participatory research to action and thoughtful activism. the papers in the book are uneven in terms of approach and depth, but all contribute to an understanding of the theory and practice of par. this is a useful textbook, as well as a tool for reviewing and expanding the approach and practice of experienced researchers. public sociology: research, action and change phil nyden, leslie hossfeld & gwendolyn nyden, sage, london, 2012, 336 pages over the past decade, public sociology has emerged as a key site of debate, research and action in the exploration of innovative solutions to social problems. public sociology seeks to reorient the broader field of sociology and make it more relevant and useful, whilst also drawing on the rich histories of disciplines such as collaborative and participatory action research, to emphasise ‘the active connections to publics and users of’ research, rather than ‘a passive research process’ (nyden, hossfeld & nyden 2012, p. 8). this united states focused resource is edited by three leading academics in the area, and contains work on 33 case studies by 53 contributors who, as one would expect, come from a variety of backgrounds including not-for-profit and community-based organisations as well as academic research. this is a timely publication which sets out the challenges and the imperatives for public sociology in an academic environment which privileges ‘original’ research by ‘experts’ within the academy over ‘translational’ research that organises existing research and disciplinary knowledge and communicates relevant findings to practitioners or activists trying to solve ongoing problems. michael burawoy, whose presidency of the american sociological association and subsequent work championing public sociology led to increased attention on the field, writes in one of the book’s three forewords: sociological imagination may expose social structure as the source of our malaise, but it is not sufficient for political action. we also need a political imagination to turn personal troubles into public issues, which is precisely what suffuses this collection. nyden, hossfeld and nyden take up burawoy’s distinction between traditional public sociology, which includes scholarship and professional activity that is driven by interests and priorities of the discipline (they identify the writing of op-ed columns, submissions to government hearings, speaking to community groups, consulting with organisations about their work, or reporting on research through web-based media), and organic public sociology (a more collaborative approach to research in gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 195–97 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 ruth mccausland university of new south wales 196 | gateways | review which boundaries between researcher and practitioner, scholar and activist, or university and community are more permeable). they refer to burawoy’s evocative description of the organic public sociologist as working in ‘close connection with a visible, thick, active, local and often counterpublic’, between whom there is a ‘dialogue, a process of mutual education’. they describe this more collaborative approach as that which is played out in the case studies in this book: ‘one that more explicitly recognizes the value of both university-based knowledge (e.g., outcomes from research done by academic sociologists responding to interests of the discipline) and community-based knowledge (e.g., awareness of community practices and histories)’. i was struck by the authors’ analysis of organic public sociologists necessarily working in complex, dynamic environments, of getting into the thick of ‘heated community debates, conflicts between organizational managers and staff, disputes between elected officials and grassroots organizations’ in seeking to bring about social change. it is refreshing and engaging to come across a text that squarely asserts the politicised nature of research without feeling compelled to defend in detail its objectivity and quality. as nyden, hossfeld and nyden point out, ethical and research standards can and should be maintained whilst being actively engaged at a community level. there are practical applied sections of the book such as ‘starting up and sustaining public sociology projects’, which includes detail regarding ‘identifying projects and partners’, ‘negotiating the research project’, ‘building trust and credibility’, ‘funding’ and ‘making university–non-university connections more routine’ and provides advice on various substantive and methodological issues that i found insightful and useful. the sections focused on the workings of the research centres with which the authors are involved are particularly detailed. the ‘career guide for public sociologists’ is informative, though entirely within a united states context. the 33 case studies detailed make for diverse and fascinating reading. they are grouped under the broad headings of ‘equitable community development’, ‘environmental issues’, ‘regional research and data collection to enhance public knowledge’, ‘inequalities of race, class and gender’, ‘the media’, ‘health’, ‘crime, reducing violence, and promoting justice’, and ‘community organizing’. barry checkoway and katie richards-schuster’s ‘youth participation in community research for racial justice’, keith n hampton’s ‘the internet as a leveler between advantaged and disadvantaged communities’, anne e figert’s ‘doing god’s work and doing good work(s): unique challenges to evaluation research in ministry settings’, leslie hossfeld and mac legerton’s ‘feast on the southeast: creating a sustainable local food system in southeastern north carolina’, donald w light’s ‘challenging discrimination against women, minorities, and the sick in health insurance’ and christine george’s ‘the role of relationship building in research partnerships’ stood out for this reviewer. 197 | gateways | review though the authors issue a rousing call for the promotion of such work in the name of public sociology, in my view there is a great deal of interdisciplinary relevance and potential in the case studies and analysis set out in this book. the authors acknowledge that they are in some senses repackaging current and past work in the field and indeed in other related fields (most notably participatory action research and evaluation, and public health), and the future of such projects may in fact be most valuably interdisciplinary. including positive impact on the community with whom researchers are working as an important measure in evaluating research quality and outcomes seems broadly relevant, as does the involvement of collaborative partners to improve research through the contributions and ideas of those most affected. there is broad appeal and applicability for the authors’ exposition of creative and flexible engaged research that is working towards positive social change. 13 schuster.indd revolutionizing education: youth participatory action research in motion julio cammarota & michelle fine (eds), routledge, new york & london, 2008, 256 pages in which ways is research revolutionary and transformative? how can research be a systematic approach to social change and critical epistemology? how do youth gain the skills to engage in critical research and what are the implications of their efforts for creating change in communities, institutions, education systems, academic settings, and society? these are the provocative questions that cammarota and fine raise in their important book revolutionizing education: youth participatory action research in motion. cammarota and fine describe youth participatory action research (ypar) as providing ‘young people with opportunities to study social problems affecting their lives and determine actions to rectify these problems’. their definition is not simply one of youth involvement in research but rather incorporates a deeper notion of the power that can be generated when critical inquiry is linked to creating social change and challenging systems of oppression. they discuss ypar both for its radical and revolutionary challenge to ‘traditional research’ practices but also for its active focus on research as a vehicle for increasing critical consciousness, developing knowledge for ‘resistance and transformation’, and for creating social change. the book contains a series of case study chapters that examine how ypar transforms young people and the social contexts in which they live as well as the learnings and implications yielded from this research. these chapters, co-written by youth and adult researchers, focus on five case examples of communities across three us states (arizona, california and new york). the book also includes four chapters that examine the theory and practice of ypar as an approach that challenges traditional notions of research and current approaches to education pedagogy. each of the five case chapters provides rich detail and focus on the research process, including the design and implementation, and implications of the research for social change. for example, cahill et al.’s chapter explores their participatory research project gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 187–189 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 katie richards-schuster university of michigan 188 | gateways | review examining everyday living in the lower east side of new york city. in this chapter, the authors detail the development of the research process and the critical insights gained from that process for understanding their own lives and those of their community. romero et al.’s chapter discusses the social justice education project (sjep) in tucson which engages young people in the public schools in participatory research on social and structural issues impacting latina/o students. it includes short writings by students about their experiences in sjep and focuses on the success, struggles and lessons learned over this five-year project and the pedagogical theory underlying the project. morell et al.’s chapter describes the work of the institute for democracy, education and access (idea) in los angeles and the participation of young people in a summer seminar in which they used critical research as a tool for youth engagement and for exploring social topics such as student rights, the experience of youth of color in public schools and civic education in schools. a unique aspect of this book is that each of the chapters is followed by a commentary from a senior scholar. the scholars – sandy grande, maxine greene, pauline lipman, luis moll and john rodgers – discuss the chapter, the educational pedagogy and the research project’s potential for transformation. the commentaries challenge the reader to consider larger questions raised by each of the chapters, including questions about democratic practice, political sovereignty, authentic learning, critical social praxis and education reform. the concluding chapters of the book focus on the role of participatory action research in reforming education systems and reforming and redefining research. cannella’s chapter challenges education systems to value the potential of participatory action research as an effective and valuable educational approach in contrast to the current approaches prescribed through federal us education policies like no child left behind. a concluding chapter by fine looks at participatory action research through the university lens. her chapter is a hypothetical letter to a tenure committee in support of an assistant professor whose scholarship is rooted in participatory action research pedagogy. fine challenges traditional notions of research and argues for the merit and value of participatory action research – not as an alternative to traditional research, but rather as a more essential form of research. revolutionizing education is deeply reflective and retrospective scholarship on critical questions about ypar. throughout the various chapters, the editors push the reader to examine the ways in which ypar projects encourage ‘new meanings of education’ and call for an examination of the way education settings can be transformed through ‘the acquisition of intellectual resources through which students initiate revolutionary projects to transform themselves and the worlds they inhabit’. in doing so, the authors lay the foundation for examining ypar not as a method but 189 | gateways | review rather as an epistemological and pedagogical approach that fundamentally challenges the way society views knowledge development, research and education. fine concludes the book stating that she hopes that one day ‘ypar comes to be recognized as a gift of critical pedagogy, deliberative public scholarship, and a delicious space for imaging multi-generational possibilities for a very different tomorrow’. revolutionizing education is an important contribution to the field of youth participatory action research. it creates the ‘delicious space’ through which readers can begin to imagine these possibilities and critically examine their own understanding of their work and its potential for revolutionising and transforming individuals and society. community monitoring a strategy to watch out for there is an increasing recognition that, despite significant improvements in health parameters such as life expectancy at birth and the reduction of infant mortality, people in many parts of india continue to have very poor access to health-care services and their health status remains abysmal. public spending on health in india, especially on preventive and promotive health, is also very low. conversely, private and out-of-pocket expenditure on health is very high – about three times higher than public expenditure. furthermore, there is the need to transform the health system into an efficient, transparent and accountable system delivering affordable and quality services. the national rural health mission (nrhm, or the mission) has been conceived and is being implemented to bring about these fundamental changes in the way health-care services are delivered to the rural poor (managers’ manual on community based monitoring 2008). the nrhm was launched in 2005 on a nationwide scale by the ministry of health and family welfare in the government of india. it has a vision to provide universal access to equitable, affordable and high-quality health care, while also being accountable and responsive to the needs of the people, especially those residing in rural areas, the poor, and women and children (‘community monitoring of health services takes off’ 2007). the nrhm aims to undertake structural changes to the health system to enable it to effectively handle increased financial allocations, as promised under the national common minimum programme. it also seeks to promote policies that strengthen public health management and service delivery to rural populations throughout the country, with a special focus on 18 states that have weak public health indicators and/or weak infrastructure. the nrhm is an umbrella program under which all national health programs and health strategies of the government of india are implemented. the major stakeholders in the nrhm are accredited social health activists, auxiliary nurse midwives and anganwadi (health) workers, panchayati raj institutions (pris) and non-governmental organisations, district administrations and state governments. in its very short eight-year journey, some very significant gains have gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 170–77 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 saurabh rambiharilal shrivastava prateek saurabh shrivastava jegadeesh ramasamy shri sathya sai medical college & research institute, kancheepuram 171 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy already been made. for example, rogi kalyan samitis (patient welfare committees, responsible for establishing and overseeing proper management structures) have been implemented in 570 district hospitals, 4210 community health centres and 16 920 primary health centres (‘nrhm – the progress made so far’ 2011). in order to achieve its goals and objectives, the mission seeks to forge effective partnerships between the central, state and local governments. flexible mechanisms and engaged practices have been built into the mission so that local needs and priorities can be identified and addressed and local initiatives promoted. different strategies and initiatives have been tried and successfully implemented in communities to facilitate active community participation. these initiatives include household and health facility surveys; local health camps; periodical public hearings, where people share their experience of seeking health care; training and orientation sessions for village health teams; and involving self-help groups, community-based organisations (cbos), parent–teacher associations, literacy volunteers, etc. (manual on community based monitoring 2006). this article explores one particular aspect of these responsive processes – community ownership and participation in management – which has been seen as an important prerequisite for the long-term success of the nrhm. the contributing authors have practical experience under different nrhm programs, namely: national vector borne disease control program; revised national tuberculosis program; integrated disease surveillance project; reproductive & child health phase ii, including janani suraksha yojana (a government of india scheme for reducing maternal and infant mortality rates); rogi kalyan samitis; community based monitoring; and national family welfare program. in all these health-care delivery programs, the authors have held managerial and administrative roles, which have contributed to the successful implementation and evaluation of the programs. the sri balaji vidyapeeth university is also helping the department of community medicine with the implementation of different programs incorporated under the nrhm. health-care centres have been established in rural as well as urban areas for the delivery of these services to the community. objectives of community-based monitoring community-based monitoring is being implemented under the auspices of the nrhm with an objective of providing regular and systematic information on community needs, which can be used to guide the planning process. it is also meant to provide feedback on the status of fulfilment of entitlements, the functioning of various levels of the public health system and service providers, gaps and deficiencies in services and levels of community satisfaction, in order to facilitate corrective action in compliance with a framework of accountability. in this way the community and communitybased organisations become equal and active partners in the 172 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy planning and responsive functioning of the public health system (managers’ manual on cbm 2008). fundamentals of community-based monitoring to ensure that health services reach those for whom they are intended, the nrhm has an intensive accountability structure consisting of a three-pronged process: internal monitoring; periodic surveys and studies; and community-based monitoring (cbm). this latter element places people at the centre of the process of regularly assessing whether the health needs and rights of the community are being fulfilled (managers’ manual on cbm 2008). cbm is also seen as an important vehicle for promoting community-led action in the field of health. the primary means for establishing and ensuring the implementation of cbm was the creation of monitoring and planning committees at all levels of health provision: phc (on-the-ground basic health units that provide integrated curative and preventive health care to rural populations); block (about 100 villages and a population of about 80 000 to 120 000); district (a type of administrative division usually made up of multiple blocks managed by a local government); and state. the monitoring process involves a threeway partnership between health-care providers and managers (the health system); the community/cbos/ngos; and panchayati raj institutions (a three-tiered structure of rural local self-government in india, linking the village to the district). cbm involves drawing in, activating, motivating and building the capacity of the community and its representatives, so that they may directly give feedback about the functioning of public health services, including input to improving planning of those services. the monitoring process covers outreach services, public health facilities and the referral system (community based monitoring of health services under nrhm 2006). the focus of the monitoring process is mainly on ‘fact finding’ and ‘learning lessons for improvement’ rather than on ‘fault finding’ (manual on community based monitoring 2006). stages of community-based monitoring in a nutshell, cbm comprises five stages: preparatory activities; capacity building and training of trainers at district level; community assessment; interface meetings; and the evaluation of feedback (manual on community based monitoring 2006). of foremost importance in the first stage are the identification of stakeholders and the formulation of a task force. this group must include representatives from civil society, policy-makers and coordinating agencies. it is responsible for planning, designing, advising and overall monitoring of the community process. the second stage deals with capacity building and the training of trainers at the district level. this is important because most districts have weak health delivery systems, incomplete health-related information and inadequate healthcare workers/ 173 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy logistic support/health financing. thus, the district is the unit most in need of strengthening. trainers from the health system, panchayat (village council) representatives, beneficiary representatives, ngos and cbos all receive training through district level workshops. ngos and cbos are trained as they assist in the collection of information during the assessment process (stage 3) at all levels, from the village to the state. this includes monitoring demand, coverage, access, quality, effectiveness, behaviour and the presence of healthcare personnel at service points, as well as any possible denial of care and negligence. in addition, participants need to be trained in the clear-cut demarcation of roles and responsibilities, accountability building and health rights, which have to be defined at the outset of the assessment process. the third stage focuses on the development of tools and techniques that are to be used in the community assessment. these include in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (fgds), case studies, record reviews and colour-coded ‘report cards’. the colour-coded report card is used to generate feedback on the degree of a citizen’s satisfaction with the quality of service provided by public agencies. it helps in identifying weak or deficient areas requiring immediate attention within an agency. it also encourages initiation of consumer-friendly practices and policies and increased transparency in services. a colour-coded report card is used to indicate the progress of activities. for example: green = 75–100 per cent of activities completed or on track; yellow = 50–74 per cent of activities completed or on track; red = 1–49 per cent of activities completed or on track. a community score card (csc) empowers citizens to provide immediate feedback to the providers. the csc can then be used as a tool to achieve social and public accountability as well as responsiveness from service providers. these cards are tools that encompass the best of social audit and citizen report card techniques. the fourth stage represents the crux of cbm. this is where the data and feedback are discussed. community monitoring exercises at both primary health centre (phc) and block levels include a jan samvad (public dialogue) or jan sunwai (public hearing). here, individual assessments and testimonies by local cbos/ngos are presented. these are facilitated by district and block facilitation groups in collaboration with village representatives. the fifth and final stage of cbm deals with the evaluation of feedback obtained from different levels of monitoring and planning committee meetings (including data entry and analysis, followed by report submission, review and documentation). data is compiled, collated and analysed in a standardised manner at different levels depending upon the availability of services, so as to aggregate data and obtain specific information about the individual service. this stage has a special significance from the program manager’s point of view: based on the final analysis, corrective measures are planned and then directed 174 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy towards villages whose report cards show either the red or yellow colour. finally, the monitoring and planning committee at state level conducts an annual public meeting, which is open to all civil society representatives. here the state’s nrhm report and independent reports are presented and reviewed, which enables corrective action to be taken (managers’ manual on community based monitoring 2008). significant improvements in health services have been achieved since the introduction of cbm, mainly due to a combination of nrhm ‘supply side’ inputs and ‘demand side’ push by cbm. for example, if the government wants to improve the immunisation coverage in a district with the help of cbm, the following steps will be phased in: the community-based monitoring process will be implemented under the overall supervision of the specially constituted task group of the advisory group on community action. in addition, a state mentoring team will be formed consisting of 7 to 11 members, of whom at least 4 to 7 will be civil society representatives. one of the state level ngos will be secured to work under the direction of the state mentoring team. a workshop will be organised by the mentoring team for state and district health officials, as well as pri representatives and ngo networks from the districts. training of the trainers for the facilitating teams (from the district(s) where immunisation coverage will be monitored) will be conducted by voluntary sector facilitators and state government officials. in the district(s), the process of community-based monitoring will be facilitated by ngos, district health officials and pri representatives. initially, community monitoring committees will be formed beginning with village committees, then phc, then block, and then district committees. a few members from the village community will be included in the phc committee; similarly, a few phc committee members will be included in the block committee; and so on. adequate representation of women, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes is required in the various committees. community-based monitoring of health service provision occurs next, with results (e.g. number of field immunisation sessions carried out; number of beneficiaries; any increase in the rates of adverse effects following immunisation; etc.) shared at all levels, including via a public dialogue or public hearing, which is moderated by the district and block facilitation groups in collaboration with panchayat representatives. finally, review and collation of summary reports occurs, with further in-the-field interaction. based on the evaluation, measures will be taken for the improvement and reorganisation of the health services. in the case of immunisation, all of the identified shortcomings/hurdles will be individually addressed and corrective measures will be taken to improve upon the results. the modified plan will be re-implemented in the area and again will be discussed in subsequent public hearings. 175 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy parameters for the successful implementation of community-based monitoring cbm brings people together from different groups, castes, religions and sectors to form partnerships. through these partnerships, the community can identify their common concerns and possible solutions through the collection, evaluation and sharing of information. cbm networks can often help in the development of meaningful collaborations between citizens and government, thereby improving public involvement in community decisionmaking. cbm can also help in the enhancement of local governance structures by bringing together the creativity, skills and resources of many different individuals. the community monitoring exercises and collation of information are organised at various levels – primary health centre, village, block, district – and the aggregated information is then passed upwards to the state government. this comprehensive information not only helps the program managers to build strategies to suit local needs on a sustainable basis, but also allows community members to increase their knowledge about local health problems. communities can then use this information to set their own limits on development and measure whether they are met. ultimately, cbm can contribute towards building ‘social capital’ and resilience in participating communities. from the in-the-field experience of cbm, a number of factors have been identified which, if monitored systematically, can ultimately lead to promising results over the long term. the most important factor is that, in order to engage the community in the process, the approach has to be context specific (i.e. the approach that is planned for tackling a problem should not be a generalised solution; rather it should suggest what should be done in that particular local setting to reduce that specific problem). this approach needs to be complemented by a continuous process of community mapping and an assessment of community participation and capacity building. secondly, the establishment of an information delivery mechanism that includes identification and communication of the community’s information needs is necessary, as community-based monitoring programs are often demand driven and the acquired new information is integrated into decisions and policies for the benefit of the society. thirdly, the gained experience should be meaningful for participants (lefler 2010). for any public health initiative to be successful, coordination among all stakeholders is critical. this should be encouraged right from the grassroots stage and mechanisms should be in place for effective communication, facilitation and negotiation. in order to achieve long-term benefits from cbm, another indispensable element is the development of strong partnerships, which not only facilitates capacity building but also the pooling of resources. collaborative approaches are further developed by encouraging forums for discussion with all stakeholders and by implementing a process of community visioning to define common goals and challenges (lefler 2010). 176 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy moving forward: current status and future challenges the process of developing and implementing cbm is a delicate one that needs to be handled carefully. community mobilisation experiences in the health sector show that the initial response of community representatives is often to assertively point out a whole range of problems, deficiencies, gaps and even alleged cases of denial of health care which may be quite difficult for the health officials to digest and absorb in the right spirit – and can, at times, lead to a virtual breakdown of dialogue. maintaining the vitality and authenticity of the process, and not allowing complete polarisation, which would disrupt the dialogue and convergence process, requires sensitivity. launching the cbm process on a large state-wide scale may conceivably lead to potentially disruptive situations and even the de-motivation of health functionaries; it is hoped this can be avoided by first working out the process in pilot areas and building appropriate checks and balances into the methodology before moving to generalisation. community-based monitoring is still an emerging concept, being piloted in nine states of india. the program has achieved success in karnataka and orissa states (gaitonde et al. 2007; national dissemination meeting 2010). in maharashtra, with the collaboration of the ngo, support for advocacy and training to health initiatives (sathi), the initial implementation of cbm was believed to be a unique ‘social experiment’ where, for the first time, community accountability, feedback and health sector dialogue mechanisms were systematically implemented on a significant scale within spaces supported by the public health system. thus, cbm was viewed as a significant opportunity to deepen, broaden and make sustainable the processes for community accountability for health services and establishment of health rights (kakde 2010). however, while considerable strides toward implementing community-based monitoring have been made, some aspects of the process continue to prove challenging in several communities. these include achieving long-term commitment by all stakeholders to community monitoring; identifying information needs of the decision-makers and establishing links with the local decisionmaking structures in order to achieve persistent influence; establishing an integration mechanism for all the gathered information to ensure a comprehensive assessment of the local health scenario; developing improved systems for managing data; and, finally, gaining the long-term commitment of government for scientific support, coordination, advice and assistance. apart from all the above challenges, in order to ensure the continuation and growth of community-led monitoring, support activities must continue at a national scale in the areas of capacity building for monitoring; regular training sessions; development of advanced techniques and strategies for information management, data evaluation and reporting; facilitation of capacity building as a means to develop and nurture networks and partnerships, 177 | gateways | shrivastava, shrivastava & ramasamy leadership skills, advocacy, negotiation and communication; and continuous monetary support to initiate, facilitate and contribute towards collaborative initiatives. conclusion community-based monitoring of health services is a key strategy of the national rural health mission to ensure that services reach those for whom they are meant. this proposed framework is usually consistent with the ‘right to health care’ approach since it places the health rights of the community at the centre of the process. it seeks to address the gaps in the implementation of various programs and thereby enhance the transparency of the system right down to the grassroots level. references akshara foundation 2007, 2006–07 annual report, viewed 13 november 2012, http://www.akshara.org.in/reports/annual_report_2006-07.pdf. ‘community based monitoring of health services under nrhm’ 2006, viewed 25 september 2012, www.nrhmcommunityaction.org/. ‘community monitoring of health services takes off’ 2007, express india, 16 october, viewed 10 october 2012, www.expressindia.com/latest-news/ community-monitoring-of-health-services-takes-off/229061/. gaitonde, r, sheikh, k, saligram, p & nambiar, d 2007, ‘community participation in health: the national landscape’, viewed 12 february 2013, http://uhc-india.org/uploads/gaitonderetal_ communityparticipationinhealththenationallandscapeinindia.pdf kakde, d 2010, ‘community based monitoring of health services under nrhm in maharashtra, 2007–2010’, viewed 13 november 2012, http:// www.maha-arogya.gov.in/community based nrhm/cbm_report_ june10_final_including_photo.pdf. lefler, t 2010, ‘successful community-based monitoring in canada: three case studies’, viewed 7 november 2012, www.wildsight.ca/files/ successful%20community-based%20monitoring%20in%20canada_ final_mrp%20(tristan%20lefler).pdf. managers’ manual on community based monitoring of health services under national rural health mission 2008, viewed 22 december 2012, www. nrhmcommunityaction.org/media/documents/managers%20manual.pdf. manual on community based monitoring of health services under national rural health mission 2006, viewed 16 september 2012, http://mohfw.nic.in/ nrhm/community_monitoring/implementers_manual.pdf. national dissemination meeting: community monitoring under national rural health mission – a report 2010, viewed 21 november 2012, www.chsj.org/ uploads/1/0/2/1/10215849/cmnationaldisseminationreport.pdf. ‘nrhm – the progress made so far’ 2011, viewed 27 february 2013, http://www.mohfw.nic.in/nrhm/documents/nrhm_the_progress_so_ far.pdf. http://www.akshara.org.in/reports/annual_report_2006-07.pdf file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/uts%20shopfront/shf046_gateways%20vol.6/supplied/www.expressindia.com/latest-news/community-monitoring-of-health-services-takes-off/229061/ file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/uts%20shopfront/shf046_gateways%20vol.6/supplied/www.expressindia.com/latest-news/community-monitoring-of-health-services-takes-off/229061/ http://uhc-india.org/uploads/gaitonderetal_communityparticipationinhealththenationallandscapeinindia.pdf http://uhc-india.org/uploads/gaitonderetal_communityparticipationinhealththenationallandscapeinindia.pdf http://www.maha-arogya.gov.in/community based nrhm/cbm_report_june10_final_including_photo.pdf http://www.maha-arogya.gov.in/community based nrhm/cbm_report_june10_final_including_photo.pdf http://www.maha-arogya.gov.in/community based nrhm/cbm_report_june10_final_including_photo.pdf http://www.wildsight.ca/files/successful community-based monitoring in canada_final_mrp (tristan lefler).pdf http://www.wildsight.ca/files/successful community-based monitoring in canada_final_mrp (tristan lefler).pdf http://www.wildsight.ca/files/successful community-based monitoring in canada_final_mrp (tristan lefler).pdf http://www.nrhmcommunityaction.org/media/documents/managers manual.pdf http://www.nrhmcommunityaction.org/media/documents/managers manual.pdf http://mohfw.nic.in/nrhm/community_monitoring/implementers_manual.pdf http://mohfw.nic.in/nrhm/community_monitoring/implementers_manual.pdf http://www.chsj.org/uploads/1/0/2/1/10215849/cmnationaldisseminationreport.pdf http://www.chsj.org/uploads/1/0/2/1/10215849/cmnationaldisseminationreport.pdf http://www.mohfw.nic.in/nrhm/documents/nrhm_the_progress_so_far.pdf http://www.mohfw.nic.in/nrhm/documents/nrhm_the_progress_so_far.pdf academics in the aisles establishing a university-supermarket partnership the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the us is a serious public health problem. nearly 70 per cent of us adults are overweight (body mass index (bmi) 25–29.9 kg/m2) or obese (bmi ≥30 kg/m2) combined; and 34 per cent are obese (flegal et al. 2012). seventeen per cent of us children and adolescents are obese (bmi ≥95th percentile using the bmi-for-age growth charts), a proportion that is higher than that of children and adolescents in other countries (ogden et al. 2012). having an unhealthy body weight increases the risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and certain cancers. while diet and exercise are key determinants of body weight, environmental factors, such as poor access to fresh foods and lack of safety and infrastructure for physical activity, prevent the adoption of optimal health behaviours (hill & peters 1998; sallis & glanz 2006, 2009). supermarkets in the us are responding to the obesity epidemic by providing the unique asset of food, pharmacy and registered dietitians in one location to help grocery shoppers successfully manage diseases, improve nutrition and lower stress (food marketing institute 2012). children in healthy weight households report being more involved in food purchasing decisions and therefore many supermarkets give hands-on store tours during school field trips (blischok 2010). clearly, the supermarket plays an important role in dietary intake and health; it is the largest source of food in the american diet and the average shopper makes one to two trips to the supermarket per week (black et al. 2010; food marketing institute 2010; guthrie, lin & frazao 2002; morland & evenson 2009; nielsen, siega-riz & popkin 2002; yoo et al. 2006). intervention research should support policy changes that will make the healthiest food choice, the easiest food choice. this call to action encourages partnership between universities and communities, supermarkets and food manufacturers. recent studies report that supermarket interventions are feasible and potentially efficacious, and shoppers have expressed a desire for supermarkets to offer health-conscious shopping programs (gittelsohn et al. 2010; huang et al. 2006; milliron, woolf & gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 183–91 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 brandy-joe milliron wake forest school of medicine kathleen woolf new york university barbara ruhs bashas’ family of stores bradley m. appelhans rush university medical center 184 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans appelhans 2012; ni mhurchu et al. 2010; vermeer, steenhuis & seidell 2009). considering the multitude of stakeholders and agenda items included in university-supermarket collaborations, strong partnerships are crucial, but can be challenging to establish. in this article, we share some of the barriers to and facilitators of university-supermarket research collaborations, with the intent of aiding other research groups that may be interested in conducting similar work. we partnered with a local supermarket chain to test the effects of a healthy shopping intervention on food purchases through in-person nutrition education focused on increasing purchases of fruits and vegetables, and decreasing purchases of high-fat foods. we conclude with a discussion of the lessons learned in the process of our university-supermarket partnership and adapt the recommendations outlined by strong et al. (2009) for partnerships engaged in piloting community interventions. partnering with a supermarket objectives point-of-purchase interventions that focus on changing purchasing behaviours can be implemented in the supermarket setting. several types of point-of-purchase interventions have been tested, including discounted healthier food items (e.g. fruit and vegetables), increased variety and availability of healthier food options, printed nutrition education materials, and increased advertising of healthful foods (ernst et al. 1986; kristal et al. 1997; paine-andrews et al. 1996; rodgers et al. 1994). our team wanted to pilot test a hybrid point-of-purchase shopping intervention and hypothesised that those who received the intervention would purchase more fruit and vegetables, and fewer high-fat foods. identifying a partner and reaching consensus in the early stages of the project, our research team approached several supermarket chains about the possibility of collaborating on a study designed to evaluate a supermarket point-of-purchase intervention that would include in-person nutrition education (milliron, appelhans & woolf 2012). in most supermarkets, the store managers report to a corporate office with multiple departments and layers of authority. the research team found it difficult to identify and reach the appropriate individuals with authority to approve the project. the study failed to receive the support of the ceo of one supermarket chain, and was declined by the public relations division of another. however, the public relations department of the supermarket chain, bashas’ family of stores, expressed initial interest in supporting the project, and referred the research team to a full-time registered dietitian who had been recently hired at the corporate level to lead health-related initiatives. fortunately for us, the dietitian had already been developing a wellness program 185 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans called healthstyles-eat smart©, which included point-of-purchase components. further, she had been given approval to implement the program in most stores. after agreeing to discuss the potential for a university-supermarket partnership in research, supermarket stakeholders and the research team needed to reach consensus on store locations, dates and times of data collection, and study procedures that would be permitted (for example, the supermarket management provided guidelines on how the intervention could be delivered). the supermarket management expressed concern that the presence of a research team would have a negative effect on supermarket traffic, sales and their organisation’s image. they were also sensitive to the potential for further solicitous interests from other organisations and/or individuals, such as children’s groups wanting to sell cookies or candy in front of their stores, or consumer research groups interested in the personal information of its consumers. our team was required to meet with bashas’ legal department to ensure that no activities were planned in conflict with any labour agreements or other union activities. overall, the process of identifying potential partners for the research, negotiating the terms of an agreement, and eventually acquiring final approval to begin data collection took about 13 months. after meetings with bashas’ corporate registered dietitian, public relations department and legal counsel, all parties agreed upon a study design that included multiple intervention stores (where the healthstyles-eat smart© program had been implemented) and multiple comparison stores (where the healthstyles-eat smart© program had not yet been implemented). the comparison and intervention stores were matched by census tracking of socioeconomic and other demographic data. however, just prior to beginning the intervention, the supermarket filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and 10 stores planned to close. unfortunately, several of those 10 stores were comparison stores in our study. re-creating the study to have a similar design was not possible because there were no additional comparison stores (where the healthstyles-eat smart© program had not been implemented) that matched the demographics of the intervention stores. hence, the result was a modified study that focused on testing the impact of in-person nutrition education on purchasing (in addition to the healthstyles-eat smart© point-of-purchase program) relative to usual care (healthstyles-eat smart© program only). participant recruitment supermarket management did not want shoppers to be contacted before or after the intervention. therefore, our research team was limited to in-store recruitment and data collection, and did not have the opportunity for subsequent follow-up. as mentioned above, supermarket management was also concerned that our presence might disrupt business and therefore we were not permitted to approach shoppers, but instead had to wait until they approached us. this procedural limitation made recruitment a challenge. further, although our affiliation and purpose was 186 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans displayed on signage in the data collection and recruitment area, as well as around the store, shoppers commonly mistook us for external vendors. when shoppers did approach our research team, they were given a brief description of the study procedures and were screened for eligibility. the study eligibility criteria provided an additional challenge for recruitment, and had to be modified shortly after the study began. the original eligibility criteria were as follows: participants had to be aged 18 years or older, shopping alone as the primary household shopper, planning to purchase at least 25 different food items, able to speak and write in english, able to shop unassisted, have transportation and own a home refrigerator. participant accrual was very slow during the first few weeks of data collection as the majority of shoppers were not shopping alone or purchasing at least 25 different food items. therefore, our research team agreed to modify the inclusion criteria so that participants were eligible for randomisation as long as they were the primary household shopper (shopping alone or accompanied), and planning to purchase at least 15 different food items. to avoid disrupting the flow of consumer traffic, the inperson nutrition education session was limited to 10 minutes or less. the nutrition educator used an intervention manual to keep each presentation consistent and to appeal to shoppers who may have been visual learners. although the time limitation eliminated the option of delivering an individualised intervention, this constraint was beneficial in that it likely mirrored the short amount of time an in-store registered dietitian or health educator might realistically have with a shopper’s attention. results and lessons learned despite initial barriers, this pilot study was feasible. one hundred and sixty-four participants were recruited and randomised into two groups. one group received a point-of-purchase healthful shopping intervention with face-to-face nutrition education. the second group did not receive face-to-face nutrition education but were exposed to the shelf signs. all participants completed surveys that included demographic questions, and participants randomised to the intervention group answered questions related to the perceived usefulness of the shopping intervention. the intervention resulted in greater purchasing of fruit and darkgreen/yellow vegetables. among the participants who received the intervention, 69 per cent reported the program to be very or extremely useful, and 26 per cent reported it somewhat useful. sixty-five per cent of the intervention participants reported that they would be more likely to shop in a supermarket that offered a healthful shopping program. the findings of this study and others have suggested that supermarket interventions to increase healthy food purchases are feasible (gittelsohn et al. 2010; huang et al. 2006; milliron, woolf & appelhans 2012; ni mhurchu et al. 2010, 2010; vermeer, steenhuis & seidell 2009). therefore, supermarket 187 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans registered dietitians are uniquely positioned to educate the public about nutrition at the point of purchase. opportunities and challenges of supermarket interventions our research team expected several challenges with the study prior to the implementation of the intervention. these included difficulty with on-site data collection (photographs of food purchases, survey administration and time), interest and willingness by shoppers to participate, and issues regarding customer privacy. while some of the challenges our research team experienced were expected, several were unforeseen. the first occurred during recruitment, as the inclusion and exclusion criteria impeded participant accrual. our research team found few shoppers who were shopping alone and even fewer who were planning to purchase as many as 25 different food items. the research team subsequently agreed to change the inclusion and exclusion criteria. second, although signage identifying our research team was displayed in the data collection area and in the store, shoppers often mistook our research team for external vendors. a third challenge posed the risk of reducing the efficacy of the healthstyles-eat smart© program. the supermarket aisles were overwhelmed with shelf tags, most of which notified shoppers of ‘price cuts’ (items that were on sale). because healthier food items are often more expensive (appelhans et al. 2012), several participants anecdotally reported that the healthstyles-eat smart© products were more costly, especially in the case of heart healthy products. although we were unable to include coupon incentives for targeted foods as part of the intervention, future healthy shopping studies would be well-served to do so. fourth, many shoppers were equipped with coupon books and shopping lists. convincing a shopper to substitute a healthier product for one on their shopping list or in their coupon book proved to be a difficult task. again, future shopping programs would be more effective if they provided coupons for targeted healthful food substitutions. a fifth challenge came, in part, as a result of the severe economic downturn that began in 2007. the supermarket with which we partnered filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just prior to the pilot testing phase of the intervention. this had two effects: 1) the corporate office was preoccupied with the financial instability of the organisation, and had little time or resources to allocate to the project; and 2) the closing of certain locations reduced the number of potential comparison stores with similar demographics to those of the intervention stores. this resulted in a modified study design and the absence of a true control group. recommendations for establishing a universitysupermarket partnership in research communication and partnership between the university research teams, supermarket management and key stakeholders are essential. strong et al. 2009 describes five key recommendations for partnerships engaged in piloting community interventions: 188 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans (1) ensure transparency regarding the research process and the intervention purpose; (2) develop realistic expectations; (3) recognise possible tensions that may arise; (4) integrate the pilot program within the structure of the host organisation; and (5) maintain reciprocal communication with program participants, the host organisation and the community during and after the pilot intervention phase. reflecting our experience in developing a partnership, recruiting intervention participants and conducting the intervention, we adapted those recommendations to universitysupermarket research collaborations. 1 ensure transparency regarding the importance of the research investigation, the objectives of the pilot study, and the process of participant recruitment and data collection. in addition to meeting with supermarket upper management, public relations and legal counsel, the research team should conduct focus groups with the supermarket managerial staff and store employees. such meetings may provide guidance in the design of the intervention as well as help ensure successful participant recruitment. 2 establish partner ‘buy in’ during study development or as early as possible. communicate often with key supermarket stakeholders and identify staff who may be willing to join the research team as a full partner. this recommendation can be challenging, especially if employee turnover is high or if managers and other employees are cycled between different stores. for example, during our initial study recruitment and intervention delivery, one manager and one cash register employee were supportive and enthusiastic about our research purpose and efforts. shoppers tended to trust the supermarket personnel, so their support helped with participant recruitment and made data collection easier. however, this level of support and trust was not consistent, and employee turnover became problematic. 3 acknowledge the tensions that may arise between the challenges of running a business by supermarket management/staff and the purpose of the pilot intervention. discuss in advance how the partnership will address these tensions. clear communication is critical, especially during economic hardship. 4 incorporate the pilot intervention within the structure of the host supermarket if possible. fortunately, we were able to test a pre-existing healthy shopping program. the results provided insight to the sustainability and effectiveness of providing such programs, as well as to future direction and possible enhancement. 5 carefully select a method of measurement for food purchasing patterns that can be implemented with minimal disruptions to store operations. we found digital photography, field notes and duplicate receipts to be efficient and well accepted, but other 189 | gateways | milliron, woolf, ruhs & appelhans options may also be well suited to different study designs and store environments. concluding remarks university-supermarket partnerships are valuable and worth the time and effort it takes to build them. by collaborating with the supermarket and testing the healthy shopping program, we were able to: 1) provide additional evidence that supermarket healthy shopping programs are feasible and can impact food purchases; and 2) provide support for implementing the program in all of the specific supermarket chains in the state and placing program volunteers in each store, as envisioned by the corporate registered dietitian. acknowledgements we are grateful to bashas’ family of stores for their partnership and permission to conduct this study. we would like to thank barbara ruhs, ms, rd, ldn, bashas’ corporate registered dietitian, elisha daigneault, catherine jarrett, jenna heller, brooke bjorge, kristina buchman, amanda palich and michelle cauwels. finally, we thank richard brandon for editorial support. nutritional analysis of shopping cart data was performed by the behavioral measurement shared service of the arizona cancer center and was supported in part by the national cancer institute (grant p30ca23074) and the arizona state university graduate and professional student association dissertation award. drs milliron and woolf were supported by the arizona state university program of nutrition in the department of nursing and health innovation during this study. dr milliron is currently supported by the comprehensive cancer center of wake forest university cancer control traineeship – nci/nih (grant r25ca122061). the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the national cancer 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steenhuis, i & seidell, j 2009, ‘from the point-of-purchase perspective: a qualitative study of the feasibility of interventions aimed at portion size’, health policy, vol. 90, pp. 73–80. yoo, s, baranowski, t, missaghian, m, baranowski, j, cullen, k, fisher, j, watson, k, zakeri, f & nicklas, t 2006, ‘food-purchasing patterns for home: a grocery store intercept survey’, public health nutrition, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 384–93. r_christie2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 31-47 © utsepress and the author yolngu studies: a case study of aboriginal community engagement michael christie he forty or more different clan groups of australian aboriginal people who live on or near the coast and islands of north-east arnhem land, in the northern territory, are collectively known as yolngu. yolngu law dictates that all marriages must be outside the clan group, a principle which has given rise to complex ceremonial and economic exchange relationships among quite separate groups. consequently, yolngu have a strong tradition of negotiation across cultural boundaries, while sharing carefully and respectfully with non-yolngu was already an established practice before the europeans arrived, as yolngu worked for, and traded with macassans who came annually to their shores from the north-west, from what is now known as indonesia. yolngu have ancient and carefully articulated theories of knowledge, identity, land, exchange and communication, which have been offered to newcomers wishing to engage with yolngu on t gateways | christie 32 yolngu land and terms. one such theory derives from the metaphor of ‘garma’, the open ceremonial ground where people are invited to gather together to perform their collective histories, their particular identities and allegiances, and an agreed statement of a way forward. the garma metaphor is particularly valuable for conceptualising bicultural (or ‘both-ways’) education, where balanda (european) and yolngu knowledge traditions come together, work together and agree together in the context of a particular place and a particular agenda, without compromise to either of the contributing traditions. the garma metaphor is also useful in understanding the interaction between teaching, research and community engagement in a university setting. community engagement is generally defined in terms of two-way relationships that yield mutually beneficial outcomes. in the yolngu epistemology, if things are done in a proper, respectful, orderly, well governed way, new knowledge and enhanced community capacity emerge from the garma performance. universities have always engaged with society but it has often been through one-way interaction at arms length. research agendas have been set by scientists, and new solutions and information have travelled in one direction – from university to society (gibbons 2005). the emphasis has now shifted. community engagement is embedded in the mission of universities around the world and is generally defined in terms of two-way relationships that yield mutually beneficial outcomes. community engagement is now seen as one of the three core activities of universities, alongside teaching and research (australian vice-chancellors’ committee 2005), and our university, the charles darwin university (cdu), has recently developed its own definition.1 engagement in this context is not an add-on, not outreach, but a building of scholarship connectivity into the objectives of the community (garlick 2005). yolngu studies at charles darwin university the yolngu studies programme was developed at charles darwin university, a small regional university in the northern territory of australia, whose mission statement explicitly avows a commitment to the community in which it has grown. cdu has a particular 1 ‘community engagement is key to all of cdu's activities, characterised by two-way relationships in which the university forms partnerships with its communities to yield mutually beneficial outcomes.’ (see www.cdu.edu.au/communityandaccess/communityengagement/index.html) gateways | christie 33 commitment to the indigenous people of northern australia, who make up 40 percent of the northern territory population. cdu is a ‘dual sector’ university, delivering education and training at both the tafe and the higher education levels. the yolngu studies programme started in the same year that the old technical and further education centre for aboriginal and islander studies was awarded faculty status, becoming the faculty of aboriginal and torres strait islander studies (fatsis). four vicechancellors and ten years later, the yolngu studies team won the 2005 australian university teachers of the year award. four people received the prime minister’s award, two yolngu and two balanda, two from the dhuwa moiety of yolngu social organisation and two from the yirritja side, two females and two males – waymamba, marrnganyin, john and michael. but present at the awards ceremony was also a group of yolngu advisers from remote arnhem land communities upon whose supervision and support the teaching, research and community engagement depended. it was truly an intercultural collaboration and this article records the nature of that collaboration. origins of the programme in cross-cultural engagement the story of engagement precedes the inauguration of fatsis and in fact of cdu by many years. waymamba, a gupapuyngu woman of the yirritja moiety, was the first yolngu studies lecturer and still works at cdu. she was born and grew up at milingimbi, and is the daughter of djawa, the ‘head man’ at milingimbi and a renowned peacemaker and cross-cultural negotiator. marrnganyin, a galpu woman of the dhuwa moiety, grew up at galiwin’ku, and became a well-known literacy worker and educator before moving to darwin, needing ongoing treatment for renal disease. she has been active in research, as well as teaching and linguistic work. john greatorex has worked with yolngu since the mid 1970s and is currently coordinator of yolngu studies and deeply involved in community engagement, teaching and research projects. michael christie who has been working with yolngu for nearly thirty-five years, set up and coordinated the yolngu studies programme with gateways | christie 34 waymamba’s assistance and is now engaged in collaborative transdisciplinary research with yolngu in a range of areas.2 john and michael both arrived in arnhem land at a time when the methodists had already established a relationship with the yolngu people which insisted that both yolngu and balanda needed to take each other seriously. john went to galiwin’ku and michael to milingimbi. the church handed over the mission schools to the government, but left behind in the schools a tradition of vernacular language use and respect for traditional culture and kinship which very soon flourished into successful bilingual education programmes. there was agreement that yolngu needed to understand and engage with the balanda culture, which impinged upon their traditional cultures, and balanda needed to respectfully engage with the knowledge traditions and the governance structures of the yolngu. the community engagement aspects of the story thus began long before the instigation of the yolngu studies programme. by the time we came to negotiate the delivery of a suite of yolngu language and culture units for the new bachelor of aboriginal and torres strait islander studies degree, the balanda and yolngu communities already enjoyed a long history of engagement. our task was to bring the existing collaborative arrangements onto a university context. we needed to develop a programme of teaching, research and community engagement which was acceptable and profitable to both the yolngu and the academic communities. the university provided resources for a whole year of community consultations and course development. this was 1994. michael travelled to all the major yolngu communities, and after extensive negotiations, advisers were appointed from each of the five major communities: milingimbi, ramingining, galiwin’ku, gapuwiyak and yirrkala. the yolngu rules of engagement the yolngu advisers agreed upon a set of protocols, and to the appointment of waymamba to the position of lecturer. the protocols established that all, not just one, of their many yolngu languages needed to be addressed. waymamba is a gupapuyngu woman, so the gupapuyngu language was chosen as the first language for all 2 for example, ‘making collective memory with computers’, a three-year project coordinated through the school of australian indigenous knowledge systems at cdu. for more information, go to http://www.cdu.edu.au/ik ‘. gateways | christie 35 students to learn. this was a convenient decision, because a vast gupapuyngu written literature already existed, probably greater than for any other australian language. the written literature had been developed mostly in the milingimbi school literature production centre over twenty years of bilingual education. about three hundred gupapuyngu texts were collected, and over the ensuing years, hundreds of other texts in other yolngu languages have been added, and many more produced by the programme. by the end of the first semester, students had already been introduced to short and simple texts in some other languages, and advanced studies mostly involved working in a strange new language. language cannot be taught without full integration of culture. the languages are needed to teach the culture. the culture is needed to teach the languages. kinship structures and practices, regimes of land ownership and custodianship, and ceremonial protocols and practices are common to all yolngu groups (with subtle differences that need to be addressed), so fundamentals of yolngu culture can be taught alongside the initial study of gupapuyngu phonology, morphology and grammar. the important particularities of clan groups – the naming conventions, images and metaphors which distinguish them from others – must be learnt later on from the right authorities, when the students have begun to successfully master the techniques of respectful negotiation. study notes, a reference book, and later a multimedia cd were developed for student use. the sale of these resources to the public provided a major source of funding for community engagement work. in accordance with a yolngu tradition, which predates the arrival of europeans on yolngu lands, all newcomers are welcomed to engage with the culture through ‘adoption’ into the kinships system. everyone is related to everyone else in a quite specific way. when bloodlines cannot be found to trace kinship, a system of subsections or skin names allows relatedness to be constructed. every student is assigned a skin name, and through that they begin to learn how to trace kinship with each other, with waymamba, and with all yolngu they meet. complex rules over how to address particular kin, what can and cannot be said to various people, and what forms of language to use when talking to and about ‘avoidance relations’, are learnt slowly, and occasionally with difficulty and embarrassment. gateways | christie 36 stories of land, and its ancestral histories should be studied in the particular languages of the owners. to make available the full range of languages and the histories and places the different dialects make real, a cd dictionary, a cd library, and later an online database were developed (see www.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies and click on ‘online database’). all of this work required further funding and over the next few years a series of small grants from within the university and from without (open learning australia, as well as the old committee for university teaching and staff development) were won. there are now about six hundred texts available electronically, in around fifteen yolngu languages. copies of all or at least as many books as we could find still available in literature centres (around two hundred books) were acquired for the cdu library. nothing of a secret/sacred nature could be addressed in the teaching programme, and students must be made aware of the protocols governing the access to and practices of secret/sacred law. waymamba, marrnganyin and guest lecturers make the complex protocols around the performance of knowledge clear and teach students what can be said about particular others, and what must be left for them to say for themselves and how the forms of language used encode the rights of particular individuals of particular ancestral stories, songs, images and performances. students can read and watch videos about particular ceremonies and ancestral stories on the website, and the lecturers explain what needs to be understood about how they work. the university must accept its reciprocal responsibility to provide good balanda education to yolngu people. as a reasonable exchange for the yolngu commitment to help balanda learn yolngu languages and culture, the university needs to reciprocate with a commitment to deliver good balanda education to yolngu on communities. this is a clear demand for a planned and managed programme of community engagement. some of the older people in the original discussion reiterated an old demand that people be taught ‘secret english’ (christie and perret 1996). this demand has underpinned a number of theoretical and applied collaborative research projects, some of which will be discussed below. the programme start-up the original programme had a full sequence of units for an undergraduate and postgraduate programme with notes on gateways | christie 37 languages and culture, and audiotapes that had been prepared for university short courses by michael and raymattja marika, one of the yolngu advisers. the notes and audiotapes were based on notes that had slowly evolved from the collaborations of many yolngu with many mission and government linguists and teacher-linguists over many years. both a yolngu and a balanda lecturer (waymamba and michael) were appointed under the guidance of the yolngu advisers, and both yolngu and non-yolngu students were enrolled. the participation of yolngu students has greatly enriched the range of texts made available to students and the public in many yolngu languages (through the online database). the yolngu students do not need to study gupapuyngu if that is not their first language, but begin immediately on improving their own vernacular literacy skills and later on commence a negotiated research programme of their own design in their own language (or another language of totemic significance to them). the two introductory level units familiarise students with the range of yolngu languages, with pronunciation, spelling and kinship that is common in structure in all clan groups. as well, they are introduced to the fundamental principles of yolngu life and with the grammar and morphology of dhuwal and dhuwala, two widely spoken language families. the intermediate level concentrates on a series of short texts on a variety of subjects in yolngu languages, and on making conversation in dhuwal. fortunately, the languages are morphologically very similar, and there are good resources available for most of them. students work through the texts with their yolngu lecturer, learning grammar, pronunciation, morphology, history, culture and interpretation. in the advanced units, students negotiate research projects with the lecturer, record, transcribe, translate and analyse texts, under yolngu supervision. many of these texts have originated from, and contribute to, collaborative research projects that are discussed below. the yolngu studies team also offers short courses to the general public. these tend to focus on the ‘cross-cultural awareness’ needs of teachers, medical workers, lawyers and government workers, but short course students are encouraged to convert their enrolments into a tertiary enrolment. the short courses are popular with the balanda community of darwin, and provide a source of revenue to pay for engagement work in the yolngu communities in arnhem land. gateways | christie 38 inscribing engagement in the web presence at the end of its second year, the programme won funding from open learning australia to develop materials and an e-learning classroom for online students. the website has now been in operation for ten years. the following image shows the home page: home page of yolngu studies at cdu, 2006; www.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies. the five buttons on the left describe firstly, the life and land of yolngu people with an interactive map; secondly, the range of study options and enrolment processes; thirdly, resources such as fonts, a public database, books and cds; fourthly, classroom access; and lastly, further information. the text of the opening screen is in gupapuyngu, waymamba’s language. these change to english upon roll-over thus ensuring the focus remains on the yolngu experience of language and culture. it needs to be approached and engaged before it can make sense to a non-speaker of yolngu languages. gateways | christie 39 further funding allowed us to develop a series of electronic and print resources, such as an electronic dictionary library, word list and grammar lessons, for classroom use, yolngu use and for public sale. profits from the sale of these resources have long been used to pay the advisers for the time they spend on their advisory work. teaching engagement to our students for many years, even before the arrival of the first europeans, yolngu had a custom of adopting visitors into their kinship system.3 this practice continued through the mission times, and remains today. if newcomers are adopted into the system, the practice offers an opportunity for yolngu to welcome and care for them properly, as well as a chance for the adoptee to learn how to treat others with care and respect. consistent with this practice, students are added to a class kinship network (see illustration, at left), which allows them to relate in particular ways to the lecturers, but also to each other. skills learnt slowly in the first months of study are later consolidated during the conversation classes, and by the time collaborative research projects need to be negotiated, students have the skills to collaborate carefully and respectfully. the diagram illustrates classroom kinship. each new generation of students is added as the children and grandchildren of more advanced students. the equals sign indicates a ‘marriage’ relationship. colours denote moieties, so patrilineal descent moves down the vertical lines. the kinship chart is reproduced here with permission. 3 see, for example, the story of the last macassan by djawa, waymamba’s father, in the online database. in this story, the last macassan is eager to remind djawa, who was a small boy when the incident took place at the beginning of the 20th century, of how he had been adopted as his elder brother by djawa’s parents in happier days. gateways | christie 40 engagement in research: working divergent knowledge systems the engagement of the yolngu studies team in research was developed in the first few years of the programme. the collaborative research practice was informed by yolngu practices and philosophies of knowledge production, particularly the philosophy of garma, as described earlier in this article. the garma metaphor is characterised by its insistence upon the engagement of both yolngu and western academic protocols and practices of knowledge production as illustrated: yolngu/transdisciplinary research engagement is understood as the intersection between two knowledge traditions. the sort of research which emerges from a properly negotiated engagement between yolngu and balanda knowledge systems includes that part of the yolngu knowledge tradition which is recognisable or legible from a western research perspective, and that part of the western academic research tradition which is at the same time conceived, shaped, governed and understood within yolngu knowledge traditions. the area in the middle of the diagram can be rigorously defined as yolngu research because it fulfils the criteria for both yolngu knowledge production and academic research. the yolngu criteria for a responsible, responsive collaborative research project include a careful negotiation of the research questions and yolngu supervision of the scale and location of the research. further, ongoing accountability not only in ethics, but in terms of accountability are important criteria, as is yolngu governance of the research process including sudden changes of direction and delays, properly identified and defrayed transaction yolngu/ transdisciplinary research yolngu knowledge practices academic knowledge practices gateways | christie 41 costs, and yolngu involvement in the production and assessment of truth claims (christie 2006). it is important to note that this research is accountable both within and outside the university. it is not interdisciplinary research, which responds to the demands of multiple disciplines within the academy; it is transdisciplinary, going beyond the evidential practices of the academic research (see also tress et al. 2004). what is described below as ‘yolngu research’ is a special (yolngu) case of transdisciplinary research. research example one: engaging yolngu communication theory ‘sharing the true stories’ was a four-year project investigating communication breakdown in the renal unit in darwin (cass et al. 2002; crc aboriginal health 2003). renal disease is epidemic in the australian aboriginal population, and good communication between health professionals and clients is central to good treatment. the researchers included yolngu dialysis patients, educators, liaison officers and interpreters and balanda nephrologists, nurses, managers, dieticians, social workers, linguists and academics. the yolngu researchers insisted on a traditional understanding of communication which reflected the garma philosophy and has much in common with balanda theories of socio-constructivism. communication is a matter of building shared understandings and working to bring narratives together towards agreement rather than transmitting truths from one mind to another; that is, collaboration rather than transmission. each participant occupies an expert position (such as the patient to her symptoms and medical history, the nurse to the daily life of the renal unit and the nephrologist to biomedicine) and communication entails building shared understandings among the positions, in particular contexts. the many outcomes of this long and complex project are recorded in a website which contains a range of communication resources (see, for example, www.cdu.edu.au/centres/stts/). in 2005 the project won the business and higher education round table award for the best research involving a cooperative research centre. it is outside the scope of this article to detail all the findings of the project and the changes to the medical culture where it was set up. however, worth mentioning are the research outcomes which produced new sorts of engagement. the use of yolngu languages, gateways | christie 42 language researchers and yolngu studies students in collaboration with yolngu researchers resulted in a broadening of the research focus away from purely linguistic concerns to an examination of the contexts (concerning spaces and agendas, for example) and the conditions (narrative, conversation, timing) under which good communication takes place. much of the research transfer therefore involved working with the balanda health professionals addressing issues of when and how to use an interpreter, ways of linking professional practice to the patients’ agendas (rather than vice versa), and quite simple things such as providing more telephones for patients to do the work of discussing and building consensus about their treatment and its relation to their family lives with key kinfolk. research example two: engaging yolngu methodologies the yolngu studies team have had strong research connections with the cooperative research centre for aboriginal health (crc-ah), who helped to find funding for two yolngu researchers, lawurrpa and garnggulkpuy, to set up the yalu marnggithinyaraw nurturing centre at galiwin’ku (see http://cdu.edu.au/). the crc-ah was very supportive of participatory action research involving yolngu knowledge practices and the image on the following page shows a painting given to the crc-ah by the yalu centre which represents the nurturing of the yolngu child through all its connections with various clan groups in the context of balanda technology (computers, stethoscope), balanda life (football), yolngu culture (different food sources), and spirituality (sacred items). lawurrpa and garnggulkpuy had been working in close collaboration with the yolngu studies team as advanced students, researchers, mentors and supervisors for balanda students who had received funding. working in collaboration with the yolngu studies team, they conducted ‘first language’ research to address the issues faced by yolngu ‘long-grassers’ sleeping under the stars in the parks and beaches of darwin. the original impetus of the research was the concern of lawurrpa for her brothers living as ‘long-grassers’ and the research question emerged from issues relating to everyday life. the shared problem required the shared solution, it needed to be properly negotiated, and everyone who had a stake in the issue needed to be involved, particularly the ‘long-grassers’ themselves. gateways | christie 43 nurturing the yolngu child by steve djati yunupingu. reproduced with permission of the artist. a previous research project (memmott & fantin 2001) had failed to adequately include the ‘long-grassers’ themselves and equally importantly, the larrakia traditional owners of darwin, on whose land the ‘long-grassers’ were living. the report of maypilama et al. (2004) presented some interesting findings such as the observation that many yolngu living in the long-grass did so because they felt it provided them with better opportunities to live authentic yolngu lives according to the imperatives of yolngu law in the city of darwin than on the ‘mission’ from which they felt they had escaped, and to which they were very reluctant to return. this was because many people from different clan groups living together in a large gateways | christie 44 community were not really in a position to support and respect traditional clan governance structures through their elders when they were undermined by the community council and its ‘socks-up’ yolngu bureaucrats. life in the long-grass of darwin therefore compared favourably with homeland centre life as both were relatively free from the poisonous sorcery-ridden life on the ‘mission’. the ‘long-grassers’ research also exemplified the collapse of teaching, research and community engagement, which is conceptualised in the garma metaphor. for example, when it came to developing the final report, the yolngu researchers made it clear that the sorts of practices which are normally implied by the ‘findings’ as ‘ways forward’ were already being implemented. there was no distinction between finding out what was wrong and doing something about it. identifying a problem and solving it are, in the yolngu ‘research’ process, integrated into a continuous programme of engagement (christie 2006). the research represented an opportunity to collectively reflect upon what was happening in terms of both problems and solutions, to let people (yolngu and nonyolngu) know what was happening, and to gather support for the ongoing work of yolngu looking after yolngu in collaboration with government and the aboriginal traditional owners of darwin. research example three: community digital capacity building the original aim of this australian research council linkage project was to develop digital solutions (configurations of hardware, software and digital objects) that could be used by indigenous people in their own places in natural and cultural resource management, including the intergenerational transmission of associated knowledge. in a number of different contexts yolngu joined the research effort as co-researchers using video cameras, sound recorders, software and hardware for their own work (see, for example, http://www.cdu.edu.au/ik/). the process was not one of developing databases and delivering them to aboriginal organisations but rather one of engaging with people in their day to day knowledge work ‘on country’. this involved taking a step back from the assumption that databases and archives contained and preserved aboriginal knowledge, and instead looking at knowledge work manifest as everyday practice embedded in community life. such work included making sense and value from gateways | christie 45 old photographs repatriated from southern museum collections; making videos of ceremonial performances to all senior ceremonial custodians to maintain their supervisory work when they could not make it to a particular ceremony in a different community; setting up systems so that yolngu teachers in remote homelands can incorporate recordings of ancestral art, dance and song into their curriculum. this research is once again deeply influenced by principles of community engagement, as solutions are negotiated in response to identified knowledge issues in particular contexts and the functions of digital technologies are not assumed but are reinvented and configured in a situated process of negotiation. conclusion the success of the yolngu studies programme depended fundamentally upon two things: firstly, that although it was often largely unnoticed or unrecognised, the community engagement strategy which underpinned the programme’s instigation and ongoing development was massive. the engagement of the cdu staff with the wider yolngu community in darwin and in arnhem land preceded the programme by many years and has continued intensively since its inception. this has required many flights in light aircraft to dozens of yolngu communities and homeland centres at the cost of many thousands of dollars. funding for these was not obtained through an identified community engagement budget but through funds gleaned mostly from the offering of short courses, selling of cds and books and small consultancies and research projects. without the established good will and the vast collection of resources in yolngu languages available to the programme, the university would have had to make a massive investment. the yolngu lecturers who live in darwin are senior community members in their own right and spend a lot of time helping people in arnhem land keep in touch with family members who may be at a considerable distance away in darwin, in hospital, housed in hostels or living in the long-grass. the faculty allows them the use of university telephones and gives them considerable time for doing community work as a key part of maintaining the reciprocal support for the programme on-the-ground in arnhem land. even with all the good will, hard work and considerable external funding, it still took the programme about ten years to become stable, gateways | christie 46 well supported, well documented and internationally recognised. negotiations with the yolngu advisers and communities are ongoing, and we continue to seek funding to enhance our community engagement in the context of teaching and research.4 the second critical success factor was the interwoven nature of the research, teaching and community engagement. the collaborative research projects actively contribute to the university’s engagement with the community (not only the yolngu community but also those in darwin and the medical and digital community, for example) and produce material for the teaching programme. the teaching programme involves students in collaborative research under yolngu supervision which increases research capacity in the yolngu community and provides an ongoing source of funding for yolngu supervisors. a good proportion of the balanda students are professionals (lawyers, doctors, teachers) doing a postgraduate diploma in yolngu studies and their research is very useful to their work. further, through its ongoing work with the yolngu advisers, the community engagement programme ensures the ongoing viability of the teaching programme and effective collaboration, supervision and transfer for the research programme. in the garma context, research is collective knowledge production which necessitates practices of teaching and engagement. teaching is a collaborative process which involves collective searching for ways forward for the whole community, and engagement involves elaborating new futures for community and helping the new generation participate in this. thus a serious engagement with yolngu intellectual traditions, particularly the garma metaphor, has allowed us to reconceptualise our work as succeeding through the erosion of the artificial boundaries between research, teaching and community engagement. references australian vice-chancellors’ committee, 2005, engagement with business and community: enhancing universities’ interaction, australian vice-chancellors’ committee (avcc), canberra. 4 see, for example, the ‘ict and remote community capacity’ project at http://www.cdu.edu.au/inc and the ‘e-learning for remote community microbusiness’ project at http://www.cdu.edu.au/aflf. gateways | christie 47 cass, a, lowell, a, et al. 2002, ‘sharing the true stories: improving communication between aboriginal patients and healthcare workers’, the medical journal of australia, vol. 176, no. 10, pp. 466–70. christie, m 2006, ‘transdisciplinary research and aboriginal knowledge’, australian journal of indigenous education, vol. 35, pp. 78–89. christie, m & perrett, w 1996, ‘negotiating resources: language, knowledge and the search for “secret english” in northeast arnhem land’, r howitt, j connell & p hirsch (eds), resources, nations and indigenous peoples, oxford university press, melbourne, pp. 57–65. garlick, s 2005, ‘regional knowledge works’, paper presented to the third stream funding forum, federation of australian scientific and technological societies (fasts), canberra, 12 october, viewed 20 october 2007, <http://www.fasts.org/images/third-stream/steve_garlick.ppt> gibbons, m 2005, ‘engagement with the community: the emergence of a new social contract between society and science’, paper presented to the community engagement national workshop, griffith university, brisbane, 4 march. maypilama, e & garnggulkpuy g, co-authored by christie m, greatorex, j & grace, j 2003, ‘yolngu long-grassers on larrakia land: first language research project’, report for the community harmony project darwin and palmerston (previously known as the itinerants project), viewed 20 october 2007, <http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies/docs/longgrass_report.pdf> memmott, p & fantin s 2001, the long grassers: a strategic report on indigenous 'itinerants' in the darwin and palmerston area, three volumes prepared for territory housing, territory health services and atsic in association with the aboriginal environments research centre, university of queensland. tress, b, tress, g & van der valk, a 2003, 'interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in landscape studies – the wageningen delta approach', in b tress, g tress, a van der valk & g fry (eds), interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary landscape studies: potential and limitations, delta series 2, wageningen, pp. 8–15. sustaining communityuniversity partnerships one consequence of the development of community-university engagement over the last decade has been a growth in the academic literature exploring the role of universities in developing community partnerships. much of the focus is on practicebased engagement, for example, on project work (fogel & cook 2006; lerner & simon 1998); ‘communities of practice’ (hart & wolff 2006); and ‘clusters’ (fielden et al. 2007). the issue of sustainability is not generally reflected in the literature, although one recent exception considers the role of universities in building sustainable communities through engagement in the australasian context (www.aucea.org.au/wp-content/uploads/autumn-20113. pdf). more often, however, where there is a focus on sustainability, it is concerned solely with a specific program or intervention. writing in the context of social work education, for example, mccaslin and barnstable (2010, p. 3) argue that ‘most analyses of community/ university collaborations ... focus on the benefit to agencies’, especially in terms of improving practice and creating a pool of qualified staff. stirman et al. (2009) similarly emphasise agency policies in sustaining university public health initiatives. an alternative focus is on the sustainability of specific health behaviours. in the field of community health, where partnership approaches are increasingly combined with other interventions, project evaluation is often limited to changes in population health status while ‘broader contextual questions that may illuminate mechanisms for change across ecological levels and project sustainability may not be addressed’ (kelley et al. 2005, p. 1). environmental and social sustainability is a developing field that requires strong partnerships between ecologists and land managers (castillo et al. 2005; grainger, sherry & fondahl 2006). here, the focus of attention is on the different perceptions of partners and the impact this has on environmental management. at the university of brighton in the uk, the community university partnership programme (cupp) has been working in the field of community engagement for several years and brighton is one of a small number of uk universities with an established institution-wide program supported by a dedicated structure. like gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 1–11 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 simon northmore angie hart community university partnership programme and school of nursing and midwifery, university of brighton http://www.aucea.org.au/wp-content/uploads/autumn-20113.pdf http://www.aucea.org.au/wp-content/uploads/autumn-20113.pdf 2 | gateways | northmore & hart many of our colleagues working in this field, cupp’s initial focus was project based, and we have tended to think of sustainability in terms of the need to ensure the continuity of projects and therefore continuity of funding. for example, a book produced by cupp in 2007 was based mainly on practical accounts of early projects (hart, maddison & wolff 2007), while the sustainability of some of our cupp-supported projects has been achieved through their integration into individual departmental or academic portfolios. the latter has certainly been a successful strategy. however, following a period of rapid expansion, resources have become tighter. as the uk enters a period of major social and political change, we are increasingly having to consider sustainability in broader terms: in particular, those fundamental elements – other than funding – that will ensure our long-term survival. that is, the reciprocal relationships and mutual benefits that exist between community and university partners and their institutions. this is not to say that funding is not important. rather, that it is not the end of the story. in terms of cupp’s brokerage role and the partnership projects cupp leads on, we are fortunate that community engagement remains a strategic priority for the university of brighton and that senior management has committed to core-funding cupp for the foreseeable future. whilst we have also secured external funds to support our community engagement work, it is of great benefit to have a relatively stable base funding, even if modest. this has contributed, undoubtedly, to the success of our work, particularly in terms of our capacity to maintain links over time with different communities, university personnel and students. this situation is fairly unusual in the uk: most universities fund community partnership activities via external grants, with almost all personnel on short-term contracts. sustainability, however, requires a more holistic, longterm approach. vogel, seifer and gelmon (2010), discussing sustainability in the context of service-learning, suggest that between five and 10 years are needed to fully establish the building blocks that influence long-term sustainability. as green and kearney (2011, p. 47) point out, project-based initiatives ‘typically address discrete aspects of more complex issues where results can be reported in a relatively short time period’. they suggest that an alternative approach is to think about the sustainability of the desired outcomes of project work. it is to the wider social impact of community-university partnerships that we now turn. community-university partnerships in the current economic climate globally, the sustainability of community-university partnership working presents a mixed picture. in the us and australia, university-wide structures that provide ongoing support for activities intended for cultural or social benefit are relatively well developed. in the uk they are still quite rare. internationally, higher education institutions incorporate civic engagement and 3 | gateways | northmore & hart community service into their research and teaching in a wide variety of ways depending on the character and priorities of their region or nation (see the talloires network website: www. tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/). despite this apparently healthy diversity, the contemporary debate about the role of universities and their relationship to local communities is nonetheless a contested one. for example, the current uk higher education sector does not look set to prioritise the mainstream funding of community engagement as core university business. as we, and others, have argued elsewhere for this to change, universities need to more actively demonstrate the added value they bring when addressing complex social problems in partnership with local communities (mulvihill et al. 2011a). furthermore, the coming era of privatisation and high student fees in the uk could positively benefit community engagement if universities can convince students that their engagement in communityuniversity partnership working is valuable. community-university partnerships thus have much to offer to the debate about the future of universities in a time of uncertainty and decreasing resources. in 2010 the president of the international association of universities reiterated the importance of the role of the university in addressing major global issues: what has become clear is that none of these major issues on the global agenda will be resolved without the participation of universities, since they are the environments that foster not only knowledge, thought and research but also proposals for social action (de la fuente 2010). as well, universities can offer more stability than many other organisations within a given community. as budd hall (director, office of community based research, university of victoria, canada) puts it: ‘higher education institutions may be one of the largest, relatively untapped resources that our communities have’ (www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/films.html). this is not to suggest that local communities are somehow the ‘weaker’ partner in community-university partnerships. communities can also be important sources of stability and are often much more nimble footed than universities or other professional gatekeepers. as 2011 draws to a close these raised expectations coincide with a period of global economic recession and huge reductions to budgets for national public services. this is a difficult environment in which to build community-university partnerships. the depletion in public services will add to the demands made on the very local voluntary and community organisations that form the majority of university partners, while for universities the costs of higher education for many sections of the population seem likely to increase and funds for research are likely to be severely http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/ http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/ http://www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/films.html 4 | gateways | northmore & hart diminished. at the same time, as universities decide where to focus limited energies for maximum effect, they will, more than ever, need evidence-based research and up-to-date knowledge. the issue of sustainability is therefore central. while it may be easier to measure the results of short-term project interventions, it is this longer term perspective that is likely to improve both the quality and impact of community-university partnerships. if the current economic crisis provides the impetus to reconsider and reshape relationships between local communities and their universities, as well as to develop new collaborative partnerships between universities, then there may well be an opportunity here, not just a tightening of budgets. in the next section we examine what such a reshaping and developing of sustainable partnerships might involve, drawing on the articles in this volume of gateways. the articles here tackle the core research question that concerns us: how do we address the challenges of building sustainable community-university partnerships, especially with disadvantaged and excluded communities who have limited resources of their own? the large number of submissions received indicates that this is an important area for exploration by both academics and community partners. we hope that the analysis presented in this introductory chapter and the articles that follow will provide gateways readers with a better understanding of the issues that contribute to sustainable partnerships. overview of this volume as has been suggested, the majority of the literature on community-university partnerships is concerned with practice development and this is reflected in this special edition of gateways. in part it is inherent in the nature of the work. most communityuniversity partnership projects, as with the current contributions, are concerned with local initiatives; have a specialist focus; and aim to address the needs of particular communities. the community needs described here range from the specific needs of chinese elderly (dong et al.) to those of extensive regional communities such as the san joaquin valley in california (london et al.) and the coastal region of the southeast of england (pratt et al.). the geographical spread is wide, although the contributions here are all from north america, australia and the united kingdom, and the absence of articles describing the experiences from less economically developed countries is a notable gap. a number of articles, such as those by pratt et al., russell et al., shea, and ellis and leahy, adopt a regional level perspective, suggesting that the focus of engagement work may be shifting away from being on an individual university. the range of specialist topics is also broad, including service-learning (vogel & seifer); youth mentoring (jones, keller & wheeler); the university of the third age (ellis & leahy); community arts (white & robson; vazquez jacobus, baskett & 5 | gateways | northmore & hart bechstein); environment (london et al.); and health (wright et al.). they comprise a rich array of ideas and descriptions about different types of partnerships and recent project work that will be useful for readers interested in empirical detail and the diversity of methodologies employed. in part, too, the tendency to focus on practice is related to the complexities involved in undertaking partnership work. in different ways the contributors to this volume encounter the challenges of maintaining funding; dealing with issues of unequal power (real or perceived) between community and university partners; the difficulties of information sharing across institutional and organisational boundaries; and working with multiple partners. unsurprisingly, this sometimes leaves little opportunity for critical reflection. one purpose of this special edition was to encourage contributors to reflect on their work and, rather than assume that sustainability has an intrinsic value, consider the notion of sustainability. notwithstanding the practice-based nature of the articles, a number usefully address the concept of sustainability or utilise other theoretical perspectives to investigate sustainability, for example boyle, ross and stephens’ application of stakeholder theory. nonetheless, the contributions are very much from a university rather than a community perspective. this is not to censure the current authors. community partners do not have the same time or motivation to write about their work and it requires a good deal of support (hart, maddison & wolff 2007). we are therefore very grateful for the number of contributions that have been co-written by community members and academics. the diversity of content presented us with a challenge in terms of ordering the articles. rather than including a detailed résumé of each paper we decided on a more thematic approach, which is presented in the next section as a series of cross-cutting issues. characteristics of sustainable partnership working sustainability and partnership working are inextricably intertwined. as boyle, ross and stephens observe, while community-university partnerships have become an increasingly common approach to tackling difficult social problems, ‘partnership sustainability appears to be as complex as the problems the partnerships are designed to address’ (p. 116), and our understanding of both is incomplete. with this caution in mind, the current collection of articles does suggest some common characteristics that underpin sustainability. these include: —genuine reciprocity —a creative approach to partnerships —mutual learning and recognising the multiple purposes of partners —building ‘bridges’ within and between organisations —funding. we explore each of these further. 6 | gateways | northmore & hart genuine reciprocity the idea that partnership working should be based on reciprocal relationships and that this is an important factor in building sustainability may appear self-evident. however, the reality of community-university partnerships is of unequal power and legitimacy between higher education institutions and many community partners, particularly where those partners represent socially excluded or disadvantaged communities. vazquez jacobus, baskett and bechstein refer to the ‘well intentioned [but] ... sadly, a familiar bias in the attitude of some academics – that community partners are the feeble-minded, albeit stout, cousins to the intellectual inhabitants of the ivory tower’ (p. 70). a major challenge facing universities, therefore, is in addressing these attitudes and inequalities: how to engage communities and individuals who are least likely to have had a formal relationship with higher education in a way that embodies genuine reciprocity. the partnerships represented here provide some clues as to what a more inclusive practice might entail. boyle, ross and stephens, in their comparative study of three partnerships, argue that leadership is a critical factor. the mere fact that individuals may have a stake in the success of the partnership will not make it sustainable. whether the partnership is led by a faculty or community member, sustainability will benefit from ‘[an] embedded, well-connected leadership, with expertise in the social issue at hand’ (p. 114). it is this that creates the legitimacy necessary to support a sustainable partnership as well as legitimacy in the eyes of policy-makers and other stakeholders. a second aspect of mutuality is respect for the different modes of knowledge of community and university partners, where the community partner is ‘regarded as an equal, not merely a mechanical agent of the university partner’ (vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein, p. 70). london et al.’s account of a participatory action research project looking at the social and environmental impacts on health in the san joaquin valley, california, demonstrates how partnerships can go beyond simply documenting community knowledge to promote mutual co-learning between academics and community partners. such co-produced knowledge both creates more rigorous and relevant research and provides community partners with ‘opportunities for self-empowerment through the documentation and critical reflection of their environmental knowledge’ (p. 27). elsewhere, dong et al. and wright et al. emphasise that mutual learning also involves a culturally sensitive approach, embracing diversity and respecting cultural, linguistic, racial/ethnic, gender and other differences. a creative approach to partnerships one of the key themes running through the projects presented here is the importance of creativity in sustaining partnerships. personal relationships, supported by effective leadership, are crucial to this. there are numerous examples of how good personal relationships create the necessary flexibility, adaptability and persistence to 7 | gateways | northmore & hart counter the inbuilt differences of power and legitimacy between partners and their multiple starting points and purposes. such relationships, however, take time to develop. as phipps and zanotti suggest, this is likely to be an evolutionary process, where trust and shared understanding develop through a series of collaborations over time. in this way sustainability ‘... is not an end in itself. sustainability is a by-product of a successful relationship’ (p. 209). they highlight the interplay between the micro and macro levels of partnership working, suggesting that in paying attention to the ‘little things’ – supporting each other in the dayto-day interactions of meetings, events, presentations, writing and so on – the ‘big things’, like sustainability, will naturally develop. once trust and good working relationships have been established, they need to be maintained. shea points out that the arrival of newcomers to the group or partnership will necessitate revisiting past discussions to build trust and achieve a new consensus. mutual learning all of the partnerships described here aimed in some degree to develop mutually beneficial co-learning. as london et al. observe, community-university partnerships: ‘[do] not merely document community knowledge, but can promote mutually beneficial co-learning between academics and [community] advocates’ (p. 23). this takes a variety of forms, including a service-learning approach (vogel & seifer); learning through art (white & robson); participatory research (boyle, ross & stephens; dong et al.; london et al.; wright et al.); older adults learning through u3a (ellis & leahy); and practitioner development (jones, keller & wheeler). a common concern, however, was how to evaluate the impact of that learning, whether on students, faculty members, or community partners. evaluation has an important learning purpose in providing clear feedback to all partners involved. however, the diversity of engagement activity requires a diversity of measurement tools and it is likely that different judgements will be made by different stakeholders (hart, northmore & gerhardt 2009). another issue in evaluating community-university partnerships is the need to distinguish between evaluating the impact of the partnership on its stakeholders, for example staff and student engagement, or on institutional prioritisation, teaching and learning or levels of community engagement, and evaluating the social impact of university-community initiatives (mulvihill et al. 2011b). these dilemmas are apparent in the projects described here. a variety of methodological approaches were employed. these variously focused on the perspectives of different partners; the processes involved in the partnership; and evaluating the social impact of a program, though few involved a formal evaluation of the partnership model. this makes it difficult to draw general conclusions. nonetheless, some important broad-level issues emerge in relation to partnership sustainability. 8 | gateways | northmore & hart firstly, as wright et al. point out, the definition of ‘success’ may be different for new or emerging partnerships and for established partnerships, ‘since time plays an important role in the impact of the partners’ activities and in the quality of the partners’ relationships’ (p. 88). second, ‘“success”, corresponding to desirable outcomes, is a challenge to objectively measure’ (vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein, p. 78). while there is a need to develop appropriate and manageable outcome indicators (and this will be increasingly important as universities look to measure the strategic and financial return on their investment in engagement), if, as phipps and zanotti argue, the goal is to leave a legacy from which others can learn, it is important to collect the stories as well as the outcomes (p. 211). in their terms, communityuniversity partnerships are as much about the ‘journey’ as the ‘destination’. finally, an important characteristic of communityuniversity partnerships is their interdisciplinarity. many involve a range of professional, artistic and academic disciplines, as well as diverse cultures, languages, ages and abilities. this can produce a rich learning environment but it can also bring with it the danger of over-extending those involved (vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein). while this could seem a potential threat to sustainability, the opposite may be the case. as vazquez jacobus, baskett and bechstein conclude: ‘what has seen us through the challenges [of interdisciplinarity] is a resiliency in the fabric woven by our common ideals’ (p. 73). building ‘bridges’ the barriers to successful community-university partnerships, particularly the inequalities in recognition and resources already mentioned, have led to the development of various models of university capacity building for community engagement. an important focus here is on what occurs at the boundaries between different organisations and the need for ‘boundary spanners’ who can broker relationships and act as interpreters between partners (wenger 1999). alter (2005) emphasises the importance of creating ‘enabling platforms’ to bring together community-based experience and academic study in a deeper mutual understanding. the notion of ‘communities of practice’ is one way of handling the different modes of knowledge involved in community-university partnerships (hart & wolff 2006). the partnership model of science shops is similarly concerned with building up longer term relationships between scientific knowledge and civil society groups to meet local needs (ec 2003). at the university of brighton we have developed a helpdesk, supported by a senior researchers group, which plays a crucial role in capacity building both within the university and between the university and the local community (hart et al. 2009). the need for an infrastructure to build the necessary trust, relationships, commitment and understanding for sustainable partnerships is emphasised by a number of the current authors. russell et al. maintain that this should include the 9 | gateways | northmore & hart whole university: administrative staff, senior management and academics. shea argues that institutional level commitment is important for handling issues such as a long-term funding strategy, transition plans and inevitable changes in leadership. boyle, ross and stephens stress the importance not only of an administrative infrastructure but also of faculty involvement. it is the long-term, intellectually based engagement of academics that can create the time commitment and ongoing support essential to sustained community partnerships. without this, partnerships may be too dependent on particular leaders or funders, who may have shortterm horizons. funding funding is, nonetheless, an important element of sustainability and we were surprised that so few of the articles submitted talked about finance, suggesting that other factors may ultimately be more important to sustainability. white and robson’s account of the revival of a community arts project reminds us that it is easy to underestimate the importance of both a small number of committed individuals and what they refer to as ‘the communal will’. conversely, universities themselves represent considerable resources. despite the difficult climate in which they operate, boyle, ross and stephens argue that within this climate universities have the potential to act as important ‘anchor’ organisations for local communities. while funding may not be the most critical factor in successful community-university partnerships, it is unavoidable. limited resources and straightened economic times may well generate new creative opportunities (white & robson; shea; pratt et al.) but for many partnerships ‘it is the literal buy-in, the delegation of resources and the priority of assets, which we are missing. unfortunately, it is this financial buy-in that is also required for our sustainability’ (vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein, p. 78). conclusion as many of the authors suggest, sustainability is ‘not in and of itself an affirmative good’ (vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein, p. 78). the projects described here did not set out with sustainability as an outcome. they set out in a variety of ways to make a real difference to the lives of people in local communities and to the quality and relevance of university research and teaching. in the process they created significant opportunities for knowledge mobilisation and exchange. sustainability was thus ‘... a by-product of ongoing collaborations between organisations’ (phipps & zanotti, p. 74). indeed, for many, it was the collaborative relationship rather than any specific outcome that lay at the heart of sustainability. equally, as london et al. highlight, a strong partnership relationship can survive setbacks: ‘the sustainability of community-university partnerships is not based on a lack of mistakes in the relationship, but instead on the ability to build resilience over time and draw strength from responses to the challenges to be overcome’ (p. 13). 10 | gateways | northmore & hart the articles in this special edition provide us with a wealth of detailed material and identify some important characteristics of sustainable community-university partnership working, often in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage. nonetheless, they remain predominantly descriptive accounts. given the challenges involved, whether in designing, implementing and evaluating the impact of partnership activities or in establishing genuinely reciprocal relationships between partners with different levels of power, legitimacy and commitment, there is now an urgent need to develop more theoretical models of sustainability that can help us withstand the current economic challenges. importantly, these models should draw on the experience of sustainable partnership working in less economically developed countries, where the concept of university-community engagement and sustainability will take on different connotations owing to different cultural and political contexts. yet the partnerships represented in this collection also demonstrate a creativity, thoughtfulness and entrepreneurialism that suggest that we should not be pessimistic about the sustainability of community-university partnership working. the paradox is that economic crises may help to create sustainability as partnerships between community organisations and universities become more essential to the survival of both. acknowledgements we would like to thank the gateways team, especially margaret malone for her valuable editorial input. any correspondence should be directed to: a.hart@brighton.ac.uk references alter, t 2005, ‘achieving the promise of public scholarship’, in s peters, n jordan, m adamek & t alter (eds), engaging campus and community: the practice of public scholarship in the state and land-grant university system, kettering foundation press, dayton, oh. castillo, a, torres, a, velázquez a & bocco, g 2005, ‘the use of ecological science by rural producers: a case study in mexico’, ecological applications, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 745–56. european commission (ec) 2003, science shops: knowledge for the community, eur 20877, office for official publications of the european communities, luxembourg, viewed 8 november 2011, ec.europa.eu/ research/science-society/pdf/science_shop_en.pdf fielden, s, rusch, m, masinda, m, sands, j, frankish, j & evoy, b 2007, ‘key considerations for logic model development in research partnerships: a canadian case study’, evaluation & program planning, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 115–24. fogel, s & cook, j 2006, ‘considerations on the scholarship of engagement as an area of specialization for faculty’, journal of social work education, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 595–606. de la fuente, j 2010, ‘the higher education sector must create innovative partnerships for social construction’, interview, guni newsletter, issue 56, may, barcelona, viewed 8 november 2011, www.guni-rmies.net/ newsletter/viewnewsletter.php?int_boletin=218#art1579 ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/science_shop_en.pdf ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/science_shop_en.pdf www.guni-rmies.net/newsletter/viewnewsletter.php?int_boletin=218#art1579 www.guni-rmies.net/newsletter/viewnewsletter.php?int_boletin=218#art1579 11 | gateways | northmore & hart grainger, s, sherry e & fondahl, g 2006, ‘the john prince research forest: evolution of a co-management partnership in northern british columbia’, forestry chronicle, vol. 82, no. 4, pp. 484–95. green, a & kearney, j 2011, ‘participatory action learning and action research for self-sustaining community development: engaging pacific islanders in southeast queensland’, the australasian journal of universitycommunity engagement, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 46–68. hart, a, maddison, e & wolff, d (eds) 2007, community-university partnerships in practice, national institute of adult continuing education, leicester. hart, a, northmore, s & gerhardt, c 2009, briefing paper: auditing, benchmarking and evaluating public engagement, national co-ordinating centre for public engagement, bristol. hart, a, northmore, s, gerhardt, c & rodriguez, p 2009, ‘developing access between universities and local community groups: a university helpdesk in action’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 45–59. hart, a & wolff, d 2006, ‘developing local “communities of practice” through local community-university partnerships’, planning, practice & research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 121–38. kelley, m, baldyga, w, barajas, f & rodriguez-sanchez, m 2005, ‘capturing change in a community-university partnership: si se puede! project’, preventing chronic disease, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. a22. lerner, r & simon, l 1998, ‘directions for the american outreach university in the twentieth century’, in r lerner & l simon (eds), university-community collaborations for the twenty-first century: outreach scholarship for youth and families, garland publishing, new york. mccaslin, r & barnstable, c 2008, ‘increasing geriatric social work content through university/community partnerships’, gerontology & geriatrics education, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1–18. mulvihill, n, hart, a, northmore, s, wolff, d & pratt, j 2011a, the future of community-university engagement: south east coastal communities dissemination paper 1, may, university of brighton, brighton, viewed 8 november 2011, www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/briefingpapers.html. mulvihill, n, hart, a, northmore, s, wolff, d & pratt, j 2011b, measuring the impact of community-university engagement: south east coastal communities dissemination paper 5, university of brighton, brighton, viewed 8 november 2011, www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/briefing%20papers/ paper_5web.pdf stirman, s, buchhofer, r, mclaulin, j, evans, a & beck, a 2009, ‘publicacademic partnerships: the beck initiative: a partnership to implement cognitive therapy in a community behavioral health system’, psychiatric services, vol. 60, no. 10, pp. 1302–04. vogel, a, seifer, s & gelmon, s 2010, ‘what influences the long-term sustainability of service learning? lessons from early adopters’, michigan journal of community service learning, fall, pp. 59–76. wenger, e 1999, communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity, cambridge university press, cambridge, ma. http://www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/briefingpapers.html http://www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/briefing%20papers/paper_5web.pdf http://www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/briefing%20papers/paper_5web.pdf impacts of sustained institutional participation in service-learning perspectives from faculty, staff and administrators the movement for greater civic engagement in higher education in the united states has taken hold across the core academic missions of teaching, research and service (astin 1999; boyer 1990; community-campus partnerships for health 2007; israel et al. 1998; nyden 2003). one manifestation of this movement has been dramatic growth in faculty and student participation in servicelearning. service-learning is an approach to experiential learning that is grounded in community-university partnerships, in which students provide services that simultaneously address communityidentified concerns and meet key learning objectives (seifer 1998). a key characteristic of service-learning is the ‘reciprocal nature of both the service and the learning among all parties in the relationship’ (jacoby 1996). community and university partners – including faculty members, students and community organisations – are engaged as co-learners and co-creators of knowledge (jacoby 1996; seifer 1998). service-learning also aims to produce reciprocal benefits for community and university partners. the method equips students with skills and competencies that may be better taught through experiential learning than conventional classroom-based methods. while the specific learning objectives for service-learning vary by course and degree program, most servicelearning experiences share the goals of teaching skills to work effectively with communities and support positive social change, and fostering attitudes of social responsibility and professionalism (cashman & seifer 2008; seifer 1998). similarly, while the specific service objectives for service-learning vary, service-learning aims to benefit partnering community agencies by providing needed services that address client needs or support broader agency objectives such as capacity development and strategic planning (cashman et al. 2004; kushto-reese et al. 2007). in addition to these immediate benefits to participating students and community partners, service-learning can have broader impacts. service-learning may lay the foundation for future community-university partnerships by building trusting relationships that produce reciprocal benefits and by creating a context for academic and community partners to develop staff gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 186–202 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 amanda l. vogel sarena d. seifer community-campus partnerships for health 187 | gateways | vogel & seifer member skills and organisational infrastructure. in addition, sustained service-learning partnerships have been identified as effective in changing the attitudes, behaviours and beliefs of participants. for example, they can help enhance faculty members’ understanding of the value of community-engaged scholarship (ces); encourage community-based careers among graduates; and enhance mutual understanding between partnering community organisations and universities. ultimately, service-learning has been identified as a means of building the capacity and desire of academic and community partners to work together to address community needs and work for social justice (cashman & seifer 2008; community-campus partnerships for health 2007; freyder & o’toole 2000; gelmon, holland & shinnamon 1998b; seifer 1998). a large body of empirical literature documents the shortterm benefits of service-learning for students in a wide variety of disciplines and fields (eyler et al. 2001). this literature has shown that service-learning positively influences students’ personal and professional development, leadership and communication skills, intercultural understanding and sense of community responsibility. it has also shown that service-learning contributes to enhanced academic outcomes, including critical thinking skills, course content learning, the ability to apply classroom learning to real-world settings and the likelihood of completing one’s academic degree program (eyler et al. 2001; prentice & robinson 2010). in comparison, there is very little empirical literature documenting the broader impacts of service-learning for both academic and community partners, such as those mentioned above. but the existing studies have demonstrated promising outcomes. gelmon and colleagues (1998a, 1998b) conducted a multi-methods assessment of the impact of the health professions schools in service to the nation (hpsisn) program, a threeyear service-learning demonstration program implemented in 17 us health professions schools. they found that benefits for participating faculty members included enhanced relationships with students and community partners, new directions in teaching and scholarship, greater integration of their personal and professional lives, and increased understanding of community needs. benefits for community partners included expanded services for their clients, greater access to grant funding, increased awareness of university assets and limitations, and enhanced volunteer and staff recruitment and retention. sandy and holland (2006) conducted 15 focus groups with longstanding community partners in service-learning, in which participants reported that sustained organisational participation in service-learning had multiple positive outcomes, including benefits to their clients from the interpersonal relationships they formed with students and receipt of services that enabled their organisations to both deliver core services to clients and take on new projects. they also reported that participating in service-learning supported reflective 188 | gateways | vogel & seifer practices that enhanced staff and organisational development, created opportunities to learn from academic partners, helped their organisations to develop relationships with other community agencies participating in service-learning, and supported efforts to achieve organisational goals by creating a certain amount of prestige that was affirming and energising. worrall (2007) conducted an interview-based study with participants from 12 community agencies with different durations of participation in service-learning. these agencies reported similar benefits, including that service-learning enabled them to deliver core services in the context of limited budgets, benefited their clients through the interpersonal relationships they developed with students and enhanced their perceptions of the academic institution. finally, a number of studies have found benefits for participating academic institutions, including that servicelearning supports student recruitment and retention (astin & sax 1998; roose et al. 1997; vogel, seifer & gelmon 2010) and enhances community-university relationships (gelmon, holland & shinnamon 1998b; vogel, seifer & gelmon 2010). one likely explanation for the limited empirical research exploring the broad impacts of service-learning is that these outcomes may require a number of years to achieve, yet most evaluations of service-learning outcomes tend to be funded concurrently with threeto five-year grants to support the implementation or institutionalisation of service-learning (gelmon et al. 1998a, 1998b; holland 1997). this limits the outcomes that can be successfully evaluated, and may contribute to the strong focus in the literature on students’ learning outcomes. in the present study, we had a unique opportunity to return to the hpsisn cohort studied by gelmon and colleagues, 10 years after grant funding ended, to assess the broad impacts of long-term sustained institutional participation in service-learning. we interviewed service-learning leaders from each of the institutions, including faculty members, staff and administrators, to learn about the extent to which service-learning was sustained at their institutions, the factors that influenced sustainability and the impacts of long-term institutional participation in servicelearning for both academic and community partners. this article reports findings on the sustainability of service-learning at each school and the impact of long-term institutional participation in service-learning. for a description of the factors that influenced sustainability, see vogel, seifer and gelmon (2010). background to the study this study was conducted with service-learning leaders at schools that participated in the hpsisn program. hpsisn provided financial and technical support to 17 health professions schools to establish service-learning partnerships with community agencies to address unmet health needs and integrate service-learning into the curriculum. each funded institution provided matching 189 | gateways | vogel & seifer support, in cash or in-kind, over the three-year grant period. in addition, faculty, students and community partners received technical assistance and participated in professional development to support a high level of rigour in the partnership process and the pedagogical components of service-learning. hpsisn was a program of the pew health professions commission and the national fund for medical education, and was supported by the pew charitable trusts, the learn and serve america higher education program of the us corporation for national and community service, and the us health resources and services administration. the hpsisn grantees represented a broad spectrum of the characteristics of us health professions academic institutions. they were dispersed across the major regions of the country and included large research institutions and small teaching institutions, as well as public and private, faith-based and secular, and rural and urban institutions. grantees included schools of allied health, nursing, allopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, public health and dentistry. there was also a great degree of diversity among participating community agencies because each academic institution selected community partners with the aim of addressing local health priorities. community partners included local chapters of national organisations such as the american red cross, boys and girls clubs of america and planned parenthood, and local agencies such as nursing homes, churches, senior centres and youth centres. detailed descriptions of the hpsisn program and the outcomes over its three years of operation have been published elsewhere (connors et al. 1996; gelmon et al. 1998a, 1998b, 1998c; seifer, connors & o’neil 1996a; seifer, mutha & connors 1996b). more than 10 years later, hpsisn remains one of only a few national demonstration programs for service-learning in a single discipline or set of disciplines in the united states. as early adopters of service-learning, and given the support provided to hpsisn participants to implement high-quality servicelearning, a study with leaders of service-learning at the hpsisn grantee institutions represented an ideal opportunity to explore the impacts of long-term institutional participation in servicelearning. method we structured our inquiry according to an approach proposed by gelmon and colleagues (2001). they defined the impact of service-learning in terms of the breadth of stakeholder groups that may be affected by it, including students, faculty service-learning staff, staff members of community agencies who are directly involved with service-learning and more broadly, the participating academic institutions, community agencies and communities served by these agencies. because our study focused on the impact of long-term participation in service-learning by academic 190 | gateways | vogel & seifer institutions, we assessed the impact on all of these stakeholder groups, with the exception of students, who are transient and therefore not involved in sustained service-learning activities. this was a retrospective study, conducted from july 2007 through june 2008, involving interviews with service-learning leaders at the hpsisn grantee institutions. our aims were to assess the extent to which service-learning had been sustained at each hpsisn department or school since grant funding ended a decade earlier, in 1998, in order to explore the factors that influenced sustainability and to learn about the impact of sustained institutional participation in service-learning. we began by contacting the original hpsisn principal investigators at each of the 17 grantee institutions, to invite their participation in interviews for this study. as a number of these individuals had moved on to other institutions or organisations, this involved first identifying their current institutional affiliations and contact information. all consenting principal investigators participated in one-on-one telephone interviews. interviews assessed the extent to which the hpsisn schools had sustained service-learning; the factors that influenced sustainability, including facilitators, challenges and strategies for success; and the impact of sustained institutional participation in service-learning for a broad range of stakeholders. in any case where the principal investigator was unable to answer all of the interview questions – for example, if he or she had left the institution, or was no longer actively involved with service-learning – we asked for referrals to additional service-learning leaders at the institution who could answer these questions. these individuals were also interviewed by telephone, and interviews explored the same three topics. interviews ranged from 60 to 90 minutes in duration. with the consent of the participants, all but one of the interviews were recorded and transcribed. transcripts were analysed using an iterative process of thematic coding and memowriting, which identified major themes and the relationships between these themes (miles & huberman 1994; morse & richards 2002). thematic codes were developed as a result of this process, and applied to all of the transcripts. to analyse the interview that was not transcribed, the lead investigator listened to the recording and took notes on the major themes that emerged. these were analysed along with the transcripts. for a more detailed description of the study methods, see vogel (2009) and vogel, seifer and gelmon (2010). this research was approved by the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health institutional review board (irb-1 protocol #211). findings of the 17 hpsisn grantee institutions, 16 agreed to participate in this study. twenty-three individuals participated in interviews – 16 of the 17 hpsisn principal investigators and seven additional individuals identified through snowball sampling. the overall sample included faculty members, service-learning staff members 191 | gateways | vogel & seifer including directors and other staff, and administrators such as department chairs and deans. degree of service-learning sustainability of the 16 grantee institutions represented in this research, 15 had sustained service-learning in some manner for the entire 10-year period since hpsisn grant funding ended. however, the degree to which these 15 schools continued to invest in service-learning varied significantly. participants from three of these schools reported no organised departmentalor school-level investments in service-learning. they explained that service-learning was no longer integrated into the curriculum and did not receive any support through the allocation of resources, faculty or staff time, or supportive routines or policies. rather, they explained that servicelearning was sustained through the independent efforts of a small number of dedicated faculty members who created service-learning experiences in the context of elective courses or co-curricular experiences. in contrast, participants from the other 12 schools reported that service-learning remained integrated into required courses 10 years after hpsisn funding ended, and that significant resources continued to be invested in service-learning at the departmental level. faculty time was allocated to servicelearning in a systematic fashion; service-learning was included in departmental planning processes; learning objectives continued to be developed specifically for service-learning experiences; and funding was allocated to support a fullor part-time servicelearning coordinator in the department. within this group of 12 schools, there were sub-groups with additional levels of support for service-learning. participants from 10 of these schools reported that there was support for service-learning in the institutional mission, and participants from nine schools described vocal leadership for service-learning among high-level administrators at the levels of the school and/or university. participants from seven of these 12 schools described additional investments in service-learning at the levels of the school, college and/or university. these included, for example, funding for a service-learning centre and director at one or more of these organisational levels; stipends and/or release time to support faculty participation in service-learning; recognition for service-learning in hiring, promotion and tenure policies; and the creation of a steering committee to advise on service-learning in health professions education. interview participants from these 12 institutions shared reflections on the impact of their schools’ and departments’ longterm participation in service-learning. from their interviews, five main themes emerged related to the impacts of service-learning. these were: 1) increased community engagement and ces, and increased valuation of both, among participating faculty members; 2) greater capacity for community-university partnerships among academic and community partners; 3) improved communityuniversity relations; 4) diffusion of service-learning and/ 192 | gateways | vogel & seifer or principles of community-university partnerships to other departments and schools; and 5) recruitment of students seeking community engagement opportunities. each of these themes is described in detail below. increased community engagement and community-engaged scholarship, and increased valuation of both when asked about the impact of their institutions’ long-term participation in service-learning, interview participants most often described the impact on their own professional activities. about half of the interview participants described how their personal leadership in service-learning early in their careers, through their roles in hpsisn, was a major factor in leading them to develop careers as community-engaged scholars. many of the others said they were already committed to ces when they became involved in hpsisn, and that their ongoing leadership in service-learning during and after hpsisn, helped to support their development as community engaged scholars. participants described their involvement in a wide range of activities that fell under the rubric of ces, and which benefited a wide range of stakeholders, including their academic institutions, other academic institutions, their local communities and the ces movement more broadly. half of these individuals mentioned writing books or chapters, or editing books, about servicelearning in their professions. a number described how they had provided technical assistance to colleagues at other academic institutions in the us and abroad to support them in implementing service-learning. some of these participants served as principal investigators for grants that involved their institutions as mentors to other health professions institutions that were implementing service-learning for the first time. one participant described how she and a group of colleagues from her university developed a summer service-learning institute to train faculty from other health professions institutions. in addition, a number of participants explained that their involvement in service-learning connected them with community agencies and government offices where they took on leadership roles or conducted research. for example, one participant, who eventually became the dean of her school, described how her leadership for service-learning led her to become involved in a host of local community activities: i was appointed by the governor to the state board of nursing to represent professional nursing education. i think i’m recognized in the community as being involved with different kinds of social issues. i’m [also] on the board of directors of [a local] hospital. another participant explained how her participation in service-learning led to a community-engaged research partnership, with important implications for local health: i did a study at [a hospital that was a service-learning partner], looking at implementing protocols in the urgent care department to 193 | gateways | vogel & seifer screen for victims of violence. there was a protocol that everybody should be screened when they come into urgent care, so we did a study to see if that was true. this study determined that screening for violence in fact was not taking place in all instances where it was warranted, and resulted in the development of a new screening protocol that was more effectively implemented. other participants described how service-learning helped them to develop an understanding that community engagement had a legitimate place within the activities of health professions faculty members and health professions academic institutions more broadly. in addition, they described how service-learning helped them to see the added value that community engagement brought to the core activities of academic institutions, including both research and teaching. interview participants explained how this new perspective dramatically influenced their own professional activities, as it provided them with the lens they needed to integrate community engagement into their scholarly activities. for example, one participant said: [service-learning] provides a home for me … to this day that allows me to understand how i can give back [as a health professional]. and i got hooked. and then i started thinking more broadly about what the role of the university was in educating students to think more broadly about community responsibility … that really made me cross multiple boundaries as a faculty member and as a citizen in my own local community. another participant described how his early leadership role in service-learning through hpsisn provided him with a framework for understanding community-engaged research and teaching as scholarly activities. this framework shaped his future professional activities: [service-learning] helped provide a more academic, or intellectual, base in some of the issues of community-based participatory research and community-based service-learning … i think it clearly helped inform a lot of the work that i did while at [the university] … and then with the [foundation]. and it definitely helped a lot in terms of my work as dean of curriculum at [another university]. so i would say that it’s definitely had a profound impact on the work that i do … it’s a sensitivity. it’s a lens to look at problems. and i think it’s a perspective that’s been greatly informed by those initial experiences. greater capacity for community-university partnerships among academic and community partners the second most commonly mentioned impact of long-term institutional participation in service-learning was that it contributed to building greater capacity for community-university partnerships of all kinds among participating academic institutions and community agencies. a number of interview 194 | gateways | vogel & seifer participants described how their service-learning centres or participating faculty members capitalised upon service-learning partnerships to develop future community-engaged research, training and service opportunities. one of these interview participants explained: we have been able to leverage some of the [service-learning] projects … there’s one [service-learning] team i can think of in which the faculty member has written a grant that speaks to the need that was identified by the community partner. the outcomes of that have been that now the faculty member has a grant to study obesity in this population, the community agency benefits because they didn’t have to write the grant … and there are programs and interventions developed through that grant that benefit the community. another participant described how community and academic partners in service-learning had created relationships that enabled them to support each other’s efforts to obtain grant funding: we applied for one of the regional medical education and public health grants. and then [for the grant writing process] everybody [academic and community partners] comes together. and we have credibility with our [service-learning] partners … so people [in the community partner agencies] will mobilize when there’s a need to mobilize. and we, equally, will mobilize for them when they need our input on grant funding they’re trying to get. just as often, participants noted how service-learning had created capacity among community partners to initiate partnerships with the university to address community health priorities. for example, one participant explained: the community partners now seek us out because they have an issue that they think would be relevant for a course group or for students and faculty … [and] they’re able to more effectively deal with the problems that they bring to us because they have the extra support of the bodies, as it were – students and faculty – and they have the intellectual capital of a university to help them see and deal with their problems differently. they feel, very often, empowered by the process and not overwhelmed by having to address the issues, because now they have help. another participant said: usually the [grant] applications are initiated by the community partner, and we provide technical assistance … our faculty members, to my knowledge, don’t receive any money from those. but the [servicelearning] students then can be part of that. they write the students in as the people who are going to deliver the [services]. improved community-university relations many interview participants said that sustained service-learning helped to change the way that the academic institution and community partners perceived and related to one another. one 195 | gateways | vogel & seifer particularly important impact they described was that servicelearning led community partners to feel that the university could be trusted and, specifically, that the university’s stated interest in addressing the needs of community partners was sincere. for example, one participant said: i think that for the most part [the university] has, at least in our local community, made a name for itself [through service-learning], in terms of a certain level of integrity when it comes to working with community. so, you know, ‘it’s a good partner to have. they will deliver when they say they’re going to do x, y, z.’ another participant observed that community members saw community-engaged scholars on campus in a new light, which reflected the principles of equity, collaboration and cultural humility that are central to service-learning partnerships: the way we’re perceived by people off campus [now is] as people who want to work with people, who … understand and want to understand local issues. that we’re not just looking down our noses and thinking we know best for everybody. some participants indicated that these improvements in community perceptions of the university and communityengaged faculty members had led to a greater willingness among community partners to engage with the university. the following exchange with one participant exemplified this theme: question: what’s been the impact of service-learning from 1998 to the present on community partners? answer: one of the major ones is a sense of trust in the university. sometimes people approach projects with universities with a sort of scepticism, because they feel like they’re going to be the subjects or guinea pigs of some project, and that their needs are not going to be considered, just the student needs or the faculty needs. that’s certainly not true in service-learning. and that’s been our experience – that the community partners now seek us out … question: did community partners not seek you out before the servicelearning program? answer: not to the extent that they do now. other participants from institutions where service-learning was only implemented within a single department, and not at the level of the school, college or university, described how these benefits were limited to the department engaged in servicelearning, and did not extend to the entire academic institution. diffusion of service-learning and/or principles of communityuniversity partnerships to other departments and schools another commonly cited impact of long-term institutional involvement in service-learning was the diffusion of service196 | gateways | vogel & seifer learning and/or the principles of community-university partnerships on which service-learning is built to additional departments and schools. interview participants described how they provided leadership to encourage this. for example, one participant explained how, as a leader for service-learning in her department, she organised a series of colloquia about servicelearning on her campus that led to the diffusion of service-learning to other departments: faculty would say, ‘well, we can’t do service-learning in our course. this is a humanities course,’ or, ‘i teach a 70-student section of general biology. how would i get service into my course?’ … part of what i did at that time was to help people try to get an understanding of what service-learning was all about … and then the students did campuswide colloquia and presentations about the service-learning that they were involved in … part of it was trying to just introduce the idea that service-learning is something that nearly everybody can do … faculty who participated in some of those discussions went back, and [created new] service-learning activities … there were some things in music that were being done with students in after-school programs. the art faculty and students did some things in the low-income housing community … business department faculty and students, especially during income tax preparation time, worked with the senior centers and worked with seniors to help them prepare for tax season. other interview participants described how their long-term leadership in service-learning led to system-wide changes at their institutions that led to the adoption of service-learning more broadly. for example, one participant said: we were able, after the [hpsisn] grant was finished, to continue to encourage [other] departments to come on board … so now, the college does have service-learning requirements for [all of] their students. other interview participants described how, although service-learning did not spread to other disciplines at their institutions, the partnership principles that underlie successful service-learning – including communication, equitable power sharing and reciprocal benefits – did diffuse to other departments and schools in their institutions, with positive results. for example, the following participant noted the influence of service-learning in a medical school on the way that the master of public health (mph) program was designed: i will say that this [service-learning] program has had an influence on the mph program … for example, the mph practicum now needs to be more of value [to the community partners] and more collaborative. [another impact was] the creation of a community advisory group for the mph program, which was modeled directly on what we were doing [for service-learning]. so a lot more attention to getting people involved in a collaborative way, much as we have with the medical school [service-learning] curriculum. 197 | gateways | vogel & seifer another participant observed how a long-term commitment to service-learning in a school of nursing helped to create broad buy-in to principles of community partnerships among faculty and administrators, and this in turn helped to develop an environment that supported community-based participatory research: i think the service-learning effort really promoted the mandate, the philosophy, and the passion for community[-based] participatory research … service-learning enhanced people’s attitudes about doing research in that way: really in the community, with the community, and with applications back to the community – that we’re going to improve the quality of life. recruitment of students seeking community engagement opportunities finally, a number of interview participants described how longterm institutional participation in service-learning had unforeseen benefits for student recruitment. they explained that students cited the opportunity to engage in service-learning as an important reason they chose to attend these institutions. these participants said that students valued service-learning for the opportunities it provided both to provide service as a structured part of their education and to learn through experiential methods in community settings. some of these interview participants described how, based on this feedback from students, their service-learning centres and marketing departments had collaborated to create student recruitment materials that highlighted the service-learning opportunities available at their institutions. for example, the service-learning director at a medical school related: service-learning is something that attracts a lot of students. some people come here [because] they know that service-learning is part of the first year course and they want to be involved. sometimes they’ve been involved in service a lot in their prior institutions or in their work before they came here, and they want to continue. so every year we send [information] that tells where the students went and what they did [for service-learning] … to every newly admitted student … [and] every summer i get a few people who say, ‘thank you. i’m looking forward to starting in september and i saw that you’re going to [a particular community agency], and i would like to go there because i’ve been working with that population.’ discussion a commonly cited challenge for the ces movement, particularly at research-intensive universities, is that the institutional culture does not recognise community engagement as a sufficiently scholarly activity (calleson, jordan & seifer 2005). our findings provide evidence that service-learning can help to support a shift towards an institutional culture that recognises and supports community engagement. interview participants described how their participation in service-learning helped them to develop an 198 | gateways | vogel & seifer appreciation for community engagement as a legitimate scholarly activity, and moreover, one that could advance the educational and societal goals of academia. they reported that this change in orientation to community engagement dramatically influenced their future professional activities as faculty and, in some cases, as administrators. participants also described how service-learning led to institution-wide changes that supported ces, including greater capacity for community-university partnerships; improved community-university relations; the diffusion of service-learning and/or its partnership principles within the institution; and the recruitment of students seeking community engagement opportunities. these findings suggest that service-learning can be an effective strategy to foster an institutional culture that is more embracing of community engagement, by serving as a ‘stepping stone’ to other forms of community-university partnership, including partnerships for teaching, research and scholarly practice. a comparison of the immediate outcomes of hpsisn reported by gelmon and colleagues (1998a, 1998b) with the outcomes of this research conducted 10 years later provides evidence for the added impact of long-term sustained institutional participation in service-learning, both for faculty activities and for the institutional culture. in interviews with academic partners in service-learning, gelmon and colleagues found that faculty reported new directions in teaching and scholarship, greater integration of their personal and professional lives, and increased understanding of community needs. the findings from the present study suggest next steps that built upon the new directions described in the study by gelmon and colleagues. specifically, interview participants related how, over the prior 10 years, they had had committed careers as community-engaged scholars and implemented communityengaged projects that successfully addressed important community needs. in addition, participants described the diffusion of servicelearning and its principles of community-university partnerships to other departments and schools, and the benefits of service-learning for recruitment of students seeking community-engagement opportunities. these research findings have implications for the activities of funding agencies, academic administrators and faculty members who wish to support greater community engagement in higher education institutions. they suggest that funders wishing to foster greater community engagement in higher education should include service-learning in their grant portfolios. they also point to the benefits of an incremental approach to encouraging community engagement, beginning with service-learning, which can lay the foundation for more resource-intensive communityuniversity partnerships such as community-engaged research. academic institutions may also find that service-learning is a promising first step towards additional partnerships because of the immediate benefits it produces for community partners, students 199 | gateways | vogel & seifer and participating faculty members, and the infrastructure for partnerships that it builds. finally, increasing numbers of faculty members wish to engage in scholarship that has practical benefits for communities. these findings suggest that servicelearning is an effective way for them to begin to learn about the scope of community-engaged scholarship, the range of available community partners, and the needs and priorities of their local communities. while participation in service-learning may create an extra time burden for faculty members in some institutions, participants in this research identified multiple professional and personal rewards. this study had a number of limitations that are important to keep in mind when considering the findings. we purposefully selected participants from the hpsisn program in order to explore the experiences of a cohort of institutions that had sustained service-learning for over a decade, and that had implemented rigorous principles of service-learning. however, the experiences of the hpsisn cohort, which was comprised only of health professions schools, may not be generalisable to other academic disciplines. in addition, the hpsisn grantees received technical assistance on key aspects of implementing high-quality service-learning that may have contributed to the positive impacts identified in this research. in addition, because only university-based participants in service-learning were interviewed, longer term impacts on communities could not be directly assessed. while some impacts for community partners were described, the university-based participants in this research tended to focus on impacts for faculty and academic institutions. community partners would likely provide different perspectives that focus more heavily on the outcomes for their agencies, clients and communities. future research on the impact of sustained participation in service-learning is needed in other academic settings and with participants from community agencies that are long-term service-learning partners. research that includes academic and community partner perspectives on the impacts of the same sustained service-learning partnerships may uncover convergences and divergences, with implications for understanding how best to maximise the benefits of service-learning for everyone involved. finally, studies that rely on retrospective interview data, such as this one, include a number of limitations. when asking participants to reflect on events over a period of time as long as 10 years, recall bias limits the ability to unambiguously assign impacts to particular events, or to identify whether the longterm impacts that participants described occurred due to events that took place in year 5 versus year 10. future retrospective research on the impacts of long-term sustained service-learning can be enhanced through mixed-methods approaches that use a combination of data sources, such as interviews, documents and observations. such approaches may help to identify the timing of key events and investments in service-learning and assess their 200 | gateways | vogel & seifer shortand long-term impacts (vogel 2009). a related challenge inherent in this study design was the inability to establish clear direction of causality. academic institutions with a pre-existing bent towards community engagement were more likely to have participated in the hpsisn program. the influences of long-term sustained institutional participation in service-learning and the organic evolution of an institutional culture already predisposed to community engagement may be impossible to disentangle. future research into the sustainability and impact of servicelearning in higher education would benefit from comparative approaches that assess these outcomes in a set of institutions with variable baseline degrees of institutional support for community engagement and ces. conclusions a challenge for research on the broad impacts of servicelearning is that evaluations of service-learning tend to be funded concurrently with threeto five-year grants to support implementation. yet many of the promising potential impacts of service-learning for faculty members, academic institutions, community agencies and communities – such as increased ces among faculty, greater capacity for community-university partnerships and additional partnerships for research, teaching and service – may require a number of years to develop. in this study, we had a unique opportunity to explore the long-term impacts of service-learning at a group of 15 institutions that had sustained service-learning for over a decade. our findings produced evidence that long-term sustained institutional participation in service-learning can increase faculty community engagement and ces and enhance faculty attitudes regarding the scholarly value of community engagement; increase capacity for communityuniversity partnerships among academic and community partners; diffuse service-learning and related principles of communityuniversity partnerships to other departments or schools; and enhance recruitment of students seeking community engagement opportunities. these findings suggest that sustained institutional participation in service-learning can be effective in fostering a greater culture of community engagement in academic institutions and serve as a stepping stone to other forms of community engagement. acknowledgements we would like to thank the us corporation for national and community service, the us agency for healthcare research and quality and the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health for their generous support of this study. we would also like to thank the 23 research participants whose participation made this study possible. finally, we would like to thank dr sherril b gelmon, dr shannon frattaroli, dr leiyu shi, dr janice v bowie and ms holly a grason, whose contributions as members of dr vogel’s doctoral dissertation committee helped to strengthen this article. 201 | gateways | vogel & seifer references astin, a 1999, ‘promoting leadership, service and democracy: what higher education can do’, in r bringle, r games & e malloy (eds), colleges and universities as citizens, allyn and bacon, boston, ma, pp. 31–47. astin, a & sax, l 1998, ‘how undergraduates are affected by service participation’, journal of college student development, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 251–63. boyer, e 1990, scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate, josseybass, san francisco, ca. calleson, d, jordan, c & seifer, s 2005, ‘community-engaged 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5–17. ties that bind creating and sustaining communityacademic partnerships growing interest among academics and health professionals in finding new ways to study and address complex health and social problems has manifested in recent years with increasing community demands for research and program implementation that is community-based, rather than merely community placed (minkler & wallerstein 2008). in the united states, communitybased participatory research (cbpr), with its emphasis on the creation and use of community-university or community-academic partnerships, is the prevailing paradigm to address these complex problems, especially those concerned with racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. essential principles of cbpr involve shared vision, equitable involvement, ownership and trust, capacity building, and immediate and long-term gains resulting in improved and relevant research (minkler & wallerstein 2008). for community and institutional partners, cbpr involves their active participation, mutual benefit and co-education, and sustained commitment to a process beyond studying an area of concern. it involves applying findings to achieve improved outcomes for the community. once established, a challenge for communityacademic partnerships is sustaining the partnership in the face of time and changes in its membership. while the need to strengthen the relationship between researchers and the community has been recognised, often from the viewpoint of the university partner, discussions on sustainability of partnerships have been few. reflections are shared, through the eyes of community members, on the core elements that tie the community and academic members together and the challenges in understanding and nurturing those ties so that the communityacademic partnership is sustained over time, and on possible recommendations for sustainability. it is based on a cbpr that was conducted to (1) evaluate the functioning and future sustainability of the community child health network study los angeles (cchn-la) community-university partnership and (2) evaluate gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 83–99 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 kynna n. wright ucla school of nursing pluscinda williams community co-chair, cchn-la committee, haaf ii shekinah wright member, cchn-la committee, haaf ii eli lieber steven r. carrasco haik gedjeyan university of california 84 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco the experience and beliefs of the current cchn-la communityuniversity partnership members in their understanding of current functioning. the paper reflects the thoughts of community partners after six months of establishing this partnership as part of their participation in the larger community child health network study (cchn). the foundation: community-academic partnered participatory research within the fields of public health, nursing and medicine, cbpr has been defined as a partnership approach to research that equitably involves, for example, community members, organisational representatives, and academic and/or clinician researchers in all aspects of the research process (gebbie, rosenstock & hernandez 2003; minkler & wallerstein 2008). communityacademic partnered participatory research (cppr), a form of cbpr that was coined by chen, jones & gelberg (2006) is one approach to community program development and collaborative research that emphasises equal partnership for community and academic partners while building capacity for partnered planning and implementation of research-informed programs. a cppr project involves a sequence of activities. these activities include: (1) identifying a health issue that fits the community priorities and the academic capacity to respond; (2) developing a coalition of community, policy and academic stakeholders that informs, supports, shares and uses the products; (3) engaging the community through conferences and workshops that provide information, determine readiness to proceed and obtain input; and (4) initiating work groups that develop, implement and evaluate action plans under a leadership council (bluenthal et al. 2006). jones & wells (2007) suggest that for cppr, community can refer to individuals who share recreation or work or live in an area. they further define community engagement as the values, strategies and actions that support authentic partnerships, including mutual respect and active, inclusive participation, as well as power sharing, equity and mutual benefit, or finding the ‘win-win’ (steuart 1993) possibility. jones & wells (2007) point out that some challenges in community engagement for physician and academic researchers include building trust with community members, learning what respect means in a community context, and understanding the timeframe and flexibility required to accommodate the course of events within the community engagement process. this is a dyadic process requiring both academicians and community members to work together. if this is learned, trust can be built and engagement can commence. once the community-academic partnership is established, the partners work together using basic principles that govern and facilitate their research activities. based on an extensive review of the literature, israel et al. (2005, 2008) and macaulay (2007) have identified a list of nine 85 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco principles or characteristics of cbpr that cppr acknowledges. these characteristics include: (1) recognising community as a unit of identity; (2) facilitating a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of the research, involving an empowering and powersharing process that attends to social inequities; (3) building upon strengths and resources within the community; (4) integrating and achieving balance between knowledge generation and intervention for mutual benefit of all partners; (5) fostering co-learning and capacity-building among all partners; (6) focusing on local relevance of public health problems and ecologic perspectives that recognise and attend to the multiple determinants of health; (7) disseminating results to all partners and involving them in the dissemination; (8) involving systems development using a cyclical and iterative process; and (9) involving a long-term process and commitment to sustainability. building upon these characteristics, cppr concludes that in order to achieve successful academic engagement with community partners, some of the guiding principles need to include regular communication following mutually agreed upon reporting and mutual respect of values and cultural mannerisms (jones & wells 2007). it is important to note that no one set of principles will be applicable to all partnerships; rather, all partners need collaboratively to decide what their core values and guiding principles will be. according to israel et al. (2008), these principles can be considered to be on a continuum, with those listed above being an ideal goal towards which to strive. there are several benefits to using a cppr approach including enhancing the quality, validity, sensitivity and practicality of research by involving the local knowledge of the participants and bringing together partners with different skills, tools, knowledge and expertise to address complex problems (jones et al. 2007). the context: the cchn-la community-university partnership the community child health network study (cchn) parent study is a five-year, national institutes of health (nih)-funded, multi-site, prospective cohort cbpr study of the influences of stress and resilience on maternal allostatic load and birth and child outcomes. another main goal of the cchn study was to examine how the community, family and individual levels interacted with biological influences and resulted in health disparities in pregnancy outcomes and in infant and early childhood mortality and morbidity. this study used a cppr premise to guide all aspects of the study, including research design, participant outreach and recruitment, and dissemination of information. a diverse group of research experts from each of the funded sites worked together with community-based members at each of the sites and at the national level. the community experts brought experiences and analytical perspectives, while the research experts had a pulse on the latest scientific information relevant to acute and chronic 86 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco stressors affecting health. at the national level, the group used a working format of subcommittees, weekly conference calls and quarterly meetings to focus the work, which culminated in a unified vision, as reflected in the aim of the study, the hypotheses and the design. at each of the five sites, local co-principal investigators (co-pis) and co-investigators (co-is) from an academic institution and the community worked through a community-university partnership to design, implement and evaluate the research project at each of the local levels. los angeles, california, one of the sites within the larger cchn study, had already created a community-university partnership over 14 years ago, and when the opportunity for grant funding through cchn was presented to them, they worked together to write the proposal. once the grant was funded, as part of the funding requirement, in 2007 they created the community child health network study los angeles (cchn-la) community-university partnership. the cchn-la community-university partnership is made up of university researchers from several departments at a large southern california university, including the departments of medicine, public health, nursing, and psychology (referred to as ‘academic partners’ in this study). the community members (referred to as ‘community partners’ in this study) of the cchnla community-university partnership were composed of members of the preterm workgroup of healthy african american families (haaf) ii. they were the lead community partner, a nonprofit, community-based organisation that began in 1992 as a community-academia-government research partnership to study the experience of pregnancy and birth outcomes among african americans and latinos (jones et al. 2010a,b; wright, jones & hogan 2010). community partners were composed of local grassroots members (including pregnant/parenting women and their partners, women of child-bearing age and fathers), representatives from local peri-natal programs from local city and county agencies, peri-natal community-based organisations (cbos) and representatives from faith-based agencies. evaluation of functioning and future sustainability from this larger parent study, community and academic partners were interested in holding each other accountable to the cppr process and in evaluating the functioning and future sustainability of the cchn-la community-university partnership. therefore, an evaluation study, also funded by the nih, was conducted to meet these additional goals. the evaluation study used mixed data collection methods, including a survey (n = 53) that was handed out at each of the bi-monthly preterm workgroup meetings, which were the key times all academic and community partners of the cchn-la community-university partnership would come together to discuss study-related business. this was done 87 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco to identify key elements and barriers in order to foster effective community-university partnerships. through an iterative process, community and academic partners jointly developed two surveys and a semi-structured interview guide that were used to facilitate the dialogue sessions (community dialogue sessions (n = 22); open-ended survey (n = 27)). this interview guide was adapted from the work of israel et al. (2003), and included six domains of measurement: general satisfaction, partnership impact, trust, decision making, organization, and structure of meetings. dedoose, a web 2.0 rich internet application for the management and analysis of mixed methods research data, was used to organise, excerpt and code the qualitative data in this study. dedoose also allowed for the integration of the qualitative data and coding activity with participant demographics and quantitative survey responses. following the development and inter-rater reliability evaluation of the code system based on the key themes, research team members searched for, extracted and coded content informing any number of themes represented in the code system. dedoose features then provided for the visualisation of patterns in the qualitative data based on coding activity, participant characteristics and responses to survey questions. following the identification of patterns that informed the key research questions, the associated excerpts were extracted. a review of these excerpts provided for a deeper understanding of the observed surface patterns and then served as an interpretation and presentation of study results. data for this secondary evaluation study were collected at three time points over a two-year period. this article reflects on data shared by community members during the time 1 collection phase, conducted from august 2008 to january 2009. in general, community partners were largely female (66 per cent), african american (92 per cent), latino (6 per cent) and caucasian (2 per cent). in terms of their relationship with the community-university partnership, 18 per cent of the community partners had had a longstanding relationship and had been part of the perinatal workgroup and the cchn-la communityuniversity partnership for seven years or more, as compared to 100 per cent of the academic members. the majority of community partners, however, had been involved for less than one year (41 per cent for 6 months or less; and 32 per cent for 7 to 12 months). nevertheless, both academic partners (100 per cent) and community partners (97 per cent) felt a very strong commitment to the partnership and to sustaining the relationships between academic and community members. defining success partnerships are formed for a variety of reasons, ranging from seeking to address and understand a particular health problem, in this case causes of poor birth outcomes, to meeting funding requirements for community involvement in a grant proposal. for the individuals and organisations involved, the definition 88 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco of ‘success’ is multifaceted (seifer 2006). furthermore, success is defined differently for new or emerging partnerships and established partnerships, since time plays an important role in the impact of the partners’ activities and in the quality of the partners’ relationships. developing and sustaining partnerships is often a non-linear process involving many ‘starts’, times to pause, and times to reflect and ‘restart’. the top three intermediate measures of success for the cchn-la community-university partnership from the community partners’ perspective focused on the relationships among partners and included shared leadership (97 per cent), communication (91 per cent) and trust (91 per cent). academic partners, on the other hand, were much more interested in the achievement of group goals (31 per cent) and the benefits of participating in the cchnla community-university partnership (30 per cent) and in the decision-making process that facilitated meeting grant outcomes (27 per cent). through open-ended surveys, many community partners reflected that, when they came to the bi-monthly haaf preterm meetings, they wanted to share in the leadership and development of the meeting agendas and topics discussed. in addition, they wanted to work on building relationships, especially in the areas of communication and trust, both within the community partners, many of whom were new to the cchn-la community-university partnership, and between community and academic partners. however, community partners shared that they felt that academic partners had a set of goals for each meeting, which often drove the meeting, but these goals were different from their goals and were not effectively communicated to the community partners. this led to many of the community partners feeling that they did not share in the leadership of the partnership and this led to a sense of mistrust of the academic partners and to a disconnect in terms of expectations and goals of the partnership. according to community partners of the cchn-la community-university partnership, several key elements or ‘ties’ that can ‘bind’ (e.g., strengthen or sustain) the partnership. if these key elements are not identified and addressed by members of the partnership in a timely and culturally appropriate manner, feelings of frustration and mistrust can occur, leading to a weakening of the ties that hold the relationship together and ultimately to the loss of community partners within the partnership. community members initially identified key elements for authentic community-academic partnerships and then 22 community partners further reflected upon these aspects through community dialogue sessions. these ties included trusting relationships, understanding and respecting cultural differences, communication, and shared power. trusting relationships strong relationships are at the heart of successful partnerships, even as participants acknowledge the lengthy, sometimes challenging, course to develop them. community members often 89 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco do not trust academic researchers or the research process (jones & wells 2007). this scepticism and cynicism can be deeply rooted in past community experiences with research and outsiders to the community which, at best, brought no demonstrable benefit to the community and, at worst, caused irreversible harm (israel et al. 2006). trust was identified by community partners as a fundamental component of authentic and healthy communityacademic partnerships. while community partners recognised that it takes time and energy to develop trust, they felt that this was a core element that was needed for all relationships, both those between their community partners and those between community partners and academic partners. this is illustrated by two quotes from community partners. interviewee i (2009) said: i think that’s what it is, trust, and the fact that people have grown accustomed to each other. people start to know each other. people start knowing each other on a first name basis. it’s not like, ‘hey dr. [x]’ or ‘hey miss [y]’. it’s like, ‘hey, [z]’. people start to know each other on a friendlier basis … you’re a person. i’m a person. we’re talking. we’re sharing information. interviewee 7(2009) commented: because in order to make change, build a partnership and build trust … you, i mean community and academics have to be dedicated, you have to be committed. and you have to know that there’s an outcome. and in order to do that everybody has to come and stay at the table. many community partners also reflected that they were initially more trusting of other community partners than of the academic partners. however, they felt that the community partners needed to keep an open mind to allow the academic partners to show their commitment to the partnership and to gain the trust of the community partners. this is illustrated by the following quote from one community partner, interviewee 10 (2009): but i see often that when new community members come to the table they are skeptical of the academic members, which is to be expected and then over time once they get to know the academic members and see that they care about the interests of the community more trust is developed. trust building takes time. community partners also reflected that, for trusting relationships to develop in a partnership, the partners involved needed to consistently exhibit certain behaviours and characteristics. these included being open and honest, being able to listen well and being able to speak frankly about contentious but important issues. this is illustrated by the following two quotes from community partners, interviewee 2 (2009) and interviewee 3 (2009): i think it’s [trust] getting better because i think that a lot of the community members that are at the table say when something goes 90 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco wrong. and i think the facilitator continues to remind them to say, ‘you’re right’ and ‘talk’. and so i think they’re starting to learn that the academics are starting to learn that people are starting to say what’s on their mind even if it may be something that may cause some static. i keep coming back to the cchn-la partnership because i have trust and i’m comfortable with haaf and this partnership. i get questions answered. they guide me in the right way. they make me feel like – they have made me feel that i can trust them and that i’m valuable, my voice is valued. and now i can speak out honestly about how i feel about anything going on in the partnership or the research. listening to and addressing needs identified by community partners is a factor in facilitating the development of trust and the overall success of the partnership. community partners are more likely to get involved and stay involved in a partnership when their issues are emphasised and addressed (seifer 2006). understanding and respecting diversity successful partnerships convene and maintain a diverse group of partners, including those who are directly affected by the topic of study (israel et al. 2005). this involves engaging and mobilising a diverse group of partners in terms of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (ses), organisational affiliation, interests, and roles in the partnership. there are many challenges to convening and maintaining a diverse membership in partnerships. one such challenge is the issue of culturally sensitive dynamics (grace 1992), that is, the lack of cultural congruity that may exist between individuals of the same cultural group and between individuals of different cultural groups. these were palpable at the beginning of this cppr research project. racial/ethnic as well as class or ses differences were evident. an understanding and respect for these differences was a core issue identified by several in the community as something important to maintain and sustain the partnership. this is illustrated by the comment of one community partner, interviewee 9 (2009): i think the only way that it’s gonna make it work is if people respect the ideas and the concepts and voices of everybody at the table. i still think that there is a huge breakdown in terms of the respect of what the value is of the people who are living in the conditions, living and having the experiences … you know life experiences, i still think that the researchers who are mostly white don’t respect the input or the value of the people who are mostly of color that they’re saying they want input from maybe because they don’t understand what it likes to be of color. so i think that that has to be built. i think respect is a huge component. and keeping an open mind of how they really want to utilize this body of people that they say they want to work with. in addition, there was a perception by some of the community partners that the academic partners were better than 91 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco they were because of the ses resources (for example, education) they brought to the table. however, community members felt that it was very important for everyone, both community and academic partners, to be valued for the skills they had, and that no one set of skills was any better or worse than another. this was illustrated by one community partner, interviewee 5 (2009), who stated: not saying that they don’t deserve that [power and respect]. i mean they [academics] did go to school … but i definitely don’t think it’s a 50/50 thing. i think maybe it should be, ’cause there’s a lot of other foot soldiers in the community that are not at the higher level of book education but have a lot to give from life experiences. we know the resources in the community that academics don’t know because they don’t live here and that’s important information. in order for partnerships to be sustaining and successful, all members of the partnership must embrace diversity at all levels – racial/ethnic, social class, gender, organisational, and institutional affiliation. differences may exist between community and academic partners in areas such as resources, life experiences, language, time demands, loyalties and level of commitment to the partnership. through open and honest communication, and continual give and take, a level of trust needs to be established before partners can be explicit about understanding and responding to these differences (israel et al. 2005; seifer 2006). communication the articulation of co-learning emphasises that information needs to go in both directions in order to facilitate research and improve the problem-solving ability that can be applied to the current issue as well as to future issues. academic researchers need to learn from community members the communication strategies that are used and that work in their communities (israel et al. 2008). this process should be an integral part of formative research. communication was a major issue that was identified as something that could affect the sustainability of the communityuniversity partnership either positively or negatively. from the community partners’ point of view, communication included the language and terms being used (such as academic jargon and acronyms), feeling that value was not placed on what was being communicated. community partners reflected that some academic partners used terminology that was not understood by community partners and, when they asked for clarification, their request was not honoured and they felt devalued. this is illustrated by the reflections of one community partner, interviewee 12 (2009), who said: i think some of the most difficult times that i see that happens at a meeting is that even when languages are spoken out of turn and you go back and you tell them, ‘could you please break it down to keep it at a common level where people could understand’, it’s like you continually have to reiterate it, reiterate it to them. no matter what you say it’s still 92 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco not heard and they keep using the same terms that community cannot understand. and over time you feel that you are not valued and what you say is not valued. however, other community partners reflected that communication was a ‘two-way street’ and that community partners had to take responsibility for the communication process as well. these community partners felt that the community partners needed to take ownership for trying to learn the research process and the language used in the research process. this is illustrated by one community partner, interviewee 3 (2009), who stated: i would have to say that we need to, we as a community need to understand the procedures and the language of their research. and you know what i’m saying, to get more educated on how they [academics] speak and do the research … ’cause you know when people can’t understand the language, they seem to lose interest and then we don’t see them at the partnership meetings anymore. but we as community have to make the effort, it’s a two-way street. and still other community partners expressed that they had had positive experiences and good outcomes for both community and academic partners when community partners spoke up and asked during a meeting what terms meant and if academic partners would educate them in the research process. this is reflected in one community partner’s comment, interviewee 2 (2009): and i think it was a very important learning curve for them as well. because [after community explained they did not understand the language they were using] they [academics] did see at that point and took it as a learning opportunity to teach us the language so that we are all communicating in a way that makes sense to both community and academics. then we can be true partners. community members can learn communication and research skills and build networks outside their immediate environment through the experience. in this way, community capacity and competence is improved. community competence, a term coined by cottrell, refers to the ability of community members to collaborate effectively in identifying problems and needs, to reach consensus on goals and strategies, to agree on ways and means to implement their agreed upon goals and to collaborate effectively in the required action (lasker & weiss 2003). community competence building begins during the formative research phase and should proceed through the entirety of cbpr. shared power and leadership key to cppr is the concept of community, partnership, and shared power and leadership (minkler & wallerstein 2008). successful partnerships are characterised by jointly developed processes and procedures that pay particular attention to issues of equity, 93 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco shared influence and control over decision-making (minkler & wallerstein 2008). shared power is believed to be important for quality in research in that it evolves from the people and reflects their voices; it is believed to be particularly useful to improve quality in transcultural research. community partners reflected that the balance of power sat with the academic partners and that in order to have a sustainable partnership there should be a way to shift this balance, especially when it comes to decisions regarding money and resources. this was voiced by many community partners as illustrated by the two comments from interviewee 11 (2009) and interviewee 20 (2009) below: power, leadership? i think it would probably be somewhere in between maybe 65/35, maybe 65 academia and 35 community. however, on the level of when i think of how in terms of money, when i think of power in terms of, you know equal status in terms of how things are delivered or recognized, in an academic world i don’t think that they [academics] give [community] the same power. a fundamental component of successful partnerships is the active involvement and shared influence and control of all partners involved in all aspects of the partnership. partners seek to modify imbalances of power through shared decision-making and fair distribution of resources (seifer 2006). community members reflected that, while the partnership had a community pi and a community co-facilitator at the haaf preterm meetings, they also had to take an active role in learning the leadership process and the research process, including budgets, so that they could become leaders within the cchn-la community-university partnership as well. in doing this, many community partners felt that these learned experiences would help them in sharing in the leadership process and the decision-making processes that occurred in the research process. recommendations for sustaining new and established partnerships all findings were shared initially with cchn-la community partners during a debriefing session. during that time, community partners reflected upon the findings and came to the conclusion that all partnerships, whether emerging or established, could take a number of steps to increase their likelihood of success. it was decided by the community partners that it would be beneficial to continue to reflect upon these findings and to develop a list of recommendations, based on the cppr model underlying the current research project, to address the key elements that were identified and then to share these findings and recommendations with their academic partners during another debriefing session. below is the list of recommendations that community partners developed to sustain community-university partnerships. 94 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco create shared goals while each research project has set measurable outcomes, it is important for all members of the partnership to understand what the goals are, who is responsible for achieving the goals and how these goals will be achieved. incremental goals and milestones to meet the final research outcomes should be created jointly by both community and academic partners. all meeting agendas and goals for a particular meeting should also be jointly created by input from both community and academic partners. transparency and open communication would facilitate the alignment of goals and objectives. build trust among and between community and academic partners trust is a hallmark of authentic community-academic partnerships. it is something that is built over time, and it requires respect of oneself and others, strength of character, and motivation to work to move beyond past negative histories and experiences that may have caused mistrust in the past. it is established by commitment to the partnership, its shared mission, its values and its goals, and to the process of collaboration. it is manifested by the things partners say in words and do in their actions, for example, saying that they will attend a community-university partnership meeting, and then showing up and actively contributing. trust is a two-way street. it requires active participation and cooperation by both community and academic partners, and is an issue that must be revisited frequently if partnerships are going to be sustained over any length of time. community members reflected that both community and academic partners could draw upon the trust that was already present in the members of the partnership that had been with the partnership longer. this could lead to an initial willingness of newer partners to get involved and help them to establish a commitment to develop more long-term trusting relationships. embrace diversity in the partnership community partners reflected that the diversity of the partnership, whether racial and/or ethnic, ses, gender, organisational, or institutional affiliation, was a major strength of the partnership. although differences may exist among partners in such areas as goals, life experiences and resources, community partners felt that, first, a level of trust was needed in all members of the partnership (for example, between and within both community and academic partners) and to be transparent about discussing these differences. once the differences were brought out in the open, then partners could work towards understanding and accepting these differences. enhance communication through a common language lack of communication can foster distrust between community and academic partners. finding a common language with which to discuss the various aspects of the research project and research process is crucial to the sustainability of the partnership. 95 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco community partners felt that they needed tools and/or resources to help promote effective communication between their community and academic partners. they suggested that community and academic partners jointly create a glossary of terms that are commonly used in their research project and that this glossary should be available at community-university partnership meetings for all members. they also suggested that there be crosseducation of the two groups, where community partners would educate the academic partners on terms and language used in the communities in which the research project was taking place, and where academic partners would share research terminology with community partners. in addition, community partners recommended that at all meetings, if anyone was unfamiliar with a term, they should speak up immediately and ask for clarification, and that if clarification was asked for, it was the responsibility of the meeting facilitators to make sure that this was addressed before moving on with the meeting. develop criteria, rationale and procedures for educating new partners community partners reflected that, because so many of the community partners were new to the partnership, many of them felt disconnected from both the community and the academic partners and from the research study itself, not for lack of interest, but perhaps because of a lack of knowledge regarding cppr, community-university partnerships and the research process itself. therefore, they recommended that both community and academic partners create a document that communicated why someone would want to join the partnership and the expectations of participation. in addition, all new members, both community and academic, would be required to participate in an orientation session, which would be co-facilitated by a community and an academic partner and which would welcome them into the group, define the vision, mission and goals of the group, and their role in the partnership. an educational or welcome package of information should also be given to all new members. share power and leadership equally community partners felt that they wanted to embrace the cppr model, which recommends a high degree of joint power and leadership at every step of the research process. a key feature of cppr initiatives is the emphasis on joint community and academic leadership and ownership (jones et al. 2007; wright, jones & hogan 2010). to community partners, this sharing meant that a central goal of cppr and the community-university partnership would be to build the capacity of community members in the partnership. community partners recommended that the community-university partnership and affiliated work groups and subcommittees should be headed by one or more community leaders and also one or more academic leaders, who would work together to meet the goals of the community-university 96 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco partnership. this would require ongoing training for community partners in the areas of leadership, meeting facilitation and public speaking, and would help to build the capacity of the community partners not only for the benefit of the partnership, but also for the larger community in which they lived and served. address issues of financial sustainability partnerships need to consider ways to make projects sustainable beyond a single grant or funding period from the very start of the partnership. community partners felt that they should have shared responsibility in understanding and creating the projects budget, and in finding and securing additional funds for current and future cppr projects of the community-university partnership. they recommended that academic partners educate community partners in the process of identifying funds (for example, through funding websites, joining list serves and/or attending funding workshops) and securing funds (such as grant writing). investment in building the community’s capacity in these areas would not only give community partners additional skills and expertise that would help to sustain the partnership and projects that they worked on, but would show the community partners that the academic partners were committed to the growth of community members and ultimately to the sustainability of the partnership. deal with conflict quickly and respectfully community members reflected that conflicts and disputes within community-academic partnerships were common and should be viewed as necessary to growth. however, communicating about their resolution would create a legacy of problem-solving strategies (jones & wells 2007). community partners recommended that a key way to sustain partnerships was for community and academic partners to jointly create a project work plan that included a written guideline for conflict resolution and a visual flow-sheet model that would help to simply illustrate the path that would be taken to resolve all conflicts that might arise. ideally, this should be done at the beginning of the partnership, but it could be done at any time during the partnership. the guidelines should be concise and in a language that both community and academic members could understand (see figure 1, overleaf). 97 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco the community-university partnership recognises the need for encouraging open, respectful dialogue, and encourages input from all participants. acknowledging that such free flow of ideas may lead to conflict that can be simply defined as disagreement, the communityuniversity partnership adopts the following guidelines for resolution of any such conflict in a way that is best for the whole group and the mission of the community-university partnership. 1 identify the problem. if a concern or disagreement arises, there will first be determination by those involved if it relates to the current research project. efforts will be made by those involved to identify the core issues of the disagreement and resolution will be attempted by the parties involved by using the steps below. 2 look at options. potential options for resolution will be listed and individuals will be allowed to explain why the particular option being proposed provides information on how the project will be impacted. efforts will be made to come up with as many creative solutions as possible. 3 areas of agreement. discussion will be facilitated to identify those areas upon which everyone agrees in order to narrow outstanding issues for discussion. 4 preferred solution. through a process of consensus building, the preferred solution will be identified. 5 if resolution of the issue cannot be reached, the issue will go to the community-university partnership steering committee. 6 issues not resolved by the steering committee will go to the principal investigators and co-investigators for resolution, based upon all of the previous information and discussion. it is understood that the process is based on maintaining an environment of trust and respect, and a basic understanding of the goals of the community-university partnership. discussion will be held without blaming anyone for the conflict and will support the exploration of creative solutions. conclusion as indicated above, the community child health network evaluation study not only aimed to identify and synthesise knowledge about the cppr process within the cchn-la community-university partnership, but also sought to develop strategies to foster community-university capacity for participatory research at national and local levels. information from the first sixmonth evaluation was shared with the local academic partners at another joint debriefing session. since then, the academic partners have agreed to the recommendations and they have begun a plan to implement them. these recommendations, as well as reflections from other study sites, were also shared with the community and academic partners of the national community child health figure 1: communityuniversity partnership guidelines for conflict resolution 98 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco network parent study during their annual partner meeting. the recommendations were utilised by the national partners in their restructuring of the cppr process at the national level to help in the creation of a team of community workers who would be trained to assist at the local sites in collecting birth outcome data, which is currently being conducted. cppr is time consuming and filled with challenges as local communities and outside academic researchers collaborate to navigate difficult ethical and methodological terrain, addressing issues of trust, understanding and respecting cultural differences, communication, and shared power and leadership. yet communityuniversity partnerships can work through this process and sustain the partnership through building trust within and between community and academic partners by embracing diversity, increasing communication through a shared language and by sharing power equally in all aspects of the research process. if community-university partnerships include financial sustainability by building the capacity of the members of the partnership through orientation and education, they may find a methodology that holds immense promise for ensuring that research focuses on topics of deep concern to communities. this would be conducted in ways that enhance validity, build community capacity, promote systems change and work to reduce health disparities. acknowledgements special thank you to lynette codrington and marisol sadener for their assistance with this article. references bluenthal, r, jones, l, fackler-lowrie, n, ellison, m, booker, t, jones f, mcdaniel, s, moini, m, williams, k, klap, r, koegal, p & wells, k 2006, ‘witness for wellness: preliminary health findings from a communityacademic participatory research mental initiative’, ethnicity & disease, vol 16, suppl., pp. 18–34s. chen, d, jones, l & gelberg, l 2006, ‘ethics of clinical research within a community-academic partnered participatory framework, ethnicity & disease, vol. 16, suppl., pp. 18–35s. gebbie, k, rosenstock, l & hernandez, l 2003, who will keep the public healthy? educating public health professionals for the 21st century, institute of medicine, washington, dc. grace, c 1992, cultural competence for evaluators: a guide for alcohol and other drug abuse prevention practitioners working with ethnic/racial communities. osap, rockville, md. interviewees 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12 & 20 2009, discussion on barriers and facilitators to effective community-university partnerships. (personal communication, 18 august 2009). israel, b, krieger, j, vlahov, d, ciske, s, foley, m, fortin, p, guzman, j, lichtenstein, r, mcgranaghan, r, palermo, a & tang, g 2006, ‘challenges & facilitating factors in sustaining cbpr partnerships: lessons learned from the detroit, new york city & seattle urban research centers, journal of urban health, vol. 83, no. 6, pp. 1022–40. 99 | gateways | wright, williams, wright, lieber & carrasco israel, b, parker, e, salvatore, a, minkler, m, lopez, j, butz, a, mosley, a, coates, l, lambart, g, potito, p, brenner, b, rivera, m, romero, h, beti, t, coronado, g & halstead, s 2005, ‘community-based participatory research lessons learned from the centers for children’s environmental health and disease prevention research’, environmental health perspectives, vol. 113, no. 10, pp. 1463–71. israel, b, schulz, a, parker, e, becker, a, allen, a & guzman, j 2003, ‘critical issues in developing and following community-based participatory research principles, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), community-based participatory research for health, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 56–73. israel, b, schultz, a, parker, e, becker, a, allen, a & guzman, j 2008, ‘critical issues in developing and following community-based participatory research principles’, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), community-based participatory research for health, 2nd edn, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 47–62. jones, l & wells, k 2007, ‘strategies for academic and clinician engagement in community-participatory partnered research’, jama, vol. 297, no. 4, pp. 407–10. jones, l, lu, m, lucas-wright, a, dillon-brown, n, broussard, m, wright k, maidenberg, m, norris, k, ferré, c 2010a, ‘one hundred intentional acts of kindness toward a pregnant woman: building reproductive social capital in los angeles’, ethnicity & disease, vol. 20, suppl., pp. 36–40s. jones, l, wright, k, wright a, dillon-brown, n, broussard, m, hogan, v 2010b, ‘the healthy african american families risk communications initiative: using community partnered participatory research to address preterm birth at the local level’, ethnicity & disease, vol. 20, suppl., pp. 31–35s. lasker, r, weiss, e 2003, ‘broadening participation in community problem solving: a multidisciplinary model to support collaborative practice and research’, journal of urban health, vol. 80, pp. 14–60. macaulay, a 2007, ‘promoting participatory research by family physicians’, annals of family medicine, vol. 5, pp. 557–60. minkler, m & wallerstein, n 2008, community-based participatory research for health, 2nd edn, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 1–23. seifer, s 2006, ‘building and sustaining community-institutional partnerships for prevention research: findings from a national collaborative’, journal of urban health, vol. 83, no. 6, pp. 989–1003. steuart, g 1993, ‘social and cultural perspectives: community intervention and mental health’, health education quarterly, vol. 20, suppl., pp. 99–111s. wright, k, jones, l & hogan, v 2010, ‘a roadmap for authentic community/academic engagement for developing effective community preterm birth education’, ethnicity & disease, vol. 20, suppl., pp. 77–82s. recalling community using material culture and digital archives in salford this article explores strategies for engaging geographically fragmented urban communities as active participants in conceptually re-mapping their former localities. it looks in detail at the ongoing retracing salford project in salford, uk, which employs the use of everyday objects and oral histories, to engage and enable former residents to reconnect with their recently demolished neighbourhoods, as well as to each other, and document an urban working class history largely overlooked by the large-scale institutions. the project is based on a phd study undertaken by the author at the district six museum in cape town, south africa, which examined the use of material artefacts in exhibitions and memory workshops at that museum, and explored how such strategies could be implemented in salford, uk (cassidy 2009). like district six, salford has undergone wide-scale demolition and population dispersal over the past 40 years. over four years, from 2005 to 2009, objects relating to the demolished urban districts of salford were collected. these included street signs, family photographs, street maps and home movies, and formed the basis of the retracing salford project. since 2009, they have been exhibited in spaces such as museums, community centres and libraries etc. the installations aimed to rejuvenate a sense of place, despite the eradication of the built and social environment. wide-ranging responses were then collected from former residents as oral histories and used in the installations. written records also contributed to a more in-depth overview of life in the district. the project has since developed, by using digitised versions of the family snaps, street signs and oral histories and uploading them on an ongoing basis to the internet, as a developing online streets museum archive (www.streetsmuseum. co.uk). different sections of this digital archive show key elements of life in the districts of salford. the site also contains pages on streets, sport, schools, workers, pubs, places etc. in the past two years this work has been developed by a small team of community arts workers, including an oral historian, a web designer and other community artists, who are engaging diverse age groups in the gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 166–82 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 lawrence cassidy http://www.streetsmuseum.co.uk http://www.streetsmuseum.co.uk 167 | gateways | cassidy process. what began as a project focussed solely on the salford 7 district has expanded to also include districts 3, 5 and 6. we have had a significant response to the project from hundreds of former residents who have kept objects in their homes, sometimes for decades, and donated them to us. salford residents have overwhelmingly demonstrated to us that they want a space of interactive urban commemoration, where educational outreach is a central part of the legacy of the districts that were destroyed. this article first provides an overview of the land clearances in salford, which are still ongoing. it then presents a detailed discussion of the retracing salford project and reflects on how the methodology employed has helped rejuvenate and reconnect these dispersed communities. the article argues that the simple, low-cost employment of everyday artefacts, exhibited in accessible locations, is succeeding in widening the circle of participation and debate in relation to heritage issues, in particular the absence of commemoration of working-class community culture in the city. this approach has also increased awareness of urban land clearance issues. however, the project is constantly evolving and its continued success depends on numerous factors, such as developing new and existing strategies of engagement with the community, regularly gaining publicity and organising new exhibitions and workshops. potentially, the collection of material artefacts could be utilised as an interactive online resource, for residents to access, share memories and maintain links. as well, it is hoped that one day the physical collection will become a permanent installation, either in an independent site, or within an existing museum. salford 7: historical context the border of salford 7, the initial focus of the project, begins less than a mile from manchester city centre. the area was a high-density factory suburb, housing networks of families that formed over generations. the population expanded rapidly during the 1870s and 1880s, as multiple rows of terrace streets were constructed to house workers. many of the houses were owned by landlords, and later companies, who rented the properties out to the families of the district. larger, wealthier houses in the area lined the streets into manchester city centre and occupied other prime locations, close to parks or squares, or were situated on the periphery of the district. the district was predominantly white working class, however, parts of it also contained a culturally and racially diverse population. there was a substantial jewish population, many of whom were forced from russia and eastern europe during the late 19th century and also after the second world war. later, in the 1960s and 1970s, other immigrant groups arrived, including irish, greek, italian, ukrainian, yugoslavian, polish and other eastern european nationalities. the area had a particularly strong community spirit and rich street life, as successive generations grew up in the terrace streets and extended family networks knitted the community together. throughout the 168 | gateways | cassidy 19th century, the social and architectural composition of the area remained largely unchanged (figure 1). slum clearances the process of ‘slum’ clearances in salford began in the 1950s and 1960s with the oldest, most centralised sections of the city and extended outwards. in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s, the lower broughton area of salford 7 underwent mass demolition. during this time its population almost halved, as the local authority used compulsory purchase laws to clear and reclaim whole sections of the city. (for example, in 1931, lower broughton had a population of almost 18 500; today, its population is approximately 2500. (salford city council, 2007). other areas in the city were also completely erased during those decades. during the 1970s, some residents’ groups in the lower broughton area attempted to oppose the clearances, with the help of salford university students, and a minority of streets survived because of their efforts. however, in the absence of meaningful participation in the decision-making process, virtually all terrace streets, local shops and related buildings were cleared at this time (shapely 2007). decisions were continually made using a top–down strategy, with planning consultants drafted in to salford to decide on future development. when the heavy industries declined and the older terrace houses were cleared, many of these patches of land were subsequently occupied by large-scale light engineering factory units, or consumer goods warehouses, with sophisticated security or surveillance systems. these sites have continually expanded in number and scale. today a large newly built casino and a series of expensive car showrooms line the road into manchester city centre (cassidy 2009). the image and myth of the ‘slum’ and the ‘slum dweller’ has long been associated with salford (roberts 1971), and is historically rooted in mid-nineteenth century descriptions of elements of the working class in manchester (engels 1958). certain districts were described as degenerate, not only physically, but also morally. figure 1: lower broughton, salford 7, 1930 169 | gateways | cassidy this legacy of representation has spanned successive generations. during the victorian period, for example, the working class, or sub-class, were described as a form of contagious disease, their mere presence in an area being sufficient to spread immorality (kidd & roberts 1985). undoubtedly, poverty was a feature of the salford 7 district. many landlords and companies were solely concerned with generating profit and subdivided large properties, often not maintaining them. however, other properties were extremely well cared for, and their ornate features retained. the architectural quality of many streets also differed widely and many of the streets were in good order. some houses were victorian and georgian mansions and could potentially have achieved listed status. a whole mix of architectural styles and periods existed. yet, over 120 years after engels and other victorian reformers made their initial observations, the images of the urban ‘slum’ and the ‘slum landlord’ still lives on in collective memory, and it was this argument that was used to justify the demolition of whole enclaves of the city. however, the ‘slum’ conditions that existed in salford 7 in the 1970s were significantly enhanced, if not created, by this very demolition and by leaving properties boarded up and run down for years on end prior to demolition. once the line was drawn and residents knew demolition was unavoidable, then, logically, people lost the will to look after the properties. after the demolition of the terrace streets in the 1970s, the remaining residents of the area were relocated to peripheral housing estates on the edge of the city, or to high-rise flats. a minority of the original population were re-housed in the immediate area. this was achieved by rapidly constructing new council houses at a much lower density. the local council was under pressure, as manchester was expanding outwards and had made potential plans to design new road networks to plough through the district. at first, these houses were well maintained and the community took pride in living in them. some families continued to live close to each other, as small clusters of original networks, and there was still some form of social infrastructure, including local shops, older streets, pubs, care homes, clubs and schools. however, since the early 1980s, unemployment, social breakdown and antisocial behaviour have significantly increased, whilst local facilities have been steadily erased. in the past 15 years, the area has gained a negative reputation in the media for crime, unemployment and related social problems. despite this, the few original extended families that remain have generally stayed together and have contributed to maintaining the community throughout these years, when many others left. current regeneration and demolition there is currently another wave of demolition sweeping through the area, affecting virtually all the houses built in the 1970s and the few remaining older terrace streets, further fragmenting the native population. this latest round of ‘regeneration’ is part of a 170 | gateways | cassidy public–private partnership between the local council and property developers, and is driven by central government’s housing market renewal initiative, which targets urban inner-city areas highlighted as economically failing. over the past five years, in numerous industrial areas in northern uk, local government and development companies have used a combination of strategies on an ongoing basis to redesign urban districts into neighbourhoods of ‘choice’, resulting in the mass demolition of victorian terrace housing and the large-scale relocation of long-term working-class residents (figure 2). this has also been the case in the salford 7 district. in the months and immediate years prior to the current construction of new houses, certain streets slipped into further decline, the environment became increasingly threatening, property prices collapsed, residents gradually left, and houses were demolished and their occupants relocated outside the area. other residents left out of ‘choice’, or were offered housing outside the area. a percentage of the original inhabitants were re-housed and were superficially involved in some consultation. however, this was largely cosmetic, as restructuring and demolition plans had already been made before residents had been consulted (somerville 2012). on the whole, a new community has steadily been implanted and the area has been rebranded. it now consists of apartments and houses. many of the publicly owned high-rise flats built in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s have also been demolished, or privatised, and are now gated communities, or student mini-cities. this is also part of the ongoing regeneration of the city and the area. consequently, in salford, most older, established communities have gradually been relocated to peripheral estates, as greater manchester has come to symbolise the policy of overspill. it is estimated that over 1000 streets have been demolished in different districts in salford over the past 70 years. some sections are only just being built on, after lying empty for 35 years. there are currently hardly any figure 2: the destruction of cultural heritage, broughton, salford 7, 2010 171 | gateways | cassidy architectural features left untouched by demolition, apart from the odd building such as the heritage-listed church of ascension (figure 3). this has resulted in the formation of a kind of ghost city, which most residents over the age of 40 or 50 can still remember living in. the successive rounds of demolition in salford have resulted in long-term social polarisation and health problems. whilst some area clearances were necessary over the past 40 years, due to longterm landlord neglect and general deterioration, well-maintained streets and buildings were also destroyed. the ongoing demolition process has been subjected to substantial critical academic analysis from a number of different perspectives, including: as a destruction of architectural heritage and a cultural/human rights issue (cassidy 2009; wilkinson 2006) as a form of cultural domination and eradication (allen 2008); as having a significant negative impact on health (mallinson 2003) and wellbeing (woolrytch & sixsmith 2008); and as a re-enactment of historical strategies of spatial segregation (cassidy 2009, 2012a). today, multiple indices of deprivation statistics reveal huge problems in the area (cassidy 2009). the value of place: district six, cape town despite ongoing demolition programs in urban areas, the value of place is increasingly being recognised by official bodies. english heritage (2008) has recently identified a series of conservation principles relating to the sustainable management of the historic environment. this organisation states that certain values should be recognised in relation to conserving historic sites. these include communal value (schofield 2009), which concerns the meanings of place for the people who relate to it or feature it in their collective experience or memory; commemorative and symbolic value, which reflects the meaning of place for those who draw part of their identity from it, or have emotional links to it (as part of a wider analysis of other international sites of conflict, john schofield figure 3: the destruction of 1970s housing, lower broughton, salford 7, with the church of ascension in the background, 2011 172 | gateways | cassidy (2009) discusses the earth of the district six area and the district six museum as an iconic example of this kind of value); and social value, again defined as places that people perceive as a source of identity, distinctiveness, social interaction and coherence. some places are modest and everyday; others are reflective of regional and national identity. as mentioned, much of the impetus for developing the retracing salford project came from seeing the work done by the district six museum in cape town, south africa. during the 1970s, around 60 000 people were forcibly removed from district six in cape town by the apartheid regime, and their homes destroyed when it was declared as a ‘white only’ area under the group areas act. successive generations of families had lived in the area, forming deep attachments to the place (western 1996). consequently, the destruction of it produced a profound psychological wound and the effects of this contributed to the formation of a community-based movement to reclaim the site. this movement, known as ‘hands off district six’, eventually evolved into the district six museum, which opened in 1994, as a land claims court. the material remnants collected from the district were used in memory workshops as legal evidence for relocating residents back to their former homes. while there are historical differences between the underlying issues surrounding the destruction of district six in cape town and the salford 7 area – poverty rates in the uk are substantially less extreme than those in cape town, for example – there are also many common threads: both districts are located next to cities that represent past symbols of regional and international wealth and power; both areas were associated with ‘slum’ districts, and the mass housing clearances were undertaken in the name of social improvement; established family networks, formed over generations, were fractured and lost; local residents were relocated significant distances from their original district, often to the periphery of the city or beyond; and over 90 per cent of the architectural fabric in each district has been cleared in the past 40 years or so, completely modifying the urban grid. some tracts of land in salford 7 have remained uninhabited for over 35 years, as is also the case in district six. today, in both cities, there is still a huge gap between affluent and deprived areas that has now spanned various generations (cassidy 2009; dorling 2007; peck & ward 2002). the social and architectural landscapes of both cities can be read in related terms: as examples of power and domination, and as the selective commemoration of particular histories and the exclusion and ongoing destruction of others. many communities in manchester and salford have now been erased and completely excluded from ‘official’ commemoration by museums. none of the working-class districts that were formed over generations in central manchester, such as angel meadow, chorlton-on-medlock, red bank, ancoats, hulme, little italy, little ireland, or collyhurst are represented in any museum as a permanent display. in salford, 173 | gateways | cassidy the districts of greengate, ordsall, broughton, langworthy, islington, hanky park, whit lane, ellor street and bexley square are not represented anywhere as permanent displays. there have been temporary exhibitions of urban communities, but they are never given permanent or prominent spatial institutional commemoration. however, the example set by the district six museum shows that a community-centred process can be developed, maintained and valued in a far deeper way than what can be achieved by drafting in outside professionals. as well, long-term sustainable community links can be maintained through such a process. this has been demonstrated by the range of projects that continue to be popular at the district six museum, such as local and international youth projects, memory workshops with ex-residents, schools outreach and critical educational projects, as well as residents’ clubs, learning programs, conferences, student placements, community-based radio and tv, digital archiving projects and a whole variety of related events. on the whole, the district six museum, as a community-based movement, uses artefacts within a politics of critical reflection which raises particpants’ consciousness and develops the tools of critical inquiry. it contributes to breaking the culture of silence of oppressed people. this form of experiential learning is largely absent in salford and manchester and is something we have encouraged in our workshops in salford. such an approach works towards demystifying the structures and processes of the society within which the museum works (soudien 2008, p. 116), and gives everyone a role to play in the process, including intellectuals, educators, museum professionals and community groups. reclaiming salford the community-inspired outreach program retracing salford has been operating for the past 3 years. inspired by the first major exhibition at the district six museum in cape town – streets, re-tracing district six – it aims to collect material from demolished urban areas of salford, such as maps, home movies, oral histories and street signs, as well as family snaps, and exhibit them in local venues. in this way, material culture is used to recall and rejuvenate wide-ranging memories of the near past, facilitating the collection of information on past street conditions, street life and the processes that were used to expedite demolition. related images and histories are also collected from now demolished high rise flats. ex-residents who visit the exhibitions are invited to donate material and are also interviewed and the accounts of their experiences recorded. the collected material, including some of the oral histories, is then placed on an online digital archive, which can be seen at www.streetsmuseum.co.uk. the streets museum archive is designed to fill the substantial gaps left by museums, whose role it is to explore city histories, yet are doing so only selectively (bennett 1995; kavanagh 1999; macdonald 1998). http://www.streetsmuseum.co.uk 174 | gateways | cassidy supporting the ‘collection’ of digitised artefacts is a physical outreach program of this online archive, which travels around the city, as a mobile museum. the installations were made with a team of people from community organisations and are designed to create active sites of memory that local visitors can easily access. venues include traditional museum spaces as well as alternative locations like community centres, churches and clubs. these alternative spaces are important, as local residents tend not to visit museums, due to lack of transport and cultural capital. the exhibitions provide a space for communities to impose their own version on the recent past, as a form of emotional mapping, enabling them to reflect on personal and family memories (bagnall 2003). using material culture alongside the family snaps, maps and street signs, we collect home movies mostly made during the 1960–70s. these movies can reveal evidence of the built environment that has now been destroyed and how locals interacted with it. the films focus on cultural traditions and religious processions that have now ended, as a way to perpetuate collective memory through group viewings (connerton 1989). as the films were made by local people, they reveal a sense of place rooted in local knowledge, that contrasts with outside perceptions of the area as a slum district housing a demoralised population (norris nicholson 2000). they place the politics of representation back into community hands and challenge the negative stereotypes of working-class culture often found in current fine art photography (samuel 1996). the use of multiple family snaps in the installations was intended to achieve related aims. the snaps were made into posters or exhibited on three-dimensional objects. these objects act as a tactile contrast to impersonal displays in highly funded museum spaces. despite the snaps’ seemingly superficial content and stereotypical poses, the commonality of the images opens up a space of identification, dialogue, reflection and memory, or postmemory, work. this potentially enables the general public, who may not have been part of the community on display or not had any direct involvement with the events portrayed in the images, to empathise with the plight of that community (blackman & harbord 2010; cassidy 2009; hirsch 2002, 2005; kuhn 2002; spence & holland 1991). the snaps also facilitate intergenerational links. they provide a common space of identification for audiences on a local, national and international scale (figure 4). the snaps are exhibited in unlikely combinations and ironic contexts, often amongst other objects, such as machines in industrial heritage sites, or within calendar and postcard display stands at regenerated museum sites that commodify, repackage and often sentimentalise working-class culture. laminated interactive street maps of the districts are used to enable the community to conceptually repossess the area 175 | gateways | cassidy (cassidy 2012b). when visitors gather around the maps, they are encouraged to place stickers on their former addresses, which are then catalogued and numbered. current addresses are also catalogued. these records can be used to chart migration routes and contact residents for further interview (figure 5). the names of places that are recalled, using the maps as inspiration, often substantially differ from titles on the official maps of the area. the installation spaces are often small, which encourages interaction and socialising, and visitors often remain there for substantial periods, recalling events, families, relations, traditions, buildings and places of work. the longer visitors remain, the more inclined they are to relax and reveal in-depth stories, and comment on sensitive subjects. families often visit the installations in groups and intergenerational reflection is encouraged. oral histories are also collected in the space, enabling younger children to listen to their parents’ and grandparents’ stories as they interact with the images, objects and maps. the street signs are displayed alongside the maps, which anchor the maps and locate them in time and place. the street signs ground figure 5: interactive street map, lower broughton, salford 7 figure 4: the lowry, salford – enlarged family snaps pasted to gallery wall, 2005 176 | gateways | cassidy the installation as a place that is deeply meaningful to local visitors (casey 2001). they also catalyse memories of related streets in that particular locality. these material remnants are rusting, partially decayed and contain the marks of past interaction (figure 6). as such, they are intended to contrast with newly designed impersonal spaces (or non-places) of regeneration that hold no meaning for local communities, such as new apartment blocks (woolrytch & sixthsmith 2005). the installations are regularly advertised in the local press, who have cooperated in the process of publicity and collection, as has the bbc. over 80 street signs from the area and other areas in the city have been collected, many belonging to residents who have had them since the 1960s or 1970s; others date from recent demolitions (firgure 7). all the objects have intensely personal associations. as with the district six street signs, they have become signifiers of extraordinary power, as layer after layer of meaning sediments around them (bohlin 1998). the street names figure 7: nora street resident elsie winstanley (left), with the sign that she kept for 38 years. friends dorothy criechton (centre) and maureen murphy (right) are also from central salford districts figure 6: a-z of lost salford streets installation, people’s history museum, manchester, 2011 177 | gateways | cassidy hold potentially countless personal and social memories and associations for generations of people. autobiographical accounts that are related to the street signs can be collected and extended indefinitely by using the objects in the exhibitions. in this way, the objects are used as a sensory form of engagement. retracing salford’s outreach program also involves delivering educational workshops in schools and memory workshops with adults at local exhibition venues. artists also work on the project in diverse media, to engage the community in both tangible and nontangible heritage projects, such as textiles work, live performance and drama, based on the remembered events of the area. it also entails working alongside other organisations in the city that have related interests, such as universities, the working class movement library, community centres and arts groups. this recently involved designing a program of events and presentations at the working class movement library, salford, which was held over an extended period. this has sustained visitor participation at both the library and the retracing salford project, through the sharing of resources, contacts, archives and information. it has therefore become a mutually supportive process. reflecting on methods of engagement there has been a massive loss of sense of place in salford over the past 40 years, as the vast majority of the architectural fabric has been erased in all urban districts. coupled with this has been the lack of public commemoration of working-class culture, history and identity by the major institutions. in contrast to this absent public display, however, the retracing salford project, and its online development, has shown that many people place great value on urban community histories and heritage, by conserving and keeping objects in their homes, as private ‘museums’ to the streets they have lived in. their in-depth knowledge of the urban clearance process and street life – and of industrial history, mining, war and urban culture – is profoundly engaging and informative. hundreds of people have donated to our project and personal histories are recounted in the belief that this will lead to a more permanent institutional recognition of urban life. as historian raphael samuel has observed, the most interesting historical documents are often found in the home (samuel 1996). this process of interaction with everyday material culture, first observed at the district six museum, has acted as a form of social practice (radley 1990), making possible a collective stamp of approval, which dissolves the formal distinction between organisers and visitors (bohlin 1998). the memory workshops we have held in the exhibition spaces are where family photographs and related objects are collected, interviews are also conducted and general discussion is encouraged alongside large-scale street maps. this opens up individual and group reflection on the near past and on previously hidden memories. these memory workshops were inspired by the district six museum’s use of family albums in their 178 | gateways | cassidy two rivers project, which retraced communities in the peripheral districts that they had been relocated to. in salford, it involves taking family albums into outlying districts (named overspill estates in the uk) and encouraging former residents of central urban districts to reflect on the removal process and their lives. this participatory process has helped to build trust, as common ground is established between interviewers and the community. the method of reflecting on the loss of schools, clubs, teachers, shops, parks, streets, flats, factories, cultural traditions and so on bonds the community together and acts as a form of therapy. judging by the reactions of ex-residents interviewed to date, many have a deep emotional attachment to place and community. many remain in the exhibition space for long periods and become upset when recalling events associated with removal and demolition or their past life in the district. over the past three years, the archive of material culture has grown steadily. it has been supplemented by a glass plate negative collection, which we obtained from a studio photographer in the area, who recorded events and portraits over a 40-year period. this archive is similar to the van kalker archive, which is held at the district six museum. the online activities are constantly developing. residents bring in family snaps of their former streets, which are then scanned in and uploaded to the website. this allows residents to become familiar with the use of digital technology and potentially archive their own images. many residents have already formed online archives, as well as blogs and websites, and are engaged in social networking. we have found that combining both physical and digital exhibits contributes to social networking. as well, groups of ex-residents have begun to create their own online archive of family snaps on the streets museum’s facebook page, which has been set up alongside the website. all this activity shows the grass-roots interest in the project and the depth of feeling people have for the district and place they grew up in. at present the streets museum site is not interactive, in that it does not facilitate comments on each photograph and street. however, this is currently being developed. a main critical issue is how to police the site, to ensure comments are appropriate, as the images could potentially inspire a large amount of debate, and such monitoring would involve time and funding. interestingly, the websites have attracted interest from ex-residents now in australia, south africa and the usa. district six has been subject to an intense level of interdisciplinary analysis, especially since the memory boom of the 1990s (bohlin 1998; coombes 2003; field 2001; hall 2006, 2007; jeppie & soudien 1990, mceachern 2001; rassool 2007; rassool & prosalendis 2001). this research can potentially be utilised and extended in relation to other communities that have undergone similar processes, for example, other districts in salford and manchester, as well as liverpool, glasgow and london. indeed, coombes (2003) has drawn comparisons between the 179 | gateways | cassidy events in district six and those in certain port areas in the uk, such as toxteth in liverpool 8, tiger bay in cardiff and london’s docklands. it truly amazed me to see the rapid development of the district six museum in a country with relatively few financial resources compared to those of european cities. its success demonstrates that we do not necessarily need multi-million pound regeneration sites to attract visitors, but meaningful interactive displays that can engage, retain and sustain visitors over the long term. when the retracing salford project was exhibited at the local museum in 2008, it was found that the installations, plus weekly attendance by researchers to engage with residents, significantly increased visitor numbers to the museum by 23 per cent over a three-month period. this would undoubtedly have steadily increased, if the exhibition had remained as a permanent museum outreach project (cassidy 2009). the streets museum website has since attracted over ten thousand visitors. hundreds of families have personally donated snaps to it. the comments book displayed at our exhibition at the people’s history museum, manchester, in 2011, was full of supportive statements, asking for a future permanent home for the collection. this has also occurred at every community venue we have exhibited in since (approximately six different locations). publicity in manchester newspapers has received a wide-ranging response, with residents constantly calling to request the inclusion of their histories in the project. on the whole. this process requires a number of staff members to initiate and maintain it, including an archivist, an educational outreach worker, an oral historian, a curator, a community outreach worker(s) and also project coordinators. conclusion a major long-term objective of the retracing salford project is to continue to critically engage with dominant forms of historical representation, or absent commemoration in the city, using the district six museum methodologies briefly described in this article as inspiration. the goal is to work towards creating a more inclusive representation of urban community histories in the city, principally by involving more people as active participants in this process and debate. this work in salford, which is entirely independent of local museum collections policies, has demonstrated that visitors value low-budget, meaningful interactive exhibitions, which are produced by people who have a direct historical connection to the district as lived experience and who can engage residents in debate and reflection regarding the intricate details of the area and issues being faced today. its further development will depend on support from a range of institutions, such as museums and universities, through the provision of space, staff, technology and facilities. in the current climate of wide-scale community clearance or eradication, as well as social alienation, this should be prioritised. 180 | gateways | cassidy salford, and indeed all central manchester districts are being confronted with social devastation, as all forms of the tangible past are removed. this process is part of an ongoing program of largescale community clearance and mass relocation. supportive social networks are erased as part of this program. projects that facilitate a sense of place, social networking, intergenerational education, skills building and links with the near past should therefore be encouraged. the clearances of the 1960s and 1970s were not blessed with projects of the kind discussed in this article; however, residents have patiently kept the material artefacts that now serve as evidence of those clearances – and this will be true of the current clearances, too. in the absence of the physical environment, this cultural material can now be used in diverse projects to educate and empower the community. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the following people for their advice: professor jim aulich, dr amanda ravetz and dr nick mansfield. thanks, too, to vice chancellor professor martin hall for his support at all stages of the project. references allen, c 2008, housing market renewal and social class, routledge, abingdon, uk. bagnall, g 2003, ‘performance and performativity at heritage sites’, museum and society, vol. 1, issue 3, pp. 100–07. bennett, t 1995, the birth of the museum, routledge, abingdon, uk. blackman, l & harbord, j 2010, ‘technologies of mediation and the affective: a case-study of the mediated environment of mediacity uk’, in d hauptmann & w neidich (eds), cognitive architecture: from biopolitics to noopolitics, architecture and mind in the age of communication and information, 010 publishers, rotterdam. bohlin, a 1998, ‘the politics of locality: remembering district six in cape town’, in n lovell (ed.), locality and belonging, routledge, abingdon, uk. casey, e 2001, remembering, a phenomenological study, indiana university press, bloomington, in. cassidy, l 2009 ‘salford 7: the representation and reconstruction of a lost working class community’, unpublished phd thesis, manchester metropolitan university, manchester. cassidy, l 2012a, ‘salford 7/ district six: using material artefacts to facilitate memories of destroyed districts’, in w jackson, b jeffery, m marino & t sykes (eds), crisis, rupture and anxiety: an interdisciplinary examination of contemporary and historical human challenges, cambridge, uk. cassidy, l 2012b, ‘salford 7/district 6: the use of participatory mapping and material artefacts in cultural memory projects’, in l roberts (ed.), mapping cultures, place, practice, performance, palgrave macmillan, hampshire, uk. connerton, p 1989, how societies remember, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. 181 | gateways | cassidy coombes, a 2003 history after apartheid, visual art and public memory in a democratic south africa, duke university press, durham, nc. dorling, d 2007, poverty, wealth and place in britain, 1968–2005, the policy press, bristol, uk. engels, f 1958, the condition of the working class in england in 1844, blackwell, oxford, uk. english heritage 2008, conservation principles: policies and guidance for the sustainable management of the historic environment, english heritage, london. field, s 2001, remembering forced removals in cape town, centre for popular memory, university of cape town, cape town. hall, m 2006, ‘identity, memory and countermemory: the archaeology of an urban landscape’, journal of material culture, vol. 11, nos 1–2, pp. 189–209. hirsch, m (ed.) 1999, the familial gaze, dartmouth college, hanover, nh. hirsch, m 1997, family frames: photography, narrative and post memory, harvard university press, cambridge, uk. lawrence dates okay? you had 2001 and 2005 but i can only find these original publications. jeppie, s & soudien, c 1990, the struggle for district six, blackshaws, cape town. kavanagh, g 1999, making histories in museums, leicester university press, london. kidd, a & roberts, k 1985, city, class and culture: studies of cultural production and social policy in victorian manchester, manchester university press, manchester, uk. kuhn, a 2002, family secrets: acts of memory and imagination, verso, london. macdonald, s (ed.) 1998, the politics of display: museums, science, culture, routledge, london & new york. mallinson, s 2003, ‘historical data for health inequalities, conceptualising and measuring the health impact of place: focus on salford’, journal of the british sociological association, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 771–80. mceachern, c 2001, ‘mapping the memories: politics, place and identity in the district six museum, cape town’, in a zegaye (ed.), social identities in the new south africa, after apartheid, vol. 1, kwele books, cape town, pp. 223–47. norris nicholson, h 2000, ‘two tales of a city: salford in regional film making c.1957–1973’, manchester regional history review, vol. 15, pp. 41–53. peck, j & ward, k 2002, city of revolution: restructuring manchester, manchester university press, manchester. radley, a 1990, ‘artefacts, memory and a sense of the past’, in d middleton & d edwards (eds), collective remembering, sage, london. rassool, c 2007, ‘memory and the politics of history in the district six museum’, in n murray, n shepherd & m hall (eds), desire lines: space, memory and identity in the post-apartheid city, routledge, abingdon, uk. rassool, c & prosalendis, s (eds) 2001, recalling community in cape town, district six museum foundation, cape town. 182 | gateways | cassidy roberts, r 1971, the classic slum: salford life in the first quarter of the century, penguin, london. salford city council, 2007, broughton ward profile, salford city council, viewed 15 december 2011, www.salford.gov.uk/council/ salfordwardprofiles.htm samuel, r 1996, theatres of memory, verso, london. schofield, j 2009, aftermath: readings in the archaeology of recent conflict, springer, usa. shapely, p 2008, ‘social housing and tenant participation’, history and policy, march, viewed 30 july 2012, www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/ policy-paper-71.html. somerville, p 2011, understanding community: politics, policy and practice, the policy press, bristol, uk. soudien, c 2008, ‘memory and critical education: approaches in the district six museum’, in b bennett, c julius & c soudien (eds), city, site, museum: reviewing memory practices at the district six museum, the district six museum, cape town. spence, j & holland, p 1991, family snaps: the meanings of domestic photography, virago, london. western, j 1996, outcast cape town, university of california press, berkeley, ca. wilkinson, a 2006, pathfinder, save britain’s heritage, london. woolrych, r, & sixsmith, j (in press), ‘placing well-being and participation within processes of urban regeneration’, international journal of public sector management. http://www.salford.gov.uk/council/salfordwardprofiles.htm http://www.salford.gov.uk/council/salfordwardprofiles.htm www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-71.html www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-71.html gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 18–38 © utsepress and the authors understanding social responsiveness: portraits of practice at the university of cape town judy favish and sonwabo ngcelwane in 1997, the department of education in south africa released its white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education (department of education 1997). as part of its programme for change, the paper called on universities to contribute more directly towards national development. this policy position was reaffirmed three years later in the department of education’s ‘national plan for higher education’, which asserted the need to prioritise the responsiveness of academic programmes, research and community services to regional and national needs (republic of south africa 2001). in order to assess how institutions were managing this mandate to be more responsive, a system of institutional audits was instigated. the higher education quality committee (heqc), established under the terms of the 1997 higher education act, outlined 18 criteria against which institutions would be evaluated in the first round of institutional audits (council on higher education 2004). these criteria were approved by the council of higher education in 2004. the concept of gateways | favish & ngcelwane 19 community engagement was not defined, thus making it possible for institutions to define it in ways that were appropriate to their own contexts and missions (council of higher education, 2004). in all, 23 public institutions are to be audited, and the first round is due to be completed in 2011. the university of cape town (uct) was the second public university to be audited (council on higher education 2006). in tandem with these nation-wide policy developments, uct has experienced its own emerging engagement with social responsiveness. uct’s commitment to playing an active role in south africa’s cultural, economic, political, scientific and social environment was first articulated in its mission statement of 1996 (uct 1996). this did not, however, entail any formal reporting to the governing structure of the university on how the university was addressing major development challenges facing the country. to address that shortcoming, an ad hoc faculty senate social responsiveness working group (srwg) was convened, and in 2004 uct launched its first annual social responsiveness report (http://www.uct.ac.za/ services/ip/sr/anualrpts/) it was also felt that this report would assist the university to prepare for the institutional audit scheduled for 2005. this article traces the process of policy formulation and subsequent institutionalisation of social responsiveness at uct and assesses that process using the criteria identified by stanton (2007). the data comes from informal participant observation in the srwg since 2005 and from its annual reports on social responsiveness (of which there are now five). this article outlines three aspects of institutionalisation: defining social responsiveness; linking social responsiveness to research and teaching; and supporting and rewarding social responsiveness. it finds that the participatory process used by the srwg has laid the foundations for the institutionalisation of social responsiveness, though challenges remain with respect to ensuring a consistent implementation of the policy across the institution and maximising the impact of social responsiveness on critical challenges facing the country. gateways | favish & ngcelwane 20 defining social responsiveness the first challenge the social responsiveness working group (srwg) encountered was in stimulating a discussion about social responsiveness and coming to some university-wide understanding of its meaning. in order to do this, as a first step, the srwg conducted an internal survey on the subject, which formed the basis of its first report. the survey was sent to 148 heads of (academic) departments (hods) and research units – electronically and in hard copy – as well as to individual staff members on campus. this amounted to an additional 108 copies. in total, 256 copies of the survey were sent out. there were 81 responses, amounting to a 32% return rate, which compares favourably with the return rates of other qualitative research studies at uct. however, given that there were very few responses from several faculties, the responses did not constitute a truly representative sample of all socially responsive activities across the university. the survey attempted to capture the ways in which staff were responding to social, economic, cultural and political development needs through their research, curriculum and choice of pedagogy. the release of the report brought to the surface very divergent views amongst the university’s senior leadership about the notion of social responsiveness and the value of producing a dedicated report on the subject. some members of the senior leadership argued that a focus on social responsiveness was necessary in order to monitor how uct was addressing aspects of its mission which related to the stated commitment to playing an active developmental role in south africa’s cultural, economic, political, scientific and social environment (uct 1996), and to demonstrate uct’s accountability as a public institution in helping to achieve national goals for the transformation of higher education, as outlined in the department’s white paper 3 (department of education 1997). others felt that a focus on social responsiveness could have the effect of undermining the importance of basic research, or that it could reinforce a view prevalent amongst certain stakeholders within the country that research which doesn’t have an immediate impact cannot be regarded as relevant. they also argued that using the term ‘responsiveness’ could result in a narrow, instrumentalist view of the role of the gateways | favish & ngcelwane 21 university in society rather than encourage an understanding of the university as contributing to the broad public good. amongst people sympathetic to the idea of producing an annual report there were different views about whether social responsiveness should be linked to efforts to promote social justice or whether it should also include contributions to various dimensions of development, such as cultural, economic, environmental and political (uct 2004). a seminar was organised soon after the release of the report to debate the different views. this helped to allay some concerns, particularly those related to the need to avoid a narrow, instrumentalist approach to social responsiveness, as well as fears about attitudes to basic research. to this end, members of the srwg stressed that policy critique should be regarded as a critical component of social responsiveness and that there was no intention to undervalue basic research. indeed, the link between research and evidence-based policy work was explicitly recognised. in planning the next and subsequent annual reports, the srwg took account of the recommendation in the audit report of the university of cape town, prepared by the heqc, which challenged uct to ‘review its current approach to community engagement (and social responsiveness) in the light of some prevailing conceptual ambiguities and quality related gaps, and work towards the development of an integrated institutions policy framework … that would provide a more coherent set of parameters for implementation … and quality monitoring of community engagement’ (council on higher education 2006, p. 37). the srwg decided to present the 2005 report in the form of ‘descriptive case profiles’. the intention was to stimulate debate on two points: firstly, about enhancing learning and research through engagement with external constituencies; and secondly, about the role of the university in engaging with socio-economic needs. in addition, it was felt that reflection on the case studies would help the university develop an institution-wide conceptual policy framework for this aspect of the university’s work, as called for in the audit report. in identifying the descriptive case profiles, the srwg, which was responsible for overseeing the production of the report, used the following working definition of social responsiveness: gateways | favish & ngcelwane 22 scholarly-based activities that have projected and defined outcomes that match or contribute to developmental objectives or policies defined by civil society, local, provincial or national government, international agencies or industry. (uct 2005, p. 4) data for the cases was collected in the form of in-depth interviews with individuals or unit/centre/project heads. questions for the interviews were drawn up by the srwg. the questions covered background to the project/work/unit; the reasons why the work was initiated; the nature of the partnerships with external constituencies; the aims of the activity; links with teaching and research; perceptions of the relationship between the socially responsive activity and the multiple purposes of higher education; the value for uct of the activity; the nature of outputs emanating from the activity; and ideas about how social responsiveness should be evaluated and recognised by uct (uct 2005). the following nine cases were covered in the 2005 social responsiveness report (favish 2006): contributions to the formulation and implementation of • economic policy for the motor industry the main impact of this engagement lay in its contribution to a set of policies intended to guide the restructuring of the automotive industry to enable it to operate in a more competitive environment. providing research and resources to industry: the case of • the minerals processing unit the unit focuses on the provision of high-level resources to the south african mining industry through rigorous postgraduate research training, and it also conducts multi-disciplinary research into problems experienced in the industry. aids and health care modelling in the centre for • actuarial research the centre is a research and teaching unit. the primary focus of the work involves developing and maintaining a model that projects the demographic impact of the aids epidemic in south africa. the products of the unit are also used to assess the impact of vaccines. the unit provides information to government and civil society organisations and helps them interpret information. gateways | favish & ngcelwane 23 building the capacity of organised labour in occupational • health and safety through research, advocacy, training, materials and curriculum development: the case of the industrial health research unit this unit aims to develop the occupational health and safety capacity of trade unions and their members who can in turn use that expertise to transform the role of workers in the field of occupational health and safety. the unit’s services include research on systems and practices; policy research and advocacy; providing advice to workers around injury and disease cases and their compensation claims; facilitating the development of trade union skills in case work and providing training in workplace accident investigations and health and safety audits; risk assessments; curriculum development, participatory action research; and the production of articles and reports for popular publications and academic journals. mediating the interface between theory and practice to • advance social justice in relation to land distribution professor ntsebeza draws on his academic research to engage critically with government policy as well as with social movements on issues related to land reform. he uses research and solid evidence to back up claims and cases. teaching fieldwork through community-based • partnerships in the field of urban geography projects undertaken by the students include the mapping of public and vacant spaces that could be used for development in partnership with community organisations; the mapping of home-based businesses; analysing the ways in which factors such as age and gender differentiate residents’ skills and work; and researching backyard living in valhalla park. transforming specialist archaeological expertise into a • community-based heritage and education project over the past ten years, this project has worked towards returning the archaeological archive to the community. it has informed the curricula for local and visiting schools and established a job creation project ‘designed to generate sustainable small business built around a local archaeological record’. gateways | favish & ngcelwane 24 community service in the faculty of law and • engagement with the legislative process the community service part of the case describes activities which the students have initiated to meet the requirement of doing a stipulated number of hours of unremunerated community service in order to graduate. the other part of the case describes how academics get involved in legislative processes to enhance the efficacy of the criminal justice system on the basis of constitutional values. shaping policy for children through evidence-based • advocacy: the case of the children’s institute the institute was established to harness the collective academic capability in the university to promote enquiry into the situation of children, to share this capacity through teaching and training programmes, and to mount evidence-based advocacy together with other stakeholders to influence the development of laws, policies and interventions for children. these cases reinforced the importance of defining ‘social responsiveness’ in a way that allowed for the wide range of current uct activities geared to addressing development challenges at national, provincial, local and sectoral levels. limiting social responsiveness to the notion of community engagement, regardless of how broadly ‘community’ was defined, would exclude too much. as chatterton & goddard (2000, p. 478) state, ‘territoriality is an extremely complex and problematic concept for higher education institutions [and] universities operate within multiple and overlapping territories and usually manage a portfolio of activities ranging from the global to the local’. nor would a narrow focus on the local community encourage institutions to critically reflect on their role in regard to provincial government within the ‘broader context of globalization and the resurgence of the region as an important arena for political and economic activity’ (chatterton & goddard 2000, p. 478). the analysis pointed to the need for uct to define its role in relation to society in a manner that would: embrace the notion of being responsive to local, • provincial and national needs encompass proactive and critical engagement of • academics and students with the challenges facing society gateways | favish & ngcelwane 25 include the role of higher education in fostering public • dialogue about development challenges and the strategies taken by the government to address them include cultural, social, economic, political and • environmental needs recognise the importance of providing students with • opportunities to develop skills for active citizenship through involvement in community-based education projects. since 2006 the srwg has organised three colloquia in order to reflect on issues that have surfaced in the social responsiveness reports, as well as to build a community of practice around social responsiveness and equip people to promote social responsiveness within the institution. each of the colloquia have been organised around the cases studies and have been attended by about 60 people, including people involved in the cases, union representatives, deans, deputy deans, students, heads of academic departments and other academics. the discussions in the first two colloquia focused on the definition of social responsiveness and the links between social responsiveness and the other core processes at the university. analysis of the contributions in these two colloquia suggested that there was consensus about using a broad definition of social responsiveness that would embody links between activities involving academic staff, external constituencies and the notion of public benefit. this latter notion was preferred because it covered the wide range of contributions being made to social, economic, cultural, political and environmental development, and did not limit the university to an instrumentalist position of responding to the needs identified by other constituencies, as the 2005 srwg definition, given earlier, implied. however, there was strong support for retaining the term ‘social responsiveness’ and for emphasising the importance of responding to the local, regional and national context in our research and teaching, as there was a perceived need to counter the considerable effort being made to position the university as a world class research-led institution. this position was formally endorsed in 2006, when the senate approved a definition of social responsiveness that stipulated that it must have an intentional public purpose or benefit (uct 2006). gateways | favish & ngcelwane 26 whilst the senate affirmed its commitment to promoting social justice, it recognised that contributions to various dimensions of development were important. this view accords with the world declaration of higher education, which states that the ‘relevance in (or responsiveness of) higher education should be assessed in terms of the fit between what society expects of institutions and what they do. this requires ethical standards, political impartiality, critical capacities and, at the same time, a better articulation with the problems of society and the world of work, basing long-term orientations on societal aims and needs, including respect for cultures and environmental protection … higher education should reinforce its role of service to society, especially its activities aimed at eliminating poverty, intolerance, violence, illiteracy, hunger, environmental degradation, and disease’ (unesco 1998, p. 8). examination of the 48 cases which have been profiled over the past two years suggests a strong emphasis on promoting social justice, social reconstruction and human rights. this may be a reflection of the inequalities that characterise south african society or perhaps a bias on the part of the deans who nominate the cases. this concern with social justice is amply illustrated by the case of london from the school of public health, who describes his role as an academic as ‘helping to build a critical mass of researchers who can develop a coherent theoretical framework for human rights and health work, and translate this into changes in the conditions of ordinary people’ (uct 2007a, p. 22). the school’s health and human rights project has consciously chosen to work with ‘vulnerable’ groups in society such as deaf people and farm workers and to conduct their research in a manner that empowers the groups they work with to become ‘agents of their own rights’ through the establishment of a learning network of civil society groups that help participants develop ways to access health care, as is their right. this concern with social justice, access and health and human rights, raises some interesting and challenging questions for public universities in south africa, and elsewhere, as they consider their mission. former uct deputy vice-chancellor martin hall has suggested that when thinking about the mission of a public university in contemporary south african society, an examination of the university’s contributions to addressing poverty and growing gateways | favish & ngcelwane 27 inequality is critical, as these can be regarded as the biggest challenges facing the new democracy. he says: ‘a necessary condition for the continued reproduction of the defining aspects of the public university is addressing inequality and its consequences’ (hall 2006, p. 2). an analysis of the role played by the university in promoting access to higher education for groups which were previously denied such opportunities and whose social mobility was accordingly constrained, can be seen as a clear indicator of how universities can promote public benefits. undertaking work that enables people in marginalised social groups to enter and study at the university, and enjoy the benefits of its resources, is in our view a crucial form of social responsiveness in the south african context. the case of the diploma in adult education provides an example of how previously denied sections of the community have now been granted access to higher education. however, the case profile of several staff members from the economics department who collaborated with the national treasury and international academics in a project to review south africa’s macro-economic policy illustrates a very different approach to advancing the public benefit. in this case study, three members of the school of economics contributed to empirical research that formed the basis of reports which were produced at the end of the first phase of the project. these were then discussed with representatives from the private sector and the labour force. as one of the economists involved in the project says: often the things that people seem to notice with respect to social responsiveness involves work with poor people in communities. of course that’s extremely important and it makes a huge difference in its own right. but an economist like me can’t do that. it’s not what i do – but i can make a difference by using my disciplinary expertise to make an impact on policy, which in turn can make a big difference to the lives of ordinary people. so policy work should be seen as part of social responsiveness. (uct 2007a, p. 33) the definition of social responsiveness adopted by the senate accommodates these different developmental paradigms. gateways | favish & ngcelwane 28 linking social responsiveness to research and teaching the second challenge for the srwg in its efforts to build consensus about a framework for social responsiveness related to the widespread misconception on campus that social responsiveness referred to activities that had no relationship with research and teaching, the core processes of the university. in conceptualising the relationships of social responsiveness to research and teaching, the srwg drew on the analysis of the cases in the social responsiveness reports and comparative literature. in 2005 a us conference, co-convened by campus compact and tufts university, stated that one of its aims was to examine how research universities could ‘entertain and adopt new forms of scholarship – those that link the intellectual assets of higher education institutions to solving public problems and issues’ (gibson 2006, p. 5; for more on campus compact see: http://www.compact.org/). it was recognised that achieving this goal would ‘necessitate the creation of a new epistemology that … would imply a kind of action research with norms of its own, which will conflict with the norms of technical rationality – the prevailing epistemology built into research universities … and that new forms of pedagogy and teaching will also be required’ (gibson 2006, p. 5). this approach resonated with challenges being made to higher education institutions in south africa to demonstrate what they were doing to rethink dominant epistemologies and generate knowledge about the third world from a third world perspective (mbeki et al. 2005). such an orientation would, amongst other things, require the ‘conscious elucidation of an african perspective as a distinctive conceptual and analytical lens, which in turn provides a mental position or plane of projection from which the “present” is viewed, reviewed or judged, or from which propositions for new visions, or directions are made’ (odora hoppers 2006, p. 49). gibbons has posited the notion of the ‘agora’ which comprises a ‘problem-generating and problem-solving environment’ (gibbons 2006, p. 11), populated by academics and other ‘publics’ and designed to generate ‘socially robust knowledge’, that is, knowledge that will be demonstrably reliable in a broader range of contexts and not just in specific laboratory conditions (gibbons 2006). this process usually involves a process of ‘interaction between experts and others, gateways | favish & ngcelwane 29 each of whom may inhabit different worlds to interact effectively in transforming an issue or problem into a set of research activities’ (gibbons 2006, p. 14). gibbons describes the issue around which they engage as a ‘boundary object’ and the space where engagement happens as a ‘transactional’ space involving two-way interaction or communication. often, because the discussions are around problems, the solution involves interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work (gibbons 2006). writers like nyden and gibbons argue that socially engaged research necessitates some form of community involvement in determining the research questions and the interpretation of the data. for nyden, collaborative university-community research typically involves partnerships in all stages of the research and dissemination of results, including conceptualisation of the issues to be studied, design of the methodology, collection of data, data analysis, writing up of a report, and dissemination of research results (nyden 2005). several of the case profiles in the reports illustrate knowledge generation, knowledge application and knowledge dissemination through working with external constituencies. they show that partnerships based on principles of reciprocity, mutuality and equality can enrich the process of knowledge generation. the portrait of the african religious health assets programme (arhap), located in the department of religious studies, describes the use of transactional spaces involving multiple stakeholders to generate knowledge about factors impacting on the treatment of hiv/aids. the background to this initiative was the contestations on the ground in south africa about the distribution of antiretrovirals (arvs), which suggested that it is not enough to simply provide arvs. various etymologies of disease appeared to be at work and differing constructs of the body, health and illness were involved, many of them imbued with religious images, symbols and understandings of the world. so in working in a grounded way with communities, arhap tried to generate ‘theories [which were] shaped as much by the way people actually think and work and live on the ground, as they were by prior learning’ (uct 2006, p. 11). arhap’s approach is located in the body of work known as asset based community development, or capability-focused approaches, which recognises the need to take seriously the assets that people on gateways | favish & ngcelwane 30 the ground have, and build on these, rather than work from a deficitbased model, which is the usual approach of traditional research. as cochrane of arhap says: it is the collaboration between researchers, practitioners and local communities that generates the necessary set of new and different perspectives to create new knowledge. academics are necessarily involved in discourses that are quite technical as a result of being influenced by particular theoretical backgrounds. but … it is necessary to relate the discourse and the way it is constructed to the discourses that people use on the ground. as a result, there may be a need for trans-cultural interpretation. (uct 2006, p. 11) other cases illustrated the potential of applying technology to improve the quality of people’s lives, demonstrating a much wider notion of innovation than has been described in northern literature on innovation to date. the cell-life project brought together academics from the information technology, engineering and health faculties at uct to design a medical management system to support patients on anti-retroviral treatment by merging cell phone technology with the internet and database systems. similarly, the palsa plus project, based in the uct lung institute, was started in an attempt to address the spectrum of commonly seen lung diseases through the use of a shared, uniform approach to diagnosis and treatment in primary care settings. the work culminated in the establishment of a knowledge translation unit, which promotes the integration of research findings into clinical practice so as to strengthen health services and improve patient outcomes. these two case studies demonstrate that social responsiveness work and traditional, high-level research are far from being mutually exclusive activities. the case profiles also contain information on the variety of ways in which uct staff seek to promote access to information and research findings, in addition to publishing in academic journals. this includes the use of websites, the production of cds, the organisation of exhibitions and festivals, the production of posters and pamphlets, participation in radio programmes, writing newspaper articles, and presentations of papers at seminars and conferences. indeed, as london of the health and human rights project says: gateways | favish & ngcelwane 31 the raison d’etre of doing work on human rights is to promote the right and access to health care. so academics continuously reflect on ways of sharing information about what they learn through their research to help improve people’s access to health care. (uct 2007a, p. 23) the cases also illustrate how academics are attempting to develop socially responsive graduates by enhancing the relevance of the curriculum through engagement with external constituencies. the portrait of the postgraduate programme in disability studies in the faculty of health sciences illustrates how the research community of disabled and non-disabled academics, activists, policy makers and practitioners, coalesce in an ‘agora’ using participatory and action oriented research to generate the knowledge base of the postgraduate curriculum, as well as to inform national government policy processes. key principles guiding the design of the course included finding an african voice for disability that could communicate the needs as identified by the disability rights movement (favish & mcmillan 2009, p. 6). this approach recognises that the university is not necessarily the only repository of knowledge, and that input from stakeholders is critical to the success of the programme. it is also based on the premise that genuine transformation cannot successfully occur through decision-making done solely by those with power, and that lasting change involves shared decision-making through the establishment of ‘transactional spaces’ (gibbons 2006). this collaboration helped to ensure that the curriculum and forms of assessment were designed in a way that graduates would exit with the competencies needed to promote the rights of the disabled by ensuring a strong focus on advocacy-related skills (favish & mcmillan 2009, p. 6). the case of the child guidance clinic describes a curriculum renewal process driven by the desire to produce psychologists equipped to work not just in private practice but also in community contexts. a crucial focus of the review was on teaching the students how to use theories in versatile ways and to think on their feet so that they are able to work in trauma contexts where groups may change every week and where it is necessary to have an immediate impact. students are also taught how to go about identifying community resources that can provide appropriate forms of support to members gateways | favish & ngcelwane 32 of poor communities. the clinic is also planning to introduce a course on diversity and race related issues to equip the students to deal with these kinds of issues in therapy (uct 2006). the annual reports illustrate how students have benefited from service learning opportunities, where the theory they learn in the university environment is applied in a practical context, as part of the formal curriculum. however, several cases nominated by the student representative council covered voluntary activities organised by student societies. this pointed to the need to ensure that the policy framework on social responsiveness accommodated civic engagement that occurred outside of the curriculum. supporting and rewarding social responsiveness following senate approval of the definition of social responsiveness in 2006, the srwg developed a policy framework for social responsiveness, which culminated in approval by the university’s governing council in december 2008. during this two-year period, extensive consultations took place with a range of stakeholders on campus including trade unions, student groups, support staff, faculty boards and senate. the policy is underpinned by a conceptual framework, reflected in the diagram below, that acknowledges the interconnectedness between social engagement and the other core activities of the university, research and teaching, as well as civic engagement, which takes place outside the formal curriculum (uct 2008). the inclusion of civic engagement was deemed necessary as it recognised the critical role voluntary community service plays in helping to promote active citizenship among staff and students. uct’s current conceptual research civic engagement teaching & learning socially engaged service and learning (2.2.1) socially engaged research (2.2.2) socially engaged teaching and research (2.2.3) gateways | favish & ngcelwane 33 framework accordingly recognises the following major forms of social responsiveness: research-oriented forms of responsiveness• teaching and learning-oriented forms of responsiveness• civic engagement with no link to the formal curriculum. • the policy framework also identified certain functions which various units should perform in order to support staff who wish to become involved in social responsiveness. for example, the framework established executive accountability for providing university-wide leadership on social responsiveness and a senate committee was charged with helping to promote and strengthen social responsiveness at the university. to complement awards issued to staff and students in recognition of achievements in teaching and research, the policy framework makes provision for an institutional award for social responsiveness for staff and the issue of certificates to students who provide evidence of active involvement in civic engagement. the policy framework also makes provision for the consideration in performance reviews of staff members’ contributions to social responsiveness: performance criteria applied in ‘rate for job’ evaluations specify that social responsiveness should be embedded in the three performance areas of research, teaching and leadership/management/ administration … this means that staff can choose to provide examples of activities related to social responsiveness as evidence of meeting the criteria in the various categories or not. (uct 2009, p. 13) assessing social responsiveness according to hall, the outcomes of 13 audit reports completed by the heqc between 2004 and 2008 indicate that universities in south africa are at widely varying stages in conceptualising community engagement practice (hall 2008). the analysis of the reports, prepared by hall for the council on higher education, led the council to initiate a process of developing a national conceptual framework for community engagement (hall 2008). singh argued that the process of formulating a framework should be organised ‘as a conversation between the forging of some kind of a national enabling framework and how institutions are conceptualising a next-level framework for themselves [and that this] conceptual work [should not be] about gateways | favish & ngcelwane 34 setting narrow, tight, exclusionary definitions of what community engagement is. [it is] rather about setting some broad parameters for community engagement in the social development agenda’ (singh 2006). the process of developing a national framework is therefore still underway in south africa. the heqc has not yet published a report on all the audits conducted to date. in assessing uct’s progress with regard to social responsiveness it is not possible at this stage to compare uct’s performance with that of other institutions in south africa or to assess our work in relation to a national framework. we have therefore chosen to assess our work in relation to criteria suggested in a report from a 2007 conference on civic engagement by research universities in the usa (stanton 2007). this report proposes that institutionalising engagement would require the following: audits of institution-wide engagement to identify and • assess the extent of its activity, purposes and location campus-wide visibility and recognition of exemplary • efforts stimulation of debate within the university about • engagement activities recognition of engaged scholarship in tenure and • promotion decisions and grant awards incentives for staff and students who propose innovative • courses, research and other initiatives appointment of staff and the establishment of capacity • and infrastructure to support engagement educating students about the value of engaged • scholarship the provision of sustained funding or grants for engaged • scholarship and engagement with the university’s councils and other • external constituencies about the university’s role and effectiveness in social responsiveness. assessment of developments within uct over the past few years suggests that all but the last two criteria have been addressed, notwithstanding the fact that there is always room for further improvement. for the past four years, uct has been collecting information on social responsiveness activities through the process of compiling gateways | favish & ngcelwane 35 the annual reports. the information on these case profiles is now contained in a dedicated website maintained by the institutional planning department (www.socialresponsiveness.uct.ac.za/). these reports have been used to give visibility and recognition to exemplary efforts across the campus. three colloquia have been organised to stimulate debate within the university about social responsiveness activities. the overwhelming support for the vice-chancellor’s draft strategic concept paper on social responsiveness, which forms part of the university’s new draft strategic plan, indicates that staff no longer contest a strong focus on social responsiveness. indeed, social responsiveness has been fully integrated into key institutional documents. during 2007 revised criteria for performance reviews of academic staff were implemented for the first time. social responsiveness is embedded in the criteria, which stipulate that: all academic staff are expected to exhibit some level of social responsiveness through teaching and learning, research and/ or leadership. at each level the onus lies on the person to demonstrate such social responsiveness of an appropriate type for this academic rank. (uct 2007b, p. 1) however, the srwg was not able to ensure that examples pertinent to social responsiveness were included in the document. this was a major impediment to the efforts of the srwg to gain recognition for staff involved in social responsiveness. currently, analysis of faculty records indicates that several faculties are not correctly implementing the policy on the criteria for performance reviews. we suspect that this may be due either to opposition to aspects of the policy or residual confusion about aspects of the policy. the criteria are presently being reviewed. it is hoped that this will help to ensure alignment across the university with the policy framework which stipulates that, ‘staff can choose to provide examples of activities related to social responsiveness as evidence of meeting the various categories (i.e. research, teaching and learning, and leadership, management and administration) or not’ (uct 2009, p. 13). lessons can be learnt from students’ commitment to their activities and the many hours they are prepared to invest in activities that do not directly benefit them in terms of their academic performance. gateways | favish & ngcelwane 36 whilst the case studies involving student voluntary activities indicate the willingness and desire of students to get involved in communitybased projects, this zeal should be matched by efforts to systematically understand and articulate the outcomes, challenges and best practices in this area of work. in terms of engaging with external constituencies about the university’s role and effectiveness in social responsiveness, the annual social responsiveness reports are discussed by the university’s governing council, but not more widely than that. for the first time, the colloquium in 2009 was organised around presentations from external constituencies and focussed on their perceptions of their partnerships with uct. the university has also signed memoranda of understanding with the provincial and city governments, which are designed to strengthen collaboration around development priorities. conclusion most of the social responsiveness initiatives at uct are happening at the level of individual academics, or units, rather than at a university-wide level. whilst this is legitimate and desirable within universities, the complexity and urgency of the problems being addressed suggests that there may be a need for a more strategic and coordinated university-wide approach. several critical challenges such as poverty eradication and helping to improve the quality of public schooling need to be addressed in order to maximise the impact of any interventions. the case study on uct’s response to the xenophobia crisis in 2008 provided evidence of the need for the university ‘to establish a structured mechanism to harness the intellectual resources of the university to respond to the needs of the majority of people in our country’ (uct 2009, p. 23). the vice-chancellor’s recent strategic concept paper on social responsiveness refers to the various threats impeding efforts to construct a more democratic and just society, such as high levels of poverty and inequality, the poor quality of education in most of our public schools and the lack of infrastructure development, and proposes that uct should appoint pro vicechancellors who would be able to provide more directed university leadership working in consultation with the entire university community and in liaison with organizations in communities, the city gateways | favish & ngcelwane 37 and province to address these needs. such leadership would enable the university to draw on the strengths of individual departments in a coordinated fashion (uct 2009). it is hoped that the formal approval of the strategic concept paper by the university at the end of the year will result in a more strategic institution-wide approach to social responsiveness. references chatterton, p & goddard, j 2000, ‘the response of higher education institutions to regional needs’, european journal of education, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 475–496. council on higher education 2004, ‘criteria for institutional audits’, higher education quality committee, pretoria. council on higher education 2006, ‘audit report on the university of cape town: report of the heqc to the university of cape town’, higher education quality committee, pretoria, march 2006. council on higher education 2006, community engagement in higher education: proceedings of the conference, council on higher education, pretoria. department of education 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, department of education, pretoria. favish, j 2006, ‘portraits of practice: social responsiveness in teaching and research at the university of cape town’, paper presented at the fotim quality assurance conference, johannesburg, june 2006. favish, j & mcmillan, j 2009, ‘the university and social responsiveness in the curriculum: a new form of scholarship?’, london review of education, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 169–179. gibbons, m 2006, ‘engagement as a core value in a mode 2 society’, paper presented at the che-heqc/jet-chesp conference on community engagement in higher education, cape town, 3–5 september. gibson, cm (ed.) 2006, ‘new times demand new scholarship. research universities and civic engagement: a leadership agenda’, campus compact and tufts, viewed 19 october 2009, http://www.compact.org/initiatives/civic-engagement-at-research-universities/ trucen-section-a/ hall, m 2006, ‘toward engagement for the public good’, working draft, university of massachusetts, massachusetts. hall, m 2008, ‘community engagement in south african higher education’, unpublished paper prepared for the council on higher education, pretoria. mbeki, t, erwin, a & mangena, m 2005, ‘the challenges facing higher education in south africa’, unpublished discussion document, pretoria. mcmillan, j & pollack, s 2009, ‘taxonomy of forms of responsiveness (2005–2007)’, unpublished paper presented at a workshop at the university of cape town, cape town, 22 may. nyden, p 2005, ‘the challenges and opportunities of engaged research’, paper presented at the che-heqc/jet-chesp conference on community engagement in higher education, cape town, 3–5 september. odora hoppers, c 2006, ‘constructing a conceptual framework for hbus in a developmental paradigm’ in m nkomo, d swartz & b maja (eds), within the realm of gateways | favish & ngcelwane 38 possibility. from disadvantage to development at the university of fort hare and the university of the north, human sciences research council, cape town, pp. 47–64. republic of south africa 2001, ‘national plan for higher education’, department of education, pretoria. stanton, tk (ed.) 2007, ‘a conference report 2007. new times demand new scholarship ii. research universities and civic engagement: opportunities and challenges’, university of california, los angeles, viewed 19 october 2009, http://www.compact.org/initiatives/ civic-engagement-at-research-universities/trucen-section-a/ unesco 1998, ‘world declaration on higher education for the twenty-first century: vision and action’, viewed 15 march 2005, http://www.unesco.org/education/educprog/wche/ declaration_eng.htm university of cape town 1996, ‘mission statement’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2004, ‘social responsiveness report 2004’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2005, ‘social responsiveness report 2005’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2006, ‘social responsiveness report 2006’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2007a, ‘social responsiveness report 2007’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2007b, ‘minimum performance criteria for academic rate for job’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town, 2008, ‘social responsiveness report 2008’, university of cape town, cape town. university of cape town 2009, ‘draft concept paper on social responsiveness, unpublished discussion document, cape town. engaging creative communities in an industrial city setting a question of enclosure much has been said about how ‘creativity’ might infuse policymaking and planning – especially in the wake of popular bestsellers by richard florida and charles landry on ‘creative places’ and the ‘creative class’ (the latter a supposed demographic group associated with creative industries such as film, design and music, who are said to be the key to the economic fortunes of cities). creativity, it is said, can be facilitated in particular urban environments, given the right preconditions such as ‘hip’ inner-city precincts, café culture and walkable dense clusters of design firms and retail and residential spaces. the common argument is that the presence of conducive qualities for creativity helps attract new migrants and industries, and in turn generates new ‘scripts’ for places, even whole cities, whose competitiveness and civic fortunes can be turned around – a ‘creative reinvention’ of sorts (see gibson & kong 2005 and kong et al. 2006 for a discussion of this policy script and its popularisation internationally). since then, such ideas have been criticised heavily, from issues of classism (peck 2005), elitism (barnes et al. 2006), gentrification and social displacement (catungal, leslie & hii 2009; indergaard 2009) and inherent neoliberalism (christophers 2008; gibson & klocker 2005) to problems defining such a loaded and mercurial concept as ‘creativity’ (including related definitional difficulties around what constitutes a ‘creative industry’ (o’connor 2009; pope 2005; throsby 2008)). creativity is therefore a contested concept – no more so than in the conduct of research with ‘creative’ communities. responding to these critiques, this article discusses a project where deliberate attempts have been made to connect with the unheralded or surprising forms that creativity takes outside the established arts – what is known in the literature as ‘vernacular creativity’ (edensor et al. 2009). if creativity is semantically opaque and its mobilisation as cultural planning discourse frequently politicised, what then are the political and practical implications of seeking to engage with creative communities beyond the established arts? this article considers such engagement in the context of a project based in a regional area of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 1–15 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 chris gibson ben gallan andrew warren university of wollongong 2 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren australia where creativity is often overlooked. it does so through the notion of enclosure, which has helped us both analyse the policy landscape of the arts and creativity and imagine capacities to form new enclosures around communities of practice, policy and research in ways that challenge old precepts. the project in question is the australian research council (arc) funded cultural asset mapping for regional australia (camra) project – a linkage initiative that combines federal government funding with support from municipal councils, peak arts bodies, and local and regional government associations. the overall aims of the project are to work outside any pre-given definitions of ‘creativity’, assumptions about where it resides or whether it is in fact a good thing for policy-making and planning, and instead to build partnerships with communities through which creativity is defined, located and discussed (see the project’s website, http://culturemap.org.au/). we use the phrase ‘cultural asset mapping’ to encapsulate this alternative framing, drawing on prior community-engaged research where the means were as important as the ends – the politics of knowledge production being foregrounded in the process of doing research (underhillsem & lewis 2008). case study regions where such partnerships have been formed during the camra project include rural and regional areas in australia – locations not usually associated with creative industries, which have even been typecast as ‘lacking’ creativity in previous audits and creative class studies (see gibson & klocker 2004 for a critique). one such location is wollongong – 85 km south of sydney and one of australia’s key centres for heavy industry, notably coal and steel production, as well as sea transport, freight and logistics. in wollongong, reliance on heavy industry and manufacturing has triggered successive civic anxieties about economic futures, and regional economic plans have variously looked to tourism, education and creative industries for their capacity to diversify the city’s economy and to insulate jobs from global economic fluctuations (waitt & gibson 2009). there is a presence of what are typically described as ‘creative industries’ in wollongong, including a theatre scene, visual artists, filmmakers and designers, and the city has pockets of gentrified ‘creative class’ activity, partly in the inner city and also on its scenic northern beaches (a function of lifestyle and amenity). wollongong city council cultural planners, who are industry partners on the camra project, wanted to include well-established arts communities in the project, but also – mindful of the critiques of creativity alluded to above – wished to explore a more expansive understanding of what creativity might be, and where it could be found. this was important in wollongong because, with its industrial base, strong working class culture and challenging demographic mix (high levels of cultural diversity, newly arrived migrant and refugee communities, socioeconomic inequality, http://culturemap.org.au/ 3 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren problems of youth unemployment), any project focusing only on the established arts and creative industries would quickly run the risk of reinforcing existing divides and being accused of elitism. negotiating research methods — a pragmatic approach clarifying our approach took a year of regular meetings by university researchers on the camra project with cultural planners at wollongong city council, as well as the pursuit of specialist projects on specific forms of vernacular creativity (custom car design, surfboard shapers, aboriginal hip-hop) and sites of creativity (for example, the live music venue, the oxford tavern, host to wollongong’s fringe/alternative/punk subcultures until its untimely closure in 2010). in industry partner meetings, planners at wollongong council emphasised the importance of genuine engagement with established arts and creative industries, but also the need to seek more broad views about ‘creativity’ beyond the expected voices. indeed, a back story to the project was precisely that a ‘gulf’ had been seen to emerge between those most vocal in local cultural planning debates (from the established arts and creative communities) and a heterogeneous population who were generally disengaged from cultural planning processes. council often ran consultation sessions at particular times of the day in central venues such as libraries, and lamented that it was the same prominent figures who frequently attended, leaving unanswered residual questions of representativeness and diversity of views across the community. stepping into this context, the camra project was presented with a methodological challenge to both leverage the existing expertise in arts and creative industries and move beyond any perceived ‘arts mafia’ to locate alternative voices, places and ideas. what emerged out of the year’s worth of regular meetings was that a mixed method approach was required to conduct cultural asset mapping in wollongong. specific projects meant it was possible to dedicate time and energy to locating and exploring alternative creative sectors beyond the usual places, while a series of other activities would be pursued by the project, as a whole, with the broader population. a pragmatic approach was taken initially to selecting specific creative activities and sites: aboriginal hip-hop emerged as a focus because of the involvement of several of our undergraduate students (of indigenous background) in the region’s hip-hop music scene; custom car design was a focus because of the authors’ prior knowledge and awareness of a creative scene in wollongong surrounding car design, which had also recently been demonised by mainstream media in the area as ‘hoon’ culture; the oxford tavern live music venue was chosen because of the involvement of one of the authors as a musician there; and surfboard shaping was chosen because another of the authors is a keen surfer and knew of the region’s high-quality custom surfboard workshops (but also, crucially, knew they had been 4 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren previously ignored by the city’s cultural planning and creative industries’ strategies and audits). these initial choices set the scene for detailed longitudinal analysis of vernacular creativity in wollongong, as all existed outside official discourses of creative industries in wollongong (waitt & gibson 2009), but as initial selections they were not intended to be exhaustive. indeed, the real possibility existed that these particular choices would only produce another partial and thus problematic sense of what constituted creativity in wollongong. it therefore became apparent that a much more ambitious public research exercise would be needed to broaden the net. this latter exercise came to be the hosting of a ‘cultural mapping lounge’ (figure 1) at wollongong’s largest annual civic festival, viva la gong, in november 2009. the cultural mapping lounge consisted of a stall manned by staff and students and camra personnel from the university of wollongong and the university of technology, sydney, at which members of the general public – literally anyone – were invited to have their say on two basic questions: ‘what is the coolest place in wollongong?’ and ‘what is the most creative place in wollongong?’ these two questions, although simple, were the product of many hours of debate from within project partnership meetings. they were chosen because they invited people in a reasonably accessible ‘pop culture’ format to reflect on their city, on cultural life, and on creativity. in addition to these questions, members of the general public were asked to explicitly identify on a paper map of wollongong their ‘cool’ and ‘creative’ places with blue and pink highlighter pens. drawing on advances made elsewhere in a previous project (see brennan-horley & gibson 2009), these maps were later collated and combined using geographical information systems (gis) technology to produce analytical and statistical reports on where wollongong residents located ‘cool’ and ‘creative’ places figure 1: andrew warren, ben gallan and josh edwards administering a map interview at the viva la gong festival, november 2009 (photograph: chris gibson) 5 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren (see gibson et al. 2012, for a detailed discussion of these results). all in all 205 people participated in this exercise, producing 160 interviews and maps (some participated as couples or as whole families, responding to one interview and drawing on one map). members of the arts and creative industries focus group, conducted in the week following the viva la gong public mapping exercise, were asked the same questions, and provided with the same maps and pens in order to produce an identical set of comparable data. within specific sub-projects, the methods developed were tailored to the communities from whom views were sought, and could be extended over a lengthier time period. individual creative practitioners in surfboard production, custom car design and aboriginal hip-hop were interviewed numerous times over a two-year period, with trust built through repeat visits, informal chats and discussions, and support from researchers outside the bounds of the project (for instance, for custom car designers during visiting festivals, or by attending gigs by aboriginal hip-hoppers). at the oxford tavern we sought views from those involved in its music scene both currently and through 20 years of its history as a live music venue: the musicians, booking agents and punters who made it the city’s premier alternative live music venue until its recent tragic demise. in-depth, longitudinal conversations with different kinds of vernacular creative communities were also made possible. in keeping with previous literature on the politics of community-engaged research (burrawanga et al. 2008), a process of constant negotiation occurred between the focus which was hypothesised initially and the themes that emerged in the conduct of doing research with members of the creative communities. the expectation of the oxford tavern research was to describe a close-knit live music ‘scene’, which could be interpreted within subcultural theory frameworks. subcultural theory describes the manner in which people affiliate through music, fashion, behaviour and attitudes into discrete social formations such as punk, hip-hop and rave cultures (gelder 2005). from this interpretation, it was thought that the connection to cultural planning would be forged through valorising otherwise disenfranchised subcultural formations as legitimate elements of wollongong’s creative community (in the manner of willis’ (1990) now-classic study of creativity among working-class youth; see also shaw 2005). instead, what was encountered were apathetic attitudes towards the scene itself – rarely did music-scene participants at the oxford perceive what they did as particularly cultural or value it as anything more than a personal attachment to music and drinking. in context, the whole time we were researching and writing about this scene there was a threat that the venue was planning to close (which it eventually did, in 2010), and people were angry about this prospect. we anticipated that participants in the music scene there would hence voice strong opinions about the value of the venue to the city’s creative subcultures, and complain about its neglect by local policy-makers. 6 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren over a couple of beers in informal situations outside the research context, everyone had opinions about the situation. yet trying to encourage people to talk on tape or sit down for interviews at times outside the music scene’s activities was far more difficult. therefore, different techniques were adopted such as using social networking sites to keep the research engagement casual. through such strategies we made contact with an older generation of people no longer at the oxford – ex-music-scene participants who were looking back in retrospect rather than wanting to talk about contemporary issues such as the survival of the venue. what transpired was that, instead of an empirical exploration of specific cultural planning themes, a looser narrative approach emerged within which the aim was to simply ask people about their first ever experience of the oxford tavern and then let them narrate a story from their lives involving the oxford. this narrative approach enabled a form of personal dialogue with researchers not possible through semi-structured interviews. rather than providing a mere backdrop to specific questions linked to hypothesised themes, narratives allow reciprocal relationships to unfurl between events, places and social identities important in sustaining the lives of people within altering circumstances (søndergaard 2002). we thus resisted the desire to press for further comment on questions of cultural planning and creativity, instead allowing discourses to unfold in their own manner. some participants did not even need to be asked another question: they would provide a personal history of their whole involvement in the scene, and offer up critical insights, without need for further prompting. the aim was to facilitate casual chats about the periods that people were involved with the venue, and then later piece together the general story of that venue. it remains moot whether this methodological approach could be easily replicated – again reflecting the situatedness of knowledge production. as nagar and ali (2003) intimate, moving between and across subject positions in research is context and path dependent. it happened to be that one researcher was already in the oxford tavern’s music scene. participants would share stories with him more easily than they might other researchers; hence some of the older participants would say, ‘well this is before your time but i’ll tell you a story’, and they would then expound on a theme. positionality of the researcher is critical (rose 1997), and personal history in that scene, or ability to be able to talk to members of a particular creative community with intimate knowledge or shared experience or history, is important (gold 2002). the story was different again when working with aboriginal hip-hoppers. here, being present at the university was critical, as was luck in coming in contact with indigenous students who participated in the region’s hip-hop scene. on one occasion a conversation between researchers and indigenous students turned to hip-hop and students were asked if it would be okay to get in contact to participate in research. one researcher subsequently met 7 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren people at nowra youth centre – a space not of our choosing, but rather where the hip-hop scene’s members were already hanging out. for a while the research constituted nothing but ‘being around’: meeting hip-hoppers once and saying who we were, where we were from, what our interests were, and watching and listening to hip-hop music being made, rehearsed and recorded. this accords with kusenbach’s (2003) method of the ‘go-along’: talking, recording and conversing with people as they stroll or ‘hang out’ in their own familiar everyday urban spaces. in subsequent meetings interviews were requested and conducted. the process was, in other words, a familiar one in qualitative social science of building trust and rapport (cameron & gibson 2005). once we had talked to key people who were operating from the youth centre, they were very good at mobilising others, who were easily convinced to participate in the research once trust (and even friendship) was apparent with the researchers (cf. tillmann-healy 2003). gaining trust opened up more opportunities to get to talk to other people; those involved in hip-hop were willing to talk about what they were doing and were enthusiastic about showing us their music, taking us through how they’d go about making a track on the computer with the equipment they had. they talked about key people who were important in that process, speaking fondly about opportunities to perform; but then underneath that hinted at issues and difficulties they were having in accessing opportunities to perform around the local area. reinforcing gibson’s (2006) argument, the perceived boundary between non-aboriginal researcher and aboriginal research subjects was less profound in the camra project experience than the shared camaraderie enabled by a focus on music, on a shared passion for the creativity involved in songwriting. with camra this resulted in collaborative publications between andrew and local participants in the aboriginal hip-hop scene (see warren & evitt 2010), which in turn constituted co-authorship as a strategy to negotiate and unsettle the relations of power that infuse research processes, and thus an attempt to decolonise research (burrawanga et al. 2008). the key was to listen and not ask too many in-depth sensitive questions about life ambitions and problems. rather than press for contemplation on critical issues, ‘being around’ and then doing gentle interviews were opportunities to create a space for discussion of positive creative forces in the lives of participants (kusenbach 2003), an antidote to the all too familiar story of the same kids being typecast as ‘problems’ at school and in the community. reflecting on this experience, the potential problem lies in having expectations about what one can glean from research participants too early in the process. instead, in this case, meaningful insights about vernacular creativity among a disenfranchised community emerged slowly, and gently, from within deliberately easygoing research encounters. 8 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren redrawing the boundaries of ‘enclosure’ qualitative and in-depth explorations of specific forms of vernacular creativity, as outlined above, helped inform the camra project’s wider agenda of understanding local cultural assets beyond predictable off-the-shelf creative city strategies (for empirical detail, see gallan 2012; warren 2012; warren & evitt 2010; warren & gibson 2011). the problem remained that in choosing specific case studies other forms of vernacular creativity may have been overlooked. how can researchers engage with unidentified communities, whose locations, contours, personalities and proclivities are simply unknown? our answer was the cultural mapping lounge at the popular, free viva la gong festival, in the hope that a quick, short sample of the general public could be recruited in a non-threatening, and even entertaining, research exercise. admittedly, much less detail was provided by the general public than was possible through in-depth case studies, but the benefit was the possibility of capturing far more diverse forms of creativity, including seemingly ‘mundane’, ‘hidden’ or controversial examples. extensive analysis of the results is not possible here (see instead gibson et al. 2012), but it is worth drawing out a few insights from the public mapping exercise relevant to our discussion of the politics and pragmatics of research process. at the viva la gong mapping lounge, members of the general public had much less than was expected to say on established arts and creative industry activity, and instead a broader mix of predictable and unpredictable activities were identified and discussed – from community gardening to school choirs, from knitting circles to migrant cultural programs. the viva la gong exercise proved a point about the community’s willingness to participate in research – they were queuing up at one stage – quite a contrast to the ‘consultation fatigue’ (diduck & sinclair 2002) that sees formal community consultations, town meetings and focus groups so poorly attended. the resulting map analysis (see, for example, figure 2) had within it enormous scope for representing the diversity of views and experiences of the general public in wollongong. these included, but were not limited to, expressions of localism and pride in specific suburban community initiatives; vernacular creative activities not otherwise included in cultural planning strategies; engagement with ‘nature’ such as beaches and the city’s escarpment backdrop; city-wide sites of creative gravity (including regional galleries and nightlife– entertainment districts); and even outright dismissal of the artscentric notion of creativity in favour of a grassroots emphasis on the everyday creativity used by working class and disadvantaged people to survive and make do with few financial and community resources (further detail on this is provided in gibson et al. 2012). yet paradoxically, with the viva la gong cultural asset mapping exercise there was a self-effacing tendency, where members of the general public being interviewed would say ‘i’m not in a position to be able to comment on that; i don’t know 9 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren anything cultural; i’m not creative; i don’t know anyone who is creative’ – even when they did, or themselves were actually involved in activities that might be of interest to cultural planners (revealed after gentle probing by the researchers). there was a sense in which members of the general public felt a lack of validity to speak. we wondered where exactly that came from: working class humility, a sense of eschewing seemingly middle-class cultural or artistic pursuits, or a history of having been excluded from the dialogues of cultural planning – having been outside the enclosures of policy-making? rather than spend too much time discussing specific results, what is most relevant from a community-engaged research perspective is that knowledge-production is clearly a dialectical or iterative process – and that knowledge about what is ‘creative’ and where it might reside must be understood through a continual process of ‘becoming’ by way of dialogue within specific policycommunity-university exchanges (cameron & gibson 2005). figure 2: ‘where is creative wollongong?’ — all responses, combined, viva la gong cultural asset mapping exercise, november 2009 (source: gibson et al. 2012) 10 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren in our case, where cultural planners have a familiar set of connections to the established arts and creative industries, it is through these sets of connections that discourses on what constitutes creativity emerge. these dialogues are the avenues through which ‘assets’ and ‘problems’ for a city and its creative industries are defined, made real, and ultimately shape cultural policy for the city. in foucaultian theory this is called ‘enclosure’ – where government and ‘experts’ build sets of connections in the policy-making realm and a sense of enclosure forms around those connections (dufty 2008; rose & miller 1992). this notion of ‘enclosure’ is a specific and technical one, normally found in sociological critiques of policy and governance, but much less common in methodological literature. according to sociologists of foucaultian persuasion, policy discourse is framed within that enclosed set of connections, and ideas outside this enclosed web of iterative dialogues between experts and government remain excluded. this was at times visibly evident in our arts and creative industries focus group, conducted shortly after the viva la gong mapping lounge (and within which we asked the same questions as we did to the general public: ‘where is cool and creative wollongong?’). at the arts industry focus group, it became obvious upon arrival that most participants already knew each other and were reacquainting and re-establishing existing connections, reproducing and rehearsing certain conversations about artsrelated topics, casually, as they had coffee before the day began. these spaces and interactions within the focus group setting were about cementing those already enclosed, semi-enclosed, or informally enclosed dialogues. this contrasted enormously with the somewhat random, even chaotic, jumble of ideas, places and themes that extended from our general public mapping exercise at viva la gong – an exercise without depth of expert insight in comparison to that of the focus group, but which nonetheless had all the hallmarks of a rich ‘vox pop’ format: diversity, confrontation, dissent, surprise, off-the-cuff comments, and more than a few ‘hidden treasures’. looking back on this exercise, it also becomes arguably clearer why it is that vernacular creative activities such as surfboard shaping or custom car design have until now been eschewed within formal civic cultural planning processes. certain cultures and creative endeavours (especially museums, theatre and visual arts) have full-time employed gatekeepers and those crucial gatekeepers interact with the gatekeepers of cultural policy and planning within this realm of enclosure (gibson 2011). what council considers legitimate within the sphere of cultural planning is informed by societal perceptions of what counts as ‘arts’, or what counts as ‘creative’ – but is also a product of the socialised networks within which policy enclosures form. other forms of vernacular creativity might be equally ‘artful’, yet not show up on the policy map. surfboard shapers, for example, considered their work very much artistic – a soulful, creative, innovative, design-driven 11 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren industry. local surfboard workshops such as byrne employ shapers who have played a pivotal role in australia’s professional surfing history: tom carroll won two world titles on byrne surfboards. with beaches spanning the entire length of wollongong and being central to cultural life in the city (as was abundantly evident in our cultural asset mapping exercise at viva la gong – see figure 2), one might expect wollongong to have made mileage out of this seemingly obvious local cultural asset. yet surfboard shapers we interviewed recounted having been to council meetings and attempting to talk about it, and then realising that there was little awareness of the existence of a surfboard industry in wollongong (it was still assumed to be essentially a steel/coal/manufacturing city). surfboard shapers talked extensively about how wollongong had an amazing natural asset: wollongong is located on a remarkable wave-influenced coastline and there are already within the city people who work within surfing and have become internationally renowned for their activities. and yet the enclosures around arts and cultural planning have yet to embrace surfboard shapers. surfboard shapers, like custom car designers, are simply not part of the social and professional networks through which the policy landscape of arts and creativity are enclosed. conversely, other forms of creativity were downplayed by participating community members: people involved in custom car design, for instance, rarely perceived what they did as creative or artistic and were dismissive of council initiatives towards inclusive cultural planning practice as being ‘irrelevant’ for them and their pastime (cf. diduck & sinclair 2002). custom car designers did not describe their activity as ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’ – it was more about an outlet for personal expression. they had had an interest in cars since they first obtained their licence while at high school, and customising cars was a chance for them to do something interesting outside the confines of boring, repetitive and tiring work in heavy industry. custom car designers could pull together different people and skills – friends they had in the local area – in ways that perfectly matched academic descriptions of the network sociality present in other more familiar creative industries such as music (brennan-horley 2008). and yet they didn’t see custom car design as particularly creative, or as a legitimate form of art. thus a form of self-exclusion accompanied actual exclusion from official policy enclosures of art and creativity. in the case of custom car design, the situation is made more complex again because related to the activity is the wider politics of customised cars being associated with stigmatised ‘hoon’ behaviour – in contrast to the creativity and skilful work involved in designing and rebuilding cars. overcoming the gulf between the established arts and creative industries and custom car design means not just becoming more inclusive (cf. davies & dwyer 2008), but shifting perceptions and challenging stereotypes. car shows, for instance, attract a diverse audience, from young to old, from grandparents to little children – people who outsiders might not necessarily think would be connected to a custom car design 12 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren scene, or a creative scene for that matter. so to engage with such people requires a reshaping of thinking about ways to encourage or develop community arts and creativity (anwar mchenry 2011). it requires local government to take some initiative to break outside the enclosures that form over time around policy-making spheres, as well as questioning accepted wisdom and existing regulatory practices where appropriate, such as handling community resistance to the staging of car shows in public spaces, issues to do with insurance, risk management, local traffic plans and waste management – all the bureaucracy that surrounds urban planning, festivals and events. policy-making on creativity outside predictable dialogues and enclosures needs actions on themes far more quotidian than many creative city strategies appear to be. pushing this notion of ‘enclosure’ further, a different set of enclosed dialogues occurs, even within council, that further complicates this discussion. it became obvious within the camra project that cultural planners – who have been very keen to broaden the scope of the dialogues informing cultural planning – act within the local government context where culture and creativity struggle for legitimacy against other ‘basic’ needs. in this context it has been argued that council more broadly has higher priorities than arts and culture. cultural planners in turn see themselves as on the sidelines – as their submission to the new south wales government’s inquiry into the development of cultural infrastructure outside the sydney cbd document reveals: a significant period of 8–10 years of research and planning for improved cultural facilities still leaves wollongong in a position where little substantiative change has been achieved. lack of resources has been a fundamental issue. however the lack of recognition of the important role of the arts and culture is a major cause of this stagnation (wollongong city council 2008, p. 10). the enclosure surrounding cultural planners and established arts and creative industries in wollongong is, in other words, superseded by another kind of enclosure – that of the ‘core’ business of council – which serves to exclude culture from claiming its rightful place in the sandpit of holistic city-wide planning. conclusion we have shared some reflections here on what works and what remains difficult when seeking to engage communities in cultural planning research – and in so doing have attempted to broaden the scope of what constitutes ‘creativity’. for us, as researchers, pivotal was the dynamic of taking the time to listen to participants and let their stories unfold, not arriving into the research context with an agenda or a set strategy. we concord with kusenbach’s (2003) recommendation that in the research context it is essential to allow time to go for a drive, go for a chat, hang out, to hear someone’s story. through our various attempts during the camra project to engage with vernacular creative communities, the forms of 13 | gateways | gibson, gallan & warren enclosure that enfold the policy-making sphere were subsequently rendered vividly – and at times our research strategies had to adapt in order to overcome the boundaries normally assumed as a given around the established arts and creative communities. it remains to be seen what wollongong council does with the variety of insights delivered by the camra project. a worst-case scenario may be that we have extensively documented a live music scene before it died; that we spotlighted temporarily vernacular creative scenes such as custom car design and surfboard shaping (with little permanent recognition forthcoming); and that we captured momentarily a multitude of snippets about grassroots cultural assets through viva la gong – activities, people and places that might remain beyond the ambit of future cultural planning. the project continues now into its next phase, in which policy dialogue around the results is the key goal. as researchers increasingly attuned to the manner in which enclosures form around policy-making spheres, it is incumbent on us to both open up opportunities to include in these dialogues otherwise neglected forms of vernacular creativity, and to resist scenarios in which we ourselves unwittingly produce new enclosures around our own particular ideas, objectives and 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(kevelson 1993, p. 1) niversity-community engagement is increasingly becoming a key focus of australian universities (see, for example, australian universities community engagement alliance 2005; funding australian universities for community engagement 2005; winter et al. 2006; and innovative research universities australia 2006). there is little agreement, however, as to the values underlying the term ‘community engagement’, or the kind of activities it ought to represent. for example, university-community engagement might be thought of as a vehicle for teaching and learning, research, developing industry and professional links, marketing the university, or perhaps enhancing civic altruism. all of these kinds of activities u gateways | low 108 can be described by the term university-community engagement, and in an australian context it is all of these things. it would seem that there are a vast number of stakeholders that have become active collaborators in the work of australian universities for an equally diverse number of reasons (commonwealth of australia 2002). in this social context, researchers at universities can no longer assume that their findings can be thought of as ‘authorised truth’ and simplistically expect the public and its social institutions to accept and incorporate the findings of university research programs ‘on trust’ (mcgee & lyne 1987). given the identified trend toward engagement and collaboration, i propose that we view the work of university-community engagement as being itself a process of enquiry rather than a collection of problematically dissociated university functions. in this view, university-community engagement is transformed into a system that must continue to be responsive to the dissent of its constituency, or it does not exist (low 2003). i define dissent as a feeling or way of thinking that opposes an accepted viewpoint, and enquiry as a method of communication that aims to find out the truth. my argument is that by viewing university-community engagement as a process of enquiry that is reliant on dissent, we can simultaneously allow two possibilities: enquiry can function to keep communication closed to the wider community (through its self-referential autonomy), and connected to the community (through its communicational commitment to engaging with dissent). the above dialogical view of university-community engagement also suggests that the purpose of enquiry as a whole is something internal or immanent to any social system. in this sense, we do not ‘transfer' or ‘transmit’ knowledge between social systems, but, rather, we engage a method that enables the recognition of a shared object of enquiry – its entelechy (nicholls 2000). thus, a university’s ability to stabilise itself in the face of both internal and external challenges is founded upon its ability to recognise its own inherent instability and continually adjust itself (to learn and grow) in response to this dissent (see, for example, luhmann 1990; and michael thompson 1992). universities, therefore, must continually enquire into, and regulate their responses to, the surprises dissent embodies if they are to survive. in short, the self-reflexive operation of dynamic social systems (such as universities) requires that communication as enquiry continue interminably. gateways | low 109 how does a university regulate itself to ensure that communication as enquiry continues indefinitely, and how does this mode of regulation affect the manner in which universities engage with external stakeholders? to answer these questions, we will need to examine universities as systems controlled by a system of differentiated communication. following the lead of kecskes (2006), the theory i shall use to guide us in this task is derived from the work of anthropologist mary douglas. grid-group theory mary douglas is well known for her grid-group technique used for analysing the dynamics of social systems (see, for example, douglas 1973, 1982a, 1982b, 1989, 2001; douglas & wildavsky 1982; douglas & calvez 1990; mamadouh 1999; and spickard 1989). douglas’ method is to superimpose two dimensions of social commitment as indicated in the diagram below. the term 'grid' is used to represent the degree of individuation: ‘the term grid suggests the cross-hatch of rules to which individuals are subject in the course of their interaction’ (douglas 1982a, p. 192). thus, at the top of the diagram is strong grid, a place where there are visible rules of control (that is, a high degree of social regulation and classification), while at the lower end, weak grid, is a place where ‘formal classifications fade, and finally vanish’ (douglas 1982a, p. 191). on the other axis, the term 'group' is used to represent a dimension of social incorporation: ‘the group itself is defined in terms of the claims it makes over its constituent members, the boundary it draws around them, the rights it confers on them to use its name and other protections, and the levies and constraints it applies’ (douglas 1982a, p. 192). thus, to the left-hand side of the diagram is weak group (weak social incorporation) and to the right strong group (strong social incorporation). these twin dimensions are used to yield a four-fold model of social organisation. much of douglas' use of the model was directed at explaining the styles of thinking and behaving characteristic of each of the four quadrants, which douglas called ‘cultures’. the quadrants (a, b, c, and d) and their mnemonic titles (individualism, isolates, hierarchy, and enclaves) provide four distinctive contexts within which a ‘cultural bias’ is generated. the cultural bias of each quadrant is maintained through the explanations and justifications that seem gateways | low 110 douglas' four types of social environment (adapted from douglas 1982b, p. 11). plausible to people communicating in each quadrant. thus, for douglas, each quadrant represents a culture within which certain attitudes and behaviours are characteristic: square a (low grid, low group) allows options for negotiating contracts or choosing allies and in consequence it also allows for individual mobility up and down whatever the current scale of prestige and influence. square b (high grid, low group) is the environment which ascribes closely the way an individual may behave. in any complex society some categories of people are going to find themselves relegated here to do as they are told, without the protection and privileges of group membership. square c is the environment of large institutions where loyalty is rewarded and hierarchy respected: an individual knows his place in a world that is securely bounded and stratified. finally, square d is defined by the terms of the analysis as a form of society in which only the external group boundary is clear: by definition all other statuses are ambiguous and open to negotiation. (adapted from douglas 1982b, p. 4) in the present context, we are interested to discover the communicational characteristics of the quadrants and their possible isolates b hierarchy c individualism a enclaves d grid group gateways | low 111 relationship to the concerns of university-community engagement practitioners and/or researchers. we are also interested to find out how dissent functions in each of the quadrants. as noted earlier, dissent is a vital communication factor enabling university research communities to constitute and maintain themselves through enquiry. both dissent and enquiry are vital to the creation of new knowledge, the task of universities. thus, without a method to nurture and reveal dissent, universities would be unable to even recognise different ways of being in the world, and enquiry would be rendered impossible (hawes 1999, p. 235). to examine what happens to dissent in different social or cultural contexts, we shall think about what it would be like to be communicating about a specific university-community engagement issue under the communicational constraints of the grid-group dimensions. what we imagine could be any issue at all – the only proviso here is that the issue involves the mobilisation, or the possibility of, a dissenting view. this imagining method will allow us to discuss how university-community engagement is coordinated in different ways via different methods of social organisation (that is, via communication). in other words, the grid-group method of analysis will enable us to see what it would be like to communicate about a specific issue within four distinct ‘communicational communities’ (ransdell 1998). thus, for our present purpose, the grid-group model allows us, as douglas put it, ‘to understand the relation between the inside structure of an organization and the insides of its members’ heads’ (douglas 1989, p. 172). more specifically still, we can use the grid-group model to identify different methods of university-community engagement, and then examine the different ways in which universities might respond to dissent, the communicational welding agent for enquiry. a semiotic episteme for grid-group analysis douglas argues that we are ‘unable to conceive of the individual’s environment if it is not a group of some kind’ (douglas 1982a, p. 192). in other words, it is impossible to conceive of an individual without also thinking about how that individual communicates within a group, or with other groups. an individual’s judgement in regard to a specific issue is consequently constructed from within an evolving social dialogue with other groups (see, for example, gateways | low 112 perelman 1982; and corrington 1994). this much we can agree on. what is perhaps missing from douglas’ conception of ‘environment’, however, are influences derived from sources that are ‘other’ than the social system itself, that is, from sources the existence of which is not attributable to what we want or do not want to be the case. these sources, i argue in contrast to douglas, have a being of their own that is independent of what we think about them, for example, ecosystems, animals, rocks, plants, or at the most generalised level, universes. in my view, a ‘de-anthropologised’ epistemology is required if we are to also recognise and become responsive to scientific methodologies within the context of a grid-group analysis (luhmann 1989, p. 78). indeed, without a theory capable of encompassing scientific communication methods, much of the work of a modern university would remain un-analysable. this article therefore puts forward the case for a semiotic epistemology in grid-group analysis. i have derived this insight from the work of charles s. peirce (1839–1914). in peirce’s view, communication mediates between an independent reality and our reasoning about it (low 2003). to demonstrate how such an approach might operate in the context of grid-group analysis, i am next going to locate four different methods of communication in douglas’ grid-group diagram. i will then investigate how each of the four communication methods i identify function as an enquiry system for university-community engagement. in his famous paper the fixation of belief, peirce identifies and discusses four methods we can use to obtain a settled state of belief (peirce 1955, p. 10ff). in the following diagram, i have renamed each quadrant with one of peirce’s four methods of enquiry: the method of tenacity; the method of authority; the a priori method; and the method of science. each method differs from the other three in regard to the communicational characteristics used to persuade the participants to reach agreement. put another way, each method solves the problem of dissent in relation to university-community engagement in a different manner. in an ideal world, we have the freedom to choose between these methods. under the constraining influence of the grid-group dimensions, however, our choices are restricted by the communicational bias of the quadrant we are communicating within, or at least, that is the proposition i am investigating in this article via douglas’ grid-group constructs. gateways | low 113 group a peircean grid-group communicational community diagram. tenacity (isolates b) according to peirce, the method of tenacity operates to maintain existing beliefs through avoiding contact with any contradictory evidence. people in this quadrant therefore protect themselves from doubt by avoiding situations or information that might give rise to doubt in the first place. if this is not possible, the individual tenaciously clings to a former belief to ward off doubt. in this sense, the method of tenacity operates to protect the individual from group pressures (hence, weak group), while maintaining a sense of powerlessness in relation to the forces of social regulation (hence, strong grid). dissent in this quadrant is equivalent to personal disintegration. to ward off this, the individual regresses to an existing belief, or an existing rule for action. holding to this view tenaciously will solve the immediate problem at hand. peirce compares the method of tenacity to that of an ostrich burying its head in the sand (peirce 1955, p. 11). whether it was a good idea to do so can only be determined retrospectively. tenacity (isolates b) authority (hierarchy c) science (individualism a) a priori (enclaves d) grid gateways | low 114 authority (hierarchy c) the method of authority is also based on the recognition of dissent, but here we move toward the strong end of the group dimension, thus dissent cannot be repressed by the first method (tenacity) as effectively. to remain incorporated within the group, if that is the intention, the individual, or perhaps a sub-group, must resolve the conflict made evident by dissent by submitting the issue to authority, for example, to an authorised decision-making process, or perhaps an authorised ‘expert’ or ‘judge’. this method, therefore, involves a selfidentification with the pre-authorised beliefs of the group in respect to any specific problem and the correct method to solve problems. in other words, membership involves a voluntary submission to the processes of social regulation, which is why i have located this method of fixing belief at the strong end of the grid dimension. often the key issue in this quadrant is whether there is sufficient time or resources available to resolve the conflict. if not, a decision will be imposed. a priori (enclaves d) the a priori method operates to eradicate dissent through reason, but without recourse to experiential evidence. peirce characterises this approach to the fixation of belief as the ‘philosophical’ method. he suggests that what we find reasonable via this method is a matter of intellectual ‘taste’ or ‘fashion’. in this quadrant, then, whatever an individual believes must remain consistent with the opinion of a group. it is a group consensus that determines what is to be believed, which is why i locate this method at the strong end of the group dimension. if a cohesive group’s interpretation of new information remains consistent with what is already believed, the information is usually found compelling on this basis alone. the third method, therefore, resolves dissent through an appeal to the binding power of ideas rather than by a submission to authority. consequently, the intellectual freedom of this communicational community cannot be closely regulated without reducing it to either of the previous methods (tenacity or authority), which is why i locate the a priori method at the weak end of the grid dimension. science (individualism a) the method of science operates to eradicate doubt by subjecting hypothesised resolutions to dissent to experimentation and gateways | low 115 observation. i am going to cover the characteristics of this quadrant in a little more detail, as how this method goes about resolving disputes is key to understanding the role of enquiry in universities. as argued earlier, enquiry-based communicational communities form around a common concern for a subject matter that is independent of what we want to be the case rather than a special ideological or philosophical preference. thus, as i have noted elsewhere (low 2000), enquirers who consider group conformity to be more important than finding out what is really the case cannot be said to be communicating scientifically. cooperation in a scientific communicational community has as its object the investigation of the truth of its subject matter, not the construction of a truth the communicational community wants to be true. the method of science, therefore, involves factors identified and made operational by the other three methods of fixing belief, but brings into play one vital extra factor. in the method of science, the being of the object of enquiry plays the determining role in the fixation of belief. for example, i might say to someone, ‘it’s very smoggy today’. the person i say this to might respond by saying, ‘how do you know that?’ i could then respond by saying, ‘go outside and look at the colour of the sky and smell the air. if you do this, you will find that the sky looks brown and the air smells like burnt petrol’. if the person i have addressed this claim to does this, they will likely be compelled to the same conclusion i have asserted via a mediated experiential contact with the subject matter of my assertion. in this sense, my communication is meaningful if, and only if, my interlocutor responds to my communication appropriately – that is, in a manner that will reveal the object of my assertion. if this is done, and there remains some disagreement about what is to be accepted as the object of my claim (for example, ‘that’s not smog, that’s progress!’) this can only be resolved by dialogic enquiry with the same object in mind. in this sense, the relational consequences of the object of enquiry can only be found out by enquiry. we cannot impose our meanings on the object by stipulating that it must be as we command or think it to be (the position of the other three quadrants). the object of enquiry is free to object to what we say about it in the method of science (latour 2000). even the most complex scientific enquiries follow the basic method described above. for our present purpose, then, note that an gateways | low 116 assertion (that is the conditional proposition asserted to be true) made in the science quadrant is made to an audience considered distributively rather than collectively. in a scientific community, the scientist addresses ‘whomever the assertion may concern’ (ransdell 1998). as such, the audience is not a collection of people who must, as a group, accept or reject the claim according to whether it coheres with an existing system of beliefs (that which we call ‘knowledge’). this is why i locate the method of science at the weak end of group. note also that there can never be some kind of mechanical procedure that, if adhered to, will guarantee that a claim made in the science quadrant is necessarily true (for example, the object of an assertion might have changed in some important respect that was not anticipated, or the asserter might be mistaken about something). this is why i noted earlier that the truth of any claim in science is ultimately determined by the subject matter or object of enquiry. no amount of social regulation can in itself guarantee that any given claim approximates the truth, which is also why i locate the method of science at the weak end of the grid dimension. in the science quadrant, then, individuals are (ideally) free to communicate openly and honestly in relation to a specified subject matter of concern. consequently, there is both less influence and control from others (that is, the group dimension), and individuals are relatively free from social regulation (the grid dimension). in other words, the method of science is dominated by strongly competitive conditions and images of individual autonomy. i seem to hear my reader ask, ‘but surely the method of science is a highly regulated social activity and therefore it should be located in the hierarchy quadrant?’ i defend my choice for locating the method of science in the weak grid, weak group quadrant on two further grounds: first, i agree that science is a social activity. as just noted above, when a scientist makes a claim, the scientist does not make it to a communicative community considered as a collective. rather, the claim is made to anyone who has an interest in determining the truth about the same subject matter (that is, ‘to whom it may concern’). this may turn out to be a large number of people, or it may turn out to be a single individual, or perhaps even a person or group of people not yet born. in this sense, there can be no criterion of membership in a scientific communicational community, such as an allegiance to what is already believed (the a priori method), or to that which has been authorised to be believed (the method of authority), or to what gateways | low 117 we habitually believe (the method of tenacity). what is required is an honest and sincere desire to find out. in short, there must be a commitment to the function of truth-seeking in communication. second, scientists, in order to be scientists, must be as free as their subject matters. although the hierarchy quadrant would prefer it if nature could be made to remain fixed in place by decree of its policy or engineered interventions, nature remains something independent of these efforts, as something dynamic and evolving. in this sense, the method of science must also be organic. it cannot be highly regulated or fixed, that is, not without it becoming overly authoritarian, tenacious, or unwilling to admit a new level of information (a priori). in sum, my modified grid-group diagram is designed to provide an interpretive apparatus within which we can set about describing the communicational characteristics of the methods used to fix belief in each of the quadrants. the proposed method of analysing university-community engagement communication, therefore, follows logically from my earlier argument that communicational communities are constituted by their communication method. disagreement within a quadrant is thus functionally the same as disagreement with one’s self-identified communicational community. in this sense, the method for settling opinions operative in each quadrant constitutes a suitable name for the communicational community of the quadrant. the hypercycle of university-community engagement the purpose of my modified grid-group diagram is to provide a structured typological space within which four distinct social agorae for university-community engagement can be identified and discussed – both in relation to their internal characteristics, and in relation to each other. as thompson has noted, each of the methods identified via any grid-group analysis seriously contradicts the other three, yet each is complementary to the regulation of a social system as a whole. as thompson states, the four quadrants: … form themselves into a hypercycle. each way of life, it turns out, does something for the next that it cannot do for itself. (thompson 2000, p. 191, original emphasis) gateways | low 118 for example, the method of authority would be a suitable method for enforcing the business contracts that arise out of the method of science. in turn, the excesses of the method of authority would provide the a priori method with something to criticise and rally around, and the method of tenacity would give the method of authority someone to categorise and develop policy in respect to. thus, since each communicational community acts as a source of disagreement or difference, it is necessary to the others in a system of communication: the reproduction of each way of life ensures the survival of the other three. as suggested earlier, university-community engagement at a generic level is made possible via a method of communication called enquiry, which is also why recognising and nurturing a role of dissent is so vital to university-community engagement. my findings so far suggest, however, that enquiry operates solely in the science quadrant of our modified grid-group diagram. the communicational constraints of social incorporation (grid) and group membership (group) are minimised here, allowing the freedom necessary for enquiry within a universe of discourse that is equally free (this is most often termed ‘academic freedom’). in the science quadrant, anything imaginable is possible and any possibility is imaginable (at least in theory). in short, the possibilities for selecting ideas to investigate in this quadrant are derived from interactions with a universe of discourse that is potentially endless in its possibilities. however, it is also this very characteristic of the method of science that shows us why universities cannot operate in the science quadrant in isolation. there must always be something other than the self-referential autonomy of university research to encourage new directions for enquiry and to correct errors, for example, when theory is put into practice. put another way, a university must derive disagreement and direction from sources that are external to the university itself. in this view, when the innovations that emerge from the science quadrant find their way to the other three quadrants, they are greeted in different ways according to that quadrant’s preferred communication method. this in turn determines whether ideas derived from the science quadrant are capable of being incorporated into a broader social system, and which communication strategies are appropriate to achieving this acceptance (luhmann 1989, p. 82). as the hypercycle functions by utilising each communication method (that is, each method for fixing belief), each method is necessary. gateways | low 119 implications for communication strategies each of the communicational commitments i have identified arises out of a distinct method of fixing belief, and each is proposed to be necessary to a university-community engagement communication system. one of the advantages of grid-group analysis, then, is that it enables us to see that there are a number of paths that could be used to engage the system with those matters relevant to the life of universities. our diagram also reveals a number of concomitant difficulties due to conflicting communication methods and assumptions. as we have seen, each quadrant has a distinctive method for processing communication, thus we cannot assume that a communication generated in the science quadrant, for example, will be interpreted or discussed in the same way in another communication quadrant. indeed, the analysis undertaken here would suggest that such an expectation is impossible. the new will always be processed in a different manner in the other quadrants. this is to be expected, as, after all, there is no need to communicate research to an audience when the object of the research is already known and accepted by that audience. in this sense, university-community communication is premised on failure – if it doesn’t surprise an audience to some degree, it’s not something new that is being communicated. perri 6 et al. (2006, pp. 75–76) have analysed the idea of surprises within the context of grid-group theory. their analysis helps us think about what is likely to occur when communications generated within the science quadrant move to the other three quadrants. grid-group analysis suggests that if the findings of a university research programme are to be successfully disseminated and taken up in the other quadrants, each of these quadrants should be thought of as a distinct audience with a distinct method of processing messages. thompson (2000, p. 192), for example, proposes that each quadrant has a distinct ‘information handling style’ which enables it to accept or reject messages from other quadrants. in respect to universitycommunity engagement communication, thompson’s study and the recent work of perri 6 et al., as well as our own efforts, suggest that the following considerations may be pertinent to designing better communication strategies for university-community engagement when such communication is generated by the science quadrant. gateways | low 120 tenacity quadrant information from the science quadrant is neither selected nor rejected in any particular way by the method of tenacity. this is due to the social isolation implicit to the quadrant’s positioning at the weak end of the group dimension. autonomy is restricted by social structures and these structures are largely beyond the control of the individual (strong grid), hence the theme of this quadrant is, ‘what you don’t know can’t harm you’. broadcast media, such as television or radio, are therefore often enlisted to communicate with this quadrant. the idea is to create as many points of attraction as possible so that the new idea can establish itself. however, grid-group analysis would also suggest that messages conveyed by the popular media will fail in this quadrant unless the message is closely matched to existing structures and beliefs. for example, a message designed to motivate recycling would fail unless there were social structures in place to enable recycling. similarly, a new rule for action may need to be strategically ‘reframed’ so that the individual can act in accordance with their existing frameworks and communication preferences (shellenberger & nordhaus 2005). for example, medical researchers may increasingly find their work is disseminated to this quadrant through self-help groups on the internet, or via popular television programs such as er or house (van dijck 2003). as these sources are not seen as ‘official sources of authorised university-community engagement’, individuals in this quadrant do not feel threatened or overwhelmed by them and can select out information that helps them survive. authority quadrant information in the authority quadrant is meticulously analysed and classified systematically, preferably via a large bureaucracy with vast information technology resources available to assist in the task. if the information entering this quadrant has not been correctly coded, corrective instructions are sent back to the science quadrant. ‘more research’ might be commissioned, or alternatively, research that is not deemed useful to the authority quadrant’s predetermined categories and priorities is ‘axed’. this quadrant would, therefore, have a focus on what is appropriate communication from the science quadrant. consequently, universities communicating from the science quadrant to this quadrant do so primarily through authorised gateways | low 121 channels such as submissions, hearings and enquiries, for example. as douglas and calvez have argued in regard to an earlier gridgroup analysis (1990, p. 460), communication between the science quadrant and the authority quadrant can be thought of as a ‘positive diagonal’. in this sense, there is a functional alliance between the method of authority and the method of science. the authority quadrant commissions research, and the science quadrant carries it out. however, this close alliance is not without its problems. as noted above, the authoritarian quadrant may attempt to ‘discipline’ the science quadrant, thereby killing off the freedoms of the science quadrant that enable researchers to produce insight. similarly, the authority quadrant may self-regulate itself into an information gridlock through over-regulation, effectively preventing any new information from entering. a priori quadrant the social solidarity of this communicational quadrant is built around exposure to the failings of the other quadrants. as such, conflict sustains this quadrant and information is selected on the basis of whether it conforms to what is already believed to be the case. the uncertain and provisional shades of grey of the science quadrant are therefore quickly transformed into ‘black and white’ by the a priori quadrant. in other words, doubt is either transformed into knowing, or knowing nothing. indeed, in order to maintain its absence of structure (weak grid), the a priori method handles new information by subjecting it to a consensus process. in consensus, participants carrying new information can either join in, or refuse to join in. thus, new information that cannot be incorporated via consensus is labelled ‘the enemy’. this would seem to indicate that the content of communication directed at a priori groups should be selected to conform to (or ‘partner with’) the oppositional purpose of the social solidarity or it will be rejected. perri 6 et al. (2006, p. 75) note that universities communicating with this quadrant may encounter the following dynamic. the lack of grid (institutionalisation) makes the support of authority within a priori groups difficult. as such, they will be unable to sustain negotiations with outsiders due to their inability to sustain effective authority internally. given this, it may be best to approach groups operating under the communication principles of this quadrant only gateways | low 122 if they are at the early stages of their formation. in this case, the information supplied will be used to strengthen common beliefs and maintain a sense of boundary. when communicating with groups in the latter stages of their development, however, thought might be given to whether the characteristic passionate loyalty and protective impulses of this quadrant will function to reject university-community engagement efforts, no matter how well intentioned. the alternative danger noted above is that any communication will have to be so seriously distorted to be rendered acceptable, that it will no longer be meaningfully linked with its intended object. wider implications the previous discussion is largely premised on the assumption that the science quadrant is where new ideas are most easily generated due to the favourable levels of grid and group. this is perhaps why it is often incorrectly assumed that ideas generated in this quadrant should be the focus of university-community engagement. as noted earlier, however, there are many other reasons a university might want to engage – for example, to recruit new students, to draw in donations, or to teach vocationally. these tasks may be best performed in a different quadrant and therefore the staff involved will adhere to a quite different method of fixing belief. for example, within the a priori quadrant an idea must appear reasonable or it will be rejected. to seem reasonable, and therefore no longer be open to dispute, ideas in this quadrant are called ‘knowledge’. notions of ‘verification’ and ‘empirical validity’ lead to an expectation that everyone should also believe in and accept the knowledge of this quadrant. as such, groups operating in this quadrant believe they can capture and embed knowledge in structures such as field manuals, operational procedures, predictive models or ‘best practice’ exemplars. as stressed earlier, applying the above communication forms to the work of the science quadrant will be self-limiting and unproductive. imposing pre-determined patterns in the science quadrant kills off the very creative process one hopes to facilitate. seen from the other direction, then, ideas generated in the science quadrant may appear to the a priori quadrant to be either insane or pointless (kurtz & snowden 2003). this is because the ideas of the science quadrant are research ideas and as such are largely useless, at gateways | low 123 least until some later time. it may take decades or even generations for the ideas generated in the science quadrant to be transformed through the hypercycle into ‘knowledge’ in the a priori quadrant. the above is why university-community engagement strategies created from the ‘knowledge’ point of view of the a priori quadrant may not work as expected. for example, the a priori quadrant might use a case study approach to develop a set of guidelines for university-community engagement that it is claimed can be replicated in contexts that have not yet been studied. applying these a priori guidelines to the science quadrant, for example, would only serve to precipitate confusion, as in the science quadrant patterns are viewed as uncertain and goal-based directives are viewed with scepticism. perri 6 et al. has examined some of the self-limiting and unproductive communicational characteristics of the a priori quadrant in detail (2006, p. 75). they argue that since this quadrant structures itself according to asymmetric status and power relations based on role, informal networks that get participants to put aside their formal roles temporarily can be used to create boundary linkages. for example, to create communication linkages with the science quadrant, they recommend that industry leaders and government officials be encouraged to participate in science quadrant activities. this social learning strategy can exploit the formation of bridging networks that unfreeze the institutionalised gridlock so characteristic of the a priori quadrant. conclusion the discussions above indicate ways to think through the strategic implications of university-community engagement communication via grid-group analysis. i have argued that our starting point for the task should always be to view university-community engagement as an enquiry activity. this has led to me suggest that at a social system level, the general purpose of university-community engagement is to find ways of linking the new ideas generated by a university into a broader, more complex social system. as precautionary corollary to the above, i suggest that we note that an entirely new idea, or what peirce called a ‘detached idea’, can never be created by a university. put another way, the semiotic epistemology for grid-group analysis developed here suggests that gateways | low 124 an entirely new object of research cannot be engaged with (lyne 1982). the reason for this, according to peirce, is that the best we can do is fill out and correct already existing ideas (peirce 1998, p. 327). as peirce observed: as to detached ideas, they are of value only so far as, directly or indirectly, they can be made conducive to the development of systems of ideas. there is no such thing as an absolutely detached idea. it would be no idea at all. for an idea is itself a continuous system. but of ideas those are most suggestive which, detached though they seem, are in fact fragments broken from great systems. (peirce 1976, p. 346) thus, we might say that university-community engagement is a task that involves drawing from the experience and existing beliefs of the community, as well as giving to any community an expanded or corrected method for accessing a shared and revised subject matter. given the above, university-community engagement might also be said to be a method of communication that welds the dialogic of university-community engagement into a common mind: this mind may be called the commens. it consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the [communication] in question should fulfil its function. (peirce 1976, p. 478, original emphasis) i have stressed that the social system relies heavily on the method of science to draw new information from the universe of the possible into the social commens. further, i have suggested that it is only in the communicational community known as science that a reality independent of what we think, but not thinking generally, is given epistemological and ontological status. that is, it is only in the science quadrant that the universe can be engaged with dialogically as an equal partner in our enquiry process. in this sense, the science quadrant allows a social system to experience that which is other than itself, and listen and respond to the surprises the other can offer. the findings of this article therefore suggest that society does not rely on science to guide its actions exclusively. our grid-group analysis indicates that society uses four distinctly different methods gateways | low 125 of communication to regulate itself. from a systems point of view, then, the method of science serves a janus-like function in universitycommunity engagement. it presents society with the opportunity to protect itself from threatening new ideas (by suppressing or ignoring the new), as well as the opportunity to incorporate and embrace new ideas (luhmann 1989, p. 83). this finding also supports a more general thesis: that is, to find a balance between the demands we make of the universe (and the universe’s capacity to remain integrated with us) involves recognising that which is other than us as a dialogical collaborator of equal status with society. if this does not happen, human communication tends to become oppressive of difference, introducing imbalances and disconnections that cause harm (such as food shortages, global warming, war). a social system can only deal with the above imbalances and disconnections if they are recognised and legitimised as concerns that are derived from, and necessary to, its method of communication. 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global networks on local, social, political and cultural values, nomos, baden-baden. van dijck, j 2003, ‘after the ‘two cultures’: toward a ‘(multi)cultural’ practice of science communication’, science communication, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 177–190. winter, a, wiseman, j & muirhead, b 2006, ‘university-community engagement in australia: practice, policy and public good’, education, citizenship and social justice, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 211–230. changing tune in woodstock creative industries and local urban development in cape town, south africa featuring monikers such as ‘creative denver’ or ‘smart shanghai’, city planning strategies geared towards conjuring the next creative city have become a common feature of urban development policies throughout the world. with charles landry’s (2000) and richard florida’s oeuvre (2002; 2005) widely debated by leading planners and politicians, the promise of competitive advantage and economic growth through the development of one’s local creative economy has spread like wildfire. though florida’s creative class nexus exceeds the creative industries by including, for instance, financial and legal services, creative city and creative class narratives are joined at the hip in formulating the ‘creative imperative’ (spillmann & van osten 2002) which has come to dominate the international urban policy transfer market (evans 2009). furthermore, this development reflects a wider global socioeconomic shift towards the knowledge economy and the neoliberal commodification of culture in late capitalism (gibson & klocker 2005; hartley 2005; harvey 2001). from bollyto nollywood (nigeria’s low-budget but highoutput film industry) evermore emerging markets and developing countries are trying to enter the global economic circuits by means of promoting their domestic creative economy. moreover, as costs of labour rise in developed countries, sectors like the film industry are finding new spaces in satellite production centres abroad (scott & pope 2007). the south african film industry – especially cape town with its internationally renowned versatile outdoor locations – has benefited from these runaway productions in recent years. however, critics are regarding this practice as evidence of the hegemonic power of contemporary global capitalism and proclaim the emergence of a new international division of cultural labour (miller et al. 2005). though promoted by international development organisations such as the united nations development programme (undp) and the united nations conference on trade and development (unctad) with their already second joint report (2008, 2010), the rise of the creative economy in the global south and its manifold effects are yet to be researched sufficiently in gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 16–34 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 laura wenz university of cape town 17 | gateways | wenz order to critically assess and challenge its actual ability to serve as a ‘feasible development option’ (unctad, undp 2010). amongst the first to address this research gap were barrowclough and kozul-wright (2008), but they failed to pay sufficient attention to the spatial impact of the growing creative industries in the global south and their role in the economic, social, physical and symbolic transformation of neighbourhoods and localities. recent works, however, have questioned the transferability of western creative city policies and critically examined the after-effects of translating the creative city script rooted in european and north american planning ideals into divergent contexts using examples from places such as singapore (chang & lee 2003), toronto (catungal, leslie & hii 2009) and darwin (luckman, gibson & lea 2009). a groundbreaking book, spaces of vernacular creativity: rethinking the cultural economy (edensor et al. 2010) critically interrogates the dominant creative city features as primarily urban, ‘high’ cultured and middle class, refuting the popular belief of the creative city as a universal panacea. the articles in the book provide an exciting array of alternative stories, adding substantially to previous efforts of recounting creative ‘tales from the margins’ (gibson 2010), for example by focusing on creative small cities (waitt & gibson 2009), addressing the role of physical remoteness and proximity in the identity construction of local cultural industries (gibson, luckman & willoughby-smith 2010) and highlighting the importance of ‘alternative creativities’ for envisioning urban futures as counterbalances to dominant neoliberal discourses (gibson & klocker 2005) . unfortunately none of these publications feature much that is from an african perspective. hence, this article sets out to explore the nature of urban regeneration in the global south and the ways in which such regeneration efforts have been linked to the growth and increasing public recognition of the creative industries. in particular, it suggests that any benefits from the influx of ‘culturepreneurs’ (lange 2005) need to be measured against their impact on pre-existing social, cultural, economic and spatial structures. sometimes a new lick of paint on a formerly derelict factory is too readily accepted as general evidence of positive urban change. this response fails to consider the more contentious cross-currents deriving from the often antagonistic relationships between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, the city core and suburban spaces, as well as newcomers and old, established communities. furthermore, in the south african context, questions around the new appropriation of post-apartheid space cannot be investigated without a critical consideration of persistent racial and economic inequalities as a source of social tensions. the article draws on a detailed and ongoing examination of woodstock, a former industrial hub lying just east of cape town’s city centre, which is currently experiencing rapid change due to the arrival of creative entrepreneurs and property developers. it makes use of local observations and semi-structured interviews 18 | gateways | wenz with a wide array of stakeholders in woodstock such as local and provincial government representatives, city planners, public– private–partnership exponents, property developers, creative industry stakeholders, cultural and creative industry sector body directors as well as local residents. yet, before the local case study of woodstock can be presented in more detail, it is vital to set the broader stage by briefly looking at the creative economy’s development in contemporary south africa in general and cape town in particular. setting the stage: the creative industries in post-apartheid south africa the first political reference to the creative and cultural industries in south africa was made in a national report headed ‘creative south africa: a strategy for realising the potential of the cultural industries’ (department for culture, media and sport 1998). this is remarkable inasmuch as the new south african democracy was then still in its infancy, with the first mandela government facing the challenge of quickly delivering on its promises of sound financial restructuring, housing provision and expeditious social reconciliation. as the unemployment rate was high and particularly devastating amongst the previously disadvantaged communities – a situation persistent to this day – the department was mainly focusing on job creation and skills development through its cultural industries growth strategy. lacking in political commitment and suffering from an overburdened portfolio, the department only followed up the strategy erratically. therefore, the 2011 state of the nation address came as a surprise as the president stated: ‘linked to tourism, we will continue to develop the cultural industries sector, which contributes about r2 billion to the gross domestic product. we have also seen the value of events such as the cape town international jazz festival, which contributed more than r475 million to the economy of cape town and created 2 000 jobs in 2010’ (zuma 2011). the speech certainly reveals a rather constricted view of the creative economy, regarding it mainly as a vehicle for propelling the country’s tourism industry, a sector endowed with great aspirations for job creation, especially for low-skilled workers, and for subsequent poverty alleviation through the highly contested but politically prevalent belief in economic trickle-down effects. as eisinger (2000) shows, focusing on pleasing a ‘visitor class’ can seriously inhibit the pursuit of an inclusive civic agenda and in the case of south africa specifically threatens to contradict the national commitment towards the social imperatives of a developmental state. despite providing evidence for the belief of creative industry experts that local politicians have yet to understand the creative economy and tend to merely reduce it to aspects of commercial arts and entertainment or ‘bread and circus politics’ (eisinger 2000), the presidential reference nonetheless suggests that the growing south african creative economy is enjoying increasing popularity 19 | gateways | wenz within the local political realm. as the quote shows, cape town is playing a leading role in putting the creative economy on the government’s map – but why? on the one hand, cape town’s history as a bustling trading post and the successive processes of ‘creolization’ (cronin 2006) can be seen as an ideal breeding ground for its vibrant contemporary urban culture. on the other hand, the legacy of apartheid weighs heavily against this romantic perception. with its ideology of separate development and the corresponding legislative acts, namely the population registration act of 1950 and the group areas act three years later, the apartheid government managed to turn cape town from one of the least segregated cities into the country’s most divided urban environment (western 1997). quickly revealing itself as an intrinsically spatial regime (christopher 2000), the apartheid government re-created the city to serve its ideological purpose, separating people categorised as ‘black’ from people politically tagged as ‘coloured’ or ‘indian’ and driving all three groups out of the city centre, controlling public space and consequently keeping the different cultures from interacting (houssay-holzschuch & teppo 2009). of the four population groups described in the population registration act (‘white’, ‘african’, ‘coloured’ and ‘indian’; see christopher 2000), the ‘white’ population was promoted as the dominant group, entitled to all privileges including visits to theatres, music halls, museums and other cultural amenities. (while aware of the contested political origin of these racial categories, they will feature in this article, as they are still commonly used in public documentation and contemporary research (houssay-holzschuch & teppo 2009).) access to these facilities was restricted for the ‘coloured’ group, whereas for the ‘black’ population access was prohibited altogether (bickfordsmith, van heyningen & worden 1999; western 1997). at the same time, sectors such as performing and visual arts and music, which today are commonly framed as subsectors of the creative economy, back then fostered popular conscientisation and resistance against apartheid across racial lines (cleveland 2008; minty 2006). as these forms of subversive artistic and cultural expression were officially banned and criminalised by the apartheid government, they eluded the broad-based commodification intrinsic to today’s creative and cultural economy: it was actually the fight against apartheid that gave cultural expression its spark. the reason why art forms existed was to speak up against apartheid … when we now look in economic terms to how you convert artistic and cultural expression into products that serve a market or into services that form a market, then we are new in the game (interview with provincial government official, lw 2009). the end of apartheid saw the return of many cultural and creative practitioners from exile as the bans were lifted, accompanied by a parallel influx of visitors and international 20 | gateways | wenz capital investment. interestingly, the influx of these practitioners to cape town seems not least related to touristic activities, functioning as the initial port of call: … because the nature of the city and where it’s located, with its beauty it has attracted a lot of western creative industry types that have come here for holidays but also for various events and projects … (interview with representative of cape town partnership, lw 2009). however, the spurt in the city’s creative industries is not only due to increasing international recognition but also to the organisation of emergent local creative specialists in a number of local sector bodies such as the performing and visual arts networks, the cape town fashion council and the cape music industry commission, spear-headed by the well-known ‘creative cape town’ initiative, which was formed in 2007 as a sub-chapter of cape town partnership, a public– private–partnership organisation focusing on the improvement, security and marketing of the inner-city. due to this distinct institutional embeddedness within an inner-city improvement organisation, the initiative’s spatial development projects, such as the installation of an innovation district named ‘the fringe’ or events such as ‘creative week cape town’, remain confined to the mandatory boundaries of the inner-city core. this tends to reproduce the dichotomy between downtown as ‘spiritual home of the creative process’ (hracs 2010, p. 87) and the suburbs as banal and anything but creative. as hracs (2010) and bain (2010) show in their respective studies of suburban vernacular creativity in toronto, this pretence is misleading and built upon the simplistic equation of bohemian lifestyle meaning downtown living. in its networking projects, however, ‘creative cape town’ transgresses these tight spatial boundaries in order to provide a city-wide platform for communicating, supporting and facilitating the development of the creative and knowledge economy. a quantitative mapping survey identifies over 1000 creative industry businesses in the inner-city and its fringe areas, including parts of woodstock (creative cape town 2009). in terms of defining the creative industries, local and provincial initiatives and programs unanimously draw on a popular british global export. originating in britain’s national department for culture, media and sport (dcms) and arriving in cape town through government officials and cultural policy-makers’ previous education and work in the uk during and after the years of ‘cool britannia’ (interview with representatives of provincial and local government 2009, 2011), the definition for the creative industries identifies 13 sectors as well as several cross-cutting sectors such as design, heritage and cultural tourism (dcms 1998; department of labour south africa 2008). the political value attached to these cross-cutting sectors is highlighted by the successful high-profile bid by cape town to become the world’s design capital in 2014. displaying its cultural heritage, mixed with contemporary african design, the bid is also http://www.creativecapetown.net/ http://www.capetownpartnership.co.za/ http://www.creativecapetown.net/the-fringe-cape-town%e2%80%99s-innovation-district/ http://www.creativeweekct.co.za/ 21 | gateways | wenz thought to address the legacy of the 2010 fifa world cup through comparable efforts of festivalisation, running the risk of facing a similar array of difficulties as that tournament, as discussed by haferburg (2011). lacking a city-wide survey, the highest concentration of creative industries can be assumed to be in the inner-city area, the so-called ‘city bowl’. the reasons for this are its centrality and the majority presence of important creative and cultural public institutions such as the opera, numerous theatres and the national art museums. by and large, the current situation still follows the well-trodden path of apartheid’s spatial legacy, with the main cultural institutions situated in those areas previously classified as ‘white’, such as the city bowl and the southern suburbs, which are still home to the most affluent neighbourhoods of the city. there have been efforts by the city council’s department of arts and culture to establish a gallery, museums and a music centre in formerly disadvantaged and peripheral areas such as bellville, parow and the township of gugulethu. though making a difference in fostering and displaying local creative talent, these efforts have not led to the creation of any prominent creative industry hubs outside the urban core. contrary to the aforementioned top–down political interventions, the influx of the creative industries to woodstock has not been stirred by the roll-out of large-scale, urban culturalled regeneration and events programs but by a variety of entangled private development impulses. consequently, tuning into woodstock implies three main steps: first, to unpack the ways and means through which creative industries found their interest in and way to the area; second, to assess the ambiguous effects of such cultural-led development on a neighbourhood in a city of the global south; and third, to listen closely for nuances that could provide a lead to finding the right frequency for meaningfully engaging creative industries and local neighbourhood development. research methodology my local research in woodstock forms part of a broader research project looking at issues around the appropriation of the ‘creative city’ paradigm in cape town and its consequences for urban governance and spaces of vernacular creativity. within the wider research framework, to date 45 interviews have been conducted over a period of eight months, split between two four-month-long stays in the field. the article draws largely on interviews conducted during the first stay in 2009, which are, however, juxtaposed against more recent developments and observations. the interview partners were recruited via the snowball method, with gatekeepers of the different stakeholder groups acting as initial multipliers. one of the main limitations of this method is certainly the existence of disguised power plays, with gatekeepers consciously excluding certain interview partners with dissenting views. however, to 22 | gateways | wenz alleviate this bias, all interview partners were asked for further contacts, contributing to a wider spectrum of discerning positions. in terms of the interview process, professional participants were asked to give detailed accounts of their involvement in and interfaces with cape town’s, and more specifically woodstock’s, creative economy, as well as development trajectories and future visions. residents were specifically asked to reflect upon their personal history of settlement in woodstock, their perception of and engagement with the local neighbourhood, and specific creative industry-led redevelopments in their vicinity. tuning into woodstock – urban transformation and creative industries woodstock, located eastward of cape town’s cbd and north of the former district six, is the city’s oldest suburb (see figure 1). originally an agricultural settlement, the area was renamed woodstock in 1882 and quickly developed into an industrial hub, specialising in glass, leather and later textile manufacturing and food processing. from the 1920s till after world war ii, the industrialisation process took its largest toll on the area, as woodstock’s beach had to make way for the extension of the harbour and new railway lines that still present a solid barrier between woodstock and its seafront. affecting the neighbourhood most thereafter were the declaration of district six as a ‘white’ figure 1: the city of cape town 23 | gateways | wenz group area in 1966 and the subsequent forced removal of 60 000 mainly ‘coloured’ families (bickford-smith, van heyningen & worden 1999, p. 183). as many of woodstock’s factory workers’ families and friends were living in the area, the tightly knit social net existing between both neighbourhoods took a fatal blow. furthermore, the demolition drove a visible spatial wedge between woodstock and the city centre, which to this day has not been closed due to the highly complex and lengthy negotiations over land redistribution. though woodstock was heavily industrialised, it also retained a significant share of housing, mainly inhabited by working-class families of all racial categories with the largest number being families classified as ‘coloured’. even though there were many attempts to categorise woodstock as ‘white’ under the group areas act (which actually subsided after the regime’s negative experiences with district six), most of its mixed-use area remained ‘unclassified’, or ‘grey’. this term is commonly used for those neighbourhoods where the group areas act was not enforced and which were, by the late 1980s, proclaimed free settlement areas. of those ‘non-conforming enclaves’ (christopher 2000, p. 110), which to this day remain positively associated with a more integrated, cosmopolitan and resilient community, woodstock was one prominent example (christopher 2000; garside 1993). yet lingering urban decay was rampant, and many of the clothing factories in woodstock had closed down by the 1990s, due to the opening up of the south african markets to the global economy and the resulting competition from cheaper asian imports. hundreds of workers were retrenched, aggravating the persistent symptoms of sociospatial deterioration such as crime, drug abuse and poverty. nonetheless, the hard location factors like the proximity to the cbd, as well as soft factors such as the rich history of the area enshrined in its historic architecture and old, established community structures, prompted gentrification in the early days of post-apartheid south africa. this initial cycle of invasion saw the arrival of the first creative entrepreneurs as garside (1993, p. 33) recounts: ‘… many artists, architectural businesses, and small advertising enterprises were attracted by woodstock’s victorian architecture, its close proximity to table mountain, and hotchpotch mixture of residential, retail and warehousing activities which were markedly different to the bland uniformity of much of suburban cape town’. this observation shows that the transformation was not triggered by any top–down political intervention but was based on the individual location decisions of artists and cultural practitioners. this first influx of creatives happened mostly under the public radar, as it was neither connected to the creation of economic clusters nor to larger property developments. this gradually changed after the first democratic elections in 1994 with fresh investment flowing into the country and the property sector slowly discovering the derelict area’s development potential. whereas in western contexts figure 2: property advertisement (2004) replicating the globally more common cultural association with the name woodstock 24 | gateways | wenz art studios and work spaces are often refurbished by creative businesses, small artist collectives or non-profit art centres in a diy fashion, especially in the pioneer phases of gentrification (catungal, leslie & hii 2009), woodstock’s current gentrification and creative-industry-led urban regeneration has been initiated and driven by private property developers that wanted to reap profits from the ‘rebirth of woodstock’ by means of specifically attracting ‘creative industry’ tenants (nevill 2011, see figure 2). widely referred to as the pioneer responsible for putting woodstock on the map, and its success quickly prompting other investors to jump on the bandwagon of creative-industry-led development, is a building complex called ‘the old biscuit mill’ (see figure 3). established in 2005 as a mixed-use creative centre with studios, offices and retail spaces, its popularity mounted through hosting a very successful local food and design market on saturdays, which has become an attraction for affluent locals and tourists alike. though large parts of woodstock had been rezoned as an urban development zone (udz) in 2004, following a national treasury program of tax incentives to encourage the refurbishment and construction of commercial and residential property in inner-city areas (national treasury 2004), the independent development company of the old biscuit mill said they still took a leap of faith. we bought the [old] biscuit mill three and a half years ago and by that time that area of woodstock was degenerated, gone down … it has changed the thing … the lure was the character of the buildings, the size … and the fact that you could actually isolate it from the other surrounding buildings because around it was still [a] dodgy area. so we could create one entrance and we could monitor who comes in. (interview with property developer, lw 2009). the developer’s inhibitions stem from the biscuit mill’s proximity to infamous gympie street, a narrow side street densely packed with small semi-detached houses typical of woodstock. the street made headlines from the early 1990s onwards due to recurring drug-related and violent crimes. when discussing woodstock’s urban transformation, gympie street is constantly figure 3: the old biscuit mill before its renovation (2004) and today (2011) http://www.theoldbiscuitmill.co.za/ 25 | gateways | wenz referred to as the synonym for the ‘other’ side of woodstock, often serving as immediate justification for spatial fortification. as the extensive local research of lemanski (2004, 2007) has shown, these popular narratives of crime and grime have led to a nationwide increase in private security, which in turn contributes to growing danger in the remaining public space ‘by abandoning it to those excluded from the privatized world’ (2004, p. 107). the result is a sociospatial polarisation that separates ‘insiders (those with access to desirable spaces) from outsiders (on the margin, looking in)’ and essentially perpetuates the social divisions that were inherent during the apartheid state (lemanski 2004; saff 2001, p. 102). in spite of gradual changes, the majority of the creative spaces in woodstock are still located in enclosed block developments, where physical access is controlled and private security firms are operating, clearly demarcating the frontier between the desirable, protected creative enclave and the surrounding area as a dangerous ‘outside’. this critique does not imply that crime in the area has been eradicated, which is unfortunately not the case, nor does it want to easily dismiss the real threat crime poses to the lives of many south africans on a daily basis. rather it seeks to highlight the negative effects deriving from this perpetuation of spatial dualism through the homogenising and essentialist processes of othering (spivak 1985). though critical researchers such as peck (2005) have already warned of simply assuming causality between the growth of local creative economies and positive social cohesion, as this correlation is often purely suggestive, this warning must be extended to similar assumptions on spatial cohesion. the valuable work of fleming (2011) provides further evidence, as it traces gentrification and its negative effects on the community in woodstock through the lens of low-income rental housing provision. due to the stark property price increases, not least owing to the public promotion of woodstock as ‘cape town’s art district’ (malcomess 2008), fleming found that the already marginalised rental housing stock for the low-income population had further decreased, with properties being sold off for redevelopment. subsequently, several families were served eviction orders, leading to their unwanted relocation to the peripheral temporary relocation area (tra), symphony way, a remote tin-house settlement built by the local government 30 km away from the city centre. symphony way tra was installed prior to the fifa world cup and has sparked social and political controversy ever since. relocated residents face substandard living conditions and high crime and are in danger of losing their scarce livelihood due to the long and expensive commute to their places of work (symphony way pavement dwellers 2011). serious consequences for the old, established community are imminent while spatial dualism based on socioeconomic (im)potency is replicated: ‘evictions, demolitions, and new buildings remove their [residents,] friends, family, social support structures, and overall sense of belonging; the fortified and 26 | gateways | wenz exclusionary high-rises and economically inaccessible storefronts visually and physically splinter the neighbourhood into sections usable only to those who can afford it, and govern the idea of what and who should comprise the “neighbourhood” itself’ (fleming 2011, p. 19) the question of ‘whose neighbourhood?’ relates directly to the issue of the right to cultural representation in woodstock and the displacing effects of creative economic place-making. through the relocation of three of the country’s most prestigious galleries to the area in 2008 and the subsequent opening of more gallery spaces across lower woodstock, the suburb was quickly marketed as a fresh and exciting location for south africa’s most renowned and best selling artists and their collectors. however, the main target group for most of the creative products and content produced and sold in woodstock’s new art and design shops remains formally educated middle to high income consumers, which evidently does not reflect the local population’s main socioeconomic profile. yet, as gentrification has the potential to narrow woodstock’s presently broad socioeconomic spectrum and further evict alternative meanings and actors, this must be taken into critical account (catungal, leslie & hii 2009). resonating with chang and lee’s (2003) findings on the tension between ‘global’ and ‘local’ artistic representation and practice in singapore, there is some evidence that european cultural registers are often still seen as dominant in the aesthetics of creative production, raising questions about persistent colonial and racialised urban social relationships: so you’ll find that the big industries in terms of design, communication, film are largely driven by white middle-class moneyed background that tend to have had a lot of experience of europe … a lot of the high-end crafters are white, the ones that are selling it and make large amounts of money with certain types of craft often served by black crafters who help to prop it up and give it its manpower. you don’t find much coloured craft in that picture for example because it is not considered craft, it’s not african, it’s not curio (interview with representative of cape town partnership, lw 2009). in this light, the ‘like-mindedness’ of fellow creatives often praised during interviews appears rather tainted, particularly concerning the exclusion of aesthetics and practices related to ‘coloured’ culture which has a long local tradition of vernacular creativity in the area, closely connected to cape town’s annual coon carnival, and works as a major point of reference for ‘coloured’ identity negotiation (visser 2005). the social segregation and spatial dualism can again be exemplified using the old biscuit mill and its busy, popular saturday ‘neighbourgoods [sic!] market’. asked for the relationship between this ‘theatre retail space’ and the local community, one of the old biscuit mill’s first tenants recounts: i do not think this space is specifically targeted towards the community and the [saturday] market for instance is not really frequented by http://www.neighbourgoodsmarket.co.za/ 27 | gateways | wenz people from the community. they might be selling wares here but i don’t think they are particularly attracted to it. it’s more the cool capetonian factor that you see here. but i do think some of the shops people would work in but there is no specific attraction for the muslim community here, not that i am aware of (interview with publisher/ graphic designer, lw 2009). this statement reveals a dichotomy, clearly placing the ‘cool’ inside the well-demarcated and fortified boundaries of the creative centre and rendering anything beyond its gates ‘uncool’. the surrounding neighbourhood is homogeneously declared ‘muslim’ and addressed as ‘they’, pronouncing the notion of otherness and the existence of specific cultural registers perceived as ‘different’ from the interviewee’s stance. this alleged difference is furthermore endowed with the need for different symbolic representations, which, however, cannot be provided within the perimeter of this creative space. the interviewee’s rationale endorses the argument that the products on display as well as the practices performed respond to cultural representations which in her perception are specifically ‘western’ and do not speak to her imagined other, the local ‘muslim’ community. the interviewee also references the old biscuit mill as a possible place of employment for woodstock’s residents. this assumption, however, needs to be further scrutinised against the backdrop of the local population’s formal education level. on the one hand, some traditional local businesses such as framers, upholsterers, delicatessen owners and seamstresses have benefited as suppliers to the creative industries, as has the construction sector. on the other hand, though, there is very little direct opportunity for unskilled personnel within the creative businesses themselves, aside from the usual jobs of cleaning and security which offer limited perspectives for skill development and upward professional mobility. most of the middle to higher income job profiles require professional training and often a college or university degree. with more than 65 per cent of woodstock’s population only having completed a maximum of 12 years of schooling and only 10 per cent holding any qualification higher than a bachelor’s degree (city of cape town census 2001), the often small-scale creative enterprises with a high demand for tertiary-educated and specialised freelance personnel have little capacity to employ let alone train the local workforce. this situation resonates strongly with the assertion of catungal and leslie (2009, p. 701) in the context of toronto that ‘poorer racialised communities in the city are generally not the recipients of the windfalls of the creative city’. not surprisingly, the account of spatial exclusion as well as economic and cultural segregation is echoed from ‘across the street’ by a resident of 30 years and owner of a small one-bedroom house in nearby greatmore street, when asked about the old biscuit mill and its saturday market: 28 | gateways | wenz oh down there. it is mostly the rich white people going there … i don’t know what’s so wonderful there, everything is so expensive … it is all visitors and tourists that are going there. i have never ever heard anybody that i know in this whole community say that they will go there … i wouldn’t want to go there because everything is so dear … (interview with resident of greatmore street, lw 2009). where above the sociocultural separation was described using the binary of ‘cool’/‘uncool’, the resident phrases her sense of alienation based on an economic/racial binary. though the resident has personally experienced apartheid’s racial discrimination due to her categorisation as ‘coloured’ and still paints a vivid picture of her daily struggle during those years, she explicitly expresses her strong conviction of racial equality as a cornerstone of post-apartheid society. her account strongly resonates with a broader argument in contemporary south african urban studies, which criticises the continuation of apartheid’s racial/urban divide as it is perpetuated through socioeconomic polarisation stemming from increased market deregulation (marks & bezzolli 2001). furthermore, the critique of the biscuit mill’s attraction for ‘visitors’ (local population from affluent parts of town) and ‘tourists’ (international visitors to the city) can be related to eisinger’s (2000, p. 331) conclusion that building a city for visitors promises only limited pay-offs for the local population. on the one hand, the growing attraction of woodstock as a creative hub has generated broad attention for the neighbourhood and has drawn in a new array of people – visitors who often become new residents who would have previously never ventured into this part of town due to its deprived and crime-ridden image. moreover, it has generated economic opportunities for some local businesses and residents as suppliers to the creative process and a low-skilled workforce that is, however, rarely involved in the creative production of the creative industries’ commodities. so, on one level, the rise of the creative economy can be said to have produced a positive momentum with new opportunities for social interactions transgressing racial and class boundaries. however, these important opportunities are often kept at bay by, or even lost to, the drastic and varied workings of gentrification. often unwillingly but nonetheless knowingly, the creative industries are adding to increasing property prices as the creative entrepreneurs and artists are earmarked by the real estate sector as rentgenerating and value-adding tenants, both commercially and residentially. though there is no reliable data on the number of people negatively affected by the evolving gentrification process, the demise of low-income rental housing followed by growing insecurity of tenure and threat of eviction for the residents described in fleming’s (2011) work is painting a grim picture for the future of woodstock’s urban poor. in contrast to other post-industrial gentrification scenarios in the western world, where the pioneer artists are often displaced by more well-to-do peers from the design, advertising and new 29 | gateways | wenz media segment in a second invasion cycle (catungal, leslie & hii 2009, p. 1108), this could not be verified in the case of woodstock. though single cases may exist and the situation may change in the future, the creative enterprises and artists who move into the area are generally better endowed with financial resources than the majority of woodstock’s old, established working-class population, not least due to their social network capital stemming from professional training in public or private fine art schools, design centres or film academies. the ambiguity of creative industries’ place-making elaborated above gives a warning notice of urban change that is likely to spatially and culturally exclude, as well as socially and economically marginalise, large parts of the local population by labelling them as ‘non-creative’ outsiders who are unable or even unwilling to share in the dominantly western creative vision. this, however, is only one side of the story (albeit a dominant one) encountered during my research in woodstock; i also came across certain alternative and more inclusive ways of engaging the local population, as discussed below. finding the right frequency – potential for woodstock and its creative industries the creative industries’ potential for contributing to neighbourhood development becomes visible when zooming in at the micro level, looking at interventions and initiatives from individual businesses and organisations. a number of creative enterprises working in woodstock can be related to what amin (2009) discusses as the ‘social economy’. he defines this as a third sector, ‘engaged in both trading and non-trading activities, but characterized by community-based or social ownership and a clear commitment to principles of self-help, mutual obligation and social relevance’ (drawing on pearce 2009, p. 6). although still a much debated and fuzzy concept, it serves as a springboard to characterise the hybrid form of some of woodstock’s creative industry outlets which are trying to show social responsiveness and make a difference for the local population. what follows is a brief discussion of ways of rethinking creative industry development and social engagement in woodstock. in order to address this aspiration, it is imperative to open up the ‘geography of creativity’ (edensor et al. 2010, p. 12) by breaking up the perpetuated spatial binaries that regard anything outside the designated places of formal creative production as bereft of creativity. this is mutually dependent on a shift in public perception and policy formulation that does not favour value (that is, economic revenue) over values and actively appreciates the more mundane spaces of everyday cultural practice and vernacular creativity. having said that, this is already fundamental to the daily mode of operation of some of woodstock’s creative industry outlets; for example, street art and graffiti collectives have left 30 | gateways | wenz their visual mark on an increasing proportion of woodstock’s building stock, often in collaboration with local school classes and youth programs. though contributing to the formation of more commonly accessible forms of artistic and cultural expression and often explicitly dealing with topics of social justice and inequality, many of the artists are aware of the janus face of their wellmeaning interventions, including the problem of being henchmen to the contested property sector by making certain street corners ‘look and feel’ nicer in ‘shin[ing] a light “on the abject beauty and places people are afraid to go”’ (mclean 2010, p. 213). this ambiguity exemplifies that any culture-led intervention – be it public or private, individual or collective – which embarks on the task of engaging the ‘community’ is in fact always treading the fine line between local politics, competing social imaginaries and neighbourhood-level hierarchies. the ability to be conscious of and manoeuvre these social rapids ultimately decides the fate of any such undertaking. similar to hudson’s (1995) encounters in derwentside, success is generally with those organisations and outreach projects that display an awareness and appreciation of woodstock’s local history and respond to the population’s social needs and cultural demands as they define them. this generally goes along with lowering the spatial threshold by using mundane spaces such as public parks, libraries and community halls as locations for participation and engagement. but even those creative industry spaces that have been working in the area for more than 10 years are still confronted with neighbourhood members’ inhibition to visit them. in utilising everyday places, the various stakeholders have established a ‘neutral’ meeting ground which does not impose any specific cultural register but rather creates an environment for ‘possibility space’. these spaces offer the chance to build social relationships through ‘deep, unexpected, or provisional encounters’ (bromberg 2010, p. 214). though bromberg specifically sees these spaces developing under a noneconomic rationale, in light of the need for livelihood creation and provision for woodstock’s still numerous low-income residents, it is, in my opinion, vital to further explore the engagement of creative industries with their surrounding neighbourhood under the auspices of social economy principles. outro this article has attempted to grasp the ambiguous spatiality of the south african creative economy in considering its interplay with the entangled urbanities of metropolitan cape town. highly visible in and around the urban core, almost fully disguised in their informality but far from nonexistent on the vast township periphery, the creative industries have been reshaping this postapartheid city. the focus of the article has been on the inner-city fringe area of woodstock which has seen the unremitting arrival of creatives from various sectors, giving rise to issues common to the process of gentrification, sociospatial polarisation and unequal 31 | gateways | wenz cultural representation. however, it has been shown that some creative industry outlets have been able to find low-threshold ways of engaging communities through actively acknowledging their distinct local history and diverse sociocultural make-up. this does not mean that all creative industries in woodstock have to fully shift their focus and take over responsibility for the government’s duty of providing equal opportunities. however, in the post-apartheid context of spatially expressed social inequality, it is counterproductive to leave urban renewal solely to the effects of market forces, and the ambiguous situation in woodstock is a result of such public disregard. considering the normative project of inclusive city creation, it is vital to promote social responsiveness in a wider spectrum of local creative industries by raising awareness of the cultural, economic and social needs of their surrounding neighbourhood. acknowledgements the research was made possible through a generous grant provided by the german national academic foundation. the author would also like to thank the department of geography at the university of münster and the african centre for cities at the university of cape town for providing much appreciated institutional support. furthermore, the author is indebted to ashley hurst, patrick niemann and suzana pramanik for insights and comments on initial drafts, as well as to professor paul reuber, professor myriam houssay-holzschuch and zayd minty for their continuous guidance and encouragement. references amin, a 2009, ‘placing the social economy’, in a amin (ed.), the social economy: alternative ways of thinking 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1364–81. spillmann, p & van osten, m 2002, be creative! der kreative imperativ, museum für gestaltung zürich, viewed 10 january 2011, www.k3000.ch/ becreative. spivak, g 1985, ‘the rani of simur’, in f barker, p hulme, m iversen & d loxley (eds), europe and its others, vol. 1, university of sussex, colchester, uk. symphony way pavement dwellers 2011, no land! no house! no vote! pambazuka press, cape town. unctad, undp 2008, ‘creative ecomony report 2008 – the challenge of assessing the creative economy: towards informed policy-making’, monograph, un, viewed 3 february 2009, www.unctad.org/en/docs/ ditc20082cer_en.pdf. unctad, undp 2010, ‘creative ecomony report 20010 – creative economy: a feasible development option’, monograph, un, viewed 17 december 2010, www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditctab20103_en.pdf. visser, g 2005, ‘let’s be festive! exploratory notes on festival tourism in south africa’, urban forum, vol. 16, no. 2–3, pp. 155–75. waitt, g & gibson, c 2009, ‘creative small cities: rethinking the creative economy in place’, urban studies, vol. 46, no. 5–6, pp. 1223–46. western, j 1997, outcast cape town, university of california press, berkeley, ca. zuma, j (2011), ‘state of the nation address by his excellency jacob g zuma, president of the republic of south africa, at the joint sitting of parliament, cape town’, 10 february 2011, www.info.gov.za/speech/dyna micaction?pageid=461&sid=16154&tid=27985. http://www.k3000.ch/becreative http://www.k3000.ch/becreative http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditc20082cer_en.pdf http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditc20082cer_en.pdf http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditctab20103_en.pdf http://www.info.gov.za/speech/dynamicaction?pageid=461&sid=16154&tid=27985 http://www.info.gov.za/speech/dynamicaction?pageid=461&sid=16154&tid=27985 9 watts.indd a holistic educational paradigm managing coastal resources in the philippines the world is facing a depletion of marine resources that threatens entire cultures and endangers the very life of the planet. reports indicate that over 80 per cent of world fish stocks are heavily exploited or depleted, yet close to 200 million people continue to depend on the fishery for livelihood (fao 2008). the vast geographical range of many marine fish populations calls for public participation, communication and coordination on a large scale, all of which may be critical to maintaining the health of coastal resources, as well as the delivery of ecosystem services. the need for public participation is enhanced in those countries where both government services and marine management infrastructure are limited. in the philippines, public participation has been identified as a priority strategy to promote sustainable development of coastal resources (republic act 8435, akester et al. 2007). given the lack of empowered stakeholders and a functional government body that can appropriately address the challenges of coastal resource management through public participation, catalyst institutions need to step in. this role is being undertaken by the aurora state college of technology (ascot), located in aurora province on the northeast coast of luzon island, philippines. ascot has adopted a holistic approach that offers a model for responsive education with a focus on participation and representative leadership. although universities and colleges have generally acknowledged their connection to their surrounding environment and link theory with practical application in communities (lowes & reisch 1998), the ascot program is specifically aimed at cultural transformation as an approach to sustainability in the coastal environment. the focus is on communication and coordination for large-scale coastal resource management and sustainability. some research in developing countries has specifically identified the importance of involving authorities within public partnerships (choguill 1996). this is in contrast to early international work on public participation, which identified citizen control as the primary goal and highest level of activity, while gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 120–138 ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 paul watts daluhay, www.ecosystemics.info eduardo macose aurora state college of technology eusebio angara aurora state college of technology marivic pajaro aurora marine research and development institute 121 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro partnerships with authorities were ranked third in significance (arnstein 1969). however, these initial categories did not consider leadership needs in areas such as technical ecosystem management, or educational development and learning (reed 2008). in the current work, we outline ascot’s ongoing programs as an example of a ‘catalyst institution’ in action, with a focus on responsive education through strategic partnerships and public participation. as an example of public participation, we report on a case study of research conducted with the aurora province fisherfolk and pamana, a national alliance of fisherfolk marine protected area (mpa) managers. the coastal resource management challenge the coastal resource management (crm) challenges that ascot is responding to are a reflection of the country’s profile of coastal resources and livelihoods. the philippines has the fifth largest coastline in the world – over 6000 km longer than that of the entire continent of africa. the review of asian coastal fisheries by silvestre and pauly (2004) provided data that compared the nine developing countries with populations greater than 20 million (bangladesh, india, indonesia, malaysia, mayanmar, pakistan, philippines, thailand and vietnam). additional calculations reports indicate that the philippines is identified as a hotspot and a global priority for conservation because of its mega diverse marine fauna, notably reef fishes, corals, molluscs and other invertebrates (carpenter & springer 2005; roberts et al. 2002). however, it also ranks first in marine ecosystem use, dependence and influence. the per capita philippine consumption of fish is the highest at 36 kg/year, in part due to a land base that is limited to just 300 000 km2. the influence of the country on global marine systems is demonstrated through the relationship between the size of the exclusive economic zone (eez) and the land area of the country. the philippines again ranks first within the nine large asian countries at 5.95 km2 of eez per km2 of land, over twice that of vietnam or indonesia. the primary crm challenges in the philippines include declining fish catches, degradation of coastal habitat, conflict amongst resource users, poverty amongst artisan fisherfolk and increasing food deficiencies (luna et al. 2004a,b). these conditions are significant issues affecting provision of the country’s protein needs as well as export income and livelihoods (barut, santos & garces 2004). for example, the poverty level in fisherfolk families has been reported to be about 62 per cent, approaching twice the national average (israel 2004). although santos (2004), analysing department of environment and natural resources (denr) data, found a five-fold increase in fish production (total weight of fish catch) in the past 35 years, the paper also reported catch per unit effort (cpue) had dropped by 90 per cent. the situation is complicated by the fact that the ocean and fishing are often seen 122 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro as a last resort for livelihood and income generation. an increase in the number of fisherfolk or in time spent fishing can create competition that effectively reduces the quality of the livelihood of fisherfolk, the wellbeing of their families and the health of the ecosystem. in the philippines, there is a significant relationship between population levels and the state of fisheries resources (alino et al. 2004b). large population increases in the philippines tend to push people into fishing due to the general lack of alternative livelihoods (townsend 2004). at the same time, there is a tendency for reductions in fish harvest to result in forest degradation, as residents are forced inland to support their families. in the philippines over 90 per cent of the forests have been removed, leaving aurora the most highly forested province, with over 70 per cent cover still remaining (ong et al. 2002). recent reported declines in the aurora province marine fishing sector (mamauag 2004) have been dramatic, and as marine biodiversity and biomass are depleted, further pressure may be put upon terrestrial biodiversity. the philippine biodiversity conservation priorities program (ong et al. 2002) identified aurora province as a high biodiversity conservation priority for forest systems as well as for specific marine categories. globally, managed marine protected areas (mpas) are considered one of the most effective tools for the rehabilitation of coastal resources. there are an estimated 4600 mpas throughout the world (woods 2006). however, there is an urgent need to advance the increasingly successful, but generally local and small-scale coastal mpa strategies to larger ecosystem units such as bioregions (unesco 2009). for example, in terms of scale, mpas represent just a few hectares each and number over 600 in the philippines (alcala & russ 2006), while the entire coastal waters of the country are divided into just six marine bioregions (ong et al. 2002). a bioregional approach is perhaps the best next step for philippine marine planning, which so far has invested significant efforts in establishing mpas as an application of the ecosystem approach. the expansion of the ecosystem approach to philippine bioregions has perhaps been limited in part by the historic development of terrestrial administrative regions, thus complicating marine ecological considerations (dizon-corrales 2004). many non-government organisations and researchers, however, are now focused on the need for further integration of the ecosystem approach and coastal resource management efforts (adan 2004; barut, santos & garces 2004; hermes 2004a; luna et al. 2004a,b; pido 2004), though biodiversity-based marine bioregions have only recently been given institutional attention in the philippines (ong et al. 2002). aurora province, where ascot is situated, lies in the north philippine sea (nps) bioregion (ong et al. 2002), stretching between the east coast provinces of sorsogon in the south and batanes in the north. in general, the philippine eastern seaboard 123 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro has been found to have reduced primary productivity and coral reefs are significantly poorer in quality than those of other fishing areas of the philippines (gomez et al. 2004). however, the philippine eastern seaboard is generally seen as an area where fish capture could be increased, due to the fact that it ‘produces’ a limited portion of the philippine fish harvest (gomez at al. 2004). these perspectives appear to be in disagreement with participatory fisheries data from aurora province. between 1989 and 2002, aurora’s 10 000 residents directly associated with fishing experienced a 57.5 per cent decrease in marine harvest and a 63 per cent decline in cpue (mamauag 2004). the status of deepwater and highly migratory fish stocks, such as those of tuna, illustrates the need for a larger scale approach to managing ecosystem services. currently the municipal local government units (mlgus) have jurisdictional responsibility for coastal resource management and fisheries. the province of aurora is divided into seven independent municipal fisheries; however, application of an mpa and coastal planning tool (licuanan et al. 2006) indicates that collaboration needs to occur between jurisdictions and in some cases beyond provincial water boundaries. the mlgu jurisdiction extends out only 15 km from the shoreline, while commercial fisheries operate on a separate system starting at 15 km offshore and extending out to the border of the eez. this produces conflict between municipal and commercial harvest (zaragoza, pagdilao & moreno 2004a, b), but, while there is a high level of tuna harvest, there is also a lack of information available on deepwater fisheries and organisms compared to their shallow water counterparts (flores 2004). along with the establishment of bioregions, a process to initiate interprovincial public participation and links between commercial and municipal fisheries appears necessary, as well as a step forward in terms of marine spatial planning that includes the use of massenergy models (christensen & pauly 1995, 1996) as suggested elsewhere (unesco 2009). responsive education programming the complex, large-scale and urgent nature of the problems in the philippines necessitates the active involvement of institutions that can respond in a multi-layered, holistic way. there are several reasons why educational institutions are especially well placed to take on this role. education represents a stable funding framework and an environment where the exchange of ideas, building of consensus and initiation of local action programs can occur. further, the balance between the three tertiary education functions of extensions, teaching and research provide a holistic framework to facilitate cultural and local transformation. also, the core budget for the state education system is not hampered by specific business or financial goals but rather has a ‘service first’ mandate, based upon government funds. finally, academic programs are not directly controlled by government, which can allow institutions 124 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro to be a catalyst towards integrating public participation with jurisdictional activities. in the philippines, as a result of related economic and infrastructure limitations, fisherfolk are in general expected to actively engage in determining the sustainability of their own livelihood and ecosystem services. the establishment of coordinated sequential educational activities (elementary school to college and adult education) on fisheries resource management may therefore be of particular significance. ascot was established in 1993 to provide local access to tertiary education and to help address the development challenges of aurora province. it envisions itself as a centre of excellence in various programs of teachings and a lead provincial academic institution with developed expertise in key areas of research. the ascot vision also includes leadership in community/extension services, sustainable development initiatives in the province and the establishment of strong linkages beyond aurora. ascot is evolving a highly functional networking mechanism with local and international universities and institutions through communication and coordination. ascot is committed to developing human resource potential through quality training that is responsive to the needs of the people in the province in particular and the nation in general, and to serving as a catalyst and facilitator of the provincial development efforts in food security, poverty reduction, health care and preservation of the incredible biodiversity of the province. recently, ascot, in partnership with aurora province and the maximo t. kalaw institute for sustainable development (roxas 1984, 2006), initiated an ecosystem-based, communitycentred participatory approach to development involving an integration of agricultural, forest and marine ecosystems. the ascot marine portion of the program (titled aurora province and the global village coastline: communication and coordination) is intended as a holistic response to the marine challenges through a transdisciplinary approach. the program has three distinct but related areas of activity: strategic partnerships, public participation, and responsive education. this ascot approach was developed through analysis of the current situation in aurora province and various national needs perspectives related to the marine environment (alino et al. 2004b; eisma 2004; hermes 2004b; silvestre & pauly 2004). it is a response to the need for a strengthening of institutions (silvestre & pauly 2004), based upon the idea of using existing education infrastructure to enhance, reform and develop goal-orientated public participation. emphasis is on communication, coordination and cooperation at all levels: from local to international, from mountains to marine, as discussed elsewhere (mcglone et al. 2004). in effect, ascot is refocusing disciplines and other academic activities to respond to a specific national challenge. the collaborative and landmark reference library organised by the department of agriculture– 125 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro bureau of fisheries and aquatic resources (da-bfar 2004) provided ascot with a focus and starting point for its current activities. the ongoing ascot programs also take into account the fact that the culture is relationship-based (pakikipagkapwa), as demonstrated by ‘money sent home’ being the largest source of foreign currency in the country. one challenge is to extend and develop this characteristic that exists at the personal level to encompass communities that share ecosystems. reflecting this, ascot has taken an ethnoecology approach to its engagement activities whereby humans are considered an integral part of the ecosystem (see www.ecosystemics.info). this is in contrast to the traditional productionor harvest-based approach, which tends to see humans as external to the ecosystem. in essence, this application of ethnoecology involves a validation of cultural perspectives on the environment as a prerequisite to any suggestions of change. there is also good political cooperation between all levels of government within the province of aurora, which is of particular significance in developing a multi-jurisdictional approach. as well, a provincial focus for coastal resource management would make it possible to apply provincial land use plans to the concept of marine sustainability, as suggested elsewhere (pinat & green 2004). the ascot program could also be a significant contribution towards ensuring public participation in the establishment of an inter-provincial approach to offshore marine sanctuaries, which has been identified as a philippine priority (hermes 2004b), as well as helping to meet the advocacy needs (pestaño-smith 2004) associated with sustainable ecosystem services. consequently, ascot’s three-pronged response to the conditions in the republic of the philippines may also be of use in defining asian-based input on global marine sustainability. this approach to partnerships, participation and education could perhaps also be applied to other cultures and jurisdictions beyond the philippines. strategic partnerships the partnership, advocacy and research activities of ascot are directed at creating a common agenda encompassing jurisdictions, academe and fisherfolk. in the past decade, ascot initiated a coastal resource management research and development project with assistance from volunteer services overseas philippines and funding from the spanish government. in 2005 an initial memorandum of understanding (mou) was signed to strategically link this ascot initiative with the aurora province inter-local government unit coastal resource management committee (ilcrmc), which was itself initiated by the philippine ecogovernance program and the university of philippine marine science institute (orencio 2008). the goal was to form a 126 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro collaborative province-wide programmatic approach to coastal resource management and marine fisheries. the collaborative ascot–ilcrmc program is intended to facilitate mechanisms for effective management of ‘communal property rights’ (berkes & folke 1998) and is in essence an example of ‘parametric fisheries management’ (acheson et al. 1998), focusing on fisherfolk participation and how fishing occurs at a local and then bioregional level, rather than how much fish is taken. a broader mou establishing joint action steps for interprovincial collaboration along the shores of the north philippine sea is one of the next steps in this participatory process, a step that has been endorsed by several national agencies. local government alliances are a key development in philippine coastal resource and fisheries management (adan 2004). however, while jurisdictions are limited by political boundaries, ascot’s role is to facilitate a collaborative and broader ecological-based participatory approach, while respecting jurisdictional mandates. although ascot does not have the resources to investigate all fisheries’ challenges, existing expertise and current proposed research programs will form a strong base for strategic partnerships. for example, ascot has a strong faculty program on mangroves, an area that is of significance in fisheries management (alava & cantos 2004; barut, santos & garces 2004; israel 2004; jatulan 2004; luna et al 2004a; white & deleon 2004). mangrove conservation and development has been found to be a subject that stimulates dialogue and other forms of participation by aurora fisherfolk. mangroves could thus form an area of specialty in future ascot research programs, based in part on its already existing faculty strengths. in addition to the local focus, the ascot crm program is also intended as a responsive contribution to meeting the challenges identified within philippine marine fisheries in general. identifying and acting upon local research needs is considered to be part of an iterative program that will contribute to the often identified national marine information shortages (flores 2004; silvestre & pauly 2004; zaragoza, pagdilao & moreno 2004a) and be a contribution to the convergence of adaptive ecosystem management strategies (alino et al. 2004a). one ascot goal for development is to ascend the levels of public participation with the initial aim of local empowerment leading to larger scale input, consensus, advocacy and sustainability. the objective is to implement a systematic coordination of province-wide jurisdictional responsibilities, interests and resources, as well as to mandate partnership development through inter-provincial, national and international linkages. the ascot approach to building organisational and interjurisdictional relationships is conceptually based on the cultural characteristic of family and community level ties, the sense of helping others. as part of this strategy, relationships are developed and supported through a systematic approach to scheduled 127 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro meetings, synthesis of information, participatory approaches to consensus building and action-orientated research for sustainable development, with emphasis on focal group discussions (fgds). the strategic involvement of jurisdictional representatives and the national fisherfolk alliance, pamana, in local fisherfolk collaboration is an applied approach to expert/authority partnerships with the public (choguill 1996) that contributes to both development and participation goals. public participation in the past 20 years the fish catch per unit effort in aurora province has dropped by about 60 per cent (mamauag 2004). it is unreasonable to suggest or legislate that fisherfolk must stop feeding their children through the only livelihood option open to them. there is a clear need to work with people’s organizations and involve them in the process of defining sustainable livelihoods and the changes in fisheries management that are also needed to sustain ecosystem services. globally, similar integrated approaches to linking social and ecological systems are being used (berkes & folke 1998). in essence, the ascot approach to public participation involves an iterative strategy of focal group discussions (fgds) with fisherfolk barangays (the smallest local government unit (lgu) within municipalities) and people’s organizations, balanced by internal and external assessments, review and resultant action. it establishes a process for participation that shares knowledge (traditional and scientific) and perspectives on marine resources throughout the marine bioregion and even globally. the ascot use of the fgd approach evolved through its collaboration with volunteer services overseas over the past decade. initially, it was used on an ad hoc basis but has recently been institutionalised through the office of the ascot planning officer. in addition, the recently established aurora marine research and development institute (amrdi), which is administered by ascot in collaboration with other agencies, uses fgds as a cornerstone for all stakeholder engagement. experts and jurisdictional representatives sometimes have a role in defining fgd topics and facilitating dialogue amongst fisherfolk, while also providing analysis and in many cases strategic documentation. fgds can be used to promote public participation and collect information on specific topics for both research and specific administrative goals. below is an example of one fgd initiative, which is focused on the development and engagement of fisherfolk communities in terms of ecohealth. case study: the aurora fisherfolk ecohealth initiative there is a growing global awareness that human health is directly linked to the health of the environment. the term ‘ecohealth’ was created to represent this conceptual merger of people and the environment in what can be more broadly considered as an ethnoecology approach, where people are considered as a part of the ecosystem. pamana, as a national alliance of fisherfolk marine 128 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro protected area (mpa) managers, represents a grassroots approach to creating and developing ecohealth practitioners (añabieza et al. 2010). in 2009, aurora province held a symposium on ecohealth, which was co-sponsored by pamana, the department of health, jurisdictional crm representatives, and ascot. in part, pamana provided fisherfolk experts who assisted in stimulating the participatory process, based upon their experience. fgds were utilised as an approach to planning, development and the building of consensus. representatives from fisherfolk communities from across the province were split into four groups of peers, by location (northern or southern) and again according to occupation (fisherfolk or health workers). specifically, ascot adopted the social artistry approach called salunoron (which includes music and other forms of applied artistry) during the fgds, as developed by the bagong lumad artists’ foundation inc. (vicente 2009) to facilitate non-grammatical inputs that are culturally relevant to the philippines. topics covered during the symposium were grouped into three categories: food systems and marine resources; environment and health; and future trends associated with population and climate change. the fgds yielded information on the perceptions of the participants in terms of the importance of marine resources, in particular as sources of protein and as traditional medicine. all participants indicated a strong interest in protecting the health of the environment, especially as it relates to human health and food security. a few marine protected areas have already been established by aurora province fisherfolk, and there is local interest in expanding upon this emerging network, in part through pamana ka sa pilipinas. clearly, many of the goals will involve interbarangay, inter-municipal and even inter-provincial cooperation to respond to some of the specific challenges. watershed approaches to environment and human health could perhaps best be initiated within specific barangays and/or groups of barangays. in 2010, following the conference, the provincial health department took a leadership role, built on the unanimous agreement of the symposium participants for further collaborative volunteer activities. the ecohealth participatory approach is being used to determine program and implementation gaps within certain individual barangays. specific barangays have been identified to help focus on the health of small-scale fisherfolk and their families. ascot, in partnership with the university of the philippines marine science institute, is currently establishing the aurora marine research and development institute, and adopting the ecohealth approach to fisherfolk related research as a main focus of the crm program. in summary, the initial results of the workshop (table 1, overleaf) are being used to determine local, regional and provincial action plans. this ongoing participatory strategy could provide a catalytic effect for positive change across the bioregion 129 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro and in other philippine areas as a form of action research, as outlined elsewhere (reason & bradbury 2008), making it potentially of national and even global significance. discussion points saf sahw naf nahw nutrition rice 50% 25% 10% 50% fish diet 25% 33% 70% 25% catch set aside for food 20% 20% 1 kg 20% catch 10 kg 3–100 kg current challenges improper sewage/waste/garbage disposal; unsanitary conditions ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ contaminated/polluted waters ✓ ✓ ✓ kaingin (slash and burn) farming ✓ ✓ flooding ✓ ✓ stagnant waters that carry disease ✓ ✓ shortage of good fish supply/low fish catch; best fish is exported ✓ ✓ illegal logging ✓ unemployment ✓ malnutrition ✓ future challenges scarcity of harvest; depletion of fish stocks ✓ ✓ ✓ overpopulation; immigration ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ increased disease (diarrhoea, malaria, dengue, parasitism) ✓ ✓ effects of climate change ✓ ✓ kaingin (slash and burn) farming ✓ pollution ✓ lack of alternative livelihoods ✓ forest depletion ✓ more floods ✓ increase in fish prices ✓ increased malnutrition in children ✓ solutions solid waste management/segregation/landfill site ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ alternative livelihood; livelihood development programs ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ protection and management of local marine resources ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ proper sanitation/sewage management ✓ ✓ ✓ self-discipline/attitude change in individuals ✓ ✓ ✓ education campaigns/programs; sharing knowledge ✓ ✓ ✓ family planning; formulate reproductive health law ✓ ✓ ✓ regulate fish mesh size ✓ ✓ government assistance ✓ ✓ fisherfolk coordination/cooperation programs ✓ ✓ strict penalties for illegal environmental infractions; implementation of laws ✓ tourism development ✓ proper implementation and advocacy of programs ✓ table 1: summary of fgd results: southern aurora fisherfolk (saf), southern aurora health workers (sahw), northern aurora fisherfolk (naf) and northern aurora health workers (nahw). 130 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro future educational activities teaching ascot has proposed to establish a marine science program with two areas of specialisation: coastal resource management and marine technology. the ascot teaching program will focus on using education holistically, as a venue for participation, reform and development. in the past, many excellent interventions throughout the philippines have not continued after initial project funding was exhausted. it is hoped that by building upon the sustainability of the education infrastructure to institutionalise participation this tendency will be avoided. figure 1 shows the proposed framework, which will have input to teacher training as well as direct influence on secondary and elementary schooling. the full operation of the undergraduate marine program that is currently waiting for budgetary approval is expected to start in 2012 or 2013. this undergraduate offering will include four or five years of study in the existing faculty of forestry and environmental science. a primary focus is to provide graduates with tools for participatory facilitation. a combination of training in science, governance and social development that is directly linked to both local job opportunities and provincial fish landing sites (carreon 2004) will provide opportunities to contribute to crm faculty and associates crm graduate program pakikipagkapwa (a filipino term for communal responsibility) ascot education program elementary teacher training elementary school high school teacher training high school service delivery linkages crm undergraduate program research and publication figure 1: integrated education framework of aurora state of technology (ascot) for coastal resource management and biodiversity conservation program in aurora province, philippines. 131 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro collaborative projects focused on municipal (trudeau 2004) and commercial fisheries licensing issues (alesna, dizon-corrales & cabangbang 2004) as well as enforcement (guidote 2004) and related misunderstandings (luna et al. 2004b). the balance of courses between governance, marine science and participatory approaches to development will be initiated in year two. table 2, below, presents a draft outline of course titles, followed by a brief description of the courses focused on participatory development. aurora state college of technology marine & coastal resource management core courses, year 2 marine science governance participatory development 1. principles of ecology 2. oceanography 3. marine ecology 4. ichthyology 5. invertebrate zoology 1. municipal governance and crm mandates 2. provincial governance and crm mandates 3. national governance and crm mandates 1. community development i 2. community relations 3. people’s organizations 4. forestry and agricultural land use community development i. the sustainable development courses in the program will be divided into two community development offerings, with the first course focusing on background requirements and relationships for the initiation of a sustainable development framework. sustainable development will be examined as a specific application of the ecosystem approach and the concept of community integrity. within an area defined biogeographically through an ecosystem approach, students will be exposed to the initial steps of determining principles, rights, jurisdictions, biodiversity linkages and local potential. students will then be required to consider relationship development and public participation within the administrative and social frameworks, leading to analysis and transformational education activities by the students in subsequent years. community relations. this course will give students exposure to the concept of community and its influences. emphasis will be placed upon establishing appropriate levels and types of interactions for the purpose of promoting public participation and sustainable development in the context of related environmental sustainability and ecosystem services. local action will be considered from a community-based perspective. students will develop their awareness of potential challenges associated with integrated development involving individuals, people’s organizations (pos), local government units (lgus), and provincial and national agencies. participatory approaches will be examined as a means of building multi-sector consensus on the role of biodiversity. people’s organizations (relationships and activities). people’s organizations will be examined in terms of social networking and their capacity as cultural, economic and advocacy agents. the role of lgu interactions with pos will be considered as an integral component of intervention development by non-local agents. challenges associated with po development will be reviewed 132 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro based upon local, regional and national experience. the potential development of focused training interventions will be applied to the structure and operation of known pos. forestry and agricultural land use. this summer semester course is intended to develop an understanding of forestry and agricultural land use relevant to marine considerations. students will use their skills developed in previous courses to promote public participation in defining forestry and agricultural land use in a specific area. a written report will be submitted and/or a presentation conducted with emphasis on the links between these two areas and the marine system. extensions extensions is an area of service provided by state colleges and universities that focuses on the application of nationally mandated development projects and forms of local innovation. emphasis is on poverty alleviation and sustainable development. the current framework for the ascot extensions program was established by author e macose, in part through his role as director of extensions. the program focuses on both biological capacity and public participation developed as part of the action research doctoral study of macose (2008), with authors p watts as adviser and e angara as a thesis committee member. the program has separate areas of emphasis for farmers and fisherfolk. the program involves ascot taking a leadership role in sustainable development through the implementation of the ecosystem based community centered sustainable development organization and management (ecsom) protocol (roxas 1984). this community-centred approach is based upon systematic public participation at the barangay and municipal levels through municipal planning officers. ascot has facilitated the implementation of the ecsom protocol by engaging the eight municipal development councils and coordinators that constitute aurora province. there is now a strong link between the ascot extensions program and the local government units (lgus) through the municipal planning and development coordinators who will call for meetings and assist in focused fgds with organisations including ngos, people’s organizations, community associations, academic organisations, churches, and the local media. future initiatives will be in part driven by a local or community social accounting matrix that links food sources to employment and household activities through a house by house census, household cluster meetings or fgds and community representation. in the marine environment, approaches need to be bioregional to consider biodiversity. ecsom is based upon a strong local organisational development protocol for the management of our ecosystems, encompassing connections within and between each other (roxas 2006). one challenge at ascot is that there is a lack of staff with social accounting analytical skills. staffing constraints could be addressed in two ways: through in-house training and by recruitment, based upon the mobilisation of the 133 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro required financial resources. in a development directly related to the ecsom initiative, public participation is also being approached in terms of human rights goals and the perceived objectives of the communities. there is also a need to develop focused adult education programs within the extensions program that not only inform fisherfolk and related communities, but also empower them to have input and increase their applied understanding. conclusion the partnership and public participation facilitation and building, extensions, and research and teaching activities of ascot for the marine environment will continue to develop in a transdisciplinary manner, with a focus on poverty alleviation and ecohealth. the programmatic approach to empowerment in crm for aurora province is centred on the sustainability of marine resources and related livelihoods. marine resource sustainability is not only a function of biological capacity but must also consider the culture of resource extraction. therefore, for any form of sustainability to be successful, the primary beneficiaries of the marine system, that is, the fisherfolk, need to be empowered to participate. academic institutions are centrally placed to take on this crucial leadership role in driving public participation, establishing synergistic collaboration at various levels of governance – such as between government bodies, grassroots organisations and education centres – and institutionalising public participation and empowerment measures through responsive education. the ascot programs are an example of the potential for this evolving role. in economically advanced countries, sustainable development is often seen as the primary responsibility of government. however, the lack of governance infrastructure in less developed countries lends itself to a heightened local level of participation, responsibility and engagement. a focus on public participation may, in fact, be the only possibility for significant movement towards marine sustainability in the philippines. a primary focus on communication and coordination as a function of broad-based participatory approaches to partnership development is also needed. empowerment of local stakeholders, such as fisherfolk, can potentially lead to a broader scale of participation, and even national and eventually international consensus on marine sustainability. similarly, direct involvement and collaboration between academe and jurisdictions may be critical in establishing participatory strategies to create a holistic and responsive approach to the sustainability of larger marine ecosystem services. this may be particularly true for less developed countries with limited financial resources and high rates of poverty. academic institutions can play a significant role in pursuing sustainable development, reaching from primary to secondary to adult education as a means of supporting and furthering the sustainable use of coastal and other 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curitiba, brazil, pp. 1–12. 138 | gateways | watts, macose, angara & pajaro zaragoza, e, pagdilao, c & moreno, e 2004a, ‘overview of the small pelagic fisheries’, in da-bfar, in turbulent seas: the status of philippine marine fisheries, coastal resource management project of denr, cebu city, philippines, pp. 32–37. zaragoza, e, pagdilao, c & moreno, e 2004b, ‘fisheries for tuna and other large pelagic fishes’, in da-bfar, in turbulent seas: the status of philippine marine fisheries, coastal resource management project of denr, cebu city, philippines, pp. 38–41. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 119–143 © utsepress and the author an evolving partnership: collaboration between university ‘experts’ and net-fishers merle sowman most academic institutions the world over are engaged in some form of community outreach activity, known variously as service learning, social outreach, community development and social responsiveness (bringle & hatcher 2002; martin et al. 2005; muirhead & woolcock 2008; onyx 2008). although initially considered to be a service function, with a strong focus on providing expert knowledge to society (benson et al. 2000; martin et al. 2005; bringle & hatcher 2002), increasingly universities have recognised the importance and value of such university-community partnerships for contributing to scholarship, enriching the research and learning experience and linking theoretical ideas to societal problems at a local level (vickers et al. 2004; buys & bursnall 2007; oldfield 2007). there is also a growing realisation that addressing social and environmental problems is beyond the capabilities and resources of a single organisation. the university, with its diverse range of disciplines and areas of expertise and resources, should be a key player in such gateways | sowman 120 collaborative problem-solving efforts (martin et al. 2005, muirhead & woolcock 2008). indeed, worldwide, there has been an increased interest in developing and nurturing such university-community partnerships (sherrod 1999; buys & bursnall 2007; muirhead & woolcock 2008). given the growth of literature in this field, it would appear that universities and communities are creating innovative collaborations at an exponential rate (martin et al. 2005) and, furthermore, that the future of these partnerships is set to become an integral component of the university enterprise. buys and bursnall (2007) argue that universities need to shift their thinking about university-community partnerships from one that views partnerships as secondary to teaching and research to one that places them central to their mission. these partnerships have the potential to lead to innovative programs and new forms of knowledge that can influence policies and address societal problems. oldfield takes this idea further, claiming ‘formal academic production of knowledge is impoverished without broader community engagement’ (oldfield 2007, p. 108). the university of cape town (uct) has had a strong history of community engagement and development, especially given south africa’s racially oppressive socio-political past. however, over the past 10–15 years, uct has elevated the importance of this commitment to community engagement by developing a social responsive policy framework and a university social responsiveness committee, and in 2004 uct launched its first annual social responsiveness report (http://www.uct.ac.za/ services/ip/sr/anualrpts/). furthermore, uct has included social responsiveness as a performance indicator in academic appraisal processes (uct 2009). academics, however, remain reluctant to acknowledge the scholarly value of these collaborative universitycommunity engagements unless outputs are presented in academic publications. the environmental evaluation unit (eeu), based at uct, has a long history of community engagement. established in 1985 in response to the growing need for research and training services in the environmental assessment and management field, it became increasing involved in policy-related research and community gateways | sowman 121 outreach activities during the transition to democracy. during this period, the eeu found itself increasingly called upon by nongovernmental organisations (ngos) and community groups to provide advice on the environmental and social justice dimensions facing poor communities (for example, proximity of new housing development to polluted stormwater canals, impacts of open cast mining, poor living conditions in low-income housing; see: http:// www.eeu.uct.ac.za/). this article reports on the ebenhaeser net-fisheries project, a community-university partnership project that has been ongoing since 1993. it provides an overview of the evolution of the partnership process and highlights key activities and outcomes of the different phases of the partnership process. the article discusses important aspects of the research but its purpose is not to provide a review and assessment of research findings and outcomes (reference to research results and outcomes are provided throughout, however). rather, the main focus is on the shift in perceptions, research approaches and university researchers’ roles in response to changing government policies and management regimes. as the researchers’ understanding of the fishery system (charles 2001) – that is, the biophysical, socio-economic and institutional dimensions – deepened, and as the partnership strengthened, the partners were able to work collaboratively to seek solutions to immediate concerns but more importantly to strategise and act in the face of changing government policies and plans. what is most striking about this partnership process is that the changes that have taken place over the lifespan of this project have mirrored the changing perspectives and directions in the small-scale fisheries literature (berkes et al. 2001, 2003; mcconney & charles 2008). the environmental evaluation unit: ebenhaeser partnership background to the fisher community the olifants estuary, one of the largest in the country, comprises a unique and productive ecosystem located on the west coast of south africa, approximately 350 km north of cape town (figure 1). the fishing communities that utilise this estuary have a long history of fishing in the estuary (sowman 2003). the community consists of descendents of families evicted from fertile agricultural land near gateways | sowman 122 lutzville (figure 1) in 1925 due to historic discriminatory policies and laws. upon relocation to the lower reaches of the olifants river, these fishing communities situated at papendorp, olifantsdrif, ebenhaeser, rooierwe and nuwepos, shifted their subsistence activities from farming to fishing (sowman et al. 1997). fishing for harders, liza richardsonii, in the estuary, using rowing boats and gillnets, has continued to the present time and the local fishing communities, known collectively as ebenhaeser, largely subsist from the harder resource, although they sell their catches to farmers from the surrounding areas, particularly in the summer months when catches are good. excess catch is also salted and dried and used as a source of food during the winter months. there are at present approximately 150 families involved in fishing on the estuary, although only 45 exemption permits have been issued by the fisheries management authority. each permit holder is allowed one crewmember, which means there are a total of 90 ‘legal’ fishers. in general terms, the fishing families of ebenhaeser are considered poor, with a mean monthly income per fisher family ranging from 378–570 rands (us$53–80) (carvalho et al. 2009). while there is a core of fishers who engage in fishing whenever conditions are suitable, many other fishers will seek alternative employment, which is often seasonal, such as grape picking, or ad hoc, such as road maintenance, to supplement their livelihoods. figure 1. the location of olifants river estuary and adjacent fishing communities, western cape, south africa gateways | sowman 123 initial engagement (1993-1998) the fishers of ebenhaeser first approached the eeu in 1993 due to concerns about the presence of diamond recovery vessels in the estuary, which they blamed for a perceived decline in fish catches during the early 1990s. after several meetings and a preliminary assessment of the situation by a fisheries biologist (eeu 1993), the eeu initiated a research project with the following objectives: to assess the sustainability of the net-fishery; to develop a communitybased monitoring system; to ascertain the fishers’ levels of dependence on the resource and facilitate the development of a comanagement system for the olifants estuary harder fishery (sowman et al. 1997). under such a system, the government and the fishers would jointly co-manage the local resource (the estuary harder fishery), sharing rights and responsibility between them (pomeroy & berkes 1997; berkes et al. 2001). these research objectives and methods were agreed upon with the fisher community as well as the provincial fisheries authority at the time, cape nature conservation, who expressed some concerns regarding fishing pressure in the estuary. a number of local community members were trained as resource monitors. their task was to collect fishery data that could then be used to conduct a stock assessment. following a series of training sessions at uct and in the field, the monitors embarked on their work in 1994 and were visited by members of the research team once every six weeks to discuss any problems with data collection. another aspect of the research concerned conducting a mesh size experiment to determine the relationship between fish size, catch rate and gillnet mesh sizes at different localities in the river. this experiment was conducted over a five-day period and repeated every two months during the fishing season in 1995 and 1996. fishers from the community were employed to assist with the experiment. results from the mesh size experiment showed clearly that catch rate declines markedly with increasing mesh size (sowman et al. 1997; sowman & bergh 2001). for example, an increase in the mesh size from 51mm to 54mm (which is difficult to detect with the naked eye) results in a reduction in catch rate of more than 40 percent. these results were used to negotiate with the authorities a reduction in legal mesh size from 54mm to 51mm, which was the mesh size in place prior to 1993 – when the reduction in catches was first noticed by fishers. gateways | sowman 124 although there were certain limitations to the community-based monitoring system, the stock assessment undertaken on data obtained for the period 1994 to 1997 did not reveal any decline in catch per unit effort (cpue) (sowman 2003; carvalho et al. 2009). given the results from the mesh size experiment, the research team recommended additional licences be allocated to the most needy unlicenced fishers, and the increase in fishing effort be closely monitored for possible changes in cpue. the second focus of this early engagement was to facilitate the development of co-management arrangements between cape nature conservation (cnc) and the fishers to jointly manage the fishery. this was considered desirable given the fishers’ knowledge of and interest in managing the resource, and cnc’s limited resources and capacity. the arrangements involved workshops with an elected fisher committee as well as the broader fishing community to build an understanding of co-management principles and practices, and to agree on the principles and elements of such a partnership agreement. it also required regular meetings with cnc to flesh out the details of how this partnership would be implemented. by the end of 1997, a draft partnership agreement had been prepared which outlined the roles and responsibilities of the partners with respect to managing the fishery (sowman et al. 1999). however, during this period, south africa was undergoing a major law reform process and responsibility for marine and estuarine resource management had become a national competence under the authority of marine and coastal management (mcm), a chief directorate within the department of environmental affairs and tourism (deat). during this period, there was considerable confusion regarding which government agency was ultimately responsible for the management of estuaries. without a clear policy, nor a clear government partner with whom to engage, the fledgling co-management arrangements for this fishery collapsed in 1999. during this period of institutional uncertainty, however, the eeu remained in communication with the fishers, responding to specific requests for advice as the new subsistence and small-scale fisheries management system was being developed (harris et al. 2002). gateways | sowman 125 the middle years (2000–2005) once established, the new fisheries management agency mcm planned to significantly reduce the fishing activities in the estuary. this decision was largely based on a national study of the status of the harder resource in south africa undertaken by mcm scientists; the study suggested that the harder resource was overexploited and recommended a reduction in number of permit holders in oversubscribed areas (hutchings & lamberth 2002a). the fishers were informed at a community meeting about the decision to significantly reduce the number of licences issued for net-fishing. however, the presence of a well-organised and informed fisher committee, as well as data on the status of the resource provided by the uct stock assessment (sowman & bergh 2001), and evidence of the community’s dependence on these resources for food and livelihoods, meant mcm was unable to impose their decision and had to negotiate access rights and management protocols with the fishers. the outcome of these discussions, which is still in place today, was an agreement that there would be a reduction in fishing pressure and 90 fishers, one permit holder and one crew member, would be accommodated in the fishery. permit conditions relating to net length, mesh size, bycatch (incidental catch of certain linefish species not targeted by the fishery) and recording of catches were also negotiated. during this period of transition, the university-community partnership focused on enhancing awareness about fisher rights and responsibilities, as articulated in the new 1996 constitution of the republic of south africa and in various laws relevant to resource management. it also focused on developing individual and institutional capacity to equip fishers to effectively participate in management (eeu & plaas 2003a, 2003b). these activities were undertaken in partnership with a research grouping at the university of western cape, program for land and agrarian studies (plaas), and were funded through a norwegian-south african bi-lateral agreement with deat-mcm. a secondary focus of this norwegian funded project was to facilitate the development of co-management arrangements in selected coastal small-scale fisheries, one of which was the olifants estuary net-fishery. the community-monitoring program was revitalised and meetings between the new fisheries authority, mcm, and the fisher community were initiated. however, gateways | sowman 126 despite legislative provisions supporting co-management (hauck & sowman 2003), and mcm claims to be engaged in co-management processes with the fishers of ebenhaeser, mcm continued to take decisions on key management issues and rules pertinent to the netfishery without adequate consultation with the fishers (sowman 2003; carvalho et al. 2009). concerns regarding mcms top-down and regulatory approach to management were frequently raised at fisher committee meetings as well as in meetings with mcm officials (minutes of olifants river fishing committee, ebenhaeser, 2 august 2004; minutes of co-management meeting, ebenhaeser, 16 and 17 november 2004; minutes of co-management meeting, cape town, 13 october 2006). from the fishers’ perspective, examples of decisions taken by mcm without adequate consultation included the following: crew members were not allowed to fish without permit holders being present on the boat; unused licences had to be returned to mcm and could not be allocated to another non-licensed fisher in the community; all bycatch had to be returned to the fishery enforcement officer; and, most critically, the policy to phase out gillnet fishing in the estuary. their concerns regarding the lack of consultation were also documented in letters to mcm and various memoranda to the environmental minister: ons die vissers van ebenhaeser soek graag by die staat ‘n verduideliking van hoe voorneme rondom die uitfasering, want ons wil graag onderhandel. ons voel dit is belangrik dat ons verseker dat die onderhandel proses al die belange deelnemers betrek’. (we, the fishers of ebenhaeser, therefore want an explanation from the department and clarity regarding the phasing out policy as we want to negotiate and discuss possible alternatives. we feel that during the negotiation process we may come up with suitable solutions that include and will benefit all stakeholders). (letter to mcm, 28 july 2007) however, at about the same time, concerns about the status of linefish stocks in south africa led to the introduction of a range of policies and management measures to address the linefish problem (van der elst et al. 1996; griffiths 2000; hutchings & lamberth 2002a, 2002b; cockroft et al. 2002). these included restrictions on recreational fishing and a reduction in traditional net-fishing rights gateways | sowman 127 and operations along the entire coastline. estuarine-based netfishing was also targeted because of the role that estuaries play as nursery grounds for many linefish species and concern about the impact of net-fishing on linefish species. as part of this process, the fisheries authority announced in 2005 that the olifants estuary gillnet fishery would be phased out within five to ten years. this announcement was made in a government policy document (deat 2005), with no prior consultation with the local fishing community. the fishers, together with the eeu and masifundise (a nongovernment organisation working with fishing communities in the western cape), questioned the validity of such a top-down decision, particularly within the context of the co-management program that was being developed. the fishers supported the need for some form of protected status for the estuary, and accepted the existing restricted fishing area of approximately 2 km2 at the mouth of the river, which was designated in 1934 (province of cape of good hope, 1934). their concerns regarding the long-term sustainability of the resource are clearly articulated in the olifants fishing association’s constitution (2003), which states as a key objective: ‘om die visbron so effektief moontlik tot voordeel van die gemeenskap te benut’ (to protect the fish resources as effectively as possible for the benefit of the fishing community) (constitution of the olifants fishing association 2003) as well as other statements made at meetings and workshops throughout the 15 years of this engagement (for example, olifants fishing committee meeting, ebenhaeser, 16 november 2004; minutes of meeting, eeu, uct, 6 october 2006). recent years (2005-present) from 2004–05 onwards, the nature of the engagement shifted back to research to ensure that relevant information on the status of the resource, as well as the impacts of fishing on bycatch, was available. data on bycatch were recorded by monitors when the communitybased monitoring program was reinstated in july 2004. despite mcms stated intention to phase out gillnetting in the estuary, efforts to foster co-management arrangements between the fishers and government authority were pursued, with the eeu playing a facilitating role. however, these efforts were severely hampered by the differing interpretations of the stock assessment results gateways | sowman 128 produced by the university research team (fielding & bergh 2007). the university research results indicated no significant reduction in cpue for the olifants harder fishery, and insignificant bycatch, and thus there was no conclusive evidence that gillnet fishing had depleted bycatch stocks to risky biological levels (fielding & bergh, 2007; carvalho et al., 2009). the mcm scientists, however, questioned the veracity of these results and referred to early work conducted in the berg river (hutchings & lamberth 2002a, 2002b) 125 km south of the olifants river, which suggested that the net fishery for harders is maximally or overexploited. however, extrapolation of these general findings to the olifants river is not necessarily valid and hence insufficient grounds for closing the fishery – especially given the fishers’ dependence on the resource. similarly, results from an analysis of the monitoring data for the period 2003–06 also indicate that bycatch of the gillnet fishery is low (fielding & bergh 2007; carvalho et al. 2009). what is not clear from the data available is whether current low levels of bycatch are due to major impacts (fishing and other environmental impacts) that occurred several decades ago prior to monitoring, or whether the low levels of bycatch in the estuary are the result of very reduced linefish species that use the estuary. clearly, these issues need to be further investigated and debated but the university research team were convinced that closure of the fishery could not be justified on current data. a further major stumbling block in the co-management negotiations was the very different management objectives articulated by the two partners, mcm adopting a highly precautionary conservation approach to fisheries management as opposed to the uct research team and fishers that sought to balance conservation with local livelihood objectives. complete closure of the fishery was unacceptable to the fishers and reluctance of the authorities to respond to requests by the fishers and the university partners to explore alternative management measures to address resource concerns and the problem of bycatch, resulted in a gradual breakdown of trust between the authorities and the fishers. the comanagement initiative was increasingly seen as a farce and fishers openly criticised mcm at meetings about their failure to embrace the principles of co-management. ‘hulle praat van medebestuur maar gateways | sowman 129 mkb neem al die besluite’ (they speak of co-management but mcm makes all the decisions) (pieter cloete, chairperson, olifants fishing committee, minutes of meeting, eeu, uct, 6 october 2006). in 2007, as part of a program to enhance the management of estuaries in the western cape province, a consulting group, anchor environmental consultancy, was appointed by the cape action plan for the environment (cape) regional estuaries management programme with full endorsement from mcm, to develop a management plan for the olifants estuary. this management plan initiative was in response to deat’s commitment to implement its national biodiversity strategy and action plan (deat 2004), which, when adopted, would have legal status in terms of the recently promulgated 2008 national environmental management: integrated coastal management act. the olifants river estuary had been identified as a biodiversity conservation priority requiring a clear management plan. according to the consultant’s report, the area was considered to be ‘relatively unaffected by human development’ and hence offered an ‘unofficial wilderness sanctuary for flora, fauna and for visitors’ (anchor environmental consulting 2008). little reference was made to the traditional fishing activities of the ebenhaeser fishing communities nor other human dimensions of the estuarine system. the outcome of this management plan formulation process was a recommendation to zone the estuary for different activities; declare a ‘no-take’ marine protected area (mpa), which would extend from the mouth of the river for approximately 14 km inland; the phasing out of gillnetting by 2014; and the identification of alternative livelihoods for the fishers of ebenhaeser. the designation of this mpa would effectively remove the fishers’ customary rights and impact on their rights to food and livelihood. these proposals were seen as totally unacceptable by the fishing community. consequently, the ebenhaeser fishers, together with the eeu and masifundise, elicited the support of the legal resources centre (lrc), a public interest litigation organisation, to assist the community assert their rights to resources by writing to the relevant minister. this action has resulted in a delay in finalising the management plan and a review of the proposal to declare the estuary an mpa in terms of the 1998 living marine resources act. since late 2008, the fishers and their social gateways | sowman 130 partners have been engaged in discussions with mcm officials to resolve this conflict. information that may be required to challenge this mpa proposal has been identified and a new research agenda is being developed. however, the litigation route is not desirable for government or the fishers, and totally undermines efforts to establish some form of co-management system for this fishery. the near closure of the net-fishery without adequate consultation with the fishers, or consideration of alternative management measures to address concerns about the bycatch, necessitated a rethink of eeu’s research focus and strategy, as well as the unit’s role in this university-community partnership. the expansion of the partnership to involve researchers from other disciplines, in particular history, in order to gain evidence to support the customary rights of fishers, as well as other social partners such as the lrc that could jointly challenge this disregard for the fishers’ human rights, has characterised the recent phase of research. the following section of the article discusses the changing nature of this partnership, in particular, the unit’s changing perspectives regarding how to address complex small-scale fishery problems, as well as a how the unit’s approach to research and capacity development has been reconsidered based on an improved understanding of the ebenhaeser fishery system and the changing policy and management environment. research: shifting perspectives and approaches the initial response to the concern about the perceived decline in fish catches in the estuary in 1993 was to dispatch a fisheries biologist to find out whether there was in fact a reduction in catches, and if so, what the possible causes might be (sowman et al. 1997). based on this preliminary investigation, a research project was developed that focused on, firstly, the collection of fisheries data by trained community monitors, and, secondly, conducting an experiment using varying mesh sizes to ascertain whether changes in gillnet mesh size may have affected catch rates. both these aspects of the research were undertaken by fisheries scientists, who were part of the university research team, which also designed the experiment and catch monitoring cards, supervised the entering of data and finally undertook the analyses. findings from these research activities were gateways | sowman 131 documented in various research reports and publications (sowman et al. 1997; sowman & bergh 2001). similarly, the design and administration of a household survey and focus group meetings (1996–1997) were undertaken by university researchers with assistance from community members. results from these surveys were documented in various research reports and published in the academic literature (sowman et al. 1997; salo 1998; sowman et al. 1999; sowman 2003; january 2006) and will not be discussed further in this article. however, of relevance here is that this phase of the research was largely driven and executed by the university researchers with assistance from the community. discussions regarding the application of the research data to management decisions were largely undertaken between the university researchers and officials from the government fisheries agency. although research results were discussed at fisher meetings on a regular basis and popular pamphlets on specific issues were distributed in the community, the design, execution and analysis of research were largely driven by the university ‘experts’. although not initially conceived as a research activity, the eeu’s facilitation of the co-management arrangements between the fisheries management authority (initially cnc and later mcm) and the fishers, developed into a long-term research activity. not only did the eeu play a facilitation role in these processes, but it was also able to reflect on and analyse the issues affecting progress with comanagement arrangements between the fishers and the government agency. in particular, facilitation of these co-management processes provided understanding and insights into the conditions required for co-management to be operationalised in a small-scale fishery context, such as the harder net-fishery throughout south africa. at about this time, the notion of co-management as an alternative approach to managing small-scale fishery systems was being advocated and explored in many countries throughout the world (pomeroy & berkes 1997; raakjær nielson et al. 1996; berkes et al. 2001). based on the eeu’s involvement in ebenhaeser and other community fisheries projects, researchers from the eeu were invited to participate in a worldwide collaborative co-management research programme (raakjær nielson et al. 1996; sowman et al. 1999). in this respect, the gateways | sowman 132 university research contributed to debates and theories about comanagement and insights gleaned from this study contributed to an analysis of co-management initiatives in the southern african region, which explored the feasibility of co-management as an alternative to conventional top-down management approaches (wilson et al. 2003). furthermore, the research team’s interest in co-management as an alternative approach to coastal and fisheries resource management led to a book project in which nine other co-management case studies were documented and analysed (hauck & sowman 2003). university research between 2001–06 was limited due to funding being targeted at awareness raising and capacity development activities. however, in 2003, new funding was secured and this led to the revitalisation of the community-based monitoring system as reliable and long-term fisheries data were needed to determine a sustainable harvesting regime for the estuary. four female members of the community underwent a two-week training course at uct, which had a theoretical and practical component. involvement of female monitors provided an excellent opportunity to enhance involvement of women in a largely male-dominated activity. interaction between these monitors and the eeu research team has been regular and staff and postgraduate students work closely with them to address problems as they arise. furthermore, as the monitors’ knowledge about the fishery has increased, their contribution to research and management discussions as well as their input at fisher committee meetings and government–community meetings has become increasingly important, thus playing a key role in the coproduction of knowledge (figure 2). since 2007, in response to plans to close the fishery, reliable fisheries data have become even more essential. the ongoing collection of fisheries data is necessary, given that consistent long-term data sets are vital for reliable fisheries management. a paper on the reliability of the olifants estuary community-based monitoring system has recently been published to highlight the reliability and value of the community-based catch monitoring system (carvalho et al. 2009). these data are required for negotiations with government scientists and conservation biologists involved in management decisions. however, despite research reports and publications indicating that there has been no significant reduction in cpue for the olifants gateways | sowman 133 river harder fishery for the period 1994–2006 and that linefish bycatch is low (fielding & bergh 2007; carvalho et al. 2009), mcm scientists and their consultants are adamant that closure of the fishery is necessary to conserve biodiversity, rebuild linefish stocks and restore the ecological integrity of the estuary (anchor environmental consultancy 2008) and that no alternative management measures are feasible. it is this narrow scientific focus to fisheries management that has created tensions between the uct research team, the fishers and government scientists and managers (minutes of meeting, uct, 1 september 2008). whilst closure of the estuary to fishing would achieve the conservation objectives listed above, it fails to recognise the human dimensions of the fishery system, and in particular the traditional rights of the fishing communities that depend on these resources for food and livelihood. this disregard for the fishers’ rights and failure to engage them in the management plan development process has initiated a new wave of research that is focusing on gathering and analysing oral histories from fisherfolk in the ebenhaeser community. the rationale for this research is to gain information on traditional fishing practices and identify customary rules that governed this fishery historically. this information may be required to demonstrate customary rights of these fishers and to legally challenge the proposal to declare an mpa. the research team involved in this process is significantly expanded, and involves disciplines across both the natural and social sciences – history, law, social science, geography, environmental and marine science and community development, as well as ngos working with the fishers. in addition, the research partners are engaging with a broader group of marine scientists, both in south africa and internationally, who have significant experience in small-scale fisheries management. the purpose of these interactions is to identify and investigate alternative management measures to address the bycatch problem and to investigate supplementary livelihood activities for the fishers of ebenhaeser. clearly, the nature and focus of the research has changed over the life of this project, from an initial focus on fisheries science to a recognition of the need to understand the fishery system in all its complexity (charles 2001; berkes et al. 2001). an improved gateways | sowman 134 understanding of the historical and cultural aspects of the fishery is now required in order to provide a holistic understanding of this complex human-ecological system (figure 2). furthermore, the incorporation of local and indigenous knowledge regarding customary practices and rules governing the fishery historically is required to establish the customary rights of the fishing communities of ebenhaeser and challenge proposals to remove their rights. figure 2 this historical aspect of the research has been neglected to date. in addition, it is anticipated that engagement with the broader group of marine scientists will assist in identifying research questions that need to be addressed in order to identify management measures that seek to balance conservation and livelihood objectives. the recent phase of research has thus taken on a transdisciplinary orientation in that the research partners together with the fishing community are gateways | sowman 135 jointly framing the research problems, setting the research questions and identifying appropriate research methods to conduct the research (figure 2). adopting a transdisciplinary approach requires researchers to understand and consider the key philosophical underpinnings and methodological approaches of the other disciplines involved and identify a conceptual framework and methodological approach that is acceptable to all partners and addresses the questions at hand. this integrative approach represents a blending of philosophical thought and interdisciplinary understanding (amey & brown 2005) and a moving towards a collective responsibility for the intellectual processes guiding the research. the finalisation of this transdisciplinary research framework is still underway. the evolution of this research project from a largely fisheries science focus to a transdisciplinary problem-solving approach involving researchers from different disciplines, institutions and the fisher community presents an exciting, enriching and empowering process for all involved. the research team are motivated by the intellectual and learning opportunities created by this collaboration. the fisher community feels a sense of support from their social partners, and realises that their involvement in knowledge generation is crucial to ensuring that their rights are recognised and protected. their ongoing involvement in the community-monitoring system, social surveys and oral history studies is crucial to the collection of data that can inform decision-making. thus the focus of this project has shifted from gathering information by ‘the experts’ in order to analyse and produce data for management and decisionmaking, to the co-production of knowledge where the knowledge produced is ‘an emergent product of the university-community engagement’ (onyx 2008, p. 102). researchers and community members now have a common vision and purpose with regard to the project, namely, to recognise and protect the customary rights of the fishers of ebenhaeser and ensure the long-term sustainability of the fishery system through the identification of appropriate governance models and management measures that are broadly acceptable to all stakeholders. this shift in thinking and approach has to some extent been reinforced by developments in the small-scale fisheries arena gateways | sowman 136 internationally as well as the researchers’ participation in various international conferences on the topic. the discourse on alternative approaches to managing small-scale fishery systems and taking an integrated, participatory and human rights based approach to management is now considered the only way to achieve sustainability (charles 2001; berkes et al. 2001; berkes et al. 2003; mcclanahan et al. 2009). the ideas emerging from this discourse are being applied in the ebenhaeser fishery and lessons learned from their application are contributing to debates and theoretical developments in the field of fisheries co-management (hauck & sowman 2003; raakjær nielson et al. 1996, wilson et al. 2003). capacity development: from training fishers to mutual learning over the lifespan of this project, there has been a shift in emphasis from ‘training’ and ‘building capacity’ of fishers and monitors, to one that recognises that mutual learning and capacity development is occurring for all partners. while the initial phase of the project focused on implementing a series of training and capacity building workshops for fishers, the latter phase of the project has been characterised by joint learning and problem solving. members of the fishing committee and the monitor group are now integrally involved in the meetings and workshops linked to the development and implementation of the transdisciplinary research program. engagement with this project has enabled a number of postgraduate students and staff to engage with the complexities of the small-scale fisheries arena and link theory to practice. while the students’ research has been presented in conventional student dissertations (salo 2001; january 2006; carvalho et al. 2009), the learning that has taken place in the community has extended far beyond a conventional academic education. working in this community has required the university team to navigate differences in culture and language, in values and understandings about resource management and the meaning of community, and also difficult power dynamics, especially in the initial stages of building the relationship. this engagement also forced researchers to confront preconceived ideas about the idealised lifestyles of traditional fishing communities, and instead focus on providing solutions to enhance their livelihood circumstances. gateways | sowman 137 furthermore, involvement in this project has challenged traditional disciplinary thinking and empowered researchers and students to extend their disciplinary boundaries and increase their knowledge spheres (amey & brown 2005). for the university research team, ongoing involvement in the research, capacity development and community activism in ebenhaeser has broadened understanding of these complex and dynamic systems and forced a rethink of the theoretical ideas underpinning the research as well as the methodological approaches to conducting research in small-scale fisheries (figure 2). in particular, recognising small-scale fisheries as complex adaptive systems (berkes et al. 2001; gunderson, 2003; armitage et al. 2008) has led to the inclusion of a module on ‘systems thinking and complexity theory’ in our environmental management masters program, as well as the application of these ideas in a module on ‘integrated coastal management’. expansion of the research team to address the current issues at ebenhaeser has also necessitated a rethink of key research questions underpinning the project as well the methodological approaches employed (figure 2). the research teams’ recent participation in an oral history short course to learn how to gather and interpret oral histories, engagement with the legal team regarding the clarification of the fishers’ customary rights through historical research, and ongoing engagement with the broader group of marine scientists regarding alternative management measures to address conservation issues, have all contributed to enhancing knowledge and developing skills amongst the team. from facilitation to advocacy: an uneasy shift during the first decade of involvement with the ebenhaeser fishing community, the eeu played a facilitation role between the ebenhaeser fishers and the relevant fisheries authority. in general, the relationship between the different stakeholders has been cordial and mostly respectful, even though the fishers, government (managers and fisheries scientists) and the researchers have not agreed on several policy and management issues. nonetheless, despite these differences, there has been a willingness to pursue discussions on developing some kind of co-management arrangement. throughout this universitycommunity engagement process, the eeu has recognised the difficult task of balancing conservation and livelihood objectives but has gateways | sowman 138 insisted that the quest for sustainability must be underpinned by principles of participation, equity and social justice. however, the events of the past 20 months and, in particular, the proposal to declare the estuary an mpa, has required the eeu research team to shift its position from a mainly facilitation role to one of advocacy (figure 2). the total disregard for the customary rights of this fishing community, and the failure to meaningfully involve them in the development of the management plan, is indicative of a fundamental difference in values and approach to resource management by government scientists and managers and their consultants, and has led to a complete breakdown of trust between, on the one hand, the government, conservation groups and consultants supporting the declaration of the mpa, and, on the other, the fishers, the eeu and ngos working with the fishers. while the research team acknowledged the importance of protecting parts of the estuary for restoration of depleted linefish stocks and the need to afford it some conservation status, these conservation interests need to be balanced against the customary rights and socio-economic needs of this marginalised fishing community. further, our research and that of other similar cases internationally, suggests that sustainability of fish stocks and fishing is possible under conditions where government and communities work in partnership. the closure of the estuary to fishing and the consequences of such radical management action were considered unjust, inequitable and contrary to principles underpinning the constitution of the republic of south african, 1996 and various resource management laws. consequently, the eeu research team resolved to work collaboratively with the legal resources centre (lrc), masifundise and the fishers to challenge the proposal to declare the estuary an mpa. this clear opposition to the proposed mpa and willingness to participate in legal action against the state and its consultants is indicative of the eeu’s shift in position (figure 2). ongoing interactions with the above groups have resulted in specific actions, such as the drafting of a letter to the minister of deat to prevent formal adoption of the olifants estuary management plan, ongoing meetings with senior mcm officials to explore alternative management measures that recognise the human dimensions of the fishery, and ongoing meetings with the social partners and the fishers to strategise about the future of the fishery. gateways | sowman 139 the decision to take on an advocacy role is not a comfortable one, especially given the research team’s longstanding relationship with the fisheries management agency and other conservation stakeholders involved in estuarine management. challenging these proposals and taking a definite position against government and the consultants on this matter, and working with a legal team and other social partners to challenge government proposals, may have implications for future projects and partnerships, and even funding. conclusion this article has documented the evolution of a university-community partnership that has benefitted both the community and the university, through joint research and mutual capacity development. what started as a community request for scientific advice regarding a perceived decline in fish catches in the olifants river estuary has developed into a multi-faceted partnership project characterised by transdisciplinary research that is responsive to changing community needs and government policies, the co-production of knowledge, learning and capacity development, and the creation of mutually respectful and durable relationships between the university and the fisher communities of ebenhaeser. it has also highlighted the value of working collaboratively with communities and other stakeholders to jointly tackle complex human-ecological problems. while the initial focus of the project was on providing ‘expert’ advice to assist the fishing community and build capacity to enable fishers to participate in management, the later years have been characterised by collaborative research and the co-production of knowledge in the face of policy changes and management decisions. capacity and skills development amongst fishers and monitors have resulted in empowerment of the fisher communities and the ability to respond directly to fisheries policies and management proposals that threaten their livelihood. similarly, the university researchers involved in this partnership process have been required to extend their disciplinary perspectives and knowledge arenas, embracing different paradigms, methodological approaches and knowledge systems in seeking to address the challenges facing the fishery and the community. in addition, this partnership project has provided an opportunity to apply theoretical ideas to a real case situation and assess their applicability in a changing policy and governance environment. gateways | sowman 140 the immediate and powerful response from the social partners to the recent proposals to declare the estuary an mpa has reinforced the strength of the relationship between the various partners and the value of sustaining the partnership. the recent expansion of the partnership and the interactions across this multiple stakeholder group – that is, university-community-other social partners – presents an exciting, enriching and empowering process for all involved and has already yielded new insights and innovative ideas for improving our understanding of these complex issues and for challenging management proposals and policies as necessary. acknowledgements the research practices and outputs as well as the learning and capacity development that are described in this article, would not have been possible without the involvement and commitment of the fishers, community leaders and monitors of ebenhaeser. for their time, knowledge, hospitality and friendship, i am truly grateful. in addition, the commitment of the various students and researchers from uct, who have been involved in this fisheries project in ebenahaeser for the past 15 years, is also sincerely acknowledged. collaboration with the staff and students from the peninsula technikon in the initial years of this project was an enriching and valuable experience and to them i extend my thanks. for the scientific analyses of fisheries data and an ongoing willingness to give input to the project, olrac and fieldwork are acknowledged. working together with masifundise over the past five years, and with coastal links and the legal resources centre more recently, has significantly enriched this partnership and my own understanding of the complexity of small-scale fishery systems. they are all gratefully acknowledged for their role in this process, in particular their commitment to ensure that the rights of the fisher community at ebenhaeser are protected. references amey, mj & brown, df 2005, ‘interdisciplinary collaboration and academic work: a case study of a university-community partnership’, new directions for teaching and learning, vol. 102, pp. 23–35. anchor environmental consulting 2008, 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social responsiveness, unpublished discussion document, university of cape town, cape town. van der elst, rp, butterworth, ds, hecht, t, de wett schutte, d & salo, k 1996, ‘relief measures for marine subsistence fisherfolk in south africa’, unpublished report, technical relief measures task team, fisheries policy development committee, department of environmental affairs and tourism, cape town. wilson, dc, raakjær nielsen, j & degnbol, p 2003, the fisheries co-management experience: accomplishments, challenges and prospects, kluwer academic publishers, dordrecht, the netherlands. vickers, m, harris c & mccarthy, f 2004, ‘university-community engagement: exploring service-learning options within the practicum’, asia-pacific journal of teacher education, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 129–141. a mutually beneficial relationship university of the third age and a regional university campus the relationship between the regional campus of a metropolitanbased university and a branch of the university of the third age (u3a) has proved to be a sustainable partnership, enduring as it has since 1996. after providing some background on u3a, a worldwide movement, and on the development of this regional branch, this article reflects on the benefits to both partners – benefits identified by two small earlier research projects, as well as the memories and experiences of the authors – and explores the factors that have contributed to the success of this ongoing partnership. evaluation criteria for use as a framework for assessing the relationship are also considered. background the ‘third age’ is the age of active retirement, following childhood and youth and then the age of full-time employment, and preceding a more dependent old age for some. the u3a, along with other similar organisations (hebestreit 2008), provides an avenue for continued learning for active retired people in many parts of the world. the first university of the third age (l’université du troisième age) was begun in toulouse, france, in 1972 when a university began giving older members of the community access to non-credit university courses (lawton 2003; u3a adelaide 2010). this model spread elsewhere in europe. in britain a different model emerged in 1981, in which principles of self-help were apparent, older students being the teachers of their peers, as well as learning from them. in australia, u3a has followed the british model, the first branch being established in melbourne in 1984. in south australia, the first group was established in adelaide in 1986, and there are now 19 throughout the state, eight of these outside the metropolitan area. a recent development has been the formation in south australia of an alliance of u3as. being an incorporated body it is able to apply for grants on behalf of its member u3as (alliance of u3as in south australia 2009). u3a in australia has grown and there are now at least 200 groups and a virtual u3a, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 154–67 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 bronwyn ellis university of south australia and university of the third age whyalla michael leahy university of the third age whyalla 155 | gateways | ellis & leahy hosted by queensland’s griffith university (u3a online 2009), but accessible to people worldwide. some u3a branches have had assistance and support from universities: for example, u3a– uwa in perth originated in the university of western australia’s extension (continuing education) program (university of western australia 2007); the sunshine coast u3a relates closely to its local university (u3a sunshine coast 2010); and a partnership between the whyalla campus of the university of south australia (unisa) and the whyalla u3a branch is the focus of this article. nevertheless, u3a remains an independent organisation. considering sustainability, and sustaining the theme of this issue of the journal, ‘sustaining universitycommunity partnerships’, can obviously be taken to mean ‘supporting, encouraging, upholding and assisting’ such partnerships and helping them to continue. however, ‘sustaining’ can also be read as an adjective, describing the type of partnerships, ‘partnerships that sustain’ or ‘give sustenance to’ those involved in them. both aspects of ‘sustaining’, which are interrelated, will be considered here. in the first case, we see ‘sustaining’ as much more than simply maintaining or keeping partnerships going so that they are not seen to fail, even if their continuation is no longer justified. rather, we see it as an active, ongoing, positive process that involves evaluating and developing aspects of the partnership as needs vary and new participants become involved, so that it is truly sustainable. in this particular partnership, we consider it also important to draw out the ‘sustaining’ aspects of the relationship itself, as these enable the needs of the partners to be met and provide benefits to the university campus, u3a branch and individual u3a members. these sustaining qualities contribute to the sustainability of the partnership. university–community engagement universities are not only teaching and research institutions, but also have a role in outreach to the community. in unisa’s case, the slogan, ‘educating professionals. creating and applying knowledge. engaging our communities’, reflects these multiple functions (unisa 2009a). the last part was formerly ‘serving the community’; the change to the current form reflects a move away from thinking of the university as doing things only for the community to the two-way engagement of doing things with the community. the service aspect has not vanished, but there is recognition of the benefits that also come to the university through engaging with the community: ‘service to the community is a defining characteristic and the university is enriched through its interaction with different communities’ (unisa 2009a). engagement features prominently in unisa’s statement of vision, mission and values (unisa 2009c). the australian universities community engagement alliance (aucea) also highlights 156 | gateways | ellis & leahy this aim in the first of its principles applying to the engaged university: ‘university community engagement is based on a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and expertise between universities and communities’ (aucea 2010). such aspirations are now widespread; in fact there is a ‘global movement in higher education civic engagement’ (talloires network 2010, p. 2), underlined by the establishment of the talloires network (tufts university 2011) five years ago and various university regional networks. ‘social engagement’ and ‘public engagement’ are other terms used to encompass partnerships and relationships with those beyond the campus (university of brighton 2009). u3a in whyalla whyalla is a regional south australian city of about 23 000 residents, located 400 km north-west of the state capital, adelaide. almost a quarter of its population are aged 55 or more, with 13.5 per cent 65 or older (abs 2010). hence there are well over 5000 people in the age group targeted by u3a. the impetus for the establishment of a u3a branch in whyalla came from a community member. a public meeting was held in 1996 to gauge interest, and unisa whyalla staff were approached for assistance. some classes were held in university rooms, and others, in the early days, at a local high school. the university campus took on sponsorship of the new group early on, and university staff were invited to contribute to the program of classes. some faculty members offered to teach classes based on an area of expertise or interest (not necessarily related to their academic career: a former statistics lecturer delivered a series on the american civil war), while others responded to requests for classes on topics in which u3a members had expressed interest. to begin with, few u3a members took part in the tutoring of classes, but the number of members who also tutor has increased over the years, along with guest presentations from other members of the community. unisa, established in 1991 from predecessor institutions whose history went back to the 19th century, has a commitment through its founding act of parliament, the university of south australia act 1990, to functions that extend beyond teaching, research and consultancy to include addressing matters of equity and contributing to ‘the enhancement of the diverse cultural life of the community’ (government of south australia 2010). its hosting of a u3a branch fitted well with these ideals. the whyalla u3a branch at the end of 2010 had 103 financial members (71 female, 32 male), compared with 45 at the start of 2000, with numbers increasing during that year as more members joined in order to undertake particular courses. since 1996, 311 individuals of diverse employment and cultural backgrounds have been part of the branch. ages of members range from early retirees in their fifties to one member in her nineties. the largest group is in their seventies. at this stage of people’s 157 | gateways | ellis & leahy lives they may be seeking less physically active pursuits and concentrating more on exercising the mind, whereas some early retirees may still be too busy to think of joining u3a. the vast majority of members are actively involved to a varying extent. a small number have been members since 1996, but new members join each year. most classes are held in a room made available to the group in the main building of the campus. classes are held from monday to friday, with class sizes ranging from half a dozen to 20 or more. normally there are at least eight class sessions per week, comprising continuing courses, such as language classes (french, german and italian), and one-off presentations, plus some slots for recreational activities such as scrabble and other games. classes are usually scheduled for an hour and a half, commencing mid-morning or early afternoon, but there are also two evening language classes (which has allowed some younger members to attend). social gatherings are held in each of the four terms of the year, and there are occasional excursions to places of educational interest. class lecturers (usually referred to as tutors) come from within the group, the outside community and occasionally from the university staff. the membership fee of $20 for the year covers attendance at any number of classes. u3a whyalla and the university campus partnership the present partnership of the whyalla campus and the u3a group is a healthy, harmonious one. the initial university support in the early years of the partnership, involving teaching contributions by lecturers and free use of university lecture rooms, has evolved. as more tutors have come from the group’s ranks, and speakers from the wider community have become involved, there is still input from university staff, but there is no longer the same dependence on this support. u3a now has a dedicated room, a former laboratory (still with plumbing to enable washing up after cups of tea and coffee and social afternoons) in which u3a resources and equipment do not need to be packed away after a class. the room also has a television, vcr/dvd player, overhead projector, bookshelves, a refrigerator and a few computers. a trolley with laptop and data projector is available for borrowing from the campus. use of university facilities includes student computer pools for the computing classes and other classes needing online access. library use is free for these community members. the group receives logistical support from campus staff: campus central staff attend to photocopying needs and the information technologist deals with electronic difficulties. the good relationship with these staff is much appreciated by u3a members. members wear u3a whyalla badges consisting of a pin/clip-on backing, with a replaceable insert displaying the member’s name and current year; a magnetic badge is affixed to this, with logos advertising the unisa and u3a connection (see figure 1). 158 | gateways | ellis & leahy while the university provides all of the above inputs, it is not a one-way flow of benefits. two (unfunded) research projects, conducted in early 2000 and late 2008, together with other anecdotal data, illuminate the relationship that has developed between the campus and u3a. research project 1: impact of u3a membership the multiple benefits of joining u3a were highlighted by a small qualitative research project early in 2000 involving the then members of the branch. it was conducted by bronwyn ellis and facilitated by the u3a committee. whyalla u3a members were invited to be involved in a paper-based survey asking about their opportunities for learning new things and how important these were for them; how other learning opportunities compared with those of u3a; what impact u3a had had on them; what they had learned about themselves and others through u3a; and what they rated as the highlights of their u3a learning and involvement. other questions relating to subject areas, schedules, etc. were also included to guide the u3a committee’s program planning. seventeen questionnaires were returned (representing 19 members, or 42 per cent of the membership, as two couples each submitted a combined response). while some mentioned other avenues for learning, the survey found that u3a was regarded favourably, particularly when the cost was compared with that of some other activities. the majority felt that it was important to keep on learning new things. comments included reasons such as ‘general interest’, ‘personal development’, ‘mental stimulation’ and ‘so i don’t stagnate … keep my brain alert’. most were very positive about u3a’s impact on them, attributing to their participation a gain in confidence, a chance to catch up on things not learned in their youth, and opportunities to mix with people of similar interests and make new friends. they appreciated the informality of u3a classes, with ‘no pressure to perform’, and also valued the opportunity to learn in a university environment. they had certainly learned that ‘one is never too old to learn and enjoy learning’, and had discovered that there was much still to learn and friendly people in whose company to pursue this. hence u3a’s impact on participants had both intellectual and social dimensions. for further details of this project, see ellis 2000; 2006. the latter article also includes later informal and interview data. figure 1: u3a whyalla badge 159 | gateways | ellis & leahy research project 2: reciprocal contributions over the years it became apparent to the u3a members, and to some university staff members, that there were mutual benefits arising from this relationship. a research project conducted late in 2008 sought to identify more clearly these benefits, and perceptions of them. the survey consisted of two parts: an online questionnaire targeting whyalla-based unisa staff and a paperbased questionnaire distributed to u3a members. the former attracted a fairly low response, as only a minority of the staff had been directly involved with u3a. the u3a response, 28 out of 105 (including some people who had not been very active in u3a that term), actually represents a fairly good response from the most involved members. staff were asked about ways in which u3a and individual members had contributed to the university, whether they could suggest further contributions, whether they themselves had contributed in any way to u3a, and their knowledge of other staff contributions (thereby including some of the contributions of former staff members). the questionnaire also probed their knowledge of any other unisa engagement with seniors’ organisations and their thoughts about retired people enrolling as formal university students. staff contributions included serving as u3a course lecturers or delivering one-off sessions, helping out with organising equipment and facilities, and encouraging other staff to provide sessions. u3a members were asked about the benefits for them personally and for u3a that they saw stemming from unisa’s sponsorship of u3a whyalla, and what benefits they considered this relationship had brought to unisa. they were invited to suggest other ways in which unisa could help u3a, and other ways in which u3a could help unisa. they were also asked about their knowledge or ideas about any other seniors’ organisation links, actual or potential, with unisa, and whether they had any interest in formally enrolling in a regular unisa course or entire program. here we focus on just the reciprocal contributions (for further details of the survey, see ellis 2009). from u3a members’ point of view, they appreciated, as well as the unisa contributions already mentioned, the fact that rent-free accommodation (‘a very good home’, ‘comfortable and safe’) allowed their fees to be kept much lower than in some other u3as; that was an encouragement to new people to join. the central location made access easy from whatever part of the city members resided. it was felt by some that the university location gave u3a a ‘higher profile’, and it was a venue to which outside speakers were happy to come. u3a members also enjoyed interaction with younger students and the help and encouragement that university staff extended to them. the benefits that the campus received from the u3a were perhaps less visible to staff without u3a links. staff who had involved u3a members in classes really appreciated their input. these staff included nursing and social work lecturers, for whose classes these older students had acted as model ‘patients’ or 160 | gateways | ellis & leahy ‘clients’, and others who had co-opted them as an audience for student presentations or to share their experiences with students. these occasions gave students experience in working with and learning from older people. on occasion, u3a members had staffed a registration desk on open day. by simply being there to learn, they were lifelong learning role models, adding to campus diversity. a staff member appreciated the ‘different perspective’ brought to the campus. u3a members helped to make the community more aware of the campus and to create ‘interaction between the general public and the academic world’. their wordof-mouth advertising, inspired by their positive feelings about the campus, should not be underestimated. both staff and u3a members envisaged possible expansion of these contributions, including mentoring, contributing from past professional experience to class segments, providing publicity for their group, which would also include favourable publicity for the university, and making use of their networks in unisa’s interests. if some u3a members followed through on their expressed interest in formal unisa study, that would also bring all the advantages of having an increased range of experience and backgrounds in unisa class groups (bunyan 2003); one staff member described ‘cross-generational learning’ as having ‘the potential to be richer and broader’. in short, the project identified that unisa whyalla campus provides u3a whyalla with much physical, practical and moral support; however, at the same time, unisa receives many benefits from this partnership – some very visible and others less so, but no less important. sustaining the partners the continuing relationship between the campus and the u3a branch certainly meets the needs of the u3a for a secure place to meet, with all the advantages of being able to leave resources displayed or available for easy access, without having to compete with unisa priorities for use of teaching space. the rent-free accommodation allows the branch to enjoy a healthy financial situation without having to charge higher fees – something for which members on pension incomes are grateful. it also obviates worries for organisers about class venues for the next term. the central location means that the u3a space is equally accessible to people from opposite ends of the city. there is adequate parking and the campus is also on a bus route. it is a pleasant place to meet, adding to its social advantages. the fact that the campus also has a café that is open to the public provides further opportunities for social interaction, including with friends from outside the u3a group. a much larger study on the role of u3a in victoria found it to be ‘an important means of enhancing the quality of life for older adults through the provision of lifelong education’, appealing because of ‘its emphasis on peer-teaching philosophy, 161 | gateways | ellis & leahy community orientation, accessibility, affordability, and the wide variety of courses offered throughout the year giving enjoyment and structure to members’ lives’ (hebestreit 2008, pp. 547 & 562). these findings would resonate with u3a members in whyalla. while u3a would no doubt provide such benefits for members even if they had to meet somewhere else in whyalla, the unisa support means that this can happen more easily and effectively, and to a greater extent, as it allows for any number of classes to be held each week without the burden of extra hiring fees. benefits for individual members include, to begin with, satisfying their desire to learn new things. retirement or semiretirement has given them the time to take up activities and learn new things that may have been forgone in the past because fulltime work or caring for families took priority (warren & clarke 2009). some manage to fit learning and social activities into a busy schedule that includes volunteer jobs and grandparenting responsibilities. many, if not all, u3a members could be described as ‘ulyssean adults’, a term coined by mcleish in 1976 (mcguire, boyd & tedrick 2004), recalling how the ageing greek hero, ulysses, craved further adventures and knowledge after his return to an existence that seemed humdrum after the excitement of the trojan wars. this thirst for new knowledge and experience was highlighted by the poet, tennyson, in his ulysses (1842). u3a members, like ulysses, see what they experience in this group as ‘adventures in learning’ – a slogan that appears on their publicity materials. an important aspect of acquiring new knowledge is updating oneself on new technologies and the skills needed to optimise their use: not only computers, but also mobile phones and digital cameras, require mastery. each new model brings with it something new to learn. classes catering to these needs are included in the whyalla u3a program. the enjoyment of pleasant social gatherings, concurrently with their classes and in addition to them, is a big factor in attracting many people to u3a and other interest groups. research has shown that learning and socialising have a wide range of benefits for health and wellbeing, arising from the cognitive exercise involved, the mental health advantages of interaction with others, and gaining knowledge beneficial to avoiding or managing adverse health conditions (elmore 1999; mcguire, boyd & tedrick 2004; niace 2006; ranzijn 2002; rozanova, dosman & de jong gierveld 2008; seedsman 1994; swindell 1991). both the social aspect and bringing people up-to-date with electronic innovations mentioned above contribute to enhancing social inclusion for this group, particularly those of their number who would otherwise be less involved in activities outside the home (elmore 1999). for the campus, there are direct benefits stemming from the presence of willing volunteers who make contributions to teaching and learning and other campus activities, as mentioned above. their presence also provides lifelong learning role models 162 | gateways | ellis & leahy for younger students (and staff). unisa lists this quality of being lifelong learners as one of the attributes that its graduates develop during their undergraduate programs (unisa 2009b). for unisa lecturers who contribute teaching input to u3a’s program, there is a widening of their experience in tailoring their presentation of content to a new audience. the new networks to which they are exposed also increase their links to the community, a source of possible support, knowledge of needs, and contacts valuable for current and future research projects. the partnership therefore opens up avenues for academics pursuing the scholarship of engagement, as well as that of teaching and research. along with other groups using campus facilities, u3a draws people into the campus, adding to its ‘life’, since nowadays, with many students studying part-time while working in fullor part-time employment, and appearing on campus only for lectures, or sometimes choosing to use podcast alternatives, the small campus often seems very sparsely populated. hosting other groups or organisations on campus enables university resources and facilities to be used optimally for community benefit. as mentioned above, u3a members are unofficial word-of-mouth marketers of unisa to their families and other contacts outside the group. all of this involves very little cost to the campus. sustaining the partnership the campus–u3a partnership has proved its sustainability through its survival for 15 years, and still appears strong and healthy. a number of factors have contributed to this enduring relationship. as in any relationship, open, clear communication contributes to harmoniously working together. for example, unisa staff have been amenable to requests for help or equipment from u3a. the mutual benefits that have been described above are no doubt an important aspect of the longevity of the relationship. the reciprocity is demonstrated in the willingness of u3a members to help out in undergraduate classes when invited, so as to give something back to unisa, while a lecturer from one of those classes was only too happy to present a session for u3a, showing her gratitude for what they had done for her students. these mutual benefits have contributed to meeting a wide range of needs for u3a, its members and the campus. stability is provided by the continuing members of both parties, and stagnation is averted through the influx of new members of both unisa staff and u3a, bringing fresh ideas, needs and abilities: new blood and old faithfuls both have their part to play in sustaining a dynamic relationship. potential negatives of active members moving elsewhere to be closer to family or for health reasons have been counteracted by the arrival of new members, often with active contributions to make to the program. dedicated continuing committee members, the driving force in this u3a group, have welcomed new people with fresh ideas to join them. responsiveness to the u3a group’s expressed needs and 163 | gateways | ellis & leahy interests has made for a varied program with courses catering to a wide range of interests. flexibility in adapting to changed circumstances has allowed for varying the timetable and venues as needed. this has been possible because of the u3a’s sole use of their main meeting room, as access is restricted only by the hours the building is open. the support of campus leadership over the years has been a strength. some of the former deans and now the current leader (director: centre for regional engagement) have also presented sessions for the group. this leadership support has also made possible some of the facilitators of partnership sustainability: sharing of resources; minimising some obstacles to u3a course delivery through authorising internet access and technical support when needed; and helping to promote u3a activities. partnership evaluation criteria while there has been no formal evaluation of this partnership, the experience of the stakeholders involved and the findings of the research projects demonstrate its worth. working through the items of a formal evaluation tool could prove beneficial in the future, as a learning process for those reflecting on the effectiveness of the partnership as well as for outcomes that would prompt the implementation of improvements. in any such activity, it would be essential to be mindful of ‘the continued importance of an understanding of context alongside any measurement of partnership effectiveness’ (halliday, asthana & richardson 2004, p. 285). one such tool that could be used as a basis for systematic reflection is a set of partnership principles, based on six assessment criteria from a nuffield foundation tool, supplemented by other dimensions derived from an evaluation of health action zones in the united kingdom (halliday, asthan & richardson 2004, p. 288). these principles focus on the recognised and accepted need for the partnership; clear, realistic purpose; commitment and ownership; trust; clear protocols; monitoring; nurturing a partnership culture; meaningful involvement for all stakeholders; and effective communication. in the case of our unisa–u3a partnership, the partners recognise its advantages, and often the need for it, in a trusting, communicative environment. more could no doubt be done to build and nurture the partnership culture and to encourage wider u3a involvement in campus activities. an australian example, in the context of health promotion, is provided by vichealth (2004), which categorises partnerships on a continuum ranging from informal networking to coordinating to cooperating to more formal collaborating (the last-mentioned indicating partnerships of greatest engagement). the unisa–u3a partnership at times includes aspects of these four processes, but overall is not at the top end of the scale. while more formal collaboration for particular activities and events has involved the allocation of specific roles to u3a volunteers, there is no memorandum of understanding or similar formal document 164 | gateways | ellis & leahy underpinning the partnership, such as that operating in the rmit university–u3a city of melbourne partnership (graves 2002). instead, the whyalla relationship relies on informal cooperation, acceptance and mutual willingness to be of assistance to the partner. a further set of evaluation criteria has been used by the organisation of economic co-operation and development (nd) in the context of evaluating development assistance projects: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. while the partnership we have described here is of a very different kind – a reciprocal relationship, and not one involving a recipient and a donor – these criteria could offer a lens through which to consider its value. the partnership has without doubt demonstrated its relevance, but the advantages of the relationship could be promoted more, so that all of the unisa community are aware of its value. it has been effective in enabling u3a to meet its objectives, and also in contributing to unisa engagement objectives. it has been efficient in the sense of being cost-efficient. it has had an impact on those involved as described earlier; this impact could be extended by widening the membership and increasing the mutual contributions already made. the partnership has proved its sustainability. whether or not a formal evaluation of the partnership is undertaken in the future, it would be advisable for the u3a committee and the unisa campus not to take it for granted, but regularly to consider how the relationship could be developed and strengthened for their increased mutual benefit. such critical reflection could form part of unisa whyalla planning meetings and be something that u3a committee members (currently nine people, plus president, secretary and treasurer) could undertake at least annually, and include as a topic for wider discussion at annual general meetings. the partners could draw upon the evaluation resources mentioned earlier in order to develop a simple customised checklist, with room for additional comment, which could serve as a useful tool for facilitating this critique. conclusion the enduring quality of the u3a–campus relationship can be attributed to meeting the learning and social needs of the u3a members and also to the benefits that the presence and activities of this group bring to the campus. these needs and benefits are seen as continuing ones for both partners. not only has the relationship been sustained, it has also served to sustain those involved. moreover, it has provided a gateway linking academe and the wider community, furthering the links between the two. ongoing evaluation could assist in enhancing and extending the benefits arising from this partnership, adding to its advantages for the campus and expanding its outreach into the community. 165 | gateways | ellis & leahy u3a members and their age cohorts are an underutilised human capital resource. universities would do well to regard them as ‘a potentially positive asset’ and draw upon their knowledge and wisdom in dealing with the challenges of this century and its ageing demographic (garlick & soar 2007, p. 53). acknowledgements many thanks to the u3a members, current and former, who have contributed to our knowledge, not only through the surveys described but also informally. being granted time in meetings for the researcher to introduce and explain planned research was also most helpful. the support and encouragement of unisa whyalla staff are acknowledged. references alliance of u3as in south australia inc. 2009, viewed 12 october 2010, http://alliancesa.webs.com. australian bureau of statistics (abs) 2010, ‘national regional profile: whyalla (c) (local government area)’, viewed 11 october 2010, www. ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/nrpmaps.nsf/new+gmappages/national+re gional+profile?opendocument. australian universities community engagement alliance (aucea) 2010, ‘aucea charter and principles of university community engagement’, viewed 26 april 2011, 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http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/images/stories/static/about-cupp/socialengagementstrategyfinal090909.doc http://www.unisa.edu.au/styleguide/text/educating.asp 167 | gateways | ellis & leahy university of south australia 2009b, ‘graduate qualities’, viewed 23 april 2010, www.unisa.edu.au/gradquals/default.asp. university of south australia 2009c, ‘vision, mission and values’, viewed 23 april 2010, www.unisa.edu.au/about/intro/vision.asp. university of the third age – adelaide inc. 2010, viewed 9 october 2010, www.adelaideu3a.on.net/. university of the third age sunshine coast 2010, ‘learning for the joy of learning’, viewed 11 october 2010, www.u3asunshine.org.au/main/ default.asp. university of western australia 2007, ‘lifelong learning’, uwa news, vol. 26, no. 19, p. 11, viewed 11 october 2010, http://uwanews.publishing.uwa. edu.au/archive/2007?f=192956. vichealth 2004, the partnerships analysis tool: for partners in health promotion, viewed 17 october 2010, www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/en/ publications/mental-health-promotion/partnerships-analysis-tool.aspx. warren, l & clarke, a 2009, ‘“woo-hoo, what a ride!” older people, life stories and active ageing’, in r edmondson & h-j von kondratowitz (eds), valuing older people: a humanist approach to ageing, the policy press, bristol, uk, pp. 233–48. http://www.unisa.edu.au/gradquals/default.asp http://www.unisa.edu.au/about/intro/vision.asp http://www.adelaideu3a.on.net/ http://www.u3asunshine.org.au/main/default.asp http://www.u3asunshine.org.au/main/default.asp http://uwanews.publishing.uwa.edu.au/archive/2007?f=192956 http://uwanews.publishing.uwa.edu.au/archive/2007?f=192956 sustaining community-university collaborations the durham university model durham university is often perceived by its surrounding region as a somewhat elitist institution. this article is an account of how a team of people set out to change this impression and to better fulfil the university’s moral and civic responsibilities through a series of interconnected activities that can be described as community outreach and engagement. the model we have used to achieve this can be characterised as being organic, multifaceted, responsive and sustainable. we will consider each of these elements but will seek, in particular, to analyse how our work has become increasingly embedded in the university’s structures and processes as it has evolved. we will also look at the strengths and weaknesses of our approach, and how we see the future vision for the university and its community partnerships. community engagement is increasingly recognised as vital to the future of any university (benneworth et al. 2009). there are many reasons why community engagement may be important: (1) to enhance the profile of the university in its locality as a good neighbour and responsible employer; (2) to increase recruitment; (3) to enhance the skills and experience of members of the university; (4) to take advantage of funding opportunities; and (5) to enable better research (rcuk 2010). however, we have taken the view that the moral imperative is more compelling than any of these instrumental reasons: the need for a university to fulfil its civic responsibilities and do whatever is in its power to ensure its impact on society is a positive one – economically, socially and culturally. with this is mind, durham university commissioned a scoping study in 2008, funded by the regional development agency, one north east (one), aimed at finding out more about what was happening already in the field of community engagement (robinson & zass-ogilvie 2008). the study found that, while a lot was happening in the field of business and knowledge transfer, schools outreach and the like, the voluntary and community sector (vcs) was relatively ignored in these activities. durham university is located in a region with some of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 218–31 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 andrew russell, andy cattermole, ray hudson, sarah banks, andrea armstrong, fred robinson, rachel pain, sharon gollan durham university greg brown thrive, thornaby 219 | gateways | russell et al. the highest indicators of poverty and deprivation in the country, and the vcs has untapped potential to work on dealing with these issues. it was identified as the sector with the greatest potential for further university partnerships to develop. at the same time, the university commissioned an online survey of all of its staff to gain more data around the potential for university-supported staff volunteering and other voluntary activity. an excellent response was received, with a response rate of over 10 per cent of the university’s 3500 staff. it was clear from the survey that there were committed individuals in the university who engaged in volunteering and other activities which could be classed as ‘engagement’ largely because they thought it was a good thing to do (robinson & hudson 2012). however, it was also clear that a groundswell of demand existed for the university to become better and more openly engaged in such activities and to take them on board as an institutional commitment. around the same time, ray hudson was redeployed from his previous post as director of the wolfson research institute (a major health and wellbeing research base in the north-east) to become pro vice-chancellor for queen’s campus and the region. queen’s campus, stockton, is a satellite campus of the university, the site of the wolfson research institute and some of the strongest existing community-university collaborations, primarily through the national health service (nhs), the local authority and the vcs. taking on a regional responsibility meant that the work that had been started at queen’s campus could be extended throughout the university’s hinterland and beyond. crucial to the development of our program was access to funding over and above the core resource the university could offer. fortunately, one north east, with its remit of development and regeneration, had been looking to fund projects in county durham as a means of fulfilling its agenda. our program could be seen as a complementary activity to those being funded by one in the newcastle/gateshead area, particularly large-scale initiatives such as science city, within which newcastle university is significantly embedded. county durham is a slightly ‘betwixt and between’ county, lying as it does between the large conurbations of tyneside (newcastle/gateshead) and teesside, and many of the health and economic indicators that were moving in positive directions north and south of the county appeared to be stagnating or even heading negative within it. one north east was looking for new drivers to start to bring county durham back ‘on track’ and the university, the third largest employer in the county after the county council and the nhs, was seen as a key economic engine (as well as knowledge broker) to achieve this. therefore, funding from one, from the initial scoping study through two different funding tranches to 2011, underpinned the development of our project. the proposed project, phoenix, had four parts: —phoenix volunteers – developing the opportunities for staff volunteering work in the region 220 | gateways | russell et al. —phoenix challenge – working on joint development and research projects with key organisations and groups, many of them in the voluntary and community sector —phoenix places – establishing community engagement opportunities within specific areas in county durham and the tees valley —phoenix sport – building on the work of durham’s sport-in-thecommunity program. we were thus fortunate in securing the first tranche of funding from one, which would underpin our work until october 2009, on the basis of which we were able to engage two community engagement consultants and ‘buy out’ the time of other university staff to work on program development. phoenix volunteers was perhaps the most radical part of the bid, since the university had no track record whatsoever of officially sanctioned staff volunteering outside its portals. we set ourselves a target of 175 (approximately 5 per cent of the total university workforce) for the first year of our work, and set about authorising our staff volunteering scheme through the university executive committee (uec). taking our cue from previous examples of ‘good practice’ in this field (bussell & forbes 2008), we proposed (and it was accepted) that staff should be able to take up to five days per year as time off from their normal work, without losing pay, to engage in approved activities that would be of mutual benefit to the community and the university. staff were able to propose their own volunteering work, or choose from a range of alternatives posted on the phoenix website. any charitable cause was acceptable, although animal welfare groups and political and exclusionary religious organisations were not, as these were seen as sources of potential controversy. we also spent a lot of time developing the phoenix challenge work, under the aegis of a community partners scheme, which was intended to formalise partnerships with known and new community groups and organisations operating in the region. the idea with this scheme was to bring together in a more coherent fashion the various ‘offers’ the university was tendering to particular organisations. our publicity leaflet indicated how we were able to give partners access not only to our staff volunteering scheme but also to information professionals, student societies, training and development opportunities, student placements, research and the ‘knowledge economy’, and facilities and events that they might find useful. we soon had over 100 such groups registered. our long-term goal was to provide a ‘one-stop shop’ to make it easier for community groups and organisations to access the university and for members of the university to access the community. we secured an email address (community. engagement@durham.ac.uk) as a first measure in enabling this to happen. as well as phoenix, the university was also in partnership with newcastle university and the centre for life on another mailto:community.engagement@durham.ac.uk mailto:community.engagement@durham.ac.uk 221 | gateways | russell et al. public engagement project, beaconne, through which £1.2 million had been secured over a five-year period. funded by the higher education funding council for england and wales (hefce) as one of six ‘beacons for public engagement’ around the country, the aims of beaconne were somewhat different to those of phoenix, focusing primarily on academic staff, the development of collaborative and sometimes power-reversing research initiatives with ‘experts through experience’ beyond the university, and on culture change within it. the structure of beaconne was quite complex, and also changed during the lifetime of the project as staff changed. durham had an academic engagement lead (andrew russell) working with three academic theme leaders, one for each of the following key areas: social justice and social exclusion; health, wellbeing and the life course; and energy and the environment. beaconne was charged with organising a fellowship scheme and a small grants scheme to help university staff initiate and run public engagement activities. it also worked in close collaboration with the national coordinating centre for public engagement which was responsible for monitoring the work of the individual beacons and advocating public engagement on the national stage. developing the durham model the original articulation of phoenix in delivering the initial components of the durham model was to bring the outreach programs and research expertise of durham university to bear on a collaborative and community-based program for the regeneration of county durham. the program would provide innovative and evidence-based approaches which could be rolled out to communities across the north-east, the uk and beyond. the program aspired to combine new approaches to community regeneration with research to monitor outcomes aimed at developing a more general model with national impact. the university would take a lead role in a creative partnership to help local people tackle problems as they saw them. four principles underlay the proposed community initiative: empowerment, partnership, education, and leadership. these were elaborated on as follows: —empowerment. the most effective way to tackle disadvantage is to empower people to help themselves, through providing the support and resources which enable them to do so. such bottom-up ‘action research’ allows solutions to be customised to local conditions and needs as perceived by local communities. —partnership. community support can be best provided via networks of trusted and independent partners, some regional and some extra-regional, working with local people and communities. multiple partners can best identify and define problems through their different approaches to communication with communities, and bring different views on how similar problems have been 222 | gateways | russell et al. successfully tackled in other communities and lessons to be learned. —education. no community can regenerate without education and the raising of aspirations, which must begin early in the lives of children. universities, leaders in education for centuries, are currently focused on 18–21 year olds. widening of their role to a cradle-to-grave approach has endless possibilities for community development and regeneration. —leadership. durham university is one of the leading research-led universities in the uk and a node in global networks, attracting international thinkers and innovative ideas to the region. staff in the university would work collaboratively with local people, communities and partners in an innovative and exciting new approach to community regeneration and renewal. a key component of this plan would involve the establishment of university ‘one-stop shops’ in selected local communities, through which local people could find out about the resources available through the university and could communicate the sorts of help and support that they needed. putting the two funding streams together meant that we were able to use the strengths of each in sometimes synergistic ways. phoenix ran workshops bringing together university academics and community representatives to discuss potential collaboration and common ground. these links could then be capitalised upon by beaconne. we remained open to the possible lines of development that our community partners raised in either forum. for example, one issue that arose at an early stage in a beaconne-hosted meeting was that of library access and provision. community groups expressed a desire for easier access to the university in order to find out what information was available based on previous research in the community or on a particular topic. through discussions with the university library staff, led by phoenix, we were able to set up a ‘hotline’ that community partners could use to seek this information. similarly, some organisations brought up issues to do with procurement and how to do better at obtaining university contracts. while there are eu and national regulations that have to be upheld, the procurement office is very favourably disposed to awarding contracts to local suppliers, but realised that the ‘meet the buyer’ events might be too intimidating for representatives from social enterprises to attend. after some discussion, arrangements were made for bespoke training events for community partners wanting to find out how to succeed in tendering for contracts. rather than foreclosing possibilities at the start by too rigid a focus on pre-designated aims and outcomes, we were thus able to develop a model that was organic in its potential for growth and development. a second characteristic of the durham model is its multifaceted nature. we had prioritised staff volunteering and community and voluntary sector partnerships as the main planks of our initial work, but it became evident that there were possibilities beyond these discrete areas that needed to be 223 | gateways | russell et al. developed. sometimes this was through thinking creatively about how to deal with needs that could not be catered for through one medium. for example, many community groups and organisations expressed a desire for assistance with information technology problems. initially we targeted the it service in the university for staff volunteer help, but it was apparent that there was never going to be it-skilled staff volunteers available to cope with the demand. nor did we feel it was fair to ‘pigeon-hole’ someone with a particular skill as the volunteering scheme was designed to enable people to undertake something totally different from their normal line of work if they wished. hence, we established a dialogue with staff in the computer sciences and engineering department, who saw possibilities for second-year students to undertake placement work in small groups with our community partners as part of a professionalism strand. this was taken up with alacrity and in the first year students worked with nine organisations in this way. similar initiatives were set up with mba students at the business school, and students taking the msc in marketing. the development of links with the third sector for undergraduate and postgraduate programs builds on previous work with students in other disciplines such as medicine (russell 2011) and has been of significant benefit to the program as a whole. we have been clear about not trying to create new programs, at least at first, but to offer real-life alternatives for courses which usually only offer theoretical projects. what we have developed is a model which delivers tangible benefits for all involved: the students get to work on real challenges and interact with groups and areas which they would not normally have been able to do. project management, interpersonal and logistical skills are all developed through this model. in the case of the computer science students, the community organisations were all able to secure a professional service for which they would have previously had to pay (at an estimated value of about £1400 per organisation). finally, the department was able to offer a more challenging and diverse set of student projects. a third characteristic of the model is its focus on the whole university, not just academics. our initial survey revealed many staff in administrative and ancillary roles working or having links with groups and organisations outside the university. they have been some of the most enthusiastic champions of the staff volunteering scheme. another characteristic that everyone would subscribe to is the responsiveness of what we do, both to the needs of the communities we work with and to the opportunities that arise both within and outside a large university like durham. for example, discussions with the university’s staff development and training units (in response to requests from community partner organisations for bespoke training in certain areas such as leadership) revealed some appropriate courses taking place regularly with spare capacity that could be made available, free of charge, to outside organisations. this has become a regular 224 | gateways | russell et al. subject of our email correspondence with community partners; we can usually inform people about a week beforehand if there are going to be places available in a particular course. another example is when we were approached by the county council’s youth offending service (yos) looking for staff volunteers able to work on its review panels and in other capacities. while we did not feel there was much likelihood of strong uptake from staff for such an endeavour, we were able to put the yos in contact with the law department’s pro bono service which is intended to give students practical (and useful) experience in legal settings. the first meeting between the yos volunteer coordinator and the service yielded 12 students willing and able to take up the challenge of working with young people who had brushed with the law. the final characteristic we would identify as having been crucial to our development is our focus on becoming sustainable once the funding streams from which we have benefited so greatly during their existence come to an end. the economic downturn, fiscal debt crisis and change in political leadership in the uk between 2007 and 2010 have made such a characteristic crucial. one north east, for example, is due to disappear as our regional development agency in march 2012, the victim of a government that is seeking to make radical infrastructural cuts and feels that regional thinking must give way to localism or nationalism in terms of agenda-setting. ensuring sustainability the first pillar of sustainability that is a crucial element in institutional terms is embedding what we do within strategy documents. durham university’s 2010–2020 strategy has been produced during the lifetime of the phoenix and beaconne projects, and has community outreach and engagement embedded at several points. for example, durham aspires to be a ‘socially responsible institution, working with partners to enhance economic and social development internationally, nationally and locally’. a strong steer towards greater corporate social responsibility is indicated in its research goal to deliver ‘research in every discipline that addresses questions and issues with the potential to make significant impact on knowledge, people, the economy, or to enhance or change society for the better’. the retitling of ray hudson’s pro vice-chancellor role to that of ‘partnerships and engagement’ could be seen as a signal, symbolic of the changes that were taking place in terms of institutional commitment. in setting out to fulfil these strategic aspirations at the practical level, we have moved away from ‘buying out’ staff from other duties to ensuring some permanent members of staff are fully deployed on community outreach and engagement activities, sometimes supported by contract staff. the final round of money from one north east was not used to further fund bought-out staff, but to buy in services from a community supplier based 225 | gateways | russell et al. outside the university (sharon gollan associates) with the aim of training up full-time members of staff to undertake the further development of the staff volunteering scheme both within and outside the university. other money from one north east was used to provide seedcorn funding for groups and organisations that we had identified in phase i as being worthy of support for the mutual benefit of themselves and the university. in order to ensure this embedding took place in a strong institutional context, the work of team durham (which had been tangentially part of phoenix through the moniker ‘phoenix sport’) was enlarged and diversified under its director, peter warburton, to encompass many other aspects of university life, under the umbrella title ‘experience durham’. this brings together sport, music, arts and outreach activities across the university under the banner of extracurricular experience for students and staff. at one level this could be seen as reversing the outward engagement focus which has been the core of the phoenix program to date. however, with the current fiscal austerity and the need and desire to ensure our activities become embedded within core university provision, it was perhaps inevitable that some retrenchment would take place. phoenix is now refocusing its activities to deliver in two key areas. there are now about 230 staff volunteers, part of an achievable target of 10 per cent of staff registered as volunteers this academic year. as the program has become increasingly sophisticated, different profiles of volunteer can now be identified: —existing volunteers who use phoenix to make their volunteering more flexible —new volunteers seeking placement —team challenge events – there are now two of these every month —advocates —special projects, for example the queen’s campus adult work experience programme which involves community members seeking work experience working alongside mentors within the university administration. thus, while the structures and mechanisms may have changed, they have enabled a certain degree of confidence that what we do will sustain itself. however, we are mindful that in consolidating activities in this way, certain areas that were able to be incorporated in our organic and responsive model are left out of the frame. this is where what we see as the second key means of developing sustainability comes into the picture, namely establishing advocates throughout the university who can maintain an ‘ear to the ground’. these are people to whom core community outreach and engagement staff may turn when a request from outside is made which seems appropriately referred to a particular department or support unit. they can also recruit members of staff to engage in community outreach and engagement activities of all types. the advocates are particularly crucial to embedding our community outreach and engagement 226 | gateways | russell et al. work, as people who can not only generate and disseminate volunteering opportunities, but can potentially broker research relationships and perpetuate a wider social responsibility agenda. we now have over 60 named advocates in nearly every academic or support department/unit within the university. we are still far from achieving a ‘one-stop shop’ where voluntary and community sector organisations seeking to work with the university in whatever capacity can come and be referred to one or more of a range of university facilities, resources or personnel. however, in terms of embedding the research themes and approaches of beaconne, there is more to report. sarah banks (school of applied social sciences), the theme leader for social justice and social exclusion, teamed up with rachel pain (geography) to establish a centre for social justice and community action (csjca) as a means of embedding the work of that theme in a more sustainable university structure. the theme leader for energy and the environment, tom henfrey, used the development of a new durham energy institute as the place in which to nest a low carbon communities program, involving outreach and engagement activities with transitions durham, climate change durham and the uk permaculture association. the csjca is a research centre made up of academic researchers and community partners which aims to promote and develop research, teaching, public/community engagement and staff development (both within and outside the university) around the broad theme of social justice. its specific focus is on participatory action research (for example, greenwood & levin 2001; iied 2008; kindon, pain & kesby 2007). it has been offering short training courses that are made available to university staff, students and community groups, research projects organised in partnership with community organisations, seminars and conferences, and university-based teaching modules and programs on community development. the csjca has been particularly active in establishing long-term relationships with particular groups and organisations with which it has shared values and goals. one of these is thrive, a church action on poverty-funded project based in thornaby, teesside. thrive’s focus is on enabling people in deprived settings to deal with debt and livelihood issues and to organise themselves for community activism. the relationship began when greg brown, the director, invited sarah banks and andrew russell to meet him. from this initial meeting, a small grant from the wolfson research institute enabled a consultant to work with the organisation for a few days over the course of a year, co-designing the research framework for a sustainable livelihoods project. then the organisation took on some undergraduate medical students in the community placement scheme to work alongside residents as volunteer mentors on the sustainable livelihoods work. following some mentoring training provided by the organisation and ongoing support while they went about their work, the students 227 | gateways | russell et al. conducted one-to-one mentoring support for residents in their own homes. thrive supplied practical support as well, in terms of mobile phone cards and a taxi account. the students were, in the director’s words, ‘very good and proactive’. following on from these inputs, the need was identified for an action research worker (andrea armstrong) to work part time with thrive over a six-month period from september 2009 to march 2010. andrea provided research support on the sustainable livelihoods project, funded by a beaconne small grant. her work involved helping thrive wrap up some previous projects, setting up research monitoring systems (spreadsheets, word folders, wall charts, etc.), anonymising data sets, assessing and reviewing interview transcripts, as well as one-to-one mentor support with residents. sarah banks and andrew russell then secured a parttime interdisciplinary practitioner research studentship through the university for a phd researcher to commence working with thrive. thus a multifaceted and strong relationship has been established which promises to continue well into the future. lessons learned not all of the initiatives that have taken place have been successful, and some, such as the community-based, ‘one-stop shop’ concept outlined in the original phoenix bid, have yet to be realised. this is only to be expected in schemes based on ambitious long-term visions (five years in the original phoenix scoping study, a period which, at time of writing, we are only halfway through). we have not been able to respond to every request made by community partners, at least not initially. for example, several community partner organisations made the point that they needed work experience opportunities for some of their clients or community members. however, the university also has a duty to provide its own students with such opportunities if and when they are available, and the scope for involving more people from outside is somewhat limited. that said, in the third year one of our queen’s campus champions, who was also the main office manager, set up a mentoring scheme bringing people from outside the university seeking work experience together with staff working in her office in order for them to develop new skills and experience workplace culture. this has become a pilot scheme that we hope to champion and use as a model for other departments within the university. in terms of work at the student level, while our student placement work has gone very well, other initiatives we have attempted involving students have yet to bear fruit. perhaps this is because they have responded to needs within the university (such as the development of the student employability agenda) rather than needs identified by partner organisations outside, but our efforts to set up employment experience initiatives for students in areas such as local government and health have not yet worked. rather like student interns, the former of these initiatives was for students to become attached to a council member, perhaps 228 | gateways | russell et al. at cabinet level, to find out about their work and offer assistance where possible (for example, in researching particular areas). one of our most obvious and active links, with stockton borough council, was deemed unsuitable because of impending local elections, and the association of north east councils expressed concern about being seen to be partisan in ‘doing business’ with durham university rather than all five universities in the ne region. similarly, a plan to provide each of the 10 regional advisory groups that were providing support for the regional health strategy, ‘better health, fairer health’, with student ‘lay’ members fell on stony ground (even though we could have initiated this through collaboration with the student employment service leads in the five universities across the region). we have not ventured into the area of student volunteering per se, recognising that student volunteering is already very broadly covered through the student-run student community action, the duck (durham university charities commission) and work going on in colleges (gregory 2010). from the list of original phoenix strands, it will be apparent that phoenix places is the one about which we have least to say at the moment. this is because this particular initiative was predicated on robust delivery mechanisms such as the staff volunteering and community partners schemes for its success. we have identified those communities with which the university has strong links already and envisage building on these in the future. just as queen’s campus, stockton, has become a satellite of the main university campus, we could envisage the same thing happening, on a much smaller scale, with bases in other non-university locations. the academies scheme, the plan to inject private finance into schools to raise standards and increase autonomy, was something that the university was committed to at two sites in county durham and which might have become bases for further work of this nature. however, at the time of writing, the new government has put further development of the academies on hold and we wait to see whether the university’s initiative in this area will be realised. another change which has taken place during the lifetime of the projects which has not been overly helpful is the shift away from thinking regionally. this has happened both within the university and within the body politic at national level. our vicechancellor has indicated that he sees durham university as a ‘world class’ university and expects its horizons to be international rather than regional ones. the focus of our community outreach and engagement work to date has inevitably been regional, in part simply because our funding derived in part from a regional development agency but also because we felt keenly the moral obligation for the university to honour its civic responsibilities within the region of which it is a part. however, we certainly recognise that community engagement can take place at any level, and are actively developing initiatives with people in countries as 229 | gateways | russell et al. diverse as france, zambia, sri lanka and uruguay. this reflects our continuing focus on responsiveness to change within the university as well as beyond. the beaconne and phoenix projects have coexisted in similar timeframes and political/social environments – their aims often misunderstood and substituted for each other’s in people’s minds. one characterisation is that phoenix is about service and service learning, and beaconne is about culture change and the development of a partnership or co-productive research model. yet culture change can also be seen to have occurred through phoenix, as evidenced through senior management buy in and in the attitudes of communities and staff who see what they are involved in as valuable, important and a ‘good’ thing to do. beaconne has also involved service elements, such that newcastle university beaconne staff are now in discussion with phoenix staff at durham concerning the possible development of a staff volunteering scheme in our beaconne partner university! the coexistence of the two projects has led to confusion in terms of public (and staff) perceptions, yet their potential to integrate and encapsulate common themes and practices remains – but has still to be fully exploited. looking to the future as well as our aspirations for a one-stop shop and to develop our international links, we are keen to establish a community engagement federation with the other four campus-based universities in our region. durham, of course, already has newcastle university as a partner through beaconne, but there are a number of other successful partnership models involving all five universities that we can follow, such as the centre of excellence in teaching and learning for health care professionals (cetl4healthne), the ne teaching public health network (soon to be renamed public health futures, by government decree), and particularly the sports universities ne model which was championed by peter warburton and his counterpart directors of sport at the other universities in the north-east. we recognise the need for this in practical terms as well as strategically and ideologically. some public sector organisations, such as the probation service, are prohibited from entering into servicelevel agreements with individual higher education institutions because of the risk of favouritism and exclusion. however, they can engage with pan-regional bodies such as sports universities north east. we would like to see what has happened for sport in this regard extended to community outreach and engagement in general, and are already making links with our counterparts in other universities. we have also used internet technologies to streamline our staff volunteering scheme, but there is a lot more we can do in this regard to make registration, matching and delivery of volunteering and other opportunities easier, and to make it 230 | gateways | russell et al. easier for outside organisations to find out more about what the university has to offer. finally, however, we hope to do more to change how the university is perceived by the people and communities beyond its boundaries. while we feel we have done a lot to change perceptions already, there is a lot more we can do. in this we can draw strength from the links we have been able to make with parallel developments in other parts of the country and the world (for example, brighton university – hart & wolff 2006; hart, madison & wolff 2007). at our community-university collaborations conference held in durham in september 2010, the first national and internationally focused conference we have held since we started, one delegate brought up the issue of access. members of some deprived communities in the durham area felt that the university was not just a few miles away but on another planet. yet it was their taxes that funded its establishment and perpetuation. the current strapline used by our media and communications department in its work with the press and other local media is ‘so much more’. we hope in the future that this might change to something along the lines of ‘durham: it’s your university’. references benneworth, p, conway, c, charles, d, humphrey, l, younger, p 2009, characterizing modes of university engagement with wider society: a literature review and survey of best practice, office of the pro vice chancellor, newcastle university, newcastle, uk. bussell, h & forbes, d 2008, ‘how uk universities engage with their local communities: a study of employer supported volunteering’, international journal of nonprofit and voluntary sector marketing, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 363–78. greenwood, d & levin, m 2001, ‘pragmatic action research and the struggle to transform universities into learning communities’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), handbook of action research, sage, london, pp. 103–13. gregory, o 2010, ‘student volunteering at durham’, unpublished report for the nccpe. hart, a & wolff, d 2006, ‘developing local “communities of practice” through local community-university partnerships’, planning, practice and research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 121–38. hart, a, maddison, e & wolff, d (eds) 2007, community-university partnership in practice, niace, leicester, uk. international institute for environment and development (iied)2008, ‘towards empowered participation: stories and reflections’, participatory learning and action 58. kindon, s, pain, r & kesby, m 2007, participatory action research approaches and methods: connecting people, participation and place, routledge, london. research councils uk (rcuk) 2010, what’s in it for me? the benefits of public engagement for researchers, viewed 15 october 2010, www.rcuk.ac.uk/ cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/scisoc/rcukbenefitsofpe.pdf. robinson, f & hudson, r 2012, ‘can universities really effectively engage with socially excluded communities? reflections on the british experience’, http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/scisoc/rcukbenefitsofpe.pdf http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/scisoc/rcukbenefitsofpe.pdf 231 | gateways | russell et al. in p benneworth (ed.), universities and community engagement. springer, dordrecht. robinson, f & zass-ogilvie, i 2008, ‘durham university phoenix programme: scoping study’, unpublished report prepared for the university’s community engagement task group and onene. russell, a 2011, ‘interprofessional healthcare as intercultural experience: early years training for medical students’, in s kitto, j chesters, j thistlethwaite & s reeves (eds), a sociology of interprofessional healthcare practice: critical reflections and concrete solutions, nova science publishers, hauppauge, ny. a framework for entry par values and engagement strategies in community research the purpose of this article is to explore and clarify the importance of entry in community-based research on sensitive topics such as mental health and to suggest a framework for community research entry that uses the values of participatory action research (par) and specific engagement strategies. we argue that the entry process is a critical aspect of the overall research process. indeed, its success or failure sets the tone for the entire project. we wish to emphasise three points about research entry. first, that successful research entry is not only the effort of recruiting participants and/or gaining access to communities at the beginning of the research study, but is an ongoing and gradual process of community engagement that involves much work (before and throughout all phases of research). second, that to be successful, research entry requires the building and maintenance of long-term and reciprocal relationships between researchers and community members with power imbalances to be constantly navigated. third, that research entry should be guided by a combination of par values and concrete engagement strategies. to this end, we offer a discussion of our understanding of entry and the par values that inform it, as well as a critical evaluation of our own case study, examining strategies employed and challenges faced. while we consider the principles of entry discussed in this article to be relevant throughout the entire research process, the article looks primarily at entry processes at the initial stages of research. this article draws from a case study of a collaborative community-university research project completed in the waterloo and toronto regions of ontario, canada. the ‘taking culture seriously in community mental health’ is a community university research alliance (cura) project involving over 45 partners who explored concepts of mental health and mental illness as well as needed services and supports from five cultural–linguistic perspectives (somali, sikh punjabi, polish, mandarin, spanish latin american). a primary aim of the research was to inform new demonstration projects and the future organisation and delivery gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): x–xx ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 joanna ochocka elin moorlag rich janzen centre for community based research 2 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen of mental health services in multicultural canada. there are a limited number of case studies with mental health consumer/ survivor organisations that have explored the use of par values in community-based research and entry (nelson et al. 2004, 2010; nelson, lord & ochocka 2001), and we believe that a similar approach can be helpful in researching sensitive topics with culturally diverse communities. community-based research: issues regarding entry for this article we use a definition of community-based research developed in 2009 by 25 community and academic researchers who came together to address community-based research ethics in the waterloo region, canada. drawing inspiration from israel, schulz, parker and becker (1998), community-based research was defined as research that strives to be: —community situated – beginning with a research topic of practical relevance to the community (as opposed to individual scholars) and which is carried out in community settings —collaborative – community members and researchers share control of the research agenda through active and reciprocal involvement in the research design, implementation and dissemination —action-oriented – the process and results are useful to community members in making positive social change and promoting social equity (for more information, see: www.communitybasedresearch. ca/page/view/cbr_definition.html). in community-based research the relationship between researcher(s) and participating community members is vital to the research outcome and is always, at the same time, under negotiation. the process that researchers undertake in order to gain entry into communities is a central element of the entire project, yet surprisingly, the topic of entry is rarely addressed in the relevant literature and is an aspect often overlooked within community-researcher partnerships. overwhelmingly, articles outlining qualitative approaches to community-based research in the social sciences, even those involving sensitive issues, gloss over the entry process and instead focus on strategies for participant recruitment (parrado, mcquiston & flippen 2005; sadavoy, meier & ong 2004; sixsmith, boneham & goldring 2003). this is perhaps understandable when considering research from a traditional perspective, where it is often viewed as a tool for gathering and accumulating data (babbie 1998). from this standpoint, research entry is seen as a means for recruitment or research access. yet if research is viewed as intervention, as social action with the potential for change, then entry becomes the critical opportunity for establishing a community-researcher relationship with markedly different dynamics and goals in mind. crucial to this understanding is a conception of entry as a process, one that is shaped by a combination of participatory action research values 3 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen and concrete engagement strategies. in this scenario, participants and researchers alike have access to the processes as much as the outcomes, and the research itself is a means for change. building from experiences gained from our own projects with community-based participatory research, we propose that entry is a vital and integral component of the research process, and thus the entry strategies or techniques used must be carefully considered and respectfully executed. entry becomes the gateway to successfully establishing community-researcher collaboration. despite an apparent need for the notion of entry to be addressed as a distinct element in the research process, an insubstantial body of literature focusing on community entry would suggest the issue is frequently neglected. there are, however, a handful of sources (lee included) that provide insight along with tentative guidelines for successful community entry. points of convergence among these sources occur around the following topics: engaging community gatekeepers; emphasising collaboration and involvement of community stakeholders in the project; maintaining a presence in the community; and being attentive to initial hesitancies and the ‘politics of distrust’ (lee 1993). more specifically, presented by tareen and omar (1997), are a series of five steps that might be taken by participatory researchers in order for community entry to be accomplished. these steps include drawing community members in through open discussion and analysis of research intentions and strategies; inviting stakeholders to be project collaborators; and encouraging community members to take the lead on some components of ongoing action. further discussion is provided by sixsmith, boneham and goldring (2003) on the significant role of community gatekeepers and some of the complications that may arise in the presence of multiple gatekeepers with conflicting views, or restrictive gatekeepers who deny researchers access to the community. for us, community research entry is a process to establish a long-term relationship with community members that is ‘continually negotiated’ (sixsmith, boneham & goldring 2003), with power imbalances to be constantly navigated. successful entry also can be a method for increasing participation and accessing under-researched populations. in this article we suggest four distinctive research entry stages: —pre-engagement —engagement —assessment, reflection and feedback —ongoing maintenance. at each stage, entry strategies and mechanisms need to be rooted in the values of par. we agree with lee (1993) that in social research, progressive entry is needed, whereby the researcher attempts to minimize the social distance between themselves and the participants through frequent contact (the ethnographic approach of being there and 4 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen being seen [sixsmith, boneham & goldring 2003]), and by making requests for access that gradually increase. we also agree with minkler (2004), who highlights that the insider–outsider tensions that arise when conducting community-based participatory research often are the result of negative historical relationships with institutionalised and internalised oppression. the question of why the entry process has been so seldom recounted, explored and theorised is pondered and discussed by lee (1993) in a thorough overview of the process of access in research on sensitive topics. possible suggestions include time limitations as part of the research-to-publication expectations; the one-sided nature of such narratives, which would potentially give only half of the picture; and a vague or even a lack of knowledge by the researcher as to the reasons behind successful entry (lee 1993). a further possible reason added by lindsay (2005) is that this oversight is embedded within the current presentation structure for research and findings in academic journals. the dominant standard for what should and should not be included generally discourages researchers from addressing and discussing the issue of entry. participatory action research: a value-driven approach to research participatory action research (par) can be defined as ‘a research approach that consists of the maximum participation of stakeholders, those whose lives are affected by the problem under study, in the systematic collection and analysis of information for the purpose of taking action and making change’ (nelson et al. 1998, p. 12). par can be characterised as ‘research with’, not ‘research on’ people. it provides training and mentoring for members of the community so that they can learn how to research; offers opportunities for meaningful involvement in a project that is intended to effect community change; produces data for advocacy; and places a high value on experiential knowledge (ochocka 2007; ochocka, nelson & janzen 2005). the par approach is rooted in the ideals of democracy, equality, liberation and change (nelson et al. 2004; ochocka 2007). it includes a commitment to power sharing, relationship building, and a shared ownership and control of research. par researchers are therefore value-driven and use values to evaluate the success of their research projects. there are four main values that underlie par and influence all components of the research process: empowerment; supportive relationships; social justice; and ongoing reciprocal education (nelson et al. 1998; ochocka & janzen 2007). we want to suggest adding a fifth value: respect for diversity, which emphasises equity and inclusion. a discussion of these five par values follows. empowerment the first par value focuses on developing personal and/or group power from a process of working together towards a common 5 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen goal. empowerment is a transitive process between the individual and the environment around him/her (zimmerman 1995) with some transforming results in power sharing (rappaport 1981). it is based on individual and community self-determination and involves individuals (or groups) interacting together and gaining power to make choices and transform them into desired actions and outcomes (nelson, lord & ochocka 2001). empowerment also refers to personal changes, resulting in greater control, voice, skills, assertiveness and self-esteem (chamberlin 1997; zimmerman 1995) and to other benefits that come from true collaborations. supportive relationships the second par value deals with the type of relationships built between researchers and community members. in particular, this value addresses potential inequalities in the research relationship. supportive relationships foster a connectedness not only to the research topic area, but also to the people involved in the research processes (nelson et al. 1998). by collaborating and sharing stakeholders’ diverse knowledge and experience, community-based research seeks to change the social and personal dynamics of the research situation so that it is cooperative and enhances the lives of all those who participate (stringer 2007). social justice the third value of par emphasises the practical implications from research – its social action agenda. community-based research needs to produce useful knowledge to make positive social changes and to promote social equity. it strives to integrate research and practice, reduce the gap between knowledge and action and thereby create a new future that is better than the present (kemmis & mctaggart 2005;schensul 2009). ongoing reciprocal education from the perspective of par, reciprocal education refers to the value of mutual learning and mutual education. there is an understanding that knowledge is produced and disseminated in a meaningful way among researchers, community partners and others on an ongoing basis. respect for knowledge inherent within communities is particularly important (wenger, mcdermott & snyder 2002). such a notion breaks from the traditional assumption that researchers bring knowledge to communities. in fact, the practical and experiential knowledge of community members are seen to be integral to the research endeavour, as they bring a ‘knowing in action’ that goes beyond simple knowing about action (heron & reason 1997; reason 2006). respect for diversity: equity and inclusion we have added this value to the identified par values because community-based research is conducted in the real world where respect and appreciation of various perspectives, beliefs and norms are essential. this is especially so when researching with culturally diverse groups on sensitive topics. 6 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen we believe that using the values of par as a guide for implementing research entry strategies is essential in facilitating the development of successful, long-term community-researcher relationships. these par values act as a framework for communityresearch entry. further, such a value-driven approach enables community members to become partners and collaborators in the research endeavour. the cura project ‘taking culture seriously in community mental health’ was a five-year (2005–2010) community university research alliance (cura) project, bringing together over 45 university and community partners in the toronto and waterloo regions of ontario, canada. the purpose of this research collaborative was to explore, develop, pilot and evaluate how to best provide community-based mental health services and supports that would be effective for people from culturally diverse backgrounds. this research study was led by the centre for community-based research (ccbr), located in the neighbouring cities of kitchener and waterloo in ontario. ccbr has a long history (since 1982) in conducting research that uses a par approach focusing on sensitive topics and involving marginalised communities (see www.communitybasedresearch.ca/). five cultural–linguistic communities were actively involved in this project (somali, sikh punjabi, polish, mandarin chinese and spanish latin american communities) at the two sites (toronto and waterloo; 10 groups in all). some of these communities had previous research experience with the ccbr (for example, the somali and spanish latin americans) but researchers were approaching others for the first time. the cultural–linguistic groups were chosen based on the demographics across sites (both newer and established communities in canada with sufficient numbers); geographic distribution of region of origin; differences in migration experiences (immigrants versus refugees, voluntary versus forced migration); and visible minority status. one of the project’s goals was to emphasise the transferability of knowledge gained by migrants to all of multicultural canada (see janzen, ochocka & the ‘taking culture seriously’ partners 2006). all 10 groups worked collaboratively with each other and with other stakeholders including researchers, mental health practitioners, funders and policy makers. the study had three phases, each using a par approach: —phase i: to explore diverse conceptualisations of mental health problems and practices based on the use of several mixed methods —phase ii: to develop culturally effective demonstration projects based on study learnings —phase iii: to evaluate demonstration projects. the findings from the first phase of the research led to various understandings: of ethno–cultural community perspectives on mental health (simich et al. 2009; simich, maiter 7 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen & ochocka 2009); how to lead a large community-university partnership (jacobson et al. 2007); and how to take culture seriously in community mental health and promote the wellbeing of immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds (janzen et al. 2010). the second phase of the research examined the planning of 12 proposals for cura demonstration projects designed to meet the needs uncovered during the first phase (nelson et al. 2010). the third phase focused on evaluating the implementation and outcomes of four of the cura demonstration projects that were externally funded. there were seven main mechanisms of engagement used to implement the par approach (ochocka & janzen 2007). first, the cura partnership group, which included representatives from all partner organisations, guided the study and made all strategic decisions. second, a series of face-to-face site visits with ethno– cultural community leaders were held so that they could help shape the project proposal; another round of visits was also held immediately after receiving funding. third, local multi-stakeholder steering committees led the research component within each site. fourth, researchers from the participating ethno–cultural communities were hired and trained as researchers and mobilisers of their respective communities. fifth, ongoing communication and feedback was provided to research participants, community members and cura partners, which included a number of forums for community members and two conferences to share findings and plan future activities within and outside the alliance. sixth, 12 innovative concrete projects were reciprocally developed among cura partners in order to demonstrate culturally responsive mental health practices. and seventh, the project was coordinated by an organisation (ccbr) that is community-based, allowing for a safe and trusted location for the study and all its players. for more information, see: www.communitybasedresearch.ca/ takingcultureseriouslycura/. par values: a framework for entry the use of par values as a framework for approaching communities to collaborate on research was generally successful. our entry strategies served as a prelude to building a true partnership between community participants and the research team. yet, as in all research involving multiple partners and stakeholders, this process was not as simple as it would appear. putting values into practice is challenging. for this cura project, we worked with five different cultural–linguistic communities in two locations. we also partnered with more than 20 local community-based organisations and cultural–linguistic groups. for each new partner or group, a new entry process began, with new and different relationships to be negotiated. 8 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen through the examples below, we illustrate how the par values were used to frame the research entry processes. we discuss the implementation dilemmas and then reflect on the strategies used in various stages of the research entry process. empowerment in implementing the value of empowerment we used the principle of researching with, not on or for, the culturally diverse communities. this translated into democratic participation of community involvement in all stages of research with voice, choice and control held by communities over research processes and findings. in deciding whether or not to collaborate with one another in a research partnership, researchers and community members addressed several questions. who are the partners? how will the power be shared among them? what is the focus of the research? how will the knowledge produced be shared and used? the conventional role of researcher (people in control over research processes and results) was challenged and changed into one of collaborator, partner and facilitator of democratic processes. similar to what has been noted by lee (1993) and others in the literature, much of what was encountered in the entry process involved building trust, encouraging ownership and involvement, and overcoming tensions related to negative past experiences with research. we found that implementing the value of empowerment was crucial, but was difficult to achieve, for two reasons: —it involved a shift in the understanding of the roles of the researchers and the research participants (necessitating ongoing clarifications —it involved recognition of privileges, stereotypes, racism and power imbalances and the need to build a shared ownership of the research processes and findings (demanding strong facilitation). supportive relationships when implementing this value, clear communication and a conscious de-emphasis of professional jargon were important but not sufficient. the powerful role of language (both professional and english) was one of the significant barriers addressed right from the beginning. the value of supportive relationships was a driving force for us to be truly inclusive, respectful and collegial. in terms of community entry, this was something continuously under negotiation whereby relationships were developed and built over time. people reacted to what was said and how, and talked to each other later – which sometimes helped, sometimes hindered the further development of relationships. we tried to develop and maintain strong, supportive and reciprocal relationships, especially with the community researchers (10 people representing various communities) and the steering committee (12–15 people representing communities, service providers and academics at each site). just as with other types of relationships, researchercommunity relationships need to be able to demonstrate ongoing trust. 9 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen social justice early on in the conceptualisation of our research study, a social change agenda was articulated as its driving force. there were two main reasons for this: to raise community awareness about mental health issues; and to create a more inclusive and effective mental health system. crucially, however, social justice and action was viewed not only as a potential outcome, but also as an ongoing development throughout. as the entry progressed and relationships developed, participants started to see the research itself as a tool with which communities could take much needed action for change. reciprocal education the par value of mutual learning throughout the research study was an important selling factor in starting to work with the communities. we promoted the cura study as an invitation for everybody to create a community of practice where people could learn from each other and where knowledge would be exchanged from and to all involved. the most important aspect when facilitating community meetings was in the asking of questions (not in having all the answers), and in listening to the diverse perspectives and ways of understanding. we tried to incorporate all suggestions and directions coming from the community into the research processes to make them truly collaborative. respect for diversity a primary component of the research during the entry process was negotiating the reality of entering a collaborative research project with communities who speak different languages, who have different cultural backgrounds, and who practise different cultural and religious norms and beliefs. at each stage of the entry process, researchers entering the cultural–linguistic communities were evaluated by members of the communities on their actions, assumptions, behaviour and words they used, which often led to reflective consideration of their own cultural norms and values, resulting in an ongoing negotiation between the two. we were actively looking for commonalities across all diverse partners and were appreciating differences in actions and perspectives. research entry stages in addition to being committed to and explicit about the values of par, we went through four distinctive stages of entry and used concrete strategies to engage the ethno–linguistic communities in the research. we would like to briefly describe the four main stages of our entry process: pre-engagement; engagement; assessment, reflection and feedback; and ongoing maintenance (see lo & fung 2003). thereafter, we critically reflect on the challenges in implementing par values. we use our own researchers’ field notes as illustrations. 10 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen pre-engagement stage this was the preparatory stage for the proposal development undertaken before making any official contacts with the cultural communities. according to lo & fung (2003, p. 162), essential to pre-engagement is cultural sensitivity, which ‘encompasses attributes such as curiosity, perceptiveness, and respect’. for our entry process, this stage involved respectfully engaging ‘gatekeepers’ as key informants to help in proposal development and in organising initial site visits with a small number of community members. these pre-meetings with key people in a given community proved to be a helpful first step in connecting with the community itself. it was an opportunity not only for presenting research ideas and inviting communities to participate in research collaboration but also a chance for us to introduce ourselves (and the values we held). in most cases, the initial meeting lasted one to two hours and ended with a clear answer of yes or no to the proposed research collaboration. next, a mixed community meeting was organised with leaders from the five selected ethno–linguistic communities in each of the study sites (10–15 community leaders attending each event). some participants had previously collaborated with research partners and served as brokers of trust between researchers and the communities. the objective of these mixed community meetings was to present the research proposal, to have community leaders subsequently shape the research ideas, to explore ways of working together and to secure preliminary affirmation of community involvement. these pre-engagement meetings reinforced for us the importance of making initial contacts with an appropriate community gatekeeper, someone who is well connected and well respected within the specific community and who sees the value in collaborative research and who can convince others to join in. in the case of the punjabi community, not only was he/she able to provide the translation, as needed, but also the necessary interpretations and appropriate arguments. his/ her belief in the importance of this study was a persuasive factor in the community’s decision to work with us. (excerpt from toronto site) in order to broaden the involvement of community members and to deepen their engagement, a series of face-toface community site visits were held with members of the five communities in each location. facilitation was important, as was the language we used (no research jargon), the addressing of challenging issues (such as previous bad research experiences, racism, power imbalances and privileges in research), and an awareness of diversity and our own cultural norms and values. we actively looked for commonalities and appreciated differences among people: [flora] borrowed a tunic and headscarf from a co-researcher who had been to india. [janis] wore a long dress with a scarf she had bought in india. when we arrived at the temple, we arranged our headscarves 11 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen and stepped into the building. the entry hall was filled with people of various ages, all of whom were barefoot. we felt self-conscious about our footwear, but did not know where to leave our shoes. we asked at the front desk for our key contacts, and a man went to find them. our male contact soon emerged from the room where the religious service was taking place, showed us where to leave our shoes, wash our hands, and then took us into a small room for tea. we used an appropriate greeting in punjabi, ‘sat-sri-akal’; people responded with big smiles. we were in … (excerpt from waterloo site) engagement stage once funding was approved, a second wave of community visits was held. a series of 10 meetings was organised with the five cultural linguistic communities at the two project sites. in a few cases, additional follow-up meetings were organised to engage more community members. this engagement stage was the high point of negotiation with community partners, focusing on their involvement, their control, and their benefits and costs. essential in this stage was to gain mutual understanding of the expected research processes and outcomes, and to clarify roles and responsibilities. also at this stage we defined the mechanisms for the ongoing community engagement. discussions during the site visits were generally lively, if not at times challenging, with community members often ‘testing’ researchers as to the benefit (and potential harm) of the research to their community (ochocka & janzen 2007). a pressing objective of this project was to learn from the ethno–cultural groups involved as much as possible about their perceptions of mental health/ mental illness, their experiences with services available and, most importantly, their ideas for more appropriate and beneficial support. so community site visits were used to explore these issues and to educate us about how to ask sensitive questions and to listen to diverse ways of understanding. facilitation of these meetings was aided by our welcoming these challenges, by presenting our commitment to par values and by inviting community members to help shape the research agenda through their involvement in the other pre-determined strategies. the following excerpt illustrates various meeting dynamics: at first, people listened politely. then they began to ask questions, insisting on needing definitions for terms, parameters for the research, and anticipated outcomes, clearly expecting us to hold ownership of the project. we explained that we have deliberately not defined terms at this point because we want to leave room for definitions that meet each community’s needs. with each question, we replied by asking the community to share with us what would make the most sense from their perspective. our apparent unwillingness to provide answers seemed to be perplexing to participants at first, but once they realized that they had the power to shape the language, definitions and 12 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen parameters of the project for their community, the energy in the room shifted and they took ownership of their participation. (excerpt from mandarin-speaking community) the next step was to establish steering committees, to which each community sent one or two representatives. the main purpose of these steering committees was to serve as a forum for ongoing relationship building, as well as to provide guidelines about project activities. these included participant recruitment, formulation of research methods and tools, data collection and analysis, dissemination strategies, and the development and evaluation of demonstration projects at the two sites. in community-based research projects such as these, the steering committee acts as a sounding board to test ideas before going out into the larger community, and allows the researchers to tailor the research as much as possible to the groups involved (see also ochocka & janzen 2007). also at this stage, 10 community researchers were hired from within the 10 cultural–linguistic groups. the bulk of the funding for these researchers was separately raised from a community foundation (the ontario trillium foundation) due to restrictions from the major academic funder. as an essential component of the entry process, these community researchers were hired not only to help with the data collection phase of the project, but also to serve as active voices and as representatives from within their individual communities. community researchers were not hired on the basis of research skills or experience alone, but also on account of the interpersonal and communication skills they possessed. these 10 community researchers were active and collaborative members of the cura research team and served as a means of continuous informal information exchange between their respective ethnic communities and the research team. thus, the engagement stage for this project was about the development and solidification of the research alliance, the mutual conceptualisation of roles and the establishment of personal rapport. assessment, reflection and feedback stage the relationships between researchers and community members were tested over the duration of research entry. the assessment, reflection and feedback stage involved daily internal check-ins for the cura coordination team, and regular checks with individual and group community partners to gather information, reflect on it and adjust entry strategies. also in this stage we built the structures for the ongoing evaluation and feedback that would occur throughout the research study. this stage emphasised that community entry is indeed an ongoing process; a continuous evaluation of both the implementation of the par values and the promises made to communities during the preand engagement stages. 13 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen in our cura project the constant check-ins with steering committee members and community researchers were ‘must-do’ parts of each bimonthly meeting. the cura partnership group held semi-annual meetings to reflect on entry processes and to provide ongoing feedback to shape them. this is a very good research centre. when i have problems, i call them and i get private training … informal training in addition … whenever you have problems, they solve it with you. a lot of things are new for me, so i’ve got excellent training and the people are there for me. (excerpt from focus group meeting with community researchers) ongoing maintenance stage this final stage involved developing and shaping sound project structures that would facilitate the equitable participation of all partners in the research and information sharing. these structures enabled open communication and mutual leadership (as well as the entry of new partners throughout the research process). figure 1 shows the cura project structure. there were four working groups with a number of subcommittees. the cura partnership group and two steering committees (at toronto and waterloo) provided regular mechanisms for active involvement in the planning and evaluation of all cura activities. the knowledge mobilization working group consisted of a mix of diverse partnership group research working groups — literature review — web survey — key informant interviews — case studies — popular theatre — focus groups toronto steering committee — service providers, academics, cultural–linguistic community representatives waterloo steering committee — service providers, academics, cultural–linguistic community representatives waterloo polish community toronto polish community waterloo somali community toronto somali community waterloo sikh punjabi community toronto sikh punjabi community waterloo mandarin community toronto mandarin community waterloo latin american community toronto latin american community training working group research team project researchers, student researchers, community researchers knowledge mobilization working group evaluation working group figure 1 14 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen cura partners and was active in providing creative ideas for disseminating cura news and findings to a variety of audiences (see jacobson et al. 2007). the evaluation working group was closely engaged in monitoring community engagement and reflecting on cura activities. all groups and committees in the cura structure also served as a means for ongoing reciprocal education. the following excerpt from field notes at the waterloo site visit with the somali community emphasises the value of reciprocal education: this group pointed out that stress and depression are not recognized as ‘mental health’ issues in their community. to the somali people, mental health disorders refer only to serious diagnosed illnesses such as schizophrenia. this was important for us to note since it will affect the terminology we use with this community. we were also told that they are reluctant to seek conventional medical care, and will first seek counselling among extended family and religious leaders. (excerpt from somali community) in the maintenance stage we also focused on developing a social aspect to our collaboration. people were invited to participate in gatherings organized by cura researchers and community groups: for example, ccbr picnics, christmas parties, trips to conferences, lunches, chinese new year celebrations, punjabi khalsa, polish day, and the multicultural festival. contained in table 1 is a summary of the strategies used for each of the entry stages. entry stages strategies pre-engagement (proposal development) —meeting with ‘gatekeepers’ —mixed community meeting with community leaders —face-to-face site visits with a small number of community members engagement —face-to-face site visits with each community —establishment of two steering committees —hiring community researchers assessment, reflection & feedback —ongoing check-ins with researchers and community partners —collaboration on research (various working groups) ongoing maintenance —regular communication (at and between meetings) —education focus of the collaboration —social focus of the collaboration challenges in implementation the four stages of the entry process used various strategies to engage communities in research. the five values of par guided all engagement strategies and because of them the community table 1: summary of strategies for each entry stage 15 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen entry for this cura project was generally successful. however, the challenges and tensions around implementing par values in the entry process were many. for example, focusing on the value of empowerment was helpful in finding creative ways to share power, information and resources with communities, but was challenging and demanding on a practical level. questions include: how to build community resonance on an issue under study? how to guarantee community control in decision making when so often researchers are in the ‘driver’s seat’? how to have an equal collaboration with community groups and organisations when the cost of / availability of resources and funders’ expectations are the bottom line? how to facilitate ownership and build trust with many diverse players, and what’s truly for them? another challenge was ongoing confusion over role clarity throughout the entry process. making the research process fully collaborative and reciprocal for all involved (contributing and benefiting equally) was full of tensions. the implementation of the value of supportive relationships enabled people to contribute to the process but also challenged them with respectful disagreements and ongoing clarifications, discussions and compromises. it also forced the research partners and participants to consider how supportive they can be and of whom. we found the implementation of the social justice value in the entry process particularly difficult. two challenges were observed: one related to realistic expectations about the outcomes of change and the second related to the process of change. in the entry stage community members wanted researchers to make declarations about concrete, tangible and long-term changes in the way systems operate. however, given the nature of any ethically sound research this was not a promise that could be made, as long-term outcomes cannot be pre-determined. this uncertainty was difficult for some partners to live with, particularly for those who had had negative experiences with research projects in the past. regarding the process of change, the challenge lay in understanding research as intervention. research from a par framework holds the notion of research as social action. thus, the research process itself provides ample opportunity for some level of social change and action from within the communities involved to occur. although this is not a guaranteed outcome for all par research projects, in this case there were indications right from the entry stage that some level of social change was taking place from within the cultural–linguistic communities as they became more actively involved in the research project. part of this was due to simply opening up the public dialogue about mental health and mental illness within the communities, which allowed for awareness raising, stigma reduction and community capacity building around support to start taking place. as the research process continued, this momentum towards change from within the communities continued as well. 16 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen the implementation of reciprocal education built trust throughout, but it again created a situation of unpredictability and open-endedness within the project planning, which some communities had difficulty with. being true to the value of reciprocal education meant that everyone was forced to challenge at some point in the entry process his or her own assumptions and taken-for-granted knowledge. we, of course, learned a lot about the specifics of ethno–cultural communities and their experiential realities, but we also learned about our own assumptions. and finally, given that this project involved the participation of many cultural–linguistic groups, there were some challenges encountered when implementing the value of respect for diversity. first was the simple challenge of becoming as familiar as possible with the cultural norms and values of each of the five cultural–linguistic groups involved and incorporating this into the research as far as possible. second, once the groups were gathered all together, was the challenge of agreeing on a common purpose that made sense to everyone and, in some cases, agreeing to disagree when necessary. third, there was a challenge of moving the process forward without being ‘caught’ in individual/ group differences. and finally, there was the challenge of the background context (for example, previous negative research experience, the existence and previous experience of racism and discrimination, a lack of trust in the possibility of building new relationships that could be free of power imbalances and manipulation). although challenging, this value was the most significant for the entry process, as it was crucial for forming strong, long-term relationships that would facilitate the research over the five years to come. conclusion in this article, we have presented a framework for community entry when conducting research on sensitive topics and have illustrated how this framework was put into practice in a community university research alliance in ontario, canada. this article emphasises three points about research entry. first, that research entry is not only the effort at the beginning of the research project but is ongoing (before and throughout all phases of the research). second, that successful research entry is about building and maintaining strong and reciprocal relationships between researchers and community members. third, that research entry employs both par values and concrete engagement strategies (lo & fung 2003; ochocka & janzen 2007). in presenting this case study as an example of a successful approach to research entry, we want to emphasise how important the combination of par values and engagement strategies is in developing reciprocal and action-oriented relationships between researchers and community members. par values guide researchers’ strategies (and their implementation) for the recruitment of study participants but also for building lasting 17 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen partnerships that help in effective knowledge production as well as knowledge mobilisation for future change. given the richness of experience that has been gained through working with this cura project, we believe other community-based research could benefit from this presented framework. there are some potential challenges in using a par framework in the entry process. these include previous negative experience with community-based research, working with different languages, cultures or religious backgrounds, choosing the right gatekeepers, and finding a balance between collective and individual ownership of research outcomes. it seems to us that successful entry, which focuses on developing and maintaining trusted relationships, depends on an ongoing effort to maintain transparency and inclusivity for all involved, and on focusing on commonalities. it also requires a vision to use research for desirable change. maintaining a strong commitment to the implementation of the par values in each of the various engagement strategies results in respectful, strong and mutually beneficial partnerships. beyond challenges, we believe that there are two main dilemmas to research entry using par values. first is a strong pressure for researchers to deliver. communities engaged in research are constantly evaluating researchers and project coordinators according to the promises made in the preengagement and engagement stages. sometimes the expectations are too ambitious. second is the ability to play various roles with different community partners at the different stages of the research entry process. often researchers need to be inspiring leaders or initiators for action, but sometimes they need to play a follower/ junior role allowing communities to lead and coordinate activities. constant negotiation and renegotiation of relationships are needed with all players. the development of real, reciprocal and actionoriented relationships between researchers and communities are the only way to make research relevant and research entry possible and successful. references babbie, e 1998, the practice of social research, wadsworth publishing company, belmont, ca. chamberlin, j 1997, ‘a working definition of empowerment’, psychiatric rehabilitation journal, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 43–46. heron, j & reason, p 1997, ‘a participatory inquiry paradigm’, qualitative inquiry, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 274–94. israel, b, schulz, a, parker, e & becker, a 1998, ‘review of communitybased research’, annual review of public health, vol. 19, pp. 173 –202. jacobson, n, ochocka, j, wise j, janzen, r & the ‘taking culture seriously’ partners 2007, ‘inspiring knowledge mobilization through a communications policy: the case of a community university research alliance’, progress in community health partnerships: research, education and action, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 99–104. janzen, r, ochocka, j & the ‘taking culture seriously’ partners 2006, 18 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen ‘the road toward cultural empowerment: an invitation to inclusion’, in d zinda (ed.), navigating multiculturalism: negotiating change, cambridge scholar’s press, newcastle, uk, pp. 58–76. janzen, r, ochocka, j, jacobson, n, maiter, s, simich, l, westhues, a, fleras, a & the ‘taking culture seriously’ partners 2010, ‘synthesizing culture and power in community mental health: an emerging framework’, canadian journal of community mental health, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 51–67. kemmis, s & mctaggart, r 2005, ‘participatory action research: communicative action and the public sphere’, in n denzin & y lincoln (eds), the sage handbook of qualitative research, 3rd edn, sage, thousand oaks, ca, p. xix, pp. 559–603. lee, r 1993, doing research on sensitive topics, sage, london. lindsay, j 2005, ‘getting the numbers: the unacknowledged work in recruiting for survey research’, field methods, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 119–28. lo, h & fung, k 2003, ‘culturally competent psychotherapy’, canadian journal of psychiatry, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 161–70. minkler, m 2004, ‘ethical challenges for the “outside” researcher in community-based participatory research’, health education & behavior, vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 684–97. nelson, g, janzen, r, ochocka, j & trainor, j 2010, ‘participatory action research and evaluation with mental health self-help groups and organizations: a theoretical framework’, in l brown & s wituk (eds), mental health self-help: consumer and family initiatives, springer, new york. nelson, g, lord, j & ochocka, j 2001, ‘empowerment and mental health in community: narratives of psychiatric consumer/survivors’, journal of community & applied social psychology, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 125–42. nelson, g, ochocka, j, griffin, k, & lord, j 1998, ‘“nothing about me, without me”: participatory action research with self-help/mutual aid organizations for psychiatric consumer/survivors’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 881–912. nelson, g, ochocka, j, janzen, r, trainor, j & lauzon, s 2004, ‘a comprehensive evaluation approach for mental health consumer-run organizations: values, conceptualization, design, and action’, canadian journal of program evaluation, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 29–53. ochocka, j 2007, ‘working with diverse communities towards social change: a community university partnership in canada using a participatory action research approach’, in a bokszczanin (ed.), social change in solidarity: community psychology perspectives and approaches, university of opole press, opole, poland, pp. 76–83. ochocka, j & janzen r 2007, ‘blending commitment, passion and structure: engaging cultural linguistic communities in collaborative research’, in a williamson & r desouza (eds), researching with communities: grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research, muddycreek press, auckland, new zealand. ochocka, j, nelson, g & janzen, r 2005, ‘moving forward: negotiating self and external circumstances in recovery’, psychiatric rehabilitation journal, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 315–22. parrado, e, mcquiston, c & flippen, c 2005, ‘participatory survey research: integrating community collaboration and quantitative methods for the study of gender and hiv risks among hispanic migrants’, 19 | gateways | ochocka, moorlag & janzen sociological methods & research, no. 34, no. 2, pp. 204–39. rappaport, j 1981, ‘in praise of paradox: a social policy of empowerment over prevention’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–25. reason, p 2006, ‘choice and quality in action research practice’, journal of management inquiry, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 187–203. sadavoy, j, meier, r & ong, a 2004, ‘barriers to access to mental health services for ethnic seniors: the toronto study’, canadian journal of psychiatry, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 192–99. schensul, j 2009, ‘community, culture and sustainability in multilevel dynamic systems intervention science’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 43, no. 3–4, pp. 241–56. simich, l, maiter, s & ochocka, j 2009, ‘from social liminality to cultural negotiations: transformative processes in immigrant mental wellbeing’, anthropology & medicine, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 253–66. simich, l, maiter, s, moorlag, e & ochocka, j 2009, ‘“taking culture seriously”: ethno linguistic community perspectives on mental health’, psychiatric rehabilitation journal, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 208–14. sixsmith, j, boneham, m & goldring, j 2003, ‘accessing the community: gaining insider perspectives from the outside’, qualitative health research, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 578–89. stringer, e 2007, action research, 3rd edn, sage, thousand oaks, ca. tareen, e & omar, m 1997, ‘community entry: an essential component of participation’, health manpower management, vol. 23. no. 3, pp. 97–99. wenger, e, mcdermott, r & snyder, w 2002, cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge, harvard business school press, boston, ma. zimmerman, m 1995, ‘psychological empowerment: issues and illustrations’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 581–99. collaboration between universities an effective way of sustaining communityuniversity partnerships? the cost of bailing out the banks and rescuing the international financial system from near collapse in 2008 and 2009 has left many national governments with unprecedented levels of debt. in response, governments of all political persuasions are contemplating swingeing cuts to public services and/or significant tax increases. while the potential roles of higher education (he) in helping national economies recover from recession through innovative research and the supply of higher-level skills are quite widely recognised, he funding is unlikely to escape the knife. a recent international comparative study for universities uk (pricewaterhousecoopers 2010) suggested that the usa and canada both cut overall funding for he in 2009–10, particularly at the state or province level. in the uk, university funding was cut by an average of 12 per cent in 2011, with capital funding grants cut by more than half (bbc 2011). cuts have been more dramatic for institutions focused on teaching than on research. the government has also announced plans to move from a central teaching grant model to one that is much more focused on student fees and loans (willetts 2010). arguably, this will make funding for many individual institutions much more uncertain in the short to medium term. even in countries where overall investment in he is being increased in response to the recession, many are introducing cost and efficiency initiatives, and areas perceived to be ‘non-core’ such as widening participation, are starting to suffer (pricewaterhousecoopers 2010). in this context, support for community-university partnerships, with their seemingly tangential relationship to the core higher education missions of teaching and research, might seem easy targets. this would be short-sighted; the potential of communityuniversity partnerships to improve the quality of both teaching and research should not be underestimated. our experience of evaluating and supporting a major program of communityuniversity partnership projects in the south-east of england (the south east coastal communities or secc program) has highlighted many instances where partnership projects have led to gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 119–35 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 jonathan pratt steve matthews emergent research and consulting ltd bruce nairne step ahead research ltd elizabeth hoult canterbury christ church university stuart ashenden university of greenwich 120 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden new research opportunities, new developments in the curriculum, and opportunities for students to develop knowledge and skills outside the ‘classroom’ or lecture theatre environment. the secc program, which started just three years ago, in 2007–08, was born into a very different policy (and economic) environment. the program was initially envisaged as a higher education funding council for england (hefce) pilot for a potential new public funding stream to support communityuniversity partnerships. regardless of the success of the program – in terms of demonstrating the mutual benefits and added value such work can bring to both communities and universities (and there have been some clear successes on these fronts) – the prospects for a discrete community-engagement funding stream for he in the uk now seem remote. at the time of writing, a significant number of secc projects look likely to continue their activities after program funding ends, using a variety of income sources. what is perhaps more at stake, when considering core funding in this new higher education funding environment, is the ability to identify and support new community-university partnerships and projects. even for the universities participating in the secc program, funding will still be required in the future if they are to widen and deepen their community relationships and extend potential benefits beyond the departments currently participating in secc projects. core funding for community-university partnerships is likely to be critical in two ways: 1 to provide initial seed finance for project activities that could act as ‘proof of concept’ and potentially attract funding from other sources in future 2 to enable universities to develop and sustain an effective infrastructure and/or conducive environment to engage with communities, that is, to attract and respond to enquiries and to develop working relationships with community members and organisations. if universities in england are to continue to develop community-university partnerships and projects in the short to medium term, this core funding will need to be ‘top sliced’ in some way on an institution by institution basis from the funding and fees they receive for other things (such as teaching and research) – funding that is itself under increasing pressure. clearly universities, like many publicly-funded organisations at the moment, need to explore ways of doing more with less. this article draws on evidence gathered from the evaluation and coordination of the secc program to highlight some of the opportunities that collaboration between higher education institutions can bring. one of the most distinctive features of the secc program has been that universities have been encouraged to collaborate in order to engage communities, identify opportunities, and to scope, manage and, in some cases, deliver project activities. key questions for the program have therefore been whether cross121 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden university collaboration can bring added benefits to communityuniversity partnership work, whether it can enhance the support mechanisms for such work, and whether it can influence the likely sustainability of support mechanisms and partnerships (beyond individual projects). in an ‘age of austerity’, we contend that collaboration between universities may be an efficient and effective way of engaging with local communities but that such inter-university collaboration is not cost-free and requires high-level strategic buy-in by institutions. evaluation interviews with secc project leads have suggested that the finance required to initiate and sustain individual projects can be quite small. indeed, some project leads felt that too much funding can get in the way of developing effective community-university partnerships, upsetting the balance and reciprocity of the partnerships. however, the resources required to create the ‘infrastructure’ to support community engagement are sometimes overlooked. a significant proportion of these costs are for academic and administrative support staff time, although there may also be marketing and promotion costs as well as general office-related overheads. for the secc program the issue of collaboration also has a geographical dimension. nine universities and one not-for-profit organisation managed the program collectively. some of the participating universities were located less than 2 km apart; others were several hours drive away. is cross-university collaboration more likely to be effective in improving sustainability where universities share a common location or where they focus on neutral ground? indeed, can effective collaboration be independent of the geography of communities or of project activities and work at a regional, national or even international level? we should perhaps note at this point that we are talking about the infrastructure and mechanisms to support communityuniversity partnerships from the university and academic perspective. this is not to suggest that community partners do not also have support needs to ensure they get the most out of community-university partnerships. we should also note that the secc program involves a very diverse range of projects, with differing objectives and levels of resources, which at the time of writing are still in their final phase of operation. it is not our intention here to assess the comparative successes of individual projects. the south east coastal communities program the evidence used in this article has been drawn primarily from the overall secc program evaluation exercise. however, the article also draws on participant research. two members of the writing team remain engaged in the overall coordination of the program and are, in that sense, ‘inside’ the data that is presented here and, as such, are participant researchers. although the name of the program is clearly stated from the outset, in order to protect the 122 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden identities of the individual project workers we have ‘anonymised’ references to them. while a good deal of the information about the processes involved in the secc program is already in the public domain, the results of the program evaluation are not. the decision to anonymise particular players was informed by the desire to reflect as deeply and critically as possible on those emerging results here. the £5–6 million (£3 million from hefce) secc program is now coming to a close. it has supported over 30 communityuniversity partnerships and a wide range of projects. all have a common theme (health and wellbeing), a common broad geographical focus (coastal communities) and a common goal (to facilitate ‘demand led’ community knowledge exchange, working in partnership with local organisations to leverage added resources and value for the benefit of coastal communities). the health and wellbeing theme was deliberately chosen because it was seen to be sufficiently open to encompass the wide range of subject disciplines offered by the partner institutions, but it could equally have been another theme. geographically, the secc program area covers the full coastal area of south-east england, from the thames estuary in kent to the new forest in hampshire. while the program was regional, it was primarily governed by three subregional boards (hampshire, kent and sussex). each subregional board had representatives from the three local partner universities and a number of community partner organisations. the boards were responsible for identifying and approving projects and for overseeing the financial and academic management of the program. each subregion explored a slightly different approach to community knowledge exchange in terms of what a ‘community’ is, and what constitutes ‘demand led’ (see figure 1), and each region began from very different starting points with regard to community-university partnerships and knowledge exchange. in hampshire projects could be described as relating to a ‘thematic community’ of social enterprises and entrepreneurs, figure 1: three approaches to community knowledge exchange 123 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden with commissioning decisions based on a structured process of consultation with key stakeholders. projects have ranged from business school advice to potential social entrepreneurs, through helping communities to negotiate asset transfers and run community centres, to working with care social enterprises to understand the implication of the personalisation agenda in care budgets. the approach in kent could be considered as ‘place based’, with projects focused on a single local borough, swale. a ‘bottom up’ approach to project identification was adopted, a call for proposals from community groups partnered with heis within broad selection criteria was circulated and the subregional board undertook a selection process. projects have ranged quite widely in nature and focus: working with young fathers, older people and roma groups for example. in sussex secc projects have typically involved taking action on priorities identified by established communities of interest or practice, some of which predated the secc program. project activities have included older people learning to become researchers, developing a form of music therapy for different audiences, and improving how public services engage with and relate to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. it is worth noting that, while distinctions between subregional approaches in terms of project activities are useful to make, in practice we are talking about relative emphasis. many of the projects in kent were focused on particular communities of interest as well as place (and sometimes communities of practice). many of those in sussex were with community groups that were quite narrowly geographically focused. some projects in all three sub-areas have explored different aspects of working with and supporting social enterprises. the regional board has not played a significant role in terms of developing thematic approaches or approving projects but has focused on ensuring sound financial governance, programlevel monitoring and evaluation and, to some extent, developing opportunities for sharing learning and experiences between the three subregions. each subregional board has a representative on the regional board and they sit alongside representatives from hefce and the university of chichester (which has taken the lead role on financial reporting and management) and a small number of senior academics involved in the original bid but not in the delivery of the projects (including the chair). the nature of the mechanisms and infrastructure developed to engage communities and the extent to which this was done collaboratively between universities was left to the subregional groups to decide. 124 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden sustainable support mechanisms from their experience of community-university partnerships at the university of massachusetts, silka et al. (2008) note that ‘resources are often simply too scarce and time too limited to devote to selffocused “process” goals such as sustainability’. they nevertheless suggest that there are underlying processes and structures that are important for building continuity in community-university partnership work. these include having a funding stream for project activities but also a means of communicating the university’s capabilities and a continuous process for getting new faculty and academics on board. the need for such structures and processes can easily be overlooked, sometimes through a genuine and understandable desire to ensure project funds reach beneficiaries and are not swallowed up in bureaucracy. in some cases, the secc program has been no exception: while engagement mechanisms have been developed in all the subregions and participating heis, they have sometimes been ad hoc and have received little funding or support. the secc program evaluation suggested that there were three dimensions to these ‘infrastructure’ needs: 1 to provide an interface for attracting community enquiries 2 to deal with those enquiries in an appropriate manner 3 to support academics who work on enquiries. universities tend to present a complex and divided face to community partners. there is often a confusing array of faculties, departments, schools and individual academics, all operating apparently quite independently of one another. therefore, an effective interface for community partners is essential for the longterm sustainability of community-university knowledge exchange. it builds trust, raises awareness and provides a flow of potential projects and/or knowledge-exchange activities for the future. in each of the three subregions, the secc program has provided some element of community interface to help cut through this confusion. each hei in the secc program appointed academic leads to provide project guidance at a local level. in kent these leads have had quite a high profile amongst community organisations in and around the swale area (perhaps unsurprising given the tightly defined geographical remit of the program in the subregion). while the partners in kent ran an open bidding and scoring exercise for funded projects at the start of the program, the subregional program manager and academic leads have continued to receive enquiries and approaches from a number of community organisations over the last three years. they have tried either to deal with them directly or pass them on to relevant colleagues, but the process of managing these additional enquiries has understandably relied on the goodwill of the project team rather than systematic processing. not only did the project team not have access to any further central funding for projects, it was difficult, even for senior academics, to have full knowledge of colleagues’ expertise across their institution (let alone across partner 125 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden institutions). time spent receiving and responding to queries has not been directly funded by the program, and has taken resources. it is still open to question whether any of the subregional program managers or academic leads will continue in their gatekeeper role once program funding has ended. in hampshire, while the thematic focus of social enterprise might seem to imply a relatively small ‘community’, the number of social enterprises and potential social entrepreneurs in the subregion is likely to number in the thousands. as in kent, academic leads have provided this gateway function to a large extent, although they have had the infrastructure of business engagement (business helpdesks, websites, processes for dealing with business enquiries, etc.) to fall back on. business engagement infrastructure is not ideal for engaging communities; the language, look and feel of business engagement can be quite offputting to some potential social entrepreneurs and community groups interested in social enterprise. however, the overlap between enterprise and social enterprise does mean that adapting business engagement processes and structures is not unreasonable. the trading nature of social enterprises also means that they may be willing to pay modest amounts for value-added services from universities. one of the hampshire universities is therefore looking to set up a self-sustaining unit to deal with future social enterprise enquiries (particularly around asset transfer), while another one has plans to develop its business school as a regional social enterprise centre of excellence. the partners plan to continue to collaborate, but at this stage it looks likely to be collaboration through cross-referrals of social enterprises and community group ‘customers’ to institutions with the most appropriate academic specialism or project offer rather than a shared communitycustomer interface. in sussex, one of the universities has trialled a ‘hub and spoke’ model of engaging potential community project partners. a non-academic program coordinator formed the central ‘hub’ and queries were initially directed to her via a range of community contacts, recruited to act as ‘spokes’. the key here has been to raise, through personal contact and briefings, the spokes’ knowledge and understanding of the university, how it works and who to contact. as with hampshire, the sustainability of the hub and spoke model when program funding ends is an issue, although the hub function may not require a full-time coordinator. the plan is for strategiclevel permanent staff in the university to take over the role. however, the model is also coming under pressure from reductions in public expenditure that are filtering through to the third-sector community organisations that form the spokes and could lead to a high turnover of organisations and individuals involved. another university in sussex has a well-developed community interface on which a good deal has already been published. it was developed before the secc program but has been enhanced through program funding. the interface team, working 126 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden with the host university, has set up and managed a helpdesk for community partners, with a staffed telephone line, email address, website and marketing literature (see hart et al. 2009). through the program the helpdesk has been extended to take calls from a wider geographic area. the helpdesk is backed up by a group of senior academics from across the university who share an interest in community engagement. critically, this group includes academics from both the founding university and its nearest neighbouring hei (with whom it has some history of collaboration). the group meets regularly (at least every six weeks) and discusses how to respond to queries the helpdesk can’t deal with immediately. if appropriate, senior researchers are assigned to work on the queries (between one and five researcher days), resolving them or at least taking them to the next stage (student or postgraduate projects, funding bids, etc.). currently, the helpdesk responds to around 200 enquiries a year, around a third of which lead to senior researcher involvement. the interface team also provides an environment in which those involved in community engagement can share experiences, learn and build on the work of the past (for a fuller outline, see balloch et al. 2007). in many community-university projects, community engagement and relationship building are only part of the project. from an individual academic’s perspective, they may not even be the most important part; they will be more directly interested in things relating to their academic discipline: sports science, child development, music, etc. yet community engagement and relationship building can be difficult things to get right. the unit provides a small body of staff to advise on and provide administrative support for community engagement and a focus for publishing academic articles on experiences and learning about community-university partnership work. that the unit and helpdesk are likely to survive beyond the secc program is testament not only to the added value of this kind of infrastructure but also recognition of that added value by senior strategic staff within the university (and to some extent its neighbouring hei). high-level strategic buy-in can be crucial for ensuring that core staff and structures are supported during periods ‘between grants’. this is essential for communityuniversity partnerships working in the fields of social care, health and community wellbeing, as potential funding streams for this kind of work are often time-bound and/or ‘pilot’ in nature. indeed, community partners are well accustomed to playing the ‘game’ of using a series of short-term projects to meet a longer-term need and to help build a critical mass of activity that has more ‘transformative’ potential. however, the overall reduction in public spending will make even short-term funding scarce and more efficient ways of working will be needed. why does every university in a region need to develop its own community-engagement infrastructure? certainly 127 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden the secc program has shown that shared structures for reviewing projects and approving funding for community-university partnerships can work (providing there is a shared funding stream for project activity). collaborative opportunities there is also logic in universities collaborating from a community perspective. many community organisations, staff and beneficiaries are confused by the range of heis in the region and do not know who to approach, particularly where there are several universities in a single town or city region (which is common in the uk even for quite small cities). in this sense a shared infrastructure could also be greater than the sum of its parts, achieving higher levels of community awareness than individual institutions. it could also help to ensure that enquiries and opportunities are spread more evenly and dealt with by people with the most appropriate experience. at a subregional level, most of the universities participating in the secc program report that they are much more likely to work together in the future, although current structures such as subregional boards are unlikely to survive the end of program funding in their current form. this is despite the fact that in each subregion quite different types of universities have been working together: ‘russell group’ research-orientated universities, redbrick universities from the 1960s and more teaching-orientated institutions (former polytechnics and teacher training institutions that became universities following the further and higher education act 1992). the program evaluation does suggest that relationships within subregions have tended to be stronger between the more teaching-orientated institutions. the desire to be seen to engage in prestigious and important research perhaps places a premium on national and international rather than local connections for research-orientated universities. nevertheless, in sussex, a close working relationship has developed between a research-orientated institution and one with a more teaching-orientated philosophy. it is expected that support for their shared community helpdesk will continue, for example. this relationship predates the secc program but highlights that institutions with different backgrounds and histories can still collaborate in community engagement. the likelihood of future collaboration between universities in the uk on community-engagement infrastructure may also depend on forthcoming changes in the ways universities are funded. the proposals in the browne (2010) report, securing a sustainable future for higher education, one of the most significant policy papers on higher education in the uk in recent history, will, if implemented, mean less government-controlled funding and more autonomy for institutions. equally, it is not clear whether the new higher education council that is recommended in the report will continue hefce’s role in promoting and supporting strategic initiatives such as the secc program. a potential result of such changes could 128 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden be that community engagement, whether collaboratively with other institutions or unilaterally, would depend upon its strategic importance to the institution in the context of its overall business. a question of geography? given secc’s ‘regional’ approach, does this mean that there has been a missed opportunity for setting up a sustainable collaborative regional-level structure to support communityuniversity partnerships? the geographical focus for the secc program was chosen because the ‘region’ shared a number of social and economic challenges (secc 2007): —low productivity relative to the southeast and, in some cases, the uk —generally lower economic activity and employment rates and high concentrations of economic inactivity and ‘structural’ unemployment rates —relatively low-skilled profile of its workforce —lower business density and business start-up rates —more traditional industrial activities, including lower valueadded manufacturing and visitor economy; a low proportion of employment in knowledge-based sectors, especially in the private sector, and a high dependence on public sector employment —a greater proportion of people already over retirement age than the regional average, with projections of further ageing —relatively poor infrastructure and connectivity. it was also, at least theoretically, a geographically contiguous region, representing a strip of settlements along the coasts. however, despite geographic proximity and shared social and economic heritage, it could not easily be argued that the secc area is one ‘community’. from each of the coastal towns the main economic and transport connections run inland towards london, not along the coast. the quickest way of travelling from one part of the region to another is often to go into london and come out again. furthermore, inhabitants of the different towns and cities along the south coast do not feel part of a coastal community. community identities are no more natural than national identities; they are socially constructed (anderson 1991). indeed, it should be acknowledged that the program was set up with a strong subregional structure in recognition of this economic and social reality (note the plural ‘communities’ in the program’s title). the regional focus of the program was always much more about sharing and disseminating learning than activity. in retrospect, the program may have underestimated the importance of this regional function until quite late in the day (discrete regional funding for coordination and dissemination was allocated only in the last few months of the program), but this should not be confused with a desire for the program to be regional in its operation. this begs the question: is there a natural scale for supporting community-university partnerships? it might seem logical to suggest that this scale should be at the scale of the ‘real’ 129 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden community. however, students of social theory will realise that the concept of community has been subject to significant debate since tönnies first sought to draw a theoretical distinction between community (gemeinschaft) and society (gesellschaft) in the 19th century. onyx (2008) highlights that communities have both local and extra-local dimensions and recent interest in network theory has highlighted that we are all members of many interconnected communities (rowson, broome & jones 2010). the geographical landscape of the communities we are part of is also widening over time. one of the ironies of community studies within tight geographical boundaries, from young and wilmott’s study of family and kinship in east london in the 1950s to pahl’s study of the isle of sheppey in the 1980s, has been that they seem to identify close-knit communities just as they disappear, or at least become more dispersed. of course, ‘community’ is a highly contested term (johnston 1994). it is not possible to circle an area on a map, around a university, for example, and assume it is a community. quite rightly, the secc project did not attempt to do this (although the funding body did attempt to impose a standard definition for the total study area). communities of interest, in particular, such as people with similar disabilities, can be very widely dispersed. but this does not mean that geography does not matter; despite the internet and relatively cheap travel, many of our social networks overlap geographically; they are focused around the places we spend most time, our homes, workplaces, the places we shop and where we spend recreational hours. furthermore, social and economic processes, such as housing markets, can have sorting effects that create geographical clusters of people with particular outlooks or needs. conducting a spatial approach to community development in such circumstances makes some sense (dclg 2008). even the projects in sussex implicitly recognised the potential importance of place as a domain for interaction and learning by seeking to work with local communities of interest and/ or practice (hart & wolff 2006; wenger 2006). this geographical dimension to communities is particularly important when we consider some of the reasons put forward for investing in community-university partnerships. according to carr (1999), such partnerships did not fully emerge in the us until urban problems, such as physical decay and rising crime, began to directly affect universities themselves, particularly in terms of attracting and retaining staff and students. this meant that the benefits of community-university engagement became clearer to the heis and the concept of mutuality or reciprocity developed. reardon (2005) notes several drivers behind this growing level of engagement, including: —attracting more public and private sector investment if universities can demonstrate their role in developing the economy of their local areas 130 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden —improving the vitality, attractiveness and safety of an area, which can help to attract talented students and staff to the university —improving relationships with their communities, which can mean that there is more local community support for universities’ expansion plans. however, a focus purely on the local neighbourhood in which a university campus is based is problematic in terms of effecting social and economic change. deprived neighbourhoods are the result of wider social and economic forces and efforts to reduce inequalities and exclusion will often need to operate on these wider scales. it is also interesting to consider the program in terms of the relationship between the geography of project activity and the geography of key university sites. at a regional level it was agreed that projects would focus on the coastal strip rather than the inland parts of kent, sussex and hampshire. this was quite natural, given that each of the participating universities had significant sites in this coastal area. however, in kent there was a conscious decision to choose a ‘target’ geography for projects that was neutral. none of the kent partner universities had a significant presence in swale and none regarded it as a hinterland that was uniquely ‘theirs’ in terms of ‘supplying’ potential students or staff. it was felt that the neutrality of the geographical focus would both facilitate more open collaboration between the partner universities and raise the profile of higher education in an area with little history of community engagement with the sector. by way of contrast, many of the projects in sussex and hampshire (though by no means all) were focused on the four university cities of brighton & hove, chichester, southampton and portsmouth – all areas where one or more of the partners had a significant physical presence, with southampton and brighton & hove both being home to two universities in close proximity. initial conclusions the secc program reveals that collaboration between universities can significantly enhance the mechanisms for engaging communities, whether through cross-referrals between institutions or the provision of identifiable contact points (program officers or helpdesks) to help community members navigate and access the complex institutions that are modern universities. however, despite the collaborative nature of the program, the resource implications for heis have sometimes been overlooked, with responsibilities falling on temporary staff who will not be there once the program funding ends. in one or two cases, however, institutions have put in place more sustainable infrastructure with some level of collaboration and shared costs (in terms of staff time). collaboration at a subregional level has widely been seen by participants to have been a positive experience and most of the nine universities suggest that they will look for opportunities 131 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden to continue to collaborate – a significant outcome from the project given the competitive nature of the relationship between many of the participating heis before the program began. however, given cost implications at an institutional level, effective collaboration on the mechanisms of engagement requires high-level strategic buy-in within heis to the concept of community-university partnerships as mechanisms for improving research and teaching as well as community relations. at the time of writing, some of the heis in the secc program are much more committed to this idea than others. it may be true that all of the participants have travelled some distance towards this as a way of working but at the end of the three-year program there are still clear gaps between the most and the least engaged. this does not seem to be a product of the relative focus on teaching or research, although this may play some role, but is more a result of how involved senior strategic staff have been in the development of the program at a subregional and regional level. to date, the regional board of the program does not seem to have been an effective catalyst for encouraging heis to think more about collaborative ways of funding and organising engagement mechanisms and infrastructure in future, although this may change as the program moves into its dissemination and legacy phase. there remain clear opportunities for further collaboration on engagement mechanisms, however, particularly within the city regions that are home to more than one institution. it seems no coincidence that the two sussex universities collaborating most closely are co-located in the same city. the location of a university campus is perhaps a useful starting point for building an effective support environment for university-community partnership work. in kent, the locality was chosen deliberately in order to see how an adjacent rather than a ‘home’ community might benefit from such a project. none of the three university partners had any significant presence in the area where the project was located. while individual projects have worked well, some academics involved noted that this may undermine the long-term sustainability of community-university partnerships in the area. the relationship between improving the local area and the benefits reardon (2005) highlights for universities (such as support for expansion plans) is much less clear – potential benefits that can be essential when seeking to secure high-level strategic support from university management for community-university partnerships. in addition, academics involved in the projects noted that the perceived isolation of the study area and difficulties travelling to it were sometimes a barrier to engaging students and postgraduates in the projects. there is, therefore, a strong case for focusing collaboration and shared support mechanisms for community-university partnerships where a number of community networks overlap geographically and encompass more than one university campus. 132 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden the secc program experience suggests that this might be at the level of city region and/or functional economic area. however, this might be bigger than a travel-to-work area. the city region surrounding the universities in hampshire, for example, includes two urban centres 32 km apart, with distinct travel-to-work areas but nevertheless encompassing an area with significant economic and social connectivity. by way of contrast, the team in sussex found that there were limited connections between communities in and around the two urban areas that were 48 km away. postscript: (geo)political parallels discussion of the most appropriate geographical scale for economic and social interventions and the infrastructure to support them and the relative merits of decentralisation and localism is topical in most industrialised nations. in the uk, some 12–15 years ago, there was a shift towards regional structures in public policymaking and delivery, with the devolution of a range of policy areas to scotland, wales and northern ireland and the creation of nine english regions, each with a government office, regional development agency, regional health authority and a regional assembly (of representatives nominated by elected officials from local authorities at a county level). the philosophy behind this approach was to: —support ‘on the ground’ coordination of the work of different central government departments —provide a mechanism for redistribution and correction of economic and social geographical inequalities (that is, the north–south divide) —circumnavigate local conservatism (with a small ‘c’) when considering physical regeneration needs. the regionalisation trend faltered, however, when in a referendum the north-east of england voted against their regional assembly becoming a directly elected body (bbc 2004). in 2007 regional assemblies were abandoned altogether and in may 2010 the new coalition conservative and liberal democrat government announced that government offices, regional development agencies and regional health authorities would also be abolished. a key reason the new government has given for the change is that regions are an artificial construct and do not reflect economic and social realities. the discussion now is around identifying functional economic areas in terms of travel to work, retail markets and business trading areas. local authorities and business groups have been invited to collaborate to become local enterprise partnerships (leps) at a scale that encompasses some degree of economic and social self-containment. many of the strongest candidates for leps are city regions. this does suggest that, for uk universities, collaboration at a city-region level would also allow for greater interaction with and influence on statutory bodies seeking to make economic and social interventions. however, the focus on urban areas and their 133 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden immediate hinterlands does raise the question of what will happen to places in between city regions, places on the margins: how will their needs be met? gough (2009) notes that this question has also been raised by decentralisationand localism-style policies across europe. as community-university partnerships continue to develop and support community development around their – predominantly urban – campuses, is there a danger that this is one dimension of economic and social inequalities that they could exacerbate rather than resolve? references anderson, b 1991, imagined 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identity, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/publications/publication-display.do?id=12294112 http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/publications/publication-display.do?id=12294112 http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/publications/documents/theglobalpicture20100907.pdf http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/publications/documents/theglobalpicture20100907.pdf http://www.thersa.org/projects/connected-communities http://www.thersa.org/projects/connected-communities http://www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/businesscase.html http://www.infed.org/community/community.htm 135 | gateways | pratt, matthews, nairne, hoult & ashenden wenger, e 2006, ‘communities of practice: a brief introduction’, monograph, viewed 4 october 2010, www.ewenger.com/theory/ communities_of_practice_intro.htm. willletts, d 2010, ‘statement on higher education funding and student finance’, department for business, innovation and skills, 3 november, viewed 28 april 2011, www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willettsstatement-on-he-funding-and-student-finance. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-statement-on-he-funding-and-student-finance http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-statement-on-he-funding-and-student-finance it’s the basement stories, not the belt lessons from a community-university knowledge mobilisation collaboration academic research is under increasing pressure to be relevant to individuals and communities outside of the academy. interest in increasing the impact of research on public policy and professional practice is growing in the united kingdom (holmes & harris 2010), australia (butler 2007), canada (cooper & levin 2010) and has been observed in other countries as well (boaz, fitzpatrick & shaw 2009; lavis et al. 2006). methods of linking research to action include activities collectively referred to as knowledge mobilisation, knowledge transfer, knowledge translation and knowledge exchange, as well as other terms (estabrooks et al. 2008; gagnon 2011). these methods of linking academic research to policy or practice are not new concepts. the 19th-century us land grant colleges enshrined ‘service to society’ as a mandate, along with teaching and research (bonnen 1998). one setting of such engaged scholarship is the ubiquitous support for universityindustry engagement framed in paradigms of technology transfer and industry liaison (agrawal 2001). community-university engagement has received less institutional support and is either left up to individual researchers and their partners or is framed in institutional paradigms of civic engagement or service-learning (lerner & simon 1998), as well as community-based research (hart & wolff 2006; minkler & wallerstein 2003). york university has previously described developing the first canadian institutional capacity to support knowledge mobilisation (kmb), the way most universities support technology transfer (phipps & shapson 2009). york’s institutional capacity to support kmb is based on methods of ‘producer push, user pull’ and knowledge exchange (lavis 2003) and extends these to include the co-production of knowledge. these kmb services are based on a knowledge broker model (lomas 2007; ward, house & hamer 2009) and use established tools such as clear language research summaries, graduate student interns, social media and knowledge exchange events to link researchers to non-academic research partners (phipps 2010). gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 203–217 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 david phipps york university daniele zanotti united way of york region 204 | gateways | phipps & zanotti york university’s kmb service is delivered in conjunction with community partners in york region, led by the united way of york region (uwyr). our community-university kmb partnership is similar to community-based research in a number of ways. both feature co-production methods of research where community and university researchers work together to produce new knowledge that is both relevant to community needs and fulfils academic criteria for tenure and promotion. both are change oriented, seeking to use research to inform decisions about public policy and professional practice. both seek to ‘level the playing field’ and recognise the mutual value that both bring to the research partnership. however, there are also significant differences. (1) community-based research often works on persistent social issues such as hiv/aids, aboriginal concerns, poverty, health disparities and climate change. kmb is content agnostic. kmb seeks to broker relationships between researchers and non-academic research partners regardless of the topic or discipline. (2) community-based research fosters relationships between community and university. kmb embraces research collaborations with community agencies but also works with governments, ngos and the private sector. about 30 per cent of the service york’s kmb unit provides to non-academic agencies is provided to municipal and provincial government agencies. (3) in community-based research, the community identifies the research question. about 30 per cent of york’s kmb service derives from university faculty seeking a community or other partner for their faculty-driven research projects. (4) community-based research is a co-production method, while kmb also embraces methods of producer push such as clear language research summaries that make the results of academic research accessible to non-academic audiences. (5) at york university kmb is supported by university staff, while university faculty members undertake community-based research with their community researcher colleagues. this article presents the lessons learned from four years of community-university collaboration for knowledge mobilisation. the lessons are based on reflection upon experience and practice data collected from kmb activities. from may 2006 to september 2010, york university’s kmb unit conducted 162 information sessions for community and government audiences and 132 information sessions for the university faculty and graduate students. york has engaged over 200 faculty (approximately 14 per cent of faculty) and 149 graduate students. we have brokered over 200 research and kmb relationships, working with 195 distinct community and government agencies. at each kmb event we collect survey data to complement the qualitative stories disseminated via 237 blog entries published on mobilize this! (www.researchimpact.wordpress.com) and over 3000 tweets, which are picked up by more than 1100 twitter followers (@ researchimpact). in 2009–2010 york and our community partners from the united way of york region and the york region district http://www.researchimpact.wordpress.com 205 | gateways | phipps & zanotti school board conducted a formal evaluation of the kmb unit’s activities. the findings of the evaluation were generally positive and are posted online (york university 2010). a component of this evaluation included the evaluation of york’s knowledge mobilization intern program. the positive results of this evaluation have recently been released (hynie et al. 2011). reflecting on this analysis has allowed us to identify common lessons learned through four years of communityuniversity kmb collaboration. these lessons show that sustainable community-university collaboration is a journey not a destination. we first describe the partners, york university and the united way of york region, and the collaboration that has grown and evolved over four years. we then turn to a story of another journey taken by one of us, daniele, as he travelled to spend the summer with his relatives. both the getting there and the journey he took with his relatives after he arrived serve as allegories which highlight the lessons we have derived from our community-university partnership. we then present the lessons with examples drawn from our community-university kmb practice and conclude with a vision of what might be possible as we continue our journey. about york region it might take a whole village to raise a child but it takes sustainable collaborations to support a population as diverse as york region. york region sits to the north of toronto, canada’s largest urban space. administered by a regional government comprising nine independent municipalities, york region (www.york.ca) covers 1776 km2 and encompasses nine municipalities. york region had a total population of 983 100 in 2007. with a five-year growth rate of 22 per cent (2001–2006) and with new canadians making up 43 per cent of the population (almost twice that of the rest of ontario), york region is one of canada’s fastest growing and most diverse communities. it has elements of inner city (i.e. downtown markham), high wealth creation (i.e. vaughan), an aboriginal reserve (in georgina), rural agriculture (i.e. east gwillimbury) and environmentally protected areas such as oakridge’s moraine that crosses the townships of king and whitchurch-stouffville. the complex social and human service needs of such a diverse region are confounded by a relative lack of investment in human service infrastructure. in 2007, pricewaterhousecoopers released a report comparing the level of investment in human services in 905 (the telephone area code for the regional municipalities to the north, east and west of toronto) with other regions in ontario. the report showed that each 905 resident receives c$218 less for social services than the average ontarian, which translates into a total funding gap of c$708.2 million – an increase in the total operating gap for social services of c$156.7 million or an increase of 33 per cent from 2003/04 to 2005/06 (pricewaterhousecoopers 2007). this gap intensifies the need for human services provided at the community http://www.york.ca 206 | gateways | phipps & zanotti level. along with other social service organisations, united way of york region helps to bridge this gap not just with funding but with civic engagement, community building, leadership and a desire to work across all sectors to improve the quality of life of the citizens of york region. the partners established in 1976, united way of york region (uwyr) is a registered charity uniting people and resources to improve our communities. in its 2010 fundraising campaign, uwyr raised c$8.1 million to support human services provided by its 39 member agencies, delivering 100 programs. uwyr also funds coalitions of residents and organisations. united way identifies community priorities and works with partners to take action, supporting a network of 100 critical programs across the region’s nine municipalities. research on the provision of human services in york region shows that uwyr touches one in three people across the region – over 290 000 in 2009 (www.uwyr.on.ca). in 2008, united way released what the media dubbed ‘a landmark report’, if addressed. the report juxtaposed york region with the outer suburbs of toronto circa 1979, comparing the current demographics of york region with findings from metro suburbs in transition, released in the late 1970s by the then community social planning council of metropolitan toronto. the report articulated the single defining issue for the region and social services: the intersection of a breathtaking pace of growth, the changing face of growth and the places where this growth was happening. in 2009, united way released the follow-up, addressing our strengths (www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2009/addressing_ our_strengths_report.pdf), gathering stories and themes and priorities from its most extensive community engagement process to date. the findings were simple: residents wanted united way to help youth grow up strong; help individuals and families achieve economic independence; and support individual and community wellbeing. as important, the community asked united way to focus on strength as opposed to focusing solely on need – supporting the rich and vibrant infrastructure of volunteer groups already at work across the region, and incubating new ideas to address our most pressing social issues. all of this, of course, has focused not only the work of united way but that of our partners, most specifically york university. york university is canada’s third largest university with research and graduate programs, spanning the full spectrum of disciplines from health and the pure and applied sciences through business, law and the humanities, social sciences and the creative arts. york university is home to the schulich school of business, which is ranked 15th overall in the world and first in the world for international business programs. osgoode hall law school http://www.uwyr.on.ca http://www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2009/addressing_our_strengths_report.pdf http://www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2009/addressing_our_strengths_report.pdf 207 | gateways | phipps & zanotti is ranked first in canada for faculty quality, based on academic citations of research, and york university’s faculty of fine arts offers canada’s largest fine arts program. york university is an active player in the civic and economic fabric of york region and has a number of university outreach activities in collaboration with york region communities, businesses and municipal governments. as described previously (phipps & shapson 2009), york university has invested in the first kmb unit in canada that is fully integrated into the research enterprise of the university. operational since 2006, the kmb unit serves to enhance access to research and research expertise so that academic research can inform decisions about public policy and professional practice. evolution of the collaboration uwyr is a key partner in york university’s community outreach and engagement and a key player in york university’s kmb strategy. but this relationship took time to grow. we didn’t plan to get to where we are now. rather, it was a process of evolution. we started out by acting as gateways for our organisations. if a united way member agency sought research expertise, the uwyr pointed them to the kmb unit. if a university professor sought a community partner, the kmb unit would seek the advice of uwyr. one-off researcher–agency project brokering allowed both organisations to develop trust and a shared understanding of community-university collaborations. we deepened our relationship by supporting each other in governance and decisionmaking roles. york university invited uwyr to sit on its kmb joint advisory committee. david phipps was invited to sit on the uwyr community engagement & research committee and daniele zanotti was invited to sit on the president’s task force on community engagement (www.yorku.ca/commeng). we also collaborated on projects of mutual benefit. over the last two years, york university has posted 136 researchsnapshots, clear language research summaries, in an online searchable database (www.researchimpact.ca/researchsearch/). over the summer of 2010 the kmb unit targeted research that falls under the uwyr’s three strategic priorities: helping our youth grow up strong; enabling individuals and families to achieve economic independence; improving the wellbeing of individuals and the community. of the 63 research projects submitted for drafting as researchsnapshots in 2010, 44 met one of the three uwyr priorities. these 44 researchsnapshots provide access to research and expertise that will assist uwyr and its member agencies in decision-making. collaborating on shared projects creates value for both of our organisations. uwyr and york university are publicly supporting each others’ community outreach and engagement efforts by being visible at each other’s events. daniele speaks at each kmb expo, york university’s annual kmb colloquium (http://researchimpact. wordpress.com/2010/03/11/525600-minutes/) and david attends http://www.yorku.ca/commeng http://www.researchimpact.ca/researchsearch/ http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/525600-minutes/ http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/525600-minutes/ 208 | gateways | phipps & zanotti and supports community consultations, such as those that led to the uwyr 2009 strategic planning document, addressing our strengths (united way of york region 2010). daniele was also a keynote speaker at the may 2010 york leaders roundtable (www. yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?article=14820). beyond public speaking, we also publish together. you can read the top 10 lessons learned from knowledge mobilisation as articulated by david and daniele in phipps, johnny and zanotti (2009). daniele has been featured in nine stories found on york university’s kmb blog, mobilize this! (http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/). this publicly visible partnership has extended to investing in collaborative research projects. over the summer of 2009, york’s kmb unit invested $30 000 in each of two collaborative research projects between york researchers and york region community partners. one collaboration examined mental health services for teen mothers in york region and another collaboration explored youth resilience. both of these collaborations continue today and have received additional funding, or are seeking funds to continue their work. we have since evolved to co-funding graduate student interns. in the summer of 2010, uwyr and york university co-funded three graduate student interns to undertake neighbourhood-based research in york region to help inform uwyr investment decisions. york university’s kmb intern program (hynie et al. 2011) has supported 31 graduate students working in research-based summer jobs for community partners. students get real-world experience applying their emerging research talents and the community partners have a better sense of the potential for community-university collaborations. the three uwyr kmb interns: (1) undertook a literature review focusing on the impact of growth and change on human services and various responses to address the impact; (2) conducted social asset mapping in identified geographies of growth in york region; and (3) identified, refined and piloted potential neighbourhood assessment tools for future consultation and engagement activities with residents, community groups, service providers and other key stakeholders. in addition to this co-investment in current kmb interns, daniele hired a former york university kmb intern as part of uwyr’s campaign staff. hiring experienced kmb interns illustrates the value of the internship in training graduate students for a career in community-based work. we have grown from being gateways into each other’s networks to co-investing through a shared philosophy built on trust and experience. this four-year story of a growing relationship and a deepening trust between collaborators has allowed uwyr and york university to embark on a truly transformative or, as daniele says, ‘disruptive’ (www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2010/agm_ remarks_dzanotti_june2010.pdf) initiative. more on that later. we now return to daniele’s story of his zia which illustrates the lessons learned from the york/uwyr kmb collaboration. the underlying message is that community-university collaborations http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?article=14820 http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?article=14820 http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/ file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/shopfront%20uts/shf015_gateways%20volume%204/vol4_gateways/www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2010/agm_remarks_dzanotti_june2010.pdf file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/shopfront%20uts/shf015_gateways%20volume%204/vol4_gateways/www.unitedwayyorkregion.com/pdf/2010/agm_remarks_dzanotti_june2010.pdf 209 | gateways | phipps & zanotti are about the journey not the destination. sustainability is possible but it is not an end in itself. sustainability is a by-product of a successful relationship which we will illustrate with examples from our knowledge mobilisation practice. and now, daniele’s story. my best childhood summers always included a family trip to north bay to visit my aunt and uncle, zia angelina and zio vittorio; four zanottis packed into a pontiac parisienne with enough sandwiches, thermosed espresso and milano ‘s’ cookies to last three weeks let alone four hours, singing along to classic italian alpini songs like ‘rosamunda’ and ‘quel mazzolin di fiori’. and once there, in between a few trips to the corner store, church and visits to relatives, the bulk of our time was spent either at the basement table eating, preparing to eat, or cleaning up after we ate, and at the sewing machine, watching and listening as my zia weaved threads and stories of back home and relatives. a summer of stories, you might say. my zia is a master seamstress and storyteller – one and the same trade. for a gift, each year she would make me one thing: a shirt, a bag, a hat, a scarf. i would stew over it for weeks, talk to my mother about it and then finally decide – a leather belt. my zia’s answer was always the same, ‘ah, perfetto, a [insert garment here]. it is going to be the best [insert garment here] ever.’ and so that one hot and humid summer in north bay, amid all the scraps of flowered fabric and plastic couch covers and threads, in the scent of always brewing espresso and fresh sauce and frying onions, with a radio crackling more italian tunes on the large fold-out sewing table, i sat with my zia as she made me a thick brown belt – so thick it could hardly fit into my jean buckle. i asked her, ‘can the leather be a little thicker zia?’ and she told me stories of my nonno, her brother, the shoemaker, of my great uncle, a farmer, who grew figs and grapes. i asked her, ‘can we use a big silver buckle, bigger than the one you have?’ and she told me about my great grandma, who never went to school a day but was the town mortician and advocate and counsellor. and then, after days that flew so fast, she turned, smiled and handed me the belt. ‘danie, the best belt ever.’ i was shaking with excitement, nervous as i strung it through my jeans. i kept repeating, ‘so perfect, zia, so perfect’. i marvelled, ‘how do you make it so perfect?’ and she turned the tiny radio off, and said, ‘it’s the basement stories, danie, not the belt’. lesson 1: build on shared histories no one would spend four hours in a car with their family to visit strangers. daniele’s family members have a shared history as do uwyr and york university. over 25 per cent of york university 210 | gateways | phipps & zanotti students and 19 per cent of staff live in york region, second only to students and staff from metropolitan toronto. york university staff and students contribute to and benefit from the human services of york region in which uwyr is a key player. we also have considerable shared kmb history. thirty-eight per cent (13/34) of york university kmb interns have had placements with york region agencies and 38 per cent of requests for kmb services have come from york region. this shared history is deepened by shared governance activities including york university’s president’s task force on community engagement and the community and the uwyr community engagement & research committee. when considering community-university collaborations, you choose those potential partners with whom you have a shared history on which to build. lesson 2: recognise that one collaboration comprises many small activities daniele and his family made trips to the store, visited their church and their relatives, and ate and sewed and talked. no trip is made up of a single activity and neither are community-university collaborations. while keeping your eye on the outcomes of your collaboration, you need to pay attention to the little things along the way. as described above, the three uwyr–york university kmb interns are undertaking neighbourhood-based research – a great collaboration. but in order to get the three interns to their jobs, the kmb unit and uwyr sought buy-in and commitment from decision-makers and then developed: (1) a job description; (2) a process for soliciting and reviewing applications; (3) eligibility and evaluation criteria; (4) a timeline for applications and review; (5) work space and supervision requirements; (6) training requirements; and (7) an mou for fund transfer – all before the students could begin. pay attention to all the little details (which are often invisible to the outcomes of community-university partnerships) because these are the determinants of success and sustainability. the finished painting is made up of many, many brush strokes just as every community-university relationship is the product of many little activities along the way. don’t forget to track all these little activities (meetings, attendees, evaluations, outcomes, tweets, blogs, media stories, trainees etc). count them because you’re going to have to report on them. but also celebrate them because they are the heart of your collaboration. lesson 3: seek co-collaborators along the way daniele didn’t go to visit just his zia. while there he visited other relatives, friends from church and all the store owners that sold the food they would need to keep the kitchen hopping. he visited and talked with all his family and relatives that summer. these are the allies, enablers, amplifiers and connectors of all our relationships and collaborations. the knowledge brokers who form the staff of the kmb unit are the main connectors and supporters of community-university collaborations at york university but they do 211 | gateways | phipps & zanotti not work in a vacuum. there are a number of other york university offices that support community-university engagement as outlined in the final report of the president’s task force on community engagement (2010). these diverse offices include experiential education, office of university events and community relations and the td centre for community engagement. other examples of such allies and connectors include the office of communitybased research at the university of victoria (www.uvic.ca/ocbr), the community-university partnership program (cupp) of the university of brighton (www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp) and the institute for community engaged scholarship at the university of guelph (formerly the centre for families, work and well-being www. worklifecanada.ca). the most established of these is the work of cupp. angie hart has literally written the book on communityuniversity partnerships (hart, maddison & wolff 2008). cupp is based on a community of practice model (hart & wolff 2006) and employs a knowledge broker who operates the research help desk (hart et al. 2009). when seeking out your community or university partner(s), look to the enablers of community-university collaborations in your locality and use them for guidance and support. lesson 4: collect the stories as well as the outcomes as daniele sat in the basement, his family cooked dinners and shared the summer’s stories. if food was the outcome, then the stories were the process that got them there. in learning about what works for sustainable community-university collaborations, it is important to recognise that the process is as important as the outcome. it is even more important if your goal is to leave a legacy from which others can learn. this was well articulated by andrew campbell and nick schofield (2007) who urged research funders to ‘fund the arrows as well as the boxes’. when we surveyed our online and community users in 2009, they told us that one of the developments they would like to see is more information about kmb tools. in the fall of 2010 we launched a series called the ‘kmb tool box’ in which we articulated different kmb tools representing the processes for many of our main kmb services. not all tools will work in all contexts and modification will be required to tailor the tools to different community-university situations. nonetheless, these tools will serve as the arrows (= processes) that connect the boxes (= outcomes). seek out the right tools for communityuniversity engagement so that they become the stories that are exchanged while cooking the food. lesson 5: think carefully about outcomes daniele thought hard before deciding that, this specific year, he wanted a new leather belt. similarly, sustainable communityuniversity partnerships require careful consideration and usually refinement by evolution as much as by design. for sure, some quick wins are important. one type of quick win that the kmb unit supports is a request for a ‘lunch & learn’ speaker. the request http://www.uvic.ca/ocbr http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/ http://www.worklifecanada.ca/ http://www.worklifecanada.ca/ 212 | gateways | phipps & zanotti is received, speaker identified, lunch & learn session happens, speaker leaves and everyone is happy. sustainable communityuniversity collaborations are not quick wins but the product of ongoing relationship building and management. think hard about what you want to achieve but also be flexible in accommodating emerging opportunities that might be able to help you achieve your outcomes. lesson 6: speak and listen to others, don’t collaborate in a vacuum daniele did think long and hard but he also talked to his mother before deciding he wanted his zia to make him a belt. we also need to create spaces where we can reflect on our communityuniversity collaboration and obtain support and feedback from others. the annual kmb expo is one such space where we tell our stories in large and small groups and seek input to help sustain collaborations as they move forward. ‘project teen moms’ was featured at the 2010 kmb expo. project teen moms is an ongoing collaboration arising from the 2009 investment by the kmb unit in research to explore mental health services for pregnant teens and teen mothers in york region. it is a collaboration amongst kinark child and family services (www.kinark.on.ca), the children’s aid society of york region (www.yorkcas.on.ca), and researchers and graduate students from the lamarsh centre for research on violence and conflict resolution at york university (www.yorku.ca/ lamarsh). not only did they share their stories (told in their own words on a video at www.youtube.com/researchimpact#p/u/2/ rceiwahwo3q) but they received valuable feedback from other community and university members throughout the day. seek out feedback from whatever communities of practice or networks are available to you as this will help sustain your communityuniversity collaboration. lesson 7: aim for the best daniele knew the belt made by his zia would be the best belt ever, not because it was a belt, but because his zia had made it. she had made any number of garments for him before and each one was the best garment ever. some of the best communityuniversity collaborations are sustainable but they do not aim for sustainability as an outcome. they are sustainable as a by-product of ongoing collaborations between organisations who are experienced in collaborating. the uwyr and york university collaboration is sustainable because of four years of working through a number of projects with collaborators who are experienced in community-university work and who work from a position of trust and shared philosophy. aim to do the best in all your projects with your collaborator(s) and sustainability will be possible. when we started working as mutual knowledge brokers we didn’t plan to launch a disruptive collaboration, with the potential to transform investments in human services in york region. but we will. and it will be the best collaboration ever. http://www.kinark.on.ca http://www.yorkcas.on.ca http://www.yorku.ca/lamarsh/ http://www.yorku.ca/lamarsh/ 213 | gateways | phipps & zanotti lesson 8: collaborating is messy, labour intensive, social and works best in a shared cultural environment the basement in which daniele sat next to his zia would never be featured in a designer home magazine. it was a real basement that was lived in and worked in and as a result it remained covered in scraps of fabric and thread. this basement was ripe for collaboration and those easiest to collaborate with were also comfortable in this basement. but this is not an absolute. davies, nutley and walter (2008) have discussed how research utilisation has moved from a two-communities (= different cultures) model to iterative models where terms like ‘knowledge interaction might more appropriately describe the messy engagement of multiple players with diverse sources of knowledge’. while it is easiest for collaborations to form amongst partners from the same cultural background, knowledge mobilisation services help to bridge different cultural backgrounds until the partners can build their own shared culture. bridging these cultures requires flexibility, which is the key to successful collaborations and, therefore, sustainability. york university’s kmb unit was approached by york central hospital to facilitate a collaboration on youth engagement. the kmb unit identified a researcher from the department of psychology in the faculty of health and two other collaborators, york region district school board and the town of richmond hill (home to york central hospital). when the hospital was hit with restructuring, they backed away from a leading role and the school board stepped up to assume this responsibility. the hospital remains involved in a diminished capacity and this project went on to receive one of the previously mentioned $30 000 awards for collaborative research. seek collaborators who share cultural norms and values but also seek knowledge mobilisation services and flexible arrangements to overcome any cultural differences. lesson 9: while working together towards outcomes, there’s a lot of knowledge exchange along the way this is similar to lesson 4: the process is as important as the outcome. daniele and his zia worked together to make the best belt ever. daniele would make a suggestion and his zia would listen, exchanging knowledge between each other. unlike knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer is the one-way movement of knowledge between researchers and decision-makers. this can happen through a producer push or a user pull method (lavis 2003). daniele and his zia were practising knowledge exchange, which is an iterative, multi-directional method of collaborating. one of the kmb unit’s hallmark knowledge exchange events is ‘km in the am’ (knowledge mobilisation in the morning). km in the am is a monthly thematic breakfast meeting that has attracted 209 unique participants (many attending multiple meetings), including 99 from community organisations, 47 from the regional municipality of york and 63 from york university. covering topics as diverse as mental health, immigration, youth poverty, seniors, 214 | gateways | phipps & zanotti housing and homelessness, and diabetes among many others, km in the am provides a venue for community and university members who share a research interest to meet and explore potential collaborations. as opposed to a lunch & learn where the university talks to the community (uni-directional), km in the am is an iterative exchange event where university and community members talk to each other (multi-directional). both project teen moms and mobilising minds started at a km in the am, illustrating the potential of knowledge-exchange events to foster sustainable community-university collaborations. attend all of the networking, community of practice and knowledge-exchange events you can manage. you never know who you’re going to meet. and after all that daniele finally tried on his belt … lesson 10: it’s not the destination, it’s the journey daniele’s destination was the belt. the basement stories were his journey. uwyr and york university never consciously aimed to create a sustainable community-university collaboration. the collaboration evolved through shared activities, shared decisionmaking and shared investment in research and training, resulting in a sustainable collaboration. every step was made possible by the trust and shared commitment built up over the preceding steps. our journey has involved all the little things that go into making presentations, attending meetings, sharing meals, supporting staff, sharing press releases, linking websites, writing blogs, drafting agenda, taking minutes … and they continue. don’t worry about sustainability as a destination. pay attention to the journey and you’ll get where you want to go. these are the lots of little things that allowed us to collaborate on a scale we never imagined. a community-university collaboration for tomorrow on 6 october 2010, uwyr and york university presented a call to action for change inc., a social innovation incubator (http:// research.news.yorku.ca/2010/10/06/united-way-and-yorkuniversity-launch-change-inc-to-address-complex-social-issuesinyork-region/). this incubator will support new social entrepreneurs and social enterprises that promise to make a difference in the lives of citizens of york region. york university will provide space, access to shared administrative services, and access to graduate students and to faculty (i.e. business, law, design) to help entrepreneurs make evidence-informed decisions as they nurture their social ventures. uwyr will provide funding and access to a network of community and human services agencies. the social innovation incubator is also supported by an innovation advisory board made up of york region business leaders, including leaders from companies like ibm, open text, cgi, york region media group and the royal bank of canada. these business leaders will provide access to seasoned business mentors so that the social entrepreneurs are guided not only by research evidence but by http://research.news.yorku.ca/2010/10/06/united-way-and-york-university-launch-change-inc-to-address-complex-social-issuesin-york-region/ http://research.news.yorku.ca/2010/10/06/united-way-and-york-university-launch-change-inc-to-address-complex-social-issuesin-york-region/ http://research.news.yorku.ca/2010/10/06/united-way-and-york-university-launch-change-inc-to-address-complex-social-issuesin-york-region/ http://research.news.yorku.ca/2010/10/06/united-way-and-york-university-launch-change-inc-to-address-complex-social-issuesin-york-region/ 215 | gateways | phipps & zanotti practical experience. change inc. will help the partnership move from the process of knowledge mobilisation to the outcome of social innovation. social innovations are the outcomes of successful knowledge mobilisation: social innovations such as those we described for the york region immigration action plan and free the children (phipps & shapson 2009); social innovations such as helping the children’s aid society of york region provide evidence-informed mental health services to teen mothers; social innovations such as the parkdale activity and recreation centre (parc) heat registry that tracks and provides services to poor and vulnerable populations at risk of heat exposure on hot summer days; social innovations such as a sports camp for diabetic children and youth; social innovations such as the uwyr strength investments that invests in coalitions of citizens and organisations, not just uwyr member agencies; social innovations such as the homeless hub that makes research available to policy-makers and providers of services to the homeless. these are just a few examples of the many social innovations which were informed by research collaborations between community agencies and york university and which help improve individual and community wellbeing. deepening the uwyr–york university collaboration to focus on social innovations as outcomes of knowledge mobilisation will help maximise the relevance of university research in the lives of york region citizens. conclusion we have reflected on our experience and our evaluation of four years of community-university kmb collaboration. the 10 lessons learned from our experience demonstrate that sustainable community-university collaboration is possible – but by evolution not by design. do the little things as best as you can. learn from the little things when you do them incorrectly. and in four years, you too can have a sustainable community-university collaboration. it is never only about the belt. it is always about the basement stories that gets you there. references agrawal, a 2001, 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international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 1–7 © utsepress and the authors gateways: expanding knowledge through broader participation phil nyden, paul ashton, julie davis, marilyn krogh, reuben miller, pauline o’loughlin and david van zytveld his new journal, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, responds to a growing global movement of university-collaborative research initiatives. it also strives to fill a gap created by the sparse number of journals which publish outcomes of community-engaged research and work concerning community engagement. we seek articles based on research that is the result of actively engaged research-practitioner collaborative projects, has the potential for informing community-based activities or develops understanding of community engagement. combining different knowledge bases that have traditionally been separated into academic and non-academic worlds can dramatically increase information flowing to scholars, community leaders and activists seeking to improve the quality of life in local communities around the world. we also wish to encourage work that contributes to the scholarship of engagement. t gateways | nyden et al 2 gateways is the product of a series of discussions among faculty, staff, students and community partners involved in universitycommunity collaborative research at the center for urban research and learning at loyola university chicago (curl)1 and the shopfront2 at the university of technology, sydney (uts). curl and shopfront represent a new generation of university-based research centers focusing on breaking down barriers between university and community in both the shaping and completion of research. these two centers work collaboratively with a broad range of community partners in developing and completing research projects. partners have included informal neighborhood groups, community organizations, citywide advocacy coalitions, local government, regional policy making bodies and national coalitions. over the past ten years, in the course of a variety of visits to each other’s center, as well as participation in a number of seminars and discussions, we recognized the need to create this new international journal that highlights community-engaged work throughout the world. it may seem counterintuitive that two research centers anchored in studying local issues with local community groups would think that there is a need for an international journal on community research and engagement. however, just as our centers have been challenging the notion that the only rigorous research is research completed inside universities and defined solely by disciplinary-determined priorities, we have also challenged the notion that community-based research is parochial. community-based research can be a basic building block of regional, national and international research. rejecting the view that international policy institutes are the only networks capable of framing and completing comparative international research, we strongly recognize that grassrootsanchored research can provide valuable ground work that produce additional democratic forms of global knowledge shaped by researchers and community members alike. in past decades, the expenses of funding and coordinating international research favored large government and foundationsupported institutional research operations such as the world bank, the world health organization or the council on foreign relations. 1 center for urban research and learning at www.luc.edu/curl 2 uts shopfront at www.shopfront.uts.edu.au gateways | nyden et al 3 while these organizations have certainly contributed to our understanding of some global issues, they have sometimes left out local voices or have not always been sensitive to emerging issues in local communities. however, the new and much more accessible modes of communication that we now have available – from the internet and e-mail to faxes and international phone access – have extraordinary promise to democratize the research process and pull together more local voices (nyden et al. 1997). at the same time, there has been a flood of new grassroots social change and policy organizations worldwide. in blessed unrest environmentalist paul hawken points to a massive growth in grassroots organizations around the world that are having an impact on local practices and increasingly influencing global policy (hawken 2007). a similar expansion in grassroots organizations can be seen in other advocacy areas. as a free e-journal available to everyone, gateways will take advantage of increased access to communication in sharing research results and in stimulating interaction among community-based researchers and community partners worldwide. we are fortunate to have the generous support of the utsepress, based at the university of technology, sydney’s library which uses the open journal system (ojs). ojs is a free journal management and publishing system, developed by the public knowledge project, which seeks to improve and expand access to research. the term ‘research’ is used here more broadly then in most academic journals (see for example williamson & desouza 2007). it can be research based on questions generated within an academic discipline or it can be a research based on a collaboration among academic researchers, community leaders, policy makers or other local activists. it can be original research or it can be ‘translational’ research. although original research has long been favored in academic journals, a research-outcomes communication crisis has emerged in many of our countries. much of the knowledge produced in the academic world does not find its way out of specialized journals and into the hands of local communities or communityserving organizations. for example, in the case of basic biological research in the usa, it can take more than fifteen years for results of ‘bench research’ to get into the hands of health practitioners. this disconnect dramatically slows down our ability to improve the quality of lives of millions of people worldwide every year. in the gateways | nyden et al 4 usa, the national institutes of health has actually created new ‘translational research’ units and initiatives to address this problem (zerhouni 2005). the continuing effects of economic rationalism, through governmental exercises such as the excellence in research in australia (era) and the british research assessment exercise (rae), have also made pressing the need to provide refereed outlets for community-based research and work on community engagement. by providing a publication outlet for engaged research outcomes, gateways also hopes to encourage more collaborative researchpractitioner/activist research activities as well. we seek articles based on cooperative research approaches in conceptualizing, designing, completing and communicating research. universities and university-based researchers sometimes behave as if they have the corner on the knowledge market. local communities and residents are mere respondents in these research endeavors. however, this approach to research has the potential to produce less rigorous research with only a partial view of the social, political and cultural world around us. without including the knowledge and perspectives of people engaged on a day-to-day basis in local communities, local workplaces and locally-anchored organizations, we can blind ourselves to emerging critical issues. more importantly, we can overlook the kernels of solutions that are already in place in local communities that successfully address problems facing communities, regions or nations. with more systematic research, such emerging solutions can be better understood and potentially grown to a larger scale of impact. in essence gateways seeks to add chairs at a global research table. for years academics very successfully have used a model of informal discussions around the ‘research table’ to develop, guide and disseminate research results with colleagues in their respective fields. in a typical academic department, lunchtime conversations about the best methodology to use for a given project or an informal afternoon seminar where a research idea is floated with colleagues are used to strengthen the quality of research and draw on the knowledge of others in the department. discipline-based scholarly meetings do the same thing on a national scale. we would like this journal to be a vehicle for expanding that research table to include experienced community voices. this can only strengthen the quality of research since it taps into knowledge and experience often not easily accessed by academic-based researchers. gateways | nyden et al 5 the expanded research table is also an effort to democratize knowledge production. as information is more and more the major currency in shaping policy in local as well as international forums, strengthening a grassroots voice can challenge knowledge inequalities in our societies. that, in turn, can challenge basic inequalities in the quality of life we see in all of our nations. beginning in the 1970s, the science shop movement in europe has effectively worked to do just this. for over three decades, university and non-university science shops have worked with community members in defining pressing research needs and completing solutions-oriented research. research reports have addressed matters ranging from the measurement of the impact of industrial farm insecticides on local communities to the evaluation of new approaches to reduce domestic violence (european commission 2003). this work is described in more detail elsewhere in this issue. in keeping with our perspective in democratizing knowledge production, we are using a broadened definition for ‘peer’ in our peer-reviewed section of the journal. non-governmental organization leaders, community activists, regional policy organization staff often have the credentials and/or experience to review research articles. whether holding a phd or having decades of experience, such nonacademic peers may be as qualified or more qualified to judge the quality of articles submitted to this journal as are university-based researchers. consequently, in addition to using academics, we will go outside the university walls to find qualified reviewers of gateways articles. recognizing that community activists, social service providers and policy makers among other non-academics do not necessarily see peer-reviewed articles as the only source of information, we also are including a non-peer-reviewed section to publish reports and comments of value to the broader engaged research community. an added benefit of focusing on community-based research is that it tends to be interdisciplinary because issues important to those outside of academia do not necessary neatly fall into disciplinary silos. thus, we expect gateways articles not only to transcend university-community, researcher-practitioner and scholar-activist boundaries, but also to bridge disciplinary boundaries. much of the creativity in research and in policy innovation takes place at the boundaries in our society. such work pushes us outside familiar gateways | nyden et al 6 worlds and forces us to take into consideration different perspectives, different sets of knowledge, and different experiences. we expect the quality of gateways articles to be enhanced by this combination of different knowledge bases and tensions among different participants in the research enterprise. there are a number of national and international networks that promote engaged research. the european-based livingknowledge network is such an example.3 growing out of over thirty years of science shop experience and capitalizing on recent support from the european union, this network has supported bi-annual international conferences of scholars and activists and has created mentoring networks to develop new science shops in other european countries and cities. the community outreach partnership center (copc)4 program of the us department of housing and urban development functioned to facilitate growth in university-community partnerships for a number of years. although copc has not been funded in recent years, there are other efforts in the us to bring together universitycommunity research centers and informal groups of researchers and community partners.4 within the public health field, the community campus partnership for health (ccph)5 has been among the most effective networks in the usa. the australian universities community engagement alliance (aucea)6 has worked to promote coordinated research projects in that country (temple, story & delaforce 2005). in canada the biannual community-university exposition has served to bring together community-based researchers and community activists to share information and forge new connections (clover & mcgregor 2008). participatory action research networks in latin america have regularly held conferences and seminars to maintain links among community-based projects in multiple countries. gateways holds the promise of being a valuable tool in promoting and reporting on grassroots research initiatives, communityuniversity engagements and the scholarship of engagement. 3 the living knowledge network at www.scienceshops.org 4 community outreach partnerships centers program at www.hud.gov/progdesc/copc.cfm 5 community-campus partnerships for health at www.depts.washington.edu/ccph/ 6 australian universities community engagement alliance at www.aucea.net.au gateways | nyden et al 7 ultimately it will be the authors and readers of gateways who will bring this promise to life. references european commission 2007, science shops: knowledge for the community, eur 20877 isbn 91-894-6246-9. glover, d & mcgregor, c 2008, community-university partnerships: connecting for change, proceedings of the third international communityuniversity exposition, university of victoria,victoria. hawken, p 2007, blessed unrest, penguin books, london. nyden, p, figert, a, shibley, m & burrows, d 1997, building community: social science in action, pine forge press, thousand oaks, california. temple, j, story, a & delaforce, w 2005, ‘aucea: an emerging collaborative and strategic approach dedicated to university community engagement’, http://aucea.med.monash.edu.au:8080/traction/permalink/website51 (accessed 29 september 2008) williamson, a & desouza, r 2007, researching with communities: grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research, muddy creek press, auckland and london. zerhouni, ea 2005, ‘translational and clinical science – time for a new vision’, new england journal of medicine, vol. 353, no. 15, october, pp. 1621– 1623. microsoft word br_attoh.doc gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 197–199 © utsepress and the author creating a new kind of university: institutionalizing communityuniversity engagement, stephen l. percy, nancy l. zimpher & mary jane brukardt (eds). anker publishing company, bolton, ma, 2006; pp 288. ince the release in 1990 of ernest boyer’s seminal work, scholarship reconsidered: the priorities of the professoriate, there has been a flurry of research and publication activity calling for american colleges and universities to embrace the scholarship of engagement. organizations such as the national review board, the american association for higher education, the american council on education, the committee on institutional cooperation, campus compact and the national association of state universities and land grant colleges have weighed in on the subject, offering criteria and guidelines that decipher the complexities of defining engagement; engaging students in service learning and reflective inquiry; determining evaluation procedures for promotion and tenure; fostering a campus climate that promotes community engagement; reconciling conflicts associated with faculty workloads; and implementing transformative cultural change. north central association’s higher learning commission has revised its ‘criterion 5: engagement and service’ accreditation standards by developing operational components and definitions of engagement, and by establishing engagement benchmarks. recently, the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching has developed a new community engagement classification scheme that takes into account an institution’s involvement with curricular engagement and outreach and partnerships. the scholarship of engagement is systematically gaining legitimacy through a growing community of scholars, an increasing number of professional societies and the emergence of scholarly journal outlets such as the journal of public service, the journal of extension and this inaugural journal, gateways. the aforementioned issues surrounding engagement are what stephen percy, nancy zimpher, mary jane brukardt and their colleagues seek to address in creating a new kind of university: institutionalizing community-university engagement, an important scholarly addition to the debate and discourse on the scholarship of engagement. the book is divided into five parts with each part further subdivided into a number s gateways, vol 1, 2008 198 of chapters. part i (chapters 1 to 2) sets the context of engagement through the lens of the milwaukee idea, chronicling the university of wisconsin-milwaukee’s (uwm) institutional commitment and pathway to university engagement. it highlights the arduous process of cultural and institutional change that occurred in uwm under the bold leadership of then chancellor nancy zimpher, including an analysis of the barriers to and effective strategies for transformative change. part ii (chapters 3 to 5) examines the effect of community partners, shared governance structures, and the school of continuing education in fostering institutional change. part iii (chapters 6 to 9) explores the scholarship of engagement in the context of teaching and learning and curriculum reform. it traces the twenty-year history of movements and key milestone moments associated with campus-based service, service learning and civic engagement, beginning with the era of student volunteerism in the 1980s. it then focuses on a number of grassroots approaches to curriculum reform and assessment, including efforts aimed at designing core curricula and general education requirements around the themes of diversity and engagement. part iv (chapters 10 to 11) presents two initiatives – the milwaukee partnership academy and the milwaukee non-profit community – that served as a framework for creating, structuring, and sustaining community partnership. part iv (chapters 12 to 15) concludes by presenting some examples of how universities and colleges can go about institutionalizing and sustaining engagement beyond the initial stages of visioning, planning and adoption. one such example is the us housing and urban development’s community and outreach partnership center (copc) program, launched in 1992 to encourage colleges and universities to develop and implement outreach and engagement activities addressing the problems of their urban communities. the three concluding chapters that follow examine the structural and procedural challenges involved in the administration of an engaged university. specific challenges include the procedures involved with recruiting and hiring faculty who advocate engagement; conflicts associated with promotion and tenure guidelines; negotiating grants, contracts and relations to corporate interests; service to students; and promoting engagement through fundraising and gift giving. gateways, vol 1, 2008 199 while the opinions entailed in the authors’ analysis suggest a number of potential directions for promoting the scholarship of engagement, many of the book’s central perspectives are not new to the literature on engagement. despite these limitations, the authors’ analysis makes a significant contribution to the literature on the scholarship of engagement by highlighting the difficult question of how one goes about sustaining and institutionalizing community-university partnerships. the book’s conclusions suggest that universities and colleges can institutionalize engagement in sustainable ways through six practices: integrate engagement into mission; forge partnerships as the overarching framework for engagement; renew and redefine discovery and scholarship; integrate engagement into teaching and learning; recruit and support new champions; and create radical institutional change. radical change can occur by acknowledging and removing structural and institutional barriers, fostering interdisciplinarity and facilitating networking. further, radical change entails instituting recognition systems and financial incentives to reward innovative and creative thinking, developing appropriate mechanisms to support community-university partnerships and requiring new governance structures to develop procedures that inform the processes of assessment and accountability. ultimately, universities have to be resolute in planning, implementing, assessing and institutionalizing engagement. samuel a. attoh loyola university chicago microsoft word br_goff.doc gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 202-203 © utsepress and the author researching with communities: grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research, andy williamson & ruth desouza (eds). muddy creek press, auckland & london 2007; tables, contributors’ notes, bibliographies; paperbound; pp 413. esearching with communities: grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research represents a paradigmatic shift from the more conventional approaches of researching communities as objectified research subjects. as a research practice it significantly augments the realisation that social research is a situated, cultural practice, attuned to individual, cultural and ethical characteristics of a group of people researching shared interests together. such a shift raises new questions, generates new methods and sees social research resource new forms of social change and progression. williamson and desouza have brought together twenty-six case studies that describe research approaches of bringing ‘the community’ into research enterprises as active participants. in some cases the researchers are brought into a community’s self determined initiative. it is refreshing, informative, current and engaging reading. the text is to be highly recommended to fellow social researchers, teachers of social research, community participants, students and consultants. it also has significant value to experienced as well as potential commissioners of participatory research strategies. following the editors’ scene setting introductions, the book is divided into three sections: ‘engaging with communities’ describes strategies for establishing and maintaining co-researching relationships; ‘research as a living partnership’ explores how participatory research as a form of inter-relationship stretches the expectations and capabilities of all participants; and ‘methodology and process’ reconsiders essential concepts and elements of research within co-researcher relationships and frameworks. the case studies cross many different fields of application including health, community development, conflict and disaster, information technology, spirituality and population displacements. the locations cross the globe from asia-pacific, europe, africa and the americas. australian practitioners will be encouraged to see so r gateways, vol 1, 2008 203 much innovative work being carried out in australia particularly in relation to indigenous communities. the binding thread throughout is as the inside page states: ‘undertaking research in ways that promote and privilege the voice of community, is respectful of local or indigenous practices and is culturally safe’. each author expresses commitment to establishing environments that enable lay parity in inquiry design, delivery and utility and also to explore how barriers to such environments persist in reflexivity about research practice as well as research outcomes. it is clear that researching with communities is not a solution to oppression so much as a way of self critically joining with those enduring oppression so that the wisdom of the oppressed may go towards transforming their own condition. researching with communities is powerful in its mapping of a maturation of the action research field. it describes initiatives that go beyond linear models of research methodology to principle-based, whole system and emergent approaches and outcomes. the authors describe this maturation in grounded, accessible language. the observations, reflections and self-directed questions energetically communicate an inspiring and indeed, encouraging map of the action research field. this book is a solid stepping-stone into a confident and capable action research future for both communities and those who work with them alike. susan goff action learning action research association democracy and higher education: traditions and stories of civic engagement scott j. peters, with theodore r. alter & neig schwartzbach, michigan state university press, east lansing, mi, 2010, 396 pages this book is one in a series titled, ‘transformations in higher education: scholarship of engagement’ that address issues of campus-community partnerships in the united states. it presents profiles of a dozen academic professionals working at cornell university’s college of agriculture and life sciences in new york state who have pursued collaborative education and research for tangible public benefit. each profile includes a biographical account of how that person came to do his or her work, and a narrative about one of their projects. half of the profiles feature social scientists and half natural scientists. cornell is one of about one hundred institutions in the american land grant system, which was created by federal legislation in the later 1800s to improve public welfare, especially that of farmers and rural communities. in 1914, this purpose was institutionalised through the smith-lever act, which created and still funds the cooperative extension system, where ‘extension agents’ communicate between campus academics and off-campus constituencies. while the authors of this volume argue that early extension work was collaborative in process and democratic in purpose, during the post-world war ii era, many people viewed it more narrowly as technical assistance to commodity agriculture producers. since the nation now has an abundance of cheap basic foodstuffs, the population is more urban and environmental concerns are rising, support for the land grant system is faltering. in this book, peters, alter and schwartzbach seek to recover the original vision of the land grant system, and show how academics and their partners are anticipating and addressing issues such as wildlife management, rural school quality, urban neighbourhood development, pesticide use on golf courses and organic farming, as well the concerns of dairy farmers. of the people profiled, some have appointments as extension educators, some as non-tenure-track faculty members and some as tenure-track faculty members. most of them never aspired to be ‘ivory tower’ academics, and incrementally found ways to partner gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 198–200 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 marilyn c. krogh loyola university, chicago 199 | gateways | review with people in the ‘real world’. in the process, they reshaped their academic roles into something new, something we recognise now as engaged scholarship, or in the authors’ words, as ‘public work’. formulating, conducting and interpreting research relevant to their partners is central to many of the people profiled. for instance, anu rangarajan developed a guide for researchers on crop rotation based on discussions among a group of leading organic growers. molly jahn believes ‘with the kind of conviction akin to missionary zeal that fundamental and applied science … are highly synergistic ways of viewing the world’. she publishes in top academic journals and releases commercially successful crop varieties. and frank rossi not only draws on his own research, but also builds ‘on ramps and off ramps’ to the research of colleagues who won’t interpret results for laymen or make policy decisions. all of them report that their work requires not just technical expertise but also, crucially, organising ability, which was not typically part of their professional training. in some cases, the organising is relatively simple, for example where existing networks intersect through a trusted academic, such as rossi, who is the ‘expert in the middle’ of heated conflicts about turf management among golf-course supervisors, environmentalists and regulators. in a couple of cases, academics helped organise one side of an explicit political conflict, as when tom lyson joined the opposition to school consolidation in freeville, and ken reardon supported the cause of the mostly immigrant essex street merchants in new york city against the redevelopment plans of then mayor edward koch. most commonly, however, they organise less sophisticated, decentralised, emerging or abandoned agricultural producers into professional associations and attempt to advise them in ways that serve both the producers and the public. for instance, tom maloney founded pro-dairy to improve management on farms that were growing from family operations to larger businesses; it now helps farms respond to hispanic workforces pressing for collective bargaining and overtime pay. marvin pritts started what became the new york berry growers association to serve decentralised berry growers in ways comparable to the associations for the more centralised apple and grape growers. the association now certifies berries cultivated using integrated pest management methods. as a horticulturalist, rangarajan recognised the importance of organic farmers, even though they constituted less than one per cent of the state’s growers, and historically had been overlooked by the university. she helped create what became the northeast organic network (neon) to facilitate that relationship and to sponsor funded research. jahn, who is involved in plant breeding and genetics, was undeterred when her successful open-pollinated winter squash was dropped from the product line of the seed company which distributed it, as the company had merged into a larger entity that would only carry hybrids for a global market. 200 | gateways | review jahn founded the public seed initiative, connecting smaller seed companies and growers with public-sector germ plasma. the effort has been applauded by the united states department of agriculture and similar efforts are starting in other regions of the country. the vision, energy and accomplishments of all 12 people profiled are impressive and inspiring. their stories are diverse, rich and complex – an encouragement to any academic wondering what an engaged career would look like. moreover, the satisfaction they take in their work should be heartening to people who feel they have to sacrifice their personal lives to do engaged work. jahn is especially articulate on this point: by pursuing collaborative research, rather than the rat race of ‘big science’, she was able to study interesting questions, get funding, make a societal contribution and enjoy her personal life. the authors provide these profiles as appreciative examples of people doing engaged work; they give some historical context at the beginning and some draw out lessons at the end. they do not delve into the problems of this work, although several are mentioned in the profiles, especially the erosion of belief in and support for the public sector. instead, the authors invite their readers to reflect on these stories and learn what can illuminate their own work. administrators and funders should take note of the vitality here, and encourage similar efforts. in so doing, they will promote a democratic way of life where people work together to understand and address shared problems. in the words of truman’s 1946 president’s commission on higher education, such a way of life would enable academics to ‘deploy technical expertise and judgment not only skillfully, but also for public regarding ends in a public regarding way’. in light of visual arts a knowledge transfer partnership project as experiential learning the ‘in light of visual arts’ project was initiated by two academic units within the hong kong baptist university (hkbu): the academy of visual arts (ava) and the knowledge transfer office (kto). these academic units partnered with megaman® hong kong, a light manufacturer, on this project. the three parties had a shared mission: to engage a wider audience for eco-friendly lights and to create awareness of their uses, so that the targeted audience, both visual arts students and the general public, would come to appreciate the importance of lighting effects to the visual arts sector and other creative industries. how the three parties were connected in this knowledge transfer partnership (ktp) project is examined below. project objectives there were five main objectives of the ‘in light of visual arts’ project: (1) to enhance students’ ability in the use of lighting in visual arts communication; (2) to facilitate knowledge transfer of art appreciation and art archiving between manufacturers and art practitioners; (3) to raise and gain awareness of hkbu’s contribution to visual communication and the environment; (4) to stimulate knowledge transfer in the arts and humanities through collaboration and partnerships; and (5) to make an impact by delivering the concept of ‘eco-philosophy of light’ through visual arts, research and documentation. the partnership according to the hkbu’s knowledge transfer office, knowledge transfer (kt) is ‘the transfer of knowledge, expertise, skills and capabilities from universities as the academic knowledge base to companies or organizations in need of the knowledge, such as nongovernment organizations, commercial and industrial sectors, and various non-academic beneficiaries’ (knowledge transfer office 2013). kto considers that kt should not be limited to technology transfer or commercialisation, but should include transfer of knowledge and know-how between academic disciplines such as arts, education and humanities. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 218–27 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 ming-hoi lai hong kong baptist university 219 | gateways | lai to echo kto advocacy, ava and kto, the two academic units within hkbu, worked with megaman® hong kong to develop the ‘eco-philosophy of light’, a pilot scheme emphasising a participant-and-audience-oriented experience. visual arts axis, the community art branch of ava, was responsible for the project’s execution, which aimed at reaching a general audience, including the communities near the two campuses of ava in east kowloon, as well as its local secondary school network. the three parties’ involvement was as follows: academy of visual arts of hkbu (academic partner); megaman® hong kong (external partner); knowledge transfer office of hkbu (kt associate) – see figure 1. the ‘in light of visual arts’ project was more than a simple transfer of technological knowledge of eco-lighting from megaman® hong kong to ava students; it also aimed to make this knowledge available to a wider audience, for instance, by holding an exhibition and educating people about different applications of eco-lighting and the associated technology. knowledge transfer and the arts smith (2012) points out that disciplines within academic institutions tend to have a specific or, in negative terms, ‘narrow’ field of study and that, through knowledge transfer, academics from different departments would be able to break through their established knowledge boundaries to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as communicating and cooperating with industry. as ozga and jones 2006 (p. 7) note, ‘… recent academic figure 1: overview of the three parties’ collaboration 220 | gateways | lai explorations of the nature of knowledge have included discussion of the relationship between the kind of knowledge in play and its transfer and transferability’. the ‘in light of visual arts’ project aimed to examine how knowledge transfer could be integrated with informal learning approaches and visual arts elements, in addition to scientific and technical knowledge, which most people would associate with lighting. ‘indeed, [d]evelopments in understanding knowledge support a shift from traditional linear models of knowledge production and subsequent dissemination to an interactive, iterative, problem-focused, trans-disciplinary model.’ (ozga & jones 2006, p. 9). knowledge transfer should not be limited to the knowledge related to technical development, it should also ‘… include knowledge that can promote critical political and social awareness and understanding’ (ozga & jones, 2006, p. 9). there seems on the surface to be little scope for knowledge transfer for the arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines, yet these disciplines may actually be able to contribute to the creation of meaning and value beyond economic outcomes. thus, knowledge transfer from these disciplines could provide other perspectives for visual arts students, such as on environmental issues, which may not be included in their studies. the participants in the ‘in light of visual arts’ project were students of bachelor of arts (hons) in visual arts, an undergraduate program offered by ava. according to the program requirements, students must take some compulsory courses, which include introduction to visual arts, introduction to western art and introduction to chinese art. apart from the introductory courses, the students have to choose at least three clusters, each comprising four to five courses, from three divisions. studio and media art division visual arts studies division craft and design division 1. drawing and painting 2. chinese arts 3. lens-based media 4. sculpture 5. body 1. art history & theory 2. visual & material culture 1. graphic art 2. experimental imaging 3. glass & ceramics 4. wearables 5. objects & environment within the 12 available clusters, only 3 cover knowledge and use of lighting: lens-based media, experimental imaging, and objects and environment. the use of lighting has only a supportive role in the art media. for example, ‘looking through the lens’, a course within the cluster lens-based media, covers lighting and optical theories and is an accessory to photography, investigating how light affects the photo-taking process. ‘sustainable design’, a course within the cluster objects and environment, covers sustainability in design by utilising recyclable or biodegradable materials. the course structure therefore inspired figure 2: clusters available for visual arts students 221 | gateways | lai the writer to consider how lighting knowledge and eco-philosophy, or any other relevant factors, could be articulated in the ba (hons) in visual arts program, so that lighting, as an important source of knowledge for visual arts students, could sharpen students’ observation and sensitivity towards the community and environment around them, thus forming the basis for unique learning and artistic experiences. the provision of opportunities for unique experiences is important as internship may not be an integral component of all undergraduate programs. where this is the case, this could be facilitated by working with different stakeholders within the commercial sector. for example, in the ‘in light of visual arts’ project, student participants working with an established company of the lighting industry, megaman®, were guided to consider the needs of various business and governmental organisations: how a commercial organisation works towards an ethical and sustainable business strategy, and how that strategy may be linked to the arts, where the arts and sustainable business share a common belief in social and community betterment. the kt process for ‘in light of visual arts’ involved two key stages. the first stage was knowledge transfer from megaman® hong kong to student participants; the second stage was the transfer of knowledge from students to the general public – how ava students and lecturers incorporated lighting knowledge so that in the long run it might become an intangible asset for both the general public and megaman® hong kong, the lighting manufacturer. knowledge transfer and ‘in light of visual arts’ first stage of knowledge transfer process megaman® hong kong played an important role in the first stage of the knowledge transfer process of this project. through three workshops and a concept store visit, the lighting company transferred knowledge about eco-friendly lighting equipment and solutions to ava student participants. students were thus able to combine their artistic knowledge and talent with the expertise gained from megaman® hong kong throughout their creative activities. they were expected to have some knowledge and understanding of lighting technology and of how the use of lighting maximises the technology’s efficiency while minimising potential hazards to the environment. whereas it is generally perceived that visual arts students have a good eye and hand for creative processes, they are also expected to tackle aspects of these processes they are less familiar with, but that are important when it comes to art and ethics, or the more encompassing genre known as ‘environmental art’. these are not out-of-reach experiences related to seeing art as mere cultural capital or classy commodity, but echo the third and fourth objectives of the project, to ‘raise and gain awareness of hkbu’s contribution to visual communication and the environment’ and to ‘stimulate knowledge transfer in the arts 222 | gateways | lai and humanities through collaboration and partnerships’. it was therefore important for the visual arts students involved in the project to acquire lighting knowledge and to disseminate what they had learned in a comprehensible manner. this is not to say that the aim should not be art creation, but rather that the art should become more approachable for the general public so that community members are not restrained by ‘technical boundaries’. this acts as a good beginning for disseminating both artistic and lighting knowledge, both being similar in the techniques they involve. this explains how the project, in enabling an exploratory experience for its student participants, encouraged them to use lighting knowledge in dynamic ways for artistic creation while attaching meaning to it, both personal and social. for example, the making of light and shadow was a fruitful experiment for some student participants – by making full use of the low temperature characteristics of light-emitting diode (led) products, such a process avoids the burn that may be caused to the thin layer of paper or wood of lighting products when put close to the surface. the work, dear teacher (figure 3), for example, was made from a large pile of genko yoshi, a paper often used for chinese writing. in putting the light bulb underneath the pile of papers, the student was required to consider the capability of the papers and the lighting product, as well as the heating issue. the student was also required to incorporate the skill of paper crafting with the interplay of light and shadow, working to articulate the piece on both personal and public levels – to communicate with the general public. similar examples include the full moon, with its display of five decoupage lanterns, each decorated with patterned utensil napkins, and an interplay of light and characters, a work expressing its literal meaning. it is a white cloth installation with chinese characters presented in a free-floating order while casting light on the cloth. the exploration of light and shadow demonstrates how lighting products mean more than illumination – articulating certain art forms, while being a stable and sustainable lighting source. the mechanism behind the art-making process also engages the general public, prompting student participants to design with various exhibition spaces in mind, as well as audiences. informal learning and knowledge transfer. as discussed above, megaman® hong kong covered practical knowledge about lighting technology and an introduction to lighting in its three workshops and provided an opportunity for students to gain on-site experience of different lighting functions, as well as knowledge about choice of products and skills. knowledge transfer as effected in ‘in light of visual arts’ thus differs from conventional knowledge transfer in that the emphasis is more on student application and how this can be used in the development of a feasible model for visual arts education in the longer term. figure 3: dear teacher, 2012 223 | gateways | lai in light of this, the revised bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, proposed by anderson and krathwohl (krathwohl 2002), and which includes six major learning objectives (figure 4), has been used as a framework for a visual arts educational model. the content and activities in workshops 1 and 2 relate to the ‘remembering’ and ‘understanding’ categories in figure 4, as the student participants were required to memorise and understand the information and concepts conveyed by the representatives of megaman® hong kong about their lighting products. different cognitive levels of the revised bloom’s taxonomy played an important role during workshop 3 and the art-making process, where students had to give careful consideration to fusing knowledge of visual arts and lighting – thus reaching beyond creating merely ‘glowing’ artwork. student participants were to apply the lighting knowledge they had acquired from the workshops and to analyse which, if not all, would fit their works better. the three works mentioned above all utilise paper and lighting sources, but how these mediums are individually integrated produces three different effects. students have to evaluate how to maximise the impact of lighting before coming up with their own creation: in an interplay of light and character, by displaying words in free-floating order; and in the full moon by using tailored patterned napkins for five decoupage lanterns. in addition to the integration and application of different concepts, the project aimed to consolidate the kt process with actual creative experiences. john dewey, the renowned educator and philosopher, proposed theories emphasising the relationship between experiences and creativity. dewey believed that knowledge should be obtained through different experiential or creative experiences, and that experiences were the interactions between people and the environment. ‘learning by doing’, according figure 4: krathwohl’s revised bloom’s taxonomy 224 | gateways | lai to dewey, was an important way of learning and ensured that students were able to make good use of their knowledge in daily experiences. dewey (1916) suggested that students, also as learners, should be allowed to participate in various learning activities to acquire a variety of knowledge, which supports the aim of ‘in light of visual arts’ to bring the visual arts and the use of lighting closer together. sustainable lighting is a significant development in modern societies, although generally it appears to be detached from the art-making process and mostly seen as a separate professional domain. lacking the inclusion of lighting knowledge in visual arts education partly explains the difficulties participating students encountered in the course of its trial. dewey (1934) pointed out that, when learners are required to inquire into a process they have gone through where they have encountered problems or obstacles to learning, reflection could lead them to come up with solutions, and the final solution itself would often signify the formation of new knowledge. when student participants in the project were required to assess if their artistic ideas were feasible, having made their own artworks with resources that may have been quite unfamiliar to them, they had to understand and differentiate between various lighting products (or theories) before refining their work. lighting products became part of the art materials or essential elements of their artwork, although they may have overlooked or taken them for granted previously. during the process of exploration, even though the students received advice and suggestions from different parties, such as representatives from megaman® hong kong or ava lecturers, they sometimes still had questions or problems when engaging in the art-making process. in addition to the problems during the production process, mentioned previously, such as choice of lighting product colour, once preparing for the exhibition the students faced other kinds of challenges related to, for example, assembling their artworks in a limited exhibition space, which had an impact on how their original ideas could be viewed. students then had to make adjustments or amendments to their artworks, while retaining the original concepts as much as possible. davies (2008) further investigated experiential learning and came to believe that it could be categorised as a form of informal learning (figure 5). he pointed out that this kind of learning was affected by a number of elements, apart from observation and conceptualisation, including formal knowledge, past experiences and expectations. hayton, boyes and preston (2010) point out that creative knowledge transfer should not be limited to others who are involved in the creative process. creative knowledge transfer is an iterative process and provides lots of opportunities for all learners to reflect on the experience and knowledge gained during the process. 225 | gateways | lai expectations emotions opportunity learning orientation, including memory own observations fellow participants’ observations informed non-participants’ observations formal knowledge own experience reflection insight credibility checking experience bank experience ‘in light of visual arts’ adopted the informal learning approach. not only did students ‘receive’ the lighting knowledge being transferred to them from megaman® hong kong, they were also able to construct new knowledge by taking part in the project. the learning experience was enhanced by acquiring new knowledge, incorporating the new knowledge into the art-making process and subsequently disseminating the artworks to a wider audience, both art lovers and the general public. feedback from student participants. student participants revealed that they got a taste of what it was like applying visual arts in the commercial world. for example, one of the students came up with an original idea for creating a light with adjustable brightness; however, the participant was compelled to compromise his creative ideal due to his limited technical knowledge. as a result, he modified his product to be a conventional lamp with an ordinary switch. this example illustrates the imperative role technical support plays in helping students solve problems encountered in the creative process. due to such problems with implementation, some students have suggested incorporating workshops on basic electrics in forthcoming kt projects, especially those that relate closely to art and design. other students suggested inviting professional artists who were familiar with light as a creative medium to be consultants. these suggestions reinforce the importance of technical knowledge. even a basic knowledge of lighting made it possible for participants in the project to enhance their creative process by enabling them to utilise their knowledge of light more flexibly, more thoroughly, and to greater success. second stage of knowledge transfer process with the integration of the informal learning approach, the ava students managed to consolidate the knowledge transferred from megaman® hong kong to create 11 artworks incorporating figure 5: overview of the elements involved in informal learning 226 | gateways | lai visual arts and lighting elements. stichler (2011, p. 19) remarks that, for any kt project between different disciplines, it is important to have ‘dissemination of “the good, the bad, and the ugly”, what worked well and what did not work to our expectations, and both supported and failed hypotheses convey knowledge of these findings to others’. participants in the ‘in light of visual arts’ project agree with this notion, believing that knowledge transfer should not be confined to commercial industry or academia, and that the project content, process and outcomes should be shared with the general public so as to become an extension of the knowledge transfer partnership. the university grants committee of hong kong sar (2013) also agreed that knowledge transfer should be a reciprocal process: the community should benefit by gaining knowledge on lighting, while the collaboration between university and industry should draw the two parties closer together. the aim of visual arts axis, an organisation affiliated with ava, mentioned earlier, was to reach out to the community by means of visual arts. visual arts axis therefore invited a number of local secondary schools to the ‘in light of visual arts’ exhibition, and provided guided tours for them. by this means, secondary school students had the opportunity to learn more about the basics of lighting, mainly the difference between eco-friendly lighting products and traditional ones, as well as its impact on artmaking and, in turn, the environment. however, arranging visits and guided tours of the exhibition for secondary school students was a fairly obvious source of community outreach for this project. knowledge transfer could have been enhanced by introducing more proactive measures to engage other stakeholders within the community at an earlier stage of the project. conclusion as a pilot project aimed at synthesising lighting knowledge, visual arts and community engagement, ‘in light of visual arts’ was ambitious in steering away from a unidirectional approach, which is often the favoured model for ‘technology transfer’. the project nonetheless prompted student participants and the writer to attempt to enhance the function of the visual arts, at the same time bringing visual arts students, artists, art-lovers and, if possible, the general public closer, using the ‘in light of visual arts’ project as the medium. while lighting knowledge is (mostly) technical, and thus functional, the information provided by the lighting manufacturer also catered to the creative needs of visual arts students: how to comprehend the concept of illumination, temperature and space. while some artists may be offended by the notion of functionality in art, this project indicates that both function and creativity can play a part in bringing environmental messages to a broader audience through a knowledge transfer partnership. including lighting in the visual arts curriculum and/or as an extracurricular 227 | gateways | lai activity, in line with the informal learning approach, could inspire future visual arts students and other participants in the project to come up with other approaches as to how the combination of lighting and visual arts knowledge could have a stronger impact in enhancing community awareness of the environment. references davies, l 2008, informal learning: a new model for making sense of experience, gower, aldershot, uk. dewey, j 1916, democracy and education, the free press, new york. dewey, j 1934, art as experience, perigee books, new york. hayton, s, boyes, l & preston, y 2010, creative labs: exploring creative knowledge transfer, hayton associates, bradford, uk. knowledge transfer office 2013, ‘what is knowledge transfer’, knowledge transfer office, hong kong baptist university, viewed 3 july 2013, http:// kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=what-is-knowledge-transfer. krathwohl , d 2002, ‘a revision of bloom’s taxonomy: an overview’, theory into practice, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 212–18. ozga, j & jones, r 2006, ‘travelling and embedded policy: the case of knowledge transfer’, journal of education policy, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1–17. smith, l 2012, knowledge transfer in higher education: collaboration in the arts and humanities, palgrave macmillan, hampshire, uk. stichler, j 2011, ‘knowledge transfer through dissemination’, herd, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 17–22. ugc (university grants committee) 2012, knowledge transfer, viewed 28 december 2012, www.ugc.hk/eng/ugc/activity/kt/kt.htm. culture, regeneration and community reinventing the city it is just over 12 years since the doors of tate modern in london were opened. the curators, architects and engineers carrying out the ambitious plan to convert the former bankside power station could not have fully anticipated just how popular the museum would become in catching the public’s imagination. from all over the world visitors to london have made tate modern a ‘must see’ destination. the building was designed for two million visitors annually, yet over five million arrived in the first year, exceeding even the most optimistic projections. similar levels of attendance have continued, as the building, the exhibition program, the collection and installations combined have embedded tate modern in the cultural landscape – not only in the united kingdom but across the world. in my role as head of regeneration and partnerships for tate i have been involved in the strategic management of tate modern for the last 11 years, co-ordinating how we work as an international cultural institution, a business and a part of the london community. looking back over the previous decade, it is clear that tate modern continues to be much more than a world-class art museum and tourist destination. in what has become known as the tate modern ‘project’, the museum sits at the heart of a wider strategy utilising creative organisations and creative thinking in the economic development, regeneration and reinvention of a central area of a major world city. what began as a series of interventions and initiatives has evolved into a fullyformed strategic approach to city and neighbourhood-making. the project is underpinned by a strong ethos of partnership-building responsive to the needs of local communities, businesses and tourists, while also recognising the interconnected local, national and international dimensions of both the museum and the local area. the project is also sustained by a number of alliances in the public, business and political spheres which play a vital advocacy role highlighting the contributions cultural institutions, creative practice and artists make in the places in which we live, work and play. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 152–65 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 donald hyslop tate modern, london 153 | gateways | hyslop crucial to this model of engaged working is how to meet the following series of basic ongoing challenges: — how can the often differing needs of local communities, workers and tourists be balanced when developing an area? —how can cultural organisations and other businesses work together, and can culture be good for business? —what is the best way to engage and encourage political leadership and advocacy? —what is the best way to develop an organisation which not only works within local, national and international contexts but makes connections between them? —what are the opportunities to bring artists, creative forces and ideas into the places and spaces in which we live our everyday lives? this article explores the development, challenges and successes of the tate modern project so far – for it has been undoubtedly successful, evidenced by the sheer amount of physical change, development and new facilities in the surrounding area. yet there are still some critics of both the project itself and the broader concept of using culture and the arts to stoke the engine of urban (or for that matter rural) regeneration. the most common accusation levelled at cultural regeneration is that it is really a form of gentrification, primarily concerned with increasing the profits of the few. others argue that it amounts to the ‘sanitising’ of communities as property prices rise and new developments become unaffordable for most people. at the same time, public space is privatised and industrial or traditional work places are displaced. it is true that the pioneer projects in europe, including guggenheim bilbao and tate modern, have sparked a series of capital investments seeking to replicate these early success stories by using culture as a driver to reinvent and re-energise towns and cities across the world. during the last 10 years, a number of ambitious schemes have been mounted across the uk, including baltic (gateshead), new gallery (walsall), nottingham contemporary (nottingham), mima (middlesborough), lowry and imperial war museum north (salford), royal armouries (leeds), milton keynes (milton keynes) and most recently turner contemporary (margate). some projects have failed, including sheffield’s national pop museum and urbis in manchester, both of which have now closed. however, most have been initially successful in increasing tourism, enhancing cultural value and civic pride and prompting secondary waves of market-led development. in most cases it is too early to judge the success of the long-term impact of these projects on the economic and social development of their communities. using the tate modern project as a case study, i argue that for continued success, cultural-led regeneration needs to extend far beyond the bricks and mortar of buildings. as suggested by the ‘basic challenges’ listed above, such an endeavour will depend on the ability to find relevance for the wider work of the 154 | gateways | hyslop institution; establish a long-term strategy for the development of strong partnerships and alliances across the spectrum; and encourage continued debate and dialogue. it is my experience that success and continued relevance depends on understanding and stimulating place-making via three key spheres: (1) the physical (the buildings); (2) the social (the activity); (3) and the intellectual (the partnerships). establishing tate modern tate modern is part of a much older institution. the national gallery of british art opened at millbank, westminster, in july 1897 on the site of the former millbank prison. in its conception little thought was given about how the new institution would coexist with its neighbouring communities, including the millbank estate and the new medical military hospital and college. despite these drawbacks, tate britain became a fixture of south westminster, albeit slightly dislocated from its local communities. a hundred years later, when the trustees and senior tate staff embarked on the project that would result in the creation of tate modern, the first museum of modern and contemporary art in the uk, we were continuing a long tradition of establishing new cultural institutions in london. however, in doing so, it was also clear that we faced a unique and fundamental set of challenges and issues in realising our ambitions. when we set out to find the necessary space, central london offered a range of interesting possibilities including brown-field sites and existing buildings. many factors favoured the choice of bankside, not least its central location on the south bank of the thames opposite st paul’s cathedral and the city of london, and the scale and potential of giles gilbert scott’s cathedral-like power station built in 1947 to supply electricity to londoners. bankside or ‘street along the thames’ dates from the 16th century and has played a significant part in the entertainment of londoners for centuries. initially not included as a formal part of the city, it was here that people came to enjoy a variety of ‘pleasures’ offered by the playhouses and theatres, bear baiting pits and brothels. later it prospered as part of the industrial infrastructure along the thames, supplying the port and city and maintaining an empire across the world. however, by the 1990s, post-industrial bankside had become a rather forgotten and depressed part of london, with the power station at its heart fenced off and largely unused. at that time, there were around 3000 residents and 6000 workers in the immediate area (many whose families had lived there for generations). meanwhile, nearby, a few thousand annual visitors were attracted to shakespeare’s globe and the area around borough market or wandered along the river walkway from waterloo station and the royal festival hall on the south bank. further to the south in the london borough of southwark, beyond a spaghetti-like tangle of railway lines and arches, lay significant areas of social and urban deprivation. this 155 | gateways | hyslop was a classic example of an area struggling to come to terms with its post-industrial decline as the docks and small-scale industries around the river disappeared. even in the 1990s, the idea of culture as a stimulus to recovery was not well received by many local political leaders who thought ‘real jobs and real industry’ were the solution. indeed, sam wanamaker’s long campaign to recreate shakespeare’s globe theatre which opened in 1997 at bankside had faced similar stiff opposition in some local quarters. however, the mood was changing, and for some key policymakers in southwark the opportunities tate modern presented were very attractive. both the leader and chief executive of southwark council became advocates for the project and, amidst some intense debates, managed to secure the first £1 million capital funding as a statement of faith in the project. their vision was further fuelled by the council’s then director of planning and regeneration who was championing innovative architecture and development in the borough. at this time a strategy was formed to promote high quality architecture and design in the area which, among other large and small developments, has eventually led to renzo piano’s shard, which can now be seen in southwark high above london bridge. completed in mid 2012, it is the tallest office building in the european union. from the outset, our ambition was to play an active part in managing the wider regeneration that would result from the establishment of a new museum in the area. we believed it was vitally important for any development to be balanced, retaining many of the unique qualities of the area while recognising the competing needs of those who live, work and visit there. thus, the challenge for the tate was threefold: firstly, unlike our predecessors who had established new buildings in trafalgar square (national gallery) and south kensington (victoria and albert museum) over a hundred years ago, we had to create a compelling scheme for the adaptation and future use of a power station – compelling enough to convince funders that the project would secure the public and private investment needed for it to be a success. launching an architectural competition in 1994 was a major step in framing our ambition for the building and the area. it was crucial that the winning entry would combine innovative design with an awareness of the goals held for the tate. the appointment of the then relatively unknown practice herzog & de meuron led to a creative and practical partnership between architects and museum which has formed the bedrock of the successful regeneration so far. secondly, it was necessary to address how the museum would sit within the urban fabric of bankside and london. we had to reestablish a relationship with the river, cut off by the security fence that had surrounded the power station for 50 years. there was also a need to connect with the established south bank area to the west and with borough market to the east (about to emerge as a major player), and london bridge station. perhaps the biggest challenge 156 | gateways | hyslop lay (and still lies) to the south where medieval street patterns, dark and dank victorian railway arches and a wall of tired office buildings blocked access. central to a redefinition of bankside were two major infrastructure projects: the jubilee underground line, which had brought the ‘tube’ to the new southwark station close to where tate modern was being developed; and the millennium bridge, which was due to open at the same time as tate modern. while the infamous ‘wobbling’ incident delayed its opening for two years, norman foster’s stylish bridge has since successfully connected bankside to ‘the city’, making the walk between st paul’s cathedral and tate modern internationally iconic. thirdly, we had to ensure that the opportunities offered by the regeneration were developed in a spirit of consultation and partnership rather than imposed on the established communities living in the area. this led to the development of the ‘social model’ – a distinct form of community urbanism that we established as a framework for the project. the model remains the cornerstone of much of our work and our philosophy that culture can stimulate and activate new approaches in the development of cities and communities. with this in mind, one of the first appointments to the project was a bankside development officer, whose remit was to establish and develop the social model while working within the political, business and local community contexts. using the tate modern project as a catalyst for new thinking, and building on the strong sense of community in the area, a number of groundbreaking projects and initiatives began. many of these brought together innovative partnerships where the business, creative and public sectors evolved projects with local communities – often centred on developing volunteering opportunities for local employees to work in a range of roles. examples include local school literacy programs; projects recording the heritage of the area; or the creation and maintenance of pocket parks and community gardens. the following core partnerships and projects were established, laying the foundations for organisations and initiatives that not only prosper and continue today but have also had an influence far beyond the immediate area: —the bankside business partnership, which consists of major employers in the area (financial times, tate, price waterhouse coopers, guy’s hospital, land securities, chelsfield, shakespeare’s globe) —the bankside residents forum, a strong campaigning organisation representing local residents’ needs in the face of intense development in the area following the arrival of tate modern —the bankside arts training trust, which acted as a bridge and training hub for local people to gain work experience and jobs in the arts and culture sector in central london (both in construction projects and staffing newly-opened buildings) —a series of innovative, creative arts projects such as the ‘wedding project’ and ‘bankside browser’, which brought together 157 | gateways | hyslop international artists and local communities to explore local spaces and places in creative forums. these core projects were underpinned by a philosophy that sought to open up the project, both in terms of information sharing and building a sense of local ownership and pride in the project. in may 2000, when the queen opened the £134.5-million, publicly and privately-funded tate modern, the prospect of architectural and artistic excellence was matched by an ambition to stimulate the economic and social regeneration of bankside and beyond. tate modern at 10 the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the launching of tate modern marked the coming of age of the ‘peoples’ museum’ with a series of exhibitions, events, and gatherings of artists and community members. reflecting on our first 10 years, it is clear that the museum has caught the public imagination to a unanticipated degree. how far has the tate modern project met the challenges outlined earlier (i.e. utilising creative organisations and creative thinking to stimulate economic development, regeneration and reinvention of a central area of london)? i believe that its success, now and continuing into the future, is due to the three key aspects previously identified: the physical, the social, and the intellectual. the main anchor of the museum is, of course, its collection. up to two-thirds of the display spaces at tate modern are dedicated to showing both established and new acquisitions collected from all over the world. free access to the museum building and collection has been pivotal, giving everyone the opportunity to learn and enjoy. it also represents a direct, democratic connection to the publicly owned collection which we manage on behalf of our audiences. tate’s ever-changing program ranging from spectacular blockbuster shows (miro, kahlo and gauguin) to exhibitions of smaller, more experimental work has brought modern and contemporary art to a large number of new audiences. there is also an increasing international focus on works from latin america and asia. tate modern has also been the testing ground for a series of ground-breaking collaborations involving an exploration of contemporary dance, music, theatre and film. perhaps the most unexpected driver of success has been the building itself and the unique space that is the turbine hall. once crowded with machinery for the power station, the empty hall offers a vast space to wonder at and wander through before entering the galleries. during the autumn and winter it is transformed when an artist’s imagination brings it to life under the auspices of the unilever commission. as a transitional space between the city and the museum, the turbine hall seems to generate its own dynamic in which the public feel free to congregate, interact and socialise in ways not possible in most other cultural public buildings. while memorable commissions such as olafur eliasson (the weather project 2003), carsten höller (test site 2006) and doris 158 | gateways | hyslop salcedo (shibboleth 2007) were acclaimed as stunning artistic achievements, neither artist, nor curator nor architect could have predicted the air of spontaneity and free-form-interaction with which the audience embraced these works. how then has this critical acclaim for the collection, the exhibition program and the building itself contributed to the economic and social regeneration of london? firstly let’s look at some of the economic statistics around tate modern. as early as 2001, one year after opening, mckinsey & company evaluated the impact of the new museum (tate press release 2001b). they reported: —£100 million flowing into london’s economy, of which £50–£70 million was specific to southwark —3000 jobs created in london —tate modern created 487 jobs in addition to 283 jobs created during construction —commercial development, investment and property prices in southwark were beginning to outpace london averages. this has, of course, proved only to be the beginning of the ‘cultural regeneration’ of the area. tate modern, shakespeare’s globe, borough market and other sites in bankside and the south bank have become the catalyst for continued growth and development over the last 10 years. audiences in excess of 4.5 million have continued to flock to tate modern every year. borough market, with its offerings of organic and high-quality food, attracts similar numbers. it is true to say that contemporary art and food have been major drivers in the on-going regeneration of the area. development of both residential and commercial properties has intensified in the area with blue chip companies such as ipc media (time warner) and rbs (royal bank of scotland) relocating to the blue fin building (newly built as a second-wave regeneration project just behind tate modern). joining them in the area are major architectural firms such as allies and morrison, and, increasingly, many small and medium-sized creative companies are also making bankside their home. over the last 10 years the neighbourhood surrounding tate modern has seen fundamental changes. the residential population has more than doubled (from 3000 to 7500) and the number of workers in the area has increased tenfold (from 6000 to 60 000). property prices have increased, there is more demand for hotel rooms, and the direct and indirect economic benefits from visitors to tate modern are worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the economy of london. with the vast majority of the land in the area being privately owned, maintaining a balanced community in times of intense development requires strong partnership and advocacy initiatives. this brings into play the second and third key spheres: the social and the intellectual. initiatives in these two areas, alongside planning and developmental control processes, continue to be vital in retaining a healthy, functioning neighbourhood. what began as the bankside business partnership has grown into 159 | gateways | hyslop better bankside – one of the first business improvement districts in the united kingdom (http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/). elected, funded and run by local businesses, the company now operates with a baseline £5 million budget over a five-year term. it is tasked with bringing additional services (not replacing local council provision) into the local area around green, clean and safe agendas. this recognises that city zones which are major business and tourist hubs require more intense regimes. but beyond these core services, the influence of the strong cultural identity of the area is increasingly in evidence as projects in the public realm and greening open spaces are realised with a creative twist involving artists and other creative thinkers – for example, upgrading railway arches with public art, artistic design of street furniture, signage and community festivals. in particular, an imaginative set of projects and initiatives are emerging from the bankside urban forest (buf), originally commissioned by better bankside and conceived by architects witherford watson mann, which are bringing new thinking and life into the public realm in bankside, linked to the rest of london (http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/ bankside-urban-forest). a strong partnership involving private, public and community organisations have come together around a concept that provides an alternative to traditional public realm master planning. buf conceptualises the neighbourhood around tate modern as a series of routes, pathways, streams and trails. it looks behind and beyond the major river pathway to identify key routes and places of congregation in the hinterland. development of the ‘forest’ is approached organically by seeking to involve business, residents and the local authority in evolving public realm projects. in the short to medium term it sits very much within tate modern’s philosophy of balancing needs through incremental development with a strong design core. this innovative approach has attracted interest from the mayor of london’s office, design for london and the international architectural press. in the longer term it will deliver some important links from bankside further into the south, forming connections with other regeneration efforts in south london, elephant and castle, peckham and beyond. in the current economic climate, this model provides an example of how to move forward in developing the public realm in the face of cost constraints without sacrificing community involvement, design quality or development standards. but it does mean moving beyond the older style, monolithic ethos of master planning to working in a more gradual way, based on strong partnership and community ownership. similarly, the bankside residents forum (brf) has grown and prospered, to become one of the largest and most sophisticated residents’ organisations in the country. in the early 2000s, seeing the wave of development about to take place in the area, the forum members took a strategic decision to concentrate their efforts on engaging with developments through the planning process to ensure maximum benefits for local communities. they http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/ http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/bankside-urban-forest http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/bankside-urban-forest 160 | gateways | hyslop have been hugely successful in securing a new community space with a raft of other community benefits. along the way their members have also acquired an impressive breadth of expertise in community representation, from participating in the thameslink enquiries (a major railway infrastructure program through central london) to leading a campaign in the high court to oppose an inappropriate residential development in hopton street, close to tate modern and established housing. the strong ethos of partnership in the area has led to the brf working closely with tate modern and other businesses on a whole range of projects around corporate social responsibility, open space and employment and training. this does not mean that the independence of the organisation has been lost. indeed, the very fact that brf has developed a strong independent voice, whilst still being able to work pragmatically in partnership, is why the organisation is respected. training and employment opportunities are still key aspects of the development of the area and its cultural businesses. the bankside arts training trust has now become the start project. hosted by tate modern, start now works with cultural organisations across the whole of london providing skills training and workplace familiarisation for unemployed residents of south london. this project continues to be vital in creating a bridge between the cultural sector and communities who would not normally have considered the cultural sector as a work opportunity. tate supports the project by providing accommodation, facilities, finance and administration services. the running costs are met by allocating section 106 funds, which comprise a levy on new developments to provide improvements to the public realm and community benefits. start has helped tate and other cultural organisations recruit for various departments, predominantly in customer-facing roles. over 50 clients have been employed as gallery assistants and around 20 clients have been employed as retail assistants in tate shops. this has given an important local dimension to tate staff resulting in a number of benefits, for example, local staff tend to stay longer and act as local ambassadors for the organisation. as the wider area around tate has been transformed and matured, a critical mass of 21 publicly-funded, not-for-profit cultural organisations has emerged in north lambeth and southwark. stretching from the millennium wheel to tower bridge and extending southwards to elephant and castle, the area hosts a diverse range of organisations including south bank centre, old vic, young vic, siobhan davies dance company, imperial war museum, unicorn theatre, shakespeare’s globe, tate modern and the british film institute. together they form the south bank and bankside cultural quarter, which was established to find a common purpose for culture in the development of the area and in london generally. it has recently focused its collective voice and action around preparations for the london 2012 olympic games, 161 | gateways | hyslop as well as public places and spaces and learning initiatives. the two boroughs (lambeth and southwark) have also played a very active role in the group. the economic and social impact of the cultural quarter (the largest group of its kind in the world) is significant and growing. the group: —attracts upwards of 13 million visitors and users per year —has a net economic impact in london of £900 million —creates 2100 direct jobs and 32 000 jobs indirectly —works with 767 000 educational users —spends 11 per cent of its turnover on local services. while, on the whole, many of the changes we have seen in the wider area over the last 10 years have been for the good, such major changes over a relatively short period must inevitably have some negative impacts. for example, before tate modern and the resurgence of borough market, the surrounding area was a relatively quiet backwater. in a short space of time it has been transformed with up to 15 million people each year walking through the area via the river walkway along the thames. this has brought with it some unwanted aspects such as illegal trading, busking and petty crime. in addition, the scale of development continues unabated, even in the midst of a serious economic crisis, with construction traffic, building work and logistics potentially disrupting to those who live and work here. better bankside was established to deal with and lessen these impacts. it has also acted as a catalyst to bring together all the developers in the area to cooperate in minimising any negative impacts of the building works and produce a monthly e-brief and newsletter to report on the progress of projects (www.betterbankside.co.uk/ our-services/2617-dbrief). the scheme has become recognised as a model of good practice in the sector as a recipient of a mayor of london’s business award. the social model approach, incorporating our basic development philosophy, has allowed us to continue our leading role in managing these changes. we have worked hard to retain the crucial balance between development and the needs of local residents, workers and visitors. importantly, we have also demonstrated that cultural institutions can play a role in bringing artists and creative thinking to bear in a variety of contexts, permeating the places and spaces in which we live our everyday lives, far beyond the gallery walls. connecting all of the projects and activities outlined above with political partnerships and dialogue has been vital. advocacy with and the involvement of local area councillors, the mayor of london’s office and national government is a central theme of the social model. the result can be seen in a number of tangible outcomes. for example, the bankside urban forest strategy has been adopted as an annex to the planning guidelines for the area, meaning developers have to consider it when thinking about their proposals for buildings and the public realm. the coalition between residents, business and tourist attractions is increasingly seen as being willing and able to trial and quickly respond to new ideas, schemes and policy. london www.betterbankside.co.uk/our-services/2617-dbrief www.betterbankside.co.uk/our-services/2617-dbrief 162 | gateways | hyslop government and european-funded projects in areas as diverse as travel planning, environmental monitoring and sustainable food markets are currently taking place. the national government’s policy of neighbourhood planning, which gives local stakeholders more direct control in how their neighbourhoods develop, is being piloted in bankside reflecting a rare recognition that the area is a key community and business pathfinder requiring a plan which reflects those joint interests. as we now move into a new phase of the development it is also important to reflect on the last key challenge we set out to achieve, which is retaining the balance between the area’s local, national and international identities. this was originally an ambition of tate modern itself, to ensure it played a meaningful role in all these dimensions. however, what for me has been one of the most interesting (and unexpected) developments over the last 12 years, has been the merging of these identities not just in the work of tate modern but in the development of the wider area. this has led to a much more sophisticated model, both in the museum and in the wider neighbourhood, where we see artists and other practitioners from all over the world working with local communities. ideas such as the bankside urban forest, which are locally specific, organic and incremental, are being adopted and adapted in other countries. the social model of cultural regeneration pioneered through tate modern with its strong key objectives continues to attract interest world-wide from governments, politicians and academics keen to meaningfully connect with their communities. the future from the outset, we envisaged that the london-wide effects of the transformation of bankside – including the completion of the second phase of the tate modern project that is currently underway – would take at least 20 years to be fully realised. we still face a series of major challenges over the next 10 years as we and the neighbourhood enter a new stage of development, working in a very different economic and social situation. we are also extending the context of our thinking and practice to include the wider development of london and other world cities. accordingly we have identified a number of major challenges and opportunities for the future. firstly, we want to maintain culture and creativity as a focus for the identity and development of bankside. for example, herzog & de meuron’s new structure will rise from three large underground oil tanks located at the south lawn of tate modern. it will transform the building and surrounding area, vastly extending the scope of our activities. in particular, the project will allow a new route through the turbine hall to be opened up connecting the museum to south london. this is an important step in realising our aspiration to physically link the local regeneration to communities to the south, allowing them to enjoy the economic benefits of increased visitor traffic. 163 | gateways | hyslop secondly, a number of major transport, infrastructure and other building projects are taking place in the area. these include new railway stations close to tate modern at blackfriars and london bridge; a major residential block designed by rogers stirk harbour + partners, neo bankside, which is opening in two phases (2011/12); a number of hotels under construction; and renzo piano’s shard, the tallest office building in the eu, which was completed in 2012. better bankside has assessed that more than £5 billion worth of construction development will take place in bankside over the next five years, which will more than double the existing value of the area. so, over a 10-year period there will have been more development in the area than took place in its entire previous history. the shard on its own will attract around 28 000 additional employees into london bridge and environs every day. the partnerships we have established, particularly better bankside, which work with the local authority and other business-led organisations across london, face major challenges. they will need to find strategies to deal with this second doubling of the area’s workforce and the impact that will have on transport infrastructure and general facilities. thirdly, we need to realise the ambition of the bankside urban forest. its success will allow us to extend the physical and social regeneration of bankside to the south. it will also allow further exploration of the potential to involve artists and creative thinking in the public realm. we believe it is a model of working that can be relevant beyond bankside and is attracting interest from government agencies in countries as far afield as turkey, malaysia and singapore. fourthly, there are now five strong cultural quarter groups across london working together and with the mayor’s office. the immediate focus has been to get the very best from the london 2012 olympic games. working closely with the mayor’s office and the olympic delivery authority, the cultural quarters have helped shape the cultural aspect of the games, including the ‘look and feel’ of the dressing up of the city and its major landmark buildings. the lessons of cultural regeneration in bankside and across london can also help inform the 2012 legacy, ensuring we make the very best of the investments in east london. in difficult economic times it is important to maintain london and the country’s cultural ecosystem, from artists working in small studios to the regional networks of local authority museums. the success of tate modern and the lessons we have learned can help find ways to support and nurture different networks elsewhere. the model of partnership, advocacy and culture-led development we have championed is relevant to the challenges we face in the future. for the first time in human history more people are living in urban environments than rural ones. this trend will continue apace across the world. urbanisation does not necessarily mean that all cities will grow and prosper; successful cities will be those that offer the best services, amenities 164 | gateways | hyslop and quality of life to its citizens and communities. governments will need to reconcile increasing pressure on public services and the very quality of life that attracted residents to cities in the first place. this, in turn, will place pressure on political authorities facing demands for services by citizens who are becoming increasingly sophisticated in articulating their needs through the democratic process. with little public enthusiasm for higher taxation and shrinking public budgets, cities face a set of complex challenges. these will demand dynamic, innovative and creative models and partnerships if we are to achieve balanced communities with access to good services and transport, healthy environments, and general quality of life. with this in mind, we have recently begun to develop a network of creative agencies working in the development of urban communities across the world. working in both the theory and practice of city-making, they include museums, universities, heritage and business organisations. for example, tate museum is currently working with museum rotterdam, american university beirut, bigli university istanbul and q + a panels munich. it would be simplistic to argue that cultural organisations, even on the scale of tate modern, or major events such as london 2012, can in themselves be the salvation of the modern city or redefine urban living. however, what the tate modern model does illustrate is the importance of firmly rooting cultural development in a set of wider political, business, creative and community contexts. retaining a balance between the needs of communities, workers and visitors can make it possible to drive culture-led regeneration. this in turn can help us think about, imagine and practically develop the neighbourhoods and communities we desire. from our perspective at tate modern, the first 12 years has been an incredible journey. we look forward to seeing what the next decade will bring. references and further reading tate modern releases and publications hyslop, d 2010, ‘nla bankside & london bridge’, video presentation, 9 february, viewed 5 july 2012, http://www.gleeds.tv/index.cfm?video=660 millennium commission, ‘talkin’ about regeneration: tate modern’, viewed 5 july 2012, http://millenniumnow.org.uk/themes/regenerate/tatemodern-london/ moore, r & ryan r 2000, building tate modern: herzog & de meuron transforming giles gilbert scott, tate gallery publishing, london. morris, f 2006, tate modern: the handbook, tate gallery publishing, london. rogers, r 2000, ‘tate bankside masterplan’, viewed 5 july 2012, http:// www.richardrogers.co.uk/work/all_projects/tate_bankside_masterplan tate annual report 2010-11, viewed 5 july 2012, http://www.tate.org.uk/ about/who-we-are/tate-reports/tate-report-2010-2011 http://www.gleeds.tv/index.cfm?video=660 http://millenniumnow.org.uk/themes/regenerate/tate-modern-london/ http://millenniumnow.org.uk/themes/regenerate/tate-modern-london/ http://www.richardrogers.co.uk/work/all_projects/tate_bankside_masterplan http://www.richardrogers.co.uk/work/all_projects/tate_bankside_masterplan http://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/tate-reports/tate-report-2010-2011 http://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/tate-reports/tate-report-2010-2011 165 | gateways | hyslop tate press release 2001a, ‘tate modern – the most popular art museum in the world’, 11 may, http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases tate press release 2001b, ‘the economic impact of tate modern’, 11 may, http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases tate press release 2001c, ‘bankside urban study: richard rogers’ vision for bankside’, 11 may, http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases partnerships and initiatives better bankside business improvement district, viewed 5 july 2012, www. betterbankside.co.uk/ bankside urban forest, viewed 5 july 2012: www.wwmarchitects.co.uk/downloads/bankside_urban_forest.pdf www.betterbankside.co.uk/bankside-urban-forest www.architectsjournal.co.uk/culture/bankside-urban-forest-weekendurban-orchard/8602598.article http://mayor.london.gov.uk/who-runs-london/mayor/mayoral-decisions/ md976 further reading dean, c, donnellan, c & pratt, a 2010, ‘tate modern: pushing the limits of regeneration’, city, culture and society, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 79–87. evans, g & shaw, p 2004, ‘the contribution of culture to regeneration in the uk: a review of evidence’, report to the department for culture, media and sport, london metropolitan university, dcms, viewed 5 july 2012, www.rccil.org.uk/979/summaries/the-contribution-of-culture-toregeneration-in-the-uk-a-review-of-evidence.html manson, f, 2000, ‘regeneration: can culture carry the can?’, rsa journal, vol. cxlviii, no. 5494, 3/4. uk government 1999, towards an urban renaissance, urban task force report. http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/releases www.betterbankside.co.uk/ www.betterbankside.co.uk/ www.wwmarchitects.co.uk/downloads/bankside_urban_forest.pdf www.betterbankside.co.uk/bankside-urban-forest www.architectsjournal.co.uk/culture/bankside-urban-forest-weekend-urban-orchard/8602598.article www.architectsjournal.co.uk/culture/bankside-urban-forest-weekend-urban-orchard/8602598.article http://mayor.london.gov.uk/who-runs-london/mayor/mayoral-decisions/md976 http://mayor.london.gov.uk/who-runs-london/mayor/mayoral-decisions/md976 www.rccil.org.uk/979/summaries/the-contribution-of-culture-to-regeneration-in-the-uk-a-review-of-evidence.html www.rccil.org.uk/979/summaries/the-contribution-of-culture-to-regeneration-in-the-uk-a-review-of-evidence.html onyx gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 90-106 © utsepress and the author university-community engagement: what does it mean? jenny onyx want to reflect on the nature of community-university engagement, its role, challenges and achievements. in this i start with ‘engagement’ and what that might mean in the context of a university-based research centre. there are, of course, many forms of engagement, but i wish to focus specifically on engagement as coproduction of knowledge. in this, our partner in the co-production of knowledge is the community, or rather civil society. i re-examine the nature of community, and the role of civil society in today’s society. the article then outlines one significant research programme that emerged from the work of a university research centre, the centre for australian community organisations and management (cacom), at the university of technology, sydney. this research – namely the story of social capital research – was initiated by a request from community partners and was carried out in collaboration with them. i gateways | onyx 91 the research programme led to several significant research projects which have had a major impact on theory and public policy. it challenges the notion of the university as ‘expert’ and illustrates the co-production of knowledge. the article concludes by discussing the various roles that the university can play within the co-production of research knowledge with the community: as collaborator in the research process itself; as mediator in the development of linking social capital between community and more powerful players; and as the potential site for independent critical analysis. the nature of engagement there are a number of significant forms of community-university engagement, all of which occur within the university of technology, sydney. these include various forms of work-based learning, industry placement programmes, and student volunteer projects. however, this paper focuses on one form of engagement that has received little attention. that is the engagement between a university research centre and the community sector, or civil society. the university research centre is typically regarded as the primary site for the advancement of knowledge, in which the academic or research fellow takes the role of ‘expert’ in identifying research questions, developing programmes of research and disseminating findings, primarily to an audience of peers, but ultimately to the wider community (eyerman 1994; see also goldfarb 1998). in this role of ‘expert’ the university researcher is called upon to provide expert advice to government and industry. it is also possible that the university research centre may become the arena in which the intellectual tradition of social critique may flourish, as eyerman notes but with some scepticism: one such context, both local and global, is the university and other institutions of higher learning. the idea of higher learning has provided ‘intellectuals’ with grounding for their claim to expert knowledge, and thus helped reproduce as well as legitimate the expert-professional tradition, but it has also provided grounding, either as a counterfoil or as an inspiration, for other intellectual traditions. this is then one context which could serve as a space for the gateways | onyx 92 emergence of a new generation of critical intellectuals. (eyerman 1994, p. 192) in any case, the intellectual, even those who maintain a critical independence, remain within the expert-professional tradition and are therefore seen as knowledge producers, or at least as gatekeepers and arbiters of what counts as ‘knowledge’. it is a very top-down view of expert knowledge. gallopin et al. (1999) suggest that the leading forms of scientific knowledge have become ‘industrialised’ or ‘incorporated’. they refer to a process whereby scientific knowledge has been increasingly separated from ‘public knowledge’, through patent systems, increasingly specialized technology-based knowledge and the creation of ‘expert’ knowledge systems, which alienate the lay members of the society for whom they seek scientific knowledge. the increasingly codified scientific knowledge is no longer accessible to the ‘lay’ public, opening a case for uncertainty and skepticism regarding the content and validity of ‘scientific’ knowledge claims. an alternative view sees knowledge as socially constructed within a wider arena of engagement. in the new form of reflexive modernization, people are less trusting of expert knowledge, and new forms of ‘regulation’ emerge, being either formal reflexive regulation, such as self-commitments, mediation processes and voluntary agreements, or informal reflexive regulation, such as networks and informal agreements. these new forms of regulation are ‘shaping society from below’ and their dynamics, and those of attendant disputes, are the sub-politics of the ‘risk society’ (beck 1999, pp. 37–38). in this context, lay knowledge, not techno-scientific knowledge, is the bearer of the ‘revolutionary reflexive consciousness’. the very production of knowledge itself has thus shifted. gibbons et al. (1994) identify two modes of knowledge production. while mode one refers to the conventional production of scientificexpert knowledge, mode two is much more complex. consistent with the social construction of knowledge, it refers to knowledge produced in the context of its application: knowledge is always produced under an aspect of continuous negotiation and it will not be produced unless and until the interests of the various actors are included. (gibbons et al. 1994, p. 4) gateways | onyx 93 such knowledge generation is transdisciplinary within a problem solving framework and involves both empirical and theoretical components. it is dynamic, and its diffusion occurs initially in the very process of its production. such knowledge production is likely to occur through multiple sites, and is certainly no longer the privileged possession of the university. the nature of ‘community’ there has always been community, since the beginning of human social formation. as far back as recorded history allows us to see, there are numerous examples of charitable works performed by churches and other formal or informal organizations. there have always been efforts by citizens to mobilize for a common cause, be it the guilds of the middle ages, or a socio-political movement for human rights. these mobilizations all refer to arenas of purposive collective action around shared interests and values, but operating outside the institutional forms of state, market and family (howell 2006). they may, but need not, constitute formal incorporated nonprofit organizations. they are usually initiated through loose, informal networks that gradually crystallize into social movements or formal organizational structures. the concept of community has been roundly critiqued by sociologists as largely meaningless (bell & newby 1974). nonetheless, it continues to hold central meaning in everyday discourse and in academic analysis. we all live in some form of community or overlapping communities. these communities have one thing in common; they all comprise ongoing, face-to-face relationships with significant others.1 communities may be either local or extra-local: when we say communities are local we mean that they are limited to a specific, symbolically defined, geographic area. we emphasize that ‘locality’ is symbolic, because individual members are likely to have different notions about what defines the geographic area … locality is important because it generally defines the boundaries of our informal social 1 the matter of online community is a matter of recent inquiry, note, for example, appadurai (1990). gateways | onyx 94 lives, suggesting that interpersonal networks will be closed and bounded. (milofsy & hunter 1994) most people interact not only within a local community, but also within various extra-local communities of interest. relationships are defined and conditioned by cultural, social, economic and political systems operating at regional, national, and increasingly at international levels. the social frame of reference may be an ethnic community, for example, or a professional community with indeterminate physical boundaries. in either case the term ‘community’ as applied has important core meaning attributes, but fuzzy boundaries in terms of exactly who is or is not included. within each of these communities, whether local or extra-local, much of the work of the community occurs directly and immediately, without any sort of formal, structural intervention. the acts of simple neighbourliness are of this sort. a neighbour is sick so we bring in a bowl of soup. a neighbour’s child wanders down the street and we take her home. but other exchanges need to be formalized in some way, usually because it is necessary to set up some sort of organizational structure so that the exchange can continue into the future. our disabled children will need support long into the future. it is too important to leave to the chance assistance of a neighbour, and too heavy a burden to bear alone. so we form organizations whose brief it is to care for these children. this leads to a realization of other needs, for example to educate the community, change legislation, and create a different climate so that disabled children can have better life chances. so we, the parents and citizens, band together with others, including concerned professionals, to form advocacy or political lobby groups. these groups may begin as informal networks, but find the need to formalize their structure as they evolve and acquire and use resources in their mission. so civil society is made up of the thousands of networks and organizations, of various degrees of formality, that our communities have created as instruments to pursue what some people have identified as important ongoing work of the community. they are as different from each other as their origins and purpose suggest. but, by and large they carry some common values. they are non-profit; they do not set out to make a profit to further the economic advantage of any person or group of people. they are voluntary; they are formed out of the free and willing association of their members. gateways | onyx 95 they are non-government; they are explicitly independent of any party political or state interest. they are task oriented; they are explicitly formed to carry out important community work. they seek social change; they reflect and attempt to realize a collective vision of a better world. the multitude of community, civil society organizations can generally be categorized according to their role. the majority are concerned with direct service delivery to a specified category of (usually disadvantaged) people. some organizations carry the task of political advocacy. others are more concerned with community development. community development is particularly important because it is about the enhancement of the whole community and its citizens. community development activities operate according to threefold principles: • decision making by those most affected by outcomes of the decision – the subsidiarity principle • personal empowerment and control by individual citizens over their own life – the empowerment principle • the development of ongoing structures and processes by which groups can meet their own needs – the structural principle. the formal study of civil society until very recently there was virtually no presence of the study of civil society or its organizations within any university. consequently there was little understanding of its size or importance within the larger society. even the name used varies widely. terms used for civil society organizations include: the non-profit sector, the voluntary sector, the third sector, the community sector, or nongovernment organizations (ngos). each of these terms refers to much the same phenomenon, but emphasizes one aspect of the sector. only in the last fifteen years has there been an attempt, through the johns hopkins comparative nonprofit sector project (www.jhu.edu/cnp) and more recently through the international civil society organization civicus (www.civicus.org), to systematically measure the size and capacity of the third sector, that is, of legally recognized non-profit organizations in a country. the johns hopkins project now includes comparative and detailed data for thirty six countries. the findings are astounding. far gateways | onyx 96 from being a sector of minor importance and poor resources, civil society in most countries includes many thousands of organizations, involving millions of volunteers and paid workers, and representing some 5.4 per cent of gdp (salamon, sokolowski & associates 2004). in australia for example, as of 1996, there were an estimated 700 000 civil society organizations of which 320 000 were incorporated (had a formal structure) and 34 000 of which employed staff. there were 460 000 full-time equivalent workers comprising 7.6 per cent of the australian workforce. in addition, 2.3 million australians volunteered a total of 374 million hours, amounting to a further 217 000 full-time equivalent staff (lyons 2001, p. 17). however, the third sector is unlike either the state or the market. government draws its power and resources from the political process and taxation. business, for-profits, draw their power and resources from the market itself, from the capacity to sell for profit. civil society organizations, as the third sector, draw their power and resources from the people, from the capacity to mobilize, from voluntary donations of time and money and from contributions from the other two sectors. it is more variable in its forms, being often driven by small groups of citizens in pursuit of a vision. often that vision has revolved around issues of social justice, and attempts to improve the lot of the disadvantaged and marginalized. perhaps for this reason, much of the third sector has remained opaque to the public eye, seen as an admirable but nonetheless small, impoverished and insignificant aspect of society. in australia, as elsewhere, there was no attempt at the national level to include the non-profit sector in any regular census until recently. one may reflect that such disinterest in civil society was entrenched within welfare state ideologies that focused on the central role of the state to meet all human and social justice needs. but it was equally entrenched in the ideology of the new right, based on public choice theory and the fundamental assumption of individualized selfinterest. be that as it may, few universities had any formal engagement with community in terms of a dedicated research centre until the 1990s, either in the us, uk or australia. in australia, the first ever university course in community management was established at the university of technology, sydney (uts) in the mid 1980s, followed shortly thereafter by the formation of cacom, the first australian research centre, whose mission was and still is to enhance the gateways | onyx 97 australian community sector and its management through research, training, publications, seminars and conferences. later, in 1996, cacom was joined at uts by shopfront, which represented a forum for community projects involving uts students and staff, from which the community benefited, and students gained formal course credit. during the same period, there was a proliferation of similar centres across the us, canada and uk and the development of an international organization: the international society for third-sector research (istr), which holds biennial international conferences. the story of social capital research in order to gain an insight into what can be gained from such a formal research commitment to community, one particular research programme will be described from within cacom. this is the story of a research programme which has had a continuing strong effect on australian academic thought and on public policy, but which was initiated and driven by a practitioner research agenda. social capital research arose initially out of a political need to defend community development programmes. as one consequence of economic rationalist policies, all programmes were required to demonstrate measurable outcomes. those that could not lost their funding. as one anonymous government minister was known to have articulated: ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it, and we won’t fund it’ (kenny, 1994). while the tradition of community development is as old as human habitation, community development in australia, as elsewhere in post-industrial countries, found new impetus from the rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the form of a determination to remove all injustice, poverty and oppression, by empowering the people to participate in their own development. the rights discourse was quite different from the earlier ‘charity’ model. charity was offered to ‘the deserving poor’ by the privileged of society. the community development of the 1970s emerged as a philosophy, and as a political strategy for empowerment and social change. it was about bottom-up processes of change and action, about the right of people to have a say in decisions that affected their lives, about participation, mutual support, collective action and the demand for resources. it was about self-help too, but at a collective rather than an individual level. it was recognised that if social gateways | onyx 98 structures had created inequality and disadvantage, then it was the responsibility of the larger society to provide the resources to redress them (kenny 1994). as a consequence, governments at state and commonwealth levels attempted to respond to community demands by providing resources, both structural and financial, for hundreds of community development initiatives. demands for funding increased throughout the 1980s as new social problems were identified. but with the new funding came greater demands for accountability, and for evidence of effective use of that funding. it became necessary to demonstrate the impact of community development programmes. those that could not do so were in danger of losing funding. finally, in 1994, cacom at uts was asked by some of its industry partners to use its research expertise to find a way to help small local community development functions survive. basically, the request was made to find ways to measure community development, and to develop performance indicators so that organisations could provide evidence to funding bodies demonstrating that community development was real, measurable, produced positive outcomes for the community and, therefore, worth funding. although there was unlikely to be major university funding available in the political climate of the day to carry out such research, the faculty of business made a small grant and the local community services association of nsw (lcsa) agreed to contribute its own networking and volunteer resources. as the peak body for small local community development organizations, such as neighbourhood centres, this constituted a considerable resource. cacom agreed to assist. like many community sector research projects this began with a very definite practical purpose, but a rather vague conceptual framework. in order to try and explicate the research question more clearly, a series of workshops/reflective dialogues were held both with people in the field and with academics. the early workshops were centred around the question, ‘what would a healthy “developing” community look like?’ (onyx 1996).2 at one of these workshops, eva cox introduced the term ‘social capital’. she was preparing her much-respected boyer lectures at the 2 the story of social capital research is also recorded in onyx (2003). gateways | onyx 99 time on the topic of a truly civil society (cox 1995). robert putnam had just published his groundbreaking book on making democracy work (putnam, leonardi & nanetti 1993). it became clear that we needed to measure social capital. the concept sounded hard-headed and measurable, the sort of language that bureaucrats might be interested in. but what was it? as we pursued the issue of social capital through the emerging literature and through our own discussions, it became clear that the concept needed considerable explication before we could begin to measure it. so the empirical research question became one of ‘what is the conceptual structure/nature of social capital (what is it)?’. the question led to the development of an instrument incorporating all those items that may be relevant. the resulting questionnaire was completed by over one thousand citizens across five communities in nsw. it was factor analysed, refined into the core items, which comprised a social capital factor as well as eight identifiable separate factors, and the results published. the resulting survey instrument has since been used and replicated many times and the social capital scale has proved very useful, particularly in a local government context.3 the publication of the survey results completed one phase of the research cycle. however, it is interesting to reflect on subsequent events. like all good research, the survey raised far more questions than it answered. it generated a whole new set of research questions to be pursued, many of which required a quite different methodology. the results also impacted on the real world of social policy and organizational practice. for example, we found that volunteers score among the highest of all groups on many of the social capital dimensions. further empirical and theoretical work has tried to explicate the importance of volunteering for the generation of social capital. indeed, onyx and leonard (2000a) proposed a theoretical model that placed volunteering at the heart of social capital. leonard and onyx were successful in obtaining university research funding to pursue the role of volunteering in the generation of social capital. this time the 3 the survey results are presented in onyx and bullen (2000). later validation of the scale in the us can be found in o’brien, burdsal and molgaard (2004). gateways | onyx 100 research was done with industry partners that included both government departments and a peak community organization. that second study demonstrated the crucial role of volunteers in maintaining rural communities in particular (onyx, leonard & hayward-brown 2003). it also identified that volunteers play at least three roles within the community. first, volunteers play a key role as community builders, in developing organizations and services within the local community. this role is particularly important in rural areas which may not otherwise access crucial recreational or social services. second, volunteers play a mediating role in community networks, particularly between professional and lay networks. the study found that the volunteer is regarded as a kind of para-professional, one that is positioned in the overlap between the professional world and the community world. the volunteer is not a professional, but an ordinary citizen in the local community. but by virtue of their training and experience within the organization, they have access to a great deal of information that is useful to the community. in seeking access to that information, people may feel more comfortable with asking a friend than approaching formal, professional sources. third, given their key location in community networks, volunteers also play a key role in maintaining bonding and developing bridging links with other organizations and communities of interest. given this key locational position, they may be instrumental in creating, or alternately obstructing, broader community networks. that is, they play a gatekeeper role in network building, a role that may facilitate or impede inclusivity within the wider community. social capital is certainly not limited to any one segment of the population. one research study by a student of cacom who is also a community worker found that older immigrant groups from nonenglish speaking background score in the mid-range on most social capital dimensions, including ‘community connections’ (brown, onyx & bullen 1999). on the other hand, as bullen and onyx (1999) identified, family support service clients have the lowest scores, compared with all other groups, on all social capital dimensions except ‘tolerance of diversity’. this group of highly stressed, vulnerable people has minimal access to the social capital of the communities in which they live. researchers from cacom and partner universities went on to identify other implications of social capital and the community, in gateways | onyx 101 particular, the relationship between social capital (bonding and bridging) and community capacity building. preliminary fieldwork in sweden was published in another cacom working paper (onyx & leonard 2000b). subsequently cacom was successful in obtaining other research funding to explore the implications of social capital in rural australian and canadian towns. the implications of this story it is interesting to trace the sequence of events over the ten years of this research programme. at one level, it is a conventional university research programme, supported by traditional research funding sources. however, there are several significant factors that set it somewhat apart: • the impetus for the programme came not from academia, but from the community itself, specifically from small community organizations requesting assistance • the initial research could not attract adequate research funding as it lay outside the mainstream disciplinary interest of the time (that changed later) • the research at each point was done with the support of industry partners, that is, with community-based organizations, all of whom contributed considerable in-kind resources of time and labour. the research could not have been done without this engagement by the community partners • the development of the research questions, the methods and the interpretation of the findings was a collaborative process, involving both academics and community practitioners. the kind of university-community engagement illustrated by the social capital research programme involved multiple stakeholder partnerships. each was positioned differently with respect to the research process, and was, therefore, able to contribute its own unique perspective, knowledge base and implicit resources. this was indeed social and human capital put to maximum effect, producing a far richer picture than any one approach could have provided. in all of this, the university contribution was significant, in terms of the research expertise and knowledge of the literature provided by the gateways | onyx 102 participating academics, as well as the broader research infrastructure that the university can access. university research is also (ideally) seen as value neutral and research findings deemed more likely to be valid. this is important in the political context in which the community is seeking government funding for its programmes. within the sub-politics of funding proposals, evidence constructed and presented by the organization seeking funding is likely to be regarded as self-serving and unreliable, while (the same) evidence constructed and presented by a university is more likely to be regarded as credible. so the role of the university is important. however, in the example cited, and indeed in any true university-community engagement, the role of the university was not one of largess, donating its knowledge and expertise to the supplicant community. it was a much more dynamic and reflexive process, in which the knowledge grew out of the interaction between university and community. both contributed and therefore the emergent knowledge could not have occurred without the interaction. this process challenges the nature of knowledge itself as traditionally constructed, and approximates gibbons et al. (1994) mode two knowledge production. the knowledge required to understand social capital and community capacity building is not located within a rarefied scholarship. it is the collective construction of multiple, differently positioned minds collaborating and sharing their specific perspectives. the knowledge was not the property of the university or of the community, but an emergent product of the engagement. the university as mediator this is not to deny the potential leadership role of the university. in the example cited above, the initiative came from the community in the first instance, but it was the action of the university that placed social capital on the social policy map. in some cases the university may take on the role of social entrepreneur, establishing a community/training/research function outside the university itself, on the model of the teaching hospital. historically, a number of social work schools have established and maintained community houses in this way. in other contexts, the university may play the role of broker or mediator. to use the language of social capital again, social capital is gateways | onyx 103 normally based on collaborative networks among equals. these ties may be close (as in bonding social capital) or loose (as in bridging social capital). but there is also ‘linking social capital’ which entails networks among those with unequal power (woolcock & narayan 2000). such networks are crucial in enabling the relatively powerless to access knowledge and resources from the relatively powerful. they frequently require the mediation of power relationships in order to allow collaborative action to facilitate cross-group trust and cooperation. as this takes time and a significant amount of interaction among individuals and groups, the development of linking social capital requires long-term commitment by all parties. the process may be facilitated by a neutral, but trusted, third party who is able to mediate and negotiate some of the politically sensitive issues that divide. universities sometimes play that role. in one example, in south africa, a university work-based learning initiative enabled the development of community primary health services in disadvantaged areas, and involved the negotiation at many points with both the community and with the government health department (dovey & onyx 2000). again, it was a multistakeholder process in which knowledge was emergent and shared across the normally intractable divides of community, government and academics. in this process, the university was able to play an important mediating role, both in showcasing aspects of the programme to the government department, but also in supporting the application of funding for the programme to continue. within the communities themselves, the health professional students were able to gain enhanced authority by virtue of university support, for the introduction of new primary health initiatives, particularly where there was some traditional resistance to these initiatives. the university as site for intellectual deliberation goldfarb identifies the university as the natural location for intellectual deliberation. he also notes the function of critical deliberation is in danger of being subverted by the new, and selfinterested, professionalism. yet it remains possible for academic intellectuals to maintain a critical independence from wider political and economic forces, at least to some extent. for goldfarb, the task is complex but important. gateways | onyx 104 intellectuals help societies talk about their problems. they contribute to a democratic life when they civilize political contestation and when they subvert complacent consensus … intellectuals are key democratic agents as they stimulate informed discussion about pressing social problems, fulfilling this role by cultivating civility in public life and promoting the subversion of restrictive common sense. (goldfarb 1998, p. 1) goldfarb does not see the university as the only, or even the primary, site for intellectual activity. civil society is perhaps equally important, at least in some times and places. he defines civil society very broadly as that which develops when people ‘act as if they lived in a free society’ and in the process produce one. the essence is always one of critical independence from the state, the market and the family. while universities are not always able to maintain this critical independence, a university research centre may attempt to do so, by stimulating wider social and economic debate, by providing a forum for such critical engagement both inside and outside the university, and by disseminating the products of such deliberation. while the social capital research programme could hardly be seen as radical, it did have the desired effect of challenging the prevailing limited economic rationalist view of social policy. conclusion university-community engagement may now have found its time. in the postmodern world of complex ideas and shifting priorities, it is crucial that civil society be recognized as central to understanding the current discourses of government and society. the problems and issues of modern life involve many stakeholders, and an understanding of them. the development of new knowledge will necessarily be an emergent phenomenon involving dialogue and collaborative action by all stakeholders. the university is well positioned to engage in this process, not as received ‘expert’ but as one player that can contribute its knowledge and resources, sometimes in response to community initiative, sometimes taking a leadership role and sometimes providing a brokerage or mediating role representing the community interests before more powerful state or market interests. there is an incipient scholarship of engagement gateways | onyx 105 emerging. once articulated, a discourse of university-community engagement will inevitably lead to new insights and more effective programmes of research, training and policy development. references appadurai, a 1990, 'disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy', in m featherstone (ed.), global culture: nationalism, globalization and modernity, sage, london. beck, u 1999, world risk society, polity press, cambridge. bell, c & newby, h 1974, ‘introduction’, in c bell & h newby (eds), the sociology of community, frank cass, london. brown, k, onyx, j & bullen, p 1999, 'social capital and seniors networks in a multicultural context', third sector review, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 57–69. bullen, p & onyx, j 1999, social capital: family support services and neighbourhood and community centres in nsw, local community services association of nsw & family support services association on nsw, sydney. cox, e 1995, a truly civil society, boyer lectures, abc books, sydney. dovey, k & onyx, j 2000, ‘the long road to reconstruction: work-based learning, social capital and the transformation of a south african health service’, unpublished paper, uts, sydney. eyerman, r 1994, between culture and politics; intellectuals in modern society, polity press, cambridge. gallopin, g, funtowicz, s, o’connor, m & ravetz, j 2001, ’science for the twenty-first century: from social contract to the scientific core’, international journal social science, vol. 168, pp. 219–229. gibbons, m, limoges, c, nowotny, h, schwartzman, s, scott, p, & trow, m 1994, the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, sage, london. goldfarb, j 1998, civility and subversion: the intellectual in democratic society, cambridge university press, new york. howell, j 2006, ‘the global war on terror, development and civil society’, journal of international development, vol. 18, pp. 121–135. kenny, s 1994, developing communities for the future: community development in australia, thomas nelson, melbourne. lyons, m 2001, third sector: the contribution of nonprofit and cooperative enterprise in australia, allen & unwin, crows nest. gateways | onyx 106 milofsky, c & hunter, a 1994, where nonprofits come from: a theory of organizational emergence, 1994 arnova conference, san francisco. o’brien, m, burdsal, c, & molgaard, c 2004, ‘further development of an australian-based measure of social capital in a us sample’, social science and medicine, vol. 59, pp. 1207–1217. onyx, j 1996, ‘social capital: theory and measurement’, working paper series no. 34, centre for australian community organisations and management, university of technology, sydney. onyx, j 2003, ‘the story of social capital research’, third sector review, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 53–64. onyx, j & bullen, p 2000, ‘the different faces of social capital in nsw australia’, in p dekker & e uslander (eds), social capital and participation in everyday life, routledge, london. onyx, j & leonard, r 2000a, ‘women, volunteering and social capital’, in j warburton & m oppenheimer (eds), volunteers and volunteering, federation press, sydney. onyx, j & leonard, r 2000b, ‘rural renewal and social capital: the case of sweden and australia’, working paper no. 46, centre for australian community organisations and management, university of technology, sydney. onyx, j, leonard, r & hayward-brown, h 2003, ‘the special position of volunteers in the formation of social capital’, voluntary action, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 59–74. putman, r, leonardi, r & nanetti, r 1993, making democracy work: civic traditions in modern italy, princeton university press, princeton, new jersey. salamon, l, sokolowski, w & associates 2004, global civil society: dimensions of the nonprofit sector, kumarian press, bloomfield. woolcock, m & narayan, d 2000, ‘social capital: implications for development theory, research and policy’, world bank research observer, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 225–250. levesquepdf.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 150–164 © utsepress and the author government support and infrastructure: realizing the value of collaborative work peter levesque his article is a discussion of some of the roles of government in the support of community-campus research, otherwise called community-based research, citizen science, community-university research alliances or collaborative research. it is not a comprehensive analysis but may lead some readers to further investigate how government may best support collaborative research for collective benefit. i am writing from the perspective of a former staff member of a canadian federal funding agency who also has experience working with provincially funded institutions involved in community-based research. an introduction to programs such as cura (canada) and picri (ile-de-france) and a centre of excellence for child and youth mental health (ontario) is presented. i argue that the success of such programs is an indicator that government support of communitycampus partnerships and science and society interactions produces t gateways | levesque 151 significant social and economic value that is currently left unrealized by traditional research modalities. as such, greater support in the form of incentives and infrastructure are called for. a taxonomy applied to the role of the state in supporting public health initiatives is suggested as a framework from which to build specific recommendations for further government investments. growing or producing knowledge? michael gibbons et al. (1994) described the new methods for the production of knowledge. although they recognized that their mode one and mode two categories were insufficient descriptors, what was clear to them was that our collective understanding of knowledge production is changing. knowledge is not only a product but also a process and a participative one at that. mode one research is traditionally organized in universities. the main objective is the production of ‘new’ knowledge. the ‘pure’ disciplines are the location of knowledge production and scientific recognition. there is a staging of processes from fundamental to applied research. the peer review system is the predominant form of assessment both for the research processes and the products generated from these processes, as well as the careers of the people involved. the main targets for diffusion of this new knowledge are peer-reviewed journals. this form of knowledge production is generally well supported with incentives – rank, tenure, and promotion – as well as infrastructure such as institutions, associations, conferences and an apparatus for sharing and communicating results. in their analysis, gibbons et al. identified a new mode of knowledge production – mode two. this knowledge is produced in the context of application, in problem solving, and in the spaces formed by relationships. the locus of production tends to be transdisciplinary as well as transectoral. there is heterogeneity of people involved as well as organizational diversity. there is a greater level of social accountability and reflexivity. there is a form of quality control that goes beyond methodological or theoretical rigorousness, to one that includes cultural sensitivity and its applicability to real world problems, with real people in real places. gibbons states that mode two is an indicator of the end of the academic monopoly on the assessment of research. gibbons also states that this new mode of gateways | levesque 152 knowledge production implies a diversification and deinstitutionalization of knowledge diffusion activities. contrary to mode one, current supports for mode two are poorly developed, sparsely distributed and the costs of sharing and communicating are often underwritten by the individuals involved. yet, mode two is growing and attracting an increasing number of people. while this trend is somewhat paradoxical, what is clear from reading gibbons is that research is evolving from a complicated process into a complex one. this is a process that is emergent and perhaps can be described as more organic. unrealized value from research findings during the six-year period that i spent at the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc), i had the opportunity to look at the results of several thousand funded research projects. while all of them were submitted to a peer review process and the results thereof disseminated via the traditional peer review channels, it was clear to me and other members of the advisory council and staff that the full potential value of this research was not being fully realized. as a result of trying to determine why so much work was not producing its full value, i began to see research as three fundamental questions: what, so what and now what. the ‘what’ or content of basic research is found in the data, information, descriptions, and stories that are produced using a wide range of disciplinary tools and methods. the ‘so what’ is related to secondary analyses, to the creation of meaning, to myriad interpretations and to the contextualization of the data, information, descriptions and stories referred to above. ‘now what’ relates to the application of content within context and to the capacity for action, decision-making, and decisions that produce added value. ‘now what’ leads to the production of value, most traditionally in the form of product, programs and policies. however, there is significant value to be found in the changing of perspectives, such as that which led to the improvement in the lives of women in society or of our aboriginal populations, and greater cultural tolerance. further value is found in the creation of new procedures and processes, whether this is within business, government or the not-for-profit sector. there is further value still, in the improvement of professional practice and in the translation of research into new people skills. the gateways | levesque 153 processes that assist in the realization of the value of research findings are now commonly referred to as knowledge mobilization, knowledge management, knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange, dissemination, diffusion and other related terms. there are some sectors where the process of knowledge mobilization is achieving greater success, and with greater speed, than other areas – for example, the oil industry (see henrie & hedgepeth 2003) and oncology (thompson et al. 2006) versus childcare (lavis et al. 2003, p. 221) and environmental policy. while there is some research to draw upon at this moment, such as that found in the diffusion of innovation and the creation of technology centres, it is the opinion of this author that there is a correlation between existing infrastructure and incentives and the speed with which research moves into application. the creation of incentives in 1998, sshrc launched the first round of a pilot program: community-university research alliances (cura). this program has had a significant effect on the administration and development of research support programs funded by the canadian federal government and to a lesser extent on government agencies in other countries. it is also having an influence on the priorities of universities and scholarship in canada. a little background on the agency is important to understand the context of the emergence of the cura program. the social sciences and humanities research council of canada was created in 1977 by an act of parliament to be an arm’s-length federal agency that promotes and supports university-based research and training in the social sciences and humanities. it is governed by a twenty-two member advisory council and reports to parliament through the minister of industry. the grants and scholarships budget for 20062007 was $306 million (canadian dollars). allocation of these dollars is based on recommendations from volunteer experts that comprise the peer-review selection committees (sshrc 2006). the cura program was created as a pilot program of grants to address issues arising from the effects of globalization and other forces on canadian communities. sshrc states that: many of these challenges are best addressed at the local and regional levels by the local and regional groups that best gateways | levesque 154 understand the needs of, and the factors affecting, particular communities. in addition, issues which cut across geographic boundaries are also best addressed by postsecondary institutions working closely with groups that represent particular "communities" of interest. in service of these goals, stronger alliances between community organizations and postsecondary institutions can be enormously effective and yield important benefits for them both. (sshrc 2007) as such, the program supports the working together of postsecondary institutions and community organizations as equal partners. the cura program has four specific objectives: to promote the sharing of knowledge, resources and expertise between postsecondary institutions and organizations in the community; to enrich research, teaching methods and curricula in postsecondary institutions; to reinforce community decision-making and problemsolving capacity; and to enhance students' education and employability by means of diverse opportunities to build their knowledge, expertise and work skills through hands-on research and related experience (sshrc 2007). the original expectations for this program were modest. as the program officer in charge of the first competition cycle i was assured that we would receive no more than fifty or sixty letters of intent. these letters of intent were the first stage in a competition to receive one of eight full grants available. the first cycle produced 178 letters of intent. at the time, this was the largest number of applications to a strategic program ever received by sshrc. the range of proposals submitted reflected both the diversity of canadian society and the wide-ranging effects of globalization on communities. senior administrators reacted to this demand by appropriately increasing the number of grants to be funded to twenty-two – a budget increase of almost threefold which was also unprecedented. what emerged from the adjudication process was not only a realization that there was a great demand for funding for community-university partnerships but also that a significant proportion of institutions and communities in canada were already engaged in partnerships of one form or another. this form of self-organization is consistent with work identifying the paradoxes of self-organizing systems. margaret wheatley states that the viability and resiliency of the self-organizing gateways | levesque 155 system comes from its great capacity to adapt as needed to create structures that fit the moment (wheatley 2006, p. 82). it was apparent that communities, organizations and individuals across the country had been consistently interacting with colleges, universities and other post-secondary institutions in an effort to either find solutions to or better coping mechanisms for a range of problems affecting them. there was however a consistent lack of both financial resources and access to highly qualified individuals and data and information sources that could assist them to find the solutions they were looking for. in short, there was a lack of incentives to attract individuals to these local problems, as well as a lack of infrastructure linking them to each other in an efficient and potentially effective way. the cura program provided some resources and incentives which attracted a significant number of researchers and communitybased organizations. it also, given the size of the award (originally $200,000 per year for three years, later increased to five years), provided incentives to administrators in postsecondary institutions to consider such partnerships to be of value despite the reality that these efforts were outside the normal academic frame of reference. in 2004, i was invited by the government of ile-de-france, which is the regional government that includes the city of paris, to make a presentation on the sshrc experience with the cura program. the discussions which followed from this presentation led to the creation of a program called picri (partenariats institutions/citoyens pour la recherche et l’innovation). the aim of this program is to stimulate partnerships between research institutions and not-for-profit organizations in order to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, resources and skills between these different bodies. the program also supports a range of actions aimed at stimulating the interests of the general public, and in particular of young people, in science and scientific research (european commission 2007). while the picri program is based on the cura program and provides similar incentives as well as some supports to further enhance societal benefit from collaborative research activities, it has accomplished something of considerable significance – it has linked researchers across disciplinary groupings to work collaboratively on complex issues that are affecting the ten-million-plus inhabitants of the region gateways | levesque 156 of ile-de-france and is partially responsible for the emerging rise of interest in making paris an eco-region. a recent conversation with the vice-president of research for the region of ile-de-france, dr marc lipinski, during the 3rd living knowledge conference, hosted at the ecoles de mines by la fondation sciences-citoyennes, revealed both the ease with which the program was accepted at the political level as well as the growth of interest in engaging with the programming at a scientific level. dr lipinski stated that he expected to have to fight to see the program implemented. however, the reality was that his political colleagues considered the program to be a reasonably good idea but one that they had never considered. having the opportunity brought to their attention, the value to the region was easily recognized and there was good support to implement and experiment. his advice to political representatives in other regions was simply to ‘go for it’. at the scientific level, researchers and civil society organizations have come together on practical problems and have engaged in a co-creative process to identify the elements of a problem and implement solutions based on sound scientific research. an example includes the testing and rating of a range of electric wheelchairs for usability and durability in an urban parisian context. given the cost of these medical devices, as well as the critical need for them by their users, this was seen as a simple yet ultimately very useful project that would provide useable decision-making data to those funding the chairs as well as to those using them. also in 2004, the ontario ministry of children and youth services provided the financial resources to create the provincial centre of excellence for child and youth mental health at cheo. the vision of the centre is to have an integrated system that meets the holistic mental health needs of children, youth and their families, which is evidence-based and understood by the community at large (manion 2004). through a series of initiatives this centre connects youth, children, families, caregivers, and parents to the granting agencies, community agencies, associations, academic health science centres, government and universities. they also link these actors to the health care system, the welfare system, the justice system and the education system. while the centre itself can be considered as infrastructure, it also plays the dual role of a facilitator that engages the diverse parts of a gateways | levesque 157 complex system that supports children and youth with mental health difficulties, and also acts as a catalyst that provides funding for community-campus research partnerships. the centre states that it is committed to building capacity in the child and youth mental health sector, in part through its grants and awards programs. it acknowledges that this is accomplished by developing new knowledge, establishing new networks in partnerships, as well as by increasing the skills of those working in child and youth mental health through a variety of training initiatives (for more information on the provincial centre of excellence for child and youth mental health at cheo, including its grants and awards program).1 all research grants provided by the centre must include community partners. they provide capacity building grants to community organizations and service providers to increase their skills in knowledge development and utilization. they also build capacity within the community by directly funding youth projects – conceptualized, organized, implemented, and managed by youth. the centre has brought the community directly into the policymaking arena by implementing a consumer’s advisory group that makes recommendation to the centre as well as to the ministry. value beyond the fiscal marketplace in each of the examples provided above, federal, provincial and regional governments have initiated spending and changes in the informational environment to entice research partnerships between parties that are not ‘normally’ in interaction with each other. however, in order to move from case studies or exceptional examples to normal streams of activity with consistent and sustained funding, it is important to have a structure for government (and institutional) policy, programming and decision-making to imagine and organize the possibilities within their particular contexts. one important argument to present to these actors is that value creation is not limited to fiscal exchanges. there are multiple marketplaces, some of which have transactions measured in something other than monetary units. initiatives that create value in the form of social relationships, safe communities, improved health, good housing, clean water, educated citizenry and a host of other social profits often require investments to support conceptualization 1 see http://www.onthepoint.ca/index_e.htm gateways | levesque 158 and development activities – in much the same way that small and medium-sized enterprises receive support and subsidies before they can be viable in the global marketplace. without these supporting structures, substantial value goes undeveloped, underdeveloped or lost. one way to imagine the role that various levels of government can play in supporting community-campus research is provided by the case of public health and public health law. in the taxonomy provided by lawrence gostin (2004), one sees that the state is imbued with powers to create the conditions for people to be healthy, as well as the power to constrain autonomy, privacy, liberty, proprietary or other legally protected interests of individuals for the promotion of community health. these include the power to tax and spend, alter the informational environment, alter the built environment, alter the socioeconomic environment, regulate directly, and indirectly, through the tort system and deregulate. it can be argued that these state powers are not limited to public health. applying the taxonomy of state powers to communitycampus research partnerships, several arguments may be put forth that call for greater support of community-campus research partnerships. in the case of most federal governments, at least among the g25 countries, a certain proportion of tax dollars are spent supporting research – in canada this is done in part via the granting agencies such as sshrc, as well as the natural sciences and engineering research council of canada and the canadian institutes of health research. while the mandates of these organizations have a general focus on supporting university-based research, the canadian institutes of health research has a specific mandate with regard to knowledge transfer (for more information on its knowledge transfer strategy for 2004–2009, ‘innovation in action’.2 there is very little inhibiting any level of government from directing taxes to support community-campus research partnerships other than political will, competition for research dollars from more established institutions, practices, disciplines or perspectives and inadequately demonstrated effectiveness of the methods dominant in collaborative research. it is part of the political role of those engaged in collaborative research to build arguments which demonstrate the value of their work – value that otherwise would go unrealized. however, while 2 see http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/26574.html gateways | levesque 159 this evaluation process is emerging, it needs to be made perfectly clear that it was an evaluation process, conducted by the president of sshrc, dr marc renaud, and the vice-president of knowledge mobilization, ms pamela wiggin, which ultimately led to the transformation of the cura program from a pilot to an ongoing strategic program. it is unlikely that there is anything in the legislative frameworks of any government that inhibits it from investing in and supporting programs and structures to facilitate community-campus research. as the interview with dr marc lipinski in paris indicated, most of his political colleagues have just not considered the idea and when presented with it, they considered it a worthy initiative to undertake. the role of government to alter the information environment is not limited to restrictions but also to access: physical access and conceptual access – in this case to the results of publicly funded research. i remain surprised that there is not greater public demand for access to the results of work funded with public dollars. it is clear to me that if public dollars are used to support the research process, whether paying for the overhead in institutions, for the salaries to train highly qualified personnel, or for storing electronic and paper versions of various interpretations and analyses, then the same public should have access to the results of the research process, in a format that they can use and in a timely manner. the funding of communitycampus research in many ways alters the information environment. the co-construction of research questions, the collaborative analysis of results and the dynamic tension of determining how best to apply these results to the contexts in which people live produces value that otherwise remains as potential only on library shelves and in classroom desks. government has a role to play in altering the built environment that supports the research process. there are examples emerging in many places that show how to make university and college campuses more accessible to members of community-based organizations, citizen associations, community advocates and other organizations and individuals involved in the complex process of improving the social, environmental, economic and aesthetic conditions of their communities. some of these examples include the science shops in europe, the creation of specific offices within universities which act as intermediaries, such as the office for community-based research gateways | levesque 160 at the university of victoria, or a whole range of centres and institutes who include the public as a stakeholder rather than an audience member. while many of these initiatives have been led by individual activists or concerned academics, government has a role to play in supporting these initiatives, both in sharing success stories and in providing resources to restructure their public institutions to make them more accommodating, more welcoming and more useful to the concerns of the communities in which they find themselves. it is my opinion that one of the failures of the cura program has been the lack of a systematic process to bring research projects and groups together to share methods, techniques, tools, data and concepts in a systematic manner. while some of this has happened in an ad hoc manner through the community-university expo conferences in saskatoon, winnipeg and in victoria in 2008, there is a clear role for a national body to assist in the coordination and sharing of resources, data and opportunity. while political philosophies between governments may differ with regard to how they alter the socioeconomic environments under their jurisdiction, there is significant research to show that disparities within populations are in fact detrimental to all within that population (kawachi 1999). it is perhaps within the context of activities that reduce disparities within populations that government support for community-campus research may show the greatest results. while it has been demonstrated that education is one of the shortest routes out of poverty (morrison 2002), an education that includes active involvement with community organizations has been shown to produce citizens that are more engaged in their communities and for longer periods of time (lasker & weiss 2003). government programs which support community-campus research may result in the triple positive outputs of providing an education, training a more engaged citizenry in the use of research methods and interpretation of research results, and producing data, information and mechanisms to reduce disparities and create a more equal socioeconomic environment for its citizenry. while i am not aware of any longitudinal research at this time this may be an area for further work. given that direct regulation, indirect regulation and deregulation are areas that are outside my experience or expertise, i leave the creation of arguments that look at these roles of government to others. however, it is clear to me that without some form of clear, gateways | levesque 161 concrete directive, which supports clear, concrete incentives and infrastructure that supports community-campus partnerships and collaborative research, it will be left to those activists, advocates and concerned academics currently involved in pushing for such to continue their quest – underwriting the costs of doing so out of their own pocket, energy and personal visions. moving forward the late 1990s and the better part of this decade has seen substantial and significant increases in support for collaborative work. i've mentioned a few examples; however, i suggest that such initiatives exist, often in the shadows or in between other programs. it is important that the benefits and the value that is derived from engaging in collaborative work be made explicit, with a transparency of conversation about methods, limitations, opportunities and vision that reflects the best of the scientific methodology, while avoiding the worst of empire building, of ego inflation and of the creation of hierarchies that inhibit our collective abilities to produce solutions to our problems, or at the very least, better methods of coping with the problems that challenge us. government has been involved in the construction of the modern research enterprise from its very beginning and as such should be involved in the continued construction of the new forms of research. governments have been involved in the creation of land grant universities, in the facilitation of research projects to change the socioeconomic conditions during the great depression, and in accommodating the great demographic shift that occurred due to the baby-boom. as noted above, sshrc launched the cura program in part as a reaction to globalization but also in recognition of the power of including all stakeholders in a context of the discovery and implementation of potential solutions to the challenges they face. the only way to move forward is with a deliberate, systematic and transparent conversation about how best to support mode two research. gibbons did not state that mode two would displace mode one; rather gibbons and colleagues assured us that these two processes are complementary rather than in competition with each other. there is a common statement about scientific inquiry that discovery is made by individuals standing on the shoulders of giants gateways | levesque 162 and that if it were not for the work of their predecessors, new knowledge would not be created. government is not the enemy of research and research is not the enemy of government. if one looks at the history of the research enterprise in all developed countries, one sees collaboration and a collective effort to engage in mutually beneficial activities. while there are moments of conflicting visions, lack of leadership and outright hostility, none of these should limit our imagination or our will to engage with each other in improving the conditions in which we live, both locally and globally, by using the best methods from science, from community and from the diversity of cultures that populate our increasingly connected world. there is a clichéd statement that a population gets the government it deserves. i would argue that we do ourselves a great disservice when we choose not to involve the socially constructed frameworks of our governmental systems in the social construction of our communities. during a conference in vancouver, in one of those conversations many of us have during coffee break, a native elder whose name i never got asked a question about research: ‘what have we lost? why are we re-searching – should we not be searching?’ i suggest that we need to search together to find better ways of asking questions, of finding answers and of implementing and utilizing these answers in ways that benefit more of us. it is at the core of community-campus research to find such ways and to use them. it is at the core of government to ensure that our populations are well cared for. it is apparent to me that there are more opportunities than obstacles – however, the words and the language that appeal to our decision makers have not yet been found. perhaps some of the suggestions presented here will allow for that language to be developed and for the proper incentives and accompanying infrastructure to support collaborative research to continue to be built. references european commission 2007, ‘ile-de-france – bringing science closer to society’ (online), available: http://ec.europa.eu/research/researchersineurope/news/article_2798_en.h tm, viewed 15 may 2007. gateways | levesque 163 evans rg 1999, ‘purchasing population health: paying for results’, journal of health politics, policy, and law, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 1238–1244. gibbons, m, limoges, c, nowotny, h, schwartzman, s, scott, p & trow, m 1994, the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, sage, london. gostin, lo 2004, ‘health of the people: the highest law?’, the journal of law, medicine & ethics, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 509–515. gostin, lo 2005, ‘the core values of public health law and ethics’ in tm bailey, t caulfield & nm ries (eds), public health law and policy in canada, lexisnexis canada, markham, p. xi. henrie m & hedgepeth, o 2003, ‘size is important in knowledge management’, journal of knowledge management practice, august. kawachi, i 1999, ‘social capital and community effects on population and individual health, annals of the new york academy of science, vol. 896, pp. 120–130. lasker rd & weiss, es 2003, ‘broadening participation in community problem-solving: a multidisciplinary model to support collaborative practice and research’, journal of urban health, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 14–47. lavis, jn, robertson, d, woodside, jm, mcleod cb & abelson, j 2003, ‘how can research organizations more effectively transfer research knowledge to decision makers’, the millbank quarterley, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 221–248. manion, i 2004, ‘best practices building on the strengths: children and youth with special needs’, paper presented at the ontario children and youth summit, toronto, 25 november 2004. marmot, m 2005, ‘social determinants of health inequalities’, the lancet, vol. 365, no. 9464, pp. 1099–1104. morrison, c 2002, health, education and poverty reduction, oecd development center, paris. social sciences and humanities research council of canada 2006, ‘about sshrc’ (online), available: http://www.sshrc.ca/web/about/about_e.asp, viewed 16 april 2007. gateways | levesque 164 social sciences and humanities research council of canada 2007, ‘applying for funding: community-university research alliances’ (online), available: http://www.sshrc.ca/web/apply/program_descriptions/cura_e.asp, viewed 16 april 2007. thompson, gn, estabrooks ca & degner, lf 2006, ‘clarifying the concepts in knowledge transfer: a literature review’, journal of advanced nursing, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 691–701. wheatley, m 2006, leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world, berrett-koehler publishers, san francisco. suarez-2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 179–196 © utsepress and the authors capacity building and empowerment: a panacea and challenge for agency-university engagement yolanda suarez-balcazar, fabricio e. balcazar, tina taylorritzler and edurne garcia iriarte apacity building can be defined as a complex process that can exist at the individual, organizational, and/or community levels, and consists of skills, motivations, knowledge and attitudes necessary to implement programs (flaspohler et al. 2008). capacity building involves the transfer of competencies necessary for community groups or individuals to identify their issues and address their concerns. in the case of community-based agencies this involves improving their effectiveness and/or the quality of the services they provide to consumers (goodman et al. 1998). through capacity building, agencies may increase their ability to manage, sustain or improve their programs, utilize evaluation findings, and take action to address pressing social problems (balcazar et al. 1998; glickman & servon 2003; ristau 2001). c gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 180 to conceptualize capacity building at the agency level one must first ask, ‘capacity for what?’ the goals and specific needs of the agency at a particular time must be assessed. agencies often face many demands from consumers and pressure from funding sources to address specific needs. subsequently, one area of interest is the development of agency capacity for effective program evaluation. according to stockdill et al (2002) capacity building for evaluation is a ‘context-dependent, intentional action system of guided processes and practices for bringing about and sustaining program improvement’, (p. 8). this process can take place through the use of internal agency resources and expertise or through partnerships with outside collaborators and experts focusing on the transferring of particular knowledge and skills. although collaborative efforts almost always involve some degree of reciprocity, there is a potential for power struggles in the capacity building process when working in partnership with outside collaborators. however, such issues can be avoided through the employment of empowerment principles in the capacity building process. the purpose of this article is to discuss an approach to capacity building among university-community collaboration projects that is consistent with empowerment principles and focuses on an analysis of individual, organizational and contextual and cultural factors. background in the fall of 2005, the center on capacity building for minorities with disabilities research (ccbmdr) was funded by a grant from the national institute on disability and rehabilitation research (nidrr) of the us department of education. its mission was to assist researchers in conducting their work with multi-ethnic populations and to build capacity among community-based agencies to more effectively serve multi-ethnic populations with disabilities. the ccbmdr staff has worked with over thirty community-based social service agencies from eight states. these organizations provided services to people with various disabilities from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. the ccbmdr staff take a two-pronged approach to capacity building with these organizations. they provide participating agencies with evaluations of the impact of their services and work to increase participating agencies’ cultural competencies. among other functions, the center provides training and technical gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 181 assistance through participatory partnerships in which the needs and concerns of the participating agencies were addressed. funding requirements and changes in the demographic profile of many communities are placing pressure on community agencies to evolve. for example, many agencies that serve individuals with developmental disabilities in the chicago area, and its surrounding suburbs, were created in the 1950s and early 1960s by white middleclass families to serve their children. today, those children have aged and immigrants representing multiple racial and ethnic groups have moved into the communities. the agencies now face pressures to do things differently. evaluative protocol and programmatic expansion is required to serve their more diverse consumer bases. one way agencies can address issues faced by these diverse populations is through partnerships with local institutions of higher learning. such partnerships are mutually beneficial. agencies gain access to various resources, information and expertise while universities gain, among other benefits, opportunities to conduct research, advance knowledge and train their students (suarezbalcazar et al. 2005). as a community engaged research center within a university, efforts have concentrated on developing capacity at both individual staff and agency levels. across both levels, the optimal outcomes of capacity building activities are: institutionalization (the establishment of policies and procedures that support the new programs or procedures); mainstreaming (making the new programs or procedures part of the day-to-day activities of the agency); and utilization (verifying that the new programs or procedures are utilized and/or incorporated in service provision) (stockdill et al. 2002). a framework for conceptualizing capacity building most of the capacity building literature includes taxonomies of capacity building (see flaspohler et al. 2008), conceptualizations of capacity building (see arnold 2006; fawcett et al. 2003; wandersman et al. 2006) and discussions of the various dimensions of capacity building (see chaskin 2001; crisp et al. 2000; lord & hutchison 2003; nye & glickman 2000; ristau 2001). based on previous research and review of the literature, we developed an empowerment approach to capacity building designed to assist communities in either promoting gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 182 social change and/or engaging agency staff and program recipients in the process of program planning, implementation and evaluation (fawcett et al. 2003; fetterman 2001; fetterman & wandersman 2005). using an empowerment approach to building capacity focuses the process on identifying staff and agency strengths, increasing stakeholders’ capacity to identify their needs, documenting the impact of the programs and increasing the degree of control agency staff have over their initiatives (balcazar et al. 1998; glickman & servon 2003; nye & glickman 2000; ristau 2001; taut 2007). to build capacity a culturally appropriate and contextually grounded participatory approach was utilized. we emphasize the interaction between organizational and individual factors that impact the agency’s level of readiness, awareness, knowledge and skills/competencies for evaluating programs and for providing culturally competent services to consumers. the objective is to build and sustain capacity by promoting critical infrastructures at the agency and individual levels. these factors interact with one another influencing an organization’s ability to build capacity (suarezbalcazar et al. forthcoming). agency-related factors that provide optimal conditions and facilitate capacity include: strong and committed leadership; a learning climate; access to resources and support systems for evaluating programs and enhancing culturally competent services; and attention to the context and culture of the agency. we argue that lack of attention to these factors hinders capacity building efforts. individual factors are defined as the characteristics of individual staff members in direct contact with participants. individual factors that optimize capacity building within an organization include: personal readiness (willingness and motivation), level of work competence (knowledge and skills) and the degree of the individual’s cultural competence (suarez-balcazar et al. forthcoming). cultural competence factors include, but are not limited to, differences in the languages spoken by consumers and staff members, knowledge of factors that contribute to individual diversity and familiarity with the cultural characteristics of particular minority consumer groups. in addition to the factors previously mentioned, different contexts also influence both the individual and the organization. community and organizational history along with the political and socio-economic context in which the cbo is situated may impact capacity building. organizational and individual factors interact in gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 183 varying ways and are embedded in the cultural and contextual elements of the organizations and communities they serve (stockdill et al. 2002). capacity building within this framework is designed to improve services and programs for individuals with disabilities from different backgrounds (balcazar et al. 1998; glickman & servon 2003; griggs 2003; ristau 2001; stevenson et al. 2002; suarez-balcazar & harper, 2003; taut 2007; thayer & fine 2001). to promote capacity building our center staff provides training, technical assistance and consultation to agencies in need of incorporating evaluation practices within their program operation. in the case of capacity building for providing culturally competent services, balcazar et al. (forthcoming) defined cultural competence as the ability of service providers to effectively address the needs of people with disabilities from different ethnic backgrounds and assist them in reaching their personal and/or rehabilitation goals. the focus of our work is on building the capacity of cbo, cil and vr office staff to provide services that are culturally congruent with the beliefs and values of their increasingly diverse consumer population and which meet their diverse needs. experts in the field have identified a need for culturally competent services in part because of the increasing number of individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds who are either underserved or not served at all, and because traditional outreach and service delivery practices are not always effective in either recruiting or meeting the needs of diverse populations (moffat & tung 2004). center staff provide training, consultation and technical assistance to agencies utilizing training materials developed for that purpose.1 as with our evaluation capacity building work, our involvement and capacity building efforts to improve cultural competence are supported to varying degrees by stakeholders at multiple levels, including agency leaders and both frontline and midlevel staff. the challenge for community researchers is finding out how to engage in capacity building efforts without patronizing the community, all the while adhering to the key principles of empowerment. the construct of empowerment is often defined as the process groups and individuals go through in order to gain control 1 copies of the staff training guides are available from the first author upon request. gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 184 over relevant resources that impact their lives (zimmerman 2001). the empowerment process involves the principles of community participation, equal partnerships between universities and communities, participatory action research and respect for cultural diversity among others (fawcett et al. 1994). the essence of community research using an empowerment approach is to promote community autonomy and power redistribution. with the growing popularity of capacity building, it is advisable to utilize empowerment principles so that agency staff members can gain control of decisions that impact the quality of the services they provide to consumers. based on reviews of the capacity building literature (see for example flaspohler et al. 2008), literature on community-university engagements (such as rubin 2000) and field notes taken during the last three years of the ccbmdr’s technical assistance and consultation for capacity building, we offer the following principles to promote capacity building from an empowerment perspective. keeping control of the capacity building process most of our work is conducted in collaboration with staff from agencies serving people with disabilities. executive directors, program officers and key staff become our partners. they then identify the issues and areas of interest in which they want to increase their knowledge, skills or competencies. if training on evaluation or cultural competence is required, the staff from the community-based organization selects the areas for training, organizes the training and often facilitates the training along with ccbmdr staff. working with a few key members of the organization, instead of just one, facilitates building capacity that can be sustained over time. suarez-balcazar et al (2004) identified several steps that help maintain the control of the project in the organization including: letting the stakeholders identify and define their own needs, developing ownership over the process, taking a participatory and action-orientated approach to the collaboration and maintaining the voice of the stakeholders present throughout the capacity building project. in most of our capacity building work thus far, the stakeholders of interest have been the agency staff or managers, while program consumers have not participated. for example, a recent collaboration with a state office of vocational rehabilitation services focused on a gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 185 need expressed by several managers: developing and monitoring plans for outreach to people with disabilities from diverse ethnic backgrounds. office managers identified their goals and action plans and then tracked staff outreach efforts toward multi-ethic populations with disabilities in their community. developing competencies that matter the focus of capacity building should be on providing training to build new skills, exchanging new knowledge and overall developing competencies needed in a given agency. these competencies must be salient to management, staff members and the agencies’ consumers and have a long-lasting impact at the individual and organizational levels. in our projects, participants identify both areas of need as well as the skills and areas of development that are important to them. in this way we work to assure the relevance of the process to those involved. in an empowering approach, the area of focus of the capacity building activities cannot be imposed on the agency. the focus needs to come from the staff and key stakeholders, such as consumers, in order to have an impact that can be sustained over time. furthermore, agency staff are more willing to acquire and utilize new competencies when the knowledge and skills address perceived areas of need, when staff members feel invested in the process and when they take an active role in pursuing such competencies. therefore, our projects are driven by agency staff who willingly collaborate to meet their agency’s needs. for example, a large local agency that serves adults with developmental disabilities contacted us for cultural competence training for their staff. after discussing their needs and logistical difficulties within agency-wide training sessions, we agreed to start the process with the management team. this involved close to one hundred managers in two separate training events. at the end of the training we asked participants to set specific goals for each program they managed. several follow-up phone contacts suggested that some teams made substantial progress in meeting their goals (such as translating critical program information into spanish), while others made little progress. those who made little progress towards their goals alluded to obtaining little to no support from their organizations in the way of resources, willingness to discuss the gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 186 issues, time and effort. we attributed the differences in goal attainment to the degree of investment and commitment of the agencies to the change process. playing various supportive roles embracing an empowerment approach to program evaluation has also led ccbmdr staff to be ready to play various roles within an agency as the need arises. it is imperative for us to be willing and ready to shift and change roles as the capacity building process unfolds. the process of working with a partner agency is neither linear nor predictable and expertise is present among both facilitators and recipients (nyden et al. 1997). in capacity building, researchers must strike a responsibility balance. they must be flexible enough to play diverse roles while allowing agency staff to develop ownership of the process. recognizing the expertise of the stakeholders within the organization and shifting the role of expert from the university to an organization’s staff, depending on the circumstances, can facilitate the maintenance of the partnership (suarez-balcazar et al. 2004). the degree to which our efforts are supportive of the organization can have important implications for establishing equal relationships, building trust and facilitating adequate lines of communication or catalyzing power struggles within an agency, resulting in the eventual failure of our work to build capacity. whether documenting the impact of programs or providing culturally competent services, empowerment approaches to building capacity employ the researcher as a coach, a partner who provides technical assistance, and/or as an agent, assuming multiple roles to facilitate the enhancement of new skills and knowledge, promoting organizational learning and programmatic change (see fawcett et al. 2003; fetterman 2001). for instance, we are currently working with an organization that serves latinos with developmental disabilities. this is a large organization that offers multiple programs. once the partnership was established with the staff, senior management decided to develop the agency’s evaluative capacity. after the agency management selected a program to begin the capacity building process, a series of trainings on logic model development, setting measurable goals and developing and utilizing tracking systems was initiated over an eighteen month period that included follow up technical assistance. during this time one of the agency’s staff members took on the role of gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 187 trainer. she mastered the development of program logic models and trained other staff on how to develop logic models for their individual programs. after further training from ccbmdr staff, she is now teaching other agency staff how to use logic models. another staff member shifted out of her role as trainee at one of the training sessions and offered to facilitate a focus group with program participants. the ccbmdr staff are providing technical assistance and support to agency-wide dissemination efforts but no longer leading the training. maintaining a strengths-based approach to capacity building one of the principles of community engaged participatory research is a strengths-based approach to partnerships (see duffy & wong 1996). similarly, an asset-based approach, as articulated by mcknight (1997), focuses on the strengths of community organizations rather than their limitations or deficits. while the term ‘building capacity’ implies a set of skills or competencies that is either inadequate or is absent altogether, capacity building requires the identification and employment of assets of an organization, its staff, and the community in which it is situated. in our evaluation of capacity building work, for instance, we have seen that the presence of organizational factors such as strong leadership, a positive learning climate and resources allocated to the initiative (like staff time, ongoing training and assistance), along with individual factors such as staff motivation and willingness to learn as well as their skills and competencies, both maximizes and expedites the process of building capacity. the more strengths an agency brings to the process, the more likely that capacity can be built. we have conducted cultural competence (cc) trainings with more than eighty agencies from around the midwest over the last three years. as part of our capacity building strategy for cc training, we have incorporated goal setting as an integral component of the training process and provided technical assistance to agency staff for up to six months after the training event to support goal attainment. participants are free to set their own goals, either agency-wide or program-specific, depending on the staff members present at the training event. we have noticed consistent differences in goal attainment based on whether or not agency management supports gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 188 the change efforts. in agencies where managers or supervisors are invested in the attainment of goals, change can happen. this is a key finding in that facilitating change in organizational cultural competence often requires fiduciary commitment. agencies are often required to hire bilingual staff members, pay for the translation of outreach materials or allow their staff ‘flex time’ so the staff members can be available to meet with consumers and/or their families during evenings, on weekends or as otherwise needed. focusing on sustainability, institutionalization and utilization of acquired skills as stated earlier, we have engaged in two types of capacity building efforts: providing staff training to promote culturally competent services and assisting staff members in evaluating the impact of their services and programs. these efforts require special attention to maintaining the skills, knowledge and overall competencies acquired at the agency level so that staff can utilize and sustain learned competencies when our involvement and capacity building efforts cease. due to this, the capacity building partnership can last well over two years, involve training multiple staff at different organisational levels in either evaluation or cultural competence and provide oneon-one technical assistance and consultation as needed. to this end, instructional guides can be written in collaboration with agency staff. in the case of capacity building for evaluation, ccbmdr staff work with agency staff to assist in the development of materials and procedures (such as evaluation planning forms, logic models and assessment tools) tailored to the particular needs of the agency. the goal is for staff to be deeply involved in these activities, utilising existing materials while simultaneously focusing on developing materials to address future evaluation needs of the agency. maintaining ongoing contact and follow-up has also been a part of our efforts for building sustainability. this is the strategy used in our cultural competence trainings where participants can receive technical assistance for up to six months (for more information see taylor-ritzler et al. forthcoming). another way in which we are building sustainability is through a train-the-trainer model with large organizations. for instance, we have collaborated with the illinois department of human services’ division of rehabilitation services (drs) to train their vocational rehabilitation counselors in cultural competence. the drs is gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 189 responding to large increases in the diversity of the consumer population and disparities in the achievement of rehabilitation outcomes among minority groups, especially latinos and african americans (see atkins & wright 1980; baldwin & smith 1984; capella 2002). after several one-day training sessions with groups of counselors, we began training drs staff who, in turn, provide training, technical assistance and ongoing supervision related to improving cultural competence at regional vr offices throughout the state of illinois. our research indicates that this model is effective (see taylor-ritzler et al. forthcoming). in a large bureaucratic agency it is often difficult to facilitate organizational change. sometimes the top administrators support such efforts but direct service providers may be skeptical of their motives or resist change altogether. and occasionally the opposite is true, where direct care employees may want to implement change but are not supported by their supervisors. we have been fortunate to find little open resistance to change, in part because both managers and direct service employees recognize the need for improvements in their respective agencies. as more employees participate in cultural competence training and realize their role in organizational change, their support for the process increases. we chose not to impose change from the outside but to let agency staff and their leadership set their own goals and take the necessary steps to achieve change in their respective offices. for capacity building to be sustainable and for it to have lasting impact at the agency level, control of the process needs to rely on the various agency stakeholders. if it does not, the knowledge and skills taught are likely to dissipate after the capacity building work has ended. overall, sustaining capacity building requires systemic changes in the organization. such changes take time. patience and high tolerance for frustration are perhaps desirable qualities for those involved in capacity building (suarez-balcazar et al. 2005). this is certainly true for both agency and university staff because unanticipated challenges often occur. paying attention to cultural and contextual issues to be consistent with empowerment principles, capacity building activities must attend to the culture and context of the community and the organization of interest as sengupta et al (2004) observe, gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 190 ‘culture shapes values, beliefs and worldviews.’ social programs are infused with cultural elements that often relate to the very issues the programs were created to address. culture impacts how the problem they seek to address is conceptualized and how and why particular types of services and service-based approaches are offered. sometimes these services and approaches are consistent with the culture of agency consumers. in these instances the agency’s efforts may be successful. other times they are not, in part because the services offered by the agency fail to meet community needs. the cultures of both the organizations and the communities they serve operate within social, historical, economic and political contexts (sengupta et al. 2004). contextual factors, such as the existence of differences in power among evaluation stakeholders, disparities in the economic resources of the organization and the community, the relationship between the organization and community residents, the historical development of the organization and its impact on the community and differences in resource distribution among various social programs, must be taken into consideration when engaging in capacity building efforts. in agencies that serve individuals of diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as well as ability levels, attention to cultural factors is most critical (sengupta et al. 2004). an example of the importance of cultural and contextual factors in building capacity is our experience working with a tribal vocational rehabilitation program (tvrp). we observed that when program leaders felt that the evaluation was ‘for someone else’, especially if it was perceived that evaluative efforts were for a us government funder or a university researcher, program staff members were less likely to mobilize others for action around evaluation activities. contextual factors, such as the long history of us oppression, especially related to tribal self-governance and landownership, impacted evaluation practices including data collection and the utilization of findings. cultural factors related to beliefs in self-reliance contributed to a lengthy process of building trust in our center’s motivations and methods of capacity building. we had to show that our intentions were to support their goals as a tribe and the capacity building project would only happen on their terms. understanding, respecting and attending to cultural and contextual factors were critical in our work with leaders and members of tvrp. in general, culture and context can have a significant impact on maintaining harmony between capacity building efforts and gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 191 empowerment principles. in particular, approaches to capacity building must be consistent with the cultural norms of the agency and the communities they serve, otherwise the community and/or agency will be less likely to adopt the skills and knowledge offered. one of the agencies with which we have collaborated, located in a predominantly latino urban neighborhood, wanted to obtain feedback from community residents about its programs, one of which was a leadership and mentoring initiative for latino youth. when discussing possible methods for data collection, it became clear that we needed to consider cultural and contextual issues. based on experience, agency staff believed that community residents would not answer a mail survey. instead, staff members suggested door-todoor canvassing would be a more appropriate way to collect data. they believed one-on-one contact with residents to be a more culturally sensitive research approach. the staff also expressed appreciation that our interviewers were bilingual and bicultural, and as a result the latino community would be more receptive to participating in the study. conclusion capacity building for program evaluation is a complex process that involves a number of organizational and individual factors. historically, program evaluation has been perceived by agency staff as a threatening process designed to examine individual performance. this article presents an empowering approach for developing agency and individual capacity, one that includes principles to help guide its implementation. this is an appropriate approach for capacity building because the construct of capacity building itself implies collaboration and active participation. in order to promote empowerment, the issues discussed in this article should be considered. building capacity effectively at agency level enhances and improves the quality of service provision, promotes the professional development of staff, increases satisfaction and the likelihood of change implementation and promotes innovations at both individual and agency levels. the value of recognizing that capacity building can be practiced congruently with empowerment principles facilitates greater control of the process for agency partners. capacity building enhances agencies’ ability to address social issues that are important to the gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 192 communities they serve. when capacity building is approached from an empowerment perspective, the knowledge and skills shared with agency stakeholders may be used and maintained for the betterment of the agency and its clients. this process implies university and agency staff work together in a collaborative and reciprocal manner in which both groups benefit. building optimal capacity for evaluation and culturally competent services represents an opportunity for community agencies and university centers to work collaboratively and share experiences, thus making contributions to best practices and services. potential barriers and hurdles, such as power struggles, limited resources (including time), staff allocation, funding for program evaluation and the academic partners’ inability to develop truly collaborative partnerships, are some of the challenges identified in the literature (see fawcett et al. 1996; author et al. 2003; wandersman et al. 2006). further challenges include differential time constraints and agency staff turnover. in our experience, challenges arise when agencies and university partners have differing timeframe expectations for their capacity building efforts. universities usually work with students and academic calendars that often generate pressures on partner agencies to move through the process quickly. agencies on the other hand have their own pressures and timelines that often do not match those of the university. for instance, program evaluation often takes lower priority than developing funding proposals or dealing with state regulators. we initially anticipated that our capacity building partnerships would last between twelve and eighteen months with each agency but we have found that it is takes two to three years to reach desirable results. finally, in one of the state agencies where we have been working for over three years, our partners and closest collaborators were promoted to positions, retired or left the organization for other reasons. these departures created a vacuum in leadership and brought the process to a halt. we are now examining how to help the agency re-energize the training division, re-train the staff and continue the training goals that lie at the heart of our collaboration. starting over is not unusual in this process because of unforeseeable circumstances. overall, empowerment values enhance and promote capacity building. it is a process that can build strong communities and solid community agencies that share a sense of responsibility towards their gateways | suarez-balcazar et al 193 constituents. capacity building for program evaluation can allow organizations to improve their services while simultaneously increasing the degree of knowledge and control of direct service staff. staff and agency leaders can discover that their increased capacity may be a tool to improve the way they do their jobs and the effects they have on their consumers. agencies are realizing that in order to improve the impact they are having on the people they serve they have to better understand the needs of their consumers and develop skills sets to improve their practices. capacity building becomes the mechanism by which agencies and consumers come to realize their common goal of attaining a better quality of life through culturally appropriate 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participatory evaluation of community initiatives’, journal of prevention and intervention in the community, 26, no. pp. 5-20. taut, s 2007, ‘studying self-evaluation capacity building in a large international development organization’, american journal of evaluation, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 45-59. taylor-ritzler, t, balcazar, f, dimpfl, s, suarez-balcazar, y, willis, c & schiff, r (forthcoming), ‘cultural competence training with organizations serving people with disabilities from diverse backgrounds’, journal of vocational rehabilitation. thayer, ce & fine, ah 2001, ‘evaluation and outcome measurement in the non-profit sector: stakeholder participation’, evaluation and program planning, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 103-108. wandersman, a, clary, e, forbush, j, weinberger, s, coyne, m & duffy, j 2006, ‘community organizing and advocacy: increasing the quality and quantity of mentoring programs’, journal of community psychology, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 781-199. zimmerman ma 2001, ‘empowerment theory: psychological, organizational and community level of analysis’, in j rappaport & e seidman (eds), handbook of community psychology, plenum, new york, pp. 43-63. 2 cuthill.indd working together a methodological case study of ‘engaged scholarship’ this article is written in response to the emerging interest around ‘engaged scholarship’. the particular focus here is on the use of participatory action research (par) at the university of queensland’s boilerhouse community engagement centre (uq boilerhouse), which will serve as a case study for engaged scholarship in practice. it describes in detail the methodological framework developed at the centre – a methodology specifically relevant to the author, who has been using this approach to research for 13 years. this article also seeks to use this case study as a means to shed light on the broader context underpinning discussions on ‘engaged scholarship’. first, that the role of universities as ‘expert’ producers of knowledge must be re-evaluated. as gibbons, limoges, nowotny, schwartzman, scott and trow (1994, p. 11) suggest, it is perhaps inevitable that universities have come to acknowledge that they are only one player, ‘albeit still a major one, in a vastly expanded knowledge production process’. and second, that any focus on engaged scholarship is part of a wider discussion about democracy and citizen participation that extends over nearly 2300 years. from a contemporary perspective, the effectiveness of a primarily representative democracy is increasingly being challenged. assumptions of representative democracy may have been more meaningful in smaller communities faced with relatively slow change and less complexity. in such instances commonality of religion, politics and ethnicity in a place or nation could be counted on to ‘represent, more or less, the views of many’ (caragata 1999, p. 283). it is increasingly apparent that there is now a need to include a diverse range of citizen knowledge and experience in democratic decision making. in such a democracy citizens are seen to be active, informed and engaged in local issues rather than passive, withdrawn and apathetic (putnam 1993). balancing a citizen’s right to participate is the acknowledgement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 20–37 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 michael cuthill university of queensland 21 | gateways | cuthill of citizen responsibility relating to ‘the equal importance of others and their claims’, and the concept of a common good (caragata 1999, p. 283; jordan 1989). in today’s complex society, this situation is reflected in calls for a more participatory democracy that embraces a collaborative approach between diverse stakeholders1 to achieve these common good outcomes. while responses in this area are often viewed primarily as a role for governments, there is also an increasing call for higher education institutions to contribute by ‘… connecting the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic and ethical problems’ (boyer 1996, p. 21). until quite recently in australia, the potential for universities to contribute in this way had not been widely discussed. the concept of ‘engaged scholarship’ provides an opportunity for exploring practical responses by universities in their quest to achieve this potential (global university network for innovation 2008). holland (2005, p. 11) describes how engaged scholarship is increasingly being embraced by universities around the world, both ‘… as an expression of contemporary research methods and as a reinterpretation of the role of higher education in creating public good’. by providing a case study of engaged scholarship in practice this article presents: —a methodological framework for engaged scholarship as implemented through uq boilerhouse participatory research projects —discussion on how par can contribute to greater participatory democracy, and therefore the potential for universities to contribute to the ‘common good’ —reflections on some of the tensions and difficulties in implementing such work. engaged scholarship: the context for participatory action research the concept of ‘engaged scholarship’, as an example of contemporary research methods, draws largely from the description by gibbons et al. (1994) of the mode 2 approach to knowledge production as being applied, transdisciplinary, participatory, reflexive, and directed towards achieving ‘common good’ outcomes while maintaining high-quality research standards. there is a certain familiarity associated with many of the suggested attributes of such an approach; a general feeling that what’s old is new again. this is evidenced through a diverse range of theoretical, disciplinary and practice avenues through which engaged scholarship might be explored, for example: —action research (carr & kemmis 1986; lewin 1948; zuber-skerrit 1991) 1 for the purpose of this article stakeholders are broadly defined as individuals or groups who potentially have an interest in or may be impacted by an issue. 22 | gateways | cuthill —participatory evaluation (chambers 1994; estrella & gaventa 1998; guba & lincoln 1990; office of evaluation and strategic planning 1997) —participatory governance (arnstein 1969; gaventa 2001; de tocqueville 1969) —community-based participatory research (minkler & wallerstein 2003; israel et al. 2005) —participatory development (eade 1997; institute of development studies 1996; leal & opp 1998; united nations development program 1997). each of these approaches is intrinsically linked from both an ethical and methodological basis (strand et al. 2003) and has influenced the development of uq boilerhouse engagement initiatives. readers are invited to explore more detailed description of these approaches through the literature. the following discussion will focus on participatory action research (par), an approach that has provided a clear methodological foundation for engaged scholarship at the uq boilerhouse. three key concepts underpin participatory action research. first, that all citizens, including the poor and oppressed, are capable of undertaking ‘their own investigations, analysis and planning’. second, ‘that outsiders have roles as convenors, catalysts and facilitators’. third, ‘that the weak and marginalised can and should be empowered’ (chambers 1994, p. 954). implementation of these three concepts directly addresses power-laden considerations of ‘whose knowledge counts?’, providing a strong social justice focus for par. working from this philosophical platform, par encourages and facilitates participatory and empowering processes for diverse stakeholders, thus moving away from the ‘expert’ delivery of knowledge from academics to the people, to a coproduction of new knowledge and shared understandings as a basis for collaborative local action (cuthill 2003; rahman 1993). as a collaborative research approach, par is founded on trusting and respectful relationships between stakeholders. it seeks to build the knowledge, skills and abilities of participants, and to facilitate informed and collaborative responses for the common good. par links academic theory to practice through an iterative process of reflective learning involving diverse stakeholders (boyer 1996; habermas 1989). in doing so it combines the three interrelated aspects of research, education and socio-political action into a process for restructuring existing power into a more equitable arrangement (fals-borda & rahman 1991). as part of a new paradigm of social science it acknowledges ‘… a world of multiple and competing versions of truth and reality’ (wadsworth 1998, p. 8). such an approach implicitly suggests that theory and practice are both interdependent and complementary, and each should inform and strengthen the other. in a self-reinforcing 23 | gateways | cuthill process, practice would inform theory and theory would inform practice. this theory/practice nexus is a central theme within all uq boilerhouse research. par is a process-orientated research approach which acknowledges that, ‘how you do things is as important as what you do’. the research expertise, in facilitating an informed, highquality and inclusive research process, is of key importance. this is a significant departure from the traditional research role; a move away from the academic as the ‘expert’ holder of knowledge, to a role where the academic is a facilitator of collaborative knowledge creation processes. proportionally few academics appear to be aware of either the practice or potential of participatory research. a better understanding and clearer articulation of this approach and its impact is required – outcomes to which this article hopes to contribute. par in practice: a case study of the uq boilerhouse methodology the uq boilerhouse community engagement centre provides a methodological case study of engaged scholarship implemented at a research centre level. launched in 1999 on the new university of queensland campus at ipswich, the then-named community service research centre was established to build links between the campus and the west moreton region in south east queensland. this was one of the first research centres established in an australian ‘sandstone’ university to explicitly articulate a desire to ‘engage’ with its community to collaboratively address local issues (muirhead & woolcock 2008). (the university of queensland is recognised as one of australia’s leading universities. it is a member of the group of 8 australian ‘sandstone’ universities, consistently ranks among the top 100 universities in the world, and is acknowledged as one of the top three research universities in australia [university of queensland 2008, p. 4]. in 2007, there were over 5300 staff and approximately 40 000 students.) in february 2005 a new director was appointed and assigned the task of developing the centre to play a leadership role in university engagement policy, planning and practice in australia through a focus on engaged scholarship. the centre was subsequently renamed the uq boilerhouse community engagement centre and a three-year strategic plan was developed to clearly articulate the centre’s vision, mission, principles and objectives (uq boilerhouse 2006). that mission is ‘… to facilitate just and sustainable community outcomes’. the mission is underpinned by four principles that provide clear direction for all centre engagement initiatives. they include a commitment to: —collaborative responses to local issues —active citizenship —personal relationships as a basis for collaboration 24 | gateways | cuthill —sustainable development – incorporating a balance between social justice; economic stability and equity; environmental protection; and participatory governance. working from the mission statement and principles, much of the centre’s work now focuses on ‘engaged scholarship’. over the past four years the centre has implemented 18 major projects with over $3.5 million of operational and project funding. project and centre level evaluation frameworks have been developed and are starting to provide early assessment of the impact from this work (for example, see cuthill, wilson & nielson 2008; hudson & cuthill 2006; scull & cuthill 2007, 2008; warburton et al. 2008). the uq boilerhouse acts as a facilitating agent, bringing together diverse public, private and community sector stakeholders to develop informed and collaborative responses to both existing and emerging local issues or opportunities (uq boilerhouse 2006). a participatory research approach opens up new possibilities for innovation where: —responsibility is shared —diverse perspectives are heard —understanding, ownership and commitment for collaborative actions are enhanced —resources can be used most effectively (cuthill & fien 2005). the iterative process of par means that research will be both responsive and flexible, facilitating ongoing opportunities for stakeholders to be involved in all stages of a project, collaboratively refocusing the activities, and pursuing new leads and directions as the research develops. this methodology is implemented at the uq boilerhouse through three defined but interrelated stages: —project development and design —data collection and analysis —reporting and project evaluation. while the following description provides discussion around these three stages, it should be remembered that each research project has its own specific context relating to, for example, funding, timeframes, political environment and stakeholder outcomes. as such, what follows should be read as a broad description of this methodology, and viewed as an ‘ideal’ model. in practice, each of the par projects facilitated through the uq boilerhouse is much more ‘messy’ than the following description might suggest. this is typical of the par methodology. stage 1: project development and design appropriate project development provides a solid foundation for research that directly contributes to the centre’s mission, and complies with centre principles. initially, a local issue and/ or opportunity is identified by stakeholders, and a small project team, comprising centre staff and self-selected stakeholders, do a preliminary scan around the ‘topic of interest’. this scan involves identifying and having informal discussions with other (obvious) stakeholders, and starting a literature search. if there appears to be a clear need, identified both in the literature and ‘on the ground’, 25 | gateways | cuthill to develop an informed and collaborative response, a formal research process is instigated. this can be a diffi cult period of the par process as there is usually little funding available to support development of the research. as such, projects often only get up and running due to the generous efforts from committed stakeholders. initial project meetings focus on articulating research questions, developing a common language, starting the stakeholder analysis, and identifying funding sources to implement the research. these meetings provide an opportunity for people to get to know each other, and thereby help establish a respectful working relationship among the oftentimes disparate stakeholders. the stakeholder analysis is undertaken to identify people and/or agencies who have an interest in or may be impacted by the acknowledged issue. this identifi cation is typically problematic in that, no matter how much effort is put into the analysis, as the project progresses there always seems to be someone else ‘who should have been invited’. projects leave open the opportunity for new stakeholders to join in at any stage, with their level of participation negotiated through project ‘governance’ procedures. centre research team project management group other interested stakeholders broader public the centre research team initially comprises a boilerhouse researcher and interested academic staff from either uq or other universities. a partisan approach to research is encouraged. when project funding is secured research staff are employed and join the research team to implement fi eld research. the research team has core responsibilities relating to accountability for research funds, research quality, provision of a secretariat to the project management group and compliance with institutional procedures. an interim project management group guides the initial stages of research development until funding is achieved. people identifi ed through the stakeholder analysis are invited to an initial project workshop which: diagram 1: stakeholders are broadly categorised in four groups 26 | gateways | cuthill —provides description of the context for the issue of concern —indicates the intent of the interim project management group to undertake a par project, and provides information on what this will entail —invites those who are interested to be involved. stakeholders who wish to be actively involved in the project management group self-identify, while others who are not able to actively participate can maintain a lower level of involvement as an interested stakeholder. it is also acknowledged that the broader public might have some interest in the project, and information processes for this group are addressed in a communication and engagement plan. this plan is developed to ensure that an appropriate level of engagement is facilitated for each of the four stakeholder categories identified in diagram 1. the actual level of engagement in the par project is determined by the individual, the rationale being that people will choose their level of involvement according to both their interest in the issue and their ability to contribute. it has long been acknowledged that participation ‘… cannot be conjured up or created artificially’; rather, it is more of a feeling expressed by the individual that they want to be part of the project, that they consider its aims to be worthwhile and they choose to commit to the work (lawrence 1954, p. 51). the different levels of stakeholder engagement might range from being kept informed or being consulted, through to full participation in the research (arnstein 1969) – see table 1. levels of engagement methods of engagement stakeholders are informed media or public reports academic articles conference presentations project stakeholder email list project newsletters stakeholders are consulted presentations to stakeholder groups website discussion forums stakeholder interviews, workshops and/or surveys stakeholders participate review of project design, reports and/or publications research team and project management group meetings the project management group is now boosted with new members emerging from the initial project workshop. governance procedures are articulated as a first priority. some groups have decided that a formal ‘memorandum of understanding’ is appropriate while others have opted for a less formal group consensus approach to decision making. two recent projects have also established a ‘critical friends group’ comprising both national and international experts in the area of research focus. this group table 1: levels of, and methods for, engagement 27 | gateways | cuthill provides an independent and informed voice to guide/review the research. other tasks completed during the development and design stage include a detailed research design, project evaluation framework, ethics approval and a funding application. the funding application often involves a ‘wait’ of anywhere from 3 to 12 months. this lull in research activity can be problematic in regard to maintaining enthusiasm and momentum among the project management group. a short-term solution for some projects has been to seek ‘bridging’ funds from project partners and/or external sources. this usually involves relatively small amounts of funding, which are used to employ a research officer to work approximately two days a week until full funding is achieved. if split among three to six project partners the cost is quite small. most uq boilerhouse projects look for funding of three years, which provides a reasonable length of time to implement a genuine participatory research process. stage 2: data collection and analysis appropriate data collection methods are selected from a suite of six potential data sources: —literature review —observational data —stakeholder interviews —participatory processes —stakeholder surveys —project evaluation. the literature review includes academic literature; consideration of relevant policies, strategies, plans, case studies and/or reports; census data; and any other relevant secondary data. while the bulk of the review is completed during the developmental stage, additional information is collected as the project progresses. to date, observational data (for example, from public meetings and project management group meetings) has played a minor role in informing centre projects. however, in several recent projects extensive filming of project meetings and workshops has been conducted, although to date this data has not been systematically analysed. in a process orientated methodology, it is expected that there is much to be learnt from how the process is implemented. the usefulness of this method is being examined both in terms of the quality of data and how it can be analysed, and with regards to resource considerations. there is an ethical requirement to have the consent of any individuals being filmed or recorded. during the developmental stage, an oftentimes extensive series of informal discussions with diverse stakeholders is conducted. these one-on-one discussions have the aims of establishing initial contacts with stakeholders, field testing emerging concepts relating to the topic of research interest and identifying other potential stakeholders (neuman 1994). field notes are written up by the research officer after each meeting/workshop. 28 | gateways | cuthill semi-structured or structured interviews are a common data collection method for centre projects. interviews are taped, transcribed, then thematically coded and returned to participants for editing or further elaboration. however, this is a timeconsuming and costly process with 100–150 hours of interviews recorded and transcribed each year. the centre is exploring the use of new technologies such as voice recognition software to offset this cost. participatory processes, based on concepts of ‘collective reasoning and deliberation’ provide a key source of data for centre projects (carson & gelber 2001, p. 11). these processes include, for example, project management group meetings, stakeholder workshops and focus group sessions. they facilitate multiple outcomes including data collection, building common understanding from diverse perspectives and establishing stakeholder networks. arguably, the development of informed and collaborative responses heavily relies on these group processes as a facilitated pathway towards such responses. these participatory processes have involved groups of between 3 and 80 people in sessions ranging from one hour to two days. data from participatory processes is collected through a variety of methods including participants recording their ideas on butchers paper, minutes from meetings, electronic whiteboards, and small breakout sessions with summary overheads used to present back to other participants. it is considered essential to use experienced facilitators to plan and deliver participatory processes. this role is filled by experienced centre staff when possible, but external facilitators are used, especially for larger and/or more complicated workshops. hoatson and egan (2001, p. 11) argue that the value of an independent facilitator is evidenced in ‘… their ability to be seen as working for that partnership, rather than for any individual interest’. this is particularly relevant during the developmental phase of research when the group is in its formative stages. qualitative methods such as interviews and participatory processes form a core focus for data collection during boilerhouse par projects. however, surveys are an important tool for some data collection processes, for example, if responses from a large population are required to inform a project (neuman 1994). generally, projects use a mix of two or more data collection methods. data is generally processed through use of discourse analysis, thematic coding or statistical analysis. results from the various individual data sources are then triangulated and examined to determine similarities and differences. stage 3: reporting and project evaluation following the data analysis, a first draft research report is developed by the research team and reviewed by project management group members. when a ‘final’ draft is agreed on, this is distributed to all stakeholders on the project email list for comment. in some projects stakeholder workshops are also run to 29 | gateways | cuthill facilitate detailed discussion and review of the draft report, and also to communicate project outcomes to interested audiences. once the review processes are completed the research report is used as the basis for academic publications, conference presentations, stakeholder policy, planning and/or training responses. all publications are available for free download on the centre’s website (subject to copyright requirements). a project evaluation framework has been developed as a guide for all centre projects (table 2). the framework incorporates five key areas for evaluation, which include both the tangible and less tangible project outputs (kuruvilla et al. 2006). evaluation criteria examples of indicators/ methods 1 project outputs (e.g. reports, training, plans, guidelines etc.) project deliverables submitted: • on time, and/or • as outlined in funding agreement 2 efficient and accountable budget project completed: • within budget, and/or • in accordance with funding agreement 3 research quality research reporting endorsed through: • the project management group, and/or • peer-reviewed academic publications, and/or • peer-reviewed conference presentations 4 effective communication and engagement processes positive responses from project evaluation: • survey, and/or • stakeholder reflective workshops, and/or • participant interviews 5 enhanced human and social capital (capacity building, e.g. trust, skills, networks, collaboration) positive responses from project evaluation: • survey, and/or • stakeholder reflective workshops, and/or • participant interviews working from this framework, a project evaluation plan is developed during the first stage of research. this plan is then used as a touchstone throughout the project to ensure appropriate progress is being made towards achieving project objectives. the final stage of the research incorporates a summative evaluation, which is included in the project report. the par methodology has proven incredibly successful over the 13 years it has been used by this author, and more recently across a diverse range of uq boilerhouse projects. previous discussion has focused on how the research process operates, now we focus on a number of reflections that might be useful if considering such an approach. discussion briefly focuses on table 2: project evaluation framework 30 | gateways | cuthill why par might be useful in helping build just and sustainable communities, and reflects on some of the areas of tension and difficulty experienced by the centre in implementing its work. engaged scholarship: enhancing human capital and the development of participatory democracy arguably, in our modern technological society, a rapid accumulation of knowledge and wealth has not yet been accompanied by equivalent ‘advances in ethical thinking’ (mcintyre 1996, p. 15). calhoun (1995, p. 9) emphasises the importance of citizens understanding the ‘underlying pattern of causes and constraints, not merely the more contingent surface pattern of actual occurrences’. if people are not able to critically perceive the reality of their lives, they are simply swept along with the tides of change, for good or bad (fals-borda & rahman 1991; freire 1970). by adopting a social learning and action approach par seeks to develop a ‘critical consciousness’ relating to a citizen’s ethical responsibility to take informed action for the ‘common good’ (freire 1973). as such, the concept of par seeks to involve ‘disenfranchised people in pursuit of answers to the questions of their daily struggle and survival’ (sohng 1995, p. 1). this approach focuses on people in a local setting and recognises ‘the importance of social and collective processes’; in essence, it encompasses a dialogue that facilitates a shared understanding of issues and acceptance of responsibility and promotes informed action (wadsworth 1998, p. 12). personal empowerment is evidenced in the attainment of knowledge, skills and abilities through participation (lyons, smuts & stephens 2001). development of local leadership and attainment of new skills and information facilitates the ongoing cyclical process of social learning and collaborative action (cuthill & fien 2005). as a result, local communities have an opportunity to empower themselves to play a key role in local development. the collaborative nature of the uq boilerhouse methodology looks to facilitate these processes and outcomes, and is at the core of the centre’s philosophy and operations. yet its implementation has and continues to be a learning process for centre staff. as with any collaboration, there is a possibility of tensions surfacing, particularly in relation to issues of power, representation and cultural dynamics (wallerstein & duran 2006). for example, a recent centre project involved working with pacific island communities, education providers and service agencies to support young people from these communities in accessing higher education opportunities. during this project two key areas for negotiation arose (scull & cuthill 2008). first, research fatigue due to previous negative experiences of research participation was evident, with pacific island community representatives initially reluctant to become involved in what was seen as ‘yet another research project’. second, there was a 31 | gateways | cuthill challenge in securing reliable participation from pacific island participants, partly due to differences in cultural norms between the anglo-australian research team and these participants. adaptation, flexibility and negotiation were required from both cultural groups to overcome these issues. while shared collaboration and shared decision making among participants is both a necessary and an admirable goal, it should be noted that ‘collaboration’ is an imperfect science. it depends on and revolves around contextual factors such as the available time, abilities, commitment and intention of participants. as experienced with the pacific islander project, these influencing ‘contexts’ form the basis of ongoing negotiation within each collaboration (gray 1989; himmelman 1995). negotiations for the pacific islander project were facilitated through a series of workshops involving community leaders, two pacific island community liaison officers employed by the project and project research officers. these workshops were very different in their implementation to the structured workshops normally facilitated by centre staff. for example, the islanders have a very strong christian faith and they start and end all gatherings with prayers. they also requested regular breaks during the workshops to allow them to converse in their native language to ensure that the preceding discussion had been clearly understood by all participants. as a response to a previous (negative) research experience, the pacific islanders asked the university to sign a memorandum of understanding (mou), which outlined the roles and responsibilities of all participants. the mou provided a focus for negotiation for both parties and an agreement was reached after much discussion. our experiences suggest it is important that the practical realities of achieving ‘negotiated’ equality within participatory research be addressed during the early developmental stage of a project. topics such as implementation timeframes, project language, intellectual property, funding arrangements, governance and delivery of ‘useful’ outcomes for all stakeholders must be openly discussed and agreed upon. this dialogue should look for a shared understanding of project goals, management and outcomes, and of participant roles and responsibilities. potential issues should be flagged at a time when they can easily be discussed and managed. from a research manager’s perspective, it is worth noting that while negotiation among participants is presented as a key requirement for participatory action research at the centre, three issues are not open for negotiation. first, most uq boilerhouse projects are publicly funded, through national competitive grant schemes, with the centre listed as the administering agency. as such the centre has legal accountability to ensure funding is used appropriately. second, uq boilerhouse researchers accept responsibility that all centre research projects are conducted to peer review quality standards. third, all uq research projects undergo 32 | gateways | cuthill a strict ethics approval process before implementation. as part of ethics approval, all uq boilerhouse staff, and by association all project participants, are obliged to adhere to stipulated ethics procedures and requirements. making the case for participatory action research as stated, negotiation constitutes a first step in the iterative research process. this process can be quite disconcerting for stakeholders who might be more familiar with the more common linear, positivist approach to research. indeed, broadly speaking, there appears to be a general lack of understanding of participatory approaches both in public agencies and in many of the more traditional academic ‘silos’ in australian universities. however, it is clear from the uq boilerhouse experience that public, private and community sector agencies, and academics, once they are familiar with the par approach, endorse and support what they describe as a ‘common sense’ research approach that looks to address real world issues and needs. as such, ‘quality’ within par strives to be both socially accountable and academically defined (gibbons et al. 1994). the academic rigour associated with the centre’s work, along with the reputation of a ‘sandstone’ university provides a strong incentive for partnership building. for example, the uq boilerhouse has been approached by private sector agencies such as urban development companies and major consulting firms to work together in developing community engagement processes or social impact assessment studies for major infrastructure projects. these agencies see the strength of the centre as a neutral party, situated within a major australian research university. this provides them with the credibility to argue their project outcomes to both their clients and the development regulators. during project negotiations the boilerhouse looks for a guarantee to protect the independent nature of the research being implemented. interestingly, these agencies generally seem to be more conversant with and accepting of participatory approaches than government agencies. one of the key constraints impeding a more ready acceptance of par is a lack of empirical evidence, specifically with regards to the quality and impact of par, but more generally in relation to engaged scholarship. while much is claimed of this approach (including what is reported in this article), the evidence to support these claims is thinly distributed across a multitude of diverse disciplinary journals and reports (seifer & carriere 2003). as noted previously, in response to this situation, the uq boilerhouse is implementing project evaluations for all centre projects. evaluation fulfils multiple purposes, including that it: —supports continuous learning through reflective practice —provides evidence of accountability to the centre strategic plan —directs future planning for both the centre and its projects. 33 | gateways | cuthill from an institutional perspective, there is a valid question as to how engaged scholarship fits into the traditional academic setting (commission on community-engaged scholarship in the health professions 2005). perhaps the logical starting point for such a conversation around this issue is the key requirement for academics to publish in highly rated peer-reviewed journals. such publications directly relate to opportunities for tenure, career advancement and academic promotion. however, this route is problematic with regards par as, historically, journals have predominately focused on publishing research from mainstream research paradigms. as a result, reporting of participatory research has not been highly visible. a recent suite of academic journals, more willing to report outcomes from engaged scholarship, provides increased opportunity for academics to publish their participatory research. further confounding the publication issue is a common philosophical commitment from academics undertaking engaged scholarship to widely share the knowledge gained through such research. in response to this commitment, their research reporting is directed to publication outlets that are broadly available to the most relevant audience, not hidden away in academic journals accessed by the privileged few. clearly, there is an inherent tension between publishing in high-quality peer-reviewed journals for career advancement, and providing accessible information to a broader audience. this tension could be addressed through appropriate institutional recognition of and support for engaged scholarship that might not meet standard promotion criteria, but does contribute to the ‘common good’. as noted earlier, measures of research ‘impact’ are narrowly defined in australian universities and research is required to enhance understanding of the costs, benefits and impacts of engaged scholarship. conclusion the work of the uq boilerhouse over the past 10 years has undoubtedly influenced the way engaged scholarship is viewed within the university of queensland. the centre now has ‘runs on the board’ in relation to participatory research. for example, every dollar invested in the centre over the past three years has returned $3 in project funding, and substantial in-kind support. in addition, the centre has produced academic outcomes, developed strong regional partnerships, and provided direction to institutional policy and operations in this area (cuthill 2009). for example, a recent report sponsored by the vicechancellor, outlines recommendations for institutional responses relating to broad concepts of university engagement. in particular, recommendation 8 identifies the need to ‘develop institutional responses to recognise and support the scholarship of engagement’ (cuthill & dowd 2008, p. iv). discussions are underway with regards to implementing this recommendation 34 | gateways | cuthill through development of a participatory research mentoring and support program for early career researchers and higher research degree students. this article has presented discussion relating to engaged scholarship, and a methodological case study focusing on par as an example of engaged scholarship. ongoing discussion and debate on the different applications of engaged scholarship will help engender a more ready understanding of participatory research as a valid and valuable methodology within the academy (gibbons et al. 1994). it is my belief that in time engaged scholarship will become more broadly accepted as one way of ‘doing business’ in australian universities. as boyer (1996, p. 18) suggests, we might once again become more ‘… vigorously engaged in the issues of our day …’; engaged scholars working towards the philosophical concept of a ‘common good’. references arnstein, s 1969, ‘a ladder of citizen participation’, aip journal, vol. 35, no. 4, july 1969, pp. 216–24. boyer, e 1996, ‘the scholarship of engagement’, journal of public service and outreach, vol. 1, pp. 11–20. calhoun, c 1995, critical social theory: culture, history and the challenge of difference, blackwell, oxford uk and cambridge usa. caragata, l 1999, ‘the privileged public: who is permitted citizenship?’ community development journal, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 270–86. carr, w & kemmis, s 1986, becoming critical: education, knowledge and action research, falmer press, london. carson, l & gelber, k 2001, ideas for community consultation, a paper prepared for the nsw department of urban affairs and planning, new south wales government, australia. chambers, r 1994, ‘participatory rural appraisal (pra): analysis of experience’, world development, vol. 22, no. 9, pp. 1253–68. commission on community-engaged scholarship in the health professions, 2005, linking scholarship and communities: report of the commission on community-engaged scholarship in the health professions, community-campus partnerships for health, seattle, wa, www.ccph. info. cuthill, m 2003, ‘the contribution of human and social capital to building community well-being: a research agenda relating to citizen participation in local governance in australia’, urban policy and research, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 373–91. cuthill, m 2010, ‘embedding engagement in an australian ‘sandstone’ university: from community service to university engagement’, metropolitan universities (in print). cuthill, m & dowd, a 2008, the audit report: engagement at uq, uq boilerhouse publication, ipswich, queensland, www.uq.edu.au/ boilerhouse. cuthill, m & fien, j 2005, ‘capacity building: facilitating citizen participation in local governance’, australian journal of public administration, vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 63–80. 35 | gateways | cuthill cuthill, m, wilson, e & nielson, n 2008, ‘collaboration in a competitive environment: evaluation of and reflections on a collaborative “youth at risk” project’, journal of youth development, vol. 2, no. 3, online, www. nae4ha.org/directory/jyd/index.html. eade, d 1997, capacity-building: an approach to people-centered development, oxfam publication, uk. estrella, m & gaventa, j 1998, ‘who counts reality? participatory monitoring and evaluation: a literature review’, ids working paper 70, institute of development studies, university of sussex, www.ids.ac.uk/. fals-borda, o & rahman, m 1991, action and knowledge: breaking the monopoly with participatory action-research, the apex press, new york. freire, p 1970, pedagogy of the oppressed, continuum, new york. freire, p 1973, education for critical consciousness, a continuum book, the seabury press, new york. gaventa, j 2001, towards participatory local governance: six propositions for discussion, institute of development studies, university of sussex, www.ids. ac.uk/. gibbons, m, limoges, c, nowotny, h, schwartzman, s, scott, p & trow, m 1994, the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, sage, london. global university network for innovation 2008, higher education in the world 3. higher education: new challenges and emerging roles for human and social development, palgrave macmillan, new york. gray, b 1989, collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems, jossey-bass publishers, san francisco, ca. guba, e & lincoln, y 1990, fourth generation evaluation, age publications, england. habermas, j 1989, ‘the tasks of a critical theory of society’, in s bronner & d kellner (eds), critical theory and society: a reader, routledge, new york, pp. 289–92. himmelman, a 1995, collaboration for a change, university of minnesota, mn. hoatson, l & egan, r 2001, ‘rebuilding collaboration in a competitive environment: a case study’, just policy, vol. 21, pp. 8–15. holland, b 2005, ‘scholarship and mission in the 21st century university: the role of engagement’, proceedings of the australian universities quality forum 2005, www.auqa.edu.au/files/publications/full_proceedings.pdf. hudson, e & cuthill, m 2006, ‘supporting communities by engaging adolescents through the use of university after-school care: a case study’, australian universities community engagement alliance (aucea) national conference 2006, www.aucea.net.au/. institute of development studies 1996, ‘the power of participation’, ids policy briefing issue 7, www.ids.ac.uk/userfiles/file/publications/policy_ briefs/pb7.pdf. israel, b, eng, e, schulz, a & parker, e 2005, methods in community-based participatory research for health, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. jordan, b 1989, the common good, basil blackwell, oxford. 36 | gateways | cuthill kuruvilla, s, mays, n, pleasant, a & walt, g 2006, ‘describing the impact of health research: a research impact framework’, bmc health sciences research, vol. 6, no. 134, www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/6/134. lawrence, p 1954, ‘how to deal with resistance to change’, harvard business review, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 49–57. leal, p & opp, r 1998, ‘participation and development in the age of globalization’, canadian international development agency, ottawa. lewin, k 1948, resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics, g lewin (ed.), harper and row, new york. lyons, m, smuts, c & stephens, a 2001, ‘participation, empowerment and sustainability’, urban studies, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 1233–51. mcintyre, j 1996, ‘tools for ethical thinking and caring: a reflexive approach to community development theory and practice in the pragmatic 90s’, community quarterly, melbourne. minkler, m & wallerstein, n 2003, community-based participatory research for health, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. muirhead, b & woolcock, g 2008, ‘doing what we know we should: engaged scholarship and community development’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 8–30. neuman, w 1994, social research methods, 2nd edn, allyn and bacon, london. office of evaluation and strategic planning 1997, participatory evaluation handbook, united nations development program, www.undp.org/eo/ documents/who.htm. putnam, r 1993, making democracy work: civic traditions in modern italy, princeton university press, princeton, nj. rahman, m 1993, people’s self-development: perspectives of participatory action research: a journey through experience, zed books, london. scull, s & cuthill, m 2007, ‘using engaged scholarship to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes: a collaborative partnership between the university of queensland and pacific island communities’, paper presented to the social justice and lifelong learning: diversity, globalization, transformation face annual conference, university of east london, london. scull, s & cuthill, m 2008, ‘polyvision: pacific youth of tomorrow. a collaborative partnership between the university of queensland and pacific island immigrant communities in australia’, journal of widening participation and lifelong learning, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 35–38. seifer, s & carriere, a 2003, national symposium on community-university partnerships, symposium overview, community-campus partnerships for health (www.ccph.info) and office of university partnerships (www.oup. org). sohng, s 1995, ‘participatory research and community organising a working paper’, paper presented to the new social movement and community organising conference, university of washington, washington. strand, k, marullo, s, cutforth, n, stoecker, r & donohue, p 2003, ‘principles of best practice for community-based research’, michigan journal of community-service learning, summer 2003, pp. 5–15. de tocqueville, a 1969, democracy in america, harper and row, new york. 37 | gateways | cuthill united nations development program 1997, decentralised governance programme: strengthening capacity for people-centred development, management development and governance division, bureau for development programme, mirror.undp. org/magnet/docs/dec/decen923/decenpro.htm. university of queensland 2008, uq strategic plan 2009–2013, university of queensland, www.uq.edu.au/about/docs/ strategicplan/strategicplan2009.pdf. uq boilerhouse 2006, strategic plan 1 july 2006 – 30 june 2009, university of queensland, www.uq.edu.au/boilerhouse. wadsworth, y 1998, ‘what is participatory action research?’ action research international paper no. 2, www.scu.edu.au/ schools/gcm/ar/ari/p-ywadsworth98.html. wallerstein, n & duran, b 2006, using community-based participatory research to address health disparities, health promotion practice, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 312–23. warburton, j, everingham, j, cuthill, m & bartlett, h 2008, ‘achieving effective collaborations to help communities age well’, australian journal of public administration, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 470–82. zuber-skerrit, o (ed.) 1991, new directions in action research, the falmer press, london. community–university partnerships using participatory action learning and action research (palar) as a core function of a university, community engagement needs to be embraced by all academics in higher education, enabling research for, and as, social change. this article considers participatory action learning and action research (palar) as an approach for community–university partnerships to foster and maximise the rewards of university engagement with communities for collaborative research and problem-solving. it has the following dual focus: (1) to explain how palar can provide opportunities for universities to work collaboratively with community members; and (2) to demonstrate what can be achieved using palar. the three r’s of palar – relationships, reflection and recognition – are the key elements that promote a truly participatory approach to knowledge creation and practical social and educational improvements. in addition, palar is a useful method for disrupting traditional perspectives of community– university relationships and interaction. palar has the potential to: (1) promote mutual learning and development; (2) foster the cascading of learning and knowledge to others in the community; and (3) co-create knowledge that is relevant, contextualised and useful, both for meeting community needs and producing research output as required of universities. two case studies (one south african and one australian) will provide evidence of the usefulness of palar in developing the capacity among participants (academic researchers, postgraduate students and community members) to collaborate for meaningful educational and social change. to provide a context for these case studies, the following section briefly explains the concepts of action learning (al), action research (ar), participatory action research (par), and participatory action learning and action research (palar) (based on zuber-skerritt 2011). a model is presented for the design of community development programs through university–community partnerships using palar. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 113–30 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 judith kearney griffith university lesley wood community-based educational research (comber), north-west university ortrun zuberskerritt griffith university and tshwane university of technology 114 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt conceptual framework for participatory action learning and action research (palar) action learning and action research (alar) many theories and definitions of action learning (al) and action research (ar) have been developed independently of each other over the last few decades. the two concepts were united in the first world congress on action learning, action research and process management (alarpm – later renamed alara) held in brisbane in 1990, and have since been integrated conceptually as alar (zuber-skerritt 2009). in brief: ‘action learning’ means learning from and through action or concrete experience, as well as taking action as a result of this learning. similarly, ‘action research’ is a cyclical iterative process of action and reflection on and in action. through the careful thought of collaborative reflection we conceptualize and generalize what happened (action). we can then investigate (research) whether our conceptions hold ground in new situations; that is, we try to find confirming and disconfirming evidence to inform our assessment and further reflection. the main difference between ‘action learning’ (al) and ‘action research’ (ar) is the same as that between learning and research generally. both include active learning, searching, problem solving and systematic enquiry. however, action research is more systematic, rigorous, scrutinizable, verifiable, and always made public (in oral or published written/electronic forms) (p. 6). participatory action research (par) as the name suggests, par involves the participants in all or most phases and processes of the research (design, implementation/ action and evaluation) as equal partners. par as a concept and practice was originally developed for community engagement in developing countries by pioneers such as paulo freire (1972, 2004) and orlando fals borda (1998; fals borda & rahman 1991) in latin america; md anisur rahman (2008) and his associates in pakistan and bangladesh; and marja-lisa swantz (2008) and her colleagues (swantz, ndedya & masaiganah 2001) in tanzania. although these researchers are university trained, they were able to reach beyond formal education to support people who were disadvantaged, oppressed and believed themselves to be powerless. they collaborated with community-based organisations, nongovernment organisations (ngos) and others in civil society, with funding from private and public sectors including the world bank. meanwhile, par has become an international network (based at cornell university: cornell.par.network@gmail.com) which collaborates with other similar networks and associations such as the international action learning and action research association (based in australia: www.alara.net.au) and the collaborative action research network (based in the uk: http:// www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/carnnew/). mailto:cornell.par.network@gmail.com http://www.alara.net.au http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/carnnew/ http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/carnnew/ 115 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt participatory action learning and action research (palar) the concept of palar integrates alar and par in a holistic way. people involved in palar projects are interested in participating (p) and working together on a complex issue (or issues) affecting their lives, learning from their experience and from one another (al) and engaging in a systematic inquiry (ar) into how to address and resolve this issue/issues. traditionally, a researcher has been defined as an expert, external, distant observer who uses certain variables, research methods – predominantly quantitative methods and statistics – and large samples of ‘subjects’ to establish ‘objective truth’. in the palar paradigm, the researcher joins the ‘tribe’ – as in anthropology – and facilitates the whole process of research and development with ‘participants’ as co-researchers in all phases of the research. instead of large numbers of subjects on whom the researcher conducts their research ‘objectively’ to achieve validity and reliability, palar focuses on small numbers of people in a community who are engaged in addressing an important, complex problem collaboratively and actively because they are directly affected by the problem and its solution. research methods used in palar projects are predominantly qualitative, rather than quantitative as in traditional research. the base primary criterion for quality and reliability is ‘authenticity’. this means that research results are valid if they are authentic, i.e. recognisable and confirmed in terms of mutual benefits, by the participants in the research. outcomes of palar include individual participants acquiring problem-solving, communication and lifelong learning skills, self-confidence and transformational change at the personal, professional and community/organisational levels through reflection on action/practice. palar outcomes also include a published contribution to knowledge in practice and theory. palar integrates what we identify as the three main areas of development: (1) community development; (2) leadership development; and (3) the development of lifelong learning. these three separate areas of concern are integrated through palar as a positive and essential approach to community engagement. a generic model of palar programs figure 1 presents the eight main components or phases of a structured action learning program that includes collaborative palar team projects as a methodology for addressing a major issue or concern in a community or organisation. this model is a general guide, with flexibility in choice and use of process and methods in each phase of the model. it has proven to be effective in designing palar programs/projects in higher education, management education, and community and organisational development in several countries (zuber-skerritt 2011). 116 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt 1 problem definition and needs analysis. the first phase of palar is to facilitate a needs analysis in which the participants brainstorm to clearly identify the main problems or issues that need to be addressed urgently in the community. they then prioritise the issues and establish work-based project topics and teams to design the program and prepare the background materials and resources. 2 start-up workshop. the purpose of a start-up workshop – preferably residential to keep participants away from the distractions of the workplace and family commitments – is to: (1) create a supportive environment conducive to relationshipbuilding, trust, open discussion, reflection and learning; and (2) lay the foundations for participants to acquire, create and cascade relevant knowledge and skills related to palar for the design, management and evaluation of their projects. the workshop of one to five days’ duration, depending on the scope of the problem/s and issues that participants will work on in their projects, will include the following key areas: — vision-building and team-building — introduction to palar — project design, management and evaluation — qualitative research methods — using information technology, library resources, electronic databases, and bibliographic packages such as ‘endnote’ — the project planning process, with an emphasis on context analysis. 3 project work. in this third phase, participants attend regular team meetings (without the project leader/s but supported by a mentor as necessary), to work on their particular topic and research project (including data collection, analysis, feedback to their co-participants and collaborative interpretation of results). all teams also meet once a month to discuss progress and any problems. 4 mid-way specialist workshop. it might be necessary to conduct a mid-way workshop with all teams attending to provide figure 1: a generic model for palar programs (zuber-skerritt 2002, p. 144) 117 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt specialist input in certain skill areas as needed and identified by participants (for example, library or it skills), allowing them to continue working independently in their teams. 5 project work continued. by this stage, team members have developed the necessary skills and confidence to operate as autonomous learners and researchers. they meet regularly with their teams and monthly with all the other teams to present their progress reports, exchange their ideas and experiences and ask questions. 6 concluding workshop, presentations and celebration. the purpose of the concluding workshop is for participants to finalise project results. it provides a valuable opportunity for them to reflect on the successes and failures of their palar efforts, the significance and impact of their work, and whether/how it might be possible and useful to continue the palar project. it is important to help participants prepare: (1) their oral presentations (usually 10–15 minutes per team) to all stakeholders (the media, colleagues, family, friends and the wider community); and (2) their written reports (newsletters, journal articles or book chapters) or audio-visual presentations. help can also be provided in organising the big finale: the presentation and celebration day. this is the highlight of any palar program, often involving the presentation of certificates or other awards followed by dinner, music, dance and songs. participants feel recognised and rewarded for their completed work, synergy and team spirit. it is an opportunity for them to express pride in their achievements and their contribution to positive change in the community and to the betterment of their own and other people’s lives. the following two case studies exemplify the usefulness of palar as a means by which university academics can engage with communities in partnerships. the first case study examines how palar’s 3rs – relationship, critical reflection and recognition – are essential to the methodology. the second case study highlights what can be achieved by outlining processes and outcomes that evidence the development and sharing of personal and group learning and the co-creation of knowledge. participatory action learning and action research (palar) in higher education – a case study in south africa the context of research in south africa this case study reports on a fledgling community–university partnership in south africa. through palar, the partnership aims at developing academics’ capacity to engage with community members in development projects to address local concerns sustainably, while also fulfilling their research obligations. designed as a capacity development program comprising four discrete projects, the partnership uses the palar process model described earlier (see figure 1). this program is in its beginning 118 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt stages and is challenging the dominant paradigm of research for community development in south africa. so the focus here is on how far the paradigm and methodology of palar can help shift the mindsets of academics, postgraduate students and community members in south africa concerning the aims, process and outcomes of what is construed as research. community engagement has quite recently been introduced as a core area against which universities and academics are evaluated in south africa (council for higher education 2010). most south african universities acknowledge their main function is to generate knowledge that contributes to theory and to innovations that will, in turn, lead to sustained societal improvement. some of the common values they uphold which inform and define their institutional ethos and distinctive educational purpose and philosophy are: (1) respect for diversity and for the natural environment, excellence and integrity; and (2) ubuntu, a traditional african concept characterised by human interdependence and open, friendly, supportive relationships. these values are very much consistent with three r’s of palar: relationships, reflection and recognition. the authors of this article therefore decided to provide tertiary-level researchers and postgraduate students with an opportunity to learn how to conduct community engagement for positive social change, researching with, rather than on, community members, while perceiving them as co-participants rather than mere informants and/or recipients of knowledge. funded by the australian foreign aid program, ausaid, we presented an intensive, residential five-day workshop on palar (based on the model in figure 1 and summarised in table 1). key elements and observations the research question the research question that guided this project was: how can palar be useful for building the capacity of academic researchers and community members to partner in research to bring about improvement in education and in society at large? participants from the faculty of education at two south african universities formed four teams, each team consisting of a faculty member, a postgraduate student and a community representative. the teams already had a topic in mind when they attended the workshop, so they could apply their learning to a real situation. methodology data on the participants’ experiences of palar were collected during and after the workshop by means of participants’ written reflections, their reports on how they cascaded their learning in their respective communities, and the transcribed recordings of subsequent monthly meetings of their action learning sets. these data were analysed thematically (creswell 2005) using the research question as a theoretical lens. the study was designed to comply with the quality criteria to enhance trustworthiness summarised by shenton (2004) which enhance credibility, 119 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt dependability, transferability and confirmability of the data. the study also complied with the usual ethics procedures of informed consent, voluntary participation and confidentiality (bogdan & biklen 2007). table 1 presents a brief summary of the content (aims and activities) of the palar program and of individual team projects. observations since this project is still in progress and the results have not yet been finalised, we present a few key observations made over the first eight months of the project using the three r’s of palar (relationship, reflection and recognition) as an analytic lens. direct quotes are from participants. palar results in a high degree of personal growth through the process of reflection. the palar process requires the researcher to reflect critically on their thinking, feelings and actions. this results in participants perceiving personal growth and learning as an integral part of the process. the project supervisors who arrived as confident, seasoned researchers, suddenly found themselves in new terrain where their past assumptions were being challenged. their reflections revealed that although they welcomed this learning, it was at times difficult for them to make the shift to a more democratic way of supervising and researching. the initial project outlines and reports frequently indicated an instinctive tendency to revert to familiar, more traditional methodology and discourse. the postgraduate students also found it difficult to unlearn what they had been taught in previous research courses at university. aims of program 1. build capacity in researchers at tertiary level using palar 2. design four research projects using palar to engage with communities 3. subsequent cascading of learning at university and in the community individual projects how can youth be involved most effectively in designing and implementing peer education programs for preventing teen pregnancy? how can alumni be involved most effectively in school improvement? how can the potential of non-music specialist grade r practitioners be unlocked most effectively to nurture the musical development of learners? how can community be involved most effectively in setting up and running a new school? workshop focus (5 days) principles and processes of palar strategies for designing and supervising palar projects writing and publishing the results of palar projects ongoing development monthly meetings of action learning sets progress reports on projects reflections on personal learning and community change ongoing cascading of learning via formal workshops at the two universities via formal cascading events in communities via informal cascading in everyday community interactions finalising results concluding workshop preparing for oral and written reports presentation and celebration day table 1: summary of aims, projects and program content 120 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt one doctoral candidate, for example, continually referred to herself as ‘the researcher’, rather than using the first person as is appropriate in the narrative account of the palar process. however, because of the trusting relationship between participants in the learning set – trust that had developed quickly through several aspects of the workshop – they felt comfortable helping each other and pointing out instances where they were deviating from palar principles and processes. while participants offered numerous accounts of facing their own lack of knowledge during cascading sessions, this acted as a motivator to identify further learning needs and take responsibility for meeting those needs. action learning was identified as a main factor in this process, enhanced by participants’ dialectic reflection (winter 1987) within the action learning set. the relationship aspect of palar changes the way participants think and feel about research. as one participant put it, ‘palar has provided me with a way of making my engagement with community human’. this comment led us to believe that the main attraction of palar for many of the participants is that ‘research has now been made easy and interesting’, largely because palar requires the formation of democratic, egalitarian relationships that recognise the potential of community members as co-researchers. the action learning set participants no longer felt like they were intruding on the community, but that they were a part of it, working together towards mutual improvement. one participant claimed he found great satisfaction when working with the community members and witnessing them ‘discovering the “intellectual” in themselves and the work they are doing’. this was especially gratifying since the members of this community, having experienced a low level of formal education, tended to regard themselves, and be labelled by others, as ‘illiterate’. after working with project participants and becoming participants themselves, they perceive that they are actually contributing to research on how to start up a community school – and thus feel recognised and valued. however, some of the project participants at times found it difficult to form trusting, democratic relationships with the community. one doctoral student struggled to involve the teachers working in the school in her project and concluded that ‘perhaps this methodology is not for me’. when she shared this experience with the action learning set, another participant with deep insight into the thinking of this particular community helped her see what she might do differently to make the community members feel more valued and part of the project. through action learning and critical reflection, this ‘negative’ experience was turned into valuable learning for her and the other participants. the action learning set experience helped participants to understand that participation cannot be just empty rhetoric: engagement has to have real value for the community and their contribution as coresearchers needs to be recognised as valuable. 121 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt the focus on relationships allows ‘a vibrant community of practice to emerge’. the monthly action learning set meetings were supplemented by e-mail contact, enabling participants to share the latest articles on action research or other topics that the teams were researching. participants’ feedback was very positive. members of the group also asked each other for help in accessing suitable literature and theories for their individual projects. however, it was difficult to draw all the members together in one place, even once per month. participants’ normal work at university and school continued and at each meeting at least two people sent apologies for their absence. as project leader, i was sometimes downhearted about this, taking it as a sign of low commitment to the project. nevertheless, it taught me and the project facilitators to keep focussing on the positive and continue motivating, rather than castigating members for their absence. we understand that relationship must take precedence over a task orientation in the early stages of the palar process. the participants perceived the ongoing interaction as beneficial, as comments such as these indicate: ‘it was good and exciting to experience the learning that emerged as a result of the group interaction’ and ‘group interaction has made me realise we are all human’. this points to an increased capacity to embrace diverse opinions and experiences through the relationships developed within the action learning set. a high level of motivation and enthusiasm was created through relationships. it was really gratifying to experience the sometimes overwhelming feeling of motivation and enthusiasm with which the participants cascaded their learning. during the few weeks following the start-up workshop, they reported many instances of informal cascading as they shared their knowledge in all types of contexts – with church committees, with parents/staff/volunteers at school, with community organisations, one-on-one with colleagues and fellow students, and even with their families. the democratic approach to identifying needs and finding ways to meet them resonated in all aspects of their lives. one participant, who is a doctoral candidate and a teacher, shared how there was a much more collegial climate at her school since she had introduced palar strategies in staff meetings and projects, suggesting that the relationship element of palar was responsible. another postgraduate student, who is a school principal, has changed the whole style of management and administration at his school in accordance with palar processes and enthused about the energy and commitment it was creating among his staff as they worked together towards a common goal. there were many accounts of how ‘palar has become a way of life’ for participants. the challenges – letting go and opening up making the shift from a traditional, researcher-dominant mode of enquiry to palar is not always easy. as tertiary-level researchers, we are used to determining the ‘what, where and how’ of the process, necessarily tailored to suit academic proposal and report 122 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt requirements and time allowed for completion of the study. palar requires letting go of this control and trusting in the participatory process. this is easy to say in theory, but not so easy to do in practice – a view many of the participants in this project shared. it was easier for those who were already part of the community – in this case, the postgraduate students who were teachers at the school/community with whom they were researching. they seemed to be more in tune with community thinking and ways of working and had a clearer idea of how to interact with community members than did their university supervisors who were not used to ceding control of the process. supervisors reflected on how they had to learn to trust the judgement of their postgraduate students and rely on their knowledge of the community as a basis for making strategic decisions about the research process. the supervisors found this difficult, but the honesty with which they shared their responses to this new research process with the group helped to open up critical discussion on this issue. supervisors thus learnt from their students, making for a more democratic supervisory relationship in line with palar egalitarian values. another challenge for academic participants was how to communicate with communities, whose members in most cases are not familiar with the discourse used by academic researchers. good communication is the basis for forming trusting relationships and so it is a vital aspect of the palar process. surprisingly, since academics are used to writing reports, it became extremely difficult to get the academic project participants to actually write their in-depth reflections on a regular basis. most gave lack of time as the reason, but we suspect that many found it challenging, perhaps personally confronting, particularly as all reflections were posted on dropbox and could be accessed by all group members (we wanted all data to be communally owned and used). this finding needs to be explored in view of the supervisors’ tendency to uphold traditional, hierarchical relationships between supervisor and student and their role as ‘experts’ – an attitude which may deter them from openly criticising their past practices in light of new understanding as well as discussing their own current learning needs. the community members in the team, some of whom are postgraduate students being supervised by the academics, do not appear to have this problem. perhaps because of their community allegiance they do not primarily identify as participants in the traditional academic relationship and therefore feel less vulnerable to the disempowerment it sets up. these speculations will be followed up in future action learning set meetings. while the passion and excitement displayed by the participants using palar in their research projects cannot be captured in words, their submission of over 20 reports of cascading to colleagues and students at the university and in the various project communities in just seven months is a measure of their enthusiasm. we are able to see how palar’s three r’s – relationship, critical reflection and recognition – actually work in 123 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt practice as a truly participatory approach to creating knowledge and practical improvement in the social and educational circumstances of a disadvantaged community in an economically developed country. participatory action learning and action research (palar) in higher education – an australian case study logan city – the research context the setting for this partnership was logan city in the brisbane– gold coast corridor in southeast queensland, one of 10 areas across australia identified by the federal government as experiencing entrenched disadvantage and long-term unemployment (department of education, employment and workplace relations nd). in some logan suburbs, such as woodridge and kingston, the unemployment rate in 2012 exceeded 19 per cent whereas queensland’s average rate was 5.5 per cent (department of education, employment and workplace relations 2012). however, against this backdrop of disadvantage, logan city proudly boasts that it is one of queensland’s most culturally diverse cities, with more than 27 per cent of people from countries where english is not the first language (logan city council 2012). the city is a major settlement location for refugee families and is a designated high-growth area. with a rapidly increasing representation of people from the pacific island regions, predominantly of samoan heritage, samoan is the most commonly spoken language other than english. however, while samoan families are strongly represented in local schools, they are underrepresented in higher education. several factors explain this under-representation. one is non-alignment between home and school. understandings and expectations about children’s roles, responsibilities and communication practices contrast markedly between parents educated in samoa and queensland teachers (kearney, fletcher & dobrenov-major 2011). this non-alignment has inhibited strong school–home partnerships and has constrained families’ understanding of pathways into higher education and the longterm benefits of undertaking university studies. this situation is exacerbated by australian government policy. since 2001, most samoan family members have entered australia as new zealand citizens on non-protected special category visas, so they are able to live and work in australia but are not entitled to many benefits associated with australian citizenship. for example, this visa status makes their children ineligible for australian government higher education support such as hecs-help, the higher education contribution scheme for australian citizens. for most samoan families, the up-front payment of fees is prohibitive so high school leavers are denied higher-education opportunities. the partnership described in this case study is between a university campus in logan city and a samoan community 124 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt organisation called the voice of samoan people (vosp). the partnership, which has continued since 2010, was established between vosp and the university to mutually address samoan under-representation in higher education in logan. aspects of this partnership will be discussed to illustrate the processes of palar, with emphasis on palar’s potential to: (1) promote mutual learning and development; (2) foster the cascading of learning and knowledge to others; and (3) co-create knowledge that is relevant, contextualised and benefits the common good. promoting mutual learning and development through palar members of vosp, a community organisation, were uncertain how to address the challenges many samoan families experience in their new lives resettling in logan. the university community shared this uncertainty. however, the potential partnership between the university and vosp sealed a common interest in responding together to these concerns, reaffirming that the university and its staff, like vosp, are part of the logan community. our shared interest developed into shared optimism. through our knowledge, ideas, networks and energies – our shared action through palar – we believed we could make a difference. at the inaugural meeting of the partnership we brought together 20 people associated with the university or vosp. the cultural understandings and life experiences of these participants were very diverse, but we all shared a will to create positive change in the community. the focal question first we negotiated a focal question for our group members’ responses: for you personally, what are the felt needs of the samoan community to improve educational opportunities for all? using the nominal group technique – a structured, group decision-making process enabling all participants to contribute equally in response to a question – the group identified the following set of needs for the samoan community: —increased parental involvement in children’s learning —improved communication amongst immediate stakeholders, e.g. parents, teachers and school children —stronger sense of belonging for children and youth within the samoan culture and the wider community in logan, e.g. at school, home, church and university —more confident use of both samoan and english. having completed the needs analysis, we agreed on four project teams, with each addressing one or more of the identified needs. participants at the inaugural meeting identified an interest in particular projects and agreed to meet again to develop project plans. in general, we followed the phases of palar programs shown in figure 1. however, a recommended residential startup workshop was not possible for participants because of family commitments and financial constraints that prevented them from taking time off work. instead, we met regularly in the evening after work. at our second meeting we started with a relationship125 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt building exercise to encourage openness and mutual respect. this involved sharing significant turning points in our lives with two other participants whom we knew least. from that moment on, our collective identity strengthened. trust developed quickly and we began to speak openly with each other as a group about processes that were culturally appropriate for all participants. these included issues such as managing time, the importance of prayer at the beginning and close of meetings, and protocols relating to hospitality. at that second meeting we also completed a visionbuilding exercise. this enabled project teams to envision possible outcomes and to share them in pictorial form with the wider group. it was at this point that we started to speak confidently about actioning positive change. subsequent meetings involved learning about the palar process and progressing project work. each team conducted a context analysis that involved discussion with stakeholders, a swot (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, careful consideration of constraints, and compilation of a resource inventory. teams regularly revisited their vision statement and the broader outcomes from the initial needs analysis. this was especially important before developing action plans for the four projects. individual teams met in their action learning sets and with all other teams as a wider group to share progress and to discuss challenges. project work generated considerable interest beyond the original participants, with the number of samoan participants increasing at each meeting. cascading learning and knowledge to others one of the four project teams focused on promoting samoanheritage youth’s sense of belonging within their traditional culture. this was seen as important since many of these young people struggle with competing demands resulting from tension between their parents’ island traditions and their own participation within contemporary australian society (kearney & vosp 2011). ravulo (2009) suggests that inability to resolve these demands inhibits development of a well-defined identity which underpins pro-social behaviors. this project team, which included four chiefs, interviewed samoan-heritage youths to identify what they wanted to know and better understand to live more comfortably in their community. samoan members of the team developed this information and made it available on a website while university staff and students contributed technological expertise. this project work has resulted in invitations to the project team to speak with teachers about samoan cultural beliefs and practices, and a request from a government agency for a report on samoan cultural traditions. a second project team worked with students from local secondary schools using creative engagement strategies to provide the young people with a voice to speak openly about, and find ways to address, issues important to them. a series of workshops was held to unlock talent, raise aspirations and promote action 126 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt leadership among participants and beyond. this was the beginning of a more formal approach to youth leadership now funded by the university. a third project focused on families. the team who surveyed samoan-heritage teenagers and parents found that many young people lacked confidence in expressing their point of view clearly to parents and teachers. parents realised that improved communication with their children was a priority. a series of workshops was held in local church congregations. these inspired the development of a samoan parenting program, delivered in samoan language, as an ongoing partnership between the university and local churches. the fourth project was operationalised in the context of a local primary school where more than half the students are of samoan heritage. much of the work focused on developing the role of a pacific island liaison officer (pilo) within the school. the project team started with a workshop to negotiate the role with teachers so that there was clear understanding of how the role could work. a parents’ night was held with information conveyed in both samoan and english. this attracted about 60 parents whereas previously, when the event was promoted through a notice in the school newsletter, very few had attended these events. we learnt that parents respond to personal, spoken invitations and regard the parents’ night as important when church leaders and community elders endorse the event. a study centre and a samoan-language class were established with classes offered after school to all students. both initiatives were supported by samoan parent volunteers. since the project started, rates of absenteeism and incidents of late arrival at school have been reduced. behaviour issues have lessened and teachers are more confident about managing these issues in a more culturally responsive way. the school is currently trialling a teaching role that encourages teachers and samoan parents to work collaboratively to improve the oracy of children in the early years of formal schooling. outcomes of all projects were acknowledged and celebrated at a special community event at the university. samoan community members took a lead role in the celebration, which attracted strong attendance from among their families and friends and publicly reaffirmed the partnership between the community and the university. as a result of these very visible and positive outcomes, the university appointed a full-time project officer to work collaboratively with communities to sustain outcomes and develop further initiatives to raise aspirations and educational attainment. the university has extended this role for another year and project work continues in a strong collaboration with local schools and the wider community. enrolment of samoan students at the university continues to increase and a special pacific island graduation, hosted by the university, is now an annual event and attended by hundreds of community members. 127 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt co-creating knowledge overall, palar enabled us to engage collaboratively and constructively with complex community issues, working with and co-creating local knowledge and processes towards achieving sustainable solutions that serve shared community and university interests. some particular outcomes of using palar in partnership with vosp are especially pleasing. some samoan members of project teams are now themselves undertaking university studies – an aim which motivated vosp to initiate contact with the university in the first place. another is the collaborative writing of reports and articles – an unexpected positive outcome which averted the all too common situation where traditional western research paradigms disregard the voices and protocols of the community under enquiry (smith 1999). palar also encourages practices such as reciprocity and mutual respect that align with samoan cultural traditions and are integral to a talanoa approach, which is a conversational method advocated by pacific island researchers (vaioleti 2006). palar works as a means to help community members better understand and reorient the entrenched power structures in society that work to disempower newcomers like the samoanheritage peoples who may lack familiarity with cultural norms and institutional processes. these shortcomings are intrinsic to sustaining the power relationships in which newcomers see themselves as disempowered citizens. palar is about personal and community empowerment. challenges – understanding norms and protocols our palar project was not without challenges. perhaps the main challenge for our partnership related to diversity within the participant cohort. the life experience, cultural conditioning and worldviews of samoan community members and university academics were clearly different, and both sides of the partnership were largely unfamiliar with each other’s worlds. this resulted in misunderstandings. for example, non-samoans sometimes overlooked what are norms in samoan society, such as the importance of prayer to start and end public meetings and protocols relating to food and hospitality procedures. we mispronounced names. fortunately, these incidents were met with good humour and a willingness to learn more about each other’s cultures. true to palar principles, as co-participants we worked together with mutual trust and respect. ironically, while diversity within the group led to challenges, it also enriched our partnership, strengthened our resolve to work together towards our shared goals, and was a valuable, empirical source of learning for us all. indeed, it is in working through the challenges of research that we learn more about the problems that we seek to resolve, how to resolve them in practice, and by extension, through reflection and meta-reflection (fletcher & zuber-skerritt 2008), what this means for palar as methodology in theory and practice. complementary to our shared will, the combination of participants’ diverse endowments of knowledge, 128 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt skills and networks was intrinsic to the partnership’s success. in all, palar’s flexibility, adaptability, and equalising of us as coparticipants made it a particularly effective methodology for this complex, people-centred research project. conclusion this article has addressed the focal question of how to use the process and methods of palar most effectively to promote university engagement with the community through partnership for the benefit of all participants as well as their universities and communities at large. it has provided: (1) a conceptual framework for palar in the context of community engagement; and (2) a model for designing palar programs/projects (see figure 1). the two case studies – one based in south africa and the other in australia – illustrate how the conceptual framework and the design/process model may be applied to effect positive educational and social change in communities through partnership with a university. the case studies also highlight challenges for practice that will need further research. as the case studies illustrate, the essential features of the palar process are the three r’s: relationships, reflection and recognition. relationships and relationship-building, which underpin the development of trust and the team-building process, is intrinsic to the project’s ongoing success and sustainability and to the passage of learning. reflection is an essential practice for all members of project teams as they implement and further develop action plans that align with the initial needs analysis. the iterative process of reflection enables project participants to: (1) learn more about their communities, about themselves and about the knowledge they have co-created; and (2) identify requirements for further action. working together with project participants in these case studies, we created new ways of knowing, understanding, doing and feeling as a result of our palar experience. recognition of outcomes in the palar process – of both action and learning – is important as an affirmation of collective and personal achievements and must be celebrated as such. recognition and celebration are usually not the final step in the research and learning process, but rather the next step in a new cycle of the palar process that engages communities – in partnership with universities – in sustainable, community-centred development. references bogdan, rc & biklen, sk 2007, qualitative research for education: an introduction to theories and methods, 5th edn, pearson education, boston. creswell, j 2005, educational research: planning, conducting and evaluating qualitative and quantitative research, 2nd edn, merrill/pearson education upper saddle river, new jersey. 129 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt department of education, employment and workplace relations (deewr) 2012, small area labour markets australia, march quarter, commonwealth of australia, canberra, viewed 18 november 2012, http://www.deewr.gov. au/employment/lmi/documents/salm_mar2012.pdf department of education, employment and workplace relations (deewr) nd, building australia’s future workforce: place-based initiatives, deewr, canberra, viewed 12 november 2012, http://www.deewr.gov.au/ department/budget/documents/20112012/place-based_initiatives.pdf fals borda, o 1998, people’s participation: challenges ahead, tercer mundo editores, bogota. fals borda, o & rahman, ma 1991, action and knowledge: breaking the monopoly with participatory action research, apex press, new york. fletcher, m & zuber-skerritt, o 2008, ‘professional development through action research: case studies in south african higher education’, systemic practice and action research, vol. 21, pp. 73–96. freire, p 1972, pedagogy of the oppressed, penguin, harmondsworth, uk. freire, p 2004, pedagogy of indignation, paradigm, boulder. kearney, j & vosp 2011, samoan cultural beliefs and practices. a report for child safety services, school of education and professional studies, griffith university, brisbane. kearney, j, fletcher, m & dobrenov-major, m 2011, ‘non-aligned worlds of home and school: a case study of second-generation samoan children’, journal of family studies, vol. 17, pp. 146–56. logan city council 2012, community profile: logan central, viewed 12 november 2012, http://profile.id.com.au/logan/birthplace?webid=290 rahman, ma 2008, ‘some trends in the praxis of participatory action research’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), the sage handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice, sage, london, pp. 49–62. ravulo, j 2009, the development of antisocial behaviour in pacific youth, doctoral dissertation, university of western sydney, viewed 14 november 2012, http://arrow.uws.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/repository/uws :8264?f0=type%3a%22thesis%22 shenton, ak 2004, ‘strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects’, education for information, vol. 22, pp. 63–75. smith, lt 1999, decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous people, university of otago press, dunedin, nz. swantz, ml 2008, ‘participatory action research as practice’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), the sage handbook of action research: participatory inquiry and practice, sage, london, pp. 30–48. swantz, ml, ndedya, e & masaiganah, ms 2001, ‘participatory action research in southern tanzania with special reference to women’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), the sage handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice, sage, london, pp. 386–95. vaioleti, tm 2006, ‘talanoa research methodology: a developing position on pacific research’, waikato journal of education, vol. 12, pp. 21–32. winter, r 1987, action-research and the nature of social inquiry: professional innovation and education work, gower publishing company, england. http://www.deewr.gov.au/employment/lmi/documents/salm_mar2012.pdf http://www.deewr.gov.au/employment/lmi/documents/salm_mar2012.pdf http://www.deewr.gov.au/department/budget/documents/20112012/place-based_initiatives.pdf http://www.deewr.gov.au/department/budget/documents/20112012/place-based_initiatives.pdf http://profile.id.com.au/logan/birthplace?webid=290 http://arrow.uws.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/repository/uws:8264?f0=type%3a%22thesis%22 http://arrow.uws.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/repository/uws:8264?f0=type%3a%22thesis%22 130 | gateways | kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt zuber-skerritt, o 2002, ‘a model for designing action learning and action research programs’, the learning organization, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 143–49. zuber-skerritt, o 2009, action learning and action research: songlines through interviews, sense publishers, rotterdam. zuber-skerritt, o 2011, action leadership: towards a participatory paradigm, springer international, dordrecht. 10 gant.indd community 21 digital toolbox for sustainable communities despite the ubiquitousness of the word ‘sustainability’, much of the public debate surrounding this issue only serves to alienate and demoralise individuals and communities. sustainability is often perceived as conservation of species, the environment or the world. in rural areas, however, it is actual communities that are under threat. paradoxically, despite the proximity to nature of rural communities, rural does not necessarily mean being ‘green’. in fact, rural behaviours are disproportionately dependent on natural resources and, as a consequence, can be less sustainable. this article seeks to unpack the term ‘sustainability’ and to explore the potential of ‘self-sufficiency’, which is a demonstrable concern of vulnerable rural communities, and has been the focus of much work on community engagement in the uk. such a focus can arguably achieve as a by-product genuine, meaningful and measurable sustainable development. the article describes an action-research project that aims to use web-based technology to help community groups in the rural uk counties of east and west sussex to facilitate their own sustainable development. the project – known as ‘toolbox for the 21st century village’ – arose from collaboration between two main parties with distinct expertise and insight into issues of sustainability which were thus able to offer different, but complementary, perspectives in relation to engaging communities. after discussing the term ‘sustainability’, the article will briefly introduce the two main parties involved in this project, together with their background and experience. the research contexts and practical agendas that the two parties have brought to the project have proved essential to its development and evolution to its current stage. the article will then go on to outline the design brief and design process and discuss the aims and challenges raised by the ‘toolbox for the 21st century village’ project. don’t mention the ‘s’ word ‘sustainability’ has seemingly permeated every aspect of modern life and yet it remains a loaded and often divisive and polemical term. despite being central to many campaigns and activities, to gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 155–170 ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 nick gant university of brighton teresa gittins action in rural sussex 156 | gateways | gant & gittins use the term as a central point of principle in a positive way can lead to argument, demoralisation and negativity. sustainability is often perceived as a type of utopia or absolute condition, and this perspective does not help to empower or encourage individuals or communities to take positive action, particularly if it requires a return to some sort of ‘pure’ existence that makes no impact on the planet. this is simply unrealistic, but can result in disempowerment and an individualised sense of ‘so why bother trying?’ similarly, terminology such as climate change ‘denier’ or ‘believer’ is deeply unhelpful, serving only to divert attention from more nuanced and commonsensical concerns, while reinforcing and entrenching crude divisions. the communication of sustainability issues in society through visual culture, the media and politics has also served to alienate, demoralise and disenfranchise many individuals and communities. lowering co2 emissions and addressing climate change can be seen as defining missions for the sustainability movement, but the iconography of these issues is that of stranded polar bears on melting ice caps, desertification and mass starvation, rendering the scale and nature of these issues overwhelming and incomprehensible. for a small village to be able to consider its role within an abstract global mission to save unfamiliar creatures, eco-systems and landscapes is a very tall order. whilst effective images predominantly focus upon climate impacts, individuals tend not to relate to these personally with little knowledge of, or interest in, activities to mitigate climate change. popular media representations of climate change reduce people’s perceptions of the likelihood of adverse events, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will be inspired to take action (lowe 2006). therefore, any approach to sustainable development needs to provide more inclusive, tangible and accessible strategies for engagement and sustainable progress. indeed, when we ‘zoom in’ from the global issues articulated above and look more locally at rural communities and their concerns, there is a shift of scale as well as a change in focus. issues that we can define as relating to ‘sustainability’ are here too, but they are more relevant, immediate concerns of everyday modern rural life. concerns are often about self-sufficiency or self-sustainability. however, unlike the apathy and disenfranchisement often shown towards irreconcilable, distant global issues, communities are frequently very motivated, empowered and productive when engaging or addressing these tangible local concerns, particularly when part of a community led planning process. the misperception still exists that the countryside is a green and pleasant land, and that by living in close proximity to ‘green space’ or ‘huggable trees’ rural habitation is somehow more at one with nature. however, most villages in the uk are not actually wide-open natural playgrounds but detached, land-locked islands 157 | gateways | gant & gittins often surrounded by industrialised farmland. in the uk, for example, the propensity to centralise many day-to-day servicing needs within metropolitan areas inadvertently results in much greater use of motor vehicles: rural households have higher co2 emissions per person than those in the city, thanks to their generally larger, detached or semi-detached houses, multiple cars and long commutes (cars are responsible for 12 per cent of carbon emissions in europe – 50 per cent in some parts of the usa). the regions with the biggest carbon footprints in the uk are not the metropolises of glasgow or london, but the largely rural north east of england, as well as yorkshire and the humber. in fact, the per-capita emissions of the big smoke – london – are the lowest of any part of the uk (smith 2010). so devising sustainable development strategies for rural communities should be a priority and could have a disproportionately positive effect. for example, as part of a community led planning process in barcombe, east sussex, a recent survey asked: ‘what sustainability issues concern you the most?’ despite a diverse demographic, the majority of answers from the 540 respondents were localised and introspective rather than global and apocalyptic in their concern. their comments related to personal issues and experiences such as lack of village places to recycle cardboard, concerns about rural post office and shop provision, affordable local housing, bus service frequency, village hall maintenance costs, local oil prices, theft of stored domestic oil and loss of local dairy herds (barcombe community action plan survey 2009). these concerns then formed the basis of actions in a community led plan, which are now being proactively addressed through an integrated approach to meeting needs and as essential elements of the natural development of the village in question. a new zero-carbon village hall has been designed and building is underway, with virtually zero running costs and the installation of cardboard recycling points. other elements of this initiative include the development of a low-impact, affordable housing scheme and the implementation of local energy production and wildlife conservation projects. this embracing of identifiable, localised and practical concerns, driven by community led planning, has the potential to generate numerous and relevant changes. this suggests that sustainable development might be best achieved as a natural inclination or via local agendas rather than by a ‘higher’ sustainability agenda or kyoto targets. as evans and abrahamse note (brahic 2009, p. 9), ‘sustainability can be a by-product of a lifestyle choice that may initially have nothing to do with environmental concerns. more than yoga teachers and hemp grocery bags, it is this that may prove to be the real key to britain’s shift to a more sustainable lifestyle.’ by communities being self-serving rather than altruistic, the result can be effective, more sustainable positive action. 158 | gateways | gant & gittins local, introverted and even ‘nimby’ (not in my back yard – a term describing anti-development tendencies within rural communities) concerns can indirectly drive community self-sustainability in a way that altogether bypasses the politics of belief and/or scientific fact versus fiction that characterises and constipates the wider global campaign. background: the collaborating parties across the uk, rural community councils (rccs) are charitable local development agencies, generally based at county level, which support and enable initiatives in rural communities. altogether, there are 38 rccs, which form part of the national rural community action network (rcan), itself organised under an umbrella organisation called action in communities in rural england (acre). among the rccs’ broad range of activities, one of their core functions is to help with the development of community led plans (clps), which form part of the community planning approach now promoted at each level of local government in the uk. community led plans are put together by the community through consultation, needs assessment, research and local agreement. the parish or town council often takes a key role, but in many communities an action plan team, with representatives from across the community, is formed to take the process forward. parish and town councils are the third level of local government in the uk with members elected by the community to represent the particular community to the higher tier authorities, as well as having some local responsibilities themselves for service delivery. parish and town councils in the uk are distinct from parochial church councils, also sometimes called parish councils. action in rural sussex (airs) is the rcc covering the counties of east and west sussex. established in 1931, airs has provided continual support to rural communities over the last 80 years. the priorities and services offered by airs have varied over the years but central to the key services has been support for local communities to identify their own local action plans based on local consultation and needs assessment. airs has then supported the parish and town councils to implement the actions and continue to review and update the plan. the funding for this work has come from both central and local government sources and to some extent from the communities themselves. methodologies have been developed and shared with the rest of the rcan network so that community led plans have been similarly developed throughout rural england. airs provides its rural communities with advice about community led planning processes, as well as information about potential priorities, projects and solutions to the issues identified. a typical community led plan takes between nine months and two years to complete. in the last year this advice has included publications that provide community led plan teams with ideas about how to tackle concerns related to climate change, localism, self-sufficiency and resilience. 159 | gateways | gant & gittins in 2007, airs published the first incarnation of a ‘toolbox’ in the form of a printed poster, the central feature of which was an illustration of a ‘typical’ village (see figure 1). the illustration used a local visual vernacular to depict a recognisable image of rural life, but with a diverse range of elements of sustainable development embedded within the normal everyday behaviour of the village. solar panels on houses, community orchards, car clubs, community composting and recycling points were all elements intended to inspire and inform rural communities. this ‘picture of sustainability’ became a focal point of interest for local communities and community engagement organisations as something they could really relate to. the use of a familiar, everyday village that had integrated sustainability as part of its self-sufficiency and natural behaviour enabled individuals and communities to envisage and identify themselves and their role within a positive and integrated sustainable system. this printed toolbox was the catalyst for airs to engage with the centre for research and development at the university of brighton, uk, and in particular with nick gant at the centre. nick’s research and public life offers considerable experience in the mediation, communication and promotion of sustainability. equally, the university of brighton has developed a distinctive cluster of sustainability and sustainable design researchers and research agendas and a demonstrable body of applied practice work. nick gant’s public role as a parish councillor has also added to his experience of the reality ‘on the ground’ when considering sustainability as a topic within a rural community. the use of the printed toolbox demonstrated its potential in assisting community groups to identify their own priorities and possible projects. however, teresa gittins of airs, who had led the development of the toolbox, also recognised the limitations of an figure 1: first incarnation of the toolbox for the 21st century village, utilising an illustration of a ‘typical local village’ with embedded aspects of sustainable development 160 | gateways | gant & gittins approach that relied wholly on a print medium. discussions with nick gant led to the development of an idea that the original toolbox should be web-based and dynamic in its capabilities as an information management device and that this would broaden its appeal as well as provide a greater potential to incorporate more information and advice. this in turn led to further discussions about a more integrated project that could transform the whole community led planning processes and make them more accessible to a greater number of people. the development of a web-based networking opportunity for rural communities to engage among themselves, and with other rural communities, with the assistance of an rcc facilitator, was seen as a real chance to significantly improve the knowledge and outcomes for the individuals and groups involved. a system that provided data and evidence of need to service providers and public sector bodies would enhance the roles and reputation of rccs and enable them to continue with their core task of promoting and facilitating local community development. to date, the rccs have been very successful in encouraging rural communities to take a much greater role in their own planning and in driving their community agenda. this engagement is based on comprehensive community involvement in the clp process and collective decisions about the future actions that the community will take. currently, 68.2 per cent of villages in east and west sussex have completed a community led planning process, each undertaken over the last eight years (airs 2010). it was felt that this impressively high level of involvement offered much scope for an informatics system such as the toolbox to both streamline and enhance the practical, largely paper-based process while also making it much more dynamic, accessible and shareable and therefore much more effective. a steering group was formed to assist nick gant and teresa gittins with the initial design, development and blueprint of the system and its functionality. the group comprised university colleagues peter day and gary brooke who provided research and technical expertise in community information science, a respected community led planning expert nick wates and representatives from the community led planning team at airs. the group represented a wealth of experience of community development techniques and methodologies and was receptive to and enthusiastic about embracing web-based technologies to also enhance and promote the existing clp processes and the increased engagement of local communities. the group provided some early validation of some of the assumptions and aspirations of the system to be developed. from the group’s discussions a design brief and an action-research project based on the initial design was developed. this design brief resulted in a web-based toolkit being piloted and evaluated by a number of individual communities with the intention of providing the basis for the final system. 161 | gateways | gant & gittins at the time of writing this article, the blueprint of the website toolbox has been specified and analysed to ensure the best chance of functionality. the site is under construction and a pilot process of trialling will begin in january 2011 with selected communities who are undertaking a community led planning exercise. the communities will be chosen firstly from within a cluster of communities that are geographically close and also from a selection of communities that are more remote and offer different demographics. the name for the project website is community21. org and, assuming the pilot is a success and having now received support from the national rcc body, acre, the project team plans to evolve and grow the system to instigate its ‘going live’ and being utilised throughout the national network of rccs. results of the pilot exercise will be disseminated and will form the basis of further discussion and research and development. the design brief the context for the design brief is: —to provide an updated and contextual basis for communities to undertake a community led plan while at the same time exploring issues of climate change adaptation, self-sufficiency, localism and community action —to enhance (not replace) the face-to-face community engagement work that rccs undertake so successfully and for the new toolbox system to, in its own right, also enable the facilitation and evolution of sustainable development —to identify from airs’ point of view what shape community facilitation will take in a digital world —to provide a system that can generate useful data summaries of the priorities and actions identified by rural communities. the platform design the focus was to design a bespoke content management system (cms platform), which would see the inclusive nature and success of the original printed illustration developed as a digital interactive feature on the new internet platform, or toolbox (see figure 2, overleaf). cms platforms enable different information formats or content (text, pictures, movies, etc.), created by any number of different sources, to be uploaded to a website and stored, broadcast, exchanged, shared, linked, re-presented and managed dynamically. the first key feature of the community21 system will use the aforementioned original illustration of the village that so successfully offered communities the opportunity to explore integrated sustainability through an identifiable image in paper form. as an interactive image map on the community21 platform, the illustration can come to life with each element being linked to its own branch of continually updated information. be it wind turbines, community orchards or low-impact, affordable housing, each interactive feature element can link off to information on local suppliers, grants and funding and, importantly, case studies of a community’s own examples and experiences. these case 162 | gateways | gant & gittins studies can be uploaded by the community itself, bringing greater diversity, authenticity and dynamics to the content. the case studies (as content) can then be managed in different ways. for example, case studies relating to creating village ponds can be accessed based on the locality of the person or community viewing the information. so the videos, pictures, instructions, discussion and critiques that form the case studies will be prioritised so that individuals and communities can link, network and engage with their neighbours based on shared knowledge and experience. this of course does not prevent a visitor to the website from seeing how a village in another county or even country has created a pond, hydro-electric power supply or communal bee hives, for example, but it enables a local dynamic of social networking and intercommunity engagement to occur. this sharing of information and knowledge is valuable and the project team sees connective processes such as this as essential to positive, collective cultural change. ‘the web matters because it allows more people to share ideas with more people in more ways. the web’s underlying culture of sharing, decentralization and democracy makes it an ideal platform for groups to self-organise, combining their ideas and know-how’ (leadbeater 2008). of course this sort of management of content and networking is not a new concept – this toolbox design integrates thinking and systems that already exist in both social networking cms websites, such as facebook, and open source and/or wiki systems such as wikipedia. open sourcing and wiki, as styles of content management, offer opportunities when considering the figure 2: new website platform featuring interactive illustration of village with embedded data resource 21st century village me action planning my community sign inabout sub menu 2 sub menu 4sub menu 3sub menu 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 33 3 3 3 searchlatest updates help contact terms and conditions 163 | gateways | gant & gittins value of the community as a ‘cloud’, where multiple sources of information, opinion and good practice create effervescent live organisation. open source systems originally emanated from technical communities of software designers and programmers who joined together to develop, augment and/or expand a particular piece of software. this practice has evolved to offer highly active, cooperative problem-solving potential, resulting in growing capacity and capability of the software for communal, democratic gain and exploitation. wiki systems are generally websites that are easily interlinked and contributed to by a community – wikipedia is a great example of this. in both open source and wiki, the collective contribution becomes a live and dynamic manifestation of knowledge and skill that finds solutions to collective problems. the skills and knowledge are in turn perpetuated, shared and disseminated widely for communal benefit. it is hoped that in the toolbox scenario the communal building of experience and information will spread best practice behaviour as well as identify failures and lessons learned as communities work toward self-sustainability. the wiki and open source culture, by enabling communities to have a voice and the tools to enact their own planning and development that can be disseminated and shared, could enable/encourage progress and self-sustainability through mutual dialogue and layered knowledge: people want meaningful opportunities to participate and contribute, to add their piece of information, view or opinion. they want viable ways to share, to think and work laterally with their peers. they are searching for collaborative ways to get things done. when these three come together – participate, share, collaborate – they create new ways for us to organize ourselves that are more transparent, cheaper and less top down structures (leadbeater 2008). the platform design integrates the notion of collective sharing of knowledge, ideas and action facilitated by a common goal (self-sustainability). it is envisaged that rural community councils (rccs) will manage the system and provide professional support and supervision to communities, helping them to identify and act on their needs, based on nuanced local demands (see figure 3, overleaf). airs and the other rural community councils are increasingly aware that there is both potential for much of their information packs and guidance to be web-based and increasing interest from community representatives and participants in webbased processes. such a development could help to transform the whole community led planning processes. instead of relying solely on evening meetings, events and paper-based consultations and surveys, which by their nature attract a particular level of community engagement, the use of new technologies will engage a broader and greater proportion of the local population. it is part of the role of airs to develop and introduce new ideas, 164 | gateways | gant & gittins concepts and techniques and this project has the potential to both transform and reinvigorate the development and implementation of local community led plans. putting aside the current (hopefully transitory) issues about accessing broadband and adequate connection speeds within rural communities, the platform will build on existing trends and behaviours that many people are engaging with at a personal level and transpose these to work for the benefit of the whole community. community development has a history of adapting and embracing new technologies, techniques and methodologies because to be successful it needs to relate to how individuals and society as a whole interact and engage at any point in time. itbased technologies bring opportunities that cannot be ignored, especially if traditionally hard to reach groups and individuals are to be engaged. each community will still need to be sensitive to the need to engage with the non-it community, but then the techniques and methodologies for this already exist. as part of the design stage, further exploration of existing technology for social networking occurred, to see what other opportunities there were for rccs to act as community facilitators online. this led to the development of the community21 website offering the opportunity to ‘mash up’ with other services, which essentially means the website will integrate or share elements from other software or websites such as twitter and facebook, to enhance or combine the service. the toolbox website will be able to engage with communities that already exist on these social figure 3: image of website platform demonstrating case studies of village actions entered by the communities themselves help contact terms and conditions 21st century village me action planning my community sign inabout sub menu 2 sub menu 4sub menu 3sub menu 1 lisis nis ad magnim et endre ming er sumsandio odolent atuero odionum dolobor ip ea faci bla feu feugue dolore velit ing endipsum adipisit eum dolor inim doluptat at. tionsec tetummy nit landreetummy nim iustie faccum zzrillan vercillam dolore consed magniatum vulput aliquipisi. read more upton wood lisis nis ad magnim et endre ming er sumsandio odolent atuero odionum dolobor ip ea faci bla feu feugue dolore velit ing endipsum adipisit eum dolor inim doluptat at. tionsec tetummy nit landreetummy nim iustie faccum zzrillan vercillam dolore consed magniatum vulput aliquipisi. read more rectory dairy lisis nis ad magnim et endre ming er sumsandio odolent atuero odionum dolobor ip ea faci bla feu feugue dolore velit ing endipsum adipisit eum dolor inim doluptat at. tionsec tetummy nit landreetummy nim iustie faccum zzrillan vercillam dolore consed magniatum vulput aliquipisi. farmer’s market extra content notifications 165 | gateways | gant & gittins networking platforms, which could include large proportions of younger and notoriously difficult to reach members of a community. the second key element of the platform design is the formation of a section entitled ‘your community’. this will form the basis for community led planning (clp) that importantly uses a recognisable image of the users’ actual community as the central interaction and interface with the community data developed through the clp process. the image of the community is generated by ‘mashing up’ with the google maps software. one key advantage of the smooth interface of this software is that on entering the ‘your community’ page on the website, the user can be taken on a visual journey from space, viewing the earth as a whole and then zooming in to their actual geographic community. it is hoped this will help form a more literal, visual and perceptual connection between the user and the bigger context of their community. once zoomed in, past the patchwork of regional and neighbouring communities, the image of the user’s community is ‘real’ and identifiable in all its detail. the community led planning process undertaken by rccs such as airs often starts with a community ‘mapping’ or audit exercise. this is where key information such as demographics and the number of businesses, faith groups, societies, clubs, etc. is collated – the ‘your community’ aspect of the website is designed therefore to enable the community to map this information onto the image of itself within google maps using tags. the system allows community planning teams and rcc users to augment the image of the community with interactive tags which, when clicked on, reveal detailed information about the community (see figure 4, overleaf). the community generates this information itself as part of the initial community audit exercise. the image of the community as an interface becomes alive with detailed content representing that community, its unique features, characteristics and personality. each individual tag forms a link to an individual page with content applied to it – so the church is tagged and can have its own page, formed from templates, which contains information relating to its strategy for sustainability and pledges for change, alongside its profile and any general information. equally, local business and service providers can advertise and promote themselves as part of the local economy. the collective data accrued by the system is stored and managed and can be re-presented publicly through the ‘front end’ of the system (public user interface) or presented dynamically according to different criteria in the ‘back end’ (limited access or management interface) for strategic use by the clp team and/or other local, regional or national strategic planning authorities. community led planning is to be further integrated into the system design by offering the opportunity for online community consultation – traditionally done via community 166 | gateways | gant & gittins meetings and printed questionnaires. online questionnaires can draw on the knowledge and experience of previous work while having the ability to be specifi cally customised to suit individual communities. not all community members are keen or able to attend village meetings for a variety of personal or political reasons or practical constraints. the opportunity for community members to engage with the clp process and fi ll in questionnaires online not only saves on paper, ink, onerous processes of survey delivery and collection and very lengthy data compiling, but is also quick and easy to do – which in turn is likely to result in greater participation. whilst not intended to entirely replace the traditional processes of engagement, the system pilot will test the effi cacy of submitted survey results being digitally compiled ‘live’ and presented transparently back to the community through accessible graphics and data presentation pages. the clp process often has to confront and deal with highly divisive issues and subjects within a community. of interest to the project team is how being able to view the results of community members’ responses to questions around these contentious issues as they come into the system could potentially create a provocative situation and political dynamic that may attract greater interest, engagement and responses from members of the community. the ‘live’ presentation of responses and blogs which enable ongoing communal commentary on the results, as they emerge, may also create a more modern sense of broadcasting and vibrancy around the event. the advantages technology offers should permit a more accurate polling of opinion on key issues with much greater levels of interactivity and visualisation possibilities. data can still be figure 4: website platform featuring google map image of community augmented with ‘data tags’ 21st century village me action planning my community sign inabout sub menu 2 sub menu 4sub menu 3sub menu 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 33 3 3 3 searchlatest updates help contact terms and conditions 167 | gateways | gant & gittins entered manually on behalf of those who want to use a paperbased system, but for the increasing majority of internet users, the system should provide greater transparency and accuracy and a more inclusive means of engagement with the clp process and interpretation of collective opinions. once individuals are registered in the system, other community members, planning groups, strategic authorities and local government can facilitate an ongoing dialogue with individual members, providing a very direct link, through one system, to large proportions of the population in a dynamic and efficient way – something the more traditional routes do not offer. the ‘multi-local society’ on a micro level, a community framing its own concerns and aspirations, and envisioning itself, its problems and responses as part of a larger system of neighbouring communities, can be positive in itself. but using a cms platform such as the proposed community21 system as an integrated part of the long-established and successful process of clp that the rccs already facilitate, the combined information in turn should have relevance, value and use beyond the immediate community. the hoped-for result of any clp process is a range of actions that the community agrees as items they want to address and act upon. these actions are not only the practical agenda items for the community, but authentic representations of its aspirations, concerns and responses. it is hoped that the community21 platform will be able to take this information/clp process a step further. by zooming in and enabling the system to gather and compare this detailed, localised and idiosyncratic data across a network of communities that have undertaken the clp process, a range of interested parties, including the community itself, could then ‘zoom out’ and build a picture of a whole range of valuable perspectives relating to trends, commonalities as well as differences, and idiosyncrasies. by programming the system to view, compare and contrast information in a range of ways, agencies charged with strategic and economic planning could be greatly assisted. the new network of community users could be used to poll opinion or trial policy. while zoomed in on a local level, a shop owner and farmer could see that their community would like access to more locally grown produce or a parish council could see that a community would like to establish a managed woodland for fuel. but also by zooming out and viewing collective actions, a bus company could access data demonstrating that four neighbouring villages want better local transport provision and could engage in a collective dialogue with them regarding a solution – perhaps polling the community through the system to comment on a proposed scheme. conservationists could view the local pond project and link it to a network of ponds or initiatives across a region. local authorities and energy companies could see that communities in a region want locally, sustainably sourced power and respond accordingly. beyond the 168 | gateways | gant & gittins obvious value of shared authentic information and best practice between communities, the collective body of real case studies and information generated by the communities themselves could lead to collaboration and joined-up thinking on bigger issues. the communities would be acting for themselves but would also be part of a visible, active and tangible patchwork of interlinked communities, forming a much bigger fabric, all progressing and integrating their natural propensity to survive and be more sustainable. in the uk all of this is congruent with the aspirations being developed under prime minister david cameron’s ‘big society’ proposal. this emergent collective picture that captures key aspects of local communities and their self-sustainability progress would hopefully be a vibrant and live illustration of action and progression, which could be viewed in detail or monitored on a wider scale. the website has the potential to capture change and progress in a meaningful, positive and accurate way. the active dynamic is formed from local planning and a social network of interlinked communities that forms a much larger organism – a digitally enabled multi-local society which, according to manzini (2007), is ‘a network of interconnected communities and places, at the same time open and localised. small is not small and local is not local.’ contrary to what was thought in the past, the joint phenomena of globalization and increased connectivity have given rise once again to the local dimension. by the expression ‘local’ what is meant now is something very removed from what was understood in the past (i.e. the valley, the village, the small provincial town, all isolated, relatively closed within their own cultures and economies). the new local combines the specific features of places and the communities with the phenomena generated and supported worldwide by globalization and by cultural and socio-economic interconnections (manzini 2007). questions and challenges the project/initiative is not without its challenges. one issue is managing anxieties communities may have about the adoption of another internet system. this might also be compounded by the concerns over information sharing generally within social networking systems. additionally, communities may not want to engage with what might be seen as comparable or even competitive services or systems to those that communities already use or have developed for themselves. the way to overcome this is to embed the whole package within the facilitation role provided by the rccs – the system is there to augment what is already working successfully as well as building opportunities for communities who do not have such services. the other main barrier for some communities would be the quality of the broadband connections in rural communities in the uk. this is variable and could inhibit, at least initially, individuals and communities actively participating. 169 | gateways | gant & gittins there is also a degree of cultural change to be tackled in rural communities. the individuals leading community led planning initiatives are often more used to the traditional means of communication – public meetings, exhibitions, leaflets, paperbased surveys. changing over to – or supplementing with – more digitally based systems will take time, but will offer demonstrable value. both systems will need to work in parallel if the aim of engaging with the whole community is to be achieved. while the ideas behind the system embrace the philosophy of, and provide a mechanism and process for, managing both the ‘big society’ agenda and addressing climate change issues, the resources required both to develop the system beyond pilot and, more importantly, to actively engage and provide support to communities in it are not necessarily in place or clear. the pilot will enable the formation of the full system specification for the next phase of operation, as well as an opportunity to build a business model based on trials of various models for paid services and functions by community and commercial users within the pilot. some of these will model shared income streams for rccs and communities. proving whether the system can sustain itself will be vital in engaging further partners, funders and users. conclusion despite the concerns that communities may have inhibitions when moving towards an online facilitation system such as community21, the prototype system was formally presented at the airs annual conference, rural futures 2010 policy and practice, in september 2010 and it received resounding support from a range of governance and community engagement agencies, with over 20 communities committing to be part of the pilot trials. the national rural community council umbrella organisation, action for communities in rural england, has also endorsed the development of the system and the aspiration to form a fully integrated national system for the benefit of rccs and communities across the country. the functional prototype system will be used with communities across east and west sussex as part of the trial pilot in january 2011. the various proposed business models that might be applied to facilitate the growth of the system will each be trialled to form variable income possibilities. the ambitions of the project team are to see the community facilitation services and tools deployed by rccs become more relevant, progressive, valued and functional. by developing the pilot through local established networks that form part of a linked national system it is hoped the agendas of sustainable growth, self-sufficiency and resilience can be achieved in a meaningful way that will further empower communities to make their own decisions and take positive action for themselves. 170 | gateways | gant & gittins references airs 2010, study of communities in east and west sussex, internal research. barcombe community action plan survey 2009, barcombe parish council survey of 540 residents july 2009 – march 2010. brahic, c 2009, ‘sustainable living’, in economic and social research council, britain in 2009: the state of the nation, esrc, london, pp. 9–11. leadbeater c 2008, we-think, profile books, london. lowe, t 2006, ‘is this climate porn? how does climate change communication affect our perceptions and behaviour?’ tyndall centre working paper 98, viewed 5 march 2010, www.tyndall.ac.uk/content/ climate-porn-how-does-climate-change-communication-affect-ourperceptions-and-behaviour. manzini e 2007, ‘the scenario of a multi-local society: creative communities, active networks and enabling solutions’, in j chapman & n gant, designers, visionaries and other stories, earthscan, london, pp. 77–93. de rita, e & bonomi, a 1998, ‘manifesto per lo sviluppo locale’, bollati boringhieri, torino. smith, p 2010, ‘rebooting britain: tax people back into cities’, wired uk, january, p. 90. all my friends are here four initial case studies on student design agencies in 1999, the small, but rather well-known german town of weimar was to become the cultural capital of europe. in preparation for this major international event, as far back as 1996 the bauhausuniversity weimar – one of the leading local cultural institutions – had set up a student agency, ideenwerkstatt ’99 (ideas workshop ’99) to initiate, coordinate and realise pilot projects leading up to the climactic festival program in 1999. from its establishment, the ideenwerkstatt ’99 was located in a fairly large hall of a university-owned condemned building, managed by a young administrative officer assigned by the university, who supervised a core group of eight part-time student freelancers and an unaccounted number of projectrelated student helpers. other than the administrative officer’s salary, the office space and some initial office equipment, the university didn’t allocate much further funding to the operation of the project; the ideenwerkstatt essentially needed to compete for internal and/or external funding and/or grants, or otherwise produce its own income. when the ideenwerkstatt closed down at the end of the summer of 1999 it had co-produced: —an international architectural competition including an international preparatory workshop for a town-planning project called neues bauen am horn (1996) —the architecture exhibition, kulturstadtbauen, which toured europe for two years (1997–98) as a promotional warm-up to the cultural capital year —a full-scale tv studio for the broadcasting of the 100-day festival tv program, worldhaustv (1999) —a series of international symposia called campus 99 (1999) —a number of smaller exhibitions of student projects and similar events in local venues (1998–99). as a side-project for income-generation, the ideenwerkstatt also became very involved with the university’s general visual communications, and at some point it was effectively the institutional communications bureau. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 199–217 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 peter benz hong kong baptist university 200 | gateways | benz of the eight core student members of the ideenwerkstatt, all but one became creative entrepreneurs immediately after their graduation from university; five are still successful design entrepreneurs today, two proceeded to become university professors. i am one of the latter. sociopolitical context in hong kong based on my own rather beneficial experience as a student member of a student design agency in the 1990s in germany, it came quite naturally to me to suggest setting up a university-related student design agency when i took up my current position as a full-time faculty member of hong kong baptist university’s (hkbu) newly founded academy of visual arts (ava) in 2006. in 1999, the first chief executive of hong kong special administrative region (sar), mr tung chee-hwa, set the goal of transforming hong kong into a cultural metropolis. his policy address prompted the realisation that arts education would be a major factor within this transformation (kao & lu 2002), and, inevitably, arts education at tertiary level came under the spotlight. several institutions and the university responded to the new policy focus by enhancing their visual arts programs in terms of both quantity and professionalism – the founding of the academy of visual arts by hkbu in 2005 was, for example, a direct result of this policy. this first reform in visual arts education was followed by the more recent policy, established by mr donald tsang, the second chief executive of hong kong sar, of developing hong kong towards a knowledge-based economy. this second policy specifically included a call to offer diversified learning paths for young talents in creative competence and professionalism by enhancing educational activities while also tying them in with industry (bauhinia foundation research centre 2007, pp. 12–13). as a result of these macro policy developments, the number of visual artists with professional qualifications from hong kong tertiary institutions has almost tripled since 2001, relieving to some extent the immediate demand for visual arts professionals. however, this development has led to new problems: new graduates in the visual arts in hong kong, like their peers in other disciplines, generally have traditional expectations of their future jobs (projectable career paths, steady income, job security, etc.) – particularly because of their family and social backgrounds – which do not match well with the professional realities of the creative and cultural sector. thus, graduates will often seek employment in other industries, and are ultimately lost to the creative sector. yet, at the same time, creative industries and cultural institutions continue to urge more art administration and creative talents to enter the creative market as a means to enrich the cultural landscape of the city. 201 | gateways | benz this leads to a paradoxical situation: the current generation of young visual artists, the so-called ‘post-80s generation’, finished their tertiary education in the visual arts, which they chose in good faith because of the new public policies, positive public awareness and real market demand, in 2008 and later, and were immediately challenged by the current economic downturn and a society too rigid and suffocating to allow for alternative career concepts (hkindieff 2010). this general situation is also reflected in the particular experience of the academy of visual arts in recent times: ava graduates approximately 100 young visual artists from its ba program every year. other tertiary programs of a similar nature at ava’s sister institutions in hong kong – for example, city university’s school of creative media, chinese university’s department of fine arts, polytechnic university’s school of design – release an additional 300 or so ba graduates annually into the job market. unfortunately, the majority of these young creative talents do not enter the cultural and creative sector, often seeking employment in entirely different industries or in services merely supplementary to the visual arts. for example, of ava’s graduates in 2010, 56 per cent entered the commerce/industry sector, followed by education (33 per cent) and community/social services (11 per cent). only slightly more than 40 per cent of the graduates who found full-time jobs defined their employment as ‘in art or design related industry’ (academy of visual arts 2008, 2009, 2010). additional data from these exit surveys of the first three cohorts of ava graduates in 2008–2010 suggest that only a minority of 10 per cent of these graduates intend and are determined to start up as visual arts entrepreneurs, whether within a self-established corporate structure, self-employment, or freelance. this adds up to about 10 ava graduates and about 40 graduates hong kong wide in 2013; for a community of 7 million inhabitants, with a per capita gdp of approximately us$36 000 (international monetary fund 2012), in close geographical, political and cultural proximity to a vast mainland chinese market, this is a remarkably small number, particularly considering that in other countries a large proportion of creative graduates usually choose to work entrepreneurially (for example, in the uk 28 per cent across all creative occupations (higgs, cunningham & bakhshi 2008); see also ball, pollard & stanley (2010), in particular their concluding remarks on pages 216–219). reasons stated by those graduates who chose not to become full-time visual artists seldom place responsibility for their decision with public policies or social pressures, and instead consistently cite – besides the perceived low salary level of creative jobs and the unstable professional situation – other factors: a majority claims insufficient professional skills or doubts in their own abilities compared to perceived professional standards as reasons not to continue their careers in the visual arts. others worry about 202 | gateways | benz the lack of professional exposure during their study years and competition from graduates with overseas qualifications (benz & ng 2011). while, on the one hand, these creative talents are steering clear of the creative industries, on the other, ava continues to receive a fair amount of demand from the industry in general, businesses and/or private persons looking for support with various creative issues. these businesses – mostly small and medium enterprises (smes) and non-government organisations (ngos) – do not want or cannot afford to hire a visual artist full-time, yet they are interested in the knowledge/skills that ava and its graduates/ students as creatives have to offer. this first-hand observation of demand is also supported by, for example, hong kong sar’s government prediction of further growth in the cultural and creative sectors in hong kong in the coming years, as well as its initiative to support knowledge transfer from universities to smes through additional specifically allocated funding (hong kong sar government 2013). research background the situation in hong kong indicates that there is demand from the student side for professional on-job experience as well as for development of entrepreneurial skills and ‘spirit’, while at the same time there is demand from businesses and industry for the particular knowledge that ava has to offer. the question remains: how can the academy of visual arts meet these demands? as ava’s primary mission is of an educational nature, the obvious initial answer might be to integrate external projects into courses and classes. however, as many educators in the creative disciplines have experienced, formal classroom settings are fundamentally different from ‘real life practice’ in the creative industry. as one case study on industry–design school cooperation in canada put it, ‘the results [of the proposed project] had to satisfy certain project constraints defined by the [industry] client in response to the specific corporate history, socio-cultural context, and business climate. these constraints were site-specific and not readily generalised. likewise, neither the extent of the mandate nor the scope of the project were clearly defined or understood at the outset’ (poldma & samuelson 2004, p. 60). in the contemporary educational landscape where students are bound by term schedules and study plans, courses are built around specific program and course-level intended learning outcomes and programs need to account for their learning outcomes to quality assurance committees. continuous and recurring integration – that is, beyond the one-off collaboration purpose-designed for particular case studies – of complex and meaningful real-life professional experiences in courses is almost impossible to achieve. the ava thus needed to think of a more experimental model to systematically incorporate on-job experiences in its educational offerings. 203 | gateways | benz this is where the idea of an agency as an entity ‘to organise transactions between two other parties’ (oxford dictionary n.d.) came into play. in principle, such an agency could be formulated along the model lines of knowledge transfer partnerships (ktps) as they are adopted by numerous tertiary institutions today (see, for example, hong kong baptist university n.d.; kingston university n.d.; ucl advances n.d.): a student or a group of students (associates) works on the assignment of a client (external partner) within the community of ava (academic partner). by the mid-2000s the idea of a student design agency was by no means novel; however, it appeared that the establishment of such an agency in hong kong had never been attempted. in the summer of 2010, i therefore proposed to hkbu’s knowledge transfer office to conduct a feasibility study for the founding of a student design agency specific to the hk context. this proposed knowledge transfer feasibility study would be produced in collaboration with the department of strategy, marketing and entrepreneurship of the business school of kingston university london (benz & ng 2011). on the way to constructing the feasibility study, i stumbled across a more fundamental issue concerning student-led design agencies. as a first step, my research assistant at the time and i had attempted to investigate student design agencies worldwide: where are they? how are they set up? what are their (business) activities? how are they operated/managed? what kind of experience do they provide for students/graduates? how do they tie in – if at all – with the educational mission of their parent institution? however, we encountered an ‘information void’: we could not locate any publications other than the odd newspaper note about student-run design agencies, let alone any academic (case) studies about their history, set-up and/or achievements. apparently, student design agencies had not been a topic for academic investigation or reflection, despite them being fairly common in the contexts of design institutions worldwide. as it subsequently turned out, it was also difficult to find, locate and contact any student design agencies directly: the entities we were interested in are run by students, which implies that their staff is, by definition, doubly burdened by their studies and their agency work. and it follows that answering odd interview requests by strange academics would not be of major interest to them. in addition, student agencies could be assumed to face a high fluctuation of members, unclear hierarchies, unsystematic record-keeping, and variable prioritisation of tasks. often our emailed contact requests were passed around several times within an agency before we eventually received a (negative) reply. taking into account also that student design agencies often do not spend too much time on updating their websites and/or checking their general mailbox, and that there is no commonly accepted taxonomy – what is a student design agency in one place may well be a visual communications office or an ideas workshop in another 204 | gateways | benz – or definition of suitable/acceptable activities for student design agencies available, our research efforts became increasingly erratic and cumbersome. despite this frustrating experience, we were eventually able to locate four student design agencies, which were prepared to share their experiences and thus help answer three principal questions: 1 can student design agencies be agents for disseminating specific knowledge/skills from the creative field to the wider community? that is, can they principally be viewed as possible models for knowledge transfer? 2 are student design agencies valid entities to provide recurring on-job experiences for students in creative subjects – do they produce educational value? 3 which parameters influence the quality of the educational experience of a student design agency? all four cases that follow are based on interviews conducted between november 2012 and january 2013 as part of a follow-up investigation triggered by the findings – or, rather, lack of findings – from the initial research. in the first three cases the current agency heads responded to a detailed questionnaire and answered further individual follow-up questions by email/skype to clarify any remaining issues (see interviews: lindig 2012; nguyen 2012; quiring 2012; yaw 2012). case 1: töchter + söhne gmbh, universität der künste, berlin, germany in 1999, towards the end of the projected operation of the ideenwerkstatt ’99 in weimar, its student members – amongst them myself – were discussing how to possibly preserve and institutionalise what we at the time considered a fundamentally important study experience for ourselves. during our discussions we were also aware of events in berlin, where only recently students of the ‘gesellschafts und wirtschaftskommunikation (gwk)’ (‘communication in social and economic contexts’) program (universität der künste berlin n.d.) of the then college of the arts (renamed in 2001 as the ‘university of the arts’) had founded their own design agency, which they called ‘töchter + söhne’ (‘daughters & sons’). töchter + söhne was founded as a limited company (gesellschaft mit beschränkter haftung) by another student association of the universität der künste (udk) – the berliner kommunikationsforum e.v. – which also provided the legally necessary financial endowment. structurally and financially, töchter + söhne was thus entirely independent from its parent institution from the start. nevertheless, from its very beginnings in 1999 until its closing in 2011, the agency maintained institutional connections with its parent institution, for example, by inviting the university president / other faculty members to sit on its advisory board. 205 | gateways | benz other than through such administrative connections, the college, until 2009, provided office/studio space on campus, which allowed various faculty to informally drop in every now and then to provide academic and professional consultations and effectively – intentionally or not – a very loose form of supervision. while not directly institutionalised in any ordinance, such informal exchange with staff members as well as the close geographical/personal relationship with the university/college essentially reflected the initial founding idea of töchter + söhne: according to an interview given to unispiegel magazine in 2000 (kolbeck 2000), the four founding members were not primarily interested in generating any particular business, because they instead felt they lacked the professional skills necessary to achieve this. founding an agency was their attempt to respond to this perceived need, which was apparently shared by many other students, made evident by the subsequent continuously strong participation in töchter + söhne. in the early years, the vast majority of participants in the agency were active students from udk – mostly from gwk and the visual communications programs. graduates would not usually be allowed to join or continue working for the agency, although there were some exceptions. over the following years – due to the spreading ‘fame’ of töchter + söhne – more students of other universities in berlin joined the team as ‘freelancers’ until it reached its maximum size of 20 ‘permanent freelancers’ in 2008. nevertheless, throughout its operational time at least the ceos – usually a team of two students who deferred their studies for one or two years to dedicate themselves full-time to the agency – would always be udk students. the agency provided a large range of communication, research and design services, for example, product development, strategic marketing, store concepts, web applications and interface design. its clients varied in sector and size, though from the start töchter + söhne managed to attract numerous high-profile clients. for example, one of its first clients was the otto group, the world’s largest mail order group; later, their portfolio included also techniker krankenkasse, universal entertainment, senate of berlin, amnesty international and deutsche telekom (töchter + söhne n.d.). thus, very early on in its institutional history the agency was playing ‘the big game’. in this context, it is remarkable that töchter + söhne didn’t formally compete in pitching to acquire clients; all of its commissions were picked up only through direct contact, word of mouth and/or its reputation. in this regard, especially in the early years, töchter + söhne benefited from their clients’ willingness to support young professionals, despite the potential ‘risks’ that came with hiring a student-run agency instead of a ‘proper’ professional agency. however, being associated with a particularly new and young agency did in effect ‘rub off’ on the reputation of the clients, and allowed them to reposition their image to the public. 206 | gateways | benz interestingly, because of the clients’ commitment to the ‘cause’ of supporting young creatives, töchter + söhne could afford to charge market prices, arguing that the outcomes produced were of the same quality as could be expected from other providers, and should therefore command the same price. this willingness on the clients’ part to commission a student design agency and pay normal market prices, while töchter + söhne paid its members student rates (kolbeck 2000) equivalent to the german minimum wage, was essentially the core to töchter + söhne’s economic success. töchter + söhne were thus able to continuously generate very significant reputational kudos, along with rather handsome annual financial profits, which were in turn donated to udk to be invested in program delivery. while the possibility to earn some money through studyrelated work was of course certainly an incentive for students to join the agency, other aspects of participation were at least equally important: for example, often students close to graduation would join to generate some on-job experience and projects to boost their application portfolios. also, student members of the agency consistently emphasised the team experience and the various ‘soft rewards’ – reputational gain for students who were accepted to participate, use of facilities and resources, and the apparently significant fun of working there. in the end, the closure of töchter + söhne was not triggered by economic issues, but by changes in the educational landscape: when the udk began implementing the ‘bologna reform’, which in germany resulted in new program structures with previously uncommon ba and ma degrees and shortened study times, students faced harsher schedules, penalties for deferring studies and more streamlined study paths. this meant that the onaverage younger and less mature bachelor students did not bring the skill sets and levels of experience to the job to accomplish the complex and challenging tasks of the agency’s daily business (töchter + söhne n.d.). because of the potential failure to maintain work quality, and as the university couldn’t see the possibility of integrating the agency into the new educational structure, töchter + söhne’s stakeholders decided to close the agency in 2011, after 12 years in operation. despite its closure, töchter + söhne still has an almost legendary reputation today, especially amongst german design students, as a student-run design agency that for a while managed to operate on the same playing field as the ‘big ones’. of the agencies i looked into for this project, töchter + söhne certainly is the one that managed most successfully to emulate professional practice in its activities, to the point of appearing almost as a ‘normal’ professional agency. case 2: werbeliebe e.v., university of applied arts, pforzheim, germany unbeknown to me at the time, around the same time in 1998 as töchter + söhne was established in berlin, another group of 207 | gateways | benz students founded a student design agency at their college for applied sciences (now renamed pforzheim university) in the provincial city of pforzheim in southern germany. in contrast to their counterpart in berlin, they registered as an independent association, c-werk e.v. (eingetragener verein, or ‘registered association’) – later renamed werbeliebe e.v. (translates roughly as ‘advertising love’). this is a german legal structure, which requires the organisation to be non-profitmaking. according to its ordinance, the association’s sole purpose is ‘professional education and training in the area of marketing communication’, and such an association will ‘offer its members educational opportunities through lectures, discussion panels, seminars, and practical work experiences’ (werbeliebe e.v. 1998). what started off as a very clear-cut, purpose-driven agency with an educational focus developed over the years to become a more complex entity with several divisions. today, along with the original agency, the association, for example, publishes a university magazine called md – marketing digest, runs another student agency specialising in video productions and organises the annual two-day marketing conference ‘refill – the brand event’. similarly to töchter + söhne, werbeliebe is supported by its parent institution through provision of an on-campus office space, and is informally supported by academic staff through consultations and/or professional contacts. unlike töchter + söhne, werbeliebe does not have any structural relations with its university through its ordinance. its board of three directors is entirely made up of students, as are the lower ranks of project leaders, team leaders and team members. while werbeliebe’s business activities are similar to those of other student agencies (projects for external partners, university internal projects and self-initiated projects), they appear a little more diverse than, for example, those of töchter + söhne, if not in content, then in size and profile. also, werbeliebe’s management seems to have slightly more control over which projects it will take on. for example, while werbeliebe initially took on rather large industry clients like daimler, they gradually – and apparently purposefully – developed their clientele as non-profit/charity organisations with smaller, open-ended projects. in addition, selfinitiated projects with an educational focus, such as their own marketing magazine and marketing conference mentioned above, which have educational benefits to the university community at large, form a larger part of their activities than those of their counterpart in berlin. today, at any given time, 30 to 40 students – who by default have to become members of the association – work for the agency, usually initially as ‘team members’, gradually growing into more senior leadership positions. such gradual promotion ensures a continuity of development as well as allowing time to familiarise ‘newbies’ with the association’s operations and people, which in turn nurtures team spirit and maintains quality of their output. 208 | gateways | benz a very interesting aspect to note in this context is that werbeliebe does not pay its members/freelancers; indeed, by ordinance it is prohibited to do so (werbeliebe e.v. 1998). all work, time and effort contributed to the agency are entirely voluntary. in fact, participants even pay an annual – nominal – membership fee, which creates the slightly paradoxical situation that the students effectively pay to work on projects that often generate income or even profit. despite this seemingly unfavourable scenario, the agency doesn’t have problems recruiting new participants, as acceptance as a member apparently enhances the member’s reputation. further, even more than at töchter + söhne, nonmonetary incentives, such as satisfaction from projects, passion for the discipline, educational benefits, a strong team spirit, social networks and activities seem to outweigh the lack of financial compensation. participation in werbeliebe is rewarded through formal certificates and, in special cases, reference letters by staff members. more generally, however, werbeliebe throughout its history apparently has managed to generate a kind of selfrenewing ‘corporate spirit’ that appeals directly to the professional enthusiasm and personal dedication of its members. compared to töchter + söhne, werbeliebe remains closer to its roots as a student-run agency in terms of its (business) activities, its engagement with the community, its operations and the personnel involved. it is more clearly dedicated to an educational mission, and its various activities are aimed more at fulfilling this than at ‘playing the professional game’, claiming awards and/or gaining more than a local/regional reputation. case 3: penn student design, university of pennsylvania, philadelphia, usa student agencies in the usa principally have a different historical background from their european counterparts as they can be traced back – very broadly – to the cooperative education initiative of cincinnati university’s hermann schneider (park 1943) in the early years of the 20th century and roosevelt’s subsequent national youth administration (nya) of the 1930s (lindley & lindley 1938). the nya can be viewed as an early incarnation of the federal work–study program of today (university of pennsylvania n.d.), a federally funded support system in the usa that assists students with the costs of post-secondary education by helping them earn financial funding through a part-time work program. work–study today is offered through ‘student agencies’ at around 3400 colleges and universities in the usa (us department of education n.d.), providing on-campus part-time jobs ranging from bartending and waiting, to removal services and storage provision, bicycle rentals and gift shop operation, and may of course also include various design services. due to their nature as articulations of a federal program primarily intended to financially support students in need, these student design agencies generally differ from those previously discussed in several ways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/federalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/united_states_of_america http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/post-secondary_education http://www.psabartending.com/ 209 | gateways | benz —the student agencies execute a state-run program and therefore are required to adhere to regulations and guidelines that come with it, including of course regular accounting, taxation reporting, etc. this in many cases results in the parent institution being required to (tightly) supervise the agencies, despite the agencies nominally being ‘managed’ by students. as the agencies are specifically mandated and financed for the purpose of supporting student earning, their principal existence is not a matter of entrepreneurial consideration, although their range of services may develop to some extent. —student participants must be paid – by federal requirement – at least the federal minimum wage throughout their (formal) employment, making participation far more of a ‘regular job’ than a voluntary professional experience borne out of personal enthusiasm. —participation of students is means tested, thus it does not necessarily reflect interest, ability or enthusiasm of the employed student for the particular job. —activities of the agencies are usually more ‘introversive’, that is, they are directly aimed at the particular university/college community. local/state government would certainly object if federally funded student services directly competed with ‘normal’ local businesses in the area, potentially threatening their existence due to the student services’ subsidised sub-market prices. penn student design (psd) was established in about 2002 – an exact date can’t be given due to lack of records and loss of contact with its original cast – by students interested in offering design services to the campus of the university of pennsylvania. for the larger part of its operation psd remained an independent student group until, due to increasing administrative and operational pressures, it – albeit reluctantly – joined penn student agencies (psa), the institutional umbrella organisation for the work–study program, in 2011. since then, psa provides psd and other student agencies with a common office, a general manager and various office resources. it also manages general administrative tasks – legal contracts, payment of bills and salaries, etc. – thus effectively taking control of many of the entrepreneurially ‘sensitive’ issues of running a business. penn student design currently employs a staff of approximately 20 students, offering design services for posters, flyers, logos and/or websites, as well as photography services for events, portraits, architecture etc. mainly to university departments and student groups. designers are paid a projectbased fee, receiving 80 per cent of the income generated from a commission, the remaining 20 per cent going to the psd as overheads. psd thus far has not developed any self-initiated projects and/or events, except for an annual photo competition that leads to the production of a calendar, the sales of which 210 | gateways | benz generate the major part of psd’s revenue. in view of this revenue distribution, psd effectively depends on support from psa to be economically sustainable. in contrast to all other student design agencies investigated during this research, psd is the only one that cannot generate and/or maintain the common enthusiasm of a ‘design club’ and is challenged by ‘the lack of investment by the designers’ (nguyen, interview, 2012), who generally appear not to care much about the agency or their involvement with it. in effect, this want of commitment strips psd of the social experience that contributes substantially to the success of the other student design agencies. this becomes further apparent through the non-existence of any member/alumni network, the lack of ties to any specific department – and thereby lack of academic ties and benefits – as well as through the absence of formal recognition of contribution. participation in psd is effectively a straightforward means of earning money, not for anything else. case 4: creactive, iact, selangor, malaysia creactive student agency, based in selangor on the western outskirts of kuala lumpur, malaysia, was the only case available for investigation in a developing economy. it was founded in 2002 as a division of iact college – formerly known as the institute advertising communication training – a local provider of vocational sub-degree programs in visual communications subjects, not unlike community colleges in the usa or hong kong. as iact’s roots reach back to the early 1970s when it was a joint educational institution of the malaysian advertisers’ association (maa) and the association of accredited advertising agents (4as), malaysia, it traditionally had close relations with the advertising industry, in particular, and prided itself in ‘producing job-ready graduates for advertising agencies (iact college, overview n.d.). accordingly, a student design agency, where (selected) students could practise their skills on the job, seemed a rather natural fit, so not surprisingly creactive was not a student initiative originally – unlike the other cases – but an institutional reaction to external industry demand. since its inception a decade ago, creactive has remained an integral part of the institutional structure, and the agency’s activities have been much more directly related to the educational purpose of the parent institution than in the other cases. consequently, in contrast to the previously discussed cases, creactive has been led by a volunteer – that is, unpaid – academic staff member. given this structure, institutional control of the agency’s activities is intentionally much more obvious than in the other cases: not only does the academic staff member supervise the entire design process, she also is present at meetings with clients and initiates and organises activities, and is in charge of agency operations and audits the books, etc. this set-up clearly explains 211 | gateways | benz the relatively low (public) impact of the agency, as creactive is only one of many responsibilities of the staff member – and an unpaid one too – and most likely her attention is limited. currently, approximately 20 students work for creactive on external projects, generally from local smes, ngos and/or community initiatives, and internal jobs for iact’s own special events. projects usually are in line with the educational profile of iact – that is, advertising oriented – which allows the agency to tie in with the educational purpose of the institution. participants are selected through a formal selection procedure involving a portfolio review and usually an interview, though effectively no particular requirements/restrictions are outlined, and positions are offered as available and at the adviser’s discretion. upon leaving, creactive students receive a formal certificate of participation and a testimonial from the agency leader, which they may use for their cv. particular services offered by creactive are specified as ‘advertisements, marketing research, marketing & branding consultancy, and corporate identity’ (iact college, student ad agency n.d.). no official price lists are available, but generally prices are calculated at 30–50 per cent of the local market price. creactive has its own account under the college and all revenue can be used for its own purposes, in particular for office equipment and agency activities. similarly to werbeliebe, student participants are not paid a salary for their work at creactive, which also explains why no graduates can afford to stay on the team, as is the situation in the other cases. however, creactive does provide free professional development workshops, organises parties and other team experiences, and even occasionally offers leisure trips (even to bali), financed from the agency’s revenue. these activities constitute staff-led team-building, and inject social meaning into life at creactive, which then becomes an incentive for participation. while not the official institutional understanding, creactive does not see itself solely as an advertising agency with additional educational merit, but identifies with the community projects for which it provides design services. within creactive’s social context, this appears to be a rather adequate reinterpretation of the idea of a design agency. comparison and recommendations despite the relatively accidental or circumstantial selection of the above cases, it appears that the four agencies under review do share a number of critical traits that allow them to be compared with validity: —all four agencies were founded within a relatively small window of four years, between 1998 and 2002, and have been operating continuously for a minimum of 10 years. 212 | gateways | benz —all four agencies are directly related to one particular tertiary institution, are officially recognised by their parent institution and recruit their members more or less exclusively from its student body. —all agencies under investigation generate business revenue through offering design services to the community. —all agencies and their universities are located in thriving urban communities, providing similar opportunities as well as competition, though potentially at different economic levels. for comparison, table 1 provides an overview of the essential parameters of the four agencies as established through the interviews. with reference to the three research questions initially posed, the findings from the interviews indicate that student design agencies can indeed successfully transfer creative knowledge from an institution to a wider community. the simple fact that table 1: comparison of the four agencies’ primary parameters töchter & söhne (germany) werbeliebe (germany) psd (usa) creactive (malaysia) organisation years of operation 1999–2011 (12 years) 1998– (14 years) 2002– (11 years) 2002– (11 years) founding impetus student initiative student initiative federal government program institutional initiative organisational status limited company registered association (non-profit) institutional division institutional division management 2 students 3 students 2 students 1 staff member institutional support space space space, administrative overhead space, administrative overhead dedicated support staff none none none 1 (unpaid) active student members 20 (max.) 40 (max.) 20 (approx.) 20 (approx.) operations operational purpose professional development through on-job experience ‘professional education through practical work experiences’ financial support of students through part-time work on-job training business activities ‘communication, research and design services’ advertising and marketing, visual communications services graphic design and photography services ‘advertisements, marketing research, marketing & branding consultancy, and corporate identity’ other activities n/a educational (lectures, workshops, conference, etc.) none educational (lectures, workshops, etc.) target clients corporations, smes, ngos mostly ngos, some smes institutional community, private ngos, smes, institutional community service charges market price sub-market price sub-market price sub-market price student salary minimum wage none project-based, but at least minimum wage none institutional recognition participation could be counted for a required internship none (yet the agency issues formal participation certificates) none certificate of participation and a testimonial other student incentives on-job experience, team experience, use of facilities and resources, fun on-job experience, team experience, use of facilities and resources, social and professional network, fun on-job experience on-job experience, team experience, fun operational sustainability yes yes n/a yes 213 | gateways | benz all cases studied could generate significant income from external commissions over extended periods of time quite clearly shows that, whatever their services were, the external partners considered them worth the money they paid for them. in all of the cases the identity of the agency was (at least partially) determined by their close association with a reputable academic institution; from the external partner’s/client’s point of view they would likely often be considered ‘identical’, with the agency being perceived merely as an administrative construct to manage the external assignments. it can be assumed that choosing a student design agency from a reputable institution would add value for clients as the credibility of the institution would ‘spill over’. in this scenario the students became the agents of communication and knowledge transfer between the institution and the external client. interestingly, however, with the exception of creactive and iact, none of the other institutions and agencies seemed to grasp the potential of this notion for institutional communication, despite the various student design agencies – except possibly psd – significantly contributing to a positive reception of the university, especially by the professional community, but also by the public at large. structurally, psd’s operations probably best match the classic knowledge transfer partnership (ktp), in essentially assigning single students or small groups of students to particular assignments without any extended activities; but psd also seems to be the least successful agency in the study in terms of ‘student satisfaction’ and also financially, thus a classic knowledge transfer partnership may not be the ideal model for a student agency. at the core of the foundation story of each case lies the idea of improving design education through providing students with opportunities for real-life professional experience. all four agencies achieve that: all of them allow professional exposure; all of them regularly produce interesting projects of good or very good quality for their clients; from all of them – with the exception possibly of psd – their participants walk away with the impression of having had a very special experience and to have learnt important (professional) life lessons. it is valid to assume the educational value in student design agencies, as the agencies studied simply wouldn’t have survived for an extended period of time if students hadn’t found them worth the time and effort. as in all of the cases the agencies paid no salary, or merely a minimum salary, the learning experience as perceived by the students was the most likely incentive for them to stay on. therefore, there seems good reason to confirm that there are positive educational effects; however, as none of the agencies kept systematic track of their alumni, further formal research will be required to determine, in particular, the qualitative outcomes of the agency experience. nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence 214 | gateways | benz to suggest that, if student design agencies were considered as knowledge transfer models, the conventional ktp model would need to be extended to include an educational element/module, aimed particularly at the kt associates (the students). it seems the single most important criterion for the success of a student design agency is the ‘spirit’ it manages to create. those agencies that succeed in creating an intensive working experience with a strong focus on social interaction in the team can induce motivation and enthusiasm for their cause to the point where it is more important than monetary incentive for the participants. as tim stübane, one of the first two ceos of töchter + söhne, expressed in an interview: ‘this is not merely a working place, this is the centre point of my life, and all my friends are here too [translation by author]’ (kolbeck 2000). lukas quiring of werbeliebe insists that ‘community, network, experience, passion, fun’ are the reasons that ‘all students with above average motivation and talent will be active in the agency [translation by author]’ (quiring, interview, 2012). this observation very much matches my personal experience at ideenwerkstatt ’99, though at the time i didn’t entirely realise the importance of the team experience as clearly. the parameters that seem to trigger this student experience are relatively simple to achieve: —provision of an on-campus agency space. such space needn’t be particularly well equipped, but must allow room ‘to hang out’. on-campus space asserts the agency’s relationship with the parent institution and also locates it within the institutional community; however, it should not encourage the parent institution to ‘patronise’ the agency. —selection of student members of the agency should be formal, and participation should subsequently be acknowledged by some sort of certification. an interview and/or a portfolio assessment for participation creates the impression of exclusivity and enhances the quality of the participatory experience. the competitive edge that is implied seems to be more of a challenge than a deterrent to potential members. also, the interview allows existing members to ‘test’ potential newcomers, thus ensuring at least a minimum of personal ‘chemistry’. —one incentive to participate in a student design agency is informal access to instructors, thus occasional consultations with members of staff and/or their participation in activities should be encouraged. an exchange with instructors over jobs will also assure the quality of the output of the agency and improve the learning experience of the students. —the agency’s activities should not be exclusively business driven. while on-job experience is of course one major purpose of a student design agency, this needs to be complemented by other activities (lectures, workshops, sharings, parties, movie evenings, trips). it is remarkable that a good percentage of student design agency projects are self-initiated and/or not-for-profit. it appears 215 | gateways | benz that students will work for a cause just as much as for money, and this sentiment should be actively developed to foster their enthusiasm. after all, student agencies are not professional businesses, despite trying to emulate them. conclusion the interviews conducted in the process of this research and the findings demonstrate the real potential of student design agencies as sustainable models for the transfer of specific creative knowledge and skills from academic institutions to the wider community. the findings show the benefits of the student agency for the institution, the client and the students, and highlight some points where conventional knowledge transfer models would need to be modified to maximise the impact, value and, ultimately, the meaning of the student design agency. the case studies have outlined a variety of real-life options for setting up student design agencies, thus providing pathways to inform institutional practices in relation to student-led knowledge transfer initiatives. and finally, this project helped to work out the structure of ava’s own variation of a student design agency, which was launched in hong kong in september 2013 as the young artists agency. references academy of visual arts 2008, exit survey of ba (hons) in visual artsgraduates 2008, academy of visual arts, hong kong baptist university, hong kong. academy of visual arts 2009, exit survey of ba (hons) in visual artsgraduates 2009, academy of visual arts, hong kong baptist university, hong kong. academy of visual arts 2010, exit survey of ba (hons) in visual artsgraduates 2010, academy of visual arts, hong kong baptist university, hong kong. ball, l, pollard, e & stanley, n 2010, creative graduates creative futures: a major longitudinal study undertaken between 2008 and 2010 of the career patterns of graduates in art, design, crafts and media subjects qualifying in 2002, 2003 and 2004 from 26 uk higher education institutions, creative graduates creative futures higher education partnership and the institute for employment studies, brighton, uk. bauhinia foundation research centre 2007, hong kong: a creative metropolis – a policy submission paper, bauhinia foundation research centre, hong kong. benz, p & ng, ww-t 2011, feasibility study on setting up a young artist agency (yaa) as a new initiative of hong kong baptist university (hkbu), academy of visual arts, hong kong baptist university, hong kong. higgs, p, cunningham, s & bakhshi, h 2008, beyond the creative industries: mapping the creative economy in the united kingdom, nesta, london, uk. hkindieff 2010, ‘y.h.a. 30+ young hongkong artists dialogue’, viewed 9 july 2013, http://www.hkindieff.hk/2010/local03.html. http://www.hkindieff.hk/2010/local03.html 216 | gateways | benz hong kong sar government 2013, ‘budget speech by the financial secretary’, press release, viewed 9 july 2013, http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/ general/201302/27/p201302270264.htm. iact college n.d., ‘overview’, viewed 30 january 2013, http://iact.edu. my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134&item id=227. iact college n.d., ‘student ad agency’, viewed 30 january 2013, http:// iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&it emid=243. international monetary fund 2012, ‘report for selected countries and subjects’, world economic outlook database, april 2012, viewed 9 july 2013, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/ weorept.aspx?pr.x=29&pr.y=18&sy=2009&ey=2012&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort =country&ds=.&br=1&c=532&s=ngdpd,ngdpdpc,pppgdp,ppppc,lp& grp=0&a=. kao, g & lu, l 2002, a feasibility study on setting up a visual arts academy in hong kong: reviews and findings, hong kong arts development council, hong kong. kingston university london n.d., ‘knowledge transfer schemes’, viewed 10 july 2013, http://www.kingston.ac.uk/services-for-business/knowledgetransfer-and-innovation/knowledge-transfer-schemes/. knowledge transfer office n.d., hong kong baptist university, ‘knowledge transfer partnership’, viewed 10 july 2013, http://kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/ channel.php?channel=knowledge-transfer-partnership. kolbeck, m 2000, ‘spielwiese zum austoben’, unispiegel 4/2000, viewed 9 january 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/unispiegel/d-16715770.html. lindley, b & lindley, e 1938, a new deal for youth: the story of the national youth administration, viking press, new york. oxford dictionaries (british & world english), viewed 9 july 2013, http:// oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agency?q=agency. park, c 1943, ambassador to industry: the idea and life of herman schneider, the bobbs-merrill company, indianapolis, in. poldma, t & samuelson, h 2004, ‘the sico color naming project: forging ties between educators and industry’, idea journal 2004, pp. 59–70. töchter + söhne, viewed 30 january 2013, http://www.toechterundsoehne.net/. ucl advances n.d., ‘knowledge transfer partnerships (ktp)’, viewed 10 july 2013, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/advances/support/ktp. universität der künste berlin n.d., ‘about gwk’, viewed 31 january 2013, http://www.gwk.udk-berlin.de/en/. penn student agencies, ‘history’, viewed 30 january 2013, http://www. vpul.upenn.edu/psa/history.php?phpsessid=9acd5b1806079093e2801cb 842d295f3. u.s. department of education, ‘federal work-study (fws) program’, viewed 30 january 2013, www2.ed.gov/programs/fws/index.html. werbeliebe e.v. 1998, satzung des vereins werbeliebe e.v. http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201302/27/p201302270264.htm http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201302/27/p201302270264.htm http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134&itemid=227 http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134&itemid=227 http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=134&itemid=227 http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&itemid=243 http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&itemid=243 http://iact.edu.my/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&itemid=243 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=29&pr.y=18&sy=2009&ey=2012&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=532&s=ngdpd%2cngdpdpc%2cpppgdp%2cppppc%2clp&grp=0&a= http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=29&pr.y=18&sy=2009&ey=2012&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=532&s=ngdpd%2cngdpdpc%2cpppgdp%2cppppc%2clp&grp=0&a= http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=29&pr.y=18&sy=2009&ey=2012&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=532&s=ngdpd%2cngdpdpc%2cpppgdp%2cppppc%2clp&grp=0&a= http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=29&pr.y=18&sy=2009&ey=2012&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=532&s=ngdpd%2cngdpdpc%2cpppgdp%2cppppc%2clp&grp=0&a= http://www.kingston.ac.uk/services-for-business/knowledge-transfer-and-innovation/knowledge-transfer-schemes/ http://www.kingston.ac.uk/services-for-business/knowledge-transfer-and-innovation/knowledge-transfer-schemes/ http://kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=knowledge-transfer-partnership http://kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=knowledge-transfer-partnership http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/unispiegel/d-16715770.html http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agency?q=agency http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agency?q=agency http://www.toechterundsoehne.net/ http://www.ucl.ac.uk/advances/support/ktp http://www.gwk.udk-berlin.de/en/ http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/psa/history.php?phpsessid=9acd5b1806079093e2801cb842d295f3 http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/psa/history.php?phpsessid=9acd5b1806079093e2801cb842d295f3 http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/psa/history.php?phpsessid=9acd5b1806079093e2801cb842d295f3 file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/uts%20shopfront/shf046_gateways%20vol.6/supplied/www2.ed.gov/programs/fws/index.html 217 | gateways | benz interviews the four case studies above are based on interviews conducted with representatives of each of the agencies between november 2012 and january 2013. all interviews began by the representatives filling out a formal questionnaire, and then answering follow up questions through email, except in the case of creactive in which the entire interview was conducted via skype. further information was obtained from websites and other sources as referenced. lindig, e, töchter + söhne, interview, 2012. mr. eric lindig was the last ceo of töchter + söhne, from 2010 to 2011, and is the current liquidator of its remains. the interview was conducted from 13 november to 19 december 2012. quiring, l, werbeliebe e.v, interview, 2013. mr. lukas quiring is the current president of werbeliebe e.v., and answered my questions from 27 november 2012 to 17 january 2013. nguyen, b, psd, interview, 2013. ms. brenda nguyen is currently one of two managers of psd, with whom i was in touch from 27 december 2012 to 16 january 2013. yaw, q, creactive, interview, 2012. ms. queenie yaw quee peng, the agency’s advisor since 2006, was interviewed on 22 december 2012 through skype. _goback collaboration, participation and technology the san joaquin valley cumulative health impacts project community-university partnerships have been shown to produce significant value for both sets of partners, providing reciprocal learning opportunities, (re)building of bonds of trust, and creating unique venues to formulate and apply research that responds to community interests and informs collaborative solutions to community problems (peterson, minkler & vásquez 2006; minkler & hancock 2003, seifer 2003; tajik & minkler 2006). for such partnerships to be mutually empowering, certain design characteristics are necessary, including respect for different modes and expressions of knowledge, capacity-building for all parties, and an environment that promotes honest and constructive dialogue about inevitable tensions associated with the interplay of knowledge and power. this article explores an innovative case of community-university partnerships through participatory action research involving a coalition of environmental justice and health advocates, the san joaquin valley cumulative health impacts project (sjv chip), and researchers affiliated with the university of california, davis. university and community partners in sjv chip developed a strategy to document cumulative health impacts of multiple types and sources of pollution; to inform policy change to improve environmental and health policies; and to empower community members to use research to advocate on their own behalf. produced through a collaborative writing process with university and community partners, this article critically addresses the complex and challenging interactions between scientists and social movements and the use of participatory action research (falsborda 1992; hall 1992; israel et al. 1998; nyden & wiewel 1992; stoeker 2003) and a public participation geographic information system (ppgis) (elwood 2002; elwood & leitner 1998) to intervene in regional power structures and address cumulative health impacts. methods and key findings this article seeks to answer three research questions: (1) how can a ppgis process be employed to build effective and sustainable gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 12–30 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 jonathan k. london tara mirel zagofsky ganlin huang university of california, davis jenny saklar the san joaquin valley cumulative health impacts project 13 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar community-university partnerships? (2) conversely, how does a ppgis process depend on such partnerships? (3) prompted by these questions, how does engagement in a ppgis process transform not only the knowledge base but the ways of knowing of its partners? the project was based on a participatory action research approach that developed a double-loop learning process (argyris 1976) in which academic and community partners could share and continually and critically reflect upon their own knowledge of and ways of knowing the social and environmental dimensions of the san joaquin valley region. project partners engaged in a praxis in which the documentation of environmental justice issues through ppgis mapping were subjected to a continuous dialogue, critique and refinement process, drawing on the diverse expertise of all members. the research methods for this article are participant observation and reflexive analysis by the study authors of the planning meetings and workshops during the two-year (and counting) project period. these observations were documented in field notes and reflective dialogue between the study authors. in addition, the authors analysed written and visual records of maps, meeting minutes, project reports and other project documents. the community-university and participatory action research approach in this project offers two major findings: —public participation gis does not merely document community knowledge, but can promote mutually beneficial co-learning between academics and advocates, as well as spatial representations and analyses that reflect the multiple scales of social movement organising. —the sustainability of community-university partnerships is not based on a lack of mistakes in the relationship, but instead on the ability to build resilience over time and draw strength from responses to challenges experienced and overcome. community-based participatory research, boundary objects and ppgis drawing on the foundational texts and praxis of fals-borda (1992), freire (1982), hall (1992) and others, minkler (2004, p. 684) defines community-based participatory research (cbpr) as underscored by ‘ethical principles such as self-determination, liberty, and equity and reflects an inherent belief in the ability of people to accurately assess their strengths and needs and their right to act upon them’. despite the potency of cbpr to address social inequities, including the hierarchies of power/knowledge between researchers and communities, practitioners also acknowledge a range of tensions with the approach. delugan and colleagues (2010, p. 8) observe that ‘a tension may exist between academic standards for indicator selection and measurement, and a community’s interests likely guided less by academic standards’. this tension is also identified by nyden and wiewel (1992) as something to ‘harness’, while stoeker (2003) answers his question about cbpr ‘are academics irrelevant?’ with a qualified ‘no’ – as long as there 14 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar is continuous, critical and reciprocal reflection on the play of power in the relationship and on the interdependent roles of both academics and communities. one innovative approach to cbpr that addresses some of these tensions is the public participation geographic information system (elwood 2002). in ppgis, researchers and community advocates collaborate to develop digital maps that represent highpriority issues and incorporate community knowledge. this process is intended to help participants develop a sense of ownership over the map products created for their use and to elicit new information or feedback on how maps can be changed to better suit community and advocacy needs. this public participatory use of gis is both educational and political in that it seeks to expand access to technology and spatial data to groups that may not traditionally have had access to such resources, including lowincome communities and communities of colour. the maps produced through the ppgis process can be understood as ‘boundary objects’ (gieryn 1983; star & griesemer 1989) that serve to bridge—albeit unevenly—cultures of knowledge and resources for ‘boundary movement repertoires’ (brown 2007; brulle & pellow 2006) whereby distinctions between science and non-science, experts and laypeople are blurred ‘in order to negotiate the meaning of science and to challenge the definitions of acceptable scientific practices and products’ (mccormick, brown & zavestoski 2003, p. 547). a critical avenue for such democratisation has been through ‘citizen-science alliances’ (brown 2007) and ‘street science’, which refers to ‘a practice of science, political inquiry, and action [that] originates and evolves in a community’ (corburn 2005, p. 44). liévanos and colleagues (in press) describe the relationship between ‘street science’ and university/academic research science in the san joaquin valley in ways that highlight both the areas of connection and the discontinuities that must be negotiated in any university-community partnership. one arena for the convergence of street and academic research science is around the emerging concepts and methodologies of cumulative environmental and health impacts. attention to cumulative impacts is based on understanding that human health is a product of multiple factors operating in conjunction and over time (lynch, kaplan & shema 1997; schafer et al. 2004). by tracing the lived reality of those at risk of exposure, a cumulative impact approach can begin to systematically address the factors that expose certain populations to specific combinations and concentrations of chemicals (krieg & faber 2004). the collaboration between university researchers and community advocates developed through the sjv chip process represents an innovative and productive negotiation of these different cultures of knowledge, focused on documenting cumulative health impacts through the methods of gis and community-produced mapping. 15 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar regional context california’s san joaquin valley, a region comprised of eight counties in the southern expanse of the central valley, extends for 470 km and is home to 5.4 million residents (see figure 1). the san joaquin valley is world renowned for its industrial agricultural production but also suffers from the social, environmental and political implications of this economic engine, including industrial applications of pesticides and the exploitation of an inexpensive – often sociopolitically isolated – immigrant farm labour population (cole & foster 2001; harrison 2006, 2008; liévanos, london & sze in press; london, sze & liévanos 2008; pulido 1996; sherman et al. 1997; villarejo et al. 2000; walker 2006). sometimes called the ‘other california’ (haslam 1994) and compared to appalachia with its concentrated poverty and associated social ills (congressional research service 2005), the san joaquin valley is a land of ‘poverty amidst prosperity’ (martin & taylor 1998). populations of largely low-income immigrants from around the world (but with a predominant representation from mexico, including significant numbers of indigenous and undocumented persons) live and work in communities heavily affected by the toxic externalities of agricultural and industrial production in the region (pulido 1996). air and water pollution are two consequences of industrial agricultural production in the region which have significant figure 1: california’s san joaquin valley (huang and london 2010) 16 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar negative impacts on residents’ health (for background on water pollution see firestone 2009). as a result of air pollution generated by stationary agricultural and industrial sources, coupled with the automobiles and diesel trucks that stream through the region’s highways, residents of the san joaquin valley suffer from high rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments (ngo et al. 2010). vulnerability factors for residents, such as those living near freeways, working in outdoor occupations with inadequate safety precautions, drinking polluted water, and lacking health insurance and access to quality medical care, create what morello-frosch and colleagues (2001) call a ‘riskscape’ that disproportionately disadvantages those with the least means to protect themselves and their families. many of these residents live in unincorporated communities and therefore lack direct local representation to address these issues and to hold policy-makers accountable (anderson 2008; rubin et al. 2007). drawing inspiration and organising tactics from the united farm workers, civil rights and related struggles, the environmental justice movements in the san joaquin valley have encompassed campaigns on issues ranging from pesticides exposures, diesel exhaust impacts, access to clear drinking water and toxic waste dumps, to air and water contamination from industrial dairies and other agricultural production, and more recently climate justice (harrison 2006; liévanos, london & sze in press; pulido 1996). activists have mobilised across scales – linking community struggles with regional, state-wide, national, and even global justice movements (cole & foster 2001; harrison 2006, 2008; london, sze & liévanos 2008). the activists that would form sjv chip were leaders in this movement to give voice and power to the populations struggling most directly with these environmental inequities. the san joaquin valley cumulative health impacts project the san joaquin valley cumulative health impacts project (sjv chip) was founded in april 2009 by a coalition of environmental health and social justice organisations representing low-income communities and people of colour in the san joaquin valley in their environmental justice struggles. advocates recognised that environmental permitting, regulatory processes and local policymaking could provide greater environmental protection for and improve the health of families, communities and the economy if pollution sources were reviewed and considered in a comprehensive way. while the concept of enhancing public policy through the documentation of cumulative health impacts had been discussed among san joaquin valley justice advocates for years, there had been little action towards this end due to the limited capacity of the advocates to effectively engage with the relevant science and scientists. environmental justice and health activists in the san joaquin valley were inspired by still toxic after all these years 17 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar (pastor, morello-frosch & sadd 2007), based on a communityuniversity partnership with the bay area environmental health collaborative (baehc) cumulative health impacts campaign. this report, and the campaign it informed, resulted in a commitment by the san francisco bay area air quality district to reduce cumulative environmental impacts, although regional activists continue to press for the district to formally adopt a cumulative health impacts assessment method. this precedent prompted discussions among advocates in the san joaquin valley about the desirability and feasibility of launching a similar cumulative impacts campaign among members of existing coalitions in the region. these discussions reached a decisive point at a healthfoundation-sponsored conference where academic and community partners associated with the baehc presented their work, and activists from the san joaquin valley experiencing what they called ‘research envy’ articulated their interest in developing a similar process in their region that could provide credible science to inform policies that promoted environmental, economic and social health. the organisations that founded sjv chip included the central california environmental justice network; central valley air quality coalition; californians for pesticide reform; california prison moratorium project; california rural legal assistance inc./ foundation; catholic charities diocese of stockton; center on race, poverty and the environment; fresno metro ministry; greenaction for health and environmental justice; medical advocates for healthy air; and the sjv latino environmental advancement project. what is remarkable about sjv chip is both its breadth – encompassing most of the most active and effective environmental justice organisations in the region, with a particular focus on air quality and pesticides – and how these leaders were willing and able to dedicate time beyond their already overcommitted schedules to a new collaborative effort. at the same time, members understood that the individual and organisational strains of this overload were unsustainable and a central challenge to their longterm success. during an initial set of exploratory planning meetings, sjv chip community leaders defined the qualities of engagement they sought with potential academic partners. based on existing relationships with researchers at the university of california at davis (uc davis) center for regional change (http:// regionalchange.ucdavis.edu) and the uc davis environmental justice project (http://ej.ucdavis.edu), the sjv chip invited uc davis researchers to develop a collaborative project together. at the same time, uc davis researchers had received funding from the ford foundation to develop participatory action research projects in california and were interested in focusing some of this support within the san joaquin valley. the uc davis environmental justice project (ejp) and the center for regional change (crc) focus on solutions-oriented and community-engaged research, as well as the integration of social equity into research http://regionalchange.ucdavis.edu http://regionalchange.ucdavis.edu http://ej.ucdavis.edu 18 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar and policies on sustainability. developing sustained partnerships with key regional actors such as sjv chip is a crucial part of carrying out this applied research mission. more broadly, as a public land grant university, uc davis is committed to conducting research that serves the interest of the people of california and can be applied to solving pressing social, environmental and economic problems facing the state. initial meetings between sjv chip members and uc davis researchers took place over approximately one year and focused on defining goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities for the collaboration. while time-intensive, this process allowed for crucial trust-building and development of a shared language for collaboration. one early challenge addressed in these initial meetings was the fact that uc davis project funding had been received prior to establishing a formal relationship with sjv chip and therefore without consultation with regional partners. while this timing resulted from a longer-term grant from the ford foundation, which uc davis subsequently sought to make available for its work in the san joaquin valley, this raised a tension with a fundamental principle of environmental justice in which activists seek to ‘speak for themselves’ and play lead roles in shaping policies and programs that affect them, including the allocation of funding. this challenge, the first of many that the project would address and which is described below, offered opportunities to build a resilient and adaptive partnership. to ensure that the partnership developed based on mutual accountability, while recognising the inherent imbalance in power between academic and community partners, sjv chip developed a set of guiding principles, which were then formalised in the ‘uc davis & sjv chip collaboration agreement’. this agreement outlined the purpose of the collaboration, roles and responsibilities, decision-making processes, collective ownership of data and the process for sharing results. the agreement’s preamble explains the document’s purpose and underlying philosophy: we have launched this project because there is a dire need for cumulative health impacts research in the san joaquin valley that is informed by the communities who already understand the severity of the problem … to inform policy makers about how to better address the cumulative health impacts in our communities … we believe it is vital to the project that we collaborate with academics that understand environmental justice and are sensitive to the historic pattern of colonialism by academic institutions … in the san joaquin valley in the past. the parties then worked together through a communityuniversity partnership summarised in table 1. community partners brought their extensive social movement networks and organising methods, their direct experience of local and regional patterns of environmental injustices and their knowledge of the policy context that the project sought to affect. sjv chip members committed to participate in conference calls, meetings and 19 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar workshops to define, review and modify the maps and related documents. members later organised community-based mapping workshops with residents and neighborhood associations to build education and awareness, engage residents in the identification of issues and collect relevant data on pollution sources. sjv chip has also begun to engage in its own fundraising and has succeeded in securing some financial resources to support its ongoing efforts. uc davis offered faculty and staff time for research and capacity-building to create a series of maps, reports and policy briefs as informed by the needs of sjv chip. the uc davis research team brought specific expertise, including experience working with environmental justice research and advocacy in the region, gis capability for community capacity-building and map-making, and the capacity to facilitate bilingual/bicultural groups, which proved useful for helping coordinate and carry out the mapping workshops. the gis and community maps located and demonstrated the problem of disproportionate burdens of pollution and cumulative health impacts in socially vulnerable communities. all products were defined and reviewed through a series of workshops with uc davis researchers and sjv chip members. uc davis members drew on their funding from the ford foundation and other sources to support all expenses needed to carry out coordination, data collection and workshops (e.g. translation of materials, interpretation, childcare, food) as well as modest stipends for core sjv chip members. table 1: sjv chip collaborative research process phase timeline process challenges learning edge outcomes relationshipbuilding and projectplanning months 1–12 sjv chip organising meetings; meetings with uc davis team extensive time needed to build trust understanding structures and cultures of academic research; defining own research agenda develop trusting and mutually respectful relationships between community and university partners participatory gis mapping months 13–18 workshops to inform map production (issues, indicators, and places of interest); iterative refinement of maps community participation focused on researchers’ maps reading and critiquing maps improved maps (regional and community scale) community mapping workshops months 18–24 participants record local knowledge on community-scale maps by hand lack of direct ‘field’ research (limited to recall/self-report) reading and critiquing maps; developing spatial literacies mapping of local knowledge on specific topics future stages months 24–36+ (contingent on additional funding) potential methods: neighbourhood walking audits (using gps); mobile airquality monitoring extensive time and funding needed for training and technical assistance critical view on research and ability to conduct local knowledge as data on causes and effects of cumulative health impacts 20 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar participatory mapping processes the sjv chip project incorporated a range of socio-spatial analysis methods. each contributed to the production of knowledge about cumulative health impacts and the interaction between community and university partners in a participatory action research endeavour. to help visually represent the concepts of cumulative impacts and to begin to develop a common visual vocabulary, the uc davis research team developed a set of vulnerability indexes. these indexes quantified the spatial distribution of the environmental hazards, and to account for their cumulative impacts (huang & london 2010) a social vulnerability index was calculated as mean of the four indicators derived from us census data: (1) households below federal poverty line; (2) people older than 25 years without a high school diploma; (3) people of colour (non-white); and (4) households that were linguistically isolated. an environmental vulnerability index was calculated using the us environmental protection agency’s toxic release inventory, presence of petrochemical refineries, hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities, chrome platters, pesticide application, and total cancer risk from air toxics. these two indexes were mapped at the census block group scale, as represented in figure 2. figure 2: san joaquin valley indices developed by uc davis and sjv chip 21 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar based on their work with sjv chip, huang and london (2010) have shown that the cumulative environmental hazard and the social vulnerability indexes are highly correlated. that is, residents in block groups having a high environmental hazard index tend to have high degrees of social vulnerability. while this socio-spatial analysis has affirmed the fundamental understanding by regional activists about environmental inequities, it has also refined this critique by focusing attention on especially vulnerable communities and on the highest impact pollution sources that were not as visible without the mapping process. community mapping workshops based on the preliminary maps and indexes, sjv chip selected a range of places to hold community mapping workshops. the goals of the community mapping workshops were to: (1) facilitate participants’ active discussion of the pollution sources that impact them; (2) capture location and descriptors of specific pollution sites not accounted for in secondary data sets; (3) further develop community partnerships with sjv chip; and (4) create maps and reports that members could use in their efforts to reduce, remove or prevent the burdens of multiple sources of pollution in their communities. these communities were selected based on diverse representation of the region’s rural and urban areas, incorporated and unincorporated areas, geographic dispersion throughout the region and diverse pollution source profiles. also, although the majority of the environmental justice communities that sjv chip serves are primarily latino, communities with high percentages of african americans and other ethnically and racially diverse populations were also chosen to broaden the base of the coalition. sjv chip hosted its first two community mapping workshops in the urban neighbourhood of west fresno (in fresno county) and the rural community of wasco (in kern county) – see figures 3 and 4. in both settings, uc davis researchers shared maps on 22 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar social vulnerability and pollution sources at the regional and community scale. sjv chip members facilitated a process through which participants could document pollution sources on large aerial images, focusing on sources that might not show up in official data. uc davis researchers then incorporated the local data into a digitised map. these workshops were followed by a range of convenings to strategise on how to use the maps to advocate for improved policies and better health. the remaining community mapping workshops are currently in the planning stage. findings for building and sustaining communityuniversity partnerships the partnership between sjv chip and uc davis has produced significant benefits for both community and university entities. at the same time, the partnership has had to confront a range of challenges as members developed their relationship. fortunately, by addressing these challenges in explicit, constructive and creative ways, the community-university partnership has been strengthened. the dialogue associated with cumulative health impact maps has helped reinvigorate the environmental justice community in the san joaquin valley and provided university faculty and students with unique praxis opportunities. these 23 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar mutual benefits, as well as some of the challenges encountered in the process, are described in the following two sections. finding 1: public participation gis does not merely document community knowledge, but can promote mutually beneficial colearning between academics and advocates as well as spatial representations and analyses that reflect the multiple scales of social movement organising. the cumulative environmental hazard index (cehi) and the social vulnerability index (svi) developed for the project have integrated a unique set of variables and mapped them over a large and heterogeneous regional landscape. these variables were defined in the initial uc davis–sjv chip workshops based on the knowledge and experiences of participants. in particular, the integration of pesticide application data, along with the more typical hazardous facilities data sets, and the use of a relatively fine scale (that is, census block groups as opposed to census tracts that many previous studies have used) have added great value to the practice of cumulative impact assessment. in addition, the statistical analyses of correlation between the cehi and the svi have provided potent evidence of the co-incidence of environmental hazards with race, ethnicity and class, a central claim of the environmental justice movement. as evidenced by the completion of the first sjv chip community mapping workshop, engaging community residents and neighbourhood grassroots organisations together in such a forum was an effective way to build community capacity and cross-check the regional mapping efforts. community partner capacity was enhanced by relationship-building with the coalition and with university entities, access to various mapping tools and expertise, sharing, documentation of environmental and health concerns, and the opportunity to apply data to inform local, regional and statewide advocacy. although the community maps are still being examined, preliminary analysis importantly shows that local data generated by residents complement pollution sources from the regional maps based on secondary data. informed and inspired by the project maps, a growing base of advocates is now discussing and educating others about cumulative health impacts, including community residents and networks of non-profit organisations. the maps are understood as an engaging visual tool to help educate and build community capacity advocacy. one leading grassroots activist on pesticide issues described the sjv chip process as: ... extremely hands on and inclusive of the communities affected by these pollution sources. it was particularly special for me seeing pesticides mapped out along with all the other pollution sources! it is a snapshot of all the exposures and contaminants we are faced with on a daily basis living in the valley. this snapshot can now be taken 24 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar into consideration for the health and well being of our communities for more preventative practices to be implemented when industries are considering moving to our area. another activist, working on leadership development for grassroots activists commented on the systemic and cultural politics of the project: this process has been critical in developing a more technical understanding of the environmental and land use challenges people of color face. in many, if not all cases, we are revealing a systemic racism that has gone uncontested. it is vital that our systems work for healthy, dignified, and democratic communities. the potency of the multiple types of maps and of the participatory mapping process itself demonstrates the role of these maps as ‘boundary objects’ (gieryn 1983), synthesising different modes of knowledge towards a common end of improving the lives of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in the region. uc davis researchers – in particular, the post-doctoral scholar and gis specialist – offered university science as a key asset to the mapping project. university science was seen as a credible tool that documents community knowledge in a form that agency scientists and regulators would find legitimate and compelling. in particular, by documenting community knowledge and allowing for a critical examination of this knowledge by community leaders and researchers, the notion of cumulative health impacts was given a new level of rigour and analytical potency. the process and products of the mapping project have helped secure additional funding for sjv chip to continue capacitybuilding of community groups. additionally, some partners and colleagues have requested the use of sjv chip maps for a variety of advocacy issues. for example, sjv chip shared the maps with a state assemblywoman to make the case for improvements in planning for unincorporated areas in california. with the help of the maps, they were successful in convincing the assemblywoman to sponsor legislation on the issue. the impacts of this learning are spreading beyond the region as sjv chip and uc davis have been invited to share their work at various academic and government agency conferences and symposia around the country. finding 2: sustainability of community-university partnerships is not based on a lack of mistakes in the relationship, but instead builds resilience over time and draws strength from responses to challenges experienced and overcome. the community-university partnership mobilised through sjv chip has been built over two years of trust-building efforts and through pre-existing relationships among svj chip community leaders and between sjv chip members and uc davis researchers. as mentioned above, sjv chip work also drew on many lessons learned from a similar project in the san francisco bay area. while sjv chip adapted these protocols specifically for use in 25 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar the san joaquin valley, many of the baehc tools were largely replicable, which saved sjv chip significant resources. sjv chip also found success modelling several of its communication and decision-making processes on approaches used by the central valley air quality coalition (cvaq), of which many sjv chip leaders are also active members. for example, sjv chip provided meeting notification and transparency on future actions, and made use of consensus-based processes that were grounded in cvaq’s operational guidelines and history. sjv chip’s close alignment with cvaq’s mission and process contributed to cvaq’s prioritisation of sjv chip as one of the coalition’s main efforts for 2009–2011. sjv chip members’ strong relationships and networks also played an important role in achieving its successes with very few financial resources. their strong ties based on long histories and trust with community groups, non-profit organisations, foundations and academic institutions led to numerous opportunities, including small grants and access to data, provision of meeting space and bilingual interpretation at no monetary cost. this collaborative learning process is an important component of vital and sustainable social movements (beamish & luebbers 2009). the project’s principal investigator had grown a strong relationship with sjv chip partners through his work as an evaluator of the central valley air quality coalition and earlier work as executive director of a youth advocacy organisation active in the central valley before joining uc davis. the credibility of the uc davis environmental justice project, based on the director’s national reputation as an environmental justice scholar with experience in the advocacy sector, helped reaffirm to sjv chip the university’s genuine intentions in engaging in this project. the ‘uc davis & sjv chip collaboration agreement’ further strengthened this relationship by defining the types of relationships the project would have with academics, the respective roles and responsibilities, how decisions about what and how to map cumulative effects would be made, and the process of how data could be shared in the future. to maintain the vitality of this partnership, sjv chip’s coordinators and the uc davis doctoral student would regularly check in with community leaders. in addition, the uc davis research team participated in monthly sjv chip conference calls. as specific issues arose, the partners would immediately address them, helping the project move forward. these issues ranged widely from planning details for organising the community-based mapping workshops, allocating financial resources for coordination assistance, locating relevant data and writing letters of support for sjv chip grants. each of these activities helped to build trust and open communication which strengthened the relationship between sjv chip and uc davis and ultimately led to the success of the project. 26 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar while the partnership between sjv chip and uc davis yielded many innovations and was characterised by a strong and growing level of trust and mutual respect, the partnership also experienced some significant challenges in the interstices where interests and perspectives diverged. the relationship’s first challenge was in addressing the legacies of distrust at the generic level between community advocates and universities over the perception of academia as an ‘ivory tower’ – irrelevant at best, hostile at worst to the interests of communities. sjv chip members also expressed frustration over more recent cases of university-affiliated research by other institutions that depleted community resources while offering little benefit to the community organisations. uc davis’ own historical alignment with the agricultural industry, with its associated contradictions around the interests of farm labour (for example, the development of the mechanical tomato harvester, which relegated thousands of farm workers to surplus status) and environmental quality (for example, the promotion of a pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser intensive agricultural model) (friedland et al. 1975; kirkendall 1964) represented a substantial barrier to the community partners welcoming the current uc davis team as allies. in addition, as mentioned above, uc davis receiving outside funding for its work before establishing a working relationship with svj chip raised concerns about the role of the university as leading, as opposed to working collaboratively with, community organisations. even with the guidelines for academic collaboration with sjv chip in place, it was crucial that the uc davis team consistently reaffirmed its commitment to the principles of collaboration with sjv chip and critically reflected on how to ensure that its practices followed both the letter and the spirit of these principles. for example, the uc davis team altered the typical academic publishing process based solely on the independent scholar, with primary orientation to the ‘literature’ assessed by scholarly criteria, to a collaborative learning process, with publications and conference presentations developed through mutual agreement and effort by both community and university partners (including this article co-written by uc davis and an sjv chip member and reviewed by sjv chip as a whole). the partners also established a protocol for sharing the maps, including the provision that maps using secondary data would be the property of uc davis, while the community maps using local knowledge would remain under the control of the sjv chip community partners. other challenges not specific to the partnership but to sjv chip’s process included working across a large region and creating basic community access to opportunities to participate in the mapping project (addressing needs for interpretation, child care, food, evening hours). the most acknowledged challenges among sjv chip members were the limited staff and limited financial resources. the members found ways to carve out time and resources in their respective organisations; however, this ‘running on fumes’ was understood by all parties to be unsustainable in the 27 | gateways | london, zagofsky, huang & saklar long run. to address this shortage of resources, sjv chip secured a number of capacity-building grants that helped, but did not completely address the problem faced by its grassroots partners. the difficulties in sustaining capacity and engagement over time somewhat impacted the overall pace and extent of the project. identifying more well-defined, desired policy outcomes in the early stages also would have strengthened internal incentive and associated timelines. conclusion this article has sought to understand the role of public participation gis in building and sustaining effective communityuniversity partnerships. the partnership between sjv chip and uc davis faculty and students has thrived based on a confluence of interests and possibilities. these factors include community advocates’ need for capacity-building and rigorous research from sources with legitimacy in the eyes of policy-makers, coupled with the need of land grant university entities for robust community partnerships that can define, inform and apply research in the public interest. the methods of ppgis offer a dynamic meeting of ground where academic and street science can complement and strengthen each other. in particular, engaging with the end-users of gis maps to define relevant indicators, data gaps, spatial units for representation, and refinements to the empirical and analytical approach help academics make their work more rigorous and relevant. likewise, community partners gain opportunities for selfempowerment through the documentation and critical reflection of their environmental knowledge. such partnerships are challenging for the same reasons they are powerful: the joining of parties with different incentive structures, bases of accountability and cultures of knowledge. this creates the need for ongoing dialogue and negotiation to maintain the productive edge of this creative tension. the experience of the sjv chip project illustrates the ways in which university and community partners identified and worked through these challenges. based on this case, we have learned that interdependent science – in which community and 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minkler & n wallerstein (eds), community-based participatory research for health, josseybass, san francisco, ca, pp. 108–18. tajik, m & minkler, m 2006, ‘environmental justice research and action: a case study in political economy and community-academic collaboration’, international quarterly of community health education, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 213–31. villarejo, d, lighthall, d, williams, d, souter, a, mines, r, bade, b, samuels, s & mccurdy, s 2000, suffering in silence: a report on the health of california’s agricultural workers, the california institute for rural studies, davis, ca. walker, r 2006, the conquest of bread: 150 years of agribusiness in california, the new press, new york. http://cjtc.ucsc.edu/pub_reports.html http://cjtc.ucsc.edu/pub_reports.html http://www.prrac.org/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 39–60 © utsepress and the author michael gibbons (2005) argues for the need to re-imagine the relationship between higher education and society and calls for the emergence of a ‘new social contract’. in particular he highlights three elements of this new form of engagement: contextualization, boundary objects, and transaction spaces or boundary zones. it is here that my article is located: in the conceptualization of the ‘boundary zone’ at the nexus of higher education and society, with a focus on service learning as practice. in particular, i am interested in exploring how service learning can be conceptualized in new ways that might enable us to ask critical questions of the forms it takes, and the roles, identities and knowledge of those who try to make it happen. the argument i make in this article is that in order to better understand the ‘push and pull’ of service learning, we first need to better understand what happens between the university and its external constituencies. in other words, what do they do together? and how do they do it? to understand this, we need to shift our through an activity theory lens: conceptualizing service learning as ‘boundary work’ janice mcmillan gateways | mcmillan 40 unit of analysis – that is, what specific data we focus on to answer our research questions – from individualised practices towards the transaction space or boundary zone and develop conceptual tools to illuminate the complex social practices that occur at this nexus. thus, in my case, the unit of analysis becomes the service learning ‘activity system’ (see later discussion on activity theory) – the activities that students and community members are jointly involved in as part of the service learning project. service learning is variously defined in the literature (see for example, bringle & hatcher 1996; morton & troppe 1996; zlotkowski 1998). as a movement, it has a long history in the usa as part of the attempts by many higher education institutions to be more ‘civically engaged’ in searching for solutions to pressing social problems. however, as waterman (1997) argues, it may be more useful to outline the major defining features of this form of educational practice than to pin the practice down to an exact definition. for waterman, these features include: students learning and developing through actively • participating in organised service experiences that meet actual community needs. experiences that are ‘integrated into the students’ • academic curriculum’ and provide opportunities for students to write, talk, and think critically and actively about the meaning and the learning from that experience. learning that is enhanced by extension beyond the • classroom. service learning is a recently introduced practice in south african higher education. i thus begin the article with a brief overview of the south african national higher education context. i then present my conceptual framework, service learning as ‘boundary work’, drawing on the tools of activity theory. i show briefly how i used this framework to analyse two case studies at the university of cape town (uct), which formed the basis of my recent phd thesis, and finally, i end with some questions for future research and reflection on practice. background context: south africa and the university of cape town from the mid 1990s, and against the backdrop of our first democratic gateways | mcmillan 41 elections, south african national higher education policy began making strong arguments for a more ‘responsive and engaged’ higher education sector. the south african national plan for higher education (2001) and the education white paper 3 (1997) put forward the following arguments regarding the role of higher education in contributing to social justice and economic and social life: higher education, and public higher education especially, has immense potential to contribute to the consolidation of democracy and social justice, and the growth and development of the economy … the overall well-being of nations is vitally dependent on the contribution of higher education to the social, cultural, political and economic development of its citizens. (che 2000, pp. 25-26) these challenges and the need to re-think knowledge production in the context of the `knowledge society’ – knowledge as more socially relevant and ‘generated in contexts of application’ (gibbons et al. 1994) – have been increasingly reflected in policy and legislation. this in turn has put new pressures on higher education institutions to respond to these calls for change. the national commission on higher education (nche) (1996) has argued that there are a number of key responses required of institutions. these are reflected in white paper 3 (1997) as challenges central to the transformation of the he sector: increased participation• responsiveness to societal needs• cooperation and partnerships• similar sentiments are identified by the department of education in the national plan (2001), which include the following transformative goals for south african higher education: the development and delivery of relevant curricula which contribute to providing high-level skills training which will ‘develop professional and knowledge workers with globally equivalent skills, but who are socially responsible and conscious of their role in contributing to the national development effort and social transformation’. (favish 2003, pp. 9–10) one of the ways in which a number of publicly funded universities in south africa took on this challenge particularly in relation to teaching gateways | mcmillan 42 and learning was via the national chesp project – the communityhigher education-service partnership programme. from mid 1999 to the beginning of 2001, uct, together with seven other universities, was the recipient of a joint education trust (jet)-ford foundation planning grant as part of a national project to explore the potential of service learning in the context of community-higher educationservice partnerships (chesp). the aims of the project were, amongst others, to develop service learning courses that allowed students to gain credit for academic learning in the context of community service and to empower disadvantaged communities through the engagement work. central to these aims were the development of service learning partnerships. since the end of 2008, the chesp project has become the responsibility of the council on higher education (che). it is too early to tell what role it will play in continuing to support the development of service learning but it laid the foundation for many institutions in south africa to re-think the ways in which teaching and learning can be more responsive to broader society. after this initial response to the challenge of transformation, it is now timely to rigorously look at what is involved in service learning practice so that it can be taken forward and built upon – as both pedagogy and a new way to think about university engagement in the broader society. to do this, requires new theoretical tools of analysis. service learning as boundary work: a conceptual lens at the start of this article, i drew on the work of waterman to identify a number of defining features of service learning. however, it is clear from reading the service learning literature that understanding this form of social practice often involves understanding more than the defining features. it is also involves understanding a whole range of complex and challenging relationships, values, processes, and interactions that go beyond what we would understand as the formal curriculum (stanton et al. 1999; cruz & giles 2000). in particular, keith (2005) argues that putting ‘difference’ and ‘situatedness’ at the centre of our analyses and understanding is critical: i want to look at the idea of situatedness and consider that a major task of service learning is not forming bonds of communion but reaching for understanding across difference in gateways | mcmillan 43 ways that enable working together towards goals of social justice. it is this understanding … that is necessary for valorising the assets of the other and seeing difference itself as an asset rather than a deficit. (keith 2005, p. 18) focusing research on the university-community interface or ‘transaction space’ would, i believe, be able to shed some light on service learning in a new way to take into account some of the complexities highlighted above. linked to this, a number of authors have explored service learning as a form of ‘border pedagogy’ (hayes & cuban 1997; keith 1998; skilton-sylvester & erwin 2000; taylor 2002), drawing largely on work in critical pedagogy and critical postmodernism (anzaldúa 1987; giroux 1992). all of them argue that we need to develop new lenses to understand aspects of the service learning experience. they argue that the metaphors of ‘borders’, ‘border-crossing’ and ‘borderland’ are useful and important as a ‘compelling starting point for describing and rethinking the nature of service learning’ (hayes & cuban 1997, p. 74). hayes and cuban quote giroux as follows in support of this argument: border crossing serves as a metaphor for how people might gain a more critical perspective on the forms of domination inherent in their own histories, knowledge and practices, and learn to value alternative forms of knowledge … borderlands should be seen as sites both for critical analysis and as a potential source of experimentation, creativity and possibility. (giroux 1992, p. 34, in hayes & cuban 1997, p. 75) the framework developed below adds to this body of theory by introducing the tools of activity theory and the language of boundary work. service learning and social practice given my understanding, following vygotsky (1978), that learning is an inherently social practice, that is, we learn first through, and with, others before we internalize the learning as our own, i was initially drawn to social practice theories as a way of looking at service learning. it is important however, to note here that my thesis did not focus on student learning per se; rather, i focused on learning as a way to understand the social practices and activities between students and communities as they engaged with each other. gateways | mcmillan 44 in light of the above, i began with situated learning (lave & wenger 1991) and the concept of ‘social practice’. following lave and wenger, i use social practice very broadly to emphasise the ‘relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learning and knowing’ (lave & wenger 1991, p. 50). from a situated learning perspective therefore, social practice is understood as a lens that puts an emphasis on: the inherently socially negotiated character of meaning and the interested, concerned character of the thought and action of persons-in-activity. (lave & wenger 1991, pp. 50–51) accordingly, learning, which in other frameworks might be viewed as individual, mental and non-social, is viewed as situated, collective and historically specific. it is this ‘doing in a historical and social context’ that gives structure and meaning to what we do. in understanding how this engagement takes place, the authors introduce the concept of a ‘community of practice’ to refer to the sustained engagement with others in joint practices over time. following this, academic disciplines and their professional disciplinerelated bodies on the one hand, and community organisations and activities/practices, on the other, could each be viewed as a community of practice with their particular practices and ways of doing things. while a key point in situated learning is that people are members of multiple communities of practice – often simultaneously – i was looking specifically at the community of practice constituted by the engagement of students in their discipline-based community of practice with the community in their role as activists. while situated learning – and a ‘communities of practice’ lens in particular – has a lot to offer and has been drawn on in theorising service learning (wolfson & willinsky 1998; castle et al. 2003), it also has limitations (hay 1993; lemke 1997; hodges 1998; daniels 2001). many argue that there is lack of a coherent account of contexts that shape learning. this weakens it as a tool to use in exploring different communities of practice when they interact with others in a new setting. secondly, a situated learning lens does not directly and explicitly develop a theory of power and power relations (hodkinson & hodkinson 2003; hodges 1998; cooper 2005). lastly, there are still no ‘analytical tools’ in this approach to facilitate the development gateways | mcmillan 45 of a more comprehensive theory of social practice and in particular, pedagogy. activity theory: delineating the ‘unit of analysis’ to address some of these critiques it is useful to return to the roots of situated learning and to the work of a number of post-vygotskians. the particular strand i have drawn on is activity theory, evident in the work of kozulin (1998) and engeström and miettinen (1999) in particular, where the unit of analysis is the activity system. while not offering a direct critique of communities of practice, billett (2002) summarises the key differences between communities of practice and activity theory (at) in ways that enabled me to see why the move from communities of practice to activity theory was important for my purposes. he argues: whereas communities of practice may be seen as the manifestation of particular situational factors that constitute a social practice, at (leont’ev, 1981) assists in identifying and understanding these factors [and their interrelationship]. at holds that human actions are the product of social practices that are historically and culturally constituted. some at perspectives focus on historical and cultural contributions to human activity, including the sociogenesis of knowledge (for example, leont’ev 1981; cole 1998), whereas others focus on how situational factors shape human actions (such as engeström 1996). the latter, in particular, assists in delineating what comprises a social practice and identifying the factors that constitute that practice. (billet 2002, p. 85; emphasis added) my use of the theory has been in this latter area, that is, focusing on how situational factors shape human actions. the rest of this section is focused on developing this understanding further. for engeström and miettinen (1999), activity theory provides a very useful starting point in defining what is being researched – in other words, what the unit of analysis is. in this case, it is the activity system, a ‘flexible unit of analysis’ that enables us to look in different directions and with different levels of ‘magnification’ to answer the questions that puzzle us (russell 2002). through this lens, learning, teaching and social responsiveness can be viewed as activities that involve people and objects interacting in complex ways. russell argues that learning in an activity theory framework is gateways | mcmillan 46 not about the internalisation of discrete information or even skills by individuals; it is ‘expanding involvement over time’, social as well as intellectual, with other people and with the tools available in their culture. engeström (1996) argues for ‘three generations’ of activity theory. in first generation activity theory there are three essential elements in any activity system: subject/s, object/s and tools (russell, 2002). the subjects are individuals or subgroups engaged in an activity. the object is the ‘raw material’ on which the subject brings to bear various tools, for example, the ‘object of study’. what is important to understand is that the object is more than just raw stimuli: it is a ‘culturally formed object with a history, however short or long’ (russell 2002, p. 69). in any activity system, the motive is linked to ‘object’ as it shapes the overall outcome of the activity. tools, both material and/or conceptual (cole 1996), are understood as things that mediate subjects’ action upon objects: they mediate or facilitate subjects doing things. examples could include a concept, a computer, or a text. in service learning such tools might include texts, student questionnaires and other artefacts needed in order to learn in the context of a particular service learning course. it can be represented as follows below. figure 1 for the second generation, engeström expands the framework to examine systems of activity at the macro level. the importance of this shift is that it foregrounds interrelations between the individual subject and his/her community of which he/she was a member. the community is the broader or larger group interacting in the activity and of which the subject/s is a part. the division of labour refers to the fact that in any activity there are always power relations and different roles are evident, often causing contradictions in the system. the meditational means/tools (machines, writing, speaking, gesture, architecture, music etc) objects/motive outcome subjects gateways | mcmillan 47 rules operating in any activity are broadly understood as not only formal and explicit rules governing behaviour but also those that are ‘unwritten and tacit’, often referred to as norms, routines, habits, values and conventions (russell 2002; engeström1996). figure two captures it below. figure 2 third generation activity theory is aimed at providing tools and concepts that can enable us to understand and explore multiple viewpoints, value systems and ‘networks of interacting activity systems’ (daniels 2001, p. 91; emphasis added), where contradictions highlighted by contested activity system objects emerge. in other words, two intersecting activity systems each have an identifiable object, which, as they work together on a common project, becomes a transformed object. the outcome of this is object three, the result of intersecting activity systems. it is represented below. figure 3 gateways | mcmillan 48 while i have been influenced by third generation activity theory, i have instead argued for two communities of practice interacting via one activity system and engaged in joint activities (mcmillan 2008). it is only at the intersection – or boundary – with each other, that these communities of practice become one system and only through their activities together do the elements of the system get constituted. the activity system does not exist outside of the service learning activities; the activities act to constitute the system. in addition, my data in both cases indicated that the activity system constituted by the service learning does not generate one transformed object through its activities, as discussed by third generation activity theory; rather, distinct, albeit linked, objects remain. i discuss this issue further below. in what ways does this framework assist us in developing a new language of analysis for service learning as a form of social responsiveness? activity theory illuminates two key features of service learning that i have not seen discussed in other studies in the service learning literature. these are what i call in the first instance an expanded community and in the second, a dual (but interrelated) object. introducing these two dimensions elaborates and takes further the notions of ‘border pedagogy’, ‘borderland’ and ‘border-crossing’ highlighted earlier by other service learning researchers. firstly, the ‘expanded community’: service learning involves an expanded, more diverse community than the traditional universitybased one consisting of students and educators. the community in service learning also includes an outside community. communities, and the respective activity systems of which they are a part, represent different ways of engaging with the world, different histories with specific tools of mediation, and different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing, all of which can challenge students, and thereby the activity systems, in significant ways. as noted by russell (2002), the community element of an activity system has a significant impact on all the other elements in the system. the second feature, a dual (but interrelated) object, refers to the fact that there are both learning and service goals to be achieved through service learning. third generation activity theory outlined above, talks of the possibility of a ‘contested object’ across two activity systems when they interact with each other. however, i have regateways | mcmillan 49 interpreted this as a ‘dual (but interrelated) object’ in service learning. as i argued above, the service learning activity system only gets constituted when the university and community come together with their dual purpose – service and learning. this then translates into a dual (but interrelated) object of service and learning, rather than one transformed object. however, while clearly different, service and learning are inseparable, as it is through the service that the students learn, and it is through the learning that service gets rendered. hence the dual (but interrelated) object. this sets up an inherent tension in service learning which impacts on the other dimensions of the activity system. i look at how this happens in two service learning cases after first turning to the last piece of the conceptual frame: service learning as ‘boundary work’. language of the boundary: zones, tools and workers building on the activity theory frame, we need three more concepts: boundary zones, boundary objects, and brokering. these are drawn from the work of star and griesemer (1989), bowker & star (1999), wenger (1998) and tuomi-gröhn and engeström (2003) amongst others. in my work, i have used ‘boundary zone’ to refer to the activity system located between two communities of practice. tuomi-gröhn and engeström (2003) argue that while such spaces are generally places of challenge, contestation and playing out of power relations, they can also be potential sites for new learning opportunities and new knowledge. and because such zones are the places where each community of practice reflects its own discourse, structure, norms and roles, elements from both systems are always present. these relations and activities are mediated by tools of mediation or ‘forms of reification’ around which communities of practice organise their interconnections (wenger 1998). tools can be psychological (for example, a concept) or material (for example, a computer, a questionnaire); they have histories and are bound up in practices. in a boundary work frame, we need to understand tools as potential ‘boundary objects’ (bowker & star 1999), that is, tools that might serve to coordinate the perspectives of various communities linked through joint activities. bowker and star argue that to the extent that they belong to multiple practices, tools of mediation represent gateways | mcmillan 50 the nexus of perspectives and practices and carry the potential of becoming boundary objects. this can only happen however, if through them, various perspectives can be coordinated. in other words, on their own and outside of a specific context, a tool is not inherently meaningful or powerful but when put to use in a specific context, it can take on very strong, often contestable, meanings. an example here could be a questionnaire: on its own it is not necessarily powerful but put to use in a specific context as a means of gathering information, it becomes very powerful and even contested. finally, specific roles and identities are important in understanding boundary work. in developing this frame i was interested in focusing on the actors who facilitate the activities across the boundary zone. these are the ‘brokers’ (wenger 1998) or ‘boundary workers’ as i prefer to call them: agents who assist participants make new connections across activity systems, enable co-ordination and, if experienced, open up new possibilities for meaning and therefore learning (wenger 1998). it is a complex role as it involves ‘processes of translation, co-ordination and alignment between perspectives’ (wenger 1998). in order to influence the development of a practice, to mobilise attention and to address conflicting interests – in other words, to assist with learning by introducing elements of one community of practice into another – requires legitimacy on both sides of the boundary. in particular, i believe that we need to understand the skills, values, and knowledge required by academics to do this work successfully, as they are often the most centrally placed potential boundary workers. i reflect on some of this in the next section. service learning as boundary work: two case studies activity theory is a useful tool in analyzing contradictions and tensions between components of a system in order to change the system (engeström 1996), and it is used in this way in much educational research. while i did not set out to use activity theory to change practice in my own research, i did use it to illuminate the nature of service learning as social practice. inherent in this approach, is therefore identifying the key contradictions in the service learning activity system. these i identified as follows: gateways | mcmillan 51 the (expanded) community-• rules-(dual) object/outcome = discourses ‘rubbing up against each other’ = disruptions in the boundary zone the (expanded) community-• tools-(dual) object/outcome = struggles over tools of mediation = struggles over boundary objects the (expanded) community-division of labour-(dual) • object/outcome = challenges to roles, identity and agency = complex role of boundary workers what this represents is the observation that in boundary work, rules, tools and division of labour are not constant and static. indeed, they need to be negotiated and are often challenged; they shift and are sometimes completely transformed because of the two features noted above: the expanded community and dual (but interrelated) object. to illustrate these arguments, i will draw briefly on two case studies in my phd study where this framework was developed. my first case study involved students on a fourth-year mbchb primary health care/public health community-based block, a compulsory block offered by the school of public health and family medicine within the faculty of health sciences at uct. it is a compulsory part of the degree students take when qualifying as medical doctors in south africa. the mbchb is an undergraduate degree over six years, including a seventh year of internship in order to qualify. this block comprises eight weeks in which students are on site in the community, three to four days per week. in the particular project i observed, students were engaged in a project with the south african domestic servants and allied workers union (sadsawu), focusing on occupational health and safety. students completed epidemiological research with the workers for their public health component and then, based on their findings, ran a workshop with union members on occupational health and safety for the health promotion part of the block. the second case study involved third-year environmental and geographical sciences (egs) students doing a human geography course. this involved a research and mapping project with a community-based organisation, the valhalla park united civic front organization (vpucf) in valhalla park, a neighbourhood of cape town. in this case study the project involved collecting data gateways | mcmillan (quantitative and qualitative) on the lives of people living in backyard shacks in valhalla park.1 the students went on four site visits where they worked with the vpucf. their service work was aimed at collecting mapping data for the vpucf to negotiate with the city of cape town for better housing. the students then presented their findings to both students and vpucf members. in both cases, my main data sources were: my own field notes observing student activities in • the field interviews with academics and educators involved in the • two courses student reflective journals • based on the framework developed above, my analysis revealed that in each of the two activity systems, the two communities of practice, represented by the students on the one hand and their community partners on the other, reflected quite different rules, discourses (gee 1990) and norms. in both systems, these rules were disrupted and challenged in the service learning course. an example drawn from one of the medical students’ journals illustrates this well. he captures his feelings waiting for the domestic workers to arrive for the interviews: it was happening again. there we were sitting in the hot sun … waiting, waiting, yet again! was it really so difficult to be on time? i wonder what the excuse is going to be this time? would there even be an excuse? the frustration had been building up all week. nothing had been going according to plan and time was running out. why would anyone want to belong to a union? was this the way other unions functioned? medical students for the duration of their training live a very unique and artificial existence compared to almost anyone else. we thrive on structure, pressure and fear. take any one of these variables out of the equation, and we are totally lost. we constantly feel the need to be in control of whatever situation we find ourselves in. it is what we are being trained to do. in medicine, there are so many variables. it is impossible to control all of them. but we have to be in control of as much as we can as a way of compensating for those factors that are beyond our control. (student h, journal entry 1) 1 the term ‘backyard shack’ is one of many (for example, bungalow, wendy house) used to describe the houses erected in the yards behind principal houses in a neighbourhood. the relationships between the house owners and backyard shack dwellers are complex and beyond the scope of this article. gateways | mcmillan 53 the challenge here is how to use this reflection as a learning experience and to value the different discourses. second, i observed how the students and their community partners challenged the tools in the activities; in other words, there were ‘struggles over tools of mediation’. an example in the egs case was where the main activity system tool, a questionnaire, was challenged. not only did the egs students learn about the vpucf and the community by administering the questionnaire, the vpucf also had a big stake in the tool: they themselves had designed it. in complex ways therefore, this enabled them to use it for their own purposes. for example, at times they decided who needed to answer it based on their need for particular voices to be heard. it also meant that the students had less control over its content. one of the egs students reflects this lack of control in discussing her discomfort at some of the questions they had to ask: there was one question i remember on that survey which i didn’t like asking, which was, ‘if they didn’t have any facilities for a toilet, whether they used a bucket?’ i didn’t like asking that. i thought it was a bit putting them on the spot and making them feel very uncomfortable. i know that they agreed to put those questions down but some of them i felt to be a bit imposing … we were the ones experiencing it so i felt that it wasn’t any use in going to susan (the university lecturer) to ask. i don’t think making those kinds of decisions was going to in any way jeopardize the survey. we collected all the data that was necessary. it was just that one question that we decided not to ask. (student d1, interview, 19 january 2006) while the student changed this question both she and her partner received comments the lecturer about this in their final report. by doing this, susan thus reinforced the dominant and powerful role of the vpucf in the students’ learning. tools thus have potential to act as boundary objects (bowker & star 1999), with meaning on both sides of the boundary; however they need to be given credibility and positioned as such by both communities. third, contesting rules and challenging tools led to shifts in roles and division of labour. power relations were challenged in both cases as new identities and forms of agency emerged. an example of this is during the workshop in the mbchb case where the workers challenged students’ knowledge and authority in interesting ways: gateways | mcmillan 54 the whole workshop then took another turn when one of the domestic workers started acting out. a volunteer worker was asked for by student h to demonstrate picking up a basket to see whether they were doing ‘it correctly’. one of the workers then exaggerated the role of picking up a basket and made fun of the role-play including the student who was running it. student h, a male student, then started demonstrating another role-play on ironing, showing the technique. while this is going on, [a domestic worker] gets up to do a little ironing skit in the corner. one of the other domestic workers said, as if she felt sorry for the student ‘ok, i get your point, wow!’ felicia [one of the workers] then said that picking up a basket is difficult – for the ‘fuller person – she can go halfway down but i am not sure if she can come up again!’ one of the other domestic workers put it like this: ‘jou maag kom in tussen jou bene [your stomach comes in between your legs] – ok, then you must tuck your tummy in’. there was laughter from both students and workers. (field notes, 17 october 2004) these pieces of data demonstrate the complex practices that develop in service learning and the ways in which rules, tools and division of labour can be disrupted and challenged in significant ways. in order to make sense of these practices, and to work towards practices that can deal with these differences in the boundary, i will conclude this section by outlining some questions that might be asked of such practices going forward. firstly, in working towards a better understanding of engagement processes and the zone in which they occur, we can ask: what is the nature of the ‘interface’, the ‘boundary • infrastructure’, the ‘transaction zone’ in service learning/social responsiveness? what are the rules that operate here? answering this question could assist service learning researchers/ practitioners better understand the nature of the expanded community and its impact on the system. additional questions include: in what ways is the boundary zone ‘contradictory’ or • dangerous? and for whom? in what ways is the boundary zone important as a • transformative space in higher education? how does it shape the nature of social responsiveness partnerships? gateways | mcmillan 55 second, there is the issue of the tools of mediation. we need to consider what the role is of the tools of mediation we wish to use in our other social responsiveness activities. the question we can ask here is: are the tools of mediation used in our service learning/social • responsiveness ‘boundary objects’? can they inhabit multiple contexts at once, and have both local (within one community of practice) and shared meanings in this ‘boundary practice’? by designing them for ‘boundary work’, we are providing an opportunity to enrich both the learning as well as the service dimension of service learning, that is, the dual (but interrelated) objects of such a practice. additional questions are thus: if our tools are not boundary objects, what will it take to • design them as such? what impact do such tools have on service learning • pedagogy? third, it is important to consider the role of the brokers or boundary workers. in order to better understand this role, we could ask: who are the boundary workers in service learning/social • responsiveness? why do we see them as boundary workers? an important first step in understanding this role is to identify the key people who play it. it might be obvious in some cases but not in others. it could include academics, community members, or students. as wenger (1998) argues, boundary workers, for a whole range of complex reasons, are equipped with various kinds of knowledge and experiences and various degrees of power. it is important therefore to ask some additional questions: what are the knowledge, values, attitudes and • authority required to play this role of boundary worker successfully? what are the challenges in playing the boundary worker • role? the example of one such ‘boundary worker’ in the health sciences faculty at uct indicates how important it is to think about what it takes to play this role successfully and whether more traditional academics necessarily have such backgrounds. anna was a university-based and paid community site facilitator who gateways | mcmillan 56 worked with the mbchb students on their service learning projects largely due to her background in working with other community organisations in an education and research role. she says site facilitators: … need to be up-dated [sic] with the debates in how you need to understand what […] research requires of the student. you need to be able to speak in the [university] environment and the community environment. you need to understand project planning and how to guide students through the project planning. you need to be able to function and interpret information across different learning approaches. before you secure the project you need to speak about sample size, people accessing it and numbers and all of those things. you need to know what it means for the project if you do or don’t secure certain things, and you won’t unless you have a little bit of an understanding of research methodology. (interview, november 2004) despite this knowledge however, it is important to note that the site facilitators were never considered academics in this role. one of the key challenges therefore in taking this work forward in south africa (and i imagine elsewhere too) is to get recognition for the multiple knowledge sources that boundary workers draw upon when doing boundary work in higher education. universities, if they are to serve as ‘boundary institutions’ (hall 2003) and contribute to the public good, need to take up this challenge – and soon. conclusion gibbons (2005) has talked about the importance and challenges of working at the boundary of higher education and society: boundary work needs to be facilitated and managed and to do this specific knowledge and skills are required … engagement as a core value will be evident in the extent to which universities do actually develop the skills, create the organisational forms and manage tensions that will inevitably arise when different social worlds interact. it is by commitment to resolving these tensions … that universities will be able to demonstrate that they have embraced engagement as a core value … [t]o embrace this form of engagement entails that universities themselves be prepared to participate in those gateways | mcmillan 57 potential transaction spaces in which complex problems and issues will be initially and tentatively broached. (gibbons 2005, pp.11–12) this article set out to discuss a framework for understanding and addressing some of these challenges. in order to do this, i argued firstly that we need to shift our unit of analysis from individualised practices towards the transaction/boundary zone and the social practices that take place here between very different constituencies: the universities and the communities with whom they engage. through the lens of activity theory, i argued that service learning as a social practice has two inherent features that need to be made visible in order to develop our understanding of this form of social responsiveness. these are an expanded community (students, lecturers and community members) and a dual (but interrelated) object (learning and service). these two features have important implications for the other elements of the activity system and help to explain many of the challenges and complexities posed by this work. i showed this through some of the data from my study. in conclusion, i strongly believe we need to see service learning as engaging differing strengths, knowledge and practices. the implications for uct, and other higher education institutions engaging in this kind of work, is therefore to develop robust, relevant and critical ways of researching, developing and critiquing these practices. in order to facilitate this, we need to see different knowledges, voices and experiences as central to these processes. to return to keith (2005), we need to see/imagine difference as an asset rather than a deficit because it is this that we need to harness in our social responsiveness. hopefully, the tools introduced in this article can enable us to focus in on, and better understand, the nature of practices at the boundary where the ‘knowledge of differently positioned people’ intersect through social responsiveness practices such as service learning. references anzaldúa, g 1987, borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza, aunt lute books, san 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development of the mind, progress publishers, moscow. mcmillan, j & shay, s 2004, ‘service learning as “situated learning” in higher education: a conceptual framework’, paper prepared as part of the jet-funded service learning project, university of cape town. mcmillan, j 2008, ‘what happens when the university meets the community? an analysis of service learning as “boundary work” in higher education’, unpublished phd thesis, department of sociology, faculty of humanities, university of cape town. moore, d 2000, ‘the relationship between experiential learning research and service learning research’, michigan journal of community service learning, special issue fall, pp. 124–128. morton, k & troppe, m 1996, ‘from the margin to the mainstream: campus compact’s project on integrating service with academic study’, journal of business ethics, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 21–32. nche (national commission on higher education) 1996, discussion document: a framework for transformation, human sciences research council, pretoria. russell, d 2002, ‘looking beyond the interface: activity theory and distributed learning’, in m lea & k nicoll (eds) distributed learning: social and cultural approaches to practice, routledge/falmer & the open university, london, new york. scott, i, mcmillan, j, yeld, n & hall, m 2003, equity and excellence in higher education: the case of the university of cape town, report to mellon foundation, december. skilton-sylvester, e & erwin, e 2000, ‘creating reciprocal learning relationships across socially-constructed borders’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 65–75. stanton, t 1998, ‘institutionalizing service learning within postsecondary education: transformation or social adaptation?’, partnership perspectives, vol. 1, no. 1, communitycampus partnerships for health, san francisco. stanton, t, giles, d & cruz, n 1999, service learning: a movement’s pioneers reflect on its origins, practice, and future, jossey-bass, san francisco. star, s & griesemer, r 1989, ‘institutional ecology, “translations” and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39’, social studies of science, vol. 19, pp. 387–420. gateways | mcmillan 60 taylor, j 2002, ‘metaphors we serve by: investigating the conceptual metaphors framing national and community service and service learning’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 9, no.1, pp. 45–57. tuomi-gröhn, t & engeström, y (eds) 2003, between school and work: new perspectives on transfer and boundary-crossing, pergamon, amsterdam, new york. vygotsky, ls 1978, mind in society, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. waterman, as (ed.) 1997, service-learning: applications from the research, lawrence erlbaum associates, hillsdale, nj, london. wenger, e 1998, communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity, cambridge university press, cambridge. wertsch, j 1985, vygotsky and the social formation of mind, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. wolfson, l & willinsky, j 1998, ‘what service learning can learn from situated learning’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 5, pp. 22–31. zlotkowski, e (ed.) 1998, successful service-learning programs: new models of excellence in higher education, anker publishing company, bolton, ma. teaching civic engagement evaluating an integrative service-learning program violence in america, especially in american cities, has risen to such an extent that it has become a public health issue (satcher 1995). research has specifically noted a strong relationship between urban poverty and violence for youth of colour (kovandzic, vieraitis & yeisley 1998; martinez 1996). violence in american cities is also a social justice issue, and one that the national association of social workers (nasw) code of ethics (1997) explicitly directs social workers to confront. from an educational perspective, pedagogical approaches to teaching civic engagement (underwood et al. 2000), social justice (adams 1997; astin & sax 1998), diversity (boyle-baise 2002) and macro social work practice (cooks & scharrer 2006) through the use of service-learning have shown great promise. this article describes the process of and the empirical results stemming from a service-learning intervention program that was conducted as part of an advanced community practice class for master of social work (msw) graduate students. service-learning activities targeted community capacity-building efforts begun in response to the growing frustration and concern about violence directed at and perpetrated by youth in an urban setting (mcknight & block 2010). the student work joined an effort called ‘you bet i told’ aimed at challenging the ‘no snitch’ street culture that was depriving victim families of justice in relation to the violence. the issues presented by the service in the community related well to course learning objectives such as developing social work practice skills in civic engagement, social justice, diversity, and ethics. this article seeks to demonstrate the effectiveness of using service-learning to both teach macro social work course content and build community capacity by using a mixed-method data analysis design. empirical analysis of qualitative data from student reflection papers and quantitative analysis of course evaluations have been employed to demonstrate support for the use of a service-learning approach to teaching macro content. implications for the use of service-learning as a teaching approach conclude the article. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 98–114 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 jed metzger nazareth college, rochester, ny 99 | gateways | metzger relevant literature and conceptual framework youth and violence american communities have an enduring and growing problem related to violence perpetrated by and against youth (hawkins et al. 2000). there is therefore a need to make inroads into violencerelated behaviours that detract from the overall quality of urban life (kinnevy & broddie 2001). many american cities are beset by the compounding forces of poverty, high school drop-out rates, unemployment, shrinking supplies of affordable housing and a culture that supports a ‘no snitching’ rule related to violence (mccart et al. 2007). in many parts of the us, states and cities are wrestling with ways to provide meaningful connections with youths and families that are struggling with the economy and violence in their neighborhoods (nissen, merrigan & kraft 2005). national data tracking high-risk youth reflect that these youth face multiple factors that seem to compound on each other to create this profile defined as ‘at-risk’ (children’s defense fund 2007; ellickson & mcguigan 2000). driving factors include poverty (children’s defense fund 2007), lower performing schools (fields & mcnamara 2001), family status factors such as growing up in a single-parent household (hawkins et al. 2000), lower quality health care and increased need for mental health services (children’s defense fund 2007), community factors related to levels of neighbourhood disorganisation and availability of drugs and firearms (hawkins et al. 2000), as well as racial factors with youth of colour being more likely to be involved in violence (children’s defense fund 2007). in addition, research suggests that the likelihood of perpetrating violence and being a victim of violence is increased by the same factors (malik, sorenson & aneshensel 1997). overall, the literature supports the understanding that factors compound on the individual youth to create a situation of being at risk for violence. the traditional response to youth violence is one that has been directed by police and juvenile justice (fields & mcnamara 2001). with the economic downturn, funding has been increasingly moved from preventive efforts into enforcement efforts (lee-davis, kaczorowski & yale 2008). as belts have tightened, budgets for recreation, youth services and expenditure on youth in general have decreased, while funding for law enforcement has increased. while the outcry from a public uneasy with gangs, increasing murder rates and prevalence of drug trafficking often does land on law enforcement’s purview, decreasing funding for preventive measures and healthy outlets for youth inevitably leads to a downward spiral of deficit-based approaches and denies knowledge gained from asset-based understandings (fisher & harding 2008; kretzman & mcknight 1993; mcknight & block 2010). the escalating violence and diminishing preventive budgets have resulted in a resurgence of efforts aimed at community building to address violence (hawkins et al. 2000). such 100 | gateways | metzger community-building efforts are aimed at youth engagement and empowerment using an asset-based approach (mcknight & block 2010). driving this renewed interest is the growing belief in the need for comprehensive strategies to deal with community violence directed at and by adolescents (mccart et al. 2007). as a profession, social work is well positioned to help construct this kind of integrative community practice intervention (mannes, roehlkepartain & benson 2005). social work is oriented towards asset-based approaches to community capacity building (austin 2005; cnaan & rothman 2008). as such, community efforts need to be well planned and targeted using proven community capacitybuilding strategies such as public forums and focus groups (mathie & cunningham 2008; nissen, merrigan & kraft 2005). service-learning the benefits of service-learning for students, educators and the community have been well documented (holland 2003; watkins & braun 2005). in large part these benefits have been noted due to the dynamic learning opportunities that service presents (underwood et al. 2000). dynamic, as learning in these contexts is a social activity. as a social activity, service-learning has been shown to help build a sense of citizenship (morgan & streb 2001; perry & katula 2001) and civic engagement (astin & sax 1998). in this way the integration of learning is fostered as the student processes the exchange in the community through the structure of the coursework and assignments (cooks & scharrer 2006; timm, birkenmaier & tebb 2011). meaning is made and constructed by the students in the relationships and context of the service. for students, the learning opportunities presented by the hands-on experiences encourage and foster active learning (johnson 2001; watkins & braun 2005). specifically for social work students, service-learning presents a real-life situation to increase self-awareness of biases, prejudices and stereotypes (boyle-baise 2002; flannery & ward 1999). learning now comes from experience, which can only enhance learning from text books and classroom knowledge building. in this way the experience helps the student to construct meaning in a social environment (hacking 1999). in a closely related and expanded way, the link to promoting learning related to social justice through service-learning has been well established (adams 1997; boyle-baise 2002; timm, birkenmaier & tebb 2011). through the pedagogical approach of service-learning the student can make meaning and have direct access to the compounding factors/ forces that hold back social justice in our society. in fact servicelearning has been shown to promote a longer term sense of civic engagement than other, more traditional learning approaches (kirlin 2001). thematically, the social justice building blocks of equality, participation, racial and economic justice become real and assessable when community-based service-learning is well constructed (boyle-baise & langford 2004; timm, birkenmaier & tebb 2011). 101 | gateways | metzger the opportunities for educators are no less profound through the use of service-learning. teaching via service-learning becomes an integrated activity (bloomgarden & o’meara 2007). it moves the faculty in line with the oft-quoted description of teaching as ‘lighting a fire, not filling a bucket’. the faculty is now in position to actualise course objectives in a tangible way and present opportunity for real skill acquisition (bloomgarden & o’meara 2007). in addition to the teaching integration, service-learning provides the potential for a more seamless integration of research and teaching (brew & boud 1995; colbeck, 1998). increasingly, higher education institutions have become interested in the role they play in the community (lavalle 2009). through the action and activity of service-learning, the college/ university becomes a participant in the community (underwood et al. 2000). the institution becomes a collaborator, a partner, and in doing so must negotiate how to ‘do with, not to’ the community. this is predicated on the institution understanding that partnerships take time for the trust to develop and that sustained efforts produce much stronger results than episodic service-learning efforts (holland 2003). in summary, while there is clear movement towards the use of service-learning to deliver course content, more evidence is needed to demonstrate that this is a high-impact best practice (dooley, sellers & gordon-hempe 2009). additionally, fidelity to the principles of service-learning in course and service construction is essential to move towards service-learning being seen as an evidence-based educational practice (watkins & braun 2005). specifically, that there is real collaboration between the educational system (in this case the course) and the community partners, that the faculty openly demonstrates reciprocity as evidenced by more fluid teacher-learner roles, that learning be guided by well-constructed reflection assignments, and that the service be meaningful action that encourages civic responsibility (watkins & braun 2005). finally, without question, teaching using service-learning means that many things are outside the control of the faculty. as such, the faculty needs to both prepare for the unexpected and be ready to be flexible in the academic setting of the course in ways that generally do not come up when performing solely classroom-based instruction. the community learning context this article describes the process and the empirical results stemming from graduate social work course-related, servicelearning interventions. the setting of the service was a midsized northeastern united states urban community. the actual partnership involved a graduate social work program and a historically african-american church. the college–church collaboration was formed to address social justice needs (boylebaise & langford 2004), both of the community and of the service delivery system (steves & blevins 2005). a major objective of the 102 | gateways | metzger partnership was to push for reform of critical community practices that deprived the community of safety (kinnevy & broddie 2001). these practices related to ideas about community–police relationships and the code of the street culture that seemed to be specifically played out in violence committed by and against youth (lee-davis, kaczorowski & yale 2008), the result of which was a grassroots social justice, community capacity-building effort known as ‘you bet i told’. the ‘you bet i told’ partnership began through outreach to the church from the social work department following a rash of six murders of youth under the age of 18 over a 10-day period in the fall of 2005 and has grown from that point. the partnership, with its successes and challenges, has most certainly been a living classroom for the msw students and faculty that have been involved and an initiative that directly reflects how social workers can live out the profession’s mission related to social justice and community practice (adams 1997). briefly, the ethical principles of the nasw code of ethics directs that social workers provide service, work for social justice, and promote the dignity and worth of every person (1997). these are tall orders and a challenge for social work educators to make these principles come to life in real educational experiences (underwood et al. 2000). this article pertains to the activities conducted in the third year of the project. the third year began with a billboard campaign to address the ‘no snitch’ rule of the streets in a city that had led its state in the per capita murder rate for four of the past five years. as is the case in many cities, a sizeable portion of the murders involved youth as perpetrator, victim, or both. as a community capacity-building exercise related to the ‘you bet i told’ campaign, two public forums were held in early 2008. the goal of the forums was to provide an opportunity to build relationships between community members and law enforcement officials to address the culture of ‘no snitch’ that had hampered both law enforcement efforts and a sense of safety in the community (hawkins et al. 2000). the events allowed parts of the community disempowered by fear and lack of trust in the community safety mechanisms to partner with law enforcement to begin to more fully use community assets to address crime (ellickson & mcguigan 2000; mcknight & block 2010). the planning for, running of, and post-event reporting to the community was carried out by the service-learning students. the two events used a community capacity-building model as the central framework (cnaan & rothman 2008; mcknight & block 2010). community capacity-building approaches focus on empowering citizens through democratic processes to become engaged in the issues that are pertinent to them (mcknight & block 2010). the first event was held at an african methodist episcopal church as a public community forum. the service-learning students performed a number of roles at the event. they greeted and registered the community and officials and assisted in the 103 | gateways | metzger serving of a community dinner prepared by the church before the formal forum. they were stationed at each of the three public microphones as both scribes and ‘bell-ringers’ as each speaker was kept to a time limit; they scribed the whole evening which was projected onto a large screen in real time; and they conducted and collected the exit surveys. the second public forum was held at a nightclub at dinner time. the club was chosen as a way to attract more youth. the club is one of the few clubs that produce larger scale urban music on a regular basis, and it donated the space, microphones, projection screens and soft drinks as a goodwill gesture to the community. again, the service-learning students had a similar array of roles and functions. course learning objectives the course described in this article is a graduate social work macro practice (methods) class. the course was developed to deliver specific council on social work educational policy and accreditation standards’ (epas) competencies. there were seven course objectives for this course. while parts of each objective did fit this semester-long assignment, four stood out as particularly important to demonstrate: —demonstrate knowledge of generalist practice and its application to developing empowering interventions with communities through a collaborative mutual process with social and economic justice as a primary focal point —demonstrate a depth oriented level of understanding related to cross-cultural and human diversity issues related to populations at risk —demonstrate a comfort with the range of social work roles in generalist practice including conferee, enabler, broker, advocate and mediator —demonstrate effective application of the problem-solving process: problem identification, assessment, goal setting, intervention, termination and evaluation. clearly these are all essential learning objectives for master’s level social workers and difficult to achieve, especially when using only a traditional education approach. method this research employed a concurrent mixed-method, integrating post-hoc design (creswell 2009). mixed-method designs have proven to provide a rich illumination of practice-related data (anastas 2004). assessment used two related data sets, the empirical analysis of qualitative data from student reflection papers, and the quantitative analysis of course evaluations from the combined two sections of the advanced macro practice course, which was compared to the course evaluation data from the two prior years that had not had a service learning component. analysis of the student work was run through the college’s institutional review board and deemed as ‘exempt’. 104 | gateways | metzger the qualitative methodology used a grounded theory approach consistent with the structure outlined by glaser & strauss (1967). as the analysis of the student papers reflected on their real-world experience, the data was embedded in that context (anastas 2004). student papers were hand coded in a mapping process (harry, struges & klinger 2005). the process of the analysis used a structure of open coding, followed by categorical grouping of data, followed by theme-level bucketing and finally interpretation of results (harry, struges & klinger 2005). students completed a lengthy reflective assignment which asked them to follow a praxis model of first describing what they had experienced and done to facilitate the community capacity building to address youth violence, second to reflect using the four course objectives discussed earlier in this article as anchor points, and third to integrate and say how the experience and reflection had developed their own social work practice skills. for the quantitative analysis, all students completed an idea (instructional development and evaluation assessment) diagnostic course evaluation. the idea was administered at the end of the course with the instructor not present in the room and sent outside the institution for statistical analysis. the results were then returned to the institution and the instructor. many academic institutions use such a service for course evaluation. prior to the student course evaluation, the instructor selected five learning objectives as relevant. four rated as ‘important’: (a) learning fundamental principles, generalisations or theories; (b) acquiring skills in working with others as a member of a team; (c) developing a clear understanding of and commitment to personal values; and (d) learning to analyse and critically evaluate ideas. one was rated as ‘essential’: learning to apply course material. scores on this idea data from the 25 students enrolled in the servicelearning course were compared to the similar scores from the 48 students who took the same course with the same instructor in the two previous years, but who did not undertake a service-learning component. the data was analysed using an spss program. as the students were not randomly assigned, the design for this group comparison methodological approach must be considered quasiexperimental (creswell 2009). results qualitative analysis of student reflective papers copies of the student papers were kept by the author. papers had been originally submitted without names attached using a number code for later identification purposes. using a random number draw, 10 of the papers (approximately 40 per cent of the total) were selected for a qualitative review for the purpose of this article. the reflective assignment papers first went through an open coding and then a categorical coding (harry, struges & klinger 2005). the third pass through the data bucketed the data into five distinct themes: macro practice as a social justice vehicle; empowerment/ 105 | gateways | metzger accessing power as an outcome of macro practice; diversity and ethics; a sense of integration/coming together of knowledge; and the value of service-learning as an educational approach. developing empowering interventions with communities. appreciating the complexity of social justice in a macro context appeared to be a challenge many students had not previously integrated into their learning. the students (and these were graduate students) came to reflect on macro practice almost as if they had never really considered community as a practice field before, and it seems to have been transformative. ‘the project provided me with an opportunity to become aware of the community and think about how i could do something or practise social work with it.’ ‘i did learn about macro practice because i did it and it wasn’t just a course, it was life.’ ‘i found myself at first being mad at the police, then i felt sorry for them that everyone was mad at them and then i saw that people and the police were actually talking to each other, that was when i knew that we were doing community work.’ ‘it was the mothers who had lost their kids to murder, it seemed like for the first time they got to talk and be heard.’ in a related way many students were struck by the events’ ability to bring the people and the sources of power together. ‘we brought potentially adversarial groups together (law enforcement, frustrated victims of crime and fearful citizens) and empowered them to be partners in change together.’ ‘the greatest piece i will take from this experience is knowing that the process of empowering people is more important than trying to quickly reach a conclusion.’ ‘from the youth i heard so clearly that they just want and need to have a sense of control in their lives, i think the forum gave them an opportunity to voice that.’ taken together, the students’ reflections seem to be addressing an understanding that community change is a process that they can help to facilitate rather than something that they just ‘do’. depth in cross-cultural issues with populations at risk. the role of diversity and ethics was brought to life for the service-learning students through live experience. ‘we were able to get past the “let’s be nice to each other and not step on each other’s toes” thing and really connect.’ ‘i heard a perspective about being black that i just had not heard anyone ever say before and that shocked me and made me think about what i do as a social worker.’ one job three students had was to ring a small bell to indicate that a speaker’s time was up. what seemed to be an ‘easy’ job before the event proved to be challenging and illuminating: ‘i knew i had to ring the bell for the white woman as i had for the black woman. the white woman was talking so slow but i knew the black woman was watching me to see if i was going to give her more time. i knew then that she thinks that she always has to watch for special treatment.’ since the formation of the social work profession, the ability to work cross-culturally has been a core practice skill; the service opportunity seemed to facilitate this learning. 106 | gateways | metzger application of course objectives to learning. as this was an advanced practice course the ability of students to integrate knowledge was a critical outcome. results of the analysis suggest that the service-learning experience did provide a vehicle for that integration. ‘this course was different; i am still mulling the way everything comes together.’ ‘i just feel like i have a deeper understanding of how things are in the community, it is not just one thing or another. the kids that are getting killed are getting killed because all this stuff is compounding on them, their family and their neighborhood, everything.’ ‘i saw a community effort, not a private struggle; i think that is what is needed to address this challenge.’ the challenge of teaching macro social work practice in a classroom is that the community is not in the classroom. it would seem that by bringing the students into the community and having them take on social work roles they were able to learn about community social work practice. service-learning as a pedagogical modality. finally, there were a lot of data related to the method (service-learning) of the course. ‘learning about macro practice is difficult and usually kind of boring, but this was different, it got me involved.’ ‘this class was different, i exert a lot of energy in class, and this is the first time i think i received more than the energy i exerted.’ ‘this experience has sparked my interest in future community work.’ ‘this was really challenging, but that is the real world, i learned a lot by having things get messed up in a real way.’ ‘this type of learning was a benefit to me – even when it was frustrating, i was learning.’ the student reflections point to a level of depth that was afforded by the service-learning activities. quantitative analysis of idea data at the end of the course, students were given a formal student idea course evaluation form. this computerised form offers a list of 12 items that can be used as a basis for measuring student success in achieving course objectives. the instructor selected five items (out of 12) as relevant; as mentioned, four were deemed ‘important’: (1) learning fundamental principles, generalisations or theories; (2) acquiring skills in working with others as a member of a team; (3) developing a clear understanding of and commitment to personal values; and (4) learning to analyze and critically evaluate ideas. the fifth item was considered ‘essential’: learning to apply course material. students responded on a 5-point scale, with 1 relating to ‘i made no apparent progress on this objective’ to 5 meaning ‘i made exceptional progress / i made outstanding gains on this objective’. the mean for the students who had a service-learning experience was 4.9 with a standard deviation of 0.137. the two prior years’ idea data were combined. the mean for the two prior year classes without a service-learning experience was 4.25 with a standard deviation of 0.368. as the two prior years needed to be considered as potentially different groups, a one-way anova was performed (abu-bader 2006). the difference, while not significant (f=1.970, p=.089), did show a strong trend towards a statistical 107 | gateways | metzger difference. given the limited sample size, not achieving statistical significance is not unexpected and as such a p value of .089 can be read as powerful evidence of an effect (abu-bader 2006). discussion the ‘you bet i told’ project directly provided a structure that facilitated student learning through involvement in the community (cooks & scharrer 2006; johnson 2001). one course objective asked that students ‘demonstrate knowledge of generalist practice and its application to developing empowering interventions with communities through a collaborative mutual process with social and economic justice as a primary focal point’. the students were involved live with the process, they greeted the public officials and the concerned citizens, and they provided critical service related to the success of the community capacity-building efforts (mcknight & block 2010). they met with mothers whose sons had been murdered and who were filled with anger at both the loss and their perceived lack of justice. by facilitating the process that brought disconnected aspects of the community together, the students learned how empowerment practice is actually done. the whole project was driven by community capacity-building approaches that asked the social worker to work to catalyse strengths in the community that had become buried by the compounding force of multiple factors (kinnevy & broddie 2001; mcknight & block 2010); in this case factors associated with urban poverty. analysis of student work and post-course evaluation demonstrate that the involvement in this community capacity-driven project translated into a substantial learning experience. a second student learning outcome related to crosscultural practice skills in the macro environment. murder is disproportionately affecting youth of colour (kovandzic, vieraitis & yeisley 1998; martinez 1996) and therefore the students (who were largely caucasian and middle class) needed to engage and connect across multiple diversity lines. the structure of the service-learning seems to have facilitated this critical skill acquisition. there was a real sense of partnership between the community and the college. the community leaders wrote several letters to the college president thanking the school for the work of the students. the students and the faculty involved all learned from the community, reflecting a real sense of reciprocity. in their reflection papers the students directly commented on their own growth and deepening of understanding. the problem of murder and youth violence is real, and the students and the faculty were struck by the fact that they were doing something meaningful, hopefully life altering, in the community. in addition, the students gained skills in how to form and maintain partnerships with community providers, in this case a historically african-american church (lough 1999). increasingly there is evidence that partnerships with religious organisations are an under-utilised community asset, and as such the students’ on-going involvement provided learning on how to set up and maintain such a partnership (holland 2003). 108 | gateways | metzger the third essential course learning objective required that the students gain proficiency and familiarity in a number of essential social work roles. through the multitude of real tasks that the service required, the students gained live experience in a variety of roles. specifically, they brokered a conversation between groups of people who were disconnected (mothers of murdered children and law enforcement), they helped to create an advocacy platform to address social justice shortcomings related to homicide, and they learned to enable a grassroots democratic process. the fourth essential course objective was to engage in the problem-solving process. the ability to promote the capacity of a community is an important professional skill set for social workers in today’s world (ehrlich 2000). it is also a skill set that most students need to practise to bring textbook concepts to a real state of understanding. the service-learning experience not only provided the students with live learning of strategies to build community but also to be a part of the democratic process (mcknight & block 2010; porter et al. 2008). later they used service-learning reflective assignments to process and integrate learning gained from the experience (watkins & braun 2005). in particular, the students were able to work with and reflect upon the community of youth who are deemed ‘high risk’. this is a historic population for whom social workers need to have competency in community practice skills (kinnevy & broddie 2001). for service-learning to be effective, a solid communitycollege partnership is vital (holland 2003; timm, birkenmaier & tebb 2011). a core value of this partnership that has been brought to the table by the faculty involved in this project has been a commitment to community capacity building and strengthening (porter et al. 2008). the students facilitated virtually every aspect of the forums, including the transcription of the events. the faculty then used the transcriptions to form five key recommendations that were presented to the mayor, the county executive and the leaders of law enforcement including the district attorney and the chief of police. in this way, as an organic grassroots-driven community initiative, graduate msw students participated in, facilitated and ultimately learned how to promote community capacity building by empowering the voice of citizens in relation to the structures of community power. the other ‘learner’ in the whole process is the faculty member, and like most service-learning course experiences this project provided ample opportunity for learning. as with many forms of learning, some of the learning is born from frustration and some from pride in accomplishment. welch (2009) talks about a ‘knock on the door’ that opens up an opportunity. this project was full of opportunity. one challenge was meeting all those opportunities. this relates to the extra time it takes to run a good service-learning course. without question, time that would not be spent in typical classroom-based instruction is demanded of the faculty. to be engaged in the community, one must go into the community, sit with people, hear their perspective, make 109 | gateways | metzger relationships and accommodate their needs. the project took place in a church. the church had needs and requests. the project involved community leaders, each with a schedule and a set of needs. it was important to have the press on board, and getting the press to cover an event takes planning and knowing how to frame a press release so they will come. most helpful is for the faculty to consciously assume a civilly engaged scholar identity (liese 2009). this means that time needs to be spent considering how to translate concepts such as democracy or stewardship into action. for this project it became essential for the faculty to define and stress to the students these core concepts. additionally it was necessary for the faculty to learn to talk this talk with the community leaders so that all could be relatively on the same page with the potential objectives of the project. ultimately the extra labour paid off in learning for the faculty as the work was meaningful, and this helped the faculty gain a greater sense of meaning in the academic experience (diener 2009). in many service-learning opportunities the ability to arrange the learning in a public context is essential. learning as a social activity is powerful (underwood et al. 2000). this is especially true when the learning is meaningful. as this project placed the students in the middle of a community conversation related to murder of youth and community/police relations, the level of meaning was high and this seemed to spark student learning. learning was facilitated by the access to the populations impacted by the core issues on both sides. the access to the critical actors provided the opportunity for the social work students to construct knowledge in a social exchange that actually happened (cooks & scharrer 2006). the students met and mingled with both the citizens affected and the power brokers in the community. in these roles the students helped to make bridges, building social capital (austin 2005). key attention was paid to constructing community activities that were well planned in order to build community capacity, and as the students were intimately involved in the planning, these community capacity-building skills were taught as well (nissen, merrigan & kraft 2005; timm, birkenmaier & tebb 2011). with regard to specific outcomes, the students were able to learn about building community to support high-risk youth (mannes, roehlkepartain & benson 2005). as the community was struggling with issues of social justice and disempowerment of youth, the students were situated in a position where they could both facilitate horizontal linkages with other youth and vertical linkages to power structures including the mayor, chief of police and district attorney. as such there was an opportunity for holistic and comprehensive integration (steves & blevins 2005) for the students, as well as a comprehensive community response for the at-risk youth and families (mccart et al. 2007). 110 | gateways | metzger limitations to the course outcome ratings a note of caution needs to be given when considering this posthoc mixed-method analysis. there are numerous ways in which historical factors could have influenced the course outcome ratings (rubin & babbie 2005). for instance, the instructor reasonably could have gained teaching skills between the prior years’ courses and the service-learning enhanced course, which would have translated into improved idea scores. there are student variables, too, as the student groups are unique; for instance, the servicelearning student group could have been stronger or a better fit for a service-learning approach, or the relatively small sample size could have been overly influenced by a particularly passionate student. in a similar way, doing a qualitative review of student work invites bias as presumably the students are motivated to get good grades and may try to tell the instructor what they think the instructor wants to hear (rubin & babbie 2005). collectively these concerns need to be taken into account when considering these results. conclusion and implications macro intervention method coursework does present a challenge to the instructor. the depth, breath, richness and complexity of community are hard to capture in a text or in classroom activities (cooks & scharrer 2006). increasingly, across the country, institutions of higher learning are coming to value service to the community and an engaged campus-community model (bloomgarden & o’meara 2007). for academia the use of servicelearning opens the door for significant learning opportunities for student, faculty and community (liese 2009). for this project the students were able to demonstrate that they had mastered key course objectives, as seen in both the analysis of their work and in the course evaluation scores. specifically, students were able to talk about feeling more connected to the community and the democratic process. importantly, this is vital learning that the faculty also gained (diener 2009). the project set out to explore ways to improve the sense of social justice in participants, and the service did appear to enable two distinct groups – those affected by violence, and law enforcement – to come together and hear each other out, with the promise of working together to increase social justice in urban environments. in a related way the service provided by the class brought diverse groups together, providing a platform for the students to see how to develop skills related to diversity work. finally the service and the raw nature of murder offered numerous ethical considerations for learning. the implication of this work from the results of this post-hoc review is that it adds strength to the use of service-learning as a high-impact educational practice (kuh 2010), especially in terms of delivering course content in social work macro practice courses. clearly, service-learning is labour intensive and not as ‘clean’ as 111 | gateways | metzger classroom only instruction, but the reward is enhanced learning for student and faculty while making a meaningful contribution to the community. references abu-bader, s 2006, using statistical methods in social work practice: a complete spss guide, lyceum, chicago, il. adams, m 1997, ‘pedagogical frameworks for social justice 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neighborhoods, berrett-koehler publishers, san francisco, ca. morgan, w & streb, m 2001, ‘building citizenship: how student voice in service-learning develops civic values’, social service quarterly, vol. 82, pp. 154–70. national association of social workers 1997, code of ethics, nasw, silver spring, md. nissen, l, merrigan, d & kraft, m 2005, ‘moving mountains together: strategic community leadership and systems change’, child welfare, vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 123–40. perry, j & katula, m 2001, ‘does service affect citizenship?’, administration and society, vol. 33, pp. 330–33. porter, j, summers, m, toton, s & aisenstein 2008, ‘service-learning with a food stamp enrollment campaign: community and student benefits’, michigan journal of community service learning, spring, pp. 66–75. rubin, a & babbie, e 2005, research methods for social work, thomson learning australia, southbank, victoria. satcher, d 1995, ‘violence as a public health issue’, bulletin of the new york academy of medicine, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 46–56. steves, l & blevins, t 2005, ‘from tragedy to triumph: a segue to community building for children and families’, child welfare, vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 311–22. timm, t, birkenmaier, j & tebb, s 2011, ‘the experiential community assessment project: integrating social work practice skills’, journal of community practice, vol. 19, pp. 175–88. 114 | gateways | metzger underwood, c, welsh, m, gauvain, m & duffy, s 2000, ‘learning at the edges: challenges to the sustainability of service learning in higher education’, journal of language learning across the disciplines, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 7–26. watkins, m & braun, l 2005, service-learning: from classroom to community to career, jist publishing, indianapolis, in. welch, m 2009, ‘the knock on the door’, in m diener & h liese (eds), finding meaning in civically engaged scholarship, information age publishing, charlotte, nc, pp. 29–37. microsoft word r_debok_steinhaus2.doc gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 165–178 © utsepress and the authors breaking out of the local: international dimensions of science shops caspar debok and norbert steinhaus hat is the air quality like, right here, at my front door, downtown in this big city? this question has been put many times in recent years to science shops. there is a growing concern among citizens on local air quality and the impact it is having on their health. city traffic is becoming more and more dense, traffic jams are on the rise and rush hours last longer. there is more traffic and more pollution from cars. in 2006 the european environment agency (eea) published a report on air pollution at street level in european cities (eea 2006). the eea concludes that traffic-related air pollution is still one of the most pressing problems in urban areas. human exposure to increased concentrations of pollutants, especially the so-called fine particles, in densely populated urban areas is high. air quality controls, which are aimed at protecting public health, are frequently exceeded, especially in streets and other urban hotspots. more generally, science shops, as well as regional and local civil society organisations (csos), have been confronted with an w gateways | de bok & steinhaus 166 increasing number of requests from citizens on local environmental issues. many of these requests focus on the lack of information that is available for citizens. the aarhus convention, signed by many countries of the united nations in 1998 and brought into force in 2001, obliges local governments to inform citizens about local environmental conditions and to create opportunities for citizens to participate in (environmental) decision-making processes at the local level. science shops and csos or ngos get many requests for support from citizens on how to access available information, how to assess this information and how to participate in local decisionmaking processes. since 2005 the science shop for biology at utrecht university (since january 1, 2008, the science shop of the faculty of science) has initiated several projects on local air quality, often in close cooperation with the interfaculty institute of risk assessment sciences at utrecht university and several community organisations. in cooperation with a local cso, the science shop developed guidelines and a pilot version for an information tool on local air quality for citizens. in cooperation with the dutch cyclists’ union they initiated a real-time research project to measure exposure (of cyclists) to fine particles and ultra-fine particles. this research was the basis for a national discussion in early 2008 on air pollution by mopeds compared to cars. citizens and science shops science shops are not ‘shops’ in the traditional sense of the word. they are often, but not always, linked to universities, where students conduct the research as part of their curriculum. most science shops are small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines usually free of charge and on behalf of citizens and local civil society. in the netherlands as well as in other countries, requests are not only directed to science shops but also to several local environmental organizations. these requests come from many individuals who are often not aware of other individuals that are raising the same questions. in fact, those individual questions are of general interest and are not individual at all. for example, the fact that many individuals and local environmental organizations and even regional umbrella organizations contact the science shops clearly show that there is broad concern about local air quality. and although some general information on local air quality is available, gateways | de bok & steinhaus 167 citizens or small organisations are often not aware of it. the problem is that they lack access to this information in a practical way. and when they do have access to the information they often do not have the expertise to assess it. the many requests science shops receive clearly show that providing information on its own isn’t sufficient to raise citizens understanding of scientific information. awareness and understanding of scientific information and knowledge will be an essential step towards greater public participation in decision-making processes. thus additional efforts are needed to really bridge the gap between science and society. the interacts case studies (jørgensen et al. 2004) show that when ngos or citizens approach science shops, their need for knowledge can be categorized in terms of: • scientific analysis of a problem; • enhancement of knowledge around a certain topic; • research on the impact of governmental projects; • development of solutions; • evaluation of ngo or community services/projects. getting access to free or low cost research and independent research through the science shops is an important instrument that helps ngos and local communities to participate in decision-making procedures. the fact that science shops respond to civil society’s needs for expertise and knowledge is a key element that distinguishes them from other mechanisms of knowledge transfer. nowadays, a straightforward publication of scientific results and one-way science communication will not suffice. but there is a change going on. a brief theoretical background on science and society relations the relation between science and society is changing. nowotny, scott and gibbons (2000) clearly describe an improved interaction in knowledge transfer. for a long period science and society have been separate entities, with hardly any exchange (mode-1 science – mode1 society). often this has been referred to as science placing itself in an ivory tower. nowadays science and society are approaching each other. it started with a growing interest in societal applications of gateways | de bok & steinhaus 168 science, guided by science. it was still a rather one-way operation (mode-2 science). more recent is the growing interest of society in the applications of science, with society becoming the demanding party (mode-2 society). science and society relations seem to be changing to a more two-way modus of knowledge transfer, getting closer to what can be called a real dialogue. it is fair to ask, however, if there is a real two-way communication on knowledge transfer occurring. european citizens, at least, do have an ambiguous relation to science. in 2005 the european commission (ec), published a new eurobarometer report (ec 2005a), which was a survey on the perception of european citizens regarding science and technology. on the one hand european citizens do not feel well informed about innovations and developments in science and technology but on the other hand they lack interest. there seems to be a strong confidence in science and technology. for real confidence, however, there is a need to understand. do citizens understand the implications of new developments in science and technology, or do they trust the sender of this information? much of the communication about science still relies on a rather traditional sender-receiver means of communication. since the late twentieth century many reports and articles about the good results to be gained from a real two-way and interactive science communication (for example, see felt 2003) have been published, which underline the increasing awareness of the importance of dialogue. the european commission supported the many voices that discussed the need for a more society-based impact assessment that could exist alongside the traditional assessments systems of scientific research. universities are key players in the process to strengthen the role of community involvement in the evaluation of scientific research (ec 2005b). science and society in the european union in 2000 the european union adopted the lisbon agenda (eu 2000), whose aims are to make europe by 2010 the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy, with sustainable growth, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. europe should be a real knowledge society. as one of the instruments to achieve the lisbon targets the european commission in 2001 launched the science and society programme. with this programme, gateways | de bok & steinhaus 169 established in the research directorate general (dg research), the ec intends to bridge the gap between the scientific community and society at large by creating better interaction between science and society. the past european framework for research (the sixth framework programme for research (fp6), 2002–2006) focused on twelve main research topics. besides these research topics other themes were linked to all of the research themes, in so called horizontal programmes. as one of the horizontal programmes the science and society programme supported activities that brought together policy-makers, researchers and citizens from all the thematic research fields. within the frame of this programme, support has also been given to the science shops. the science shops were really first catapulted into the european public eye by the ec, which established the ‘science and society action plan’ in 2001 (ec 2002). at the centre of this was a dialogue between citizens and scientists, and the intention ‘to pool efforts at the european level to develop stronger and more harmonious relations between science and society.’ the commission's support was just as strong for the mediators acting between citizens and science, namely the science shops and similar institutions. in november 2005 the ec published a science shop call for proposals as part of the science and society programme. the general objective of the call was to contribute to the universities’ aim of sharing knowledge with society – in particular in the context of regional and local development – by supporting the development and strengthening of science shops (and similar organizations) based in, or cooperating with, universities. the call aimed to support science shops in addressing the specific needs identified by local civil society, while at the same time optimizing the use of available research results and expertise. emphasizing the local dimension of the research while simultaneously fostering international cooperation with organizations dealing with the same kind of local research questions (such as, for example, the issue of local air quality) were the key elements of this ec call. the call was a big success with twenty seven high-quality proposals qualifying for funding. unfortunately the budget was too limited and only four projects received funding. on 18 december 2006, the seventh framework programme for research and technological development (fp7) of the european gateways | de bok & steinhaus 170 community (ec) for the period 2007–2013 was adopted. this new framework programme clearly shows europe’s vision on research and the future role of europe in science and of science in europe. the scope of this article doesn’t allow us to go into details of fp7, but relevant information about europe’s new research policy can be found at the fp7 website.1 europe’s research policy is changing and of course the new vision has been heavily discussed and negotiated with the very many stakeholders, from multinationals to research institutes. on a smaller scale representatives of ngos and citizens’ organisations have been involved as well, for example, at the science and society forum. at this forum there was a clear voice to open up europe’s research funding structures and instruments to small ngos and citizens’ representatives (ec 2005c). in the science and society fp7 work programmes (ec 2007) each year several calls for proposals are announced, which are of interest to science shops. although the pilot call in fp6 was a success, there has not been another call specific to science shops but there are clearly relevant elements for science shop like activities in the science and society calls in 2007 and 2008. knowledge society in the future major changes in europe’s research policy will take place due to a revised selection of research themes and processes for project funding and research cooperation. although there have been thematic shifts in the new european research strategy for 2007–2013, the science and society programme will be strengthened. in fp7 the science and society programme will be part of the directorate science, economy and society. it is not yet clear how this will be worked out in the yearly work programmes of the ec. however, there is a general tendency (not only at the ec) to reduce knowledgesociety to knowledge-economy. now, when talking about innovation in relation to research, mainly technological innovation is mentioned. social innovation is often not included in this context. on the other hand there is a growing understanding that this is a limited and short-term approach only. to achieve a real knowledge society in the long term, there is a need for a broad understanding of what a knowledge society is. 1 see http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/home_en.html. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 171 ‘in a knowledge society that aims to be more than a knowledge economy, science shops have a special place,’ explains maria van der hoeven, dutch former minister of education, culture and science. the dutch minister (nowadays of economic affairs) is a particular admirer of the ‘unique bottom-up approach’ of science shops. ‘by supporting citizens in their quest for knowledge, people are given more possibilities to take responsibility for shaping their own life and their living environment,’ she says. in the netherlands she urged the universities to take into account the economic and non-economic (or indirect economic) aspects of knowledge society (ec 2003). science shops: from 1970 to 2008 in the early 1970s the student movement had a strong focus on the democratization of universities in europe. universities had to come down from their ivory towers where theoretical and monodisciplinary knowledge prevailed. at that time there was no direct link to daily problems in society, where some of the side effects of technological development were becoming visible. universities had to increase the role of society in research and to foster contacts between the public and science and scientists. in the netherlands this led to an increasing demand for applied research and education in academic curricula. some critical university staff as well as students joined forces to help civil society groups increase their knowledge. they introduced project education in university settings as an addition to regular lecture-based classes. their efforts coincided with a growing environmental awareness and the development of civil society organizations. on the waves of this movement science shops emerged (directly translating this forms the dutch word for these organizations: wetenschapswinkels, where wetenschap means science, and winkels means shops). the dutch word for science has, to a lesser extent than in english, a bias on the natural sciences. however, the word ‘science’ in the name science shop is used in its broadest sense, so it includes the social sciences, natural sciences, the humanities and engineering. the dutch science shops were grounded on the idea that universities had to play a more prominent role in the solution of social and environmental problems. within universities science shops started to build partnerships with civil society. by the end of the 1970s, almost all dutch universities had a science shop in which gateways | de bok & steinhaus 172 staff worked on research requests from civil society groups. science shops became recognized intermediaries between science (the universities) and society, working in an open way and orientated towards interaction (farkas 2002). nowadays, science shops have consolidated their bridging function between universities and society. organizations can apply for research assignments in all areas of science such as nature, environment, health, art and culture, law, social work and communication. science shops offer students the opportunity to do community-based research and enable community groups to get access to university research resources, or support in scientific methodology or processes. from a modest extension of a university service on a voluntary basis, their number has today mushroomed to more than thirty professional organizations in the netherlands, while also spreading to several countries across the world (such as videnskapsbutikken in denmark, wissenschaftsladen in germany and austria, intermediu in romania, science shop in the uk, community based research center in the usa) and shopfront, at the university of technology sydney, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006. there is not one standard model for science shops because they function within different socio-political, cultural and organizational contexts (mulder et al. 2001). there are, however, some important parallels among the many different types of science shops. by focusing on these parallels an international group of organizations identified themselves as science shops, with the following definition: a science shop provides independent, participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society. science shops appear all over the world but operate in many different ways. what they have in common is their demand-driven and bottom-up approach. they also share an interactive dialogue with community and community involvement in research (mulder and de bok 2006). a participant of the 2006 science shop summer school, an activity in the ec-funded science shop project trams (see below), compared the science shops with goulash soup. the taste is different depending on where you cook it but the ingredients are similar. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 173 indeed there are many differences in the way science shops meet the above definition but they all have a general mission statement in common. they all seek to: • provide civil society with knowledge and skills through research and education; • provide their services on an affordable basis; • promote and support public access to and influence on science and technology; • create equitable and supportive partnerships with civil society organizations; • enhance understanding among policymakers as well as education and research institutions of the research and education needs of civil society; • enhance the transferable skills and knowledge of students, community representatives and researchers. in practice, science shop work starts with a first contact between a civil society organization and a science shop on a specific problem. then in a cooperative search for a solution new knowledge is generated, or at least existing knowledge is combined and adapted in a true partnership without ‘science’ prevailing in any way. through their contacts, however, science shops also provide a unique ‘antenna function’ of society’s current and future demands on science (hende and jørgensen 2001). in france and belgium, the ‘science and society action plan’ of the ec (ec 2002), mentioned earlier, led to a revival of the science shop concept, while in spain the very first science shops came into being for the first time. in germany and switzerland, as well, several initiatives have since got under way. with the financial support of the ec, some of the european science shops have managed to organise themselves into a european (or even global) network called living knowledge. online information, training material, empirical reports, meetings and conferences have been developed or organised. above all, however, the network is an aid for those who wish to open up a science shop. they can inform themselves of the various forms of science shop and choose the one that would suit them best. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 174 some of the more recent science shop like initiatives are the merging of italian science shops in 2006, the start of the first science shops in hungary (summer 2006), glamorgan (wales) and china (shanghai) in november 2006 and new activities in cork (ireland) and lisbon (portugal). and, of course, the start of the office of community based research at the university of victoria (bc, canada) in 2007. and some students have come knocking again: from greece, turkey and iceland, as well as from the new eu-member states in eastern europe. and yet these actors of the ‘new generation’ differ from those of the founding generation: they tend to be more heterogeneous regarding their organizational structure as well as their fields of work, orientating themselves to community-based research, an approach which allows those carrying out the research and those requesting information to work much more closely together. they also profit from the experiences of scientists and citizens gained from using numerous new forms of dialogue and participation. the 3rd living knowledge conference in paris (august 2007) offered a unique platform for the different concepts of science shops and like organisations to be discussed. trams in recent years, established science shops have been increasingly asked to support the development of structures, procedures and materials for organisations that were about to start a science shop. many ad hoc initiatives worked to fulfil the needs of (new) science shops. it was clear there was a growing need for more systematic efforts to share experiences and good practices. however, the science shop concept couldn't be simply copied but needed to be adapted to the local contexts of the new organizations. local citizens’ needs and demands for research supply and mediation structures, host organisations and research funding structures are just some of the factors that are of relevance for the success or failure of a new science shop initiative. to structure and support new science shop initiatives a threeyear eu-funded project ‘training and mentoring of science shops’ (trams) started in may 2005. trams will offer a toolbox with training materials for new and existing science shops. it will offer them the opportunity to get started or to increase professionalism. besides a toolbox trams will offer new science shops a tailor-made gateways | de bok & steinhaus 175 mentoring programme for practical advice and support. trams will focus on: • a mentoring programme for science shops; • training materials and programmes; • e-modules and e-learning tools; • dissemination of training and mentoring activities. in trams eighteen organizations from fourteen countries (austria, belgium, denmark, estonia, france, germany, greece, iceland, latvia, netherlands, romania, united kingdom, spain and turkey) cooperate. trams is a joint effort of experienced and new science shops. this combination of users (new science shop initiatives) and suppliers (experienced science shops) will be a guarantee of customized tools and a relevant content for the toolbox. trams will run pilot projects with the intention of offering structural services for the international science shop network living knowledge. one of the spin offs of trams that may become a structural service was the science shop summer school. in august 2006 thirty two participants from all over the world participated in this threeday course on science shops. experienced science shop staff discussed operational options and good practices, but also barriers to running a science shop. examples of different science shop models were presented and site visits to different types of science shops in the netherlands have been organized. at the 3rd living knowledge conference in paris (2007) and the community-university exposition (cuexpo 2008) at the university of victoria (bc, canada) this course has been offered in different, shorter formats. because living knowledge is an open network, the deliverables of trams – for example, a guide for scenario workshops (gnaiger and schroffenegger 2008) and a faq-section and science shop toolbox on the living knowledge website2 are available for all organisations that are interested in community-based research and the concept of science shops. the free living knowledge newsletter and the discussion group are the main communication tools for sharing community-based research experiences around the world. 2 see www.livingknowledge.org. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 176 future directions and challenges in the last ten years science shops have come back on the agenda of science policy-making. but they also seem to be at a crossroads, where their work focus and their coalitions may have to change. on the one hand, they are still connected to their roots, the social movements. on the other hand, a general trend towards business cooperation in science policy can be observed. in this new context science shops face the challenge of positioning themselves between these two trends (fischer et al. 2004). in addition, resources have to be built up to maintain active cooperation on an international level and to allow science shops to work in a network, but still remain in close cooperation with their citizens. in this context the 3rd living knowledge conference, held in paris in august 2007 and titled ‘communities building knowledge – innovation through citizens’ science and university engagement’ was already a great success (steinhaus 2008). more than 330 people from over fifty countries joined one or more of the eighteen sessions; the number and the quality of the presentations revealed the expertise and competence of the associations and social movements in the scientific domain. so it’s time that civil society be recognized as a producer of knowledge, and that this ‘third scientific sector’ be accepted as a partner in public research directed towards public interest. there is an ongoing interest in and attention given to the participation of citizens in community-based research in sciencebased policy processes and decision-making procedures. however, there is still a long way to go before citizens will be fully accepted as equal partners and providers of knowledge and expertise. one of the most important outcomes of the conference therefore was the strong wish for global networking. many participants expressed their willingness to help with the next steps in building global connections in community-based research. this is also a question of marketing and lobbying. we now have to think about how to combine our network capacities and how to link initiatives around the world. at the cuexpo 2008 a first step was made by the introduction of gacer, the global alliance on community-engaged research (see www.livingknowledge.org). with gacer, the representatives of the community based and participatory action networks present at cuexpo 2008 declared that the right to learn, the right to know, the right to produce knowledge, and the right to access knowledge are inalienable rights for all. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 177 the alternating cuexpo and living knowledge conferences offer a good international forum to share experiences, but there is a need to build on this in a way that really brings into practice the ideas of gacer with hands-on activities. we hope to meet many of you to share experiences and build active partnerships (before and) at the 4th living knowledge conference, in belfast, august 2009. references ec, 2007, workprogramme 2007. capacities, part 5. science in society., c(2007)563 of 26.02.2007. ec, 2005a, special eurobarometer 224: europeans, science and technology., ecdg research. eb63.1 ec, 2005b, european universities: enhancing europe’s research base. report by the forum on university-based research, isbn 92-894-9307-0. ec, 2005c, questions of science – echos from the science in society forum, ki-6905-359-en-c, isbn 92-894-9939-7. ec, 2003, science shops: knowledge for the community, eur 20877, isbn 91-8946246-9. ec, 2002, science and society action plan, isbn 92-894-3025-7. eea, 2006, air pollution at street level in european cities, eea technical report no 1/2006, isbn 92-9167-815-5. eu, 2000, presidency conclusions. lisbon european council, 23 and 24 march 2000. farkas, n 2002, bread, cheese, and expertise – dutch science shops and democratic institutions, unpublished ph.d. thesis, rensselaer polytechnic institute, troy ny, usa. felt, u (ed.), 2003, o.p.u.s. – optimising public understanding of science and technology, final report, university of vienna. fischer, c; leydesdorff, l; schophaus, m: science shops in europe: the public as stakeholder (2004), science & public policy, 31(3), 2004, 199-211. gnaiger, a & schroffenegger, g 2008, toolkit scenario workshop, trams – training and mentoring of science shops, the fbi centre, innsbruck, austria. gateways | de bok & steinhaus 178 hende, m & jørgensen, m s 2001, the impact of science shops on university curricula and research, scipas report no. 6, utrecht university. jørgensen, ms, hall, i, hall, d, gnaiger, a, schroffenegger, g, brodersen, s, von der heiden, k, reimer, r, strähle, m, urban, c, endler, w, teodosiu, c, rojo, t & leydesdorff, l 2004, democratic governance through interaction between ngo's, universities and science shops: experiences, expectations, recommendations. final report of interacts, isbn 87-91035-26-0. mulder, h & de bok, c 2006, ‘science shops as university-community interfaces: an interactive approach in science communication’, in d cheng, j metcalfe & b schiele (eds), at the human scale: international practices in science communication, science press, beijing. mulder, h, auf der heyde, t, goffer, r & teodosiu, c 2001, success and failure in starting science shops, scipas report no. 2, utrecht university. nowotny, h, scott, p & gibbons, p 2001, re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty, policy press, cambridge. steinhaus, n (ed.) 2008, proceedings of the 3rd living knowledge conference, paris 2007: communities building knowledge: innovations through citizens’ science and university engagement. dvd available for free via editor. research methods for community change: a project-based approach randy stoecker, sage, thousand oaks, ca, 2011, 280 pages tertiary institutions have been under increasing pressure for some time to achieve competing goals. universities in countries such as australia, britain and new zealand which have undergone national research assessment processes – with grave consequences in the british case – are expected to publish ever larger quantities of original research in ‘high quality’ academic venues, primarily academic journals, and to demonstrate peer esteem. at the same time, they are required to demonstrate relevance and social benefit. outside universities, state-based services continue to be eroded in difficult economic circumstances, while resources for community groups continue to shrink. randy stoecker’s research methods for community change offers, among other things, a creative model which addresses some of these dilemmas. as its title indicates, stoecker’s highly readable book provides a manual for undertaking rigorous engaged research based on community projects that have quality impacts and outcomes for communities, students and academics. stoecker is a professor of sociology at the university of wisconsin-madison who has worked with numerous community organisations and groups for over 25 years. i would also describe him as a public sociologist since, as is the case with public history, stoecker’s immediate concerns are with authority (though he does not use this term) and audience. for stoecker, all participants in this model have skills and knowledge – even if they are not aware of them – which can feed into research, and can be shared, transferred or enhanced along the way. authority in the research process is also shared. the process itself is cyclical, involving four stages – diagnose, prescribe, implement and evaluate – and it can begin anywhere. in terms of audience, stoecker does not privilege academic venues over others. instead, he suggests a large number of vehicles through which research can be communicated and disseminated. work concerning the preservation or building of community identities, for example, might best be presented through an exhibition or a community theatre production involving community members. this does not preclude its publication in refereed journals or at conferences. indeed, a strength of the book gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 201–02 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 paul ashton university of technology, sydney 202 | gateways | review is its advocacy for the relevance of academic research and the need for genuine engagement. academics are not portrayed as ivory tower intellectuals. nor are community researchers held up as saviours. community members are presented as partners in research rather than subjects of it. importantly, stoecker indicates that the engagement process is anything but easy. a section entitled ‘loose gravel’ appears at the end of every chapter identifying the pitfalls and problems that lie ahead for the newly engaged researcher. stoecker also provides sound advice on these based on extensive experience. this book should be recommended reading for academics who want to move into the area of engagement, for students who need a highly accessible and easy-to-understand guide to the relationship between academic work and community needs and desires, and for community members wanting to create significant and successful partnerships with universities. building equitable community-academic research collaborations learning together through tensions and contradictions this article describes findings from an evaluation of a multisectoral research initiative called assets coming together for youth (act for youth), a community-academic research alliance that brings together multi-disciplinary academics, graduate student research assistants, community stakeholders and youth research interns. midway through this five-year project, the alliance’s evaluation working group undertook a number of reflexive research exercises to better understand how these different partnership group members experienced the collaborative process. specifically, the research sought to (1) understand people’s experiences of the collaborative process; (2) engender reflection among stakeholders; and (3) support the alliance’s ongoing efforts to cultivate an equitable participatory process. research and evaluation activities were carried out by act for youth staff, graduate students and a department of a provincial youth employment association (evidence research and evaluation, www. evidenceconsulting.org). one of the authors of this article (houwer) was directly involved in the research activities. the other authors are the university principal investigator (anucha), the executive director of the provincial employment association (wood) and a research associate (nichols). all of the authors participated in the project’s evaluation working group. in this article, we draw primarily on focus group and interview data to address the following question: what are people’s perspectives on act for youth’s organisational structures, goals, methods and early outcomes? from an evaluative point of view, we assessed whether participants felt they had sufficient opportunity to bring their perspectives or knowledge to bear on project implementation and whether the collaborative process reflected the project’s social justice – or equity – standpoint. in addition to assessing the degree to which people felt they were able to give voice to divergent points of view, the research sought to understand social, historical and institutional conditions that enabled and/ or restricted an equitable collaborative process. data reveal three gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 57–76 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 naomi nichols uzo anucha rebecca houwer york university matt wood first work: the ontario association of youth employment centres http://www.evidenceconsulting.org http://www.evidenceconsulting.org 58 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood interrelated themes, which this article explores in detail: we seek to understand how ambivalence, tension and a willingness to learn shape a collaboration’s process and outcomes. the literature on community-university interactions there is an extensive body of literature on community-academic interactions, including community-based (participatory) research. community-based and participatory approaches are strategies meant to ensure that research is ethical, attentive to the needs of research subjects and useful outside of academic settings. in a review of the community-based research (cbr) and communitybased participatory research (cbpr) literature conducted by the research triangle park (2004), the authors suggest that cb(p)r is distinguished by a collaborative research approach that includes structures for participation by communities, organisations and researchers. cb(p)r frameworks are rooted in principles of social justice and influenced by constructivist and critical theories, and most strive to create useable, action-orientated findings (israel, schultz, parker & becker 1998). principles of productive community-academic collaborations notions of reciprocity and inclusivity are vital to communityacademic research partnerships (campbell & lassiter 2010; carlton et al. 2009; eckerle-curwood et al. 2011; flicker & savan 2006; israel et al. 1998; pearce, pearson & cameron 2007; vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein 2011). positive community-academic participatory research interactions recognise and build on the divergent expertise that partners contribute to the collaborative process. terms like co-researchers, co-development, co-creation and knowledge exchange are used to signal the centrality of the reciprocal partnership in community-university collaborations. mutual trust is another pillar of community-based research (carlton et al. 2009; israel et al. 1998; vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein 2011; wright et al. 2011). a collaborative process, based on the principles of reciprocity and inclusivity, builds trust (carlton et al. 2009). mutual trust is also fostered through meaningful dialogue and deliberation among stakeholders. the centrality of dialogue in the collaborative process is an indication that community participation is a valued asset in the production of collaborative outcomes (campbell & lassiter 2010; carlton et al. 2009; israel et al. 1998; wright et al. 2011). the other principles of community-based research are emancipation, empowerment and social justice. to actualise a goal of mutual empowerment, community-academic partnerships must demonstrate respect for different modes of knowledge, facilitate capacity building for all partners and establish conditions for constructive dialogue (london et al. 2011). when all of these principles are upheld, cb(p)r and other collaborative research approaches have the power to be politically and socially transformative (flicker & savan 2006; freire 1970; kovach 2005). 59 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood graduate student involvement in communityengaged scholarship institutions of higher education are increasingly being asked to apply their intellectual resources to help solve social issues. however, multiple studies provide evidence that university faculty members typically receive little to no formal preparation for conducting community-engaged scholarship (austin 2002; austin & mcdaniels 2006; glass, doberneck & schweitzer 2011; khobzi & flicker 2010; moore & ward 2008; noy 2009; o’meara 2008; o’meara & jaeger 2006; reybold 2003; rice 2002). with respect to community-engaged scholarship, a survey of over 4000 doctoral candidates found that ‘over half of students are very interested in providing service to the community; only 13.8%, however, reported any preparation by their programs for this role’ (golde & dore 2001, p. 28). the majority of doctoral students want to contribute to ‘the community’ but do not feel prepared to do this: doctoral training focuses predominantly on the acquisition of research knowledge and skills. youth participation in research youth participation in research is an emerging trend that presents opportunities and challenges (checkoway & richards-schuster 2003; fine & torre 2008; jacquez, vaughn & wagner 2013; khobzi & flicker 2010; kirshner 2006; lerner et al. 2006; mclaughlin 2006; nygreen 2009; powers & tiffany 2006; smith, monaghan & broad 2002). according to the united nations convention on the rights of the child, youth have a right to participate in the examination of matters that concern their lives (checkoway & richards-schuster 2003). not only do youth have the political right to participate in research, but their inclusion is thought to provide a standpoint from which to better understand dominant discourses (hooks 1990). marginalised youth, in particular, typically do not easily access institutions of higher learning in a capacity that does not frame their participation as ‘data’ (sanchez 2009). in traditional research, youth ‘voices’ lack ‘currency unless they are “managed” – coded, analyzed, and quoted by the professionally trained’ (sanchez 2009, p. 93). full youth participation in research remains a significant challenge – the genesis of which lies in academic culture, institutional priorities and adult partner preparedness. the act for youth process evaluations offer an opportunity to reflexively engage with the problems and possibilities of youth–adult research collaborations (suleiman, soleimanpour & london 2006). evaluating or researching collaboration a number of studies focus on researching and/or evaluating community-academic collaborations, themselves. among these studies, survey, interview and focus group data are used to assess collaborative processes and outcomes. many of these studies describe an evaluation of the collaborative process (e.g. carlton et al. 2009; eckerle-curwood et al. 2011; hart & northmore 60 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood 2010; lantz et al. 2001; wright et al. 2011). like the studies cited above, our evaluation working group used a number of research and evaluation strategies to generate the data, which this article explores. data were collected through a survey (a partnership selfassessment tool), focus group discussions with stakeholders and most significant change interviews with youth. the project context — assets coming together for youth research project act for youth is a multi-sectoral research alliance that is being carried out in an urban neighbourhood in ontario, canada. the partnership group of act for youth includes a cross-sectoral alliance of community stakeholders and an interdisciplinary network of scholars, comprising 31 project team members (community members, academic members and graduate students) who are either co-applicants or collaborators on the grant. the project also includes 27 community organisational partners (for example, youth-led, youth-centred, multi-service and faith-based organisations). the school of social work was already part of a collaborative within the community that tackled different social issues. the act for youth project began when a new professor (the principal investigator and second author of this paper) joined the school in 2006. anucha initiated a series of conversations with several community partners to see if they could develop a project that would involve youth. the development of the project proposal involved several presentations at coalition meetings, over 30 meetings with community organisations (some of the meetings involved youth), numerous emails and community consultations. a half-day community forum with over 50 attendees including 14 youth was held at the end of the proposal development stage to share the core ideas of the project and receive feedback and comments. a consistent group of academic and community stakeholders are co-applicants and collaborators on the research grant that funded the project; however, the work roles of some of these partners have changed over the four years of the project. for example, three academic co-applicants have changed institutions, five community co-applicants and collaborators have changed jobs, and one community partner has retired. most have remained as co-applicants and collaborators on the project. for some, the project no longer directly addresses issues (or a geographical area) relevant to their current jobs. this means that their collaboration is no longer central to their new roles. youth interns were recruited through our community partners who work with youth. interested youth were invited to submit an application and participate in an interview. this was a paid internship that focused initially on building their research skills to allow them to participate as youth researchers. the project defines youth as young people between 11 and 29 years of age. this expansive definition was suggested by youth themselves when we 61 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood solicited their feedback on the proposal before it was submitted for funding. different research activities within our wide range have targeted different age groups. for example, the internship was open to youth 15 to 29 though most of the youth were under 24. a positive youth development framework and a social justice perspective inform alliance activities. a positive youth development perspective highlights young people’s strengths, rather than their deficiencies. a social justice approach acknowledges the cumulative impacts of structural racism, sexism, poverty, zero-tolerance policies and unemployment on the outcomes youth experience. combined, these two perspectives guide the project’s efforts to create a comprehensive youth development strategy that builds on and develops youth’s strengths. in the first three years of the project, participants conducted a series of research and capacity-building initiatives to support this goal. research-related working groups undertook (1) survey research to assess youth assets and resources (youth survey working group); (2) photo-voice projects and a mobile ‘speakers corner’ research to understand youth experiences and perspectives (youth voices working group); (3) focus group discussions and in-depth interviews to understand young people’s pathways to employment and education (youth employment and education strategies working group); (4) critical media discourse analysis of 148 texts on the community’s youth, an interpretative policy analysis of various youth policies and in-depth interviews with journalists, academics and community stakeholders (reframing discourse working group); and (5) ongoing evaluation of, and reflection on, act for youth processes and outcomes (evaluation working group). alongside their involvement in many of these research activities, youth from the community participated in research internship programs, summer community-based research institutes, a youth-led committee and a number of working groups. they analysed data, blogged about research findings, planned and implemented a youth-led conference, participated in partnership group meetings and contributed to a variety of other project-related activities (for example, research and planning meetings). ultimately, these activities informed the design of a multi-directional mentorship program, which facilitates mentorship ‘pods’ between middle school and secondary school youth, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as university alumni. funding has been secured for the mentorship program, and it is currently being implemented in the neighbourhood where alliance activities have taken place. the mentorship program was developed collaboratively through a series of brainstorming sessions with youth, faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral research associates and community professionals. with support from the post-doctoral research associates, the project’s principal investigator secured funding for this initiative through an academic innovation fund 62 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood program. these ad hoc brainstorming sessions were fruitful spaces for working collaboratively and learning across difference. participants reflected on emerging research findings, shared ideas, brought in readings to discuss and worked towards establishing actionable next steps. this complex mentorship project is a major outcome of the research alliance’s work to date. methods and data to facilitate ongoing assessment and reflection on the collaborative process, an evaluation working group composed of academic and non-academic project stakeholders was established. the working group was co-chaired by an academic (houwer) and a community practitioner (wood). the discussions focused on assessing people’s experiences with the project. the working group was interested in understanding how people became involved in the project; their perspectives on the various research frameworks and instruments that have been used; their perspectives on the project’s governance structure; and finally, their assessment of project leadership and the decision-making processes. focus group discussions were conducted with academic (n=3), community practitioner (n=4), youth (n=7) and graduate research assistants (n=4). a trained peer researcher facilitated the focus group discussions with youth participants. all of the other focus groups were co-facilitated by a senior graduate student and the evaluator from evidence research and evaluation. each of these discussions were digitally recorded and then transcribed. most significant change interviews (dart & davies 2003) were conducted with four of the 2010–2011 youth researchers who participated in the project through a funded internship. these interviews focused on discovering how young people believed they had been changed by their experiences on the project. young people were invited to reflect on their experiences with the project, and to articulate how these experiences had led to changes in their lives. these interviews were digitally recorded and then transcribed. thirty-five partnership group members (13 community partners, 10 academic partners, 7 graduate research assistants and 5 youth) also completed a partnership self-assessment survey. the survey invited people to reflect on six partnership domains: partnership synergy; leadership effectiveness; partnership efficiency; effectiveness of the partnership’s administration and management; sufficiency of non-financial resources; and sufficiency of financial and other capital resources. while the quantitative and qualitative results of the survey are not the central focus of this article, the authors have reviewed these survey data in the context of data generated through focus group and interview discussions, looking for themes that cut across the data sets. the findings explored in this article are primarily informed by the qualitative focus group and interview data. the first author of this article (nichols) coded all of these data. emerging themes and preliminary reflections were discussed with project stakeholders during a research advisory meeting. the research 63 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood advisory body (composed of academic researchers, community professionals, graduate research assistants and youth) offered feedback on the preliminary reflections, which shaped subsequent analyses and the production of this article. analysis and writing were also shaped by ongoing discussions among the authors of this article and between the authors and the other members of the evaluation working group. we realise that our broad categories – academic, community, graduate student research assistants and youth – do not capture the multifaceted identities people have for themselves. many people in the ‘community’ category of stakeholders are not residents of the neighbourhood where research and development activities took place – they travel in from their own neighbourhoods each day to work. on the other hand, all of the people categorised as youth and some of those whom we described as graduate research assistants do live in the community. the slipperiness of the terms used to differentiate stakeholders was a source of ongoing discussion in the focus group data. throughout this article, therefore, we use stakeholder categories with an awareness of their limitations. because our goal was to explore the collaborative process from the perspectives of people differently oriented to the project, we sought out representation from the project’s official stakeholder groups. findings in this section, we examine participants’ perspectives about the act for youth collaboration – its organisational structure, goals, methods and outcomes. in so doing, we explore how historical, social and institutional relations shape the collaborative process. we focus on articulating a relationship between people’s ambivalence towards the partnership process, tensions between stakeholder groups and the role of multi-directional learning. it is important for a collaborative project to facilitate ongoing opportunities for collaborators to share their expertise and experiences with one another. when people’s different expectations, experiences and knowledge are not adequately acknowledged and incorporated into a project as resources, their commitment and energy dwindle. people need a space to talk, listen and learn throughout both the project’s development and its implementation. our data suggest that uncertainties about the collaborative process can be assuaged by opportunities for learning across difference. when participants’ divergent points of view are seen as project resources, moments of tension can serve a pedagogical function. in turn, opportunities for learning strengthen people’s commitment to the collaborative process and support the development of mutually beneficial project outcomes. 64 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood historical relations: experience, expectation and ambivalence political, social and economic conditions, as well as a history of interactions between communities and universities, shape how community-university partnerships unfold (fisher, fabricant & simmons 2005). the focus group data – people’s experiential knowledge of the collaborative process – point to historical relations that shape the act for youth collaboration. from the beginning, some stakeholders were skeptical about the project’s ability to create a strategy to support positive development outcomes for youth in the community: ‘… there is a lot of potential but i also feel concerned about what we are going to do with [the findings]. i don’t want it to be another report that sits on the shelf and doesn’t really have the impact – potential impact that it could’ (community professional). community practitioners’ uncertainties about the benefits of collaboration reflect historical and existing tensions between this community and the university. the university in question is situated in a highly stigmatised neighbourhood on the northwest edge of a large urban centre. the neighbourhood has an active network of community-based organisations. it also has a reputation for considerable gang activity, poor educational attainment and disenfranchisement amongst some of its youth. at times, this reputation obscures the community’s remarkable resilience and the diverse strengths of the people who work and live there. although it is a public institution, the existence of the university in the neighbourhood is not viewed as having resulted in substantial benefits to the surrounding community: ‘one of my fears going in was here we go again. here is another thing that is going to go and pull the resources out of the community and then [the academics] go running for the hills’ (community professional). on multiple occasions, people referenced past experiences with the university that depleted community resources and created few positive changes in the community. one of the graduate student collaborators on this project suggested that people who live in the neighbourhood surrounding the university are really tired around being researched. there is a real fatigue around it and people are really anxious for … ‘what are we going to get from this? what are we going to do now?’ and i don’t think always a university or the academic partners are on the same kind of time frame as community organizations, and so trying to navigate who needs what at what point – i see that as being a challenge. this student names a concern that was echoed by others in the graduate research assistants’ student focus group, the youth focus group and the community professionals focus group: historically, the link between research and action has not been apparent to non-academic participants in collaborative research projects. 65 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood in the above passage, the student questions whether it is an issue of contrasting timelines. people in community organisations are looking for timely returns on their investment in research. while academic participants also want to see useable outcomes generated from collaborative research, they are not working in frontline positions where useable outcomes could find immediate traction. people in different stakeholder groups experience the urgency around action differently. granting sufficient visibility to the research-to-action process and ensuring that a project generates timely outcomes for a diversity of stakeholder groups is a challenge for community academic research collaborations. our data suggest that simply giving voice to people’s prior experiences and divergent points of view is not sufficient. academic collaborators clearly heard people’s desires for reciprocity and their apprehensions about the project’s ability to generate meaningful impacts in the community: i remember a strong message … that if people had the sense that this was yet another research project that was not going to really benefit the community – it was going to draw resources out of the community but not really benefit the community – and that people would be again the objects of the gaze of the academics, that people would just bail quickly (academic professional). in the absence of a suitable process for acting on these concerns, tensions between stakeholder groups and ambivalence towards the project failed to serve a pedagogical purpose. an equitable collaborative process requires mechanisms or structures through which people’s diverse experiences, knowledge and expectations can be mobilised for mutual benefit as a project evolves. otherwise, as our data indicate, historical tensions settle into the background of a project, periodically surfacing to shape interactions between various stakeholders. social and institutional relations: academic grant-seeking, accountability and issues of ‘voice’ people need an opportunity to voice their divergent expectations/ ideas, as well as their prior experiences with community-university partnerships in the process of developing and implementing a collaborative research and social change agenda. in the act for youth initiative, project implementation has not been experienced as adequately attentive to this need. as the project progressed, some youth struggled to give voice to their ideas: ‘they were planning on reframing the research process, and i didn’t really feel like i had a voice in that. so all we really had to work with was the framework that they had already established’ (youth participant). this tension between established (that is, articulated in the project proposal) and emergent research activities influenced young people’s sense that the project was being ‘steered by academics’ and shaped whether they felt they could contribute to ongoing planning. academic grant-seeking requires that a research agenda is established before funding is allocated, and granting governance 66 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood and accountability work requires that one deliver the outcomes that were laid out in the proposal. project leads – particularly the principal investigator – are accountable to the timelines and deliverables specified in the proposal: ‘there is a framework that comes with any funding source. here is your money and you have to hit these benchmarks by these timelines, and meet those expectations. so to also honour the desire to be as flexible and responsive in the process as your colleagues demand is a challenge’ (community professional). in the case of act for youth, the project proposal was produced through a number of collaborative exercises, involving academics, community practitioners and youth; however, the youth who participated in the proposal were not the same youth who were involved once project funding had been secured. while there were aspects of the project process that young people were invited to steer (for example, a youth-led committee), other aspects of the project (for example, much of the research) needed to reflect what had been written in the original proposal. the proposal put the responsibility for the generation of a positive youth strategy in the adult court but with feedback from youth. in much the same way, the community practitioners who entered the discussion during the project implementation phase – that is, after funds were secured – expressed their struggles to contribute substantively to the collaborative process. one community professional suggested that non-academic partners interpreted the process as ‘really academic’, which made it challenging for people to carve out roles for themselves: ‘it doesn’t really feel clear what we are trying to do. i don’t know how we would contribute. i feel like it would be difficult for a lot of people, not just youth, to really feel effective in contributing to designing the process.’ it is significant that two years into the project people are still grappling with the project’s aims, and how to effectively contribute to ‘designing the process’. while the project has a clearly articulated theoretical framework and an explicit set of research objectives, this information is not necessarily illuminating or relevant for people who work outside of academic institutions. the articulation of a project’s theoretical framework and central research questions are, however, essential to the successful navigation of research grant-seeking processes. the process of applying for the federally funded community-university alliance grant that supports the act for youth project requires people to conceive of the project in the terms laid out in the proposal submission process. once this frame is in place, it continues to shape the process moving forward. on multiple occasions people explained that tensions between academic and non-academic stakeholders resulted from the different expectations people brought to ‘the table’. there is a general sense that people who work in academic settings have a different ‘understanding of what should be happening’ than people who work in community settings; but focus group participants 67 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood never actually name the different expectations that make it difficult to collaborate effectively. the data suggest that people have not had sufficient opportunity to discuss their divergent expectations throughout the life cycle of the project. people remain uncertain about one another’s expectations and whether those expectations are being met. because this lack of ongoing transparency is combined with an overtly academic project frame, people who work in community organisations – much like youth – have not experienced equitable participation in the collaborative process. upon reflection, a graduate student observes that she has not had an opportunity to work with the community professionals involved in her working group: ‘maybe our community members are not participating at this point … when i was talking earlier about working and setting things up via email, i was saying i was working with academics … it was supposed to be our entire working group … but we didn’t have a community voice on it’ (graduate student). a community professional explained that it can feel like one is ‘down here because i don’t have the knowledge’. instead of viewing people’s divergent knowledge, skills and professional foci as resources, there is a sense among community, youth and post-secondary student participants that academic ‘voices’ or perspectives have dominated the collaborative process. when people did have a chance to bring their divergent knowledge and expertise to bear on project development and implementation, deliberation and conflict ensued. in all but the youth focus group, people discussed a particularly tense conversation about a proposed survey instrument. some people cited the discussion about the survey instrument as an important moment where non-academic participants in the project gave voice to their concerns about the appropriateness of the survey tool for the community and the project’s aims. the discussion was upheld as a pivotal moment across focus groups because the division of participants into academic and non-academic ‘camps’ was acknowledged, and ultimately people engaged in a productive dialogue across a divide which had always been felt, if not overtly named: what started to develop, if i remember correctly, was academics defending the tool and community members critiquing the tool. and then we moved to a space where there was some engaged dialogue about it … people have to cross the floor. some academics have to begin to align themselves with community so that they enter that space and are able to say they understand what the critiques are, and say ‘those are valid critiques’ … a kind of an openness to the perspective and viewpoints of others so that you can sort of hear and understand each other (academic professional). while a difference in viewpoints is initially experienced as confrontational, the group is ultimately able to listen to what one another have to say and engage in dialogue. across focus group discussions with community professionals, post-secondary 68 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood students and academics, the discussion of the survey instrument was remembered as an instance when people encountered another perspective and were open to learning from the encounter. opportunities for deliberation and debate may be difficult, but ultimately they contribute to a deepened understanding of people’s evolving expectations of the partnership process and outcomes. they are also opportunities for learning. the centrality of learning although no discussion questions addressed learning directly, in all of the focus group discussions people talked about or offered evidence of learning, knowledge creation and/or knowledge exchange. in some instances (particularly the discussions and interviews with youth), conversations settled on missed opportunities for learning. an exploration of these data – evidence of learning and not learning – allow us to explore the role that pedagogy might play in the development of equitable and productive collaborative processes, as well as the importance of learning as a collaborative outcome. one of the participants in the post-secondary student discussion observed that opportunities to create knowledge positions people to see and understand the relationship between power and knowledge more clearly: ‘up until high school or even the early years of university, you are mostly just reading knowledge and regurgitating back [what you’ve read]. whereas research is more – you’re involved in the process of creating it [knowledge] … a lot of power is held in information and so you got to know how information is spread and created’ (graduate student). another graduate student remarked on the importance of ‘hearing from all these different people’. she had never considered that her (quantitative) way of researching and/or looking at the world would not be appropriate for some research questions and for some research populations. an opportunity to learn and work across disciplinary and professional difference opened her eyes to the limits of a singular disciplinary or methodological frame. non-academic professionals also highlighted the importance of learning through dialogue and participation in the working group meetings. these meetings offered a space to: ‘think out loud and think in ways that are not traditional about how we are either going to continue the research or apply the research’ (community professional). the most vivid learning outcomes are evident in young people’s descriptions of their involvement in this project. young people participated in the project as members of a youth voices working group, members and co-chairs of a youth-led committee, participants in a summer community-based research institute, participants in other project working groups and as research interns. young people were clear that they learned much from opportunities to interact with people who work and study at the university. for many, this was the first time they had been on the university campus. ongoing opportunities to engage with 69 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood graduate students were cited as particularly transformative for youth. the graduate students were perceived to be more accessible than the faculty members, and so the youth engaged with them in frank discussions about academic life, travel, and the research they were doing together. in the end, many youth discovered that the people who work and learn at the university are not ‘like a different species or something. it’s just that i’ve never thought that i would be talking to, you know, you [the researcher], or like other people, like ph.d. students, like – on like – a conversation level’ (youth participant). the young people explained that the collaborative process provided them with opportunities to think analytically, to receive mentorship from graduate students, and to apply their learning in the context of act for youth’s collaborative research and social change agenda. in so doing, they explain that they have learned more about their community and how to understand it from a critical research perspective. as much as they have learned about research or the community, young people also described having greater self-awareness as a result of their participation in the act for youth project. they described a learning process where youth are agents, actively carving out opportunities for knowledge creation (cammarota & fine 2008; kirshner 2006). the project also provided ongoing capacity-building activities (for example, the summer community-based research institute) as well as multiple opportunities for youth to contribute to working group and research meetings. more than other participants in this project, young people described openly engaging in, and benefiting from, opportunities to learn. that said, youth were also quick to point out places where opportunities for learning were missed. some young people explained that they did not feel sufficiently prepared to take on roles as youth researchers for this project: ‘this is our first time doing research and there should have been someone to at least mentor us or assist us throughout this entire time – oversee our work. that didn’t happen’ (youth participant). while young people wanted – and benefited from – a chance to make knowledge as they actively brought their own ideas and goals to bear on the research process, they also wanted to receive ongoing mentorship and support from the adult participants on this project (camino 2005; kirshner 2006). young people wanted a chance to learn from the ‘big-wigs’ who attended the initial project meeting, but had not been visibly involved since then. they clearly articulated that the responsibility for reaching out should be shouldered by the adult participants of the study. they wanted to learn and receive mentorship from ‘all the people at the table’, but they also wanted flexibility and a chance to drive certain aspects of the project themselves (cahill 2007; hadfield & haw 2007; jacquez, vaughn & wagner 2013). access to opportunities to develop the collaborative skills and relationships that will aid us in addressing complex sociopolitical problems 70 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood are crucial for young people and adult members of communityuniversity research partnerships (suleiman, soleimanpour & london 2006). the data from our reflexive analysis indicate that the adult participants of the study share young people’s desires for reciprocity, flexibility and meaningful involvement. perhaps more to the point, adult participants’ uncertainties about the collaborative process and its ability to generate mutually beneficial project outcomes mirror young people’s ambivalence about the research and community development process. we use the term ambivalence here to bring attention to people’s continued uncertainty about the equitable nature of the collaborative process. for instance, people clearly expressed reservations about the project’s ability to generate timely and meaningful changes in the community. data also indicate a perception that expressions of concern or disappointment fall on ‘deaf ears’ or fail to influence an existing project framework. because the data illuminate instances of learning and shared reflection as positive project outcomes, we suggest that expressions of uncertainty – and even tension – might be productively framed as sources for learning and dialogue across stakeholder groups throughout the life cycle of a collaborative project. discussion in our discussion we articulate a productive relationship between ‘voice’, ambivalence and multi-directional learning. our data suggest that the act for youth project would benefit from more opportunities for face-to-face communication, learning and knowledge exchange. productive collaborations require ongoing attention to, and deliberation about, the collaborative process, people’s roles and accountabilities (in the project and elsewhere), project governance and the generation of project outcomes. a process that is iterative, dialogic, reflexive (that is, continually evolving) and explicitly pedagogic will sustain interactivity among collaborators; such a process would celebrate ambivalence, uncertainty and inquiry as the heart of its emergent and responsive model. for example, a productive project process would enable ongoing and transparent conversations about the various – and sometimes conflicting – institutional relations shaping people’s involvement. people are juggling multiple institutional demands on their time, which reduces the amount of time they can dedicate to a project. in academic settings, people’s participation in a project like this represents one aspect of a complex professional portfolio: many people also have other research projects they are conducting as well as their ongoing contributions to teaching and service. tenure and promotion processes – which must be engaged in if a person is to keep her/his job as a university professor – continue to privilege the production of peer-reviewed publications over reports or other research outcomes that might be accessible 71 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood and of interest to people outside of academic institutions. while academic participants in this study acknowledge young people’s requests for more support and face-to-face engagement, they remain unclear how to meet this request given the demands of their employment. people are navigating similar accountability relations in community agencies that rely heavily on governmental and charitable funding. how they proceed to do their work is clearly shaped by the ways in which the work will be evaluated (nichols 2008). funding relations (for example, chronic under-funding and ongoing grant-seeking), agency mandates and strategic plans all shape what and how community work happens, and whether or not this project becomes a ‘front burner item’ for an executive director. whether people are working in community agencies or university research institutes, they are required to organise their work such that it can be held accountable to the funding timelines, priorities, deliverables, etc. that have been articulated for them. bringing visibility to the divergent institutional contexts shaping people’s involvement in, and expectations for, a project supports the generation of mutually beneficial project outcomes. across focus group conversations, people suggested that the act for youth project required a more effective communication structure. communication within and between working groups often fell apart, and many people reported uncertainty about the project’s overall progress to date: ‘there are so many moving parts and so many players. i think it’s extraordinarily complicated. i think the in-person meetings are important, but i think those are often difficult to arrange – to get people there’ (academic professional). on one level, the project’s ‘communication problems’ reflect the challenges of coordinating a complex project, composed of many ‘moving parts’. but the ‘communication problems’ also signal inter-systemic breaks, which are shaped by differences in professional and experiential knowledge, expectations and communication patterns, as well as divergent institutional governance frameworks. people are navigating multiple institutional demands that can interfere with or detract from the time and energy that is required to sustain purposeful interinstitutional relationships. day to day, people’s work is constrained by obligations to funders and an imperative to work within the dominant ideological frameworks within which their professional performance will be judged. across community and university settings, people are working within institutional reporting, fundmanagement and performance-evaluation frameworks that have individualising effects. the divergent perspectives and expectations that people bring to a collaborative research project are shaped by social and institutional relations, which draw individual people (and individual projects) into extended relations of governance. in combination – and particularly when they lack mutual visibility 72 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood – these coordinative relations make it challenging to maximise opportunities for reciprocal engagement and mutual learning. but they do not undermine the potential entirely. one way to facilitate ongoing reflexivity and flexibility among collaborators is to acknowledge this need and work to collectively navigate moments of tension or hesitation – whether these are shaped by people’s various accountabilities or not (dumlao & janke 2012; mccormack, buck & mcgraw 2012, 2013). mccormack et al. (2012) suggest that embracing tension or differences between collaborators can itself be a source of learning. opportunities to view a situation from another person’s position are opportunities for thinking differently. but merely bringing these differences into visibility for one another will not necessarily lead to learning. as we indicated in our findings section, collaborators also require a mechanism for productively and equitably facilitating learning as the outcome of sharing divergent viewpoints. dumlao and janke (2012) suggest that relational dialectics is a framework that can be used to address the tensions that result from stakeholders’ diverse professional accountabilities, cultural norms and expectations. as described by dumlao and janke (p. 154), the concept of dialectal tensions resonates with our own use of the term ambivalence, to describe tensions that reflect ‘both/and nature of different perspectives rather than either/or thinking’ . the concept emphasises ‘the complexity of relationships’ and the ‘multiple systems of meaning held by the people involved in a partnership’ (p. 154). as a practical tool to stimulate learning within a partnership, a relational dialectics approach invites collaborators to adopt a learning stance, such that they become open to learning from evolving tensions and relationships throughout the collaborative life cycle. the key is to focus on using opportunities for dialectical learning to make decisions or agree on next steps – that is, to see the conversations as key to generating some form of collective response. conclusion act for youth is a complex multi-sectoral research alliance. the collaboration spans generational, disciplinary, professional and institutional boundaries. it also spans considerable temporal and geographic distance. this complexity is a common feature of community-academic research alliances. the project is designed to mirror the complexity of the problem it intends to resolve. the collaborative framework is meant to facilitate interdisciplinary, interprofessional, interinstitutional, and in the case of act for youth, intergenerational problem-solving. to some extent, the act for youth project has achieved this objective. the project has used photo-voice, in-depth interviewing and large-scale survey data to understand young people’s strengths, the resources available to them, and their experiences in 73 | gateways | nichols, anucha, houwer & wood school and community. the project has implemented communitybased research institutes for youth, a youth-led conference, and a multi-generational mentorship program involving local youth, the university, and university alumni. the combination of research and development initiatives is shaping the alliance’s articulation of a strengths-based youth development framework for ‘marginalized’ urban communities. these various outcomes are a direct result of collaborative activities. but project complexity also comes with organisational challenges. it has been difficult to maintain people’s enthusiasm about, and dedication to, the act for youth project throughout all project phases. a collaborative project requires ongoing opportunities for people to engage in joint planning and problem-solving. it requires considerable coordination and planning to enable opportunities for mutual learning and engagement, as well as the flow of collaborators on and off a project over the course of its life cycle. at the same time, the project needs to be flexible enough to respond to collaborators’ evolving contributions and objectives, while also demonstrating fidelity to a funded project proposal. throughout the collaborative process, people need opportunities to come together to discuss and reflect on governance relations, share experiences and knowledge, re-evaluate project objectives, celebrate project milestones and collectively move the project forward. this article proposes that expressions of ambivalence and tension throughout the life cycle of a project indicate areas that require continued dialogue and learning across stakeholder groups. dumlao and janke’s (2012) relational dialectics is one potential framework for structuring the type of multi-directional learning opportunity we recommend. acknowledgements the authors, as members of the assets coming together for youth research project, wish to gratefully acknowledge the generous funding by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. we are also especially grateful to our colleagues on act’s evaluation and monitoring working group: susan mcgrath, sue levesque and karen swift from york university. references austin, a 2002, ‘preparing the next generation of faculty: graduate school as socialization to the academic career’, journal of higher education, vol. 73, no. 1, pp. 94–122. austin, a & mcdaniels, m 2006, ‘using doctoral education to prepare faculty to work within boyer’s four domains of scholarship’, new directions for institutional 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carrasco, s & gedjeyan, h 2011, ‘ties that bind: creating and sustaining community-academic partnerships’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 4, pp. 83–90. http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/reap_report_bradford_u.pdf http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/reap_report_bradford_u.pdf successes, challenges and lessons learned community-engaged research with south carolina’s gullah population during the past two decades, researchers have provided evidence to support the notion that the social environment in which people live, as well as their lifestyles and behaviours, can influence the incidence of illness within a population (iom 1988). they have also demonstrated that a population can achieve longterm health improvements when people become involved in improving the health of their community and work together to effect change (hanson 1988). the rationale for communityengaged health promotion is aligned with the recognition that lifestyles, behaviours, wellness and illness are all shaped by social, biological and physical environments. this ‘ecological’ view is consistent with health inequalities, unequal distribution of wealth and socioeconomic conditions, leading to an outgrowth of social changes similar to those of earlier decades (hanson 1988). the strength of community-engaged research is well documented and is recognised as a useful approach for eliminating health disparities and improving health equity. in light of these developments, members of disease prevention groups, such as the center for disease control and prevention (cdc) and the national institutes of health (nih) clinical and translational awards (ctsa), have expanded efforts to create collaborative environments, strong community action and public policy in ways that support community engagement. to this end, emerging researchers at academic institutions have begun to appreciate the ecological view for eliminating health disparities and promoting social justice. the purpose of this article is to describe and demonstrate how five projects incorporated key community-engagement principles to conduct research between interdisciplinary research teams from the medical university of south carolina (musc) and african americans residing in rural south carolina, also known as gullahs. the five projects, which span a 20-year period, will demonstrate how the academic researchers have been able to build relationships and trust with the gullah population in order to sustain partnerships and to meet major research objectives. central to this success has been: 1) the establishment of a gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 150–69 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 ida j. spruill renata serricchio leite jyotika k. fernandes diane l. kamen marvella e. ford carolyn jenkins kelly j. hunt jeannette o. andrews medical university of south carolina 151 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews citizen advisory committee (cac), which was developed at the inception of the first community-engaged research project; and 2) the integration of clinical and health research with the nine key principles of community-engaged research, as identified by the nih and discussed below. while successes included the implementation of a working cac with clear, realistic goals, creation of a dna data repository and reduction in diabetesrelated amputations, there were challenges including structural inequality, organisational and cultural issues and a lack of resources for building sustainable research infrastructure. major take-home messages and recommendations suggest the need to gain knowledge about the community culture/assets and to embed community cultural context into research approaches. we begin this article with a brief overview on community engagement and the nine principles, followed by a brief historical background of the sea island gullah population, a description of each project, and an integrated matrix highlighting how the community-engagement principles have been used. the article ends with challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations for community-engaged research. community engagement loosely defined, community engagement is ‘the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interests or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people’ (cdc 1997, 2011). it is a powerful vehicle to promote environmental and behavioural changes which, in turn, lead to improvements in health and wellbeing of a community. community-engaged research (cenr) entails a collaborative partnership between academic researchers and the community. community engagement with research can be viewed as a continuum, from collaboration on a specific project to a more progressive approach involving greater community involvement, including a shared and equitable partnership that is sustained over time (cdc 2011). the ‘ideal’ cenr is a model in which scientific professionals and members of a community work together, as equal partners, in the development, implementation and dissemination of research that is relevant to the community (israel et al. 1998, 2003). an advantage of this approach is that the processes are bi-directional, allowing researchers to utilise scientific knowledge of an identified health problem facing the community, and for the community to utilise their expertise in the cultural and social contexts of the health issue and potential solutions that may work locally. more importantly, with an engaged partnership approach, research can contribute to decreasing health inequities among disempowered communities and help build capacity by focusing attention on social justice and power sharing (israel et al. 2003). 152 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews an expert task force convened by the nih reported nine key principles of community engagement, which drew on their knowledge of the literature, as well as their individual and collective experiences (cdc 2011). these principles include: 1 be clear about the purposes or goals of the engagement effort and the communities you want to engage. 2 become knowledgeable about the community (i.e., culture, economic conditions, social networks, political and power structures, values). 3 establish relationships, build trust, work with the formal and informal leadership, and seek commitment to create processes for mobilizing the community. 4 accept that collective self-determinism is the responsibility and right of all people in a community. 5 partnering with the community is necessary to create change and improve health. 6 all aspects of community engagement must recognize and respect the diversity of the community. 7 community engagement can only be sustained by identifying and mobilizing community assets and strengths and by developing the community’s capacity and resources to make decisions and take action. 8 organizations that wish to engage a community must be prepared to release control of actions or interventions to the community and be flexible enough to meet its changing needs. 9 community collaborations require long-term commitment by the engaging organization and its partners. each project discussed below describes how the above cenr principles were incorporated into the research approaches within the gullah communities. the origins of the gullahs extend back to the late 17th century when their ancestors were captured in africa and transported to american shores. the sea island/gullah african american (aa) population provides a unique cohort for defining genetic and environmental factors for complex chronic diseases, such as diabetes, autoimmune disorders, particularly lupus, and cancer. this section begins with a brief historical description of the sea islands. historical context of the sea island culture since the early 1700s, the sea island communities have inhabited the barrier islands along the coast of south carolina (sc) and georgia (ga) and adjacent coastal communities in florida. the sea islanders, also known as gullahs, are the descendants of enslaved africans, and are one of the most distinctive cultural groups that exist in america today. isolated off the coast for nearly three centuries, the native population developed a vibrant way of life that remains, in many ways, as african as it is american 153 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews (jones-jackson 1987). historians report that colonists in carolina sought out africans from the ‘grain coast’ of west africa (opala 1985; pollitzer 1999) because of their rice-growing expertise: the sc low country was similar to the topography of west africa and ideally suited for rice cultivation (see figures 1 and 2). the gullah language, an english creole very similar to the modern-day language (krio) spoken in sierra leone, is the preserved spoken language of the sea islanders (opala 1985). gullahs in south carolina to highlight the gullah culture within the proper context, we share a quote from anthropologist william pollitzer (1999): the gullah people are not a museum piece, relics of the past, but rather survivors of enslavement, bondage, discrimination, and white privilege, they are fellow human beings entitled to work out their own destiny. several factors, such as geographical, cultural and social isolation, helped preserve the relative homogeneity of the sea islanders of south carolina. it is estimated that 40 per cent of enslaved africans brought to the united states entered through the port of charleston from the west coast of africa including senegal, gambia, sierra leone, ivory coast, the congo and angola (jones-jackson 1987; pollitzer 1999). the low-lying areas of the sc low country were rife with diseases such as yellow fever, malaria and tuberculosis, and therefore were mostly avoided by european landowners and largely supervised by enslaved african foremen (pollitzer 1999). this resulted in minimal contact with europeans and the enslaved africans from different regions created a fusion of their home cultures and formed a new (gullah) culture in america. moreover, this unique culture emerged from eight generations of life under oppressive conditions. the sc gullah population is known for preserving more of their african linguistic and cultural heritage than any other african american community studied within the united states. in fact, the sc gullahs have less racial admixture (3.5 per cent) than any groups tested in the united states (pollitzer 1999). their english-based creole language contains many african words and significant influences from african languages in its grammar and sentence structure. properly referred to as ‘sea island creole’, the gullah language is related to jamaican creole, barbadian dialect, bahamian dialect and the krio language of sierra leone in west africa (hancock 1980; turner, mille & montgomery 1974). all of the projects described in this article used a community-engaged approach and are rooted in the unique history of coastal south carolina gullah communities. figure 2: sea islands of south carolina and georgia (the ‘low country’ region). map drawing courtesy of jennifer b. lessard figure 1: map of west coast of africa figure 1: map of west coast of africa 154 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews overview of community-engaged research approach true community engagement can be difficult and labour intensive, requiring dedicated resources to help ensure its success. the best known framework and approach for cenr is community-based participatory research (cbpr), defined by israel et al. (1988) as an interdisciplinary research methodology in which scientific professionals and members of a specific community work together as equal partners in the development, implementation and dissemination of research that is relevant to the community. community engagement benefits from using the participatory research principle of shared power. more importantly, because cbpr is bi-directional and can contribute to decreasing health inequities among disempowered communities, cbpr can help build capacity in under-served populations, by focusing attention on social justice and sharing power. unlike cenr, cbpr researchers present or bring to the community their scientific knowledge or a problem that has been identified from clinical data. for example, the researchers from both project sugar and sleigh used their scientific knowledge to identify a clinical problem with disparities in prevalence of diabetes and lupus among the sea island population. the heart of our cenr occurred within the sc gullah communities. our hope is that by further investigating these diseases within this unique population, the results will be translated into methods of prevention, earlier diagnosis, social justice and more effective treatments to benefit their communities. specific examples of how each project engaged the community are presented below and summarised in table 1. project sugar (1995–2003) initiated in 1995, project sugar (sea island genetic african american families registry) was the first of many genetic studies to be conducted among the sc sea islanders. the sea islands population has a particularly high degree of genetic risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2dm), with a sibling relative risk of 3.3 for t2dm, a figure exceeding that in many other communities (garvey, mclean & spruill 2003). the incidence of diabetes among the sea islanders has been projected at 20 per cent (jenkins et al. 2004; mclean et al. 2003), which is much higher than in the general african american population. the scientific aim of project sugar was to isolate and identify genes responsible for the expression of t2dm and obesity in gullah speaking aas. the intent and goal of the project was to create a dna repository linked to clinical data on 400 aa families affected with t2dm. adhering to the principles of cenr, the research team sought to engage the community through the formation of a citizen advisory committee (cac) at the inception of the project. community stakeholders were identified and a 15-member cac was formed of representatives from a cross-section of the gullah community, including the faith community, state legislature, community health centres, educational establishments, 155 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews research participants, consumers, cultural organisations, formal and informal leaders, and members with and without a scientific background. in partnership with the cac, a recruitment model/strategy known as the community plan reward (cpr) was adopted. the three components of the model include community involvement, flexible protocols, and rewarding the community with tangible benefits. the cpr model proposes that, when services are provided to the community (e.g. health fairs, mobile health vans, community education), in tandem with local community advisory committees, the possibilities of recruiting participants into research and clinical trials are significantly enhanced. this model has demonstrated benefits to both the participants and the researchers (spruill 2004). in addition, decision-making regarding recruitment was shared, resulting in a flexible study protocol, which included weekend recruitment efforts and home visits. the project sugar research team sought to hire nurses who reflected the study population, had respect for their culture, and could speak and understand the ‘gullah language’. a major request from the cac from the outset was that the academic researchers attempt to balance research with community service projects. this request has been upheld by project sugar, as well as by research projects discussed later. from 1995 through 2003, project sugar recruited gullah families living on the sc sea islands. project sugar now has a data and dna repository of 1324 individuals, or 650 families, which includes 1105 individuals with t2dm. this is one of the largest assembled cohorts of aas with t2dm in the south-east gullah families. genome-wide linkage scans revealed a novel t2dm locus in this population on chromosome 14q (c14) and 7q (c7) that appears to reduce age of diabetes onset (sale et al. 2009). in 2003, genetic-related studies among the gullah population were united under one umbrella and the cac changed its name to the sea islands families project (sifp). the purpose of the sifp is to formalise new partnerships between the academic institution and the community, share resources and ideas, avoid duplication of community efforts, and provide guidance and recommendations to the new research teams interested in doing research among the sea islanders (see below). center for oral health research (2001–present) periodontal disease affects one or more of the tooth-supporting tissues. there is evidence that periodontal disease can worsen diabetic control and (vice versa) and that proper management of the disease can improve diabetic control (soskolne & klinger 2001). several genetic polymorphisms have been associated with chronic, severe periodontitis. the unique homogeneity of sea islanders makes this population especially attractive for studying the influence of genetics on the expression of periodontal disease. building upon the positive community partnership developed by project sugar, the first center for oral health 156 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews research (cohr) project funded through the center of biomedical research excellence (cobre) for oral health mechanism became the second successful community-engaged genetic project under the sifp umbrella. there are now multiple projects under the cohr umbrella. the first project was a genetic/epidemiologic cross-sectional study that investigated the prevalence of caries and periodontal disease in the t2dm gullah population (fernandes et al. 2009; marlow et al. 2011a). the second project was a double-blind clinical trial to investigate the need for antibiotic therapy in conjunction with mechanical non-surgical therapy in the treatment of periodontal disease in this same population (bandyopadhyay et al. 2010; marlow et al. 2011b). membership in the sifp enhanced rapport, communication, cultural sensitivity and cultural humility. patients were valued and compensated with gift cards as an appreciation for their time and, similarly to the project sugar design, the results of their blood work were mailed to them along with a thank you letter. the latest projects have developed upon the communities’ interest in improving their oral health and have involved community members as co-investigators. they have been funded recently by grants from the national institute of dental and craniofacial research (nidcr) and the united states department of defense. both projects have been developed using a cenr approach and their main goals are to develop culturally sensitive oral-health multi-level (church, group, individual) interventions and to disseminate the latest technology to community clinics, thus improving the services available in community clinics and decreasing oral health disparities in the gullah population. local community members have been hired and trained to act as community oral health promoters, and a study-specific community advisory board has been formed, mainly composed of church leaders and town administrators, with the objectives of enhancing communication between the research group and the community, improving results/products dissemination, and assuring cultural sensitivity in all aspects of the research projects. individual and small church advisory boards have also been formed in each of the participating churches to facilitate the design and implementation of church-level interventions. sleigh (systemic lupus erythematosus in gullah health) (2003–present) systemic lupus erythematosus (sle or lupus) is an autoimmune disease that affects approximately 1 in 250 aa women of childbearing potential. aas have a threefold increased prevalence of lupus, develop lupus at an earlier age, and have increased lupus-related morbidity and mortality compared to caucasians (bernatsky et al. 2006; fernandez et al. 2005). multiple factors, including genetic, environmental and socioeconomic, likely underlie the ethnic disparity in lupus (rahman & isenberg 2008). socioeconomic and genetic differences alone, however, cannot explain the significant increase in prevalence of lupus in the past 157 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews 20 years or the gradient of lupus between west africa, where it is a rare disease, and the united states, where it is prevalent (gilkeson et al. 2011). these latter findings suggest environmental factors play a key role in triggering the onset of lupus and impacting disease severity. genetic and environmental heterogeneity within the united states african american population has confounded previous efforts to identify causative factors in lupus and/or its co-morbidities. the lower non-african genetic admixture among gullah aas makes them a unique population in which to study complex multifactorial diseases. the sleigh study was established in 2003 to find the genes and environmental triggers that cause lupus and lupusrelated autoimmunity, and to assess the prevalence and severity of lupus in the gullah aa population. there are several active research studies, under the umbrella of the longitudinal sleigh cohort, recruiting from the sea island communities. in 2002, a relationship was formed between the lupus investigators and the sifp developing the protocol for the sleigh study. the lupus investigators presented at an sifp meeting what was known about the prevalence of lupus among aas in coastal sc, including hospitalisation data showing increased mortality among aa women with lupus, and continued to meet with sifp members to help develop a protocol to address the question of lupus among the gullah. in addition to discussing project progress and results at every quarterly sifp meeting since that time, in 2010 the project organised a steering committee, which includes sifp members particularly interested in lupus and other academic partners, in order to discuss the relevant studies more frequently and in more detail. the steering committee has also helped direct the community outreach and education programs and participated in evaluation of the sleigh study progress in reaching the research and educational objectives. following the recruitment service-orientated model (cpr) from project sugar, the researchers have been successful in partnering with local lupus support groups and patient advocacy organisations, including the lupus foundation of america, and community members have initiated studies to address areas related to lupus of particular interest to them utilising the sleigh cohort. although this requires the community members to become trained in human research methods and be approved by the institutional review board (irb) as study personnel, it has invariably been a worthwhile and rewarding experience. in respect to skill building with community stakeholders, a community liaison who reflected the study population was hired to provide consistent representation at the cac/sifp quarterly meetings and the weekly team meetings. utilising principles from cenr, and building on positive relationships with the community established by the previous research projects, the sleigh team was able to recruit a large number of gullah families to meet the goal of the project. the sleigh study has grown to include 237 patients with lupus, 158 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews 166 unrelated controls and 220 family-member controls to date. findings from sleigh to date suggest a higher than predicted prevalence of multiplex families, with 26.6 per cent of patients coming from multi-affected families, and a significantly lower age at lupus diagnosis in the offspring of a parent with lupus, which could be attributed to genetic ‘anticipation’ (kamen et al. 2008). there is also a high prevalence of autoantibody seropositivity in first-degree relatives of patients, with a notable 35 per cent of all sleigh first-degree relatives testing positive for antinuclear antibodies (ana) at a significant titre of ≥ 1:120. one of the investigations into potential environmental triggers of autoimmunity led to the discovery of an alarming 95 per cent prevalence of vitamin d deficiency among gullah aas, which subsequently led to further studies into the impact of vitamin d deficiency on immune and bone health (ben-zvi et al. 2010; kamen et al. 2008). a clinical trial providing oral vitamin d to patients with sle found that higher than expected doses of vitamin d are required to achieve normal levels, and that fortunately these doses are safe and well tolerated. in 2009, with funding from the national institute of environmental health sciences (niehs) at the national institutes of health, the researchers have been able to continue the investigation of environmental triggers of autoimmunity among the sea island gullah population. this four-year study is examining exposure to and blood levels of persistent organic pollutants (pops) found in local dietary staples such as fish. hollings cancer center/cancer prevention & control (2011–present) since 2000, through the cancer screening and patient navigation services in the sea island community, the hollings cancer center (hcc) has conducted cancer-screening activities via the hcc’s mobile health unit at a local federally qualified community health centre on johns islands, screening well over 3500 participants. the purpose of this project is to share awareness of and strategies for preventable cancers among african americans. the hcc approach to cenr started with the identification of a clinical problem (high prevalence of breast and prostate cancer among the sea islanders) by academic researchers and forging of a partnership with community ‘champion’ members and organisations. each lay facilitator who was trained during the program signed a contract/agreement to conduct two cancer education training sessions in his/her community within 12 months. the research team at hcc adhered to principals of cenr and shared the credit for success with the community partners. the signature programs, cancer education training program in the sea island community and community engagement activities conducted in cancer education training program, have reached a total of 469 individuals. the cancer education training program (2009) was conducted in a targeted sea islands community (johns island). the program consisted of 159 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews a four-hour evidence-based cancer education program in which there was a three-hour component focusing on general cancer knowledge, a 30-minute component specifically on prostate cancer knowledge, and another 30-minute component on cancer clinical trials knowledge. participants engaged in role plays as they practised sharing the information they had learned with others. results related to cancer knowledge outcomes are reported elsewhere and demonstrate that general cancer and prostate cancer knowledge scores increased significantly following the cancer education program (ford et al. 2011). the community engagement activities conducted in cancer education training program used community skill building to employ the train the trainer design. this was a fourhour session conducted at each site and focused on training community members to teach others in their communities about cancer prevention and control, lifestyle interventions, cancer screening, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment options. the community partnership included a self-identified champion, or community leader, responsible for recruiting participants. each community person received a binder containing copies of all of the materials presented during the four-hour training session, including evidence-based information related to cancer screening, early detection, treatment and participation in cancer clinical trials. adhering to the principles of shared power, the community champion decided which training product (transparencies, memory sticks and/or cds) worked best. nine trained facilitators conducted 16 cancer education training programs, reaching 469 individuals. results indicate more positive perceptions of cancer clinical trials following the intervention (p<0.001). reach (racial and ethnic approaches to community health) (1999–present) since 1999, reach has focused on improving type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2dm) management and reducing disparities related to health care and complications through cenr and building partnerships. the reach charleston and georgetown diabetes coalition represents a diverse group of academic and lay community members. the coalition is governed by by-laws and community-based participatory actions. reach focuses on improving community-wide outcomes through: 1) community education on t2dm prevention and control; 2) health system improvements through continuous quality improvements; and 3) coalition building, policy change and sustainability. forging partnerships with existing partners resulted in collaboration with many sea island community partners. the reach academic partners bring the science of diabetes to the communities, while community members decide when, where and how to apply or integrate evidence-based practices into community and health systems, while also generating ‘community-based evidence’ for change. the partners then work together to address and eliminate disparities in health and health care. 160 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews the coalition has developed community education programs, which are delivered by community health workers (chws), as well as the multiple partners. in multiple community sites, especially in federally qualified health centers (fqhcs), culturally relevant t2dm self-management training is delivered weekly by certified diabetes educators in collaboration with chws. additionally, for resource sharing, reach offers a ‘strip-it’ program that provides reduced-cost glucose monitoring strips for the uninsured and underinsured through local diabetes coalitions in each county and partner fundraising, as well as an educational guide, ‘my guide to sugar diabetes’, and foot care education (http:// academicdepartments.musc.edu/reach/materials/index.html). the reach evaluation team reports a 44 per cent reduction in dm-related amputations in aas (jenkins et al. 2011) and a reduction of almost 50 per cent in aa men with diabetes. although improved care has not translated into significantly improved a1c control – the hallmark of decreasing t2dm complications – the coalitions (reach charleston and georgetown diabetes coalition and the local coalitions in each county) have demonstrated a positive trend in blood pressure control and a small, though at this time insignificant, trend in a1c control. and for community residents who attend three or more reach diabetes self-management education classes, a significant decrease in a1c control has been observed (from an average of 10.3 per cent a1c to 7.1 per cent) (jenkins et al. 2011). however, dm control (a1c, blood pressure, lipids, and associated complications of stroke, cardiovascular and kidney disease) for community residents remains a challenge and the focus of current actions through reach. applying community-engaged research principles our partnerships between communities and academic institutions as a strategy for social change are gaining recognition and momentum. in their truest form, these partnerships require time and commitment but have the power to transform the individuals, the communities and the institutions that are part of them. our projects reflect different points on the continuum of cenr, from collaboration on certain aspects of the research (i.e. recruitment, implementation) to an equitable partnership with community members as co-investigators who work side by side with academic researchers in all phases of the research partnership. three projects (sugar, cohr, and sleigh) focused on the genetic influence on diseases among the sc gullah population and worked with the sifp to address cultural preferences, recruitment and implementation strategies. the hcc projects adopted similar cenr approaches. reach has progressed along this continuum to involve shared decision-making with the coalitions and shared protocol development, implementation, evaluation and dissemination strategies. the latest cohr projects reflect the ideal point on the cenr continuum, with community co-investigators and partnership in all phases of the research. table 2 highlights each study and adoption of the established cenr principles. http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/reach/materials/index.html http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/reach/materials/index.html 161 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews research studies research goal/ purpose community partners community services provided results project sugar isolate and identify genes responsible for t2dm and obesity citizen advisory board (cac), later known as sea islands family project (sifp) federally qualified health centers (fqhc) project sugar mobile health unit free health screenings and diabetes education recruited 650 african american (aa) families created dna and data repository dna registries used to identify markers for t2dm cohr determine magnitude of oral health disease isolate genes that increase susceptibility to periodontal disease determine oral health treatment strategies that work fqhc dental clinics sifp churches mayor’s office dental care free oral examinations dental education higher rates of periodontal disease among gullahs compared to other aas deep cleaning, with no antibiotic, enough to improve periodontal health and glycemic control in t2dm gullah aas new oral health promoter intervention being tested in churches sleigh identify genes and environmental triggers that cause lupus and lupus-related autoimmunity, and assess the prevalence and severity of lupus in the gullah population local lupus support and patient advocacy groups sifp free autoimmune disease screenings and lupus education higher prevalence of lupus among gullah families compared to other population studies finding of potential genes predisposing to lupus and potential environmental triggers of disease hollings cancer center impact of community education to improve cancer knowledge and receptivity to cancer trials to test the impact of genetic polymorphisms on racial disparities in breast and prostate cancer incidence and mortality 15 civic and service organisations sifp train the trainer modules in community mobile health van cancer knowledge can improve with community education more positive perceptions of cancer clinical trials following the intervention 40 of the trained lay facilitators have conducted 104 sessions, reaching 3292 community members recently funded genetic studies are in the early stages of data collection reach decrease or eliminate disparities for african americans with t2dm charleston and georgetown diabetes coalition educational pamphlets, ‘my guide to sugar diabetes’ community education, free selfmanagement diabetes education, and linkages related to managing diabetes and seeking appropriate resources worked with local coalitions to establish 501(c)(3) non-profit organisations, and provide training for grant writing and methods for obtaining funds for sustainability beyond reach cdc funding engaged community in elimination or reduction in disparities related to a1c, kidney and lipid testing in aas with t2dm who visit their provider almost 50% reduction in diabetesrelated amputation rates across the two county areas established ongoing diabetes selfmanagement education programs in several sites table 1: summary of community-engaged research with sea island community 162 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews 163 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews before starting cenr what is necessary? consideration for success case example principle 1 principle 2 principle 3 principle 4 principle 5 principle 6 principle 7 principle 8 principle 9 establish clear goals become knowledgeable about the community establish relationships develop community self-determination partner with the community maintain respect for community diversity mobilise community assets release control maintain community collaboration project sugar improve t2dm prevention and treatment with new genetic discoveries cac members had extensive knowledge of gullah culture identified community strengths cac organised at inception of project cac composed of formal and informal leaders community embraced cultural heritage by celebrating annual gullah festival, penn center heritage day and moja arts festival, and invited research team memoranda of agreement with five fqhcs within the recruitment area multiple recruitment strategies all staff/ volunteers orientated to gullah culture hire staff from community cac request tangible benefits, i.e. education and health screenings and flexible protocol cac co-chaired by community stakeholder although the cac was formalised in 1995, it continues to meet today community-wide dissemination events cohr develop a model to improve oral health of rural gullah communities sought input from preestablished sifp created study-specific community advisory board research team participated in multiple community events community members hired as part of the research team meetings with local leaders and historians to learn more about the culture and habits sifp partnerships were slowly formed with different community/church leaders partnership established with community clinics participated in multiple cultural events, educating the community on how to take better care of their oral health needs research team became involved in other projects, led by the community memoranda of understanding signed with three different community dental clinics formal partnership established with multiple churches in the sea island communities smaller community advisory boards formed in each participating community/church hired community members to be part of the research team used different recruitment/ intervention strategies, based on community input used community’s strengths (i.e. people assets and current infrastructure (church, community, dental clinics) to improve different aspects of the projects community and academic partners are co-principal investigators in different projects community organisation is funded by grant support community is involved in every aspect of the project, from the problem identification, through finding possible solutions to results dissemination research team involved in community-led projects sleigh decrease lupus morbidity and mortality among gullah through new genetic discoveries, to improve prevention and treatment modalities sought input from preestablished sifp to better inform protocol design and define recruitment strategies organised a smaller steering committee for the project provided educational seminars on lupus for the community performed autoimmune disease screenings within the community invited community members for autoimmune disease testing and counselling partnered with patient advocacy and support groups hired a community liaison, who is also an sifp member smaller steering committee formed in addition to quarterly meeting with the sifp multiple approaches and strategies based on community input and requests community members have initiated studies to address research questions utilising the sleigh cohort and have become approved study personnel continue to provide community services and feedback to the community on study findings and implications maintaining up-to-date contact information for study participants is a priority reach decrease disparities for aa gullah with diabetes employed members of the community to work collaboratively with researchers to identify goals and objectives, and design activities and evaluation methods for identifying and reducing disparities organised a coalition of community members and academic researchers to work together to identify and establish relationships with community leaders and members of the community researchers and public health leaders shared the science of diabetes with the community, while the community leaders and members decided when, where and how to apply the ‘science of diabetes’ within their communities memoranda of agreement with fqhcs, community organisations and libraries within the community multiple approaches and strategies based on community input and requests the community organisations and agencies were invited to identify a member of their community to lead community activities and serve as resources community organisations were invited to become coalition partners and receive funding for implementing activities identified members of the coalition and employees from the community were involved in decisionmaking related to ongoing activities of reach community members determined when, where, what and how to engage community in activities, while reach employees and coalition members assisted with implementing and evaluating community progress in addressing disparities related to diabetes management and control hollings cancer center improve cancer disparities identify effective cancer awareness, prevention and treatment in sea islands communities research team members participated in training sessions on sea island/ gullah culture research team members talked with local historians and read literature research team attended cultural events in the community conducted cancer education training programs with gullah community members advisory committee comprised of sea island community members provided cancer screening, patient navigation and cancer education services in the sea island communities ‘train the trainer’ approach with lay community facilitators hcc recently conducted a cultural competence training led by the internationally renowned national coalition building institute group participated in sea island community celebration; as a result, one of the community leaders will play a major role in organising the research team to conduct a cancer education/ training program with members of her community presented initial research to sifp to obtain approval and input before moving forward with the studies continue to provide tangible services to community members and will expect community members to highlight areas of cancer research in which they would like to collaborate with members of the research team table 2: case studies and principles for community engagement 164 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews challenges, lessons learned, recommendations challenges experienced by our research teams have been organised into three major areas: 1) structural inequality; 2) organisational and cultural issues; and 3) resources for sustainable infrastructure. structural inequality structural inequalities observed by our team include common issues experienced by rural isolated communities, such as distance from health service centres, lack of adequate transportation systems, lack of access to healthy foods (from grocery stores) and poor communication systems. rural communities, such as the sea island gullah communities, have difficulty accessing these services due to their geographical location. recommendation one strategy, as recommended early in this process by the original citizen advisory committee, was to balance the research agendas with community services and to provide tangible health benefits to the community. for example, project sugar provided free diabetes education/screening; hcc provides prostate and breast pap screening, utilising the mobile health unit; cohr provides dental examination and primary therapy at no cost; reach provides health fairs and community education. organisational and cultural issues historically, african americans as a group have not participated in clinical trials and health-related research, especially genetic research, and the numbers are more dismal among rural aa (bonvicini 1998; byrd et al. 2009). a history of exploitation in minority rural communities may manifest in a number of ways, including fear and lack of trust and participation in research. lack of trust has been one of the major challenges faced by researchers trying to conduct cenr among the sea islanders. isolated from the mainland until the 1950s, the sea island communities have been largely ignored, victims of benign neglect, and have experienced racial discrimination and jim crow laws. they are suspicious of ‘outsiders’, and their ingrained cultural norms have been passed down through many generations. with a history of no direct benefit from research, in some cases experiencing harm from research, and no feedback or results of studies, it is not unusual to encounter participants with cultural memories of negative experiences, anger and reluctance to get involved – even when the research is proposing a cenr approach. these behaviours are validated by the literature, in that the most frequently mentioned challenge to conducting effective community-based research is lack of trust and perceived lack of respect, particularly between researchers and community members (israel 1988, 2003). recommendation as the first genetic research among the sea islanders, project sugar spent the first year building relationships, identifying and seeking support from both formal and informal leaders, and hiring credible 165 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews and influential gullah leaders as part of the project staff. explicit in the comments from the stakeholders was the need to ‘sit at the table’ and to formally organise a cac. it was important for the academic partners to both listen to and acknowledge the past negative and exploitative history of this community. this often emotionally difficult and time-consuming process, however, enabled the other projects to build upon the prior positive working relationships of project sugar as a viable strategy for conducting cenr. equally important for the academic organisational culture is broad-based support from the institution and principal investigators and provision of resources for the community beyond the scope of the research agenda. all teams have written these provisions into grant funding and/or have been able to identify other academic resources to enable participation in local health fairs and gullah cultural events. resources for sustainable infrastructure the most challenging and important lesson learned is the continued need for resources, such as research infrastructure and community liaison, to maintain ongoing communication channels between the community partners and the academic institution, especially between funding grants. currently, a formal infrastructure with ongoing financial support for the sifp does not exist; instead, resources and administrative tasks for quarterly meetings, along with the commitment of sifp members to attend quarterly meetings, are shared among the research projects. ongoing community collaboration is critical for establishing and maintaining trust and respect between the academic and community partners. paramount to this is the need to identify funds and resources to formalise the infrastructure and to continue maintaining and improving community ties. yet, despite these challenges, all of our cenr projects have enjoyed some degree of success, by utilising community-engagement principles and drawing on the insight, planning and relationships built during the initial study, project sugar, as well as the commitment of both academic and research partners. lessons learned through clearly articulating and sharing goals, becoming knowledgeable about the community culture and embedding the cultural context with research approaches, important lessons have been learned. utilising existing community assets (especially people) and community infrastructure (community clinics and churches) has also benefited these projects. in addition to the above, it is important that community academic partners have patience and allow time to build relationships, to recognise, respect and include the local expertise, to use a variety of recruitment strategies, and to acknowledge memories that may lead to distrust of researchers. we are also aware that dissemination of research findings to the community can be challenging for multiple projects. to address this problem, a community celebration was held on 21 166 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews january 2012 at a local high school, to share findings from all the projects under the sifp umbrella. the sifp was active in planning this event, which combined a mutual sharing of research findings and cultural activities (e.g. local singers and dancers). the event alternated research and community presentations and was led by a local gullah councilwoman. researchers from all projects shared results of their study findings along with moving testimonials from research participants. over 200 community participants attended this historical event. conclusion the ultimate goal of clinical and health services research is to create knowledge that can be used to improve health and health care for individuals and communities. to achieve this goal effectively, especially when working with under-served populations, investigators are increasingly incorporating community input into all stages of the research. community-based participatory research, which provides principles and processes for obtaining community input and engagement, is being increasingly used in traditional medical research settings. true community engagement can be difficult and labour intensive and require dedicated resources to help ensure its success. our work and our journey to date is a small testament to the potential for systems change and social action on health inequalities. it is by no means without flaws and is still evolving. nonetheless, we are a tight-knit group of like-minded researchers, research staff and community members who are committed to the principles of cenr, in that we strive to provide ongoing capacity building and improved quality of life for our sea island families. the sifp continues to meet quarterly at the academic institution, and community members have expressed interest in becoming a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation with hopes of attracting funding to promote sustainability. to this end, we offer the following recommendations for academic and community sustainability: —federal funding agencies need to re-examine funding priorities, as well as how funding is structured, reviewed, distributed and evaluated, to support higher educational community partnerships. —academic partners must work together with community partners to change the culture of higher education to include those values that support communities as equal partners. —to enhance understanding and respect, academic partners must acknowledge the strength, value and culture of the community. —community partners have the responsibility to share their collective wisdom and knowledge with academic partners and funding agencies. —academic institutions should support community members as civic leaders, change agents and community-based researchers. —academic institutions should compensate community members for their expertise. 167 | gateways | spruill, leite, fernandes, kamen, ford, jenkins, hunt & andrews —both community and academic partners should develop principles of participation and written agreements to clarify terms of engagement and expectations. acknowledgements we thank the members of the sea island families project for their support and guidance. grant supporting this project: “the project described was supported by award number ncrr/ ncats/nih ul1rr029882 and ul1 tr000062. the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the national center for research resources or the national institutes of health.” ijs: r01 dk084350 (nih/niddk) rsl: p20 rr-017696 (south carolina cobre for oral health/nih/ ncrr), r21 de021979 (nih/nidcr), w81 xwh1020057 (dod usamraa), p30 rr033382 (cobre iii award/nih/ncrr). jkf: p20 rr-017696 (south carolina cobre for oral health/nih/ ncrr) dlk: p60 ar062755 (nih/niams), r21 es017934 (nih/niehs) mef: r01 md005892 (nih/nimhd), p20 ca157066 (nih/nci), w81xwh-10-2-0057 (dod usamraa), p30 ca138313 (nih/nci), r21ca152865 (nih/nci), w81xwh-11-2-0164 (dod usamraa) cj: u50/ccu422184 and 1u58dp001015 (cdc), r15 nr00948601a1 (nih/ninr) kjh: r01-md004251 (nih/nimhd), r01-dk084350 (nih/niddk) joa: 5r01hl090951 (nih/nhlbi) references bandyopadhyay, d, marlow, n, fernandes, j & leite, r 2010, ‘periodontal disease progression and glycaemic control among gullah african americans with type-2 diabetes’, journal of clinical periodontology, vol. 37, pp. 501–09. ben-zvi, i, aranow, c, 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‘genome-wide linkage scan in gullah-speaking african american families with type 2 diabetes: the sea islands genetic african american registry (project sugar), diabetes, vol. 58, pp. 260–67. soskolne, w & klinger, a 2001, ‘the relationship between periodontal diseases and diabetes: an overview’, annals of periodontology, vol. 6, pp. 91–98. spruill, i 2004, ‘project sugar: a recruitment model for successful african–american participation in health research’, journal of national black nurses association, vol. 15, pp. 48–53. turner, l, mille, k & montgomery, m 1974, africanisms in the gullah dialect, university of michigan press, ann arbor, mi. www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm a hong kong university first establishing service-learning as an academic credit-bearing subject the benefits of service-learning (s-l) for the intellectual and personal development of students, as well as its value as a platform for campus-community partnerships, have been much discussed in the past few decades (astin et al. 2000, 2006; xin & ma 2010). the term ‘service-learning’ was coined in 1967 in the us and its growth on college campuses there has since been witnessed. the concept and practice were further developed in asia following an international conference on s-l in chiang mai, thailand, in 2004, organised by the international partnership for service-learning and leadership (ipsl). hong kong and china, for example, later began to adopt the pedagogy in their curricula (chan & ma 2006). lingnan university (lu), with its liberal arts mission, was the first university in asia to institutionalise s-l by establishing the office of service-learning (osl) in 2006. the osl plays a vital role in collaborating with other academic departments to offer a real-life opportunity for students to apply in the community the knowledge and skills that they have gained from coursework, and to integrate useful knowledge with practice. service-learning is defined as: [a] course-based, credit bearing educational experience in which students (a) participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs, and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility (bringle & hatcher 1995, p. 112). it is an innovative pedagogy that connects theory and practice; through performing high-quality community service, students put their academic knowledge into practice. their studies are in turn reinforced and learning deepened through the process of critical thinking and self-reflection. in other words, s-l allows students to: 1 participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs; gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 178–98 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 carol ma hok ka alfred chan cheung ming lingnan university 179 | gateways | ma & chan 2 reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain a further understanding of the course contents; and 3 learn to care, serve and be socially-aware and responsible (bringle & hatcher 1995, p. 112). the s-l program at lu and all related courses and activities are supported by the osl. the roles of the osl are to identify the needs of society, conduct training and reflective meetings about the social issues which need to be addressed, and work with staff in partnering departments and service agencies to ensure that the intended learning outcomes are met. it was stipulated in the 2011 university development plan that s-l would be a graduation requirement in 2014–15. currently s-l at lu comprises three different modes: —mode 1. community-based service-learning activities: students participate in non-credit-bearing s-l activities locally and internationally, for example, a community outreach program in developing asian countries. a minimum of 30 hours of subjectrelated community services is required. —mode 2. partially integrated course mode: students participate in s-l associated with credit-bearing courses offered by other academic departments (also known as departmental courses). students undertaking this mode normally use their tutorial hours for service – in practice, a trade-off of two service hours for one tutorial hour (a total of 15 hours); other course requirements such as lecture attendance remain the same. the service element in these courses is closed related to the learning objectives and course content. an example of this is devising business plans for local social enterprises as part of the strategic management course offered by the department of management. students are normally placed with an agency where they carry out their services (projects) in groups of four to five for a minimum of 30 hours a term. projects are graded by course instructors, agency supervisors and osl coordinators. —mode 3. fully integrated course mode: students participate in credit-bearing s-l courses offered by osl, ‘community engagement through service-learning’ and ‘cross-border service-learning summer institute’. these courses are also called independent courses. students in this mode devote their entire contact hours to s-l and they also have to attend lectures and seminars offered by osl; it is a form of work-based learning. s-l is currently integrated in the majority of the university disciplines, forming part of the undergraduate program. the following sections will discuss in more depth the history and development of the whole program, how the program actually operates and the lessons learned while institutionalising servicelearning at lingnan. 180 | gateways | ma & chan development of service-learning at lingnan university from community service to service-learning even before the establishment of osl in 2006, because of its longstanding motto ‘education for service’, lu emphasised both academic studies and community service. service among students was mainly promoted by the student services center through different projects conducted in cooperation with non-government organisations (ngos) and the government. the asia-pacific institute of ageing studies further developed this community engagement by launching the research internship program (rip) and the lingnan angels program (lap). in the first term of 2004–05, a pilot service-learning and research scheme (slrs) was implemented, mainly funded by the kwan fong charitable foundation. the primary aim of the slrs was to offer students opportunities for learning through providing voluntary services to the needy, while also providing initial data for academic research. under the guidance of course instructors and agencies, students developed positive attitudes and skills (for example, communication and problem-solving skills), and applied their classroom knowledge in serving the community. the proposal to look at the possibility of developing the lingnan s-l model followed the successful insertion of what was referred to as a ‘service practicum’ in two social sciences courses, namely ‘crime and delinquency’ and ‘health, illness and behaviour’, back in 2000. in the practicum component, students spent their tutorial hours (around 15 hours in total) on a subject-related group project. in the projects they applied what they had learned in class in addressing a social need (for example, promoting anti-smoking in schools). the practicum was well received by both the students and the partnering agencies (for example, schools and non-profit organisations). it was following the aforementioned ipsl international conference in chiang mai, thailand, that lu started to recognise s-l as a structured educational experience. the former associate vice-president of lu, professor barton starr, led the delegation and provided total support for faculty members to develop courses with an s-l element. with his backing, and a modest donation of hk$500,000 secured by the former president, professor edward chen, the service-learning and research scheme was piloted in 2004. from non-credit-bearing to credit-bearing the years between 2004 and 2006 were important landmarks for the development of s-l at lu: s-l components were imbedded across the curriculum. the model emphasised both research and evaluation mechanisms. the service-learning and research scheme: the lingnan model (chan & ma 2006) was published. following the successful validation of slrs, the former president obtained a huge donation to establish a university-wide protocol for service181 | gateways | ma & chan learning for the next 10 years. together with encouragement from the service partners in the local community, the office of service-learning (osl) was established in 2006, charged with the following mission: —to promote lu’s motto, ‘education for service’ — to provide reciprocal benefits to the participants and the community — to produce a positive developmental impact on student learning and growth — to enhance learning and teaching efficacy through servicelearning. the osl further integrated s-l into lingnan’s liberal arts curriculum (mode 2), being one of the first among academic institutions in hong kong to do so. in 2007 it began offering its own courses with three credits (mode 3). overall, almost 3000 students have participated in s-l, with on average of about 400 students participating in the program every year. the following table shows the number of lu students joining the various s-l modes between 2006 and 2012: modes 2006–07 2007–08 2008–09 2009–10 2010–11 2011–12 mode 1 communitybased 11 (0.48%) 129 (5.61%) 75 (3.26%) 94 (4.09%) 145 (6.30%) 84 (3.65%) mode 2 partially integrated course 273 (11.87%) 236 (10.26%) 343 (14.91%) 298 (12.96%) 394 (17.13%) 390 (16.96%) mode 3 fully integrated course – 15 (0.65%) 7 (0.30%) 17 (0.74%) 33 (1.43%) 24 (1.04%) total 284 (12.35%) 380 (16.52%) 425 (18.48%) 409 (17.78%) 572 (24.87%) 498 (21.65%) note: % denotes the number of students joining s-l program modes out of the total number of students at lu. from credit-bearing to graduation requirement as lu moved toward a four-year educational model in 2012, s-l has gained in prominence in this liberal arts university. starting from the 2014 intake, all lu students will have to be involved in one s-l activity or take and pass at least one course with an s-l element before their graduation. this is known as the servicelearning requirement (slr). since s-l courses and projects are of different types, there are five principles in determining whether students have successfully fulfilled the slr, namely community engagement, reciprocity, reflection, public dissemination, and time requirement. students have to fulfil a minimum threshold requirement under each. these principles follow the theoretical underpinnings of s-l closely, and this will be discussed in detail in the next section. moreover, with its experience in s-l, osl of lu now plays a major role in developing s-l networks among higher education table 1: number of lu students joining different s-l modes, 2006–12 182 | gateways | ma & chan institutions in hong kong and asia. the higher education servicelearning network (hesln) in hong kong and service-learning asia network (slan) were set up in 2009 and 2011 respectively, and lu serves as the secretariat for both. in retrospect, the development of s-l at lu was aided by timely support from the president’s office as well as community partners. at the same time, it also adopted the right strategies at the right time. the following section details the theoretical framework for conceptualising s-l at lu, as well as designing its actual operation. theoretical framework for conceptualising and implementing s-l at lingnan university three main strands of theory and philosophy inform the conceptualisation and implementation of s-l, namely wholeperson education, experiential learning, and knowledge transfer. they are interrelated: without any of the strands, it is difficult to achieve knowledge transfer. experiential learning is one of the best platforms on which whole-person education can be practised, and as students apply what they learn in real-life situations knowledge transfer results. whole-person education as a mission lu is devoted to delivering whole-person education that fosters the development of community leadership; this is exemplified in its ‘profile for the ideal lingnan graduate’ (‘profile’), specified in the strategic plan for 2009–2016. after their undergraduate program, an ideal lingnan graduate will: — have strong oral and written language proficiency in both english and chinese (putonghua as well as cantonese), together with excellent communication and interpersonal skills; —be committed to involvement in and service of the community; — have an international outlook and be able to understand problems from different cultural perspectives; — have a secure grounding in his/her chosen academic field and an awareness of possible cross-disciplinary applications; — possess essential generic research-related skills, including knowledge of it; — have strong analytical skills and a capacity for independent critical thinking; —be imaginative and possess problem solving capabilities; —be capable of imaginative and sound planning; — have excellent communication skills, based on tolerance, integrity, civility, and a sense of personal responsibility; —have both the capacity and desire for life-long learning. 183 | gateways | ma & chan consistent with the profile, all educational activities should help students enhance the following skills: — communication skills: having the sensitivity and confidence to communicate with others, and understanding the values of group discussion — organization skills: being able to organize events and others, and feeling competent and empowered to lead others when necessary — problem-solving skills: being able to identify, frame, and resolve problems. — subject-related knowledge: being able to identify and apply knowledge related to one’s academic subject to authentic situations, and seeing the usefulness of that subject — research skills: being able to frame and conduct information gathering, and understand the importance of this process to knowledge acquisition — social competence: having an increased understanding of others and oneself, and being able to connect with others who are different — civic orientation: feeling empathy for others, having personal responsibility for social situations, and planning for future civic action. these seven skills and competences are known as the seven domains, and at lu can be understood as s-l intended learning outcomes, which guide the design of all courses and service projects. the validity and reliability of the tool (a set of preand post-course questionnaires) measuring the seven domains have been repeatedly validated in lingnan’s course evaluation and research projects (chan & ma 2009). table 2 illustrates how each skill/competence is related to the profile descriptors. profile for the ideal lingnan graduate descriptors (profile of a community leader) related servicelearning intended learning outcomes have strong oral and written language proficiency in both english and chinese (putonghua as well as cantonese), together with excellent communication and interpersonal skills communication skills social competence be committed to involvement in and service of the community civic orientation have an international outlook and be able to understand problems from different cultural perspectives problem-solving skills research skills social competence have a secure grounding in his/her chosen academic field and an awareness of possible cross-disciplinary applications subject-related knowledge research skills table 2: how s-l intended learning outcomes relate to the ‘profile for the ideal lingnan graduate’ 184 | gateways | ma & chan possess essential generic research-related skills, including knowledge of it research skills have strong analytical skills and a capacity for independent critical thinking research skills problem-solving skills be imaginative and possess problem solving capabilities problem-solving skills be capable of imaginative and sound planning; organisation skills have excellent cooperative skills, based on tolerance, integrity, civility, and a sense of personal responsibility communication skills organisation skills social competence have both the capacity and desire for life-long learning research skills subject-related knowledge experiential learning as a vehicle with whole-person education as lu’s mission, students at lu are trained to acquire the above skills and knowledge. lu believes that s-l, as the experiential learning vehicle, is one of the best ways to achieve this as students experience real learning by establishing links between the classroom and the community. early practitioners of s-l indeed made their pedagogical home in the field of experiential learning (stanton, giles & cruz 1999), in which life experience is infused with the learning environment and content. kolb and fry (1975), in their experiential learning model, suggest that learning occurs when one goes through a cycle consisting of concrete experience, observation of and reflection on that experience, formation of abstract concepts based upon the reflection and testing the new concepts, and that learning can begin with any one of them. john dewey (1938), the most famous proponent of experiential education, believed that for an experience to be educational certain parameters had to be met, the most important being continuity of and interaction with the experience. in other words, the experience should come from and lead to other experiences, motivating the person to learn more, and should also meet the internal needs or goals of the person. s-l is a form of experiential education in which students engage in a cycle of service and reflection. it provides students with experiences through which they can test and apply what they have learned in the classroom. from lu’s experience, students not only integrate knowledge into their service experience, they also investigate social issues through different research methods. while processing knowledge about the community issues investigated through continuous guided reflection and observation, civic engagement is increased; in going through the process of knowledge building, knowledge application and knowledge transfer, students have the opportunity to co-create knowledge (see figure 1). 185 | gateways | ma & chan awareness, self-appraisal and understanding new insights and experience developed and transformed or even transferred from and to the community acceptance and internalisation of knowledge/skills operationalisation and application of knowledge/ skills in reality throughout the process, a cycle of reflective learning is developed. new concepts may also be created as a result of this, upon which another cycle of learning begins. that is to say, learning has to go through several stages: awareness and self-appraisal, internalisation of what has been learned, and understanding of how the knowledge can be operationalised and new skills and knowledge developed and transformed, and even transferred from and to the community (see figure 2). in the s-l program at lu, the service projects are fully integrated into courses (not added to courses) and are designed in such a way that ensures that ‘both the service enhances the learning and learning enhances the service’ (furco 1996, p. 5). in other words, the project is intended to provide services to those in need of them as well as to help students better understand the issue they are investigating. this is also precisely why lu very much values the dialogue between academia and the community, which is evident in the establishment of the community-faculty committee and involvement of each stakeholder in the whole course development and implementation process. knowledge transfer as a process with different stakeholders’ involvement, knowledge transfer (kt) becomes a process, which has emerged from and indeed is a mission of higher education in hong kong and china, together figure 1: cycle of reflective learning (developed by the authors in 2004 at the ipsl international conference in thailand) figure 2: knowledge building, application and transfer through servicelearning 186 | gateways | ma & chan with teaching and research. the university grants committee (ugc) has incorporated kt into its mission statement and institutional mission statement. kt is ‘the systems and processes by which knowledge, including technology, know-how, expertise and skills, are transferred between higher education institutions and society, lead[ing] to innovative, profitable or economic or social improvements’ (ugc 2012). it is the dissemination of expertise, skills and capabilities from universities as the academic knowledge base to institutions or organisations in need of the knowledge, including non-government organisations and other nonacademic beneficiaries. knowledge to and from society provides organisations and the targeted population with the means to increase capability and improve conditions (kto, hkbu 2012). the ultimate goal of kt is to work with communities, philanthropic networks and individuals, ‘so as to generate strategic social innovations through synergy’ (kto, hkbu 2012). s-l is an excellent platform for the operation of kt: knowledge learned and created in the university is spread to the community through service. through kt, the osl aims to forge close ties with faculty, students and the general public to create a progressive hong kong society and world. it can be said that kt is core to the lu’s motto ‘education for service’. indeed, the mission of whole-person education cannot be achieved without using s-l as a vehicle for kt. this theoretical framework informs the current practice of s-l at lu. implementation of s-l at lu: from course conception to course evaluation development of s-l courses and their endorsement process quality assurance is an important element in creating s-l courses, so development and approval of new courses is the first step in the program’s quality assurance. in doing this, the osl plays multiple roles including those of catalyst, solution provider, process helper, resource linker and confidence encourager (farmer 1990). before the start of every academic year, osl, together with the community-faculty committee, discuss the direction of the courses and projects for the coming year to ensure that the needs of both the course instructors and the community are met. developing new courses includes incorporating s-l elements into existing departmental courses and developing independent s-l courses from scratch. at lu, this involves four key stages, namely promoting, planning, initiating and obtaining approval for the courses, before they are officially offered. 1 promoting enhancing knowledge of s-l is the first step in instilling the s-l culture on campus, in order for faculty members to respond by integrating s-l elements in their courses. osl promotes the aims and objectives, as well as the values and benefits of s-l, to academic staff through the following means: 187 | gateways | ma & chan a) s-l events for faculty members one of the roles of osl is to provide the opportunity for experienced agencies to meet with interested faculty to discuss opportunities for potential partnerships. osl also invites various experts in s-l to share the design of their programs and stories of success with the faculty at events such as themed luncheons, faculty training and s-l conferences. these are platforms for faculty members and community partners to meet and understand more about the relationship between academia and the community, in particular how win–win partnerships can be fostered. b) resource sharing osl regularly shares useful s-l resources with faculty members and provides support. these include annual reports, newsletters and student assessment tools. various publications and online resources are also available on the osl website and in the university library. osl makes sure that the collection in the library is up to date by regularly making purchase suggestions to the librarians. c) meetings with course instructors osl staff meet with course instructors to talk in greater detail about the s-l concept and to explain how s-l can enhance student learning and faculty’s professional development through possible partnerships at lu. they also address concerns course instructors may have and suggest service opportunities that are highly relevant to their course content, students’ needs and intended learning outcomes, at the same time addressing a social need. 2 planning during the promotion stage, some faculty members become interested in the s-l pedagogy and decide to officially incorporate s-l in their courses. they then put forward a proposal, with support from osl, which addresses the following: —evidence of community needs and student demand for the proposed course/s-l component —intended student learning outcomes —relationship between the proposed service project and course content —how the s-l project (both processes and final product) will benefit the community —course components, respective roles of different stakeholders (for example, osl, community agencies) and resource implications —how the course relates to (and is different from) existing s-l courses —student assessment mechanisms. —for independent s-l courses (mode 3), osl considers the availability of academic expertise, as well as the above items. 188 | gateways | ma & chan 3 initiating after careful research and planning, interested course instructors complete a form containing the following items. a) the course: —course title —course description —course structure and content —learning outcomes and measurement —assessment criteria and weightings —reading list (if any). b) the service project(s): —project title(s) —aims and objectives —student number —service target and number —project nature and content —roles and responsibilities of osl coordinators, course instructors, agency supervisors and students —schedule —budget. 4 obtaining approval before launching for departmental courses, after the course instructor has consulted osl, the course proposal is first discussed at the departmental level and then submitted to the s-l programme committee. the course is endorsed by the department board and curriculum committee of the relevant department, which is responsible for submitting the course syllabus to the academic quality assurance committee (aqac) and finally to the senate for consideration for endorsement and approval. independent courses designed and taught by osl go through similar procedures. operation and quality assurance of s-l courses under both the existing practice and the proposed future development (that is, the service-learning requirement (slr) for graduation in the 2014–15 academic year), partially integrated courses (departmental courses with s-l elements) serve the most number of students. osl works closely with course instructors and community agencies as it conducts a specific, standardised implementation process to ensure that each course meets the standards of teaching and learning, as well as community needs. the implementation process involves four major stages: preparation, training, project, and assessment. the following sections outline the existing practice, and new arrangements in view of the development of slr are also specified. the whole process is coordinated by experienced osl staff who have at least two years working experience in osl or the education/training field, monitored by senior osl staff with more than four years s-l experience. 189 | gateways | ma & chan 1 preparation a) roles of osl during this stage, ideally three months prior to the term’s commencement, course coordinators from osl confirm with course instructors on courses that will be offered with s-l elements. at the same time, they also identify and liaise with service agencies that are able to provide student placement opportunities and supervision. apart from sharing the rationale and objectives of s-l, they discuss with the agency supervisors the project arrangements, such as duties and responsibilities, and come to an agreement before the commencement of the courses. b) roles of course instructors course instructors also modify the course structure by integrating s-l (the 30 service hours) into their courses. currently, in some courses, the service-learning element replaces the traditional tutorials, whereas in other courses students can choose to participate either in the servicelearning project or tutorials. in the future, under the slr, students will still be given this freedom, but whether they opt to participate in the s-l project and therefore fulfil the slr has to be clearly stated during course registration. c) the first lecture a student guideline with all relevant materials is prepared by osl coordinators prior to the first lecture of each course and a briefing session is arranged and delivered by course instructors and osl coordinators during the lecture. students also fill out pre-test questionnaires that assess their performance on the intended s-l outcomes (the seven domains mentioned above), namely subject-related knowledge, communication skills, organisation skills, problem-solving skills, research skills, civic orientation and social competence. 2 training a) agency orientation before actual involvement in service projects, students need to be familiar with the background of the agencies. osl course coordinators arrange agency orientations for students where they meet their agency supervisors and get to know about the agency and its plans. this event engages students by arousing their interest and their passion to serve and learn in the particular service context. b) training workshops training workshops are held by course instructors and/or osl coordinators and sometimes by other professional trainers (such as social workers experienced in working with the elderly) as well, to equip students with the necessary skills. these workshops focus on specific elements that help students with the designated tasks of their projects. students also receive training in general skills that are relevant to s-l, such as basic theories of experiential learning and reflective cycles, 190 | gateways | ma & chan teamwork, critical thinking and research skills. there is an aptitude test for students to complete, so that both students themselves and osl get to know the students’ characters, strengths and weaknesses. following are some examples of questions raised at the training workshops: —what is s-l? —why do you participate in s-l? —what are the roles and responsibilities of students? —how is the project related to course materials? —what are the expected learning outcomes (both subject-related and for personal development)? —what social issue(s) could potentially be addressed? —what are the expected outcomes for or impacts on different stakeholders? —what are the students’ expectations of participating in s-l and how likely will these expectations be fulfilled via s-l? each project is of a unique nature and is set in a different social context. osl therefore strives to work closely with departments in providing more specific information and skills training for the students. course instructors can take this opportunity to further elaborate the rationale and underlying principles of the project, in relation to the course objectives, so as to help students recognise the links between them. in addition, agencies may offer workshops that provide very specific information for and/or train students who work with a special community. examples are skills for interviewing elderly people with depression, skills for communicating with patients on rehabilitation, and training in the culture and customs of south asians. 3 project agency supervisors provide professional guidance to students in planning, implementing and evaluating their proposed tasks in the project. within the course lectures, course instructors introduce case studies and topics related to the specific s-l projects to deepen students’ understanding of the subject-related knowledge as well as to optimise the integration of s-l elements into the course. a) consultation meetings in experiential learning, reflection is particularly important because it makes the learning process continuous. reflection clarifies the values behind the students’ academic and community experiences and raises students’ awareness of their social responsibility. there are thus at least two consultation meetings in each course for each project group, which allow students to track their learning progress and consider ways to improve their service quality, as well as further strengthen links with the course materials. course instructors, coordinators from osl and sometimes the agency supervisors are involved in these meetings. 191 | gateways | ma & chan before the consultation meetings, course instructors design a set of reflective questions related to both the service project and the subject matter to facilitate students’ reflection. at the same time, students are asked to provide an update of both their progress and their team’s performance so that they can evaluate their personal and team development. apart from this, osl has prepared a reflective diary and a consultation guideline for general use, which is given to students to facilitate their reflection and learning consolidation. questions such as the following will be asked at the meetings: —what is the most impressive moment so far? how did it affect you? —what have you observed in the project that links with the course materials? —what is the relationship between the service and the social issues? —have you achieved your learning goals and objectives? how? course instructors and coordinators from osl also familiarise themselves with the service projects and related activities, which allows them to provide timely feedback to the students. it is also a good time to collect students’ comments on the course/project arrangements and their suggestions for improvement. through this consultation and observation, program quality is monitored and students are kept on the right track through regular support. b) reflective meetings since reflection is of utmost importance in the s-l learning process, osl organises a reflective meeting (more than one session is offered) to gather together all students involved in s-l in the term to review their learning progress halfway through the project. students share their project nature and content, observations and inspirations, links between their experiences and academic knowledge, as well as personal development. they are guided to further understand the reflective cycle by applying their own service and learning experiences to it. the meeting serves as a platform for students from different courses to share their learning and experiences with each other, opening another channel to their understanding of social needs. osl also listens to feedback from students for program improvement. c) internal meetings among osl coordinators throughout the term, coordinators from osl communicate regularly with both the course instructors and the agencies to keep track of project progress and students’ performance. in the middle of the term, there is a meeting for all the coordinators to share the project’s progress and the students’ performance – the difficulties they have encountered, as well as good practices for program development. coordinators also 192 | gateways | ma & chan share feedback collected from students, agencies and course instructors so that they can address any issues or modify materials for use in the second half of the term. 4 evaluation and assessment a) evaluation by students upon completion of the project, all students complete post-test questionnaires, which are sent to their osl coordinators. there is also a peer review where students assess the performance of their group members. in addition, students are required to submit a group project report and individual reflective essays, focusing on academic knowledge enhancement, learning outcomes, and their reflection. these reports and essays are graded by the course instructors. osl also conducts content analyses of the reflective essays to investigate the process of the students’ learning. b) in-class presentations and report-back celebrations all participating students engage in in-class presentations. osl also hosts report-back celebrations for outstanding groups. these provide a platform for all osl coordinators, social service agency supervisors, course instructors and students to share the fruits of the teaching and learning and the impact of the services on the community. it is also an opportunity for students to practise their presentation skills and share their learning outcomes and reflections with others. students’ presentations are assessed based on the course requirements set out by the course instructors, and their performance is counted towards their final grades. sometimes agency representatives are also invited as members of the judging panels, helping to assess students’ presentation skills and content. in some courses, the scores given by the agencies become part of the final grades. c) focus groups focus groups are conducted by osl staff to gain a deeper understanding of the students’ learning experience and continually improve the operation of the courses and projects. d) evaluation by course instructors and agency supervisors course instructors assess the service products (for example, videos, strategic plans), which are strongly related to the course content. osl coordinators also hold evaluation meetings with both the course instructors and the agency supervisors. in view of the slr, osl is currently piloting a summative questionnaire which is to be filled out by course instructors and agency supervisors at the end of the service project. using the summative questionnaire, course instructors and agency supervisors assess students’ performances in the s-l project based on a standardised service-learning outcome indicators rubric table, which has been formulated according to the seven domains. in other words, different stakeholders will be assessing the students using the same criteria and in terms of measurable learning outcomes. this is believed 193 | gateways | ma & chan to increase the rigour of the course and project evaluations, and to ease comparisons between the perceptions of different stakeholders. osl also encourages course instructors to adopt them in their official assessments. table 3 below summarises the course implementation procedure and related assessment and quality assurance mechanisms discussed above. it should be noted that the agency visits, training and workshops, consultation meetings, reflective meetings, and in-class presentations and/or report-back celebrations are all mandatory in s-l at lu. responsible parties stages (i) course instructors (ci), osl project coordinators (pc) & agency supervisors (as) —courses approved —identify interested agencies 1. prep a ra tion sta ge  (ii) ci & pc —integrate s-l into courses, prepare necessary s-l guidelines for students —modify preand post-test questionnaires by adding specific subject-related knowledge items  (iii) ci, pc & students (s) —1st lecture: briefing and recruitment of students —1st week: students make tentative choices for their service sites within this week —2nd week of term: finalise student lists and project groups  (iv) ci & pc —pre-test questionnaires to be filled out by all students  (v) ci/pc & s —agency orientation 2. tra in in g sta ge  (vi) ci/pc —training workshops  (vii) ci, pc & s —consultation meetings  (viii) ci, pc, as & s —project and supervision 3. project sta ge  (ix) ci, pc & s —reflective meeting during service projects —on-site observations —internal meetings among osl coordinators table 3: implementation process of the partially integrated course mode (i.e. departmental courses) 194 | gateways | ma & chan  (x) ci, pc, as & s —post-test questionnaires to be filled out by all students —summative questionnaires to be filled out by ci and as 4. eva lu a tion & a ssessm en t sta ge  (xi) pc &s —group project reports, individual reflective essays  (xii) ci, pc, as and s —in-class presentations and report-back celebrations  (xiii) pc & s, pc & ci, pc & sa —focus groups with students —evaluation meetings with agencies —evaluation meetings with course instructors lesson learnt in institutionalising s-l at lu: the importance of faculty training and support as with other universities with a similar set-up, such as the office of service-learning at the hong kong polytechnic university (hong kong) and the service-learning centre at the fu jen catholic university in taiwan, a primary task of the osl is to facilitate course development (bringle & hatcher 1996). apart from adopting the course conception process as outlined above, osl at lingnan university has also come to realise the importance of utilising different creative means to start dialogue with faculty regarding s-l and to support them in both course development and s-l-related research through providing advice and liaison between faculty members and other community partners (that is, social service agencies). to this end, faculty training and support, including a faculty retreat, faculty workshops and a faculty resources website will all be put in place in the coming academic year. the retreat will allow faculty to work out concrete action plans in preparation for slr. the workshops will address topics that are of most interest and relevance to faculty, such as student assessment and research. the website will include both local and international information and resources on s-l and the community, which will be updated regularly. experience also tells us that faculty would appreciate some external incentives, such as having a coordinator in their department who oversees all s-l-related matters or a teaching assistant who communicates between faculty members and the community. the coordinators could actually become s-l associates who not only take care of the administrative arrangements but also act as advocates of s-l within their departments, while the teaching assistants could help to enhance communication among different stakeholders. sharing the s-l institutionalisation experiences at lu is very important and the above initiatives could assist this process. it is particularly important that the senior management group of the 195 | gateways | ma & chan university is made aware of these needs, so they can position s-l as an important initiative and make wise decisions on how best to use the resources and space available at the university. future direction of s-l in higher education in hong kong although s-l is relatively new among higher education institutions in hong kong, quite a few universities (for example, university of hong kong, polytechnic university of hong kong) are trying to use s-l as a teaching tool in their classes. through the collaborative efforts of the higher education service-learning network, it is hoped that more joint research and programs will be explored in order to create an s-l academic evidence base. measurement and validation of impacts of s-l on students and graduates undoubtedly, s-l is an educational activity that requires rigorous assessment and evaluation. gathering evidence from empirical studies of the learning outcomes of s-l programs is therefore of paramount importance. to date, much of the data for these studies has come from students’ perceived learning outcomes in completed preand post-course questionnaires, which has also been the practice at lu, as described above. apart from this, lu has begun conducting studies which compare students who have participated in s-l with those who have not; that is, longitudinal studies on s-l impacts on students. few studies, however, focus on the cumulative effect – otherwise known as the ‘dose effect’ – s-l has on students who have had multiple s-l experiences, or the effects an s-l course or project has on students at different points of time over an extended period, as highlighted by eyler (2000). the osl at lu is now starting to conduct studies that fill these two gaps, the results of which will be shared within the s-l network. some studies have shown that students engaged in s-l are more likely to participate in community service and to have a heightened sense of civic responsibility after graduation (for example, astin et al. 2000; misa, anderson & yamamura 2005; national commission on service-learning 2002). this type of research on graduates is currently lacking in hong kong and should be made one of the priorities in institutional s-l research. the effect of different factors, such as the nature of the s-l project (for example, direct versus indirect services), area of studies and number of years since graduation, could also be explored. development of a progressive s-l model as s-l gradually becomes mainstream in hong kong, higher education and lu staff, as educators, need to ask how students can develop academically, as well as in terms of civic efficacy, by progressing through stages in a well-designed s-l model, echoing the above need to study the cumulative effects of multiple s-l experiences on students. 196 | gateways | ma & chan at lu, staff are exploring the possibility of adopting a progressive model, in which students go through different stages of s-l with different learning focuses. first, they are encouraged to start their s-l journey by taking an introductory s-l course (in the case of lu, a mode 3 course offered by osl). in their second and third year, students can then continue to deepen their s-l experience by taking s-l courses in their own areas of study. meanwhile, they can take part in cross-border s-l programs during term and summer breaks, learning and serving in an overseas location. finally, as students approach graduation, they can integrate s-l elements into their final year projects or practicums as s-l would be an excellent platform from which to translate their cumulative disciplinary knowledge and competencies into projects that address community needs. each step in this progressive model would link closely and each would prepare students for the next step, while reinforcing what they have learned in the previous course. this progressive model could be further explored as a pilot at lu, reflecting our whole-education philosophy. conclusion campus engagement in the community can take many forms, from community work to internship to community-based research. it is, however, the belief of lu that s-l is the most meaningful way for cultivating a giving culture. first and foremost, it encompasses the central mission of higher education – teaching and learning – and involves both faculty and students in educationally meaningful service activities that address real community issues (bringle & hatcher 2002). unlike much other pedagogy, students, faculty and community members are all involved as co-learners, co-educators and co-generators of knowledge (felten & clayton 2011). the resulting enhanced skills and competences can be applied then to almost all other university and life experiences of students. s-l also involves a relatively long engagement process that requires ongoing dialogue between the university, community partners and service targets (zlotkowski 1999), rather than a one-off experience that lacks commitment and sustainability. the heightened civic involvement has also proven to have a farreaching impact on students, even beyond graduation, as shown in studies done with graduates with s-l experience (astin et al. 2000; astin et al. 2006). being the first university in hong kong to make s-l an academic subject, we can share the academic content and our experiences with other institutions. undoubtedly, successful institutionalisation of s-l in higher education institutes requires the support and contribution of various stakeholders, the most important being senior management of educational institutions. they need to commit resources to develop effective citizenship among students, to address the needs of communities through the application of knowledge, and to form creative partnerships between the university and the community (bringle & hatcher 197 | gateways | ma & chan 1996). the work of developing and implementing s-l courses and monitoring their quality can be daunting, so having a designated s-l team, such as the osl, is highly desirable. having s-l coordinators and associates in each participating academic department would also contribute to easing the burden, which is a goal that osl at lu is currently pursuing. acknowledgements the authors wish to acknowledge that dr elaine tang hau hing has assisted in the final editing of the manuscript. references astin, a, vogelgesang, l, ikeda, e & yee, j 2000, how service-learning affects students, higher education research institute, ucla, los angeles, ca. astin, a, vogelgesang, l, misa, k, anderson, j, denson, n, jayakumar, u, saenz, v & yamamura, e 2006, understanding the effects of service-learning: a study of students and faculty, higher education research institute, ucla, los angeles, ca. bringle, r & hatcher, j 1995, ‘a service-learning curriculum for faculty’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 2, pp. 112–22. bringle, r & hatcher j 1996, ‘implementing service learning in higher education’, the journal of higher education, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 221–39. bringle, r & hatcher j 2002, ‘campus-community partnerships: the terms of engagement’, journal of social issues, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 503–16. chan, a cm & ma, c cm 2006, the service-learning and research scheme: the lingnan model, office of service-learning, lingnan university, hong kong. chan, a cm, lee, km & ma, c cm 2009, ‘service-learning model at lingnan university: development strategies and outcome assessment’, new horizons in education, vol. 3, pp. 57–73. dewey, j 1938, experience and education, collier books, new york. eyler, j 2000, ‘what do we most need to know about the impact of servicelearning on student learning?’, michigan journal of community service learning, special issue, fall, pp. 11–17. farmer, d 1990, ‘strategies for change’, in d steeples (ed.), managing change in higher education, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 7–17. felten, p & clayton, p 2011, ‘service-learning’, new directions for teaching and learning, issue 128, pp. 75–84. furco, a 1996, ‘service-learning: a balanced approach to experiential education’, in b taylor (ed.), expanding boundaries: serving and learning, corporation for national service, washington, dc, pp. 2–6. knowledge transfer office, hong kong baptist university (kto, hkbu) 2012, ‘what is knowledge transfer?’, viewed 28 march 2013, http://kto. hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=what-is-knowledge-transfer. kolb, d & fry, r 1975, ‘toward an applied theory of experiential learning’, in c cooper (ed.), theories of group process, john wiley, london. misa, k, anderson, j & yamamura, e 2005, ‘the lasting impact of college on young adults’ civic and political engagement’, paper presented at http://kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=what-is-knowledge-transfer http://kto.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/channel.php?channel=what-is-knowledge-transfer 198 | gateways | ma & chan the association for the study of higher education annual conference, philadelphia, pa, 19 november. national commission on service-learning 2002, learning in deed: the power of service-learning for american schools, columbus, oh. stanton, t, giles d & cruz n 1999, service-learning: a movement’s pioneers reflect on its origins, practice, and future, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. university grants committee (ugc) 2012, ‘knowledge transfer’, viewed 5 april 2013, www.ugc.hk/eng/ugc/activity/kt/kt.htm. xin jun & ma c (eds) 2010, service-learning in asia: curricular models and practices, hong kong university press, hong kong. zlotkowski, e 1999, ‘pedagogy and engagement’, in r bringle, r games & e malloy (eds), colleges and universities as citizens, allyn & bacon, boston, ma, pp. 96–120. www.ugc.hk/eng/ugc/activity/kt/kt.htm microsoft word br_cuthill.doc gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 200-201 © utsepress and the author engaged scholarship: a guide for organizational and social research, andrew h. van de ven. oxford university press, oxford, uk, 2007; pp 330. an de ven‘s book is obviously a labour of love, based on thirty years teaching and field experience. it focuses on the concept of engaged scholarship, a participatory approach where researchers and non-researchers work together to develop new knowledge about complex problems. it is primarily directed towards academic staff and doctoral students who wish to learn how to engage with diverse stakeholders to undertake applied research that crosses disciplinary boundaries, providing rigorous and relevant outcomes of a quality that is both academically defined and socially accountable. the messages relayed here mirror similar arguments expressed by michael gibbons and others in the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies (1994) whose concept of ‘mode 2’ research identifies universities as one stakeholder among many knowledge producers in a new, more fluid and interdependent approach. in company with gibbons and other illustrious thinkers in this area such as ernest boyer in scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate (1990) and ‘the scholarship of engagement’ in the journal of public service and outreach (1996), van de ven’s discussion on engaged scholarship has the potential to considerably broaden contemporary concepts of scholarship within the academy. such an approach looks to strengthen the oftentimes-tenuous links between theory and practice. in itself this aim should be important enough to warrant serious attention not only from academics, but also from government policy makers, private sector interests and those working in not-for-profit agencies. practitioners have much to gain by using theory to inform their actions, while in a self-reinforcing process practical applications can provide important feedback and direction to ongoing processes of theory building. as van de ven argues (p. 35), ‘scholarship that engages both researchers and practitioners can provide an exceedingly productive and challenging environment; it not only fosters the creation of knowledge for science and practice, but it may dissolve the theorypractice gap.’ van de ven uses the ‘diamond model’, comprising problem formulation, theory building, research design and problem solving to v gateways, vol 1, 2008 201 illustrate the process orientation through which engaged scholarship is conceptualised, implemented and reviewed. the first two chapters provide an introductory foundation required for understanding application of the ‘diamond model’ of engaged scholarship. once readers have a grounding in the concept, chapters 3 to 7 then describe the practical application of the model. the final two chapters provide more detailed discussion on engaged scholarship including that stemming from the author’s own experiences. this is a well written book that provides an informative and accessible guide for researchers with an interest in developing their understanding on how they might work collaboratively with those outside academia. while the book is grounded in management and organisational studies it provides broad direction for those working in other areas of social science. michael cuthill university of queensland pre-capacity building in loosely-coupled collaborations setting the stage for future initiatives healthy community-based organisations (cbos) at the grassroots level are essential to civic engagement and the creation of social capital, and consequently are considered critical elements in building localised democracy (maloney, smith & stoker 2000; skocpol 2003; weisinger & salipante 2005). nevertheless, such organisations, many of which provide critical services to their communities, are at high risk of dissolution during tough economic times because they rely heavily upon volunteers and lack sufficient evaluation and fundraising capacity. for instance, in order to remain viable and contribute to the creation of healthy communities, cbos must demonstrate their quality and effectiveness and understand their own organisational processes and outcomes, the service environment and existing best practices. they must also understand how to use such information for decision-making and action. unfortunately, many grassroots cbos lack resources and expertise for benchmarking, evaluative inquiry and program evaluation, putting them at a competitive disadvantage. this is particularly the case in organisations within disenfranchised communities, where fundamental capacities for growth and development often are lacking. such a situation, however, presents opportunities for collaboration with larger, better resourced entities – namely, universities with research-trained faculty who are expected to perform community service as part of their responsibilities and are increasingly aiming to create engaged learning experiences for their students. indeed, institutes of higher education (ihe) nationally and globally, heeding calls by foundations, government officials and the public, are striving to become more engaged with and responsive to the needs of their surrounding communities. community-university partnerships (cups) are proliferating across campuses in the us, as is the literature on their benefits and challenges – generating what some have described as a national ‘civic university movement’ (harkavy & hartley 2009). this article describes efforts by university faculty to respond to requests for research by grassroots cbos in a marginalised gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 76–97 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 cheryl a. hyde temple university karen hopkins megan meyer university of maryland-baltimore 77 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer urban community in baltimore. these projects aimed not just to meet the immediate research needs of the grassroots groups, but to set the stage for future capacity-building initiatives and more formally developed partnerships that could equip the civic and service infrastructure in this community to survive, especially during periods of economic recession. in this sense, the work we examine here can be described as ‘pre-capacity building’ through ‘loosely-coupled’ collaborations. the term ‘pre-capacity’ captures both the underdeveloped nature of these grassroots organisations in terms of leadership, membership and infrastructure and the assessment nature of the research projects. the research included simple needs assessments, identification of ‘best practices’ and basic program evaluation, all of which could lead to program modification and development and help agencies raise funds for future capacity-building activities. the efforts are ‘loosely-coupled’ because, in contrast to more well-established, long-term community-university partnerships, they are intentionally of limited duration with relatively informal collaborative guidelines and fewer available resources. in our discussion of the research projects, we intend to illustrate how loosely-coupled collaborative structures enable faculty to respond rapidly to community requests for research and provide needed information and feedback that equip cbos to engage in strategic capacity-building (not necessarily with the same university partner). however, the article’s primary focus is to identify the limitations and pitfalls of the loosely-coupled approach to cups, particularly when working with small, underfunded grassroots cbos and within a research university that has not fully committed itself to structurally supporting engaged teaching and research. limitations in both the community organisations and the university that compromised project processes and products are highlighted. we consider some reasons for these obstacles, their consequences and the impact that failure to successfully execute ‘pre-capacity building’ work has for future community-university relations and capacity-building efforts. literature review successful examples of grassroots development and community empowerment underscore the importance of nurturing respect and trust among partners, sustaining bonding and bridging social capital, viewing and capitalising on diversity as a strength, and leveraging an array of resources (figueira-mcdonough 2001; mizrahi, bayne-smith & garcia 2009; putnam 2000; saegert, thompson & warren 2001; sanyal 2006; weisinger & salipante 2005; west, alcina, peterson & laska 2008). although often not stated explicitly, all of these factors require a comprehensive, overarching strategic plan allowing sufficient time for the project to come to fruition (fasenfest & gant 2005; gass 2005). challenges arise, however, when community groups lack resources, have internal membership conflicts, and weak ties with other 78 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer local organisations, even when issues among groups/communities are shared (chaskin 2003; hurlbert, beggs & haines 2001; knickmeyer, hopkins & meyer 2003; lopez & stack 2001; meyer & hyde 2004). these challenges are likely to be especially severe in marginalised and vulnerable communities in which community organisations and associations are relatively depleted. increased scholarly attention has been paid to the role that non-indigenous organisations play in promoting or facilitating the health and wellbeing of communities and in building the capacities of cbos. these ‘intervening institutions’ (cohen 2001; see also fehren 2010, who uses the term ‘intermediary’) can provide critical resources (i.e. funds, technical assistance, space, manpower, training and support) that allow communities, their organisations and associations, to assess their needs and cultivate their own human, social and economic capital for purposes of developing and delivering services and building collective political power. intervening institutions have commonly included private foundations, local and state governments, policy research centers, labor unions and universities (bartczak 2005; fasenfest & gant 2005; ferman 2006; fisher, fabricant & simmons 2005; maurrasse 2001; sanyal 2006). a variety of factors influence whether or not a partnership between a community organisation and an intervening institution is successful; these factors are illustrated in figure 1. the type of assistance offered by an intervening institution, and its capacity (available funding, manpower and expertise as well as restrictive rules and regulations) to support the effort will affect the partnership. influential characteristics of community organisations include the nature of the leader-member relationship (where ‘member’ is broadly defined to include staff, volunteers, constituents, service users and/or participants), the extent to which leaders and members can clearly articulate their goals, needs or grievances and the organisation’s capacity level (i.e. funding, staff time and commitment, and staff knowledge and skill levels). within the broader community context, the gap between available and needed resources and the strength of area networks are significant issues. finally, time factors, such as the desired duration of the partnership and the history of prior collaborative efforts in which the community has engaged (including those with different intervening institutions), will influence the current partnership (cohen 2001; fasenfest & gant 2005; fehren 2010; figueiramcdonough 2001; hurlbert,beggs & haines 2001; hyman 2002; maurrasse 2001; wright et al. 2011). although we recognise the importance of collaboration history and the community context, the factors examined here for their influence on collaborations are limited in focus to the intervening institution (e.g. the university) and grassroots community organisations. a primary challenge within partnerships is recognising and balancing differing sources of knowledge and expertise, status and access to resources; a challenge that intensifies when 79 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer c om m un it y c on te xt tim e factors partnership type(s) of assistance offered by intervening institution(s) intervening institution(s) capacity leader – member relationship community organisation capacity clarity of goals/ needs/grievances intervening institution factors community organisation factors quality of area networks needed vs. available resources prior collaborative efforts short or longterm duration community partners are already marginalised. intervening institutions have been rightly criticised for being disconnected from local communities and assuming patronising stances towards them (coffin 2005; cohen 2001; fasenfest & gant 2005; fehren 2010; fisher, fabricant & simmons 2005; gass 2005; maurrasse 2001). there have been many attempts to address and rectify this imbalance by acknowledging and cultivating communitybased knowledge (ferman 2006; strand et al. 2003; west, alcina & peterson 2008; wright et al. 2011). reflecting these criticisms, recent scholarship on cups has stressed the need for universities to adopt a ‘transformative engagement’ approach when working with communities and to generate true ‘reciprocity’ or ‘reciprocal learning’ among partners (brown et al. 2006; reardon 2006; weerts 2004). within these frameworks, universities are encouraged to become conscious of power differentials between university and community members and the inevitable tensions that arise as a result – what some have called the ‘politics of engagement’ (fear et al. 2004). scholars argue that universities must shift their fundamental approach to engagement from acting ‘for’ communities to acting ‘with’ them – where the motivations, strengths and limitations of both partners are clearly articulated, goals and knowledge are co-created and benefits are shared (begun et al. 2010; buys & bursnall 2007; silka & renaultcaragianes 2006). figure 1: factors that influence partnership efforts between community organisations and intervening institutions 80 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer this perspective on community-university partnerships is grounded in the assumption that cbos have the ability to define and delineate their problems and have sufficient capacity for leaders and members to understand and participate authentically in a collaboration. where this is the case, the collaboration has a high probability of success – with success being defined as completion of the project and either improved capacity or greater preparedness for future capacity-building activities. yet there may be instances where leaders or representatives of cbos are not fully able to articulate their concerns and/or do not have the capacity for sustained participation in the collaborative process. a related challenge in these partnerships is devoting sufficient time and attention to the early phases of the relationship. anecdotal and scholarly accounts of partnerships between community organisations and intervening institutions underscore the importance of planning for the entire trajectory of the project (coffin 2005; fasenfest & gant 2005; hyman 2002; mancini et al. 2004; wright et al. 2011). gass (2005, p. 16) delineates six broad stages: (1) issue/opportunity; (2) catalyst/invitation to partnership; (3) threshold dimensions; (4) partnership agreement; (5) operating the partnership; and (6) mutual benefit/increased social capital. while his model is more formalised than the collaborative projects we undertook, the ‘threshold dimensions’ stage is worth noting. in this stage, partners undertake the development of trust, respect, communication and a mutual understanding of strengths and figure 2: two paths to capacity building partnership in pre-capacity building stage weak/no foundation solid foundation r eq u es t fo r collaborative efforts stall or stagnate • issue/process confusion • unclear responsibilities • compromised outcome collaborative efforts proceed • member defined/owned • assistance by intervening institution • desired outcome pre-capacity building stage thresholds thresholds loosely-coupled path 2 path 1 capacity building intervening institution community organisation 81 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer limitations. a mutually agreed threshold needs to be reached in each of these areas before the partnership can proceed. it is in this threshold stage that assessments should made of the community organisation’s ability to articulate its concerns, verify membership buy-in and demonstrate a basic understanding of what the project entails. during this stage, the limitations of the intervening institution, such as insufficient resources and faculty time, also need to be identified and communicated to the community partner. broadly stated, there are two possible paths in moving from loosely-coupled collaborations to capacity-building partnerships, as illustrated in figure 2. path 1: adequate threshold levels are met and the collaborative effort proceeds based on a solid foundation for a capacity-building partnership. path 2: threshold levels are not sufficient and the collaborative effort stagnates, resulting in issue and process confusion, unclear responsibilities, compromised outcomes, a weak foundation for community capacity-building, and ultimately, the risk of damaged intervening institution – community relationships. key factors for success or failure in twelve collaborations while the literature on cups includes numerous case studies, many of which highlight successes, challenges and critical lessons learned, articles that compare and contrast successful and unsuccessful cases and clearly articulate why and how projects succeed or fail are less prevalent. this article begins to address this gap by comparing 12 collaborations, some successful, others not, to identify the key factors that facilitated or hindered each project’s level of completion and success. partner community characteristics the collaborative research efforts took place in a mixed race and income community covering 75 city blocks in the eastern section of baltimore. approximately 30 recognised community associations are located in the catchment area (although membership widely varies), as well as a number of overburdened and under-resourced social service organisations (baltimore city community association handbook 2005). during the past several years, under the auspices of a local university, the authors have been involved in providing technical assistance, staff /member development training, community organising assistance, ‘best practices’ research and program evaluation services to a number of grassroots associations and organisations in this community (hyde & meyer 2004; knickmeyer, hopkins & meyer 2003). these collaborations could be described as ‘loosely coupled’ in that they were not formal in the sense of a bona fide community-university partnership (bowl 2010; fasenfest & gant 2005; gass 2005; maurrasse 2001; mizrahi, bayne-smith & garcia 2009), although these efforts informed the eventual creation of such an initiative. east baltimore is one of the more diverse sections of the city. historically a blue collar, working class area, it has been 82 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer the point of entry for most immigrant groups in baltimore. the neighbourhood areas that comprise the catchment area reflect much greater diversity than that of the city as a whole. the area’s 2000 population was 32.5 per cent white, 60 per cent african american, 7 per cent hispanic and the remaining half per cent american indian and asian (bnia 2003). yet despite this overall diversity, these areas are concentrated racially and economically. there are several public housing projects in the catchment area which are primarily occupied by african americans (65.3 per cent to 96.9 per cent). the latino population, located primarily in the southeast part of the city, increased substantially in the past decade. four neighbourhoods within the catchment area have latino populations that have grown four times more than the city’s overall growth rate. the percentage of families reporting that they speak a language other than english in the home ranges from 1.5 per cent to 23.3 per cent (baltimore city community association handbook 2005; consolidated plan, 2001–2005 2001). in east baltimore, the 2000 poverty rate ranged from 10.1 per cent to 58.6 per cent and median family income ranged from $11 618 to $47 143 (consolidated plan, 2001–2005 2001). the consequences of these economic figures are manifested clearly in the housing situation in east baltiore, where median home values ranged from $34 600 to $112 100 across the catchment area. during the 1990s, vacant housing units increased by 43.3 per cent to 70 per cent across catchment neighbourhoods (consolidated plan, 2001–2005 2001). the city has attempted to remove marginal or abandoned housing and replace it with affordable units for low-income families; yet demand far exceeds availability. the loss of relatively inexpensive rental units has left many having to choose between substandard units or paying an extremely high rent. for lowand moderate-income individuals and families, this increasing lack of affordable housing is likely to be exacerbated by redevelopment efforts. an estimated 1000 households are being displaced by a biotech park project; another 140 families lost their low-income housing when a subsidised rental complex was sold. the catchment area remains particularly vulnerable to these demographic and economic trends because of a largely uncoordinated service/advocacy network comprising many weak or close to failing agencies and associations. agency and association representatives reported that their organisations faced heightened demands from community members in the areas of housing assistance, resettlement, protection of property values, jobs, basic health and welfare, safety and transportation. these representatives also indicated that fragmentation within the catchment area sabotaged broad and coherent collective responses to these concerns. instead, they noted that distrust within and between the catchment area neighbourhoods had developed (hyde & meyer 2002; knickmeyer, hopkins & meyer 2003; meyer & hyde 2004). moreover, the community organisations suffered from 83 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer inadequate financial resources and, in some cases, leadership with insufficient experience and knowledge to deal with these growing problems. nonetheless, these grassroots community organisations were the primary vehicles for the (potential) engagement of various disenfranchised groups. community leaders also expressed a desire for greater collaboration between their various organisations and associations so that the community could more effectively address these problems from within, and successfully negotiate for assistance from intervening institutions beyond its boundaries. collaborative research projects – overview the above profile of the catchment area provides a context for the various projects in which we engaged over a three-year period. the issues on which we collaborated included financial literacy for consumers, affordable housing, support for senior citizens ‘aging in place’, crime reduction, cross-cultural service delivery (specifically for immigrant populations), neighbourhood safety and health education. in each case, a community organisation leader initiated a request for research assistance, often by contacting one of the authors. by way of an initial response, the authors held a series of meetings in which the focus and scope of the project were discussed and the kinds of resources the intervening institution (as represented by the authors) could provide were identified. the three types of requests for research assistance were: (1) a needs assessment, so that the organisation could pursue funding with greater knowledge and authority; (2) an investigation into ‘best practices’, which could be used as models for the development of programs and services; or (3) a program evaluation, so that the organisation could obtain feedback on what it was doing well and what it needed to improve. it is important to underscore that the projects were to provide requested research for these community organisations and not to train organisational members in research skills. these projects cannot therefore be described as communitybased participatory research (cbpr). nevertheless, openness and active participation of organisational members was needed to help researchers gather information from agency documents, staff, clients and inter-organisational networks. within a threeyear period, we (either individually or together) provided pro bono research for 12 community organisations, all of which were tied to some aspect of grassroots capacity-building. these organisations, with brief summaries of the projects and outcomes, are presented in table 1. 84 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer community organization1 research project focus process and product archway association assessment of community residents’ main health concerns and recommendations regarding health education programming —organisational contact person repeatedly changed project focus —high level of disagreement between leader and members, and among members, regarding focus —lack of resident availability/willingness to be interviewed —final project: effort switched to basic organisational development through technical assistance cherry hill association best practices, with recommendations, on affordable housing options within an urban community with emphasis on viability of single room occupancy —focus remained clear and consistent —good access to interview respondents —final project: detailed report on merits of sros and other options provided to organisation community centre evaluation of adult literacy program with recommendations —agency staff unavailable for information —agency staff not helpful in identifying individuals who participated in the program —poor records —final project: no evaluation, focus switched to best practices report elder housing best practices for residential ‘aging in place’ programs, and community assessment of the desirability of such a program in the area —organisational contact person and other key staff disagreed on focus and were never available —organisation decided to work on another service project —no final product table 1: community organisations in research collaboration projects 1 organisation names changed for purposes of confidentiality. 85 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer community organization1 research project focus process and product job resource centre outcome evaluation of organisation’s job training program, specifically use and satisfaction —organisational contact person and staff not available —limited access to program records —high degree of leaderstaff conflict —no final product new neighbors centre assessment of rising tensions between recent immigrants and long-time residents with focus on how to ‘acculturate’ immigrants —focus remained consistent —good access to organisation and community members regarding cross-cultural relations —as research progressed, it was apparent that the acculturation focus was not appropriate for the situation —final project: detailed assessment that was rejected by organisation because analysis and recommendations differed from what was wanted outreach centre best practices and techniques for evaluating operation and use of a cooperative (with other agencies) food pantry —other pantry agencies opted out of the project (after it was underway), which severely limited data collection and substantially delayed project. —final project: report on ‘best practices’ used by food pantry operations and assessment of centre park cdc community assessment of the prevalence and location of vacant lots in the catchment area, and recommendations for addressing problem —focus remained clear and consistent —limited availability of cdc members for data —most data gathered through detailed ‘walking tours’ documentation —final project: community map of lot use, with emphasis on vacant lot identification and description 86 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer community organization1 research project focus process and product port cdc best practices on financial literacy programs and community assessment of the desirability of such a program —focus remained consistent —staff unavailable for interviews or to help make contact with potential consumers of such a program —final project: ‘best practice’ report with recommendations, but no assessment because of lack of informant information the 3-6 group evaluation regarding satisfaction with the technical assistance given to after-school program —program goals not clearly defined, which made evaluation difficult —limited access to partnering agencies (staff and data) —final project: descriptive report, not evaluation none of the requests came with funding support, but because they involved some form of community-based research, the authors engaged graduate student research assistants, interns working in some of the organisations and students in several graduate social work research classes to help with the projects and learn valuable research skills (for discussion on communitybased research courses see hyde & meyer 2004). all projects involved some combination of interviews, document analyses, meeting observations, community mapping and secondary data analyses (i.e. census data). for each project, the goal was to provide the community organisations with a comprehensive and comprehendible report that could then be shared with members and used for resource and organisational development. this would be supplemented by oral presentations by the project team to organisational members and stakeholders. the authors also would make themselves available for any ongoing or follow-up consultations. collaboration outcomes and implications – alternative pathways in order to identify factors that influenced the quality of the 12 collaborations presented here, the authors examined field notes kept during the projects and post-project debriefing notes from meetings with students and organisational leaders and members. the review of this material and reflective conversations among the authors about the collaborations revealed clear alternative pathways the collaborations took, based upon the nature of the 87 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer project and, most importantly, the adequacy of attending to and meeting the key ‘threshold dimensions’ outlined in the review of the literature above. indeed, the efforts examined here illustrate how capacity thresholds need to be identified, agreed upon and solidified in order for promising loosely-coupled collaborations to proceed to comprehensive capacity-building partnerships. the projects began in a similar fashion. community organisation leaders sought assistance from university faculty because they recognised the necessity of research in the ongoing capacity development of their organisations and by extension their communities. moreover, they understood their own limitations in terms of skills and time availability and viewed this kind of collaboration as a means of redress. in early discussions, these leaders were articulate about the focal issue and some were able to indicate exactly what kind of information they wanted. from the outset, these individuals promised complete access to the various sources of organisational information such as files, staff (if present), members and themselves. as projects unfolded, however, they took different trajectories and had differing levels of success. a few projects proceeded relatively smoothly from beginning to end. one such example was the partnership with the cherry hill association. the focus of the requested research was to identify affordable housing options within an urban neighbourhood with an emphasis on the viability of sros (single room occupancy). several factors facilitated the success of this project, most of which had to do with the engagement of association leadership early in the process. first, the association’s leadership was clear about what they wanted and maintained a consistent focus throughout the duration of the work. second, they identified, and in some instances made connections with, potential interview respondents, which helped ensure their availability. third, the leadership was willing to work with the student researchers early in the project to help them fully understand what was needed. fourth, the faculty member and many of the students working on this project were familiar with the neighbourhood, which helped considerably during the start-up. finally, the association staff (including the leaders) were open to alternative housing options, and were willing to discuss with the students the viability of other suggestions generated from their research. (note that except for this last point, the other factors pertain to the threshold stage of the partnership). more frequently, however, projects experienced a number of difficulties that clouded the area of focus and/or stymied the involvement of community organisation members who needed to provide information or feedback about their practice experiences. in a few cases, these setbacks were temporary and with adjustments or renegotiation of project goals, the project proceeded. for example, the outreach center needed information on best practices and techniques for operating and evaluating a cooperative food pantry. the original project included three other agencies that were interested in being part of this cooperative 88 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer venture; all of the participating organisations agreed to being assessed in terms of their capacities for contributing to the food pantry project. after the research began, the other agencies withdrew (citing other priorities, lack of resources, or both). the outreach center director worked with the faculty member and student researchers to re-align the project goals to one of assessing the need for the center to run a food pantry and the resources required, as well as a comprehensive compilation of ‘best practices’ for such an enterprise. the center was then able to use this information in its strategic planning and grant writing. most common were projects that stalled, were compromised, and in a couple of instances, fully derailed. one such case was the park cdc. the original project goal was to produce a community assessment of the prevalence and location of vacant lots and recommend how the cdc could address the problem. this focus remained consistent throughout the project. problems arose, however, because the cdc leadership was unable to communicate the need for its membership to participate in this project. as a result, few members were willing to be interviewed or provide other needed data. the student researchers could only complete a comprehensive community map, identifying and describing the vacant lots based on information derived from a ‘walking tour’. they were not, however, able to provide recommendations for possible lot usage which required input from the membership. similarly, work with the community center had to be altered because the staff was not available to provide needed information, nor did they offer suggestions about who else might be interviewed. the final product was a report on ‘best practices’ for adult literacy programs, but the requested evaluation was not produced because of staff disengagement. these projects can therefore be understood as being partially successful. in both cases, research was compromised because of the disconnect between leaders and members or staff such that full ‘buy-in’ did not occur. no final reports were generated from the work with elder housing, the resource center and the archway association. the contact person and other organisational members of the first two organisations were rarely available after the initial meetings. in all three organisations, records and documents were poorly organised or non-existent. perhaps more importantly, there were high levels of leader-member conflict or disagreement that resulted in significant barriers to the collaborative process. faculty and student researchers involved in these projects reported chaotic organisational environments, not to mention considerable personal frustration. an agreement was reached with the archway association to offer technical assistance to address some of the leader-member problems. elder housing opted out of the partnership entirely. the faculty member eventually ended the partnership with the job resource center because of repeated delays and assigned the students to other projects. 89 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer in retrospect, we learned that a critical step in the overall project design was the phase immediately following the initial agreement to collaborate, in which the authors and student researchers sought to make initial contact and connections with the organisation and its members. this span of time, usually lasting a few weeks, would often determine our ability to continue the work. the following problems that arose in the partially or completely unsuccessful projects reflect limitations in one of the four factors identified in figure 1, illustrating the influence of each upon the success of collaborations: —initial clarity by the organisational leader gave way to confusion, often resulting in changes in focus so that the agreed upon issue was discarded and replaced with another concern (at times repeatedly) —usable organisational data sources were unavailable, which was partly a reflection of how under-resourced and under-staffed these organisations were —organisational leaders did not understand or did not convey to staff the demands of the project, which included continued involvement on the part of organisational informants and assistance with the dissemination of project-related material (i.e. consent forms, informational letters, questionnaires etc) —leader-member disconnect meant that organisational members did not agree with the research focus, had different priorities, or wanted other forms of assistance —outright leader-member conflict suggested that the leader (usually our contact) was viewed as a ‘problem’ within the organisation, to such a degree that members did not feel safe participating in the projects —a desire for quick fixes or immediate action prevailed over understanding and embracing a more protracted and iterative research process —assumptions typically overestimated the breadth and depth of the intervening institution’s available resources and project responsibilities —project findings differed from what the organisational leaders and/ or members ‘wanted to find’ —research team members had insufficient understanding of organisational or community dynamics and structure. constraints were placed on the collaboration by the intervening institution, particularly with respect to resources (i.e. faculty and student time, funding, manpower) and faculty job expectations (i.e. fundable and publishable research). many of these difficulties exposed confusion and conflict within the organisation; factors that could have a considerable impact on the organisation’s development, regardless of the successful (or otherwise) completion of our projects. while we were able to intervene in ways that opened access or gained clarity when some of the problems arose, such efforts were not without frustration or delays. more often, we needed to halt or 90 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer substantially slow down the projects in order to attend to the tensions or concerns that presented themselves. misunderstandings or impatience regarding what we, and the intervening institution, could reasonably offer in terms of expertise or resources had the potential to damage the nascent partnership, as well as future partnerships. harder to address were the conflicts or disagreements that emerged between the organisational leader (with whom we initially partnered) and the membership. these incidents signified fundamental differences regarding the purpose or direction of the organisation, and raised doubts about who truly guided and spoke for the organisation – leaders or members. these internal organisational dynamics that affected project outcomes were very difficult to assess in just one or two initial meetings. only after the projects were underway, and the authors and students began to deeply engage with the cbos, was the depth of internal conflicts revealed. difficulties also arose from the side of the intervening institution. no university funding (or other support) was available to respond to the numerous requests for assistance the authors constantly received, and the community organisations had no means to pay for research services. thus, the authors decided that using masters research classes was one way to respond to community needs, as well as meet teaching and service responsibilities. this strategy, however, placed limits on the collaborations. because of the urgency of the community organisations’ requests and the requirement to complete class projects within a 16-week semester, a time-consuming threshold assessment was not possible. we could not, for example, devote sufficient time to understand the organisational or community context before proceeding with the requested research (although over time, our ‘entry’ became more efficient). figure 3: ‘ripple effect’ when threshold dimensions are not met diminished community participation potential intra-organisational conflict mistrust among partners miscommunication among partners threshold not adequate weakened organisational capacity building 91 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer because projects were compromised (although nonetheless completed), stalled or derailed, any hoped for community engagement that could have resulted from this work also suffered. the ripple effect of disruption at this early stage of a partnership could be significant as issues of trust and respect between all the actors were raised, as illustrated in figure 3. incomplete or inaccurate information about the intervening institution that filtered through the community could damage future collaborative work. the intra-organisational conflicts that arose had to be addressed before the organisation could move forward on any change effort, and even though we were collaborators, we were not, as ‘outsiders’, well situated to productively resolve these conflicts. discussion the experiences presented here should serve as a cautionary tale regarding the initiation of loosely-coupled cups. upon reflection, we severely underestimated the issues that needed attention and clarification in terms of ‘threshold dimensions’ (gass 2005) during the early phase of the collaborations, and overestimated both our own and the cbos’ capacities. despite the very real time constraints, we should have determined some strategy for completing a threshold assessment. mutual trust and respect existed between the authors and organisation leaders (largely based on prior work with some of them, who in turn, recommended us to others). communication about the organisational issue or concern seemed clear – at least initially. with these dimensions (seemingly) in place, the critical step of discussing and understanding one another’s assets and deficits should have happened, but did not. rather, this step was glossed over affecting the subsequent partnership agreement phase, in that clear roles and responsibilities and time commitments were informally agreed upon (i.e. no formal mous were drafted and signed). factors that overrode the critical threshold assessment included: (1) the urgency felt by cbos to get their research needs met immediately and the authors’ desire to respond to increasing requests for help from cbos starting to feel the effects of the looming ‘great recession’; (2) increasing encouragement by the university for faculty to satisfy and closely tie together their tripartite goals for teaching, service, and research; ( 3) enthusiasm among the authors and agency partners generated during the initial conversations; and (4) the need for faculty to employ the time-limited availability of student manpower. all these factors encouraged the relative informality of the partnering. however, as a consequence, we never fully understood or factored into our planning, the lack of readiness within these organisations to collaborate on these projects. conversely, the organisations and their members never gained a realistic picture of what we could and could not do. taking seriously this stage in a partnership requires a willingness for all parties to assist one another in becoming selfreflective and critically constructive (bartczak 2005; brewerton & 92 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer millward 2001; busch et al. 2005; coffin 2005; maurrasse 2001; mizrahi, bayne-smith & garcia 2009). strategies might include teaching leaders assessment skills that can be used within their own organisations, so that they have clarity regarding their strengths and limitations and the potential affect they could have on the partnership (hyman, 2002). a clearly written agreement would delineate respective roles and responsibilities which would require time to negotiate (mattessich 2003; mattessich & monsey 1992). additionally, a realistic assessment of member ‘buy-in’ is crucial and cannot be assumed (brewerton & millward 2001). these measures are difficult to balance against the often intense pressures involved in meeting the needs of the community in immediate and tangible ways and initiating community engagement efforts. yet failure to implement them runs the risk of ambiguity in terms of roles and responsibilities and with respect to the articulation and ‘ownership’ of the issue, concern and project outcomes (wright et al. 2011). specifically, we often were surprised by the level of disconnect between the organisational leaders and members. the leaders seemed to have good reputations among their constituencies and most had demonstrated the ability to bring much needed resources into their communities. yet something had occurred in these organisations which led the leaders to view needs and priorities differently than the members. and, at least from our vantage point, the leaders often seemed more realistic than the members about what could or should be done (although this was not always the case). more problematic was that the ability to conduct dialogue and debate within many organisations was weak or non-existent. this, in turn, raised issues of leadership accountability and constituent responsibility. this disconnect between organisational leaders and constituents is part of a broader ‘ripple effect’ that occurs when the capacity threshold is not adequate (see figure 3). in an immediate sense, the projects we undertook were compromised in some ways because of the barriers we experienced while dealing with the organisations; the research process, as well as outcomes, illuminated these problems. on a larger scale, however, by proceeding with the projects while not addressing threshold dimensions adequately, we may have set in motion more suspicion and mistrust, misinformed assumptions, and diminished or marginalised engagement by the community. based on our experiences, future collaborations and partnerships will be informed, for better or worse, by current relationships. therefore, despite the urgency of meeting the needs of the community or at least those of the organisational leaders, it will be essential to assess the capacities of all partners before engaging in initial, loosely-coupled collaborations and before proceeding with more formal partnerships (bowl 2010; gass 2005; hyman 2002). ultimately, project participants must recognise and commit to the essentially iterative nature of community-based 93 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer research collaborations, in which goals, roles, responsibilities and expectations need frequent revisiting and renegotiation (baum 2000). such a process requires the time-strapped community organisation leaders and university faculty to remain fully involved in conversations beyond the initial agreement phase. this is a time consuming requirement that is difficult to fulfil when no funding is available to support faculty or free organisational leaders from their constant struggle to obtain resources. finally, the capacity limits of intervening institutions also influence the degree to which the obstacles presented by resourcedepleted community organisations can be overcome. faculty who engage in such collaborations typically face competing pressures: (1) produce research that is publishable in top research journals to achieve tenure and promotion; (2) teach and provide students with real-life research experiences; and (3) meet demands from the university and the community to engage in community service. while community-based research collaborations hold the potential to satisfy these competing demands, funding and other institutional incentives are not always forthcoming to support faculty in these endeavors; the research that results is much more useful in practice for the community agencies than for publishing purposes. having graduate students do most of the research ‘legwork’, while providing invaluable learning experiences for them, further complicated the process as they may not have clearly communicated to the organisations what was needed for the research. yet using students in this way was necessary because of the lack of research funding as well as our own teaching obligations. additionally, some institutional constraints and requirements, such as the academic calendar and human subjects review procedures (often not sensitive to community-based research), can limit faculty responses to community requests for assistance (berg-weger et al. 2004; bowl 2010; hyde & meyer 2004; mancini et al. 2004; strand et al. 2003; west, alcina & peterson 2008). conclusion this article has focused on loosely-coupled communityuniversity research collaborations; specifically the critical, yet often overlooked, threshold stage in these collaborations during which the strengths and limitations of all participants are fully understood. the ‘lessons learned’ from our experiences hopefully underscore the importance of this aspect of the relationship between grassroots cbos and intervening institutions. the assessment of abilities and resources, the insistence on a clear and sustainable focus, and the clarity of responsibilities, ultimately helps provide a more solid foundation upon which to engage in the capacity-building efforts necessary for localised civic engagement. faculty who wish to pursue the types of projects described here should be careful to accurately estimate the amount of time needed to establish a clear threshold process and be wary of doing 94 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer so outside a formally developed, university-sanctioned long-term cup. ideally, such work should be legitimated and encouraged by top campus leadership and supported by sufficient campus infrastructure in the form of an established cup office. these offices (or centres) have proliferated across campuses in the us during the last decade and have reached research universities more recently. they typically have long-term goals and are guided by a formal steering committee comprising faculty, staff and community stakeholders who consistently identify priorities, often for a clearly delineated geographic territory, and establish clear partnership guidelines and processes. these offices are also often responsible for soliciting and reviewing formal requests and applications from cbos for research and volunteer services and prioritise and ‘match’ these requests with faculty expertise. processes might begin with the creation of a university website where community agencies can learn about the types of research assistance faculty and students could provide and complete an on-line application for collaboration. the application form may include deadlines that accommodate the academic calendar and specify a period before a project’s commencement during which resources, responsibilities and timelines to be met by project partners must be clearly identified in the form of an mou. such ‘bridging’ work by the university can be invaluable in that it significantly improves the chances of success of collaborations, enhances the level of trust developed between an institute of higher learning and its surrounding communities, and promotes the ability of both to address significant social problems over the long term. the problems highlighted in this paper echo the complaints community partners have made about service-learning projects generally: that absent an overarching, long-term cup, faculty members can seem unavailable and aloof and lack substantive interaction with community members, where motivations, goals and responsibilities, benefits and costs can be clearly articulated. ultimately, commitments and collaborations must go beyond a one-time service-learning project, research grant or course to build satisfying and solid relationships (baum 2000; buys & bursnall 2007; leiderman et al. 2002; sandy & holland 2006). universities that fail to recognise the importance of such consistent and ongoing relationship-building and infrastructure development will prevent community-university partnerships from reaching their full potential thereby limiting the creation of engaged learning and research opportunities for faculty, students and the community at large. references bartczak, l 2005, a funder’s guide to organizational assessment, fieldstone alliance publishing, st. paul, minnesota. 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‘leveraging social capital: the university as educator and broker’, in r dilworth (ed.), social capital in the city: community and civic health in philadelphia, temple university press, philadelphia, pp. 81–100. 96 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer figueira-mcdonough, j 2001, community analysis and praxis: toward a grounded civil society, brunner-routledge, philadelphia. fisher, r, fabricant, m & simmons, l 2005, ‘understanding contemporary community-university connections: context, practice, and challenges’, journal of community practice, vol. 12, no. 3/4, pp.13–34. gass, e 2005, ‘the path to partnership: a new model for understanding community-university partnership’, professional development, vol. 8, no. 2/3, pp. 12–23. harkavy, i & hartley, m 2009, ‘university-school-community partnerships for youth development and democratic renewal’, new directions for youth development, vol.122, pp. 7–18. hurlbert, j, beggs, j & haines, v 2001, ‘social networks and social capital in extreme 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their communities, routledge, new york. meyer, m & hyde, c 2004, ‘too much of a good thing? insular neighborhood associations, non-reciprocal civility and the promotion of civic health’, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 77–96. 97 | gateways | hyde, hopkins & meyer mizrahi, t, bayne-smith, m & garcia, m 2008, ‘comparative perspectives on interdisciplinary community collaboration between academics and community practitioners’, community development, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 1–15. putnam, r 2000, bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community, simon & schuster, new york. reardon, k 2006, ‘promoting reciprocity within community/university development partnerships: lessons from the field’, planning, practice and research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 95–107. saegert, j, thompson, j & warren, d (eds) 2001, social capital and poor communities, russell sage foundation, new york. sandy, m & holland, b 2006, ‘different worlds and common ground: community partner 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j, & salipante, p 2005, ‘a grounded theory for building ethnically bridging social capital in voluntary organizations’, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 29–55. west, j, alcina, k & peterson, s 2008, ‘principles of participatory action research (par), issues of entrée, and internal review board (irb) challenges in community/agency/university collaborations’, manifestation: journal of community engaged research and learning partnerships, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 46–59. wright, k, williams, p, wright, s, lieber, e, carracsco, s & gejeyan, h 2011, ‘ties that bind: creating and sustaining community-academic partnerships’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 4, pp. 83–99. levels and networks in community partnerships a framework informed by our overseas partners our international civic engagement (ice) work revolves around an annual 13-day study abroad course that convenes in the commonwealth of dominica. this small, rugged island country is about 750 km2 in size and has a population of around 70 000. dominicans are primarily of afro-caribbean heritage and speak both english and french creole. the study abroad course features ongoing collaboration with non-government organisations (ngos) and community organisations in dominica, and focuses on mutual learning about how we can live more sustainably. it also emphasises the importance of local organising for sustainable economic development and transcontextual learning about local activism for sustainability. the students in the course collaborate with our local partners and their communities in a range of hands-on activities around these themes. such activities are as diverse as teaching at a primary school, engaging young adults on the topics of educational attainment and career paths, helping at a botanical garden, harvesting fair trade bananas, and supporting and participating in a village festival day. in addition to the study abroad course led by thomas klak, he and a team of undergraduate and graduate students have conducted geographical research projects on the island since 2005. the research projects and the study abroad course complement each other, by sharing contacts and deepening our understanding of dominica’s political ecology. emma mullaney worked on the dominica project for two years as a graduate student while conducting research on the politics of access to land. another graduate student created a host family program so that villagers could obtain more direct benefits from visitors, and to facilitate more direct cultural engagement. yet another graduate student carried out a water quality analysis at ecotourism sites heavily used by cruise ship visitors, while a different student mapped the potential for landslides, which often wreak havoc on this steep and rainy island. through these and other research projects and the annual course, we have developed long-term partnerships with dominicans of many stripes, including ecotourism operators, school principals, local politicians, public sector employees, ecologists, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 1–21 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 thomas klak university of new england emma gaalaas mullaney the pennsylvania state university 2 | gateways | klak & mullaney farmers, village organisers and ngo leaders. these dominica activities in synergistic combination constitute the international civic engagement (ice) project described in this article. the context just presented leads to the central questions of this article: what does all of this civic engagement activity mean to our dominican partners? how do they perceive our partnerships, and to what extent do their perceptions and priorities parallel or contrast with our own? from our perspective, we can observe that the benefits to our dominican partners include financial and material inputs, manual labour, relevant research projects, and an outside interest in contributing positively toward their meeting community challenges. but until the research reported in this article, we had not explicitly asked our overseas counterparts for their perspectives. indeed, the literature on civic engagement suggests that partners’ perspectives are seldom solicited (more on this in the next section). we report on our efforts to gauge their impressions of our work. through better understanding of their priorities and concerns, we hope that our relationships can continue to deepen and become more productive in the future. this article unfolds across four sections. the first provides an overview of the diverse literatures which inform our operationalisation of ice. the second explains the methods through which we solicited our dominican partners’ perspectives. the third details our research findings, including ways of characterising partnerships on three levels according to intensity, depth of engagement, and complexity. the article concludes by emphasising the need for further work which addresses ice’s challenges, and which better incorporates partners’ views. literature review of international civic engagement partnerships our overseas work is informed by a diverse set of literatures. in this section we follow bringle (2010), who identifies many important connections between the best practices and the literatures on study abroad, international education and service-learning. though these literatures have in many cases developed separately, we see each as connected to ice and find the links between them valuable and informative. throughout this literature review, we reflect on how the ideas from these fields have influenced our own international partnership efforts. distinguishing community outreach projects near campus and abroad at the outset we found it helpful to distinguish the kind of partnership relationships we have developed in dominica from those associated with many service-learning activities near to campus, which are often organised quite differently. servicelearning near campus involves, in many but certainly not all cases, sending students into community organisations in order to help – to ‘volunteer in needy communities’ (hondagneu3 | gateways | klak & mullaney sotelo & raskoff 1994, p. 248). community partners in such programs interact primarily with undergraduates, who in most cases are involved only over the short term. in an example of this approach from california that is representative of some of the concerns, a focus group of dozens of community partners revealed dissatisfied reactions to the service-learning program: ‘there was an overwhelming clamor among these community partners that faculty should be more directly involved with their sites and work to better understand the culture, conditions, and practices of their community co-educators’ (sandy & holland 2006, p. 37). one of the interviewed community partners noted that ‘i’ve never developed a relationship with a professor. i work with the service-learning coordinator primarily, and some students’ (sandy & holland 2006, p. 37). such an approach can reinforce divisions between the realms of academic inquiry and community engagement when, in effect, students are deployed as extension officers. the absence of actively engaged professors in other service-learning contexts also raises questions about the activities’ intellectual content (woolf 2005). whatever the applicable critiques of ice as we attempt to carry it out in the eastern caribbean, they are unlikely to centre on a lack of sustained faculty engagement. such commitment is a cornerstone of our program for several reasons. logistically it would be difficult for undergraduates to work in communities overseas without direct faculty involvement, particularly in developing partnerships over time that make possible undergraduate engagement. beyond that, our international partnership relationships are not about placing undergraduates in service-learning environments, although service-learning of a different sort does occur through the course’s engagement activities. our university group and our dominican counterparts are dedicated to working to understand one another across the various divides between us, including culture, global economics, race, class and geography. kahn (2010) usefully argues that international work like ours should involve people in the host countries at an early stage of problematising, instead of aiming to generate benefits at the end. providing help to needy people is inadequate. university groups need to work with their partners more directly on the fundamental organisational issues associated with the partnership (kahn 2010). we feel that our interviews and follow-up discussions with partners are steps in this direction. to capture the differences in involvement described above, we prefer the term civic engagement rather than service-learning to describe our overseas project. the term ‘civic’ is etymologically linked to citizens, citizenship, and democratic engagement and responsibilities. we seek to encourage global citizenship thinking among our students (battistoni, longo & jayanandhan 2009). we seek to encourage our host partners to see our collaborations as transcending conventional national borders of citizenship. in our case, the processes of ‘service’ and ‘learning’ are both mutual 4 | gateways | klak & mullaney exchanges. even when students and faculty carry out individual research projects, they do it as members of a university team with a variety of host community connections, and they work to deepen relationships that have developed over years (klak & mullaney 2011). for us, international civic engagement, more than servicelearning, encapsulates this long-term, collaborative and reciprocal project that combines study abroad, research and service related to sustainable living (bringle, hatcher & holland 2007; ccph 2005, p. 13). conceptualizing relationships with partners and host communities our distinction between service-learning and civic engagement leads into other conceptual issues regarding the people with whom we partner and interact during study abroad. one is an oftenrepeated point that is nonetheless worth emphasising: one must take great care not to homogenise, containerise or reify the notion of a host community (baumann 1996). however reassuring it may be to imagine a unified and fixed host community eagerly awaiting our arrival, their society is just as complex and full of contradictions as anything coming from the university side. it is too easy and too common to implicitly imagine supposedly consensual, homogenised communities in the rural global south that are organic and inherently sustainable (mohan 2001). in fact, considering the reality of differences within the host society with regard to economic standing, political party politics and other priorities, one should expect more diversity than unity. an impact of host community diversity and dynamism is that key players in our partnerships move in and out over time (as they do on the university side). this is a normal and appropriate feature of partnerships that should not be considered a sign of weakness or failure. this discussion raises the question of whether it is helpful to deploy the concept of host community at all to refer to groups of people with whom we interact. conceptually, we prefer (but admittedly do not always adhere to in conversation) terms such as partners, partnering groups and collaborators. these terms are more precise and don’t imply, as community often does, homogeneity and consensus. referring to partner relationships rather than to host communities also reminds us of the particular nature of our engagements: only certain people living in the regions where we work are engaged and benefit directly from the relationships (cf. bringle, clayton & price 2009). in many cases, these individuals are higher in social and/or economic status. many others in the same village are excluded and this exclusion can spread resentment, an outcome antithetical to the notion of partnerships of mutuality, democratic engagement and social justice. a constant challenge of partnerships like ours is therefore to creatively spread the relationships and associated benefits more widely and inclusively. in this article, when we refer to host communities, we do not suggest unity of purpose and benefits. 5 | gateways | klak & mullaney we understand host communities as localised populations within which our university group interacts unevenly. one of our goals is to encourage dialogue and cooperation among members of the host community who may not otherwise be motivated to work together towards a common purpose. in our case, that common purpose is hosting visiting groups such as ours in a way that disperses the benefits widely, with new partnerships snowballing from earlier ones, which contributes incrementally to sustainable community development. therefore, while we take seriously the problems associated with engaging a ‘community’ through its most accessible, engaged and prominent members, we consider this concept an appropriate starting point for relationship building, both between our groups and among our hosts. another concern with service-learning arises from a tendency among practitioners to conceptualise their community partners in terms that render them alien: we and they, our group and theirs, etc. while it is difficult to avoid such dualistic thinking in partnerships, it must be approached with scrutiny lest such conceptions inadvertently reinforce social divisions rather than bridge them. as development studies scholar lakshman yapa has argued, institutions of higher learning engaged in community outreach often ‘view the community as the domain of the problem, and the college as the domain of the solution’ (quoted in enos & morton 2003, p. 20). such a blinkered perspective obscures agency and culpability on both sides of this largely culturally constructed divide and hinders democratic collaboration across it. impacts on partners a decade and a half ago, holland and ramaley (1998, p. 3) levelled some concerns about civic engagement activities by universities before a federal forum on ‘connecting community building and education reform’: unless [community-university] collaborations move away from an emphasis on reforming organizations, to a stronger community base and a larger vision for the community, too much time will be spent defining and managing relationships and success will be more likely to be defined in terms of effort expended on institutional improvement rather than community impacts or human impacts. unfortunately these concerns continue to resonate. the impacts of collaborative projects on community partners remain notably under-studied. research has to place much more emphasis on examining and theorising civic engagement and servicelearning from a pedagogical standpoint. previous research has primarily evaluated the impacts on students (useful literature reviews include bringle 2010; giles & eyler 1998; imperial, perry & katula 2007; mcleod & wainwright 2009; perry & katula 2001; perry & thomson 2004). equally important, yet less often examined, is the impact of such programs on the host collaborators and their communities. as dorado and giles (2004, p. 126) explain: ‘the emphasis on 6 | gateways | klak & mullaney community partnerships in the service-learning literature is both relatively new and quite sparse. while there has been some emphasis on the community impacts of service-learning in the research literature, a focus on the partnerships themselves is new.’ sandy and holland (2006, p. 30) even suggest that the process by which partners benefit is something of a black box: [s]ervice-learning practitioners often do not often know if, when, and how this is achieved. to date, there are few published studies documenting the perspectives of community members in partnership with universities, and the field acknowledges that this area continues to be under-represented in the overall service-learning literature. given the social justice orientation of ice and other community outreach programs, this is a disconcerting gap in the literature. following holland and ramaley’s (1998) model of community-university collaborations as ‘knowledge-based learning organizations’, we argue that in order to contribute to mutual transformative and collective social change, we must seek out and reflect upon the feedback from everyone involved, not least of which are our community partners who host, and in the process educate, our students. as we critically examine and seek to improve our civic engagement efforts, we keep in mind planner sherry arnstein’s maxim that ‘participation without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless’ (arnstein 1969, p. 216). our training in geography and theories of power provides us with insight into how privilege operates to reinforce existing inequalities. arnstein’s warning remains as urgent today as it was in the 1960s: ‘participation’ can be a dangerously beguiling term, deployed on behalf of everything from manipulative and exploitative relationships to truly transformative partnerships. our goal in soliciting the perspectives of our participants was to address what fellow geographers bailey and grossardt (2010) more recently called the ‘arnstein gap’, that is, the difference between the perceived and desired relationships that participants have with our civic engagement program. in the sections that follow, we detail how we approached gathering participant feedback, the findings we generated, and the implications for improving our partnerships as we move forward. methods our interview questions are found in appendix a. they were designed by following an approach that torres (2000) refers to as revisiting the essential elements of the partnership. she advocates that partners regularly convene for evaluative discussions of issues such as benefits, modifications and goals. our questions also extend from those of sandy and holland (2006, p. 31), who described their research project as follows: the goal of this study is to better understand the diverse perspectives of long-term community partners collaborating with institutions of 7 | gateways | klak & mullaney higher education, and to identify partner recommendations for ways to transform higher education practice to strengthen mature and well-established partnerships. previous research also prompted us to focus our questions on the partnership as the unit of analysis, which is particularly lacking in the literature (dorado & giles 2004; klak & mullaney 2011; sandy & holland 2006). we believe that this focus has the unintended but positive side-effect of dampening trepidation partners might have about speaking freely, because the reflections concern the connections established between us, rather than the performance of any individuals. finally, our questions were motivated by suggestions from whitney and clayton (2010), who recommend that such inquiries go beyond investigating ‘what impact does the [international service learning] program have on the local community?’ to more fundamental and actionable issues such as ‘what should we be trying to achieve together?’ the initial 21 interviews with our dominican partners were completed in 2009, with follow-up conversations and reflections with them extending from the initial interviews several times over the ensuing few years. since 2009 these sit-down sessions have become regularised and seek to gauge our dominican partners’ impressions of the impacts of and priorities for our collaborative work. the interviews presented challenges and choices. we were aware that our partners were likely to be hesitant to be openly critical of us regarding our relationships. in response, we began the interviews with questions soliciting word associations that were non-judgemental about the relationships, and introduced more direct queries about the nature of the relationships only towards the end. indeed, the interviews established a new dimension to the partnerships, with regular opportunities for partners to reflect on positive and negative aspects of their mutual experiences and to set future priorities. an obvious alternative data-gathering method would have been to have someone unassociated with this ice project conduct the interviews (sandy & holland 2006). this arrangement would have been less practical and perhaps even less desirable in this case. practically speaking, it would be difficult and expensive to arrange for someone sufficiently knowledgeable about the partnerships, yet unassociated with the university project, to travel throughout dominica to find and interview our partners. though we have many contacts throughout the country, including with institutions of higher education, at the time of this research we had not identified anyone with both sufficient training and the availability to join what is inherently a highly time-consuming project. this situation reflects some of the challenges of working in a small island state with limited infrastructure, as well as patterns of escalating pressures on university educators and researchers that extend far beyond dominica. the research presented in this paper is one step in an ongoing long-term project, and we look forward to continuing to building on it in the future. 8 | gateways | klak & mullaney in terms of desirability, it is worth underscoring that no one understands the details and history of the partnerships better than those people who have been most involved with them over the many years. having the principal person involved in the partnerships from the university side conduct the interviews has the advantage of contributing to deepening the relationships. this is valuable, not only for the relationships’ longer term, but also as motivation for our partners to participate in the interviews. indeed, the interviews have served as a step towards building stronger relationships through regular dialogue and reflection. the interviews targeted key informants, that is, the individual in each organisation who had been most involved in the partnership. in all cases, this was a person previously identified as a leader within that local organisation. data collection was at the one-on-one level, in order to allow the partner to have the full opportunity to articulate his or her opinions and priorities. this data-gathering approach contrasts with others that have deployed focus groups, which can draw out overarching points that transcend the particularities of one partner’s viewpoints (sandy & holland 2006). in this case, it was those particularities that were of greatest interest. four partners were interviewed in greater depth, and 17 others in lesser depth. the distinction between these two types of interview corresponds to the depth of the partnership, as discussed below. we had worked with all interviewees for at least a year and a half at that time, so none were at the one-time project level depicted as a partnership entry point by enos and morton (2003). this project followed a protocol for conducting ethical research involving human subjects, as established by our university institutional review board and the related national guidelines for ethical research articulated by the collaborative institutional training initiative (citi – www.citiprogram.org/ aboutus.asp?language=english). we adhere to these guidelines by excluding partners’ names, instead describing them by their organisational positions, jobs and/or expertise. findings characterising and differentiating partnership levels and networks travelling to dominica with the express purpose of seeking feedback and perspectives from our partners about our relationships proved enlightening on several levels. the experiences underscore that it is worth stepping back on a regular basis from the ongoing details of engagement and activity, coordinating and scheduling, to assess the status and quality of the relationships. three general points emerged from the initial interviews and follow-up sessions. we will first present these three broad points because they frame the entire set of partnerships. we will then turn attention to prominent themes articulated by partners. the first point highlights an important geographical constraint on the partnerships that indirectly imposes barriers www.citiprogram.org/aboutus.asp?language=english www.citiprogram.org/aboutus.asp?language=english 9 | gateways | klak & mullaney to what the partnerships can achieve. it concerns the acute geographical obstacles associated with international civic engagement partnerships. developing deep and sustained relationships with overseas partners, particularly those located in a difficult-to-reach foreign country such as dominica, is immensely challenging. it is only possible for the lead person on the university’s side of the partnership to spend about three weeks in dominica each year. fieldwork for each student thesis project adds another month or two of contact and relationship-building to the overall project. this amount of contact is quite limited as compared to the possibilities available to university groups working in communities proximate to their home base. it is also limited when compared to the kind of intense daily interactions typical within dominican communities, as in so many village-oriented societies around the world. it may be surprising to readers that, although we are in a global telecommunications age, email and telephone communications are constrained by access, quality and cost for our dominican counterparts. few dominicans use email as regularly as we in university settings do. and, further, electronic communications cannot substitute for face-to-face contact, particularly in a society where such contact is the norm. an effect of these geographical obstacles is to underscore that the university partners are fleetingly present outsiders separate from the day-to-day activities and relationships in dominica. our discussions in dominica about the nature of and possibilities for the partnerships are unavoidably constrained by this geography. a second general point to emerge from the feedback sessions with partners is that our choice to engage a variety of partners located in different regions of dominica creates an additional challenge. whereas many civic engagement projects are focused on a single community, our dominica project has sought to engage several geographically dispersed communities throughout the country. the study group stays three nights each in four different regions of dominica, in order to interact with a wide variety of people engaged in a host of sustainability issues from fisheries and forestry to farming and handicraft production. we do this broad sweep in order to support a variety of grassroots initiatives, to obtain a countrywide understanding of sustainable development issues, and to learn from the regional comparisons and contrasts. while this itinerant approach offers students a broad experience, it limits the depth of local work and engagement. despite the country’s small size, communities are distinct, and regular intense community work happens to a large extent at the local scale. the possibilities for our partnerships are therefore also constrained by the limited time we spend in any particular place. the third and most important result of the interviews, and one requiring more elaboration below, leads us to conceptualise partnership levels and networks. our partnerships differ from one another in their levels of intensity, engagement and complexity, and many are interdependently connected through relationship networks. 10 | gateways | klak & mullaney by ‘network’ in the context of our study abroad partnerships, we mean an informal system of interconnected relationships between groups of people with overlapping interests or concerns who interact and provide mutual assistance or support. our sit-down sessions with partners revealed to us that partnership longevity is often correlated with its depth, as others have previously noted (for example, bringle & hatcher 2002; sandy & holland 2006). in other words, partnerships that have endured over the longer term tend to be deeper. however, for many of our dominican partnerships this is not the case. we find that more important than partnership longevity is multi-dimensionality, which does not necessarily expand linearly with time. by multidimensionality we mean the number of different activities associated with the partnership. for example, a deep partnership may involve mutual fundraising, shared meals, cultural activities and gardening/farming. this multi-dimensionality parallels the ‘closeness’ dimension identified by bringle, clayton and price (2009). this finding is also consistent with that of dorado and giles (2004), whose interviews led them to posit that time only partially correlates with partners’ commitment to service-learning relationships. in contrast, our differentiation of partnerships differs from dorado and giles’ (2004) three-way classification, which they refer to variously as (a) tentative, learning or new, (b) aligned or active, and (c) committed, nurturing or longer term. ours are even less time-dependent and based primarily on the number of dimensions the partnership engages. the dimensionality can grow quite quickly, particularly if a relationship can be built on other longer term network relationships in the host country and tap into previous trust and positive experiences with other locals the partners mutually know and respect. this is a common occurrence in a small country such as dominica, where social and professional networks are dense, critical to ongoing local development issues and extend countrywide. our partnerships tap into this existing dense national network of leaders. indeed, it is striking in conversations with community leaders how often other contacts from throughout the country are well known to them. dominica is a country of just 70 000 people, but the social networks appear much denser, richer and more thorough than any comparable western city of similar size. more specifically with regard to our partnerships, our interviews have led us to conceptualise three levels. assigning each partnership to one of the three categories is a useful exercise, in that it helps to define the parameters, qualities, expectations and extent or scope of each relationship (table 1). the main feature that distinguishes the three levels is the number of dimensions that pertain to the partnership. level c is focused on a particular activity, such as an annual day’s activity centred on tropical ecology or organic farming. several of these level c partnerships are long running, rewarding and enriching for both sides, attesting to the fact that achieving level a status is not necessarily a goal in many cases. level b relationships are often deeper than those 11 | gateways | klak & mullaney at level c, but for various reasons have not reached the highest level. in some cases, this may be simply because the partnership is relatively new. it is sometimes only after years of working together that the trust and integration of mutual agendas can occur. in other cases, the overseas partner at level b is simply too busy with other important things in his or her life to devote time to cultivating a partnership that would take it to level a. level dimensionality distinguishing features examples of partners’ fields t 1 a multiple conceptualising the partnership; brainstorming new initiatives; nurturing the partnership; working to expand the activities and participants community and environmental leaders, educators, activists, administrative leaders, ecologists, tour organisers 4 4 b two or three partnership scope is narrower; partner is otherwise preoccupied; sometimes nascent relationships; greater emphasis on friendships than on building partnership projects farmers, artisans, community organisers 14 12 c singular restricted to singular activities; contact is relatively limited; partnership is not conceptual or ‘big picture’ drivers, guides, teachers, host families, guest speakers, restauranteurs, ecologists 12 5 t – total number of partners at this level i – number of partners at this level interviewed in our level a partnerships, both sides envision a broad picture of the partnership’s aims, possibilities and trajectory. relationships of this sort are characterised by regular interactions between leaders on both sides concerning the breadth of the project and how it can be enhanced. both sides willingly invest in nurturing and extending the relationship. level a partnerships often concern themselves with the relationship between our university and the country of dominica as a whole. one example of such an issue of interest to both sides is the way in which visiting groups can have an impact in villages and surrounding rural areas that is bigger than what happens at the level of small group interactions. in other words, the partnership works to contribute in a modest way to integrated regional development. in our ice project, there have been in recent years only four level a partnerships. notably, owing to community dynamism and the evolution of the partnerships, some of the dominicans involved at the a level have shifted in and out over time. as mentioned earlier, such change is normal and appropriate. level a partnerships are relatively few, in part because of the time and effort required on both sides to cultivate such relationships. this suggests another reason why it should not necessarily be a goal to advance partnerships to the a level. they require continuous contact and nurturing, and this is difficult and perhaps even undesirable table 1: three levels of partnership relationships 12 | gateways | klak & mullaney for the success of the broader ice project. on a related note, level a partnerships are few also because engaging at the highest level of intensity is not possible for, or of interest to, most dominicans. they, like most people in the world, are preoccupied with their own work, family and social activities. given all of life’s demands, why invest deeply in a primarily overseas relationship? dominicans are among the world’s friendliest and most welcoming people, but the geographical barriers to the overseas partnerships noted at the outset of this section dampen relationship development. there are many more partnerships at the two lower levels. again, this became clear when interviewing partners in light of the research questions. it became apparent that some of the questions were not suitable for the experiences that our relationships have had, despite the fact that many of these relationships were several years old. one level c partner replied, when asked to characterise the relationship between our university and our dominican counterparts, ‘i hadn’t really thought about it’. in such situations, the interview dispensed with direct questioning along these lines. instead, inquiry was shifted to a more general conversational level, to allow the partner to raise and articulate issues that were particular to her/his experience, and to begin to share the broader collaborative picture, as appropriate and meaningful, with b and c level partners. partnership nurturing and dialogue can and should continue, no matter the level of partnership intensity, and as appropriate to that level. our conceptualisation differs from the partnership levels distinguished by sockett (1998) and others following him (for example, nye & schramm 1999; ramaley 2009). the four levels these authors have identified are service relationships (fixed time and task with the university providing the service); exchange relationships (exchange information and gain access to each other for mutual benefit, project specific); cooperative relationships (joint planning and shared responsibilities, long-term, multiple projects); and transformative relationships (shared decision-making/ operations/evaluation intended to transform each organisation). we find these distinctions from the literature useful but, based on our interviews, posit different relationships between the levels. as nye and schramm (1999, p. 70) help to explain, ‘sockett’s higher levels [represent] more successful partnerships, consistent with the empowerment model’. ramaley (2009) adds that their partnership levels, from service to transformative, increasingly have ‘more impact’. in contrast, our conceptualisation stresses that there are network-like connections between many (but not all) of our partnerships at different levels, so that any success of the partnerships at higher levels is not independent of lower level relationships. for example, a level a partnership with a successful eco-lodge owner (called transformative in sockett’s model) is enriched by lower level partnerships with local practitioners of sustainable farming and village organisers (perhaps these would 13 | gateways | klak & mullaney be exchange or cooperative relationships for sockett). as another example, a level a partnership with a village mayor is enriched by lower level (but notably long-term) partnerships with homestay families and a local cultural heritage/music group. in both of these examples, the supportive connections between these dominican practitioners and our university group are many. indeed, we cannot conceive of our more and less intense partnerships separate from one another, because they are intricately and synergistically related, and each contributes in its own way to the overall ice project. sockett’s (1998) partnerships at different levels are presented as if they are independent of one another. however, we suspect that interconnections between partnerships at different levels, operating simultaneously and synergistically, are not unique to our ice project. in university-community organisation partnerships, often conceived as simply bilateral, are there not in fact other crucial collaborators (level b and c partners in our schema) providing particular expertise, insights and experiences that enhance the principal partnerships (level a for us)? we would like to know if other civic engagement practitioners find such interconnected networks among their partnerships. we also notice a tautology in sockett’s partnership model: if partnership success is defined by the attributes, arrangements and circumstances associated with the fourth type, namely transformative relationships, then the other three types and purposes of relationships can never be as successful. there are two ways out of this circular logic. one is to define only transformative relationships as partnerships, and relegate the other less intense relationships to more general terms, such as associations or working relationships (bringle, clayton & price 2009). the other option is to allow the concept of partnership to apply more broadly while understanding that, depending on the partnership level, it has different purposes and goals by which success is defined. our experience makes us uncomfortable deeming the less intense partnerships as inherently less successful. in many cases they appropriately have narrower agendas which should not be considered less successful. indeed, as we have mentioned, maintaining more than a few partnerships at the most intensive level would be time and energy prohibitive for both our university and the dominicans. maintaining a network-like structure of partnerships that differ in level of intensity is appropriate and indeed necessary, and can be deemed successful at all levels. the different levels of partnership in the network need each other for the overall ice project to achieve success. reflections, recommendations and priorities from our dominican partners our interviews and follow-up sessions elicited a wealth of positive feedback, from praise for the maturity and contributions of our students and expressions of satisfaction after working with our researchers, to comments on the ways that our study group 14 | gateways | klak & mullaney benefits a wide range of dominicans. negative sentiments have been concerned primarily with the short duration of our stay in any dominican locale and the desire for more dominicans to participate in our exchanges. what follows are a few quotes illustrating these sentiments and themes. taken together, they illustrate how the partnerships have extended our impacts in dominica beyond that of a typical study abroad tour. one owner–operator bus driver employed to transport the study group described a day course participants spent in a fishing village: yes, we should have more student groups like yours and not so many other tourists. why? because the money goes further and deeper. if i had a group like yours for 10 days every month, i would be laughing! you have had a good day, and the kiosk lady, she has money tonight to buy for her children. the fisherman has money to buy chicken, so the farmer he buys from has money for school fees. you [the study group] help a lot and don’t make demands that things be a certain way. a different dominican partner lauded our organised sessions, wherein the american students dialogue with their dominican counterparts, saying that they serve as a ‘motivator’ for the latter, and that they ‘force them to listen to serious talk’. a school principal stressed that the partnership works for all involved because ‘first of all it is a mutual relationship’. another principal sent this follow-up email after a recent reflection session we held in dominica: at my parents teachers association meeting on monday 13th i spoke to my parents about your great plans for the students and the school. everyone sends their love to you and your students especially the parents who are receiving the scholarship fund for attending the preschool. beyond the positive feedback, partners effectively ‘raised the bar’ when asked what they believed we should do to make partnerships even more successful. if you ask partners what they would like to see us do more of, they list out many intriguing but ambitious things, and then it’s up to the partnership leaders to try to make them happen. this puts an even greater burden on the partnership organisers, which is exciting and challenging but unnerving at the same time. it is safer and less taxing to simply carry on the partnership as it incrementally develops over time, without encouraging host partners to think proactively about the future. it should be clear from this article that we are not advocating a retreat from more deeply incorporating partners’ perspectives; rather we are acknowledging the additional challenges to an already very ambitious overseas effort that may emerge from any data-gathering effort soliciting partners’ suggestions in the future. 15 | gateways | klak & mullaney none of the partners’ recommendations seemed off the cuff. on the contrary, the suggestions were so detailed as to suggest that they extended from considerable prior thought about what they would like to see in the future. two level a partners recommended specific ways that we should deepen our collaboration. an ecologist working for the dominica government would like to see more direct collaboration on research projects, particularly so dominicans can gain a fuller understanding of the research methods that they can deploy themselves in the future. this partner put it this way: if we had the wherewithal, i would like to see a passing along of skills [from student researcher to public employee]. i would like to attach one or two of staff with the student to share knowledge and skills, but there is no concerted effort as yet to do this skill transfer. in addition, he would like to see ‘off island training’ for his staff, such as in ecological science, methods for data gathering and analysis, and gis [geographic information systems] at our university. we find these appropriate extensions of the partnership, but unfortunately resource constraints on both sides have not allowed us to implement these recommendations. we will continue to advocate with our university for such partnership extensions. another level a partner took the opportunity availed by the initial interview to imagine a well-orchestrated teleconference between students and staff at our university and in dominica. he sees the two sides being brought together by the senior member of our university team: ‘you are the connector’. he suggested that, when our study group was next in dominica, the senior member make a presentation at one of the universities which summarises our collaborative work on the island over the years. the presentation should point to the future: ‘these are the lessons we are carrying forward’. comments and questions should come not only from students and staff present at the event, but also from our university back in the us. he even suggested that university students and staff on other caribbean islands be invited to participate in the teleconference. regarding the entire event, he says we should ‘film it for the record as an evaluative tool’, both for the details about our collaborative work and as an example of teleconference-based collaboration across international space. finally, he suggested an accompanying written report on and evaluation of our experiences of the prospects and challenges for community-based sustainable development: ‘next time i would like to see an overarching report and assessment’. clearly, these suggestions represent a tall order, challenging in terms of the logistics, commitment, technology and content! although we have not been able to achieve this rather grandiose version of interaction at a distance, these partner recommendations have led to additional interaction by way of skype and discussion of shared reading materials. other level a partners made similar suggestions, emphasising the value of better documenting of our engagement activities. one recommended annual reports written 16 | gateways | klak & mullaney collaboratively by our students on sustainable ecotourism, based on their interactions with dominicans. this partner noted that it might be valuable to see how such reports change over the years, as students’ experiences in dominica change, and as the ecotourism sector itself evolves: maybe students can do -in order to make a difference -a report at the end, of recommendations. -what do your students think we should be doing? ten annual reports from students. a singular group report – i’m sure everyone [i.e., our dominica contacts and people in the ecotourism sector] would like to see what collectively they see and recommend. a primary school administrator also suggested we better document our collaboration. we should ‘prepare a letter to the minister of education’ describing the details and successes of the matching funds campaigns for local schools. this same partner asked for help with strategies for a seemingly universal problem, namely ways to enhance parental involvement in the educational process: ‘regarding the school: getting parents to be more fully involved is a difficulty – i would like some strategies for greater involvement. bring some ideas from the us.’ suggestions such as these have prompted ongoing discussion about ways that our mutual projects can be publicised and about ways we partners can engage more contributing participants. lastly, one partner suggested other ways that our student research projects could be better disseminated. he suggested that such students ‘give a public lecture or something on the radio’. in response, we organised a session in which graduate students presented their research findings, attended both by undergraduate students from our university and a wide range of interested dominicans. these comments underscore the ongoing need for researchers from the global north to share their findings with those in the host society who help make the research possible. all of them are wonderful and appropriate suggestions for ways to deepen and extend our partnerships. summarising them here serves as a record of our partners’ visions for future steps. our plan is to continue to work to find ways to operationalise them, if not fully, then at least through activities that move the partnerships in the suggested directions. conclusion and implications this article reports on efforts to probe the perspectives of our overseas partners regarding the performance of the partnerships and how they can be improved. it has conceptualised partnerships in light of burgeoning literatures on service-learning and civic engagement. the literature defines successful universitycommunity partnerships as those that are long term, deep and multi-dimensional. our findings, on the contrary, suggest that partnership success can occur at all levels of intensity. successful 17 | gateways | klak & mullaney partnerships vary in their levels of intensity, engagement and complexity, and many are interdependent in network-like relationships. the highest partnership level is associated with multi-dimensionality of purpose and spans issues such as teaching, fundraising, community development and conceptual brainstorming about collaborating across international borders on issues related to sustainable living. lower intensity partnerships often contribute crucially to the overall success of the community engagement project, and also provide valuable support for higher level partnerships. by conceptualising partnerships in terms of their dimensionality and relationship networks, practitioners can better appreciate the different contributions and expectations at each level toward the project’s overall success. we encourage research to assess the extent to which this framework applies to other civic engagement partnerships, both near campus and abroad. we conclude with a discussion of five wider issues associated with civic engagement projects, particularly international ones and the associated study abroad courses. first, we find that international partnerships are even more challenging than domestic ones (we do have local partnership experience for comparison). ice projects face acute communicative and geographical challenges which can easily appear insurmountable and threaten to undermine the entire effort. these include not being locally situated within the milieu of community experience and organising, and attempting to maintain contact with distant people with limited telecommunications access. however, our experience is that the rewards exceed the challenges, and we urge other educators to commit to long-term investment in such transcultural and transcontextual partnerships. second, it is important to be sensitive to the power dynamics associated with partnerships between an american university and people/communities in the less developed world. we find that the power dynamics cut both ways, with each side bringing different capacities, interests and motivations to the relationship. the american university and its staff and students hold considerable power in the relationships owing to their financial and technological resources and related ability to travel to and stay in the host society. therefore, we feel morally obligated to continue to work to deploy our relative resource wealth in ways that benefit our dominican hosts. we do this in a variety of ways, as we have recounted in this article. we try to provide income to disadvantaged dominicans during our study tours, contribute disproportionately to mutual fundraising projects, obtain computers and other much-needed inputs for partnering organisations and (least successfully thus far) press our university administration to contribute resources to our overseas educators. that said, it’s important to appreciate that the power dynamics are not entirely one-sided, because our overseas partners bring a different kind of power to the relationships – call it ‘hosting power’. the success of our program relies on our partners choosing to 18 | gateways | klak & mullaney invest time and effort to engage with and host us. we guests rely on them for all aspects of our experience in their country. in all cases, our hosts choose to welcome our university group into the daily rhythms of village life. it is an open question as to which side in the partnerships needs the other more. ongoing, open dialogue among partners is required to assure that the relationships, despite the power imbalances, are of mutual benefit. we feel that the partner interviews and follow-up discussions reported on in this article contribute importantly towards mutuality. third, it follows that better communication is the antidote to poor or imbalanced relationships. this article and the interviews it is based on have been invaluable to our ice project. it serves as a record of what we have been trying to achieve in our project and identifies ways that our partnerships can deepen in the future. we hope that it will encourage other academics working on civic engagement partnerships to more systematically assess their progress and partners’ views to help fill the related gap in the literature. more important than the scholarly contributions is the positive impact on the project itself. this research experience makes us certain that such dialogue contributes significantly to enhancing partnerships and the overall impact of overseas activities for all involved. fourth, a partnership caveat to keep in mind is the principle that activities should be mutual. discussions with host partners about future actions should focus on activities that will be undertaken mutually by both sides of the partnership. it’s easy to err (as we admittedly have) by asking host partners what they would like to see in the future and obtaining a list of activities that are quite grandiose, difficult to accomplish and imbalanced in terms of effort and engagement. mutuality dictates that activities should involve both sides, rather than one serving the other, although in some short-term situations one-sidedness is necessary. fifth, this study leads to suggestions for course design. we recommend that study abroad courses include conceptual readings on ice such as presented in this article. in other words, readings and associated discussions to prepare for study abroad should not only focus on course topics (for example, physical or cultural geography, history, ecology) and current issues in the host communities, but should also familiarise students with the aims of the civic engagement project. devote class time to discussing how a civic engagement course differs from a more 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joint forum of u.s. department of education and u.s. department of housing and urban development, portland, or. hondagneu-sotelo, p & raskoff, s 1994, ‘community service-learning: promises and problems’, teaching sociology, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 248–54. http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/commission%20report%20final.pdf%20 http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/commission%20report%20final.pdf%20 20 | gateways | klak & mullaney imperial, m, perry, j & katula, m 2007, ‘effective service learning in public affairs: lessons from the literature’, journal of public affairs education, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 231–52. kahn, h 2010, ‘overcoming the challenges of international service learning: a visual approach to sharing authority, community development, and global learning’, in r bringle, j hatcher & s jones (eds), international service learning: conceptual frameworks and research, stylus, sterling, va. klak, t & mullaney, eg 2011, ‘international civic engagement: from development studies and service-learning to miami universitydominica partnerships’, partnerships: a journal of service learning & civic engagement. vol. 2, no. 1 (winter), pp. 1–26. mcleod, m & wainwright, p 2009, ‘researching the study abroad experience’, journal of studies in international education, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 66–71. mohan, g 2001, ‘beyond participation: strategies for deeper empowerment’, in b cooke & u kothari (eds), participation: the new tyranny?, zed books, new york, pp. 153–67. nye, n & schramm, r 1999, building higher education-community development corporation partnerships, seedco & us department of housing and urban development, new york. perry, j & katula, m 2001, ‘does service affect citizenship?’, administration & society, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 330–65. perry, j & thomson, a 2004, civic service: what difference does it make?, me sharpe, armonk, new york. ramaley, j 2009, ‘government/university partnerships: an international perspective – the view from the united states’, viewed 12 june 2012, www.deakin.edu.au/dhs/symposium/keynote%20 presentation_symposium_jr.pdf. reason, p & bradbury, h 2001, ‘inquiry and participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice, sage publications, london, pp. 1–14. sandy, m & holland, b 2006, ‘different worlds and common ground: community partner perspectives on campus-community partnerships’, michigan journal of community service learning, fall, pp. 30–43. sockett, h 1998, ‘levels of partnership’, metropolitan universities: an international forum, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 75–82. torres, j 2000, benchmarks for campus/community partnerships, campus compact, providence, ri. whitney, b & clayton, p 2010, ‘research on and through reflection in international service learning’, in r bringle, j hatcher & s jones (eds), international service learning: conceptual frameworks and research, stylus, sterling, va. woolf, m 2005, ‘avoiding the missionary tendency’, international educator, march–april, pp. 27–31. worrall, l 2007, ‘asking the community: a case study of community partner perspectives’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 14, pp. 5–17. http://www.deakin.edu.au/dhs/symposium/keynote%20presentation_symposium_jr.pdf http://www.deakin.edu.au/dhs/symposium/keynote%20presentation_symposium_jr.pdf 21 | gateways | klak & mullaney appendix a: interview questions 1. what words come to mind to describe your relationship with [our university] professors and students? 2. what are the most important things that you would like to teach or show visiting [our university] students? please explain. 3. has your view of [our university] professors and students changed over time? if so, how? 4. what benefits do you obtain from your relationships with [our university] professors and students? 5. are there any differences between your relationship with [our university] professors and students compared with other visitors to dominica? why or why not, and please explain. 6. what would you say is the worst thing about your relationship with [our university] professors and students? or: do you have any concerns? 7. what is most important for you to get from your relationship with [our university] professors and students? 8. what would you like to see happen in the near future so that your relationship with [our university] is better for you? 9. to what extent do you see your relationship with [our university] as a partnership? please explain. 10. what would you like to see happen so that your relationship with [our university] would be more of a collaborative partnership? 11. is there anything else you would like to say about your relationship with [our university] professors and students that we have not covered? _goback silkapdf.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 128–149 © utsepress and the authors community-university partnerships: achieving continuity in the face of change linda silka, robert forrant, brenda bond, patricia coffey, robin toof, dan toomey, david turcotte and cheryl west challenge most community-university partnerships will face after having established themselves is how to maintain continuity in the face of change. the problems besetting communities continually shift as new issues bubble up. similarly, the goals of the university partners often fluctuate. and the partners themselves shift: people working in non-government organizations often move in and out of positions and university partners may change with tenure or shifts in university priorities. in light of all of this flux, can stable community-university partnerships be built and, if so, how? this problem is not an insignificant one (maurrassee 2001). now that universities are once again expressing interest in working with the communities that surround them, community leaders who have had past experiences with universities are responding to such overtures with caution and even skepticism (holland 2005; lerner & simon 1998; nyden 2005). communities perhaps rightly question the a gateways | silka et al 129 staying power of this latest university enthusiasm (edwards & marullo 1999; silka 1999). continuity in university involvement requires some shared vision but this is often in short supply in academic environments (kennedy 1997; rhodes 1998; silka 2001). university faculty are notoriously difficult to lead, with faculty operating largely as independent entrepreneurs pursuing their own interests (bowen & shapiro 1998). in light of these challenges, how can continuity be built into community-university partnerships? these are issues we have struggled with over the past decade at the university of massachusetts lowell (uml) (forrant & silka 2006; forrant & silka 1999). uml is a comprehensive public university located in the northeast of the united states. the region in which uml is situated has undergone rapid transformation (massinc 2006; silka 2004). lowell is now home to the second largest cambodian population in the united states, all countries in africa are represented among lowell’s residents, and many central and south americans (for example, some 15 000 brazilians) live in the lowell area (lotspeich, fix, perez-lopez, & ost 2003). the majority of the youth now in the lowell school system are from minority backgrounds. at the same time, this region is undergoing economic restructuring (forrant 2001a; gittell & flynn 1995; moscovitch 1990): northeastern massachusetts was once a major locus for manufacturing but many of these high-paying industrial jobs have gone overseas, leaving behind unemployment and environmental contamination. because massachusetts is a high cost region in which to do business, there is a constant need for the development of new opportunities to replace the industries that have moved elsewhere. against this background, the issues that call for immediate response are never entirely predictable. issues sometimes emerge abruptly and with urgency: a gang death may occur, leading to renewed concern over what is happening to youth; or housing costs may show dramatic spikes, leading to increased attention on the gap in affordability. this search for continuity in partnerships is made all the more challenging by the changes reshaping uml as its ‘baby boomer’ faculty nears retirement (clark 2004; hutchings, huber, & golde 2006). like many universities, uml is currently undergoing its greatest faculty turnover since the university’s inception. over onequarter of the faculty have retired in the last few years, and these gateways | silka et al 130 retirees have been replaced by approximately one hundred new faculty, bringing in new interests, goals and areas of scholarship. in some departments, the majority of the faculty has been at uml for a mere year or two. in addition, the university administrative leadership has changed, with most having served in their leadership roles for just a few short years. with these administrative changes have come attempts to promote new emphases on outreach and research intended to align university efforts more visibly with regional needs on areas such as the environment, green chemistry, nanotechnology, the work environment, and regional economic development (forrant 2001b). how then can stability in communityuniversity collaborations be maintained in the face of these changes, both in the problems to be tackled and in the partners participating in collaborations? at uml much experimentation has gone into trying to answer this question. this article describes an approach that has been developed over a series of summer projects occurring over the past decade. a number of different approaches have been employed, from harnessing the inherent strengths of communities (the ‘multipliereffect’) to linking one-shot content funding with other already existing organizations and projects. this article looks at four broad areas of consideration: the selection criteria for projects; the effective and creative use of content funding; the need for clear communication of a university’s capacities and strengths; and the need to get new faculty on board. at essence, however, is the need to build shared responses if continuity is to be an integral, embedded part of the process. moreover, approaches, if they are to be truly inclusive, must reach out to entire universities and a broad range of partners (lynton & elman 1987; o’meara & rice 2005; todd, ebata, & hughes 1998). yet despite the importance of continuity, it cannot be made the centerpiece of partnership efforts: in most partnerships, resources are simply too scarce and time too limited to devote to selffocused ‘process goals’ such as sustainability. instead, if seamlessness is to be achieved, it must emerge as a side benefit of the activities that are already a natural focus of partnerships. the question that partnerships find themselves confronted with, then, is how to go about their ever-shifting topic-focused work so as to produce continuity as a predictable byproduct. gateways | silka et al 131 the lowell approach for the last eight years, our uml partnership has used content funding that is available every summer as a means of responding to shifting priorities. each year a summer research-action project is developed to target an issue that has emerged into prominence, often with unexpected urgency. uml provides a university-wide committee, the committee on industrial theory and assessment (cita), with resources of approximately $20 000 per annum to carry out this research-action project in which graduate students and high school students look for innovative ways to investigate an issue of joint interest to the community and university. these topics have been highly varied and have included: • new immigrant businesses (1998): many in the community were pointing out that at a time of loss of major industries in the merrimack valley, many new small immigrant businesses were emerging. little was known about these businesses: their focus, their owners, their customers, their links to the community and their needs for technical assistance from uml and the small business assistance center. much has been written about the ways in which immigrant businesses may be more tightly connected to their customer base and may contribute to higher ‘multiplier effects’ in their communities. • youth transportation/youth asset mapping (1999): many of lowell’s youth do not have access to private transport. public transport is their only means for getting to jobs, recreation and entertainment. schools, youth-serving organizations and many others were struggling to understand youth experience with public transportation and the nature of their unmet needs. the demographic character of lowell’s youth is changing rapidly. few in the city are familiar with the resources available for youth and youth-serving organizations. can lowell’s youth use geographic information systems and other community mapping resources to identify assets? • women-owned businesses (2000): women-owned businesses were emerging in lowell. again, little was known about these businesses: their owners, their customers, their links to the gateways | silka et al 132 community, their needs for technical assistance and partnership with organizations such as uml’s center for women and work. • the housing crisis (2001): lowell was rapidly becoming a magnet for those priced out of the greater boston housing market. many different entities in the city were trying to understand what was going on with the housing market and what could be done. each group seemed to think that some other group had the tools or resources to address the problem. • understanding and addressing budget cutbacks within lowell’s youth service agencies (2002/2003): a ‘perfect storm’ of cutbacks began in earnest in 2002. federal, state and local funding for programs dramatically dropped, as did foundation funding. each individual organization was aware of its own crisis. however, little had been done to gather together information about the magnitude of these cutbacks so that their implications could be considered as a whole. • community connections/uml signature outreach areas (2004): uml had reached the point where community groups were beginning to sense that the university had much to offer. but partners were reporting that they were struggling to make sense of the rich variety of resources and who within uml might act as a resource. • spreading the word on sustainability (2005): uml’s cita hosted a conference on sustainability: inside and outside universities, published an edited volume in this area, and surveyed uml students about their views on this aspect of the university’s mission. who within uml was doing work in this area? what are the views of sustainability among prospective students, community partners and others? • ‘what’s art got to do with it?’: economic development and the arts (2006): the city of lowell’s master plan as well as many of the initiatives of the city’s division of planning and development emphasize the arts as a source of economic revitalization. an arts overlay district has been created and much of the city’s promotion emphasizes the ‘creative economy’. this approach to economic revitalization has its advocates and its critics, but little has been known about how those immersed in or experiencing this latest lowell renaissance view the events and opportunities/needs for partnership. gateways | silka et al 133 the selection criteria for topics the brief outlines given above of our summer research projects provide a glimpse into lowell’s shifting priorities. across these diverse initiatives, the larger question we have pursued over the past decade is whether individual projects can simultaneously contribute to an understanding of particular issues and be a means of achieving continuity within partnerships. as mentioned already, much experimentation has gone into testing different approaches within our summer projects to find a strategy that works. we have now arrived at an approach that we find helps us to achieve goals in very different content areas while at the same time strengthening our capacity for continuity. put briefly, when choosing a project we look for a topic with the following characteristics: • the collection of local data is needed, and this data can be gathered within the time span of a summer • the input of both the community and the university is necessary for success • the language and terms lend themselves to community definitions rather than concepts framed solely by university departments or disciplines • progress in solving the problems cannot be achieved merely by review of the literature but instead requires the integration of scholarly research with the knowledge of the community • no single discipline can be said to own the topic • the university has some competencies in the area but also needs to strengthen capacities • students from diverse disciplines can readily contribute through their involvement • the approach or topic is generative and can spawn work in many different directions • the topic lends itself to action. when topics are selected with these characteristics in mind, we have found they serve as great opportunities for partnership building that integrates the independent strengths of the community and the university. gateways | silka et al 134 some might mistakenly view the summer projects as mere pilot work – and it is indeed the case that more extensive studies do often follow. but it is important to note the respects in which this work differs from preliminary pilots. the goal of the summer projects is to collect information that is ready to be used for local decision-making and is not merely intended to lay the groundwork for additional indepth study or large scale experiments elsewhere. the local community is not a laboratory for testing out new practices that will then be applied in the real world; the local community is the real world. moreover, the focus is not on data collection per se; often it is on the framing of issues, the result of which may or may not point to the need for data collection. concurrent with this, we have revised the role we see for traditional academic deliverables such as journal articles and conference presentations. the primary aim of the summer projects is not publications; instead the dual aims are, first, to make the usefulness of information central to how data are collected and, secondly, to make reliance on data a comfortable, routine part of all local decision making. toward these ends, we do not rely on journal articles and conference presentations as primary vehicles; we use policy reports, videos, websites and community forums as well as extensive use of local media, including cable television, local radio, and print media. and in all of this we take into account the audiences and objectives and we reach out to policy makers so that the findings will get used. despite their obvious diversity, the summer projects listed above share important features. each had an urgency to it, a timeliness. the information was needed quickly, often because some immediate policy change was under consideration. in most cases the long delay involved in securing external funding for data collection was not viable. each topic also had the advantage of drawing on multiple domains. that is to say, the topics were inherently interdisciplinary and because they did not ‘belong’ to any single field, they encouraged disciplines to pool their efforts to achieve greater understanding. these areas were also chosen because of their high visibility. their salience meant not only that people were often willing to devote scarce resources to the issues, but also that media attention could easily be gained to highlight the combined efforts of students, partners, and the city. and the topics themselves were gateways | silka et al 135 generative: they had the potential to contribute in many different and often unexpected ways to teaching, research and outreach. to better illustrate some of the above ideas, this article will discuss in more detail two examples from the summer research projects. the first example, new immigrant business (1998), amply demonstrates how tapping into the latent knowledge and strengths of a community can lead to many and varied opportunities for future partnerships. the second example, economic development and the arts (2006), looks at how issues of ownership can be sidestepped through creative partnership. utilizing the ‘multiplier effect’ some changes emerge rapidly and go to the very heart of community life (migration policy institute 2004). such was the case with immigrant businesses beginning to emerge in lowell at the beginning of this decade. as noted earlier, lowell over the previous decade had undergone dramatic demographic shifts. the number of asian families had increased rapidly, and the size and prominence of other immigrant groups was rapidly increasing as well. one of the most visible signs of these changes was the large number of small immigrant businesses — restaurants, retail stores, insurance agencies, beauty parlors, auto body shops, and the like — that were suddenly emerging throughout the city’s many neighborhoods (turcotte & silka 2007). these new businesses were all the more important in light of the changing economy and the region’s loss of major manufacturers. small immigrant businesses were seen as perhaps becoming the core of the region’s new economy. so, what were these businesses? in what ways were they contributing to the local economy? what kinds of assistance did they need from the university, from the city and from other organizations? these questions were on the minds of many at the time that the 1998 summer project was undertaken. the approach used in this first summer project pursued continuity by implicitly drawing an analogy with the concept of the ‘multiplier effect.’ that is, the choice was made to focus on information that had high potential to be used, reused and re-circulated throughout the community, where each use would have the potential to establish new links between groups that were previously unconnected. gateways | silka et al 136 at the outset of the project, no inventory existed of the new businesses, of their number of employees, of the nature of their customer base or of the kinds of practices and acumen they brought to their new businesses. yet a growing body of literature on immigrant businesses pointed to the possibility that these businesses might be important anchors in their communities: immigrant businesses generally had higher ‘multiplier effects’ than other businesses, which is to say that the dollars they generated tended to recycle through the community more times than dollars generated by nonimmigrant businesses (jennings, in press; turcotte & silka 2007; wilson & martin 1982). and the literature suggested that these businesses might differ from nonimmigrant businesses in other respects as well: there were discussions of import substitution; of how these businesses seemed to be helping their compatriots learn about the new society; and in general, of how these small businesses acted as key institutions within their neighborhoods. given this context, during the summer of 1998 we brought together a team of graduate students and high school youth who represented different immigrant groups now living in lowell. to learn about these businesses would not be simple. no central registry existed and some of the businesses were owned by new residents who were undocumented or had yet to achieve compliance with american tax laws and environmental regulations. many of the business owners spoke a primary language other than english and had little time to devote to answering esoteric questions about their businesses. under the direction of faculty well versed in economic development, and with the support of some members of the community-university advisory board who were themselves immigrant business owners, the team developed an interview protocol, a neighborhood sampling strategy and a method for ‘mining’ fragmentary data from existing sources. throughout the summer, students were thrust into situations that showed them the importance of, yet difficulties with, real-life data collection. students saw first-hand the challenges that arise in attempting to gather information from small business owners. barbershop owners, for example, continued to cut hair even while being interviewed because they could not stop or leave their barbershop to attend a focus group. despite these difficulties, the team was able to create a detailed report gateways | silka et al 137 about these new businesses, the niches they were filling and the needs they foresaw for assistance and support.1 the potential for spinoffs that would create continuity was considerable. once information about the businesses was gathered, then uml and other organizations could begin to assess a number of factors, including the ways that they might need to change their assistance practices in order to meet the needs of these businesses; how new cooperative organizations such as asian chambers of commerce could be developed if the felt need was there; how business and regional economic and social development faculty could better enable their students to collaborate with these immigrant businesses; and how to support the anchoring effects of these businesses on neighborhoods, such as in creating opportunities and reducing crime. and, indeed, the outgrowths of this summer project were numerous. the report that was created (about the new businesses, how they went about their work, the kinds of contributions they were making to the local economy and the needs they had for assistance if they were to further develop their businesses) was widely circulated and read. this report was placed online so that it would be available across time to different groups and organizations. various community forums were held at which the information became the focus of discussion and planning. the findings contributed to planning for cooperative ventures such as the asian american business association and a partnership bringing together immigrant restaurants with organizations focused on increasing the recycling and use of food wastes. sidestepping ‘ownership’ issues the arts and economic development summer project, briefly described next, illustrates a different strategy for pursuing continuity. partnerships not infrequently bump up against ownership issues. as noted earlier, one of our goals was to select summer project topics that were not owned by particular disciplines. this is easier said than done and it can often stand in the way of attempts to achieve continuity. in community-university partnerships, individuals put boundary markers around a topic, either in words or actions, 1 the report is available at http://www.uml.edu/centers/cfwc/reports/microsoft%20word%20docum1.doc gateways | silka et al 138 demarcating it as belonging to their discipline, their department or their community-based organization. although positive energy can result when a group sees a problem as their responsibility, too often territoriality and ossification are the consequence and the same unproductive ways of attacking the problem are repeated. how then can the positive aspects of felt ownership be capitalized upon and the problematic aspects avoided? how can the examination of the issue be moved beyond the constraints of a single disciplinary perspective? disciplinary ownership claims can be sidestepped by redrawing the outlines of a topic. prospects for continuity then increase as more people see their perspectives as relevant. a broader partnership can then be bolstered even as the focus stays on new program creation for a specific topic. within the context of the summer projects at uml, we have seen this ownership dilemma resurface every year. consider the arts emphasis of the 2006 summer project. in recent years lowell has focused on the arts as an economic development strategy (florida, 2002). such a strategy could readily be seen as corresponding to the expertise arena of particular university departments or certain branches of city government, yet what is taking place in lowell deals with much more, including issues of class, race, established traditions and the needs of long-term residents versus newcomers. yet partnership examples in this particular summer project illustrated how ownership claims could be transcended. one local organization, in particular, demonstrated great resourcefulness in showing the potential of bringing diverse partners together to define the arts. this organization, the revolving museum focuses on promoting public art but sees this goal as achievable only by linking it to other goals (that is, building community understanding of public art, revitalizing the city, and strengthening youth leadership).2 the revolving museum (rm) has been inventive in seeking out partners whose interests on the surface bear little relationship to the arts: those in computer science, green chemistry, or math, for example. the rm sought out uml’s program in green chemistry as a way for students to see how art, chemistry, and progressive environmental practices can be integrated in a community. and the rm participated in a partnership with k-16 groups to design after school programs bringing together math and the arts, again to widen understanding of 2 the revolving museum at http://www.revolvingmuseum.org gateways | silka et al 139 the art while at the same time improving student math skills. although these particular examples focus on schools, the rm has engaged in the same process with projects designed to encourage non-school partners to work together in devising new ways to revitalize abandoned spaces through the use of arts. effective and creative use of content funding resources for university-community partnerships are often limited. one resource that partnerships often do have at hand is funding dedicated to the pursuit of a particular topic or content area. this important resource often has not been examined for its potential to enhance continuity. content funding that is aimed at diverse and specific topics is often seen as sowing the seeds of discontinuity, but we argue here that it can instead be creatively harnessed to build continuity within partnerships. in the summer project of 2001, continuity was pursued by focusing on a topic but at the same time finding opportunities to link it to related interests and thus draw in new partners. for some time lowell, the merrimack valley and massachusetts have been in the midst of a crisis in housing affordability (santiago, jennings, & carrion 2005; university of massachusetts donahue institute 1997). the statistics are daunting. housing costs in massachusetts rank among the highest in the us and the increases in housing costs are rapidly outstripping wages (massinc 2006; stone 2000). young people are leaving this region in greater numbers than anywhere else in the us because of the region’s high cost of living. and the region’s ability to attract new businesses is increasingly being undermined by escalating housing costs. in the summer of 2001, an investigation of the housing crisis had already begun at the uml center for family, work, and community. however, because this investigation was grant-funded, the fear was that this focus would disappear once the external funding was exhausted. with the cita summer project, a research team of graduate students and high school students aimed their efforts at enlarging and extending the impact of this one-shot grant-funded initiative. many steps were taken to embed this grant work within ongoing streams of partnership activity. the summer team helped to publicize the project and link it to various university departments and community partners. information was shared with those who gateways | silka et al 140 previously had not seen their work as housing-related, such as those studying health who might find intriguing the national trends linking housing to health issues. graduate classes were drawn in, with students as a part of their coursework providing training to community leaders in assessing the implications for housing under lowell’s twenty-year master plan. and past initiatives were mined for their possible links to housing. for example, immigrants groups in lowell had previously participated in a grant-funded initiative entitled ‘celebrating diverse traditions of community preservation’ in which, over a series of months, they shared information about best practices in their home countries on housing and other economic development topics. the team gathered examples of how other community-university partnerships had contributed to solving housing crises and helped to create a final report organized around the community’s questions regarding the housing crisis.3 clear communication of a university’s capacities and strengths effective partnerships arise out of a clear understanding of each other’s strengths, capabilities and interests. uml’s community partners have repeatedly expressed their frustrations with the ‘black box’ character of the university. community partners reported continually needing to ask such questions as: what are the resources of the university? what are its areas of strengths? who does what? it was frequently unclear to potential partners what the university could offer in the way of partnership. often in describing resources of a community or university, the approach takes the form of mere cataloguing. a list is made of the available resources and the resulting compendium is then widely distributed. the problem with such an approach, however, is that it tends to be inert. it lacks an action component and has limited potential to generate activity. we wondered whether information might be gathered and presented in ways that contribute to continuity by implicitly signaling importance, interdisciplinarity, links to pre-existing community interests and needs, to pre-existing faculty strengths and to the university’s mission. and could all of this be done in a way that makes these underlying criteria integral 3 the full report is available at http://www.uml.edu/centers/cfwc/reports/housing%2520report.pdf. gateways | silka et al 141 without being salient? in the summer of 2004 the cita graduate student-high school student team undertook this task. they gathered information about eight uml signature outreach areas by looking at what has been done, who has been involved and what opportunities for collaborations are suggested by these signature outreach areas.4 although the community was ostensibly the audience for the information, in fact the entire university was the target. we wanted to link the university with the needs that had been identified by the community. the goal was to expose university faculty, staff and students to opportunities for collaboration by providing them with examples of the innovative work already being done by their colleagues. the information could then help to support continuity. this information about the signature outreach areas is increasingly being widely used. the information was introduced into the deliberations of the uml community outreach task force, it was used by the uml’s community-university advisory board and it appears in the uml community clearinghouse that is used by community partners to identify resources and opportunities within uml. getting new faculty on board finally, if continuity in partnership is to be the hallmark of a community-university partnership, new faculty must be drawn into the kinds of collaborations described throughout this article. yet involving new faculty is difficult because new phds, in our experience, are especially anxious about getting their own research underway and, unfortunately, such research often does not lend itself to the multidisciplinary thrust of community-university partnerships. the research of new faculty is typically narrow in scope, reflecting as it does the subdisciplinary focus typically called for in a dissertation. how do we address this issue of involving new faculty and could we do so in ways that do not place their scholarly advancement at risk? our partnership’s way out of this dilemma has been to continually try to shape our projects in ways that signal to new faculty how the projects link to their research programs but at the 4 information on the outreach areas is available at http://www.clearinghouse.uml.edu/outreach_areas.htm gateways | silka et al 142 same time indicate how the project might enable them to expand their research in a direction of interest to them. our investigation of youth program cutbacks, for example, took into account cutbacks in those areas that would be of particular interest to new faculty with strengths in particular areas. we suggested how these cutbacks might be better understood if an economic analysis were to occur for example, or if the impact on youth-serving agencies were to be investigated, or if innovative uses of tools such as geographic information analyses were brought into the investigations. we have also worked to identify and disseminate to new faculty and to departmental tenure committees information about publication outlets that welcome the kinds of interdisciplinary research done through partnerships. and, we have offered workshops for new faculty on partnership grant writing, which illustrate the pathway to publication that is possible through grant-funded partnership research. we are finding that such approaches are beginning to achieve success. a final thought: partnerships in times of program cutbacks opportunities to create programs, as the above illustrates, can stimulate the formation of new and even unanticipated partnerships. in times of program cutbacks, partnerships often become all the more important yet the prospects for maintenance and continuity are often vastly reduced during these times. in 2002/2003 the summer project examined the nature and extent of the funding cutbacks that were occurring at all levels of government. our goal was to see if, as a partnership, we could find new ways to capture the nature of the losses so that these cutbacks could be viewed with fresh eyes. the goal was not merely to document the losses but to find effective ways to frame these losses. the data gathering and reporting were organized to take into account the kind of substitution analysis that permeated discussions, whereby people assumed that the impact of losses from one kind of funding could be minimized by substituting other sources of funding. the community report produced at the summer’s end documented cutbacks but then framed the cutbacks by directly confronting the problems with this substitution analysis. the report showed the ways in which, if funding cutbacks from different sources all came at the gateways | silka et al 143 same time, the substitution approach would not address the shortfalls. the lack of a safety net was concretely illustrated. the findings were presented at several community forums where the discussion was oriented on stemming this crisis. the partnership mounted a media campaign to publicize the results. in the interim, while waiting for the funding situation to improve, we began to focus on avenues for innovation. in other words, might there be innovative ways to carry out programs and meet youth needs in the face of severe budget cutbacks? one uml graduate course took up this task directly, combing the literature for best practice examples of innovative approaches to youth programming in times of budget cutbacks. this information was then used to create community tip sheets and hold community workshops demonstrating how such strategies could be implemented in lowell. the highlighting of program cutbacks turned out to be useful as far as it went. but only now, nearly half a decade later, has our partnership begun to realize that we missed opportunities to use program loss as a wake-up call to raise questions about whether community indicators are being kept that will allow for the tracking of changes. at the time, we did not do an analysis of existing indicators nor did we consider which indicators might be needed if impacts such as loss of youth services were to be better monitored in the future. youth violence is now erupting in the city, yet we are not positioned to say whether the upsurge in youth violence in any way parallels the cutbacks in after school programming in particular neighborhoods. as a partnership, we have begun to recognize that attention to continuity ought to be used to raise questions in a variety of areas including data collection and use. conclusion as noted at the outset, all of the common ways that communities and universities come together pose problems for continuity. grant funded forays into the community often lurch from one project to the next. courses begin and end. individual faculty research projects are faculty driven and often limited in scope and duration. external funding takes so long to acquire that often the urgency has passed before the funding is in place. continuity can be imposed through the creation of a university central office for community partnerships but too often such an approach can become too bureaucratic or is viewed gateways | silka et al 144 with wariness by faculty fearful of excessive administrative control. the result is that the opportunities for timeliness and continuity are limited. in this article, we have argued for a different approach to continuity, one in which the resources that are available for content projects are used by community-university partnerships to respond in a timely fashion to shifting problems in ways that build shared responses and thereby continuity. some might assert that the approach argued for here — building continuity through structures while varying the topic focus — will not be successful in the face of changing administrative support or shifting patterns of priorities in community partners. clearly such changes pose obstacles to continuity, and the consequences of these changes can never be fully anticipated or warded against. what we have found over a decade of experience, however, is that the approach described here has a sufficient degree of both flexibility and specificity to provide opportunities for growth and adaptation in the face of such changes. and we are seeing first-hand the value of this approach in the face of change. once again, many of our community partners are undergoing significant changes in their staffing and funding while at the same time the upper administration at our university has been transformed. our chancellor is new as are many of the vice chancellors. yet, in the face of these changes, we have been able to garner support for partnerships by showing how these past practices have built a body of knowledge and experience that has served our region well. the work continues to be supported and valued. while specific actions that have the effect of building continuity have been the focus of this article, we are finding ourselves increasingly cognizant of the importance of how we use language. it has been our experience that the active use of metaphors sometimes provides the best way for people to see the importance of creating continuity in community-university partnerships. in our partnership discussions we sometimes bring up the image of a relay race to raise questions about the need to plan for transferring the baton (that is, we need to plan for how we are going to have one class or group of summer research participants smoothly hand over their findings to others). or, to capture the importance of moving quickly and sometimes without much preparation time, we might liken ourselves to a strike force or s.w.a.t. team that must go into action on a suddenly pressing issue without every fact or analysis we might gateways | silka et al 145 need. the use of the apt metaphor or analogy within our community conversations has become an important part of how we go about learning together. universities have much in the way of intellectual capital, but questions remain as to how these resources can most effectively be brought to bear on community problems. in this time of experimentation, the answer to what will work best is not yet clear. as universities around the globe test out different possibilities across a variety of settings, a literature on best practices will begin to emerge to guide future efforts. here we have suggested a number of possible approaches worthy of further investigation. references bowen, wg & shapiro, ht (eds) 1998, universities and their leadership, princeton university press, princeton, nj. clark, rl 2004, ‘changing faculty demographics and the need for new policies,’ tiaa-cref institute, available at http://www.tiaacrefinstitute.org/research/papers/040104a.html, viewed 1 september 2007. edwards, b & marullo, s (eds) 1999, ‘universities in troubled times – institutional responses,’ american behavioral scientist, vol. 42, no. 5, full issue. florida, r 2002, the rise of the creative class: and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life, basic books, new york. forrant, r 2001a, ‘random acts of assistance or purposeful intervention: the university of massachusetts lowell and the regional development process,’ in r forrant, j pyle, w lazonick, & c levenstein (eds), approaches to sustainable development, university of massachusetts press, amherst, massachusetts. forrant, r 2001b, ‘pulling together in lowell: the university and the regional development process,’ european planning studies, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 613–628. forrant, r, pyle, j, lazonick, w, & levenstein, c (eds) 2001, approaches to sustainable development, university of massachusetts press, amherst, massachusetts. gateways | silka et al 146 forrant, r & silka, l 2006, ‘introduction: inside and out — what’s it all about?’ in r forrant and l silka (eds), inside and out: universities and education for sustainable development, baywood, new york. forrant, r & silka, l 1999, ‘thinking and doing — doing and thinking: the university of massachusetts lowell and the community development process,’ american behavioral scientist, vol. 42, pp. 814–826. gittell, rj & flynn, pm 1995, ‘lowell, the high tech success story: what went wrong?’, new england economic review, march/april. hall, t & silka, l 2007, ‘housing for everyone,’ in e hamin, l silka, & p geigis (eds), citizens as planners, university of massachusetts press, amherst, massachusetts. holland, b 2005, ‘new view of research for the twenty-first century: the role of engaged scholarship,’ in l silka (ed), scholarship in action: applied research and community change, us housing and urban development, washington, dc. hutchings, p, huber, mt, & golde, cm 2006, ‘integrating work and life: a vision for a changing academy’, perspectives: carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, available at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/index.asp, viewed 1 september 2007. jennings, j 2007, ‘social capital, race, and the future of inner city neighborhoods,’ in j jennings & a withorn (eds), politics, neighborhoods, and the misuse of social capital, palgrave-macmillan, new york. kennedy, d 1997, academic duty, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. lerner, rm & simon, lak 1998, ‘the new american outreach university,’ in rm lerner & lak simon (eds), university-community collaborations for the twenty-first century, garland, new york. lotspeich, k, fix, m, perez-lopez, d, & ost, j 2003, a profile of the foreignborn in lowell, massachusetts, the urban institute, washington, dc. lynton, ea & elman, se 1987, new priorities for the university: meeting society’s needs for applied knowledge and competent individuals, jossey-bass, san francisco. gateways | silka et al 147 massinc. 2006, ‘commonwealth agenda 2006’, commonwealth: politics, ideas, civic life in massachusetts, available at http://www.massinc.org, viewed 1 september 2007. maurrasse, dj 2001, beyond the campus: how colleges and universities form partnerships with their communities, routledge, new york. moscovitch, e 1990, ‘the downturn in the new england economy: what lies behind it?’ new england economic review, july/august. migration policy institute, 2004, building the new american community: newcomer immigration and inclusion experiences in non-traditional gateway cities, report for the nation conference of state legislatures. nyden, p 2005, ‘the challenges and opportunities of engaged research’ in l silka (ed.), scholarship in action: applied research and community change, us housing and urban development, washington dc. o’meara, ka & rice, re 2005, faculty priorities reconsidered: rewarding multiple forms of scholarship, jossey-bass, san francisco. pyle, j & forrant, r (eds) 2004, universities and regional economic development, edgar elgar press, london. rhodes, fht 1998, ‘the university and its critics,’ in wg bowen & ht shapiro (eds), universities and their leadership, princeton university press, princeton, new jersey. silka, l 1999, ‘paradoxes of partnership: reflections on universitycommunity partnerships,’ in n kleniewski & g rabrenovic (eds), research in politics and society: community politics and policies, jai press inc, stamford, connecticut. silka, l 2001, ‘addressing the challenges of community collaborations: centers as opportunities for interdisciplinary innovations,’ in r forrant, j pyle, w lazonick, & c levenstein (eds), approaches to sustainable development, university of massachusetts press, amherst, massachusetts. silka, l 2004, ‘a university enters into its regional economy: models for integrated action,’ in j pyle & r forrant (eds), universities and regional economic development, edgar elgar press, london. gateways | silka et al 148 santiago, j, jennings, j, & carrion, l 2005, ‘immigrant homebuyers in lawrence and lowell, massachusetts: keys to the revitalization of cities,’ available at http://www.ilctr.org/news/pdf/immigrant_homebuyers.pdf, viewed 1 september 2007. stone, m 2000. situation critical report 2000: meeting the needs of lower-income massachusetts residents, available at http://www.mccormack.umb.edu/research/download/mccormackinstitut ereport2000.pdf, viewed 1 september 2007. todd, cm, ebata, at, & hughes, r 1998, ‘making university and community collaborations work,’ in rm lerner & lak simon (eds), university-community collaborations for the twenty-first century, garland, new york. turcotte, d & silka, l 2007, ‘reflections on the concept of social capital: complex partnerships in southeast asian refugee and immigrant communities,’ in j jennings (ed.), race, neighborhoods, and the misuse of social capital, palgrave-macmillan, new york. university of massachusetts donahue institute, 1997, a profile of housing in massachusetts, available at http://www.donahue.umassp.edu/docs/profhous-97, viewed 1 september 2007. wilson, k & martin, a 1982, ‘ethnic enclaves, a comparison of the cuban and black economies in miami,’ american journal of sociology, vol. 88, pp. 135–160. acknowledgements funding for the work described here was provided by university of massachusetts lowell’s committee on industrial theory and assessment. graduate students who participated in these projects as staff included theresa bader, shawn barry, ioana crisan, susan dempsey, heather derby, jagruti desai, cathy ferreira, gustavo garcia-barragan, jennifer gaudet, toni-marie henry, marc horne, brandy jablonski, joseph meager, palak mehta, theresa milewski, taner osman, george papakostas, john penney, deepa rao, john reynolds, jennifer santos, manjula sastry, brian twomey, henri urey, magdalena vedawati, vicki watson and henrique wilson. undergraduate students included leidy arias, nerissa gleason, sokny luong, and nate osit. high school students included ronnie campbell, chan chea, timothy dalton, tram dang, linda det, linda doung, juliana estrada, alex iraheta, jenneh kaikai, ratani khan, jeffrey khorn, venus luong andrew morel, joel morel, sammie meth, shelagh murphy, mary neor, sokley oeur, sandy phomsopha, ellen proeung, milton robles, gateways | silka et al 149 senvey sam, chhavy sinuon, sreyroth tom, phally ty, jhony valencia, maribel vilchis and narin yem. faculty members meg bond and jean pyle helped to lead the summer 2000 project on women-owned businesses. reflexivity in performative science shop projects science shops are organisations within universities or other knowledge institutes that conduct scientific research on behalf of citizens and local civil society. since the first initiatives in the 1970s, a multitude of intellectual shapes and institutional forms has evolved, in which the relationship between the knowledge institute, its clients and the aims of the projects can vary widely (de bok & steinhaus 2008; leydesdorff & ward, 2005). the work of the science shop is mainly funded by the knowledge institute and is considered a means to bridge the gap between scientists and the public and to improve the societal impact of the institute. the science shops provide non-government organisations (ngos) and local communities access to scientific knowledge and the opportunity to engage with scientific research and through this are in line with calls for more open and contextualised forms of scientific research (baum 2000; greenwood & levin 2007; lam & bertilsson 2003; nowotny, scott & gibbons 2001). many organisations that ask for help from a science shop aim to empower themselves as representatives of marginalised interests within a decision-making process. according to aalbers and padt (2010), there are three main reasons for organisations to commission a research project through a science shop: —to influence a specific planning or decision-making process —to develop new knowledge that can help to present a fresh perspective within a specific discussion —to develop their own initiative through the retrieval of scientific knowledge and insights. science shop projects are in vogue with the growing interest in increasing the impact of scientific research on society, and an analysis of these projects can provide a valuable contribution to the debate about action research (cassell & johnson 2006; nowotny, scott & gibbons 2001; van paassen et al. 2011). there is a growing awareness of the changing position of science in public policy among researchers, as well as among policy-makers, politicians and consultants (beunen & opdam 2011; ellis & waterton 2005; fischer 2009; mcnie 2007). several studies have shown that within decision-making practices knowledge is not gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 135–51 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 raoul beunen martijn duineveld roel during gerard straver albert aalvanger wageningen university and research centre 136 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger simply used, but strategically produced, contested and ignored (ellis & waterton 2005; fischer 2009; mcnie 2007). the role that knowledge can play, and the kind of knowledge that can be useful, therefore depends on the context and the questions at hand. experts cannot escape the power plays in which knowledge is constructed, contested and used (flyvbjerg 1998; hernstein-smith 2005; hillier 2002), and this awareness raises some important questions. can researchers, for example, meet the multitude of (sometimes conflicting) expectations from the actors involved and still ensure the scientific quality of their research? and what are the democratic consequences of researchers becoming entangled in the political domain of public policy? although a wide variety of researchers have studied the performance of action research and discussed its pro and cons (for example, berardi 2002; irwin 2001; martin 2008; van paasen et al. 2011) and various issues have been discussed from a more critical perspective, many reflections mainly stress the success of a project and the important role of the specific researchers in producing this success (mosse 2005). while it is naive to assume that action-research projects are always successful, it is hard to find critical reflections (or self-reflections) that address the frustrations of researchers and other participants in these projects, of the conflicts caused by the projects or the limitations of action research. reporting on the successful performance of action research seems to be necessary to maintain a central position within a field, to obtain new funding, and so on (cf. rap 2006; van assche et al. 2011). such studies, however, do not help to produce useful insights into the complex deliberations and power struggles that often characterise decision-making processes, where power and knowledge are inextricably entwined (cf. fischer 2009). nor do they help to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that bring about changes and the particular roles scientists play within these processes. few studies pay attention to the way in which the role and position of the researchers influence the process and its outcomes. in this article we investigate how reflexivity can help researchers to create a better understanding of their own role and position within a project. first, we elaborate briefly on power and knowledge interactions in action research, establishing this as a framework from which we can reflect on the experiences gained from some of the wageningen university and research centre (wageningen ur) science shop projects. to this end, three projects are described as an illustration of some possible challenges and tensions researchers may face in science shop projects. we then elaborate on some of the dilemmas associated with the role and position of action researchers participating in science shop projects. power and knowledge in action research various authors have published on the relationship between science and society or, in more abstract terms, power−knowledge 137 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger interactions (e.g. duineveld & van assche 2011; fischer 2009; flyvbjerg 2002; latour 2004). foucault (1994, pp. 81–102) has shown how power can be repressive as well as productive: power produces, for example, some discourses, realities, knowledge, values and subjects, and makes others impossible by marginalising or subjugating them. in line with his work, others have shown the power strategies that different actors have used to attain their objectives (flyvbjerg 2002). one of these strategies is the selective use of certain (scientific) knowledge and the conscious concealing or marginalising of research that does not work to one’s advantage. this makes the role scientific knowledge can play in planning and decision-making practices an important and recurring theme in many studies. within decision-making processes, scientific knowledge functions as an advocate for or rejection of certain claims. involved organisations and actors produce knowledge to reinforce their power position while de-legitimising the knowledge of competing organisations, practitioners and citizens. as a consequence, the participants in the decision-making process are regularly confronted with different studies showing contradictory results. to gain a better understanding of the role of scientific knowledge within the decision-making process, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the mutual relationship between power and knowledge. most science shop projects operate in situations of great power inequalities stemming from the weak position of citizen groups in the decision-making network and the fact that they often lack access to important resources such as money and knowledge. in order to understand the impact of these power inequalities on the production and use of scientific knowledge, we should acknowledge that power produces knowledge: ‘there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations’ (foucault 1977, p. 27). since power and knowledge are always entwined, it is impossible to step aside from relationships of power and produce ‘objective’, ‘independent’ knowledge. foucault has shown that knowledge is defined within discourses as a set of practices or strategic games within which realities are produced that both open and close reality for us because of the necessity for selection and simplification (foucault 1994). each discourse, each perspective on a part of reality, creates that reality for us, but the choices implied (this or that construction) simultaneously veil alternative constructions – alternative delineations of objects and subjects, backgrounds and relations. power and knowledge shape each other; power conflicts imply or give rise to conflicting versions of reality, and vice versa (cf. flyvbjerg 1998). the action researcher is part of these power relationships which influence what counts as knowledge and which knowledge is subjugated or marginalised. in order to understand how knowledge is produced and used in science shop projects, we should therefore account for the role 138 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger and position of the researcher and make them the object of study. such reflections on the work of researchers link to the literature on reflexivity (cooper & burnett 2006). our definition and use of reflexivity derives from several sources. there is the french post-structuralist tradition of pierre bourdieu (bourdieu 2003; bourdieu & wacquant 1992), michel foucault (1973, 1994) and roland barthes (1957), as well as the sustained reflection on the role of the researcher in knowledge creation that has taken place in anthropology since the 1970s (denzin 1997; geertz 1973; inglis 2000; mauthner & doucet 2003). pierre bourdieu attempted to make the disciplines of sociology and anthropology more reflexive (bourdieu 2003; bourdieu & wacquant 1992; reed-danahay 2005). for bourdieu, a reflexive sociology is a sociology that duplicates its scientific labour. it objectifies not only the social reality of others but also the researcher and his or her research. he gives the following description: by [reflexivity] i mean the objectivation of the subject of objectivation, of the analysing subject – in short, of the researcher herself … what needs to be objectivized, then, is not the anthropologist performing the anthropological analysis of a foreign world, but the social world that has made both the anthropologist and the conscious or un-conscious anthropology that she (or he) engages (bourdieu 2003, p. 282). bourdieu, leaning on foucault and barthes, identified reflexivity to a large extent with the uncovering of latent assumptions, with ‘the systematic uncovering of unthought, intuitive, embodied categories which themselves are preconditions of conscious practice’ (howe & langdon 2002). he argued that researchers must always reflect critically on the effects of their choices, actions and interests. this is particularly important in the field of action research, an activity that includes collective choices and collective investments in the future. the role of action researchers in society and the positionality of their knowledge and skills shape in a fundamental manner the organisation of space and the options left open for the future (howe & langdon 2002). all forms of reflexivity spring from the positionality of knowledge (adams 1999; bal 2002). positionality can be understood as the contextual construction of knowledge: knowledge is produced in a series of contexts and the conditions of creation leave marks that cannot be erased entirely later (van assche 2007). reflexivity is seen as a sustained reflection on the positionality of knowledge (cf. sletto 2010), ranging from local and informal to general and formally codified knowledge. in this respect, reflexivity addresses the political dimension of knowledge, both in its construction and in its application (bourdieu & wacquant 1992). a focus on reflexivity implies that researchers should think consciously about the possible (and 139 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger also the unintended and unwanted) transformation of the power relationship in a specific situation and their own role within these transformations. this theoretical perspective enables researchers to explore systematically the various roles they themselves, their organisations and their knowledge play within a specific science shop project or in related action-research projects. three examples of science shop projects this article is based upon the experiences from science shop projects of wageningen ur in the netherlands, three of which are used to illustrate some of the challenges researchers may face during their projects. the wageningen ur science shop supports non-profit organisations by conducting research projects in the fields of nutrition and health, sustainable agriculture, water management, environmental quality, and processes of social change. in the past 25 years, the science shop has conducted over 260 projects, dealing with societal effects of agriculture, food, animal welfare, traffic and spatial planning (aalbers & padt 2010). after a non-profit organisation contacts the science shop, a researcher will be approached and asked to assess if the research is new and relevant and if there is enough societal support to conduct the research. if all questions are answered positively the researcher will write a project proposal. this proposal is then discussed with the client and a steering committee. the main objective of the steering committee is to advise the researchers about the project and to help embed the results of the project in societal and political debates. the steering committee consists of experts who have particular knowledge about the subject and social networks through which the results of the projects can be disseminated. active participation is requested from the client during all phases of the project. in this section we briefly describe three projects of the wageningen ur science shop to show their effects on power relationships and knowledge production and the dilemmas that arose for the scientists working on these projects. the description focuses on the changing role and position of the researchers as well as the dynamics and interactions by which these were influenced. we describe only briefly the substantial aspects of the projects since our focus is on the process. the analysis draws upon our own experiences with different science shop projects and open interviews with the project leaders and other stakeholders involved in these three science shop projects. interviews were concerned with both the development of the process and the project outcomes. particular attention was paid to the different roles of the researchers, the difficulties that were faced during the process, the social and political dynamics that influenced the project, the conflicts between different parties, and the most important reasons why certain obstacles could be tackled along the way. we studied 140 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger various articles in local newspapers that were published before, during and after the projects in order to understand the local context in which the projects were conducted. noordwaard research project a group of farmers living in the noordwaard, a polder (a lowlying area enclosed by dikes) in the south-western part of the netherlands, was alarmed by government plans to increase the water discharge capacity of the river rhine. these proposed removing and replacing some dikes, which would result in the noordwaard farmland being taken out of production. the land would then be used to create space for the river when there was a threat of flooding. in response to these plans, the farmers started to lobby for alternative solutions with less impact on the agricultural sector. the group was in need of independent experts who could relate the farmers’ ideas to the government plans and who could judge the necessity of giving up a large part of farming land in the area. quite by coincidence, the farmers got in touch with the science shop of wageningen ur, and asked it to review an alternative plan for increasing the discharge capacity of the river. their request was granted and the project began (pleijte et al. 2005). the research project showed that the noordwaard group was marginalised in the government’s decision-making process: their knowledge and alternative ideas were not being taken into account. an inhabitant explained: ‘why are we not allowed to ask an independent researcher paid by rijkswaterstaat? where have three years of talking led us to? i feel sad, tired and angry. we are all very polite towards each other, but what have we gained from years of respectful interaction?’. the government plans were based on a river discharge computer simulation and the water management administration was not willing to consider the farmers’ suggestions for an alternative plan. the government did not favourably view the alternative plan and simply refused to see it as an input to the hydraulic river model that had been developed to calculate the efficiency of the government plan. the group of farmers did not have access to another computer model that could be used to evaluate the implications of their ideas, so they turned to the university that had developed the hydraulic river model. this was in vain, however, because the scientists were afraid that the possible outcome could jeopardise their good relationship with the water management administration. the scientists who became involved in the science shop project were not hydraulic specialists. they specialised in policy analysis and landscape ecology. initially they tried to improve the quality and status of the alternative plan in a workshop that included specialists on river management, climate change, hydraulics, etc. these experts were asked to provide a critical analysis of the alternative put forward by the group of farmers in order to improve the feasibility of this plan. expert workshops in which local knowledge was fused with scientific knowledge were 141 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger organised (pleijte et al. 2005). however, the government project organisation stuck to its initial refusal to calculate the effects of the alternative plan. a member of the parliament agreed with them: ‘what has happened is almost staggering. you ask people to work on a solution that guarantees safety. there is a commitment that generous compensation should come, as people have to move. we all say that public support is very important. but by all sorts of awkward actions and uncertainties people do not feel [they have been] taken seriously’ (anon. 2008). in response, the noordwaard farmers chose another strategy. they began to criticise the government model and its underlying assumptions, and conveyed their criticism to politicians and lobbied for their alternative plan. the politicians became aware that the water administration officials had developed ‘tunnel vision’. the project organisation responded to this criticism by urging individual members of the farmers’ group to be cooperative; it also indicated that higher land sale prices would be possible if farmers cooperated in selling their properties. moreover, resistance was said to adversely affect the interests of those people in the noordwaard who had decided to sell their properties and stop farming. every day an officer of the project organisation visited one farmer who was seen as the opinion leader in the group. these visits occurred unannounced during work hours. the officer’s objective was to stop the farmer resisting the government’s plan. the result was that the community fell apart and heavy tensions became apparent between the farmers who were cooperative and those who resisted the proposed plans. meanwhile, the scientists from wageningen ur were invited to appear before the parliamentary committee for water management to clarify the situation. the politicians became alarmed by the self-referentiality of the water administration. first, they spoke to the chairman of the committee for water affairs, who belonged to one of the governmental parties (christian democrats). he was very cautious in his reactions, even expressing his concerns about his own position. after consulting his committee, he gave an assignment to the research and verification office of the staten generaal (parliament) to clear up the vague discussion about facts, figures and local alternatives to the government project. this seldom occurs, and only where there is lack of trust between politicians and administration. the verification office confirmed the tunnel vision of the administration, not only concerning the noordwaard project but also projects in many other locations. they concluded that local knowledge and alternative plans were systematically sidelined during the planning processes. later, the science shop researchers were invited to participate in an expert meeting organised by the above-mentioned committee. the discussion in the political arena troubled the noordwaard community even further. members of the farmers’ group gave warning signals of a state of despair in those who were torn between becoming cooperative or staying on the track of resistance until the procedure as a whole had been 142 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger completed. as one of the science shop project leaders explained, ‘... the effect of the science shop project on the governmental planning process was rather significant: the officials of the project organisation felt attacked. the researchers in the science shop project inadvertently hardened the relationship between the farmers’ group and the project organisation’. to avoid further escalation of the problem, the researchers and the science shop coordinator decided not to publish the final report. with the approval of the farmers’ group, the confidential report was handed over to the parliament in the hope that it could improve the quality of both the discussion and the decision. however, the parliament simply approved the government plans without much discussion. the science shop project failed to change the power inequality between the project organisation and the community and did not manage to influence the closed knowledge construction process upon which the government plan was based. ‘village identity’ research project many local communities in the netherlands are currently developing a so-called ‘village vision’. in this document, villagers describe their wishes for the near and long-term future of their village and address social and spatial issues and developments important to them. the development of a village vision is often organised by the village council, a group of citizens that can ask for help and guidance from a supporting organisation funded by provincial authorities. these supporting organisations, however, had questions relating to the role of the collective identity of the villagers within a village vision. they asked the science shop of wageningen ur for help, and the ‘village identity’ project was initiated (aalvanger & beunen 2011). the aim of this project was to develop various methods that could be used by villagers to make the identity of their village explicit, which could be used as input to a village vision. five different methods were developed, drawing upon a theoretical understanding of collective identity. the methods were tested during eight meetings in three villages. feedback from these meetings was used to assess the extent to which the different methods were suitable for making the identity of a village explicit. during the project, the researchers faced three important dilemmas: —the balance between theory and practice —the position of the researcher in the discussion between citizens and local government —the effects of the project on the construction of collective identities within a village. with regard to the first dilemma relating to the balance between theory and practice, theoretical explorations of collective identities have shown the constructed nature and fluidity of identities. identity is continuously changing and the construction of collective identities is largely affected by contemporary issues. coming up with a definition of the village identity is difficult, if 143 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger not impossible, since ‘the village identity’ does not exist and even more so because the development of a village vision, and the discussions about the village identity, affect the construction (and reconstruction) of collective identities in the village (aalvanger 2011). however, such an abstract, theoretical reflection might not be considered helpful by the organisations that commissioned the research project, as many of them held to the idea that it was possible to give a clear, unambiguous description of village identity. in addition, the village councils would need specific input to the development of a vision and there was doubt whether they could translate, by themselves, theoretical insights into a specific context. the researchers therefore concluded that a more pragmatic approach that did justice to both theory and practice was required. one researcher explained that ‘identities may overlap, but may also be conflicting. in that sense, the village council should find a way to connect the different identities’. such an approach would allow researchers to explain to those who commissioned the project the complexity of identity construction, while also providing them with some methods that could be applied during the development of a village vision. the second dilemma related to the fact that a village vision is an instrument that can help villagers to influence the policies and plans of a municipality. this was even promoted by a member of the parliament who argued that ‘municipalities have to get used to the fact that it will be quite common to make an agreement with the villages’. the meetings were predominantly organised as an experiment to test different methods for making the collective identities explicit. however, the feedback from the meetings was also interesting to the village councils, as it gave them a general overview of what the villagers wanted. in one instance, the results of the research project were used in a discussion with the municipality to put forward the perspectives and ideas of the villagers. the villagers asked the researcher to take a stand during the discussion, knowing that a researcher from wageningen university might be more persuasive and help them to gain a stronger position in the discussion. although empathy was felt for the villagers’ request, the researcher refused. this decision was understood and accepted by the villagers, but at the same time regretted. this indicates that the researcher needs to reflect continually on his or her own behaviour. citizens, consciously or unconsciously, sometimes require a researcher to take a position which may entangle the researcher in a discussion from which escape may not be easy. finally, the research showed that the organisation of the discussions influenced the relationships amongst the villagers. during the meetings, the participants constructed a collective identity based upon a distinction between ‘active villagers’ and ‘non-active villagers’. as one inhabitant explained, ‘it is always the same people who have to pull the cart, the others never show up’. although this did not prove to be problematic in the 144 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger specific villages the science shop worked with, it is an issue of which researchers need to be conscious when using participatory methods in the construction of collective identities. the distinction between ‘those involved’ and ‘those not involved’ is made by ‘those involved’ and may therefore reinforce the exclusion of the noninvolved citizens and, as a consequence, may increase tensions amongst the villagers. this project shows that the involvement of action researchers not only influences the relationship between a community and the responsible authorities, but also the relationships between people within the community. interventions through science shop projects can bring people together, as shown by the participation at the meetings, but at the same time it may also exclude people, reinforce existing tensions within a community and even creating new ones. ‘ring road erp’ project discussion about a ring road around erp, a little village in the municipality of veghel (north-brabant, the netherlands), had divided the community for a very long time. half of the village wanted a ring road because it would reduce traffic through the centre of the village, the other half absolutely did not want this road because it would destroy the landscape on the edge of the village and because they feared it would only attract more traffic. the ring road was seen as a way to reduce the high amount of motorised traffic on the road through the village centre and deal with associated problems. several model studies were conducted by a specialist organisation; however, the outcomes of these studies only increased the opposition. a local pressure group, ‘erp alert’, asked the science shop for help, which led to the commencement of the ‘ring road erp’ project (hoofwijk et al. 2007; stobbelaar & leistra 2010). ‘erp alert’ wanted the researchers to prove that the ring road was a bad solution to the serious traffic problems in the village. the science shop rephrased their question into: ‘what is the best solution to the traffic problem taking into account the wishes of all stakeholders in the area?’ a stakeholder analysis was used to determine the criteria on which all parties agreed: safety, fast transport, no disturbance, and no decline of landscape and nature qualities. the researchers used these criteria to develop and test 11 traffic options. they concluded that the ring road was not a good solution. furthermore, they presented a regional perspective regarding traffic flows as an approach to finding an alternative solution. this solution involved guiding traffic to the main roads, away from the village, in combination with a dead-end road to the industrial area. the results of the science shop project were not well received in the village. many people feared that this solution would delay the implementation of measures to solve the traffic problems in the village centre. for them, the ring road might not be the best solution, but it was at least a solution that could be realised 145 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger quickly. as one inhabitant said during the presentation: ‘i prefer a certain solution, the ring road, above an uncertain solution’. they were therefore very critical of the report and blamed the researchers for not presenting a ‘real’ solution. the researchers responded that it was not their responsibility to decide on a specific solution and that the insights they presented could be used by the municipality to do so. about six months later, the municipality suddenly presented an alternative to the ring road. this alternative was very similar to the solution presented by the science shop project, which indicated that the project had helped to open up new perspectives. it had also become clear that the ring road would cost the municipality much more than the alternative solution, which for a large part would be paid for by the regional authorities. this might also have played an important role in developing an alternative solution. this case shows that a science shop research project can help to resolve a persistent impasse. in erp, the municipality and its traffic consultants were confronted with increasing difficulties in overcoming the growing tensions between the inhabitants to find a suitable solution. the researchers were able to come up with a solution because they included more people in their study and looked at the problem from a broader perspective. the researchers first studied the traffic situation at a regional level before coming up with a solution to the traffic problems at the local level. furthermore, they studied the criteria on which a solution should be based, instead of focusing directly on different road options. this approach was praised and taken up by the aldermen: ‘we have discussed the results of the study with a focus group. this group included representatives of all political parties. but within this group we did not have a political discussion. everyone participated with the intent to get this issue to a successful conclusion. it has been discussed here for decades. it is now time that something should happen’ (p van erp 2008a). if researchers can maintain an independent position, the chances that their ideas will be accepted by others are stronger. at the same time, the project shows the difficulties of remaining independent. one way or another, researchers tend to be drawn into a political discussion and, as a consequence, people expect them to take sides. in this project, the researchers explicitly made clear that their role was to provide further insights into the traffic-related problems and possible solutions, but that it was the responsibility of the municipality to take a decision on this matter (jaarsma 2007). still, their work was heavily criticised and their solution was taken into account only after it became clear that a ring road would be too costly for the municipality. dilemmas encountered in science shop projects the three projects show that science shop projects often take the form of action research whereby the project and its outcomes are defined and achieved in cooperation between researchers and their clients (aalbers & padt 2010). science shop projects are a particular 146 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger form of action research since they aim to combine scientific research with a mediation process in order to solve a societal problem. within the projects, the researchers cooperate with local stakeholders and fulfil multiple roles as researcher, process organiser and consultant. the knowledge that is produced is used to develop further insights into the issue at hand and solutions, but the researchers also facilitate the decision-making process and act as mediator in the negotiations between the different parties. these different roles are likely to fuse, because they are fulfilled by one person or a small team of researchers working closely together. this makes it difficult to distinguish the roles and have an overview of the different expectations, tasks and responsibilities that come with these roles. furthermore, the projects show that science shop projects are likely to become part of a political and societal debate. this debate influences the project and the work of the researchers, while at the same time the project can influence the debate and the decision-making process. the influence of the political debate was very strong in the noordwaard project, which made it difficult to perform the research, and in the end it proved impossible to influence the decision-making process. in contrast, while the ‘ring road erp’ project was highly contested, most actors were open to expressing their ideas, discussing these ideas and taking into account the results of the scientific study. the projects show that researchers and their projects are likely to become part of the power relations between the actors involved in the issue. in this respect the researchers can never be independent. on the one hand, the political debate and power struggles influence the role and position of the researcher and therefore the development of the research project. on the other hand, the research project can influence the political debate and the power relations between the actors involved. the latter is of course a main objective of a science shop project, but researchers need to be aware that this is not by definition a positive one. a science shop project can help to empower groups and actors that have been marginalised or excluded from the decisionmaking process by giving a voice to them and their perspectives and knowledge, as was the case in the noordwaard project. civic initiatives can become so powerful that they severely affect common interests or exclude other perspectives. researchers in a science shop project should take these consequences into account, especially if they also play an important role in steering the process. intentionally or unintentionally, the project and its results will cause shifts in the power relationships between the different parties. in this sense, science shop projects are never neutral or objective. researchers should also be aware that their project is likely to become part of a political struggle between different actors and should therefore reflect upon the social and democratic consequences of their project and decide in which ways and to what extent they want to become involved in local politics. on the one hand, science shop projects can help to open up new perspectives, 147 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger empower weak organisations and give them a better position within a deliberative process of planning and decision-making. however, on the other hand, these projects also entail risks, as they may create new opposition between different groups, deepen existing conflicts or intervene in the formal democratic decisionmaking processes. furthermore, researchers should be aware of the influence of the sociopolitical context of their role and position. a science shop project is supposed to provide a powerful instrument for analysing problems, exploring possible solutions, and monitoring and evaluating the impact of actions taken. to do this, the researcher needs to identify with the perspectives of the person or group who has commissioned the project as methods and alternative solutions are often developed in close cooperation with this client. as a result, the researcher may end up in a compromised position because this close cooperation with one of the actors involved in an issue may make it difficult to perform an independent role within the societal debate. other actors are likely to criticise this cooperation with one particular actor and may blame the researcher for not being independent, thereby complicating or even undermining the research and acceptance of possible outcomes. researchers should therefore be aware of whose perspective they align with, whose power they are reinforcing and to what extent they can identify themselves with this perspective. researchers should also understand that their position, and on account of this the roles they can play, as well as the outcomes of the project, also depend on the perspectives of other actors. this influence can be positive when actors are willing to cooperate and make use of the results of the project, but not so when some actors refuse to cooperate. researchers should also be aware that the fusion of research and practice might lead to a kind of ‘self-referentiality’ (fuller 2009; trigg 2004) that might restrict the scientific analysis and development of solutions. self-referentiality refers to the framing of new information in terms of predefined concepts. this may cause blind spots, preventing the researcher from developing a fresh perspective on the issue at hand. self-referentiality may also compromise the reliability and validity of the research process. science shop projects can lead to a close relationship between researcher and client, in which the researcher develops a strong empathy for the client and their problems and ambitions. this may further obscure or restrict the researcher’s perspective and independence, causing the researcher to become blind to other options. furthermore, the researcher may get too involved in the power struggles around the issue. to a certain degree, this is unavoidable. a science shop project will always have an impact on, and most likely transform, the power relationships between the various actors involved. related to these power issues, the contested nature of knowledge (and the problem it poses for politics), policy formulation and citizen participation are also important 148 | gateways | beunen, duineveld, during, straver & aalvanger to consider, as many bodies of knowledge are becoming more and more discredited. examples can easily be found in health promotion or climate adaptation. a researcher who becomes too entangled with the interests and worldview of the group or community they are working for can put this independent position at risk. as a consequence, the research itself may become a subject of debate and controversy, consequently disempowering both the client and the researcher. these dilemmas represent some of the challenges science shop projects may face. therefore, in our opinion, researchers should always be critical of their own role and position within a project. this is necessary for the production of useful insights, knowledge and recommendations. detaching from the interests of the client requires an ongoing awareness of the power−knowledge practices in which one is involved. this helps the researcher to take a different perspective on the problem or on the use of knowledge and expertise within the project and the decision-making process. determining the appropriate contribution of science to a particular project can be made easier by a critical assessment of the utility and limitations of specific scientific tools and approaches. conclusions science shop projects favour the interaction between science and society. these projects have the potential to challenge or change ossified power structures that discriminate between truth and un-truth. bodies of knowledge produced within official planning structures are questioned and debated, yielding possible innovations with regard to the political involvement of citizens and the inclusion of informal local knowledge. the projects can inspire innovations in decision-making, in knowledge and in self-efficacy. therefore, these projects are a very interesting experimental zone in a democratic tradition that seeks to account for the interests of a minority and include the initiatives of citizens. this reflection on three science shop projects conducted by wageningen ur shows that empowerment is far from unproblematic. based on theoretical and practical considerations, it seems obligatory on certain occasions for researchers to step aside from the idea of empowerment and its framework of performative theories and to take a reflexive position. reflexivity is needed to become effective instead of simply helpful. it requires questioning the power−knowledge relationships, the nature of the democratic process and the consequences of empowerment for other vulnerable groups. harvesting the lessons of these projects requires researchers to balance performative and reflexive science. references aalbers, c & padt, f 2010, 25 jaar onderzoek van de 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(2009): 144–159 © utsepress and the authors building bridges: linking universities with the manufacturing industry robert knutsen, charlene steyn and martin nicol over a decade ago, the south african government, through what is now the department of science and technology, published a white paper that brought into being a national system of innovation (department of arts, culture, science & technology 1996). this paper set the scene for translating the historical dependence on a resource-based economy into an innovativeand knowledgebased culture by harnessing the intellectual capital of its people. its motivation was to drive south africa to become a much more active player in the global manufacturing economy and thus create employment and wealth, particularly amongst the large, previously disadvantaged population. the provincial government of the western cape, in particular, has determined that much of this manufacturing thrust will be developed from smalland medium-sized enterprises (smes). however, growth in the manufacturing sector not only requires a will to do so, but requires support to develop the manufacturing entities into globally competitive industries that will gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 145 create employment and wealth. this means tapping into the worldclass research and development resources that exist at the regional level. currently, the proverbial chicken-and-egg situation exists: the capability of research institutions remains unlocked and industry is not able to advance. this article examines how research institutions and industry can be brought together in ways that will both enable industry to grow and will also enrich university research and teaching. some of the reasons for the lack of progress in this area are discussed, and particular attention is paid to the cape initiative in materials and manufacturing (cimm), a not-for-profit company that was formed in 2004 to build bridges between the worlds of the factory and the academy (uct 2007, p. 55). the article examines a number of innovative approaches undertaken by cimm and discusses the benefits, challenges and mixed results achieved by the organization to date, and the possible reasons for this. it also examines research done in comparable regions and makes suggestions for ways forward in the western cape context. unlocking the capability of the cape research institutions the western cape has a great deal of expertise in materials and manufacturing in its universities and research institutions. there is, at the same time, a pressing need on the part of industry to source the most suitable and cost-effective designs, materials and manufacturing methods for their products so they can hold their own against international competitors. big companies have their own internal research and development (r&d) laboratories – or they buyout capacity in university departments. godfrey (2006) makes clear that the power (size and strength) of industry partners has a strong influence on the way in which the interaction between industry and universities have come to be structured and function. but small manufacturers, the smes that south africa is relying on to create more jobs, typically do not have access to the new knowledge in materials and manufacturing that could be critical to their progress. their operating budgets, profit margins and skills base often inhibits them from entering into negotiations with potential university partners. the western cape university environment, indeed that of south africa as a whole, requires substantial financial support gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 146 for research in addition to that provided by the internal university budgets. for example, funds are required for student bursary support, salary contributions to research support staff and to cover running costs, as well as contributions to the university overhead costs or so-called research levy. these costs associated with accessing r&d capabilities are significant and are firm barriers for the majority of the small manufacturing industries in the western cape. cimm was formed in 2004 in response to the above situation. it is the brainchild of a group of academics from the local western cape universities who shared a common vision to increase the level of involvement by research entities with smaller manufacturing industries. cimm is guided by a board of directors that has from its inception been led by the university of cape town (uct) and includes representatives from all the local universities, a national research facility, and industry. the company is sponsored by the provincial government of the western cape and the business is managed by a full-time ceo (http://www.cimm.co.za/about.php). the imperative for a closer link between business and the universities is not one-sided. cimm was formed by academics who were concerned by the reduction in the number of materials scientists at western cape universities. at the end of the 1990’s, people saw that there was a threat to the continued existence of a local node of expertise in the area. in order to turn this around, it became necessary to demonstrate the importance of materials science in manufacturing by closer engagement with the manufacturing sector. it was anticipated that, as industry reacted to the services and resources offered by cimm, manufacturers would become drivers to direct the sort of people that were needed by industry and the sort of research that should be conducted to support business success. in 2006, cimm commissioned a detailed assessment of the capability and capacity of the cape universities and research institutions with respect to materials and manufacturing (drummond 2007). funded by the provincial government of the western cape, the r&d survey covered 20 departments or centres at the university of cape town, the university of the western cape (uwc), stellenbosch university (su), cape peninsula university of technology (cput) and the ithemba laboratory for accelerator-based sciences, which gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 147 is a national research facility. tertiary institutions were exposed to cimm and its activities through the survey, and it encouraged departments, research centres and groups to think about what they can offer to industry in the fields of product design, materials selection, manufacturing selection and advanced materials research. this assessment was also envisaged as a powerful marketing tool for promoting the intellectual property of the western cape. the survey looked at regional capability – available equipment was listed, as were laboratories and published research papers. excellent resources and strong capabilities were evident, but the survey revealed a particular weakness in human resources. it remained unclear whether or not this capability was allied with a capacity to get involved in work that will assist local industry. there is little doubt that the capability of the western cape research institutions is world-class, but there exists problems in unlocking this capability to best serve the needs of a developing manufacturing industry. on the one hand, work done by research departments that is of real value to business but which does not rank as world-class does not get priority from university funding mechanisms. this service role, as relevant as it is for teaching and research, is not the core function of universities. and there are academics that resent the fact that time on expensive and scarce scientific testing equipment is being taken up by marginal work for industry. on the other hand, manufacturers also have a particular view of universities. they see them as being up in the clouds and ignorant about working in the real world. those who have worked with university people in the past have found that they take ages to do anything. if manufacturers approach a university, it is because they have a problem that needs to be solved. they are looking for a service, not a complex process. bridges have to be built. in 2006, a team of researchers led by uct’s professor dave kaplan produced a report on micro-economic development strategy on behalf of the provincial government (kaplan et al. 2006). one of the report’s key findings was that if the western cape manufacturing industry is to survive and grow, it has to become more involved with r&d. it is also apparent from cimm’s experience that industry is not adequately defining the areas where they need assistance with research and development. requiring solutions to emergency gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 148 problems is all very well, but manufacturers are not approaching the universities and research institutions to assist them with mediumterm development work. this south african experience echoes the principal finding of the 2003 lambert review of business-university collaboration in the uk (lambert 2003). the report’s main conclusion was that ‘the biggest single challenge lies in boosting the demand for research from business, rather than in increasing the supply of ideas and services from universities’. this cannot be the responsibility of the universities. universities are responsible for teaching and research – and for responding to the demands of society in an appropriate manner. it is not their role to organise business. however, universities can turn this to their advantage if they are able to entice industry to assist them with delivery in the teaching programme. cimm has explored this opportunity and in 2007 developed what is known as the industry-student project programme (ispp). industry-student project programme the undergraduate engineering programmes at the western cape universities all require final year students to complete research projects that are generally conducted over 4–8 months. in a similar way, the honours (fourth) year of science programmes also requires students to undertake research projects in their specific discipline. a rough estimate indicates that there are at least 800 students who complete these projects each year at western cape universities. designing this number of projects each year is quite onerous and although some academics extend their larger postgraduate research programmes to include undergraduate projects, for many it is difficult to maintain new ideas. this is where industry can assist by providing project ideas that are highly relevant to current manufacturing. not only will students be exposed to real world problems, which is often lacking in some academic areas, but industry will benefit extensively by obtaining access to research infrastructure at very low cost. there is no cost attached to the student’s time, although in some cases it may be helpful to obtain a contribution towards study costs, and access to equipment at universities is generally pre-allocated, since these projects form part of the core teaching business of the various departments. cimm launched this idea by promoting ispp to the same departments and gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 149 centres that were surveyed during the 2006 capability and capacity study. cimm has also advertised this opportunity to industry and has offered its services as a gateway organization to link project ideas with relevant academics and research activities. in the first instance, companies were encouraged to submit proposals to cimm, who in turn would assess the projects and make the appropriate connection with the universities. there are very clear benefits to be derived from successful implementation of ispp, but at the same time, some barriers have been identified. benefits include: individual companies will obtain access to affordable • r&d that will generate an outcome to a specific project within a timeframe more consistent with their expectations academics will receive assistance in formulating ideas for • projects and the initial short-term project interaction could lead to • more extended research interaction at postgraduate level (for example, masters and phd level). the net effect will undoubtedly have the potential to improve the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry through technological advancement, and hence the employment opportunities for graduates will grow with positive knock-on effects to the departments that are developing the graduates. besides these benefits, however, the following challenges will need to be taken into account: companies are often reluctant to divulge relevant information about projects in fear of breach of confidentiality that may jeopardize their competitive advantage. consequently, they may impose restrictions on the student thesis that ultimately would not be acceptable by the university and as such may impose a barrier to the initiation of the project. a further barrier includes the difficulties experienced as a result of companies not adequately defining the scope of the project. an idea needs to be translated into a work plan so that it can be assessed by the relevant academic before being accepted for allocation to prospective students. cimm is able to assist in both these regards. firstly, there are often ways to conceal sensitive information without detracting from the value of the work performed by the student, and gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 150 as long as these issues are identified early in the negotiation process, the company can be protected without any significant detriment to the university examination process. cimm can facilitate the adoption of non-disclosure agreements that will further protect the relevant parties. furthermore, cimm is also in a position to assist with developing the project ideas to the point where the offering becomes much more attractive to academics who may otherwise be inwardly focused towards their established research activities, or in some cases, reluctant to move away from the well trodden approach of recycling projects. it is strongly believed that tremendous advantage can be gained from promoting concepts such as ispp, but the interventions offered by an organization such as cimm are vital to ensuring success. notwithstanding the above rationale, successes to date have been few. in many instances industry has responded positively, but they often provided insufficient details to properly define the objectives and anticipated outcomes of the proposed projects. academics have been slow to take up project ideas. perhaps this is not too surprising given the fact that the ispp process is a departure from the conventional approach to final year projects. cimm, and even more so ispp, is not yet proven and hence academics are somewhat reluctant to venture into this territory. this does not mean that the idea is not worthwhile or cannot work. instead it requires much more detailed intervention by cimm, at least initially, to ensure systematic definition of the project in the first instance, along with full project management support to ensure that all requirements are met in a timely fashion. it needs to be remembered that ispp does not aim to provide research support for universities in the normal way that one may expect from university-industry collaborations, but rather provides access for small companies to test facilities and expertise at a relatively low cost. the universities in turn obtain assistance with curriculum delivery in regard to final year project offerings. cimm needs to invest considerable effort to prove that these arrangements can work and that they do offer benefits to all concerned. the spin-in concept whilst the national system of innovation encourages higher education institutions and science councils to include patents, gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 151 business plans and proactive liaisons with industry in their research goals, the evolution of this has been slow. the reasons are complex and varied as already described, but undoubtedly include the strong academic tradition to publish in high impact journals and the fact that academics and researchers, by their very nature, are not entrepreneurial or business oriented. furthermore, a study commissioned by the national advisory council on innovation (naci 2007) revealed that both article and book output had stagnated, signalling that the underlying human capital in academia is being stretched to the limit. in other words, academics are engaged disproportionately in teaching and administration, and perhaps are spending too much time meeting reporting deliverables demanded by funding bodies as opposed to translating their research outputs into peer review articles and books. despite this, however, there are some significant successes where research ideas and inventions have been translated into commercial outputs. a recent noteworthy success has been the formation of hot platinum (http://www.hotplatinum. com) that developed from research sponsored by the innovation fund through the department of science and technology (http://www. dst.gov.za). the research led to the novel design and manufacture of induction furnaces for the jewelry industry with particular emphasis on high temperature melting of platinum alloys. in an age where the ‘win-win’ situation is often targeted, the propulsion of research outputs towards the creation of commercial ‘spin-out’ companies can benefit all parties who get involved in the activity. the formation of a spin-out company is probably one of the ultimate measures of success of the national innovation system promoted by south africa’s department of science and technology. since academics can remain attached to the spin-out company, they are able to supplement their regular income, which in itself provides just reward for commitment to teaching and research. proliferation of such opportunities may even assist in attracting more people into academia and hence relieve somewhat the position described in the aforementioned naci report. in these same companies, graduates find careers that are tailor-made for their high level training. furthermore, successful companies will create employment positions for support staff and increased economic activity along the value chain. the university of stellenbosch in the western cape is well gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 152 known for having an institutional culture and infrastructure that encourages and supports entrepreneurship among students as well as staff members a technology transfer company called innovus was formed in 1999 to facilitate the commercial exploitation of intellectual property emanating from the university’s faculty members and students (http://www.innovus.co.za). there are already several examples where breakthroughs and inventions have led to the formation of spin-out companies including aquanutro (http:// www.aquanutro.com), sunspace and information systems (http:// www.sunspace.co.za) and diacoustic medical devices (http://www. diacoustic.co.za). of course, success also depends on the provision of adequate venture capital to support the formation of the spin-out company and often this vital ingredient may be the critical barrier to success, particularly in the current global environment where the opportunities to obtain credit are much reduced. in addition, there is always great risk in forming new commercial ventures. an alternative to the formation of spin-out companies is to develop the corollary which we call the ‘spin-in’ company. in this case, the source of ideas may originate from an existing company, but still require substantial research and development. since most manufacturing operations are not able to single-handedly afford the cost of research, they require partners who are able to offer assistance at relatively low cost. universities and science councils are well positioned and equipped to provide this form of assistance, particularly if the activity can slot into the regular senior undergraduate and postgraduate research programmes. however, there are several reasons why this has not been happening, as already discussed in this article. the problem may be addressed, however, by examining whether or not most of the barriers can be overcome if the researchers are able to obtain a partnership in commercializing the output. so, instead of demanding full cost recovery for executing the research proposed by the external manufacturing company, the costs are significantly reduced and a commercial partnership between the research institution (university or science council) and the manufacturing company is initiated. in this way, the end point is similar to the formation of a spin-out company, except that the initiator is the manufacturing company, which is most likely an sme, and not the research institution. the researcher and institution gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 153 continue to be part of the manufacturing operation long after the initial research is completed and the resultant expansion of the manufacturing activity could conceivably lead to additional job creation. in essence, the concept of spin-in companies epitomizes the intentions of cimm. the bringing together of industry and academia to support and grow the activities of industry is promoted by creating stronger networks between the two parties. the industrystudent project programme (ispp) has huge potential to lead to ‘spin-in’ activity, thereby creating new revenue streams for research institutions, providing additional income for researchers, and growing the manufacturing economy with ultimate job and wealth creation. a 2006 report for the european commission on regional advantage considers the case of ‘technology-based new firms [that are] a special category of knowledge-based firms’ (european commission 2006, p. 53). most of these firms are created as spin-offs from existing private industry but ‘a substantial part of the new technology-based firms is linked to university activities’. this is despite the fact that ‘creating and exploiting new commercial ideas are not part of the traditional core operations’ of universities. the report says that ‘a small share of the new technology-based firms are created by university researchers themselves, that is, direct university spin-offs’ but it also highlights a different process where ‘external entrepreneurs’ – private firms – progress by ‘exploiting university research made by others’. although the phrase ‘spin-in’ is not used here – and the possibility that the research may owe its direction to the entrepreneur rather than to the academic team is not made explicit – this co-development of ‘previously missing technologies’ is exactly the process that cimm is able to encourage. promoting interaction between academics and industry as already indicated, the fact that industry is often not able to adequately access assistance from higher education institutions (heis) is partly due to the limited capacity on the part of academics and researchers. university and research agendas are such that they place huge demands on personnel and consequently projects are either taken on with subsequent poor delivery, or they do not get out of the starting blocks at all. so, despite the efforts of cimm and the good intentions of the academics who become involved, the gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 154 capabilities remain unlocked. that is, it is not enough to provide bridging services as offered by cimm, what is also needed is a third party that can take over the management of the project and thus enable the academic partner to concentrate on providing expert input to plan and conduct appropriate research and investigation without having to be too concerned with logistics. not only does this lessen the load and lower the barrier to entry for academic involvement, but it also allows the academic party to feel more at ease in the sense that they are not deviating too much from their regular work practice. most academics are not inclined to business and therefore may feel uncomfortable if expected to drive and manage the entire project, particularly where it may involve logistics that are far removed from the regular research environment. a recent project example involving the uct centre for materials engineering is discussed below. a large consortium involved in the construction and management of a rock retainer system on the slopes of table mountain in cape town approached the centre for materials engineering for assistance in providing solutions to ongoing corrosion problems experienced by their wire rope barriers. from the outset it was clear that the problems were complex and required in situ examination, laboratory simulation and in situ trials over an extended period. large wire rope barrier systems are certainly not the typical samples that a materials research laboratory handles and furthermore, alternative coating systems for the wire ropes were required to be proposed and evaluated. the latter expertise in coating systems was not available at uct and consequently a third party consultant, who was accessed through the cimm network and was able to independently conduct research related to relevant coating practices, was invited to join the project. in addition, an important requirement for the third party involvement was to manage and execute the process of sample extraction from the mountain slopes, set up simulation tests at another third party laboratory that was able to provide test facilities not available at uct, and arrange the placement of wire rope control samples at strategic locations on the mountain slopes. the expertise provided by uct was thus able to concentrate on the assessment of corrosion damage and the interpretation of mechanisms that were responsible for the premature degradation of the original installations on the mountain slopes. consequently, the gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 155 academic involvement was limited to direct scientific investigation, interpretation and report compilation. the impact on the regular activities of the centre for materials engineering was very limited whilst the value of the output for all parties was substantial. the knowledge developed at uct assisted the third party consultant in devising a successful coating system that was able to provide a solution to the severe corrosion problems experienced by the wire ropes. although the outcome of this project was highly successful, it was acknowledged by the academic partner that it was unlikely that the project would have advanced towards any reasonable conclusion without the assistance of the third party consultant. cimm believes that this mode of involvement should be encouraged and promoted more widely to academics and researchers. essentially this approach provides a very attractive path for academic-industry interaction without drawing too heavily on the university and research institution resources. furthermore, the sound business approach inherent in successful consultancies ensures that the client is adequately serviced, which greatly diminishes the entrenched poor reputation for services provided by academia. the opportunities that extended academic expertise can add to the business activities of regular consultants should also not be ignored. cimm thus aims to identify consultants who are able to participate in the networks that exist within the local manufacturing sectors. the important role that universities can play in regional innovation systems is widely acknowledged (european commission, 2006; trra 2007). this refers traditionally to processes of technology transfer, creation of knowledge-intensive spin-off companies, and the establishment of science parks and incubators (european commission 2006, citing jones-evans et al. 2001). both cimm’s development of the ‘spin-in’ concept and its identification of the useful ‘intermediary’ role that can be played by consultants are particularly suited to the context of the western cape where the immediate need is to improve the performance and competitiveness of existing manufacturing firms. as the links between business and academia increase in number, the availability of more modes of interaction will promote deeper levels of collaboration. the comments of the european commission report are equally applicable: ‘access to knowledge produced through research at regional universities serves as a gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 156 locational advantage for firms in the region, especially in the context of smes. when constructing regional advantage, regional innovation performance may thus be strengthened by regional firms tapping into the knowledge reservoir of the local universities against relatively few costs’. as cimm’s experiences show, there are various ways of doing this. the networks and social capital created around these innovative approaches may, in turn, improve the environment for science parks, incubators and the other ‘traditional’ development advantages associated with universities in developed countries. learning from others in its 2007 discussion document on ‘the role of universities in economic development’, the toronto regional research alliance (trra), points to the ‘significant body of literature that documents the importance of university activities to the innovation process generally and to technology-based industrial performance’. one of its main points, however, is that ‘the precise nature of the university’s role in the knowledge-based economy – and its ability to perform the roles ascribed to it – is still being explored’ (trra 2007). in the western cape, cimm’s activities can be seen as part of this quest. there are at least two elements that shape cimm’s particular experience in this regard – firstly: the need to operate at a scale and in a style that matches the much weaker technology and innovation environment compared to that of more developed centres in other parts of the world. the trra report highlights the need for universities to tailor their efforts to fit ‘the characteristics of their own regional innovation ecosystem’. miles (2007), in a striking analogy, characterises the relatively large (in the uk) and successful cambridge high-technology cluster as ‘small mammals’ compared to the ‘big gorilla’ companies of silicon valley in the usa. south africa does not even rate on such a scale. secondly: the need for the project to foster a common approach across a number of research and learning institutions in order to provide a sufficiently broad base of service and expertise in materials issues (collaboration between universities is critical to its success). about ten years ago, knowledgenorthwest (knw) was created as a collaborative project between the higher education institutions in england’s north west and was established to support knowledge gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 157 transfer and innovation in the region by facilitating business access to the vast and wide ranging knowledge and expertise available across the region’s heis. the project operated for six years until early 2006 with almost £2.3m funding drawn down during the life of the project (north west universities association 2007). in many respects, the objectives of cimm mimic that of knw in that the project had two key arms including the promotion of a knowledge and skills brokerage service and the facilitation of higher education strategic engagement with regional priority clusters and sectors. the knowledge and skills brokerage service provided a single point of contact to facilitate business access to the knowledge, expertise and skills available within the region’s knowledge base. in the review of the knw model (north west universities association 2007), it is clearly evident that the single point of access to the region’s heis and the simultaneous broadcasting of enquiries across the knowledge base proved to be valuable to business. however, it was firmly recognized that the full potential was compromised by the low-level intervention at the hei-business interface. the brokerage role was undertaken by relatively junior, generalist staff and the offer was available to organizations of all types and sizes, across all sectors. consequently, this generalist approach increased the intervention required by heis both at central level, to understand and articulate the nature of the enquiry prior to processing, and at the academic level, in terms of the exploratory dialogue required with the client. this experience demonstrated the considerable support that some companies, and in particular smes, need to effectively access and utilize the knowledge base, both in the early stages when diagnosing and articulating their needs, and later to maintain communications, and develop and deliver the idea. cimm is different in this regard in that the focus of attention is aimed at providing materials and manufacturing support only and consequently the target industry market is much more concentrated. in this way the tailored expertise of the ceo and the board members enables a much more efficient interface between heis and industry than that experienced by knw. in addition, it is now recognized that the project management role that is offered by third party consultants can be vital in ensuring that projects are completed to the satisfaction of both parties. gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 158 another important aspect highlighted in the knw review report refers to the manner in which measurable outputs are evidenced to substantiate the level of funding awarded to sustain the operation of knw. outputs such as job creation and sales targets were identified but it has since been recognized that these hard economic outputs may be inappropriate to measure the impact on business and industry (north west universities association 2007). in many cases companies were either too busy or were too difficult to contact or engage with to enable effective follow-up that sufficiently reflected the outcome of the intervention. furthermore, given the time lines of some developments, additional outputs may yet be delivered but will fall outside of the project and follow-up period. this remains a challenge as it is reasonable to expect that funding agencies will require some form of evidencing of outputs and cimm will need to rise to this challenge in order to secure sustainable funding from government, industry and other agencies. conclusion there is little doubt that universities and research institutions have much more to offer than core teaching and high level research. it is also quite obvious in many situations that industry, and in particular the manufacturing industries, require assistance to advance their capabilities and products to remain competitive in the global economy. bringing these two entities together can only increase the strength of both the teaching/research environment and the manufacturing industry. since this marriage does not happen easily in many situations, the role of an intermediary is critical. in the western cape region, the willingness of universities and industry to form networks has been demonstrated through the formation of the cape initiative in materials and manufacturing. while this ‘bridging’ organization is still in its early stages, it offers much potential as a means to enhance and grow the activities of the universities and industry and hence deliver direct benefits to graduates and the local economy. references department of arts, culture, science and technology 1996, ‘white paper on science and technology’, republic of south africa, pretoria, viewed 9 june 2009, http://www.dst.gov. za/publications-policies/legislation/white_papers/ gateways | knutsen, steyn & nicol 159 drummond, m 2007, ‘r&d capability assessment in materials and manufacturing’, unpublished report for cape initiative in materials and manufacturing, cape town. european commission 2006, ‘constructing regional advantage: principles – perspectives – policies report’, european commission, brussels, viewed 19 june 2009, http://www. dime-eu.org/files/active/0/regional_advantage_final.pdf godfrey, s 2006, ‘partnerships and networks in new materials development’, in g kruss (ed.), creating knowledge networks: working partnerships in higher education, industry and innovation, hsrc press, cape town, pp. 94–126. jones-evans, d, cooke, p, klofsten, m & paasio, a 2001, ‘entrepreneurial universities from the periphery’, european commission publication eur 19846 – the regional level of implementation of policies, brussels. kaplan, d, daniels, r, lorentzen, j & morris, m (eds) 2006, ‘micro-economic development strategy for the western cape – synthesis report: 2006’, department of economic development and tourism, provincial government of the western cape, western cape. lambert 2003, ‘lambert review of business-university collaboration: final report december 2003’, hm treasury, london, viewed 3 june 2009, http://www.hm-treasury. gov.uk/ miles, n 2007, ‘the state of the innovation economy in the uk 2007’, oxford to cambridge arc, norwich research park, pp. 74. national advisory council on innovation south africa 2007, ‘human capital and the south african knowledge base: annual report 2006–2007’, national advisory council on innovation, pretoria, viewed 9 june 2009, http://www.naci.org.za/pdfs/nacireports/ north west universities association, 2007, ‘knowledgenorthwest final report september 2007’, north west universities association, manchester, uk, viewed 2 july 2009, http:// www.nwua.ac.uk/docs/pdf/knw_final_report_final_200907.pdf toronto regional research alliance 2007, ‘the role of universities in economic development: discussion document prepared for trra research working group’, traa, ontario, canada, june 2007, pp. 63, viewed 7 june 2009, http://www.trra.ca/en/reports/ trrareports.asp university of cape town 2007, ‘social responsiveness report 2007’, university of cape town, cape town, pp. 55–59. sustaining communityuniversity partnerships lessons learned from a participatory research project with elderly chinese go to the people. live among them. learn from them. start with what they know. build on what they have. lao zi, father of daoism, 600 bc the chinese community in the united states is the oldest and largest asian-american subgroup with an estimated population of 3.6 million (barnes & bennett 2002; bennett & martin 1995). compared to the general us population, the chinese community is older in average age (shinagawa 2008). with more than 80 per cent of chinese older adults foreign born, the community is less acculturated than other immigrant groups. older chinese immigrants are experiencing the stress of ageing, which is compounded by pronounced migratory and psycho-social distress caused by vastly different cultural and linguistic barriers (huff & kline 1999; mui 1996). compared to their us counterparts, chinese older adults report worse mental health outcomes (ren & chang 1998); they have higher risks of depression and are more likely to report somatic psychiatric distress (casado & leung 2001; lam, pacala & smith 1997; raskin, chien & lin 1992). there remains a significant need to eliminate the health disparities in the chinese populations (li, logan & yee 1999). despite existing health disparities, systematic health data on chinese older adults are limited. historical racial tension, compounded by cultural and linguistic barriers, often prohibits the chinese community from fully participating in research (shah et al. 2007; yu 1982). other challenges of data collection, subgroup heterogeneity and recruitment further render health research on the chinese population difficult (guo 2000; moreno-john et al. 2004; norris et al. 2007; parikh et al. 2009). as a result, there is a lack of empirical data to document the health needs, health determinants and authentic voice of this marginalised community (shah et al. 2007; simon et al. 2008). the purpose of this article is to present the challenges faced in sustaining a community-university partnership when conducting a cbpr project with an elderly chinese population in chicago’s chinatown, and to detail strategies and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 31–47 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 xinqi dong e-shien chang rush university medical center melissa simon northwestern university medical center esther wong chinese american service league 32 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon from meeting the challenge of cultural complexity in this chinese community. the greater chicago area has one of the largest us chinese communities in the country, with an estimated population of over 67 000 (simon et al. 2008). located in the near south side of chicago, the chinatown neighbourhood, including the communities of armour square, bridgeport and mckinley park, remains the most densely populated with chinese immigrants (bennett & martin 1995). currently, the chinatown community is one of the fastest growing ethnic communities in chicago (goldsworthy 2010). in this article, we illustrate the key challenges and themes through adaptation of a conceptual framework for sustainability proposed by alexander and colleagues (2003), as outlined below. we focus on the university partners’ reflections, as well as the constructive comments and evaluation of the collaboration by community leaders and stakeholders. the paucity of systematic understanding of the ageing chinese population necessitated the collaboration of community and university partners, beginning in 2008. our primary goals in the first phase were 1) to build a collaborative partnership between the community and university for a community-based, action-orientated health-promotion study; 2) to investigate community health needs using culturally sensitive measures; and 3) to develop community-engaged research capacity. building on this two-year collaboration, we were recently rewarded with continuing funding from the national institutes of health to expand our partnership efforts through communityuniversity infrastructure and network building. background research in recent years, community-engaged research has been increasingly undertaken by gerontologists and researchers from relevant disciplines to promote and support healthy ageing, health protection and disease prevention (baker & wang 2006; blair & minkler 2009; carrasquillo & chadiha 2007; davies & nolan 2003; norris et al. 2007). although community-engaged research offers a common framework for studies that seek to strengthen the link between research and practice, it encompasses a wide range of research endeavours as well as the degree to which the community is involved. among its variations, community-based participatory research (cbpr) places the most emphasis on engaging the community as a full, equitable partner throughout the research initiation, implementation and dissemination processes. participatory action and research elements are given equal consideration (israel et al. 1998, 2001; leung, yen & minkler 2004; wallerstein 2006). by equitably engaging both community and university partners in an action-driven investigation, the cbpr approach enhances the quality and quantity of research without losing sight of local community values (israel 2000; minkler 2005; minkler & wallerstein 2003). 33 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon there are compelling philosophical and practical reasons for engaging communities in health sciences studies. broadly speaking, the nature of community health issues is multifaceted, and their solutions often supersede the capacity of one single perspective or organisation (butterfoss, goodman & wandersman 1996; israel et al. 1998; lasker & committee on medicine and public health 1997). therefore, engaging the community in each step of the scientific enquiry helps to facilitate positive change (green & mercer 2001), and brings in a diverse group of stakeholders to co-own a solution that matters and makes sense to them. hence, implementation will more likely be sustained (kobetz et al. 2009; martinez, carter-pokras & broan 2009; minkler 2005; okubo & weidman 2000). in addition, given the complexity of health determinants and the disparities experienced by marginalised groups, older adults and ethnic minorities, whose health behaviours are strongly intertwined with their cultural beliefs, any intervention must be developed from knowledge of and respect for the community’s cultural values (cdc/atsdr committee on community engagement 1997; israel 2000; minkler 2005; minkler & wallerstein 2003). sustainability of community-university partnerships sustainability planning is central to the management of successful community health initiatives. from an evaluation standpoint, sustainability may be difficult to conceptualise, given that it often refers to a future stage (alexander et al. 2003). public health literature examines sustainability mostly from the viewpoint of maintaining specific health programs, such as health initiatives, or retaining knowledge, capacity and values generated from the collaboration (bryant 2002; israel et al. 2006; paine-andrews et al. 2000; shediac-rizkallah & bone 1998). less attention is given to sustaining the partnership itself (gomez, greenberg & feinberg 2005; israel et al. 2001), and investigating partnership sustainability through empirical evidence is also not granted the attention it deserves (israel et al. 2001). a few studies have examined theoretical perspectives of sustainability. for instance, alexander and colleagues (2003) have conceptualised five broad attributes of the cbpr approach that are important for partnership sustainability: (1) vision-focused balance that brings the partnership to agree on a long-term vision for community health; (2) infrastructure development that fosters member participation and engagement; (3) community linkages that sustain commitment among the individuals and institutions involved; (4) systems orientation, in which attention is directed to the long-term function of the synergetic partnership; and (5) outcome-based advocacy to effectively identify and pursue valued goals through collaboration. this framework also highlights the interplay between different environmental factors, including cultural, political, physical and economic contexts, which impact on the partnership. 34 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon despite sustainability being a key indicator of partnership success, it raises challenges for many organisations. much has been published on the structural challenges facing communityuniversity partnerships, and some have noted that partnership building is a cultural exchange in progress. combining two different systems inevitably results in a series of compromises in order to achieve a shared goal (israel et al. 1998; lasker & weiss 2003; williams et al. 2005). the voluntary basis of collaboration calls for a process-orientated, consent-based leadership that may prove ineffective where there is tension between the expectations of the community and those of the university (lindamer et al. 2009; williams et al. 2005). another challenge is a lack of or reduced funding, which may create difficulty in maintaining group morale, momentum and energy and fundamentally threaten the long-term viability of the partnership (israel et al. 2006; williams et al. 2005). in addition, it may be challenging to document and evaluate how the research collaboration in practice meets health and wellbeing needs (kreuter 2000; roussos & fawcett 2000). the challenge of cultural complexity in the case of minority health, the challenge of partnership sustainability goes beyond structural limitations. taking culture into account is a prerequisite for delivering high-quality healthcare services to people from diverse sociocultural contexts (kleinman, eisenberg & good 1978; tervalon 2003). however, language and cultural barriers often complicate the ability of minority immigrants to understand and participate in research studies (cristancho et al. 2008; martinez, carter-pokras & broan 2009). therefore, marrying culture with sensitivity training has evolved into an institutionalised strategy in current medical school curricula in the us (institute of medicine 2008). the concept of cultural sensitivity in clinical encounters often refers to the ways in which health-care professionals interact with patients from different cultural backgrounds. but it is also helpful in guiding community-university partnerships. in the case of the chinese population in the us, chinese communities are predominantly foreign-born: less than a third are us born, and nearly half do not speak english well (shinagawa 2008). not only are the language and cultural barriers challenging, chinese communities are inherently diverse due to the history and development of immigration trajectories (moreno-john et al. 2004; parikh et al. 2009). these sociodemographic characteristics call for culturally sensitive research measures (guo 2000; norman 1988; shinagawa 2008; wong 1998). as a result, it was critical for our partnership to direct and conduct research content in accordance with the community’s cultural practices, philosophies and preferences as we strove to strengthen partnership links. research design guided by cbpr principles, our community-university partnership is a collaborative effort between rush university medical center 35 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon and the chinese american service league (casl). casl is a community-based organisation in chicago’s chinatown, serving more than 17 000 clients in the greater chicago area annually through its health promotion programs and other social services. the partnership was initiated by a gerontologist at rush institute for healthy aging (riha), rush university medical center, who has been working closely with casl on health promotion programs. community-based service organisations are often among the most involved partners in collaborative research on quality of life issues (green & mercer 2001). therefore casl was well suited in that it had longstanding collaborations with almost all social service agencies located in chinatown. in this partnership, casl serves as a bridge between the university-based researchers and the broader community partners serving on our advisory committee. committee members play a pivotal role in fostering community support and guiding the overall examination of health issues in the community. they comprise stakeholders and leaders enlisted from civic, health, social and advocacy groups and community centers, as well as community physicians and residents, and represent the cultural diversity of this community. committee members work extensively with the investigative team to review findings and examine study instruments to ensure cultural sensitivity and appropriateness. in order to accommodate the community’s cultural and linguistic diversity, committee meetings are conducted in three languages: english, mandarin and cantonese. the formation and conduct of this community-university partnership allowed the development of an appropriate research methodology that took into account the chinese cultural context. under the guidance of community partners, both quantitative and qualitative data was collected in the community. a survey questionnaire was constructed to examine the health needs of chinese older adults, and a total of 78 study participants were recruited from community centres, seniors housing, local advertisements and community educational initiatives. survey questions were initially constructed in english and were then translated into simplified and traditional chinese by bilingual and bicultural research assistants and investigators. the interviews were conducted according to participants’ preferences in english, mandarin or cantonese by linguistically competent research assistants. the study was approved by the rush university medical center institutional review board. research findings results of the survey suggest that elderly chinese are vulnerable (dong et al. 2011b). symptoms of depression, loneliness and lack of social support are common in the urban chinese population (chang et al. 2010c). our findings from both quantitative and qualitative data suggest that elder mistreatment is common, but is considered unacceptable in chinese culture (dong et al. 2011a). 36 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon they also suggest that increases in the incidence of symptoms of depression are associated with an increase in the self-reporting of elder mistreatment in the us chinese population (dong et al. 2010). our research outcomes have important practical implications for health-care professionals and social services agencies, as well as concerned family members. in particular, the locally relevant findings underscore the need to advance research and educational initiatives through culturally and linguistically appropriate measures. as a result, our partnership continues to expand its efforts to community outreach programs and educational activities. since the inception of the partnership in 2008, we have created a bimonthly trilingual community health forum to promote health and advance the community’s capacity in research on ageing. reflections on partnership sustainability these reflections on developing partnership sustainability focus on the initial stage of the research (vision-focused balance and infrastructure development), the mid-term actions (community linkages) and the long-term goals (systems orientation and outcomes-based advocacy), as discussed below. vision-focused balance community-university partnerships by default comprise community organisations and university groups equally contributing based on a shared vision. having a clear vision and mission statement is perhaps the best way to help generate support for the partnership (roussos & fawcett 2000). creating and sharing a broad vision by building upon prior positive working relationships with partner organisations emerges as an important strategy (israel et al. 2001). to begin with, in our partnership experience, our community and university partners had already collaborated on a series of health initiatives in chinatown that helped foster a trusting relationship. in addition, consistent with prior studies, our bicultural and bilingual investigators’ cultural insights contributed to forming a trusting relationship with the community as well as an effective collaboration (calamaro 2008; suh, kagan & strumpf 2009; yancey, ortega & kumanyika 2005). nevertheless, there were initial challenges. despite our partnership sharing a uniform vision on improving the health of chinese older adults, as the partnership evolved members voiced concerns about how to best achieve that vision. in our first partnership evaluation meeting (about eight months into the partnership), most community advisory board members concurred that, despite there being an initial buy-in from community partners, it was unclear how to translate short-term goals into future goals congruent with the vision. some members felt that they wanted to be more involved but did not know how. others felt unclear about the potential contribution they could bring to the 37 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon table. and still others questioned the level of impact from collecting research data on issues that were already well perceived through anecdotal stories. our partnership used several strategies to mitigate these problems. first, as the partnership progressed, we revisited the agenda to reflect on the collective perspectives, knowledge and skills of the partnership in order to hold each partner accountable. through this we gained the understanding that, despite sharing the same vision, community advisory board members may prioritise different needs. it was imperative to ascertain that all of the long-term goals met the capacity of the partnership. second, we realised that community partners needed to understand that research findings may not immediately effect social change, while university partners needed to ensure that the collective community voice was being heard, reflected and respected. when the goal is community empowerment, it is important to keep communicating the vision brought forth by the partnership in order to keep an array of partners at the table. third, creating a vision not only implied the ability to bring partners to commit to a communityfocused, action-orientated research endeavour, but also implied the capacity to drive the partnership towards a shared vision, as it is this which may strongly affect sustainability (paine-andrews et al. 2000). infrastructure development infrastructure building contributes to bridging the current knowledge level and long-term vision. without the internal support systems that glue the partnership together, the partnership will not be able to foster effective member participation and full commitment (wolff & maurana 2001). in our partnership, leaving the chinese community with no research tools to advance its own needs was among the most articulated concerns in partnership meetings. whereas conventional infrastructure building may be essential, we have come to the conclusion that utilising creative measures to address the bilingual and bicultural needs of the chinese community is equally critical. as a result, we have devoted extensive time and energy to planning infrastructure targeted towards the chinatown community’s cultural and linguistic needs. to begin with, we enhanced the community’s research capacity by organising research workshops for community partners who were interested in learning more about health sciences research. the training provides co-learning experiences that foster leadership breadth and depth pertaining to cultural knowledge exchange. in a mock focus group training workshop, among other events, not only did community partners gain specific skills in research instruments and facilitation, but researchers also gained insight into chinese culture, such as respect and honour for seniors. for instance, researchers learned the technique of facilitating open discussions among chinese older adults without being authoritative or making older adults fear ‘losing face’. this 38 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon provided the university partners with a great opportunity to learn from community wisdom as well as how to interpret data so that it was more culturally appropriate. at the same time, both community and university partners recognised the pressing need to strengthen data acquisition in the community. chinatown residents mostly converse in chinese, including cantonese, mandarin and taishanese dialects. therefore, research data easily suffers from the problem of ‘lost in translation’. in response, our partnership is in the process of creating a bilingual data resource centre that will permit data collection in both english and chinese (all dialects share the same scripts). the data centre will further improve the quality of the data and accuracy of the community’s collective voice. community linkages a thriving partnership requires the sustainability of broad community participation (alexander et al. 2003). however, community partnership building often encounters the challenges of structural constraints, such as lack of funding or trust in the collaboration. facing this latter challenge, we first aimed to generate broad participation by both the community and the university using culturally sensitive measures. we actively sought feedback from community and university partners in order to engage multiple community stakeholders and leaders within the partnership framework. for instance, our advisory committee functions as a complementary effort to both community and university partners on the strategic plan of sustainability. the committee is instrumental in designing and guiding the cultural appropriateness of educational training and dialogue between the community and university partners. in other words, the committee serves as a bridge between the university centre and the community partners to ensure that the vision and desired goals will be met. second, we found that showing appreciation for the local community resources greatly contributed to the partnership’s ability to establish a strong working relationship. traditionally, chinese culture places great emphasis on respectfulness and honour, both of which remain core values of confucianism (chan & tan 2004). therefore, expressing adequate appreciation for the local cultures has evolved into a meaningful protocol throughout this partnership. third, given that cbpr is a different approach from that which many researchers and community members are accustomed to, organising educational forums and training opportunities may deepen the ties between both partners. from the inception of this partnership, researchers have worked side by side with community partners to build community research capacity through education and training using culturally appropriate measures. for instance, we have implemented a series of health promotion forums in response to the needs of ageing adults. based on feedback from the committee, research partners have presented papers on topics 39 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon such as nutrition, depression and elder mistreatment. older adults have felt free to ask questions in trilingual (english, mandarin, cantonese) presentations, and the presentations have been well received by the community. in addition, community initiatives have offered the academic community the opportunity to go into the field and learn first-hand from aggregative community wisdom in terms of its resources, assets and skills. we are also in the process of integrating academic expertise into the partnership. workshops on research principles are offered to the community members at large to alleviate health illiteracy (minkler 2000). based on the recommendation of community partners, we have also made an effort to highlight partnership visibility in the community through the mass media. we have started a quarterly ‘ask dr dong’ column to encourage community members to express their own health needs. community residents can submit a question directly to the study team, and answers are provided by the university partners. lastly, we have learned that the action-orientated approach to partnership building is vital to our collaboration with the chinese community. after completing data collection, we organised an appreciation dinner for 78 project participants and their family members. the dinner provided the participants with an opportunity to understand their contribution to advancing community health sciences. moreover, the occasion allowed community and university partners to witness the well-received impact of this partnership at the grassroots level. systems orientation the formation of community-university partnerships is premised upon the enhancement of organisational capacity to achieve its goals. in most cbpr studies, partnership capacity implies the ability to advocate for the community on pressing health needs (butterfoss, goodman & wandersman 1996; roussos & fawcett 2000). furthermore, the effectiveness of leadership synergy is perceived as a long-term goal of partnership continuity (alexander et al. 2003). with regard to partnership synergy, we are continuing to form new relationships as well as maintain the partnership as inevitably some members leave and new members come on board. providing new members with in-depth orientation and consciously welcoming them helps to forge cohesion among partners and to ensure an inclusive process (israel et al. 2006). another benefit of this community-university collaboration is the increased interaction between the chinese community and academic institutions, health professionals and social work professionals, as well as other community organisations, which helps lay the foundation of a sustainable partnership beyond the funding period. in order to boost the confidence of partners in attaining long-term outcomes, studies indicate the importance of first achieving short-term outcomes, which often carries symbolic value for continuity. the more closely a community change addresses 40 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon a perceived need on the part of community partners, the more likely the change will be sustained (paine-andrews 2000). to achieve this, our partnership carefully defined its research purpose and envisioned potential action-based solutions both within and outside the community. for instance, our preliminary data analysis indicated that among this group of older adults, family support was identified as the most desirable relationship, yet it remained least satisfactory due to unfulfilled expectations on the part of older adults (chang 2010b). in addition, community wisdom places great emphasis on a collective decision-making process and the value of family unity. therefore, in community data presentations, we invite older adults as well as their family members to attend the presentations in order to illustrate the pressing challenges facing elderly parents. outcomes-based advocacy when community-university partnerships think critically about their potential impact, working to effect institutional and governmental policy change may be the best means to ensure lasting impact (israel et al. 2006). to begin with, engaging communities in research offers the opportunity for academic researchers to conduct practice-based research that translates findings into effective clinical practice (westfall, mold & fagnan 2007). through the exchange of expertise between diverse partners, cbpr not only contributes to organisational capacitybuilding, but also creates a research–practice interface that informs public policy changes (davis & nolan 2003; doyle & timonen 2010; israel et al. 2010). the challenge remains for the present partnership, however, of how to develop actionable policy goals that take into account the cultural and linguistic complexities of the chinese community. increasing cultural sensitivity to health-care interventions is viewed as equally important as communicating the results among the partnership. in the public health literature, there is a growing consensus that cultural sensitivity embodies more than matching the languages and preferred locations of a targeted community. incorporating the cultural, social and environmental forces that affect health behaviours in a community contributes to the salience of policy impact (fisher et al. 2007; kreuter & mcclure 2004; resnicow et al. 1999). in practice, we have sought to work with partners at both the community and the national level. our partnership has collaborated with the american psychiatric foundation and the albert schweitzer foundation to assess health interventions with chinese older adults in chinatown elderly apartments. with the help of skilled medical student volunteers, the saturday with seniors program gathers feedback from chinese older adults on culturally sensitive health matters requiring long-term promotion. we have also participated in a number of scientific conferences, both citywide and nationwide, to share our partnership experiences with colleagues in the field. given the intrinsic diversity among chinese immigrants in the us, we 41 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon acknowledge that our findings may not be generalisable to other chinese populations, including chinese minority groups and suburban and rural chinese populations, as they may be subjected to varying degrees of social and economic influence (shinagawa 2008). therefore, it is imperative to branch out to other chinese communities in the country. we are currently spearheading outreach efforts to the chinese immigrant services agency network international (cisani), which is an international social services agency network serving chinese immigrants around the world. conclusion based on the conceptual five-factor sustainability model, we have presented the challenges faced and the lessons learned from sustaining a community-university partnership in chicago’s chinatown community. we see wide implications from this evidence-based, impactdriven partnership for developing culturally appropriate strategies that meet the needs of diverse populations. first, partnership sustainability should not be perceived simply as a programbased evaluation. this is not the sole decisive indicator of the sustainability of community-university partnerships. rather, the cultural context and structural and environmental constraints also affect the capacity of the partnership to continue to form collaborative relations with all partners (alexander et al. 2003). based on our experience, we conclude that the cultural, social and environmental contexts within which the partnership operates perhaps serve as a fundamental platform for longterm sustainability. working with the chinese community has highlighted the importance of respecting and embracing diverse cultural philosophies, practices and preferences in sustaining a partnership. genuine understanding and the practice of culturally sensitive research are critical for advancing social change. second, reflecting upon partnership sustainability, we consider all five factors equally critical to the success of this collaboration. however, envisioning long-term goals, as well as achieving their realisation, perhaps are more significant in moving this partnership forward. in our evaluation meetings with committee members, we constantly brainstorm the probable potential of this collaboration: what do university and community partners envision this partnership to be in the next five to ten years? what are the critical elements for sustaining this partnership beyond the funding years? in our case, informing policy changes in the light of community needs emerges as a longterm goal of this partnership. whereas sustaining partnerships may imply the continuity of specific infrastructure, programs or initiatives for particular collaborations, our collective goal of longterm, policy-actionable impact will help sustain this partnership into the future. third, we believe our partnership experience with this chinese population provides implications for expanding the cbpr 42 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon model to fully address the needs of culturally sensitive research. however, the cultural context presents challenges not only in our case, but also within the rich diversity of chinese populations. embracing various cultural practices implies more than adapting to their unique language needs. engaging particular aspects of chinese culture contributed to sustaining the present communityuniversity partnership. from the inception of this partnership, we incorporated a diverse group of stakeholders and maintained equity in decision-making. at the operational level, we collected both quantitative and qualitative data using culturally appropriate methods, including the design of trilingual focus groups, progress evaluation meetings, participation certificates as a token of respectfulness, data presentations with participants and their family members, and community educational initiatives addressing culturally specific myths in the health sciences. we believe that a culturally sensitive approach enhances the cbpr model as well as the potential for partnership sustainability. finally, we cannot emphasise enough that partnerships need to be fostered over time through a humble dialogue exchange between the community and university partners (chang, simon & dong 2010a). learning from community expertise, including its resources, skills and knowledge of cultural and linguistic complexities, allows the university at large to establish long-term beneficial relationships throughout the initial stage, mid-term actions and long-term goals. our experience demonstrates that measures including trilingual meetings, workshops, training and media outreach efforts are all pivotal in setting the stage for evidence-based health interventions. as lao zi, the founder of daoism, proposed in 600 bc, the dao (way) to serve local communities first and foremost requires leaders and practitioners to learn from community wisdom, and build on community resources. we conclude with a committed attitude to mutual learning, with both community and university partners being better able to explore, comprehend and appreciate each other’s standpoint, thereby contributing to a sustaining, meaningful partnership. acknowledgements this work was supported by the national institute on aging (r03 ag033929, r03ag 033928, rc4ag039085 and r21ag038815) and the paul b. beeson award in aging (k23 ag030944). we are grateful to the community advisory board members for their continued effort in this project. particular thanks are extended to bernarda wong, sueylee chang, bob zhou, anna zhu, vivian xu, yen-hui deng, jin lian lai, debra chow, angel hau and yicklun mo, chinese american service league (casl); steve brunton, chinese mutual aid association; dr david lee, illinois college of optometry; lucy guo, mandy labreche, mona el-shamaa and edwin chandrasekar, asian coalition of health; danny kong, chinatown elderly apartments; ruby wong, saint agnes health 43 | gateways | dong, chang, wong & simon care and rehabilitation center; grace tung and david wu, pui tak center; dr hong liu, midwest asian health association; dr margaret dolan, john h. stroger, jr. hospital; ronnie kann, chicago community coalitions association; florence lei, casl pine tree council; and julia wong, casl senior housing. references alexander, j, weiner, b, metzger, m, shortell, s, bazzoli, g, hasnainwynia, r, sofaer, s & conrad, d 2003, 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of a creative community-university partnership the current economic crisis provides an opportunity for urban universities to rethink and reshape their relationships with the communities in which they are located. creative partnerships among universities, city agencies and community organisations have the potential to leverage the strengths of all three to: (1) identify and articulate community-defined needs and priorities; (2) systematically identify and map community resources; (3) provide students with service learning and field research opportunities; and (4) help neighbourhoods and community organisations weather crises and emerge from them stronger. while urban universities have a long history of working with community organisations and city agencies on discrete projects, often those projects are isolated from one another. when project outcomes, lessons learned and related achievements are stored in disciplinary or community silos, a project’s impact may be limited, thus forestalling shared learning. despite the immediate learning and community outcomes of such projects, the community’s collective knowledge base may not be advanced and outcomes may not be sustained. recognising the untapped potential of the discrete community-university partnerships (cups) in san francisco, san francisco’s neighborhood empowerment network (nen) and the institute for civic and community engagement (icce) at san francisco state university (sf state) have been working to develop a collaborative model that involves other bay area institutions of higher education partnering with city agencies, nonprofit organisations, businesses and neighbourhood resident leaders. called nen university (nenu), this partnership is seen as the academic hub of the nen, ‘a constantly evolving collaboration of community organizations, city agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions [whose] goal is to empower neighborhoods to become cleaner, greener, healthier, and more inclusive places to live and work’ (nen ndc). as such, nenu is a unique collaboration which will serve to bring the resources of these universities to bear on community defined issues and needs (eisman 2010b). gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 136–53 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 jennifer shea san francisco state university 137 | gateways | shea this is an ambitious project, made at once more ambitious and more pertinent given the impact of the current economic crisis on all of the major players in this partnership – the city, the universities, the nonprofit organisations the other community groups. moreover, it is a work in progress and, as innovative models often do, entails a good deal of learning by doing – not only for students and faculty, but for all involved in crafting the partnership model. i first became aware of the nascent concepts of nen and nenu in 2008, and my first opportunity for active involvement came during 2009 when i directed an independent study that had two students in the field conducting research, the purpose and design of which was developed collaboratively with nen. the independent study research provided one area of traction (alongside several others) for developing the nenu concept, which was still only a fledgling idea at the time, and later in 2009 my services were retained to help craft the nenu concept paper. while that formal role ended in january 2010, i have remained involved, helping first to design interview protocols and later to analyse interview data for a nenu project, and now supervise several students working in various capacities on nenu projects. i am also a member of a related advisory committee. this article is a reflective piece that fits within a type of scholarship of engagement (mcnall et al. 2009), informed by my experiences and observations in the ‘doing’ of engaged scholarship as it relates to nenu over the course of the past two years. these reflections should not be taken as a comprehensive history or effectiveness analysis of nenu or any of the processes discussed herein. rather the aim is to contribute to the conversation about the successes and challenges associated with developing and sustaining creative community-university partnerships by nesting those reflections in the relevant literature. first, a brief overview of the recent literature on cups is provided and three categories of threats to cup sustainability that can be derived from the literature are then identified. using that framework, the aim is to contribute to the discussion of how best to build sustainable (in that they have staying power beyond the commitment of a few key individuals) and effective (in terms of building or strengthening communities) cups. to that end, after describing nenu, the nenu partnership development process is examined in the context of that framework, identifying past and potential threats to sustainability, as well as factors that have in the past or may in the future address those threats. the article concludes with implications for research and practice. sustainable community-university partnerships: an overview of the literature as the sustainability of cups is a focus of this article, before delving into the cup literature, it is worthwhile exploring the concept of sustainability, so prevalent that it is often referred to 138 | gateways | shea as a paradigm or doctrine (swidler & watkins 2009). in generic terms, sustainability can be thought of as ‘long-term survival at a non-decreasing quality of life’ (rose 2007, p. 386), a definition derived from the ecological and ecological economics literatures. in the context of community development, sustainability is equated with maintaining gains in resource-constrained environments that have often faced historic and structural challenges (settings similar to those where community-university partnership projects take place). in this context, threats to sustainability include staff or leadership turnover, shifts in institutional priorities and a lack of funding (silka et al. 2008). from the community development perspective, many argue that sustainability requires a greater integration of projects and people, with the infrastructure to support it (e.g. beard & dasgupta 2006; grosjean & kontoleo 2008; hemphill et al. 2006; jones-mccrae 2008). according to spiro (2009), when conceived as long-term stability, sustainability requires consistent funding support, behaviour changes and the ability to adapt. others see sustainability as being equated with the acts of building capacities or enhancing participation to improve governance, creating a sense of ownership, and fostering more effective and efficient programs and policies (mathers, parry & jones 2008; mirabella, malcolm & berger 2007; smets & salman 2008; sobek 2008; suarez-balcazar et al. 2008). more specifically, community involvement is seen to foster innovation, enhance capacity, create local ownership or buy-in, respond to community-identified priorities and promote stability – all of which contribute to sustainability (gonzález & healey 2005; waldman 2009). universities are well-positioned to enhance the sustainability of city–community initiatives because universities can help mitigate asymmetries of power and information between residents and city agencies, thus helping to enhance trust (kathi & cooper 2007). the contemporary call for renewed civic engagement in urban universities dates back to the mid-1990s (see, for example: benson, harkavy & puckett 2000; jelier & clarke 1999; ostrander 2004; perkins 1994). related to that call is the literature on community-university partnerships, which finds itself at the intersection of at least three bodies of literature – one on partnership and network development, a second on communityengaged scholarship, and a third on civic renewal and communitybuilding (see, for example: d’agostino 2008; mcnall et al. 2009; plastrik & taylor nd; sirianni & friedland 2001; takahashi & smutny 2001; traynor 2008; wei-skillern & marciano 2008; white 2009). due to limitations of time and space, the focus of this overview is on nine overlapping potential threats to sustainable cups that emerge from that literature. as seen in table 1, those threats can be placed into three overarching categories: (1) asymmetries (of power, information and organisational capacity); (2) inadequacies (of rewards, resources and infrastructure); and 139 | gateways | shea (3) divergences (in focus, priorities and norms). each threat corresponds to one or more sustainability factors. for example, the first row of table 1 reads as follows: ‘an asymmetry in power may manifest itself when universities make one-sided decisions about which communities/groups are worthy of partnership; that asymmetry may threaten sustainability by fostering mistrust or discouraging participation’. it is important to note that while these threats have been parsed out for analytical clarity, in reality they often overlap. for example, inadequate funding levels may exacerbate information and power asymmetries, causing small community groups to distrust university partners. moreover, power asymmetries often overlap with asymmetries in organisational capacities, which may thwart the accommodation of different expressions of power. sustainability factor threat category threat subcategory sample manifestation of threat trust participation commitment asymmetry (uneven) power —city agencies make rules and decisions without consulting community —universities decide which groups are ‘worthy’ of partnership trust participation commitment information —all have ‘inside’ information from own perspective (city politics, recent research, community priorities and solutions) participation commitment organisation capacity —mismatch between large, slow-moving bureaucracies and smaller flexible groups participation commitment inadequacy (not enough) rewards —faculty/student time investment not accounted for in evaluation process —community outcomes not sustained; city or university ‘walks away’ commitment resources —low levels of funding —too few personnel —insufficient knowledge/ skills participation commitment trust infrastructure —communications technology not fully developed —systems for sharing funding, decision-making, etc. do not exist table 1:factors for sustainability and associated threats 140 | gateways | shea sustainability factor threat category threat subcategory sample manifestation of threat commitment divergence (difference) focus one party prefers ambiguous definitions or parameters while others prefer precise ones commitment participation trust priorities partners cannot agree on top priorities trust norms community empowerment efficient/effective resource use learning and knowledge as table 1 shows, asymmetries refer to uneven amounts between partners, inadequacies refer to insufficient levels or quantities overall, and divergences refer to different norms or strategies among partners. cups may face several sustainability threats at once. for example, studies that focus on the characteristics of partnership development themselves look at inadequacies in infrastructure and power asymmetries, suggesting there are lessons to be learned about managing unequal power relations and impacts on the community that may affect the effectiveness of those partnerships (baum 2000; mcnall et al. 2009; prins 2005; shefner& cobb 2002). some of the most recent literature suggests that it may be important to view communityuniversity partnerships as creative, strategic, shared power partnerships – crafted intentionally by drawing on and respecting multiple sources of expertise to develop valued, contextualised and innovative ways of strengthening communities (boyte 2008; white 2009). nonetheless, the challenges inherent in crafting a shared vision and a shared power system with different institutional interests that can be exacerbated by power differentials between the community (neighbourhood associations, community-based organisations) and bureaucratic institutions like city agencies and urban universities should not be overlooked (baum 2000; boyte 2008; mcnall et al. 2009; prins 2005; shefner & cobb 2002; white 2009). those challenges are rooted in distinct capacities around communications and planning, which are related to divergent institutional priorities, norms and infrastructure. moreover, none of these entities are monolithic in terms of their cultures, perceptions or priorities. inadequate rewards do not refer to personal or professional gain from participating in cups, but to the reality that faculty, residents and staff members of community-based organisations or city agencies need to know that their investments of time, energy and money are worthwhile and will be recognised, valued and supported in the long term. for example, while the literature is rich with reports on effective community-engagement research and teaching scenarios, that literature also recognises that those scenarios are labour-intensive for faculty and often not rewarded 141 | gateways | shea during the tenure process (d’agostino 2008; koliba 2007; waldner & hunter 2008). less prevalent in the literature, but widely recognised among non-profit and community-based practitioners, are the unmet expectations and associated burdens for organisation staff that sometimes accompany community-service learning projects, especially short-term ones (stoecker & tryon 2009). similarly, according to mcnall et al. (2009), one concern expressed by community groups in ongoing partnerships was uncertainty regarding the sustainability of additional resources the partnership may have brought to service delivery systems, a fear confirmed by the experiences of those whose partnerships had ended. moreover, while individual efforts are important and can realise marked successes, ‘sustained and systemic success’ requires some cooperation from and with institutions (white 2009, p.3), needs to be accompanied by an infrastructure that creates a favourable environment for community-building (traynor 2008) and must be rooted in a set of trusted reciprocal relationships that extend beyond individuals to institutions or organisations (chaskin 2001; reardon 2006). even when multiple groups are involved in collaborative or networked arrangements, two may play primary roles in the partnership, suggesting that certain offices or departments will emerge as the primary connectors between a given agency and the partnership hub (white 2009). however, in the absence of a supportive community-building infrastructure, individual faculty and their counterparts in community organisations bear a heavy burden, in terms of conducting outreach, developing relationships and designing appropriate and effective projects (stoecker & tryon 2009; waldner & hunter 2008). in other words, these projects may face the combined threats of inadequate rewards, resources and infrastructure all at once. despite these threats, the literature points to several indicators of successful community-university partnerships, including those grounded in a shared vision, governed using shared power and decision-making, funded using shared resources and managed effectively from a partnership perspective (mcnall et al. 2009; stoecker & tryon 2009; suarez-balcazar et al. 2008). those indicators overlap in some ways with qualities of effective networks and partnerships, including ‘being well organized, with clear operating procedures and mechanisms for ensuring maximum participation between its members; and having adequate resources to fulfill its purposes, particularly in terms of time, finance and human capital’ (selkrig & keamy 2009, p. 189; see also black 2008). at the root of those success indicators are a set of leaders at various levels who act as boundary spanners, able to understand the needs, priorities and norms of partners outside their arena (university, community, city), translate them to peers inside their arena and foster the development of trust (reardon 2006). cross-boundary leaders possess skills and abilities that help them successfully manage and develop interpersonal relationships, especially where power is unequal and priorities distinct. shared 142 | gateways | shea power leadership is rooted in an explicitly political, contextualised view of leadership that focuses on how individuals and groups work together to solve complex social problems (crosby & bryson 2005; o’brien & shea 2010). sometimes trust-building is a long and delicate process, especially where communities hold historically informed, deeprooted scepticism about the motivations and intentions of universities or city agencies – scepticism that needs to be addressed in order to build trusting, reciprocal relationships (silka et al. 2008). the process of trust-building may require that universities ‘accept the limitations of positivist scholarship in order to benefit from reciprocal learning made possible by the local knowledge contributed by their community partners’ (reardon 2006, p. 107) and that cities resist the urge to advance a predetermined agenda. in other words, partners have to work together in a reciprocal fashion to smooth out asymmetries by establishing infrastructures that address power and information asymmetries while also working to address inadequacies in resources, which may further even out asymmetries, for example. the section that follows describes nenu, its partners and projects, as well as some of the successes and expected benefits of the partnership. after that description, the sustainability factors and threats framework laid out in table 1 is used to identify real challenges that surfaced (some of which are ongoing) while defining and refining a shared vision for the nenu partnership and the infrastructure needed to support it. while many of these observations support the existing literature, this analysis contributes by paying particular attention to this unique partnership’s structure and the underlying assumptions that seem to have minimised the impacts of those threats. nenu: a unique trilateral partnership born out of a series of ongoing conversations and joint activities carried out by daniel homsey, director of the neighborhood empowerment network, san francisco city administrator’s office, and dr gerald eisman, director of icce, nenu’s evolution has been organic and truly collaborative in nature. their early conversations were neither a response to a funding opportunity, nor mandated from ‘the top’. rather, both homsey and eisman have shared a commitment, personal and professional, to strengthening san francisco’s communities. they have been inspired and informed by the research coming out of the postkatrina recovery, much of which emphasises the importance of building social capital to foster community resiliency (colten, kates & laska 2008; morrow 2008), where resiliency refers to ‘the ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruption’ (white house 2010, p. 18). the nenu partnership model is rooted in a paradigm that values collaboration and recognises that all communities have assets they can build upon to identify and address their collective priorities. more than a set of normative beliefs or assumptions, 143 | gateways | shea the paradigm reflects current work in the areas of community resilience (colten, kates & laska 2008; morrow 2008). as such, nenu works to leverage resources and create synergies to identify and address community priorities in ways that cross institutional and sectoral boundaries. nenu has been described as a hub – a vehicle that facilitates connections among academic institutions, city agencies and other neighbourhood stakeholders: nen university (nenu) combines the skills and talents of academic institutions, city agencies, and other neighborhood stakeholders to improve local communities. through nenu, students earn class credit for projects, such as community asset mapping and leadership training, that make communities more resilient and better places to live (nenu nda). driving this view of nenu are intentions to tactically deploy collective assets and collaboratively implement projects; it is what reardon (2006, p. 97) would call an empowerment/capacitybuilding partnership because it seeks to generate and disseminate practical knowledge in order to enhance community capacity so that partners will be better prepared to identify and address local priorities. community capacity may be mobilised intentionally or operate through informal interactions; it includes the human capital, organisational resources and social capital that exist and can be leveraged within a community to identify and address collective priorities meant to maintain or enhance the wellbeing of that community (chaskin 2006, p. 295). a project must meet four criteria in order to be considered a nenu project or initiative (not all work done by university faculty and students with or in the community fits). first, nenu is unique in that its projects must be implemented collaboratively by all three categories of stakeholders:(1) an academic institution which is a nenu partner, (2) a city/county agency, and (3) a stakeholder from outside the academic and governmental spheres. second, nenu projects are meant to build on existing assets to further community goals that work toward developing resilient neighbourhoods, where resilient neighbourhoods have the capacities and associational networks that will help them collectively ‘bounce back’ after a major natural or man-made disaster. the third criterion is meant to facilitate coordination among various nenu projects and partners – it requires nenu initiatives to be publicly described as such. finally, the findings from nenu projects must be shared with other nenu members, and the community at large. these criteria directly address some of the sustainability threats identified in table 1. figure 1 depicts the relationships among nen, nenu, the academic institution partners, and the projects and initiatives that fall under nenu. 144 | gateways | shea the benefits of the partnership, as identified in the most recent version of the concept paper (28 january 2010), are as follows: —increases the visibility of the contributions that academic institutions make to san francisco and its neighbourhoods —connects the work of service-learning teams to stakeholder-led strategic initiatives —links community-engaged research projects and products to stakeholders who control assets that can be deployed to support stakeholder-identified outcomes —increases the perceived value of academic research to community stakeholders —makes available a suite of applied research that can be shared throughout the city and beyond —facilitates the development of long-term relationships between academia, the city and the community that increases social capital, which in turn can be leveraged in the recovery from a major earthquake. these benefits are seen as being achieved over a continuum of time – some immediately, some over a slightly longer time– and, ultimately, in the long term will create sustainable relationships among nen members and academic institution partners which will contribute to making san francisco’s neighbourhoods more resilient (e.g. safer, cleaner, stronger, more inclusive). current academic institution partners include sf state, the university of san francisco (usf) and the university of california san francisco (ucsf). other area academic institutions, including the presidio graduate school, art institute of california san francisco and california college of the arts, have also been approached and are considering engaging in the partnership (at figure 1: nenu concept 145 | gateways | shea the time of writing there are no membership dues or other barriers to joining). in addition, there are plans to reach out to other key institutions like city college of san francisco. nenu projects are engaged learning zones (elz), multi-phase processes that combine community, university and government resources in a long-term effort to support bottom–up capacitybuilding efforts that address community needs (eisman 2010a). several are currently underway, including one in the outermission-ingleside (omi) neighbourhoods that brings together ‘a wide variety of neighborhood stakeholders to identify and prioritize common challenges, set goals, mobilize available resources, and implement strategies for change … [to] create a network of agencies and individuals who can bring about positive change for local communities’ (icce 2010), and the lgbtq and polk corridor (polk) resiliency projects, which work to support and strengthen these communities in their efforts to identify and address existing and emerging challenges (nen ndb). nenu partners are already learning – and sharing their learning – from these projects. for example, the omi and polk elz projects were undertaken by different partners and organised in different ways. the omi project used a bottom–up approach to identify and build relationships with community stakeholders, and was designed as a multi-phase, multi-year project (phase i lasted one year). the polk elz relied on an existing community leadership team and expected to skip the long phase i process. in the end, the polk elz did not take off quickly; it turned out the long phase i was necessary. as a result, the omi elz model will be used by various nenu partners in other neighbourhoods. these projects are funded in various ways, often through the community-service learning offices at the academic institution partners, which may have grant funding to support this work. for example, icce was recently awarded a sub-grant that it used to support nenu projects. that sub-grant came from the california campus compact’s grants program that was funded by the corporation for national and community service’s (cncs) learn and serve america program, thus bringing federal funding to support neighbourhood work that otherwise would have been invisible to federal funders. reflections on the nenu partnership and its sustainability the framework of threats to sustainability identified in table 1 has been used to inform my reflections, which focus on the threats to sustainability encountered during the processes of refining and articulating nenu, how it functions and what it does. these processes include refining the mission, vision and values statements, sketching the basic partnership roles and governance structures, and identifying basic goals and objectives for nenu. 146 | gateways | shea concurrent threat 1: asymmetry of power and inadequacy of infrastructure as conversations meant to foster a shared vision of nenu progressed, it became clear that the city did not want to be perceived as the driving force behind nenu projects. yet nen was both closely tied to the city governmental apparatus and in many ways the core of nenu. while nen was an essential element of nenu, there were good reasons not to put nen at the centre of the partnership. among those reasons was the need to convey to sceptical community partners that nenu was not merely a strategic city initiative meant to placate or co-opt certain neighbourhoods or groups. another important reason was that the concept of nenu was meaningless without the participation of academic institutions, and those academic institutions wanted to be depicted as essential partners. thus, it was agreed that both nen and the academic institutions would make essential contributions to the core concept, nenu (refer to figure 1 for an illustration of those relationships). while this may seem like an obvious resolution in hindsight, at the time the discussion was muddied because it seemed that nen played a key convening role in bringing together both neighbourhood groups and academic institutions. in retrospect it appears that the difficulties were due to an underlying sustainability threat caused by inadequacies in the decisionmaking infrastructure and asymmetries in power that no one wanted to (or could) address, as they related to asking what would happen to nenu if one partner disengaged. on the one hand, a potential strength of the partnership was the multiplicity of actors and possible nodes through which institutions and organisations could link to the partnership. on the other hand, concerns were raised that the city, in particular, might at some point disengage wholesale and walk away (that seems unlikely now, given the success of the partnership to date). these concerns suggest that some partners may have been wavering in their commitment to the partnership. also falling under power and information asymmetries was a distinct set of challenges related to the use of specific phrases and their connotations. sensitivities were voiced from all sides, with some terms (e.g. leveraging resources or community problems) being associated with objectifying communities while others were seen as overly sentimental. other seemingly innocuous terms were seen as exclusive. for example, early on, the term ‘neighborhood stakeholders’ was meant to refer to those in nenu that were not affiliated with a city agency or an academic institution. as it turned out, at least some of the academic institutions saw themselves as neighbourhood stakeholders, too, as did some municipal entities. it was then agreed that all parties to nenu ought to be considered neighbourhood stakeholders and the quest to find a term to refer to the myriad neighbourhood-based community groups, including houses of worship and businesses, was abandoned. 147 | gateways | shea concurrent threat 2: asymmetry in capacity and inadequacy of infrastructure an ongoing set of challenges revolve around inadequate communications infrastructures and asymmetrical organisational capacities, which may threaten nenu’s ability to get buy-in from a wide range of neighbourhood groups and, more importantly, help them to understand and work with university systems. while there is widespread buy-in of the concept of nenu at the institutional level (e.g. city agencies like the department of emergency management and university administrations), more has to be done to ensure that it resonates with community leaders. the differences in buy-in are a result, in part, of the mismatch between the capacities of fast-moving, often informally organised neighbourhood groups that respond to events as they happen and the relatively slow-moving university bureaucracies that are constrained by the academic calendar (e.g. semester system) and course objectives. three of the academic institution partners (sf state, usf and ucsf) have recently joined forces to take concrete action to address this mismatch, by creating a city-wide database of service learning projects – a major undertaking to which each institution has contributed $10 000 (g eisman, personal communication, 9 october 2010). concurrent threat 3: divergence, inadequacies and asymmetries from the outset, the group struggled with trying to distinguish the lines between nen and nenu, including which agencies were members of which group and how formal that membership would be. as time progressed, it became evident that those struggles would manifest themselves again as we worked to illustrate the relationships between these various groups (figure 1 was the fifth diagram attempt, and is by far the simplest). at the most basic level was difficulty in describing the role of nenu – should it be thought of as a vehicle, an action-centred partnership, a hub of coordination, or some combination of these? in the end, the group came to agree that creating a formal governance structure was premature, which may make it difficult for nenu to survive leadership turnover or a shift in partner roles. there are a number of possible explanations for these difficulties, though my sense is that this threat represents a trifecta of sorts, where the partners experience a slight divergence in priorities that is exacerbated by power and information asymmetries and inadequate resource levels. but even this trifecta of threats does not seem to have hampered the partnership’s development. in fact, recently joint funding proposals have been submitted, including an application for a fund for the improvement of post-secondary education (fipse) grant, with the ucsf taking the lead on writing the proposal. even in the absence of a formal governance structure, joint funding awards will likely bode well for sustainability. 148 | gateways | shea divergences in foci proved to be one of the more contentious points, likely rooted in different motivations and priorities related to nenu. the group was confronted with an ongoing struggle about whether nenu projects ought to be rooted in neighbourhoods (conceived as geographically bound communities) or in communities more broadly. from the city’s perspective, restricting nenu projects only to communities with geographic boundaries might alienate some constituencies and thwart city-wide efforts to strengthen communities overall. at the same time, some university representatives were energised by the neighbourhood focus. in the end, it was agreed that nenu projects could cross neighbourhood boundaries, so long as some identifiable community was involved, but that some of the terminology would still focus attention at the neighbourhood level (e.g. neighbourhood stakeholders). in another instance of divergence, differing institutional priorities and norms revealed themselves. for example, university representatives were concerned that faculty with long histories of community engagement should retain their independence and the integrity of their work, particularly work that may be critical of city policies, agencies and representatives of those agencies. at the same time, city agencies could not be seen as supporting initiatives that criticised or challenged city policies. in short, all of the partners had multiple audiences to whom they were accountable and whose concerns must be weighed. once these concerns were voiced and understood by all parties, the value nenu added, as compared with traditional partnerships, was illuminated and resulted in the requirement that all three sets of stakeholders needed to buy into a project before it could be considered part of nenu. partnership characteristics fostering sustainability each of the specific threats identified above could have threatened trust and participation, key factors in sustainable partnership development. however, the partners worked through these differences, which enabled them to articulate a shared vision for nenu. one factor that facilitated the process was that many of the people at the table had already established good working relationships and enjoyed high levels of interpersonal trust that enabled the group to work through areas of disagreement or divergence. nonetheless, at the same time, new voices were sometimes brought into the conversation about how best to articulate the vision of nenu, which at times meant that the group had to revisit past discussions to build trust with newcomers and achieve consensus. despite these challenges, it took the group less than six months to come to consensus, represented by the description of nenu provided on pages 142–45. it seems that trust, combined with a commitment to the shared vision and the principles of collaborative leadership and broad-based participation, were the essential elements in this outcome. another example of the strength of the partnership comes from the resolution of a recent conflict, resulting from a series of 149 | gateways | shea miscommunications, which resulted in what the city thought was a clear commitment of resources by an academic institution partner to work with a specific neighbourhood, following the elz model. on the other hand, the academic institution partner felt that the city had not clearly identified a project or neighbourhood to which to commit those very resources. further complicating the matter were the expectations of the neighbourhood groups who were anticipating being part of a new elz, and the potential negative implications for the city if those expectations were not met. after a series of separate conversations, all parties came to understand that there was no ill will, rather miscommunication was primarily to blame, and the issue was favourably resolved. as a result, another academic institution partner began sharing its internal documents on elzs with the others to help them understand more clearly how the model works. in addition, the academic institution partners worked together to shift the ways in which their resources were being deployed in two neighbourhoods to ensure that those resources were being used where they would do the most good, while also meeting the goals and expectations of each academic institution partner and ensuring that the neighbourhoods’ expectations were met. these actions suggest a commitment to reciprocity and shared learning. the resolution was possible because nenu is flexible and agile enough to adjust rather quickly (making it compatible with how neighbourhood groups work) and because the actors involved have trust-based relationships that allow them to understand one another’s need and accommodate change as needed. while low levels of infrastructure are often seen as a threat to sustainability, it may be that the loose configuration of the partnership will allow it to grow, adapt and become sustainable in a way that a more structured form would prevent – only time will tell. in short, it appears that the nenu partnership has many characteristics likely to contribute to its sustained effectiveness – reciprocal relationships rooted in trust, shared power, broadbased participation and learning. at the same time, there are other issues related to a long-term funding strategy, handling leadership and transition plans and ensuring a long-term institutional commitment that may prove more challenging for its long-term sustainability. while current efforts to lead and communicate across boundaries are essential to the immediate success of the partnership in order to sustain it, an infrastructure that can support and survive the inevitable leadership transitions a partnership like this will endure is crucial. final thoughts: implications for research and practice as dr eisman recently remarked (personal communication, 17 september 2010), the real goal of this work is to help communities build their capacity to be at the centre of nenu initiatives. the innovation of nenu is that it convenes multiple academic institutions in a trilateral partnership with city agencies and community groups. moreover, a representative from each sector 150 | gateways | shea (academic, city, community) must be involved in a project in order for it to be called a nenu initiative, which requires high levels of cooperation and coordination. the success of nenu thus far can be attributed to four main characteristics: trust, shared power, broadbased participation, and reciprocal learning. these characteristics directly address some of the weaknesses in cup models that operate as discrete partnerships and are not able to share learning widely. in more general terms, the reciprocal value partnerships like these can create is essential to their long-term viability and sustainability, but trust-based relationships take time to build and maintain. certainly, strong partnership networks can and should be able to sustain leadership transitions at multiple levels but they may not be able to sustain commitment levels that waver with political administrations or individual faculty priorities. therefore, a crucial component of sustainable community-university partnerships may well be institutional, organisational and community commitments that are rooted in norms and cultures that value and support this type of collaborative work. this requires that all partners engage in reflective, ongoing, reciprocal learning processes. still, there is much work to be done, both in working to ensure the long-term sustainability of the nenu partnership as it grows and evolves and in systematically examining the processes it uses to navigate the partnership and handle threats to its sustainability. a formal study of the nenu partnership, especially if explicitly compared to other cups, may shed more light on its nuances and lead to the development of new hypotheses to test or practices to explore. as the quest for creating more effective cups that can demonstrate long-term, community-focused impacts continues, it seems that the nenu partnership may prove an interesting and worthwhile one to model. acknowledgements i am grateful to dr gerald eisman, director of the institute for civic and community engagement at san francisco state university, and mr daniel homsey, director of the neighborhood empowerment network, san francisco city administrator’s office, for their input and feedback on early drafts of this article, as well as their overall support for my writing it. i also appreciate the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers of this article. references baum, h 2000, ‘fantasies and realities in university-community partnerships’, journal of planning education and research, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 234–46. black, r 2008, ‘new 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www.kettering.org/file%20library/pdf/byron%20white%20navigating%20power%20dynamics.pdf www.kettering.org/file%20library/pdf/byron%20white%20navigating%20power%20dynamics.pdf www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf innovation in collaboration the summer institute on youth mentoring as a university-community partnership university-community partnerships are designed to address pressing social problems by combining the goals and resources of colleges and universities with those of community stakeholders. ideally, partnerships develop as symbiotic projects that empower community organisations, enrich the community, and provide unique sources of data for research and evaluation. partnerships take many forms and have a wide range of goals, from promoting health, to developing sustainable neighbourhoods, to improving public education. they may involve university students serving an under-resourced area of the community, or community members entering the university to participate in dialogue, planning and research. universities and community partners may also work together to make research findings accessible to the wider community, increasing the chances that important advancements in scientific knowledge are applied in practice. likewise, partnerships provide a forum for professional knowledge to shape the direction of academic research. with so many variations, locations and goals – and because securing funding for partnership projects is increasingly difficult (us department of housing and urban development 2010) – it is important for partnership researchers to identify commonalities present in the most effective university-community partnership models. researchers have recently begun to define the characteristics of successful university-community partnerships. following a review of recent developments in the literature, this article explores the utility and flexibility of one of the more comprehensive partnership frameworks by applying it to a distinctive university-based summer institute designed to foster the exchange of knowledge between researchers and practitioners in the field of youth mentoring. one aim of the study reported here was to evaluate whether factors typically considered important for these partnerships would translate across contexts and provide a relevant conceptualisation for the summer institute model. another goal was to learn how partnership criteria might be gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 168–85 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 kevin r. jones thomas e. keller portland state university marc wheeler big brothers big sisters of america 169 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler further expanded and adapted. based on the findings of the study, suggestions are also made for possible innovation in established university-community partnership models. partnership types and trends in 1994, the us department of housing and urban development (hud) established the office of university partnerships (oup) to promote the establishment and growth of university-community partnerships nationwide. in 1999, hud published a report that described hundreds of partnerships divided into seven main categories: service-learning, service provision, faculty involvement, student volunteerism, community in the classroom, applied research, and major institutional change. hud’s community outreach partnerships centers (copc) program was one of the largest efforts to promote cooperation among universities and local partners, with a focus on spurring economic development and providing safe, affordable housing in urban areas. however, the bush administration gradually scaled back federal support for partnerships, and by 2005 the copc program was receiving no additional funding, effectively ending many large-scale, federally funded partnership projects. some partnerships found innovative ways to continue without federal funds (bloomgarden et al. 2006), and another outcome was the development of new university and community college offices dedicated to supporting universitycommunity partnerships. the current study explores a ‘community in the classroom’ partnership designed to bridge the often-disconnected worlds of research and practice. service providers often find it difficult to keep up with the latest developments in research (gira, kessler & poertner 2004). in a review of randomised controlled studies of dissemination efforts in health professions, gira, kessler and poertner (2004) found that distributing research findings to practitioners (without additional implementation strategies) was ineffective in changing practice behaviours. the authors also found that traditional continuing education and professional development opportunities using only didactic techniques were also ineffective, while small group discussion and practice sessions generated moderate to large effect sizes compared to the control group. addis (2002, p. 375) argued that hierarchical and unidirectional methods of dissemination created resistance to implementation and that ‘practitioners are more likely to adopt research products when they find them useful and can contribute creatively to their development and evaluation’. sherrod (1999, p. 234) pointed specifically to the potential of university-community partnerships, which ‘play many important roles, but an especially critical one is their attention to dissemination of research findings’. these findings suggest that more collaborative, partnershiporiented dissemination processes may hold promise for improved integration of scientific knowledge into professional practice. 170 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler characteristics of successful partnerships an emerging body of literature has begun to define characteristics of successful collaborative efforts (cardoza & salinas 2004; mai, kramer & luebbert 2005; torres & schaffer 2000; schumaker, reed & woods 2000), as well as common challenges encountered by university-community partnerships (lane, turner & flores 2004). torres and schaffer (2000) offer a comprehensive outline of eight essential partnership features, compiled from proceedings of the 1998 wingspread conference on university-community partnerships. based on their experiences with copc, schumaker, reed and woods (2000) also offer eight ingredients for successful collaboration from the university’s perspective. while there are slight differences between the lists, both research teams stress the importance of having a shared vision, clear communication and a clear organisational structure. mai, kramer and luebbert (2005) put forward a similar, more distilled list based on a review of over a dozen partnerships. cardoza and salinas (2004) narrowed their list of key components for successful partnerships to five and their findings support the conclusions of the other authors. the current study employed the eight characteristics described by torres and schaffer (2000) as the analytic framework because it was the most comprehensive and had significant overlap with the findings of other studies. the four lists are compiled and compared in table 1. torres & schaffer 2000 schumaker, reed & woods 2000 mai, kramer & luebbert 2005 cardoza & salinas 2004 a history of collaboration founded on a shared vision and clearly articulated values shared vision formulation of shared objectives vision reflecting on the purpose of the partnership informality and flexibility flexibility beneficial to partnering institutions composed of interpersonal relationships based on trust and respect good personal relationships, including high levels of trust table 1: comparison of four lists of characteristics for successful universitycommunity partnerships 171 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler torres & schaffer 2000 schumaker, reed & woods 2000 mai, kramer & luebbert 2005 cardoza & salinas 2004 multidimensional: involve the participation of multiple sectors addressing a complex problem creating structures to support collaboration collaboration clearly organised and led with dynamism simple organisational structure integrated into the mission and support systems of the partnering institutions linking and integrating with university resources support sustained by a ‘partnership process’ for communication, decision-making and initiation of change clear and frequent communication communication university’s visibility evaluated regularly with a focus on both methods and outcomes consulting data to assess outcomes common challenges of establishing and maintaining successful partnerships have also been identified (lane, turner & flores 2004). partners with an initial shared vision may find they have differing perspectives on key issues. for example, lane, turner and flores (2004) described a researcher–practitioner partnership in the corrections field that encountered obstacles due to disagreements over program implementation and evaluation. cherry and shefner (2004) identified issues of class, status and organisational differences as common impediments to successful university-community collaboration. in addition, some researchers have suggested that the short-term nature of most funding streams may render many partnership efforts unsustainable (baum 2000). the summer institute on youth mentoring youth mentoring is a prevalent and popular mode of intervention with children and youth across the nation (walker 2007). some formal youth mentoring programs, most notably those affiliated 172 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler with big brothers big sisters of america, have long histories and strong national networks. however, most programs are more loosely connected through organisations that provide advocacy, training and technical assistance, such as mentor/the national mentoring partnership, which currently has more than 5000 formal programs listed in its nationwide database of mentoring programs (k zappie-ferradino, personal communication, 11 february 2011). in most programs, service approaches have evolved gradually with the accumulated experience of practitioners. in the past 15 years, however, researchers have made a concerted effort to evaluate the effects of mentoring and to investigate the processes by which mentoring influences youth development (dubois & karcher 2005). the emergence of a theoretical and empirical literature addressing important issues in youth mentoring has facilitated a productive exchange between the academic and practice communities. in fact, a selfidentifying community of practitioners with interests in research is beginning to coalesce, as reflected by 480 subscribers to the youthmentoringlistserv, a vehicle for disseminating youth mentoring research and practice knowledge (d dubois, personal communication, 11 february 2011). the summer institute on youth mentoring (siym) at portland state university (psu) was designed to offer a new and distinctive educational opportunity for experienced youth mentoring professionals. participants attend an intensive weeklong seminar discussing recent developments in theory and research on youth mentoring. each session is led by a prominent, nationally recognised research fellow. the aim is a series of highly interactive discussions that provide an in-depth view of the research and examine its implications for practice. to encourage an active exchange among professional peers and with researchers, siym employs a small-group format (5–6 researchers, 25–30 professionals) with a selective admissions process. ideal participants have several years of experience in the field and are seeking advanced professional development. participants hold positions that enable them to influence the training and supervision of staff, the development of program models and the implementation of service delivery changes. sessions include ample time for participants to think critically about their own program issues and explore opportunities for innovation. a fundamental premise of siym is that dialogue between experienced professionals and researchers stimulates relevant research and enhances translation to practice. this reciprocity between researcher and practitioner reflects what saltmarsh, hartley and clayton (2009, pp. 9–10) call ‘an epistemological shift that values not only expert knowledge that is rational, analytic and positivist but also values a different kind of rationality that is more relational, localized, and contextual and favours mutual deference between lay persons and academics. knowledge generation is a process of co-creation, breaking down the distinctions between knowledge producers and knowledge consumers’. 173 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler evidence for effectiveness of the 2007 summer institute created in 2007, the summer institute on youth mentoring aimed to produce mutual benefits for practitioners, researchers and the field of youth mentoring generally. an initial analysis of participant questionnaires indicated that the 2007 siym was largely successful in achieving its goals of providing a forum for professionals and researchers to exchange information, build relationships and plan together to improve mentoring research and programs (jones & keller 2009). specifically, findings indicated that siym facilitates mutually beneficial relationships between researchers and practitioners; inspires new or renewed interest in research among practitioners; facilitates new collaborations among researchers; catalyses program innovation and improvement; facilitates planning and goal-setting among practitioners; and successfully promotes professional development. although the 2007 summer institute was considered successful, several areas for improvement were identified. siym organisers reviewed participant feedback and made adjustments before the 2008 event. more small group activities and discussions were incorporated into the presentation sessions. structured social time was added in the form of a networking dinner. the success of the 2007 event and a successful grant proposal to conduct further analyses prompted the authors to begin considering siym as a promising and innovative university-community partnership model. study aims and method the current study was designed to accomplish two main goals: 1) to evaluate the 2007 summer institute on youth mentoring in terms of established criteria that characterise successful universitycommunity partnerships, and 2) to describe significant innovations introduced by siym that may add to current knowledge about how university-community partnerships can be most effective. all 2007 siym participants were recruited to participate in the study. consent forms were distributed with siym materials on the first day of the seminar, and all 24 forms were signed and returned. all five 2007 research fellows were also recruited for participation. consent forms were distributed to research fellows via email and were returned by fax or mail. on the last day of the seminar, questionnaires were distributed to all 24 participants. the questionnaires asked participants a series of open-ended questions about their experiences at siym and invited suggestions for improvement. twelve participants (50 per cent) returned completed surveys on the last day of the seminar or by mail or email in the weeks following the event. the research fellows were asked to complete a separate questionnaire six to eight months following the 2007 summer institute. four of the five researchers (80 per cent) returned 174 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler completed questionnaires by email or by mail. all completed questionnaires were converted to electronic documents and entered into atlas.ti for analysis. data were analysed in three stages. the first two stages used inductive, exploratory and grounded theory methods (strauss & corbin 1990) to label and synthesise questionnaire responses as they related to siym’s overall mission. first, open coding was used to label, line by line, participant responses to the post-seminar questionnaire. the second stage consisted of axial coding, in which initial codes were grouped and organised into about a dozen main categories (e.g. participant professional development). after this stage, the initial evaluation of the summer institute was conducted, resulting in the findings summarised above (jones & keller 2009). the third stage of data analysis was a typological analysis (hatch 2002), in which the coded data were re-examined and recategorised according to characteristics of successful partnerships (torres & schaffer 2000). after coding and assignment of data to the typological categories based on the partnership framework, the researchers examined the contents of each category for subgroupings, trends, or differences among the responses. a final step in the typological analysis was to examine all data not fitting one of the predetermined categories, and to decide whether they represented a useful addition to the partnership model. the typological analysis, including the identified innovations, yielded the results reported below. the subjective nature of qualitative enquiry requires that researchers establish the trustworthiness of the research process and findings to increase confidence that rigorous methods were employed and that participants’ voices were heard (lietz, langer & furman 2006). the current study employed several strategies to ensure trustworthiness, including member checking, an electronic audit trail and a reliability check of the typological analysis by a researcher not involved with the study. the coding reliability check showed better than 76 per cent correspondence for assignment to categories, with discrepancies largely due to participant statements that reflected several categories simultaneously. study findings study participants reflected on a number of topics related to the conception of the summer institute on youth mentoring as a university-community partnership. the findings are first presented in terms of how well the data supported a correspondence between key characteristics of siym’s success and torres and schaffer’s (2000) criteria (see table 1). excerpts from questionnaire transcripts illustrating these connections are presented in the relevant sections below. findings are then presented in terms of innovations to established partnership models apparent in siym. 175 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler shared vision data supported the centrality of a shared vision among participants for program improvement through interactive and intensive information sharing. participants’ responses strongly suggested that having time away from work and other ‘day-today responsibilities’ was critical to the success of the siym format. participants also listed dozens of specific goals and plans for program improvement they intended to pursue upon returning to work. the interactive nature of the seminar also stood out for participants as a key characteristic. several participants stated that the intimate setting and the full week of sessions allowed a ‘deep dive’ into important topics that was ‘very rich and valuable’. participants also anticipated that relationships developed at the siym would continue and that ‘having actually met and dialogued with researchers in the field has made the research “more real” to me … and therefore further energised my interest in staying up on the research. i have established a new network of professional friends to whom i can turn with my questions, need for support and/or information’. these elements together suggest that the original vision for siym stated by the founder in the first grant proposal was widely shared by participants: siym is an approach for facilitating direct communication and collaboration to bridge the traditional divide between research and practice. the program leverages university resources to address an influential audience whose needs are not well met by current training programs. mutual benefit to partnering institutions siym gave participants the opportunity to build relationships and develop their own professional skills and knowledge. as one participant said: ‘as i was listening to the researchers’ present their studies this past week, i was constantly evaluating what they were telling us and how that could inform best practices at my agency.’ several participants also expressed the deeply personal nature of their experiences at siym, with one participant writing: ‘this seminar has been profoundly meaningful to me on a number of levels. i have approached the content primarily as an executive director … but i have also responded to the content in my role as a big brother in a school-based mentoring program and as a father to a three-year-old daughter.’ the research fellows received valuable feedback from practitioners regarding the potential utility of their findings and what additional research would be useful. the researchers also initiated collaborations with practitioners and other researchers to pursue new research topics, develop assessment strategies and plan additional events that bring researchers and practitioners together. one researcher stated: ‘i made tremendous strides on my mentorrelated writing projects and received some valuable feedback on a planned grant proposal.’ 176 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler finally, portland state university gained important exposure as a pioneer in facilitating collaboration between youth mentoring researchers and practitioners. websites, articles, newsletters and book reviews mentioned the siym experience and the value it was adding to the field (e.g. karcher 2008). the dean of the psu school of social work said that she believed the siym model would inform other efforts to bridge research and practice at the school. development of interpersonal relationships respondents stressed the importance of the relationships they had developed with other mentoring professionals from across the country and the world. participants also appreciated the unique perspectives other participants presented, and one participant felt ‘empowered to be part of such a prestigious group of people in the field of mentoring’. several participants also formed strong connections with researchers during the week and planned further communication and collaboration to address specific agency issues: ‘i also feel that just getting to know these researchers and my colleagues from around the usa and canada improves me professionally and increases the likelihood that i maintain contact with them over time.’ the researchers also developed relationships with each other and spent time discussing current projects as well as potential opportunities for collaboration. researchers expressed a deepening of respect for practitioners and their professional knowledge and noted how they planned to collaborate with practitioners in the future. participants suggested that developing long-term relationships with one another could be facilitated through additional structure provided by the institute. one researcher suggested an institute newsletter to keep participants informed of new developments in research and to encourage ongoing dialogue between participants. other recommendations included a webbased discussion board on the siym website, a special journal issue dedicated to projects initiated or developed at the summer institute, and inviting past participants back in subsequent years for further networking and professional development opportunities. multi-dimensional participation mentoring programs may be operated by independent non-profit organisations; initiatives of schools, counties or other public entities; or partnerships between private and public institutions (dubois & karcher 2005). some mentoring programs use volunteers while others employ professional mentors. programs can be school based, community based, or web based, and they can be short term or long term. many organisations across the country support mentoring programs through a variety of resources. nearly all of these types of programs were represented at the summer institute, and participants expressed appreciation of the diversity of viewpoints included in the discussions. one participant wrote: ‘i 177 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler liked having the variety of representatives present, including longtenured practitioners and relatively new ones, big agencies and small, practitioners and supporters, etc.’ clear structure and organisation participants were generally satisfied with the organisation and structure of siym. participants appreciated the three-hour blocks of time allotted for presentations, which allowed ‘time to really examine the researcher’s methods and findings’. participants felt that the small group size and seminar structure facilitated inclusiveness, openness and critical evaluation of the material. one participant said: ‘the intimate size of the group and interactive discussion format of the institute created a stimulating and dynamic learning environment that encourages sustained dialogue among the participants’. several participants suggested having more breaks, but the vast majority of comments related to the organisation and structure of the seminar, suggesting that participants found the experience powerful and rewarding: ‘having the researchers present their findings in front of everyone, allowing time throughout for questions and debate, helped us all better absorb the research, setting us up to more likely understand and implement the key findings when we returned to our workplace.’ integration into the mission of partnering institutions many participants explicitly described professional benefits from their experiences at siym, which can be divided into two categories. the first category might be called inspirational because of its personal and motivational nature. several participants reported a renewed commitment to the mentoring field, saying that the summer institute was inspiring, invigorating and rejuvenating. one participant said: ‘the enthusiasm and commitment to mentoring was infectious and motivating’. the second category involved the acquisition of skills and knowledge: ‘i have been in the mentoring business for 27 years and this was one experience that truly expanded my knowledge base … i learned more from the institute than from the last 15 conferences i have attended.’ other participants described very specific skills (e.g. how to set up a basic program evaluation) and knowledge (e.g. the importance of processes for ending mentoring relationships) that would directly inform and support their future work. several participants expressed concern that the momentum gained for program improvement at siym may be lost upon returning to their organisations. potential obstacles included lack of resources for new initiatives, difficulty in integrating new ideas into established programs, resistance to change from employees and boards, and lack of time to fully communicate, plan and implement innovations. these barriers pose a threat to the potential for siym to become ‘integrated into the mission of partnering organizations’. 178 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler partnering processes the concept of a partnering process as described by torres and schaffer (2000) is dynamic and multi-dimensional, incorporating the presence of relationships (which has already been described as a key component of participants’ experiences), communication and work for positive change. some participants spoke about components of the partnering process, but identified them as separate characteristics rather than as directly related parts. for example, one participant said that two-way communication between researchers and practitioners made siym a powerful professional development experience – but did not describe the formation of relationships or any specific positive change anticipated. another spoke mostly of the potential for positive change: ‘both practitioners and researchers can offer new ideas and creative program ideas to each other – that was often the exciting part of our time together.’ however, several participants conveyed the idea of a partnership by describing processes that combined these characteristics. one participant stated that, through siym, practitioners were able to help researchers translate what they had learned into effective practices. this simple statement demonstrates the intricate link between the relationships (developed during the summer institute), communication (practitioners helping researchers) and positive change (applying effective practices in the field). another participant described the partnering process and the interplay of these three elements more explicitly: ‘having access to the researchers – hearing their findings, being able to discuss them fully, and being able to explore ways to improve our practices – was of extreme value.’ regular evaluation since its inception, siym has incorporated systems for participant feedback and ongoing evaluation of program effectiveness. the results of an initial evaluation of the 2007 summer institute and subsequent changes to the siym format were described earlier. many other improvements to siym have been made in subsequent years. there have also been several outgrowths from the initial siym. for example, in response to demand from local organisations, a half-day community symposium provides a summary of major themes and findings presented at siym to local practitioners. the success of siym also provided a foundation for the creation of the center for interdisciplinary mentoring research at portland state university. the center supports numerous events and initiatives promoting mentoring research and fostering connections with programs. in a comprehensive study of 19 university-community research partnerships sponsored by the pew partnership, ferraiolo and freedman (2002, p. 29) found that specialised campus-based research centres proved ‘an effective and visible tool to connect university and community needs’. 179 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler significant innovations to established university-community partnership models participant responses suggested that the summer institute on youth mentoring demonstrated several core characteristics that may be considered innovative in that they represent a departure from common university-community partnership models. expanding the idea of ‘community’ in a partnership participants of the 2007 summer institute travelled to portland from 14 states and two provinces in canada. a review of records from the 2008, 2009 and 2010 summer institutes showed that participants, including research fellows, have now travelled from 30 states, four canadian provinces and five foreign countries to participate. most partnership efforts engage universities with communities that are in close physical proximity to the campuses. some universities encourage students and faculty to make national and international connections (hart & wolff 2006), but these partnerships are often still defined geographically. for example, one tufts university effort serves under-resourced schools in boston (toomey 2007), while another tufts partnership provides health resources in tanzania (kamuhabwa & lee 2009). yet few universities have engaged larger, more conceptually defined groups, such as ‘the mentoring community’, as potential partners for university-community partnership projects. even partnerships that seek to disseminate research findings to practitioners and other stakeholders rarely engage the intended audience directly, more often setting up online clearinghouses or distributing printed research summaries. while such partnerships attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice, evidence suggests that these dissemination methods are inadequate for creating changes in practice (gira, kessler & poertner 2004). siym, on the other hand, manages to reach an influential cohort of professionals from across the nation and world using strategies for dissemination, including interactive learning and the use of highly credible leaders in the field, who have shown promise in influencing the use of research findings in practice (gira, kessler, & poertner 2004). summer institute participants described the benefit of sharing information with other participants from a wide range of locales. in some cases, representatives from rural programs that operate in geographic isolation experienced many partnership characteristics (e.g. personal relationships, shared vision, the partnering process) as encouraging and validating. several participants also felt a new or renewed sense of community with other mentoring professionals, and expressed the belief that interpersonal relationships would help hold the community together. engaging with others from diverse locations also inspired some participants to envision positive change that could be enacted through policy initiatives at the state and national levels. 180 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler using short, intensive format to achieve long-term goals most university-community partnerships are intended to be ongoing collaborations in which partners meet regularly to plan and work together towards a common goal. most partnership efforts require continuity and long-term commitment from all partners, but the siym has a different goal and a different approach. the siym itself lasts a week, while the relationships, communication, collaboration and change initiatives are intended to continue long after the siym has ended. in effect, the university plays ‘matchmaker’, bringing together dozens of participants and a handful of researchers to introduce them, help them to get to know each other, and encourage them to carry on meaningful and mutual relationships. the university’s involvement with each individual participant may indeed be short and temporary (although a number of participants have returned for community events and symposia in subsequent years), but the engagement and commitment to the mentoring community, at least for some, appears set to last. in fact, a number of participants have described specific plans for engaging with research fellows, other researchers and each other in the coming months and years. one drawback of the short-term nature of the siym was described by participants. several practitioners felt that a more formal ongoing relationship with siym participants was necessary to keep the momentum going upon their return home. the 2007 siym included no formal process or forum for participants to keep in touch, except through an email list. one participant wrote: ‘i feel like i have a cohort of support that i can draw on if needed’, but added, ‘i would like for that to be more ongoing and intentional … maybe even just using the website or a group listserv that is focused on mentoring research issues’. introducing an inexpensive and self-sustaining approach gilderbloom and mullins (2005) describe two types of universitycommunity partnerships: 1) federally funded, top–down programs with a city-wide or regional focus, and 2) collaborative, locally funded, bottom–up approaches that focus on a single neighbourhood. while most partnerships have taken one of these forms, the siym introduced a relatively low-cost and sustainable approach that reached far beyond the typical geographic boundaries. each stakeholder made financial or other resource investments in the program. participants, or the organisations they work for, paid $725 in tuition, plus travel expenses and other incidental costs. although these expenses represent a significant investment on the part of participants and their organisations, the demand for learning opportunities such as siym will likely increase as foundations and government funders place ever greater expectations on programs to demonstrate outcomes. furthermore, access to relevant research will grow in importance as funding becomes contingent on the use of evidence-based practices. practitioner commitment to research–practice dialogue is likely to continue, as suggested by one siym participant’s promise: ‘and 181 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler next time around, you can count on our organization for even more logistical and financial support in making it happen’. since 2007, even as economic conditions disintegrated, interest and participation in the siym has increased steadily. through 2010, 16 research fellows and four special guest speakers, as well as over 120 mentoring program leaders, have participated in the siym, with hundreds of others participating in the community events and symposia sponsored by the institute. beyond tuition revenue, two other sources of support contribute to the long-term viability of the siym. first, the psu school of social work has an endowed professorship focused on youth mentoring research. this position provides dedicated time to direct the siym. the school also offers meeting spaces and other forms of tangible support. second, the siym is supported by philanthropies that see value in a well-educated workforce for mentoring programs. the siym has been successful in securing funds from community foundations and individual donors. these resources are used to offer scholarships in the form of tuition reduction and to cover some general operating expenses. discussion the current study adds several important elements to our understanding of how successful university-community partnerships operate, and how they can adopt or develop sustainable practices over the long-term. first, the findings lend support for the list of successful partnership characteristics proposed at the wingspread conference and reported by torres and schaffer (2000). the relative lack of empirical studies comparing partnership efforts makes it difficult to confirm whether factors identified by one study are pertinent beyond the (usual) single case examined. this study helps move the universitycommunity partnership field one step closer to establishing a reliable framework that practitioners and researchers can use as a foundation for evaluating and strengthening existing partnerships or establishing new ones. while the current study complements and extends our knowledge about universitycommunity partnerships, the cross-sectional design provides only a snapshot of participants’ attitudes following the event, and does not offer any indication of the longer-term impacts that the siym may have had on practitioners, researchers and mentoring programs themselves. we recommend that future research be directed towards longitudinal evaluation of partnerships at both individual and agency levels. partnership researchers can also use emerging knowledge about the characteristics of successful partnerships to explore how these characteristics are related to one another. in other words, studies like this may help set the stage for conceptualising and testing dynamic models of partnership processes, moving beyond simple lists to understanding how the interplay of structures and relationships contribute to the development and perpetuation of effective partnership initiatives. 182 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler the summer institute also demonstrated that dissemination of research findings and discussion on the implications of research can be successfully facilitated in person and especially through building interpersonal relationships. not only are the typical clearinghouse and conference approaches ineffective strategies for putting research findings to use (gira, kessler, & poertner 2004), they largely neglect the important contribution that practitioners can make to the research-to-practice (and practiceto-research) conversation. in contrast, siym facilitated meaningful dialogue and relationships designed to keep the communication going beyond the seminar week. considering that the research literature and practice knowledge are continually expanding, siym has introduced a format that could help move away from passive modes of dissemination to utilise active processes of implementation and integration of important research findings. the siym model also demonstrated the potential for university-community partnerships to raise the standards for professional development. several participants said that the siym was the best professional development experience of their careers. siym combined the research of academic conferences with the intensive and interactive nature of professional training to offer a model that participants found rewarding, inspiring and, in some cases, transformative. a review of effective professional development practices in schools found that successful programs shifted their focus ‘from isolated learning and the occasional workshop to … collaborative reflection and joint action’ (wested 2000, p. 11). one participant described the importance of collaborative reflection while discussing the summer institute, saying: ‘i believe [practitioners and researchers] need each other – sort of like holding up a mirror to let each other know what things look like from a different perspective’. the findings of the current study also showed that the siym successfully addressed what smith and gillespie (2007) found were several major obstacles to professional development in education, including time constraints, lack of face-to-face interaction, and mismatch of goals, suggesting that the innovative siym model could be applied more broadly to bring practitioners and researchers together to make better use of research and practice knowledge. finally, siym offers a low-cost, sustainable model of university-community collaboration that can have large-scale and potentially long-term impacts. many partnership models require substantial financial resources. bloomgarden and colleagues (2006) describe the challenge of securing matching funds from university and community partners in order to qualify for federal grants. holland (2003, p. 4) contends that pursuit of external funding from various sources can lead to ‘the trap of episodic attention to individual grants and projects, which tends to create superficial and temporary relationships’. the summer institute has from the beginning taken an entrepreneurial approach and relied on a balanced combination of funding from 1) tuition payments 183 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler from participants, 2) university support in the form of faculty time dedicated to directorship of siym, and 3) small foundation grants for community events and other expenses. the relatively low cost of the event combined with significant contributions from stakeholders may be a formula that attracts increasing attention as the economy continues to struggle. while this sustainable model may impose certain logistical limitations on siym, the event has enjoyed consistent growth and expanded reach since its inaugural year. there are several limitations to the current study that should be considered. first, the combined return rate for questionnaires was 55 per cent, meaning that data analysis was based on responses from just over half of siym attendees. there is no way to tell how the participation of non-responders would have changed the results. it is possible that participants who had a positive experience were more likely to fill out and return questionnaires. second, while various measures were taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the study’s results, the authors’ professional involvement with the summer institute may have introduced an element of bias into the data analysis and the interpretation of findings. finally, the partnership models described in this study are largely untested and their long-term impacts are unknown, so further research is needed before conclusions can be drawn about the value of one partnership model versus another. despite these limitations, the findings of the current study tell a compelling story of an innovative university-community partnership that may offer other organisations and institutions a framework for establishing their own successful collaborative efforts. acknowledgements this work was made possible through the support of the center for academic excellence at portland state university. the authors sincerely thank the mentoring researchers and professionals who participated in this study. references addis, m 2002, ‘methods for disseminating research products and increasing evidence based practice: promises, obstacles, and future directions’, clinical psychology: science and practice, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 381–92. baum, h 2000, ‘fantasies and realities in university-community partnerships’, journal of planning education and research, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 234–46. bloomgarden, a, bombardier, m, breitbart, m, nagel, k & smith, p 2006, ‘the holyoke planning network: building a sustainable college/ community partnership in a metropolitan setting’, in r forrant & l silka (eds), inside and out: universities and education for sustainable development, baywood, ny. butterfield, a & soska, t 2004, ‘university-community partnerships: an introduction’, journal of community practice, vol. 12, nos 3 & 4, pp. 1–11. cardoza, o & salinas, g 2004, ‘public citizen: the civic role of an educational institution for the betterment of society’, in k ferraiolo (ed.), 184 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler new directions in civic engagement: university avenue meets main street, pew partnership for civic change/university of richmond, richmond, va. cherry, d & shefner, j 2004, ‘addressing barriers to university-community collaboration: organizing by experts or organizing the experts?’, journal of community practice, vol. 12, nos 3 & 4, pp. 219–33. cox, d 2000, 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the human resources for health (hrh) gap in tanzania: a model for mutual success’, presented by muhimbili university of health and allied sciences (muhas), tanzania, and tufts university, usa, accra, ghana, 27 august 2009, viewed 10 july 2010, www.hedprogram.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=9yxgqkbksfo%3d &tabid=225. karcher, m 2008, book review of g clary & j rhodes (eds), mobilizing adults for positive youth development: strategies for closing the gap between beliefs and behaviors, journal of youth and adolescence, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 475–80. lane, j, turner, s & flores, c 2004, ‘researcher-practitioner collaboration in community corrections: overcoming hurdles for successful partnerships’, criminal justice review, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 97–114. www.hedprogram.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=9yxgqkbksfo%3d&tabid=225 www.hedprogram.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=9yxgqkbksfo%3d&tabid=225 185 | gateways | jones, keller & wheeler lietz, c, langer, c & furman, r 2006, ‘establishing trustworthiness 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review of adult learning and literacy, vol. 7, p. 1. strauss, a & corbin, j 1990, basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques, sage publications, newbury park, ca. toomey, m 2007, essential literacy partnerships at the south lawrence east elementary school, coalition of essential schools, viewed 10 july 2010, www.essentialschools.org/resources/371. torres, j & schaffer, j 2000, benchmarks for campus/community partnerships, campus compact, providence, ri. us department of housing and urban development 2010, collaborating for change: partnerships to transform local communities, hud office of policy development and research, washington, dc, viewed 12 august 2010, www.oup.org/files/pubs/collaboratingforchange.pdf. walker, g 2007, mentoring, policy, and politics, public/private ventures, viewed 8 october 2010, www.ppv.org. wested 2000, teachers who learn, kids who achieve: a look at schools with model professional development, wested, san francisco, ca, viewed 10 june 2010, www.wested.org/online_pubs/teachers_who_learn/teachlearn.pdf. wilson, d 2004, ‘key features of successful university-community partnerships’, in k ferraiolo (ed.), new directions in civic engagement: university avenue meets main street, pew partnership for civic change/ university of richmond, richmond, va. www.essentialschools.org/resources/371 www.oup.org/files/pubs/collaboratingforchange.pdf www.ppv.org www.wested.org/online_pubs/teachers_who_learn/teachlearn.pdf mulligan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 48-72 © utsepress and the authors renegotiating community life: arts, agency, inclusion and wellbeing martin mulligan, christopher scanlon and nicky welch he community arts sector in australia has grown enormously in scale and diversity over the last thirty years (mills 2006). while there is no consensus on how to define community arts as distinct from other forms of art practice, the term is being used widely to refer to art practices that encourage active participation by people who can be identified by their membership of designated communities rather than their skills and/or experience as artists (mills 2006). the growth of community arts in australia has been accompanied by a growing international trend which has seen community arts positioned as a community development tool. as a report commissioned by the rand corporation in the us (mccarthy et al. 2004) demonstrated, there has been a growing emphasis on an ‘instrumental’ role for the arts in achieving specific social outcomes, ranging from reducing incidents of crime to increasing school retention rates. at a broader level it has been argued (see, for t gateways | mulligan et al 49 example, williams 1996; richards 2006) that community-based arts projects can lead to tangible improvements in the health and wellbeing of local communities and this argument has been used to call for an increase in funding for community arts. yet the evidence for the benefits of participating in community arts and cultural activities remains unconvincing and attempts to define the health and wellbeing benefits of the arts have borne little fruit (mcqueenthomson & ziguras 2002; cultural ministers council 2004). studies on the social benefits of community arts have reached an impasse for three main reasons. first, the questions being asked are often too narrow and the research methods too limited in range and scope. second, much of the literature in the field relies on static understandings of community that pay little attention to the changing nature of local community life in the context of globalization. third, and related to the first two factors, some of the conceptual tools being used to analyse the data, such as the notion of ‘social capital’ for example, tend to be reductive and are of only limited help in understanding the complexity of community. this article is based on the outcomes of a four-year study, conducted across four diverse local communities in the australian state of victoria, on ways in which community-based arts and cultural projects can enhance community wellbeing. the research specifically aimed to avoid the weaknesses of earlier research on this topic by taking a broader view of what constitutes community-based art work and by using a carefully integrated combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods across the four case study communities. this article seeks to address the question of social inclusion and it draws on the use of photonarrative techniques that help to reach socially excluded people. an article of this length could not do justice to all the research methods used in the study or to all the outcomes that are included in a 177-page research report (mulligan et al. 2006). it does, however, aim to demonstrate the importance of moving beyond narrow links between arts initiatives and social outcomes to discuss some of the more intangible, diffuse, and sometimes unexpected outcomes. as a result of this emphasis, the broad study reached the conclusion that the open-ended nature of the arts can help to generate and sustain webs of meaning at a time when shared narratives and frameworks of meaning of community are being gateways | mulligan et al 50 challenged by the disruptive effects of the intersecting social processes of ‘globalization’. such social benefits cannot be understood in terms of quantifiable outcomes but rather in terms of the ways in which participation with arts-based projects can help individuals and groups of people to negotiate contemporary changes confronting the communities in which they live. in contrast to a focus on social capital, this article centres on notions of ‘social narrative’ and ‘social inclusion’. expressed in its simplest terms, our argument is that community arts can positively affect health and wellbeing because they can enable individuals and groups of people to develop narratives of action in response to social change. although the research used a wide range of methods ranging from community surveys to ‘strategic conversations’ with experienced community arts practitioners (mulligan et al. 2006), this article relies primarily on the outcomes of the photonarrative research conducted with marginalized people living in the four communities. details of the photonarrative technique used in the study will be provided later. however, to explain why this focus of attention produced some interesting and fresh insights, and to explain why the researchers used the photonarrative technique, we must begin by drawing some lessons from the methodological and conceptual weaknesses of earlier research in this field. social and cultural dimensions in health policy in an effort to curb the increasing costs associated with health, governments around the world have pursued a diverse range of strategies aimed at promoting behavioural change, such as antismoking and healthy eating campaigns. other approaches have sought to reach beyond the level of individual behavioural modification to a concern with the social and cultural contexts of health and wellbeing. central to such concerns is the idea that health and wellbeing have social and cultural dimensions (as well as biological) and this has led to an emphasis on creating social and cultural environments that might produce better health outcomes. many of these social health strategies have drawn support from the booming literature on ‘social capital’, loosely defined as networks of trust, cooperation, reciprocity and mutual obligation, between individuals and groups. according to advocates of social capital, increasing such networks by encouraging individuals to ‘participate’ gateways | mulligan et al 51 has a range of positive and desirable public policy outcomes, from increasing economic efficiency, improving academic performance, lowering crime rates and – the focus of this article – improving public health and wellbeing. as robert putnam, a leading proponent of social capital observes: of all the domains in which i have traced the consequences of social capital, in none is the importance of social connectedness so well established as in the case of health and wellbeing. (putnam 2000, p. 326) putnam is not alone in his positive assessment of the impact of social connectedness on health and wellbeing. reviewing the literature examining social connectedness and mortality rates, for example, cohen (2001, p. 6) reports that the ‘health risks of being isolated are comparable in magnitude to the risks associated with cigarette smoking, blood pressure, and obesity, and remain even after controlling these and other traditional risk factors’. with such certain and apparently authoritative backing, policy makers and health bodies have pursued social connectedness as a tool for improving population health and wellbeing. in australia, the victorian health promotion foundation, known as vichealth – a funding partner in the research project on which this article is based – has used social capital to inform and guide its approach to mental health and wellbeing. vichealth has, more specifically, sought to harness the arts and cultural activities as a means of promoting social connectedness and social inclusion, funding community arts activities since its inception in 1987 (vichealth 2002; 2006). at a broad, abstract level the evidence to support this kind of emphasis in health promotion policies seems robust. however, as mentioned above, the research on how it works in practice is less than convincing and has been hampered by both methodological and conceptual weaknesses. first, many of the studies in this area are based on research that is only likely to be convincing to those within the field. a review of the literature on the links between arts and indicators of mental, social and physical health conducted by mcqueen-thomson and ziguras (2002), found that much of the research has been based on selective case studies, anecdotal accounts, small sample sizes and subjective assessments of outcomes. moreover, many of the studies examined gateways | mulligan et al 52 by mcqueen-thomson and ziguras were short-term in nature and, in some cases, were carried out by people who were too close to funding bodies to make what could be considered objective assessments (mcqueen-thomson & ziguras 2002). in short, much of the research on this topic has been narrowly conceived and selfreferential in nature, finding ‘evidence’ to support existing assumptions. a broader review of the literature on the ‘social benefits’ of the arts (mccarthy et al. 2004) reached very similar conclusions about research conducted in the us, and paola merli (2003) has made similar criticisms of the ‘evidence’ used by francois matarasso to support his influential argument for the social benefits of arts participation (matarasso 1997). such critiques should not, however, lead to a condemnation of all the efforts made to date to employ the arts for social outcomes because the anecdotal evidence regarding the unique benefits derived from participation in arts-based projects is very strong (see mulligan et al. 2006). furthermore, we need to broaden our understanding of what constitutes ‘evidence’ because it comes in a wide variety of forms. matarasso mounted a spirited defence of his work against merli’s critique (matarasso 2003) in which he rightly pointed out that the demand for rigorous ‘proof’ of beneficial links fails to take into account the complexity of those connections. according to matarasso, merli’s critique was also far too dismissive of the partial evidence that is available. what we need is more and diverse evidence rather than a sweeping rejection of the useful work done by people such as matarasso. the conceptual problem is that some researchers have been looking for linear relationships of causality when the relationships between inputs (arts and cultural projects) and (social) outcomes is much more indirect and diffuse than that. to overcome this problem, the research on which this article is based concentrated on how artsbased projects can be employed to create the conditions in which individuals and groups of people can renegotiate the terms of their involvement in their local communities without trying to predict the particular outcomes resulting from such increases in individual and group agency. a second methodological and conceptual problem with much of the recent research on relationships between the arts and health and wellbeing is its heavy reliance on imprecise and problematic conceptual tools, such as the interrelated concepts of ‘social capital’ gateways | mulligan et al 53 and ‘social inclusion’. in their review of the literature on social capital and health promotion, for example, hawe and shiell (2000, p. 880) argue that this concept lacks theoretical precision, and is often used uncritically and in a circular way to refer to ‘all that is “good” within a community’. social capital can thus be moulded to fit in with whatever indicators of social health and wellbeing are being used, rather than offering insight of itself. similarly, practical applications of social capital have been found wanting. a pacesetting study on the social impacts of the arts in australia (williams 1996) that relied heavily on the vague notion of social capital did not help arts practitioners or funding agencies to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of emerging community arts practices, as williams herself acknowledged (1997). ‘social inclusion’ has sometimes been seen as a policy prescription that follows on from social capital. this term gained credibility when it was adopted by the blair government in the uk to replace notions such as ‘social equity’. in commenting on the uk experience, which included a cabinetlevel social exclusion unit to investigate barriers to inclusion, ruth lister (2000) claims that many people took advantage of this shift in terminology to blame the poor for their own plight and most of the policies aimed at overcoming exclusion were aimed at getting people into paid employment – often to join the ‘working poor’ – when the causes of exclusion are more wide-ranging than the lack of a steady income. however, she argued that the notion of exclusion can be more targeted and effective than broad terms such as ‘poverty’ or ‘disadvantage’. lister argued for the retention of social inclusion provided that the causes of exclusion are addressed at what she called ‘material’ and ‘symbolic’ levels (lister 2000). other commentators (see, for example, hinkson 1999, pp. 109– 110) have argued that policies of social inclusion may simply encourage greater participation in social structures that may actually entrench problems – such as poor health and poor academic achievement – for those at the bottom of social hierarchies. such critics argue that inclusion may draw people into the ‘global market’ that is reconstituting the communities in which they live and that this can intensify feelings of insecurity and disempowerment. more specifically, critics such as hawkes (2004) have warned against using the arts as a band-aid or a diversion to avoid the need for systemic gateways | mulligan et al 54 change to address the causes of disadvantage. in his conference paper (2004), hawkes went as far as saying that some of the ‘best’ art can be ‘terrifying, disturbing and disorienting’ as a form of social critique that does not aim to enhance ‘wellbeing’ within existing social structures. however, social inclusion can also be used as a critique of social practices and structures that constantly recreate division and ‘disadvantage’. in this study we have sought to critically retrieve the concept from its narrow and shallow uses, thus decoupling ‘social inclusion’ from the concept of ‘social capital’, with its bias towards quantitative or economic visions of social life (fine 2001). this is not necessarily to reject ‘social capital’ completely, but to use it in a far more restricted and precise sense than is presently the case (scanlon 2006). however, this study reached the conclusion that previous attempts to make sense of community arts practice by introducing the notion of social capital (see, for example, williams 1996) have not been helpful to practitioners. by contrast, the concept of ‘social inclusion’ does make sense to such practitioners. a third problem with the existing research on using the arts as a tool for community development is that it is often based on static and one-dimensional understandings of what constitutes communities in the contemporary world. a number of social theorists (see, for example, young 1990; hobsbawm 1994) have argued that the notion of ‘community’ is, at best, vague and ambiguous or, even worse, that it creates outdated and romanticized notions of social norms that are oppressive to those who do not fit such norms. as hobsbawm (1994, p. 428) suggests: ‘never was the word “community” used more indiscriminately and emptily than in the decades when communities in the sociological sense became hard to find in real life’. more recently walmsley (2006, p. 5) began a review on ‘the nature of community’ by saying that the word has been used so loosely for so long that it now has a ‘high level of use but a low level of meaning’. nevertheless, he argued that the term ‘community’ reflects aspirations for forms of social life that are gaining in their appeal and that we need to investigate some of the more constructive ways in which the term is being used to enhance social life. many of those who want to rescue the word community from its most narrow, romanticized or utilitarian uses turn back to the gateways | mulligan et al 55 distinction made as long ago as 1887 by ferdinand tönnies1 between gemeinshaft communities that are relatively stable and feature established networks and relationships based on mutual obligation and gesellschaft communities in which people are far more mobile and concerned with individual self-interest (see, for example, lowe 2000; stehlik 2006; walmsley 2006). while tönnies was writing at a time when masses of people were moving out of established rural communities to seek work in the burgeoning cities as a result of the industrial revolution in europe, his terminology has been used to argue that local communities can display a mixture of the two characteristics and that some gesellschaft communities can regain at least some of the characteristics of gemeinschaft communities (see lowe 2000). given their enduring appeal, tönnies’ concepts of different forms of community should not be dismissed and there are still plenty of local rural communities in the world that display gemeinschaft characteristics. however, the changing nature of local communities in the intervening 130 years, and particularly its reconstitution through processes of globalization, heavily qualifies the usefulness of these now dated concepts. part of the problem with discussing community within the context of globalization is that much of the literature on globalization has limited usefulness in understanding community. indeed it is only relatively recently that some scholars have recognized the ‘lure of the local’ in connection with global change (see, for example, featherstone 1996; lippard 1997). paul james (1996; 2006) has argued that accelerated globalization has not resulted in the replacement of old social formations with new ones but rather an increased layering of social life from local face-toface communities through to more abstracted and spatially extended communities (the nation and beyond). people belong simultaneously to ‘communities’ that operate at different levels of abstraction and instead of focusing on one or another aspect of this multilayered existence we need to examine how these levels interact. in elaborating these criticisms of the methodological and conceptual weaknesses of existing research on the health and wellbeing benefits of arts participation, we must reach the conclusion that the impasse is unlikely to be broken by conducting further 1 a book by tönnies was published in german in 1887 under the title gemeinschaft und gesellschaft. gateways | mulligan et al 56 research of a similar kind to what has already been undertaken. while study after study shows that there is some kind of connection between participation in community cultural events and projects and improved wellbeing, adequately explaining how that connection works is still to be accomplished. we must find ways to get beyond mechanistic accounts of the relationship between social interventions and their complex ‘outcomes’. a fresh approach this article is based on the outcomes of a four-year study, conducted across four diverse australian communities, on the contribution that community-based arts and cultural activities might be able to make to the wellbeing of local communities. the study was prompted by the aforementioned literature review conducted by mcqueenthomson and ziguras (2002), which highlighted the need for a new and broader approach to this field of research. ironically, the broadening of the research focus led to a departure from some of the specific recommendations made by mcqueen-thomson and ziguras. rather than continuing the futile search for tight links between strategies aimed at strengthening local communities and specific health outcomes, the research tried to understand the distinctive role that participatory arts and community celebrations can play in helping diverse local communities cohere more successfully and to develop narratives of meaning that can stand the test of time in a changing world. following james (1996; 2006), our research for this project is situated within a broader interest in what can make local communities more sustainable in the context of globalization. the four research sites four research sites in the southern australian mainland state of victoria were chosen to provide focus and spread to the research. we were careful not to assume that the geography alone defined community, hence the use of the term ‘research site’, rather than ‘community’. the research sites included some in which there has been a proud tradition of community art work and some where community arts are being introduced ‘from above’ in an attempt to enrich local life. st kilda is an established inner-urban suburb of melbourne with a large migrant population, particularly european jewish, and a high proportion of young upwardly-mobile people. alongside these gateways | mulligan et al 57 relatively wealthy residents exist a group with lower and fewer socioeconomic means, and a high number of residents of public housing and rooming houses and, indeed, homeless people. it has a rich tradition of using innovative community arts activities to foster inclusion and social connection. in contrast, hamilton is a rural community located in the southwest corner of victoria. prior to the arrival of european migrants in the 1840s, hamilton was a flourishing area for the indigenous people and it has continued to be a place of relative prosperity brought about primarily by sheep farming. hamilton is known for its affluence and social and political conservatism, a reputation that has survived more recent rural recessions. although hamilton is not without a community arts scene, it has nothing like the extensive, targeted and ongoing community arts activities of st kilda. just over 100 kilometres from melbourne, the small town of daylesford has become a popular destination for weekend visitors attracted by its natural mineral springs and historic guesthouses. daylesford has a rich history of swiss-italian migrants who pioneered european settlement in the area during the gold rush in the 1850s and 60s. for a small rural town it has, like the inner urban st kilda, a rich and varied cultural life, including the second largest gay and lesbian celebration in australia after the world famous sydney ‘gay and lesbian mardi gras’. finally, the peri-urban melbourne suburb broadmeadows began in the 1950s as a hastily built public housing estate on the edge of melbourne. an influx of migrants from non-english speaking countries dramatically changed the population mix in later years. currently over thirty three per cent of the population comes from non-english speaking backgrounds with around fourteen per cent of residents coming from the middle east (australian bureau of statistics 2001). the area also includes a large number of singleparent families, many families on very low incomes, and a relatively high proportion of people unable to find employment (australian bureau of statistics 2001). while the local council facilitates excellent community arts initiatives, it is on a far smaller scale than the diverse range offered in both st kilda and daylesford. across the four communities a wide range of events, projects and programmes were examined. these ranged from regular festivals to classes and other activities run by community-based organisations for gateways | mulligan et al 58 targeted sectors of the community, and to one-off celebrations or creative initiatives that emerged more organically from within the communities concerned (see mulligan et al. 2006 for more details on the activities examined). unlike some earlier studies the research was not restricted to projects funded by government or semi-government agencies. methods research was conducted in the four communities amongst both initiators and participants in community arts projects and community celebrations and a special effort was made to consult people who rarely, if ever, participate in such events. the specific methods used included two questionnaires (n=800), thirty semi-structured interviews/conversations, the collation of fifteen local stories, and four sets of photonarrative inquiry. following ezzy (2002), the methods were chosen to reflect the aims of the project and to ensure that diverse forms of ‘evidence’ regarding the social benefits of arts participation could be considered. research participants were recruited through a variety of channels, using purposive sampling techniques. while deliberate in the sense that certain groups were identified as being relevant to the phenomena studied (pope & mays 1995), the aim of purposive sampling is to generate difference. a number of strategies were used to generate a sample that would provide data to address the aims of the research. community arts, community development and community health workers were all interviewed, as were participants in a range of community art projects and programmes. however, we also used methods that were aimed at finding out when and why people participate in community arts activities (surveys) and we also used the photonarrative technique to target people who might have good reason to feel socially isolated (such as people with ‘special needs’ and ‘at-risk’ youth). an initial questionnaire was designed for a mail-out survey of 3000 residents in the four communities (with a response rate of around ten per cent for the urban communities and around twenty percent for the rural communities). this generated broad data about perceptions of local community life in a changing world (mulligan et al. 2006, chapter 4) and it prompted a more targeted survey of people attending community arts projects and events or significant community celebrations. whereas the first survey revealed some gateways | mulligan et al 59 barriers to participation in local community projects and events, the second survey sought to explore what attendees might have gained from their participation (mulligan et al. 2006, chapter 4). lengthy interviews with community arts and community development practitioners across the four communities led to a detailed analysis of what constitutes ‘good practice’ within these overlapping fields in australia (mulligan & smith 2007 and mulligan et al. 2006). however, for the purpose of our discussion here on how people in local communities might use the arts to renegotiate the terms of their engagement in those communities, we will rely primarily on the outcomes of our use of photonarrative techniques to explore problematic experiences of social inclusion and community engagement. while the two surveys gave the researchers a broad view of the issues related to participation in community arts and practitioner interviews gave us a deeper understanding of effective practice, the photonarrative technique enabled us to target some social groupings whose participation in community life is often problematic. for example, we used the technique to explore the experience of community life for people living in rooming houses in the st kilda area and we targeted young people and men suffering social isolation in the rural township of daylesford. by focusing on such marginalized groups of people we were able to test some prevailing assumptions about the nature and benefit of social inclusion, and that is the focus of this particular article. there are, of course, many research techniques that rely on the use of cameras to explore less conscious aspects of people’s lived experiences (see harper 1984; wang & burris 1994, 1997; wang & redwood-jones 2001). we employed a ‘photonarrative’ technique that involved distributing cameras to participants recruited to the project and asking them to take photos that might express their sense of community. this was followed by semi-structured interviews with each of these research participants centring on the images they had taken. the researchers were then able to analyse the lengthy transcripts of these interviews. in each of the research sites, the photonarrative research was carried out with assistance from local organisations and groups, such as community health centres, neighbourhood bodies and local government officers. the process for recruiting participants was lengthy and in each case a fairly small percentage of initial participants completed the task and the gateways | mulligan et al 60 subsequent interviews. the number of completions ranged from over twenty in the case of st kilda to just two at broadmeadows. clearly, this is a narrow sampling and the technique would not stand on its own as an exploration of community life. however, it did produce some interesting and unexpected outcomes that would not have been picked up by the other research methods used (as outlined above). incorporating cameras as a research tool has been used in a number of contexts to examine health and wellbeing issues (see wang & burris 1997; booth & booth 2003; mcintyre 2003). however, as distinct from some other approaches that utilize photography as a research tool (see wang & burris 1997), our photonarrative technique makes no claim of ‘empowering’ participants in the research. the outcomes of our photonarrative research are complemented in the discussion below by some slightly surprising outcomes of our survey of people participating in a range of significant community celebrations and events. discussion of research findings in analysing participant transcripts across the four communities, three key propositions emerged: • the communities are undergoing enormous changes in the present era of globalization in ways that directly confront issues of personal identity and a sense of narrative • participation in community arts and celebrations can create individual and/or collective narratives of action within a local context • reflective participation in community arts and celebrations can enhance choice in regard to the ways in which individuals and groups manage their engagement with local communities. globalization and constructing new narratives we live at a time when shared narratives, and their frameworks of meaning, have been weakened and individual self-identity has become, in ulrich beck’s terms, a ‘do-it-yourself biography’ (1992, p. 135). less and less is prescribed by external agents and events and more and more has to be chosen and re-chosen, negotiated and renegotiated. while it would be difficult to sustain the thesis that the contemporary world is more fragmented than was the case in the past, the kinds of fragmentation now seem to cut deeper. there are gateways | mulligan et al 61 fewer overarching structures and institutions through which individuals might negotiate forms of social inclusion. while such institutions of the past could be stifling and oppressive, they also gave people a relatively secure sense of who they were and how they ought to live (see, for example, brett & moran 2006, pp. 10–11, 15–47). contemporary life is increasingly governed by what richard sennett (1998) calls the maxim of ‘no long term’. in such circumstances, individuals are increasingly forced to use their own resources to develop a coherent sense of self and identity, to develop narratives of self that help to create a degree of stability in the face of change. for some, the new ‘freedom of expression’ can be liberating while for others it can be disorienting, offering little more than evanescent and contingent reference points. the photonarrative interviews gave some insight into such changes at the level of community life, of the abiding bonds of community being overtaken, restructured, and reconstituted by forces of more mobile, fleeting forms of association celebrated by the boosters of neo-liberal globalization. for example, an interviewee who lived in an apartment complex on busy st kilda road spoke of the fast-changing nature of his community. he mentioned that he knew the people who had lived in the building for a long time because he recognized their cars in the car park. the arrival and departure of other residents of the complex was registered by signs advertising furniture and appliances being posted on the apartment noticeboard as residents prepared to vacate the building. there was a sense here of community in a constant process of flux, created, dissolving and re-created. perhaps not surprisingly, this interviewee reported that he did not feel that he was part of his community and that his parents had a stronger experience of community than he did. there were other signs of community being overlaid by processes and activities, which went beyond, and worked to reframe, the local bonds of community. a common theme amongst the interviewees was that face-to-face community was under threat from a variety of processes variously described as centralization or corporatization. such concerns typically emerged when people were invited to reflect on whether community life was weakening, strengthening or staying pretty much the same. an interviewee in st kilda, for instance, said her community was becoming ‘more corporate’ as large corporations displaced smaller shops, producing a more anonymous street life gateways | mulligan et al 62 which was seen as having a negative impact on the kinds of community who were likely to settle and live in st kilda: unless the eclectic-ness still attracts those who have those qualities – if we can maintain that, then people will still want to live here and express that. but if it gets too becton [a large property developer], too development, too jeans west [a clothing chain store], then you’ll get an average kind of mindset. while specific corporations were mentioned, these seemed intended more as specific examples of a more general way of life which was experienced as hostile to stable, settled forms of community, where individuals could develop a coherent identity and narrative. one respondent spoke about changes to the local library claiming that it was: … one of those meeting places that keeps people connected. the local librarian knows all the town gossip because people come in and blab. old people come in and bring her cakes, probably more for a yak than the books, so it is another one of those institutions which they keep wanting to streamline and corporatize and privatize and fuck up. if they left them alone they would be fine. they are important. another interviewee, from daylesford, mentioned his frustration with the local service station which seemed to be representative of the impersonality of large corporate chains, in opposition to the community that he had known. i hate our shell service station with a passion. our local service station may employ a few workers, but the workers don’t work for the community. i’ve been in there many times, [and] because i’m not a very rich person … they treat us with contempt. as soon as i hang my bowser up, she’ll see me coming and grab her computer and leave me hanging around until she’s good and ready to serve me. this concern with the impact of corporations is not focused on particular corporations but rather a perception that corporations in gateways | mulligan et al 63 general represent a whole way of life which was seen as being impersonal and hostile to the ‘natural’ rhythms of community life. one interviewee illustrated the general theme, arguing that community was weakening because of the economic changes and the rise of corporations. the weakening of community, he said, had ‘to do with having a job’: this thing at the moment of forcing people into work who are on pensions and on welfare. i’m all for that – except, exactly what jobs are these people going to do? where are the jobs? what are they going to do? is it going to earn them an adequate wage or is it going to give them pride? is it going to feed into their wellbeing and self-esteem? you get me started. it’s to do with democracy, it’s being supplanted by ‘corpocracy’ which is really the whole world being run by corporations … corporations and stock markets are driving marginal people out of a meaningful life. in contrast to this picture of globalization, he offered what he called ‘the “cliché of the tea-lady”. she had a pride – those sorts of jobs just don’t exist anymore’. arts and the construction of narratives of action the reference to the tea lady highlights the personal consequences of the changing nature of community within conditions of globalization. it summons up a loss of identity. as local communities have been buffeted and reconstituted by processes of globalization, the sources of individual identity seem more precarious and the way forward less clear. within this changed context, the arts can play a role in providing a sense of narrative and purpose, and so facilitate a sense of agency, offering people the means of piecing together the fragments of life and a coherent sense of self. meryl, a female festival attendee commented that she had been involved with numerous other community arts events over a fifteenyear period. she noted ‘i have gained friends, confidence and community links. [these are] very important to who i am today’. clearly, meryl’s involvement in community arts had been an important source of her identity. yet it must be noted that this was over a fifteen-year period of being centrally involved. this suggests gateways | mulligan et al 64 that short-term participation in community arts may not be a short cut or a quick fix to questions about managing identity. it requires considerable investment of time and energy. this provides some support to the concern expressed by many community arts practitioners who maintain that funding often only allows for short-term projects that do not encourage the more beneficial longer-term involvement. to ‘get something’ from the community, respondents reported having to put something in, or, as in meryl’s case, many hours over a long period of time. rather than offering an escape hatch, arts participation may offer a means of managing uncertainty, of reflexively building and re-building a sense of community and identity. perhaps more striking still was a participant in the photonarrative process who lived in a rooming house in st kilda. he used art – in this case creative writing – to give a sense of narrative and structure to his life. the participant lived in a rooming house because he had had problems with drugs and alcohol over the years. his community was primarily others in the rooming house, who, he said, were dealing with ‘drug problems and depressions’. ‘the only problem with these sorts of communities’, he continued, ‘is that there are lots of people with their own problems. so it’s not easy to live in environments like this’. asked if the community was valuable to him, he answered: no, not at all. not this community at all. you need to stay away from this sort of environment, otherwise things just snowball. you get people drinking, and next minute you are too. that’s how it all starts. this man used his writing as a means to construct an identity outside of alcoholism and drug use. he was a keen runner and regularly wrote one-page stories about his life that he thought about while running. the walls of his modest room were decorated with two heart-shaped sculptures made out of found objects. he explained that one was for running and the other was for writing, both of which had to be done properly and for the right reasons. as he explained, the hearts are ‘a reminder for me that there are two things i need to do from the heart. if i didn’t do that i would get all confused’: gateways | mulligan et al 65 it’s important for me to do my one-page story every day. just a one one-page story. i tread a very fine line with what i do. it’s very important for me to do these things, and to do things properly as well. otherwise there’s no sense in doing it if i am not doing it properly. this man was encouraged to take up writing by the existence of a roomers magazine initiated by community development workers employed by the local port phillip city council. the magazine is distributed through local bookshops and news agencies and numerous writers contributing to the magazine have talked about their work at the high profile melbourne writers festival and other literary festivals in victoria. the fact that the magazine had published some of his stories gave this man a sense of validity and it was enough for him to know that his stories might be of interest to other, unknown, people. writing became a daily practice that helped him deal with a difficult, even dangerous, local environment. another photonarrative participant, this time from daylesford, provided a similarly stark example of the role of arts and community in affording some sense of identity and narrative. this man had been dealing with depression after a road accident. he had begun attending a local men’s group called the ‘men’s shed’, which was initiated by a community health worker with a strong interest in the arts who noticed that many men in this rural community rued the fact there seemed to be fewer opportunities to make and fix things with their own hands. so the ‘men’s shed’ was set up to give them a chance to participate in manual tasks ranging from mechanical repairs to artistic practices. the ‘men’s shed’ project stretches the prevailing understanding of what constitutes community art but it clearly gives participants new opportunities to be creative and productive. when this participant was asked what he got from his participation in the men’s shed, he said: well it gets me out of bed. if it wasn’t for the men’s shed, i don’t think i would be here today. it gives me the will to get out of bed. it involves my kids and my whole family. the men are now a part of my family, knocking on the door. gateways | mulligan et al 66 although the focus of the men’s shed was on manual work, this man said that he had gradually become involved with the lives of other men who came to the shed and started to play an organising and co-ordination role. after recovering from a serious road accident, attending the shed had become a large part of his recovery process and it helped him adjust to a new sense of self. exercising choice in forms of engagement in making these comments about links between art, narrative and agency, we do not suggest that clear ‘outcomes’ in terms of ‘community engagement’ are automatic or unproblematic. indeed, increased agency might lead to a more critical engagement with local communities, as jon hawkes has suggested (2004). for some of those we interviewed for our research, such as the man living in the st kilda rooming house, artistic practices gave them an opportunity to better manage their forms of engagement rather than surrender to an assimilation in fairly toxic social environments. the rooming house writer was happy to share his stories but only when he could maintain a degree of distance: i use my writing to help people. i give it to them and walk away. that way i don’t take any of this shit on. i’m not a counsellor, and i don’t want to be a counsellor. i am trying to teach people that they can live a normal life. this ‘inclusion-at-a-distance’ made possible a mediated relationship with his community, enabling a form of participation in community life that was characterized simultaneously by both inclusion and exclusion. to the extent that arts participation can increase agency, this does not automatically lead to the creation of more bonded communities. indeed, as we have seen, art can be used to create some distance. at the same time, it needs to be remembered that the rooming houses of st kilda provide some kind of home within a vibrant neighbourhood for people who face rather bleak alternatives. sustainability of rooming house communities might be better measured in terms of an absence of conflict and violence rather than in terms of social bonding. sadly, the gentrification of st kilda is leading to the closure of many of the rooming houses and a new form of social exclusion for the former residents. gateways | mulligan et al 67 however, the desire for a mediated engagement with local communities was not confined to the residents of rooming houses. there were other photonarrative participants who suggested that tight-knit communities might not improve their own health and wellbeing. one person said that he needed to feel that he could opt in and out of his local communities: ‘i’m not by nature a club person. i’d love to be a club person, i’d love to be a team person but it’s not in my nature’. some people, it seems, eschew an intense engagement with other people in favour of a kind of ‘cool civility’. when a photonarrative participant from daylesford was asked if he thought it possible that community engagement might sometimes undermine individual wellbeing, he replied: sure. when the community is a rigid hierarchy, or where there is a lack of tolerance to varying forms of behaviour … all those things, if you don’t fit the mould then you are in trouble. my father’s family comes from a tiny town in the mallee [district] on the south australian border. gossip in those sorts of towns can be vicious. such responses suggest a need for a more nuanced understanding of what social inclusion looks like. too often, simplistic notions of what an inclusive community should look like underpin the way this concept is advocated in health promotion literature. our research suggests it is more important to focus on agency than on an uncritical conception of social inclusion. even when people do make the effort to participate in community arts activities or community celebrations they may not feel more ‘included’ as a result. one respondent to our survey of such participants highlighted a ‘lack of inclusiveness’ in his feedback about the event – a community flower show that is linked to a major festival in daylesford – and added that ‘the energy was closed and cliquey [sic], not embracive’. yet another participant in the same event wrote, ‘we only just arrived and are already excited about being here – the music, the colour, the sense of community, happy people being themselves and enjoying life!’ a third, female, participant was even more enthusiastic in writing: ‘the kingfisher festival [held annually in melbourne] is a standout every year [with gateways | mulligan et al 68 a] community atmosphere unlike other festivals; i attend approximately ten to fifteen [festivals] per year’. within the one event, participants can feel variously included and excluded and this gives weight to the views of experienced community arts practitioners that it is better to have a diversity of activities and programmes rather than expect too much of one project, no matter how ‘successful’ it might have seemed (mulligan et al. 2006, chapter 10). conclusion this article presents just some of the findings of a broad study on ways in which participatory arts and community celebrations can make a distinctive contribution to the health and wellbeing of people and their local communities (mulligan et al. 2006). even though the study used a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods across four distinct and diverse local communities, it had only limited success in reaching people who are not already engaged in some way with their local communities. however, the use of a photonarrative technique did enable us to reach an understanding of some of the complexities of contemporary local community life that has eluded other researchers interested in community wellbeing. this has generated new insights about how arts participation can help people renegotiate the terms of their engagement with their local communities. the research has shifted the focus from a narrow search for the specific social ‘benefits’ of arts-based interventions in community life to a focus on processes that might give socially excluded people increased agency in a confusing and changing world. the insights gained suggest the need for a more nuanced understanding of the interlocking processes of social inclusion and exclusion in communities that are being constantly reconstituted through the local manifestations of broader, global processes. globalization continues to undermine forms of community that generated a relatively secure sense of identity and belonging and the onus has shifted to individuals to do that work for themselves. as richard sennett has suggested (2006, pp. 183–188) people are trying to make their individual experiences cohere by creating a sense of ‘narrative movement’ about their lives and this is where arts participation can play a major role. our research suggests that arts participation can help people develop new individual and group narratives that can gateways | mulligan et al 69 increase their agency in managing their engagements with the communities in which they live. participation in community arts and celebrations can stimulate greater reflection about self and society, leading to the creation of narratives of action that can apply locally. however, the outcomes of increased agency are diverse and difficult to predict and it is essential to avoid simplistic, static and onedimensional conceptions of ‘community’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘wellbeing’. earlier research on community wellbeing has been hampered by the careless use of conceptual tools, such as ‘social capital’ and ‘social inclusion’, which can mask the complexities of contemporary life. it is precisely because arts participation offers an open-ended approach to the exploration of lived experience that it can help people in their ongoing search for identity in a changing world. however, this makes it very difficult to predict the outcomes of that participation and the social benefits of arts participation can only be described in broad, flexible and non-instrumental terms (mulligan & smith 2007). the complex relationship between arts, agency and inclusion may be frustrating for people charged with the responsibility of turning experience into social policy or for ensuring that funding for projects aimed at community strengthening is well spent. they need to be reassured, however, that the evidence is mounting, in all its diverse forms, that arts participation has a distinctive and timely role to play in the contemporary world. references australian bureau of statistics 2001, 2001 census data, viewed 18 september 2006, http://www.abs.gov.au/. beck, u 1992, risk society: towards a new modernity, sage, london. booth, t & booth, w 2003, ‘in the frame: photovoice and mothers with learning difficulties’, disability and society, vol. 18 no. 4, pp. 431–442. brett, j & moran, a 2006, ordinary peoples’ politics: australians talk about politics, life and the future of their country, pluto, north melbourne. cohen, s 2001, ‘social relationships and health: berkman and syme (1979)’, advances in mind–body medicine, vol. 17, p. 6. cultural ministers council 2004, social impacts of participation in the arts: stage two report, evidence, 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http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/seu/2001/pse/pse.pdf. stehlik, d 2006, ‘community as palimpsest: the example of perth’, dialogue, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 41–49. vichealth 2002, ‘creative connections: promoting mental health and wellbeing through community arts participation’, viewed 31 may 2006, http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/assets/contentfiles/creativeconnections %20text.pdf. vichealth 2006, ‘community arts and participation scheme’, viewed 31 may 2006, http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/content.aspx?topicid=119. walmsley, j 2006, ‘putting community in place’, dialogue, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 5–12. wang, c & burris, ma 1994, ‘empowerment through photo novella: portraits of participation’, health education quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 171– 186. wang, c & burris, ma 1997, ‘photovoice: concept, methodology and use for participatory needs assessment’, health education and behavior, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 369–387. wang, c & redwood-jones, ya 2001, ‘photovoice ethics: perspectives from flint photovoice’, health education & behavior, vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 560–572. williams, d 1996, creating social capital: a study of the long-term benefits from community-based arts funding, community arts network of south australia, adelaide. williams, d 1997, how the arts measure up: australian research into the social impact of arts programs, comedia, london. young, im 1990, justice and the politics of difference, princeton university press, new jersey. 11 hoffman.indd rediscovering community interethnic relationships and community gardening the areas of community service work, civic or cultural engagement and volunteer work with society are rapidly becoming popular topics of research, as many individuals are discovering the value and psychosocial need to contribute to a community or social event (ferber 2007). the value of community service work in relation to how individuals communicate and identify with others as well as within their own cultural and ethnic group has been well established (chun & akutsu 2003; martin & nakayama 2004). when specific types of environments are created and established, allowing individuals to contribute to the community and work with each other, prosocial behaviours develop more readily, which improves the overall context of other relationships in society and culture (bond & smith 1996). current research suggests that increased contact with ethnically diverse groups can in fact reduce prejudice and racial conflict (paolini et al. 2004; pettigrew 1997). given the fact that increased contact (via superordinate goals) with different ethnic groups has been shown to help reduce racial conflict and improve race relations, we decided to create a conceptual replication of past research where a gardening environment would allow for members of ethnically diverse groups to interact and work on a variety of gardening-related projects. while there have been numerous studies exploring the relationship between group work and general interethnic relations (see, for example, gaertner et al. 1989; hoffman & wallach 2007a; pettigrew 1997), little empirical research to date has explored the relationship between actual community service gardening activities and reductions in ethnocentrism. because different theorists have different perceptions of what community service work actually is, we define community service work as any community volunteer service that is primarily devoted to improving the environment and relationships of those who comprise any community. community service activities (such as those in the current study) are organised under the direction of supervisors (or mentors) who help train and educate gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 171–184 ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 august john hoffman metropolitan state university and compton community college julie wallach eduardo sanchez 172 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez the community members who work in some way to improve the environment (such as cleaning parks and recreational systems) or society. why is community service work effective? a popular and relatively new discipline in psychology today is evolutionary psychology (buss 2004). evolutionary psychology describes the development of prosocial behaviours necessary for groups of individuals to engage in positive and mutually beneficial acts in order to ensure the survival of members within the group (trivers 1971). an argument can be made based on this theory that the reason why community service work remains a vital component among groups of individuals is that we have evolved the capacity and need to not only benefit from the services of others, but to also provide those benefits to others in society. one theory that describes the popularity and effectiveness of community service work is simply that of identification with others who need help, a concept that is commonly referred to as ‘empathy’, where individuals who observe others in need of assistance feel inherently compelled to engage and interact with them, offering support and help whenever possible (penner et al. 2005). this theory is very compelling for many evolutionary psychologists, who argue that significant early behaviors such as altruism and group or community engagement evolved from necessity and now literally provide the ‘glue’ for the fabric of modern behavior. these early behaviors have helped to shape group norms that are now manifest in the social interaction and prosocial behaviors of society today (buss 2004). when group members work cooperatively with one another, they tend not only to communicate more effectively, but also to return or reciprocate prosocial behaviours, an evolutionary concept that is referred to as ‘reciprocal altruism’ (cosmides & tooby 1992; trivers 1971). however, when societies and cultures (that is, individualistic cultures) prevent individuals from engaging in cooperative group work that allows them to share their skills and aptitudes, conflicts often develop from a lack of understanding of the values of other cultures and societies (tjosvold 1993). additionally, when group members perceive others as behaving in a self-centred or egoistic manner, they tend to respond in a similar egoistic manner (kerr & kaufman-gililland, 1994). thus, it is important that communities (especially those communities with diverse cultural backgrounds) embrace the numerous potential advantages and opportunities that are offered through the basic principles of community service work. in the current study we hypothesised that participation in the community gardening program would significantly reduce reports of ethnocentrism and increase perceptions of the importance of community service activities. the benefits of community service work are more than improving a segment of society and helping individuals to work more cooperatively with 173 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez each other. community service involvement has also been shown to help individuals to understand the value and importance of civic responsibility, social participation and commitment to the community to which they belong (jones & hill 2003). cooperation and interdependency have been shown to be critical factors that influence the group’s ability not only to solve problems more effectively, but to allow group members to develop and return favours to each other that ultimately enhance the resilience and integrity of the group itself (komorita & parks 1995). additionally we hypothesised that the development of a community service gardening program would foster appreciation and value of future work in community service activities. gardening and horticulture are very rewarding activities but can also be very laborious due to the scope of the responsibilities involved in maintaining a community garden. given the fact that gardening activities can be effectively accomplished by groups of individuals working cooperatively, we decided to explore the effects of community gardening in terms of improving interethnic relationships and decreasing ethnocentrism. method participants thirty (n = 30) participants (15 female and 15 male) were randomly selected for the study. participants were undergraduate students who volunteered (convenience sample) to participate in the study and were enrolled in an undergraduate psychology course at compton community college (ccc). ten female and 10 male participants from ccc were hispanic and the remainder (five female and five male) were african american. ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 32 years. apparatus the community service gardening activities took place in the northern section of the compton community college campus (spanning two acres). the location of the garden itself was critical to the study, as participants had relatively easy access to the tools and equipment that facilitated the maintenance and continued development of the program. participants were able to engage in the gardening work relatively easily without logistical problems of transportation, etc. equipment used in the current study consisted of a variety of traditional gardening tools and equipment: 10 shovels, five rakes, 10 hand spades, one string edger, three (power) mowers and one push-variety lawn mower. all participants were provided with instructions on how to complete work assignments in the garden. depending upon weather conditions, students watered the plants and engaged in cultivating and weeding exercises. the participants planted a variety of flowers, roses and vegetables throughout the program and prepared the soil to accommodate new plants. the garden includes over 100 citrus trees, rose plants, 174 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez artichokes, various herbs, grapevines, watermelons, strawberries, and several native plants and perennial flowers. during the course of the project participants planted the following vegetables in the vegetable garden: 25 celery plants (a. graveolens); 25 collard greens (acephala); over 50 different white and yellow corn plants; a variety of red, yellow and white onions (allium); 25 common ‘cherry’ tomato plants; 25 ‘thumb’ carrots (d. carota) and 25 common red beets (vulgaris). seven citrus trees (three navel orange, two kumquat and two oro blanco) and two bacon avocado trees were planted in the garden area. the flowers that were planted in the rose garden consisted of different varieties, including dianthus, chrysanthemum, cosmos, sunflower and poppy. procedure ethnicity and demographics compton community college is a very ethnically diverse college located in south-east los angeles, california. the city has changed dramatically from an ethnic demographic perspective within the last 20 years. prior to 1950, the area was middle income, comprising primarily caucasian residents. however, during the 1960s through to 1975, the demographics changed significantly, with african americans growing to comprise over 75 per cent of the city of compton. these demographic and ethnic changes are most clearly reflected in the student body enrolled on campus at ccc, where today over 60 per cent of the campus students identify as ‘hispanic’ or ‘mexican american’ and 30 per cent of the students identify themselves as ‘african american’. the remaining 10 per cent of students identify themselves as ‘caucasian’ or ‘other’. given the highly diverse ethnic backgrounds of the students at ccc, we decided to focus on the relationships between community service gardening work and interethnic attitudes. a within subjects (paired samples) design was used in this experiment in which all subjects received the same levels of treatment as a means of increasing internal validity and reducing random error. the treatment consisted of the activities of planting the flowers, trees and vegetables in the community garden over a span of 16 weeks (one academic semester). participants (n = 30) were administered a pre-test measuring ethnocentric attitudes and attitudes towards community service work (see appendix 1: ‘ethnic ultimate attribution error’ scale). after completing the pre-test measure, all of the participants arrived at compton college each saturday morning (spring semester 2007) from 7 am to 12 noon. because gardening work becomes more physically challenging and demanding as the temperature heats up, participants were requested to report to the community college garden area promptly at 7 am. all participants were asked to sign in with the experimenter once they arrived at the work site and to sign out upon completing their assignment. 175 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez three of the participants were not able to report to the campus until 9 am, and they were assigned to a mentor with other students upon their arrival. overall actual attendance throughout the 16-week project was surprisingly strong, testament perhaps to the popular nature of gardening activities. many of the participants had indicated that they appreciated the opportunity to ‘work outdoors’ owing to few such locations available to them in the urban city area where they lived. of the entire 30 participants in the study, three absences were due to ‘personal problems’ and two absences were due to preparing for academic assignments. the participants were given preliminary instructions in terms of how and where to plant the various trees, shrubs, vegetables and flowers. the participants were also given instructions to work closely with each other and to provide support and assistance to each other while completing each gardening assignment. participants typically worked in groups of three, four or five and were given detailed assignments by the experimenter, such as weeding a specific area of the garden (least popular) and planting three to four citrus trees or rose bushes (most popular). additionally (and perhaps most importantly), the participants were encouraged to engage in dialogue with each other when they needed help or if they were unclear on a particular assignment. they were also encouraged to share their ideas with each other throughout the work experience, and to discuss their future academic and educational plans after completing ccc. two key topics were assigned to each participant throughout the study which would be collected by the experimenter at the end of the project: —what were their subjective feelings and experiences in working with other students from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds while participating in the community garden? —how would they identify their future academic and professional goals? —what were their plans after graduating from the community college? —what was the overall impact of their community service activities? an important function of the study was to help the participants realise their goals in working in the community garden with other students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. each work assignment lasted approximately 45 minutes to two hours, and at the end of two hours all of the participants enjoyed a 45-minute lunch break. during this period participants were able to share experiences with each other about things they liked (and disliked, such as weeding and manual physical labour). after this much-needed break, all participants resumed work with randomly assigned group members. this change in group status provided the participants an opportunity to engage in work with different members. the final phase of the work day included 176 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez the cleaning-up process, sweeping, throwing rubbish in containers and finally watering. all participants were instructed to sign in in the morning once they arrived and to sign out upon completing their assignments. the average actual ‘work time’ that the mentors and community college participants spent working together varied from group to group, but averaged 90 minutes to two hours depending on when the gardening assignment was completed. an important goal and component of the study was establishing supportive relationships among participants and a better ability to understand and communicate with each other while completing their specific tasks. we hypothesised that the positive relationships that developed among the participants and mentors would reduce any levels of pre-existing ethnocentrism and increase perceptions of the value of community service work. in some cases the work that was completed by the student participants and mentors was very specific and required detailed instructions (such as cultivating a particular area of land, mixing and mulching the soil and then planting vegetables like corn) and in other situations the work was very mundane and simple – some may even refer to it as ‘boring’ (for example, picking up rubbish and litter in the garden area, sweeping sidewalks or simply weeding). all participants worked together cooperatively and this form of positive collaboration made the mundane and boring work ‘more tolerable’ according to the participants. ethnic ultimate attribution error (euae) scale and community service work attitudes an important component of the community service program was not simply helping interethnic groups to improve communication with each other, but also to identify how attitudes may have changed in terms of appreciating the value and importance of community service work. at the conclusion of the study, all participants were administered the ethnic ultimate attribution error scale (euae), a questionnaire that measures two variables: —reports of satisfaction while completing a community service project —reports of subjective experiences in working in ethnically diverse environments, and attitudes of members of ethnically diverse groups. the euae is a likert-based scale designed to measure attitudes of individuals working within ethnically diverse groups as well as self-report responses regarding satisfaction and importance in engaging in community service activities. the reliability of the responses concerning both attitudes towards ethnically diverse populations as well as the value of community service work was high, with agreement between raters exceeding 80 per cent (r = .82). additionally, a ‘reflection paper’ was required by participants which explored anecdotal comments by each participant regarding their overall subjective experiences throughout the study (see appendix 2). 177 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez results the results of the study strongly support the hypothesis that community service gardening activities significantly reduce levels of ethnocentrism among community college participants. as predicted, there were significant changes in the results for ethnocentrism among the participants from the pre-test to the post-test scores. pre-test: (m = 80.73; sd = 8.30); post-test: (m = 59.55; sd = 24.98); t(10) = –2.53; p < .03 (where sd = standard deviation, m = mean, t = statistical t value; see table 1 at the end of the article for extended information). discussion the results of the study strongly support the hypothesis that ethnically diverse community service work significantly reduces ethnocentrism. the participants worked together, cooperatively and collectively, to achieve the desired goal of improving the community college and garden area. the results of the study are a direct result of the benefits of a ‘superordinate’ goal – that is, a goal only capable of being achieved through the cooperation and assistance of all members, regardless of ethnicity or gender. the fact that the community college participants were ethnically diverse and were able to work cooperatively with other participants supports previous research addressing cooperative group work with multiethnic populations (triandis 1990). by working cooperatively with each other the participants soon learned about the mechanics of community gardens. more importantly, they learned to work with each other despite economic and physical differences. additionally, the community college students learned that they actually had more in common with each other than not, a concept that is referred to as the ‘norm of homogeneity’ (bond & pyle 1998). the preand post-test ethnocentrism scores that were provided by the euae scale reflect this result. the benefits of the community service gardening activity were further supported by the anecdotal comments provided by the students in post-experiment interviews. one participant (raul) commented: ‘i had the chance to participate in the gardening program and got to meet people that i normally would have never met. it was a great experience to work with other students and to achieve something beautiful that could be shared by others. it is a “win–win” situation and i would recommend it to anyone.’ a second participant (ani) wrote: ‘i think the gardening activity is a great idea because it gets you outdoors and working with people. it helps an area [compton college] that needs improvement and it also helps everyone to get along better. i enjoyed the time i spent there and am happy that our work was so appreciated by everyone.’ the ramifications of the study are very important if we wish to improve interethnic relationships and reduce a disturbing growing trend of ethnic conflict and violence within our 178 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez community. perhaps the most important finding of the study is that there are in fact several community-related activities that can promote positive interethnic behaviours that successfully reduce conflict within our society. communities and civic leaders can become proactive in reversing the trend of inner-city violence by establishing more programs that embrace the philosophical and fundamental principles of community service work. city leaders and governmental agencies can create more inner-city programs to help younger individuals recognise the positive strengths in interethnic collaborative group work. gardening programs that help students to work together and produce foods for the community can help replace gang activity within our communities and schools. rakes and shovels can replace graffiti and guns. most importantly, community gardening programs help teach participants the inherent positive value of interethnic work and achieving goals by working together. the key component in the success of the community service activities was based (in part) on interdependence – the concept that goals can only be reached if all participants set aside their perceived differences and work cooperatively together. in the current study the sheer magnitude of the project ensured interdependency. a few well-intentioned individuals clearly could not have achieved the ultimate goals of the community service gardening project. the combined efforts of all of the participants were necessary to achieve the development and proliferation of a beautiful two-acre garden over the span of 16 weeks. when the participants realised that they needed to work together under the direction of the mentors, their work became more cooperative and unified as a group – which is the essence of community service work. many of the participants indicated to the experimenter that they ‘felt pride’ in the work that they were participating in and enjoyed the aesthetic beauty of the campus at the end of the work day. thus, the realisation of the need in others, regardless of ethnicity or gender, to complete a project of this size, is what contributed to the important development of interdependence and resulted in the reports of reduced ethnocentrism in the post-test phase of the experiment. this sense of unity and colourblind ‘wholeness’ is essentially the substance and crux of the many benefits of community service work. based on our significant findings, we feel compelled to make several suggestions for future research. our first recommendation is for an increase in the number of participants in future studies. in the current study nine community college participants discontinued participation for several reasons. while attrition rates vary in empirical research, it should be noted that the overall attrition rate for compton community college students is relatively higher than the national average, with an average semester attrition rate of 30–40 per cent (over 80 per cent of the students are currently on financial 179 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez aid). the reasons for this disproportionately higher attrition rate are complex; however, the majority of students indicated that ‘economic reasons’ are the most common reason why they need to drop classes or even discontinue attendance. for future studies we recommend at least 50–100 participants as a more effective base in determining the relationship between ethnocentrism and community service work. additionally, we recommend traditional between-subjects design (that is, separate groups for the experimental and control groups) be implemented, where participants are randomly assigned to either a control or an experimental group. the between-subjects design may help improve the internal validity of the study to better determine the effects of the community service work. a third recommendation for future work concerns the external validity of the study. in the current study our primary ages ranged from 18 to 30 years. this relatively young sample may not accurately reflect the overall effects of community service work on older participants. notwithstanding these limitations of the study, we feel that community service work has many positive and valuable applications to the community and society. participants reported feeling overall ‘very satisfied’ after the community service gardening program and indicated that they looked forward to working with the other participants during the day. one participant commented: ‘every saturday morning when i wake up i look forward to planting my vegetables and working with the other students. the gardening program really gave me a sense of accomplishment and helped me to feel good about myself because i was doing something good for other people.’ one of the mentors (luz) commented: ‘now i can appreciate the fact that i can do something that can help others here at the school. it was great to work with different people and to get to know them over the course of several weeks. i just felt better about myself because i was doing something productive to help people less fortunate than me every saturday ... i want to do this [community service] again next semester!’ in conclusion, the community service program was successful not because of individual efforts, but because of group efforts in working cooperatively towards a single goal. the community service work helped our participants to look beyond their superficial differences (that is, ethnicity or socioeconomic status) and identify their common interests – improving a community college by planting and tending flowers, vegetables and shrubs. the participants took pride and ownership in what they were doing and offered help to each other throughout the program. finally, there were many secondary benefits that we attribute to the community service activities in addition to the reduction of ethnocentrism. for example, the participants were able to communicate and interact more often with members of diverse ethnic groups. this process allowed them to discover that their 180 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez perceived differences were small compared to the numerous similarities they shared with each other. if we, as a society, truly wish to reach out to more communities and help reduce ethnic conflict and violence, we need to re-examine how groups interact with each other and create more programs that are designed to facilitate the principles of community service work and interdependency. appendix 1 ‘ethnic ultimate attribution error’ (euae) scale please give each statement a score of ‘1’ through ‘5’, where scores indicate: 1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree somewhat 3 = not sure / don’t know 4 = agree somewhat 5 = strongly agree. community service attitude scale 1 i feel that it is important for different ethnic groups to work together on community projects 2 i feel that it is possible for people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds to live and work together in harmony 3 i believe when people from all backgrounds work together on a common project, people tend to understand each other better and get along more 4 i believe that ethnic diversity can strengthen and improve our community in many different ways 5 i am just as likely to establish friendships and communicate with members of different ethnic groups as my own ethnic group 6 i believe that racism and discrimination are traits that are learned (not something that is inherited) and if something is learned, it may be ‘unlearned’ 7 i believe that our school systems (such as high schools and primary schools) should develop community service projects for the students to get involved with (i.e. help clean litter, plant gardens, work in food shelters, etc.) 8 higher educational systems and communities both work more effectively for students when they establish programs that encourage ethnically diverse groups to work together 9 i believe community service programs can help children to become more autonomous and responsible persons as adults 181 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez 10 i believe that community service programs (such as gardening) can help students to identify their vocational strengths and career interests 11 usually when i accomplish something i believe it is due to my skills and talents 12 i believe that there are many people who accomplish things not necessarily out of skill, but rather they happen to be in the right place at the right time or just simply luck 13 i feel that i can pretty much control the outcome of events that occur in my life, whether they are good or bad events 14 i feel that many people who suffer from health problems (e.g. obesity) simply have a tendency to remain inactive or sedentary in their lifestyle 15 when something goes wrong in my life it usually is due to some circumstance that i can change as long as i put my mind to it 16 it is difficult for me to rely on others because i generally feel that pretty much i can do the best job 17 i feel that when members of the same ethnic group get together they pretty much look out for each other more than members of a different group 18 i feel that some groups of people are more prone to failure due to circumstances that they in fact have control over 19 i prefer working with and socialising with members of my own group 20 i believe that people are biologically predisposed to prefer being with those who are more like them appendix 2 reflection paper the last several weeks you have participated in a community-service oriented program designed to improve a community college that serves underrepresented student populations. please briefly comment about your overall subjective experiences (both positive and negative) and provide any insight or suggestions to the program, such as: —what types of experiences with your participating partners came to mind while you completed the gardening program? —how can the gardening program be improved? —have your attitudes toward community service work or volunteer behaviours changed since participating in this program? if so, how? 182 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez —does any single experience stand out in your work in the garden with your partners? — thank you! table 1 group statistics school n mean standard deviation standard error mean pre-test compton 17 81.94 7.830 1.899 csun 8 80.00 6.949 2.457 post-test compton 11 59.55 24.985 7.533 csun 8 82.38 4.658 1.647 paired samples test levene’s test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference standard error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper lower upper lower upper lower upper lower pre-test equal variances assumed 0.552 0.465 0.598 23 0.556 1.941 3.247 –4.775 8.658 equal variances not assumed 0.625 15.451 0.541 1.941 3.105 –4.661 8.543 post-test equal variances assumed 84.706 0.000 -2.533 17 0.021 –22.830 9.012 –41.843 –3.816 183 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez references allen, t 2006, ‘rewarding good citizens: the relationship between citizenship behavior, gender and organizational rewards’, journal of applied social psychology, vol. 36, pp. 120–43. bond, r & smith, p 1996, ‘culture and conformity: a meta-analysis of studies using asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task’, psychological bulletin, vol. 119, pp. 111–37. bond, m & pyle, j 1998, ‘diversity dilemmas at work’, journal of management inquiry, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 252–69. buss, d 2004, evolutionary psychology: the new science of the mind, 2nd edn, 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pp. 516–39. kerr, n & kaufman-gilliland, c 1994, ‘communication, commitment, and cooperation in social dilemmas’, journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 66, pp. 513–29. komorita, m & parks, g 1995, ‘interpersonal relations: mixed-motive interaction’, annual review of psychology, vol. 46, pp. 183–207. martin, j & nakayama, t 2004, intercultural communication in contexts, 3rd edn, prentice hall, upper saddle river, nj. paolini, s, hewstone, m, cairns, e & voci, a 2004, ‘effects of direct and indirect cross-group friendships on judgments of catholics and protestants in northern ireland: the mediating role of an anxiety-reduction mechanism’, personality and social psychology bulletin, vol. 30, pp. 770–86. penner, l, dovidio, j, piliavin, j & schroeder, d 2005, ‘prosocial behavior: multilevel perspectives’, annual review of psychology, vol. 46, pp. 365–92. pettigrew, t 1997, ‘generalized intergroup contact effects on prejudice’, personality and social psychology bulletin, vol. 23, pp. 173–85. tjosvold, d 1993, learning to manage conflict: getting people to work together productively, lexington books, new york. 184 | gateways | hoffman, wallach & sanchez triandis, h 1990, ‘cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism’, in j berman (ed.), nebraska symposium on motivation, 1989, university of nebraska press, lincoln, pp. 41–133. trivers, r 1971, ‘the evolution of reciprocal altruism’, quarterly review of biology, vol. 46, pp. 35–57. fostering resilience empowering rural communities in the face of hardship statistics for rural and remote communities in australia make for grim reading. the people in these communities experience relatively high unemployment, low household incomes, inadequate public transport, scarce services and an ageing population (catholic welfare australia 2006). coming on top of these difficulties has been the current australian drought, which has been unprecedented in terms of its severity, geographic spread and duration, with some areas declared to be in ‘… exceptional circumstances for 13 of the past 16 years’ (productivity commission, australia 2008). the ‘natural cause’ of this economic loss has left communities struggling, as they attempt to respond to a situation that is largely beyond their control. in many cases this has led to a decline in rural community populations, with many members seeking better incomes and circumstances elsewhere (country matters 2008). recently, the australian government established a drought policy review expert social panel to examine the social impact of drought on rural communities. during 2008, the panel held 25 public meetings with over 1000 people in order to gain feedback on the challenges facing these communities and, most importantly, to gather information to develop guidelines for the future. among the multiple recommendations, the panel noted, ‘to effectively prepare communities for the social impacts of future dryness, governments must ensure [that] support of community development initiatives reinforce social changes that will endure’ (dpresp 2008, p. 26). while outlining many positive interventions and responses to these communities, the panel also highlighted that ‘there are a range of individuals and non-government welfare or church-based groups that are almost competing with each other to deliver packages of food, clothing or toiletries and to hold community socialising events’ (p. 26). further to this, ‘a number of people informed the panel that, in their view, many of these groups may have lost sight of their client group’ (p. 26). in this article we report on findings generated from community meetings held as part of the community resilience building approach used by the north east riverina rural gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 55–69 ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 darryl maybery monash university rod pope charles sturt university gene hodgins charles sturt university yvonne hitchenor north east riverina rural counselling service 56 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor counselling service (nerrcs). while it is not unusual to capture information about the impact of climate on rural areas from public meetings or forums (such as the expert social panel, 2008), this study uniquely focused on capturing community responses about what actions and goals they would propose, in order to build and strengthen their communities for the future. contrary to being ‘out of touch’ and ‘losing sight of their client group’, the nerrcs approach is specifically designed to focus and empower small rural communities, families and individuals to self-manage the ongoing impact of adverse climate changes. the project was funded by the australian government department of families, housing, community services and indigenous affairs (fahcsia), and focused on eight small communities in the south-east of new south wales, australia. this article details the key outcomes from the community meetings held in these regional areas, plus provides a discussion of the strengths and limitations of the research. it was considered that the core themes (from community responses) would provide important information and perhaps direction to other communities, policy makers and researchers seeking to encourage social groups struggling to build their resilience. the nerrcs approach the broad aim of the nerrcs approach was to support and build capacity in rural communities so that they could effectively manage change and thrive. the approach was initially developed from a community forum with practical input from a regional reference group and rural health academics from the centre for inland health, charles sturt university, wagga, new south wales, and monash university, melbourne, victoria. central to the approach was increasing community access to and use of services offered by government and other agencies. it was recognised that rural people preferred to create their own destiny rather than have programs imposed on them. the project was designed, therefore, to empower small communities, with the secondary benefit of avoiding dependency. community members would be invited to work together and plan community capacity building measures that would help them cope with the effects of drought. a series of community meetings were central to the nerrcs strategy. the approach is strengths based, focusing on community assets and strengths rather than deficiencies and weaknesses in accordance with the principles of asset-based community development (scales & streeter 2004). the nerrcs approach is also informed by the model of neighbourhood resilience described by mowbray and colleagues (2007), and employs principles that underpin family and community centred practices (dempsey & keen 2008; dunst, trivette & hamby 2007), which recognise that communities are unique, know the needs of their members best and are most able to support themselves. the concept of resilience has provided a valuable theoretical foundation on which to build the resulting approach to facilitating positive community responses to hardship. 57 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor definitions of resilience have included successful adaptation to stressful circumstances (werner & smith 1982), the ability of individuals at high risk to prosper (rutter 1987) and ‘bungy jumping through life’ (fuller, mcgraw & goodyear 1999, p. 159). resilience involves such things as inner strengths like optimism, self-esteem and adaptive coping techniques (grotberg 1995), and relational strengths characterised by having and maintaining quality supports and connections (grotberg 1995). relational resilience involves quality family connections (resnick, harris & blum 1993), availability of support (cohen & wills 1985) and positive educational institutions and experiences (fuller et al. 1999; resnick, harris & blum 1993). luthar (2006, p. 780), a distinguished expert in the field, sums up five decades of research into resilience by saying that ‘resilience rests, fundamentally, on relationships … strong supportive relationships are critical for achieving and sustaining resilient adaptation’. while there has been considerably less research into community resilience, per se, than into individual resilience, landau and saul (2004) identify four themes important to community resilience in response to natural disasters and traumas. they include community and social connectedness; collective communication regarding the trauma; ‘getting back on the horse [by] reestablishing the rhythms and routines of life’; and having a positive vision of the future or renewed hope. mowbray and colleagues (2007) highlight connectedness to others through social assets, such as schools and sporting clubs in urban neighbourhoods, as being very important for community resilience. being strengths focused is also an underlying ideal of the resilience concept. landau (2007, p. 351) suggests that ‘… individuals, families, and communities are inherently competent and resilient, and that with appropriate support and encouragement, they can access individual and collective strengths that will allow them to transcend their loss’. this is the underlying premise of the nerrcs approach and is inherent within its strategic response to the small rural communities it serves. in summary, it appears critical that interventions for australian rural communities, which face perhaps the most difficult period in their history, must focus on empowerment from within rather than answers imposed from without. it also appears theoretically and anecdotally important that these solutions be socially proficient – that is, they build upon the social connections and resources already present in these communities to further develop their social resources. method context the study was conducted in eight small rural communities, ranging in population size from approximately 150 to 8000. these communities are all located within the northern riverina region of new south wales, australia, in an area spreading 50–220 58 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor km north and west of wagga wagga. this is part of the service delivery region of nerrcs. wagga wagga is a large regional centre (population just under 60 000), located 450 km south-west of sydney. aria+ index scores for the participating communities ranged between 2.40 and 10.53, meaning these communities were categorised as ‘outer regional’ to ‘remote’ (australian institute of health & welfare 2004). participants participants were 97 consenting members from the eight communities who, following open invitations to all community members, attended two meetings in their community organised by nerrcs. on this basis, it is unlikely that the participants were representative of all community members, but it is likely that they reasonably represented those community members most likely to participate in action to strengthen their communities, as attested by their attendance at the meetings. all participants were informed of the nature and purpose of this study, which formed part of the evaluation of the nerrcs program and meetings. all volunteered to participate on the understanding that the data required for the study would be gathered during the meeting proceedings, and that the anonymity of individuals would be protected. participants were informed through extensive local advertising, including posters, newsletters and word of mouth, that the gatherings aimed to enlist local input to community planning and action that would strengthen the community. ethics the study protocol was approved by the charles sturt university ethics in human research committee (protocol 2008/133). given the positive (strengths) focus of the approach and the voluntary nature of participation there was minimal risk to participants. however, we offered support service contact to participants and any description of participants ensured that they were not identifiable by their position in their communities. to take part in the community meetings, or focus groups, participants signed consent forms that were stored separately from all other material associated with the study, such as recordings, memo notes and transcripts. any identifying information emerging at any time was removed from the data sets. the study did not, as far as we are aware, impinge on culturally sensitive issues or involve culturally and linguistically diverse participants or persons with mental illness. the ethical considerations of the research were consistent with those applying to many qualitative research projects, and included participant recruitment, informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, protection from harm, and interpretation and ownership. these considerations were managed in accordance with the ethical guidelines identified by charles sturt university’s code of conduct for research. 59 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor procedure participants attended an initial interactive public meeting in their community, akin to a focus group, followed by a second ‘action plan’ meeting 6–10 weeks later. both meetings were facilitated by nerrcs. the initial meeting encouraged attendees to identify and prioritise their needs, identify the community assets available to respond to those needs and identify skills gaps and barriers that must be addressed. the second meeting encouraged participants to prepare action plans that would strengthen their community and address identified needs. in line with the earlier mentioned philosophy of nerrcs – communities are unique, know best the needs of their members and are most able to support themselves – the discussion at both meetings in each community was very much ‘led’ by the community and not the facilitators. the meetings were guided by the following four key research questions (posed to each community): —what are some of the issues/things that you are noticing here that you feel are a result of the drought? —what does your community need to do if it is to become stronger? —to implement an action plan to strengthen your community, what training and/or other supports do you need? —what actions and future goals should your community undertake to become stronger? data collection data was collected in two ways, with consent of all participants. first, large write-up sheets (‘butchers paper’) were employed to record, in writing that could be viewed by all participants, key points from the discussion. second, the proceedings were audio recorded in order to capture the detail of the discussions. data analysis following the meetings, both sources of data were then summarised for each community in the form of a brief report (6–8 pages), including action plans (see examples in appendix 1). all documents were returned to the communities for participant checks (lincoln & guba, 1985), in order to elicit feedback on any inaccuracies and required amendments. key themes from the eight individual community reports were then independently identified by two authors for each of the four questions. these authors then pooled shared theme categories, noting differences but reaching an overall consensus regarding central themes. results tables 1 to 4 outline the key responses to each of the four research questions, with communities listed as ‘a’ through to ‘h’. to the first question regarding the impact of the drought, table 1 presents six key themes: finances, transport, stress and health, social disintegration, young people and community events (in this case, generally a positive outcome associated with events that brought the community together). 60 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor there were three subthemes within the ‘financial impact of the drought’ category: a general expression of having less money (‘no money in your pocket’); the subsequent need for people to find off-farm jobs to supplement income; and the cost of transport. this issue of cost of transport (particularly in relation to higher fuel costs) was also considered important in relation to reducing social activity. participants across a number of communities thought that the cost of transport meant that fewer people joined in sporting or other social activities, or volunteered for community activities. transport was also specifically mentioned in relation to accessing services such as health and education, but was also seen as a broader reflection of the ‘tyranny of distance’ suffered by rural communities. in distilling the comments, it appeared that transport was a ‘rural issue’, irrespective of the drought. however, the effect of the drought in reducing income and, in recent times, the increasing cost of fuel meant there was essentially a double negative impact on the ability to fund travel costs. town financial impact of drought transport stress and health social disintegration young people community events (positive) general off-farm work fuel costs – social contact a no money to spend. affecting business and businesses closing. farmers working ‘off farm’ for income. really hard to find money to do things. going outside of town, ‘living away from home base’. volunteers are burning out, giving up commitments. numbers of children dropping (no farming children) – have been decreasing since 1980s. fewer activities locally for children – now going to bigger centres. one particular annual major event of this community is good for the town. community drought gatherings and witches night have been good. b unemployment – rural and regional. fifty per cent less income in shire since 2001. slower retail economy. fewer dollars in community – less joining in things like sport etc. strain on existing facilities; mental, physical, emotional. children impacted (they know what is going on and are feeling the strain). negativity, frustration. social interaction decreasing. kids not coming to town. declining student numbers (tafe), especially in rural courses. c financial impacts on individuals, families, business and the community. health issues, including access to doctors (depression, hidden feelings). volunteers burning out. friendly town. incoming people are welcomed +/– people leaving the community, particularly young people. school numbers are fine. strong sporting ties. table 1: ‘what are some of the issues/things that you are noticing here that you feel are a result of the drought?’ 61 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor town financial impact of drought transport stress and health social disintegration young people community events (positive) general off-farm work fuel costs – social contact d prolonged nature of drought. lack of income and disposable cash for individuals and families within the community. concern and worry in terms of future weather. ‘town name is changing’. new people moving to the community especially from ‘cities’. they have different ways of living and different expectations. perception by parents that children will be ‘turned off’ pursuing a career in agriculture/ farming. community is ageing – fewer children and families – not attracting young families. e people looking for alternative employment – off farm. requirement to travel away for training and stay away from home with low wages. social aspect disappeared as a result of financial restrictions. increased fuel costs having a real impact – potential to increase isolation. very limited services and having to travel for everything – health, education etc. – placing extra financial burden. some services not available in local community, so need to travel to wagga wagga. people leaving the community. social aspect disappeared as a result of decreased numbers of residents. families separated as a result of off-farm work – dividing families and increasing pressures in families. children noticing and missing the social side of the community. sporting clubs folding. community connection lost in recent years, e.g. closure of golf club and tennis club. f financial impacts. isolation due to cost of fuel: impact on health. difficulties with iptas (isolated patient transport assistance scheme). guilt of parents. extra pressure on service providers. depression. frustration – not being able to provide for family. loss of control. losing confidence in the future. lack of motivation to plan/decide. exodus from rural areas. family breakdown (communication breakdown). community resilience in evidence. volunteers decreased: numbers, ability, financial and psychological, availability, work demands, tougher existence. community teamwork to the fore. opportunities to teach kids about resilience, teamwork. g lack of on-farm jobs. lack of income – small businesses struggling. having to get other jobs. community transport needs (no transportation to bigger centres). ‘tyranny of distance’; tradespeople not wanting to come out. lack of motivation. depression (individual) – concern children are depressed as well. losing young people. harder for young families to get started. 62 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor table 2 highlights some typical statements from across the community groups in response to the second research question identifying what communities need to do to become stronger. the central theme that emerged was the desire for more social or recreational activities. this was notable, as almost all of the groups saw this as a key way to bring people from the community together. the second theme was the need to strengthen families, with a particular focus on young people — this included more social activities and the general perceived need to ‘strengthen families to support kids’. there was some overlap of this category with the social/recreational category and also with the third category, which was to provide support/empathy to and between community members. together, these three categories constitute a shared theme of developing community connectedness and the social assets of the community. the final two theme categories in participant responses were focused on such things as improving the look and function of the town (such as organisational/visual/ practical), and meeting the training needs of the community. responses to question 3 build upon this training need (see table 3). town financial impact of drought transport stress and health social disintegration young people community events (positive) general off-farm work fuel costs – social contact h no money in your pocket. more women working off farm – childcare issues. fuel is dear here – people have to travel long distances. less people with time and money to volunteer, but more work to do. more depression. feelings hidden – failure? especially the men. middle generation suffering – not as much experience of drought. stigma attached to poor mental health. people leaving farms/towns. people helping one another out – coming together more. town social/ recreational family/ youth support/ empathy organisational/ visual/practical training a more social events. more for the youth and families. town needs to look better. b maintain contact. understanding and listening. education, business development. c hobby groups/clubs. help each other. tafe outreach courses/ computers. d have regular organised gatherings. socialise more. community support. work together as a group. e social gatherings. promote increased community connectedness. working bees to clean up church yards etc. provide resources to start projects. f more social events. involve farm and town people together if possible. strengthen families to support kids. encourage communication and support between community members. funding and town improvement. g hobbies, sports etc. youth — social opportunities. be more aware of others’ feelings. clean up after ourselves. table 2: what does your community need to do if it is to become stronger? 63 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor the central training needs identified by participants were in submission and grant writing, short courses in such things as mental health and first aid updates, resumé writing and support on how to plan and undertake action planning. with the exception of one community, there was also an identified need to enlist outside support. in addition, almost half of the communities identified that an outside independent facilitator was important for planning and community meetings. further to this, and not shown in table 3, participants also considered it important to have a local organiser who was readily accessible, knew ‘what the community was already doing’, and could ensure that the timing of such things as training was considerate of other work commitments. there was also interest in sharing community ideas with others. the two most commonly articulated goals, each proposed by six communities, were centred on increasing social connectedness and being or becoming more positive in focus (see table 4). social connectedness focused upon bringing people together generally but also on getting the community working together and having fun. being positive focused on developing a team spirit to build belonging and to overcome apathy. the remaining goals centred on providing support to others, particularly youth, welcoming visitors, improving the skills of community members and beautifying the town. based on these goals, each community then proceeded to develop a detailed action plan to address their goals. it is not possible, within the confines of this paper, to describe all of the actions proposed but examples are provided in appendix 1 and illustrate the sorts of detailed and concrete planning that participants undertook for their communities. town submission/ grant writing short courses action planning enlist outside support other a get shire assistance. nothing needed – action being taken within town resources. b how to write funding submissions and access grants. support to write action plan. independent facilitator for future meetings (nerccs). develop interagency collaboration. c get outside support from local shire, youth work, nerccs, lions, rotary. d submission/grant writing. how to run more effective meetings and events. how to plan. basic corporate governance. e get funding from dpi and/or catchment management authority. f submission/grant writing. mental health and wellbeing. first aid update. resumé writing. independent facilitator for planned meeting (nerccs). draw on outsiders for instrumental actions/ support. g independent facilitator for community meeting required. table 3: to implement an action plan to strengthen your community, what training and/or other supports do you need? 64 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor discussion many communities in this study highlighted the stress and strain associated with the drought and the resultant mental health problems. this is consistent with previous research (for example, alston & kent 2004; dpresp 2008). the theme of halting disintegration and building social cohesion was a key need and action plan. this theme was also important for young people. while previous literature has shown how the drift of families away from rural communities impacts on young people’s further education and schooling (alston & kent 2006; dpresp 2008), the current finding illustrates that rural communities are also concerned about the socially isolating nature of drought on young people. an important finding from this study was the enthusiasm and empowerment that the nerrcs approach facilitated in the participating communities. the appendix illustrates communities determining and taking action to meet their own identified needs, with multiple community members responding with action. landau and saul (2004, p. 9) suggested, following the 9/11 tragedy, that communities in new york needed the opportunity ‘… to be able to retain or regain connection to their families and natural support systems’. it appears that communities in the rural australian context have similar needs. the nerrcs approach brought each participating community together and focused them on their strengths and natural support systems, via social activities. however, unlike 9/11, the australian drought experience is now not considered to be a defining event, but rather a normal part of australian agriculture (dpresp 2008). this definitional reorientation of drought prompts a need to examine how external agencies should respond to these communities. the nerrcs community empowerment approach, as demonstrated by the current findings, provides a model of how governments (and town social connectedness be/come positive provide support visitors improve skills improve town a bring people together. support our youth. welcome our visitors. beautify our town. b working community. overcome apathy to empathy. interested community. c seek opportunity and run with it. support our community. increase visitors to town. d social connectedness. team spirit. mutual support. e bring people together. build a sense of belonging. skills for individuals. skills for community. f bring people together, increase opportunity and diversity. create positive energy with positive communication. encourage and support youth. g create positive energy. overcome apathy. skills training. h family fun day. table 4: what actions and future goals should your community undertake to become stronger? 65 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor non-government agencies) can respond to the recent expert social panel suggestion that, ‘governments must be more effective in encouraging people in rural communities to self-identify their health needs and be able to seek appropriate support at an early stage’ (dpresp 2008, p. 8). instead of external agencies imposing themselves on communities (dpresp 2008), we suggest a resilience model of community engagement that: —focuses communities upon their strengths and natural support mechanisms —inherently values the communities’ strengths and ability to respond —builds upon the communities’ self-identified needs, activities and assets. such outcomes are clearly demonstrated by many of the community responses highlighted in table 2. in responding to the question ‘what does your community need to do if it is to become stronger’, the communities highlighted four key strengths that could be built upon. notably, only one factor (training) required outside support. while not suggesting that outside assistance should not be offered, this finding highlights that if given the opportunity (for example, via the nerrcs approach) communities will focus upon building and enhancing their own strengths and resources. we suggest that employing this approach is likely to lead to a more efficient, focused and effective use of external resources, one which is directed by communities. the nerrcs approach could also be extended further. first, it could consider what mechanisms could be put in place to sustain engagement, empowerment and development of these communities. while some of the current nerrcs communities did not need further encouragement to focus and plan for the future, other communities appeared to need ongoing facilitation to nurture empowerment. a second issue is how to encourage early identification of issues, problems and solutions, using the nerrcs approach, in a continuous fashion. one mechanism might be for drought workers or counsellors to regularly facilitate such meetings with the communities they serve — akin to a town reference group that is attuned to recognising community needs and directing actions and utilising resources. we recommend that agencies, as a first step, engage with groups of individuals who are broadly representative of their community. engagement with communities should be undertaken with a strength and resilience focus and attitude. this would ensure that individuals and organisations intending to serve communities do not ‘lose sight of their client group’. it is particularly important to note that facilitators need to be independent of the communities, be strengths focused and be willing and able to facilitate community action and self-development. there are several limitations to this research. first, the data collection relied upon groups of individuals who volunteered to attend a community meeting. while these meetings were open to 66 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor the public, the findings may have been affected by sampling bias and participants responding in a group setting. second, while considerable effort was made to reduce any facilitator bias (that is, facilitator awareness of the issues, philosophy of nerrcs), small rural communities are not isolated from one another, and they may have communicated action aims or outcomes to each other independently of the nerrcs-organised meetings. in conclusion, the current findings are important in confirming some of the key issues of stress, strain and financial hardship in rural communities dealing with prolonged drought. however, most importantly, the findings demonstrated that, though the communities recognise that this situation is contributing to some degree of social disintegration, there appears to be considerable hope that, by working together and utilising social agencies, communities can develop social connectedness, which can in turn make them more resilient. the nerrcs approach is an important model that drought workers and governments can use to encourage rural communities to selfidentify their needs, strengths and assets; be empowered to take future action; and move forward in a coordinated fashion. acknowledgement we gratefully acknowledge the support of the north east riverina rural counselling service, charles sturt university centre for inland health, and funding provided by the australian government department of families, housing, community services and indigenous affairs. appendix 1 examples of action planning and goal setting from towns d and e (note that minimal editorial changes were made to these planning documents). town d by consensus, the participants decided to focus on social connectedness (goal 1) as it was felt that if town d was a socially connected community this would foster mutual support (goal 2) and team spirit (goal 3). our goal organise a community christmas celebration at the recreation ground. —how: find out who is interested – by newsletter, word of mouth, shop notice and personal contact. enlist support. —when: sat 15th december at 5.30 pm (tbc), planning done by 1st week in december. —who: seven people were named as volunteers (noted that all others who show interest were welcome – the more the better). one person was named to talk to all who come into the store. —resources: $$$$ budget $600: promotional flyer, inform and get permission from recreation ground and show society (shire), get public liability insurance – each of these activities were assigned 67 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor a volunteer responsible for taking action. get people to help; need kids’ amusement ideas. a final note: by this point in the process facilitation was redundant, as the participants had taken control of both the process and the event. they then presented their morning’s work to the year 6 pupils , seeking their involvement and feedback. the group agreed to meet again at the store on monday next in order to continue planning. town e our goal to bring people together, increase opportunity and diversity with the aim of creating a music group/club. —how: approach arts council, develop the story behind the idea, use churches and schools to promote, identify and seek expressions of interest, write a story for the newspaper and local news. —when: discuss potential at next interagency meeting may 20. —who: five volunteers were identified, with some actions required, including talking to arts council and approaching a neighbouring community who had a choir. —resources: draw on local government area to promote and find a venue; the arts council and local newspaper to help in promotion. references aisbett, d, boyd, c, francis, k, newnham, k & newnham, k 2007, ‘understanding barriers to mental health service utilization for adolescents in rural australia’, rural and remote health, vol. 7, no. 624. alston, m & kent, j 2004, social impacts of drought: a report to nsw agriculture, centre for rural social research, charles sturt university, wagga wagga, australia. alston, m & kent, j 2006, the impact of drought on secondary education access for rural and remote areas. a report for dest, centre for rural social research, charles sturt university, wagga wagga, australia. australian institute of health and welfare 2004, rural, regional and remote health: a guide to remoteness classifications, rural health series no. 4, cat. no. phe 53, aihw, canberra. australian institute of health and welfare 2007, rural, regional and remote health: a study on mortality, 2nd edn, rural health series no. 8, cat. no. phe 95, aihw, canberra. catholic welfare australia 2006, lessons from the field: family relationship services in rural and remote australia – challenges and good practice, discussion paper, catholic welfare australia and the department of families, community services and indigenous affairs, canberra, viewed 23 october 2008, www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/families/pubs/rural_remote/ lessons_from_field-frs_rural_remote_aus/pages/default.aspx. cohen, s & wills, t 1985, ‘stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis’, psychological bulletin, vol. 98, pp. 310–57. country matters 2008, social atlas of rural & regional australia, bureau of rural sciences, commonwealth of australia, canberra, viewed 14 april 2010, http://adl.brs.gov.au/socialatlas/. 68 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor dempsey, i & keen, d 2008, ‘a review of processes and outcomes in family-centered services for children with a disability’, topics in early childhood special education, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 42–52. drought policy review expert social panel (dpresp) 2008, it’s about people: changing perspectives on dryness. a report to government by an expert social panel, department of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, canberra, september. dunst, c, trivette, c & hamby, d 2007, ‘meta-analysis of family-centered helpgiving practices research’, mental retardation and developmental disabilities research reviews, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 370–78. fuller, a, mcgraw, k & goodyear, m 1999, ‘bungy jumping through life: what young people say promotes well-being and resilience’, australian journal of guidance and counselling, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 159–68. grotberg, e 1995, a guide to promoting resilience in children: strengthening the human spirit, bernard van leer foundation, the hague, netherlands. landau, j 2007, ‘enhancing resilience: families and communities as agents for change’, family process, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 351–65. landau, j & saul, j 2004, ‘facilitating family and community resilience in response to major disaster’, in f walsh & m mcgoldrick (eds), living beyond loss, norton, new york. lincoln, y & guba, e 1985, naturalistic inquiry, sage, london. luthar, s 2006, ‘resilience in development: a synthesis of research across five decades’, in d cicchetti & dj cohen (eds), developmental psychopathology: risk, disorder, and adaptation, 2nd edn, vol. 3, wiley, new york, pp. 740–95. luthar, s & brown, p 2007, ‘maximizing resilience through diverse levels of inquiry: prevailing paradigms, possibilities, and priorities for the future’, development and psychopathology, vol. 19, pp. 931–55. maybery, d, pope, r, hodgins, g, hitchenor, y & shepherd, a 2009, ‘resilience and wellbeing of small inland communities: community assets as key determinants’, rural society, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 326–39. mowbray, c, woolley, m, grogan-kaylor, a, gant, l, gilster, m & shanks, t 2007, ‘neighborhood research from a spatially oriented strengths perspective’, journal of community psychology, vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 667–80. murray, g, judd, f, jackson, h, fraser, c, komiti, a, hodgins, g, pattison, p, humprehys, j & robins, g 2004, ‘rurality and mental health: the role of accessibility’, australian & new zealand journal of psychiatry, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 629–34. productivity commission, australia 2008, inquiry into government drought support: issues paper, productivity commission, canberra, viewed 11 november 2008, www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/81880/ government-drought-support-issues.pdf. resnick, m, harris, l & blum, r 1993, ‘the impact of caring and connectedness on adolescent health and well-being’, journal of paediatrics & child health, vol. 29, suppl. 1, s3–s9. rutter, m 1987, ‘psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms’, american journal of orthopsychiatry, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 316–31. scales, t & streeter, c 2004, ‘asset building to sustain rural communities’, in t scales & c streeter (eds), rural social work: building and sustaining community assets, brooks/cole/thomson learning, belmont, ca. 69 | gateways | maybery, pope, hodgins & hitchenor walsh, f 2007, ‘traumatic loss and major disasters: strengthening family and community resilience’, family process, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 207–27. werner, e & smith, r 1982, vulnerable, but invincible: a longitudinal study of resilient children & youth, mcgraw-hill, new york. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 1–17 © utsepress and the author transgressive partnerships: community engagement in a south african university martin hall community engagement, along with teaching and research, is one of the three principles of the south african higher education system. this role is set out in the 1997 white paper on higher education and has been affirmed as a priority in a series of subsequent policy positions and criteria for quality assurance. the white paper (which informed the higher education act of the same year) required that public higher education institutions ‘demonstrate social responsibility … and their commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for community service programmes’. a key objective was to ‘promote and develop social responsibility and awareness amongst students of the role of higher education in social and economic development through community service programmes’. this policy position was reaffirmed three years later in the ministry of education’s national plan for higher education which asserted the priority of enhancing ‘responsiveness to regional and national needs, for academic programmes, research, and community service’ (republic of south africa 1997; 2001). gateways | hall 2 yet there has been persistent dissatisfaction with outcomes over the following decade. for example, lazarus (2007) noted that, while by 1999 most institutions had included the concept of community engagement in their mission statements, only one had operationalized it in the three-year rolling plan required by the department of education. favish argued that concepts of engagement are inadequate because they fail to incorporate fully social, cultural, political and economic dimensions (favish 2003). mouton and wildschut (2007, p. 7), reviewing service learning interventions across a range of institutions, concluded that service learning ‘has unfortunately resulted in a strong negative reaction at some institutions … institutions are generally reclaiming the contested concept and labelling service-learning with their own terminology or saying that they will do service-learning in their own way’. these observations are supported by the outcomes of institutional audits completed by the higher education quality committee between 2004 and 2008, which show that universities are at widely varying stages in conceptualizing community engagement practice (hall 2009a). singh, summarizing the situation at a landmark conference on aspects of community engagement held in 2006, noted that there is a clear need for a comprehensive reconceptualization and review of community engagement in south africa’s universities (council on higher education 2007). the articles brought together in this collection contribute to the process of review and reflection through the lens of one higher education institution, the university of cape town (uct). a public univerity, uct is situated in cape town in the western cape province. with south african’s second highest population – over 3.5 million – the city, which is the largest conurbation in south africa, is home to the national parliament and numerous government departments. founded in 1829, uct is south africa’s oldest university. as the only university in south africa listed in the top 200 in the times higher education ranking of world universities, uct lays claim to being the country’s leader in both reseach and teaching (claims that are, of course contested by other universities). while renowned as a centre of liberal opposition to apartheid, uct now takes a conservative position on scholarship and teaching, tending to gateways | hall 3 conceptualize engagement as taking place through the processes of teaching and learning, rather than as a third imperative with its own – distinct – leadership and organizational structures. broadly, uct would self-identify with elite institutions in other parts of the world: the russell group in britain, the group of eight in australia, the ivy league in the usa. this positioning gives a particular perspective to the work of community engagement. given uct’s general position that community engagement is best expressed through the practice and scholarship of teaching and research, the strategy that has been developed for taking engagement forward has been to identify and describe cases of good practice through an annual social responsiveness report. these reports, the first of which was launched in 2004, were intended to stimulate debate: firstly, within the university community about different forms of social responsiveness and how learning and research can be enhanced through engagement with external constituencies; and secondly about the role of the university in engaging with the socioeconomic needs especially in a context of deep inequality, and high levels of poverty and unemployment. case profiles were selected by a senate working group that took as a key criteria an intentional public purpose or benefit, and engagement with external constituencies. this strategy was successful in that, in 2008, uct’s senate and council adopted a policy framework for social responsiveness that acknowledges the interconnectedness between social engagement, research and teaching as well as civic engagement outside the formal curriculum (favish & ngcelwane this volume). conceptualizing community engagement as intertwined with teaching and long-established approaches to research leads, in turn, to a consideration of the epistemology of knowledge itself. these are questions about what is accepted as legitimate knowledge, the scope of the university’s role in recognizing and validating forms of knowledge and the definition and boundaries of the curriculum, understood as the ways in which the university disseminates knowledge that it has validated as authentic. these issues are further contextualized by the articles that follow, as well as the portraits of good practice in uct’s successive social responsiveness reports, providing an instructive profile of the ways in which a longgateways | hall 4 established and widely recognized university is responding to its location in a country, an immediate hinterland, facing considerable and continuing developmental challenges. the immediacy of these challenges, and the valency of location, was brought home in may 2008 when south africa was confronted with an extensive outbreak of racialized public violence directed at economic migrants, refugees and foreign nationals from other parts of africa. favish’s review of uct’s response to this crisis, seen through the work of a student volunteer organization, a refugee rights project and an academic department, raises key questions of the ways in which immediate humanitarian responses can grow into sustained forms of engagement with underlying issues of poverty, marginalization and racial and national stereotyping. while uct’s response to the crisis showed ‘the enormous capacity that exists within universities to contribute to the ongoing development of our society, through research and teaching, as well as through sustained engagement with issues confronting our country’, the challenge of sustained engagement remains: the case profiles suggests that universities need to grapple seriously with the challenge of building the relationships and structural mechanisms that will enable them to enhance their role in promoting the public good. it also raises questions about the critical role of university leadership in universities for developing appropriate strategies for promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and galvanising the intellectual resources of the university to respond to the needs of the majority of people in our country (favish this volume). concepts of knowledge a working understanding of community engagement would include service learning, problem-based teaching and research that addresses specific wants and needs, the pursuit of alternative forms of knowledge, and challenges to established authorities that control and direct research systems and the allocation of qualifications. why has this kind of work remained on the margins of the traditional university in south africa, despite a decade of clear public policy, and why does there appear to be resistance to its inclusion despite a number of incentives that include moral affirmation for contributing to social and economic justice? gateways | hall 5 articles in this collection show how specific forms of engagement push at the boundaries of conventional knowledge-making. both rivett and tapson and saldanha show how engagement with key societal issues (respectively, responding to hiv/aids and the requirements of workplace education) can unleash potential in both staff and students within the university. mcmillan theorizes this as work across institutional borders, a ‘boundary zone’, arguing that ‘we need to shift our unit of analysis ... from individualised practices towards the transaction space or boundary zone and develop conceptual tools to illuminate the complex social practices that occur at this nexus’ (mcmillan this volume). favish’s overview of uct’s response to the 2008 xenophobia crisis demonstrates how volunteerism, professional fields such as social development and advocacy and support projects can be mobilized. london, heap and baldwin-ragaven show how a continuing engagement with human rights issues, originating in the collapse of ethical standards in the apartheid years, has shaped a progressive discourse, ‘a shift away from an inward focus on the education of “our” medical students to looking externally to engagement with and linking into social processes in health sciences education’. this, in turn can ‘achieve a wider impact on the health sector, consistent with the vision of the truth and reconciliation commission’s recommendations for training aimed at changing the culture and practice of health professionals in south africa’ (london, heap & baldwin-ragaven, this volume). sowman’s account of the 15-year collaboration between uct’s environmental evaluation unit and the fishing communities of ebenhaeser (on the western cape coast) well illustrates the institutional ‘boundary zone’ as an area of dynamic opportunity. the ebenhaeser community first approached uct in 1993 due to concerns about the presence of diamond recovery vessels in the estuary. this resulted in the initiation of a research project to assess the sustainability of the net-fishery, ascertain the fishers’ levels of dependence on the resource and facilitate the development of a co-management system. in turn, this mushroomed into a transdisciplinary research project involving researchers from different disciplines and institutions: ‘the fisher community feel an incredible sense of support from their social partners, but realise that it is their knowledge and participation that is ultimately required to ensure that gateways | hall 6 their rights are protected ... researchers and community members now have a common vision and purpose with regard to the research project’ and are working together to produce knowledge that can serve community needs and also contribute to scholarship (sowman this volume). do cases such as these, which see the university pushing outwards and embracing new sorts of work change the nature of the university in itself? in order to explore this, we need a way of understanding, and mapping, the epistemology of both traditional and engaged ‘knowledge work’. one way of doing this is through actor-networktheory (hall 2009b). there is an extensive literature on actor-network-theory and its use in understanding processes of research. however, for present purposes, latour’s close study of a fieldtrip, comprising a botanist, pedologist and geomorphologist, to study the border of the amazon forest and the savanna in brazil, serves well. latour shows how the research exercise comprises a series of ‘transformations’. thus the research site is mapped, soil samples taken, codified by the use of standards of colour and granularity, removed from the field to the laboratory and published, encouraging further questions that will prompt a return to the field, and the collection and codification of further samples: knowledge, it seems, does not reside in the face-to-face confrontation of a mind with an object, any more than a reference designates a thing by means of a sentence verified by that thing. on the contrary, at every stage we have recognized a common operator, which belongs to matter at one end, to form at the other, and which is separated from the stage that follows it by a gap that no resemblance could fill. the operators are linked in a series that passes across the difference between things and words, and that redistributes these two obsolete fixtures of the philosophy of language: the earth becomes a cardboard cube, words become paper, colours become numbers, and so forth. an essential property of this chain is that it must remain reversible. the succession of stages must be traceable, allowing for travel in both directions. if the chain is interrupted at any point, it ceases to transport truth – ceases, that is, to produce, to construct, to trace, and to conduct it. the word ‘reference’ designates the quality of the chain in its entirety … gateways | hall 7 truth value circulates here like electricity through a wire, so long as this circuit is not interrupted. (latour 1999, p. 69) what is particularly useful here is the concept of the ‘reference’ circulating through a ‘circuit’ of connected actors to establish and validate an ever-dynamic corpus of knowledge. further consideration of sowman’s case study of the ebenhaeser fishing community well illustrates this. described in the terminology of actor-network-theory, it is apparent that the environmental evaluation unit’s initial facilitation of co-management arrangements established a network that connected uct, the ebenhaeser fishing community and the fisheries authority. references circulate in this network as ‘understanding and insights into the conditions required for co-management to be operationalised’. through the university, the network of circulating references is widened to include other countries: ‘the notion of comanagement as an alternative approach to managing small-scale fishery systems was being advocated and explored in many countries throughout the world’. as a result, new knowledge is developed: ‘the recent proposal to declare a “no-take” marine protected area (mpa) in the estuary has initiated a new wave of research that is focusing on gathering and analysing oral histories from fisherfolk in the ebenhaeser community’. political positioning and contested power relationships are fully incorporated as part of the integrated knowledge system: ‘the rationale for this research is to gain information on traditional fishing practices and identify customary rules that governed this fishery historically. this information may be required to demonstrate customary rights of these fishers and challenge the proposal to declare a mpa in the estuary’. as a result, there is a common sense of participation in the ‘circuit’ of references: ‘researchers and community members now have a common vision and purpose with regard to the research project’ and are working together to produce knowledge that can serve community needs and also contribute to scholarship (all quotations from sowman this volume). using actor-network-theory to understand how communities of practice connect to produce powerful new forms of knowledge further amplifies mcmillan’s understanding of boundary zones. her article summarises the work of the community-higher educationgateways | hall 8 service partnership (chesp), which has worked to promote service learning in south africa (mcmillan this volume; also lazarus et al 2008). as with many service learning initiatives, the chesp programme has challenged the boundedness of the traditional, formal, university curriculum through experiential learning ‘in community’. such ‘border pedagogy’, when it is successful, results in a joined-up system in which there is a shared understanding of purpose and meaning: ‘it is only at the intersection with each other, that these communities of practice become one system and through their activities together, the elements of the system get constituted. the activity system does not exist outside of the service learning activities; the activities act to constitute the system’ (mcmillan this volume). in more general terms, the methodology of actor-network-theory and the concept of ‘border pedagogy’ give substance to the idea of the ‘organic intellectual’ returning to gramsci’s original conception. giving effect to this work at, and across, the boundaries of institutions has required the incorporation of different forms and expressions of knowledge in a shared system of circulation. thus a particular quality of engaged ‘knowledge work’ that crosses boundaries is that the forms of knowledge that circulate as ‘references’ vary. this is well illustrated by two cases described by favish and ngcelwane in this volume. the portrait of the african religious health assets programme (arhap), located in the department of religious studies at the university of cape town, connects practitioners of different forms of knowledge who are concerned in differing ways with the treatment of hiv/aids. the shared circuit of communication replaces the sterile distinction between ‘academic/ western’ and ‘traditional/ african’ knowledge with a common way of making meaning in pursuit of a shared set of objectives. similarly, the portrait of the postgraduate programme in disability studies in the faculty of health sciences illustrates how the research community of disabled and non-disabled academics, activists, policy makers and practitioners use participatory and action-oriented research to generate a shared knowledge system for both teaching and policy development (favish & ngcelwane this volume). a useful way of disaggregating these differing forms of knowledge – or varying forms of ‘reference’, in the terminology of actorgateways | hall 9 network-theory – is to think of them on a spectrum between highly localized, ‘tacit’, ways of knowing and universal, ‘codified’, forms of knowledge (david & foray 2003; foray 2004). tacit knowledge is localized, developmental and usually communicated by direct interaction. while forms of knowledge transmission such as apprenticeship, learning in the household and oral transmission in initiation processes are standard examples of tacit, or informal, knowledge transmission, so are science laboratories, seminars and the circulation of draft analyses. codification is essential if knowledge is to be generalized, generally shared and expressed in forms that have explanatory power: codification consists in translating knowledge into symbolic representations so that it can be stored on a particular medium. this creates new cognitive potentialities that remain inconceivable so long as the knowledge is attached to individual human beings and, hence, only heard (when spoken) or seen (when put into practice) through interaction with those carriers. inscribing (through writing, graphics, modelling, virtuality) makes it possible to examine and arrange knowledge in different ways and to isolate, classify and combine different components. this leads to the creation of new knowledge objects such as lists, tables, formulae, etc. these are fundamentally important in that they open up new cognitive possibilities (classification, taxonomy, tree networks, simulation) that can provide a framework for the rapid production of new knowledge ... but they are only possible when people consider the matter of recording and, hence, the symbolic representation of their cognitive states. (david & foray 2003 p.26) recognition of prior learning processes (rpl) are often instances of the alignment of tacit and codified knowledge. well established as a principle for addressing the acute inequalities of opportunity in south african education, rpl is less often put into practice in ways that enable and empower learners. this may be due to difficulties of translating a person’s expertise in tacit forms of knowledge – for example, workplace or community expertise, or knowledge gained through forms of apprenticeship – into the codified ‘book knowledge’ of the academy. the approach taken by uct’s adult learners working group, described by saldanha in this volume, gateways | hall 10 shows how curricula can be developed that work across established organizational boundaries that separate institutions such as universities, trade unions and government departments. through the vehicle of a two-year, part-time diploma in adult education, workplace-based educators gain access to the university through recognition of their prior-learning which is often in the form of tacit knowledge. rather than starting with highly-codified theoretical knowledge, the curriculum opens with reflection on experience, moving iteratively between theory and practice. a key objective is to provide learners with agency to enable them to intervene and facilitate change in workplace contexts, where they will need competence in both codified and tacit forms of knowledge to succeed. a further example of the potential in bringing both tacit and codified forms into the same knowledge system is again the ebenhaeser net-fisheries project (sowman this volume). as with other maritime communities, the ebenhaeser fishers have an extensive tacit understanding of the ecology of the olifants river estuary and an appreciation of the probable effects of disruptive interventions, such as the activities of diamond recovery vessels which first prompted them to approach uct’s environmental evaluation unit for assistance. their perception was that, by linking their close understanding of their circumstances with the eeu’s understanding of the scientific basis of estuarine systems and current and pending environmental legislation (codified knowledge par excellence), they could work to secure their livelihoods. from the perspective of the university, the trust established with the ebenhaeser community opened up a new and valuable source of knowledge that could be codified as reports and academic papers in a number of disciplinary and transdisciplinary areas. this provided university-based knowledge-workers with reputational capital which, for their part as well, further secured their livelihoods (david and foray 2003). for this combination of tacit and codified knowledge ‘references’ to work effectively, both ebenhaeser and uct participants depend on a common, trusted, ‘circuit’ through which these ways of knowing can be shared. the benefits of transgressive partnerships by thinking of knowledge in these ways, and relating theory to rich cases of practice, it becomes evident that work across the boundaries gateways | hall 11 of institutions results in new and exciting opportunities for creating and distributing new ways of knowing. a first set of benefits is motivational and transformative for the university as an organization. as favish and ngcelwane note, case studies show how work began through engagement and activism on key issues that relate to the universitiy’s social and political context. they point out that, in theorising the university’s role with regard to critical citizenship, work in social responsiveness can lead to an examination of the reconstruction and development functions of higher education, the production of graduates able to promote social justice and construct empowering relationships with disadvantaged communities and the role of higher education in supporting a democratic ethos and cuture of human rights (favish & ngcelwane this volume). in their account of work in uct’s faculty of health sciences, london, heap and baldwin-ragaven (this volume) show how taking up human rights issues has forced staff to step outside disciplinary boundaries and work with lawyers, adult educators, development practitioners, media experts and political scientists. this has in turn facilitated conceptual development, moving from a narrow notion of human rights as civil and political freedoms, to recognising the increasing importance of engaging with socioeconomic rights challenges in a developing country context and focusing on implementation of human rights principles. similarly, the cell-life project, which facilitates clinical care for hiv positive people, grew from dismay at the mbeki government’s denial of the realities of the aids pandemic and the consequent failure to provide vulnerable communities with appropriate health care (rivett & tapson this volume). turning to adult education, saldanha (this volume) describes how the field developed in the mid-1980s, at the height of popular mobilisation against the apartheid state and the growth of local civic organizations, providing a space for community and political activists to meet and talk to each other in a way that was quite difficult to do in the face of state repression. the transformative effects of breaking conventional boundaries can result in what foray (2004) has called a ‘combinatorial explosion’ – the burst of creativity that can follow from organizing or codifying knowledge in new ways. naturally, motivational benefits influence the formal domain of the curriculum – the ways in which knowledge is structured for gateways | hall 12 development and transmission inside the academy (an important form of codification in itself). the human rights focus in the health sciences and work in adult education each demonstrates this connection. for their part, london, heap and baldwin-ragaven (this volume) describe how redesigned curricula for the health professions have incorporated human rights issues both in classroom teaching and clinical training. and the curriculum for the diploma in education (adult education) has been developed around critical reflective practice that builds the personal and professional identity of students by recognizing the validity of their prior workplace-based learning (saldanha, this volume). one further case also show the benefits of community engagement for curriculum development. knutsen, steyn and nicol (this volume) are concerned with developing knowledge transfer from universities to industry, a key element for economic development and job creation. they point out that there is often a disjuncture between the traditional focus of the university curriculum and the needs of industry, which need short and effective pathways from research and innovation to application. their case study shows how the finalyear engineering curriculum can be developed to integrate industry partners in teaching through project development. it would, of course, be naïve to argue that curricula innovations such as these are self-evident and problem-free. apart from representing long-established systems of codifying knowledge, the curriculum is often a proxy for access to resources and other ‘gatekeeper’ functions of the university as an institution, as delineated by bourdieu in his now-classic study (bourdieu 1988). holloway details some of these challenges in her study of the introduction of disaster risk science teaching in the faculty of science at uct. disaster risk science (drs) incorporates five disciplinary areas – geography, anthropology, sociology, development studies, disaster medicine – and the curriculum also requires a community risk assessment group exercise undertaken over several days in a disaster-prone informal settlement, jointly identified with the city of cape town’s disaster management centre. this, though, foregrounded well-known tensions in transdisciplinary teaching and research as well as the differing methodologies of the humanities and natural sciences: ‘reconciling the tension between gateways | hall 13 explicit requirements for internal disciplinary robustness and the transdisciplinary demands of the disaster risk field remains a persistent subtext and institutional challenge …. the experience of the drs progamme [has been that] although deemed socially and technically valid from the lens of an applied discourse, [it] falls short in conforming to the established disciplinary paramaters of environmental and geographical science it is particularly evidenced by the continued absence of any general operating budget support for drs teaching and student supervision.’ (holloway this volume). it will already have been apparent that the ‘internal’ benefits to the university of these transgressive partnerships have evident benefits to ‘external’ constituencies, whether these be human rights work, hiv/ aids interventions, work in adult education, industrial innovation or disaster risk management. appropriately, the cases in this collection, as well as in uct’s annual social responsiveness reports, emphasise these external benefits as a matter of public accountability. for example, the urban and rural poor, especially those in developing countries, bear disproportionate levels of disaster loss and hardship. new approaches to disaster risk science described by holloway extend the ability to mitigate such risk by moving from an emphasis on sudden-onset calamities to a focus on pre-existing social and economic vulnerability. this opens up opportunities for improved risk interventions that could reduce the current vulnerability of tens of thousands of people. an appropriate way of calibrating both the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ benefits of engaged research and teaching is to ask whether initiatives have resulted in sustainable partnerships between universities and other kinds of organization. the case studies in this collection include other examples of work with ngos as well as with other civil society organizations, trade unions and community organizations that work outside both the for-profit private sector and government – a broad category that is becoming known as the ‘third sector’. projects with workplacebased adult educators fall into this category. those taking part in this programme include community educators from ngos – early childhood organisations, health and hiv/aids organizations – and educators based in trade unions. there are also cohorts from sector education and training authorities (setas) from the clothing, gateways | hall 14 textile, footwear and leather seta and the transport seta. aspects of the curriculum are negotiated with ‘third sector’ partners. for example, ‘the curriculum for the trade union educators is negotiated with ditsela – a national trade union education body, to ensure that it is grounded in the trade union context. the course is delivered jointly by the university and ditsela and is designed and facilitated by staff and educators from the trade unions’ (saldanha this volume). there is no automatic incompatibility between the ideals of academic freedom and unrestrained enquiry, and teaching and research directed at economic and social development through partnerships. accordingly, other contributions to this collection are instances of productive partnerships with industry and with the state sector. the potential for a sustainable relationship with forprofit industry is set out in knutsen, steyn and nicol’s case study of materials and manufacturing. this initiative is grounded in south africa’s national system of innovation, introduced in 1996 as a strategy to enhance international competitiveness and create new jobs. the cape initiative in materials and manufacturing (cimm) was formed to advance materials science through industry-university partnerships. cimm aims to give companies access to affordable research and development and to extend research interaction at postgraduate level. because there are evident benefits to both sides of the partnership, this initiative is seen as sustainable through addressing clear sets of interest. a good example of a partnership with the state sector is the work of uct’s cell-life project, in conjunction with the desmond tutu hiv centre in the faculty of health sciences. the centre had developed a treatment management method, using hiv+ community members who had successfully started their antiretroviral treatment programme (art) as treatment advocates. cell-life contributed an information technology system, based on cellular communication, that alleviated patient overload as the treatment management system expanded. this system called intelligent dispensing of art (idart), was specifically designed for anti-retroviral dispensing in the state public health care sector. conventional clinics, with one pharmacist and using a paper-based system, can dispense to approximately 80 patients per day, which results in a treatment ceiling of approximately 2000 patients for that clinic. the alternative model developed by gateways | hall 15 the desmond tutu hiv centre and cell-life uses a pharmacist in a central location who dispenses medication, which is then sent in sealed packages to the clinic where the patient is able to collect the medication from a pharmacy assistant. idart was designed to integrate such pre-packing, or down-referral, models. it is today installed in more than 30 clinics across south africa and supports the dispensing to nearly 70,000 patients on a monthly basis (rivett & tapson this volume). conclusion taken together, the profiles of practice in this collection provide an overview of a university community working to adapt the traditional goals of teaching and research to a scholarship of engagement with key social and economic activities. while working in a range of fields these practitioners share the conviction that the work of the university cannot be detached from its social and economic context. in this sense, all are gramscian organic intellectuals. reading through cases such as these throws light on the broader questions of higher education policy with which this introductory article opened. it can now be seen that the gap between policy and practice from the publication of the 1997 white paper to the present results in part from a confused and incomplete theorization of the ways in which new knowledge is constructed. by using the device of actor-network-theory, and concepts such as tacit and codified knowledge, it can be seen how work at, and across, institutional boundaries works, and the opportunities and barriers that such transgressive enterprises entail. in particular, it becomes clear that there is no inherent reason why knowledge claims, or assertions of authenticity or validation, should be restricted to the university as an institutional form. there is no principled reason why tacit and localized knowledge originating outside the university should remain uncodified and therefore of low general utility, or why knowledge originating outside of its bastions should be of any particular threat to the continued existence of the university as an institution. indeed, the opposite can be argued: unless the university participates in these broad, inter-institutional networks, it is likely to be marginalized. looking to the future, and mindful of the need for reconceptualization that was emphasized at the 2006 conference gateways | hall 16 on community engagement and higher education in south africa, one way forward is to think in terms of the distinction between private benefits and public goods. higher education clearly benefits individuals, who gain qualifications which provide them with access to high status employment and, on average, higher lifetime earning than those without tertiary education. universities also offer a range of private benefits to the corporate sector through industry-sponsored research, outputs in journals and books that provide commercial publishers with profits, and licences and patents that constitute intellectual property that may yield a financial return for its owners. at the same time, universities clearly benefit the public, both as individuals and collectively, through providing access to education, raising national competitiveness through skilling the workforce and fuelling regional and national economic growth, combating poverty, marginalization and unemployment. by means of the principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom, universities are part of the democratic process, generating critique of centres of economic and political power and, hopefully, educating a critical citizenry. from this perspective, what is understood and implied in the concept of community engagement can be understood as a part of a set of public goods emanating from higher education. this approach allows the objectives of community engagement to be understood within their context. for south africa, responding to the imperatives of the public good would include addressing the challenges and issues raised in each of the case studies in this collection. for a university such as uct, focusing on the imperatives of the public good would address the question raised by student leaders wendy lewis and thandi de wit in reflecting on their engagement with the humanitarian crisis that engulfed cape town in the winter of 2008: in ten years time, if something like this hit again, we would have doctors, lawyers, biologists, engineers, business people, musicians, sociologists, playwrights etc. all knowing a little more about how to respond to this situation, and wanting to respond to the situation, because they know that it is each individual that counts, not just the name of an institution. (favish this volume) gateways | hall 17 references bourdieu, p 1988, homo academicus, stanford university press., palo alto ca. council on higher education 2006, community engagement in higher education: proceedings of the conference, council on higher education, pretoria. david, p & foray d 2003, ‘economic fundamentals of the knowledge society;’ policy futures in education vol. 1, no.1, pp. 20–49. favish, j 2003, monitoring the quality of higher education: the case for making contributions to development central to considerations of quality, international conference on assessing quality in higher education, cape town. foray, d 2004, the economics of knowledge, mit press, cambridge. hall, m 2009a, community engagement and the higher education system in south africa: a metaanalysis: report to the heqc, council on higher education, pretoria. hall, m 2009b, ‘new knowledge and the university’. anthropology southern africa, vol. 32, nos. 1 & 2, pp. 69–86. latour, b 1999, pandora’s hope: essays on the reality of science studies, harvard university press, cambridge. lazarus, j 2007, ‘embedding service learning in south african higher education: the catalytic role of the chesp initiative’, education as change vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 91-108. lazarus, j, erasmus, m, hendricks, d, nduna j & slamat, j 2008, ‘embedding community engagement in south african higher education’, education, citizenship and social justice, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 57–83. mouton, j & wildschut, l 2007, ‘an impact assessment of the chesp initiative: high-level findings’, jet education services, johansbur republic of south africa 1997, ‘a programme for the transformation of higher education (white paper 3)’, government gazette, 18207. republic of south africa 2001, national plan for higher education, ministry of education, pretoria. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 61–81 © utsepress and the authors health and human rights: new challenges for social responsiveness leslie london, marion heap and laurel baldwin-ragaven south africa’s struggle against apartheid discrimination, including struggles in the health sector, laid the basis for a vibrant engagement of staff and students in human rights research, teaching and outreach in the health sciences faculty at the university of cape town (uct). this article outlines how this early engagement has continued to address new challenges emerging in the postapartheid democratic period in south africa. collaboration with nongovernmental organizations in the early 1990s led to the development of the health and human rights project, which has been at the heart of the faculty’s engagement work on health and human rights ever since. this article explores how its programme of ‘train the trainers’ in health and human rights has resulted in the national adoption of human rights competencies as an essential component of health professionals’ skills base. research has also extended lessons learnt from the apartheid period into work with vulnerable groups, such as rural farm workers and the deaf. partnerships with civil society gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 62 organisations have been a strong thread of the faculty’s engagement work, creating new knowledge and new ways of joint work, including advocacy engagement in civil society movements and the establishment of regional networks. as well, this article discusses how a focus on health professionals’ practice, in terms of dealing with potential dual loyalty conflicts and their role as gatekeepers in the health services on matters of patients’ rights, has shaped the research agenda. this article illustrates how knowledge production for the public good extends beyond notions of enhancing economic productivity for national development and provides a base for transdisciplinary and transinstitutional engagement. finally, it is shown how the portfolio of social responsiveness activities in the health and human rights envelope has offered significant and novel mutual benefits to the university and the community. background south africa experienced an extraordinary range of human rights violations under apartheid that impacted on all sectors of society. the effect of racial discrimination on health was so extreme that it was said: ‘if an outsider wished to know what “apartheid” was, an examination of health and health care would have given them excellent insight into this system of segregation, inequality and oppression’ (department of health 1997). the truth and reconciliation commission’s (trc) investigation of health sector complicity in apartheid era abuses highlighted the myriad ways in which health professionals and their organisations failed to protect the human rights of vulnerable persons and communities under apartheid (trc 1998). in particular, the trc singled out the role of universities and higher education institutions for not prioritising meaningful teaching of human rights and ethics in health professional training, noting that this neglect was instrumental to the wider complicity of the health sector in apartheid abuses (baldwin-ragaven et al. 2000). in their recommendations, the trc argued: training in human rights [must] be a fundamental and integral aspect of all curricula for health professionals. this training should address factors affecting human rights practice, such as knowledge, skills, attitudes, and ethical research practices. knowledge of and competence and proficiency in the standards gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 63 (both national and international) to which [health professionals] will be held accountable should be a requirement for qualification and registration. (trc 1998) one of the most egregious cases in which south african doctors collaborated in gross human rights violations was that of mr steve biko, a former medical student and political activist detained by security forces in 1977, whose torture during interrogation by police led to his death, despite being attended by a number of medical doctors (rayner 1987; baldwin-ragaven et al. 1999). in fact, evidence at the inquest into biko’s death indicated the doctors, who included at least one university of cape town (uct) graduate, allowed their clinical judgment in managing steve biko’s condition to be influenced by police interests: sk: ‘in terms of the hippocratic oath, are not the interests of your patients paramount?’ il: ‘yes’ sk: ‘but in this instance they were subordinated to the interests of the security police?’ il: ‘yes’ (baldwin-ragaven et al. 1999, pp. 91, 93, emphasis added) the outcry in response to biko’s death led to the closure of ranks amongst the leadership in the medical profession (van heerden 1996), with both the medical association of south africa and the south african medical and dental council attempting to cover up his torture and the complicity of the doctors’ involved (baldwinragaven et al. 1999). protests at medical schools around the country, including a very active lobby amongst students and staff at uct, led to the establishment in the 1980s of a set of anti-apartheid groups in health, which took up not only the protection of victims of political repression, but also began to explore issues of health policy needed for a post-apartheid south africa (london 2004). university of cape town staff and students were active in networks providing medical and counseling support to political detainees and in programmes for the reintegration of returning exiles and released long-term political prisoners, and contributed to the establishment of the trauma centre for survivors of violence and torture (tcsvt), a non-governmental organisation (ngo), offering mental health and social services for gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 64 victims of repression and advocating against detention. they also participated in the early policy development work around primary health care through organisations such as the national medical and dental association (namda) (coovadia 1999). origins of the health and human rights programme this involvement in anti-apartheid work by staff and students in the medical school at uct laid the basis for future engagement around human rights issues on the campus in a way that has propelled research, teaching and social engagement for the university since the 1990s. the first formal uct engagement in health and human rights began in partnership with the tcsvt in the early 1990s in the years before apartheid formally ended with the first democratic elections in 1994. staff assisted the organisation in its work around the reintegration of returned exiles and political detainees through clinical service, research and advocacy. for example, staff alerted health professionals around the country about the likelihood of malaria amongst returned exiles by publishing a letter in a national medical journal based on research conducted for the trauma centre (london & zweigenthal 1993). however, the main collaboration with the tcsvt took the form of a 3-year funded initiative, the health and human rights project (hhrp), to develop a submission to the truth and reconciliation commission (trc) on health – subsequently published as a text on health, human rights and ethics, the first of its kind in south africa (baldwin-ragaven et al. 1999) – and to assist the trc organise its national health sector hearings (de gruchy et al. 1998). the collaboration with the tcsvt formed the basis for subsequent teaching, research and outreach, since it established the value base around which the university-ngo engagement was to take place – responsiveness to need, promotion of social justice, a focus on vulnerability, the use of research and professional skills to turn vulnerability into agency, and a recognition of the mutual benefits of such partnerships. health and human rights teaching the initial focus of teaching was to run courses geared directly to undergraduate students in human rights (london et al. 1997). however, this initial teaching was offered as an optional module with gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 65 the result that it self-selected students already concerned about social justice (london & mccarthy 1998). although there was space in the institution to initiate such teaching, there was no institutional interest or support at uct at that time for fundamental curriculum change for medical students (baldwin-ragaven et al. 1998). as a result, after the funded project with the tcsvt closed in 1998, the focus of the health and human rights work shifted to teaching educators of students in a ‘train-the-trainer’ fashion. by running a short course for teachers geared toward introducing human rights into the curricula of health professionals at institutions across south africa, it was hoped that the intervention would achieve a wider impact on the health sector, consistent with the vision of the trc’s recommendations for training aimed at changing the culture and practice of health professionals in south africa. this reflected a shift away from an inward focus on the education of ‘our’ medical students to looking externally to engagement with and linking into social processes in health sciences education. since 1998, the train-the-trainer programme has trained over 200 staff from training institutions around south africa, as well as ngos, research agencies, statutory councils and professional associations (london & baldwin-ragaven 2008). the programme provides participants with skills to begin to implement curriculum change in their own institutions, as well as skills related to teaching on human rights, and for promoting transformation. the learning objectives of a train-the-trainer course in health and human rights can be summarised as: advance conceptual understanding of human rights• examine the relationship of professional/ethical codes to • human rights explore institutional accountability• recognise the importance of self-study and reflection• explore strategies for curriculum change• identify core and discipline-specific competencies• share resources available • build a network• it also integrates field visits to important human rights sites in cape town as part of experiential learning on the course. trainees have included nurses, physiotherapists, doctors, community activists, gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 66 ngo workers, and lawyers, all involved in some way in the training of health professionals. it has also included students as participants in the course; these students have engaged very effectively in discussions alongside teachers about curriculum design for human rights learning. over the past three years, the course has included participants from african-wide human rights networks of health professionals. support from the international federation of health and human rights organisations (ifhhro) has extended the profile and orientation of the training to a continental focus. the importance of institutional engagement and self-reflection as being critical to mainstreaming human rights teaching, has been learnt first hand at the university of cape town, where a faculty-based transformation process has been ongoing since 1998, intended to ensure diversity and human rights are a component of a welcoming environment for staff and students (london & perez 2001). this has been a valuable experience that has informed the content of the train-the-trainer course in health and human rights in recent years. far from teaching just knowledge, or even skills, the course engages at a level that challenges participants to think about their own situatedness in relation to questions of privilege – privilege formerly linked to racial groups in apartheid south africa, but in current times more easily recognisable in multiple axes of disadvantage other than race. notably, uct staff who have attended the train-the-trainer course have been instrumental in engendering curriculum change for uct health sciences students (duncan et al. 2006; mayers 2007; london & baldwin-ragaven 2008) and preliminary evaluations suggest that similar changes have been effected by staff at other institutions (garcia et al. 2009). curriculum redesign has enabled contentious human rights challenges (for example, termination of pregnancy) to find their way into the curriculum for health professional students in ways that enable students to reflect on their own values in relation to national human rights commitments. students are, therefore, able to engage at a deeper level with formal teaching and apply these learnings in later years when they go out into communities to conduct health promotion projects in local settings with community stakeholders. moreover, much of this development work around gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 67 human rights in the curriculum has contributed to a national consensus that human rights are a core competency for graduates in the health professions (london et al. 2007). in 2007, the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa), the national regulatory body responsible for setting standards for medical student training, mandated training in human rights as a compulsory component of health professional training, alongside ethics and health law (hpcsa 2007). as a teaching activity responding to a particularly powerful need in south africa, the course has also impacted fundamentally at the level of standard training for health professionals. health and human rights research alongside teaching, and indeed integrated into teaching, has been a research focus of the hhrp reflecting its base in public health as an academic home. health sector struggles during the antiapartheid period engaged in health policy but did not frame such policy engagement as socio-economic rights issues (london 2004). as a result, many of the post-apartheid challenges have continued to throw up contradictions for transformation, which are essentially human rights paradoxes similar to those identified by the truth commission. for example, in public criticism of the well-recognised resistance of the minister of health to the adoption of anti-retroviral medication, a letter to the newspaper pointed to the problem of ‘dual loyalty’ in health policy: a minister of health is supposed to advise a president … on the validity of medical research. what are tshabalala-msimang’s medical qualifications? ... did she swear the hippocractic oath and sign the geneva convention as all of us newly graduated doctors did? … it seems that loyalty to the party overrides the deaths of thousands of our people and our raped babies. (bain, je, letter to the editor, cape times, 14 march 2003) one of the active areas of research run by the hhrp has therefore been to focus on the problem of ‘dual loyalty’ in the health professions, both in the delivery of clinical care (rubenstein et al. 2002) and in the development and implementation of health policy (london 2002). where health professionals allow third party interests to interfere in their professional obligations to patients and/or communities, they risk complicity in the violation of human rights. gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 68 work by the hhrp has taken the form of developing guidelines as part of an international working group (rubenstein et al. 2002); providing/offering education and training initiatives for health professionals as part of continuing education courses; and advocacy at the level of professional regulation. materials on ‘dual loyalty’ have also been used in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. extending the logic of rights-based approaches into public health policies (gostin & mann 1994) has provided critiques of reproductive health policies for hiv+ women (london et al. 2008) and confinement policies for patients with drug resistant tuberculosis (london 2008a). there has been a close link between teaching and research, consistent with uct’s vision of being a research-led university, manifested both in the use of research findings around ‘dual loyalty’ in teaching but also in the engagement of students, through their human rights-based research, with public debate about key health policies (for example, mathews 2006) or in applying their analytical skills related to human rights to public health policies in their thesis research (mall 2007). in much of this, the teaching and research has necessitated strong cross-disciplinary work, not always easy to achieve. for example, finding examiners that are able to locate themselves comfortably at the interface between social science, epidemiology and law has been a challenge for validating this type of scholarly work. nonetheless, the importance of such work for contributing to changing public health policy (london 2006) has made such efforts worthwhile. a second perspective to the research work undertaken has been a focus on issues affecting vulnerable groups (london et al. 1998; london 2003; london 2005; naidoo et al. 2008). putting vulnerable groups first is critical to a human rights approach and the research activities therefore reflect the human rights perspective both in content and approach. two case studies illustrate this focus on vulnerability. the first involves farm workers in the western cape who suffer the legacy of the dop system, an arrangement which allowed for the provision of alcohol as part of the remuneration of farm workers, introduced by early colonialists in the 17th century in south africa to control indigenous labour. although no longer legal, the consequences of this system persist in the form of widespread alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence. as a result, farm gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 69 worker communities continue to experience high rates of poverty, social disruption and alcohol-related illness and injury (london 1999), including rates of foetal alcohol syndrome (fas) that are the highest in the world (may et al. 2006). research responding to this need led to the establishment of the dopstop association as an ngo in collaboration with other universities, farmers, farm worker representatives, and the local health services to address the problem of alcohol abuse in rural farming communities. dopstop has provided opportunities for students and staff to apply the principles of the ottawa charter on health promotion (world health organisation 1986) in their engagement with health services, policy interventions, advocacy and training and empowerment of communities most affected by alcohol. lessons learnt in the context of the dopstop, particularly around how to ensure sustainability of such community-based interventions, have been applied to other connected research projects. for example, a large collaborative project funded by the centre for diseases control in the usa to test different approaches to fas prevention in a rural district north of cape town (morojele et al. 2009) has been better able to anticipate how to hand over to community stakeholders a workable and sustainable intervention plan. a second example of vulnerability relates to research aimed at extending the right of access to health care for deaf people in cape town via professional interpreting services (see, for example, heap & morgans 2006). here, deaf refers to those who are born deaf or who become deaf as children and whose first language is south african sign (sasl). the project emerged from a long-term social anthropological study that investigated how deaf people strategize to deal creatively with being deaf and marginalized in a dominantly hearing society (heap 2003; heap 2006). the project work has involved undergraduate health science students working alongside – and learning from – deaf research assistants. outputs have been both academic and in the area of advocacy, with the students and deaf people collaborating to produce a pamphlet of guidelines to assist health care staff (heap et al. 2006) and a dvd submission by deaf people in sasl to a human rights commission hearing on access to health care (heap 2007a). subsequent phases of the project have started piloting a professional sasl language interpreter service for health care (see haricharan & heap 2009). gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 70 through the project, deaf people have begun to occupy and use space within the academe, working alongside other researchers in shared research offices and being visible through sasl and sasl interpreting at official university events, such as selected public lectures and seminars (heap 2007b). moreover, as researchers themselves, deaf people have become agents for knowledge generation and advocacy that would not have been possible without the flexibility and accommodation that has emerged from a commitment to human rights by the institution. without being planned as such, this project has been able to demonstrate the cogency of a conceptual framework developed in seemingly unrelated human rights research for the network on equity in health in southern africa (equinet), which explored a set of case studies to derive a model for framing a rights approach. this model recognised the agency of the most vulnerable in society as critical to advancing equity in health (london 2007) and this was largely ‘lived out’ in the work with the deaf. the importance of recognising agency as being critical to realizing the right to health was tested further in a pilot study with three local civil society organisations (csos), which explored their understanding and use of rights in their work on health (thomas & london 2006). the study identified the need for information, support and networking in order to help them engage with the state and led on to the establishment of a learning network on health and human rights (london 2008b). the learning network created a productive and respectful space for csos to explore how to best adopt human rights strategies in their work, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research to identify best practice, develop training and advocacy materials, and disseminate experiences more broadly. some of the outputs of this participatory research have been used in advocacy engagement as outlined below. network members play active roles in determining the type of research and training needed through an independent executive committee structure. outreach and advocacy in health and human rights the people’s health movement (phm) is an international civil society movement dedicated to the realization of health as a right, and aims to achieve this through concerted civil society action gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 71 (chowdhury & rowson 2000). in 2005, the phm established a south african chapter that has relied heavily on involvement by hhrp staff and researchers, and on outputs generated through the research activities of the health and human rights programme at uct. both undergraduate and postgraduate student involvement has been key to sustaining the research activities and to shaping student consciousness about community agency in health. through involvement with phm, uct staff and students as well as visiting interns have contributed to strengthening its right to health campaign and advocacy inputs, such as submissions to national policy hearings, community-based campaigns and media. in large part, this collaboration reflects the underlying values of human rights outreach as expressed in scholarly engagement to enhance social justice. another example in which hhrp advocacy has been socially responsive has been in the field of hiv/aids in south africa, where state policy has been particularly ambivalent, if not openly hostile to csos promoting the rights of poor people to care (schneider & stein 2001; heywood 2004). the health and human rights project inputs have strengthened public interest litigation challenging employment-based discrimination against persons with hiv (related to denial of employment to hiv+ persons in the national airline and the military forces), as well as assisting a court challenge against ministerial support for and departmental tolerance of the illegal distribution of and experimentation with unregistered medicine by a german entrepreneur in south africa (aids law project 2008; treatment action campaign 2008). consolidating such advocacy has required novel forms of communication and dissemination. the hhrp set up two electronic list servers, one generally on health and human rights (see health & human rights [hhrnet] at http://www.hst.org.za/generic/31) and the other, a closed list specifically for trainees aimed at teaching in health and human rights. the list servers have enabled rapid dissemination of information, invitations to join petitions or other forms of direct action, and raised wider awareness of health and human rights crises. gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 72 infusing a human rights perspective into academic work as universities grapple with the challenges of what forms of knowledge production are needed in the new millennium (muller & subotzky 2001), it is clear that realizing a commitment to the public good must be broader than just enhancing economic productivity for national development (gibbons 1998; bawa 2003). rather, such an endeavour should embrace wider conceptions of engaged and active citizenship (talloires network 2005). confirming human rights as part of a health professional’s responsibilities and identity (london & baldwin-ragaven 2006) is thus consistent with not only national but also international trends in higher education, as well as professional ethics governing the health professions. the current work in the hhrp has a strong sense of continuity with the earlier activist involvement of programme staff in antiapartheid activities, including health activism in the trade unions (london 1993) and in support for victims of political oppression (baldwin-ragaven et al. 1999). academics moving from such arenas bring with them experience, insights and commitment to train health professionals to be sensitive to health and human rights issues and to inspire students to work in the public and ngo sectors. in addition, incorporating findings from research investigating discrimination within the university into teaching programmes (perez & london 2004; ismail 2007; london et al. 2009a) has played an important role in informing the university’s own strategies for transformation as well as locating research directly in a rights context within the institution. taking up human rights as an engaged academic activity has also forced staff to step outside disciplinary boundaries and to pursue transdisciplinary and transinstitutional work, characteristic of socially responsive research (gibbons 1998). for example, much of the work has involved interactions with lawyers, adult educators, development practitioners, media experts and political scientists. human rights are about promoting wellbeing, so human rights related research must touch everyday life as it affects everyone everywhere, involving contact with all kinds of people and organisations, without which it would not be possible to do the research. this is particularly well illustrated in the opportunities presented to anthropologists working in this field. it is often suggested that it gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 73 is hard for anthropologists to disentangle their roles as researchers from their roles as citizens. but human rights allow them to engage, critically and constructively, as citizens and academics, to combine social activism and ethnography (heap 2007a). in the process, the anthropologist explores what making real the promise of the south african constitution actually means at the level of the lived experience of ordinary people. at this level, anthropology can contribute a rich ethnographic texture and theoretical innovation about the lived experience of marginalisation and human rights discourse to the body of knowledge and practice in the health and human rights field. a key challenge is to build a critical mass of researchers who can develop a coherent theoretical framework for human rights and health work and translate this into changes in the conditions of ordinary people, consistent with nyden’s argument (2005) that engaged research must lead to change with and by those affected by the subject under study. research findings from various projects within the programme have shown, firstly, the limitations of an approach to rights which depends solely on litigants having to go to court to demand their rights and, secondly, that for rights to be realized, people have to become agents in changing the conditions which allow their rights to be violated (london 2004; london 2007). this recognition of community agency has formed the basis of the programme’s involvement in the people’s health movement and in developing a learning network on health and human rights, which combines training and research in a dialectical relationship and which affords space for researchers to participate in the network whilst simultaneously and collaboratively researching the networking process. however, as pointed out by muller and subotzky (2001), socially engaged research is not inevitably less likely to reproduce power relations than what gibbons (1998) terms mode 1 or traditional approaches to research. rather, the recognition and tackling of power relations in research has to be actively pursued. for example, a paper that emerged from research with farm workers exposed to pesticides explored genetic susceptibility to pesticide risks. the paper (lee et al. 2003) won an award for scientific quality from an international gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 74 journal but attracted criticism from activists because of the possibility that categories of workers known to be genetically susceptible could be excluded from employment; this highlights the difficulties of doing research in the context of vulnerability, even when the intent is to highlight such vulnerability. learning from this experience means that researchers must be more sensitive to how research findings are presented and must involve communities directly in discussions about the research design and the collection, use and interpretation of data (nyden 2005). for example, several of the deaf field workers who assisted the department to do a baseline survey of the health and communication experiences of deaf people in cape town have become ‘shapers’ of the research rather than interpreters of signed communication for other researchers (heap et al. 2006). knowledge transfer has been a key component of how research and training can best improve communities’ rights of access to health care. over and above publishing articles in academic journals, research findings and information have been developed as pamphlets and posters on human rights for civil society. people who have completed the train-the-trainer course are added to a designated list server that disseminates information around human rights training issues, as well as case studies, materials and related training resources. the programme has made available, under open access copyright, the manual used in the train-the-trainer course, so that alumni of the course can use or adapt components of, the whole course, for further curriculum change (http://www.hhr.uct.ac.za/train/train. php). the equinet website (http://www.equinetafrica.org) has been used to post research findings and information and serves as an important authoritative source for information on equity and health in the region, providing free access to activists, researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders. most recently, the equinet health rights theme, jointly coordinated by the health and human rights programme at uct with colleagues at the university of the western cape, has engaged with parliamentarians in southern africa responsible for health through research, inputs and policy briefs (equinet 2008a; equinet 2008b; london et al. 2009b). extending such engagement with key policy-makers is part of academic responsibilities, whether in the form of submissions gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 75 to government and other agencies, such as the human rights commission, or in promoting public dialogue on human rights challenges in health affecting society. this has manifested in articles in the press and popular journals or newsletters to promote awareness of these issues. measuring the impact of the health and human rights project the hhrp programme has sought to build in some form of evaluation into all their projects. for example the impact of their training course is the subject of a current follow up study by garcia et al. (2009). however it is not always easy to identify appropriate indicators for assessing the impact of human rights work. for example, the programme’s understanding that collective conceptions of rights are as important, if not more so than individualist claims, for realizing the right to health, means that typical indicators based on individual knowledge, attitudes and practices would fail to capture real impact. further, funding for such evaluations is often difficult to secure in the absence of quantitative statistics. impacts are often at policy level and cannot be easily traced back to single interventions or research activities. for example, the decision of the hpcsa to mandate the inclusion of human rights, along with ethics and health law, as core competencies required of graduates in the health professions, was a consequence facilitated by the train-the-trainer programme, but which had many other antecedents and contributory components. short of commissioning a labour intensive qualitative policy evaluation, the links between research activities and impacts will remain anecdotal. nonetheless, this particular outcome represents a key milestone in ensuring that health professionals are better able to contribute to transformation in the new south africa. further, academic reward systems for socially engaged research are not well developed (nyden 2003). conventional ways of measuring the impact of research, namely publication in peer review journals and citations, may not always be the most appropriate ways of measuring the impact of community-engaged research because of the importance of disseminate information in accessible ways, not only to realize the purpose of the research activity but also because that is a key aspect of this form of scholarship. for example, staff who publish gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 76 high quality, peer-reviewed reports on public access websites may not gain adequate credit for such outputs in promotion processes, even if such websites are regarded as the most authoritative and popular sites for accessing information on the topic. this narrow approach does not take account that different kinds of research or scholarly outputs lend themselves to different forms of knowledge transfer or assessment of impact. most recently the deaf community of cape town (dcct) has also started to take on responsibility for assessing their own health needs. in october 2007 they hosted a workshop to showcase their work on hiv/aids to health professionals, the department of health and other interested parties (heap 2007c). the workshop formed part of their celebrations of 25 years as an ngo. conclusion the university of cape town (uct) has benefited from the community engagement; organisations in civil society view uct as a source of support and they draw on uct academics to support their work, resulting in a mutually beneficial relationship for them and the university. for example, organisations that tap professional skills to generate data to assist their advocacy have offered important sites for student learning. similarly, many of the lessons learnt from the human rights research have assisted the health sciences faculty’s own transformation. the faculty has recently established a fellowship to support health and human rights research, addressing the impact of violence on health, partly as a response to societal challenges posed by criminal violence but also in direct response to instances where violent crime has led to the death or injury of university staff or family members. socially engaged teaching, research and advocacy in human rights has therefore been able to integrate both an inward and outward focus, allowing the institutionalization of the lessons derived from socially responsive scholarship. it has facilitated conceptual development in the field: moving from a narrow notion of human rights as civil and political freedoms, to recognising the increasing importance of engaging with socio-economic rights challenges in a developing country context; and going beyond a simple recognition of vulnerability to a focus on agency, which is instrumental to transforming human rights from ‘rights on paper’ to making rights real. gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 77 lastly, the human rights work has emphasized how important reflection is, both as an academic tool and activity and as an institutional imperative. linked to this is the importance of role modeling for students. while official policies want to see university graduates committed to contributing to societal good, deeper engagement with stakeholders in the field of human rights and health offers huge opportunities to advance staff and students’ understandings, as well as to help generate the critical citizenship needed to address challenges in health and human rights. references aids law project 2008, ‘statement by the aids law project: victory against the sandf in hiv discrimination case’, viewed 22 october 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pp. 1096–1101. london, l, orner, pj & myer, l 2008, ‘even if you’re positive, you still have rights because you are a person: human rights and the reproductive choice of hiv positive persons‘, developing world bioethics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 11–22. london, l & perez, g 2001, ‘reconciliation in the uct health sciences faculty: a vision for transformation’, south african medical journal, vol. 91, no. 12, pp. 1027–1028. london, l & zweigenthal, v 1993, ‘malaria among exiles returning to south africa’, south african medical journal, vol. 83, no. 9, pp. 694–695. mall, s 2007, ‘the impact of african traditional healers on arv treatment in south africa’, masters in public health thesis, university of cape town, cape town. mathews, s 2006, ‘criminalising deliberate hiv transmission – is this good public health?’, south african medical journal, vol. 96, no. 4, pp. 312–314. may, pa, gossage, jp, marais, as, adnams, cm, hoyme, he, jones, kl, robinson, lk, khaole, nc, snell, c, kalberg, wo, 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218–224. nyden, p 2003, ‘academic incentives for faculty participation in community-based participatory research’, journal of general internal medicine, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 576–585. nyden, p 2005, ‘the challenges and opportunities of engaged research’, in l silka (ed.), scholarship in action: applied research and community change, us department of housing and urban development, washington, dc. perez, g & london, l 2004, ‘“forty-five year apart”: confronting the legacy of racial discrimination at the university of cape town’, south african medical journal, vol. 94, no. 9, pp. 764–770. rayner, m 1987, turning a blind eye? medical accountability and the prevention of torture in south africa, american association for the advancement of science, washington, dc. rubenstein, ls, london,l, baldwin-ragaven, l & the dual loyalty working group 2002, ‘dual loyalty and human rights in health professional practice; proposed guidelines and institutional mechanisms‘, international dual loyalty working group, physicians for human rights and health sciences faculty, university of cape town, viewed 22 october 2009, http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-dualloyalty-2006.html. schneider, h & stein, j 2001, ‘implementing aids policy in post-apartheid south africa’, social science and medicine, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 723–731. talloires network 2005, the talloires declaration on the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education, the talloires conference, talloires, france, 17 september gateways | london, heap & baldwin-ragaven 81 2005, viewed 22 may 2009, http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/downloads/ talloiresdeclaration2005.pdf. thomas, j & london, l 2006, ‘towards establishing a learning network to advance health equity through human rights strategies’, report to the centre for civil society, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, december 2006. treatment action campaign 2008, ‘cape high court interdicts matthias rath and orders government to investigate him and stop breaches of the medicines act. victory for the rule of law and the scientific governance of medicines’, viewed 22 october 2009, http:// www.tac.org.za/community/node/2348. truth and reconciliation commission 1998, truth and reconciliation commission of south africa report, volumes two, four, five, truth and reconciliation commission, cape town. van heerden, j 1996, ‘the meaning of the masa apology’, south african medical journal, vol. 86, no. 6, pp. 656–60. world health organisation 1986, ‘ottawa charter for health promotion’, first international conference on health promotion, ottawa, 21 november 1986. who/hpr/ hep/95.1, viewed 22 may 2009, http://www.who.int/hpr/nph/docs/ottawa_charter_ hp.pdf. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 98–118 © utsepress and the author crafting disaster risk science: environmental and geographical science sans frontières ailsa holloway in keeping with the university of cape town’s commitment to social responsiveness (http://www.socialresponsiveness.uct.ac.za/), this article traces the process that underpinned the development and introduction of a postgraduate programme in disaster risk science (drs). it foregrounds the programme’s conceptualisation within the department of environmental and geographical science (egs) at the university of cape town (uct), with particular emphasis on examining how disciplinary and theoretical coherence was balanced with cross-disciplinary application and social responsiveness. the article begins by describing the contextual conditions external to uct’s formal teaching and learning environment that provided the necessary impetus for the new programme. it also traces the iterative interaction between context and curriculum that occurred over the period 1998–2008. this engagement was facilitated and mediated by the disaster mitigation for sustainable livelihoods programme (dimp), an interfacing research and advocacy unit, located within gateways | holloway uct’s department of environmental and geographical science (egs).1 an explanation of subsequent content and sequencing of the postgraduate curriculum then follow. they illustrate the programme’s continued engagement with south africa’s newly promulgated disaster management legislation, as well as its relevance and rigour in relation to the complex risk environment of south africa’s western cape. the article continues by reflecting on the drs programme’s positive contributions both to scholarship and to risk management practice. it concludes by critically examining the pervasive and often dispiriting obstacles that constrained the new programme and that continue to challenge its institutional sustainability. framing disaster risk for the purpose of teaching and learning a fundamental expectation of higher education institutions is that they will continuously critique and evolve processes of scholarship that are academically rigorous and socially relevant. with respect to the drs academic programme, it is particularly significant that its impetus originated in constituencies largely external to uct. specifically, the programme was ‘driven-in’ by a montage of contextual and societal processes, including the conceptual and ideological reorientation of the disasters discourse in the 1990s. it was also informed by an urgency to address and reverse the historic estrangement between african higher education institutions and the disasters domain, as well as the republic of south africa’s ambitious aspirations to reform its disaster management legislation. together, these provided much of the momentum, rationale and interfacing architecture necessary for strengthening uct’s scholarly engagement in the disasters domain. the global context the past ten to fifteen years have been marked by a global reorientation of the disasters discourse, most significantly illustrated by the widespread acceptance of disaster risk reduction as a developmental imperative. this repositioning of the ‘disasters’ domain has also served to counter its more narrowly defined historic preoccupation with spectacular disaster events. scholarly impetus for this transition had in fact been building incrementally since the 1980s, drawing heavily on evidence collected 1 the author acknowledges the potential for bias in this article, given her role in establishing dimp and in initiating and implementing uct’s postgraduate programme in disaster risk science. dimp and the academic programme are currently undergoing review. gateways | holloway 100 from disasters in the 1970s and 80s that showed disaster losses to be significantly influenced by pre-existing social and economic vulnerability conditions. similarly, it reflected mounting evidence of disproportionate levels of disaster loss and hardship borne by the urban and rural poor, especially those in developing countries (blaikie et al. 1994; hewitt 1997; pelling 2003; wisner et al. 2004; among others). the shift in scholarly attention to vulnerability and risk reduction was also accompanied by vigorous international advocacy, notably by the united nations international strategy for disaster reduction (un/isdr) (http://www.unisdr.org/) and its 1990s predecessor, the international decade for natural disaster reduction (http:// www.reliefweb.int/; see also http://www.unisdr.org for further information). while both global processes actively promoted the developmental reduction of disaster risks, isdr efforts have been further advanced by the hyogo framework for action 2005–2015 (http://www.unisdr.org/). the past decade has been marked by the emergence of a wideranging vocabulary related to disasters and risks. the unisdr has made particular effort to align terms and definitions that are frequently used. for instance, ‘disaster risk’ is defined as the ‘potential disaster losses in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services which could occur to a particular community or society over some specific future time period’. other definitions may be accessed online at: http://www.unisdr.org/eng/terminology/terminology2009-eng.html. this global framework, an outcome of the world conference on disaster reduction in january 2005, places specific emphasis on building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters (isdr 2005). it explicitly calls for integrating disaster risk reduction into sustainable development policies and planning; the development and strengthening of institutions, mechanisms and capacities to build resilience to hazards; and the systematic incorporation of risk reduction into emergency preparedness, response and recovery programmes (isdr 2005). disaster response in africa regrettably, the constructive engagement across academic and practitioner constituencies that reoriented global thinking on disasters gateways | holloway has not prevailed in africa. this is ironic given the continent’s disaster risk profile, which, along with the scale of sustained international humanitarian assistance, indeed implies significant ‘disaster-proneness’.2 it could be argued that the entrenched conflation of highly visible international aid with conceptions of african ‘disasters’ has, in itself, contributed to the estrangement of the continent’s higher education institutions from meaningful engagement with the broader disasters domain. furthermore, while consolidated emergency appeals and highly visible international humanitarian aid have been and remain the primary intervention mode for africa’s ‘loud and visible’ emergencies (domini et al. 2008; see also http://www.reliefweb.int/), they simultaneously and unambiguously highlight significant shortfalls in local capacity and skilled human resources to address the continent’s risks. this conclusion resonates with findings by the commission of the african union, un/isdr and the world bank, who jointly lamented that africa’s capacity to realize its developmental risk reduction aspirations remain significantly hampered by ‘low knowledge, skills, competencies, staff and information at all levels’ (bhavnani et al. 2008, p. 43). their report similarly highlights the continent’s ‘lack of technically-oriented human resources’, and specifically identified the need for cross-sectoral training and strengthening of capabilities in relation to hydrometeorological threats (bhavnani et al. 2008, p. 44). therefore, while there is no question that international relief has significantly alleviated disaster-related hardship and suffering across the continent, its focus on humanitarian and operational imperatives has seldom, if ever, allowed for engagement with africa’s institutions of higher learning. moreover, international humanitarian assistance has repeatedly ‘overlooked’ the role played by higher education institutions in developing strategic human capacity to manage future or even recurrent risks. more importantly, it has signalled that the disasters domain is neither relevant to local discourse, nor a legitimate field of core scholarship and practice. such outcomes are clearly contrary to the rationale that argues for strengthened human resources in the continent, and which, by necessity, require the engagement of africa’s institutions of higher education (holloway 2009). 2 oecd humanitarian response contributions to africa for the period 1995–2006 have been conservatively estimated at usd 29 billion (development initiatives 2008) (http://www. globalhumanitarianassistance.org) gateways | holloway 102 south africa’s transition to developmental risk reduction south africa’s experience of disaster management policy and law reform processes provides an important contextual driver to uct’s drs programme as it departs significantly from this continental precedent. it also illustrates the value of the iterative engagement between south african higher education institutions and government that spanned almost a decade and which has continued. the vigorous character of this interaction is also credited with contributing substantially to the risk reduction focus of south africa’s 2002 disaster management act and its subsequent national implementation framework (http://www.ndmc.gov.za/). significantly, both the law and framework explicitly underlined ‘education, training and disaster management research’ as priorities. in the south african context, this concerted call for strengthened education, training and research acknowledged the urgent need for skilled human resources to implement the new legislation. however, it also represented tacit understanding of the complicated history and reputation of disaster management within south africa that could be traced back through ‘civil protection’ to ‘civil defence’ and ultimately to its roots in ‘national defence’ and the armed forces. furthermore, it implicitly placed obligations on the country’s teaching and learning institutions to facilitate the field’s transformation from its entrenched and historic preoccupation with a crisis-oriented ‘militaristic response’ into a socially responsive domain underpinned by developmental risk and vulnerability reduction (pelling & holloway 2006). it is in this context that the disaster mitigation for sustainable livelihoods programme (dimp) at uct becomes relevant, both in its contribution to national policy and legislation, as well as through its provision of disaster risk-related education, training and research following the promulgation of the law in 2003. (for more information on dimp, see: http://www.riskreductionafrica.org/.) located within uct’s department of environmental and geographical science, dimp’s establishment in 1998 was motivated by southern africa’s intensifying drought and flood risk profile during the 1990s, as well as its growing dependence on international humanitarian aid. this period was also notable for its suite of high profile, internationally funded ‘drought’ and ‘disaster management’ gateways | holloway 103 workshops and training courses. the majority of the capacity building initiatives of that decade, however, were led by higher education institutions located abroad, which, unfortunately, were not sustained beyond their original project cycle. the growing evidence of southern africa’s intensifying risk profile, combined with marked shortfalls in skilled human resources and persisting disconnect between the region’s higher education institutions and the broader disaster management enterprise, as well as the inadequacies of internationally-driven ‘training’ initiatives, provided the impetus for the author to establish dimp. fortuitously, the unit’s inception also coincided with efforts by the postapartheid government to reform its out-of-date disaster management legislation. this provided a meaningful and robust context for university-society engagement as well as access to numerous stakeholders during the protracted policy and legislative reform process (pelling & holloway 2006). since the law’s promulgation, this initial relationship has been sustained and reinforced in the form of at least ten commissioned research, policy and training initiatives. the multi-stakeholder character of such work has also continued to provide nuanced insights into the knowledge and skills needed to strengthen national and local disaster risk management capacity. moreover, its socially responsive character, grounded in the western cape’s complex risk context, has significantly informed the content and curricula of dimp’s professional short courses and the formal drs programme. fusing context with content: conceptualizing the drs curriculum since the 2003 disaster management act, external demands from government and interest groups for socially relevant disaster risk scholarship have been intense and unrelenting. however, the reality of weak continental experience in disaster risk-related education, combined with constrained internal teaching capacity, cautioned against a hasty curriculum response. as a result, the programme unfolded incrementally over a five-year period, coinciding with transitions in national disaster management policy and law. this iterative process of ‘fusing context with content’ was further enabled by the identification of three underpinning imperatives: disciplinary coherence within environmental and geographical science; alignment gateways | holloway 104 with transformative disaster management policy and practice; and social responsiveness to the western cape’s disaster risk profile. thus, the resulting programme, both in its conceptualization as well as its implementation, substantially converged with transdisciplinary learning approaches, despite its disciplinary location within environmental and geographical science. the first key priority for the new academic programme was establishing disciplinary coherence within the field of environmental and geographical science. this objective sought to avoid the pitfalls that can accompany coarsely crafted efforts at ‘mainstreaming’ an emerging cross-cutting domain, or attempts to ‘cut and paste’ it superficially into an umbrella discipline. disciplinary alignment also represented an essential precondition for framing the curriculum’s scholarly identity and directing its social responsiveness. fortunately, the discipline of geography has an impressive scholarly tradition in the broad domain of hazards, vulnerability and disasters. indeed, much of the global intellectual leadership in the society-environment interface relating to disasters can be directly attributed to the discipline. this has been and continues to be wideranging, extending, on one hand, from a detailed focus on natural hazards and the disasters they trigger (for instance, alexander 1993; bryant 1991; burton, kates & white 1993; smith & petley 2009) to applied publications that strengthen disaster and risk management policy and practice (such as handmer & dovers 2007; handmer & haynes 2008). the discipline, particularly through its expression in human geography, has also enhanced scholarly understanding of the social vulnerability conditions that increase the likelihood of loss and hardship (blaikie et al. 1994; hewitt 1997; pelling 2003; wisner et al. 2004, among others). this extensive work has vigorously underlined the plight of the urban and rural poor, especially those in developing countries, as bearing disproportionate levels of disaster loss and hardship. it is the conceptual and empirical work in relation to natural hazards and human vulnerability that significantly underpinned the emergence of the concept of disaster risk in the 1990s. this has effectively repositioned the ‘disasters domain’ as a socially responsive, developmental priority. gateways | holloway 105 the drs curriculum drew heavily from this rich geography literature, nuancing it further to reflect disaster risk application and contextual imperatives relevant to south africa, and eventually defining disaster risk science as: the systematic study of disaster risks, their determinants and consequences in order to inform disaster risk management and promote sustainable development. (holloway, 2005) the following figure unpacks this definition to demonstrate its articulation within the domain of environmental and geographical science as well as its application in relation to disaster risk management and social vulnerability reduction imperatives. with respect to the requirement for theoretical and disciplinary coherence within environmental and geographical science, the definition intentionally conceptualized disaster risk science as a field directed to purposive enquiry, rather than one oriented to practice. however, to ensure its coherence in an applied context, disaster risk gateways | holloway 106 science was also conceptualized to align with transformative disaster management policy and practice; that is, to reflexively inform and be informed by risk management imperatives. this is significant as it differentiates drs from disaster risk management, a field that explicitly foregrounds practice and implementation. the separate but complementary emphases are gateways | holloway 107 viewed as analogous to those in the health sciences, in which epidemiology, defined as ‘the study of the occurrence of disease’ (rothman 1986, p. 23), informs the practice of public health, but is not a field directly responsible for health care service delivery. the reflexive relationship between disaster risk science and disaster risk management is illustrated in figure 2 above. the third crucial dimension of the drs academic programme was a focus on university-society engagement, which framed not only the formal curriculum, but also its socially responsive research orientation. in this context, the drs definition also provided for selective attention to disaster risks of social and developmental relevance within the western cape. the scope and extent of these concerns is pointedly described below in the provincial disaster management framework of the western cape: many of the province’s formally ‘declared’ disasters are triggered by extreme weather and are characterized by largescale informal settlement, veld (wild-land) and urban fringe fires, severe wind and rain storms, flash-floods and drought … these relatively rare events classified as disasters are exceeded by many ‘unclassified’ significant events that are managed locally. the province’s past ‘declared’ events are even more dramatically outnumbered by the thousands of small and medium-size disaster events that exact cumulative losses on households and local authorities every year’. (http://www. capegateway.gov.za/) this summary of the western cape’s disaster profile points to disaster risks that neither result in catastrophic losses, nor tens of thousands of deaths, as is characteristic of disaster events profiled in the international media. yet, the disaster risk thematic is still critical from both developmental and humanitarian perspectives, especially in the western cape’s hundreds of crowded and underserved informal settlements exposed to severe weather, flooding and destructive fires. it was this specific disaster risk context, despite its low profile in global publications such as the 2009 united nations global assessment report on disaster risk reduction (http:// www.unisdr.org/) that the drs programme sought to examine and address. in the context of the western cape’s disaster risk profile, such an integrated socially-responsive interface was viewed as ‘nongateways | holloway 108 negotiable’, acknowledging the widespread and increasing social hardship associated with recurrent ‘small and medium scale’ disaster events throughout the province, as well as the western cape’s seasonal exposure to climate extremes, severe weather, flooding and devastating fires. disaster risk science: an emerging transdisciplinary domain disaster risk science exhibits many of the characteristics specifically attributed to transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production – approaches that cut across or ‘transgress’ recognized disciplinary borders. increasingly, transdisciplinary approaches are viewed as a robust means for understanding and addressing complex contemporary problems that are not amenable to disciplinary solutions alone (horlick-jones & sime 2004; max-neef 2005). they are further differentiated from multidisciplinary efforts by their exchange of elements ‘across disciplinary boundaries in an evolved methodology which transcends “pure” disciplines’ (horlick-jones & sime 2004). gibbons et al. (1994) significantly advanced understanding of transdisciplinary knowledge production by identifying mode 1 and mode 2 knowledges. while mode 1 knowledge production is viewed as consistent with more orthodox disciplinary-based research, mode 2 knowledge draws on both disciplinary and non-disciplinary sources of knowledge and is reflexively generated by multiple actors in a context of application (gibbons et al. 1994, p. 3). with specific reference to transdisciplinary learning, two clear preconditions are also underlined; the mastery of mode 1 ‘foundational knowledge’ (gibbons et al. 1994; muller 2000; winberg 2006) and the provision of an enabling ‘transaction space’ that facilitates rigorous university-society dialogue and engagement (nowotny et al. 2001; winberg 2006). transaction spaces are seen to facilitate socially relevant knowledge production processes, enabling the ‘co-evolution of knowledge producers and society’ (winberg 2006). they provide the means and processes by which macro, meso and micro concerns can ‘speak to’ higher education – as well as the means by which educators can ‘talk back’ to other contexts. gateways | holloway 109 in many ways, the unfolding drs programme and its subsequent implementation provide a clear and valuable example of what gibbons (2005) terms ‘the new contract’ between universities and society, one which reflects this ‘joint production of knowledge by society and science’ (gibbons 2005). the disaster risk science programme, both in its conceptualisation as well as its transdisciplinary curriculum design, also conforms closely with the attributes of a mode 2 knowledge production process (gibbons et al. 1994, p. vii). this is evidenced by the programme’s evolution through an iterative and reflexive articulation of environmental and geographical science in the context of south africa’s disaster risk management and social development imperatives. the programme’s apparent effectiveness in generating skilled human resources and contextually relevant disaster risk research also illustrates the coherence between its disciplinary foundation and social orientation. from the perspective of an applied postgraduate programme, it is clear that a robust ‘mode 1’ environmental and geographical science undergraduate foundation was a necessary requirement (http://www.egs.uct.ac.za). at the same time, the disaster mitigation for sustainable livelihoods programme (dimp) effectively ‘opened up’ the disaster risk transaction space, facilitating an engagement between the university and broader community that had not previously existed. this occurred through a wide range of activities, including commissioned research, disaster management policy development, practitioner training, and engagement with a diversity of government, civil society and international stakeholders. the university-society engagement further allowed the incremental generation of a curriculum that was both technically sound as well as socially robust. this has been measurably reflected in exploratory disaster risk research on informal dwelling fires in cape town by postgraduate students (smith 2005; morrissey & taylor 2006; pharoah 2008) as well as ex post studies of severe weather events that exacted economic and social losses (to access postgraduate papers, see: http://www.egs.uct.ac.za). it was also apparent in the conceptualization and implementation of relevant professional ‘disasters and development’ short courses, attended by more than 300 practitioners from 2000–06. as one senior provincial official has stated, ‘i can trust the uct graduates. they know what to do’. gateways | holloway 110 from curriculum design to delivery: challenges and solutions a pervasive challenge in framing the formal drs teaching and learning process was the conspicuous absence of systematic scholarship related to disaster risk across africa and from which the new curriculum could be adapted. while there are indeed numerous higher education courses that address the science of ‘natural hazards’ or ‘human geography’, their scope is not equivalent to that encompassed in the disaster risk field. moreover, the urgency of the situation called for graduates with interdisciplinary disaster risk science skills and strong social responsiveness capacities within only a year (two semesters) of completing their undergraduate education. this generated a host of challenges and questions concerning sequencing, course content, preferred research methods and strategies to compensate for a seriously constrained literature relevant to the western cape’s disaster risk profile. with respect to curriculum sequencing, questions emerged concerning the timing of applied, focused and mentored service learning in disaster-prone areas. additional ethical challenges arose in balancing the need for structured service learning with student safety in informal settlements that were often potentially dangerous and where levels of deprivation were traumatizing, even for mature postgraduate students. from the perspective of content, questions also emerged on what constituted a responsible balance of disaster risk-specific and multidisciplinary content, given the diverse risk profile to be addressed and the limited teaching resources available. for instance, what proportion of content should address public health issues related to disaster risk … or climate change concerns … or humanitarian ethics? similarly, given that drs incorporated elements from both the natural and the social sciences, what specific research methods should the curriculum profile? an early realization on course content was the glaring lack of published and unpublished literature directly applicable to the western cape disaster risk profile. similarly, there were significant shortcomings in prevailing conceptions as well as popular misconceptions about urban risks within the province. this was compounded by a marked absence of robust research methods to study and understand the province’s rapidly changing risk gateways | holloway 111 configurations. such constraints are illustrated by comparing existing knowledge on wildfire ecology to that of informal settlement fires, both considered significant risks in the province. the first is characterized by a detailed, well-researched and scientifically solid body of literature; while the second remains conspicuously under-researched despite the widespread human hardship it generates and associated media profile http://www.preventionweb.net/). similarly, while established flood risk research methods have long existed within the fields of hydrology or freshwater ecology, these proved to have limited application in understanding and addressing the livelihood risks of the thousands of informal residents living in floodand weather-exposed wetlands across the province. delivering the drs curriculum: integration and sequencing the eventual drs postgraduate curriculum reflected a sequenced transition that built theoretically and methodologically on an environmental and geographical science undergraduate foundation but added drs-specific theory and practice. this process is illustrated below. gateways | holloway 112 the drs programme was crafted theoretically to rest on an undergraduate platform defined by the mode 1 disciplinary requirements of environmental and geographical science. conceptually, this was then ‘stepped-up’ to a post-graduate specialisation by focusing selectively on the ‘hazards’ and ‘vulnerability’ sub-themes introduced in the undergraduate curriculum, along with geospatial applications related to the disaster risk field (such as the use of global positioning systems and remote sensing technologies). the postgraduate programme extended application of these concepts and methods by introducing in-depth literature specifically related to disaster risk drawn from global sources as well as similar academic programmes in europe, the americas and australasia. it also included additional content on climate change, public health, livelihoods and national disaster management policy, all considered essential interfacing knowledge areas to the disaster risk field in the context of the western cape. links between formal knowledge and socially responsive practice were consolidated through a community risk assessment (cra) group exercise undertaken over several days in a disaster-prone informal settlement, jointly identified with the city of cape town’s disaster management centre. a key expectation of this service learning process was that both the participatory assessment process and findings would enhance community-based risk management in the settlement concerned, benefiting those who participated in the process. confidence in the academic robustness of the programme has grown since its introduction in 2004. this is reflected in the reports by independent examiners external to uct who have consistently confirmed its academic rigour, including the quality of coursework, thoroughness of examinations and relevance of applied fieldwork. in addition, a comprehensive and independent panel review of both dimp and the drs programme is currently occurring. valuable insights for further improving the programme are anticipated from this process. programme outcomes: the application of socially responsive science since the drs postgraduate programme began in 2004, it has generated numerous benefits with respect to skilled human capacity, gateways | holloway 113 unfolding disaster risk scholarship, development deliverables, and an emerging body of disaster risk knowledge that is relevant locally, nationally and internationally. from 2004–09, approximately 35 students will have completed either drs honours or masters degrees. almost all honours graduates have either progressed to masters programmes either within drs or other applied fields or have moved quickly into positions in government or non-governmental organizations. some have been employed as entry-level disaster managers and others in nongovernmental development organisations. the cross-disciplinary character of the programme, combined with a focus on applied competencies, is seen to offer an impressively adaptable suite of skills, relevant to fields as diverse as climate change adaptation and integrated urban development. postgraduate theses on informal fires, severe weather events and urban flooding (http://www.riskreductionafrica.org/) have begun to generate an emerging but critical body of knowledge on complex risk configurations that, previously in africa, had been poorly documented and understood. one such example is the reconceptualisation of the livelihood risks of informal residents in severe weather-exposed wetlands, which challenges established approaches to investigating riverine flood risk drawn from the disciplines of hydrology or freshwater ecology (benjamin 2008). another is the interrogation of the role played by weather variables widely used in wildfire danger rating systems as these apply to severe informal dwelling fires (hackland 2007). similarly, since 2005, the service learning component of the programme has ‘delivered’ annually between one and three community risk assessments in identified risk-prone informal settlements. these assessments have become highly valued by local government and civil society stakeholders, as they are viewed as non-politicised vehicles for consensus-building on priority threats, especially in settlements with diverse and fragmented interest groups. significantly, drs graduates also contribute to dimp’s commissioned disaster risk research, particularly as this applies to ex post studies of severe weather events. this growing body of gateways | holloway 114 knowledge (http://www.egs.uct.ac.za) now increasingly informs provincial and national discussions on adaptation to climate change. it has also guided policy formulation on development priorities such as strategic infrastructure planning as well as community development practice through publications such as weathering the storm: participatory risk assessment in informal settlements (http:// www.preventionweb.net/), which provides advice on appropriate approaches for assessing and reducing risks in high risk areas. perhaps the most wide-reaching impact of the drs programme, however, has been the actual conceptualisation of the academic programme itself, an approach that is proving to be transferable across disciplines, countries, languages and risk contexts. for example, usaid’s office of foreign disaster assistance awarded $usd 2.9 million to uct to support and enable the periperi u project to build disaster risk-related scholarship in ten higher education institutions across africa from 2008–11 ( http://www. riskreductionafrica.org/). this unprecedented project, for both usaid and for disaster risk-related capacity development in africa, sought specifically to build skilled disaster risk management human resource capacity through higher education institutions. the initiative is conceptualised as a cross-disciplinary collaboration to support selected academic programmes in fields as diverse as public health and seismic engineering in order to integrate disaster risk into their applied postgraduate courses. the rapid progress already made by the periperi u consortium now signifies, for the first time in africa, an emerging academic architecture for disaster risk-related scholarship and engagement across contexts, countries, languages and disciplines. continuing tensions along borders and boundaries the unfolding of the drs programme has, however, foregrounded many of the tensions documented in the development and practice of applied, transdisciplinary scholarship within contemporary university environments (muller 2000; waghid 2002; winberg 2006). this has been particularly evident in the drs case, given the programme’s disciplinary positioning within the department of environmental and geographical science within the science faculty. such tensions are inevitable, given the socially-negotiated character of gateways | holloway 115 the disaster risk domain, which fluidly crosses a range of disciplines that include health sciences, economics, engineering and humanities. reconciling the tension between explicit requirements for internal disciplinary robustness and the transdisciplinary demands of the disaster risk field remains a persistent subtext and institutional challenge. from an academic perspective and by necessity, the disciplinary positioning of drs within environmental and geographical science calls for in-depth knowledge of its umbrella domain. furthermore, reflecting the need for disciplinary integrity, drs curriculum content and graduate research are required to conform to quality assurance requirements framed by the disciplinary lens of environmental and geographical science. this is despite the fact that the intellectual scope and applied context of drs reach well beyond these parameters. muller (2000) contends that this is an expected consequence – that even when academics are ‘deeply engaged in mode 2, the evidence is that they continue to value their standing and participation in professional societies and the values and norms of their academic disciplines and that they continue to extol the virtues of peer review. that is to say, they continue to value a mode 1 intellectual climate.’ muller’s observations resonate with the experience of the drs programme, which, although deemed socially and technically valid from the lens of an applied discourse, falls short in conforming to the established disciplinary parameters of environmental and geographical science. it is particularly evidenced by the continued absence of any general operating budget support for drs teaching and student supervision. this is despite consistent and competitive postgraduate student throughput since 2004, and growing demands for the programme by students and external role-players. such constraints are increasingly countered by evidence of rigorous scholarship through established external examination processes, and an emerging ‘research publication’ profile. the current dimp review also constitutes a valuable mechanism for a broader conversation with uct leadership on greater institutional support for emerging fields, such as disaster risk science, as does documented evidence of fees and subsidy income generated from drs-associated teaching and supervision. gateways | holloway 116 conclusion: disaster risk science or ‘egs sans frontières’ the disasters domain is, by its nature, diffuse and cross-cutting. moreover, its transdisciplinary character not only embodies the concept of ‘sans frontières’ (without borders), but also obliges principled action in the service of humanity. in this context, and recognizing the inherent challenges of navigating a socially negotiated curriculum within a faculty of science, the article draws much of its inspiration from the independence and energy reflected by humanitarian organizations such as médicins sans frontières. there are other important implications to be drawn from the drs programme; for, not only does it challenge deeply-entrenched stereotypes about disaster risks in africa, it also provides evidence that strengthened human capacity in the continent is more than a future educational aspiration. it is an urgent developmental and humanitarian imperative – and it is long overdue. references alexander, d 1993, natural disasters, ucl press, london. bhavnani, r, vordzorgbe, s, owor, m & bousquet, f 2008, report on the status of disaster risk reduction in the sub-saharan africa region, commission of the african union, world bank, unisdr, nairobi. blaikie, p, cannon, t, davis, i, & wisner, b 1994, at risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters, routledge, new york. benjamin, ma 2008, analysing urban flood risk in low-cost settlements of george, western cape, south africa: investigating physical and social dimensions, upublished ma dissertation, university of cape town, cape town. bryant, e 1991, natural hazards, cambridge university press, cambridge. burton, i, kates, rw & white, gf, 1993, the environment as hazard, the guilford press, new york. development initiatives 2008, global humanitarian assistance 2007/2008, march 2008, global humanitarian assistance group, viewed 15 june 2009, http://www. globalhumanitarianassistance.org domini, a, fast, l, hansen g, harris, s, minear, l, mowjee, t, & wilder, a 2008, humanitarian agenda 2015: final report. the state of the humanitarian enterprise, feinstein international center, tufts university, boston, viewed 12 june 2009, http://www.reliefweb.int/ gibbons, m, limoges, c, c, nowotny, h, schwartzman, s, scott, p & trow, m 1994, the new production of knowledge. the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, sage, london. gibbons, m 2005, engagement with the community: the emergence of a new social contract between society and science, unpublished paper presented at the griffith university community engagement workshop, south bank campus, queensland. hackland, l 2007, investigating the relationship between weather and the severity of urban fires: a study of informal settlement fires in the cape town metropolitan area, unpublished msc proposal to the department of environmental and geographical science, university of cape town, cape town. gateways | holloway 117 handmer, j & dovers, s, 2007, handbook of disaster and emergency policies and institutions, earthscan, uk and usa. handmer, j & haynes, k (eds) 2008, community bushfire safety, csiro publishing, melbourne. hewitt, k 1997, regions of risk: a geographical introduction to disasters, addison wesley longman, essex. holloway, a 2005, ‘disaster risk science in southern africa: taking it into the academic mainstream’, in t jeggle (ed.), know risk, un/isdr, tudor rose, geneva, pp. 113–114. holloway, a & roomaney, r 2008, weathering the storm: participatory risk assessment in informal settlements, periperi publications, cape town, viewed 21 october 2009, http:// www.preventionweb.net/ holloway, a 2009, ‘disaster risk in africa: dynamic discourse or dysfunctional dialogue?’, paper presented at conference on conceptualisation of risk in africa, university of bayreuth, november 2008, and forthcoming publication 2009, viewed 21 october 2009, http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?id=162295 horlick-jones, t & sime, j 2004, ‘living on the border: knowledge risk and transdisciplinarity’, futures, vol. 36, pp. 441–456. isdr 2005, hyogo framework for action 2005–2015: building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters, world conference on disaster reduction, kobe, hyogo, japan, 18–22 january 2005, viewed 21 october 2009, http://www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/hfa.htm isdr, 2009, global assessment report on disaster risk reduction, united nations, geneva, switzerland, viewed 12 june 2009, http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/ report/index.php?id=1130&pid:34&pih:2 max-neef, ma, 2005, foundations of transdisciplinarity, ecological economics, vol. 53, pp. 5–16. muller, j 2000, ‘what knowledge is of most worth for the millenial citizen?’, in j muller, reclaiming knowledge: social theory, curriculum and education policy, routledge/falmer, london and new york. morrissey, j & taylor, a 2006, ‘fire risk in informal settlements: a south african casestudy’, open house international, vol. 31, no. 1, pp98–105. nowotny, h, scott, p, & gibbons, m 2001, re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty, polity press, cambridge. pelling, m 2003, the vulnerability of cities: natural disasters and social resilience, earthscan, london. pelling, m & holloway, a 2006, ‘legislation for mainstreaming disaster risk reduction’, tearfund, viewed 21 october 2009, http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/website/ campaigning/policy%20and%20research/drr%20legislation.pdf) pelling, m & wisner, b (eds) 2008, disaster risk reduction: cases from urban africa, earthscan, london, viewed 21 october 2009, http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/website/ campaigning/policy%20and%20research/drr%20legislation.pdf pharoah, r 2008, ‘fire risk in informal settlements in cape town’, in m pelling & b wisner (eds), disaster risk reduction: cases from urban africa, earthscan, london, pp. 105–125. province of the western cape provincial gazette extraordinary 2007, no 6455, the western cape disaster management framework: disaster management act, 2002 (act no. 57 of 2002), viewed 15 june 2009, http://www.capegateway.gov.za/text/2008/5/provin07ex_gazdisaster_3_oct_2007.pdf gateways | holloway 118 republic of south africa, government gazette 2003, no. 24252, no. 57 of 2002, disaster management act, 2002, cape town, viewed 15 june 2009, http://www.ndmc.gov.za/comp/ webdocuments/disaster_management_act.pdf republic of south africa, government gazette 2005, no. 27534, no. 654 of 2005, national disaster management framework, cape town, viewed 15 june 2009, http://www.ndmc.gov.za/ rothman, k 1986, modern epidemiology, little, brown and company, boston, toronto. smith, h 2005, ‘the relationship between settlement density and informal settlement fires: case-study of imizamo yethu, hout bay and joe slovo, cape town metropolis’, in p van oosterom, s zlatanova & e m fendel (eds), geo-information for disaster management, springer, berlin, heidelberg, pp. 1333–1355. smith, k & petley, d 2009, environmental hazards: assessing risk and reducing disaster, routledge, london and new york. university of cape town 2006, ‘social responsiveness report 2006’, university of cape town, cape town, viewed 15 june 2009, http://www.socialresponsiveness.uct.ac.za/usr/social_ resp/reports/soc_resp_report2006.pdf waghid, y 2002, knowledge production and higher education transformation in south africa: towards reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service, higher education, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 457–488. winberg, c 2006, undisciplining knowledge production: development driven higher education in south africa, higher education, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 159–172. wisner b, blaikie p, cannon, t & davis, i 2004, at risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters (2nd edn), routledge, london and new york. forms of engagement and the heterogeneous citizen towards a reflexive model for youth workshops in social research, as in social activism, words can never be ignored, or they take a savage revenge. but if they are attended to respectfully in all their complexity they provide a guiding thread through otherwise bewildering mazes. in this article we illustrate this general point of method by focusing especially on ‘engagement’. we unpick its ambiguities, detach its baggage, and return its complexities to where they belong, in social experience. we recover the potency it still has, discernible amongst the mass of propagandistic uses of the term. over the last decade, we both have been involved in various aspects of ‘university community engagement’. as we will argue, this slogan and the research it points to are valuable. thirty years ago no university in australia would have used the term or made a systematic attempt to be ‘engaged’. yet we must confess that we find it a somewhat vague term. ‘university engagement with the community’ can refer to everything from participatory research in the field of the humanities, making research available to the broader public through media interaction, to bridging the ‘gap between the laboratory discovery and practice’ in the medical sciences (doberneck, glass & schweitzer 2010, p. 5). similarly, glass, doberneck & schweitzer (2011) note that no standard language or universally accepted definition of ‘engagement’ is available. despite this, a general understanding of engagement in the discourse of universities emerges as a ‘scholarly endeavour that cross-cuts teaching, research and service … generating, transmitting, applying, and preserving knowledge for the direct benefit of external audiences … that are consistent with university and unit missions’ (michigan state university 1993, quoted in doberneck, glass & schweitzer 2010, p. 9). this definition seems to be at the core of a number of studies (such as doberneck, glass & schweitzer 2010 and glass, doberneck & schweitzer 2011). our own university, the university of western sydney, describes ‘engagement’ in similar terms, as a ‘partnership, for mutual gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 56–75 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 james arvanitakis bob hodge university of western sydney 57 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge benefit, between the university and its communities, be they regional, national or global … a distinctive way of carrying out research, teaching, learning and service’. each of the 41 universities in australia refers to ‘engagement’ in some way. it may be in researching engagement in the broader community (for example, by deakin university’s marie-louise sinclair 2011), outlining a university’s engagement plans (for example, edith cohen university’s ‘engagement functional plan 2011–2013’) or discussing how the institution embeds itself within the community through ‘engagement’, both locally (for example, la trobe university) and globally (for example, monash university). going through each of the websites, two things become clear: first, that australian universities consider community engagement as a way of responding to critics who have long accused them of being detached, undertaking esoteric research, being ‘ivory towers’ (see lloyd 2005) or adopting ‘leftist, ivory-tower thinking’ (see right-wing commentator miranda divine 2011, p. 21); and second, that each institution touches on this concept of ‘mutual benefit’ in their interactions with the community. yet for those like us who want to pursue ‘engagement’ in our academic and research practice, all these descriptions leave many questions so open that it becomes unclear where the policies lead. what does mutual benefit mean? at what level do we describe an interaction as ‘partnership’? how do we identify ‘direct benefit’? driving such doubts is the overriding impression that ‘engagement’ in these terms is limited to the core business of universities, the production of knowledge. the sole actor is the university, doing what it does best, to ‘benefit’ others outside, who do not seem to be involved in deciding what benefits they most want, and in what form. these others are an ‘audience’, who may applaud a good show but seem to have no other role. this is a ‘scholarly endeavour’, a ‘distinctive way’ of doing what universities have a monopoly on doing anyway. for our own research, as we will report it in this article, ‘engagement’ has a different, more problematic sense. our engagement activities are often driven by an aspiration for justice or a sense of injustice. it is from this understanding of the role of the contemporary engaged researcher that our methodological approach has developed and been employed. in designing and implementing the program we will discuss, we utilised a participative research methodology, becoming directly involved as both participants and observers. ‘engagement’ in this mode is inescapably dynamic and interactive. such an approach is informed by feminist insights such as those of mies (1991) as well as by post-colonial authors including said (1979) and nandy (1983). here ‘the researcher’ should actively participate and agitate to identify and confront injustices and alienation, not simply observe and report. this approach rejects the concept that there is one objective form of inquiry or knowledge 58 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge (stanfield 1998). as researchers, we see two important benefits from this approach. it creates a pluralism that reflects a plurality of knowledge that befits the heterogeneous nature of contemporary australia. it reminds us that in seeking to change others, we are not above the need to change. here we propose to drill deeper into the meaning potential of this apparently slippery term (partridge 1966, p. 243). at its heart and in its foundation is an old french word, gage, whose primary meaning was ‘a pledge’, and hence a contract or a stake in a bet. but a variant coexisted in old northern french, wage, alternating g with w, with the same range of meanings. wagen came into middle english first as ‘pledge’ and slowly shifted to ‘bet’. the plural wages likewise shifted from ‘pledge’ through ‘recompense’ to its present meaning, ‘money paid for work’. parallel to this history is the story of old high german wetti, a cognate word with the same range of meanings as gage. this became old english wedd, also a ‘pledge’ or ‘wager’. this slowly developed its current specialised meaning, a pledge or promise between a man and woman (or as some might see it, a gamble that the relationship will work out well over a lifetime). these words and their history carry a formative stage of european history with them into the modern age. old french and old english were languages of pre-capitalist stages of european society in the first millennium, and this family of words carries some of that context with them. these were turbulent, bloody times for western europe, when ambiguous heroes like atilla and charlemagne destroyed and established ephemeral empires, with shifting coalitions and identities out of which the modern set of nation states evolved. this was a period in which ‘the life of man’, in hobbes’ memorable phrase (leviathan, 1651), ‘[was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. but hobbes used this dramatic picture to legitimate the need for a linear form of sovereignty, in which many rights of citizens were transferred to the state as the precondition for society itself. his version of social contract theory had more rights and fewer obligations for the sovereign. later versions, such as those of locke and rousseau, shifted the balance of rights more towards citizens, in both cases using a different history as basis for their ideology of citizenship. marx and engels (1847) described the impact of the bourgeois/capitalist era as ‘tearing asunder motley feudal ties’ and leaving ‘no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”’). marx and engels were more concerned to identify the defects of capitalist society than to analyse or recuperate the conditions of the systems which preceded it. yet the crucial flaw they identified in capitalism, its destructive effect on the relationships that constitute all societies, has proven just as damaging to modern societies as they claimed (see, for example, putnam 2000). monetary economies existed in feudal times, but they coexisted there with non-monetary systems, 59 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge the continuation, in less legitimated forms, of the principles of gift economies. these forms flourish today in new but marginalised modes, whose function is to correct the huge social inadequacies of capitalist forms of sociality. ‘engagement’ however defined plays an important role in this unofficial counter-system. when the university of western sydney emphasises ‘mutual benefit’ as the basis for its policies of engagement, those benefits need to be set at least in part outside the sphere of the cash economy. they may then be ‘financialized’, because that is the dominant tendency in discourses in developed economies, but that model is likely to distort the main rationale and best functioning of engagement. it can be a clarifying act to restore some of the basic structures of ‘engagement’ in its original contexts, with its own problems of chaos and uncertainty, as a strategy for coping with problems and dysfunctionalities of our own age. at the centre of the older meaning and practise of ‘engagement’ was the idea of the gage, the pledge made between two participants, in front of witnesses. the gage linked the present of the pledge to the uncertain future of the outcome, made more certain by commitment of the pledge-giver to fulfilling it, if that is possible. behind the pledge lay an understanding of its conditions, the different benefits, monetary and otherwise, which were the motives for the pledge. the possibility of making a pledge rested on and strengthened the social relations surrounding the two major participants, and the witnesses, as in other manifestations of gift economies. the concept of a gage – or ‘pledge’ – culture in these terms offers a new angle on the general sociological problem of the relations between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, the relations between given social structures and the possibilities for individual agency within or against those structures. in giddens’ (1993) influential work, for instance, ‘structuration’ refers to the space and products of interaction between individual agents – in this case citizens – and the structures they produce in the course of their social life through their reflexivity of action (their capacity to reflect on and change their social contexts, to a degree). giddens sees the scope for reflexivity and positive structuration as greater in contemporary global society than in the past. in our alternative history of gage-culture, we see ‘agency’ as resting on a network of commitments. the motive force of these changes is a transformative commitment of individuals, a potentiality that comes from them rather than being the new gift of postmodernism. we will use ‘engagement’ in this sense as a guide to making better and more strategic interventions in the three sets of relationships inextricably involved in our project: ‘engaged research’ with academic and other partners; our own ‘engagement’ with the young people we work with; and finally, their engagement as citizens with the rest of society. 60 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge undertaking engagement the focus of our most recent research and engagement activities is an australian research council funded project looking at the changing and heterogeneous nature of citizenship within australia. within this project, we are interested in the ‘culture of citizenship’ rather than simply a legal framework around what constitutes a ‘citizen’. this project has developed from long-term engagements involving mutual commitments with a number of non-government organisations, including oxfam australia, amnesty international, aid/watch and oxfam hong kong and has focused on young people (defined somewhat loosely). the project asks questions about the nature of citizenship in contemporary australia, why people become politically active, what transformations ‘citizens’ must go through to have a ‘sense of agency’, and what deficits (and surpluses) in this sense of agency form in the current culture of citizenship. at the base of this research project is an ‘active citizenship’ workshop designed by one of the researchers, james arvanitakis, along with then-oxfam employee mitra gusheh, titled ‘from sitting on the couch to changing the world’. (it should be noted that the couch workshops had a number of iterations, and as the intellectual property used to develop them was registered under a creative commons licence, there have been versions developed by others.) though there were earlier incarnations, the couch workshop was designed as part of a training program for an oxfam australia initiative, with arvanitakis working as a consultant/volunteer. while more background about the couch workshop is provided later in this article, it is important to note that it continued its evolution because of a high demand for it by other community groups. behind this demand was a desire for training and education around citizenship and practices that could promote citizens’ agency. the program was driven by ‘engagement’ by all parties, which did not end with the original outcome. ‘engagement’ produced more engagement. this article discusses the latest manifestation of the ‘from sitting on the couch to changing the world’ workshop from both an engagement and a reflexive research perspective. concentrating on the recent delivery of the couch workshop to a group of young people in a mixed cultural and socioeconomic suburb in the western suburbs of sydney, we present the theoretical underpinnings of our approach, and the reflexive process employed in its design and delivery. within this context, we also look at how the various messages that we attempted to deliver can be compromised by the organisational environment and commitments made to funding bodies and institutional supporters. how do we manage to promote active citizenship and agency within such a workshop when the agenda is often predetermined by those funding such projects? yet can we ignore our own commitments to and engagement with these funding bodies? along with our attempts to develop stronger and more diverse ideas of citizenship, we wanted a richer set of ideas on 61 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge change and transformation. our ‘engagement’ with contemporary society includes a pledge to work for change, in a society where there is too little justice for the marginalised, too little opportunity for many to be engaged in their future or the future of their communities. in the following section we discuss the theoretical approach we employed in relation to citizenship and transformation, framed by the concept of engagement. citizenship in contemporary australia traditionally, citizenship has been presented as a set of social practices (turner 1993, p. 4) that bind us as a nation (mueller 2002). in this way, it presents us with ways of describing what people are included in as well as excluded from (turner 2009). for marshall (1950), there are three components of citizenship that are historically specific and evolutionary in character: civil, political and social. social citizenship, according to marshall (1950), entails both rights and responsibilities that ‘define the identity of members of a political community, thereby regulating access to the benefits and privileges of membership’ (turner 2009, p. 66). this envisages a form of belonging as well as constructing a unifying sense of the civic. this concept of citizenship implicitly rests on a model of primarily vertical, linear relationships between civic institutions and citizens (brodie 2004) that is reciprocal but asymmetrical. in this conception, the quality of the relationship between government and citizens is evaluated through quantitative measures such as voter attitudes and participation (kymlicka & norman 1994). the figure of the citizen and the surrounding discourses and practices are ambiguous and incorporate a double gaze. from above, it is a strategy of governance and a way to incorporate segments of the populace into an alignment with ruling sections of the state. from below, it is a strategy for relative empowerment. the balance here varies: rather than a pre-fixed concept of the citizen, citizenship is a site for struggle that is constantly redefined in that process. despite major contestations and shifts in demography and the economic and political environment, australian concepts of citizenship have remained stagnant for decades. this traditional model of citizenship makes a number of simplifying assumptions, in order to force a better fit between potential citizens and a single, homogenous ideal of citizenship. in australia, for example, civic institutions continue to be shaped by the figure of an idealised citizen framed within a limited range of values and identities: conservative, mono-cultural, anglo-australian (dyrenfurth 2005), rational (isin 2004), one who is economically successful and above a certain age. this homogenous image remains even when there is dominant rhetoric of multiculturalism, as in australia (hodge & o’carroll 2006), because the contemporary state is envisaged as a non-porous container (wimmer & schiller 2002) where citizens are 62 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge primarily shaped and moulded by internal priorities (brodie 2004; hindess 2002, p. 130). while this is not credible in most (if not all) states, this is particularly the case for a migrant nation such as australia (hage 2003) that continues to experience changing demographic patterns (isin & turner 2007, p. 9). the australian government’s department of foreign affairs and trade (dfat), for example, informs us that the percentage of people born outside australia has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, now representing 25 per cent of the population (dfat 2009). this vertical model for the relations between citizens and government also presents a misleading map of the highly complex and changing governance relationships for all citizens to negotiate if they are to access their rights or fulfil their responsibilities. even a minimal sketch of contemporary governance structures highlights how complex the environment is for those who aspire to some control over their lives: citizens not only negotiate dealings with formal government structures but must now interact with private service providers (such as schools and hospitals), national and international non-government organisations, supra-state bodies (the united nations and international monetary fund) and transnational corporations (such as rating agencies and corporations whose income capital dwarfs that of many states) (hindess 2002, p. 133). in addition, there are various nonformal organisations and networks (including environmental, human rights and religious) well beyond the ‘sociopolitical geography of nation-states’ (hayes et al. 2010, p. 512). within this environment, treating people as homogenous citizens is clearly counterproductive. here the relationship between individuals and the state is no longer a simple vertical one. each individual citizen’s relationship with the state is subject to myriad formal and informal relations. the nature of these relations enables our capacity for action with other (heterogeneous) citizens, in many ‘horizontal’ relationships that have emerged (arvanitakis 2011). as such, effective citizenship is now more than ever relational: a function of complex constellations of relations. in this ‘relational’ approach to citizenship, any bond with civic institutions is complicated by connections individual citizens may have with those around them (both near and far), as well as their relationship with the same civic institutions. consequently, local and global issues in both the formal political and civic spheres as well as informal relations influence the cultural practices of citizenship (hayes et al. 2010; kuisma 2008). we reframe this network of relationships that holds modern societies together in terms of relationships of engagement. one crucial element missing in the dominant ideas on citizenship is active commitment by individuals, their gage, to their communities, local, national and global. the other is the set of commitments from above to these individual citizens. australian society is constituted by this web of relationships, lateral, vertical and oblique, in all directions. 63 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge despite these many developments, the most common way of seeing ‘citizenship’ in australia is still in rigid, restrictive terms, privileging a limited range of values and identities. in australia, we have found that this is basically a conservative, mono-cultural, anglo-australian imposed on those who do not fit: from young persons to immigrant populations (arvanitakis & marren 2008). in this way, it reinforces a sense of exclusion because citizenship is seen as something that you must ‘fit into’ (collin 2008). we can think of this as a blunt instrument forcing all citizens, including their values and aspirations, into a predetermined shape (aly 2010). this idea of citizenship, paradoxically, increases a sense of alienation rather than addressing it. consequently, government programs that aim to promote more active citizenship, especially amongst young people and migrants, must avoid rigid definitions of citizenship (holdsworth et al. 2007). citizenship, however, is typically presented as something that young people and migrants are expected to ‘grow into’, creating a sense of being ‘citizens in waiting’ (collin 2008). the result for young people is an adult-centric model of citizenship, accessible only by reaching legal and cultural markers. this ignores the changing cultural mix of australia, indicators of adulthood (crawford 2006) and the many contributions and ‘acts of citizenship’ (isin & nielsen 2008) that young people are making to our society (for example, see youniss & levine (2009) for a discussion of the us context, and arvanitakis & marren (2008) for an australian analysis). this homogenous, top–down model of the citizen favoured by government discourses, and the lived heterogeneity reality, creates a potential split. from above, this is leading towards a crisis in governance as the majority of the population fail to see any unifying initiative as citizens. from below, there is a sense of exclusion and disconnection from civic processes. this type of approach is also reflected in civics education programs. while an in-depth analysis of such programs is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that the development of such a curriculum is based on increasing concerns about the emergence of a ‘democratic deficit’ (della porta 2005) leading to a sense of marginalisation (portney & o’leary 2007) and the steady decline in youth political participation (bos et al. 2007). in reviewing the various programs implemented by different governments across australia, it becomes increasingly clear that they fail to consider the fluid, complex nature of citizenship. most programs take a ‘one size fits all’ and ‘top–down’ approach, focusing on what is expected of citizens rather than what citizens desire or can be enabled to do (see arvanitakis & marren 2008 for a more detailed discussion). they propose pledges for these young people rather than offering their own pledges in return. another key failing we identify in these programs and participatory experiences is that they afford little or no control over 64 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge the process or outcomes. this approach, we argue, may actually be counterproductive as the pedagogical approach is one of young people ‘becoming’ citizens rather than ‘being’ citizens (holdsworth et al. 2007, p. 9). participation is presented as distant, only available when certain legal and cultural markers are reached. such failings led us to design an alternative approach to our university-based civics engagement and education that presents the following principles: 1 civic education should promote action-based learning to encourage a sense of agency and provide insights into the complex nature of both formal and informal political processes. this means that both the knowledge and skills of citizenship are taught along with promoting a ‘culture of citizenship’. 2 citizenship education should be about promoting ‘questioning minds’ and democratic values rather than achieving some arbitrary benchmarks. 3 individual students should set the agenda for engagement rather than assuming that there is a single priority that needs to be set. 4 any program should be both flexible and reflexive – allowing participants to alter the direction based on changing priorities and needs. transformation, reflexivity, change based on these four broad principles, we designed and implemented a series of engagement programs to promote a sense of active citizenship, described above as the couch workshops. these were designed in consultation with various non-government and local government authorities. importantly, the workshop has been through many iterations and we continue to reflexively redesign it, as well as develop a theoretical frame to better inform our practice. the couch workshop has been successful in taking account of the heterogeneous nature of citizenship, promoting a sense of agency, and developing a horizontal approach to citizenship. (though still being analysed, a great deal of data collected from participants confirms these observations. one exemplary case is presented by l1, who established an ‘artists for sustainability’ exhibition at a major metropolitan gallery.) it has also had a number of limitations and pitfalls. these in turn have generated important new insights into theoretical issues. the various theoretical approaches we have drawn upon are based on our conversations with participants over a five-year period, where the underlying motive was political, social, civic or cultural change. of particular relevance is that we work in areas of low socioeconomic and cultural status where communities are under stress. a fundamental problem we found with our practice was the paradoxical issue of transformation. supposing that our workshops 65 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge were honed to a state of perfection in creating engaged citizens, would the outcome just be a dominant society that incorporates them more effectively? we took on a need to work with this paradox: to create conditions of belonging and support for the marginalised, and also release their creative energies to transform their own lives and reshape society. to help undertake this, we drew on the ideas of brazilian critical educator paulo freire (1972) and german philosopher martin heidegger (1927). while the work of freire (who dealt with illiterate brazilian peasants in the 1940s) and heidegger may appear fundamentally different to the challenges of 21st century australia (and the tertiary education sector reflecting on their community interactions), both authors raise important issues around engagement and transformation. to begin with, freire focused on both skills development and consciousness-raising: two aspects that he saw as complementary in achieving empowerment. importantly, his ‘engagement’ was two-way: rather than taking a ‘deficit’ approach towards students and treating them as passive containers to be filled by teachers who monopolised knowledge, it was a journey the ‘teacher’ also took. freire (1972, p. 69) did this by beginning with their world, as they understood it – or their ‘thematic universe’. this was the starting point for a journey that passed through concentric circles, from particular to general, from local to global: a journey that all parties involved took together. while the consciousness-raising that freire discusses is presented as both an abstract and an insubstantial condition, what is relevant here is that skills on their own are not enough. in his discussions, freire draws on martin heidegger’s (1927) phenomenological concept of the ‘threshold’. while this concept of ‘threshold’ represents only a fraction of heidegger’s work, it is powerful and significant because the changes we are looking at involve not simply ‘acts’ of citizenship, but the culture and consciousness of citizenship in which these acts develop. such an assertion fits with kurt lewin’s (1936) topological field, and the importance of understanding an individual’s environment when attempting to comprehend their behaviour (balkenius 1995, p. 79). lewin also argued that the best way to understand such behaviour was to not only engage but also attempt to transform it. this is relevant for our ‘engagement’ because we are interested in deep change – both the personal and, by extension, the process of changing the political. the skills we work towards enhancing in the engagement is only one step, the other is working towards cultural change. drawing on both our own interpretations as well as freire’s use of heidegger, we begin with the concept of humans being in the world: our ‘being’ and ‘world’ must always be thought of together and cannot be separated (hayes et al. 2010, p. 517). the way we humans relate to this being in the world varies significantly, however: we may feel at home, indifferent, empowered or even alienated. the question that we are asking, 66 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge both as researchers and practitioners of engagement, is: can this be influenced by some kind of transformation? heidegger indicates that transformation can occur when we transcend ordinary, everyday thinking, and venture into an unfamiliar domain that is both transitionary and transformational, and feel at home there. it is here that the concept and metaphor of ‘the threshold’ can inform our engagement. the threshold is the place of passage supporting this transformation between the radically different and the familiarity of being at home. the threshold both defines and sustains the uniting difference between two domains: between the familiar everyday experience and where the purely sensible and obvious are transcended. the threshold establishes an ‘in-between region’; a meeting place of different domains of rational thinking, while remaining rational. our challenge is to achieve just this: to work with those who we engage with to cross the threshold. here we enter into two simultaneous domains of thinking: seeing and relating to the everyday while also perceiving the potential for change. this transitionary thinking does not disconnect us from everyday rational, calculative and objective thought, but nevertheless ruptures the habitual and addresses its limits. the constrained logic of everyday familiarity is overcome. freire’s and heidegger’s thinking around ‘thresholds’ and changes in ‘consciousness’ comes from a different theoretical tradition of concepts of citizenship and engagement, but we have found this difference gives them their importance. we have applied these approaches to a program that not only promotes a sense of agency amongst participants but also attempts to achieve this by facilitating participants to see the world in a different manner. that is, to cross a heideggerean threshold. this was achieved within a freirean approach that promoted practical skills and civic strategies while simultaneously increasing the structural and cultural understanding of the challenges that these communities confront. it is a discussion of one of these workshops that we turn to next. walking through the threshold: from sitting on the couch to active citizenship the ‘sitting on the couch to changing the world’ workshops presented an opportunity for us to engage with a cross-section of young people. we aimed to promote citizenship skills and the sense of agency we identified as missing from civics education, in a framework where real, continuing change was on the agenda. in this article, we describe two different versions of the workshop and their lessons for engagement. the first combined couch with another program designed by various service providers and a local government agency, in a 10-week civic education workshop for a group of 16-year-old students from a public school. this school is based in a culturally and economically diverse area of sydney’s western suburbs. the aims of the workshop were twofold: to promote a sense of empowerment, agency and 67 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge active citizenship for the participants by enacting meaningful engagement towards their communities (however they chose to define them); and to highlight the potential of a university education for such forms of engagement. as part of the university of western sydney schools engagement program, academic staff are encouraged to go to primary and secondary schools to promote ‘life at university’. this is important, given that many of the schools we visit have students who have never considered attending a university. the aim is not to tell them that they must attend, but rather, that this is an option they may want to consider when completing secondary school or later in life. it shifts a threshold. it can also be seen as a recruitment exercise, from the university’s perspective. acts of engagement often serve a number of motives, for different participants. such ambiguity is normal. it is not a disqualification, but nor should it be ignored. the second workshop was delivered to a group of university students from one of sydney’s established institutions. the workshop was held as part of the students planning to establish the institution as a fair trade university and build links with oxfam: a project encouraged by the university as part of ‘engagement’. rather than wanting oxfam to take the lead in this endeavour, those involved felt it would be best to have the students lead the campaign. we were invited to run the workshop as a way of training them to achieve this goal. importantly, this goal was something that they had defined but lacked belief that they could achieve. the school-based workshop structure is summarised in table 1. the workshop design presented civics education to a population whose concept of the civis was not unified, in a process adapted to the changing, complex and heterogeneous nature of their experience of citizenship. session description coming to know your world: —introductions and defining the important issues to each individual participant; —how should things be in the world around you: the aim is to encourage participants to identify issues around which they gather; to create reflective capacity and imaginative and transformative capacity. we will give the young people the ability to take some risks in a safe environment. table 1: structure of the school-based workshop 68 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge session description power: introduction to power and reflexive activities. —introduction to persuasion and influence: what are the possible paths to making the changes that you want to see? —who holds power in our system of government and how can we get them to listen? skills training —introduction to advocacy; —public speaking and telling a powerful story; persuasion skills: being focussed on solutions; being clear about what you are asking for; framing your issue; —media literacy. understanding our systems of government —looking at the various tiers of government. conclusions and forward planning: —taking forward what has been learned through the training; how to make what has been learned last. we learnt many lessons, which have guided our further workshop development, community engagement and research. to begin with, we noted that the first half, with its two parts, successfully achieved a moment of transformation. the facilitators (who included arvanitakis) focused on the lived experience of the participants, their sense of agency (or lack of it) and their understandings of power. this process allowed the participants to break down and see through their everyday experiences, reaching a moment of transformation, crossing a threshold. this process required high levels of skill and engagement by the facilitators. simply asking young people ‘what are you interested in’ fails because we have found that what most pick is either top of their mind, something that has recently interested them, or what they think the facilitators want to hear. the key is to engage with their grounds for engagement. presenting a list of issues that we believe may interest young people repeats the errors of conventional civics education workshops by pre-packaging priorities. using ‘case studies’ (fictional or actual) means that participants fail to relate to the issues. the success of the first phase came from allowing participants to develop their own priorities and engagements. this established a sense of agency towards their role in the workshop as the participants themselves noted they essentially ‘set the agenda’. lessons learnt were applied to their lived experience rather than mediated through a hypothetical situation. the facilitators employed a number of ways to gather this information. for example, using a map to draw out where each participant spends most of their time and then asking a number of probing questions including: what is it about this place that 69 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge attracts you? how would you feel if you could no longer access this? what would make it a better place? these questions were asked only after building some rapport with the participants. the key transformation concerned issues of power and agency. to highlight the relational nature of power, the facilitators workshopped a series of interactive activities that showed how members of a society are interlinked. various mechanisms were employed to show this interconnection including having participants stand in a circle and, using string, physically connecting the various participants, including the facilitators and teachers – showing how one’s decision can affect others. we emphasised how power is diffused throughout society rather than concentrated at the top. taking this relational approach to power meant that participants came to understand their potential influence, their crucial role in relations of engagement. equally illuminating for us was our recognition that the second half of this workshop worked less well, for some subtle but important structural reasons. we had begun by identifying power as diffused, but the focus of our skills training was on how to deal better with central sources of power, like government bodies or the school hierarchy. further, in the structure of the workshop the discussions around power were separated from those on agency, resulting in a disjuncture between the two. this process obscured the fundamental links between these issues, implying that participants’ agency depended on remote sources of power rather than growing from the relationships built around them. the result was a simplification of the more complex and nuanced position we had established earlier. the facilitators were still as enthusiastic and committed and the workshop still rated as a success, but in our terms we regretted that we had inadvertently brought them back across the threshold understanding we had achieved in the first phase. the fair trade workshop took a different approach. this three-hour workshop focused on how ‘change’ can happen (see table 2 for the structure of the workshop). as students were already attending university we made the assumption that some basic sense of citizenship existed. we focused on establishing a sense of agency, highlighting the ways that individuals and groups can make change happen through strategies of multiple engagement. 70 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge session description coming to know your world: —introductions followed by the ‘3 things’ exercise: identifying the three things that make you laugh, sad, feel inspired, stay awake at night, proud (such as achievements) and want to change in the world; —your world: an exercise whereby the participants graphically record the many relationships and activities in their lives. —establish connections with others in the room creating a safe environment. —through various activities, participants identify what of the ‘3 things’ is their priority: what change do they want to see. power: introduction to power and reflexive activities —interactive stories of change: local, regional, national and international; —discussions about how this happened: how can we apply the lessons learnt? how does change happen? —relationships of power: how does power operate —identifying our own solidarity relationships and networks: how do we build on and strengthen these? skills training —unpacking the things that enable change and disable our sense of agency; —how do we deal with constraints: time, money, knowledge, experience? —how to build on what resources we have access to? understanding our systems of government —exercise to envisage the change that is desired; —planning exercise; —postcard exercise. conclusions and forward planning: —conclusion and planning how to build the networks. the first transformative moment emerged from our focus on change as something that happens within our everyday lives, not something separated from us. change occurs by looking at existing relationships, habits, behaviours and interactions, and responding to these in the context of the change we desire. this led to a threshold moment around identity. change does not occur by becoming ‘someone else’. the students did not have to become ‘activists’ to bring about change. as students they could reflect on their existing relationship to the university, and their behaviours with campus outlets and their peers. as one participant stated: table 2: fair trade workshop 71 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge the workshop provided opportunity for us to open our mind and challenge ourselves in relations with the goal of changing the world. the second moment of transformation occurred when these relationships were also explored from the perspective of power. like the participants in the first workshop discussed above, the participants here had not identified the relational and diffused nature of power, but assumed it was concentrated. they came to realise that power operated in the relationships that were being established in the workshop. as one participant noted in our follow-up discussions, the workshop was powerful because it promoted a sense of ‘connecting … and seeing how people have similar ideas’. this was also evident in the goals set by the participants. for example, one participant noted that he did not realise how strong his network was, adding that he would also promote fair trade by ‘workshop on delivery in parishes’. in both workshops, we took care to remind participants that this was not a power-free zone. both school and university environments are sites for the operation of complex relationships of power, agency and engagement. with the school workshop, it was important to work with teaching staff to ensure that they understood that we were potentially going to challenge the established power relationships within that environment, within a framework of respect for different commitments and forms of engagement for facilitators, participants and staff. we learnt valuable lessons from exercises that worked well. in one, we asked participants to list three things that they would aim to achieve in terms of their desired goal: one before the end of the day, one in three months, and one in 12 months. we then asked them to write a postcard to themselves that we would send to them within three months. this type of planning was seen as fundamental in achieving change: very practical and really pushes people to plan and take actions on changing the world. i like [that] the teacher gets us to make an action plan for this coming year. the action plan and the postcard … motivating you that you can make changes [sic]. the postcard strategy surprised us with its effectiveness. this led us to ask why it worked so well, and what it was doing in terms of our conceptions of engagement and transformations. firstly and directly, it formalised their own process of pledging or committing to an outcome for themselves, to which we acted as witnesses. as witnesses we had our own commitment too, to continue the timeframe of the workshop beyond the specific workshop. second, it was a productive example of an autocatalytic loop. the output of the workshop stage became the input for the post-workshop phase, sustained by the shared commitment of facilitators and participants. 72 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge when we planned these workshops we did not use the concept of autocatalytic loops or reflexive feedback. with hindsight we can see areas it could have helped. for instance, as we noted, participants in the first workshop established the agenda at the beginning, but instead of feeding this success into the later stages of the workshop we felt pressure to ensure we met specific outcomes, due to our commitments to funding bodies. as the workshop progressed, we began to steer it in certain directions. as a result it backed off from the threshold state of transformation we had desired. two strategic questions arise from this experience: how do we achieve our aims but not be limited by a preestablished agenda? could funding bodies learn to support projects that do not have any ‘measurable outcomes’? a final lesson that emerged from both workshops was the issue of longer term support within an engagement framework. we did not want to run workshops, then walk away. by establishing communities of peer support, it is possible to identify and prioritise issues and challenges, to pursue and encourage change. in both workshops, resource constraints meant that we failed to do this, but we can learn from this to ensure we do things differently. for those promoting engagement, this challenge has no easy solution but must be addressed. this is particularly the case where the aim is to establish networks to achieve change and empower citizens. responding to calls for assistance or support with ‘sorry, i’m now working on another project to meet my performance indicators’ would quickly disentangle the relations that we had worked so hard to establish. conclusion we do not doubt that universities have an important role in engaging with the broader community. but a key challenge for contemporary universities is to acknowledge and confront the complex network of the communities they interact with, and engage in ways that can simultaneously transform us/them and the community. as part of our broader project we have attempted to acknowledge this. we see the broad aim of engagement programs as worthwhile, to establish meaningful links between universities and the community around a sense of common purpose. the challenge is to go beyond information dissemination, to engage with the energies and ideals of these heterogeneous communities, to co-create new versions of the civis better adapted to the complex dynamics of the contemporary world. simultaneously, both the university and us, as researchers, cross a threshold: better understanding the many communities around us as well as understanding the transformations required to achieve a socially just world. acknowledgements we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for engaging with this research and their valuable input. we would also like 73 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge to thank the australian research council for awarding us the funding for the arc discovery project dp120104607 discussed in this article. references aly, w 2010, ‘on the future of conservatism’, quarterly essay, vol. 37, pp. 3–57. arvanitakis, j 2011, ‘redefining the political moment’, cosmopolitan civil societies: an interdisciplinary journal, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 72–89. arvanitakis, j & marren, s 2008, ‘putting the politics back into politics: young people and democracy in australia’, discussion paper, whitlam institute, sydney. balkenius, c 1995, ‘natural intelligence in artificial creatures’, department of cognitive studies, no. 37, lund university. bos, a, williamson, i, sullivan, j, gonzales, m & avery, p 2007, ‘the price of rights: exploring the 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marshall, t 1950, citizenship and social class, and other essays, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. marx, k & engels f 1970 (1847), communist manifesto, lawrence and wishart, london. mies, m 1991, ‘women’s research or feminist research?’, in m fonow & j cook (eds), beyond methodology: feminist scholarship as lived research, indiana university press, bloomington, in, pp. 60–94. monash university community engagement framework, viewed june 2012, www.odvce.monash.edu.au/assets/documents/ communityengagementframework_final_november_2010.pdf. mueller, d 2002, ‘defining citizenship’, theoretical inquiries in law, vol. 3, no. 1, article 6. nandy, a 1983, the intimate enemy: loss and recovery of self under colonialism, oxford university press, delhi. partridge, e 1966, origins, routledge & kegan paul, london. portney, k & o’leary, l 2007, ‘civic and political engagement of america’s youth: a report from the tisch college “national survey of civic and political engagement of young people”’, tisch college, tufts university, medford, ma. www.latrobe.edu.au/bendigo/community www.odvce.monash.edu.au/assets/documents/communityengagementframework_final_november_2010.pdf www.odvce.monash.edu.au/assets/documents/communityengagementframework_final_november_2010.pdf 75 | gateways | arvanitakis & hodge putnam, r 2000, bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community, simon & schuster, new york. said, e 1979, orientalism, penguin, london. sinclair, m-l 2011, ‘developing a model for effective stakeholder engagement management’, curtin university of technology, viewed june 2011, www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/apprj/articles/12-sinclair.pdf. stanfield, j ii 1998, ‘ethnic modelling in qualitative research’, in n denzin & y lincoln (eds), the landscape of qualitative research, sage, thousand oaks, ca, pp. 156–84. turner, b (ed.) 1993, citizenship and social theory, sage, london. turner, b 2009, ‘t. h. marshall, social rights and english national identity’, citizenship studies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 65–73. uws engagement, viewed march 2012, www.uws.edu.au/community/ in_the_community/oue. wimmer, a & schiller, n 2002, ‘methodological nationalism or the “container model”’, global networks, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 301–34. youniss, j & levine, p 2009, ‘younger americans act: an old idea for a new era’, in j youniss & p levine (eds), engaging young people in civic life, vanderbuilt university press, nashville, tn, ch. 1. www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/apprj/articles/12-sinclair.pdf www.uws.edu.au/community/in_the_community/oue www.uws.edu.au/community/in_the_community/oue 9 bourner.indd a compatible partnership? student-community engagement and traditional university education this article explores the relationship between student learning from community engagement (slce) and traditional university education (tue). in so doing it seeks to contribute to our understanding of the rationale for efforts to include slce in higher education. student learning from community engagement (slce) normally involves the inclusion within the higher education curriculum of a period of time in which students work for some form of community-based organisation, to learn from the experience and to provide benefits to the community. the ‘engagement’ in the term ‘student learning from community engagement’ refers to students working on a community-based project(s) within a community setting. for example: [it] relates to a practical task or project carried out either for or with a community organisation. projects are either suggested by local groups or identified by students through established volunteering networks (cupp 2005, p. 2). slce can take many forms, ranging from accredited volunteering in the community, where learning is distilled from the volunteering experience, to full-blown service learning, as found in many universities in the usa. it doesn’t include student volunteering on campus or forms of student-community engagement where student learning is not a major object of the exercise. a significant feature of student-community engagement is reciprocity, that is, the ‘give and take’ involved. students give their time and talents to community groups and organisations and receive valuable learning. at first sight this seems so different from ‘traditional’ university education, which is centred on some specific academic subject(s), that it raises a range of questions, especially: —are slce and tue different ways of realising the same ends and, if so, could slce replace tue for at least some students? —on the other hand, are slce and tue so different that they are incompatible? if they are compatible, what value does student gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 139–154 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 tom bourner university of brighton 140 | gateways | bourner learning from community engagement add to traditional university education? —where does slce fit within a program of traditional university education? the aim of this article is to explore these questions and offer some answers. the issues are explored within the context of university education in the uk. a particular feature of university education in the uk has been its slowness in moving from an elite to a mass system (scott 1995; trow 1973). the uk made that transition at a relatively late stage of its economic development (measured in terms of real gnp per head). the existence of a binary system of higher education until the 1990s meant that many of the pressures to change higher education were directed at the polytechnics rather than the universities, including the pressure to make universities more responsive to their local communities. consequently, traditional university education, at least at the undergraduate level, held sway longer in the uk than in other countries at comparable levels of economic development. thus, for example, the usa has a much stronger tradition of studentcommunity engagement within its universities, particularly in the form of service learning, than does the uk (see, for example, butin 2010 or stanton et al. 1999). the dominant position of tue within uk universities until relatively recently makes it a particularly fruitful context in which to explore the relationship(s) between tue and slce. the focus of this article is on university education at the undergraduate level. there are two reasons for this. first, slce is most commonly found at this level in the uk rather than at masters or phd levels. second, undergraduate education is the largest single component of higher education. the problem of heterogeneity a major difficulty in exploring the relationship between student learning from community engagement (slce) and traditional university education (tue) is that slce programs are far from homogeneous. some courses of student learning from community engagement involve well-defined projects whereas others involve simply a period of activity in the community. some involve student engagement with the local community whereas others involve engagement with the wider community. some focus on the application of knowledge acquired in the university whereas others focus on the distillation of knowledge from the experience of student engagement. some are based on a single module within a degree program that students take while continuing with other modules whereas others are more like a sandwich placement, that is, a period of full-time learning in the community between periods of college-based studies. in the light of such heterogeneity what do we actually mean when we use the term ‘student learning from community engagement’? 141 | gateways | bourner the solution to the problem of heterogeneity employed in this article is the concept of the ‘majority model’. such a model comprises those features that are shared by the majority of programs of student learning from community engagement in the uk. this is only a partial solution to the problem, however, because most programs of slce in the uk are relatively new, which means there is still a considerable amount of curriculum experimentation and development going on. the case study at the end of this article provides an illustrative summary of studentcommunity engagement at one university in the uk where it is relatively well established, albeit a development of this decade. much has been written about the specific practices found in student-community engagement in those countries where it is relatively well developed, particularly in the usa. less is known about the full extent of student learning from community engagement across britain and the range of practices involved. there are accounts of the experiences and practices within particular institutions (for example, hart, maddison & wolff 2007) but no up-to-date survey or profile of the position across the whole country. the status of the ‘majority model’ of student learning from community engagement in the uk proposed by this article must therefore be regarded as provisional. what is needed is a national profile of programs of student-community engagement to discover the variety of practices in programs of student learning from community engagement and establish empirically which features are shared by most and which are local variations. such a profile could also facilitate the spread of emergent developments, good practice and new ideas. until we have such knowledge, the ‘majority model’ of student learning from community engagement in the article must be viewed as tentative and corrigible. there is also considerable heterogeneity within ‘traditional university education’. some courses of traditional university education place considerable reliance on coursework in assessment whereas others rely entirely on examinations; some include group work and others do not; and so on. however, traditional university education is more familiar because it has been around for longer and because many of its features are recorded in published guides for prospective students. faced with the problem of variation in traditional university education, the solution employed in this article is the same as that employed for slce, that is, reliance on the concept of the majority model which focuses on features shared by the majority of traditional university education courses in the uk. what is meant by ‘traditional university education’? the primary aspiration of a university education has changed over the long history of the university. in the earliest universities of the middle ages it was to serve the needs of the latin church 142 | gateways | bourner with its espoused aim of serving the will of the god of western christendom. in the early modern period it was to produce godly gentlemen, men of virtue who could tell right from wrong morally, socially, intellectually and aesthetically. in the early 19th century its main goal began to change to preparing graduates to serve the advancement of knowledge (through research, dissemination or application of knowledge) and it was this change in mission that led to the type of university education we now regard as ‘traditional’ in the uk. appendix 1 provides a brief account of the origins of what is regarded as traditional university education in the uk. so what is a traditional university education? it is one that seeks to equip students with knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable them to play a part in the advancement of knowledge of an academic subject. the intended learning outcomes of traditional university education follow from that superordinate goal and include: knowledge —knowledge that is up-to-date. in order to equip students to contribute to the advancement of knowledge it is important that they are familiar with current knowledge, its boundaries and the gaps that most need to be filled. the height of traditional higher education rises with its proximity to the leading edge of the advancement of knowledge. at its higher levels students discuss the most recent knowledge discovered by research. and at the highest level of all, doctoral level, they finally reach the leading edge itself as they are expected to make an original contribution to new knowledge. —text-based knowledge. traditionally, new knowledge is published in academic journals after which it is distilled down into advanced textbooks and later into textbooks for intermediate and foundation levels of higher education. the arrival of e-learning is impacting on this process but the knowledge available online remains predominantly text-based. —knowledge that is located within academic subjects. the advancement of knowledge implies the accumulation of knowledge. as the stock of knowledge expands the only way to gain an understanding of knowledge at its leading edge is by increasing specialisation. the accumulation of knowledge over time therefore implies growing subject specialisation and consequently a progressive rise in the number of individual academic subjects. skills —critical thinking skills that enable a student to test the validity of assertions and conclusions. if students are to play a role in the advancement of the knowledge of a subject then they need to be able to evaluate claims for new knowledge. in the words of douglas hague, chair of the uk’s economic and social research council for much of the 1980s: 143 | gateways | bourner academics must believe that acquiring the ability to test ideas and evidence is the primary benefit of a university education (hague 1991, p. 64). —skills of written communication. apart from the ability to test ideas, assertions and evidence, what other generic skills would most help a student destined to serve the advancement of new knowledge? the main one is the ability to communicate effectively. since the normal way of communicating new knowledge is through publication in an academic journal, traditional university education has placed much emphasis on written communication and, in particular, producing written work for an academic audience. —subject-specific skills. economists, for example, might need statistical skills, chemists might need laboratory skills, physicists might need mathematical skills, and so on. in some subjects the subjectspecific skills comprise a relatively large part of the syllabus and in other subjects they comprise a relatively small part. in some subjects, such as languages and mathematics, there is a large grey area between the acquisition of subject-specific skills and the acquisition of subject knowledge itself. attitudes —a sceptical/questioning attitude. scepticism is a natural ally of critical thinking. traditional university education seeks to equip students with the ability and disposition to test ideas and evidence. the ability depends on critical thinking skills and the inclination to do so depends on an attitude of questioning and scepticism. —intellectual curiosity. traditional university education applauds the idea of ‘learning for its own sake’. its overarching project is to increase the stock of knowledge from which all can draw and it makes the implicit assumption that this project can be best advanced if academic staff and students are free to pursue knowledge for its own sake. in the words of the founding figure of the modern research university, wilhelm von humboldt: at the highest level, the teacher does not exist for the sake of the student: both teacher and student have their justification in the common pursuit of knowledge (humboldt 1970, p. 243). —impartiality. traditional university education prizes the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, which implies disinterested enquiry. it is not surprising that the long tradition of rhetoric as a subject of study in university education petered out with the arrival of the research-based university. disinterested enquiry seeks to discover rather than persuade and in that sense it does not take sides. it eschews advocacy and reveres impartiality. student learning from community engagement and its learning outcomes if the main purpose of traditional university education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to serve the advancement of knowledge of an academic subject, then 144 | gateways | bourner what is the main purpose of student learning from community engagement? it is to equip the students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to make a difference to the lives of those in the community. what sort of knowledge? —knowledge that enables students to make a difference. since this is likely to depend on context (particularly time and place), it is more important for students to know where and how to find answers from a range of sources than to absorb an established, but limited, body of general principles or theory. the knowledge needed, for example, to help establish a dedicated childcare centre on an estate in a disadvantaged neighbourhood is likely to be different from that needed to help a local school extend its after-hours involvement in community projects, and different again from that needed to best help with a scheme whereby knowledge and skills gained by contributing to neighbourhood renewal is counted towards formal qualifications. —knowledge distilled from experience. whereas traditional university education has most respect for the sort of knowledge found in academic journals and textbooks, student learning from community engagement applauds the sort of knowledge that is distilled from experience. —self-knowledge. what sort of knowledge would be most helpful in enabling students to make a difference? knowledge that is specific to the student’s role in the community-based issue on which they are working. the most specific knowledge of all is student knowledge of themselves, including understanding their own talents, strengths and weaknesses. this is particularly important because the main instrument for change that students will bring to every future situation is themselves so they need to know about their own strengths and weaknesses. what sort of skills? —reflective thinking and strategic thinking skills. these are the key thinking skills that are needed to make a difference. they are needed to capture the lessons of the students’ experiences in the community and they are needed to develop strategies, plans and actions to realise the goals that the students set themselves. like critical thinking they are both forms of question-based thinking but the searching questions needed for reflective thinking and strategic thinking are different (bourner 2009). — listening skills. writing for an academic audience is not as highly valued by slce as it is by tue. by contrast, oral skills (listening and talking) are of particular value to those who would seek to make a difference in the community. listening skills are especially important because responding to a need often starts with listening. —personal transferable skills. enhancing students’ abilities to make a difference after they graduate means preparing them for problems, situations and contexts that cannot normally be predicted far in advance. this is why it is important to hone up their skills that are transferable between a wide variety of different situations. what 145 | gateways | bourner makes a person effective as a change agent is the particular set of personal skills and other strengths the individual brings to a situation. what sort of attitudes? —desire to make a difference. it is one thing to develop the capacity to make a difference in the community and another to have the disposition or inclination to do so. by making students more aware of the needs within the community, student engagement enhances the motivation of the students to contribute to change within the wider community. —proactivity. a proactive attitude equips students with a bias for action – a clear asset for those who aspire to make a difference. —commitment. a person’s ability to make a difference is enhanced by a commitment to the changes they seek to make … and if they are passionate in their commitment then so much the better. table 1, above, contrasts the knowledge, skills and attitudes of traditional university education with those of student learning from community engagement. it is important to appreciate what columns 3 and 4 do, and do not, represent. column 3 represents the sort of knowledge, skills and attitudes embodied in the majority of traditional university education that was inherited from earlier generations of university academics (it also represents an ideal of subject-focused education that dominated uk universities table 1: traditional university education and student learning from community engagement compared knowledge, skills and attitudes key questions traditional university education (tue) (majority model) student learning from community engagement (slce) (majority model) what type of knowledge is most valued? the most recent/ advanced knowledge discovered by research knowledge that most enables students to make a difference, including knowledge of where and how to find things out knowledge what is the principal source(s) of knowledge from which students learn? textbooks and (at the more advanced level) academic journals distillation of knowledge from experience and reflection what domain of knowledge epitomises this form of higher education? knowledge located within academic subjects self-knowledge what thinking skills are most highly valued? critical thinking skills that enable a student to test ideas, including assumptions and conclusions the skills of reflective thinking and strategic thinking skills what communication skills are most highly valued? skills of written communication, especially the ability to write for an academic audience listening skills what other skills are most prized? subject-specific skills personal transferable skills attitudes what attitudes are most highly valued? 1. sceptical/ questioning attitude 2. intellectual curiosity, that is, a spirit of disinterested enquiry 3. impartiality 1. desire to make a difference 2. proactive, that is, a bias towards action 3. commitment 146 | gateways | bourner during at least the middle half of the 20th century). it does not purport to represent all of traditional university education; there is still, for example, a thinning strand of the sort of higher education advanced by cardinal newman (newman 1976) and there is a range of recent additional tributaries that are serving to broaden higher education. these include the development of skills for graduate employment (particularly in the 1980s), skills for independent study (particularly in the 1990s) and the ‘skills’ of reflective learning (particularly over the last decade) (bourner 2004). however, the ideas of traditional university education continue to exert such power that it is reasonable to believe that a majority of uk academics across the range of universities would want a university graduate to be equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes as described by column 3. those uk academics who would see the attributes of column 3 as unimportant constitute a very small minority. column 4 claims (with rather less confidence) to represent the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes embodied in the majority of slce. most academics engaged with slce will have their own particular views about the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they want to flow from slce as well as their own priorities. so each is likely to see omissions. column 4 does not claim to represent all of slce nor even all the knowledge, skills and attitudes to which the majority of slce practitioners subscribe. there will be those, for example, who would wish to stress the role of contextualisation of knowledge, the importance of developing interpersonal skills and openness to the experiences and perceptions of diverse others. column 4 claims only to show a range of learning outcomes in the domains of knowledge, skills and attitudes to which a majority of slce practitioners would subscribe. a glance at table 1 shows a large discrepancy between the items in the column for traditional university education and the corresponding items in the column for student learning from community engagement. even if the absence of a national profile of slce means that there are some errors in the ‘majority model’ of slce it is clear that slce seeks to equip students with knowledge, skills and attitudes that are quite different from those of tue. this gives the answer to one of the questions posed at the start of this article: ‘are slce and tue just different ways of reaching the same higher education ends?’ clearly, they are not. table 1 implies very different graduate profiles, each with a range of quite different strengths. these are summarised in figure 1. tue: graduate profile 1 according to column 3, traditional university education seeks to produce a graduate with up-to-date knowledge of an academic subject, mostly gleaned from books, journals and other written sources. this graduate has acquired the skills needed for success in an academic subject, the ability to write in ways approved by academics in that subject discipline and well-honed critical faculties. she or he ends their university course with figure 1: contrasting graduate profiles 147 | gateways | bourner a questioning mind that values learning for its own sake and respects impartial enquiry. slce: graduate profile 2 according to column 4, student learning from community engagement seeks to produce a graduate who has learned where and how to find knowledge from a wide range of sources, how to capture knowledge from their own experience and, in so doing, has acquired considerable self-knowledge, including awareness of their particular talents and strengths. she or he has acquired skills that are transferable to a wide range of situations including the ability to develop a strategy or plan and the ability to listen in ways that lets the people they are speaking with know they have been understood. this graduate recognises the value of action when they want to make a difference to a cause to which they feel committed. these are two very different graduate profiles but they are not incompatible. each graduate is prepared for their next steps after graduation depending on the direction of those next steps. a graduate who is best described by profile 1 is particularly well prepared to progress further in academia by way of further academic study at postgraduate level, teaching and research. a graduate who can be described by profile 2 has developed many of the attitudes associated with graduate employability more generally (universities uk 2003). a recent study of the changes in first destinations of uk graduates over the last four decades revealed that in the early 1960s about six out of every 10 graduates remained within the education system after graduation – going on to teaching or other training, research, further academic study, or education administration. today that ratio is down to about three out of 10 (bourner & rospigliosi 2008). the large majority now find jobs in other sectors, including industry, wholesale/retail, financial services, commercial and public services other than education. clearly, graduates who can be described by both profiles are better prepared for their next steps in either direction after completion of their university studies. in other words, they are more versatile and have a wider range of options when they graduate. conclusions and implications this article started with the aim of exploring the relationship between traditional university education and student learning from community education. its approach has been to identify the superordinate goal of tue (to develop the capacity, and disposition, of students to contribute to the advancement of knowledge of an academic subject) and that of slce (to develop the capacity, and disposition, of students to contribute to the community). it has looked at what these goals imply for the main learning outcomes of tue and slce respectively. these learning outcomes were then examined in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes, and summarised in table 1. this table allows the questions posed at the outset of this article to be answered: 148 | gateways | bourner 1 are student learning from community engagement (slce) and traditional university education (tue) different ways of realising the same ends and, if so, could slce replace tue for at least some students? the knowledge, skills and attitudes that flow from slce are largely different from those that flow from tue. this is shown by comparing columns 3 and 4 in table 1 above. 2 on the other hand, are slce and tue so different that they are incompatible? if they are compatible, what value does student learning from community engagement (slce) add to traditional university education (tue)? slce and tue are not incompatible as neither precludes the other. including slce within a program of higher education adds a range of learning outcomes of much value in preparing students for their lives after university (including finding graduate employment). 3 where does slce fit within a program of traditional university education? slce doesn’t fit within a program of traditional university education; it fits with it. it is not a means of achieving the same learning outcomes as tue; it contributes valuable additional learning outcomes resulting in a bigger, richer higher education experience for university students. the relationship between slce and tue is, therefore, one of complementarity as slce and tue offer complementary learning outcomes. these answers have a number of implications. first and foremost they imply that the role of student learning from community engagement in higher education is not to serve tue but rather to play a significant part in higher education in its own right. slce makes a significant contribution in developing students’ social responsibility and capacity for community action as well as preparing students for their lives after university, apart from any contribution it might make in advancing the knowledge and understanding of an academic subject. this is not to imply that slce can make no contribution to tue in some subject areas. there is a limited range of subjects, mostly those that provide a training for professional practice involving community engagement, where slce can be drawn on by tue, such as education, some health studies and some applied social sciences. and there are a limited number of additional subjects where tue offers opportunities for the application of campus-based studies (for example, where a computer studies student sets up a website for a community group). but in the majority of university subjects (such as maths, modern languages, chemistry, classics, physics, literature, engineering, ancient history, biology, etc.) its contribution to traditional university education is clearly marginal. this is evident by comparing column 3 with column 4 in table 1. a second implication is for the advocacy of slce within higher education and, in particular, the different approaches to making the case for slce. one approach is to focus the case for 149 | gateways | bourner slce, in the first instance, on those subjects such as education, nursing and applied social studies, where slce can make some obvious contribution to tue (either as input or as an opportunity to apply campus-based learning). demonstrating its viability and value in these subject areas provides a basis for rolling it out into other subject areas. in other words, having demonstrated that slce ‘works’ in easy-to-reach subjects it is assumed that this will make harder-to-reach subjects more receptive. this may be termed the ‘trojan-horse’ approach, as it uses the easy-to-reach subjects as a means of gaining entry to higher education more generally. the analysis in this article, summarised in table 1, suggests that this strategy is unlikely to achieve more than limited success. the argument that slce can contribute to tue is only ever likely to convince those academics in the hard-to-reach subjects who wish to be convinced. consider the problem of persuading subjectcentred academics in a discipline such as physics that studentcommunity engagement will contribute to their intended learning outcomes centred around the contents of column 3 in table 1. it would require advanced skills of rhetoric (and possibly sophistry) to convince such academics that student learning from community engagement could help prepare their students to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and understanding of modern physics. the more that advocates of slce convince themselves that slce contributes to tue (either as input or as application) and base their advocacy on that argument the less successful they are likely to be in making a case that is persuasive to academics in the hardto-reach subjects. to have more than a marginal impact in such areas it is necessary to provide reasons that have more appeal to academics in the hard-to-reach subjects. the analysis in this paper implies that it is better to focus on the society-centred outcomes and student-centred outcomes. it is indicative of the seismic shifts that have occurred in the university landscape over the last halfcentury to say that most subject-centred academics are likely to agree that there is value in developing the social responsibility of students, particularly if a way can be found that will help prepare students for their lives (including work) after university. slce offers such a way. the third implication is for further research. at an early stage in this article the need was identified for a national profile of programs of student-community engagement in the uk to discover the variety of practices in programs of student learning from community engagement and to establish empirically which features are shared by most and which are local variations. what has also become apparent is the need for profiling the incidence of slce across the range of university subjects and types of universities. this sort of profiling will identify the extent of the variation and make it possible to test ideas about why some subjects and some sectors lag behind others in adopting slcs. it will also make it easier to test ideas about why countries like the uk lag behind other countries, particularly the usa, in 150 | gateways | bourner the adoption of slce. also, the conceptual typology of table 1 offers a theoretical framework for informing future empirical enquiry. there is, for example, a need for future work to explore empirically how educators perceive the learning outcomes of student-community engagement in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes. this will contribute to an understanding of how different views on the knowledge, skills and attitudes that flow from slce affect actual slce applications and practices. the purpose of slce is not to serve tue. slce makes a contribution to higher education in its own right. it contributes additional learning outcomes. together, tue and slce offer a broader higher education curriculum and experience and together they better prepare students for life after university than either can alone. case study: student community engagement at brighton university the student community engagement (sce) program at brighton university is run by the university’s ‘gateway’ unit, the community university partnership project (cupp), which was set up in 2004. this sce strand of cupp’s work operates via projects that are integrated within academic courses. the largest element of the sce program is the community participation and development (cpd) module, which operates in six schools of the university. in addition, there are politics and business versions of the module. the other main element of sce at brighton university is modules designed around larger projects within a particular course or school. for example, the school of architecture has developed an open architecture studio that enables students to take on building projects with local schools and playgroups. they get an opportunity to gain experience of tendering, costing, designing, sourcing and building a structure as they work with stakeholders who have a vital interest in the outcome but rarely have much say in it. the cpd module is based on 30–50 hours of practical work in the community by the students. during the 2007–2008 academic session about 1500 hours were contributed by about 350 students to about 180 different community organisations. this implies that, on average, each student completed almost 45 hours of practical work in the community. examples include work in local primary or secondary schools, prisons, play centres, refuges, and mentoring and ambassadorial work through the university’s program for widening participation in higher education. the cpd module provides a broad template specifying various parameters (including the number of hours of practical work – normally 50 – and the nature of the assessment at various points) but the range of actual work that the students undertake is as wide as their fields of interest, the contacts they can identify and the roles they can undertake. 151 | gateways | bourner the cpd module is intended to enable the students to take the initiative in choosing projects. for the most part, the student suggests a project they would like to undertake or works to a brief agreed with a community organisation they have chosen to work with. examples include community nursing students working with groups that mainstream services find hard to reach (such as setting up a health clinic for refugee women and children) and business management students developing business plans to support funding applications by community organisations. some of the opportunities are provided by the university’s student volunteering network; some are found through local volunteer organisations; and some come from contacts the students have or manage to identify and develop. a significant dimension of this module is that most of the students go through application, interview, selection and training processes that are similar to those they will experience when looking for work after they graduate. academic credit is based on project work, analysis and reflection on their particular community-based project. the students are graded on their success in examining and making sense of their experience rather than the success or otherwise of their task (which may depend on factors outside their control). assessment requires the completion of a learning journal, analysis of the organisation where they are located, and exploration and review of the literature that is relevant to their work. they are required to identify and assess the relevance of their learning from other modules they have studied in the university, identify what they brought to the experience and assess what they have gained from the experience. they are also asked to discuss whether this is the sort of organisation in which they might wish to work after graduation. appendix 1 a brief account of the birth of traditional university education1 according to conventional wisdom the universities were in disarray by the start of the 19th century. by the eighteenth century universities everywhere were in the doldrums, confined to the training of priests or pastors, a few civil servants, and those gentry too poor to educate their sons by private tutors and the increasingly popular ‘grand tour’ of the continent … most universities in eighteenth century europe were moribund, with idle professors ... despised by the intellectuals of the enlightenment. in england the historian of the roman empire edward gibbon described his student days at oxford as ‘the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life’, [sic] and his teachers, ‘the monks of magdalen’, as ‘decent, easy men who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder’. in germany civil servants and politicians seriously discussed whether universities did more harm than good and ought to be abolished (perkin 1997, pp. 14–15). 1 this is only the briefest summary. the standard works on the development of the university and university education in europe are the three volumes of a history of the university in europe sponsored by the standing conference of rectors, presidents and vicechancellors of the european universities (cre), now the european university association (eua) – see de ridder-symoens (1992, vol. 1 & 1996, vol. 2) and rüegg (2004, vol. 3). for a good brief account of european universities to 1914 see rudy (1984), and anderson (2006) gives a useful account of the development of uk universities and university education over the last 200 years. 152 | gateways | bourner a way out of the malaise was provided by wilhelm von humboldt who established the university of berlin with a new mission: the pursuit of knowledge. it was not the role of the humboldtian university to serve the needs of students but rather it was the role of students as well as the staff of the university to serve the pursuit of knowledge. in humboldt’s own words (in translation): at the highest level, the teacher does not exist for the sake of the student: both teacher and student have their justification in the common pursuit of knowledge (humboldt 1970, p. 243). knowledge is pursued in order that it may be found, so the goal of the pursuit of knowledge is the discovery of knowledge and that meant research. this was to become the superordinate goal of the university. it was the birth of the research university. berlin’s lead was followed by other german universities and what became known as the german model was adopted by universities in other countries too. there are at least three reasons: —german industry was thriving in the latter part of the 19th century and this was attributed, at least in part, to the adoption of research (and especially research into the natural sciences) by the german universities —there was a large inflow of students to german universities particularly from those wanting to get a training in research —german professors’ commitment to research and publication gave them a source of reputation not enjoyed by the staff in other universities who confined themselves to teaching. this enhanced the esteem of the german universities as well as german academics. consequently, the german universities that had been regarded as the most backward in europe at the end of the 18th century transformed themselves in the course of the next century into the universities that were seen as the most successful. in other words, by the start of the 20th century not only were the german universities seen as being at the leading edge but also they were the ones that had made the most progress. the conclusion was clear: if you wanted to build a successful university you needed to prioritise the advancement of knowledge. it is easy to see the role of university staff in the ‘advancement of knowledge’. but what was the role of the students? for the students the university offered a period of preparation during which they could equip themselves to contribute to the advancement of knowledge through research, dissemination or application of the growing stock of knowledge. what we now regard as traditional university education in the uk is the sort of higher education that was developed during the nineteenth and the first half of the next century to serve that purpose. references anderson, r 2006, british universities past and present, hambledon continuum, london. 153 | gateways | bourner bourner, t 2004, ‘the broadening of the higher education curriculum, 1970–2002’, higher education review, vol. 36. no. 2, pp. 39–52. bourner, t 2009, ‘higher learning: developing students’ powers of learning in higher education’, higher education review, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 5–28. bourner, t & rospigliosi, a 2008, ‘40 years on: long-term change in the first destinations of graduates’, higher education review, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 36–59. butin, d 2010, service-learning in theory and practice: the future of community engagement in higher education, palgrave macmillan, london. community and university partnership project (cupp) 2005, student learning in the community: lessons from practice, cupp, brighton. hague, d 1991, beyond universities: a new republic of the intellect, institute of economic affairs, london. hart, a, maddison, e & wolff, d (eds) 2007, community-university partnerships in practice, national institute of adult continuing education, leicester. higher education statistics agency (hesa) 2008, students in higher education institutions, 2006/07, higher education statistics agency, cheltenham. von humboldt, w 1970, ‘on the spirit and organisational framework of intellectual institutions in berlin’, minerva, vol. 8, pp. 242–67 (german original 1810). millican, j 2005, ‘opening doors – “the contribution of the community university partnerships to community development and personal learning”’, paper presented to the education for sustainable development conference at the university of bournemouth, september 2005. newman, j 1996, the idea of a university, ed. frank m turner, yale university press, new haven, ct. perkin, h 1997, ‘history of universities’, in the history of higher education, 2nd edn, eds l goodchild & h wechsler, pearson, boston, ma. de ridder-symoens, h (ed.) 1992, a history of the university in europe: vol. 1, universities in the middle ages, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. de ridder-symoens, h (ed.) 1996, a history of the university in europe: vol. 2, universities in early modern europe (1500–1800), cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. rudy, w 1984, the universities of europe, 1100–1914: a history, associated university presses, london. rüegg, w (ed.) 2004, a history of the university in europe: vol. 3, universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1800–1945), cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. sastry, t 2004, postgraduate education in the united kingdom, higher education policy institute, london. scott p 1995, the meanings of mass higher education, open university press, bristol, pa/society for research into higher education, buckingham, uk. stanton, t, giles, d & cruz, n 1999, service-learning: a movement’s pioneers reflect on its origins, practice, and future, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. 154 | gateways | bourner trow, m 1973, problems in the transition from elite to mass higher education, carnegie commission on higher education, berkeley, ca. universities uk 2003, enhancing employability, recognising diversity: making links between higher education and the world of work, universities uk, london. watson, d 2007, managing civic and community engagement, open university press/mcgraw-hill education, london. building castles together a sustainable collaboration as a perpetual work-in-progress khadija, a three-year-old somali girl, regards the artist quizzically – she is unsure how to respond to the suggestion that she ‘use the materials to make something that describes family’ (figure 1). khadija’s mother, by contrast, jumps right in, rendering the coloured paper (figure 2). later, the artist weaves their work into the fabric panel coloured by khadija’s teacher (figure 3). this panel and others form the vibrant backdrop of a community celebration, rich with multicultural food, dance, art and music (figure 4). this is the building castles together project (bct), an interdisciplinary collaborative project that draws on art and gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 65–82 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 michelle vazquez jacobus university of southern maine at lewiston auburn college robert baskett sandcastle clinical and educational services christina bechstein maine college of art (meca) children fig. 1 fig. 2 fig. 3 fig. 4 fig. 5 66 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein cultural communication to strengthen relationships, enhance clinical services and build community. the synthesis of khadija’s, her mother’s and her teacher’s creations into an integrated exhibit reflect the work of the bct partnership (figures 1–5). each participant contributes their pieces which, when woven together, interact together more substantially. the innovation of one empowers the participation of another who may have been otherwise unable to join in. the bct project and the collaborative partnership from which it was born are the focus of this article. the partnership, located in the state of maine in the united states, is between the community-based campus of the university of southern maine at lewiston-auburn college (usm lac) and an early education centre, sandcastle clinical and educational services (sandcastle), serving a diverse range of differently-abled young children. usm lac is a public state university, one of the degree-awarding institutions of higher education which are funded and operated by the individual states of the usa. they are referred to as ‘public’ because of the ‘influx of public money’ subsidising tuition and because they are generally open to the public to apply for admission (peterson’s 2011). this complex 10-year partnership recently reached a high point in its development with the independently funded bct project (through a grant from the w.k. kellogg foundation). bct is an ideal model for analysis of sustainable universitycommunity partnerships as it manifests complexities inherent in such collaborations: the factors which have made it most successful and sustainable are also those that have presented the greatest challenges. this article, co-authored by sandcastle and usm lac, focuses on five elements of our collaboration: (1) mutuality and reciprocity; (2) diversity and interdisciplinarity; (3) community integration; (4) dynamic interaction; and (5) asset enhancement. hart and wolff (2006) note the dearth of scholarship reflecting full community partner participation. we respond to this concern by framing our discussion through the shared voice of the bct partners’ collaborative (the ‘we’ of the article), complemented by the unique perspectives of each partner. we also posit why community partners are under-represented in the academic literature and how this challenge is reflected in this assessment of the partnership’s sustainability. the partners community-engagement activists emphasise that, fundamental to ideals of social justice, university-community partnerships ought to derive from genuine community need, not academic fiat (porter & monard 2001; reardon 2006). our partnership was established because of the practical need to better integrate all members of our community, most recently including a burgeoning population of somali immigrants. there was also recognition that lewiston, 67 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein maine, the setting of our partnership, experiences adversity at many levels, impacting the most vulnerable – children, the poor and recent immigrants (vazquez jacobus & baskett 2010; vazquez jacobus & harris 2007). child poverty in androscoggin county’s principal cities, lewiston and auburn, is respectively 42 per cent and 27 per cent of the child population (maine children’s alliance 2010). the challenges are seen vividly in the local public schools. in 2009, 50.5 per cent of children in androscoggin county qualified for free lunch and 18 per cent of androscoggin’s k–12 students required special education (maine children’s alliance 2010). at the school serving the downtown lewiston area, which has the highest concentration of immigrants in the city, 97 per cent of the children receive free lunch (maine department of education 2010). recent restrictions in public spending multiply these hardships. on top of these challenges, the community’s cultural landscape has rapidly become more diverse. since 2001, approximately 5000 east african immigrants have relocated to lewiston–auburn (vazquez jacobus & jalali in press), an area with little recent experience with multicultural populations. in fall 2001, there were only 23 students who came from non-englishspeaking families in lewiston’s public schools; by fall 2010, the number was over 1000 (vazquez jacobus & jalali in press). as a microcosm of the lewiston–auburn area, the demographics of sandcastle have also changed dramatically. initially the families served were almost entirely caucasian and predominantly of franco-american descent. however, between 2003 and 2008 sandcastle’s proportion of children of colour doubled. many of these children are ‘new americans’, representing somalia, kenya, the sudan, morocco, the democratic republic of congo and latin america. concerned about these social issues, sandcastle approached usm lac hoping to join forces to ameliorate the complex challenges confronted by their families. sandcastle’s mission is to provide early childhood education and clinical services to children with special needs and to typically developing children, as well as support services to their families. the agency is unique in the region in its efforts to provide inclusion programming for children both with and without disabilities. most of the children attending sandcastle (aged 18 months to 5 years) have been diagnosed with a developmental disability; most come from low-income families; half come from immigrant families (80 per cent of these are east african immigrants who have experienced the trauma of war, loss, refugee camps and relocation); over half live in single-parent households; two-thirds have experienced crisis; and most of sandcastle’s children experience many of these risk factors. as the community-based campus of the state university, usm lac confronts many of the same challenges as sandcastle. founded in 1988 in response to low educational attainment in the region, usm lac has developed to meet the needs of its 68 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein community (vazquez jacobus, tiemann & reed in press). usm lac serves approximately 1250 students, all commuters, who are ‘non-traditional’ in age (average age is 30) and life experience. most usm lac students are first-generation college students, 75 per cent are female, nearly all are economically challenged (over 90 per cent receive financial assistance to attend school), most work full time and many are parents. paramount to usm lac’s mission is that the curriculum is relevant to the lives of its students and to their needs in developing the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in the community (vazquez jacobus & baskett 2010, pp. 94–95). the building castles together project although engaged learning has always been integral to the mission and pedagogy of usm lac, there has yet to be sustained institutional support for this work: there is no independent budget to sustain community service learning at usm lac and no institutionally dedicated staff. understanding this, and hoping to support usm lac’s community-engagement work, in 2008 representatives from the w.k. kellogg foundation (kellogg) proposed a discretionary grant of $25 500 to support a common focus: vulnerable children. the usm lac faculty member who coordinated community service learning (the coordinator) convened a project leadership team that included sandcastle’s psychologist/director; a somali cultural consultant and usm lac graduate; a usm lac student who had extensive experience in community engagement; and the coordinator herself as project director. together, this multicultural and multi-disciplinary leadership team began the work of collaboratively directing the project by co-authoring a proposal to kellogg and appropriately naming the endeavour ‘building castles together’. the bct project was initially proposed as an open-ended pilot project aimed at developing a general protocol for a holistic, culturally sensitive and egalitarian model for assessment of disabled (particularly immigrant) children and their families. bct was also designed as a community-driven project which would glean its specific goals from the community (israel et al. 2001). in its nascent stages through the spring of 2009, the bct team held community meetings and informal workshops to derive specific actions from interested participants. the project was a timely response to community need because of the confluence of several events. first, we noted the rapidly changing demographics in our region, and that these shifts were leaving the ordinary systems of care wanting for understanding, expertise and cultural knowledge. second, the concept of higher education was expanding to consider civic engagement and global understanding as critical for full comprehension and development of engaged citizens (boyer 1996; reardon 2006; stanton, giles & cruz 1999). third, given the tensions experienced in the community, we believed that the integration of children and families as partners in their care and 69 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein education would empower families, build resilience and contribute to the capacity of the community (israel et al. 2001; vazquez jacobus & harris 2007). originally, co-created art was proposed only as a mechanism for launching ideas about the ‘real’ work of the project. thus, at the project’s inception, the coordinator commissioned a public artist to facilitate ‘just one or two workshops’ designed to elicit ideas and build trust. however, as the project progressed, we came to understand that community co-created art was not just a means but a valuable end in itself. as we crafted the art together we developed an alternate means of communicating and improving our understanding of each other. thus, fairly early into the bct timeline, our goal transformed from developing a protocol for culturally sensitive assessment and implementation of early childhood services to developing a multi-level community building program which included the co-creation of a public art work. after almost a year of planning, the public artist joined our leadership team and bct began, gently, with integrated workshops exploring culture, communication and creative expression. we built on foundational themes derived from these workshops to hold a few ‘art get-togethers’, with children, families and staff members co-creating art (figures 1–3). while the art was being generated, we conversed with interested families about their heritage, their children, their challenges and their strengths. we marked bct at the inception and again at the conclusion, with large (over 100 in attendance) community celebrations bringing art, music, dance and food together with culture to promote solidarity (figure 4). we then integrated the narratives, the community gathering process and the co-created art into a comprehensive exhibit of multimedia panels (figure 5 is an example of one of these). although the bct project has formally concluded, in that the designated funding has been exhausted and a final report submitted to the funder, the project is really now in an evaluation, assessment and scholarship phase (as opposed to an action phase), and through the strengthened partnership, many elements of the project are ongoing, as will be discussed further below. analysis of the partnership mutuality/reciprocity reflecting on the elements of our partnership that most contribute to sustainability, we begin with mutual regard, reciprocity, trust and balance. our mutual partnership works because it is founded on common goals (begun et al. 2010; merzel et al. 2007): we aspire to a happier and more accessible community, particularly for those most marginalised. we believe that the most effective and just way to achieve these ideals is through public participation which includes the disenfranchised in a process of mutual and sustained empowering exchanges. we hope to model in our shared leadership (miller 2006; seers et al. 2003) the strengths-based 70 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein mutual regard for each other that we expect will empower the community (sparks & muro 2009). critical to our dynamic partnership is interest in ongoing learning (fogel & cook 2006; hart & wolff 2006). we build regular reflection into our process (merzel et al. 2007; reardon 2006) and, at the conclusion of each activity, we debrief together, sharing favourite moments and reflecting on lessons learned. this process is vital to sustaining our partnership as it allows us to be mindful of the positive reasons for our collaboration. our time is so limited and our lives so stressful that without these deliberate reminders of assets, we might revert to questioning the value of so consuming a venture. from sandcastle’s perspective, mutuality is a prerequisite for an enduring collaboration with the university. a project such as bct requires the development of trust at a substantial and intricate level. the process is particularly complicated because the fields involved are different from the usual educational and clinical disciplines. in early education, ‘art’ is referred to most often as a component providing a developing child with an avenue of expression or as a means of curricular boost to emergent literacy and numeracy skills (phillips et al. 2010). art as a collective process and as a pervasive element of communication is new. understanding the novelty requires flexibility and a willingness to suspend goal-directed thinking. this trust has, at times, required extensive conversation, and, frequently, the abandonment of expectation (fogel & cook 2006). egalitarian interaction has been a cornerstone of sandcastle sustaining a continuing relationship with usm lac, which is very different from a series of relationships. it is possible to have periodic relationships of value where one partner holds the reins and the other cordially responds. for instance, a university may use a preschool as a place of recruitment for subjects of research. sandcastle has participated in such relationships, which have been of value to the university but of little consequence to the agency. similarly, sandcastle has engaged faculty in resourcing answers to academic questions or finding specialised items such as computer programs where the benefit was primarily for sandcastle. in themselves, neither of these interactions would be regarded as mutual or reciprocal. mutuality, by contrast, requires the reciprocal recognition of value and expertise. for this to occur, a community partner must be regarded as an equal, not merely a mechanical agent of the university partner. as a community partner, sandcastle does not always experience this, which may be due to the hierarchical nature of the university itself. for example, a well-intentioned remark that the university could provide the ‘brains’ to the community partner’s ‘brawn’ reflected, sadly, a familiar bias in the attitude of some academics – that community partners are the feeble-minded, albeit stout, cousins to the intellectual inhabitants of the ivory tower. it also reflected the suspected reality that the equality and mutuality can only go so far. the sustainability of 71 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein the bct partners’ current egalitarianism is perhaps only possible at the present scale of a modest non-profit collaborating with a small campus at a local level. it would likely face challenges if the relationship was more ambitious and required more adjustment at foundational levels of the university hierarchy. the partnership’s mutuality and reciprocity is evident in the example of this article. in answer to the call for scholarship fully co-authored by community partners and academics (hart & wolff 2006), the bct partners felt well placed to co-author a piece describing the lessons of our partnership and the obstacles to full co-authorship. the irony is that to accept this charge we needed to overcome those very challenges. in our experience, the lack of non-academic participation in academic scholarship reflects not a disinterest in engagement but a shortage of resources and the different value placed on publication in scholarly journals. in addition to supporting nobler ideals, professors must ‘publish or perish’. while an agency leader may have an interest in publication in scholarly journals, a more ‘useful’ outlet for their scholarship may be an application for funding, an appeal to a local charitable organisation, an editorial in a local paper, or an informal talk at a library. for the university, scholarship may be the end in itself; for the community partner, scholarship is most often a means to a more practical end. in this difficult economic climate and for those who work with vulnerable populations and are reliant on public funding, the decision to partner is an onerous one, weighed through balancing costs and benefits (bushouse 2005). even in our partnership, where our community partners appreciate the requirements of scholarship and the importance of publication for credibility in academia, they have neither the leisure nor the incentive to wax poetic on themes of community engagement – better to spend their limited time engaging with that very community than writing about it. whatever time a community organisation may have for writing needs be spent authoring grant applications to keep their organisation functioning (vazquez jacobus, tiemann & reed in press). this is how the mutuality of a sustainable partnership applies. recognising the import of scholarship to their academic partner, the bct community partners rearranged their priorities to co-author this article. such reallocation is not always feasible, however, and we wonder how other similarly situated partnerships address this call. just as practitioners of community engagement now understand the paradox of community-engagement work that does not integrally include the community partner (israel et al. 2001; reardon 2006), the academy may now realise the irony of writing about such mutual collaborations without the full co-authorship of the partners. where recently there has been a movement towards community based participatory research (cbpr), perhaps now we can hope for the birth of community based participatory scholarship. 72 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein in order for disenfranchised community partners to join the ranks of scholars we may need to alter the paradigm of the scholarship of engagement yet again (boyer 1996; hart & wolff 2006; zlotkowski 2002). community partner authors ought to be better supported to fully engage in scholarship. this might mean fiscally strapped agencies being supplemented financially (fielden et al. 2007). correspondingly, the academic system which perpetuates the imbalance in authorial participation would need to be realigned to expand community-engaged scholarship (fielden et al. 2007; hart & wolff 2006). when academic work that has actual value to community and academic partners alike (co-authoring grants, organising community-building events, co-creating artistic exhibits) is credited by the academy, then university-community partnerships may experience greater reciprocity. agencies which receive assistance with completing proposals for funding may be more available to co-author more traditional academic articles and papers. until then, academics run the risk of sustaining themselves through self-referential analyses which perpetuate the very imbalances they are striving to rectify. interdisciplinarity/diversity the bct team includes a diverse range of professionals representing different institutional agendas and missions. contributing to our sustainability is our mutual recognition of the assets each partner brings, as well as appreciation of the vibrant interaction this union of diverse perspectives affords (mccaslin &barnstable 2008; porter & monard 2001). we guide bct from a shared leadership perspective, each working from our relative strengths. we are fortunate that each of our team members is him/herself multi-disciplinary: the artist and clinician are also academics; the university instructor is also a multicultural clinician. as experienced ‘boundary crossers’ (reardon 2006, p. 106), we can speak each others’ languages and have a good understanding of each others’ institutional constraints and mandates. we also challenge each others’ assumptions (fogel & cook 2006) and modify our interventions, all the while making our work more accessible to the community. complex social challenges require complex multi-level solutions (downs et al. 2009; wackerhausen 2009). we aspire to improve the care for, build relationships with, and enhance the engagement of a vulnerable population of disabled children and their families who face multiple challenges. many of these families are immigrants or refugees, most are poor, and many are living in environments of chaos or have survived trauma. one family involved with bct includes a mother and father born in somalia, who met in a refugee camp in the middle east and emigrated to the southern united states before relocating to lewiston, maine, and five children, the youngest of whom has been diagnosed with autism, a condition that neither parent seems to be able to place in a cultural context. the mother lost virtually her entire family to 73 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein violence in somalia, and was herself jailed; the father was forced to work for a militia before escaping during a gun battle. the father speaks limited english and prefers to do so without an interpreter; his wife does not speak fluently and relies on his translation. understanding this family is not simply a matter of translation: even approaching the subject of interpretation is fraught with hazards because of gender, tribal affiliation and individual experiences. the compounding factors of psychological trauma and developmental disability require a holistic response that must exceed the specialties of individuals: no one field any more than any one person can begin to approach such complexities solo (vazquez jacobus & harris 2007). none of us claims to have all the answers, nor that our field of expertise is the sole avenue for solutions. we also approach the multiple dimensions of children and families by appealing to their diverse assets. art, talk, analysis, education, music, dance, food and culture elicit different skills and responses from our participants. relating through diverse cultures and languages, as well as across ages and abilities, we provide multiple methods of communication and appeal to different learning styles through our varied approaches (kolb 1984). in addition, the cultural and artistic exchange between professions and across status can reframe the relationship between college student and community member, between teacher and child (arlach, sanchez & feuer 2009). as it sustains us, our interdisciplinarity also threatens our stability. a common refrain is ‘we are taking on too much!’ in the spirit of inclusiveness, our projects include music, dance, art, food, socialising, and gathering histories and recipes – all the while trying to integrate all levels of disability, community, students and staff. ‘can we just do an art workshop?’, a partner queries anxiously. ‘no food, no entertainment and we don’t invite the whole neighbourhood. just focus on one thing for once!’ many times we have had to scale back and realise that we can’t do it all. with this interdisciplinarity, we have the tendency to overextend ourselves to the point of exhaustion, or to appear chaotic and disorganised. our conglomerate of multi-disciplinary partners interlaces a fine and complex mesh. this kind of sustainable reciprocal relationship does not come easily and it does not come without cost. we have over our time together worked through rough patches of miscommunication and disaffection. what has seen us through the challenges is a resiliency in the fabric woven by our common ideals. community integration our mutuality occurs not only at the level of our interdisciplinary team’s interaction, but through our engagement at the macro level of university and community. community-engagement scholars stress the need to include community partners reciprocally in the service-learning work of universities (hart & wolf 2006; reardon 2006). indeed, the growing field of cbpr highlights the 74 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein import to validity, credibility and sustainability of such mutual relationships (israel et al. 2001; merzel et al. 2007). however, even the empowerment/capacity building partnership (reardon 2006, p. 97; shramm & nye 1999) is university focused and directed. such partnerships aim to include the community at all levels of planning and implementation, and to maximise the benefit to the community, but they often begin from a skewed orientation – a history of hierarchical ‘town and gown’ relationships which need be rehabilitated (fogel & cook 2006; reardon 2006). thus, even when elite colleges strive to identify and measure benefits to the community, many do so in large part to assure themselves that such enrichments exist and, in doing so, demonstrate a mutuality with the community that may not otherwise be apparent. among the few benefits of being a financially strained public university is that few community partners are beholden to it. being of, by and for the community, at usm lac mutuality with community partners is inherent. bct is community based because both sandcastle and usm lac are the community. our memberships draw from, and serve, the local communities and reflect their increasing diversity as well as their financial and educational challenges. the university and its constituents face the same hardships as the community, and in many cases we are all, quite literally, ‘in it together’. the bct partnership, in comprising members of the community at multiple levels, transcends the empowerment-based model of more traditional university-community partnerships. we have in our membership the disenfranchised as well as the privileged. there is, however, a tension between the membership of the bct leadership team and the people represented by our membership. though culturally diverse and representing multiple perspectives, the members of our leadership team are, comparatively, privileged. this is why it is critical that our partnership not be merely community based, but community derived. we follow strengths-based, client-directed practices of integrating the inherent expertise of our clientele (sparks & muro 2009) to bring the families we work with into the direction of the project. correspondingly, sandcastle’s relationship with institutions of higher education changes with the degree that an institution is integrated with the community. for instance, with the local private selective college, there is no anticipation that their students will become sandcastle employees, as their students generally have limited connections to lewiston and maine and tend to depart on graduation. however, sandcastle is always mindful that usm lac students are likely to be past, present or future clients or employees of sandcastle. investment in a sustainable relationship between usm lac and sandcastle is important because it is essentially a direct investment in future operations. sandcastle has several employees who are graduates of usm lac’s programs, and many students of usm lac use sandcastle’s services. 75 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein community is the unofficially represented partner in the usm lac–sandcastle partnership and, as such, most of our programs are open to the community. we introduce sustainable, positive change in the community through the integration of community-based approaches so that the people of lewiston, as well as the families and staff directly served by bct, expect to be included. we intended with the bct project not only to partner the university and the agency, but to engage the community of families with disabled and immigrant children in partnership with the mostly white low-income students of the public university. as a result, we chose not to determine our specific project goals in advance as we needed to derive these from the community as we worked together (castillo et al. 2005). to the extent that elements of bct are sustainable in the local community, it is because we have not made ourselves indispensable. integral to the project has been the building of communities, assets and networks so that the positive elements of the collaboration could endure long after a discrete project was concluded. in order to be so community based, we have tried to direct the process by consensus, openly and permeably looking for the work of bct to arise naturally from the community (arlach, sanchez & feuer 2009). this kind of openness, however, can also translate as complicated and undefined. the plasticity can be seen as a lack of clarity, which frustrates some and leaves others unsure of outcomes. for those needing to estimate costs and plan contingencies, such dynamic, organically derived projects can be a challenge to articulate, measure and objectively evaluate. the story of oudry, a four-year-old congolese boy, illustrates bct’s progress with community integration. oudry is autistic, exceedingly active and largely non-verbal; his family speaks limited english. these challenges, along with complications in translation, led oudry’s family not to attend the bct opening event, explaining later that they did not think they would be able to keep oudry under control. through the course of bct, oudry’s family shared their stories of living with oudry, escaping the congo and of being refugees in lewiston, a community at best ambivalent about welcoming african refugees. by the time of the bct culmination celebration, oudry’s family was sure to attend, bringing all their children, including oudry, to the well-attended event in lewiston’s multipurpose centre. they brought a native congolese dish to share, they danced to the music and they took pride in their recipes. oudry was all over the multipurpose centre, bounding about from the art table to the food, and back again. nevertheless, oudry’s mother had a chance to dance and join in the fun. wherever oudry ran, someone would follow: a university student, a sandcastle teacher, or one of oudry’s sisters: ‘hanging out’ with oudry was just one of the activities of the evening. the next day the cover story in the local paper was about the bct celebration. a colourful picture showed a pack of children laughing 76 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein and clapping at the franco–american musician entertaining them. in the back of the picture is a brown and red blur: oudry running through the scene. dynamic interaction weinberg (2003) cautions that there is ‘little flexibility’ in community-based research and ‘high consequences for failed projects’ (p. 26). he notes the challenges presented by rigid academic schedules and student learning-outcome requirements, emphasising the need to negotiate over multiple levels and develop common principles for governing partnerships. working across so many organisations, cultures and personalities, the bct team recognised the need to eschew inflexibility from the beginning. though more cumbersome to initiate and more complicated to operationalise, our activities are carried out flexibly, with multiple sources of input. the diverse experiences of our members create a dynamic union which evolves to respond to the changing needs of our community. we begin with a general plan as scaffolding, and then arrange from the back forwards, starting with a set date or output about which we must be concrete and objective (a grant report or a large community event) and then work our way backwards, with each partner setting a work plan for participation which will allow us to achieve the common end. when, inevitably, someone misses a meeting or an art instalment is held up, we find a substitute if necessary or rework that piece rather than abandon the entire affair. many of us have had to relax some of our previous rigidities in order to work well together: the academic must tolerate a range of different methods of written input; the artist must be open to an aesthetic which includes inexpert contributions; the preschool teacher must abandon a learning plan and incorporate a spontaneous activity. this flexibility, and our mutual compact to abide by it, is one of the partnership’s most powerful assets as it makes us not only adaptable, but current and resilient in the face of challenge (vazquez jacobus & harris 2007). the fluidity often allows us to fill in gaps or to double-up in areas experiencing disproportionate wear. for instance, when it became clear that many families enthusiastically participated in art workshops in a way that they did not in spoken interviews, we reallocated our resources to host more art workshops. however, like children upset that all the crayons are at the other side of the table, the tension created when the resources of a project were disproportionately aligned is not to be denied. similarly, though we were fortunate that our funder was amenable to keeping final outputs open, such flexibility is rare. many need clear structure and concrete objectives in order to best function. most institutions require specific, objectively measurable proposals, plans and budgets to be submitted well in advance. modifications of contract, budgets and timelines can add a great deal of stress to institutional administrators, as well as create 77 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein conflict among team members who are unclear about how to proceed or on what to rely. in a partnership such as ours where the resources are strained at all levels, each project exists handto-mouth with the next: the artist cannot work on the wall mural if she is still completing the brochure mock-up. our flexibility can make it a challenge to plan or participate in other projects, never knowing when we are going to be required for this or that one. asset enhancement from the perspective of a community organisation, partnering with a university has the potential to amplify resources, but also carries a necessary investment and a degree of risk (bushouse 2005). students vary by aptitude, experience and availability. sandcastle’s most common relationship with local institutes of higher education, as a practicum placement site, has generally been positive, with interns providing direct benefit to clinical work and not infrequently resulting in future hiring opportunities. bushouse (2005) describes the general preference of non-profit organisations for ‘transactional’ or limited scope of engagement relationships, rather than sustained or ‘transformational’ associations. sandcastle has historically preferred such transactional relationships, where the project is circumscribed and distant from the essential functioning of the organisation, as they are ‘less risky’ and less cumbersome. for instance, a student in information technology can be readily hosted to assist in standardised form development. if the project is timely and successful, both sides benefit, and if the project is not timely, little has been lost. bct has introduced sandcastle to the fraught, but potentially beneficial, world of transformational partnerships. the rewards of investment in the transformational process include the addition of specialties and relationships, as well as the enhanced appreciation of the community partner’s own resources. a value of sustained investment in the partnership is the assembly of relationships outside that of the initial partners. sandcastle’s connection with the bct project has led to surprising additions. for example, the work of the public artist evolved into a public sculpture grant for a work to be situated at sandcastle. like sandcastle, usm lac and many of the organisations involved in bct are working with constrained resources. yet in the face of these limitations, the bct collaboration affords our constituencies art, clinical experience, cultural enrichment and enhanced personal attention. there is little question that our students, staff and families are richer for the experience with bct. however, the asset picture is more complicated for institutional and project personnel. as all the partners in our collaboration are economically stretched, more opportunities also mean even greater stress and work for collaborators. unless there are sufficient funds through an independent or external source to hire new dedicated staff, additional collaborative projects may mean that already burdened personnel become even more so. thus, one 78 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein of our chief lessons has been to limit goals and expectations to realistic outcomes, given funding, time and personnel limitations (mccaslin & barnstable 2008). paradoxically, it is our limited resources and economic crises that make our partnership most sustainable, as such unions are so instrumental to our institutional survival. recently, authors have written of the value of collaborative partnerships, especially in trying economic times, to maximise opportunities as well as to enhance resources (bushouse 2005; mccaslin & barnstable 2008; vazquez jacobus & baskett 2010; vazquez jacobus, tiemann & reed in press). philosophically, bct has always had buy-in at both the university and the community level to the ideals and values of community partnerships. it is the literal buy-in, the delegation of resources and the priority of assets, which we are missing. unfortunately, it is this financial buy-in that is also required for our sustainability. conclusion sustainability is not in and of itself an affirmative good. to the extent that detrimental practices or policies are perpetuated, such sustainability can be destructive. our discussion above summarises the aspects of our partnership that are positive and imitable by other consortiums, as well as cautions against those undesirable outcomes we insidiously maintain. as we look to the seeds of positive sustainability planted through our collaborative partnership, we must continue to ask ourselves critical questions regarding our sustainability. the first crucial question is whether bct has resulted in positive change: how do we evaluate the partnership’s impact on the community? because of the dynamic qualities embraced in this project, ‘success’, corresponding to desirable outcomes, is a challenge to objectively measure. the bct group has come to evaluate progress by underscoring the multiple divergent effects of the collaboration rather than by paired comparisons of expectations and outcomes. we see success in our process, in the positive ramifications observed in the community and in progress towards the ideal of a thriving diverse community. we see families who were previously reluctant to interact conversing with a teacher; we see over 100 community members enthusiastically dancing, sharing food and culture; and we see success. as relationship-strengthening and community-building themselves were among our primary goals, we measure our success largely by the interest of our community members in participating and their continuing eagerness to interact. positive outcomes also include the improved sustainability of these relationships and the capacitybuilding of our partner organisations. to the extent that we are able to note asset enhancement, strengthened community bonds, improved learning and expanded understanding, we measure sustainability and success. 79 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein our second question is whether these successes are sustainable. with regard to the five tenets of sustainability which we outline in this article, we find some areas more tenable than others. mutuality and reciprocity are tested by the divergent priorities and agendas of community partners and academic institutions, particularly with regard to requirements for formal academic scholarship. however, our interdisciplinarity and diversity, the varied skills and resources afforded by the partnership, allow us to focus continuing work on capacities developed through the partnership. for example, sandcastle now integrates an appreciation of art and culture both in the curriculum and in the school’s environment. usm lac students who participated in the project are reinvigorating a culture of mutuality and culturally infused relationship-building in their work with communities. community integration has been one of the most sustainable elements fostered through bct as participants have developed stronger and more consistent relationships through the many community celebrations, workshops and interactive opportunities. recognition of the realities of dynamic interaction between collaborators is perhaps the most lasting lesson of this collaboration. like any relationship, a collaborative partnership, particularly one which is hoped to be sustained over a long term, ebbs and flows. at one point it may be particularly intense and enthusiastically maintained; at other points one partner may be exhausted, expending disproportionate energy. occasionally, when institutional resources are too limited to extend outreach to others, the collaboration needs to nurture the patience and foresight to endure a dry spell. it is our belief that a sustainable collaboration includes partners who are flexible enough to moderate their roles as circumstances warrant, resilient enough to withstand challenges without viewing them as damning, and faithful enough to have the perspective to weather tough storms. indeed, the most sustainable partnerships are those which have endured substantial obstacles and have gleaned invaluable insight into their workings from the challenge. one of the undeniable factors that assist in the weathering of storms, however, is adequate resources. as we assess the asset enhancement afforded through bct, we face an ironic challenge: collaborations are particularly vital for less well-resourced institutions to enhance their assets. however, as much as these collaborations present more opportunities for our clientele, they also create more stress for our already strapped personnel and resources. having fewer resources can also mean having fewer options if something goes wrong. it is crucial to sustainability that, not just the partners, but their home institutions have the support and perspective to adapt to changes in the collaboration. we must also consider that, if our intent is to derive goals and purpose from the community, we need be adaptive to their evolving needs. however, as previously marginalised people are integrated and a model of mutual leadership develops, opinions 80 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein and directions present themselves that may not have been present at the project’s inception. if the goals are, as ours have been, to integrate these multiple voices, then the project must be flexible enough to integrate this participation without reverting to chaos. our partnership evolved into the multi-dimensional collaboration that it has become because of our willingness to wrestle through these changes. it is our belief that paramount to positive sustainability is transparency and flexibility: the very elements which arguably create the greatest challenges. not all collaborations work, and even those that work well rarely function in every regard. the true labour of a collaboration is having enough time, resources, trust, flexibility and passion so that partners can maximise the assets that work well and be amenable to changing those that don’t. thus, an effective and sustainable collaboration is, by necessity, a perpetual work-in-progress, continually evolving in response to community changes and experiences. acknowledgements building castles together is the collaborative project of the university of southern maine’s lewiston auburn college campus, sandcastle clinical and educational services, sttar consultancy services and tricounty mental health services, and was funded by the w.k. kellogg foundation. cooperatively constructed castles require not only materials, but buckets of energy and gallons of support, along with the faith and perseverance to bring those towers from the sky to the ground. for these necessities, we thank monica lee, stephanie gelinas, charlene o’clair, ismail ahmed, khadra jama, the maine college of art (meca) and the staff of sandcastle, without whom these particular palaces would not have made it beyond wistful imaginings. special appreciation also to dante, luka and sophia, always eager to jump in and get their hands dirty; and to nilda and connie for helping to keep an eye on all of us while we do. references arlach, l, sanchez, b & feuer, r 2009, ‘voices from the community: a case for reciprocity in service-learning’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 5–16. begun, a, berger, l, otto-salaj, l & rose, s 2010, ‘developing effective social work university-community research collaborations’, social work, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 54–62. boyer, e 1996, ‘the scholarship of engagement’, journal of public service and outreach, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 11–20. bushouse, b 2005, ‘community non-profit organizations and service learning: resource constraints to building partnerships with universities’, michigan journal of community service 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hart, a & wolff, d 2006, ‘developing communities of practice through community-university partnerships’, planning, practice and research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 121–38. israel, b, schulz, a, parker, e & becker, a 2001, ‘community-based participatory research: policy recommendations for promoting a partnership approach in health research’, education for health, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 182–97. kolb, d 1984, experiential education: experience as the source of learning and development, prentice-hall, englewood cliffs, nj. maine children’s alliance 2010, maine kids count 2010, maine children’s alliance, augusta, me, viewed 20 october 2010, www.voices.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/07/kidscount_2010_me.pdf. maine department of education 2010, free and reduced school lunch report, maine department of education, viewed 20 october 2010, <https://portal. maine.gov/sfsr/sfsrdev.ed534.ed534_report>. mccaslin, r & barnstable, c 2008, ‘increasing geriatric social work content through university/community 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relationships of reciprocity through international service-learning’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 5–17. reardon, k 2006 ‘promoting reciprocity within community/university development partnerships: lessons from the field’, planning practice and research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 95–107. www.voices.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/kidscount_2010_me.pdf www.voices.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/kidscount_2010_me.pdf https://portal.maine.gov/sfsr/sfsrdev.ed534.ed534_report https://portal.maine.gov/sfsr/sfsrdev.ed534.ed534_report http://www.petersons.com/college-search/public-university-vs-private.aspx http://www.petersons.com/college-search/public-university-vs-private.aspx 82 | gateways | vazquez jacobus, baskett & bechstein seers a, keller, t, wilkerson, j, pearce, c & conger, j 2003, ‘can team members share leadership? foundations in research and theory’, in c pearce & j conger (eds), shared leadership: reframing the hows and whys of leadership, sage, thousand oakes, ca, pp. 77–102. schramm d & nye n 1999, building higher education community development corporation partnerships, us department of housing and urban development, washington dc. sparks, j & muro, m 2009, ‘client-directed wraparound: the client as connector in community collaboration’, journal of systemic therapies, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 63–76. stanton t, giles d & cruz n 1999, service learning: a movement’s pioneers reflect on its origin, practice and future, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. vazquez jacobus, m & baskett, r 2010, ‘building community capacity through school-based service-learning’, metropolitan universities journal, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 93–110. vazquez jacobus, m & harris, d 2007, ‘mapping hunger in maine: a complex collaboration’, academic exchange quarterly, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 202–09. vazquez jacobus, m & jalali, r in press, ‘challenges to food access among lewiston’s african immigrants’, maine policy review. vazquez jacobus, m, tiemann, m & reed, e in press, ‘the downtown education collaborative: a new model for collaborative community engagement’, metropolitan universities journal, vol. 21, no. 3. wackerhausen, s 2009, ‘collaboration, professional identity and reflection across boundaries’, journal of interprofessional care, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 455–73. weinberg, a 2003, ‘negotiating community-based research: a case study of the “life’s work” project’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 26–35. zlotkowski e 2002, ‘social crisis and the faculty response’, journal of public affairs, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–18. using simulation to educate police about mental illness a collaborative initiative following the fatal shooting of an individual with a mental illness in 2006, an inspector with durham regional police service (drps) contacted a nursing educator in the faculty of health sciences at the university of ontario institute of technology (uoit) to explore possible educational opportunities for frontline officers. this initial contact led to the uoit faculty member and a nursing colleague from ontario shores centre for mental health sciences (ontario shores) collaborating with drps to develop and implement two educational sessions, one for special constables who are responsible for the administration and care of individuals in police custody, including their transportation between police facilities and the courts, and one for police negotiators responding to a hostage taking. based on the success of these educational initiatives, the two nursing colleagues were approached by a member of the drps leadership to develop a week-long educational program for frontline officers that focused on mental illness awareness and effective interpersonal skills and communication strategies for engaging with individuals challenged by mental illness. the initial agreement was to educate 20–25 officers a year for a three-year period. however, this nurse-led initiative was so successful that the two nursing colleagues were asked to continue to provide educational sessions past the original three-year commitment; the collaboration is now in its sixth year. the need for comprehensive police education is strongly supported by the number of interactions police, as first responders, have with people experiencing mental illness. one in five canadians is affected annually by mental illness. currently, there are 6.7 million canadians living with mental illness and over 1 million canadian youth living with mental illness. by 2041, it is estimated these numbers will have increased to over 8.9 million canadians and 1.2 million canadian children and youth (smetanin et al. 2011). the following statistics from smetanin et al.’s (2011) report, the life and economic impact of major mental illness in canada, highlight the prevalence of police interactions in canada: 1 in 20 police dispatches involve people with mental health challenges, and half of these police encounters gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 52–66 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 wendy stanyon bill goodman university of ontario institute of technology marjory whitehouse ontario shores centre for mental health sciences 53 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse result in transport or referral to services. three in 10 people with mental illness have had police involved in their care pathway. two in five people with mental illness have been arrested in their lifetime and two in five encounters with police involve situations that are unrelated to criminal conduct. people with mental illness are also over-represented in police shootings, stun gun incidents and fatalities. wanting to build on the collaboration’s previous achievement, and having recognised the need to educate greater numbers of officers within existing time constraints, the nursing colleagues elicited the support of durham college’s innovation centre and, in collaboration with drps, applied for and received a content development grant from inukshuk wireless, a provider of wireless broadband and a joint venture of bell canada and rogers communication. each of these successes ultimately contributed to the development of this unique partnership involving a police service (drps), a mental health facility (ontario shores), and two postsecondary institutions (durham college and uoit). currently, there is no other known partnership of its kind. the funding from inukshuk was used to support the development of four online computer simulations depicting incidents involving individuals with mental illness; the purpose was to promote a greater understanding of the challenges individuals with a mental illness may experience and to facilitate the ability of frontline officers to respond effectively in their interactions with individuals with mental illness. the nursing associates, having already established a level of trust and respect, accepted a leadership role in this project and were quick to recognise the importance of including drps police constables in all phases of the simulation development, which took place over a period of about eight months. together with frontline officers who volunteered to participate, they first identified critical incidents involving individuals with mental illness that officers commonly encounter on the job. they also partnered with several different officers to develop the scripts and to determine the response options and feedback to be provided, as well as the content and format for the learning activities and resources to be included in the library. in addition, the police depicted in the video clips in the simulation scenarios and in the feedback boxes were members of drps. nurses from ontario shores have extensive experience working with individuals challenged by mental illness and were therefore capable of role playing the individuals with mental illness who were depicted in the video clips. their participation was voluntary. the innovation centre provided the multimedia expertise to create the flash framework for the simulations and to oversee the shooting and editing phases of the project. frontline officers and staff nurses were also actively involved in these two phases of the project. 54 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse subsequently, the partnership was awarded additional funding from the canadian council on learning for a followup research study to determine if simulation is an effective educational resource. the research team consisted of the uoit nursing educator, the nursing colleague from ontario shores, a member of drps’s leadership team, the head of the innovation centre and another uoit faculty member/statistician. specifically, this study examined three major research questions: 1 to what extent can simulations be used as a tool to educate police officers about mental illness and how to respond effectively in interactions with individuals living with mental illness? 2 to what extent do simulations enhance police officers’ confidence in their ability to interact effectively with individuals living with mental illness? 3 to what extent do police officers find simulations (a) easy to use, and (b) reflective of reality? background mental illness is not only a major public health concern in canada but indeed globally. according to the world health organization (2003), four of the six leading causes of years lived with disability are due to neuropsychiatric disorders (depression, alcohol-use disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). first responders to emergencies are generally not mental health professionals; therefore, it is imperative that first responders develop the skills necessary to be effective when interacting with citizens with mental illness. police officers are often the first responders to situations in the community involving people with mental illness. in 2011, the first large-scale canadian study (smetanin et al.) to examine the nature of police interactions with individuals with mental illness was conducted with support from the mental health commission of canada. approximately three-quarters of the participants indicated they had been apprehended and/or arrested by police at some time in their life; the vast majority had also experienced being handcuffed, though their contacts with police were not related to criminal behaviour. the majority of the interactions ended without an apprehension or arrest; however, police use of force was a common experience. a consistent theme expressed by the participants was the importance of police officers being better educated on how to successfully manage situations involving individuals with mental illness. police contacts with individuals who have a mental illness have risen dramatically over the past few years. the push to deinstitutionalise individuals with mental illness without having the required community supports, inadequate social assistance rates, increasing poverty, reduced number of hospital beds for psychiatric admissions, lack of affordable housing and increasing rates of homelessness are all contributing to this alarming 55 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse community issue (watson, corrigan & ottati 2004). police services are becoming increasingly aware of the need to provide officers with training beyond what is currently offered to new recruits in terms of mental illness and strategies for effectively engaging individuals who are presumed to have a mental illness (hanafi et al. 2008). current literature indicates that the best practice models for police response involve specialised and ongoing education for all frontline officers (coleman & cotton 2010b; watson et al. 2011; weaver et al. 2013). according to a study by cotton and coleman (2008), all new police officers in canada currently receive mental health education; however, the length of this education varies greatly, anywhere from 1 hour to 24 hours, with most officers receiving less than 10 hours of education. at a minimum, police officers are introduced to some of the issues they may encounter when interacting with individuals with mental illness, such as indicators of stress, substance abuse or suicidal intent, as well as behaviour management strategies, mental health law and assessing services. another study by coleman and cotton (2010a) found wide variations in the quality and availability of in-service programs for canadian police. according to both studies, the vast majority of the education is delivered in lecture format, and online resources are not common practice. an increasingly popular method of education for adults and professionals is e-learning. defined as instruction delivered electronically via dvd, internet, intranets or other multimedia platforms (smart & cappel 2006), e-learning often incorporates simulations and other gaming technology. kleinpell et al. (2011) conducted a comprehensive review of research published since 1996, and found 250 relevant citations involving ‘e-learning’, ‘computer assisted learning’ and ‘web-based learning’. although their search was directed towards critical care education, their findings affirmed the growing availability and utilisation of education tools developed in this format. the educational benefits of simulations and other modes of e-learning include improved psychomotor skills, enhanced retention of knowledge as well as enhanced decision-making skills, interactive learning, options for immediate feedback, the opportunity for repetition and ongoing reinforcement of skills, and the ability to ‘restart’ or ‘reset’, so users can learn from their mistakes without risk (dror 2011; lanzilotti et al. 2006; perkins et al. 2010; rentroia-bonito, jorge & ghaoui 2006). however, not all e-learning efforts are equally effective. the effect of a welldesigned module depends not only on the content but also the presentation, including technical aspects such as graphics, ease of use and the overall ‘fidelity’ or ‘realism’ of the program (trapp 2005). moreover, research has indicated that end-users’ perspective 56 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse is essential to the development of effective computer-based learning tools, as users’ perceptions influence the acceptability and use of such tools (moisio, markkula & smeds 2003). as more institutions have begun incorporating e-learning techniques into their adult education and professional training programs, research in the area has increasingly focused on maximising users’ retention and transfer of knowledge. a number of themes have emerged from the literature; the most effective e-learning tools appear to be those that (a) are tailored to their target population, (b) have a high degree of realism and authenticity, and (c) are part of a wider educational curriculum. tailoring an e-learning tool to the intended audience ensures the materials meet the specific learning needs of the users (blake 2010), as well as the reality of users’ busy schedules and unique ingrained habits and perceptions (adler et al. 2009; blake 2009). in addition, where simulations and other e-learning tools closely resemble the situations in which the learned skills need to be used, users report greater satisfaction and engagement (kovacs & toms 2010; schuwirth & van der vleuten 2003; tashiro & dunlap 2007). effective e-learning tools cannot act as a complete substitute for hands-on training in real-life settings, as users report (issenberg & scalese 2008; kyle & murray 2008); rather, simulations and other techniques should be planned, scheduled and carried out thoughtfully in the context of a wider curriculum (mcgaghie et al. 2010), allowing for a ‘blended’ education approach that integrates the strengths of both e-learning and face-to-face instruction (abdelaziz et al. 2011). method to determine the effectiveness of the simulations as an educational resource for police services, a mixed method, quasi-experimental preand post-test research design (two intervention groups and a control group) was selected by the researchers in order to capture the best of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. a questionnaire asking about participants’ knowledge and understanding of mental illness was used to collect quantitative data about the effectiveness of the simulations; and focus groups were conducted to explore the impact of the simulations on police officers’ level of confidence in interacting with individuals with mental illness, and officers’ perceptions of the simulations’ ease of use and level of realism. focus groups give participants an opportunity to discuss a topic in greater detail through a group process that assists them to explore and clarify their points of view (farnsworth & boon 2010; kamberelis & dimitriadis 2013). focus groups also provide descriptive data that can be used to make decisions about program modification and development (sagoe 2012). recruitment and participants the recruitment phase proved to be challenging. all frontline officers with drps were formally invited by email to participate in the study. in an effort to increase the sample size, additional 57 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse emails were sent out over a period of several weeks reminding officers of the opportunity to participate in the research study. in addition, individual officers and members of the drps leadership assisted with the recruitment phase by encouraging their fellow officers to consider participating in the study. a total of 51 police officers (12 females; 39 males) volunteered to participate. they ranged in age from 22 to 51 years, with the majority of participants (61 per cent) over 30 years old. their policing experience ranged from one month to 28 years, with the majority of officers (67 per cent) reporting six or more years on the job. also, the majority of the participants had some previous mental health education (59 per cent), as well as experience interacting with individuals with mental illness both on (92 per cent) and off (78 per cent) the job. officers who had attended one of the weeklong mental illness education sessions provided by the two nursing colleagues (prior to the development of the simulations) or who had participated in the development of the simulations were not eligible to participate in the study. there were two experimental groups, representing two intervention approaches that were explored for providing education on interacting with people with mental illness: (a) face-to-face education; and (b) simulation-based education. those in a separate control group did not obtain this education by either approach. officers did not sign up to be part of a particular group (face to face, simulation, control). dates were set according to officer availability and the group type was assigned later, with consideration given to maintaining a similar sample size for each of the three groups. despite the randomised assignments of participants to groups (with allowances for scheduling and so on), some differences in the groups’ final compositions were observed, possibly because of different scheduling requirements: the control group’s members were found to be somewhat younger than the two intervention groups’ members, with less prior policing experience and less additional education related to mental illness. seventythree per cent of the control group had on-the-job experience with individuals with mental illness in comparison to 100 per cent for the intervention groups. while these differences may have slightly affected some partial results, they do not appear to have impacted the study’s general findings. materials the participants’ knowledge of mental illness, at the point of joining the study, was assessed using a questionnaire and an answer guide that were customised for this research. two of the researchers, who are also mental health nurses, developed the 16 questions covering the key concepts and issues related to mental illness that were covered in the content of the simulations, including identifying signs of mental illness, assessing suicide risk, and strategies for effectively engaging with people with mental illness. all but one of the questions were in short answer format; 58 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse the other was a true/false question. the two researchers answered the questions individually and then compared their responses before finalising the answer guide. the questionnaire was marked out of 30. the following are examples from the knowledge questionnaire: 1 what are some key thoughts, feelings and behaviours that might indicate an individual is experiencing a mental illness? 2 list 3 risk factors for suicide. 3 asking individuals if they are thinking about killing themselves is not wise since this may put the idea into their head. true/false 4 for an individual who is talking about feeling suicidal, what question(s) would you want to ask her/him to determine the level of risk? 5 when communicating with an individual, what does it mean to respond with empathy? provide an example. 6 when is a depressed person at the highest risk for suicide? each of the four computer-based simulations (young man exhibiting suicidal behaviour, male adult demonstrating delusional thinking, male adult experiencing hallucinations, and young woman exhibiting self-harming behaviour), includes interactive video clips with response options (see figure 1), learning activities (see figure 2), detailed feedback on both the response choice and the answers selected on the learning activities, and a library containing additional learning resources. figure 1: example of an interactive video clip and feedback box in the simulation depicting suicidal behaviour figure 2: example of a learning activity screen in the simulation depicting suicidal behaviour 59 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse procedure randomly assigned, as described above, to one of the three groups – simulation (17), face to face (16) or control (18) – all of the participants were tested on their current knowledge about mental illness. for the experimental groups, these were their pre-tests. their responses on the knowledge questionnaire were double-blind marked and any discrepancy in scores was reconciled through discussion among the researchers. officers in the simulation group worked independently on a laptop computer to complete each of four prepared simulations. the participants were provided with a brief explanation of the navigation tools prior to commencing. the same educational content was delivered to officers in the face-to-face group by the study’s nursing colleagues in a seminar format. to ensure equivalence of the content, a learning package that replicated the content and sequencing of the simulations was prepared in advance. it included a written description of the scenarios, the response options, and the learning activities. officers in the face-to-face group were each given one simulation scenario at a time to read. this was followed by a discussion about the response options, the response they would have selected and the likely outcome of each of the response choices. the participants went on to complete the learning activities and, after each activity, they were provided with the rationale for both the correct and incorrect answers. a summary of the key concepts (identical to the summary provided at the end of each simulation) was also provided after each of the scenarios. to accommodate the nature of police work and the limited time that participants could be away from direct service, officers who were assigned to either the simulation or face-to-face groups were subdivided into clusters, based on the officers’ availability to participate in the research on particular dates. all clusters within a given intervention group (simulation or face to face) were treated as identically as possible. following the education intervention given to officers in the experimental groups, the officers took a post-test about their knowledge of mental illness. results were recorded and data were analysed primarily through the use of anova tests (analysis of variance), as further described below. included were two-way anova tests to check whether the above-noted subdivisions of the experimental groups (simulation versus face to face) into subclusters for practical implementation had any direct or interaction effects on study outcomes. the final phase of the research was the focus groups, and following the interventions all of the officers participated in one of these group interviews. the officers in the control group also participated in a focus group. the focus groups were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide to gather the officers’ subjective perceptions of their knowledge about mental illness and how to effectively interact with people with mental illness, and to share their experiences 60 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse in this area. they were also asked to discuss how confident they were in their ability to effectively interact with people with mental illness and about factors that affected their confidence. participants in both the simulation and face-to-face groups were asked what impact, if any, they believed the educational session they had just participated in would have on their confidence in future interactions with people with mental illness. the simulation group was also asked for feedback on the simulations in terms of their ease of use and how closely the simulations reflected reality. each of the focus groups lasted for approximately an hour and a half. all of the focus groups’ responses and comments were audiotaped and later transcribed verbatim to ensure transcript accuracy. handwritten notes were also taken by one of the two researchers present. these notes were then used to summarise for the focus group participants the major ideas expressed by the group, and enabled the participants to elaborate further or provide necessary clarification. the transcripts were read a number of times by each of the researchers and, with each reading, themes were identified and the data were coded, supported by nvivo software, version 8.0. findings and discussion research question 1: to what extent can simulations be used as a tool to educate police officers about mental illness and how to respond effectively in interactions with individuals with a mental illness? the effectiveness of simulations for educating police officers about mental illness and appropriate responses was confirmed in both the focus group data and the experimental preand post-test analyses. further analyses with a separate control group added additional support. in the focus groups, officers described the simulations as engaging, and they appreciated the multiple interactive media and the ability to choose options in their responses to the scenarios presented. being able to go at one’s own pace, with different learning styles, and even backtrack for redoing a scenario were all considered positive features of the simulations. nonetheless, officers did share a desire for some face-to-face contact in their learning, or at least to have an opportunity for discussion or clarification of what had been covered in the online resource. experimentally, for officers receiving simulation-based training, their mean scores on the knowledge questionnaires increased from 18.47 (of 30) on the pre-test to 24.15 on the posttest. this increase is statistically significant, based on a paired t-test for mean difference (pre-scores minus post-scores): t-value = -9.84, p-value ≈ 0.000. although for practical scheduling purposes, these officers did not train in one common group (e.g. with the same room and facilitator), this factor had no impact on results. this was confirmed with an unbalanced two-way anova test (analysis 61 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse of variance), which included as an extra variable the officers’ training group. as for the t-test, the mean differences in pre-/ post-test scores were found to be significant for those undertaking simulation training (f-value = 49.97, p-value ≈ 0.000), while no difference in scores could be attributed to one’s specific training group or to any interaction with that variable. the effectiveness of the simulation training was shown to be comparable to the effectiveness of face-to-face training. for officers trained face to face, mean scores on the knowledge questionnaires increased from 16.66 (of 30) on the pre-test to 22.66 on the post-test. this increase is statistically significant, based on a paired t-test for mean difference (pre-scores minus post-scores): t-value = -10.42, p-value ≈ 0.000. again, a check was made, using an unbalanced two-way anova test, which confirmed that (a) the pre-/post-test differences were significant for members of the face-to-face group (f-value = 17.55, p-value ≈ 0.000), and (b) their arbitrary clustering into different training groups did not appear to have any impact. an unbalanced two-way anova test was also used to compare directly the impacts of simulation versus face-to-face training on officers’ knowledge scores. by either training method, scores increased significantly after training. in the experiment, simulation-training actually showed a slightly greater beneficial effect than did face-to-face, but the nominal significance of the difference was borderline (p-value = 0.049). certainly, it appears that simulation training is at least as effective as face-to-face training. in addition, there is further evidence of the benefit of the training, by either intervention type, if data are included from a control group who wrote the knowledge questionnaire (once) but did not receive the training on mental illness. based on the results of an anova test, those who had either type of training showed a significantly higher questionnaire score than those who were yet to (or did not) receive the training intervention (f-value = 77.82, p-value ≈ 0.000). tests taken after training had a mean score of 23.42; those which reflected officers’ knowledge without the training had a mean score of 16.35. (note that the three subgroups that were yet to (or would not) receive the training had slightly different scores from each other, at that stage; but the significance of their jump in scores, in aggregate, after training was not impacted.) research question 2: to what extent do simulations enhance police officers’ confidence in their ability to interact effectively with people with mental illness? in the focus groups, officers unanimously agreed that additional education can have a positive impact on their confidence. they discussed not always feeling confident about their level of knowledge and understanding of mental illness, and it was clear that they experience some trepidation when responding to the emotionally disturbed person (edp) calls they receive because of a perceived level of unpredictability associated 62 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse with these encounters. while participants expressed concern about the unpredictability, they also acknowledged the importance of building rapport and engaging individuals in conversation, one of the strategies that is emphasised in each of the four simulations. officers also identified additional factors that affect their confidence and decision-making in their interactions with individuals with mental illness. these included frustration with the healthcare system and lack of mental health services, being responsible for the safety of everyone involved in the incident, feeling pressured by peers or supervisors, issues of legal liability, and the public’s perceptions of their actions. officers also indicated they gained confidence through their on-the-job experiences and the ability to learn from their mistakes and each other. although officers did admit to being out of their ‘comfort zone’ and thus probably never feeling totally confident in their ability to engage with individuals with mental illness, the majority of participants self-identified as being very confident on the job. they talked about the nature of policing and the need to appear confident. they also mentioned being absolutely confident in terms of the use of force policy and they were adamant that, if at any time their efforts to diffuse or contain a situation involving a person with mental illness failed, the use of force policy provided clear directions as to the required course of action and that they would not hesitate to follow those directives. in defining how they saw an effective interaction with an individual with mental illness, they showed sensitivity to the condition of the individual and to the circumstances that could either escalate the situation or defuse it. such awareness also helps explain the frustration they have in dealing with emergency departments where their opinions are not valued, their time is consumed, and they witness the person with mental illness being released in what they believe is a premature fashion. research question 3: to what extent do police officers find simulations (a) easy to use, and (b) reflective of reality? officers in the focus group offered very positive feedback on the simulations and the collaborative initiative of wmhc and uoit in developing these resources and providing the education. they reported that the simulations were easy to use and realistic of common incidents they encounter on the job. officers indicated that basing the simulations on real, critical incidents in the community and using actual police officers in the videos added to the credibility and realism of the simulations. they also found navigating through the simulations to be relatively straightforward. there were no criticisms of the interface, and comments were made that validated the usefulness of the learning activities and library resources. in probing whether the learning activities were best placed before the main encounter or interleaved with the video, the officers preferred to view the video in an uninterrupted fashion and complete the activities either before or after it. they also offered some suggestions for improving the simulations, which included creating a larger video screen, 63 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse providing more response options, having access to a ‘help box’ prior to making a decision and having the ability to ask questions of the despatcher. limitations and future research the findings of this study are based on a one-time knowledge assessment and self-reported data of a small group of officers with the durham regional police service. further research with a larger sample size is required to determine if the officers’ increased knowledge and understanding of mental illness is sustainable over time and if they are actually applying what they have learned to their on-the-job interactions with individuals experiencing mental illness. also, every effort will be made in any future education and research initiatives that are undertaken to include individuals with lived experiences of mental illness and their support persons. this was an identified limitation in the development of the simulations and the current research study. including representatives from other police services as well as community mental health organisations in future research endeavours would also make a valuable contribution to the existing research. in spite of efforts to ensure randomisation, there were demographic differences between the control group and the intervention groups in this study. participants in the former were generally younger with less experience. this problem might be mitigated in future studies by adding exclusion criteria for potential volunteers to ensure that all participants have at least some minimum level of experience. conclusion as police services become increasingly aware of the need to provide officers with education about how to interact effectively with individuals who may be experiencing a mental illness, identifying effective educational strategies and resources will also become more of a priority within the policing sector. the findings of this research study support simulation as an effective resource in addressing this important educational challenge. police officers who participated in either of the education sessions (face-to-face or simulation) demonstrated a statistically significant increase in their scores on a knowledge about mental illness questionnaire that was administered pre and post their educational session, indicating that the simulations are at least as effective as face-to-face education sessions. in addition, there was a statistically significant difference between the post-test scores of officers who participated in an education session and the scores of the officers who did not (control group). there will also be greater demand for efficient educational resources, given the current fiscal constraints and high costs of education. the simulations’ online format is a definite cost benefit. in 2010, the four police simulations that provided the basis for this research were recognised by accreditation canada as a ‘leading 64 | gateways | stanyon, goodman & whitehouse practice’, which is described as: (1) creative and innovative; (2) demonstrating efficiency in practice; (3) linked to accreditation canada standards; and (4) adaptable by other organisations. also, durham regional police service and the ontario provincial police, the largest police force in the province, made the decision to include the simulations as part of the mandatory training they provide to all of their frontline officers. the most recent addition to the partnership is the ontario police college. an agreement has just been signed that will enable the simulations to be included in the mental health education that is provided to all new police recruits in the province. the success of this unique and growing partnership can be attributed to several factors: (1) a shared commitment to better serve the citizens in our communities who are living with a mental illness; (2) a genuine respect for the expertise and contributions of each of the members; (3) a willingness to set personal interests and ‘politics’ aside; and (4) sharing credit for accomplishments and successes. it is also clear that mental health nurses and nursing educators, as knowledge professionals, have the requisite skills and expertise needed to foster interprofessional collaborations within communities and lead new learning initiatives aimed at strengthening awareness and understanding of mental health issues. based on the momentum generated to date, it is likely that the partnership will continue to expand and eventually include representation from police services, community organisations, education institutions and citizen groups from across the province. certainly, citizens who are living in our communities and trying to manage mental illness can best be served by a strong collective ‘voice’ that advocates for the sharing of experiences, resources and expertise. references 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http://www.who.int/mental_health/ media/investing_mnh.pdf http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/investing_mnh.pdf http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/investing_mnh.pdf from social butterfly to engaged citizen: urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing and mobile technology to support citizen engagement marcus foth, laura forlano, christine satchell & martin gibbs (eds) mit press, cambridge, ma, 2011, 544 pages in 2009, two workshops exploring urban informatics were held: one at pennsylvania state university, university park, and the other at the queensland university of technology, brisbane. research and inquiry into the changing landscape of technology-enabled engagement with communities, cities and spaces was presented at both of these events. from these gatherings of international scholarship and research, the book, from social butterfly to engaged citizen: urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing and mobile technology to support citizen engagement, was compiled. within these agglomerations, through the lens of the emerging field of urban informatics, both the citizen and citizenship are under scrutiny. there is a clear sense of positioning urban informatics to play a role in the development of the public sphere and community. the editors are acutely aware of the challenge confronting them in their explorations of relations between the social, technology and space, noting a need to apply new hybridities, concepts, theories and methods for understanding such relationships. the book addresses five themes: theories of engagement; civic engagement; creative engagement; technologies of engagement; and design engagement. obviously, engagement is a core organising thematic and, as both idea and ideal are explored in its breadth, not all engagement is the same. the critical question, as the editors describe, is to understand how various technologies can be harnessed for engagement to pursue diverse ends, including better engagement. however, in itself engagement is not tantamount to citizenship: it is one of many citizenship practices. as iveson writes, it is not sufficient to facilitate citizen participation, but rather to ask ‘what is the vision of the good citizen and the good city they seek to enact?’ while technologies do not create the citizen, strategies of citizenship are enacted with and through them. the participation of citizens is not the only hallmark of progressive or empowering urban governance. consequently, many of the projects in the book address engagement in terms of a communicative, conversational or informational process, for example ‘climate on the wall’ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 192–94 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 linda carroli 193 | gateways | review and ‘co2nfession/c02mmitment’. others, like ‘smart garden watering’, establish a more obvious informational feedback loop intended to modify the behaviours of suburban gardeners in water conservation. exercising the responsible consumption of natural resources is a different position and practice to exercising citizenship. such a difference is highlighted in de cindio and peraboni’s project which develops online citizen dialogue and deliberation. they note the need for higher level modes of online participation which can evolve through ‘hives’ for civic participation in decision-making. current civic initiatives, such as fixmystreet, tend to have little impact on public discourse and decision-making. there is a changing awareness of civic agency: a more mature public space, supported by government, can reinforce public dialogue and foster citizen involvement. one of the recurring images – or visions – in the book is that of the ubiquitous city (u-city), where technologies not only shape our experience of the city and its urban culture, but are also shaped by our ideas of the city. our imaginaries, as de waal argues, exert influence in the design of urban technologies. ubiquity can sometimes translate as invisibility, even a set of hidden permissions or protocols that shape the everyday. in her study of south korean u-cities, halegoua claims that the examination of media practice and consumption at the level of urban street and everyday life is an under-explored opportunity. yet, despite that promise, there is no sense of citizen participation in decision-making about urban space in some korean cities. informationalisation or information processing pervades the urban environment and results in the interpenetration of architectural surfaces, bodies, signals and waves. fuller and harley claim this creates new kinds of social engagement and ‘forces of relationality’. considering a protocological surround, they pose a question for the citizen who is ‘modulated back into the space of flows’, asking ‘what kind of engaged citizen we might imagine if citizenry isn’t even really aware of its engagement anymore?’ there is a sense of being connected but not necessarily switched on. however, this unspoken participation can be regarded as implicit participation where engagement is grounded in everyday actions (as in people voting with their feet), rather than words. at the very least, these questions present challenges for empowerment and for practice. dourish and satchell suggest that moral economy and forms of social participation are evident in the use of social media. less concerned with a focus on tools, they draw attention to social acts and media ecology to highlight the formation of publics rather than audiences. one of the striking examples of active social participation is found in the citizen science community. paulos, kim and kuznetsov found that new technologies enable citizen scientists in measuring and monitoring their environments. this tactical use of sensors in the urban environment captures data that can be used in advocacy and activist efforts. user-generated data – as in the movements 194 | gateways | review of people in the city – can also facilitate understanding of the experience of the city. pereira et al. say this kind of ‘implicit engagement’ can result in the development of urban indicators to evaluate urban strategies. the city is sensory and sentient – we now know more about our environment and our own occupation of it than ever before as the distinction between infrastructure and inhabitant blurs. as these brief notes about the content of the book demonstrate, from social butterfly to engaged citizen offers insight into the breadth of intellectual inquiry into the interplay of technology, the city, community and space. as predominantly academic projects, the chapters offer examples of enmeshed and emerging methodologies. for example, forlano has designed several methods that support open innovative networks where citizens are engaged in collaborative knowledge creation and the making of an open source city. in her engagement with mobile work, forlano’s experimental approaches included using twitter for ethnographic notes taken in public spaces appropriated for co-working. another example is ‘flash mob ethnography’ as a form of fieldwork. this book evinces that theoretical and research agendas are attentive to and anticipating of the needs of cities and communities where the urban and technological are intrinsically entangled. the book outlines numerous learnings about enhancing human–computer–urban experience in ways that canvas opportunities for citizen engagement, social relations and urban governance with an eye to the future. who has a stake? how stakeholder processes influence partnership sustainability universities throughout the world are expanding their relevance by responding to and engaging with local and regional societal challenges in multiple ways, including developing various kinds of community partnerships (baum 2000; bringle & hatcher 2002; butterfield & soska 2005; forrant et al. 2001; stephens et al. 2008). universities have a particularly interesting potential to facilitate societal responses to current challenges because universities are ‘anchor’ organisations that are more stable and robust than many other organisations within any given community (coalition of urban serving universities 2010). faculty, students and administrators are increasingly finding pedagogical and intellectual value, as well as other personal and professional rewards, in connecting their work in explicit ways with communities beyond the campus (baum 2000). at the same time, communities (from the smallest non-profit organisation to state legislative bodies) are turning to universities to provide resources, knowledge and assistance in addressing perplexing social problems as public resources prove scarce and social problems persist (harkavy 1998; maurrasse 2001). community-university partnerships typically involve an array of constituencies, or stakeholders, both from within the university and from the community. through analysis of the evolution of three community-university partnerships in the same urban context but with different characteristics, different university and community stakeholders, and at different places in their partnership history, this article explores factors contributing to the durability of community-university partnerships, paying particular attention to variation in the strength and priorities of the stakeholders involved. the three partnerships included in this analysis are: (1) univercity – a discontinued partnership between the worcester city government and multiple universities that was designed to promote economic development; (2) the hope coalition (healthy options for prevention and education) – a youth–adult partnership consisting of 17 public and private organisations, including two universities, created to reduce youth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 100–118 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 mary-ellen boyle laurie ross jennie c. stephens clark university 101 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens violence and substance use and promote adolescent mental health in worcester; and (3) the institute for energy and sustainability (ies) – a recently initiated partnership involving two private universities in worcester working with politicians, businesses and government leaders to stimulate the growth of a clean energy industry in the region. this comparative review of the three partnership cases focuses on understanding variation among different university and community stakeholders. in addition to identifying ‘who has a stake’, the study explores the salience of the stake, taking into account relative power, legitimacy and urgency of each stakeholder. we assert that adapting stakeholder theory to the field of community-university partnerships will allow deeper understanding of the processes necessary for universities and communities to sustain their collaborations and bring about social change. each of the three authors is a faculty member who has been involved in the development of or implementation of at least one of the partnerships being compared, so this comparative analysis is based on a combination of formal and informal interviews as well as participant research by the co-authors. community-university partnerships in the united states, universities have a longstanding tradition of serving as engines of economic development for states and regions (freeland 1992; hahn 2003; rosenthal & wittrock 1993). university researchers offer technical knowledge, an analytical perspective and access to a talented, inexpensive labour pool; universities also provide an educated workforce and may offer customised training for local employers (crespo & dridi 2007; koven & lyons 2003). these two roles of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination have become increasingly important in the transition to a knowledge economy. in addition to economic development, universities, particularly medical schools, increasingly play key roles in community health, co-creating knowledge and educating outreach workers (minkler & wallerstein 2003). beyond teaching and research, a third role for universities has emerged: that of direct involvement in community issues. such involvement can include activities as diverse as school reform, solar panel installation and staffing community health centres. this role is conceptualised in various ways: universities as citizens (bringle, games & malloy 1999); universities as partners (maurasse 2001); universities as leaders and change agents (clark 1998; harkavy 1998); universities as economic anchors (hahn 2003). the concept of community-university partnership has received significant attention in the literature, to the extent that such partnerships are considered a social movement (harkavy 1998; maurasse 2001); a mechanism for combating corporatisation and overspecialisation in academia (bok 2003); and a means to educate for democracy (astin 1996). the federal government in the us has invested in 102 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens such partnerships: in 2000 the department of housing and urban development, through its community outreach partnership center grant program, offered funding to ‘help universities rebuild america’s cities’. philanthropic foundations, too, have supported university civic engagement initiatives (ostrander & portney 2007). policy analysts, higher education researchers and urban planners have established that social change occurs as a consequence of community-university partnerships and have emphasised that universities as well as their communities will be affected by such endeavours (dewar & isaac 1998; silka 1999; wiewel & lieber 1998). with regard to components of successful and sustainable partnerships, scholars have pointed to the importance of university mission, campus infrastructure and pedagogy (bringle, games & malloy 1999), as well as university and classroom contexts (boyle 2007). best-practice reports focus on the partnership as an entity, suggesting that effective partnerships require features such as reciprocity, shared planning, power and resources, good communications, and clear goals and expectations (holland 2003). a recent assessment of a 10year partnership concludes that commitment, communication, collaboration, flexibility, trust, and maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship are necessary for success (judd & adams 2008). one identified gap in the literature on ‘what works’ in community-university engagement is deeper understanding of these collaborative processes (hart et al. 2009). this article seeks to address the gap by describing, analysing and comparing the processes of stakeholder engagement over time. those critical of community-university partnerships focus on the ‘unheard voices’ of the community (stoecker & tryon 2009). even when the rhetoric is about creating a participatory process of community empowerment, the reality is often much different (boyle & silver 2005; sorensen 2007). stoecker and tryon (2009, p. 192) suggest that new research is needed to ‘shift the balance of power to a more community-involved practice of community engagement by colleges and universities’. in the three case studies to be described below, community involvement differs as does the balance of power. the lens of stakeholder salience allows these process and power issues to be analysed and then compared. stakeholder theory stakeholder theory (freeman 1984) has developed most robustly in the management literature, where it focuses on decisions that affect multiple constituencies, that is, those with a ‘stake’ in the particular action being considered by a private-sector firm. the theory tries to explain ‘which groups are stakeholders deserving or requiring management attention, and which are not’ (mitchell, agle & wood 1997, p. 855). beyond stakeholder identification, managers are urged to undertake stakeholder analysis, stakeholder dialogue and/or stakeholder management. stakeholder theory has 103 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens been critiqued for ‘having no moral underpinnings’ since it is not always clear that a manager will assess the competing stakes in an ethical manner (philips 2003), as well as for paternalistically suggesting that stakeholders can be ‘managed’. this is especially problematic when the stakeholders are citizens rather than consumers or employees, as has been the case when the theory has been applied to the public sector (tennert & schroeder 1999) and to charities (cordery & baskerville 2005). nonetheless, given our concern with processes of collaboration and constituents necessary for success, and our focus on the organisation rather than the manager as the unit of analysis, these critiques are not especially relevant. moreover, we intend to use the concept analytically rather than normatively. most useful to us is the stakeholder typology developed by mitchell, agle and wood (1997), based on the attributes of power (defined as the extent to which a party has the means to impose its will in a relationship), legitimacy (based on the socially established structures or behaviours) and the urgency (time or severity) of the stakeholder’s claims. from these attributes, stakeholder saliency can be determined in various contexts including political organisations (o’higgins & morgan 2006). in management, the ‘typology allows predictions to be made about managerial behaviour with respect to each class of stakeholder’ (mitchell, agle & wood 1997, p. 855). when communityuniversity partnerships are the unit of analysis, salience works differently: rather than predicting managerial behaviour, we suggest that stakeholder salience influences the power balance in the collaborative processes, which in turn appears to affect the sustainability of the partnership, as will be explored in the three case studies below. methodological approach the case study was chosen as the research method because it potentially allows understanding of stakeholder interactions in depth and over time, and because case analysis can be used to explore causation (yin 1994) and thereby the factors that result in sustainability can be studied. moreover, cross-case comparison strengthens the generalisability of our single case explanations (miles & huberman 1994). three community-university partnerships with different structures and history were selected for this case study. yet all three are situated in the same urban context and were developed within the past decade. this shared context is an important element of the study because of what is known about the dynamic nature of any local environment: ostrander (2004) asserts that there are no singular models or universal best practices for university-community engagement, largely because local factors are disparate and evolving. and stephens et al. (2008) argue for the critical role played by local context when environmental sustainability is the goal. by comparing three partnerships within the same context rather than focusing on exogenous variables, 104 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens as occurs when partnerships in different geographic regions are studied, this case study can deepen understanding of how stakeholder processes influence partnership sustainability. cases were developed by integrating information from formal and informal interviews with key actors and stakeholders and personal involvement and engagement of the researchers with the partnerships, as well as review of secondary documents including formal reports, minutes of meetings and news articles. the authors have had various degrees of involvement in each of the cases, as is typical in participatory action research where university-based researchers work in partnership with communities to achieve mutually agreed upon aims (smith et al. 2010). we mitigated bias by using graduate assistants to collect data and generate analyses, as well as by individually deriving the comparative analyses, then synthesising our conclusions. context: background on worcester, massachusetts the three community-university partnerships are situated in worcester, massachusetts, usa, a mid-sized city with a population close to 175 000. like other post-industrial cities, it has been facing economic decline. from 2001 to 2007, worcester lost more than 2200 jobs, 2% of its total employment. the size of the labor force also declined, along with the labour force participation rate. losses were primarily in manufacturing and financial services, though the manufacturing losses were not as steep as in the us as a whole. in the past several years, the weakening economy and the slowdown in the housing market have negatively affected property values, reducing city tax revenues. at the same time, city expenditures, primarily salaries and benefits, have been increasing. nonetheless, worcester has seen growth within the biomedical/life sciences fields, in health care and higher education (city of worcester 2004; research bureau 2008). the worcester area is home to 13 colleges and universities that serve 30 000 students and employ 11 000 people. findings: community-university partnership case studies the partnership descriptions are organised as follows: (1) purpose, history and accomplishments; (2) community stakeholder representation and salience; (3) university stakeholder representation and salience; and (4) partnership structure including leadership and staffing. univercity (2004–2008) purpose, history and accomplishments the univercity partnership was established in 2004 with a primary goal of leveraging the potential of the region’s 13 universities to enhance economic development (stephens, hernandez & boyle 2009). this partnership, which was sustained for only four years, focused on expanding the tax base of the city 105 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens of worcester and creating new jobs within the city and the region. as its name suggests, the key stakeholders were the universities and the city. this partnership emerged within the controversial context related to taxes and universities. while there was a general understanding that universities have a positive economic impact on the area, a vocal subset of the city population believed that colleges should make payments in lieu of taxes (pilot). pilots are a means to collect voluntary payments from non-profit organisations such as educational institutions, hospitals, churches, etc. (non-profits do not pay property tax in the us; property tax is the city’s primary source of revenue.) a number of cities have successfully persuaded universities to make pilots, yet worcester’s higher educational institutions have argued that their in-kind contributions through their community engagement projects and overall economic spill-over effects were more than adequate. univercity was the recommendation of a 23-member task force, appointed by the mayor, which included community and business leaders, government and elected officials, and representatives from the colleges. the task force proposed to establish a structure for communication among the city, colleges and the business community; to formalise and enforce evaluation mechanisms to inventory current productive relationships, institutional strengths and student engagement in community activities; and to pursue projects in nine key economic development areas (city of worcester 2004). a four-member executive board, 10-member campus liaison committee, and 12-member advisory board were established to provide programmatic guidance to the executive director. the city contributed $35 000 and the 10 participating colleges made equal contributions totalling $35 000. the chamber of commerce provided $41 000 of in-kind support. following a competitive national search for an executive director, the board hired the former director of the department of housing and urban development’s community outreach partnership center grant program. the executive director was solely responsible for promoting the main objective of univercity, that is, to encourage economic development. univercity was to focus on: (1) college purchasing; (2) the colleges as employers of worcester residents; (3) real estate development; (4) college advisory capabilities; (5) business incubation; (6) workforce development; (7) downtown development and the student consumer; (8) students as volunteers, service learners and professional interns; and (9) marketing worcester. according to key informants, univercity had two significant successes over the four years of its existence: the establishment of a benchmarking system to measure the economic development impacts of colleges and universities, and an overall increase in the amount of money spent by colleges and universities locally through the local purchasing program. its final progress report stated that the colleges and universities contributed more than $207 million 106 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens into the worcester economy in the previous year, and detailed the percentage increases in purchasing, fees and assessments, the number of staff living in the city and total taxes paid to worcester. the partnership was discontinued in 2008. interviewees suggested that while univercity was a great idea on paper, the conditions to make it a successful and sustainable partnership did not come together in practice. they cited inadequate funding, structural problems and lack of clear, coherent goals as the limiting factors. only about $7000 was dedicated to programmatic spending annually, limiting univercity’s ability to fund projects. additionally, a lack of 501(c)3 non-profit organisation status limited univercity’s capacity to secure funding beyond the allocations provided by the city and the colleges. community stakeholder representation and salience with regard to the question, ‘who has a stake?’, the city of worcester and the chamber of commerce were the two most evident community stakeholders. neither neighbourhood business associations nor community-based organisations working on economic development were involved. those in ‘need’ of jobs were not an organised stakeholder group, though those who might eventually provide jobs were at the table in the form of the chamber of commerce. the chamber hosted the partnership offices, so their interests were financial as well as substantive, yet individual chamber members had little direct involvement in the partnership. the city had a powerful stake in the success of univercity, and was able to influence the partnership’s agenda and outcomes. worcester would gain tax revenues, and successful business incubation would also benefit residents and city coffers. univercity evaluation showed an increase in monetary contributions as detailed above. yet, city involvement in the partnership appeared one-sided: they wanted to benefit from university connections but did not offer much in return. though there were efforts to increase student service-learning opportunities, and it could be argued that successful marketing of worcester would benefit the universities in the long run, this partnership appeared to lack reciprocity. the city used its power to become a salient stakeholder, but this imbalance of power did not sustain the partnership as a whole. other community representation was minimal, reducing the legitimacy of univercity’s efforts beyond city hall. with regard to urgency as a stakeholder attribute, those individuals who most urgently needed economic development had no organised way to become involved in the partnership. in this case, the stakeholders with the most to gain had the least power. although the need for economic development was seen as urgent by government leaders, this urgency was distant from those board members involved in decision-making, further diminishing the salience of the city as a stakeholder and limiting the impact of the partnership over time. 107 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens university stakeholder representation and salience although engaging with the local universities was the primary objective of this partnership, actual university interaction and connection were limited. university administrators were involved in the initial set-up of the partnership and had seats on the governing boards, and universities contributed money to the operating budget, but these were administrative stakeholders. faculty, staff and student involvement was minimal. this was not for lack of trying. internship and service-learning directors on various campuses had great hopes that univercity would address problems of coordination and provide centralisation of community-based activities. they hoped that univercity would match community and university needs, and avoid duplication among different colleges. faculty were aware of the importance of collaboration across the city as each college increased its service activities and sent students out to internship sites, and this was an explicit but unfulfilled goal of the partnership. given that neither faculty nor students were involved in the planning or the day-today operations of the univercity partnership, it is not surprising that this goal was subsumed by the interests of the more powerful stakeholders. univercity became to be seen as a top–down, downtown entity, aloof and out of touch with the needs of its multiple stakeholders. the universities had a stake in the success of the partnership, but their stake was not powerful or urgent, in part because it did not extend beyond administrators. also there were so many universities at the table that their interests were diluted and thus power was diffuse. and because universities already perceived themselves as engines of economic development and anchor institutions in the region, their sense of urgency was minimal. the universities were happy to contribute through local purchasing and hiring, but given the scope, pace and predictability of existing university economic activity, additional actions could not contribute greatly to solving the problems of job loss and economic decline. thus the salience of the university stake was the result of their legitimacy as stable economic actors in the region, not the result of their role as knowledge creators and disseminators. with regard to the balance of power and the reciprocity needed for partnership success, univercity’s fate suggests that university involvement should extend beyond the administrative level to include the faculty and students who have an urgent interest in achieving the partnership’s goals. partnership structure and leadership if best practice requires ‘reciprocity, shared planning, power and resources, good communications, and clear goals and expectations’ (holland 2003) for partnerships between one community organisation and a single university, it can be argued that such characteristics are even more important when trying to get multiple universities and city agencies to work together. so the complexity of univercity posed structural hindrances from 108 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens the beginning. though collaborative planning processes were instituted with the univercity partnership, it does not appear that the stakeholders with the greatest saliency were involved nor was the process premised on reciprocity among stakeholders. it is especially important to note that, as an outsider, the executive director of univercity faced numerous challenges. though familiar with community university partnerships, he had not been involved at an operational level. moreover, he neither knew the local government actors, nor had longstanding relationships with the university stakeholders or the business people on the board of univercity. he had a personal stake in the success of the partnership, but he lacked the power and legitimacy necessary to create a sustainable collaboration given the issues outlined above. because univercity was discontinued, this case offers a unique set of lessons about what does not work with respect to sustainable partnerships. hope coalition (2000–present) purpose, history and accomplishments the healthy options for prevention and education (hope) coalition was formed in 2000 and continues today to work towards its mission to reduce youth violence and substance abuse and to promote positive mental health and youth voice through a youth–adult partnership. hope consists of 17 youth serving and supporting organisations in worcester, including non-profit, community-based youth programs, public schools, city government and a community development corporation. the executive directors of these organisations form the adult board of the coalition. umass, the clinical partner of the university of massachusetts medical school, is hope’s lead agency and fiscal sponsor. hope’s original funding was from the federal substance abuse and mental health services administration (samhsa), initially promised for five years. hope engaged in a youth-driven needs assessment and planning process that resulted in the development of three programs: 1) a peer leadership program consisting of high-school-aged youth that represent coalition organisations; 2) a youth-designed mental health program; and 3) a 13-week youth worker training institute. yet, when it came time to move into the implementation phase of the program in 2002, hope was notified that the implementation funds were no longer available. for many community-based coalitions, the loss of a major funding source can destabilise, or even cause the dissolution of the partnership. hope, however, has been able to maintain its focus on its core priorities. the hope coalition mental health model has now been operating for seven years with grants from united way and local foundations. by locating the program at two community-based youth programs where 90 per cent of the youth are low-income and over 75 per cent are latino or african american, the hope model directs service to low-income youth of colour – unquestionably an 109 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens under-served population. the hope model has reduced stigma and transportation barriers. as a result, the involved organisations have become healthier places for all young people. likewise, the youth worker training institute, which has been operating since 2002, has graduated hundreds of youth workers. community stakeholder representation and salience: the central role of youth hope was built on the principle that youth must be leaders in efforts to address the issues that affect their lives (ross 2010). coalition adults actualised this principle by developing a peer leadership program for the coalition. the hope peer leaders were (and continue to be) a racially and ethnically diverse group of 15–20 year olds from across worcester. hope staff trained the youth in research methods, community organising, meeting facilitation, public speaking and action planning. peer leaders receive a modest stipend in exchange for work. other incentives for participation included food at meetings and bus vouchers. hope peer leaders put their skills to work by conducting a needs assessment, engaging over 700 young people through surveys, interviews and youth speak-outs. the major issues they uncovered included teen pregnancy and stds, violence, stress/depression, transportation, getting into college, drugs and alcohol, and inadequately trained youth workers. several of the key findings of the youth’s work became the basis for additional planning, including efforts to provide on-demand mental health help for youth in crisis and better trained youth workers. in this case, those with a stake in the outcome were the youth, and their stake was salient not because of their power – youth are largely a disempowered group – but because they were seen as a legitimate group and their voices were able to convey the urgency and immediacy of the issues. the legitimacy of the peer leaders catalysed local agencies into creating the youth programming that was needed. university stakeholder representation and salience the salience of the university stake increased over time, serving to strengthen and stabilise the partnership. as described above, about two years after its founding, the coalition was notified that the financial support from samhsa for implementation had been eliminated. in response to the shock of losing funding, the university stakeholders involved in the coalition made some key decisions. umass agreed to fund the first youth worker training institute, to fund the part-time coalition director permanently, and to sustain the peer leaders until alternative funding sources could be secured. the coalition director, who in the meantime had begun a full-time faculty appointment at clark university, was able to bring new resources to the table. undergraduate and graduate students became involved in the coalition and provided support in geographic information systems, program evaluation and peer leader development. 110 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens the two universities’ stakes differed, and complemented each other. umass brought the power of its financial resources to the table when needed. it had a stake in this case because the mission of hope aligned strongly with its strategic aims in the area of youth development. the hope director, a faculty member at clark, brought legitimacy and resources in the form of human capital, as she was able to harness established structures of the university to sustain the youth work. college students benefited from the opportunity to become involved, deepening the partnership at a stage when it was able to absorb new stakeholders. like umass, clark’s stake in being involved with the coalition was also symbolic in that it promoted community engagement and making a difference as core values. partnership structure and leadership analysis of this case suggests three reasons why the hope coalition has been successfully responding to community needs throughout the past decade. first, the coalition was able to achieve and maintain a strong and engaged partnership between youth and adults. the hope peer leaders and the hundreds of youth they engaged increased the legitimacy of the coalition’s identified priorities and inspired coalition adults to persevere even when funding was uncertain, and also to invest their own limited resources into the development of the coalition. second, hope’s lead agency and fiscal sponsor, umass, had a mission closely aligned with that of the coalition. enhancing youth mental health and reducing violence and substance abuse were clearly in the interest of this university-affiliated institutional partner. for this reason, umass was willing to support coalition operations until it could locate other funding sources as well as permanently dedicate funds to support the part-time coalition director. third, the organisational structure of the coalition facilitated sustainability and reflected the commitment of coalition partners. specifically, the part-time director was on the faculty of a local university and the time of the other hope staff was an in-kind contribution from the partners. hope is now in its 11th year and is widely seen as a model for youth-led community change. the institute for energy and sustainability (2008–present) purpose, history and accomplishments the institute for energy and sustainability (ies), a new community-university partnership focused on green and sustainable energy, began in june of 2008 when the local congressional representative approached the presidents of two of the city’s private universities, clark university and worcester polytechnic institute (wpi), to promote the idea. since then, these two universities have been working with politicians, business and government leaders to develop ies. the mission of the partnership is to improve worcester and the surrounding area by: (1) creating green jobs; (2) increasing energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gases; (3) supporting the establishment of worcester 111 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens as a national leader in sustainability; and (4) supporting research in the science of sustainability and sustainable technologies. strategies to accomplish these objectives include supporting and coordinating workforce development, training and outreach to increase energy efficiency of buildings within the community, integrating support for university-based research, and the attraction, growth and retention of green business. future plans include a green science park, a community resource centre and research incubation support. community stakeholder representation and salience the public launch of the ies partnership was gradual. in april 2009 the emerging entity and initiative had not yet been formally announced to the worcester community, yet informal networking had begun and announcements in specific venues and social circles had been made. before officially launching the initiative, the steering committee wanted to ensure the involvement and engagement of a broad representation of stakeholders. a 2010 corporate conference was in some ways the official launch of the ies; this event, which was covered by the local media, attempted to engage with multiple local businesses as well as government and academic stakeholders. in addition to facilitating networking and potential new collaborations, throughout 2010 the ies was focused on multiple fundraising efforts, including some large collaborative grant applications that involved working closely with multiple stakeholders. the ies has also been working with a group of worcester citizens, organisations and researchers who are focused on energy efficiency retrofits. in considering ‘who has a stake?’, it appears that ies is casting a wide net. multiple community groups have been involved thus far, and it is not yet obvious which will be most salient. ies has used the power and legitimacy of the legislative delegation to gain buy-in across sectors, is calling upon the business community for financial support, and is attempting to include neighbourhood groups that have urgent interests in energy efficiency and affordability. university stakeholder representation and salience recognising the long-term stability, the human resources and the external legitimacy associated with the city’s universities, the ies approached university leaders to initiate the partnership. in addition to their convening power, the universities have provided office space and logistical support. the university leaders and the ies board of directors have tried to engage faculty in the development of the institute; however, clear mechanisms for faculty involvement are only starting to emerge as the partnership structure, mission and priorities evolve. more explicit attempts to build the strengths of faculty research expertise into the plans for the institute have been recently articulated. student involvement has been similarly tentative as yet, primarily consisting of projects designed to further ies’s early goals. 112 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens partnership structure and leadership the ies organisation was formalised through a memorandum of understanding (mou) between the two universities that outlines the objectives, the organisational structure, the participants and the organisation’s name. to facilitate its ability to receive grants and other funds, the institute has filed to be an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organisation, separate from the universities. following the granting of $150 000 by the massachusetts clean energy center, announced in april 2009, the steering committee drafted and circulated an announcement for the position of executive director. in november 2009 a member of the steering committee, an environmental/energy lawyer with national-level experience as the former assistant secretary for the department of energy, became the interim executive director. with an executive director in place, the steering committee became a board of trustees and could now provide advice and feedback to the ies executive director and staff. this director brings governmental and legal experience to the partnership, as well as expertise in renewable and affordable energy. he has been actively strengthening university and community connections since taking on this role. the other ies staff member has an undergraduate degree from one worcester university and a graduate degree from another, so he may provide necessary linkages to the higher education institutions and community groups. as of now, ies seems to be spending most of its time fundraising. the economic development mission is still of paramount importance to the city and the region, and expectations are high for a green energy cluster offering jobs as well as energy efficiency/affordability. stakeholders are many, yet stakeholder salience is still not obvious, and thus sustainability difficult to predict. cross-case comparison community stakeholder salience these cases show that in community-university partnerships, the reciprocal involvement and sustained salience of community stakeholders are of paramount importance. with univercity, although worcester residents were the intended beneficiaries of the economic development, processes for engaging directly with the community were limited, so the power, legitimacy and urgency of involved community stakeholders were low. with the hope coalition, the youth who were the target audience were intrinsically involved in identifying problems, creating programs and even staffing for the interventions. solutions to the community problems were co-created by youth and the organisations charged with implementing them. most importantly, the youth stakeholders were supported by the other coalition partners, resulting in a situation where stakeholder salience was significant, so much so that obstacles could be overcome and the partnership could adapt and change over time. 113 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens ies’s attempt to engage with a wide array of community partners demonstrates a broad reach, but it is not clear yet which community stakeholders will become most salient. there is a sense of urgency among certain community stakeholders, particularly those working at the grass roots, so it will be important for ies to harness this urgency for continued relevance. an institutional emphasis on connecting with corporate leaders and potential new business opportunities has been negatively perceived by some within local environmental ngo communities. while tension may be healthy for the development of the partnership, it may also point to the fact that goals have not been mutually determined; rather, the ideas have come from the public sector and appear to be top–down. it may also be that the goal of economic development is too broad and diffuse to engage stakeholders effectively, as was the case with univercity. in contrast to youth mental health, the fact that ‘everyone’ is affected by economic development and energy challenges does not necessarily translate to effective action. at this point we see the ies community stakeholders as fragmented rather than aligned, a fact that diminishes their power overall and may eventually weaken the partnership. university stakeholder salience university stakeholder engagement can be at multiple levels within the same university, and salience varies accordingly. university presidents, vice-presidents and provosts were essential to the initial development of both the univercity and ies partnerships, using their power to convene, as well as to provide in-kind and cash resources. they also were called upon to offer the political and social legitimacy made possible by their support. the hope coalition, in contrast, did not begin with high-level administrators, yet benefited from their financial and logistical support at a crucial stage in its development. university faculty represent another cohort of stakeholders, with salience largely tied to legitimacy. while faculty involvement in univercity was extremely limited, a university faculty member plays a critical role in hope as the part-time director of the coalition. within ies, faculty inclusion has been broadly attempted but not yet systematically realised. some are critical of the apparent business focus of recent work, believing that community needs are being given short shrift. the need to raise money to sustain the partnership has in some ways further hindered the cultivation of university connections for ies because specific opportunities for research and student work have not had time to coalesce, though ies is currently collaborating with the university and local community-based organisations on proposals for sustainability initiatives and research. the administrative infrastructure of the universities in worcester is such that they can act as an entity (i.e. the ‘university’ can collaborate) without necessarily involving either faculty or students. with hope and ies it is clear that the university partners 114 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens provided intellectual legitimacy, a level of objectivity and very important stability. however, the univercity case demonstrates that without the long-term intellectually based engagement of specific faculty, partnerships may lack the commitment and long-term support that only faculty involvement can bring to a communityuniversity partnership. a partnership without strong faculty engagement might be short term, dependent on particular leaders, or focused on money (i.e. pilot), which may lead to destabilisation over time. given that faculty usually expect long-term tenures in their universities, especially compared to students or presidents, faculty involvement is important if the time commitment necessary for effective collaboration is to be assured. partnership structure and leadership the leadership of these three community-university partnerships is strikingly different. the director of the univercity partnership was not only an outsider to worcester but also to the university and community development worlds. the hope coalition, on the other hand, is led by a faculty member who has a long history of local community development work and a strong professional and academic interest in the success of the partnership. this suggests that partnership sustainability might benefit most from embedded, well-connected leadership, with expertise in the social issue at hand. with ies, the leader of the partnership is a lawyer who has minimal experience working with universities or with community organisations, though he is knowledgeable about environmental issues and the public sector. strong relationships between the university leaders are positive indicators for ies; yet ies staff must also strive to enhance their connectedness to stakeholders at multiple levels. with respect to organisational structure, sustainable long-standing partnerships appear to be flexible and fluid over time. flexibility is required in terms of who is involved from the community and the university at various key junctures, and flexibility is especially important with respect to funding. start-up money is crucial, but the partnership must fiscally sustain itself. community-university partnerships can usually find space and in-kind staff support, but money for programming and funds to pay the leaders needs to be in real dollars and can be difficult to obtain. it is likely that hope persists successfully because it only has a part-time director to support, and because the focus of its mission (on youth mental health) is one that has appeal to outside funders in the private and public sector. univercity was supported by donations from local universities, but there was no obvious return on their investment, and the partnership’s goals were such that it was difficult to identify alternative funding sources. it is likely, too, that there were too many partners and no one salient stakeholder beyond the city government. univercity, like ies, took on the vexing problem of economic development, but without a focus on a cluster or particular industry. ies was able to obtain stimulus funds to start up, and may benefit from the increased 115 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens societal urgency associated with climate change, the natural environment and the need to transition energy systems. still, ies will need a long-term financial strategy both to support its current organisational structure and to accomplish its goals. conclusions social change and its associated social learning must be grounded in particular places (wenger 2000), so the power of situated empirical analysis of community-university partnerships should not be underestimated. a goal of this study was to facilitate social learning from past experiences and to inform currently emerging community-university partnerships. among the three cases explored here, the termination of univercity provides valuable lessons, as does the strength of the hope coalition. the newly emerging ies can potentially integrate the perspectives and the lessons learned from the other two cases. we recommend greater attention to faculty involvement, deeper connections with community partners beyond businesses, and careful cultivation of flexibility and leadership. the opportunities and the challenges associated with each are as follows: when considering university stakeholders, faculty involvement provides a different kind of stakeholder power and intellectual legitimacy from engagement with other university constituencies. faculty can bring a unique intensity and focus to a partnership, but given the current incentive structures for faculty promotion, support and encouragement for faculty engagement in community-university partnerships is limited in many universities. with regard to community stakeholders, when the partnership authentically engages with community groups at all levels, the partnership is more likely to be effective and be sustained. the power and legitimacy of the community stakeholders are important. those close to the problem at hand should be deeply involved. and while inclusiveness is important, the univercity example highlights the challenge of potentially having too many partners, and partners who have agreed to be a part of the initiative but who may have unclear roles, responsibilities and expectations. the hope coalition also integrates multiple diverse stakeholders but the relatively narrow and targeted mission of this partnership has kept the complexity of the stakeholders contained. finally, flexibility and adaptability are necessary for persistence and success, as is leadership. the effectiveness of the partnership is integrally related to its leader’s skillfulness in management, fundraising and communication. not to be underestimated are the personal relationships that the individual should have with both university and community representatives. the partnership leader must be cognisant of the salience of each stakeholder, and should strategically use their relative amounts of power, legitimacy and urgency. future research should examine the issue of stakeholder salience with respect to partnership sustainability, with particular 116 | gateways | boyle, ross & stephens emphasis on changes over time as well as the processes by which different stakeholders become connected and engaged. factors beyond power, legitimacy and urgency should be explored; for example, prior experience with collaboration could be a significant factor, as could the density of pertinent stakeholders within a region, or the optimal number and size of partner organisations. community-university partnerships have become increasingly common approaches to vexing social problems, but scholars’ understanding of these entities is still incomplete. partnership sustainability appears to be as complex as the problems the partnerships are designed to address. yet as universities heighten their community engagement, it will become even more necessary that we examine and reflect upon these experiences. acknowledgements we thank the community partners in worcester with whom we have each worked and from whom we have learned. we are also grateful for the research assistance provided by carrie fischer and kara baylog. support from the mosakowski institute for public enterprise at clark university is much appreciated. finally, we thank the two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that improved the manuscript. bibliography astin, a 1996, ‘democracy at risk: what higher education can do’, eisenhower leadership program, gettysburg college, gettysburg, pa. baum, h 2000, ‘fantasies and realities in university-community partnerships’, journal 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no. 4, pp. 291–301. yin, r 1994, case study research: design and methods, sage, thousand oaks, ca. dialogue, review and reflect a spiral of co-learning and co-research to surface knowledge on the right to health in this article we explore how members of civil society organisations (csos) and academic researchers participate in a dialogical process of co-learning and co-research about the right to health. in particular, we are interested in knowledge that has previously been suppressed or undocumented. our focus is on the right to the highest attainable standard of health – a human rights standard which is now widely accepted (though not without its critics, see, for example, ferraz 2009; preis 1996) – and serves as the intellectual base for our study. to meet the challenge of making human rights a day-today reality, ‘democratic space’ is required to enable people to participate in, influence and hold governments to account (jallow 2006, p. 51). while charters and commissions are important, it is the collective action of civil society which will translate human rights into practice (london 2008): in particular, the agency of the most vulnerable and those affected by human rights violations (heywood 2009) to monitor and hold states to account, to develop programs and policies, to take on an advocacy role and to address human rights violations (london 2008). knowledge is instrumental to agency, yet there is a diversity of ways of knowing which reflect hierarchies of knowledge and power. to translate the right to health into practice, and to research how this is done, it is important to recognise that existing dominant knowledge may be incomplete. to effect agency, it is necessary to develop new ways of surfacing and disseminating knowledge previously suppressed or undocumented. it was for this purpose that ‘learning by doing and doing by learning: a civil society network to realize the right to health’ (in short, the learning network (ln)) was established. the ln comprises civil society organisations (csos) from historically deprived areas, both urban and rural, around cape town, south africa. the ln cso’s vary in mandate, composition and focus. they are ‘positively’ constituted in that they work for equity and seek to operate in an accountable way in consultation with constituents and members. this article understands a cso to be any organisation outside the state or private sector. such a broad definition is equally inclusive gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 115–34 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 maria stuttaford university of warwick, uk gabriela glattstein-young university of cape town, sa leslie london university of cape town, sa 116 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london of, for example, non-government organisations with a formal constitution and board of directors and a member-led communitybased organisation that is informally constituted. while knowledge in the global north is generally dominated by individualist concepts of human rights, the ln has turned to african philosophers for a contribution towards an understanding of rights including collective entitlements. the ln challenges the dominance of knowledge from the global north on the right to health; without rejecting this knowledge, it has sought to expand theorisation of the right to health. while using reference frames other than northern knowledge paradigms to reconceptualise human rights is closely linked to controversies about cultural relativism of human rights (connell 2007), debate about culture is not central to this article. rather, our focus is on epistemological authenticity and generation of new knowledge paradigms. where relevant, we allude to cultural debates but only as illustrative of the conceptual dialogue needed to overcome the hegemony of dominant ideas about the right to health. this article concentrates on two questions: how does a coresearch process enable the surfacing of previously suppressed or undocumented knowledge? and how does this process of surfacing enable the dissemination of knowledge that would not otherwise be accessed? to frame the discussion, we begin by introducing the idea of competing knowledges, and setting out the potential contribution that can be made to the field of health and human rights through surfacing new knowledge. through a presentation of empirical findings, we argue that the co-research processes of the ln support co-learning and exchange of power and have surfaced and disseminated previously subordinated knowledge. surfacing knowledge to understand african philosophy, bell (1997) argues that it is not necessary to seek written ‘scientific’ texts; instead it is important to engage in discussion with african philosophers, listen to the narratives of african people and observe the visual art, performance and practices of african people. through dialogue across contexts, the dominance of one knowledge about the right to health can be challenged and an ‘other’, in this case african, knowledge surfaced. self-reflection on diverse views of human rights, forms of oppression and resistance, and social practices leads to the production of a plurality of knowledge (santos, nuens & meneses 2007). from this practice, we find that ‘there are neither pure nor complete knowledges; there are constellations of knowledges’ (santos, nuens & meneses 2007, p. xl). attempting to assert an ‘african philosophy’ is potentially problematic because it risks homogenising a vast and diverse geographic area and valorising one philosophy over another (bernasconi 1997). however, it is also the case that african thought, history and philosophy have been systematically dismissed and subjugated by the european and north american 117 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london metropolis (bernasconi 1997). in an african context, it is appropriate to surface the voices of african peoples in research on how the right to health can be translated into practice. ibhawoh (2000) calls for a two-way cross-fertilisation between cultural systems and universal and national human rights standards. for example, while the african charter on human and peoples’ rights (oau 1986) substantially reflects the prevailing international human rights discourse at the time of its establishment, it also contains significant departures from the dominant discourse. unique aspects include the use of the term ‘peoples’ in the title, indicating divergence from the much criticised individualist un documents to a more collective understanding of human rights, and reflecting the importance of the collective in african societies (wohlgemuth & sall 2006). including both collective and individual frames on rights claims in the ln research program has enabled us to draw upon africa-centred knowledge, such as work by shivji (1989), who argues that african traditional society is based on a collectivity (community) rather than on the individual. this does not exclude the individualist elements of human rights in africa, nor seek to romanticise african communitarianism (el-obaid & appiagyei-atua 1996), but rather celebrates the contribution that different human rights perspectives and knowledges can add to debates on the practical realisation of the right to health. given the importance of surfacing subaltern and previously suppressed knowledge of collectives, the challenge is to design research that captures this knowledge. previous research into health and human rights has found that, when asked, people at the grassroots level have been unclear as to what is meant by the right to health (london 2008; stuttaford 2009). a communitybased, participatory research design was adopted to address this challenge. participatory research should recognise the skills and expertise of research participants, elicited by appropriate research design and methods (israel et al. 1998). however, at the same time, there may be gaps in knowledge, necessitating consciousnessraising and learning before action research can be applied (freire 1996), processes which are central to participatory research approaches (cooke & kothari 2001). participatory approaches identify not only what people do not know but, more importantly, what they do know and build on the resources of communities (israel et al. 1998). furthermore, they provide methods for the co-construction of knowledge between the traditional ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’ (hill et al. 2001). through the processes of reflection and action that characterise participatory research, the emancipatory potential of social science can be harnessed (bhaskar 1989); however, framing research as participatory and emancipatory highlights the role of power in research (flyvbjerg 2001). by adopting a participatory research design, researchers seek to create a more equal balance of power in the research relationship than is usually found in conventional 118 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london research (cornwall & jewkes 1995). furthermore, an emancipatory social science has a specific and directive critical content, identifying what is wrong and what specifically needs to be done to make improvements (sayer 2000). nyamu-musembi’s (2005) actor-orientated perspective on human rights focuses on people’s understandings of rights, informed by their actual struggles for these rights. she argues for an emphasis on action that benefits the least powerful individuals and groups in society: ‘when people ask the question “works for whom?” and translate this question into action, they change the terms of institutionalised understandings of rights and make rights real in their own context’ (nyamumusembi 2005, p. 32). while nyamu-musembi is referring here to human rights practice, the same can be said for human rights research. by asking ‘for whom’, it is possible to shift power in the critical research process to those who have experienced human rights violations – essentially the application of a rights-based approach. through ‘internal cultural discourse and cross-cultural dialogue’, rights can be reinterpreted and reconstructed (an-na’im 1992, p. 3). this article argues that reflection and dialogue enable a participatory research process where multiple experiences and knowledges can be shared, discussed and used to progress the implementation of the right to health. we turn now to a discussion of the learning network to illuminate how co-research and colearning processes work in practice. the learning network the learning network (ln) was established in 2008 with an explicit agenda to build capacity within member organisations to be agents for the realisation of communities’ rights to health and to share the lessons generated from this process with organisations beyond the ln. the ln comprises six csos (anonymised as oc, of, oy, ov, oe and om) and four universities (uot, uow, uoa, uos). the principles underlying the work of the ln are that: —empowerment implies knowledge, assertiveness, critical engagement and collective action; —health is a state of wellbeing, determined by access to health care and healthy social conditions; and —networking for rights must be based on a partnership of mutual respect, benefit and equality (report of strategic planning meeting 26/02/10). in addition, four roles of the ln have been identified to support delivery of the above objectives: a a research role documenting and analyzing best practices in realizing the right to health; b an informational role to ensure communities are better informed about rights to health; 119 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london c a capacity building role to promote access to learning opportunities for member organizations; and d an action role to use the learning gained by member organizations to support services and advocacy around health (report of strategic planning meeting 26/02/10). the ln is made up of an executive committee (exco) plus the general membership. annual strategic planning meetings are held, at which all member organisations jointly set research goals based on the above principles and roles of the ln. the ln project does not engage in ‘pure’ participatory research in that members of the csos did not participate in the initial funding application. one of the academic institutions, uot, took responsibility for research coordination, the budget and leading funding applications – functions still devolved to uot by the exco. three or four times a year review and reflection workshops are held and there are quarterly exco meetings at which progress on research goals is updated. the university-based researchers have monthly team meetings, open to cso members, which include operational discussions and a theoretically based seminar. tables 1 and 2 summarise the activities undertaken by the ln from inception. the design of the ln, based on a spiral of dialogue, review and reflection (described in more detail below) means that the co-learning and co-research elements are intertwined. the representation of co-research activities (table 1) as separate from other activities (table 2) is therefore a representational convenience to highlight role (a), alongside roles (b) to (d), as listed above. research activity description questionnaire organisational profiles basic demographic information on all ln organisations questionnaire knowledge and practices ln organisations at baseline and three years in-depth interviews cso understanding of health rights and perceptions of ln activities mixed methods exploring organisation learning for health and human rights impact of ln participation amongst member organisations photovoice cso members taking photos about health and human rights, which are used as a basis for focus groups and in-depth interviews case studies in-depth interviews regarding health violations; used for training and advocacy table 1: co-research activities undertaken within the ln (adapted from london et al. 2012) 120 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london research activity description toolkit on the right to health development and piloting of a toolkit as a training and advocacy tool; monitoring and evaluation of roll-out; adapting for use in southern and east africa mixed methods evaluation: community participation through health committees health committees as vehicles for community participation in advancing the right to health audit of health committees study of the capacity-building needs of health committees and barriers to participation documentation of health team development following the development of a health team in a rural farming region language as a component of the right to health how language acts as a barrier to realising the right to health, based on data from experiences of deaf persons using sign language and xhosa-speaking patients qualitative evaluation of ln pamphlets assessment of coverage and effectiveness document review and key informant interviews policy study analysis of the provincial draft policy on participation and health committees qualitative study on disability and human rights understanding of human rights by people with disabilities qualitative reflection on the process of co-learning and knowledge creation reflecting on how the ln undertakes research literature review exploring the contribution of african philosophy to conceptualising the right to health an annotated bibliography; theoretical analysis of the traditional value of ‘ubuntu’ as expressed in the rights concept of dignity; rights explored as collective entitlements ethnographic study of women’s development within the ln experiences and development of women participants in the ln 121 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london research activity description mixed methods research to explore the process of knowledge generation through rights-based research processes power and trust in the context of universitycso engagement development and evaluation of modules for in-service training on the right to health for healthcare providers health-care provider training training area focus no. of activities the right to health general information on what is meant by the right to health and how to hold government accountable 14 piloting of toolkit on the right to health 8 training of trainers on the toolkit 2 disability and the right to health 3 rights advocacy 1 community participation as key to the right to health 2 engaging state services accessing basic services – advocacy with provincial and municipal authorities 3 community development tools participatory community mapping as an action research method 1 alternative methods for community decision-making in social structures 1 leadership training 1 re-theorising the right to health based on our experience what do african theories and philosophies say about human rights, individual and collective rights, and the right to health? 2 culture as obstacle and opportunity 1 writing skills building capacity of ln members 2 table 2: co-learning activities undertaken within the ln (adapted from london et al. 2012) 122 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london methods for researching co-learning and co-research in order to examine the two questions at the heart of this article – how does a co-research process enable the surfacing of previously suppressed or undocumented knowledge and how does this process enable the dissemination of that knowledge – the authors explored how co-research has shaped the internal evolution and development of the ln. we asked whether the use of co-research has enabled the ln to fulfil the roles established by its exco. reflective email and face-to-face interviews were conducted with 11 ln participants between october and december 2010 by one author (ggy). the questions developed for the reflective email interviews were based on feedback from participants at previous review and reflection workshops on how they perceived the ln to be functioning. areas explored related to the knowledge people had of the right to health and of each other’s organisation before joining the ln; the role of trust, power and the exco in establishing and developing the ln; how and where power has been exchanged in the ln; and how the goals of the ln have changed over time (see appendix 1). these interviews, as well as data collected as part of the wider ln research project, including learning network exco minutes, review and reflection workshop notes and strategic planning meeting notes, were managed using the qualitative data analysis software, nvivo. data were analysed by two of the authors of this article and coded according to themes probed by the research questions. further themes were identified when reading and re-reading data and in discussion between authors. these additional themes included: what participants value about the ln; how and where participants contribute to the ln; the extent to which knowledge is surfaced and how such knowledge strengthens agency; and accounts of examples of work being undertaken by organisations based on what they had learnt through ln activities. while being action-orientated, the ln was established from an academic base with research processes that expect academic writing for journals (such as, for example, this article), which can be interpreted as subjugation of cso voices by the norms of the academy. for this reason, an outline of this article was circulated and presented to both academic peers and cso members at a workshop in cape town in october 2010. a draft article was circulated and then presented at further workshops with academic peers and cso members in february 2011. on the basis of comments received, the article was revised into its current format. ethical approval for the research was obtained from the university of cape town’s faculty of health sciences research ethics committee. data presented in this article have been anonymised using organisational identifiers and individuals have been allocated a unique number. 123 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london findings and discussion this article seeks to address two key issues: co-research enabling the surfacing of previously suppressed or undocumented knowledge and co-research enabling the dissemination of this knowledge. given the spiral design of reflection and action (bhaskar 1989), these two issues are interlinked. the first sub-section below focuses on how co-research processes fundamental to the ln facilitate a dialogical process in which no one knowledge is valorised (bernasconi 1997) and in which co-learning contributes to a constellation of knowledges (santos, nuens & meneses 2007). the second sub-section focuses on how the co-research processes facilitate the dissemination of surfaced knowledge and inform efforts to realise the right to health. process for surfacing suppressed knowledge rather than a lengthy chronological description of how the ln has evolved, we focus here on the development of review and reflection workshops and the exco – two key processes that illustrate the iterative spiral of co-learning and co-research within the ln and have informed both the network’s development and its responses to the challenges faced over time in establishing a dialogical process. review and reflection workshops were found to be central to creating a space for surfacing knowledge and enabling colearning. these meetings are held three to four times a year and are open to all members. at the workshops, and also at exco meetings, agendas are mutually agreed, chairing roles are shared, presentations are given by all partners, activities are reported on, and new research and advocacy activities identified. workshops are held at a mutually agreed location, with refreshments served on arrival and a ‘cafe style’ room layout allowing people from different organisations to mingle and chat before the workshop begins. presentations range in content and are followed by discussion. in the past, for example, there has been a presentation (jointly by cso members and a university-based researcher) on findings from using photovoice (fick et al. 2010), an update on research with community health committees (by a universitybased researcher) and a presentation of a practice-based tool for promoting disability and human rights (by a cso). other activities during the day have included small group exercises such as piloting the health rights toolkit. this illustrates how a research network of ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ can support agency to establish a dialogue between active social agents as human rights defenders (p de vries 1992). as co-researchers, participants came together to explore themes through narratives and images (collected, for example, during interviews and photovoice) which were rooted in everyday experiences (reason 2001). this sharing of social experiences began a reflexive process, which hervik (1994) frames as facilitating the sharing of understanding and knowledge, and which also allows for the identification of tensions within the co-research relationship and provides flexibility in responding to each other (read & maslin-prothero 2011). ln participants 124 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london visualised shifts in power and knowledge as a spiral between coresearchers (figure 1). power within research cannot be simply conferred on others. in the network of co-researchers, power was experienced as fluid and crossing boundaries between participants. as one participant commented: ‘[the workshop] made me feel empowered and gave me confidence’ (review and reflection workshop 25/08/09). in responding to questions about learning, trust and power, one cso member argued that ‘learning by doing is the first thing that comes to mind and i do believe that trust was built through actions, sharing and communication … the exchange of power has influenced learning’ (oc1). another cso participant confirmed how learning was based on a process of review and reflection: ‘the trust was built through engagement, dialogue, review and reflect, um, because you moved forward but you also look back at where have we made mistakes’ (om1). this notion of co-learning in cyclic iterations is reinforced by the project’s ongoing meetings. for example, at a review and reflection workshop, participants reported that ‘the spiral model allows us to review and reflect so that challenges and solutions are shared; we are able to shape and change direction as we go. this was an organic process and we have been evolving/changing to meet needs of member organizations’ (report of review and reflection workshop 29/06/10). these findings illustrate the ln intent of fostering an emancipatory spiral of co-learning (bhaskar 1989) in which there is an iterative process of sharing information (ruger 2006) and learning (kolb 1984). de vries (1992) has highlighted how civil society needs to create space for its own projects and programs. as public space becomes increasingly regulated, csos have had to transform spaces into ‘sites for health rights’ where the right to health can figure 1: ‘information moves in a circular process of learning, action and reflection’ (illustration of the learning network drawn by csos at review and reflection workshop 29/06/10) 125 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london be advocated for and realised (stuttaford, hundt & vostanis 2009). creating this type of space in which co-research and colearning activities can occur has been an important part of the ln’s approach. one cso participant explained ‘… there’s a space, um, to dialogue and there’s also a space for us to reflect on what it is that we want, as an organization, so that is an advantage’ (om1). furthermore, asserting ownership of the physical spaces for supporting learning has been important: ‘we hosted two meetings, we took control … the power was in our hands … um … and i think that is what an organization needs to do, if you are the host you’re the person with the power for the day’ (om1). one of the clearest examples of csos and university-based researchers sharing power while engaged in a dialogical process of co-learning was when csos led an intervention to improve the governance of the ln. the exco, established in the first year of the research in response to csos wanting to have more decisionmaking power, was not functioning effectively due to low turn-out at meetings and inconsistent attendance, indicating a perceived lack of ownership and limiting the ongoing development of the ln. this was a critical point for the ln. members were keen to shift the ln’s focus from training and information dissemination to being more participative and engaging in deeper co-learning, as originally intended. one of the csos (oc) volunteered to lead an exco meeting convened specifically to address poor attendance and participation and to introduce members of the network to reflect (regenerated freirean literacy through empowering community techniques), a method commonly used by oc. this method not only identified the reasons for poor turn-out and improved ways of working, but placed, for the first time, a cso in a leadership role in training others in the network, including the university-based researchers. at a technical level, the reflect method was able to identify ways to improve formal reporting back at exco meetings, providing a clear way to surface, document and disseminate best practice within the ln. in reporting back at each exco meeting, organisations share how they use a rights-based approach in their work. increasingly, the ln is relying less on academic institutions to provide the point of contact to instigate learning opportunities, and participants are now looking across the whole of the ln for support, based on linking directly with each other or with other networks and organisations. for example, a workshop organised by one cso (of) on participatory mapping enabled other csos to learn from of’s knowledge (report of exco meeting 18/05/10). in another instance of skill exchanges between csos, one organisation (ov) invited a speaker from another ln cso (oe) to lead a discussion on disability and human rights (report of exco meeting 20/07/10). these developments illustrate how sharing power in the exco has led to a deepening of the co-learning experience by bridging different contexts, actors and knowledges (de vries 1992). the encounters between co-researchers are not simply about the 126 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london interaction between researcher and informant, but also about the interaction between different knowledge (de vries 1992). by having an emancipatory interest in knowledge (bhaskar 1989), the ln has sought to redress the traditional power relationship in the research context with the explicit aim of promoting the translational potential of knowledge. the way in which the csos led the establishment and strengthened participation in the exco, the subsequent increase in csos networking directly with each other, and the direct involvement of csos in undertaking research (for example, with photovoice) illustrate how csos are not passive recipients of information on the right to health, but rather active participants (long 1992) as co-researchers. further, it was not only amongst csos that consciousness was raised, but also amongst researchers. for example, one researcher commented: ‘i might describe our growth and movement to be like a winding tree with many knots. as opposed to one of those sterile-looking trees in urban areas that are confined by poles and wires to ensure that the tree grows in a certain direction. instead, our tree has been much more organic – no pesticides, no wires – just growing at its own slow, meandering pace’ (uot4). while spivak (1988) has argued that the ‘subaltern cannot speak’ (p. 308) because ‘there is no space’ (p. 307), she has qualified this by explaining how it is possible to form an ethical and enabling relationship with the subaltern based around ‘unlearning’ and ‘learning to learn from below’ (spivak 2002, in kapoor 2004, p. 642). whereas at the outset ln members felt that research remained the domain of academics, members of the ln have described how there is now sharing of experiences: ‘ln provided access to learning opportunities; access to learning, learning from each other, and also from academic institutions to learn from civil society (reciprocal process)’ (report of review and reflection workshop 29/06/10). in summary, processes for surfacing learning and knowledge have been established through a range of activities, but most notably through the establishment of iterative review and reflection workshops and an exco. capturing and disseminating surfaced knowledge knowledge is at the heart of the ln’s stated goals. when first established, the ln aimed to explore participants’ understanding and practice of human rights and how interaction between providers and community members could generate new models for realising rights to health. however, as the spiral learning process unfolded and as the emphasis on co-learning and co-research took root in the ln, capturing and disseminating knowledge was put into practice in ways that validated all participants’ expertise. we illustrate this through three examples – the development of pamphlets and a toolkit on the right to health; adapting and adopting research instruments; and embracing african philosophy in theory-based discussions about the right to health. 127 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london in the first year of the ln, at review and reflection workshops, csos requested specific training on the right to health and, in particular, how to address human rights violations. the development of pamphlets and a toolkit on the right to health was therefore undertaken in response to self-identified learning needs of csos. the universities took the lead in developing these materials, but the content was created in partnership with the csos. the practical experiences of csos are captured in seven pamphlets on the right to health, published under an open access licence in the three main languages of the western cape (http:// salearningnetwork.weebly.com/resources.html). all ln partners have been involved in the development of the content of the pamphlets and in their translation, resulting in a strong sense of ownership of the material. for example, one cso representative commented: ‘this milestone stands out for us as an organisation because community members were consulted and involved in the development of these pamphlets and as a result all the [members] are knowledgeable on such rights’ (oc1). the gains in knowledge evident in this quote and the effectiveness of action within ln members’ organisations has been confirmed in another study evaluating the ln pamphlets (strecker 2011). while the ln materials have been useful for identifying and addressing health rights’ violations, ln csos have recognised that materials on their own are insufficient for translating the right to health into practice and should be complemented by capacity building and reflection (report of review and reflection workshop 29/06/10; strecker 2011). co-research has, therefore, been critical to the development of cso-led programs. for example, one cso has taken a ln questionnaire instrument and adapted it to the sector in which the cso works, resulting in the development of a wider research-based work program tackling disability as a right for the organisation: ‘the network has allowed us as an organisation to relook at our human rights program more critically and as a result we have begun a research process about disability and human rights. at the end of this process we will be establishing a suitable way to incorporate the right to health and disability rights into our existing program’ (oe5). for another cso, the involvement in peer research through photovoice has led to organisational action on environmental health issues as well as new knowledge about the right to health: ‘the participation of oc members in the [photovoice] research has created a different understanding in the organisation on what we perceive the right to health and health practices to be … yes new knowledge has been created’ (oc1). the research team’s monthly meetings include a research seminar which has stimulated discussions related to theory. however, it was only when funding was received under the uct programme for the enhancement of research capacity (perc) (a university program aimed at promoting african knowledge) that it was possible to allocate resources to develop a strand of http://salearningnetwork.weebly.com/resources.html http://salearningnetwork.weebly.com/resources.html 128 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london work engaging more fully in african theory. from this point, greater attention started being given to african theories relating to human rights, collective action and collective rights. seminars organised under perc further encouraged ln participants to explore theoretical elements: ‘the responsibility of researchers and academics is not simply to share surface information (pamphlet knowledge) but to share the theories and analyses which inform the way knowledge and information are constructed and represented’ (smith 1999, p. 16). while the lead for perc seminars came from academics, input from csos was central to dialogue which led to the incorporation of african philosophy into the theoretical underpinnings of ln activities. in particular, one of the cso exco members who attended the seminars and actively participated in discussions commented on the value of this engagement: ‘the perc seminars have been good opportunities to learn from other academics, to learn and engage at a philosophical level and to find a theory to fit the practical knowledge of communities’ (of2). the ideas emerging from the ln’s engagement with african philosophical perspectives on rights represent new insights from csos on the implementation of the right to health that were previously unsolicited and invisible. by way of illustration, the exploration of african philosophy in relation to rights has enabled the ln to surface new ideas about the seeming tension between public health utilitarianism advancing the collective good and human rights seemingly representing individualist rights entitlements. while framing rights as also collective in nature may partly address the shortcomings of the dominant individualist approaches to human rights, there are also serious potential shortcomings in this approach (howard 1992). for example, collective rights may be exclusionary where they are used to alienate people, such as minority groups, who do not adhere to certain social norms. internationally, recognising the knowledge of groups or collectives has to date focused on indigenous knowledge rights associated with natural resources in relation to ‘scientific’ knowledge (nyamu-musembi 2005). it seems logical to extend this recognition of bodies of knowledge to other realms, for example, the expertise of groups who have experienced violations of their right to health and how they have actively redressed such violations. it could be argued that the ln is one such collective. however, the ln makes the distinction between collective rights, meaning the rights of groups, and the right to collective health, which is more consistent with the principles of public health. furthermore, the ln also distinguishes between the right to health conferred on groups, and collectives working to realise their right to health or to overcome violations. in other words, in keeping with the participatory design, the ln guards against becoming exclusionary by refraining from engaging with the language of 129 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london group rights. rather, it adopts the principles of public health in promoting the right to collective health and collective action to promote population health. given that collective action is an important element of african approaches to human rights (gyekye 1997), it can be argued that the protection and promotion of human rights is only as strong as the collective of human rights defenders (abbas 2008). in the ln, csos are collectives taking action for the benefit of the greater public good, rather than individuals or discrete groups acting for their own exclusionary interests. collective action in engaging the state around its human rights obligations is important within the ln. for example, a civil society submission to the south african human rights commission in 2009 was based partly on ln research and led to a debate with a senior public health sector manager, who disputed the value of a participatory model for engagement with the department of health. subsequent to that exchange, the department of health has appeared to be more receptive to participation by one of the csos (om), which has since been invited to annual health service planning processes, and, on one occasion, was asked to present closing remarks to the workshop. the ln has not only researched how the right to health is implemented by csos, but has also been critical of the practice of the right to health and violations of this fundamental right. following an emancipatory design has meant the ln has been involved in identifying not only what is inhibiting the realisation of the right to health but, more importantly, collective ways to address violations and promote the right to health. external impacts resulting from the ln have included improved occupational health for farm workers and improved environmental health for urban communities. however, impact can also be seen in the sharing of learning with external networks, for example, in expressions of interest in the ln toolkit from uganda and angola, involvement from and with the people’s health movement and ln csos benefitting from other university-community engagement projects through environmental and education projects. while this article is partly about trust and power in coresearch and co-learning, a limitation evident is that none of the csos partners are co-authors. this has been addressed in the ln through the establishment of writing workshops open to exco members of the ln, and academic co-authorship is now being developed. however, we have still not engaged with a wider membership of organisations. another challenge is that while the article is critical of dominant knowledge and explores the surfacing of previously suppressed knowledge, the ln has to date not addressed cultural relativism and the right to health. this may be an issue the ln exco decides to explore in future seminars. 130 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london conclusions from the empirical findings, the ln emerges as a research process for surfacing knowledge that contributes to a constellation of knowledges. two aspects of the ln have been highlighted. first, the role of sharing power in establishing the processes of co-learning and co-research, illustrated in the establishment of the exco for sharing decision-making between academic and cso members on the management and strategic direction of the ln, and in the implementation of regular review and reflection workshops for sharing practice and research findings. second, how co-learning and co-research has surfaced previously silenced knowledge that has been added to a constellation of knowledges being disseminated and used in a new way. in this article we have demonstrated how research processes can enable subordinated collectives and their knowledge to be given prominence. by challenging and redefining power in the research process, spaces for co-learning have been created in which knowledges from different contexts have been shared through a dialogical spiral of co-learning and co-research. as researchers, policy-makers and csos increasingly grapple with the implementation of the right to health, a research design such as that of the ln provides an example of how a dialogue of co-research and co-learning may surface knowledge on its implementation. acknowledgements this article draws on the experiences and knowledge of colleagues at the cape metropolitan health care forum, epilepsy south africa western cape, ikamva labantu, ikhaya labantu, the women’s circle, university of cape town, university of maastricht, university of warwick, university of western cape and women on farms project. we thank fellow participants in workshops of the programme for the enhancement of research capacity (perc) at the university of cape town (uct) and participants at two writing workshops. the british academy/association of commonwealth universities funded the two writing workshops. at the time of undertaking the research drawn on here, the learning network was 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6 august 2012). oau doc. cab/leg/67/3 rev. 5, 21 i.l.m. 58 (1982), available from http://www.africa-union.org/official_documents/treaties_%20conventions_%20protocols/banjul%20charter.pdf (last accessed 6 august 2012). oau doc. cab/leg/67/3 rev. 5, 21 i.l.m. 58 (1982), available from http://www.africa-union.org/official_documents/treaties_%20conventions_%20protocols/banjul%20charter.pdf (last accessed 6 august 2012). www.law.columbia.edu/law culture/spivak%20paper.doc www.law.columbia.edu/law culture/spivak%20paper.doc 133 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of masters in public health, university of cape town, cape town, sa. stuttaford, m 2009, ‘methods in health and human rights research: towards a spiral of co-learning’, in f coomans, m kamminga & f grunfled (eds), methods of human rights research, intersentia, antwerp, belgium, pp. 135–57. stuttaford, m, hundt, g & vostanis, p 2009, ‘sites for health rights: the experience of homeless families in england’, journal of human rights practice, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 257–76. de vries, p 1992, ‘a research journey: on actors, concepts and the text’, in n long & a long (eds), battlefields of knowledge: the interlocking of theory and practice in social research and development, routledge, london, pp. 47–84. wohlgemuth, l & sall e 2006, human rights, regionalism and the dilemmas of democracy in africa, codesria, dakar. appendix 1: email and face-to-face interview schedule a learning network for the right to health: co-learning and knowledge production please find six questions below that we would like you to consider. you can take up to one week to complete these questions, allowing yourself time to reflect on the responses you will provide and then returning to the questions. please provide your response under each of the questions, giving examples where you think this will be helpful. all learning network members, academics and csos, are answering the same questions. cso respondents questions: 1. thinking back three years to the start of the learning networks, can you remember if you made any assumptions about the knowledge that already existed with you as a person, in your organisation, or with other organisations joining the networks (both csos and academic institutions)? (for example, were there any assumptions you made about the level of knowledge in your organisation about what the right to health means?) 2. what knowledge did csos and academic institutions have of each other at the outset of the learning network? 3. previously when asked about lessons learnt in the ln, respondents identified trust as being an important forerunner of co-learning. how was trust, or mistrust, built through the learning network over time? please give examples where possible. 4. previously when asked about lessons learnt (june 29 review & reflection), respondents said that the establishment of the executive committee was an important milestone in the development of the learning network. we would like you to reflect on how the exchange of power in the ln has or has not influenced co-learning. a. how was power exchanged in the learning network and how did this influence co-learning? b. where was power exchanged and did where people meet and interact influence co-learning? 134 | gateways | stuttaford, glattstein-young & london 5. do you think the direction of the learning network has changed since the outset? if yes, please explain the way in which the direction has changed. 6. when asked before about lessons learnt, respondents said that members of organisations have gained new knowledge about the right to health. it would appear that there has been co-learning and knowledge has been transferred between organisations. a. would you say that new knowledge has been created? that through the ln we have created new knowledge about the right to health? b. if yes, how have you and your organisation understood, participated in and contributed to the process of knowledge generation? if no, then please explain. c. if yes, how do you think the academic institutions have understood, participated in and contributed to the process of knowledge generation? d. how has ‘new’ knowledge been translated into practice? can you give concrete examples of this? garlick_palmer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 73-89 © utsepress and the authors toward an ideal relational ethic: re-thinking university-community engagement steve garlick and victoria j. palmer his article argues for the importance of developing a relational ethic to guide university-community engagement practices and processes. our objective is to demonstrate that ethical ‘engagement bridges’ can be formed to link higher education institutions (heis), human capital at the community level, and the important global questions of our day that resonate with regional communities. taking centre place in this triad is the notion of being-for, an ideal form of togetherness put forward by zygmunt bauman (1995) in his early work on globalisation and post-modernity. being-for is presented in this article as a moral aspiration that, if embraced, can tie together engagement scholarship with the development of enterprising human capital, and result in ethical outcomes in the universitycommunity engagement arena. our premise is that modern day tertiary education institutions t gateways | garlick & palmer 74 are based on a neo-liberal funding paradigm with conditional obligations. funding conditionality is not an issue unique to these institutions, but it has particular relevance here if we are to critically consider how engagement between university and community can rebuild fragmented social ties and support economic development and growth. this is because university-community engagement exists within a context of governance (boydell et al. 2008), where the conditions and rules that are set down by funding bodies are sometimes at odds with and override larger ethical obligations and goals. we want to consider how, within the ethical relation of beingfor, we can find a space to keep the moral agenda alive and ensure ethical consequences for regions and the people within them. this means using being-for as a platform to explore the spatially-relevant ethics, or ‘sp-ethics’, of university-community engagement. forms of togetherness and engagement bauman (1995) proposed that contemporary global conditions and social relations are characterised by three different forms of togetherness: being-aside, being-with and being-for. the ideal, being-for, provides the basis from which to conceptualise an alternative to contemporary neo-liberal conditions currently dominant in tertiary institutions. neo-liberalism fosters and favours connections that are fragmentary, momentary and occasional. the conditions are characterised by values of competition, efficiency and individualism. such relationships respond to needs as they arise rather than being relationships that are formed longitudinally, according to mutually shared goals. the neo-liberal vision is strongly embedded in many public and private institutions and it is one that is antithetical to building a common good that emphasises fairness, justice and equality. it creates ‘the imposition of hard and fast lines around us; to make of the individual an atom, a being-for-itself, autonomous, selfinterested and introspective’ (davidson 2000, p. 642). under neoliberal conditions we become isolated, separated and at a distance from each other; such conditions do not foster an ideal form of togetherness that can take us forward to the development of ethical communities. neo-liberalism, its conditions and subsequent non-relations, thus require critique in the context of developing stronger and better university-community engagement processes and practices. left alone, these relations err toward what bauman (1995) called relations gateways | garlick & palmer 75 of being-aside rather than being-for. being-aside is described by bauman as a relationship where others are not recognised as entities that matter but rather are seen as being co-present. in being-aside, resources and physical space are shared but there is no recognition of others as being ‘person-like’. from this setting of being-aside, copresence moves toward being-with, where there is a selected recognition of others. in the being-with relation other people move into the realm of persons, but not in an entirely certain manner, and only to the degree that they are necessary to the encounter. bauman (1995) suggests that being-with is still a mis-meeting of incomplete and deficient selves as a result of this. the ideal relation is being-for where the full ingredients of the person are seen as precious and this is applied in a non-selective manner to all beings regardless of their status. bauman (1995, p. 52) is careful to explain that ‘none of the known forms of togetherness privileges the being-for relation, but none of them ward it off either’. however, being-aside is an on-the-side encounter that does not hold the moral recognition of others as important and being-with seems much more characteristic of selfinterested relationships. subsequently, it seems possible to suggest that having the aspiration of being-for will result in its formation much more so than not having it. it is in this respect that we believe bauman’s (1995) ideal form of togetherness provides a basis from which to develop processes and practices for university-community engagement. engagement and the sp-ethics of it all if we recall the concept of being-for as an ‘engagement bridge’, then its realisation may be achieved through the ways in which it informs the creation of human capital – that is, graduates with creative, enterprising and engaged skills – and where the needs of people within their communities are met through the acts and practices of engagement between university and community. this notion of being-for, as a link, is based on the view that university-community engagement has a moral purpose and explicit agenda to deploy enterprising human capital formation as an intentional strategy to achieve ethical outcomes. these ethical outcomes need to be formed around relationships between persons and not entities (such as corporations and government and non-government institutions, gateways | garlick & palmer 76 where entity-centric, rather than individual views matter). such relationships need also to be predicated on spatially-relevant ethical values, or sp-ethics. sp-ethics refers to the combined interaction of values and principles relevant to local places, the fostering of enterprising human capital based on local needs and identity, and geographicallyspecific concerns. sp-ethics evolves through the process and practices of people engaging together within the community, where learning is seen as a two-way street, and the formation of tacit knowledge is valued as equally as that of explicit knowledge (boydell et al. 2008). sp-ethics focuses on the things of shared importance to members in that location, with the proviso of needing to be cautious of falling into the traps of exclusive localism. to articulate sp-ethics one needs to have the ideal form of togetherness being-for at the centre of all engagement processes and practices – that is, being-for is the premise for universities to commit to sp-ethics. sp-ethics embodies the sense of ‘a community woven together from sharing and mutual care’ (bauman 2001, p. 150). more importantly, it acknowledges that the experience of space is fundamental to our identity (davidson 2000). according to bauman, modern institutions, like modernity itself, have become liquid. social structures have weakened and their disappearance heralds an era of short-term projects and episodes which are no longer characterised as sequential forms of progress or development (bauman 2007). knowledge in this setting travels through information highways to a plethora of diverse destinations and circumstances, and what was once distant is now much more familiar and closer than before. the idea that community and university engagement can be built from a one-size-fits-all format, as in a central agency policy prescription, does not work in this globalised context. this means that community engagement principles and processes, as well as the role of the university in developing enterprising human capital, need to be considered within a spatial context. this spatial context includes geographical location, physical environments, the built-environment, the natural environment, and human and non-human beings within this. this sees spatiality as a commonly shared and commonly shaped good that can move us away from seeing identity as a privatised and individual affair increasingly defined by ‘social standing and the purchasing of statusgiving positional goods’ (rutherford 2007, p. 19). gateways | garlick & palmer 77 rutherford (2007) also suggests that in our contemporary world when we try to grasp the meaning of society, it often escapes us like water. quoting bauman, he discusses how neo-liberal society has become a place of: [i]ncreasingly individualised individuals, [a place] which cannot easily hold its shape – it neither fixes nor binds time and space. fluids flow and yield to the slightest pressure. they drip, flow, gush, swirl, disperse into particles, gather into a flood (rutherford 2007, p. 9). the slippery nature of human relations does need to be acknowledged in the formation of community engagement strategies and planning. communities are not predictable entities upon which formulaic models can be overlaid. boydell et al. (2008, p. 211) argue that knowledge is dynamic, and its articulation can often become static and mask what is tacitly known. in this liquid world, attention must be directed at fostering and anchoring enterprising human capital in ways that respond to local community needs and conditions. the role of the university according to boyer (1996), dewey (1956; 1961), benson and harkavy (2002), garlick and palmer (2007) and others, universities are not simply ‘drive-through mobility factories’ where students privately gain something to help them fall into a future determined by others. universities have ‘a larger purpose, a larger sense of mission, a larger clarity of direction in the national life’ (boyer 1996, p. 20). this is the traditional understanding of universities as being places that form ethical citizenry and communities that have a moral character and future built around new knowledge. however, funding pressures and the push to be globally competitive have put universities at risk of losing this sense of an ethical citizenry and the shaping of the common good. the role of universities in encouraging citizen learning and knowledge acquisition meant for dewey that participation in these processes, ‘[was] to make the work of the chaotic [city] metropolis intelligible to its most disadvantaged citizens’ (addams cited in bellah et al. 1992, p. 152). in this respect, one of the goals of education is for it to be transformative and deliberative, and in this somewhat gateways | garlick & palmer 78 confusing global age to make life intelligible to all people regardless of group membership. this means having a strong moral and ethical purpose as a guiding vision that goes beyond individual gain and profit making. moreover, the non-selective nature of being-for relations needs to be embraced over the selective and exclusionary ones of being-with. when the focus of outcomes is without regard to spatial concerns of regions and communities, then the trap of selective relationships is ever present. universities have been forced to adopt being-with relations in the neo-liberal climate. the introduction of up-front fees and the limits this has placed on all people having access to educational opportunities is a case in point. this is not to say that the slippery, liquid nature of life can be captured and fully understood by universities and used to develop ethical engagement, but forms of togetherness that are premised on open enquiry and critical questioning (learning) are essential. in view of this, one of the primary principles that ought to underpin university and community engagement, then, is that community participation be oriented toward the creation of a good society, or in other words, a commonly shared good. such learning ought not to be exclusive and out of reach of those at the margins of society. universities need to reach out to the community and they need to do so in ways that include a perspective of being-for, rather than one of private institutional advantage. in other words, universities in the first instance should seek to create graduates (human capital) with the best knowledge and skills that can contribute to assisting community priorities in a globalising world, rather than simply being focused on input or student numbers. this is a significant public good role for the university engaging with its community. as well, the scholarship of university and regional community engagement should be premised on concepts of discovery, integration, knowledge sharing, and on-the-ground application (boyer 1996). this means understanding individual values and communal identities shaped by local circumstances and context, and acknowledging the tacit knowledge held within communities to harness and identify their enterprising human capital. universities and their relationship with ‘common good’ most universities whether they are publicly or privately funded show gateways | garlick & palmer 79 characteristics of being-with relations above and beyond those of being-aside in the neo-liberal context. however, as institutions oriented toward serving and shaping the public good, universities must always be aware of the inherent risks of the fragmentary and momentary nature of neo-liberal encounters. if they are not, then they risk falling into the traps of inconsequential resource sharing and always being just to one side of communities. as private enterprise comes to have a vested interest in the activities of public education institutions it is important that these issues are ethically critiqued. this means, for example, asking whether the conditions associated with the funding that universities do receive are focused on improving community outcomes. it means looking at engagement programs through the lens of sp-ethics and setting down core criterion and questions for assessment, such as asking if spatially-relevant ethical needs, identities and values are being taken into account. how much has the university harnessed the enterprising human capital and generated the conditions for this to flow outward from the engagement process? claims that ‘universities are not public goods that require government subsidies … [and that] higher education can be financed privately’ (schwartz 2006, p. 3) risk eroding relations between universities and their communities. those at the margins, those in the middle, find it harder and harder to engage with public education, which fosters entity-like rather than person-like recognition. the more that a competitive, business logic underpins the conditions of university funding, the more that university engagement with its student and community populace begins to take on the appearance of a common utilitarian agenda which disregards spatial and human uniqueness, and a sense of place. considerations of the majority reign and in this climate universities become tied to accountability measures and project development requirements that reflect the needs of funding bodies over the needs of the community. in this context, community engagement risks being a top-down endeavour applied to settings and locations, instead of evolving in a bottom-up manner. scholarship loses its connectivity to the places within which it occurs and we ask in this environment, ‘do universities know what the common, public or shared goods of their regional and local communities are’? in this neo-liberal environment where the values of competition, gateways | garlick & palmer 80 efficiency and productivity dominate, universities fail the boyer (1996) test of engaging with the public good. indeed, we propose that if sp-ethics are taken into account universities now need to engage with a common good that can incorporate all beings and forms of life, not just humanly defined ones. at present, forms of togetherness are fragmented in terms of the connection between scholarship, place and ethical outcomes. the difficulty of being-aside and being-with relations is that people in communities are not given the opportunity to contribute in a creative and engaged way to a common good. or rather, where they are given this opportunity, the objectives have already been set by somebody from outside of the location and without mutual conversation. by proposing that bauman’s (1995) conception of the ideal ethical relation ought to underpin scholarship of community engagement, we do not intend to reduce bauman’s (1995) concept of ethical relations to an economic one. the goal instead is to acknowledge that universities need to foster enterprising human capital that can contribute to community development whatever their needs may be. communities are not value-free places where institutions such as universities can locate themselves and assume students are naturally part of ethical communities that provide a haven for certainty, security and safety (bauman 2001). ethical communities must be fostered, worked at, critically engaged with and they are certainly not places of funding conditionality (cooper 1997; palmer 2006). palmer’s (2008) recent work also illustrates the problematic of value convergence when private and public enterprises are tied together with conditional funding obligations through partnership arrangements. this places limits on how far educational institutions can maintain a commitment to a sense of a shared common good when constrained by funding conditions. contrary to schwartz’s vision of ethical communities largely built around economics, cooper (1997, p. 11) articulates that ethical communities are ‘multi-logical (in that they incorporate more than just one logic, which in the neo-liberal world is an economic logic), they are dialogical (conversation based and relationally formed), they are heterogeneous, they do not have an all encompassing tradition, and they are reflective, analytic, involved and open’. this is contrasted for cooper (1997, p. 10) with moral communities where ‘norms are imposed, codes for behaviour are given based on preexisting traditions, law and order is imposed to deal with chaos, gateways | garlick & palmer 81 homogeneity is favoured, and communities are authoritative, devolved, closed and bounded’. for us, schwartz’s vision of the exclusively privately funded university is a moral community; one where the opportunity for universities to contribute to the wider common good and to the development of enterprising human capital is closed off. universities were once considered places where contribution to a commonly shared public good was integral to scholarship. so the idea of a social practice (isaacs 1998), such as weaving ethical values into the creation of human or knowledge capital, is fitting to understanding concepts of scholarship of engagement (boyer 1996; benson and harkavy 2002). isaacs (1998, p. 5) posits that: [s]ocial practices are not natural phenomena independent of persons … social practices are both constructed by, and constituted by, persons … in social practices persons enter into a collaborative engagement to achieve a common goal, or to promote a desired good, which would be unreasonable at the purely individual level. indeed, schwartz (2006, p. 4) too, in spite of claiming support for private funding of universities, supports the notion that education ought to have a purpose and that the purpose is to develop ethical behaviour. to provide a ‘basic sense of ethics’, as schwartz (2006, p. 4) contends, requires more than an involvement and participation that simply generates economics. moreover, it means having an appreciation that ethical purpose and behaviour might be placed somewhat in tension with sole private funding of public institutions. if funding prescribes certain rules that must be adhered to and if that funding disregards the sp-ethics of locales, then the ethical is at risk. universities need to be places that not only foster creativity in their human capital – a conscience of being in a social and economic world – but should also be places that encourage a purpose for doing (enterprising). knowledge generation ought to be seen as a social practice that provides the basis for ethical engagement to proceed; and that the being should not be placed at risk by the doing. our proposition is that universities can in fact foster being-for relations in their communities through their human capital creation tasks (that is, instilling creativity, enterprising and community engagement skills in their graduates). this is an intentional move gateways | garlick & palmer 82 away from capital being seen purely in private economic terms, to being seen in a socially constituted context. in recent work bauman (2007, p. 82) has noted that ‘one of the most bewildering paradoxes revealed in our time is that on the fast globalizing planet politics tends to be passionately and self-consciously local’. while being-for represents the embodiment of a commitment to ethical relations that transcends local place and space, the importance of local identities in engagement practices and processes cannot be ignored. indeed to acknowledge identity means incorporating the spatial nature within which it forms. this will undoubtedly mean taking into account a range of issues that are important in that area such as environmental or socio-political contingencies. these factors and considerations will become all the more important as heis regionalise and engage with communities with diverse needs and abilities. thus, higher education institutions are central to a particular vision of a public good that can be fostered in communities (boyer 1996; isaacs 1998; benson and harkavy 2002; and garlick & palmer 2007). however, it is a vision that sunderland & graham (2006) assert has been eroded by economic rationalism. because economic rationalism is dependent on relations which are certainly aside and often with, universities that incorporate conditional funding arrangements into their education agendas will not be able to articulate ‘a vision of what they are trying to achieve for society, or to live up to it’ (schwartz 2006, p. 4); something more than this will be needed. enterprising human capital formation in their study of the drivers of regional growth in australia between 1984 and 2002, garlick plummer and taylor (2007) found, using mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis across ninety four regions, that human capital was the most significant determinant, followed by technological change and industry specialisation. institutional intervention (mostly in the form of government assistance measures) was a negative driver of regional economic growth outcomes. this suggests a significant hei role not only on the supply side through the provision of ethically aware knowledge workers, but also in stimulating greater regional demand through engagement across education and productive sectors. according to garlick et al. (2007, p. 33), the human capital contribution to growth in regional communities comes via the process of ‘enterprising’, gateways | garlick & palmer 83 where human capital is fostered and focused on achieving outcomes of regional community benefit. in this sense, enterprising human capital is about education rather than training. it is about equipping individuals, free of entity connections, with an understanding of the economies and societies they are a part of, the processes of change that run through them, and the ways in which they might effect change. training, on the other hand, equips individuals for what is known now and for supporting the ‘winners’ that others have chosen. training is not about new directions, ideas and opportunities. ‘enterprising’ human capital in the regional context involves having the skills to take an idea or opportunity and, with others, turn it into an on-the-ground outcome that addresses an important community or spatial concern. the case of locally developed cooperative businesses – those that respond directly to a community need, where membership is formed via ongoing commitment to shared values, and have declared principles that include ongoing education – is a good example of this. enterprising human capital is relational with other people and not solely based on entities. garlick (2007) has also found that there is a growing divergence in both the stock and flow of human capital between a select few high growth metropolitan regions and a much larger number of relatively low growth non-metropolitan regions. human capital, much like bauman’s (2007) notion of liquid modernity, risks flowing downstream from low growth non-metropolitan regions to high growth metropolitan regions. the task of the university and its engagement with its community is to address this spatial imbalance, and the ethical implications of it. this will mean engaging in locally defined activities and needs. universities are seen as having a dual role in contributing to stronger human capital outcomes and ethical perspectives in the regional community. on the supply-side they can through their teaching and learning programmes embed enterprising as well as creative and engagement skills that have an ethical dimension and a connection to the needs of the regional community. this is the embodiment of a scholarship of engagement by its teaching and research staff. on the demand-side they can stimulate greater university entry in the community by creating pathways for those to move through and up. that is, practising university-community engagement from the basis and perspective of being-for relations that gateways | garlick & palmer 84 are non-selective. garlick et al. (2006) have identified some of the common features of many regional communities outside key global growth centres. first, high levels of human capital leak out through a brain drain of university-educated graduates and through the daily commuting of professional and senior management to larger centres. second, there is an underutilization of human capital through its underemployment in basic service skills and an underutilization of the skills of the productive ageing demographic cohort. and third, there is a failure to reach out to and include those at the margins of the education system. the mix of these impacts will be different in diverse regional communities and it is important for universities to identify the human capital circumstances and needs in the communities of which they are a part. universities can design and deliver programs that seek to overcome this low equilibrium picture where human capital is inefficiently used. it is in fact their ethical imperative to do so as leakages and barriers to the progression of human capital to higher levels limits the extent to which a community can ethically address the big issues of the world that resonate locally. this will mean developing educational programs that are relevant to communities and regions so that enterprising human capital becomes a strategy for achieving ethical engagement. if universities take up this challenge there is greater potential for ethical communities to evolve. the ethical community for bauman (2001), striving for the elusive ‘community’ in a globalising world of individuals is not about obtaining security, freedom and homogeneity of cultures and views by setting in place borders. in fact, bauman (2001) has suggested that ‘community’ as a concept is an imagined ideal, one that we desperately long for and to which we hope to return but never have entirely within our reach. borders are by nature fluid and influenced by our perceptions and relatedness with each other in the world; they are only imagined in so far as we place limits on them. ethical communities are possible when communities have equality of access, achieved not through regulation but by local enterprise. of course, ethical communities require recognition that distinctly moral fields already exist in geographical locations and some of them gateways | garlick & palmer 85 will need to be critiqued. these moral fields are ‘expressed in a spatiotemporal metaphorics, a discourse of relativity, proximity, dimensionality, distances, volumes and velocity and so on’ (smith 2001, p. 151). we can detect the proximity of relations in communities, the value dimensions which make people close or far apart, and the volume and velocity at which community is changing. while smith (2001) explains spatiality metaphorically, he is quick to dispel any notion that moral spaces are meant only metaphorically. indeed, bauman’s (1995) concepts of forms of togetherness can illustrate proximity, distances, dimensionality and recognition between people in their communities. moral spaces are socially produced and constituted realities that require ongoing conversations based on mutual encounters to identify the values and principles at play. these encounters are sometimes not easily achieved, but the commitment to such dialogue must be maintained. bauman argues: if there is to be a community in the world of individuals, it can only be (and it needs to be) a community woven together from sharing and mutual care; a community of concern and responsibility for the equal right to be human and the equal ability to act on that right (2001, pp. 149– 150). this means that in our communities we need to imagine ourselves engaged in relationships with others and to think about other beings as equally entitled to just treatment and access to resources as we ourselves are. the tendency here would be to see our argument as purely a deontological one and for our proposition for being-for to be applied regardless of the consequences. if the application of being-for means that there is a reduction in the inequities of access to education or that there is less injustice because of selective entry requirements, then this achieves our desired ethical end. consequential normative ethics, like utilitarianism which is focused on the greatest good for the greatest number, ignores the reality that not everyone is recognised as being a part of the greater good and most certainly, not all non-human beings are considered a part of it. in reality, it is both the consequences of our actions that benefit the common good and our intentions to be ethical that matter. without the moral aspirations that deontological, or duty-based ethics offers, we are left devoid of gateways | garlick & palmer 86 principles and values to follow in process and practice. bauman (2007) notes the trend to community homogeneity and a distrust of diversity and ‘otherness’ in a liquid neo-liberal world, giving rise to ‘mixophobia’ in communities. in such fragmented places all that can be expected are being-aside and being-with forms of togetherness (bauman 1995). such forms of togetherness are limited to episodic and usually competitive encounters of individuals, where they are viewed more as objects or entities than as humans with respected intrinsic qualities. the ethical community neatly brings together the two ideas of a being-for ethic and enterprising human capital that we suggest is a way forward for universities to engage with their communities via the development of sp-ethics. the question arises as to whether there might exist a kind of spatial context for ethics where local circumstances and needs provide the frame for the ‘sharing’ and ‘mutual care’, not only from an ideas perspective (creativity), but from a doing (enterprising) perspective. how the transformation from creative capital to enterprising capital is achieved and supported by universities in their engagement with regions and communities is a critical ethical question to be addressed in future research and theorising. conclusion bauman (1995) proposes that being-for can arise from the act of transcendence of being-with relations. in a sense, we take this to mean that commitment to the aspiration can translate to the act of transcendence itself and produce ethical outcomes. for us, this does not mean that moral and ethical purpose exists in a transcendental state, located nowhere but so obviously somewhere. rather, universities need to articulate clear visions and ethical purpose for their engagement processes and practices, and there needs to be a desire to attain ethical engagement that can result in ethical communities, particularly in a context where neo-liberal moral communities reign supreme. being-for is transmitted through social practices where enterprising action transforms creative capital into beneficial and ethical social, economic and environmental outcomes, with potential far beyond that intended at the outset. while beingaside and being-with do not, as bauman (1995) articulates, close off the possibility of being-for, it is fairly clear from our analysis that these forms of togetherness are unlikely to facilitate the aspiration for gateways | garlick & palmer 87 ethical engagement. university and community engagement needs to be premised on ethical intentions. being-for is our proposed conceptual bridge between scholarship of engagement intentions, developing enterprising human capital and the translation of these to ethical outcomes. this premise forms the basis of teachers and researchers within universities embodying an ethics of engagement. a failure to engage in these ways ensures universities and their communities do not tackle in an ethical way the big issues of the world that resonate locally. they thus fail in their responsibility to contribute to, and shape, a shared and committed common good. references bauman, z 1995, life in fragments: essays in postmodern morality, blackwell publishers, oxford. bauman, z 2001, community: seeking safety in an insecure world, polity press, cambridge. bauman, z 2007, liquid times: living in an age of uncertainty, polity press, cambridge. bellah, r, madsen, r, sullivan, wm, swidler, a & tipton, s 1991, the good society, alfred a. knopf, new york. benson, l & harkavy, i 2002, truly engaged and truly democratic cosmopolitan civic universities, community schools, and development of the democratic good society in the 21 st century, paper presented at the seminar on the research university as local citizen, university of california, san diego, 6–7 october. bishop, p, cheshire, l, howes, m, lawrence, g, liebrecht, t, loechel, b, oliver, p, rolfe, j & yee, s 2006, engaged government: a study of governmentcommunity engagement for regional outcomes report 2: selection of case studies, griffith university, brisbane, queensland, http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/cgpp/projecteg/pdf/research_report02 .pdf, accessed february 12 2007. boydell, l, hoggett, p, rugkåsa, j & cummins, a 2008, ‘intersectoral partnerships, the knowledge economy and intangible assets’, policy & politics vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 209–24. boyer, e 1996, ‘the scholarship of engagement’, journal of public service and outreach, no.1, pp. 11–20. cooper, t 1997, ‘building an ethical community’, annual ethics and public life lecture, queensland university of technology, brisbane. gateways | garlick & palmer 88 davidson, j 2000, ‘a phenomenology of fear: merleau-ponty and agoraphobic life-worlds’, sociology of health and illness, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 640–660. dewey, j 1956, the child and curriculum and the school and society, university of chicago press, chicago. dewey, j 1961, ‘the school as social center’, in j boydston (ed), john dewey: the middle works, 1899–1924, vol. 2, 1902–1903, southern illinois university press, illinois, pp. 90–91. garlick, s 2000, 'engaging universities and regions: knowledge contributions to regional economic development in australia’, eip report no. 00/15, deetya, canberra. garlick, s, benniworth, p, puukka, j & vaessen, p 2006, oecd peer review evaluation report: the twente region in the netherlands, www.oecd.org/edu/higher/regionaldevelopment garlick, s 2007, ‘creative associations in special places: enhancing the partnership role of universities in building competitive regional economies’, eip report no. 98/4, deetya, canberra. garlick, s & palmer, v 2007, ‘connecting scholarship to places: human capital, learning, enterprising and an ethical approach to communities’, the australasian journal of university community engagement, vol. 2, no. 1, spring, http://www.aucea.net.au. garlick, s, taylor, m & plummer, p 2007, an enterprising human capital approach to regional growth: implications for policy and the role of vocational education and training, ncver, adelaide, http://www.ncver.edu.au/pdf. isaacs, p 1998, ‘social practices, medicine and the nature of medical ethics’, paper presented at the society for health and human values spring regional meeting, youngston state university, youngston, ohio, 17–19 april. palmer, v 2008, ‘uneasy terrains: mapping ethical tensions in corporate community partnerships’, third sector review journal vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 51–66. palmer, v 2006, narratives beyond civility: moral protest and cooperation in ethical communities, unpublished phd thesis, queensland university of technology, brisbane. palmer, v 2001, ‘shifting focus: putting the commun[all] back into community development’, third sector review journal, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 75–87. rutherford, j 2007, after identity, lawrence & wishart, london. schwartz, s 2006, ‘higher education and the public interest’, australian financial review, 12 may, p. 10, http://www.afr.com/home/, accessed april 25 2007. gateways | garlick & palmer 89 smith, m 2001, an ethics of place: radical ecology, postmodernity, and social theory, state university press, new york. sunderland, n & graham, p 1998, ‘the role of academic community in higher learning: alternatives to a drive-thru education’, the third pacific rim conference proceedings, vol. 1, queensland university of technology, brisbane, http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/paper/graham/acad_com.htm, accessed march 15 2007. higher engagement and civic engagement: comparative perspectives lorraine mcilrath, ann lyons & ronaldo munck (eds), palgrave macmillan, new york, 2012, 268 pages higher engagement and civic engagement is a broadly conceived, readable introduction to engagement in the higher education sector. the book’s foreword and introduction provide clear contexts for contemporary university engagement from an international point of view. in a world in which the north–south divide is arguably becoming more pronounced, where capitalism’s economic cycles continue to generate crises such as the gfc and where globalisation has unequal impacts across the world, societies struggle with problems ranging from climate change to youth alienation. these challenges are knowledge intensive. universities are knowledge-intensive institutions that have vital roles to play in addressing these challenges. civic engagement, the foreword notes, is not an add-on or something that primarily generates warm and fuzzy feelings. it is, or should be, a core function of the modern university. it should be seen as one of the three areas of university activity: teaching and learning, research, and engagement, or at the very least be embedded in the other two spheres. pedagogically, and in terms of international networking, universities have much to gain through civic engagement. higher education is central to the formation of engaged, critical and global citizens. these citizens contribute to the evolution of ‘cosmopolitan communities of community activists’ as well as to the professions, which has implications for conceptualising models of civic, community and other engagement. further, the ‘massification’ of tertiary education – involving the growth in socioeconomic diversity among students, rapid technological change, social networking and the knowledge economy’s increasing demand for high-level skills – has a complex relationship with engagement. the entangled relationship between higher education, the state and the private sector has other implications for engagement. the nature of research in universities, for example, is changing. application, rather than academic imperative, is driving more and more of the research conducted, and therefore engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 231–32 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 pauline o’loughlin 232 | gateways | review needs to be considered in terms of community need. the focus has to shift from knowledge economies to knowledge societies (p. xiv). as noted in the foreword, ‘if the university is not an ivory tower, nor an extension of the business world, then it needs to be socially embedded’ (p. xvi). the collection is divided into three sections. the first covers context and concepts. chapter 1 discusses the ‘glocally’ grounded university, with a focus on north dublin, arguing that globalisation only becomes operationalised at the local level. looking at south africa, chapter 2 examines higher education as a driver for social transformation. chapter 3 explores alignment and its role in achieving civic engagement agendas in ireland, and the last chapter of the section discusses civic engagement in the west. section two – manifestations and issues – looks initially, in chapter 5, at community-based participatory research through the lens of a case study of the boilerhouse at the university of queensland in australia. chapter 6 examines the benefits of civic engagement to students and universities, while also discussing the difficulties of developing an international language of engagement. the following chapter considers student volunteering through the alive program at the national university of ireland. chapter 8 focuses on service-learning from a community partner perspective. section 3 reflects on practice. the university of grenada provides a case study of faculty use of service-learning pedagogy in chapter 9, while the following chapter reports on the results of a survey of civic engagement activities in irish higher education. the latin american experience is treated in chapter 11, and service and community engagement at the american university in beirut is the focus of chapter 12. the final chapter provides a case study of the beacons for public engagement project in the uk. usefully, this book contends and clearly demonstrates that civic engagement is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ pedagogy. it acknowledges continuing difficulties in the field. civic engagement, community engagement and service-based learning can have different meanings in different places over time and the terms are sometimes conflated. the point here, perhaps, is to acknowledge the historical, cultural and geographical contexts in which engagement occurs rather than become bogged down in debates over definitions. there also needs to be more open discussion about the politics of civic and other forms of engagement which can range from radicalism to conservatism. all this is encouraged by the editors and authors of this book, which is an original and provocative contribution to an emerging field. finding sustainability university-community collaborations focused on arts in health this article describes a number of community-based arts in health projects in schools and disadvantaged communities in northern england that connect with the interdisciplinary research interests of the centre for medical humanities at durham university. in 2000, we were invited to become associates of the newly established centre (at that time, known as the centre for arts and humanities in health and medicine). we brought with us a portfolio of arts and health projects, underpinned by a growing funded research agenda. white took up the post of senior research fellow in arts in health and robson became associate artist for arts in health and education. we have a background in arts management and practice, often within community health contexts, and with a pedagogic role of facilitating emotional health and wellbeing in schools and communities. over the last 10 years we have worked to connect the centre’s interdisciplinary research interest in what makes for human flourishing with community-based arts in health projects that can advance participatory action research and test hypotheses. we are particularly interested both to examine and demonstrate good practice in community-based arts in health and to assess what factors may help to make the work sustainable for long-term research study. to assist us in our inquiry, we have so far been able to access through the university several tranches of outreach development funding and ‘seedcorn’ research grants, supplemented by personal awards of fellowships from the national endowment for science, technology and arts. this interest and support have helped us to develop an intellectual framework for arts in community health and examine its practice internationally, as well as providing a promotional platform and other funding opportunities. university involvement has also, however, set us a two-fold challenge: to sustain the work both as meaningful arts activity for the participants and as fertile ground for inquiry by researchers. this is carefully nurtured community work and cannot be set up just to test out hypotheses, and it requires longitudinal thinking in its practical development, if not also in its research methodology. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 4 (2011): 48–64 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 mike white mary robson centre for medical humanities, durham university 49 | gateways | white & robson in this article we set out some lessons learned from our practice, and examine how community-based arts in health is relevant in a broader policy context of education, social cohesion and public health. at the core of our work is assisting schools and communities to develop new traditions that celebrate health awareness and occasions of transition through the power of resonant imagery and the reflective practice that comes from relationship-based work. the ‘happy hearts’ lanterns: a case example the use of handmade lanterns in the uk for celebratory processions originated with the theatre company welfare state international, with whom we worked in the 1980s. lantern parades have been a connecting thread of imagery throughout our many years of involvement in arts and health projects. they are, literally, occasions to view a community in another light. sometimes they are one-off events, but in many cases they become annual celebrations and form part of wider programs of work that connect arts, health education and community development. they can provide small-scale but significant practical instances of how social capital is produced and built upon. lantern events offer a tangible image of how that ‘capital’ is in circulation in the community. they create potent, resonating images for particular times and places, and literally throw light upon what makes for healthy living. every neighbourhood should have one. one such event, the ‘happy hearts’ celebratory lantern parade for the wrekenton estate in gateshead, became an annual event that took place each march from 1994 to 2006. core support came from gateshead libraries and arts, with a succession of charitable trusts and sponsors providing one-off grants. from the outset the event involved hundreds of local children, their families, voluntary agencies, churches and the district health promotion team. wrekenton is an area that is regarded as a ‘black spot’ in terms of both its health profile and its media image as a rough place. yet over the years the procession became the distinctive event in the local calendar, a metaphorical ‘screening’ and celebration of community health. during the 1990s we believed that we were helping to develop in wrekenton a model example of practice in communitybased arts in health. this model addressed both emotional health and physical health through a focus on creating participatory arts activities in a community with just about the worst morbidity record in england for coronary disease. after 12 years of running a highly successful and influential schools and community project channelling health promotion around the annual sculptural lanterns parade, we had to resign ourselves, for pragmatic and complex reasons, to closing it down. our letter of 27 february 2006 to the new head teacher of the school where the project workshop was based explained why: 50 | gateways | white & robson the happy hearts lanterns parade began in 1994 and has been a hugely successful venture. from humble beginnings, it became a nationally renowned project and example of good arts in health practice, featured in conference presentations around the world and a seminar in downing street. commissioned by gateshead council, it transformed from a single event into a robust, annual tradition. local people took it to their hearts, commemorating births and deaths through it and becoming expert lantern makers in the process. annual core funding from gateshead libraries and arts was supplemented by grants from charitable trusts, health services and sponsorship. latterly, the council grant was somewhat diminished, but their arts team provided invaluable technical support year after year. happy hearts brought well over £130,000 of funding into wrekenton over those years, and inspired much more, including the community of southwick in sunderland who now have their own procession, catch the light. over the years it has provided an important case study for research into the role of local arts development in addressing health inequalities. the aim of happy hearts was to work with the community network to help promote inner strength, health and development on every level. it is about sharing. it can only happen in the context of a constantly developing tapestry of relationships. sadly, for whatever reasons, happy hearts is no longer supported by a strong local network and therefore cannot continue. it would be a contradiction in terms for it to do so. there was no reply to this letter, which in itself spoke volumes for the sorry state into which the initiative had deteriorated. when the event began, there was a wealth of networking in wrekenton. each year, teachers, health professionals and local artists learned how to make lanterns at an open day held for all interested parties. reciprocally, the project team was invited to attend local meetings where schools, churches, community education, social services, the youth service, libraries, health visitors and the police were all represented. these meetings generated more support for the project – a second primary school became involved and a teenage mothers group signed up to make images for the procession; a local computer group produced the poster and the community police officer would organise the route and join us on the parade. over the project’s last few years, however, the picture became quite different. it had become a battle to get the event to happen at all, for lots of reasons, not simply lack of funding, though that was proving more and more difficult. the biggest concern had been the falling off of the partner agencies that provided year-round community contact and helped us facilitate a meaningful development of the project as it generated its own participant-driven narrative. there were other reasons, too: broad community network meetings no longer happened; changes in schools and agencies meant less of an emphasis on the emotional and social development aspects of the project; the police started to charge a considerable fee to come on the parade; and, whilst 51 | gateways | white & robson people from other communities were coming to observe and be involved in the project, it was evident that fewer new local people were signing up to its potential. the shutting down of happy hearts was felt as a personal disappointment to us as we had embedded our belief in the potency of arts in community health within the spirit of this event. its long duration had assisted the evolution of our understanding of arts in community health as a distinct area of activity operating mainly outside acute health-care settings, being characterised by the use of participatory arts to promote health, as described in white’s (2009) book on practice and research in this field. the practice of arts in community health was pioneered in the uk in the late 1980s through sporadic pilot projects placing local arts development in health promotion and primary care contexts. it has since grown and expanded to embrace community health on a broad front, hooking up with multi-agency initiatives to address the social determinants of health through partnership work. in communities and schools in disadvantaged areas it has combined creative activities with health education and amassed positive testimony from participants as to its value. the big challenge for arts in community health has been to sustain projects for long enough to understand and consolidate the practice and to undertake longitudinal research that can utilise and analyse participants’ testimony within a more rigorous ethnographic framework. inevitably it proved difficult for a parlous community arts project such as ours, reliant on successive one-off project funds, to maintain the necessary on-the-ground partnerships, attract strategic support, and remain vital and engaging within a generational timeframe. placing arts in health in a broader policy context from a policy point of view, the extinguishing of wrekenton’s lanterns in 2006 was perhaps unfortunately timed. in the public health field, interest was growing in the ‘health assets model’ (morgan & ziglio 2007). this model contends that, historically, health promotion has worked on a deficit model that focused on the problems and needs of communities to be addressed through health resources. an asset model, on the other hand, looks at communities’ capability and capacity to identify problems and activate their own solutions, so building their self-esteem. public health practitioners were beginning to argue that salutogenic (or health generating) factors that build health awareness through social cohesion and personal meaning are just as important as pathogenic (or sickness generating) processes, particularly as risk factors account for only 40–50 per cent of early mortality (harrison et al. 2004). some researchers went so far as to suggest that identifiable health assets in a community could include wisdom, creativity, talent and enthusiasm, and that these revealed cultural and values-based potentiality. tapping into this potential would 52 | gateways | white & robson require new training and reorientation of existing social welfare and economic delivery and development systems which recognised that ‘community cohesion may be a very significant value-based asset with cultural determinants’ (harrison, kasapi & levin 2004, p. 9). harnessing political will in support of the health assets approach has been more gradual and some of the excitement generated in the public health arena by the idea has been lost in translation. the foundations of the coalition government’s ‘big society’ plans in 2010 were, ironically, already being laid in the final term of the labour government. a framework that could practically assist a health assets approach in public health work with communities was set out in the department of communities and local government white paper (2006), which proposed arrangements for local authorities to lead on health and wellbeing issues in local communities. it aimed to shift the pattern of healthcare provision to prevention, with particular attention to complex issues of social exclusion. the white paper had an accompanying strategy which paved the way for the current culture shift in commissioning by providing opportunities for the voluntary sector to bid to run programs and services. this was a significant strategic change that could assist in introducing arts projects into community care partnerships, based on local area agreements forged between local authorities, primary care trusts and other partners. it placed emphasis on the voluntary sector’s ability to assist in needs assessment and capacity-building in communities, and advocated more joint workforce development (department of health 2006). further government support for this shift was provided with the publication of the department of communities and local government white paper on empowerment (2008), which set out how the untapped talent of communities could be unleashed to create improvements to public services, local accountability and opportunities for enterprise. wrekenton’s happy hearts missed the boat on this purchaser/provider crossing, possibly because it was a schools-based project which lacked local leadership at the time. elsewhere in north east england, some social prescribing schemes that were using the arts to address mental health and ageing fared better. before this article gets mired in ‘what ifs’ and ‘what could have beens’ it is time to report an extraordinary development in wrekenton that occurred in 2010. a group of residents on the estate approached the local authority and the primary care trust for help to reinstate the annual lanterns event after its five-year hiatus. these were new parents who had participated as children in the early parades, and who now wanted to revive the event for the benefit of their children. they wanted it not just to provide some seasonal festivity in the social calendar but precisely because they grasped its potency as a health promotion tool. they were particularly concerned about recent evidence that wrekenton had double the national average of smokers at 43 per cent, and that a third of young women on the estate smoked. furthermore, in 53 | gateways | white & robson gateshead the pre-mortality rates from cancer were among the highest in england, at twice the national average. as one resident commented to the local paper, ‘we wanted to do something to bring down these terrible figures in a way that educated but didn’t patronise people and that would bring the community closer together. there used to be a lantern parade that went through parts of gateshead that started in the mid-1990s to raise awareness of health matters such as heart disease, so it seemed like an ideal way for us to address the issue of smoking’ (chronicle extra 2010). the newly formed lantern parade committee subsequently fundraised for an event and engaged artists to work with the community on a parade for national no smoking day in march 2011. we had thought the lantern parade project was finished, blighted as we explained in our letter by the collapse of the local organisations’ network and the schools’ support that we had seen as central to its sustainability. the surprise revival of the event helped us see that there were other overlooked factors that needed to be taken into account in the research and evaluation of arts in community health in respect of sustainability: namely, the resonance within the experience of an art work, the aesthetic agency of participatory arts and what we ascribe to be ‘the communal will’. our logistical problems in sustaining the parades in wrekenton had perhaps led us to undervalue these effects and to focus instead on inputs and outcomes of social capital. we had assumed that the community no longer wanted this event because the professional ‘gatekeepers’ had become so uncommitted. yet the anecdotal evidence of community support, gathered in comments books, was often staring us in the face – for example, in the remark of a teacher with a heart condition who wrote: ‘when the big “heart of the community” lantern lit up, my heart felt better’. similarly, in a nine-year-old boy’s literacy in the social determinants of health when he observed that ‘when the lanterns light up, everyone becomes my friend’. key facets of the aesthetic agency of participatory arts, as acknowledged in an arts council england survey (coi 2007), are that they generate wellbeing and help strengthen identity, connection and a supportive sense of place. in parallel with this, there has been growing interest in the public health arena in antonovsky’s theory of ‘salutogenesis’ (lindstrom & eriksson 2006), which suggests that health originates in the human quest for coherence and a harmonious environment (antonovsky 1979), a theory which could have application across the whole arts in health field. through sustained programs of participatory arts, shared creativity can embody committed expressions of public health, simultaneously identifying and addressing the local and specific health needs in a community. importantly, this collective action still proceeds from the personal, facilitating engagement by individuals with their own health needs, but also creating 54 | gateways | white & robson commitment to a communal will for a shared experience. this was recognised at the launch of the national health service in 1948 by its political architect, aneurin bevan: the maintenance of public health requires a collective commitment. preventative medicine, which is merely another way of saying collective action, builds up a system of social habits that constitute an essential part of what we mean by civilisation (department of health 2000, p. 4). bevan acknowledged that there is a cultural base to the health services and that we need to make this visible in order for the public to fully engage with it and help shape it. yet it has taken half a century to realise that participatory arts could have a role in bringing this to light. a commitment to addressing the social determinants of health requires a process of engagement that goes beyond the health services themselves and builds alliances for social change. this in turn can provide a significant opportunity for a university to engage meaningfully with its host communities in the development of social capital. in bevan’s statement there are glimpsed the rudiments of social capital and resilience. the term ‘social capital’ has become a confusing and overused term in assessing the impact of community development initiatives (mcqueen-thomson & ziguras 2002). in the context of community arts, a better understanding of the social psychology that goes into building trust and reciprocity within communities may be found in a book that predates social capital theory: lewis hyde’s (1979) seminal work on art and the gift economy, the gift. hyde contrasts the sterile exchanges of commodity culture with the ability of an artwork or totem to bind a community through an evolving tradition of reciprocal generosity. making art work as a social gift is at the heart of thinking and practice in community arts. a gift is not a commodity at all, in the sense that its value is perceived wholly in the transmission rather than in the accumulation of a good. what matters is the sentiment and ceremony of the process. as hyde describes it: when a gift passes, it becomes the binder of many wills. what gathers in it is not only the sentiment of generosity but the affirmation of individual goodwill, making of those separate parts a spiritus mundi, a unanimous heart, a band whose wills are focused through the lens of the gift. thus the gift becomes an agent of social cohesion, and this again leads to the feeling that its passage increases its worth, for in social life at least, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (hyde 1979, p. 36). hyde emphasises the importance of a process of emotional transaction through creative participation that makes for genuine empowerment rather than a balance sheet deduction of how much social or cultural capital a community may possess. anthropology can provide an interesting lens for examining the effects of arts activities on health promotion and population health. in homo aestheticus, us art critic ellen dissanayake 55 | gateways | white & robson (1992) argues that species-centred art is a behaviour, a biological necessity, which is disciplined by the need to do what feels good in art-making. she considers ritual and art to be socially reinforcing, with ceremony having evolved as a survival mechanism that binds people together. a distinctive quality of art that she terms ‘making special’ is thus a form of social persuasion, turning what is obligatory for survival into something desirable, and addressing substantive communal concerns through evoking deep feelings. these ideas are highly relevant to the practice of arts in community health, and there may be a fundamental connection to be explored between creativity and health as a pathologically optimistic expression of survival. dissanayake refers to ‘liminal’ transitional experiences producing ‘communitas’ (the feeling of community). this state of being also relates to csíkszentmihályi’s (1996) theory of ‘flow’, when action and awareness fuse and ego is replaced by a collective sense of ‘rightness’ which can channel and relieve anxiety or distress. by having control of the process, dissanayake argues, it becomes possible for participants to speculate and to see the relation of the present ceremony to past and future, a form of scenario building. dissanayake (1992, p. 83) concludes ‘the reason art is “therapeutic” has at least as much to do with the fact that, unlike ordinary life, it allows us to order, shape and control at least a piece of the world as to do with the usually offered reason that it allows sublimation and self-expression’. it is this therapeutic effect which motivates participants to repeat these events, creating traditions. these alert us to ‘selectively valuable behaviours’, so that choice and community go together. a motivation to healthier living also proceeds from emotional response to reciprocal trust. participatory arts can provide a channel for that to be celebrated, and artists working in this field consistently say that in facilitating this they want to make a difference to people’s health because they genuinely care. artistic processes may confound the scrutiny of clinical examination, health policy review or evaluation technique, yet there is a benefit staring us intellectually in the face. the collective art work comes to express temporarily a shared creativity that still allows for personal pride of attainment, and may produce varied and deeply personal meanings for the participants. that is why participants instinctively so often ‘get it’ when professional observers may not. their emotional response is the embodiment of meaning; a phenomenon which is now considered central to cognitive science. as philosopher mark johnson (2008, pp. 46–47) asserts: we need to know how emotion binds us to the world, helps appraise our experience, and makes action possible. one of the surprises in studying these deep, pre-reflective, emotion-laden, embodied aspects of meaning, conceptualisation and reason is that these turn out to be the very processes and elements traditionally explored in aesthetics and art theory. 56 | gateways | white & robson although this phenomenon may not yet be proven to have a replicable therapeutic effect on individual pathology, it does demonstrate how a benign communion around health awareness can be created and sustained in people and places; and in our experience, even in communities enduring socioeconomic disadvantage. just as ‘social capital’ has become a rather over-used term, so ‘resilience’ has become a shallow watchword for the sustainable self and community in times of adversity. a canadian handbook providing an excellent overview of the complexity of evaluating resilience in children states that ‘resilience has come to mean the individual capacities, behaviours, and protective processes associated with health outcomes despite exposure to a significant number of risks’ (ungar 2005), but it later cites glantz and sloboda’s (2009) observations on resilience, concluding that ‘there is great diversity in the use of the concept; it is used variously as a quality, a trait, a process or an outcome’ (ungar 2005, p. 110). ungar argues that ‘resilience’ is a concept that is difficult to generalise because an understanding of the specific social and cultural context is crucial and it requires mixed methods of research that account for the multiplicity of competing understandings of health, inevitably requiring interpretation and the use of metaphor. the core argument is that it is more than an individual trait because ‘resilience occurs when the personal meets the political, when the resources we need for health are available so we can realize our potential. we need a communitization of health, understanding health as a communal experience. resilience is simultaneously a quality of the individual and the individual’s environment’ (ungar 2005, p. xxiv). ungar also notes that both psychological and political influences are needed to effect change in community health, and this has been particularly neglected in professional health practice with children – at least until recently in the uk. addressing children’s wellbeing through arts in health the labour government’s every child matters strategy, introduced in 2000, identified five national outcomes that all professionals working with children and young people needed to be aiming for: these are being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, and socioeconomic wellbeing (dfes 2005). the strategy provided a context in which to conduct joint conversations, joint planning and joint working by statutory and voluntary agencies, with clear processes to achieve those outcomes for children and young people; but crucially children and young people had to be involved in learning to take responsibility for achieving those outcomes for themselves. the national children’s bureau came to see those five outcomes as integrated rather than separate (worthy 2005), and identified the characteristics of good practice as residing particularly in projects that fostered creativity 57 | gateways | white & robson and emotional and social development. such projects can ameliorate the process of transition, not only as it occurs in the school system but also possibly when a child undergoes difficult change and loss in their personal life. what may now affect change in both child and community health practice in the uk is the marmot review fair society, healthy lives (2010), which has attracted interest across the political spectrum, and is endorsed at the outset of the public health white paper, healthy lives, healthy people (department of health 2010). the marmot review sets out six policy objectives to reduce health inequalities, including ‘enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives’, with a priority to ‘ensure that schools, families and communities work in partnership to reduce the gradient in health, well-being and resilience’ and ‘create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities’. the review spells out that differences in health status come down to economic inequalities. on the social determinants of health it concludes ‘all these influences are affected by the socio-political and cultural and social context in which they sit’ (marmot 2010, p. 10). it encourages extending the role of schools into communities and developing the education workforce to address social and emotional wellbeing in school, family and community life. the review notes that family life has more influence on a child’s educational development than school itself and concludes ‘the physical and social characteristics of communities, and the degree to which they enable and promote healthy behaviours, all make a contribution to social inequalities in health’. it calls for support for communities to find their own whole system solutions so that top–down approaches are reduced and ‘avoid drift into small-scale projects focused on individual behaviours and lifestyle’ (marmot 2010, p. 18). the marmot review stresses how working in partnership can scale up interventions. in recent years our schools-based arts in health projects (and at last count we are variously working with 24 schools) have been brought together in an annual review meeting at the wolfson institute in order to learn from each other’s practice and to set a framework for exchange visits and the scaling up of activity into a common program. the university had a facilitating role in enabling focused conversation to take place between academics, schoolteachers and participants, enabling us to refine together the proposals that we intend to present to major research charities and research councils in the coming year. we have also attempted to nurture a network for engagement in a longitudinal study. one of the most influential of our community arts in health and education projects is now in its eighth year: ‘roots and wings’, based in a primary school in chickenley in west yorkshire. chickenley is a socioeconomically deprived ‘sink estate’ on the outskirts of dewsbury. its primary school has had a troubled recent history, with a record of low academic achievement and 58 | gateways | white & robson uncommitted teaching staff – some children had experienced as many as 14 different class teachers in five years. as a result, in 2001 it was taken into ‘special measures’ on the recommendation of the inspectorate. a newly installed head teacher saw the potential in having artists in residence at the school to help address its difficulties, to be funded initially through the children’s fund. the project’s artists, led by robson, have worked year-round with pupils, their families, school staff and the wider community to foster social and emotional development and encourage cultural change through new traditions that mark significant moments in the life of the community. at the core of roots and wings is the art room, a space run by the children during breaks and lunchtimes with artist support. children choose to make things of emotional content in these sessions. encouragement to reflect on feelings has led to the children creating greetings cards, initially for friends and family but now also for sale in craft outlets in the town, with the proceeds providing charitable donations that the children determine. sometimes there may be as many as 40 children in the art room, but order emerges in this bedlam as children assist each other in realising their art from concept to appraisal. it is not just an activity room; it is a space to foster empathy, and to model and analyse relationships in a child-friendly way. the art room also provides a congenial space that has influenced the design of other areas in the school. within three years, the roots and wings program had significantly impacted on chickenley primary’s performance at all levels. an ofsted inspection report (kirklees lea 2006) stated: one child wrote about her marvellous work of art, ‘i think i am a painter now. i could work in a fast food restaurant, but being a painter is better’. pupils are cherished as individuals. education for personal, social, health and citizenship is well organised to promote healthy and safe lifestyles. the initiative entitled ‘roots and wings’ is an outstanding element which has raised the school’s profile locally. pupils’ artistic skills, writing and personal development, for example, are enhanced by its many superb activities. pupils who are talented in sports or the arts thrive on a curriculum which offers many worthwhile opportunities in these areas. this is reflected in their trusting attitudes and confident bearing. and one inspector wrote to the children to say: we loved talking to you about the way that your school has improved in the last few years. the ‘roots and wings’ project is marvellous. we particularly liked the art room and all that goes on in there. a number of events take place each year that are now accepted and welcomed elements of chickenley culture. there are two annual carnivalesque parades that celebrate transition. one is held when the youngest children move up to ‘big school’ and the other with the eldest, as they prepare to begin life at the high school. every march, children and their parents transform their 59 | gateways | white & robson schoolgrounds into a candle-lit representation of their estate for an event known as ‘lantern land’. other activities include projects to raise aspirations, encourage effective thinking and increase self esteem – and how to apply these qualities and skills to other areas of life. every aspect of the project involves reflective practice, whether between the professional practitioners or the pupils. this seedbed of reflection is a nurturing environment for the professionals involved in roots and wings. their practice places at the heart of everything they do a belief that curiosity is the fuel of development. modelling congruent behaviour is constant and is crucial to the project’s success. while some professional talk will be of attainment, resilience, attendance and expectations, the quality of such projects as these is in the relationships they foster, and in the creation of a fund of memories, both individual and collective, that is helping to redefine perceptions of the community. given this reflective environment, developed over years, it came as something of a deflating disappointment to realise that all was not well. a new senior management team had brought changes to the school, as is and should be expected. there were glitches with their understanding of the project and what it brought to the working environment of the school. other staff changes inevitably added to the misunderstanding as they were not inducted as to roots and wings’ role much beyond that it produced fantastic art work. the overall relationship between project staff and school staff was amiable, yet somewhat diminished. without attention, relationships can and did falter. here was another aspect of the problem we had faced at wrekenton, but this challenge felt enormous. wrekenton was an annual event. this was longitudinal work of a rich and detailed nature and so a lot more was at stake. project staff felt the problem to be an ethical one since, fundamentally, it was impossible for the work to develop without a mutually understood communal will. the way forward was to talk to senior management and explain that the project would not seek further funding and why. it required a frank, honest yet sensitive approach. this was a no-blame situation but everyone’s responsibility. the news of the developments at wrekenton helped fuel some doubts in us. were we, the professionals, making decisions at the expense of participants and did we have the right to so do? it is fair to say that the revelation came as a shock to the senior management. they had no idea that the problem existed and found it impossible to imagine the school without roots and wings. the new head teacher declared that the nurturing environment provided by the project was crucial for the children and their ability to learn. what the project team had thought to be a full stop was a semi-colon, a necessary pause. the announcement of a possible closure quickly turned into a conversation that opened up channels of communication. both sides were able to admit responsibility without rancour and to move on to a new phase of development; the project continues as a 60 | gateways | white & robson result and to everyone’s credit. that the project enjoys such a rich, reflective environment meant that the situation was called out in time, before it sank to a point of no return. this was not a repeat of the wrekenton situation; it was progress and indeed sustainability. offshoots of the projects given the longitudinal nature of the work, there is already an accumulated wealth of data from our projects clearly demonstrating how arts-led approaches can contribute to mental health and wellbeing work in schools (raw 2006). arts practice is now helping to shape educational practice on different levels, and the links between professionals and academics and participants are now many and varied, as the following examples suggest: —in the centre for medical humanities (cmh) we are co-authoring book chapters and articles with our research fellows and phd students, based on our fused interests, thereby creating other layers of interdisciplinary working and ways of sustaining interest in and debate about the cmh’s work. —the original evaluator of roots and wings has become a phd student at cmh, pursuing interests in the empathic nature and skills-base of arts and health practice. her field research will be based on several of our projects. —as part of an aspirations project, an associate dean from huddersfield university was invited to chickenley to be interviewed by the children about her job. in response, she invited the children to the university where they visited the ‘research gym’ and met with professionals, academics and students. —a year 6 teacher at chickenley now works regularly alongside robson in providing training in ‘the nurturing curriculum’ to teachers in the kirklees district through the borough’s targeted mental health in schools (tamhs) initiative. —the open university (2009) chose roots and wings for a filmed case study to accompany its interdisciplinary course in critical practice with children and young people, a module masterslevel course that provides a deeper understanding of the ideas that influence current practice, analyses recent changes in the organisation of services and explores what it means to be a critical, reflective practitioner (robb & thomson 2010). —academics from the anthropology and geography departments at durham have visited roots and wings on several occasions and show an ongoing interest in the possibility of future research collaborations with practitioners and participants. these sustained relationships make for a complex network: practitioners, participants and academics meet in safe and comfortable spaces, allowing for mutual understanding that can help to originate participatory and guided research with mentoring from various departments within durham university. the projects themselves also generate more research-guided practice. loca is kirklees council’s arts and regeneration agency. inspired by roots and wings’ successes, the agency was keen to 61 | gateways | white & robson extend to other schools some of the working practices that were proving so successful in chickenley. loca successfully bid for funding to develop ‘inside me’, a program which for its first three years involved artists working in a cohort of six primary schools to deliver a series of 18 short projects with a particular focus on emotional literacy and emotional health. on the strength of the impacts and strong evidence base generated (loca 2009), kirklees primary care trust offered funding to extend and deepen the work, enabling a program which saw five artists placed in four primary schools and one secondary school for two years on an ‘in residence’ basis. this in turn led to the primary care trust commissioning loca to be a delivery partner in the new kirklees tamhs program. loca’s creative input to this 10-month program involves some of the most experienced artists from inside me and roots and wings working alongside other specialists (including a primary mental health worker, educational psychologists, social and emotional aspects of learning specialists) to find innovative and creative interdisciplinary ways of delivering interventions and training with children and staff in 15 participating schools (only one of which has previously been involved with inside me). in respect of the inside me work in the two years prior to tamhs, kirklees primary care trust was not interested in yet more of the kind of evaluation (focused on proving the work’s emotional health impacts with children) which had persuaded it to invest in the work in the first place. so loca invited academics from the centre for medical humanities to a study day to examine the data and generate ideas for differently focused discussion, reading and writing. the resultant papers and articles are a way of sustaining interest in and thinking about the work and retaining a relationship with academics; an alternative to an evaluation report that might never have seen the light of day. conclusions sustaining a long-term relationship with projects like those we have described also allows both the quantity and quality of documentation and dissemination to be improved. such work lends itself readily to interdisciplinary analysis as well as generating a richly detailed evocation of the process of the work, so that participants’ tales become vital testimony. the emergent narrative in a community about a continuing seasonal celebration assists our understanding of the resonance and aesthetic agency of arts in health that we referred to earlier. for example, when we asked a group of women volunteers whether the lanterns had any significance for them after the event, they replied in unison ‘they’re our memories’. this home-grown testimony helps to build the persuasive advocacy for an arts in health project to be sustained through difficult times. it is important to look through and beyond the evidence because as the world health organization (2008 p. 33) has observed, ‘evidence is only one part of what swings policy decisions – political will and institutional 62 | gateways | white & robson capacity are important too. but more than being simply academic exercises, research is needed to generate new understanding in practical, accessible ways, recognising and utilising a range of types of evidence, and recognising the added value of globally expanded knowledge networks and communities.’ despite the present economic climate of austerity, there is still fertile ground on which arts in community health and university research can engage. in a pressured voluntary sector, schools with a commitment to supporting community development may become key partners and locations from which to explore a viable ‘big society’. creating ‘communitas’ in neighbourhoods is going to require far more than recreational volunteering if the coalition government’s ‘big society’ idea is to redress the effects on local services of what author and libraries campaigner philip pullman (2011) has tellingly described as ‘market fundamentalism’. long-term partnerships between restructured local health services, academy-style schools with a social agenda and whatever cultural services have been spared the axe could be crucial – and university involvement could help motivate such partnerships to common ends in practice and research. methods of knowledge exchange and transfer will need to become more about entrepreneurial ingenuity and low resource requirement, and about releasing staff for volunteering than applying full economic costing for research. as england’s public health function is now being transferred to local authorities, strategies to deliver on community health must remain sensitive to local culture and circumstances or the inherent advantage of having local authorities as a commissioning nexus for services relevant to local population needs may be lost. as evidenced in happy hearts and other projects described in this article, effective health promotion is about more than addressing topical health issues and priorities, it is also about issues of identity, meaning and place – and these are essential factors in the development of arts in community health, in expressing the ethos of healthy schools, and in maintaining what bertholt brecht described as ’the greatest art of all; the art of living together’ (willett 1964, p. 276). acknowledgements the authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and support over many years of the residents of the wrekenton and springwell estates in gateshead, loca cultural development agency, and the staff and pupils of chickenley primary school in dewsbury. references antonovsky, a 1979, health, stress and coping, jossey-boss, san francisco, ca. central office of information (coi) 2007, the arts debate: regional consultation meetings, coi, london. 63 | gateways | white & robson chronicle extra 2010, ‘lanterns aim to light way to health’, newcastle chronicle extra, 15 september, p. 6. csíkszentmihályi, m 1996, creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, harper perennial, new york. department of communities and local government 2006, strong and prosperous communities: the local government white paper, the stationery office, london. department of communities and local government 2008, empowerment: the local government white paper, the stationery office, london. department for education and skills (dfes) 2005, every child matters: an overview of cross-government guidance, dfes, london. department of health 2000, the report of the chief medical officer’s project to strengthen the public health function, department of health, london, p. 4. department of health 2006, no excuses. embrace partnership now. step towards change! report of the third sector commissioning task force, department of health, london. department of health 2010, healthy lives, healthy people, the stationery office, london. dissanayake, e 1992, homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why, university of washington press, seattle, wa. glantz, m & sloboda, z 1999, ‘analysis and re-conceptualisation of resilience’, in m glantz & j johnson (eds), resilience and development: positive life adaptations, plenum publishers, new york, pp. 17–83. harrison, d, kasapi, e & levin l 2004, assets for health and development: developing a conceptual framework, european office for investment in health and development, london. hyde, l 1979, the gift: how the creative spirit transforms the world, routledge, new york. johnson, m 2008, ‘body meanings’, new scientist, 12 january, pp. 46–47. kirklees local education authority (lea) 2006, ‘ofsted inspection 282150’, kirklees education authority, huddersfield, uk. lindstrom, b & eriksson, m 2006, ‘contextualising salutogenesis and antonovsky in public health development’, health promotion international, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 238–44. loca (2009), inside me: evaluation report april 2008 – march 2009, loca, dewsbury, uk. marmot review 2010, fair society, healthy lives: strategic review of health inequalities in england post-2010, the marmot review, london. mcqueen-thomson, d & ziguras, c 2002, promoting mental health and wellbeing: a review of literature focussing on community arts practice, vic health, melbourne, victoria. morgan, a & ziglio, e 2007, ‘revitalising the evidence base for public health: an assets model’, global health promotion, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 17–22. open university 2009, ‘k802 critical practice with children and young people’, course, viewed 8 february 2011, www.open.ac.uk/study/ postgraduate/course/k802. http://www.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/k802.htm http://www.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/k802.htm 64 | gateways | white & robson pullman, p 2011, ‘market fanatics will kill what makes our libraries precious’, the guardian, london, viewed 8 february 2011, www.guardian. co.uk. raw, a 2006, chickenley creative kids project: independent evaluation for year 3, children’s fund, dewsbury, uk. robb, m & thomson, r 2010, critical practice with children and young people, policy press, bristol, uk. ungar, m 2005, handbook for working with children and youth: pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts, sage publications, london, p. xvi. white, m 2009, arts development in community health: a social tonic, radcliffe, oxford, uk. willett, j 1964, brecht on theatre: the development of an aesthetic, hill and wang, new york, p. 276. world health organization (who) 2008, closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health, who, geneva. worthy a 2005, ‘supporting children and young people through transition’, spotlight briefing, national children’s bureau, london. www.guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk 5 netshandama.indd quality partnerships the community stakeholders’ view universities the world over are developing smart partnerships with their communities in order to advance their core business of teaching and learning, research and community engagement (bringle & hatcher 2002). however, all too often, there is a tendency in academia to use the idea of engagement as an ‘aerosol’ term, sprayed over any interaction between a higher education institution (hei) and the community to give the relationship a politically correct facelift. academic and research roundtables often focus on what constitutes a quality partnership but the voice of the community is generally absent from such discussions. similarly, there is a voluminous amount of literature on how a university-community partnership should evolve, as well as tools to assist this evolution, but historical and contextual issues facing rural-based universities and communities in poverty stricken underdeveloped countries that are often troubled by paralysing levels of illiteracy, inequity and underdevelopment are rarely addressed in the literature. in such contexts, consideration of the community perspective is crucial to establishing a quality partnership. this researcher would contend that in most cases a partnership is assumed to be in place, and to be working as intended, yet what is happening on the ground may not, in fact, represent a quality partnership. in this regard, i concur with lynn (2000, p. 649) who indicates that existing partnerships between academic institutions and communities often lack trust and respect. as nyden & wiewel (1992, p. 43) point out, it takes more time than expected to implement a true partnership in which trust and satisfactory decision-making mechanisms are built. understanding each partner’s relationship objectives; improving coordination, access and service in order to be responsive to community needs; and working to ensure partnerships are sustainable are challenging demands – and mistrust in the community is often fed by a history of unsatisfactory projects. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 70–87 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 vhonani netshandama university of venda 71 | gateways | netshandama nyden and weiwel (1992, p. 43) also suggest that academics and their students can be remarkably oblivious of deadlines, which render communities nothing more than teaching tools. the education white paper 3 on the program for higher education transformation in south africa (department of education 1997) stated that higher education institutions have to be responsive to community needs, encourage broader participation and address issues of access in higher education, a position enshrined in the constitutional framework of south africa, which places increased emphasis on addressing community needs in all sectors (constitution 101 of 1996). this transformative agenda was found to be especially compelling in the case of rural-based south african universities, which often serve historically disadvantaged black populations in areas that are both under-resourced and underdeveloped (nkomo & sehoole 2007, pp. 235–36). yet, after more than a decade of community-university engagement in south africa, one area remains crucially unexamined: the views and experiences of community members in their partnerships with higher education institutions. this article discusses what is understood by the term ‘quality partnership’ from the point of view of community stakeholders, drawing on a study that was conducted during 2006–2007 by the researcher at the university of venda (univen) in the limpopo province of south africa. it first provides an overview of the national and local context of this study before turning to a discussion of community perspectives as revealed in the case study. the study posed the following two questions: ‘what would you regard as a quality partnership between the hei and the community?’ and ‘what are your needs and expectations of a partnership with the university?’ four main requirements emerged from the data: —balance the partnership objectives of both parties —ensure an unexploitative partnership —share power and control in the partnership —maintain and monitor the partnership. the article concludes with some thoughts on what constitutes a quality partnership with some suggestions for achieving this. the local and regional context the university of venda in thohoyandou in the vhembe district of the limpopo province of south africa was established in 1982. situated in the midst of a rural community, univen has identified its niche as a provider of higher education to the socially and economically disadvantaged. the history of the university dates back to south africa’s apartheid past, which supported the establishment of homeland universities. these universities are currently often referred to as ‘historically black universities’ (hbus). thus the majority of students attending the university of venda come from limpopo, one of the poorest of south africa’s nine provinces, and neighbouring mpumalanga, as well as from 72 | gateways | netshandama the south african development community (sadc) region. a significant number of students come from the surrounding rural communities, commuting to and from the university on a daily basis. the key challenges facing the university of venda, as well as south africa as a whole and, indeed, africa generally, include the following: —poverty and deprivation —unemployment —illiteracy —technological backwardness and inadequate infrastructure —economic dependency —preventable diseases such as hiv/aids —violence and crime —globalisation. in 2002, the department of education mandated univen, along with other heis in south africa, to make the transformation to a comprehensive university offering career-focused programs. by the end of 2006, univen had adopted a new vision: to be at the centre of tertiary education for rural and regional development in southern africa. the university’s mission reads: as a comprehensive institution, the university of venda offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in fields of study that are responsive to the development needs of the southern african region, using appropriate learning methodologies and research. during each stage of transformation the university aligned its vision and mission to the needs of the community at local, regional, national, continental and international levels. in 2009, the university established a new directorate of community engagement (ce). prior to this, although community engagement had been embarked upon by the university – and some research conducted into the success or not of these partnerships – there had been no coordination, institutional conceptualisation or framework for community partnerships, nor had there been an office that dealt specifically with these partnerships. the mandate of the community engagement directorate at univen is to ensure that community engagement is integrated into the core business of the university, focusing on partnerships for sustainable rural development and poverty reduction through teaching, learning and research. through the directorate univen is seeking to ensure that a qualitative, symbiotic and reciprocal relationship exists between itself and its community stakeholders. in south africa more generally, research and debate is occurring, among other means, via the kagisano series and the higher education monitor series, published by the council on higher education (che), which also produces institutional audit, conference and colloquia reports. many of the che publications document that there is very little evidence in south africa to suggest that partnerships between heis and the community have 73 | gateways | netshandama been monitored, resulting in difficulties in sustaining long-term partnerships. as well, the organisation for such engagement is largely left up to individual institutions. questions remain to be answered as to what extent does a university department attempt to address the problems of the community and in what form can this be done (for an overview of recent discussions, see kagisano nos 6 & 7 – council on higher education 2010). chapter 7 of the 2004 che review report into south african higher education 10 years after the introduction of democracy looks at community engagement. it notes that the ‘perception that community engagement and service are merely add-on, niceto-have and philanthropic activities remains a key challenge to [their] integration as a core function in the academy’ (che 2004). however, research is underway, including several case studies of partnerships by this researcher and colleagues at univen, as well as the recent publication by francis, dube, mokganyetji and chitapa (2010). considering the community in a partnership it is expected that stakeholders will share their needs and expectations of each other and establish common ground from which to operate. indeed, the process of finding a common vision for the partnership can establish the basis for ongoing commitment and define how progress will be measured and recognised (overton & burkhardt 1999). when the traditional leaders of a local community approached the university of venda in 2006, neither party had a framework from within which to engage as partners. since then, several other proposals for partnerships have been put forward. the ad hoc nature of this early engagement work prompted the researcher to conduct a qualitative study into what community members regarded as a quality partnership with a hei. the research was also useful in terms of her professional discipline – community health nursing. in 2000, the department of advanced nursing science had decided to adopt a model of engagement with the community under the banner of community-based education and problem-based learning, the implementation of which would also benefit from greater knowledge of community perspectives. the world health organisation (who) study group (1987), in its report community-based education of health personnel, refers to a community as a social group determined by given geographic boundaries and/or common values with interested members who know and interact with one another. it functions within a particular social structure and exhibits norms, values and social institutions. according to this definition, a community is a group of people united by at least one common characteristic. sociologists, too, emphasise social interactions and networks in their definitions of community (kumar 2005, p. 276). the study discussed in this article has therefore drawn upon definitions of community from the sociology and health sciences 74 | gateways | netshandama literature and has defined community characteristics in this instance as ‘ruralness’, limited resources and poverty, as well as shared experience or traditions. of critical importance to any partnership, but especially those with vulnerable communities, is a rigorous appreciation of the ethics and responsibilities involved on the part of facilitators from institutions that are often much better resourced than the surrounding communities. although the concepts of trust, respect and transparency are generally covered in the literature, the question of how these concepts relate to partnerships with the communities under discussion here is largely absent. the need for students to be properly prepared, the need to appreciate communities’ knowledge, and the need for constant reflection are synonymous with conducting meaningful research on universitycommunity partnerships. these issues are at the heart of quality partnerships – as was demonstrated by the responses to the two questions in this case study. the case study: research design and method a qualitative case study research method was used to describe the views of community stakeholders on quality partnership. a case study is an integrated system best used to access the thoughts, feelings and desires of the subjects studied (patton 1980). the questions addressed in this study were: —what are your needs and expectations of the partnership? —what do you regard as a quality partnership between the hei and the community? for this case study, a definition equating quality with ‘fitness for purpose’ was used, although this was not without complications. while it may not be difficult to measure the quality of education, it is difficult to measure the quality of community engagement in relation to development issues (kegler, twiss & look 2000, p. 760) and to document the quality of partnerships between the hei and the community generally (lasker, weiss & miller 2001). the difficulties are attributed to a lack of accountability, short engagement periods, insufficient intensity and contamination of communities, as well as to an emphasis on traditional education methods. further, differences in social, cultural, educational and professional backgrounds both among community members and between community members and representatives of the hei may lead to a diversity of views and multiple interpretations of what is meant by ‘quality partnership’. this could encourage power imbalances between the hei and the community, which would then undermine the partnership. in addition, it was imperative to address the often controversial question of community stakeholders and representation. knowing who to include among community stakeholders, and limiting the number of participants, is not easy. additionally, one must be mindful not to choose processes that will exclude some groups by default. methodological problems may 75 | gateways | netshandama also arise in studies that aim to hear the views of stakeholders – a common problem highlighted by brosius, tsing and zerner (1998) being generalisation – and thus meticulous stakeholder analysis is vital. it is argued that the safest way of identifying community stakeholders is to pinpoint the most obvious participants (as in providing systems and functions) without ruling out any groups. in addition, the process of selection has to be open and transparent so that people are at least aware of the procedures being put in place. it was noted in the current study that opinions on education, health, research priorities and community development were likely to differ, and that the view of one group or one member was just as important as that of the others. different individuals and groups evaluate situations differently, which leads to different actions. everyone’s views are heavy with interpretations, biases and prejudices, and this implies that there are multiple possible descriptions of any real world activity (kegler, twiss & look 2000). it was therefore important to avoid reducing the question of stakeholder representation to the notion of a generic community upon which policy-making can be based. in this case study, the choice of research design and methods and consensus discussions meant that the accuracy of the interpretations made by participants could be constantly assessed to minimise bias and prejudice. in qualitative research an attempt is made to interpret ‘phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them’ for the purpose of theory-building (denzin & lincoln 1998, p. 2). participants in the study included community members who reside in the historic venda homeland, the furthest located 60 km (37 miles) from the university. a non-probability purposive and snowball sample was used for this study. first, a stakeholder analysis was done to determine those local community groupings served by the university of venda that should have a voice in the study. previous research on stakeholders has resulted in a number of definitions of stakeholders; however, in this study, stakeholders were regarded as groups or individuals who could affect or be affected by the accomplishment of the organisation’s mission. in addition, stakeholders included all participants involved in the study as well as those who may not have been directly involved in the study but whose activities could in some ways be changed as a result of the study (freeman 2002). sample selection purposeful sampling techniques were used in this study – typical case, convenience and maximum variation sampling for small cases as defined by patton (1990). purposeful sampling allows most to be learned from the sample selected about the issues that are central to the research. typical sampling cases represent ‘average’ examples. a form of maximum variation sampling was also used, as described by patton (1990) for small samples. since the community was and still is patriarchal in nature, care 76 | gateways | netshandama was taken to ensure that the voices of women and youth were also heard. the community groupings or strata were determined by first requesting the community leaders who approached the university to identify people or groupings in the communities who would contribute by answering the research questions. once identified, the researcher approached these individuals and/or groupings to request participation in the study. the initial engagement with these individuals led the researcher to several others who were identified by them. for example, the following input came from dan who was identified by the chief to be the most appropriate person to engage with (dan was a retired education official of the former venda homeland and an elder in the kinship of that community): women in our communities are the most affected by poverty. they are mostly unemployed and are left at home to witness poverty around the clock. there will be no other food except pap [a traditional porridge made from maize meal]; babies and elderly in the family will be sick requiring her attention. they definitely need assistance. and: youth these days are affected by different disease and you find that there is a lot of teenage pregnancy. today there is hiv/aids. youth are very vulnerable. if you look at their behaviour you will realise that they have not yet received enough and sufficient information regarding issues of hiv/aids. there is a great need for youth education. the study did not seek to generalise to other settings. data saturation was the main determinant of the size of the sample. according to patton (1990), key informants or knowledgeable participants can identify who is typical; however, from this and other inputs, the researcher uses his/her judgement to extend the sample size beyond data saturation by allowing the many other voices, for example, those of women, the elderly and youth, also to be heard. those potential participants who gave informed consent eventually constituted the sample whose size was determined by data saturation. upon gaining approval to conduct the interviews, the first stage of data collection began. all interviews were conducted at a venue determined by the participants. the two questions mentioned above were canvassed and subsequent conversation was prompted by probing, clarity seeking questions and paraphrasing by the researcher to encourage participants to say more in response to the theme questions. a tape recorder was used to record information that was later transcribed verbatim. field notes were also taken during the proceedings (talbot 1995, p. 479). consensus discussions were generated in a feedback workshop, which was conducted with the community representatives, to confirm the findings. 77 | gateways | netshandama ensuring trustworthiness according to lincoln and guba (1985, p. 19), there are four criteria for establishing trustworthiness in research: truth value, applicability, consistency, and neutrality. strategies used to ensure trustworthiness are summarised here: prolonged engagement with participants was ensured by interactive, dialogic, one-on-one interviews with stakeholders, as well as by focus group meetings; workshops were conducted with potential participants about their views; consensus discussions were held with community members and co-coders; peer examination and member checking was carried out; and feedback workshops were conducted with community members. finally, triangulation was ensured through the use of these varied methods of data collection. ethical considerations the researcher adhered to the highest possible standards of research planning, implementation and reporting, with particular focus on the partnership principle (denosa 1998, pp. 3–6). the researcher ensured that the anonymity of all participants was protected in the report by not mentioning real names. informed consent was obtained from participants in written form. participation was voluntary. the researcher served as contact person for any participants who had questions or complaints about the research. data analysis a constant comparative method was used simultaneously with data collection to analyse and code the data. using tesch in creswell (1994), data was reduced and categorised. a sense of the whole was obtained by reading through each transcribed recording of participants’ inputs. notes were jotted down in the margins of each transcript and compared as the researcher coded and developed theoretical categories. significant patterns emerging from the analysis of participants’ responses were synthesised and related to discussions in existing literature on quality partnerships. discrete acts of participants and expressions of attitudes were examined and then coded into theoretical categories, a process referred to as open coding (creswell 1994; strauss & corbin 1990). limitations the study was qualitative and contextual in nature and therefore did not seek to generalise the findings. in any natural setting it is difficult to replicate circumstances. there are many changes that can be due to effects, frequencies, and the researched and researcher differences in background, etc. in this regard, it was left to the judgement of the reader to determine what is referred to as applicability (newman & benz 1998). applicability also means that the reader can look at the characteristics of the sample in the study and make logical judgements about whether the sample is comparable to other samples. if the samples are similar, the results 78 | gateways | netshandama of the study can be applied to the similar sample (lincoln & guba 1985; patton 1990). discussion of findings several themes emerged from participants’ views of what quality partnerships entail, which are now discussed and illustrated with quotes from the participants. the following quotations from participants affirmed the decision of the researcher to conduct the study: ‘communities have their own understanding of how things should be done, which institutions hardly find out’; ‘find out what the people need to know and let them know’; ‘maybe one last thing that i want to emphasise is the issue of community involvement from the word go, so that they feel to be part of the project. do not decide what their needs are. ask them what they will feel more comfortable with. they know and understand their needs better than you do.’ balancing the partnership objectives of both parties need for education and training as well as empowerment emerged as central to what participants regarded as quality partnership between a university and a community. with regard to education and training, participants felt that they needed to be educated about various aspects of life with due consideration given to improving problems of poverty, ill health and unemployment. some of the participants thought the university had a lot of money and therefore could provide resources for the community, while others understood that the university might not have the necessary resources and capacity to address all their needs. however, the latter still felt that the university had the potential to raise funds on their behalf: ‘i want to say to you the community does not know who the funders are but the university knows. why can’t the university teach the community in writing fundable proposals?’ in this regard, the researcher observed that the appropriateness of these expectations were to a large extent influenced by the level of education of the community members and thus their understanding of the system and the changing role of the hei. those who were educated focused more on education and training, while those who were not educated, and most probably unemployed, focused more on the expectation that the university could address their most pressing needs of unemployment and poverty. participants also emphasised the need for economic empowerment through job creation and sustainable projects. they also saw the university as a resource centre: ‘the university should be able to reach any community member in the village, not only the visible members of the community on top like chiefs and civic leaders. to do that, the university should be able to have an office or a university community liaison/resource centre within the community where anybody can come for help. the university must make itself visible to the ordinary citizen in the community.’ 79 | gateways | netshandama for community partners, a quality partnership should maintain a balance between academic and community development needs. they described community development in terms of the ability of the community to do things for itself as a result of the interaction with the university. for example, participants talked about a partnership that would enhance their ability to initiate and manage projects that would give them opportunities for employment, fundraising and the means to sustain themselves. ‘ja. maybe the university can help us with fundraising for the projects. i know that the university is a wellestablished institution. you should look at how you can help us fundraise.’ ‘… maybe after teaching them [the women], you can encourage them to initiate health projects that will enable them to have employment, like starting a vegetable garden or an orchard for the community. these will generate employment and also income while at the same time making provision for the wellbalanced diet in the families.’ increasing the focus on education and training for sustainable community development was, according to participants, another indicator of a quality partnership, in which the gap between each of the partner’s needs was bridged. whenever there is a partnership, there are expectations from each partner. in most instances of university-community partnerships, the assumption that academics know what communities expect from the partnership is evident in their initial interactions. this situation is not unique to academics at the university of venda (buys & bursnall 2007, pp. 73–86). on the one hand, academics are often busy, adhering to timeframes and deadlines that are not always negotiated with the community (nyden & wiewel 1992, p. 43). on the other hand, it is the author’s view that communities’ expectations may not be in sync with the mandate of the hei or may go unexplored. as one participant said: ‘empower our people with knowledge and skills and involve them when initiating this project so that they can feel that they own the project.’ communities also felt that the approach of heis was disempowering and encouraged dependency: ‘if you are not committed to developing our communities do not include our names when asking for funds. do your things alone.’ furthermore, community participants referred to the role of educators and researchers in empowering the students to understand the needs of the community, to respect the knowledge that the community has and to appreciate the circumstances of the community: ‘i believe they [the students] do not know everything because they are students. i believe you are going to ensure that they respect what the family members are telling them.’ unexploitative partnerships according to participants, a partnership that does not seek to bridge the gap between the needs of the hei and those of the community is exploitative and will result in community fatigue. obviously, this is problematic for communities. lack of cohesion in 80 | gateways | netshandama a hei also creates confusion and community fatigue (maurrasse in smith-tolken 2004, p. 116): ‘it is as if you [researchers] do not come from the same institution and it is tiring.’ uncoordinated partnership activities also result in many cases in duplication of services in one sector of the community and lack of services in others. participants felt that a holistic, multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to teaching and learning, training and education were central to a win–win partnership. community participants indicated that past experiences with academics left them with the impression that academics were often untrustworthy because they did not devote time to the relationship, but instead visited the community to address their own needs, not those of the community. in this regard they indicated that most of the relationships they had had with academics were exploitative because they came and went without any structured form of commitment or consultation: ‘we agree on a thing and people disappear.’ ‘after getting what they wanted they left without even a warning.’ another participant asserted: ‘ja … isn’t it when people do research, they collect information, get their degrees, write their papers and then disappear.’ furthermore, participants felt that quality partnerships entailed a guaranteed long-term relationship in which stakeholders felt responsible for honouring appointments and meetings to ensure the smooth running of the partnership. this stemmed from the feeling that heis and other research organisations had a tendency to move in and out of the community as they wished and therefore did not care when, how and what they left the community with: ‘you must have a year program indicating when you will be doing what and how you will be coming to our communities’; ‘… previously people have come and stole our information and used it to their benefit without a thank you.’ ‘quality partnerships respect community members’ time and have some level of organisation that is considerate of community wellbeing.’ participants felt that community fatigue was often not considered, hence the uncoordinated manner in which academics visited the communities: ‘today is the department of agriculture visiting us with some projects, tomorrow is health, and next day is environmental science ...’ partnership efforts must be based on a deep appreciation of the participants’ needs as a complex set of factors that influence wellbeing. participants also felt that a quality partnership required institutional commitment. those participants who had previously interacted with the hei spoke of the serious delays and frustrations encountered and the unsustainability of initiatives that did not have one central coordinating point. a reason for this delay was described as follows: ‘… you speak to this individual today, make commitments and promises and tomorrow he is gone and no one remaining knows anything about it.’ inherent in a quality partnership are principles of honesty, reciprocity and transparency: ‘… the university should rather indicate what they 81 | gateways | netshandama will be able to provide or assist the community with since it is the one that possesses the expertise. in other words, from the needs that the community has laid down, the university should indicate whether it would be possible for it to assist the community or not. the university must outline where they can help and where they cannot help.’ in a quality partnership, stakeholders should feel accountable for its existence and its success. and each stakeholder should feel the need to do something about his/her situation (personal accountability): ‘we will not work if we are taken as bandit of those who are educated. if we work together and respect each other, i believe that even the punishment that we are getting from god will go because he will realise that nobody undermines the other. he will bless us with even more energy to heal the disease if we work together.’ these discussions led us into the issue of power and control within partnerships. shared power and control in partnerships power dynamics are often realised in the manner in which partners regard each other. respect is generated by the partners’ understanding of social, political and cultural structures. as mentioned above, participants indicated that their past experiences with academics were usually not trustworthy because the academics were more focused on their needs than those of the community. the following quotation attests to the experience: ‘... and please, when one person is tasked with the responsibility he/she must honour the promise or commitment. we agree on a thing and people disappear.’ in addition, the researcher noted with interest that participants alluded to power dynamics within the community as well: ‘… remember that the fact that you have been given permission by the leaders does not mean that you must impose on any other person in that community.’ participants were concerned that some academics claimed to have spoken to the community when in fact they had just spoken to one or two people who claimed to represent the community. participants’ arguments on the question of power can be summarised under three main concepts: empowerment, equity and respect. of the first, the participants’ view was that empowerment had to do with the sharing of power. it was to them both the dynamic of a quality partnership and an outcome of such a partnership. this implied that engaging in an empowering manner required an empowered community that sought empowerment and vice versa. academics needed to be empowered to learn about those areas in the community that they did not know about. participants were of the opinion that an ivory tower mentality, whereby academics defined the terms, was to be avoided since it rendered the academics invalid as partners. empowerment also meant that intellectual property rights of both parties were respected in areas where knowledge was generated. an assertion that academics ‘stole information’ exemplifies this view. 82 | gateways | netshandama secondly, from the participants’ point of view, a quality partnership is characterised by the adoption of equity principles: ‘a huna nanga ino fhira inwe’. in this quote, literally meaning there is no one healer who is superior to another, a participant who is a traditional healer expressed in a venda idiom that recognising the need for each other suggested that each had something to offer the relationship and therefore no one should be bigger than the other. equity entails sharing of resources – finance, money, community knowledge, networks, personnel, and political and social power. these are all forms of power that have value in the partnership and must be shared: ‘the partnership must be managed by a team who should look at the whole issue of resources, personnel that are going to be involved eh, and the money that we are going to spend in the partnership.’ each partner must participate in the evaluation of equity over the duration of the partnership. thirdly, regarding respect, the following quote makes participants’ feelings clear: ‘we know that we have been disrespected before. we do not want to be disrespected again now in a democratic country. we no longer trust any relationship with people who come to us to say we want to work with you because previously people have come and stole our information and used it to their benefit with no thank you.’ while quinlan, blumenthal and fishman (2000, p. 39) acknowledge the presence of an inherent tension between lowincome communities and large institutions, they also argue that such tension can be ameliorated over months and years: the university should rather indicate what they will be able to provide or assist the community with since it is the one that possesses the expertise. in other words, from the needs that the community has laid down, the university should indicate whether it would be possible for it to assist the community or not. the university must outline where they can help and where they cannot help. the feelings of participants were that these three aspects were disregarded by the hei, which led to a lack of long-term commitment. academics therefore must be critically aware of their power in the development dynamic and its potential for abuse. maintenance and monitoring of partnerships participants were of the view that establishing a set of shared objectives was never considered by the university: ‘no one seems to care. it is always about the university or the funder. when they come they look at the money or the number of degrees awarded, not at the impact out there.’ participants argued for strategies to engage in long-term relationships, which would also address the issue of sustaining whatever the students left behind while they completed their studies. the termination of a partnership, they argued, should be based on a consensus that both parties no longer had a need for the other and that the continuation of any projects and/or activities could be managed by those remaining 83 | gateways | netshandama who would have been capacitated in the process of the students’ learning. participants felt that the services and resources of the hei were fragmented because of power struggles over ownership on the part of academics and had little to do with the interest of communities. one participant summed up the solution: ‘… work together!’ if parties are in a true partnership, resources can be shared for maximum mutual use and benefit. resources in this context include knowledge and ideas, as well as material resources such as physical infrastructure, funds, equipment and supplies. to participants, a quality partnership was one in which processes and outcomes were monitored and evaluated: you should also make sure that you put strategies in place for follow up on what you have started with the community. set dates where you are going to come to check on the people you have trained, for example, once a month, and also invite people’s inputs on the progress of the projects. you should not just leave the community after teaching them. monitoring and control mechanisms should therefore be put in place to ensure that follow-up and feedback occurred: ‘you should not just dump the community after using them’; ‘no feedback, no reports, another one comes with his own agenda.’ participants were of the opinion that academics never wanted to learn from previous experience: ‘they come and go, all in the name of the university; in the end no one is accountable to what takes place in the community.’ while a lack of evaluation and monitoring of partnership activities may not be a problem with the hei per se, participants raised serious questions regarding the university’s ethical and moral responsibility towards the public good, which was also raised in the literature. it is documented that for various reasons academics do not want to reveal all the information relating to their community projects. an audit study conducted by smith-tolken (2004, p. 115) confirms this. debate about the implications for heis of the lack of monitoring and evaluation of community projects is underway. it is likely that such debates will underscore the negative impact on community wellbeing of this deficiency and the need for more discussion in this regard. what, then, is a quality partnership? while there are problems in contextualising the construct ‘quality partnership’, these should not be used as an attempt to avoid establishing the criteria, quality measures and processes of a true partnership when engaging with communities. a community’s perspectives ought to be heard and integrated within a quality improvement mechanism. one way of doing this is to form ‘quality circles’ that consist of community members. currently, several best practices exist at the university where some research teams consist of various levels of community members, and teams of research assistants and students include volunteer community members 84 | gateways | netshandama who are trained and participate in data collection and mapping. such practices will be reported on in future research articles. the emphasis should not be on ‘doing to’ the community, but ‘doing with’ that community out of a sense of social responsibility, empowerment and the need for social change. to participants, partnership is a reciprocal, outcomesbased relationship between the hei and the community, which consists of initiation, execution and sustenance phases and has three dimensions: interactive learning and education; community development; and project management. stakeholders strive towards meaningful lifelong learning through a project management process. furthermore, partnership is the interdependence of different people with different roles engaged in the pursuit of a shared goal, implying that the desire for community development is inherent in the expected outcomes of the partnership process. if clarity of role, purpose and relationship is not articulated and ‘lived out’, then it is not a partnership. this is often a challenging and daunting task, which requires reflective and reflexive exercises – and should include an honest process of researching the researcher. any process that consciously or unconsciously fosters dependency undermines the partnership. in addition, when the partnership objectives are set, it is important that the partnership management adopts a team management and participatory management approach (waddock & walsh 1999). after elaborate discussions and engagement, the directorate at univen is currently steering a policy framework, which seeks to embrace such principles as equity, reciprocity and ‘ubuntu’ – an ancient african word, meaning ‘humanity to others’, and interconnectedness: ‘i am what i am because of who we all are.’ finally, the ethics and politics of all these dynamics and processes are a cause for concern. discussions about community partnerships in academic forums need to include deliberate and informed discourse on the ethical and moral obligations in the partnership. discussions in this respect are both challenging and problematic, especially as regards accountability. more often than not when the directorate raises questions about the ethics and protocols of partnering with communities, the responses are often along the lines of ‘who are you to start questioning my relationship as an academic with community x?’ while this issue requires a separate article, it is important to note that the community stakeholders who participated in the study questioned the ethics of our engagement with communities. the question is therefore whether heis are working towards addressing these areas and, if so, in what way? conclusion perspectives on quality partnerships between heis and communities need to be further deliberated upon. inclusive debates (consisting of a reference group that includes community 85 | gateways | netshandama representatives) are necessary to reach consensus about what constitutes quality partnership practices. competing objectives of both parties need to be constantly unpacked. the partnership context cannot be removed from its processes. in some contexts, determining the partnership objectives and understanding the roles of each party in the partnership are constricted by the most pressing needs, in this case the need for poverty alleviation and development activities, and those of transforming the university to be in line with the mandate and directives of the government of the time. what this may imply is that there will continue to be a tension if academics’ understanding of a quality partnership does not include efforts to be rigorous in its consideration of the ethics and responsibilities of working with vulnerable communities and to elevate the voices of community members. experience teaches us that there will be no clear-cut answers because circumstances differ and compete. thus, a constant and deliberate, as well as participatory, search for best ways is necessary. while the researcher acknowledges the complicated nature of embracing the community voice in the concept of quality, she wishes to open the debate so that the determination of what quality is, its criteria and its indicators, includes both sound processes and the perspectives of community partners. references arcury, t, austin, c, quandt, s & saaverda, r 1999, ‘enhancing community participation in intervention research: farm workers and agricultural chemicals’, health education and behavior, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 563–79. bringle, r & hatcher, j 2002, ‘campus-community partnerships: the terms of engagement’, journal of social issues, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 503–16. brosius, j, tsing, a & zerner, c 1998, ‘representing communities: histories and politics of community-based natural resource 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health, substance abuse, domestic violence, financial difficulties, inferior housing, family breakdown, and unemployment (vinson 2007). the durability of disadvantage and the complex interaction and impact of such factors can lead to people disengaging from society, with a critical outcome being social exclusion and often denial of their human right to educational opportunities. in this context, educators, communities and community organisations are challenged to engage with people who are disadvantaged or socially isolated in ways which enable them to move from a situation of dependence to being empowered to make their own decisions. this shift from dependence to empowerment occurs through people developing within themselves a sense of agency for setting their own goals and choosing pathways to achieve their goals, thus contributing to a positive sense of identity, quality social relations and new hope for the future. the importance of the role of education in assisting people to move beyond disadvantage is based upon positive correlations between education and the health, resilience and wellbeing of people (hammond 2002, 2004; hartog & oosterbeek 1998; marmot & wilkinson 1999; ross & mirowsky 1999). a number of studies have indicated that relevant education can lead to improvements in self-confidence (carlton & soulsby 1999; dench & regan 1998); self-efficacy (wertheimer 1997); self-understanding (cox & pascall 1994); competencies, communication skills and civic engagement (emler & fraser 1999; parry, moyser & day 1992); a sense of belonging to a social group (jarvis & walker 1997); and substantive freedoms and capabilities (sen 1999). such diverse outcomes for the personal wellbeing of people indicate how purposeful and appropriate education can contribute to improvements within the social, economic and personal domains gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 88–103 ©utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 peter howard jude butcher luke egan australian catholic university 89 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan of a person’s life (hammond 2004; luby & welch 2006). however, disadvantaged people most in need of access to education and the critical pathway it provides to transformative learning and social inclusion are often those least likely to access it (butcher, howard & mcfadden 2003). the question remains as to what is the nature of such transformative education. this article explores the theory of hope as a basis for transformative education, examining in particular two key aspects of hope theory: the development within marginalised people of a sense of their own agency to set goals; and a belief in their ability to choose pathways that will help them achieve those goals. transformative education needs to both develop their ‘will’ and show the ‘way’. if education is to provide disadvantaged people with pathways to social inclusion, hope theory suggests it must feature access to university education that enables them to have the confidence and capabilities to take personal control and engage purposefully in a changing society (benson, harkavy & puckett 2007). we suggest there are three central elements to transformative education: —appropriate strategies: the ‘scaffolding’ processes provided —innovative partnerships: the collaboration of committed partners from community, academe, corporate and government sectors —purposeful reflection. the clemente australia (ca) program is a community embedded, socially supported university education (cess) that delivers key personal, social and economic benefit to people and communities experiencing marginalisation or disadvantage. it is examined here in detail as a case study of transformative education, with research data provided on its impact on people experiencing disadvantage or social isolation. we conclude that community embedded, socially supported education has resulted in enhancing the life opportunities and choices of disadvantaged australians, and raise some issues needing further inquiry. theory of hope the construct of hope was originally studied only within the fields of philosophy and theology. hope was integral to the human person who, with dignity, could have a positive sense of self and their purpose in life even in the most dehumanising of circumstances (frankl 1963). hope also provided a base for envisioning a better world (bloch 1995) and articulating how people could work towards a ‘better tomorrow’. psychology brought different perspectives to understanding the nature of the person and the role of hope. maslow (1970) distinguished between a person’s basic needs including hunger, affection, security and self-esteem, and meta-needs such as justice, goodness, beauty and unity. his attention was upon the self-actualising person for whom there was a sense of oneness in the person and with the world. from maslow’s perspective a self-actualised person would have a strong sense of hope. however, his theory does not provide a 90 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan basis for engaging with people who are disadvantaged or socially isolated and assisting them in developing a sense of empowerment through setting goals and identifying pathways for achieving them. with the advent of the positive psychology movement and the accompanying shift towards human strengths, psychological processes such as hope began to be studied scientifically. hope theory, pioneered by the late cr snyder in the early 1990s (see snyder, irving & anderson 1991), provided researchers with an explanatory model that has stood the test of almost 20 years of empirical investigation. according to hope theory, the process of hope is cognitive in nature; it is goal-directed thinking. emotions play an important role, but cognitions are primary: thoughts regarding one’s goals will determine how one feels (snyder 2002; snyder et al. 1996). along with goals, hope is understood in terms of two other cognitive foci: pathways thinking and agency thinking. to hope for an outcome is to have a goal in mind. in other words, hopeful thinking is goal oriented (snyder 1995). before one can perform the tasks needed to reach a goal, the goal itself must be well defined and appropriate to one’s abilities and circumstances. those people who are more hopeful set goals for themselves which are more realistic, more attainable, better articulated and grander in scope. they are more likely to divide their grand goals into smaller, more manageable sub-goals, and they are better able to shift their focus onto a new goal should their original goal turn out to be unattainable. hopeful people are highly flexible in how they think about their goals, and they typically set a greater number of goals for themselves (snyder 2002). in pursuing a goal, the two cognitive processes mentioned above – agency thinking and pathways thinking – operate (snyder 1995). these represent the ‘will’ and the ‘way’ respectively, as it were (snyder et al. 1991). ‘pathways thinking’ refers to one’s ability to identify or generate the routes that lead to one’s goal. agency thinking refers to one’s ability to motivate oneself to follow these routes successfully. those who possess high levels of both pathways and agency thinking are said to be high in hope. the two components of hope are mutually reinforcing: it is much easier to motivate one’s self to pursue a goal when one believes that there are many workable pathways leading to the goal, and it is much easier to search for workable pathways when one is highly motivated to reach one’s goal (snyder 1995; snyder et al. 1991). the benefits of hope have been demonstrated in a variety of contexts: higher hope has been associated with better physical and mental health and better performances in academic, athletic and workplace settings (chang 1998; curry et al. 1997; snyder 2002). one of the best ways to increase a person’s level of hope is to provide him or her with opportunities to pursue and attain goals (snyder et al. 2000). practice makes perfect, and successful goal 91 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan pursuit in one domain leads to broad increases in hope across all the domains of one’s life. this means that people who are helped to reach, say, an educational goal will become better able to reach a different goal, say finding employment unassisted (snyder et al. 2000). this sense of hope is related to, but distinct from, one’s sense of self-efficacy (magaletta & oliver 1999). the relevance to educators is clear: by encouraging students to become more hopeful, a transformative education program helps them to reach the goal of moving beyond disadvantage. educators need to address both the ‘will’ and the ‘ways’ a person brings to achieving goals. to this end, the clemente australia program has been structured to provide disadvantaged people with the opportunity to pursue such educational goals in a supportive community setting. the program offers its students an accessible, clearly defined structure leading to educational success, and the students are encouraged at all times to persist through the difficulties that arise as they undertake their studies. as a result, they become more hopeful, not only with regard to educational and academic activities, but also other aspects of their lives. the benefits of increased hope cannot be underestimated. to see a clemente australia student receive his or her certificate at the end of two years of dedicated study, to see him or her beaming on stage at the graduation ceremony, is to see someone who has become emphatically more able to meet all manner of challenges that may arise in his or her life. it is to see someone who has become almost immeasurably better able to move beyond disadvantage, and to engage with and contribute to a more socially inclusive future. the need for such transformative education programs for people who are disadvantaged is supported by a study by partis (2003), which showed that homeless people’s sense of hope was related to their being able to make sense of their own experiences. in contrast, the respondents in the study expressed how their ‘perceived lack of power and control … led to feelings of helplessness and depression’. research into the nature and impact of transformative education such as that offered by clemente australia needs to be developed to examine: —the impact of the program on the participants’ sense of hope —how the program contributes to their development of both ‘the will’ and ‘the way’ —the role of the social dimensions in transformative education, and —the relationship between the cognitive and emotional aspects of the participants’ engagement in the study. the clemente program clemente australia is an innovative program providing transformative 21st-century tertiary education for people who are otherwise excluded from tertiary education. the clemente program originated in new york in 1999 with the expressed purpose of 92 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan empowering the poor and marginalised. a humanities-based education utilising a socratic teaching paradigm that re-engages people suffering isolation and profound disconnection provides the curriculum foundation for clemente australia. such a focus on the humanities enables accessible content matter for the participants, allowing them to draw upon their life experiences in reflecting upon the literature, artworks and philosophies being studied (shorris 2000). shorris (2000) promoted an education of ‘riches for the poor’, which offered people the rich cultural capital of citizenship. he expressed the following key pedagogical principles for the content and processes for clemente: —it is generalist in content. the curriculum breaks down the substantive distinction between learning (for well off) and churning (for the poor), thus opening a regular routine of participation. —dialogue is the purpose, taking the place of a teacher-centred education. —the classes become a temporary public space, a public sphere to be involved in, where its students can escape their private troubles and confront public issues. clemente is a place and a time when students can break out of isolation. —the culture of prizes and rewards has no place. participation is the measure of success. academic grades are important to the students to be sure. but turning up is the success. thus clemente is designed to engage the disaffected, isolated, homeless and poor in values-based education, which promotes practices of autonomy that counteract the routinisation of the poor (gervasoni, smith & howard 2010). clemente was established in australia in 2003 by the australian catholic university (acu) in collaboration with st vincent de paul (st v de p) with the initial site being in east sydney. since 2005, eight sites have been established across australia: in surry hills, sydney (july 2005, mission australia – ma); brisbane (july 2006, ma); canberra (february 2007, st v de p); campbelltown, south-west sydney (august 2007, st v de p); perth (february 2008, ma with edith cowan university); melbourne (april 2008, ma); ballarat (august 2008, acu and university of ballarat with the smith family); and adelaide (march 2010, finders university and ma). the sites named clemente or catalyst-clemente share their knowledge and experiences under the umbrella name of clemente australia. there are now more than 130 students enrolled nationally each semester with 48 people having graduated from the program and many choosing to undertake further educational programs. the course and the individual units were designed to be sensitive to the particular needs, requirements and capacities of disadvantaged people while maintaining academic standards. this sensitivity to the needs of the students was paramount as many of the students experience problems with substance misuse and 93 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, with comorbidity (both substance misuse and mental illness) increasingly reported among disadvantaged australians (stockwell et al. 2005). furthermore, levels of mental health are key indicators of disadvantage and poverty and a critical element for cognitive and communication skills, learning, personal development, resilience and self-esteem (johnstone 2001). the community embedded nature of the program, with it being offered in a community service setting, both facilitates participant access to the program and ensures agency support in addressing the complex array of student needs (mission australia 2004, 2007). the program offers university-approved units in subjects such as ethics, literature, drama, art, philosophy and history, with students studying one unit each semester. on the successful completion of four units, participants graduate with a university non-award qualification that can provide access into an accredited university undergraduate degree or lead to other life choices. the subjects are taught over 12 weeks, and each week the students attend a two-hour lecture and a two-hour ‘shared learning’ tutorial-style session. the ‘shared learning’ sessions are staffed by volunteers from the business and corporate sectors. these volunteers are known as ‘learning partners’, to reflect the fact that both the students and the volunteers learn from their experiences of interacting with one another. the learning partners are provided with a professional briefing prior to the commencement of the courses. their role is to assist the students in undertaking and completing their tasks, assignments and other coursework, especially with regard to computing and written language skills. to further coordinate the ongoing implementation of the program each site has a community-based coordinator who responds to the social support needs of students, liaises with the university academic coordinator in managing the everyday issues related to the program and oversees the weekly lecturing and learning partner sessions. the collaboration of community agency support staff, university lecturers and learning partners is integral to the socially supported nature of the program, as is the mutual support amongst the participants themselves. the ‘scaffolding’: community embedded, socially supported education clemente australia engages people who are disadvantaged or socially isolated in university (humanities) education within community agency settings with access to professional welfare support and facilitated access to a diverse range of services. important dimensions of this community embedded, socially supported university education (cess) include: —permeability of boundaries between the education centre and other elements of students’ lives —greater openness of lecturers and tutors to students and their lives —informal and supportive culture of cess education for course participants 94 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan —the expansive, caring and supportive role of centre or agency staff —balancing of the supportive and formal teaching roles of lecturers (gallacher et al. 2007). such education has been found to provide pedagogical tools and strategies for developing student competence and class membership and participation. these strategies include ‘teachers and students addressing one another as persons who can and do have choices, preferences and tastes. this is seeing and knowing someone, in all their particularity – and with dignity’ (thomas 2007, p. 791). often disadvantaged people in a mainstream university are labelled as alternative entry participants and regarded as an identifiable minority group (tell 1999). in cess these people find a formal but supportive educational opportunity for social inclusion. through this scaffolding, disadvantaged people are empowered to establish for themselves a helpful balance across the three elements of university institutional requirements, their needs as both a person and a university student, and their further engagement with the wider community. the social support from the community agencies is critical to cess university education. students with significant health and other issues are best supported in their education when they can access professional welfare and the range of supports they need. access to such services, which assists students in their handling of issues such as high anxiety through to contemplating suicide, is only possible through the permeability of boundaries in cess university education. in contrast, students in mainstream university education pathways could access, at best, a general, rather than a specialised, form of welfare and medical services. innovative partnerships the collaboration of the education, government, community and corporate sectors is central to having disengaged and disconnected people access enhanced educational and learning opportunities, and is a key structural aspect of clemente australia. this collaboration is built upon new social arrangements and crosssector community networks with a shared social vision based upon purposeful learning and people achieving higher levels of self-esteem, self-confidence and social connectedness in the community. the shared vision and commitment is expressed in a memorandum of understanding (mou) between the different organisations. the mou details the vision and goals of the program, the shared values base, and the role and commitment of each of the organisations. the collaboration within this cess university education (see table 1) is structured to assure the quality, effectiveness and sustainability of the program for clemente australia students in ways that achieve the goals or missions of the individual organisations, as well as contributing to community social capital and wellbeing. 95 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan the structural dimensions of the provision of this quality service bring the different elements of cess education together in a holistic way for the students. health and welfare are readily available to students, while the learning support from people in the corporate sector contributes to the students’ self-dignity. the students are the focus for the provision of the program and the accompanying services. they see the place or site as their place, for which they have a strong sense of belonging and ownership. the partnerships contribute to the students’ sense of empowerment rather than the sense of dependency often associated with their seeking support or specialist assistance. furthermore, the commitment of the stakeholders to institutional accountability, financial sustainability and institutional capacity building conveys to the students the stakeholders’ very high regard for clemente australia. there is a genuine understanding amongst all groups that they are collectively contributing to the enhancement of the community’s social capital. all involved with the program and the students realise that they are continually enhancing their own personal and professional competencies for engaging with marginalised people. hence, mutual benefits and reciprocity are key features of the partnerships and cross-sectoral collaboration amongst tertiary institutions, non-government organisations, community agencies and corporate support. purposeful reflection purposeful reflection is integral to transformative education. this reflection is a continual element of the learning and teaching for the students, lecturers and learning partners. furthermore, reflective practice is a structured component of the reviews of the sessions, whether scheduled classes or learning partner sessions. these sessions provide the conversational opportunities for students to conceptualise and synthesise their thoughts and ideas. such purposeful reflection enables them to share their life experiences with others and to come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of their identity in community. the knowledge table 1: collaborative contributions within community embedded, socially supported university education (cess) dimension of collaboration education welfare health corporate student personal wellbeing and learning increased self-efficacy and hope for learning and for the future increased capacity of clients for engagement in meaningful activity better self-management of health and medications sense of fulfilment in engagement and learning quality service delivery for students certificate of liberal studies structured pathways to re-engagement ready portal for community health services expression of corporate social responsibility enhancement of social capital social and community engagement across students, employees, volunteers, learning partners; increased engagement of students with families, friends and colleagues accountability for quality and cost-effective services quality assurance procedures within and across sectors research into cost–benefits of program in terms of personal, social, economic and social benefits for the individual, community, society and government financial sustainability of services university carriage of cost of student fees, student administration provision of coordination and infrastructure contribution through cash and in-kind philanthropic contributions personal, community and institutional capacity building capacity to offer community embedded, socially supported university education holistic delivery of services through universitycommunity partnership provision of pathways to better health, e.g. from depression employee engagement with people and communities in the complexity of their lives 96 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan frameworks evident within the course content provide structures and language which enable students to converse, explore and reflect purposefully upon many of the personal influences and impacts on their lives. other formal structures for purposeful reflection are meetings between the students, agencies and institutions in planning and maintaining the delivery and sustainability of the program and amongst key university and agency staff in recognising and addressing the general and particular needs of the students who continually come from diverse demographic, learning and medical backgrounds. such meetings ensure a sharing of interagency and community-based knowledge that strengthens the learning environment of the students and provides opportunities for all to reflect purposefully upon the program content, structures and delivery, particularly from the students’ perspectives. identifying impact since 2003, the australian iterations of the clemente program have been the subject of a broadening research agenda assessing the impact of the program upon students and the organisations involved. the researchers continue to acquire a deeper appreciation and understanding of the complex and intricate processes, relationships and transitions that occur during the programs (egan et al. 2006; gervasoni, smith & howard 2010; howard et al. 2008; mission australia 2007; stevenson, yashin-shaw & howard 2007). in these studies the authors continue also to examine the impact of clemente australia on the students with respect to: —students’ goals —students’ sense of agency —students’ sense of hope for the future —appropriateness of the pathways. the research data gathered employs a ‘methodology of engagement’ with students as authentic collaborators in the study. the students, who usually have fragile and vulnerable backgrounds, give of themselves in undertaking the program of study, being involved ‘with’ the ongoing research and reflecting upon their learning journey. the research is built upon a collaborative research paradigm based on mutual trust, respect, integrity, dignity and rapport (delamont 1992; liamputtong 2007). the questions asked of the students are tailored to be respectful, engaging and open ended, allowing the participants to share their perspectives and experiences in a dignified way. the research shows that: —they are mostly single, separated or divorced —many have children or dependants —more than half have lived in crisis or emergency accommodation, or on the streets —most have attended primary or secondary school, but a small percentage have engaged in post-secondary education 97 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan —most have a longstanding physical health condition, illness, disability or infirmity —most subsist on a government pension, while a small percentage pay their way through working or other sources. student goals students enrol in clemente australia with two types of goals. the first goal is the individual goal of personal transformation of their life and the ability to engage more in life. the second goal is linked to pathways for achieving a new sense of personal identity and independence through study, volunteering, employment and wider engagement with family and other people. students see clemente australia as giving them ‘structure in life’ which led to ‘selfimprovement’ and a more ‘purposeful life’. gaining ‘knowledge led to achievement’ and the confidence within themselves to see purpose, opportunities and choices (catalyst/clemente australia forum 2010). though the students find the course confronting and daunting, they also find it encouraging, stimulating, challenging, engaging and fulfilling. building self-confidence and self-esteem enables students to take the risk of setting goals for both personal transformation and future learning achievements. sense of agency many students have had to overcome significant internal and external barriers just to enter into and begin the program. coming to the first class can be a daunting experience in itself and the ongoing attendance and completion can be precarious and fragile, depending upon the individual’s circumstance from week to week. ca students say that their engagement in the program has had a positive impact on their sense of self, their confidence as learners, their relating to others participating in the community, and on creating a future for themselves (howard et al. 2008). students express an enhanced view of self and their wellbeing. they comment on self-esteem, increased levels of confidence and personal development. these are essential factors in enhancing economic and social participation. the students also express a desire for enhanced and increased social participation with all others involved in the program. this was articulated at the beginning of the program as a hope and developed further as a reality as the program progressed. for some students, their relationships with others change in positive ways. the change goes beyond simply enhancing their social interactions to include changes in their relationships and how they engage with others, including family and friends. sense of hope for the future long-term disadvantaged australians often find it difficult to see the potential and possibility of a different future for themselves and their families. they often feel they lack a sense of being able to control their future and are instead subject to circumstances outside their control. as the program progresses, the students speak increasingly about their future (mission australia 2007). they 98 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan establish hope and personal expectation that they will complete the program and then continue their studies. many students identify key changes in the ways in which they communicate and interact with their family members, friends and others, and see in this a hope for a more socially inclusive future in their place within community. the ca students come to acknowledge that indeed they have a future and are able to plan more purposefully for that future with a newly evolving sense of hope. appropriateness of the pathways the structure and setting of the program are important factors. the relatively small size of the classes enables the students to receive greater levels of attention from the lecturers, and the two-hour duration of the classes allows the students to explore their subject matter in sufficient depth. the shared learning time when students are able to access weekly one-on-one sessions with their learning partners has been critical, as many of the personal barriers that constrain their learning (for example, levels of computing skills, reading and writing skills) are addressed and reduced. as well, delivery of the program within a community setting is significant as students are able to access the support services attached to the community-based venues (for example, medical and dental services, meals, counsellors). each site offers or is in proximity to a number of services and facilities that can be accessed by the students. furthermore, it is likely that the students feel more comfortable studying within the supportive atmosphere of the community setting than within a university campus. the students’ engagement is reinforced by the way in which the course content is delivered by the lecturers who engage the students in group discussions, excursions, drama presentations and other alternate learning strategies, encouraging all to participate. each student is called upon to offer their own personal reflections, insights and contributions, and a high level of interaction is fostered. students have clearly expressed the belief that the process of learning and the course content were important to them, as was the opportunity to engage with others in the learning process. the students have also commented on the value of participating in cultural or community arts activities linked, as requirements, to their study. currently (2009–2011), data collection is occurring through a student survey across three sites; in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of students; focus group interviews; and a cost–benefit analysis of the program. survey data is being collected across five key domains: demographic; health and wellbeing; social supports; program engagement and participation; and social inclusion. the study details the economic, social and wellbeing position of the student population on entry to the program and undertakes cohort comparisons with the australian population from the subset of the ‘disadvantaged’ population from which the student population is drawn. a cost–benefit analysis will measure the extent to which 99 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan the program improves the outcomes of participants relative to the net cost of delivering the program. cost–benefit studies of this type are complex, but there is a growing body of research that is attempting such analysis (flatau et al. 2008; pinkney & ewing 2006). following the survey, semi-structured interviews will gather data on individual student’s life journeys across the study, exploring and providing insights to their perspectives on their home, school and employment experiences, social interaction, health and wellbeing, and the impact of these factors on their studies. interviews will be ‘guided conversations’ which, while having specific topics, will be fluid, allowing backtracking, reflexivity and diversions. the impact of ca also needs to be assessed in the context of the reasons why the participants undertook study in the program. the primary reasons include motivation for betterment through knowledge (68 per cent); learning interest, personal satisfaction, to prove to themselves their ability to achieve (each 64 per cent); to move on from where they were (60 per cent); and the gaining of additional skills. for most students, their circumstances meant that university study had usually not been an option for them in the past, either because they did not have the necessary entry qualifications, or because they lacked the confidence to tackle what they saw as a very intimidating place due to their physical and emotional difficulties. the more informal community-based program provided them with a new start. overall, the students had a very positive evaluation of the program, and felt that they had been able to make several changes in their life as a result of their participation. ninety-two per cent really liked life as a student, 88 per cent felt that the program met their expectations, 88 per cent were satisfied with the unit topics on offer and 88 per cent with the overall quality of teaching (howard et al. 2010). conclusion from the commencement at one east sydney site in 2003 with 11 homeless students, ca now enrols more than 130 students who are experiencing disadvantage and social isolation each semester. nationally, in 2010, there are collectively more than 15 community agencies, universities, community partners and local councils collaborating to deliver the program. australians are supporting one another to provide access to quality tertiary education for many who never hoped or believed they had the right to such educational opportunity. the data presented indicate that for this vulnerable group of higher education students the circumstances of their lives had a strong capacity to influence the goals they set and their sense of agency in achieving their academic success. the students chose clemente australia as their educational program of choice for attaining their goals. they opted for a transformative humanities education program which is community embedded and socially supported. this transformative education is having a significant 100 | gateways | howard, butcher & egan impact on these students’ development of a new sense of identity, their independence and ability to establish control over their personal wellbeing, and their sense of hope regarding future opportunities including social, physical and economic success. the psychology of hope provided a theoretical framework for developing, implementing and researching the impact of clemente australia. people deciding to enrol in clemente australia have already made a decision about new goals for themselves. they pursue their goals within a humanities education program conscious of the social and other forms of support they are being offered by people in community organisations and the university, and the learning partners. the goals and the supports are integral to the participants feeling confident about achieving their goals. clemente australia is based upon collaboration, from a shared values base, and the commitment of the community, business, government and educational sectors. ongoing investigations of the participants’ journeys will add to the understanding of the role and impact of collaborative, crosssectoral transformative education programs. students’ personal wellbeing, engagement and learning are a major focus for each of the organisations involved. this holistic approach expresses a shared commitment by all to the students’ wellbeing, engagement and learning. student endorsement of the program and its delivery emphasises its impact both on their sense of agency 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education: some nontraditional participants’ experiences’, research papers in education, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 107–19. thomas, e 2007, ‘student engagement and learning in a communitybased arts classroom’, teachers college record, columbia university, vol. 109, no. 3, pp. 770–96. vinson, t 2007, dropping off the edge: the distribution of disadvantage in australia, jesuit social services/catholic social services australia, richmond, victoria. wertheimer, a 1997, images of possibility: creating learning opportunities for adults with mental health difficulties, national institute of adult continuing education, leicester, uk. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 82–97 © utsepress and the authors the cell-life project: converging technologies in the context of hiv/aids ulrike rivett and jonathan tapson the last decade has seen great strides in our understanding of the impact and complexity of hiv/aids. from battles fought in court to provide free treatment for hiv positive mothers and to reduce drug prices (mbali 2003; barnard 2002) to the complexity of managing the supply of medication to the most rural areas (wood et al. 2008), south africa has become the country known not only for its high prevalence rate, but also for its ambitious target of treating 80% of all people requiring anti-retrovirals (arvs) by 2011 (doh 2007). throughout the last few years, one aspect of treatment has remained an intractable challenge and concern for all parties involved. successful and sustainable treatment with arvs requires an adherence rate of 95% to prevent the development of drug resistance and the mutation of the virus. additionally, the treatment requires a complex time-and-diet regime, and side effects need to be monitored regularly. (bekker et al. 2003) gateways | rivett & tapson 83 the provision of medication and compliance to it is often complicated by poverty, distance to medical facilities, and an underdeveloped health care system (nattrass 2006). a number of ngo and civil society initiatives were launched from 2000 onwards to investigate methods to support patients in impoverished areas. despite limited resources, some of these initiatives have been successful for several years now, by using creative ways to increase manpower and support. one of these successful projects was launched in 2001 in gugulethu, a high-density, low-income township outside of cape town. the desmond tutu hiv centre (dthc) of uct had developed a treatment management method that used hiv-positive community members who had successfully started their antiretroviral treatment (art) programme as treatment advocates. after receiving training for peer-counselling and adherence to medication, these ‘therapeutic counsellors’ became the main support systems for patients who had started art. each of these counsellors was responsible for between 15–20 patients. by visiting patients regularly and engaging with them, issues such as diet problems, side effects and financial and social challenges, were identified ‘remotely’ – the patient was not required to come to the clinic and the human resource of doctors and nurses was extended through the counsellors. however, once patient numbers grew, follow-up and record keeping became a challenge (bekker et al. 2003). in 2001, cell-life was started as an initiative between academics in the engineering faculties of the university of cape town (uct) and cape peninsula university of technology (cput) to investigate the possibilities of developing technological tools that would support medical staff in managing arv treatment more effectively. being aware of the unsuitability of electronic patient systems due to the low penetration of computers and the limited access to the internet, cellular (mobile telephone) technology was identified as a viable option for data collection and information management. engagement with colleagues from the medical sector and the dthc highlighted that successful and sustainable treatment does not only rely on reminding a patient to take medication, but on a more comprehensive support structure to assist patients remotely, so that hiv/aids can be managed similarly to other chronic conditions. gateways | rivett & tapson 84 the technology supporting medical staff in ensuring high adherence rates of patients was the main goal of the first technology development of the celllife team. since arv treatment is a lifelong programme for the patient and the medical staff involved, it is important to develop a solution that offers sustainability through increasing the capacity and resourcing of medical staff. this is particularly so given the extent of the hiv/aids epidemic in south africa, which requires complex treatment of a chronic and permanent condition for an enormous number of people, thereby making medical staff and infrastructure a major constraint on a successful outcome. the hypothesis of cell-life was that by developing an appropriate tool which supports clinical staff in decision making, by providing information that is relevant and up-to-date, patients will receive improved care. it was also hoped that such a system could increase organizational efficiency, which would ultimately lead to extending treatment programmes to more hiv+ people. cell-life focused on supporting under-resourced public health centres that faced the following challenges: high hiv prevalence rate within the service area• low income levels• high staff turnover in the health centre• lack of infrastructure • lack of experience with computers or information • systems limited financial resources• challenges within the clinical management structures and • processes often these types of clinics or health centres are based in peri-urban and rural environments, where access to treatment is defined by the complexity and cost of travelling to the clinic (nattrass 2006). based on the knowledge gained through failed information system projects in the developing world, particularly in government sectors (heeks 2003), cell-life identified that a new approach to the understanding and development of information management within resource constrained settings was required. most of the failed projects showed that top-down, functionalist models (hirschheim & klein 1989) based on acquisition by management gateways | rivett & tapson 85 resulted in a development-as-modernisation approach (moodley 2005; gurumurthy & singh 2009). fundamentally, the systems were developed by technologists and provided to a passive user. the development process was separated from the context and the users’ experience, which subsequently often resulted in project failure. a process of matching the information needs of stakeholders with the technologies known to staff and their patient management approach was used to identify the most appropriate technology for the context of each environment (rather than developing a ‘onesize-fits-all’ system). the concept of integrating information system design, user analysis and development was adapted by cell-life from the totalising approach of identifying the ‘average user’, and became instead an approach that focused on the information and the technology available within each community. this lead to a paradigm shift within the system design thinking of the cell-life team from an attitude of extracting information from the user, to an engaging attitude that resulted in benefits to the medical staff and subsequently the patient. cell-life concentrated on identifying the most important data and information that was required to be communicated, and then identified available technologies that would suit the local context, appreciating the variety of needs and realities of each clinic. one such technology in use in a number of under-resourced environments was the cellphone. by early 2000, south africa, like many other developing countries, was already starting to see a dramatic increase in the use of cellular technologies. in 2005, it was estimated that south africa had in excess of 20 million cellphone users, out of a total population of 46.9 million (see: http:// www.statssa.gov.za). south africa’s usage rate was at 43% of the population, which was comparable to a developed country like france where the usage was approximately 42%. an article on cellular online from the publication african telecommunication indicators 2004, entitled ‘does mobile technology hold the key to widening access to icts in africa?’, bases the reasons for the success of cellular technology in africa, and its effect on access to icts, upon the lack of communications infrastructure and the high demand due to unmet need (itu 2004; for full article, see: http://www.cellular. co.za/news_2004/may/0501004-itu_says_africa_is_the_world.htm) gateways | rivett & tapson 86 beyond its primary function for basic oral communication, the main advantage of the cellphone lies in its ability to transfer data using a variety of technologies. by 2003, technologies such as wig (wireless internet gateway), which use a simple sms structure, were well developed. today, a number of technologies, from ussd (unstructured supplementary services data) to java applications on high end phones, have resulted in cellphones becoming a key tool for data collection in the field (un 2008). in the context of implementing information management systems in the primary health care sector, cellular technology had the added advantage that it was a known and widely-used product, and therefore one of the major concerns of technology implementation and uptake in under-resourced areas was minimised (fynn et al. 2006). the first cell-life application, ‘adherence’, was a simple wig menu that was loaded onto the cellphones of therapeutic counsellors and treatment managers of the desmond tutu hiv centre. the cellphone was used to collect information that had previously been written down in a book and then carried back to the hospital. there were a number of obvious challenges with the paper system, such as the records not being available in the patient folder, the books occasionally getting lost, and there was no possibility of immediately addressing issues in the field, as information was not available until the books were returned to the centre. the adherence cellphone application enabled the therapeutic counsellors to collect medical and socio-economic data at the homes of patients, and to then send the information to the clinic via the gsm network. the data were received in real-time in a centralised database, and clinical staff were able to review entries and collate information. (skinner et al. 2007; natrass et al. 2007) sister lulu mtwisha of the desmond tutu hiv centre describes the old paper-based system in comparison to the electronic system: it is incomparable, the paperwork was good for that particular period, but with the advent of cell-life it is something that i don’t wish to revisit. with the old system i would get the information a week after everything had happened. i would make the counsellors hand in the paperwork of their visits for the past week on a monday or tuesday. i would then gateways | rivett & tapson 87 bring the pile of forms back to my office at desmond and only when i had time would i peruse and check. i may not have noticed anything going wrong for an entire month and only at the end of the month when i could look at the data for that whole month, would i notice that a certain patient had not been visited. now with the cell-life system i can pick this up quickly and there is really nothing that can fall off the plate without me noticing. the system allows me to prevent situations from happening rather than having to fix a situation once it has already happened. it’s a form of damage control. (interview, 30 june 2005) figure 1: a typical menu from the wig interface in the original ‘adherence’ application, shown in use on a basic cellphone cell-life has developed a number of other solutions for data collection and information distribution since the first adherence menu. today, cell-life offers a range of menu-based tools that are developed by open source consortia and support a variety of ngos, academic institutions and civil society in managing hiv+ people across the country. from 2003 onwards, it became apparent that one of the underestimated challenges of hiv treatment was the dispensing of medication. by 2005 only 14.9% of south africa’s registered pharmacists were working in the public sector (health systems trust 2005). to this day, pharmacies in community clinics rely heavily on paper-based systems, consisting of the patient folder, stock lists and handwritten reports. since pharmacy management and dispensing are fundamentally very process-based and numerical tasks, it is relatively easy to transfer these particular aspects into an ict system; on the other hand, the realities of public health care in resource constrained settings make the implementation of systems often very difficult (brown et al. 2006). gateways | rivett & tapson 88 to address this problem, cell-life developed an ict system called idart (intelligent dispensing of art), which is specifically designed for arv dispensing in the public health care sector. it was developed in an open source environment and was made available on the celllife website. as in the cellphone applications, the system was designed with a particular focus on the following challenges: the software had to support the core functions of • dispensing to hiv+ patients, rather than being a fullyfledged stock management system. the on-site software set-up needed to be implemented • within one day, and the availability of staff for training was no more than 7 hours. the software needed to be self-explanatory to an extent • that new staff could be trained by the existing staff using the software. this was a particularly important point due to the high staff turnover. the software needed to be independent of internet • connectivity. there was also no possibility of backing up to servers, since most of the clinics had little or no computer equipment. the software had to be flexible enough to allow for • different dispensing models, depending on the set-up of each clinic. the dispensing of medication in south africa requires a registered pharmacist to be present. however, owing to the limited number of pharmacists available, most treatment sites have only one pharmacist. this results in clinics reaching a ‘treatment ceiling’, that is, the number of patients being able to receive treatment is physically limited. most clinics with one pharmacist present and using a paperbased system, can dispense to approximately 80 patients per day, which results in a treatment ceiling of approximately 2000 patients for that clinic. to address this bottleneck, dispensing structures were revised and the so-called ‘down-referral’ model was developed. the pre-packing and down-referral model uses a pharmacist in a central location who dispenses medication, which is then sent in sealed packages to the clinic, where the patient is able to collect the medication from a pharmacy assistant. having the package dispensed by the pharmacist, and then sent sealed to the remote gateways | rivett & tapson 89 location, enabled compliance with the existing dispensing policy since the pharmacy assistant was only required to hand the package over and dispense any additional non-prescriptive medication, such as multivitamins. however, the revised process made the tracking of medication more complex, and idart was designed to integrate a variety of such pre-packing or down-referral models (wood et al. 2008). figure 2: idart set-up allowing for two types of arv dispensing. direct dispensing occurs when patients collect their medication from the pharmacy directly (1 in figure). remote dispensing by down-referral occurs when patients collect their pre-packaged arv medication from remote clinics, situated in communities (2 in figure). (brown et al. 2006) another key challenge that had to be addressed was the backing up of patient data. since most pharmacists had no access to the internet, gsm modems were connected to the idart computer in each pharmacy and the patient database was backed up daily to the celllife server using the gsm cellular network. idart had been developed using a process called evolutionary prototyping, which focuses on developing a working system by iteratively defining the requirements. this type of approach is very often used in the context where the overall system requirements are difficult to define (carr & verner 1997). due to the ever-changing environment of hiv/aids and thus, too, the dispensing conditions, idart was continuously reviewed. one of the key partners of the idart development was the reproductive health research unit (rhru) of the university of witwatersrand. this unit, being at the gateways | rivett & tapson 90 forefront of the newest developments in side effects, drug dispensing and other related matters, requested changes to idart on a regular basis. the changes to the system would subsequently result in celllife offering the updates to all other clinics, which benefitted from the knowledge of rhru. a pharmacy assistant in a rural clinic in the north west province described idart as ‘a knowledge transfer system between universities and community clinics’. idart became one of the products that achieved the greatest impact for medical staff. a number of unforeseen uses of the system resulted in its benefit increasing over time. the collection of accurate patient data by the pharmacist resulted in the aggregated data required by governments or funders being produced in the pharmacy. having patient records and the medication collection date resulted in a new way of measuring adherence; and being able to trace patients who had not collected medication resulted in a reduction in the number of patients who dropped out of an art programme and were not recovered (in the field, such patients are know as ‘loss-to-followup’) (wood et al. 2007). idart is today installed in more than 30 clinics across south africa and supports arv dispensing to nearly 70 000 patients on a monthly basis. cell-life spun out of the university of cape town and registered as a not-for-profit organisation in 2006, at a stage when the implementations of the developed technologies throughout south africa had become the core function of the team. the organisation had to change focus and structure to move ultimately from pilot sites to the endeavour of a nationwide deployment. research and development are to this day a key component of the organisation, but its focus lies in the implementation of technologies to support people living with hiv. developing cell-life: enablers, barriers and challenges reflecting on the development of cell-life within an academic environment, a number of enablers, barriers and challenges can be highlighted. we have analysed these from the perspective of university management, in the sense that active steps could be taken to improve the university as an environment for socially responsive initiatives. gateways | rivett & tapson 91 enablers partnerships across disciplines during 2000, in a climate of activism against the south african government and with the need to find solutions to help people living with hiv, the university became a centre of engagement for a number of initiatives. in the case of cell-life, academics identified a common goal to which they were able to contribute based on their expertise within the engineering environment. whilst cell-life was based in the engineering and built environment faculty, it formed very strong collaborations with colleagues in the health sciences, commerce and science faculties. these collaborations were founded on actively sharing knowledge to identify a way to support south african communities. partnerships and the active engagement between the various specialists were fundamental to the success of cell-life. whilst the university’s administrative system still reflected the understanding of research as occuring within one discipline – that is, faculty-based activity – staff members were committed to collaborate beyond these administrative borders. in many respects, the ‘lowhanging fruit’ – simple problems with single-solution responses – have been taken care of by mainstream state and ngo organizations, and so new initiatives are aimed at complex problems, which are most likely to require cross-disciplinary solutions. a side effect of the wholesale adoption of a cost-based approach to university management is that all projects must have a host department and faculty for financial reasons; effectively, cross-disciplinary research is tacitly discouraged. this reinforces the natural inclination of many academics to work within vertical knowledge ‘silos’. as such, an active effort by the university to encourage cross-disciplinary social responsiveness would be likely to improve the success rate in this regard. knowledge sharing since it was the aim of cell-life to assist in the fight against a pandemic, all knowledge gained through the project was made available through public media and research outputs. all software that was developed was released via the open source gnu public license (gpl), which guarantees open access to the software and the source code, and cell-life is still making all of its software available gateways | rivett & tapson 92 through its website. the use of open source licensing was key to generating enthusiasm from the volunteer software developers (see ‘voluntary involvement’, below). the open source licensing could have created a conflict with the university’s intellectual property (ip) policy, under which the software should have been commercialised; however, the ip contracts manager made an ad hoc exception to the policy in this instance. this highlights the need for flexibility in university policies if successful non-traditional social responsiveness (sr) interventions are to take place. the ip policy in particular should have a formal mechanism for exempting sr initiatives from its more stringent criteria. pilot studies and evaluation due to a number of initiatives within uct, it was relatively easy to identify colleagues who were prepared to provide feedback on the technology developments and to support evaluation studies within their groups. research showed that no documented evidence of similar system designs or approaches existed within the hiv sector (sorensen et al. 2008) and the researchers therefore relied heavily on the feedback on technologies from groups such as the desmond tutu hiv centre of uct, who used the adherence cellphone application within their sites. colleagues from the commerce faculty assessed the economic feasibility of some of the cell-life solutions, and colleagues from the social sciences assessed the success of the implementation in the field. the ergonomics and user-friendliness of the cellphone menu structure were assessed by colleagues from the department of computer science. (skinner et al. 2007; hanmer et al. 2006; nattrass et al. 2007; kinkade & verclas 2008) voluntary involvement cell-life depended for its first three years on staff and student volunteer enthusiasm, as well as key input from some external professionals in the ict field. it was impressive to see the level of sustained effort that could be achieved with an important goal, and that the current student body in particular has a well-developed sense of social responsiveness, which goes beyond simple or short commitments. gateways | rivett & tapson 93 barriers and challenges traditional research methodologies new paradigms of systems design have been established through the cell-life initiative. participatory action research (par) became a fundamental part of system design, and challenged the traditional approach of system design and user analysis. whilst this can be very exciting for the researcher involved in the project, on the other hand, it brings with it the challenge of having to show the credibility of the method, and its evaluation and success by providing empirical evidence. rather than attempting to shoehorn the evidence into an inappropriate paradigm of separation between the observer and the observed, models that acknowledge the attitude of engagement between the researcher and the community have to be developed. participatory action research engagement with a number of stakeholders, such as community members, health workers, academics and others, results in a diverse environment which brings richness to a system design. however, it also results in the challenge of managing the various expectations and different levels of understanding. par is defined as a collaborative process oriented towards social transformation (mctaggart 1997); however, there is little documented information on how to manage collaborative processes which lead to creating specific system requirements that are essential for information system designs. cell-life experienced similar issues to the ones described by crang (2003) regarding the challenge of communication, as well as the need to consistently reflect on the design parameters that have been developed based on the (mis)understanding between the developer and the user. funding the cell-life project was not seen as traditional research, and for the first three years of cell-life no funding was received through the existing academic funding programmes. in particular, the state agencies responsible for funding ict research and innovation made no contribution, despite a number of strong applications being made. the majority of income was received through donations from cellphone companies approached by the cell-life team. all software gateways | rivett & tapson 94 development was done by volunteers in the open source community and through student projects. this was a suitable approach for initial prototyping, but did not offer the possibility of quality assurance and support at scale. implementation and scale-up cell-life implemented and evaluated its first technology solution as part of an existing research study of the desmond tutu hiv centre. from 2004 onwards, a number of initiatives with organisations outside the university started; however, all of these initiatives never reached scale and stayed pilot projects. only through the setting up of the notfor-profit organisation cell-life, was a focus towards implementation and roll-out created, something which had not been achieved within the university context. it should also be noted that technology interventions tend to follow a pattern of succeeding only after several iterations, and usually in an application that was not initially envisaged. the pattern of ‘serendipitous entrepreneurship’ is very common. as such, one should be prepared for the first iteration of a technology solution to an sr issue to require a number of iterations prior to success, and be mentally and managerially prepared for a change in scope to provide a more useful solution. perceptions the health sector in the developing world is well-used to the participation of donor-funded and civil-society programmes which tackle major health issues. traditionally, however, all medical systems and infrastructure products are sourced from commercial, usually developed-world, vendors, and are thereafter adapted to the local need. an infrastructure provider working with an open-source, not-for-profit business model and providing very site-specific solutions requires a mind shift in administrators and managers. the uptake and success of the systems depends very strongly on the personalities and technology champions on site. conclusions one of the early slogans of civil activism for treatment of hiv/aids was ‘all of us are infected or affected by hiv/aids’. this rings true when considering how fighting a pandemic such as this one has a profound impact on the structure of a society. one can therefore gateways | rivett & tapson 95 reasonably argue that hiv/aids is more than a mere medical problem. cell-life has been an initiative that has shown how infrastructure and technology development can make a substantial contribution to supporting medical staff in the endeavour of providing better care to people living with aids. as highlighted above, a successful rollout of arvs does not depend only on training sufficient medical staff and providing support within communities; seemingly basic problems such as establishing infrastructure to distribute medication to patients independent of geographical location are key factors to ensure sustainable and successful lifelong treatment. the development of technologies for the public health care sector in resource constrained settings led to approaching the user analysis and design phase in a different way to previously. instead of identifying the lowest common denominator of users in various contexts, the team approached each site with an attitude of engagement that embedded the research within the environment of the user. developing software solutions for a new field requires a proof of concept, which is usually done through pilot studies. cell-life benefitted greatly from being able to draw on existing studies within uct to test the first developments. partnerships with academics and experts in the field as well as an attitude of knowledge sharing and volunteerism resulted in technologies being developed relatively quickly and at a very low cost. a number of challenges and barriers were highlighted, such as the limitations of traditional research methods and the definition of celllife within the academic environment. practical considerations such as attracting funding required a creative approach away from the traditional research funding, and resulted in successfully approaching businesses in the cellphone industry to fund the first implementations and evaluations of the cell-life technology. whilst the university environment allowed the first technology developments of cell-life to be leapfrogged through the spirit of activism and collaboration, a focus towards providing technology solutions at a national level was only created when cell-life became an organisation outside of the university. there are a number of gateways | rivett & tapson 96 things that the university could do to improve the likelihood of future success. these would include: creating an environment which encourages cross-• disciplinary solutions and eases the problem of shared finances and infrastructure. adapting the ip, cost recovery and contractual policies to • allow for non-commercial exploitation of technology ip in the sr context. encouraging the recognition of research within the sr • context as a valid type of scholarship, and motivating the funding agencies to provide appropriate support for this research. the cell-life initiative provided an opportunity to reflect on the responsibility and relevance of research in the context of a developing country. references barnard, d 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fortuin, j 2008, ‘review of e-health systems for hiv/aids and antiretroviral treatment management in south africa’, journal of telemedicine and telecare, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 37–41. wood, r, kaplan, r, bekker, l-g, brown, s & rivett, u 2008, ‘the utility of pharmacy dispensing data for art programme evaluation and early identification of patient loss to follow up’ southern african journal of hiv medicine, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 44–48. muirheadpdf.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement no 1 (2008): 8-30 © utsepress and the authors doing what we know we should: engaged scholarship and community development bruce muirhead and geoff woolcock ommunity engagement has become a familiar term in the australian higher education lexicon in recent years. professor sir david watson (2007, p. 1) from the university of london claims that now ‘hardly any university, anywhere in the world, would dare not to have a civic engagement mission. the question is: how real, and how effective are these?’. a vital strategy to building and sustaining democracy lies in the unique constellation of intellectual, social and financial capital existing within the modern university. the key lies in the expertise embodied within the university, the socialisation role of mass higher education and the promotion of social cohesion in sustainable democratic societies. universities and communities have the resources and capacity to co-produce and co-create powerful strategies for firstly, solving global problems manifested in the local community and secondly, helping both to become national and global leaders, which includes defining their identity, building a c gateways | muirhead & woolcock 9 foundation for teaching and research, delivering social and economic benefits, and also providing social, cultural and physical capital and infrastructure. while community engagement has become more familiar in australian higher education, there is still little institutional infrastructure evident in current australian universities that directly embodies the principles and sentiment of community engagement. however, the university of queensland’s (uq) ipswich campus focus on responsive community engagement and partnership in establishing the community service and research centre (now uq boilerhouse) back in 1999 today provides an opportunity to reflect on the many and varied experiences of the centre and, more broadly, the context in which university-community engagement took effect during the past decade. the community service and research centre (csrc) was an initiative of uq’s faculty of social and behavioural sciences in partnership with the office of the deputy vice chancellor (international and development). the centre formed an integral part of the university’s community engagement strategy. the centre’s initial vision was ‘to develop genuinely democratic, mutually beneficial partnerships between the university and the community. these partnerships [aimed] to build a sustainable, inclusive and socially just community’ (see www.uq.edu.au/csrc). the csrc became a hub for the fostering of innovative ideas, economic and community development programmes, collaborative research projects, consultancy services, interprofessional courses and training programmes, and placement of university students with skills and interests that matched community needs. in its first six years of operation, the centre became one of the most exciting and active incubators of community-based service and research in australia, employing approximately forty community researchers and twenty associated adjuncts and research associates to work with more than three hundred partners, including community, government, non-government, academic and private sector organisations. the partners took on varying roles, degrees of involvement, input and responsibilities depending on the project brief, but all were premised on the importance of developing democratic, mutually beneficial partnerships. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 10 the csrc generated more than $aud5 million in localised action research and teaching and learning projects; produced more than fifty reports and publications for community and government agencies; was invited to participate in several international conferences and symposia and hosted two major international conferences on higher education and community engagement. further, the csrc hosted almost sixty international academics involved in higher education and community engagement activities and was invited to sit on many expert committees at state and federal government level. it also created community-based learning opportunities for uq undergraduate and postgraduate students by establishing over one hundred and fifty learning partnerships for placements and community projects, partnering with over one thousand individual community members. the centre also demonstrated practical responses leading to innovative service and research in the local ipswich region. the ipswich community embraced the opportunities presented through access to the university’s expertise and resources. partnerships and collaborative activities developed with a wide range of local organisations and agencies in order to improve the capacity to provide better services to the ipswich community. regular interaction with government agencies, business and community groups, local government and individuals achieved a number of significant and successful projects, and over one hundred members a week utilised the centre’s facilities and service programmes. the defining experience: the goodna service integration project (sip) for all the activity generated by the csrc over the period 1999–2005, there was one large project that, in almost every aspect, captured the intent and vision of the csrc. ipswich is a former coal-mining and industrial provincial town in the midst of change. it is located 40 kilometres south-west of the queensland capital city brisbane. in 1999, a tragic assault occurred there, and seven young people were charged with murder. this incident was one of a number of significant social issues that had troubled the ipswich community over an extended period of time. however, it was this incident that finally triggered recognition of the need for discussions between the regional government managers involved in human services in order gateways | muirhead & woolcock 11 to begin developing better models of service delivery to address serious social issues. the csrc provided leadership for this group of senior regional managers by facilitating discussions and connections with other agencies. over a period of twelve months, fortnightly breakfast meetings were held. the number of senior executives attending these meetings increased from three to twenty. consistent themes began to emerge from these discussions such as: • the need to focus on building community capability • the need for a holistic collaborative effort across all levels of government with community leaders and community-based organisations • the difficulties in operating effectively with government programmes organised around ‘silos’ • government programmes having difficulty pooling resources and working collaboratively to address identified regional problems • goodwill between agencies to address these issues. key people and agencies that needed to be included in the group were identified. the local member of parliament, the hon. david hamill, and ipswich city councillor, paul tully, both endorsed the project. complex issues and concerns relating to the significant local disadvantage were identified. a climate was established to trial a collaborative project to improve government service delivery focusing on linking agencies and new methods of implementing intersectoral government partnerships based on location rather than on specific programmes. ipswich city council was invited to nominate a chair to lead the group, allowing the csrc to continue as an advisor and facilitator, providing research, teaching and learning expertise and evaluation skills. the suburb of goodna, within the ipswich city region, was identified as the location for a trial service integration project (sip). the sip focused specifically on goodna for several reasons, including the long recognised problems stemming from significant socioeconomic disadvantage in goodna. some residents describe the community as ‘the doormat ‘brisbanites’ wipe their feet on, on the way into ipswich and ipswich folk, on their way into brisbane’. it was also important to gain an understanding of the impact of the gateways | muirhead & woolcock 12 institutional precinct on the goodna area with many residents frequently reporting feeling ‘shuffled’ or ‘shunted’ between these offices in confusing and frustrating attempts to have their often complex needs met. with goodna already a hub for many commonwealth, state and local government services, there was also an essential opportunity to have front-line staff participating in the project. the importance of having a single location to which the project’s multiple activities all had to be ultimately accountable became increasingly evident as the project evolved. the goodna sip was created as a way to respond to the unique and complex issues faced by the community of goodna, whilst charting a new way for government to ‘do business’ in multiply disadvantaged communities such as this. funding for the sip was provided by three queensland government departments: the department of families, the department of housing and the department of employment and training. uq, through the csrc and ipswich city council, provided substantial in-kind support to the project. the vision for the sip was ‘working better together for sustainable community wellbeing in goodna’ (http://www.uq.edu.au/boilerhouse/goodna-sip/). one of the primary aims of the project was to align the human services provided by the three tiers of government and the nongovernment sector, with the needs and aspirations of local residents and the priority outcomes identified by the state government. the sip thus established a set of outcomes influenced by the primary aims of each participating agency. furthermore, the sip sought to align these outcomes with, firstly, the queensland state government’s draft managing for outcomes (mfo) performance management framework, and secondly, the eighteen priority needs and aspirations of the goodna community as expressed through a series of consultation processes held in autumn, 2001. the overall aim of the sip then became one that sought to develop a sustainable system of human service provision (including the design, funding, delivery and evaluation phases) by: • aligning the needs and aspirations of the community of goodna, the strategies of service agencies in the region and the priority outcomes of government and consequential resource allocation processes that support that alignment gateways | muirhead & woolcock 13 • building social capital, responding to community wellbeing and facilitating the integration of human services • building relationships, promoting learning processes and giving emphasis to measurement and modelling as three critical and inter-connected strategies to create systemic change to facilitate community wellbeing. relevant literature and models in setting the scene for the commencement of the sip, there was obviously a large groundswell of energy and commitment to ‘get going’ but there was equally a determination to not repeat the mistakes made by other similar initiatives. intent on understanding what constituted the leading evidence for undertaking a service integration project, the sip team drew on several domains of literature, described below. as is standard for most research projects, the sip undertook to identify as many examples as possible of best practice in terms of service integration, but it is also important to recognise that there was no standard template to guide effective service integration research and practice. thus, the goodna sip needed to ‘write its own book’ when it came to developing an integrated system of human services that improved sustainable community wellbeing. literature covering a range of disciplines and models was explored, including: community development, social entrepreneurship, community action networks, social capital, community indicator processes, community wellbeing, community capacity building, community visioning processes, sustainability, public sector reform processes, triple bottom line performance measurement, leadership and more. these readings, combined with studies undertaken via the sip’s graduate certificate programme and ongoing discussion amongst sip team members, contributed to the development of the sip model. the initial search surveyed a range of projects/programmes that shared one or more of the desired sip outcomes for goodna. the specific focus was to identify case studies of government-led projects that place an emphasis on community consultation and participation. where possible, this included attempts to integrate human service delivery. the focus also tried to remain upon places that share social, cultural and economic similarities with goodna. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 14 beyond specific projects and programmes relevant to sip, the sip team was faced with a challenging task in addressing the key relevant literature for the service integration project. readings in the first semester of the inaugural graduate certificate course (july – december 2000) were capturing the attention of the initial sip team with their emphasis on collaboration and inter-professional communication. many of the key ideas that emerged in the curriculum were carried into the practices of sip and are highlighted throughout the text below. however, the sip also emerged at a time when several significant public policy directions had become prominent, particularly in the activities of state governments and, more broadly, coinciding with the significant re-thinking of how governments engage with communities, particularly those which are socio-economically disadvantaged. place management perhaps most significant of the emerging policy trends was the emphasis on place and developing a range of ideas interested in a more ‘place’ or spatial focus to policies, programmes and services. notions such as ‘place management’, ‘place planning’ and more recently ‘local governance’ can be viewed as an overlay on the ideas of ‘community capacity’ and ‘social capital’ that add further perspectives to the task of developing effective local community action. these ideas stem primarily from efforts by government organisations to develop more effective approaches to the management of particular localities. in this sense, a place approach can be seen to describe new forms of institutions and service delivery arrangements designed to deliver improved outcomes for identified communities (croft 1998; latham 1998; mant 1998; botsman & latham 2001; edgar 2001; walsh 2001; zappala & green 2001). the notion of place management has become a popular ‘badge’ for a collection of approaches concerned with the lack of coherence and coordination in government programmes that all purport to be serving the same place. place management is often couched in terms of ‘breaking down the silos’ (that is, particular governmental programmes that have relatively narrow goals), and is also linked to ‘third way’ ideas of ‘joined up government’ at the local level. place management is also concerned with developing more effective gateways | muirhead & woolcock 15 relations among government, market and community (civil society) organisations and groups within a local area. the sip team shared many of these objectives but it also was determined from the outset not to be labelled a place management project with its inferences of a government one-stop shop, or central coordinating agency for goodna. with no actual new resources to distribute, the sip team was eager to acknowledge that there remained sound reasons for agencies to stay in their silos providing specialist services where these were demanded. instead, the sip team emphasised that it was only interested in those areas where integration was seen to be a progressive and necessary response in addressing the complexities of human service provision. service integration having established service integration as the key applied focus of the project through entitling it as such, the sip team received far less guidance from existing literature on this topic. this was somewhat surprising given that integrated human service delivery initiatives have seen a resurgence in light of reduced government spending in the social sphere and the subsequent need for alternate service delivery solutions to improve efficiency, responsiveness and customer satisfaction. however, despite the concept’s popularity at the applied level, there is no universal definition of ‘human service integration’, and much speculation and debate surrounds the determining of appropriate discourses for defining and referring to service integration (si). in a most simple and broad definition, konrad (1996, p. 6) has referred to the embodiment of si as being where ‘two or more entities establish linkages for the purpose of improving outcomes for needy people’. a partnership is formed among human service providers with common goals of meeting complex customer needs. another definition suggests ‘taking existing multiple services delivery and coordinating it into an organised, single service system’ (semmens et al. 1998, p. 7). the konrad definition seemed particularly suitable for the purposes of the sip, which was more focused on integrated services at the level of delivery rather than in developing a single system. of course the delivery of social services has to date generally been fragmented and diffuse and as such, methods of delivery have gateways | muirhead & woolcock 16 been described as costly, complicated and unfriendly (lutfiyya 1993). service integration projects emerging in the 1990s saw a shift in focus from grand si schemes aimed at meeting all of the needs of people and families at risk, to more modest, concentrated projects, focusing on particular sets of problems or populations (agranoff 1991). while si projects in the past have had different emphases, at root they have all sought to make the human service system more responsive to individuals with multiple, interrelated service needs (yessian 1995). what the sparse si literature did strongly reiterate was the need for a long lead time to achieve substantial change in service delivery arrangements, with austin (1997, p. 7) recommending at least five years. haste to document outcomes is likely to be at the expense of the development of links between stakeholders and the refinement of effective processes, each necessary to sustain projects into the future. the sip team members, many of whom were already established as the first cohort of the graduate certificate, were reading material that concurred with the semmens et al. (1998, p. 21) conclusion that ‘shared understandings, shared vision, and shared commitment need to be developed between stakeholders to achieve an outcome-centred approach’ and, furthermore, ‘that it is not sufficient to recognise shared vision and values in the project proposal without identifying the processes necessary to achieve end goals’. keeping these lessons in mind, the sip team’s interest in the si literature turned to where it could be utilised as a marker of the effectiveness of projected si initiatives in goodna. o’looney’s (1997) tabular presentation of service integration effectiveness offered the most user-friendly tool with respect to assessing the impact of the sip. even though his model was based on a preventive service delivery project focusing on improved family wellbeing, he delineated importantly between four levels of service integration – the direct service level, the programme level, the policy level, and the organisational (or inter-agency/whole of government) level. social inclusion/social capital whilst place management and service integration were key interests for the sip team, there was an early recognition that the project also needed to demonstrate a commitment to community development and building the social capital of goodna. an early belief and commitment that quickly flourished among the sip team was the recognition that shared capacity building gateways | muirhead & woolcock 17 processes also help to build social capital. these intentions were consistent with the arguments of lowndes and wilson (2001) that social capital can be fostered by government, via: • relationships with the voluntary sector • opportunities for public participation • responsive decision-making • arrangements for democratic leadership and social inclusion. the sip team undertook a thorough analysis of the social capital literature which provided some empirical evidence of the role of social capital and its potential relevance for goodna. much of the existing research provided confirmation of relationships that exist between social capital and the desired outcomes for the goodna project. while the existence of a correlation does not necessarily mean causality, there was enough evidence, particularly in the australianbased material (onyx & bullen 2000; winter 2000; stone & hughes 2002), to support the potential utility of enhanced social capital for achieving the purposes of the sip. however, a number of issues needed to be addressed before proceeding further, including the following questions raised at the conclusion of the literature analysis written in march 2001: why measure social capital? what is the desired effect? what will be measured? how will these measures be used? the key decision was whether to utilise existing data, which, although problematic, would reduce time and costs, or to develop a specific social capital measurement tool for the collection of primary data in goodna. while the potential to yield rich data in goodna existed, it was necessary to question whether this was a primary objective of the sip, as well as to hypothesise the importance of social capital to integrating human services provision. the outcomes of this interest in adopting a social capital approach were largely taken on via the sip measurement and modelling group. the more relevant measurement tools for sip have been in the area of community wellbeing indicators and here the sip was guided by the comprehensive work of salvaris (2000), whose overview of the growth and development of the community and social indicators movement in australia and current work in victoria gateways | muirhead & woolcock 18 and nsw assisted in the development of an appropriate set of indicators. local governance the other area of interest that emerged as relevant to the project over time was the growing scholarship on local governance (badcock 1998; reddel 2002), most especially the british (social exclusion unit 1998; lowndes & skelcher 1998; atkinson 1999) and european (oecd 1996; cars 2000) literature addressing notions of social inclusion and exclusion. the sip team was keen to explore how readily governance theories applied to the work being undertaken in goodna through the sip. in order to facilitate this exploration, we chose to use the framework developed by reddel et al. (2001) for the local governance and social inclusion project at uq as a lens through which to take an alternative view of the sip. a paper written by boorman & woolcock (2002) in conjunction with the sip team in the latter half of 2001 used examples from the sip to respond to the four ‘key research/policy issues, themes and dilemmas relevant to the study and practice of “local governance”’ (reddel et al. 2001, p. 1): • is there a focus on community outcomes rather than administrative processes? • what are the key practice dimensions of local governance? • what are the new skills base and infrastructure requirements for effective local governance? • what are the necessary accountabilities and performance measures for local governance? in their paper, boorman & woolcock (2002) expanded on the sip response to these key questions but the relationships with the local governance and social inclusion project were undoubtedly enhanced by participating in the latter project’s activities. as the sip evolved, it was arguably in this area of scholarship – concentrating on issues of regional and local governance – that the sip had most to offer. network analysis the final key domain of literature that somewhat surprisingly became very relevant to the sip over time was that of network analysis. even though the sip team was aware from the outset of the gateways | muirhead & woolcock 19 importance it was vesting in building relationships between regional managers of government and then, in turn, with the goodna community, there did not initially appear to be any immediate research methodology that could readily assess these relationship building processes. with the involvement of robyn keast, a phd student at queensland university of technology interested in finding case studies for her theories on networked governance and formerly involved with a major networked state government project, the sip team learnt much from not only her analysis but that of other scholars in this area. where network analysis coincided neatly with other scholarship on governance was its recognition that the shift to community-centric relations has generated a myriad of activity around broad forms of engaging citizens and that typically these organisational arrangements have utilised various levels of networking. the strength of networked governance analysis was its capacity to go beyond descriptions of networks to aligning the linkage arrangement with the linkage structure. to put another way, networking, networks and network structures are arrangements that organisations enter into and cooperation, coordination and collaboration are relationships between members of these groups. keast’s hypothesis in her early study of the sip was that the project seemed to fit many of the criteria for a network structure of collaboration, where not only does integration involve strong linkages among members but the purpose is specific, often complex and usually long-term. network structures are highly interdependent constructs and rely on members moving outside of traditional functional specialities to create new ways of working (cigler 2001; mandell 2001; lawson 2002). collaboration is the most stable and long-term type of arrangement. it also has the highest degree of risk. it depends on establishing a high degree of trust among the members and thus is a very time consuming process. it also depends on the members being committed to common missions and to seeing themselves as part of a total picture (mandell 1999, 2001; agranoff & mcguire 2001). in addition, the theory asserts that collaboration through network structures will lead to fully integrated activity. members of a networked structure see themselves as being interdependent. they are not only sharing resources or aligning activities; they are working gateways | muirhead & woolcock 20 towards systems change (mandell 1999). they recognise that they need to form into network structures because traditional methods (including networking/cooperation and networks/coordination) have not been sufficient. each of these areas of the literature was significant in its impact on the evolution of the sip but, as critical as it was to identify those learnings up-front in order to avoid the mistakes of other social planning projects, it was even more important that the sip be seen to be helping the goodna community as soon as possible – it was time to get started. the inter-related strategies of the goodna service integration project the three critical and inter-related strategies developed by the goodna sip team to effect lasting and sustainable change within the system of human service provision were: teaching and learning (including accredited university programmes developed specifically for the project, short courses, learning events, action learning projects); relationship building (including community-government engagement, intra-community relationship building, crossgovernment collaboration and enhanced communication and cooperation between local, regional and central processes of government); and lastly, measurement and modelling (including the development of a regional information warehouse, the measuring of community wellbeing and the development of cost-benefit models to enhance child protection). the csrc was integrally involved in each of these important strategy areas and pivotal to their implementation and assessment. teaching and learning crucial to the model of systemic change was recognition of the need to engage with new ideas, to build new skills and to develop new sets of knowledge to tackle the challenges ahead. equally important was a need to unlearn old ways of behaving, many of which had been reinforced and rewarded for years. important also was the need to practice new skills relating to collaboration, interprofessional communication, community engagement, distributed ownership and capacity building. the teaching and learning component of the goodna sip was considered to be a critical ingredient to creating gateways | muirhead & woolcock 21 sustainable change and involved both community-based and formal programmes. community-based learning projects were undertaken by a number of groups working collaboratively to develop local responses to community needs. staff employed by the goodna sip supported these groups to apply action learning frameworks so they could develop ways in which they could respond to a diverse range of community-identified issues. community-based projects included: enhancing community access to sport and recreation facilities; developing integrated responses to domestic violence; and developing an integrated family support service to reduce the incidence of child abuse. the formal learning programmes implemented within the sip included a graduate certificate in social science (interprofessional leadership), community and interprofessional leadership short courses and community learning events. the graduate certificate in social science (interprofessional leadership) was the first accredited learning programme initiated through the sip. it was run over two semesters and exposed students to the fundamental principles underlying collaborative practice. the students learnt the theoretical groundwork and practical skills for initiating and sustaining collaborative work. they also undertook a collaborative community engagement project (ccep), which enabled them to apply the skills of collaboration they learned through classroom and applied learning situations. they did this by working on a real-time issue in the goodna/ipswich region that required an interdisciplinary approach. they were supported and guided in this project by the uq teaching staff, practicing professionals and community representatives. the first cohort of students in this programme were all senior staff from government organisations based in the region, while the second and subsequent cohorts of students also included front-line staff from government and non-government organisations as well as members of community groups. as the reputation of the graduate certificate grew, community demand for enrolment increased. new concerns emerged in the community relating to equitable access to learning and capacity building. these concerns inspired the centre to develop a series of short courses in community and interprofessional leadership. participants who completed these short courses and chose to gateways | muirhead & woolcock 22 undertake some assessment tasks could obtain recognition of prior learning and thus entrance into the graduate certificate and other accredited university programmes. community learning events were also developed to maintain the momentum for ongoing learning, particularly for those who completed the graduate certificate. the ‘learning events’ or ‘learning breakfasts’ programme involved a one to two hour presentation on a contemporary topic by a local, regional or interstate presenter. in keeping with the interconnected nature of the sip, these learning events were preceded by an informal breakfast at which participants could build or maintain relationships. more than one hundred and fifty community and government representatives attended these learning events. the centre also sought to provide free access to community members to attend other relevant university lectures, government briefings and symposia. exposure to such learning events was a significant avenue for raising awareness, building networks and heightening self-esteem for community members who had not previously been exposed to such forums and who did not have the means to attend without support. relationship building it was also clear from the outset that the sip was going to be reliant on sustaining a number of vertical and horizontal relationships. relationship building strategies were tiered over four distinct levels: • relationship building within the goodna community • relationship building between government agencies and the community • relationship building within and between government agencies • relationship building within the sip team. perhaps the most significant step in the sip’s first year was the hosting of community forums and subsequent group workshops from april to june 2001. these provided the first and central means by which the sip team felt confident of meeting the needs and aspirations of the goodna community. the sip team adopted a straightforward format for reporting back on what was said at these workshops via a four-page sip update and maintained these updates on a quarterly basis from june 2001 to the end of the project. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 23 the sip team was unanimous in its belief that the sip should be involved in service integration projects in goodna that accorded with the sip goals and state government priority outcomes. at the same time, however, the sip team was mindful of not creating a misperception that the sip was another government agency focused solely on delivering service integration projects but instead emphasised the importance of every sip-initiated project to work more creatively with existing resources. the first official sip ‘project’ was the expanded use of the goodna state school’s pool. the decision to commit to this as sip’s first project was not taken lightly but it proved to be another crucial learning path about the complexity of working collaboratively. an equally significant project taken on by the sip, also at the goodna state school, resulted in the development of a service which became known as the goodna integrated family support (gifs). early feedback received in response to the gifs trial using unpaid social work students has been extremely positive. a further $aud195 000 under the department of families future directions initiative was obtained to trial the service through 2003 and the programme is still successfully running at the time of writing. similarly, the integration issues have been substantial in other sip projects, including the goodna.net project, an ultimately successful attempt to establish a community website for goodna; a domestic violence research project addressing domestic violence service delivery issues in goodna / gailes; and a goodna-focused research proposal to recommend an appropriate model of service delivery for people being released from custody. measurement and modelling looking to generate new ways to measure and model crossgovernment human service interventions, the sip measurement and modelling strategy group set out to build a set of appropriate indicators to assess wellbeing in goodna, but also to deliver useful tools to enable more effective regional human service agency resource allocation in goodna and the region. the participation of the queensland treasury’s office of economic and statistical research (oesr) in the sip from march 2001 made a significant difference to thinking about the measurement and modelling implications of service integration. the sip team soon discovered that each agency gateways | muirhead & woolcock 24 has a distinctly different approach to measuring the success of their inputs, with little capacity to delineate the effectiveness of their spending in a particular place as concentrated as goodna, let alone in such a complex area as human services. another successful sip project involved the undertaking of a longitudinal community wellbeing study of goodna in conjunction with the oesr and which provided both paid employment and research skills acquisition for local residents. the survey has been subsequently replicated in goodna and other disadvantaged areas of queensland. other sip projects had more mixed results, including the attempts to establish markers or indicators of the effectiveness of service integration, the possible establishment of a regional information warehouse and effecting real change in relation to jobs and training and public transport. arguably the sip’s most complex project was the alignment and resource allocation project (arap). this project sought to assist efforts to renegotiate the way money is spent to deliver improved community wellbeing outcomes by aligning and linking the needs of the residents of goodna, the strategies of the regional agencies and the priority outcomes of the state government. to assist the focus of the pilot study, the arap concentrated on child protection, or a focus on programmes that would reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect on the grounds that this continued to be a significant issue for the goodna community. the project demonstrated to the participating agencies that to get the best results from available resources requires a comparative assessment of the full portfolio of programmes across all relevant agencies before deciding on the size of investment in each. the emergence of sip’s activities on the ground in goodna was underpinned by the enormous amount of formative work outlined above. in sum, the sip was governed by mutually agreed guiding ideas. the vision for the sip was developed by the multi-agency sip team and gave rise to the project aim. the strategies by which the sip sought to achieve these aims were learning, relationship building and measurement and modelling. the achievement of the project aim was reflected in periodical changes to the project outcomes. the elements by which the strategies were delivered were detailed within action plans and specific project plans. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 25 transitioning sip the range of activity presented via the examples above cannot possibly capture the full extent of the sip. it does not for instance tell of the significant amount of time spent talking with groups at all levels of government and community about the sip story. neither does it fully capture the amount of time devoted by all of the sip team to listening and reading about other inventive ways to build relationships, and to learning and measuring, plus the time spent sharing that information and knowledge with so many sip stakeholders. we also have not written about the several cul-de-sacs that such a multi-faceted project will inevitably go down over its course. the trick was to recognise as quickly as possible that it was a limited path and to move on, always keeping an eye on the big picture of what was sustainable about the sip. to this end, in addition to continuing to develop many integrated initiatives, the group spent most of the project’s second half planning for its transition, and in the words of one sip team member, spent longer transitioning the project than ‘any other project he’d known’. whilst the sip was established to consider the integration of human services, the learnings and tools of the project were considered to have broader application to the full range of agencies represented on the west moreton regional managers of government forum (wmrmf). the sip team thus committed to a process of engaging with people who live and work in goodna to understand what they wanted ‘left behind’ in their community and to plan to meet these priorities. a ‘design workshop’ to develop the idea of a ‘community forum’ in february 2003 saw a large cross-section of the community commit to establishing an ongoing community forum through which to engage local residents and service providers in discussion and action relating to community issues. summarising the multiple levels and complexity that was the goodna sip was always a challenging task throughout the project, let alone assessing its overall effectiveness. what was distinctive about the sip was not any single feature alone but rather, the way it interweaved elements essential to community development through regional agency core business and intra-governmental, crossgovernmental and government-community relations. in doing so, this project prioritised time and resources to this essential task in gateways | muirhead & woolcock 26 order to ensure that integrated services can be developed, respond to local needs and aspirations, and ultimately contribute to enhanced community wellbeing. although the sip team consistently addressed the issue of evaluation, without the resources to fund an external evaluation the project was reliant on processes of continuous assessment and learning. these internal evaluation methods were consistent with the action learning processes adopted by the sip team and were complemented by the network analysis doctoral research of robyn keast (2004). her case study of sip (incorporated in keast et al. 2004) showed that, although sip could be regarded as a network structure that had gone beyond cooperation and coordination to demonstrate genuine collaboration, it remained at risk of being judged on traditional measures. though the sip clearly changed the way governments and government-funded agencies do business in the goodna community, there are very few definitive outcome measures commonly utilised by government agencies that can conclusively demonstrate these changes. perhaps the most critical sustainability question inherent in the work of sip was that if human service integration mechanisms are established in order to respond to disadvantage, can they and ought they be sustained once participants have experienced an improvement in circumstance and the initial ‘threat’ that caused their establishment has subsided? the experience of sip suggests that to answer such a question requires a more sophisticated evidence base to guide key decision-making accompanied by a learning agenda to reinforce sound theory informing good practice. collaborative governance working well is capable of meeting both ends but the reality in addressing such complex human service issues through the lens of service integration is that there is no single ‘answer’ or magic bullet. the sip’s story is one that instead simply promotes the consistent, rigorous and reflective application of good practice or ‘doing what we know we should’, the title of the project’s final report (see http://www.uq.edu.au/boilerhouse/goodna-sip/). it is a practice in which universities ought to be central players, sharing resources unable to be matched by any other social institution. conclusion in australia, engaged scholarship oriented towards community development objectives has yet to be recognised in funding regimes gateways | muirhead & woolcock 27 as being inherently beneficial in terms of scholarly excellence and university rankings. while the civic role of universities is acknowledged by individual universities, higher education management and at the federal policy level, they are most often framed as funding problems related to ‘community service’ rather than as research opportunities which can raise the university’s profile by providing the basis for excellent research outputs and community enrichment. the goodna sip conclusively demonstrates that community development and engaged scholarship are not only reconcilable, but that they are fundamental in any university’s attempts to undertake authentic community engagement, as argued by benson, harkavy & puckett (2000). while there are many and various approaches to community engagement, there is recognition that effective programmes such as a sip require common elements to be present. if undertaken solely in the province of the silos of government, community engagement risks being seen as another top-down government intervention (boxelaar et al. 2006) lacking the institutional flexibility that the involvement of higher education can help to mitigate. it is also well recognised that elements, which are contingent upon the character of particular universities and the environments they occupy, must be present. some of the work from north america on civic renewal, for example, has already been adapted by australian universities to positive effect. it is clear that while there are many benefits for universities and communities that effectively engage with each other, the political will to recognise engaged scholarship as scholarly excellence is constrained by its definition as ‘community service’. incentive structures for community engagement in university funding are clearly lacking. however, there exist mechanisms and priorities within federal funding structures which state governments can take advantage of for the purposes of promoting community engagement objectives. a clear path to funding community engagement activities lies in the framing of community engagement as legitimate academic research, as a form of scholarly excellence. a conception of engaged scholarship that replaces community service is vital to such a role. furthermore, state support for problem-based community research gateways | muirhead & woolcock 28 can be leveraged to promote whole-of-institution involvement in community engagement objectives. while the benefits of community engagement are long-term, often indirect, and therefore somewhat less obvious, research shows that the benefits of effective engagement are the result of far-sighted, long-term investment in community wellbeing and, consequently, in a healthy citizenry. if universities are to participate effectively in much-needed urban, regional and community development programmes, steps must be taken to put in place funding arrangements that encourage universities to engage with communities of which they are a significant part. references agranoff, r 1991, ‘human services integration: past and present challenges in public administration’, public administration review, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 533–545. agranoff, r & mcguire, m 2001, ‘after the network is formed: processes, power, and performance’ in mp mandell (ed.), getting results through collaboration: networks and network structures for public policy and management, quorum books, westport, ct, pp. 11–29. atkinson, r 1999, ‘discourses of partnership and empowerment in contemporary british urban regeneration’, urban studies, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 59–73. austin, m 1997, ‘service integration: introduction’, administration in social work, vol. 21, nos. 3/4, pp. 1–7. badcock, b 1998, ‘forgotten places, excluded citizens and the rise of one nation’, urban policy and research, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 241–246. benson, l, harkavy, i & puckett, j 2000, ‘an implementation revolution as a strategy for fulfilling the democratic promise of university-community partnerships: penn-west philadelphia as an experiment in progress’, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 29 no. 1, pp. 24–45. boorman, c & woolcock, g 2002, ‘the goodna service integration project: government and community working together for community wellbeing in goodna’ in t reddel (ed.), governing local communities: building state and community capacity, the university of queensland, brisbane. botsman, p & latham, m (eds) 2001, the enabling state: people before bureaucracy, pluto press, annandale nsw. boxelaar, l, paine, m & beilin, r 2006, ‘community engagement and public administration: of silos, overlays and technologies of government’, australian journal of public administration, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 113–126. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 29 cars, g 2000, social exclusion in european neighbourhoods – processes, experiences and responses, final report of project financed under the tser programme, european commission, brussels. cigler, b 2001, ‘multiorganizational, multisector, and multicommunity organizations: setting the research agenda’ in mp mandell (ed.), getting results through collaboration: networks and network structures for public policy and management, quorum books, westport, ct, pp. 71–85. croft, d 1998, ‘place management: a key to better urban development’, australian planner, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 49–53. edgar, d 2001, the patchwork nation: re-thinking government – re-building community, harper collins, pymble, nsw. keast, r, mandell, m, brown, k & woolcock, g 2004, ‘network structures: working differently and changing expectations’, public administration review, vol. 64, no. 3, pp. 363–371. konrad, e 1996, ‘a multidimensional framework for conceptualizing human services integration initiatives’ in j marquart & e konrad (eds), evaluating initiatives to integrate human services, american evaluation association no. 69, jossey-bass, san francisco, pp. 5–19. latham, m 1998, civilising global capital: new thinking for australian labor, allen and unwin, st leonards, nsw. lawson, h 2002, ‘improving conceptual clarity, accuracy, and precision and facilitating more coherent institutional designs’ in m brabeck & m walsh (eds), the contribution of interprofessional collaboration and comprehensive services to teaching and learning, the national society for the study of education yearbook 2002, university of chicago press, chicago. lowndes, v & skelcher, c 1998 ‘the dynamics of multi-organizational partnerships: an analysis of changing modes of governance’, public administration, vol. 76, pp. 313–333. lowndes, v & wilson, d 2001, ‘social capital and local governance: exploring the institutional design variable’, political studies, vol. 29, pp. 629– 647. lutfiyya, m 1993, integrated services: a summary for rural educators, eric digest charleston, wv: appalachia educational laboratory. mandell, mp 1999, ‘community collaborations: working through network structures’, policy studies review, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 42–64. mandell, mp (ed.) 2001, getting results through collaboration: networks and network structures for public policy and management, quorum books, westport, ct. gateways | muirhead & woolcock 30 mant, j 1998, ‘place management: why it works and how to do it’, uts papers in planning, no. 13, university of technology sydney, sydney. oecd 1996, reconciling economy and society: towards a plural economy, organisation for economic cooperation and development, paris. o’looney, j 1997, ‘marking progress toward service integration: learning to use evaluation to overcome 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melbourne, melbourne. social exclusion unit 1998, bringing britain together: a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, uk cabinet office, http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk stone, w & hughes, j 2002, social capital: empirical meaning and measurement validity, research paper no. 27, australian institute of family studies, melbourne. walsh, p 2001, ‘improving governments’ response to local communities – is place management an answer?’, australian journal of public administration, vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 3–12. watson, d 2007, managing civic and community engagement, open university press, london. winter, i (ed.) 2000, social capital and public policy in australia, australian institute of family studies, melbourne. yessian, m 1995, ‘learning from experience: integrating human services’, public welfare, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 34–39. zappala, g & green, v 2001, addressing disadvantage through place management: is there a role for nonprofit organisations?, working paper no. 3, the smith family, sydney. breathing life into theory illustrations of community-based research: hallmarks, functions and phases the last three decades have seen a significant change in the research relationships between researchers and communities, and between universities and communities, around the emergence of community-based research (cbr). cbr in canada can draw on its long tradition in participatory action research and indigenous research from the late 1960s and early 1970s (hall 2005). this research found new life with the creation in 1998 of the community university research alliance (cura) grant by the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc), the canadian institute for health research (cihr) partnership grants and similar grant models by other funders. social science research is quickly moving toward community-based research models of engagement. there are compelling reasons for this shift. increasingly, community-based research (cbr) is being seen as a catalyst for social innovation, for public policy improvements, for solving complex community issues, and for promoting democracy in which local knowledge is valued in building local solutions. from a practical perspective, a community-based research approach recognises the community as knowledge-rich partners and does not portray knowledge as the sole domain of academic institutions. rather, community engagement co-creates knowledge to maximise research utilisation (small & uttal 2005; wallerstein & duran 2003). cbr also brings theoretical advantage by delivering insider knowledge to the shaping of the research purpose and questions, and by collaboratively refining theories (cargo & mercer 2008; fitzgerald, burack & seifer 2010). finally, this approach responds to fundamental issues of fairness and equity. cbr advances ‘knowledge democracy’ by recognising knowledge creation as a matter of cognitive justice – of finding ways for community groups, government and academics to equitably work together in solving complex social issues (de sousa santos 2006; gaventa 1993; hall 2011). despite the fact that more and more researchers are conducting research that engages communities, there are few clearly defined guiding principles, ethical considerations and gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 18–33 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 joanna ochocka rich janzen centre for community based research 19 | gateways | ochocka & janzen national standards that should be followed. the intention of this article is to bring more conceptual clarity to cbr by reflecting on theory through practice and practice through theory. the centre for community based research (ccbr) has been grappling with what cbr means, both through a conceptual lens (drawing on the theoretical discussions of others) and through its own practice (over 350 projects in 30 years). with a commitment to social change and innovation, it is well positioned as a bridge between academia and community. this neutral stance has enabled us to create space for melding theory and practice. reflecting on theory through practice and implementing practice through theory enriches the understanding of how to carry out community-university research collaborations such that people gain the collective capacity to imagine how the circumstances of their lives could be improved. at ccbr we promote communitybased research in both academic and community settings. we connect people who conduct cbr (through community based research canada and cuexpo conferences), and encourage cbr quality by housing the community research ethics office. this article begins with theory. it very briefly reviews the definition of cbr and its hallmarks (what it is), functions (why to do it) and phases (how to do it). next, three cbr case studies are presented to illustrate the practical implementation of cbr theory. the article ends with brief conclusions related to four insights revealed through the case studies. we believe that combining theory with practical illustrations enlivens cbr discourse, bringing greater contextual insight to the nature of cbr. community-based research: hallmarks, functions and phases there is a growing literature on collaborative research that intends to bridge the gap between diverse stakeholders for the common goal of addressing and resolving complex societal issues (stoecker 2005). three hallmarks, or guiding principles, have emerged from this literature that help to define cbr. community relevance refers to the practical significance of the research to communities. research is relevant when community members, especially those most affected by the issue under study, gain voice and choice through the research process (smith 2012; wilson 2008) and when researchers draw on the ways of knowing that people agree are valuable to them (kemmis & mctaggart 2005). as such, community relevance honours the indigenous research tradition that stresses self-determination (kovach 2009). equitable participation emphasises that community members and researchers equitably share control of the research agenda through active and reciprocal involvement in the research design, implementation and dissemination (hall 1975; nelson et al. 1998). drawing on the ‘southern’ participatory research tradition, this domain acknowledges that, when people are conscious of their situation and the power that oppresses them, they can collectively work 20 | gateways | ochocka & janzen towards a better future (freire 1970). action and change honours the ‘northern’ utilisation-focused action research tradition that is frequently associated with kurt lewin. this domain has an emphasis on social change through successive reflective action cycles (lewin 1948, 1951). it stresses that the process and results of research should be useful to community members in making positive social change and in promoting social equity (nelson et al. 1998). another way of thinking about cbr relates to the functions of research: why people pursue research. cbr can be seen to have three main functions: knowledge production, knowledge mobilisation and community mobilisation. cbr produces knowledge through critical reflection of personal and collective experiences, whether these experiences are recent (clare 2006) or historical (fals borda 1987). it values experiential and practical knowledge assuming that people can create a new understanding that is grounded in their social involvements, which in turn creates a better informed practice that is guided by new-found insights (israel et al. 1998). cbr knowledge production is done in collaborative, participatory and action-oriented ways. research participants are engaged in designing, carrying out and using research while they contribute to the pool of knowledge. in addition to knowledge production, cbr also mobilises knowledge. research findings are shared in ways that speak to various audiences and that enable people to use this knowledge to transform society within their respective spheres of influence. creative means of mobilising knowledge might be required to fully engage partners in the sharing of research findings (denis et al. 2003; golden-biddle et al. 2003; jansson et al. 2009) and to develop innovative ways of mobilising findings to stimulate new social interventions (nelson et al. 2005; ochocka, moorlag & janzen 2010). for example, the centre for community based research uses creative communication strategies (e.g. theatre productions, videos, etc.) to motivate stakeholders to develop new evidence-based practice. cbr also functions to mobilise people and communities for action. knowledge production and social action are combined to improve health and social welfare (cargo & mercer 2008; graham & tetroe 2009). people can be motivated to act through research because the research connects with their experience and with their understanding of the world. research can also bring people together in such a way that their reciprocal collaboration leads to innovative solutions. such solutions require input from multiple perspectives, otherwise they may never emerge (ochocka & janzen 2007). a third quality of cbr relates to the way the research is carried out. the phases of research involve a high degree of collaboration among stakeholders and researchers with constant feedback loops. the cbr process can be envisioned as four nonlinear and repeated phases which are ever attuned and adaptive to emerging contexts and ongoing learning (ccbr 1998, 2004; 21 | gateways | ochocka & janzen janzen et al. 2012). the four phases include: (1) laying the foundations; (2) research planning; (3) information gathering and analysis; and (4) acting on findings. each phase involves a number of steps that are not necessarily implemented in linear order. these steps happen rapidly and iteratively but sometimes can involve a longer term process (see figure 1). the four phases emphasise not only traditional technical elements associated with research rigour, but also foreground the relational aspects of collaborative research. they do so because of a belief that a collaborative process of inquiry, the engagement of all involved, is as important as the outcomes or findings of the research (janzen et al. 2012; reason 2006). this relational component is critical to all four phases of the research (see figure 1). case examples below we describe three research projects conducted at ccbr as case examples which emphasise the three hallmarks of cbr (i.e. community relevance, equitable participation, and action and change). each of the case studies also demonstrate the three functions of cbr and the collaborative process of conducting research that is both technical and relational. we believe that combining practical illustrations with theory brings fuller life and conceptual clarity to understanding cbr. diversity and mental health: pursuing research that is community relevant the taking culture seriously in community mental health research study began with a research topic of practical relevance to the community. a number of ethno-cultural groups, with whom ccbr had conducted research previously, expressed to us their concerns about mental health struggles experienced within their figure 1: the four phases of community based research. adapted from ccbr 1998, 2004. 22 | gateways | ochocka & janzen communities. the research literature also provided evidence that western-trained service providers and program planners often do not understand the culturally specific meanings and customs attached to mental health and mental illness (james & prilleltensky 2003). as a result, many cultural groups lack access to appropriate mental health services (beiser 2003) or receive inadequate diagnosis and treatment (al-krenawi & graham 2003). no previous studies had comprehensively examined culturally diverse meanings, early identification of mental health issues in marginalised cultural groups and the best practices for culturally inclusive services and supports within the mental health field. the purpose of the study was to explore, develop, pilot and evaluate how best to provide more effective community-based mental health services for canada’s culturally diverse population. the project, a five-year sshrc-funded community university research alliance (cura), was housed and directed at the centre for community based research. it was a collaboration among 45 partners from the waterloo and toronto regions in ontario, including interdisciplinary academics, ethno-cultural community groups and leading practitioners (from mental health and settlement sectors). from 2005 to 2010, the project was carried out in three phases: (1) exploring diverse conceptualisations of mental health problems and practices through primary data collection; (2) developing culturally effective demonstration projects through collaborative proposal development with partners and community members; and (3) evaluating demonstration project development and implementation. within the first phase, five methods were used (international literature review, key informant interviews, focus groups, service provider surveys and case studies) to gather data from over 300 individuals in multiple languages. analysis of this data resulted in the development of a theoretical framework for improving mental health services for cultural communities. in the second phase, this framework was the basis for developing innovative demonstration project ideas intended to address many of the challenges and issues identified by participating communities and practitioners. in total, 12 demonstration project proposals were submitted to funders, with 6 successful in securing external funding beyond the study. some projects were initiated by cultural communities, while others by settlement and mental health service organisations. all projects needed to demonstrate the reciprocal collaboration of cultural communities, practitioners and/or policy-makers. the third and final phase included a second round of data collection, focusing on evaluating the planning and implementation of these demonstration projects. five ethno-cultural communities were actively involved (somali, sikh-punjabi, polish, chinese, spanish latin american) in both the toronto and waterloo regions. a number of mechanisms were used to implement this community-based research including (a) collaborative entry involving ethno-racial 23 | gateways | ochocka & janzen communities in all phases of the research, including proposal development, data gathering/analysis, knowledge mobilisation and development of demonstration projects; (b) establishment of two steering committees which involved representatives from ethno-racial communities and other stakeholder groups meeting bi-monthly to guide all aspects of the study; (c) hiring, training and co-researching with 10 community researchers who were key ambassadors of the project within the participating communities; (d) a strong knowledge mobilisation component (bi-annual cura bulletins sent to over 300 researchers/practitioners/policy-makers, two professional theatre productions, a round table for policymakers, 10 community forums, 2 conferences, 14 peer-reviewed articles and over 40 conference presentations delivered nationally and internationally); and (e) 12 demonstration projects based on research findings (ochocka 2007; ochocka & janzen 2007). lessons learned about community relevance. this communityuniversity research initiative attempted to honour the ‘indigenous’ self-determination research tradition in being relevant to community members. the people most affected by the issue were facilitated to gain voice and choice that was expressed in their own terms. efforts were taken to meaningfully involve diverse communities and other stakeholders to produce new knowledge, to mobilise that knowledge, and in the process to collectively develop and implement new practice. an important lesson that we learned through this project was about the critical role of researchers as ‘research instruments’. community researchers hired in this project were selected by their respective ethno-cultural communities based on their abilities to mobilise communities for action. their research skills were secondary in the selection criteria, as the project provided them with solid research training and ongoing support both individually and as a group. these 10 people were the true ‘ambassadors’ of the project, able to quickly mobilise their respective communities during both research and action phases. all were trusted by their community, and all became recognised as mental health leaders within their community. ensuring relevance of the research was therefore facilitated by these community animators who were themselves active members of the participating communities. still, the process of promoting relevant and meaningful research participation was not easy. to begin with, the sensitive nature of the research topic (mental health) posed challenges. openly discussing mental health issues was not the norm for most participating communities – for some, the research project was their first attempt at broaching something that was described previously as being ‘taboo’. this fact made the initial engagement with all 10 ethno-cultural communities challenging. research entry took time, with a process for securing entry needing to be tailored to each of the participating communities and focused on building trust. the expectations of what the project could accomplish for the various communities varied a great deal. for example, some ethno-cultural communities wanted to have a 24 | gateways | ochocka & janzen safe space to talk about mental health problems, some wanted to see new practice emerging, while others were expecting concrete outcomes such as securing ongoing funding for their own community-led organisations. we were careful not to raise unrealistic expectations. rather, our approach was to issue an invitation to explore together, with the strength of many, the possibilities of re-creating a more responsive mental health system. (one community did in fact realise their wish and now receive substantial annual funding to run their own mental health organisation). the complexity of the partnership, with ethno-cultural communities intentionally selected to represent diverse world regions, also made community relevance challenging. for example, research instruments and written materials needed to be translated and focus groups and feedback forums were conducted in different languages and in culturally appropriate ways. and the demonstration projects needed to resonate with a range of culturally and racially appropriate understandings of mental health. in short, the time and resources available to ensure relevant research and meaningful community processes were tight. we took as a key indicator of relevance the desire expressed by community members at the end of the project to continue our collaboration (which posed its own set of challenges related to disengagement). beyond ethno-cultural community members, other stakeholders also had expectations of what would make the research relevant. service providers wanted to gain specific knowledge and skills to be able to better respond to ethnocultural communities. academics wanted to develop papers and presentations. everyone wanted to see influence on mental health public policy. it was in this latter area (of public policy) that the research partnership was the most limited. while the project was able to develop new practice (six demonstration projects), the majority of these were not sustained over time (one did receive annual funding and a few others secured additional patchwork funding for a while). in short, most pilot projects were not integrated into the existing mental health system, despite participants hosting a well-attended policy roundtable and regularly informing a large number of policy-makers, policy analysts, funders and politicians about the study’s progress and findings. clearly, policy engagement was not at the level needed for funders and policy-makers to enact necessary changes within their sphere of influence. evaluation of ontario’s consumer/survivor initiatives: equitable participation for social justice ccbr conducted a seven-year study funded by the ontario mental health foundation and canadian institute of health research in which we evaluated the processes and outcomes of consumer/survivor initiatives (csis). csis are organisations for people and run by people who struggle with their mental 25 | gateways | ochocka & janzen health. this evaluation was part of a larger community mental health evaluation initiative, the first ever multi-site assessment of community mental health programs in ontario. in the case of csis, the focus was on mutual aid/self-help as one component of the broader mental health system. the evaluation was longitudinal. we used a quasiexperimental design to examine the impacts of participation in csis on individual members and a comparison group of nonmembers at 9, 18 and 36-month follow-up intervals. in addition to quantitative outcome measures, qualitative data were gathered to provide more in-depth insights into the experiences of csi members in the context of csis. we also collected data on systemlevel change activities in which the csis were engaged through the use of a quantitative tracking tool. the overall design and findings of the study are reported elsewhere (nelson et al. 2006, 2007). the study used a number of mechanisms that engaged all participants and participating organisations: (a) the involvement of csi members in developing the study proposal and in selecting the study sites; (b) the hiring, training and supporting of consumers as co-researchers; (c) the use of a steering committee (including representatives from each of the participating csis, the ontario peer development initiative (opdi) – the provincial umbrella group of csis, and researchers), which met bi-monthly to guide all aspects of the study; and (d) ongoing feedback and dissemination of study findings in both popular (e.g. news bulletins, forums, videos, workshops) and professional formats (e.g. journal articles, chapters in books) (nelson et al. 2005). lessons learned about equitable participation. this research study was an example of the ‘southern’ participatory research tradition in linking research and education in the collective pursuit of social justice. from inception, the project was explicit in its agenda of advocating for consumer-run, self-help supports to be a recognised part of the mental health system with its fair share of funding. at the project level, consumers/survivors had control of the research agenda in proposal development, in participating and leading the steering committee, and in conducting research. financial resources went directly to consumers/survivors and their organisations. the project legacy included: (a) qualitative and quantitative data for policy advocacy; (b) a dvd chronicling the csi movement and evaluation; and (c) ccbr’s helmut braun memorial scholarship for post-secondary students who are pursuing social justice studies and in need of financial assistance (www.communitybasedresearch.ca/page/view/yearly_scholarship_ award.html). as researchers, we learned a lot about what equitable participation means when researching with consumers/ survivors. we had many opportunities to co-learn and co-create knowledge, and co-evolve cbr theory and practice. we became very self-reflective of our privileges, and learned to listen and be humble when consumers/survivors said ‘it does not make http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/page/view/yearly_scholarship_award.html http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/page/view/yearly_scholarship_award.html 26 | gateways | ochocka & janzen sense’ and always to have a back-up plan for activities in case people were experiencing struggles. this project had an ‘edge’, with tough issues on the table both with the steering committee and within the research team. there were differences of opinion and disagreements among partners, which were often related to personal or interpersonal struggles or competing visions of the tactics or strategies that were needed. we often felt the frustrations of our partners when they were confronting barriers and difficulties in making a real change to our mental health system. but we learned that these kinds of challenges should be seen as healthy and forceful motivators for change and advocacy. lessons were also learned about the depth of responsibility researchers have when vulnerable populations agree to participate in research. we did manage to earn people’s trust to the extent that many consumers/survivors participating in the research believed that we had their best interests in mind. however, once the relationships began to develop, some individuals shared painful experiences that were personally disturbing to us. some needed considerable support and others had life limitations on performing their research tasks. on the tragic death of one of the community researchers, we needed to take extraordinary measures to ensure continued support among research partners, whether they were co-researchers, steering committee members or participants in the research. this included trips to the hospital, organising the funeral and supporting others (and ourselves) through the grief. as researchers, we needed to dig deep to deliver on creating a supportive environment for all. we also experienced challenges in mobilising communities beyond the four participating csis. the project organised a ‘presentation tour’ to share research findings with csis across ontario and produced a video featuring many csis. both initiatives were very successful. however, the larger sociopolitical context played a role in limiting true systemic impact. the csis had been facing tough times, with limited funding increases from ontario mental health and long term care (omhltc). some csis had become subsumed by larger non-consumer-run mental health organisations. our engagement with these broader policy-makers and community mental health agencies was limited. perhaps if we had had a subsequent project that focused more intently on knowledge transfer and broader stakeholder engagement, we might have witnessed more lasting impact. a waterloo region response to immigrant employment: an action-oriented series of projects between 2002 and 2011, ccbr undertook a series of five action research projects to address immigrant employment and underemployment within waterloo, ontario. each project engaged many stakeholders to plan, act and reflect together. at the end of each project, the next set of actions was determined collectively by those involved in the previous projects. 27 | gateways | ochocka & janzen in total, 350 people participated from six different stakeholder groups: immigrants, employers/business, government, academic institutions, community-based organisations and non-governmental funders. the projects were funded by over 20 multi-stakeholder groups. ccbr provided leadership and project coordination for the first three projects (janzen, hatzipantelis & hogarth 2005). the fourth and fifth projects were led by the greater kitchener-waterloo chamber of commerce and the regional government, while research played a background role in conducting evaluation and community facilitation (dildar & janzen 2009; janzen & dildar 2008). the first project, entitled ‘voices for change’, involved consciousness-raising action research. this project highlighted the underutilisation of immigrant skills as a community-wide concern (not simply an immigrant special interest concern) by stimulating broad-based engagement. evidence of immigrants’ lack of employment and underemployment received media attention, with local dignitaries signing ‘calls for change’ directed at senior levels of government, employers and regulatory bodies. the second project focused on collaboratively determining the local response to immigrant employment through an immigrant skills summit. a series of cross-stakeholder pre-summit focus groups identified actions for local stakeholders. this needs assessment/community action planning project concluded with the summit (attended by over 100 key community leaders) that called for establishment of wrien (waterloo region immigrant employment network). the third project focused on a detailed vision for wrien and on negotiations regarding its new collaborative structure. the fourth project was led by the local chamber of commerce and was designed to implement wrien’s initial three-year mandate, with evaluation research ensuring that stakeholders continued to have a say in directing this comprehensive community initiative (see janzen et al. 2012). the fifth and final project, ‘immigration partnership: settling, working, belonging’, expanded the focus beyond employment to address other issues of settlement and belonging. this project also involved a number of community consultations facilitated by ccbr, under the leadership of the local regional government and a cross-stakeholder steering group (ccbr 2010; janzen, walton-roberts & ochocka 2012). lessons learned about action and change. this series of projects honoured the ‘northern’ action research tradition with a loop of ongoing cycles of planning, acting and reflecting (each project represented a complete cycle of all four cbr phases outlined in figure 1). there was no master plan for these five projects. rather, at the end of each project, stakeholders reflected on the project and planned what should happen next, creating and pursuing a new future together through research. the result was the development and maintenance of a new comprehensive community initiative (wrien and the immigration partnership), which at the time had no model to draw on within mid-sized canadian cities (janzen, walton-roberts, ochocka 2012). 28 | gateways | ochocka & janzen this lack of long-term ‘strategic planning’ proved to be a strength. the establishment of wrien and the immigration partnership as a concrete new structure occurred because its development was staged in a way that maximised stakeholder engagement one step at a time. each step built on the previous step’s successes and accomplishments. true, the context was important in creating conditions favourable to innovation (waterloo region prides itself on being a community that embraces innovation and collaborative ‘barn raising’, and by the fifth phase the federal government had provided a significant amount of funding). yet equally important was that this series of cbr projects stimulated reflective action amongst diverse people and inspired creative solutions incrementally and in a sustained way. another lesson related to the changing leadership of the reflective action. across the progressive project cycles, the primary leadership moved from a non-profit research organisation (ccbr) to an organisation representing the private sector (a local chamber of commerce) to eventual rest within a local regional government. with each change of leadership came a widening set of partners to implement new action and change. other groups also played leadership roles within their respective sectors. for example, the many funding bodies provided their own type of leadership. their involvement not only provided much needed financial resources (particularly in cycles one to three when no resources were available from senior levels of government), but also proved invaluable in engaging their respective constituents to join the collective action. and where were the researchers in terms of leadership? ‘it depends’ is the answer. the role of researcher came to the foreground when it was needed and requested. this happened early on in cycles one and two when research stimulated the initial engagement. researchers then receded to the background when other leadership made the desired action and change more likely. while the nature of the successive projects was not scripted but negotiated overtime, so too was the leadership. the rationale for leadership rested on which party was deemed most likely to move research into action at a particular time. not surprisingly, the biggest challenge related to working across sectors. the ‘culture clash’ between the non-profit and private sectors was most pronounced. each had their own understanding of why this topic was important and what the ‘rules of collaboration’ should look like. for example, private sector participants generally valued brief early morning meetings that focused on rational decision-making and stressed the economic benefits of immigrant integration. in contrast, nonprofit representatives tended to favour longer midday meetings that encouraged people to articulate why a particular topic was important and stressed immigrant integration as a social justice concern. researchers needed to facilitate diverse stakeholders to develop a common vision for collective action, despite their differences in motivation and process style. the result was that this 29 | gateways | ochocka & janzen series of initiatives mobilised diverse stakeholders to work together to find new ways around a common concern (janzen et al. 2012; ochocka et al. 2010). conclusion community-based research can be explained in different ways: what it is (hallmarks), why to do it (functions) and how to do it (phases). understanding these three qualities is helpful when designing and implementing new studies. cbr can also be understood through the practice of lived experiences of researchers, participants, stakeholders and other groups involved. while theory provides explanations and concepts by which to understand what cbr is all about, practice provides concrete ideas of what it means to implement these theoretical concepts and how to deal with the messiness and challenges that sometimes emerge through cbr. the three case studies presented demonstrate both the complexity and usefulness of cbr. all three research initiatives used a participatory approach to engage various stakeholders for action. they inspired and equipped people for change and produced innovative practices due to collaborative knowledge production and knowledge mobilisation efforts. however, they also highlighted the challenge of moving beyond engagement to create social change that influences existing systems. in particular, the cbr case examples illuminate four main insights on the nature of cbr. our hope is that these practice-based insights will breathe additional life into cbr theory. the first insight relates to the apparent tension between academic excellence (the technical aspects of research) and community relevance (the relational aspects of research). it is tempting to articulate this tension as a zero sum balancing act where the upholding of one is done at the expense of the other. in other words, pursuing the rigour and standards of research quality is done to the detriment of meaningfully engaging people, and vice versa. we found, however, that effective cbr can pursue both excellence and relevance, and aspire to do so with each in full measure (recognising that this ideal is not always achieved). the key to fully embracing both excellence and relevance lay in recognising and utilising the skills and expertise of all research partners. in each of the case studies, the wherewithal to conduct excellent research that was relevant was present in the collective. shifting leadership to the most knowledgeable partners, whether for the technical or relational aspects of research, brought the required expertise to the fore. in addition, the mutual mentoring and supporting of research partners in the various research tasks also enabled the research partnerships to simultaneously pursue both qualities. the second insight relates to engagement. community engagement within research seems to be directly linked to the deeper values and assumptions about the nature of research. engagement is more likely to happen when community members 30 | gateways | ochocka & janzen and other stakeholders witness that researchers view the research project as supporting a strategic social movement – a movement with the goals of facilitating sociopolitical awareness and systemic change. creating and maintaining this intellectual and safe ‘research space’ where people can gather, conduct high-quality research, learn from each other and advocate for social change is an important facilitating factor for successful cbr. at the heart of cbr is the desire for action and positive social change. yet cbr projects are conducted within the confines of a broader sociopolitical context. this context plays a critical role in the implementation and ultimate impact of any research study. the case studies demonstrate that it is truly difficult for a single research project (even one that is multi-year and multi-partner) to influence existing socioeconomic systems and to create substantive change. the third insight therefore relates to longevity and reach. impactful cbr is more likely within a sustained research agenda that exists over time. it is also more likely if knowledge and community mobilisation efforts involve a wide range of stakeholders, as well as policy-makers. obviously, human and funding resources are needed to build such a prolonged and involved research agenda. but as the wrien case example demonstrates, repeated and sustained cycles of cbr are more likely to maximise the potential to facilitate concrete changes in existing systems. the final insight relates to cbr researchers themselves. cbr researchers are the key to successful cbr projects through their competencies in ethics, through their skills in navigating and facilitating complex partnerships and through having both relational and technical research integrity. while understanding the ‘researcher as instrument’ is nothing new, what the case studies reveal is that this truism extends beyond data gathering. indeed, cbr researchers can be seen as the catalysts that link and enliven the three hallmarks, three functions and four phases of community-based research. references al-krenawi, a & graham, j 2003, multicultural social work in canada: working with diverse ethno-racial communities, oxford university press, oxford, uk. beiser, m 2003, ‘why should researchers care about culture?’, canadian journal of psychiatry, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 154–60. cargo m & mercer s 2008, ‘the value and challenges of participatory research: strengthening its practice’, the annual review of public health, vol. 29, pp. 325–50. centre for community based research (ccbr) (formerly centre for research and education in human services) 1998, evaluation handbook, by a taylor, j botschner & o kitchener. centre for community based research (ccbr) (formerly centre for research and education in human services) 2004, good practice and resource guide: community needs assessments and service evaluations 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(eds), researching with communities: grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research, mud creek press, waitakere city, new zealand, pp. 323–37. 33 | gateways | ochocka & janzen ochocka, j, moorlag, e & janzen, r 2010, ‘a framework for entry: par values and engagement strategies in community research’, gateways: international journal of community research & engagement, vol. 3, pp. 1–19. reason, p 2006, ‘choice and quality in action research practice’, journal of management inquiry, vol. 151, no. 2, pp. 187–203. small, s & uttal, l 2005, ‘action-oriented research: strategies for engaged scholarship’, journal of marriage and family, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 936–48. smith, l 2012, decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples, 2nd edn, zed books, london. stoecker, r 2005, research methods for community change: a project-based approach, sage publications, thousand oaks, ca. wallerstein, m & duran, b 2003, ‘the conceptual, historical, and practice roots of community based participatory research and related participatory traditions’, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), communitybased participatory research for health, john wiley & sons inc., san francisco, ca, pp. 25–46. wilson, s 2008, research is ceremony: indigenous research methods, fernwood publishing, black point, ns, canada. _goback a robust university-ngo partnership analysing school efficiencies in bolivia with community-based management techniques community-based research (cbr), also referred to as communityengaged scholarship, has become an integral part of academic pursuits in the business and management sectors as business scholars focus on ‘doing good’ and as the need for managerial techniques become increasingly recognised by not-for-profit organisations as necessary for organisational economic sustainability. the research literature on management for social responsibility provides many examples of managerial applications helping communities reach higher levels of sustainability, several of which this article makes reference to. most of these articles focus primarily on the content of the research, that is, the benefits provided by the particular managerial technique to address a specific problem. just as important as the content of the research is the process through which it is conducted because of the desirability to maximise community participation, tap community-based knowledge sources, use the research process as a conduit for community member empowerment, ensure that benefits from the research will be long-lasting and, perhaps most importantly, to offer the community the means to continue the initiative(s) after the academics are long gone. the objective of the research described in this article was to examine resource-utilisation efficiencies in a network of primary and secondary schools operated by fe y alegría: bolivia (fya:b) in low-income communities. the research project proposed to achieve this through application of a time-tested managerial quantitative technique, data envelopment analysis, the results of which were included in an article by neiva de figueiredo and marca barrientos (2012). this article complements that publication and has two main objectives. the first is to critically examine whether and how well descriptive managerial quantitative research techniques enable community-engaged knowledge development taking one case study as an example. the second is to document the importance of a strong university-non-government organisation (ngo) partnership for meaningful community-based management research. thus, the article is an inquiry into factors affecting positive application of descriptive managerial quantitative research techniques within gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 93–112 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 joão neiva de figueiredo ann marie jursca keffer saint joseph’s university miguel angel marca barrientos silvia gonzalez camacho fe y alegría: bolivia 94 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez the cbr context in a cross-cultural setting, with emphasis on the importance of the institutional partnership. because the broad research project is still ongoing, the article’s objective is to offer a structured description of the partnership’s development and the research process to date, and to reflect on what seems to be working well and what can be improved. fe y alegría (fya) is a not-for-profit ngo operating over one thousand schools for the very poor in various countries, mostly in latin america. in bolivia, this organisation has been active since 1966 and now operates over four hundred schools in very diverse regions of the country. fya:b national and departmental offices keep annually updated information on all schools managed by the organisation in bolivia, which allowed for the development of a detailed database covering all schools in the network. this, in turn, led to a need for techniques that would help synthesise this quantitative data and also compare it with qualitative indicators. among other objectives, fya:b’s national and departmental offices hoped such an effort would help identify schools which were making best use of extremely scarce resources and eventually allow for the identification and later dissemination of best practices among all schools in bolivia. the research project had several unique characteristics. first, the academic researchers and the communities were of completely different cultural environments. second, there were essentially three categories of participants in the research: academic researchers; fya:b national and departmental offices; and their community schools. third, because fya:b wanted an objective and reliable way to interpret information gathered, the research involved using quantitative managerial efficiency evaluation techniques to complement field observations. the nature of the research effort was eminently descriptive in the sense that it sought to provide insights into school efficiencies through quantitative methods in addition to qualitative observations undertaken on the ground. fourth, the objective was to enable fya:b to eventually proceed with research on their own, that is, with academic support only on an as-needed basis, particularly important because of the geographic distance between the communities served in bolivia and the us-based academic institution, saint joseph’s university (sju). fifth, the research benefited from an institutional partnership between sju and fya:b which already had been in place for several years. sixth, as described below, empowerment of the individuals served by the schools (the low-income communities themselves) was just as important as empowerment of fya:b, and indeed was one of fya:b’s stated objectives – as a result, there were sometimes several layers of cultural sensitivities to be recognised. seventh, there were differences in modus operandi between fya:b and sju, and it was necessary to develop a set of attainable goals and a flexible timeline, including periodic reassessments, in order to maximise the benefits to the communities served by the schools – the ultimate objective of the research. 95 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez we believe this article, which is jointly authored by members of fya:b and sju, offers several contributions to the literature on the process of community-engaged scholarship. perhaps the most important contribution is the account itself, with its examination of the strengths and limitations in applying a specific set of management research tools, namely descriptive quantitative techniques, within cbr frameworks. second, this article seeks to contribute to the literature on partnerships between universities and community-based organisations, especially to the understanding of factors contributing to the sustainability of such joint efforts. a third contribution is to make explicit one example of an area in which management research can contribute greatly to community wellbeing, namely the area of primary and secondary education for low-income communities in a developing country. fourth, the article includes a listing of features which helped set up this cbr project, which may be useful for other communityengaged management research initiatives. the context: bolivia, fe y alegría, and the research project education in bolivia bolivia is a landlocked developing country in south america with a population of 10.2 million (2012 estimate) and an area of roughly 1.1 million km2 (larger than spain, portugal, italy and greece combined). according to the world bank, bolivia has the lowest per capita income level among iberian-colonised countries in south america. the main economic activities are mineral extraction, agriculture and services – bolivia exports commodities, including natural gas, crude oil, soybeans and soy products, and tin. bolivia’s income inequality remains the highest in latin america despite recent efforts to reverse this trend: the country’s gini index for distribution of family income is estimated at 53, fourteenth in the world (cia world factbook 2012). furthermore, at 0.675, bolivia’s human development index (2012) is among the lowest in south america. bolivia is the latin american country with the highest percentage of inhabitants with indigenous ethnicity (roughly 55 per cent, excluding mixed white and amerindian – mestizos). the most spoken languages are spanish, quéchua and aymara – with 60 per cent, 21 per cent and 15 per cent of inhabitants respectively identifying each as their first language (cia world factbook 2012). these indigenous cultures have centuries-old traditions as bolivia was home to several pre-columbian civilisations, most notably the tiwanaku and the incas. with the discovery of the new world, bolivia’s original inhabitants saw the richness of their land almost exclusively benefit the spanish conquerors. bolivia declared independence from spain in 1825, initiating a turbulent republican period, with almost 200 coup d’états at an average of over one per year (cia world factbook 2012). in december 2005, the country elected its first ever indigenous president, evo morales, 96 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez who had run on a platform based on empowering the native population (mesa, gisbert & mesa gisbert 2008). in december 2009, he was re-elected with 60 per cent of the vote. bolivia is a young country with a median age of 22 and a literacy rate of 87 per cent. pre-university-level education in bolivia includes two cycles, with the primary cycle comprising the eight years of elementary and middle school (ages 6 to 13), and the secondary cycle including the four years of high school (ages 14 to 17). education is required by law for children under 14. according to the bolivian ministry of education, roughly 50 per cent of children under 18 attend school exclusively, with almost 20 per cent combining schooling with herding and almost 10 per cent combining schooling with agriculture. despite progress in recent years, educational opportunities are very uneven, with female, indigenous and rural populations less likely to be literate and to complete basic schooling (cia world factbook 2012). in addition, the bolivian geography is very diverse with three categories of regions of comparable size and of very different climates, characteristics and ecosystems (the highlands, the valleys, and the lowlands). the various ethnicities comprising inhabitants of each of these regions have very diverse cultures due to many factors, including the vast geographic differences. this magnifies the importance of education to maximise opportunities, while at the same time valuing each individual’s cultural heritage. although recent public initiatives have done much to improve education in bolivia, it still lags behind other south american countries in most pedagogical metrics. fe y alegría fe y alegría (fya, ‘faith and joy’) is a jesuit-sponsored not-forprofit organisation focusing on education and development of the ‘poorest of the poor’ in 19 countries (mostly in latin america but also including spain and chad). in 2011 the organisation managed over 1200 schools and 2500 educational support service centres, reaching over one million students through formal education, special education, community development and other initiatives. the popular saying is that fya’s work begins ‘where the pavement ends, where there is no running water, where the city loses its name’. fya was founded in 1955 and grew during its early years in caracas and later maracaibo, venezuela. the original vision (which remains to this day) was to develop a network of elementary and secondary schools predicated on the belief that education can be a transformative force through cura personalis (care for the individual) to help rescue the excluded from ignorance, poverty and subjection. fya has developed a unique approach to providing the managerial, administrative, pedagogical and developmental expertise for in-network schools, acting in each country through a small staff which leverages capabilities and resources across schools in each domestic network to train and develop faculty members, work with individual school personnel to establish and reach aggressive goals, 97 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez identify and develop best practices, and to ensure that these best practices are disseminated. in over 55 years, fya has expanded persistently. by 1971 the organisation was present in all northern andean countries, and it is now present in all of latin south america with several categories of programs, including formal schooling, special education, distance and radio learning, technical education, adult education, teacher training, and community services (fe y alegría 2013). as is true in other countries, since its inception in bolivia in 1966, fya’s work has been directed to the most impoverished with the objectives of empowering them in their personal development and encouraging their participation in society. fya:b operates in a decentralised structure with departmental (provincial) directors who provide local support and a central office that coordinates activities nationwide. in 2012 fya:b was present in every bolivian department or province, operating over 400 schools with over 7500 teachers and 200 000 students. fya:b is now an integral part of the country’s educational system, offering a wide range of educational services. the largest area is ‘formal education’, which manages a network of elementary and secondary schools ensuring community participation, including classes in the quéchua and aymara indigenous languages. other services provided include special education for students with disabilities, secondary professional technical education, boarding schools for students in rural areas who live too far away to go to school from home every day, called wisdom houses (casas del saber in spanish or yachay wasis in quéchua), distance education through radio and also a large menu of community service activities (fe y alegría: bolivia 2013). recently, over 80 per cent of the funding has come from the bolivian government, slightly over 10 per cent from donations and less than 5 per cent from revenue-generating initiatives. the research project because bolivia is so resource constrained and because fya:b operates in locations of extreme poverty, the organisation has worked hard to stretch funding sources, and an ever-present objective has been to raise network schools’ efficiency levels. this has been achieved in many ways, including efforts to involve the school communities and use of novel pedagogical techniques. effective resource utilisation is of paramount importance to fya:b, so the request to rationalise and interpret data to verify individual school efficiencies was an opportunity to help the organisation and the communities it serves while also contributing to the academic literature on primary and secondary education management. at the same time, there was the opportunity to undertake a valuable example of community-based research, at least at two levels. the first was the level of the inquiry, that is, the request from fya:b for help in synthesising the findings from the extensive surveys schools fill out every year in a descriptive research effort using a quantitative methodology to better understand resource utilisation. the second was the level of the local communities, that is, to 98 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez verify whether findings from the quantitative methodology were borne out by qualitative observations on the ground, and once opportunities to disseminate best practices were identified, to do so with the involvement of teachers and families in the localities. the measurement of relative school efficiencies in bolivia through quantitative managerial techniques helped the organisation identify and assess best practices among schools in the network and allowed for an objective comparison of fya:boperated schools with those not run by fya:b. the descriptive quantitative technique used to determine school efficiencies was data envelopment analysis (dea), which has been used extensively in social settings including education applications (see cooper, seiford & tone 2007 for a detailed introduction to dea). schools within the fya:b network were indeed found to be more efficient than non-network schools. furthermore, the technique allowed for the identification of highly efficient network schools, leading to further inquiries and identification of best practices (for a complete description of the content and results of this research, see neiva de figueiredo & marca barrientos 2012). community-based research in this article the expression ‘cbr’ is used in the sense articulated by strand et al. (2003), who suggested a model based on three principles. the first proposes that cbr should be a collaborative effort between academia and community members. the second is that cbr should promote and validate various sources of knowledge and methods of discovery. the third principle is that cbr should have the specific goal of achieving social change to foster social justice. the remainder of this article follows a similar structure in that, after this section on cbr, it first examines the partnership, then the process of joint knowledge creation, and finally the strengths and limitations of the use of descriptive managerial quantitative techniques to achieve social impact. since 2008, this research has been a collaborative effort between academia (sju), fya:b, and the communities it serves through education. secondly, the research promoted and validated alternative sources of knowledge and methods of discovery implicitly and explicitly. explicitly it did so in several ways such as the joint selection of variables to be included in the school surveys and the institution of open feedback mechanisms. implicitly it did so throughout the whole research effort by adopting an open, receptive stance and a pace set by fya:b, not by the academics involved. lastly, the research had, and has, the specific goal of achieving social change to advance social justice, in that it has helped fya:b and the local communities it serves by increasing their understanding of school efficiencies, thereby leading to fairer available resource utilisation. in recent years the extensive literature on partnerships for community-engaged research has benefited from a lively debate on how to put ethically sound prescriptive visions of universitycommunity engagement, such as that proposed by garlick and 99 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez palmer (2008), into practice. as netshandama (2010, p. 72) articulately put it, ‘… there is a tendency in academia … to use the idea of engagement as an “aerosol” term sprayed over any interaction between a higher education institution (hei) and the community to give the relationship a politically correct facelift’. onyx (2008) specifically defined engagement as a partnership between the university and civil society to co-produce knowledge. civil society, according to onyx, includes, among others, the non-profit sector and ngos such as fe y alegría, as well as the communities themselves. the university may or may not have the initiative in a joint effort to create knowledge and may or may not have a leadership role, acting as mediator, synthesiser or facilitator as the case may be; in the author’s words ‘… the creation of social capital is normally based on collaborative networks among equals’ (onyx 2008, p. 103). boyer (1996) urged academia to become a more ‘vigorous’ partner in addressing social, moral and other problems. silka et al. (2008) provided a thoughtful examination of factors that can help sustain healthy universitycommunity partnerships in the face of the inevitable changes and transitions institutions face. shea (2011) listed several factors affecting the sustainability of such partnerships and enumerated threats to each factor. implicit in strand et al.’s (2003) second and third principles is the desire for academic community involvement with practical objectives, which may include the joint discovery of new ways to apply knowledge, as articulated by boyer (1990). for boyer, scholarship should mean not only the traditional notion of research in pursuit of new knowledge, but also integration of knowledge – indeed, he argued that scholarship of application was in many ways better suited to deal with societal problems. as dewey (1938) had pointed out, the creation of knowledge should be linked with social experience and reality rather than isolated from action. the examination of school efficiencies in conditions of extremely scarce resources in a way that, through fya:b and community representatives, takes into account unique characteristics of the communities served by the schools and produces information that leads to school management action is indeed an example of scholarship of application using integration of knowledge to improve social conditions. such joint creation of knowledge has been exemplified in the literature in several areas of academycommunity collaboration and in different cultural settings. also important as a foundation for the research described in this article is the literature on indigenous communities (as indigenous ethnicities comprise the majority of bolivia’s population) and, more specifically, the literature on education in the context of cultural diversity. kovach (2009) linked epistemology with research methodology to underscore indigenous ways of learning and ways of knowing that are different from academic tradition. she pointed out the importance of research methods that allow for ‘indigenous knowledges’ to be expressed. 100 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez other indigenous scholars have written about culturally unique ways of creating and transmitting knowledge, for example, bishop (1998, 2005) on the māori approach and swadener and mutua (2008) on the benefits of ‘decolonizing’ research. cbr validates and builds upon local cultural norms, as exemplified by park (1992) on the advisability of following local cultural norms together with or, sometimes, in opposition to conventional research methods. when gathering data on nutrition and unemployment in tanzania, he found that q&a rigidity in instrument construction deriving from the need for replicability was less effective in obtaining the necessary information than relying on communal knowledgesharing customs typical of the local culture. several models of cbr evolved within the context of education, such as the seminal work by freire (1970), who linked education to the validation of one’s cultural roots and the pursuit of social change, objectives to be reached through action, including both community and researcher participation. kincheloe and steinberg (2008) pointed out the transformation potential and the environmental preservation essence of indigenous knowledge and extolled the benefits of multiple research and pedagogical perspectives. they further noted the need to ‘… sidestep the traps that transform their [the western scholars’] attempts at facilitation into further marginalization’ (p. 141) and stressed the importance of using education and local knowledge for social change that ensures indigenous needs and interests are fulfilled. fya’s education work empowers the individual within his or her own cultural context as a means to achieve social inclusion and pursue social justice; therefore, although the management research project itself was quantitative and descriptive, we would argue that its end-result and impact stand the scrutiny of indigenous methodological examination. although most cbr research has fallen under the sociology, public health, anthropology and sustainability disciplines, there have been instances of management cbr that have had an impact. recent examples of management application research focused on the marginalised include cumbie and sankar (2010), who used a community perspective to develop disaster-related preventive guidelines and measures involving stakeholder needs in stricken areas; scarincini et al. (2009), who adopted a community-based participatory research methodology to develop an evaluation framework to reduce the disparity of cancer incidence between different ethnicities in southern us states (an example of community-based research in public health-care initiatives); mihelcic, zimmerman and ramaswami (2007), who provided several examples in which indigenous knowledge and skills in managing and disseminating water and energy sustainability practices in sub-saharan africa proved to be just as important as, if not more relevant than, imported methods; and parras (2001), who showed that a co-management approach including all stakeholders was necessary to reduce destruction of 101 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez coastal resources in the visayan islands of the philippines. these are just a few examples from the managerial academic literature describing community-based research initiatives. this article offers yet another example of the type of contribution that management research can offer to marginalised communities. developing a trust-based partnership the partnership between fya:b and sju began over 10 years ago through the facilitation of an agreement between the jesuit provinces of maryland and bolivia to collaborate and share resources. the sju–fya:b research initiative on school efficiencies therefore was not created from zero. in 2001, sju staff conducted two exploratory visits to bolivia. at the conclusion of the second visit, while still in bolivia, an in-person meeting to establish the next steps occurred between one sju professional, the jesuit provincial for bolivia and the national director of fya:b. a threepronged initial approach for collaboration was identified for the path forward: (1) to explore the possibility of english language services for fya:b staff; (2) to organise a periodic sju faculty and staff immersion in bolivia; and (3) to explore possibilities of workshops by sju faculty for fya:b. this meeting served as the basis for the partnership process, including collaboration driven by a common mission, open communication using culturally competent listening skills, and mutual respect through viewing the counterparty as the expert in their own respective professional and cultural context. both organisations shared grounding in jesuit education precepts, which offered a baseline shared vision of working towards a more socially just world where the needs of the marginalised were addressed through education. moreover, this common vision included essential ideals of collaboration, such as reciprocity and focus on relationship-building, implying the need for each party to get to know the other: the more each institution understood the other’s work, the higher the likelihood of an organic evolution of projects within the partnership. relationship-building steps the vast differences between bolivian and us cultures were acknowledged early on, so the initial objective in attempting to collaborate was to build trust, which was achieved through the series of relationship-building steps described below. 1 effective communication through active listening. it was essential that all voices be equal in dialogue. this required learning the nuances of each individual, dialectical language differences and distinct cultural customs. for example, the us culture oftentimes listens towards a task orientation. in the bolivian setting, it was desirable to respect the cultural imperative of open-ended listening – listening to deepen understanding and increase knowledge, in contrast to listening to determine impending action. furthermore, active listening is a way to reflect back ideas and clarify language usage – very important when all parties are using two languages, one of which is not a 102 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez native tongue. effective communication has improved over the time of the partnership, and with successful programming in response to each other’s expressed needs or desires, trust was built gradually. 2 a strengths-based approach. from the beginning, the partnership sought to recognise each institution’s strengths and to share expertise whenever possible, which contributed substantially to trust-building. for example, fya:b’s strengths as a pioneer in special education programs for the marginalised in bolivia was highlighted for sju immersion participants as a model program, while sju’s financial and networking resources across disciplines provided fertile ground for sharing of expertise. the early dialogue included the understanding that each party was the expert in their own context. fya:b professionals knew their network of schools and country best. the sju professional responsible for the partnership knew the context of us higher education, with its slowness to adapt to change, the academic demands on faculty and the existence of departmental resources available to sju professionals. as an example, this understanding was employed very practically in the planning process of the first immersion when, at fya:b’s request, sju selected two goals for the trip, goals which by design crossed over both institutions’ mission statements: (a) for participants to have an intentional experience, deepening their understanding of the needs of the marginalised in the developing world; and (b) for participants to deepen their understanding of the jesuit mission in the global context. the explicit identification of goals crossing both mission statements allowed for fya:b to showcase the many strengths of their organisation within a framework familiar to sju participants. 3 a deep respect for cultural characteristics. one of the great contributions to the process of building trust and rapport within the partnership was the gift of the bolivian culture to focus on the whole individual. thus, collaboration typically began with a check-in on staff member personal situations. weddings, births and deaths were all expressed and well wishes shared. furthermore, recognising that the partnership was far from the only occupational responsibility of fya:b and sju staff members, deadlines and schedules were informed by and sometimes changed because of other activities fundamental to the respective institutions. this flexibility in understanding as well as dedication to the partnership allowed for an open communication environment. significant milestones significant steps in deepening the partnership prior to the research described in this article occurred in the 2002–2003 academic year and in 2006. in 2002, the year in which the partnership was operationalised, the participants of the first sju faculty 103 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez and staff immersion program were selected. additionally, the national director of fya:b attended sju for a six-week language training session. room and board were provided by the jesuit community and tuition was covered by the university and english language services, while the national director provided his own transportation. then, in 2003, sju education department faculty presented workshops in bolivia for fya:b personnel. in the first year of partnership implementation, both parties planned and received a deliverable. while by no means did this establish the obligations of a reciprocal relationship, it was an investment of time, talent and financial resources by both parties. in 2006, the partnership took other steps towards reciprocity. while previously sju immersions had occurred annually, it was agreed that fya:b professionals would participate in an immersion trip to the us, the first such fya:b delegation to visit sju and an opportunity to enhance mutual benefit. goals defined by fya:b at the time included understanding the us educational context and the educational mission of the society of jesus in the us. similarly to the goal development of sju’s immersion, fya:b selected goals that crossed over the missions of both institutions and allowed for further integration. funding for this immersion was provided by sju and the society of jesus. additionally, an informal financial donation drive by sju immersion program past participants was formalised with the office of development and alumni relations. this partnership eventually allowed for sju employees to select payroll deduction as an option for donation and for all donations to be tax-deductible. also in 2006, the first student academic immersion began. students at sju enrolled in a full academic course in which they studied the bolivian context and participated in a week-long trip to the country over the spring break. with the inclusion of this student immersion, all sectors of the university were involved in the partnership: faculty, staff, administrators and students. fya:b also had a wide spectrum of involvement: us immersion visits were coordinated by the national office staff, 2006 immersion participants were selected from each department in bolivia and workshops provided by sju faculty were presented to staff across the country. after 2007, immersion trips became biannual events with an fya:b delegation visiting sju on odd-numbered years and an sju delegation visiting bolivia on even-numbered years. although there had been several faculty collaborations for the benefit of fya, a long-term research project had not yet been developed, which the authors attribute to several factors, among them geographic distance and language barriers. in 2008 the partnership took a further step towards augmented reciprocity. joint knowledge creation it was with the benefit of the relationship already developed that the seed for the descriptive management research project on school efficiencies in low-income communities was planted in 2008, leading to a process of joint knowledge creation. the research 104 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez project is descriptive because it seeks to understand observed school efficiency levels rather than identify possible ideal efficiency levels. due to the large number of schools and the consequent need to synthesise information to allow for a ‘first cut’ at understanding school efficiency levels, a quantitative managerial technique was desirable. two important consequences of creating an environment of joint knowledge creation were the need for extreme caution in analysing results and the need for extreme care in providing input data. any quantitative results on a given school (whether encouraging or discouraging) needed to be compared with qualitative information obtained on the ground from the school itself, with input from personnel very familiar with the particular situation. in addition, the raw information on schools needed to be reliable and accurate to avoid distortions. these two consequences inform the process of joint knowledge creation (in which sju, fya:b and community schools are joint agents in the research process), as evidenced in the description below of the project’s five phases. phase i: exploration (may 2008 to march 2009) it is apparent to anyone visiting fya:b-operated schools that resource utilisation is top of mind. there is no waste. children are engaged and show a unique desire to learn. teachers clearly are giving their all despite scant infrastructure (some schools unfortunately do not even have basic amenities). children clean classrooms at the end of the day. everyone takes care of materials and supplies. results are noteworthy as abandonment rates in fya:b schools have been very low. as had been the case with prior visitors, sju staff members walked away from the may 2008 immersion trip extremely impressed with the sheer magnitude of achievements under very difficult conditions. this led to a period in which sju researchers investigated fya:b methods and tried to understand what was unique about their approach. the immersion trip marked the beginning of the joint research project as it became apparent that, if the perceived superiority of fya:b schools could be quantified, this perhaps could be helpful in fya:b’s fundraising. data from the bolivian education ministry was obtained, which led to a search for an appropriate tool to compare school performances, and prototype runs confirmed that fya:b schools indeed seemed to operate at higher efficiency levels than non-network schools. in march 2009 these results were shared with fya:b, which showed strong interest in deepening the study to include comparisons of schools within the network as these could provide further insight on fya:b schools because of the vast amount of data the organisation had collected on its own schools. phase ii: feasibility (march 2009 to may 2010) given fya:b’s interest in pursuing a joint descriptive management research project, phase ii consisted of (a) fya:b making explicit certain requests and objectives regarding functionality of a quantitative tool for performance evaluation; (b) understanding the necessary conditions for success; and (c) building support in 105 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez both organisations (sju and fya:b) for proceeding. first, it was necessary to verify whether information was available and to select variables for analysis. during a trip to bolivia by sju in june 2009, fya:b confirmed interest, the necessary conditions for an ongoing project were established, and fya:b’s national office explicitly asked for a tool that would allow for comparing data collected across schools. several preliminary dea models were subsequently run with academic software to verify the appropriateness of the methodology and to incorporate fya:b’s research questions with those already being analysed: the stage was set for joint analysis of variables and procedures. lastly, the feasibility of fya:b using dea in a sustainable manner was verified. this period was one of project design and of exploring whether sju could provide support for use of dea, including necessary human resources. by early 2010 it was clear that the proposition was feasible, that is, the conditions for a successful joint project were deemed present and financial support for travel and local data analysis expenses was obtained from sju’s office of the mission. however, the most important condition, in the researcher’s opinion, was obtaining consensus at different levels of fya:b of the project’s usefulness. as mentioned above and described simplistically, fya:b’s structure includes three levels: the la paz national office, the provincial offices called oficinas departamentales, and the individual units where the teachers work. it was important that representatives from all three levels understood both the potential and the limitations of the descriptive research project. it was also important to have input and support from each of the three levels of fya:b. the main finding from this phase was the realisation that proceeding with the project was feasible and desirable from financial, technical and structural standpoints. phase iii: initial adoption (may 2010 to august 2011) phase iii began in may 2010 when feasibility of the project had been ascertained within both sju and fya:b. through the office of the mission, sju provided funding for travel, purchase of dea software (dea-solver by kaoru tone of japan’s graduate institute of policy studies) and for additional manpower for data entry and analysis. additionally, six laptops were donated to allow for analyses to be performed locally. in august 2010, a third 10-day research trip to bolivia served to jointly establish the parameters of the initial dea adoption, analyse model structure and potential variables, select variables to be added to annual surveys and included in system-wide dea runs, create an augmented database through the addition to and adaptation of questions in the survey the national office sent annually to each school in the network, and to execute dea runs for analysis of the specific research questions. results pointed to the superior performance of fya:b schools when compared to out-of-network schools and also allowed for the comparison of efficiencies among fya:b schools in helping identify and disseminate best practices. 106 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez phase iv: continued adoption (august 2011 to mid-2015) phase iv represents fya:b’s sporadic use of the dea methodology to help organise and analyse information obtained from annual school surveys, fya:b’s quality enhancement initiative (a worldwide process that is undertaken every five years by the organisation to determine the impact of their work) and from other sources. phase iv also involves a period in which the national office of fya:b will perform analyses, together with other stakeholders, which will deepen understanding of the data, divulge analyses and preliminary conclusions regarding school efficiencies, engage in dialogue with the provincial offices and the individual schools, and through this process identify, assess and disseminate best practices across schools. phase v: consolidation (expected after mid-2015) phase v is projected to follow phase iv and is expected to comprise the steady-state modus operandi in which fya:b will conduct desired research, with sju’s help, when necessary. in this phase, fya:b will determine the research questions, which will then be formalised, detailed and answered by fya:b itself in a process in which sju will participate on an as-needed basis. discussion: achieving social change there is no question that fya:b’s work achieves social change, as is apparent to any outside observer or visitor. as such, it is the contention of the authors that the partnership with sju and the knowledge creation generated by the research project has helped fya:b in its objective of contributing to social justice and empowering indigenous communities. the partnership satisfies boyer’s (1996) call for vigour and the desire for continuity in the face of change (silka et al. 2008), in that joint actions and impact have grown over time even in the face of more than one leadership change in each organisation. shea (2011) cites three main sustainability factors – trust, participation, and commitment – for successful partnerships and identifies threats to those factors, which she classifies in three categories: asymmetry threats, inadequacy threats, and divergence threats. most threats identified, such as lack of focus, differences in power, asymmetric information, insufficient resources and different priorities either were non-existent throughout the history of the sju-fya:b relationship or were addressed early on. as described in the previous section, the very nature of the research project itself implied use of technology and resources which had not been available to fya:b at the beginning of the process, so there indeed was a period in the project during which academics and fya:b members were exchanging information and tool-specific knowledge – a period, for lack of a better word, of capacitation. indeed, the final phase of the research project is expected to be fya:b applying the analytical tools to the organisation’s and the communities’ needs, with academic involvement only on an asneeded basis. 107 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez the sju-fya:b partnership, as it has evolved over 10-plus years, also seems to satisfy netshandama’s (2010) four findings regarding what community stakeholders value. first, over the years the stated objectives of each party seem to have been met. the initial phase of ‘discovering one another’ has given way to a phase of ‘joint discovery of possibilities’ and an evolution in the explicit joint set of objectives. there has been transfer of knowledge and experience, with effective gap-bridging on both sides. second, the partnership has been unexploitative. sju has coordinated and shared experiences among the many members involved with the partnership thus avoiding ‘community fatigue’ and both parties have had a genuine desire to address the communities’ needs above their own interests. third, the shared values and strong institutional commitment from both sju and fya:b has led to a partnership of equals (onyx 2008) in which power and control are jointly exercised. lastly, and linked to the discussion in the previous paragraph, the partnership has had continuity and over time has instituted effective formal and informal maintenance and monitoring mechanisms. the cbr effort has resulted in knowledge-building and knowledge transfer: as mentioned earlier in the article, results of the research project have been described in neiva de figueiredo and marca barrientos (2012). the first research question was answered in the affirmative: comparing in-network school efficiencies turned out to be helpful to better identify, understand, examine and disseminate best practices across the organisation. the second research question was also answered in the affirmative: schools operated by fya:b were found to be on average more efficient than out-of-network schools. the dea-based managerial techniques used in the research project were helpful to fya:b at several levels. here, we single out features which we believe were important in achieving positive results, hoping to identify criteria which may help cbr initiatives in general. first, it is necessary to build trust. in the context of this research, the beginning of the trust-building process preceded the actual research project as recounted earlier. most often the trust-building process begins with the first stages of the research project itself because oftentimes there is little or no previous relationship with the community, a timing consideration which adds layers of complexity to the endeavour. in the research described in this article, perhaps the main elements helping to build trust were mutual respect and a clear confluence of objectives between fya:b and sju. second, it is desirable to have awareness of cultural differences, whether explicit or implicit. it is important to be accepting of different customs and, especially within the context of a different cultural reality, to be willing to learn every step of the way, that is, to constantly compare observed counterparty behaviour with previously held notions of expected counterparty behaviour. to complicate matters further, most cultural differences are not readily recognisable, as pointed out by sathe (1985). 108 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez the literature on conceptualising and understanding cultural differences, such as hofstede (1980), ronen and shenkar (1985), hall and hall (1990) and trompenaars (1993), can be very helpful in this regard. each of these proposes a unique framework for synthesising cultural characteristics in a way which can be useful when dealing real-time with a set of customs different from one’s own. working together is the best way to gain this familiarity, a process which is linked to the previous point on trust to the extent that it is helpful to feel the freedom to make unwarranted cultural mistakes or blunders with the knowledge that they will be pointed out by the counterparty. third, there is a need for consensus-building at various levels of the community. it is necessary to avoid the natural instinct to engage in directive top–down research based solely or mostly upon what the researcher assumes might work best for the community. any cbr initiative should involve an element of grassroots energy, bottom–up initiatives, to be added to the necessary top–down orientation usually present in academic research. in the research project described in this article, this involves including in the process all three levels of the fya:b organisation. this consensus-building helps sustain beneficial project outcomes and ultimately leads to transformed communities. fourth, because often there is the need to gradually build trust and consensus with communities having different sets of cultural norms (as was the case in this instance), a gradual approach is recommended. this can be accomplished by establishing various stages for the research project and ensuring that necessary conditions to advance to the next stage include input from all stakeholders and consensus regarding objectives and methodology. the desirability for a gradual approach in and of itself may imply a willingness to operate under a loose timetable: more important than achieving certain milestones at set points in time is doing so when there is confidence that the necessary conditions to move forward have been met. lastly, it is necessary to keep in mind that, because the ultimate goal is lasting benefit for the community, success is determined locally: the community is the only entity that can determine whether the research objectives have been reached. in goethe’s words: ‘knowing is not enough: we must apply; willing is not enough: we must do.’ if success expectations are built through consensus early in the project, then successful outcomes are attributed to the community, that is, to all stakeholders, which results in lasting transformation. if the community is in charge and is perceived as such, change is sustainable. the criteria listed above are counted as strengths in this particular cbr project: they were present to a greater or lesser degree, as described in previous sections. it is also important to identify limitations in using descriptive quantitative management research techniques in a community-engaged setting. one limitation inherent to this type of research is its complexity. 109 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez while research results and knowledge-building are always subject to the test of reality, that is, to empirical cross-checking (‘the proof is in the pudding’), it is also true that a clear understanding of the mechanisms behind the methods is very helpful. because dea is based on sequential application of linear programming techniques to various decision-making units and because efficiency results can vary widely when different input and output variables are chosen, significant time was invested in capacitating fya:b practitioners on tool usage, and in educating academic researchers on the particulars of the bolivian environment, in an ongoing mutual growth process. this does not mean top–down ‘colonizing’, but rather a joint discovery of the pros and cons of using such a quantitative technique, balancing the tool’s characteristics against those of the environment in which it was being applied. the second limitation is the difficulty in carefully and precisely accounting for input and output variable integrity. it was necessary not only to join time-tested techniques with onthe-ground specific knowledge in choosing descriptive variables for school efficiency estimation, but also to ensure proper measurement and reporting of those variables. this was achieved through various measures such as improving the annual school survey, altering selected variable measurement criteria, crosschecking for variable accuracy, establishing data-verification procedures and instituting feedback loops to enable timely corrective action when necessary. the third limitation is the temptation to ‘jump to conclusions’ or, expressed in a different way, the need for patience when applying a quantitative descriptive technique in a new environment. significant knowledge creation occurs during cross-verification of quantitative results against qualitative observations on the ground, as school efficiency findings are compared with the experiences of the communities they serve and of fya:b personnel directly involved. this ‘verification loop’ needs to be put in place before any definitive conclusions are drawn from the descriptive research effort. establishing such verification mechanisms takes time because they require a maturation period in terms of understanding intrinsic limitations of the methodology and they also involve buy-in from the communities themselves. conclusion the objective of this article was to reflect on the process of community-based management scholarship as applied to research conducted to improve the efficiency of schools operated by fe y alegría in low-income communities in bolivia within the crosscultural context of the sju-fya:b partnership. it is intended that it will contribute to the literature by providing a critical account of the application of quantitative descriptive managerial techniques in a cross-cultural community-based research setting within the context of a strong university-ngo partnership. the article’s main conclusion is that the pros far outweigh the 110 | gateways | neiva de figueiredo, jursca, marca & gonzalez cons and that, despite the difficulties and limitations described herein, quantitative descriptive managerial techniques have an important role to play in helping foster social justice even where significant cultural differences are present. further, there are several mechanisms which can and should be put in place in order to mitigate those limitations, perhaps the most important being the existence of a strong and gradually built academic-community partnership based on mutual trust and respect, open-mindedness and willingness to learn. it is our hope that this account will encourage management academics to pursue community-engaged scholarship opportunities, with the objective of making lasting and sustainable contributions to the lives of those who need them most. acknowledgements we would like to thank margaret malone, managing editor of gateways, for her advice and guidance. we would like also to thank the anonymous peer referees for their very helpful feedback. references bishop, r 1998, ‘freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in research: a māori approach to creating knowledge’, international journal of qualitative 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the waves of culture, brealey, london. who organises the community? the university as an intermediary actor in western europe, since the 1980s, the differences between prosperous areas of the cities and deprived neighbourhoods have again visibly increased. growing social and economic inequalities have resulted in a spatial polarisation; the spaces of the winners and the spaces of the losers have become more distinct. almost all countries have responded to this spatial divide by the introduction of programs to stabilise their marginalised neighbourhoods. the reference point for these programs is segregated urban communities that have a spatial concentration of poverty, unemployment and migration, low levels of education, substandard housing quality and poor service infrastructure. the heterogeneity of problems, social milieus, subcultures, values and religions in marginalised communities forbids onedimensional approaches to neighbourhood renewal. the broad diversity of burdens, risks, challenges, prospects and beliefs in marginalised communities requires complex and cooperative strategies and policies rather than the traditional top–down strategies of municipal administrations. in the german city of essen (population 580 000) the municipality was aware of the very complex situation of its deteriorating communities and therefore asked a local university institute to become an active partner in the conceptualisation, implementation and operation of the local community development programs. out of this long-term university-community engagement evolved a specific neighbourhood management model. the major difference between this model and other community development processes in germany is the establishment of a professional intermediary function. in essen, this function is exercised by university staff. this article highlights some of the possibilities, problems and findings surrounding the role of universities as intermediary actor in urban community development. beginning with theoretical reflections on the need for professional intermediaries and their paradoxical tasks, the article goes on to introduce the essen model of neighbourhood management and the specific tasks of intermediaries, showing how this model responds to some gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 3 (2010): 104–119 ©utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 oliver fehren university of duisburg-essen 105 | gateways | fehren of the challenges outlined above. after a brief description of the university institute as one example of universities’ public service role, the article finishes with some conclusions on the implications for practice of this intermediary role. why professional intermediaries in community development? the overall aim of community development processes is to stabilise and improve the quality of life in marginalised neighbourhoods or urban districts that are struggling with the ordinary results of spatial segregation: a high percentage of low-income households and unemployed residents, a high ratio of migrants and people on welfare, lower educational degrees and a poor quality of public infrastructure (healthcare, schools, public transportation, housing, etc.). powerful participation of community residents, local institutions, clubs and associations, as well as the local economy, is considered to be essential for a successful improvement of the local living conditions. but neighbourhood renewal also relies on a systematic linkage of the interests and issues of the local community with municipal departments, their professional knowledge and their resources. community development requires experts in communication that on the one hand organise exchange and decision-making processes at the community level and on the other hand organise negotiations between municipal representatives and spokespeople for the interests of citizens. in the past, priests, teachers, nurses or local politicians were able to take over this intermediary function of managing dialogue, but over the last decades their significance has decreased. this calls for the assignment of professional intermediary players with an institutionalised responsibility for perpetually pushing the dialogue between the life-world in the local community and the administrative system of the municipality. intermediaries are able to combine the different principles of organisation and the different logics of acting to transcend the traditional boundaries between different departments and professions. they act as agents between different parts of society, between the more formal and bureaucratic world of the administrative system, the profit-orientated world of economy and the less formal, sometimes chaotic life-world of the community. the background and theory of the integrating function of the intermediary structure in progressive community development is outlined below. integrating life-world and system the core of ‘traditional’ community work is to search for the main issues of the people who live in the community and to activate the residents as broadly as possible in order to let them have a greater say on issues concerning the development and reshaping of their community. community work supports and initiates community organisations with regard to the main interests and worries of the residents. these organisations and initiatives try 106 | gateways | fehren to enforce improvements in a variety of issues concerning their neighbourhood. they try, for instance, to increase the quantity and quality of local social services, challenge exaggerated utility charges for apartments in the community or rebuild run-down and neglected playgrounds. by activating and supporting these citizens’ activities, community work tries to empower marginalised people. according to the philosopher, juergen habermas, those citizens’ organisations are the very heart of what is called ‘the civil society’: ‘civil society is composed of those more or less spontaneously emergent associations, organisations, and movements that, attuned to how societal problems resonate in the private life spheres, distil and transmit such reactions in amplified form to the public sphere’ (habermas 1996, p. 367). however, it is interesting to note that, although habermas points out the importance of these grassroots civic movements, he is somewhat sceptical about the impact that these forms of collective action achieve: ‘such associations certainly do not represent the most conspicuous element of a public sphere dominated by mass media and large agencies, observed by market and opinion research, and inundated by the public relations work, propaganda, and advertising of political parties and groups’ (habermas 1996, p. 367). community organisations and citizens’ networks are generally able to identify the problems and needs in the neighbourhood very precisely. but very often the signals they are sending are too weak to agitate or redirect the boards and bodies of political decision-making (habermas 1996, p. 373). this leads to a dilemma: in order to stabilise and develop a disadvantaged community, municipal politics and administration depend on being supplied with informal public opinion from the life-world in the neighbourhood – because these opinions are wider, more sensitive, more expressive and less compulsive. but, on the other hand, the administrative system of the municipality is very likely to either absorb or, even worse, ignore the citizens’ activities without adjusting or changing their policy. habermas’ remarks make it obvious that professional support for the ‘empowerment of the excluded’ is not the only, nor necessarily the most appropriate, way to progressive community development. aside from the organisation of the citizens, there is a need for intermediary structures that help to improve the interaction between the informal decision-making processes of the community residents and the much more formal procedures of decision-making in municipal administration and politics. integrating citizens and institutional resources community-orientated programs face a general dilemma: on the one hand, they work with an empowering goal which considers the inhabitants of a certain marginalised neighbourhood to be, or to become, responsible members of their communities capable of increasing their participation, in order to have a greater say in local decision-making. on the other hand, these programs must 107 | gateways | fehren contend with a decrease in the resources of community residents (people in deprived communities become poorer and their school education downgrades) and an increase in general suspicion towards the residents – marginalised people are generally treated as a potential danger to children and potential welfare abusers. activating citizens of deprived neighbourhoods to participate more in the development of their community can very easily become a cynical strategy under these conditions. in view of the above, the success of citizen participation in community renewal should not rely only on citizens’ commitment, and the strength of grassroots organisations should not be overestimated: it is not productive to support exclusively the small and often weak civic initiatives and self-help groups while, at the same time, following completely different criteria, e.g. economical ones, in the modernization of large social institutions and services … is it really unavoidable, that hospitals, retirement homes, schools and other institutions still must be seen as ‘social deserts’ concerning participation of and cooperation with citizens …? (heinze & olk 2001, p. 23, translated by the author) the crucial question for community development is not primarily about the number of residents who are actively dedicated to volunteer work and civic engagement. far more important for the quality of the ‘local civil society’ is how well the institutions that influence the everyday life of the people are linked to the life-world and how open they are to influence and participation by the citizens: ‘the options that a person has depend greatly on relations with others and on what the state and other institutions do. we shall be particulary concerned with those opportunities that are strongly influenced by social circumstances and public policy …’ (drèze & sen 1995, p. 6). activating the process of community renewal demands focus on the institutions and their resources, not just the citizens. therefore, the task of professional intermediaries is to make institutions more sensitive to the needs of their users, to overcome institutional autism, and to open them up to the demands and opinions of the life-world. professional intermediaries are the local agents or the local guards (maybe even the watchdogs) for civic mainstreaming of public institutions. they must be a permanent challenge, maybe even a permanent provocation, to these institutions by demanding and supporting their adaptation and openness to citizens’ needs. integrating community, city and region it was nikolas rose who most prominently pointed out the fundamental change and the dialectic that goes along with the current rise of community approaches: the idea of community was ‘initially deployed in the social field as part of the language of critique and opposition directed against remote bureaucracy’ (rose 1996, p. 332). nowadays, rose criticises, community approaches have been transformed: 108 | gateways | fehren ... into an expert discourse and a professional vocation – community is now something to be programmed by community development programs, developed by community development officers, policed by community police, guarded by community safety programs and rendered by sociologists pursuing ‘community studies’. communities became zones to be investigated, mapped, classified, documented, interpreted … what began to take shape here was a new way of demarcating a sector for government, a sector whose vectors and forces could be mobilized, enrolled, deployed in novel programs and techniques which operated through the instrumentalization of personal allegiances and active responsibilities: government through community (rose 1996, p. 332). rose draws the conclusion that the mutation of community approaches indicates the shift of responsibility for social questions from society as a whole to local communities: ‘collective relations have been re-figured in such a way as to reduce the salience of “the social” in favor of “the community”’ (rose 1996, p. 337). a quite similar critique argues that the growing popularity of policies which focus on local communities results in an ‘over-spatialization’ of social policies (stern 2004). communityorientated policies tend to lock the marginalised people in their neighbourhood. they enable residents to mutual self-help, but the disadvantaged community is not systematically integrated into the overall urban developments and discourses (kessl, otto & ziegler 2002). michael woolcock and deepa narayan (2000, p. 227) point out that the urban poor often possess a ‘close-knit and intensive stock of bonding social capital that they can leverage to get by … but they lack the more diffuse and extensive bridging social capital deployed by the non poor to get ahead.’ this ‘bonding social capital’ refers to the ‘social glue’ between sociodemographic homogeneous groups; ‘bridging capital’ characterises relations between different social milieus; and ‘linking capital’ indicates the relationship between citizens and the political–administrative complex (woolcock 1998). what these critical objections add up to, is that what is needed in processes of neighbourhood renewal is less bonding and more bridging and linking (hautekur 2010). the current deformations and distortions of community approaches are accompanied by an oversimplification of the concept of community. this applies also to involved universities: ‘a common failing of universities working with communities is the assumption that they can develop a single, uniform definition of who and what the “community” is, or that such a definition is necessary’ (holland & gelmon 1998, p. 4). the definition of ‘community’ is a difficult challenge. therefore, very briefly, i want to bring to mind the quite complex and sophisticated conceptualisation of community which was developed at the chicago school of sociology in the 1920s. in their work, park, burgess and mckenzie created a highly differentiated perception of community, which can be helpful in overcoming 109 | gateways | fehren some of the present reductions of community approaches. apparent even in the first edition of the city (1925), is how the authors looked at community as an embedded part of a larger urban structure and integrated social and geographic terms like community, natural area and neighbourhood. they also said that community always means a collection of people and institutions. and they went far beyond a spatial definition of community and pointed out the high significance of local institutions: ‘the simplest possible description of a community is this: a collection of people occupying a more or less clearly defined area. but a community is more than that. a community is not only a collection of people, but it is a collection of institutions. not people, but institutions are final and decisive in distinguishing the community from other social constellations’ (park, burgess & mckenzie 1992, p. 115). they also claimed that community does not describe contained or separated spaces and presented a remarkably perceptive view of the relation between local community and the city, which is useful in clarifying actual misconceptions of community: ‘every community is always part of some larger and more inclusive one. there are no longer communities wholly detached and isolated; all are interdependent economically and politically upon one another. the ultimate community is the wide world’ (park, burgess & mckenzie 1992, p. 115). the local community is always just a functional part of larger contexts. for community approaches, intermediary bodies are essential in order to avoid a focus on marginalised people without critically examining the strategies of conservation and monopolisation of power by the dominant social classes and milieus. intermediaries can help to embed the deprivation of certain urban communities into the context and responsibility of the entire city and the institutional sphere. thus, intermediary players make a substantial contribution to ensuring that community approaches do not degenerate to simple ‘poor people’s approaches’. professional paradoxes of intermediaries in order to be able to take over an intermediary function in community development, trust needs to be developed with all parties: politics and bureaucracy on the one hand and the community residents on the other. if not, the public mandate will be lost. intermediaries need top–down as well as bottom– up legitimisation. they also need to be connected sufficiently with the life-world of the people in the community as well as the politicians and the administrators. however, at the same time, intermediaries need to be relatively independent of those actors in order to be able to help make their conflicts productive. therefore, intermediary professionals should not be staff of the local political or administrative sector; they should be independent of the reasoning and agendas of large bureaucracies. intermediaries can, and should, be publicly funded, but the local government should 110 | gateways | fehren not have direct control over them: ‘… such structures might be “co-opted” by the government in a too eager embrace that would destroy the very distinctiveness of their function … the goal in utilizing mediating structures is to expand government services without producing government oppressiveness’ (berger & neuhaus 1977, p. 7). in order to cope with their mediating function between the private sphere of the life-world and the spheres of the economy and the state, intermediaries should have sufficient autonomy from these spheres. thus, neither private companies nor local governments seem to be suitable providers for professional intermediaries. jenny onyx (2008, p. 103) gives a hint as to who could be an appropriate provider: ‘the process may be facilitated by a neutral, but trusted, third party who is able to mediate and negotiate some of the politically sensitive issues that divide. universities sometimes play that role.’ intermediary bodies have to be aware of their potential for causing antagonism – though they are able to contribute to a better connection between the life-world and the system, they may equally achieve the opposite effect. the establishment of professional intermediary bodies does not necessarily indicate an increasing openness of the political–administrative system towards the citizens. by their mediating action professional intermediaries are in danger of acting like a buffer between the citizens’ opinions and the opinions of the political–administrative system, thus weakening the impact of communications from the life-world to the system. the existence of specialised intermediaries can be either an expression of the inability and unwillingness of large organisations to communicate with the citizens or part of an attempt to increase their sensitivity towards the needs and interests of the citizens. the essen model of neighbourhood management the city of essen used to be the former ‘capital’ of the ruhrgebiet, which is a region whose booming development started with the beginning of industrialisation and was founded on coal mining and steel industries. the ruhrgebiet is still the area with the highest population density in europe (population of 4.5 million). essen today faces a lot of structural and economic problems due to the decline of its main industrial sectors. this has resulted in an unemployment rate of 14 per cent and a high social and ethnic spatial segregation. the two local communities that participate in the community development program each have 30 000–50 000 residents. the practical experiences of the university-community engagement over the last two decades have led to the development of a unique model of neighbourhood management. the essen model of neighbourhood management tries to respond to the necessity to integrate different actors, professions and institutions, and to integrate different budgets and different sectoral thinkings, 111 | gateways | fehren goals and rationalities, in order to stabilise and improve the living conditions in marginalised communities. the model (see figure 1) consists of three intertwined professional action levels that dovetail the broad variety of people, resources, services and sectors (grimm, hinte & litges 2001): —the local community (neighbourhood) —the municipal administration —an intermediate level to connect community and municipality. the neighbourhood level is where ‘traditional’ community work takes place. community workers are located in neighbourhood offices and are either employed by the municipality or by ngos. they initiate, organise and counsel citizen activities and grassroots interest groups at a community level. on the intermediate level district moderators bundle human beings, needs, ideas and resources. they develop and manage projects concerning the community. their special task is to link the sometimes very open and chaotic processes at the community level with the much figure 1: neighbourhood management – areas of responsibility and organisation 112 | gateways | fehren more bureaucratic and standardised processes in the municipal administration. in essen, the district moderators are staff of the university institute. at the municipal level there is a municipal area commissioner in charge of the overall project-steering, combining different resources, agencies and departments of the municipality. like ‘elevator lift boys’, these intermediaries connect with and mediate between the local community and the municipal government. professional intermediary bodies help to ensure that the activities of the people in the community find resonance in the municipal political–administrative system. through this mediation the neighbourhood management encourages the bundling of resources from different disciplines and different parts of the administration, economy and community stakeholders and concentrates them on certain communities in order to reconnect the development of the local community to that of the overall city. the intermediary professionals act as a mediating structure between the administrative level, where the entire development process and the financial budget are coordinated, and the neighbourhood level, where community workers activate and support people in the organisation of their self-interests. the introduction of intermediary bodies as an additional action level in the process of community renewal must be seen as a supplement to traditional community work. it does not mean giving up support for and empowerment of citizens’ action. it merely widens this task by trying to extend institutional sensitivity to the informal opinions of the life-world of the citizens. to act as an intermediary in the context of community development offers the possibility to double the direction of activation. the activating function of the essen model of neighbourhood management draws on two directions: —citizens’ activation: stabilising the situation in the community by communicative and organisational improvement of the local civil society in coping with internal and external conflicts —institutional activation: a cooperative–conflictual matching of the work of local institutions to the particular needs of the community. implementing the function of the professional intermediary the core function of intermediary bodies in processes of neighbourhood renewal is to establish extensive stable communication networks and cooperation both within and outside the community. their special challenge is to initiate dialogue and cooperation between persons and institutions that are not used to working with one another or are not able to understand each other’s very different rationales, purpose and actions. the intermediary role can be described as ‘change agent’, ‘lubricant’, ‘bridging-instance’, ‘bypass-organisation’ or ‘hingefunction’. but the function of intermediaries does not involve settling disputes. their task is not to avoid conflicts but to make conflicts productive. 113 | gateways | fehren a significant task of intermediary bodies is to ensure that not only top–down enacted community development programs determine what can be discussed on site and what cannot. the specific value of intermediary work lies in the fact that it helps to represent logic, ideas and interests that (sometimes) differ from those of local politics and administration. through residents’ meetings, backyard conversations, home visits, intensive interviews, staircase meetings, district festivals, etc., intermediary bodies help to keep the floor open for unexpected demands by community residents that do not necessarily match the current agenda of urban development. the task of intermediaries is to keep the possibility open for questions such as: —in whose interest and for which population groups should the community development program operate? —who has the power to define what the main problem is? should the top priority be easy access to the nearby motorways, like the local retailers claim? or should emphasis lie on a more sensible traffic calming, like the elderly and the parents of young children think? —should the community development take place for the people who live here now? or for the people you would like to live here in the future? part of the intermediary function is the creation of mutual comprehension and transparency. unlike the tendency of traditional community work and community organising to focus only on the community residents, intermediaries not only prepare and coach the citizens for dialogue but all participating actors (lüttringhaus 2000, p. 140). and intermediaries do not cultivate one-sided movements of ‘the have-nots against the haves’. intermediary actors manage dialogues in different kinds of directions: —between (conflicting) interests of the residents in the community —between competing departments of the municipal administration —between community-based organisations and the bureaucratic world of the administration or profit-orientated economic sector. aside from horizontal networking, the introduction of intermediary bodies emphasises the necessary vertical network dimension of community renewal: bridging and connecting the deprived people in marginalised communities with resources and capacities they lack, which might be located ‘outside’ the local community. the municipal administration cannot fulfil its function without feedback from the citizens. in order to overcome communication problems between the system and the life-world the municipality is in need of intermediary professionals acting as ‘interdisciplinary interpreters’ between these spheres. the professional interpreter’s first task is to understand the different modes, logic, pace and constraints of both and their second task is to translate and transport these ‘strange’ rationalities in a way that is comprehensible to the actors in both the life-world and the system. 114 | gateways | fehren intermediaries serve as information brokers and are a social early-warning system for the municipality as well as the community. they are ‘not the mouthpiece of the citizens, but they help them to raise their voice. they are not a mere puppet of the municipal administration, but they help them to become more citizen-centered and by this means more effective’ (hinte 2001, p. 174, translated by the author). intermediary players do not have legitimate power; at best they have influence. they do not try to change the system directly (because then it would refuse); but with their accumulation of valuable and reliable information they can gather influence which allows them to irritate the system and encourage change. in order to exercise their mediating function, intermediary professionals are dependent on trust from both the life-world and the system. this confidence, in turn, can only arise if the intermediaries themselves are familiar with both of these spheres. intermediaries therefore seek contact with players from the system and the life-world. the operational competence of intermediary bodies is based on their knowledge of and access to the local community, as well as to the broader city. this ongoing acquisition of relationships and information by the intermediary bodies takes place in two steps (fehren 2008, p. 194): 1 building relationships in the local community. the basis of intermediary action is to permanently relate to and take notice of the people in the community, their issues, their fears and their beliefs. detailed knowledge about events, developments, new risks and prospects concerning the community is generated and updated by a variety of access paths to the community. these include initiation of community-related working groups (professional and non-professional); dealing with ‘hot topics’ of the community (for example, housing, education, jobs); regular background discussions with multipliers such as priests and imams, local politicians, club presidents, district social workers and local retailers; meetings with the community workers in the local community centres, which have (like a seismograph) a very good sensitivity regarding the community because of their daily contact with the citizens; and attendance at community meetings and meetings with community organisations. 2 building and updating relationships and access to the municipal government and administration. while access to the local community is the ‘standing leg’ of the intermediary, access to local decision-makers and controlling authorities in government, administration and business is the ‘free leg’. this second pillar is based on regular meetings with representatives from the municipal administration; background discussions with city council politicians; participation in municipal working groups; and project-related contact and cooperation with actors who operate beyond the community range, such as 115 | gateways | fehren communal business development, volunteer agencies, welfare associations and the companies as ‘corporate citizens’. one example, addressing the issue of different religious groups living together in the same neighbourhood, might be helpful to illustrate some aspects of the intermediary function. in a local community with a high muslim migrant population the old ‘backyard mosque’ burned down and the muslim parish was planning a new and prestigious mosque with a minaret. this raised concern amongst native (christian) residents in some parts of the community that they may become ‘strangers in their own neighbourhood’. the muslim residents, meanwhile, were concerned that their freedom of religious expression would be overlooked. the intermediary ‘district moderators’ immediately set up a local planning group. this group consisted of a broad collection of institutional, local and municipal opinion leaders: representatives from the churches and mosques, local politicians and administrators, retailers and houseowners. one effect of the immediate establishment of this group was that the political parties were not tempted to develop any ambition to politicise the arising conflict in the upcoming election campaigns. the group agreed on the right of the muslim parish to build a mosque in the community and also decided to seriously address some of the fears and worries of the native residents. lots of public meetings took place, where people were invited to raise their concerns and to concretise them. close contact was established with the press media, which covered the issue several times. as a kind of ‘paradoxical intervention’, a theatre group was invited to draw public awareness to the plans for the new mosque. they exaggerated the issue by setting up short plays in which crusaders and jihad fighters attacked each other. these took place at the weekly farmers’ market and got the market visitors to engage in the topic in a very lively and non-threatening way. as a result of the nuanced approaches of the intermediaries to integrate the various actors and milieus of the community in the public debate, a property for the mosque was found which, as a compromise, was neither in the very centre of the community nor on its outskirts. nowadays the new mosque is a fully accepted, integral part of the community. institutionalising intermediaries in essen, the university institute, issab, performs the intermediary function for the processes of local community development. the intermediary professionals, who are called ‘district coordinators’, are employed by the university institute, but the municipality pays their wages. the university contributes the expertise of two professors and, in addition, its students do their practical year in the community development projects. what does the municipality of essen get out of this cooperation? as a relatively independent institution, the university is able to give incorruptible feedback to city hall. the district 116 | gateways | fehren coordinators from the university point out what the decisionmakers in the municipality neglect, miss or misunderstand. they act as an early-warning signal in the political arena and help to hold the local government accountable. at the same time, they support and challenge the municipal administration. issab’s community engagement is not an additional task but is at the very core of its research and action. the institute consists of four different branches that are all connected to the institute’s practical engagement in the local communities. issab engages with the community in the following ways: —it acts as a provider of professional intermediaries for the municipality – four of the institute’s staff are fully engaged in the local community development programs. —as part of the ba study program for social work, the institute offers a three-semester in-depth project – studies in theory and practice of community work and social space orientation. for a maximum of 50 students theoretical/academic components of courses are linked with community-centred practice that is embedded in the local community development projects. —the institute’s research activities adopt an action research approach. research is done in close cooperation with the local protagonists and results are passed to them as soon as possible in order to support their action. the focus of cognitive interest is on how local communities can be organised with the help of social space orientated forms of social work and what (organisational) forms of professional competence and material resources are necessary (see www.uni-due.de/issab/). —based on this knowledge, the institute counsels municipalities in germany, austria and switzerland that want to improve the contextual sensitivity of their public services or reorganise their whole administration to have a local community orientation. in addition, the institute offers training and qualification for staff in these municipalities. conclusions on the practice of the university as intermediary relative autonomy intermediaries in community development processes can and should be funded publicly, but at the same time they must be protected from direct interventions by the local government. in order to perform their mediating function between the sphere of privacy (life-world) and the field of economy and state (system), intermediaries should have sufficient autonomy in these spheres. universities as providers of an intermediary function in community development seem to be a very suitable institutional setting: they combine maximum municipality independence with strong social legitimacy, and thus have an influential social position. the university institute is beyond partial interests. of course, it does have self-interest (that is, keeping the community 117 | gateways | fehren projects as research and practice fields for the students). but unlike regular providers of social services (like welfare associations), the university is not in need of expansion in this particular field and does not compete with other providers. this is a very important foundation for being an intermediary: the university institute is not part of the market game of social services in a municipality. therefore, it is less tempted to ingratiate itself with the municipality in order to secure further orders. advisory groups at community and municipal level critically evaluate and monitor the university-community partnership. they support improvement in the relationship and guard against inappropriate developments. this initiative ensures that the institute’s staff is trustworthy and loyal to the municipality and at the same time critical of – and sometimes annoying to – political decision-makers and the municipal administration. clear mission and purpose research on campus-community partnerships shows that ‘having a clear identity of purpose and goals’ is crucial to the success of university engagement (bringle & hatcher 2002, p. 507). this is especially true of the ambivalent field of the intermediary. the duality of activation, which means activating both the citizens and the institutional sphere, requires a mandate from the municipality. the declared will of the political–administrative system to deal with professional intermediaries is essential to tackling the sometimes uncomfortable criticism of the intermediaries. the engagement of the university institute in essen has nothing to do with charitable activities on a voluntary basis. quite the contrary. the entitlements of the university are contracted with and paid for by the municipality. the contract with the municipality runs for an unlimited period of time. only this longterm contract makes it possible for the university to take the risk of hiring extra staff and setting up an extra study program. emphasis on implementation university engagement should not be viewed as using the community and its problems merely as study subjects. ‘those very communities … resent being treated as an experimental laboratory for higher education …’ (holland & gelmon, 1998, p. 105). the communities instead require those forms of academicpractitioner collaboration that have a practical outcome: ‘… implementation (i.e. successfully putting ideas into practice) is the test of knowledge’ (benson, harkvay & puckett 2000, p. 25). this demands an active involvement that many academics still feel uncomfortable with. in essen, the institute itself is an agent for transformation of local communities and public policies. this active engagement of universities in local development suggests the employment of skilled staff: ‘campuses may need to hire professional staff skilled in understanding communities and acting as liaisons among diverse constituencies’ (bringle & hatcher 2002, p. 508). 118 | gateways | fehren universities can be a very suitable institutional setting for taking over the ambivalent intermediary role in community renewal processes. they dispose of relative autonomy from the local government and are connected in numerous ways with both the city and the region. the dual perspective of doing research on community development strategies on the one hand and engaging in the local community development programs on the other can create a fruitful interaction and tension between theoretical and empirical knowledge and practice of community development. if universities are able to expand their traditional academic mission by becoming a provider of intermediary functions, they can overcome the academic-practitioner divide and serve their region in helping to resolve the growing complexities of today’s social tensions and challenges. references benson, l, harkvay, i & puckett, j 2000, ‘an implementation revolution as a strategy for fullfilling the democratic promise of university-community partnerships: penn-west philadelphia as an experiment in progress’, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24–45. berger, p & neuhaus, r 1977, to empower people: the role of mediating structures in public policy, american enterprise institute for public policy research, washington dc. bringle, r & hatcher, j 2002, ‘campus-community partnerships: the terms of engagement’, journal of social issues, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 503–16. drèze, j & sen, a 1995, india: economic development and social opportunity, oxford university press, oxford. fehren, o 2008, wer organisiert das gemeinwesen?, edition sigma, berlin. franke, t & grimm, g 2002: ‘quartiermanagement: systematisierung und begriffsbestimmung’, in bertelsmann stiftung, hans-böcklerstiftung, kgst (eds), quartiermanagement: ein strategischer stadt(teil) entwicklungsansatz, netzwerkknoten quartiermanagement, hannover, pp. 5–12. grimm, g, hinte, w & litges, g 2004, quartiermanagement: eine kommunale strategie für benachteiligte wohngebiete, edition sigma, berlin. habermas, j 1996, between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy, routledge international studies in the philosophy of education, cambridge. hautekur, g 2010, ‘mehr bridging, weniger bonding: der bedarf an sozialem kapital in benachteiligten kommunen’, sozialmagazin, no. 2, pp. 40–43. heinze, r & olk, t 2001, ‘bürgerengagement in deutschland: zum stand der wissenschaftlichen und politischen diskussion, in r heinze & t olk (eds), bürgerschaftliches engagement in deutschland: bestandsaufnahmen und perspektiven’, leske und budrich, opladen, pp. 11–26. hinte, w 2001, ‘soziale kommunalpolitik: soziale räume gestalten statt elend verwalten‘, in w hinte, m lüttringhaus & d oelschlägel, grundlagen und standards der gemeinwesenarbeit, votum, münster, pp. 168–78. 119 | gateways | fehren holland, b & gelmon, s 1998, ‘the state of the engaged campus: what have we learned about building and sustaining university-community partnerships’, american association of higher education bulletin, pp. 3–6. kessl, f, otto, h-u & ziegler, h 2002, ‘einschließen oder aufmachen? der raum, sein kapital und deren nutzer’, in m riege & h schubert (eds), sozialraumanalyse: grundlagen – methoden – praxis. leske und budrich, opladen, pp. 177–90. lüttringhaus, m 2000, stadtentwicklung und partizipation, stiftung mitarbeit, bonn. onyx, j 2008, ‘university-community engagement: what does it mean?’, gateways, vol. 1, pp. 90–106. park, r, burgess, e & mckenzie, r [1925] 1992, the city: suggestions for investigation of human behavior in the urban environment, the university of chicago press, chicago & london. rose, n 1996, ‘the death of the social? refiguring the territory of government’, economy and society, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 327–56. stern, m 2004, ‘unterund überbetonungen des raums: einige dilemmata in der empirischen übersetzung der sozialkapitaltheorie’, in f kessl & h-u otto (eds), soziale arbeit und soziales kapital, vs verlag, wiesbaden, pp. 209–23. woolcock, m 1998: ‘social capital and economic development: towards a theoretical synthesis and policy’, theory and society, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 151–208. woolcock, m & narayan, d 2000, ‘social capital: implications for development theory, research and policy’, the world bank research observer, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 225–49. two steps forward, one step back achievements and limitations of universitycommunity partnerships in addressing neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage in this article, we discuss a university-community partnership that had broad goals to promote social, economic, educational and cultural links between the university and people living, working or studying in carlton, a suburb of melbourne, australia, with particular emphasis on engaging with disadvantaged and marginalised communities who had limited contact with the university. this population could potentially benefit from having access to the educational, research, employment and infrastructure opportunities available at the university. known as the carlton tripartite partnership, it involved the university of melbourne, the city of melbourne and the carlton local agencies network (clan), an affiliation of local community-based organisations. at the time of writing, the partnership is faltering, after a period of encouraging consolidation. key objectives of the partnership were strongly aligned with the university’s core activities (research and teaching), but also included aims that appealed to its civic obligations. in particular, this involved creating local employment opportunities and facilitating access to university infrastructure. these diverse objectives reflected incongruent, but not incompatible, aims for the partnership and some proved difficult to achieve. while the partnership reflected the potential of inter-sectoral collaborations and the value of making the university’s diverse resources available to impoverished communities, it encountered notable limitations. insights from partnership activities are important to consider because they suggest the ways in which the value of universities as civic institutions that generate public benefits is being eroded through the influence of neoliberal policies. contemporary contexts for universitycommunity partnerships there are growing expectations that public universities (in particular), as generators and repositories of knowledge, should strive to ensure equitable access to their intellectual and scholarly resources and assets. this obliges universities to consider the barriers that communities and populations may encounter in © 2016 by d warr & r williams. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: warr, d & williams, r 2016, ‘two steps forward, one step back: achievements and limitations of university-community partnerships in addressing neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 22–40. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v9i1.4339 corresponding author: deborah warr; djwarr@unimelb.edu.au doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4339 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index deborah warr richard williams university of melbourne gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 23 | gateways | warr & williams securing such access. there is a growing body of work claiming the value of university-community partnerships for both universities and civil society in facilitating access to diverse university resources, and ensuring that universities are responsive to public issues. potential benefits include enriching student experiences, creating knowledge flows that stimulate creativity and innovation, directing scholarly expertise to address real world issues, and building public trust and respect for higher education institutions (nccpe n.d.). increasingly, these public benefits are in tension with other institutional objectives formulated within recent processes of restructuring that in turn have been strongly influenced by various interpretations of neoliberal ideology. the unfolding and troubling implications of neoliberal policies in universities are galvanising some commentators to remind us, and reimagine the potential, of universities as institutions that are orientated to generating public benefit (for varied discussions see holmwood 2011; jones & shefner 2014; marginson 2011; mcilrath & mac labhrainn 2007; thornton 2014). in anglophone countries, the various impacts of neoliberal policies are part of continuing processes in which enduring institutions such as universities respond to contemporary contexts and demands. nevertheless, alongside the inevitability of change, the concept of the modern university as an institution combining scholarship, teaching and research has remained consistent, at least since the beginning of the 19th century. it is conventionally associated with the founding of the university of berlin in 1810, with the model further developed in the united kingdom (collini 2014). it emerged when the prussian ideal of the state-sponsored university was grafted onto extant models of universities as selfgoverning communities of scholars. this evolving model produced tensions that remain evident, including the view that universities are in part driven by human curiosity and transcendent of the interests of the state or other structures of power while being partly regulated and supported by the state. since the early to mid 20th century, universities have been influenced by socially progressive movements and policies, such as the new deal in the united states (jones & shaeffer 2014), with effects of heightening tensions between intellectual leadership and political authority, the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and forms of knowledge on which economic success is dependent. more recently, the influence of neoliberal ideology, seeking to advance the unfettered operation of free markets, is evident in the growing corporatisation of universities, which are being remodelled by administrators in the image of international business corporations. in australia and elsewhere, this promotes versions of what slaughter and leslie (1997) characterised in the title of their book as ‘academic capitalism’, further intensifying tensions between economic performance and civic obligations of universities to contribute to the public good. the corporatisation and commodification of educational and knowledge-generating 24 | gateways | warr & williams activities is associated with declining institutional interest in, and capacity for, partnering with communities when there is little prospect of financial gain for the university (thornton 2014). partnerships with disadvantaged, marginalised and underresourced communities, which require considerable investment of time, have become ever more difficult to justify within institutions. the increasing orientation to global markets and rankings leads to the significance of partnerships with neighbourhood communities being readily overlooked, even though they are critical sites for demonstrating commitment to civic obligations and conducting scholarly work that seeks to understand how processes of globalisation manifest in everyday ways (bivens 2014; jones & shefner 2014). these tensions are evident in the university of melbourne’s vision statement that prefaces its current strategic plan. it is an uncomfortable amalgam that attempts to reassure widely different constituencies that are at times agonistic. it includes the goals of being considered among the world’s eminent universities while being ‘fully engaged in the life, culture and aspirations of melbourne and the regions we serve’ (university of melbourne 2015, p. 5). the social mission statements of entrepreneurial neoliberal universities are also becoming more ambiguous because of their ‘extractive’ tendencies. this refers to preferences for supporting civic obligations that are calculated to have institutional benefits (financial, reputational and status) rather than contributing to generalised social beneficence (barnett 2007, p. 31). even universities that express explicit commitment to their civic obligations can have ambivalent commitment to social missions because of the complex social and economic dynamics in which they are positioned. these tensions are not unfamiliar. universities have long been institutions that both reinforce and challenge inequalities (reay 2011), and these effects may be polarising in times of widening socioeconomic inequality. the partnership we discuss brought these tensions and issues to the surface. it aimed to promote cooperation between the university of melbourne and communities living and working in its neighbourhood, with particular emphasis on communities living in nearby high-rise public housing estates. the positive outcomes that were generated suggest the potential to generate mutual benefits through university-community partnerships with communities that are being progressively cut off from social and economic resources and opportunities. a key finding highlighted the significance of community development approaches that were sensitive to the circumstances of local populations and offered strategies for bridging marked differences in the power and resources available to the respective partners. the difficulties in achieving some objectives pointed to the challenges of addressing the structural factors contributing to socioeconomic disadvantage, and outlined tensions in the institutional logics under which the university is operating. 25 | gateways | warr & williams contexts for the carlton partnership the main university campus is partly located in the inner urban suburb of carlton, a diverse suburb with significant populations of students (including growing numbers of international students) and lowand high-income households (abs 2013a, b). there are relatively high numbers of overseasborn residents living in carlton, mainly comprised of international students and residents of the high-rise public housing estates. this local diversity contributes to a vibrant neighbourhood, and the commercial and cultural precinct of lygon street attracts large numbers of visitors and tourists. it also renders the suburb vulnerable to social fragmentation. there is a history of friction among residents who hold differing ambitions for the suburb, and between carlton residents’ groups and local institutions. on several occasions the university’s ongoing expansion has resulted in local heritage buildings being demolished, incurring the ire of residents and contributing to persistent views among residents that the university is indifferent to its local community. findings from a survey commissioned by the university noted a predominant impression among those who lived or worked in carlton that it was viewed as an ‘elitist, arrogant, detached, exclusive and self-absorbed’ institution, a ‘walled city’ that was unconcerned with and removed from the everyday lives of its neighbours. (this quote is from an internal document produced by open mind research, 2006, that was influential in persuading senior people at the university of the potential value of the partnership for improving local relations.) local contexts and history formed an important backdrop to the carlton tripartite partnership, which was established in response to worsening socioeconomic disadvantage among some populations. particularly affected were migrant-background residents of the public housing estates who were struggling to find employment, despite many gaining additional qualifications since living in australia. their experiences of social and economic exclusion were compounded by lack of access to infrastructure and services, issues which the partnership was created to address (for expanded discussion see warr & williams 2014). around the time that the partnership was established in 2011, the university’s knowledge transfer office was redesigned as the melbourne engagement and partnerships office (mepo). its purpose was to broker and manage university-wide partnerships between the university and organisations in the corporate, government and community sectors, and it was given responsibility to coordinate the university’s involvement in the partnership at an operational level. there was a lack of clarity, however, in articulating a broader institutional rationale for the work of mepo, leaving key staff to rely on the diverse professional experience and skills they brought to their roles. in 2014 a new engagement portfolio was created in the chancellery and mepo was disbanded. over time, the university’s perception of the importance of relationships with 26 | gateways | warr & williams local communities has strengthened. its current strategic plan states that ‘the university will deepen its social compact with its local communities … working collaboratively with communities of place or interest provides the opportunities to match our values with the operations of a large and complex organisation’ (university of melbourne 2015, pp. 24–25). promoting a community development model from the outset clan emphasised that the partnership needed to be grounded in community development principles. community development is more a practice philosophy than a defined process, characterised by frequent reference to social equity and social justice. it is helpful to understand the attributes of community development in order to grasp potential dissonance with university processes and structures. community development fosters ‘bottom up’ processes to harness local knowledge and expertise, and promotes community-led organisation and advocacy to achieve a more equal distribution of resources and access to infrastructure. a core principle is the importance of community control over how problems are defined and the solutions that are devised to address them. it seeks to build self-reliance, recognising and building on existing strengths rather than identifying deficits to be rectified. it acknowledges that contest and conflict are as much part of a functional community as consensus and cooperation, and that all communities contain multiple realities and inconsistent narratives. community development practitioners maintain that effective participation should begin at the earliest stages of problem identification. increasingly, however, policy makers, administrators and funders are likely to defer to ‘expert’ opinion (green 2005), or agree that community participation is important but impracticable because it is slow and time consuming. it is also often at odds with high-level political contingencies. the work relies on building and maintaining working relationships within long-term developmental perspectives. it relies on local knowledge, which is depleted by the high staff turnover inherent in shortterm projects and employment contracts endemic in social policy implementation. community development is also highly relational, and the experience and skills of the employees involved are thus critical. effective community development depends on partners having shared understanding of, and commitment to, its key tenets. for these reasons it is often incompatible with the fragmented, managerialist product approach to social problem solving. method for the evaluation the evaluation of the partnership was funded as a vice chancellor’s special initiative and focused largely on partnership processes. although the partnership fostered a broad and diverse range of activities, four keynote projects were selected as ‘critical case’ studies that represented strategic partnership aims. flyvbjerg (2001, p. 78) defines critical cases as those which exemplify 27 | gateways | warr & williams characteristic aspects of the general issue under investigation. figure 1 summarises the case study projects that represented contrasting objectives of the partnership. data were collected through key informant interviews, documentary analysis and participant observation. case study 1 (infrastructure): promoting social inclusion through sport objectives: promote the university as a public space and enhance the ways in which it can make a positive contribution to local intellectual, social, cultural and economic life. specifically, develop sport and recreation activities that reflect community interests and facilitate public access to university recreational infrastructure. case study 2 (learning): bridging the digital divide objectives: promote the potential for student learning to serve public ends and bridge the ‘digital divide’ in carlton by providing low-cost computers for people on low incomes, training programs, marketing information resources and a community website through student placements and other contributions. case study 3 (employment): promoting employment and training opportunities objectives: explore opportunities for the university, as a major employer in the city of melbourne, to generate employment opportunities for local populations from horn of africa countries. cast study 4 (research): research and learning engagement in an educational setting objectives: enhance research relationships between the university and the community, and promote the potential for university-based research and student learning to serve public ends. specifically, promote research and learning activities between the university and a nearby school that has an ethnically diverse community of children living in low-income households. key informants had direct involvement in project activities and a total of 20 interviews were completed with 23 informants; nine were employed by community organisations (some of whom were also local residents) or local government, five were employees of the university or a subsidiary, seven were students of the university, and two were from small student-run businesses. one interview was conducted as a group interview with students and two interviews involved two informants. a range of documentation from the case study projects, including relevant evaluations, was identified and reviewed. this material was used to provide contexts for partnership activities and insights into outcomes. researchers also attended planning and progress meetings and community events over the course of developing and conducting figure 1: description of case study projects and objectives 28 | gateways | warr & williams the evaluation. conversations at these events were not recorded but were drawn upon for general impressions of how issues played out and were resolved over time. approval to conduct the research was gained from a university departmental human ethics advisory group. data from key informant interviews were coded for content and themes, and early analysis used to inform subsequent recruitment of informants and interview content. discussion of the case studies draws on these analyses to consider the partners that were involved, outcomes that were achieved, challenges that were encountered and other relevant observations and insights. in keeping with the ethical principles of the design, informants were able to review drafts to ensure they were satisfied with the ways in which their comments were represented. before discussing the findings, we flag potential limitations of the study. available resources and concerns around understanding the implications of potentially competing motives for engagement activities led us to focus on understanding partnership processes rather than measuring specific outcomes and impacts, although these would have offered crucial insights for appraising the effectiveness of partnership activities. it is also possible that relying on key informants with stakes in the projects may have influenced their perspectives on issues. these risks were mitigated by relying on evidence to support claims that were made and the benefits of generating usable insights into partnership processes that could inform ongoing activities (riggs et al. 2013). a more substantial limitation centres on the meaning of ‘community’ in the evaluation. the interpretation of ‘community’ embedded in the partnership included local community organisations that provided services to residents. the partnership involved these organisations but not residents, trusting the organisations’ knowledge of their clients. the evaluation brief echoed this distinction. only residents who were associated with partnership members were included as informants. the decision by the university to work with local organisations is consistent with community engagement principles, but the result is that the data include community organisations speaking on behalf of residents. insights from the case studies promoting social inclusion through sport – the carlton sports carnival first staged in 2012, the sports carnival became an annual event. it was originally conceived by the community to develop opportunities for sport and recreational activities for children and young people. the carnival involved primary schools from the local, metropolitan and even rural areas in a football tournament. a locally based non-government organisation, sports without borders (swb), was funded by the city of melbourne to manage the project. drawing on community development models, swb uses sport as a vehicle for building individual and community 29 | gateways | warr & williams capacities, social connections and social inclusion, with a particular focus on working with migrant-background and refugee communities. an organising committee was formed, including representatives from a broad range of partner organisations and a team of three young people living in the carlton housing estate (who were resourced and supported by swb to take on these leadership roles). the victorian multicultural commission provided funding and scholarships for some of the young people to maintain their participation in sport. informants reported that the sports carnivals achieved some significant outcomes. a community worker explained that the broad involvement of partners and schools ‘brought a whole lot of diverse players together, people who don’t normally always interact with each other … who all bring something unique and something important’ to the project. the events offered young people living in the carlton housing estate leadership opportunities and the chance to work with diverse partners to exchange insights and build skills. held on university grounds, they facilitated community access to university infrastructure and an occasion for local housing estate residents to visit the university, as one of the informants explained: people enjoyed it … we had a good turnout from the community, the young people really enjoyed being a part of it, and for a lot of people, a lot of the kids especially, it was the first time that they’d even been to the university. so you’ve got kids [in the nearby high-rise housing estates] living a hundred metres, three hundred metres away from the university who have never even been a part of it (community worker). university staff and students worked cooperatively alongside community workers to run the carnivals. university students became involved through the student ambassador leadership program (salp), which assisted in hosting the event. families were curious to ask students about their studies, and were astonished by the university’s fine buildings, expansive grounds and sporting facilities: i think the population, the cohort that was coming here, were really surprised that they could just walk onto campus. it wasn’t, you know, i mean, that’s about breaking down the ivory wall or that perception that there is an ivory wall (university staff). challenges were encountered early in the project. the involvement of melbourne university sport (mus), which manages sport and recreation facilities on the campus, was critical. mus is a semi-autonomous business unit of the university that is required to be financially independent and thus needed to recover its costs in hosting the event. this contributed to perceptions that the university was not supportive of the project, particularly as community partners were themselves contributing work-time hours which constituted considerable in-kind support. despite their central role in the project, to minimise costs mus 30 | gateways | warr & williams staff had limited capacity to attend planning meetings and this placed further burdens on community-based workers who experienced difficulties in navigating the university’s complex organisational arrangements. many organisational challenges were addressed as the role of mepo in supporting partnership projects grew over the three years covered by the evaluation. most significantly, mepo began actively recruiting staff with community development skills and experience. from the perspectives of community-based partners, this was ‘a very significant plus and it certainly had a big impact on this process’ (community worker). over successive events, there was a general feeling that the community sports carnivals were a success in achieving their social objectives. a university staff member highlighted the symbolic importance of residents of the public housing estate being invited by the university on to its campus: [t]he kids came and they played and they were so at home on our campus, and so did their parents. mothers sat there chatting all day, and you know, it’s taken a lot of work to get to that point where we’re accepted even at that level (university staff). the sports carnivals aimed to have multiple impacts, including benefits for universities in enriching students’ experiences and learning, and facilitating local community access to university resources. it is clear from the improvement in the organisation between the first and subsequent events that the university and the carlton community had each gained skills and capacity. students who were involved spoke of acquiring event management skills, learning how to work as part of a team and the importance of relationships. significantly, opportunities for public housing residents to visit the university and meet staff and students introduced them to a largely unfamiliar environment. the event generally promoted social interaction across diverse groups of primary students, although it remained difficult to engage local primary schools in carlton’s affluent neighbourhoods. the event provided opportunities for student-run social enterprises to participate and make a valuable contribution to the success of the day. processes improved over time and there is high potential for the initiative to evolve into long-term collaborations. the case study suggests this potential and also demonstrates the challenges of negotiating with the university, as an entity with multiple organisational parts and divisions that are increasingly positioned within contrasting operational logics. for example, mepo was tasked to promote partnerships to achieve varied community and university objectives, while mus was obliged to operate on a business model. bridging the digital divide the second case study focused on the ‘carlton on-line opportunities and learning’ [cool] project, which was designed to support a coordinated, intergenerational approach to ‘bridging 31 | gateways | warr & williams the digital divide’ among residents of carlton. data from the australian bureau of statistics showed that less than 40 per cent of public housing tenants in carlton had an internet connection, which compared to 86 per cent of households in carlton and 72 per cent across victoria (simons & kimberley 2013). the cool project provided people on low incomes with low-cost computers, training programs, volunteer support and a community website. the computers were supplied by a social enterprise, estate computers, a subsidiary of cool, which refurbished ex-government and ex-university computers. its coordinator was an estate resident. in contrast to the sports carnival, the university was not a lead partner, although it contributed to the project in a range of ways. a key contribution was made through student volunteering, including salp students and sife (students in free enterprise). the latter is an international student organisation that promotes free market solutions to achieve social and economic outcomes. the students worked as consultants on specific tasks that included producing a marketing plan for estate computers, information sheets for estate residents and a pamphlet publicising the cool project. the coordinator of cool explained how the engagement of the university had helped the project: [o]ne of the students … did a very good proposal for marketing. it was an eye-opener, you know, when you don’t have a marketing background and also you don’t have the time to actually focus on that, when someone actually focuses on these few things it kind of gives you something to think about … also we had a, actually a very good student … and he was someone who was very, you know, keen, liked computers, and he used to come every week and help me set up computers and deal with the customers (community worker). the university also encouraged student and staff volunteers to work on shortand long-term community-based programs for residents of the housing estates, including a homework club for children and computer and it skills training for adults. mepo provided assistance in coordinating this involvement, and international students were particularly enthusiastic volunteers. the students reported gaining valuable experience and critical real-world learning opportunities through their volunteering activities: my whole involvement in sife has been very useful just to get to know the local community, how to reach people, how to help people … and in my case it’s also been a way to develop communication skills, teamwork, all of those things. i believe when i came here i was very shy and now i feel that i am, that i can say things that i’m thinking, not just to be quiet. and i think this project was like the beginning of a big change in terms of my personality (university student). an evaluation of the cool project conducted by the auspicing agency showed that the project had positive impacts for 32 | gateways | warr & williams residents (simons & kimberley 2013). ongoing challenges included getting the right fit between the skills, experience and availability of the volunteers and the needs of community-based organisations. volunteering was most successful when there was a good match between the nature of the tasks and the skills and availability of volunteers. for short-term specific tasks that were not dependent on established relationships, student volunteers proved effective. for tasks that relied on longer term relationships, the demands of the semester cycle meant that students were often unable to provide the necessary continuity: i think with students [there are] limitations because they move on … they have a shorter life [as a volunteer] because, first of all, they’re tied to semesters, and the[n] they’re going off to do other things. so they’re very valuable, but you have to see a place for them. i think retired local residents are often much more reliable as volunteer tutors (community worker). volunteers need some preparation for their roles, particularly if they are unfamiliar with the social and cultural contexts in which they will be working. some local organisations allocated resources to recruit and support volunteers, but the resources available were insufficient if there was a high turnover. some university-based organisations, such as salp and sife, provided support for student volunteers which was important, particularly as it offered students crucial personal and professional experiences. some informants noted that volunteering was most effective when it was grounded in mutually respectful and cooperative longer term relationships between university and community members. this minimised the potential for students and staff to view their roles and partnership activities from a welfare perspective and to assume that poor communities would be grateful for whatever they were offered. projects that involve engagement over time between individuals in divergent social circumstances must emphasise the importance of according dignity to all participants, otherwise the risks of reinforcing social distinctions experienced by members of marginalised communities can outweigh potential benefits of building confidence and skills. as with the sports carnival, the liaison role of the mepo partnership consultants was critical in maximising the benefits for both the university staff and the community. it was particularly critical in coordinating the involvement of various university faculties and units and channelling a range of resources into the projects. promoting employment and training opportunities for migrant-background men the horn afrik advocacy project was created in response to the particular needs of a sizeable group of primarily islamic men from somalia, ethiopia and eritrea living on the carlton public housing estate. the project was managed by a somali-australian community development worker. the men had undertaken tertiary 33 | gateways | warr & williams education at graduate and postgraduate levels, mostly in australia, but had struggled to find employment. a 2011 newspaper article reported that, while unemployment in melbourne’s african community was 26 per cent, unemployment among africanaustralian graduates was as high as 90 per cent. it stated that ‘commercial pilots, doctors and other professionals who have migrated from africa find it difficult to get their qualifications recognised here, so they drive melbourne’s cabs as a means to feed their family’ (willingham 2011). this project had received funding from the city of melbourne to research the circumstances of this group of men. the findings highlighted related issues, including the loss of status, marginalisation, concern about their inability to provide for their families, the effects of frequent rejection when job seeking, and boredom. there were widespread concerns that african men faced particular difficulties finding suitable work because of racist attitudes. the horn afrik project included partners from the finance sector, who established a mentoring program for african refugees. as a result, some of the men found employment in the banking industry. the university, as one of the largest employers in the city of melbourne, was approached to support the project in the hope it could provide access to jobs by giving special consideration to applicants from the local housing estates. however, this goal conflicted with the university’s policy of filling low-skilled casual and part-time vacancies from its student body, and its indigenous employment framework prioritises the employment of indigenous australians. adding to this, the university had steadily outsourced a wide range of services such as ground maintenance and child care that could provide entry-level job opportunities for local residents. nevertheless, the involvement of the university led to other possibilities being explored. a consortium of local agencies successfully sought funding from a statewide initiative to establish the carlton work and learning centre (cwlc) which offered unemployed residents opportunities to learn job interview and presentation skills. the consortium was able to link with the university’s human resources department, and department staff used their allotted volunteer time (two days per year) to stage simulated interviews for cwlc clients and offer constructive feedback. the department also provided temporary placements to cwlc clients, and the manager of the cwlc featured in a university hr staff-training workshop. from the perspective of the cwlc, this represented successful (albeit modest) outcomes: well for me, yes it has [been positive], and i mean we have had one person placed temporarily at the melbourne university in the hr department during their busy period ... it was a short period but this job seeker in particular hadn’t had any australian experience and to be able to put melbourne university hr administration officer for 34 | gateways | warr & williams even a short period spoke volumes when she put her resume through the next time. and she went on to [other casual positions] and is now settled into a permanent position (community worker). university staff who were involved also recognised the potential relevance of a key university strategy: i’m hoping you know, for everybody, it’ll broaden our view of the world and our perspective but it’ll, it could also really help with, i mean i can just think racial awareness, cultural awareness differences you know, hopefully it’ll do a lot of things … it’s really interesting at the moment and there’s a lot of cross connections. there’s a program happening in the university – and in fact i’m going to this – called ‘courageous conversations about race’ … it’s [about] understanding we all have biases and stuff like that, and because that’s really important in the interview and in the other contexts as well. so i think this actually supports some of that, you know, it’ll actually be a practical cultural awareness … i think one of the common things is most people, most people know the need to have a job, understand that, and what a job can do for you so i think people will want to help people as much as they can in terms of achieving that end (university staff). aspects of this case study illustrate the importance of the values and beliefs of the individuals who were motivated to help others gain access to the benefits of employment. this case study shows the challenges in creating employment opportunities both through community-based efforts and in large organisations such as the university where the outsourcing of services has diminished institutional influence and disadvantaged groups are competing for scarce opportunities. social procurement policies could be used to stipulate quotas to promote employment opportunities. this could have important effects because, although individuals can benefit from programs to improve english language proficiency, mentoring and other work preparation programs, these efforts go only so far in the face of wider socioeconomic conditions. an unanticipated outcome was that the project raised awareness of issues of racism and discrimination and highlighted the relevance of anti-racism initiatives within the university. research and learning engagement in an educational setting the final case study focuses on engagement with a local primary school, which is located on a site adjoining the nearby public housing estate. it is a small school with an ethnically diverse student population, the great majority of whom live on the estate. because of its proximity to the university, it has over the years had connections with teacher training programs and various researchers who have conducted studies at the school. school staff expressed mixed responses on the value of these collaborations. in particular, there were concerns that involvement in research projects made demands on the school community, yet generated negligible benefits. the school was keen, nevertheless, to reactivate 35 | gateways | warr & williams its connections with the university to develop research projects which addressed emerging local issues and used collaborative processes that meshed with the school’s philosophy and commitment to local community development. a key shift in the relationship between the school and the university was facilitated by the growing expertise in community development principles among the partnership consultants in the mepo office. these mepo staff recognised the risks of the partnership for small underresourced schools: they [the school community] really didn’t want to be seen as some sort of social laboratory … there are some real pockets of disadvantage in that community and in some respects they might be over researched [but] they do some amazing work [in the community] and they take a real strengths-based approach … they’ve been bruised in the past by, by stuff that the university has maybe tried to do (university staff). they focused on developing research collaborations that aligned with the school’s ethos and this was noted and appreciated by senior staff at the school who explained: [the relationship with the university] didn’t start off brilliantly because we weren’t well matched in our understandings of community … we had very different expectations and approaches … and at the end of it, i felt we had been used in, in a … [searching for the right word] … it wasn’t nice. but anyway … then things changed a lot (community worker). the approach shifted … [they told us] ‘i’m here to listen, i’m here to talk, to hear what’s happening at grass roots and the[n] we can look at where we can link with the uni, but it needs to come from you and it needs to be owned by the community sector’. that was a huge shift for me (community worker). this shift in engagement styles led to new possibilities for research projects that responded to needs identified by the school. for example, a research project was established to improve language and literacy outcomes for somali children and address low literacy among somali parents. without the partnership consultant’s relationship with the school, the project is unlikely to have taken place. from this the school developed a direct relationship with the researcher and was planning to continue the project. the researcher explained: i just think it’s an absolutely fantastic thing to do, and it’s probably one of the most effective projects the university could fund in terms of directly connecting children and families and schools, so it’s actually quite a simple project, but i think really quite, you know, quite effective (university staff). other small projects have also been established in response to community needs, although there are ongoing barriers for researchers seeking to work collaboratively with local community 36 | gateways | warr & williams partners because institutional structures are not geared to support participatory approaches to research (maclean, warr & pyett 2009). despite the merit of such projects, they present challenges to researchers: the problem for me was that the grant was actually quite small. i had to put in a lot of in-kind [support], and actually some of my own funding, and just finding the time. i had problems finding a co-worker, because i needed someone with very [particular skills] and once i did find the person that was … fantastic, that person’s actually wonderful and keen to keep working with them, um, but finding the resourcing and the time was the biggest challenge (university staff). this case study provided a powerful example of the importance of community development processes for universitycommunity partnerships to generate reciprocal benefits, and that, in university settings, these are frequently overlooked skills. this was evident when a senior staff member commented: i didn’t really know the depth of [the partnership consultant’s] experience until one day i was talking to her about some social needs over in [another] area, and she just began to detail, you know, community structures and … which buttons you’d push over there. i just realised she’s got this vast experience that you would find hard to normally recruit into a university, and would not normally, but in terms of social partnerships it’s just essential (university staff). mepo partnership consultants were able to promote other opportunities for the school that enhanced learning programs, such as organising donations of surplus university property to the school. with the right processes in place, many of the community informants recognised the value of university connections: you’ve got all these professors of planning and engineering and social studies who could come together to support any of the projects that we dream up … providing support through their knowledge and expertise to suggest that this could work or, no, that was tried in france and don’t go near it … they’ve got a whole lot of knowledge that could be harnessed (community worker). these case studies also illustrated how, within the parameters of the formal three-way partnership, multiple complex subsidiary partnerships and interlinked strategies developed over time to address a range of situations associated with socioeconomic disadvantage in the local community. the positive outcomes that were generated pointed to the potential of university-community collaborations. many partnership activities are ongoing and demonstrate the achievements and challenges of inter-sectoral partnerships when there is considerable asymmetry in power, resources and prestige between the partners. the case studies showed the importance of community engagement expertise in navigating this asymmetry. 37 | gateways | warr & williams tensions and opportunities in universitycommunity partnerships the evaluation suggested the partnership generated positive outcomes for the university and local communities. it showed that partnership processes needed to be sensitive to community perspectives and ways of working. initially, this required skills and understanding that were hard to find in the culture of a major research university. it was not until the university employed staff skilled in community development that it was able to achieve a substantial shift in its relationship with the carlton community. importantly, the mepo partnership consultants offered a portal into the complex organisational structures of the university. they represented a diversification of skills and expertise and facilitated access to the university, which had the effect of enhancing the ‘permeability’ of the university to the local community (bivens 2014, p. 223). permeability enables diverse stakeholders to become involved in university processes with expectations that can challenge and resist the authority of the rationales driving corporatisation and marketisation (bivens 2014). in these ways, university-community partnerships can unsettle what has been noted as a growing comfort within universities with the discourse and perspectives of ‘management schools, business consultants and financial journalism’ (collini 2011, p. 9). the political challenges inherent to the philosophy and practice of community development approaches may be critical in confronting the growing dominance of this discourse. there was some suggestion that senior staff came to grasp the potential of community development approaches. at the same time, this potential was veiled in the language of ‘partnership consultants’, and vested in individuals rather than institutional structures that supported its characteristic practices. it is clear that other factors may combine to neutralise the transformative potential of community development approaches, including concerns that, without long-term commitment from the university, the relationships that have been developed will atrophy or be lost. subsequent restructuring has resulted in the mepo office being disbanded and key staff relocated to the chancellery. this both presents opportunities to influence key decision-makers and risks that their efforts will be more thoroughly co-opted to serve the university’s priorities and interests. similarly, student volunteering initiatives have since been restructured and centralised too, and the question of how they can be orientated to meet local community needs remains unanswered. institutional support that promotes continuity in engagement activities is particularly important in contexts where programmatic funding models, high staff turnover and other factors mean that longstanding objectives of community development leading to sustainable processes are increasingly unrealistic. notable models of institutional support for sustaining university-community partnerships, such as the multifaceted 38 | gateways | warr & williams community university partnership program (cupp) at the university of brighton, have recurrent funding and integrated strategies that support long-term partnership and engagement activities that increase capacities to generate sustainable social justice outcomes (bivens 2014; hart & aumann 2013). key here is how universities understand their contemporary significance and foundational values. university-community partnerships can be vehicles for driving real social change or designed to serve institutional interests and soften the impact of business models being imposed onto academic activities akin to notions of ‘corporate social responsibility’. efforts to develop productive university-community partnerships have particular benefits for marginalised communities who otherwise encounter many barriers in accessing universities as repositories of significant intellectual, social, economic and cultural resources. arguably, there is significant scope for universities, as simultaneously local and global actors (marginson 2011), to use their economic and social power and status to create these opportunities. currently, however, there is mounting emphasis on building international reputations and declining interest in addressing local problems. marginson (2011, p. 413) argues that these tensions can be somewhat resolved by recognising that the distinctive nature of higher education institutions lies in their ‘foundational public purpose’ and that this may be what ensures their enduring relevance amidst processes of profound social and technological change. renewing the public purpose of universities increasingly requires, among other things, what barnett (2007, p. 32) referred to as ‘a vision of the almost impossible’. it is ‘almost impossible’ because it requires contesting dominant and powerful neoliberal rationalities and universities moving to be outside of themselves and engaged with wider society. this engagement dissolves boundaries between university and civic society and has the effect of transforming institutions themselves (barnett 2007). genuine and mutually respectful universitycommunity partnerships are key to realising these possibilities. concluding remarks university-community partnerships are important planks for universities to demonstrate their commitment to a social mission and remain relevant and accountable to the wider public. they are nonetheless implemented in, and span, complex and divergent fields of practice and meaning, and this means that they can have mixed outcomes and uncertain progress – two steps forward and one step back. they can generate outcomes that would otherwise not have been achieved even if these, at times, fall short of their ambitions. these are critical times for mounting arguments for the social value of universities as civic institutions, and for the many other ways that universities can generate public benefit. currently, the social value of community engagement risks being overlooked 39 | gateways | warr & williams and even dismissed. there can be multiple challenges for those working within universities in garnering support and commitment for engagement activities in the face of competing demands and expectations. in marginalised communities, there is hope mingled with despair that situations will change and improve. the next steps cluster around restoring and fostering the capacities of universities to support community-engaged scholarship that contributes to cohesive and just societies. acknowledgements we wish to acknowledge the contributions of participants in the evaluation study, and give special thanks to members of the carlton local agency network (clan) who worked with us to conduct the evaluation and develop recommendations. references australian bureau of statistics 2013a, basic community profile: carlton, cat. no. 2001.0, 2011 census of population and housing, abs, canberra. australian bureau of statistics 2013b, census of population and housing: national regional profile 2007–2013, abs, canberra. barnett, r 2007, ‘recovering the civic university’, in l mcilrath & i mac labhrainn (eds), higher education and civic engagement: international perspectives, ashgate, aldershot, uk. bivens, f 2014, ‘constructing social justice from the university’, in j shefner, h dahms, r jones & a jalata (eds), social justice and the university, palgrave macmillan, houndmills, uk. city of melbourne 2010, opportunities for carlton: community plan melbourne. collini, s 2011, ‘from robbins to mckinsey: the dismantling of the universities’, london review of books, vol. 33, no. 16, 25 august, pp. 9–14. collini, s 2014, ‘what’s happening to universities?’, lecture, viewed 28 april 2016, http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2014/professor_ stefan_collini.shtml. flyvbjerg, b 2001, making social science matter: why social enquiry fails and how it can succeed again, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511810503 green, j 2005, ‘professions and community’, new zealand sociology, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 222–41. hart, a & aumann, k 2013, ‘challenging inequalities through community-university partnerships’, in p benneworth (ed.), university engagement with socially excluded communities, springer, dordrecht, the netherlands. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4875-0_3 jones, r & shefner, j 2014 ‘introduction: globalisation and the university – a path to social justice’, in j shefner, h dahms, r jones & a jalata (eds), social justice and the university, palgrave macmillan, houndmills, uk. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137289384.0004 and http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137289384_1 marginson, s 2011, ‘higher education and the public good’, higher education quarterly, vol. 65, no. 4, p. 411. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ j.1468-2273.2011.00496.x. 40 | gateways | warr & williams maclean, s, warr, d & pyett, p 2009, ‘was it good for you too? impediments to conducting university-based collaborative research with communities experiencing disadvantage’, australia and new zealand journal of public health, vol. 33, no. 5, p. 407. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ j.1753-6405.2009.00420.x. mcilrath, l & mac labhrainn, i (eds) 2007, higher education and civic engagement: international perspectives, ashgate, aldershot, uk. national co-ordinating centre for public engagement (nccpe), viewed 24 february 2015, www.publicengagement.ac.uk/. open mind research 2006, ‘community perceptions and attitudes towards the concept (and practice) of knowledge transfer’, carlton, australia. reay, d, 2011, ‘universities and the reproduction of inequality’, in holmwood, j (ed.), a manifesto for the public university, bloomsbury academic, london. riggs, e, block, k, warr, d & gibbs, l 2014, ‘working better together: new approaches for understanding the value and challenges of organsiational partnerships’, health promotion international, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 780. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dat022 simons, b & kimberley, h 2013, carlton online – opportunities and learning: evaluation of the carlton digital inclusion project, brotherhood of st laurence, fitzroy, australia. slaughter, s & leslie, l 1997, academic capitalism: politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university, johns hopkins university press, baltimore, md. thornton, m (ed.) 2014, ‘the retreat from the critical’, in m thornton (ed.), through a glass darkly: the social sciences look at the neoliberal university, anu press, canberra, australia, http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/ bookworm/view/through+a+glass+darkly/11371/cover.xhtml. university of melbourne 2015, growing esteem 2015–2020, university of melbourne, parkville, australia. warr, d & williams, r 2014, on the ground doing the partnership stuff. bridging the gulf between the university and its neighbours, mccaughey vichealth centre for community wellbeing, parkville, australia. willingham, r 2011, ‘african doctors are driving melbourne’s taxis’, the age, 14 november. mobilising communitybased research on zoonotic infections a case study of longitudinal cohorts in vietnam gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 23–42 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 co-authors: karen saylors1,2, tue ngo tri1,3, toan tran khanh6, kiet bach tuan4, heiman fl wertheim3,7, stephen baker3,7,8, hoa ngo thi3, juliet e bryant3,7 implementing collaborators: corina monagin1,2, ha luu thi thu5, juan carrique-mas3, james campbell3, hien vo be4, an nguyen ngoc5, chuc nguyen thi kim6, maia rabaa3,9, cuong nguyen van3, laura merson3, chi nguyen thi yen3, huong vu thi lan3, nathan wolfe1,2, mark woolhouse9, guy thwaites3, hien tran tinh3 1 global viral, usa; 2 metabiota, usa; 3 oxford university clinical research unit, wellcome trust major overseas programme, vietnam; 4 subdepartment of animal health, dong thap province, vietnam; 5 preventive medicine center, dong thap province, vietnam; 6 hanoi medical university, hanoi, vietnam; 7 nuffield department of medicine, oxford university, uk; 8 the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine, london, united kingdom; 9 the university of edinburgh, edinburgh, uk list of abbreviations used apeir: asia partnership on emerging infectious diseases research dss(s): demographic surveillance site(s) dt: dong thap province dvs(s): district veterinary station(s) hmu: hanoi medical university mbds: mekong basin disease surveillance network nts: non-traditional species (bats, rodents, porcupines, civets, ostrich, wild boar, dog) oucru: oxford university clinical research unit pmc(s): preventive medicine center(s) sdah: sub-department of animal health vizions: vietnam initiative on zoonotic infections emerging infectious disease surveillance in human and animal populations is a global health imperative and represents an enormous challenge to government authorities, particularly in resource-limited settings (keusch 2009; king et al. 2006). in response to complex threats posed by emerging zoonotic infectious diseases (diseases transmitted from animals to humans), a new paradigm for health research has developed: the one health approach. the one health concept is based on core principles of systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, multi-stakeholder participation, equity, sustainability and ‘knowledge-to-action’ (charron 2011) and attempts to address the interdependencies of human and animal health by promoting research that considers socioeconomic, cultural and environmental factors. despite widespread agreement on the need for coordinated surveillance activities that unite public health and animal health objectives (avma 2008), there remains little consensus on what comprises the one health research agenda and relatively few examples of ongoing surveillance that utilise expertise from both human and animal health sectors. public agencies dedicated to human and animal health must be responsive to markedly different stakeholders as disease control objectives for protecting human health and animal producers’ livelihoods have often been in conflict, resulting in 24 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant competition rather than cooperation (coker et al. 2011; jones et al. 2008). in recognition of these challenges, a variety of interagency partnerships have been established to address these institutional/ sectorial barriers to integrated management of infectious diseases. for instance, the mekong basin disease surveillance network (mbds) was established in 2001 to enhance cooperation in detecting and controlling infectious diseases in southeast asia (thailand, vietnam, laos, cambodia, myanmar). supported by the rockefeller foundation and other donors, the mbds has focused on strengthening programs that address animal, human and environmental health through establishing capacity and infrastructure improvements and transdisciplinary leadership (macpherson et al. 2013). the asia partnership on emerging infectious diseases research (apeir), initiated in 2006, represents a similar effort to promote regional collaboration on avian influenza, with an emphasis on developing collaborative ecohealth/ one health research proposals and policy advocacy for crossdisciplinary work (silkavute, dinh xuan & jongudomsuk 2013). vietnam has been one of the epicentres of zoonotic disease emergence over the last decade and has some of the highest densities of human and animal populations in southeast asia (horby, pfeiffer & oshitani 2013). approximately 80 percent of the vietnamese population lives in rural areas and participates in small-scale (backyard) poultry and pig production (thorson et al. 2006). many aspects of animal production systems and food consumption habits in vietnam may promote zoonotic disease transmission, including a predominance of production systems with mixed species and little/no biosecurity; the presence of abattoirs and wet markets operating with very basic hygiene; poor cold chain for distribution and limited meat inspection; widespread consumption of raw/undercooked blood, meat, fish, organ tissues, raw leaf vegetables and wild animal products; and use of untreated waste water for agriculture. in the last two decades, vietnam has experienced extraordinary economic development and urbanisation and the livestock production and food retailing sectors are undergoing rapid modernisation. these changes will undoubtedly have major impacts on human exposure to animal pathogens, and hence the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. the one health research agenda within vietnam – as elsewhere – has focused almost entirely on zoonotic agents (who 2014) and has been dominated by studies that attempt to quantify human exposures and risks associated with avian influenza (dung et al. 2014; schultsz et al. 2009; uyeki et al. 2012). in addition, several studies targeting bacterial food-borne zoonoses have involved linked human–animal sampling (carrique-mas & bryant 2013). for studies of rare or poorly documented viral zoonoses, tools to assess cross-species transmission have relied mostly on comparative seroprevalence investigations (truong et al. 2009). due to the challenges of conducting ‘animal–human interface’ studies, most research has employed cross-sectional sampling of 25 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant human and in-contact animals at a single time point, or casecontrol designs that use data from the livestock sector but do not involve concurrent animal and human sampling. several interface studies have included extensive qualitative interviews to assess attitudes, perceptions of risk and behavioural risk factors (huong et al. 2014; liao et al. 2014; manabe et al. 2012; paul et al. 2013), but the focus has consistently been on implications for human health rather than on animal impact. the community cohort project described here is part of the vietnam initiative on zoonotic infections (vizions) program, which encompasses both hospital-based syndromic surveillance and community-based research on zoonotic pathogens. this article describes the establishment of the community-based aspects of the vizions program. the objectives of this ongoing community cohort project are to investigate pathogen ecology and evolution at the human–animal interface and to enhance understanding of viral cross-species transmission events. a core feature of the program is the linkage between syndromic surveillance in hospitals and enrolment of community members within the same ‘catchment area’ of selected study hospitals. the community cohort involves coordinated sampling of healthy humans and domestic animals, with the goal of establishing a sample bioarchive for future studies of pathogen ecology and population immunity and the capacity-building goal of promoting cross-sectoral cooperation from human and animal health providers, as part of pandemic preparedness. the cohorts comprise people with high levels of occupational and residential exposure to diverse animal species. the concept was to establish sample collections of healthy people and animals that are linked in space and time to clinical hospital-based sampling (for which extensive diagnostics are being done). if new pathogens are detected within hospitalised clinical cases, a mechanism will be in place to readily access community samples – both human and animal – to estimate population-level differences in prevalence. here we describe the process by which the community cohorts were initiated in dong thap (dt) province and bavi district of hanoi province. the purpose of this article is multifold: 1) to describe the structure of the cohort; 2) to document the protocol, methods and implementation approach; 3) to identify differences between the two sites, dong thap and bavi; 4) to galvanise critical selfreflection among the partners about challenges, strengths and weaknesses, in order to inform extension of the cohort to additional provincial study sites. methodology the cohort structure and collaborative partnerships the lead international organisation on this project is oxford university clinical research unit (oucru). oucru was established in ho chi minh city within the hospital for tropical diseases in 1991, with a mandate to conduct clinical biomedical 26 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant research on tropical infectious diseases. until recently, the scope of oucru activities was largely limited to hospital-based research; thus, implementation of community-based research within healthy populations and work within the agricultural sector of vietnam required modifications to the organisational statutes that provide permissions for a uk-based entity to conduct research in vietnam. an additional international partner directly involved in field implementation of vizions is global viral, a us-based nongovernment organisation with extensive experience implementing field research among high-risk populations. global viral was responsible for developing the behavioural and risk analysis components of vizions and assisting with recruitment guidelines for the cohort. the key vietnamese partners in the first two provinces targeted for implementation, dong thap and bavi, differed in terms of approach to and history of involvement in managing research cohorts. the selection of these provinces as study sites was driven by the long history of the oucru partnership with the provincial hospital in dong thap and by the existence of an ongoing demographic surveillance site in bavi. the partners in dt province were the sub-department of animal health (sdahdt) and the preventive medicine center (pmc-dt). these entities submitted a combined permission request to the provincial people’s committee, as the project was to be jointly administered by the human and animal health sectors. the time from submitting project requests to obtaining approvals was approximately three months. dong thap partnerships the sdah-dt had the primary role of identifying potential cohort households and study sites (i.e. farms, markets, slaughter points). sdah-dt also provided general oversight of project implementation, based on their knowledge of local farming communities and their role in overseeing the district veterinary station (dvs) for animal sampling. following the selection of potential cohort households, both sdah-dt and pmc-dt jointly hosted community meetings to explain project objectives and initiate the recruitment process. bavi partnerships for bavi coordination, a decision was made to collaborate with hanoi medical university (hmu). hmu was selected as the lead agency because of its long history in maintaining the fila bavi demographic surveillance site (chuc & diwan 2003), a cohort of approximately 11 000 households located within a western rural district of hanoi province. ethical clearance was obtained through the university institutional review board. the project was envisioned as a nested cohort within the existing structure of fila bavi cohort, and thus recruitment was restricted exclusively to the bavi district of hanoi province. provincial-level authorities (such as sdah-hanoi or pmc-hanoi) were not directly involved in the planning phase of the project; rather, hmu liaised directly 27 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant with the corresponding district offices in bavi (district veterinary station and district preventive medicine center) to recruit parttime project staff for human and animal sampling. experienced interviewers from the fila bavi cohort conducted the enrolment behavioural questionnaires. study design: protocol, methods and implementation approach the study was designed as a descriptive longitudinal cohort of individuals with significant occupational or residential exposure to domestic livestock or wildlife. the intention was to prioritise recruitment of individuals with exposure to exotic non-traditional species (nts) (e.g. rodents, porcupines, civets, ostrich, wild boar, bats), as well as people with typical livestock exposure (pigs, chickens, ducks). the sampling frame designated four different types of study sites (farms, markets, slaughter points, and restaurants serving nts). sampling of humans and representative in-contact warm-blooded animals was conducted at enrolment and yearly intervals; additional ‘responsive’ sampling was conducted in the event of any reported clinical episodes among the cohort members. of note, the possibility of sampling diseased animals (‘normal’ causes of mortality/morbidity as well as epizootic outbreaks) was discussed at length during the planning phase of the project. while awaiting ethical approvals for human enrolment, we initiated a six-month pilot project in dt which attempted to monitor animal disease episodes on sentinel farms. unfortunately, the pilot encountered difficulty and resulted in unreliable data regarding animal illness. in addition, we encountered resistance from animal health authorities who perceived the study protocol as conflicting with internal regulatory policies for reporting notifiable animal diseases. thus, although sampling of animal diseases (and concurrent sampling of humans during animal disease outbreaks) was originally of interest to the overall project objectives, these activities were not written into the final approved study protocol for either site. study sites four types of study sites were identified in the study protocol: 1) farms; 2) live bird markets; 3) slaughter points/abattoirs for larger livestock (predominantly pigs, cows, dogs); and 4) restaurants serving nts. study sites comprised epidemiological units to be used for classifying types of human–animal contact behaviours during subsequent analysis. the sampling frame (frequency, numbers of samples, specimen types) was different for each type of study site. farm sites were intended to represent typical residential exposures to diverse domestic livestock species within rural settings, and were of particular interest due to the possibility of enrolling children from the households. markets and slaughter points were intended to represent more intense occupational exposures (particularly to blood), and were of interest due to the feasibility of sampling postmortem tissues of representative animals. the restaurant study 28 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant sites were solicited to target the most unusual exposures to exotic species (nts) because issues surrounding ‘wildlife farming’ and the wildlife trade had previously been identified as a concern for the emergence of novel infectious agents (daszak, cunningham & hyatt 2000; karesh et al. 2005; wcs 2008; wolfe et al. 2000). participant inclusion and exclusion criteria individuals were considered eligible if they were involved in raising animals for at least three years, had the intention of longterm animal husbandry, and agreed to sign an informed consent form that specified their willingness to be sampled and to have their animals sampled, both during the enrolment phase and periodically thereafter. it was also specified that households must be located within 40 km of the designated hospital site for clinical presentation in the event of illness. this constraint was introduced for logistical reasons, and also because it ensured linkage between clinical episodes occurring in communities and those detected at the hospital (through the hospital-based syndromic surveillance project). in this way, the community cohort could be linked in time and space to the hospital clinical data, lending the project a more rigorous epidemiological framework. human sampling and questionnaires we identified two types of participants: fully enrolled cohort members, for whom baseline enrolment and yearly sampling was conducted, plus completion of a behavioural survey; and contact members, who were identified through follow-up investigation of an illness episode in a cohort member as being symptomatic at the same time as the cohort member, and who consented to provide specimens at a single point in time. a distinction was also made between cohort members enrolled as part of a household unit (i.e. farm study sites), where only the individual who was most in contact with animals (defined as ‘lead’ family member) was interviewed, and cohort members enrolled as individuals (associated with an occupational study site, i.e. a market/slaughter point/restaurant). all occupational and lead household cohort members were interviewed using a questionnaire that provided information on personal disease history, animal exposures, and disease history for animals maintained at the study site (for farm sites only). the questionnaire was designed to investigate knowledge of zoonotic disease transmission and health risks associated with animal exposures and food consumption. it was tailored to reflect the anticipated diversity of cohort members’ occupational exposures, with separate sections to be answered by farmers, market/slaughter workers, and restaurant workers/animal traders. the human specimen collections at enrolment, yearly follow-ups and in the event of clinical episodes were identical, and comprised a 5 ml blood specimen (from adults), 3 ml blood collection (for children <5), nose/throat swabs and rectal swabs. 29 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant animal sampling animal sampling on farms was designed to be random and proportionally representative of the typical warm-blooded domestic livestock species present on the farms. fifteen individual animals were sampled at each farm per visit (regardless of farm size, and regardless of whether the visit comprised enrolment or responsive sampling following notification of a human clinical illness episode). a worksheet was designed to assist study staff in calculating the number of animals to sample from each species, based on a weighted scoring system and estimations of the total herd or flock size and numbers of nts. staff were instructed to preferentially sample any animals with symptoms of illness. the weighted scoring system was essential to provide clear and simple guidance to animal sampling teams, and was piloted during the first phase of dt enrolments to ensure that rarer species present on the farm (e.g. ostrich, porcupines) would also be sampled. the specimen types collected varied by species, but were intended to complement the human collections by representing the three major compartments: systemic blood, gastrointestinal, respiratory. for the cohort members associated with markets/ slaughterhouses and restaurants, a separate program of periodic cross-sectional sampling was implemented to collect blood and postmortem tissues from representative species at each slaughter point. clinical episodes during enrolment, participants were given oral and written instructions for procedures to follow should they develop an illness. each cohort member was given a laminated study card showing their study site and unique participant id, as well as contact phone numbers for the project coordinator (to contact in case of clinical illness) and the community veterinarian (to contact in case of animal disease). participants were encouraged to notify the project coordinator of any illness within 24 hours of symptom onset. an initial telephone consultation between the project coordinator and the cohort member would determine if the illness was of probable infectious origin, in which case the cohort member would be encouraged to present directly to the provincial or district study hospital (with compensation provided to cover the cost of transport). if the cohort member did not wish to go to hospital, then a project team would be despatched to the household to sample the cohort member at home and to identify any symptomatic household contacts. the follow-up procedures were identical regardless of whether the follow-up occurred at home or at the hospital. these comprised completion of an incident report form and human sampling identical to that of enrolment (whole blood; rectal swab; nasal/throat swab). immediately upon notification of a clinical episode of a farmer, the project coordinator was also required to mobilise the veterinary teams to visit the farm study site for ‘responsive’ animal sampling. the responsive animal sampling protocol was identical to the 30 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant enrolment protocol, comprising sampling of 15 animals and 3 specimen types per animal for a total of 45 animal samples. methodology and implementation implementation differences between dong thap and bavi sites to establish good working relationships with the sub-department of animal health in dt (sdah-dt), a baseline survey of enteric pathogens in domestic farm animals was conducted. this survey was not part of the official roll-out of the cohort and did not include any human sampling; rather, it was performed prior to setting up the cohort and focused on a rigorous, systematic and randomised study design for cross-sectional sampling of animal faeces on duck, chicken and pig farms. farms were selected based on census data and randomised from three different scales of production (small, medium, large). the rationale for the animal enterics survey was to review animal census data for the province; to learn about the structure of the livestock sector; to visit field sites and train sdah-dt personnel in animal sampling and research methodology; to set up standard operating procedures related to sample storage, labelling and transport; and to generate baseline data on animal pathogen diversity within the predominant livestock species (i.e. the most relevant ‘human–animal interface’) (anh et al. 2014; carrique-mas et al. 2013). these activities proved critically important for increasing the overall research capacity of the sdah-dt, which had not previously engaged in partnerships with foreign collaborators. a number of important logistical details were addressed during this preparatory phase and key project staff from sdah were identified. in addition, it became clear that some district veterinary stations had better capacity for sampling than others, and this information helped guide site recruitment for the human cohort study. following the initial success of the baseline animal enteric surveys, oucru and sdah study teams approached the pmc-dt together to introduce the concept of establishing a longitudinal human cohort. cohort implementation in bavi district of hanoi province occurred only after dt activities had been well established. the process of study initiation was markedly different in bavi due to the structure of partner relations; hanoi medical university had the lead role and provincial offices of the sdah and pmc were not involved, since the intent was to focus enrolment of cohort members within a single district (i.e. a much smaller administrative unit). the envisioned project was ‘nested’ within an existing large-scale demographic surveillance site (dss), the fila bavi cohort, comprising approximately 51 000 people who had been continuously monitored for over 10 years (nguyen & vinod 2003). because there was no perceived need to involve provinciallevel animal-health authorities, we were unable to obtain animal census data or information on prior animal disease outbreaks, and no baseline animal enteric surveys were conducted. 31 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant to identify potential cohort members from within the larger fila bavi dss, a ‘pre-screening’ questionnaire was developed to determine the occupational animal exposures to the fila bavi heads of households, to identify the predominant animals present at the household sites and to obtain specific information regarding patterns of raw blood consumption. approximately 9000 people completed the ‘prescreening’ questionnaire, and the output was incorporated into an ongoing phd student project on food consumption behaviours and risk perceptions relating to streptococcus suis, a pig bacterium that can cause bacterial meningitis in humans (huong et al. 2014; wertheim et al. 2009). the results indicated the presence of large numbers of unusual species (in particular, porcupines, civets, ostrich), which were considered of significant interest to the project as these species presented a contrast to the predominant pig/poultry farms of dt. in addition, although the survey indicated that large numbers of people were routinely involved in slaughtering livestock, these activities took place largely within households, as there were no abattoirs within the district. training and informational meetings the vizions team organised several trainings for personnel from sdah-dt and pmc-dt to refine the study protocol and familiarise the team with details of various standard operating procedures for human and animal sampling, laboratory workflow, and sampling transport and storage, and to plan coordinated human and animal sampling. all project staff of pmc-dt were trained in good clinical practice; this was held in conjunction with training for project staff at the provincial hospital. key sdah-dt staff were also invited to attend good clinical practice training and this provided the first opportunity for the human and animal health field staff to meet. cohort recruitment in dt was facilitated through three informational meetings in three target communes: 1) at sdah headquarters, targeting farmers in cao lanh district and cao lanh city; 2) at sdah headquarters, targeting people involved in slaughtering and meat processing (of poultry, pigs, rodents); 3) in chau thanh district veterinary offices, targeting farmers. at the informational meetings, participants were requested to sign a list indicating whether they were interested in enrolling, and these lists were subsequently used by the sdah-dt and pmc-dt to organise home visits. at the first recruitment meeting in cao lanh, the study team had not yet developed sufficient skills to clearly communicate project objectives and engage community members. at that time, the study team at district and commune levels did not have a thorough understanding of the project and local farmers did not have a good rapport with commune animal health staff. these factors contributed to poor recruitment levels at the first informational meeting. in the subsequent meeting at the chau thanh veterinary station, the local study team had improved their presentation skills and was more experienced in explaining the 32 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant study protocol and responding to questions. the second meeting also proceeded more smoothly due to the positive reputation of local veterinary staff. prior to launching activities in bavi, two training exchanges between staff from bavi and dt were organised in order to learn from the dt experience. these exchanges were also intended to promote coherence of protocol implementation across the northern and southern sites. initially, the newly recruited coordinators from bavi travelled south to visit oucru headquarters in ho chi minh city and field sites in dt. they met with counterparts, reviewed procedures for human enrolment and behavioural questionnaires, discussed animal sampling, and received hands-on training for sampling and laboratory processing techniques. subsequently, staff from dong thap visited bavi in may 2013. dt staff provided guidance to the bavi field team on animal sampling as the lack of veterinary expertise within both oucru and hmu project teams was identified as a key concern. the bavi dvs had never been involved in projects requiring animal bleeding, invasive sampling or oral fluids collection, nor did they have experience with basic laboratory procedures for aliquoting, labelling, or storing and maintaining sample inventories. the dvs office had only very rudimentary facilities; hence, equipment purchases were required, including a centrifuge and air-conditioner. training study teams on biosecurity procedures (disinfections) was also necessary for visiting multiple farms on the same day. site selection and engagement in dt, recruitment of farming household members and market/ slaughter workers was handled entirely by sdah-dt. based on experiences gained from the baseline survey, the sdah was also able to identify districts with strong, supportive local dvs offices. three districts were identified as focal points for enrolment: chau thanh district, cao lanh district and cao lanh city. staff from each of the three respective dvss sent lists of potential farms to the sdah provincial office. sdah staff visited these farms and verified the numbers and types of animals present, as well as the number of household members, to prepare a roster of candidate heads of households to be invited to community informational meetings. the sdah identified three daily wet markets within the study districts and discussed the study with poultry market workers at these sites. they also met with the owner/manager of the largest abattoir responsible for slaughtering the majority of swine/cattle to identify potential cohort members. a specific effort was made to identify individuals involved in the rat trade, which required scoping visits to markets in other districts. in dt, human sampling and enrolment was conducted at participants’ homes, at their request. after discussion with potential participants during the informational meetings, enrolments were most frequently conducted on weekends when family members (including school-age children) were available. the pmc-dt team was responsible for assessing inclusion/exclusion criteria for each 33 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant participant, obtaining consent, providing a unique id number for each participant and responding to any questions about human sampling. during enrolment, a medically qualified pmc-dt staff member provided a free medical consultation to family elders. this service helped to establish trust and build a relationship with the family members. children were often scared of the blood collection and the pmc-dt study team members worked to dispel their fear (figure 1). a total of 282 study participants were recruited from a total of 64 sites in 5 districts of dt. the cohorts comprised 214 persons from 60 farming households; 30 commune animal health workers; and 38 workers from 1 abattoir and 3 wet markets. the farming households included enrolments of 35 children <15 years old (12 percent). for bavi, hmu led the household recruitment and enrolment process. households with nts that had been previously identified in the pre-screening were not approached for enrolment as the majority were considered too far away from the district hospital or had gone out of business since the time of the pre-screening questionnaire. hmu proceeded to identify other potential households based on previous involvement in the fila bavi dss, the numbers of animals and mix of species present at the household sites, and proximity to the district hospital. to recruit households, experienced project staff from fila bavi dss visited households with a representative from the district pmc office to introduce and explain the project. despite a high refusal rate during the first months of recruitment, a total of 109 people from 29 households were successfully enrolled in july–august 2013. in august 2013, enrolment was temporarily suspended due to the suggestion that more effort should be made to identify and engage households with nts and ‘wildlife’ restaurant staff, since the presence of these unusual sites was an important rationale for working in bavi. following the model of dt, an additional staff member was hired as community veterinarian. the role of the community vet was to figure 1: enrolment of children during home visits in dong thap province assist in identifying potential households with nts for enrolment, to build rapport and improve communication with cohort members through periodic (monthly) visits to the households, and to enhance the ability to respond to cohort members’ concerns about animal health. at this time, it was also agreed that recruitment of additional cohort members (to meet the target of 270 individuals) would be facilitated by holding a community information meeting to explain the project. attempts to identify farms with nts and restaurants involved in the ‘wildlife’ trade in bavi were successful; however, these farms tended to be located in the more isolated parts of the district and poor access roads rendered them impractical as study sites due to anticipated difficulties for managing response to clinical episodes. in addition, participants from these sites had very high refusal rates. the project teams were reluctant to invest more time in recruiting individuals from these sites, in part due to a lack of experience with animal sampling. dvss were overwhelmed by the amount of work entailed in the enrolment sampling, and enrolments in late 2013 were generally delayed through lack of human resources, as dvss were busy with routine annual vaccination campaigns. bavi enrolment targets were completed by the end of december 2013 and comprised a total of 270 people, classified as either members of farming households, commune animal health workers, restaurant workers, and three types of traders (those who raise/slaughter/sell animals from their home; those who slaughter at home and sell fresh meat at the market; and those who sell fresh meat at market but are not directly involved in slaughtering). the cohort households and study sites were located in 20 of the 32 communes of the district. in order to promote reporting of clinical episodes, an sms phone-based text messaging system was implemented, sending weekly reminders to cohort members asking them to contact project staff in the event of mild or severe illness. discussion strengths and challenges herein we have described the project launch of two longitudinal community cohorts in southern and northern vietnam that are linked to a complementary hospital-based syndromic surveillance project conducted in the same areas. the two community cohorts originated under a single study framework with the same objectives and study design, and yet the process of study initiation differed greatly between the two sites and offers an opportunity to reflect on different approaches. clearly the success of community-based projects depends on engagement and buy-in from key community leaders. in dt, where human health (pmc) and animal health (sdah) teams led project implementation, the two departments had prior history of being involved in joint training programs related to avian influenza education campaigns, but they did not have a history of 34 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant active collaboration. the vizions project required intensive time commitments and provided increased opportunities for interaction among key staff. roads to villages were often in poor condition and impassable by four-wheel drive vehicles, so team members shared motorcycles to visit the cohort households together. overcoming the challenges of flooded roads and flat tyres on such excursions helped to build camaraderie among the field teams, resulting in bonds and friendships that strengthened communication and collaboration between sdah and pmc. the project also provided numerous opportunities to interact with local community members, and the commune information meetings, recruitment contacts and subsequent follow-up visits have provided a forum for the local government staff to demonstrate leadership and develop rapport with a wide circle of community households. for dt, local empowerment and establishing leadership capacity within sdah-dt in the early phases of the project launch was a key to later success. the initial animal enteric survey was also essential for building local capacity for basic research management. oucru leaders recognised the need for multisectoral bridging of animal/human health as a key objective of the project, and helped provide resources for coordination between sdah and pmc at all levels (provincial, district, commune) during the training and preparation phases. in bavi, the pmc and dvs district offices were not involved in identifying potential participants; however, they were responsible for sampling at enrolment. the project coordinator (hmu staff) and local assistants (pmc and dvs staff) visited eligible sites to inform potential participants about the project and obtain consent on an individual household basis; this proceeded before holding initial commune-level meetings to introduce the project. human and animal health concerns were regularly discussed with district pmc and dvs staff during sampling, and resulting information on human and animal diseases detected during sampling was shared between pmcs and dvss. establishing and regularly strengthening relationships with cohort members and grassroots partners is essential to assuring the sustainability of the cohort. in dt, the key means for engaging directly with cohort members is through the community veterinarian, who often provides complementary animal feed supplements or advice on animal husbandry. the project coordinator from pmc-dt often visits cohort households and sometimes provides vitamin supplements for participants, conducts on-site medical exams and provides referral advice for additional diagnostics. in bavi, a similar regime of frequent household visits by staff from local commune health centres helps to ensure the regular reporting of human clinical episodes. the relationship between the study team and cohort members has been strengthened through this individualised attention; thus, the cohort members know and trust key study team members. a community cohort often foresees recruitment challenges, especially when the subject matter is sensitive and deemed 35 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant potentially harmful to business. the objective of collecting behavioural and risk-factor data, however, necessitated posing questions about animal husbandry and food consumption that were potentially sensitive, in particular questions about handling of diseased animals, carcass disposal, notification/reporting of animal disease, and consumption of raw blood and other animal products. participants were reluctant to share details that were perceived as jeopardising the value of their livestock or livestock products. as observed in many similar projects, we found that farmers were mistrustful and reluctant to participate if the project focused on documenting biosecurity risks, so successful engagement depended upon building trust among stakeholders (hernandez-jover et al. 2012). it was thus important that the study team has a good relationship with cohort members and field-site communities and that there be clear, regular communication about confidentiality and the neutrality of the research study. in bavi, recruitment challenges revolved around a lack of perceived direct benefit to cohort members from participation in the study, as well as lack of interest and reluctance to have animals sampled. although the hmu team already had established relationships with the community due to the long-running fila bavi dss, cohort members still feared blood draws and worried that giving a blood sample would negatively impact their own health, and that animal sampling would similarly impair productivity of their livestock. some people in bavi expected test results would be provided to them immediately after enrolment, and when it was explained that this was not part of the protocol, some declined to participate. of 84 eligible farm sites, only 62 signed consent forms and 59 agreed to give human and animal samples. fifteen restaurants were approached and only three agreed to participate; the others did not admit that they sold wild animal meat or were afraid of negative impact on their business due to participation in the project. the informed consent form stipulated that participation in the project would involve periodic sampling of farm animals. many farmer participants in dt expressed reluctance at having their pigs sampled as they were concerned about production losses due to stress. during the first week of animal sampling in dt, one baby pig died following the enrolment sampling because he was restrained too tightly, and the animal health team were worried about the cohort participants’ possible reaction. the situation was handled through compensation to the farmer for the value of the pig. subsequently, the animal handling teams gained experience and to date there have not been any additional accidents. reluctance to allow animal sampling also proved a challenge during the bavi farm enrolments. particular difficulties were experienced with wild boars and porcupines. for the porcupine farms, sampling has been restricted to faecal collections due to the difficulty of restraining porcupines. in principle, porcupine farmers have agreed to assist the project staff in obtaining other sample types (respiratory swabs and blood) whenever porcupines 36 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant are restrained for transport/sale/slaughter; however, to date, the logistics and timing of obtaining these samples has been difficult. for the one farm that rears ostrich, the farmer has accepted the collection of rectal swabs and blood; however, collection of respiratory swabs was considered too problematic and dangerous. for both dt and bavi sites, the logistics and planning for hospital involvement in follow-up of clinical episodes posed some particular challenges. this was largely due to the fact that the syndromic surveillance component of the project (known as ‘04vizions’) was concurrently running at the same hospitals. the study protocols for the two projects (the community-based and hospital-based arms of vizions) required completion of different case reporting forms and collection of different specimen types. concerns were raised about whether parallel implementation of the two projects would cause confusion among the hospital staff. to avoid these difficulties in dt, it was agreed that the project coordinator (based at the provincial pmc office) would be responsible for sampling of cohort members regardless of whether the cohort member was sampled at the hospital or at home, and they would also be responsible for completion of the incident report form and transfer of samples back to the pmc laboratory for aliquoting and storage. a similar solution was proposed for bavi, whereby the district pmc project staff report to the hospital to assist hospital staff with sampling and completion of paperwork whenever a cohort member falls ill. in discussions with field teams of the district offices in bavi, project staff have expressed frustration with the lack of adequate compensation for their time on the vizions project and have not developed a sense of ownership of the project. this is particularly true of the dvs staff responsible for animal sampling, as they are often overstretched due to competing responsibilities and, additionally, the ad-hoc farm visits for responsive animal sampling to clinical episodes is very time consuming and logistically hard to manage. there is also a sentiment that the animal health staff (at dvs) and human health staff (at pmc) should be differentially compensated because the animal sampling is more labour intensive and involves additional risks. hmu manages compensation for the field staff in the district government offices, and currently it is not considered feasible to augment payments. consequently, the field teams in bavi are relatively disengaged from the project and have not yet built rapport with cohort households through proactive visits or outreach activities. discussions are ongoing to ameliorate community involvement and clinical episode reporting. these challenges point to one of the major difficulties of working exclusively with district level offices, where human resources are far more limited than in provincial headquarters (for example, sdah-dt has approximately 40 staff, while bavi dvs has only 5 full-time employees). 37 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant lessons learned one lesson learned from project management experiences in dt is the value of repeated face-to-face visits with cohort members at their homes and workplaces. in dt, the community veterinarian and lead coordinator from pmc fulfil this role. they are both based in cao lanh city, the provincial capital, and they are the staff who visit households when there are ill household members. in addition to assuring follow-up procedures of sampling and documentation, these visits provide a social/cultural function. in bavi, the community veterinarian visits households once per month (regardless of the occurrence of clinical events) and a group of commune health workers have been recruited to visit each household once per week. in response to cohort members’ specific requests for more education/training, workshops on animal health have been held in both dt and bavi. the dt workshop in october 2013, led by lecturers from nong lam university, provided basic training on animal nutrition and vaccination issues. topics also included information on antibiotic use in feed and for therapeutics. for the animal health workshop in bavi, the program was led by experts from hanoi university of agriculture and chaired by a tv celebrity who hosts a program on animal husbandry for local television. the workshop provided cohort members with basic information on the most high-profile animal diseases (avian influenza, foot and mouth disease, and porcine reproductive & respiratory syndrome) and a chance to voice concerns relating to animal vaccination programs. another project implemented in dt, ‘health in the backyard’ (www.oucru.org/health-in-the-backyard/), has also enhanced community engagement on topics relating to zoonoses and human–animal interactions. this program involved producing photo-documentaries and storytelling by cohort members, who recounted their own experiences of husbandry practices and perceptions of health risks in their daily lives. the films were then viewed in group settings, with the purpose of stimulating dialogue and debate within the community and between scientists and stakeholders regarding public health concerns and research priorities. the participatory format of ‘health in the backyard’ greatly contributed to cohort members’ appreciation of the project, and the intent is to use a similar approach in the north. in summary, the key mechanisms we have developed to facilitate good relations with the cohort communities include: 1) providing free health checks during annual cross-sectional sampling; 2) providing free consultations/medicine when cohort members fall ill; 3) performing on-site rapid diagnostic tests for influenza for all respiratory cases (conducted at the time of consultation at the commune health station); 4) recruiting commune health workers and a community veterinarian to regularly visit cohort households; 5) hosting educational workshops on animal health/agriculture issues; 6) hosting engagement 38 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant http://www.oucru.org/health-in-the-backyard/ activities such as the photo-documentary project, ‘health in the backyard’; and 7) creating opportunities to socialise with project staff, such as group lunches for staff and key community leaders. conclusion the one health concept has recently gained recognition amongst veterinary, animal health and public health practitioners involved in infectious disease research, and new research and surveillance activities are increasingly including linked sampling of humans and animals (carrique-mas et al. 2013; cuong et al. 2015; dung et al. 2014). most research conducted to date, however, has been limited to single-time-point cross-sectional sampling. this is because maintaining a network for longitudinal sampling presents many additional challenges and difficulties in project management. in this article, we have discussed experiences from the first year of a longitudinal cohort study that monitors human illness episodes and conducts coordinated animal sampling in response to reported illnesses. a future extension of the project to enable synchronous monitoring of animal and human disease would represent a truly remarkable ‘one health’ achievement, but this is not practical at present. the achievements to date, however, enable responsive sampling of humans and animals within the immediate period following a human illness episode (48 hours). we have also achieved an informal ear-to-the-ground mechanism for learning about ongoing animal disease outbreaks. we suggest that informal (non-official) networks for obtaining information on animal diseases are likely to remain important sources of data for the foreseeable future. the risks of possible zoonotic pandemics have never been greater, due to exponential increases in mobility of people and goods around the world, rapidly changing agro-ecosystems and other ecological changes associated with urbanisation and climate change. the primary lesson learned to date from the project launch of vizions in northern and southern vietnam has been a reaffirmation of the critical importance of community engagement activities in promoting cross-sectoral work, specifically bridging activities that require input from both the human and animal health sectors. these engagement activities are central to building trust and supportive relationships among researchers, partner agencies and stakeholders. thus far, the project has been implemented in two unique sites (in north and south vietnam) and under two very different management structures (government-led and academic-led). we suggest that programs embedded within existing government-led surveillance structures, with strong presence in local communities, are most likely to succeed and directly contribute to improved awareness and reporting of disease episodes in communities. strengthening of partnerships with government institutions is preferable to working through temporary, externally funded academic partnerships, as the staffing within government agencies is less transient and 39 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant thus may promote the sustainability of the research activities by enhancing leadership capacity at the community level and the training of local actors. as the project continues, we anticipate that the participatory research approach will foster improved coordination and collaboration at provincial, district and commune levels, and will provide new local leadership for research on surveillance systems and zoonotic disease transmission in vietnam. references american veterinary medical association (avma) 2008, contributing to one world, one health: a strategic 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with flulike illness? a population-based study 41 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant from a rural area in vietnam with outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza’, archives of internal medicine, vol. 166, no. 1, pp. 119–23. truong, t, yoshimatsu, k, araki, k, lee, b, nakamura, i, endo, r, shimizu k, yasuda, s, koma, t, taruishi, m, okumura, m, truong, u & arikawa, j 2009, ‘molecular epidemiological and serological studies of hantavirus infection in northern vietnam’, the journal of veterinary medical science/ japanese society of veterinary science, vol. 71, no. 10, pp. 1357–63. uyeki, t, nguyen, d, rowe, t, lu, x, hu-primmer, j, huynh, l, hang, n & katz, j 2012, ‘seroprevalence of antibodies to avian influenza a(h5) and a(h9) viruses among market poultry workers, hanoi, viet nam, 2001’, plos one, vol. 7, no. 8, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043948. wildlife conservation society (wcs) 2008, commercial wildlife farms in vietnam: a problem or solution for conservation? hanoi, vietnam. wertheim, f, nghia, h, taylor, w & schulsz, c 2009, ‘streptococcus suis: an emerging human pathogen, clinical infectious disease, vol. 48, issue 5, pp. 617–25. wolfe, n, eitel, m, gockowski, j, muchaal, p, nolte, c, prosser, a, torimiro, j, weise, s & burke, d 2000, ‘deforestation, hunting and the ecology of microbial emergence’, global change and human health, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 10–25. world health organization (who), vietnam zoonoses fact sheet, 2014. 42 | gateways | saylors, ngo tri, tran khanh, bach tuan, wertheim, baker, ngo thi, bryant http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=nguyen%20dc%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=rowe%20t%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=lu%20x%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=hu-primmer%20j%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=huynh%20lp%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=hang%20nl%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=katz%20jm%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=22928049 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043948 _goback gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 160–177 © utsepress and the author the role of public universities: examining one university’s response to xenophobia judy favish on 19 may 2008 south africans woke up to the horrifying image of a mozambican man, ernesto nhamuave, engulfed in fire. upon investigation, it turned out that he had been set alight by fellow human beings. professor adam habib, deputy vice-chancellor of the university of johannesburg, has described ernesto nhamuave as the human face of south africa’s orgy of xenophobic violence (habib 2008). he died in the ramaphosa informal settlement after a group of south africans beat him, doused him with petrol and burnt him alive. ernesto was one of the 65 or more foreign nationals who would die in the following days in the violence that swept gauteng. thousands more fled their homes with literally nothing except the clothes on their backs. by the end of the week, the violence had spread like wildfire throughout the country. this unprecedented violation of the rights of ‘others’ in south africa bordered on human catastrophe and caught the government, public institutions and individuals by surprise – people did not know how to respond. gateways | favish 161 many south africans volunteered their time and energy to help the displaced people. the university of cape town (uct), home to 2308 students from the rest of africa, did react to the crisis, but in a manner that suggested that uct was grappling with appropriate ways of translating its commitment to being an engaged university into concrete action. uct’s immediate response to the xenophobia crisis took the form of humanitarian aid designed to mitigate the suffering of thousands of people displaced by the violence. professor martin hall, then deputy vice-chancellor at uct and co-chair of the uct crisis response committee that was set up to co-ordinate the support of the uct community, described the university’s response as follows: it became clear on about the wednesday that there was a rapidly emerging crisis in cape town. on friday evening uct was told that there were 200 people displaced in buses. uct’s initial reaction was to find accommodation for these people. so the first response was to find 200 mattresses, which the residences did magnificently and very quickly. at first we thought we would need the sports centre. but soon after that we were advised that the network of church halls and community centres would be able to cope with the flood of displaced victims. so the people who we thought were coming to us were diverted into what eventually turned out to be a network of over 100 community sites. so we then sent the mattresses that we collected to the church. we were informed that the most immediate role we could play was providing transport for people who had been forced to leave their homes. so we deployed the jammie shuttles and moved about 2000 people in the course of the weekend. staff and students were also mobilised to provide relief in the form of blankets, clothing and food. shawco [student’s health and welfare centre organisation] volunteers conveyed the goods to various distribution points that had been set up by non-governmental organisations (ngos) and the churches. (hall 2008) during the course of the crisis, uct’s contribution increasingly came to reflect the particular expertise and strengths that reside within the university, manifested across a diversity of activities. students were mobilised to assist in various ways. in uct’s case the capacity to do this quickly and effectively was due to the volunteer gateways | favish 162 infrastructure established by shawco, a community development organisation run by students of uct. as well, the resources of medical personnel were speedily galvanised through the health sciences faculty. another set of resources was located in the refugee rights project, attached to the law faculty. staff from the clinic there had been working with refugees for years and, as a result, had the infrastructure and relationships to respond to the incidences of human rights abuses and provide advice on protocols for dealing with refugees. and finally, the department of social development mobilised its resources to offer counselling services. whilst it is recognised that many other departments in uct organised seminars on xenophobia, or introduced discussions on xenophobia into formal teaching programmes, this article focuses on the interventions of shawco, the refugee rights project and the department of social development. these initiatives were nominated by the faculties and student society representatives on the social responsiveness working group for inclusion in the 2008 social responsiveness report. representatives from these units were also represented on the vice-chancellor’s crisis response committee. shawco: supporting health related interventions shawco health sector is an arm of shawco that is run by health sciences students on a voluntary basis. it provides six evening clinics on a weekly basis and one paediatric clinic every month to seven disadvantaged communities in the cape metropolitan area. on the evening of 23 may 2008, a member of the shawco health steering committee received a phone call from one of the volunteer doctors who was helping out at the caledon street police station in the city to ask whether shawco volunteers could assist with handing out blankets, food, and clothes to the thousands of people who had been displaced by the violence and had congregated at the police station. a decision was made to advertise the need through shawco’s regular communication channels. the communication indicated that volunteers would help as individuals, not under a shawco umbrella, since shawco could not take responsibility for the safety of volunteers in this situation. a bulk sms was sent out at 22:45 to the 300-plus students on the shawco health database, requesting their help. gateways | favish 163 on saturday morning an emergency meeting was called for shawco health steering committee members and other shawco leaders from the shawco education sector on the university’s main campus to decide how shawco could help. it was decided that shawco health would focus on health-related activities, while shawco education, with the aid of shawco staff and drivers, would co-ordinate the collection and distribution of large amounts of food, clothing and hygiene products to the different sites of refuge. this enabled a large portion of the uct community to get involved personally and practically. a decision was also made that shawco would not use its branded vehicles to take relief items into the communities that shawco traditionally serves. shawco has struggled to change its brand from a welfare organisation to a development organisation over the last 14 years, with communities still expecting free handouts of food and clothing. we did not want communities to feel that we had double standards, but we did want to contribute in some way to an unprecedented crisis. a further decision was made that shawco health would not suspend any of its normal services – a move which could potentially have generated xenophobia where none had existed previously by making our normal communities feel marginalised during the crisis. (de wit & lewin 2008) on the saturday night, 24 may, shawco health leaders met with members of the treatment action campaign (tac), aids law project (alp), aids & rights alliance for southern africa (arasa), médecins sans frontières (msf) and individual doctors to discuss a concerted health response. a decision was made to run a health assessment across all known sites on sunday morning, utilising a rapid needs assessment tool developed by msf, the site details accumulated by tac, and volunteers mobilised by shawco health: a sms was sent out at 21:30 on saturday night asking for volunteers to report at 08:00 the next morning. despite the last-minute call and early wake-up, 20 volunteers arrived at the shawco offices the next morning. the volunteers from the faculty of health sciences included medical and health and rehabilitation students. the volunteers were trained by msf and given instructions on security issues. four students were paired up with doctors and the rest worked in student-pairs. gateways | favish 164 a total of 18 sites had been identified for the teams to visit that day – they came back with over 33 having been assessed (as a team would go into an area, the police would take them to more sites which had not as yet requested help from the civil society coalition). shawco volunteers wore shawco health shirts so that they would be identified as relief workers. through this identification, shawco became the link between the civil society coalition and various church groups who were hosting internally displaced people. by the monday after the crisis exploded the churches were running an online database of all the sites which they were supporting. shawco health was able to feed information into these sites, as well as to incorporate health-specific questions, needs and information so that the overall response could be more effective. (de wit & lewin 2008) by sunday afternoon, 25 may, over 33 sites had been surveyed and information from all those sites captured and assessed, which was then relayed to various role-players in the response. the survey captured information on, inter alia, numbers of men, women and children, shelter, food provision, health needs, health services and safety. this was the first data obtained regarding the extent of the crisis situation. up until this point, the city of cape town had no idea of the scale and complexity of the situation. the framework developed on this day was later adopted by the city of cape town disaster management team as a basis for monitoring all sites. subsequent modifications were made by the civil society coalition (csc), a loose network of community based organizations and ngos that was formed to facilitate a co-ordinated response to the crisis. these modifications included questions on the provision of health services in the area, visits of health officials, and access to first aid at the sites. on monday, 26 may, in a meeting between city and provincial health leaders and representatives of the civil society coalition, it was agreed that daily health assessments would be run by health officials across the eight health sub-districts in the cape metro area, and the results of these assessments would be sent to the csc along with requests for volunteers aimed at specific interventions. while waiting for the information from the health services to come through, uct’s faculty of health sciences and shawco health, in gateways | favish 165 partnership with the tac/alp/arasa-convened alliance, began putting together a database of students and staff members who were willing to help with health-specific interventions. it was a very effective use of the faculty’s communication systems and shawco’s long-standing ability to co-ordinate volunteers. (de wit & lewin 2008) as per the agreement, the details of the individuals willing to help were sent to the health authorities. by the thursday of that week, 29 may, the csc, still waiting for a response from the health authorities, decided it was necessary to run another rapid site assessment of the more than 70 sites that were now logged on the central database. shawco volunteers from upper campus formed part of the group that ran these assessments, as shawco’s health students were occupied with their curriculum work in the hospitals during the weekdays. from the information gathered through the rapid needs site assessment, shawco health could identify which sites had: no access to health care facilities • large numbers of people• a large proportion of children under the age of 5 and/or • signs of diarrhoea and scabies outbreaks. • although the plan was not to set up parallel health systems, it had become clear from the data gathered that many people were either too scared to access the normal health care facilities or had actually been harassed by local citizens on attempting to access these facilities. shawco health therefore identified eight sites most in need of extra health services and began to arrange for their mobile clinics and teams of students and doctors to go out and run weekend and evening clinics. once again, shawco health was able to make use of the faculty’s bulk sms system to advertise the clinics to all the health sciences students. this enabled shawco health to have access to students who would not normally be in the shawco communication network and boosted clinic attendance. (de wit & lewin 2008) shawco health also developed and distributed materials to help site co-ordinators identify and treat diarrhoea, scabies and tb outbreaks, as well as information on medical ‘red flags’ – what to gateways | favish 166 refer, how quickly, and to where. none of this kind of information had been distributed during the first week of the crisis. this was later added to by a leading paediatrician and academic who put in special notes on how to care for newborns, nutrition, and handling of specific childhood illnesses. these resources will be kept on file for any similar crisis that might arise in the future. over the space of the week, shawco health ran nine clinics at eight different sites around cape town, treating over 600 people (in addition to the six normal evening clinics on mondays, tuesdays and wednesdays). a later clinic was run by volunteer doctors using one of shawco health’s fully equipped mobile clinics and the shawco dispensary for the hundreds of asylum seekers staying under the eastern boulevard bridge (the students were at this time writing end of block exams). the manner in which the faculty of health sciences and shawco health worked together to respond to the crisis serves as a wonderful model for how student organisations and more ‘institutional’ bodies can work together extremely effectively. each did what they do best and supported each other, which led to a highly efficient health response from the uct community. (de wit & lewin 2008) refugee rights project: helping to manage a humanitarian crisis on the morning of friday 23 may, the refugee rights project fielded calls from countless numbers of its fear-stricken clients who were afraid to leave their homes as well as from others who were confronted by perpetrators of violence. the refugee rights project staff immediately intervened by liaising with the south african police service to assist those affected to reach places of safety. later that day nearly 250 refugees arrived at the offices of the refugee rights project at the law faculty seeking assistance. with severely traumatised clients who obviously needed emergency relief, the staff at the refugee rights project had to step outside their traditional role of attorneys to manage a humanitarian crisis. with the assistance of the rondebosch police, initially at the police station and later at rondebosch united church, they managed to place 1057 refugees in shelters in and around cape town with the jammie shuttle providing much needed transportation. on saturday morning the project staff logged all the displaced people that were assisted by them with the cape town disaster gateways | favish 167 management team. many members of the uct community (staff and students) came to the assistance of the project staff. it soon came to the attention of the refugee rights project that refugees who were housed at community halls, church halls and mosques were being moved by government to the youngsfield military base as well as other distant and relatively remote places such as soetwater and silverstroom. within hours it became apparent that refugees’ rights were being violated by the military personnel and other officials at these sites. the refugee rights project immediately intervened by liaising extensively with the military personnel at the base, explaining the refugees’ right to freedom of movement, amongst others. this intervention directly resulted in these rights being respected and in the media gaining access. (khan 2008) other legal issues immediately identified and addressed by the project were the forced and undignified tagging of the refugees at these sites and the attempted unlawful registration of people not already documented. it was pointed out to the minister of home affairs (in a series of correspondence), under whose ostensible authority this was being done, that the authority she claimed for the procedure did not in fact empower such registration and that the offensive questions on these registration forms had no basis in law. this led to the minister retracting the initial unlawful registration and relying rather on powers under the immigration act to grant residence to the undocumented migrants for a six-month period. during this time, much appreciated support and assistance for the refugees came from the staff at the refugee rights project and, indeed, from the entire cape bar, an association of attorneys and advocates. at the same time refugees were demanding involvement from the office of the united nations high commissioner for refugees in cape town (unhcr). project staff convinced unhcr staff to come to cape town and establish a presence for the duration of the crisis. in addition they also facilitated many meetings with community-based organisations and ngos and the unhcr protection unit. a very important role identified by the refugee rights project staff during this time was the fact that they, via their clients, were a gateways | favish 168 key source of information, and at times of life-saving information. during the crisis of may 2008, they informed the south african police of the impending attacks on foreigners and the exact areas where such attacks were likely to occur, thus helping to ensure that not a single person was killed in the western cape. they did so again in september 2008 in an attempt to avert further brutal attacks and displacement of vulnerable people whom the entire international community had agreed to protect. the project staff remain committed to ensuring that refugees’ rights are not violated and in this regard they continue to inform south africans about refugee rights. department of social development: rendering psychosocial support concerned about the unfolding crisis, staff in the department of social development acted quickly when approached by the dean of the faculty of humanities on 26 may 2008 about offering services to refugees. initial responses included compiling a list of volunteers to render psychosocial support to displaced refugees. the department recognised that even though direct counselling was not part of its core activities these were extraordinary circumstances and the values of the social work profession dictated that staff respond to this human disaster. the department was also aware that its students worked in communities as part of their field practice and that they may be placed in situations where they needed to respond to clients who were traumatised as a result of the events. the goals of the department were to: render psychosocial support to individuals and groups • affected by violence and displacement participate in networks with community service • organisations (csos) and uct staff in order to pool resources so that services could be maximised and identify lessons in reframing practice-based interventions • from african experiences of displacement. the first step was to compile a list of potential volunteers, which consisted of staff and students in the department, colleagues from the psychology department and practitioners in the field. the project coordinator, with the assistance of the head of the department, liaised with shawco and a meeting was convened with dr pumla gobodogateways | favish 169 madikizela, from the department of psychology, to plan a response. counselling was conducted with groups and individuals, but it soon became clear that the refugees were being further traumatised by a lack of co-ordination between the province and the city. this resulted in confusion around what was going to happen, an overreliance on volunteers, and the absence of a clear idea as to how the government planned to deal with the situation. based on ongoing needs assessments, the method of intervention was modified and counselling was offered on an ad hoc basis. it soon became evident that refugees were preoccupied with meeting their basic needs and that the most practical way to offer support was for a counsellor or counsellors to be available at specific times. counselling rosters were compiled for youngsfield and harmony, which were advertised via the leaders and the refugees used the service as needed. it was also clear that services needed to be offered during the day as well as after hours, because the majority of displaced persons at both sites were not available during the day. the adults would leave the sites to go and seek employment and the children attended school. at chrysalis academy, services were offered during the day only (including saturdays). however, a volunteer was available at night in the event of an emergency. later, at summer greens, a counsellor was available two mornings per week and three counsellors were available four evenings a week. counsellors offered support to mainly adult refugees, but some support was provided to children. they also offered support to volunteers who were showing strain as a result of working long hours and not being able to answer the refugees’ questions about their future. volunteers were feeling helpless and despondent. in the third week of the crisis the department realised that chrysalis academy was reasonably well resourced in terms of counsellors and approached the network of trauma support providers to find out where the department’s assistance was needed more. the department then decided to render services at the summer greens hall, which was housing a total of 250 people, including 65 young children. the situation at summer greens was different in that the site was co-ordinated by the refugees themselves and there were gateways | favish 170 very few volunteers who were involved. however, the leaders of the site also required support. the service during the day was geared towards adults, whereas the evening sessions were mainly used to intervene with children. the counsellors realised that the classic role of therapist would not suffice in this situation and that intervention was required at different levels. this included organising food, linking with government officials about the provision of basic needs, assisting with tracing lost relatives, and organising medical assessments and treatment. a positive development at the onset of the intervention was the establishment by the health sciences faculty of the network of trauma support providers, mentioned above. this informal network consisted of academics, cso staff and private practitioners. the network enabled co-ordination between the departments of psychiatry, psychology and an ngo, the trauma centre for survivors of violence and torture. reflections on the public role of the university as can be seen from the above accounts, the uct response took the form of humanitarian aid with students and staff from the uct community contributing predominantly as concerned citizens. in addition, academics and students provided specialised services linked to their professional areas of competence or fields of study. at the meeting which took place on monday, 26 may, to which all members of the uct community were invited, a strong view was expressed that uct needed to move beyond its ‘first response’ of humanitarian aid and focus on developing a deeper understanding of the causes of the crisis with a view to formulating proposals for more effective immigration policies and state responses to the gross violations of human rights which had occurred all over the country. the key challenge identified was for the university to formulate a framework for a sustained long-term intervention without prescribing what form the intervention should take. the motivation for intervening probably stemmed from a desire to support the role of public universities in promoting the public good and helping to address development challenges faced by our society in line with uct’s mission to play ‘an active developmental role in our cultural, economic, political, scientific and social environment’ (uct 1996). gateways | favish 171 the activities of the department of social development illustrate how a department in a university can position itself to engage with long-term issues. from the outset the department decided to set academic goals for its intervention, because ultimately it aimed to reflect on the lessons learnt from the experience and incorporate these lessons into its teaching as well as encourage debate about the practice models used: the work with displaced refugees is vital, not only for humanitarian reasons, but because it will inform the teaching of the department of social development. historically the department has always recognised the relevance of incorporating input on trauma into the curriculum. the trauma and struggles experienced by refugees is a strong component of the module on trauma intervention offered by the department. the work with refugees provided staff with the opportunity to conduct research on issues related to xenophobic violence. our postgraduate students in development planning were tasked with examining planning processes related to the re-integration of refugees into communities. staff have continued to be involved in ongoing research into the dynamics and struggles faced by displaced persons in the cape metropole area. the department will also be hosting a seminar with relevant stakeholders to examine our intervention and to debate practice models, learnings and the way forward. it is also envisaged that the papers discussed at this seminar will be published. (williams 2008) the religion and xenophobia conference organised by the religious studies department is another example of an initiative designed to stimulate debate about the underlying causes of the xenophobia crisis and to reflect on strategies for addressing these. however, whilst other departments within the university may have engaged in a similar fashion, once the need for large-scale humanitarian aid declined, it proved difficult to sustain a centrally co-ordinated initiative to engage with the long-term challenges. hall suggests that one of the major reasons for this stems from contestations, or a lack of clarity, about the public role of the university: gateways | favish 172 the extent to which the university interprets its public role beyond the core issues of research and teaching provision is an unsettled issue in higher education. what is interesting in the sort of situation that we faced in this crisis is that the more theoretical policy issues which have been there in an abstracted sense all the time became very concrete. for example, we’ve always known that the 1997 white paper identifies a clear set of public obligations for universities. but it’s one thing to debate those in the abstract; it’s another thing altogether to know how to respond to a very immediate public crisis. so uct’s decision to set up the crisis committee was essentially reactive rather than proactive, and a result of a buildup of voices within the institution urging the institution to do something. this created a collective push towards an engagement. (hall 2008) the difficulty in sustaining a longer-term intervention highlighted structural difficulties in regard to promoting the civic mission of universities. as hall says: uct’s organisational structure is set up to reproduce and extend a core of largely discipline-based knowledge through discipline-based teaching and discipline-based research. i have no doubt that that sort of work has a key role in an education system as a whole. but to seriously address the challenges that manifested themselves during the xenophobia crisis would require strong, clear and directed university leadership working in consultation with the entire university community. such leadership would enable the university to draw on the strengths of individual departments, whilst seriously grappling with the implications of being a university located in one of the steepest gradients between wealth and poverty in the world. so whilst there is a large number of motivated individuals and groups of individuals across the university who are very passionate about human rights issues, and who may from time to time demand that the university responds as an institution to particular strategic issues, there isn’t an organisational structure within uct that can carry or own a university-wide project. this becomes more challenging when long-term interventions necessitate inter-disciplinary work. there’s no funding available, there’s no organisational structure that you could use, and so it is likely to be entirely champion dependent. (hall 2008) gateways | favish 173 in explaining the motivation for his own involvement, hall refers to the connection with his transformation portfolio: the crisis was highly racialised, and appeared to be related in complex ways to issues of inequality, social exclusion and poverty. although the nature of the linkages still needs to be analysed properly, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that the causes reflect the pathologies of poverty, inequality and exclusion, which are substantive issues of transformation. i therefore felt that addressing the crisis was part of my portfolio. given that disciplines constitute the basis of the organisation of universities, the lessons from uct’s engagement in the xenophobia crisis suggest a critical role for the university leadership in allocating appropriate resources to: harness intellectual expertise from across the university• deepen debate about the causes of a crisis such as the • xenophobic violence and critically reflect on long-term strategies for addressing • these underlying causes the need for a university-wide response reflects the importance of inter-disciplinary collaboration in building better understanding of complex phenomena: really interesting things happen when people from different disciplines get together to discuss issues. there are key human rights questions, which are not necessarily straightforward – there are people who would come out of law who would believe in absolutist versions of human rights, which will be completely challenged in anthropology. so it can be argued where problems are as complex as those associated with the xenophobia crisis, university-wide debates and discussions could have contributed to a deeper understanding of the issues. (hall 2008) promoting critical citizenship much of the literature on the public engagement of universities refers to the role of universities in producing critical citizens through educational programmes and practices that are conducive to critical discourse, cultural tolerance and a common commitment to a humane and just social order. gateways | favish 174 fulfilling this mission entails the provision of opportunities for ongoing debate about various forms of prejudice and humanitarian disasters, amongst other things, so that students are equipped to deal with such challenges in the future. in the absence of a university-wide structure to organise public debates, universities tend to rely on individual champions or academics who take their roles as public intellectuals very seriously. uct was fortunate to be able to draw on the reservoir of expertise within shawco and its network of student volunteers to recruit volunteers to assist with the relief effort. indeed, the role played by shawco illustrates how critical the existence of a student-run entity like shawco at a university can be, both for building relationships with local communities in cape town and for providing students with opportunities for co-curricula experiences which enable them to acquire leadership skills, whilst addressing key development challenges facing our society. student volunteers who participate in shawco activities attest to how their engagement with communities strengthens their commitment to promoting a culture of tolerance and social justice within the country. they also come to appreciate the importance of team work and the value of social networks in addressing major challenges facing south africa: i think a large part of why shawco’s response was successful was because it was student-run. yes, staff members were there to offer support and assure students that there was a budget which they could draw from, but essentially the students were given free rein to respond in the way they saw best. i believe it is because of this freedom that they responded in such an overwhelmingly professional and effective manner – i think, had we as staff members assumed responsibility and told them what to do, we would have had a totally different situation on our hands. students have personal resources in terms of energy and idealism, but also in terms of their communication and social networks and (i know this is the wrong word, but) a ‘moral authority’ because they are acting in a voluntary capacity and not as part of their ‘job’. so, when a student asks another student to come and help out, there is more clout and communication to other students than when a student is asked/ told by a staff member or as part of the university’s structures. gateways | favish 175 while the university may have tried to tap into residences for donations and volunteering, it was actually the students who came up with the idea of contributing their meals (yoghurts, packed sandwiches, juices, etc.) to the sites, as well as ongoing collections (and marketing of the collections) of clothes and hygiene products. these were individuals in individual residences who took the initiative to do this on their own volition. (lewin 2008) whilst this quote from a staff member at shawco highlights the importance of student-led initiatives in nurturing a life-long commitment and sense of responsibility to contributing to the development of society, it also challenges the university to reflect critically on whether sufficient opportunities are provided for students to acquire the practical skills needed for active citizenship through the formal curriculum or as part of the co-curriculum. as a member of the shawco board says: students who volunteer via shawco do so primarily in their capacity as uct students. so it is difficult to see how shawco could operate independently of uct. but i think it is important to reflect on the extent to which ‘uct’s response’ was so critically dependent on shawco, which, although closely linked to uct, is in fact a largely independent ngo. thus, for instance, how different would the picture have been in the absence of a shawco? and what might the implications of this be? i think it is important to think about what it all means for how the uct community is mobilised, not only in crisis situations, but also to respond to ongoing social needs in the communities of which we are a part. the reliance on shawco to provide a channel for student volunteerism, given its ambiguous relationship with the university, exposes potential weaknesses within uct with respect to the role of universities in providing opportunities for students to acquire skills associated with active citizenship through practice. i believe that the role that shawco plays currently in uct is not fully appreciated. (molteno 2008) conclusion the brief accounts of the contributions of shawco, the refugee rights project and the social development department indicate the enormous capacity that exists within universities to contribute to the gateways | favish 176 ongoing development of our society, through research and teaching, as well as through sustained engagement with issues confronting our country. however, the case profiles suggest that universities need to grapple seriously with the challenge of building the relationships and structural mechanisms that will enable them to enhance their role in promoting the public good. it also raises questions about the critical role of university leadership in developing appropriate strategies for promoting inter-disciplinary collaboration and galvanising the intellectual resources of the university to respond to the needs of the majority of people in our country. the benefits of promoting a culture of volunteerism amongst students have been highlighted, as well as the need for the university to reflect on appropriate protocols for mobilising the resources of shawco and other student-led societies. lastly, the positive features of the collaboration between students and staff of the health sciences faculty, and between them and other organisations of civil society, provide excellent examples of the ways in which mutually beneficial relationships can be built with external constituencies. as lewin and de wit say: imagine if each faculty and structure in the university (such as residences etc.) had called its students together on the first day and asked them to identify ways in which they could respond, firstly within the line of work they are studying (if possible), secondly with the faculty’s resources (such as communication structures, phone lines, people, computers etc.), and thirdly just with the faculty’s support (just knowing their students were going out as a group to play games with kids in the camp, for instance, and encouraging them in different ways). if the student leaders in residences had been given the space and support of the organisation’s structures to mobilise donations, volunteers etc. – can you imagine each residence committing to sending out ten volunteers to run afternoon classes with kids in the camps, or something? how awesome would that have been? admittedly, this all took place during and after exams, but we believe that if universities more actively promote and recognise what ‘student organisation’ can accomplish, we would have seen a lot more of it. then, in ten year’s time, if something like this hit again, we would have doctors, lawyers, biologists, gateways | favish 177 engineers, business people, musicians, sociologists, playwrights etc. all knowing a little more about how to respond to this situation, and wanting to respond to the situation, because they know that it is each individual that counts, not just the name of an institution. references information for this case profile was provided by: ms thandi de wit, ms fatima khan, mrs wendy lewin, mr frank molteno, ms fatima williams and associate professor allan taylor; from an interview conducted with professor martin hall on 16 october 2008; and from a group interview conducted with mr jon hodgson, mr jonathan hoffenberg, mrs wendy lewin, mr frank molteno and ms fatima williams on 30 october 2008. habib, a 2008, ‘explosion of a dream deferred’, cape argus, 17 june. university of cape town 1996, ‘mission statement’, university of cape town, cape town; see http://www.uct.ac.za/about/intro western sydney is hot! community arts and changing perceptions of the west fibro houses, suburban sprawl, crime, bogans. traditionally, sydney’s western suburbs have been associated with all the markers of poverty and disadvantage, and a distinct lack of cultural sophistication. to be a ‘westie’ was to embrace a working-class culture of plain talking, manual labour and a general suspicion of art, higher education and other ‘pointyheaded’ pursuits. more recently, as western sydney has become increasingly multicultural, the stereotypes have focused more on ‘ethnic crime’ and immigrant ‘ghettoes’. however, these negative images of western sydney are starting to shift, pushed along particularly by attempts to boost cultural and artistic activity in the region. in the last decade or so, western sydney has seen a proliferation of new cultural and artistic institutions, organisations and community initiatives, and advocates now hail the region as australia’s newest cultural sensation. to what extent have these positive images of cultural vibrancy displaced the older negative ones? what role have community arts played in this re-imagining of western sydney? this article examines these questions through a framework of evaluating social impacts. while evaluation of arts programs typically focus on their outputs and outcomes and on individual participants, i have attempted to push out the parameters of evaluation to explore social impacts, in particular, the impact of arts programs on the broader social perceptions of a region. in doing so, i have also sought to expand the methods available for undertaking evaluation and challenge the prevailing preoccupation with measurement, arguing that quantitative measures narrow the scope of what can be recognised within the wide range of impacts that arts programs can have. evaluation of social impact: getting beyond measuring outputs in the last 25 years or so, evaluation has become the new mantra of funding bodies, community organisations, and it seems, any organisation providing any kind of service. increasingly, organisations are becoming eager to demonstrate the impact gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 5 (2012): 35–55 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 christina ho university of technology, sydney 36 | gateways | ho of their work and to improve their organisational performance, partly in response to requirements by their funders for greater accountability. this trend has given rise to numerous evaluation models, mostly relying on quantitative methods. these include costbenefit analysis, social return on investment, social accounting and audit and results-based accountability, to name a few (productivity commission 2010, p. 51). most of these approaches devise indicators for measuring the outputs and outcomes of an organisation or program, often attempting to translate these contributions into financial values. however, critics see these frameworks as too narrow to capture the full spectrum of the contributions which are actually being made. this has been particularly evident in the arts. cultural policy decisions can no longer refer to notions of ‘excellence’, ‘quality’ or ‘artistic value’ (belfiore 2004, p. 188), but rather must show, in the form of ‘hard evidence’, exactly what individual or social benefits are generated by programs. however, in many ways, the impacts of arts programs are inherently difficult to measure. they occur in complex, open systems where it is difficult to determine which actions led to particular outcomes. they are often about providing intangible as well as tangible benefits, focusing on the processes of participation and creation rather than exclusively on the end-product. they are often about changing perceptions and attitudes, not just of participants but of a broader audience. while their impact may be felt immediately, arts projects often generate ripple effects that continue long after the life of the project. this article focuses on these longer-term ripple effects, and in particular, the impact of community arts programs on perceptions of western sydney. in focusing on this level of impact, i deliberately targeted an area that is difficult to evaluate. as mentioned earlier, evaluation commonly focuses on outputs or the ‘direct products of the organisation’s activities’, such as number of classes taught, number of hours of service delivered, numbers of participants served (productivity commission 2010, p. 35). however, evaluations can also consider outcomes, or the ‘intended benefits for participants during and after an organisation’s activities’ (productivity commission 2010, p. 35), including new knowledge and skills, changed attitudes or values and modified behaviour. these outcomes are obviously broader than simply accounting for what services were delivered. however, fewer evaluations consider broader impacts or the longer-term benefits for the individual and the community, including ‘feedback effects’ and ‘spillovers’ from activities (productivity commission 2010, p. 44). these include improved community participation, stronger communities and enhanced local identity. there is less data available to assess such impacts, 37 | gateways | ho and as noted above, it can be difficult to isolate the contribution of any one program, especially when goals may not be fully realised for some time or when significant unanticipated results emerge. in australia the study of the social impact of the arts is gradually developing, although from a slow start, thanks to the work of deirdre williams, who in the mid 1990s pioneered a methodology later taken up by numerous international studies. commissioned by the australia council for the arts to examine the long-term value of 89 community-based arts projects, williams found evidence of many social, educational, economic and artistic benefits. she highlighted a critical link between community culture and social cohesion, demonstrating how ‘community-based arts programs are powerful catalysts for developing healthy, viable communities’ (williams 1996). in particular, community-based art programs can create a sense of place, affirm the values of the community, assert its differences and communicate its aspirations (williams 1996). subsequent studies have found similar benefits (matarasso 1997; walker, fleming & sherwood 2003; ramsey white & rentschler 2005). particularly pertinent to this article, guetzkow (2002) has assessed the impact of the presence of artists, arts organisations and public art, finding that this can improve the image and status of the community, promote neighbourhood cultural diversity and reduce crime (p. 3). these factors may all strengthen an area’s ‘cultural vitality’, or a community’s capacity for creating and supporting creative expression on its own terms (opdycke et al. 2003, p. 8). as hawkes (2001) has argued, cultural vitality should be considered the ‘fourth pillar of sustainability’, which is just as important in a community as the other dimensions of economic viability, social equity and environmental sustainability. the melbourne-based cultural development network has now devised a framework for arts indicators, which includes the creation, dissemination, validation and support of arts and culture as a means of measuring a local community’s cultural vitality (cdn 2010, p. 1). the social impact of community arts programs in western sydney: a case study the information and cultural exchange (ice) while western sydney has been the focus of much social research (burchell 2003; butcher 2003; collins & poynting 2000), few studies have focused specifically on the social impact of community arts programs on the region. this article aims to redress this gap, documenting changing perceptions of the west’s cultural vitality based on a case study of the community organisation, information and cultural exchange (ice). ice works at ‘the intersection of arts, community and technology’ (ice 2011), specialising in digital media and community cultural development through the use of digital stories, film and urban music. for more than 20 years, ice programs have provided training, mentoring, 38 | gateways | ho networking opportunities and professional development, building the career foundations of some highly successful australian artists, particularly in film-making and hip hop. located in the western sydney suburb of parramatta, ice has been a pioneer in delivering services to a region traditionally neglected by arts bodies, working mainly with young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. its best-known programs include: —artfiles: an artists’ professional development program that includes a directory of more than 2000 artists living or working in western sydney, the most comprehensive database of its kind —urban cultures: hip hop production and performance projects, providing skill development, mentoring and career information for aspiring artists —screen culture: ice’s film-making program which includes film festivals, digital storytelling, professional mentoring and competitions —switch digital arts centre: home to ice’s training programs, facilities and equipment services. ice is one of australia’s most successful community arts organisations. in 2007, it was recognised by the australia council for the arts as one of its eleven ‘key producers’ comprising ‘leading australian community arts and cultural development organisations’, who receive long-term funding (australia council 2009, p. 3). as a relatively mature community organisation whose impact clearly exceeds what can be captured by basic project evaluations, ice provides an ideal case study for exploring the social impact of arts projects. in particular, i aim to uncover ice’s role in the changing image of western sydney. a case study approach is useful as it allows an in-depth exploration of the experiences of one organisation, while firmly locating that exploration within a broader social context. consideration of these two dimensions is vital in investigating the impact of particular cultural interventions on the wider environment, in this case western sydney. in more practical terms, as yin (1989, p. 20) notes, the case study’s ‘unique strength’ is its ‘ability to deal with a full variety of evidence’, including documents, artefacts, interviews and observations. this study incorporates findings based on multiple research methods, including surveys, interviews, and media analyses, all focused on the role of ice within its wider western sydney setting. this research is part of a larger project, ‘ripple effects: community building, participation and cultural citizenship through creative practices in western sydney’. the project was funded by the australian research council, and conducted in partnership between the university of technology, sydney, information and cultural exchange and the australia council for the arts and arts nsw. 39 | gateways | ho sydney’s harlem? western sydney’s new groove research on the social impact of the arts invariably highlights the importance of community-building and local identity and image. this is particularly important for historically under-resourced areas such as western sydney. a vast region, home to nearly 2 million people covering 14 local government areas (ows 2011), western sydney is often regarded as the ‘other sydney’ (collins & poynting 2000), a poor cousin of the rest of the city. the region has traditionally been a working class heartland, home to much of the city’s manufacturing and industrial employment, and the destination of the majority of new migrants to sydney. the western suburbs continue to suffer from higher rates of poverty, unemployment and other indicators of disadvantage relative to the rest of sydney, and have also been perceived as a cultural wasteland, an endless, ‘culture-less’ suburban sprawl. however, western sydney arts advocates assert that the region is in fact a dynamic and creative place bursting with stories about contemporary multicultural australia. ice director, lena nahlous, compares western sydney with areas like new york’s harlem and the bronx and london’s brixton, saying that people will increasingly want to come to western sydney because it, too, is ‘edgy’, ‘vibrant’ and ‘authentic’ (nahlous 2011). indeed western sydney appears to be experiencing a cultural renaissance. while previously, the west tended to look towards the cbd for its cultural consumption, this ‘centreperiphery’ perception is no longer so dominant (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 7). state cultural institutions and festivals such as the sydney festival, and the sydney writers festival are increasingly travelling west, along with numerous other major events that were previously the exclusive preserve of the city. moreover, local cultural production is increasingly gaining recognition. a 2006 state government report on the arts in western sydney noted that there has been ‘increased recognition of the region and its unique cultural values and expression’ (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 5). in particular, it stated that ‘western sydney has become an incubator for innovative strategies’, including in arts practice. ‘cutting edge, hybrid and innovative artistic and cultural practice has featured across a range of art forms, and “community cultural development” has been reinvented in 21st century terms’ (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 6). for example, according to councillor chiang lim, parramatta now markets itself as the ‘creative city’, a new arts hub that demonstrates that ‘culture and art are not the exclusive domain of inner sydney’ (pitt 2010). a recent article in the sydney morning herald, ‘the zest in the west: sydney’s sizzling centre’, notes that parramatta has ‘positioned itself as a new dining and arts hub, especially for the under-25 set’ (pitt 2010). western sydney has even received grudging recognition from establishment 40 | gateways | ho art critics. for example, in his review of the 2005 multi-sited exhibition western front: contemporary art from western sydney, the sydney morning herald’s john mcdonald wrote: … things are starting to look a lot brighter in the western suburbs. once upon a time there was nothing but concrete shopping malls to charm the visitor. the bricks and grime of these suburban sargassos were the legacy of councillors who resembled bill heslop from muriel’s wedding, with his slogan, ‘you can’t stop progress!’ nowadays there is at least a tacit acknowledgement that culture has a place at the table, alongside commerce. there is also a recognition that communities without adequate cultural facilities are breeding grounds for boredom, vandalism, social misery and crime (mcdonald 2005, p. 28). the growth of arts activities and public investment in the arts is reflected by a parallel growth in coverage of the arts by local media. the parramatta advertiser has a circulation of nearly 83 000, and is delivered to households in 33 suburbs in the parramatta area (parramatta advertiser 2011). a comparison of its coverage of the arts in two years – 2002 and 2010 – revealed that articles on the arts in the local area more than doubled, from a total of 70 items in 2002 to 160 in 2010 (see table 1). there was also a degree of diversification in the type of arts stories covered. while in 2002 26 per cent of arts stories covered art exhibitions, in 2010, this had halved to just 13 per cent. in 2010, art classes and festivals (such as the inaugural parramasala south asian cultural festival) featured more prominently. 2002 2010 total number of stories 70 160 top themes of stories: —art exhibitions 26% 13% —art classes 13% 24% —festivals 4% 18% —performance 19% 15% —local artist achievements 7% 11% a similar trend was evident, although on a much smaller scale, in sydney’s broadsheet newspaper, the sydney morning herald. searching for stories on western sydney, parramatta, art and culture, i identified four articles in 2002 (see table 2). the eight listings related to events included in ‘what’s on’ columns. 2002 2010 stories 4 8 listings 8 8 in 2010, the number of stories had doubled to eight, including one on ice’s arab film festival but the number of listings was unchanged. these stories obviously do not represent the full range of reporting on western sydney as a whole in the table 1: stories published in the parramatta advertiser, 2002 and 2010 table 2: stories published in the sydney morning herald, 2002 and 2010 41 | gateways | ho newspaper. however, these small numbers provide an indication of the continuing marginality of western sydney arts and culture. visibility is improving, but from a very low base. this raises the question of whether changes occurring in western sydney are affecting the broader arts and culture hierarchies. to some extent, it is very much a local phenomenon which is not radically transforming external perceptions. however, the growth of local capacity and energy is certainly being seized upon by western sydney-based practitioners. as part of this study, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 community arts workers based in western sydney. all discussed the transformation of the western sydney arts scene, often enthusiastically pointing out examples of the proliferation of arts initiatives, from theatre and film-making to hip hop and digital storytelling. in the words of theatre worker, lina kastoumis: we’re young and funky. it’s a funky constituency, all the artists coming through, and it’s only going to get better ... no one’s even yet touched an iota of what’s going to come out. i see a boom period in five years of more filmmakers, more sound artists, more digital artists coming out (kastoumis 2010). according to veteran community arts worker, alissar chidiac, western sydney artists no longer need to rely on citybased arts resources: gone are the days where you had to get someone from metro in paddington, who was inevitably blonde and going to talk about how they’ve never – and i’m not exaggerating – they never go past glebe, you know? … i mean, that’s where you used to get your new media kind of support. metro screen! metro screen! paddington was the only thing! (chidiac 2010). the result has been a transformation among western sydney cultural producers’ perceptions of the region. no longer is it a place to ‘escape’, as filmmaker and arts worker, maria tran, puts it: ... especially for me, coming from western sydney, i feel very connected here because prior to [being involved with ice], i was with everyone else, thinking, ‘yeah, this place is a ghetto. i want to get out of this place’. but now i’m learning more about the people who live in this area, and seeing the different projects that are happening. it is quite amazing… yeah. i feel proud of being in this region! (tran 2011). how has this transformation occurred? in answering this question it’s important to consider the crucial role played by governments in building the arts infrastructure in the region. building the arts infrastructure in western sydney at a macro level, western sydney’s cultural renaissance reflects major public investment in arts infrastructure in the region, facilitated through the nsw government’s western sydney 42 | gateways | ho arts strategy, launched in 1999. the aims of the strategy were to ‘encourage greater participation in the arts by the people of western sydney, increase business support, assist job creation, highlight existing infrastructure and resources, and make recommendations for specific initiatives’ (nsw ministry for the arts & nsw government’s office of western sydney 1999, p. 1). prior to this time, penrith hosted the only regional gallery in western sydney (nsw ministry for the arts & nsw government’s office of western sydney 1999, p. 9). by the mid 2000s, the state government had funded the establishment or enhancement of nearly 10 major arts centres in western sydney, including centres in blacktown, casula, parramatta, penrith, fairfield and hawkesbury (nsw ministry for the arts 2006). although most of these institutions were established by local governments, state government funding ‘enabled these organisations to grow beyond a local provider role’ (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 5). acting together, each has encouraged local cultural production and participation in the arts, heightening cultural vibrancy in western sydney. the arts strategy also mobilised local councils to invest in the arts, providing dollar for dollar matched funding for investments in the development and promotion of the arts (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 9). as a result, it is now standard for local councils to develop annual cultural plans and employ cultural development officers. the 2000 sydney olympics was another milestone, with the creation of sydney olympic park in homebush adding a major cultural asset to sydney’s west. at the time of the opening of stadium australia, a daily telegraph story proclaimed: ‘sydney is shifting on its axis. today its focus is beginning a slow, definite and logical drift towards the west …’ (lalor 1999, p. 44). similarly, the sydney morning herald reported that ‘suddenly, and for the first time, a significant part of sydney’s sporting and cultural focus has shifted westwards’ (dennis 1999, p. 11). western sydney has also attracted substantial funding for community cultural development (ccd) work (previously known as community arts). in 2004, out of all the funding provided by the australia council to western sydney organisations and individuals, nearly half (47 per cent) went to ccd projects (lally 2004, p. 13). some organisations, like ice, have particularly benefited from this policy focus on western sydney, attracting increased levels of funding and recognition. brown (2008, p. 228) argues that ccd processes produce knowledge about social issues, and can also ‘allow powerful transformations of the way social … problems are framed, [and] of the way solutions are sought …’ over the last decade or so, ccd projects have been crucial in forging a particular western sydney model of cultural expression, and ice has been at the forefront of this movement. 43 | gateways | ho ice’s role in developing the arts in western sydney because ice’s period of growth coincided with the rollout of the western sydney arts strategy, and because the organisation often works in partnership with others, it is impossible to pinpoint the precise role played by ice in the evolution of the arts scene in western sydney. the question of attribution is always vexed when it comes to social impacts arising from complex environments where individuals and organisations are highly intertwined, and goals may not be fully realised for many years after the work is completed. the ‘mediating environment’, which includes economic conditions and social and demographic trends, is widely recognised as complicating attempts at evaluation (productivity commission 2010, p. 35). considering the relationship between the activities of community-based organisations and broader social outcomes, the productivity commission (2010, p. 43) classifies the contributions of organisations as either: —sufficient for the outcome to arise —necessary but alone not sufficient —enhancing where the quality or extent of the outcome is greater relative to what otherwise would have happened. while ice programs may often be sufficient to achieve outcomes at the level of individuals, at the level of social impact they undoubtedly play an ‘enhancing’ role. no one organisation can claim responsibility for changing social perceptions and enhancing local identity. even if governments can claim to have provided a large portion of the funding for arts infrastructure, it is grassroots organisations such as ice that translate this funding into actual programs. for example, ice director lena nahlous, describes the brokering role the organisation often plays in bringing artists into the region for collaborations. she recounts well-known artists touring in sydney, such as dj pogo, sarah love or the herd, who worked with ice to ‘connect with emerging artists’. nahlous also describes how ice increasingly receives calls from casting agencies and other organisations wanting to employ people from specific cultural backgrounds, recalling examples of ice working with young actors preparing for roles on national television programs (nahlous 2011). as part of this research, we conducted a survey in 2009–2010 to gauge recognition of ice programs among 50 mainstream western sydney institutions, such as councils, educational institutions, and local media. we asked respondents what impacts they thought ice projects had. many credited ice with playing a key role in the western sydney arts transformation, saying the organisation: —‘helps create identity in western sydney’ —‘contributed significantly to a change of identity and perception of the area’ 44 | gateways | ho —‘brought a lot of interest in western sydney from the outside’ —‘built an arts precinct in parramatta’. in our in-depth interviews with community arts workers, this comment, from community theatre worker, claudia chidiac, was typical: i think there’s a handful of organisations in western sydney ... that have made people want to be here, have made people want to work in the region, and ice have really led the way in turning western sydney into [something] really sexy… people were seeing all the work that was coming out of this region, and it was always leading back to ice (chidiac 2010). while there was much positive recognition of ice among our survey respondents, a minority viewed ice’s visibility in a negative manner. the following comments were common among this group: —‘they are a good pr machine’ —‘there is a lot of pr and hype’ —‘very good at promoting and documenting their work’. one respondent stated, ‘i’m not sure about the substance behind the gloss’, while another compared ice to a ‘show pony’ that was attractive to investors. for these respondents, the practical contribution of ice was difficult to distinguish from all the promotional material. some argued ice had drifted away from traditional community work, embracing a more commercialised approach that required greater investment in self-promotion and branding. ice is well recognised for its slick, professional marketing and promotion. this has been an important ingredient in its mission to bring visibility to western sydney cultural activity. particularly in the last decade, the organisation has had a consistent brand aesthetic, one that connotes hip, tech savvy youth and cutting-edge urban cultures. from the organisation’s massive website to its annual reports, weekly newsletters and flyers for projects, all ice materials are professionally produced, artistically designed, and singularly upbeat in their written and visual communication. in many ways ice provides a textbook study in how professional marketing has enabled a relatively small organisation to ‘punch above its weight’, securing visibility in a crowded landscape. while this has raised concerns about whether ice’s focus on promotion comes at the cost of its traditional communitybased work, ultimately, building visibility for the ice brand has also meant greater visibility for western sydney arts in general. this has given rise to other criticisms that ice has become so synonymous with western sydney arts that it has monopolised the field, leaving little room for other players. ice attracts a large share of public funding going to western sydney, because according to community arts worker tim carroll, ‘it’s like a box has been ticked universally for western sydney, and that this one organisation ticks all those boxes for the funding bodies’ (carroll 45 | gateways | ho 2010). fellow community arts worker, alissar chidiac, notes that ice has become ‘shorthand language’ for all community cultural activity in western sydney (chidiac 2010). it should be noted that like any organisation, the fact that ice attracts its fair share of critics is simply due to the competitive nature of the sector in which it is located. ultimately, though, it would be unfair to claim that there was no ‘substance’ behind the ‘hype’ at ice. in some ways ice is a victim of its own self-promotion, excessively elevating expectations of what the organisation can achieve, inevitably leading to some disappointment. we now turn to details of some of the ‘substance’ of ice’s ccd work which, i argue, has made a solid social impact. community arts for the 21st century: the ice model it is impossible to definitively demonstrate the impact of one organisation’s work on the shifting perceptions of an entire region. however, key features of ice’s work align with what has been recognised as cutting-edge arts practice in western sydney. these include ice’s focus on: —the creative possibilities of new media and technology —young people from culturally diverse backgrounds. some of the new interest in western sydney cultural production stems from the innovative models of community cultural development (ccd) emerging from the region. this reflects the nsw government’s characterisation of the region, as noted above, as an ‘incubator for innovative strategies’ where ‘community cultural development’ has been ‘reinvented in 21st century terms’ (nsw ministry for the arts 2006, p. 6). ice is widely recognised as being at the forefront of this ‘new ccd’, particularly because of its emphasis on digital technology with digital arts training, urban music, digital storytelling and other screen arts featuring heavily in its programs. challenging traditional notions of the digital divide, ice has leapt into the new media era, providing access to traditionally technology-poor populations. according to theatre worker lina kastoumis, ice was ‘smart enough 10 or 15 years ago to jump on the fact that digital technologies were going to become widespread and accessible, so why not skill people up to use them?’ (kastoumis 2010). digital storytelling, arguably the fastest growing genre in ccd work, has been a particularly successful component of ice’s programming. digital stories comprise short films, two to three minutes long, with a very simple format, usually a first person narrative told with images or simple animation, a voice-over and sometimes music. the simple format is deliberate, as it is intended to make digital storytelling an extremely accessible art form. widely used in community arts, education and even corporate communication (couldry 2008, p. 387), digital storytelling represents something of a social movement, empowering ‘ordinary people’ to tell their stories, using simple, accessible technology. couldry argues that ‘digital storytelling 46 | gateways | ho contributes to a wider democratization of media resources and possibly to the conditions of democracy itself’ (2008, p. 386). burgess (2006, p. 206) describes digital storytelling in terms of ‘vernacular creativity’ – creative practices that emerge from nonelite social contexts and communicative conventions. ice participants have created a total of more than 200 digital stories, in projects such as: —digitales (global digital storytelling project) —vietnamese story exchange —penrith city story exchange —youth digital cultures —digi diaries (muslim australian youth) —koori story exchange —african parenting stories —yallah! what’s your story? (arab australian youth) —bonds for life; life after bonds (ex-bonds workers). an important goal of these projects is to provide skills to people in marginalised communities, who might not otherwise have access to the technology or expertise, in order to allow them to tell stories about themselves. while basic in format, digital stories can be a powerful form of expression. hartley and mcwilliam (2009) suggest that the power of the digital story comes from its unique form, that ‘combines the direct, emotional charge of confessional disclosure, the authenticity of the documentary, and the simple elegance of the format – it is a digital sonnet, or haiku’ (p. 5). similarly, burgess (2006) explains that the personal narrative is the key feature of digital stories: ‘narrative accessibility, warmth, and presence are prioritized over formal experimentation or innovative “new” uses for technologies’ (p. 207). as a process, digital storytelling projects comprise a workshop lasting several days where participants learn how to use photo, sound and film-editing technology, and more importantly, engage in a ‘story circle’ process where they are encouraged to craft their own story in a group setting. digital storytelling is clearly one of the more ‘efficient’ community arts programs, creating a finished product in a short period of time. this makes the art form popular among many organisations, including funders. for example, kim spinks, a senior arts bureaucrat in the nsw government, enthused about the possibilities of digital storytelling: when i’m explaining to other government agencies about what the arts can do, i often use projects like digitales. they are a great example of [how] with good professional infrastructure and a professional arts organisation, you can get quite inexperienced people to make quite polished pieces of multimedia that have quite a personal charm to them (spinks 2011). not only was digital storytelling ‘empowering and artistically satisfying’ for participants and audiences, spinks explained, but for government agencies it was an example of a 47 | gateways | ho modest program that could deliver results. moreover, the simple design of digital storytelling workshops allowed funders to easily understand the process involved, unlike some bigger, longer-term projects: ‘with digitales, you can see how it was done. you can see that not much was needed, besides a good facilitator, and some good infrastructure. it’s accessible. it doesn’t scare the horses’ (spinks 2011). young and funky: western sydney and cultural diversity apart from the emphasis on digital creativity, ice has consistently promoted the vibrancy of western sydney’s culturally diverse population, a strategy that aligns well with official government promotions. for example, fairfield city council’s motto is ‘celebrating diversity’, while in their official publicity, virtually all councils in western sydney describe their communities by referring to the number of different countries residents hail from. this is also typical of successive state governments’ portraits of western sydney. for instance, the first paragraph in the 1999 document launching the western sydney arts strategy stated: western sydney is one of the great cosmopolitan regions in australia. around 30 per cent of its people speak a language other than english at home; 60 per cent of sydney’s aboriginal and torres strait islander people reside there. it has a proud migrant and indigenous heritage (nsw ministry for the arts & nsw government’s office of western sydney 1999, p. i). ice also prominently frames its work in terms of cultural diversity. the first paragraph of its 2009 annual report states: with over 100 nationalities calling it home, greater western sydney is one of the most culturally diverse communities in the world. this complex region is currently exploding with stories, global influences, fresh interpretations and new collaborations. it’s here that australia’s changing multicultural identity is being imagined and realised, and ice is at the centre of this process (ice 2009, p. 4). in these representations, cultural diversity is valorised as a unique asset of western sydney, implicitly challenging two common stereotypes: on the one hand, traditional images of the west as a bland, suburban sea of fibro, and on the other hand, as an assemblage of ethnic ghettoes riddled with crime and deprivation. reflecting the shift away from the social deficit approach that characterised previous decades, community arts and development projects have reframed residents of western sydney. no longer disadvantaged and unsophisticated, they are now cultural producers with their own unique stories to tell. and many of these stories are about diversity, identity, cultural conflict, racism, hybridity and other themes relating to life in multicultural australia. 48 | gateways | ho elaine lally argues that there is a new sense of confidence in western sydney, and the expression of a noticeable regional identity – one that is streetwise, reflecting a larrikin, battler instinct, not aiming to emulate what is done elsewhere (lally 2010). theatre worker lina kastoumis expresses in graphic terms the distinct approach taken in western sydney cultural production that reflects australia’s diversity: ... we look like real australians, you know what i mean? it goes so counter to the anglo-dominated representation you see on tv ... every time i watch australian tv, especially commercial stations, i believe i’m living in a parallel universe. that’s not the australia i know ... so, when i go to an ice event, or a campbelltown event, or a blacktown event, i’m at home in my diversity, and i’m a part of that diversity, and i feel very proud that there’s a reality to us that we’re rejoicing, celebrating, hanging shit on, but it’s there, as opposed to the fallacy of the anglo-centric world that we see on television (kastoumis 2010). the cultural productions kastoumis refers to treat diversity as the norm, and kastoumis herself speaks from the standpoint of a proud and assertive ‘wog’ as well as a professional arts worker. this kind of assertiveness, found throughout western sydney, has become increasingly common since the 1980s, when ethnic culture evolved from being something ‘different and quaint’ to something that could be edgy and political. migrants could also be represented as ‘excluded, suffering and angry’ (hawkins 1993, p. 140). however, migrants can now also express cultural pride in a contemporary way, without having to rely on traditional or folk representations. for example, ice director lena nahlous recounts a performance project featuring chinese-australian girls combining traditional fan dancing with hip hop (nahlous 2011). ice is well known for its work with people from culturally diverse backgrounds, often in projects where cultural diversity and identity are the framing narratives. the post 9/11 climate has been hostile for many migrant communities, particularly arab and muslim australians, who are geographically concentrated in western sydney. this follows earlier difficult periods for vietnamese and other minority groups targeted by aggressive law and order politics that criminalised whole western sydney suburbs. in this environment, community arts programs play a vital role in telling alternative stories about multicultural australia. ice programs deliberately target marginalised and vulnerable populations, including people from arab, pacific, african and aboriginal backgrounds. the products of these projects often feature assertions of cultural pride, and speaking back to negative stereotypes. some notable examples include: —of middle eastern appearance (film by paula abood) —trouble comes to me (film by shifa: agents of change, young arab men) —media places and spaces (public art anti-racism project). 49 | gateways | ho another important ice initiative is the arab film festival, which from small beginnings in parramatta’s roxy theatre in 2001, now tours nationally every year, boasting major public and private sponsorship and broad recognition among the arab community in australia. in providing marginalised communities with a forum for self-expression, ice programs realise in practical terms the official discourses valorising cultural diversity in western sydney. they provide tangible ‘good news stories’ about the success and dynamism of multiculturalism in western sydney, evidence that is readily taken up by local media, funding bodies and other institutions. in 2006, the australia council’s community partnerships scoping study stated that there was a need to ‘find descriptive language to name and describe the arts and cultural activities in and with communities, so that this practice can be recognised as belonging to all people in communities and provide the potential for arts and cultural activities to assume a greater status in local communities’ (2006, p. 8). i argue that organisations like ice have begun to do just this, in creating a new language to describe the work of diverse communities. what might otherwise be viewed as idle amateur experimentation, or even a public nuisance (young people leaping across walls and fences in the practice of parkour), is transformed by organisations like ice into authentic artistic expressions that reflect the vibrancy of multicultural australian culture. what is remarkable is that this alternative discourse has gained traction in an otherwise culturally conservative era. in some cases, such as ice participant’s ali kadhim’s parkour project, even senior government officials have accepted that their conventional definitions of what constitutes art might need to change. as the australia council’s head of community partnerships, frank panucci, stated recently, parkour (an urban movement art form combining climbing, leaping, rolling and balance to scale walls, fences and other urban obstacles), is now recognised as a legitimate art form for public funding – a shift that was unimaginable a few years ago (panucci 2010). in 2010, the australia council and qantas produced a short film featuring kadhim, entitled nine lives, which was screened on qantas domestic flights. kadhim, a young man from western sydney whose family encouraged him to become a security guard after high school, now runs his own business providing parkour workshops and making films of his exploits (nahlous 2011). in western sydney today, ccd projects are producing a wide range of cultural expressions that shift traditional stereotypes of the area as deprived and culture-less, as well as creating new ways of expressing cultural identity that valorise diversity. of course, it is impossible to definitively measure the extent of these shifts in perception. stories of a vibrant western sydney and positive images of ethnic minorities might gain most traction at a local level, their impact dissipating with distance. however, as noted above, several 50 | gateways | ho community arts worker interviewees stated emphatically that cultural producers and audiences were increasingly drawn to the area. perhaps the most powerful testament to the social recognition of western sydney’s ccd work is the enormous success of ice itself, which is certainly a new darling of the australia council and other public bodies. ice works with some of the most stigmatised social groups in australia today, including young arab men, african refugees, muslim australian youth and indigenous groups. it turns their public image on its head, representing these groups, and western sydney as a whole, as creative, dynamic and the true face of australian multiculturalism. for this sort of work to be given the kind of recognition that ice has received, is remarkable evidence of the ability of ccd work to shift powerful and ingrained social perceptions. conclusion: how far has the west come? despite the cultural renaissance of western sydney, however, little has been achieved in eradicating sydney’s overall arts and culture hierarchies. if the west is rising, it is from a very low base. as alissar chidiac says: ... but still people do put the eastern suburbs on a pedestal. i am not going to accept that yes, everyone’s just really happy about how everything’s growing and bursting in western sydney. i work with artists who, for them, still, it’s second-rate for them to show in western sydney. they want to show their work in paddington (chidiac 2010). ironically, it may be the growth of ccd itself in western sydney that maintains such hierarchies. with ccd work snapping up a large portion of australia council funding for western sydney, there is much less scope for the development of visual arts, theatre, music or other more conventional art forms in the region. the australia council (2006, p. 7) admits that the ccd sector has at times ‘been effectively marginalised from the broader arts and cultural industry’ and that ccd has been regarded as too narrowly focusing on disadvantaged groups, producing outcomes regarded as inferior to other fields of cultural activity (brook 2008, p. 189). elaine lally (2010) puts it more bluntly, arguing that western sydney figures so highly in ccd funding because it is a way of marginalising the arts in western sydney. policy makers might be happy to fund ccd in the region, she argues, but have been very negative about western sydney’s capacity to generate what they consider to be ‘real’ art. hawkins (1993) describes it this way: ‘community arts are located out on the cultural fringes where marginal groups produce marginal art’ (p. xix). it should be remembered that western sydney continues to experience higher levels of disadvantage compared to other areas of sydney. in this sense, a ‘developmental’ approach to arts is perhaps more justified here than elsewhere. however, critics argue that the culture of ccd can limit artistic experimentation. 51 | gateways | ho hawkins describes an ‘aesthetics of affirmation’ that has historically prevailed in the ccd sector. this approach seeks to produce affirmative images of ‘the marginalised’, privileging the self-esteem of the participants (p. 137). this can create a uniformity in cultural production: ‘a “good” community arts project is either harmlessly wholesome in its representation of unity, harmony and togetherness, or it is crudely rhetorical in its representations of us against them’ (p. 163). this is evident in the genre of digital storytelling. as discussed above, the power of these short films rests almost exclusively on the intimacy of the first-person narrative, and the authenticity of the storyteller as a real person recounting their thoughts and experiences. while the genre provides an accessible vehicle for cultural expression, the digital stories produced are often predictable and formulaic in their content, narrative style and plot development. similarly, mcewen characterises ccd as ‘process rather than product’ emphasising ‘the making of community rather than the making of arts’ (2008, pp. 42, 50. see also mills 2008, p. 207). as rose (1997) puts it, the significance of ccd lies in participation, rather than in the finished product. it is important for the participants to ‘find a voice’. what they say with their voice is less important (p. 194). ice director lena nahlous acknowledges that some ice events need to be held in the city in order to attract an audience, giving the example of a refugee writers’ event which formed part of the sydney writers festival in the mid 2000s. nahlous says the audience, largely anglo australians, would probably not have travelled to parramatta for the event (nahlous 2011). arguably then, for western sydney to be genuinely accepted as a culturally vibrant region, it needs to move on from relying on ccd projects for cultural production – or at least, the relationship between community development and cultural production needs deeper consideration. organisations like ice have reached a level of maturity to enable such considerations. recently ice reframed its work in a binary structure, setting its cultural development program apart from its creative enterprise program. the latter focuses more heavily on professional development, employment and creative and entrepreneurial leadership (ice 2009) – a framework distinct from one of community empowerment and redressing disadvantage. another notable shift is the disappearance of the term ccd from official ice rhetoric, mirroring the changing discourse in government and other circles (for example, at the australia council, ccd is now known as community partnerships). tanja dreher (forthcoming) analyses two distinct logics in ice projects, which she terms ‘affirmation’ and ‘competition’. the former comprise the traditional ccd projects, engaging disadvantaged populations with the goal of providing access to resources as opposed to aiming for professional quality outputs. 52 | gateways | ho the latter category is structured around competitive processes (e.g. to win a film-making scholarship), professional development and mentoring. such projects are helping western sydney arts shake off the perception that local cultural activity is organised for welfare rather than artistic purposes. however, to the extent that hip hop or digital storytelling workshops are still often framed in terms of ‘keeping kids off the streets’ (in spite of the best efforts of organisations like ice), western sydney cultural production may continue to be viewed within a welfare model that measures success in terms of participation levels and the development of individuals rather than innovative end products. the question remains: is a welfare approach a necessary stepping stone, an affirmative action program for a historically marginalised region? alternatively, does the ccd approach monopolise cultural production to the extent that different practices fail to be developed? does it reinforce the region’s marginalised status by presenting its artistic community as always in ‘development’ and never truly ‘accomplished’? organisations such as ice may well be starting to blur the boundaries between traditional community development and a more entrepreneurial approach to facilitating artistic excellence and innovation. in this sense also, they are pioneers in the ‘reinvention’ of ccd practice. in the future, this transformed ccd may become more detached from associations with redressing disadvantage and empowering communities. this may leave a gap in the provision of services to communities that remain disadvantaged, a significant question that is not addressed here. however, it may also lead to a diversification in the types of cultural production emerging from western sydney, which in time may convince more and more australians to accept the image of the region as a new and exciting centre of australian creativity. what does all this mean for how we evaluate arts programs? this article has argued that capturing the social impact of community arts programs requires a development of evaluation techniques, beyond the quantitative. in attempting to document the social impact of an organisation like ice, including the cumulative ‘ripple effects’ of its programs throughout western sydney and beyond, this article has deployed several distinct research methods, both qualitative and quantitative. unfortunately, community-based organisations rarely have the time or funding to carry out this kind of holistic research. however, with the growing consensus on the urgent need to expand our methods for evaluating the various impacts of community programs, it is hoped funders and community practitioners will increasingly be in a position to integrate these kinds of research methods into the core of their daily practice. 53 | gateways | ho references australia council 2006, ‘community partnerships scoping study: creative communities’, australia council for the arts, sydney. 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www.arts.nsw.gov.au/index.php/news-and-publications/publications/western-sydney-arts-strategy/ www.arts.nsw.gov.au/index.php/news-and-publications/publications/western-sydney-arts-strategy/ http://www.arts.nsw.gov.au/index.php/news-and-publications/publications/western-sydney-arts-strategy-2006-progress-report/ http://www.arts.nsw.gov.au/index.php/news-and-publications/publications/western-sydney-arts-strategy-2006-progress-report/ http://www.arts.nsw.gov.au/index.php/news-and-publications/publications/western-sydney-arts-strategy-2006-progress-report/ http://www.westernsydney.nsw.gov.au/ digitaledition.parramattaadvertiser.com.au/#folio=3 http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/the-zest-in-the-west-sydneys-sizzling-centre-20100820-138yu.html http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/the-zest-in-the-west-sydneys-sizzling-centre-20100820-138yu.html http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/the-zest-in-the-west-sydneys-sizzling-centre-20100820-138yu.html 55 | gateways | ho yin, r 1989, case study research: design and methods, sage publications, newbury park, ca. interviews tim carroll, bankstown youth development service (interviewed 2010) alissar chidiac, casula powerhouse (interviewed 2010) claudia chidiac, powerhouse youth theatre (interviewed 2010) lina kastoumis, urban theatre projects (interviewed 2010) elaine lally, university of technology, sydney (interviewed 2010) lena nahlous, information and cultural exchange (interviewed 2011) frank panucci, australia council for the arts (interviewed 2010) kim spinks, arts nsw (interviewed 2011) maria tran, information and cultural exchange (interviewed 2011) needs and readiness assessments tools for promoting community-university engagement with aboriginal communities community-based participatory research (cbpr) is recognised by national funding organisations as the most appropriate, even the most desirable, approach to research involving marginalised communities (canadian institutes of health research 2008), establishing an expectation that researchers will engage communities in meaningful ways and as equal partners throughout the research process (minkler & wallerstein 2003). as a result, there is increased acknowledgement by scholars of the importance of engaging those who can bring their own perspectives and understanding of community life to key issues (mccloskey et al. 2011). israel et al. (1998) promote the use of cbpr methods in public health research, as they allow researchers to look at the social and environmental factors involved in health outcomes and to apply health knowledge in community settings. our use of the term cbpr is derived from israel et al. (1998) and refers to the participation of non-academic researchers (métis settlement members) in the process of co-creating knowledge, with both community and university partners contributing their individual strengths to improving community wellbeing. in this article we discuss a cbpr project conducted in partnership with buffalo lake métis settlement (blms), an aboriginal community in alberta, canada. in canada, the term ‘aboriginal’ is used to describe first nations, métis and inuit peoples. this partnership explored community readiness to participate in the development and evaluation of a life skills and substance abuse prevention program, with a focus also on community needs. through this partnership, community needs and readiness assessments were identified as critical components in overcoming the challenges of achieving engagement. partnership development goals with blms included developing community ties and facilitating program ownership by the community. as individuals from blms expressed interest in developing life skills programs from the ground up, the researchers strove for relational accountability between the university and the community. a component of building this relationship was completing a needs and readiness assessment to foster the emergence of community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 131–49 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 fay fletcher alicia hibbert fiona robertson jodie asselin university of alberta 132 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin priorities, inform the next steps of research design and program content development, and establish evaluation methods. in order to achieve these goals, the first two years of the research project were dedicated to building the partnership, with subsequent years devoted to developing life skills program content and evaluation measures. this article focuses on these first two years of engagement. we believed that these early stages of working together would lay the foundation for successful, sustained engagement. in conducting needs and readiness assessments, it was our belief that relationship building would occur early in the research project and help the research team to overcome some of the challenges of aboriginal community-university engagement in cbpr. dempsey’s (2010) article on the challenges to successful engagement prompted the following analysis of lessons learned from universitycommunity engagement. among these challenges, the following were key: —ambiguity of community: how community specific is the approach? —campus/community divide: how are differences addressed and even used as tools in the partnership? —demand for community participation: how can the burden of participation on community members be reduced? —institutionalised practices: how do institutions (in this case, the university) create barriers for engagement? before discussing this in detail, we provide some brief information on métis and the background to the research, followed by an overview from the literature on needs and readiness assessments, and in particular the nine stages consistently used to identify community readiness. these stages are measured across six key dimensions. we use these stages as a framework for examining the findings from the needs and readiness assessment we conducted with blms. presenting our findings in this way allowed us to then explore whether or not the needs and readiness assessment process did help lay the foundation for a successful, ongoing engagement process. dempsey’s (2010) four points, listed above, offer some questions to help reflect on our success in the engagement process. this article suggests that a needs and readiness assessment can be critical in reducing/responding to some of the above challenges, and it identifies a number of key ways in which this may occur. the time invested in needs and readiness assessments may allow the research team to discover difference both within and between communities, identifying strengths as well as areas of cultural ambiguity. this community-specific knowledge may allow research teams to identify areas where institutions create both opportunities and barriers to address the local context of the community. this article will show key learnings that will inform our ongoing partnership with blms and provide valuable insight for working with other settlements in future. the challenges of 133 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin cbpr and community engagement can be mitigated by focusing on relationships; a needs and readiness assessment can provide a critical means for reducing associated challenges. background to the research buffalo lake métis settlement, located 180 km from the nearest major city, shares a history of colonisation and marginalisation with other aboriginal communities in canada, experiencing disproportionate rates of social, health and economic burdens compared to the non-aboriginal population in canada (martens et al. 2011). the métis are one of the three constitutionally recognised aboriginal groups in canada (mcnab 2005). despite this, the métis are overlooked within aboriginal health research and addressed primarily within pan-aboriginal studies (driben 1985; findlay 2011; lamouche 2002; martens et al. 2011; tjepkema et al. 2011; younge 2003). as of 2006, the aboriginal population in canada was 1 172 790, representing 3.7 per cent of the total population; of that total, the métis number 389 785, and are the fastest growing aboriginal group in canada (gionet 2009). despite comprising one-third of canada’s aboriginal peoples, the health disparities between the métis and other canadians remain unaddressed (martens et al. 2011). figure 1 shows the extent of these disparities. chartrand (2011) has argued that métis face different challenges from those of the general canadian population, including first nations and inuit communities and, along with dyck (2009), has advocated for health research that is culturally grounded within métis communities to address these differences. fortunately, alberta health services, the provincial health-care provider in alberta, saw the need to work with a métis settlement to produce a needs and readiness assessment and funded this work as part of a larger project adapting and developing life skills programs for children in first nations communities. figure 1: prevalence of diagnosed chronic conditions, by aboriginal identity group, off-reserve population aged 20 or older, canada, 2006/2007 (statistics canada 2006) 134 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin the impetus for the work with the métis community also grew out of an earlier successful collaboration between researchers from the university of alberta and several first nations communities in alberta on the delivery and evaluation of an evidence-based, culturally adapted substance abuse and violence prevention program (baydala et al. 2009, 2011a; baydala, worrell & fletcher 2011b) based on the botvin life skills program (botvin et al. 1989, 2003; griffin et al. 2003). within these studies, a multi-method approach consisting of quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups and interviews showed positive impacts on children’s refusal skills, self-belief and knowledge of the negative effects of drug and alcohol use. these results provided the evidence needed to secure research funds for this assessment of the need for and readiness of one métis settlement to develop a similar program for their children and youth. ethical approval was granted by the university of alberta research ethics board on 6 june 2010. a métis colleague, who had a pre-existing relationship with blms, introduced the principal investigator to blms settlement council, the settlement’s local governing body. council members were asked if they were interested in a potential research partnership with the university of alberta to assess the community’s need for a youth life skills program. during that meeting, council members expressed their ardent belief in the need for life skills and substance abuse prevention training across all ages in their community, but especially among youth. the council’s unanimous agreement that such programs were necessary for their members served as the first sign of the community’s readiness. on 22 june 2010, the council passed a motion to support a community needs and readiness assessment. two community members were then recruited as paid research assistants whose responsibilities would include planning and conducting focus groups with community representatives. methodology of the project evaluating community readiness, defined here as the degree to which a community is prepared to take action on an issue (donnermeyer et al. 1997), helps researchers understand processes of community change and develop strategies for addressing issues (plested, edwards & jumper-thurman 2006). in turn, this encourages communities to define their own issues and strategies, builds cooperation between stakeholders and participants, encourages participation, and increases capacity for intervention. a community readiness assessment is aligned with cbpr principles that promote building on existing strengths and resources within the community (israel et al. 1998); for the readiness assessment at buffalo lake métis settlement, community assets were preidentified by a small number of community members, then further expanded and ranked in participatory focus group activities with a larger number of participants. research has shown that community members must agree that a problem or issue is locally 135 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin important for a prevention strategy to succeed (andersson & nahwegahbow 2010; jumper-thurman, vermon & plested 2007; krieg, martz & mccallum 2007). furthermore, programs put in place to solve community problems are more likely to be successful if they fit local norms and encourage local participation (edwards et al. 2000). therefore, community members were given the opportunity to define priority areas to be addressed in a life skills program through multiple levels of qualitative data collection with embedded feedback loops. through focus groups, employing community members as key project staff, frequent community meetings, and providing updates and discussion space with community leaders, community members were able to ensure that the developing program would fit their needs, while also giving researchers a more in-depth understanding of the community. the community readiness approach recognises that programs should be tailored to fit the realities of individual communities. nine stages of community readiness are consistently used throughout the literature (donnermeyer et al. 1997; jumperthurman 2000; oetting et al. 2001; plested, edwards & jumperthurman 2006). stage 1 reflects a low level of readiness and stage 9 reflects a high level of readiness: 1 community tolerance/no awareness 2 denial 3 vague awareness 4 pre-planning 5 preparation 6 initiation 7 institutionalisation 8 confirmation/expansion 9 professionalisation. community readiness is determined by assessing each stage across six key dimensions (oetting et al. 2001; plested, edwards & jumper-thurman 2006): 1 existing efforts to address issues 2 community knowledge of these efforts 3 community leadership 4 community knowledge about the issue 5 resources (funding) related to the issue 6 community climate. in contrast to measures we have used in previous aboriginal research projects (fletcher, mckennitt & baydala 2008), the stages and dimensions of readiness proved appropriate as we proceeded with the project. however, after determining that survey 136 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin instruments were not the most effective means of gathering needs and readiness information from the community, we adapted our methods to include participatory focus group activities. as a community-grounded project is the most effective approach to addressing health needs (andersson & nahwegahbow 2010; jumper-thurman 2000; krieg, martz & mccallum 2007), priority was given to community members’ participation in every possible stage of project development. although the issue (drug, alcohol and bullying prevention) was pre-determined for this project, community members participated in and shared community priorities through the needs and readiness assessments already described, as well as program development, implementation and evaluation. additionally, we looked to the needs and readiness assessments to develop relationships so that community members could propose meaningful initiatives and solutions. the community needs and readiness assessments completed in 2010–2011 represent a form of pre-engagement in the discovery, exploration and trial alliance phases, as outlined by campbell-voytal (2010), allowing for tentative collaboration with an ‘opportunity to observe, listen, and try out a tentative alliance’ (p. 157). data collection six focus groups, with a total of 21 participants, were held with blms community members to assess the perceived relevance of life skills topics; these topics were gathered from similar programs with first nations communities (baydala et al. 2009). the breakdown for the focus groups included two youth focus groups (14–24 years of age), two seniors/elders groups (60+) and two with adults (25+) representing parents and service providers from health and social services. the focus groups allowed participants to suggest additional topics for life skills education. two community members were hired to plan the focus groups and recruit participants. recruitment, which was challenging in this remote rural setting, was achieved through word of mouth and advertisements in the community newsletter. methods consisted of a combination of recorded and nonrecorded focus groups. the original questions, from plested, edwards and jumper-thurman (2006), were adapted to compensate for lower reading comprehension levels and to break down the typical formality employed in survey and focus group language. in the researchers’ experience, formal academic language is generally inappropriate when used in discussions with non-academic focus group participants; maintaining colloquial language creates a more equitable environment. the following questions were presented to individuals in a survey format at the initial focus groups to focus later discussion: 1 what are the top 2 or 3 most important issues facing buffalo lake? 137 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin 2 how much of a concern is substance abuse and violence in your community? (please circle your answer from 1–10, with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘a very great concern’). 3 how much of a concern is substance abuse and violence to the leadership in your community? (please circle your answer from 1–10, with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘a very great concern’). 4 how much of a concern is addressing substance abuse and violence through a prevention intervention to the leadership in your community? (please circle your answer from 1–10, with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘a very great concern’). 5 what is the level of expertise and training among those working on substance abuse and violence prevention in the community? (please circle your answer from 1–10, with 1 being ‘very low‘ and 10 being ‘very good‘). 6 given these efforts to address substance abuse and violence prevention, to what extent are other community members aware of these efforts and available resources? (please circle your answer from 1–10, with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘very aware’). during the first focus group it became immediately apparent to researchers that the survey and traditional focus group setting was not producing effective results. participants were reticent and mostly uncommunicative. in order to promote discussion, two proprietary interactive tools – the target activity and thermoscale (fletcher et al. 2013), described below – were introduced, with guiding questions to explore perceived community need and readiness to partner in a community-university research project. survey questions were also adapted into open discussion questions, so that results would still reflect the community needs and readiness assessment concepts, but would be achieved in a manner more acceptable to participants. based on our experience, the research team determined that a consensus-based approach would be more effective in fostering in-depth discussion among participants about perceived needs and readiness. this would in turn help to enrich our understanding of the community. data collection and findings are presented briefly below. the target activity (fletcher et al. 2013) was used to explore whether community members felt that a life skills program was needed. this activity involved a large poster of a target with three concentric rings. post-it notes were placed around the outside edges of the poster, featuring pre-written topics derived from the current literature (botvin et al. 2003) and recent research in first nations communities on drug and alcohol resistance (baydala et al. 2009). focus group participants were asked to come to a consensus on the degree to which a variety of resistance skills and knowledge areas might contribute to community wellness. the activity itself was developed by the authors as a pragmatic approach to encourage 138 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin discussion and had been trialled successfully in previous studies (fletcher et al. 2013). each skill/knowledge was labelled critical, important, or noteworthy. participants were also asked to add their own topics and to indicate at what age they thought such a skill should be introduced. topics of critical importance included alcohol, bullying, dealing with anger, drug use, peer pressure, and violence. topics considered important to address included dealing with conflict, gambling, gender roles, grieving, self-esteem/selfimage, smoking/tobacco, and stress. noteworthy topics included advertising, assertiveness and communication skills, dealing with anxiety, decision-making, kinship, media, neighbourliness, and spirituality. community members in the focus group specifically introduced the topics of gang awareness, gambling, gender roles, kinship, neighbourliness, and spirituality. the thermoscale (fletcher et al. 2013), adapted from mccabe and horsley (2008), was used to explore community readiness and to help the researchers understand the community from the perspective of its members. two community members working on the project first reviewed the tool and the pre-determined community assets. through consensus, participants placed community assets on a scale from cold (weak community asset) to hot (strong community asset) to demonstrate the character of their community. the list of assets originated from community readiness literature (donnermeyer et al. 1997; jumper-thurman 2000; oetting et al. 2001; plested, edwards & jumper-thurman 2006). participants were given the opportunity to identify additional assets, allowing them to express community values that the researchers had not anticipated. in total, 39 assets were discussed and placed on the scale. results from both activities led to the needs and readiness assessments. the six dimensions of community readiness focused the analysis of the focus group notes, activity photos and transcripts: 1 existing efforts to address the issue. although the issue of youth drug use and bullying was defined by existing funding and supported by a motion from blms council, there were no existing programs in the community supporting life skills development for children, youth, or adults. focus group participants supported the proposal to develop a program that would have a positive impact on reducing substance abuse and violence, with results focusing on the need to impact children around the age of seven. 2 community knowledge of these efforts. participants shared that there were no existing life skills or substance abuse/violence prevention programs in the community. earlier programs for adults had not been particularly successful or relevant to the local context. the absence of relevant life skills programs impacted the course of further program development by demonstrating the need for a ground-up, community-driven approach and the necessity to base program development upon métis-specific content. 139 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin 3 community leadership. blms council members were strongly supportive of a project that would respond to the issues of drug abuse and bullying. local resources were made available to the research team, including community space for focus groups, and key community members were identified as enthusiastic contributors. 4 community knowledge about the issue. participants were well aware of existing issues of drug and alcohol abuse and violence, were concerned about their impacts on community wellbeing, and recognised that action should be taken to address these issues. gang violence had not been identified as a local issue by the research team prior to the focus groups. 5 funding resources related to the issue. although there were no available funding sources in the local community, the community was willing to provide resources through inkind support, including infrastructure to support full-time employment in the community for subsequent stages of the project. community members were very knowledgeable about available resources in their community. 6 community climate. there was a lack of consensus among the participants about the community climate, with the greatest divide between youth and senior participants. youth were far more likely than seniors to speak positively about community resources (including the services of health-care workers, mentors, volunteers and royal canadian mounted police) and the community’s overall sense of identity and feeling of unity. findings and discussion findings from the needs and readiness assessment were used to determine the design of the next phase of the research project, including program content and measures of community impact and individual developmental strengths. dempsey’s (2010) critique of community engagement helped us realise the extent to which needs and readiness assessment activities contributed to our ability to resolve some of the difficulties of blms community engagement. these potential areas of difficulty included: 1) the ambiguity of community, 2) the campus/community divide, 3) the demand for community participation, and 4) institutionalised practices (in particular, university policies and practices). this experience corroborates dempsey’s claim that building authentic relationships is critical to community-university engagement. to exemplify this, each section that follows covers one of these four areas of potential difficulty in community-university engagement, closing with a key learning. the ambiguity of community dempsey (2010) notes that there is a tendency in research to downplay the complexity of communities, by treating communities as homogeneous entities. in the process of completing the 140 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin needs and readiness assessments, we realised that, despite acknowledgement of diversity among the first nations in canada, the cultural distinctions – spiritual beliefs, ceremony, language, food practices – between métis and first nations peoples are often overlooked. while the diversity among first nations peoples in canada can be compared to the diversity among native americans in the united states, there is no such comparison for métis people’s unique history and culture. métis settlement members are further distinct from the métis nation of canada and pronounced cultural differences also exist between settlements. for example, the assumption that an aboriginal language is necessarily related to aboriginal cultural identity was shattered by blms as participants ranked the languages traditionally associated with métis culture – french, cree and michif – as unimportant or weak community assets. we propose that the current use of the term ‘aboriginal’ in canada tends to homogenise the experience of three very distinct groups: first nations, métis, and inuit. years of research with first nations contributed to our own application of panaboriginal assumptions to métis during the needs and readiness assessment phase. for instance, the anticipated role of elders and the concept of spirituality were two sensitive, yet extremely important community dynamics to understand in order to promote meaningful engagement. while working with first nations, we learned to make participation and guidance from formal elders a priority in our work. although we assumed the same of our métis colleagues, we learned through the assessment process, as well as at council meetings, that approval to proceed rested with the settlement council. to assume an elder-first approach to community involvement was to incorrectly allow pan-aboriginal assumptions to inform our work with métis. contrary to the normative elder role in first nations, elder authority is not formalised at blms. at blms, an elder is a respected senior – it does not denote the proper noun, ‘elder’, as is used in first nations communities. when asked about the need for elder involvement, none of our community colleagues expressed concern about the absence of a committed elder working on the project. we addressed this issue directly with the blms local advisory committee, which was initiated after the needs and readiness assessment phase, and were informed that the community has seniors, who undoubtedly hold community cultural knowledge and are referred to as elders, rather than elders in the first nations tradition. in further contrast to our expectations, the focus groups identified blms as predominantly catholic and almost exclusively christian. preconceived ideas of what program content might look like, based on first nations spirituality, were subsequently revised to reflect respect for diverse beliefs and values, rather than traditional teachings. another historically and contemporarily significant métis practice that the researchers did not anticipate included fiddling, traditionally associated with the dance 141 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin style known as the métis jig. artistic and ceremonial practices considered significant to first nations, such as carving, drumming and smudging, were not relevant to blms. key learning: our needs and readiness assessment offered a process for redefining community in terms of its heterogeneity. as suggested by dempsey (2010, p. 365), ‘acknowledgement of diversity of community opens up understandings of the politics involved with identifying and representing community interests’. had we not spent the time working with community members to complete the needs and readiness assessments, our actions would very likely have reinforced a pan-aboriginal approach that would have, at the least, compromised our research relationships and goals, and at worst, made impossible any chance of a community-university partnership. the process of doing the needs and readiness assessments heightened our awareness of community ambiguity and our capacity to respond appropriately, with openness and respect, to what may be perceived as cultural ambiguity. the campus/community divide dempsey (2010, p. 364) stated, ‘universities – as complex organizations – are embedded within various over-lapping historical, political, and economic relationships with their surrounding communities’, and that the imaginary divide created between the university and communities (downplaying the fact that these spheres overlap) threatens engagement. it is through proactive discussions that acknowledge participants’ understanding of our ancestors’ place in a shared history, and our ongoing responsibility to social justice (fletcher 2013), that we overcome the potential threat of the campus/community divide. our individual differences, including age, gender, religion, culture and socioeconomic standing, are embedded within our institutional membership and history and are additional potential threats to community engagement. these differences are minimised by accentuating shared experiences and goals and building upon the strengths that are made possible by difference (dempsey 2010, p. 364). métis settlements have pre-determined rules for membership. despite dempsey’s (2010) comment on the positive potential of researchers and community members belonging to the same community, there was no way that research team members, in this particular case, could be members of the métis settlement. in fact, the rules that set membership in our communities – including settlement and university – necessitate building the research partnership across communities. however, in contrast to dempsey’s point, we took steps to acknowledge differences and believe that doing so contributed to our ability to achieve shared goals: some individuals had knowledge of the community, including its political milieu, history and sense of local culture, while other individuals had expertise in securing funding, working through institutional processes, providing administrative leadership and 142 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin facilitating research. making transparent our differences and our shared commitment to improving community wellness allowed for many points of convergence between team members. we believe that this approach to community-university engagement, even though it may have been apparent and intentional only on the part of the university members, was critical to success and for that reason deserves attention in this reflection. community engagement was shaped by educational and research experiences that very intentionally attended to differences and similarities. kanpol (1995) writes of an educational system that requires educators and students to join in unity in mutual learning and teaching to find ‘terrains of similarity of solidarity’. in our case, university-based team members were aware of the history of first nations, métis and inuit peoples in canada. we acknowledged that inequities between aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups stem from the long-term impacts of colonial policies and legislation, and that we share responsibility for achieving equity. through this approach, participants engaged in critical and ethical reflection about what it meant to bring a wide variety of cultures into dialogue with each other, unifying without losing touch with individual differences. key learning: dempsey (2010) suggested that, to acknowledge difference, we discuss our individual goals, whether personal or professional, and attempt to describe the accountabilities of each partner. our needs and readiness assessment amplified our attention to this and reinforced our commitment to attend to each other’s strengths. in taking a strengths-based approach to project management, the research team was inspired to complete and share the results of rath’s (2012) strengthsfinder test as a community-university research team. the strengthsfinder test served as a means to discuss our preferred roles and responsibilities in the project as well as our accountability to various aspects of the project. we explored our strengths as individuals in order to view our differences positively. as a team, we minimised the potential community-university gap by valuing individual strengths and taking these into consideration at each new stage of project planning. the demand for community participation the third challenge presented by dempsey (2010) highlights the burden placed on community when, in the absence of adequate funding, research projects rely on volunteers and in-kind support from communities. israel et al. (1998) promotes the concept of facilitating collaboration between university team members and community members in all phases of the research. having worked with and been mentored in the non-profit sector, the principle investigator knew the importance of contributing financially to the ‘bottom line’ to honour the efforts needed for collaboration. as a result, whenever possible, priorities in the funding allocation included money to pay employees and rent space in the community 143 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin or, at the very least, honoraria to compensate them for their time and expertise. office space was rented at blms for the two research assistants hired to recruit a cross-section of community members to participate in the needs and readiness assessment focus groups. these research assistants arranged for the research team members to attend the monthly luncheon at the community seniors centre, and participated in the development of the resources for the program. this approach created employment opportunities and contributed to infrastructure costs, thus representing a fair exchange between university and community. these actions underlined the value that was being placed on community knowledge and commitment. in addition, university-based employees took on as many administrative and logistical responsibilities as possible, serving as the ‘backbone’ organisation between the broader university structure and the settlement. a backbone organisation is defined as a structure that serves to tie together various organisations/ units in collective impact initiatives (hanleybrown, kania & kramer 2012); it is the supportive infrastructure to collaboration: backbone organizations serve six essential functions: providing overall strategic direction, facilitating dialogue between partners, managing data collection and analysis, handling communications, coordinating community outreach, and mobilizing funding (hanleybrown, kania & kramer 2012). in our team, the backbone organisation consisted of university-based employees who performed both research and administrative roles. for example, university-based staff filled out personal expense reimbursement forms, informed community staff of their employee union rights, interpreted all university policies and procedures that would otherwise prove difficult to navigate, prepared and submitted all contracts and appointments, reconciled grant funds, and negotiated any hr or finance-related issues of community staff with university units. we were able to structure our project in this way because our funders saw benefit in intervention over the long-term. key learning: while undertaking the needs and readiness assessment, we learned that there was a small but skilled group of people in the community and came to understand what it would take to support these people in ways that would make the demands on their time manageable while also meeting our research obligations. the result was a project management approach to research that facilitated broad thinking about possible funding sources that would allow us to align with, and provide financial support for, community and human resource development. in other words, research project management, resources, skills and strategies combined with the intent of alleviating the burden on the community. 144 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin institutionalised practices finally, institutional practices, such as university and funding agency policies and procedures, including research ethics board criteria, have the potential to create significant barriers to positive community-university engagement (israel et al. 2001). the emphasis on obtaining written consent in the canadian institutes of health research guidelines (canadian institutes of health research 2008), which in turn becomes the basis for review by institutional boards in canada, as per the experience of one of the authors’ participation on an ethics review board, presents a potential barrier to engagement that could be avoided through oral consent or acceptance of consent by kin (baydala et al. 2011a, p. 105). first nations’ elders, through earlier research projects, taught us that seeking written consent is not always appropriate. the following example focuses on why and how institutional barriers need to be overcome in the ethics process. elders in a first nations community accepted a tobacco offering to participate in a research project – implying a sacred commitment – and were later asked for further consent. as tobacco had already been offered and accepted, the additional consent requests made the elders feel their integrity was being questioned (baydala et al. 2013). in this case, institutional ethics policies imposed practices that were contradictory to community or cultural ethics. ‘when traditional protocol has been offered and accepted by elders, asking for written consent was interpreted as a lack of acceptance for the legitimacy of community protocol and is disrespectful of the elders personal intent’ (baydala et al. 2013, p. 13). the academic team could not continue within the confines of the institutional ethics policies to build meaningful partnerships with the community’s elders, so the team worked with the research ethics board to create a meaningful and more appropriate consent process. this experience informed the research team’s approach from the outset of the project with blms. a preference for oral consent and allowing for assent by minors, however, remain issues specific to conducting research with this community. based on our experience, major research grants such as the tri-council funding programs in canada (canadian institutes of health research, social sciences and humanities research council, and the natural sciences and engineering research council of canada) present barriers to community engagement by their policies for allowable expenses. for example, community office set-up is not typically an allowable expense under their program guidelines since all associated expenses – equipment, rental fees, janitorial services – constitute facility costs, which are considered overhead that should be provided by the institution (natural sciences and engineering research council of canada 2013). the institution, on the other hand, does not support satellite offices in rural communities by providing equipment and janitorial and repair services in a location hours away from the university campus. likewise, in order to conduct cbpr research, computer 145 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin software and financial management training must often be provided to both university and community partners. israel et al. (2001) discuss the critical importance of professional development to a cbpr project as both community and university partners often must fulfil varied roles, from program administrator to community promoter, from project manager to public speaker, and from writer to research assistant. again, these professional development costs are typically not eligible in a standard research grant and must, at minimum, use project resources to apply for special training grants (natural sciences and engineering research council of canada 2013). the institution offers such specialty training, at a cost, to research personnel. in contrast, project funding through the alberta health services safe communities innovation program allowed us to incur expenses critical to both project set-up and relationship building that contributed directly to community engagement. eligible expenses included the remote office set-up (purchasing desks, computers and other equipment and paying to move these items to blms), salaries for community members, mileage for travel to the communities, refreshments provided for community members at meetings and focus groups, mobile phone costs for staff accessing the internet and text messaging while working offsite, and gifts of thanks to key community members. knowledge mobilisation within the community was also improved through our ability to pay for a custom project website with a simple design aimed at disseminating project information within the community and the university. since the completion of the needs and readiness assessment, project funds have also provided t-shirts and backpacks for child participants of our summer camp, gymnasium supplies for the blms recreation centre aimed at younger children, and team apparel that ensures program facilitators, volunteers and program staff stand out and are recognised in the community. these types of expenses, while not direct research expenses, provide concrete ways to demonstrate the commitment made to and by the community as a whole and advance relationship building within the community. key learning: there are institutional policies in university and major funding organisations that require ongoing commitment to education and continual effort to reform these policies. given the opportunity, research ethics boards and funders seem willing to respond to the unique needs and conditions of ethics and engagement with first nations, métis and inuit peoples. changes in policy and practice are a requirement of ethical engagement. although policies and practices are responding to the expectations of community-based research and engagement, persistence and commitment are required to extend discussions of ethics beyond research to community-university engagement. conclusion we have shared our reflections on the community-specific challenges that were encountered in developing a research 146 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin partnership with members of buffalo lake métis settlement in canada. this work was prompted, supported and again challenged by dempsey’s (2010) critiques of the ambiguity of community, the campus/community divide and the individual differences (including culture, socioeconomic standing, gender, age) that can be present in a research partnership, the burden of participation on community members and the barriers to engagement arising out of institutional policies and procedures. in retrospect, the two years that were spent completing a needs and readiness assessment were vital to our ongoing engagement with the bmls community and our subsequent research program. this activity fostered engagement between university and community partners and led to unanticipated effects on our research goals as we continue to strive to understand the unique context of this community. in this process, we were reminded again of the importance of questioning pan-aboriginal assumptions and approaches when working with first nations, métis, or inuit communities. regardless of how many communities or how long our involvement as academic researchers, the uniqueness of each and every community and every initiative deserves the time and respect that was accorded through the process of completing this assessment. through this process of reflection, we were also reminded of the ongoing divide between community and university partners. open and honest discussions about drug and alcohol use, gambling, violence and bullying in the community have allowed us to continually acknowledge and incorporate unique experiences, education and expertise. we developed greater insight into the capacity and readiness of the community to partner for research purposes as a result of the needs and readiness assessment. we were able to avoid placing an unfair burden on community partners. to reduce the potential strain of a research partnership on the community, our team centralised administrative and logistical responsibility with university-based employees, who acted as a backbone organisation in the research partnership. finally, we learned first-hand that effective partnerships with aboriginal communities may require pushing institutional research ethics boundaries in order to best serve the community, rather than simply avoiding risk for the university. at the outset, when we were first introduced to blms council and held focus groups with community representatives, our goal was to determine whether blms felt there was a need for a youth life skills program and whether they were ready for a research partnership with the university. by the end of the needs and readiness assessment, blms community partners and university partners shared the goal of creating a life skills program for children that would be relevant, culturally appropriate and community specific. our ongoing relationship, subsequent approvals by blms council and the development of a program that has since been delivered by community members represent 147 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin successful community engagement. it is our opinion that this success is grounded in the needs and readiness assessment activities. references andersson, n & nahwegahbow, a 2010, ‘family violence and the need for prevention research in first nations, inuit, and métis communities’, pimatisiwin: a journal of indigenous and aboriginal community health, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 9. baydala, l, worrell, s, fletcher, f, letendre, s, letendre, l & ruttan, l 2013, ‘making a place of respect: lessons learned in carrying out consent protocol with first nations elders’, progress in community health partnerships: research, education and action, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 135. baydala, l, letendre, s, ruttan, l, worrell, s, fletcher, f, letendre, l & schramm, t, 2011a, ‘“why do i need to sign it?” child assent in schoolbased prevention research in a first nation community’, first peoples child & family review, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 99. baydala, l, worrell, s & fletcher, f 2011b, ‘fasd: a 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(eds), education and the political project of engagement and disengagement, sense publishers, boston, ma, pp. 89–105. fletcher, f, baydala, l, hibbert, a & robertson, f 2013, interactive focus group tools, ces4health.info, viewed july 2013, http://ces4health.info/ find-products/view-product.aspx?code=w64jy7fs. fletcher, f, mckennitt, d & baydala, l 2008, ‘community capacity building: an aboriginal exploratory case study’, pimatisiwin: a journal of indigenous and aboriginal community health, vol. 5, no. 2, p. 9. gionet, l 2009, métis in canada: selected findings of the 2006 census, statistics canada, ottawa, on. government of canada 2013, ‘chapter 9: research involving first nations, métis and inuit peoples of canada’, tri-council policy statement: ethical conduct for research involving humans, 2nd edn, viewed 6 august 2013, www.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/ chapter9-chapitre9/. griffin, k, botvin, g, nichols, t & doyle, m 2003, ‘effectiveness of a universal drug abuse prevention approach for youth at high risk for substance use initiation’, preventive medicine, vol. 36, p. 1. hanleybrown, f, kania, j & kramer, m 2012, ‘channeling change: making collective impact work’, stanford social innovation review, viewed february 2013, www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/channeling_ change_making_collective_impact_work?cpgn=wp%20dl%20-%20 channeling%20change. israel, b, schulz, a, parker, e & becker, a 2001, ‘community-based participatory research: policy recommendations for promoting a partnership approach in health research’, education for health, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 182. israel, b, schulz, a, parker, e & becker, a 1998, ‘review of communitybased research: assessing partnership approaches to improve public health’, annual review of public health, vol. 19, p. 173. jumper-thurman, p 2000, ‘community readiness: a promising model for community healing’, in d bigfoot (ed.), native american topic specific monograph series, u.s. department of justice, the university of oklahoma health sciences center. jumper-thurman, p, vermon, i & plested, b 2007, ‘advancing hiv/aids prevention among american indians through capacity building and the community readiness model’, journal of public health management practice, january suppl., p. 49s. kanpol, b 1995, ‘multiculturalism and empathy: a border pedagogy of solidarity’, in b kanpol & p mclaren (eds), multiculturalism: uncommon voices in a common struggle, bergin and garvey, westport, ct, pp. 177–95. krieg, b, martz, d & mccallum, l 2007, access to health services for elderly métis women in buffalo narrows, saskatchewan, prairie women’s health centre of excellence, winnipeg, mb. http://ces4health.info/find-products/view-product.aspx?code=w64jy7fs http://ces4health.info/find-products/view-product.aspx?code=w64jy7fs http://www.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/chapter9-chapitre9/ http://www.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/chapter9-chapitre9/ http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/channeling_change_making_collective_impact_work?cpgn=wp%20dl%20-%20channeling%20change http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/channeling_change_making_collective_impact_work?cpgn=wp%20dl%20-%20channeling%20change http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/channeling_change_making_collective_impact_work?cpgn=wp%20dl%20-%20channeling%20change 149 | gateways | fletcher, hibbert, robertson & asselin lamouche, j 2002, environmental scan of métis health information, initiatives and programs, national aboriginal health organization, ottawa, on. martens, p, bartlett, j, prior, h, sanguins, j, burchill, c & burland, e 2011, ‘what is the comparative health status and associated risk factors for the métis? a population-based study in manitoba, canada’, bmc public health, vol. 11, p. 814. mccabe, a & horsley, k 2008, the evaluator’s cookbook, routledge, new york. mccloskey, d, mcdonald, m, cook, j, roberts, s, updegrove, s, sampson, d, gutter, s & eder, m 2011, ‘chapter 1, community engagement: defining and organizing concepts from the literature’, in principles of community engagement, 2nd edn, national institutes of health, usa, pp. 3–41. mcnab, d 2005, walking a tightrope: aboriginal people and their representations, wilfred laurier university press, waterloo, on. minkler, m & wallerstein, n 2003, community based participatory research for health, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. natural sciences and engineering research council of canada 2013, tri-agency financial administration guide – use of grant funds, viewed august 2013, www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/professors-professeurs/ financialadminguide-guideadminfinancier/fundsuseutilisationsubventions_eng.asp. oetting, e, jumper-thurman, p, plested, b, edwards, r 2001, ‘community readiness and health services’, substance use and misuse, vol. 36, nos 6&7, p. 825. plested, b, edwards, r & jumper-thurman, p 2006, community readiness: a handbook for successful change, tri-ethnic center for prevention research, fort collins, co. rath, t 2012, strengthsfinder 2.0, gallup, new york, ny. statistics canada 2010, the health of inuit, métis and first nations adults living off-reserve in canada: the impact of socioeconomic status on inequalities in health, health research working paper series, ottawa, viewed august 2013, www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-622-x/2010004/fig/ figure02-eng.htm. tjepkema, m, wilkins, r, senécal, s, guimond, e & penney, c 2011, potential years of life lost at ages 25 to 74 among métis and non-status indians, 1991 to 2001: health report, march, statistics canada, ottawa, on. younge, t 2003, ‘review of research on aboriginal populations in canada: relevance to their health needs’, british medical journal, vol. 327, issue 7412, p. 419. http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/professors-professeurs/financialadminguide-guideadminfinancier/fundsuse-utilisationsubventions_eng.asp http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/professors-professeurs/financialadminguide-guideadminfinancier/fundsuse-utilisationsubventions_eng.asp http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/professors-professeurs/financialadminguide-guideadminfinancier/fundsuse-utilisationsubventions_eng.asp http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-622-x/2010004/fig/figure02-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-622-x/2010004/fig/figure02-eng.htm _goback choice, power and perspective the neglected question of who initiates engaged campus-community partnerships contemporary communities are confronted with difficult economic, political, social, environmental and health-related challenges. institutions of higher education are uniquely poised to help address them, as they harbour significant human, intellectual and organisational resources. in addition, as smerek et al. (2005, p. 7) note, ‘… these institutions are physically rooted in their communities’, and therefore, ‘… investing in the betterment of their immediate environments is good for both the community and the institution’. as a result, the past few decades have witnessed a growing movement within higher education to tackle such issues through direct collaboration with community partners. these settings hold the promise of fostering relationships where university researchers, students and community partners can collaboratively address research questions of immediate relevance and localised importance. in this sense, community-university partnerships can potentially reshape how we think about the mission of the modern university. however, this move towards partnerships has provoked controversy and criticism, with many seeing such efforts as misguided or overly idealistic, doing little to further knowledge creation and advance core endeavours of colleges and universities. this misunderstanding of engagement and service-learning by the ‘stanley fishes’ of academia (reflected in monographs with polemical titles such as fish’s save the world on your own time, 2008) is symptomatic of the broader failure of many to see how community-campus efforts are tied to the core intellectual mission of higher education (holland 2006; nyden 2006). despite boyer’s (1990) seminal analysis of the scholarship of engagement, this work of engagement is often seen as parochial and as failing to bring universities any closer to answering fundamental knowledge questions (maurrasse 2001; nyden et al. 1998; strand et al. 2003). as more higher education institutions begin to entrust their engagement efforts to partnerships, how to make these partnerships successful takes on a new urgency. in their rush to offer advice, and put the critiques above to rest, numerous authorities on partnerships have focused on providing ‘how’ type gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 38–56 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 robert w. glover linda silka university of maine 39 | gateways | glover & silka recommendations (pokorny et al. 2006; ravid & handler 2001; roker 2007; suarez-balcazar et al. 2006). ‘how’ type questions focus on the mechanics of partnerships but do not require us to think about the ways that partnerships advance the core mission of creating and applying new knowledge. this article argues that this focus is premature and misses the deeper and more critical ‘who’ questions that are urgently in need of analysis and explication. ‘who’ questions, by contrast, lead in surprisingly direct ways into an examination of the extent to which campus-community partnerships provide distinctive opportunities to further the knowledge mission of academia. indeed, the question ‘who gets to start a partnership’ links what have too often been taken to be independent and separate issues. these issues include (silka 1999, 2006): —whether the partnership will be problem focused (with the community making this decision) or disciplinarily framed (with the campus making this decision) —whether the partnership will aim to identify root causes (that is, emphasising the study of the causes of the problem) or to arrive at solutions (that is, emphasising the application of knowledge to pressing community problems) —whether the partnership will be dominated by a single discipline or will advance interdisciplinarity —whether the partnership will be seen as a way for junior faculty to develop their professional expertise or whether partnership involvement is regarded as a problematic distraction best avoided by those yet to establish their scholarly reputation and achieve tenure. in a broader sense, the seemingly simple, straightforward question of who initiates the partnership leads to the complex problems of choice, power and perspective that bedevil campuscommunity partnerships (soska & butterfield 2004). failure to devote attention to the question of who starts the partnership ignores important relational dynamics that may actually undermine the stated goals of mutuality, equality and reciprocity in relationships between universities and communities. until these problems are more adequately addressed, the partnership approach is unlikely to become a central means by which engagement can achieve prominence in academia (o’meara & rice 2005). the move from outreach to engagement, from merely reaching out to reshaping academia’s intellectual core, will remain at best an unrealised promise. the growth of community-university research partnerships community-university research partnerships are proliferating, with examples throughout the united states and internationally. the innovative research partnership of the university of michigan’s detroit center for urban studies has been highlighted in many publications (israel et al. 2001). loyola university’s 40 | gateways | glover & silka widely respected center for urban research and learning works with chicago neighbourhoods on community-based research problems and has become a model many others are seeking to replicate (nyden 2006). portland state university (portland state 2008), tufts university (brugge & hynes 2005), university of pennsylvania (www.upenn.edu/ccp/index.php) and the university of texas el paso (staudt & cardoza 2005) are all major exemplars. many of these research partnerships have been centred in urban areas (shepard et al. 2002), whereas others have taken place in rural areas and remote locations where the challenges to partnership are different (israel et al. 1998). from partnerships with tobacco workers to those with african american family farmers impacted by adjacent industrial hog confinement farms, these rural research partnerships attempt to create research partnerships that will directly address community needs (grant & wing 2004; wing 2002). some of these partnerships have taken place in large communities whereas others emphasise the work of mid-sized communities and mid-sized universities (silka et al. 2008). tribal nations have been important innovators in the creation of these new forms of community-university research partnerships (santiago-rivera et al. 1998; ten fingers 2005). various funders and international organisations have spearheaded this work. the national institute of environmental sciences has been a leader in promoting community-based participatory research (o’fallon & dearry 2002; srinivasan & collman 2005) as has been the u.s. housing and urban development’s office of university partnerships (democracy collaborative 2007; silka 2006). the community campus partnerships for health continues to be an important innovator in the development of community-university research partnerships (shore et al. 2008; www.ccph.info). internationally, there is growing work in communityuniversity partnership research, seen in countries as varied as australia (aucea.com.au; jacklin & kinoshameg 2008), brazil (monteiro, siqueira & filho 2011), canada (sshrc 2008), france (foray 2004), great britain (hart, maddison & wolff 2007), south africa (brown-luthango 2013; favish, mcmillan & ngcelwane 2012; mcmillan 2011); south korea (kim, jeon & yim 2011) and the sudan (abdelrahman & al fadil 2011). this ‘internationalization’ of community engagement provides a rich set of cases to analyse community engagement, often across varied social, economic, political and cultural contexts. in addition, bawa and munck (2012) note that this geographic diversity in community-university partnerships can provide a corrective to dominant visions and definitions emanating from the ‘global north’. awareness and study of such partnerships makes us increasingly aware that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to community-university partnerships. a number of recent volumes and articles surveying the global reach of engagement demonstrate the importance of attending to the specificity of www.upenn.edu/ccp/index.php www.ccph.info aucea.com.au 41 | gateways | glover & silka place in crafting sustainable partnerships (brown-luthango 2013; favish, mcmillan & ngcelwane 2012; mcilraith, lyons & munck 2012; watson et al. 2011). many academic disciplines and interdisciplinary efforts have now begun to tackle research questions through science shops and related forms of community-university research partnerships (sclove, scammell & holland 1998). a variety of fundamental research questions have been pursued within these partnerships on topics as diverse as child development, climate change, economic development, environmental justice, health disparities, and nanotechnology. many journals now include this focus (for example, environmental health perspectives, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, journal of community practice, journal of empirical research on human research ethics, metropolitan universities journal, new solutions, and race, poverty and environment). many monographs have been written or are now in development that focus on research partnerships (jason et al. 2006; maurrasse 2001; minkler & wallerstein 2002; strand et al. 2003). unsurprisingly, as campus-community partnerships proliferate, academic leaders are increasingly calling for recognition of the fact that engagement contributes to the core values of academia and strengthens science (foray 2004; gibbons et al. 1994; kellogg commission 1999; o’meara & rice 2005). major research institutions in the united states as well as internationally are promoting engagement. the association of commonwealth universities, through one of its task forces, asserted in 2001 that engagement is now a core value for higher education. the midwestern research universities of the big 10 conference, through a task force (committee on institutional cooperation 2005), have emphasised strategies for strengthening and benchmarking engagement. the association of commonwealth universities, through the book, the idea of engagement: universities in societies (bjarnason & coldstream 2003), has laid out a comprehensive analysis that makes engagement central to the knowledge mission of higher education. work has even begun on developing new indicators of research quality that will be linked to engagement (holland 2006; ramaley 2005). and the relatively new carnegie engagement designation (carnegie foundation 2008) is a culminating statement on the importance of engagement to the goals of higher education. the impacts for researchers are significant. funders of research are seeing the partnership approach as increasingly important to achieving knowledge-generation goals. federal funders of research in the united states such as centers for disease control, department of education, national institutes of health and the national science foundation have all begun to call for research partnerships as a part of their requirements for funding in some areas. additional criteria have been adopted by the national science foundation, for example that encourage partnership research and require attention to the importance of application of research findings and the analysis of broader social 42 | gateways | glover & silka and policy impacts of research (holland 2006; ramaley 2005). in short, engagement and the creation of community-university partnerships continue to generate ever-increasing interest. research partnerships: how are they linked to core knowledge functions? despite the growing reliance on partnership approaches in research, categorical rejection of the notion that this work advances higher education’s core knowledge mission persists (holland 2006). such work is still seen by some as contributing little to the generation of knowledge. through the words of one colleague, sandy and arguelles (2006, p. 22) concretely capture this view: ‘all this emphasis on talking to people outside of our discipline and in the community is a distraction from our obligations, which are principally to publish and teach …’ from this perspective, community engagement obstructs the ‘real’ intellectual work to which academics should devote their energies. others critics call forth workload arguments. rather than seeing engagement as an avenue by which disparate intellectual activities can be brought together, they regard engagement as simply the addition of irrelevant work. bringing an international perspective to this topic, holland (2006, p. 3) has commented that american scholars tend to see engaged scholarship as ‘… an attempt to pile more responsibilities and expectations onto an already overburdened faculty’ and as merely a way to legitimise service and outreach. what is overlooked by such critics, she argues, is the enormous potential of engaged scholarship to integrate competing intellectual tasks into a more coherent whole, one better adapted to society’s emerging needs. engagement as carried out through community-university research partnerships shows every possibility of sustaining and strengthening higher education’s role in knowledge creation. leaders also promote engaged scholarship as an antidote to current problems with how academia pursues its mission of generating knowledge. the president of the social science research council, professor craig calhoun (2004, p. 13), for example, stresses the need for work that transcends the deficiencies in traditional academic approaches to achieve core knowledge aims: ‘many academic projects are driven by neither deep intellectual curiosity nor pressing public agendas but simply by the internal arguments of academic subfields or theoretically aimless attempts to cumulative knowledge that most accumulates lines on cvs. to justify these by an ideology of pure science is disingenuous.’ what we need to do, nyden (2006, pp. 12–13) argues, is understand more fully the key features at the heart of higher education’s culture of questioning and then look at how this approach can be advanced in community-university research partnerships. ‘the culture of questioning is at the core of academic teaching and research’, he points out. ‘in the classroom, teachers and academic researchers pose challenging questions to students to make sure they understand course materials and develop the 43 | gateways | glover & silka critical thinking skills needed to understand, shape, and change the world in which they live and work.’ he then expands on this point: ‘… researchers need to look behind the familiar facades of everyday life. we cannot be satisfied with common sense explanation of family life, community institutions, and other social practices.’ community-university research partnerships offer an important means of extending and enriching this culture of questioning (nyden 2006). research partnerships have reinvigorated our culture of questioning in the past, such as through the investigations of jane addams and her chicago colleagues at hull house in the early 20th century, which documented immigrant poverty in chicago (deagan 1988; harkavy & puckett 1994). in our contemporary setting, the creation of partnerships brings this culture of questioning to novel targets and previously overlooked contexts, and helps us confront new societal challenges. the research practices themselves become targets within this culture of questioning. and assumptions about whether emphasis should be placed on root causes or on solutions become targets of critical inquiry. in short, partnerships enlarge the culture of questioning and, moreover, they bring the culture of questioning back to roots that included communities and universities working together on research. however, while the partnership approach holds much promise, the crucial question of who initiates the partnership has not received adequate attention. we take up this question in the following section. who starts the partnership – a neglected question the seemingly straightforward issue of who initiates a research partnership raises complex problems of choice, power and perspective, and raises questions about how higher education pursues its goal of knowledge generation. examining this process has the potential to infuse new life into longstanding debates on higher education’s culture of inquiry. in this section, we summarise these opportunities, point out their links to key issues, and offer recommendations for how universities can position themselves to use these opportunities for reflection. the question of who starts these community-university research partnerships crucially informs much of what they stand to contribute in new knowledge. but these collaborations have often been the sites of struggle around the question of who starts the partnership. as nyden (2006, p. 10) notes, collaborative research ‘is not a matter of a professor thinking up a research idea and then asking a community partner if it wants to join the research process’. collaboration, he reminds us, is about defining goals together. it is about the give and take between university and community partners that leads to integration of perspectives and knowledge. when the researcher frames a research project without community participation, he or she exercises subtle, but important, forms of power that potentially marginalise community 44 | gateways | glover & silka perspectives. long ago, political sociologists bachrach and baratz (1962, p. 948) wrote that, ‘… power is exercised when a participates in the making of decisions that affect b. but power is also exercised when a devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to a …’ as regards community-university partnerships, we might say that, even if the subsequent interaction is characterised by inclusive and transparent mutual decision-making, the researcher who dismisses community voices at the inception of a project has already undercut goals of mutuality and reciprocity so essential to effective collaboration. the horizon of possibilities for such partnerships is shaped in significant ways by the researcher’s initial framing of the issue and their initial thoughts about how the research problem can be effectively studied. when community partners are eventually brought into the conversation, its scope has already been limited in numerous ways that can have significant negative impacts at subsequent steps in the partnership. among scholars and researchers sensitive to the need for ongoing reciprocity and collaboration, the question of ‘entry’ into a partnership does arise. ochocka, moorlag and janzen (2010) stress that entry is a ‘… vital and integral component of the research process, and thus the entry strategies or techniques used must be carefully considered and respectfully executed’. significant attention must be paid to earning the trust and respect of community partners, ensuring inclusion and empowerment in the research process, as these initial moments set in motion attitudes and social dynamics which characterise subsequent interaction. yet, paradoxically, by the moment of entry, important decisions about the research process have already been made. in certain key senses, the agenda for the partnership has already been set. if we focus on the dynamics that ought to characterise our entry into their community, we neglect the prior question of who initiates contact. beyond the agenda-setting stage, obstacles frequently arise. such collaboration is neither straightforward nor easy, and conflicts often stymie these partnerships (sullivan et al. 2001). communities have been described as frustrated by the ways that research universities work with them, increasingly arguing that they are taken advantage of by researchers who arrive at the community’s door already knowing what they hope to extract (silka et al. 2008; stoecker 2005). academic researchers have been described as exploiting poor communities to advance their own personal research agendas (ball 2005; stoecker 2005). the relationships, despite their promise for mutuality, are seen as superficial, failing in their promise to achieve shared knowledge exchange or, worse, constituting outright exploitation. beyond concerns about transparency and mutuality, lack of community input in the initial stages of the project can lead to substandard research design. any number of examples reflect 45 | gateways | glover & silka the incompleteness of models and theories that can result when investigators start the research without the community. consider quigley’s (2001) example of problems analysing the health consequences of above-ground nuclear testing. her work points out that researchers assessing above-ground nuclear testing in nevada simply assumed that paiutes living on their tribal land could not have had sufficient exposure for contamination to carry health consequences. the problem, according to quigley, was that this conclusion was based on an impoverished model of the vectors of exposure. key features of the paiute lifestyle were omitted such as the fact that they were largely eating off the land rather than consuming store-bought food. the flesh of small mammals, a significant dietary component, concentrated the toxic chemicals found in local grains and soils. the changed vector analysis opened up new questions about possible exposures and probabilities of health consequences. within a partnership, the community and university partners were able to work together to broaden the model and enrich the research questions. just as models can be impoverished and problematic in the absence of community input, the overall focus of the project can be askew when academics initiate the pursuit of knowledge. as community leaders have had researchers come to them with their preconceived agendas, many community members have begun to point out that the focus of the planned research is often not on the problems that were of greatest urgency in the community (sandy & arguelles 2006; van der eb et al. 2006). communities often become involved because they see an urgent need for solutions. yet, academic training puts a premium on thoroughness of research, on scrupulous avoidance of any incompleteness in the analysis that would provide peer reviewers with cause to reject the work. as a result, academics’ energies are consumed by the search for root causes that should ultimately shed light on a solution, but as community partners note, university researchers rarely reach this solution stage. somehow there is never enough data to eliminate all alternative explanations. the fact that research within partnerships is not a source of solutions frustrates communities. in addition, the question of who starts the partnership becomes important because of differences in geographical and temporal horizons. that is to say, partnerships highlight questions about perspective and what people know about the problems at hand. faculty rarely have the means at their disposal for understanding the local environment. sandy and arguelles (2006, p. 21) note that academic training teaches and rewards the skill of abstracting up and generalising. they use a horizon analysis to capture the distancing consequences of this training: ‘we are oriented mostly toward horizons that are often far removed from where we are physically located. we tend to be oblivious to events occurring in our neighborhoods or in the communities that surround the universities or agencies where we work or study.’ as a result, faculty lack the habits of mind to carry out their 46 | gateways | glover & silka knowledge inquiries in ways that engage with the deep nature of local problems, and not infrequently their academic training has taught them to view local problems as insignificant and not worthy of study. community-university research partnerships offer the promise of keeping attention focused on the need for knowledge inquiries that link horizons and create intellectual connections between generalised knowledge and specific localised conditions. the question of who starts the partnership also confronts the fact that integrating community-based and universitybased knowledge and perspectives, while important, rarely occurs. academics infrequently include the community in their formulation of research. as sandy and arguelles (2006, p. 21) point out: ‘in the quest to gather knowledge and consider different perspectives, academic researchers have locked out many members of the very communities that we purport to study … we rarely invite the kind of direct input from community members that would inform our research designs or data analyses.’ problems of this sort are not rare (silka et al. 2008). they are common and sufficiently serious that they have become the focus of efforts to forestall them, such as development of templates for partnership contracts (stoecker 2005). partnerships potentially raise important issues, yet if the focus is on ‘how to’, these issues remain opaque. rather, they emerge when our focus is on the question, ‘who gets to start the partnership’. paradoxically, if the ‘who’ consists only of university researchers, questions linked to core intellectual issues, which might expose limitations, bias and subtle power differentials in such partnerships, never surface. not infrequently, university researchers have initiated community-campus research partnerships because of their knowledge that funding is available for such partnerships (seifer & calleson 2004). as a result, campuses rather than communities often start the partnership, and it is only after key decisions have been made that universities seek out the community which will be studied (seifer & calleson 2004). under such arrangements, all of the usual academic goals (for example, publishing in peer-reviewed journals) can be pursued without scrutiny. and, because the focus is on research, such partnerships can be seen as consistent with higher education’s mission of advancing knowledge, without ever calling such problematic initial assumptions into question. what are some of those assumptions and how might partnerships help us think about them? the broader implications of ‘who gets to start the partnership’ for research design as we have seen, an apparently practical question (that is, who gets to start the partnership?) is, in fact, much more. the partnership’s beginning is where the framing takes place and it is where choices about knowledge generation are made (for example: will the focus be on basic research? applied research? 47 | gateways | glover & silka on solutions? on root causes?). this early stage is where choices occur about what will be included and what will be omitted from the research, and once the framing has occurred, a different direction becomes increasingly unlikely. furthermore, such onesided framing and agenda-setting effectively undermines goals of mutuality, transparency and reciprocity before the partnership has even begun. academics, when they initiate a partnership, might start with theoretical questions. community leaders are more likely to begin by drawing attention to a pressing community problem: an upsurge in childhood asthma, a rapid increase in gang violence, community residents losing their homes to foreclosure, youth dropping out of school, jobs disappearing and economic development at a standstill. the start for the community is not with a theory nor is it with a literature-driven hypothesis. the starting focus likely concerns a problem, with communities seeking robust, cost-effective and easily implemented solutions to address it. in addition, community partners likely bring to the partnership firm views about when the knowledge generation has progressed sufficiently that it is now time to act. community partners also are likely to bring understanding that the focus on action has to be tempered by what is possible. if the knowledge produced is to be helpful, it has to be more than merely hypothetical; it has to map onto the tools that community groups have at their disposal. cash, borck and patt (2006) remind us of this in their loading dock analysis of the problems of ensuring that research is actually used. in their view, researchers too often simply take as a given that research will be useful and will be used. they liken this to generating more and more new products under the assumption that interested buyers exist. researchers keep generating more and more studies under the assumption that the results will be useful to someone, but findings stack up on ‘the loading dock’ waiting for those who may find uses for them. because users were not involved from the outset in the research partnership, what is generated may have limited usefulness. these loading dock problems can be circumvented through research partnerships. a community housing study brought this message home to us (center for family, work, and community 2002; hall & silka 2007). in one of our partnership projects we carried out research on the rapid rise in housing costs in our community, seeking to understand the problem and identify possible solutions. it was widely assumed in the community that there were groups (for example, community development corporations – cdcs) with resources to solve this housing problem. the partnership organised the research, not merely to understand the extent of the problem, but also to identify the tools (for example, tax credits that would underwrite the cost that cdcs would incur to build large numbers of affordable units) each community ‘actor’ had that could be used for the solution. through the research we discovered that groups often lacked precisely those tools others expected them to use (that is, the tax credits 48 | gateways | glover & silka that cdcs were expected to use were much too small to cover the difference between what people could pay and what affordable housing units would cost to build). solutions had to be found that could integrate the patchwork of resources in new ways. by working within a partnership, we learned to gather data in ways which shed light on viable solutions given the structure of the community and which did not presume solutions that were impossible, given the structural limitations. our research partnerships created new knowledge but in a form that was helpful and realistic for the community partner, given the conditions. the issue of ‘who gets to start the partnership’ also speaks to whether the messiness of the problem on the ground will be considered in the development of the research approach. if, as academics, we begin selection of the framing questions by having discussions only among ourselves (or worse, those within our individual disciplines or subdisciplines), this generally means being guided by a scholarly literature that has already organised information in line with existing theoretical assumptions. but community problems are messy problems. when, as academics, we limit our discussion partners just to other academics, we are less likely to rub up against this messiness and the attendant complications. for example, if our interest is in studying the health impacts of air pollution in a community neighborhood, we might forget that community partners are struggling not only with the medium of interest to us but with co-occurring urban environmental risks (for example, a person who is exposed to poor air quality in their neighborhood may live in a lead-contaminated house, may grow vegetables in a garden with arsenic-contaminated soil, and may consume fish caught in polluted waters and having high levels of mercury concentrated in the flesh of the fish). exposure to just one pollutant is rare. in research partnerships, community partners help expose the complex problems in the locality in which they occur, and we are forced to move beyond disciplinary ways of organising knowledge. a change in the culture of inquiry and the knowledge generation may result. the broader implications of ‘who gets to start the partnership’ for the core basic vs. applied research distinction attempts are continually being made to confine communityuniversity research partnerships to the applied research box. through these organisational lenses, partnerships are regarded as beneficial largely because they are an efficient means for applying research (that is, they move the research off the loading dock). such a view suggests that little will be lost by waiting to start a partnership until after the basic research has been completed. but, as indicated here, this tendency to see research partnerships as essentially about application is myopic. their benefit to the culture of inquiry is unlikely to be fully realised when the framing of research topics is first carried out by scientists, research is then carried out in isolation, and only then are findings turned over 49 | gateways | glover & silka to community-university partnerships for application. this linear conception of the research process fails to reflect the iterative nature of knowledge creation. furthermore, it risks smuggling in researchers’ biases, constructing subtle and overt power disparities between university and community. these undercut larger goals of mutuality and transparency, of conceiving of the community partner not merely as a research subject but as an equal partner in the process of inquiry and knowledge creation. clearly, attending to the question of who starts the partnership is a reminder of the need to take up these issues and honestly confront them as early in the research process as possible. in addition, drawing a sharp distinction between applied and basic research leads researchers to assume the importance of independently pursuing research that is basic and research that is applied. instead, the more significant challenge is to understand how problems can be investigated in ways leading directly to findings with clear applicability. the collapse of this basic/applied distinction is cropping up in many surprising places in academia, for example, in the case of nanotechnology research partnerships. nanotechnology is one of the most rapidly growing research areas in the united states and internationally. nanotechnology researchers have been concerned with what they deem a chronic loading dock problem. basic nanotechnology discoveries that hold great potential for application (in medical devices, in drugs, in new materials) have emerged from the laboratory, but attempts at application have generally foundered. what has been termed the ‘valley of death’ intervenes between scientific discoveries in the laboratory and full-scale manufacturing aimed at bringing those discoveries to market. discoveries simply do not make it across that valley and instead ‘die’ at the bench stage. as a result, nanotechnology researchers have become interested in finding new ways that research can be carried out in partnership so that applications have a greater probability of success. as a result, the ubiquitous basic/applied distinction is increasingly viewed as unhelpful, indeed even detrimental, as researchers move toward new ways of working with partners. partnerships may help us rethink distinctions in knowledge of discovery and knowledge of application, basic research versus applied research, or in other organising frameworks that have been used to categorise research but which may not fully capture what goes on in research partnerships. before concluding, we will address one final practical consideration in the challenges of a community-initiated model of partnership. as the readers of this article are likely aware, universities can be complex bureaucracies, difficult to access and negotiate. at a recent university event, a thoughtful community partner who had worked with us on numerous occasions remarked, ‘universities are big, amorphous institutions. we do not have a problem accessing big institutions; we do it all the time. however, amorphous institutions are more challenging because one doesn’t 50 | gateways | glover & silka know where to start.’ for community partners, the university is often an institution that lacks a ‘front door’. this is a challenge that must be confronted. in response to this, many institutions have created centralised points-of-access, often offices, whose explicit goal is facilitating campus-community connections (beere, votruba & wells 2011, p. 197). in many ways, even the establishment of such entry points signals how far we have come in thinking about community engagement. however, as we stated at the outset, successful community engagement is not ‘one size fits all’ and the mere establishment of a centralised point of contact cannot guarantee a culture in which community partners will reach out to the university. in some cases, centralisation may even have unintended sideeffects which negatively impact community-university connection. first, such centres will thrive only if community engagement is simultaneously central to the academic mission of the college or university. if incentive structures for faculty and staff are not aligned with the goals of community engagement, staff of such centres may cultivate community relationships for which there is no corresponding research partner. this will actually harm rather than facilitate community-university partnerships. second, if community engagement is not a campus-wide priority, such centres will be vulnerable, as universities face budget shortfalls or economic constraints (an all-too-frequent reality for many universities throughout the world). third, and lastly, the establishment of a centre risks ‘siloing’ the activity of community partnership; the business of cultivating reciprocal community relationships and trust becomes someone else’s responsibility. sustainable and successful community engagement works most effectively when it is diffused across the academic institution and within the community. the process of centralisation can, almost by definition, work at cross-purposes with that goal. conclusion: from ‘how?’ to ‘who?’ the many different questions that have been asked throughout this article all tie back to the overarching question of who starts the partnership and how this shapes the engagement between communities and universities: what would true engagement look like if the campus and the community started together from the very beginning to create a research agenda? what would engagement in community-campus partnerships look like if the power differences could be minimised? what would happen if the partnership were to be organised around a problem focus rather than a disciplinary analysis? what would need to change if the focus were to be equally on creating knowledge and ensuring its applicability? the question of who gets to start the partnership underlies all of these issues. the issues of knowledge generation raised here are longstanding ones in academia that will not be resolved easily or quickly. community-university research partnerships offer 51 | gateways | glover & silka opportunities for universities to reflect on their core knowledge function in new ways (for example, in their generation of new knowledge, should universities be concerned with local issues or should they only be trying to develop knowledge aimed at generalisations beyond a particular time and place? should universities reconsider such questions as ‘are peer-reviewed articles and books reasonable end goals for knowledge generation?’) community-university research partnerships confront universities with these issues, prompting universities to be creative in finding new ways to advance those knowledge functions. furthermore, true community-campus partnerships force thoughtful consideration of the power dynamics of these relationships, and jettison aspects of the research process which pay lip service to mutuality and equality, but subtly disregard it. and, finally, as we have seen, the question of who gets to start the partnership is far from a question of mere mechanics. this issue is linked to fundamental knowledge-generation issues. although some assume community-university partnerships are antithetical to academia’s core mission of knowledge generation, it may turn out that engagement through research partnerships opens up new and unexpected opportunities for advancing knowledge. partnerships expose old questions to new scrutiny while raising new questions. partnerships may well be the most complex of places for exploring these issues of framing questions, generating knowledge and using knowledge. furthermore, community-campus partnerships may provide distinctive opportunities in the future for innovations in knowledge generation. references abdelrahman, s & al fadil, s 2011, 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pp. 105–20. sullivan, m, kone, a, senturia, k, chrisman, n, ciske, s & krieger, j 2001, ‘researcher and researched—community perspectives: towards bridging the gap’, health education & behavior, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 130–49. ten fingers, k 2005, ‘rejecting, revitalizing, and reclaiming: first nations work to set the direction of research and policy development’, canadian journal of public health, vol. 96, suppl. 1, pp. 60–63s. the center for family, work, and community, university of massachusetts, ‘meeting lowell’s housing needs: a comprehensive look 2002’, viewed 20 february 2013, www.uml.edu/docs/housing%20report_ tcm18-52573.pdf. http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura_idrc-aruc_crdi-eng.aspx http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura_idrc-aruc_crdi-eng.aspx http://www.uml.edu/docs/housing%20report_tcm18-52573.pdf http://www.uml.edu/docs/housing%20report_tcm18-52573.pdf 56 | gateways | glover & silka watson, d, hollister, r, stroud, s, babcock, e 2011, the engaged university: international perspectives on community engagement, routledge, new york. wing, s 2002, ‘social responsibility and research ethics in community driven studies of industrialized hog production’, environmental health perspectives, vol. 110, pp. 437–44. community-university research partnerships: reflections on the canadian social economy experience peter v hall & ian macpherson (eds), university of victoria, victoria, bc, 2011, 259 pages during the last months of the liberal federal administration of paul martin in canada (2003–2006), after a sustained lobbying campaign led by quebec’s chantier de l’economie sociale and the canadian community economic development network (cced network), funds were allocated to support the social economy sector of canada, and a call was issued for research proposals on the social economy ‘conducted by academic researchers in partnership with community based organizations’. while the subsequent administration cancelled the general program everywhere except in quebec, it retained the $15 million research program, which was modelled on the existing community university research alliance (cura), funded by the social science and humanities research council of canada (sshrc). through a peer review process, sshrc selected and funded six regional nodes and one national hub to pursue this research agenda from 2006 to 2012. this unprecedented level of resources for a pan-canadian exploration of the social economy, known as canadian social economy research partnerships (cserp), resulted in almost 400 studies, involving 16 universities and over 140 community-based organisations. this volume, community-university research partnerships: reflections on the canadian social economy experience, describes the organisation of this large research effort. it provides context for chapters submitted by the hub and nodes, and concludes with directions for the future. a second volume, assembling understandings, summarises the research findings across all the nodes. the third volume is canadian public policy and the social economy. all three are available as free e-books at the website: http://socialeconomyhub.ca. in this research, the social economy included not only the voluntary non-profit sector, as americans might define it, but also cooperatives, social enterprises and informal, emerging efforts. four of the node principal investigators knew each other from prior membership in a professional association for studying cooperatives. the national hub for this research was located at the university of victoria and co-directed by ian mcpherson, of the gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 228–30 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 marilyn krogh http://socialeconomyhub.ca 229 | gateways | review university, and robert downing, of the cced network. the leadership of each node was also a partnership between an academic institution and at least one community organisation. five of the six academic institutions were universities, but one was yukon college, which had never hosted a research project like this before. sometimes the community organisations were apex associations, and sometimes they were looser networks. while the academic partner was typically the home institution, in the node for british columbia and alberta, the community partner took on that role. each node developed its own style of governance. the atlantic node, the northern ontario, manitoba and saskatchewan node, and the british columbia and alberta node were decentralised, with an emphasis on local engagement. on the other hand, the southern ontario and quebec nodes were more centralised, with more emphasis on policy dissemination. each node, in turn, hosted from 25 to 80 collaborative projects over five or six years. all projects had to follow sshrc guidelines for ethics and accounting, and all the nodes completed both mid-term and final evaluations. in each node, there was only one full-time staff person dedicated to the research projects – the coordinator. all the coordinators had advanced degrees and stayed for five or six years, and took on a full range of responsibilities, although sshrc considered them to be only administrative staff. in chapter 10, they make the case for sshrc to compensate this ‘pracademic’ role in the future. while this volume focuses on process, each chapter submitted by a node lists their projects, and some tantalising hints about them emerge in the narratives. for instance, through the northern saskatchewan trapper association cooperative, older and younger people reconnected with each other and ‘all relations’ (the animate in the land, animals and spirit world). in northern ontario, the coalition for algoma passenger trains, resisted reductions in service on a small regional line, and found ways to diversify services and increase appreciation for the railroad’s cultural significance. the most common projects involve mapping the social economy, social enterprises, cooperatives, indigenous people, organisational capacity, and public policy. chapter 3, submitted by the atlantic node, analyses their decentralised internal functioning, and chapter 4, submitted by the quebec node, provides a straightforward checklist and graphic for evaluating the research partnership process. chapter 8, from the node led by the canadian centre for community renewal, describes functioning as a research base without the infrastructure of a university. chapter 9 highlights some issues accentuated in the far north: the slow research permit process, the high cost of travel and, most importantly, a history of being treated as research subjects, not agents. 230 | gateways | review other chapters discuss familiar themes, such as the importance of attending to long-term relationships, not just tasks, as well as the true co-determination and implementation of projects. they also discuss familiar difficulties: the different standards of accountability, timelines, and financial support for academic and community-based researchers. they note, however, that the divide is more institutional than personal. many academics have volunteered or lived in the community, and many community leaders have academic training. all the contributors stress the need for the ssrhc to fund community-based researchers in ways more comparable to academics. although the funding for this pan-canadian effort has ended, some of the partnerships are continuing, or morphing into new forms. one outcome is the founding of the association of non-profit and social economy research (anser) and their online journal, anser-j, which is similar to gateways. sshrc guidelines have been modified to vet the quality of potential partnerships and to allow projects to evolve over time. moreover, all three of canada’s research councils now have funding for universitycommunity partnerships. this book will most interest people who would like to organise a similar effort, as well as readers who would like an introduction to this research in canada, since it provides leads to many people, universities and organisations. given the ascendency of neo-liberalism in canada and elsewhere, macpherson and toye write (p. 38), ‘the social economy is not the total answer to the pressures and possibilities that confront our times, but it offers strengths and resources that can be most useful – that it would be foolish not to explore seriously’. research as community-building perspectives on the scholarship of engagement if research were a form of community-building, what would it be? what is a community-building approach to research, compared to one that is designed primarily to study a subject for its own sake? community-building is a process which builds community. research is a process which develops knowledge. research can be viewed as community-building, but this approach is not normal, and there is relatively little written about the topic. i am a community worker and university professor who practises ‘research as community-building’, that is, ‘research’ and ‘community-building’ as interrelated parts of the same process. in this article, i examine my approach to research as a form of community-building. i draw upon a program in metropolitan detroit that i am involved with, as well as tell something of my own story, in the hope that these reflections might be useful to others who are considering work of this type. reconceiving research community-building is a process which builds community. it has core concepts, such as ‘starting with people’, which refers to the idea that the process should originate in the experience of people; ‘strengthening the community’ as a unit of solution; ‘joining together’, in which individuals accomplish more together than any one of them could if acting alone; and ‘planning and organising’, as a means for community members to accomplish their goals (checkoway 1997). community-building can have various outcomes. for example, it can contribute to an individual’s competencies and connectedness; to organisational capacity and leadership development; and to better housing, healthier neighbourhoods and other community-level effects. there also are factors that can contribute to successful practice, such as identifiable leadership, widespread participation, working relationships, and group cohesion and cooperation in agreeing upon solutions to problems (defilippis & saegert 2012; mattesich & monsey 2001; sampson 2012). gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 139–49 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 barry checkoway university of michigan 140 | gateways | checkoway research is a process for developing knowledge. researchers formulate theories, gather information, confirm facts and solve problems about which they care. they synthesise existing studies, explain why things happen the way they do, or interpret the significance of findings for further thought and action (babbie 2012; neuman 2006). research has many methodologies. researchers can gather information through qualitative methods such as observations, interviews, focus groups, or surveys; or quantitative methods, which produce numerical and statistical explanations: correlation and regression analysis to determine the relationship between two or more variables; experimental research, which places participants in experimental and control groups; or meta-analysis, which draws upon several existing studies. there is no single best methodology; there are many (bryman 2012). research as community-building is imaginable in most academic disciplines and professional fields, such as psychology, sociology, social work and public health, and there is nothing a priori to prevent any researcher, such as a philosopher or physicist, from work that builds community in every stage of the process. the issue is neither the discipline nor the field, but rather how research is practised, and this partly depends on whether the researcher is up to the challenge. this article examines ‘research as community-building’ and draws upon a project in which i am deeply involved, emphasising three stages of the research process: (1) defining the problem; (2) gathering the information; and (3) using the findings. these are not the only research stages, but are among the important ones. first, however, i will discuss the way in which my research approach derives from both personal and professional experiences. understanding my methodology means understanding me. my own approach i grew up in newburyport, massachusetts, a small city north of boston. the city is picturesque, from its farms and commons to cobblestone streets and wharves on the river, through to marsh and the ocean. it was home to fishing and shipbuilding in revolutionary times, and cotton mills and shoe factories during the industrial period. newburyport was known for its social stratification. it was studied by w lloyd warner and a team of harvard anthropologists, and published as the ‘yankee city’ series (1942, 1945, 1947, 1959, 1975), in which he identified three social classes: upper, middle and lower, with each level further divided into upper and lower. upper-class yankees lived in stately houses on high street, middle and lower middle-class families on middle street, and lower-class residents confined themselves to low street and the river road. newburyport was, as the novelist john p marquand (1949) wrote, a place of class and tradition on a river by the sea dominated by ‘old money’ families who built factories and 141 | gateways | checkoway financial institutions, and where ‘everything is in its place and there’s a place for everything’. he criticised warner and other social scientists for their tendency to make generalisations about people based solely on their academic training or socialisation. they saw only what they had been trained to see. i too have been socialised into the academy, but not before i was affected by my experience in the community. my family were eastern european immigrants. my grandfather started as a ragpicker and later became a small businessman who helped other immigrants to settle in town. my father was a merchant and small businessman, and my mother was the daughter of a shoemaker and factory worker. we were religious minorities and attended a traditional jewish synagogue of 40 families in a city dominated by yankees and christians. my parents were aware that they were minorities in a society that was not theirs, and this affected their beliefs and behaviours. growing up, i easily grasped the nuances of small town new england life, the people and how they came together into a social structure. i was a regular at school board and city council meetings, and developed close relationships with the superintendent and mayor, both of whom lived down the street and taught me to believe that community change was possible and that i had the power to create it. school was my base of operations. i was a hard worker, top student and class president – quite possibly the first ethnic person to be elected as such. school was the means for me to excel in the classroom and the community, and the two – school and community – were intertwined in my experience. for example, when a school board member forced the superintendent to resign, i took up a citywide petition, gathered thousands of signatures and convinced him to continue his role, silencing the board member who then was defeated for re-election. at wesleyan university, first, and then later as a doctoral student at the university of pennsylvania, i continued my practice of combining campus and community work. my doctoral studies focused on community change, an approach that was reinforced by my professors. i helped establish an undergraduate program which enabled students to apply academic knowledge to realworld problem-solving through internships in community agencies of low-income neighbourhoods. this program reinforced my combination of research, learning and teaching, in which one relates to the other, all the while building community. this pattern has continued in a succession of faculty positions: at the university of california, university of illinois, and now at the university of michigan. at illinois, for example, my courses enabled students to collaborate with low-income community members in chicago and st louis neighbourhoods and established a community-based organisation that has continued for more than 40 years. at michigan, we collaborate with community partners in rural areas, small towns, and suburbs 142 | gateways | checkoway and neighbourhoods of metropolitan detroit in michigan, and in the south bronx, boston, detroit, chicago, mississippi delta, appalachia, albuquerque, east oakland, and other areas. overall, my role as a community organiser is inseparable from my role as a university professor. while actively engaged in the community, i also present papers at professional meetings and publish articles which draw upon my research, in a continuous mutually reinforcing process in which ‘doing’ stimulates ‘knowing’ and vice-versa. my expertise derives from my own experience. i am aware that others’ derives from theirs, and i believe that there is nothing a priori that makes one person’s experience better than another’s. following is an example of how my approach plays out in practice. youth dialogues in metropolitan detroit metropolitan detroit is highly segregated, with small areas of diversity. the city is largely black, and the suburbs mostly white, although some suburbs are increasing in populations of african, asian, middle eastern and latin american descent. segregation increases inequalities in metropolitan detroit. for example, some schools have high-quality resources and facilities, whereas others have outdated books and plumbing so old that toilet paper is rationed. in schools which are becoming more diverse, achievement gaps and intergroup incidents are increasing, and teachers lack training in how to handle such incidents (darden & kamel 2000; farley, danziger & harry 2002; gallagher 2010; kenyon 2004; leduff 2013; sugrue 2005). young people in metropolitan detroit want to communicate with others who are different from themselves, but segregation limits them. they want to address discrimination, but segregation prevents them from forming the relationships needed for collective action. they realise the benefits of diversity, but are not organised in a way that would allow them to strengthen these benefits (young, n.d.). youth dialogues on race and ethnicity in metropolitan detroit is a program which was established to increase dialogue among young people – of african, asian, white european, middle eastern and latin american descent – in the neighbourhoods and suburbs. the program includes intergroup dialogues, metropolitan tours, residential retreats, community projects and youth leadership. it runs educational and training workshops and policy summits, involving youth leaders and adult allies. research and evaluation are integral to the program (checkoway 2009; checkoway & richards-schuster, 2011). 1. defining the problem what is the problem to be solved? why is it important, and to whom? defining the problem is a research stage which determines everything else, for if researchers or community members define 143 | gateways | checkoway situations as real, they are real in their consequences. when segregation is defined by urban planners as a problem caused by white flight to the suburbs, for example, the subsequent work will differ from when it is defined as caused by the investment decisions of bankers and builders. it is not whether there is a correct definition; it is that the definition of the problem affects the action (merton 1968; watanabe 2009). the youth dialogues program originated when a community leader wanted to address the social isolation of young people in metropolitan detroit and approached me about how to proceed. we convened community meetings with representatives of racial and ethnic groups, which established face-to-face relationships and produced a proposal that was funded by both a community-based foundation and the university of michigan. we were conscious of ‘defining the problem’ by starting with ‘community participation’, ‘group formation’ and ‘relationship building’, which would contribute to subsequent program implementation. we talk with our community partners in face-toface meetings about what we want to accomplish and form groups designed to accomplish the purpose. when community members define their own problems, it engages them in the process. in comparison, there is a professor down the hall at my university who himself defines research problems that he thinks are important, based upon his personal or professional interests. he generally gets his ideas when he sits in his office, visualises a project that builds upon earlier work, reads an article that is provocative, or talks with colleagues on the campus. then, he reviews the literature which relates to his idea; formulates questions whose answers are measureable; collects data using standardised methods; and analyses the findings in terms of his original objectives. in so doing, he is highly conscious of a ‘community of experts’ who care a great deal about his problem definition. he says that he never involves ‘laypersons’ in this work, except as ‘human subjects’ (booth, papaioannou & sutton 2012). 2. gathering the information what do we want to learn? how can information be gathered in ways which develop knowledge and contribute to communitybuilding? professionals gather information as a normal part of their practice, such as when lawyers take depositions to determine which facts are relevant, or physicians review laboratory tests before diagnosis and treatment (gänshirt 2007; schön 1983). in the youth dialogues program, youth–adult research teams were formed, with members selected for their involvement in the community, not for their technical expertise. their community involvement was their expertise; tailored workshops prepared them for their research roles. the research teams gathered information through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. for example, they gathered information about family histories, social identities, and 144 | gateways | checkoway similarities and differences among group members. they examined the forces that shaped their thinking, stereotypes they have heard and prejudices they have learned from the ‘cycle of socialization’ (harro 2013). school was another point of information gathering and awareness raising: the school’s racial and ethnic composition, its curricular content and institutional practices. in the neighbourhoods and suburbs, a bus tour let team members observe schools and malls, industrialisation and deindustrialiation, development and decline, and discrimination and civil rights. the tour included visiting a concrete wall constructed by builders to separate whites from blacks. a public gallery later held an exhibition of their photographs, which was open to all community members. team members asked researchers to create preand post-test questionnaires to assess attitude changes in the program, using a multigroup ethnic identity measure and color-blind racial attitudes and collective self-esteem scales. with assistance, they later analysed quantitative data and other findings about the program in which they were participants. in comparison, my colleague employs linear models, factor analysis, multidimensional scaling and other research methods. he belongs to a centre that provides cutting-edge study design, data collection, data processing services, and access to the world’s largest archive of digital data. in gathering information, my colleague refers to himself as a ‘detached’ expert who defines problems in ‘dispassionate’ ways and who gathers data on ‘human subjects’ through ‘value free’ methods that assure the ‘validity’, ‘reliability’ and ‘generalizability’ of the findings. when he gathers information in accordance with these criteria, he believes that he is doing his job. when i work in collaboration with our community partners in accordance with both ‘research’ and ‘community’ principles, i believe that i am doing mine. 3. using the findings how can findings be used to address a problem? if research is for a purpose, what will you do with what you learn? in the youth dialogues program, dissemination is inseparable from research. participants are active communicators. for example, we helped prepare a script based on their experiences with a youth theatre company that participated in the program. the result, speak for yourself, has been performed in more than 100 school assemblies and community centres. actors come to the front of the stage and facilitate ‘talk backs’, in which audience members stand and speak – often for the first time – about their experiences with discrimination and diversity (checkoway n.d.). with input from a writing coach, participants have also published my dreams are not a secret: teenagers in metropolitan detroit speak out (young n.d.), a book in which they write about finding their voice. as a result of the program, one participant created a youth dialogues course in her high school. she prepared a proposal for the school board, the 145 | gateways | checkoway superintendent assigned a teacher, and now students enrol in a permanent course, which, because of its success, was incorporated in a course required for all students. other school districts have also established youth dialogues courses, resulting in more than 5000 students learning from the program. other participants formed the ‘youth policy leaders’ in order to address segregation and diversity. they gathered 3000 signatures and presented a resolution to the michigan board of education for unanimous approval. the resolution calls for ‘diversity learning for all students’, ‘teacher professional development’ and ‘student voice in policy decisions’, and has been presented at conferences of youth leaders and school officials at the local, state and national levels. when participants found that teachers were unprepared to facilitate sensitive discussions in the classroom, they asked school officials to offer professional development workshops with content on dialogue facilitation, role of teachers as change agents, and how to turn incidents into strategies. teachers from more than 30 school districts have participated in these workshops and receive ongoing consultation and technical assistance, in partnership with the intermediate school district in michigan. participants write about their experiences. one young person wrote about her efforts to establish a course, another about her public policy experiences, and another an entire book about her involvement in the program. one adult wrote about how her school responded to news that an infamous racist was coming to demonstrate in front of the building, and another about her involvement in a 160-kilometre youth leadership march from detroit to the state capitol in lansing in order to protest zerotolerance policies. university partners participate in all of these dissemination efforts and, in addition, make presentations at professional meetings, publish articles in scholarly journals, and incorporate content into courses on campus and workshops in the community. for us, however, publications are only one form of dissemination. in contrast, my colleague believes that the primary purpose of research is to understand a subject and views publications in scholarly journals as his dissemination. he cares what his peers think about his work and subscribes to a service which counts how many times they refer to him in their publications. he does not discuss the impact of his work on society, even when his funding comes from government agencies (drake & jonson-reid 2007). institutional issues i am a professor at the university of michigan, an anchor institution with immense resources. it has centres, institutes, libraries, laboratories, housing and health services, arts and cultural programs, media networks, sports teams and conference facilities. it is more than a school; it is a major employer, provider and consumer of goods and services, and a powerful social 146 | gateways | checkoway and economic engine whose decisions have local, national and international effects. michigan has faculty members with expertise in a wide variety of academic disciplines and professional fields – including arts and sciences, architecture and urban planning, business, education, engineering, information, law, public health, public policy, social work and medicine – in which they conduct research, teach and train people, aggregate knowledge so as to make it more useful, and disseminate findings to popular and professional audiences. some faculty members are passionate about communitybuilding, incorporate this into their research and teaching, and receive recognition for their work. others have community interests but do not normally act upon them, or feel frustrated in their efforts to do so. my observation is that they have been conditioned to believe that community-building is a diversion from their real work and might even jeopardise their careers in the institution. they hear this from their dean, the provost reinforces it with a reward structure, the institutional culture perpetuates it, and they believe that it is true (checkoway 2013). it is ironic that this is the case. studies show that faculty members who engage in community agencies have more publications in peer-reviewed journals, more funded research projects and higher student evaluations of their teaching than those who do not (doberneck, glass & schweitzer 2010; patton & marver 1979). indeed, there are growing calls for change on a number of fronts: rewarding multiple forms of scholarship (ellison & eatman 2008; o’meara 2011; o’meara & rice 2005), reframing incentives and rewards (martinez-brawley 2003; o’meara & rice 2005), preparing future faculty (o’meara 2010), reconsidering the roles of academic administrators (langseth, plater & dillon 2004), making the case for engaged scholarship (foster 2010; lynton 1995), moving faculty culture from private to public (kecskes 2006) and creating institutional change (fitzgerald, burack & seifer 2011). yet, despite all this evidence to the contrary, most faculty hold to beliefs and behaviours that were part of their conditioning. when faculty members draw upon their expertise in community-building as an integral part of their role, they should be rewarded. i am aware that there are obstacles to research as community-building in the academy and understand the frustrations it causes to some of my colleagues. certainly, any strategy to involve the faculty in community-building should have an appropriate reward structure, without which it is dysfunctional for the individual and for the institution. but, i assume that obstacles to change are a normal part of the change process and in fact can be a productive source of intellectual tension. 147 | gateways | checkoway conclusion if research were a form of community-building, what would it be? our research on the youth dialogues on race and ethnicity in metropolitan detroit program shows that the program enables young people to develop knowledge of their racial and ethnic identities and those of others; to build awareness of race and racism as forces in their lives; and to take specific actions against racism in their own lives. our approach is that ‘defining the problem’ involves community members in group formation and leadership development. ‘gathering the information’ enables them to ask questions about society and develop relationships for addressing them. ‘using the findings’ results in theatre performances, youthauthored publications, permanent courses in schools and a youth leadership group whose members have produced tangible accomplishments. community-building is what i do, and research is instrumental to the work. i chose a career in higher education because of my belief that this would help facilitate a process in which higher education and community are intertwined, an approach which i first adopted when i was growing up and continued over the long haul. in this way, my personal and have professional roles are interrelated, and my hope is that this article might be useful to others who are interested in this approach. references babbie, e 2012, the practice of social research, cengage learning, independence, ky. booth, a, papaioannou, d & sutton, a 2012, systematic approaches to a successful literature review, sage, thousand oaks, ca. bryman, a 2012, social research methods, 4th edn, oxford university press, new york. 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o’meara, ka 2011, ‘faculty civic engagement: new training, assumptions, and markets needed for the engaged american scholar’, in j saltmarsh & m hartley (eds), to serve a larger purpose: engagement for democracy and the transformation of higher education, temple university press, philadelphia, pa, pp. 177–98. o’meara, k & rice, r 2005, faculty priorities reconsidered: rewarding multiple forms of scholarship, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. patton, c & marver, j 1979, ‘paid consulting by american academics, educational record, vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 175–84. sampson, r 2012, ‘what community supplies’, in j defilippis & s saegert (eds), the community development reader, routledge, new york, pp. 163–73. schön, d 1983, the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. basic books, new york. sugrue, t 2005, the origins of the urban crisis: race and inequality in postwar detroit, princeton university press, princeton, nj. warner, w 1959, the living and the dead: a study of the symbolic life of americans. yale university press, new haven, ct. warner, w 1975, yankee city, yale university press, new haven, ct. warner, w & low, j 1947, the social system of the modern factory, yale university press, new haven, ct. warner, w & lunt, p 1942, the status system of a modern community, yale university press, new haven, ct. warner, w & srole, l 1945, the social systems of american ethnic groups, yale university press, new haven, ct. watanabe, k 2009, problem solving 101: a simple book for smart people, penguin, london. young, a (n.d.), my dreams are not a secret: teenagers in metropolitan detroit speak out, new generation press, providence, ri. you winsome, you lose some home and hospitality in the northern rivers the home project was a three-year collaborative research project conducted in 2011–2013. it was established through a partnership between northern rivers performing arts (norpa) and the school of arts and social sciences (sass) at southern cross university (scu) in lismore, new south wales. a third partner, the lismore soup kitchen, joined the project in 2012 and 2013, when activities revolved around the winsome hotel, a heritage listed and iconic australian pub that now offers low-cost daily lunches and a shortterm accommodation service for marginalised men. the home project’s objective was to raise awareness of homelessness in the northern rivers region of new south wales through creative arts practice and community engagement activities. the broad project aims were to explore questions of home, homelessness and belonging in northern rivers’ communities; to address the experiences of individuals affected by homelessness; and, where appropriate, to provide avenues for public dissemination of the stories of individuals who are or have been without a home. being a collaborative exploration of a complex and sensitive issue, the project was conceived as an open-ended inquiry that would operate according to the principles of participatory action research and creative practice research. that is, in both thematic focus and practical activity the project was designed to be both iterative and emergent, with recurring evaluations ensuring that each year’s activities built on the experiences and outcomes of those of the previous year. this article discusses the activities undertaken in each year of the project, providing a case study of a community engaged research project involving collaboration between university staff and students, a performing arts organisation and a community service provider. in particular, we discuss the way in which the theme of ‘hospitality’ emerged, as both a theoretical and practical orientation for the project, through our engagement with the history and current operation of the winsome hotel. as a longstanding lismore institution and a venue for live music that now operates as a soup kitchen and accommodation service, the winsome hotel is an architectural space designed to provide gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 59–78 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 grayson cooke jim hearn southern cross university 60 | gateways | cooke & hearn commercial hospitality. at the same time though, in ceasing to operate as a pub and music venue and reorienting to deliver services for people without a home, a perception arose in the lismore community that the winsome had somehow turned its back on those in the community who had previously found their home at the winsome. the complexity of this apparent about-face and the social dynamics and reverberations it produced serve as a particularly cogent reminder of the awkward status homelessness carries as a social and cultural issue. in this article, we focus on the way in which the project’s openness to emergent themes allowed us to target our objective of raising awareness of homelessness in the region through an investigation of the physical infrastructure of hospitality built into the winsome hotel. situating homelessness homelessness is a complex and difficult social issue, an imbroglio (latour 1993) that sites the disadvantage and deprivation experienced by people without a home within a network of personal and social factors such as social inclusion and exclusion, social stigma, and mental health and wellbeing (mulligan, scanlon & welch 2008; secker 2009), and causal factors such as housing affordability, unemployment, poverty, domestic violence and mental illness (homesslessness australia 2013). according to homelessness australia (2013), the peak body for homelessness issues and services in australia, on any given night 1 in 200 people are homeless, with over 100 000 people without a home nationwide. new south wales, being the most populous state, has the largest number of people without a home, around 28 000 (homelessness australia 2014). and notably for this project, the northern rivers area of new south wales (the australian bureau of statistics refers to this area as the ‘richmond–tweed’) has 6 per cent of the state’s homeless people, but only 3 per cent of the state’s population. thus the northern rivers’ rate of homelessness is roughly twice that of the state as a whole, and the rate of homelessness amongst aboriginal and torres state islander people in the region is many times higher, making it a significant social issue for the region (homelessness nsw 2006). these statistical measures of homelessness are vital for gauging the scale and distribution of homelessness in urban and regional areas; however, they are not directed at understanding how homelessness is experienced and perceived by individuals and societies. this more material perspective calls on concepts such as social exclusion and inclusion to situate homelessness within a network of social relations and attitudes. ‘social exclusion’ is a term which has been used in social policy internationally for many years, especially in the uk where a ‘social exclusion unit’ was established in 1997 (barraket 2005). secker (2009, p. 5) argues that social exclusion can be understood as the failure of various systems which underpin modern society: 61 | gateways | cooke & hearn —the democratic and legal system, which promotes civic integration —the labour market, which promotes economic integration —the welfare state system, which promotes social integration —the family and community system, which promotes interpersonal integration. clearly, many people without a home will suffer from various forms of social exclusion. secker also argues that social inclusion is best understood not as the inverse of social exclusion but as a measure of how individuals feel accepted within social contexts. where social exclusion is a structural problem, ‘inclusion operates on an individual or group level and relates to the extent to which people are accepted and feel they belong within different social contexts’ (secker 2009, p. 5). inclusion, then, is something that is felt, it has an affective dimension that questions of housing, civic or labour market integration will not necessarily address. similarly, the concept of stigma operates on an affective and attitudinal level. stigma arises from the effects of social practices aimed at marking certain populations, such as poor people or criminals, with the ‘marks of shame’ (phelan et al. 1997, p. 323). such intentional and public stigmatising practices are designed to demarcate social boundaries and hierarchies, differentiating those who conform to cultural norms from those who do not (goffman 1968). the corollary to these public and visible technologies of shame is the effect this public shaming has on the attitudes and behaviours of people in society. as phelan et al. (1997, p. 325) note, stigma normalises discriminatory practices and justifies the existing social order by shifting responsibility for disadvantage to the individual. thus, while compassion for the homeless is widely felt, people without a home are also frequently considered lazy and irresponsible, as having brought their situation upon themselves (link et al. 1995). people without a home suffer various forms of social exclusion and stigma. stigma is cumulative and associative – people are stigmatised for many different reasons, and people without a home are frequently subject to the stigma attached to homelessness, but also to mental illness, alcohol or drug problems, criminality, or ethnic minorities (link et al. 1995). additionally, gronda (2009) argues that stigma can also prevent people from accessing supportive social services and networks and conversely can lock people into destructive social situations. thus stigma operates as both a mechanism of social exclusion and as a kind of social pressure or inertia, keeping individuals in their current situation and preventing change. a further concept useful in framing the affective dimension of homelessness is the notion of place and related notions of place attachment, place identity and sense of belonging. these concepts, which are addressed across a range of disciplines such as social psychology, human geography and sociology, all explore the relationship between people and the places they inhabit, the bonds that form between people and place, and the values and meanings 62 | gateways | cooke & hearn people derive from an attachment to place. people without a home are frequently denied access to the stability and security that place attachment can provide – security both in the sense of physical shelter and in terms of a stable sense of self, a sense of continuity of identity (garbutt 2011; scannell & gifford 2010). the mobility required of the homeless, the way they are frequently treated as a ‘problem’ of public space which must be always moved on and kept from sight (kawash 1998), ensures that people without a home do not get access to the positive benefits of attachment to place – the individual and collective meaning-making that can occur when people are able to form bonds to specific places (cresswell 2014). addressing the dislocation of homelessness in the northern rivers, then, involved exploring how people find meaning and identity in the places important to them and communicating this to the wider community. project description and discussion homelessness is an issue that scales right from the very concrete experience of material existence up to the much more abstract sphere of public policy, and addressing homelessness requires responses that are appropriately positioned on this scale. at the same time as homelessness is something that is experienced by individuals, it is also a social justice problem for society, for towns and cities which seek to house and support the homeless, and for governments which must likewise provide economic support as well as policy directed at reducing homelessness within the nation. for an arts-based university department and a performing arts organisation to seek to influence the concrete and infrastructural aspects of homelessness services, such as housing, health and service provision and the policies underpinning these services, would be an ineffective use of the capacities of creative arts practice. the more affective and attitudinal realm of the issue, however, is much more within the purview of the creative arts; these more personal factors of how people feel and what they think delineate two key potentialities of creative arts practice, both in terms of the process of being creative and in terms of the effect of apprehending the outcome. participation in the arts is understood to ‘have a positive effect on the way people feel, which improves personal wellbeing’ (barraket 2005, p. 8). a key aspect of this positive effect is the active, practical nature of creative arts – they require individuals to engage with new knowledge, to learn new skills and to collaborate with others, and in that sense to produce change within their lives and contribute to social inclusion (mulligan, scanlon & welch 2008). while a simple cause–effect relationship between arts activities and social outcomes is difficult to observe because of the diffuse and personal nature of the factors involved, producing the capacity for change, creating ‘the conditions in which individuals and groups of people can renegotiate the terms of their involvement in their local 63 | gateways | cooke & hearn communities’, is where community engaged creative arts practice can make the greatest contribution (mulligan, scanlon & welch 2008, p. 52). the home project’s objective of raising awareness of homelessness, with its correlative aims of exploring the experiences and stories of people without a home, arose out of the need to focus on the affective and attitudinal dimensions of homelessness. creative activity is not only a process that can be personally beneficial, it is also a mechanism of public communication, a ‘powerful vehicle for community education around public health issues’ (barraket 2005, p. 8). the combination of the social change agenda of participatory action research and its iterative structure (greenwood & levin 1998), together with the openended, processual and publicly visible nature of creative arts activities, allowed the project partners to design the home project to cumulatively raise awareness of homelessness through creative activities over three years. as university researchers engaging with various communities – firstly with norpa, a community performing arts organisation, and secondly with the lismore soup kitchen, winsome hotel and the various communities and populations that circulate through the building – we were cognisant of the need to marry our own interests as creative artists and cultural theorists with the needs and interests of the various community members. in each phase of the project we sought to explore ideas that arose from the literature on homelessness and related social issues. through the processes of participatory action research, our conceptual orientation found material and active form through community engagement and creative practice (gustavsen 2001). it was the emergent nature of creative practice research processes that guided us in our endeavours. that is, while we went about the activities for each year with a certain structural sense of where our activities would be focused and located, we did not know what the outcomes of each process would be other than that they would be publicly displayed or performed, and so the process was designed to allow for emergent factors to direct the development of each phase of the project. in this section of the article, we will outline the activities conducted in each year of the project and discuss the themes that gradually emerged over the full duration of the project. 2011: a place for everything for the first phase of the home project, the project partners decided to focus initial activities during national homeless persons week (nhpw) in august in order to, firstly, produce materials for a public exhibition later in the year, and secondly, develop relationships with individuals and stakeholders associated with housing services and homelessness in the lismore area. early on in this process, we held a public forum to seek input into the project and invited representatives of the many social service organisations in the region who work with people without a home; 64 | gateways | cooke & hearn while only a small percentage of invitees attended, crucially we did get interest and advice from representatives of the lismore soup kitchen and winsome hotel, as well as from peter lehner, the choirmaster for the winsome choir, which is a choir made up of people who frequent the winsome hotel for meals. given the sensitivity of the notion of homelessness, developing a sense of trust with the communities we engage with has been a central aspect of the project throughout its development. we saw it as vital that, in this first year of the project, we develop a solid basis of community trust and understanding on which we could build in subsequent years (jermyn 2001). with this proviso in mind, the project partners agreed to treat this first year as exploratory and thus to focus on concepts bordering homelessness rather than on homelessness itself; we wanted to bring to the fore some of the nuance that is often hidden within or obscured by the stigma of homelessness (gilbert 2001; phelan et al. 1997). during creative development meetings which were held with the project partners and the students who had agreed to be involved, the underpinning concepts for the nhpw activities were devised and developed. norpa’s program for new work, ‘generator’, of which the home project formed part, focuses on creating theatrical work that is both engaging and relevant to the diverse communities of the northern rivers. artistic director julian louis was instrumental in suggesting creative frameworks for the exploration and acted as provocateur to the students and researchers working on the project. we decided to explore individual and community sentiment around notions of home, place and belonging, ideally providing a series of creative spaces for people to think about their own sense of belonging in this region or in others. in creative and planning meetings, norpa’s site-specific and interactive theatre productions were a key influence on our approach. recent norpa projects had included the creation of a site-based work, railway wonderland, set in lismore’s disused railway station, and a circus show, open house, set in a real house in north lismore (norpa 2011, 2012). particular inspiration was derived from the democratic set project by geelong’s back to back theatre. the democratic set revolves around a mobile theatre set – a shipping container – in which community members are filmed while performing their response to a given theme or question. established as a residency at various locations (in australia and internationally), the project is based on the belief that ‘all people are in principle equal, and should enjoy equal social, political and economic rights and opportunities’ (back to back theatre 2014). the project enables both an individual address of the concepts being explored and a community response, through the summing of individual performances – in this way employing repetition and difference to provide a ‘snapshot’ of community sentiment. on the basis of our desire to produce a snapshot of community sentiment regarding home and belonging, three different activities were designed to produce audiovisual materials 65 | gateways | cooke & hearn for later exhibition. these activities and the subsequent exhibition, a place for everything, were centred around the university’s gallery space, a small shopfront that had been converted into the scu next art gallery, located in the lismore cbd. the choice of such a central location for nhpw activities (rather than inviting participants to come to the scu lismore campus situated a few kilometres from the cbd) was based on the need to take the project to the centre of community activity. the three activities conducted are described below. up against it in this activity, members of the winsome choir were filmed performing against the rear wall of the scu next art gallery. choirmaster peter lehner worked with the choir to devise scenarios for their performance, in which they variously sang, chanted, told stories, enacted skits, or simply regarded the camera in silence. footage from the winsome choir’s performances was later edited and projected life-size against the rear wall of the gallery at nighttime during the exhibition period, so that it ‘mapped’ directly back onto the space it was filmed in (see figure 1). the result was the appearance of a group of figures ‘inhabiting’ the space while no one else was around. this project thus reflected on notions of public visibility and invisibility, producing a kind of nocturnal after-image of urban space. where you stand in this activity, participants were asked: ‘if you had a statue made in your honour, what would it look like and where would it be placed?’ participants were asked to stand on a plinth and have their photo taken, posing as the statue they envisioned. they were then recorded telling an interviewer about the place they would like their statue to be installed in. responses to the question varied from local to specific places (‘in my home in lismore’, ‘under the two bridges that come into lismore over south’, ‘in the council’s office’) to other australian and international locations (‘in finland near the northern lights’, ‘in rome next to the colosseum’) or nonspecific locations with personal resonance (‘under a jacaranda tree’, ‘in the ether’). the ‘where you stand’ photos were printed on adhesive fabric and displayed in a row running the length of the gallery, each photo accompanied by an interactive microcomputer figure 1: filming and projecting ‘up against it’ 66 | gateways | cooke & hearn that played the matching audio story (see figure 2). this project was also edited together for inclusion in an abc open story written by one of the project’s student participants (see lewers 2011). together, these photos and audio recordings operate as an exploration of place attachment and belonging, requiring participants to think not only of places that are special to them personally, but also to see themselves in those places, publicly visible and permanent. this activity, then, was about visibility and value, designed to produce a kind of ‘virtual empowerment’. as many commentators (goffman 1968; kawash 1998; phelan et al. 1997) note, visibility is a trope or recurrent theme within homelessness – the homeless are publicly visible because of their lack of access to private space and their often untidy appearance, likewise often as a result of a lack of access to private space (kawash 1998). this form of visibility feeds the stigmatisation of the homeless; while statistically – in australia at least – there are more people without a home staying with friends or relatives than sleeping rough on the streets (homelessness australia 2013), the heightened visibility of a small number of homeless people crowds out representation or consideration of the ‘hidden homeless’. thus, while it is in part correct to suggest that homelessness is a ‘visible problem’, it is more correct to suggest that homelessness involves a problem of visibility, a problematisation of being visible in public. asking people ‘if a statue was made in your honour, what would it look like and where would it be placed?’ is necessarily to propose that every person is visible, valued and included within a community; it creates a virtual space in which each of us is a public figure, whose identity and memory and thus attachment to place lives on in public space after we are gone. lounging around for this part of the project, an outdoor lounge was set up in the laneway beside the gallery and turned into a film set (see figure 3). participants – both passers-by and invitees – were asked a series of questions about home, place and belonging, which were later edited into short vox-pop interview sequences (see http://vimeo. com/32238774 for one of the edited ‘lounging around’ segments). figure 2: shooting and exhibiting ‘where you stand’ http://vimeo.com/32238774 http://vimeo.com/32238774 67 | gateways | cooke & hearn this project benefited from snowball sampling of participants: for example, one couple who took part were inspired by the opportunity to relate their feelings of belonging to the region, and subsequently sought out a friend of theirs, a refugee from kenya, and brought him to the laneway to tell his story. the project attracted a wide variety of responses to the notions of place and belonging: from indigenous participants who spoke of home and country to refugee participants who had found a home in lismore after years in refugee camps. notions of ‘home’ spanned everything from the simple safety of four solid walls to the presence of family, friends and community, and a feeling for the region and the natural landscape. the home project’s 2011 phase was designed to canvas the community’s relationship to notions of home and place and to highlight the wide range of understandings and experiences of these notions in the community. we used multiple media forms to create a snapshot of the many and varied perspectives on home in lismore’s multicultural community, and in terms of our desire to raise awareness of issues relating to homelessness in the region, focused on the question of visibility in relation to homelessness. we sought to get both participants and audiences to reflect on their sense of belonging to and in a place, their attachment to specific places and why they felt such attachment. 2012: winsome stories in evaluating the outcomes from the 2011 phase, and thinking about how we could build on this phase in 2012, we saw that, firstly, we had produced and exhibited a number of creative outcomes and engaged with hundreds of people in the process, but that more crucially we had also made a step towards building trust and familiarity with service providers and community members experiencing or working in homelessness. importantly, the most concerted community response was from the members of the winsome choir, who through their enthusiasm for performance and the mentorship of peter lehner became very involved in all aspects of the 2011 project. figure 3: the laneway film set for ‘lounging around’ 68 | gateways | cooke & hearn thinking about how we could continue to build this relationship while raising awareness of homelessness led the project partners to think about the role the winsome hotel could play in the future of the project. it was the winsome hotel’s dual nature as both a multifaceted social service and an imposing physical infrastructure or architecture that guided us in this thinking. the conversion of the winsome from a pub and music venue to a soup kitchen and accommodation service had been widely publicised in 2008–2009, accompanied by strong community sentiment, including considerable opposition. newspaper stories and letters to the editor from this period record both the excitement of lismore soup kitchen volunteers and associates about moving to new premises and the wariness of community residents who feared an increase of crime and disorder through having a homeless service on their doorstep. the ‘stigma’ of homelessness, then – homelessness as a visible problem subject to a cumulative fear that links homelessness to the stigma of criminality and mental illness – was very much present in the debates around the winsome hotel’s new role (phelan et al. 1997). indeed, what occurred was that the stigma of homelessness was transferred from the homeless per se to the building itself. in terms of place attachment, we can see this as a complication of the winsome’s ‘place identity’ (jorgensen & stedman 2001), a kind of contestation of what the winsome was to mean to each community. when discussing this issue with the president of the lismore soup kitchen, mieke bell, she noted explicitly the need to demonstrate to the lismore community that the winsome was still a community asset and that its doors were open to everybody in the community and not just those self-evidently ‘in need’. in a sense, this perspective allowed our objective of ‘raising awareness of homelessness’ to be refined and to incorporate the idea of normalising homelessness through demonstrating to the lismore community that the winsome had not become off limits; destigmatising the winsome hotel could essentially destigmatise homelessness ‘by stealth’. addressing the winsome hotel as a cipher for thinking through the complexity of homelessness as an individual and social issue led us firstly to explore the history of the hotel. the winsome is situated at the junction of two rivers, the richmond and the wilson, and it sits across the richmond river from the lismore cbd. the current building, which achieved heritage listing in 1980, was built in the 1920s, but a pub has stood on the same site since the 1880s when the junction hotel was built (see figure 4). being situated across the river from the lismore cbd, the hotel functioned in its early days as a final stop for anyone travelling to lismore from the north. newspaper advertisements from the late 1800s highlight the ‘commodious’ nature of the hotel and its ample stables. 69 | gateways | cooke & hearn we conducted filmed interviews firstly with people involved in the winsome’s current manifestation – soup kitchen volunteers, members of the winsome choir and directors of services at the winsome. secondly, we interviewed people who had lived or worked at the winsome in its previous incarnations; we spoke to, for example, a woman who had worked as a barmaid there in the 1950s and 60s, a representative of the tropical fruits organisation who had made the winsome the centre for gay and lesbian communities in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the venue operators who had run the winsome as a live music venue up until its closing in 2009. all interviewees spoke about the welcoming nature of the hotel, its conviviality, the warmth of its interiors, the grandness of its architecture and the special feeling this conferred on visitors to the hotel; this sense of both regality and community familiarity is also evidenced in the way the hotel is referred to in newspaper stories through the 2000s, where it is referred to as the ‘duchess’ or ‘grand lady’ of lismore (cousins 2007; turnbull 2005) (see figure 5). figure 4: the junction hotel c. 1890 (image courtesy richmond river historical society) figure 5: the winsome hotel c. 1930 (image courtesy richmond river historical society) 70 | gateways | cooke & hearn most importantly for this project, though, was the sense that emerged from interviews, particularly with representatives of the live music and gay and lesbian scenes, that the winsome was a place for the underdog – for the outcast, the outsider. being over the river from lismore proper, it was on ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ and functioned as a gateway to north lismore – where the likelihood of floods had kept rents cheap and ensured a sizeable artistic and alternative community – and onwards to places like nimbin, a centre for alternative cultures in the northern rivers. while some interviewees lamented the loss of the winsome as a live music venue, and indicated that this sentiment was still widespread in the community, they also recognised the appropriateness of turning the winsome, with its architecture and history of welcoming all who crossed its threshold, into a service for people without a home. what emerged from the interviews, then, was the sense that, while the outward role of the winsome in the community had changed, its essence as a space for the provision of hospitality to whoever may come through its doors had remained the same. here we need to acknowledge the concept of universal hospitality, hospitality in its broadest sense, of an openness to whoever and whatever may come (derrida 2001). having conducted these interviews, as well as archival searches, the project partners decided to present the project as a research presentation, an evening in which some of the stories of the winsome could be told and the past could be brought into alignment with the present. we produced what could be termed an ‘expanded documentary’. drawing on the tradition of ‘expanded cinema’ (see youngblood 1970), we presented our research as a mixture of live video mixing of interview footage, live music from the winsome choir (now named the bridge st choir) and theatrical recitations by choir members of key ‘headlines’ or moments in the winsome’s history. this presentation was widely publicised and held alongside a ‘winsome café’ evening where soup kitchen volunteers ran the winsome as a restaurant open to the public. in this way, we sought to achieve the dual aim of demonstrating to the lismore community that the winsome was still ‘open for business’ to the broad community and not just to people without a home, and that its current manifestation was really not much different from what it had been in the past. in the interviews and historical materials we presented, the key theme underlying this presentation was the continuity of hospitality; that the winsome had always been a site, both in practice and material design, for the provision of hospitality, and that the services it now offered were likewise entwined with the complex tradition and social function of hospitality. 2013: you winsome you lose some given norpa’s expertise in theatrical performance and production, the 2012 presentation had been a useful test in which to explore the winsome’s capacity as a venue for live performance. 71 | gateways | cooke & hearn as indicated above, a large part of the winsome hotel’s effect on visitors lies in the grandeur of its architecture. it has wide balconies running around the front of the building and a balcony and courtyard area at the back, as well as numerous interior spaces, making it the perfect environment for a multifaceted performance and exhibition event designed to tell multiple stories in different ways. in evaluating the 2012 iteration of the project, the project partners agreed that, having explored the history of the hotel as well as tested its theatrical potential, we were ready to work towards a much more fulsome and professional public outcome, and that the winsome hotel would once again serve to focus the project both thematically and materially. in discussions between scu researchers, norpa and the lismore soup kitchen staff, the idea of an artist-in-residence program emerged as a way of both engaging winsome residents and day users in creative processes and working towards a public outcome that would provide a suitable challenge for participants (barraket 2005, p. 13). the impetus for conducting an artistin-residence program was twofold. firstly, we saw it as a way to explore the capacity of creative arts activity to improve individual and community health and wellbeing. while the previous two years had involved a number of creative activities and had also involved the winsome choir – who are living testament to the contribution of collective creative activity to personal empowerment – this was the first time in the project that we would be working with specific groups of people who were not necessarily already involved in creative practices. the evidence for the capacity of arts activities to improve personal and community health and wellbeing is strong. while the evaluation of community arts processes is often difficult owing to the ‘soft’ nature of the factors involved, widespread evidence supports the idea that engaging in creative arts practices feels good for participants and, further, that the collaborative nature of community arts endeavours ensures that this feeling is communal and can contribute to social inclusion and social capital (lowe 2000; mills & brown 2004, p. 106; mulligan, scanlon & welch 2008). our desire with this project was that the artists in residence would be able to facilitate participants’ explorations of new or unfamiliar art forms, highlighting the positive value of a sense of discovery and of newness, and also of the risk of trying something new, of rising to and meeting an active challenge (barraket 2005, p. 13). secondly, the other core idea funding the artist-in-residence model was that, in working towards and presenting a performative ‘showing’ of work arising from the artist-in-residence workshops, residents and day users of the winsome hotel who had engaged with these workshops would be able to reverse their usual role of ‘guests’ of the hotel and become ‘hosts’ for the night. hospitality is defined by relations between host and guest. lashley and morrison (2000) argue that, to be effective, hospitality requires the guest to feel that the host is being hospitable through feelings of generosity, 72 | gateways | cooke & hearn a desire to please and a genuine regard for the guest as an individual. critically, hospitality also implies reciprocity, which is an understanding that, while i may be the guest on this occasion, in subsequent meetings i will be the host. derrida (2000) theorised hospitality as the binary opposite of tolerance, because tolerance was always at the discretion of the host. in a world where the homeless or other subjects are merely tolerated, the host is always the host, and the guest is always the guest – often an unwanted or uninvited one. ‘indeed, tolerance is first of all a form of charity. a christian charity’ (derrida, cited in borradori 2003, p. 16). given that understanding of hospitality, this iteration of the home project worked to create a sense of personal efficacy in the residents of the winsome by requiring them to function as hosts for a final night ‘showing’ of the artists-in-residence program. hospitality is also a cultural practice that operates in the private, the social and the commercial domains (lashley & morrison 2000). the winsome hotel provided this research project with a unique opportunity to analyse links between these three domains of hospitality, in order to better understand how these domain considerations of hospitality address various problematics associated with homelessness. critically, there is no domain consideration of hospitality where notions of the private, the social and the commercial do not overlap. this iteration of the home project understood the winsome hotel as an architectural space that was originally designed to provision commercial hospitality to paying customers in the form of meals from the commercial kitchen, accommodation in the bedrooms and bathrooms on the top floors of the hotel, and refreshments in the bar downstairs. all hotels are designed to operate as a form of commercial hospitality. in its current iteration, however, the winsome does not serve alcohol, and has transformed the bar area into a café that serves coffee and snacks to visitors and guests. commerce and profit, which are the central tenets of the commercial domain, are not the reason the winsome currently functions, in that its primary aim is to address the social issue of homelessness. in this way, the commercial architecture of the hospitality industry is being deployed at the winsome to address a complex social issue. and despite not functioning around notions of profit and loss, the building, and its staff and volunteers, continue to provision hospitality in much the same way that the hotel has always done. further to this, in considering how the private domain of hospitality intersects with the commercial/social domains of hospitality at the winsome, the notion of ‘home’, or of what it means to be housed, is generally understood as a place where families and/or individual subjects sleep, eat and practise hospitality amongst themselves. thus the home project theorised home as a space and place where hospitality is provisioned and received by hosts and guests. the home project’s inversion of guest and host relations on the final night of the artist-in-residence program, whereby the formally homeless ‘guests’ of the winsome 73 | gateways | cooke & hearn functioned as ‘hosts’ for the night, was designed to highlight how the cultural practices and architectural spaces of hospitality can equal notions of what it means to be home and to have a home. as barraket (2005, p. 13) notes, community arts activities are most effective when established artists are involved in engaging and motivating participants. norpa engaged a project director, bronwyn purvis, and selected a group of local artists from a range of disciplines – musician jamie birrell, visual artist karla dickens, and writer and chef jim hearn, and peter lehner was again involved as choirmaster for the bridge st choir. each artist was employed to conduct activities at the winsome hotel for four weeks, during which time they would work with winsome residents and day users to produce art or performance ideas which could be presented at a public showing later in the year. additionally, jim hearn worked with residents on professional food preparation and kitchen etiquette in preparation for the public event, where the residents would become hosts for the evening and welcome community guests to the building with a meal. these activities culminated in a performance and exhibition event in december 2013 (see www.youtube.com/ watch?v=w_ro2hk22ey for video documentation of the home project’s 2013 manifestation). the event was developed over the four preceding months during artist-in-residence meetings held at norpa in lismore. the artistic director of norpa, julian louis, and the general manager of norpa, emily berry, were keen for the evening to be both a showing and a performance of both the artist-in-residence program and the winsome hotel more generally. given norpa is a performing arts organisation which generally works with theatrical scripts, actors, stages, musicians and designers, participants were all aware of not wanting to simply ‘aestheticise’ homelessness by somehow re-presenting what already existed at the winsome. this early problematic was overcome by maintaining a focus on hospitality, rather than homelessness, and by highlighting how hospitality can be both theorised and provisioned as a response, and even an initial ‘solution’, to homelessness. this is not to suggest there is not a complex web of individual and social/cultural reasons that lead people to finding themselves without a place to call home, but rather indicates the desire this research project had to highlight that what people without a home lack is a place to call home, and what functions in home-like places are various modes of hospitality that address the needs of the human body. in this way, the project aimed to reveal how hospitality, rather than homelessness, functioned at the winsome. given that decision, the aim of the project involved thinking about how the residents and day users of the winsome could function as hosts during the showing of the artist-in-residence program to the 150 invited guests from the city of lismore. planning and cooking a dinner for people who attended the showing became a central concern during the final month of the home project, for which file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/uts%20shopfront/shf053_gateways%20vol.8/supplied/www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ro2hk22ey file:///users/alanlippert/documents/work/uts%20shopfront/shf053_gateways%20vol.8/supplied/www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ro2hk22ey 74 | gateways | cooke & hearn residents worked with chef jim hearn to plan and prepare a menu for the evening. julian louis and bronwyn purvis worked with indigenous actor, mitch king, on performing a reading of poetry that evolved out of the writing workshops, as well as with sound artist jamie birrell to overlay soundscapes with recordings of residents’ stories about life on the street. karla dickens, who is a highly regarded and widely collected indigenous artist, hung a large sculptural exhibition that repurposed large wire birdcages and innerspring mattresses (see figure 6). norpa technicians created lighting and av effects for karla’s exhibition, which during the evening of the showing silhouetted both the wire sculptures and key words of karla’s inquiry against the brick wall of the winsome. the bridge st choir also presented songs on the evening, as did jamie birrell’s winsome band, which was made up of residents who could play musical instruments. guests on the evening gathered in a space outside the winsome, where the bridge st choir performed a song, and were then led through various sites within the winsome in order that guests could experience the results of the artist-in-residence program. the mapping of the guests’ movements through various architectural spaces of the winsome, each of which highlighted a different outcome of the previous four months of work, ended in the back garden where an outdoor thai barbecue dinner was served by jim hearn, winsome residents and volunteers. the provisioning of food and drink is central to any understanding of what hospitality means. lashley and morrison (2000) argue that, fundamentally, the act of contributing to and sharing in the collective food supply are the foundations of obligations and rights which underpin hospitality. and it was this final act of the artist-in-residence program, of the formerly ‘homeless’ residents of the winsome hotel functioning as hosts by provisioning food and drink to the invited guests of the region, which enabled participants to gain some sense of agency through their participation in the home project. figure 6: karla dickens’ installation (photo courtesy karla dickens ©) 75 | gateways | cooke & hearn evaluation and conclusion as we have noted above, we focused on the winsome as a kind of cipher for the issues surrounding homelessness, in an attempt to gain greater traction and to link homelessness to a related issue and cause felt very strongly in the community. the love the lismore community felt for the winsome, and the loss they felt when it ceased operating as a venue for live music and parties, constituted a kind of homelessness for the community members, a complication of place identity and attachment. focusing our activities on the winsome allowed us to highlight the broader issue of homelessness by tapping into a pre-existing locus of community sentiment. it enabled us to unpack and communicate the stories of people without a home within the context of a kind of ‘homecoming’ where the lismore community was welcomed back to the winsome and the complication of the winsome’s identity in the community was resolved. the principles of participatory action research, and creative arts practice, were central to the unfolding and success of this project. the openness and emergent nature of this method and practice allowed the project to develop according to its own internal logic; the regular evaluation sessions held by all project partners ensured that the project was responsive to the ideas and experiences of participants and stakeholders on an ongoing basis. the broad emphasis on place and belonging that we started with became more finely honed as the project went on, turning to focus on the winsome and the notion of hospitality as instantiations of these broader concepts. thus it was through the emergent notion of hospitality, and the inversion of the roles of guest and host, that we sought to destigmatise homelessness in general and the winsome in particular, and in so doing achieve our objective of raising awareness of homelessness in the northern rivers region. there are many positive outcomes we can take from this project. over three years, hundreds of community members engaged with the home project, either as participants or audiences, and in turn were asked to think through, and orient themselves in relation to, questions of home and homelessness. social inclusion was kept at the forefront of this process through a focus on visibility and acceptance, and bringing the history and present of the winsome hotel into this mix ensured that those at the margins were central to the project. feedback sheets from the 2013 performance evening elicited many positive comments from community members, delighted to see the winsome once more a hub for music, performance and storytelling. follow-up interviews with the artists in residence, as well as residents of the winsome, demonstrated that the positive effects of creative community engagement did indeed occur in this project. both artists and winsome participants indicated the pleasurable nature of the trust and communication they developed between each other. the fact that these were professional artists was significant; a number of winsome residents spoke about the 76 | gateways | cooke & hearn professionality of the artists and norpa staff, and how impressed they were with the final outcome. the sense of personal efficacy is tangible here – the sense that it is possible to be involved in bringing to fruition something of personal, social and cultural worth. as one participant noted, ‘it demonstrated that we can run an event like that here. it can be a good experience’. at the same time, all participants, both artists and winsome residents and attendees, indicated that the program could have run for longer – that more could be done, that longer residencies were required to build greater connections and to have lasting effects in the lives of the participants. even after three years of activities, we still only scratched the surface of the potential of this project. this was inevitable though, and is as it should be; addressing homelessness in all its complexity is an ongoing project, a project we can never be done with. but highlighting how the winsome already functions as a unique model of addressing homelessness in our community, through providing what derrida labelled ‘unconditional hospitality’ to our region’s uninvited guests, makes plain the capacity all communities have to understand how the ethic of hospitality requires citizens to ‘say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor’ (derrida 2000, p. 77). this ethic of unconditional hospitality, of saying ‘yes’ to the uninvited guests amongst us, which includes the homeless on our streets, underscores how hospitality is first and foremost a civic responsibility. homelessness should not only be a question of tolerance, or of christian charity, but rather an indication that a person amongst others in a community requires what hospitality provides, which is to say a meal, a drink, and a place to socialise with others: a place to call home. acknowledgements this article is dedicated to the memory of dr rebecca coyle, our colleague and mentor who was pivotal to the genesis and early stages of this project. we would also like to acknowledge the support of the school of arts and social sciences at southern cross university and the vincent fairfax family foundation. references back to back theatre 2014, the democratic set, viewed 27 june 2014, http:// backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/the-democratic-set1/. barraket, j 2005, ‘putting people in the picture? the role of the arts in social inclusion’, social policy working paper no. 4, brotherhood of st. laurence and the centre for public policy, melbourne. borradori, g 2003, philosophy in a time of terror: dialogues with jurgen habermas and jacques derrida, the university of chicago press, chicago. cousins, k 2007, ‘pub’s new managers keen to make their mark on “grand lady” of lismore’, the northern star, 9 august. http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/the-democratic-set1/ http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/the-democratic-set1/ 77 | gateways | cooke & hearn cresswell, t 2014, ‘place’, in r lee, n castree, r kitchin, v lawson, a paasi, c philo, s radcliffe, s roberts & c withers (eds), sage handbook of human geography, sage publications, los angeles, pp. 3–21. derrida, j 2000, of hospitality: anne dufourmantelle invites jacques derrida to respond, stanford university press, stanford, ca. derrida, j 2001, on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness, routledge, new york. garbutt, r 2011, the locals: identity, place and belonging in australia and beyond, peter lang, bern, switzerland. gilbert, t 2001, ‘states of being: exploring the links between homelessness, mental illness and psychological distress. an evidence based policy paper’, homelessness australia, lyneham act, viewed 27 june 2014, www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/ policy/states_of_being_evidence_based_policy_paper_mental_illness_ and_homelessness.pdf. goffman, e 1968, stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity, prentice-hall/pelican, englewood cliffs, nj. greenwood, d & levin m 1998, introduction to action research: social research for social change, sage publications, london. gronda, h 2009, ‘possible future directions for homelessness research in nsw’, parity, vol. 22, no. 9, pp. 55–56. gustavsen, b 2001, ‘theory and practice: the mediating discourse’, in p reason & h bradbury (eds), handbook of action research, sage publications, london & thousand oaks, ca, pp. 17–26. homelessness 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in search of hospitality: theoretical perspectives and debates, butterworth-heinemann, oxford, ma. latour, b 1993, we have never been modern, trans. c porter, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. lewers, a 2011, ‘have i got a pose for you?’ abc open, viewed 27 june 2014, https://open.abc.net.au/posts/where-would-you-like-to-be-a-statue69wy8uf. http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/policy/states_of_being_evidence_based_policy_paper_mental_illness_and_homelessness.pdf. http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/policy/states_of_being_evidence_based_policy_paper_mental_illness_and_homelessness.pdf. http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/policy/states_of_being_evidence_based_policy_paper_mental_illness_and_homelessness.pdf. http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/index.php/about-homelessness/fact-sheets http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/index.php/about-homelessness/fact-sheets http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/index.php/about-homelessness/fact-sheets http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/index.php/about-homelessness/fact-sheets http://www.homelessnessnsw.org.au/sub-heading-1/ http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/documents/publications/298.doc https://open.abc.net.au/posts/where-would-you-like-to-be-a-statue-69wy8uf https://open.abc.net.au/posts/where-would-you-like-to-be-a-statue-69wy8uf 78 | gateways | cooke & hearn link, b, phelan, j, stueve, a, moore, r, bresnahan, m & struening, e 1995, ‘public attitudes and beliefs about homelessness’, in j baumohl (ed.), homelessness in america, oryx, phoenix, az, pp. 143–48. lowe, s 2000, ‘creating community: art for community development’, journal of contemporary ethnography, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 357–86. mills, d & brown p 2004, art and wellbeing, australia council for the arts, sydney. mulligan, m, scanlon, c & welch n 2008, ‘renegotiating community life: arts, agency inclusion and wellbeing’, 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http://norpa.org.au/productions/railway-wonderland/ a novel recruiting and surveying method participatory research during a pacific islander community’s traditional cultural event this article describes how an unincorporated community coalition, gaps in services to marshallese task force (gaps), joined with the northwest arkansas hometown health coalition, state health department and local university to conduct a special population health survey of marshallese, a pacific islander community living in northwest arkansas. the marshallese originate from the republic of the marshall islands (rmi). gaps was the coordinating organisation and the state health department and university played a supportive role. the results of the study will be discussed in a separate publication. the purpose of this article is to describe how this community coalition engaged in a community-based participatory research (cbpr) process to select and refine validated questionnaires and then used a novel method to recruit and survey participants during a traditional cultural event. the article focuses on the successes, failures and lessons learned. background the number of pacific islanders in the united states is growing rapidly, increasing 40 per cent between 2000 and 2010 (hixson, hepler & kim 2012). however, pacific islanders remain underrepresented in health research (ro & lee 2010; roehr 2010; working group of applied research center and national council of asian pacific americans 2013). specific health information on pacific islanders is often obscured in aggregated data on asian americans and pacific islanders (ro & lee 2010; roehr 2010). the health and human services (hhs) action plan to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities recognises the need for better health data on pacific islanders and recommends the development of ‘other methods to capture low-density populations including native americans, asian americans and pacific islanders’ (department of health and human services n.d.). while there is little data on pacific islanders living in the us, there is even less health information available on marshallese specifically and no published data on the health status of marshallese living in arkansas. while most pacific islanders in the us live in hawaii and california, many pacific islander subpopulations, including marshallese, are gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 150–59 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 grace donoho gaps in services to marshallese task force pearl mcelfish rachel avants emily hallgren university of arkansas for medical sciences 151 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren dispersing across the united states (hixson, hepler & kim 2012), increasing the need to conduct smaller community surveys to better understand the health status, beliefs and attitudes of new pacific islander communities in the us. in this article we focus on one pacific islander population, the marshallese, who have established a significant and growing community in northwest arkansas. the marshallese population in the united states has been growing since the compact of free association (cofa) was signed in 1986, granting the marshallese free entry into the us to live and work without a visa or permanent resident card (shek & yamada 2011). marshallese migrants are defined by the us government as ‘non-immigrants without visas’; 98 per cent of the marshallese in arkansas do not claim us citizenship (jimeno & rafael 2013). they are referred to as ‘cofa migrants’ or ‘cofa residents’ (shek & yamada 2011). according to the us census, the marshallese population in the us more than tripled from 2000 to 2010, growing from an estimated 6700 in 2000 to 22 400 in 2010 (hixson, hepler & kim 2012). because of the limited documentation required to enter the us as cofa migrants and frequent travel both within the us and between the us and the rmi, estimating the us marshallese population is difficult. the marshallese consulate estimates the actual population of marshallese in the us to be around 40 000, which is almost double the us census figure (mcelfish 2013). this estimate is supported by school enrolment data. in 2010, arkansas had the largest population of marshallese living in continental us – approximately 10 000 (mcelfish 2013). prior to the 2009 centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) marshallese health survey, local health-care providers and non-profit organisations were working to meet the acute health needs of the marshallese community including diabetes, hansen’s disease and hepatitis. however, there was a dearth of local data on the marshallese to help them improve the appropriateness of the health services provided. health-care providers and non-profit organisations needed information for program planning and to document health disparities in order to apply for local, state and national grant funding to meet the needs of the marshallese community. in 2007, a local community advocate formed the gaps in services to marshallese task force. gaps comprises educators, elected officials, health-care providers, social service providers, non-profit agencies, the marshallese consulate, marshallese pastors and marshallese community members who are dedicated to improving the lives and welfare of the marshallese. the marshallese task force has the trust of and a strong relationship with the marshallese community. method dialogue concerning possible funding from the cdc began in december 2008. the agreed upon purpose of the marshallese 152 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren health survey was to promote the success of established public health programs in achieving identified objectives within this specific population. from december 2008 to april 2009, there was ongoing communication as revised proposals were submitted to the cdc to conduct a health survey among marshallese that would coincide with the marshallese constitution day celebration that takes place annually over a one-week period around memorial day. the event attracts thousands of marshallese who participate in the celebration and team competitions. the jones center for families (a local non-profit organisation and gaps partner) in springdale, arkansas, was identified as the fiduciary for the cdc funding. notification was received on 20 april 2009 that the project had been funded to the amount of $78 045. the marshallese constitution day events were to be held at the jones center for families during the week of 19–26 may 2009. this allowed only five weeks until the target date for the survey implementation. this short timeframe necessitated the formation of a marshallese health survey subcommittee. each subcommittee member was also a member of gaps. the following organisations had representatives on the subcommittee: jones center for families, hometown health improvement, community clinic, marshallese consulate and marshallese pastors. marshallese community members also sat on the subcommittee. in addition, representatives from the university of arkansas and the arkansas department of health were present for support. the subcommittee used a consensus model to make all implementation decisions. survey construction the subcommittee reviewed several validated surveys provided by the university of arkansas and the arkansas department of health. the university of hawaii and the ministry of health from the rmi also provided survey instruments that had been used with the marshallese population. the subcommittee then established and prioritised categories of questions that were most important, using a consensus model of decision-making. categories included demographics, health status, access to health care, barriers to health care, body weight and height, physical activity, health history, current health condition, reproductive health, oral health, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, knowledge about aids, sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, physical check-up for cancer, domestic violence, and community health problems. after survey questions were selected by the subcommittee, a survey draft was constructed and sent to the broader cbpr group, which included the full membership of gaps, the department of health and academic partners, for comments and suggestions. all comments and suggestions were discussed and incorporated by the subcommittee and a final version was constructed. the final survey included 64 questions that were taken from five validated survey instruments. these included behavior risk factor surveillance system, siloam springs rural health corporative 153 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren survey, jones family institute homeless survey, kaiser permanente health survey and the 2007 republic of the marshall islands’ health survey. the survey was reviewed for cultural appropriateness by marshallese members of the subcommittee. the final version of the survey was translated into marshallese by a local marshallese pastor and then confirmed by the marshallese consulate. the survey was pilot tested with a small group of marshallese who worked at the jones center for families. a university of arkansas doctoral student created an online version of the survey using survey monkey. the process of reviewing, drafting, editing and translation took place in only five weeks. survey implementation process the survey was conducted over the one-week period of the marshallese constitution day celebration, 19–26 may 2009. the marshallese constitution day celebration is a traditional cultural event that celebrates the signing of the marshallese constitution in 1979. this event includes ceremonies that honour the signing of the marshallese constitution as well as team sporting events and traditional cultural dance and singing events. the marshallese constitution day celebration is held annually during the last week of may in many locations, including the rmi, arkansas, california, hawaii, oregon and washington state. from 2000 to 2009, the marshallese constitution day celebration was held in arkansas at the jones center for families. in 2008, the year prior to the survey, more than 3000 marshallese took part in the marshallese constitution day events held in arkansas. because of the large number of marshallese at the celebration, it was determined to be an ideal time to achieve a large convenience sample. the survey was administered through computer-assisted self-administered questionnaires in both english and marshallese. participants completed the survey at the jones center for families in a large computer centre with 24 desktop computers and a computer classroom with 12 computers. five marshallese individuals who were bilingual in english and marshallese and highly computer literate were hired to recruit participants and assist people with questions during the survey process. to promote study participation, flyers were distributed during the marshallese constitution day and the study was announced on a popular marshall islands website: http://yokwe. net/ the needs assessment was reviewed by the institutional review board and granted an exemption. participants were 18 years of age or older. each participant was assigned a unique participant identification number, and participants were given a $20 walmart gift card as remuneration for their participation. post-event process upon completion of the data collection, the raw data was sent to the arkansas department of health (adh) for statistical analysis. 154 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren adh staff cleaned the data, imported the data into statistical analysis software (sas), cross-tabulated the data and developed the initial tabulation of results. two participatory data-analysis events occurred following the initial tabulation of the data. the first event was a joint meeting of gaps and northwest arkansas hometown health improvement project, where the arkansas department of health presented the summary data of the 2009 health survey of marshallese. there was an opportunity for questions and discussion about what the information meant and how it could be used. sixty-three people attended this event. while some marshallese were present at the first meeting, the majority of participants were service providers to the marshallese. the second event focused specifically on the marshallese community. using marshallese churches as the point of contact, marshallese were invited to attend an event at the jones center for families to review summary data of the 2009 marshallese health survey. lunch was provided to all attendees, then males and females were invited to separate meetings in accordance with marshallese custom. marshallese staff who worked at the arkansas department of health presented the summary data to the 89 people in attendance. after the summary data was presented, people were invited to attend focus groups to share their reactions to the survey results and help interpret the information. again, males and females attended separate focus groups, three for each gender, each with a marshallese facilitator. participants in each group were asked open-ended questions related to their interpretation of the information presented. information from the focus groups was used to create the final needs assessment document and an action register based on the input and prioritisation of the broader marshallese community stakeholders. individuals and organisations took ownership of specific topics and reported each month on progress toward solutions. those action items continue to be active in 2015. results event organisers estimated that 4000 people attended the 2009 marshallese constitution day event. the number of survey respondents (n=1289) far surpassed the target number of 600. the event also attracts many marshallese from other states. out-of-state participants were allowed to participate; however, arkansas residents were the primary focus of the study, so all non-arkansans were removed from the sample, reducing the total to 874 respondents. the arkansas sample was slightly more educated, but had higher rates of unemployment than the rates reported in the 2010 us census for the marshallese population living in arkansas (see table 1). dissemination and action the arkansas department of health printed 100 copies of the 2009 marshallese health survey summary data for distribution. 155 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren the marshallese task force (including marshallese members) and the northwest arkansas hometown health improvement project had a joint meeting in january 2010 to present the results of the survey; 68 people attended the event. this event was covered in the northwest arkansas section of the arkansas democrat-gazette newspaper, with three separate articles during 2010. additionally, marshallese were invited to attend a luncheon at the jones center for families on 23 april 2010, where they learned the results of the survey and were invited to participate in focus groups to interpret the findings and prioritise issues to be collaboratively addressed; 89 marshallese attended. discussion the novel method of implementation during a traditional cultural event allowed for targeted, high-yield recruitment of participants. the goal was initially 600 participants, and the total recruitment was more than double that number. while time between the grant submission and approval was almost a year, the team only had five weeks to construct, pilot and implement the survey. as a result, there were limitations and many lessons learned during the process. 2010 arkansas us census* health study difference in percentage percentage frequency percentage frequency age 18 to 34 66.6% (1520) 66.8% (584) –0.2% 35 to 64 31.8% (725) 31.2% (273) 0.3% 65 and older 1.7% (38) 1.3% (11) 0.4% don’t know/no answer – 0.7% (6) – gender males 51.3% (1171) 43.6% (381) 7.7% females 48.7% (1112) 56.1% (490) –7.7% don’t know/no answer – 0.3% (3) – education less than 9th grade 14.5% (222) 9.2% (80) 6.1% high school 70.5% (1077) 71.2% (622) –2.3% college 14.9% (228) 16.5% (144) –0.8% graduate or professional 0.0% (0) 0.2% (2) –0.1% other – 1.5% (13) – don’t know/no answer – 1.5% (13) – employment employed 58.6% (951) 39.4% (344) 17.5% unemployed 14.3% (233) 24.0% (210) –11.0% not in labor force 27.1% (440) 32.8% (287) –2.6% don’t know/no answer – 3.8% (33) – * 2010 us census data is for arkansas residents who report race as marshallese alone or in any combination with other groups (u.s. census bureau 2010a, 2010b, 2010c). table 1: demographic characteristics of survey respondents residing in arkansas 156 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren limitations the marshallese health study was not without challenges. there were limitations on the methods used to conduct the study. the primary limitation of the study was the use of a convenience sample. while the subcommittee considered other sampling methods, there were no clear, acceptable alternatives for sampling small, hard-to-reach populations who had limited healthcare access (faugier & sargeant 1997; goel & salganik 2010; heckathorn 1997; magnani et al. 2005; marpsat & firdion 1999; valenzuela jr 2002). however, few differences were identified when the sample was compared with the 2010 us census data for marshallese living in arkansas. the sample was similar in age, had slightly more females and education, and higher unemployment rates than the 2010 us census data reported. a second limitation was a malfunction with the skip patterns of the computerised survey. the electronic survey program did not allow for skip patterns. while skip pattern instructions were provided, respondents did not always follow those instructions. this may have caused some confusion. skip patterns were inserted for data analysis, but the fact that respondents answered some questions that should have been skipped showed evidence of some misunderstanding. in addition, there were logistical challenges. on 21 may 2009, the fire alarm at the jones center for families went off and all occupants, including study participants, were required to leave the building. those who were actively taking the survey had to start the survey again. in addition, the server for the computer laboratory crashed and some surveys were lost. at peak periods, there were significant waiting times to take the survey and some potential respondents were lost due to this. the information was limited to self-reported health status and health behaviours. the study would have benefited from combining health-screening information with self-reported information to provide a more complete and empirical picture of the health of the marshallese community. organisers had planned to link health-screening information with the survey results, but the short timeline did not allow for implementation of that plan. lessons learned the following lessons learned were compiled by the gaps subcommittee, which included representatives from the marshallese consulate, marshallese pastors and marshallese community, as well as health-care provider, non-profit organisation, arkansas department of health and university of arkansas representation. the list of lesons learned was then distributed to the broader group via email. additional edits were made based on the input of the larger group. final lessons learned were confirmed by the subcommittee and presented back to the broader group. these lessons are presented below. 157 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren collaboration is important at all levels there was significant cooperation between the health-care providers, non-profit agencies and the marshallese community. in addition, both the university of hawaii and the ministry of health from the marshall islands were involved in the collaboration process, provided survey instruments and shared information about previous surveys with the marshallese. the arkansas department of health and the university of arkansas played a more peripheral and supportive role. all parties worked together to ensure their unique contribution focused on the collective goal. engagement of leaders is imperative support from the marshallese consulate and marshallese pastors was identified as one of the elements critical to the success of the project. if time had allowed, the organisers would have also included additional marshallese elders in the pre-implementation planning process. community-driven and organised processes can allow for rapid implementation while the study would have benefited from additional time to plan and implement the health survey, the subcommittee was able to implement it within five weeks from the award notice. furthermore, more than 1200 people participated, with only one week available for data collection. the flexibility and dedication of the communitybased organisations allowed for rapid implementation. the post-event process is just as important as the survey information the post-event interpretation, discussion and dissemination of the data led to an action registry. this action registry is viewed as the biggest success of the project and it is still being used in 2015. the action registry has led to changes in organisational practices and allows local organisations to receive grant funding. this will be described further in a later article. elders in the marshallese community thanked organisers for the post-event luncheon and discussion, noting that they appreciated their involvement in determining how the information was interpreted, presented and used to improve their community. cultural sensitivity is imperative throughout the process, marshallese were involved in choosing the questions, recruitment, data collection, interpretation, dissemination, action and implementation. this allowed the organisers to be sensitive in many critical areas. for example, the entire group ate lunch together, and then the genders were divided for the results discussion. both the shared meal prior to important discussions and the separation of genders when discussing health information were in accordance with marshallese cultural tradition. the short timeframe increased limitations while proud of the accomplishment, the organisers saw the timeframe as ‘nearly impossible’. to achieve the best results, the 158 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren survey needed a more intensive field test prior to implementation. additional testing with the online system would have helped improve implementation logistics and the survey instrument, and many of the skip pattern issues may have been avoided with more time to test the computerised survey. information is power while limitations exist with self-reported data from a nonrepresentative sample, the information can still be powerful for planning and advocacy purposes. local health-care providers and non-profit organisations have used the information to collaboratively meet the needs of the community. conclusion this article describes a community-driven needs assessment process aimed at better understanding the health status and concerns of the northwest arkansas marshallese community, for which there was a complete absence of health status data. the implementation process was novel and provided the basis for program planning and increased dialogue between service providers, the marshallese community and researchers. while random population-based samples will continue to be the gold standard of health-surveillance research, special populations with significant health disparities are often underrepresented in these studies, or aggregated with other populations in a way that provides information that is of little value to particular communities, health-care providers, and non-profit organisations. as communities of pacific islanders move further from the west coast into rural southwestern states, such as arkansas, the lack of data, combined with the necessity to better understand the health status of the new population, make it crucial to conduct non-traditional health surveys. without health data, new minority communities and their providers do not have the information required to advocate for the programs and services needed. additional methods are required to provide practical, inexpensive and methodologically sound sampling strategies to access low-density minority communities that are not represented in traditional population-based studies. references department of health & human services usa n.d., ‘hhs action plan to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities: a nation free of disparities in health and health care’, viewed 14 september 2013, http://minorityhealth. hhs.gov/npa/files/plans/hhs/hhs_plan_complete.pdf. faugier, j & sargeant, m 1997, ‘sampling hard to reach populations’, journal of advanced nursing, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 790–97, doi 10.1046/j.13652648.1997.00371.x. goel, s & salganik, m 2010, ‘assessing respondent-driven sampling’, proceedings of the national academy of sciences, vol. 107, no. 15, pp. 6743–47, doi 10.1073/pnas.1000261107. 159 | gateways | donoho, mcelfish, avants & hallgren heckathorn, d 1997, ‘respondent-driven sampling: a new approach to the study of hidden populations’, social problems, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 174–99, viewed 17 november 2014, www.jstor.org/stable/3096941. hixson, l, hepler, b & kim, m 2012, ‘the native hawaiian and other pacific islander population: 2010’, united states census bureau, viewed 17 november 2014, www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-12.pdf. jimeno, s & rafael, a 2013, a profile of the marshallese community in arkansas, volume 3, winthrop rockefeller foundation, little rock, ar and university of arkansas, fayetteville, ar, viewed 17 november 2014, www.wrfoundation.org/assets/files/pdfs/immigrant%20study%202012/ volume%203%20-%20a%20profile%20of%20the%20marshallese%20 community%20in%20arkansas.pdf. magnani, r, sabin, k, saidel, t & heckathorn, d 2005, ‘review of sampling hard-to-reach and hidden populations for hiv surveillance’, aids, vol. 19, suppl., pp. 67–72s, doi 10.1097/01.aids.0000172879.20628.e1. marpsat, m & firdion, j-m 1999, ‘the homeless in paris: a representative sample survey of users of services for the homeless’, in d avramov, coping with homelessness: issues to be tackled and best practices in europe, ashgate, aldershot, uk, pp. 221–51. mcelfish, p 2013, ‘interview with carmen chonggum’, arkansas marshallese consulate. ro, m & lee, a 2010, ‘out of the shadows: asian americans, native hawaiians, and pacific islanders’, american journal of public health, vol. 100, no. 5, pp. 776–78, doi 10.2105/ajph.2010.192229. roehr, b 2010, ‘asians and pacific islanders in us need greater prominence in research’, british medical journal, vol. 340, doi 10.1136/bmj.c2495. shek, d & yamada, s 2011, ‘health care for micronesians and constitutional rights’, hawaii medical journal, vol. 70, no. 11, supple. 2, pp. 4–8s, pmcid: pmc3254228. us census bureau 2010a, ‘census summary file 2: profile of general population and housing characteristics for marshallese in arkansas, table dp-1’, generated using american factfinder, viewed 31 july 2014, http://factfinder2.census.gov. us census bureau 2010b, ‘2006–2010, american community survey: sex by age by employment status for marshallese in arkansas age 16 and over, table b23001’, generated using american factfinder, viewed 31 july 2014, http://factfinder2.census.gov. us census bureau 2010c, ‘2006–2010, american community survey: sex by age by educational attainment for the marshallese population in arkansas 18 years and over, table b15001’, generated using american factfinder, viewed 31 july 2014, http://factfinder2.census.gov. valenzuela jr, a 2002, ‘working on the margins in metropolitan los angeles: immigrants in day labor work’, migraciones internacionales, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 6–28. working group of applied research center and national council of asian pacific americans n.d., ‘best practices: researching asian americans, native hawaiians and pacific islanders’, viewed 12 september 2013, http://ncapaonline.org/2013/07/30/best-practices-researching-asianamericans-native-hawaiians-and-pacific-islanders/ _enref_1 _enref_2 _enref_3 _enref_4 _enref_5 _enref_6 _enref_7 _enref_8 _enref_9 _enref_10 _enref_11 _enref_12 _enref_13 _enref_14 _enref_15 _enref_16 _enref_17 from community data to research archive partnering to increase and sustain capacity within a native organisation expanding interest in community engagement and participation in research by universities, researchers, community members and funders reflects a dramatic paradigm shift in the way that we understand the research enterprise. somewhat counter-intuitively with respect to the expectations of traditional mainstream academic research approaches, community engagement and participation have been shown to improve the scientific quality of the research process in relation to research question relevance, informed consent, cultural sensitivity, reliability and validity of instruments, recruitment and retention of research participants, and accuracy of interpretations and findings (minkler 2005). research conducted using an engagement approach also increases the potential for findings to be translated into practice or to result in meaningful change (ahmed & palermo 2010; barkin, schlundt & smith 2013). community-engaged projects may take a number of different forms. in this article, we share our experience of a collaborative project between a non-profit membership organisation and researchers from two universities. we focus on the importance of infrastructure development for moving towards truly equitable partnerships that expand forms of participation and bring together researchers and practitioners in ways that blur traditional power boundaries (gutiérrez & penuel 2014; penuel 2015). our collective work sits at the intersection of health research, stem education research, and culturally based teaching and learning. the interdisciplinary nature of our team has allowed for the blending of community-engaged methodologies, which is reflected in our discussion of values in research, below. valuing community engagement and participation in research in a review of 20 community-engaged studies, cook (2008) found that an engagement approach helped to integrate research and action, and that studies focusing on issues identified as priorities by the community and incorporating qualitative methods were more likely to lead to action. in health research, engaged research janet page-reeves university of new mexico ananda marin northwestern university molly bleecker maurice leon moffett university of new mexico kathy deerinwater sarah echohawk american indian science and engineering society douglas medin northwestern university © 2017 by j page-reeves, a marin, m bleecker, ml moffett, k deerinwater, s echohawk & d medin. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: page-reeves, j, marin, a, bleecker, m, moffett, ml, deerinwater, k, echohawk, s & medin, d 2017, ‘from community data to research archive: partnering to increase and sustain capacity within a native organisation’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 283–297. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.4947 corresponding author: janet page-reeves; jpage-reeves@salud.unm.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.4947 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) 284 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin design has become essential for uncovering the dynamics of complex, seemingly intransigent health problems, and has been demonstrated to be key to addressing health disparities and improving health outcomes (wallerstein & duran 2010). community engagement has also become an integral dimension of education reform (weiss, lopez & rosenberg 2010). in education research, knowledge co-constructed through a deliberative process of dialogue with parents, extended kin relations and other stakeholders has been shown to increase meaningful intergenerational involvement and to positively impact children’s education (bang et al. 2010; bray & kenney 2014). in addition, the process of conducting community-engaged research is seen to have educational and experiential value. individuals who participate in a community-engaged research process are exposed to different, sometimes novel perspectives and often find themselves positively changed by the experience (jacoby 2009). as such, community engagement has become a core part of professional education for health-care providers (strasser 2010) and educators (marin & bang 2015; o’meara & jaeger 2006), and community-engaged research conducted as service-learning is understood to be beneficial for promoting student civic engagement (jacoby 2009). capacity for community-engaged research although the benefits of community engagement in research are increasingly acknowledged, community engagement does not just happen. meaningful engagement requires development of capacity within the university and in the community — a continuing challenge (goytia et al. 2013). policy and infrastructure at academic institutions requires further alignment with engagement approaches in terms of academic culture, value of the work, criteria for faculty evaluation and institutional support mechanisms (hoeft et al. 2013; nyden 2003; whitmer et al. 2010). developing more academics with the particular skills to conduct research in an engaged way with community members and more academically trained professional researchers from the communities of study are key components of a truly ‘engaged’ academy (wenger, hawkins & seifer 2012). and, despite apparent enthusiasm about and calls for community engagement, there continues to be a lack of coherence in support for what it really takes to conduct research using engagement principles. the priorities of funding agencies, the length of time allotted for conducting the research and the expertise of grant review committees do not necessarily align with the shift to an engagement paradigm (smith, kaufman & dearlove 2013). as a result, proposed community-engaged research projects are often under-appreciated or misunderstood and therefore not funded, or are too brief and under-resourced when they are. the capacity of academic researchers and the institutional environment of the university are clearly important for developing community-university relationships for research, but the need to recognise and support research capacity in the community is also essential for establishing successful and equitable research 285 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin partnerships (goytia et al. 2013; roberts et al. 2013). like researchers, community members often require or are interested in obtaining education regarding the nature of scientific inquiry and instruction in the use of consent, ethics in research with human subjects, protocols, research design, data collection instruments and methods, data analysis, and interpretation of findings (goytia et al. 2013). emphasis has therefore been placed on the need to develop the skills and knowledge of community members so that they can participate in, conduct, or lead the research process (wallerstein & duran 2010). this type of knowledge development is seen as an emancipatory process (lindsey & mcguinness 1998) that can change the nature of power dynamics that commonly exist in community-based and community-engaged research (wallerstein 1999). in particular, rubin and colleagues (2012) suggest that when approaches to training are based on co-learning and appreciate community funds of knowledge, they can engender respect, reciprocity and power-sharing. these are the first steps in empowering the community to control the research process. as a result, much of the literature on community capacity has focused on the need to develop human resources and competencies through educational forums and training events (cunningham et al. 2015), how this capacity is ‘empowering’ (lindsey & mcguiness 1998) and how it allows communities to increase their level of participation in research (wallerstein & duran 2010). community-engaged research with indigenous communities community engagement with native communities has received a great deal of attention in the literature (e.g. wallerstein & duran 2010). importantly, conducting engaged research with native communities has its own particular dynamics. indigenous researchers and their allies have done much to broaden conversations on community-engaged research by centring questions about research as an enterprise of colonialism and the history of research as defining who is human (smith 1999). research on tribal communities was often seen as a testing ground for determining the universality of theories of human intelligence and development. cross-cultural research in this tradition took western middle-class individuals and families as the starting point and default for comparisons. in this context, native individuals and families were often painted as different and thus deficient. medin and bang (2014) have discussed this in terms of homefield disadvantage. home-field status, being a member of the in-group and/or occupying a position of power, can cultivate a sense of psychological distance for researchers and lead to marking members of cultural groups other than the researchers as inferior. in response to this history, and with the hope of moving towards justice, scholars have devoted energy to uncovering the deficit perspectives and colonial sensibilities that may be driving research orientations. these efforts are often motivated by a desire to create new forms of social relations and to see indigenous futures that are not bound by historical and stereotypical images 286 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin of native peoples. in addition, scholars invested in decolonising methodologies (brayboy et al. 2012b) aim to develop theories and tools from within indigenous communities that work toward self-determination. many of these theories make visible the ethics and values associated with ways of producing knowledge through research as well as ways of being a researcher. for example, brayboy and colleagues (2012b, p. 436) have outlined a framework for research that is motivated by service to community and ‘the call by the indigenous researchers to (re)claim an indigenous intellectual life and thought-world’. their framework highlights ‘4 rs’: relationality, responsibility, respect and reciprocity’. in this spirit, we argue that infrastructure development within communities is key to (re)claiming ‘an indigenous intellectual life and thought-world’ and should be a primary goal of communityengaged research projects with indigenous communities. situating knowledge: infrastructure as a component of community research capacity while human resources and knowledge are important dimensions of the power dynamic in community research, the tendency in the literature has been to under-appreciate the nature and dynamics of infrastructural resources. although budgetary infrastructure (hoeft, et al. 2013), grant peer review (smith, kaufman & deerlove 2013) and institutional review boards (bang et al. 2010) have been discussed by a number of authors as components of infrastructural capacity for communities, broader treatment of these issues remains weak. moreover, infrastructure involving data sets designed for research, data management tools, data collection protocols and data analysis software has received even less treatment. we find that much of the literature on community capacity in community-engaged research uses too narrow a lens, defining community capacity as resting primarily on internal personal mindsets or knowledge of individual community members. this leads to a problematic conceptualisation of the engagement process. for example, the focus on providing education and training for knowledge/skill development and ‘transfer of competencies’ (suarez-balcazar et al. 2008, p. 179) means that ‘empowerment’ becomes a mechanism by which researchers ‘empower’ community members through training, that ‘participation’ is often construed as researchers ‘including’ community members in the research process, and that ‘control’ over the process is often understood as control over the research agenda and approach rather than as the community and its members leading the research partnership—none of which appropriately reflect the power dynamics that an engagement paradigm purports to enact. like goodman et al. (1998, p. 262), we recognise the need to distinguish between ‘participation’ and ‘leadership’ in thinking about community power and agency in research. lack of attention to infrastructure for research in this context reflects the reality of community-engaged research. while there is a need to focus on training to ensure that all members of 287 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin a team share a common understanding of the research process, resources that could be used to invest in the development of infrastructure beyond human resources are hard to come by. infrastructure for research, which can be costly, is assumed to exist within the university. as such, although power may inherently reside in the community, without sufficient infrastructure community agency is diminished and community power deflected. to address this conundrum, following bray and kenney (2014, p. 103), we believe there are ways to strategically structure community-engaged research efforts to support communities to develop their own capacity and agency in the research enterprise. lindau and colleagues (2011) suggest that a strengths-based approach can be used to identify positive points of leverage to create research infrastructure in a community. for example, community organisations that may not have a mission focused on research may have assets that can be enhanced and deployed as infrastructure for research. strategically tailoring capacitybuilding efforts (cunningham et al. 2015) to develop these resources can increase the likelihood of communities taking the lead in research. the partnership this article explores our experience working with a native american organisation to transform documents gathered in the routine practice of the organisation’s work into a database appropriate for research, thus building the capacity within the organisation to conduct its own research using its own data. we are undertaking this effort through a collaborative partnership between the american indian science and engineering society (aises) and researchers from the university of new mexico (unm) and northwestern university (nu). our unm team has extensive experience working with community-engaged projects in albuquerque involving women residents of a historic downtown community who are concerned about food insecurity (page-reeves et al. 2014a, b), a community-run clinic and diabetes patients from the latino immigrant community (page-reeves et al. 2013a, b), members of a latina immigrant women’s social isolation support group, a health coalition in albuquerque’s international district (page-reeves & cardiel 2016), an organisation providing basic adult education services, and an organisation that provides educational opportunities and builds skills to promote economic and social justice for latino immigrants. our nu team has a long history of conducting community-based design research (cbdr) with community partners including the american indian center of chicago and the menominee tribe of wisconsin. design research is a methodology that employs iterative rounds of design and implementation with the goal of building learning theory and improving educational experiences. cbdr re-tools this method to include community members as decision makers in the research process and designers of educational environments (bang et al. 2010). both of our research teams have developed a variety of 288 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin strategies for working with communities that attempt to build or sustain capacity in the community that will outlive time-limited research funding. the project we discuss here has funding from the national science foundation (nsf) to understand factors related to success among native americans in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem). in 2008, as a result of a prior relationship, pamala silas, the then executive director (ed) of aises, enlisted the collaboration of a researcher at unm (page-reeves) to develop a project to address issues of interest to aises using aises data. when it became clear that a comprehensive approach to the project would require a multi-disciplinary team, silas recruited researchers at nu (medin and marin) with whom she also had a prior relationship, and we added other unm investigators (moffett and bleecker) to round out our skill set. the structure of our funded project has co-principal investigators (co-pis) at each of the three partner organisations, with the current aises ed, sarah echohawk, serving as the aises co-pi. after the start of the project, aises hired kathy deerinwater, who subsequently became a project co-investigator. from the outset, then, aises has driven our community-engaged research – the idea for the research was initiated by aises, the team was recruited by aises, aises co-leads the project and aises staff participate as members of the team, aises data provides a foundation for the research, and separate project budgets are administered by each of the partners (aises, unm, nu). elsewhere we have discussed how budget infrastructure and financial resources can be used to promote community control over the research process (bang et al. 2010). here we describe how we have structured our project design to leverage requisites of the current research process to create permanent data infrastructure. our project will leave behind infrastructure for future research that can be controlled by our community partners at aises. the american indian science and engineering society (aises) aises is a national non-profit organisation whose mission is to substantially increase the representation of american indians, alaska natives, native hawaiians, pacific islanders, first nations, and other indigenous peoples of north america in stem studies and careers. to realise its mission, aises offers stem programs, scholarships, internships, mentorship and in-person events as well as incorporates native cultures and traditions within stem. aises’ growing membership now exceeds 3800 students and professionals, comprising 189 college chapters, 15 professional chapters and 158 affiliated k–12 schools, representing over 200 tribal and indigenous nations. because aises has seen so many students and professionals utilise its services over its nearly 40 years of operation, aises is committed to conducting research to address important stem education issues as they pertain to native american people and communities. 289 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin office for community health (och) at the university of new mexico (unm) the och at unm focuses on addressing the socioeconomic factors that cause health disparities, particularly within minority communities. it has long been recognised that educational outcomes can be affected by individual health and wellbeing, but it is increasingly clear that educational success also significantly impacts long-term health outcomes (winkleby et al. 1992). this understanding highlights the extent to which we can no longer afford to silo research into disconnected spheres of interest, and provides the foundation for the partnership between aises and the och on this project. we now recognise that, in the long run, the interests of the community on multiple levels will be served by this holistic approach. northwestern university (nu) the nu component of our research team draws from education and social policy as well as psychology. the present project is a natural extension of previous research on community and culturally based science education in a partnership that includes the american indian center of chicago, the menominee nation of wisconsin and the university of washington (uw). nu’s work has been supported by nsf grants involving parallel submission such that funding goes directly to the three partners rather than involving subcontracts. direct funding necessitates and encourages the building of research administration capacity, and it means we do not rely solely on the nu institutional review board for research protocol approval, but rather can seek approval from within our other two partnering entities as well (bang et al. 2010). project focus our current research uses a resiliency-based model to counter deficit frameworks commonly employed to understand the underrepresentation of native americans in stem. the focus is on the factors and dynamics that lead to success as defined by native american science students, practising scientists and communities rather than on stories of damage and failure that are common in the literature (tuck 2009). the analyses we are developing will shed light on how native individuals leverage personal and cultural assets to embrace a congruency between indigenous culture and western science as they achieve success in stem. results of this research will provide guidance for institutional policy and programmatic efforts intended to increase native participation in stem. a key component of our research involves analysis of aises organisational data. over the past 40 years, aises has collected information about a national cohort of native students and professionals, many of them extremely successful in stem. these data are not available anywhere else, and have never previously been thoroughly analysed and evaluated, in part because much of the data existed in hard-copy format kept in boxes in 290 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin storage containers as we describe below. our research using this data involves identifying correlates of stem persistence, degree attainment, and employment among native scholars. however, in addition to using aises data for our current investigation, it is also a stated objective of our project to build the capacity of aises to engage in research more generally. to this end, we are transforming aises’ organisational documents into a permanent searchable archive. we are creating this infrastructure by: 1) scanning aises hard-copy documents, 2) entering the scanned files in a coherent, organised database to allow for development of future research questions and structured investigation, 3) creating a list of potential research questions that the files could be used to answer, and 4) identifying ways to enhance the capacity of aises to generate improved and ongoing information on native americans in stem via the development of organisational data collection protocols and data collection tools. as the premier organisation for native scientists and engineers, with the proper infrastructure, aises is uniquely positioned to collect longitudinal data from a national cohort of native stem professionals. the research infrastructure we are developing will allow aises to design future research to further illuminate the native experience in stem and connect research more concretely with the evolving needs of native communities and individuals. creating the archival database data sources the aises data collection includes a broad range of hard-copy and electronic document types dating back to 1977, including aises membership applications, applications for primary, secondary and post-secondary scholarships, internships and camps, and applications to the national american indian science and engineering fair (naisef). beginning in 2000, aises began to store organisational data electronically. the data from 1976 to 1996 exists in hard-copy format housed in denver at the denver public library within their western history/genealogy archives, and the later data was held in a storage facility in albuquerque. two hundred and forty-six boxes of these hard-copy files from 1997 to 2000 were in six containers. most of these boxes were the standard size of 38 x 30 x 25 centimetres (15 x 12 x 10 inches). of the 246 boxes, 80 held files related to scholarships (applications, awards, etc.), 40 contained administrative records (e.g. accounting), 35 contained science fair related files (applications, participants, etc.), 30 contained information on educational programs (including aises-sponsored camps), 16 contained aises membership data, 15 contained aises conference files (including the national american indian science & engineering fair – naisef), 13 contained internship applications and information, and 17 contained miscellaneous data. 291 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin establishing the database to establish protocols and priorities for scanning the documents and for entering the scanned data into a database, members of the research team looked through a sample of the various document types at the storage unit in albuquerque. for our current work, we prioritised scholarship applications, as they would provide the data most crucial to the research goals of the project. we also realised that the files would need to be sorted before being scanned, as many contained extraneous documents, such as duplicate transcripts of scholarship applications. funds had been included in the project budget to hire a company to scan the files, but a company had not been selected. there were two potential options in albuquerque that the research team considered: a national for-profit company that could scan the documents and also had the capacity to store the hardcopy data, or a local non-profit social enterprise with a similar document imaging and shredding service but with the explicit social mission of employing developmentally disabled individuals. each company provided a sample scan of some of the documents and it was determined that the non-profit organisation produced a better product at a lower cost. the non-profit was chosen to do the scanning because of the quality of their product, but we were also happy that we had been able to use the research funds to support the work of a local social enterprise. through this process of working with the two companies on a scanning sample, aises discovered that moving hard-copy data from the local storage container facility to the national for-profit company would result in significant cost savings over time. as a result, aises used separate non-research project funds to make this transfer. the scholarship files included student essays and demographic data such as age, sex and (in some years) place of birth and tribal affiliation, as well as educational information such as high school gpa, declared major, courses in stem and prior stem experience. two native american students were hired by aises to do the file sorting at the aises office. we then created a rigorous scanning protocol. at the scanning company, a single searchable pdf file was created for each application and saved to a folder on the company’s server. a naming convention for the pdf files was created and the names of the folders into which they were to be placed corresponded to the order of the boxes of files scanned. the scanned files were then shredded. when all of the files in the boxes were scanned, the scanning company used a secure file transfer protocol to transfer them to a member of our research team at unm who created a microsoft access database, including a data entry form. four unm undergraduate students, including one native engineering student, were hired to enter the data from the scanned pdf files into the database. it took approximately 18 months to sort, scan and data enter all of the approximately 7400 scholarship files. boxes containing other types of files took an additional three months to scan. these will be entered into the database in the future. 292 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin challenges as with many projects of this size, there were a number of logistical challenges. first, having the team spread out across different states (new mexico, colorado and illinois) and at different locations in albuquerque (aises, unm, the storage facility and the scanning facility are all in different parts of town) created a number of obstacles in terms of file sharing and management. communication problems often arose around delivery and pickup of boxes. this ultimately impacted the pace of workflow in sorting and organising the files. as the work continued, protocols were developed to minimise errors. for example, tracking forms were created and shared among the team and updated at key time points. at the same time that we were managing the sorting and digitising process, we were also grappling with questions about the organisation of the data itself. for example, we were faced with a number of options in terms of the form that the data might take and how to structure the database. despite the challenges, we achieved our stated objective of creating an organised searchable database of approximately 8000 files at aises. this infrastructural capacity will allow aises to better track internal operations related to organisational activity, and will also lead to aises-driven research projects in the future. current and planned research current research questions: —evaluate factors related to the success of native american students in stem —assess factors related to native american stem students switching universities —construct a path dependent model of stem program choice —conduct a sub-group analysis of native american students for whom stem is the gateway to the health science professions —evaluate the extent to which including more questions in scholarship applications would affect recipient selection. planned future research: —conduct social network analysis to assess the influence of mentorship and aises chapter support on native american students’ success in stem —analyse how students’ concept of science changes as they progress through undergraduate and graduate programs —assess internal decision-making with respect to scholarship awards —evaluate the extent to which participation in multiple aises programs affects a student’s likelihood of completing a stem degree —assess the impact of long-term participation in and commitment to aises on the pursuit of a stem career by those individuals —assess correlation between the different types of aises programs and a student’s likelihood of completing a stem degree and/or having a stem career. 293 | gateways | page-reeves, marin, bleecker, moffett, deerinwater, echohawk & medin impact, insights and implications an important goal of this project has been to strengthen the research capacity of aises as a community organisation. aises is committed to contributing significantly to the limited but growing body of literature on education research for native people in stem. native americans are often excluded from large data sets, or findings about them are deemed statistically insignificant (faircloth, alcantar & stage 2015). while this may be an issue of sample size, marking native data with an asterisk and placing notes about this data within footnotes actively contributes to the invisibility of the experiences of native people and in doing so masks our own responsibilities as researchers (shotton, lowe & waterman 2013). it is very important to aises to not only evaluate its programs but to understand their shortand long-term impacts on native students and professionals. of course, issues remain. the unique characteristics of the aises database pose distinctive challenges. given the small number of native americans in science, and especially in certain subfields, consent and de-identification may not be sufficient to protect confidentiality. there are increasingly strong demands to make all data publicly accessible, and native organisations will need a form of ethical review to protect individuals and communities from misuse and misunderstandings of data that non-native institutional review boards may not have considered. these are system-level issues and it will take system-level measures to prevent unintended consequences. through the strategic design of this project, aises is poised to develop and launch its own research program utilising the database we have described above. furthermore, aises will be able to leverage the outcomes of this project to seek additional research funding in order to maintain and update the database and conduct new research. beyond our current partnership, aises has begun to pursue grant support for additional analysis of its archival database to direct its policies as a native american serving institution, but also to address educational sciences issues concerning the chronic under-representation of native american scholars in stem disciplines. references ahmed, s & palermo, a 2010, ‘community engagement in research: frameworks for education and peer review’, american journal of public health, vol. 100, no. 8, pp. 1380–87, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/20558798. doi: https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.178137 bang, m, 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and the environment, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 314–21, http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_journal_ articles/271/. doi: https://doi.org/10.1890/090241 winkleby, m, jatulis, d, frank, e & fortmann s 1992, ‘socioeconomic status and health: how education, income, and occupation contribute to risk factors for cardiovascular disease’, american journal of public health, vol. 82, no. 6, pp. 816–20, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ pmc1694190/. doi: https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.82.6.816 http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/beyond-random-acts-family-school-and-community-engagement-as-an-integral-part-of-education-reform http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/beyond-random-acts-family-school-and-community-engagement-as-an-integral-part-of-education-reform http://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/index.php/jheoe/article/view/754 http://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/index.php/jheoe/article/view/754 http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_journal_articles/271/ http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_journal_articles/271/ https://doi.org/10.1890/090241 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1694190/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1694190/ https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.82.6.816 ‘culture’ as hiv prevention indigenous youth speak up! one rainy spring evening, our research team was preparing for a community report-back session on the taking action communitybased participatory action research project in kahnawà:ke, a mohawk reserve located near montreal. we presented our major research findings by showcasing several of the arts-based products (e.g. murals, paintings, hip hop songs and videos) produced by youth participants during the project, linking structural inequity to hiv vulnerability (flicker 2012; flicker et al. 2014a, b). the event culminated in a conversation with the audience on the issues raised in the project. during the discussion, one man asked: ‘why are aboriginal youth into hip hop, wearing baggy clothes and acting black?’ many of the youth present were frustrated by the question. they tried to explain that indigenous cultures are not static; rather they are fluid and change over time. they felt that expression through hip hop and ‘new’ forms of art were mediums as powerful as drumming circles or pow-wows for conveying their health promotion messages to their peers. one of the adults in the room chimed in, stating, ‘ya, i do photography. that is not often seen as a traditional aboriginal art form, but what does it mean to be “authentically” aboriginal?’ not completely sure if he was satisfied with the answers he had received, the man sat back in his seat mulling over the responses. the discussions in this community exemplify the challenges between representations of indigenous identity and traditional and contemporary indigenous cultures. they highlight the ways in which indigenous identity is often thought to be synonymous with ‘static’, ‘primitive’ and ‘unchanging’ traditions that are often juxtaposed with ‘contemporary’ practices (king 2011). this vignette also demonstrates how indigenous identity expression has taken on political, historical, racial and nationalist signification and remains a site of much tension, both within and outside indigenous communities in canada. in this article, we explore (a) the ways indigenous youth involved in an hiv intervention take up and reclaim their cultures as a project of defining self, and (b) the way indigenous culture can be used as a tool for resistance, hiv prevention, and health ciann wilson vanessa oliver wilfrid laurier university sarah flicker york university native youth sexual health network tracey prentice university of victoria randy jackson mcmaster university june larkin jean-paul restoule university of toronto claudia mitchell mcgill university © 2016 by c wilson, v oliver, s flicker, native youth sexual health network, t prentice, r jackson, j larkin, j-p restoule & c mitchell. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: wilson, c, oliver, v, flicker, s, native youth sexual health network, prentice, t, jackson, r, larkin, j, restoule, j-p & mitchell, c 2016, ‘“culture” as hiv prevention: indigenous youth speak up!’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 74–88. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v9i1.4802 corresponding author: ciann wilson; ciann.wilson@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi.org/0.5130/ijcre. v9i1.4802 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 75 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell promotion more generally. here, we draw on simpson’s (2011) definition of culture as a series of interrelated processes (e.g. activities, ceremonies) that engage our full beings and require our full presence (mental, physical, spiritual, etc.) in order to survive, live full lives and grow. background tensions surrounding indigenous culture and identity are situated in the nation-building history of canada, in which racial classifications were layered upon legal definitions and were deemed necessary for socially constructing a ‘strong’ white settler society as superior to, and separate from, indigenous communities and other racial minorities (mawani 2002). the very existence of settler society and its stake in the ownership of land and resources were dependent on defining and legislating ‘aboriginality’ and maintaining a racial apartheid that defined who could lay claim to nationhood and access resources (banton 2000; das gupta 2009; furedi 2001; lawrence 2003; mawani 2002). towards this end, aboriginal identification (i.e. indian status) was made synonymous with race, blood quantum, prescriptive physical and phenotypic characteristics, and a political-legal relationship to the state (lawrence 2003). legislation like the indian act (which was enacted in 1876 with the goal of assimilation through institutions such as residential schools and land regulation) resulted in very real differences in the experiences of ‘nativeness’ in canada and exemplifies the countless ways indigenous identity has been highly politicised and embedded in systems of power along the intersections of race, gender and class (lawrence 2003). in this article, the terms ‘aboriginal’ ‘native’ and ‘indigenous’ are used interchangeably, reflective of the inconsistent use and broad disagreement on the legitimacy of appropriate labels for the identity of the first peoples of turtle island – an indigenous term used to refer to north america (adelson & olding 2013). the definition of the term ‘indigenous’ signifies descendants of peoples who originally inhabited a geographical region in pre-colonial times and maintain distinctive cultural, economic and political ties to their land (amadahy & lawrence 2009). it is important to note, however, that these legislated definitions were meaningless to indigenous nations prior to colonisation; they are thought to have homogenised hundreds of diverse indigenous tribes, nations and cultures; forcibly replaced traditional indigenous ways of identifying the self, which relied on a relationship to land, space, place and community identity; and afforded the canadian government substantial control over definitions of indigeneity (larocque 2011; lawrence 2003). the operation of historic and ongoing forms of systemic oppression and colonisation, such as racism and social, economic and political disenfranchisement, have not only resulted in contentious debates about definitions of indigenous identity and sovereignty, but have had an impact on every aspect of indigenous life, including health inequities. indigenous communities are over-represented in many poor health outcomes, including the hiv epidemic (adelson 2005; reading & wien 2009). aboriginal communities account for 4.3 per cent of the canadian population and yet account for 15.9 per cent of the reported hiv cases (public health agency of canada 2013). aboriginal youth are at greater risk than their nonaboriginal counterparts, with 32.6 per cent of the positive hiv test reports from 1998 to 2008 being among aboriginal youth aged 15–29, as compared with 20.5 per cent among those of other groups (public health agency of canada 2010). indigenous youth are also diagnosed with hiv and aids at younger ages (public health agency of canada 2010). existing health promotion practices in public health often focus on individual models of risk (flicker et al. 2014a). however, when left un-contextualised by the social determinants of health, ‘risk models’ and hiv statistics help to sensationalise stories about the primitive, ‘culturally backward’ native (or racialised other) who is unable to control his/her instincts, emotions and sexual desires (lawrence 2003, 2004; mawani 2002; richardson 2008). inherent to these dominant narratives is the portrayal of aboriginal (and racialised) bodies as public health hazards, vectors of disease and pollutants. indigenous people are thought to lack the knowledge and behavioural mannerisms of a ‘proper canadian’, the rational and collected white person who occupies a role of purity, authority and normalcy in dominant discourse (larocque 2011; richardson 2008). by contrast, contextualised models of health promotion understand health disparities as a direct consequence of compounding factors such as inequitable socio-geopolitical histories (flicker et al. 2014a; kaufman et al. 2007a; mcivor, napoleon & dickie 2009; ricci et al. 2009; steenbeek 2004; steenbeek et al. 2010). behaviour change interventions need to move beyond the individual to address interpersonal, social, environmental, cultural and structural factors, which can be potent forces in prevention efforts (devries et al. 2009; kaufman et al. 2007a; wilson & miller 2003). numerous studies have found that health and wellbeing are integrally connected to culture (fagan & mcdonell 2010; kaufman et al. 2007b; leston, jessen & simons 2012; mooneysomers et al. 2012; ricci et al. 2009; rushing & stephens 2012; wilson & miller 2003), and this is especially true for indigenous communities where culture and language act as buffers/protective factors against negative effects of risk (mcivor et al. 2009). many indigenous youth value working with and seeking counsel from trusted adults and elders as these approaches are holistic and build bridges for intergenerational communication and knowledge exchange (bouris et al. 2010; ricci et al. 2009). strategies that centre on cultural reclamation, reconnection and re-engagement can focus on the knowledge, skills, talents and capacities of youth, as well as highlight the preventive measures young people are already taking. these approaches are strengths based, promote 76 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell positive identity formation and counter stereotypes of the health issues facing indigenous communities by highlighting their resilience and ability to flourish (mooney-somers et al. 2012; restoule et al. 2010). in this article, we focus on how youth see and understand their culture in relation to their identities and health. we do so as a first step to reimagining hiv prevention possibilities that offer an alternative to conventional public health practice which seeks to isolate behaviours (e.g. condom use) from social, political and historical contexts. in doing so, we hope to offer a counter narrative to the ways in which health promotion can be achieved. methods arts-based approaches have been widely used in hiv research and health promotion inquiry and advocacy (catalani & minkler 2009; cole & knowles 2008; denzin & lincoln 2011; markus 2012; wang & burris 1997). following in this tradition, the taking action project: using arts-based approaches to develop aboriginal youth leadership in hiv prevention explored (a) the potential for using the arts to engage indigenous youth in hiv leadership and health promotion activism, and (b) how they linked structural inequality with individual risk through their art. in-depth methodological details are provided elsewhere (flicker et al. 2014a, b; oliver et al. 2015), however we provide a brief overview here (figure 1). the project underwent ethical review at the four participating universities (york, mcgill, mcmaster and the university of toronto); the study design was also reviewed by participating indigenous communities and, where appropriate, community consent was sought. we adopted a community-engaged, sex positive, strengthbased approach premised on the idea that indigenous youth are strong, resilient and knowledgeable, and many have the capacity required to be leaders in their communities. we hired, trained and supported youth coordinators from six different indigenous communities across canada to lead customised artsfigure 1: taking action methodology summary 77 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell based weekend workshops for their peers which explored the links between structural inequality and hiv (yee et al. 2010). each workshop offered a mix of traditional art-making activities such as carving, painting, throat singing and drumming, along with more contemporary art forms such as hip hop, theatre and photography. as the workshops happened sequentially, art created in one community was shared with subsequent sister communities to both spark dialogue about hiv and inspire the creative process. we also engaged in a variety of interactive games and activities to support hiv education, such as ‘sexual health bingo’, which simultaneously encouraged networking and discussions about hiv among workshop participants; ‘connect it!’ where, using post-its, participants wrote words they linked to hiv and colonisation and then tried to link them graphically; and condom-on-banana relays (yee et al. 2010). elders were available throughout the workshops as supports and ceremonial facilitators. elders are respected culturally knowledgeable individuals who are skilled at translating knowledge within communities (flicker et al. 2015). they provided ceremonial and ethical guidance to assist the research process (flicker et al. 2015). across the six communities, over 100 young people (aged 13–29) participated in art-making; 88 of these youth filled out demographic surveys and consent forms, and 70 subsequently participated in private 1:1 in-depth follow-up interviews conducted by the research team to reflect on their experiences (six to eight weeks after the workshops). youth were provided with free meals and art supplies at the workshop and received a $20 honorarium for participating in the follow-up interview. interviews focused on how they felt about the workshop, their understandings of the reasons for the elevated rates of hiv among aboriginal youth and what could be done about it, and their thoughts on the art pieces created at the workshop. all interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. this article draws on the data derived from these interviews. data were coded using nvivo qualitative data management software by a team of five graduate students, who received group training from the principal investigator on how to thematically code data in accordance with the codebook collaboratively created by the research team (flicker & nixon 2014). students worked in pairs to review paper copies of transcripts, cut them up with scissors, and organise excerpts according to the codebook categories. coded data were then analysed and discussed in a collaborative participatory fashion at a retreat in which all coinvestigators and the six youth coordinators participated. the analysis presented below reflects discussions around the major ‘culture’ code. the project team operationalised the ownership, control, access and possession (ocap®) principles – a protocol that supports aboriginal self-determination and ownership over all research concerning aboriginal people (first nations centre 2007; http://fnigc.ca/ocap.html). participants had full ownership of their 78 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell artwork and consented to its reproduction and sharing in print and online formats. additionally, a ‘youth story’ manual was created by the youth coordinators and shared with their communities at local community events. limitations our sample was self-selected. it is possible that only those youth leaders interested in art and/or hiv volunteered to participate. as a result, care must be taken in interpreting results. culture-based interventions may not work for all indigenous youth in all contexts. however, we worked with a diverse cross-section of young people from various cultures, regions and walks of life (often voices that are rarely heard) that overwhelmingly supported this approach. results aboriginal identity and cultural reclamation drawing on data from the youth interviews, we foreground the voices of young people as they explain the role of their identities, and particularly culture, in their narratives of self-affirmation, health, healing and wellbeing. for some youth, their identity was linked to race and legislated ideas of indigeneity such as status cards. this was often directly connected to their ancestry, their appearance and (in)ability to ‘pass’ or ‘look’ aboriginal. when i was younger, it used to bug me a lot, like not looking aboriginal, like on reserve and stuff. but now i am more confident in my identity … i started getting more involved in the traditional and ceremonial stuff, i was like, i know i am aboriginal, like i have my indian status in my wallet, so i am not worried about that. however, as described in the quote above, for many youth being aboriginal was much more than simply appearance, blood quantum or status card. it also related to the importance that culture played in identity formation, as a continuous and ongoing process. as one youth described: if you forget the stories and songs, we forget the past. and if we forget the past, then there’s no history. if there’s no history then there can’t be a future. the complexity of culture for youth participants, culture was a complex construct that included reconnecting to their land, body, history, family, community, language, tradition and ceremony, among other elements. table 1 provides a more detailed look at the ways in which participants took up and defined the importance of culture. many youth regarded elders as integral stewards for imparting, teaching and disseminating culture and traditional ways of knowing and doing to the younger generation. some youth spoke passionately about the personal importance, impact and pride of being involved in cultural practices, events and ceremonies. others talked about learning their language as important for 79 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell intergenerational healing, empowerment, staying healthy, and combatting ills like hiv and substance use (see table 1). theme examples elders as knowledge keepers ‘we should talk to our elders about more because they have our culture and tradition and we need to learn it more because really, that is the future.’ ‘we see how our grandparents were raised: they were in the snow, they were in the canoes, they were cutting fish and everything like that and then the next … generation had screens and tvs and everything like that and they were not on the land and they were not being taught the same morals.’ ‘we have to get our culture back we have to find some other spiritual strength that our ancestors had. in order to do that we need to go back to the land, yes the land, it’s all important.’ learning language and culture ‘i want to learn native language. i want to be able to speak it, i just want to learn it. like i am more into it than i was before.’ ‘i want to learn more stuff about my culture because i’m in a different school now and we can’t learn anything because there’s no mi’kmaq classes. so, i want to, somehow, like, get to know more about my culture and stuff.’ ‘yeah, so yeah, i am really in touch with it, i go to longhouse and festivals and stuff like that and i was named in the longhouse. i am really in touch with it, i am not fluent in the language but i would really like to be.’ ‘culture is important because in our culture you can understand the language and what they are saying when they’re drumming, like information about hiv and stuff like that.’ art as culture ‘art is part of our culture or just part of any culture really: it actually is culture.’ ‘because [the hip hop song] … just catches you, catches your attention … because mostly everybody on the reserve listens to music.’ ‘like, i like traditional aboriginal art, i have always found it especially beautiful and interesting. maybe something inherited.’ ‘lots of people look at art, especially native people, because they have, like, really unique art styles.’ table 1: the importance of culture 80 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell culture and wellbeing ‘because people will be, like, i wish i could remember my culture and then start like going out with friends and family hunting and stuff and it will cut down on drinking and all that a little bit, and then they will be like just yeah.’ ‘yeah, [ceremony] gets your mind off doing things like drugs and alcohol and hanging out with your own crowd. you get to learn more.’ ‘i like doing cultural things like fishing, cleaning some fish that my grandma catches. helping her with stuff like that and yeah. because your mind will be set on, like, to do something good for your culture [not] destroying it by drinking.’ ‘culture can tell you how to keep your body healthy, like through praying and other medicines.’ ‘get more involved in culture, medicine, keeping the body healthy, and not, like, learning it is not cool to party and stuff.’ culture, sexuality and prevention ‘way back in our youth, we would be educated about our sexuality. so i think just like going back to having the facts, being educated at a young age … yeah, i think that, if [we] were still in our culture then we would not have that much, like our numbers wouldn’t be out there, we would be doing our traditions of what we do.’ ‘people with culture they try to get it away so there would be a separation of culture and hiv when you are talking to them, but i don’t think that should be because i think culture should be an emphasis on what it means to be like a human.’ ‘culture is a big deal because if you know about your culture you will respect your body more rather than not knowing anything and doing whatever you see or hear people do.’ ‘i was talking to my auntie who is in a fasting camp. and she mentioned that, like, way back before like colonization, that people were really frank about sexuality and that they thought that that was the best way to protect people because then they knew like, they knew the facts. and i think that is important also.’ central to the conversation about culture and sexual health was that the youth had a very good understanding of the role colonialism played in suppressing conversations about sex and sexuality, which otherwise would have been normalised conversations and topics that reaffirmed self-knowing in their traditions. a number of youth resisted dominant narratives and conceptions of aboriginal culture as being static and unchanging. they discussed the importance of art as a medium for selfexpression and an important example of the fluidity and 81 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell malleability of aboriginal cultures and traditions that are able to evolve to incorporate new ways of knowing and doing, such as video-making and photography. although youth placed great importance on and pride in their cultures, many discussed the detrimental impact of colonialism, the residential school system and assimilation on their cultures, communities and lived realities. these factors and processes often contributed to their inability to piece together fragmented narratives about silenced histories, cultures, traditions, languages and knowledges. um, i learned that a big part of the reason why a lot of us lost our language was cause they – we weren’t allowed to speak it in the residential schools and they would get, like, whipped or whatever if they tried to talk our language – and then, that’s kind of a reason why we lost it. and, that’s pretty bad, cause a lot of people don’t know how to speak their language. furthermore, some youth made complex connections between these colonial processes and the ongoing challenges their communities face, including the spread of hiv among aboriginal peoples. i guess in a way residential schools … all that physical, sexual and mental abuse and then when we were able to go home they did not know much of the culture anymore and they just felt like crap, i guess, and then they went to alcohol and drugs, i guess, and yeah. the problem with aboriginal people is just like the isolation that they have to go through: isolation from each other, from their communities, from their traditional ways. i think that can have all sorts of negative repercussions, and i think that hiv is one of them. many of the youth participants felt that coming together and having an opportunity to engage, reclaim, redefine and reimagine their culture and heritage was not only important for their positive identity formation, but was also a ‘good way’ to talk about hiv prevention. discussion youth expressed frustrations with the role of colonial processes in silencing, fragmenting and erasing aspects of their cultures, histories, traditions, languages and knowledges. many connected this erasure to the social and health ills prevalent in their communities, including hiv. as demonstrated in table 1, youth understood how colonisation resulted in social isolation, the breakdown of community and familial connections that are vital for living in a good way, the loss of language and cultural knowledge, and increased substance use. colonialism has led to legislative attacks on every aspect of indigenous life, including spiritual and ceremonial life, cultural genocide through assimilation in the residential school system, and indigenous ownership of land (mikkonen & raphael 2010; simpson 2004). 82 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell 83 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell identifying these factors and the resulting traumatic stress is critical for understanding the historical and contemporary health crises of indigenous peoples in canada. for instance, when it comes to the sexual health of aboriginal communities, many of the ‘high-risk’ behaviours that are displayed by some indigenous people are linked to intergenerational trauma (and sexual trauma more specifically), unresolved grief, and the shaming of sexuality and cultural identity – much of which is a legacy of the residential school system, as depicted in the narrative accounts of the youth (mitchell & maracle 2005). the intergenerational trauma of colonisation is a determinant of health with grave implications for the overall health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples, resulting in increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic illnesses (czyzewski 2011; larocque 2011; lawrence 2004; simpson 2004). the narratives of cultural pride shared by the youth are important because they mark a counter-discourse that does not centre on grief and colonisation. much like the responses of the youth who challenged their elders’ ideas of authentic indigenous identity at our feedback session in kahnawà:ke, these narratives are framed around resistance, resilience, self-determination and self-definition. overwhelmingly, the youth located their identities in cultural survival rather than a legislated national identity or racial identification. further, for many youth, indigenous culture and identity was understood as being fluid and open to evolution, change, and the incorporation of new art forms and mediums for expression and understanding the self. the youth conceived of identity and culture as processes one could learn and re-learn, build and re-build, as well as redefine to reflect cultural practices and art forms, such as hip hop and film, with which they are familiar. while such cultural identifications may seem arbitrary to some (nederveen pieterse 1992), they offer us a starting place that focuses on strengths (rather than the dominant narratives of deficits) within indigenous communities. narratives where youth believe they have the power to shape, challenge, reclaim and create new cultural norms and traditions that fit with their own personal and communal visions for change are particularly empowering. many youth viewed reclaiming their cultures as key to combating hiv because traditional practices teach values like respect for and knowledge about one’s body, healthy sexuality, sexual pride, and living a balanced life (simpson 2009). in other words, for these youth, culture serves as a protective factor against risks of health ills such as hiv (mcivor, nepoleon & dickie 2009). many of the youth discussed how participation in cultural practices was important for their self-conception, empowerment and healing, as well as transmitting information about hiv and keeping them engaged in something affirming to their identities, while distracting them from harmful activities such as substance use. towards this end, many youth spoke excitedly of their attempts to learn and reclaim their languages and cultures despite barriers. reclaiming indigenous cultures, stories, languages 84 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell and ceremonies helps to nurture the hearts and minds of future generations, as it teaches youth that it is ‘ok to be indian’ (simpson 2011). this is integral to ending the cycles of victimisation, perpetuated through dominant narratives of colonial abuse, and combatting hopelessness by reconnecting indigenous peoples to stories of resistance and survival. reclaiming is the ultimate form of decolonisation: it can include processes such as storytelling, language speaking, ceremony, singing, dancing and doing (simpson 2009). conclusion our research process and findings show that the incorporation of culture, community, history and tradition is important for effective hiv prevention and health promotion initiatives for aboriginal youth. equally important are approaches that are: a) strengths-based; b) sex positive – encouraging informed and candid conversations about sexual health among youth and trusted adults; c) culturally safe (mooney-somers et al. 2012; ricci et al. 2009; rushing & stephens 2012); and d) incorporate indigenous models of health promotion (mikhailovich, morrison & arabena 2007). these approaches can aid in creating strategies that move beyond individual behaviour change models. individual and community health are vastly interconnected, so health interventions that focus on individual behaviour models of hiv risk, while failing to address the long-term impact of social, political and economic domination, and cultural genocide experienced by indigenous communities are problematic and inadequate (anderson 2011; mitchell & maracle 2005). there is a need for collective healing within indigenous communities based on self-determination, intergenerational connections, and traditional and cultural ways of knowing and doing (anderson 2011). towards this end, a level of cooperation between health service providers, community members and traditional healers needs to be established (kaufman et al. 2007a; steenbeek et al. 2010). aboriginal community members know best the needs of their communities and should be a central part of leading the development of sexual health service delivery and needs assessment (ricci et al. 2009; steenbeek 2004; steenbeek et al. 2010; thompson, greville & param 2008). lastly, this work may be useful in research and activist spaces beyond the canadian context where indigenous peoples have experienced similar forms of structural violence. references adelson, n 2005, ‘the embodiment of inequity’, canadian journal of public health, vol. 96. adelson, n, olding, m 2013, ‘narrating aboriginality on-line: digital storytelling, identity and healing’, the journal of community informatics, vol. 9, no. 2. amadahy, z & lawrence, b 2009, ‘indigenous peoples and black people in canada: settlers or allies’, in a kempf, breaching the colonial contract: anti85 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell colonialism in the us and canada, springer, pp. 105–36. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9944-1_7 anderson, k 2011, ‘life stages and native women memory, teachings, and story medicine’, university of manitoba press, winnipeg, mb. banton, m 2000, ‘the idiom of race: a critique of presentism’, in l back & j solomos, theories of race and racism: a reader, routledge, london and new york. bouris, a, guilamo-ramos, v, jaccard, j, mccoy, w, aranda, d, pickard, a & boyer, c 2010, ‘the feasibility of a clinic-based parent intervention to prevent hiv, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies among latino and african american adolescents’, aids patient care stds, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 381–87, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/apc.2009.0308 catalani, c & minkler, m 2009, ‘photovoice: a review of the literature in health and public health’, health education & behavior, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 424–51, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1090198109342084 cole, a & knowles, j 2008, ‘arts-informed research’, in j knowles & a cole, handbook of the arts in qualitative research, pp. 55–70. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.n5 czyzewski, k 2011, ‘colonialism as a broader social determinant of health’, the international indigenous policy journal, vol. 2, pp. 1–16. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2011.2.1.5 das gupta, t 2009, real nurses and others: racism in nursing, fernwood press, halifax, ma. denzin, n & lincoln, y 2011, the sage handbook of qualitative research, sage, thousand oaks, ca. devries, k, free, c, morison, l & saewyc, e 2009, ‘factors associated with the sexual behavior of canadian aboriginal young people and their implications for health promotion’, american journal of public health, vol. 99, no. 5, pp. 855–62. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2007.132597 fagan, p & mcdonell, p 2010, ‘knowledge, attitudes and behaviours in relation to safe sex, sexually transmitted infections (sti) and hiv/aids among remote living north queensland youth’, australian and new zealand journal of public health, vol. 34, suppl., pp. 52–56s, doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1753-6405.2010.00554.x first nations centre 2007, ownership, control, access and possession: sanctioned by the first nations information governance committee, assembly of first nations, national aboriginal health organization (naho), ottawa, on. flicker, s 2012, taking action! art and aboriginal youth leadership for hiv prevention, toronto, on. flicker, s, native youth sexual health network, wilson, c, oliver, v, jackson, r, prentice, t, larkin, j, restoule, j-p & mitchell, c 2014a, ‘because we are natives and we stand strong to our pride: decolonizing hiv prevention with aboriginal youth in canada using the arts’, canadian journal of aboriginal community-based hiv/aids research, vol. 5, pp. 4–24. flicker, s, native youth sexual health network, oliver, v, wilson, c, jackson, r, prentice, t, larkin, j, restoule, j-p & mitchell, c 2014b, ‘“because we have really unique art”: decolonizing research with indigenous youth using the arts’, international journal of indigenous health, vol. 10, iss. 1, pp. 16–34. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18357/ijih.101201513271 86 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell flicker, s & nixon, s 2014, ‘the depict model for participatory qualitative health promotion research analysis piloted in canada, zambia and south africa’, health promotion international, vol. 10, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ heapro/dat093 flicker, s, o’campo, p, monchalin, r, thistle, j, worthington, c, masching, r, guta, a, pooyak, s, whitebird, w & thomas, c 2015, ‘research done in “a good way”: the importance of indigenous elder involvement in hiv community-based research’, american journal of public health, vol. 105, no. 6, pp. 1049–54. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ ajph.2014.302522 furedi, f 2001, ‘how sociology imagined “mixed race”’, in m song & d parker (eds), rethinking “mixed race”, pluto press, london. kaufman, c, desserich, j, big crow, c, holy rock, b, keane, e & mitchell, c 2007a, ‘culture, context, and sexual risk among northern plains american indian youth’, social science & medicine, vol. 64, iss. 10, pp. 2152–64, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.02.003 kaufman, c, shelby, l, mosure, d, marrazzo, j, wong, d, de ravello, l, rushing, s, warren-mears, v, neel, l, jumping eagle, s, tulloch, s, romero, f, patrick, s & cheek, j, 2007b, ‘within the hidden epidemic: sexually transmitted diseases and hiv/aids among american indians and alaska natives’, sexually transmitted diseases, vol. 34, iss. 10, pp. 767–77, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/01.olq.0000260915.64098.cb king, t 2011, the truth about stories: a native narrative, house of anansi, toronto, on. larocque, e 2011, when the other is me: native resistance discourse, 1850– 1990. university of manitoba press, winnipeg, mb. lawrence, b 2003, ‘gender, race, and the regulation of native identity in canada and the united states: an overview’, hypatia, vol. 18, iss. 2, pp. 3–31. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2003.tb00799.x lawrence, b 2004, ‘real’ indians and other mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood, university of nebraska press, lincoln, ne. leston, j, jessen, c & simons, b 2012, ‘alaska native and rural youth views of sexual health: a focus group project on sexually transmitted diseases, hiv/aids, and unplanned pregnancy’, american indian alaska native mental health research journal, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1–14. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.5820/aian.1901.2012.1 markus, s 2012, ‘photovoice for healthy relationships: community-based participatory hiv prevention in a rural american indian community’, american indian alaska native mental health research journal, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 102–23. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5820/aian.1901.2012.102 mawani, r 2002, ‘in between and out of place: mixed-race identity, liquor and the law in british columbia, 1850–1913’, in s razack, race, space and the law: unmapping a white settler society, between the lines, toronto, on, pp. 47–69. mcivor, o, nepoleon, a & dickie, k 2009, ‘language and culture as protective factors for at-risk communities’, journal of aboriginal health, november. mikhailovich, k, morrison, p & arabena, k 2007, ‘evaluating australian indigenous community health promotion initiatives: a selective review’, rural remote health, vol. 7, p. 746. 87 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell mikkonen, j & raphael, d 2010, social determinants of health: the canadian facts, york university school of health policy and management, toronto, on. mitchell, t & maracle, d 2005, ‘healing the generations: post-traumatic stress and the health status of aboriginal populations in canada’, journal of aboriginal health, vol. 2, iss. 1, 15 march. mooney-somers, j, olsen, a, erick, w, scott, r, akee, a & maher, l 2012, ‘young indigenous australians’ sexually transmitted infection prevention practices: a community-based participatory research project’, journal of community applied social psychology, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 519–32, doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1002/casp.1134 native youth sexual health network, heaslip, a, proudfoot, d & flicker, s 2010, taking action youth coordinator manual: art and aboriginal youth leadership for hiv prevention. nederveen pieterse, j 1992, white on black: images of africa and blacks in western popular culture, yale university press, new haven, ct. oliver, v, flicker, s, native youth sexual health network, wilson, c, jackson, r, prentice, t, larkin, j, restoule, j-p & mitchell, c 2015, ‘“women are supposed to be the leaders”: the intersections of gender, race and colonization in hiv prevention with indigenous youth’, culture health and sexuality journal, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 906–19. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.10 80/13691058.2015.1009170 public health agency of canada 2010, ‘hiv/aids among youth in canada’, hiv/aids epi update, viewed 11 june 2016, www.phac-aspc. gc.ca/aids-sida/publication/epi/2010/index-eng.php. public health agency of canada 2013, hiv and aids in canada: surveillance report to december 31st, 2013, viewed 5 september 2015, www. phac-aspc.gc.ca/aids-sida/publication/survreport/2013/dec/index-eng. php. reading, c & wien, f 2009, health inequalities and the social determinants of aboriginal peoples’ health, national collaborating centre for aboriginal health, prince george, bc. restoule, j-p, mcgee, a, flicker, s, larkin, j & smillie-adjarkwa, c 2010, ‘suit the situation: comparing urban and on-reserve aboriginal youth preferences for effective hiv prevention messaging’, the canadian journal of aboriginal community-based hiv/aids research, vol. 3, pp. 5–16. ricci, c, flicker, s, jalon, o, jackson, r & smillie-adjarkwa, c 2009, ‘hiv prevention with aboriginal youth: a global scoping review’, the canadian journal of aboriginal community-based hiv/aids research, vol. 2, pp. 25–37. richardson, c 2008, ‘canada’s toughest neighbourood’: surveillance, myth and orientalism in jane-finch, brock university, st catharines, on. rushing, c & stephens, d 2012, ‘tribal recommendations for designing culturally appropriate technology based sexual health interventions targeting native youth in the pacific northwest’, american indian alaska native mental health research journal, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 76–101. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.5820/aian.1901.2012.76 simpson, l 2004, ‘anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of indigenous knowledge’, american indian quarterly, vol. 28, nos 3–4, pp. 373–84, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0107 simpson, l, 2009, lighting the eighth fire: the liberation, resurgence, and protection of indigenous nations, arbeiter ring, winnipeg, mb. 88 | gateways | wilson, oliver, flicker, nyshn, prentice, jackson, larkin, restoule & mitchell simpson, l 2011, dancing on our turtle’s back: stories of nishnaabeg recreation, resurgence and a new emergence, arbeiter ring, winnipeg, mb. steenbeek, a 2004, ‘empowering health promotion: a holistic approach in preventing sexually transmitted infections among first nations and inuit adolescents in canada’, journal of holistic nursing, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 254–266, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0898010104266714 steenbeek, a, amirault, m, saulnier, g & morris, c 2010, ‘strengthening community-based approaches to hiv/aids & sti screening, treatment & prevention among atlantic first nations people, canadian journal of aboriginal commuinty-based hiv/aids research, vol. 3, pp. 41–56. thompson, s, greville, h & param, r 2008, ‘beyond policy and planning to practice: getting sexual health on the agenda in aboriginal communities in western australia’, australian and new zealand health policy, vol. 5, no. 3, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-8462-5-3 wang, c & burris, m 1997, ‘photovoice: concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment’, health education and behavior, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 369–87, doi:10.1177/109019819702400309. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/109019819702400309 wilson, b & miller, r 2003, ‘examining strategies for culturally grounded hiv prevention: a review’, aids education and prevention, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 184–202. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/aeap.15.3.184.23838 program evaluation as community-engaged research challenges and solutions much of the thinking that has shaped our understanding of community-engaged research has its roots in the intellectual résistance of the early 20th century to the domination and permeation of the positivist imagination into our ways of knowing, talking about and interacting with the world. since then, positivism’s vision of a singular source and mode of knowledge, accessed, secured and enriched only through carefully guarded instruments and methodologies, has been systematically assaulted by social theorists at two major points. at the first of these, adherents of the critical theory tradition have attacked the tendency of positivist models to reduce diversity and complexity in the social world to rationalised taxonomies and empirically observed social ‘facts’, querying the possibility of their ‘objective’ observation and even disputing their very existence. elsewhere, cultural and political theorists have exposed the myriad ways in which positivist epistemologies preserve and rely upon systems of bureaucratic control, sustaining the privileges of the elite and entrenching social stratification and inequality. these critiques, intellectual progenitors of post-modernist epistemologies, instead seek to promote plural and local forms of knowledge and envisage sociological research as a function of emancipation. their authors, from michel foucault to edward said, have inspired a re-imagination of research as a collaborative, inclusive and impact-driven process that acknowledges the role of knowledge creation in the establishment, preservation or disestablishment of the latent power relationships that sustain disadvantage and social division. in the hands of critical pedagogists such as paulo freire and henry giroux, this epistemological tradition became a tool for those committed to the empowerment of the disempowered, the granting of voice to the unheard, and the inclusion of the excluded. theories of community-engaged research emerged from within this tradition as an approach to research conducted in community contexts, and encouraged the development of collaborative strategies for advancing community wellbeing, in so doing seeking to foster gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 118–38 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 richard reed macquarie university 119 | gateways | reed and support partnerships between ‘researchers’ and ‘researched’ characterised by two-way learning built on a commitment to knowledge exchange and mutual respect and recognition. despite being a tool for understanding impact and effectiveness, evaluative research into community-based programs has not always taken this approach. indeed, for those whose programs or activities are ‘under evaluation’ it might give the impression of reinforcing control rather than advancing collaboration, equity, mutual learning or any other emancipatory outcome. in part, this is an inevitable consequence of differences and disagreements vis-a-vis evaluation terminologies, methodologies and strategies. on the face of it, evaluation has a number of broad goals, serving principally to guide program development, support institutional planning and enhance accountability. in practice, the weighting or priority these goals receive depends hugely on context. in considering the relationship between evaluation and the principles of community-engaged research, we also need to think briefly about an important semantic question. the extant body of literature on evaluation practice implies some degree of consensus that evaluation, in non-academic contexts, employs unique techniques that set it apart from other forms of social research – and thus that there may be a clear difference between evaluation and evaluative research. to an extent this is undeniably true – the methods evaluation deploys are often focused first and foremost on delivering findings that are useable and have practical applications; this often requires ‘compromising’ on traditional concerns for research quality vis-a-vis data validity in order to address certain professional and practical expediencies. notwithstanding the emergence of quite different languages and approaches, however, to some degree this is also something of a false dichotomy, one that has emerged from and speaks to differences in professional positioning and structures rather than fundamentally different methods, values or goals. while recognising this is still a live debate, for the purposes of this present article i assume a degree of interchangeability between the terms evaluation and evaluative research. i therefore urge the reader to see beyond any language that suggests an alignment with one mode over the other to the conceptual and practical issues that are important considerations for all modes and forms of evaluation. from this premise i advance the contention that evaluative research into social interventions can – and indeed should – be both conceptualised and operationalised as engaged research committed to effecting positive social change. the article frames its reflections in the context of evaluative research into a number of outreach programs at macquarie university, sydney, targeted at school students and community members from backgrounds that are underrepresented within australia’s higher education student population. the article illustrates ways in which evaluative research can be conceived of in terms of community 120 | gateways | reed engagement by mapping research strategies against two influential models of community engagement. it then reflects on some of the challenges in implementing these ideal practices within the context of evaluative research, recognising that the challenges and opportunities that have arisen during this evaluative research reinforce the conclusion that such models can only provide aspirational targets. in this sense, the appropriate moral and professional framework for such research is one that combines a commitment to engagement with a reflexive, adaptable, pragmatic and above all iterative approach to methodology and stakeholder relations. background: evaluating outreach activities the evaluative research upon which the reflections in this article are based focused on seven educational interventions led by macquarie university professional and academic staff. these programs are part of a broad portfolio of activities at macquarie funded by the federal government’s higher education participation and partnerships program, a tranche of bespoke funding initially conceived as a response to a review of australia’s higher education system in 2008 that identified the disproportionately low participation of a number of societal groups in higher education, including individuals from low socioeconomic, aboriginal, and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. collectively, the macquarie programs have identified a number of critical objectives to assist the goal of ensuring that the representation of these groups in higher education corresponds to their demographic representation within the broader population, including raising ambitions and aspirations, increasing capacity and skills, and tackling structural disadvantage. in order to assess progress against these aims, in 2012 macquarie commissioned evaluative research to complement existing reporting and monitoring exercises and develop strategic understanding of the programs’ impacts. this evaluation consisted of both formative and summative components and produced five principal outcomes: 1 in its formative aspect, the evaluation provided a ‘reflective space’ in which evaluators were able to work with program facilitators to help identify appropriate, evidence-based improvements. the evaluation sought to explain not just what the impact had been, but also how that impact was achieved, allowing program facilitators to build on the successes and strengths of individual programs and to address critical weaknesses. 2 the research findings supported strategic decision-making around the university’s social inclusion and widening participation strategies. 3 by contributing to various reporting processes, the evaluation supported efforts to ensure the university meets its legal accountability and transparency requirements. 121 | gateways | reed 4 the evaluation helped to construct an evidence base on the impact of social inclusion activities, thus building a case for the continuation of funding and public support and interest. 5 the evaluation contributed to general knowledge concerning disadvantaged students from a range of backgrounds and the barriers they face in accessing higher education. the collection and analysis of data was guided by a theoretical and methodological framework that fused current best practice in evaluative research with the specific aims and objectives of the program. the evaluation was holistic in scope, intended to gather triangulated data but also to uncover evidence of how impact is often mediated by the relationship between and contributions of the various stakeholders in the program. evaluation as community-engaged research although the increasing demand for accountability and transparency of publicly funded social interventions has inspired a focus on summative evaluation (shah, nair & wilson 2011), the relatively developmental character of many of the programs under assessment at macquarie (as well as the portfolio to which they belonged) meant it was important to give equal attention to formative aspects of the process. formative evaluation accrues a number of benefits above and beyond those of summative evaluation; in the present case it was anticipated that it would facilitate learning and program development (harris, jones & coutts 2010; nesman, batsche & hernandez 2007), as well as build evaluative and reflexive capacity – critical given the limited duration of the evaluative research (preskill & boyle 2008; smeal, southwell & locke 2011). formative evaluation, of course, is also particularly conducive to participatory methods and models of engaged research (harris, jones & coutts 2010; hashimoto, pillay & hudson 2010; stoner et al. 2012). however, the research also advanced from a recognition of the potential for top–down disengaged research to extend and deepen entrenched disadvantage, and thus a failure to engage would risk working against the goals of the programs it was seeking to assess. there were a number of additional reasons why the principles of engaged research were seen as crucial to this evaluation project. the exchange of knowledge facilitated by collaborative partnerships is critical to ensuring that evaluative practice is directly informed by the reality of conditions on the ground. procuring the wisdom of multiple perspectives and the intimate knowledge of program development is key to the development of effective, efficient, ethically sound and minimally disruptive evaluation instruments. it should also not be overlooked that the trust engendered by the good relationships created as part of engaged research practice ultimately enhances the possibility of more intimate and accurate testimony from research participants who understand and buy into the function and purposes of the research. however, we would do well to recognise that, while 122 | gateways | reed partnerships characterised by high levels of trust are likely to provide more intimate testimony, better understanding of the rationale and direction of the research project may also lead to a bias in results as research participants provide answers in interviews and focus groups they feel the researcher wants to hear. in creating the conditions and building the relationships that enable and sustain knowledge exchange, engaged research also facilitates the building of capacity (evaluative capacity, in this case). external evaluation is rarely cheap, even where it is readily available. moreover, whatever expertise or putative objectivity external evaluation brings to the table, it takes time for the evaluators to familiarise themselves with evaluated projects, and requires effective communication on an ongoing basis to ensure researchers are aware of developments in the program under evaluation. the inevitable distance of the external researcher from the program also means that there is a constant risk that evaluation findings are misaligned with program objectives or otherwise misrepresent the work under evaluation. internal evaluation, by contrast, drastically reduces the risk of this disconnect because it is informed by professional experience in the program. for these reasons a number of authors have argued that best evaluative practice by necessity should include a capacity-building component. again, engaged research with a focus on the building of collaborative relationships characterised by trust, mutual learning and knowledge exchange are plainly the best vehicles for this process (nesman, batsche & hernandez 2007; oliver et al. 2002; preskil & boyle 2008; ryan, chandler & samuels 2007; smeal, southwell & locke 2011). from the outset, therefore, the evaluative research at macquarie envisaged engaged methodologies as critical to its success, thus embedding a commitment to collaboration in the key research stages of design, implementation, iteration, analysis and dissemination. the research identified individual program staff, principals and senior teaching and support staff in schools, and parents and community representatives as key stakeholders and, as far as possible, encouraged and presented opportunities for these stakeholders to contribute to research processes. the inclusion of stakeholder voices at every stage of the research was also intended to ensure that the findings of the evaluation were a product of the authentic integration of multiple areas of expertise and local knowledge, brought together within and through the research process. this input would help to maximise the research’s potential to empower its participants to make informed decisions about program improvements and professional or pedagogic practices, and to equip its participants with a collaboratively constructed evidence base to support program sustainability and advocacy efforts. with these considerations in mind, due thought was given from the outset to how theories of community engagement might support the development of engaged and inclusive research strategies and methodologies for the macquarie evaluation. 123 | gateways | reed this was not a simple proposition: the current literature on community engagement is emergent rather than established, and the frameworks that do exist are varied in quality, detail, scope and applicability. nevertheless, it is possible to discern some points of consensus within the extant body of scholarship, and evaluative research has integrated three core objectives within its various stages sourced from this literature: (1) empowerment of program stakeholders; (2) democratisation of knowledge; and (3) effecting social change. additionally, two of the better known communityengaged research models have been useful for conceptualising and operationalising the engaged intent at the heart of evaluative research: arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation (arnstein 1969; see figure 1), and the more recent five-point framework developed by the international association for public participation (iapp) 2014; compare also sarrami foroushani et al. 2012; see figure 2). both models share a common vision of community-engaged research falling somewhere along a continuum – from top–down, autocratic and non-participatory approaches at one end to fully democratic, inclusive and synthetical modes of research at the other (bowen, newenham-kahindi & herremans 2010; russell et al. 2008). citizen power citizen control —enabling informed decisionmaking to enhance future practice —facilitating advocacy —evaluative capacity delegated power —joint decision-making —inclusion in methodology —responsibility for some dissemination partnership —collaborative design —presentation of findings —joint responsibility —shared credit tokenism placation —agreement on methodology (e.g. timing, location, extent) consultation —ascertain boundaries, existing practices, potential challenges —agree consent informing —nature of research project, aims, objectives, scope, anticipated roles nonparticipation therapy manipulation figure 1: national indigenous science education program evaluation mapped against arnstein’s ladder (1969) 124 | gateways | reed in combination, these models were used in the macquarie evaluation as frameworks to guide engagement and inform matters of timing, scope, audiences and methods for engagement. collaboration was key throughout: during the design phase, for instance, stakeholders were initially identified and consulted to ensure the process of framing the project was informed by a range of stakeholder views (harris, jones & coutts 2010) and the particular requirements and reality of the program (lawrenz & huffman 2003). this was followed by an initial design phase that involved further consultations around matters of methodology and anticipated implementation; during this stage, and subsequent iterative design stages, stakeholders were asked to comment on proposed interview schedules and to contribute questions of their own that would provide useful information in their professional development. the stakeholders were also critical in the implementation stage. not only did they broker contacts between the researchers and the program participants, but in line with the ambition to raise evaluative capacity they were also directly involved in the data collection (though decisions in this regard also had to be balanced with matters of research ethics and data integrity). finally, stakeholders were involved on an ongoing basis in the dissemination of the research findings. in one case, for example, the researchers worked closely with both the macquarie-based program team and principals and head science teachers in a number of schools in western sydney involved in a science outreach program to devise strategies for disseminating the research findings as professional development for teaching staff. elsewhere, during evaluations of the university’s scholarship schemes and a mentorship program in partnership with a national figure 2: evaluative research against the five ‘goals’ of community engagement 125 | gateways | reed media organisation, program staff were able to identify critical audiences for dissemination, in addition to leading or advising dissemination practices as appropriate. mitigating impact notwithstanding these aspirations, there were a number of challenges that inhibited the evaluation’s success in realising this idealised framework on the ground. figure 3 provides a visual representation of some of the key issues: it imagines a series of challenges and opportunities that collectively constitute ‘intervening factors’ that mediated the impact of the evaluation as an engaged project. the challenges the evaluative research faced varied tremendously, from those that were relatively easily overcome to those that required significant compromises. many of these problems were anticipated as part of an initial risk identification and management process, but this itself became an evolving strategy as the initial approaches adopted to minimise these risks proved unsuccessful or insufficient. these challenges may be usefully considered within the framework of five broad categories: definition, paradigm, participation, resources and governance. challenges of definition concerned issues of boundaries and inclusion. one of the core challenges of engaged research into the sorts of large multi-agency projects included in this evaluation was the difficulty in identifying the full range of stakeholders (that is, the targets for engagement). the programs under evaluation all involved a number of groups and individuals who could be legitimately considered stakeholders based on their capacity to affect or be affected by the programs (e.g. see bryson 2004, p. 22), foremost among whom were program funders and coordinators, in addition to a range of teachers, school administrative and support staff, community representatives, parents, school and university student participants, and volunteers. in some cases, however, identifying the stakeholders was less straightforward. the national indigenous science education program (nisep), for instance, involves training school students to present scientific figure 3: the mitigation of impact: challenges and opportunities 126 | gateways | reed experiments to their peers, which raised the questions: how should we be thinking about the stake in the program of those observing the experiments? what about the teachers responsible for these students? more problematically, as the programs under evaluation evolved and developed during the course of the evaluation, so too did the size and nature of individuals’ stakes in the programs, resulting in arguments for the inclusion of others in this circle who were not part of the initial engagements. this prompted the broader question: how do we respond when the size of the stake changes as individuals or groups join or leave programs, or as the program develops? paradigm challenges are those that arise as an inevitable result of the need to synthesise divergent forms of knowledge and professional practice. they are perhaps the most complex and intractable issues to negotiate, as they can involve issues of longstanding unequal power relationships between alternative sets of beliefs and professional or community practices. many of these concerned bringing together the standards and expectations governing data validity, research practice or ethics protocols as understood in the academy with the alternative models of professional practice or ‘valid’ knowledge that are often prevalent in the schools and community contexts within which programs operate. the complexity of this synthesis was particularly evident for programs delivered in indigenous communities alongside indigenous partners, where questions of diverse paradigms also touched on far broader clashes between the western epistemologies that frame the academy’s ethical oversight and research processes and the local epistemologies of australian aboriginal groups. more than a mere intellectual dilemma, this had a genuine consequence. concerns over conflicts of interest, for example, and the prevalent view in the academic research paradigm that distance and value neutrality are central to the production of valid research findings often precluded – or certainly complicated – the complete inclusion in the research of stakeholders who had either little understanding of, or actively rejected, the dominant ways of thinking about knowledge creation within the academy. just as difficult to overcome were problems of participation. as hashagan (2002) recognised, the reality of stakeholders’ interest and willingness to engage in community-based research rarely matches the idealised plan. the differential in stakeholder predisposition towards engagement means that it can sometimes be very difficult – if not impossible – to ensure that all stakeholders are equally included and involved. this throws up numerous professional and ethical dilemmas. should the researcher focus his/her efforts on those with whom effective connections have been established, or on those with whom the engagement is less solid? how does the researcher contend with different ways of understanding or ‘doing’ collaboration or engagement (the latter was a frequent challenge during the macquarie evaluation)? 127 | gateways | reed the evaluative research at macquarie evidenced a number of reasons why stakeholder engagement might be limited. for instance, through the course of the evaluation, evidence emerged of stakeholders having previously had ‘bad’ or difficult experiences with research or researchers. again, there is a particular weight to this ‘burden of distrust’ (brenner & manice 2011) for some indigenous stakeholders, who are understandably suspicious of the intent of external researchers. for some older participants, the bureaucratic cloak of institutional research recalled memories of the welfare men in white coats who, in the name of protection, provided the academic rationale for shocking acts of statesponsored racism that led to the forced separation of aboriginal children from their families and country. this legacy haunts even the most democratically intended research project, though the impact of that distrust, of course, varies from person to person, from community to community, and is intricately tied up with local collective memories. even those stakeholders not scarred in the same way can be inclined to a certain passivity and disinterest towards universitysponsored research that can significantly hinder attempts to involve and include. sometimes the research is simply not seen as important or capable of addressing key needs within the community – a reflection both of the diverse needs and pressures within community settings and of a perception (fair or unfair) that research tends to be low impact, disengaged, or even parasitic. but this can also manifest as a perception that the researcher is an expert, who not only knows the best way to conduct such research, but is also ultimately responsible for its success or failure. comments indicating such were relatively common during the evaluative research. for example, one project coordinator remarked at the onset of the evaluation: ‘so the plan is for you to come in, take a look at everything we’re doing, and tell us what we need to stop doing and what we need to do better’; a confronting attitude for the researcher determined to avoid delivering verdicts and to instead facilitate processes of reflection. passivity and apparent hostility towards the research can also be a product of stakeholders’ lack of confidence in their ability to contribute, or of a lack of understanding of research practice or of the ultimate benefits of the research. it might also be occasioned by a perceived connection between evaluative research and oversight processes, where stakeholders are nervous about the implications of research findings on their professional futures. or it might simply be a product of a lack of time (or a perceived lack of time) and the pressures of competing priorities (bamberger et al. 2004; bearman et al. 2008; harris, jones & coutts 2010; ryan, chandler & samuels 2007). the impact of these personal predispositions, of course, becomes greater the more stakeholders are involved; they represent a significant challenge to securing the active participation of stakeholders necessary to maximise the research’s impact and to ensuring that decision-making around the project is genuinely collective. 128 | gateways | reed challenges of governance reflect issues around decisionmaking, whether related to the strategising, designing or implementation of the research, or to responding to unanticipated events, difficulties or opportunities. on the one hand, these are intimately connected to problems of definition: how do we determine who to include in the governance structures of a community-engaged research project – all stakeholders or only some? if the latter, using what criteria – the size of the stake in the project? how do we respond when the size of that stake changes as the program develops and individual or group numbers decrease or individuals or groups take on more responsibility for the program? should we include those who are most likely to understand and engage with the research goals, or reach out to those who are not well disposed towards the research (a perhaps more democratic gesture but also one that comes with risks and no little potential for frustration)? and how should staff turnover be handled? the difficulty arises in deciding where and how to balance the trade off between inclusiveness versus the ability to rapidly respond to unforeseen problems. of course, this challenge, as with those others above, becomes all the greater in the context of limited resources. external evaluations are often limited to short time periods, and because they are not directly linked to core practices, it can also be difficult to make a case for the assignment of significant resources. as became clear during the evaluative research at macquarie, the limited timeframes and funding of many evaluative research projects do not always work well with the inevitable resource intensity of establishing and maintaining fully consultative and inclusive research practices, particularly where the stakeholders are initially resistant or disinterested. the lack of time or limited opportunities for face-to-face contact can make it particularly difficult to establish trust with stakeholders who are negatively predisposed towards research practice. staff turnover in stakeholder organisations (an issue exacerbated, in this instance, where programs rely heavily on volunteers) can further tax the resources available to the researcher, particularly if these changes result in the ‘resetting’ of key relationships in the middle of an evaluation. meeting the challenges notwithstanding the tendency for these challenges to sometimes seem like insurmountable hurdles, the extant community engagement and evaluation literatures offer a number of strategies for overcoming such difficulties. for instance, one tangible response to the challenges of definition is a robust stakeholder analysis process that identifies the interest and power of key stakeholders, their relationships with one another and the program, and their orientation towards the program (e.g. brugha & varvasovszky 2000; gilson et al. 2012). mapping out these characteristics allows researchers to make ethical but also pragmatic decisions about who the key stakeholders are, and which inclusion/engagement measures to adopt for which stakeholders. 129 | gateways | reed similarly, bridging paradigmatic differences between the research and community worlds, which requires researchers to be ‘scientifically sound in locally appropriate ways’ (ctsac 2011, p. 124), could involve collaborations with key stakeholders during planning stages to map out and document some of the values and practices that are shared by all the stakeholders, either as an explicit ‘statement of values’ or as part of an memorandum of understanding (mou; e.g. pasick et al. 2010, p. 16; ross et al. 2010; sc ctsi 2012, p. 19). researchers have to be careful to ensure that these values speak to community needs, and thus that the goals and intended impact of the research address these needs. in the case of the macquarie evaluation, one of the shared values acknowledged by a number of stakeholders was a belief in the power of mutual learning; this could then be put into action by turning research findings into toolkits intended to support professional development activities. an mou can also help respond to resourcing challenges by ensuring all available resources are identified, mobilised and rationalised as far as possible (davis et al. 1999; davis et al. 2003). inevitably, finding bridges to overcome divides in the way different stakeholders think and engage with the work will go a long way towards addressing problems of participation and engagement. clear statements of ground rules and expectations, embedded in universally understood principles that reflect local cultures and needs but also address the practical requirements of the research, can also do much to help smooth the integration of new stakeholders as the program and the research develop. similarly, a good stakeholder analysis will include an assessment of stakeholders’ strategic concerns and interests, and thus provide a strong platform for the development of specific methods for increasing the engagement of sceptical or disinterested stakeholders. the macquarie evaluation made good use of some of these strategies, and in many cases the experience of the research also reinforced their value. many of these strategies formed part of the systematic consultations the researchers initiated with the program teams during the research planning phase, guided by the rufdata evaluation planning tool developed at the university of lancaster (saunders 2000). in accordance with this model, the researchers engaged the program coordinators and key stakeholders in a series of structured conversations designed to establish a number of key baselines for the evaluation: its key objectives (reasons and uses), what activities it will evaluate (foci), the evidence it intends to collect (data), key stakeholders and dissemination plans (audience), appropriate timescales (timing) and who is responsible for which aspects (agency). the conversations were drafted into a series of collectively owned written agreements. this process provided information that allowed the researchers to make informed decisions about inclusion strategies, as well as how to overcome the problem of high-influence stakeholders with more complex orientations towards the programs and the evaluations. it also constituted a 130 | gateways | reed form of stakeholder analysis that provided the rationale by which engagement with stakeholders who were most directly impacted by, or had the greater influence over, the program could be prioritised over those with less influence or interest. there are additional strategies researchers might use to boost stakeholder engagement. for instance, researchers might fuse stakeholder analysis with a strengths-based framework to counter the tendency for stakeholders to feel unqualified, thus identifying approaches to the problem of researcher passivity (harvey 2014). establishing channels for ongoing consultation throughout the course of the research – not just in the initial planning phases – is also critical. the establishment of a community advisory group with strong, inclusive leadership based on a solid understanding of power dynamics, for instance, can create a space in which stakeholders can air concerns and respond to emergent challenges; and it can also boost the stakeholders’ sense of agency and ownership of the research project. the establishment of subcommittees and inclusive approval or feasibility processes may also help to increase levels of active engagement by increasing the individuals’ sense of agency in the process. where issues of resources make such structures difficult to construct and maintain, the researchers might instead commit to planned iteration phases that prompt renewed consultations and reflections with key stakeholders. this was the preferred option in the case of the macquarie research, where the rather complex nature of the research, its various programs, and the wide range and diversity of stakeholders made it extremely difficult and time consuming to establish formal advisory structures. instead, the formalised periods of ‘iterative program design’ provided prompts and opportunities for re-engagement and also presented critical opportunities for realigning the research where changes in program delivery or personnel over time had left a distance between the program and its evaluation. the scheduled consultations that were part of this iterative process helped to ensure the research stayed relevant to its original goals and abreast of the influence of these changes. reflection on the evaluative research at macquarie also exposed additional complexities that suggest we should implement such processes with a degree of care and sophistication. sometimes, for instance, there remain nuances such processes (or the literature they are based upon) do not always address. in conducting stakeholder analysis, for example, researchers need to find ways to distinguish between the identities and characteristics of stakeholders in the program and stakeholders in the research. ultimately, ensuring research methods are implementable and conducive to supporting community-engaged research principles (such as capacity strengthening and knowledge exchange) throughout the lifetime of the research means understanding the nuances of the stakeholders’ orientations towards the research 131 | gateways | reed itself, not just the program. there is often a good degree of overlap between the two, but at other times there are some important differences that any stakeholder analysis should address. the macquarie evaluation also proved that the task of conducting a stakeholder analysis can be complicated by a whole series of specific contextual factors. for instance, it became apparent that high levels of support among practitioners for the programs under assessment could translate into a more opposed orientation towards evaluative research – or indeed any research perceived as intrusive or threatening. most of the staff involved in the research programs at macquarie were employed for fixed terms, with no guarantee of employment beyond the end of their term, a reality that is true of many social interventions and makes for a particularly fraught and complex context in which to conduct evaluative research. as a consequence, it was not always straightforward to establish stakeholders’ level of interest and influence in the research, or their true orientation, particularly where there was thought to be a connection between being seen to offer outward support for the research and ongoing employment or other professional opportunities. the author certainly experienced occasions during the evaluations where key stakeholders expressed strong outward support for the evaluative process, but failed to follow through on promises of support – or even worked against the research to a degree behind the scenes. confronting as they may be, such challenges are an inevitable aspect of social and professional environments characterised by intersecting and competing interests, hopes and fears of different stakeholders, requiring some triangulating of sources and a degree of resilience and creativity on the part of the researcher. these added complexities remind us that, while thorough planning and inclusive structures and processes are important tools for enabling stakeholder engagement, there is no solely procedural panacea to the typical challenges of communityengaged research. reflecting on the limitations with some of these processes as they manifested through this evaluative research helped to reaffirm the critical foundation provided by effective relationship building, enabled through strong communication and interpersonal skills. solid professional relationships built on mutual trust, respect and recognition, and characterised by transparency and authenticity, can go a long way to overcoming key participation and paradigmatic differences. they can also open up avenues for the building of evaluative capacity, empowering stakeholders to deliver positive impact themselves on later occasions that might not have been possible without the research project. and, by facilitating mutual learning and knowledge exchange, effective professional relationships can do much to help to mobilise additional resources and smooth the processes of decision-making associated with effective research governance. in many cases, the researcher has a key role to play here: overcoming paradigmatic differences, for instance, requires that 132 | gateways | reed researchers ‘demonstrate inclusion and respect to the fullest extent possible’ (gittelsohn et al. 2003) by respecting community customs and practices. even where the research has clearly constrained goals and methods, ensuring the community are included may well require a genuine ethnographic engagement, where researchers attend events and functions, for example, not directly related to the research but that nevertheless serve an important role in building trust and respect. there are also various practical solutions the researcher might implement to help minimise potential conflicts and misunderstandings where stakeholders are situated in different professional paradigms. face-to-face meetings, for instance, are inevitably better than conference calls or emails in this regard, opening up a broader range of communicative cues and extending the possibility of finding shared ground. misunderstandings about research practice might be overcome via a commitment to knowledge exchange realised through training or capacity-strengthening activities on the one hand and the researcher’s participation in community events on the other. ultimately, however, effective relationship building requires reciprocity; no engaged project can succeed without all sides respecting and recognising the experience and expertise each side brings to the table. overcoming paradigmatic differences requires that all parties maintain an awareness of the potential for miscommunication and be scrupulous about the assumptions they make. often the literature puts much of the onus on the researcher to take responsibility for crafting such relationships and to make the critical compromises necessary for ensuring these relationships develop. in community contexts, this is often based on the perception that the researcher occupies a privileged power position. in reality, however, even when engaged with significantly disadvantaged communities, the power relationships are complex – community gateholders, for instance, can wield significant influence over the outcome of the research. rather than taking full responsibility for the success or failure of these relationships, the researcher might be better served to think of their role as creating the conditions for such relationships to emerge (such as open communication channels). a researcher who makes too many compromises may find him or herself becoming less rigorous in observing their inclusive ideals as frustration mounts; in striving to manage the responses, fears or interests of others, the researcher should not forget to attend to his or her own. in practice, it may be more effective to craft a middle ground where certain ground rules are respected. often this can be as simple as observing meeting etiquette, a small but deceptively important aspect of conveying mutual respect and recognition. creating professional structures and interactions characterised by mutual respect and recognition of each stakeholder’s experience and expertise is a critical foundation, and a commitment to regular communication will help build awareness of the limitations and pressures on both sides (horn et al. 2008). 133 | gateways | reed ultimately, the most effective relationships will always emerge where both sides are committed to this process and have a shared appreciation for the value such relationships add. the effectiveness of this process is inevitably increased where practitioners and managers provide structures and incentives to support it. at the very least, it should be recognised and acknowledged in the planning stages, prior to the research being commissioned, that relationship building will need extra time and, where possible, work collaboratively with the researchers to build support for and understanding of the research process. sideways thinking there are occasions, as the macquarie research evidenced, when even these responses are insufficient to overcome the challenges of community-engaged research and deliver both tangible research outcomes and the sort of full and inclusive stakeholder engagement to which this model of research aspires. when solutions have been exhausted, or where relationships just do not function no matter how much energy has been invested from either or both sides, community-engaged research can feel like an uncomfortable, uncertain and unmanageable enterprise. this author certainly encountered such moments, and contended regularly with uncertainty as to how to overcome differences in understanding and attitudes associated with individual personalities or long professional or cultural legacies – factors that proved ultimately beyond the power of the researchers to address satisfactorily within the project’s confines. these occasions remind us of an important reality of community-engaged research. ‘no battle plan’, insisted the prussian military strategist helmut von moltke, ‘survives first contact with the enemy’; so too it is impossible to plan away all the potential complications and challenges that arise when conducting community-engaged research. planning, strategising and doing all one can to build effective collaborative structures and spaces remains an essential part of conducting engaged research, but often the most appropriate response to these challenges is for the researcher to address his or her own attitudes and expectations (and, where relevant, those of the commissioning organisation). sometimes this involves adjusting (or perhaps resisting, or at least navigating around) some of the traditional ways in which research quality is recognised within the academy. for instance, where questions of data validity are wedded to positivist conventions, there may well be a corresponding desire to strictly control independent variables. but to embark on a communityengaged research project means to an extent learning to become comfortable with a certain amount of fluidity, uncertainty and compromised objectives. quite apart from being antithetical to the principles of community-engaged research, strict control is rarely possible in any collaborative context. 134 | gateways | reed during the macquarie research, two particular approaches proved particularly useful in countering the temptation to look for ‘perfect’ solutions and outcomes. the first was to give preference to post-positivist qualitative methods that described alternative modes of knowledge creation. where quantitative methods sometimes struggled to keep abreast of the changing variables that contributed to the evidence of impact, taking a qualitative, narrative-building approach allowed the evaluative research to meaningfully identify and discuss areas of impact without seeing cause and effect as purely a matter of measuring variables against evidence of change. the second response was to explicitly anchor the research in the values that underwrote both the program and the community-engaged research model, so that the research aimed for a broad vision of impact determined not just by the quality of its data but also by the quality of its relationships and the useability of the findings. this wider approach to the question of research ‘goals’, ‘impact’ or ‘success’ provided a strong foundation that also enabled the researchers greater flexibility in responding to changes in program practices or personnel. this last approach was aided by a little lateral thinking. for instance, notwithstanding the depth and breadth of the challenges mapped above, and their potential to seriously impact upon the successful implementation of engaged evaluative research models, during the macquarie evaluation a number of unanticipated opportunities for the research to maximise its impact emerged when the challenges were reconsidered from another angle. for instance, where evaluators came across negative or misinformed perceptions of research practice that hindered participation, there was a corresponding opportunity, if that research was conducted in a democratic and inclusive spirit, to go some way towards repairing those perceptions. by combating negative pre-perceptions, engaged research might be seen as a means of facilitating future research activity, even if the immediate results have been limited. perhaps not what those who commission research are always ready to hear, but certainly a tangible outcome with very worthwhile long-term benefits. one final unanticipated opportunity evidenced by the evaluation of the macquarie programs has been the potential for evaluative practices to directly contribute to program objectives. as discussed above, one of the key aims of the macquarie outreach programs was to build capacity and confidence within student participants. there is indicative narrative and anecdotal evidence from the macquarie research that focus groups and interviews requiring participants to reflect on their participation in the program and comment on possible improvements have both helped to develop critical, reflexive thinking and to make the students feel included and heard. a second key objective was the building of capacity within professional staff (in the schools, in this case); the evidence of the formative evaluation processes has been used for professional development purposes and to guide 135 | gateways | reed and inform pedagogic practice. moreover, as attested to by the macquarie-based facilitators, much of the programs’ success depends on the strength of the relationships between community and school-based stakeholders and the macquarie staff. through consultations with the stakeholders, the evaluation process has thus itself helped to deepen and strengthen those connections upon which the programs depend. conclusion the reflections in this article offer a small contribution to our understanding of the complex relationships and processes that characterise the intersection of academic research, educational interventions, and community and school-based pedagogic practices. in a pragmatic and conceptual sense, these frequently manifest as critical challenges for the researcher committed to synthesising the values that inform these different practices via models of community-engaged research. these challenges keep the engaged researcher honest: like any community-engaged research, managing a community-engaged evaluative project involves striving to secure a balance between maximising opportunities and remaining ever mindful and attentive to the attendant risks. this array of challenges also makes one thing particularly clear: good intentions are not enough. the reflections herein disclose the need for researchers to deploy a range of tools and to take on a number of roles, serving as brokers and mediators and being prepared to spend at least as much time building relationships and exchanging knowledge as on more traditional research activities such as data collection and analysis. here lies perhaps one of the greatest challenges for engaged evaluative research: it places a huge onus on the researchers, not only in terms of time commitments, but also in terms of the array of skills they must bring to the table. in addition to research-specific skills, the evaluator must have knowledge of evaluation methods and content-specific knowledge, and be able to act as a broker, mediator and educator, adapt his or her language to a diverse range of audiences, and constantly translate, mediate and bridge professional discourses. the requirement for such a broad range of skills is why some writers stress the value of using evaluation teams (worthern & sanders 2011). of course, not every challenge is surmountable. some may need to be accepted or worked around rather than overcome. many of the challenges researchers face in implementing engaged evaluative practices relate to the difficulty synthesising divergent forms of knowledge, language, professional practice and agendas. the researcher’s success in uniting these often determines the level of impact evaluative research has, but the lack of clear consensus as to the appropriate response to paradigmatic conflict makes this a tricky and indeterminate business. there is also perhaps more outside the researcher’s control than we might ascertain from consulting best practice literature. the reality is that the quality 136 | gateways | reed of engagement in evaluative research, like any form of research, may often benefit from the intervention of third parties, such as the line managers of stakeholders, to help motivate or encourage stakeholder participation. ultimately, this discussion reinforces the argument that there can be no ‘perfectly’ realised model of community-engaged research. processes and techniques for overcoming key challenges all tend to manifest a common acceptance of the need to prioritise resources and energies; once we begin to prioritise, of course, we do so on the basis of a tacit assumption of the need to strike a compromise between what is ideal and what is practical. these sorts of reflections remind us again that engaged research should be understood as an approach and a process, with engagement taking place on a continuum, rather than as a description of a concrete series of deliverables and outcomes. instead of looking for operational responses to all these difficulties, it might also help to 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pp. 57–73. worthern, b & sanders, j 2011, ‘content specialization and educational evaluation: a necessary marriage’, journal of multidisciplinary evaluation, vol. 7, no. 15, pp. 272–95. _goback collaborative community research dissemination and networking experiences and challenges since their earliest establishment, there has been a continuous preoccupation with what role universities might have in relation to their communities when faced with the challenge to be ‘…of and not just in their community’ (watson 2003, p. 6). social responsibility has now been identified as a core function of a higher education institution (hei) (parsons 2014), with significant consideration being given in the literature to how to conduct collaborative, engaged or community-based participatory research (see, for example, benneworth et al. 2009; boser 2006; hart, madisson & wolff 2007; macpherson 2011; savan & sider 2003; wright et al. 2011). what is persistently absent, however, is how to follow that principle through to forms of collaborative research dissemination and networking beyond open access publishing. this practice article reports on our experiences of a collaborative exhibition (from planning to delivery) at the research showcase event held in cardiff in june 2014. the event was part of the larger connected communities programme established by the uk arts and humanities research council. one of the aims of the program is to get community partners more involved in the entirety of the research process, from setting research priorities to disseminating research findings. this article has been written primarily by university-based authors with contributions and critical reflections from some of our collaborative partners. it describes the context within which the event took place and the co-exhibitors involved. it outlines our agreed objectives and distinct expectations in deciding to co-exhibit. it captures some of our achievements, but in order to maximise learning it focuses on the key challenges we faced and how we addressed them. specifically, it identifies some of the tensions and logistical issues experienced from planning to delivery of the exhibition and how they might be resolved in the future. we also highlight structural changes that we feel could be made by funders to enable more equitable and accessible means of dissemination, learning and networking. we draw the conclusion that, even in the not often discussed nitty-gritty of collaborative hannah macpherson ceri davies angie hart suna eryigit-madzwamuse university of brighton anne rathbone arts connect emily gagnon university of sheffield lisa buttery scott dennis boingboing © 2017 by h macpherson, c davies, a hart, s eryigit-madzwamuse, a rathbone, e gagnon, l buttery & s dennis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: macpherson, h, davies, c, hart, a, eryigit-madzwamuse, s, rathbone, a, gagnon, e, buttery, l & dennis, s 2017, ‘collaborative community research dissemination and networking: experiences and challenges’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 298–312. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5436 corresponding author: hannah macpherson hm139@brighton.ac.uk doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5436 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) 299 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery exhibiting and research dissemination, significant skills and qualities are required. these include trust, transparency, flexibility and compromise. the connected communities programme the connected communities programme (ccp) is a united kingdom based cross-council research program of the arts and humanities research council (ahrc). the overarching aim of the program is to help understand the changing nature of communities in their historical and cultural contexts and the role of communities in sustaining and enhancing quality of life. it seeks to both deliver research in conjunction with community partners and help community partners understand and get more involved in setting research priorities. the program has involved a £30 million investment in over 300 projects since 2010. key themes of this broad program include community health and wellbeing, community creativity, prosperity and regeneration, community values and participation, sustainable community environments, places and spaces, and community cultures, diversity, cohesion, exclusion and conflict. under ‘vision and overview’, the ahrc connected communities programme website states the following: the vision for the programme is to mobilise the potential for increasingly inter-connected, culturally diverse, communities to enhance participation, prosperity, sustainability, health and wellbeing by better connecting research, stakeholders, and communities. this emphasis on cross-connection reflects the ahrc connected communities’ aim of fostering a more equitable research agenda and supporting skill sharing, and one of the program’s key mechanisms for realising this objective is the staging of an annual research showcase event. as a group of connected communities research academics and collaborators (detailed in the next section), we attended the second of its annual showcases in cardiff in june 2014. the showcases represent an exciting opportunity for community partners to be brought into the heart of ahrc activity to both exhibit and gain an overview of the connected communities’ research program. as facer and enright (2016, p. 8) – research fellows attached to the programme – recognise: the connected communities programme demonstrates that ‘public value’ from research is not about creating short term, instrumental partnerships in which universities offer quick evaluations or specialist inputs in exchange for communities offering access to a ‘real world’. rather, it is about creating substantive conversations between the different sets of expertise and experience that university and community partners offer, and in so doing, enabling the core questions that both are asking to be reframed and challenged. such a set of relationships is far from the naïve economic model that would see the value of research judged by its immediate utility. instead, it is about the creation of a new public knowledge landscape 300 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery where communities, and the universities that form part of those communities, can collaborate to question, research and experiment to create new ways of understanding, seeing and acting in the world. however, for this ‘new public knowledge landscape’ to be realised, we argue that greater attention needs to be paid to issues of clear communication, accessibility and equity if the ideals of cross-connection, broad participation and new public knowledge are to be attained. there were opportunities to raise these issues with the showcase organisers, both at the showcase itself and following its completion, so the research fellows who were attached to the program and tasked with developing an overview of its workings have already integrated some of this feedback in their report (see facer & enright 2016). however, we hope that future programs that involve collaborative research dissemination can build on the learning and skills development that stemmed from our own team’s experience of the showcase event and is outlined in this article. as facer and enright (2016, p. 6) note in their connected communities report: the most significant and sustainable legacies … are embodied. participants in projects are developing new skills, knowledge and understanding as well as the confidence to put these into action in the networks, organisations and partnerships they are involved with beyond the project itself. at the same time, the programme has nurtured the development of a new generation of community and university researchers who have ‘grown up collaborative’ and who take for granted the value and potential benefits of interdisciplinary community-university partnerships. our participation in the research showcase who we are the collaboration discussed in this article involved both academics at the university of brighton and a number of artsbased organisations that have an interest in resilience and helped deliver the ‘resilience house’ at the research showcase and some of the projects that were collaboratively produced and represented at the showcase. art in mind is an arts organisation in brighton run by and for young people facing mental health complexities. with art in mind as a partner and macpherson (as principal investigator), we developed ‘building resilience through community arts practice: a scoping study with disabled young people and young people facing mental health challenges’ (macpherson, hart & heaver 2014, 2015). carousel and culture shift arts connect are both arts-based programs providing social and development opportunities for people with learning difficulties in brighton and east sussex, and were involved in working alongside brighton university academics 301 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery on another connected communities project entitled ‘using a communities of practice model to contribute to community cohesion and self-reliance’. the virtual school for children in care works with looked after children and care leavers (young adults who have left care) to promote positive experiences and engagement in education, training and employment in brighton. in conjunction with professor hart, one of our connected communities’ academics, they produced ‘exploring resilience of young adults with learning difficulties – a co-inquiry’, which was represented at the showcase. at the university of brighton community engagement has long been a part of the university’s strategic vision. in all of the projects listed above we focus on mutual benefit for all involved and link this activity to teaching, future programs and research. however, these aspirations do not exist in a vacuum and must contend with what chatterton (2000) calls the ‘push and pull’ of engagement. in the uk today, universities are facing the rise of the knowledge economy, increasing ‘marketisation’ of higher education and increasing student fees. engagement as a strategic choice can act as both a push and a pull factor. we believe community-based research and dissemination that stems from the right collaborative partnerships can achieve much within this context. the resilience-related research and practice development, to which this article relates, has been part of the communityuniversity partnership agenda at brighton since its inception 10 years ago (www.boingboing.org.uk). therefore, it was a natural step for us to apply for connected communities programme funding and to attend the showcase event with our research partners. as academics, our aims for participating in the showcase were to: —raise the profile of young people in the festival, including people with mental health issues, looked after young people (who have foster families) and those with learning disabilities —contribute to placing co-produced collaborative work at the heart of the showcase with a clear community, as well as academic, presence —contribute to the capacity building of young people as research collaborators —ensure a positive developmental impact for all young people involved in attending and exhibiting at the showcase —further develop and strengthen the relationships between brighton based academic and community organisations and community organisations in cardiff and newport —engage targeted groups of local welsh families, schoolchildren and young people to encourage their participation in the showcase event. what happened? attending the research showcase involved 30 of us travelling from brighton to cardiff on a ‘green’ bus fuelled by vegetable oil (we all smelt of chips by the time we arrived!) and joining 10 other http://www.boingboing.org.uk 302 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery community partners and academics at the venue. once there, we set up the installation known as the resilience house, which had been many months in the planning. this was a large furnished gazebo with different rooms, representing different aspects of resilience-related research in which the range of co-exhibitors had been engaged. the house was decorated with exhibitors’ artwork that had been produced collaboratively. the showcase event in cardiff was an excellent opportunity to bring a diverse group of stakeholders together to showcase ongoing research that fell under the umbrella of the connected communities programme. at the showcase, a university academic (macpherson) spoke to all 40 participants and conducted informal one-to-one recorded interviews in order to aid the process of reflecting on and evaluating what was achieved at the showcase event as well as the challenges faced. outcomes: developmental gains the opportunity to be at a research showcase was quite a step forward for these diverse and marginalised young people who wouldn’t normally attend such events. for some of the young people who attended, travelling to a different town hundreds of miles from brighton, mixing with people they didn’t know, staying overnight without their parents and presenting their work was extremely challenging. however, on the surface, a number of the group could have been viewed as relatively high achievers with greater levels of confidence than some of their peers who face similar issues. feedback from the young people highlighted, however, the necessity of not taking their challenges or their level of need for granted. we’ve all got experiences of mental health issues and/or learning difficulties. outside i might look confident and happy, but certain situations make me really anxious, and i was very anxious about going to cardiff. it was alright and it went well, but i was worrying loads about what could go wrong. it could actually have impacted really badly on my mental health, but it was fine, and turned out to be a great experience. (lisa buttery, boingboing artist in residence) the young people presented their work to a diverse audience from research and practice backgrounds. working together to construct the resilience house as part of the showcase, practising and delivering presentations, and talking to people on the stalls were all important and challenging developmental opportunities for the young people. the sense of pride they expressed in what they had done was evident. it was great to present our work and i felt proud of our part of the stand and the stand as a whole though again, more people to actually see it would have been better. (chris dunne, art in mind) 303 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery i was really scared to do the presentation. i didn’t believe i could do it, but after i had more confidence and then i knew i could stand up and say things and people would listen to me. i never felt like that before but now i can do presentations again in the future. (arts connect participant) exhibiting at the event also provided the opportunity to bring together a diverse group of people from across the university and the community who wouldn’t otherwise work alongside each other. for me personally the event brought together partnerships and people which i would not otherwise [have] had a chance to meet and talk with, particularly the young people. i think the presentations would have made a big impact … amongst many of the achievements was getting the young people to the festival and celebrating their work. it was wonderful to see the young people have their work on display and talk to people about it and be proud of what they have achieved. i just wish that this could have been more widely shared. (christina panton, university of brighton occupational therapy student) the learning i have taken from preparing for and attending this event is huge. i was very involved with the development of our stand and during the process have been exposed to many issues surrounding collaborative working and have developed an appreciation for the level of detail, nuance and planning it takes to support the inclusion of community partners. now embarking on my own doctorate with plans to undertake collaborative research i expect the impact of this learning to ripple through my work for years to come. it was not an easy undertaking, but seeing the pride of the young people and seeing what we all could achieve together has been very motivating and inspiring. (emily gagnon, community researcher) tensions and challenges while some of the issues we faced at this showcase and networking event are common to the wider literature on community-based participatory research (e.g. working with diverse groups of people, using appropriate language and communication, and focusing on mutual benefit for participants), we also found that there were specific tensions and expectations and new skill sets and bodies of expertise that were required to navigate this undertaking. these acted as barriers to the ccp aims for the showcase being fully achieved. we discuss these in detail below. time: there is never enough of it there is a ccp ideal around collaboration but sometimes not sufficient lead time to put this in place. the organisers did recognise this and issued a call for contributions at the beginning of the year, with the actual showcase event to take place in june. however, the time it actually took to write the bids and confirm the successful applications meant that the team only had a few months to prepare the showcase materials and work out the details of the exhibition and presentations between the different project groups. 304 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery in the lives of young people with complex needs (who may, for example, need more time to prepare materials), eight weeks was not long enough to get ready for such a big social and intellectual challenge. for example, claire griffiths, the film-maker on the project, who specialises in supporting people with learning difficulty to make their own films said: … you need time, you need so much time. it would be a whole project in itself to teach these young people about documentary film making. so we are having to take the lead on this in order to make something meaningful in the timeframe. lack of time also influenced the discrepancy between the amount of support co-exhibitors wanted to contribute and what they were actually able to give. some partners worked intensively on producing the showcase – for example, young artist lisa buttery and emily gagnon, a community researcher working with boingboing, co-curated the stand. both felt considerable ownership of the process. however, a lack of time for some partners seemed to feed into a lack of attachment to the showcase event and perhaps a slight feeling of being ‘roped in’ (showcase participant). working with lisa to curate the stand was a fantastic experience but also very time-consuming as there was so much for us to organise and manage. probably the most frustrating thing was knowing the other young people were keen and had so much more to offer, but despite the material resources available – like free room hire and access to mini busses – we simply did not have the capacity to put in place the support infrastructure necessary to hold the workshops which would have realised this potential. planning workshops and transport to meet diverse needs takes time, and we just did not have enough. so, while we’re taking on more than we needed to other young people were feeling disconnected from the process. (emily gagnon, community researcher) with hindsight, we were possibly over-ambitious about the number of young people we recruited. but, on the other hand, we were keen to make the event as inclusive as possible for young people with different abilities and needs, and give as many as possible this opportunity to participate. we probably didn’t “need” the young people from arts connect to attend. there were enough other young people, who had been involved in university partnership for longer, to staff the resilience house and who could have done a presentation. on the other hand, the positive impact on those young people was immeasurable and some even articulated it as a life changing experience. (anne rathbone, university of brighton doctoral student) 305 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery navigating expectations: implicit and explicit agendas at the showcase the research showcase event was located at two sites in cardiff, with a shuttle bus connecting them. there was an expectation that group members would spend time explaining what was being achieved through their work and, given the differing needs of the group, quite a lot of preparatory work prior to the event went in to supporting some of the young people to meet new people and talk about their work. some young people did get the opportunity to talk about the contents of the resilience house to visitors, however others didn’t because of the limited visitor numbers. many of our group wondered how much publicity the event had had outside of the invited research project participants, as the number of people from the community was lower than we had anticipated. there were sessions hosted by a number of community venues across the city. however, it was this lack of a ‘public’ to showcase their work to that disappointed some of the group who had put a lot of work into what they thought would be a ‘public engagement event’. we needed the public and some more communities! i actually felt a bit disappointed that we all worked so hard and only a few people got to see the tent and other art work by the young people. (ceri davies, university of brighton: cupp) the event was different to how i imagined as i thought there would have been more stands there and there would have been more people in attendance. (arts connect participant) it could have been a more powerful event, had a huge potential, if public was well-represented. future events should put more effort on publicizing the showcase. having multiple locations was also another challenge and also i think influenced the number of people attended. (suna eryigit-madzwamuse, university of brighton) the event was largely attended by other researchers and some of their community partners. we were the largest group to attend the event, and in fact colleagues from the ahrc mentioned that we were over-ambitious in the number of people we had in attendance. however, one reason for our group being so large was that we needed a large number of adults to address the support needs of the young people who participated. in contrast, the staffing of most other stalls included just one or two community partners at best and so was dominated by university-based staff. this was a surprise for our group, and the overall lack of community partners in attendance was a disappointment. furthermore, the remit of the showcase was so broad that attendance from the wider public and local interested organisations was weak. if the general public is part of the target audience, more attention may need to be given when planning 306 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery future showcases to consider how the content can, in fact, attract them. future briefs on these types of event should also include more stringent expectations about the level and nature of community partner involvement in order to appropriately shape the expectations of all involved. our expectation of the event was that it would be a public and associated organisation showcase for research partners. however, it seemed evident that what it had become was a showcase to funders and a networking opportunity primarily for academics to consider future bid development. macpherson discussed this with one of our collaborators who stated: i think once i understood that really this was a showcase for funders and securing future funding rather than really for the public i could understand what was going on better. the first day i just couldn’t visualize the big picture of why we were here. (darren, virtual school) i think people forget how obscure the culture of research councils and funding can be to those not embedded in academic circles. for the young people i worked with their expectations for the showcase were based on their experiences of the art exhibitions and project displays their group had held at community events and in public spaces – the discrepancy between such events and a roomful of mostly academics caused some confusion…the lack of exposure of their artwork to public and peers seemed to add an edge of disappointment for some. (emily gagnon, community researcher) i felt that there were a core group of connected people who were ‘in the know’ that were coming together at the event to do some workshops/thinking and this didn’t feel very open to other participation. so it might have been improved by having a range of opportunities for people to network together – not necessarily the project leads who might already know each other, but all the people they are working with as well. (ceri davies, university of brighton: cupp) these comments show that the expectations of our partners in the showcase event were very different from the reality of being there. we felt that to maximise the opportunity of bringing together such a diverse group of people and projects, it would have been ideal to create some space for networking that would have cultivated more explicitly some of the connections and links at the event. for example, a sub-event or panel might have helped our group link more closely with the conference. creation of these spaces could be a key way to encourage more informal dissemination and engage a range of academic and non-academic partners in the themes and ideas of the program. if the event is to be truly inclusive, then paying attention to these details is important. 307 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery i think i would participate in an event like this again; it was interesting and fun and with a lovely group of people trying to do good things. my one hesitation would be if it seemed like not many people would see our work again. (chris dunne, art in mind) cultures of language and the non-verbal: we just make art for some of the collaborators who came along to the event, the activities that they were involved in felt very different from the language they were framed in as part of the showcase. resilience is a particular ‘culture of language’ that you can use to explain and justify what you do. (art in mind young person) subconsciously i draw on the resilience ideas. i make myself recognize the positives. it’s definitely helpful for that. i’ve been involved in our resilience work for ages now, and was involved with putting two resources together, and other people came to it later and are still trying to get their heads around it. (lisa buttery, boingboing artist in residence) this reflects a common tension that collaborative research practitioners encounter when working with concepts and ideas in different domains and with different timescales and levels of involvement. it is unsurprising that different people have a different grasp of and rationale for the practices and ideas being used – in this case, the concept and exploration of resilience. this also extends to those who visited the house at the showcase who had a definition of resilience that covered anything from ecological flood risk to ‘community resilience’ in areas of regeneration. working with specific concepts across community-university boundaries means that everybody will interpret these ideas according to their own context. and as illustrated further below, many people may be making ‘resilient moves’, without labelling them in that way. the implications of this for showcasing and disseminating research are not straightforward. we found that the different rationales and cultures of language and practice that animate academic and community partner work means you have to stay in this tension. a key and meaningful way of generating understanding, presenting research and its outputs, and implementing and sharing theory in practice is to develop different artefacts or boundary objects (hart et al. 2013). for us, this included art work made by the young people, films, badges and posters, and academic papers, booklets and resources. such an approach also resists the duality between ‘researcher’ and ‘community’ in co-presenting the outcomes of the research. it seems to me that there is a problem in this space in that the art releases people from their identity categories because in the moment of making art they are not a person with a mental health problem or a person leaving care. they are just a person absorbed in the making. the application process for participating in the event and 308 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery an involvement in presenting work to research communities ends up re-inscribing peoples identities as ‘marginalised’ or as ‘young people with mental health problems’ that in fact arts activities had, at least temporarily and partially, released those people from. (hannah macpherson, university of brighton) there are clearly complex issues, and indeed contradictions, at play here. a competitive bidding process meant that we felt the need to clearly define the identities of the different people coming along to convene our stand. this was done to show that we would be involving people who were not simply the ‘usual suspects’. future showcase events would benefit from continuing to ensure it is not just the ‘usual suspects’ who attend. to do this, diversity and inclusion need to be central organising principles of the event. networking and interacting with other visitors and stallholders: the need to develop new skill sets and dispositions part of the rationale for attending the showcase was that community partners would get to tour the other stalls and see what other kinds of research were occurring under the same program. however, the skills, sociocultural knowledge and disposition to tour stalls with confidence are not a given. in fact, some of the young people found approaching other stalls intimidating and felt a bit jumped on when they ventured outside the house. equally, it was sometimes hard for them to know when it was appropriate to talk to visitors to our own stall. this sort of sociocultural knowledge specific to research dissemination and information gathering is a learnt disposition and skill that cannot be assumed to be held by all community partners. it takes experience, practice and confidence. at the start of the event i think people did not really know when to talk to the people who visited our stand and so some people just popped their head in and then left without anyone speaking to them. as the day progressed, people became better at this and it was great seeing the young people asking visitors to the stand if they would like to sit at the table while they talked about the projects they had been involved in. if i was to do it again i would brief the other team members more about how/when to approach people. (scott, boingboing) as a research student i am really happy to be working with people in the community in a partnership model. i see this as a really important way forward for the university to be relevant to local social capital and society in general. if i did an event like this again i would be a bit more assertive about needing a clear brief. for example, we didn’t really know who we were presenting to until we got there. (anne rathbone, university of brighton doctoral student) although a few school groups and our colleagues working with welsh mind attended the showcase, overall there was weak participation by the general public. this may have been because 309 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery the remit was so broad. future events might specifically target groups of further education students, for example, which might capitalise on the breadth of the remit and enable student access to a wide variety of academics and community partners working on exciting collaborative research projects. getting the basics right: food, water and transport for those of us coordinating our group, and for the ahrc organisers, it is important to note that ensuring our group members’ basic needs were met was not completely achieved in the opinion of some of the participants. on the positive side, we received appropriate funding from the ahrc for the visit, and so were able to accommodate our group in a hotel right opposite the showcase site to which we had been assigned. this meant that, once we arrived in cardiff, we could immediately establish ourselves at the site without lengthy commuting backwards and forwards to our hotel. furthermore, we were able to budget to include other adults in our group whose role it was to offer additional support to those who needed it, and we had enough funds to eat out at a restaurant on both nights of the trips and to buy snacks and drinks for the young people. however, meeting some other basic needs was challenging. for example, having the showcase on two sites was not ideal. when we arrived at the showcase venue all our name labels were at the other site. also, there were no free refreshments apart from a basic packed lunch at lunchtime. this differed from the other venue, where a more substantial lunchtime meal was provided. this comparison and perceived inequity caused unnecessary criticisms of the refreshments at our venue. furthermore, some staff supporting young people felt that the lack of tap water facilities in a hot venue was a basic oversight. we had a group of young people with learning disabilities with us with limited money and a penchant for coke and we couldn’t even get them water to drink from the cafe without paying for it. it was very hot and stuffy in the exhibition space. we bought them bottles of water and squash but when they saw the fizzy drinks that’s what they wanted. (anne rathbone, university of brighton doctoral student) deciding on the most appropriate mode of transport was a key issue. after various deliberations regarding the complexities of three train changes, most of the group travelled in a chip fat fuelled bus to the event – sustainable, but actually impossible to sustain a conversation on the bus because of the noise, according to one participant! i was sat on the bus wondering why it had gone so quiet, then i realised it was so noisy that people had given up trying to talk over the noise … i was by the wheel arch my left cheek vibrated so much it went numb. (virtual school member) however, another remarked in response to reading this: 310 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery i didn’t think it was much louder than a normal bus, and i preferred it to the train as i would have been anxious about having to change and being around all those people at the station. (lisa buttery, artist in residence, boingboing) getting these basics right is very important in order to keep partners on board and feeling valued. conclusion in this article we have explored some of the tensions and challenges of attending and presenting at a research showcase event as a diverse team of academics, community partner staff and young people. we identified that factoring in time, shaping expectations of all contributors, training contributors to speak to the public about their work, ensuring appropriate sub-forums are constructed and attended to disseminate work, discussing different cultures of language and ensuring basic needs are met are key issues that need to be addressed if ideals of cross-connection and a new public knowledge landscape are to be realised in practice. some of these were anticipated and some not, but all provided useful learning for the future. most of the issues faced are not represented in current literature, perhaps because they deal with basic logistical and administrative issues. however, getting the nitty-gritty right and satisfying people’s basic needs are crucial to meaningful collaborative research activity. significant skills and qualities are required even at the level of nitty-gritty, including (if possible) qualities of trust, transparency, flexibility and compromise amongst all participants. issues as basic as transport, preparation, and a shared understanding of the remit and audience for the event – which might not have been seen as noteworthy for a less diverse group – were thrown into sharp relief by the diversity of our showcase team and the complex network of partnerships. therefore, it is important that, in undertaking collaborative ventures such as this, we look afresh at logistical issues and avoid making assumptions during the planning process. issues such as insurance cover for community collaborators who are neither students or staff, accessible travel arrangements, careful risk assessment and management, and payment for support staff if required are all issues that the university and the funding organisation need to address if they are serious about community collaboration. these issues are second nature to most community organisations, and universities need to be open to learning from their experiences and challenging internal bureaucracies. furthermore, careful attention needs to be paid to the different motivations and objectives of the various parties attending such events. this was not something we did in a comprehensive manner at the outset, and future organisers of such events would be wise to ask how varied organisations and participants’ objectives differ and how they can best be met. 311 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery through attendance at the showcase and reflecting on it afterwards, interview-based reflection and co-authoring this article, invaluable learning and development was achieved by all of us, whatever our specific role. this will hopefully enable the individuals and the university and community partners to continue to make collaborative research meaningfully inclusive from inception through to presentation of outputs. references benneworth, p, conway, c, charles, d, humphrey, l & younger, p 2009, ‘characterising modes of university engagement with wider society: a literature review and survey of best practice’, viewed september 2013, http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/ characterisingmodesofuniversityengagementwithwidersociety.pdf. boser, s 2006, ‘ethics and power in community-campus partnerships for research’, action research, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 9–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750306060538 chatterton, p 2000, ‘the cultural role of universities in the community: revisiting the university-community debate’, environment and planning a, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 165–82. doi: https://doi.org/10.1068/a3243 facer, k & enright, b 2016, creating living knowledge: the connected communities programme, community-university partnerships and the participatory turn in the production of knowledge, arts and humanities research council, bristol, uk. hart, a, davies, c, aumann, k, wenger, e, aranda, k, heaver, b & wolff, d 2013, ‘mobilising knowledge in community-university partnerships: what does a community of practice approach contribute?’, contemporary social science, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 278–91. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/215820 41.2013.767470 hart, a, maddison, e & wolff, d 2007, ‘introduction’, in a hart, e maddison & d wolff (eds), community-university partnership in practice, niace, london. macpherson, h 2011, ‘navigating a non-representational research landscape and representing “under-represented groups”: from complexity to strategic essentialism (and back)’, social and cultural geography, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 544–48. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.601866 macpherson, h, hart, a & heaver, b 2014, ‘impacts between academic researchers and community partners: some critical reflections on impact agendas in a “visual arts for resilience” research project’, acme, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 27–32. macpherson, h, hart, a & heaver, b 2015, ‘building resilience through group visual arts activities: findings from a scoping study with young people who experience mental health complexities and/or learning difficulties’, journal of social work, pp. 1–20. parsons, a 2014, ‘literature review on social responsibility in higher education’, occasional paper number 2, unesco chair for community based research and social responsibility in higher education. savan, b & sider, d 2003, ‘contrasting approaches to community-based research and a case study of community sustainability in toronto, canada’, local environment, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 303–16. doi: https://doi. org/10.1080/13549830306657 http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/characterisingmodesofuniversityengagementwithwidersociety.pdf http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/characterisingmodesofuniversityengagementwithwidersociety.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750306060538 https://doi.org/10.1068/a3243 https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2013.767470 https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2013.767470 https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.601866 https://doi.org/10.1080/13549830306657 https://doi.org/10.1080/13549830306657 312 | gateways | macpherson, davies, hart, eryigit-madzwamuse, rathbone, gagnon & buttery watson, d 2003, ‘universities and civic engagement: a critique and a prospectus’, in keynote address given at the 2nd inside out conference on the civic role of universities, brighton, uk. wright, k, williams, p, wright, s & gedjeyan, h 2011, ‘ties that bind: creating and sustaining community-academic partnerships’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 4, pp. 83–99. doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v4i0.1784 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v4i0.1784 _goback university vinculación a two-way strategy for sustainable development and academic relevance the utopian ideal shared worldwide is to achieve sustainable development to ensure the best conditions of life for every living being inhabiting the planet, now and into the future. it’s said to be utopian because, at this time of obvious environmental, social and economic decay, it seems that what we long for will never be achieved. however, the struggle continues and the dream remains. great leaders throughout the world, government and nongovernmental organisations, and society in general have assumed the responsibility for guiding action toward this end. in mexico, the government has adopted the definition of sustainable development as ‘the efficient and rational management of resources, in a way that makes it possible to improve the welfare of the population without compromising the quality of life of future generations’ (proméxico). leff (2002) complements this perspective in a complex way: the principle of sustainability is manifested as a mark of the fracture of the modernising reason and as a condition for building a new productive rationality founded on ecological potential and on new civilising senses based on the cultural diversity of the human race. it is about the reappropriation of nature and the reinvention of the world; not only of a world in which many worlds can coexist, but of a world shaped by a diversity of worlds, opening the encirclement of the globalised economic-ecological order. the authors of this article understand that sustainable development brings us closer to a comprehensive social order in which humanity has the challenge of viewing reality in all its complexity, but acting simply in order to solve the socioenvironmental problems it suffers. the most important challenge lies in thinking and acting in reality from an integrated scientific perspective, so that the generation and transmission of knowledge is increasingly effective in providing solutions within complex contexts. it is within institutions of higher education that education and scientific research can play a critical role in social transformation. the rebeca hernández arámburo héctor cruz gonzález alicia ceja rivas university of veracruz © 2017 by r hernández arámburo, h cruz gonzález & a ceja rivas. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: hernández arámburo, r, cruz gonzález, h & ceja rivas, a 2017, ‘university vinculación: a two-way strategy for sustainable development and academic relevance’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 14–32. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5480 corresponding author: rebeca hernández arámburo rhernandez@uv.mx doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5480 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:rhernandez@uv.mx http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5480 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5480 15 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas university provides classrooms and research centres, human talents and vision, technology and scientific innovations; it can become the stage and its participants the actors in promoting sustainable development. in this sense, institutions of higher education have to focus their efforts on attending to one or several areas of need through programs of care, research and outreach services, and the dissemination of information resulting from these efforts. however, in many cases, this attention is oriented to a specific problem and sometimes the involvement of different actors is poorly articulated. this has resulted in small impacts scattered across different areas and sectors of the population. on the other hand, many institutions of higher education seem to be focused on training human capital that can strengthen the economic structure of a country. if the results are adequate, partnerships are established between the university and industry, which makes it possible to extend the scope of action. a cycle occurs in which the market looks to the university because it gets benefits such as technological advances and labour; in turn, the university benefits from access to resources used to further develop scientific research and sources of employment for its graduates. if the results are not adequate, the additional financial resources that the university may obtain are reduced and work with different sectors becomes restricted. hence, the interest of the market in higher education is forcing the commercialisation of universities, with the risk of turning higher education into a space in which ‘[universities] would provide products demanded because of their transient utility in the market, not because of their relevance to the project of the construction of society’ (de la cruz ayuso & sasia santos 2008, p. 43). if things continue in this direction, the university itself will manifest as a ‘mark of the fracture’ between the most pressing needs of society and higher education’s substantive functions. knowledge must travel a long way from its generation before it gets to those who most need it. in consequence, the following questions arise: where does the university fit in? what is its role within complex social structures? how can it produce a vinculación, or twoway interaction, between the university and the wider environment that contributes towards sustainable development? this article attempts to answer the above questions by discussing the project of the universidad veracruzana, which, put simply, is the intention to achieve a balance between competing needs by establishing a strategic university-society vinculación that focuses its actions on a double-track interaction. the university starts from a scientific and technological basis and establishes two strategic lines of action – one directed towards social development and the other to economic development – both of which are intended to favor sustainable development. as well, the vinculación incorporates feedback mechanisms, which act to influence university practices and validate the advances in science 16 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas and technology. this article discusses the university’s development of its university social action model, a strategy to clarify and systematise its long experience of engagement across all aspects of the university. background: higher education in mexico in mexico, such questions around the purpose and role of universities have always been a part of higher education. indeed, the public university was born in response to very specific social demands, and which it proposed to solve through science and technology. the national autonomous university of mexico (unam, in spanish) is one of the oldest universities in latin america. it originated during the time of spanish colonial rule, as a result of the hegemonic need of the catholic church to expand and dominate knowledge, just as had happened in europe. in the struggle for autonomy and the mexican revolutionary movement of 1910, the university laid the foundations for ideological diversity, with a strong tendency to address problems related to injustice and abuses of power. as such, one of the most socially significant acts of unam was to open its doors to anyone who requested it, regardless of their social status. a similar history belongs to the university of guadalajara, which was also influenced by the social changes of the mexican revolution. it established an ideology of support for minorities, and engaged in the social policy of the state of jalisco to improve the living conditions of the population through science, art and culture. the most recent establishment of universities in mexico’s southeastern region, which includes the universidad veracruzana, has its roots in the need to bring higher education to all social groups, including indigenous, to promote social change on the one hand and the preservation of culture on the other. public universities in mexico have traditionally relied on government funding. since higher education is a public service that is supported by the federation, states and municipalities, funding is provided by all levels of government: the federal government provides 78 per cent, the state governments provide the remaining 22 per cent, and the municipal governments provide occasional donations of land or support for construction. however, in recent decades, the increase in the number of higher education institutions and student enrollments in public universities has resulted in a reduction in university funding. along with a growing demand for university projects to solve environmental problems, this has generated the need to seek new financing. therefore, the current position in higher education is to integrate models of science and technology development that promote economic growth with models that address societal needs. half the funding for science and technology comes from public resources; thus, public universities recognise that they have a commitment to society, which is materialised in the generation of 17 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas knowledge and the training of high-quality human resources which will contribute both to raising the competitiveness of the country … and to the solutions of social needs (dutrénit, 2012). since its birth in 1944, the universidad veracruzana has been recognised nationally and internationally for its social and humanitarian vinculación. initially, the university’s vinculación focused on collaboration with the government: for the university, it was a means to apply knowledge acquired in the classroom, and to obtain resources for the expansion of its facilities and equipment; for the government, value came from gaining university support in solving certain problems. during the 1970s and 1980s, as marginalisation and poverty worsened in rural and indigenous communities, the universidad veracruzana transformed its vision and a phase of collaboration with communities began. this resulted in actions that ranged from plans of assistance to projects of self-management and selfsufficiency, which both shapes the behaviour of the communities involved and promotes the identity of the university. social development is the end goal, and teaching, research and university outreach is the means with which to achieve it. however, without a guiding axis, these practices were not well coordinated. in the 1990s a structured proposal for multidisciplinary attention to society emerged, with projects such as the university social service brigades (buss, in spanish) and casas de la universidad (‘university houses’). (these activities, for which the university was awarded the macjannet prize for global citizenship in 2012, are discussed briefly later on in this article.) now, with more than 50 years of constant activity and interaction with society, as well as sustained reflection, the university is able to formulate the proposal presented in this article. the proposal gives form and structure to the actions that derive from the university’s educational and professional practices and social services, and involves a total enrollment of almost 80,000 students from 175 undergraduate and 137 graduate programs. this commitment is expressed in the university’s general development plan 2025: the universidad veracruzana is always committed to the social, economic and cultural development of mexico, and the state of veracruz recognises the diversity of the socio-natural environment and the commitment of its academic work to provide viable answers to the needs and problems of the community (universidad veracruzana 2008). this mission reiterates the university’s commitment to society and expands the parameters by which the university’s social responsibility can be viewed. the university’s long-standing emphasis on support to rural communities and urban groups does not exclude a commitment to indigenous communities, who form one of the most truly representative social groups of the state and of the country, nor does it exclude the public sector and public and private companies committed to social development. despite 18 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas the importance of the dedicated involvement of the university, it is not – and should not be – the only entity responsible for social development. public universities in mexico have a clear understanding of the above: the leadership that they strive for goes beyond the generation of knowledge; they are leaders because of their ethical behavior, their commitment to social justice, their tenacity in ensuring that science and technology are directed to the common good. therefore, when a university like veracruzana raises its voice, its always carries in its tone a commitment with the society. understanding vinculación: a strategic process of interaction for social and academic relevance vinculación is a polysemic concept that, without context, can have as many meanings as users of the term: today there is no single definition of the function of vinculación in higher education institutions; when attempts have been made to define the term, it has been done in very general ways, and even on some occasions it has been viewed as an indefinable category (campos & sánchez 2006). in this article, vinculación is understood as a strategic process for attending to society’s needs and problems via its deliberate inclusion in the development of the university’s substantive functions of teaching, research, outreach and cultural diffusion. furthermore, these processes include feedback mechanisms that impact on the university’s work. these mechanisms refer to the various strategies used by academics and students to share the positive and negative results of their practice with the governing academics at the university. these strategies include faculty meetings, publications, congresses, forums, among others. in this article, we opted to keep the term in its original language; we consider that its english equivalent (‘engagement’) emphasises a university’s action on the environment, without always considering the importance of information feedback. we recognise that our understanding may differ from that of others, depending on what each country or university identifies as a priority. therefore, it is essential that, within the formal context of higher education, the concept of vinculación should be limited. campos and sánchez (2006), in their study on the interpretations of university vinculación in mexico, proposed at least three uses of the term: —physical: the relationship that is established with society in the form of care, operated principally through the compulsory mexican social service, with practices coordinated by academics and sometimes professional practice; —economic: the relationship that the university sets with society, especially with the private sector, in terms of the search for financial support for projects of a public or private nature. it promotes the achievement of alternate funds, with a strong tendency to consider productive development as the ultimate goal; 19 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas —substantive: university vinculación is considered a substantive function responsible for the planning and operation of specific actions that are carried out with the wider society; this does not necessarily imply coordinated actions with academia and research. under this perspective, it is an end in itself. however, for the universidad veracruzana, given its long trajectory of involvement in social fields, the existing interpretations are not enough. by deliberately including vinculación in the university’s existing substantive functions, the two-way process is able to strategically benefit academically from all of the university’s various engaged activities, regardless of type, as well as retain the freedom to vary its activities and perspective as need be. if vinculación is considered a third mission or new substantive function in its own right, this integrated adaptability may not be possible. in short, universidad veracruzana’s institutional strategy of vinculación, with the productive, social and government sectors, is built under a social-academic perspective that allows for the establishment of relationships of mutual cooperation in order to create an impact external to the university, and ensure a return mechanism (feedback) for the improvement of educational programs and processes of research, which aid in the university’s search for social and academic relevance. understood in this way, university vinculación is achieved to the extent that certain basic conditions are met: 1 there is a social problem that can be addressed from one or several areas of knowledge. 2 there is a proposal that arises from an academic group, under the framework of an area of knowledge, or a set of areas. 3 there is a possibility of two-way interaction mediated by certain agreements that have been entered into by both parties and been formalised. 4 subsequent to the attention of the problem, there is feedback from the interaction that allows for the evaluation of the academic and social impact of the process. to fulfil this notion of a social-academic perspective, the universidad veracruzana organises its processes of interaction with society along two strategic lines that guide the direction of its actions and focus efforts on ensuring maximum impact. guiding vinculación: economic and social strategic lines of action the university’s model of vinculación sets up two strategic lines of action: one focused on economic development and the other focused on social development. the two lines of action work together to give meaning to sustainable development. it is necessary to clarify that these are neither diverging nor parallel lines – they feedback mutually, affecting one another positively or negatively. a proposal for action usually emphasises one line or another, but can incorporate both social and economic 20 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas development outcomes; an example may be a project based on the economic needs and potential of a community. the line focused on economic development proposes alliances with industrial and business sectors to support the economy through actions that promote a culture of entrepreneurship, allowing university students and the general community to be leaders in innovative, productive projects, and also improve rates of employment. it also proposes joint work in research and technological development for the optimisation of production systems and innovation in products and processes that will improve quality of life within society. the line of action focused on social development aims to create partnerships with communities, social groups and the government sector, and to establish action plans that have an impact on areas of intervention such as health, education, environment, culture, recreation, sports and urban infrastructure, promoting an attitude of self-management and sustainability. 1. strategic line focused on economic development scientific and technological transformations in recent decades have impacted all dimensions of human living: work and recreational spaces, the domains of health, food, and, of course, communication systems. the productive structures and use of energy systems have also been transformed and given rise to an economy based on the ability to generate and use knowledge for industrial development and trade. the accelerated pace in scientific and technological advancement reduces the distance between the production of knowledge and its application, bringing research centres and companies closer together. the organization for economic cooperation and development (2009) established that innovation is a key part of economic development; so much so that governments have directed a substantial proportion of their investments into innovation. such changes have impacted on the objectives of higher education institutions, which previously focused on the generation and transmission of knowledge but now consider the transfer of innovation and technology as priorities in the promotion of regional and national economic development. innovation has two main components: technological development (inventions) and its subsequent translation to the marketplace (commercialisation), by which it can contribute towards economic development. it is therefore necessary that universities recognise in the two components the different pathways (see figure 1) through which they can exploit their scientific and technological capabilities to address students’ professional development demands with labour market requirements, and to contribute to surrounding community needs. entrepreneurship should be the trigger for a process that strengthens a proactive attitude in students – and, in fact, across the entire university – which, when combined with skills for the 21 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas management of ideas and the development of projects, opens doors to the workforce, either through institutions, private companies or self-employment. figure 1 shows a line that goes from training for entrepreneurship to social endowment. the important idea is that, as far as the university provides tools and programs to develop entrepreneurship among its fellows, the wider community benefits by having a better prepared workforce gifted with entrepreneurial skills, resulting in new business and growth in existing companies (enterprise acceleration), and a decrease in unemployment. equally, the same result could be possible through strategies of innovation based on the transfer of research and technology at the national and international level. the results of these technological innovations provide feedback to the university, impacting on scientific breakthroughs, and, ultimately, on economic and sustainable development. in the case of the universidad veracruzana, this approach is a collective effort by two programs: emprende uv, a program that is aimed at the development of entrepreneurship within the entire universidad veracruzana community through a series of extracurricular workshops in entrepreneurship; and inserción laboral, a program that places those students who have undertaken the entrepreneurship workshops but do not want to start a new business into jobs in companies seeking innovators or entrepreneurs. on the other hand, many of the workshop participants are academics, who return to their laboratory and redirect their research with a market orientation and multidisciplinary approach to the development of technology with potential for commercialisation, providing new elements for the competitiveness of industry or new opportunities to create value for start-ups. 2. strategic line focused on social development the public university of the 21st century must play a key role in the transformation of society, not merely as a momentary response to trends in economic development but in recognition of the opportunity to build a society with lower inequality, less poverty, figure 1. strategic line focused on economic development. 22 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas less violence, less indifference and with greater understanding of sustainability and human rights. it is increasingly pressing that universities move from being an entity that analyses and contemplates social problems toward one that engages and generates alternative solutions to transform the conditions that hinder local, state or national development. the great majority of the factors impeding social development are positively influenced by developments in education, science and technology, which have their origin in the work of higher education institutions. therefore, the challenge of the university is to contribute to social transformation, defined by lópez montaño (2005) as ‘… the process that seeks to eliminate the barriers that hinder access of the weak and of the middle classes to productive assets, opportunities for progress and the benefits of public policies’. it is a process, which, in the course of time, should lead to an improvement in the living conditions of the entire population in multiple areas (health, education, nutrition, housing, social security, employment, infrastructure and income), with the notion of sustainability permeating throughout and across these areas. it also implies the reduction of poverty and social inequality and the eradication of corruption. in this process, the role of the state as promoter and coordinator is critical, as is the committed participation of social actors, both public and private, with the university as an additional actor, providing talent, technical expertise, scientific method and knowledge. the purpose of the university is to train students committed to their social environment, which is in itself an exercise of social transformation. however, the commitment goes beyond that. it calls for the participation of the entire university structure, by means of the articulation and linking of its substantive functions (teaching, research, outreach and dissemination of knowledge and culture) with the resolution of specific problems in society and its constituencies. in its long experience of social vinculación, universidad veracruzana has built a very particular vision of the way in which a process can be organised in order to respond to the challenge of social transformation. the subsequent systematisation of this experience has led to the development of a model that integrates more than 20 years’ experience of designing actions and projects that have been linked to the substantive functions of the university. the result is the university social action model (masu, in spanish), which is defined as the expressive provisions or instruments that are provided by the university, perceived or received by the society, and generated in the process of engagement between university and society, with the ultimate purpose of promoting social transformation for sustainable development. masu is a strategy to clarify the social commitment of the university based on four levels of support: altruism, assistance, advice and the promotion of self-management for 23 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas social transformation (see figure 2). it is suggested that the role of the university should go from being an autocratic leader to a companion for the creation of possibilities for social development. the objective of masu is to provide resources that are specific to the university to impact on the development of communities and groups of society; at the same time, it is an exercise in feedback on the academic and social relevance of the university’s substantive functions. the emphasis is on reducing the dependence by society on external actors such as universities, so that groups and individuals can determine for themselves decisions and actions in their search for better living conditions (see figure 3). an example of how this model has been implemented is the project known as casas de la universidad, or university houses: physical infrastructure, located in communities, which provides links between the university and the community. here, the university collaborates with community members on academic and research projects to contribute to the sustainable development of communities that are marginalised in veracruz state. there are now seven such university houses. at each, multidisciplinary groups of students, academics and researchers attend to the most pressing problems, offering, among other things, health services, consulting for productive projects according to the characteristics of the community, urban design, and programs for the rescue of traditions and culture. for example, at coyopolan university house, programs and activities include community health figure 2. university social action model (masu). figure 3. definitions of impacts, action percentages and reduction of dependence (as action by society increases, dependence decreases). 24 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas promotion, diagnosis of community health, nursing, nutritional guidance; environmental activities such as reforestation, recycling, livestock advice and training, and the establishment of a native seed nursery; accounting and administration training; online and distance education programs; and cultural, sport and recreational programs. the university houses are managed by a coordinator, who is a key player in establishing the university’s contact with the community. as a first step, the coordinator establishes a community committee comprising local authorities and community leaders, who commit to analysing the needs of the population and define the direction of solutions. the committee also guides academics about the needs of the population and possible options for engagement. as proposals are developed, they may range between four levels of university actions (as described in figure 3), depending on the problem and the level of community participation. proposals for action may be oriented to social or economic development, or both. it is important to mention that even when projects proposed by the university are perceived as disconnected from one another (an action related to oral health and another to urban development, for example), since everything is coordinated from the university house, problems and actions are integrated and analysed as a complex whole. the results are exposed to the community for analysis and decision-making, and to the academia to identify the social relevance of the academic activity. (for more information on the university houses, and evaluation of specific projects, see the reference list for sources, in spanish) the process of vinculación: designing a model for complexity and flexibility universidad veracruzana’s vinculación is characterised by having multiple pathways for interaction leading to multiple outcomes, therefore, its design is complex; implementation involves a greater degree of difficulty than other linear solutions that are more limited in their processes and results. however, the need for great complexity comes from the fact of a changing environment. above: casas uv: coyopolan, left, and atlahuilco, right. 25 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas consequently, there is no set manual of procedures, but a number of key elements that need to be considered. 1. purpose and scope the start of this process is the triggering question: what is the purpose of the vinculación? if we consider the different perspectives of vinculación mentioned at the beginning of this document, one can define the type of engagement – social or economic – making it possible to trace the path of the entire proposal. a vinculación whose intention is to find spaces for student practice (and offer feedback on students’ professional skills) follows a very different path to a vinculación that proposes as first purpose the obtaining of resources to support institutional projects. a vinculación that is focused on applying a concrete knowledge also differs from the one that focuses the investigation on the solution of a general problem. the intention must be clear from the beginning, because this will determine the definition of the academic and social outcomes in a focused and two-way process. to do this, the following aspects should be considered: 1 the identification of an issue on which impact is desired, whose identification is effected by means of research or by an express request from the government, company or groups of society. the problematic, described in disciplinary terms, will define the form of assessment that will be used to determine, at the end of the intervention, if there was an impact or not. 2 the development of a proposal of attention based on a theoretical framework specific to the discipline or disciplines involved. in this way, the theoretical, conceptual and contextual references, which will guide purposeful action, are clearly expressed. this proposal allows for the validation of the theories through their application in reality, and by using the results of the strategy as raw material for academic reflection. 3 the establishment of the scope of the attention defined on the basis of an analysis of the possibilities that the university has to deal with. this involves assessing the capacity of human and financial resources, and time needs. the definition of this is expressed in specific, formalised agreements between the parties, defining the commitments of each of the actors. 4 definition of a return path for feedback on both the academic and social impact of the attention. 2. diagnosis once the purpose and scope of the vinculación are defined, the next step is to make a diagnosis that will establish a point of departure for forming a detailed understanding of the problem identified. the diagnosis also sets out the variables on which the vinculación intends to influence and, in turn, parameters by which to identify if there has been a change or not. the diagnosis will be understood, in this document, as a study prior to any planning. it emerges as an institutional need 26 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas that consists in the collection of information, identification and analysis of the problems and/or real needs, with the purpose of exploring and understanding the existing situation and, above all, to propose potential solutions and opportunities that will allow for the design of strategies and actions leading to improvements. given that the social-academic vinculación implies a two-way process, and an impact in both directions, the diagnosis that arises must consider two aspects: academic and social. the academic diagnosis starts by defining the prerequisites that the student must fulfill to carry out the action of the linking proposal, as well as the definition of academic competences that are considered necessary, specifying if this knowledge will be acquired, reinforced or only evaluated in the activity. cazares and cuevas de la garza (2007) considered that competence is linked with the ability to do something, the know-how, the why and what for, in such a way that the competencies may be transferable. they include four knowledges: theoretical knowledge, know-how, to know how-to-be, and knowledge transfer. the purpose is to transcend the immediate context: to transform it, and also to adapt it to new situations. given the above, an activity of this nature allows for the development and acquisition of theoretical and methodological knowledge, skills and ethical awareness, all of which need to be considered in the academic diagnosis. these competencies are linked to subjects taught in the classroom and to the graduate profile, although this does not rule out the possibility of developing additional competencies, specific to the complexity of the problems to be solved. in this way, the diagnosis is the basis for determining the manner in which the action of vinculación impacts on the development of the student. the social or environmental diagnosis provides information with regard to the problems or deficiencies that are present in the context; this is done on the basis of the theoretical proposal previously defined, which gives an explanatory framework of what happened and why. the diagnosis describes the aspects on which the university will be able to influence, and identifies, upon completion of the project, how to recognise if that has occurred or not. a quantitative, qualitative or mixed assessment can be considered. the important thing at this point is that the diagnostic process allows for a comparison of before and after. 3. planning the vinculación when the diagnosis has been completed, there is an overview of the problem: from this, one can make a proposal of social action that is also academically relevant. in spite of the ambiguity that might exist in the concept of ‘planning’, this is considered a rational activity essential for the achievement of goals. reyes ponce (2004, p. 244) proposes that planning is the setting of a specific course of action and its guiding principles, which describe the sequence of operations, establish a timeframe for implementation, and identify the necessary material resources. 27 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas when proposing a plan aimed at various actors and social scenarios, it is important to consider that there are factors that can be included and others that cannot be addressed directly, but which can be influenced by the activity that is carried out. recognising these factors makes it possible to set feasible goals. planning in the field of education contributes elements to ensure the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process, and so it considers various components such as the anticipated programming, the knowledge possessed by the student, didactic resources to be used, activities, time and the evaluation. considering the above, the planning of the vinculación may respond to four central questions: why act in relation to the problem? what is one trying to achieve? how can this objective be achieved? to what extent were the proposed objectives achieved? why act in relation to the problem? this question raises the reasons that give meaning to the specific proposal; it is the expression of the arguments that explain the grounds on which the activity or vinculación project will take place, based on the diagnosis and on the theoretical framework of reference. it is presented as a description that sets out the problematic, the academic purpose to be achieved, and the impact on the environment that can be generated. as part of the argument, it is important to explain what future scenarios might occur should no action be taken in response to the problem. in this way, the decisions on what to do and how to do it emerge from an analysis of the whole context. what is one trying to achieve? this assertion expresses the intention of the specific proposal resulting from the analysis of the context and the problems. it may or may not be a proposal whose scope can resolve the entire problem, but instead considers the greatest impact possible, on the basis of university resources and the possibility of action. the objective gives an indication of what can be evaluated at the end of the action, in both the academic and social arena; this establishes an intention in relation to the social problems identified, as well as to the training of the students and the development of the discipline. how can this objective be achieved? this gives rise to the description of the process to be followed, the actors involved, the resources required and the timeframe envisioned. a detailed description facilitates the monitoring of the process, and hence a feedback that compares ‘what was planned’ to ‘what is being achieved’, facilitating decision-making. this can give rise to a systematisation of experiences that will serve as a basis for feedback of results, a theoretical framework of reference, didactic strategy, and even the participation of different actors. the final proposal, endorsed by all participants, is formalised through a legal instrument of academic cooperation that sets out the commitments and responsibilities of the university and of the other participating organisations. to what extent were the proposed objectives achieved? even when this question is to be answered at the end of the process, 28 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas it is defined at the start of the planning. doing so also involves identifying different moments for ‘feedback’, so that decisionmaking, reflection, and change may occur during the process, not just upon completion. it is important to stress that the assessment is not an end in itself but a means to improve the effectiveness of the project; therefore, it provides information on the academic and social outcomes of the strategy and the process itself. in terms of the academic outcomes, the assessment takes into account the students’ competencies of a conceptual, methodological, technical, contextual, ethical and integrative nature; it also considers the didactic strategy utilised in a vinculación proposal, and analyses it from the perspective of both student and academic. in relation to science, including innovations and technology, an evaluation is conducted on the extent to which the framework of reference was sufficient as a response to the identified problem. this evaluation is carried out by the academic group; if the framework is deemed to have been inadequate, the academic group must propose innovations in response to the unsolved problem. with regard to the evaluation of changes or not in the social context, it is important to consider how environmental complexity can hinder the insulation of variables. the interpretation of the results and outcomes must consider possible additional impacts by the presence of factors not anticipated. 4. impact evaluation the evaluation of the impacts of vinculación has as its focus a critical element for academic and social development: relevance. for universities, relevance is a principle on which its social responsibility is based. gottifredi (as cited in vergel, 2015) declared: relevance is directly related to the expectations and feelings of society for the university … [in this sense, relevance is] defined as the degree of correspondence that exists between social and individual needs being met by higher education, and what is really achieved, as well as other aspects such as socialisation, legitimacy, cultural training, extension and services. hence the importance of identifying the two types of relevance upon which the processes of university vinculación must have an impact: social relevance and academic relevance. according to garcía (2000), social relevance will be understood as: the degree of contribution or intervention by universities towards solving the needs or demands of society, across technical and social dimensions, current and future: [that is,] its contributions and the way in which the university is felt and perceived by society in its interaction that takes this wider context as an object of study to identify problems, propose solutions and participate in them, [doing so] from a reflective position that allows for the maintenance of the principles inherent to its status as a university. 29 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas however, the assessment of social impacts through social relevance is made even more complex when it is considered that the social and economic development of a city or a region does not depend exclusively on institutions of higher education. it is an entangled mesh of responsibilities and capacities, composed of different sectors and institutions that put their resources towards improving the living conditions of the various groups in a society. it follows from the above the need to refer to those indicators of impact designed by international organisations (for example, the united nations and the economic commission for latin america and the caribbean) and consider also the more precise indicators built by the national and local instances that identify problems, needs and specific contexts. statistical indicators constitute one of the indispensable tools to resort to in order to have relevant and timely information for decision-making, follow-up of the commitments and accountability. also, it is essential to assess, monitor and predict trends of the situation of a country, a state or a region, assess the institutional performance and carry out the comparability of economic development and social progress (sandoval de escurdia & richard 2003). some of the specific indicators that help the universidad veracruzana build a frame of reference for social relevance are organised by areas of impact. in the case of health, the most common indicators are: nutrition, hygiene, contagious diseases, chronic degenerative diseases and health information. in the area of education: literacy levels, schooling, educational continuity and non-formal education. in culture, tradition and sport: strengthening of social identity, roots, interaction and competitive effectiveness. in the environment and nature: quality of water, air and land, and environmental information. in the economy: per capita income, productive projects, sources of employment and labour insertion. assessment of academic relevance follows a process similar to that of social relevance, and includes core elements of university planning. the academic relevance corroborates the extent to which classroom learning responds to a curriculum and programs of study that provide the student with a comprehensive and up-todate education based on research lines, defined by the academic group, and as demanded by the social context. thus, the indicators of academic relevance can be organised in the following way: —training of student: competencies, scope of the training objectives. —syllabus: curriculum, teaching strategies, graduate profile. —lines of research: relevance. —general learning: instrumental, interpersonal, systemic. —specific learning: conceptual, methodological, ethical, technical, contextual, integrative. these indicators of social and academic relevance are the most important reason to have a comparative ‘x-ray’ of the scope and limitations of the processes of university vinculación. 30 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas by this understanding, even highly theoretical knowledge, when integrated into a body of knowledge, has great social utility in terms of the contribution it can make towards understanding the world. the intention is not that every subject must be directly applied in vinculación experiences, but that activities are designed which integrate and draw on the full spectrum of knowledge. in this regard, both the academic relevance and the social relevance must, in principle, be complementary. academic relevance is related to the curriculum of academic rationalism, the curriculum with emphasis on social restoration, the curriculum of self-affirmation, an integrated curriculum, and a comprehensive curriculum. both social and academic relevance must interact and be complementary through the educational purposes, taking into account the needs of individual and collective development. and, given that education is a possibility of transformation for those who are part of this process and also for the context, it is necessary to enable the development of other forms of production, communication and integration that are different from those driven by the neoliberal model that has prevailed despite the psychosocial transformations of the environment (pupiales rueda 2012). ultimately, a measurement of the university’s impact on social and academic relevance will provide an indication of the importance of social responsibility and university participation for social transformation toward sustainable development. conclusion the conceptualisation of vinculación, as a feedback process, is an essential strategic process for both identifying the academic and social relevance of knowledge generated in university classrooms and research institutes, and for returning the information generated in the process of vinculación to the educational process. it is an approach that reaffirms the formative essence of the public university. the vinculación strategy at the universidad veracruzana, based on a social-academic perspective, favours the integration of the most relevant factors of development: the economic and social. this integration exists in a dynamic balance in which neither is of greater importance than the other. this promotes the possibility of addressing a problem from a diversity of perspectives across disciplines, in which each discipline analyses a part of the phenomenon, contributing their results to the whole, and thereby producing a more complete answer to a problem. the academic aspect, in the same way, seeks an integrated construction of knowledge generated through its interaction with the environment. this interaction strengthens the complex vision of scientific research, the joint disciplines, and the generation of relevant research lines within the context in which they operate. equally, by implementing theoretical, heuristic and axiological competencies in an area of complex reality, the formation of the 31 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas student becomes more comprehensive and more socially and academically relevant. in addition, reflection on the academic results allows for the validation of theoretical foundations and the rebuilding of knowledge, as well as updating curricula and lines of research. this is only possible if the impact evaluation emerges from a combination of the definition of generic indicators (established by international agencies in a global context) and specific indicators (built ex-professo to evaluate the result of the vinculación from the proposal’s perspective and in the context in which the action took place). in addition, these evaluations contribute to the construction of metrics for measuring the impact of universities in society, which remain scarce worldwide. the universidad veracruzana is in the process of constructing metrics, which we hope will be of use to others in the future. finally, the university assumes a commitment toward social transformation for sustainable development. by doing so, the university changes its passive role in the face of social and environmental problems, and commits itself with reality. it is concerned with the problems and takes up its role of active member. this is the clear answer to the question: where does the university fit in? acknowledgement the authors would like to acknowledge the support of margaret malone, managing editor of gateways journal, whose input aided in the development of this article. references note: all translations in the article are by the authors. campos ríos, g & sánchez daza, g 2006, ‘la vinculación universitaria y sus interpretaciones’, ingenierías, vol. ix, no. 30, pp. 18–25. cazares aponte l & cuevas de la garza, jf 2007, ‘planeación y evaluación basadas en competencias’, trillas, méxico. consejo técnico vinculación 2015, descripción del modelo de vinculación de la universidad veracruzana. de la cruz ayuso, c & sasia santos, p 2008, ‘la responsabilidad de la universidad en el proyecto de construcción de una sociedad’ educación superior y sociedad, nueva época, año 13, no. 2, pp. 17–52. dutrénit, g 2012, ‘vinculación y el compromise social de la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación’, paper presented at foro consultivo científico y tecnológico, santa fe, 27 septiembre. viewed 8 may 2017, www.foroconsultivo.org.mx/documentos/version_estenografica_dutrenit_ epn_27_sep_2012.pdf garcía, f, 2000 ‘una aproximación al concepto de universidad pertinente’, universidad centroccidental lisandro alvarado, venezuela. viewed 8 may 2017, www.ucla.edu.ve/dac/compendium/compendium5/pertinente.htm leff, e 2002, saber ambiental: sustentabilidad, racionalidad, complejidad, poder, siglo xxi editores, méxico. http://www.ucla.edu.ve/dac/compendium/compendium5/pertinente.htm 32 | gateways | hernández arámburo, cruz gonzález & ceja rivas lópez montaño c 2005, ‘la transformación social’. viewed 8 may 2017, www.cecilialopezcree.com/k_oldtopics/e_globalizacion/2005/3_ trimestre/d_transforma.html organización para la cooperación y el desarrollo económicos (ocde) 2009, estudios de la ocde de innovación regional: 15 estados mexicanos. proméxico website, www.promexico.gob.mx/desarrollo-sustentable/ pupiales rueda, be 2012, ‘de la pertenencia social y la pertinencia académica del currículo del programa de licenciatura en artes visuales de la universidad de nariño de la ciudad de san juan de pasto-colombia’, revista tendencias vol. xiii, no. 2, pp. 119–46. viewed 8 may 2017, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4242070 reyes ponce, a 2004, administración moderna, editorial limusa, méxico. sandoval de escurdia, jm & richard muñoz, mp 2003, ‘los indicadores en la evaluación del impacto de los programas’, méxico. viewed 8 may 2017, www.diputados.gob.mx/bibliot/publica/inveyana/polisoc/pdf/0403.pdf universidad veracruzana, 2008, ‘plan general de desarrollo 2025’. viewed 8 may 2017, 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resilience (ycdr 2) is a crossborder initiative aimed at learning from and with disaster-affected youth 13 to 22 years of age in joplin, missouri, in the united states, and slave lake, calgary and high river, alberta, in canada. each of these communities experienced major disasters and were in the early stages of recovery when they were selected for this study. working with local partners in each community, ycdr 2 faculty and students engaged youth in experiential and arts-based workshops to explore their stories of recovery and resilience. the questions framing this research project focused on the people, places, spaces and activities that helped or hindered the recovery process for youth and their peers. beyond the practical and theoretical advances of the work, which are described elsewhere (cox,et al. 2016; fletcher et al. 2016), the project offers a number of methodological contributions and lessons learned about community and youth engagement and processes that simultaneously highlight the capacities of youth, generate data, and provide novel options for knowledge mobilisation in disaster research and practice. this article, therefore, describes the ycdr2 engagement and research process and elaborates on the opportunities and challenges associated with establishing youth-community-academic partnerships in postdisaster contexts. participatory research with children and youth this research was grounded in a participatory orientation, and the flexible research and engagement strategy mirrors some of the concurrent data generation and analysis strategies of grounded theory (strauss & corbin 1997). this approach allowed us to be flexible and responsive in the emergent and shifting contexts of diverse post-disaster environments (also see brown 2009). furthermore, it supported our ability to adapt each research workshop to suit the unique needs and capacities of each community, the youth with whom we were working and the research team. lori peek jennifer tobin-gurley colorado state university robin s cox leila scannell sarah fletcher cheryl heykoop royal roads university © 2016 by l peek, j tobin-gurley, r s cox, l scannell, s fletcher & c heykoop. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: peek, l, tobin-gurley, j, cox, r s, scannell, l, fletcher, s & heykoop, c 2016, ‘engaging youth in post-disaster research: lessons learned from a creative methods approach’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 89–112. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v9i1.4875 corresponding author: robin s. cox; robin.cox@royalroads.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4875 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 90 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop participatory methods have been gaining cross-disciplinary respect and momentum over the past few decades (e.g. jagosh et al. 2012; simonds et al. 2013). since the 1990s, these methods have increasingly been identified as an effective tool for democratically engaging children and youth in the research process – from design to implementation to dissemination of results (alderson & morrow 2011; christensen & james 2008; hart 1992; james & prout 1990). the impetus for this shift was inspired, in part, by the 1989 united nations convention on the rights of the child, which was instrumental in establishing that children have the right to participate in age-appropriate decision-making processes that affect their lives, families, schools and communities (checkoway 2011). simultaneously, a paradigm shift was occurring in research such that instead of conducting studies ‘on’ or ‘about’ children, researchers have begun to employ participatory methods in an effort to learn ‘from’ and ‘with’ children and youth (christensen & james 2008; gallacher & gallacher 2008). checkoway (2011, p. 340) underscores the importance of engaging young people in the research process: youth participation is important, because when young people participate, it draws upon their expertise, enables them to exercise their rights as citizens, and contributes to a more democratic society. it also promotes their personal development, and provides them with substantive knowledge and practical skills. in hart’s (1992) report for the united nations children’s fund (unicef), he adapted arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation to better fit the potential participation levels of children and youth in research. while widely used and applied, the ladder concept was critiqued for its hierarchical design that places full participation at the top, insinuating that this is necessarily the ‘best’ approach to use when working with all children (gallacher & gallacher 2008). to address this concern, other typologies have been developed, such as shier’s (2001) ‘pathways to participation’, treseder’s (1997) ‘degrees of participation’, and wong, zimmerman and parker’s (2010) ‘typology of youth participation and empowerment pyramid’. the latter addresses some of the major critiques of participatory methods with children and youth, acknowledging that they ‘cannot be expected to carry the full burden of empowering themselves and their communities’ (wong et al. 2010, p. 105). rather, wong and colleagues call for participatory methods and typologies that recognise the range of developmental needs and evolving capacities of youth and the degree to which youth and adults share power, responsibilities and decision-making in a project. in keeping with wong et al’s (2010) typology, the ycdr 2 project was built on a foundation of symbolic participation, where the voices and perspectives of youth are valued and foregrounded in ways that encourage and further their critical thinking, selfefficacy and mastery, and emotional empowerment. during the life 91 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop of the project, and at various times in the face-to-face work with youth, our research team and the youth participants also engaged in a more egalitarian and transactional process of sharing the planning and decision-making responsibilities, or what in this typology is described as pluralistic participation. children and youth engagement in disaster management just as the field of research with youth has been evolving to become more participatory, so too has the field of disaster management. the field has a history of creating top–down relief efforts and strategies that are targeted towards adults, with young people often viewed only as passive or vulnerable victims (mitchell, tanner & haynes 2009) or, paradoxically, as hyper-resilient and in need of no outside intervention to assist their recovery (see fothergill & peek 2015 for a discussion of these ‘disaster myths’ related to children and youth). the historic hierarchical approach to disaster management, a legacy of its militaristic roots, is increasingly being challenged to engage communities and citizens through participatory approaches to preparedness, response and recovery (phillips 2009). from this perspective, children and youth have a vital role to play in disaster risk reduction, research activities, policy creation and decision-making (anderson 2005; mitchell, tanner & haynes 2009; peek 2008). progress has been made over the past decade to identify the disaster-related vulnerabilities specific to children and youth in disasters (peek 2008) and pediatric-specific needs in emergency response and longer term recovery (cahill et al. 2010; national commission on children and disasters 2010). this research has identified a range of post-disaster-related psychological and behavioural issues, including the potential for higher rates of stress and/or traumatic stress (weems et al. 2007; yelland et al. 2010), increased criminal activity, lower grades and higher rates of high school dropout, increased use of alcohol and other substances, and other behavioural and psychological outcomes (fothergill & peek 2015; masten & narayan 2012). advancements in research include an intersectional analysis of children and youth that explores questions of which children and/or youth in which contexts are most vulnerable and have the highest capacity for coping and recovery (gibbs et al. 2013; masten & narayan 2012). this includes identifying how and which dose effects (i.e. levels and types of exposure) intersect with other ascribed and achieved categories, such as age and stage of development of the child or youth; race and ethnic group membership; household and community level income and wealth; physical and mental ability; and other characteristics, to influence risk and resilience for disaster-affected youth. additional research is needed to identify the factors that promote resilience and to explore the role that youth play in identifying risks, needs and vulnerabilities, as well as their 92 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop potential contributions to the design and implementation of effective risk mitigation and community resilience interventions (peek 2008). understanding the social ecology of youth through their own eyes is critical to enhancing resilience (solomon & laufter 2005; ungar 2008). involving youth directly in risk and resilience education and activities has the potential benefit of increasing their sense of agency and self-efficacy when disasters occur, two psychological factors shown to be associated with resilience (luthar 2006; masten & obradović 2008; masten & osofsky 2010; nccd 2010; wolmer, hamiel & laor 2011). although the role of youth in community resilience is only beginning to be explored (mutch & gawith 2014; ronan & johnson 2005), there is a growing recognition that youth have the capacity to contribute not only to their own wellbeing in disasters, but also to that of their families and communities (fothergill and peek 2015; lahey 2015). methods and approach the ycdr2 research involved disaster-affected youth from four communities in a series of workshop and arts-based research activities that varied across communities, but shared common elements. this section details the methods used to: 1) choose post-disaster research sites; 2) engage the broader community; 3) establish youth-friendly recruitment methods; 4) facilitate artsbased and experiential (e.g. game) activities to explore research questions; and 5) ensure ethical standards for working with youth. each workshop process was designed to build the trust and engagement of participating youth, facilitate activities designed to explore the research questions, and create a space for storytelling processes and discussions that would help elaborate and deepen the shared understanding of youth’s recovery experiences. research funding and team ycdr2 was funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada in 2012. the project team received additional funding from the canadian red cross in 2014. the project was co-founded and is co-directed by a canadian-based professor and a us-based professor. the team also included postdoctoral, doctoral, masters and undergraduate student researchers at universities in the us and canada and local youth partners in the focal communities. site selection communities for this study are introduced in table 1 and described in more depth below. sites were selected based on the following factors: (1) recent exposure to one or more natural disaster events; (2) impact on youth-oriented institutions and spaces (such as homes, schools, parks and recreation centers); and (3) proximity of the researchers to the community and/or existing connections within the community. 93 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop slave lake, alberta. on 15 may, 2011, a wildfire swept into the northern alberta town of slave lake. no deaths were caused by the fire, but it destroyed approximately one-third of the town’s buildings and homes, as well as nearby forested areas. the majority of residents were evacuated before the fire reached the town. joplin, missouri. seven days later, on 22 may 2011, joplin, missouri experienced an ef-5 tornado (the highest magnitude on the fujita scale). more than 160 deaths were reported and 990 people were injured. approximately one-quarter of the city’s buildings, including nine of the 18 public schools, were heavily damaged or destroyed. calgary, alberta. on 20 june 2013, torrential rain in southern alberta caused seven major tributaries and rivers to overflow, resulting in one of canada’s largest and costliest floods. over 75,000 residents were evacuated from neighbourhoods throughout calgary. one death was reported. high river, alberta. the same floods of june 2013 also severely affected the nearby town of high river, located approximately 60 km south of calgary. all residents were forced to evacuate, over 70 per cent of homes were damaged and most of the town’s buildings were badly damaged. three deaths were reported in high river, and one was reported in the neighbouring town of okotoks. initial post-disaster engagement once a disaster-affected community was identified that met our selection criteria, we reviewed news articles and websites in order to find potential organisational partners and local leaders. these included elected officials and emergency management officials, school administrators and teachers, hospital administrators and mental health experts, representatives from local chambers of commerce, members of various communityand youth-based organisations, and youth pastors and other religious leaders. this process allowed us to collect information about the consequences of the disaster and the recovery process, and identify potential adult allies who might support the recruitment and sustained engagement of youth within the community. prior to scheduling our initial visits to each community, we reached out via email and telephone to these potential ycdr2 field sites estimated population recent natural disaster event(s) month/ year of the disaster event(s) timing of initial community engagement number of youth participants slave lake, alberta, canada ~6,800 wildfires may 2011 may 2013 6 joplin, missouri, us ~50,000 ef-5 tornado may 2011 january 2013 15 high river, alberta, canada ~13,000 flooding june 2013 december 2013 9 calgary, alberta, canada ~988,000 flooding june 2013 december 2013 9 table 1: ycdr2 field sites and workshop participants 94 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop collaborators, most of whom were highly responsive to our requests for interviews or informal meetings. we believe this was due to the length of time that had passed since the disaster, which ranged from 6 to 18 months, depending on the community where we were working. rather than moving into the field immediately after the event (an approach to collecting perishable data that has a long history in this field (phillips 2014), but has also been sharply criticised in recent years (gaillard & gomez 2015)), we were intentional about waiting as our goal was to understand longer term post-disaster recovery processes. upon our arrival in each community, we began with formal and informal interviews with adult contacts and, through these meetings, began identifying potential youth participants. we initially met with youth formally in focus group settings where we audio recorded our exchanges, and more informally in classrooms and community-based settings where we engaged in open conversation to learn about the prospect of collaboratively developing a series of participatory workshop sessions. we had conversations with adults and youth about their desired level of participation in the project, their levels of motivation and vision for the project, and their thoughts on various creative approaches to data collection. the initial adult and youth interviews were invaluable in terms of expanding upon what we had learned about the community and the disaster from secondary sources, and contributing to the promotion of the ycdr2 research and our youth-recruitment activities. the workshops in her meta-analysis of empirical studies of youth participation, frank (2006, p. 366) identified five lessons for approaching youth participation that conceptualise youth as ‘resources for civic action’, ‘learners’ in the process of developing competencies and skills, and ‘collaborators’ with adults who can provide guidance and access to the resources they need. our flexible approach to the fieldwork and our implementation of the participatory workshops reflect this orientation. the research and workshop activities in each community were tailored to the needs, interests and capacities of our youth participants, shaped by the input of key youth and adult allies and partners, and influenced by the availability of the research team in relationship to funding and logistics. therefore, although we held constant the focus and goals of the research (i.e. youth capacity-building; contributing to theories of disaster recovery by drawing on youth perspectives), the design of the workshop process in each community remained fluid and responsive. workshop design and participants in keeping with the preferences and learning styles of youth (lomas & oblinger 2006), the basic design of all our workshop processes centred on creative and expressive research methods. over the past decade, the range of creative and expressive methods used in research has expanded to include photovoice (e.g. downey 95 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop & anyaegbunam 2010; edwards et al. 2012); photo elicitation interviews (clark-ibáñez 2004; meo & dabenigno 2011); videovoice (aarsand & forsberg 2010; didkowsky, ungar & liebenberg 2010); audio diaries (worth 2009); poetry (fitzpatrick 2012); drawing (ortiz guitart, prats ferret & ferré 2012); art-based internet design (battles 2010; driessnack & furukawa 2012); and participatory or social mapping (clark 2011; hart & rajbhandary 2003). creative methods involve tools for engaging youth (checkoway, pothukuchi & finn 1995) and fostering social learning and development (engeström, miettinen & punamäki 1999). such methods can be especially useful for working with young people in the post-disaster context as they provide an outlet for expression, reflection and the generation of new knowledge (fraser & al sayah 2011) in response to experiences that may be challenging to put into words. in a group setting, such as the ycdr2 workshops, the creative process is social. the creation of drawings, photographs and writings, for example, and the discussion generated by these outputs provide opportunities for shared meaning-making and connection. groupbased creative activities make thought processes explicit and observable through conversation, emotional responses and the development of artistic outputs. as a team, we had experience and familiarity with many of these methods, but focused primarily on visual methods such as photo-elicitation, photo-voice, video and stop-motion animation and participatory analysis methods such as social mapping. the choice of specific methods varied from workshop to workshop and included methods of expression of specific interest to individual youth (e.g. music and poetry). the size and duration of each workshop also varied across the communities where we worked, but they typically involved between three to ten participants per workshop with each workshop lasting between two to three days. in total, we worked with 39 youth across the four communities (table 1). participants ranged in age from 13 to 22 and included a roughly equal number of girls and boys in each community. the workshops were held in youth-friendly community spaces operated by local youth-serving organisations (e.g. boys and girls clubs, ymca, community centres). ethical considerations this project adhered to national and international ethical guidelines for conducting human research (i.e. in canada, tri council policy statement for the ethical conduct for research involving humans; in the united states, department of health and human services office for human research protections under the guidance of the university institutional review board). this was crucial for the present study given that participants were youth who had previously experienced an unsettling event (i.e. the disaster), the nature of the activities explored in their disaster recovery, and the information and stories participants contributed to a website that was publicly accessible. in view of this, university approved consent forms were signed by youth participants and parents of 96 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop youth under the age of 18. assent forms were also obtained from youth under the age of 18. participants signed additional waivers and photo release forms indicating whether or not they consented to being audiotaped, photographed and/or videotaped. the audio recordings of workshops and interviews were transcribed without names to maintain the anonymity of participants’ comments. because conversations and activities related to disasters and recovery hold the potential to evoke emotion, one of the members of the research team with training in disaster psychosocial response and trauma counselling was present during the workshops. in addition, participants were told that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw from any activities or the full workshop if they wished. the one youth who did withdraw was able to discuss her feelings and options for participation with the member of the research team trained in counselling; after deciding to withdraw, she received additional support from one of the local youth-based organisations with which we had partnered. this experience further emphasised the importance of including individuals with counselling expertise on the research team, as well as linking in with local organisations to provide longer term support. despite our adherence to typical research ethics considerations, we noted that such ethical guidelines do not often focus on issues that commonly arise in arts-based research, which can be particularly challenging when working with vulnerable populations such as youth (e.g. lafrenière et al. 2012; wang 2006). one key consideration is to enable data collection without compromising participants’ voices (e.g. lafrenière et al. 2012; sandelowski et al. 2006). to respect this, participants were encouraged to explain their own art products in their own words, and provide captions for them when appropriate. importantly, ethical applications and consent forms ensured and respected artistic licence; participants were given the option to include their names with their products or not. in almost all cases, the youth selected the option that they did, indeed, wish to have their names attached to their respective work. workshop goals the central goals of each workshop were to invite youth to use creative methods – of our or their own design – to explore disaster recovery from their perspectives, and to consider how they might contribute to the resilience of youth more generally and their community specifically. the following research questions guided our work: (1) how do disasters affect the daily lives of youth? (2) what assets and vulnerabilities contribute to/or hinder recovery? (3) what forms of support do youth need and how are those needs being fulfilled? (4) how do youth actively contribute to their recovery and to the recovery needs of those around them? and (5) how might youth-centred recovery activities incorporate and contribute to longer term resilience of youth, their families and their communities? in an effort to respond to these gaps in 97 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop knowledge, we asked youth in each community to respond to a series of questions in interactive group formats. the research questions were translated into specific, focused questions for the youth such as: how have you contributed to recovery in your community? what places were most important to your recovery? who was most helpful with your recovery process? workshop process the creative workshop activities were intentionally sequenced in a progressive nature – building from previous activities – to encourage a deep level of trust, engagement, discussion and critical reflection. drawing on strategies for group development (e.g. tuckman & jensen 1977), each of the sessions included activities that would establish trust, build relationships, strengthen group coherence, and offer tools for discussion that would serve as a foundation for the rest of the workshop. following this, the youth took part in a series of creative activities, as described below, with the intent to generate and deepen discussions about recovery and resilience. the workshop sessions were audio and video recorded and later transcribed by research assistants. facilitation the research team shared facilitation responsibilities and worked to ensure the ratio of adults to youth did not inhibit youth’s full participation and engagement. members of the team not facilitating a specific activity participated equally in the games with the youth participants. the active engagement of adult researchers can disrupt the typical imbalance of power that occurs when adults stand apart from fun and focus only on leading youth in activities. in the case of the ycdr 2 workshops, and consistent with the commitment to a pluralistic participatory approach, the space of learning was established as a shared space, in which both adults and youth were willing to take risks in order to learn. with that said, it was often appropriate for our research team to step back from the ‘action’, such as when the disaster-affected youth were sharing their own stories of recovery. we practised open and active listening skills and often took on other research-related roles such as videotaping or recording audio/notes so the sole facilitator could help guide youth conversations. trust and relationship-building activities initial workshop activities involved low-risk experiential activities such as ‘name games’, in which participants – including members of our research team and the youth involved in the workshops – learned one another’s names through play. for example, we often played the name game where the participants would stand in a circle and toss a ball to one another until everyone had learned everyone else’s name. these activities set an active and fun tone and contributed to engagement through community building and formation of trust. 98 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop after these initial warm-up or icebreaker activities, we led participants through a period of ‘shared norm creation’ where the youth were asked to ‘take control’ of the workshop and identify the ‘rules’ that they hoped would be implemented to ensure a successful process. norms such as ‘have coffee available’, ‘smile’ and ‘only offer supportive comments of others’ were then posted around the workshop space to ensure that we were all reminded of our shared agreements and could refer back to them when needed. we then engaged in activities designed to build teams and deepen trust. ‘hopes and fears’, for example, involved youth and the research team anonymously sharing their aspirations and worries associated with the workshop process. these were written on slips of paper that were placed in two separate hats, one for hopes and one for fears. in two rounds, one for each hat, participants pulled out an anonymous slip, read it aloud, and related or empathised with the specific hope or fear expressed on the slip of paper. this activity normalises fear as natural, encourages empathy with that fear (or hope), deepens the sense of trust amongst participants and begins the sharing process in a relatively risk-free manner. for example, one joplin youth expressed a fear of being misunderstood during the upcoming sessions. in reading that fear aloud, another youth offered this response: i can understand that. and not with just being misunderstood, but it goes along with being nervous. i remember when i first talked to you guys or the news crew. i was nervous at first and i was like ‘man, i am gonna say something dumb or stutter or just ramble on’. but, i mean as it went along, things went easier and i was able to process my thoughts (joplin male youth, 2014). facilitated experiential games and activities we then engaged in other facilitated games and activities, or what boal (2002) would call ‘physical dialogues’. these kinds of activities allow those participating to become comfortable with each other and with themselves. moving from verbal to physical engagement through play (e.g. human knot, push not to win; boal 2002) creates intimacy, interrupts the restrictive norms that tend to limit creativity and expression in many adult-designed workshops, and encourages playfulness. one such activity was the magic carpet ride (see currie & heykoop 2011), which engaged all participants working together to flip a tarpaulin (i.e. the magic carpet) on which they were standing (i.e. flying) without stepping off the tarp (figure 1). similarly, we frequently used an activity called the unity circle (currie & heykoop 2011) (figure 2) in which participants would hold a rope circle and use their weight and the tension on the rope to stand and sit as one. 99 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop storytelling processes and learning about disaster recovery with the groundwork of trust and relationship building firmly intact, we shifted the focus of the workshop to concentrate on a range of expressive activities designed to encourage individual and shared exploration of the research questions. for example, we used visual explorer™, a pre-existing set of photos, to explore experiences of the community and recovery using visual metaphors (figure 3), graphic recording to develop a more collective story through images, graphics and words (figure 4), and photo-elicitation activities that generated photo-stories (photos with captions or brief paragraphs) of meaningful occurrences in the young people’s disaster recovery experiences (figure 5). in addition to the creative activities and outputs suggested by the research team, youth also shared their experiences through their own forms of creative expression, including music (e.g. an instrumental guitar song) and writing (e.g. poems, journal entries). in slave lake, youth sought out photographs of their communities, painted those images onto each other’s faces, and superimposed an image of their painted face onto the original image (figure 6). these photographs served as the basis for story creation and focused discussion on the disaster and its enduring consequences. figures 1 and 2: the ycdr2 workshops began with trust and relationship-building activities, and facilitated games, such as the magic carpet ride (left) and the unity circle (right). figure 3: the visual explorer™ activity provided an entry point into discussion and storytelling. figure 4: graphic recording creates a visual story of the workshop process. 100 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop in calgary and high river, youth worked with a professional spoken word artist and a local animation company to generate poems and art (graphics, clay figures, words) that they then used to create stop-motion animated videos (figures 7 and 8). in each community the workshop processes resulted in different research outputs and stories. however, in each case, the stories stimulated and deepened youth’s discussion of their recovery experiences and enriched our understanding of their perspectives on disasters and what aided or undermined their sense of wellbeing as they and their families worked through the recovery process. figure 5: participants took or retrieved photographs and created photo stories in response to questions about their disaster recovery. figure 6: slave lake participants created facepainting photo-art to depict recovery in relation to their changed environment, which led to in-depth discussions about their recovery experiences. figures 7 and 8: still images from stop-motion animation videos about youth’s disaster experiences in calgary: ‘nightmare of reality’ by emily and megan, and ‘the calgary floods’ by cameron and tessa. 101 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop for instance, one teenager in joplin brought in a photograph of her younger sibling and told a moving story about them being so-called ‘twister sisters’ after the tornado. other youth in the workshop responded with empathy and also were able to relate as she highlighted the importance of mutual care between siblings in the recovery process. during the photo-face-painting activity, a teenager from slave lake emphasised the challenges youth face in feeling left out of community recovery efforts, and the importance of youth being there for each other: being a youth is difficult because you might feel like you are left out since no one is looking after you or giving you jobs to help with. i think the most important job for youth is to be there for each other … even if you aren’t dealing with the exact same thing, youth who went through disasters have a way of understanding other youth (slave lake female youth, 2014). the animated videos produced by youth in calgary and high river described the ‘heartbreak’ and ‘nightmare’ of the floods and the loss of memories, homes and irreplaceable items, but they also spoke of hope and the conscious choice to move forward despite the uncertainty of the path (‘life is like a narrow road’, high river). many of these videos also spoke of the importance of community to youth, and how friends and family helped youth ‘through the hard times of losing everything’ (‘a better day’, calgary). lessons learned the ycdr2 project offers a number of lessons about the challenges and successes of establishing and maintaining youth-academic research partnerships in general, and working with youth in a post-disaster context in particular. for the most part, these lessons learned relate to the research process, but also include a focus on the research content. they are organised under the following seven themes: building on existing momentum and sustained engagement; participant-researcher reciprocity; youth engagement in disaster recovery; youth-relevant engagement in research; degree of participation; multiple uses of arts-based methods; and data analysis challenges. building on existing momentum and sustained engagement achieving initial and sustained engagement with youth participants can be challenging, especially when researchers are located outside the community of interest (this is relatively common in disaster research). in this multi-site project we thus faced geographic challenges in establishing contacts and arranging activities from a distance as well as cultural challenges related to obtaining insider knowledge of local customs, community characteristics and networks (also see minkler 2004). by developing relationships with adult allies and community-based youth-serving organisations in each field site, we were able to link to existing youth-focused programs and draw on their pre-existing 102 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop credibility. these allies also helped us understand local politics, contextualise post-disaster conditions, and identify particular neighbourhoods or organisations that might be fruitful in terms of recruiting youth. in turn, we were able to collaborate with local organisations in a number of ways, providing some with financial support, as well as showcasing their work as part of our knowledge mobilisation efforts. the project also generated empirical data (i.e. themes drawn from the analysis of the workshop discussions, workshop outputs and youth evaluation of the workshops) that we aggregated, anonymised and then shared with these organisations to inform their own considerations of how to engage and support disaster-affected young people. given the long-term and challenging process of disaster recovery, building these kinds of connections to existing community supports was also an ethical decision. we remained conscious of the limitations of our engagement and tried to address this wherever possible by: (1) employing interested youth as on-theground research assistants in order to build capacity; (2) helping to develop and foster relationships amongst youth participants and between adults and youth involved in our project; (3) developing and disseminating project newsletters in the community (and beyond) that highlighted the research activities and youthgenerated outputs; and (4) using facebook, instagram, and other social media to stay in touch with the youth and encourage space for additional peer-to-peer and peer-to-researcher interaction. these approaches helped, although we acknowledge that having a more continued presence in the communities or empowering a local research team to help carry on the work would have further strengthened the influence and outcomes of the project and sustained youth engagement. participant-researcher reciprocity when included in research activities, youth should be invited to participate in relevant and meaningful ways that reflect their evolving capacities and developmental needs. we also believed that the workshops should be fun and interactive. youth who participated in the workshops received refreshments at all the workshops as well as folders and other creative supplies. in thinking about other forms of reciprocity, our team was clear that the research not only needed to contribute to knowledge but also to the personal and academic development of the participating youth. we therefore attempted, across the communities, to offer them opportunities for skill-building, connecting with local mentors and integrating into the community in a meaningful way (also see jacquez, vaughn & wagner 2013). we invited several interested youth to work with us as paid research assistants. we also reciprocated by writing reference letters, finding ways of sharing some of our knowledge and skills through guest lectures, and working to co-develop other opportunities and initiatives that would allow youth to continue to have a voice and the space to contribute to disaster recovery. in 103 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop calgary and high river, we leveraged the work we did with ycdr2 to access further funding to continue the research and capacity building with youth in those communities (see resiliencebydesign youth innovation network on facebook). these actions represent the importance of the ‘longer cycle of exchange’ that maiter et al. (2008, p. 322) suggest can build relationships and capacity over time and increase the benefits to youth and their communities of participating in research projects. paying attention to reciprocity within research can also contribute to greater reflexivity about the power imbalances that often exist between researchers and the researched (trainor & bouchard 2013). even as the youth themselves responded positively to ycdr 2, and many of our adult community allies expressed support for and excitement about the project, we were aware that the project and the research goals were largely designed using a top–down approach. we attempted to minimise this by engaging the community and youth from the start of our fieldwork, and working with youth to refine and ‘co-create’ the research activities and questions. youth engagement in disaster recovery youth in the focal communities repeatedly expressed that they wanted to be engaged and to contribute to the ongoing recovery and resilience of their communities. it quickly became obvious to us that they had insights to share and the capacity and interest to actively participate in post-disaster processes. the stories generated during the research also suggest that youth have the potential to inform and inspire those around them through their words, creativity and actions. when we spoke with adult leaders in the research communities, they expressed genuine interest in hearing and learning from youth, and they were visibly moved by the photo-stories, videos, animated shorts and other creative outputs the youth had produced. ycdr 2 opened up a space for youth to share their personal thoughts with one another and with the broader community and possibly opened up some new thinking among adult leaders about how youth might be encouraged to contribute to disaster recovery and beyond. youth-relevant engagement in research during the ycdr2 project, youth level of engagement varied over time, individually and collectively. we learned that sustained engagement looked more like intermittent intensive engagement, or what one of our research team has described as a ‘heartbeat model of engagement’ (godsoe 2015). youth-friendly modes of communication (e.g. texting, facebook, instagram) were more effective for reaching and having sustained contact with and connecting youth. the specific favoured modes of communication varied between individuals and communities to some degree, reminding us as researchers that we need to be intentional and explicit in asking youth participants whether and how they prefer to communicate across the lifecycle of a research project. moving 104 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop forward, it will be interesting to consider how institutional review board agreements and ethical processes can better reflect the communication needs and realities of youth, rather than relying on paper formats. in research with adults, the appropriate means of communication is typically email or phone calls, whereas with younger populations it is important to use communication strategies that are aligned with their preferences. in order to reduce attrition and ensure participants have all relevant information, we recommend asking each participant about what mode of communication, when, and how often they would like to be contacted. the unique character of each community and, in particular, of key adults such as parents and teachers in the lives of youth also played a role in youth engagement. some communities were more supportive of the research and more amenable to youth participating. in other cases, adults acted more as gatekeepers, protecting youth from the potential of harm from reopening wounds. youth seemed to have fewer concerns and were often adamant that sharing their stories through art was a positive experience. these contrasts highlight the challenge of finding a balance between honouring the independence and autonomy of youth while acknowledging the potential developmental and/ or legal limitations on their ability to make informed choices for themselves. this is particularly important when it comes to research following traumatic events, such as disasters; care needs to be taken to avoid re-traumatisation (ferreria, buttell & ferreria 2015), while also ensuring that youth have a voice in decisions related to their participation in research and other activities. in most cases, we were able to minimise these tensions by working with trusted community partners and proactively providing caregivers and other key adults with clear descriptions of our research goals and approaches, and the steps we had taken to ensure our work with youth was ethical. in one community, despite these steps, key adults remained guarded and youth participation in the project was limited. however, in the year following our primary field work in that community, a sub-group of youth – all of whom had moved on to attend university in a nearby urban centre – expressed interest in further participation and continued to work with a member of our research team who lived in that city. this latter example underscores the need for flexible research designs that can effectively provide opportunities for youth engagement while addressing the diversity of ages and varying levels of autonomy in this transitional developmental stage. degree of participation the design of the project responded to recent critiques of youth engagement and participatory action research. in particular, we acknowledged that researchers cannot fully place the onus of empowerment on the youth themselves (wong, zimmerman & parker 2010). ycdr2 aimed to achieve a balance between adultsupported youth engagement and youth agency. in activating 105 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop symbolic participation, our methods and activities allowed youth to construct and disseminate their own stories. this meant that many of the youth were engaged and willing to participate and took ownership of their stories. part of this success lay in providing a flexible context-specific structure, limiting adult attendance and participation in the workshops, and offering appropriate modes of engagement of relevance to the participants. this form of pluralistic participation, in which youth were given opportunities to take a more active role in shaping the workshop, was somewhat successful, such as when youth developed shared norms and roles to guide parts of the workshop and when they added a research question that they thought was important to the project. however, we observed that there was a greater need to build leadership skills along the way and to develop longer term opportunities for youth to enact their agency. also, funding structures (and their requirement for fully formed proposals to access funding) and traditional research norms led to a largely developed project prior to youth engagement. preferably, youth voices would have played a role earlier on in the development of the research project and throughout the lifecycle of the study. building from this experience, our research lab has subsequently formed a youth advisory and hired several youth research assistants to provide input and ideas earlier on in the research process. multiple uses of arts-based methods part of the project’s success in engaging youth can be attributed to the use of arts-based methods. using arts-based research deepens data generation; using the arts-based knowledge it produces can facilitate the dissemination of research findings and increase the potential impact of those findings (colantonio et al. 2008; fleming et al. 2009; gray et al. 2000). the youth-generated creative outputs in ycdr2 have provided dissemination opportunities that moved beyond traditional modes (e.g. publications, conferences) and traditional audiences (e.g. academics) to reach a wider audience and amplify the voices of the youth who participated. the animated videos produced in high river, for example, were shared with the mayor and city council, posted on the city’s facebook page and presented in a community movie night event. the creative research outputs from all four communities are also featured on the youth creating disaster recovery & resilience website at ycdr.org. the website celebrates the contributions and voices of these youth and responds to the youth’s desire not only to contribute to the recovery process in their own communities but to reach out to other disaster affected youth. as one participant from slave lake mentioned: if there was something like a natural disaster in the future, and obviously there will be … it would be nice to be able to like kinda help them out you know share ‘well, this is what i went through and this is how i changed it’. 106 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop the website is supporting our continued engagement in calgary and high river, and was also instrumental in our reaching out to work with an international group of youth who participated in the united nations world conference on disaster risk reduction in sendai, japan, in 2015. moreover, the approaches have informed our many other youth-centred research projects, helping us to be creative, even as we also continue to collect data in more traditional forms. the creative processes also helped the youth express themselves in ways that were engaging while simultaneously helping them to build skills related to learning and using new modes of artistic expression. it is probably equally true, however, that the choice to use arts-based methods in the workshops may have reduced the appeal of the project for those youth who had limited or no interest in artistic expression. data analysis challenges using flexible, creative methods of data collection can pose challenges for data analysis and the findings that can be reported. unlike surveys that ask the same questions of research participants, creative methods and participatory approaches are by design varied and adapted based on each research context. the flexible approach of the project resulted in a rich and diverse data set from the different communities. but it also led to the generation of an enormous amount of textual data (we audio recorded each session in full and later transcribed those multi-hour sessions) and visual/creative outputs (songs, poems, photographs, etc.). these many and varied forms of data resulted in a longer and more complex process of analysis. to overcome these challenges, we adopted an inductive, collaborative and systematic coding process using nvivo qualitative analysis software to organise the data and support the analysis, and engaged in team discussions regarding the findings. this process involved the researchers/authors of this article and undergraduate assistants, some of whom were youth themselves. further, as important as the visual and other stories were in exploring and conveying youth’s experiences and supporting engagement and empowerment, they did not always produce explicit responses to the research questions. balancing the needs and goals of the research with the interests and focus of the youth was challenging. as the work has moved forward with youth in calgary and high river, we have become more intentional about finding ways to engage youth as co-researchers in a staged and more systematic process. by using our research questions as the foundation for building research skills, we are able to generate data of specific interest to us, and then support youth in applying their research skills to explore questions of interest to them. conclusion the ycdr2 project used flexible, youth-centric, arts-based research workshops to learn from and foster the inclusion of young people 107 | gateways | peek, tobin-gurley, cox, scannell, fletcher & heykoop as active and able contributors to disaster recovery and resilience. in line with frank’s (2006) and wong, zimmerman and parker’s (2010) principles of youth participation, the project has contributed to the knowledge and practice of research with youth in the postdisaster recovery space. the challenges and tensions that arose were equally as instructive as the successes for methodologically advancing the practice of engaging youth in disaster research. the arts-based methods simultaneously addressed a number of issues, including garnering youth interest, story creation and dissemination, breaking down power differentials, and providing a safe and empowering outlet for expressing experiences. the lessons learned through ycdr2 about establishing youth-communityacademic partnerships can hopefully inform the work of researchers, policymakers, service providers and others interested in the study of research with youth and the empowerment of youth as citizens and active contributors to their communities. acknowledgements we would like to thank the numerous community partners who supported and facilitated our work, including antyx community arts society, the joplin family ymca and high river hearts and minds. we acknowledge the varied contributions of the many undergraduate and graduate research assistants at royal roads university and at the center for disaster and risk analysis at colorado state university who assisted with this project, including valerie cere, shawna cosby, matt godsoe, neil griffith, tiffany hill, samantha lafever, jennifer lambrick, christopher lyon, sarah michaud, kylie pybus, kelly shreeve and jessica thurston. danielle barker, austin henady, jordan mcgrane and tyler nonemaker, all from joplin, missouri, and surrounding areas, served as community-based and youth researchers for the project. jonathon wood and jennifer tobin-gurley designed the interactive website for this project, www.ycdr.org. the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc) of canada and the canadian red cross provided funding for this research, which is gratefully acknowledged. 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(ses-1540314). any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the national science foundation. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 january 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: kirby c., haruo, c., whyte, k., libarkin, j., caldwell, c. and edler, r. 2019. ethical collaboration and the need for training: partnerships between native american tribes and climate science organizations. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 5894. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i1.5894 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) ethical collaboration and the need for training: partnerships between native american tribes and climate science organizations caitlin k kirby1*, citralina haruo2, kyle p whyte3, julie c libarkin1, chris caldwell2 and rebecca edler2 1department of earth and environmental sciences, michigan state university, 288 farm lane, room 207, east lansing, mi, usa 2sustainable development institute, college of menominee nation, po box 1179, keshena, wi, usa 3department of philosophy, michigan state university, 503 s. kedzie hall, east lansing, mi, usa *corresponding author: caitlin k. kirby; kirbycai@msu.edu doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5894 article history: received 18/01/2018; revised 15/08/2018; accepted 31/08/2018; published 15/01/2019 abstract indigenous peoples develop and utilise climate science resources to address climate change impacts, and climate scientists often collaborate on such projects. little is known about whether climate science organisations (csos) adequately train their staff to work ethically with indigenous peoples, promoting benefits for tribes while reducing harms. to research this training, we conducted interviews with cso employees (n=9) and native american tribal citizens (n=7). thematic content analysis revealed that many challenges, benefits and common goals exist for both groups. tribes were more likely to discuss challenges, focusing on trust and capacity building. csos were more likely to discuss benefits, focusing on information exchange. both csos and tribes provide training activities for cso employees, but training programs are not mandated or consistent across employees and organisations, and they are typically not evaluated. our research indicates a need for co-created and evaluated training programs which take into account the challenges faced in cross-cultural partnerships. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5894 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5894 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:kirbycai@msu.edu http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5894 keywords climate change, indigenous peoples, community engagement, tribally driven participatory research, ethics, stem education introduction indigenous peoples in north america and beyond are among the populations most active in planning for climate change (bennett et al. 2014; whyte 2017). for example, the quileute tribe in northern washington has relocated some village homes in the face of increased flooding and winter storms, and challenges experienced in obtaining sufficient food due to shifting fish populations in the pacific northwest (papiez 2009). policies at national and international levels require or recommend that climate science organisations (csos) work with indigenous peoples with the goal of providing scientific climate change expertise and/ or advice to support indigenous planning (exec. order 2013; unfccc 2015). these calls for collaboration are consistent with broader movements to enshrine free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples (unga 2008), where all affected parties in a collaborative project are able to influence the design of the work and be made aware of any risks and opportunities. yet, recent events such as the struggle with the dakota access pipeline, where the standing rock sioux tribe was insufficiently consulted about the installation of a crude oil pipeline that posed risks to their cultural and natural resources, call to question whether those who seek to collaborate with indigenous peoples are doing so ethically (grijalva 2017; whyte 2017). research methodologies that incorporate community-based, indigenous-centric, and tribal participatory research approaches offer extensive guidelines for ethical research collaborations between scientists and communities. at the outset of a collaboration, scientist and indigenous partners must consider who will benefit from research projects and in what ways (israel et al. 1998; thomas et al. 2011). research collaborations between indigenous peoples and science organisations also require navigation of the complex social, historical and legal networks in which scientific and indigenous institutions are embedded. historic subjugation and coercion of indigenous peoples has led to a legacy of power imbalance between indigenous peoples and scientific research organisations (bohensky & maru 2011; fisher & ball 2003) and mistrust towards researchers (harding et al. 2012). thus, it is incumbent upon researchers who wish to engage with indigenous peoples to take responsibility for ensuring that their research will minimise harms and maximise benefits for all partners involved. the mere existence of ethical research guidelines does not ensure their implementation, and there is a need to understand if and how these guidelines are utilised by researchers on the ground. this need is not exclusive to climate scientists; it applies to researchers from all fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem). we propose the use of ‘ethical stem’ as a description of scientific training and research that provides scientists and engineers with tools to critically evaluate their relationships with the communities in which they conduct research, and to do so in a way that maintains respect for and provides valid scientific research for those communities. scientific career preparation should include discourse about ethical stem, and must be expanded to acknowledge the cultural, social and political contexts in which science operates (kimmerer 1998; sadler, barab & scott 2007; tanner & allen 2007). kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes we present an exploration of what content is needed in ethical stem training and how it might be effectively disseminated to researchers who wish to work with indigenous peoples, based on interviews with experts working at the nexus of united states indigenous peoples (tribes) and climate science organisations (csos). this article outlines the context of climate change adaptation, indigenous peoples, and their relationships with scientific research organisations in the following literature review section. our focus is on indigenous peoples in the united states, but we utilise global examples to illustrate the need to engage in these practices throughout the world. we then further characterise and define our sample of research participants. our results section focuses on the current state of ethical stem training that climate science researchers receive to work with indigenous peoples, and highlights emergent themes from our interviews that demonstrate the need for further training and potential training content. we provide summarising and concluding thoughts on how this work can be applied in fostering scientists and indigenous peoples to engage in climate adaptation partnerships. literature review indigenous peoples’ conceptions of climate change and their efforts in adaptation have been well studied. indigenous peoples in east africa and the arctic track weather and climate events through specialised and contextual understandings based on how they interact with their environments, integrating such information into cultural and social aspects of life (callison 2014; herman-mercer et al. 2016; leclerc et al. 2013). documented indigenous responses to climate change include indigenous saami reindeer herders’ pastoral practices in nordic countries (reinert et al. 2008) and the use of different varieties of crops, water maximisation techniques and shortened growing seasons among indigenous farmers in nigeria (ishaya & abaje 2008). records of indigenous peoples’ response to climate change are also documented in multiple contexts outside of scholarly spaces (e.g. cskt 2013; kettle, martin & sloan 2017; srmt 2013; tebtebba 2011). even with this considerable body of work, more research on indigenous climate adaptation is called for, such as with māori populations in new zealand who are grappling with challenges of adapting to changes in the natural resources they rely on (fitzharris 2007). in addition, much of the literature examining indigenous adaptation to climate change focuses on aspects of indigenous life that are considered to be ‘traditional’, ignoring the many other contemporary resources that are also impacted by climate change, such as the use of diesel fuel by indigenous peoples in the arctic (cameron 2012). indigenous peoples who engage in efforts to increase their resiliency amidst a changing climate do so within larger socio-political structures that create barriers to this engagement. in our discussion of these efforts, we use the term natural resources while recognising that it may not adequately express indigenous cultural, spiritual and moral relationships with the environment. prior governmental interventions into indigenous spaces via colonialism have caused many of the social, economic and cultural issues that indigenous peoples face today (cameron 2012). despite this, many indigenous peoples continue to engage with colonial governments, asserting their interest in and right to be involved in all levels of policy and decision making related to natural resources (davis 2010; leclerc et al. 2013). for example, inuit hunter–trapper communities in canada work to communicate across multiple scales of governance to integrate local knowledge and national monitoring in government-mandated management of natural resources (o’brien, hayward & berkes 2009). however, indigenous peoples can also be ignored or mistreated in discussions about climate change and natural ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes resource management. during the un conference on climate change in indonesia in 2007, indigenous peoples were excluded from important discussions about climate change, and their particular needs were excluded from documents resulting from that conference (davis 2010). indigenous saami reindeer herders in the tundra face differing regulations across the nations of norway, sweden, finland and russia, with norwegian regulations from the ministry of agriculture limiting how the reindeer herders are able to adapt to long-term climate change. these regulations stem from a misunderstanding on the ministry’s part of the cyclical nature of the arctic ecosystem, which saami herders have long recognised and utilised (reinert et al. 2008). a willing collaboration between the indigenous saami and the ministry of agriculture prior to the implementation of new policies might have avoided this restriction on the saami people. collaborations between government agencies and indigenous peoples are increasingly recognised on the part of governments, particularly with the adoption of the united nation’s declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (davis 2010; unga 2008). historical relationships between indigenous peoples and researchers parallel those between indigenous peoples and governments in their lack of ethical treatment. one topic that illustrates these relationships is the concept of traditional ecological knowledge (tek). tek refers to the body of knowledge held by an indigenous community based on their history, values and beliefs, and can also encompass ‘systems of responsibilities that arise from particular cosmological beliefs about the relationships between living beings and non-living things or humans and the natural world’ (whyte 2013, p. 5). tek has historically been considered auxiliary or inferior to western scientific knowledge in many scenarios. although some scientists now place more value upon tek, this generally occurs in a context in which tek is used to supplement western scientific understanding for the benefit of western science (latulippe 2015). tek has also been improperly shared with the public, leading to harm of sacred sites and tribal resources (harding et al. 2012; williams & hardison 2013). when properly carried out, partnerships between indigenous peoples and researchers can benefit both groups. for example, prior partnerships have increased tribal social capital (arnold & fernandez-gimenez 2007; kellert et al. 2000), improved management of natural resources (cronin & ostergren 2007; kellert et al. 2000) and integrated tek with scientific understandings to bolster and contextualise each way of knowing (kellert et al. 2000; leclerc et al. 2013). these benefits are often reported by researchers without documented agreement from indigenous partners. an explicit understanding of the benefits that indigenous peoples receive or expect to receive from research partnerships is needed so that researchers are equipped to ensure those benefits are available. while the nature of ethical practice within the context of scientific collaborations is well documented (minkler 2004), little is known about ethical stem training and implementation programs. ethical stem is a mechanism for developing cultural competence, which is the ability for individuals and organisations to work effectively in cross-cultural situations (cross et al. 1989). whereas cultural competence is most often discussed in healthcare contexts (beach et al. 2005), the term ‘ethical stem’ intentionally situates both concepts within the broader scientific community. all research scientists who work with community members should be prepared to engage in ethical stem. in regard to climate change specifically, ethical guidelines need to be included in collaborative agreements between multiple levels of governments, natural resource management agencies and indigenous peoples. these ethical guidelines need to explicitly consider past transgressions against indigenous peoples and the threats they are facing due to climate change (o’brien, hayward & berkes 2009). our kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes research is situated here in an effort to integrate what we know about partnerships between indigenous peoples and scientists, and to invite equal voice from all partners. research questions the current work is framed by research questions that seek to unpack how ethical stem is communicated within the context of cso–tribe collaborations in the united states: 1. what is the current state of ethical stem training that csos provide their staff? a. how effective is this training? 2. what is the current state of partnerships between tribes and csos? b. what are the benefits and challenges in these relationships for tribes and csos? this research question was developed based on themes that emerged from our interview analysis and can guide the development of training content and format. methods partnership contexts the research sample consisted of both indigenous peoples and scientists employed by climate science organisations, with each interviewee having experience working in partnerships across these groups. indigenous peoples in this context refer to groups who exercised political and cultural self-determination prior to a period of invasion and colonialism and who continue to exercise self-determination as non-dominant populations in territories in which nation states are recognised as the primary sovereigns (anaya 2004). for the purposes of this article, indigenous peoples and tribes will be used interchangeably given that in the us context indigenous peoples often refer to themselves as tribes. in the us, the federal government recognises 567 tribes as sovereigns, individual states recognise over 50 additional tribes (salazar 2016) and there are many unrecognised indigenous peoples; all of these are encapsulated in our use of the term tribe. csos refer to both federally and privately funded organisations whose goal is to provide communities with scientifically valid research, expertise and advice related to climate change impacts. to protect the anonymity of participants, the specific structure of these partnerships will not be shared; however, these partnerships occur across many contexts. both tribe and cso respondents might be based at federal agencies, higher education institutions, or other organisations. data collection and analysis the research team pre-identified individuals from across the us with tribal or cso affiliations and well-documented experience collaborating on tribe–cso climate projects. tribe and cso interviewees were from the arctic, mountain, california, southwest, oklahoma, great lakes, and east/southeast regions of the united states. cso interviews also included individuals from the pacific and pacific northwest regions. one semi-structured interview protocol was designed for tribal citizens and employees (supplement a), with another designed for scientists within a cso (supplement b). sixteen interviews were completed (csos=9 and tribes=7) via online video calls. the audio for each interview was recorded and transcribed. the driving questions for this work specified predetermined themes to examine in the resulting transcripts, focusing on three ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes broad categories of reasons for establishing partnerships, ethical stem training activities, and evaluation of ethical stem training (research question 1). in order to acknowledge the emergence of additional themes not foreseen in the interview protocol (research question 2), we conducted thematic content analysis (burnard 1991). interviews were coded using a technique based on grounded theory (corbin & strauss 1990) where additional themes were created based on the language used by interviewees. two authors, one with a tribal perspective from the college of menominee nation (ch) and the other with a science perspective from michigan state university (ck) developed a coding scheme through analysis of one tribe and one cso interview. codes were added and discussed during subsequent interview analysis, with interviews being re-coded as new themes emerged. the entire team reviewed the resulting codebook for clarity and completeness, ensuring that it would accurately represent emergent themes at the tribe–cso nexus. following codebook development, an additional interview from each perspective was coded separately by ck and ch to establish inter-rater reliability. the average measure of intraclass correlation across the two raters was 0.89 (min=0.85 and max=0.92). intraclass correlations close to 1 indicate near perfect agreement, with values above 0.75 suggesting strong agreement across coders (cicchetti 1994). ch coded five of the remaining cso interviews and ck coded two cso interviews and the five remaining tribe interviews. results interview analysis the 16 completed interviews (csos=9 and tribes=7) had an average duration of 43 minutes, with a standard deviation of 17 minutes. interview lengths did not differ for tribe and cso participants. upon reviewing our analysis, we found that our interviews reached saturation according to criteria in francis et al. (2010). we set a minimum sample size of 12 interviews based on guidelines in guest, bunce & johnson (2006) and four interviews beyond those 12 were coded with no additional themes added (francis et al. 2010). predetermined themes predetermined themes from the interview protocol were reasons for establishing partnerships, ethical stem training activities and ethical stem training evaluation (research question 1). each predetermined theme contained at least one subtheme that was discussed by both tribe and cso participants (table 1). overall, analysis of the predetermined themes demonstrated multiple types of training activities that csos can engage in to learn how to work ethically with tribes. however, engagement in these training activities varied and none of the trainings were evaluated. each predetermined theme is discussed below to explore the current state of ethical stem training for csos who work with tribes. kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes table 1 predetermined overarching themes with example subthemes from both perspsectives predetermined theme subthemes reasons for establishing partnerships federal government mandate trust responsibilities and treaty rights ethical stem training activities: discussions consult tribes tribes & csos liaison consult other csos ethical stem training activities: documents written materials organisational protocol ethical stem training activities: conferences attend tribal workshops and conferences organise tribes conferences invite tribes to conferences ethical stem training evaluation relationship quality tribal authorship lack of complaints reasons for establishing partnerships the most commonly discussed motivations for collaboration were mandates from the united states federal government. federal cso interviewees often initiated partnerships because of secretarial order number 3289, which requires federal climate science agencies to work with tribes (doi 2009). trust responsibilities and treaty rights, which refer to the legal duties and moral obligations of federal agencies to uphold treaty contracts with tribes to ensure consultation in natural resource management, were also mentioned as important motivators for building collaboration. ethical stem training activities the csos and tribes suggested a variety of avenues for csos to receive ethical stem training. the main types of activities suggested were discussions, documents and conferences (figure 1). the lack of specificity about the need for ethical stem training within federal and organisational policies has resulted in inconsistencies in training across csos. training generally occurs in an ad hoc and experiential manner, with employees learning how to work with tribes as they begin research partnerships. because the csos did not typically have established training programs, both tribes and csos were responsible for providing ethical stem training independently. many interviews revealed that individual researchers were responsible for training themselves: when i first get a new researcher, i’m going to send them some links, websites, some different things…they do their homework, then i might want to work with them. [t] ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes in this case, although the researcher was responsible for completing the training, the materials were being provided by the tribe, which was often the case (figure 1). in addition, little oversight on the part of tribes or csos was evident. figure 1 ethical stem training activities that are facilitated by tribes (n=7) and csos (n=9). each activity is shown, along with the percentage of respondents who suggested that their organisation or tribe facilitated such activities, either directly or by coordinating them for other parties. discussions some csos encouraged their employees to engage in discussions or informal consultations with tribes, a tribe–cso liaison, or other csos, to gain an ethical understanding of these complex partnerships (figure 1). many tribe interviewees frequently engaged in these discussions themselves or connected csos with other consultants. interviewees suggested that csos should engage in discussions with tribes to learn about the tribe’s culture, research needs and project goals. typically, interviewees considered csos responsible for initiating these discussions. some respondents’ organisations featured a tribe–cso liaison position for coordinating research projects between csos and tribes. other respondents expressed the need for establishing this specific position within their own organisation, where the liaison would provide training for csos. some csos consulted other researchers at csos who had prior experience working with tribes. occasionally, multiple csos and tribes would participate in discussions, as one tribe interviewee described: kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes one aspect of the work that we do is … promoting a coordination and communication among the scientists and tribal representatives. so part of what we’re doing is trying to create the forum for that kind of meeting to happen and then to help be the facilitator for the exchange of information. [t] documents publicly or privately available documents that described best practices were a particularly popular training aid for establishing ethical stem behaviour in cso collaborations with tribes (figure 1). these included written guides from a variety of sources as well as organisational protocols and documents that were used specifically within a particular cso or tribe. one cso participant described their development of written materials for ethical stem training: we are in the process of developing a…guidebook for our researchers…to help them understand what sovereignty is, what traditional knowledge is, things to be aware of with respect to cultural practice…not all native americans are the same. [cso] this quote emphasised the content of the guidebook and the multi-cultural nature of these partnerships. many csos were also interested in using their experience gained in prior work with tribes to develop a comprehensive training curriculum. one tribe and one cso were each working independently to create ethical stem training curricula, and additional csos suggested it as a future step. conferences conferences, workshops and group meetings were suggested as other platforms for ethical stem training (figure 1). these events were perceived as accessible and common, with one respondent commenting that there was ‘always some type of training that is highlighting [tribal] issues’ [t]. about half of the tribes’ interviewees and a few csos organised and attended tribally focused conferences. the explicit focus of conferences and meetings was not ethical stem itself, but rather the gathering provided a venue where csos could ‘learn about tribes and learn about their issues and how to interact with them’ [cso]. csos were more likely to invite tribes to cso-hosted conferences than organise tribally focused conferences, which sometimes resulted in a larger burden on tribes to acquire funding to send tribal employees to these meetings. ethical stem training evaluation none of the training programs for csos were intentional, and thus no evaluation of ethical stem training was conducted by any interviewees. a variety of evaluation methods were suggested, although most evaluated the research relationship rather than the training itself. each perspective stressed the importance of tribal involvement in the evaluation process: to me it would be feedback from the tribes, tribal council, or the environmental professionals you’re working with. if they could provide some commentary of the experience…would be the key way of evaluating it. [cso] this quote features the overall relationship quality between cso and tribal partners as a suggested evaluation metric. tribal authorship of research publications and a lack of ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes complaints about the partnership were two additional suggested metrics. typical quantifiable evaluative tools, such as the number of tribal citizens involved in a project, were not regarded as particularly effective in these relationships. emergent themes when coding interviews, thematic content analysis was utilised to reveal themes that were not anticipated in the interview protocol about the relationships between csos and tribes. this resulted in four emergent themes: partnership goals, benefits for tribes, benefits for csos, and challenges. the emergent themes describe the need, potential content and goals for ethical stem training in facilitating tribe–cso partnerships (research question 2). as with the predetermined themes, each emergent theme contained multiple subthemes (figure 2). overall, emergent themes revealed that tribe interviewees were more likely to discuss many challenges, while cso interviewees were more likely to discuss a variety of benefits. subthemes that described challenges were the most plentiful overall, indicating that the relationships between csos and tribes are complex and challenging to navigate. we explore each of the four emergent themes below. partnership goals, benefits for tribes and benefits for csos demonstrate what a successful relationship between csos and tribes might look like and may help guide ethical stem training evaluation. challenges demonstrate potential focus areas for ethical stem training content. figure 2 emergent themes and their relative importance for tribes and csos. partnership goals, benefits for tribes, benefits for csos, and challenges kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes were four main themes identified via thematic content analysis. levels of importance indicate the percentage of interviewees who discussed a subtheme. items of low importance were <15% of interviewees, moderate between 15–60%, and high importance subthemes were discussed by >60% of interviewees. partnership goals the presence of certain relational characteristics between tribes and csos was critical to successful partnerships. each interviewee suggested at least one of the following partnership goals: relationship building, encouraging tribal sovereignty and empowerment, and equal collaboration. a focus on relationship building between researchers and tribal citizens was considered a necessary partnership component, with emphasis on the need for individual researchers to focus on personal relationships in order to earn trust. for example, one tribe interviewee articulated their experience: the scientist wants to come in and do their research and leave and don’t see it as a relationship…a tribe…wants this relationship with the researchers long-term. [t] this quote described the motive of the csos as research-based and short term, which misaligns with the tribe’s goals of a longer research relationship. a focus on building and sustaining personal relationships was often considered the responsibility of the cso: i think scientists…that are looking to work with indigenous communities really need to take it upon themselves to build those strong relationships within the communities. [t] the promotion of tribal sovereignty and empowerment through working relationships was another desired characteristic of collaborations. one cso stressed the importance of tribal sovereignty: [tribally-led science] moves this idea of tribes being a ward of the federal government… and it empowers tribes as sovereign nations to understand and react to their own impacts and understanding of climate change. [cso] here, empowerment included scientific capacity and a broader understanding of tribes as sovereign nations. finally, a sense of equal collaboration, often via tribal input throughout all stages of a research project, was a key characteristic of successful partnerships. benefits for tribes benefits for tribes generally highlighted the desire for tribes to maintain control over their resources and the focus of climate change research. the ability for tribes to 1) build capacity and 2) have input in the formation of research projects was most frequently mentioned (figure 2). csos were more likely to discuss these potential benefits than were tribes. a tribe interviewee commented on building capacity: one of the things i promote in my tribal engagement strategy is that the ultimate goal is that the tribe can do their own climate science, their own planning, their own projects… having the groups collaborating is building the tribe’s capacity [t] ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes capacity building was discussed in a scientific sense: through interaction with csos, tribes could expand or begin their own climate science research. being absent from collaborations with csos, tribes might not have access to resources to build this scientific capacity. tribal input into research formation was related to the power difference between tribes and csos in regard to their scientific backgrounds. both tribes and csos were interested in proceeding with research projects that have tribally relevant outcomes. while highlighting this benefit, tribe respondents discussed the challenge of conflicting research interests between csos and tribes. when these conflicts occurred, tribes would also highlight their lack of capacity to carry out their own research. other benefits specific to tribes included networking with scientists, development of climate adaptation plans, promoting intergenerational learning, receiving funding, and access to scientific data. benefits for csos the primary benefit to csos was access to traditional ecological knowledge (tek) and adaptation methods. tek is not a typical component of formal education for scientists and is generally only available to csos through the cultural exchange of working closely with tribes. lack of trust and knowledge ownership concerns were often highlighted regarding tek, suggesting that cso access to tek should not be considered a given in partnerships. one cso described their views on tek: [tribes] have a long history and they’ve seen a lot of change and they know how to adapt to change…and so we can learn a lot from what they know and from their adaptation tools. [cso] other benefits for csos included access to tribal data and the ability to receive funding because of their engagement in projects with tribal partners. tribe participants suggested that cso researchers benefit from career advancement by completing research projects. a desire for career enhancement on the part of a researcher was sometimes considered motivation to engage in unethical partnerships: my experience is that researchers, you know, often are seeking a knowledge and a credential. and those are…their highest priorities and they often assume that they can enter tribal lands and do work without getting the approval by tribal leaders. [t] challenges: cultural the most commonly identified challenges dealt with the cultural aspects of tribe–cso partnerships (figure 2). cross-cultural difficulties were described in general, such as: we don’t come with the same set of values, teachings, and understandings. [t] interviewees also discussed specific cultural differences, such as perceptions of tek: the hardest thing to teach is kind of the reverence for other people, for other cultures. people talk about tek like a thing and you need to gather it and we need to put it in a gis database or something. and it’s not. it’s…a way of life. it’s not a thing. [cso] the cross-cultural nature of these partnerships was most apparent when dealing with the different knowledge and bureaucratic systems of the scientific and tribal communities. two narratives emerged surrounding different knowledge systems. one narrative considered western science as complicated and technical, requiring communication to tribes in a kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes different way from how scientists generally communicate their findings. the second was a concern over the cultural understanding of tek. the two quotes below exemplify this contrast: we come as agency scientists with a bunch of jargon, and ecosystems, goods and services, and scenarios, and pathways of stressors and thresholds. you’re going to have to simplify that, or at least retranslate that into understanding, having done your background on…the tribe and their community. [cso] in a collaboration with people who have other ways of knowing, it’s not about verifying the other ways of knowing with the scientific knowledge…each puzzle piece is verified against its own metrics, its own criteria, experiences. it’s considered accurate by the knowledge holders. [cso] the first quote signified the need for csos to be prepared to translate their scientific understanding into accessible information. the second quote emphasised the importance of understanding and respecting the tribes’ process for creating knowledge, which may include their own language, methods and evaluation criteria. tribe interviewees often pointed out the bureaucratic differences between the structure of a tribe and a cso, describing csos as unaware of how to work with a tribe’s decision makers. tribe and cso interviewees also discussed the multicultural landscape of tribes as a barrier to successful collaboration. when working with multiple tribes, csos should take note that: all tribes…don’t have the same cultural beliefs. they’re different. they’re unique. [t] challenges: resources the primary resources that presented challenges were knowledge, trust, funding and time. a concern for all interviewees was ownership of knowledge, where knowledge was a broad concept encompassing scientific data and tek. csos often discussed ownership of knowledge as a concern related to their organisation’s protocol. interviewees stressed the need to inform tribes of what information they planned or were required to publish. proper handling of tribal knowledge and data was linked to a lack of trust based on past transgressions by researchers. trust here refers to the moral concept that different peoples should create conditions where each is certain that the other takes their best interests to heart (wolfensberger 2016), and not to government trust responsibilities. lack of trust was mentioned by most tribe interviewees, but only some cso interviewees (figure 2). issues caused by this lack of trust varied and included a reluctance to start partnerships, a lack of information sharing, and slowing down the research process. attaining funding for research expenses was of great importance to tribes and of moderate importance to csos (figure 2). tribes faced barriers in dealing with scientific research protocols, including navigating federal funding agencies. concerns were also expressed over the fairness of funding allocations to tribes, and regulations that limited an open exchange of funds. interviewees also encountered a lack of time and resources to dedicate to projects and ethical stem training. challenges: engagement the challenges related to engagement in partnerships were least commonly discussed, but highlighted disparities in concern over certain partnership characteristics. tribes and csos ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes mentioned difficulty engaging tribal citizens and tribes, as groups, in research. one tribe participant described tribes’ lack of engagement as related to feeling uninvolved in the project and having other priorities: i think a lot of times the indians themselves don’t feel like they’re part of the project so their interest is very low. you know, they have other issues to worry about, mostly social issues. [t] this quote also demonstrates an example of an unequal partnership where tribes are not given project control and voice in the project. many tribe participants were concerned about unequal partnerships, while only one cso participant identified a similar theme (figure 2). in addition to a lack of sufficient involvement in the project, tribes were somewhat concerned about conflicting research needs where the goals of cso and tribal partners were misaligned. csos did not mention this as a challenge (figure 2). two challenges were mentioned only by csos (figure 2), and they were related to the structure of their organisations. many csos are under a federal mandate to work with tribes, and as such csos develop tribal engagement strategies. however, documentation detailing these strategies is insufficient to provide adequate guidance for real-world engagement. another challenge unique to csos was engaging their climate scientists in tribal issues and ethical stem training. even though ethical stem training opportunities exist, few cso employees seek them out independently of a specific project. discussion this study analysed the current state of relationships between climate science organizations (csos) and tribes in order to understand the need for, prevalence of, and potential avenues for ethical stem training in these partnerships. the abundance of emergent themes from the interviews indicates that interactions between tribes and csos are complex. while guidelines for engaging in these types of relationships exist (e.g. ctkw 2014; nih 2011), our research has shown that even among scientific organisations and tribes that commonly work across these cultural boundaries, there are no consistent efforts to connect researchers or tribes with ethical stem training. tribes and csos shared many perceptions about their partnerships, with some key differences that indicate there is a need for csos to engage in ethical stem training. first, there appears to be an unequal burden on tribes in providing ethical stem training for researchers who begin partnerships unprepared. while most respondents suggested that csos should be responsible for training their researchers to work with tribes, tribes often provided this training through documents or discussions. second, csos tended to focus on the potential benefits that they hoped tribes received from their interactions, while tribe interviewees named a wider variety of challenges in these relationships. however, while cso and tribe respondents framed issues differently, they identified similar themes across partnership goals, benefits and challenges. for example, ‘unequal partnerships’ was a challenge that tribes identified, while csos and tribes also spoke to a partnership goal of ‘equal partnerships’. in order to produce more ethical relationships given our findings, we make three recommendations for researchers and organisations. first, any organisation or indigenous community seeking research partners must be prepared to engage in partnership-building conversations during project development. engaging in this process in an explicit manner, for example through written data-sharing agreements that emphasise relationship building, equal kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 14 page number not for citation purposes collaboration and tribal sovereignty, can help facilitate a smooth partnership (harding et al. 2012). tribes and csos should each be prepared to discuss their own norms and expectations at the outset of a partnership. rather than approaching an indigenous community with a predefined project and goal, researchers must seek out indigenous partners early on in project development to engage tribal members and to begin building personal relationships. this process should be undertaken before attaining grant funding for a project because of the concerns over funding that inadequately compensates indigenous partners. partnership-building conversations must consider how to produce accessible results and foster other desired benefits (emanuel et al. 2004; ngā pae o te māramatanga 2015; nih 2011). for indigenous peoples, potential benefits include having input in the research process and building scientific capacity (arnold & fernandez-gimenez 2007; holmes, lickers & barkley 2002; huntington et al. 2011). researchers should evaluate the usefulness, relevance and accessibility of project results according to indigenous partners as a measure of how well they are facilitating these benefits (lemos & morehouse 2005). because tribe respondents also emphasised a lack of trust towards researchers, we propose trust as an important partnership outcome. the benefit that cso participants most often discussed was the integration of tek into their research, which has the potential to produce novel ecological insights (huntington et al. 2011; kimmerer 1998; porter 2007). partners should recognise that some indigenous cultural norms involve respect for privacy, and that partnerships do not guarantee access to tek. researchers must also understand the cultural context surrounding tek and recognise inherent differences in the production of each type of knowledge (latulippe 2015; reo et al. 2017; smith & sharp 2012). second, further research is needed at the tribe–cso nexus to develop ethical stem training and evaluation. literature on training scientists to engage with diverse communities is sparse and often related to medical research (beach et al. 2005; minkler 2005; wong et al. 2017), thus not addressing the specific challenges that climate change researchers might encounter when working with indigenous peoples. several training activities were identified by our interviewees, with most csos engaging in some training activities. however, the currently ad hoc nature of such training is unlikely to: 1) engage all applicable researchers; and 2) capture the diverse set of challenges surrounding tribe–cso collaborations. while interviewees most often placed the context of this training within their current organisations, there have also been calls to incorporate this knowledge into training for scientists via their more formal university education (kimmerer 2002). regardless of the venue of training, intentional programs are necessary to ensure that csos and other scientific researchers can ethically partner with indigenous peoples. in order to develop stronger ethical stem training opportunities for scientists, further research should develop a wider and more representative sample of potential goals, benefits and challenges of such partnerships. upon reviewing the results of this study, some interviewees expressed that individuals’ roles in engagements might change their perspective and thus the study results. while gathering more perspectives from scientists and indigenous peoples, researchers should also seek out developed trainings at this nexus to build an understanding of current best practices. formalising and publicising best practices in preparing and facilitating these partnerships is especially important (lazrus & gough 2013). educational programs and training interventions are most likely to be effective when they are based on clearly articulated theories of behaviour change (townsend et al. 2003), and when they provide knowledge and skills that fill a perceived need by their audience (suarez-balcazar et al. 2008). using a theoretically grounded program may allow for creation of a basic ethical ethical collaboration and the need for training gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes stem training program that can be implemented – with appropriate cultural revision – in many research contexts. basing that program on the needs identified in this research, related contexts and any further research that occurs at this nexus will ensure that it is most relevant to the scientific community that it is targeting. third, csos and similar organisations should systematically utilise this training for their employees who will be working with indigenous peoples. distinct power differentials exist in the relationships between research organisations and indigenous peoples, with organisations often having more access to the resources needed to carry out scientific research (bohensky & maru 2011; fisher & ball 2003; kimmerer 1998; smith & sharp 2012) and challenges burdening tribes more than csos. this is true even within relationships featuring csos experienced in working with indigenous peoples, as shown by tribe interviewees discussing challenges relatively more than csos. it is incumbent upon scientific organisations to engage in ethical stem training and proactively address these power imbalances. for example, researchers should understand project funding sources and how funding can be shared with the indigenous partners before seeking out a partnership with an indigenous community. the training and evaluation process itself is likely to encounter many of the same challenges as any research partnership, but may be exacerbated by the cultural differences and contrasting worldviews of indigenous peoples and western scientists. both training and evaluation need to take into account indigenous and researcher perspectives, and the development of a training program should be approached in a similar manner as the start of a partnership. tribes and csos should include ethical stem training for researchers in organisational protocols in order to provide this training consistently. dedicated commitment by these organisations is necessary, not only in achieving the goals of, in this case, promoting ethical stem, but also in ensuring that these training programs are sustained over time (suarez-balcazar et al. 2008). conclusion the consideration of ethical relationships between us tribes and scientists has broad implications for similar collaborations internationally. the co-creation of ethical stem training programs has the potential to ease the burden of challenges experienced by indigenous peoples in future research partnerships and to rebuild trust that has been lost between indigenous peoples and research scientists; this is particularly true when ethical stem training is conducted in line with the guidelines suggested here and elsewhere in community-based research literature. more ethical and equitable partnerships that respond to the need of indigenous peoples to build scientific capacity can only serve to improve society’s understanding of climate change’s impacts and potential for adaptation. these ethical stem training efforts can be applied not only within the us, but also more broadly, as nations work to develop climate change adaptation plans in accordance with the paris agreement (unfccc 2015). such efforts would respond to the literature that documents indigenous peoples’ interest in responding to climate change threats (e.g. o’brien, hayward & berkes 2009) and the need to consider contextual and historic factors in relationships between indigenous peoples and researchers (cameron 2012). maintaining ethical stem principles of research will enhance the ability of climate adaptation researchers and programs, such as the green climate fund (schalatek, nakhooda & watson 2015), to adequately address the needs of indigenous peoples participating in partnerships that reduce the harms they experience and promote maximum benefits for indigenous peoples worldwide. kirby, haruo, whyte, libarkin, caldwell and edler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 16 page number not for citation purposes references anaya, j 2004, indigenous peoples in international law, oxford university press, new york. arnold, j & fernandez-gimenez, m 2007, ‘building social capital through 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license. citation: wine, o., buka, i., day, a., terris, s., clarkes, m-a, brennan, l., vargas, a.o. and burns, k.k. 2019. building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada: a multistakeholder engagement process. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 6013. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i1.6013 issn 836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article (peer-reviewed) building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada: a multistakeholder engagement process osnat wine1, irena buka1, alan day2, susan terris3, mary-ann clarkes4, lesley brennan5, alvaro osornio vargas1, katharina kovacs burns6 1 department of pediatrics, university of alberta, 11405-87 avenue, edmonton, ab, canada t6g 1c9 2 human resources, university of alberta, 2-60 university terrace bldg, 8303-112 street, edmonton, ab, canada t6g 2t4 3 116 walker road, edmonton, ab, canada t5t 2x1 4 covenant health research centre, covenant health, cabrini centre, #803 16811-88 avenue, edmonton, ab, canada t5r 5y6 5 covenant health, children’s environmental health clinic, 231 16930-87 avenue nw, edmonton, ab, canada t5r 4h5 6 school of public health, university of alberta, 11405-87th avenue, edmonton, ab, canada t6g 1c9 corresponding author: katharina kovacs burns; kathy.kovacsburns@ualberta.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6013 article history: received 20/04/2018; revised 01/06/2018; accepted 06/06/2018; published 15/01/2019 abstract as new environmental exposures are continuously identified, the environmental influences on health are of growing concern. knowledge regarding the impacts of environmental exposures is constantly evolving and is often incomplete. in this article, we describe a multi-phased, multi-stakeholder engagement initiative involving diverse stakeholders with an interest in building a children’s environmental health research agenda which would link with and support local practices and policies. the intent of this initiative was to identify priority research issues, themes and questions by implementing a tested research planning model that encompassed the engagement of diverse stakeholders. here, we describe the model application, which was specifically focused on children’s health and the environment. a key component of the declaration of conflicting interest the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the children’s health and environment clinic received funding from the university of alberta for their work regarding multi-stakeholder engagement. the authors received no financial support for the analysis of the related research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6013 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6013 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:kathy.kovacsburns%40ualberta.ca?subject= http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6013 model was the ongoing stakeholder engagement process. this included two stakeholder forums, during which participants identified three main research themes (social determinants of health, environmental exposures and knowledge translation) and a short list of research questions. other key components of the model included the development of a global sounding board of key stakeholders, an advisory board and a scientific panel with mandates to review and prioritise the research questions. in our case, the advisory board and scientific panel prioritised questions that focused on environmental exposures related to children’s respiratory outcomes. the stakeholder engagement described here is an evolving process with frequent changes of context, sustained by the commitment and dedication of the children’s environment and health research planning team and the advisory board. in this article, we share the engagement process, outcomes, successes, challenges and lessons learned from this ongoing experience. keywords stakeholder engagement; children’s health; environmental health; health research introduction research on children’s health and the environment explores diverse, evolving environmental factors and their effect on child development, growth and health, as well as potential solutions (etzel et al. 2012). environmental influences are of growing concern; parents rank environmental concerns high in their health priorities (crighton et al. 2013). on a larger scale, the world health organization estimates that the environmental impact on the global burden of disease in children under the age of five years is 25 per cent and is responsible for 26 per cent of deaths in this age group (world health organization 2017). with decades of technological and industrial advances, new environmental exposures are constantly being identified. these exposures not only impact adult health outcomes but, more critically, the health outcomes of our children for generations to come ( jirtle & skinner 2007; manikkam et al. 2012; perera & herbstman 2011; skinner & guerrero-bosagna 2009). children are particularly vulnerable because of their rapid growth and development, as well as their potential longevity, dynamic developmental physiology, unique exposures, immature judgement and lack of political voice (bearer 1995). addressing environmental impacts related to children’s health through research has been receiving health care planning attention not only because of its immediate impact on children but also due to its potential to reduce prevalence and incidence of common chronic conditions, starting in childhood but continuing into adult life, as well as potentially reducing public health spending. the complexity of conducting research on children’s health and the environment is underscored by recognition that environmental factors may be present in varying intensity and combinations at any given moment in time, and may include physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial factors (dadvand et al. 2013; sly & carpenter 2012). the effect of these factors on individuals is also mediated or triggered by specific host factors, for example, genetic predisposition or windows of vulnerability relating to growth, development and nutritional status (bearer 1995; koller et al. 2004). it is no wonder that research questions on this topic are often complex and multifaceted, seeking solutions that are rarely simple, and answers may also be somewhat ambiguous. this complex field of research needs to study multiple types of environmental exposures (e.g. social, chemical), multiple groups of variables for each type of exposure (e.g. multiple pollutants) and multiple windows of vulnerability (e.g. in utero wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes development, postnatal). additional complexity is added as environmental health research deals with risk, and uncertain or sensitive outcomes may have potential impact on different aspects of society (e.g. economic, political). taken all together, the field of environmental health research is broad, and there is a need for diverse stakeholders to co-generate and mobilise knowledge in order to inform policies, practices and research, which could ultimately improve children’s health. stakeholder engagement to address the many potential environmental human health issues, partnerships with various stakeholders including government (kothari et al. 2014) help in the framing and prioritising of research questions, as well as in knowledge co-production, translation, exchange and mobilisation of results. recognition that diverse stakeholders should be engaged in all phases of agenda-setting (reed 2008) or decision-making processes (linkov et al. 2011) has increased over the last two decades, and there are many examples of this. some of these include the involvement of patients in health-related research settings (cowan 2010) and, in the context of healthcare research, reviewing research prioritisation practices through stakeholder engagement (guise et al. 2013). other examples more specific to the context of environment and health include working with specific communities to ascertain areas of concern and need (korfmacher et al. 2014), and the assessment of existing problems to identify research priorities, such as working with farmers to detect occupational and environmental health issues (crowe, keifer & salazar 2008). another example in environment and health where issues, needs and research are priorities is the children’s environmental health clinic (chehc) at the university of alberta, canada. the chehc began to address children’s clinical environmental concerns almost two decades ago (chehc 2011), joining with the pediatric environmental health specialty unit organisation (pehsu 2017) as the only clinic of its kind in canada. chehc’s mission of optimising children’s health contemplates working in collaboration with community partners to provide and promote clinical care and education, and to engage in research that addresses environmental concerns, in support of its vision of ‘healthy generations of children thrive in optimal environments’. additional research that would inform policy and practice was required for chehc to address clinical goals and improve child health through identifying, prioritising and preventing pertinent risk factors. chehc recognised the importance of engaging stakeholders to mutually identify and address local concerns and prioritise issues of interest related to children’s health and the environment. with the support and guidance of the university of alberta interdisciplinary health research academy (ihra) (kovacs burns 2014), an engagement process was planned with the intent of identifying topics for children’s health and the environment research in alberta that responded to society needs and supported chehc’s vision and mission. at the same time, in canada, the canadian institute for health research (cihr) led an initiative to identify opportunities for research on environment and health in all of canada with the participation of various stakeholders (cihr 2013). given that there has always been a strong interest in children’s health as it relates to the environment in alberta, bringing together interested stakeholders to develop a research agenda on this topic specifically for alberta was a new and exciting initiative for the chehc. in this article, we describe this ongoing engagement process with diverse stakeholders, the outcomes and lessons learned. building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes the engagement plan a multi-phased design utilising interdisciplinary and cross-sector stakeholder engagement was chosen for this initiative, based on a model established as part of the research framework of the ihra, the research planning model (kovacs burns 2014). essentially, the generic version of this research framework involves utilising stakeholder engagement in the broadest sense of the definition. that is, diverse stakeholders with interest and expertise in the field or topic are meaningfully or actively involved in a series of phased planned events which guide the research agenda development: 1. engaging in stakeholder forums to identify priority issues related to the topic being targeted or discussed 2. forming a global sounding board of all participating and interested stakeholders, from which an advisory board and a scientific panel would be established 3. developing a draft research agenda 4. defining research questions, and identifying resources required 5. prioritising research questions and implementing the research agenda. although there exists arelationships between the global sounding board, advisory board and scientific panel, the more direct link exists between the advisory board and the scientific panel as both will inform each other regarding identified priority issues and resulting questions to be considered for research. decisions from these two groups will be summarized and shared back with the stakeholders in the global sounding board to not only inform them, but to also seek their advice or confirmation regarding decisions made (e.g. if research questions are of practical value to knowledge users), and/or to recruit research team members for the identified research questions and proposed projects, as needed. table 1 summarizes the role, responsibilities and reporting processes for the global sounding board, advisory board and scientific panel. these aspects evolve as the research agenda matures or deviates over time. table 1 features of the global sounding board, advisory board and scientific panel global sounding board (gsb) advisory board scientific panel members all diverse & interested stakeholders in alberta chidren’s health and environment; coming from different settings or practices, and across sectors (health, social, education, etc) core group of key experts self-selected from gsb and willing to invest time in advising on topics, issues and research questions relevant to stakeholders identified in gsb researchers, scholars and knowledge users with capacity to explore research questions in proposal or research plan wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes global sounding board (gsb) advisory board scientific panel roles/ responsibilities bring interest areas; identify issues, research topics and priority research questions of value in various settings (healthcare, schools, home, other) help steer the next steps with prioritising identified research areas and/or research questions; identifying and developing interdisciplinary research teams; and identifying funding sources and other supports for the projects or components of the research programs approve research questions and studies to be conducted; members may be part of research teams writing full research proposals and conducting research reporting/ informing & accountability reporting of forum activities to stakeholders; provide summary to advisory and scientific panel. report to scientific panel and to inform stakeholders in gsb. inform advisory board; report to be shared with stakeholders in gsb. the phased process and outcomes plan outlined for the research planning model differs from standard research practices in various ways. a standard process for most research teams is the identification or confirmation of priority research questions based on the literature and previous studies confirming a timely or trendy topic of interest to targeted stakeholders. the research teams may invite other select co-investigators (some may be researchers, decision makers and knowledge users) and collaborators to contribute to or support the research questions and proposed plan, often with the intent of appeasing funding agency requirements. it would be very rare for outside researchers or stakeholders to be offered an opportunity to volunteer to join the research team. input or advice may or may not be invited from collaborators or other stakeholders outside the select or core research team group to help design the research questions or proposed plan. thus, the research planning model provided an invaluable opportunity to engage various stakeholders and build on their perspectives and ideas. chehc’s engagement process and outcomes chehc expressed an interest in working with the ihra to develop an alberta-based research agenda that responded to local needs. planning began in 2012, at which time the existing ihra interdisciplinary research model was adapted and identified as children’s health and the environment: strategic process. this model has five phases, as shown in figure 1. table 1 continued building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes figure 1 children’s health and the environment: strategic process (based on the ihra research planning model). ‘pre-phase’ 1: strategic planning the planning team composed of chehc leaders or knowledge users, researchers and members of health organisations jointly developed a strategic plan outlining a process for the five phases of the framework in figure 1, including anticipated outcomes, timelines, and budgets and resources needed for forums or planning events. phase 1: recruiting for and establishing the global sounding board before the global sounding board could be established, key stakeholders with invested interest in the health of alberta’s children and the link with environmental factors had to be identified, and as many of these stakeholders as possible brought together for the engaged discussion on what priority issues and research questions exist in children’s health and the environment. the recruitment of stakeholders for this initiative was based on their diversity of knowledge, experiences and expertise in various practices (i.e. health care, schools, homes and other settings) and research applicable to children’s health and the environment. more specifically, stakeholders who were of different disciplines or sectors (i.e. health, education, environmental, social, economic and community non-government organisations, government, industry, etc.) were sought for their unique perspectives and approaches to exploring relevant issues and research questions. invitations were sent out to 125 key stakeholders to participate in the first planned forum. although one primary outcome of this forum was the establishment of the global sounding board, it was also intended to begin the actual discussion process for research agenda setting, both needed in order that the following four phases of the strategic plan could be implemented. phase 2: stakeholder engagement in brainstorming and/or consensus forums aside from engaging stakeholders in discussion and establishing the global sounding board previously described, the forums served as a platform where stakeholders could jointly identify priority issues, considerations/factors of influence or expectations (e.g. health concerns, government priorities), research questions and, additionally, acceptable practices or processes wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes for dissemination, knowledge translation and implementation of the research findings. moreover, the forums provided an opportunity for stakeholders with common interests to network, share experiences of research conducted or in progress, and brainstorm on what was or should be priority research on children’s health and the environment in alberta. world café style forums provided an approach which inspired focused discussion and gave everyone the opportunity to provide their perspectives (the world café community foundation 2016). two forums took place: one in 2012 and another in 2013. invitees to these stakeholders’ meetings comprised 123 and 140 interested individuals, respectively. stakeholders represented academia, the provincial government, non-government organisation, the federal government, granting agencies, the local government, and industry. table 2 provides the percentage of participants from the different sectors for forums 1 and 2. table 2 the cross-sector participants of forums 1 and 2 sectors invited forum 1 % participants by sectors (n=35 participants) forum 2 % participants by sectors (n=33 participants) academia 40 53 provincial government 14 16 non-government organisation 20 13 federal government 12 12 granting agencies 11 6 local government 0 0 industry 3 0 participants were divided into small groups and were provided several guiding questions to discuss (table 3). questions for forum 1 were intended to (1) identify, inform and clarify what the critical or priority areas of research were in children’s health and environmental issues in the province; and (2) invite interested global sounding board members to become members of the advisory board. results from this forum were used to set the stage for forum 2 (march 2013) to which 140 stakeholders were invited, regardless of whether they had attended the first forum or not, or agreed to be on the global sounding board or not. questions for the second forum were generated based on the outcomes and themes from forum 1. table 3 also provides the guiding questions for forum 2. anticipated outcomes to questions for both forums included lists of research areas and fundable, feasible projects; research questions that would be relevant to policy and practice; and a list of candidates interested in serving on an advisory board. the advisory board as per table 1 would help steer the next steps: prioritising identified research areas and/or research questions; identifying and developing interdisciplinary research teams; and identifying funding sources and other supports for the projects or components of the research programs. a summary of each forum is presented as follows: building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes table 3 guiding questions for discussion forum 1 questions forum 2 questions 1. what do you see as critical or priority areas for research in child health and the environment from which goals, policies and relevant health research questions could be addressed? 2. what specific research projects, questions and/or funding sources are identifiable in these critical or priority research areas? 3. would you be interested in joining an advisory board to assist with follow-up in identifying strategies for the identified critical or priority research areas and help steer them to completion? 1. from the perspective of a child’s health in alberta, what important questions need to be researched? in your response, please refer to the three identified themes (unique to alberta): a) knowledge translation (dissemination education) b) healthy child determinants c) environmental exposures forum 1 the 1st stakeholders’ forum (november 2012) was attended by 35 of 46 registered participants (table 2). forum 1 participants identified the following themes representing critical areas of interest: • knowledge translation: improve awareness and understanding of health issues around environmental exposures to influence policy. • healthy environments for children: definition of ‘healthy child’; wellness approach, healthy environments (including nutrition, toxin free, active life, health education), prevention, and targeting vulnerable populations. • environmental exposures: • air quality (outdoor/indoor), and models to link exposure, place and health outcomes • food: nutrition (healthy choices), food safety (additives, genetically modified foods, toxin free), and prenatal nutrition. participants agreed that future research would work around concerns unique to alberta. they also identified the need to create specific research questions related to those topics during a second forum. forum 2 thirty-three stakeholders participated in the 2nd stakeholders’ forum (march 2013). some were returning participants from forum 1 and some were new (table 2). on this occasion, participants identified research questions according to the three themes that emerged from forum 1. the identified questions developed during the forum are provided in table 4. wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes table 4 research questions identified by participants– forum 2 identified research questions knowledge translation 1. does public policy support the research activities and evidence obtained? 2. what are the barriers to public perceptions and uptake of knowledge translation research? 3. what strategies are most effective in knowledge translation for different levels of messages and dissemination, i.e. children, families, communities, corporations and state? determinants of child health 1. can we build an inventory of existing childhood exposure data and link it to existing social determinants of health data, and then do a secondary analysis to determine the overlap between the two? 2. what impact do social determinants of health and environmental exposures, in the broad sense, during pregnancy, have on children’s long-term health? 3. what is the role of environment contaminants in childhood obesity? 4. what determinants of health in alberta contribute to respiratory illness among children, positively or negatively? 5. how can the outcomes of children in care be improved through the modification of environmental exposures? environmental exposures 1. how does technology affect child health? 2. does child health change as the environment changes: physical, social, economic, biological? 3. a targeted study comparing children’s health and exposures in fort mcmurray or other industry-related community versus the rest of the province (must include accountability for social determinants of health including income, education, social supports). 4. perinatal, fetal environment, and effect on long-term individual and population health. 5. what makes children vulnerable to adverse effects of exposures in alberta? integrate levels: cellular, clinical, individual, group, population, provincial. phases 3 and 4: confirming the global sounding board and identifying and establishing the advisory board and scientific panel these two phases involved the identification of stakeholders who self-volunteered at either or both forums or were personally invited to join one or two boards (global and/or advisory) or the scientific panel. the advisory board and the scientific panel, as set out in table 1, are a subset of the global sounding board and are actively involved in following through with the research agenda activities. the global sounding board members who could not dedicate time to be part of the advisory board or scientific panel were kept informed by email and engaged as needed or as long as they continued to express interest in the initiative. an advisory board and scientific panel were formed and started operating three months after the 2nd forum ( june 2013). terms of reference were established for the board and panel, including criteria for roles and responsibilities regarding the development of the children’s health and the environment research agenda. building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes the advisory board consisted of diverse stakeholders and had a proposed mandate to provide advice/guidance to the chehc through all stages of the development of the research agenda through regular meetings. the advisory board was comprised of 15 members representing academia (including student representatives) (4), the provincial government (4), non-government organisation (4), the federal government (1), granting agencies (2). the director of the children’s environmental health clinic operated as the liaison between the clinic, the advisory board and the core scientific panel. the role of the scientific panel, as outlined in table 1, was to provide scientific expertise, refine priority research questions, and support interdisciplinary research teams formed through efforts of the advisory board in their development and funding applications for children’s health and the environment research projects. the scientific panel was formed by six researchers representing toxicology, knowledge translation, computing sciences, environmental health and clinical epidemiology. phase 5: refining interdisciplinary research questions for research teams and funding the advisory board started the process of formalising and documenting a governance structure and interacted with the newly formed scientific panel. the board and the panel cooperated to refine the questions into more precise research questions for fundable projects. the panel discussed the forum’s recommendations and suggested a list of potential workable research questions (table 5). table 5 questions identified by the scientific panel refined and revised research questions does child health change as the environment changes: physical, social, economic, biological? • what impact do social determinants of health and environmental exposure, in the broad sense, during pregnancy, have on children’s long-term health? • what is the role of environment contaminants in child obesity? • what determinants of health (including the environment) in alberta, contribute to respiratory illness among children (positively or negatively)? a targeted study: • compare children’s health and exposures in fort mcmurray or other industry-related community versus rest of the province (must include accountability for social determinants of health including income, education, social supports). methodological aspects: • develop robust case-control or cohort studies, and/or build an inventory of existing childhood exposure and health data and link it to existing social determinants of health data. • incorporate the use of biomarkers of exposure and effect. • identify areas of opportunity around the incorporation of new technology initiatives or changes in current practices that could affect the levels of pollution. • always incorporate knowledge translation. wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes the advisory board, in conjunction with chehc representatives, considered the questions posed by the scientific panel and prioritised initial areas of research guided by current provincial data on the burden of children’s disease. they chose to focus on investigating exposures and exploring related morbidities in alberta that required research. the board identified several illnesses of interest. respiratory illness was identified as a critical area of focus, which aligned with the volume of medical referrals of children to the chehc. other optional interdisciplinary health research projects included comparing air quality and respiratory morbidity, and the social determinants of health (rodriguez-villamizar et al. 2016). concurrent plans incorporated the testing of specific biomarkers to further understand the effects of new exposures. as with any research cycle, funding challenges existed for the proposed research projects. however, interest from governmental agencies in the suggested projects supported this research area as a promising avenue to continue in the province. additionally, some funding was received to support the renewal of engagement with stakeholders from the global sounding board, to continue discussion around the interest and feasibility of pursuing other research questions and projects. the advisory board also continued its engagement process through ongoing meetings. it holds regular meetings every three months along with protracted discussion in other areas of work conducted by the chehc. this has resulted in an extension of the advisory board mandate beyond research, including advice on clinical activities, outreach to the community and advocacy. the research agenda development and application of research projects remains an ongoing process for the chehc and is starting to provide research results (rodriguez-villamizar et al. 2017). discussion the multi-phased engagement process, as part of the children’s health and the environment planning model/strategic process, described above, involved ongoing investment and learning. it was utilised in times of growing concern with regards to children’s health and the environment and brought stakeholders together to discuss and plan future research needs in this context. participants joined the forums and the global sounding and advisory boards with the realisation that together they could explore the many challenges children face as a result of their environments and look for possible solutions through partnerships. additionally, stakeholders indicated that they continued to engage in the process not only because of professional affiliations but also because of personal interest and concern for their and others’ children; thus, ‘the discussion was not about them but us’ and the process was considered as ‘a good process to represent concerns’. through this process, multi-stakeholders’ expertise and experience contributed to identification of priority themes, research questions and specific projects relevant to children’s health and the environment in alberta. the research questions developed by this initiative responded to children’s health and global environmental issues, but focused on local issues. research projects were collectively developed by stakeholders. additional specific outcomes and achievements of this stakeholder engagement process were also identified (figure 2). first, the process raised awareness of participants in the multiple aspects of and perspectives on children’s health and the environment and provided an opportunity for participants to learn about research in the field and its complexity. the process building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes was considered an ‘educational experience’. participants learned from the conversations, especially ‘how much we don’t know’, and recognised the importance of future research. second, the community of stakeholders interested in children’s health and the environment research continued connecting through the advisory board. the creation of an advisory board was viewed as unique by the stakeholders, as many were knowledge users who could support many of the research projects and application of research findings in the future. it provided stakeholders a means to continue evolving their work and interest in children’s health, to take on an advisory role in clinical advocacy and educational issues for chehc, develop different circles of engagement, and continue to search for research funding and support. participating in the advisory board also offered a learning experience because of the different perspectives and evidence discussed. members of the advisory board enjoy meeting, networking, and taking part in conversations, ongoing discussions and the process of decision making towards future research projects. this board continues to be voluntarily active and sustainable through chehc and research team efforts. although, inevitably, there has been member turnover on the advisory board, it has been able to maintain regular meetings through a strong core of members and move forward with the initial plan, adapt to changing contexts and bring new ideas. it has evolved through common interest, enthusiasm and commitment of the board members to contribute to children’s health. third, a transformational change has occurred towards meaningful engagement, moving from individual research to stakeholder-driven research, and from researcher-driven to society-driven research. essentially, the process has extended researcher and knowledge users’ mandates to include joint engagement in supporting societal needs. input from the forum process and discussions (e.g. on the social determinants of health) have become further embedded into chehc’s work. this was a learning process that shaped thinking and practice. figure 2 the engagement process outcomes. the engagement process also presented some challenges. for starters, the process was planned to be inclusive so that there would be an opportunity for different perspectives and voices to take part in building the research agenda. however, as inclusive as organisers tried to be through their invitation process and information sharing, participation of some of the relevant sector stakeholders (e.g. indigenous communities and industry) was small or nil in the active parts of the process, such as participation in the forums and committees. wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes another challenge encountered was around participant or stakeholder expectations and outcomes. forum participants had different expectations than the organisers. while the organisers saw participants as potential knowledge users, participants did not necessarily see themselves in that way. their reasons for being engaged were mostly their interest in the topic, a learning opportunity, and maybe to become part of a group that might drive change and impact children’s health. furthermore, the concepts and some of the language used were new to some of the participants and it took time to develop a common language and to clarify the objectives of the discussions. to better inform stakeholders of the approach to the engagement process in future engagements, it would be worthwhile conducting a readiness assessment before the engagement process in order to align the forum objectives with the level of participant familiarity with context, i.e. use readiness assessment tools, which are now available for this purpose (barwick 2011; tamarack-institute 2017). of all the challenges, the main one encountered was sustainability of the planned engagement process. the initial process had institutional administrative and financial support for stakeholder engagement through ihra. however, as this support could not be continued indefinitely, the ongoing engagement of stakeholders on the global sounding board was difficult to sustain in the long term. this resulted in delays in moving the process forward towards tangible outcomes until the advisory board and scientific panels assumed more of the role of the global sounding board. we acknowledge that such a process is time consuming (planning, organising, sustaining) and a long time is required to accomplish all phases. adequate resources should be secured for long-term engagement with developed research projects, as well as for the dedication required to fulfil all objectives. despite these challenges, participants acknowledged that the forum discussions were a ‘worthwhile exercise’. moreover, this ongoing process builds on facilitators such as the existing dedication and commitment of the team and advisory board and the interest, flexibility, patience and adaptability of stakeholders as the process evolves over time and contexts change. the interest in many topics related to children’s health and the environment remains and is still valid. it is an indication of how important these topics and related issues are to current societal conversations and emphasises the need for future research in this field. it should also be acknowledged that, aside from the topics identified as critical priorities by the advisory board, others remain to be pursued. conclusions the experience described here covers a six-year period and provides a description of an ongoing long-term process and the outcomes of an engagement process undertaken for the purpose of building and supporting a research agenda for children’s health and the environment. many benefits from the engagement process were implemented. the process was also useful for making informed decisions on our future research direction based on valuable multistakeholder input, views and needs. these research priorities were co-developed to identify and prioritise local children’s health and environmental concerns. additionally, the process resulted in new relationships and collaborations and was a learning experience for all stakeholders regarding both the context of children’s health and the environment and the engagement process. experience was gained in connecting and engaging researchers, practitioners and children’s environmental health stakeholders. furthermore, as described above, there were some outcomes resulting from this engagement process which were not originally considered building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes when we started this journey. all this validates the effort and dedication invested since this engagement process began. we also acknowledge the challenges encountered with the engagement process and its sustainment. this is an ongoing process which is dynamic and iterative, and although it was planned for a specific timeline and with expectations of outcomes, we realise that reality can dictate somewhat different outcomes which require flexibility, patience and commitment. the dedication and perseverance of the stakeholders, participants and organising team keep it going, with the intent of continuing the pursuit of relevant research. acknowledgements the work presented here was supported by the interdisciplinary health research academy, university of alberta and the covenant health research centre. we would also like to thank the sounding board, the core scientific panel and especially the advisory board for their commitment, dedication and valuable input. references barwick, m 2011, ‘checklist to assess organizational readiness (cari) for eip implementation’, viewed 5 april 2018, www.effectiveservices.org/downloads/checklist_to_assess_organisational_ readiness_for_implementation.pdf. bearer, c 1995, ‘how are children different from adults?’, environmental health perspectives, vol. 103, suppl. 6, pp.7–12. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.95103s67 canadian institutes of health research (cihr) 2013, ‘environments and 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april 2017.pdf. the world café community foundation 2016, ‘world café method’, viewed 5 april 2018, www. theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/. building a children’s health and environment research agenda in alberta, canada gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2045 https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.6941 https://doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2014-0049 https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4505-12-6 https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2011.163 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031901 http://www.pehsu.net https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reprotox.2010.12.055 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.014 https://doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2016-0005 https://doi.org/10.17269/cjph.108.6136 https://doi.org/10.2217/epi.09.11 https://doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2012-0024 https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/316071/resources/tools/assessing%20readiness%20tool%20april%202017.pdf http://www.theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/ http://www.theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/ world health organization 2017, ‘don’t pollute my future! the impact of the environment on children’s health’, viewed 5 april 2018, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/254678/1/who-fwc-ihe17.01-eng.pdf. wine, buka, day, terris, clarkes, brennan, vargas and burns gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 16 page number not for citation purposes http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/254678/1/who-fwc-ihe-17.01-eng.pdf http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/254678/1/who-fwc-ihe-17.01-eng.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 2 (2009): 178–190 © utsepress and the author a second chance: the university of cape town’s diploma in education june saldanha this article describes a curriculum that gives men and women from predominantly black working class communities a second chance to acquire a formal qualification at a higher education institution in south africa. the curriculum provides the space for adult students to think critically about themselves and their practice and to develop a confident voice to express themselves. through this process they develop both learner and educator identities and begin to see how the two intersect. the article gives some of the historical background of the course, and shows how lecturers who have taught on the programme at different times have helped shape the curriculum. it goes on to discuss the changing nature of the student intake, the curriculum content and structure and ends with a discussion of the impact of the course, on students, staff and on the university as a whole. one very visible impact of the diploma is to be seen in the students who have gone on to acquire other postgraduate qualifications in adult education studies. on a university-wide level through the involvement of adult gateways | saldanha 179 education lecturers in other programmes and curricula, knowledge of and interest in adult learning is shared and encouraged. the diploma in education: historical development the diploma started in the mid-1980s, at the time of popular mobilisation against apartheid and the growth of local civic organisations. it was housed within what was the department of adult education and extramural studies in the faculty of education. the community adult education programme (caep), as it was then called, was a response to requests from civic organisations for leadership training. it began as a series of short courses and workshops, providing a space for community and political activists to meet and talk to each other. essentially, it provided capacity building for these activists who were involved in political education in their communities and trade unions. in 1987 these short courses became part of a year-long, non-credit bearing programme that broadened the student base to include people from community-based organisations, such as youth, women’s groups and housing activists. as well as these outside influences, the experiences, interests and passions of successive convenors have been instrumental in shaping the curriculum and student composition of the course. for example, anne hope, a freirian adult educator, encouraged learners from women’s groups and community-based health organizations to join the programme, whilst linda cooper drew a larger trade union constituency into the class. in the early 1990s, jean gamble introduced an industrial workplace element. she initiated the workplace learning programme (wpl), a year-long non-credit bearing programme of weekly seminars aimed specifically at workplace trainers, which was run in parallel to caep for three years. since there was a fair amount of overlap between caep and the wpl, and a growing interest in these programmes by both trade unionists and community activists, the two streams were merged and formalised into a two-year, credit-bearing certificate in adult education training and development, which subsequently became the diploma in education (adult education) in 2000. in 1994, after the first democratic elections following the end of apartheid, changes in the national education and training policy meant that people who were facilitating accredited qualifications gateways | saldanha 180 needed to be qualified education, training and development practitioners themselves. (department of education and department of labour 2003, p. 11). this has elevated the status of adult learning and further stimulated an interest in an accredited professional qualification. a new national qualifications framework was developed to address the previous inequalities of the apartheid education and training system. as a result, a ‘recognition of prior learning’ path (rpl) was introduced at the university of cape town (uct), which allowed students to be accepted on the basis of their experience, rather than the traditional formal marks-based entry requirement (republic of south africa 2002, p. 11). as well, students who cope well on the diploma are able to access other qualifications in the adult education stream, namely the advanced certificate in adult education, and in some cases have gone on to do a master’s degree. this recognition of prior education and training experience is considered to be an important admission criterion for two reasons. firstly, the majority of students growing up during the apartheid era would not have had the opportunity to complete their schooling. secondly, throughout the course, opportunities are created for students to reflect on their experience and use their insights to make sense of the theory and vice versa. over the years, as the political landscape has changed, so too has the student composition and curriculum. ‘i’m very aware [that] it has mirrored the changes out there’, says a lecturer on the diploma. ‘so as the political landscape has changed, we don’t get the same kind of political activists; it’s much more people who’re working, who actually see their career in a training context and who want to get a proper professional qualification.’ this demand for learning in order to further career advancement rather than for political mobilization has also been influenced by the changes in education and training policy, as mentioned. one of these policy reforms was the introduction of a skills levies fund for people who were previously discriminated against by apartheid policies, namely, black people, women and disabled people. under this levy, companies pay a percentage of their payroll to the fund, which is used for education and training, and the fund can be accessed by companies wishing to support staff training. gateways | saldanha 181 today, the diploma in education (adult education) is a two-year part-time credit-bearing programme that targets adult education and development practitioners in the community and workplace who wish to obtain a professional qualification (http://web.uct. ac.za/depts/educate/adult.php). it is based in the higher and adult education studies and development unit (http://www.haesdu.uct. ac.za/), which is a department of the centre for higher education development (ched; http://www.ched.uct.ac.za/home/), at uct. the students the student group is diverse with regard to race, socio-economic status, age, language and gender. the majority of the students are black women with an age range of 24–57 years. most of the students’ first language is afrikaans or isixhosa. students are required to learn in english since it is the medium of instruction at the university. the current ‘community’ cohort includes community educators mainly from ngos (for example, early childhood organisations, health and hiv/aids organizations, women’s groups, first aid organizations, shelters for homeless people) and public sector workplaces (for example, the prisons and police ) or parastatal organisations (for example, transnet, the government-owned freight transport company) as well as educators from communitybased employment-generating projects. a second group consists of educators based in trade unions and a third includes trainers from the telecommunications sector. the fourth and fifth groups of students includes trainers who are responsible for coordinating and facilitating learnerships in their workplaces – work-based learning programmes that also include a formal component. these cohorts are funded by the clothing, textile, footwear and leather (ctfl) seta and the transport seta, respectively (seta, or sector education training authority, approve learnerships and manage the skills levies). all the students are responsible for education and training at their sites of practice. the diploma is designed to be responsive to the different groups of students, and there are a number of versions of the curriculum, tailored to meet the needs of learners from different contexts. for example, the curriculum for the trade union educators is negotiated with ditsela (http://www.ditsela.org.za/ditsela/), a national trade gateways | saldanha 182 union education body, to ensure that it is grounded in the trade union context. the course is delivered jointly by the university and ditsela, and is designed and facilitated by staff and educators from the trade unions. the curricula for the students from the telecommunications sector, clothing, textiles, footwear and leather seta, and transport seta are also customized to meet the needs of learners from these contexts. through the diploma we have been able to build strategic partnerships with local industries and organized labour, which allows for direct engagement and negotiation over curriculum. the curriculum is thus continuously revised to meet the needs of particular sites of practice in the education, training and development field. this is done through partnerships with organizations and relationships built with organizations through past and current students. however, the curriculum also challenges students to develop a critical lens to interrogate the purpose of education and training within their workplaces and deepen their insight into the political, social and economic influences on their learning and practice. furthermore, despite the changing student composition and changing curriculum, lecturers agree that the fundamental aim of the diploma remains constant: to develop students’ knowledge, skills and values to enable them to facilitate the learning of other adults though a reflection on practice. this happens through critical reflection and a development of theoretical understanding. thus opportunities for examining their work as educators, and for the development of their professional identity, are central to the curriculum. the curriculum we draw on different approaches to curriculum but place a high value on experiential learning alongside humanist and socially critical frameworks. these approaches all emphasise self-realization in an individual or social context. students are helped to reflect on their experience and engage in a meaningful way with their learning experiences in different contexts. validating their experience through reflection and acknowledgement is affirming and builds their selfconfidence. students use the theoretical frameworks gained from the course to deepen their insights and understanding of their gateways | saldanha 183 experiences. this helps them to interpret their interactions with the world. the curriculum does not impose a particular worldview on learners but encourages them to understand different positions and then begin to challenge their own worldviews through a different lens. we are not suggesting that education is neutral. on the contrary, we want to echo the views of julius nyerere that ‘adult educators cannot be politically neutral. the very nature of their work is to activate the people and arouse their consciousness’ (hope 2007, p. 13). as facilitators, our own voices and experiences are evident in the design of the curriculum. the current curriculum is based on a two-year, part-time programme during which the personal and professional identity of the students is progressively built. each year the students complete three modules. in the first year, students complete: introduction to adult learning, organizational development, and designing and facilitating learning events. the first module, introduction to adult learning, builds learner confidence. we recognize that many people enter the course with very low self-esteem as learners and their re-entry into formal learning is challenging. this module creates a safe space for them to reflect on themselves as learners and deepen their understanding of how race, gender, class and culture have influenced their learning. by mapping of their own history they reflect on the factors that helped and hindered their learning. through this process of exploration they discover that for some the right to education was violated, that gender has negatively influenced learning in the context of work and home and that in many instances poverty has been a major factor that hindered their learning as children and continues to be a major block in adult years. this creates the space for marginalized students to raise their ‘voices’ and break their silences. butterwick (2005, p. 260) reminds us that there is a growing recognition for the need to explore the multiple meanings of silence. many students’ experiences in other social contexts have silenced them. butterwick (2005, p. 260) also explains that ‘silences can be a place of deep learning’ and walters and manicom (1996, p. 16) note that ‘educators must be sensitive to the context of silences and the power relations that they reflect’. this can be a hard and painful gateways | saldanha 184 process and for some students reflecting on their own learning brings to the fore feelings of resentment, anger and embarrassment. a student shared his insight during this module and said, ‘i now understand why my parents did not allow me to continue learning. they could not afford it. throughout my life and now i am 50 years old; this has created tensions between us. i called them to apologise and invited them to my graduation’. students also explore learning as a resource and reflect on what has encouraged their learning; this reinforces positive thinking about themselves as learners. through this process of engaging with their own learning, students begin to develop an understanding of themselves as learners with a ‘voice’, which is influenced by their ‘positionality and constant changing identities’ (tisdell 2000, p. 176). throughout the course opportunities are created to strengthen this voice and understand the silence. a female student very courageously shared: i was abused all my life, even while doing the diploma. this course gave me the insight to understand why i did not have the confidence to learn and succeed. i was afraid of male lecturers, thought i was stupid and did not show much respect for my learners. this has changed. i am sensitive to their needs. perhaps they were also abused. i respect them. i am a different person at home. i say what i do not like. my husband stopped abusing me. he came to my graduation and shouted when i received my diploma, ‘dit is my vrou’ (that is my wife). yes, he was the one who swore at me when i studied, ‘you fucking mad … you and your university things. i don’t know why they send stupid people to university … you have not even got a matric certificate. this is a fraudulent thing. something’s not right here. but you will have to prove to me’. after reflecting on personal experiences, the orientation shifts outwards in the second module, organisational development. here, students draw on relevant theory and through reflection on their own practice they begin to understand how the broader contextual structures and processes influence learning within organizations and groups. students struggle to talk about issues of race and gender since it forces them to confront their own prejudices and revisit their painful experiences of growing up in an apartheid society. one student was quite irritated and said, ‘this module helped me to look gateways | saldanha 185 more closely at my organization. i never thought about how race and gender was influencing changes in the organization. i don’t like this race and gender stuff but i can see what it is doing to my growth in the workplace’. the third module, designing and facilitating learning events, aims to locate this organisational experience in a wider, societal context. through planning and implementing a ‘learning event’, students apply the knowledge and skills gained from the earlier modules to develop a deeper understanding of their professional experience. students are required to design and facilitate an educational workshop that addresses the learning needs of people at their site of practice. learners reflect on their own identity as facilitators and this helps them to understand how this influences their work as educators. students are also introduced to popular education and the freirian methodology in this module. the aim is to make their voices more assertive as they reflect on and build confidence in their own professional experience. a student made a very interesting comment: ‘freire sounds too political. i stay away from politics. but you know what, what he says make sense. educators must show respect to learners. they must teach their learners to respect others. we must be critical. i must agree that there is [sic] people at my work who want the power and want us to keep quiet. yes, there is a “culture of silence at my workplace”’. in the second year, the students again complete three modules. the first, foundations of adult learning theory, introduces learners to different worldviews on the purpose of adult learning. this helps them to understand and confront the social purpose of their own work as education, training and development practitioners. they also learn about the history of adult education in south africa and try to map where they and their learners were during these historical periods. students commented: ‘i never liked history. it was boring. this adult education history makes sense.’ ‘this mapping activity told me that i am part of the history.’ ‘the session on the history of skills made me sit and think.’ ‘i now know why people think that my job is not as important gateways | saldanha 186 as theirs. do you have a book for me to read. i want to learn more. this stuff is making me empowered.’ they also try to identify different adult education approaches used during these periods and revisit the work of paulo freire. in addition, they begin to examine the impact that globalization has on their own learning and the learning that occurs in their communities and workplaces. the second module, fields and sites of education, training and development practice, introduces learners to south africa’s education and training policy framework and locates learning in a national and international context. students are introduced to the culture of human rights as they explore how the qualifications framework gives people access to education, and debate whether people’s right to education can be upheld in the absence of resources. this theoretical understanding helps them to look at their own learners’ experiences and develop an understanding of the impact of policy on learning. the aim is to sharpen their practitioner lens and build their capacity to think critically about the fact that legislation may be enabling but is not always implemented. a student commented: ‘i have rights! you must show me how i can see that this [sic] policies are implemented’. as facilitators we must build into this module a session on ‘how to access your rights’ and must create the space to share and learn ‘how to build activism’. the final module, field study, consolidates student learning through specialization in an education, training and development practitioner role, such as materials developer, education evaluator, designer or assessor. depending on their choice students are required to design material, conduct an assessment or an evaluation, or design an online learning course. by drawing on the broad knowledge base that they have gained from the previous modules, students are able to deepen their theoretical understanding of their role specialization and are able to see it in the context of their own education, training and development practices. a lecturer on the diploma explains: ‘the second year replicates the first in the sense of moving from the personal to the broader context, but at a more demanding level. this approach is the opposite of other professional development courses, where students begin with a theoretical framework and slowly move to practice. the diploma gateways | saldanha 187 moves between theory and practice: it starts with a reflection on experience, moves inductively towards theory, and then moves back from theory towards application’. the theme that cuts across the curriculum is the two-way relationship between context and learning. as facilitators of the diploma, we would argue that while context does act to shape learning in very particular, obvious ways, learning can also enable agency and thereby educators’ ability to impact on contexts. we do acknowledge, however, that in contexts such as the workplace, power relations limit their agency. research by jones (2005) indicates that it is extremely difficult for learners who return to the workplace to intervene and facilitate change at their site of practice. however, their experience of learning does give them agency to make some difference in certain areas of their lives. developing students’ learner and educator identities most of the students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and have had negative experiences with past formal learning. the diploma recognizes that the negative influences on their learning have also silenced them and thus the course begins with a focus on themselves. a lecturer who taught on the diploma explains that ‘the curriculum provides an opportunity for the development of personal confidence. this is done by starting the course with a focus on personal learning experiences, demonstrating that adult students are able to contribute their own knowledge of particular situations; from this, their learning identity emerges, and they start relating to theory and asking questions’. the course helps students develop a deeper understanding of their multiple social identities, and to see how these influence the way they facilitate learning and relate to their learners. we hold a nonessentialist view of identity and self esteem which argues that there are multiple identities that are in constant change and are sometimes in conflict with each other (hayes & flannery 2000, p. 57). this gives students the potential agency to choose to change their identity. throughout the course students learn, unlearn and relearn their identities and struggle with the tensions and contradictions that begin to surface in their personal lives, communities, workplaces and society. the course not only develops participants as learners gateways | saldanha 188 and practitioners, but also helps them to ‘read the world’ and to gain insights about what is happening at their own sites of practice. research by a masters student (february 2003), confirms the value of the relationship between personal experience and theory in the curriculum, and reveals that one of the biggest gains for students is the increase in their level of personal confidence. a lecturer on the diploma observes that ‘one of the main outputs … is assertiveness, confidence and willingness to take on bigger issues at a level where they [the participants] know they can be effective, and then start asking questions in other levels as well’. feedback from students’ assignments reflects that this happens in both personal and professional contexts. impact of the diploma through the diploma we have become more aware of the needs of adult learners who return to or enter a higher education institution (hei) for the first time, where the institutional culture and environment is orientated towards the learning of younger undergraduates. research is being undertaken through the adult learner working group, a cross-faculty group at uct, to understand the factors that influence the learning of mature students. this group was formed to lobby more widely for adult learners who have over the years not been recognized as an important category of learners. it works with the cape higher education consortium (chec; http:// www.chec.ac.za/) and other heis to advocate for the needs of adult learners. student evaluations of the diploma have generally been extremely positive in terms of personal learning and growth as educators. participants indicated a growing confidence in their role as educators and trainers, and a better and deeper understanding of both their own and other students’ education and training practices. this important aspect of the course – the opportunity to meet other learners – is often overlooked. the social networking that occurs is evidence of the value of interacting with other learners. lastly, the experience gained in the diploma programme has had an impact on uct more widely. for example, the use of rpl as an alternative path for adult students to access higher education has led to the development of an institution-wide policy on rpl, gateways | saldanha 189 largely brought about by staff from the diploma in education and other university staff collaborating in the adult learners working group. a number of students who have entered through rpl have done exceptionally well. in the 2008 intake, for instance, four students made the dean’s merit list and three students from former years went on to do their master’s degrees: two have passed while another graduated with distinction. it is also worth noting that a number of former students who did well on the diploma have returned as tutors. diploma staff have served as curriculum advisors on a number of programmes serving adult learners for example, the master’s in disability studies and the disaster mitigation for sustainable livelihoods programme (dimp). diploma staff who have phds and master’s have focussed their research on issues of adult pedagogy, particularly for students coming from historically disadvantaged communities. all educators who teach on the diploma programme have ‘adult learning’ expertise, which has proved invaluable in supporting an increasing number of programmes at uct wanting to design curricula that reflect adults’ experiences, learning and workplace realities. conclusion the diploma has given many students from black working communities a second chance to learn and embark on a journey of lifelong learning. the diploma has built the confidence of learners and impacted their lives in significant ways. the changing political landscape has seen more students wanting to do the course to further their career in education and training, but the particular nature of this diploma has given them a critical lens to reflect on their learning and practices and through this process students emerge with a deeper understanding of themselves and of the field of education, training and development. the diploma has since its inception been responsive to the needs of individuals and organisations and continues to customise the curriculum through engagement with organisations. the diploma has also impacted on the university itself, particularly through the recognition of prior learning, which has made it possible for many diploma students to access learning. very importantly, the work in the diploma over the last nine years has helped to build a critical base of knowledge about adult learning. gateways | saldanha 190 references butterwick, s 2005, ‘feminist pedagogy’, in m english (ed.), international encyclopedia of adult education, palgrave macmillan, new york, pp. 257–262. department of education and department of labour 2003, ‘an interdependent national qualifications framework’, consultative document, government printers, pretoria, july. february, c 2003, ‘what counts as useful knowledge? perceptions of a group of adult learners in higher education’, master’s thesis, university of cape town, cape town. hayes, e & flannery, d 2000, women as learners. the significance of gender in adult learning, jossey-bass, san francisco. hope, a 2007, ‘building a convivial society: insights from nyerere and freire’, lecture presented at the fourth vice chancellor’s julius nyerere annual lecture on lifelong learning, university of western cape, cape town, 20 august, viewed 20 may 2009, http://www.icae.org.uy/eng/nyererelecturepaperannehopeaug07.pdf jones, b 2005, ‘student perceptions of how their learning experiences, on a university diploma in education, impacted on their workplace practices and identity: a case study of emerging education, training and development practitioners in the clothing industry in the western cape’, unpublished master’s thesis, university of cape town, cape town. republic of south africa 1995, south african qualifications authority act (act no. 58 of 1995), government gazette, no. 1521, 4 october. tisdell, ej 2000, ‘feminist pedagogies’, in e hayes & s flannery (eds), women as learners. the significance of gender in adult learning, jossey-bass, san francisco, pp. 155–184. walters, s & manicom, l (eds) 1996, gender in popular education, zed books, london. information for these case profiles was sourced from interviews conducted by linda cooper, janice mcmillan and june saldanha with the institutional planning department, university of cape town, in october 2007. shifting the evaluative gaze community-based program evaluation in the homeless sector poverty and lack of safe, affordable housing are growing problems in canada (gaetz et al. 2013). recent estimates found that more than 235 000 individuals use emergency shelters in a given year (gaetz, richter & gullivan 2014). homelessness is a result of a series of policy failures including withdrawal of government from social housing and failure of the private market to build affordable housing (resulting in rising housing costs and low vacancy rates), as well as decades of regressive welfare reforms (bryant et al. 2011; eberle et al. 2001; hulchanski 2009; shapcott 2009; wallace, klein & reitsma-street 2006). at the same time, gentrification and loss of ageing housing stock, along with health-care reforms, including deinstitutionalisation, have exacerbated these problems, leaving many people without adequate housing (quigley & raphael 2001; shapcott 2009). the consequence is growing inequities that adversely impact those experiencing or at risk of homelessness, including increasing physical, mental, emotional and oral health disparities when compared to the rest of the population (frankish, hwang & quantz 2005; hwang 2001, 2010). further, there is a risk of premature death among those who are homeless, with people dying at a much younger age than the rest of the population (hwang et al. 2009). in many canadian cities, non-governmental organisations (ngos) initiate and provide the majority of programs mounted as part of the response to homelessness. these agencies face increasing demands for information about the outcomes and cost-effectiveness of their programs. it is within this context that housing providers in one canadian city identified the need for a research plan that could integrate evaluation as part of a transitional shelter program development and operation. the ngo initiated a partnership with local researchers to conduct an evaluation that would provide information about the effectiveness of this program in ending homelessness. in this article, we examine the application of communitybased research (cbr) principles and practices in the homeless sector and the implications for the production of knowledge and social change to address homelessness. drawing on our gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 43–58 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 bruce wallace bernadette pauly kathleen perkin university of victoria mike ranfft victoria cool aid society 44 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt experiences as researchers and service providers, we reflect on the significant successes and challenges associated with using cbr in the homelessness sector. we describe cbr and its potential as a methodological framework for participatory program evaluation and social change. briefly, we describe the transitional shelter program that was the focus of our cbr program evaluation and discuss the benefits and challenges of cbr implementation based on our experiences conducting this program evaluation. finally, we discuss lessons learned and implications for future cbr research in the homelessness sector. community-based research: overview of literature community-based research, sometimes known as communitybased participatory research (cbpr), is a collaborative approach to research in which partners from a variety of contexts work together on all aspects of the research in an equitable way with an aim of democratising knowledge (israel et al. 1998). a communitybased research partnership often includes one or more academics, representatives from community organisations and community members. a fundamental characteristic of community-based research is ‘the participation and influence of non-academic researchers in the creation of knowledge’ (israel et al. 1998). this is central to democratising the processes of knowledge production (reid, brief & ledrew 2009), through valuing and utilising the knowledge and experiences of the stakeholders, especially those with less power and resources in the research process (green & mercer 2001). cbr has the potential to effectively integrate the theoretical and methodological academic expertise of researchers with the community participants’ expertise and experiential knowledge of the research issues and findings (cargo & mercer 2008). thus, community-based research is not simply about engaging in research with community partners or having community as a site for research, but rather about researchers and community partners as co-producers of knowledge to achieve common goals through power sharing (israel et al. 1998). the participation of community is assumed at all steps in the research, and engagement should be a long-term and sustainable process (minkler & wallerstein 2008). indeed, an expected outcome of the cbr process is colearning between partners and mutual benefits for community and researchers (israel et al. 1998). cbr has an explicit social justice mandate and includes social action as one part of the research process (strand 2003). therefore, cbr is concerned with participation and knowledge development to empower and/ or generate actions to effectively translate knowledge in order to change or improve policies and programs through critique of broader power structures, as part of the research process (lazarus et al. 2012; wallerstein & duran 2008). 45 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt while cbr holds the potential to produce more applicable research than traditional researcher-driven approaches (minkler & baden 2008), there are challenges associated with conducting cbr. lazarus et al. (2012) identify several inherent tensions experienced in cbr, including tensions between science and community participation, science/research and practical goals/action, and control over phenomena and collaboration continuum. more specifically, participation and social action are often stated in ideal terms that fail to engage with power dynamics. as well, there are challenges to the implementation of rigorous but flexible research designs and difficulties in navigating research team roles and responsibilities due to conflicting demands and timelines. those conducting cbr need to be aware of these challenges and have the skills to balance the often competing demands of participation, rigour and real-world complexities, while maintaining a commitment to and enacting social action (springett & wallerstein 2008). background: the research site victoria is the capital of the province of british columbia, canada, with approximately 363 000 residents living in the city and surrounding areas (statistics canada 2013). victoria cool aid society (cool aid) is one of the ngos responsible for most of the region’s emergency shelters and 374 units of supported housing, as well as a community health clinic including health and dental services. in the mid-2000s, staff and managers with years of experience working in emergency shelters noticed that, while the main emergency shelter provided essential services, the sometimes chaotic setting was not conducive to more concentrated, uninterrupted support for clients. to address this issue, cool aid decided to implement a model of transitional shelter which was more focused on one-on-one support in the hope that this would help some people make a more permanent transition out of homelessness. although the greater victoria coalition to end homelessness had adopted housing first as its primary philosophy in addressing homelessness (city of victoria 2007; tsemberis & eisenberg 2000), it was clear to housing providers that the lack of available housing, as evidenced by low vacancy rates and high costs, would make it extremely difficult for individuals to move directly into housing from the emergency shelter (pauly et al. 2011, 2013). while overall rental vacancy rates have increased, vacancy rates for bachelor suites and housing with rents less than $700 a month are extremely low (canada mortgage and housing corporation 2012). in victoria, approximately one in four renters are in core housing need, paying over 30 per cent of their income on housing costs, and over 10 per cent are in severe housing need, paying more than 50 per cent of their income on housing (canada mortgage and housing corporation 2010, 2011, pauly et al. 2013). 46 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt in february 2008, cool aid opened a transitional shelter program, a 15-bed facility available to both male and female clients over the age of 18 with a history of emergency shelter use. the transitional shelter provides a home-like setting in a renovated rooming house where bedrooms are shared. residents share common living areas and contribute to the cooking, cleaning and yard work. the transitional shelter is staffed 24 hours a day, with two staff members on shift at all times and additional staff who do outreach, including assessments and follow-up, during the week. residents do not pay rent, and are provided with meals. recreation passes and bus passes are also available. the primary mandate of the transitional shelter is to provide temporary accommodation for emergency shelter clients where staff can work closely with residents on personal action plans with a goal of moving clients into more stable housing. the aim of the program is to reduce recidivism to homelessness and emergency shelters. a high staff to resident ratio and the absence of drop-in services enable staff to work more intensively with residents. the program is set up to ensure that each resident who leaves has community supports in place so that, in a crisis situation, supports are available to assist them to maintain their housing. the program has four key goals for a successful transition to stabilised housing: 1 an appropriate, affordable, long-term housing situation 2 an income adequate to maintain self and housing 3 increased overall health and wellbeing including access to appropriate health-care services 4 the appropriate supports to live independently. at the onset of the program, the transitional shelter was considered ‘dry’ housing. use of alcohol and other drugs was not permitted while in the program and individuals admitted to the program had goals that included sustained recovery from substance use problems. however, relapses to substance use are recognised as part of recovery and tolerated as long as the substance use does not negatively impact other residents. funding for the program required that it be a low-barrier shelter. cool aid’s philosophy is informed by the belief that residents should have access to both wet-housing and dry-shelter options. since cool aid operates several low-barrier shelters that tolerate drug and alcohol use, this program was originally designed to provide an alternative for those individuals wishing to live in an environment without drugs and alcohol. however, that has evolved over years of program operation to a point where it is recognised that substance use may be a feature of clients’ lives. as is consistent with a lowbarrier shelter, residents have access to harm-reduction supplies and may use drugs or alcohol as long as they do not interfere with their recovery goals or those of other clients. 47 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt below, we reflect on the implementation process of the community-based program evaluation and highlight aspects that we found significant or surprising in what has been a highly rewarding and productive partnership from the perspective of both university and community research partners. we also outline some of the challenges related to participation and power-sharing in the research process and flexibility of the research design, and discuss the challenges related to implementation of the data collection and ethics processes necessary for conducting rigorous research and achieving social justice aims. participation and power in the research process a question central to cbr is: who is involved in the research process, and how (lazarus et al. 2012)? a core principle of community-based research is that the research question should originate from the community (minkler & wallerstein 2008). this may seem a minor factor, but this principle is crucial in the establishment of relationships and as a guide to the research process. in our situation, as the transitional shelter program was being developed, the staff recognised the need for research and evaluation. in the early stages of the project, the program staff contacted a community-based researcher (wallace). he had many years’ experience working in the non-profit sector and with shelter staff (ranfft). as the physical structure of the house came together, the researcher and staff met on site mid-construction to put together a plan for evaluation that could be implemented from the start of the program. the research questions came from staff as they developed the shelter, and the staff played an equally critical role in developing the evaluation plan. as the evaluation took shape, additional academic collaborators joined the research team. the community-based researcher (wallace) contacted an academic researcher (pauly) who was already engaged in community action on homelessness and substance use issues. participation is integral to cbr, but it is critical to question how much a community actually wants or needs to participate in each aspect of a research project (stoecker 2008). there is an inherent risk within participatory and community-based research of inadvertently problematising community participation by developing a research plan that seeks participation from research partners in the community without requiring a similar level of obligation for the researcher to participate in the community’s priorities and activities. the problem, or challenge, with cbr is often conceived as convincing communities to participate in research. however, because cbr is not an end in itself, but rather a means for larger social change, the challenge can be reframed as how to engage researchers to participate in the larger context of the community and social change. reviews of cbr projects by 48 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt minkler et al. (2008) describe how cbr’s social justice mandate requires the activism of the researchers as well as the researchers’ sustained commitment to and participation within the community. in our evaluation project, the researchers’ longstanding participation in the larger community context and their shared commitment to social justice and ending homelessness were just as critical as the community’s participation in every stage of the research. as people not actually working at the shelter, the community-based and academic researchers (wallace and pauly) were in different ways outsiders in the transitional shelter. bruce wallace had many years of experience working with the street community and researching and writing about issues related to poverty and homelessness, including doing research with cool aid. he was able to play a key role in bridging the community and university because of his longstanding history with the organisation. collaboration with academia was similarly seamless as the primary academic researcher (pauly) was also engaged in addressing poverty and homelessness in the community, had conducted research with cool aid and, both as an academic researcher and volunteer, was a frequent speaker and advocate for ending homelessness. at the same time, her location in academia facilitated access to research funds and the engagement of collaborative researchers from the university. in this project, the primary research partners included community and academic based researchers and the shelter providers of the transitional program. in homelessness research, social exclusion of those affected by homelessness is a key issue and inclusion is germane to the development of solutions to end homelessness (norman & pauly 2013). central to participation of those affected are questions about how to engage and include people with direct experience of homelessness in research. while the service providers initiated the research, it was the researchers who eventually raised the issue of inclusion of people with experience of homelessness in the process of doing the research. it is evident that service providers have important knowledge of the people that they serve and operate with the intention of wanting to improve conditions for the people they serve. however, given the power differentials between providers and clients, it is not always clear how to engage people with experience of homelessness directly in program development and implementation. in the third stage of the research project, two advisory groups were initiated as part of the ongoing research. one group was composed of additional frontline shelter staff and a second group directly engaged people with experiences of homelessness and use of transitional shelter. this allowed for greater participation in the research process, with the researchers facilitating both groups as a means of engaging the respective expertise of both groups in data collection, data analysis, and interpretation and communication of the findings. in the communication of the findings, both groups had an opportunity to work together on the recommendations. 49 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt power differentials were increasingly mitigated by the fact that many current residents became past residents during the project, shifting their relationships with providers. research priorities and goals for the shelter staff who had initiated the research, program evaluation was a priority on par with other functions of the transitional shelter, such as conducting intakes, planning meals or assisting residents with referrals. the importance accorded to evaluation continued through the project and contributed significantly to its success. in part, their interest in evaluation was motivated by an awareness that they were developing a new type of program and that they would need to demonstrate whether or not the program was cost effective and achieved the identified goals, including reducing recidivism to homelessness and emergency shelters and supporting permanent exits from homelessness. both the community-based and academic researchers have a strong commitment to social justice and a theoretical perspective that draws on structural approaches to addressing health and social inequities, with a specific interest in and commitment to evaluating the effectiveness of different options for reducing homelessness. since the researchers were able to partner with the provider early in the program development, they had an opportunity to work with staff to mutually develop the research questions, data collection methods and instruments, and the processes for evaluation. in undertaking the evaluation, there was a unique opportunity to integrate data collection into transitional shelter programming as the program was being developed. the community and university researchers, as well as the service provider partners, saw this as a coordinated approach that would lead to respectful, unobtrusive research with the potential for social impact. from the start, the goals of the community and academic researchers were to ensure that the research would be community relevant, effectively coordinated with service provision, and hopefully provide evidence of the program’s effectiveness and new insights into the social policy context of homelessness. all partners shared an interest in developing a research process that could both provide accountability of the program and inform better systemic responses to homelessness. in order to meet these goals, a community-based research approach was chosen as the overarching framework for the evaluation, to address power inequities in the research process and promote social justice as an outcome. flexibility and tensions in research design informing this decision was the knowledge that cbr may be combined with a broad range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies based on the goals and objectives of the research (lazarus et al. 2012). traditional program evaluations often focus 50 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt on the individual and evaluate the program’s success in changing individual behaviour (pauly, carlson & perkin 2012). however, factors such as affordable housing availability and welfare reform play a significant role in the success of transitional shelter programs. acknowledging this reality requires an approach to program evaluation and theoretical frameworks that adequately capture the sociopolitical and economic context in which the resident and program are located. thus, we sought to shift the focus from evaluating change at the individual level to examining the program and its participants within a larger sociopolitical and economic context in which there is and continues to be a scarcity of affordable housing. consequently, we drew on case study methodology (yin 2009) within a community-based research framework. we deliberately chose a case study research design because we wanted to understand the transitional shelter program within its social, political and economic context so as to inform our assessment of the program’s effectiveness (pauly, wallace & perkin 2014). according to yin (2009), case study research is ‘an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident’. case study methodology is valuable because of its flexibility and rigour, and it is often used to develop theory, evaluate programs and develop interventions (baxter & jack 2008). case study research involves multiple forms of data collection to facilitate the examination of broader social, political and economic factors (yin 2009). by drawing attention to these sociopolitical and economic conditions, we sought to shift the evaluative gaze to include the context in which the program operates (springett & wallerstein 2008). with this shift in gaze, traditional criteria for success and failure of the program could be questioned, and the mandate for change could also shift towards changing the social conditions that create or reinforce inequities in power and access to resources. several authors have observed that it is particularly important to consider the effects of social policies as part of evaluations of transitional housing programs (barrow & zimmer 1999; dordick 2002). thus, program participants and the program are studied in context to determine what works for whom and under what conditions (dunn et al. 2013; pawson & tilley 1997). programs addressing homelessness are generally evaluated for their success on housing indicators alone; for example, the number and percentage of participants who exit into housing (pauly, carlson & perkin 2012). however, success measured in this way would be limited for transitional shelter participants in the context of market rental housing being unaffordable and income assistance rates too low, and where residents lacked access to health and social services required for overall health and wellbeing. for example, in the province of british columbia, 51 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt residents on all forms of income assistance receive only c$375 a month for shelter costs and the average rent of a bachelor unit is around c$650 a month (pauly et al. 2013; pauly et al. 2011). to be consistent with a social justice approach, we needed to select outcome indicators that reflected the social, political and economic conditions experienced by people in the transitional shelter. the program staff and the collaborating researchers were equally eager to develop indicators of success that went beyond the principal program mandate of reducing emergency shelter use or improving housing status so as to position the findings of the research in the broader sociopolitical context and inform social change. together, we determined that indicators of success for the transitional shelter evaluation would measure outcomes in four integrated dimensions: (1) access to stable housing, (2) improvements in health and wellbeing, (3) access to adequate income, and (4) community inclusion, in alignment with program goals. based on experience and knowledge of the literature, we identified these four dimensions as the main pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of housing stability. all four pieces are needed to create a stable foundation for clients to move out of homelessness. thus, in the development of the evaluation framework, we included attention to housing, income, health and social supports, reflecting an emphasis on key social determinants of health (raphael 2009). this is in contrast to the usual measures of individual self-sufficiency which so often characterise evaluation of homelessness programs. this explicit framing of the evaluation framework in relation to the social determinants of health and the broader sociopolitical determinants that shape housing affordability and income fostered attention on issues of power and inequality and the way in which individuals and the program were structurally positioned in relation to larger societal inequities. as part of the evaluation, we inventoried all social housing units that would potentially be available for single adults in victoria. the preliminary findings of the social housing inventory revealed that there were essentially no vacancies in these units and that specific eligibility requirements made it difficult to access social housing. we found that the bureaucratic paths to social housing are often a maze, complex and difficult to navigate. for example, staff identified that in order to get into some social housing, individuals were required to have a case manager, but that many residents of the transitional shelter were ineligible to obtain a case manager due to restrictions on these services. most transitional shelter clients needed expert assistance to find their way through a convoluted housing system with multiple providers, different sets of criteria for entry and long waiting lists. to simply focus on self-sufficiency would place the balance of responsibility on the individual for systemic failures, rather than place the efforts of individuals and programs into the context of these broader social conditions. 52 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt burdens and challenges of data collection one of the goals of the evaluation was to integrate data collection into the shelter operations to reduce the burden on staff and clients, as well as potentially inform program operations. in addition to data for the evaluation, it was necessary for transitional shelter staff to collect information on clients to screen potential residents, comply with two program funders’ reporting requirements and plan for clients’ needs while in the shelter. once someone enters the shelter, they are interviewed by staff as a way to develop a personal work plan. in order to avoid duplication of effort and reduce the burden on transitional shelter residents, we tried to integrate evaluation data collection into the usual routines of the transitional shelter. we did develop separate data collection instruments for the evaluation, but removed any questions requesting information that was already collected as part of existing screening and intake procedures. results from both processes were combined at the analysis stage. this efficiency would not have been possible without the direct involvement and input of shelter staff and managers. in spite of our combined and concerted efforts, we were not always able to avoid duplication in data collection. as the research was being developed, the provincial funding agency for shelter programs instituted a new data collection and evaluation process that all agencies had to participate in as a condition of funding. the intentions of the provincial funder were admirable as they sought a standard reporting format for all shelters in the province and required shelter staff to follow up with clients. however, this change emerged after substantial collaboration among the research team to develop and implement data collection tools. as a result, the shelter staff were now presented with two research processes, often seeking the same information from residents, and this situation was contrary to our intention of integrating our research into the shelter data collection processes. in the end, we realised that the program had to adopt the mandatory data collection tools from the provincial funding agency, but supplement this process with our more in-depth data collection instruments and amalgamate the findings in our analysis. we also encountered challenges integrating evaluation data collection with shelter intake and exit procedures. the original plan to use the surveys for both evaluation and program planning did not turn out as we intended. moving from an emergency shelter into a transitional shelter can be an overwhelming experience for clients. in addition to our intake form, new residents are faced with a small stack of paperwork including several consent forms and another survey, all of which are required either by funders or to plan clients’ care while in the program. to ease the transition, shelter staff developed an intake process that allowed residents to settle into the house first and then complete the paperwork over a few days or weeks. in response, we decided to redraft the surveys to remove the detailed case management questions and generally 53 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt shorten the survey wherever possible, although we were left with the limitation of having intake surveys completed somewhat after the actual time of entry into the program. in addition to the intake survey, we had an exit survey for residents to complete shortly before leaving the program. if entering a transitional shelter is a stressful transition, it seems that leaving it can be even more fraught, and clients generally were not completing the exit surveys. some residents left because they were moving into housing, while others had to leave due to an emergency, or were asked to leave. even under the most favourable circumstances, completing the survey was not a priority for residents or staff. typically, ‘bad’ exits could not be foreseen, and so did not allow for surveying. this presented obvious problems for data collection, especially as it seemed like people leaving under ‘good’ circumstances would have more opportunity to fill out a survey, biasing our sample. the research risked capturing only the ‘good’ exits and not the ‘bad’, or not collecting any data at exits. to simplify this often complex and highly individual set of circumstances, two alternate strategies were developed: one was a c$20 incentive for residents to complete the survey at (or soon after) exit; the other was the development of a staff completed discharge summary evaluation – a simple instrument for staff to record basic outcomes on the most significant variables (housing, income, health, social supports) for all residents. this way we had some information on everyone who left the program, whether they left under ‘good’ or ‘bad’ circumstances. communication of research processes one of the advantages of community-based research is that it can increase capacity among community organisations to conduct research. for this agency and program staff, program evaluation was clearly a priority. however, it cannot be assumed that all community partners come already prepared to conduct research in a way that conforms to current academic practices without significant support. we needed to use a consent form that conformed to the requirements of the university’s research ethics board, so we were unable to combine our consent process with any of the several other consent forms shelter residents had to sign. after an initial period of data collection, we discovered that university consent forms were not being completed and therefore many of the completed surveys could not be included in the analysis. we achieved a better success rate with the consent forms by emphasising their importance to staff and carefully tracking their completion. in our project, the research assistant (perkin) would regularly (that is, weekly) go to the shelter to provide any necessary support, collect completed forms and ensure there were adequate honorariums and surveys for ongoing data collection. the issue surrounding consent forms highlights a challenge for university-community partnerships. the forms were essential to academic interests but overlooked in a setting that had to be responsive to clients’ basic needs as well as crisis situations. it was 54 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt easy to miss our consent form among the several other forms that needed to be completed. community-based research encourages an egalitarian approach where all partners contribute to knowledge creation and no one partner’s position is privileged over the others. just as community members have important knowledge about their contexts, researchers must also share their knowledge of research contexts and processes, like consent forms and data collection, in the interests of the research project’s success. competing timelines and reporting of findings community-university collaborations often struggle with competing timelines (springett & wallerstein 2008). both academic and community partners face competing external deadlines. external pressures such as funding application cycles, ethics reviews and publications dictate the university research schedule. at the same time, the community partner may be under pressure to produce program reports, while struggling to meet the constant everyday needs of clients. in our situation, there were minimal challenges with timelines as the researchers sought to fit their work to the transitional shelter’s schedule. however, at the end of the shelter’s initial year of operation, the staff were required to submit reports to their funding agencies. the researchers were unaware of the deadline and realised that staff were creating reports without the support of the data from the research project. the situation raised doubts from the researchers as to the usefulness of the research process if it could not be responsive to these demands for information. to remedy the situation, the researchers ran an analysis of the data to date and collaborated with staff on the funder report. the situation was a reminder that data collection and priorities vary for community partners and academic researchers. in this case, researchers and community agencies were working with different deadlines, with the researchers primarily focused on the research funding timelines and the community agency partners focused on program funder deadlines. researchers need to be aware of deadlines relevant to the demands for data from a program’s outside funding agencies while clearly communicating research timelines. conclusions and implications in this climate of hyper-accountability, there are significant demands on community agencies in the homeless sector, and elsewhere, for program evaluation. program evaluation is key for knowledge development in the homelessness sector. cbr is a unique and valuable approach to program evaluation in the homelessness sector to generate knowledge and social change through a collaborative research process. at the same time, there are challenges in the application of cbr principles and practices in the homeless sector. 55 | gateways | wallace, pauly, perkin & ranftt a cbr approach to program evaluation in the homeless sector has benefits when researchers are engaged in both community and activism to end homelessness. just as participatory and community-based research values community participation in research, there is value in researchers’ commitment to sustained participation in community. because cbr is not an end in itself, but rather a means for larger social change, in addressing homelessness, there is a need to engage researchers to participate in this larger context of the community and social change. program evaluations can have a large social impact, but community-based research’s foundation in social justice must inform all aspects of the research, including what measurements of success are used in the evaluation. indicators of individual client successes and individual behaviour change, while compelling and attractive from a program funder perspective, do not capture the actual extent or causes of homelessness, nor do they give the context required to fully understand whether or not a program is successful in reducing homelessness for its clients. a cbr approach to evaluations of homeless interventions must consider structural forces such as housing affordability, income assistance rates, and access to health-care and social supports (pauly, wallace & perkin 2014). findings from this evaluation continue to be integrated into larger efforts to respond to homelessness through presentations to provincial and local policymakers and service providers. in addition, based on the findings of this research, we are working with the shelter staff to incorporate the findings to improve and refine the transitional shelter program and have identified further areas for research. we are continuing our research relationship and thus, have a well-established community-university partnership that will extend into the future. university-community partnerships committed to the principles of community-based research can function effectively within this reality. effectiveness can be enhanced by attention to ensuring that research endeavours are driven by important questions of interest to community partners and are methodologically sound without being overly cumbersome or adding to workloads in a sector that often has limited resources. taking advantage of existing data 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methods, 4th edn, sage, thousand oaks, ca. _enref_1 _enref_2 _enref_3 _enref_4 _enref_5 _enref_6 _enref_7 _enref_8 _enref_9 _enref_10 _enref_11 _enref_12 _enref_13 _enref_14 _enref_15 _enref_16 _enref_17 _enref_18 _enref_19 _enref_20 _enref_21 _enref_22 _enref_25 _enref_23 _enref_24 _enref_26 _enref_27 _enref_28 _enref_29 _enref_30 _enref_32 _enref_33 _enref_34 _enref_35 _enref_36 _enref_37 _enref_39 power and politics in research design and practice opening up space for social equity in interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional and community-based research the significance of water to the keweenaw bay indian community is profound, as it has been since ancient times. most notably, water is a primary element in the creation story of the anishinaabe people which describes the creation, out of nothing, of rock, water, fire, and wind. into each one was breathed the breath of life and each was bestowed a different essence and nature. each substance had its own power which became its soul-spirit. waters were given powers of purity and renewal. water, or nibi, is the life blood of existence. ceremonies are conducted to give thanks to the water. the protection of the life of the water is the essence of survival for the keweenaw bay indian community, both physically and spiritually. …water is the life blood of our mother earth…mother earth gives us our medicine, her strength. if she is sick or weak, we will become sick and weak people. erin johnston of the keweenaw bay indian community natural resources department shared this story in her presentation to more than 50 research participants attending a community and partner workshop in november 2013 (gagnon et al. 2014). these participants, including investigators from across social and natural science disciplines and community partners from multijurisdictional organisations, were gathered along the shores of lake superior in the upper peninsula of michigan to commence a threeyear national science foundation (nsf)-funded research project entitled ‘managing impacts of global transport of atmospheresurface exchangeable pollutants (aseps) in the context of global change’ (hereafter ‘asep project’) (asep 2013). johnston’s presentation was one in a series of talks by investigators and community partners, who shared their insights and perspectives on global pollutants, regional fish toxicity and the subsequent impacts on human health for cultural groups, such as indigenous communities, who are highly reliant on fish as first foods. the workshop, designed to facilitate interactions between researchers, representatives of organisations and community groups, included a number of elements to ‘open up space’ for dialogue and to ‘flatten’ the power dynamics between participants. it was intentionally structured to prevent domination of the valoree gagnon hugh gorman michigan technological university emma norman northwest indian college gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) © 2017 by v gagnon, h gorman & e norman. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: gagnon, v, gorman, h & norman, e 2017, ‘power and politics in research design and practice: opening up space for social equity in interdisciplinary, multi-jurisdictional and community-based research’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 164–184. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5307 corresponding author: valoree gagnon; vsgagnon@mtu.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5307 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index 165 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman researchers’ approaches and perspectives. for example, the researchers called upon frank ettawageshik of the united league of indigenous nations to set the tone for the day by welcoming everyone to anishinaabe homelands. frank welcomed the guests by telling the story of his travels to the workshop earlier that morning and how, when he crossed the bridge from lower michigan into michigan’s upper peninsula, the ominous night sky cleared and gave way to the day’s sunrise. he used this story as a metaphor to convey his sense of optimism for what we would accomplish that day in our gathering and the research in general. both johnston’s and ettawageshik’s stories emerged through a thoughtfully designed research strategy that grounds the research to place, opens up space for counter-narratives and attends both to place and to culture. in this article, we argue that interdisciplinary research addressing socio-ecological concerns and seeking community engagement can benefit from participatory forums in which power dynamics are intentionally flattened. doing so allows for a diversity of voices to emerge and influence the project pathway. accomplishing this, we argue, requires opening up space for nondominant voices, such as those of indigenous communities, to directly influence research design and practice. opening up space requires a research framework that, from the start, is designed with time and space to accommodate such influence (hanson & ogunade 2016; hart, straka & rowe 2016). this forethought sets the tone from a project’s onset for genuine and more equitable collaboration, allowing information to flow in multiple directions. while much has been written about participatory research methods and design (harvard catalyst 2016; minkler & wallerstein 2008; reason & bradbury 2007), this article addresses a gap in the literature covering research methods and critical discourse related to power dynamics and counter-narratives, particularly where research involves indigenous communities. flattening power dynamics facilitates multi-directional exchanges and enhances the value of diverse ways of knowing for all research project participants, including researchers from various disciplines, across jurisdictions and at differing scales, and between researchers and community partners. to illustrate the value of this method, we demonstrate its use in our asep project. from the onset, the goal of the project was to ensure that the nsf investigation would be geographically grounded to lake superior and responsive to the priorities of the community partners. one aspect of the research included a series of biogeochemical modelling tasks to characterise the fate and transport of toxic compounds that contaminate fish locally and worldwide, allowing researchers to estimate the effect of those emissions on future generations. another aspect involved assessing the capacity of the existing system of chemical governance to achieve reductions in emissions. project leaders also wanted to ground an aspect of the project geographically, so that the analysis 166 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman would reflect the interests of actors at different jurisdictional scales, including those in indigenous and non-indigenous organisations, and to involve real systems of local and national governance. although we did not know exactly how grounding the project geographically would affect the research trajectory, we believed that a participatory forum early on would be valuable. through this process, the question of ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’ surfaced as a priority community concern. this seemingly straightforward question, which was not part of the original inquiry, helped to focus and integrate the work of atmospheric modellers, physical chemists, limnologists and governance-focused social scientists on a question of direct interest to the project’s community partners. transitioning to a mindset of optimism – identifying an expected timeline that would no longer require restrictions on fish consumption – enhanced our purpose for doing participatory research. with the understanding that achieving safe fish would indeed take many generations to accomplish, the significance of this question lay within everyone’s acceptance and willingness (including of community partners) to work towards a long-term solution to issues of contamination. community engagement in research design and practice academic-community partnerships are at the forefront of community-engaged research in addressing a wide range of environmental and human health issues (glover & silka 2013; harvard catalyst 2016; minkler & wallerstein 2008; reason & bradbury 2007). known by various names – communityengaged research (cenr), participatory action research (par) and community-based participatory research (cbpr) – each prescribes various levels of community integration and advocates mutual respect, co-learning and community capacity building. minkler and wallerstein (2008) also point out the value of community engagement throughout various phases of the research process. often, these community-engaged investigations focus on biophysical health improvements through programs that can be implemented by communities. engaging with indigenous communities necessitates further methodological considerations, especially when research design and practices are defined primarily by investigators (kovach 2009; smith 2012). after all, socio-ecological issues involve multiple interpretations of the problem and solution (holifield, porter & walker 2010; nadasdy 2004). anishinaabe scholar wendy makoons geniusz (2009, p. 52) explains that research must be ‘meaningful for the people’ who are asked to participate. describing an alternative orientation, geniusz asserts (pp. 8, 51–52): ‘our priority is to revitalize knowledge within our own lives so that it will be there for our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren … [r]easons for conducting research is not about explaining to others, but to regain and 167 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman revitalize teachings that were or are being lost from our families and communities.’ for indigenous communities, priority issues centre on physical and cultural survival and recovery (smith 2012). involving indigenous peoples and environments means recognising the role of research in their larger healing process (berkes 2008; whyte, brewer & johnson 2015). thus research desiring indigenous participation clearly requires inclusion of indigenous priorities. to ensure participatory research reflects indigenous priorities, space for engagement is essential. as miqmak scholar marie battiste (denzin, lincoln & smith 2008, p. 503) states, ‘[i]t is vital that indigenous peoples have direct input into developing and defining research practices and projects related to them.’ however, community-engaged research is a political process fraught with power dynamics, hence providing physical space for engagement is but half the work. informed by indigenous methodologies, denzin, lincoln & smith 2008, p. 5) suggest that research be designed to ‘create a space for critical, collaborative, dialogical work … [to] bring researchers and their research participants into a shared, critical space, a space where the work of resistance, critique, and empowerment can occur’. further, indigenous methodology is guided by social justice as a process, not an event, throughout a project (nicholls 2009). indigenous research engagement guided by social justice is a long-term commitment. cree scholar shawn wilson (2001, pp. 175–76) asserts that ‘research has to do something beneficial in this world: that is part of the axiology [ethics and judgement] of an indigenous research paradigm … an indigenous paradigm comes from the fundamental belief that knowledge is relational’. several scholars have articulated this notion: indigenous research methodology is inseparable from and a reflection of an indigenous world view (cajete 2004; deloria & wildcat 2001). ultimately, relationships are fundamental to indigenous knowledge and world views. researchers engaging with indigenous communities become bound to relationships that extend beyond the life of a project. guided by community-engaged and indigenous research scholarship, our strategy involved opening up physical space through the use of participatory forums and maintaining open intellectual space to ensure that non-dominant voices and counternarratives could influence the project in ways that addressed their priorities (gagnon 2014; gagnon et al. 2014). this is particularly important for indigenous peoples who have had a history of being researched rather than being active research participants. thus, reclaiming research on their own terms is about rebuilding trust, which has, in many areas, been lost. moreover, we assert that flattening power dynamics in such an inherently political process is essential to community-engaged research. this requires that both physical and intellectual space be constructed into the research plan, incorporated early on, and actively and graciously defended throughout the project. practised thoughtfully, it provides 168 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman space for multiple ways of knowing and seeing the world. doing so is especially important when involving communities with deep and sustained connections to their environment, rooted in cultural practices such as harvesting and consuming fish (basso 1996; donatuto et al. 2011; gagnon 2016; glifwc 2010). in addition, the ‘fixity to place’ that indigenous peoples have to their homelands, both in terms of long-term connections and reserved treaty rights, demands an approach that is connected to place (and communities), even if the issue, as in this case, is transboundary (norman 2012, 2014). atmosphere–surface exchange pollutants chemical contamination is a cross-boundary, global problem with many long-term impacts on ecosystem and human health. lake superior, often perceived as ‘the most pristine’ of the great lakes, contains the highest concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (pbdes) and toxaphene, and the second highest levels of mercury in the basin (usepa–glnpo 2015). colder temperatures, low biomass density and the large volume and surface-todrainage-area ratio contribute to elevated atmospheric inputs to lake superior. two of the most prevalent toxic pollutants in the region are mercury and polychlorinated-biphenyls (pcbs), both of which belong to a class of semi-volatile compounds that are capable of being globally transported through cycles of deposition and re-emission (perlinger et al. 2016a). mercury and pcbs also biomagnify in food webs, resulting in toxic concentrations being significantly more amplified in fish than in the surrounding atmospheric and aquatic environments (usepa 2016). as a result, a serious concern is human exposure through fish consumption, which can cause neurological deficiencies, especially from exposure in developmental stages, and/or a range of immune and reproductive system diseases (usepa 2012). at the time of early contamination discoveries, environmental and public health officials did not recognise the global nature of the problem and envisioned that advisories would cease to be necessary as soon as officials eliminated local sources of contamination. advisories are ‘recommendations’ that provide information on how to limit and avoid water bodies and fish species that have the greatest health risks from elevated toxicity. in the early 1970s, fish advisories were intended to be ‘temporary’ in the united states (o’neill 2004). however, compounds such as mercury and pcbs continued to be transported through the atmosphere, resulting in the continuation of fish consumption advisories to protect the public. indeed, for nearly five decades, data collected on fish toxicity show accumulations of toxic compounds at levels that are unsafe for great lakes residents (glifwc 2016; usepa–glnpo 2015). the environmental protection agency (epa) and the food and drug administration have jointly issued a nationwide mercury advisory for store-bought and restaurant fish; and 38 states, including all great lakes states, 169 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman issue statewide mercury advisories for fresh-caught fish (usepa 2016). at the time of writing, fish advisories cover almost half of the nation’s lake acreage, river miles and coastlines. given that toxic compounds bioaccumulate, fishing communities are burdened with the majority of negative impacts (cassady 2010; donatuto & harper 2008; donatuto, satterfield & gregory 2011; o’neill 2007; ranco & suagee 2007). studies have shown that many populations remain culturally dependent on fish and, as a result, do not, cannot, or will not adhere to advisory recommendations. of increasing importance, native american tribes have some of the highest documented fish consumption rates in the united states, with great lakes tribal populations currently consuming the associated toxics at rates that are well above human health criteria (o’neill 2004). despite being protected by 19th-century treaties and reaffirmed by 20th-century statutes (mccammon-soltis & kekek 2009; wilkinson 2005), studies suggest that native american fishing rights and cultures have been severely impacted by toxicants (cassady 2010; gagnon 2016; hoover 2013; norman 2013; o’neill 2007; ranco et al. 2011). this underscores a perspective that is often lost when discussing the problem of contaminated fish: consumption advisories are not and should not be viewed as a permanent policy solution to the problem of fish contamination (nejac 2002). over the years, substantial developments in the scientific understanding of toxic chemicals and their governance have occurred (gorman, gagnon & norman 2016; perlinger et al. 2016a). it is now known that sources of contamination originate from both local and global sources, with re-emission of these persistent compounds into the atmosphere being extremely problematic. in general, they accumulate in bodies of water, soils and vegetation, and on all types of surfaces, and are able to be re-emitted into the atmosphere when conditions change (agnan et al. 2016; zhang, holmes & wu 2016). therefore, even if all new releases of these compounds were stopped tomorrow, secondary emissions from existing reservoirs would continue for decades. hence asep-related problems are inherently multi-generational and multi-jurisdictional. although significant challenges remain, a framework for reducing future emissions of these compounds has begun to emerge in the form of loosely connected governance structures at the regional, national and global level (selin 2010). the asep project the remainder of this article is organised into three sections. we begin with ‘the case’, which provides the context for the nsfsponsored asep project and for situating the research in lake superior’s keweenaw bay. then, in ‘opening up space for equitable exchanges’, we describe the main elements of the methodology we employed to open up space for non-dominant voices to influence this research project. in the third section, ‘when can we eat the fish?’, we draw attention to the value of attending to power dynamics, which allowed community-directed interests to emerge 170 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman as an interdisciplinary scientific inquiry. this seemingly simple question prompted a substantial portion of this project to be broadened to an investigation that required the participation of investigators from multiple disciplines. as a result, the co-creation of knowledge by the investigators and community partners has become an ongoing process. it is our hope that this article will provide practical methodology guidance for other researchers, particularly those who wish to engage with indigenous communities. the case: the global transport of toxic compounds the asep project, led by a physical chemist, is an nsf-sponsored coupled natural-human systems project that is investigating the fate and transport of toxic substances as a global process with local consequences. in august 2013, this project brought together more than 30 investigators from five universities and more than a dozen community partners. partnering organisations include, among others, the keweenaw bay indian community in upper michigan, epa’s integrated atmospheric deposition network and the arctic monitoring and assessment programme in norway. a major focus of the research is to improve scientists’ ability to incorporate secondary emissions into computer models so that future atmospheric concentrations can be forecast more confidently. for example, with better computer models it would be possible to more accurately forecast expected emissions of mercury under the yet to be ratified minamata convention on mercury. given that water body chemical concentrations are generally in balance with their surrounding atmosphere, predictions can be made about concentrations in fish tissue for specific aquatic ecosystems (urban et al. 2016). with that information, it would also be possible to make a general assessment of the effect that the minamata convention would have on a large population of fish consumers, such as those of the united states, and, ultimately, the us economy (giang & selin 2015). the aim is to determine a set of actions that could lead to an acceptable level of future global emissions (perlinger et al. 2016b). grounding the project geographically when researching toxic compounds that disseminate globally through processes of atmosphere–surface exchange, one has to consider all sources of emissions, wherever they occur in the world, and all systems of chemical-related governance, which exist in many different scales and forms. after all, what happens in one part of the world affects all other parts. however, it is also desirable to ground such projects geographically because the actual impacts depend on the specific aquatic ecosystems through which the contaminants biomagnify and on the fish consumption patterns of those who live in an area. our decision to ground the asep research project in lake superior’s keweenaw bay was based on several factors. first, the host university for the project, michigan technological university, is located within the region and several investigators 171 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman have experiences with community-engaged research in the area. second, the great lakes basin is particularly susceptible to the effects of asep deposition and contamination (usepa 2012). third, fish consumption advisories are common in the great lakes region, with many overlapping jurisdictions – bi-national, tribal, state, provincial and municipal governments – having some role in generating and/or disseminating advisory information (usepa 2016; usepa–glnpo 2015). in parallel with these efforts, the us–canada great lakes water quality agreement commits these nations to eliminating the need for fish advisories (glwqa 2012). the project team also decided that communities directly impacted by aseps should be involved with the research. we proceeded to invite community partners to collaborate and sought support letters from surrounding tribal, state, federal and bi-national groups. often, large research projects such as these frame ‘community engagement’ as part of education and outreach, with most of the information flowing to communities. however, in this case, engagement was designed in the project for community partners to influence aspects of its research trajectory. participatory forums held early on in the project were an initial part of the design. we are also planning a closure workshop with community partners, to take place at the end of the project, to share results and engage in dialogue for future participatory research opportunities. from the project’s beginning, particularly in the workshops, methods to flatten power dynamics – guided by the literature on community-engaged and indigenous research scholarship – were explicitly employed. one result of these efforts was the emergence of the question ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’. answering this question came to be one goal of the research team, ultimately advancing the science in a direction consistent with the main concern of participants most affected by asep contamination. foundations for community-academic relationships – trust building the process of engaging community partners began in the proposal phase when various potential partners were invited to be a part of the asep project. in the case of indigenous organisations and community members, the invitation process included face-to-face meetings with tribal leadership to seek their support. grounding the asep project in lake superior’s keweenaw bay allowed the project to build on previous trust building and long-term engagement with indigenous communities. who initiates university-community engagement is an important but often overlooked consideration (glover & silka 2013). this point is critical: the asep project was able to connect with tribal communities through existing community-academic relationships. in particular, one of the authors had collaborated extensively with the keweenaw bay indian community (kbic), as well as other great lakes tribes. another of us had worked with indigenous 172 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman cultures throughout the world and, more specifically, with the coast salish indigenous communities through her role as faculty member of northwest indian college (nwic) in bellingham, washington state. as soon as the project was funded, we – the authors and members of the research team advocating for communityengaged research – focused on planning a community and partner workshop. we invited each of the project investigators and community partners, and also extended invitations to a number of other researchers as well as to state, tribal and federal organisational representatives. given the expected diversity in participation, we began the process of intentionally designing the workshop to allow non-dominant voices to be heard in ways that could influence the project pathway. opening up space for equitable exchanges the community and partner workshop, held in november 2013, allowed investigators and community partners to engage in dialogue on the broader goals and the types of questions that various partners would like to see addressed. more than 50 asep investigators, community partners, invited community members, and state and federal guests attended this one-day forum. the community-based question, ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’, emerged from this workshop. emerging initially as a loosely articulated question rooted in a long-term perspective, it was transformed into a more precise question that included, among other things, assumptions about the type and quantity of fish being consumed. grounding these assumptions in actual practices necessitated acquiring more specific information from the community partners. towards this end, we later held a talking circle event for the purpose of learning about the importance of fish and fishing in the tribal community. this informed our efforts to determine the specific water bodies, fish species and quantity of fish that members of the tribal community might consume if toxicity were not an issue. these pieces of information were essential in determining the point at which fish might be considered safe to consume without restrictions. here, we describe our strategy and approach in preparing for the workshops using three heuristics: 1) time and space; 2) structure and specifics; and 3) products and processes. time and space the community engagement component of the asep project succeeded, in part, because the project left time and space for some aspects of the research to be community-directed. including this time and space in the project design was essential because, once funding was granted, steps to engage community partners had to be intentional and taken early on; otherwise, little opportunity for partners to influence the direction of research would have been possible (denzin et al. 2008). 173 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman in addition to allocating time in the project schedule, it was important to consider how that time was used – that is, within participatory forums. in the case of the initial asep community and partner workshop, more time was devoted to presentations by community partners than by investigators. in addition, an even greater amount of time was devoted to group meetings and general discussion than to presentations. this use of time was consistent with the overall goal of facilitating dialogue on asep issues between groups with diverse perspectives. additionally, we aimed to strengthen the ongoing collaboration between the project research team and other community partners, including community groups, educators, and environmental, health and resource agencies. how space is used is an essential consideration in flattening power dynamics (mcgregor 2004; soja 1989). first, there were decisions as to where collaborative forums would take place. our initial forum, the community and partner workshop, was held at the great lakes research center at michigan technological university, which was chosen for its location overlooking an inlet of lake superior. committed to establishing the future of great lakes research, we viewed the center as the ideal space to engage in creating research in common. however, given that this space is located on the michigan tech campus, having a member of the indigenous community provide the welcome was critical. the second workshop, a talking circle event, was hosted by a project partner, the keweenaw bay ojibwa community college (kbocc), in june 2014. kbocc is located about 50 kilometres south of michigan tech on the l’anse indian reservation. this event was attended by 21 participants, half of whom had not participated in the first workshop. we chose to host this event at the local college because most of the event’s participants were community members in keweenaw bay or worked within tribal institutions (e.g. natural resources, public health, and the tribal college). this decision was also relevant to the place-based information needed for the project (local fishing behaviour and preferences) and important for strengthening a communityuniversity relationship based on reciprocity. in general, then, we are arguing that leaving space open in the design of a project for new directions is useful, if not essential, for conducting meaningful community-engaged research. a regimented research plan without workshops for community-focused activities is unlikely to provide opportunities for community partners to make a portion of ‘the’ research ‘their’ research. structure and specifics to provide an equitable opportunity for diverse voices to be heard, decisions on the specifics of how a forum is structured also need to be considered (nichols et al. 2013). examples of explicit choices lay in the presentation sequence and the design of the focus groups. following the welcome, each forum was structured into 174 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman two main parts. morning sessions were a series of informational presentations and afternoon sessions were dedicated to focus groups. the intention was to provide community partners ample opportunity to voice their perspectives. for focus groups, each discussion was guided by a set of open-ended questions. to facilitate a productive exchange in the opening workshop, we assigned participants to one of five different focus groups. each focus group had about the same number of participants who, together, represented a diversity of knowledge and perspective. the formation of each group was as follows: —academic: a representative (either student or professor) from each of the physical, social and educational sciences —organisation/agency: a representative from a federal, tribal and state agency (i.e. both tribal and non-tribal organisations) —scale: an individual with a local, regional, national and international perspective, representing various scales of issue focus —expertise: a range of expertise from assorted environmental and social mediums such as water, air, forests, fish or policy —gender: among groups, gender was balanced. the authors and two additional individuals served as group moderators, encouraging all participants to speak (and listen). a less structured session for reporting our results, involving all the groups, followed. in the case of the second workshop, the talking circle provided an alternative structure for flattening power dynamics. a talking circle is a long-established way of sharing information within ojibwa communities. although the circle protocol varies from community to community, the main rule is to ‘speak from the heart’, with the intention being to get to the heart of issues from a foundation of trust. for all who participated, this workshop further solidified the value of the community-based aspect of the project. as mentioned earlier, we also paid attention to details such as how to (and who would) begin the workshop. we wanted the welcome speaker for each of our workshops to encourage equitable participation, and so we asked an individual from the region’s tribal community, frank ettawageshik, if he would provide the welcome for the event. his opening remarks preceded the greetings by the event planners and administrative representatives. in doing so, he provided space for indigenous narratives to be a part of the dialogue from the onset. his welcome also engendered a sense of a shared problem and a hopefulness of creating solutions in common. for the second workshop, held to learn more about the importance of community fishing and levels of consumption, kbic tribal forester gerald jondreau opened the day by involving participants in a smudge ceremony. he also shared a traditional story, the telling of the seven prophecies of the ojibwe people. jondreau set the tone for the day with the following words, which reinforced the goal of equity among participants: have you ever watched a flock of geese as they fly through the skies? they all stay together in their v-shape form while one leads the way 175 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman for the flying flock. but in the course of their journey, not just one leads the entire way. they are constantly taking turns leading the others — they are all leaders. like the geese, we are all leaders, and we will all take turns leading the way to bring change in our human community. additional details included choices involving food and gifts, and here, specific community protocols matter a great deal. some protocols are learned through the process of relationship building but, certainly, asking local community members for guidance is encouraged. we were required to use the university catering services for the first event. to ensure that the menu reflected community values, the head chef of catering services worked with us on every detail. as a result, we included local seasonal items on our menu, including fish. for the second event, we worked with a caterer from the local community, who incorporated traditional foods, such as wild rice and berries, in the menu. not only is sharing a meal together culturally important, it also signifies what the communities are advocating – their inherent and sovereign right to culturally relevant foods harvested from their traditional territory. gifting is highly valued among indigenous peoples, representing reciprocal relationships. in appreciation of the shared knowledge, we honoured our welcome speakers with traditional gifts such as locally harvested preserved foods. as in any community, the protocols associated with gift-giving can be specific. however, in keweenaw bay, the most symbolic detail centres on the good intentions of the giver and less on the specific gift. at the closing of the second workshop, kbic community partners shared traditional gifts with the research investigators. this gesture acknowledged the mutual relationship being strengthened as part of this project. products and processes to reinforce the importance of equitable interactions in participatory research, the use of collaborative products is valuable. for the asep project, investigators and community partners co-constructed a proceedings of each workshop (gagnon 2014; gagnon et al. 2014). in the case of our project forums, more than 70 workshop participants contributed to the creation of these proceedings. producing such documents also provides a structure for grappling with and synthesising the diverse content resulting from such participatory forums. less recognised as a ‘product’ of research is the process of building relationships. within disciplines, relationship-building processes usually occur through institutional mechanisms such as conferences and journal publications. building equitable relationships between investigators and community partners (and, for that matter, between diverse disciplines) requires other mechanisms, such as the participatory workshops used in this project. ideally, new relationships are created (and others strengthened), contributing to the capacity for collaboration during a project and also into the future. 176 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman opening up space for equitable exchanges was our primary intention for both forums and we used similar strategies to achieve this. however, the type of information of interest to guide the research was different for each forum. in the first workshop, we opened up space for sharing research priorities across scales and expertise. even with this vast diversity, it became clear that ecosystem and human health was the research priority and, in particular, those who are most dependent on safe fish. the second event focused on defining the parameters associated with safe fish, such as the fishing and consumption preferences of a community dependent on fish. thus, by design, local participant voices were the most prevalent. ‘when can we eat the fish?’ can large research projects actually be responsive to communitydirected interests? in this case, the answer is yes. the question, ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’, is a direct outcome of opening up space in the asep project for community input and reflects the potential value of such an approach. among other things, this community-based priority focused the trajectory of the investigation on a time endpoint – on a day when fish consumption advisories will no longer be needed. process asep investigators worked together to transform the communitybased concern into a scientific inquiry. the interdisciplinary question became: how many years will it take before the most sensitive populations in keweenaw bay are able to safely consume the amount of fish that they desire? research was divided into specific tasks based on the expertise required at each step (figure 1). tasks included identifying the policy scenarios required to reduce mercury and pcbs to levels that would no longer require restrictions on fish consumption and modelling an expected timeline to attain such a recovery. decisions involving the italicised items above (denoted by yellow spheres in figure 1) required the expertise of and were made in consultation with project community partners. figure 1: asep project ordered tasks by expertise. (schematic created by noel urban, michigan technological university, 2016) 177 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman the general steps involved in addressing this question included three parallel efforts. 1 determining what fish tissue concentration is considered safe the goal, here, was to determine the fish tissue concentrations that would protect the most sensitive population from health risks. doing so required that the most sensitive populations be identified, as well as the water bodies and fish species, and how much fish they desired to consume quantified. once established, the fish tissue concentration could be determined to be below safety thresholds for fishing-consuming individuals. sensitive populations: in consultation with community partners, the asep project defined ‘sensitive populations’ as women of child-bearing age, developing children and those who depend heavily on marine diets. by ‘depend heavily’, we mean great lakes fish consumers whose average fish consumption is currently 2 to 13 times higher than the national average (o’neill 2004). safely consume: here, safe consumption was defined using the most stringent human health standards at the time, which meant that fish tissue concentrations should not exceed a particular contaminant reference dose (rfd) (the product of fish tissue concentration times the quantity consumed). epa’s threshold for methyl-mercury (mehg) is the most protective, set at 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day (µg/kg/day) (usepa 2016). given that several jurisdictions set regulatory standards for different purposes, a variety of such safety thresholds exist (cassady 2010). for example, rfds for mehg range from 0.1–0.5 µg/kg/day. desired fish consumption: current calculations of safe fish tissue concentrations do not reflect the desired level of fish consumption among groups of people who rely on fish for subsistence and socio-cultural purposes (donatuto & harper 2008). ‘desired’ fish consumption is different from the ‘current’ fish consumption rates typically used for creating advisories. in our second workshop, asep community partners defined ‘desired’ fish consumption as two 225-gram meals per day, which represents the height of regional fishing, the spring ogaa (walleye) harvest. it is consistent with the desired rates of communities in the pacific northwest and in northeast united states (donatuto & harper 2008; ranco & suagee 2007). it is important to note that the project’s desired rate exceeds current human health criteria by 25 times. this highlights the sheer magnitude of asep-related issues for sensitive populations and emphasises the urgency for research rooted in and guided by community engagement. 2 determining how low air concentrations need to decline before fish tissue concentrations reach safe levels this part of the project, carried out by limnologists and environmental engineers, involved these steps: 178 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman — linking safe fish tissue concentrations to safe water concentrations. the bio-magnification of contaminants depends on the specific aquatic system that is involved. investigators examined the dynamics for lake superior and several inland lakes. — identifying the atmospheric concentrations of mercury and pcbs that will result in the target water concentrations. once the target atmospheric concentration is known, the question becomes focused on when that target will be reached. 3 forecasting future atmospheric concentrations of an asep, such as mercury, based on various emissions scenarios this part of the project, carried out by atmospheric modellers, engineers and natural scientists, involved two steps: — defining an aspirational emissions scenario, a businessas-usual emissions scenario and a failure-of-governance scenario to use as inputs to the fate and transport computer models. various members of the modelling and natural science team drew on the published literature and made the appropriate adjustments to produce these different emission scenarios. — running the fate and transport computer models, using the emission scenarios as input and forecasts of future atmospheric concentrations of mercury as output. much of the research involved making improvements to these computer models in terms of their ability to forecast the fate and transport of aseps. in terms of the question, ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’, the goal was to identify how long it would take to reach the target atmospheric concentrations. answering the question asep investigators recognise that it is not possible to precisely predict when it will be safe to consume without restriction (perlinger et al. 2016b; urban et al. 2016). there are too many uncertainties, especially in forecasts of future emissions and differing dynamics between water bodies. furthermore, when it comes to mercury contamination, target concentrations will take many decades to achieve, even under an emissions scenario consistent with the minamata convention. here, too, community engagement made a difference. attempting to answer the question on safe fish revealed valuable insights on the value of attending to power dynamics in community-engaged research. the specific question of ‘when can we safely eat as much fish as we desire?’, for instance, emerged in the context of the ‘seven generations’ philosophy. from that perspective, identifying a specific number of years is less important than taking action that considers the wellbeing of seven generations (glifwc 2010). the focus is on long-term thinking and planning, which needs to be the reality when it comes to toxic compounds and safe fish. engaging with community members pushed the science in a direction consistent with the problem 179 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman of toxicity and community-based concerns. their contributions highlighted an overarching priority, which is about encouraging research and policy that reflects a multi-generational approach to addressing complex socio-ecological issues. conclusion ‘when can we eat the fish?’ is the result of opening up space and flattening power dynamics in the community-engaged research for the asep project. providing physical and intellectual space to ensure the emergence and influence of counter-narratives was the methodological priority. interrelated decisions concerning time and space, structure and specifics, and products and process necessitated considerable forethought and pre-planning. balancing spatial politics can enhance equitable collaboration and diverse information exchange. research design is merely half the work – it must transition into actual practice. the asep project accomplished this dual task, with the research design resulting in a question that directly reflected community-based priorities and community contributions that continue to guide interdisciplinary project practices. further evidence that the asep project has been successful is reflected in the strengthened relationship between michigan tech and keweenaw bay. although this may be a less tangible indicator of success, the relationship has resulted in continued interaction with the community partners. in the fall of 2016, members of the research team were invited to share more about the project with the larger community as part of a lunch-n-learn series in keweenaw bay. the luncheon allowed more community members to engage with the research and participate in discussions with the researchers. the strengthened relationship has also led to continued dialogue on community research needs. members of the research team and the keweenaw bay indian community are currently engaged in research proposal discussions for the future. in summary, the primary lessons that made a crucial difference to the asep project are as follows: —begin opening up and flattening space for community engagement early on (in the proposal process and from the beginning of a project). this is important to facilitate community partners’ influence on the initial research design and to ensure meaningful engagement through the research practices that follow. —choose the first speaker at participatory forums thoughtfully. —incorporate cultural protocols of local community participants. here, the detail matters, for example, when considering what food to serve (locally sourced) and what gifts to give. —plan for a participatory forum for closure of the project (scheduled to take place in the fall of 2017). —make trust building the foundation of the research relationship. this provides project transparency and the cultural awareness necessary to make decisions about creating open, equitable forums. 180 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman —in participatory research with indigenous communities, commit to a long-term approach to research and genuine relationships with the communities with which you engage. —trust the process. the more diverse actors (and world views) that are engaged in the process, the more innovative the questions that will be generated. we also recognised ways to improve our universitycommunity approach in the future. for one, there were no travel funds for interested parties to attend the first workshop. later we learned that state agency representatives had wanted to attend but were unable to due to a lack of resources. thus, if we had appropriated project funds for workshop travel, this would have better served equitable participation. this contributed to another shortcoming in the project – we lacked expertise in human health. indeed, some of those who had wanted to attend were public health professionals. and finally, it would have been advantageous to have our most engaged community partners represented on the research team. having an indigenous research co-investigator, for example, would greatly enhance equity in university-community partnerships more broadly. many variances in research methods are particular to indigenous communities, whose long overdue participation is likely to be an escalating consideration in the future. certainly, our existing relationships with indigenous communities enabled our project to directly, and immediately, focus on power dynamics in research framing and methodology. our active role in facilitating engagement contributed to enhancing equitable collaboration and, ultimately, the project’s success. attending to power and politics in research design and practice has practical value: it is increasingly required by funding agencies and essential for ameliorating contemporary socio-ecological issues. further, it reflects a genuine effort to address these issues alongside communities that are most impacted. mutual respect and co-learning are inherent to good research practice, but being genuine is the underlying approach to opening up space for social equity. in this project, genuineness enhanced a collective sense of meaningful work, whereby community partners and investigators engaged in a meaningful experience of participation. we encourage university-community research partnerships, as well as cenr, par and cbpr scholarship, to further extend direct links to indigenous research methods as these insights are particularly relevant to vulnerable populations and health disparities more broadly. critical discourse related to power dynamics and counter-narratives is applicable across communities, where successful projects must be inclusive of both scientific and local knowledge. for indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike, participating in research is vital to socio-ecological recovery efforts. relationships between disciplines, jurisdictions and communities heavily impact these efforts. it is important to evoke gerald jondreau’s insights in thinking about participatory 181 | gateways | gagnon, gorman & norman research engagement as an investigator or community partner: we are all leaders, and we will all take turns leading the way to bring change in our human community. 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involve communities working in collaboration with universities to conduct research on a broad range of health and social issues (israel et al. 2013; nih 2011). participatory frameworks that engage community members in research are on the rise (ahmed & palermo 2010; israel et al. 2010; nih 2011). although there may be differences in what the frameworks are named and how they are implemented (israel et al. 2013; wallerstein & duran 2008) – for example, participatory action research, community-based participatory research, and community-partnered participatory research – they are based on principles of equitable power-sharing and decision-making to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities, particularly those that are marginalised (ahmed & palermo 2010; israel et al. 2013; wallerstein et al. 2008). in addition to improved outcomes for individuals and communities, these partnerships develop the capacity of community and academic members to conduct research that impacts programs, policies and practices (nih 2011; wallerstein et al. 2008). associating partnered research processes with health, capacity and system outcomes has been a challenge for those looking to advance the science of participatory research (sandoval et al. 2012; viswanathan et al. 2004; wallerstein et al. 2008). it is common for partnership processes and outcomes to interact and merge together, thus the field of participatory research is still trying to establish how to best measure contextual and partnership factors that produce change (hicks et al. 2012). research has suggested that members value partnership factors, such as leadership development (cacari-stone et al. 2014; chang et al. 2013; cheezum et al. 2013; kegler, norton & aronson 2008; rasmus 2014), the building and maintenance of trust (jagosh et al. 2015) and the transfer of knowledge between community and academic members as much as health, capacity and system improvements (hacker et al. 2012; malone, mcgruder, froelicher & yerger 2013; nichols, anucha, houwer & wood 2013; rasmus 2014). furthermore, tensions may arise when members of robin lindquistgrantz university of cincinnati lisa m vaughn cincinnati children’s hospital medical center university of cincinnati © 2016 by r lindquist-grantz & l vaughn. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: lindquist-grantz, r & vaughn, l 2016, ‘the journey and destination need to be intentional: perceptions of success in community-academic research partnerships’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–21. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v9i1.4872 corresponding author: robin lindquist-grantz; lindqurn@uc.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4872 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 2 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn community-academic research partnerships are unclear about the project’s intended outcomes and have differing outcome expectations (nichols et al. 2013). although partnership processes such as relationshipbuilding, trust, communication, decision-making, capacitybuilding and knowledge generation are considered key components of participatory research models (roman isler & corbie-smith 2012; wallerstein et al. 2008), researchers are still identifying how partnership processes impact long-term population-level outcomes or other unintended outcomes (jagosh et al. 2015; lucero et al. 2016; roman isler & corbie-smith 2012). some researchers have referred to these processes as ‘intermediate outcomes’ because they are critical influencers of long-term outcomes (jagosh et al. 2015; roman isler & corbie-smith 2012; schulz, israel & lantz 2003), whereas others have referred to them as ‘secondary outcomes’ (malone et al. 2013). regardless, efforts to continue the advancement of community-academic research approaches necessitate further examination of the interaction between partnership processes and outcomes (brugge et al. 2010; hicks et al. 2012; lucero et al. 2016; wallerstein et al. 2008). furthermore, the complexity of outcomes in partnered research warrants the use of qualitative methods in addition to quantitative methods (el ansari & weiss 2006; lucero et al. 2016; sandoval et al. 2012). the theoretical underpinnings of community-academic research partnerships span a broad continuum from pragmatic problem-solving traditions at one end to critical emancipatory traditions at the other (wallerstein & duran 2008). this expansive continuum is often replicated through varying levels of community engagement in community-academic research partnerships, which may affect individual member feelings of empowerment and agency for social change (nih 2011; international association for public participation as cited in nih 2011). moreover, the personal experiences of members can influence how they engage with the partnership, especially in the beginning (hicks et al. 2012). the purpose of the pilot study discussed in this article was to understand how individuals who live and work within different contexts think about processes within community-academic research partnerships and their relationship to outcomes in order to contribute to the critical examination of these partnerships. we utilised novel participatory methods to understand the relationship between processes and outcomes within communityacademic research partnerships to expand on frameworks that promote partnership success. using concept mapping methodology combined with participant interviews, we explored (a) how members of community-academic research partnerships define success and (b) how these members evaluate the impact of the partnered approach to research. 3 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn method concept mapping methodology and interviews were employed using a mixed methods convergent design, in which quantitative and qualitative data are collected simultaneously, followed by a merging of the results, so that inferences can be drawn (creswell & plano clark 2011). although there has been increasing support for community-academic research partnerships, traditional methods of research driven by academicians, and widely supported by institutions of higher education and mainstream funding mechanisms, continue to be the norm (ahmed & palermo 2010). the innovative convergent design of web-based concept mapping and interviewing in this study offered the opportunity for greater access to and breadth of response from individuals who had been involved with a community-academic research partnership in a variety of settings. it also provided the depth of understanding that can be generated through individual interviews to obtain a more complete picture. each method further illustrated and elaborated on the results of the other to provide complementarity in this mixed methods study (greene, caracelli & graham 1989). concept mapping concept mapping promotes stakeholder participation in the generation of qualitative data to which multivariate statistical analyses are applied to produce quantitative results that can be represented graphically and analysed by stakeholders (kane & trochim 2007; trochim 1989; trochim & linton 1986). concept mapping’s versatility and ability to generate valid and reliable data that are conceptualised amongst members of a group (rosas & kane 2012) offers an alternative to focus group methods and has been considered particularly useful for planning and evaluation (kane & trochim 2007). it can even be used as a reliable and valid method for analysing and interpreting open-ended survey data and for informing the development of qualitative interview questions (jackson & trochim 2002). the participatory elements of the method have been found useful in studies of community health issues (burke et al. 2005; kelly et al. 2007; mcfall et al. 2009; vaughn, jacquez & mclinden 2013; vaughn & mclinden 2016) which many community-academic research partnerships address. this may be because concept mapping offers more than a simple method of data collection; it is a powerful visual tool that helps members of the stakeholder group comprehend what they deem to be collectively important so that they can take action. as such, concept mapping aligns well with the pragmatic and problem-solving aspects of participatory research, yet it has rarely been used to study community-academic research partnerships in different contexts. the current study warranted a method that could stand up to the complexity, geographic diversity and contextual specificity of community-academic research partnerships in order to obtain a rich conceptual understanding of how participants think about the definition of partnership success as a means to strengthen participatory research approaches. 4 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn to understand perceptions across a variety of partnerships, the concept mapping method was conducted remotely using the web-based survey tool, surveymonkey. it included questions about the characteristics of the partnership which the participant was representing and the participant’s role in the partnership. participants responded to four open-ended prompts aimed at answering the research questions, and were given the opportunity to provide up to five responses for each of the four prompts: 1 in order for a community-academic research partnership to be successful it should achieve goals such as… 2 based on my experience, unintended but important achievements in community-academic research partnerships are… 3 you know the partnered approach to research is successful when… 4 you know the partnered approach to research is not working when… the online concept mapping was distributed using snowball sampling, starting with researchers within the authors’ academic institution, which is located in a midwestern city in the united states. this sample included academic researchers who the authors knew had been involved in community-academic research partnerships. only publicly available email addresses were used in the initial distribution of the web-based concept mapping. at the end of the concept mapping, participants were invited to forward the concept mapping link to other researchers and community members who they knew had also participated in a communityacademic research partnership. responses were recorded using a unique id assigned to each participant. for the purpose of this study, participants may have been involved in any type of research partnership along the continuum of community engagement, meaning no distinction was made between partnerships where community members were involved in all phases of the research and those where community members were only included in certain phases of the research. there was also no distinction between members who were directly representing residents of a community and those representing community-based organisations. participants were not given an incentive for completing the open-ended prompts portion of the concept mapping methodology. if a participant had been involved in more than one partnership, they were instructed to respond to demographic questions based on the community-academic research partnership with which they were most recently involved. of the 27 concept mapping participants, 63 per cent identified as an academic researcher, 33 per cent as a community member and 1 participant did not report an affiliation (4 per cent). participants reported being involved with partnerships that ranged from 1 to 29 years. partnership size reported by participants included 1 to 9 members 5 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn (n = 8), 10 to 19 members (n = 12) and 20 or more members (n = 7). nineteen participants (70 per cent) reported working with a partnership that included youth or adult community residents, whereas the rest included community members representing health-care settings, community-based organisations, advocacy groups and the faith-based community. after completing the open-ended prompts and demographic questions in the web-based concept mapping, participants in our study were asked if they would be willing to assist with the response sorting phase. consistent with concept mapping methodology, the participants sorted the collected qualitative responses by examining patterns of responses and grouping similar ideas into similar categories for each prompt (kane & trochim 2007; rosenburg & moonja park 1975; weller & romney 1988). of the six people who volunteered to assist with sorting, three were selected based on (a) their availability within the project time period and (b) diversity amongst their research partnerships, including a community-academic partnership with school personnel; a youth participatory action research collaborative; and a research collaborative comprised of funders, policymakers and community organisations. participants were offered to conduct the remote sorting electronically using an excel spreadsheet or paper-based templates created by the authors. all participants chose to use the excel spreadsheet and were provided with the de-identified responses to the four open-ended prompts via electronic mail. they were also given a detailed instruction sheet that described the steps in the sorting process. all of the sorters were proficient with excel and reported that the task itself was relatively simple to complete, but that the time for completion was somewhat lengthy. each sorter completed the task within two weeks of receiving the data. participants who assisted with sorting were given a gift card incentive. the sorted data were analysed using the smacof procedure for multidimensional scaling (mds) (de leeuw & mair 2009) in r statistical software (r development core team 2011). mds output data were then analysed using hierarchical cluster analysis, which provides a visual map that segregates the data points into clusters of similar ideas (trochim & kane 2005). consistent with concept mapping methodology and cluster analysis, lines were drawn around the data points to display the clusters. the resulting shapes were based on the data point clusters and did not signify anything in and of themselves. however, they did help with analysis of the distance between points within and between clusters. because the number of clusters could range from one to the total number of items sorted, the researcher chose and labelled the resulting cluster solutions that represented the major concepts and provided sufficient detail without being redundant. the stress index level for each of the four cluster solutions was low (1 = .151; 2 = .223; 3 = .151; 4 = .192). kane and trochim (2007) report that most concept mapping projects are between .205 and .365, with lower values indicating a better fit of the data. 6 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn interviews concept mapping participants were also asked if they would be willing to participate in an individual follow-up interview to provide additional insight into how members of communityacademic research partnerships conceptualise success. in-depth qualitative interviewing allows a researcher to explore in detail the thoughts, experiences and opinions of individuals (rubin & rubin 2012). therefore, it was an important supplement to the concept mapping method in further understanding how members of these partnerships distinguish the fine line between partnership processes and outcomes, and methods for determining whether a partnership has been successful. interview questions were developed when the web-based concept mapping survey launched. this is consistent with a convergent mixed methods design in that the interview questions were not influenced by the concept mapping data, but that integration of the two methods occurred during the analysis and interpretation phases (creswell & plano clark 2011). interview participants included four academic researchers and one community member. an additional community member scheduled twice for an interview but had to cancel due to schedule conflicts. similarly to the concept mapping sorting process, these participants were selected for interviews because they were involved in partnerships that spanned the continuum of community engagement in research and had conducted research in various disciplines and fields. this meant only two of the participants who volunteered to do an interview were not selected because they did not meet these criteria. interview participants were contacted via electronic mail to arrange the interview. one interview was conducted via telephone and the other interviews were conducted in person while the concept mapping data were being sorted. the semi-structured interviews were approximately 30 to 60 minutes in length and were digitally recorded and transcribed. a gift card incentive was provided to participants at the end of the interview. interviews were analysed using moustakas’ (1994) methods for phenomenological research to understand the experience of success in a community-academic research partnership. this method includes a series of steps that group expressions around the topic to develop a description of the experience for each individual (moustakas 1994). themes are then developed from these individual experiences to provide a group-level description of what it means to be a part of that shared experience (moustakas 1994; miles, huberman & saldaña 2014). the pilot study was reviewed by the university of cincinnati institutional review board and determined to be not human subjects research (#2014-7991). the study provides only an initial exploration of the perceptions of success from members of community-academic research partnerships. findings are not necessarily generalisable to partnerships or communities. 7 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn findings the following sections synthesise findings from the concept mapping method and individual interviews. each section is organised by the main study themes that emerged and includes a detailed description of how members of community-academic research partnerships think about outcomes within the context of those partnerships and how they determine whether the partnered approach is successful. responses to concept mapping prompts and interview questions were similar amongst community and academic participants. relationships and partnership processes are influential participants repeatedly identified the role of relationships and partnership processes as critical influencers of success, which supports previous models and studies of the importance of these factors in partnerships. the need for genuine and equitable collaboration was the most cited indicator that a partnership is successful, followed by the knowledge generation amongst members of a partnership. these responses support participatory research frameworks which stress that equality among all members is necessary in order to have an impact on the issue being addressed. other processes such as identifying and adhering to shared goals, making sure the partnership is meeting deadlines established by members and ensuring that the work of the partnership is responsive to community needs were also considered signs that a community-academic partnership is achieving success. although members of partnerships expect to achieve measurable research objectives/outcomes on the issue they set out to address, they are more likely to monitor success in the interim based on how the partnership functions throughout the life of a research project and whether there is an equal distribution of power and knowledge amongst all members (figure 1). these process and relationship factors were also addressed in interviews where many participants noted that the only way to achieve the research outcome goals was to tend to the figure 1: goals to be achieved for a communityacademic research partnership to be successful 8 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn group process. one academic participant connected research objectives/outcomes with process concepts of genuine and equitable collaboration, shared goals and knowledge generation: i think one of the goals is that you can see what you’re doing … i think a goal i’d like to see, or that i think is important, is having both members in the full range of the processes, the decisions, the use of whatever is generated in the partnership. conversely, other participants conveyed that the two were separate and important, but they had a harder time determining priority. one academic participant worked through process concepts such as shared goals and genuine and equitable collaboration as means to achieve research objectives/outcomes: i don’t know that i can pick process over research outcomes. because i think it has to be both. i think initially you have to pay more attention to the process, because again trust, relationship-building … i think you’ve got to initially spend more time thinking about the process outcomes. and then i think over time as you work together more you can shift and i think like in the example i gave, we shifted more to focusing on the research outcomes and reaching those goals. another academic participant also observed the need to focus on shared goals in the beginning of the partnership in order to do the work to achieve research objectives/outcomes: definitely in the beginning there were a lot of differences … not especially with the overall goal … more so with aims for what we can do and where we can focus our efforts on so then we know how to get there. that’s where we differed. and also we had different priorities in terms of our progress. integration as a key partnership process tending to the group process was considered crucial in the beginning in order to build trust and rapport, but it was also perceived as a catalyst for developing partnerships where members and research activities could be integrated in ways that transcend typical methods of collaboration. according to participants, this meant exploring innovative methods of communication and participation so the generation of knowledge by both community and academic members would result in data that are higher quality and more relevant to the community. participants noted that this required going beyond structured meeting times and formal communication strategies, such as email, so that academic and community partners could become more embedded in each other’s environments. participants viewed this expansion of conventional collaboration methods as necessary for partnership sustainability and the production of tangible research objectives/ outcomes. one participant described a long-term partnership that evolved from a community-academic collaboration on a specific project to one where academic researchers were co-located within 9 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn the organisation on a part-time basis. this new arrangement facilitated communication and genuine and equitable collaboration between the two parties in order to advance their shared goals. ‘i think the longer we work together the more intermingled we’re becoming. the more involved, it’s easier to get more involved. so i think as we’re working toward it, these things naturally happen.’ in another example, a participant described a partnership where genuine and equitable collaboration, knowledge generation, shared goals and being responsive to community needs were intentional from the start in order to obtain data that was more rigorous and relevant to members of that community. rather than relying on evolution over time, the academic members initiated the partnership with plans to fully integrate and build the capacity of community members in all phases of the research process. even with the intentionality behind this partnership, the academic members were surprised by the level of community commitment and engagement, including their ability to drive the research process without years of research training such as that experienced by academics: … we didn’t get into any nuances around sampling … it was in our minds, but we didn’t talk about that, we didn’t train them on any of that … they basically had this discussion of their own accord about sampling and figuring out, without using any of those [academic] words, that ‘oh you know what, we have too many people from this area and we need to get out to these neighborhoods. and how can we do that?’ and then they would come up with their own suggestions … it floored me! partnership processes influence unintended achievements as noted in the example provided in the previous theme, intentionality in partnerships can still result in unexpected benefits and achievements. when specifically asked about unintended achievements in the concept mapping method, participants further indicated the influence of partnership processes on stimulating these achievements (figure 2). participants noted that trusting the process the group had established in regard to communication, decision-making and resolving conflict can be an important achievement in these partnerships. participants reinforced the importance of knowledge generation for both academic researchers and community members, but they also cited how these partnerships can help to build new relationships as well as personal and professional fulfillment. one academic interview participant remarked: … this is honestly a feel good thing. it is so much more satisfying personally and professionally. it’s more fun, it’s more fulfilling. i actually feel good about this work. i feel that it’s not some grand rocket science, but in a small way it’s making a huge difference for this small community. 10 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn a few participants noted that expansion beyond the initial research project was unexpected, but was perceived as a sign of achievement. in one example, a community participant said of the academic researchers representing two different institutions, ‘i will say that we engage both [academic partners] in a variety of work because of how well the one specific project went’. an academic participant also noted: ‘it’s expanding in scope; it’s not stagnant. we’re not staying where we started. it’s constantly evolving in its roles … we’re being asked to participate in different things than we would’ve previously been asked to participate in.’ success defined by tangible products and outcomes group processes and functioning were perceived as important factors in partnership success, but when ultimately determining whether a partnership was successful, members primarily based this on improvements in measurable research outcomes and the development of tangible products (tangible outcomes/products; figure 3). examples provided by study participants included reports to the community or program and policy plans. as succinctly described by one academic participant: … ultimately it should be about health outcomes. the one that’s hardest to get to and the one that takes the longest. i guess, again, if you see this as a long-term process that would be where we’re headed. because otherwise, why do it? in speaking about their particular partnership, another academic participant commented: in the end the research had to be written up and presented and published. and also getting grants to do this … there were tangible things that you could list as outcomes and products of the partnership … and we had that so that was, that was our success. figure 2: based on my experience, unintended but important achievements in community-academic research partnerships 11 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn tangible outcomes/products were considered indicators that the partnership was benefiting the target community and resulting in meaningful change (community benefit and meaningful change; figure 3). an academic participant stated: adding to the success of the partnership, if we’re able to show that not only do we have these cool research outcomes, but that the intervention we did actually made a difference. so an actual health improvement outcome. that would really demonstrate the importance of this type of work. not only are we able to get the data but we’re able to get higher quality data and more effective interventions out of it. in connecting the relational components of strong partnerships and mutual engagement in research with tangible outcomes/products, a community member remarked: i also think there’s this whole relational piece. are we really benefitting from one another? we are still working for the community, both organizations. universities and colleges are at some level working for the community. they need to have good community will. and they need the community to succeed to succeed themselves. partnership processes as informal evaluation methods in interviews, participants described relying on informal methods of evaluating partnership success until a tangible product or outcome was achieved. essentially, they used their intuition based on equitable and well-integrated partnership processes until those actionable research goals were achieved. these informal methods were described in a few of the statements offered by participants: but for me it’s just a gut [pause]. do they trust you? are you involved in the conversation? when you say something, are your comments thoughtfully regarded, whether or not they’re taken? are you considered someone worth contemplating, or ideas worth contemplating? (academic participant). … we always respect our partners. we respect their intelligence. we respect their expertise. and there’s sometimes where you just have to go with a gut instinct (community participant). figure 3: characteristics of a partnered approach to research that is working 12 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn … we wouldn’t have the research without the partnership because we wouldn’t have access to the schools that we have access to. we wouldn’t be working with the kids we’re working with. but we’ve worked for years to establish trust and commitment, to establish the relationship that allows us to do this cool research (academic participant). the outcome in so many ways is the partnership. i mean, it’s that continued collaboration; that continued conversation … so i think maintaining the partnership is an outcome (academic participant). these findings were further reflected in the concept mapping. when there was a lack of outcomes and change, participants deemed the partnership unsuccessful. the other factors that contributed to a perceived lack of success included unequal distribution of power/work, lack of commitment to project/partnership, lack of participation amongst members of the partnership and poor communication (figure 4). according to one academic participant, they had to address these issues early in the partnership: and the communication, the fact that we were in touch, that we were resolving any issues as they arose. that was important. and i think that improved the outcomes and the fact that we achieved the goals that we set out to do. in another case where the partnership did not nurture group processes either in the beginning or as conflict arose, there were negative consequences, and the partnership was perceived to be negatively affected. the academic participant described the impact on the reach of the research and relationships within the partnership: i don’t know. i mean, i think it would’ve been different if we all sat down at the table together, including the community coordinators. and a conversation about a long-term goal, or a partnership-y or process-y goal rather than just an explicit research objective. and that probably would’ve been, now looking back at it, maybe that could’ve saved us from where we are now. figure 4: characteristics of a partnered approach to research that is not working 13 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn discussion the current study findings are consistent with literature that stresses the importance of partnership processes in communityacademic research partnerships (becker et al. 2013; duran et al. 2013; hicks et al. 2012; israel, coombe & mcgranaghan 2010; israel et al. 2010; israel et al. 2013; jagosh et al. 2015; lasker, weiss & miller 2001; lucero et al. 2016; malone et al. 2013; roman isler & corbie-smith 2012; sandoval et al. 2012; schulz, israel & lantz 2003; viswanathan et al. 2004; wallerstein et al. 2008) and further emphasise the necessity of nurturing these processes and relationships. this study also advances our understanding of the perspectives of community members and academic researchers involved in partnerships regarding the outcomes of their work together and the ways in which they determine whether the partnered approach to research is effective. the main themes from the concept maps and interviews suggest that, although members of these partnerships consider group processes to be the foundation of their work and the primary stimulus for achieving intended research outcomes, a project is only stamped as ‘successful’ if members are able to prove intended research outcomes or produce a tangible item to show the fruits of their labour. simultaneously, however, participants say that, until those outcomes are achieved or products are developed, they are informally and individually evaluating their progress based on the functioning of the partnership. this may suggest that when partners are silently determining the partnership is not working participation in the research process may be negatively affected. more importantly, the lack of engagement as a result of informal evaluation could ultimately impact the achievement of primary research outcomes as members lose interest or do not push the project beyond the initial stages; therefore, affecting the one determinant of a successful partnership. in an article published after the current study was conducted, jagosh et al. (2015) describe the interdependence of partnership processes and functioning and changes in longterm population-level outcomes. in their description of a ‘ripple effect’ concept, they posit that factors influencing partnership functioning, such as trust among group members, can be a component within the context of the partnership, a mechanism that propels partnership activities and an outcome of the partnership, even if it has manifested within the context and mechanism of the model. the descriptions of community-academic partnership success, identification of intermediate outcomes and the difficulty many interview respondents in the current study had in differentiating between process outcomes and research outcomes support the context–mechanism–outcome configuration developed by jagosh et al. (2015). the findings in this study expand on existing evidence about the important role of partnership processes related to outcomes (becker et al. 2013; chang et al. 2013; duran et al. 2013; 14 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn hicks et al. 2012; israel et al. 1995; israel et al. 2010; israel et al. 2013; lucero et al. 2016; schulz, israel & lantz 2003; udoh et al. 2013; wallerstein et al. 2008). this especially means that the unique contexts and needs of individual partnerships should be considered (chang et al. 2013). although members of partnerships represented in the current study ultimately wanted to achieve improved individualand community-level research outcomes, there was strong acknowledgement that in order for this to occur through the partnership there needed to be an emphasis on relationships and partnership processes. these processes, and the functioning of relationships within the partnership, were perceived as critical components of the work, and members used these as intermediaries to gauge whether their efforts were a success until it became possible to evaluate more long-lasting systemic changes. as such, previous references to these factors as ‘intermediate outcomes’ (jagosh et al. 2015; roman isler & corbie-smith 2012; schulz, israel & lantz 2003) seem to be the most fitting, as opposed to ‘unintended’ or ‘secondary outcomes’. the latter terms suggest a lack of intentionality in building and maintaining relationships and processes within the partnership, whereas the findings in this study further emphasise the need for members of community-academic partnerships to be quite intentional in their attention to these factors as a means of transforming the community. furthermore, there are likely to be cases where a partnership has achieved outcomes which it never anticipated; therefore, the term should be reserved for those situations. the partnership covenant developed by the oakland late diagnosis team (udoh et al. 2013) is an exemplar of how members of community-academic research partnerships can work together to be more intentional with regard to relationships, partnership processes and core principles of participatory research. many quantitative instruments for measuring coalition functioning and group dynamics in community-academic research partnerships are available (granner & sharpe 2004; sandoval et al. 2012) and calls have been made for the use of qualitative methods as well (sandoval et al. 2012). yet, participants in this study relied on their intuition to determine how the partnership was performing in advance of measurable health and research outcomes. members of community-academic partnerships should consider ways in which they may monitor, or evaluate, intermediate outcomes as a part of their work in order to sustain partnership momentum for long-term change (butterfoss & kegler 2002; israel, coombe & mcgranaghan 2010; schulz, israel & lantz 2003). this recommendation is consistent with literature on the importance of the implementation and maintenance phase of collaborative groups, including establishing formalised rules and procedures, monitoring member satisfaction and engagement, and evaluating processes that lead to outcomes (butterfoss, goodman & wandersman 1993; butterfoss & kegler 2002; levison-johnson, dewey & wandersman 2009; mattessich & monsey 1992; wandersman, goodman & butterfoss 1997). establishing a process 15 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn evaluation at the start of a partnership can empower group members to express and examine concerns as the work progresses (fetterman 1996; israel et al. 2010; schulz, israel & lantz 2003) in order to thwart the building of tensions. an agreed upon system for reflecting on the shared work can help to build synergy that contributes to partnership longevity, subsequent research projects and long-lasting benefits to the community (duran et al. 2013; jagosh et al. 2015; udoh et al. 2013), all of which were considered signs of partnership success. although limited in sample size, the current study provided an initial exploration of how members of community-academic research partnerships are defining partnership success. the findings are not generalisable to every community-academic research partnership and community; however, they may be useful for future studies aiming to connect the operationalisation of community engaged research to collective impact. the findings also provide an initial indication of the extent to which these partnerships are evaluating and discussing their work. additional prompts may provide further examination of how members of partnerships implement and operationalise the pathway from process to outcomes. future study would also help to understand and delineate how community-academic research partnerships across the continuum of community engagement define success and assess the impact of their efforts. leaders in the field of participatory research have called for additional studies and methods to examine the links between partnership processes and outcomes (sandoval et al. 2012; viswanathan et al. 2004). in a recent study, lucero and colleagues (2016) developed a mixed methods ‘iterative integration approach’ to understand how partnership processes connect with health outcomes. their use of this innovative approach mimicked the cyclical nature of analysis, action and reflection encouraged in community-academic research partnerships to provide new insight into this complex topic. the concept mapping methodology combined with interviews in the current study also offered a novel mixed methods approach for exploring connections between processes and outcomes across partnerships. future studies might consider using these methods as part of a sequential mixed methods design so that interview questions could specifically explore concept mapping findings. the participatory nature of concept mapping is also useful in the evaluation of complex programs and initiatives that require stakeholder input (kane & trochim 2007). as such, concept mapping – alone or in combination with other research methods – could also have utility within evaluations of individual community-academic research partnerships to address the need for iterative monitoring of processes and intermediate outcomes so that primary research outcomes can be attained. the use of an online concept mapping method was appropriate for the scope of this pilot study, but was not without limitations. as cited by kane and trochim (2007), the remote 16 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn generation of ideas allows the researcher to reach a broad stakeholder group who can record their ideas in their own environment and in their own time; however, in the present study, it seemed to have a negative impact on the number of stakeholders who participated. future studies would benefit from broader participation of community members and academics as a whole, but especially from community members to ensure their perspectives are equally represented. increased participant involvement would be especially important in the sorting phase to promote their involvement in determining the most appropriate cluster solutions and naming of clusters in the concept maps. inperson participation may help with these issues. it may also assist with the timing issue as the participatory aspects of the concept mapping could be done within group sessions, alleviating the possibility of tasks lingering as participants complete them in their own time. lastly, greater participation in concept mapping may be more achievable if used within individual partnership evaluations than in studies across multiple partnerships. in these settings, members of the partnership can better negotiate the timing of concept mapping and interview methods so that they align with other meetings and activities. in addition to the considerations discussed above, direct contact with community members, as opposed to snowball email messaging, may be useful in better explaining the purpose and utility of the study. computer and internet access, as well as comfort with technology and computer software, should also be considered when deciding whether to do concept mapping remotely or in person. the distribution of incentives – either monetary or in the form of other resources, such as child care – may also promote greater participation, particularly if concept mapping is conducted in person. use of in-person concept mapping and the strategies noted previously may also have resulted in a greater number of participants available for the individual interviews. the lack of community member input in the individual interviews limited our ability to fully explore whether the perspectives of community and academic members differ. as a result, triangulation between concept mapping and interview responses may be biased toward academic perspectives. future studies should include a larger sample of community members so that similarities and differences amongst perspectives can be explored in more detail. this study aimed to examine community-academic research partnerships as a whole, but future studies could consider differences in partnerships based on the continuum of community engagement in research (e.g. community-placed vs community-based participatory research). conclusion relationships, group processes and group functioning influence how members of community-academic research partnerships describe the value of partnerships; however, aside from notable 17 | gateways | lindquist-grantz & vaughn exceptions (chang et al. 2013; duran et al. 2013; hicks et al. 2012; israel et al. 1995; israel et al. 2010; lucero et al. 2016; schulz, israel & lantz 2003; udoh et al. 2013; wallerstein et al. 2008), they may not be explicitly discussed within partnerships. members report that they rely on intuitive, unintentional and unspoken methods of determining partnership success, particularly in the early phases of research that precede the availability of long-term communitylevel health and social outcome data. although partnership processes and functioning are highly regarded by members, when ultimately determining whether the partnership has been successful, members rely on measureable long-term communitylevel health and social outcomes and the development of tangible products, such as programs, community reports or policy changes. as such, the context of the partnership and processes developed by members should be considered intermediate outcomes and critical influencers of sustained engagement in the partnership so that primary long-term outcomes are achieved. academics and community members collaborating in research partnerships need to be aware of the power and importance of partnership processes and cultivate them as much as the achievement of research outcomes. the co-creation of transparent process evaluation methods that can be regularly monitored and discussed by all members may 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wandersman, a, goodman, r & butterfoss, f 1997, ‘understanding coalitions and how they operate’, in m minkler (ed.), community organizing and community building for health, rutgers university press, new brunswick, nj, pp. 261–77. weller, s & romney, a 1998, systematic data collection, sage, newbury park, ca. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: kabaria-muriithi, j., vanleeuwen, c. a., kathuri-ogola, l. and weeks, l. e. 2018. expectations of field supervisors in kenya: implications for communitybased human service practicums. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v11i1.5439 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article expectations of field supervisors in kenya: implications for community-based human service practicums joan kabaria-muriithi1*, charlene a vanleeuwen2, lucy kathuri-ogola1, lori e weeks3 1 school of applied human sciences, department of community resource management and extension, kenyatta university, po box 43844-00100, nairobi, kenya 2 department of applied human sciences, university of prince edward island, 550 university avenue, charlottetown, prince edward island, c1a 4p3, canada 3 school of nursing, dalhousie university, 5869 university avenue, halifax, nova scotia, b3h 4r2, canada *corresponding author: joan kabaria-muriithi; muriithi.joan@ku.ac.ke doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5439 article history: received 01/03/2017; revised 08/01/2018; accepted 16/01/2018; published 31/05/2018 abstract community-based learning (cbl), which provides opportunities for undergraduate students to develop disciplinary and work-related knowledge and skills, is increasingly becoming an integral component of higher education. similar to other countries, there is a widespread belief among employers in kenya that there is a mismatch between university programs and labour market demands. in order to enhance the employability of graduates, many departments at a kenyan university have incorporated work-integrated experiential learning opportunities such as practicums in the educational experience for undergraduate students. the aim of this article is to describe the expectations of field supervisors in host organisations participitating in a community-based human services program at a kenyan university. fifteen purposively sampled field supervisors participated in individual face-to-face interviews that included questions about their understanding of the department’s expectations of student learning activities during practicums, knowledge of the academic preparation of students in the program and challenges associated with the supervisory role. six field supervisors exhibited some level of understanding of the expectations of their role in working with practicum students, while nine field supervisors indicated unclear expectations of the students’ practicum declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research was funded by a grant from the international development research centre in canada (grant #107108-00020503-026). 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5439 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5439 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:muriithi.joan@ku.ac.ke http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5439 experience. thematic analysis revealed key themes related to: (1) student abilities, learning goals and their contributions to the host organisations, and (2) the academic program of study and academic support available from the university faculty or staff to field supervisors. the results of our study revealed a lack of clarity around practicum expectations for most of the field supervisors interviewed and insufficient preparation of the community-based organisations to host a practicum student. several recommendations are identified to clarify the expectations of community partner organisations and the staff providing student supervision to ensure benefits for both students and the host organisation. results from this study can be used to inform the development or improvement of practicum opportunities focused on producing a skilled workforce. keywords community-based learning, practicums, expectations, higher education, supervision, workintegrated learning, kenya introduction one of the chief responsibilities of institutions of higher learning is providing students with appropriate disciplinary knowledge, skills and experiences that prepare them to tackle the multitude of issues they will encounter when they enter the workforce. attention to the role of universities in preparing youth for the workforce has intensified in recent years, especially in african countries where there has been exponential growth in university enrolment and concerns raised about the quality of education students are receiving (gudo, olel & oanda 2011; nyangau 2014; odhiambo 2014; waruru 2015). community-based learning (cbl) experiences such as service-learning, practicums and internship opportunities for undergraduate students are increasingly becoming an integral component of african higher education (dorasamy & pillay 2010; ferguson & smith 2012). while there are many variations in how cbl is defined, there is broad consensus that this form of learning involves relevant and meaningful service activities in community settings to assist students in integrating their academic knowledge with practice in the field, providing them with opportunities to reflect critically on their learning and achieve academic, personal and civic learning objectives (clayton, bringle & hatcher 2013). almost two decades ago, cruz and giles (2000) noted the paucity of research examining the concerns of community partner organisations and staff. while inroads have been made, this perspective continues to be underrepresented in the literature, with the partnership landscape in kenya still uncharted. the aim of this study is to describe the issues faced by field supervisors of undergraduate practicum students. these field supervisors are employed by community organisations providing human services in kenya. with a deeper understanding of the issues and concerns of field supervisors, steps can be taken to address issues and, where possible, remedy concerns. kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 2 literature review the value of community-based learning in higher education the value of cbl experiences for university undergraduate students, the university and the host organisation is well-documented in research conducted in the north american context (astin, sax & avalos 1999; kuh 2008; peters 2014; zlotkowski 1998). benefits for students can be grouped into four broad categories of educational, social, civic, and vocational/ professional (e.g. astin, sax & avalos 1999; batchelder & root 1994; cantor 1995; giles & eyler 1994; steinke & buresh 2002; tiessen & heron 2012). there are also many benefits arising from this form of learning for universities. community-based learning experiences can help improve the image of universities among professionals and the public (mgaya & mbekomize 2014). one of the major benefits to universities is in strengthening linkages with host organisations, which may lead to the identification of new research opportunities and funding (paul 2009). universities may use cbl programs to market their courses and their graduates, which may lead to sustained or improved admission of students and employability of their graduates (cooper & orrell n.d.). inclusion of cbl opportunities in higher education programs is important because it contributes to the development of professional competencies that may not be fostered in traditional classroom settings. this enables academic programs to respond to and meet the emerging job market needs of their respective programs, and thus enhance employability of their graduates, since they gain practical transferrable skills that employers look for (haneef, yusof & amin 2006). thus, it is not surprising that there is an increasing focus on developing and expanding cbl programs. this growth places great pressure on programs, especially those that provide experiential or work-integrated learning experiences to bridge the gap between academia and students’ chosen careers (oanda & jowi 2012; owuor 2007). the participating host organisations gain access to an unpaid or partially compensated labour force who have a wealth of contemporary theoretical knowledge and are keen to apply such knowledge (mgaya & mbekomize 2014). bridging the gap between academic programs and the needs of the job market can be supported through a range of well-designed cbl experiences such as practicums; however, our knowledge of what students and community organisations need in order to improve cbl experiences for all stakeholders has not kept pace (gower & mulvaney 2012; teichler 2011). community-based learning in a kenyan context higher education in kenya has been undergoing rapid and dynamic change as efforts have been made to align learning programs with national development priorities stipulated in policy documents, such as kenya vision 2030 (odhiambo 2014; republic of kenya 2007). according to the kenya vision 2030 second medium term plan, the government will focus on matching education and training with the demand for skills required in the workplace (republic of kenya 2013). relevant objectives for universities included in this nationwide initiative relate to the need to incorporate cbl for all students in higher education to enable them to acquire necessary on-the-job training skills before graduation. graduates from programs, such as family and community sciences and related human services disciplines, face many challenges as employees with a broad range of human services organisations and government departments strive to address contemporary social and expectations of field supervisors in kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 3 economic problems in communities throughout the country. community-based learning experiences are especially vital for students enrolled in these types of programs in developing countries, such as kenya, due to huge disparities in income, education and gender equity. the power of cbl is enhanced when supported by best practices; however, evidence to enhance current practice is much less abundant in the african context than in north america. there are several examples of research studies examining community-based learning in the african context (dorasamy & pillay 2010; linda, mtshali & engelbrecht 2013; naidoo & devnarain 2009; roos et al. 2005; thomson et al. 2011), while others have conducted comparative studies of north american and africanised models of cbl (hatcher & erasmus 2008; stanton & erasmus 2013). using the educational philosophies of dewey (north america) and nyerere (africa) to better understand these models, hatcher and erasmus (2008) reported that both systems expected cbl experiences to be transformative, enabling students to understand and relate to their real-world learning experiences in ways that would generate positive change for communities. other south african studies emphasised that students in african higher education institutions needed more cbl opportunities to become professionally confident and competent, and be able to make deeper connections between their theoretical knowledge and professional skills through their cbl activities in the community (dorasamy & pillay 2010; roos et al. 2005). studies have also noted that understanding the cbl context plays a significant role in students’ engagement and learning and in students gaining meaningful and productive experience (alexander & khabanyane 2013; bheekie & van huyssteen 2015; bringle & hatcher 2007). similar findings have been observed with regard to the quality of cbl learning and longer term goals of community engagement (linda, mtshali & engelbrecht 2013; mahlomaholo & matobako 2006; osman & castle 2006). while there is a growing body of literature examining service-learning in south africa, few studies have been conducted in kenya. opiyo-newa (2012) conducted an assessment of internships and cbl programs at one university and found that students had positive attitudes towards cbl opportunities, but their writing and research skills needed improvement in order to achieve their learning outcomes. in an assessment of the students’ community service program at their institution, tumuti et al. (2013) found that two-week cbl experiences allowed students to develop a variety of skills valued by kenyan employers, such as communication and interpersonal skills, learning and problem-solving, and selfdevelopment skills. they note the benefits of this program in countering criticism of the kenyan educational system for alienating students from the lived realities of their communities resulting from its preoccupation with testing, training for white-collar employment and focus on globalisation at the expense of local needs. finally, in a project related to this current study, challenges encountered by field supervisors were identified and used to inform the development of a new course to prepare students for cbl experiences (kathuri-ogola et al. 2015; vanleeuwen et al. 2018). these challenges included helping kenyan students to develop reflective practice skills, articulating cbl learning goals, preparing students for demanding situations and workplaces, facilitating students’ development in interpersonal communication, and a lack of understanding of students’ field experiences. thus, it is recognised that cbl is very desirable within the kenyan context, and the implementation of these programs is key to their success for the various stakeholders. kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 4 implementing community-based learning in higher education integrating practicums within higher education has been typically accomplished in two ways, either through a block or a concurrent approach (haneef, yusof & amin 2006; weert 2011). in the concurrent approach, students complete a designated number of hours each week with the host organisation while completing other course requirements. in the block practicum approach, students engage in community-based learning experience without completing other course requirements. in many developing countries, institutions of higher learning opt for block practicums for their students ( johnson, bailey & padmore 2012). the preference for the block approach could be due to limited practicum opportunities within the vicinity of the respective universities. many host organisations in developing countries are located in areas far from industrial hubs where most universities are located, and thus students have to compete for the few practicum opportunities available. the block approach provides an opportunity for students to participate in practicum opportunities during a set practicum period in locations that can be far away from the learning institution. additionally, the large ratio of students per faculty member makes it easier for university administrators to manage the block system, as compared to the concurrent one. expectations of cbl stakeholders strong relationships and partnerships are essential to cbl because of the functional role they play in establishing cbl activities, the implication of valuing reciprocity among all participants in cbl and the fundamental role played by collaboration (bringle & clayton 2013). the sofar model helps researchers and practitioners to delineate key stakeholders, or constituents, in cbl and the dynamics of these different relationships, especially since it differentiates between staff of community organisations and residents within the community (bringle & clayton 2013). for example, the interactions and relationships that students have with community organisation staff, who are frequently assuming some form of supervisory role in connection with the students, are different in many ways from their relationships with community residents (bringle & clayton 2013). these same researchers go on to discuss theoretical frameworks that inform the nature of the various interactions between individuals and the outcomes of these interactions, according to exchange theory, and the concepts of closeness, equity and integrity. other theoretical perspectives which have been used to inform our understanding of interactions and partnerships with community organisations include enos and morton’s (2003) work which examines transactional and transformative relationships. their model looks at the quality of outcomes resulting from interactions between various stakeholders involved with cbl. they view transactional partnerships as ad hoc, instrumental relationships where deep change is not expected, and long-term relationships are not expected, whereas with transformational relationships there are expectations for growth and change as the relationship develops over time. studies examining community partner relationships with students and the university have found that staff supervisors in community organisations are motivated to share their time and training to support student learning and expect valuable service from students (basinger & bartholomew 2006; worrall 2007). another study focusing on community partner perspectives revealed that staff members in these roles viewed these relationships as integral to the success of cbl. these individuals were willing to voice key challenges, such as poor communication, and share recommendations with university partners to improve cbl partnerships (sandy & holland 2006). other researchers discussed the importance of expectations of field supervisors in kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 5 careful preparation and follow-through and the role of staff in community organisations as co-educators (leiderman et al. 2002). finally, staff in community organisations with a greater voice in the planning and implementing of cbl saw more benefits for their organisation (miron & moely 2006). information sharing between institutions of higher learning and field supervisors in the host organisations is an important process in developing community-university partnerships (kathuri-ogola et al. 2015). the flow of information can be affected by incongruent expectations between students and field supervisors. mismatches between student expectations and the reality of their practicum experiences have been found to contribute to limited learning for the student (olson & montgomery 2000). this is largely because students bring a number of beliefs, attitudes and expectations about the nature of the practicum (mcclam & puckett 1991; olson & montgomery 2000). in addition, unclear expectations can lead to weak feedback mechanisms, a mismatch between university courses and labour market demands, reduced benefits for the host organisation and inefficient learning for the students (klosters 2014). there is a dearth of knowledge about expectations of practicum experiences in such disciplines as family and community sciences and those related to community development from the perspective of community professionals who serve as field supervisors in host organisations (nichols et al. 2013), and there is a particular gap in our knowledge in relation to african countries. without evidence to support the development of local best practice, the impact of cbl may be diminished. as educators and cbl practitioners in the 21st century, we sought to contribute to current knowledge and practice by examining the expectations of field supervisors throughout the practicum experience. in particular, we were interested in exploring field supervisors’ expectations of their own responsibilities and their expectations of practicum students. we were also interested in the various expectations students brought to their practicum experience and their beliefs around the future benefits of practicums. the specific aim of this article is to describe the expectations of field supervisors in organizations hosting students of a human service program at a kenyan university who are undertaking cbl. methods the community-based program at the university in nairobi focuses on preparing graduates to deliver social services to individuals, families and communities. emphasis is on the improvement of the welfare of people through community-based programs, which requires a thorough understanding of family and community dynamics. in order to prepare students effectively for these tasks, undergraduate students undertaking this program complete a mandatory 12-week block community-based practicum at the end of their third year of study. the practicum is a structured work experience in a professional setting, during which the student applies and acquires disciplinary and work-related knowledge and skills. as such, the practicum builds upon a student’s coursework in the program as well as links theory with practical application. each student is supervised by a field supervisor, who is an employee of the host organisation and oversees the student’s day-to-day work. in addition, each student is assigned a member of the university faculty who provides support and evaluates the student. the students are usually attached to community programs serving children, youth, women, men, families, or groups with special needs. generally the focus is on professional human service at the community level. kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 6 fifteen organisations that hosted third-year practicum students during the may–august 2013 practicum session were sampled using purposive maximum variation sampling (patton 2015). these organisations were situated in both urban and rural locations and had male and female field supervisors. invitations for field supervisors to participate in the research were issued through telephone calls by the research team. one field supervisor in each organisation participated in a face-to-face interview with a member of the research team. the interview included questions about field supervisors’ understanding of the department’s expectations of student learning activities during the practicum, knowledge about the academic preparation of students in the program of study and challenges associated with the supervisory role. each participant was invited to share any further suggestions they had, that the university could consider to enhance the academic preparation of students for their practicum. ethical approval for the research was obtained prior to participant recruitment from the research ethics boards at the kenyan university and the canadian university where the investigators were employed at the time of data collection. qualitative data from the interviews with field supervisors was analysed using thematic analysis. an inductive six-step thematic analysis process was used to analyse the interview transcripts (braun & clarke 2006). this included steps of becoming familiar with the data, identifying initial themes, compiling a list of themes and sub-themes, organising the themes and sub-themes into a coding tree, naming and defining each theme, and providing a narrative description of the content of each sub-theme and illustrating them by selecting representative quotes. nvivo10 software was used to aid in organising the qualitative data. since three researchers were involved in coding data, appropriate procedures to ensure consensus were used (marshall 2011). these included collectively developing and defining the themes that emerged from the data. then, two researchers independently coded the data, and then three researchers worked together to come to a consensus on the codes assigned to the data. results a total of 15 field supervisors participated in the study. the field supervisors included six men and nine women. fourteen of the field supervisors were drawn from non-governmental development agencies and one from a government department. the two overarching themes used to organise the data focused on those field supervisors who had clear expectations of the student practicum experience, and those who had unclear expectations of the student practicum experience. clear expectations six field supervisors exhibited some level of understanding of the expectations of their role in working with practicum students. the main contributors to this clear understanding of supervision expectations were: explanations provided by the students about their curriculum at the university and supervisors’ work-related experience. for one supervisor, this resulted from personal experience rather than through prior interaction with the institutions of higher learning. for me i understood because of my experience and exposure… i do resource mobilization and have had international exposure… with that experience i understood (fs13). expectations of field supervisors in kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 7 another supervisor reported: …when i told him [student] to give me the units he has covered [at university],…it gave me some ideas of what kind of support he really needs to be given… (fs10). unclear expectations nine field supervisors indicated unclear expectations of the students’ practicum experience. the two themes in which field supervisors experienced unclear expectations focused on: (1) student abilities, learning goals, and their contributions to the host organisations, and (2) the student’s academic program of study and level and form of academic support by the university to supervisors. unclear expectations about student abilities, learning goals and contributions unclear expectations about student abilities emerged as a challenge. most of the field supervisors interviewed indicated that they did not know what students were capable of, and it often took a long period of time to identify appropriate activities to assign to the students. a lack of understanding of the students’ abilities resulted in unrealistically high expectations of students by their respective field supervisors. for example, some field supervisors assumed that the students would do day-to-day work activities without structured orientation and guidance. basically, the challenges of supervision come during the initial stages because first of all they [students] are new, it is their first time… and they are yet to internalize the project purpose and activities. even after this, the first 2 to 3 weeks, they get a lot of difficulties (fs8). notably, some field supervisors were not clear about what the learning goals of the students were so that the organisation could provide the necessary learning experiences. at first i did not know because i told them that i felt they [students] were in the wrong place. because yours [program] is community resource management and we have no resources that we can manage at the district alone… i felt that they will not be able to learn or fit and get the required experience. but they have managed (fs7). in some cases, the field supervisors indicated ways in which the students were able to make contributions to the host organisation, although they did not always have an expectation that this would be an outcome of the practicum. an interesting opportunity for creativity and innovation emerged for students who were placed in an environment in which there were no clear expectations of them. this was demonstrated in the flexibility and participatory approach adopted by some host organisations – they included the students in identifying the relevant activities and program they wished to be involved with. we allow them to come up with an idea… or a program… we become open so they can come up with the ideas (fs6). students were also given the opportunity to be creative in defining their own experiences due to lack of expectations. some students come up with a write up of what they are supposed to do… so we come up with a timetable… so the interns program themselves (fs14). kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 8 unclear expectations about the academic program and academic support for supervisors field supervisors provided many examples of having unclear expectations about the academic program and the level and form of academic support provided to them and their organisations. now if maybe you can now plan on giving us the curriculum to understand or a short timetable to show what they normally do… (fs15). some field supervisors did not understand the course structure and the expected format for reporting on the progress of the students. this was highlighted by one of the field supervisors: basically if you have trainings, it can help us know in depth, what course they are taking and what kind of activities we need to engage them in because when they come here what we do is try to fit them into our system, but also i can’t tell at the end of the day if it is working towards achieving the objective of the department (fs8). to enhance their understanding of the practicum expectations, the field supervisors proposed improvement to and standardisation of documentation provided to the host organisation. normally, they [students] are supposed to come with documents indicating objectives… a form where they have their objectives so that when i am with them i can be able to know what they are to achieve at the end of the practicum (fs4). several field supervisors indicated that they expected the provision of an orientation program. i had no idea what was expected from the students… because they were just brought to me to supervise them (fs2). an orientation program could contribute greatly to a long-term and successful relationship between the host organisation and the academic program. we need to first of all start a relationship with the institution and the department so that we are able to get clear information on expectations of the department and expectations of the students… so we are able to help them achieve the department’s expectations and at the end of the day, we as an organisation achieve what we want from them and also help the students achieve some of their expectations (fs8). further, supervisors suggested that more interaction between field supervisors and faculty members was needed before the practicum began. you should call for a short 2 or 3 day induction for your supervisors so that when you send your students then you know they are in the right hands… because if a supervisor misinterprets the expectations then they may not be able to guide the students (fs13). the field supervisors highlighted the importance of prior interaction with university faculty to harmonise expectations of the entire practicum placement. when i started supervising them [students], i felt i should have met their lecturer before assigning duties to them (fs3). in addition to more knowledge about the academic requirements and an orientation program, the field supervisors expected practicums to be coordinated to a greater extent. in some instances, there was random placement of students without matching their skills with appropriate activities within the host organisation. one field supervisor indicated: expectations of field supervisors in kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 9 if you know the students’ area of specialization one would be able to place them in the appropriate department and allocate a relevant activity. … but if you don’t have a wider knowledge of what a student expects from the attachment you may assume and leave some things out which may be very important to the student (fs3). in other cases, students were deployed to departments within the host organizations without clear terms of reference. in addition, the host organisations sometimes did not have adequate time to prepare to host students. if we are informed before they come at least we can prepare a job description… otherwise, if they just come without adequate prior notice, we will only allocate to them the most pressing job like filing which may not provide an avenue for adequate learning (fs4). discussion in this section, we first highlight and discuss several key findings from our study and identify several recommendations based on our findings. this is followed by a discussion of the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research. from a holistic examination of our results, we came to the realisation that many of the relationships examined in this project align with enos and morton’s (2003) transactional relationships since they operate within existing structures in which partners come together because each has something that the other perceives as useful. the cbl relationships in this instance could be characterised as instrumental, with limited commitments and minimum disruption of the regular work of the organisation. our findings indicated that there were reciprocal benefits for the students and the organisations, such as students utilising their knowledge to contribute to program development in the organisations. it is important that organisations hosting cbl students understand that benefits to the organisations can result when students are given the opportunity to apply their theoretical knowledge (mgaya & mbekomize 2014), in addition to students gaining important applied professional experience (astin, sax & avalos 1999; giles & eyler 1994). one challenge identified that could limit the benefit of the cbl experience was that the field supervisors often had very little or no prior notification that they would be supervising a practicum student, resulting in a lack of adequate preparation to host the student. in addition, limited resources meant that many host organisations did not have orientation programs or a supportive infrastructure for student practicum activities. faced with these situations, the field supervisors assigned tasks and duties randomly with little or no regard to the students’ ability or learning goals. such mismatched activities would certainly contribute to restricted learning (olson & montgomery 2000). however, an interesting finding was that, in some cases, this lack of planned activities for students on practicum enhanced creativity and innovativeness. this is an example of the resilience of some students who have the ability to both gain important knowledge and skills and contribute to the host organisation even when little or no planning or preparation has been made for their practicum experience within the host organisation. this experience during cbl can contribute to students gaining transformative real-world learning experiences (hatcher & erasmus 2008), especially in a country such as kenya in which organisations have few resources to devote to planning or preparation for student learning experiences. kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 10 a key finding of this study is that we identified a lack of clarity around practicum expectations for most of the field supervisors interviewed. this was attributed to insufficient communication between the university and the host organisation and, at times, within the host organisation itself. this is a salient finding as poor communication can hinder collaborative relationships between practicum host organisations and universities (bringle & clayton 2013; kathuri-ogola et al. 2015; sandy & holland 2006). the field supervisors observed that there were weak or no formal structured linkages between their organisations and the university. this made it difficult for them to understand the student’s learning goals, which resulted in wasting valuable time for practicum learning. this was made worse by poor orientation within the host organisation and between the host organisation and the university. these findings are particularly problematic if universities want to develop and maintain positive relationships with organisations and improve their image in the community (mgaya & mbekomize 2014). other researchers have found that universities are perceived as taking resources from organisations, resulting in few benefits to the community (nichols et al. 2013). it is clear that greater effort by universities is needed to develop stronger linkages with community organisations to ensure the sustainability and long-term success of these partnerships ( janke 2013). it is also clear that greater effort needs to be made to communicate and clarify expectations for field supervisors. providing opportunities for field supervisors to be involved in both planning and implementing cbl could greatly contribute to improving clarity of practicum expectations and to greater engagement and benefits for the organisations (miron & moely 2006). the community-based program included in this study is a relatively new program of study in kenya and many field supervisors were not familiar with its content and structure. this resulted in the field supervisors having inconsistent expectations of the students’ abilities. as a result, there were delays in assigning tasks and identifying opportunities that would contribute to students’ learning objectives. this lack of awareness is understandable since, in kenya, the human resource structure of most organisations is designed along the lines of traditional disciplines such as sociology, psychology, social work, political science, and development studies. however, the multifaceted nature of contemporary social problems requires both traditional and emerging disciplines to work towards systematic and sustainable solutions. thus, in developing countries, such as kenya, this means working towards ensuring that academic disciplines prepare graduates for the workplace (republic of kenya 2013). the field supervisors had little or no understanding of the course structure and the centrality of the practicum in the fulfilment of its objectives. this led to delays in submission of the essential reporting materials and gaps in some key areas of student assessment. it was not surprising that some supervisors mentioned that the reporting format was both unclear and tedious. this was perhaps exacerbated by their viewing the task as additional to their normal workload yet not attracting commensurate compensation. the capacity of university faculty and staff to understand the perspective of the community partner has been identified as one of the top determinants of an effective relationship (sandy & holland 2006), so work is needed to address field supervisors’ concerns associated with these administrative and assessment tasks. our results indicate that benefits could result from incorporating a pre-practicum experience in the curriculum. enhanced preparation for the practicum experience could positively impact students’ learning experience during practicum, thereby supporting national and united nations efforts to promote quality education as leading to employment in developing countries, including kenya (republic of kenya 2007). from our research in kenya, we suggest that the following should be incorporated in the program in preparation expectations of field supervisors in kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 11 for the practicum experience: support for the development of reflective practice; articulation of practicum expectations; mental preparation for demanding situations; and enhanced interpersonal communication skills (vanleeuwen et al. 2018). this pre-practicum preparation could take a number of forms, such as integration of brief cbl experiences into coursework prior to the practicum experience. for example, students could be required to complete volunteer work as part of the requirements of the program. this would create continuity in the learning process and exposure to community-based projects. alternatively, it could be achieved through a series of guest speakers from relevant institutions or organisations serving various populations, or talks by members of the community. this could create partnership opportunities with host organisations and contribute to the role of staff in community organisations as co-educators (leiderman et al. 2002). based on our findings, the practicum experience could be enhanced in five ways. (1) holding structured and regular faculty–field supervisor consultative meetings could help to harmonise everyone’s expectations of the practicum experience and the role that field supervisors have in the development of a learning contract. (2) organising a tripartite orientation program, including students, field supervisors and faculty, to identify the opportunities, challenges and potential solutions to the challenges. this would entail involvement of the stakeholders in the development of orientation materials, which could be made available on the departmental website to reduce the cost of printing and updating material as knowledge evolves or the program curriculum changes. (3) using standardised documentation to record challenges and report successes that address concerns raised by community partners. (4) developing long-term reciprocal partnerships between the university and host organisations. this would help to ensure that students gain required practical experience and further develop new skills that could lead to transformational learning and students being adequately prepared to work in a changing social, economic and political landscape. this form of arrangement would allow the host organisations to plan ahead for the arrival of students, and ensure that they receive adequate supervisory direction and support as well as access to the necessary physical and financial resources to follow through on their learning activities. in addition, this would allow community organisations to allocate time for student mentoring as part of the supervisors’ workload, while making sure that essential work tasks were completed. (5) supporting greater interaction between students, faculty and field supervisors in the development of student learning contracts. this would ensure that the student’s goals and objectives for their practicum experience correspond with those of the host organisation’s program and the designated field supervisor. we identified several limitations of this study. the study was limited to one academic program of one university in kenya, and the results may not be applicable to diverse academic programs in other countries. the department was relatively new, established seven years prior to the study in a non-traditional discipline. results from a more established academic program may yield different results. also, the responses were limited to the views of one field supervisor per organisation even in cases where the students had more than one point of supervision. the views of field supervisors willing to participate in this study may differ from those of other field supervisors. the results of this study led to our identifying several topics for future research. it would be useful to conduct a more detailed examination of the role of the field supervisor in facilitating the development of students’ professional knowledge and skill. research that focuses on what field supervisors expect and how to effectively communicate this to students kabaria-muriithi, vanleeuwen, kathuri-ogola, and weeks gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 12 prior to the practicum would also be beneficial. further exploration of the effectiveness of learning contracts in communicating student learning expectations to their field supervisor would be useful in the further development of community-based practicums, as well as research on the role of student reflections during and after the practicum. this could help to clarify their prior expectations and their learning during the practicum, with regard to professional commitment and the development of professional identity as a new human services professional. conclusions this study increases the knowledge base of cbl in the form of practicums in the kenyan context. cbl is one way that higher education in kenya can enhance the employability of graduates from kenyan university programs and respond to and meet emerging labour market needs. evidence from this study to support the development of best practices responsive to a local context fills a critical gap and encourages key stakeholders in their efforts to move forward with innovative approaches to identified challenges. based on this study, it is clear that further efforts need to be made to ensure that field supervisors who are staff in community organisations that host students for cbl experiences, such as practicums, have opportunities to be involved in the planning of this type of cbl. this involvement will also help ensure that field supervisors have clear expectations of students’ activities as they relate to their program of study and their own role in supervising students. recommendations to improve relationships and partnerships are crucial to ensuring positive outcomes for both students and host organisations in the future. the results from this study can be used to inform the development of cbl opportunities in other universities and other human service disciplines, which is essential to producing a skilled workforce in kenya and other developing countries. references alexander, g & khabanyane, m 2013, ‘service learning as a response to community/school engagement: towards a pedagogy of engagement’, perspectives in education, vol. 31, no. 2: pp. 102–13. astin, a, sax, l & avalos j 1999, ‘long-term effects of volunteerism during the undergraduate years’, review of higher education, vol. 22, no. 2: pp. 187–202. basinger, n & bartholomew, k 2006, ‘service-learning in nonprofit organizations: motivations, expectations, and outcomes’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 12, 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http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20150514122242452 the politics of public engagement reclaiming community? back in 2008, as a rather green new head of community engagement at a russell group university, i attended a session at the university of brighton on ‘radical community/university engagement’. it was a moment of epiphany for me and shaped much of my efforts and thinking for the six years i was in this post at the university. the former vice-chancellor at brighton, sir david watson (who sadly died in february of this year), was my touchstone, as he has been for many other people, exploring the history and purpose of higher education and civic/community engagement. he spoke passionately about civic engagement as a means of engaging with society through knowledge exchange and dialogue, not knowledge transfer, but ‘dialogue across the boundary between the university and its community which is open-ended, fluid and experimental’ (watson 2003, p. 16). he referenced the 2002 association of commonwealth universities’ (acu) document, which described engagement as a ‘thoughtful, argumentative interaction with the non-university world’ (cited in watson 2007, p. 3), explicitly connecting teaching and learning with the ‘wider world’ and bringing practitioners and researchers together as both citizens and neighbours. professor stuart laing, then pro vice-chancellor (academic affairs) for the university of brighton, argued at the same conference for a reimagining of the university’s social role, moving beyond enriching the student experience, or philanthropy, or imparting ‘civilised values’. he argued that university/public engagement should not be solely a mechanism for reputation management or positive marketing within a university but, instead, should be a vital space in which we might seek to forge equality of esteem and of priority for both social and economic engagement. it will touch on massive and omnipresent areas of our actual social life – areas which are at the heart of the fabric and the material base of our society – matters which affect all of us every day of our lives. (cited in clancy 2011) gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 160–66 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 sharon clancy doctoral researcher, university of nottingham 161 | gateways | clancy professor laing gave examples of contemporary issues at the heart of modern society, social urgencies such as the role of care in the community and the status of carers, public health debates on the future of the nhs, the shifting role of the voluntary and community sector in civil society, medical ethics and the public understanding of science (including social science). as someone from a community sector and social policy background, in terms of my career, and as a woman from a working-class mining town, this resonated with me. i could see the value in university-based learning reaching out to communities and responding to their real research needs, and that my role might play a small part in this. finding myself in a resource-rich institution after years of scrabbling to survive in the voluntary sector, where research tended to fall off the agenda due to the urgencies of survival, i saw an opportunity to bring my own experience of two worlds together. i had studied in, and taught in, a range of different universities, and had grown in my conviction that there should be space for practitioners to come together with academics to forge real social change. much of my own teaching had been born out of my practitioner experience. thus, i had spent a period teaching social policy, practitioner-based research and community capacity building prior to my appointment at the university, whilst working as ceo of a council for voluntary services in an area of the north east midlands hard hit by closures in the mining, engineering and textile industries. this was a place where wave after wave of policy applications seemed to make no impact in the face of the messiness, complexity and frank inequality of real community life in the area our organisation served. i had been attracted by the concept of praxis – the coupling of theory and action expressed in informed, committed action – and, by extension, the role of pracademic, suggestive, as it is, of bringing academic knowledge and skill together with actionbased practice. i knew that people were looking for answers, or at least help with debating the exigencies of their lives and seeking solutions. i had questioned many times why we were not better connected with academic activity which was looking to respond to real social issues and the lived experiences of the communities in which i had lived and worked. the world of the university, instead, seemed rather remote. what i greeted so enthusiastically in my new university-based role was the prospect of acting as a broker between these two worlds. brokers serve as the glue that breathes life into the networks that constitute relationships and sustain them over time. the most effective brokers are those who have occupied significant positions as both academics and practitioners – or so-called pracademics. these adaptable and cross-pressured actors serve the indispensable roles of translating, coordinating and aligning perspectives across multiple constituencies. (posner 2009, p. 6) 162 | gateways | clancy around the time i started my public engagement role at the university, in 2008, the higher education funding council for england (hefce) founded an initiative for establishing a coordinated approach to recognising, rewarding and building capacity for public engagement, called the beacons project. its express objective was: to create a culture within uk higher education where pe [public engagement] is formalised and embedded as a valued and recognised activity for staff at all levels, and for students. (nccpe website) out of this funding came the national co-ordinating centre for public engagement (nccpe), which aims to coordinate, capture and share learning about public engagement between and across uk higher education institutions, communities and research institutes. the nccpe has been a constant source of inspiration (and, dare i say, hope) to me and to many others working in this space. to use its own words about its work, and that of the beacons, they have worked on ‘critiquing, challenging and nudging their institutional systems and cultures to make them more supportive of engagement’ (nccpe website). to that end, the nccpe team have been clear from the start that public engagement should be broadly defined and understood. it is not about ‘specialists talking to non-specialists’. instead, their definition focuses on ‘mutual benefit’ and on increasing the he sector’s ‘relevance to, and impact on, civil society’ (nccpe website). they actively acknowledge that more emphasis needs to be placed on recognising that people are experts in their own lives, and should be respected as such. the role of brokers to catalyse and stimulate this work was explicitly understood in both the beacons’ projects and those of its successor, the catalyst program (funded by research councils uk). before any change of ethos and approach can take place in higher education institutions – often monolithic and adamantine cultures – practitioners who understand the world of both ‘community’ and ‘university’ have a vital role in critically investigating the rhetoric and definitions around engagement, and the building of resources and structures to embed change. there is no doubt that much excellent work has happened as a result of the vigorous focus on public engagement since 2008, with bodies like the nccpe and hefce at the vanguard. there is innovative and exciting university-based practice, across both pre and post-1992 institutions, focusing on regeneration and renewal, community studies on council estate culture, policy debate, and discussion at a civic level on health and social care issues, artsbased activities, which use local expertise to inform local history exhibitions, museum activity and research programs, and online discussion spaces on participation and democracy. these are just some instances of the outpouring of creativity in response to the challenge of making public engagement count. 163 | gateways | clancy the research excellence framework (ref) requirement to demonstrate public impact has also helped stimulate thinking about how we engage with ‘publics’ as part of research activity and how we demonstrate this. the ref 2014 showed an uplift in quality across all research and a sharpened focus on impact as ‘any effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia’ (ref website). i am minded of david watson’s (2007) commentary on first, second and third order university engagement – the university as ‘ethical beacon’ – as evidenced by the kinds of research they do and the student body they attract (who they are – first order); the contracts, partnerships and stakeholder engagement they foster – ‘the engaged university’ (what they do and with whom – second order); and their expression of membership – how this looks in terms of academic partnerships, levels of honesty and integrity, the rights and responsibilities they recognise and their capacity for organisational reflexivity (third order). the work of nccpe and hefce has certainly stimulated rightful debate about the role of the university in contemporary life. public engagement has a global face too, which is testimony to its growth in importance since the early 2000s. the talloires network, formed in 2005, brings together heads of universities from 23 countries from across the globe. their mission is described thus: we believe that higher education institutions do not exist in isolation from society, nor from the communities in which they are located. the talloires network envisions universities around the world as a vibrant and dynamic force in their societies, incorporating civic engagement and community service into their research and teaching mission. (talloires network website) the network profiles exceptional academics and has created the macjannet prize for global citizenship. it also provides resources, newsletters and materials, and a list of civic engagement experts, as well as staging regional and global conferences. it was actively supported by david watson, and its members contribute to the nccpe’s annual public engagement conference, engage. however, despite this creative upsurge in response to public engagement, nccpe’s key point from the start has been that, in order for public engagement to be ‘real’, it needs to be part of university culture, the fabric of the organisation’s systems, structures and ethos. it should not be a ‘bolt on’, inadequately resourced and knocked into the long grass by the twin pressures of financial exigency and social conservatism. the nccpe suggests that real barriers in the form of embedded and engrained values and ways of working continue to exist and that, after several years of activity and innovation, it is still at an early stage of the journey (nccpe n.d.). essentially, i would argue that the role of practitioners/pracademics in fostering debate about the realities of engagement is in itself profoundly political and that it represents http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/about-the-macjannet-prize/ 164 | gateways | clancy a space of contestation between the demands of an increasingly marketised and neo-liberal approach to education and a push towards greater social responsibility. it can be a lonely and sometimes profoundly challenging place to be. russell group universities do not routinely draw students from their local area; in that sense, they are not ‘of’ the community. there is a robust focus on increasing social mobility and ‘widening participation’, with an emphasis on engagement with schools, but wider links with communities are often not central to the activity of such universities and community expertise is not routinely sought to ease these relationships. the loss of adult education as a key space for understanding communities and fostering collaboration is felt keenly by those who recall its critical role in acting as a bridge to deep and genuine public engagement. much of the groundbreaking work of the 60s, 70s and early 80s has disappeared, along with adult education departments. one senior academic i talked to recently spoke of bottom-up, community-based short-term courses as a ‘nursery slope’ into higher education in economically strapped communities. without this, both practitioner expertise at community level and networks of engaged multi-disciplinary academics coming together with community groups and individuals to tackle specific issues of social, philosophical and economic urgency has been leeched away. along with adult education structures has gone an important emphasis on dialogue, debate and talking to people in response to their current position, beyond the lecture hall, where research proposals are forged on the ground from real and defined need. in my academic colleague’s view, the shift over the last two decades has been towards a ‘default position’ version of public engagement, with community engagement conflated either with a focus on widening student access and participation from ‘disadvantaged communities’ or, most prominently, with business engagement. this view is supported by findings in the higher education business and community interaction survey for 2013 (hefce 2014), which shows that the university in which i previously worked provides fewer social outreach events and is involved in fewer partnerships with community and civic actors than other universities, instead favouring engagement with private business as its preferred method of outreach. it is hard for me as a broker/pracademic to avoid some degree of ‘pessimistic analysis’ or at least a strong dose of realism, despite the many positive developments identified above. the danger is always that the default position is safest, especially in times of austerity, when money talks. business brings with it the possibility of research funding in areas such as science, technology and engineering – and this is proper. but it is disingenuous, at best, to present this kind of engagement as ‘public’, as it sometimes is. my own early experience of business and community engagement seminars was of a much greater emphasis on (and understanding of) business and little appreciation of how to do community 165 | gateways | clancy engagement well. much of the expertise garnered in the field of adult education through extra-mural activities, communityparticipatory research and community-based education, as commented on above, is now gone or is sitting outside the university sector in small community-based organisations. however, i am heartened and encouraged by a resurgence of interest in the power of adult education, these same smaller organisations continuing to keep alive an alternative vision of radical, informal education which is about individual and cultural transformation. the raymond williams foundation, particularly, with which i am personally involved, is a vital voluntary organisation that utilises traditions of informal, often residential, community-based discourse on democracy and social justice, in line with williams’ lifelong social project, the creation of ‘an educated and participating democracy’ (williams 1961, 2001, p. 389). it does this through its support fund which was created to help adults – especially the financially and educationally disadvantaged – to attend annual residential lecture-based courses, and by helping to stimulate discussion on big social, political, philosophical and cultural themes through its support of public forums. this includes emerging informal networks such as philosophy in pubs (pips) – a community organisation which supports grassroots, community-based philosophy in public venues for people with a shared passion for inquiry – sci-bars, and pub/ cafe lectures and discussion circles generally. the foundation’s starting point for these networks is that community-university engagement, unlike its more broadly conceived cousin, ‘public’, is engagement which is by necessity complex and requires the long view, as williams asserted. it brings with it little obvious financial incentive. its cultural spaces in the voluntary sector and in adult education have been laid waste by funding cuts and the march of ‘plan x’, williams’ description of the impact of neo-liberalism, which can seem like the only discourse in town. it requires a process of building trust and mutuality over many years. so, whilst universities may present an ‘open door’ to ‘publics’ with which they are comfortable, i am minded of chomsky’s (1999) famous quote ‘freedom without opportunity is a devil’s gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal’. freedom means nothing without the opportunity and power to exercise it, and communities which are deemed ‘hard to reach’ are only so perhaps because there is not sufficient will to engage with them and because university systems and structures prevail against them. for me, as a pracademic, the raymond williams foundation version of informal adult education provides the space to critically investigate the rhetoric around engagement. we need this detailed scrutiny if we are to progress with community engagement, create freedom and opportunity, and forge social change in line with laing’s and watson’s vision. 166 | gateways | clancy references chomsky, n 1999, profit over people – neoliberalism and global order, seven stories press, new york, pp. 91–92. clancy, s 2011, ‘social justice and higher education: universities as agents of change in the context of the “big society”’, ma dissertation, university of nottingham. hefce 2006, ‘hefce strategic plan 2006–11’, higher education funding council, london, viewed 21 july 2015, www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/ hefce/2006. hefce 2014, ‘higher education business and community interaction survey’, viewed 30 june 2015, www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/ pubs/2014/201410/hefce2014_10.pdf. nccpe, viewed 5 january 2015, www.publicengagement.ac.uk. nccpe n.d., ‘the history of the national co-ordinating centre for public engagement’, viewed 21 july 2015, www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/ default/files/publication/history_of_the_nccpe.pdf. posner, p 2009, the pracademic: an agenda for re-engaging practitioners and academics’, public budgeting & finance, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 12–26. ref, viewed 20 may 2015, http://results.ref.ac.uk/results/selectuoa. the talloires network, viewed 21 may 2015, http://talloiresnetwork.tufts. edu/who-we-ar/. watson, d 2003, ‘universities and civic engagement: a critique and a prospectus’, keynote address presented at the 2nd biennial inside-out conference, the civic role of universities – charting uncertainty: capital, community and citizenship, brighton, uk. watson, d 2007, managing civic and community engagement, open university press, maidenhead, uk. williams, r 1961, the long revolution, chatto & windus, london; 2001, broadview press, canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/seven_stories_press http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/seven_stories_press http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2014/201410/hefce2014_10.pdf http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2014/201410/hefce2014_10.pdf http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publication/history_of_the_nccpe.pdf http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publication/history_of_the_nccpe.pdf http://results.ref.ac.uk/results/selectuoa http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/who-we-ar/ http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/who-we-ar/ transformative learning, tribal membership and cultural restoration a case study of an embedded native american service-learning project at a research university in the united states, there are 565 federally recognised native american tribal nations, all of which experience a host of challenges: lack of economic opportunities (cornell & kalt 2006; lynch & stretesky 2012; tighe 2014; weaver 2012), increased rates of mental health and substance abuse (goins et al. 2012; gone 2007; smokowski , evans, cotter, & webber 2014; west et al. 2012), and continued cultural loss resulting from historic practices of genocide and legal and social marginalisation (evanscampbell 2008; gone 2007; hartmann & gone 2014; ramirez & hammack 2014; writer 2001). unsurprisingly, these negative experiences also occur within settings of higher education. native american students’ educational expectations are lower than those of other minority groups (grande 2004; thompson 2012) and they experience the lowest college admission rates and the highest rates of attrition (kim 2011; mcclellan 2005). taken in totality, the social and educational statistics are staggering. in response, the us federal government and institutions of higher education have established programs, resources and services for native american students aimed at improving retention and preventing attrition. the us trio programs, for example, are federally funded outreach and support programs that provide under-represented and financially disadvantaged students with institutionalised educational support. while the programs are specifically for first-generation, low-income and disabled students, many of the participants are native american. one such trio program is upward bound, which targets underrepresented students and provides them with support to help them complete high school and enter a college program (us department of education 2017). while these programs are helpful in orienting native american students during their first years of college life, they do not address the specific historic or cultural needs of these students, which are likely to vary by tribal affiliation. where these programs do focus on tribal culture, they are pan-indian in nature. thus, they fail to take into account cultural influences resulting from the world view of the particular tribal nation. a growing body brent e sykes randall university joy pendley zermarie deacon university of oklahoma © 2017 by be sykes, j pendley & z deacon. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sykes, be, pendley, j & deacon, z 2017, ‘transformative learning, tribal membership and cultural restoration: a case study of an embedded native american service-learning project at a research university’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 204–228. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v10i1.5334 corresponding author: brent e sykes; bsykes@ru.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5334 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:bsykes@ru.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5334 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5334 205 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon of research illustrates the importance of tribal-specific cultural support and connection for native american students to succeed in college (grande 2004; guillory & wolverton 2008; james, west & madrid 2013; writer 2001). given that native american culture is not homogenous, fletcher (2010) has challenged tribal nations to create educational programming based upon their own epistemological belief systems, as opposed to westernised models. it is in this vein that we consider a tribal-initiated servicelearning project as a viable mechanism for linking specific tribal community needs with academic learning. this case is noteworthy because it was conceived of and funded by a tribal nation. purpose of the research we contend that institutions of higher education should respond to this cultural need by facilitating the adaptation of existing models of educational resource delivery, namely service-learning, within native american communities. consistent with this view, benson, harkavy & puckett (2007) argue that it is the moral responsibility of universities to improve the wellbeing of communities, and fehren (2010) considers universities as intermediaries in this process. moreover, tribal community strengths (i.e. resources and needs) should drive the process, and given the unique lived experiences of each tribal nation, the core values and goals of tribally directed service-learning projects should vary greatly. the purpose of this investigation was to examine the development and implementation of a service-learning project embedded within a campus-based tribal learning community at the university. this service-learning project was conceptualised within the context of a community-based participatory research (cbpr) collaboration (figure 1). cbpr involves a partnership that builds on the knowledge and skills of community members and researchers in a reciprocal manner to build capacity within the community. it has also been shown to be an effective strategy for developing action plans that help communities improve their health or education system (adams et al. 2014; ahari et al. 2012; castleden, morgan & neimanis 2008). in this case, the tribal nation sought out researchers at the university to develop programming and research capacity within the tribal nation. during this process, service-learning emerged as a rich means to develop culturally meaningful learning, and subsequent learning transformation, for all stakeholders (tribal nation undergraduate students and leaders) involved in the project. the principal research question that we address in this article is: how did tribal students and leaders come to understand the educational and cultural significance of this service-learning project? 206 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon tribe-university collaboration: year 1 tribal learning community: year 2 (first semester) servicelearning project: year 2 (second semester) theoretical framework transformative learning theory (mezirow 2000) serves as the theoretical framework by which we came to understand the cultural transformation of tribal members. we assert that servicelearning provided a pathway for native american tribal members to collectively experience indigenous-based transformative learning. this research advances the service-learning literature by demonstrating that service-learning is a culturally appropriate, highly adaptable, non-westernised option for marginalised groups to initiate and sustain highly impactful educational experiences. transformative learning theory is an adult learning theory that seeks to understand qualitative changes that may occur across the life course. it places value on both psychological (individual differences) and social (belief systems) components of learning (mezirow 1991). habits of mind are the filters by which we process information and make sense of the world around us. according to mezirow (2000), three conditions must be met for a transformation to occur: a disorienting dilemma, changes in initial frame of reference, and critical reflection. critical reflection is the process by which people make and ascribe meaning to critical incidents and life events. perspective shifts are often the result of disorienting dilemmas, which may be a singular event such as trauma or an accumulation of experiences. in the throes of disorientation, individuals must choose to engage in critical reflection, otherwise transformation will not occur. if individuals choose to engage in critical reflection, they may emerge with new perspectives through which they view figure 1: structure of collaboration 207 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon themselves and their surroundings. according to mezirow (2000), behavioural and attitudinal changes serve as evidence that transformational learning has occurred. a number of transformative learning theorists have challenged the theory, as originally conceived by mezirow, arguing that it places too much emphasis on rationality and fails to account for context (clark & wilson 1991; taylor 1997). on this point, taylor (2008) and brooks (2001) have considered the role of constructivism by placing increased emphasis on the role of culture and its impact on meaning-making. in addition, two critical transformative learning theorists, cunningham (1998) and lange (2004), have examined transformations in light of freire’s (1970) theoretical conception of critical consciousness-raising. freire argues that minorities might become marginalised by the majority and the social structures that represent majoritarian views. over time, marginalisation leads to oppression and false beliefs, which are created by the majority and become internalised by the minority in question. overcoming marginalisation involves the development of a critical consciousness that will not only make them aware of the structures that limit their community but will also give them the tools for fighting injustices (diemer et al. 2016; gutierrez 1995). for cunningham (1998), the transformative process remains individualised; however, consciousness-raising may entail a group of people undergoing similar processes. lange’s (2004) prime focus, however, is communal action. as she contends that transformation goes beyond epistemological shifts, her view is most conducive to tribal identity and membership. service-learning in native american communities service-learning is a highly effective pedagogical tool that links community service with classroom learning. in higher education settings, it is widely employed in both student affairs and course curricula (furco 1996; stewart & webster 2011). through welldesigned service-learning projects, students gain a deep sense of knowledge and a broadened world view, which may result in their challenging their own epistemological values and beliefs (blouin & perry 2009). given the history of forced removal and assimilation of native american tribal nations in the us, it cannot be assumed that tribal members will have access to and knowledge of their histories, family narratives, culture and traditions. indigenous service-learning involves tribal communities placing emphasis on their own unique values and world view (guffey 1997; roche et al. 2007) and from their tribal point of view (lipka 1991; semken 2005; steinman 2011). this is especially salient as institutionalised forms of education may suppress native american world views through the promotion of westernised or colonised world views (sykes 2014). in contrast, tribal servicelearning may provide a pedagogical opportunity for tribal values and traditions to drive learning by providing structured 208 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon opportunities for increased awareness of cultural traditions, belonging and civic responsibility that are commensurate with the values of indigenous communities (hall 1991; steinman 2011). methodology in this section, we discuss why we adopted cbpr as our orientation towards the research and then describe our thinking behind the case study approach we embraced after considerable consideration. in the section that follows we discuss our research positionality and philosophical orientation as these relate to the investigation. cbpr as an orientation cbpr is an approach or orientation that links community members and researchers as partners in the research process. cbpr emphasises the importance of cultural safety and requires a significant investment of time and dedication from all parties, as well as ongoing relationship building (minkler 2005). in cbpr, the community drives the research process, including the methods used for investigation, the interpretation of data and the application of results (metzler et al. 2003). cbpr is of particular relevance in native american communities because the communities themselves may question westernised education models’ devaluation of indigenous knowledge (grande 2004). historically, native american communities have been wary of research as it promotes objective ways of knowing and minimises particular tribal world views and belief systems (scheurich & young 1997; smith 1999). case study case study is a widely accepted research methodology that places value on the uniqueness of a phenomenon, event or experience (stake 1995; yin 2009). stake (1995) provides a three-fold typology of case study research: instrumental, collective, and intrinsic. instrumental case studies advance a field of study, collective case studies involve a grouping of cases, and intrinsic case studies are guided by a comprehensive understanding of a case. in the latter, the case may initially be puzzling, but themes emerge through analysis. initially, we focused on the significance of the tribal learning community; however, through reflexivity and analysis, we came to appreciate service-learning as the central force in this intrinsic case. emergent design as indicated in figure 1, this project spanned two years. through prolonged exposure and an emergent design, we came to understand the case through various theoretical lenses. case study researcher bob stake (1995) proposes that viewing a phenomenon from multiple perspectives ultimately enhances researcher understanding. initially, we understood this project through the lens of historical trauma, which is the intergenerational transfer of systemic trauma (brave heart & debruyn 1998). decolonisation literature (gone 2008; kirmayer, gone & moses 2014) challenged 209 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon us to become critical of a narrow definition of historical trauma, as it could further frame the experiences of native americans according to westernised perspectives (fletcher 2013). through immersion in the case, we came to appreciate the educational impacts of the service-learning project, especially given undergraduate students’ testing of tribal identities and tribal leaders reflecting upon prior conceptions of citizenship. charmaz, denzin & lincoln (2003) view sensitisation as the process by which researchers’ senses become attuned to underlying ideas and concepts. in effect, we became sensitised to transformations occurring in real time and, ultimately, we came to understand the case through the lens of transformative learning theory. thus, language, tone and analysis reflect renewal. in our view, this is culturally appropriate as the tribal nation views education and cultural connections as central values. as cbpr researchers, we recognise the importance of criticality in indigenous research; thus, in the implications of this research, we consider the possible intersection of transformative servicelearning and decolonisation literature. participants participants included tribal students involved in the servicelearning project embedded within the learning community (n=24) and tribal leaders (n=6). sources of data as case study research seeks to gain a robust understanding of a phenomenon, researchers should include two or more sources of data (yin 2009). in this case, data came from three broad sources: direct observations of participants, documents (emails, news articles and a radio show transcript), and participant observation and researcher field notes. sources of data were coded and categorised independently by all three researchers, thereby establishing increased credibility. additionally, triangulation occurred through cross-analysis between data sources. data analysis did not begin until the conclusion of the research team’s engagement with the partnership, thereby minimising conflicts of interest and research bias. researcher positionality researchers bs and jp worked directly with the learning community students, keeping field notes. researcher zd conducted an evaluation of the program, which included participants’ interviews and survey completion. consistent with cbpr principles, the first author, bs, is a tribal member and was employed contractually by the tribal nation to facilitate the learning community and servicelearning project. jp (an anthropologist) represented the university in the partnership and zd (a community psychologist) conducted a first-year process evaluation of the learning community and subsequent service-learning project. jp began working with the tribal nation in 2009 to develop a research program and from that work the idea of developing 210 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon a learning community emerged. bs and zd began to work with the tribal nation in 2010. the first learning community began during the 2010–2011 academic year and continues to this day. researchers still meet periodically with tribal leaders to discuss the objectives of the learning community, including current iterations of service-learning projects. the tribal nation chose to be deidentified because it continues to be engaged in partnership with researchers and the university. the research context as case study research is highly contextualised, it is imperative to note the setting in which this research occurred. in this section, we highlight central features of the two institutions represented in this research: the native american tribal nation and the university. the university the university is the only ‘very high research activity’ higher education institution in the state, as identified by the carnegie classification of institutions of higher education. it is also the largest in the state, with a total undergraduate enrolment of approximately 30,000, which includes a native american enrolment of over 1000. it provides a host of academic and social support services for under-represented and first-generation students. geographically, the university is outside the boundaries of the collaborative tribal nation jurisdiction. the tribal nation in the united states, ‘indian country’ represents land that has been placed in a federal trust as the direct result of signed treaties (baird & goble 2008; davis 2010; newton 1984; schneider 2010; warren 2012). while some trusts are noted as reservations, in which tribal nations have sole ownership of the land, the majority of trust land in the us is allotted land. in this latter form, tribal sovereignty exists provided it is in conjunction with federal laws, and nonindians can own property or businesses and operate on the land. the tribal nation in this case was guaranteed allotted land (totalling over 18 000 kilometres (7000 square miles) in treaties. in terms of population size, the tribal nation is quite large as it falls within the top 10 per cent of membership of all 565 federally recognised tribal nations. it has a three-tier system of government similar to the us government (executive, judiciary, legislative). historically, the tribal nation was located in what is now the south-east united states, which resulted in early contact with europeans and the mixing of bloodlines. as a result, many tribal members are phenotypically light-skinned. forced removal to indian territory (predominantly the state of oklahoma) resulted in land allotments, which was a systematic effort to break communal identity and accelerate assimilation (davidson 2011; dippel 2014; fletcher 2013; foreman 1974; thornton 1997). today, the effects of assimilation are evident across indian country, as native americans have lost much of their language, rituals and other forms of culture. 211 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon for this tribal nation, membership was legally defined by the us federal government through the dawes treaty (1897–1934). thus, tribal members are dispersed across a wide geographic area and have varying degrees of contact with other tribal members. moreover, some tribal members (including one-third of the participants in this study) reside outside these boundaries altogether. cultural loss, then, has had significant implications for the forming of existing tribal world views, as many present-day tribal members have lost contact with their cultural traditions. today, the tribal nation invests heavily in the physical, mental and social wellbeing of its tribal members through varied services and programs. as a result of a recent increase in financial resources, the tribal nation is actively developing educational initiatives and programs to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of tribal members, including providing significant higher education scholarships for all eligible members. the tribal nation has extensive experience in creating a host of pk–12 educational programs (head start, performing and visual arts academies, summer programs, mentoring), but has only recently begun to develop programming for higher education. project narrative: service-learning transforming native american learning this section serves two purposes. first, it discusses the chronological progression of the case by providing detail on the learning community and an overview of critical steps in the service-learning project (figure 2). second, it provides a framework for analysis. year one: collaboration begins the larger cbpr collaboration within which this study is framed began when the tribal nation requested to collaborate with the university. this relationship focused on developing a culturally appropriate health-care centre for the tribal nation. the second and third authors of this article were asked to work with tribal leaders to develop culturally appropriate health-care programs for the tribal nation’s department of family services. the researchers worked with tribal health providers to develop the ‘strong family survey’ – a brief assets assessment designed to better understand how tribal members defined a strong tribal family. the tribal nation desired to reach out to tribal students at the university. while approximately 180 tribal members attended figure 2: progression of collaboration year 1 —collaboration begins —strong family survey 1 year 3 —tribal service learning i —presentation to governor —tribal service learning ii year 2 —learning community —nas course —service-learning project; strongfamily survey 2 — workshops i & ii —administration 212 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon the university and received tribal scholarships, there were no tribal-specific programs for students. a faculty member suggested a learning community as a means to connect with students, provide them with supports to assist them to be successful at university and possibly increase their connection to the tribal nation. a learning community is a cohort model that creates a peer-orientated community, where members come together to participate in educational or cultural activities that increase their connectedness within a larger institution (tinto 2003). in terms of first-year college experiences, george kuh (2008) cites both learning communities and service-learning as high impact practices for first-year college students. year two: learning community and service-learning the three authors developed a learning community that offered students access to academic support, group-based social events, opportunities for professional development with tribal members, and cultural programming designed to connect them to their tribal identity. upon implementation, we discovered that many of our students were knowledgeable about the process of higher education. even first-generation students quickly accessed existing university resources designed for early academic intervention and social support, thereby rendering the academic aspects of the learning community redundant. however, in contrast, the majority of students had limited exposure to tribal culture and traditions. learning community programming was thus shifted to promote students’ need for high-impact cultural experiences. vaughan (2002) notes the significance of collaborative environments for first-generation and under-represented groups, as it leads to joint identity development. participation in the learning community was voluntary and initially open to tribal freshmen at the university. thus, tribal students in the project were self-selected. forty tribal freshmen were invited to participate via letters, letters to parents, emails and phone. ultimately, 24 students participated. given the unique lived history of the tribal nation (some tribal members live outside tribal boundaries and in some cases out of the state), several of the students had not previously had the opportunity to participate in tribal activities or events. learning community activities took place on a bi-weekly basis on and off campus. these consisted of social and cultural activities such as the creation of cultural artefacts, community service events and field trips to tribal events. interactive cultural events such as language classes and dance troupe demonstrations were included with experiential education in mind. for some of the students, this was the first time they were exposed to tribal language and dance. these activities were extracurricular, which became a problem as students became more involved on campus and had decreased time for communal activities. we therefore sought an institutional mechanism to allow for learning community activities to become part of their accredited coursework. 213 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon in response to this emergent need, the authors approached the native american studies (nas) program at the university to modify one of its four sections of ‘introduction to nas’ for our students. they agreed, and the new course included an emphasis on this tribal nation’s history and culture. in this class, the learning community participants were able to complete a research project on their tribal culture. this class helped deepen tribal knowledge for these students. during this time, the authors met monthly with the executive committee in charge of the collaboration. tribal leaders would learn about the progress of the learning community activities and we would all brainstorm about next steps. tribal leaders desired an experiential learning activity to link new-found cultural knowledge and advance the importance of tribal service. incidentally, the timing of the nas course coincided with the second iteration of a tribal survey, which was a component of the larger collaborative partnership. we, the researchers, suggested that students could play a pivotal service role in developing a new version of the survey, which sought to assess ‘what is a strong tribal family’. tribal leaders agreed, as this was consistent with goals of the course and learning community. from correspondence between an author and a tribal professional: the goal of this project is to create and validate a survey that can be taken to other meeting points, listening conferences, gatherings, etc. to develop a broader understanding of strong families and how the [tribal nation] can provide support for those families...second, this project is a pilot for service learning with the [learning community] students. their participation in the project will be both an educational process and a service project for the nation. our goal is that they will come away from the project with a greater appreciation of the helping fields and a great appreciation of the [tribal nation] as a cultural heritage and an institution. thus, at the behest of the tribal nation, the authors planned a two-part workshop over the course of two days. part i provided a brief orientation to cbpr, an overview of survey methods and a seminar discussion on historic trauma. during part ii of the workshop, students worked together to construct the second-year strong family survey. students were challenged to conceptualise their own feelings of tribal identity and cultural loss, and to understand the impact of historic trauma and their family history. they learned to critique much of the history they had been taught in state schools. for instance, there was a prolonged, critical discussion on the us boarding school movement as a means to not only assimilate native american youth but also annihilate tribal language. more importantly, the students came to understand the significance of cultural loss. in the process, they experienced solidarity, which is consistent with freiean approaches to consciousness raising (diemer et al. 2016). based upon their physical characteristics and lived experiences, students developed a question on phenotype for the 214 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon survey. this was potentially problematic given the sociopolitical issues of blood quantum and tribal membership (demallie 2009; green 2007; tallbear 2003; villazor 2008). after the workshop, researchers submitted a completed survey to the tribal institutional review board (irb) on behalf of the students. the irb considered striking out the question on phenotype. the fledgling tribal members (students), however, responded by reiterating the significance of determining if phenotype was an important aspect of a strong tribal family. the irb allowed the question to remain. the tribal leaders suggested the annual children’s fair as the site for data collection. there, various service departments within the tribal nation set up booths to provide educational and interactive activities for families, including games. thus, the atmosphere was geared towards children and family friendly. there was a host of traditional exhibitions on areas such as storytelling, dance and language. when we arrived, the students were visibly nervous. studentconstructed surveys in hand, we crossed the red dirt arena. we brought university t-shirts as an incentive for completing surveys, which drew strong interest. we administered all one hundred surveys during the first hour. this positive response helped the students to feel more comfortable. children, many of them wouldbe first generation students themselves, showered the learning community students with questions about what college was like. the students eagerly responded to questions and encouraged them to do well in school so they could attend college too. tribal parents smiled. the tribal dance troupe, consisting of mostly elders, recognised our students from learning community activities and invited them to join in. the group returned to the survey booth and, unexpectedly, the tribal executive committee approached, meeting the students for the first time. up to this point, the committee had been responsible for administrative duties, but never had they interacted with participants. we facilitated the interaction by introducing students to the director and other tribal leaders. the conversation was lively. leaders quizzed the students on their majors, previous experiences with the tribal nation, and most importantly their views on the service-learning project and learning community. students conveyed their shared emotional experiences and newly formed tribal identities. at that moment, the tribal president (i.e. governor) emerged. he too expressed sincere appreciation for the students making time to be involved in the project; the committee had been providing him with reports. the students were literally awestruck. they were astounded that tribal leaders were thanking them. in a tribal nation of 30,000 plus members, this was a distinct honour. the students quickly flipped the script by profusely thanking the tribal governor and professionals for this opportunity to serve the tribal nation. the long van ride back to campus provided the students an opportunity to reflect on the academic year. it felt like a commencement celebration. students’ remarks on being native 215 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon american were markedly different from what they were just nine months ago at the beginning of the semester. gone was the mention of blood quantum, replaced with comments such as ‘i wonder … who [our] common ancestors are?’ ‘what are we [students] going to do next?’ and ‘i can’t believe the tribal governor thanked us’. collectively, students reflected upon the most embarrassing and fun moments of the past year. and in the process they recounted how they had grown from being nervous about not knowing their tribal history to being eager to learn more. year two and beyond initial funding plans for the learning community and the subsequent service-learning project were uncertain; however, based upon an independent evaluation, the tribal nation extended both. in order to continue nas involvement in the project (making the project co-curricular), the executive committee made a remarkable decision to devote resources to the program in the form of a financial donation towards the faculty member’s contract and allocation of tribal staff to serve as cultural experts for the course. in effect, this institutionalised the service-learning project by creating an upper-division course titled ‘tribal service-learning’. thus, this case illustrates fletcher’s (2010) assertion that tribal nations should exert their own sovereignty and create their own novel programming. the new tribal service-learning course differed from the original in a few key ways. first, it was open to university students of all tribal nations. second, with the guidance of an instructor, students examined existing tribal programs and services, conducted an informal needs analysis and, with the assistance of cultural experts, were tasked with developing a curriculum proposal. ultimately, participants created ‘one heart, one beat’, an experiential program designed to highlight the importance of social dance and culture. for this tribal nation and many others that experienced severe cultural loss, social dance is one of the few practices that has remained intact; thus, it has strong cultural significance (axtmann 2001; murphy 2007; wilson & boatright 2011). tribal leaders gathered for the student presentation of their final project. given the service-learning project results at the children’s fair, tribal leaders had come to have high expectations of the participants. the presentation surpassed them. from field notes: ‘they look so professional,’ a tribal administrator confided to me [researcher]. i smiled, knowing she was in for a treat. the lights dimmed and we watched the student-created video ‘one heart, one beat’, which detailed an eight-week social dance program. the program was inter-generational, connecting tribal elders as instructors, students as facilitators, and youth as participants. a student explained, ‘we are not the experts on social dance and feel like the kids [adolescence] would respond better to an elder 216 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon who commands more respect. we can identify with them [the adolescents], so we see our role as bridging the gap between young and old.’ as evidence of their excitement, tribal leaders arranged for the distinction of having students present their work to the tribal governor and his executive cabinet. on presentation day to the governor and his cabinet, the students were visibly nervous, yet excited to showcase the passion they had poured into their work. at the conclusion of the presentation, tribal leaders provided a standing ovation and the students beamed with pride. on the spot, the governor asked the students to implement the project during the upcoming summer. thus, the course ‘tribal service-learning ii’ was created for the summer semester and students prepared a working budget and implemented the program. analysis in this section, we analyse the case through transformative learning theory. in doing so, we contend that service-learning became a mechanism to promote cultural restoration for this native american community. kitchenham’s (2008) summative assessment of mezirow’s perspective of transformative learning serves as the basis of the analysis (table 1). with this as our theoretical framework, we assess stakeholder experiences as evidence of transformation (phases categorised by case events in parentheses). lastly, we consider institutionalisation as evidence of organisational transformation. phase transformative learning action service-learning activity participant quotes as evidence na previous frame of reference na (previous views). ‘i had no tribal influences besides mail and financial support… it was not a constant connection’ (lance 2009). 1 disorienting dilemma participants enroll in learning community and ‘introduction to nas’ and are confronted with tribal ways of knowing and new cultural experiences. ‘how much are you?’ (referring to blood quantum) 2 self-examination of feelings of guilt or shame workshop i: participants share oral family histories including guilt and shame over lack of tribal genealogy and culture. students share stories about suppressed culture. ‘i didn’t know what it meant to be a member of the tribe.’ table 1: ‘ten phases of transformative learning & corresponding servicelearning activity’, adapted from kitchenham (2008) 217 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon 3 critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions workshop i: participants come to understand that their lack of knowledge is not their fault nor is it the fault of their parents or grandparents, but a product of forced cultural assimilation, i.e. historical trauma. ‘we have our own dress and language….there is more to our tribe, not all indians are the same’ (lance 2009). 4 recognition that one’s discontent and the transfor-mation process is shared; others have negotiated a similar change participants experience a collective ‘aha’ moment, in recognising similarities across their stories. instructorled discussion on the cultural genocidal practices of land allotment to break communal ties and boarding schools as a means to extinguish language broaden perspectives. ‘we’ve become good friends….it’s amazing to know you have that connection; it helps you realize they are there and you are part of a bigger family’ (lance 2009). 5 exploration of options for new roles, relationships and actions participants question their role in promoting cultural knowledge and awareness through their responsibility for constructing the survey for the tribal nation’s strong family research project. ‘my mom said her parents didn’t want her speaking our language because teachers would punish her.’ 6 planning of a course of action workshop ii: participants tasked with developing survey. not applicable because this is an action. 7 acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementation workshop ii: overview of survey methods including question development. not applicable because this is an action. 8 provisional trying of new roles administration: participants experience ‘being’ community members by attending children’s fair, interacting with tribal members and meeting tribal professionals including governor. ‘it is really interesting; it’s nice to know where you are from, and to have a cultural identity’ (lance 2009). 9 building of competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships participants’ reflections on identity and consideration of how they can contribute to the tribal nation. ‘i learned about culture and was able to participate with people from the tribe; all of us are looking for ways to stay active; we don’t want to give it up. it has been a successful pilot run’ (lance 2009). 218 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon 10 a reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s perspective year two and beyond: executive committee continues funding for learning community, participants present to tribal governor, tribal nation invests in servicelearning project with nas, participants enrol in tribal servicelearning i & ii. ‘through helping us we can help others later; the goal of the 8-week program is foster a network of support …. and to provide the kids a rich, deep cultural experience so they will feel more connected with their culture’ (lance 2009). the learning community (laying the groundwork) in our view, it is important to note the role of the learning community, especially cultural activities in creating connection among participants. moreover, given the cultural focus of the case, we consider communal experiences as foundational for collective transformative learning to occur. curriculum and cultural programming were critical, as they challenged participants’ habits of mind. a student’s quote that exemplifies this process are: ‘i didn’t know what to expect. i grew up in dallas and the only other [tribal] people i ever met were my cousins.…we’ve became good friends, it’s amazing how we all have that connection’ (lance 2009). this student felt that the learning community had given her an opportunity to make connections to other tribal members. service-learning workshop part i: phases 1–4 according to mezirow (2000), a disorienting dilemma may be the result of a single traumatic experience or an accumulation of several incidents. in this case, we assert that the communal discourse in part i of the service-learning workshop met the definition of the latter. this discourse propelled students into dilemmas. the executive committee decided that the children’s fair survey would be an appropriate project for the learning community students to fulfil their service-learning project. thus, the curriculum of workshop i was deliberately constructed with an orientation to the strong family survey, and it provided a forum where participants could share family narratives and reflect on their significance. an important feature of this discourse is that participants came to realise that their conceptions of identity were not unique to them, but shared among others. due to forced relocation, breaking of communal ties and cultural assimilation, there is historical and cultural loss among many native americans (evans-campbell 2008). a by-product of this is an incomplete and fractured understanding of cultural practices and language. through prompts, we asked the students to talk about their personal and familial experiences and knowledge of their tribal nation. it was in the telling of these stories that they began to express discomfort with their histories, thereby potentially amplifying emotional effects. 219 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon gradually, participants began to display discontent and agitation as they shared these stories, which may speak to an individual’s recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared, and that others have negotiated a similar change (kitchenham 2008). indeed, the emotional and shared feature of this socially constructed experience seems to have magnified meaning making. jointly, students came to identify and define what constituted a tribal world view for them. examples include ‘my mom said her parents didn’t want her speaking our language because teachers would punish them’ and ‘my grandmother told me the same thing’. due to the strong rapport cultivated in the learning community, it is likely they felt safe in investigating their indigenous identities by dredging up oral family histories. participants’ willingness to engage in this difficult discussion challenged deeper underlying assumptions of the world. while these instances regarding language echo that very first learning community discussion on blood quantum and phenotype, they now understood that their plight of identity may not be so different from that of previous generations. for instance, when discussing the cultural loss of language, one participant noted, ‘i think my great grandmother was in a boarding school’, which is evidence of how the loss of valuable family histories can potentially lead to an insecure cultural identity. service-learning workshop part ii: phases 5–7 this case illustrates that service-learning can play a crucial role in promoting transformative learning because it provides curricular pathways for students to test new roles and relationships and formulate action. the project became a conduit for collective agency, which is regarded as the efficacious belief of the group in achieving a similar goal (goddard, hoy & hoy 2004). due to collective transformations occurring as a result of disorientating dilemmas, two student characteristics that had recently served as a limitation to students’ development (lack of cultural knowledge and insecurity of blood quantum) became assets. the testing and exploration of these new-found cultural identities were strengthened as students developed the survey designed to help determine ‘what is a strong tribal family?’ from a cbpr perspective, the creation of the survey radically changed social dynamics by empowering students. evidence of critical reflection can be found in their collective reflection upon their own lived experiences. this was particularly apparent in the ways that the two surveys differed. the first children’s fair survey was faculty-driven, thus the questions were from a westernised perspective. for example, statements like, ‘a family that maintains traditions and older ways of doing things’ (traditional) and ‘a family that consists only of immediate family members, a nuclear family (e.g., only parents and children)’ (western) were both listed. when the students developed the second survey, it looked very different. 220 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon the student or tribal-driven survey was more focused on collective history and relationships. for example, the students developed several questions about history, such as ‘strong families pass on family history, learn from their elders, participate in ceremonies and pass on values through storytelling’. the students were also interested in the relationship between strong families and their connection to the tribal nation. sample questions included: strong families ‘see each other often’ and ‘do activities together’. given their ongoing transformation, students created questions regarding cultural identity and phenotype, which drew ire from the tribal nation irb. upon reviewing the survey items, the irb flagged a few of these items and requested revisions. students agreed to change every item that the irb had flagged, except for the phenotype question, as they believed it represented a significant issue for tribal individuals and families. tribal leaders and the irb finally agreed to the question. the inclusion of this sensitive item is evidence of students becoming empowered to play a role in tribal relations, as well as tribal leaders’ expanded notions of tribal membership. ultimately, having tribal members – the students – develop the survey proved to intensify the cbpr effects of the collaboration. this second survey serves as evidence of the students reflecting upon their family histories and connection to the tribal nation. service-learning implementation – the children’s fair: phases 8–9 survey development provided students with a means to give back to the tribal nation by trying on the role of citizen. from this view, approval from the irb and tribal leaders served as a means of acceptance and validation. while the workshop experiences facilitated a collective realisation that they had something of value to contribute to the tribal nation, implementation of the survey at the children’s fair heightened this sense of civic responsibility and provided an opportunity for students to interact with tribal youth, elders and leaders. these interactions reinforced their cultural identities and validated their perception that they could contribute to the tribal nation in a beneficial way. one student noted: ‘i learned about culture and was able to participate with people from the tribe’. and, another: ‘all of us are looking for ways to stay active; we don’t want to give it up. it has been a successful pilot run.’ thus, developing the survey and implanting it as a servicelearning project helped solidify their transformation from students to tribal members. the service-learning project served to raise the collective consciousness of tribal students, thereby fostering epistemological shifts in perspectives necessary for transformative learning. this process of critical reflection resulted in deep cultural connection and subsequent transformations. consistent with transformative learning theory, martin (2007) weighs the importance of culture, identity and education. she contends that identity is contextual, 221 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon may take on multiple dimensions and is heavily influenced by culture. this can be seen in the discussion on the way home from the community fair, as students actively reflected on tribal culture, learning and identity. year two and beyond: phase 10 as this research is embedded within a larger partnership, in this section we consider three additional forms of evidence that servicelearning provided a pathway towards cultural restoration in this case. this approach is consistent with transformative learning theory as it focuses on psychological, attitudinal and behavioural facets of change (mezirow 2000). thus, it is necessary to look beyond the service-learning project to seek behavioural evidence of transformation. first, at the conclusion of the service-learning project, students volunteered to become peer mentors and completed two three-credit hour courses (each three-hour course is one semester worth of credit) to develop a program for tribal youth. as they continued coursework and career preparation, they were fully committed to integrating their new identities with their former sense of selves. martin (2007) refers to this process as ‘gift recirculation’. for her, the linkage of identity and education creates powerful experiences, and being so moved, individuals yearn to share them with others. over the course of one short academic year, many students incurred rapid transformations. initially, a common shared feature among them was that they perceived little opportunity to give back to the tribal nation. recirculating the gift of cultural identity through collective action (through service-learning i & ii courses, presentation to the tribal governor and being relied upon to implement an eight-week summer program) became a powerful force for solidifying transformations. second, the development and implementation of one heart, one beat provided the students with an opportunity to articulate their vision of a remedy for intergenerational cultural loss. engaging in social dance was an emotional experience, which they wished to share with other tribal adolescents. viewing themselves as facilitators and tribal elders as teachers suggests an ontological shift from westernised individualised education towards communal education. this echoes the research on transformative and restorative learning by lange (2004). rendering elders as teachers is consistent with tribal ontological beliefs in cultural renewal and in preserving indigenous ways of knowing. third, the service-learning project unexpectedly galvanised all stakeholders to continue collaborative work: both the tribal nation and the university institutionalised components of the project across multiple years. specifically, the learning community is now in its fifth year and has expanded to two additional higher education institutions in the state. the native american studies program at the university extended the permanent service-learning course, and it remains opens to all students, not just this tribal 222 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon nation. institutionalisation is regarded as evidence of sustainability in higher education environments (yarime et al. 2012). in addition, as mezirow (2000) and others consider behavioural change as evidence of transformation, we highlight the importance of organisational institutionalisation and consider it further evidence of cultural transformation. finally, service-learning has also become an institutionalised practice for the tribal nation, as it remains nested within the learning community model. conclusion this case has significant value for indigenous nations seeking to exert sovereignty as well as other communities that, through oppression, have experienced marginalisation, especially in educational settings. we contend that service-learning is a significant mechanism whereby disenfranchised groups can advance their own values, as well as notions of communal education and tribal membership, in higher educational settings and beyond. for indigenous communities, in particular, it is important to underscore that service-learning can be culturally appropriate if it places value on non-westernised epistemology and values, and the lived history of specific tribal nations (or communities). as discussed in this case, tribal nation community needs (and thus service-learning projects) will vary based upon a community’s strengths and challenges. for example, this tribal nation has exerted its sovereignty by developing a strong infrastructure and extensive resources; however, the challenges of developing an educational model appropriate for higher education and shepherding tribal identity tacitly guided the evolution of this service-learning project. thus, for this tribal nation, servicelearning came to foster cultural connection and transformation by linking life experiences, cultural identity, and views of service and tribal membership. it is likely that other tribal nations or communities may choose to focus on economic or health needs, or a host of other pressing needs. in our view, this case, in particular, teaches us two key lessons. first, we cannot assume that students from marginalised communities possess the cultural knowledge to meaningfully engage in service-learning, even within their own communities. as such, to increase the likelihood of service-learning being transformative, community members and educators should work in tandem to provide relevant learning experiences epistemologically grounded in community values (blouin & perry 2009; guffey 1997). second, tribal identity is cultivated through experiential activities. not only did service-learning cement participants’ notions of service and giving back, but it also expanded the tribal leaders’ views of what young tribal members are capable of achieving, as evidenced by their willingness to green light the courses service-learning i & ii. 223 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon this research also expands upon notions of critical transformative learning (cunningham 1998; lange 2004) by leveraging cbpr as a means to raise consciousness from tribal perspectives. doing so provided a deep learning experience and cultural connection for the students, and broadened tribal conceptions of tribal membership. at the outset, cultural identities were weak, but the service-learning project provided a means for them to jointly transform and create understanding of how they contributed to a stronger tribal nation. in addition, the tribal professionals and the tribal governor were appreciative of the students’ work and institutionalised service-learning in higher education for students of this tribal nation and others. these acts provide an opportunity for cultural restoration of the larger tribal community. finally, this case not only represents gains for tribal nations, cbpr research and servicelearning, but provides an alternative framework to further explore the roles of historic trauma and decolonisation literature. initially, we approached this project as a possible remedy to historic trauma (duran & duran 1995; gone 2007), but the project evolved to using a transformative learning theory framework. transformative learning theory, as a framework, does not negate the role of historical trauma; rather, understanding cultural loss creates a disorientating dilemma and medium for transformation. if the individual engages in reflection, then cultural connections may ensue. in this vein, service-learning provides a practical, educational means to facilitate consciousness raising, which is consistent with present-day views of the decolonisation literature. for example, gone (2008) and kirmayer, gone and moses (2014) maintain that tribal nations and other marginalised groups should work towards addressing ongoing sources of exclusion and discrimination. this case challenges indigenous educators to consider the importance of creating epistemological shifts by building cultural connection in the face of disconnection. for our participants, this created a strong antidote to colonial viewpoints. future researchers could further explore the linkage between decolonisation, transformative learning theory and servicelearning. viewed through these lenses, culturally connected tribal members can become assets in contributing to the remediation of colonialism and historic trauma by playing a deliberate, formative role in the construction of their community’s future. this case thus provides a blueprint for the application of transformative servicelearning projects in multiple other contexts. notes: the researchers received no funding for this research. the native american tribal nation discussed in this case continues to implement and expand service-learning projects. for these reasons it has elected to be de-identified. references adams, a, scott, j, prince, r & williamson, a 2014, ‘using community advisory boards to reduce environmental barriers to health in american 224 | gateways | sykes, pendley & deacon indian communities, wisconsin 2007–2012’, preventing chronic 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‘effects of cooperative learning on achievement and attitude among students of color’, the journal of educational research, vol. 95, no. 6, p. 359. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209596610 villazor, r 2008, ‘blood quantum land laws and the race versus political identity dilemma’, california law review, vol. 96, no. 3, p. 801. weaver, h 2012, ‘urban and indigenous: the challenges of being a native american in the city’, journal of community practice, vol. 20, p. 470. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2012.732001 west, a, williams, e, suzukovich, e, strangeman, k & novins, d 2012, ‘a mental health needs assessment of urban american indian youth and families’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 49, p. 441. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9474-6 wilson, a & boatright, m 2011, ‘one adolescent’s construction of native identity in school: “speaking with dance and not in words and writing”’, research in the teaching of english, vol. 45, no. 3, p. 252. writer, j 2001, ‘identifying the identified: the need for critical exploration of native american identity within educational contexts’, action in teacher education, vol. 22, no. 4, p. 40. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.200 1.10463028 yarime, m, trencher, g, mino, t, scholz, r, olsson, l, ness, b & rotmans, j 2012, ‘establishing sustainability science in higher education institutions: towards an integration of academic development, institutionalization, and stakeholder collaborations’, sustainability science, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 101. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-012-0157-5 yin, r 2009, case study research: design and methods, sage publications, london. https://doi.org/10.1353/wic.2003.0008 https://doi.org/10.1177/074171369704800104 https://doi.org/10.1177/074171369704800104 https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.301 https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.301 https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072712471501 https://www2.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/index.html https://www2.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/index.html https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209596610 https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2012.732001 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9474-6 https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2001.10463028 https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2001.10463028 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-012-0157-5 editorial: the engaged university welcome to the 10-year anniversary issue of gateways. the two collaborative university-community research centres that founded the journal – shopfront at the university of technology sydney and the center for urban research and learning (curl) at loyola university chicago – celebrated their respective 20th anniversaries in the past two years. it seems counterintuitive that two local, community-engaged centres would establish an international journal. however, from the beginning, our centres and the journal have recognised the importance of breaking down boundaries in producing and sharing knowledge. one boundary has been the university-community divide, which gateways and its contributors have striven to overcome. we have been part of a movement. lawrence s. bacow, who was chair of the steering committee of the international tallories network, which promotes university engagement, has noted positively of this trend: in universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems – combating poverty, improving public health, and restoring environmental quality. brick by brick around the world, the engaged university is replacing the ivory tower (bacow 2011). another boundary has been the national border divide. the more we have engaged in rigorous community-engaged research, the more we have recognised the need to share this information and connect researchers, community leaders and activists across the globe. increased access to evolving communication technologies internationally have made it easier and more affordable for local researchers to communicate from one continent to another. in past decades, international work could only be effectively done through a larger national or international intermediary organisation. today, the dramatically increased accessibility to, and lower costs of, international communications to broad sectors of the population has facilitated direct, local-to-local communications. sharing information via the internet and by global videophil nyden paul ashton pauline o’loughlin © 2017 by p nyden, p ashton & p o’loughlin. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: nyden, p, ashton, p & o’loughlin, p 2017, ‘editorial: the engaged university’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 1–7. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v10i1.5533 corresponding author: phil nyden pnyden@luc.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5533 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:kworton@wlu.ca mailto:kworton@wlu.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5533 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5533 2 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin conferencing is an everyday occurrence now. free e-journals such as gateways can reach an international community of scholars, practitioners and grassroots activists easily in ways that traditional academic publications can not. in addition to just reporting on participatory research, journal articles can produce direct links among members of this growing community. the journal and its supportive network of universities and community partners can also stimulate new ideas and seed new projects. we cannot overemphasise the importance of the support from our respective universities in making the first 10 years of gateways a success. this support first started with the creation of shopfront and curl. twenty years ago, the university of technology sydney and loyola university chicago each supported research centres that were committed to including community partners as active participants in research – providing ‘chairs’ for them at the ‘research table’ where new ideas emerge, and where research gets designed, coordinated and published. previously reserved for credentialled academics, shopfront and curl changed the rules and invited equally knowledgeable community members to the table. it was a bold move to recognise the value of combining university knowledge and community knowledge, and the centres continue to do so in an evolving environment. in their discussion of what we would call the final stage of the corporatisation of the tertiary sector – and what slaughter & rhoades (2009) called ‘academic capitalism’ – munck et al. (2014) have rightly observed: higher education internationally is currently facing a funding crisis and a crisis of perspectives. there is an increasing turn toward what we might call the commercialization or commodification of knowledge. the turn toward the community or the discovery of a third mission alongside teaching and research may provide an alternative strategy for higher education, which might help it to better fulfil its role as a public good. secondly, through their encouragement of shopfront and curl and some additional financial and technical support for the journal, the two universities deserve credit. uts epress provided the platform on which to build gateways. in addition to paul ashton’s experience as editor of public history review, the press provided a well-designed system for soliciting, reviewing and editing articles. the centres, supplemented by their respective universities, also provided the necessary financial support for editorial staff of an e-journal committed to free access to users in all countries. the third form of support came not only from our universities, but every universities connected with the scholars, local research projects and community partners associated with the articles published in gateways over 10 volumes. gateways authors and their research teams are front-door entry points to 3 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin longstanding international networks. universities themselves, including the scores of disciplines and sub-disciplines, have very impressive national and international networks. whether through an institution’s various discipline-based associations, annual conferences or annual journals, academic-to-academic networks are central to furthering knowledge within scholarly networks. gateways authors bring a variety of ties to these international networks. community partner co-authors also bring ties to national and international networks of non-government organisations, government policy-makers and activists. in the 2008 inaugural issue of gateways, we promised to ‘fill a gap created by the sparse number of journals which publish outcomes of community-engaged research and work concerning community engagement’ (nyden et al. 2008). we have succeeded by many measures, and we continue to grow. in 2016 we had over 10 000 readers from 85 countries. measured by number of visits to the gateways website, our readers’ top-ten home countries are australia, united states, canada, united kingdom, kenya, india, south africa, malaysia, the philippines and indonesia. gateways articles are actively used by our readers. almost 23 000 articles were downloaded in 2016, a 22-fold increase from the 1075 downloads just four years earlier in 2012. the journal has also established a foothold among academic users. in 2013, there were 233 citations of gateways articles in other academic publications; this grew to 475 in 2015. due to a two-year lag in the article publication/citation process, our download figures imply that these citations are likely to increase dramatically in the next year or two. on the one hand, the numbers are a confirmation of our journal’s reach to a larger international readership. on the other hand, we know that gateways articles are actively used by both researchers and practitioners/activists to understand and further their work. we have succeeded in becoming a go-to source of information for grassroots activities across the globe. gateways has become an evidence-based global forum. not only are community members at the ‘research table’, but the community itself has become large, multi-faceted and international. gateways has become a valuable link in a worldwide network that supports change-oriented participatory research in thousands of local communities. and, like culture, all of these activities are fundamentally local (andersen & malone 2013). the journal has also made a major step in connecting the local to the global. participatory research has been criticised as being parochial, with only limited value to broader audiences. this critique can be debated, or debunked, as it has, for example, by randy stoecker (2011). gateways has shone a light on local research and its connection to international issues. it is a resource to all readers, but also provides encouragement to collaborative universitycommunity research teams. this affirms to grassroots activists that they are not disconnected from ‘bigger’ global issues; rather, they are very much a critical part of a growing global movement. 4 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin gateways has provided increasing support and visibility for academics who often find themselves swimming against the stream of the academic practice favouring discipline-determined research priorities and de-valuing research specifically aimed at improving the quality of life in local communities. two years ago, the chronicle of higher education, the ‘newspaper’ of us higher education, published a lead article, ‘when activism is worth the risk’, highlighting the community-based work of a few individual scholars around the country (williams june 2015). the author praised the individual activist scholars in succeeding in the balancing act of scholarship and activism. at the same time, the article implicitly perpetuated the notion that this kind of work is marginal. collaborative research centres and journals such as gateways are needed to counter this marginalisation. in a response to the chronicle, phil nyden (2015) stated: we should not let departments, universities, and scholarly associations off the hook in their role in perpetuating the risks to creative scholars who are addressing broader societal inequities. the tensions between activism and scholarship have structural foundations in our universities and scholarly associations. rather than couching this in terms of a tightrope that individual activist academics must walk, universities need to change. the gold-standard of scholarship should not just be how it is judged in contributing to the discipline, but [also on] what impact it has on the quality of life of people and communities outside the universities – as measured by input from those communities. rather than occasionally recognizing and cheering on activist academic tightrope walkers from the sidelines, universities need to establish support systems for those scholars. gateways is now a strong part of that support system, making community-engaged research less marginal and more central in the lives of both academics and community members. by publishing community-engaged research articles and discussing participatory research methodologies, gateways plays a role in familiarising and bringing community eyes, ears and voices into the research process. building new community-based proponents of scientific, evidence-based, rigorous research projects will be critical in a world where prominent forces are attacking science. anyone doing any kind of research today finds it hard to ignore the insidious forces of anti-science and anti-intellectualism. in the us, president trump has become a leader of these forces with his slash-and-burn tactics working to dismantle longestablished government programs – many of which were designed and built on foundations of rigorous research in areas such as affordable housing, environmental protection, child poverty reduction, education and healthcare. similar forces dismissing rigorous, systematic research have gained a foothold already and are strengthening around the globe. 5 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin science – particularly the activist, community-engaged, change-oriented science produced by participatory research – has long been attacked. anti-science and anti-intellectual views have been longstanding traditions among parts of american society. over 30 years ago, well-known science fiction writer isaac asimov (1980) wrote: there is a cult of ignorance in the united states, and there has always been. the strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. this ‘anti-sciencism’ is not merely part of a conservative ideology; it is a reaction against independent thinking and independent research that often questions the status quo. pulitzer prize– winning historian richard hofstadter observed in antiintellectualism in american life (1963) that ‘intellect is dangerous. left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question’. community-engaged research, which lies at the heart of gateways, is a powerful antidote to the cult of ignorance and antiscience know-nothingism. the collaborative university-community research process that is so much a part of many of gateways’ articles increases community awareness of, and participation in, the systematic, evidence-based process of scientific research. community partners in research become increasingly familiar with components of research, from research design and datagathering to the writing of results and dissemination of findings to broader audiences. in the process, community knowledge can be more systematically gathered and analysed – whether it is the collection of survey data by community resident/university researcher teams or the accumulation of oral histories that are shared with broader audiences and give voice to community members. community members become partners in science and, in the process, advocates for systematic research that can lift the veils that hide community processes and institutional practices that perpetuate inequities in local communities. it is also a remedy to a dilemma currently facing academia. tertiary institutions have been under increasing pressure for some time to achieve competing goals. universities in countries such as australia, britain and new zealand, which have undergone national research assessment processes (with grave consequences in the case of britain) are expected to publish ever larger quantities of original research in ‘high-quality’ academic venues, primarily elite and often expensive academic journals, and to demonstrate peer esteem. at the same time, they are required to demonstrate relevance, impact and social benefit. outside universities, state-based services continue to be eroded in difficult economic circumstances, while resources for community groups continue to shrink. the modern university personified has become a kind of dr jekyll writ large. as geoffrey boulton (2009) noted: 6 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin in the last two decades, higher education worldwide has moved from the periphery to the centre of governmental agendas. universities are now seen as crucial national assets in addressing many policy priorities, and as: sources of new knowledge and innovative thinking; providers of skilled personnel and credible credentials; contributors to innovation; attractors of international talent and business investment; agents of social justice and mobility; contributors to social and cultural vitality; and determinants of health and well-being. gateways has been a place where university researchers and community members join together to better understand the broad range of issues confronting communities across the globe, including academic communities. it is well positioned to promote a healthy debate among community members, researchers and policy-makers around scores of problems. we will continue to be a resource that is free to the thousands of our readers. and, yes, we do hope that the research outcomes published in gateways will throw outdated ideas into question and be seen as dangerous to some. references andersen, l & malone, m (eds) 2013, all culture is local: good practice in regional cultural mapping and planning from local government, uts epress, sydney, viewed 10 may 2017, https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/books/allculture-local asimov, i 1980, ‘a cult of ignorance’, newsweek, 21 january. bacow, ls 2011, ‘foreword’, in d watson, rm hollister, se stroud & e babcock, the engaged university: international perspectives on civic engagement, routledge, new york & london, p. xx. boulton, g 2009, ‘global: what are universities for?’, university world news, issue 69, 29 march, viewed 10 may 2017, http://www.universityworldnews. com/article.php?story=20090326200944986 hofstadter, r 1963, anti-intellectualism in american life, vintage books, new york, p. 45. munck, r, mcilrath, l, hall, b & tandon, r (eds) 2014, higher education and community-based research: creating a global vision, palgrave macmillan, new york, p. vii. see also, mcilrath, l, lyons, a & munck, r (eds) 2012, higher education and civic engagement: comparative perspectives, palgrave macmillan, new york. nyden, p 2015, ‘to reduce risk to activist scholars, change support structures’, the chronicle of higher education, letter to the editor, 3 august. nyden, p, ashton, p, davis, j, krogh, m, miller, r, o’loughlin, p & van zytveld, d 2008, ‘gateways: expanding knowledge through broader participation’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement , vol. 1, pp. 1–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v1i0.889 slaughter, s & rhoades, g 2009, academic capitalism and the new economy: markets, states, and higher education, johns hopkins university press, baltimore. stoecker, r 2011, research methods for community change: a project-based approach, sage, thousand oaks, ca. https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/books/all-culture-local https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/books/all-culture-local http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090326200944986 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090326200944986 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v1i0.889 7 | gateways | nyden, ashton & o’loughlin williams june, a 2015, ‘when activism is worth the risk’, the chronicle of higher education, 20 july. _goback innovating for skills enhancement the centrality of field attachment programs in agricultural sciences in africa debate on the centrality of field attachments/work experience to education has gained traction in the recent past, with consensus emerging on the necessity for such experience in order to progress along one’s chosen career path (essential skills ontario 2014; hillage & pollard 1998; kristof-brown, zimmerman & johnson 2005). thus, work-based learning and apprenticeship–dual training systems now play an important role in facilitating employment and increasing economic competitiveness (cornford & gunn 1998; simmons 2009). traditionally, african universities, in particular departments of agriculture, embedded within their courses field attachment–apprenticeship programs, but these were generally orientated towards fulfilling the curriculum mandate of undergraduate training (mugisha & nkwasibwe 2014), while graduate training in most african universities rarely included such apprenticeships. yet, research dissertations on graduate training programs continued to pile up on university shelves (goolam 2014; sawyerr 2004). the lack of connection between graduate training and research with communities meant that farmers from whom the information was generated lost on three grounds. first, they became simply providers of information to support attainment of higher degrees. second, their production systems barely improved as there was hardly a functional relationship between farmers, graduate fellows and their knowledge, or between farmer activity and related curricular programs. third, farmers were denied the valuable partnerships that should come through farm-level research. despite universities trying to reach farmers, they continued operating within their silos and ivory towers. the university academics were becoming ‘a cyclic burden’, often seeking information from the communities without providing feedback. elsewhere in the world, the above challenges had, in part, been addressed by enhancing outreach activities. for example, in the united states, the land grant agricultural colleges established in 1862 (christy & williamson 1992) and the more recent research and development university (reddy 2011) and research in development (douthwaite et al. 2015) concepts anthony egeru, paul nampala, henry makuma-massa, moses osiru & adipala ekwamu regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum) © 2016 by by a egeru, p nampala, h makuma-massa, m osiru & a ekwamu. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: egeru, a, nampala, p, makuma-massa, h, osiru, m & ekwamu, a 2016, ‘innovating for skills enhancement in agricultural sciences in africa: the centrality of field attachment programs’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 159–171. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v9i1.4868 corresponding author: anthony egeru; a.egeru@ruforum.org doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4868 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 160 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu have strengthened the need for greater university research and community engagement, and have negotiated space for this. despite these models, african universities, inherited from the colonial period and further developed post-independence, have maintained the earlier teaching paradigm and specialty, focusing more or less on theoretical aspects of the curriculum, while giving limited attention to the practicum (juma 2011). the urgency to address the practical skills gap among university graduate fellows thus remained a challenge; a situation which only worsened as higher education funding became increasingly constricted (awidi 2014; jowi et al. 2014; materu 2007). successful attempts have been made at the undergraduate level, but field attachments, particularly in the colleges of agriculture, are largely absent from graduate training programs. the assumption often is: this is covered through graduate research. in 2010, the regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum) launched the field attachment programmes award (fapa) – an innovative strategy aimed at encouraging graduate students at postgraduate level to follow through with the dissemination of their research to enable them to link more closely with communities and agencies working in the area where their research was undertaken. this article discusses the lessons learned during the period 2010–2015 by examining two key areas: (1) the application process and implementation of the awards; and (2) the reported outcomes and challenges for grantees. the ruforum fapa program the ruforum is a network of 55 universities in 22 african countries. the network evolved from a project supported by the rockefeller foundation to a program, and is today an established figure 1: ruforum – from a project to an established institution (extracted from the ruforum strategic business plan) 161 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu institution (figure 1) governed by the vice-chancellors of the respective member universities. the ruforum competitive grants scheme (cgs) entails a mix of sub-granting approaches that are targeted to serve different categories of stakeholders at member institutions (egeru, nampala & makuma-massa 2015). the field attachment program award (fapa) is just one among a portfolio of competitive grants offered by ruforum. it particularly targets graduate students, and is awarded based on the merit of the proposal submitted by students who have developed a useful intervention, product or service as part of their postgraduate research in agricultural sciences. the fapa is designed to encourage students to disseminate their research with the communities and agencies working in the geographical area in which their research was undertaken. it is also designed to give students real-world experience and contacts with development and advisory agencies. ruforum supports university-wide research in agricultural sciences such as research in commodity value chains of cereals including sorghum, millet, wheat, rice and maize; commodity value of livestock including poultry, dairy, camels, goats and sheep; and the value chain of fish. research is also conducted in biogeochemical processes, including focus areas such as climatic sciences and atmospheric processes, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and these form the basis upon which the fapa projects are constructed. in this study, we utilised multiple data types and information sources derived from implementation of the 114 fapa projects undertaken in 17 african countries in the last five years. an online survey was purposively conducted with the fapa grantees, which achieved a response rate of 35.1 per cent. as a response rate to online surveys, this level is considered satisfactory (nulty 2008). we also analysed 40 field attachment programme award reports submitted by grantees as part of compliance to the grant award requirements. these reports included those from 2010–2014 purposively selected for their completeness of filled-out fields and geographic spread. thematic clustering and inductive approaches to meta-data analysis were used to provide clarity and rigour of information relevant for experience sharing. the results below are grouped in two main categories for the purpose of sharing lessons learned, adaptations made by the network, and challenges and next steps. the two main areas are implementation, and outcomes/challenges. results implementation and learning process the ruforum field attachment programme award has gone through five phases (table 1) with a growing number of awards over time (figure 2). the implementation cycles i and ii were essentially the pilot and roll-out phase (2010 and 2011). this period was instrumental in initiating institutional processes, 162 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu particularly in raising awareness of the field attachment as an additional catalogue of services offered by the ruforum competitive grants scheme (cgs). the lessons learnt during this phase mainly involved process and programmatic issues and technical drifts relating to translating research outputs into disseminable information for smallholder farmers, as well as the inefficiencies of transferring small grant amounts through the university systems (table 1). based on the lessons from phases i and ii, phases iii and iv were characterised by a modification to the grants process, which involved the adoption of direct funds disbursement to the students. increased compliance and completion rates, as well as growth in the number of applications, were observed in this phase. therefore, it was inevitable that a mechanism had to be devised for processing and administering the rising number of applications in a timely and efficient manner, including application submissions, compliance checks, technical review/evaluation and reporting. consequently, in phase v, an online process through the ruforum information management system (rims) was launched. the online system has enabled timely processing of the higher number of applications received. details of key process and programmatic lessons at each programmatic phase are highlighted in table 1. throughout the fapa implementation, we maintained an oversight function as a requirement of supervisors at both the university and host institutions (which include primary actor organisations, such as non-government organisations and national research organisations, including kenya agricultural research institute, rwanda agricultural board, national agricultural research organisation of uganda and agricultural research corporation of sudan). most importantly, this was done to encourage lesson learning between the university and advisory agencies such as the national agricultural advisory services (naads) in uganda and the department of agricultural extension service (daes) in malawi. figure 2: number of fapa beneficiaries by grant cycle (2010–2015) 163 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu fapa implementation a) signing grant award letters pilot phase and grant cycles i and ii (2010–2011) ruforum signed awards letters with the college leadership, with a copy to the student fapa grant cycles iii and iv (2012–2013) ruforum signed award letters directly with student and representative of the university or host institution, with supervisor as witness fapa grant cycle v and online system (2014–2015) mixed approach of signing grant awards with both student and mentor; where students were from a regional program and regional project, such as the regional mobility programs, grant awards were through the mentors due to the number awarded in a tranche lessons learnt signing with the college lessened the responsibility and commitment of the student, resulting in a number of incomplete field attachments. signing with the student and involving a supervisor ensured a fall-back position if the student was not responding; this included closer follow-up and supervision of the student’s work plan and final report cases of incomplete field attachments were reduced to zero in 13 students (cycle iii) and 2 in 22 students (cycle iv). mentors are instrumental in successful implementation of bulk awards because they provided in-country supervision and monitoring. many project proposals received were focused on research rather than dissemination. this signaled challenges in translating research results/ outputs into simplified messages for smallholder farmers. fapa implementation b) disbursement of fapa funds pilot phase and grant cycles i and ii (2010–2011) full grant amount transferred to student via university college/faculty account fapa grant cycles iii and iv (2012–2013) disbursement in two tranches directly to fapa student account fapa grant cycle v and online system (2014–2015) direct disbursement to students account continued lessons learnt students receiving the full grant amount at one time during the pilot phase reduced their incentive to submit all deliverables at the end of attachment. the grants unit registered three students who did not complete the fapa. the transfer of small grant amounts through the university system is inefficient. it can result in delay in grantees receiving the money and, in cases where the grantee has left the university, there is no way the university can transfer the money to them. disbursement in tranches and tying the second disbursement to submission of all deliverables ensured a 99 per cent completion rate. part disbursement increased transaction costs but ensured success of the grant. students respected the fact that a disbursement would be affected if their report was incomplete or substandard. disbursement directly to student accounts reduces institutional bureaucracy associated with release of funds and institutional overheads on small grants. table 1: fapa grant cycle, process and programmatic lessons 164 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu fapa implementation c) incorporating an incentive to supervisors pilot phase and grant cycles i and ii (2010–2011) no incentive to supervisors fapa grant cycles iii and iv (2012–2013) incentive to supervisors incorporated in the grant amount fapa grant cycle v and online system (2014–2015) incentive to supervisors maintained and transferred with the last tranche of funds after successful implementation and reporting had been undertaken lessons learnt disincentivised, the supervisors were not held responsible for incomplete attachment programs. incentivised, the supervisors were expected to review the fapa work plan before commencement. they were also expected to review the report and to submit a one-page brief on the performance of the student. the quality of the fapa greatly improved with the introduction of the supervision component; but this also requires close monitoring. fapa implementation d) introducing a standardised application form and reporting template pilot phase and grant cycles i and ii (2010–2011) no application form or reporting template fapa grant cycles iii and iv (2012–2013) students completed application form and reporting templates fapa grant cycle v and online system (2014–2015) application call reviewed and an open call introduced, running throughout the year; the call now circulated every week through the ruforum weekly digest lessons learnt review of applications when the application form was introduced was much simpler and faster. use of a reporting template made provision of feedback and review of fapa outcomes much simpler. the number of applications has increased due to the open call and frequent reminders to the network members. fapa implementation e) introducing online application pilot phase and grant cycles i and ii (2010–2011) no electronic application fapa grant cycles iii and iv (2012–2013) no electronic application fapa grant cycle v and online system (2014–2015) online application submission implemented through the ruforum information management system (rims); includes pre-designated budget and proposal structure templates lessons learnt online submission has increased the speed and ease of processing including review and communication of the review outcome, monitoring and candidate reporting. better organised and more focused proposals and budgets. 165 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu table 2: skills gained by the grantees during field attachment and realities that need to be taken into consideration. skills category skills and competences gained initiative and leadership —ability to execute part of the research components —developing innovation platform plans —negotiating with producer and marketing value chain actors on better supporting farmers —developing farmer community-based organisations —bringing different farmer groups together to pool resources and manage bulk produce —identifying gaps for phd research —engaging with development partners leading to the award of phd scholarship —influencing primary schools to introduce practical agriculture in the curriculum through school gardening —focusing on patenting the product outputs of the research with the support of the university intellectual property policy flexibility —methodological adaptation during implementation, including trying out new methods never used before —ability to manage conflict among different stakeholders during implementation —strategic decision making good communication —respecting and understanding cultural differences —considering equity, equality and justice/fairness during meetings —demonstrating knowledge transfer from research to practice —speaking motivationally to different stakeholders within the same audience analytical skills —discerning farmer challenges —conducting situation analysis —understanding gender-based perspectives —recognising farmer ingenuity in handling complex challenges with simpler solutions —recognising result variations and difficulty in farmer adherence to scientific practices —conducting comparative analysis of costs for farmer inputs (e.g. locally produced rations are cheaper than commercially produced rations) teamwork —working with farmers —working with development actors and other partners —understanding work ethics: organisation, time-keeping, filing and receptiveness it skills —developing farmer-based websites —gaining competence in new skills in geographic information system (gis) —maintaining and populating websites technical knowledge and competence —participatory process management —obtaining indigenous farmer knowledge and ways of doing things —developing plans with farmers —budgeting and organising of events —providing technical support to community-based organisations and civil society organisations on proposal development and alignment —developing training materials, e.g. brochures, pamphlets, books —undertaking commodity value-chain mapping —determining molecular sequencing during international laboratory level practice —reviewing and evaluating scientific proposals 166 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu skills and shared experiences gained by the beneficiaries a majority (93 per cent) of the beneficiaries recognised the important role field attachment played in their acquisition of field-based experience of working at the community level and engaging with communities at various levels. grantees enumerated a range of competences and skills, particularly cross-cutting skills, which they gained during the exercise (table 2). these skills can be categorised into eight sub-groups: initiative, flexibility, good communication, analytical skills, teamwork, ict skills, technical knowledge and competence, and network and advocacy skills. further, grantees provided several reality checks (table 2) that need to be carefully taken into consideration when engaging with smallholder farmers as these have the potential to influence farmer perceptions of and receptiveness to the technologies and knowledge being disseminated. discussion the field attachment program award (fapa) is an innovative program designed as a graduate internship to link thesis research findings with recommendations for application and use at community level. the fapa grants are intended to provide opportunities for dissemination of research outputs with a view to informing policy development and honing students’ skills in participatory problem identification and articulation of complex research. the fapa has evolved since 2010 and now reflects a learning process for all stakeholders involved. for the graduate students, the fapa presents an opportunity to participate in a skills category skills and competences gained network and advocacy skills —matching farmer needs to research needs —mobilising communities —developing farmer value systems —engaging with policy and decision makers —gaining facilitation skills —jointly preparing for and working with development partners and community development officers —undertaking fundraising via competitive grants and other fund-raising events reality checks arising from implementation of fapa and skills development and attainment realities that need to be taken into consideration —smallholder farmers are profit oriented but have limited appreciation of unit cost investment to increase yield output —entrepreneurial abilities of smallholder farmers need to be strengthened —smallholder farmers adopt and adapt technologies that directly address their production challenges —smallholder farmers have indigenous knowledge that is non-static —smallholder farmer buy-in is easy when the study is conducted with direct farmer participation from the beginning —smallholder farmers still have challenges with record keeping —timing of the dissemination activities; for example, it is difficult to gather farmers together in the morning hours during the wet season —curriculum inadequacy at university level to tackle practical agriculture —attention to institutional processes needed 167 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu real-life industrial working environment with hands-on exposure to the world of work immediately after completion of graduate training. it serves to enhance theoretical skills gained and helps graduates blend these through practical application in a community setting. indeed, some of the skills gained, including leadership and teamwork, are not key components of agricultural graduate curricula. the fapa underpins the importance of incorporating personal mastery and soft skills in curricula tailored to postgraduate students in the agricultural sciences. a study by mugisha and nkwasibwe (2014) on capacity development for modernising african food systems notes that graduate students appreciate field attachment and strongly recommend it be adopted in the training process. the fapa model has also made a significant contribution to rethinking relevant curricula at several member universities in the ruforum network. for example, arising from the fapa experience and collaboration with earth university facilitated by ruforum, gulu university in uganda and egerton university in kenya collaboratively engaged to revamp their field attachment programs (kalule et al. 2016). the current internship models at these universities mimic the ruforum model, although some slight modifications have been made to suit local and countryspecific conditions. other universities within east africa have also reviewed these models and appreciate the potential advantage of including practical and experiential learning in graduate training programs (kathuri-ogola et al. 2015). from the ruforum perspective, the evolution of fapa since 2010 demonstrates attributes of the learning organisation, as defined by senge (1996). the ruforum has facilitated through fapa learning for its members (the 55 member universities) and has continuously transformed itself to serve the needs of the various stakeholders in the agriculture and higher education sectors. member universities have embraced the fapa and institutionalised it, with improvements, within their undergraduate programs as well as introducing the concept of field attachments to the curricula of other postgraduate programs (kalule et al. 2016; okello & otieno 2016). the ruforum has also adapted its competitive grants scheme (cgs) to allow for the evolution of fapa to meet the needs of students, host institutions (university and field attachment) and faculty. these adaptations include adjustment to the implementation time from three to six months, flexibility in community prioritisation and the grant amount provided for implementation. further, the reality checks identified by the grantees have produced other core lessons for ruforum and the wider network. one important example is that smallholder farmers, while profit oriented, have limited appreciation of unit cost investment. for example, smallholder farmers do not cost their labour hours or record other input costs and, as such, the price they receive for their produce is non-reflective of the total operational costs incurred in the production process. further, farmers drawn to the better 168 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu prices offered by urban markets for their produce often do not cost transport and other opportunity costs incurred in getting their produce to market, resulting in limited or nil net gain to the farmers. therefore, farming as a business is still a challenging concept among smallholder farmers in africa (eicher 1999), indicating that the entrepreneurial abilities of smallholder farmers need to be strengthened. evidence available from the innovative programs that have been developed at gulu university and egerton university based on earlier lessons from the fapa show that it is possible to develop these skills among graduate students and that they are vital in facilitating students’ effective engagement with these communities (kalule et al. 2016; okello & otieno 2016). on the other hand, it emerged that smallholder farmers are proficient in adopting and adapting technologies that directly address their production challenges and often possess an indigenous knowledge base which they rely on to adjust to evolving circumstances. thus, technologies that increase returns and promote the integration of value chains are highly appreciated by these farmers (mirembe, obaa & ebanyat 2016). the fapa implementation also revealed the need for researchers to pay close attention to cultural and household calendars in the communities because the success of the dissemination exercise depends on appropriate scheduling and timing of dissemination meetings at the community level. for example, grantees noted that, during the wet season, it was difficult to gather farmers together in the morning as this was when they attended to their gardens, whereas female participants could not attend in the afternoon as this was when they completed household chores after garden work. therefore, appropriate scheduling of dissemination meetings is pivotal to successful dissemination. this calls for universities to ensure their graduates are trained to be flexible and innovative so they are better able to engage effectively with the communities. it also calls for grantees to pay close attention to the cultural norms and value systems of the various communities as well as institutional processes that may facilitate or hinder their engagement. conclusion and way forward the ruforum field attachment program has shown that closer engagement with farmers delivers technically skilled and adaptive graduates who are able to innovatively address the complex challenges of smallholder farmers. it also facilitates innovation, technology transfer and process modification to suit farmer needs. through the program it has been possible to bridge the skills gap between undergraduate and graduate level training. in addition, mutual and cross-cutting benefits have emerged from the student–farmer interactions, and these benefits strengthen community-university linkages. however, there are challenges for the program: —the overwhelming demand for fapas as awareness of the program has grown has implications for ruforum. the network needs to 169 | gateways | egeru, nampala, makuma-massa, osiru & ekwamu mobilise more funds to service this need, which in turn will require the universities to increase their budgets to cover the costs of field attachment and to reform their billing system, a process that is often prolonged by institutional bureaucracy. —both graduate students and faculty still have difficulty turning thesis-type recommendations into accessible non-scholarly publications such as policy briefs, brochures and factsheets that can be used for broad dissemination of the research. it is therefore vital that skills enhancement courses that build the capacity of graduate students and faculty to decode scientific recommendations and effectively communicate them to end users, including farmers, decision makers and development partners, are introduced. in this regard, initial efforts are being made by ruforum through a partnership with african women in agricultural research and development (award) to train graduate fellows in research communication. —the fapa is a small grant, but the overheads associated with managing it are quite high. however, the impact of this small grant is substantial and the fapa model can be leveraged by universities to enrich and expand their outreach activities. moving forward, it is vital that ruforum continues to implement the field attachment program with its current flexibility as this allows for collaboration, learning and adapting of approaches. the field attachment program has demonstrated its value as an innovative way to fill the skills gap among graduates; develop mutual benefits for students and farmers; and strength community-university ties. it is also important that ruforum continues to engage with industry and to further strengthen ties that will facilitate field attachment programs as a way of leveraging the costs of placement, which are currently borne by the ruforum secretariat. more broadly, it is important that 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plays various roles in society. from the perspective of liberal theory, higher education leads to selfrealisation and social transformation, including latterly elements of social mobility and meritocracy. from professional formation theory, universities and colleges are identified as providers of expertise and vocational education, both in old (‘traditional’) and new areas or fields. in economic theory, higher education is seen as a research engine, allied to regional and national ambitions for economic growth. variations on this theme include higher education as a source of business services and of national pride (watson 2011, p. 13). higher education has three functions: teaching, research, and community service/engagement. according to schuetze (2010, pp. 20–25), there are three main types of university engagement and partnership with the community: (1) academic knowledge transfer; (2) university continuing education; and (3) communitybased research and service learning. the role of alauddin state islamic university, as stated in its vision, is not only to promote social transformation but also to contribute to developing a ‘modern’ islamic civilisation. to implement this role, the university carries out the typical three functions mentioned above. ideally, the three functions should form an integrated system linking each to the others, but in reality there are deviations from this ideal and much dynamism in practice. this is related to the structures and values of indonesian higher education institutions and whether an institution is a university or an institute. the small number of state islamic universities in indonesia, such as alauddin, is unusual in that they not only adhere to the regulations of the indonesian higher education system (and thus are regulated by the ministry of education and culture in certain areas such as non-religious subjects) but also come under the umbrella of the ministry of religious affairs. as an islamic university, alauddin can teach secular science, but as an institute it could only teach religious subjects and one specific science subject. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 164–173 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 sri mastuti university of indonesia and sile project ambo masse froum pemerhati masalah perempuan (mpmp) ramsiah tasruddin alauddin state islamic university 165 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin this article discusses the importance of this change in status and more recent project initiatives designed to significantly raise the profile and effectiveness of the third function of the university: community engagement. we begin with a review of the existing model for implementing community services and then discuss the new model that has been adopted in tandem with the original model. based on the mobilizing assets for communitydriven development approach to promote democratic governance and results based management, the new model is a partnership between the university and civil society organisations (csos). the setting indonesia has 33 provinces, of which south sulawesi is one. of an indonesian population of some 250 million, south sulawesi’s population is around 8 million. the average annual population growth rate is 1.17 per cent, slightly lower than the national average of 1.49 per cent. even though the percentage of the population living below the national poverty line in south sulawesi is below the national average, the incidence of poverty in south sulawesi is still high, at roughly 13 per cent. the economy is based mainly on agriculture, fisheries, trade and some manufacturing. the province is ecologically diverse (with coastal zones, irrigated rice plains, mountainous areas, offshore islands, etc.) the population is mainly muslim, with a large christian population in the northern highlands (tana toraja). islam came to south sulawesi in a peaceful manner, mainly through trading networks. there is some variation in interpretation of islam in south sulawesi: besides the two big nation-wide islamic sociocultural organisations, muhammadiyah and nahdatul ulama in south sulawesi, there are also local islamic organisations like darul dakwah wal irshad (ddi), al nadhir and jama’ah tabligh. muhammadiyah, nahdatul ulama, jama’ah tabligh, and ddi have structures and networks stretching from the national or provincial level right down to the village level. among the different streams of qur’anic interpretation represented by these organisations, alauddin state islamic university plays an important role as an institution that is accepted by all. thus the lecturers and students are welcomed everywhere as preachers and are also very active in community service in both urban and rural areas. history of alauddin state islamic university as a state islamic institute, alauddin islamic state university mainly focused on islamic learning, turning out graduates who mostly became religious teachers in various parts of the education system. in 1965, it became an independent islamic state institute in its own right. at that time, there were only three faculties: syari’ah (islamic jurisprudence), tarbiyah (islamic education) and ushuluddin (islamic philosophy/theology). subsequently, in 2005, to respond to the needs of islamic society and to some changes 166 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin in the national education system, it converted to a state islamic university. as a university, the fundamental change was that it not only covered islamic learning but also general/secular sciences. today, the university has eight faculties, with postgraduate programs. current faculties are syari’ah and law; tarbiyah and teacher training; ushuluddin, philosophy and political science; adab (letters) and humanities; dakwah (islamic preaching) and communications; health sciences; science and technology; and business and economics. the ministry of religious affairs determines the university’s organisational structure and management system. in addition to the various faculties and support services, the university has a research center and a community service center. in 2013, these two centers, plus the center for women’s and children’s studies and several new interdisciplinary centres, have been combined into a new unit called the institute for research and community service and have been given a higher position within the university, reporting directly to a vice-rector. in addition, there are a number of ‘non-structural’ or locally created centres, such as the center for islamic and social studies (ppim). momentum for reform, and the role of the sile project the change in status from islamic institute to islamic university provided great momentum to reform the organisation. besides a new structure, new units and a new vision marrying islamic sciences with ‘secular’ sciences, there has been a new spirit in carrying out the functions of the university. in this new spirit, the sile project, a program funded by the former canadian international development agency (cida), now absorbed into the department of foreign affairs, trade and development – dfatd) and the government of indonesia was established to improve the capacity of government and civil society to develop and implement policies and projects that were consistent with democratic governance principles and also supported decentralised service delivery. sile supported the university to develop a model of university-community engagement and community empowerment to promote democratic governance. in particular, it supported the university in enhancing the community engagement function but also in integrating it with the other two functions of the university, teaching and research. it also worked with the ministry of religious affairs, which regulates islamic higher education, to reformulate and strengthen its policies supporting the community service function of its universities. in 2011, sile supported the university to carry out an evaluation of how it implemented the three university functions. some of the key findings included an overwhelming focus on teaching compared to the other two functions, with little integration between the three. outreach had a heavy emphasis on religious education, conducted mainly through service learning 167 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin in a few programs, student ‘work experience’ in communities and ‘routine’ religious lectures/sermons, for example, during friday prayers at the mosque. on campus, the outreach function was relatively marginalised, while in communities it was still relatively top–down, based on what was determined by the university. it reached only a tiny number of communities directly, and was generally unsustainable. communities often viewed the university as a source of gifts/charity. research had generally not been used in the service of communities to help them respond to the challenges they faced and make good use of their potential, nor were research results commonly integrated back into university teaching. in reflecting on its current approach to universitycommunity engagement, alauddin, together with the sile project, came to a number of conclusions: 1 current outreach approaches had made communities dependent on the university, overburdening the university with an increasing number of requests for support in the form of capital goods or other material assistance. 2 there was a lack of interest or motivation among lecturers and students in performing community service. community service was regarded more as simply a prerequisite for graduation, and lecturers were not well rewarded by the university for community work. 3 activities did not touch on the empowerment of the community to promote democratic governance. 4 the potential that existed in the university to contribute to the empowerment of the community had not been managed optimally because it was still split between teaching, research and service. 5 the university had not cooperated formally with csos (though many lecturers were very involved in csos in a personal capacity). the new approach to community engagement the review of university-community engagement showed there were three main types of engagement. first, there was community service directly from the university to the university’s partner communities. second, there was community service conducted by the university, but involving a third party. and third, community service was conducted by involving the communities around the university to proactively engage with the university and work together on community service activities. before 2011, the main approach had been the first type. based on the reflection exercise discussed above, and with significant input from recent graduates of overseas training programs (initially through diploma programs and short courses at the coady international institute, st. francis xavier university in canada), the university developed a new 168 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin approach to community engagement. in addition to continuing with the existing model, it is now trying to build a more systematic approach to community engagement that integrates the three functions of the university, using partnerships with csos, to promote democratic governance (see figure 1). university-community engagement under this approach comprises teaching, community service and research, each contributing to improving the implementation of all three functions. community service encourages community-based research and uses the products from such research in the community. the experience from community service can also become a resource and influence teaching. in carrying out community service/community engagement, alauddin builds partnerships with civil society organisations, both large and small, general and specialised, religious and secular. meanwhile, the existing model is still operating. the university has now begun to use the mobilizing assets for community-driven development approach to promote democratic governance and results based management. democratic governance in this context is both a principle to be applied in community engagement and a set of issues and methods (participatory planning and participatory budgeting, conflict resolution, social accountability/monitoring public service delivery, and civic education) that should be addressed. university and civil society organisation partnerships in developing community service by engaging csos in planning and implementing community engagement activities, the university was encouraged to experiment with a new vehicle (pokja, or working group) which it had rarely used in the past. there were several reasons, some of them alluded to above, for this approach: to combine the different strengths and knowledge of both parties, and to take advantage of the very extensive networks within communities long developed by the major csos. figure 1: the new approach to universitycommunity engagement civil society engagement university-community engagement service-learning university and cso partnerships community leaders community serviceteaching research 169 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin sustainability of effort was also a factor, with long-term mous being signed by both parties. these formalised partnerships subsequently created working groups whose members consist of lecturers from a particular faculty and representatives of one of the selected csos. each working group assists one or more communities chosen to represent the diversity of the province’s ecology, settlement types (urban, rural, accessible, isolated, etc.), ethnicity and other factors. today, eight csos have been selected to take part in each of the eight working groups. these csos were selected after considering various issues of concern to each, such as issues related to women, social and religious issues, education, children, public services, good governance, conflict, etc. this work continues to be supported by the sile project through provision of technical assistance/capacity development and funding for particular activities. figure 2 shows the implementation principles of the working groups. these partnerships between the university and csos are mainly focused on a program of community outreach and engagement that encourages democratic governance, in line with the mandate of the project and expressed university interests. in general, the working groups provide: —technical assistance to civil society organisations in enhancing the capacity of local leaders —enhancement of the capacity of csos to strengthen community participation in planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation —identification and selection, together with partner communities, of priority issues for implementation of programs to drive democratic governance —capacity assessment and best knowledge management practices related to community engagement through various strategies. more specifically, in terms of the new model and working group concept, the pokja have built a commitment among the members to share the workload evenly, and to jointly identify priorities and issues, approaches and implementation modes figure 2: implementation principles in working groups (pokja) constantly experimenting with modes of collaboration sharing the workload evenly among working group members jointly designing program priorities, approaches and implementation of program and activities establishing good communication and scheduling of activities in working groups to promote collaboration figure 2: implementation principles in working groups (pojka) 170 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin for the program of activities in communities. members of each working group begin by establishing good communications with the community and exploring carefully how they will work together, given their different backgrounds and experiences. besides this, the principles of good partnerships are kept in mind: to share resources, to be transparent in all aspects, to seek mutual benefit, and especially to develop clear methods of deliberation and decision-making. in working with communities, the pokja takes into account several mutually reinforcing ‘cross-cutting issues’, as shown in figure 3. good environmental management is standard in asset mapping and developing action plans. it is applied when pokja and communities conduct asset mapping of the villages. during this task, they describe the topography, the land condition, the farming, plantations, forests, unproductive land, etc. as an outreach program, they preserve the physical assets that are already productive, and try to improve those that are in poor condition. good governance principles are adhered to in designing, planning and implementing outreach programs, to promote participation, transparency, responsiveness and accountability. this begins when deciding the priority issues of democratic governance to be focused on, as well as the priority activities. both the organising community and the pokja decide the timeframe, know the budget allocation and plan the spending. asset mapping is done by a core community group, with assistance from the pokja. the result of the asset mapping is presented to the community, and based on this, the community develop their priority action plan. the community action plan then forms the basis on which the pokja develop implementation measures for the outreach program. in mapping and implementing the planned actions, gender equality is one important consideration; it is not just a matter of women’s representation or women’s participation, but also about whether gender gaps affect men or women. in every pokja and core community group, there are women representatives. in communities where the level of patriarchy is high, pokja discuss affirmative action among women’s groups and men’s groups figure 3: crosscutting issues 171 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin separately. it is essential that women feel free to voice their ideas and aspirations. the action plan is designed so that both women and men benefit from the activities. at the beginning, each group conducted an initial familiarisation field survey, which was followed by a community assessment using focus group discussions and interviews. results of the assessment were used to create simple asset maps of the different local communities. these described the main potential of the communities, such as the skills of its citizens, its associations and institutions, its land base and economy. such an approach was a necessary and fruitful way to initiate application of the mobilising assets approach. the working groups have now begun working together in the planning and implementation of programs and activities. working with communities using the abcd approach asset based community development (abcd) is an approach to community empowerment, led by the community itself, whereby they identify and mobilise their own assets (cunningham et al. 2012). commonly, abcd is used for economic empowerment but at alauddin state islamic university, based on technical input from the sile project, it is currently being used to promote democratic governance. according to green et al. 2006 (pp. 15–17), effective community development has three qualities: it is asset based, internally focused and relationship driven. ‘asset based’ means that community development starts from the assets, both tangible and intangible, that people have in the community. it is focused on a community’s strengths. ‘internally focused’ means the actions begin and take place within the community. ‘relationship driven’ refers to the productive connections among five building blocks of community. the five building blocks are individuals’ gifts, skills and talents; local voluntary associations such as neighbourhood groups and religious organisations; business and goverment institutions; money, goods and services in the local economy; and the physical world, both natural and man-made, such as rivers, forests, buildings, streets, etc. abcd analysis uncovers these assets and helps interconnect and mobilise them all in order to fulfil the community’s dreams. abcd in the context of south sulawesi province is appropriate, especially in working with communities which have a history of conflict, as it focuses as much on ‘social-psychological’ issues as on other more concrete needs. in practice, the working groups discussed above have added more diverse assets like religious and cultural assets, and have also identified particular issues of democratic governance on which communities would like to work. 172 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin opportunities and challenges the opportunity to unite two institutions, with different organisational, experience and community-focused approaches is very challenging, for both university and cso. being committed to work together with the new vision and mindset will provide them both with more spirit and power to make social change. this new opportunity is much to the credit of lecturers who work on the outreach programs. most of the lecturers who represent the university in the working groups are happy to be involved and engage with the communities. some village leaders have stated that the programs have changed people’s mindset: they now realise they have assets and can mobilise them for village development. some communities have grown in confidence and have begun to implement their action plans. however, some challenges face each working group. the first challenge is to comprehend the philosophy of the new vision and mission of the university itself. the pokja need to understand the operational instruments of the university’s vision, especially integration of the activities of teaching, research and community service or engagement. this takes considerable time and needs frequent reinforcement. to respond to this challenge, besides promoting knowledge sharing, allauddin islamic university is now in the process of developing strategic planning for university community engagement. the second challenge is the ability of all members of the working groups to comprehend the methodology and approach that are the tools of community development, as well as the democratic governance focus of the sile project itself. since asset based community development and results based management have been agreed on as the basic tools and approaches of the program, it is very important to know the level of competence of all working group members in applying such tools and approaches and in interacting with each local community, and to help increase their competence. from the community point of view, the challenge is that they usually want something really concrete; democratic governance is an abstract notion for them. this is why pokja in promoting democratic governance in communities, began with something simple and concrete as an entry point to practising democratic governance principles. the third challenge is the readiness of each team to manage time and work both in program planning and implementation. this requires flexibility in scheduling work in communities and changes in meeting times as each member also has his or her own daily activities in their home institution or organisation, as well as commitment and a spirit of togetherness in working for social transformation. providing clear job descriptions for pokja members could be one solution to this challenge. the fourth challenge is to change the mindset of all stakeholders involved (lecturers, cso activists and communities). mainly, it is a question of how to change the mindset of lecturers 173 | gateways | mastuti, masse & tasruddin and cso activists from acting as ‘heroes’ – which create high dependency levels in communities – and instead be motivators and facilitators who increase the confidence of communities to act and mobilise their own assets. this is also a challenge for communities, who have often been used to waiting for help and support from the outside. here, the role of community core groups is to share the vision of community driven development to the rest of the community members, together with small concrete results as helpful evidence of the outcomes of all working together towards a common goal. conclusion university-cso partnership is one model for university-community outreach programs that may be used as a vehicle to implement the three functions of the university in promoting democratic governance. the key elements to ensuring this model works effectively are: (1) strong commitment from the university and the cso, formalised in a memorandum of understanding; (2) participants who are highly motivated and trust each other; (3) start with a small, concrete activity decided by the community; (4) put the community as subject, appreciated for their assets and their capabilities; (5) institutionalise the knowledge and capabilities that actors have within their organisation, both university and cso; and (6) integrate the model for universitycommunity outreach with the functions of the university and its policies and regulations. references cunningham, g & mathie, a 2008, mobilizing assets for community driven development, training manual, coady international institute, antigonish, canada. green, m, moore, h & o’brien, j 2006, when people care enough to act, inclusion press, toronto, canada. mastuti, s 2011, report of mapping location, communities, and csos in south sulawesi, sile, jakarta. schuetze, h 2010, ‘the third mission of universities: community engagement and service’, in p inman & h schuetze, the community engagement and service mission of universities, niace, leicester, uk. watson, d, hollister, r, stroud, s & babcock, e 2011, the engaged university: international perspectives on civic engagement, routledge, new york and london. _goback faculty perspectives on rewards and incentives for community-engaged work a multinational exploratory study many us-based university faculty members feel their institutions discount their community-engaged work. this could mean when a faculty member’s dossier is reviewed for merit salary increases or for tenure, his or her engaged work is often deemed less rigorous than traditional forms of faculty work. reducing access to such rewards and recognition likely influences the faculty member’s future work. the literature is sparse, however, when it comes to such perceptions among non-western institutions. do faculties in other regions of the world share similar concerns? do their voices hold the same weight as those of the administration? there is an increasing need for bottom-up and multi-directional communication and a need to fill the gap in knowledge among higher education decision-makers. filling this gap in understanding can help policy-makers and educators foster more engaged and socially responsible higher education institutions. why the talloires network? the talloires network (tn) is the largest international network focused on university community engagement. it is uniquely positioned to provide support for and conduct research on community-engaged work. tn strives to diversify voices in higher education policy and, most recently, worked to challenge policies on global university rankings and faculty support (monaco & de la rey 2015). as a close collaborator with regional higher education networks, tn is a global hub of information to and from regional networks that elevates the visibility of civic engagement programs – allowing cross-communication and bottom-up sharing of knowledge. tn contributes to the university civic-engagement movement through three areas of inquiry and action: research, practice and education. the findings of this action research on faculty perspectives bring empirical significance to the field. the research this exploratory research aims to examine faculty perspectives: how community-engaged work (including teaching, research and trang vuong talloires network and hanoi architectural university amy newcomb rowe talloires network lorlene hoyt talloires network and tufts university carol carrier university of minnesota © 2017 by t vuong, a newcomb rowe, l hoyt & c carrier. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: vuong, t, newcomb rowe, a, hoyt, l & carrier, c 2017, ‘faculty perspectives on rewards and incentives for communityengaged work: a multinational exploratory study’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 249–264. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v10i0.5268 corresponding author: trang vuong; trang.vuong@tufts.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5268 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:trang.vuong@tufts.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5268 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5268 250 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier scholarship) is perceived, and how institutions provide rewards and incentives. engaged activities in higher education are often perceived as less scholarly than more traditional forms of teaching and scholarship because of controversy and challenges around assessment and measuring impact. additionally, there is a paucity of documentation and analysis of faculty perspectives on the issue from developing countries. the carnegie community engagement classification working group revised its 2015 application to include questions such as: do the institutional policies for promotion and tenure reward the scholarship of community engagement? this was a guiding force for the development of our research question. besides reviewing the literature on these problems and gaps in documentation, we conducted a pilot survey to explore how a sample of 38 pre-selected faculties at 14 member institutions in 11 countries perceived the support of their respective institutions. we wanted to know: are there any common patterns in faculty perspectives on their engaged work and institutional policies?; can background information such as age, gender, region, discipline, title, institution type and work type be predictors of faculty perspectives? literature review the problem: discounted engaged work a number of higher education institutions are criticised for paying lip service to the importance of collaboration between university scholars and local communities to address economic or social challenges. many scholars report that engaged work is often deemed neither as scholarly nor as rigorous as more traditional forms of scholarship. a report of the global university network for innovation claims young academics in some universities are ‘discouraged from following an engaged scholarship career pathway’ (hall et al. 2014, p. 308). in a us study based on the responses of 729 chief academic officers (caos) of four-year institutions, o’meara found that encouraging multiple forms of scholarship in faculty reward systems made a positive difference in institutional evaluations of engaged work. however, reforms usually change ‘the input to and process of promotion and tenure, not the outcomes’ (o’meara 2005, p. 505). specifically, the probabilities for individual success did not change despite formal policy reforms over the examined decade, according to data from more than half of surveyed caos. moreover, she underscores the critical role of caos’ awareness and involvement in reforms, and recognised the impact of demographic and contextual attributes (for example, race, gender, age, discipline and institutional type) on reward systems. another us-based survey examined data from 59 faculties focused on community-engaged learning from 37 institutions that received clinical and translational science awards. the study shows how engaged scholars perceive their institutional support. the majority of respondents conceded ‘there was 251 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier moderate support for community-engaged scholarship in tenure, promotion, and retention decisions’ (nokes et al. 2013, p. 265). the authors also explain that engaged scholars often expect greater acknowledgement and backing from their institutions than they receive (goldberg-freeman et al. 2010; kennedy et al. 2009; nyden 2003), but literature on faculty perspectives on rewards and incentives remains sparse (gelmon et al. 2012). looking beyond the us, watermeyer and lewis (2014) conducted qualitative interviews with 40 early and mid-career scholars known for engaged work throughout the uk. they pointed out engaged work is inadequately supported and, in many cases, even harmful to scholars’ profiles as research-active academics. most interviewees complained about undesirable side-effects of their techniques: a shortage of institutional acknowledgement, interest, incentives and rewards; a lack of promotions; and the fact that public engagement receives merely hollow praise (butt 2015; havergal 2015). engaged work is often further stymied because university policies fail to provide guidelines that endorse scholarship of this nature. o’meara also identifies a set of external, cultural and leadership factors that influence institutions’ decisions to embrace community-engaged scholarship. external factors include pressure from accreditation organisations, legislative bodies, and administrators’ involvement in a national conversation on scholarship reform. cultural factors include grassroots efforts from within the faculty and a higher level of institutional commitment to teaching and engagement. leadership factors include presidential commitments to alternative forms of scholarship and institutional reform (o’meara 2006). the gap: little information on faculty perspectives at non-western institutions many scholars are observing these faculty perceptions in western educational systems with an intense concentration on the us (o’meara, eatman & petersen 2015). corresponding literature on this topic at an international scale, particularly in the global south, is scant. it is unclear whether there are similar patterns in faculty perspectives on their engaged work and institutional policies. in the us, there have been profound studies and guidelines that respond to questions relating to faculty perspectives on, and involvement in, community-engaged work. beere et al. (2011) instructs universities on how to institutionalise public engagement. this how-to book shows solutions to problems in recruiting, hiring and orienting faculty, and ways to address workload issues, provide support services and resources, and offer incentives and awards. in another example, faculty activities and attitudes toward engagement at ohio state university were examined in a 436-respondent survey based on a conceptual framework that integrates institutional, personal and professional factors (demb & wade 2012). at michigan state university, researchers investigated 252 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier the faculty’s intensity of activity and degree of engagement through an interpretive content analysis of 173 promotion and tenure forms (doberneck et al. 2012). while helpful in providing theoretical foundations for the field, these studies are us-focused: the book by beere et al. is written from the context of american post-secondary institutions, while the two surveys mentioned are isolated in two us universities. outside the us, most research on the topic points to national contexts and institutional policies related to engaged work, but none specifically studies faculty attitudes. for example, annette (2010) focuses exclusively on institutional perspectives for promoting community engagement in the uk. he looks at the decline of service-learning culture and offers a philosophical and sociological approach to reward structures. annette does not, however, touch upon the faculty view of their institutions’ incentives. looking at australian higher education, muirhead et al. use an international lens to compare policy programs and make suggestions to increase university community engagement (hartley et al. 2005; muirhead & graham 2002; muirhead & woolcock 2008). they report that market forces exert a large influence on the education process, but maintain that adjusting faculty reward mechanisms (and university culture) is crucial to generating civic-mindedness. favish and mcmillan (2009) focus exclusively on south african higher education policy. they offer an insider’s take on the structure of the south african faculty rewards system (smout 2005). in a rare display of international scope, rice (2006), after examining athens, berlin and los angeles, advocates for expanding the faculty’s role in emphasising civic engagement. similarly, ward engages in a typological examination of faculty engagement and extends her analysis to irish institutions and higher education policy in the eu. in contrast to o’meara’s research, ward explores how civic engagement shapes identities. she provides a salient connection between eu and us higher education policy (hazelkorn & ward 2012; saltmarsh et al.). in all, there is literature on higher education policies and programs, institutional perspectives, reward systems, faculty engagement and faculty roles; however, few consider how these concepts are perceived by the faculty. multinational exploratory study methodology study participants programs were selected based on their record of engagement and interaction with members of tn. all were recipients of a tn research and award program: the youth economic participation initiative and the regional perspectives on university civic engagement. each program assesses, documents and shares ideas of participants’ engagement activities. tn secretariat contacted administrative staff or liaisons at 14 member universities currently participating in the two http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/yepi/ http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/yepi/ http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/regional-perspectives-on-university-civic-engagement-workshop/ http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/regional-perspectives-on-university-civic-engagement-workshop/ 253 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier above programs. these institutions are in 11 countries in various continents: africa (burkina faso, egypt, rwanda, south africa, zimbabwe), america (chile, mexico, usa), asia (malaysia, pakistan) and oceania (australia). each institution was asked to identify four faculty members who embody its definition of engaged scholarship. our criteria included: a mix of tenure track, pre-tenure and non-tenure track instructors; an even distribution of new and seasoned instructors; gender, racial, ethnic and religious diversity; and a selection from different disciplines. because members of this group were identified by leaders of engagement projects, we assumed they might hold positive attitudes and realistic experiences about institutional commitments. our small, targeted sample (56 faculties) sought to identify initial outcomes from the survey for the purposes of assessing the extent to which the survey language and constructs are applicable across language, national and institutional cultures. specifically, we tested our surveys to see whether more clarity was needed on language, if the scale used was understandable, and whether the length of time needed to complete the survey was reasonable. results of this pilot survey will inform the administration of a larger survey, probably drawing on the broad membership of tn. instrument dr carrier and dr furco (university of minnesota) and dr hoyt (tufts university) contributed to the creation and review of the study proposal, research questions and instrument in january 2015. the instrument, a 17-item web-based questionnaire, was original to this study and not adapted from other surveys. after peer review edits, we launched the pilot survey using qualtrics in march 2015. the survey – translated by tn’s multilingual staff – was provided in english, spanish and french. an english sample can be found online at http://bit.ly/2r08yso. we use the term ‘engaged work’ in the survey and this article as a unified term understood by the participating institutions and researchers. we define engaged work as teaching, research and scholarship; such as service-learning, communitybased learning, volunteerism, applied research and participatory action research. this definition is not identical to the one provided by the new england resource center for higher education or the typology suggested by doberneck et al. (2010) but the meaning is similar and consistent. drawing from o’meara’s work (2006) as theoretical foundation, we designed the questionnaire to examine faculty attitudes towards their universities’ recognition of communityengaged work. for example, regarding external and leadership factors (legislative bodies, administrators’ involvement and presidential commitment), question 3 of the survey asks about the ‘greatest authority for determining the overall reward and compensation structure’. in relation to cultural factors (level of http://bit.ly/2r08yso 254 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier institutional commitment), questions 7 to 10 ask about whether written policies exist that reward different types of engaged work ‘in faculty employment, promotion, or job security’. the demographic and background information that we asked respondents were very similar to the factors listed in demb and wade’s faculty engagement model (2012): institutional (institution type and region), personal (age and gender) and professional (discipline, title and work type). our two research questions also shared the same interests with two of their four questions: how do various groups of faculty perceive the support for engagement activities? can background information be predictors of faculty opinion? with regard to psychometric properties, the reliability of the survey is most likely repeatable and stable. we are certain faculty opinions would be consistent if we survey them again, assuming their institutional context and policies have not changed. the survey received validity from carnegie’s work because it used corresponding questions to the carnegie classification. although the survey is not externally valid because of its pilot and nongeneralisable nature, it remains internally valid because we accomplished our goal of measuring faculty perceptions. in order to gain external validity, we first need to access and understand the detailed policies that exist at respondents’ institutions. data collection the process of distribution and return is described in figure 1. email invitations were sent to 56 individuals, who were given four weeks to complete the survey. responses were collected and data aggregated by qualtrics so no attributions were made of responses to individuals. the response rate was fairly high (68 per cent) and not negatively affected by our timing of data collection. data analysis we applied both descriptive and statistical analyses for exploratory purposes. both of them helped determine the research design, data collection method and selection of subjects for future surveys. the descriptive analysis is an attempt to answer the question: are there any resembling patterns in faculty perspectives on their engaged work and institutional policies? meanwhile, the key question for our statistical analysis is whether there is a significant relationship between background information of respondents and their perspectives on engaged work and institutional policies; that is: can independent variables, which include age, gender, region, discipline, title, institution type and work type, be predictors of faculty opinions? as multiple comparisons may lead to a type i figure 1. survey distribution and return talloires network + univ. of minnesota talloires network + univ. of minnesota contacted 14 liaisons in 14 institutions chose 56 engaged faculty received 38 responses (68%) 255 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier error, the chosen criterion for rejecting the null hypothesis is a p value <0.01. for the purpose of piloting, we tried fisher’s exact test, multiple regressions, and logistic regressions in accordance with types of dependent variables, as shown in appendix 1. the generic regression model is: opinion = ββ0 + βageage + ββgendergender + βregionregion + βdisciplinediscipline + βtitletitle + βinstitutioninstitution + ββworktypeworktype findings descriptive results thanks to our recruitment process, we achieved our desired level of diversity in demographic and background characteristics, particularly in regions and disciplines, as can be seen in appendix 2. the respondents come from various parts of the world: from the global north (us and australia) to the global south (burkina faso, egypt, rwanda, south africa, zimbabwe, chile, mexico, malaysia and pakistan), which are both important areas for deeper investigation. despite the small sample size, there is wide coverage across sectors: natural sciences (mathematics, computer science, parasitology, agro-ecology, neurophysiology, statistics); social sciences and humanities (sociology, psychology, theatre, culture, economics); and professional (medicine, nursing, dentistry, obstetrics and gynecology, public health, education, management, business, finance, marketing, architecture, human resource, entrepreneurship). half the respondents are aged 40–55; two thirds are female; two thirds are associated with teaching positions; half work in public institutions; and three quarters work on a full-time basis. the descriptive results demonstrate relatively similar perspectives on community-engaged work and reward policies across the globe. first, on the question about who has the greatest authority for determining rewards policies (question 3), more than half (53 per cent) of respondents indicated senior administration. a notable proportion of respondents (17 per cent) said the ministry of education plays the most important role. second, when asked about what work is most rewarded (question 4), the three highest votes went to conducting research that leads to publication (97 per cent), conducting research that garners grants or other external resources (64 per cent), and conducting high-quality teaching of academic content (47 per cent). third, the instructional practices that respondents view as most highly valued and encouraged (question 6) are: applied research and learning (75 per cent), community-based research and learning (61 per cent) and entrepreneurship (58 per cent). this is a question where respondents could select all that apply, bringing the total to more than 100 per cent. surprisingly, no one thought civic studies are highly valued, as depicted in figure 2. fourth, with respect to university policies (questions 7 to 10), half of respondents noted written policies that reward research done with community members did exist at their university. in this group, about one quarter indicated these policies are not taken 256 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier seriously; half indicated no policies exist or, if so, they do not know of them, although most of their university leaders claimed in person that such policies exist. a majority (61 per cent) of respondents said policies that ‘reward research that has societal impact exist at their university’ (question 8), and about one third (37 per cent) admitted there are written policies that ‘reward teaching students to be active citizens’ (question 9). one third (33 per cent) acknowledged the existence of policies that ‘reward public service beyond the institution’ (question 10), and only about a quarter (22 per cent) thought policies that ‘reward research done with community members’ exist (question 7). in question 10, however, none of the respondents felt that strong policies exist. figure 3 demonstrates the results for question 8. lastly, regarding positive statements about engaged faculties in questions 11 and 12, a majority of respondents agreed. they concurred that faculties who conduct community-engaged research at their university are ‘primarily in academic disciplines where community issues are a central feature’ (71 per cent), ‘seen as innovators’ (66 per cent), ‘involved in some of the university’s most interesting work’ (57 per cent), ‘widely respected for conducting research that addresses important societal issues’ (57 per cent) and ‘often praised in their academic unit’ (51 per cent). they disagreed that such faculties are ‘considered to be generally less productive’ (60 per cent) and ‘often relegated to marginalized roles’ (51 per cent). however, results were mixed regarding whether such faculty are ‘considered to conduct less rigorous kinds of research’ (34 per cent agreed, 20 per cent were neutral, and 46 per cent disagreed). statistical results we found that demographic and background information may be influential factors in faculty members’ opinions about which figure 2. opinions about valued and encouraged instructional practices figure 3. opinions about written policies that reward research having societal impact in faculty employment, promotion, or job security 257 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier work is perceived as important and in attitudes toward engaged faculties, as shown in appendix 3. faculty members who work in public universities and who are women had a higher tendency to appreciate the significance of raising the university’s profile and/or rankings. female faculty members also showed stronger agreement that engaged faculties were widely respected in their universities for conducting research that addressed important societal issues. analyses with fisher’s exact test and logistic regressions showed no significant results given that our chosen criterion for rejecting the null hypothesis is p value < 0.01. if the chosen criterion was <0.05, we would have seen many significant results showing all seven independent variables as predictors. however, we decided not to dig deeper into statistical analysis or draw definite conclusions because these are exploratory tests. instead, these results helped us analyse the limitations of this pilot survey. limitations we confess it was an oversight that we neglected to ask for respondents’ race and/or ethnicity rather than simply assessing them by region. also, country of origin and country where terminal degree was conferred would better confirm the gap between the global north and south. with respect to disciplines, there are different ways of categorising. our rationale for grouping social science and humanities together is because, in a wider sense, social science encompasses some areas of humanities. many disciplines cross the boundaries between the two and integrate aspects of both. however, we acknowledge that separating social sciences and humanities could be more precise, given findings from previous studies in the us that faculties from those two groups often have significantly different levels of participation in engaged work (abes 2002; antonio 2002; demb & wade 2012; doberneck et al. 2012). for statistical analyses, other limitations that can be overcome in future surveys include: a shortage of continuous variables, the probability of a type i error due to multiple comparisons, and a small sample size. discussion through our analysis, we found the survey answers our research question. we sought to explore the nuances, as well as ascertain the extent to which faculties that conduct engaged scholarship share similar or different opinions across institutional and national contexts. we began to unearth some of these contextual factors and identify factors that transcend contexts, cultures, scholarly agendas and institutional types. this relates to what hall et al. declared about the challenge for higher education networks: how to build community-university engagement ‘across the different terminologies and narratives’ (2014, p. 309). the descriptive findings suggest there are a set of universal factors regarding perceptions of, and rewards for, engaged scholarship that transcend institutional and cultural boundaries. 258 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier first, the majority of respondents agree with how engaged faculty are positively viewed at their institutions: ‘seen as innovators’, ‘involved in some of the university’s most interesting work’, ‘widely respected for conducting research that addresses important societal issues’ and ‘often praised in their academic unit’. most of them also disagree that engaged faculty are ‘often relegated to marginalized roles’ or ‘considered to be generally less productive’. such optimism aligns with the global university network for innovation’s vision and call for higher education institutions to become engaged universities and drive social change. second, the responses to the question about the existence of written policies is quite remarkable. the responses suggest that many of the respondents cannot be much guided by policies in this area because they understand it does not exist or is not taken very seriously. responses to the question about respected and revered faculty members suggests it is not community-based research or teaching that most engenders the respect of others. many of these pilot findings might make one curious about what we would find in a larger survey. the statistical findings are not firm conclusions about global trends or correlations between opinions and demographics. instead, they offer insights about how to develop a more efficient questionnaire and better administrate a broader survey. some potentially significant correlations, such as female faculty members being more engaged, are compatible with demb and wade’s theories (2012). understanding different faculty perceptions in general and among sub-groups in particular (based on age, gender, region, discipline, title, institution type and work type) may inform future policy recommendations. in this exploratory study, we did not attempt to compare attitudes across regions, because of the small sample size. we hope to continue this work with more time and resources to achieve stronger methodology, results and interpretation. we draw four key lessons from the creation, collection and analysis of the survey. first, there are nuances in language and culture in how engaged scholarship is defined. this has implications for how survey questions are phrased and how individuals might respond to survey items. for instance, although our participating universities are involved with civic studies, no respondent selected civic studies as highly valued and encouraged. second, our data collection method and selection of subjects is appropriate, and ensures reliability and diversity in the sample. the scale used is understandable, and the length of time needed to complete the survey is reasonable. third, in future surveys, we should add more quantifiable questions; for example: number of years working with communities, hours of engaged work per week, population of communities, number of students involved in the work, number of classes, projects or jobs created, and other continuous variables about finance, facilities and infrastructures. fourth, we need to aim for a larger sample size and control the 259 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier problem of multiple comparisons. with a broader survey, we can apply the bonferroni correction and reconsider using the criterion p value < 0.01. we know from this early pilot study there is much to learn from non-western faculty perspectives on their engaged work. we seek to examine these issues more fully in our future research; this is precisely what tn and its global perspectives can offer. our hope is to bridge and share perspectives through tn to enrich and expand this body of knowledge, for all stakeholders in the process. recommendations or next steps because this is a pilot survey, the findings are mainly beneficial for lessons and recommendations for future research. with larger surveys, more conclusive findings would help produce specific recommendations for faculty, students and institutions. we hope to broaden the reach of potential member institutions for future surveys, as well as identify case studies that demonstrate best practices and lessons learned. it is important to describe deeper examples of faculty experiences from the respondent institutions, as well as from additional members with whom tn is not yet familiar. this can be done with the help of regional networks. so far, the tn steering committee’s feedback on our findings has focused on reality versus perceptions, such as the disparity between policies that some senior administrators purport to exist at their universities versus what faculty members perceive. a second survey among administrators and staff who oversee the reward process is another potential point of comparison with findings from the pilot faculty survey. furthermore, another survey of engaged students would triangulate perspectives. with 368 institutional members in 77 countries and a combined enrollment of over six million students, any future surveys promise larger sample sizes to analyse. recommendations for additional data gathering include learning how existing policies are implemented and identifying the enabling aspects of engaged scholarship at a particular university. survey data from regional networks and government organisations can be helpful inputs in the next stages of a global survey. realtime feedback from respondents, for example, revising questions while taking the survey, can also deepen our knowledge of local terminology and nuances to create a more inclusive understanding of engaged scholarship around the globe. summary and conclusion for our preliminary analysis, a 17-item survey was administered to a small sample (56 faculty members) who were selected to take the survey by a liaison at each of 14 member universities of tn. sixty-eight per cent (38 faculty members) responded from a diverse set of identifiers, including disciplines, age, gender and geographic locations. this international pilot survey contributes to addressing the dearth of literature on faculty perspectives at non-western institutions and setting a stepping stone for future research. themes on faculty perceptions of written policies and of 260 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier their own reputations as an engaged faculty are seen to be similar across institutional and regional contexts. despite the nuances in language and culture in how engaged scholarship is defined, a set of commonly held perceptions of incentives and rewards for engaged scholarship emerges to transcend the differences. the results also suggest there are potential relationships between demographics and faculty perceptions that should be further investigated with more continuous variables, control of multiple comparisons, and larger sample sizes. understanding different faculty perceptions in general and among sub-groups in particular (such as age, gender, region, discipline, title, institution type and work type) will help inform policy recommendations for implementing better community-engaged programs and building stronger civic engagement. appendix 1. modelling approach dependent variables quantity type tests opinions about the greatest authority determining rewards and existence of written policies 5 categorical fisher’s exact test likert-scale opinions with three levels of agreement about which work is important and attitude toward engaged-faculty 21 ordinal multiple regression yes-no opinions about what aspects of work that is most rewarded 6 binary logistic regression appendix 2. characteristics of the sample characteristic frequency percentage age <40 10 26.3 40-55 18 47.4 >55 7 18.4 no answer 3 7.9 gender female 23 60.5 male 12 31.6 no answer 3 7.9 region africa 13 34.2 asia 9 23.7 oceania 3 7.9 north america 2 5.3 south america 11 28.9 discipline natural sciences 7 18.4 social sciences and humanities 10 26.3 261 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier professions 18 47.4 no answer 3 7.9 title teaching positions 25 65.8 administrative/researching positions 10 26.3 no answer 3 7.9 institution type public 18 47.4 private 14 36.8 other 6 15.8 work type full time 33 86.8 part time 2 5.3 no answer 3 7.9 appendix 3. summary of statistically significant relationships using multiple regression (p<0.01) dependent variables: opinions on background information coef. std. err. t p 95% conf. interval whether raising profile and/ or rankings of the university is the most important (question 5) institution type -.922331 .2308765 -3.99 0.000 -1.39605 -.448611 gender 1.11742 .3277693 3.41 0.002 .4448932 1.789947 agreement with the attitude that engaged faculty are widely respected for conducting research that addresses important societal issues (question 11) gender -.87713 .2861413 -3.07 0.005 -1.46424 -.290166 262 | gateways | vuong, rowe, hoyt & carrier references abes, es, jackson, g & jones, sr 2002, ‘factors that motivate and deter faculty use of service-learning’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 9, issue 1, viewed 5 june 2017: hdl.handle.net/2027/ spo.3239521.0009.101 annette, j 2010, ‘the challenge of developing civic engagement in higher education in england’, british journal of educational studies, vol. 58, issue 4, pp. 451–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2010.527669 antonio, al 2002, 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buglione, sm 2009, ‘rewarding community-engaged scholarship’, new directions for higher education, vol. 2009, issue 147, pp. 25–35, doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/he.355 smout, mah 2005, the decade ahead: challenges for quality assurance in south african higher education, south african universities’ vice-chancellors’ association, pretoria. watermeyer, r & lewis, j 2014, ‘exploding the myth of public engagement as a “good thing” for research careers’, presented at the society for research into higher education, uk. watson, d, hollister, rm, stroud, se & babcock, e 2011, the engaged university: international perspectives on civic engagement, 1st ed, routledge, london. https://doi.org/10.1002/he.355 _gjdgxs puentes uc a bridge between university and society in recent decades, numerous universities have included a third mission in their institutional strategy. alongside the traditional missions of education and research, it has become clear that universities must also connect with the non-academic world: industry, public authorities and society (oeu 2006, p. 127). according to the observatory of the european university (2006, p. 130), the third mission can be realised in two ways: through economic development, related to human resources, intellectual property, spin-offs and agreements with industry; and through social development, related to public understanding of science, involvement in social and cultural life, participation in the discussion and formulation of public policy, and agreements with public institutions. in the case of chile, universities carry out a variety of public service activities that benefit surrounding communities, and which have been included in the higher education national accreditation system (world bank 2009, p. 198). the chilean national accreditation committee included connecting with the non-academic environment as an additional area for institutional assessment, requiring universities to ‘have systematic mechanisms to link with their environment, that refer to a substantial part of the institution’s work, and that have a significant impact in their area of influence’ (cna-chile n.d.). the pontifical catholic university of chile was founded on 21 june 1888, with the goal of being an institution that integrated academic excellence and a training inspired by christian doctrine. since its inception, it has sought ‘excellence in the creation and transference of knowledge, and the training of people, inspired in a catholic conception, and always in the service of the church and society’ (uc 2015). the current development plan 2015–2020 states that one of its core principles is public engagement, understood as a ‘concern, commitment, social interest and contribution to the development of the common good’ (uc 2015). in this context, the university seeks to contribute to the formulation of public policy through applied research and social interventions. ignacio irarrázaval cristóbal tello gonzalo valdivieso pontifical catholic university of chile © 2017 by i irarrázaval, c tello & g valdivieso. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: irarrázaval, i, tello, c & valdivieso, g 2017, ‘puentes uc: a bridge between university and society’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 46–57. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5471 corresponding author: ignacio irarrázaval; iirarraz@uc.cl doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5471 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) 47 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso although service to society has been part of the founding mission of the catholic university for nearly 130 years, the consideration of ‘public engagement’ as one of the specific axes of the new development plan is the consolidation of a challenge that has been strengthening since the 2005 development plan. in the earlier plan, the need to deepen the relationship with society was achieved through academic extension and leadership in the public agenda. the current challenges of public engagement for the university centre around the need for interdisciplinary work, innovation and the need to create a better management structure and coordination of engagement activities. since 2002, the catholic university has operated the puentes uc program (puentes meaning ‘bridge’), which constitutes a particular mechanism by which the university is connected with the external environment at the municipal level, and thereby seeks to contribute to the development of society. this article provides a detailed overview of the puentes uc model, including a discussion on its successes and challenges. through this model of professionally managed engagement, puentes uc is able to generate value for all participants: students, teachers, municipalities and the wider public. puentes uc: a model for university connection with local institutions the catholic university created puentes uc with the goal of strengthening its contribution to the field of public policy. the program is set up as part of the center for public policy, whose mission is to contribute to the development of chile by linking scholarship with the main challenges of society. the original brief sought to develop projects that would benefit municipalities near the university’s four campuses, facilitating the transportation and work of students and teachers from across the university’s various academic departments. the university chose to work with municipalities as they are conceived of as the true laboratories for the implementation of public policies. as chile is a highly centralised country, most of its policies are designed at the national level, yet implemented at the local level. it is at the local level that the problems of public policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation are perceived most clearly. therefore, each of these ‘diversity labs’ expose a multiplicity of challenges that incite the academic world to leave their comfort zones and get involved in the analysis and solution of real problems. during its first year, in 2002, puentes uc signed agreements with six municipalities within the city of santiago, where the university is located, and one agreement with a municipality located 100 kilometres north of the city. a team of professionals from the center for public policy identified the needs of these municipalities that could be addressed through the academic work of undergraduate students studying diverse degrees at the university. the agreement gives the municipality access to all of 48 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso the university’s faculties, and the ability to develop projects as part of the 103 undergraduate programs or numerous master’s degrees that the university offers. in the initial year, puentes uc carried out 70 projects with the participation of 482 students and 52 academics. the projects were developed as part of undergraduate courses (59per cent), undergraduate internships (28 per cent), undergraduate theses (6 per cent), as well as a smaller number by volunteer students (7 per cent). both teachers and students chose to work with puentes uc voluntarily, developing the projects as part of their course work, internships, theses and scholarship. furthermore, the first year of puentes uc confirmed that the municipal scale was an appropriate one for undergraduate students’ academic work to benefit local development and produce a positive impact within the municipalities involved, while providing students with an opportunity to gain technical and ethical training. over the course of the first five years, puentes uc broadened participation opportunities for students, adding new agreements and fostering the development of more projects every year. by the end of 2006, puentes uc was carrying out 150 projects per year, with the participation of more than 800 students. in 2008, the puentes uc methodology was systematised in a research project funded by conicyt, the government agency for scientific cooperation, and made available to all chilean universities (puentes uc 2008). more recently, puentes uc has signed agreements with five municipalities located outside santiago, thus broadening the territorial scope of the program, and one agreement with a nonmunicipal institution, the chilean gendarmería (the state prison service), thus broadening the institutional scope of its contribution. puentes uc currently has agreements with 14 public institutions, under which it carries out over 300 projects per year, with the participation of more than 1800 students (see figure 1). figure 1: development of puentes uc programs, 2002–2016. source: puentes uc 2016. 49 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso the puentes uc model is based on a joint collaboration agreement between the university and the institution (municipality, association or public service) for the development of academic projects that produce mutual benefits. puentes uc projects allow students to comply with an academic course prerequisite, be it an internship or a research project that they must carry out depending on their study plan; realise a project in which they can put their technical knowledge and professional capabilities to the test; aim to solve a real world problem, with counterparts effectively involved; and produce benefits in a vulnerable municipality. in exchange, the institution that signs the collaboration agreement receives technical advice in areas where it has scarce technical resources, or where its staff are overwhelmed by day-to-day demands. puentes uc projects allow the institution to gather information, assess administrative effectiveness, develop preliminary projects they wish to promote, innovate, and have additional technical resources at their disposal to carry out priority initiatives. the key element of the puentes uc model is the role of program coordinator, who manages the link between the university and the municipality or public institution. the coordinator is a member of the puentes uc team, located at the university, but with a strong presence at the partner municipality or institution. puentes uc recruits former students, who have participated in past projects, or young professionals, who are interested in working with the initiative, as members of its team. currently, puentes uc has nine program coordinators who monitor 14 agreements between them. the coordinators have diverse academic backgrounds, but share strong skills in terms of empathy, teamwork, initiative, autonomy and leadership. each coordinator manages one or two agreements, depending on the location and complexity of the municipality. they remain with the same municipality for at least two years, and supervise 30 to 60 projects per year. as well as monitoring existing projects, the coordinator is responsible for meeting institutional staff, officials and directors of various departments in order to detect needs, opportunities, problems or projects that could be addressed by undergraduate students in the context of their academic training. they must encourage the generation of requests from the institution to the university, making sure requests are relevant to program goals; therefore, filtering requests that are too simple or too complex to be addressed by undergraduate students. the coordinator is the concrete link between the university and the public institution, making it possible to develop initiatives that benefit both parties. for the municipality, the puentes uc coordinator is the university’s representative, through which all requests can be channelled, and the person who coordinates project execution and evaluation. as mentioned, the coordinator acts as a filter for 50 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso municipal demands, thereby adjusting the expectations of the municipality so that they do not anticipate products or outcomes that cannot be developed by undergraduate students; at the same time, the coordinator can assist them to take advantage of the multiple options for collaboration that are available to them under the agreement with puentes uc. once identified, requests are analysed by puentes uc coordinators in order to assess the most appropriate academic department and type of resource needed to address it. the same team of coordinators are the ones who meet with academics to encourage them to address these requests in their undergraduate courses, and meet with students to offer them the chance to undertake a professional internship and conduct research in connection with these projects. once there is a match between the request from the institution and the interest displayed by an academic or student, as the case may be, the project is commenced under the supervision of the puentes uc coordinator. this professional is not the technical supervisor (that responsibility lies with the academic), but he or she monitors the progress of the project, seeking to guarantee the satisfaction of both the student and the institution, the delivery of the outcomes which have been committed to, and the assessment of the project. the coordinator, along with the student and the municipal staff involved, has the responsibility of solving any problems that might arise during the realisation of the project. for students and teachers, the coordinator is an ally who facilitates their access into the municipality and aids coordination with municipal officials, acting as an intermediary, or mediator in the case of disputes with municipal officials. a real example allows for a better understanding of the puentes uc model. in the department of education at one of the municipalities with which the program works, there was a request to address a problem the department had with the children of immigrants’ families who attended the municipal preschools. according to the municipal authorities, the children did not eat the lunch they were given because it was not the type of food they were accustomed to. the department requested a menu be designed that offered alternatives, with consideration given to the types of traditional foods consumed by the children. the puentes uc coordinator in charge of this agreement analysed the application in conjunction with other program professionals, and resolved that it was necessary to first look deeper into the issue before designing a solution to the problem. the sociology institute at the catholic university was subsequently contacted, and the subject was presented to students as an alternative preschool practice; the result was a qualitative research study of one of the preschools, carried out by two sociology students. the conclusion of the study was that most of the children in that preschool did not eat their lunch, regardless of whether or not they came from families of immigrants, and that, in fact, the main cause was actually related to the time when lunch was served and the preschool employees’ 51 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso attitudes towards the children. the children preferred to play than eat, and were shouted and yelled at by their teachers, instead of being encouraged to eat their food. the solution, therefore, was not to create a new menu, but to change the behaviour of the preschool employees. the puentes uc model has allowed the university to carry out projects on issues or challenges proposed by the municipalities, as in the previous example, and has also fostered and supported the creation of new initiatives emerging from within the university itself. in this way, puentes uc has become a platform not just for the university’s academics, but also for other programs and research centres within the university, to develop research activities, projects and training activities in partnership with the municipalities with whom puentes uc works, thus taking advantage of the existing connections and of the management skills of the puentes uc coordinators. funding for the program comes from mixed sources: the university contributes the infrastructure and part of the direct costs of the professional program team (30 per cent of the total cost), and the institutions pay an average of us$2600 per month to access the program (70 per cent of the total cost). the fact that the institutions make a monthly contribution is an ongoing indicator of their interest and degree of satisfaction with the results. achievements of the puentes uc model in nearly 15 years, puentes uc has developed into an effective model for linking university and society at the municipal scale. winning the 2010 macjannet prize for global citizenship was an important achievement for the team and contributed to the consolidation of the program within the university. thanks to this international recognition, the program gained greater institutional support and commitment. puentes uc contributes in a significant manner to the development of municipalities, day-by-day, step-by-step, addressing very concrete problems in a collaborative manner and with a scale of solution that few other methods permit. puentes uc contributes to the analyses, proposal and design of precise solutions that have an impact on the daily life of many people who live in the municipality. the program provides a strong link between the university and the urban environment, and allows students and teachers to expand their knowledge and be challenged. the main achievements of this model are: a. links training and public engagement: puentes uc offers students and teachers the opportunity to develop a real project for the benefit of a vulnerable community through the provision of technical knowledge. many students participate in social volunteer activities during their time at the university; however, these are generally not related to their major area of study. puentes uc offers the possibility for them to work in the public realm in a professional capacity, opening up the possibility of future work in the public sphere or providing useful work experience for the 52 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso private sector or in civil society. in the case of teachers, the work with puentes uc allows them to link their academic expertise with the public sphere, generating new research topics or possibilities for collaboration between their academic work and the public domain. b. provides professional facilitation: the academic units and staff reduce their transaction costs by relying on the puentes uc program, which offers them a varied and up-to-date portfolio of projects that their students can work on. this way, academics themselves do not have to seek out project opportunities for students, and furthermore they can count on support from a puentes uc professional to monitor the progress of student projects and maintain relationships with local counterparts. similarly, academic units are improved by having a range of internships and research projects made available, thus increasing opportunities for students. c. offers a new approach to problem-solving: the external perspective provided by a group of undergraduate students supervised by a university academic, within the context of a course, an internship or academic research, offers a new and distinct approach to confronting a complex municipal problem. feedback from participating municipalities indicate that key highlights include: a deeper diagnosis of the problems municipalities face; an assessment of administrative efficiency; and the generation of new courses of action, which may not have been previously considered. d. allows for multiple points of participation: the puentes uc model is inserted into the public institution as a whole, opening up opportunities for collaboration with diverse departments and areas throughout the organisation. in the case of chilean municipalities, this includes a wide range of public policy areas such as education, health, security, social development, economic development, housing, urbanism and citizen security. the variety of issues addressed allows the university to involve two thirds of its academic departments, not just the most traditional ones such as engineering, economics or law, but also programs such as theatre, art, literature, chemistry and biology. e. facilitates horizontal knowledge exchange: all projects developed by puentes uc are available to participating municipalities and are therefore used as references for the development of similar projects in communities other than where it was first developed. additionally, puentes uc has facilitated direct knowledge exchange between officials of different municipalities that work in the same area or on similar projects. the knowledge that the puentes uc team acquires from each municipality allows for horizontal knowledge exchange between diverse municipalities and between students who work on similar projects in different communities. f. facilitates bi-directional links: working directly with municipalities over long periods of time (up to 15 years, in some cases) has allowed for wide-ranging participation by students and academics in the partner municipalities, and has also allowed 53 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso for an active participation by directors and professionals of these municipalities in university activities. puentes uc is often used as a means for inviting municipal staff to participate in seminars, workshops and training sessions offered by different academic departments and areas within the university, as well as in the generation of new research projects borne out of these alliances. g. builds trust between the university and municipalities: the puentes uc working format has made it possible to bring the work of the municipality into the university context, raising awareness in the academic world of municipal staff and day-to-day local issues. furthermore, it has served to modify the perceptions of university students and academics about local government, and indeed has given them an appreciation of the complexity of the work they undertake. in chile, municipalities are generally seen by academia as weak institutions, both in the development and management of local public policy. this program has contributed to changing this perception, allowing for a better understanding of the complexities of policy implementation at a local level, and the importance of the university to be involved in this process. h. is flexible and adaptable: the puentes uc model has been applied in different municipality sizes: large-size municipalities (more than 500,000 inhabitants), intermediate-size municipalities (on average, 100,000 inhabitants) and small municipalities (20,000 inhabitants or less). it has also been implemented for two years’ running in the chilean association of municipalities, which includes most of the municipalities of the country, and for three years now in the chilean gendarmería. the diversity of size and institutional characteristics shows the flexibility of the model, which allows the university to adapt it to different contexts. the model has also been tested in emergencies, such as the 2010 earthquake that affected the central-southern zone of the country, when the catholic university channelled its assistance to seven municipalities of the maule region using the puentes uc model to organise the work of academics and students. successful cases between 2002 and 2015, puentes uc carried out 3087projects in 25 public institutions. this section highlights some of these projects in order to illustrate the potential impact at a local level. design of the civic centre and town hall of frutillar in 2013, the municipality of frutillar (semi-rural, 17,000 inhabitants) decided to construct a new building to house the municipal offices and become the city’s new civic centre. the traditional municipal approach would be to call for bids for the design, specifying an architectural brief and number of square metres to be built, but without further specifications in regard to location and architectural design, thus missing a valuable opportunity to build a public building that would contribute additional architectural value to the city. 54 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso the assignment from the municipality was addressed by a compulsory workshop for undergraduates in the school of architecture, in which seven distinct proposals for a master plan and building concept were developed over a one-year period. based on these proposals, in 2014 the municipality called for bids for a feasibility study for construction, and will soon call for bids for the final building design. the project developed by puentes uc allowed the municipality to systematise the needs of its staff and community, and to gather diverse proposals that established criteria and standards to be considered in the design of the building, ensuring that it will be sustainable, architecturally attractive, and responsive to the characteristics and identity of the municipality, as well as to the needs of the people who will inhabit it. thanks to the contribution of puentes uc, the municipality of frutillar has a vision, mission and technical criteria that it did not previously have at hand. development of a fit-out suitable for small children in a waiting room in puente alto the social action department in the municipality of puente alto, an urban municipality of some 583,000 inhabitants, receives on a daily basis a high number of members of the community who are in the process of requesting social services. many of these people must bring their children with them; therefore, the situation required a space for children to play while waiting. the assignment from the municipality of puente alto was addressed in 2015 by an intern from the school of design, who focused on the consolidation of a space oriented towards early childhood in the busy waiting room of the social action department. the project developed by the student managed to consolidate, through different elements, a space for kids to move about in, with furniture especially designed with this in mind. currently, the space is not only used for children to play, but also serves as a space to carry out children’s workshops and activities. assistance in the creation and development of the inclusion department estación central is an urban municipality with around 144,000 inhabitants. facing a significant increase in its migrant population, the municipality requested a social profile of its migrant community, in order to develop a local management plan. the brief was addressed in 2013 by the course methods and techniques of social research ii, at the institute of sociology, which developed a questionnaire and conducted more than 1000 interviews with migrants in the municipality, allowing for a characterisation of this population group. based on the information provided by puentes uc, the municipality created the department of inclusion in 2014, which was supported by other academic projects. one course from the 55 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso law school devised the migrants’ rights manual in order to facilitate the training imparted by the municipality, and then an intern from the institute of political science actively collaborated to help estación central to become the first chilean municipality to obtain the migrant seal, a recognition given by the ministry of the interior for the development of programs that promote the participation of foreign communities. challenges puentes uc has come to be seen as an effective model to connect the university and public institutions at the municipal level. however, it is constantly being improved in order to increase its impact. this section describes the main challenges currently being addressed. a. long-term projects: the great majority of projects developed by puentes uc respond to specific requests from public institutions and must be completed within one academic semester, with the result that their impact is generally limited and short term. to increase the impact of its contribution at the local scale, the university has carried out, from 2016, strategic projects in every municipality working with puentes uc. these projects are more complex in nature, and require the harnessing of diverse academic resources through 2–4 academic semesters in order to carry out the complete or near-complete cycle of the project. this way, a project can include the diagnosis of a problem, the assessment of alternative solutions, the development of the preliminary project, its social and economic assessment, and the development of the elements of the final project. b. interdisciplinary nature: the development of interdisciplinary projects is difficult to realise through undergraduate courses. the diverse curricular requirements and timeframes of the different academic departments makes it nearly impossible for two or more courses from different academic departments to work together on the same initiative. however, in the case of internships, it is feasible to achieve an interdisciplinary experience. as of 2016, puentes uc is promoting interdisciplinary internships, in which two or more students from different academic departments work together at the same time on the same project. this new method will require ongoing assessment in order to guarantee that not only is it a joint work experience, but also that an interdisciplinary team is formed to address a common challenge. c. motivational campaign: university students are receiving an increasing and varied number of offers for how they might realise their academic projects. every year, more and more ngos, companies and public institutions seek to engage students in academic projects that work to their own benefit. this is why there is an ongoing need for puentes uc to redesign its means of communication and strategies for attracting students and encouraging them to apply for the projects offered by puentes uc. communication with students has become a key element for the success of the program. 56 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso d. impact assessment: puentes uc carries out an ongoing assessment of its projects through surveys of participating students and municipal staff. these surveys show a high degree of satisfaction with the program, but do not allow for an evaluation of the impact of the completed projects. the evaluation of municipal officials shows that 80 per cent of the projects developed by puentes uc are useful for its management, and that the remaining 20 per cent correspond to poor-quality outcomes or to projects that should not have been requested by the municipality. it is a permanent challenge to adjust expectations among students and staff at the beginning of the project, and to agree on terms and conditions that can be developed by students and also be useful for the municipality. since 2015, puentes uc has been using the research excellence framework methodology to document the impact of the most successful puentes uc projects (ref impact 2014). conclusion connecting with and contributing to society has become part of the catholic university’s mission and is materialised through a great diversity of initiatives. however, the puentes uc model shows that this linkage cannot be based only on will and contact, but requires management of that linkage. many universities are linked with municipalities and public institutions so that their students can develop projects for public purposes; however, the puentes uc model shows the multiple benefits that can be achieved by establishing ongoing collaborative agreements, which are managed by a professional team, and which seek to ensure that students, teachers and public institutions all benefit from working together. the success of puentes uc is due to the creation of public value for both parties: the university and the municipality. puentes uc has been part of the creation of lasting and longterm partnerships and innovations in methodology, and has permanently improved the impact of developed projects. the process for connecting and building relationships developed by puentes uc maximises the benefits generated by collaboration between universities and municipalities, adequately identifying opportunities for collaboration, properly channelling the academic resources available within the university, and generating horizontal knowledge exchange and effective contexts for shared work among students, teachers and officials. it would not be possible for a university to achieve the level of collaboration or the number of students, teachers and officials involved in these projects without the existence of a managed program such as puentes uc. in 15 years, puentes uc has carried out 3087 projects in association with 25 public institutions, involving 19,735 students and 1296 academics. even though this program is already well established at the university and at the municipal level, it is still a ‘linking’ model in permanent development whereby constant improvement is being sought. new requests from municipalities, curricular changes in academic departments, and evolution in the 57 | gateways | irarrázaval, tello & valdivieso interests and expectations of students require the program to be in an ongoing state of redesign, in order to satisfy the expectations of the university and the institutions with which it has signed agreements. the next five years will be essential in overcoming the most important challenges that puentes uc faces in order to increase its impact on public policy at a local level. references comisión nacional de acreditación (cna-chile) n.d., ‘guía para la autoevaluación interna acreditación institucional: universidades’, viewed may 2017: www.cnachile.cl/siteassets/lists/acreditacion%20institucional/ allitems/gui%cc%81a%20para%20la%20autoevaluacio%cc%81n%20 interna%20universidades.pdf research excellence framework (ref) 2014, ‘research excellence framework’, ref england, viewed may 2017: www.ref.ac.uk/ observatory of the european university (oeu) 2006, ‘methodological guide: strategic management of university research activities’, lugano, switzerland, viewed may 2017: www.enid-europe.org/prime/documents/ oeu_guide.pdf pontificia universidad católica de chile, ‘plan de desarrollo 2015–2020’, santiago, chile, viewed may 2017: www.uc.cl/es/plan-de-desarrollo puentes uc 2008, ‘manual operativo programa de vinculación entre universidad y municipios’, santiago, viewed may 2017: politicaspublicas. uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/manual-operativo-programa-devinculacion-entre-universidad-y-municipios-puentes-uc/ puentes uc 2014, ‘memoria anual puentes uc 2013’, viewed may 2017: politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anualpuentes-uc-2013/ puentes uc 2015, ‘memoria anual puentes uc 2014’, viewed may 2017: http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoriaanual-puentes-uc-2014/ puentes uc 2016, ‘memoria anual puentes uc 2015’, viewed may 2017: politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anualpuentes-uc-2015/ world bank 2009, reviews of national policies for education: tertiary education in chile, world bank, washington, dc, viewed may 2017: documents. worldbank.org/curated/en/590381468012019313/reviews-of-nationalpolicies-for-education-tertiary-education-in-chile https://www.cnachile.cl/siteassets/lists/acreditacion%20institucional/allitems/gui%cc%81a%20para%20la%20autoevaluacio%cc%81n%20interna%20universidades.pdf https://www.cnachile.cl/siteassets/lists/acreditacion%20institucional/allitems/gui%cc%81a%20para%20la%20autoevaluacio%cc%81n%20interna%20universidades.pdf https://www.cnachile.cl/siteassets/lists/acreditacion%20institucional/allitems/gui%cc%81a%20para%20la%20autoevaluacio%cc%81n%20interna%20universidades.pdf http://www.ref.ac.uk/ http://www.enid-europe.org/prime/documents/oeu_guide.pdf http://www.enid-europe.org/prime/documents/oeu_guide.pdf http://www.uc.cl/es/plan-de-desarrollo http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/manual-operativo-programa-de-vinculacion-entre-universidad-y-municipios-puentes-uc/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/manual-operativo-programa-de-vinculacion-entre-universidad-y-municipios-puentes-uc/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/manual-operativo-programa-de-vinculacion-entre-universidad-y-municipios-puentes-uc/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2013/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2013/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2014/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2014/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2015/ http://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/publicacion/otras-publicaciones/memoria-anual-puentes-uc-2015/ http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/590381468012019313/reviews-of-national-policies-for-education-tertiary-education-in-chile http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/590381468012019313/reviews-of-national-policies-for-education-tertiary-education-in-chile http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/590381468012019313/reviews-of-national-policies-for-education-tertiary-education-in-chile every teacher is a language teacher preparing teacher candidates for english language learners through service-learning secondary school teachers in the united states are facing urgent challenges in their increasingly heterogeneous classrooms where the presence of english language learners (ells) is becoming the norm. ells tend to be much more disadvantaged than their english-proficient peers in terms of socioeconomic resources and academic ability, and thus rely more on teachers to guide them through the precarious journey of surviving secondary school (fan 2009). research reveals that integrating language teaching in content teaching creates the best learning environments for secondary age ells to develop their academic language skills (valdés 2001). classroom teachers are therefore crucial facilitators of ell student learning. (in this article, classroom teachers refer to mainstream, general education, content area, non-specialist teachers in secondary schools. they are not english as a second language (esl), english language development (eld), or bilingual education teachers.) given the urgency of preparing classroom teachers to serve ells, however, relatively few studies address the actual practice of integrating linguistic knowledge and language-related experience into teacher education. only 20 states in the usa mandate ellrelated training, and less than a sixth of teacher education programs nationwide offer such training to pre-service teachers (ballantyne, sanderman & levy 2008). teacher education needs to fill this critical gap by offering ‘a situated preparation within ell communities that fosters the development of teacher knowledge of the dynamics of language in children’s lives and communities’ (garcía et al. 2010, p. 132). lucas and grinberg (2008) put forward a language-specific knowledge base for regular classroom teachers, and yet little research discusses ways to promote this knowledge base in teacher education programs. situating language teacher education in community-based service-learning has been widely practised, and for this case, in particular, it allows pre-service teachers to work with youth and adults from local, diverse and low socioeconomic neighbourhoods in the process of learning english. researchers and practitioners (for example, henry & breyfogle 2006) are paying special attention gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 77–92 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 yanan fan san francisco state university 78 | gateways | fan to the structure and pedagogy of service-learning in order to avoid the charity model of haves transmitting resources and knowledge to have-nots. in other words, service-learning should be a reciprocal experience in which ‘everyone is in service and everyone can learn’ (stanton & erasmus 2013, p. 64). fundamental understanding in service-learning requires that ‘[t]he service must be relevant to the community and the content of the academic course, meaningful to the community and to the students, and developed and formulated with the community’ (howard 2001, p. 23). most recent studies of service-learning to prepare teacher candidates for working with ells investigate and conceptualise the impact of service-learning programs on participating teacher candidates (for example, hale 2008; spencer, cox-petersen & crawford 2005) and analyse specific pedagogy that is implemented in service-learning practice. for instance, based on qualitative data collected from 106 pre-service teachers (including 15 secondary candidates), wong (2008) studied the nature of tutor– tutee relationships among pre-service teachers who participated in a service-learning college course and their english language students. wong argues that stronger awareness of the political, social and cultural contexts of working with ells and development of culturally responsive pedagogy and disposition are key to preparing future teachers. blum and de la piedra (2010) report their use of counter-storytelling in two service-learning projects that led to candidates’ critical examination of their assumptions about serving immigrant students. similarly, hallman & burdick (2011) investigated how secondary english language arts teachers could benefit from service-learning experience while developing an identity that connected to their content pedagogical skills. while service-learning is viewed as an effective pedagogical practice that promotes empathy among teacher candidates towards under-represented children, and increases awareness of social justice, equity, civic engagement and work ethics (hollins & guzman 2005), it is important to note that multiple-subject preservice teachers and elementary school children have been studied (for example, hadjioannou & hutchinson 2010; hart & king 2007; ponder, veldt & lewis-ferrell 2011; szente 2008) far more than their single-subject counterparts. in addition, a specific focus is missing on developing secondary school teacher candidates’ linguistic knowledge and language teaching while they are participating in ell communities through service-learning projects (friedman 2002). in short, this article aims to address two intertwining needs in research – the need for teacher education to build candidates’ linguistic knowledge and competence in a ‘situated preparation[s] within english learner communities that fosters the development of teacher knowledge of the dynamics of language in children’s lives and communities’ (garcía et al. 2010, p. 132), and the need for community and university partners in service-learning to create 79 | gateways | fan ‘enriched form[s] of reciprocity’ (henry & breyfogle 2006, p. 29) in which all parties own their projects by sharing a collective goal and contributing to/benefiting from the experience. using the case study of a service-learning project, the article describes and analyses language learning and teaching experiences among a group of teacher candidates as they tutored ells in northern california during spring 2010. as a teacher educator and a researcher, i explore the result of incorporating a service-learning component in a single credential course on second language development. research questions were: what linguistic knowledge and language-related experiences (lucas & grinberg 2008) did candidates learn to build? how did they interact with local communities of ells and teachers? the following sections first introduce the service-learning project, and then discuss the linguistic, social and cultural knowledge the candidates gained and the mutual learning experiences within the local communities. the last section focuses on several implications of the study. the service-learning tutee project the study took place during a single-subject credential course on second language development (sld) at a california state university in spring 2010. sld examines the nature of first and second language acquisition and sheltered instruction in order to prepare candidates to address issues related to ells in mainstream classrooms. candidates who earn a credential from this sb2042 (a california state mandate) compliant program are authorised to teach ells in public schools. the three-credit-bearing sld is therefore a gate-keeping course. as an instructor of sld for several years, i initiated the service-learning component to address a persistent problem: a missing sense of contexts in instruction that may have led to a lack of connectedness and rigour in candidates’ reflection on their knowledge and experience of working with ells. the new servicelearning component would enable candidates to observe and study closely with ells in real-life contexts (for example, workplace literacy and citizenship education). the move toward communitybased practices was grounded in a sociocultural perspective that views learning to teach as a situated social practice in which every member of a community plays an active role in constructing the experience (lave & wenger 1991). the goal was to create learning environments that were culturally and linguistically meaningful for teacher candidates, in order to understand the social contexts of the lives of the immigrant youths and adults. the service-learning component of sld, a tutee project, was established after frequent and thorough communication between the author/instructor and the participating immigrant agencies throughout 2010 fall semester. prior professional connections to the san francisco bay area immigrant communities through field supervision, as well as support from the university’s community 80 | gateways | fan liaison, the institute for civic and community engagement, played a vital role in laying the groundwork. with a collective goal of supporting the ells, the project, on the one hand, offered academic content and logistics to candidates. on the other hand, it enabled the immigrant agencies to share responsibilities through on-site supervision of candidates, modelling effective practices, co-teaching with both the instructor and the candidates, and assessing candidate performance over time. in short, the project was built upon mutual need and effective communication between the instructor and the community. the tutee project involved 20 hours of service-learning work at an immigrant agency. during the 16-week coursework back on campus, discussion topics were tied to service-learning fieldwork to monitor and facilitate the process. for example, during the first two weeks when candidates chose organisations for their fieldwork, class readings and discussions laid out national debates and language policies for ells to help candidates contextualise their service in a broader social environment. in return, candidates documented the history and community information pertinent to their organisations in order to understand the immigrant populations they served. sld also covered topics such as second language acquisition, academic language, teaching strategies and action/case studies, which guided candidate fieldwork and reflection. candidates were evaluated through participation in discussion, four field reports documenting various aspects of their fieldwork, a final report on the service-learning experience and a formal presentation to class members. quantitative and qualitative feedback from all participating agencies was also counted as part of candidates’ participation and professionalism grade. participants twenty-eight single-subject credential candidates enrolled in the single-subject credential course and all voluntarily participated in this study in spring 2010 when the service-learning sld was first offered. among the 28 candidates, there were 16 males and 12 females, mostly in their thirties. furthermore, 18 candidates identified themselves as monolingual, 7 as bilingual and 3 as multilingual. their subject breakdown was as follows: english, 6; social studies, 8; science, 6; arts, 2; music, 2; physical education, 2; mathematics, 1; and foreign language, 1. twenty-one candidates reported that service-learning was a new concept to them, and 19 reported minimum experience teaching or assisting ells. still, in a pre-project survey, many candidates stated that they valued a connection to the community and expected to learn more about language teaching from their ells and the project. as one wrote, service-learning ‘broadens perspectives, provides philanthropic kickback, and betters the community’. another candidate wrote, ‘just as i think it’s important for my students to enter into the world, i value it for educators in the making’ (preproject survey data). at the same time, some candidates voiced concerns about the practicality issues and the unknowns: ‘it 81 | gateways | fan sounds important but i really don’t know’; ‘important, yes; but i also think it can be more beneficial if done during 1st semester when the workload is smaller’ (pre-project survey data). in undertaking service-learning at 11 local agencies, the 28 candidates worked with ells, from teens to seniors, with varied literacy levels and educational and immigrant backgrounds. based on the needs of different groups (for example, learning academic english in public schools, preparing for the workforce, applying for citizenship, or developing basic literacy skills), candidates were assigned various instructional roles, such as assisting site esl teachers or leading small groups in adult education programs, tutoring in particular subject areas in after-school programs or teaching spoken english. some candidates followed a curriculum in the more structured programs, while planning for others was more flexibly based on students’ daily needs. although few candidates had a chance to practise teaching in their subject area, they all experienced the challenge of teaching english exclusively to ells, which was the goal of the service-learning course. methods course outline and data sources data sources included preand post-project surveys, candidates’ tutoring field reports, researcher field notes of classroom discussions, candidates’ final project reports and presentation materials, candidates’ mid-term and final evaluation of their learning and their progress with their tutees, and community organisation evaluation and feedback at the end of project. during the first week, a pre-project survey was administered to retrieve basic information about candidate demographics, their previous service-learning experiences and their expectations of the tutee project. at week 16, the last week of the semester, candidates completed a post-project survey to report their overall growth, struggles, and reassessment of their expectations of the tutee project, as well as their suggestions for project revision. the surveys documented candidates’ reflections on their academic development as teachers and learners and their disposition in serving diverse student populations over time. candidates wrote four field reports over a 12-week span as they fulfilled their service-learning hours at their respective organisations. each field report was approximately 700–1000 words in length. prompt questions were provided to candidates suggesting possible areas for observation, inquiry and reflection. in field report 1, candidates documented the geographic, demographic and programmatic aspects of the organisation as well as the community and ell population that the organisation served. field reports 2 and 3 focused on candidates’ developing strategies in assisting ells and analyses of how english was negotiated among members of their learning communities, including the candidates themselves. field report 4 highlighted compelling teaching and/or learning moments and their impact 82 | gateways | fan on candidates’ growth. all four field reports required candidates to connect their prior knowledge, observations and practice to language learning theories discussed in class. in addition to the four field reports, i compiled after each class meeting detailed notes taken during class on key ideas discussed, major questions, personal stories and practical concerns. these notes depicted many significant moments in class, especially when candidates tried to relate theory and site experience. the 10-page final project report by the candidates described the nature of their fieldwork and their learning in terms of language learning, language teaching, teaching the subject area and understanding of themselves as future teachers. candidates also shared a one-page hand-out during their final presentation, highlighting a compelling moment of their learning during servicelearning. as researcher, i visited many organisations in person to discuss project objectives, timelines and tutoring needs. during the project, i constantly monitored candidate progress by regularly communicating with the organisations. feedback via email, phone and site visits was documented. the organisations also filled out an end-of-project questionnaire which contained both quantitative and qualitative information about candidates’ performance, professionalism and areas for improvement, as well as the effectiveness of sld. data analysis data analysis of candidates’ linguistic knowledge and languagerelated experience was an inductive process (emerson, fretz & shaw 1995). data was first organised by candidate name, by site, and in chronological order. after reading the whole data set multiple times, initial coding categories were developed according to language, teaching, ells and the teacher’s professional disposition. the language category included such subcategories as linguistic and sociolinguistic features of tutees’ first language (l1) and second language (l2), l1’s similarities with and differences from english, types of errors in writing, characteristics of spoken language, comprehensible input, and affective filter. candidate observations of the difficulties and triumphs their tutees experienced throughout the project were also under this category. the teaching category consisted of interactions with ells, sheltered instruction, learning styles, and motivation. the disposition category covered critical discussions on tracking, immigrant education, stereotyping, language shock, teacher attitude, servicelearning, and understanding of the ell community. the last category – ells – contained teaching content versus teaching english, language demands for adult and adolescent learners, and teaching academic language. guided by a sociocultural perspective on learning, a tutoring event was adopted as a unit of analysis. a tutoring event is defined as a social activity where tutors and their tutees participate in making sense of l1 and l2 together. using this definition, the 83 | gateways | fan second round of analysis identified tutoring events in the whole data set. twenty-five events repeatedly mentioned by candidates and 18 that addressed similar issues (for example, student writing) were selected for closer examination and triangulation with all data sources. using tutoring events, the initial coding categories, including the subcategories, were re-examined and re-grouped to highlight candidates’ experiences. two examples illustrate this re-grouping. first, in 24 out of the 25 events, candidates focused on tutees’ written rather than their spoken language. from this data, the spoken language event was omitted because it was not representative of candidates’ discussions. the other example was that of a candidate teaching english songs in a migrant worker centre. the data was originally in the subcategory of ‘affective filter’ under the language category, but was subsequently included in the teaching category because the candidate analysed her use of songs as a strategy rather than as the learning of songs and lyrics. final coding was developed around (a) candidates’ knowledge of l1 and l2 development (for example, communicative competence, pronunciation, and writing) and the kind of instructional decisions that responded to this knowledge (for example, teaching vocabulary, writing, foreign language teaching methods, creating opportunity for expression, and assessing learning styles); and (b) candidates’ situated learning in a community where they learnt from and with peers and ells. findings despite their expertise in various subject areas, all candidates became students of language through observing and participating in service-learning. given limited credit hours for the course and the vast amount of information needed, the candidates focused on individual ells in their inquiry into language learning in the community. the mutually beneficial relationships among members of the community encouraged candidates’ thoughtful, critical reflections on the nature and meaning of learning a second language in contexts. ‘sofa’, ‘amirca’ and ‘bike’: (re)constructing sociolinguistic knowledge in contexts this section describes how the candidates developed and reflected on their curiosity and awareness of the sociolinguistic features of the english language together with the ells’ home languages during their tutoring experience. (note that all names are fictitious.) as an assistant to an esl teacher in a beginning-level adult class, wilson worked closely with students in small group settings. a vignette in his field report reflected a common theme in all candidates’ work, namely, to rethink linguistic knowledge beyond worksheets and vocabulary lists: [after the esl teacher introduced vocabulary in the textbook on items at home,] i decided to initiate a bit of role-play and try to create 84 | gateways | fan a more authentic situation. i told h [who is from yemen] and her circle that i wanted to visit their home in yemen. funniest was when i complimented the hostess (h) on the lovely sofa. she asked what a ‘sofa’ was. ‘we don’t have sofas in yemen.’ she then attempted to explain in english the kind of seating i could expect if i visited a yemeni home (even in the u.s.). i never thought i’d be teaching an ell student the word ‘sectional’ (to denote couches joined together in a ‘u’ shape). it was esoteric and, at the same time, marvelously fun (wilson, field report). for emily, teaching the differences between the two phrases ‘excuse me’ and ‘excuse me?’ reminded her of the ‘importance of knowing the different melodies of spoken words in any language and the importance of contexts in language learning and teaching’. emily explains her approach: i wanted to be sure to communicate that the phrase ‘excuse me?’ is applicable to multiple situations, and that tone and melody have everything to do with that communication. so i acted out … i bumped into someone’s desk and said, ‘oh, excuse me.’ then, i asked a student to speak to me in their home language, listened for a moment, scrunched up my face in confusion and said, ‘excuse me? i don’t understand’ (emily, final report). like wilson and emily, many candidates emphasised the importance for teachers to understand the notion that language is a social tool with which students explore when and where to say what to whom. this is because, as yolanda writes, ‘when they have social utility and purpose for the learner, then learning is enhanced and actually empowers the learner’ (yolanda, final report). tutees’ home languages and their impact on their learning of english were also explored. in their service-learning sites, candidates were exposed to arabic, spanish, chinese, tagalog, russian, farsi, thai, vietnamese, burmese, and their numerous regional dialects, which mirrored the linguistic reality in california. many candidates agreed that working with their tutees had stimulated more curiosity (rather than insecurity and embarrassment in being monolingual) about and daring exploration of their students’ home languages, which mediated their understanding that all languages are symbolic tools for expression, and that students were drawing upon their language resources to communicate. for example, julia recorded her observation of her jordanian tutee, a: a wrote a touching story about his childhood. although his papers show some common errors that are likely related to his primary language of arabic, they do not interfere with my understanding of his stories (julia, final report). nina, who worked with a muslim girl, k, from saudi arabia, noted that teachers should understand why learners made such errors: 85 | gateways | fan for example, in the word ‘amirca’ (ah-mer-ri-ca) that k wrote, the important vowel sounds are the long ones, ah, mer, and ca. ‘ri’ has a short vowel sound, and in arabic one would not write a letter for the i (nina, final report). candidates also quickly realised that language registers differently in various social settings – in particular, daily communication versus academic discourse. for example, fynn met two korean tutees who understood the daily announcements played on the intercom system, but had trouble reading directions in maths homework. larry offered an analogy to remind himself to integrate language in content and context: the definition for bicycle reads, ‘a vehicle consisting of a light frame mounted on two wire-spoked wheels one behind the other and having a seat, handlebars for steering, brakes, and two pedals or a small motor by which it is driven’. if one were unfamiliar with a bicycle, how helpful would that definition really be? (larry, field report). inspired by the tutees’ fascinating language diversity, candidates’ curiosity about their tutees’ home languages and their willingness to investigate linguistic and sociolinguistic features of their first language (english) more thoroughly became one major milestone in their learning. a student of language: learning in a community with mutual benefits hallman and burdick (2011, p. 354) argue that ‘because the service-learning environment required close relationships through one-on-one tutoring, pre-service teachers were not positioned in a traditional teacher role, standing in front of a (passive) class and extolling information’. this section discusses how the mutually beneficial relationships built in the tutee project community strengthened candidates’ learning with and from all members of the service-learning community, including their tutees, peers and supervising teachers on site. candidates experienced an emotional shift from insecurity to confidence from working closely with their tutees. their shock and feelings of incompetence during the earlier stages of the project were evident in all 28 field reports and class discussions. when keith realised he would be stepping into a room with 30 ells, he was ‘completely sure that [he] would not only fail, but do so in a tremendous fashion (keith, final report)’. the struggle for 10 candidates who were bilingual or multilingual lay in negotiating multiple languages in teaching. for example, nicole asked how to help her immigrant students to make meaning in english using their resources in chinese. the service-learning tutee project offered a mutually beneficial platform for all participants, especially the candidates. first of all, given its one-on-one setting, the tutors learned to communicate with their tutees more effectively, by using a combination of english, body language and visual scaffolds 86 | gateways | fan to build sociolinguistic and pedagogical knowledge and skills. for example, anna realised that the grammar pattern drills confined her students’ need to express themselves. larry ‘witnessed [his tutee] experience both highs (receiving an ‘a’ in science) and lows (constantly being made fun of because of his mexican ancestry)’, which impacted his tutee’s learning (larry, field report). in their reflections, many candidates like anna and larry emphasised how their tutees taught them the importance of investigating the learning environment, and of investing ‘a great deal of vision, commitment, tenacity, patience and openness’ in teaching (nadya, presentation). second, candidates gained experience and confidence in collaborating with peers and colleagues. john and five other candidates teamed up with ms chung, an experienced teacher who supervised the group, to work with a group of beginner-level adults. in addition to group planning, as a group they wrote a teaching journal detailing specific growth, areas for improvement and such grouping strategies as ‘wife translating for husband’ (team journal). the journal also contained the kinds of interactions to which the tutees responded well, such as reviews, jokes, repeated pronunciations and games. ms chung met with the candidates regularly. she encouraged the candidates to take cues from their tutees. john’s team used their journal to document the tutees’ daily progress and the trial and error of the team. on-site teachers like ms chung and agency administrators were crucial mentors for candidates. they promoted effective teaching and critical thinking by welcoming them to their classrooms/programs. as yolanda recorded, she enjoyed watching her mentor teaching english and admitted that, ‘no college course could have provided me with the range of methodologies that this [esl] instructor used over the several weeks that i worked with him’. several candidates in a vietnamese youth centre were invited to join their immigrant students in a protest against the state’s budgetary cut in public education. stacey and holly led a discussion among 17 immigrant students on social justice and activism before the protest. their tutees learned to produce posters and slogans. as stacey wrote, ‘we are proud that we helped the students gain a voice using english. we are grateful that the center and the students gave us the opportunity to link current affairs to teaching english’ (stacey, field report). the local immigrant agencies benefited from regular assistance throughout the semester to the immigrant populations they served. based on their evaluation of candidates’ participation and the impact of this tutee project, the agencies reported progress and milestones. for instance, an adult education unit appreciated the fact that the candidate team taught an unprecedentedly large group of yemeni refugees. several after-school tutoring sites praised their efforts in going beyond ordinary homework assignments. a centre for migrant workers celebrated a well-received music-based literacy course planned and taught by one candidate. the tutees expressed their gratitude in their homework, class projects or after 87 | gateways | fan tutoring sessions, which was ‘quite a humbling experience’ for the candidates because, as jonathan wrote, ‘i am just a teacher in training’ (jonathan, field report). the teacher candidates also benefited. they were offered challenging, realistic classroom scenarios that forced them to make connections between their developing knowledge of languages and their tutees’ ongoing struggles, between second language development theories and pedagogical implications. the on-site collaborating teachers and staff reciprocated the support by clearly communicating their goals and methods throughout the project, accommodating the candidates’ scheduling needs, constantly supervising progress and by responding to the instructor’s communication in a timely manner. most importantly, the tutees were regarded by the candidates as excellent teachers in their own right, inasmuch as they opened up to their tutors and demonstrated how rewarding and challenging learning a second language could be for different individuals. the candidates became their students and learned tremendously from this community of learners. discussion building sociolinguistic knowledge from the sociocultural experiences of working together with ells is key to candidate preparation for language diversity in their future classrooms. it is encouraging to notice that candidates in this study started to develop deep insights about language, learning and immigrant experiences. they also learned to explore sociolinguistic and sociocultural concepts in second language literacy. in addition, as both language learners and language teachers who benefited, and were benefited by, their project partners, they built their knowledge and experience together with those partners ‘through contact, collaboration, and community’ (garcía et al. 2010, p. 132). developing language skills while immersing themselves in immigrant communities with ells, candidates had opportunities to accumulate what lucas and grinberg (2008) assessed as language-related knowledge, experiences and skills teachers need for teaching ells. the anecdotes of ‘sofa’ and ‘amirca’, as well as the ‘bike’ analogy, suggested opportunities for candidates to ‘conduct basic linguistic analysis of [ell’s] oral and written text’ and to participate ‘in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication’ (lucas & grinberg 2008, p. 611). in their reflections and field reports, candidates discussed the sociolinguistic demands of oral and written language for specific language lessons and for their students’ schoolwork, compared ways people use languages in their cultures, and explored instructional techniques that promote understanding and mastery of english. at the same time, they compared different forms, usages and structures in ells’ home languages (l1) and concluded that language errors ells make should not be viewed as evidence 88 | gateways | fan of an ability deficit in the learner, but as a complex process which should be understood in context and with a knowledge of the home language (for example, hansen 2010). this initial pursuit of language development served as a springboard for more in-depth studies of the social dimensions of language. the service-learning pedagogy offered candidates authentic literacy cases to investigate; furthermore, the variety of such sociolinguistic inquiries offered the whole group even more information about, and exposure to, different cultural traditions in language practice and language learning. teacher candidates could apply their analyses of their field experience to their classroom teaching, where they need to articulate the academic language demands of their subject matter. overall, the candidates reported a better sense and direction of what to focus on and how to make the language and content explicit and relevant to their students. building a community of mutual benefits while building their sociolinguistic knowledge and skills, teacher candidates developed the multiple identities pertinent to various aspects of their profession. all participating candidates experienced identity shifts from mainstream english speaker to helpless language teacher, from confident content teacher to anxious student of languages. such new learning environments and contexts had a profound impact on ‘where [the candidates] place their effort, whether and how they seek out professional development opportunities, and what obligations they see as intrinsic to their role’ (hammerness, darling-hammond & bransford 2005, p. 384). the premise of this study was that learning to teach is a social practice situated in the daily dynamics of a community. candidates developed their sociolinguistic and pedagogical knowledge from their tutees and collaborating teachers while working with them, indicating that the social roles of participants change as the social practice itself is in motion (lave & wenger 1991). in addition, the service-learning tutee project made the learning experience reciprocally fruitful. ‘reciprocity suggests that every individual, organization, and entity involved in the servicelearning functions as both a teacher and a learner. participants are perceived as colleagues, not as servers and clients’ (jacoby 1996, p. 36). candidates’ on-site team teaching journals, discussed previously, reflected how teaching and learning intertwined and supported each other. the underlying principle of such practice is a community-oriented view of teacher learning that is ‘marked by mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire’ (boylebaise & mcintyre 2008, p. 319). in order to make such community-based service-learning projects more sustainable, it is important to recognise the institutional constraints (for example, walker, ranney & fortune 2005) and research needs of longitudinal studies. first, sld is offered in the second of a two-semester program, when candidates 89 | gateways | fan also student-teach two levels or grades of classes in their subject area, take two more credential courses and complete a high-stake teaching performance assessment (performance assessment for california teachers, or pact). all participants in this case study agreed that moving sld to the first semester would be much more beneficial to all parties involved. second, the limitation of this study is that it lasted only a semester; therefore, studies that follow the service-learning participants further into their teaching careers to provide information about impacts on their future practice are desirable. conclusion language is a social tool for communication. it is through the sociocultural practices of using this tool that we best understand the meaning and complexity of the learning and teaching of language. what teacher educators can do in an sld course is to make sure that the curriculum, to quote author anne haas dyson, is ‘permeable’ in order to include a variety of case studies with ells, so that discussions of theories and practices (see gebhard 2010, on the use of systemic functional linguistics in teacher preparation) are grounded in and guided by specific social, linguistic and political aspects of second language learning that teachers encounter in their schools and communities. through community-based service-learning, teacher candidates can build their language-related knowledge and skills on a spectrum of case studies that address the overall phenomenon of second language learning. methodologically, they can carry out small-scale case studies of second language development in their fieldwork, which requires them to identify language-related problems, refer to theoretical interpretations that may help clarify them and experiment with relevant strategies to solve them. in so doing, candidates not only learn to make educated decisions on building students’ academic literacy, but also develop habits of inquiry in fieldwork. it is crucial that they understand that, no matter how many strategies they have accumulated for teaching language, they should concentrate on the cues from their ell students for the best ways to support language development. in addition to an inquiry-based methodology, the positive outcomes of the tutee project suggest that teacher educators should thoroughly understand service-learning as a pedagogy. we cannot assume that mutual benefits to all participants will be automatically present; neither can we ignore the tensions created by a hegemonic model that assumes that the tutees beg for knowledge and skills from the tutors (hellebrandt 2006). consequently, ‘instructors must make a special effort to articulate and align students’ capabilities and the community partners’ needs in three areas: language proficiency, cultural knowledge, and professional skills’ (lear & abbott 2009, p. 312). teacher educators should promote the importance of understanding students’ lives. language is a social act; therefore, in order to 90 | gateways | fan support ells’ language development, candidates should be given guidance on how language use is infused in daily living, how life stories inform the ways people learn language, and ultimately on how to incorporate their experiences and stories into curriculum, planning and instruction (weinstein 2006). this study offers local instructional experiences and theories (morris & hiebert 2011) for teachers and teacher educators to develop sociolinguistic and pedagogical tools while supporting and being supported by the ell communities. this experience provided participating candidates with new inspiration and new ways to reflect on learning and teaching language in their future subject area classrooms, because becoming linguistically responsive (lucas, villegas & freedson-gonzalez 2008) is a basic and yet much needed quality for all classroom teachers. acknowledgements i thank the anonymous reviewers and managing editor of gateways margaret malone for their insightful comments. the development and implementation of the service-learning project described in this article were funded by a community scholarship faculty grant from the institute for civic and community engagement of san francisco state university. references ballantyne, k, sanderman, a & levy, j 2008, educating english language learners: building teacher capacity, national clearinghouse for english language acquisition, washington, dc. blum, d & de la piedra, t 2010, ‘counter-storytelling through servicelearning: future teachers of immigrant students in texas and california re-tell the “self” and the “other”’, international journal of progressive education, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 6–26. boyle-baise, m & mcintyre, d 2008, ‘what kind of experience? preparing teachers in pds or community settings’, in m cochran-smith, s feimannemser & d mcintyre (eds), handbook of research on teacher education: enduring questions in changing contexts, routledge, new york, pp. 307–30. emerson, r, fretz, r & shaw, l 1995, writing ethnographic fieldnotes, university of chicago press, chicago, il. fan, y 2009, ‘lost in institution: learning to write in midwestern urban mainstream classrooms’, journal of southeast asian american education & advancement, vol. 4, pp. 1–17. friedman, a 2002, ‘what we would have liked to know: preservice teachers’ perspectives on effective teacher preparation’, in a beykont (ed.), the power of culture: teaching across language difference, harvard education, cambridge, ma, pp. 193–217. garcía, e, arias, m, murri, n & serna, c 2010, ‘developing responsive teachers: a challenge for a demographic reality’, journal of teacher education, vol. 61, nos 1–2, pp. 132–42. gebhard, m 2010, ‘teacher education in changing times: a systemic functional linguistics (sfl) perspective’, tesol quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 797–803. 91 | gateways | fan hadjioannou, x & hutchinson, m 2010, ‘putting the g back in english: preparing pre-service teachers to teach grammar’, english teaching: practice and critique, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 90–105. hale, a 2008, ‘service learning with latino communities: effects on preservice teachers’, journal of hispanic higher education, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 54–69. hallman, h & burdick, m 2011, ‘service learning and the preparation of english teachers’, english education, vol. 43, pp. 341–68. hammerness, k, darling-hammond, l & bransford, j 2005, ‘how teachers learn and develop’, in l darling-hammond & j bransford (eds), preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 358–89. hansen, g 2010, ‘word recognition in arabic as a foreign language’, the modern language journal, vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 567–81. hart, s & king, j 2007, ‘service learning and literacy tutoring: academic impact on pre-service teachers’, teaching and teacher education, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 323–38. hellebrandt, j 2006, ‘spanish service-learning research from 1999–2003: effects on faculty, department, community, and discipline’, hispania, vol. 89, no. 4, pp. 919–26. henry, s, & breyfogle, m 2006, ‘toward a new framework of “server” and “served”: de(and re)constructing reciprocity in service-learning pedagogy’, international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 27–35. hollins, e & guzman, m 2005, ‘research on preparing teachers for diverse populations’, in m cochran-smith & k zeichner (eds), studying teacher education: the report of the aera panel on research and teacher education, lawrence erlbaum, mahwah, nj, pp. 477–548. howard, j 2001, service-learning course design workbook, ocsl press, ann arbor, mi. jacoby, b 1996, service-learning in higher education, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. lave, j & wenger, e 1991, situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, cambridge university press, cambridge, ma. lear, d & abbott, a 2009, ‘aligning expectations for mutually beneficial community service learning: the case of spanish language proficiency, cultural knowledge, and professional skills’, hispania, vol. 92, no. 2, pp. 312–23. lucas, t & grinberg, j 2008, ‘responding to the linguistic reality of mainstream classrooms: preparing all teachers to teach english language learners’, in m cochran-smith, s feiman-nemser & d mcintyre (eds), handbook of research on teacher education, routledge, new york, pp. 606–36. lucas, t, villegas, a & freedson-gonzalez, m 2008, ‘linguistically responsive teacher education: preparing classroom teachers to teach english language learners’, journal of teacher education, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 361–73. morris, a & hiebert, j 2011, ‘creating shared instructional products: an alternative approach to improving teaching’, educational researcher, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 5–14. ponder, j, veldt, m & lewis-ferrell, g 2011, ‘citizenship, curriculum, and critical thinking beyond the four walls of the classroom: linking the 92 | gateways | fan academic content with service-learning’, teacher education quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 45–68. spencer, b, cox-petersen, a & crawford, t 2005, ‘assessing the impact of service-learning on preservice teachers in an after-school program’, teacher education quarterly, vol. 32, pp. 119–35. stanton, t & erasmus, m 2013, ‘inside out, outside in: a comparative analysis of service-learning’s development in the united states and south africa’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 61–94. szente, j 2008, ‘preparing preservice teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse children: a service learning experience’, journal of early childhood teacher education, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 140–45. valdés, g 2001, learning and not learning english: latino students in american schools, teachers college press, new york, ny. walker, c, ranney, s & fortune, t 2005, ‘preparing preservice teachers for english language learners: a content-based approach’, in d tedick (ed.), second language teacher education: international perspectives, lawrence erlbaum, mahwah, nj, pp. 313–33. weinstein, g 2006, ‘“learners’ lives as curriculum”: an integrative project-based model for language learning’, in g beckett & p miller (eds), project-based second and foreign language education: past, present, and future, information age publishing, charlotte, nc, pp. 159–66. wong, p 2008, ‘transactions, transformation, and transcendence: multicultural service-learning experience of preservice teachers’, multicultural education, vol. 16, pp. 31–36. supporting communities of practice a reflection on the benefits and challenges facing communities of practice for research and engagement in nursing dedicated health workers across the world demonstrate commitment and purpose far beyond the call of duty. according to the global health workforce alliance and world health organization (2013), nearly all countries suffer from skill imbalances, creating huge inefficiencies in their health systems, and in most countries population-based public health is neglected. strategies are therefore needed to ensure adequacy in staff numbers, appropriate skill mixes and outreach to vulnerable populations. motivation strategies need to focus on adequate remuneration, positive work environments, opportunities for career development and supportive health systems. competencies need to be improved by educating health workers in appropriate attitudes and skills, creating conditions for continuous learning, and cultivating skills in leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation. the global health workforce alliance and world health organization (2013) maintains that every country must devise a workforce strategy suited to its specific health needs and human assets, and that all countries can accelerate health gains by investing in and managing their health workforce more strategically. who concludes that workforce development demands strong action by all stakeholders. south africa is confronted with a quadruple burden of disease: a very high prevalence of hiv and aids, which has now entered a synergistic relationship with tb; maternal and child morbidity and mortality; an exploding prevalence of noncommunicable diseases, mostly driven by lifestyle risk factors; and injuries and trauma often related to violence. in response to this burden, south africa has developed a strategic plan to overhaul the health system, including reconstruction and revitalisation of the nursing profession. this plan should ensure that our country has well-trained nurses who can contribute to addressing the health-care needs of all south africans in order to create healthy communities. these interventions need to cover everything from prenatal and postnatal care, to the food supply and marketing chain, to the built environment, all of which promote healthy eating and active, healthy living. to achieve this, the public health maretha de waal oumiki khumisi university of pretoria © 2016 by m de waal & o khumisi. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: de waal, m & khumisi, o 2016, ‘supporting communities of practice: a reflection on the benefits and challenges facing communities of practice for research and engagement in nursing’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 58–73. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v9i1.4717 corresponding author: maretha de waal; marethadewaal@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4717 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 59 | gateways | de waal & khumisi sector needs to forge strategic working partnerships with both the health and non-health sectors – with parents, child-care providers, schools, health-care providers, community organisations, the food industry, store owners and retailers, and the media. the situational analysis for south africa’s ‘strategic plan for nurse education, training and practice 2012/13–2016/17’ indicates that clinical training departments are no longer in existence in the majority of health service institutions in this country (department of health 2013). consequently, there is insufficient supervision and management of students as well as a general lack of good clinical role models. there is also a disjuncture between the skills and competencies of nurse educators and those of nurses in clinical practice. this is exacerbated by the lack of liaison between nursing education and nursing practice. against this background, there is a need to identify and learn from successful models and best practice in nursing education, research and service (department of health 2013). there is also a need to find innovative ways to overcome the multiplicity of challenges in the healthcare environment. globally, communities of practice have become a convenient way for nursing educators and practitioners to collaborate to meet practice needs, to develop evidence-based practice and to disseminate new knowledge to practitioners (andrew, tolson & ferguson 2008). communities of practice also provide a unique space for workplace professional development, including research training and support and evidence-based practice beyond the nursing and healthcare environments. the concept of communities of practice is not new, but it remains one of the most important concepts in social or situated learning theory (hoadley 2012). verburg and andriessen (2011) describe a taxonomy of types of ‘knowledge-building communities’, which included communities of practice, communities of interest and communities of purpose. they identified archetypes based on two dimensions of variability, namely connectivity (based on identity and degree of interaction) and institutionalisation (based on level of formalisation including of deliverables and membership). evolving from theories of knowing, learning and technology, communities of practice can be seen as both a learning phenomenon and an instructional strategy. educators have moved beyond the philosophies of cognitive constructivism and behaviourism to realise that learning must be situated in authentic practice contexts (hoadley 2012). the latter is the reason for the rising popularity of different types of communities of practice for different contexts. communities of practice provide this authentic learning space, and increasingly so where interprofessional teamwork and collaboration are required, for example in the health sciences (li et al. 2009). this article draws on reflections on and learning from communities of practice that were established in the context of 60 | gateways | de waal & khumisi a multi-university-community nursing education program in tshwane district, south africa. we discuss the communities of practice that were formed to address education and practice issues under the umbrella of the community-oriented nursing education program for women and child health (conewch) in tshwane district in south africa. the program was an attempt to develop nurses’ capacity, with a view to achieving the health targets of the millennium development goals. our lessons learned may be useful to other situated learning contexts in the universitycommunity environment in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda (united nations 2015). background to the program in 2008, a needs assessment was conducted by the nursing science department at one of the universities, which identified the healthcare facilities (two hospitals and associated clinics) in tshwane district in south africa that would be involved in the program. the information gleaned from that process informed the scope of the funding proposal and eventually of the program, which was funded through university-based nursing education south africa (unedsa). a primary finding of the study was nurse practitioners’ need for situated learning to develop knowledge and skills relevant to their practice environments. after the funding was awarded jointly to two of the applicant universities, both of the universities’ nursing science departments and the two district hospitals and their associated clinics formed the conewch program. lecturing staff of the nursing science departments who had an interest in the thematic areas were invited to join the program, and nurse managers at the hospitals and clinics nominated staff to participate in the program. advertisements were sent out to nursing education institutions to invite eligible persons to apply for masters and doctoral program scholarships. project staff were recruited and contracted. the governance structure of the conewch included the heads of the nursing science departments at the universities, academic managers, a project manager at each university and one administrative staff for secretarial purposes. the overall goal of the program was to advance nursing education and research in order to improve the health of women and children in the city of tshwane and the surrounding rural communities (unedsa 2013). the program had three broad objectives: optimise the knowledge and skills of all staff involved (lecturers and hospital staff) to support student learning; institute a research initiative with the focus on improving the quality of nursing care; and manage research groups to generate and disseminate knowledge relating to woman and child health. 61 | gateways | de waal & khumisi establishing the communities of practice the research groups were constituted as communities of practice and became the vehicle for the implementation and achievement of the program objectives. it was further anticipated that the communities of practice would create opportunities for the universities to achieve their teaching, research and community outreach mandates and for the hospitals and clinics to strengthen evidence-based decision-making for improving health outcomes of patients in local communities. once the program got underway, pilot communities of practice were formed (in year one) around the following domains: gender-related violence; human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids), and related malnutrition; maternal and perinatal mortality; reproductive health, with special focus on unplanned pregnancies; and health literacy. each community conducted start-up workshops to develop goals, define roles and develop action plans. in year two, a roundtable discussion was held with representatives of all of the communities of practice. initially, the communities of practice had experienced low attendance, lack of collaboration and slow progress with their activities. following self-reflective strategies, the groups developed strategic responses to these challenges, including revision of their annual work plans, collaborative setting of objectives and establishing work procedures. the revised action plans included projects that individual members had professional interest in, such as clinical audits, developing best practice guidelines, strengthening community engagement, and improving care at the two district hospitals. in addition, the work plans included advocacy, lecture series, service delivery interventions, curriculum development and conference participation. while participation in our communities was voluntary and driven by members’ commitment to their shared domain of interest as registered nurses in practice and in the academy, the empowerment opportunities that were created by the availability of project funding provided incentives for participation. these included, for example, participation in conferences, training opportunities, workshops, networking events and international visitors’ programs, which further motivated and sustained the communities of practice. research design the authors of this article were involved as part of the program management team as well as being active members of the communities of practice. we chose autoethnography, as described by ellis (2004), as an approach to researching our communities of practice. we realise that different group members may have had different experiences and thus different ways of describing and analysing their own experiences in their community of practice 62 | gateways | de waal & khumisi (see, for example, the articles by mataboge et al. 2014, peu et al. 2014, and phiri et al. 2015). the reflective gaze and learning experiences that we refer to in this article resonate with the epiphanies that are often found in autoethnographies, which can be described as remembered moments perceived to have a significant impact (ellis, adams & bochner 2011). our selection of epiphanies represents our personal research frame. we acknowledge the innumerable ways in which our personal experiences influenced the research process, thereby inadvertently implicating the members of the various communities of practice, other program staff and the program leaders. we used the after-action review (aar) method to systematically describe and analytically assess our experiences and learning. the aar methodology has been widely adopted by nursing, health and social care professions (kinsella 2010). the after-action review took place as a professional discussion of the experiences of the communities of practice, focusing on what happened, why it happened, what went well, what could improve, how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses, and what lessons could be learned from the experience (usaid 2006). the spirit of the review was one of openness and learning – it was not about blaming or problem fixing. the methodology was purposefully selected because of its rootedness in reflective practice theory, which allowed for a holistic, multi-perspective reflection that covered program management, as well as organisational and systems factors. in following reflective practice, our process of learning as program managers was bottom-up, self-directed and informal. it involved stepping back from our experience to make sense of it, trying and understanding what it meant, learning from it, and applying the learning to future situations. used in this context, ‘lessons learned’ means knowledge gained through experience, which, if shared, will benefit the work of others (abecker & van elst 2009). we used primary and secondary information, which we obtained through interaction or ‘eyewitness accounts’, as described by ellis, adams and bochner (2011), field notes, program reports and progress reports from the communities of practice. in our study, reliability, generalisability and validity as described by ellis, adams and bochner (2011) was ensured by the authors’ cross checking of experiences as truthful accounts against ‘factual evidence’ as reported in the approved project reports and progress reports to the funders. in our study, we specifically focused on learning experiences that may be useful and generalisable to other communities of practice in the university-community environment. below we offer a layered account of our experiences in terms of the aar research questions: what actually happened/ changed? why did it happen? what lessons were learned from our experiences? what do we need to do in future? our analyses and conclusions are presented alongside relevant data and literature. 63 | gateways | de waal & khumisi discussion what happened/changed? all the communities of practice started out with 10–15 members each, though their membership and composition changed over time. two communities of practice ceased to exist within the second year of the program. reasons for this included turnover of participants and repositioning of staff in the case of the reproductive health group, and the integration of health literacy as cross-cutting through the work of all the communities of practice, which explains the closing of the health literacy group. in summary, of the six originally established communities of practice, two were discontinued and four remained. one new community of practice was established outside of the funded program. the original configuration and the reconfiguration of the communities of practice over the seven-year period are shown in figure 1. figure 1 also shows the configuration of the communities of practice by the end of the funding period (end of 2013) and how they reconfigured in the post-funding period (by mid-2016). at the end of the funding period, all the communities of practice experienced resource constraints and questioned their ability to continue their activities in the next financial year. individual researchers who had already been awarded scholarships from the funding program could continue their research. individuals and collectives thus began a process of applying for funding from a range of university research and collaborative funding sources. however, the period between application and awarding of funding placed several of the communities of practice in limbo. the reconfiguration of the communities of practice over time reflects the dynamic nature of our communities of practice, as also observed by the world bank (2005) and wenger (2006). the world bank (2005) reports that their communities of practice go through phases: some fizzle out due to apathy and inactivity, others join together, and several are phased out. wenger (2006) aptly describes a community of practice as dynamic, in that the interests, goals and members are subject to change, and shifts on different levels should be expected and supported. why did it happen? in the literature, communities of practice have been described as feature-based and process-based. both wenger (1998) and figure 1: changes in configuration of communities of practice 2010–2016 1 the funding period ended in december 2013. communities of practice focus area 2010 2011 2012 20131 2014 2015 2016 1. health literacy 2. reproductive health 3. maternal and perinatal health 4. gender violence 5. hiv, aids and malnutrition 6. practice development 64 | gateways | de waal & khumisi mcdermott (2000) used a life-cycle metaphor to describe communities as developing through stages akin to birth, maturation and death. wenger (2006) suggested that communities of practice may need to be nurtured into continuing existence, and identified a number of critical success factors. several of these related to institutional support and infrastructure, as well as integration of communities of practice into the organisations that the members are attached to. building on systems theory, wengertrayner (2013) views a community of practice as a social learning system in which learning relationships exist among its members internally and externally. as a result of learning, changes in interaction are inevitable and can stabilise or destabilise the community of practice (huberman & hogg 1995). our communities of practice experienced destabilisation on different levels. the most disruptive event was the end of the funding period. in this regard, it needs to be noted that the conewch was university-led from beginning to end in regard to obtaining and managing the grant. the end of the funding period implied that the communities of practice had to become self-sustaining units where individuals would be held accountable for the group’s performance. this contributed to members becoming self-driven and the groups to become outcomes-driven. staff movement in the program team also caused disruptions in the management of the communities of practice as well as in the overall running of the program. shifts in identity and implications for relational practice: we adopted emancipatory decision-making, as described in the wittmann-price theory of emancipated decision making (edm) in women’s healthcare (wittmann-price & bhattacharya 2008), in our communities of practice. opportunities were provided for reflection and dialogue, and for articulating the groups’ respective shared domains of interest. this prompted further emancipatory and empowerment initiatives. our communities of practice were diverse in their characteristics, relationships, self-organisation, boundaries, identity and cultural meaning, as predicted by huberman and hogg (1995). community development is not a ‘one size fits all’ proposition. each community that they observed had its unique ‘personality’, strengths and challenges as well as stages that communities transform to. the differentiation process is a means of increasing the complexity of the system since each sub-system can make different connections with other sub-systems. instability emerges as either the diversity or the size of the community increases or due to changes in the environment of the community of practice. according to systems theory, the system has endogenous mechanisms of adaptation for adaptive readjustments on the basis of local available information, which will restore the equilibrium of the community of practice in the organisation (luhmann 65 | gateways | de waal & khumisi 1995). the differentiation of sub-systems and adjustments reflects our experiences of the configuration and reconfiguration of our communities of practice over seven years. in our experience, our communities of practice matured over the years and became more capable and more distinct in their identities. the latter, however, caused complications on different levels; for example, it made it difficult for new staff to choose and join a group, especially if the person’s research interest did not fit squarely into any one of the groups. it also meant that staff members in the same academic department were boxed into a group, and cross-boundary work became a challenge. on another level, members of the communities of practice experienced role conflict and had to negotiate their institutional job demands and academic schedules with their involvement in the communities. by 2015, the remaining communities of practice had evolved into communities of purpose, which can be described as a community of people who are going through the same process or are trying to achieve a similar objective. in the case of our communities of practice, the common purpose was a shared goal and we monitored outputs and performance, such as the number of articles published in refereed journals. further developments were noted within the existing communities of purpose, which could be described as the emergence of communities of interest. this pattern is consistent with what huberman and hogg (1995) describe as the evolving nature of communities of practice while remaining sustainable structures. according to huberman and hogg (1995), a community of practice may undergo several adaptations during its existence. in our experience, we observed how our communities of practice evolved into communities of purpose, such as publication groups, and communities of interest. the hiv, aids and malnutrition community of practice, for example, annually adopted a different area of interest to accommodate the diverse spectrum of interests of the group members. indigenous knowledge in healthcare practice is an example of a shared area of interest that directs much of the research of this community of practice. what lessons were learned from our experiences? the main challenges that we observed in our communities of practice related to group dynamics and balancing diverse priorities. we observed three different ways in which our communities of practice managed internal and external challenges. in the first example, we describe a strategy that was employed to balance diverse interests; in the second example, we describe a strategy for explicating the value of research for the benefit of health practice and service delivery in a community; and in the third example, we describe a strategy that was employed to transfer collective capacity to stakeholders. accommodate diverse interests experiences of power imbalances were observed on different levels in our communities of practice. our groups involved a range of 66 | gateways | de waal & khumisi partners from practice, the academy, communities, and different organisations and contexts. in university-community engagement, academic and professional titles create hierarchies and perceptions of whose views and knowledge are more important and valued than others. some members felt excluded in research meetings and not everyone was familiar with research terminology, academic language and theory, and so could not participate in the discourse. as an example of how this challenge was managed, we developed a work plan that covered the interests of all the members, while retaining the research focus. this was an effective strategy, based on diverse interests within the group, for resolving tensions. in the case of the hiv, aids and malnutrition community of practice, the group annually adopted a thematic area to direct their research. over the past few years, thematic areas have been extended to include convergence of indigenous and western healthcare systems (see, for example, ngunyulu, mulaudzi and peu 2015). managing external stakeholder relations is closely associated with managing intragroup dynamics, and may stem from power imbalances and contested priorities. build stakeholder collaboration and converge interests as indicated previously, university and non-university members of our communities of practice had to balance personal, group and institutional expectations and mandates, which gave rise to tensions within the communities of practice. for community organisations, performance targets are driven by service delivery targets, which overlap only marginally with the priorities and mandate of the universities. example of how this challenge was managed: this example illustrates how a community of practice resolved tensions by building stakeholder relations in university and community engagement in a way that connected diverse interests. in this example, the universitybased research was used to inform community engagement, thereby converging the interests of the stakeholder groups in the collective. the research was conducted on the distribution and use of female condoms, introduced in south africa in 1998. the community of practice conducted the research with the purpose of exploring, identifying and describing the factors that affect utilisation of female condoms among the practising health-care providers in tshwane. various publications resulted from this study (for example, mataboge et al. 2014 and phiri et al. 2015). following this research, hiv and aids awareness campaigns were conducted at taxi ranks under the auspices of the hiv, aids and malnutrition community of practice. in the first year, the university members of this community of practice played a leading role in coordinating the event, following their research on condom use among healthcare providers. in addition, female condoms were distributed – a device seen as a viable option for women to take control of their sexual life in terms of safe sexual practices and preventing unwanted pregnancy. 67 | gateways | de waal & khumisi the university staff took the lead in making logistical arrangements, including liaising with local businesses for sponsorship of the event and obtaining permission from the local authorities for the event. in the following year, community partners took the lead and the university played an ancillary role. the scale of the event was elevated to include not only hiv and aids awareness amongst healthcare workers but also a range of community workers and local organisations. the event included voluntary testing and counselling on hiv and aids, as well as a range of health and wellness services. this has now become an annual event on the calendar of this community of practice and of the community partners. transfer collective knowledge and capacity example of how this challenge was managed: in the third example, a strategy that was observed in the gender related violence community of practice illustrates how different spaces were used to transfer collective knowledge and capacity through university and community engagement. the gender related violence community of practice designed and piloted an audit instrument to assess quality of care of cases of sexual assault at three medico-legal centres in tshwane district, south africa, against international standards. these standards related to counselling and referral of victims, hiv prevention through provision of hiv prophylaxis, treatment of sexually transmitted infections (stis), emergency contraception, care of injuries, medico-legal advice and documentation of evidence. the results of the clinical audit highlighted best practices and areas that needed improvement. best practices were shared between the centres, and collaborative interventions were designed to address some of the gaps identified (van der wath 2013). after refining the audit tool, a follow-up audit was conducted which showed improved adherence to the minimum standards for cases of sexual assault. recommendations for supporting communities of practice usaid (2006) maintains that the strength and resilience of communities of practice lies in the multiplier effects they trigger in the collective skills and knowledge of the group. in our experience, social learning within our communities of practice, supported by our capacity-building strategy of empowerment, played a vital role in sustaining our communities of practice. individual and group learning was encouraged, and this culminated in collective capacity and transfer of knowledge and skills. for communities of practice, as learning communities, where members come from organisations that value knowledge (wenger & snyder 2000), it is important for the members to realise that collective intelligence must be brought to bear in solving important problems in their areas of interest and workplaces. 68 | gateways | de waal & khumisi we did experience a challenge in regard to group boundaries. for example, hiv and aids as well as gender violence cut across the work of all the communities of practice, and yet the groups maintained their group identities and did not encourage their members to work across communities of practice. our groups also seemed not to have been aware of the strength of their collective capacity. according to peu et al. (2014), in a self-evaluation of their community of practice, there was a lack of acknowledgement of collective competencies. an important lesson is to be learned from this experience. the world bank (2005) notes that the value of communities of practice lies in their ability to share specific insights that contribute to problem solving in the context of a community’s particular knowledge base without the adverse effect of information overload (world bank 2005). the type of learning that occurs in a community of practice is characterised by the social as opposed to the individual (barab & duffy 2000). furthermore, the learning is considered to be situated in the social context, with the identities of members emerging from their wider social experiences (edwards, gallacher & whittaker 2006). addressing gaps in management of the collective learning and knowledge generated by the groups for wider dissemination and ease of access remains a challenge. the following recommendations are offered based on a review of literature relevant to the lessons that we have drawn from our own experiences. establish the identity of the group as a knowledge community communities of practice have become associated with finding, sharing, transferring and archiving knowledge, as well as making explicit ‘expertise’, or tacit knowledge. tacit knowledge is considered to be those valuable context-based experiences that cannot easily be captured, codified and stored (davenport & prusak 2000; kimble & hildreth 2005). in our experience, as knowledge development accrued over time, the need for a knowledge repository system and an accessible knowledge bank became critical to the effectiveness of the community of practice. the community of practice should develop a strategy and plan for managing the knowledge and products created by the community so that they can be shared beyond the community. it is also important that procedures, practices and the technology used support structured data sharing. the purpose of knowledge management as a field of research and practice is how to better utilise the knowledge or ‘intellectual capital’ contained in an organisation’s network (dingwall 2008). it is therefore necessary to design outcomes-driven capacity building strategies and interventions to develop a culture of learning in the communities of practice to support collective knowledge generation and dissemination. 69 | gateways | de waal & khumisi institutionalise performance management of the communities of practice develop performance indicators for the group: in our experience, the performance appraisal of individuals in the community of practice is closely connected to the consistent participation of individual members, effectiveness of the group as a whole and achievement of the institution’s mandate. despite demands on the individual’s time, members remained committed because it was an agreed upon key performance area that provided a platform for participation in all aspects of the university’s mandate: teaching, research and community engagement. in the context of universitycommunity engagement through communities of practice, indicators for monitoring and evaluation should be developed to explicate the value of the community as well as guide achievement of its outputs, outcomes and desired impact at individual, group, beneficiary and institutional levels. develop group codes of conduct: communities of practice provide a platform for re-socialising and enacting our highest ideals. communities of practice can play an important role in revitalising the ideals of ethical organisations and institutions in both the academic and the practice environment (wenger 1998). however, members of these communities sometimes experience inequity, and junior members especially feel that their contributions are not recognised. a code of conduct could address power issues related to privileging of homogeneity and knowledge, which may keep newcomers to the community on the periphery (imel & ross-gordon 2006). develop the capacity of individual researchers and teams: via inter-professional training and scholarships, design and undertake individual and collaborative research and write up and publish the research findings. in addition, develop the capacity of communities of practice as work units within universities and health-care settings as a means of enhancing evidence-based decision-making. use different platforms to explicate the value of communities of practice communities of practice thrive when they become conscious of their value to the organisation, to the teams in which community members serve, and to the community members themselves. value is key to community life, because participation in most communities is voluntary. but the full value of a community is often not apparent when it is first formed. moreover, the sources of value often change over the life of the community. frequently, early value mostly comes from focusing on the current problems and needs of the community members. as the community grows, developing a systematic body of knowledge that can be easily accessed becomes more important (wenger, mcdermott & snyder 2002). communities of practice should create opportunities for participants to explicitly discuss the value and productivity of their 70 | gateways | de waal & khumisi participation in the group for the individual (micro level) and for the group (meso level), and explicate the strategic importance of the community for the member organisations (macro level). a key element of sustaining communities of practice over time is to encourage community members to be explicit about the value of the community throughout its lifetime. initially, the purpose of such discussion is more to raise awareness than collect data, since the impact of the community typically takes some time to be felt. later, assessments of value can become more rigorous, as suggested by wenger, mcdermott and snyder (2002). conclusion what worked best for us in this context where we had multiple communities of practice to support with limited resources was the development and implementation of a standard performance support plan, methodology and system for all our communities of practice. the communities of practice in our program offered opportunities for individual learning, growth and development, as well as practice development and organisational systems development. this had direct and indirect benefits for the individual group members, their organisations and the beneficiaries of their practices, notably women and children who were the main targets of our program. through the projects of our communities of practice, we achieved the goals of our funded program to institute a research initiative with the focus on improving the quality of nursing care, and to manage research groups to generate and disseminate knowledge relating to woman and child health. our communities of practice strategies to overcome challenges and to sustain themselves were quite diverse. each community of practice evolved and matured at its own pace and on its own terms. the strategy to form communities of purpose and communities of interest ensured that members could participate in their community of practice in different ways that best suited their personal and institutional needs, as well as that of their stakeholders, in addition to contributing to the development and practice of their domain of work. we learned that diversification of activities and thematic areas, as well as transfer of collective capacity, were found to be the main vehicles for relieving tensions within the communities of practice and between university and community stakeholders. by deliberately focusing on developing the identity of the group and institutionalising the communities of practice, as well as explicating the value of these communities of practice, and by building, acknowledging and sharing collective competencies of 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repeatedly been approached by social scientists and educators like myself from across the asia-pacific and beyond wanting to talk about public scholarship in new and different ways. through these experiences i have learned that in some parts of the world universities and colleges have a long history of engagement with their communities and that many were established with the primary mission of advancing social development. i have also learned that researchers and practitioners from across the asia-pacific are interested in connecting with american institutions that are also exploring research designed to improve the lives of members of the communities in which they work, but that they are reluctant to do so for reasons different from those american scholars might envisage. these are researchers who see blogs, webinars and new media as options for knowledge creation. these are researchers who are also open to exploring alternative forms of what researchers in the united states have traditionally considered academic work, and whose academic experience is gleaned from areas far less economically prosperous than what many american scholars are used to, and who may have something to teach us. developing working relationships with an international community of university researchers with a commitment and passion for social responsibility across the asia-pacific has helped me see that there are others working to support the same values more forward-thinking american organisations have worked so hard to advance and uphold. once people in my new academic home began giving me titles like ‘international liaison’, it became clear that people outside the us saw me as a channel, and that it would be my charge to marry my two regions and my two academic lives – one that imagines a more responsive and responsible united states and one that is able to tap into the jonathan damiani nagoya university of commerce & business © 2016 by j damiani. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: damiani, j 2016, ‘unusual conversations: a reflection on the mechanics of internationally engaged public scholarship’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 132–144. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v9i1.4389 corresponding author: jonathan damiani; jonathandamiani@nucba.ac.jp doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4389 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 133 | gateways | damiani global academic community as a resource for reinterpreting our perceived strengths and weaknesses, our values, and the level of our commitment to improving society. in this article i will discuss the evolution of this work, first providing an overview of this ongoing project and questions i have shared with colleagues in the us and overseas. next, i will take a look at the connections that are currently being made between publicly engaged scholars in the us and abroad in order to provide some context for the project. i will naturally include the voices of my asia-pacific co-presenters at the imagining america (ia) 2014 national conference, as well as those of conference participants, as we actively reflected on the mechanics of internationally engaged scholarship. (imagining america is a consortium of colleges, universities and cultural organisations aiming to strengthen public roles through research, action, coalition building and leadership development.) finally, i will provide a summary of responses and three themes that emerged from my session at the conference. these responses will frame a new model of internationally engaged scholarship and serve as a critical reflection on the practice of public scholarship overseas. project overview how do emerging and experienced scholars from the asia-pacific become involved in civic life? how can i create ways of marrying my work in two academic homes around the theme of publicly engaged work? these were two of the questions that initially guided my journey as an early career american researcher who had just accepted his first faculty position at a university in japan. american scholars in japan face the challenge of having to navigate several different cultures at the same time – the academic cultures they bring with them from the united states, the distinct culture of the japanese workplace and the japanese academic climate, and the dominant japanese culture. these differences forced me to reflect on how international scholars and students in the us deal with their own challenges with cultures that are unfamiliar to them. in the two years since i arrived in japan, i have come to realise that at my university, one of asia’s top-ranked and internationally accredited business schools, and at many others spread across this region, few faculty members actively value or even consider community-based scholarship as a necessary component of academic fulfilment. in this sense, my university is, like many others, a purposefully isolated entity where many students and staff go to learn and develop ideas that are only loosely connected to the world surrounding them. this isolation stirred in me a desire to depict the context for my own internationally engaged activities while addressing the many gaps that exist between scholarship and practice at my new academic home. at domestic and international events across my new region 134 | gateways | damiani i have been most interested in learning about whether and how other scholars choose to serve their communities, and how they perceive the work of scholars in the united states. the goal of my workshop session at ia 2014, entitled ‘increasing exchange between publicly engaged scholars inside and outside of the united states’, and of this ongoing project is to focus on finding ways to connect american scholars with a network of higher education and research institutions that hold a commitment to research and service for community development overseas. participant discussion at the conference was focused on understanding the value of developing partnerships with scholars from different cultures and disciplines, and on developing ways to logically increase the degree of exchange that takes place between publicly engaged scholars inside and outside the united states. project context in this section i will take a quick look at the connections that are currently being made between publicly engaged scholars in the us and those overseas in order to provide some additional context for this project. ia’s mission was initially designed to develop and sustain relationships with scholars from across disciplines and regions inside the united states, but ia is now beginning work to forge a more global identity. ia is not alone in acknowledging that higher education institutions do not exist in isolation from society or from the communities in which they are located. other organisations have tailored their work towards strengthening the civic roles and responsibilities of higher education. on both small and large scales, universities are increasingly tackling community problems and enhancing quality of life by embedding public scholarship as a core mission alongside teaching and research (hollister et al. 2012). these universities are working to instil in their faculty, staff and students a sense of responsibility and commitment to the greater social good. one such organisation is the talloires network, established at tufts university in massachusetts, usa. the talloires network is an international association of institutions that was founded in 2005 on the belief that universities around the world should be connected in their mission to build a global movement, not unlike the one imagined by ia. while the mission, values and goals of both of these organisations align in many ways, the talloires network has grown into the largest international network focused on higher education civic engagement, increasing since 2005 to over 350 members in 72 countries with a combined enrolment of over 6 million students. the network, based at tufts university, is guided by an elected steering committee of 13 members from countries around the world. the experiences of talloires to date have helped to illuminate opportunities and challenges with respect to the mechanics of internationally engaged public scholarship. as talloires continues to develop new programs to build global higher 135 | gateways | damiani education civic engagement, it has come to realise that decisive leadership, alignment of all university processes and active student involvement are key aspects of an engaged university (talloires network 2011a). the world is a different place from what it was in 2005, and the societies in which universities are located are facing increasing economic, civil and social challenges. as a result, it is crucial for organisations to collaborate with others that are facing similar challenges. another organisation that was brought to my attention at ia 2014 is the pacific rim community design network. this network was launched following a working conference on participatory community design at the university of california, berkeley, in 1998. since that time, through conferences and joint projects, a network of american researchers have been collaborating with and providing mutual support to countries across the pacific rim, including japan, taiwan and hong kong. this network also serves as a forum for comparative understanding of community design in the fast changing social context of these countries, and as an inspiring model for potential collaborations between the united states and my new academic region. ia 2014 conference participants like jeff hou, a professor and chair at the university of washington and a member of this network, have played an active role in engaging marginalised communities and citizens through cross-cultural learning between the united states and the asiapacific. unusual conversations my session at ia 2014 focused specifically on the extent to which the potential of american scholarship can be realised when universities worldwide mobilise students, faculty, staff and citizens to develop programs of mutual benefit. the idea of expanding our collective imagination beyond the boundaries of the united states served as a starting point for the workshop. in addition to my two co-presenters from the asia-pacific, session participants included graduate students from diverse ethnic backgrounds, graduate exchange students from overseas, and faculty members from a range of disciplines and mixed cultural backgrounds. the session continued, with researchers taking turns sharing their reasons for attending. the differences between their comments revealed a great deal about how conversations like these can prove valuable for scholars interested in making sense of the differences between their personal homes, academic homes and ethnic identities. these conversations were recorded, transcribed and analysed in order to make sense of some key themes of the session and this project. janeke thumbran, a doctoral student, was the first to share her reason for being in attendance. like all of the graduate students at this session, janeke was attending school in the united states at the university of minnesota. like me, janeke’s research and home flowed between two different continents. janeke had this to say: 136 | gateways | damiani janeke: i am looking to find a way to marry the kind of work i do here with what i do in south africa and that is why i’m here. this desire to marry academic identities, introduced by me at the beginning of the session, proved to be a key theme of the conversation early on. ifeoma kiddoe nwankwo, an associate professor at vanderbilt university in nashville, tennessee, continued this line of thought, commenting on how her own cultural backgrounds had become a critical part of her academic identity. ifeoma: i have a background from multiple places, my father is nigerian, and my mother and i are jamaican. this has always been a fundamental part of my life and my being but also my public scholarship work as it connects communities in middle tennessee with communities in the republic of panama. i conduct interviews with communities and use those interviews at the moment of collection for programs and projects for youth and seniors in those communities. i am very invested in ia not just being about imagining the united states, but also imagining the hemisphere and the world. so this organization [is] really creating a model, a template and tools that can be used around the world, but also as a way of highlighting tools that are already being used around the world. i think a session like this can be that space. ifeoma’s research is clearly focused on encounters between these peoples in the areas of culture, identity and ideology. the goal of ifeoma’s work is to understand paradigms for intercultural interaction as well as barriers to new cross-group engagements. like ifeoma, my virtual co-presenter vicky lin’s (aka hy tran lam) cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and mixed parentage, play a role in the direction her young academic life is heading. vicky, who is half chinese and half vietnamese, is currently undertaking an ambitious line of research that connects back to her ethnic homes and identities. vicky is a graduate student at the prestigious yuan ze university in taiwan, and an ethnic chinese from vietnam who is currently exploring and working to resolve the tensions that exist for new vietnamese entering taiwan. vicky is also a translator, who uses her language skills while working with volunteers to build a bridge between these two cultures, both in taiwan and in her home country of vietnam. at the specific request of the conference participants, vicky summarised her work in the following way, vicky: in my research i am looking at the misunderstandings between ethnic chinese and vietnamese and how these differences manifest themselves for immigrants in vietnam and taiwan. these misunderstandings lead to negative consequences for these immigrants and on policies set by their respective governments. i met with a number of chinese families in 2014 – in many cases there were three generations of chinese living together in vietnam – in order to help these families establish a language identity whereby the children are able to speak both the mother tongue [chinese] 137 | gateways | damiani and learn vietnamese so they can become acculturated and more economically advantaged. on my next project i plan to support the vietnamese migrant population in taiwan by helping them deal with the various challenges they face [in taiwan], such as racism, language barriers, and cultural differences. vicky’s plan to support cross-cultural understanding and integration in this way is also clearly connected to her own identity. while some institutions and researchers in the united states are striving to apply their research in public settings for the sake of the greater good, in my new region i have repeatedly been exposed to what i see as a much more seamless and natural approach to conducting academic research. following vicky’s presentation, my second virtual copresenter chatree preedaanthasuk, from thailand, was asked by ia participants to share a summary of his research. chatree conducted his doctoral study at keio university in tokyo, japan. despite the distance between his academic and personal homes, chatree’s doctoral study in tokyo on crisis management was rooted in improving the lived realities of community members in his ethnic home of thailand where he now works as a professor. chatree approached me after a presentation i gave at an international conference in japan and shared with me the methods he used to develop his crisis management framework. chatree’s influence as an academic at a top-ranking japanese university gained him access to government officials at home, members of rescue teams and members of the community, who also assisted in the recovery efforts following a period of severe flooding in thailand in 2011. as the group completed introductions and began to focus on understanding the value of connecting committed american institutions with the missions of publicly engaged scholars overseas, the session took an exciting and unexpected turn. while some american scholars who were in attendance were interested in discussing ways to encourage their american students to seek, find and rethink their understanding of the world and civic engagement by experiencing life abroad, international scholars in attendance remarked that it was the american universities that needed to be more encouraging and receptive to the potential contributions of marginalised international voices at these very same institutions. this striking contrast between american faculty members searching for ways to engage their ideologically isolated students with the wider world and young international scholars pursuing graduate study in the united states who felt as if they were being estranged from their campus communities was the first revelation of this session. in the following passages we can see how responses to this key theme unfolded, and how spirited the discussion became between session participants. ifeoma: the value of connecting ia’s mission to the mission of committed scholars in the us and around the world is the value for the societies in which we all live. it is a kind of broader value that we 138 | gateways | damiani can potentially have an impact on the ways that people function. we’ve just heard chatree talking about crisis management, and so [we can see] the value of sharing thoughts and experiences around working with communities. i can imagine him and his work being placed in conversation with partners in new orleans and having conversations around katrina based on what happened in thailand and the ways that can help both places avoid repetitions of the crises, and of the responses to those crises. so that it’s not just happening on the state level, and it’s not just happening on the government organization level, but that it’s happening on the people-to-people level. janeke: i think i am having trouble with this question because the question is phrased as what is the value of connecting and i think it’s so obvious that there is such great value to it. the fact that you pose this question is very much a reflection of the fact that our [american] institutions don’t recognize this, and that’s precisely the problem. and so i think as an international student in the us something i would like to see a lot more of is [american institutions] actually taking the international students a lot more seriously. viewing the international students as an actual resource. ifeoma (interjects): as a person— janeke: not just as people who come here to learn but as people that actually have something more to give than just culture. because what a lot of universities do is they take, and they invite international students to purport, and you know other ethnic minorities, particularly black students from surrounding communities, and so that never becomes part of the diversity conversation. jonathan (interjects): and the international students and minority students are getting that message as well— janeke: yeah, and international students are there to fill the diversity quota and they are invited to do all these different cultural performances, like come and give us a talk about your culture. i’m from south africa, an incredibly diverse society, and i cannot even begin to talk about what south african culture is, you know? to view international students as a resource, to see them as more than just some[one] that can talk about culture, as people that can talk about what public scholarship means. those conversations are not happening at my university. all they want us to do is sing and dance and to be a good little south african. the group became excited about this line of thought, encouraging janeke to speak these truths. in order to develop more meaningful connections with scholars abroad, one strategy that needs to be taken by american institutions is to first develop ways for international scholars already in place in america to play more active roles in developing the academic culture and climate of 139 | gateways | damiani their schools. in order to make relationships sustainable between cultures, we need to begin by connecting people from different cultures around common issues in our own institutions. conversation soon shifted to how we could logically increase the amount of exchange that takes place between publicly engaged scholars inside and outside america. this topic received immediate attention from my co-presenter, vicky lin. vicky: i think that once we talk to others, we learn about our differences. i think that different cultures really do react differently to situations, and that communication is necessary for us to be able to think outside of the place where we are. summary of responses three themes emerged from the conversations held during this session. each of these themes is connected to a new awareness by those in attendance and serves to frame a new model of internationally engaged public scholarship. first, it was clear that participants from mixed cultural and ethnic backgrounds appreciated this space to share their hopes and concerns with others who are working tirelessly to thrive under unusual circumstances and to marry their non-traditional academic and personal lives. researchers pursuing scholarship away from their academic homes who felt estranged in their new academic climates felt drawn out of isolation by being given this opportunity to actively share their concerns with others dealing with similar challenges. the myriad pressures of being a graduate and/or graduate exchange student and/or faculty member rarely allow time for non-traditional scholars to share their goals, frustrations and concerns as they relate to factors existing outside the institution or the departments of institutions in which they are asked to perform. this session saw multiple participants point to the value of person-to-person conversations around common issues including, but not limited to, environmental issues, human rights issues and issues related to crisis management. there is no substitute for trust and personal relationships built by face-to-face interactions. while conference presentations and journals are important forums for disseminating and advancing research, it is in meetings and conversations like those that took place when the seed for this project was sown at events in asia, and those that continued at ia 2014, that are the most significant for building strong and mutually supportive personal relationships. nearly all of the participants in attendance at this session were conducting research or working to support instruction using their international experience or background. as a result, conversations that may be marked as unusual in ivory tower isolation rang true to those in attendance, and discussions were developed and pathways to 140 | gateways | damiani engagement established more readily than might be anticipated if the group had been larger and less connected personally to the aims of the session. second, questions that focused on the value of exchange between scholars inside and outside the united states revealed some shortcomings of american universities in terms of their advocacy for international scholars, which was found to be often misguided or lacking entirely. here, participants pointed to the value of acknowledging international scholars and emerging experts already in american institutions and finding more meaningful ways to tap into their marginalised voices. further, it was clear that participants with mixed cultural and/or professional backgrounds have a lot to say about the current state of higher education in the united states. it was also clear that their opinions matter to american faculty members looking for new solutions to engaging their american students and staff. if american universities could more seamlessly weave the academic interests and skills of international exchange students and professionals from overseas into the fabric of their institutions, student bodies and faculties, new possibilities for academic growth relating to intercultural and interdisciplinary understanding could be possible. at my university in japan, i see many of the same issues occurring between the international exchange students and japanese students. while the university has strong ties with 87 partner universities in 41 countries on 6 continents, and is attended by many students from these same universities every semester, the nature of the relationship between the university and these students continues to be misdirected at times. at my institution, it is the japanese students who are asked to put on cultural performances, while the international exchange students’ opportunities for engagement are often limited to traditional japanese activities such as tea ceremony and flower arrangement. while some of the students are visiting the university to have brief, semester-long japanese experiences, and enjoy these cultural excursions, it is clear that both these students and the students pursuing longer periods of study (all of whom come from competitive academic environments overseas) also want to engage with and learn from their new classmates in more meaningful ways in the classroom, on campus and in the community. as a professor in the international exchange program, an advocate for programs that connect these two disparate groups of the university community, and as a liaison between the two, what i have found even more disheartening is the degree to which both the japanese and international exchange students recognise that these types of structured interactions have been developed in order to preserve the status quo. a third key theme that quietly emerged from the session was the high level of interest (and at times anxiety) those in attendance demonstrated when listening to others share their approaches to publicly engaged work. once it became clear that there was no language barrier, it was fascinating to observe how intently 141 | gateways | damiani members of the group – all from vastly different backgrounds – were listening to, asking about and relating to how others made sense of their academic lives in truly unique situations. the incredible contrast between a frustrated south african woman speaking about her research in minnesota and a vietnamese woman talking about her research with marginalised populations in taiwan was a source of inspiration and empowerment for members of the audience who were also conducting internationally engaged work. these participants encouraged others to speak out, ask follow-up questions and give testimony of their excitement and relief related to the experience. the session proved to be a wake-up call for participants who were looking for ways to inspire their american students on a local level, and their approaches to public scholarship in american institutions, particularly those existing in cultural and geographic isolation. further, during this session participants living academic lives that could hardly be imagined a generation ago found common ground with traditional and non-traditional scholars and artists in a very short space of time. this points to the value of these unusual conversations and of listening to and understanding how those outside the united states make sense of and reinterpret their academic lives. toward a new model of internationally engaged scholarship while there is evidence to suggest that it can be more effective for universities with shared social, cultural and economic contexts to work together before they partner with institutions overseas (watson et al. 2011), it is the responsibility of every inclusive organisation today to develop a conceptual framework for university civic engagement that includes the voices, narratives and best practices of those at the international level (ellison & eatman 2008). if american institutions can gather and propagate global practices of civic engagement, and interpret these practices in the language, culture and context of each region, the possibilities for ideas expansion and our own collective imagination are boundless (talloires network 2010). when experts and emerging experts across disciplines partner with others who are receptive to and/or are seeking assistance with the intention of providing ongoing support, positive sustainability outcomes for both groups can become a reality (eatman 2012). in the future, scholars and university programs that do not actively seek out these partnerships will not be able to keep up with changes in practice and methodology (boyer 2014). as knowledge-making and information-sharing have become more readily accessible in parts of the world that had previously lacked access to technology and international perspectives, the need to understand the context for our internationally engaged activities inside and outside america becomes more critical than ever before. (during 2015, i had the privilege of working as a visiting professor at a talloires network university in almaty, kazakhstan. here i found a campus in a 142 | gateways | damiani developing nation engaged in several community-based programs designed to foster mutually beneficial partnerships between the campus and surrounding urban, suburban and rural communities. the following year, i was invited to attend an international conference in pakistan, hosted by a partner school of my own university in japan. just as with my time in kazakhstan, this invitation stemmed from an interest in my role as a liaison in the development of national and inter-university collaborations and linkages. it speaks to a change in what universities in developing nations are looking for in the academy.) the road to the presentation at ia 2014 was a bumpy one. that being said, the value of this work for american scholars interested in rethinking their approaches to internationally engaged work, for foreign scholars doing research in the united states and overseas, and for those co-presenters from outside the united states who, until then, had not been given opportunities to peer into the american academic system was apparent. the willingness of my co-presenters to engage with my call to liaise in japan, and to follow through and join me virtually at the american event, shows a shift in how academia can function as an excellent and a more equitable international forum for ideas and service in the future. i have discovered through this project that, while the reluctance of international scholars to connect with american institutions is in part based on perceived geographical or ideological distance, or quality of work, there is something else at play: the discourse of american higher education. i have noticed time and again that scholars from outside the united states become perplexed when i apply academic language such as ‘civic engagement’ or ‘publicly engaged scholarship’ to the work done in american universities. as mentioned earlier, academic research taking place across the asia-pacific, especially research in developing countries, naturally has a more service-minded focus. scholars from across my new region, including my co-presenters, were surprised to see that we give this research a name, that we have special events for presenting this brand of research, and this has led to concern that their own work might not be what american researchers consider as valid. while it is critical that american institutions advocate for their communities and begin to expect their students and staff to play an active role in doing so as well, it is important they also recognise that, in some countries, the primary purpose of universities and colleges, some of which are older than the nations in which they are located, has always been to advance social development. it is also important to recognise that many scholars from around the world have an excellent grasp of the english language, but struggle to understand when english becomes pedantic. in order to build personal connections with researchers from outside the united states (and within), it is essential that we communicate using language that can be understood by people unfamiliar with the rhetoric of the academy and the demanding jargon we apply to our areas of expertise. 143 | gateways | damiani this new model of engaged scholarship includes a willingness to listen before speaking and to explore alternative ways of talking about what it means to be an academic today. this new model must eliminate or minimise language that might alienate others. american researchers interested in serving their communities, both at home and abroad, must also be willing to look to international scholars, students and staff at their own institutions before looking outside for answers. this will help both parties to draw closer ideologically and develop new shared theories and local language that can be tested through collective action. once this language has been developed, american researchers will be better prepared for, and more capable of, operating in a truly global context. finally, this new model points to a need for american scholars at home and abroad to create spaces for these types of dialogue to occur across disciplines and cultures. data collected from conference participants and experience demonstrate that publicly engaged scholars can benefit from approaches taken by researchers inside and outside their local communities. armed with an increased awareness of the potential for experiences to intersect across disciplines and cultures, an increased ability to connect with others and a resolve to develop new points of access, researchers today are placed to transform their communities and the academies that serve those communities in profound ways. concluding reflections one key outcome of this project is that we were able to determine and define what counts as meaningful action for both american researchers working overseas and scholars from overseas conducting research in the united states, and provide better understanding of the development of practices that could make such action possible on a global scale. because the conversations presented in this distinctive case study were happening for many conference attendees for the first time, i propose that this reflection on the mechanics of internationally engaged scholarship be typified as an introduction to a new model of internationally engaged scholarship – a model that esteemed scholar and session participant ifeoma aptly referred to as ‘transnational figuring out’. as more american scholars begin to forge their academic identities outside the united states (altbach & mcgill peterson 1998), as universities in the united states continue to emphasise the value of international exchange and public scholarship, and as i continue to ask and redevelop the questions that started this project, both at events in the united states and overseas in the fall of 2015, i can see these unusual conversations coming into better focus as new voices create multiple layers of overlapping and distinctive wisdom. 144 | gateways | damiani references altbach, p & mcgill peterson, p 1998, ‘internationalize american higher education. not exactly’, change: the magazine of higher learning, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 36–39. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00091389809602630 boyer, l 2014, scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate, 2nd edn, princeton university press, princeton, nj. eatman, t 2012, ‘the arc of the academic career bends toward publicly engaged scholarship’, in b gilvin, g roberts & c martin (eds), collaborative futures: critical reflections on publicly active graduate education, the graduate school press, syracuse university, syracuse, ny, pp. 25–48. ellison, j & eatman, t 2008, ‘scholarship in public: knowledge creation and tenure policy in the engaged university’, imagining america, paper 16. hollister, r, pollock, j, gearan, m, reid j, stroud, s & babcock, e 2012, ‘the talloires network: a global coalition of engaged universities’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 81–102. imagining america 2015, ‘imagining america’s 2014 national call for participation’, viewed 3 january 2015, http://imaginingamerica.org/ blog/2014/02/05/2014-national-conference-call-for-participation/. peters, s 2014, ‘organizing and disruption in higher education’, opening plenary session at the meeting of imagining america, atlanta, ga. talloires network 2005, ‘talloires declaration on the civic roles and responsibilities of higher education’, viewed 28 december 2014, www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/?pid=17. talloires network 2010, the talloires network: higher education responding to social needs, report on a meeting at the rockefeller foundation’s bellagio center, 23–27 march. viewed 4 january 2015, http://tufts.edu/ talloiresnetwork/downloads/bellagiomeetingreport.pdf. talloires network 2011a, building the engaged university, moving beyond the ivory tower, report on the talloires network global leaders conference, madrid, 14–16 june, tufts university, medford, ma. talloires network 2011b, madrid 2011 conference resolution on the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education, viewed 4 january 2015, www.talloires2011.org/conference/resolution. watson, d, holister, r, stroud, s & babcock, e 2011, the engaged university: international perspectives on civic engagement, routledge, new york. what have we learnt? a year on from the first uk community partner summit it is a sunny day in june 2013 and the uk community partner network (ukcpn) working group are meeting in london to discuss how they might support community-university partnerships to develop in more effective ways. formed a year ago, this group is part of a long-term project to build community-university partnership resilience. despite the diversity of their experiences of working with universities, the participants share common challenges and a belief that community-university partnerships have the potential to achieve positive social change. the network is the first example where community-based organisations working with universities have come together nationally to share their collective wisdom on communityuniversity partnership working, as a basis to improve the field and to challenge the culture of their partner universities. given the strength of feeling about both the value and the difficulty of community-university partnerships, it raises the question: how is it that community organisations have not come together to investigate these issues already? is it because it is not a priority, as they are busy working on other more important issues and community-university partnerships are just one way to approach these? is it that community-university partnerships are not critical to the mission or objectives of community-based organisations, and they are happy to walk away if the partnership does not work? is the perceived value of working with a university considered worth the effort and the costs, a throwback to the inherent power differentials that exist within community-university partnerships? or could it be that changing cultures is hard, and that sometimes resources or intermediaries are needed to build capacity for change? echoes of all these issues have been found in our conversations over the last year. whilst noticing that, when we do come together, there are common concerns, it is puzzling that there is less recognition of the value of a collective voice and coordinated action in this space. the authors of this article, a community partner, a public engagement practitioner and an academic involved in the project, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 129–143 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 kim aumann angie hart university of brighton sophie duncan national coordinating centre for public engagement 130 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan took this opportunity to reflect on the journey travelled so far. in the article we do not attempt to solve all the issues and challenges we have faced, but to open them up for further reflection. the context the uk community partner network working group came out of a summit held in june 2012. the summit brought together 20 community partners and 10 engaged academics from across the uk to think about ways of building community-university partnership resilience. it was part of a successful grant application that argued the need for community partner infrastructure support and real decision-making powers, to create enduring communityuniversity partnerships for the future. interestingly, it was the academic amongst us who spotted a major capacity issue for community partners to take part in individual partnerships, or to get involved in the larger strategic work, to influence and promote good partnership practice. she noticed that, whilst many academics have the opportunity to support their ongoing learning by attending conferences and securing faculty buy-outs, community partners rarely, if ever, get to network to share their experiences, consider solutions to partnership problems, or increase their knowledge base. as both academics and community partners testify, funding for community partner participation is very hard to acquire, and uk public and voluntary sector funding cuts are making the strategic inclusion of community partners even harder. with this in mind, the 2012 summit was our first attempt to craft a space for community partners to network, share experiences and good practice, and explore the potential for a uk-wide community partner network. the summit was part of a larger project made possible by funding through the connected communities programme (see: www.ahrc.ac.uk/funding-opportunities/research-funding/ connected-communities/). the connected communities programme is an unusual cross-research-council funding stream, led by the arts and humanities research council, which aims to understand the changing nature of communities and community values in their historical and cultural contexts, and the positive and negative role of communities in sustaining and enhancing quality of life. submitting a successful application co-written by academics and community colleagues, and supported by seven community partners and eight academics, was no easy task. connected communities programme funding is research funding and projects are required to be led by academics. what was challenging for the project team was how to create a space where community partners could lead the agenda, and balance this with the needs and interests of the academics involved. this has been a creative tension within the project – opening up interesting discourse amongst the team and helping all of us to reflect on how our roles play out in the running of the project. it 131 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan has been, perhaps, most apparent to the lead academic, who is used to having much more of a controlling interest and leading role in projects than that which played out in this one. the success of the summit was in part due to the involvement of two well-respected public engagement organisations equipped to provide infrastructure support and credibility to the event, and a long-standing community partner able to lend a degree of authenticity to coordinating the work. having an experienced community partner with intimate knowledge of community-university partnerships was fundamental, as was the involvement of a small working group of community partners who came together to help plan the summit. the summit was held over two days, with the first day solely for experienced community partners who had been working for over three years with universities to address social justice challenges together. this deliberate target group and boundary was drawn to encourage depth of discussion and facilitate achievable outputs, with the hope of including more community partners in the future if the network took off. community partners were then joined on the second day by a small group of engaged academics, who shared their belief that things should and could improve, to expand the conversations about ways to build more effective community-university partnerships in the future. the decision whether or not to include academics in both days of the event was a difficult one. we wanted to create a safe space for community partners to openly reflect on their work, but also wanted to recognise that community-university partnerships are about partnership and perhaps, therefore, all members of these partnerships should be involved throughout. while the authors held slightly different opinions about this, we agreed that until the community partners had met together we would be unable to explore whether we shared agendas in common, and that community partners may be inhibited from honest reflection were their academic counterparts in the room. this proved to be an effective way of running the event; however, it was not popular with some participants. together the summit attendees agreed to do three things: —set up a uk community partner network to bring people together, virtually and face to face, to support and build community partner capacity for effective partnership working —develop a community partner ‘sat nav’ to guide partners and navigate the terrain of partnership working with universities —explore opportunities to participate in discussions and activities that could lead to policy change, to better support community partner involvement in partnership working in the future. we are currently working together to deliver these three things. so far, through additional funding from the connected communities programme and the national coordinating centre for public engagement (nccpe: www.publicengagement. ac.uk/), we have written a vision statement, produced a summit file:///c:\users\kca10.university\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\temporary%20internet%20files\content.ie5\8j2kv531\www.publicengagement.ac.uk\ file:///c:\users\kca10.university\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\temporary%20internet%20files\content.ie5\8j2kv531\www.publicengagement.ac.uk\ 132 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan film, established an email list, created a web presence for the network, and presented our work internationally to learn from other countries’ perspectives of community-university partnership working. we have also conducted an online community partner survey and focus groups which support these activities. whilst the summit could be seen to be the start of the ukcpn story, we need to go back slightly further in time to consider other sources of insight and learning to better understand the roles and perspectives of communities in this important work. one of the difficulties of doing this is explained in a paper which explores the literature about university public engagement and highlights that ‘[r]esearch in the field is highly dispersed – scattered across multiple disciplines, adhering to different values, using different methods and mobilising different research traditions, making it hard for people to discover and draw upon each other’s work’ (facer, manners & agusita 2012, p. 2). the report seeks to explain why this is: time pressures and a focus on delivery, means that those leading such activities are also unlikely to draw on the existing research in related fields and are equally unlikely to contribute to them through written or other tangible outputs. exacerbating this is the fact that academic systems of reward and publication tend to discourage ‘engaging’ academics from writing up their work in publications seen as outside their main discipline, and also discourages those academics and researchers who are studying engagement processes from producing outputs that are of use and accessible to those seeking to do engagement (facer, manners & agusita 2012, p. 9). a further difficulty is that the direct voice of community partners is largely missing from the literature. the vast majority of what has been written about community-university collaboration is presented from an academic perspective and these accounts are mostly published in journals – a format of little relevance to community partners. incentives for community partners to explore and reflect on partnership working in this way are limited. in addition, whilst there is a body of literature that explores the nature of community-university partnerships, both for research and for service learning, stoecker et al. (2010) make the critical observation that there is little which investigates the value for the community partners themselves. a current study by researchers and community partners in canada explores this very issue (see the project page at: http://carleton.ca/communityfirst/). the summit participants highlighted seven specific challenges for effective community-university partnership working: dealing with different cultures; negotiating expectations; building relationships; engaging students for mutual benefit; tackling issues of power, equity, capacity and funding; measuring value and effectiveness; and building a legacy. these themes are also found in the literature. for example, stoecker and tyron (2009) reflect on 67 interviews with staff in community organisations http://carleton.ca/communityfirst/ 133 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan who were working with universities to develop service-learning (opportunities for students to enhance their learning through working in partnership with community-based organisations). they identify a number of challenges, including cultural differences in the willingness to identify as learners or experts, the community-based organisations being more comfortable with the former and academics with the latter, and the assumptions that each partner made of the other. in addition, the connected communities programme has funded a range of scoping studies which cover a diversity of issues, many of which are pertinent to our work and have provided further insights. one such study concludes: ‘given ccp’s coproduction agenda, further studies might seek to enhance the role of community partners, including community partner-led bids, or ones explicitly aimed at community-university capacity building’ (hart et al. 2011, p. 9). there has also been significant investment in developing ethical frameworks to inform community-university partnership working. the ethical guidelines produced by the centre for social justice and community action, university of durham and national coordinating centre for public engagement (2012), and co-developed by sarah banks (academic) and numerous community partners (banks et al. 2013; durham community research team 2011), provide a useful steer as to how to ensure partnerships are mutually respectful and purposeful. there is clearly much value in exploring this literature in more depth. it has reminded us that there are great resources, literature and learning, from which we can draw inspiration and understanding, and there is a need to provide easy and relevant access points for academics and community members to engage with it. that said, more research is needed to better understand the roles and perspectives of communities in this important work. international perspectives inspire and reassure the community partner working group was funded to participate in three international conferences. these provided inspiration, as well as lots of opportunities for practical learning, to augment the other sources of evidence we have considered. reassuring realism the community-campus partnerships for health (ccph, see: www.ccph.info/) set up their first community partner forum back in 2006. five years later, they delivered a conference for 100 community partners focused on community-based participatory research, which a member of the working group attended. we have taken significant inspiration from their work, and imagined that the uk community partner network might develop along similar lines. when our early experiences suggested it was going to take time to coalesce as a network, meeting with ccph’s founding executive director reassured us. despite having a key focal point, a strong shared agenda and a large number of organisations file:///c:\users\kca10.university\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\temporary%20internet%20files\content.ie5\8j2kv531\www.ccph.info\ 134 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan participating, the ccph network took around five years to get established. a critical part of this phase was to build community partner capacity to engage and to pursue policy change. tools they used in this effort included training sessions run via conference call, community mentors and national conferences. they now regularly submit responses to research agencies’ strategic plans, participate in peer review processes, and secure community partner places on research agency and health-focused decisionmaking committees. of particular note for us was that the group had received consistent organisational support and had taken time to reach this point of influence. we therefore recognise that capacity-building elements are a critical feature of developing a mature network that can begin to influence community-university partnership working locally, regionally and nationally. linking with the global agenda members of the working group also attended the 6th international conference on higher education, convened by the global university network for innovation (guni), which introduced us to a group of academics across the world who are passionate about social justice and the need to develop research with impact outside the academy. whilst community partners were very few in number at the event, we were privileged to hear of community-university partnerships from across the world seeking to address social inequalities through research and student engagement. whilst the power differentials in partnership working were discussed, there were few solutions offered on how to make a space for a new way of working. the conference was supported by the unesco chairs for community based research and social responsibility in higher education. their mission centres on the critical need to co-create knowledge and one of their key aims is to ‘conduct research on dimensions of knowledge democracy and the cocreation of knowledge, identifying the most effective practices in community-university research partnerships with special emphasis on vulnerable communities and less wealthy nations’ (http:// unescochair-cbrsr.org/). this is the only unesco chair that is coheld by an academic and a community partner, which seems an important step towards more equitable involvement of community and academic partners within this space. several things of relevance to our work emerged from this conference. for example, what stood out was that all parties found it challenging to create more equitable conditions for communityuniversity partnerships to flourish, given the multiple agendas and pressures of participants, and the need to find more ways to come together to develop more effective working in the future. in addition, the need to stand together and provide statements that could speak to policy was one tool that could be used to develop this work in the future. such a statement was developed as the culmination of the conference (see http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/ http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/ http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/ http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/pdf/resource/gdiii-final-may_20.pdf 135 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan pdf/resource/gdiii-final-may_20.pdf). although open to all to participate in this statement, it is relevant to note how few of the signatories represented community-based organisations. passion for partnerships the cuexpo 2013 conference saw a broader group of people come together to discuss and build capacity for community-university partnerships. this canadian-led conference showcases communityuniversity partnerships worldwide. of the 500 delegates, around 40 per cent represented community-based organisations, which provided a welcome dynamic to the content and tone of conversations. whilst there are similarities between the uk and canadian contexts, there are some significant differences. for example, in canada, community partnerships are foregrounded, particularly due to the first nations context; they are more likely to involve both researchers and students working together with community partners to address social issues; and there is a strong tradition of service-learning and student placements. the summit challenges to community-university partnership working were echoed in the discourse of guni and cuexpo, and both conferences offered the opportunity to discuss what great partnership work looked like and to come up with some shared principles of working together. it seems that these conversations – whilst important to build consensus and shared understanding amongst delegates – need to be acted upon. we are currently planning our second summit and this is foremost in our mind. how do we develop practical ways to move communityuniversity partnership working forward in the uk, and how do we ensure we build on learning we have already? our international experiences have opened up new vistas and provided important context for our work. defining the territory — where to draw the line? as the network developed, informed by the literature and conversations with others, we began to recognise the consequences of some of our early decisions about defining the scope of the network. when we set out to explore the potential for a community partner network we were keen to be as inclusive as possible and not make the definition of terms an inadvertent barrier to participation. we wanted to avoid long discussions about language so that we could prioritise our limited time together on themes, actions and ways forward. in principle, this built on our values of inclusion; however, it immediately led to challenges. were we to start again, we would be clearer about defining key terms. agreeing definitions at the outset may have helped improve inclusivity (as it may have provided more confidence in those we hoped to include to recognise that the network was for them), provide clarity and boundaries, and enable a more focused start. clearly, it could be possible later in the process to broaden the initial definitions, but what has proved more difficult is to narrow definitions that were initially very broad. three areas proved http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/pdf/resource/gdiii-final-may_20.pdf 136 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan particularly challenging – although there is no easy solution to how we might have addressed them differently. who is a community partner? initially we chose to leave this term undefined, hoping that people would explore the aims of the summit and consider whether it was something relevant to them. as we were at such an early exploratory stage, we wanted to leave the door open to see who might be interested in the idea of a network and were mindful that there was the possibility that the initiative would fail to garner any attention. mason o’connor et al. (2011, p. 4) suggest that ‘… there is no single uncontested definition of public or community. however, this lack of definition can be considered a strength rather than a limitation, engendering local debate as to what these terms might mean in different contexts’. by not defining ‘community partner’, we attracted summit participants from a wide variety of organisations including grassroots, resident or faith-led groups, social enterprises, not-for-profit groups, cultural organisations, national and local charities, the public sector such as schools, public libraries, government workers, and so on. that said, we received quite a few enquiries asking about eligibility, and noticed that some of the organisations we hoped to attract did not have the capacity to participate despite their interest in doing so. the only defining characteristic for summit attendance was that individuals needed to have been working with universities in partnerships with a social justice focus for over three years. whilst this breadth of definition was a strength – the fact that attendees shared common issues and challenges was a strong message to the higher education sector – it was also a weakness, as we did not necessarily share enough commonality to immediately form a cohesive network. ccph has also struggled with the term – although they have rejected the term ‘community partner’ because they consider it too referential, as community partners are defined on the universities’ terms. they now use terms such as ‘community leaders’ and ‘community-based organizations’, but within our context these too are problematic. for example, one unexpected outcome of our work was that a small number of summit applicants worked as freelancers and did not identify specifically with one particular community group or issue. what types of community-university partnerships? broadly speaking, summit attendees worked with universities in three ways: on research projects; providing volunteer placements for university students; or contributing to course curricula. a small minority of attendees were concerned about issues to do with making use of university facilities. failing to define the types of partnerships meant that the potential sphere of activity for a national network became burdened with trying to map out the territory, rather than identifying commonalities on which to build. our ambition was that, in time, the network would grow to such 137 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan an extent that there could be subgroups meeting around specific themes or types of partnerships. our hunch was that these would be either thematic such as health, social justice or environment, or partnership purpose, for example, research, student placements, volunteering etc. tightly defining the types of partnership work may have afforded us more focused discussions about how community-university partnerships can help to tackle social inequalities, develop more collaborative research work, or improve student placement and learning practice, all of which were in our minds as we wrote the first funding application. there remains the opportunity to move in this direction, and there is clear interest from community partners to promote and champion partnership working that has co-production, cocollaboration and action orientation at its heart. other forms of working together that are less partnership focused are of little interest to the community partners involved so far, perhaps on the basis that those wanting to partner universities in less collaborative ways, for example, to make use of their facilities, are better off targeting their efforts at working with their local university rather than a national network. what should the theme of the network be? when preparing for the summit we were aware that we only had capacity for 20 community partners. therefore, it was important to be clear about the focal point for the summit. we chose ‘social inequalities’ because this theme was a key driver for those responsible for the original funding application and for those on the summit planning group. we defined social inequalities as ‘when individual groups in society don’t have equal access to its riches such as social status, property rights, education, health care, housing, travelling and so on – in other words, the inequality has its roots in socioeconomic conditions’ (aumann et al. 2012, p. 2). what is interesting to observe is that, despite being the reason people came together, the social inequality theme has not been a strong feature of the discourse of the working group, although it is explicitly mentioned in the vision statement they developed: our mission is to help build a fairer society by unlocking the potential of community-university partnerships to positively impact social concerns … we aim to mobilise a network of community partners designed by and for community partners, to harness their knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm for effective communityuniversity partnership working by: a) raising the profile of community-university partnerships as a mechanism for impacting social challenges … (http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about/ community-partner-network/about-project) one possible reason for this is that the focus of the summit, and the subsequent working group, was to strengthen communityuniversity partnership working. whilst participants wanted to improve community-university partnerships to serve their social http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about/community-partner-network/about-project http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about/community-partner-network/about-project 138 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan justice agendas, the improvement of community-university partnerships was the key reason they came together in this forum. this contrasts quite strongly with the ccph, who came together to tackle health inequalities, and to recognise the need for community-based organisations and universities to work together to this end. the communities of practice model (wenger 1998) would argue that people interested in knowledge exchange organise dynamically when there is a common problem to solve and a shared passion to solve it. the common problem we seem to have coalesced over is a need to improve community-university partnerships, by providing resources to help community partners navigate the terrain, a network for peer-to-peer support, and an opportunity to affect culture change in community-university partnership working. injected into this problem-solving arena is the need to rekindle our passion – a focus on the purposes of community-university partnership working, and the inspiration, insight and effectiveness this style of working brings. the question remains whether we should have had an even tighter focus for the initial summit, but it is really hard to assess whether this matters. would a community partner network be stronger, more robustly defined or more action orientated if organised around a tighter theme, and if so what should that theme be? or is it too early to know? theorists such as aldrich (1999) and mitleton-kelly (2003) interested in the evolutionary model of organisations would remind us that even really large organisations started small, and that the emergence of organisations, or a network in our case, takes time if they are to grow organically and be sufficiently flexible to explore possible alternatives to find the most appropriate way to function. great expectations – did we really mean a national network? contact with our opposite number in north america planted the seed to establish a ukcpn and introduced us to their framework. while we did not give a lot of attention to alternatives, the concept of a ‘network’ was broadly agreed by summit delegates, albeit with some useful caveats, such as checking possible overlaps with other networks, clarifying membership, and agreeing how it might be governed and sustained. the term ‘network’ clearly raises expectations of what it is, what it is not, and what it can do, and the term ‘national’ also has an impact on expectations. once established, a national network could bring collective community voices together to speak to national funding and policy, influence culture change within the higher education sector, and provide opportunities for capacity building within community partners and universities. however, we recognised this would take a long time to establish. tensions arose within and without the working group between trying to get things going and incubate the creation of a new network, and an eagerness to start influencing wider higher 139 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan education policy and practice. whilst it has been encouraging to notice interest from funders and universities in working with the network to recruit external panel members for funding calls, and to advise on community engagement strategies, we need to be cautious about overextending the small resource we have and to whose end it is used. we need to unpick the assumptions and practicalities of what participating in these opportunities means. we do not want to become a tokenistic tick-boxing service that enables universities and their funders to suggest their decisions have been approved by a ukcpn, especially given that we are some way off establishing a network that could be said to represent a wider sector. it may be that by calling ourselves a ‘network’ we have inadvertently implied that there is a large group of community partners active, wanting and able to participate in these types of activity, and that they are supported and funded to do so. clearly this is not yet the case. the ukcpn is still in its infancy, and it will be some time before it is ready to participate in the ways hoped for by our partners. culture change the original summit and subsequent community partner survey show a strong desire by community partners to change academic culture. community partners are clearly keen to influence how universities work with communities, and how this can be better supported through funding and policy. despite this being a key desire, those involved in taking this forward struggled to identify how best to do it, and also to recognise that they too needed to change. the project benefited from the involvement of a national public engagement organisation set up to stimulate culture change in how universities engage with the public. research funders in the uk established the nccpe and beacons for public engagement in 2008. the beacon projects were focused on addressing some of the cultural barriers to effective engaged practice by universities and their academics. the nccpe ran a systemic action research process to explore these cultural factors in more depth, which highlighted several factors, including the need for universities to consider their purpose as an institution and how this animates their approach to engagement. what is needed is wider systemic change involving multiple actors in addressing the challenges. ‘embedding public engagement in hei’s will require a major culture change which is rooted in the development of successful action. a learning based approach to change, rather than one rooted in top down directives, is best suited to facilitate the corporate transformation that is needed’ (burns & squires 2011, p. 44). since then, the nccpe has been working with universities, and their funders, to explore more effective ways to support public engagement. they have developed a self-assessment framework 140 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan for universities, to support them to reflect on how they support public and community engagement in nine key areas (www. publicengagement.ac.uk/support/self-assess; www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/the%20 edge%20tool%20v2.pdf) and have sought other models of working that could better support effective community-university partnership working. this is exemplified in the research for community heritage project, which is a partnership facilitated by the nccpe between the heritage lottery fund and the arts and humanities research council, with each party funding communities or universities to work together on heritage projects. clearly, an established community partner network could potentially have the capacity to feed into regional and national consultations, highlight specific governance opportunities to be involved in, and develop tools to support community partners to impact local university agendas – but we do not yet have such a network. valuing the expertise of community partners, and seeking to use their contributions, time and commitment effectively at the decision-making table, is important. a pragmatic approach to this would be to consider the systemic change needed to create an environment for community-university partnerships to flourish, the investment needed to build community partner capacity and the methodologies that might be employed to address this, for example, through action learning, including all the actors involved in affecting the ecosystem. there are lessons to be learnt from the extensive participation work in the uk and its growing body of literature (for example, arnstein 1969; blackburn & holland 1998; involve 2008; kirby et al. 2003; lightfoot & sloper 2002; scie 2013), which suggest consultation and participation work needs to be developed and implemented within a wider participation strategy. for example, listening is only half the story; acting on what community partners say, and working to ensure that they are influencing decision-making, are as important. part of the way a national network could begin to influence culture change would be to seek investment in sustainable engagement processes, including guidelines, toolkits and training for community partners, and building a learning environment for community partners that addresses issues such as leadership, transparency, power differences, ways to assist cultural change, and effective monitoring and evaluation of partnerships. we are currently reconsidering what the best vehicles are for organising, lobbying and finding a collective voice, and how best to support learning and reflection on practice. in these early days we need to be pragmatic. clearly, we need to build community partner capacity, and the ‘sat nav’ and summit will provide some tools to help do this. eventually we would hope, like ccph, to provide peer mentors and infrastructure and support for nominated or elected representatives to participate in decision-making groups. http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/support/self-assess http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/support/self-assess http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/the%20edge%20tool%20v2.pdf http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/the%20edge%20tool%20v2.pdf 141 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan a short note on payment and funding this work has been punctuated by a question that arose time and time again. should community partners be paid to participate in the network? it relates to the larger question of how community partners should be remunerated for work with universities, and how the funding for partnership working is fairly allocated amongst partners. clearly, discussions about money belie the greater agenda of power differentials and who owns the decisionmaking. therefore, the ‘money’ question became shorthand for exploring the value to community partners of participating in the community partner network and in university partnerships as a whole. the stance taken by the working group was indicative of the values that underpinned it, namely that we need to recognise appropriately the input of community partners – valuing their knowledge, skills and expertise, and their time. this seemed a simple principle, but in practice it is very hard to apply. in this context one size does not fit all. we have little space to discuss this fascinating topic here, but nccpe has commissioned some research to draw on the different models of payment for community partner expertise, including patient and public involvement initiatives, internships and volunteering, research council guidelines in the uk, and work in canada and elsewhere. finally, building community partner capacity and supporting authentic partnerships requires investment. in the same way that regular research projects require infrastructure funding, this project has had the benefit of a £40 000 grant and the contribution of many voluntary hours from the community partners, public engagement organisations and academics involved. exploring the potential for a national network has required significant time to explore the literature, conduct focus group discussions, coordinate and administer a successful national summit, cover community partner travel costs and offer token fees towards the cost of their specific contributions, organise and complete field visits, set up a dedicated web presence and email list, and produce funding applications and written outputs. we could not have done it for less. conclusions the last year has been an interesting journey that has changed us all. we have learnt a lot about community partners’ views and appetite for this work, and are beginning to make some headway. by the end of this year we will have: —hosted our second community partner summit – involving, we hope, around 80 community-based organisations —launched the community partner ‘sat nav’ and encouraged community partners to contribute to it —developed a set of guiding principles to support community organisations in their work with universities, drawing on the ethical guidelines 142 | gateways | aumann, hart & duncan —explored models of funding to support the work of the network into the future. whilst the journey has been a challenge, there have been some really encouraging signs along the way. the arts and humanities research council has supported the development of the network and has a clear agenda for change. it has approached the network to explore the potential for community partners to sit on peer review panels for connected communities funding. this opportunity, whilst a small step in the right direction, provides a rare chance for community partners to be supported and funded to participate in a process that has an impact on us all. we have been working with the nccpe, and have had the opportunity to provide input to some of their thinking about how to support universities to improve how they work with communitybased organisations. they have agreed to help support the network and embed the community partner ‘sat nav’ into their website, ensuring it will be sustained beyond the current funding period. and we have had the privilege of meeting livewires from across the world who have stories and experiences that help to take our thinking forward and give us confidence that communityuniversity partnership working is an important part of the ecosystem to build a better society. we are looking forward to the next phase of the journey. references aldrich, h 1999, organizations evolving, sage, london. arnstein, s 1969, ‘a ladder of citizen participation’, journal of american planning association, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 216–24. aumann, k, bell, e, carter, k, duncan, s, wolff, d & hart, a 2012, setting the scene: uk community partner summit – 25th and 26th june, 2012: building community university partnership resilience, nccpe, bristol, uk, viewed 31 july 2013, www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/setting%20 the%20scene_0.pdf. banks, s, armstrong, a, carter, k, graham, h, hayward, p, henry, a, holland, t, holmes, c, lee, a, mcnulty, a, moore, n, nayling, n, stokoe, a & strachan, a 2013, ‘everyday ethics in community-based participatory research’, contemporary social science: journal of the academy of social sciences, 22 may. blackburn, j & holland, j (eds) 1998, who changes? institutionalizing participation in development, intermediate 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http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/cbl%20literature%20review.pdf http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/sites/default/files/cbl%20literature%20review.pdf http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/ fundamental researcher attributes reflections on ways to facilitate participation in community psychology doctoral dissertation research through their research efforts, many scholars from different disciplines have made it their mission to address blatant health disparities present in today’s society. apart from raising social consciousness and directing attention to gaps in the quality of health care available across various marginalised groups in communities, these researchers have dedicated part of their life’s work to making a difference by attempting to ensure equal access to health services, as well as support from public health policies, for often ignored and underprivileged populations. they have added a new dimension of social relevance to their work by incorporating egalitarian perspectives and reparative justice values in the purpose, design, methodology and outcome of their research. over the years, as more scholars realised that efforts to bridge the gaps in the availability and quality of health services between the community’s marginalised and privileged were a means to promote altruism through research, many of them began to search for approaches that would complement their new‑found purpose. one such approach was participatory research, which emerged from the context of the structural crises of underdevelopment in africa, asia and latin america of the early 1970s (wallerstein & duran 2008). despite its many changing versions along the way, many adherents remained faithful to the tradition of what is now commonly referred to as community‑ based participatory research (cbpr). as an alternative research paradigm integrating education and social action to reduce health disparities, cbpr proved to be an orientation to research that focuses on relationships between academic and community partners, with principles of co‑learning, mutual benefit and long‑term commitment that incorporates community theories, participation and best practice in research (wallerstein & duran 2006). because cbpr facilitated collaborative, equitable partnership in all research phases, and involved an empowering process, its principles became a good fit for studies that aimed to address social inequities such as health disparities. since it renato m liboro robb travers wilfrid laurier university © 2016 by r liboro & r travers. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: liboro, r & travers, r 2016, ‘fundamental researcher attributes: reflections on ways to facilitate participation in community psychology doctoral dissertation research’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 145–158. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4353 corresponding author: renato liboro; libo0730@mylaurier.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4353 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 146 | gateways | liboro & travers promoted co‑learning and capacity‑building among all partners, cbpr logically stood a better chance of influencing many social determinants of health that affected marginalised communities (israel et al. 2008). as interest in cbpr as an orientation increased over time, published literature on how its principal tenets could actually be tapped to achieve better outcomes correspondingly increased. chung and lounsbury (2006) discussed the dynamic nature of participation by community stakeholders in the research process. they noted that participation from the community comes in different forms and that both the amount of time participants devote to studies and their degree of involvement in them may waver or increase at any given period in the process as it unfolded. a few articles discussed the impact of community member participation levels on the outcomes of research efforts (cornwall & jewkes 1995), as well as the relevance of evaluating these levels of participation (butterfoss 2006). in their attempts to increase participation levels in cbpr, some researchers introduced different strategies to facilitate involvement by community stakeholders, particularly those from the marginalised groups affected by health service provision inequities. a distinct strategy some researchers found promising was identifying obstacles to facilitating participation by community members of disadvantaged subpopulations. in their review of cbpr through the assessment of partnership approaches to improve public health, israel and colleagues (1998) identified challenges such as lack of trust and respect, inequitable distribution of power and control, differences in perspectives and priorities, conflicts in concepts of representation, imbalance between action and research, and competing demands and expectations of partners. in her article on defining ways to introduce participation in participatory action research, montero (2000) described obstacles to initiating community member participation such as old practices of exclusion and the reintroduction of traditional ways of researching, knowing and learning. by identifying such challenges to the implementation of cbpr, these researchers hoped to find ways of overcoming issues before they became insurmountable problems to increasing participation. however, despite the identification of such challenges that would serve as a road map during the research process, many scholars still encountered numerous difficulties along the way as documented in certain peer‑reviewed journal articles (arieli, friedman & agbaria 2009; chung & lounsbury 2006). novice scholars new to the cbpr approach and the concept of increasing participation levels in community engagement no doubt experience even greater difficulties with the obstacles associated with practising participatory research. as fledgling researchers, doctoral students often encounter specific challenges even prior to the incorporation of cbpr principles in their initial research practice compared to their seasoned counterparts (bowen 147 | gateways | liboro & travers 2005; spriestersbach & henry 2010), and are likely to find the challenge of increasing participation from the community even more difficult. dearth of funding, institutional barriers specific to graduate‑level students, personal time constraints, shortage of manpower and support, lack of skills and experience, stricter internal deadlines and scarcity of technical resources are among the many challenges doctoral students encounter when conducting their dissertation research, even before they attempt to include elements of cbpr in their process (golde & gallagher 1999; stoecker 2008). apart from general strategies recommended to assist university and other institution‑based researchers seeking to begin community partnerships (wallerstein et al. 2005), there has been scant published literature that specifically addresses how doctoral students can adopt a cbpr approach to conducting a dissertation research effort (khosbi & flicker 2010), let alone any to suggest how to increase participation levels from their target community and reap the benefits of participatory and emancipatory research. however, doctoral students who seek to address health disparities in their dissertation research projects still have the option of taking into consideration and extrapolating lessons from principal propositions presented in cbpr literature. in this article, i analyse the value of specific cbpr concepts such as levels along a participation continuum (chung & lounsbury 2006) and examine certain fundamental researcher attributes recommended in cbpr literature that doctoral students can possibly utilise, develop and hone in their efforts to advance health equity for the benefit of marginalised groups in the community. to accomplish this, i use my own experience as a community psychology doctoral student conducting research on the potential impact of legislation on the success of gay‑straight alliances and other community‑based interventions addressing the mental health and wellbeing issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) youth in waterloo region, ontario, canada, as an empirical framework for grounding my analysis. i also propose new researcher attributes i have discovered after critical reflection on the challenges and small triumphs i experienced during the conduct of my early dissertation research process. it is my hope that these will stand as equally viable characteristics that graduate students can cultivate in their efforts to successfully address social inequities. lastly, i pose questions doctoral students may find useful to consider in their attempts to incorporate cbpr elements in their future research. it was with the invaluable guidance and support of my dissertation research supervisor/adviser (and co‑ author in this article) that i am able to share my critical reflections on my experiences as a doctoral student and early career researcher. development of my research strategy in order to establish my early doctoral dissertation research experiences as the empirical framework for my analysis, i will first 148 | gateways | liboro & travers describe the context of my research focus and original strategy, and how it was meant to address a health disparity in the larger community. i will then identify my social position by describing my role as a researcher and member of the community to place my location in the scheme of the research praxis. from that point, i will share my reflections on how my early engagement with the community brought about changes to my process and methodologies; how my position evolved within the community; and how, later in my analysis, i came to surmise that openness to implementing cbpr orientation elements, such as the concept of participation continuum levels and recommended researcher attributes proposed in cbpr literature, can bring about better dissertation research outcomes through increased participation. my doctoral dissertation research was primarily focused on examining factors that affected advocacy for the mental health and wellbeing of lgbt youth in publicly funded schools in ontario. this focus was inspired by the rise of mental health issues and other dire consequences from bullying of lgbt youth in high schools, which has become very alarming in recent decades. research conducted on the ill effects of bullying of lgbt youth has shown that lgbt students are at increased risk of poorer academic performance, truancy, dropping out, delinquency, physical and verbal abuse, risky sexual behaviours, problematic substance use, depression, suicidal ideation and suicidality, when compared to their heterosexual counterparts (almeida et al. 2009; birkett, espelage & koenig 2009; hunter 2007; nichols 1999). in an attempt to explore ways to counter these ill effects, scholars have discovered that student‑led after‑school organisations composed of lgbt youth and their allies, such as gay‑straight alliances (gsas), have a positive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of its members. a number of researchers have documented the benefits of other community‑based interventions, either together with or apart from gsas. szalacha (2003) underscored the finding that sexual diversity climates supportive of marginalised non‑ heterosexual youth were highest in schools that simultaneously implemented gsas, professional development training on lgbt issues for school personnel and anti‑homophobic school policies. griffin and ouellette (2002) pointed out that, although gsas are very important, they should only be part of a much bigger picture in which change in a school’s organisational setting to help lgbt students requires the involvement of school personnel and policies, community stakeholders and, most importantly, legal mandates and legislation that increase the chances of systematic implementation of and compliance with set programs. in the context of all waterloo region publicly funded schools, the mandate to support gsas and other lgbt‑inclusive strategies was established with the passing of the accepting schools act as law by the ontario government in june 2012 (ontario legislative assembly [ola] 2012). as a means to explore the dynamics of this context, and how to possibly address the health disparity between the mental health and wellbeing of lgbt high 149 | gateways | liboro & travers school students and their heterosexual counterparts, i decided that the focus of my research would be on exploring the perspectives and feelings of the population i believed the legislation would affect the most in my community – the gsa members and teachers of waterloo region. my original research methodology was to conduct semi‑ structured, one‑on‑one interviews with the gsa students and teachers who belonged to schools affiliated with the waterloo region district school board (wrdsb). i would accomplish this under the auspices of the equity, sexual health and hiv (esh‑hiv) research group of the centre for community research, learning and action (ccrla) at wilfrid laurier university (wlu) and its connections with the ok2bme program. ok2bme, a program that links all the gsas affiliated with the wrdsb in a network with services specific to lgbt youth and their allies, is a project of the kw counselling services, a multi‑service agency located in kitchener, ontario, canada, that provides individual, family, group, parenting and outreach support to the communities of waterloo region. both kw counselling services and the wrdsb equity and inclusion office are community partners of the esh‑ hiv research group. because of my affiliation with the esh‑ hiv research group, i was fortunate to have the opportunity to make use of the group’s collaboration and strong ties with the community. as a relatively new academic researcher in the field of community psychology about to embark on my doctoral dissertation research, i knew i still had a lot to learn about the practicalities of applying community psychology principles. i was confident in my researcher skills, but knew that i needed to tread cautiously and not proceed with too much confidence. what gave me some solace, however, was that i would be doing research on something that i was passionate about, as well as knowing that i would be engaging with a community that i could relate to and feel accepted by as an ‘insider’. not only could i identify with bullied lgbt students, but also even at my altered station in life, i still felt like one of them. it was an epistemic privilege that i believed i had earned for having experienced the same torment lgbt students today experience in their schools; a privilege i hoped would help me be a better researcher in my chosen focus of study. with guidance from my dissertation adviser and a few minor amendments, it did not take me long to get my research proposal approved by the wlu research ethics board (reb). in retrospect, i realised early on that, despite receiving support from kw counselling services in putting up posters for the study, it was probably not a good idea to have started study recruitment at the beginning of the summer as most, if not all, of the students, teachers and school personnel were already on vacation and in full holiday mode. a few students responded to the recruitment posters, but i had no success getting interviews for some weeks as the youth who expressed interest kept rescheduling. a couple of 150 | gateways | liboro & travers the students rescheduled as many as four times and eventually cancelled. i lost interviews due to conflicts with personal schedules, youth getting lost trying to find the interview location, and illness. it was frustrating to receive initial interest that did not translate into actual interviews. however, after three weeks, i was eventually able to interview three participants, two gsa students and one teacher. the interviews were rich and informative, but more than that, my first engagements with members of the community were quite illuminating. i learned many things both from the interviews and from my interaction with the participants after their interviews. from the participants’ feedback, i learned that the positive impacts that legislation can have on the success of gsas and the positive effects that gsas can have on the mental health and wellbeing of lgbt youth had a lot to do with the cooperation of the other members of the waterloo region publicly funded school system. this meant that the support of other community stakeholders, such as school administrators, school board staff, superintendents and trustees, was equally important to the success of the implementation of the new legislation mandating the formation of gsas. it also meant that, apart from the cooperation of members of the wrdsb, the support of their counterparts at the waterloo catholic district school board (wcdsb), who were also publicly funded, was just as imperative in implementing the mandates of the new act. in terms of my study, this meant that i also needed to hear from the school board administrators, staff, superintendents and trustees from both the wrdsb and the wcdsb who were just as invested in discovering how the accepting schools act could be used to help lgbt youth in ontario schools. lastly, since kw counselling services was responsible for the creation of the ok2bme program that prompted the gsa to network with the wrdsb (and later the wcdsb), their voice needed to be included in my research as well. during my interactions with the participants outside of the recorded interviews, i also recognised, in retrospect, other steps that i should have considered earlier for my engagement strategy: i needed not only to reach out to members of the community in a way that they would appreciate, but also to take anthropological and ecological approaches to finding ways to immerse myself within the community. it was not enough that i had the epistemic privilege that i believed i had and that i thought would help me relate to my target population; i needed first to get them to agree to participate and engage in the research. the youth also gave me very practical tips on how to reach more students even at the peak of summer. they told me to put up recruitment posters outside kw counselling services and in places lgbt youth and their allies frequented. this meant putting up posters where they would ‘hang out’ such as burger joints, billiard halls, day clubs, places where they would have their haircuts, and camps they would go to for the summer. they told me to take more advantage of social media by posting recruitment flyers on the gsa network website, the 151 | gateways | liboro & travers facebook pages of clubs they belonged to, and online links that would be viewed by their older friends who could tell them about the importance of the research. they also told me that to sustain interest among youth correspondence with them need not be so formal in email messages, and that i should communicate with them through texting/short messaging services (sms) and other multi‑media messaging services (mms). most importantly, the participants recommended that i should have greater visibility in the community that they were comfortable with, in order to increase my recognisability and so that youth would be able to identify me as one of their own. after fruitful exchanges of ideas, i also asked the participants if they would refer other students and teachers to me who they believed might have more to share on the gsa study. heeding the advice of the gsa students and a teacher who gave me feedback in the first three interviews, i sought and gained reb approval for the changes to my recruitment strategy. i placed recruitment posters where they would be seen by gsa members and sponsors in the waterloo region, both online and in the cities’ establishments. apart from this effort to recruit more by strategic information dissemination, i also followed their recommendation to keep correspondence with interested youth more relaxed, and began text messaging. in order to immerse myself in the community and increase my profile, i volunteered to be part of a neighbourhood steering committee whose goal was to establish the first lgbt community centre in waterloo region. in this grassroots movement group, i not only met the adult movers and shakers of what was touted as the ‘rainbow community’ of the region, i also engaged with a few youth leaders, some of whom were members of their high schools’ gsas. all these efforts became productive and helped lead to increased participation in my study. after each interview, i deliberately made greater efforts to exchange ideas with the interviewees on how to facilitate participation, and started to devise means to share study findings with the community through ok2bme activities. another aspect of the strategy i developed was to reach out to school administrators, as well as staff, superintendents and trustees from both the wrdsb and wcdsb. through old‑fashioned investigative work using the internet and local publications, i searched for key informants from the two publicly funded school boards who had keen interest in promoting gsas and the welfare of lgbt youth in the community, as well as established affiliations with ok2bme. using previously established networks of ok2bme, i wrote to them personally and sought indication that they would be agreeable to participate in interviews. i received sincere interest from representatives of both school boards, and was able to interview participants from different levels of the boards, such as staff members, superintendents and trustees, who were either primarily or indirectly involved with gsas. i also received interest from the staff at kw counselling services, who i contacted at the 152 | gateways | liboro & travers same time as the school board representatives. after conducting each of the interviews, i continued the practice of engaging participants for an exchange of ideas, consulting each of them for ‘off the record’ feedback on how to improve the research process, as well as attempting to facilitate new participant referrals. this practice allowed me to report new information to my dissertation adviser and gain guidance on how to make subtle but important changes that would increase community participation in terms of knowledge generation, degree of influence on process and, possibly, sharing some research outcomes, such as the dissemination of accrued data in the form of a gsa conference presentation. critical reflections and lessons learned upon critical reflection on my early doctoral dissertation research experiences, particularly as an empirical framework for analysis, i recognised and learned several important practical lessons. one such lesson is that implementing only a number (as opposed to all) of the elements found in the cbpr published literature can still prove very beneficial to studies attempting to promote equity and social justice. in the case of my own research efforts, it was helpful to know that some research studies promoted the belief that there were benefits to increasing levels of participation by the community, even if these levels were not necessarily at the point that ensured maximum participation at all stages of the research (cornwall & jewkes 1995; rifkin, muller & bichmann 1988). in their study on the role of power, process and relationships in cbpr, chung and lounsbury (2006) proposed an adapted participation continuum that starts from compliant participation, and then moves on to directed consultation, mutual consultation and, finally, empowering co-investigation. they described the advantages of research participants moving forward through this continuum as power structures and imbalances are progressively acknowledged and adjusted along the way. they also described that participation may begin at one level, progress to another as trust builds, and end up at a completely different level (chung & lounsbury 2006). when this concept was applied to my early dissertation research, as i implemented efforts to increase the quantity and quality of stakeholder participation, the benefits of achieving mutual consultation in the form of deliberate, respectful exchanges of ideas became evident, although the progress did not reach the level of empowering co-investigation. reflecting further on the first several months of my experiences in the community, i also came to realise that there were certain fundamental researcher attributes described in the peer‑reviewed cbpr literature that i unconsciously adopted in order to respond to the challenges i encountered in the process. tervalon and murray‑garcia (1998) first proposed the concept of cultural humility as an attribute that was better suited than cultural competence as a goal in multicultural medical education. they claimed that cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self‑evaluation and self‑critique in redressing power imbalances 153 | gateways | liboro & travers and in developing mutually beneficial and non‑paternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations. cultural humility has since been recommended in cbpr literature as an attribute for researchers to develop, not only for its value in reference to race and ethnicity, but also for its importance in helping understand and address impacts on other cultures with different socioeconomic status, religion, gender or sexual orientation (minkler 2005; minkler & wallerstein 2008). during my interactions with prospective participants from the community, i learned that it was not enough that i was openly gay and sympathetic to community members for me to develop a meaningful connection with them. i realised that i needed to show cultural humility so that i could establish equity and collaboration between the participating lgbt youth and teachers from the waterloo region high schools and myself, as an academic researcher. i needed to accept the fact that they knew the best ways for me to reach more gsa members, as well as other community stakeholders, and that it would serve me best to acknowledge that i did not truly have the ‘insider’ status i thought i had. moreover, with cultural humility, i came to recognise the aspects of my own ‘insider‑outsider’ position within the research context in which i was embedded (humphrey 2007). i realised that i had to acknowledge that i did not truly have as much of the ‘insider’ status that i thought i had from being a gay man with experiences of being bullied in my youth, and instead accept my ‘outsider’ status since there was a distinct culture in the community i was engaging with that i still had to learn about, understand and embrace. at that point, i recognised too that genuinely acquiescing to a state of shared vulnerability with the community while working through the struggles of developing my relationships with them was a means of establishing trust and respect. engaging the community with the attribute of shared vulnerability meant having the willingness to examine my deeply held beliefs and new ways of thinking about heteronormativity and oppression (maguire 2004). this meant that for me to develop a truly reciprocal relationship with the participants, i needed to relinquish all my preconceived notions of what i believed their experiences to be and be open to learning what they were willing to share with me regarding what made lgbt students in waterloo at that time susceptible to mental health issues resulting from heterosexist bias‑based harassment. in hindsight, there were two other researcher attributes i recognised as characteristics i adopted when i began to make changes in my research design and strategy to facilitate participation. i recalled adopting reflexivity and methodological flexibility almost concurrently, after noting the necessity to make adjustments to my strategy. reflexivity, an attribute of the cbpr orientation that is also a central tenet of the feminist research approach (england 1994; letherby 2003), is awareness that the researcher and the objects of study affect each other mutually and continually during the research process (alvesson & skoldburg 154 | gateways | liboro & travers 2000). in order for me to be able to elicit more responses from prospective participants in the community, i needed to be reflexive about their frame of mind and circumstances at the onset of the process. since i started recruiting gsa students and teachers at the beginning of summer, it was necessary for me to find better and more appropriate ways to reach them when they were away and preoccupied with vacation activities. i discovered that i required the perspectives and feedback of other stakeholders from the community in addition to gsa students and teachers, so i needed to be reflexive in order to expand the variety of my study participants. the concept of reflexivity involves bi‑directional flow and an alternating cause and effect pattern. if i wanted to produce effects that would be beneficial to my study process, i needed to be reflexive to the challenges caused by the circumstances i encountered in the conduct of my research. out of these necessities, i had to conduct my process with methodological flexibility and use methods that were tailored to the changing purpose of the research, as well as the context and interests of the community (dockery 1996). i had to adjust my recruitment strategy from a single form to multiple forms of information dissemination. from initially employing purposive sampling only, i had to later adopt a snowball sampling method as well. i pursued different leads that could possibly help recruit more participants based on interviewees’ suggestions and referrals to individuals and community gatekeepers. such efforts afforded me better results, not only in terms of facilitating participation, but also in terms of obtaining richer and more informative interviews that were substantiated by the concept of data triangulation (denzin 1989; kimchi, polivka & stevenson 1991), whereby information derived from sources with different roles at different levels of the school board validated the participant responses. new researcher attributes after much contemplation, i recognised that there were two other researcher attributes that i adopted, which are not necessarily specifically found in cbpr literature: academic assiduity and creative resourcefulness. if researchers remained assiduous and diligent in their scholarly work and pursuit of social equity, they would demonstrate persistence, which could potentially impress and win over reluctant prospective participants. as an example, during the recruitment phase of my research, once a week i conscientiously emailed prospective participants who seemed ‘on the fence’ about being interviewed, composing carefully thought out personal messages that directly responded to their concerns and needs. i also kept in mind the specific suggestions i obtained from the exchange of ideas with participants i had interviewed and consistently followed up on these suggestions. one teacher recommended that i ask the ok2bme program of kw counselling services for the names of teachers and administrators who had been staunch gsa supporters over the years. it took several follow‑ 155 | gateways | liboro & travers ups before i received a list of names, but it was worth the wait as i eventually secured more participants from it. in conducting the study with creative resourcefulness, not only did i learn to better correspond with prospective participants in the medium of their preference (i.e. email vs. mobile phone communication vs. online instant messaging), i also learned to provide more latitude in terms of scheduling meetings, such as conducting interviews early in the morning, late in the afternoon and even on weekends. i also gave participants the option to select interview venues of their choice as long as the location afforded privacy and confidentiality. i met participants at my office, their office, kw counselling services, the local lgbt community centre and other locations, even if it meant an hour‑long drive for me. i patiently rescheduled interviews even if the prospective participants had postponed repeatedly, and i followed up with them as long as they continued to express some interest in being interviewed. another concrete example of my creative resourcefulness was doing voluntary work with community organisations, which allowed me to spend more time with prospective participants and for them to get to know me better. adult chaperones were occasionally needed to supervise community‑sponsored activities such as afternoon movies and game nights designed to provide opportunities for lgbt students to socialise amongst themselves and their allies. i volunteered as a chaperone for these activities as a way to support the youth activities and at the same time attract prospective study participants, both students and adult advocates. i believe that adopting these fundamental researcher attributes was vital to the recruitment process for my study and contributed significantly to participation in my interviews. conclusion: questions to consider obviously, not all doctoral dissertation research studies can adhere to all cbpr principles applicable to their study when attempting to explore, and even address, health disparity issues. but efforts to increase participation and progress through the participation continuum are still commendable, especially in the context of graduate student level limitations and challenges. in an attempt to enhance the possibility of positive outcomes and the emancipatory effect of one’s research, graduate students can ask themselves certain questions so they can move forward and closer to these goals. how does the focus of my research aim to explore social inequities? what vital attributes can i consciously adopt as a researcher to augment my efforts in facilitating participation by community members and progressing further on the participation continuum? what principles and tenets of the cbpr orientation are applicable to and useful for my study so that i can increase the participation of my prospective participants, especially if i believe i cannot achieve maximum participation in all the phases of my research? have i exhausted all possible modifications or adjustments to my research approach and process in order to 156 | gateways | liboro & travers facilitate participation in my study despite my limitations and challenges? these are just a few questions to seriously consider not only at the start of a phd dissertation research study, but during its entire process. it is most important to believe that, even at the graduate training level, the effort to instil applicable elements of the cbpr orientation in doctoral dissertation research is still a laudable endeavour that new researchers can consciously and courageously take on early in their respective careers. references almeida, j, johnson, r, corliss, h, molnar, b & azrael, d 2009, ‘emotional distress among lgbt youth: the influence of perceived discrimination based on sexual 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teaching, and action research, praeger, ct, pp. 117–35. minkler, m 2005, ‘community‑based research partnerships: challenges and opportunities’, journal of urban health, vol. 82, suppl., pp. 113–19s. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jurban/jti034 minkler, m & wallerstein, n 2008, ‘introduction to community‑based participatory research’, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), communitybased participatory research: from process to outcomes, jossey bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 5–18. montero, m 2000, ‘participation in participatory research’, annual review of critical psychology, vol. 2, pp. 131–43. nichols, s 1999, ‘gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth: understanding diversity and promoting tolerance in schools’, the elementary school journal, vol. 99, no. 5, pp. 505–19. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/461938 ontario legislative assembly [ola] 2012, bill 13: accepting schools act, http://ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&billid=2549 rifkin, s, muller, f & bichmann, w 1988, ‘primary health care: on measuring participation’, social science and medicine, vol. 26, no. 9, pp. 931–40. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277‑9536(88)90413‑3 spriestersbach, d, & henry, l 2010, ‘the phd dissertation: servant or master?’, improving college and university teaching, vol. 26, pp. 52–60. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00193089.1978.9927521 stoecker, r 2008, ‘challenging institutional barriers to community‑based research’, action research, vol. 6, no. 1. pp. 49–67. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1476750307083721 158 | gateways | liboro & travers szalacha, l 2003, ‘safer sexual diversity climates: lessons learned from an evaluation of massachusetts safe school program for gay and lesbian students’, american journal of education, vol. 110, no. 1, pp. 58–88. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/377673 tervalon, m & murray‑garcia, j 1998, ‘cultural humility vs. cultural competence: a critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education’, journal of health care for the poor and underserved, vol. 9, no.2, pp. 117–25. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ hpu.2010.0233 wallerstein, n & duran, b 2006, ‘using community‑based participatory research to address health disparities’, health promotion practice, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 312–23. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 wallerstein, n, & duran, b 2008, ‘the theoretical, historical, and practice roots of cbpr and related participatory traditions’, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), community-based participatory research: from process to outcomes, jossey bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 25–46. wallerstein, n, duran, b, minkler, m, & foley, k 2005, ‘developing and maintaining partnerships with communities’, in b israel (ed.), methods for conducting community-based participatory research for health, jossey bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 31–47. engaging canadian youth in conversations using knowledge exchange in school-based health promotion currently, youth spend less time being physically active while engaging in more unhealthy eating behaviours than ever before. high rates of unhealthy behaviours such as physical inactivity (active healthy kids canada 2011; freeman et al. 2011), unhealthy eating (butler-jones 2008) and tobacco use are placing canadian youth at risk of health problems such as increased levels of overweight and obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes (morrison, friedman & gray-mcguire 2007; vanhala et al. 1998; who 2012). it is estimated that obesity rates in canadian children and adolescents have increased threefold in the last two decades (active healthy kids canada 2011). in 2010, 30 per cent of youth in prince edward island (pei) were overweight and obese and that rate had remained stable between 2008 and 2010 (murnaghan 2011). further, in line with canadian averages (roberts et al. 2012), only 45 per cent of youth in pei currently meet the national daily physical activity guidelines (murnaghan 2011), as recommended by the canadian society for exercise physiology. it is important to consider the school context when examining the health behaviours of youth, as they spend a large portion of their time in that environment. in relation to the school context and health-specific programs and policies currently implemented in pei, the provincial government regulates the nutrition policy that is implemented in all schools in the province and manages the physical education and health curriculum. however, the schools are fairly autonomous, in that approaches taken to meet educational outcomes, as set by the province, can be dynamic and specific to each individual school. schools take it upon themselves to initiate or implement healthrelated programs or school policies beyond those outlined by the provincial government or school board/district. for example, if a school identifies bullying as an issue of concern, with support from the provincial government and school board, the school takes the initiative to implement a program or policy to work through and resolve the issues. the provincial government fully gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 85–100 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 donna murnaghan courtney laurence brandi bell melissa munro-bernard university of prince edward island 86 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard supports individual schools in taking initiative to facilitate healthy behaviours in youth, above and beyond the curriculum outcomes as outlined by the province. for the first time ever, youth have a shorter life expectancy than their parents (butler-jones 2008). hence, the urgency to promote the health of youth. according to hanson and gluckman (2011), the greatest leverage of risk reduction can be achieved through timely intervention early in life. considering the amount of time youth spend in school settings, the school context is an ideal environment to initiate and facilitate healthy behaviours. solutions are needed to identify effective strategies to improve youth health outcomes. the problem, however, is that little is known about how to engage youth voices in developing youth health programs and policies. consistently, the inability of youth health policy, practice and research stakeholders to engage youth/ students in health promotion has been documented in youth health knowledge exchange literature (morrow 2001; wong, zimmerman & parker 2010), as well as by provincial stakeholders in pei. to address this gap, a key objective of our youth health research and of the provincial stakeholders in pei was to capture perspectives from youth themselves. in the past 10 years, knowledge exchange (ke) has emerged as an important component in the research process (mitton and perry 2007; straus, tetroe & graham 2011). the canadian institutes of health research (cihr 2014) defines knowledge exchange as a ‘dynamic and iterative process that includes synthesis, dissemination, exchange, and ethicallysound application of knowledge to improve the health of canadians, provide more effective health services and products, and strengthen the health care system’. there are varying terms describing similar processes, including knowledge translation, knowledge transfer, and dissemination, among others, and with these varying terms come varying definitions. however, ultimately, successful knowledge exchange involves the sharing of information and uptake of knowledge to inform action. initially, knowledge exchange took the form of producer push where evidence was pushed by researchers to stakeholders (leatherdale, manske, wong & cameron 2009), but this was found to be ineffective (dobbins, ciliska & dicenso 1998). instead, knowledge exchange through two-way communication between researchers, decision-makers and practitioners has been found to be more conducive to evidence-informed action (clark et al. 2010; lavis et al. 2003; wilson et al. 2012). often, knowledge exchange occurs between researchers and policy-makers with little involvement from practice perspectives (nixon et al. 2013; tugwell, knottnerus & idzerda 2011). previous research has identified that knowledge users should be involved in identifying problems and creating knowledge itself for knowledge exchange to be most effective (gagnon 2011; graham et al. 2006; ward, house & hamer 2009). however, there continues to be a gap 87 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard in the knowledge exchange process between knowledge creation and knowledge use by researchers and practitioners both (graham & tetroe 2007; graham et al. 2006; ward, house & hamer 2009). in 2009, prince edward island, along with six other canadian provinces and two national bodies, joined to form youth health collaborative: ‘excel’erating evidence informed action (youth excel), which was designed to better understand and build capacities for ke to advance youth health goals. as part of youth excel, prince edward island (pei), along with new brunswick (nb) and manitoba (mb), were identified as leaders in youth health knowledge exchange. a major contributor to the identification of pei, nb and mb as leaders in youth health knowledge exchange was that all three currently implement a youth health data collection and knowledge exchange system that operates on a two or three-year cycle, depending on the province. in pei, the school health action planning and evaluation system – prince edward island (shapes-pei) is a biennial data collection and feedback system, implemented since 2008, that collects information from a population of interest, and then provides information back to stakeholders (i.e. schools) to inform actions, including programs or interventions. year 1 of shapes-pei involves administering selfreport questionnaires to students in grades 5 through 12 that ask questions regarding four main health behaviours (healthy eating, physical activity, mental fitness or positive mental health, and substance use). eight to ten weeks following the data collection date in each school, the school administrator receives a school profile and summary results, with school-specific results that can be shared with teachers, students, parents and community members. year 2 of the shapes-pei cycle involves further discussions with schools, communities, government and non-government representatives regarding the school or provincial profile results, as well as coordinating a school health grant program that provides some financial support for schools to implement healthy programs based on the school’s shapes-pei results. as a result of the data collection and knowledge exchange systems currently operating in pei, nb and mb, the three provinces conducted case studies to document the successes and challenges involved with the development and implementation of their knowledge exchange systems (murnaghan et al. 2013). while each province had their own individual case study objectives, overall the case studies aimed to: (1) examine ongoing initiatives/activities and document lessons learned with respect to building capacity in collection of local data, interpretation and synthesis of data, utilisation of knowledge to take action and generation of evidence from action; and (2) to help discern realistic outcomes from these knowledge exchange networks. as part of the shapes-pei system, one of the main goals is to encourage dissemination of the results, at the same time supporting the use of evidence to inform action in schools, with a particular focus on including youth in this process. therefore, the provincial case study, as part of youth excel, 88 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard provided researchers in pei with an opportunity to explore with students what youth health issues were of most importance to them and how to encourage youth to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviours. the purposes of this article are to: (1) present the findings from a youth perspective on youth health issues; and (2) present lessons learned from the youth focus groups. method research design yin’s (2009) case study design was used to describe youth health knowledge exchange experiences and capacity. a case study research design was chosen in order to gain an in-depth understanding of knowledge exchange as a complex social phenomenon within the real-life context of youth health (yin 2009). procedure krueger’s (1994) focus group methodology was used to gather data regarding collective experiences, understandings and perspectives of youth. student focus groups were conducted at three schools over one school term in the fall of 2010. all three schools had participated in the shapes-pei survey two years previously, and would be participating for a second time during the 2010–2011 school year. overall, seven focus groups, plus one follow-up focus group, were held. following recommendations by krueger (1994), focus groups involved 10 or fewer students, were either gender specific or mixed, and involved either high school students only or junior high and high school students combined. semi-structured interview guides (available upon request from author) were used for the focus group sessions. the questions were general in nature and did not focus on any particular behaviour, but were more concerned with what the students thought to be the most important health issue. the semi-structured interview guides were developed through consultation between the research team and the provincial steering committee, which allowed for open discussion. questions focused on eliciting student perspectives on school/youth health issues and the roles of schools and students in health promotion. probes were used, as needed, to explore concepts more fully. active consent was obtained from parents and written informed assent was obtained from the students prior to participation in the focus groups. two research team members with expertise in qualitative research facilitated each of the focus groups. focus group discussions lasted one classroom period, approximately 45–60 minutes, and were held at a location and time that was most convenient for both schools and students. discussions were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim and facilitators’ field notes were recorded (halcomb & davidson 2006). students were not provided compensation and ethical approval was obtained from the university of prince edward island research ethics board and appropriate school boards. 89 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard participants purposive sampling was used to identify schools and school contacts through nominations of teachers and principals by members of the youth excel provincial steering committee. student participants who best represented the diversity of the school were nominated by the school contact. fifty students representing schools from each of the three school boards (two english and one french) participated in the focus group discussions. there were no refusals to participate and only one recruited student did not participate due to absence from school. qualitative analysis data management, synthesis and analysis activities were concurrent, iterative and ongoing. nvivo 8/9 software was used to manage and analyse data. analysis focused on thematic survey and conceptual/thematic description (sandelowski & barroso 2003). based on an analytic framework, ‘units of meaning’ arising from the texts were condensed into a set of thematic codes for each focus group. in keeping with leininger’s (1985, p. 60) work, the analysis included understanding how data from ‘components or fragments of ideas or experience’ allowed for a richer understanding of the data. data analysis included utilising a priori codes as identified in youth engagement literature. as themes emerged, codes were revised and new codes were added, as needed, on an ongoing basis throughout the iterative analytical process. member-checking was employed to reach saturation, to ensure thorough understanding of emerging themes, and to ensure that findings reflected the contributions of the participants. due to timing (end of school year), we were unable to conduct member-checking with all of the original focus groups and were only able to conduct one follow-up focus group. results students from grades 7–12 participated, with a majority of the sample representing grades 10 and 11 (84 per cent). overall, there was an equal (50 per cent) distribution by gender (n=25 females, n=25 males). results were organised into the four common themes identified by students regarding youth health issues and improving youth health, as discussed below. while the results presented are not comprehensive of all the topics students shared, they do convey the common themes that emerged across the focus groups. youth/school health issues cafeteria food and services students were asked to describe what school health meant to them and to identify what they thought was the biggest youth or school health issue. a predominant issue across all the focus groups was food quality and price in their cafeterias. while a few students did mention that healthy options were available, students overwhelmingly complained about food quality and price. as one 90 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard student said about their cafeteria’s food now as opposed to previous years, ‘it is not as good taste wise, but better health wise’. (fg2 – f) often, students felt that problems with the cafeteria resulted in students purchasing food from fast-food outlets. unappetising food, high costs and long waits in line-ups were all mentioned as contributing factors. one student stated: the cafeteria has a lot of healthy food, but the prices are too high. if there was a way to lower the prices ... people would be like, ‘oh i am not driving all the way to wendy’s if i can get something here, and it is cheaper. (fg1 – f) students were aware of the fast-food options available near their school and stressed that many students would choose that option, whether due to price, food quality/availability, or a desire to get away from the school environment for a short time. in one school, the students described how moving from their old school, located within walking distance to fast-food restaurants, to a newly constructed school situated outside of the town had impacted their food choices during lunch. physical activity another youth/school health issue identified was the lack of opportunities for physical activity at school. this was particularly true for senior high school students and for students from smaller schools where there were fewer classes and extracurricular activities/sports options. some students felt that social pressures might be impacting physical activity levels. in one all-male focus group, some junior high students thought that girls were not as interested in physical education as they used to be: ‘i find the majority of girls are getting less and less, like they don’t like gym as much. in elementary school, everybody looked forward to gym and was excited and stuff, but now i think the girls like it less and less, for the most part.’ (fg3 – m) bullying bullying was identified as an issue in all focus groups. in one school, students thought bullying was a bigger issue for junior high students. as one student explained: junior high, bullying i would say is a pretty big problem … i notice it, i notice it a lot. i am one of the people who are getting bullied sometimes, too. there are the few people who will really, really everyday get on you, but then there are some people who will just [go] off and talk to their friends about you type thing … (fg3 – m) some students preferred not to call it ‘bullying’: ‘i wouldn’t say bullying, because it is not people going up and making fun of other people, it is more like, i wouldn’t even say face-to-face stuff, just like different groups clashing.’ (fg1 – m) in one exchange among students, they went from thinking bullying was not an issue to recognising that it might be: 91 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard male 1: i don’t know if [it’s] bullying so much rather than just mocking. but sometimes you don’t even know if they are just kidding around as friends or if it is more ... female 2: it just depends, some kids they get picked on. male 1: it happens either not at all or a whole lot. everyone in the school picks on each other as a joke, or because they don’t like the people. female 2: some people get picked on too much. everything they do, they get made fun of. male 1: yeah, it gets really serious in those cases. (fg2) in one school, students considered physical acts, such as pushing another student, to be bullying, but did not label verbal behaviours, such as spreading rumours, in the same way. they recognised that it was poor behaviour, but did not specifically call it bullying. as one student explained, ‘i think because everyone is a bully. like we’ve all done it, so i don’t know, it’s just, everyone’s like, i know i’ve done it, not all that, but some of it. and i don’t know, i guess for me i’ll at least own up to it, to actually say that i’m a bully. it’s like, i don’t know, it knocks your self-esteem a little bit.’ (fgmemberchecking – f) students also shared their perceptions regarding different bullying behaviours between males and females: ‘it seems girls pick on girls and boys pick on boys, but the boys are more aggressive and the girls do more verbally talking.’ (fg4 – f) factors facilitating healthy behaviours students spoke extensively about what they thought their school and students were doing, or could do, to improve youth health. in all schools, students identified good things their school was already doing, including clean and well-kept school environments, availability of facilities (e.g. gymnasium, fitness room), healthy selections at the cafeteria, breakfast and snack clubs, no vending machines, anti-smoking/alcohol/bullying policies, and other health-promoting policies. according to one student, their school is ‘doing a good job now. they are promoting a lot of healthy stuff. they put in weights, treadmills, and in the cafeteria all the food is healthy.’ (fg1 – f) at another school the students described a recent schoolwide activity to promote physical activity: student 1: when the olympics were here, we did footsteps to vancouver …. we did a thing where the number of laps you run around the gym is equal to 1 km, so if you run this amount of laps around the gym, it is 1 km, so students could go after school, or during lunch, or phys. ed. classes and people would run, and we had a giant poster that went across the wall. 92 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard student 2: it was pretty fun. it really motivated a lot of people. before, in grade 7, i never used to run. once this olympic run came, all the teachers were really adamant that we do this, and they even had the staff, the staff could go in and do it. i saw a lot of staff do it. (fg3 – m) many spoke about their teachers and school staff acting as role models for them and encouraging the use of fitness equipment and other healthy choices. students in one school really valued the presence of a school counsellor and expressed their desire to have her at the school more often. at another, the gym teacher was considered ‘really nice and probably one of the most active living people i know. she is one of the people who will get up at 6 o’clock to go for a kilometer run.’ (fg3 – m) students also spoke often of how they could be role models in order to encourage their peers to engage in healthy behaviours: i guess, by example, if you start to do something, you could be like, ‘oh do you want to go for a run?’ and get someone else to do it, it becomes a domino effect, the more you are doing, the more someone else is doing, and other people will want to follow it. same as healthy eating, if someone sees you eating something healthy that looks really good, they will be more likely to get it too. (fg1 – f) students felt strongly that having positive relationships with teachers, staff and principals was important. they liked it when teachers and principals knew their names, had conversations with them and were generally interested in how the student was doing. as a reflection of this, students said they tried harder in class when they liked a teacher and felt that teacher respected them because they did not want to disappoint the teacher: i have to say, we have the best teachers here. you can talk to anyone. some teachers will stop me in the hallway and ask me how my day is going and stuff like that. we have a really supporting staff behind us. (fg3 – m) the positive relationships that students develop with teachers, principals and staff also seem to have a long-term impact, as several students discussed their relationships with teachers and staff at their previous schools and reflected on how they enjoyed those connections. barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours students also identified barriers to making healthy choices. specifically, students were very vocal about the cost and quality of food in their cafeteria. in most schools, the healthy option was not appealing or was more expensive, which deterred students from choosing the healthier option. additionally, multiple lunch periods, waiting in long lines and not having enough time to eat resulted in students not eating at all, choosing unhealthy options from vending machines, or leaving the school campus for quick and inexpensive fast food. the lack of opportunities to be active at 93 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard school and the lack of variety in activity type were also considered barriers by the students: i think if they had more activities for after school that would interest more people and just not a few, just [the] basketball team or whatever. i don’t really have any ideas, like dodgeball or whatever, but that might interest a lot more people to actually join and go do more physical activity after school. (fg6 – f) student voice a theme that emerged was the inability for students to have their voices heard by administrators and teachers or to have any influence in decisions and policies that directly impacted them. while there were a few students who had confidence in their ability as a group to influence change, the majority of students expressed feeling that they did not have any power when it came to making change in their schools. as one student stated: they [the school] just push us away because they think we don’t really know what we are talking about, but on subjects like that [cafeteria food, gym classes, tobacco on school grounds] we could actually have something against it, like it is true, but they just don’t listen to us because of our age. if they did, i am sure the school would be way better. (fg5 – m) another student expressed feeling the same: ‘i guess we never really tried that hard, but there are certain things that we tried to fight for that it just doesn’t work because we are kids. they don’t look at us as responsible and that we know what we are doing.’ (fg5 – f) discussion our experiences listening to students speak to the missed opportunities that result when student voices are not heard. students are clearly aware of youth health issues and have great ideas as to how schools can improve student health. students not only described what school health meant to them, they also addressed some school/youth health issues. the richness of the data resulted in the emergence of key findings about what youth or their school community could do to help them be healthier. students overwhelmingly identified that food quality and price were barriers to choosing healthy options in schools. other studies have also found that the availability of non-nutritious foods in the cafeteria and vending machines and poor food quality of the healthy food options leads to students choosing the less healthy option (bauer, yang & austin 2004; kubik, lytle & fulkerson 2005; yoshida, craypo & samuels 2010). in 2006, pei school boards adopted board-level school nutrition policies and have since been working to implement them in their schools. thus, in many cases, schools have been changing their cafeteria practices, trying to encourage healthier choices. research has also found that simple actions such as strategic placement of healthy foods in the cafeteria 94 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard can increase the sales of those foods (just & wansink 2009). increased vigilance and action to address the above-mentioned barriers may help improve policies and programs for healthy eating in schools. issues raised by the students concerning barriers to physical activity, such as the lack of options for teams or competitiveness in joining teams due to school size, were consistent with past research (bauer, yang & austin 2004; kubik, lytle & fulkerson 2005). of particular concern is the lack of participation in physical activity by females. in pei, only 37 per cent of girls, compared to 52 per cent of boys, meet the national physical activity guidelines (murnaghan 2011). students in pei identified that being selfconscious may influence whether or not they, especially girls, would participate in physical activity. negative comments by others, especially boys, towards girls who were participating in physical activities and lack of self-esteem were identified as barriers for girls to be physically active (vu et al. 2006). to address the lower participation rates for girls, more activities that girls are interested in, as well as creating school environments where girls feel comfortable, should be supported (bauer, yang & austin 2004; neumark-sztainer, martin & story 2000). positive role models emerged as a facilitator to engaging in healthy behaviours. when discussing ways to encourage their peers to make healthier choices, students identified how adults and youth could act as role models. this behaviour could be either indirect, where a student would choose a healthy meal option after viewing a friend do the same, or direct, where a student would ask or encourage their friend to participate in physical activity (bandura 2004). previous research has also found that adult and youth role models have a positive influence on encouraging healthy behaviours (kubik, lytle & fulkerson 2005; vu et al. 2006). many students spoke positively of the relationships they had with teachers and administrators at their current and previous schools. this finding is consistent with the wingspread declaration on school connections (2004) which showed that students who felt connected to their school were more likely to succeed. the association between school connectedness and various student health behaviours has been reported in studies on physical activity (faulkner et al. 2009), anger and harassment (eisenberg, neumark-sztainer & perry 2003; rice et al. 2008), and general health-risk behaviours (e.g. drug use, violence) (bond et al. 2007; mcneely & falci 2004; mcneely, nonnemaker & blum 2002; rasmussen et al. 2005; resnick et al. 1997). by fostering and encouraging positive relationships, the potential to enhance the overall health and wellbeing of youth is supported. although youth would like to participate, they are often not involved in conversations and decisions that directly impact them. overwhelmingly, we heard that youth did not have confidence in their ability to have their voices heard. however, studies have shown that there have been many successes when youth voices 95 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard have been heard and youth have been actively engaged. for example, through participation in research and other activities that directly impact them, youth have experienced increased levels of self-esteem and increased confidence in themselves and their abilities (cargo et al. 2002). engaging youth has also been found to be related to improved academic achievement and reduction of risky behaviours such as delinquency and substance use (altman et al. 1998; lerner & thompson 2002; roth et al. 1998). further work is needed to better understand the complexity of engaging youth, as well as to develop strategies to overcome these barriers. limitations some of the focus groups were larger than 6–8 participants as recommended by morse and richards (2002) and could have resulted in some students not feeling comfortable to voice their opinions. however, many of the schools in pei are small and students generally move through the school system with the same peers and have known each other for many years. also, the researchers who facilitated the focus groups found that, although some students spoke more than others, all of the students participated. future research with youth should involve larger samples of students from diverse school settings to ensure that the perspectives captured would reflect the wider youth population. the schools sampled, however, did represent rural and urban schools, high schools and consolidated schools. even though the sample size was small, the focus groups conducted were both mixed and gender specific, and students came from diverse backgrounds. another limitation arose from the recruitment of the students themselves. principals were asked to nominate students, and while they were encouraged to select a diverse sample of students that would best represent the school population, often students who were selected or who volunteered to participate in similar projects tended to be those who excelled academically and socially, and were already engaged in school activities. it is important to be cognisant that lessons learned from these students may not be completely reflective of the student population. while focus groups are a well-recognised methodology for use with youth, there may be some youth who do not share openly in groups and therefore diverse methods of engaging youth may contribute to richer and more inclusive perspectives of youth. multiple methodologies such as photovoice, journal writing, online blogs, etc. may increase the quality and variety of perspectives shared by the youth involved. implications the findings from this preliminary study speak to the need to engage youth voices in policyand decision-making. when policy and decision-makers include the population most affected by the changes as an equal partner in the process, there is a much greater chance of success. the area of youth health could experience similar success in adoption and uptake of new strategies if youth 96 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard played a more consistent role in leading the way to improve their own health. locally, summaries of the focus group results were directly disseminated to all schools that participated, and results were also presented at several provincial meetings and forums and national meetings and forums with other provincial teams involved in the youth excel project. because of the relatively small size of the province and existing relationships between youth health stakeholders, the research team has well-established relationships with all public schools in pei. these strong relationships were found to play a major role in the successful implementation and overall uptake of the shapes-pei project (murnaghan et al. 2013). as a result, stakeholders including school administrators, teachers, parents and other members of the community contact the research team directly, or are connected through the provincial government’s school health specialist, when seeking information related to youth health. these relationships facilitate the dissemination process and increase the ability to share lessons learned between and across researchers, practitioners, government and non-government representatives, and most importantly, schools. schools are provided with examples of initiatives that similar schools within pei, and also across canada, have implemented. schools that participate in the shapes-pei project receive their individual profile results within 8–10 weeks of the survey date, which allows them to react quickly and implement changes. supported by the quantitative results from shapespei and the qualitative information gained from speaking with students, schools in pei are better equipped to respond to issues of concern. conclusion although it is encouraging that we were able to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of youth voices, the work that remains to be done requires a commitment to action by researchers, policy-makers and practitioners across local, provincial and national levels to engage youth. further research is also needed to explore youth stories and perspectives more thoroughly and to engage youth voices in 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behaviours’, health education & behavior, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 81–96. 100 | gateways | murnaghan, laurence, bell & munro-bernard ward, v, house, a, & hamer, s 2009, ‘developing a framework for transferring knowledge into action: a thematic analysis of the literature’, journal of health services research and policy, vol. 14, no. 3, p. 156–64. wilson, m, lavis, j, travers, r, & rourke, sb 2012, ‘communitybased knowledge transfer and exchange: helping community-based organizations link research to action’, implementation science, vol. 5, no. 33, p. 2–15. ‘wingspread declaration on school connections’ 2004, journal of school health, vol. 74, no. 7, pp. 233–34. wong, n, zimmerman, m & parker, e 2010, ‘a typology of youth participation and empowerment for child and adolescent health promotion’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 46, nos. 1–2, pp. 100–14. world health organization 2012, ‘obesity and overweight’, fact sheet no. 311, viewed 3 july 2012, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/ index.html. yin, r 2009, case study research: design and methods, 4th edn, sage, thousand oaks, ca. yoshida, s, craypo, l & samuels, s 2011, ‘engaging youth in improving their food and physical activity environments’, journal of adolescent health, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 641–43. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html communities of knowledge and knowledge of communities an appreciative inquiry into rural wellbeing this article is an examination of the suitability of appreciative inquiry (ai) as an approach to investigate rural wellbeing. it endeavours also to reveal attributes of ai that are conducive to bolstering community and university partnerships. a team of researchers and community members designed a research study to explore elements of community life that contributed to rural wellbeing from the perspective of the community. the team became an ad hoc inquiry group that discussed and established the details of the study, including who, where, when and why. the researchers facilitated the study logistics, while the community members became aids in establishing the meeting location, ordering refreshments and encouraging participation. the members of the inquiry group also became participants in the study. through ai and other evolving and emerging forms of participatory or relational research methods, researchers and community partners actively forge co-generative relational processes and outcomes. these relatively recent research approaches encourage consideration of not only what the study reveals, but also with whom and how research relationships are developed and how power is shared within the research process itself. with input from the community members, the university researchers selected ai as a helpful approach for enabling participants to articulate and researchers to extract what is included in community members’ experiences of wellbeing. communities of knowledge, like communities of practice, are groups of people informed about or curious about discovering and sharing relevant knowledge. communities of knowledge may convene virtually or in person for a specified time, with a focus being on exchanging knowledge. knowledge of communities, as in the title, is identified as pivotal to participatory research (pr) and community-university partnerships. the best understanding of communities and of the lives of the community members can be obtained from the community members themselves. they are the experts about their lives and communities and are aware of what is working and what is not. universities looking to embark upon community research are guided by an ethic of mutual learning gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 34–51 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 kathleen may kevany margaret macmichael dalhousie university 35 | gateways | kevany & macmichael based on the expertise all parties bring to the project. referring to the work of biggs in the field of agricultural research, cornwall and jewkes (1995, p. 1669) summarised four modes of engaging in participatory research: contractual – people are contracted into the projects of researchers to take part in their enquiries or experiments; consultative – researchers are asked for their opinions and consulted by researchers before interventions are made; collaborative – researchers and local people work together on projects designed, initiated and managed by researchers; collegiate – researchers and local people work together as colleagues with different skills to offer, in a process of mutual learning where local people have control over the process. in practice, the form of community engaged scholarship and participatory research moves through the different modes of pr at different stages. this article is a critical reflection on and analysis of the use of ai as a pr approach to a qualitative study of rural community wellbeing. in considering the four pr modes as revealed by biggs, the study involved elements of both consultative and collaborative approaches. in essence, the article is an examination of the interface between communities of knowledge and knowledge of communities. first, we examine the existing literature on ai and why it was chosen as the preferred approach. next, we consider the rationale for selecting this method under four themes: relational dynamics, positivity, multivocality and social construction, and generativity and action orientation. we then discuss ai as a research methodology and its limitations. to contextualise our discussion, we provide a brief overview of our rural wellbeing case study design. the results of this case study are then examined, providing examples and evidence of the outcomes of using ai in this type of research. and finally, its impacts on communityuniversity relationships are discussed and conclusions drawn. literature review for the purposes of this article, our review of the literature forms the basis of our analysis of the suitability of ai as a research methodology to inquire into and distil the factors contributing to rural wellbeing. reflection on the selection of ai participatory research approaches, such as ai, are designed to undertake research with people who are part of the design team while also being subjects of the study. participatory design is built around engaging with local agents rather than carrying out research on them. ‘the participatory research process enables co-researchers to step back cognitively from familiar 36 | gateways | kevany & macmichael routines, forms of interaction, and power relationships in order to fundamentally question and rethink established interpretations of situations and strategies’ (bergold & thomas 2012, p. 2). the feature distinguishing ai from other participatory approaches is its orientation towards examining and appreciating what is already working in the area of inquiry. cooperrider & srivastva (1987) developed ai to counter the hostility and cantankerousness that had characterised much of community study and engagement and to seek out what was working well in communities. ai endeavours to modify or transform the power dynamic often inherent in research by democratising the process and sharing study design and decision-making powers. instead of community members being viewed as subjects, they become instead research designers, participants and analysers. ‘appreciative inquiry proposes reawakening collaborative action research so that it is grounded on a deep kind of participative, intuitive and appreciative ways of knowing, and so that it includes generative theory as a prime mover in organizational innovation’ (heron 1996, p. 8). by its nature, living within a community entails cooperative action and collective existence, so ai can be a purposeful approach to examining and illuminating these processes. undertaking an ai process is personal, relational and communal. these three dimensions can be found also in the collectivity of voices that generate and critically reflect upon ideas and possibilities (kevany & macmichael 2014, in press). ai necessitates being personally engaged with both process and content. it invites being present to and in relationship with others, perhaps in new ways, through new contexts and new conversations. it also involves consideration of community issues, and has the potential to ripple out to positively impact the community through the resultant findings and actions. as previously elucidated, appreciative inquiry stimulates a ‘generative capacity’ that may serve to challenge the guiding assumptions of the culture, raise probing questions regarding contemporary social life and examine what is often taken for granted, thereby stimulating possible alternatives (gergen 1978). for our study, our use of the ai approach was intended to shine light on underappreciated aspects of community life, particularly those that, in the experience of community members, were operating discreetly and tenaciously, and yet were life giving. our modality for this research project was prominently consultative and collaborative. it did not involve contractual or collegial frameworks. our design for ai involved both community and researchers collaborating on many aspects of the research. the identification of the research focus and the formation of the questions were initiated by the researchers and then brought to the inquiry group for adjustment. the data was collected and interpreted by the researchers. the draft report was shared with the community participants to solicit a fuller analysis and any 37 | gateways | kevany & macmichael required corrections. the design included the findings of members of the community. the action on the findings remains the domain of all parties. using the ai process affords community-university partnerships opportunities for communicative processes and relational practices that have the potential to increase civic deliberation and transformation (gergen & gergen 2000). doig and muller (2011) and gergen and gergen (2000) prompted examination of approaches to research design by asking critically reflective questions. we asked participants to consider aspects of their quality of life that often are overlooked or devalued: for example, how can researchers best serve society and foster progressive social policy or move citizens to greater engagement, democratisation and criticality? exercising scientific rigour necessitated our selecting a study design that enabled an examination of the phenomena in question without situational impediments or undue influence from community members or researcher bias. this included ensuring that participants’ contributions were without constraint. ai was conceived of as a tool to enhance organisational profitability, sustainability and overall effectiveness (cooperrider & whitney 2001), yet the literature provides valuable evidence of it being successfully adapted for community applications. our literature review revealed the potential of ai as an effective and critical method of research for our study, as ai uses an appreciative, rather than a problematic, lens. the positive or appreciative lens of ai is one of its central tenets and as such was influential in our selection of it as a suitable methodology, as explored further below. ai themes aligning with wellbeing ai seeks to identify, consider and document the forces that stimulate creativity and vibrancy in, and give voice and life to, a community. applying ai in a collaborative community approach was deemed appropriate for our inquiry into factors mediating rural wellbeing. we intended to build upon the recent and growing interest in wellbeing (aked et al. 2011; beckley 1995; cox et al. 2010; huppert 2009) by investigating what fosters rural wellbeing and whether participants in the inquiry believed that attributes like resiliency, prosperity, sustainability and vibrancy could be nurtured. we chose ai because of the qualities and characteristics it afforded this inquiry, particularly its suitability in prompting participants to share their opinions and experiences of what was working well. our rationale for selecting this method is summarised under the four themes of (1) relational dynamics, (2) positivity, (3) multivocality and social construction, and (4) generativity and action orientation. these themes are discussed below. 1. relational dynamics. ai design is purposeful as it invites consideration of individual perceptions and shared meaningmaking within a research initiative. the use of ai enables both 38 | gateways | kevany & macmichael the researchers and the community participants, as agents of social analysis and social construction, to mutually engage in constructing relations, realities and outcomes. utilising ai has been found to enhance relationships and bolster enthusiasm and creativity in workplaces and communities, and it may serve to reenergize engagement (ryan et al. 1999). 2. positivity. with its focus on what is working, ai was considered appropriate for and consistent with our inquiry into rural wellbeing. as ludema, wilmot & srivastva (1997) and van der haar & hosking (2004) purport, researchers focus their questions through their ontological, epistemological and methodological lens. how the nets are cast and the lines of inquiry defined largely determine what is sought, noticed, discovered, valued and captured as worthwhile knowledge. ‘ai’s approach counteracts exclusive preoccupation with problems that all too often de-energize …’ (ryan et al. 1999, p. 167). the line of questioning invariably influences the construction of the study and its outcomes. ‘based upon the belief that organizations grow in the direction of what is studied (inquiry is constructive), the choice of a positive [emphasis in original] topic for inquiry is proposed – as a way to construct positive social realities’ (van der haar & hosking 2004, p. 1025). by selecting the ai approach, we intended to consider and document the ‘life-giving forces’ that can be identified and extracted from cooperative action and collective existence (troxel 2002). the positive framing of questions has been found by other researchers to often surprise participants and cause them to view things as they had not before (bushe 2012; michael 2005). a couple of examples of questions we used were: ‘what local environmental actions bolster your community pride?’ ‘and what further cultural resources or events may add to community wellbeing?’ such positive framing may have prompted participants to respond with less reluctance and reticence and with more honesty than they would to traditional styles of questions focused on problems, most of which they would have heard time and time again (michael 2005). often change frameworks seek to highlight problems, with problems frequently becoming the primary focus and consumer of time and energy (cooperrider & srivastva 1987; gonzales & leroy 2011). in contrast, ai seeks to illuminate the factors contributing to successes and focuses on fostering more of them. according to bushe (2012, p. 50), ‘a central tenet of ai is that positive thoughts and feelings create more generative relationships’ and generativity is a necessary component for ‘transformational change’. 3. multivocality and social construction. ai invites multivocality and affords dialogue around diverse and complex interpretations that often leads to the construction of new views and creative options. a facilitated ai process encourages the articulation and mining of unique local insights that build upon the interpretations each participant brings to the community-university engagement process. if ai facilitators properly frame the questions and engage 39 | gateways | kevany & macmichael the right people, it allows ‘members to construct a new and better future’ (bushe 2012). ai helps members to critically discuss and hold contrasting views (ospina & dodge 2005), and the conversations sparked by ai can change the way that participants view their circumstances and their community (aldred 2009). the participants, along with the researchers, are valued as contributors and co-producers of knowledge (ospina & dodge 2005). when participants consider themselves and others as local experts, as michael (2005) suggested, passionate narratives emerge, which are inclusive of voices from a variety of backgrounds and able to generate disparate and synergistic ideas. ai provides opportunity for ongoing dialogue (gergen & gergen 2000), strengthening the relationships between community members and between community and academy. northmore & hart (2011) intimated that the careful use of ai may be instrumental in forming a collaborative, practical and purposeful partnership between researcher and resident/participant. appreciating and respecting the knowledge that the community brings to the partnership is an essential attribute of a genuine community-university research partnership and strengthens its integrity (netshandama 2010). 4. generativity and action orientation. the generative and action-oriented nature of ai supported the rationale for selecting ai as a suitable modality for our community-university research project. as gergen and gergen (2000) stated, advances in the social sciences that were informed by and applied such research approaches were found to enhance creativity, intellectual curiosity and purposeful action. ai, as part of the larger movement of participatory engagement (aldred 2009), encourages looking for what works and ways to achieve more of the desired outcomes. this places a value on research with community input that is applicable to and inspires action to be taken in the lives of community or organisational members and of those within the academy. michael (2005) postulated that positiveness used as an interview technique may reinvigorate interviewees and spark more openness, and may also reveal latent potential for change and enhancement (ryan et al. 1999). ai has been found to inspire energy and hope by catalysing discussions that changed the participant’s viewpoint to one of positivity (michael 2005). as ai holds the potential to motivate communities to take action towards an improved future state, it provides a useful lens to study community wellbeing. we now turn to a summary of the critiques of ai and an analysis of the evidence for the rigour and relevance of ai as a research method. critiques and limitations of ai critics of ai often apply critiques of positive psychology and other participatory methods to appreciative inquiry theory and approaches (aldred 2009; fineman 2006), although we have also highlighted ai-specific potential limitations. one of the most common criticisms found in the literature is that focusing on 40 | gateways | kevany & macmichael positive experiences and emotions may cause researchers to turn a blind eye to very real and potentially useful negative experiences (bushe 2011, fineman 2006; michael 2005; oliver, fitzgerald & hoxsey 2011), and that if a biased view towards the positive were strictly applied, a partial version of the truth would emerge (aldred 2009; michael 2005). also, a complete focus on positiveness may ignore factors such as complex emotions or ambiguous social situations or the diversity presented by ai study participants (fineman 2006). positivity is not a universal truth. what is positive to some may be viewed as neutral or even negative by others. while ai does give researchers an alternative to traditional problem-based methods, ignoring ‘the shadow’ (oliver, fitzgerald & hoxsey 2011) could cause the analysis to be ‘divorced from reality’ (doig & muller 2001, p. 31). such emerging research could be viewed as producing less relevant or applicable insights. unaddressed concerns about such research design questions could impede meaningful engagement in both the development of the research and in the use of the findings. another thrust of the criticism is that focusing on positiveness and attempting to recreate or replicate past success is based on false assumptions about social context (aldred 2009; fineman 2006) and may not work to deconstruct power structures (boje 2010). success is not always repeatable or reproducible as it may have been achieved under exceptional circumstances or within a different social and economic context. knowledge of external environmental factors is critical to the full understanding of participants’ narratives. and finally, as with other participatory methods, ai is criticised for embodying problematic assumptions about empowerment and thus the process could give a false sense of control to participants (aldred 2009). these criticisms will be further addressed in the discussion on limitations. bushe (2012) proposed that, rather than using the term ‘positive’, new terminology could be found. he proposed meaningful and important as helpful terms and gave an example of how, through a positively framed process, negative responses could be incorporated into the generating capacity and strengthening of communities. the questions about community health could be broad and inclusive of a variety of perspectives of the community members. for example, ‘what do you think are the most important factors for contributing to the physical and mental health of local residents?’ and ‘what approaches are used to reach out to youth or marginalized persons in the area?’ this framing would enable any responses that the members might want to share. ‘avoiding or actively repressing “negative” thoughts and feelings, in the name of “staying positive”, can also make ai a form of oppression that leads to non-generativity’ (bushe 2012, p. 50). indeed, some negative or grave experiences could be, in themselves, informative and motivating to the community. 41 | gateways | kevany & macmichael research case study design the objective of the study in which we applied ai was to discover factors contributing to rural wellbeing from the perspectives of community members. the research approach included organising focus groups in two rural communities in nova scotia, canada. tatamagouche and advocate harbour were chosen as pilot study sites and one focus group was conducted in each. they were chosen as they met the criterion for evidence of vitality: continuation of particular institutions in the community (i.e. schools and healthcare facilities, and an active community gathering space), when many communities similar in size and distance from urban centres were losing theirs. the research plan was initiated by the university principal researcher. it was brought to a planning and brainstorming session with local persons termed ‘community bridgers’. these agents of the communities were identified through existing networks of colleagues or collaborators. for the purposes of our study, community bridgers were defined as individuals with formal and informal roles as leaders, educators and community builders who would act as initial intermediaries with the communities. they would help bridge the community and the university and enable contact between the community participants and the principal researcher by identifying potential participants. many of the community bridgers also participated in the focus groups. once introduced to the principal researcher by the bridgers, the community participants were then able to assume their own leadership role and to voice ideas about the design and date of the research. consequently, the times and places suitable for focus groups and interviews were established by the participants. this was important in building the relationship between the principal researcher and community members because, as netshandama (2010, p. 80) found, ‘quality partnerships respect community members’ time and have some level of organization that is considerate of community wellbeing’. efforts were made to include participants from different sectors and backgrounds in the hope of representing a diversity of voices in the rural wellbeing study design. while focus group sizes was designed to be 7–10 in number to encourage optimal participation, all community members who indicated interest were encouraged to participate. this quite small number would enable participants to contribute ‘experientially generated data’ (heron 1996, p. 87). the experiences, interpretations, stories and examples shared by participants were collected on flipchart pages by a research assistant, while another took notes and captured a recording of each focus group session. this was proposed by the bridgers as a transparent way to capture the information. all present could hear and see the individual input, appreciate it and consider the input of the whole group, and then collectively construct additional ideas and directions. the notes gathered at the session were formed into a record of the focus 42 | gateways | kevany & macmichael groups’ discussions. participants were offered the opportunity to provide the principal researcher with comments about the record of the focus group. the notes from the two focus groups were then consolidated. the input from the focus groups was analysed for insights to inform a larger regional study on the factors contributing to community vibrancy in rural atlantic canada. while only small numbers of community members participated in the focus groups and interviews, as mentioned above, some representation of voices from diverse age groups was achieved. although questions to be used in the ai study were prepared in advance to accommodate the university’s research ethics review, these questions merely guided, and did not bind, the ‘appreciative’ discussions. further examples of focus group questions were: can you describe what ‘food literacy’ might mean in this community? what are the benefits the community has obtained from farming, fisheries or forestry? the opinions of community members directly impacted which research questions would be emphasised and whether a more in-depth or different line of inquiry would be helpful to the participants in the study. the sessions were conducted as brainstorming and open discussion sessions, during which participants built upon one another’s ideas. case study results our appreciative inquiry in two rural nova scotian communities proved effective in uncovering some of the aspects of rural wellbeing exhibited in tatamagouche and advocate harbour. citizens, politicians, community business owners, leaders, community planners and institutions all fulfil important and interdependent roles in fostering and/or thwarting community strength and vitality. in the field study, community members suggested qualities and actions that could serve to enhance wellbeing. in addition to systemic issues like the availability of health services or environmental conditions, including accessible, clean and beautiful natural features, community members spoke of the ways in which community exchanges helped to nurture the human qualities of being hard working, hospitable, compassionate, justice-oriented, economical, entrepreneurial, self-reliant, stewardship-minded and playful. community members also expressed the importance of being grateful and being ready to receive the generosity and hospitality of others. … you wanna talk about fair trade when we’re buying coffee, i think we have to think locally as well, if we want to be food secure, we have to ensure that the people growing food are making enough to keep up with the costs … diverse researchers have investigated elements of and factors contributing to wellbeing. davis et al. (2012) found it was important to maintain health systems to ensure healthy individuals and communities. mackendick and parkins (2004) 43 | gateways | kevany & macmichael found in their study in rural british columbia that there were many elements necessary for rural wellbeing, for example, the community’s ability to maintain a healthy and thriving economy, society and environment. we also found in our study of rural wellbeing that the capacities to adapt to external and internal stresses were factors identified by community as important characteristics (kevany & macmichael 2014, in press). prominent themes that emerged from the study were community members’ appreciation of the degree of community engagement, along with citizen efficacy and their sense of shared responsibility. participants also were attentive to and proud of the area’s natural magnificence, the vibrant arts scene, and the emerging entrepreneurial spirit and attractiveness of their community to newcomers. in both of the rural nova scotian communities that were visited, the members spoke about the commitment of residents towards self-sufficiency, giving many illustrations. as one resident stated: one of the things we did at the advocate harbour development association and the hospital board was we sent a letter together to the department of the environment … we wanted them to come to this area, check the harbor and tell us what is causing the problems with the clams. they did not come. in addition to identifying strategies for enhancing local results, participants in our study discussed impediments to a higher quality of community life. while these ideas could be viewed as having a ‘negative’ lens, conscious efforts were made not to discount such experiences. the research discussions enabled them to speak about strategies to enhance some weaknesses in the community around healthy living, environmental sustainability and economic innovativeness. while not all were happy that physical isolation and lack of local services imposed a necessity for self-directedness, many stated that it was a central driver for qualities in their towns that might be termed resiliency and sustainability. in these communities, isolation, while it could be perceived as a detriment, became a spark for self-reliance, creativity and community sharing. an additional quality identified by participants was the tendency to be compassionate; many members spoke of being concerned about justice not only locally, but globally as well. in general, they found community members to be hard working, hospitable and generally playful. a distilled summary of the lengthy discussions would be that members of the community generally were self-sufficient and good stewards who were grateful for and happy with their community. two community members in tatamagouche captured this notion in the following exchange: ‘you can patch it together and not on the government dime.’ ‘yah i mean they’re patching it together. they’ve got a job but maybe it’s just on minimum wage but they’ve got a cow on the side 44 | gateways | kevany & macmichael and they’re fixing engines you know what i mean and it’s amazing to me when you watch how people will knit together a number of income streams you know to make a go of it. and they also learn to live below their means in order to do that.’ this generative nature of discourse served to encourage connections and the evolution of ideas. while in the focus group it appeared that participants attended to the comments of others and built upon the emerging ideas around the factors affecting wellbeing, this may have been an illustration of ‘shared meaning making’ underway. discussions were recorded to ensure individual input was captured, appreciated and seen to be of value. the recordings were transcribed for data analysis. the community input was then analysed for insights that might reveal factors contributing to vibrancy in rural nova scotia. the researchers paid particular attention to issues in which the opinions of participants converged, or diverged. shared ideas were noted, but distinct or unique ideas were given special attention to ensure that such ideas were not overlooked. a frequent notion that participants shared is reflected in the quote by a longer term resident from advocate harbour: that’s the big thing. but you know it’s a good place to live here. it’s uh, you can still leave your doors unlocked. you know. not much crime. taxes and things are cheap. you have lots of privacy if you want. we have 88 acres here more or less and i don’t have a computer. i do have a cell phone but its only pay as you go. and uh you know you can slow life down a little. once the focus groups’ report had been summarised, participants were invited to offer any further remarks or reflections on the report developed from the community input. this reflective community input was incorporated into the study report. the principal researcher then invited community members from both rural settings to collaborate on a paper to be submitted to the community-university exposition of 2013. members enthusiastically agreed to participate and the paper was accepted for the conference. while representatives from only one of the rural communities were available to attend the conference, there was still representation from the partnership. together, we set out to articulate our appreciative process and demonstrate an example of rural community wellbeing. having the participants involved throughout the research process was intended to enhance a sense of reciprocity with participants and to appreciate and encourage more civic participation. such positive outcomes from community engagement have been documented in many places and one of note here is christens’ (2010) work on how community-organising processes helped to facilitate changes in individuals and their relationships, which in turn fostered system changes. community members spoke of many dimensions of quality of life as essential factors in mediating wellbeing. through their critical thinking and creative contributions, they were contributing 45 | gateways | kevany & macmichael to new notions of community identity. this value arising from ai is well summarised by van der haar and hosking (2004, p. 1031) in the following statement: ‘reflection upon local constructions, confronting other local constructions, helping people to become aware that they are part of the realities they create … makes these assumptions more explicit and opens up to other possibilities’. when describing their experiences of rural wellbeing, community members were interested in talking about ways of enhancing quality of life; community and cultural engagement; prosperity and economy; learning, education, and communications; political influence and democratic engagement; community sustainability and environmental wellness; vitality and health; food and resource security. the following is an example of the collaborative community spirit that emerged using ai: ‘… while we have our differences … in deep disagreements there is a capacity to maintain decent relationships because we have to work together in the community’. discussion in the following examples, we provide insights from community members that substantiate our selection of ai for this positive appreciation of rural wellbeing. the following four points of discussion relate to our earlier rationale for selecting this method. 1. an example of the importance of relational links became evident around social connections and the initial reception of new members to the community. the come-from-aways indicated that they found residents cautious and less welcoming initially, but then high degrees of acceptance and inclusion soon replaced this. this familiarity quickly led to community members readily challenging the notions of others while also showing themselves to be receptive to divergent ideas. this substantiates a similar observation by ospina & dodge (2005) that participants valued as well as challenged contributions by other community members and the researchers. thus, through the use of ai, more participants were inclined to engage and become co-contributors and co-producers of knowledge (ospina & dodge 2005). the degree of influence community members sense in their lives is largely a product of local politics. in order to investigate this sense of meaning, influence, relationship and impact, another focus group question was: ‘in your opinion, does your participation in democratic process such as voting or community consultations make a difference?’ some participants shared the following sentiments: ‘tatamagouche is a place where people come together; money is not the criteria to keep this place afloat …’ and ‘there is more vitality than funding; that’s the way you want it’. the role of the principal researcher in working to form relationships also deserves some discussion. the researchers travelled to the communities and, where distances necessitated, stayed overnight and engaged in additional activities in the area. this helped members of the communities to be exposed to the 46 | gateways | kevany & macmichael character of the researchers and in their own way to assess the motives and nature of the research initiative. it also afforded the researcher opportunities to develop more friendly relationships with the study participants and other community members. our presence, as researchers observing and interacting with local residents, provided opportunities to appreciate and discern the complexity of relational and situational elements of both communities, as well as allowing community members to have casual conversations with us and to come and learn more about our work and life pursuits. 2. regarding the practice of positivity, we found that participants in the study viewed themselves as generally positive and interconnected. this orientation was evident from participants’ comments when discussing the focus group question: what are the benefits the community has obtained from farming, fisheries or forestry? ‘i grew up here as a kid. but it was nothing like this. i mean everything’s close by. i can buy fish from the harbor, right off the boats, uh scallops, lobsters, uh and there’s blueberries. there’s nothing missing! i can’t think of a better place to be.’ another contributed a similar idea when talking about the small but diversified economy: ‘i mean everybody sort of seems to be specialized in something, so it’s almost selfsupporting. i mean you have to go outside for a few things, but generally speaking, this community here has everything.’ however, they also recognised that not everyone in the community enjoyed this positive sense of connectedness and supportiveness: they talked about some residents experiencing isolation and loneliness during our discussion. in their work on ‘renegotiating community life’, mulligan, scanlon & welch (2008) found that some community members experienced mediated ‘inclusionat-a-distance’ relationships in their community that could be simultaneously described as inclusive and exclusive. some concern was also expressed about the disproportionate power people with money can wield: ‘money can buy you a name on a building even though local contributors of significance may not even have the least of recognition’. participants were encouraged to speak freely, and comments about ‘negative’ aspects of rural life were valued equally. 3. within the theme of multivocality, the complementary, as well as the distinctive, diverse and divergent, points of view that were readily shared by community participants could be viewed as assets and strengths of communities that in themselves contributed to positive identity formation. how people ought to live out their values in relation to the environment or democracy, for example, was contested territory. members were mixed on the degree to which they could or had opportunities to influence government. a couple of divergent views in tatamagouche offered these perspectives: ‘and all government’s subsidies, government’s programs, they all go from the county lines, back to the city. so, we are stuck up here and we are nothing. we are too far from centres 47 | gateways | kevany & macmichael for certain things. it’s a problem.’ and ‘perhaps we’re politically and geographically isolated, and that’s our advantage. that helps. that’s a good issue. we are far enough away from the centre that we have to fend for ourselves.’ the inclusion of such divergent opinions in the data analysis allowed for a fuller picture of the community and its residents. striving to achieve diverse input and to inspire respectful dialogue helped to guard against potential monologicality or monovocality. criticism of the potential for the latter has been levied against ai methods by boje (2010). this weakness did not apply in our study as all participants were attentive to, respectful of and built upon the input contributed by other research participants. an example of how ‘weaving and expanding of ideas’ was achieved is demonstrated in the way the following focus group question was posed: do people become involved in this community? what are the signs of engagement? the question invited open discussion about people’s sense of levels and signs of community engagement, and the persons contributing their answers would know that their evidence would be scrutinised by other participants and could be either corroborated or challenged. in both rural communities, participants spoke of the high levels of demonstrated social connection and inclusion. they also supported each other’s examples of how the vibrancy of the communities was nurtured through volunteering and participation. they shared concerns about burn-out of volunteers and other barriers to community engagement. one participant stated, ‘there is ongoing engagement in a large number of organisations. this indicates to me that there is a high level of engagement.’ another member added, ‘on the other hand, there can be difficulty in getting new people engaged or in sustaining engagement or reengaging people’. a similar openness to hearing and building on one another’s responses is exemplified in the remark, ‘i would like to add, that i was a ‘come from away’ probably 6 years ago. so my husband and i came here to start a business in sea kayaking which wasn’t done here before. and we wouldn’t have come here other than for the holiday we took initially, if it hadn’t been for the people.’ this weaving and expanding of ideas enabled the study to take on a polyvocality quality. the pursuit of and respect for polyvocality, as encouraged by gergen and gergen (2000), were integral to this inquiry. polyvocality recognises the importance of a multiplicity of competing and complementary values, impulses and interpretations. participants were given the opportunity not only to shape the research process, but to co-author and participate in the articulation and dissemination of the findings. 4. further mining of the rural wellbeing focus groups and interview transcripts revealed the willingness of community members to generate ideas and build on one another’s proposals, particularly in relation to taking action for the environment. this does not suggest that action was produced by the study, but rather the climate and space to purposefully inquire appreciatively 48 | gateways | kevany & macmichael provided an enabling environment towards generativity and action orientation. one such example was the attention paid to reducing energy use. many ideas that were generated related to actions to care for the environment, such as more car pooling and insulating and using less space in large homes, along with having one’s own garden, walking and cycling. also, both communities practised preserving produce in season, storing produce in root cellars and sharing seasonal excess. participants were not reticent in raising obstacles to sustainability, such as extensive commuting, reliance on non-renewables and the amount of consumption of all goods. as with the other topics, residents had varying points of view on the willingness and capability of members to reduce, reuse and take appropriate action. one tatamagouche participant said, ‘but i think people are environmentally concerned here’. another added, ‘but what can we do collectively as a community that moves all of us a little bit further? i’m not totally sure that the whole community is on board with environmental stuff.’ recommendations the use of appreciative inquiry could be purposefully directed to consider power issues and strategies for communal engagement and action planning. for example, in this multigenerational discussion, some needs of youth were voiced and interest was shown to attend to these needs in more creative ways. our experience of ai revealed participants’ expanding views of each other, as noted as an outcome by aldred (2009). criticism that issues of access to and distribution of power are not discussed during ai is often raised. however, in the above study, concerns with power and justice were discussed around access to healthy foods at fair prices and the desire to protect and sustain the natural resources. in future research, ai could be employed in a more in-depth analysis and critique of power dynamics. such inquiry may be instructive for systemic change that may be beneficial to rural communities. as well, ai, as a research method, has many of the attributes required for the creation of strong communityuniversity partnerships. the noted attributes are: a focus on what matters to the community, value and respect for local knowledge, continued dialogue between community participants and the researcher, participation in the research process and clear criteria for participation (dong et al. 2011; netshandama 2010). like other relationships, the maintenance of communityuniversity partnerships requires nurturing of the needs and interests of all parties and the acknowledgement of the value of one another’s objectives. the researchers involved in this study continue to communicate with members of the communities and to invite further engagement, including making the research findings accessible to others in the community and possibly undertaking further action to bolster wellbeing as a result of the study. this speaks to the function some researchers recommend of 49 | gateways | kevany & macmichael maintaining and monitoring the progress of the community after the original research project has been completed (netshandama 2010). conclusion in this critical reflection and analysis we argued for the suitability and actionability of ai as an approach to investigate rural wellbeing and to bolster community-university engagement. a review of the literature, substantiated with evidence from the focus group discussions, supports this central argument. examination of our approach to the study of rural wellbeing revealed that the elements of ai – relational dynamics, positivity, multivocality and social construction, and generativity and action orientation – can be recalibrated. ai can contribute to the building of strengthened relationships that may be leveraged to bring to fruition more of the qualities and conditions for rural wellbeing. while the role of community-university partnerships was not largely discussed in the community focus groups, it was illuminated as a sub-theme of this article – appreciating the importance of communities of knowledge and respecting the knowledge of communities. appreciating and extracting the profound and extensive knowledge of communities was a central pillar of this inquiry into community views of wellbeing. additionally, respecting the knowledge that community practitioners and university researchers cultivated and shared proved a valuable process development to add to the practical tools for enhancing rural wellbeing. 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using personal narratives for initiating school reform’, the clearing house, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 164–67. troxel, j 2002, ‘appreciative inquiry: an action research method for organizational transformation and its implications to the practice of group process facilitation’, unpublished working paper, millennia consulting, llc, chicago, il. van der haar, d & hosking, d 2004, ‘evaluating appreciative inquiry: a relational constructionist perspective’, human relations, vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 1017–36. .2965 _goback mobilizing minds integrated knowledge translation and youth engagement in the development of mental health information resources this article describes a novel canadian research project that combined knowledge translation (kt) and youth engagement (ye) processes to develop mental health resources for and with young adults aged 18–25. there are several reasons why young adults were selected as the focus of this project. first, epidemiological data demonstrate a high prevalence of mental health problems in the adolescent and young adult period (gravel & béland 2005; kessler et al. 2005). among those between the ages of 14 and 24, 28.2 per cent have been shown to meet lifetime criteria for anxiety, while 12.8 per cent meet lifetime criteria for depression (kessler 2007). the incidence of depressive disorders rises significantly during this period, peaking between ages 18 and 24 (kessler 2007). without treatment, these disorders are highly persistent and can have significantly damaging effects on young adults’ social, academic and professional lives (dozois & westra 2004; moreno & delgado 2000; solomon et al. 2000). despite the high prevalence of mental health problems in the young adult age group, young adults are less likely to seek treatment (sareen et al. 2005). one reason for this is low mental health literacy within the young adult population. mental health literacy is defined as knowledge and beliefs about mental health problems which aid their recognition, management and prevention (jorm et al. 1997). as information about mental health problems and treatment options appeared not to be reaching young adults in canada in effective ways, a national mental health knowledge mobilisation project, mobilizing minds: pathways to young adult mental health, was established. funded by the canadian institutes of health research and the mental health commission of canada, the project ran from 2008 to 2013 (with an additional year granted to finalise the project). the mobilizing minds team included researchers/ clinician–researchers from canadian universities – york university, university of manitoba, mcmaster university, brock university and brandon university, experts in knowledge mobilisation (www. researchimpact.ca) and youth engagement (www.mindyourmind. ca), young adults and a variety of community partners. broadly, christine a garinger mindyourmind kristin a reynolds john r walker university of manitoba emma firstenkaufman alicia s raimundo pauline c fogarty mobilizing minds mark w leonhart concordia university mobilizing minds research group © 2016 by c garinger, k reynolds, j walker, e firsten-kaufman, a raimundo, p fogarty, m leonhart & mobilizing minds research group. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: garinger, c, reynolds, k, walker, j, firsten-kaufman, e, raimundo, a, fogarty, p, leonhart, m & mobilizing minds research group 2016, ‘mobilizing minds: integrated knowledge translation and youth engagement in the development of mental health information resources’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 172–185. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4415 corresponding author: christine garinger; garingerc@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4415 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 173 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg mobilizing minds sought to: 1) develop, evaluate and disseminate evidence-based mental health information and resources that would meet the needs of young adults aged 18–25 and assist them in making informed decisions about their mental health and mental health treatment options; and 2) build connections among researchers, decision-makers, young adults (mental health consumers and non-consumers) and community organisations that serve young adults to foster information sharing, collaboration and mobilisation of young adult mental health information and resources. this article gives particular attention to ye and the kt processes and products of the mobilizing minds project. we discuss three aspects: 1) structures, processes and communication; 2) project products; and 3) challenges and responses specific to the young adult team involved in the project. this case study will be of interest to youth as consumers of mental health information and services, and mental health practitioners and decision-makers seeking to improve mental health at a systemic level. more broadly, lessons learned specific to intergenerational collaboration will be of interest to youth-adult groups. the authors of this article were members of the mobilizing minds team: a community partner and ye facilitator (mindyourmind), members of the young adult team, the project coordinator and the principal investigator. youth engagement: using knowledge translation to convert knowledge to action there are multiple terms describing the processes of involving young people in issues that impact them, such as youth engagement, youth participation, youth involvement, youth volunteering, youth empowerment and, more recently, youth-adult partnerships (checkoway 2011; haski-leventhal & bargal 2008; pancer, rosekrasnor & loiselle 2002; wong, zimmerman & parker 2010; zeldin, christens & powers 2012). campbell and erbstein (2012) state that youth get involved in social issues in order to change their communities. where there is access to relevant and reliable resources about youth mental health and strong social networks, participating in a youth-adult partnership promotes youth empowerment and resilience (cattaneo & chapman 2010). however, adult partners’ (also known as allies) attitudes towards youth can impact youth involvement in socialor health-related issues. zeldin, christens and powers (2012) suggest four core elements of optimal youthadult partnerships: 1) joint decision-making, where youth actively participate at the centre of collective decision-making, rather than at its margins; 2) adults acting as natural mentors, where decisionmaking occurs in relational and emotional contexts and is not just end-goal oriented; 3) reciprocal activity, where co-learning, information translation and joint responsibility are strongest; and 4) community connectedness, where decision-making incorporates access to partners’ social capital and diverse networks. 174 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg the following sections present the mobilizing minds young adult team as a case study of research-community knowledge translation and youth-adult partnership. knowledge translation (kt) is defined as ‘a dynamic and iterative process that includes synthesis, dissemination, exchange and ethically sound application of knowledge to improve the health of canadians, provide more effective health services and products, and strengthen the health care system’ (cihr 2014). essentially, kt is aimed at improving decisions made by policy-makers, health service providers and consumers of health information through the creation and explicit assessment of the quality of the knowledge or evidence to be translated, and tailoring the knowledge to be user friendly for particular segments of the population. this definition is operationalised in the knowledge to action model put forth by graham, tetroe & kt theories research group (2007). the model highlights eight steps for successful kt implementation: 1) create and synthesise knowledge; 2) identify and select knowledge; 3) adapt to local context; 4) assess barriers to use; 5) tailor and implement interventions; 6) monitor knowledge use; 7) evaluate outcomes; and 8) sustain use. integrated knowledge translation encompasses similar steps but adds in a collaborative approach similar to participatory approaches. knowledge users are engaged in research from the outset, shaping research questions, collecting and analysing data, and disseminating findings. in this way, findings are more contextually relevant and more likely to be incorporated into practice (kothari & wathen 2013; mclean et al. 2012). the mobilizing minds project adopted a kt goal of getting the right information (about stress, anxiety and depression) to the right people (i.e. young adults and their supporters) in the right ways (i.e. in the formats that most appeal to them) and at the right time to help them make informed decisions. overview of mobilizing minds mobilizing minds moved through five phases in its approach to kt: 1) listening to young adults express their information needs and preferences concerning common mental health problems; 2) locating evidenceand experience-based information to answer their questions; 3) developing resources to answer their questions; 4) evaluating the new resources; and 5) disseminating the new resources widely. young adults were actively engaged early in the development of research questions. along the way, these young adults from academic and community settings worked alongside researchers, shaping the research methodology, designing the data collection tools, and collecting data through interviews (walker et al. 2009), focus groups (ryan-nicholls et al. 2009) and surveys (cunningham et al. 2014; marcus, westra & mobilizing minds research group 2012; nunes et al. 2014; stewart et al. 2014). the young adults also worked with researchers to analyse data and respond to findings. 175 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg in total, the project developed five main teams: a leadership team, an information identification (later called knowledge synthesis) team, a community partnership team, a partnership evaluation team and a young adult team. the leadership team and the young adult team remained throughout the span of the project while the other teams either dissolved or evolved in response to the needs of the project. for example, the knowledge synthesis team was active only during phases one and two and the community partnership team developed and became active during phases three, four and five. this article presents a case study focusing on the work of the young adult team within the larger project. young adults were involved as key partners in mobilizing minds in keeping with a ye and integrated kt approach. the main goal of the young adult team was to ensure that young adults, as the ultimate end users of the new knowledge produced, were guiding the research and collaborating in decision-making through each phase of the project. in addition to participation in their own team within the project, young adults took part in all of the other teams, along with researchers, community partners and the project coordinator. at the outset, an advertisement for paid part-time employment as part of the young adult (ya) team was delivered through organisations that work with young adults. recruitment was based on the following criteria for applicants: 1) be between the ages of 18 and 24; 2) have expertise from diverse types of living, work, volunteer and educational experiences; 3) have life experience and/or education in the field of youth social services or mental health; and 4) priority given to consumers of mental health services. nine people were hired initially, with the number of young adults involved in the project varying depending on their availability to participate (team members had other commitments such as school and work) and activities in the project. new team members were recruited as old ones moved on to other commitments. however, a number of young adults maintained engagement through the life of the project. from project inception, the mobilizing minds team was committed to involving a community partner with expertise in young adult engagement. when serious problems were encountered in the first year with this ye partner (as described in a later section), the team engaged a new partner for the subsequent years of the project. the new ye partner, mindyourmind, aimed to harness youth-adult partnerships to reach youth and young adults in order to increase their emotional and mental wellness. they brought a unique method of participation and skill set regarding ye, and their objectives aligned consistently with those of mobilizing minds. mindyourmind viewed their involvement in a community research project as a means of capacity building and learning around research collaborations. 176 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg young adult team structures, processes and communications mindyourmind focused on supporting and guiding the young adult team and brokering relationships within the larger project throughout the phases of the project. in their partnership with researchers in years one and two, the yas conducted qualitative research (i.e. interviews and focus groups) and quantitative research (i.e. surveys) to identify what information young adults would want if they were considering getting help for problems with stress, anxiety or depression. mindyourmind adopted the role of ‘boundary spanner’, defined as a cross-boundary role to break down silos, to assist the teams to gain perspective about the other participants’ world views and cultures (greenhalgh et al. 2009, p. 399). as the ye facilitators, mindyourmind attempted to craft a balance between structure around processes and a sense of openness and adaptability. this allowed room for evolution, yet ensured there was enough direction to keep people feeling purposeful in regard to the notion of getting the right information, to the right people, in the right ways and at the right time to help them make informed decisions. to build capacity within the ya team from the initial stages and to promote sufficient structure for the project to achieve its goals, the project coordinator hired a young adult as the team lead. the ya team lead and the mindyourmind facilitators cocoordinated the biweekly (or monthly) ya team meetings, which involved preparing agendas, delegating the writing of a blog (similar to taking minutes) and debriefing after the meeting. the ya team lead also worked with the project coordinator to complete detailed work plans for the ya team. during year three of the project the ya leadership role changed unexpectedly when one of the yas expressed interest and self-nominated for the leadership role. at this time there were no previously agreed terms of reference regarding the general structure of the ya team other than stating that the team lead role would be part of the structure. the initial team leader decided it was a natural time for her to step out of the role and the new leader stepped in. the ya team used teleconferencing and web conferencing to communicate across distances. during the team meetings the ya team lead opened with relationship building activities to encourage comfortable communication between members, to ease the discomfort of teleconferencing with a group of people and to offer time to get to know each other. some warm-up activities were simple questions posed to the team about social or popculture topics, while some were more activity based, such as an online scavenger hunt. between meetings the ya team used email to communicate, as well as an online subscription-based, private collaboration tool to post blogs about the meetings to communicate with members who were not in attendance and to keep other mobilizing minds project members updated on significant events. in total, 229 blogs were posted, many with comment 177 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg threads, indicating good engagement over the course of the project. further postings to the online space included forums for discussion and wikis for sharing and archiving project-related documents. one of the ways to structure the work of the ya team was co-developing work plans and timelines among the project coordinator, the ye facilitators and the ya team members. the purpose of the work plan was to identify sub-projects that the team would work on, which enabled members to build capacity by taking the lead in areas of interest and implementing the associated deliverables. examples of sub-projects will be described in a later section of this article. facilitators supported the process by identifying matches between ya team member strengths and associated tasks, with discussion around potential challenges and solutions. the larger mobilizing minds team met annually, in person, to review movement through the project phases and plan. ya team members participated and contributed to this process of direction setting. the face-to-face meetings were co-planned by the project coordinator, the principle investigator, the ya team members and the ye facilitators to ensure all teams’ work and needs were considered. in response to the need for ya team building during the fourth year, the ya team planned a dedicated ya only day. one of the activities was to translate project findings into rhythms using ‘bucket drumming’ techniques (led by a qualified music teacher). the team was challenged to create a drumming composition about the collective engagement experience. a ya team member filmed, edited and produced a video that captured the main messages (http://youtu.be/jduvohfupn8). project products during year four, the knowledge that had been created and synthesised in years one and two was ready to be adapted and tailored into resources (products) and implemented. ya team members formed sub-teams to develop resources and work on projects that revolved around their specific interests. mind pack is an example of one of the ya team products. mind pack is an online interactive resource aimed ‘to give young adults the information they need to make decisions around stress and personal problems’ (mindyourmind.ca). the resource evolved from the knowledge synthesis team’s work, ya team members’ experiences and perspectives, and mindyourmind’s expertise in technology and mental health. the concept of the digital backpack (in which all the content is housed) emerged from brainstorming discussions at one of the annual face-to-face meetings. to flesh out the resource after initial conception, the ya team met online and by teleconference and divided into sub-teams to create the various components of the mind pack tool which included: 1) a written personal story of a young person reaching out for help from a counsellor; 2) a self-assessment quiz; 3) brief written testimonials from young people who had accessed mental health help; and 4) written treatment options for stress, anxiety and depression, 178 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg including self-help options. in addition to coordinating the content and design development, mindyourmind staff contributed all of the technical development of the resource. field-testing of the tool took place during a focus group with nine youth participants (separate from the mobilizing minds project) and usability researchers worked with the ya team to complete usability testing and make recommendations for improvement based on the results. (usability is defined as ‘a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use’ – nielsen 2003, p. 1.) the ya team worked through three versions of the mind pack tool. the tool is accessible in french and english via the website, mindyourmind.ca, and organisations can access the embed code to display mind pack on their own websites. this co-creative process, across distances, demonstrates an iterative, synergistic experience, integrating the expertise of yas, community partners and researchers. another kt product was the development of a social media presence as a tool to engage allies and community partners while disseminating mobilizing minds research results. members of this sub-team (consisting of three yas, the project coordinator and two mindyourmind staff members) created a facebook page, posting one to two times weekly, and hosted tweet chats on twitter (see table 1). a tweet chat is a live event at a set time, moderated and focused around a particular topic. to filter all the posts on twitter into a single conversation, the team created a hashtag (#yamh for young adult mental health) to delineate the conversation from other posts. five tweet chats focused on young adult mental health topics and connected individuals and networks. during the planning of each subsequent tweet chat, as a strategy to spread the reach of the new knowledge, the ya team invited other mental health groups across canada to participate. building on research findings, research summaries from the knowledge synthesis team and the ya team also contributed to the creation of other knowledge products including a website, depression.informedchoices.ca, and two infographics available on the resources section of this website. date topic direct participants (individuals and organisations) estimated reach (tweets visible to followers of participants) may 2012 online engagement and young adult mental health 33 22 500 june 2012 exploring models of young adult engagement and partnerships within mental health initiatives (including prevention, promotion and treatment) 16 22 500 sept 2012 young adults’ transition to post-secondary school: ideas, supports and services 14 14 714 jan 2013 improving mental health conversations: youth, young adults and the media 37 26 000 jan 2014 reaching our audience: how to get depression resources into the hands of people who need them 88 57 898 table 1: mobilizing minds tweet chats 179 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg challenges and responses through the ya teamwork, all partners had an opportunity to learn about and negotiate youth-adult partnerships by contributing to a mutually meaningful issue: young adult mental health. however, there were challenges. three main questions arose, which are explored in more detail below: 1) how can differing perceptions of collaboration be negotiated; 2) how can a person-centred approach that allows for self-determined involvement be enabled while adhering to the need to deliver outcomes; and 3) how can team members be empowered to benefit and develop through the partnership? how can differing perceptions of collaboration be negotiated? the mobilizing minds team learned about the differences in understanding and practice of collaboration through its experience with ye facilitators. in year one, an organisation that had agreed to work with the ya team on youth engagement worked from an approach that did not value involvement from the adult researchers in the partnership. these facilitators viewed the partnership as interfering, and encouraged and supported mainly youth-led initiatives. as such, the adult researchers were explicitly excluded from ya team processes. at the end of the first year, the mobilizing minds leadership team was so concerned about this process of ya engagement that they decided to switch to another organisation for support, one that was more aligned with an integrated knowledge translation approach. during this transition time, some of the ya team members were challenged by the change from what they perceived to be a strictly ‘youth-led’ framework to a more collaborative young adultresearcher partnership. this required a shift in the philosophical approaches of both the ya team and the mobilizing minds team. the new approach valued collaboration and created a space where all expertise was accepted and all voices were heard, rather than separating solely on generational differences (i.e. chronological age). mindyourmind was transparent about the power dynamics that are typically inherent in traditional hierarchy-based relationships and addressed this through ongoing negotiation with the ya team and the larger team (larson, walker & pearce 2005). for example, during face-to-face meetings, art-based activities (collage) were encouraged as alternative ways to express and reflect on the work. zeldin, camino & mook (2005) states that youth partners who sense that their contributions are respected can focus on the shared ownership of collaborative work. shared ownership means openly acknowledging, communicating about and working with the strengths and challenges of partnerships. in another example, to explore the experience of this shift and to try to understand the ya team vision for future work together in year two and beyond, the team completed an arts-based exercise, designing a visual representation of their hopes for year two. this process began to articulate content for a terms-of-reference document. 180 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg in explaining her design, one ya team member said: my inspiration for this was based off of the successes that we had in year 1 and looking forward to things that i would like to carry through or change in year two. some of the themes include: working as a team, voicing your opinions and being engaged and inspired. other ya team members said: i really look forward to seeing this project move forward and hope that it never becomes stagnant. the flower was meant to show growth. i hope that both the project and all the members find some way to grow as the project continues. the other hopes i had were that we could find better ways to communicate and we would begin to see results from our efforts. i hoped for better, more open, and encouraging feedback and communication between the yas and the adult members. i was trying to illustrate ‘a constant, open, and encouraging dialogue, not just directives and responses’, to build a conversation. the shift to respectful and productive collaboration between partners was also facilitated through presentations (during in-person meetings) to the larger project team and ongoing reorienting conversations within the project sub-teams. to further this process, an agreed values statement by the ya team, along with a process to articulate the scope, possibilities and limitations of the ya team, helped develop an identity and stave off uncertainty. how can a person-centred approach that allows for selfdetermined involvement be enabled while adhering to the need to deliver outcomes? keeping ya team members engaged was identified as a hope for the team as they entered year two of the project. at times, the length of the project competed with the developmental pulls of their lives (e.g. navigating personal, educational and employment milestones). however, yas demonstrated ongoing commitment to the ya team and the project. for example, when teleconference meetings went through periods of low attendance, the facilitators checked in with team members to assess their ability and willingness to continue to participate in the current format. ya responses reflected a continued commitment to the project. with a refreshed forward focus, the ye facilitators remained flexible and adapted to the explicit and interpreted needs of the ya team members. the facilitators encouraged yas to form sub-teams around emerging areas of interest such as on-campus mental health, social media, video development (e.g. collectively creating youtube videos across distance) and usability testing of the mind pack tool. this enabled ya capacity building, productivity and flexibility to work on personally resonant projects, while ensuring they remained within the scope of the broad project. this also solved the recurring issue of finding a common teleconference 181 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg meeting time for all ya team partners, given personal commitments and time zone differences. how can team members be empowered to benefit and develop through the partnership? ya team members expressed a need to have their voices heard, to stay inspired and to experience a sense of accomplishment along the way. through the ya team’s work, partners (yas and facilitators) developed in multiple ways: 1) they gained knowledge about young adult preferences for receiving mental health information (i.e. the research findings in year two); 2) they developed transferable skills as they co-presented at national conferences (e.g. the canadian mental health association and the mental health commission of canada); 3) they were involved in the collaborative development of resources across distances and over time, and partnered with new media specialists; and 4) they gained experience working with an information scientist on the usability of the mind pack tool. one ya commented on the collective team climate: we are a team of young adults who are passionate about mental health! we believe in an evidence-based approach to helping young people with mental health issues. we see a better way to transfer knowledge to young people in a way that appeals to them and integrates with their daily lives. accepting you need help is hard enough, finding it and feeling welcome there shouldn’t be even harder. another ya reflected on the authenticity and transparent tone of the team: ‘at least we realized that we needed more structure and openness for more opportunity within our ya team.’ the project built inspired relationships while negotiating the challenges of communicating over distances. table 2 summarises the main challenges and provides recommendations for youth engagement collaborative projects. challenges recommendations philosophical differences around youth involvement —include all knowledge users as part of integrated model from inception of project. —establish mutual understanding of youth/adult involvement and partnership. —ensure understanding of parameters imposed by grant funding (deliverables and timelines). —ensure representation of all partners on all teams. —early on, clarify intellectual property, publication and copyright policies. changing young adult team composition over time – as members move on to other commitments —create shorter contractual opportunities and revisit regularly. —adapt team composition, create sub-teams by interest. —consider a diverse mix of youth (i.e. student and non-student). —consider how project work can tie into a career/academic goals and enable opportunities. —consider how to involve youth volunteers equitably. 182 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg conclusion the mobilizing minds project was designed to contribute to the evidence on ways to inform young adults (and other adults) who deal with stress, anxiety and depression about available services supporting mental health. knowledge products of the project were aimed to provide the public with the most up-to-date research findings on mental health services. project processes demonstrated youth engagement and integrated knowledge translation approaches (a consumer-inclusive partnership model). the partnerships established between the researchers and the team of young adults demonstrated the fluid, iterative nature of knowledge translation work, collective decision-making and co-learning. lessons learned include the importance of including young adults in all of the decisions that will impact them, from the inception of a project to the dissemination of results. a transparent, articulated youth involvement philosophy is important from the outset, as is clarity around team member roles and responsibilities. relevant and accessible communication formats enable relationship building and maintenance, and keep partners inspired and engaged in social change. in future research on collaborative partnerships involving young adult consumers, community organisations and researchers, it will be important to understand the most effective ways to bridge and span the partners’ varied worlds. as we broach new ways to approach complex health and social issues, more in-depth exploration of the workings of these unique partnerships may lead to improved systemic change. acknowledgements members of the mobilizing mind research group (mobilizingminds.ca) include the following (in alphabetical order). young adult partners: chris amini, amanda aziz, meagan dejong, emma firsten-kaufman, pauline fogarty, mark leonhart, alicia raimundo, kristin reynolds, allan sielski, tara syed, and alex yaeger; community partners: maria luisa contursi, christine garinger, heather miko-kelly and melissa taylor-gates from mindyourmind (mindyourmind.ca); research partners: lynne angus, chuck cunningham, john d. eastwood, jack ferrari, challenges recommendations communication —include all partners in decision making on use of communication tools. —attend to ongoing relationship building. —clarify processes for decision-making. —ensure balance between talking and listening. —ensure a variety of types of meetings (face to face, in person, individual, team). —evaluate, adjust and adapt. —make space for fun and informal communication. young adult team roles and responsibilities — complexity and size of the project can create role and process confusion —clarify expectations of all partners early and revisit them. —co-create team structure and roles, with clear terms of reference and decision-making approaches. —be aware of and mitigate traditional power imbalances between generations and roles. 183 | gateways | garinger, reynolds, walker, firsten-kaufman, raimundo, fogarty, leonhart & mmrg patricia furer, madalyn marcus, jennifer mcphee, david phipps, linda rose-krasnor, kim ryan-nicholls, richard swinson, john walker, and henny westra; and research associates jennifer volk and brad zacharias. this project was supported by a knowledge translation team grant from the canadian institutes of health research and mental health commission of canada (ref. no. tmf 88666). references campbell, d & erbstein, n 2012, ‘engaging youth in community change: three key implementation principles’, community development, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 63–79. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2011.645042 canadian institutes for health research 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health-related behaviours. such conditions create an environment favourable to the spread of communicable diseases like tuberculosis (tb), hepatitis and dengue, and recent years have seen an explosive increase in the spread of these communicable diseases. today, approximately every thirteenth pakistani is infected with either hepatitis b or c. in the middle east and asia pacific region, pakistan comes second after egypt for the highest hepatitis c prevalence rate, which equates to around 4–5 per cent of the population being infected (rabbani, hashmani & khuwaja 2014). in developing countries with very poor sanitary conditions and hygiene practices, most children (90 per cent) have been infected with hepatitis a before the age of 10 (who 2016a). similarly, pakistan has experienced a number of dengue fever outbreaks in recent years, including the 2005 karachi outbreak, in which 4500 dengue cases were registered, followed by outbreaks in punjab and other areas. in terms of tuberculosis, pakistan ranks fourth among the six countries facing the highest burden of this disease (national tb control program 2014). to help combat the above, the urban health program (uhp), run by the department of community health sciences (chs) at the aga khan university (aku), karachi, instigated the agahi program, which ran for one year from mid 2015 to mid 2016. agahi – meaning ‘awareness’ in urdu – was a fast-acting, innovative mass health awareness program designed to help prevent and control hepatitis, dengue and tuberculosis. in just 12 months, the agahi program focused its efforts on two selected squatter communities, rehri goth and sultanabad (population approximately 75 000 each). collaborative activities ranged from school sessions, role plays and lane meetings to training of health care workers, medical camps and maryam huda unaib rabbani fauziah rabbani aga khan university © 2017 by m huda, u rabbani & f rabbani. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: huda, m, rabbani, u & rabbani, f 2017, ‘inculcating health awareness in karachi, pakistan: how innovative, socially acceptable methods can help combat communicable diseases of poverty’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 78–96. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5481 corresponding author: maryam huda maryam.huda@aku.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5481 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:maryam.huda@aku.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5481 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5481 79 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani collaboration with local religious leaders and public sector and non-governmental organisations. overall, 80 health awareness sessions were conducted with 4000 participants, including both men and women of different age groups and occupations and children. moreover, high-risk and vulnerable populations were identified through facility-based records and community-based work, screened for the three communicable diseases (374 screened), provided with family support counselling and referred for treatment through liaison with other public and private providers. upon completion, a comparative cross-sectional survey revealed a significant increase in the knowledge of residents of sultanabad versus a control neighbourhood, especially with regard to the vector of dengue fever and personal prevention measures. these results demonstrate the value of targeted communitybased health awareness campaigns, especially in vulnerable megacities like karachi. however, the potential impact of the agahi program rests on the long-term commitment and collaborative efforts of the urban health program run by the department of community health sciences at aku. the uhp has been delivering a primary health care program in the disadvantaged urban squatter settlements of karachi since 1985. from the outset, it was conceived as a community-campus partnership model with the overall goal of contributing to a reduction in health inequities by addressing the underlying socioeconomic determinants of health through sustainable community-oriented health and social development initiatives. its aims include: develop a model of excellence in primary health care for urban squatter settlements; develop capacity in these communities to better manage their own health and social development; provide rigorous research, learning and teaching opportunities for medical and nursing students; and contribute to policy development in this area. this article argues that the importance of rigorous community-campus collaboration, conducted within a framework of social accountability, cannot be overemphasised, particularly if sustainable change and awareness is to occur. background: the three major infectious diseases of poverty hepatitis a, b and c, dengue fever and tuberculosis are among the world’s most common and devastating communicable diseases. viral hepatitis is a serious global public health problem. at present, six distinct types of hepatitis virus have been identified (a, b, c, d, e and g) (bosan et al. 2010). around 170 million patients worldwide are diagnosed as being chronically infected with hepatitis c. approximately two billion people have been infected with the hepatitis b virus globally. within pakistan, the reported prevalence of hepatitis c is about 4–7 per cent and that of hepatitis b, about 3–4 per cent, according to the findings of different surveys within the country (ashraf & ahmad 2015; rabbani, hashmani 80 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani & khuwaja 2014). according to the world health organization (who), hepatitis a affects 1.4 million people globally, and is spread by poor food and hygiene, lack of proper sanitation and unsafe water (who 2014b). improved sanitation, food safety and immunisation are the most effective ways to combat hepatitis a, while the hepatitis b vaccine is the mainstay of hepatitis b prevention (who 2016a, c). the most effective way to combat hepatitis c is to prevent its blood-borne and vertical transmission. multiple strategies are required for effective and sustained knowledge change. the global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades and is currently endemic in over 100 countries, affecting 50–100 million people annually (syed et al. 2010). pakistan has experienced a number of dengue fever outbreaks since 1992, including the 2005 karachi outbreak, but also, in 2011, the nation experienced its worst occurrence of dengue in which more than 20 000 cases and 300 deaths were officially reported (khanani, arif & shaikh 2011). at present, in the absence of any vaccination and antiviral therapy, the only method to control or prevent the transmission of dengue virus is to carry out effective vector control measures (who 2016d). the world health organization has developed an integrated vector management policy which requires a multi-sectoral approach (khan & hasan 2011). tuberculosis (tb) is one of the most major causes of mortality in the developing world. according to who data, in 2015 over 10 million fell ill with tb, while nearly 2 million died from the disease. furthermore, almost all tb deaths occurred in lowand middle-income countries (who 2017e; see also agboatwalla et al. 2003). despite efforts to halt tb, pakistan is still facing a high burden and has the eighth highest tb burden globally. alone, pakistan accounts for 44 per cent of the tb burden in the eastern mediterranean region. it is currently estimated that there are around 1.5 million tb patients in pakistan, increasing every year by 250 000 (who 2014f). anti-tb treatment is of long duration and there is the risk of quitting medication before the completion of treatment, as well as non-compliance to the recommended medication dose. regular and complete medication intake gives individual tb patients the best chance of cure and also limits tb transmission within the community. the emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant tb further reinforces the absolute necessity of helping a tb patient not to miss any medication dose. in the stop tb strategy, which uhp follows, supervision and patient support are an important cornerstone of the who-recommended directly observed treatment, short course (dots) program, currently being implemented by the government of pakistan to control tb (national tb control program 2014; who 2010g). the urban health program since its development in 1985, the urban health program (uhp) of the department of community health sciences (chs), aga 81 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani khan university, has operated in 17 different urban squatter settlements of karachi. these communities include orangi town, karimabad, essa nagri, grax village, chanesar goth, azam basti, baba island, hijrat colony, ibrahim hyderi, moinabad and future colony. health and social issues in these communities are numerous: poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation, poor water and sanitation, overcrowding, high fertility rates, lack of women’s rights and safety, high mortality and morbidity from preventable diseases, and lack of quality health care services. before the development of the chs, medical and nursing students received clinical training in the private hospitals, far from the realities faced by the great majority of the local population. the link with communities – medical, pedagogical, social and ethical – was missing. the department of community health sciences thus developed the urban health program, which is now a leading public health program in the country. core components of the urban health program include: —health awareness: the uhp provides community-oriented primary health care to communities both in their homes (outreach at the community’s doorstep) and at the uhp health centre (facility-based, one per community), with a multidisciplinary team of health care providers such as lady health visitors, family medicine and community medicine residents, medical students, social mobiliser, mis technician and supporting staff. the primary focus is to improve the health of mothers and children. uhp conducts clinics five days a week at both field sites: on average per quarter there are approximately 1000+ consultations and around 300 children and 30 pregnant women are routinely vaccinated at each site. as part of the national immunization day campaign (approximately 15 days per year), more than 3000 children are vaccinated. —social integration: social development activities have been a core component of uhp since 1996. these activities encompass four key aspects: community mobilisation and training of volunteers; health awareness; income generation for women; and provision of safe water and sanitation. currently, two homebased primary schools of 200 students each are successfully running at sultanabad. —community-oriented medical education (come): uhp sites have also been the focus of the come curriculum, a pioneering program implemented by the department of community health sciences (rabbani et al. 2005). medical, nursing and dental undergraduate students, graduate students (msc program) and trainees (community medicine residents and family medicine residents) are rotated between the field sites where they work with families to create awareness around health issues. in 2016, 549 medical students participated, along with two international students. —research: uhp is the hub of community-oriented research, which focuses on maternal, neonatal and child health, non82 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani communicable diseases, social determinants of health, health policy and health system development. a health demographic surveillance system has been set up at the sultanabad site to identify at-risk households and create health awareness about preventable diseases; two rounds of surveillance have already been conducted. alongside the publication of more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals, findings are shared with the communities. building their awareness is an integral component of all research studies. —community participation: the communities play a very important role in all of the components of uhp, and currently partnerships exist with both communities, including the chma (community health and management association) at sultanabad and the rhdo (rehri health and development organization) at rehri goth. regular meetings are held to carry out need identification, followed by planning and execution of projects, activities and surveys etc. in which they enthusiastically participate. dissemination of all the research work is done in a socially acceptable way and all the events are organised together. consequently, over 30 years of community-campus engagement, a clear and trusted process has emerged that delivers outcomes to multiple stakeholders in diverse ways. for the community, collaboration is underpinned by four key stages of community development (figure 1). in the first stage of interaction there is stepwise fruitful dialogue between campus and communities, leading on to the motivational phase as trust builds up. in the third stage of mobilisation, the community comes forward to address its issues and, finally, in the self-reliance stage, the community becomes progressively capable of self-sustaining the momentum of activities. it is anticipated that after a number of years of working with a community the uhp will withdraw, although providing ongoing technical support. in a small number of squatter settlements this figure 1: adapted from ‘ifas community development: stage 1 of empowering your community-initiation’, by j marcus, m brennan, m kumaran, r cantrell & m spranger, university of florida, ifas extension, 2015, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ fy740. image reproduced with permission of pak j public health, 2012, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 71–3. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy740 http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy740 83 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani has occurred, with the successful formation of diverse community management teams, now registered as community-based organizations (cbos) with the sind social welfare department. in recognition of this work of the uhp, the aga khan university received the international macjannet award for exceptional community engagement in 2009 (rabbani et al. 2012). the agahi project in recent years, using the surveillance and facility-based records collected through uhp’s work, researchers realised that dengue, hepatitis and tb required special attention and activities on a scale that was larger than could be accommodated as part of uhp’s core work. moreover, having an already well-established participatory model, with social accountability measures in place, it was felt that specific rigorous activities would be most easily undertaken under a dedicated mass awareness program: agahi. funded by pakistan’s higher education commission, the objective of agahi was to improve and enhance the health awareness of communities regarding tb, hepatitis and dengue to aid in their prevention and control. the agahi team conducted an extensive literature review and was able to benefit from evidence-based methods used in similar contexts elsewhere to develop a program that emphasised behaviour change around vaccine uptake, personal and food hygiene, care-seeking and compliance to treatment. the communities targeted were two squatter settlements: sultanabad and rehri goth in karachi. both communities have low socioeconomic settings with small houses and inadequate water and sanitation facilities and poor health-related behaviours. such conditions create an environment favourable to the spread of communicable diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis and dengue. because of this vulnerability – as well as the potential for prevention through the implementation of appropriate measures – uhp targeted these two communities. methodology study sites and time period the project agahi was carried out from august 2015 to august 2016 in the urban squatter settlements of sultanabad and rehri goth. the former is a very old squatter settlement of karachi, located in district west, kemari town, covering an area of 0.5 square km. the population is approximately 75 000, divided into nine sectors. the commonly spoken languages are pushto (55 per cent) and hindko (45 per cent). while the older people (>40 years) are generally illiterate, the new generation has acquired both primary and secondary education through government and private schools within the vicinity. the majority of the men are involved in service-related professions or are working for daily wages. women contribute towards household income primarily through cottage industries. 84 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani rehri goth is located in district malir, bin qasim town. the area is divided into 16 paras (sectors). each para is named after the head of the local clan based on their social groups. total population is more than 70 000. the majority of women are housewives, while men are fishermen. women contribute to family income by sorting prawns and small fish. children under five form 14 per cent of the total population, and approximately 22 per cent of women are in the reproductive age. the major language spoken is sindhi; literacy levels here are lower than in sultanabad. process 1 diagnosis of disease: according to the plan, the existing aku primary health care centres at sultanabad and rehri goth operated as the first level of care. initially, diagnosis of diseases based on symptom algorithms and simple laboratory tests were done at the centres. data was collected manually at the field sites. a software program at the department of community health sciences assisted the health centre staff in maintaining, in a protected and confidential manner, the medical history of all patients with hepatitis, tuberculosis and dengue. by studying patient records from the uhp primary health care centres, agahi was able to identify patients at high risk of these diseases. the patients needing advanced management were referred to other secondary and tertiary care hospitals including both government and private hospitals. in these cases, a referral form with the patient’s relevant history was given to the patient, for taking to the specialist. a copy was held at the centre, allowing for followup with the patient to ensure compliance. patients and their families visiting the health care centre were also provided health education by the staff through posters and audio-visual demonstrations. in the case of tuberculosis, once identified, patients were then personally visited by the agahi team, and they, along with their entire families, received advice on tb diagnosis and treatment. they were then referred to diagnostic and treatment centres. many community members were unfortunately unaware of the free treatment programs run by the government. agahi made efforts to inform these patients of the services provided by the government. 2 health awareness: this was created through outreach campaigns in the communities, building on and strengthening existing collaborations with community management teams, volunteers, religious leaders, school teachers and social workers. in addition to this, involvement extended to women’s groups, health care providers, media, government officials and families of the affected people. all stakeholders were involved, with a total of 100 or more beneficiaries participating in each activity. seminars, training sessions, meetings and workshops were conducted to train these people for awareness regarding symptoms, screening, compliance to treatment, limiting transmission and prevention. 85 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani health education and disease prevention was carried out for each disease in a separate manner. hepatitis agahi focused on creating awareness about hepatitis so that people had proper knowledge about causes, signs and symptoms, danger signs, modes of transmission, treatment and prevention strategies. to ensure every demographic group in sultanabad and rehri goth was reached, each awareness session or activity was held with different groups at different places. apart from the numerous outreach activities, for hepatitis b and c risk assessment was done at the uhp primary health care centre using standard recommendations for testing and vaccination. moreover, once every quarter, ‘hepatitis days’ were organised in the community. on these days, audiovisual materials such as banners, pamphlets, placards and films were prepared and disseminated in the community. below is the narrative summary of activities: —activity i: education sessions for community members mothers, pregnant women and men were targeted during these activities. a total of three centre-based sessions were conducted, in which more than 100 people participated. sessions not only focused on etiology of diseases but also on hepatitis b vaccination, especially for pregnant women and newborn babies. furthermore, special education sessions for community members were held to raise awareness regarding risk of transmission via nose and ear piercing and sexual transmission, and to encourage risk assessment. —activity ii: school sessions for personal and environmental hygiene five school-based sessions were held at both field sites, at which more than 100 students were educated about types, causes and symptoms of hepatitis with the help of different powerpoint presentations, brochures and pamphlets. these sessions also created awareness about preventive measures for blood-borne diseases and the role of personal and environmental hygiene in the prevention of infectious diseases. —activity iii: community-based lane sessions lane sessions were the most fascinating part of the agahi strategy, involving community men and women of all ages. these sessions focused on identification of hepatitis patients in the communities on the basis of signs and symptoms and created awareness regarding treatment options. these sessions also aimed to reduce myths about jaundice and hepatitis. —activity iv: infection control training two types of infection control trainings were carried out, in which two high-risk groups were targeted (health care workers and barbers). the importance to health care workers of adopting infection control measures for self-care and patient safety was reinforced. agahi trained both atrisk groups about the precautionary steps they could take to ensure they did not contract or spread hepatitis. for instance, barbers were encouraged to use pyodine (povidone iodine) to disinfect their shears and abstain from reusing razor blades). 86 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani —activity v: meeting religious leaders to address vaccine hesitancy these meetings mainly focused on sources of hepatitis exposure. causes and preventive strategies were also explained. religious leaders were requested to spread the message of the necessity for people to be vaccinated to prevent hepatitis b (jarrett et al. 2015. —activity vi: community-based general practitioners’ clinic visits apart from awareness sessions on hepatitis, infection control sessions were held with community-based general practitioners who, like barbers, are vulnerable to contracting and/or spreading hepatitis. in particular, general practitioners were educated about proper disposal of syringes and sharp waste. information material on hepatitis causes and preventive strategies developed by the world health organization, as well as pamphlets, were distributed to all participants to ensure reinforcement of preventive practices for hepatitis b and c. additionally, meetings with community-based general practitioners were held to develop a strong referral system. tuberculosis agahi aimed to create awareness about tuberculosis so that vigilance would be built into the community about the risk factors and significant social determinants of tuberculosis. monthly tb screening at the uhp centre was done based on symptoms. moreover, there was interaction with families of tb patients in 87 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani order to encourage them to fully support patients to improve treatment compliance. in line with best practice in other settings, agahi had a focused strategy to overcome the gaps in the successful prevention and treatment of tb (awaaz nepal n.d.; gothankar 2013; palve et al. 2015). as well, as was done with hepatitis, powerpoint presentations, posters and pamphlets were used to disseminate information. these materials contained facts on risk factors and preventive strategies as provided by who and the national tb control program pakistan. in total, 27 awareness sessions on tuberculosis were held, with a total of 1138 people participating in the various activities. since there is a lot of stigma attached to tuberculosis, all community members were encouraged to support tb patients. below is the narrative summary of activities: —activity i: centre-based awareness sessions to address tuberculosis, six centre-based awareness sessions were held at primary health care centres at rehri goth and sultanabad, in which more than 100 participants, including pregnant and postnatal women, were educated about identification and prevention of tuberculosis. mothers were encouraged to adopt bcg vaccination for their child at the time of birth. —activity ii: school-based awareness sessions students were taught about tb and its preventive strategies through different educational materials like handmade posters, brochures and powerpoint presentations. in total, seven school-based sessions were held, through which more than 200 students and their teachers acquired knowledge about modes of transmission, signs and symptoms, treatment and prevention. —activity iii: lane sessions five lane sessions were held at both field sites, in which 68 community women participated. agahi used these sessions to focus on educating women to recognise and understand transmission of the disease. care was also taken by the agahi team to urge community members to seek medical attention as soon as they had any symptoms and to adhere to the treatment plan to avoid multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. for men, special education sessions were organised by male staff, involving door-to-door campaigns and screening camps. 88 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani —activity iv: door-to-door campaigns during door-to-door campaigns infection control strategies were discussed with community members, including wearing masks in the presence of a known tuberculosis patient and abstaining from spitting on streets and floors. —activity v: interaction with families of tb patients three interactive sessions were carried out, in which all immediate family members were educated about causes, treatment and prevention. we also discussed their family history and attempted to identify the causes of tb persistence in their families. agahi referred three families to free screening camps and treatment centres and subsequently followed up with them. —activity vi: tuberculosis screening camp agahi built links between the communities of sultanabad and rehri goth and green star. this non-government organisation (ngo) specialises in controlling tuberculosis in five metropolitan cities in pakistan, and has successfully treated more than 40 000 patients. tuberculosis screening camps were held in sultanabad and rehri goth, where more than 85 community members received check-ups by chest specialists and had their sputum tested for acid fast bacilli. —activity vii: poster competitions more than 50 students from different schools at rehri goth and sultanabad participated and prepared posters for these competitions, and more than 300 students visited the poster display areas. these events were a great showcase of students’ knowledge about tuberculosis and its causes. students also briefly described their thoughts regarding tuberculosis through poster presentations. dengue based on models of success elsewhere, the agahi program adopted school-based health education and environmental interventions (espino et al. 2012; khun & manderson 2007; madeira et al. 2002). agahi used various methods to create awareness about how unhygienic living conditions and improper water storage practices can create breeding grounds for denguecarrying mosquitoes. insecticide residual spraying (irs) activity was done in collaboration with district health officials. the walk against dengue and role play were especially useful strategies, as these entailed active participation from community members, ensuring that all were given the opportunity to willingly take part in the development work that agahi carried out. furthermore, community members were urged to report to the health care centres as soon as they suspected dengue symptoms and to refrain from self-medication. during november, a dangerous month during which dengue mosquitoes breed, agahi worked alongside the uhp water and sanitation week, holding awareness sessions showing how unsanitary conditions could lead to dengue. during this week, a total of 2070 people participated. below is the narrative summary of activities: —activity i: school health sessions on dengue vector and prevention in total, 13 schools and two madrasa-based sessions 89 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani were held during this period. schools were emphasised, as they are the primary place where a maximum number of people can gather – children, teachers, parents and members of the community management teams – and where a maximum amount of information can be disseminated. moreover, children are very receptive and can be key players in helping to spread awareness. every school awareness session paid attention to signs and symptoms of dengue, for example, fever, headaches, rashes, joint and muscle pain. emphasis was also given to diagnosis of the disease as well as mode of transmission. not only were students informed about dengue, their schools were inspected so that breeding sites could be identified and personal and environmental measures could be implemented. students were encouraged to promote health education in their homes and families. —activity ii: centre-based sessions these were held in the primary health care centre at rehri goth and sultanabad, and more than 100 participants, including women and children, were educated about identification and prevention of dengue fever. these sessions emphasised ‘adopt preventive strategies to stop dengue’. —activity iii: lane sessions and house inspections two lane sessions were held, in which 70 women and children were targeted and educated about dengue mosquitoes and preventive measures. in addition, houses were inspected for potential breeding places and families were given advice on prevention of mosquito breeding within the house. —activity iv: walk against dengue this walk was arranged in both sultanabad and rehri goth, where a number of school students displaying anti-dengue posters and chanting slogans marched through their communities to raise awareness about dengue. these events were organised through the combined efforts of community leaders, students, teachers and the uhp team. 90 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani —activity v: role play the agahi team also organised a role play for the school children of rehri goth. during this, the young audience was shown how dengue spreads and the treatment and prevention of dengue. results during a one-year period, 80 educational sessions were conducted at rehri goth and sultanabad, where more than 4000 people participated in health education activities related to hepatitis, tuberculosis and dengue. different activities were carried out, including 12 lane sessions, 13 centre-based sessions, 27 schoolbased sessions, and door-to-door campaigns. infection control workshops were also conducted with high-risk populations such as barbers and health care workers. furthermore, two free tuberculosis screening camps were organised in collaboration with ngos. the involvement of all stakeholders was achieved, extending to religious leaders and institutions and communitybased general practitioners. as a first step to assessing the effects of agahi on the knowledge of communities, a comparative cross-sectional survey was conducted in sultanabad and hijrat colony. hijrat colony was selected as the control site because this locality is similar to sultanabad in terms of sociodemographic characteristics such as ethnicity, education, occupation and income. data was collected via a structured questionnaire, which was translated into urdu, the national language and understood by 90 per cent of the population. (in addition, if necessary, data collectors were fluent in pashto; the other local language, hindko, is a variant of urdu.) the survey was conducted orally. analysis was done on spss (version 19.0). chi-square and independent sample t-tests were applied for comparison. p-values less than 0.05 were considered significant. 91 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani table 1 shows the comparison of knowledge regarding dengue between sultanabad and hijrat colony. significantly higher numbers of correct symptoms were reported from sultanabad compared to hijrat colony, showing a higher level of knowledge about dengue symptoms in sultanabad. misconception about the vector of dengue was found to be higher in hijrat colony: only 6 per cent of the respondents in sultanabad, but 23 per cent in hijrat colony, considered flies as the vector of dengue (p-value 0.001). knowledge about personal and environmental measures against dengue was also higher in sultanabad (table 1). characteristics sultanabad %(n) (n=105) hijrat colony %(n) (n=114) p-value number of symptoms identified by the respondents mean (sd) 1.8 (1.0) 1.4 (0.99) <0.05 how does dengue fever spread? flies 6.5(6) 22.9(25) 0.001 mosquitoes 55.9(52) 51.4(56) 0.519 water 60.2(56) 37.6(41) 0.001 identified appearance of dengue mosquito correct 9.7 (9) 4.6(5) 0.018 at least one correct personal measure 82.9(68) 70(66) 0.044 number of environmental measures mean (sd) 1.33 (1.0) 0.97 (0.65) <0.05 additionally, in september 2016, a second round of surveillance was conducted in sultanabad, showing better outcomes due to the stringent follow-up of pregnant women and malnourished children, and utilisation of family planning methods. discussion the world health organization defines the social accountability of medical schools as representing ‘the obligation to direct their education, research and service activities towards addressing the priority health concerns of the community, region, or nation they have a mandate to serve’ (boelen & heck 1995). others emphasise the civic engagement at its core: social accountability is ‘accountability that relies on civic engagement, i.e. in which citizens and/or civil society organizations participate directly or indirectly in exerting accountability and holding politicians, policy makers and service providers responsible for their performance’ (mafuta et al. 2015). social accountability is one among many measures that have improved the delivery of services in urban areas and the accountability of service providers to citizens (undp 2013). according to marius wanders (2015), in everyday life social accountability plays a very important role: it makes communities aware of their basic rights; gives them access to information; and makes them a part of decision-making and work that table 1: comparison of knowledge regarding dengue. 92 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani involves them. in the health field, social accountability involves a commitment by practitioners and researchers to respond as best as possible to the priority health needs of citizens and society. social accountability concepts and tools are increasingly being integrated into health care systems to strengthen them and improve the quality of services. the increased responsiveness achieved through the use of social accountability mechanisms ultimately results in an improved health care system, such as an increase in user satisfaction and service utilisation, improved quality of services and decrease in the prevalence of disease (mcginn & lipsky 2015). ultimately, social accountability systems imply accountability and responsibility to society for those actions intended to serve it. they are vital as they lead to sustainable change in health outcomes. that uhp has been able to work with communities in the squatter settlements of karachi for over 30 years is due in large part to its social accountability approach. during this time, there have been real and significant improvements, such as a reduction in mortality and morbidity rates and an increase in the number of women participating in economic activity. the first two phases of community development, as practised by uhp, are the most important, as this is when trust is developed; when trust and understanding occurs, the communities come forward of their own initiative to take part in the activities. this helps in building respect and the communities’ eventual ownership of future endeavours. the community management teams hold the uhp team accountable in specific ways, such as the attendance of uhp staff at their outreach activities and at the initiation of new projects, and through the dissemination of information and presentation of quarterly and annual data. they also give input and provide innovative ideas across all activities. by investing in the capacity of community representatives to manage the program themselves has meant that, in a small number of settlements, uhp has handed management of activities over to the communitybased organisations, with the uhp providing only technical support as and when required. similarly, it is the strength of our relationships that helps mitigate the undeniable challenges of resource limitation and fatigue. the uhp program is included as part of the core budget of the university and is further supplemented by funds and grants, which allow the university to conduct other projects such as agahi. however, more than funds, the real essence of the program lies with the skills and expertise of faculty and students, and the long-term unconditional services that are offered to the communities. our continuous presence in the squatter settlements over so many years has resulted in a high level of acceptance and trust by the communities, which in turn has encouraged community ownership, self-empowerment and program sustainability. for the students, the department of community health sciences (chs) is a pioneer in our region in community-based health. medical students are exposed to community issues right 93 | gateways | huda, rabbani & rabbani from the beginning, no matter where they come from. students are taught to better understand the health systems and the underlying context to health issues. this is not the usual practice in other universities in pakistan. moreover, in addition to the medical and nursing students and residents, students from the diploma in dental hygiene, midwives and international students and volunteers are providing services and carrying out their research projects in these communities. interaction with a variety of national, provincial and local non-government organisations, hospitals, and policy makers and government officials gives students exposure to policy planning and public health as a career option. however, this breadth and depth of activities would be impossible to sustain without respectful and genuine community participation. indeed, one of the greatest successes of this program has been the creation of leaders among students, faculty and community. conclusion the promotion of community participation in public health efforts to achieve improvements in health and wellbeing dates back to the 1978 declaration of alma-ata. in our region, a few models of successful community participation projects with social accountability mechanisms can be seen in rural nepal and rural cambodia, where the citizens are empowered to express their views and concerns regarding the quality of health facility performance. in such instances, community members’ opinions are taken into account in the decision-making process, contributing to changes in the healthcare service delivery structure, such as adapting new health services to address their needs (mafuta et al. 2015). thus, involving citizens is an important strategy to improve the relationship between providers and clients, particularly in fragile communities which are characterised by weak governance systems and poor health indicators (boydell & keesbury 2014). the aga khan university has striven to develop a core university program that provides excellent, continuing and replicable learning opportunities for faculty, staff and students while delivering vital and sustainable improvements in the lives of urban squatter communities. to comprehensively tackle the spread of communicable diseases, for example, the underlying issues of poverty must also be comprehensively addressed. as a consequence, the uhp has expanded upon its routine primary health care activities and now works in other health and social development areas in need of attention, such as breast screening and referrals, mental health, child abuse, early childhood development, child labour, early marriages, the involvement of male members of the community in sensitive topics like family planning and transmission of infection, tobacco control and drug abuse, schooling (especially for girls), micro-credit programs and skills building for women. 94 | gateways | huda, 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http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs104/en/ http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137094/1/9789241564809_eng.pdf http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137094/1/9789241564809_eng.pdf http://www.who.int/tb/publications/2010/9789241547833/en/ http://www.who.int/tb/publications/2010/9789241547833/en/ _goback access to health services in western newfoundland, canada issues, barriers and recommendations emerging from a community-engaged research project this article reports on research initiated by the rural secretariat regional councils for the corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville–port aux basques regions (figure 1), and undertaken in the western health authority region of newfoundland and labrador (nl), where corner brook (pop. 19 886) is the only community of over 10 000 people (statistics canada 2011). the rural secretariat is a government entity and the rural secretariat regional councils are comprised of citizens appointed by the government of nl. the regional councils have a mandate to provide advice to the provincial government on issues affecting the long-term sustainability of their regions. the objective of this research was to document healthcare access issues of individuals and groups less likely to participate in formal telephone surveys and focus groups in the rural secretariat regions and to use these views and experiences as a starting point for exploring recommendations and solutions. the research is intended to serve as evidence to inform regional council policy advice on access to health services in the associated rural secretariat regions and to supplement a needs assessment undertaken in 2011/2012 by the western regional health authority. background: health services in rural and remote regions newfoundland and labrador, the most eastern province in canada, has a population of 514 536 people. the provincial capital has a metropolitan population of 196 966 people comprising 38.3 per cent of the provincial population (statistics canada 2011). outside of st john’s, the rest of the population lives in much smaller centres, with 62 852 people (12.2 per cent) residing in municipalities of under 25 000 and 254 718 people (49.5 per cent) residing in municipalities of under 10 000 people (statistics canada 2011). gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 67–84 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 janelle hippe victor maddalena sara heath beulah jesso memorial university of newfoundland marion mccahon kim olson government of newfoundland and labrador 68 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson the commission on the future of healthcare in canada stated that ‘[h]ealth indicators have consistently shown that the health status of people living in rural communities, especially people in northern communities, is not as good as in the rest of the canadian population’ (romanow 2002, p. 161). current literature suggests that this disparity in health and wellbeing can, in part, be explained by barriers to accessing adequate healthcare. these barriers include long wait times to access healthcare workers, lack of access to transportation, travel difficulties associated with poor weather and high cost of travel. rural communities are reported as being underserved by both family physicians and specialists, resulting in fewer people having a family doctor or consulting with a specialist. in addition to barriers to accessing health services, research also suggests that specific populations in rural and remote areas may face additional barriers related to their aboriginal identity, rural culture and/or the rural setting. wardman, clement and quantz (2005) found that many aboriginal individuals described fear of racism, discomfort in healthcare settings and concerns over confidentiality as barriers to accessing care. in 2002, gruen, weeramanthri and bailie found that barriers to accessing specialist health services included not only a lack of public figure 1: map of rural secretariat regions, with corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville– port aux basques rural secretariat regions labelled* * mapping support provided by the newfoundland & labrador statistics agency, department of finance, government of newfoundland and labrador 69 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson transport to regional centres and high cost of accommodation and food, but also cultural inappropriateness of services. in a study examining barriers to accessing cancer care among indigenous australians, issues raised included fear of the medical system, collective memories of colonialism, and lack of understanding of aboriginal and torres strait islander values and customs (sahid, finn & thompson 2009). research also suggests that rural women may face genderspecific barriers to accessing healthcare. leipert and george (2008) found that some women were reluctant to access care because they felt that seeking healthcare conflicted with cultural expectations and characteristics of rural women such as strength and self-reliance. in 2004, the gender, women, and social policy community of scholars at charles sturt university in australia found that many women felt they did not have adequate access to birthing, mental health, women’s health and counselling services (alston et al. 2006). reduced access to care may have a significant effect on rural women’s health outcomes. gryzbowski, stroll and kornelson (2011), for example, reported that rural women who had to travel to access maternity services had an increased number of adverse perinatal events including increased utilisation of neonatal intensive care unit services. rural settings may also exacerbate barriers experienced when accessing mental health services. forbes, morgan and janzen (2006) found that, while both rural and urban residents with dementia reported barriers to accessing healthcare such as long wait times and cost, rural residents often additionally reported that they did not know where to access care. boydell et al. (2006) found that barriers to accessing mental healthcare for children in rural areas may include not only a lack of services and a lack of awareness of services, but also a fear of stigma related to the smaller social networks in rural communities. overall, at least three related points emerge from a review of existing rural health services research. first, access to health services in rural areas is often inadequate because of a lack of physicians and other health human resources, a lack of health facilities and/or health services, and distance and weather-related travel issues. second, access issues are not uniform and barriers may vary depending on the community or group in question – for example, aboriginal or gender identity may be linked to specific barriers. third, depending on the specific setting, access to some services (for example, mental health services) may be particularly inadequate. methods and methodology: a communityengaged approach research methods included the distribution of a paper and online survey as well as several ‘kitchen table’ discussions. kitchen table discussions are an innovative method used to engage participants from rural communities. as with focus groups, a kitchen table 70 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson discussion involves an organised discussion with a selected group of individuals to gain information about their views and experiences of a topic, but kitchen table discussions are designed to be less formal than focus groups. according to kitzinger (1994), interaction is the crucial feature of focus groups and this can be intimidating at times, especially for inarticulate or shy members. the method of focus group discussion can discourage certain people, such as those who are not very articulate or confident and those concerned about trusting others with personal or sensitive information (gibbs 1997). because we are most likely to interact with people we know in an environment we are comfortable in, kitchen table discussions are hosted by community members in their own homes and with participants who are known to each other, such as family members, neighbours or friends. according to morgan (1988), meeting with others whom the participants think of as possessing similar characteristics is more appealing than meeting with those who are perceived to be different. this helps break down some of the formalities of focus groups and may help in capturing community voices and the views of people less likely to participate in formal focus groups. as with all community-based research initiatives, the dissemination of research outcomes was an important objective of this project. the research was initiated by the rural secretariat regional councils and input from their members was incorporated throughout the construction of the survey and during data analysis. regional council and community members were also active in distributing and delivering the surveys, hosting and participating in the kitchen table discussions, and reviewing and commenting on the project results and report. representatives of the western regional health authority and the department of health and community services were kept informed and up to date on the project, and also provided advice on the research design and analysis. surveys surveys were distributed in both paper and online formats. they were deliberately distributed to many rural and remote communities where individuals may have been less likely to complete a telephone survey. survey data were collected in one of four ways: 1) conducted face to face; 2) distributed to individuals to complete and submit; 3) placed in public locations such as town offices, clinics and community halls; and 4) completed online. in addition to general demographic information, the survey included questions about participants’ perceptions of the availability of primary healthcare, the importance of healthcare providers, the services they felt they did and did not have adequate access to, and barriers to accessing healthcare. completed paper surveys were sent to the health research unit of the faculty of medicine, memorial university of newfoundland, for data entry and analysis. 71 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson kitchen table discussions at the end of the survey, participants were asked if they would be willing to participate in a kitchen table discussion in their area. ten kitchen table discussions were held in homes of participants or in the community. the discussions were audio recorded and notes were made from these recordings and then analysed. analysis focused on four areas: (1) general experiences with health services; (2) experiences with specific health services and professionals; (3) access issues; and (4) solutions to resolve issues related to access. the number of participants in each discussion ranged from a minimum of three to a maximum of nine. there were male only, female only and mixed gender discussions. age ranges varied and there was one youth-specific discussion as well as an aboriginalspecific discussion. survey results results are shown for the total group of participants, for participants from the corner brook–rocky harbour region and for participants from the stephenville–port aux basques region. not all participants responded to all questions; all results and corresponding percentages presented below were calculated based on the number of respondents who answered each question, not the overall number of respondents. participant demographics in total, 1048 surveys were collected. as table 1 shows, there was a wide variation in demographic characteristics; however, the majority of participants from both regions were female, married and had a post-secondary education. variable n (%) regions corner brook–rocky harbour 441 (42.1) stephenville–port aux basques 607 (57.9) corner brook– rocky harbour stephenville– port aux basques overall age category 15–24 years 21 (5.7) 20 (4.1) 41 (4.8) 25–34 years 46 (12.4) 74 (15.2) 120 (14.0) 35–44 years 75 (20.3) 103 (21.1) 178 (20.7) 45–54 years 74 (20.0) 126 (25.8) 200 (23.3) 55–64 years 100 (27.0) 127 (26.0) 227 (26.5) 65–74 years 45 (12.2) 32 (6.6) 77 (9.0) 75–84 years 8 (2.2) 5 (1.0) 13 (1.5) 85+ years 1 (0.1) 1 (0.1) 2 (0.2) gender male 94 (26.6) 153 (31.7) 247 (29.5) female 260 (73.4) 330 (68.3) 590 (70.5) table 1: summary of participants’ demographic characteristics: corner brook–rocky harbour region, stephenville–port aux basques region and overall 72 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson marital status single 57 (15.6) 64 (13.2) 121 (14.2) separated/divorced 25 (6.8) 30 (6.2) 55 (6.5) married/common law 268 (73.2) 372 (76.5) 640 (75.1) widowed 16 (4.4) 20 (4.1) 36 (4.2) highest level of education completed some school 40 (11.0) 44 (9.2) 84 (10.0) high school certificate 50 (13.7) 96 (20.1) 146 (17.3) post-secondary 275 (75.3) 338 (70.7) 613 (72.7) household income <$10 000 12 (4.5) 10 (2.8) 22 (3.6) $10 000–$24 999 32 (12.6) 37 (10.3) 69 (11.3) $25 000–$49 999 50 (19.8) 108 (30.1) 158 (25.8) $50 000–$99 999 98 (38.7) 146 (40.7) 244 (39.9) >$100 000 61 (24.1) 58 (16.1) 119 (19.4) family doctor access table 2 summarises the results related to accessing a family physician: 14.2 per cent of individuals from the corner brook– rocky harbour region and 9.9 per cent of individuals from the stephenville–port aux basques region were without a family physician. the main reason cited for not having a family doctor was that ‘the physician had left the area or retired’, which was the reason given by 47.1 per cent of respondents overall (see figure 2). it is also of note that over 36 per cent of respondents from both regions had to travel outside their communities to see their family physician. respondents from the stephenville–port aux basques region were twice as likely as respondents from the corner brook– rocky harbour region to report that it took them over 90 minutes to travel to their family physician. variable n (%) n (%) n (%) corner brook– rocky harbour stephenville–port aux basques overall have a regular family doctor? yes 374 (85.8) 538 (90.1) 912 (88.3) no 62 (14.2) 59 (9.9) 121 (11.7) family doctor located in your community? yes 228 (63.7) 330 (63.8) 558 (63.8) no 130 (36.3) 187 (36.2) 317 (36.2) time to your family doctor 30 minutes or less 284 (79.8) 412 (80.0) 696 (79.9) 31–60 minutes 46 (12.9) 60 (11.7) 106 (12.2) 61–90 minutes 16 (4.5) 15 (2.9) 31 (3.6) more than 90 minutes 10 (2.8) 28 (5.4) 38 (4.4) range (minutes) 1–480 1–480 1–480 mean (minutes) 26.2 28.1 27.3 table 2: family doctor access: corner brook– rocky harbour region, stephenville–port aux basques region and overall 73 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson main health contacts respondents were also asked to identify the health providers with whom they had contact. results are shown in figure 3. of the healthcare providers identified, physicians were the most cited health contact. among notable differences, respondents from the stephenville–port aux basques region reported contact with social workers (34.7 per cent) and nurse practitioners (37.1 per cent) more frequently. access and barriers figure 4 shows the percentages of participants who indicated they had adequate access to selected services. both regions indicated they had poor access to radiation therapy and cardiac bypass surgery. respondents from the corner brook–rocky harbour region reported much higher rates of access for breast/cervical screening and more access to hip/knee replacement and cataract surgery than respondents from the stephenville–port aux basques region. wait times for obtaining an appointment was the number one barrier cited by respondents from both health regions (see figure figure 2: main reasons provided by respondents when asked why they did not have a family doctor: overall, corner brook– rocky harbour region and stephenville–port aux basques region figure 3: health providers that respondents had contact with: overall, corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville–port aux basques 74 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson 5). respondents from the stephenville–port aux basques region reported weather and distance as barriers to accessing services more frequently than respondents from the corner brook–rocky harbour region. a final open-ended question on the paper and online survey asked participants for any additional comments about access to health services in their community. a total of 375 participants provided additional commentary. when these comments were thematically coded, seven themes were identified: (1) physician shortages; (2) difficulty accessing specialist services; (3) difficulty accessing emergency services; (4) consistency of care issues; (5) difficulty with travel and the cost of travel; (6) wait times; and (7) potential for nurse practitioners. figure 4: adequate access to selected services: overall, corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville– port aux basques figure 5: barriers to accessing health services identified by participants: overall, corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville– port aux basques 75 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson physician shortages participants frequently noted that either they were unable to find a family physician taking new patients or the wait time to see their family physician was too long, resulting in the use of emergency services for non-emergency situations: … people are not able to receive routine preventative care or regular care for any condition due to no available gps in the corner brook area. people are forced to go to busy er departments for minor conditions due to having no doctor. difficulty accessing specialist services several respondents thought more specialist services such as cardiology, diabetes and obstetrics should be available in their community: i cannot imagine the stress on expectant mothers who are living so far from a birthing unit. i am able to cover the cost of trips to corner brook, but there are many who find it a financial hardship to travel there or st john’s for treatments. frequently people are requested to be in corner brook so early in the morning they have to take a hotel there overnight in order to be on time. couldn’t people who have a distance to travel be given appointments later in the day? many participants felt that mental health services in their area were inadequate and that this could have negative consequences for individuals’ health: … mental health support is very hard to find. there are only a few specialists within the corner brook and newfoundland areas. all colleges, universities and schools should have nurses/doctors on staff. people should be taught how to contact help such as community help lines, ems [emergency medical services], etc … difficulty accessing emergency services a number of respondents reported that they had difficulty accessing emergency services due to long wait times once in the emergency room or a lack of facilities within the community: on the weekend there are no doctors available in deer lake. in case of any emergency or injury you have to travel to corner brook and if it’s not a serious emergency you have to wait hours and hours. consistency of care a desire for more consistent care, in particular for a long-term, regular physician, was a common theme among participants: my family was without a family doctor for about 6 months last year before a new doctor took up the practice that had been vacated by our (much-loved) family doctor, originally from western newfoundland, who re-located to conception bay south. my concern now is that our current doctor may not stay in the area. 76 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson difficulty with travel and the cost of travel several respondents commented that having to travel to access specialist services could be challenging for a variety of reasons, including distance to travel, poor weather conditions, needing time off work to accommodate travel requirements and, most significantly, the financial costs associated with travelling: we are lucky to be near a decent medical facility and we are quite happy with the care we receive (for medical, dental and physio care). however, one family member has ongoing health issues that must be monitored and occasionally treated. we could have gone to st john’s, but we had no place to stay there. very expensive if you have to travel and have a recovery period before one can travel home. wait times respondents expressed frustration with the length of wait times in three key areas: (1) for emergency services; (2) for doctors’ appointments; and (3) to see specialists: when you have young children (like me) having a family doctor is important; however, rapid access is even more important since most problems with children arise quickly. due to the large patient loads at the doctor’s office it is virtually impossible to be ‘fitted-in’ when an urgent matter arises. i find it hard to get a doctor’s appointment without waiting 3–4 weeks. potential for nurse practitioners some respondents indicated a nurse practitioner was available in their area, that they had seen the nurse practitioner, and that their experience had been positive: as a health practitioner in the area i am acutely aware of healthcare needs of the population, especially the physical health needs. the lack of access to a family physician is a big barrier, but when nurse practitioner services have been available here, patient satisfaction with the service has been very high … other respondents indicated that a nurse practitioner was not available in the area and expanded on the use of nurse practitioners as a potential solution to non-emergency use of emergency rooms: what i do not understand is why a nurse practitioner cannot be made available to everyone who does not have a family physician. it is ridiculous and scandalous that people without a family physician are obliged to sit in the emergency room for hours waiting to see a doctor to have a simple prescription filled … respondents who commented on the role of nurse practitioners suggested that the government ought to provide better pay and/or create incentives to draw nurse practitioners into practice in rural/remote areas. 77 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson observations from kitchen table discussions the following general observations represent a compilation and summary of the kitchen table discussions. experiences accessing health services experiences accessing health services varied by community and included long wait times for tests and for emergency services, and limited access to physicians and nurse practitioners. participants frequently noted frustrations, while aboriginal participants noted a lack of cultural understanding on the part of health practitioners when accessing healthcare. health services and professionals experiences with specific health service professionals, both positive and negative, varied by community. some reported limited access to health services such as physiotherapists, ophthalmologists and dentists, and a lack of empathy from health professionals was also noted as a concern. participants cited good experiences with the provincial health line services and with nurse practitioners. access issues services to which participants felt their community should have better access included blood pressure checks, patient navigators, friendship centres, dentists and nurses, community health and wellness programs, mental health and addictions services, rheumatology services, diabetic services, x-ray and radiation services, pharmacy and prescription services, and general practitioners. doctors leaving smaller communities for bigger centres, difficulty filling prescriptions after hours and inferior mental health and addictions services were issues common to several communities. participants reported that wait times, travel and travel costs could make accessing health services difficult. additionally, communication barriers and lack of compassion from medical professionals were cited as other access issues. solutions to improving access general solutions identified by participants included bringing in the needed professionals to administer basic health services, improving access to midwifery practitioners, and providing financial support for costs associated with travel. other suggestions included more and wider access to teleconferencing, community wellness programs and specific wellness programs for aboriginal communities, patient navigators, increased hours and on-call availability of physicians, more home care and care for seniors, an increased number of nurse practitioners and better or more efficient use of nurses. a number of participants attributed long-term value to a preventative approach to healthcare and suggested that they would like to see a ‘wellness’ approach to health – i.e. an approach which focuses on maintaining mental and physical health rather than just treating illness. 78 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson discussion findings of the current research are consistent with literature on access to healthcare in rural areas. data from the society of rural physicians of canada (2013) indicate that, while 20 per cent of canadians live in rural areas, only 10 per cent of physicians work in rural areas and only 3 per cent of specialists practise in rural areas. in the present study, 11.7 per cent of survey respondents reported they did not have a family physician and 36 per cent indicated they had to travel outside their community to access their family doctor. many participants expressed frustration with a lack of access to basic primary care and specialist services in their communities. in the survey results, ‘long wait times’ (60.8 per cent) and ‘[services] not available in the area’ (47.1 per cent) were the two most frequently checked barriers to accessing health services. long wait times also emerged as an important barrier to access in kitchen table commentary. wait times and reduced service availability have been identified elsewhere as important barriers to accessing health services (canadian institute for health information 2012 report; sanmartin and ross’ 2006 analysis of the health services access survey). in sanmartin and ross’ research, which was not specifically focused on rural and remote canadians, ‘personal’ reasons, such as difficulty with transportation or cost, were identified as barriers to health services by fewer than 5 per cent of respondents. our research, conversely, focused exclusively on a rural and remote newfoundland population, where transportation problems and financial concerns were cited as barriers to access by 18 per cent and 15 per cent of respondents respectively. other transportation and financial barriers reported included no medical insurance coverage, distance to travel, services not available in the area, and weather. a variety of definitions of ‘rural’ and ‘remote’ exist in canadian and international literature (du plessis et al. 2001). statistics canada most notably defines communities of under 10 000 as part of rural and small town (rst) canada (du plessis et al. 2001). while this definition has been used frequently in health services research, recognition that ‘rural’ is a continuum has also become increasingly common, and contemporary canadian health services research frequently classifies communities of under 25 000 people as ‘rural’ as well (see, for example, harbir et al. 2012 and szafran et al. 2013). another interesting finding of this research was the regional variability regarding access to different health services. participants from both regions frequently noted they did not have adequate access to cardiac bypass surgery and radiation therapy (likely due to the distance from regional and provincial tertiary care services); however, regional analysis showed that respondents from the stephenville–port aux basques region reported particularly poor access to maternal and child health services in 79 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson comparison with the corner brook–rocky harbour region. other services such as hip/knee replacements and cataract surgery also showed wide variability across the regions. aboriginal participants indicated that their experiences with healthcare services sometimes reflected a lack of cultural understanding on the part of health professionals and indicated a desire for wellness programs specific to their needs and concerns. in other research from canada and abroad, aboriginal individuals have listed fear of racism, discomfort in healthcare settings (wardman, clement & quantz 2005), cultural inappropriateness of services (gruen, weeramanthri & bailie 2002) and collective memories of colonialism (sahid, finn & thompson 2009) as barriers to accessing health services. our research focused specifically on the corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville–port aux basques rural secretariat regions of newfoundland and labrador and is not intended to be a generalisation to other canadian and international locations. the purpose was not to generalise findings but rather to describe and document views and opinions in this specific context. however, many of our results – including participants’ noted frustration with wait times, reported difficulty accessing many specialist services, and difficulties associated with travel and cost of travel – are consistent with previous research on barriers to accessing health services in rural and remote areas (bc ministry of health 2007; boydell et al. 2006; wardman, clement & quartz 2005). the innovative kitchen table methodology was used with the intent of reaching community members who may not otherwise have participated in the research. while there is no way to know whether this method was more or less successful than traditional focus groups, we believe the informality may have encouraged some participants. the host of the kitchen table discussion would often ask neighbours, friends or relatives to take part. these individuals would likely not have heard about the research if it was not for word of mouth or they may not have taken part if they hadn’t known someone in the group. the data we gathered may have been gathered through traditional means but we chose to implement this innovative methodology in an attempt to enhance the involvement of community members. because kitchen table discussions are usually held at a community member’s home, the setting makes the meeting informal and participants tend to respond in this more relaxed environment. because they are relaxed, participants are generally more willing to discuss issues and dialogue is maximised. also, the group size is small, which increases the likelihood that all members will have a chance to be heard. recommendations researchers from canada, australia and the united states have highlighted a number of initiatives and/or recommendations to improve access to health services for individuals living in rural and remote areas, as discussed below. the current study suggests the 80 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson exploration of (1) recruiting more rural and remote physicians; (2) investigating a nurse practitioner model of care; (3) assisting individuals with travel costs and developing specialist outreach services; (4) increasing the use of telehealth services; and (5) undertaking additional rural and remote health services research. research has shown that both having a rural background and rural curricular components while in training can influence medical students to eventually take up rural practice (jones, humphreys & mcgrail 2012; orzanco et al. 2011). many medical schools in canada – including memorial university’s medical school – have taken steps to attract more rural students and provide extended rural educational opportunities. available data suggests that memorial currently ranks among the top universities in canada with regard to recruitment of rural students and the production of rural physicians (srpc 2013). yet, while newfoundland and labrador’s medical school produces physicians who practise in rural areas, results from the present research suggest that additional steps may need to be taken to enhance recruitment and retention of medical graduates. potential strategies to enhance recruitment and retention of medical graduates may constitute an area for continued discussion and research among government, university and community stakeholders. in a study designed to examine barriers and solutions to enhance access to health services in meander valley, northern tasmania, le et al. (2012) recommended attracting services to the area and recruiting and retaining more general practitioners. the authors also suggested the deployment of a nurse practitioner model as a potential solution to health services shortages. that this suggestion emerged from the context of interviews with individuals in a rural area of australia and also from the present research suggests that rural individuals in canada and other countries view nurse practitioners as an important option to improve rural health services. enhancing recruitment of nurse practitioners to rural areas is another option that should be explored further. in national and international research, difficulties with travel emerge as a key barrier to accessing health services for individuals living in rural and remote areas. assistance with the cost of travel is an important potential solution to this issue. specialist outreach services may also offer a solution to overcome the difficulty of accessing specialist services. in an evaluation of a specialist outreach service established in northern australia, gruen, weeramanthri and bailie (2002) noted that the benefits of specialist outreach included increased numbers of patients seen, less disruption to families and work, reduced cost of transport, improved doctor–patient communication and improved cultural appreciation. requirements for sustainable outreach included ensuring the program is adequately resourced and staffed; grounding the program in a multidisciplinary framework centred in primary care and not dependent only on specialists; 81 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson integrating the program with local primary care services, prior planning of visits and regular evaluation (gruen, weeramanthri & bailie 2002). in a federal government review of rural health access issues, laurent (2002) cited increased use of telehealth services as a possible strategy for increasing rural access to health services. telehealth can provide quicker access to specialist services (laurent 2002) and can also reduce travel time and cost – an especially significant benefit given the large number of respondents in the present research who cited travel costs as a barrier to accessing health services. in a recent report focused on wait times in canada, the canadian institute for health information (cihi) listed telehealth as an important strategy for reducing waits in primary care, noting that ‘[v]ideoconferencing that eliminates the need for travel has been shown to reduce wait times for specialist consultations anywhere from 20–90% … telehealth activity across canada has resulted in an estimated annual system cost avoidance of $55 million and personal travel cost savings of $70 million’ (cihi 2012, p. 20). in the present research, increased telehealth services emerged as a potential solution in some kitchen table discussions. while participants did not feel telehealth could be a complete replacement for face-to-face appointments, increased use of telehealth services could be both a cost-saving and serviceenhancing solution, particularly for communities where travel and/or wait times were the primary barriers to accessing care. while the above recommendations may constitute potential intermediate and long-term solutions to rural health services access issues, more research is clearly needed (laurent 2002; leipert & george 2008. results from the present study suggest that an effective rural health research agenda should explore the unique needs of particular vulnerable (i.e. at an increased relative risk of an adverse health outcome – flaskerud & winslow 1999) groups (for example, the isolated elderly, the mentally ill, women and aboriginal individuals) as well as the unique challenges of particular communities. indeed, in this respect, it is noteworthy that regional analysis identified differences between communities with regard to access issues. in their evaluation of a specialist outreach service, gruen, weeramanthri and bailie (2002) suggested that specialist outreach ought to be responsive to the unique needs of specific communities. wakerman and humphries (2011) have also argued that effective health service reforms should be ‘contextualized’ to suit the needs of communities and that such reforms should draw on community strengths. additional research focused on the strengths, needs and unique challenges of particular communities and groups in western newfoundland may contribute essential insight into the most effective strategies and solutions to address health services access issues in this region. 82 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson conclusion many individuals and communities in canada are denied equal access to health services for reasons that can be rooted in gender, geography, economics and lack of cultural competency, amongst others. this research, which has focused on western newfoundland, has revealed a number of health services access issues for individuals living in rural and remote communities. these issues include not only wait times and difficulty finding or obtaining an appointment with a family doctor, but also difficulty finding or affording transportation to larger centres to access primary or certain specialist services. access issues can be particularly acute for women who have to travel long distances to access maternity care. access issues can also be exacerbated for aboriginal people who face additional barriers related to racism and lack of cultural understanding on the part of health professionals. anticipated next steps with this project include the wide dissemination of findings in a variety of media throughout the regions, along with the creation of opportunities for deliberative dialogue and commentary on solutions to address challenges related to accessing health services. acknowledgements this research was funded by the rural secretariat, office of public engagement, government of newfoundland and labrador. research support and coordination was provided by the health research unit (hru), faculty of medicine, memorial university. we would also like to acknowledge the significant contributions of the rural secretariat regional councils for the corner brook–rocky harbour and stephenville–port aux basques regions as well as the participation of many community members in the project. references alston m, allan, j, dietsch, e, wilkinson, j, shankar, j, osburn, l, bell, k, muenstermann, i, giorgas, d, moore, e, jennet, c, ritter, l, gibson, r, wallace, j, harris, j & grantley, j 2006, ‘brutal neglect: australian women’s access to health services’, rural and remote health, vol. 6, pp. 1–19. bc ministry of health 2007, summary of input on the conversation on health, viewed 1 may 2014, www.health.gov.bc.ca/library/publications/ year/2007/conversation_on_health/. boydell, k, pong, r, volpe, t, tilleczek, k, wilson, e & lemieux s 2006, ‘family perspectives on pathways to 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1, no. 2, pp. 103–19. society of rural physicians of canada, viewed 1 may 2014, www.srpc.ca/. szafran, o, crutcher, r, woloschuk, w, myhre, d & konkin, j 2013, ‘perceived preparedness for family practice: does rural background matter?’, canadian journal of rural medicine, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 47–55. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/11/147/ http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection/cp32-85-2002e.pdf http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection/cp32-85-2002e.pdf http://www.srpc.ca/ 84 | gateways | hippe, maddalena, heath, jesso, mccahon & olson statistics canada 2011, geosuite (software and data package for the 2011 census), viewed 1 may 2014, www12.statcan.gc.ca/censusrecensement/2011/geo/ref/geosuite-eng.cfm. wakerman, j & humphreys, j 2011, ‘sustainable primary healthcare services in rural and remote areas: innovation and evidence’, australian journal of rural health, vol. 19, pp. 118–24. wardman, d, clement, k & quantz, d 2005, ‘access and utilization of health services by british columbia’s rural aboriginal population’, leadership in health services, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. xxvi–xxxi. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/ref/geosuite-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/ref/geosuite-eng.cfm _goback fn1 learning and service at the university of buenos aires a theoretical framework guiding the implementation of educational social practices in recent years argentina’s higher education system has acted on a number of proposals that seek to prioritise those activities that link university and community. in 2010, the ministry of education created the program for the strengthening of the argentinian university (programa de fortalecimiento de la universidad argentina). this followed from the earlier creation in july 2008 of the national network of university extension (rexuni), which was tasked with acting as adviser to the national interuniversity council (cin). these are just some of the nationwide proposals that confirm this trend. today, the university of buenos aires (uba) has a subsidised program for university extensión projects that is consolidated and in permanent growth (ubanex subsidies program: resolution cs no. 583, 2016, approved the ninth call), has overseen a considerable increase in financial aid scholarships, and has developed its first fully comprehensive and interdisciplinary program of community action in vulnerable neighborhoods (resolution cs no. 4308, 2008) – all of which directs much of the university’s actions towards the communities that nurture it. this article discusses the implementation of educational social practices or mechanisms (program of educational social practices: resolutions cs no. 520, 2010 and no. 3653, 2011), which constitute the last stage of a clear public policy of extensión first developed by the university some decades ago. the policy aims to generate mechanisms whereby the knowledge produced through research and teaching will be put into the service of society. our goal is to apply these educational social practices across the entire university, eventually involving almost 300 000 students. as dr risieri frondizi, former rector of the university of buenos aires, noted, ‘the university has to become one of the main agents of profound change, as required by the current situation. to achieve this goal, it is essential to know and respond to the needs, requirements and aspirations of the community’ (frondizi 1971, p. 247). to get to this point, however, one must first start much further back. what are we talking about when we say ‘link’ the university institution to the community? what do we mean when oscar gabriel garcía rubén hallu university of buenos aires © 2017 by og garcía & r hallu. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: garcía, og & hallu, r 2017, ‘learning and service at the university of buenos aires: a theoretical framework guiding the implementation of educational social practices’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 33–45. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5532 corresponding author: oscar gabriel garcía; secedumed@rec.uba.ar doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5532 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:secedumed@rec.uba.ar http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5532 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5532 34 | gateways | garcía & hallu we talk about ‘learning and service’ and ‘educational social practices’ as the realisation of ‘university extensión’? indeed, is the concept of university extensión explicit enough in defining the social role of universities? probably not. extensión can be understood as one of the three pillars, or the third mission, on which our higher education system is founded. however, unlike teaching and scientific research, its essential attributes have not yet been comprehensively understood. this has given rise to a major management problem: extensión has become a complex concept, and is used in attempts to explain a number of issues in the higher education system, but is not yet anchored in any of them. at a fundamental level, uba’s third mission – as with many other latin american universities – has developed without sustained strategic guidelines, making it impossible to build a theoretical framework on which to lean to continue this task, accumulate experiences, improve practices and generate discussion on the sociocultural problems of today. to immerse oneself in the debates around proposals that seek to link university with community is to assume the challenge of addressing a very complex issue, not because of the kinds of practice that are being referred to – such as learning and service, situated or experiential learning – but because of the very concept of university practice that has been much discussed in recent years. for more than a century and a half, theoretical and practical education have been separated in higher education, especially in argentina, whose higher education system is characterised as being deeply theoretical in orientation. traditionally, the pedagogical action of teaching and learning ran down the same street. it was common to hear specialists in didactics talk about the teaching–learning process, as if it were a continuous line where transmission of knowledge is one-way and dependent only on the teacher. in short, if all the variables of teaching were under control, the students automatically had to learn. and if they didn’t, they would have failed. worse, they would have been responsible for that failure. however, more recently, pedagogy is making a turn that allows a fresh look at ‘practical education’ as a means to make student learning more effective. teaching is conceived as a complex process that takes place in institutional contexts of uncertainty, and where the teacher operates from personal assumptions and institutional conditions that he/she often does not control but which strongly determine the results (davini 2008). to teach, to educate, involves the intent to transform, to produce changes in those who are at the centre of the educational action; it also involves selecting the teaching strategies for this purpose, together with the provision of adequate infrastructure that will make teaching a targeted and effective activity. but, is this enough? surely not. the complementary term ‘learning’ refers to both the process by which knowledge (task) is acquired and its effective incorporation (yield). teaching influences ‘learning as 35 | gateways | garcía & hallu task’ and these tasks performed by the student constitute ‘learning as performance’ (basabe & cols 2004). so it will be that teaching and learning cannot be seen as stages of the same lineal process since they are two separate and distinct processes: it is one thing to teach and it is quite another for the student to appropriate that which is taught. of course, there is no learning without teaching or teaching without learning; they are certainly two different but conjugated processes. in short, only in the subjective experience will student learning be done, as it is this that develops the cognitive structures which help secure knowledge. thus, knowhow or ‘learning by doing’ appears as the basis for all effective learning. as a consequence, we can now understand university extensión as a pedagogical innovation whereby learning and service, along with participatory research, both expands our understanding of what it means to teach, research and learn, and supports immediate community action in the social field, improving the living conditions of people while supporting the learning of students. university extensión, therefore, entails a comprehensive training process; bi-directionality between theory and practical experience; active and meaningful learning focused on the learner; and a conception of knowledge as a social good. above all, however, its didactic practices are aimed at ‘developing in students the skills and values of citizenship, fostering collaboration between the university and the community, and helping teaching teams that try to integrate teaching and research’ (campus compact 1999). for the defenders of this particular pedagogical current, educational institutions not only have the responsibility to develop in students the knowledge, skills and aspirations of personal fulfillment, but must also seek that students commit to the context of the community in which they develop. this article provides an overview of learning and service and its different traditions. it discusses how learning and service is understood at uba as a pedagogical strategy that can guide the implementation of educational social practices. to illustrate what this means in terms of teaching, research and learning, we provide a brief overview of the comprehensive community action program in vulnerable neighborhoods or programa integral de acción comunitaria en barrios vulnerables (piacbv), which was established in 2007. this successful program has substantially contributed to the university’s understanding of extensión, and the pedagogy that underpins it. from 2017, the final stage of a longstanding policy to deeply integrate extensión across the entire university will get underway, with the mandatory introduction of educational social practices across all faculties. the conceptualisation of learning and service the long journey of university extensión as a training activity has its origins in the british universities of the late 19th century. one of the consequences of the second industrial revolution was 36 | gateways | garcía & hallu that it became necessary to train impoverished workers so they could be in charge of the process of mass production. universities thus broke out of the ivory tower that protected the pristine minds of their students and orchestrated the first extracurricular courses for workers of textile industries. gradually, this noble mission began to spread to the whole workplace, becoming more comprehensive, even covering needs that went beyond training. this way of approaching social problems influenced latin american universities, and allowed for the generation of many projects drawn from different academic disciplines. extensión tasks conceived in this way can be defined as direct and immediate action in the social field, supported by an array of research and teaching. the research allows us to address the field, knowing the real causes of social problems, as well as plan future actions (methodology and objectives), while the teaching allows us to train those who should carry out the intervention (activities and tasks), as they will not be carried out in any other way. in this sense, we can establish that any extensión practice involves the need to focus both on the community and the personal training of those who undertake the intervention. in recent decades, there has been an increase in the supply of training measures that take into consideration the development of a democratic and participatory culture, and which encourages active participation in public life and promotes coexistence and social cohesion in multicultural societies through understanding and dialogue (folgueiras bertomeu, luna gonzález & puig latorre 2013). it is worth highlighting that, in the pedagogical aspect of extensión, several proposals have been developed, but perhaps the one that has advanced most strongly is ‘learning and service’ (aprendizaje y servicio). almost all north american universities have such programs. while learning and service projects are also expanding in latin america, their practice, particularly in countries such as argentina, uruguay and chile, deviates from what is seen in other parts of the world, and is instead associated with a social welfare vocation performing direct community service; hence it is preferable to talk about ‘solidarity learning and service’, rather than learning and service only. such practices were first initiated in the 1980s in latin america, and were consolidated in 2000, with the creation of the latin american center for solidarity learning and service in buenos aires. there are many and various definitions that have been expressed on behalf of learning and service, each belted by the nature of the specific educational institution and context in which the activities take place. we can thus see two major trends. the first, of anglo-saxon origin, understands ‘service learning’ as one of the many forms of learning through experience, ‘learning by doing’, where the emphasis is on the development of technical skills rather than the consequences or impact of such practices. here the word ‘service’ evokes more ‘do together’ than ‘give to’ (tapia 2003). the second major trend is the ibero-american context, where 37 | gateways | garcía & hallu the concept of ‘service’ is understood more broadly to include a solidarity response to the many challenges posed by the conditions of social vulnerability. another term used to describe these practices is ‘situated education’, in which school learning is considered a process in which students gradually integrate into a community of social practices. in this case, it refers to a particular kind of learning, guided by a teaching strategy with a holistic approach that is intended to relate academic learning to real life (camilloni 2009). hence, for situated education, learning and performing activities for and with the community are inseparable actions, so that students have to learn by doing within the relevant context (díaz barriga 2003). in situated education, teaching strategies focus on experiential and/or located learning, and include: —the construction of knowledge in real contexts, through participatory projects and case analysis —the development of knowledge and skills to design social action plans and projects in which students substantively take part —the development of reflective and critical capacities, and high-level thinking —participation in real social practices of the community, encouraging collaborative teamwork. regarding the above strategies, it should be noted that some of the strategies were developed decades ago, and have their antecedents in experiential teaching, project method and case analysis. however, they are now being re-conceptualised from a located and sociocultural perspective. as well, several of these strategies can be combined in practice and even be integrated into more anglo-saxon models of service learning. a key difference with the latter, however, is that in situated education, the basic unit of analysis is not the individual or the learning processes themselves but the reciprocal action; that is, the relational nature of people acting in certain contexts. thus, situated education, for the purposes of its analysis and instructional intervention, must be conceived of as an activity system whose components include: —the learning subject(s) —the instruments used in the activity —the knowledge and content that regulates the activity —a community of reference in which activity and subject are inserted —standards or rules of behaviour that regulate the social relations of that community —rules establishing the division of tasks in the activity. it follows from the above that situated education, by drawing on anglo-saxon and latin american traditions, is a new pedagogy that provides a specific way of linking the university and the community. part of this ‘linking’ is the creation of spaces for reflection and curriculum learning, which help understand reality as well as the development of creative skills to meet new situations and respond to problematic social environments. these 38 | gateways | garcía & hallu spaces act as bidirectional interfaces where teachers and students learn and the community benefits with the two-way transmission of knowledge. more recently, these proposals have been spreading in europe (folgueiras bertomeu, luna gonzález & puig latorre 2013). this century has already seen the creation of different organisations, programs and meetings, including: —2002 higher education active community fund, united kingdom —2005 service learning: dialogue between universities and communities, european union (proyecto leonardo: civicus) —2005 educational civic forum, madrid, spain —2005 centre for promoting learning–service, barcelona, spain solidarity learning and service as comprehensive educational strategy in higher education it is of radical importance to reflect on the professional skills that a context requires. today, the labour reality demands comprehensive training that, in short, cannot mean only the acquisition of theoretical content or technical skills that have not been tested in real scenarios. for these reasons, to present a new teaching means to provide tools so that students get different views of the world, participate in new and varied forms of educational practices, and acquire a reflective position facing reality. this should be the main objective of a comprehensive higher education, whereby the acquisition of specific knowledge is complemented by the ability to understand, share and produce meanings, and the adoption of an active attitude towards social reality through a thoughtful, critical and creative outlook. as kolb (1984) noted: the challenge here is to develop tasks in the community that can become learning experiences worthy of the academic year in which they integrate. experiential or located education is that which occurs outside the classroom and in a community liaison. it involves necessarily an interaction. it integrates learning and personal development. following is an explanatory model of the various pedagogical strategies deployed by the university of buenos aires (figure 1). the model has four quadrants that result from applying two criteria: first, the student’s relationship with the community (social service); second, the student’s relationship with established learning in the curriculum (formal instruction). internship educational practice where the focus is on individual technical training only solidarity educational practice that only emphasises the benefit to the community volunteering educational practices in which the focus is on both the benefit to the community and the learning of non-curricular skills learning and service social practice in which the focus is on both the benefit to the community and the learning of curricular knowledge figure 1: classification table of experiential education strategies 39 | gateways | garcía & hallu when educational practices, as a pedagogical strategy, are based on recognising and fulfilling curricular interests (the acquisition of technical skills), without being related to direct action in the community, they are referred to as classic internships for a professional practice. it is important to highlight that, in this case, the community is a passive scenario in which it hardly matters what changes occur in it. when educational practices are based on recognising and satisfying community interests without being related to the curriculum, they would be considered purely solidarity activities. on the other hand, if the activity falls within a social service and the student learns, but does so in matters not related to the curriculum, we would be in the presence of so-called volunteering. finally, if the teaching strategy implies the total combination of both dimensions, that is, a high degree of social service and high relationship with curriculum mandates, we would be facing what is known as solidarity learning and service. of course, this kind of strategy requires expanding the curriculum to include the socialisation of values and skills such as developing in students the capacity for critical thinking, and to propose possible solutions to societal issues. the student is then able to identify and define problems, using technologies for their own purposes and needs (and not be used by them); act autonomously in unexpected situations; face crossroads and make decisions with ethical sense; and, finally, work for a new and better world guided by interrelationships between objective knowledge, moral purpose and social practice. we should emphasise that university learning and service and professional practices differ on several issues. while it is true that both are forms of learning based on experience, they are markedly different. first, as we saw, the learning and service favour both the acquisition of knowledge and the specific beneficial application of this knowledge in the social field, while the internship or professional practice focuses only on the service provided as training for the student (porter honnet & poulsen 1989). second, professional practices are driven by the needs of the curriculum; the former, by curricular and community needs. third, professional practices technically prepare students for later work activity, while learning and service prepare them for ethical and responsible professional practice facing the social reality of their time. from the above, we can understand that solidarity learning and service provide the theoretical framework to guide the university’s educational social practices, whereby clear benefits for both individual training and the community in which it intervenes are achieved, promoting social integration and inclusion, improvement in people’s quality of life, and the strengthening of local development. all of it resulting from interdisciplinary, intersectoral and participatory work. for the student, what is learnt? academic training, technical skills, citizen responsibility, responsibility at work, ethical 40 | gateways | garcía & hallu formation. learning and service requires partnerships with the community, objectives framed in response to community needs, explicit curricular learning objectives, reflection, evaluation and mentoring. it may be also noted that learning and service is characterised by authentic experiences, cooperation rather than competition with others, personal commitment to the community, the acquisition of new knowledge, and the need to deal with complex problems in real situations (eyler, giles & astin 1999). it is not enough to have abstract and general knowledge; students must learn to apply it in real situations. this promotes deep learning because it is necessary to reorganise acquired knowledge and integrate new knowledge. it also facilitates evaluation because the results are immediate and visible to the different actors. it commits the whole person, intellectually, emotionally and physically. finally, can a responsible citizen culture be built? the issue takes on real importance, because, today, citizenship has become a diffuse concept. it is clear, if there is something that has characterised modernity (especially during the 20th century), that the concept of ‘citizen’ was visibly established in all countries, alike. a citizen was an individual who claimed to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in his/her nation, which is nowadays described as ‘statutory citizenship’. this traditional concept of citizen adhered to the legal framework of a nation state based on a determined territorial area. in the last 40 years, however, this has entered into crisis, largely due to successive changes on the international scene: massive migratory flows, growing multiculturalism, technological impacts on communication and the rise of the information society, gender policies, progress in youth legislation, and so on. these factors gradually eroded the traditional idea of citizenship. today, we speak of cosmopolitan citizenship, which even puts into crisis the very definition of the nation state, making it indeterminate and flexible. providing an educational response to these new dimensions of citizenship is then a challenge and draws on the intellectual debates of the early 19th century. this new concept of citizenship is understood through the full exercise of rights and responsibilities, rather than in any objective legal description: a citizen will be the one who empowers themself through active participation in order to guarantee the realisation of rights. therefore, the new model of citizenship becomes a process of construction; it is not defined in a finished way and must be built every day, making education an extraordinary instrument for this purpose (folgueiras bertomeu, luna gonzález & julián 2010). solidarity learning and service in action piacbv was created by the university of buenos aires’ superior council in 2008. this is important to note, as it demonstrates that, from the outset, the program had institutional backing. since then, 41 | gateways | garcía & hallu it has received several awards for the development of good practice in learning and service, including the declaration of educational interest by the buenos aires city legislature, 2010; special mention prize presidency of the nation, 2010; and first place, macjannet prize for global citizenship, talloires network, 2011. piacbv was established as the main extensión policy of the department of student welfare and university extensión at uba, and has since substantially informed the university’s thinking around learning and service as pedagogical framework and how whole-of-university extensión could work. the program works with at-risk populations in the metropolitan area of buenos aires, across multiple areas of need, and with multiple partners. broadly, projects come under three main areas: non-formal education (literacy, tutoring, job training, digital literacy, vocational and teacher training); preventative healthcare measures (primary health care, nutrition, vision, cardiovascular risk, dental health); and community development (legal assistance, citizenship, social and cultural activities and sports). key objectives are the fostering of inclusivity, supporting local development and opening up resources to the community. at the heart of piacbv is the creation of communal spaces, called centros de extensión. the centres serve a number of purposes: ensure a stable, ongoing connection with the communities involved; give the program organisational and physical structure; centralise the efforts of projects and participants; and allow for the exchange of information across stakeholders and projects. a critical feature is that the centres allow for the full range of extensión experiences, as presented in figure 1; that is, volunteer and solidarity projects, pre-professional practicums, and service and learning. as well, faculty-based research, university chairs and institutes are all involved. however, all of these exist within a matrix that frames the teaching, learning and research tasks as inseparable from consideration of the involvement with and impact on the community. interdisciplinary, intersectoral and collaborative approaches are central to the program. the program can be seen as transformational, in large part due to the context switching that occurs, whereby students must apply their classroom-based knowledge and skills in situations that are impossible to completely predetermine. for this reason, technical knowledge must be supplemented by the ability to make decisions, work collaboratively and imagine solutions to unanticipated problems, in contexts not always associated with the application of their knowledge. at the very least, this leads to expanded employability; but, fundamentally, this interdisciplinary work, the relationships with neighbours and civil society organisations, and the guidance of teachers favours the formation of a complex understanding of citizenship today. implementing educational social practices uba began to implement, on an optional basis, educational social practices in the curricula of all disciplines during the academic 42 | gateways | garcía & hallu cycles from 2012 to 2016. from 2017, implementation will be obligatory. the following gives a brief overview of the goals and means of implementation. general objective: —to implement educational social practices as a way of achieving integrality in the learning process, to be interdisciplinary and obligatory, have impact on the curricula, and aim to develop cooperation and collective intelligence in the students. specific objectives: —involve students in a ‘genuine’ experience, strong and common, to return to it in a reflective and analytical way, fixing new knowledge —promote social integration, in order to transform reality towards inclusivity, deepen local development and expand resources in the power of the community, based on interdisciplinary, intersectoral and participatory work —deepen the comprehensive understanding of the actions of social policies, contributing in that way to the improvement of individual training and people’s quality of life —promote the development of citizenship values based on social commitment —strengthen the links between university academic practices with the community in which the institution is inserted, articulating the curricular and community needs —integrate teaching, research and extensión functions —enable reflective and critical views on society from different disciplinary approaches —develop cooperation and connection between teachers and students, and between them and society —encourage the development of critical thinking and its use for the solution of concrete problems —develop in students autonomy and the ability to make choices and negotiate them —train students for the conception and management of projects, and to generate institutional leadership. to achieve university-wide implementation, all faculties will elevate to the university’s superior council a list of projects, which will be offered to students through a database established for this purpose, including, among other information, the allowed student quota and task schedule. students will be able to start after completing the common basic cycle (compulsory first-year courses for every student); having passed the first semester of their discipline, students are able to opt for projects offered by their faculty of origin or from another academic unit. these practices will last 42 hours in the quarter and will be supervised by a teacher and a team of teaching assistants who will guide the activities. students must carry out weekly activities, and complete in writing a survey of all the activities, to be signed by the 43 | gateways | garcía & hallu teacher in charge of the project. at the end of the practices, the teachers in charge will issue a certificate for each student who has satisfactorily completed the activities. it is worth remembering that an educational social practice is a formative path that includes three components: a formative component, which involves the development of skills mediated through teaching processes; a social component, since it is a practice that takes place in spaces outside the classroom and is directed to society; and an intervention component, since it involves the development of strategies that aim to provide a service to the community in which the institution is inserted. conclusion so far, this article has provided an overview of the need to value anew experiential educational practices in higher education as a way to achieve more effective learning. it has discussed definitions and the problems that arise related to the incorporation of various curricular and pedagogical activities without a clear theoretical understanding on which to lean. our evolving understanding of solidarity learning and service, as pedagogical strategy, now serves to guide our interaction with the community and allow for the development in students of skills beyond technical competences; for example, such things as social skills, ethical training and citizen responsibility. the social commitment of the university should not be thought of as the mere transfer of the knowledge and technologies that it produces; rather, it is essential to understand community needs as a starting point for the creation of new knowledge. by engaging with critical issues in the public arena, attitudes change and new knowledge is produced; in turn, these act as driving factors behind increased maturity and social commitment of university students. extensión is then a form of relationship between university and society, which can be an instrument of change, bringing the university closer to the most disadvantaged sectors, promoting their development. in this sense, it establishes a dialectical relationship between researching, teaching and concrete action. in this way, extensión activities should have as a priority objective ‘solidarity support for solving the problems of exclusion and social discrimination, so as to give voice to the excluded and discriminated groups’ (da sousa santos 2005, p. 92). to achieve a true survey of the needs and potential of a community, it is necessary to establish links with civil society associations. direct contact with these associations facilitates a strategic look at the economic and productive capacities of the locality, and also provides the necessary basis for the articulation of direct actions. the educational social practices at uba also aim to solve one of the difficulties that university extensión programs often find: that of not being articulated as a whole-of-institution proposal, which can result in the discontinuity of projects, lack of connection between groups carrying out similar activities, dissociation from 44 | gateways | garcía & hallu teaching and research, lack of adequate funding, and irregular evaluation. that is why it is essential to incorporate educational social practices in the curriculum as mandatory, through a deep debate that goes beyond merely administrative and logistical, but which implies a real change in the institutional culture of the university: a desire to make real its social function and contribute to a more comprehensive educational process. in this way, such a program of practices may link the following instances: connection with civil society organisations, diagnosis of the potentialities and particular needs of the locality in which the institution is inserted, knowledge production, social research, project articulation, interdisciplinary approach and direct social action. references basabe, l, cols, e & feeney, s 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foundation, racine, wi. frondizi, r 1971, ‘misión social: el sentido dinámico de la misión social’, in r frondizi, la universidad en un mundo de tensiones, eudeba, buenos aires (2005). http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/155/15550207.pdf http://www.clayss.org.ar/04_publicaciones/tzhoecoen-5.pdf http://www.revistaeducacion.educacion.es/doi/362_157.pdf http://www.revistaeducacion.educacion.es/doi/362_157.pdf 45 | gateways | garcía & hallu tapia, mn 2003, ‘“servicio” y “solidaridad” en español: una cuestión terminológica o un problema conceptual’, in h perold, m sherraden & s stroud (eds), servicio cívico y voluntariado. el servicio cívico y el voluntariado en el siglo xxi (service enquiry en españo), global service institute, usavolunteer and service enquiry southern africa, johannesburg, sa. evidence to impact a community knowledge mobilisation evaluation framework within community-based prevention initiatives, there is often a disconnection between research and practice (waddell 2001). although extensive effort and substantial resources are invested in the development of community-based interventions, the uptake of these interventions in practice has often been minimal and short-lived (leadbeater 2010). this disconnect between research and practice could be the result of a lack of effective knowledge-sharing activities, narrow definitions of what constitutes uptake and use of research knowledge (henry & mark 2003), or a combination of the two. the process through which evidence-based practices are shared with practitioners who implement them has evolved and has been refined over a number of decades. a growing body of recent literature in this area includes the development of models illustrating the process of moving knowledge into action (graham et al. 2006), as well as new interactive strategies for sharing knowledge (wandersman et al. 2008) that address many limitations of passive knowledge-sharing strategies (e.g. reports, lectures). despite many advances in connecting research and practice, the gap between research and practice persists (neal et al. 2015). it is becoming increasingly evident that the process of sharing knowledge is complex and idiosyncratic. effectively sharing knowledge requires different strategies depending on who is sharing the knowledge, what knowledge is being shared, how it is shared, and the purpose for which it is shared (ward 2016). certain strategies for sharing knowledge, such as passive information dissemination and the use of audits and feedback, have been deemed inappropriate for community settings (kothari & armstrong 2011; miller & shinn 2005). this highlights the importance of carefully tailoring knowledge-sharing strategies to the learning needs and goals of those who are interested in using the information to create positive change. this article focuses on the process of knowledge mobilisation in community settings and has three aims: 1 to highlight the importance of understanding and evaluating knowledge mobilisation in community settings s. kathleen worton colleen loomis s. mark pancer geoffrey nelson wilfrid laurier university ray dev. peters queen’s university gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) © 2017 by sk worton, c loomis, sm pancer, g nelson & r dev. peters. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: worton, sk, loomis, c, pancer, sm, nelson, g & peters, r dev. 2017, ‘evidence to impact: a community knowledge mobilisation evaluation framework’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 121–142. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v10i1.5202 corresponding author: s. kathleen worton; kworton@wlu.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5202 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index 122 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters 2 to present a framework to evaluate knowledge mobilisation that captures knowledge use for community stakeholders’ goals 3 to refine the framework by applying it. before proceeding, it is necessary to briefly explain our choice of terminology. a variety of terms are used in the literature to describe activities that connect ‘knowledge-to-action’ (graham et al. 2006). terms such as mobilisation, translation, transfer, dissemination and exchange have different disciplinary origins and can be used to distinguish different approaches (ottoson 2009). however, as practice in knowledge sharing advances, distinctions between these terms are becoming blurred, with many terms being used interchangeably. in this article, we use knowledge-to-action to refer to the general process of connecting research and practice. in the framework we propose, we have opted to use the term ‘knowledge mobilisation’ to convey a specific process of sharing knowledge that has been co-created by researchers and community stakeholders in one jurisdiction with community stakeholders in other jurisdictions who may benefit from applying this knowledge locally. knowledge mobilisation has been formally defined as ‘the reciprocal and complementary flow and uptake of research knowledge between researchers, knowledge brokers and knowledge users—both within and beyond academia—in such a way that may benefit users and create positive impacts within canada and/or internationally’ (social sciences and humanities research council 2016). knowledge mobilisation in community settings much existing knowledge-to-action theory and practice has been developed for clinical or policy settings rather than community contexts. community settings can be conceptualised as organisations that provide services to the public or to specific populations at a local level, are often guided by a board of directors, and engage community members in forming the organisation’s strategic direction (wilson et al. 2010). examples include community-based organisations, public and non-profit organisations, and some direct service providers (wilson et al. 2010). in community contexts, there are many stakeholder groups involved in knowledge mobilisation, including organisational staff, board members, policy-makers or funders, and community members who benefit from the organisation’s services or are engaged as volunteers. knowledge-to-action theory and practice literature contains a wide variety of strategies, including highly passive strategies and strategies that require extensive stakeholder engagement. there is therefore a need for more extensive research to determine which approaches work best in particular contexts (walter, nutley & davies 2005). many knowledge-to-action strategies commonly used in clinical settings (e.g. passive information-sharing, audits and feedback, the voice of opinion leaders, cost analysis) have been applied to community settings despite a lack of evidence regarding 123 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters their effectiveness in the community context (kothari & armstrong 2011; miller & shinn 2005). this is likely because of power imbalance between researchers and community/stakeholders (isenberg et al. 2004) which results in researchers selecting knowledge-to-action strategies based on assumptions that do not necessarily hold true in community settings (miller & shinn 2005). two assumptions appear to be particularly problematic for sharing research evidence with community stakeholders: 1) the assumption that knowledge producers and knowledge users have similar values and approach innovation in the same ways, and 2) the assumption that implementation of an evidence-based program or practice is the end goal for community stakeholders. the assumption of similar values and approaches to innovation is challenged by evidence suggesting that community stakeholders are often interested in holistic programs and ecological outcomes while researchers are more focused on targeted interventions and individual outcomes (particularly in clinical settings) (kothari & armstrong 2011; weiss, lillefjell & magnus 2016). researchers also tend to hold a ‘pro-innovation bias’ (miller & shinn 2005), prioritising newly developed evidence-based programs over existing practices that may appear beneficial but lack evidence. community stakeholders often prefer to innovate through the evolution of existing programs using local knowledge rather than through implementing external initiatives (kothari & armstrong 2011). differences in approaches to innovation likely stem from differences in what is considered to be evidence. researchers often define evidence narrowly in terms of empirical research and emphasise rigour, while community stakeholders often define evidence more broadly in ways that include experiential knowledge and practical wisdom, and emphasise practical utility (bowen & martens 2005; kothari & armstrong 2011; miller & shinn 2005). regarding the second assumption of similar approaches to implementation, researchers often view implementation of evidence-based practice as the ultimate goal of knowledge-to-action efforts, while community stakeholders may prioritise new ideas or changes in thinking (bowen & martens 2005). implementing an innovation in practice is often a considerably more complex task than it appears to be in knowledge-to-action models (greenhalgh & wieringa 2011). this is especially true in community settings, where organisations often work collaboratively and are unlikely to move independently to implement a new evidence-based approach without consulting others in their network (bowen & martens 2005; kothari & armstrong 2011; weiss, lillefjell & magnus 2016). many evidencebased practices are expensive, and communities may lack the resources to implement a program in its entirety (miller & shinn 2005) and instead opt to use the information to shape their thinking or to enhance existing programs. sharing knowledge via strategies that are inappropriate for community contexts may perpetuate impressions that research 124 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters and practice are separate ‘worlds’ and impede meaningful connection and collaboration between researchers and community stakeholders. effective evaluation of knowledge-sharing activities is essential to better understand how community stakeholders apply information and to continuously improve knowledge-sharing strategies tailored for community settings. knowledge-to-action strategies considered to be most appropriate for community settings often involve collaborative efforts to generate and share knowledge. engaging community stakeholders in community-based participatory research approaches where they are actively involved in the production of knowledge alongside researchers is a means of promoting knowledge sharing (wilson et al. 2010). another recommended strategy is to conduct evaluative research on strong grassroots community initiatives. this provides an opportunity to strengthen existing local practices by developing an evidence base and identifying core components of these programs and initiatives that can be adopted by other communities (miller & shinn 2005). there is a need for effective knowledge-to-action strategies that can be used to convey these core components across communities to maximise the benefit of existing communitybased research and assist communities in learning from one another. identifying the processes through which information can be shared most effectively among community stakeholders requires the development of knowledge mobilisation strategies tailored to community audiences. in order to understand how to tailor strategies to community audiences, it is necessary to evaluate knowledge mobilisation and refine the strategies employed based on what works and what could be improved. evaluating knowledge mobilisation despite the existence of numerous knowledge-to-action strategies, minimal attention has been directed towards evaluating knowledge mobilisation. much of the existing research evaluating knowledgeto-action initiatives is focused on implementation and the examination of more advanced phases of implementation to assess fidelity of the program to the original model (durlak & dupre 2008). in knowledge mobilisation of evidence-based community initiatives, an overemphasis on implementation can result in a narrow lens through which to examine community uptake and use of the knowledge shared (henry & mark 2003) for three main reasons. first, there are many different forms of knowledge use. knowledge can be used conceptually to change perspectives or ways of thinking, persuasively to influence the thinking and decisions of others (such as funders or local decision-makers), or instrumentally to make tangible changes to practices (leviton & hughes 1981). second, evaluators focused on implementation may be unable to foresee the ways in which community stakeholders may adapt the knowledge to apply it in practice. this tension between adaptation and fidelity is important to recognise, as there is the risk that 125 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters knowledge shared could be applied in ways that don’t produce the outcomes promised by the program, or worse be misused to the detriment of organisations or citizens (cousins 2004). one way of addressing the tension around fidelity vs adaptation is to emphasise the importance of fidelity to core components (i.e. ‘key ingredients’) of the evidence-based practice that are considered to be necessary for the success of the innovation (hawe, shiell & riley 2004; miller & shinn 2005). however, this approach is not perfect as it raises questions regarding the extent to which it is realistically feasible to identify and validate core components of every program (miller & shinn 2005). third, knowledge utilisation is often a long-term process in which adaptation is considered ‘inevitable’ (ashley 2009). adapted knowledge becomes harder to track during evaluation, and the use of knowledge is more difficult to attribute to a specific knowledge mobilisation initiative when it has been adapted (blake & ottoson 2009). to address some of these challenges, we present, in the next section, a new framework designed to facilitate the evaluation of short-term knowledge use in community settings. we have developed this framework to fit a specific niche: the evaluation of short-term knowledge use across communities. this niche exists between the immediate evaluation of mobilisation activities using ratings of satisfaction, perceived relevance and usefulness (loiselle, semenic & côté 2005) and long-term implementation evaluation assessing the planning, implementation and sustainability of new programs or innovations in a single community (e.g. stetler et al. 2011; wandersman et al. 2016). our proposed framework is intended for evaluating the effectiveness of knowledge mobilisation and capturing different forms of knowledge use in the preimplementation phase. pre-implementation activities involve early engagement of community members (by researchers engaged in knowledge mobilisation), opportunities to discuss feasibility of the program or initiative in the community setting, and consideration of community readiness in terms of resource reviewing and cost planning (chamberlain, brown & saldana 2011). community knowledge mobilization evaluation framework foundation of the framework we propose the community knowledge mobilization evaluation (ckme) framework as an approach to evaluating knowledge mobilisation that is designed to capture various forms of knowledge use within community settings. rather than focusing on implementation of a specific program, this framework is intended for knowledge mobilisation efforts undertaken to convey the key components of a community-based initiative in a way that promotes adaptation and uptake by community stakeholders and allows them to use the information in ways that meet their needs. our approach to evaluating knowledge use positions social impact as the ultimate goal. social impact is ‘a consequence of a process 126 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters in which knowledge and expertise circulates to achieve certain goals that are deemed relevant for the development of society’ (spaapen & van drooge 2011, p. 212). as mentioned previously, the various terms used to describe the process of sharing knowledge emerged from different disciplines. these terms represent knowledge-to-action theories that differ based on what information is shared (e.g. policies, programs, research findings) and how it is shared (e.g. communication, marketing, implementation) (ottoson 2009). the ckme framework draws upon knowledge-to-action theories from a number of disciplines to inform key evaluation questions. we incorporate questions on the effectiveness of different formats used to convey the information to community stakeholders (e.g. resources, workshops, discussion forums) developed by drawing on knowledge translation theory in medicine and public health (ottoson 2009). the process of understanding how information is transferred and shared among community stakeholders is based upon knowledge diffusion theory in communication studies (rogers 1995). we have informed considerations of knowledge non-use and the matter of context in understanding justifications for non-use by drawing upon knowledge utilisation theory in program evaluation (cousins 2004). the overarching concept of ‘pathways of influence’, in which evidence informs actions intended to facilitate positive social change (henry & mark 2003), is also based in knowledge utilisation literature. description of the framework the pre-application version of the ckme framework is presented in figure 1. the purpose of the framework is to help identify questions to guide examination of varying forms of use that link the social impact goals of the original innovation (from which knowledge is being mobilised) with the social impact goals guiding knowledge use by community stakeholders. rather than focusing on observable outcomes, this framework guides evaluators to examine the process of knowledge sharing and knowledge use. the components of the framework are linked to specific questions that draw information from community stakeholders and are of sufficient breadth to capture varying forms of knowledge use. by framing the evaluation process in terms of alignment between the knowledge mobilisation activities and the social impact goals of information use, the evaluation process remains flexible by capturing varying forms of use (conceptual, persuasive, instrumental). although it is possible (and likely beneficial) to take a mixed-methods approach to evaluating knowledge mobilisation, our framework is primarily intended to guide the qualitative component of evaluation designs. much of the information the framework is designed to gather can be best gained through interviews with stakeholders who have participated in knowledge mobilisation activities. additionally, the ckme framework is designed to be used in a one-time follow-up evaluation of the knowledge mobilisation activities three to five months after 127 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters stakeholders have received the information to allow sufficient time for them to begin incorporating the information into their roles and networks. the three to five month timeframe also provides the flexibility necessary to accommodate the yearly schedule cycles of community organisations to avoid periods when participants may be unavailable (e.g. end of fiscal year, school summer/ winter breaks) or to capture periods of program planning or the development of new initiatives (e.g. funding application cycles). applying the community knowledge mobilization evaluation framework to demonstrate the use of the ckme framework and refine the framework further, we applied it to a transnational knowledge mobilisation initiative for an evidence-based early childhood development project called ‘better beginnings, better futures’ (better beginnings), which is an early childhood initiative with the primary goal of promoting the healthy development of children and families in economically disadvantaged communities (peters 1994); it is designed to (a) prevent developmental problems, and (b) build capacity of parents, families and neighbourhoods to support healthy child development. since the late 1980s, this government-funded multi-site project in eight communities in ontario, canada (grant & russell 1990) has taken an innovative approach to mental health promotion, engaging community residents in developing programs for children. programs must be ecological and holistic, community-driven, integrated with existing community services and universally available to children and families (grant & russell 1990; peters & russell 1994; worton et al. 2014). longitudinal research followed children (aged 4 to 8) and families in 3 of the 8 project sites and found positive effects of participation of children at several points in the life span, including the most recent assessments when they reached grade 12 (peters, bradshaw, et al. 2010; peters, nelson et al. 2010). to share the lessons learned with other communities, researchers engaged in a one-year pan-canadian knowledge mobilisation plan. the team developed interactive workshops and delivered them in 7 canadian provinces and 1 of 3 territories (alberta, manitoba, new brunswick, nova scotia, ontario, québec, saskatchewan, and the yukon) as well as a set of resource figure 1: early ckme framework 128 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters materials in english and french covering the following topics (available at bbbf.ca) (hayward et al. 2011): history, program model, research and evaluation, community resident participation, engaging community partners, project organisation and management, and working with government and other funders. workshops were scheduled at the request of host community organisations and based on the availability of the presenters. in applying the ckme framework, we describe the short-term evaluation of the better beginnings knowledge mobilisation activities designed to examine how communities are utilising the information shared (if at all) and to understand the motivations and contextual factors influencing use. two primary research questions guided our application of the ckme framework: 1 to what extent do knowledge mobilisation activities meet the information needs and learning goals of participants? how could the activities be changed to better meet these needs and goals? 2 to what extent is the information presented in the knowledge mobilisation activities being used by participants in their communities 3 to 5 months following the workshop? a. what contextual factors influence this use/non-use? b. what goals or expected outcomes do participants using the information hope to achieve? method we used a stratified random sampling strategy to select a subsample of 5–6 participants from each province/territory to participate. participants’ primary perspective in attending the workshop (community member/parent, volunteer, employee with an organisation serving children, government policy) was used for stratification. in a rare case where all participants from a city indicated the same primary perspective, we used an intensity sampling method in which workshop hosts (i.e. community leaders/local workshop organisers) were asked to identify specific workshop participants who could provide in-depth information on the topics of interest. in cases where fewer than 5 individuals from a region agreed to participate in interviews, we included each of these participants in the sub-sample. this was the case in 2 provinces. interviews were conducted with a sub-sample of participants engaged in a larger mixed methods evaluation that included ratings of satisfaction and readiness for implementation. although french language knowledge mobilisation activities took place in the provinces of québec and new brunswick, the present study includes only stakeholders participating in the english language activities due to limited resources available for translation of the interview materials and limited capacity to conduct interviews in french. thirty-one individuals participated in this study. eight participants attended a workshop in ontario, 5 in alberta, 3 in manitoba, 4 in nova scotia, 6 in saskatchewan, and 5 in the 129 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters yukon. of these participants, 19 identified their primary perspective as employees of an organisation serving children, 6 as government/ policy, 1 as a volunteer with an organisation serving children, 1 as having multiple primary perspectives (employees and government/ policy) and 4 opted not to specify. although community members/ parents were invited to knowledge mobilisation workshops, no participants in this study identified their primary perspective as a community member/parent. two participants identified themselves as male, and 29 identified as female. qualitative phone interviews (approximately 30 minutes) were conducted with workshop participants using a semi-structured guide with questions about learning goals, information gained and information used. interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed for coding. data analysis was guided by the ckme framework and consisted of five steps: 1) reviewing transcripts to identify key concepts, 2) forming an initial coding scheme, 3) developing thematic codes that encompassed multiple concepts, 4) reviewing themes by conceptual linkages and hierarchies, 5) creating definitions for each theme (braun & clarke, 2006; hsieh & shannon 2005). rigour and trustworthiness of findings were enhanced through an audit trail of the primary researcher’s observational, methodological and theoretical memos (amis & silk 2008). findings the findings of the evaluation are presented in the ckme framework’s four main sections: learning goals, knowledge use, process of knowledge use, and outcomes of knowledge use. the first findings section addresses the first research question regarding the effectiveness of knowledge mobilisation in meeting participants’ learning goals. the next three sections address the second research questions regarding knowledge use, contextual factors influencing use (or non-use), and participants’ intended outcomes for use. assessing learning goals and information needs overall, the knowledge mobilisation activities offered met the knowledge goals of participants. most participants approached the workshop and resources to gain knowledge of the initiative, the core principles and unique aspects of its approach, and the best practice findings. interacting with other attendees to discuss relevance and to build connections also was important. participants who were building or enhancing existing local initiatives prior to attending the workshop sought tangible strategies for building engagement/partnerships and procedural information. participants generally indicated that the workshop and resources met their learning needs by providing a comprehensive overview of the program and incorporating sufficient detail, commenting that the information shared was high quality and well presented. i think the presentation was really quite good. it was in very clear language, very easy to understand, very easy to follow, and gave 130 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters great examples of how this has been such a success story. the videos that had interviews [with staff] who were actually running a better beginnings program were really quite good. some participants stated that the workshop provided a valuable starting point in sparking discussion regarding how better beginnings might fit with their local communities. many participants indicated that more practical information on applying the information would be a valuable addition and desired more time for discussion and interaction with other attendees. the one-day training was good in providing that really good snapshot … it gave us a big overview, but didn’t allow enough time for us to really dig into each section and figure out what exactly worked, what didn’t, and what were the strategies that were really successful. assessing knowledge use and non-use most participants interviewed indicated that they had used the information from the workshop and/or the resources; some participants noted not having had opportunities for use prior to the interview. key reasons for non-use appeared to be a perceived lack of organisational readiness, or limits of one’s role, or reticence of organisational hierarchies to engage in discussions about new initiatives and system changes. the workshop gave me very good grounding … and should we get to the position where [we] were actually working towards achieving something similar i think it would be very helpful at that point, but we aren’t at that position at the moment. the principles … fit really well with two major large scale research projects that are going on in our province … but who moves ahead with that really gets determined by the superintendent. many participants had used and shared the information to reinforce some of the values and approaches already present in their work. participants’ experiences in using knowledge gained from the knowledge mobilisation activities illustrated a combination of many forms of use. one form of use was to inform new perspectives. many participants indicated that the initiative’s principles reflected what they were already doing in some of their existing programs (e.g. 50 per cent resident participation in program committees). i think some of the information in here has helped frame that conversation about why it’s important to have community residents share equal partnership or have equal roles within a coalition. there is that tendency to think that service providers are the experts and community residents are kind of there to learn from the service providers when in actuality i think that it’s the opposite. so getting that 50/50 partnership … that is an ongoing conversation. 131 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters resident participation had previously been a missing component for some participants. we already have a whole array of programs and services in [our province], and a lot of them are aligned and centralized in one area. what we wanted to take away from this was, how do we connect what we already have to community members and parents and give them a voice, and so we really used the information that was developed through better beginnings to integrate into our programs, what we were already doing with communities. the core components of better beginnings were also used for comparing existing practices and identifying new strategic directions. we used it to evaluate our own practice and then to say, ‘what are we already doing?’ and ‘where are our gaps?’ to evaluate where we could make improvement. for some, the resources provided a starting point for discussion to reflect on the fit between better beginnings and community needs and the possibility of developing a similar initiative. [the toolkit] was a discussion starter for those who were coming to the workshop. they were able to then decide whether it’s a good fit for the neighborhoods and that gave us a population of people to speak with or to connect with or to follow up with. it gave us the tools to understand what resources we would need, what kind of support we would need – political support, financial support — and what the role would be of the community organization if we were to move ahead. another form of use was acquiring new resources and implementing new practices. a number of participants described using the knowledge to find resources needed to implement new programs. i used [the resources] to help with a number of grant proposals ... to be able to have additional empirical … and theoretical support. now we have more fire power, more tools in our tool kit more backup when we’re saying ‘we need this’ because we actually have really good reasons and we have really good documentation. the grant review that i’m sitting for next week is a $20,000 neighborhood grant and it’s my opinion that the research that i was using from better beginnings is part of the reason why. another participant was involved in efforts to implement the initiative, but the community was still in the process of seeking resources to support it. we are planning on implementing better beginnings, better futures. chats with politicians and forming a steering committee made up of 50% community members are the next steps. [a challenge is] funding – stabilized funding. whenever we talk to anybody about 132 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters implementation of any program, it’s ‘oh that sounds great, where are we going to get the money for it?’ well there is no money so the discussion ends pretty quickly … i’ve had a chance to touch base with mpps, councilors and school board super-intendants. they listened and said, ‘oh that sounds like a good idea, good luck!’ in another community, the availability of resources and support of political stakeholders facilitated faster implementation of the program model in a community resource centre initiative. we basically used better beginnings as our model as we pushed forward. after we attended the workshop we were really excited and fired up that this … was the model that we’ve been looking for. everything just fell right into place perfectly for us…we worked really hard and we managed to get individuals with[in] the city to really buy-in … the two tools that we used were the … summary and the video. the video is a wonderful tool. we’ve used that in numerous presentations and every time we send out funding requests we send that link along so that people have an idea of where it is we want to go. these findings demonstrate that participants use the information in various ways, including sharing information and starting discussions within their organisations or networks, enhancing existing programs, or starting a new initiative using better beginnings as a model. early outcomes and social impact goals guiding use most participants indicated it was too early to identify tangible outcomes from their use of the better beginnings information. it was clear that participants using the information had been able to accomplish outputs such as establishing new relationships with stakeholders (e.g. local politicians), acquiring resources or taking steps towards acquiring resources for new community initiatives, and generating meaningful discussion and new strategies for engaging parents in developing community programs for children. we had good partnerships with professionals and with schools, but we did not have partnerships with parents as well-developed as we do now. parents are now attending parent-child programs whereas before they were always cancelled. participants who had used the information applied it for one or more of the following long-term goals: increased resident/parent engagement in programs for children and families, improvement of early childhood intervention services/supports, promotion of children’s health and wellbeing, and increasing the capacity of families to support healthy child development. many of these goals were central to participants’ work and were being advanced through multiple community initiatives, including community coalitions, participatory research, new programs for parents and families, prevention promotion, and the development of 133 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters community resource centres for children and families. participants’ information use supported initiatives with evidence, acting as an established example of core components necessary for achieving program goals. communities used the information on core components to identify gaps, and strategies to fill those gaps, as well as to draw upon the evidence base and established long-term impact of better beginnings to advance new programs or initiatives that used similar approaches. the whole thing is a community development process, it’s all slow, and it all means you have to take the lead from those who do it not just those of us who have our hands on the pulse of what is new and exciting and the best practices. i’m looking to build family capacity in addition to engaging the community so that families are less insular and reliant on poor practices and they adopt healthier practices. ultimately it would be to make sure we’re building engagement with other communities and agencies. we are very inter-dependent and we have to acknowledge that. two communities were implementing the better beginnings model. one community indicated they were working to implement the full better beginnings initiative. the other was actively using the model to guide efforts to develop a ‘hub’ for children and family services after identifying gaps in their existing services. participants in other communities were actively using the information shared to make changes in local services and programming to advance the better beginnings’ goal of promoting the healthy development of children and families in economically disadvantaged communities through: 1) the prevention of developmental problems, and 2) by enhancing the capacity of parents, families and neighbourhoods to support the healthy development of children (peters 1994). notably, many of these goals were central to the overarching work of the participants and extended beyond the utilisation of knowledge generated from better beginnings. however, each of the participants who used the information used it to enhance the overall goal of early childhood development through resident engagement, partnerships among stakeholders, connections between communities and schools, with a focus on prevention of mental health issues, and development of new programs for children and parents. in summary, the application of the ckme framework to better beginnings knowledge mobilisation activities led to participants’ learning needs being met, with the exception of the need for adequate discussion and interaction time amongst participants. this knowledge changed perspectives on existing community services, increased understanding of the key components of the better beginnings initiative, helped participants identify gaps in community programs and services, informed steps towards adopting missing components, and facilitated acquisition of (or advocacy for) resources and support for new initiatives 134 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters or practices (e.g. grants and/or generating political support). instances of non-use among participants were minimal, occurring for those who did not have decision-making authority or those in communities lacking capacity. overall, the better beginnings knowledge mobilisation activities were valuable for community stakeholders, and many used the information gained to inform and advance existing community initiatives aimed at improving services for, and promoting the wellbeing of, children and families. framework revisions although the original ckme framework worked well for the evaluation presented above, our application informed the need for further development of the framework to better capture knowledge use (figure 2). the overarching linear pathway between knowledge mobilisation activities and social impact outlined in the early framework was not completely conducive to the flexible process of knowledge use, in which stakeholders use information as a tool to advance existing community initiatives rather than as a catalyst for the development of brand new initiatives. for this reason, we have changed the model to highlight the importance of the link between the social change goals of the original innovation or evidence-based practice (and subsequent knowledge mobilisation activities) and the broad social impact goals of the community stakeholders. this change shifts the emphasis from brand new community initiatives and the assumption of knowledge mobilisation as a catalyst to focus on the alignment of goals between the evidence-based practice and the overarching goals of the stakeholders using the information. we also modified the presentation of the forms of knowledge use by replacing technical (i.e. conceptual) terms with a multi-dimensional component depicting specific knowledge use activities. the cyclical nature of the new knowledge use component is intended to capture the finding that stakeholders are often engaged in multiple forms of use simultaneously, often for the purpose of achieving a single outcome. to encourage greater depth in participants’ responses, we have revised and clarified the wording of some of the questions included in the ckme framework. contributions of the ckme framework the ckme framework is a useful tool to assist researchers in identifying pathways between knowledge mobilisation activities and participants’ application of the knowledge to create positive social change for the populations they serve. researchers engaged in collaborative work with communities require strategies for evaluating knowledge mobilisation to inform what works in what context (walter, nutley & davies 2005). it is important that these evaluation strategies be functional and useful in situations where resources for evaluating knowledge mobilisation are limited. some existing approaches to evaluating knowledge-to-action strategies focus on the effectiveness of the strategies in producing a specific behaviour change among knowledge users. these approaches 135 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters to evaluation are more common in clinical settings than in community settings (kothari & armstrong 2011) and make use of resource intensive research designs, such as randomised control trials and comparison groups (bhattacharyya, estey & zwarenstein 2011) to identify best practice. this approach to evaluation, although appropriate in some settings, is a poor fit for knowledge mobilisation involving community stakeholders, who may use the information in unpredictable or less obvious ways. in this article, we have focused the development of our framework on evaluation of the short-term impact of knowledge mobilisation activities on advancing community-driven social change initiatives that align with the goals of the evidence-based practice being shared. our main objective in designing the framework was to create a tool for researchers that would be useful in identifying the early outcomes of knowledge mobilisation activities and capture how community stakeholders choose to apply knowledge given their local context and goals. this approach to evaluating knowledge mobilisation has some limitations. asking individual stakeholders about their use of knowledge often fails to capture knowledge applied at the organisational or community level; nonetheless, the approach provides insights into organisational actions. the use of selfreporting methods introduces potential bias, e.g. offering socially desirable responses (bhattacharyya, estey & zwarenstein 2011). despite its limitations, the approach we propose has important benefits as a tool for short-term evaluations of knowledge mobilisation activities aimed at sharing evidence-based practices generated through community-engaged research and action. figure 2: the community knowledge mobilization evaluation (ckme) framework 136 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters the main advantages of the ckme include its simplicity and utility, and its flexibility to capture multiple forms of knowledge use in context. simplicity and utility the ckme framework is designed to be short term and pragmatic, and to require minimal resources. the simplicity of the format makes it effective for evaluating broad knowledge mobilisation efforts that aim to share information with a wide range of community stakeholders. this approach to evaluation works well for a knowledge mobilisation initiative like better beginnings, where knowledge mobilisation is conducted for the purposes of ‘scaling out’ (sharing knowledge widely across community stakeholders) (moore & westley 2011) and introducing new concepts to settings where professional relationships or connections between the researchers and communities are not yet established. the utility of the framework was an important consideration in its design as researchers engaged in community knowledge mobilisation efforts may require an evaluation strategy that captures early outcomes and allows them to meet short-term evaluation requirements of the funders supporting the knowledge mobilisation activities. although the framework has been designed to be used in the short term, it can provide a basis on which to further engage in additional knowledge mobilisation activities or identify alternative audiences. in the case of the better beginnings evaluation, researchers could follow up and build relationships with the communities engaged in implementing the program to help them maintain core components of the program and alignment with program theory as they adapt the program locally (lee, altschul & mowbray 2008). researchers could also follow up on barriers to knowledge use by ‘scaling up’ and intentionally engaging stakeholders who hold decision-making roles and have the capacity and political influence to create change (moore & westley 2011). flexibility to capture multiple forms of knowledge use in context capturing varying forms of knowledge use is central to the applicability of the framework in community settings. participants working in communities are likely to use the information gained in varying ways, some of which impact community services directly and others that influence services indirectly. the application of the ckme framework to the better beginnings knowledge mobilisation activities demonstrated the importance of taking a broad approach to evaluating and assessing use. if the evaluation had focused only on implementation of better beginnings, results would have shown minimal evidence of uptake during the time period. the approach outlined in the framework has advantages over evaluation strategies that involve assessing only participant satisfaction or perceived usefulness (chambers et al. 2011). assessing both the extent to which the activities met participants’ learning goals and the ways in which participants used the 137 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters information provides insight into individual-level outcomes (e.g. participant satisfaction and changes to attitudes or knowledge) and into some organisational outcomes (e.g. using the information to acquire resources for new programs) or community outcomes (e.g. enhanced relationships and networks among stakeholders). examining contextual factors underlying instances of non-use (e.g. competing priorities, organisational structure) can inform decisions regarding additional knowledge mobilisation efforts in these communities and inform future knowledge mobilisation strategies. long-term implications use of the ckme framework has long-term implications for academics and community stakeholders as it facilitates the improvement of knowledge mobilisation and supports the transition to full implementation and sustainability of evidencebased practice in community settings. continuing evaluation informs ongoing improvement of knowledge mobilisation strategies and the fit of particular strategies with the community context. careful examination of fit is valuable in ensuring knowledge mobilisation activities are an effective use of time and resources for both community stakeholders and academic researchers. numerous new strategies for knowledge mobilisation have emerged with advancements in digital communication and social networking (e.g. online workspaces or portals, web conferencing, podcasts) and ongoing evaluation is needed to examine the value of different strategies in different contexts. findings regarding the effectiveness of knowledge mobilisation strategies in community settings (gained from application of the ckme framework) can be used to inform the training of researchers as well as the hiring, education and professional development of knowledge mobilisation officers and scholarly communications officers at academic institutions. as seen in the case study presented, communities engaged in knowledge mobilisation activities can draw upon the evidence base for innovative programs/practices to advocate for support and resources to implement programs/practices or to adapt existing community programs by incorporating evidence-informed components. the ckme framework is helpful in capturing varying forms of use including (but not limited to) instrumental use leading to full implementation. use of the ckme framework can help researchers identify communities intending to progress from the pre-implementation phase to more advanced stages of implementation of an evidence-based practice. researchers can then draw upon frameworks in the implementation evaluation literature to support communities in undertaking longer term consideration of program outcomes, fidelity and sustainability. future research further application of the ckme framework to the mobilisation of other community-based initiatives is necessary to inform and refine future iterations of the approach. although the application 138 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters of the framework to better beginnings is informative, application to other knowledge mobilisation initiatives for community-based practices may produce different findings. better beginnings is an initiative that was developed and evaluated over a 20-year timeframe. knowledge about better beginnings has been published and shared at various stages of the project through traditional academic avenues (e.g. monographs, journals, conferences) and better beginnings programs developed as a part of the demonstration project still run in a number of communities and receive provincial funding. existing awareness of the principles of better beginnings may have set the stage for faster and more extensive knowledge uptake and use. the better beginnings knowledge mobilisation activities aimed to provide many different communities and community organisations across canada with an introduction to the better beginnings approach. this pan-canadian knowledge mobilisation strategy prioritised breadth in engaging many communities for a short period of time. future research on the application of the framework to a knowledge mobilisation initiative that is locally focused and prioritises depth of information and long-term engagement would allow for further exploration of the utility of the framework. this application would provide the opportunity for deeper exploration of instances of use and non-use in the preimplementation phases of evidence-based practice implementation, and could allow for the triangulation of responses across different stakeholder groups and for deeper exploration of social impact over time. another valuable direction for future research is the adaptation of the framework to examine knowledge mobilisation at baseline. adapting the framework to gather information on context, learning goals and initial learning outcomes prior to or immediately following knowledge mobilisation activities could enhance existing baseline evaluation approaches that focus on participant satisfaction. conclusions in this study, we developed the community knowledge mobilization evaluation framework and applied it to establish how the framework could help illustrate the effectiveness and impact of knowledge mobilisation activities. in conducting the evaluation, we were able to document the numerous forms of use of the information shared and better understand the strengths of knowledge mobilisation activities and identify ways to improve these activities in the future. these positive results are encouraging for researchers and can help to enhance awareness of the importance of evaluating knowledge mobilisation activities, as well as further improve ways that evidence developed through community-based research activities can be shared for maximum social impact. the framework is a step towards addressing the gap in literature examining the fit between knowledge mobilisation strategies and the information needs of community stakeholders. 139 | gateways | worton, loomis, pancer, nelson & peters the ckme framework 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to their communities and to society. civic engagement and community service should be inextricable from research, teaching and learning. the talloires network is an international coalition of higher education institutions founded on such a vision. it is because of this vision that the macjannet foundation approached the talloires network in 2009 to establish the macjannet prize for global citizenship. following in the footsteps of founders donald and charlotte macjannet, the international foundation is dedicated to providing pathways for individuals and institutions to use their skills for the good of their communities. the macjannet prize recognizes exceptional student community engagement initiatives at talloires network member universities and contributes financially to their ongoing public service efforts. to date, the macjannet prize has attracted 495 submissions by community engagement projects, all of them innovative initiatives and representative of regional diversity of the network: 102 nominations have been received from north america, 95 from africa, 86 from east asia and the pacific region, 69 from latin america and the caribbean, 66 from central asia, 48 from south asia, 22 from the middle east and north africa, and 6 from europe. of those 495 nominations, 38 have been awarded either first, second, or third place and 19 received honorable mentions. the nomination pool also represents an array of topics, which can be grouped by area of focus. the majority of the initiatives address education-related issues (127) including but not limited to: illiteracy, access to education for marginalized communities, and language. in some initiatives, institutions collaborate with outside non-profit organizations or government agencies on community development work (125). other topics include: disease prevention and health promotion (63), social justice and human rights (58), environment and sustainability (46), community building (28), poverty alleviation (16), and ‘other’ or a combination of topics (32). brianda hernandez cavalcanti monique ching talloires network © 2017 by b hernandez cavalcanti & m ching. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: hernandez cavalcanti, b & ching, m 2017, ‘the talloires network and the macjannet prize for global citizenship: explorations on sustainable and innovative leadership’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 8–13. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5566 corresponding author: b hernandez cavalcanti; brianda.hernandez@tufts.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5566 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:brianda.hernandez@tufts.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5566 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5566 9 | gateways | hernandez cavalcanti & ching while the macjannet prize is a financial award, the program yields many intangible – but equally important – impacts, as the articles in this edition indicate. firstly, the prize encourages champions of community engagement to pause and reflect on what they have accomplished and provides opportunities to evaluate, improve, and learn from similar projects. secondly, the international recognition that comes with the prize supports and, in some cases, provides the validity needed to gain ground either within the faculty or the university. thirdly, that validity can nurture the confidence to seek other sources of recognition or funding. lastly, the prize signals the beginning of a type of university-community engagement that is central – rather than peripheral – to the institutional mission. transforming university civic and community engagement this special edition journal of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement features articles from five first-place macjannet prize winners and one second-place winner. the six articles offer a glimpse of university civic engagement projects in six countries created to help those who have been denied such opportunities. they highlight the complexity of civic engagement efforts in different institutional environments and regions of the world and provide insight into the pedagogy and practice of engagement. further, the articles highlight the many challenges associated with this type of work, not only with scaling up the initiatives but with institutionalizing them. finally, these accounts serve as a reminder of the critical importance higher education institutions have in the success of these initiatives and the dedication of the individuals who lead them. the authors of the articles all have qualities that leaders in civic engagement should possess. they are engaged scholars who have championed the work against all odds and believe wholeheartedly in the students and their potential for becoming the transformational leaders of tomorrow. they have challenged the status quo and overcome obstacles to do good in this world. the authors believe this engaged work is mutually reinforcing with their research and teaching and they view it as an essential part of their scholarship. they persuasively demonstrate that engaged work, or service, should have equal or even greater weight than the two other pillars of higher education – teaching and research. the authors, and arguably all those who participate in the initiatives, believe local knowledge is not in competition with scholarly knowledge. a number of the articles illustrate the importance of understanding the perceptions students have of the community, of recognizing there is much to learn outside the classroom, and of the university’s role in critically rethinking what it means to research, teach and learn today. 10 | gateways | hernandez cavalcanti & ching the authors represent six countries each with a unique context; all but one represent the global south. the global south countries featured in this edition are chile, argentina, mexico, malaysia and pakistan. this is significant because most of the current understanding on community civic engagement has arguably come from universities in the global north or ‘developed countries’, often discounting the legacy of community engagement from the global south or ‘developing countries’. the elevation of global south voices in this edition highlights one of many reasons the talloires network and the macjannet foundation are longtime partners – both entities believe in creating ways to raise the visibility of those who are underrepresented. the one article that represents a developed country, university of technology sydney, in australia is an example of what a university with more resources can do to elevate the voice of the voiceless and provide them with platforms for growth. this journey into engaged higher education begins at the universidad veracruzana (uv) with the article, ‘university vinculación: a two-way strategy for sustainable development and academic relevance’. uv, located in the southeastern state of veracruz, mexico, is one of several latin american countries where students are constitutionally mandated to complete at least 480 social service hours to receive a university degree. while engagement is required for all mexican universities, uv views it as part of its institutional dna. uv firmly believes higher education was borne out of society’s needs, and thus owes itself to society. this means any good that comes out of the ‘casa de estudio’ (education home) must be for the benefit of society. this profound commitment to society is present throughout the article, in which the authors display a deep understanding of the university’s role in improving not only the communities that surround them but society as a whole. the following article, ‘learning and service at the university of buenos aires: a theoretical framework guiding the implementation of educational social practices’ discusses a similar challenge. although civic engagement is not in argentina’s constitution, the university recently made it mandatory for all students, regardless of discipline, to engage in some form of social practicum. the first two articles establish some of the journal’s central themes – the role of universities as champions of student engagement, the importance of understanding why engagement is necessary, and who it is for. the uv authors argue that the term ‘engagement’, as commonly conceived, does not fully communicate what true engagement entails and what higher education institutions should do. they believe not enough emphasis is placed on community impact or on how communities can give institutions feedback to improve engagement initiatives. uv uses the term vinculación (bonding) and uba uses extensión. though different in meaning, both articles argue that vinculación and extension are not only difficult to understand but can also be 11 | gateways | hernandez cavalcanti & ching challenging to weave into a university’s strategic mission. a key contrast between the two articles lies in the way the institutions have sought to integrate service, or engagement, across all their functions. uv does not perceive social service as a third mission, but rather as part of the institution’s raison d’être, and has long been committed to a vision of high-level, large-scale engagement. uba does view service as a third but central mission. the institution has, by contrast, devised an overarching theoretical framework on which to build its engagement strategy. while different, this strategy is no less all-encompassing or radical. the contrast between these two university’s approaches show readers two different paths toward holistic university engagement. next, the reader will see how two similar models, both driven and championed by a university engagement centre, play out on the ground with ‘puentes uc: a bridge between university and society’ from the catholic university of chile, and ‘“useful, usable and used”: sustaining an australian model of cross-faculty service learning by concentrating on shared value creation’ at university of technology, sydney (uts). at the catholic university of chile, students can tap into the many connections between the center puentes uc and governmental agencies to carry out client-based projects. by describing the centre’s work the authors address a vital question posed by the first and second articles: why should institutions engage? one answer is revealed by what puentes uc does on a daily basis – to provide services and solutions to problems the state cannot address on its own – reaffirming the critical role of higher education institutions. subsequent articles by pakistan’s aga khan university and malaysia’s international medical university also reinforce this vital role of universities. acknowledging the ongoing gap in the literature around how community members value and perceive engagement, the article by uts shopfront does try to fill this by offering data and an overview of how their local community organisations work with them to create ‘shared-value’, a two-way track that is mutually reinforcing. the final two articles are about programs at aga khan university in pakistan and international medical university in malaysia, where leaders provide healthcare to squatter settlements suffering from communicable diseases and rural indigenous communities, respectively. the article from aga khan university, ‘inculcating health awareness in karachi, pakistan: how innovative, socially acceptable methods can help combat communicable diseases of poverty’, describes a large-scale health engagement project that provides a range of services in novel ways to reach as many people as quickly as possible. they understand the issue and its complexities and have devised innovative ways to address it. aga khan university is one of the most respected institutions in the country with resources to scale a project at the level described in the article. the university’s prominence and 12 | gateways | hernandez cavalcanti & ching commitment allows it to prioritize social engagement programs like the urban health and agahi program, and provides it with the capacity to reach people in the outskirts of karachi, pakistan. the authors of the aga khan article explain in detail what the program does and how it carries out its operation. additionally, the article mentions the importance of ‘social accountability’, which openly allows and asks the community to demand that the state or in this case, the university, provide quality services. the authors attribute some of the positive outcomes in physical and mental health to the relationship built on this accountability. the community, they argue, is able to understand its rights and its ability to positively impact the situation thereby building trust between community and institution. despite the university’s unconditional support, and the high level of accountability the authors say the program achieved, little is said about the challenges and setbacks they encountered along the way. while a discussion of these issues could offer readers valuable insight into the program, there is still much to learn from the program particularly around its community work through addressing communicable diseases. the authors also allude to the inextricable relationship between the spread of communicable diseases and poverty. one exists because of the other. many of the authors in this edition make a similar cyclical connection between problems and the socioeconomic structures that feed into them. they contend that issues do not exist in isolation and are not caused by any single factor, rather they argue that issues should be viewed in context and engagement must similarly take a holistic approach to tackling these issues. there is much literature that speaks of the impact engagement activities and initiatives have on students. at the talloires network, we see heads of institutions, professors, and others encourage and mandate that students go out to communities; put their knowledge to use; and, more importantly, be at the service of the most needy. there are rosy tales of lifechanging experiences, and of the knowledge gained from such engagement activities. however, there is another side to that story that is told less often. the last article by imu, ‘serving an indigenous community: exploring the cultural competence of medical students in a rural setting’, gives a candid look into the jarring effect of being immersed in an unfamiliar community. being confronted with this new experience challenges students’ perceptions of communities ‘in need’ and the role of higher education institutions in training and providing the space for students to begin developing cultural competencies. developing cultural competency is not just a task for students, but also for administrators and professors who do engaged work daily. each article in this edition describes a very different relationship with engaged work, but all are united by one common question: can higher education engage with communities in a mutually beneficial way while providing opportunities for rigorous learning and reflection? the articles in this edition offer a 13 | gateways | hernandez cavalcanti & ching resounding, ‘yes’, but how to achieve this is a complex and everchanging answer. the authors and programs described in this edition are facing this challenge head-on in myriad ways. some readers may view these as toolkits for their own engaged work, while others may take them as inspiration from across the globe. whatever the case, each article offers hope that higher education institutions can remain grounded, relevant, and eager to learn from the communities around them. _gjdgxs _goback learning and education for a better world: the role of social movements budd hall, darlene clover, jim crowther & eurig scandrett (eds), sense publishers, rotterdam, the netherlands, 2012, 204 pages the editors of learning and education for a better world: the role of social movements established for themselves an ambitious goal. as indicated in the introduction, they intend for the book to offer ‘new insights into the theories of how social movements work, deeper insights into the theory and practice of adult education in the context of political struggle, and new resources for hope’ (p.x). each contribution to this edited volume investigates a different aspect of the intersection of adult education and social movement work. the volume is divided into three parts. the first is focused on theoretical and historical perspectives, the second on learning through cultural struggle and the third on ‘changing the world’. the interplay between education and social movements/ social change is the theme that ties the chapters together. while some chapters focus on education as a part of social movements (such as in the opening piece about an adult education program for south african militants), others show how education is the target of social movements, as demonstrated in steinklammer’s piece on austrian kindergarten teachers protesting for better education funding. liam kane provides a primer on popular education and a nice history of the popular education movement in latin america. darlene clover’s and stephen brookfield’s respective articles both describe how art is an educational tool that is specifically appropriate for social movement work. in one of my favorite articles of the compilation, astrid von kotze describes a grassroots-based adult education system in south africa in which the ‘students’ set their own curriculum and build the radical imaginings of an alternative social world. the examples von kotze describes provide excellent lessons for teachers of all kinds about how to involve students in their own education. in addition, the ‘bottom-up’ model of freely available education described by von kotze could provide a fascinating contrast with the largely ‘topdown’ massive online open courses or moocs that have been touted as democratizing higher education. likewise, budd l. hall’s article describes the grassroots training and educational processes at the heart of the occupy movement, and how occupy’s use of the gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 167–68 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 jennifer chernega 168 | gateways | review online social media website, twitter, extended these educational processes beyond the groups directly involved in the protests. mark malone’s article also investigates the use of twitter and facebook as organizing tools during the egyptian revolution. catherine etmanski uses her own experiences to argue that organic farms serve as sites of simultaneous education and social movement organizing in response to the environmental and social dangers of industrial farming practices. learning and education for a better world could be useful as supplementary reading in classes on social movements or the sociology of education. essays from the initial section could also be used as good examples of applying critical and marxist theory in courses on social theory. the theoretical ideas of the book draw heavily from the work of paolo friere and antonio gramsci. students reading the text will find it easier to understand if they have some familiarity with these theorists’ work on critical education and hegemony. more field note or interview excerpts throughout the volume would have strengthened and clarified the authors’ arguments. many of the articles felt heavy on theory or argument but light on evidence. this deficit was even more jarring given the focus of the volume on the creation of meaning, a focus that meshes so clearly with the well-established goals of observation and interview research techniques. although it is not immediately clear from the title, learning and education for a better world is one installment in a series of volumes on international issues in adult education and, therefore, is focused on adult learners and adults in education (i.e. teachers, professors, etc) and does not investigate how younger students may engage with social movements. learning and education for a better world begins with ambitions of providing a ‘new resource for hope’, which is an admittedly lofty goal. crowther and lucio-villegas’ contribution provides a more moderate assessment of the impacts of this work and one appropriate for summarizing this text: ‘adult educational work at the level of communities does not, of course, transform global capitalism and the kind of movement it generates may not easily scale up to become such a threat. but it does begin to turn people into critical and active agents who are less easily managed or manipulated and it provides an opportunity to make visible alternative values and visions which animate people’, which is certainly an excellent place to start. _goback the article idea chart a participatory action research tool to aid involvement in dissemination participatory action research (par) is a research approach that has gained prominence in recent years because of its focus on the participation of key stakeholders from all constituent groups within the community or organisation under study and its goal of creating positive change through the research process. par is thought to be particularly well suited to research in the mental health field (nelson et al. 1998). in fact, ochocka, janzen and nelson (2002, p. 386) go so far as to say that the use of par in community mental health research is a ‘moral imperative’. individuals with a mental health diagnosis (who often call themselves ‘consumer survivors’) have traditionally been left voiceless, both in health-care services and society in general (leff & warner 2006). par allows for the ‘voice of the consumer’ to be acknowledged in research (rogers & palmer-erbs 1994, p. 10) because they are given the opportunity to be actively involved in the research process. as aptly stated by a consumer survivor researcher within a par project, ‘psychiatric consumersurvivors are both witnesses to the system and the reason for the system’s existence’ (ochocka, janzen & nelson 2002, p. 379). the involvement of consumer survivors in par projects also helps ensure that the topics are of social importance to the population being studied and that the results are shared in accessible ways (white, nary & froehlich 2001). in par projects, all members are included and participate actively throughout the research process, from initial project design to data collection and analysis (whyte 1991). multiple perspectives on a topic can increase the quality of data collected, the range of interpretations and conclusions, and recommendations for change. the dissemination of results and recommendations is arguably the most important aspect of par projects; montoya and kent (2011, p. 1003) explain: ‘it is vitally important to communicate results and interpretations with community partners and to present information in a way that is both informative and respectful’. it is through the appropriate dissemination of results that positive societal change is enacted. in community mental health research, including consumer survivors in the dissemination gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 157–163 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 cheryl forchuk western university/lawson health research institute amanda meier wilfrid laurier university/lawson health research institute 158 | gateways | forchuk & meier process helps ensure that scientific findings are communicated in appropriate, efficient and accessible ways (montoya & kent 2011). if disseminated effectively, par results can reach a variety of audiences, including policy decision-makers, social service agencies, health-care services, consumer survivors and academic researchers, and promote positive action within communities. in this article, we describe the deliberate development and use of an article idea chart, a tool designed to ensure involvement by all stakeholders in the dissemination stage of par projects. recognising the benefits of par methodologies, we have undertaken a number of par projects examining issues in the field of community mental health. the project of particular interest in this article is a community university research alliance (cura) program in london, ontario, canada, funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc). the cura program is examining the issues of poverty and social inclusion/exclusion for consumer survivors of a mental health diagnosis. stakeholders include consumer survivors, their family members, service providers from mental health and income support agencies, employers, students, policy decision-makers and academic researchers. the work is built on a previous cura program from the same institution, which focused on housing issues for consumer survivors (in discussion we refer to this as cura1). the cura program is a five-year (2011–2016) large-scale endeavour involving three main components: research, training of students, and community capacity development (social sciences and humanities research council 2013). as principal investigator (forchuk) and research coordinator (meier) we are involved in all aspects of program functioning but pay particular attention to community capacity development through the dissemination of results and recommendations. the cura project: ensuring participation in accordance with par principles, the cura program team has acknowledged the importance of equally engaging stakeholders in all aspects of the research process. the active inclusion of stakeholders began during the proposal-writing phase and will continue through the duration of the program by inviting individuals from various stakeholder groups to engage in the program through committee membership. it is vital to involve diverse stakeholders early in the research process so they can direct the research questions asked and methodologies used. in addition, investment by stakeholders throughout the research process increases the likelihood of them feeling connected to the program and wanting to contribute to dissemination activities. once committees are developed to guide the program, the article idea chart can be introduced and used to encourage active participation by all stakeholders in dissemination activities. a detailed description of the article idea chart is provided in the next section. 159 | gateways | forchuk & meier we first describe the methods used to engage stakeholders in committees as membership has a direct impact on participation in the article idea chart. in order to effectively manage the various aspects of the cura program, a total of eight committees and subcommittees were developed. seven subcommittees manage day-to-day program activities, annual forum arrangements, community projects, media and government relations, policy and ethical issues, curriculum development, and research activities. the eighth, an advisory committee (i.e. steering committee), receives reports from all subcommittees and oversees the overall cura program. this structure is beneficial because it permits all members of the program to take part in committees that fit their personal and professional interests. in addition, each committee focuses on specific issues and plans, thereby allowing the program to be managed effectively and efficiently. each committee is also involved in the important task of writing and presenting program findings relevant to their work. individuals become involved in cura committees in a variety of ways. during the proposal-writing phase, academic researchers from disciplines related to the cura topic were invited to participate. mental health and income support agencies throughout london and surrounding areas were contacted to request that one or more service providers from each agency participate as a partner in the program. can-voice, a consumer survivor peer support agency, was invited to be the lead community agency with multiple members becoming involved in the program, including one individual accepting a ‘community lead’ role to complement the ‘research lead’ role held by dr forchuk. any interested individual (from any stakeholder group) is regularly invited to join a committee of his or her choice; invitations to join the cura program are delivered in the quarterly program newsletter distributed to local agencies, during research interviews, and at presentations and annual program forums. these deliberate and frequent invitations promote inclusion by a variety of stakeholders and provide the program with enriched knowledge and experiences from new members over time. the committee structure and deliberate effort to include stakeholders positively affects all aspects of the program. not only do the diverse voices of stakeholders enrich data collection but they also enhance the ways in which dissemination activities are undertaken. the article idea chart is a tool that gives all stakeholders involved in the program the opportunity to participate in writing and dissemination of their choice, therefore fully embracing the inclusivity par projects strive to achieve. it would not be possible to engage stakeholders in the article idea chart if they were not actively involved in the program through committee membership. 160 | gateways | forchuk & meier the article idea chart the article idea chart (see example in table 1) was developed during the cura1 program on housing and mental health (forchuk, csiernik & jensen 2011). the chart was created as a way to engage all committee members from various backgrounds in the writing process and dissemination of par results. the article idea chart is distributed to all committees during each meeting. any individual member is given the opportunity to propose topics for publication, including written articles for academic journals or non-academic audiences (e.g. community newsletters). in addition, any individual from any committee is given the opportunity to join and contribute to existing topic groups. once a group is formed (authorship generally ranges from three to eight people), they begin to meet separately from regular committee meetings in order to develop the article. progress and updates on current articles are then shared at committee meetings. the development and use of this tool is a very deliberate way to encourage all stakeholders to become involved in the dissemination process. by allowing all members to propose topics of interest to them and to join existing topic groups, the writing process and authorship becomes very open and transparent. as the article idea chart continues to be reviewed at each committee meeting, there are times when similar topics will be combined and, conversely, times when one topic will be split between two separate groups as the data requires and permits. each topic group is given the support of a research staff member for literature reviews, data analysis and assistance in writing. the quality of work is enhanced by the participation of various stakeholders with differing academic backgrounds. all members who sign up to participate are expected to play an active role in the writing process, including ensuring the material can be understood by the intended audience. the decision on submission location and target audience is decided solely by the working group who creates the article. to date, in the current cura program, the list has reached 36 topics. while this may seem like an unrealistic number, the cura is a large-scale study seeking to understand a number of table 1: article idea chart for par projects (examples included) topic author(s) data source audience date claimed action/ progress submission fairness and social justice s benbow a rudnick c forchuk b edwards year 1 openended questions disability and society journal 16 july 2012 submitted submitted 7 april 2013 cura impact p hall s perry c forchuk year 1 partner interview action research journal 23 january 2012 paper complete, editing phase submission aim: 1 september 2013 stigma r csiernik c forchuk b edwards a meier year 1 stigma scale social work research 10 september 2012 writing phase submission aim: 1 september 2013 161 | gateways | forchuk & meier issues using various data collection methods. some team members have joined multiple groups, while others have joined one or two groups of particular interest to them. due to scheduling and availability of team members, it is not feasible to have 36 working groups meet simultaneously, so approximately four topics are chosen at a time and given priority. these are chosen at the research committee meeting, based on current availability of data. as one article is completed and submitted, another topic group initiates their meeting. in this way, the cura program is in a constant state of data analysis and dissemination. as demonstrated in table 1, the time between ‘date claimed’ and ‘submission’ can be lengthy; this is partially due to the fact that some committee members claim topics of interest to them early in the research process before all data is collected and also due to the feasibility issues mentioned above. because team members remain actively engaged in the program for a number of years through committee meetings and events, wait times between claim dates and submission dates have not been reported as a concern. the article idea chart was successfully used in the cura1 program. as a result, 39 topic ideas were proposed and over 20 articles were published. some of the original topics were merged and a few were abandoned if no one joined the group and the proposer did not wish to pursue the topic without others. of the articles, 18 were originally published in academic journals and were later compiled into one book entitled homelessness, housing and mental health (forchuk, csiernik & jensen 2011). contributing authors within the book came from a wide variety of backgrounds, bringing varying personal and professional expertise on mental health and housing to the articles. academic professionals, service providers, consumer survivors and students all worked together as authors of articles within the book. compiling the articles into one book allowed for a broader range of audiences to access the material as the book was given away and sold at cura events and forums. in addition to these articles, a program newsletter was created by a group of writers and distributed to all partners and local agencies quarterly. the cura1 program utilised the article idea chart specifically for written dissemination, but it could be expanded to include oral presentations and conference proceedings for other research groups. the article idea chart functions as a deliberate way to encourage participation in written dissemination. however, engaging stakeholder groups traditionally unfamiliar with research presents ongoing challenges. in the cura1 program, consumer survivors and service providers participated in publication development but academic team members often outnumbered members of other stakeholder groups. in addition, academic journals were the most frequent publisher of the research results. despite this trend toward traditional research audiences, the program nonetheless strove to make the results as inclusive and accessible as possible, including through distribution of the quarterly newsletter, posting of results on the program website, 162 | gateways | forchuk & meier presentation of results at community forums and publishing of articles on community agency websites, when permitted. these challenges reflect the fact that academic members continue to be the most comfortable with research writing and dissemination. however, the use of the article idea chart serves as an explicit invitation to other members to become involved in aspects of research not traditionally open to them and has been successful in engaging diverse authorship. while cura programs are five-year large-scale projects with the potential for several publications and presentations, the article idea chart can be used for smaller studies as well. for example, the article idea chart was utilised during a recent twoyear research project entitled ‘poverty and mental health: issues, challenges and solutions’ funded by the ontario mental health foundation (2013). while the timeline, scope and membership of this study was smaller than that of cura programs, the article idea chart was used and produced 12 topics; 4 articles have been submitted for review while analysis and writing for other topics are ongoing. a par project need not be large scale in order to use this tool. it is simply a deliberate methodology for ensuring that all team members (regardless of academic background) are given the opportunity to participate in publications or presentations on topics of interest to them. conclusion the par research process is beneficial as it engages all affected stakeholders on a given topic and removes traditional academic researchers from the role of expert. it is especially well suited for mental health research as a means of engaging consumer survivors in projects concerning the systems in which they participate. while many authors discuss the importance of par and explain ways in which to engage community members in the research team, rarely do publications explicitly discuss tools and methodologies used to ensure the full participation of all team members in one of the most important aspects of par research: dissemination of results. the article idea chart is a tool that has been utilised successfully in a number of par projects to date. it can be revised to suit the needs of other par projects and can be expanded to include presentation topics and conference proceedings. the article idea chart removes any confusion from dissemination by making the process transparent and openly available to all team members, regardless of stakeholder group. references forchuk, c, csiernik, r & jensen, e 2011, homelessness, housing and mental health, canadian scholars’ press, toronto, canada. leff, j & warner, r 2006, social inclusion of people with mental illness, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. montoya, m & kent, e 2011, ‘dialogical action: moving from communitybased to community-driven participatory research’, qualitative health research, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 1000–11. 163 | gateways | forchuk & meier nelson, g, ochocka, j, griffin, k & lord, j 1998, ‘“nothing about me, without me”: participatory action research with self-help/mutual aid organizations for psychiatric consumer/survivors’, american journal of community psychology, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 881–909. ochocka, j, janzen, r & nelson, g 2002, ‘sharing power and knowledge: professional and mental health consumer/survivor researchers working together in a participatory action research project’, psychiatric rehabilitation journal, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 379–87. ontario mental health foundation 2013, ‘research project grants’, viewed 29 july 2013, www.omhf.on.ca/guidelines/researchgrants/. rogers, e & palmer-erbs, v 1994, ‘participatory action research: implications for research and evaluation in psychiatric rehabilitation’, psychosocial rehabilitation journal, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 3–12. social sciences and humanities research council 2013, ‘communityuniversity research alliances’, viewed 20 july 2013, www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura-aruc-eng.aspx/. white, g, nary, d & froehlich, a 2001, ‘consumers as collaborators in research and action’, journal of prevention & intervention in the community, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 15–34. whyte, w (ed.) 1991, participatory action research, sage publications, newbury park, ca. http://www.omhf.on.ca/guidelines/researchgrants/ http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura-aruc-eng.aspx/ http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura-aruc-eng.aspx/ caught up in power exploring discursive frictions in community research community-based research (cbr) is a preferred approach to conducting research that affects disenfranchised groups because of its egalitarian tenets and its emphasis on building partnerships between the researcher and the community. strand et al. (2003) characterise cbr as a collaborative engagement between academic researchers and the community that endorses multiple sources of knowledge and has as its goal the pursuit of social justice. over the past decade, the promotion and practice of cbr have significantly increased, not just in the health research domain from which it emerged, but in other areas of inquiry as well. the view that cbr engages ‘marginalised community residents as valued participants in decision-making and community solution-building processes around issues that concern their lives’ (jacobson & rugeley 2007, p. 22) has led many researchers to adopt this approach without considering and negotiating the contradictions, or frictions, that may arise in cbr. when these contradictions, which we refer to as discursive frictions, are not considered within the research project, they can hinder, truncate or subvert the emancipatory potential of the cbr project. murphy (2012, p. 2) suggests that discursive frictions are ‘tensions that can arise when various national, social, organizational, and individual cultural differences materialize in our everyday discourse and practices’. he suggests that tensions privilege certain knowledge and create inequitable power relations. to ensure cbr projects are ethical and effectively achieve their goals of social justice and social change, it is necessary not just to detail the pitfalls of adopting cbr uncritically, but also to highlight the pervasiveness of power asymmetries in cbr relationships and suggest ways that the negative effects of power asymmetries may be mitigated by adopting participatory methodologies rooted in foucauldian thinking. consequently, the purpose of this article is to detail some of the dangers inherent in uncritical cbr practice, highlight the pervasiveness of power asymmetries in cbr relationships, and explore how foucault’s notions of power can be used to interrogate how cbr partnerships function and how they might be challenged through participatory methodologies to achieve cindy hanson adeyemi ogunade university of regina © 2016 by c hanson & a ogunade. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: hanson, c & ogunade, a 2016, ‘caught up in power: exploring discursive frictions in community research’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 41–57. doi: 10.5130/ijcre. v9i1.4729 corresponding author: cindy hanson; cindy.hanson@uregina.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/0.5130/ijcre. v9i1.4729 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 42 | gateways | hanson & ogunade more sustainable and ethical results in research practice. the first section of the article reviews studies that highlight the significant harm that may result from adopting a cbr approach without addressing discursive frictions. it also makes a case for additional theorising on cbr processes prior to practice. here we argue that, when a discursive friction occurs, it neither sustains oppressive power structures, as janes (2016) suggests, nor is it inherently emancipatory as many cbr scholars indicate. the next section considers foucault’s notion of power and how it applies to discursive frictions in cbr. notably, these notions of power and truth in community-university relationships also illustrate how institutional and community pressures create irreconcilable conundrums for academic researchers. we then discuss researcher/ community relationships in cbr from an adult education perspective, with the goal of better understanding the role discursive frictions play in cbr practice. next we examine how discursive frictions play out in different relationships in specific cbr projects to illustrate foucault’s notion of the pervasiveness of power in cbr relationships and highlight the need to ethically address discursive frictions that occur as a result of power relations. finally, we discuss how participatory methodologies prominent in adult education might be used to address certain discursive frictions and further facilitate ethical cbr research practice. cbr as a contested field of inquiry despite the positive depictions of cbr, some researchers have started questioning the veracity of the emancipatory claims of cbr set forth by early proponents of this research approach (guta, flicker & roche 2013; janes 2016; stoecker 2009). the emancipatory claims can be challenged when power asymmetries and discursive frictions are scrutinised. power asymmetries refer to differences or imbalances in power among participants in cbr projects, made evident by prominent binary subjectivities in cbr such as the academic researcher/community researcher binary and the community researcher/community member binary. discursive frictions refer to the ‘tensions that can arise when various national, social, organizational, and individual cultural differences materialize in our everyday discourse and practices, often privileging, but at times shifting traditional, colonial, and postcolonial power relations’ (murphy 2012, p. 2). discursive frictions arise as a result of power asymmetries in cbr partnerships. they can impact the outcome of research because they reinforce existing power asymmetries or, conversely, produce new power relations that can advance community goals and social justice. discursive frictions can also highlight inconsistencies in cbr theory and practice and paradoxes in academic-researcher relationships. janes (2016) provides one of very few studies to theorise about how power asymmetries within cbr projects promote 43 | gateways | hanson & ogunade academic epistemic privilege and truncate the emancipatory potential of cbr. janes (2016, p. 76) troubles the emancipatory claims of cbr and notes that it is ‘deeply contextual, inevitable and uneven, not easily manipulated yet still dynamic’. she questions the material practice in cbr by academic researchers of ‘giving up’ power and ‘taking up’ new subject positions, and suggests that this practice is used to co-opt the voice and knowledge of the community by reinscribing academic privilege to the academic in the production of knowledge. guta, flicker and roche (2013) explore the disconnect that exists between the stated emancipatory goals of cbr projects and practices that inadvertently advance oppressive neoliberal agendas. they identify the process of community ‘capacity-building’ that involves finding the ‘right’ community members to train, to help achieve the goals of the research project, as a technology of governance that reshapes community life by differentiating between community members who can do research and those who cannot. this artificial divide empowers those community members trained to conduct research with the right to speak for the entire community, invariably usurping pre-existing power structures in the community, which may be detrimental to community relationships. this fracturing of the community is more paternalistic than emancipatory and raises questions about the veracity of the claims of cbr. conflicting claims about cbr means that more sustained theorising is needed to better understand how cbr works, what role power asymmetries play in cbr, and under what social, political and economic conditions its emancipatory potential can be realised. situating power asymmetries and discursive frictions in cbr is crucial, because it addresses under what material conditions discursive frictions yield positive outcomes for the community. theorising about power asymmetries and, specifically, discursive frictions offers a unique perspective that frames cbr as part of a dialectical continuum in the history and politics of community engagement that is neither inherently emancipatory nor repressive. this perspective offers the opportunity to critically examine cbr praxis on a case-by-case basis. foucault’s notion of power-knowledge and discursive friction power plays an important role in defining human relationships. it is defined simply as the ability to influence or impact the actions of others. numerous scholars have theorised about power, but the thoughts of michel foucault stand out because they signal a departure from modernist notions of power (mansfield 2000). foucault posits that power is neither a commodity nor solely embodied in a person, institution or structure to be used for organisational or individual purposes. foucault (1980, p. 98) notes that power ‘is never localized here or there, never in anybody’s hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth’. rather, power is relational and circulates within human relations. 44 | gateways | hanson & ogunade power for foucault is not inert in human relations, but individuals ‘are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising power’ (foucault 1980, p. 98). it is within the fluid exertions of human relationships that power becomes apparent, constantly shaping and reshaping truth, knowledge, identity, and ultimately human relationships themselves. power is constantly at play in human relationships and becomes evident in what is acknowledged as truth/s, the knowledge held valid, and the social systems that enshrine order in human relations. in this regard, foucault (1978, p. 92) noted that: power must be understood … as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, … whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies. thus, for foucault (1980), the identity and characteristics of an individual in society are produced and reproduced by relations of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires and forces. for instance, janes (2016) indicates that in the relationship between the academic researcher and the community, the academic researcher can co-opt the voice of the community, thus exerting power over the voices or ideas from the community and, ultimately, the material practices of the community. here power is used to create a new regime of truth and meaning which can either facilitate community cohesiveness or serve to advance only the agenda of the researcher or, alternatively, both of these. according to foucault, power is not just a negative, coercive force, but also a creative force that produces knowledge. power in this sense is made tangible by the knowledge it creates. foucault, as cited in st pierre (2000, p. 496), states that ‘power and knowledge directly imply one another; there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’. for foucault, the workings of power and knowledge are so interconnected that it becomes impossible to think of one without the other. this is because ‘the exercise of power itself creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information … the exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power’ (foucault 1980, p. 52). power is thus seen as being ‘produced in everyday practices of gestures, actions, and discourse’ (hall 1989 cited in murphy 2012, p. 4). power, therefore, plays a significant role in cbr because it shapes the relationships, actions and discourses that are being investigated. 45 | gateways | hanson & ogunade the post-structural notion of discourse refers to ‘a way of reasoning (form of logic), with certain truth effects through its impact on practice, anchored in a particular vocabulary that constitutes a particular version of the social world’ (sveningsson & alvesson 2003, p. 1171). this depiction of discourse highlights its political nature and indicates that discourses only represent a particular version of reality. the political nature of discourse implies that discourses are always tied to the interests of a particular group of people who see things in a particular way. discourses are thus never neutral, but are tied to interests of those in power and generally define the limits of intelligibility in a given situation. this post-structural truism means that both discourse and groups who participate in shaping discourse wield tremendous power/knowledge in that they can proscribe or enable certain thoughts and actions. in this sense, discourses are seen as productive in post-structuralism because they work ‘in a very material way through social institutions to construct realities that control both the actions and bodies of peoples’ (st pierre 2000, p. 486). the researcher and the community: perspectives of adult educators and facilitators through a foucauldian theoretical lens, it appears that the seemingly mundane interactions between the academic researcher and communities are steeped in expressions of power that impact the trajectory of cbr projects. for example, a study by nation et al. (2011) suggests that whoever initiates a cbr partnership, whether it is the academic researcher or community members, plays an important role in framing the discourse, defining the limits of intelligibility within the project, and ultimately determining what success means for the cbr project. they suggest that the initiator of the cbr partnership typically has privileged knowledge of the issue to be investigated and is in a better position to dictate research objectives, make administrative decisions, determine data gathering and analysis techniques, and ultimately frame the discourse around such an issue. in this instance, the power to initiate a cbr partnership is facilitated by the knowledge of problems of import that can be funded and access to information about how to obtain funding to investigate these problems, highlighting the subtle nexus between power and knowledge. thus, though the goal of cbr is often to address issues facing marginalised communities, the power asymmetries between the researcher and the community may lead to exploitative discourses remaining unchallenged. as adult educators, we are reminded that a major contribution of critical adult education to cbr is the role of adult education in advancing community learning and personal or social transformation aimed at serving social justice practices (ewert & grace 2000; welton 2013). key to adult education is attention to, and discussion of, the experiences of the learners. extending this idea to communities involves attention to the 46 | gateways | hanson & ogunade relationship between the adult educator/facilitator and peoplecentred ideas. schenck, nel and louw (2010, p. 133) suggest that facilitating community practices includes understanding of oneself as a facilitator, having connections with the community, understanding the broad context of the community and its strengths, providing opportunities for the community to get to know the facilitator, and a period of discovery for the community to assess its situation and its social assets. there are frequently discrepancies, however, in the intention and the practice of facilitation. as groot and maarleveld (2000, p. 5) explain, facilitation is often focused on techniques and tools and thus, ‘the underlying diversity in intentions, epistemological, and theoretical assumptions underpinning facilitation practices usually remain implicit and unclear’. this can intentionally or not determine ‘“who” participates in “what” [way], “how”, “when” and, very importantly, “why”’ (groot & maarleveld 2000, p. 190). therefore, in order to work with community perspectives in adult learning, there needs to be a conscientious effort to understand diverse positions and subjectivities – in the community as well as in the research process. cbr, like other fields of knowledge, is a product of pervasive power relations or asymmetries. the desire of the academic community to be more involved in real-world problems like addressing health disparities has resulted in community-based projects which morph into cbr (israel et al. 1998). by getting involved in communities through cbr, academics bring to bear power in the form of their status and resources, while the community also exercises power in the form of control of the research site. this invariably creates discursive frictions that represent a dialectic process from which community development emerges. the critique of cbr practices offered by janes (2016) suggests that the re-inscription of academic privilege in knowledge production in cbr positions the community as different and, subsequently, subordinates the community’s interests to academic interests. however, this is not necessarily the case in all cbr projects. a foucauldian interpretation of power suggests that both the academic and the community exercise power in cbr relationships and that the outcome of the project is a product of a dialectic process in which discursive frictions produce a denouement acceptable to both the researcher and the community, given extant power asymmetries. consequently, communitybased researchers need to know that cbr practice is never outside of power asymmetries and understand under what material conditions discursive frictions yield positive outcomes for the community. this requires that researchers understand how to facilitate discursive frictions when they occur. later in this article we explore examples of adult education and participatory methodologies that may help cbr practitioners facilitate discursive frictions among adults in cbr projects. most of these are from our own practice as researchers in the field of adult education and as 47 | gateways | hanson & ogunade academics concerned with dynamics between universities and communities. first, however, we consider two examples of cbr partnerships in which discursive frictions frequently arise. discursive frictions in academic researcher-community partnerships the relationship between the academic researcher and the community is a key part of cbr and in many regards can be considered the driving force behind its emergence as the preferred approach to dealing with marginalised communities. ideally in cbr partnerships, research does not just occur in a community as a place or site for gathering data, but rather community members are actively involved in all stages of the research process from determining the issue to be investigated to the dissemination of results. however, some studies indicate that the relationship between the academy and the community is particularly susceptible to discursive frictions that are a product of power asymmetries (murphy 2012; nation et al. 2011). in nation et al (2011), the power relationship between the academic researcher and the community is examined to highlight how the method of power sharing plays a central role in determining the kind of engagement that occurs during cbr projects. the study found that in community-initiated cbr projects, where the community is organised and initiates the partnership with academic researchers on a predetermined issue, ‘communities tend to have the most power’ (nation et al., p. 91). they note that academic researchers may have to negotiate aspects of the project, such as the choice of methodology, which changes their role when compared to traditional or university-orchestrated research and makes the research project more emancipatory for the community, but more problematic for the researcher. academic researchers here are forced to relinquish their privileged position in knowledge production, give up control of the leading role in the research process and assume more of a pragmatic participant role in the research project, as opposed to being a facilitator of key issues. on the other hand, nation et al. notes that in situations where academic researchers develop the research agenda and determine the issues before collaborating with the community, the researchers hold most of the power. it then becomes difficult to share ownership of the project and meaningfully engage members of the community because the academic researchers have predetermined goals and they may not have the same interests as the community. this could lead to the project being largely researcher driven and issues that concern the community may be ignored in favour of the researcher’s academic interests or demands of funders. likewise, institutional pressures on academics to meet funding deadlines and to write peer-reviewed publications sometimes puts academic researchers in a conundrum with communities – one where the commitment of the academics appears to be in conflict. 48 | gateways | hanson & ogunade a case study of an international cbr partnership between us government sponsored academics (usacad) and a kenyan non-governmental organisation (kngo) in murphy (2012) highlights how power and knowledge are interconnected, diffuse, non-linear and complex, and constantly being exercised by both partners in the cbr relationship ‘from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations’ (foucault 1978, p. 94). the study details the attempt to establish a program that would help build the kngo’s capacity to implement family-based curricula on hiv/aids. members of the usacad team found it difficult to get a timely response from the kngo team regarding items to be included on the agenda for a training workshop. the key issue causing tension was whether the teams would include references to anal sex as a means of transmitting hiv/aids on the agenda of the training program. the kngo team eventually responded to the usacad team’s requests, but the agenda sent to the american team turned out to be radically different from what they had expected. in this case, reference to anal sex leading to the transmission of hiv/aids was removed from the agenda. this led to discursive frictions between the teams, with usacad claiming that their position was scientifically backed, while the kngo team refuted their claim, noting that the supposedly dominant scientific position ‘promoted homosexuality’ and contravened the religious, cultural and political beliefs of the kenyan people. thus: while the kngo, as the south partner, is placed positionally as the partner ‘in need’, they continually exercise power based on their cultural knowledge and expertise. in this example, the u.s. partners’ strategies to use/impose a particular knowledge system and language practice were rerouted to accommodate kenyan cultural norms. and numerous attempts at negotiating ways to overtly connect certain sexual practices and hiv/aids transmission through the usacad’s direct communication style were met with a respectful silence (murphy 2012, p.10). by remaining silent and refusing to compromise on certain language, the kngo group exerted power in the relationship, despite the fact that the american team funded the partnership. this case highlights the foucauldian notion of power being diffuse and continually being (re)negotiated in relationships (foucault 1980). the ‘uscad may have the technical knowledge and control the economic power (they secured the u.s. funded grant), however, kngo has the practical knowledge and controls the local cultural power’ (murphy 2012, p. 10) that in turn allowed the kenyan team to control the discourse about hiv/aids transmission. the fact that power is relational makes it malleable and allows for all participants in such relations to exert some control over others in cbr partnerships. discursive frictions in intra-community partnerships in cbr during cbr projects, discursive frictions occur not only between academic researchers and community partners, but also among 49 | gateways | hanson & ogunade various community partners (cullen et al. 2013; nation et al. 2011). communities are not monoliths and there are ‘several community constituencies who both contribute and (at times) compete to influence the project. because of this, many of the issues that develop are not tensions between the community partners and the researchers, but instead among community partners’ (nation et al. 2011, p. 95). this can create additional tensions for the researcher. discursive frictions within communities speak to the foucauldian notion of power being relational and exercised even within supposedly familial community relations. power pervades communal relations where competing interests arise that impact the outcome of the cbr study. for instance, equity-seeking groups within a community may feel less inclined to participate in a cbr project if the views of other community partners dominate the research. academic researchers can find it difficult to navigate a scenario where community partners have opposing interests and want to influence research outcomes to suit their interests. janes (2016) suggests that academics attempt to avoid the messiness of conflict within the community by presenting an image of a unified community in research findings, whereas acknowledging conflicts within communities may be more beneficial. although presenting a unified story may assure easier take-up of results, such a coherent truth ignores the diversity of community perspectives. multiperspectives instead create a multifaceted interpretation of results and help researchers avoid meta-narratives. a cbr study of ways to improve natural resource management (nrm) in the highlands of ethiopia by cullen et al. (2013) indicates that it is indeed precarious for academic researchers to navigate the power dynamics in a community with different factions and competing interests. the study illustrates that, even within innovative community-based partnerships with commonly agreed upon issues to be studied, the views of more powerful members of the community tend to dominate, further marginalising weaker members of the community. in this case, the views of government partners were being advanced over and above the views of farmers in the community. even though government representatives and farmers in the community ideally ought to share common interests, the study revealed that government representatives had longer term goals while farmers in the community had goals that addressed more immediate material needs. further, it assumed that the farmers were a homogenous group with common goals. a study by hanson and matheos (2007), which initially exhibited similar dynamics, later used tactics foundational to critical adult education and agriculture extension work to challenge the way knowledge was being presented and to include the knowledge of multiple farmers. the researchers insisted on interviewing female farmers and farmers who were not considered model farmers by the government. the knowledge from this group demonstrated the lack of homogenous thought in the process and demonstrated that the knowledge of the 50 | gateways | hanson & ogunade farmers was as valid and relevant as that of the extension workers employed by the government, despite the fact that this farmer group was systematically ignored in most cases. differences in power between groups within a community at times influence whose knowledge is adopted and shared in the cbr project. in cullen et al (2013, p. 83), ‘initially farmer knowledge was not valued during platform discussions. during early platform meetings, decision-makers frequently complained about farmer ignorance of key issues, their lack of knowledge of natural resource management, backward or inappropriate farming practices and short-term visions. this did not create a favorable environment for the sharing of farmer knowledge and represented a major barrier to innovation’. this example illustrates that, even within communities, power differences exist and these differences are played out in ways that may hamper the dissemination of knowledge, thus perpetuating discourses that undermine the interests of marginalised groups and advance the interests of community members in positions of power. however, the use of innovative participatory facilitation techniques like participatory video helped the community in this case ‘identify and prioritise problems faced by previously marginalised farmers situated across the landscape and helped achieve a more balanced representation of issues’ (p. 82). the link between power and knowledge was made evident in this case as the knowledge of farmers was initially ignored because they lacked the formal education and credentials of government officials that would give them the power to make decisions of import to the cbr project. in the next section we explore some adult education and participatory facilitation methods that have been used to foster inclusiveness, trust and respect both between academic researchers and communities and within the community in cbr projects, which may help facilitate discursive frictions when they occur. distributing power using participatory methodologies participatory research and facilitation methods are useful in addressing power differentials in cbr because participatory approaches are inherently political and aimed at addressing discrepancies in power. this section focuses on such methods, drawing on examples in the fields of health and adult learning. while there are obvious exceptions to these approaches in practice, we believe the studies presented here may open up discussion on facilitation, power asymmetries and discursive frictions in cbr. story circle discussion groups hanson (2015), for example, wrote the results of her study on intergenerational learning in indigenous textiles well aware of taken-for-granted knowledge results that could emerge due to academic privilege in the project. she therefore included measures in the design of the study to address the academic researcher/ community power asymmetry and preconceived ideas that 51 | gateways | hanson & ogunade emerged from this privilege. her study used arts-based story circle discussion groups to explore intergenerational learning in indigenous contexts in northern canada and southern chile. inspired by the work of lavallée (2009), who used anishnaabe symbol-based reflection as part of an arts-based research approach that emphasised storytelling and community engagement, hanson invited the study participants to bring artifacts from their textile practice (the study participants engaged in beading and weaving practices that were passed between generations) to the group. the items were used to trigger memories about how the women had learned to weave or bead. the methodology illustrated multiple understandings of what was considered a single concept. as the women spoke in turn around the circle, the items came to represent memories that privileged oral tradition and the stories upon which the reciprocal relationship between the teller and listener was premised – something advocated in indigenous research methodologies (chilisa 2012; lavallée 2009). the method also encouraged participants to engage through creative approaches that connected with memory, personal narratives and collective histories. although initially several generalisations about the participants’ experience were made, the local collaborators and community coordinators reminded the researcher that not all communities had equal histories in this work and challenged the way the results had been generalised. the challenge for the researcher was to give breadth to the interpretations by involving other community members in decisions around how the data would be interpreted. the ensuing discussion was ultimately richer and more varied as a result. also significant for this study and indigenous methodologies was the way knowledge sharing was built into the study. the study participants were asked how they wanted to share the results of the study. the study participants in canada requested an exhibition of their beading at an art gallery and the study participants in chile asked for a book about the study to be published (see hanson, bedgoni & fox griffith 2015). these demands ultimately extended the outcomes of the study to a broader audience, and the reciprocal nature of the process allowed for greater ownership of the results by the study participants themselves. in sharing the paradoxes inherent in the process, however, it is appropriate to mention that, during at least one academic review, the study was critiqued for not producing sufficient peer-reviewed publications. ironically, the value of the community-driven materials for knowledge mobilisation was muted by the academic pressure for peer-reviewed publications, ultimately privileging certain forms of knowledge sharing and dominant research positions. photo-voice another facilitation approach that has gained prominence in the literature is the use of photo-voice as a means of bringing to the fore the voice, experiences, knowledge and narratives of marginalised groups (becker et al. 2014; castelden, garvin & 52 | gateways | hanson & ogunade huu-ay-aht first nation 2008; true, rigg & butler 2015). photovoice is an advocacy and research technique that sets out to influence systems and policies by using ‘photographic images taken by persons with little money, power, or status to enhance community needs assessment, empower participants, and induce change by informing policy makers of community assets and deficits’ (strack, magill & mcdonagh 2004, p. 49). catalani and minkler (2010, p. 438) ‘note that photo-voice projects consist of an iterative cycle that involves photo assignments, community members taking photographs, and engaging in critical group discussions on photographs they see as relevant’. they also note that during this iterative cycle, community members assume more control of the research process because they decide what issues are highlighted in the photographs and how these issues ought to be interpreted. photo-voice also uses the stories behind each photograph as research material or text, which is analysed by participants and researchers as data and used to arrive at findings. since the photo-voice process demands active participation of community members, it allows for participants to productively contest power in the community-based research process and actively strive for the subtle balance between community and academic interests. one key feature of the photo-voice process is that it emphasises community action in the form of exhibits of photographs, accompanied by narratives that illustrate the views, concerns and experiences of the community. this research outcome is critical because it helps facilitate the changes the community needs. these exhibits achieve this goal by offering an ‘opportunity for participants to directly communicate with influential people, to creatively express their concerns, and to become further engaged in efforts to address these concerns’ (catalani & minkler 2010, p. 438). thus, a key outcome of photo-voice research is that it offers an avenue for the community’s voice to be heard by people in positions of power and influence, who can make the desired change in policy to address the community’s needs. this actionoriented outcome of photo-voice makes it particularly useful in cbr because it not only helps foster community self-determination, but also places power squarely in the hands of the community, thus embodying the egalitarian ideals cbr is founded on. the following studies illustrate the effectiveness of the photo-voice method in power redistribution and in addressing discursive frictions and the needs of participants by facilitating change. true, rigg and butler (2015) set out to explore the barriers to adequate mental health care for recent war veterans using the photo-voice technique. participants in the study were veterans who served in iraq. beyond exploring the barriers to mental health care among veterans, the study set out to generate suggestions on how to improve ‘patient-centered post-deployment care that [is] informed by the real-world experiences of veterans’ (true, rigg & butler 2015, p. 1443) and communicate these 53 | gateways | hanson & ogunade suggestions to influential health-care providers and policymakers to effect change. generating dialogue between veterans on the one hand and health-care providers and policy-makers on the other was critical in this project because it was seen as an effective intervention to enhance mental health care delivery. the researchers indicate that the photo-voice technique proved to be useful in creating dialogue with participants because it ceded control of data gathering to the participants and allowed participants the freedom to explore narratives they considered important, as opposed to narratives researchers and policymakers thought were important. the use of photo-voice initiated a dialogue between veterans, policy-makers and health-care providers involved in veterans administration health services, and this led to substantive recommendations to change the approach to mental health care for veterans. the photo-voice technique also helped both participants and researchers to explore traumatic experiences in a way that alleviated the discursive frictions that could have arisen. another study by becker et al. (2014) offers some insight into how a photo-voice project was used to create a curriculum that teaches researchers to effectively use the technique to effect change. the study sheds light on the experiences of researchers and participants in a wyoming photo-voice project. in this project, photo-voice was used to bring to the fore the voices, experiences and perspectives of community members who use mental health services ‘in an attempt to engage their expertise on what is working within the mental health system and what needs to be changed’ (becker et al. 2014, p. 191). the wyoming project set out to address the stigma, prejudice and isolation experienced by individuals with mental health needs from the public, mental health and health-care professionals, and themselves. the authors indicate that by actively disseminating the photos and narratives among community members and mental health providers, ‘participants invite critical dialogue about personal and community issues’ (becker et al. 2014, p. 204) and thus facilitate emancipatory change not just in the researcher/participant relationship, but in the relationship between the individual with mental health needs and providers of mental health services. in the wyoming photovoice project, a number of exhibits were conducted by participants in residential treatment centres, at the state legislature and at an art gallery, which not only shed light on their concerns but also served as a tool to initiate dialogue with people in positions of influence. this dialogue ultimately led to a push for change in mental health services and policy. the study shows how photovoice was used as a tool to give voice to previously marginalised groups and to influence power asymmetries in cbr relationships by changing knowledge about the issues and shedding light on silenced perspectives. the study also helped to foster inclusiveness, trust and social cohesion, factors critical to co-learning and necessary for cbr to succeed. 54 | gateways | hanson & ogunade community-based participatory action research in a study using community-based participatory action research with the prairie school for union women (psuw), hanson (2014) used facilitation techniques involving feedback loops. through the feedback loops she interacted with the school’s coordinating committee and this created a mechanism whereby the coordinating committee ultimately decided how the study recommendations would be implemented. it was considered that this process would shift power from the university researcher to the psuw. this idea was premised on the knowledge that participatory research is designed to ensure that the participants’ concerns, interests and preferences are guided by the participants themselves (bishop 2008) and that the process ‘placed researchers in the service of the community members’ (elliot 2012, p. 11). in practice, however, discursive friction emerged and the implementation of the recommendations by the school’s coordinating committee remained in the hands of only a couple of the committee members who continued to determine the agenda and design for the school. what the study did, however, was alert other women on the committee to the way power was being operationalised in the planning of the school and, because of this, additional efforts towards critical engagement emerged. ultimately, whether this led, or will lead, to substantive actions remains unknown. acknowledging the multiple perspectives at play in communitybased research was important in illustrating that the results of research are not experienced equally. when theories of participation are integrated into power dynamics, important differences in the way experiences are understood begin to emerge. for cbr to be truly emancipatory, change for social good cannot be forced by academic researchers, but must be actively pursued by community members involved in the research project. the psuw study illustrates how community and organisational structures of leadership, and power asymmetries within those structures, can subvert the direction the group chooses, but also how they can be challenged when the process continuously involves the community in an iterative process. while this is ultimately taxing on the researcher, it can result in greater takeup from the community group involved. this is also important because academic researchers run the risk of re-inscribing their own values and realities on communities and appearing paternalistic or controlling if change is driven by their actions only. this may mean that researchers need to be comfortable taking no action and allowing the change process to organically emerge from the community. conclusions troubling how power operates and is constructed in communitybased research is ultimately an attempt to conduct research more effectively and ethically. it is also an attempt to generate dialogue and understanding of how a research practice that is aimed at restructuring power relationships can also be used 55 | gateways | hanson & ogunade to reinforce inequities. cannella and lincoln (2011, p. 84) call for the ‘cultivation of a consciousness that is aware of both the sociopolitical conditions of the times and one’s own selfproductive reactions to dominant disciplinary and regulatory technologies’ through engaging with the complexities of power and understanding how it operates in the social order. thus we have presented discursive frictions that occur as a result of power asymmetries as neither inherently emancipatory nor repressive, but as an important dialectical point from which different research outcomes may emerge depending on the material practices of research participants. we have explored a few material practices that have helped researchers navigate discursive frictions with varying degrees of ‘success’ and surmise that adopting multiple facilitation methods may help cbr participants achieve the emancipatory potential of the methodology. however, more research is needed to determine whether these methods necessarily lead to emancipatory research results and, if so, under what material conditions they succeed. although this article presents examples of cbr from critical adult education in addition to other fields, there is an increasing need to determine how communitybased researchers can trouble the notion of generalised results about communities. critical reflections on how power is both built into and exercised in community research using a foucauldian analysis is our humble attempt at challenging our own actions in the field of community research as well as a call to others involved in such ‘noble’ pursuits. references becker, k, reiser, m, lambert, s & covello, c 2014, ‘photo-voice: conducting community-based participatory research and advocacy in mental health’, journal of creativity in mental health, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 188–209. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2014.890088 bishop, r 2008, 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j 2016, ‘democratic encounters? epistemic privilege, power, and community-based participatory action research’, action research, vol. 14, no.1, pp. 72–87. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1476750315579129 57 | gateways | hanson & ogunade lavallée, l 2009, ‘practical application of an indigenous research framework and two qualitative indigenous research methods: sharing circles and anishnaabe symbol-based reflection’, international journal of qualitative methods, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 21–40. mansfield, n 2000, ‘foucault: the subject and power’, in n mansfield (ed.), subjectivity: theories of the self from freud to haraway, new york university press, new york, pp. 51–65. murphy, a 2012, ‘discursive frictions: power, identity, and culture in an international working partnership’, journal of international and intercultural communication, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–20. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1751 3057.2012.740683 nation, m, bess, k, voight, a, perkins, d & juarez, p 2011, ‘levels of community 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518390050156422 strack, r, magill, k & mcdonagh, k 2004, ‘engaging youth through photovoice’, health promotion practice, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 49–58. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/1524839903258015 strand, k, marullo, s, cutforth, n, stoecker, r & donohue, p 2003, community-based research and higher education: principles and practices, jossey-bass, san franscico, ca. sveningsson, s & alvesson, m 2003, ‘managing managerial identities: organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle’, human relations, vol. 56, no. 10, pp. 1163–93. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/00187267035610001 true, g, rigg, k & butler, a 2015, ‘understanding barriers to mental health care for recent war veterans through photovoice’, qualitative health research, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 1443–55. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1049732314562894 wallerstein, n & duran, b 2006, ‘using community-based participatory research to address health disparities’, health promotion practice, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 312–23. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 welton, m 2013, unearthing canada’s hidden past: a short history of adult education, thompson publishing, toronto, on. assessing the effectiveness of a longitudinal knowledge dissemination intervention sharing research findings in rural south africa health and demographic surveillance systems (hdsss) carry out longitudinal research and operate in geographically defined areas (sankoh & byass 2012). most hdsss are located in subsaharan africa and asia, and are generally situated in rural, resource-poor settings. hdsss collect population data including births,deaths, in-migrations and out-migrations, as well as health and socio-economic data. following the baseline census of a defined geographic area, data is collected through regular census rounds during which household and individual characteristics are updated, and thus characteristics of the population living within the hdss study area are monitored (ye et al. 2012). the setting for this article is the south african medical research council/university of the witwatersrand rural public health and health transitions research unit (agincourt) (mrc/ wits-agincourt unit) that has run a hdss in rural northeast south africa since 1992 (kahn et al. 2012). the hdss was established towards the end of the apartheid era in order to gather annual health and population data to inform the future development of a post-apartheid district health system (tollman 1999). despite progressive health/other policies in the post-apartheid era, inequalities persist (naidoo 2012). two decades after democratic change was introduced in 1994, findings from the annual census updates and nested health and social studies in the study area continue to contribute to health policy and planning in south africa (tollman 2008). these findings indicate rapid health, social and demographic transitions. the objectives of the mrc/ wits-agincourt unit have expanded to include reasons for these transitions, cross-site collaboration and facilitation of public access to datasets (kahn et al. 2012). the longitudinal nature of hdsss necessitates the fostering of continuing relations between university researchers, participants, policy-makers and service providers. this is particularly important when there are inequities in power and information between the researchers, research participants and those who use the research information (nuffield council on bioethics 2002) – as is the case in most hdss settings. the concept rhian twine kathleen kahn university of the witwatersrand gillian lewando hundt university of warwick © 2017 by r twine, k kahn & g lewando hunt. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: twine, r, kahn, k & lewando hunt, g 2017, ‘assessing the effectiveness of a longitudinal knowledge dissemination intervention: sharing research findings as part of knowledge brokerage in rural south africa’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 143–163. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5111 corresponding author: rhian twine rhian.twine@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5111 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) 144 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt of civic science (bäckstrand 2003) promotes public engagement by research institutions with participants, policy-makers and the wider public as a strategy that addresses these inequities. one strand of public engagement with research is the dissemination of research findings (lavery et al. 2010). knowledge dissemination is part of public engagement programs at some hdss sites, as in the kemri-wellcome trust research programme (marsh et al. 2008), the navrongo health research centre in ghana (tindana et al. 2011) and the mrc/wits-agincourt unit in south africa (madhavan et al. 2007), but are not always routinely included, as in the niakhar hdss in senegal (mondain et al. 2016). through the international network for the demographic evaluation of populations and their health (indepth) some hdss sites work together in various research areas including migration and mortality; however, a common platform for work in knowledge dissemination across indepth hdsss is yet to emerge. there is increasing interest among funding agencies such as the wellcome trust and the economic and social research council uk for evidence around best practice in public engagement activities and public engagement practitioners are also beginning to form networks such as the online mesh network supported by the global health network. this article examines a knowledge dissemination intervention (kdi) of the mrc/wits-agincourt unit focusing on the annual sharing of research results to the population and service providers within it’s study area from 2001 to 2015. it presents a single, longitudinal case study (yin 1994) of this kdi as part of broader knowledge brokerage activities, using the evaluation framework proposed by lafrenière et al. (2013) to assess effectiveness. the main objective of this kdi is to share research findings with villagers, village leaders and service providers in the study area in order to: increase knowledge acquisition about research activities and study results; change the attitudes of participants and service providers so that multidirectional, collaborative discussion can occur regarding the relevance of research; and positively influence participants’ and service providers’ practices in individual and public health. we analyse data from annual kdi reports from 2001 to 2015, 762 feedback questionnaires of attendees, and qualitative interviews involving 60 local leaders/service providers undertaken in 2015–2016, and discuss the activities of the public engagement office (peo), established in 2004 by the mrc/wits-agincourt unit, while undertaking this kdi. in response to the research question, ‘what is the effectiveness of this kdi as measured by knowledge acquisition and changes in attitudes and practices of the residents and service providers in the case study area?’, the data suggests modest impact, and a number of ongoing challenges. in conclusion, the authors suggest ways to improve effectiveness, which would be of interest to other practitioners working in kdis in similar contexts. 145 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt literature review terms such as ‘knowledge dissemination’, ‘transfer’ and ‘translation’ are often used interchangeably, as shown by lafrenière et al. (2013) in their systematic review of the effectiveness of kdis. a kdi can be defined as ‘an active intervention that aims at communicating research data to a target audience via determined channels, using planned strategies for the purpose of creating a positive impact on the acquisition of knowledge, attitudes and practice’ (lafrenière et al. 2013, p. 2). kdis can be implemented through for example meetings, debates and other interactive activities, websites, distribution of fact sheets and policy briefs, to a range of audiences ranging from lay persons to policy-makers (mondain et al. 2016). kdis have a number of components: a clear message, a specific audience, a particular format, a plan for delivery and an evaluation of effectiveness, which necessitates the articulation of a clear aim. the characteristics of the target audience will determine the wording of the message and the method that is used for its delivery and evaluation (kothari & armstrong 2011). despite nearly 20 years of calls for greater public engagement in health research (dickert & sugarman 2005; tindana et al. 2007), there is relatively little evaluation of the effectiveness of kdis. in 2003 it was reported that only one in 10 of 175 applied research organisations in canada evaluated kdis for their effectiveness (lavis et al. 2006). in a systematic review by lafrenière et al. (2013), 11 of 19 kdis that had been evaluated for effectiveness focused on the dissemination of results to health professionals, not to research participants, (bhattacharyya et al. 2011; mitton et al. 2007; ward et al. 2009) and generally showed changes in knowledge and attitudes but rarely in practices. lafrenière et al. (2013) identified a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of kdis, focussing on knowledge acquisition, changes in attitudes and changes in practices. they suggest that evaluating knowledge acquisition can be achieved by assessing if the kdi has increased participants’ knowledge base, while changes in attitudes can be assessed by determining whether or not participants agree with the information presented and could accept it. changes in practices can be assessed through examining actions taken after the kdi. apart from the general paucity of evaluation on the effectiveness of kdis, there is a specific lack of evaluation on longitudinal kdis (madhavan et al. 2007). often researchers give less attention to the dissemination – and, by implication, reception – of research findings to participants and beneficiaries than they do to academic peers and policy-makers. the voices of participants and local service providers, especially in poorly resourced areas, are seldom considered, even when they are themselves expected to transfer research findings into practice (molyneux & geissler 2008). knowledge dissemination of research findings, with interactive, multi-directional discussion between researchers, participants and 146 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt service providers, can help in enhancing benefits (tindana et al. 2007) and is part of the ethics of practice in research (guillemin & gillam 2004). collaborative discussions about research can help to shift research agendas to be more relevant to the needs of participants and service providers, and this is particularly important in developing countries (cioms 2016). there is currently an increased focus on the role of knowledge brokerage in developing collaborative links between researchers and stakeholders, as a means to increase knowledge transfer and translation, and build users’ capacities to apply relevant findings to policy and practice (meyer 2010). there is increasing pressure on governments and service providers to develop evidence-based policy and practice (gilson & mcintyre 2008, strydom et al. 2010). this is slowly creating a ‘pull’ for the provision of relevant research results through knowledge brokers, moving from unilateral dissemination to multi-directional creation and use of information (godfrey et al. 2010). theoretical approaches to knowledge brokerage include the dissemination model and the systemic model, and both identify interpersonal contact as essential to effective knowledge brokerage (dagenais et al. 2015). a recent systematic review by bornbaum et al. (2015) analysed 29 articles on the role of knowledge brokers and identified 10 key domains of knowledge brokerage activity (p. 5): 1 identify, engage and connect with stakeholders 2 facilitate collaboration 3 identify and obtain relevant information 4 facilitate development of analytic and interpretive skills 5 create tailored knowledge products 6 project coordination 7 support communication and information sharing 8 network development, maintenance and facilitation 9 facilitate and evaluate change 10 support sustainability. we examine the two domains ‘create tailored knowledge products’ and ‘support communication and information sharing’, as they are the most relevant to this case study. case study: the mrc/wits-agincourt unit hdss figure 1: location of the mrc/wits-agincourt unit hdss study area in south africa and details of the study area 147 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt setting and objectives the mrc/wits-agincourt unit hdss study area is located in the bushbuckridge municipal sub-district of ehlanzeni district in rural mpumalanga province, south africa. the area is 500 kilometres northeast of johannesburg, separated from mozambique by the kruger national park on its eastern boundary (figure 1). the 1992 baseline census enumerated approximately 57 600 people living in 8900 households in 20 villages (tollman et al. 1999), which, by 2015, had expanded to 115 000 people in 18 500 households in 27 villages (www.indepth-network.org/member-centres/agincourthdss). some 30 per cent of the sub-district population comprises former mozambican refugees, the majority of whom are now south african citizens or permanent residents (twine et al. 2016). the majority of people living in the area are from the tsonga ethnic group, and speak xitsonga. many households practice supplementary farming, but land allocated during apartheid for resettlement is inadequate for total reliance on subsistence agriculture. unemployment is high with most formal employment being male migrant labour in mining, manufacturing, agriculture and tourism. south africa’s noncontributory social grant system are a major source of household income, together with remittances from labour migrants. since 1994, with the dawn of the democratic era in south africa, there has been infrastructure development with improved provision of electricity, roads, water and schools. currently, there is one health centre and eight primary health-care clinics within the study area, and three district hospitals 25 to 60 kilometres away (collinson et al. 2014; kahn et al. 2012). the 27 villages in the study area fall under three traditional councils, and three local municipal offices. for the purpose of this article, we define a ‘village’ as a cluster of households in a geographically defined area, which has a name and leadership structure, and is geographically separate from other villages. each village has a head man (induna), who falls under one of the traditional councils presided over by a chief (hosi); traditional councils meet every week. civic leadership operates at three levels: village-level community development forums (cdfs), wards with an elected ward councillor, and local municipalities. each village cdf is made up of two representatives from every communitybased organisation in the village, and includes the induna as a representative of the traditional council (www.agincourt.co.za/ index.php/activities/linc/). from 1992, public engagement activities were undertaken in relation to village-level consent and annual village-based dissemination of research results for every study. in 2004, a dedicated peo was established by the mrc/wits-agincourt unit, with contributions to its activities included in all research project budgets, in order to further develop knowledge brokerage activities in the study area. there are three full-time staff members at the peo. rhian twine, lead author on this article, manages the office. she is a healthcare professional who has worked in the 148 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt area for nearly 30 years; 15 years for the public health services in the district, and 13 years for the mrc/wits-agincourt unit. the two public engagement officers she manages have extensive and long-term experience as fieldworkers/ supervisors of the census and nested research projects as well as in their public engagement roles (25 and 13 years respectively). both are residents in the study area. a key activity is the kdi, the objective of which is to disseminate research findings to residents and service providers living within the study area. below, we outline the kdi activities, grouped according to two of the domains of knowledge brokerage defined by bornbaum (2015). creating tailored knowledge products from 1993 to 2002, only village-specific demographic data were presented. from 2004, three changes were made: gps village maps with no research household identifiers were distributed to village leaders and service providers; oral and written summaries of hdss modules on various topics were given, including food security, socioeconomic status and uptake of social grants; and dissemination meetings included results from nested research studies. over time, village-specific fact sheets increased from two to 14 pages. from 2011, key take-home messages were highlighted at the end of every section and all the information provided was translated into the local language (xitsonga). since 2012, village and research project fact sheets have been available on the mrc/ wits-agincourt unit website (www.agincourt.co.za/index.php/ activities/linc/#village fact sheets). from 2015, content was simplified to ensure that people with no more than eight years of education could understand the information, using the ‘readability index’ in microsoft office word. supporting communication and information sharing village-based meetings: since 1993, unit staff has presented aggregated village-specific demographic data through open village-based meetings in each village annually. the practice has continued and since the establishment of the peo team in 2004, the kdi has been extended in its format, duration and breadth (see figure 2). figure 2: changes in kdi over time, 2001–2015 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/test-your-document-s-readability-85b4969e-e80a-4777-8dd3-f7fc3c8b3fd2 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/test-your-document-s-readability-85b4969e-e80a-4777-8dd3-f7fc3c8b3fd2 149 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt since 2006, village-based meetings to disseminate research findings have taken place over one month (one or two village meetings daily) at the start of an annual six-month period. three fieldworkers supplement the peo for this month. on the prior evening, a public engagement officer drives around the village announcing the meeting using a roof-mounted megaphone. before each meeting starts, the village leadership decides if there are enough people in attendance to proceed; most meetings are held under a tree or in a school. after each presentation, in which various topics are presented by different fieldworkers, audience questions are answered by the fieldworkers. at the conclusion, 50 copies of printed fact sheets on each topic presented are made available to the attendees, and the village leaders are presented with a folder containing the fact sheets as well as a map of their village. generally, these meetings last for two hours. at the suggestion of local leaders, relevant service providers have been invited to attend since 2002. the number of villages included in the meetings has increased, with the number of possible village-based meetings going up from 18 in 2001 to 30 in 2015; five new villages were built within the original study area as part of a government housing development program, and eight villages were added to expand the area population, largely to meet the needs of intervention trials. actual meetings held were always fewer than those planned: out of 289 possible meetings over 2001–2015, 215 took place (74 per cent). reasons for meeting failure include cancellations or postponements by village leaders if too few people attended, or other village activities that arose and took precedence. meetings with village leaders and service providers: during the following five months, peo staff conduct face-to-face briefings with village leaders, community organisations and service providers, again giving each group a folder containing research data aggregated across the study area to assure confidentiality, and village-specific demographic data, in fact sheets. measuring the effectiveness of a kdi this longitudinal, mixed-methods case study of a kdi used multiple sources of data (yin 1994), as shown in table 1. quantitative data were from 14 annual village meeting reports (2001–2015) that contained information on attendees, questions figure 3: a village-based meeting in 2009 150 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt asked and requests for more information, as well as 762 feedback questionnaires that were collected from attendees over 10 years (2005–2015). attendees were asked at the beginning of the meeting to volunteer to fill in feedback questionnaires with the assistance of a fieldworker after the meeting. the feedback questionnaires, completed after obtaining verbal consent, were largely (50–80 per cent in any one year) completed by younger adults, aged 18–34 years. the number of forms filled in varied depending on whether there was a general village-based meeting immediately following the kdi, the weather, individual willingness, and the meeting’s length. owing to computer crashes, the 2003 annual report and the 2009 feedback questionnaires are missing. the qualitative data are from 15 individual semi-structured and five focus group interviews with local leaders and service providers (60 participants in total) carried out in 2015–2016. the interviews were conducted in a mixture of english and xitsonga and explored the participants’ views and experiences of the annual dissemination of research findings. the lead author (rhian twine) conducted the interviews with a local fieldworker, taped recordings of which were translated and transcribed by the fieldworker. the 15 individual interviewees were service providers and traditional leaders within the study area: two traditional council secretaries from two councils (the third covered only one village), who suggested also interviewing one induna from each of their traditional councils; three ward councillors, who represented the greatest number of villages; both regional municipal managers; clinic managers from the three busiest clinics; and the two education circuit managers responsible for the majority of schools in the site. four focus group interviews were held with the cdf chair and/or the health desk representative of each of the 20 villages that had been in the study area since its inception, and 3 added in 2007, and one focus group interview was held with the managers of the eight home-based care organisations in the area. participants were aged between 25 and 70 years. only four service providers were not resident in the study area, and there was equal gender representation. quantitative data were analysed using summary statistics in excel, as well as descriptive analysis. qualitative data was analysed thematically using nvivo 10 (qsr 2012). 2 0 01 2 0 02 2 0 03 2 0 0 4 2 0 05 2 0 0 6 2 0 07 2 0 0 8 2 0 09 2 01 0 2 01 1 2 01 2 2 01 3 2 01 4 2 01 5 2 01 6 to ta l reports on annual kdi 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 14 feedback questionnaires from attendees 82 91 68 33 0 85 25 99 98 122 59 762 qualitative interviews 20 interviews 60 participants table 1: kdi dataset 2001–2015 151 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt ethical clearance was obtained from the university of the witwatersrand’s human research ethics committee (hrec) (medical) (certificate no. m140737). all research reported on within the kdi obtained separate ethical clearance from wits hrec (medical), the relevant mpumalanga province research and ethics committee and, if undertaken with international collaborators, their institutional ethics committees. findings the findings are organised according to the three outcomes for the measurement of effectiveness of kdis: knowledge acquisition, changes in attitudes and changes in practices (lafrenière et al. 2013). knowledge acquisition service providers and village leaders were asked what information was presented and discussed through the kdi. the responses show an understanding of the relevance of the findings to their villages. census findings were always mentioned first, showing that these were the data with which they were most familiar. village leaders and service providers found demographics and maps more useful for planning than other results. i’m glad we have wits in our community because they are giving us the figures of the people living in the specific villages, and it helps us to know how many people have died each year. it also helps us to know the figures of the children who were born. we are also able to know the people who migrate outside and those [who] immigrated into our village. (cdf member, woman) the findings from nested studies, added from 2004 onward, were also found to be useful. when wits came and gave feedback, there were youth and elders in that meeting. when wits gave them the results about what is happening to the youth about hiv and tb [tuberculosis], they learnt something, they were asking questions. even the elders were interested in knowing something. (cdf member, woman) respondents, who filled in feedback questionnaires after the village-based meetings, reported that the most useful information was about hiv and tuberculosis (34 per cent), causes of death (19 per cent) and village demographics (16 per cent). a few appreciated learning more about the work of the mrc/wits-agincourt unit (4 per cent) and how to apply for a job within the unit (1 per cent). information about research results would appear to be more important than other aspects of the unit’s work. changes in attitudes the types of questions asked at village meetings and targeted briefings illustrate changing attitudes in relation to both the research activities and research results over time. figure 4 illustrates a steady increase in the proportion of questions related to research results, and a concurrent decrease in 152 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt requests for government services, and for services from the unit, until 2014. the latter coincided with a lower presence of service providers at the meetings (discussed later). from 2014, enrolment started in the first major randomised control trial in the study area (pettifor et al. 2016). due to the scale of the trial, four new villages were added to the study area; data showed these villages had a higher proportion of requests for services than did villages that had been part of the study area since 2001 (figure 5). this suggests that villagers with a longer exposure to research activities and the kdi had a clearer understanding of the university’s role, and were engaged in discussions about research rather than service provision. this provides evidence of changes in attitudes (and knowledge) about the work of the unit. examples of questions asked at village-based meetings are included below. the research topics presented, as well as which service provider attended the meetings, directly influenced questions asked. for example, in 2006, when data on access to child support grants were presented, with child support grant figure 4: proportions of questions asked at villagebased meetings 2002–2015 figure 5: questions asked in 2014 – comparison of 23 older villages and four new villages included since 2013 153 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt extension officers present, 45 of the 129 questions related to this issue. from our analysis, questions can be grouped into four main categories: 1 research results: how do you include people in the census who out migrated from the village? (2014); how do you recruit participants for studies? (2015) 2 requests for services from the research unit: can you assist people with epilepsy to get a wheelchair? (2011); can wits do something about bilharzia, because if we go to the clinic they don’t help us and our children keep urinating blood? (2011) 3 health: if i’m hiv-positive and sleep with someone who is also hiv-positive, what’s going to happen? (2014); how do i know i have heart disease? (2015) 4 requests for government services: we are drinking water from wells and dams and the water is not healthy. where can we get water for the vegetables we have planted? (2008); how can you help an older person who does not have a pension, but who also doesn’t have an identity document, carer [or] relatives? (2008) this suggests that the results were accepted as relevant and applicable to both individuals and service providers in their villages and the surrounding area. changes in practices at meetings, villagers directly questioned service providers, when available, using research results as proof to request further services. there is evidence that service provision was sometimes modified in line with such concerns; for example, after hearing requests for the mobile health clinic service to resume, a clinic manager reinstated it. in another village, pit latrines were supplied soon after presentation of data on households with no latrines. over 2001–2015, a total of 762 people completed feedback questionnaires (see table 2). of those, 397 had attended villagebased meetings the year before; 54 per cent of this group reported that the information motivated them to work or volunteer, while 14 per cent lobbied for services and 3 per cent took no action at all (figure 6). the ‘other’ category (25 per cent) included activities such as using the information to teach the youth, starting a vegetable garden at home, and encouraging other villagers to participate in research studies. figure 6: reported activities undertaken subsequent to the previous year’s kdi 154 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt further, out of the total 762 respondents who completed feedback questionnaires, 117 (15.4 per cent) had attended a previous meeting where handouts (tailored knowledge products) were distributed: over 50 per cent of this group reported not using the information, 25 per cent said they had shared the information, and only 8 per cent said the information had led to an improvement in their health behaviour, such as having their blood pressure measured. the interviews with village leaders and service providers revealed that, for this group, the information was seen as useful for planning services, student assignments and reports. we checked how many people were in our villages, and then worked with home affairs. we have 14 000 people in total but only 8000 people have ids, so we started a campaign with home affairs. (ward councillor, man) in our village, we looked at the results and found that our village is too small. we went to the chief to request to extend our village by 500 new stands [plots to build houses on]. (cdf member, man) it helps us when we do reports because we can quote that, according to wits, in village x we have got 700 households and 5000 people. (traditional council secretary, man) sometimes they use information in the folders in our schools to set exams, like hiv/aids or census information. (cdf member, man) the questions below were asked at village leader and service provider briefings, and show a commitment to translating research into policy and practice: i see that there are not so many 11 to 14 year olds having babies, but there are some. could you let us know how relevant household economic circumstances are, or if there are any other things we can learn about the households of these girls? maybe then we can do something. (ward councillor, man, after a presentation on fertility rates.) according to the statistics presented, cardiac disease is a serious problem in people aged 50 and above. why is it like that? what can we do in order to solve this problem? (clinic manager, woman, in response to a presentation on causes of death.) in the last five years there have been requests after kdi meetings for further information from villagers, students, leaders, service providers and political organisations for data for use in changes of practices. women who were starting crèches in the villages requested information on numbers of children under five years in/out of preschool, and village maps indicating sites of 155 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt preschools, to support their funding requests. social work students have needed information for assignments, and high school teachers have requested statistics on hiv for teaching purposes. ward councillors have also requested information, such as the socioeconomic and refugee status of households with teenage mothers. the south african police service asked for data on suicides and deaths due to violence in the area as evidence to support an application to set up a satellite police station, which was subsequently established. managers of nearby private game lodges have requested village fact sheets annually for their social responsibility offices. municipal representatives of the african national congress, the governing party, ask annually for all village fact sheets for service provision planning. challenges and limitations to get a better understanding of the extent of the effectiveness of the kdi, coverage is a consideration. the village-based kdi meetings have attracted 2 to 4 per cent of the adult population over 15 years. there is some variation, ranging from 1.5 to 4.3 per cent, as shown in figure 7, with a significant (p<0.05, r2=0.272) but weak decline of 0.17 per cent in attendance. this may be due to many of the meetings being held during the week, thus excluding those employed, inadvertent scheduling during cold weather, funerals, and political disputes between village leaders. village leaders gave various explanations for the stable but low attendance rates and for sometimes having to cancel meetings. these were mainly villagers not understanding the relevance of the research feedback, as well as internal village politics. since 2011, a local government election year, leaders have used the kdi meetings to raise other issues such as elections, water crises and employment with villagers, indicating that these meetings have become a platform for airing critical issues. one village leader suggested that the dissemination should be added onto existing meetings, such as those held by department of agriculture as, in his opinion, more people attended these. the data from the feedback questionnaires sheds a different light on why people don’t attend meetings. of those who completed figure 7: percentage of total population over 18 years attending village-based kdi meetings, 2001–2015 156 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt questionnaires, 47 per cent were new attendees. as shown in figure 8, reasons given for not previously attending fell into two major categories: inability to attend (not living in village, visiting/ studying elsewhere, not available) and organisational (did not know about it, meeting too early, venue too far, meeting did not happen). only 1 per cent expressed ‘lack of interest’ as a reason for non-attendance, indicating an acceptance of the data and its possible usefulness. additionally, despite being invited annually and transport provided, some service providers such as social workers, local youth development ngos, child support grant social securityofficers, home-based carers and municipal workers have not attended regularly. health-care providers, ward councillors and community development workers have attended more often. in 2004, all but one of the 17 meetings were attended by service providers, compared to 2014, when service providers attended only seven meetings. the reasons for non-attendance were mainly related to heavy workload. this means that service providers seldom gain knowledge regarding research results, and participants do not benefit from information from service providers during villagebased meetings. wits invites us, but most of the time i fail to take part in those events because i have to attend to some other community issues. (induna, man) service providers reported that handouts were often left in a folder, and some admitted not reading the information. while appreciation was expressed for the translations into xitsonga, some felt these were not always correct, and some found the font too small. people preferred attending meetings to reading information. we get the results in writing but i personally enjoy when we sit down together so that if i have questions then i can ask and you clarify those points that i could not understand as i was reading the report. (education circuit manager, man) figure 8: why people did not attend previous year’s meeting 157 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt discussion the systematic review of kdis (lafrenière et al. 2013) identified specific outcomes for the assessment of effectiveness of a kdi: knowledge acquisition and changes in attitudes and practices. this single, mixed-methods longitudinal case study of the dissemination of research results from an hdss in a rural setting has focused on the effectiveness of the annual kdi using this framework. this case study does show some evidence of change in knowledge acquisition, but only to a limited extent. village-based meetings attracted only 2 to 4 per cent of the population, and even if 25 per cent of attendees shared the information gained, knowledge acquisition through village meetings was modest across the study area. although the audience is not growing, it does not remain static, with different people attending every year. more innovative methods of alerting community members of the upcoming kdi, such as via local radio and strategically placed posters, may increase audience numbers. even though the number of attendees has been consistently small as a proportion of the village population, village leaders and political representatives have utilised the meetings since 2011 as a platform for discussion of topical village issues. this shows that the meetings have become embedded and routinised, and are considered a useful forum for debate. there have been instances when the amount of time given to research feedback has been compromised owing to the need for village leaders to address the audience on village matters, but, generally, feedback has been allowed to continue as planned with the audience remaining once the peo staff has left. since the feedback sessions are already two hours long, the peo does not make use of village meetings called by other organisations for this kdi, in line with the principle of respect for villagers and service providers underpinning all peo activities. although village-based meetings are limited in terms of coverage, face-to-face briefings with service providers and village leaders show some effectiveness in knowledge acquisition as evidenced by the types of information requested by service providers and village leaders after the kdi activities. this is important, as service providers seldom attended the village meetings, and often missed targeted service provider briefings owing to workload. given that participants seldom miss meetings owing to lack of interest, and that face-to-face briefings are preferred while hand-outs are seldom read, it would be important for different strategies to be used so as to enable participation. results clearly show that the kdi had limited effectiveness when solely based on a linear approach and was more effective when multi-pronged. the importance of face-to-face interaction over time has been noted by recent studies and also that varied strategies can be used with different stakeholders (conklin et al. 2013; dagenais et al. 2015). this could mean that more frequent meetings are needed, with smaller audiences, which would require concurrent increased human resources in knowledge broker offices. 158 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt in regard to changes in attitudes, in villages that had recently been added to the study area, more service-related questions were asked compared to villages that had been in the study area longer, where more questions on research results were asked. these trends suggest a change in attitudes concerning the role and work of the unit, with growing understanding and acceptance that the role of a research unit is not to deliver services, but to undertake research. this is evidence of increased interactive dialogue (lavis et al. 2003). kdis, such as this one, do contribute towards changing the attitudes of participants and enhance the possibility of collaborative discussion regarding the relevance of research and research results. lastly, there was some evidence of changes in practices, with a few attendees reporting that their health behaviour had altered subsequent to attending a meeting, and a few reporting that they had been motivated to volunteer/work in community projects. service providers and village leaders had used demographic data for planning at the village level. there was also some evidence of public health service delivery improving after data highlighting these issues were presented. implications for knowledge dissemination interventions we would argue that the process of organising and delivering this kdi is central to knowledge brokerage and supports other domains such as networking, developing collaboration with stakeholders, supporting the sustainability of the hdss, and building local capacities through the interpretation of research data (bornbaum et al. 2015). the mrc/wits-agincourt unit has committed resources for the establishment of a dedicated peo, which had a clear brief to manage the kdi as knowledge brokers (bornbaum et al. 2015), and reflects a growing partnership with stakeholders contributing to an increased understanding of the role of research unit and its data by the villagers, leadership and service providers. this has occurred in the social context of the evolving democracy of post-apartheid south africa, which has involved everyone in a growing awareness of both rights and responsibilities as well as the planning of increased service provision in health, housing and education. considerable time and effort was spent writing and translating fact sheets, which proved of limited use. other methods of dissemination such as theatre, which has been used to effect in this setting (stuttaford et al. 2006), postal drops of small, focused a5 pictograms, community radio, tv and social media may be useful in communicating results. radio-based soap operas or talk shows (edutainment) have been effective in engaging the public with health research in malawi (nyirenda et al. 2016) and south africa (jana et al. 2015). longitudinal hdss sites have an opportunity to develop strategies for regular information sharing through community advisory groups (reddy et al. 2010) and wider village-based dissemination. while difficult to do, it 159 | gateways | twine, kahn & lewando hundt would be important to clearly articulate the expected outcomes of these different strategies in order to evaluate their effectiveness if undertaken in hdss sites. the effectiveness of the kdi in this case study has been assessed in relation to three outcomes: knowledge acquisition, changes in attitudes and changes in practices (lafrenière et al. 2013). there is evidence of changes in all three outcomes over time; it is doubtful if changes would have been evident without a longitudinal approach. in future kdi activities, clearer, measurable objectives will be needed in order to measure effectiveness more rigorously and information disseminated and methods used need to be adapted further to be more specific, useful and contextual (legaspi & orr 2007). conclusion sharing research results with study participants and stakeholders is part of the ethics of practice (guillemin & gillam 2004). this links to civic science, which frames research as a public good (ward et al. 2009). results from this case study of a kdi to communicate research results across the population of the mrc/ wits-agincourt unit study area can be used to inform knowledge brokerage and kdis in other areas with longitudinal studies (bornbaum et al. 2015). the results show how this kdi developed from linear presentations with little engagement to multipronged, diverse activities (ward et al. 2009), with some impact on knowledge acquisition, attitudes and practices (lafrenière et al. 2013). the process of evaluating this kdi has been valuable to the peo and the results have led to change in knowledge and practice within the office itself. for example, upon realisation of the limited reach of the village-based dissemination meetings, a simple infographic is now distributed annually to each household, alongside the continuing village-based and service provider meetings. fact sheets are clearer, with shorter messages, and more serious thought is given to both the content of the message and how it is conveyed. a limitation of this study was that the evaluation tools were designed for routine use and not for rigorous analysis. nevertheless, the findings have led to changes in practice, and more effective evaluation tools are being developed. this kdi of disseminating research findings to research participants, village residents and other stakeholders is a knowledge brokerage activity that, in addition to supporting communication, and sharing information with tailored products, involves other components of knowledge brokerage such as networking, building capacity and sustainability. a holistic approach to knowledge brokerage 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traditionally largely ignored their role in addressing the challenges their communities face. however, it is increasingly recognised that higher education institutions can play a role in sustainable social change. pedagogy in higher education is shifting focus from valuing standardisation and testing to valuing civic and community engagement and active learning (lamarre & hunter 2012; strand 2000). partnerships between higher education institutions and community organisations can increase the knowledge base available in universities, improve students’ learning experiences, support community-based organisations and build civic engagement (melaville, berg & blank 2006; semken & freeman 2008; showalter 2013; strand 2000). such partnerships can be powerful tools for providing long-term, sustainable solutions to various issues faced by the community. one form that these partnerships can take is community-engaged scholarship (ces) – a community-engaged approach to teaching, learning and research, which focuses on a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and human and material resources for the purpose of positive social change (beckman & hay 2003; israel et al. 1998; melaville, berg & blank 2006; roche 2008). ces aims to identify and address a challenge or need in the community using practices such as communityengaged learning, community-based research, environmental education and service learning, or place-based learning. while ces has been shown to benefit students, professors and higher education institutions (melaville, berg & blank 2006; semken & freeman 2008; showalter 2013; strand 2000), there is a paucity of literature related to the impacts on community. hicks (2009) suggests that the focus on expected outcomes for students, faculty and institutions, rather than communities, presents an opportunity for much needed study. some authors suggest that the shortage of literature addressing ces community impacts is an indicator that ces was developed solely to educate and benefit students, rather than communities (stoecker 2009). questions gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 101–115 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 monika korzun corey alexander lee-jay cluskeybelanger danielle fudger university of guelph lisa needham wellington-dufferinguelph public health kate vsetula guelph community health centre danny williamson co-founder, farm to fork daniel gillis university of guelph, cofounder, farm to fork 102 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis remain whether ces, in practice, provides benefit to community partners; thus, evaluating the impact on community partners is essential for assessing the overall impact of ces. the primary objectives of this study were (1) to identify the potential benefits to community partners following the application of ces methods in a community-engaged classroom; and (2) to provide an example of how ces can help alleviate food insecurity. the article presents an exploratory study, designed as an introduction to the topic of how ces can address food insecurity. it is also designed to encourage others to capture the voices of community partners in ces projects. we begin by providing a literature review of ces, focusing on its potential to create sustainable and long-term social change within the community. this is followed by a review of the motivation behind our case study – the farm to fork project – and a brief description of its goals and objectives. finally, we discuss findings related to the study, focusing on the community-university partnerships that were formed and the benefits derived from them. based on survey data, the findings are presented in categories that best summarise the experiences of community partners with the project. these categories include mutual benefit, resources, networks and collaborations, and raising awareness and addressing social issues. community-engaged scholarship there is great potential when conventional education and scholarship merge with social change activism at the community level. knowledge, ideas and solutions that are unique to this space and cannot be reproduced by the actors working independently can be created. there is also potential to expand social, cultural and human capital for all partners involved – including communities and universities – when resources are exchanged in a partnership based on authentic reciprocity (hicks 2009). community-engaged scholarship is one model aiming to achieve these outcomes. ces’s core principles focus on reciprocity and mutual exchange of knowledge and resources (beckman & hay 2003; israel et al. 1998; lamarre & hunter 2012; melaville, berg & blank 2006; roche 2008; strand 2000). for the purpose of this study, ces was identified as a broad umbrella concept that captures all of these practices. ces has a rich and diverse history. it stems from participatory research, which emerged as an alternative to the dominant positivist paradigm. participatory research questions the aims of research and the role of values and power relations in research, and examines the role of the researcher in carrying out the research (gruenewald 2003, 2008; israel et al. 1998; roche 2008; strand 2000). other models such as participatory action research, action research and empowerment research evolved independently as a critique of the conventional approaches to research, teaching and learning that informed policy and practice (ball & lai 2006; strand 2000). 103 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis the work of israel et al. (1998) contributed to the conceptual development of ces. they identified nine ces principles: —viewing community as a unit of identity —building on strengths and resources within the community —supporting collaborative, equitable partnerships in all aspects, facilitating empowerment and power-sharing processes —encouraging mutual learning and capacity building amongst all partners —promoting balance between knowledge production and action for mutual benefit for all partners —focusing on local knowledge and social and ecological perspectives —including cyclical and iterative systems development —disseminating findings to all parties and between all partners —emphasising a long-term commitment to sustainability. these principles have in turn contributed to the more recent definitions of ces. in the health-related arena, the kellogg foundation has adopted the following definition based on the principles outlined above: … a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. [ces] begins with a research topic of importance to the community with the aim of combining knowledge and action for social change to improve community health and eliminate health disparities. the definition established by the kellogg foundation has been used by various researchers and is recognised as a working definition for health and social research in canada (roche 2008). we will use this definition and the nine principles as benchmarks for assessing whether the farm to fork project met the potential of ces, particularly in relation to its community partners. participatory methods continue to play a significant role in ces. under the ces model, community members have an active role in identifying the needs and challenges of the community, providing project inspiration, guiding researchers, collecting data, mobilising knowledge and facilitating the process to ensure the project produces and disseminates practical outputs (edelglass 2009; israel et al. 1998; roche 2008). strand (2000) claims that conventional scholarship stresses logic, rationality, absolute truth, power and control. strand refers to ‘separate knowers’ as those adopting this type of knowledge production and taking an impersonal stance towards the object of knowing; in contrast, ‘connected knowers’ see intuition, creativity, experience and context as the factors essential to knowledge production. hands-on collaborative learning is encouraged, with the goal being practical application. the latter type of knowing is essential for developing an in-depth understanding of issues (strand 2000). it is this type of knowing that is often ignored in academia. through ces, community partners can bring connected knowing to the academic arena. community partners help situate researchers in a specific 104 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis sociopolitical context. research then becomes locally defined and locally relevant (azano 2011; edelglass 2009; israel et al. 1998; roche 2008). ces encourages innovation, inclusiveness, and use of novel methods and techniques to address community needs. at its best, ces provides a unique but well-informed perspective on issues that can create successful long-term change, as well as advocating for policy change (roche 2008; semken & freeman 2008). however, the benefits of ces differ with different partnerships. ces may remain at the periphery of teaching practices (hicks 2009; semken & freeman 2008; strand 2000). in some cases, ces becomes a superficial model, where the aims are identified but not incorporated into the entire process. some researchers (e.g. roche 2008) illustrate that ces projects focus on the process and overlook the goals and outputs. others claim that, in practice, ces has had limited success in providing sustainable solutions to social challenges (ball & lai 2006; hicks 2009). this may relate to the notion that community partners do not have an equal role in ces projects. at worst, ces can humiliate, misrepresent and denigrate the community partners and communities they aim to help (hicks 2009; roche 2008). to avoid this, community knowledge, including values and experience, ought to be recognised as a valid form of evidence, equal to knowledge gained from scientific processes, as this would validate the community’s perspective and their experiences would be heard and recognised. in practice, however, it may be difficult to give equal weight to different knowledge systems. varying perspectives on experience, knowledge formation, theoretical frameworks and methodologies can contribute to power imbalances between community partners and academics. food insecurity the concept of food insecurity has changed over time. until the 1970s, food security referred mainly to the availability of food and was concerned with providing enough food to feed the population. more recent definitions encompass a breadth of other factors and problematise food security. these definitions stem from human rights and social justice considerations. one of the most used definitions of food security was articulated by the food and agriculture organization (fao) in the rome declaration on world food security. it states: ‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ (fao 1996). riches (1999) perceives food security as a human right and argues that nutritious and culturally acceptable food ought to be available via a dependable and sustainable food supply and regular distribution channels. the centre for studies in food security at ryerson university in toronto, canada, operates using five criteria for food security: food availability, accessibility, adequacy, acceptability and agency (see www.ryerson.ca/foodsecurity/definition/resources/index.html). http://www.ryerson.ca/foodsecurity/definition/resources/index.html 105 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis food security is achieved only when all criteria have been met. as such, food security not only means having access to food, but also having access to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food, as well as the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes surrounding food issues. approximately 870 million people in the world are considered chronically undernourished (fao 2012). the majority of these live in developing countries. although disparities between countries remain, there appears to be a trend in the developing world to reduce hunger. developed countries, such as canada, on the other hand, are facing an increase in undernourishment and food insecurity (fao 2012; food banks canada 2012; rosin, stock & campbell 2012; tarasuk 2013). in canada, about 3.9 million people, 12.3 per cent of the population, were defined as food insecure in 2011. this is about half a million more food insecure people compared to the figures for 2008 (tarasuk 2013). food insecurity plays a significant role in one’s physical, mental and social health. food insecurity in adults is linked to poor health, with increased risks of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, heart disease and depression. food insecure children also face poorer health and increased risk of depression and suicidal tendencies (tarasuk 2013). since the 1980s, emergency food providers (efps), such as food banks and food pantries, have been used to address food insecurity in canada (friel & conlon 2004). in 2011, over 850 000 canadians used food banks every month (food banks canada 2012; tarasuk 2013). further, approximately 4 million meals were prepared in soup kitchens and school breakfast and similar programs (food banks canada 2012). although significant, it is estimated that only a quarter of food insecure canadians use efps (tarasuk 2013). for those identified as food insecure, poor food quality and quantity provided were identified as one reason for not seeking the assistance of an efp. other reasons included not wanting to receive food in the form of charity and not feeling that their situation was dire enough (tarasuk 2013). the focus on non-perishable food items as the major source of food donated to efps has received increasing criticism. as previously mentioned, appropriate food quantity and quality are necessary to declare an individual food secure. many nonperishable food items are regarded as poor quality, or lacking essential nutrients (friel & conlon 2004; rosin, stock & campbell 2012). increasing the quantity of fresh produce would improve the overall quality of food donated, and may positively impact the health of those using efps. further, increasing the quality of donations received by the efps might also encourage those who do not use efps and who are food insecure to begin using them. food insecurity is a serious issue facing all canadians that requires a more in-depth and holistic approach to alleviate the immediate pressure of food insecurity as well as to motivate sustainable change at the policy level (fao 2012; friel & conlon 2004; riches 1999). 106 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis farm to fork farm to fork – a novel ces approach to the problem of food insecurity – was designed by students in a third-year required course (systems analysis and design in applications) in the school of computer science at the university of guelph in ontario, canada. the focus of the project was to improve the quality and quantity of food donated to efps by creating online tools to better connect them with their donors. brokered by the university of guelph’s institute for community engaged scholarship (ices), and building on existing relationships with the university of guelph’s research shop (rs), the students worked with three community partners: the guelph-wellington food round table, the food access working group and the food distribution working group. history and goals of the project farm to fork was motivated by a need to understand how to better connect donors to the community groups who serviced those people who were food insecure. working with community partners, the students were challenged to conceive and build a system that could facilitate direct links between efps and donors to enhance the quantity and quality of food donated. specifically, students were tasked with increasing the quantity of farm fresh food that would end up on the forks of those who needed it most – hence the name farm to fork. within a reverse classroom framework, the students built two working prototypes of what would eventually become farm to fork. instead of using class time for traditional lectures, students were required to use that time to further the project. this novel approach resulted in unprecedented attendance levels as well as an overwhelming sense of accomplishment from the students. the freedom allowed students to use a combination of information learned in the course, interaction with community partners and prototyping to develop a thoughtful approach to a complex social issue. the resulting program was a relatively simple web interface that allows efps to post specific needs in ‘real time’. the system then sends out a weekly newsletter that alerts donors and allows them to commit to providing some or all of the required resources. individuals and community partners can create an account and sign up for weekly newsletters at www. farm-to-fork.ca. since the end of the course in fall 2013, several students have continued to work on the project. students remain active at all levels of farm to fork. beyond beta-testing and development, students are actively engaged with both fundraising and promotion as they relate to farm to fork. community partners from the outset, farm to fork’s community partners were at the core of the process. frequently, these types of arrangements suffer from power disparities in which community agencies are reliant on university partners and feel they are not active and equal participants in the process. beginning with the initial conversation brokered by the ices, the community partners were essential to forming the project 107 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis question that guided farm to fork. throughout the development process, representatives from community agencies worked directly with students to build an understanding of the requirements and to provide feedback at various stages of progress. at present, students are working directly with members of the guelphwellington food round table to test and improve the software. further, it is the students who are working with efps to train their personnel to use farm to fork. by partnering with community agencies, team members were provided with access to a wealth of local food security expertise. previous research from the institute for community engaged scholarship/the research shop (2011, 2012) provided team members with a basis on which to develop the program. the direct involvement of community partners meant that farm to fork was developed in a way that met community needs rather than as simply an academic exercise. future of the project from its outset, farm to fork was designed to be an open-source website that was easily expandable and transferable. the intent was to freely provide access to the system to anyone who might wish to use it, regardless of their location. the farm to fork team is currently exploring extensions of the program which include (1) incorporating location-based technologies for smartphones that will remind donors of efp needs when they near a grocery store or efp; (2) creating direct links between farm to fork and national grocery chains; and (3) based on interest received from across canada, the united states and europe, providing access to any agency throughout the world through the existing program. while anecdotal evidence suggests that the farm to fork project will improve the quality and quantity of food donated to the emergency food system, we continue to work with local emergency food providers to collect necessary data to quantify the impact of the project. these metrics will be necessary as we bring the project to neighbouring cities. it is important to note that farm to fork operates on a not-for-profit basis. although there is potential to commercialise this model and the future outputs of the project, the founders of farm to fork do not have any intention to do so. impact of the project on the community it is recognised that one of the most profound benefits of ces is to provide communities and community partners with a voice (beckman & hay 2003; graham 2007; hicks 2009; melaville, berg & blank 2006). while challenges faced by communities may be initially recognised by academia, they can be addressed in a way that validates community partners as valid actors in producing knowledge and being part of the solution process. to capture the experiences of the community partners in the farm to fork project, as well as community members from wellingtondufferin-guelph public health and guelph community health centre, all were asked to complete a short survey comprised of 108 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis open-ended questions about their experience with the professor and co-founder of farm to fork, the students, the process and the outcomes of the project. the community partners took part in various essential aspects of the project, including providing firsthand knowledge and information on food insecurity in guelphwellington, suggesting the processes that could help address food insecurity in the region, participating in various stages of the decision-making process and mentoring students. excerpts from the surveys are presented below. they are embedded in relevant literature that demonstrates the benefits of ces to community members. the farm to fork community partners’ answers can be divided into four categories: mutual benefit, resources, networking and collaborations, and raising awareness and addressing social issues. we discuss each in more detail below. mutual benefit one of the foundations of ces is reciprocity. ces focuses on providing mutual benefit to all partners involved. as strand (2000) states, ces involves working with the community rather than for the community, or doing research on the community. working with community partners can be beneficial to the community as well as students, faculty and the university (lamarre & hunter 2012; strand 2000). students working within the ces model benefit from gaining skills not available to them via conventional teaching methods. learning content and doing research with a purpose requires students to apply their knowledge, rather than simply illustrate their understanding of course materials. various studies emphasise the high levels of enthusiasm and creativity that students are able to draw upon when working with community partners on addressing social issues (melaville, berg & blank 2006; semken & freeman 2008; showalter 2013; strand 2000). the relationships students form with community partners are demonstrated in the commitment and dedication by students revealed in ces projects such as farm to fork. as one student from farm to fork stated, ‘i consider [farm to fork] to be an experience that students should have a chance to do because it gives them a different perspective on their work and a chance to interact with people outside of the university’. professors can benefit from the ces model once methods have been put in place. specifically, it has been found that teaching within a ces framework is less stressful and more enjoyable for professors than teaching using conventional methods (melaville, berg & blank 2006; semken & freeman 2008; showalter 2013). higher education institutions can also benefit from ces: they often see higher levels of engagement and academic performance from their students (semken & freeman 2008; showalter 2013). exposure to ces can also encourage students to be active participants in school activities, their academic community and the broader communities in which they live (edelglass 2009; lamarre & hunter 2012). 109 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis communities and community members also derive benefit from the ces model. communities directly benefit, as students are encouraged to respond to community-specific needs. students often take part in activities such as community clean-ups, hospital and nursing home visits, and homeless shelter visits, where they directly assist those in need (melaville, berg & blank 2006). of course, ces is not limited to volunteering opportunities; it aims to address any community identified challenge. engagement as a result of the ces model can create future engagement and volunteerism amongst students. as one community partner from farm to fork said: there was a real sense in the lab that the students cared about the project’s development and creating impactful outcomes. it appeared that they wanted to listen and refine their work to meet the needs of the project. the fact that some students wanted to continue to work on the project after marks had been distributed and the class had ended showed dedication and engagement and a real desire to see this project from start to finish! experiencing students’ enthusiasm and dedication to a ces project in turn encourages community partners and contributes to a positive and sustainable partnership between the community and higher education institutions (gelmon et al. 1998; israel et al. 1998). through guidance from the professor and community partners, their academic knowledge and access to resources, students can help address more complex issues and formulate longterm sustainable solutions to community needs. community partners in the farm to fork project experienced the reciprocity that ces projects aim to achieve. as one community partner said, ‘[the project created] win–win opportunities for everyone involved. students had an opportunity to meet course outcomes while the community benefited from the expected project outcomes’. in addition, community partners appreciated the professor’s and students’ creativity, enthusiasm and dedication to the project. the students, under the guidance of the professor and the community partners, offered novel perspectives on how technology could be used to address food insecurity and improve distribution of healthy food to individuals who were food insecure. community partners were active in mentoring and providing guidance to the students. this indicates that the voices of the community partners were recognised and validated, which contributed to a sustained positive relationship between community partners, students and faculty, and strengthened the community-held perception that the ces-based partnership was beneficial (gelmon et al. 1998; hicks 2009). community partners also recognised that working on a real community issue encouraged and motivated students to work hard on the project. the community partners acted as mentors and also as clients, for whom the students had to provide results. as the professor said, 110 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis ‘instead of working for a professor (who would have acted as the students’ client in a conventional class format), they worked with a professor and a real client’. resources the ces model encourages an exchange of resources between all members in an effort to identify and address solutions to community and societal problems (davidson et al. 2010; edelglass 2009; showalter 2013; strand 2000). however, much of the literature examines the increased resources available to students via ces-related projects; for example, melaville, berg & blank (2006) claim that ces increases resources available to students. students also find mentors and support from community partners, which helps them broaden their network. community partners also provide resources that can be used in teaching (israel et al. 1998; semken & freeman 2008). however, there is limited literature on how community resources increase as a result of university-community partnerships, although gelmon et al. (1998) did find that community partners appreciate having access to university resources, including the library, campus facilities and meeting spaces. farm to fork community partners reported that the project increased their access to resources, including expertise and time. this was valuable, as many community organisations were faced with limited access to resources to help address food insecurity issues. the community members recognised that access to resources and expertise gained via the partnership would not otherwise have been made available for the benefit of the community. as one community partner confirmed, ‘this is an innovative solution to a community issue that could not have been done without the support of the professor and students with the limited resources that the [guelph-wellington food round table] has’. as previously mentioned, some authors believe that ces projects are preoccupied with the process and ensuring it is collaborative and mutually beneficial, and often overlook the intended outcomes of the project (roche 2008). however, the partners of the farm to fork project did recognise that the end product could be a valuable potential resource to the community. the online tools created by farm to fork were recognised as a valuable resource that community partners and potentially efps across canada could use to facilitate healthy food distribution and ultimately help individuals and families within any community gain access to healthier foods. this would help increase nourishment and health and provide some immediate relief amongst those experiencing food insecurity. networking and collaborations ces enables the facilitation of networks where information and resources can be exchanged, as well as the connection of individuals and organisations that otherwise would not be connected. the community partners recognise that the work of the partnership has increased the capacity to address food insecurity 111 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis in the guelph-wellington area and has highlighted local action around food insecurity. with the help of the university and faculty, the farm to fork project has helped link various community actors working around food insecurity, furthering useful partnerships and collaborations. as one community member stated, ‘most [food access working group] members are efps who will benefit from the farm to fork by having increased opportunities to connect with providers and community members to bring healthier foods to their service users’. this has helped all community partners involved to expand their network and gain support and resources for the work they are doing around food insecurity. this type of impact has been identified in ces literature. semken and freeman (2008) and hicks (2009) demonstrate that use of the ces model has assisted in unifying community partners and academics working together on community initiatives via working groups, steering committees and round tables, which in turn has the potential to increase capacity and social capital in the community (gelmon et al. 1998). the professor who led the project in the class appears to have played a significant role in creating a strong relationship between the community partners, as well as positive perceptions of the partnership and the farm to fork project in the community. as one community partner said: he was actively engaged in many community events that brought community partners together to ensure he was staying connected and being instrumental in pulling all of the pieces together. this takes a huge amount of effort and time which he was willing to give to the project. i also noted how much he tied in other community work around food security into the social networking streams of the farm to fork project to further engage the community as much as possible in the farm to fork project and related community initiatives. the professor was a true champion in this project and continues to play a critical role in the fruition of this work. ces encourages faculty as well as students to expand their roles to include involvement with the community (davidson et al. 2010). gelmon et al. (1998) demonstrate that community partners greatly appreciate faculty taking the time to visit and develop relationships and trust with them. hicks (2009) confirms that one of the aspects that community partners look forward to is relationship building with faculty and students. it is essential to the ces model that community partners be involved with conception of the project focus (beckman & hay 2003). as mentioned above, community partners in the farm to fork project were responsible for identifying the issue and, together with faculty, developing a tool that would address this concern of the emergency food providers. raising awareness and addressing social issues one of the major benefits of the project identified by the farm to fork community partners was the increased awareness of food insecurity issues. another was the growing appreciation that a real 112 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis social issue was being addressed in a way that would improve the lives of those who were food insecure. the farm to fork project not only used a variety of social networking media to highlight the project (e.g. twitter, facebook, wordpress), but also brought to light food insecurity issues and educated the public about them. as one community partner confirmed, ‘the guelph community health centre appreciates that this particular project is addressing one of the key social determinants of health – food – for those living in poverty in our community. i know we will have data on the actual amounts of food, time and money donated, but the impact on the students and the community is what i am talking about.’ as mentioned previously, ces literature often focuses on the impacts on students and faculty. awareness about food insecurity in the guelph-wellington region was not only increased amongst students but also the community at large. the project provided opportunities for community members to learn about the issues faced by those who were food insecure and using efps. it also educated the public about the major players addressing food insecurity in guelph-wellington. by exposing the issues efps faced in a forum that could easily be accessed by many community members, it encouraged all citizens to play a part in addressing these issues. actions such as purchasing fresh produce and donating it to an efp that requires it helps break the preconceived notion that we can only donate non-perishable food items and helps improve the health of those in need. it is important to note that although many activities and outcomes characteristic of ces were achieved during the farm to fork project, not all were the result of deliberate steps in the project. many were unforeseen. the presence and active contribution of community partners during the various stages of the project, as well as honest, open and transparent communication between community partners, students and faculty were essential to the progression of the project. all members of the project reached a consensus on goals and how those goals should be achieved, and were dedicated to achieving them. as a result, many outcomes of the project were unplanned and developed without conditions outlined at the beginning. limitations of the project although community partners were largely satisfied with the process and expected and unexpected outcomes of the project, they were concerned with project timelines. students and faculty largely schedule their events around the school semester. overall, school activities such as class time and assignment deadlines are set without much flexibility, while community partners often have busy schedules that are less established and set. community partners found it difficult sometimes to blend the two schedules and timelines. as one community partner stated, ‘coordinating schedules of community partners and the students can be a limitation at times. for example, when students host labs during 113 | gateways | korzun, alexander, cluskey-belanger, fudger, needham, vsetula, williamson & gillis class times for community partners to test different phases of the project it can sometimes be hard having the right community partners attend at fixed class times.’ the limitations around scheduling also contributed to difficulties in communication. being unable to coordinate meetings with all members present and discuss important issues and steps of the project can limit and skew the input and feedback provided on the project. the limitations caused by rigid and potentially short-sighted academic calendars have been documented also in other studies (gelmon et al. 1998; hicks 2009). academic schedules are believed to be too inflexible to address community concerns that require holistic, long-term commitment. the farm to fork project was able to address this issue by having students work on the project throughout the summer and incorporating impending phases of the project in other classes. finding financial resources to support students during the summer, careful planning and immense dedication on behalf of the professor were essential to the continuation of the project throughout the school semesters and breaks. conclusion the benefits of taking part in a ces project far outweigh the limitations for community members. ces has significant potential for positive impacts on students, faculty and community-based organisations. ces can be a powerful tool for improving students’ academic performance and their sense of social responsibility, and can provide them with a better understanding of developing solutions to community problems. evaluating community impacts is an essential, yet often overlooked, part of assessing ces projects. this article described the experiences of community partners during the farm to fork project. results show that all partners benefited from the project and that community partners gained vast resources and developed networks and collaborations that otherwise they would not have had access to. most importantly, the project raised awareness about food insecurity among the members of the project and the community at large and found tangible solutions to this community problem. such achievements in our communities do not benefit just one group of people, but benefit us all. this study was exploratory in nature and would benefit from expansion. the authors hope that it will inspire others to capture the voices of community members involved in ces projects. it could also act as a starting point for further exploring the role of ces in issues of food insecurity. references azano, a 2011, ‘the possibility of place: one teacher’s use of place-based instruction for english students in a rural high school’, journal of research in rural education, vol. 26, no. 10, pp. 1–12. ball, e & lai, a 2006, ‘place-based pedagogy for the arts and humanities’, pedagogy: critical approaches to teaching literature, language, composition 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students for success and citizenship, coalition for community schools, institute for educational leadership, washington, dc. riches, g 1999, ‘advancing the human right to food in canada: social policy and the politics of hunger, welfare, and food security’, agriculture and human values, vol. 16, pp. 203–11. roche, b 2008, new directions in community-based research, wellesley institute, toronto, canada. rosin, c, stock, p & campbell, h (eds) 2012, food systems failure: the global food crisis and the future of agriculture, earthscan, london. semken, s & freeman, c 2008, ‘sense of place in the practice and assessment of place-based science teaching’, wiley interscience, 27 march, pp. 1042–57. showalter, d 2013, ‘place-based mathematics education: a conflated pedagogy?’, journal of research in rural education, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 1–13. stoecker, r 2009, ‘are we talking the walk of community-based research?’, action research, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 385–404. strand, k 2000, ‘community-based research as pedagogy’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 7, fall, pp. 85–96. tarasuk, v 2013, household food insecurity and public policy in ontario, research to identify policy options to reduce food insecurity (proof), ontario, canada. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 february 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: kitawi, a. 2019. improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6150. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v12i1.6150 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme alfred kitawi centre for research in education, strathmore university, nairobi, kenya, p.o. box 59857-00200; akitawi@strathmore.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6150 article history: received 04/09/2017; revised 08/09/2018; accepted 02/12/2018; published 19/02/2019 abstract this research presents a viable way to encourage students in informal settlements to transit from high schools to tertiary institutions by focusing on the case of the macheo mentoring programme of strathmore university, nairobi, kenya. the aim was to investigate how the macheo mentoring programme contributed to the academic success of final year students, with a focus on subjects and overall performance. though macheo has other aims, such as provision of life skills, the research examined mainly academic performance, providing insight to how universities can structure their own high-school mentoring programs, the processes that need to be in place and possible challenges they may experience. the research contributes to the literature on the university’s role in encouraging student participation. information was gathered from a cross-sectional survey questionnaire of 72 parents and 76 students. other qualitative information was gathered to provide insight to what could have contributed to students’ success and further augmented quantitative responses. the conclusion was that there is a link between mentorship and students’ success. though this finding is similar to that of most studies undertaken in the global north, this study aims to combat the dearth of such research in the global south. the research indicates implicit connections between the university and community, which can be leveraged if they work together as partners. keywords university-community service, mentoring, transition to tertiary institutions, informal settlements declaration of conflicting interest the author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6150 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6150 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:akitawi@strathmore.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6150 africa has experienced an upsurge in student numbers in recent years. it is estimated that between 1990 and 2012, the number of students in primary schools almost doubled. moreover, compared with other countries, the most positive gains in secondary education occurred in africa (aai 2016). despite these impressive gains, no african country has achieved universal primary education even though africa allocated on average 5 per cent of its gdp to public expenditure on education. in addition, students from the african continent experience a number of academic challenges, involving both quantity and quality issues. in terms of quantity, three critical issues are access, availability and affordability. ‘some parents are unable to maintain their children in school and maintain their attendance, regardless of free primary education. hiv and aids have killed many parents and orphaned many children. as a result many children end up working, leading to low enrolments and irregular school attendance’ (el bouhali & rwiza 2017), while orphaned children have a high rate of absenteeism and truancy. in terms of quality, relevance and effectiveness appear to be constant issues in the education system. in a 2010 uwezo study of children aged 3 to 16 years in over 2000 schools in kenya, only 33 per cent of children in class 2 (7 years of age) could read a paragraph and 25 per cent of class 5 students (aged 10 years) could not read a class 2 paragraph (allavida 2012). kenya, one of the 54 african countries, and the context for the research, has experienced a number of changes in the education sector that have presented some challenges. in 1985, the then president, daniel arap moi, introduced a new system of education, the 8-4-4 (eight years of primary education, four years of secondary education and four years of university education). four years later, as a result of structural adjustment programs, the amount of government financial support was reduced. this meant that funds allocated to different sectors, including education, declined. in 1990, as a result of the jomtien declaration, many developing countries took on the responsibility of ensuring education for all by adopting a framework for action to meet basic learning needs. twelve years later, as a result of an election pledge, the new government introduced free primary education (fpe). the aim was to increase access to primary education. this was followed in 2008 by free day secondary education (fdse), which aimed at accelerating enrolment and the quality of education (sava & orodho 2014). the outcome of some of these interventions has been increased numbers of student enrolments in primary and secondary education. however, this has created a burden on the limited physical facilities and resources available, poor teaching quality, reduced performance in stem subjects, creation of non-formal schools, especially in informal settlements, and massive delays in completing either primary or secondary schooling abuya & ngware 2016; allavida 2012). in kenya, informal settlements grow at an average rate of 5 per cent every year. these settlements are also referred to as slums. in nairobi, kibera, korogocho, kawangware, viwandani and mukuru are examples of informal settlements. in kisumu, such settlements are located in the areas of bandani, obunga, manyatta arab, nyawita and kaloleni. many people in slums are enmeshed in a poverty trap. slum dwellers are subjected to horrific socioeconomic conditions, including lack of clean water and sanitation, lack of a clear mechanism for managing solid waste, and dilapidated hospitals and schools) (mutisya & yarime 2011). in terms of schooling, informal schools, also known as low-cost private schools or private schools for the poor (psp), are mainly run by philanthropic and religious organisations. they charge a very small amount to pay for the few teachers they employ. low-cost private primary schools are the preferred choice of parents due to the proximity and relatively smaller class sizes (sais 2016). overall, however, informal schools are of poor quality with a high teacher to pupil ratio (average of 1:97), teachers are untrained and, in some schools, up to six children share a single kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes textbook. these factors contribute to low learning outcomes (mugo 2012). some institutions, including universities like strathmore university in nairobi, are close to slum areas, in this instance, the kibera slum. a university may choose to become involved in some of the socioeconomic issues that slums experience mentoring embraced as university-based community service a university operates in an open environment. it interacts with businesses, family organisations, government, civil and public authorities, non-governmental organisations and various societies. it has a triple mandate: teaching, research and community service. university activities have both direct and indirect effects. in relation to community service, a university can involve itself in community issues in remote communities or communities close to the institution. community service is a form of civic involvement. in the context of universities, community service helps university students to involve themselves with people from different backgrounds. this enables students to think through and reflect on possible solutions to challenges that these communities experience. this may create in university students transformative learning capabilities when experiencing dilemmas, make them more open to diversity (williams, krista & claire 2016) and also create socially responsible leaders (dugan 2006). community service is the engagement of students in activities that primarily focus on the service being provided and its benefits to the recipients; it is an experiential form of education. in the case of this research, community service benefits pass to both the communities where service is provided and the university students involved in the activities (furco 1996). here, universitybased community service involves identifying high-school students’ needs and considering how these needs can be met. the framework response being examined is that of mentorship. there are many and varied models of mentoring. at its simplest, a mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser. mentoring also creates possibilities and provides guidance and support to others in a relationship of trust (cranwell-ward, bossons & gover 2004). important and useful models have been developed by brockbank and mcgill (2006) and keller (2007). jacobi (1991) and rhodes (2002) define three types of mentoring: youth mentoring, academic mentoring and workplace mentoring. youth mentoring is where an adult supports a young person emotionally, psychologically and in personal cognitive growth. academic mentoring involves a faculty member or a member who is more knowledgeable providing support and guidance to a younger student. workplace mentoring is where a colleague provides support to another colleague for the purpose of personal and professional growth (higgins & kram 2001). the macheo mentoring programme aligns closely with this type of mentoring model. the academic mentoring approach used in this research involves the individual placement of university students who volunteer to offer mentorship to high-school students, guided by a supervisor (thomson et al. 2008). the work of murray (2001) was also influential in the development of the macheo mentoring programme. she examined how to implement the mentoring process comprehensively. the elements in her model include: assess the readiness of the organisation to mentor; identify protégés (i.e. people eligible for mentoring); develop processes, goals and plans for mentoring; match mentors and protégés; orient mentors and protégés; design development plan; negotiate agreement; execute development; facilitate exchange experiences; conclude agreements. contextually, there are examples of academic mentoring in africa, for instance, matie community service and shawco (students’ health and welfare centres organisation). the matie community service (formerly uskor) was formed as a non-profit organisation improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes of stellenbosch university, south africa. matie offers a structured volunteer experience, comprising information sessions and short courses, serving the need of local communities for adult basic education, training and primary health care. the adult basic education program focuses on illiterate and semi-illiterate adults, people with disabilities and out-of-school youth. shawco, which is run by the university of cape town (uct), is a large student volunteer organisation which initiates health and education projects throughout south africa and also runs primary health-care clinics and education programs. the education projects aim to improve the ability of learners to access education, increase tertiary access to both universities and colleges, and offer additional interventions in extracurricular activities (uct 2018). in kenya, no private or public university has a structured mentoring process to support highschool students, especially those in informal settlements, to transit to tertiary institutions. consequently, data about these students are limited. in terms of empirical evidence (on university-community services) relating to student support before the 1980s, data on the benefits of community service are sparse. recent studies on the benefits of community service, however, have included measures of students’ self-esteem, efficacy, political behaviours and social attitudes. a similar case to the macheo mentoring programme is the big buddies program in america, a peer mentoring–tutoring project that has designed approaches to minimise school attrition and expand undergraduate students’ experience of social work. the outcomes from the program were that the big buddies improved in self-esteem, students’ academic performance also improved, students had better attitudes, and cooperative behaviours were realised. the tutors also appreciated the need to help the less fortunate (dennison, 2000). another case comparable to the macheo mentoring programme involved research with adolescent children who displayed delinquent behaviours ( jackson 2002). the children were paired with mentors who organised weekly supervision sessions. the outcomes included improvement in the children’s behaviour and in the mentors’ knowledge of children’s issues. the mentors also had a more focused education goal. lastly, a study done at the community services office at moravian college indicated that, through mentoring, college students who attended the learning connection (tlc) camps were better able to value children and themselves, while at the same time increasing their academic scores (schmidt, marks & derrico 2004). as research in the global south is limited, the aim of this article is to help address this deficiency. the aim of this research was to find out how strathmore university’s macheo mentoring programme has contributed to the transition of final year high-school students to tertiary institutions by comparing final year scores of mentored students with countrywide scores from 2014 to 2016. perceptions, gathered from surveys of parents/guardians and students, of what may have contributed to student success are also presented. these insights provide information on crucial programmatic aspects of such mentoring initiatives in universities to assist them to fulfil their community service role. the outcomes contribute to the limited body of knowledge on university-community service contributions in the global south context. the case of strathmore university’s macheo mentoring programme strathmore university is a fairly young university situated in nairobi, kenya. it was awarded a charter to operate as a fully-fledged university in 2008. the macheo mentoring programme started in 2012 and is just one of the volunteer programs organised and directed by the kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes university’s community service centre (csc), an administrative entity of strathmore university, with its own clear function and structure. other community outreach programs in which the university is engaged include: educating prisoners (in langata prison and naivasha maximum security prison) to acquire accountancy certification, visits to children’s orphanages, constructing classroom blocks in remote areas, tree-planting initiatives, offering education management courses to education managers in remote arid and semi-arid (asal) areas, and student work camps. community outreach activities have been running for more than 20 years (from the time strathmore was a college and later a university). community outreach activities rely on the goodwill of student volunteers, who receive no monetary compensation. macheo, which means sunrise in swahili, is an after-school education support program that developed as a consequence of interactions between another of strathmore university’s community outreach programs and the residents of one of the largest slums in africa, the kibera slum. during the investigations and interactions with 430 teachers and principals who were attending short courses on education management in 2007, some cited a need to increase completion rates of secondary school students in the slum areas. this implies that the macheo mentoring programme arose from these first interactions as a means to complement and not supplement teachers and principals’ efforts in schools. four schools in the kibera slum formed the first batch of schools for macheo intervention. it has to be iterated that, at the beginning, the intervention was not based on previous empirical studies, but on the concerns expressed by teachers and a need to contribute solutions to these concerns. other schools have joined the macheo mentoring programme over time, again because of interest shown by the principal of a school in a slum area. consequently, one of the critical ingredients for intervention was support and commitment from the school’s leadership. without this support, macheo mentoring programme directors could not intervene and provide assistance to the school and its students. the primary objective of macheo was thus to assist in improving the academic performance of students and providing life skills sessions. to start with, a maximum of four students were chosen from each of forms 2, 3 and 4 in each school. (form 1 students were not chosen because it was perceived that they needed time to adapt to a high-school setting since they had just transited from primary school.) the limit was established based on the existing resources of mentors and the physical and other support structures available. the criteria and process of selection are outlined below in detail. the students who were chosen were those who demonstrated academic potential and came from the most challenging backgrounds. emphasis was also placed on gender balance. after some time, some schools from kawangware slum were added, having heard from their peers in kibera of the benefits accruing to students who participated in macheo. the population of those living in kibera is the largest at 1 020 000, while kawangware’s population is 210 000 (omenya & lubaale 2012). from these two populations, approximately 60 per cent, according to current online unesco statistics, are of school age, that is between 5 and 24 years (uis 2018). this implies that there is a very big population of youth surviving in these slums and a need for further interventions. the academic sessions are conducted during the weekends – classroom sessions vary from two to four hours and individual mentoring sessions are 30 minutes in duration. during the sessions, students can seek clarity on subjects and issues that were not clear during their normal daily classes. the students are given past papers from other well-performing schools. the teachers employed in the macheo mentoring programme are normally from the wellperforming schools and are paid every month. these teachers examine students’ knowledge and revision techniques and provide advice on reading and revision techniques. they also improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes act as role models (dignitas 2008; kathuri & juma 2007). macheo mentoring programme evaluators cannot examine the quality of learning in schools where these children come from. this is because, legally, no other agent of the government apart from the teachers’ service commission (tsc) is allowed to check teaching quality in schools. tsc is also responsible for teachers’ registration and human staffing issues. university student mentors of high-school students attend the classroom sessions and provide one-on-one mentoring to students after these sessions. some other ways in which macheo supports students is by providing funds from wellwishers to purchase learning materials and revision kits. this contrasts with other remedial programs in the country, for instance those in kenya, which are supported by individual parents and communities and whose aim is mainly academic support, as explained in general by glennerster, kremer, mbiti & takavarasha (2011). furthermore, the aforementioned research stresses that benefits of remedial education have been shown at primary school level but not at higher levels. figure 1 shows the framework for the macheo mentoring programme, which includes elements borrowed from murray’s (2001) comprehensive mentoring framework. figure 1 framework for the macheo mentoring programme as mentioned earlier, the focus of the outcomes of this research is mainly on passing subject exams and transitioning to tertiary institutions. examination of life skills, creation of a sense of responsibility and creation of positive attitudes, which are part of the maccho mentoring programme’s aims, are not discussed. nor are the benefits to the university students who come to learn how their service makes a difference to the lives of children in informal settlements. this can be investigated in future research. the main reason that strathmore university students involve themselves in this and other community service initiatives is to give back to society. students are not paid for engaging in outreach activities. macheo supplements the core curriculum provided to university students who are registered to undertake degree and diploma programs by training them on how to mentor students to become leaders. the mentors are given leadership and communication skills sessions to help them communicate and transmit life skills to high-school students. kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes the macheo mentoring programme: how it works when developing the macheo approach, csc examined approaches in place around the world. the most ideal was the empire state college of the state university of new york (suny-esc) mentoring model, which borrowed heavily from the murray (2001) model. suny-esc has, since 1971, employed mentoring for academic instruction and advancement (for more on this model see https://www.esc.edu/cmlai/). the university of new york had another similar program to mentor, register and track cancer patients (murray 2001). its approach involved community service in the area of health and had different aims from that of macheo. the key elements of the suny-esc model were used to inform macheo, which works in the following way. university students approach csc to volunteer for the macheo mentoring programme. once students express interest in joining, they are oriented and given short induction courses by the director of macheo. potential high-school students are contacted and interviewed. currently, there are nine schools involved, which include schools within kibera and kawangware slums. typically, invitations are made through the principals of the respective schools to students in form 2. macheo involves students from form 2 to form 4. students can range between 14 and 17 years of age, depending on whether the students were enrolled on time or late. the process of induction into the macheo mentoring programme takes place as follows: parents or guardians of students are informed that their son or daughter will be mentored; secondary school students attend information sessions where they are inducted into macheo (with a keen focus on gender parity: a male university student mentors a male high-school student and likewise for female mentor–mentee pairs); a match is made between the mentor and mentee by the coordinator and director. thereafter, the mentor agrees with the mentee on frequency of meetings and issues that will be discussed in each meeting. mentoring sessions concentrate on academic issues and life skills. in terms of academic assistance, the main subjects covered are mathematics, english, kiswahili, biology, chemistry and physics. the sessions occur on the first, second and fourth saturday of each month from january to november, and are held in strathmore university lecture halls, which are a 30-minute walk from kibera. since the macheo mentoring programme started in 2014, at least 250 high-school students have been enrolled and none has dropped out. two coordinators and a director have been employed full-time for the macheo mentoring programme. the coordinators deal with daily operational issues and the director focuses on strategic plans and their implementation. the director regularly carries out evaluation of the mentors, mentees and support teachers who offer assistance to the students. the support teachers give guidance to the mentors on the main examinable subjects. the teaching focus in form 2 and 3 classes during the macheo sessions is mainly on all the critical areas for which the support teachers feel the students need to have a firm grasp and the form 4 sessions are focused more on addressing weak areas identified from the assessments. at the end of every year, teacher and student evaluations are carried out. the outcomes of the evaluations inform the focus of macheo in the following year. the teacher evaluations include areas where teachers think new focus is needed based on class discussions and assessments, the kind of teaching materials they need, and learner needs. student evaluations are done via questionnaires given to students. from these, teachers evaluate the kind of extra support students need in subject topics, examinations and use of laboratory equipment, and if extra practical sessions in science are required. they also gauge the frequency of contact between mentor and mentee and the depth of mentorship conversations, as well as relations at home and at school and the challenges the students face. special attention is given to the responses of outgoing form 4 students. strathmore support teachers give regular formative improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes https://www.esc.edu/cmlai/ and summative assessments of high-school students who attend the macheo mentoring programme. the formative assessments are given throughout the school term and take the form of assignments and tests, while summative assessments are given once a term (cop 2013). thus far, an explanation has been offered about the structure, development and intentions of the macheo mentoring programme. the article will now explore the aims of the research, whose objectives were: (1) to find out how macheo contributed to final year student success in the various subjects, compared with country subject mean scores, and consequent levels of transition from secondary to tertiary education (2) to examine the possible reasons behind student success in various subjects and thus transition from secondary to tertiary education. methodology mixed methods research is an approach to inquiry that employs both quantitative and qualitative aspects (creswell 2008). it mixes both approaches in the study to give more depth to the data and interpretations. this research used mixed methods because the first research questions were approached quantitatively (focus was on student scores) and the second research question, qualitatively (focus was on perceptions). the research is etic in nature because it used pre-existing definitions and explanations of mentoring, students’ success and community service (punnett et al. 2017). the research evaluated perceptions from students and parents on which aspects of the mentoring process assisted in improving student scores. these responses were captured in a semi-structured questionnaire that had three sections: background factors, mentorship, students’ success. the section on background factors examined background influences such as age, gender, the school a student belonged to, whether a student was residing with a parent, number of siblings, if parents/guardians offered financial support for education, a parent’s awareness of their child’s close friends, if a parent supported their child’s attendance in macheo and if a parent provided emotional and moral support. the mentorship section queried how a student was inducted into the mentorship, if briefing on the objectives of mentoring was given, whether matching of mentor and mentee was performed, if the mentor had changed since becoming involved with macheo, the type of discussions a student had with his/her mentor, whether mentoring sessions were planned, mentorship satisfaction level, availability of mentor, whether evaluative meetings were held at the end of the year and if a student wanted to continue with macheo. the students’ success section verified if performance in class exceeded average, if performance had improved since being involved with macheo, whether students were convinced they would pass their final examinations, other skills acquired through macheo and whether students thought they would transition into tertiary institutions. final year kenya certificate of secondary education (kcse) examination records were used to compare and contrast changes in performance. a z-test of mean differences was used to compare performance through time. a z-test is used when a researcher has randomly selected large samples; the dependent variable is normally distributed and knows the mean of the population and standard deviation (heiman 2011), which applied in this research. in the case of the data presented in this research, the researcher focused mainly on post-test data, that is, data after intervention, and did not look at responses and performance before the kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes intervention (before 2014). the outcomes of this research can be used to build a more robust longitudinal study through time and therefore elaborate on changes, impact and challenges experienced through time. the parents’ questionnaire had similar questions to the students’ questionnaire but took a guardian/parent perspective to gauge whether they understood the same issues in the same way as their children. this was important to ensure that many stakeholders’ views would be incorporated and solutions suggested would be multi-pronged. parents are the immediate community, but the perspectives of parents are absent from most of the mentoring literature (karcher, claytie & powell 2002; spencer 2010). the questionnaire, as mentioned previously, does not gauge the change in perceptions, but perceptions at a particular point in time (2017). for later research studies, there is an intention to determine whether the perceptions of students in the macheo mentoring programme have changed, though this will be a new population of parents and students. most of the data in the questionnaire were ordinal in nature and therefore an ordinal test of relation was used. the chi-square test was used to test the relationships for the second research question. scope and data analysis the final sample that filled in questionnaires consisted of 76 students and 72 parents. this sample is sufficiently representative of the actual population of 170 students and 170 parents (the sample size is at a margin of error of less than 0.2, using the z-score at 95 per cent confidence interval and 0.5 standard deviation). the questionnaires were administered by the managers of the macheo mentoring programme in a convenient way, dependent on the availability of students and parents, i.e. those who said they could give responses. the students came from nine different schools in informal settlements. all students were within the age bracket of 16–20 years; 42 were male and 34 female. in the case of parents, 34 were male and 37 female. one person did not indicate gender. fourteen parents were within the age bracket of 20–30, 26 between 31 and 40, 21 within the 41–50 bracket and 10 were above 50. this implies that most parents were in the youth age bracket using the african youth charter standard age bracket of 15–35 (african union 2006). the analysis was based on a crosssectional survey during the months of april to september 2017, and not a longitudinal survey. reliability and validity validity was ensured through content validity and face validity (bordens & abbott 2011). face validity was ensured by asking two experts if the data asked for in the questionnaires corresponded to the themes and research questions. content validity was assured through the use of the same core aspects of the suny-esc, new york model (beins & mccarthy 2012; burgess 1989). reliability tests were done using the cronbach alpha test (cohen, manion & morrison 2007). the items in the parents and students’ questionnaire were similar, with few differences in terms of phrasing and context. the cronbach alpha value calculated was 0.845 for 34 items, which implies the questionnaires were reliable. research ethics research ethics were ensured through anonymity of accounts by not revealing specific information about individuals, such as a person’s name and other personal information. the researcher asked for permission from the university and respondents to gather the information. parents who filled in the questionnaire were informed that their children would fill in a improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes questionnaire with similar questions to those in their questionnaire. participants were allowed to answer or not answer certain questions in the questionnaire (beins & mccarthy 2012; burgess 1989). an option was provided in the questionnaire for each question a person was free not to answer. each parent was asked to fill in a research consent form before their child provided a response and parents were asked to fill in individual consent forms. results comparison of final year subjects’ scores with country subject means and consequent levels of transition the following tables compare form 4 kcse macheo subject performance and country-wide mean scores over the three years that the macheo mentoring programme has been running. because each region in the country presents a different subject mean, with the highest means normally reported within urban areas, compiling country means has required some approximation. table 1 comparison of final year scores comparison of subject mean scores of final year macheo students with country performance year maths english kiswahili chemistry biology physics m c m c m c m c m c m c 2014 3 1 5.68 3 3.88 5 2.44 2 2.81 2 2.5 3 2015 4.65 1 5.39 4 5.17 5 5.41 2 5.56 2 5.14 4 2016 3.00 1 3.22 4 6.91 5 2.70 2 2.80 2 2.00 4 2017 5.25 1 4.32 4 4.82 5 3.93 2 1.92 1 2.21 2 total 15.9 4 18.61 15 20.78 20 14.48 8 13.09 7 11.85 13 av. 3.98 1 4.65 3.75 5.19 5 3.62 2 3.27 1.75 2.9625 3.25 m = macheo mentoring programme performance c = country performance   mathematics english kiswahili chemistry biology physics z-test 0.01408 0.21255 0.778265 0.09722 0.14823 0.75552 country average grade score 1 3.75 5 2 1.75 3.25 in all the five subjects, the average grade score was above the country-wide scores. in 2014, for the first group completing the macheo mentoring programme, two macheo subjects showed a lower performance than the country-wide mean score: kiswahili and physics. in the other three subjects, mathematics, english and chemistry, the macheo students performed better. in terms of subject differences, the main subject which showed a significant difference from country mean scores from 2014 to 2017 was mathematics with sig=0.014. this was because the macheo average student performance was consistently well above the country average, kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes while in the other subjects the scores were close to the country mean performance. further, there was a relationship between the performance in mathematics and biology and chemistry performance for the three years. if students performed well in mathematics, for instance in 2015, performance in biology (5.56) and chemistry (5.41) was found to be equally high. when the performance in the different subjects is compared for inter-subject mean performance (that is, mean performance for the various subjects from 2014 to 2017), no significant mean difference was identified. this implies that interventions by the subject teachers were similar over the three years and thus yielded almost similar results. this was to be expected as the same support teachers had been giving assistance to the students since macheo started. transition rates for mentored students the current transition rate (in 2017) of students in the macheo mentoring programme from secondary to university education is 19 per cent, which is above the average country-wide transition rate of 12 per cent (i.e. 70 073 out of 610 501 had a c+ result and above; c being the average cut-off grade) (onsongo 2017). in total, 33 per cent of macheo students transited to tertiary institutions, including both universities and colleges, in 2017. table 2 presents the transition rates of macheo and the whole country and table 3 compares performance over 2014–2017. table 2 comparison of students transitioning from secondary to tertiary level education year % of students who can gain entry into university from macheo % of students who can gain entry to technical institutions from macheo % of students who can gain entry to university at country level % of students who can gain entry to technical institutions at country level 2014 24% 52% 31% 58% 2015 33% 82% 32% 59% 2016 23% 55% 16% 34% 2017 19% 33% 12% 29% table 3 a z-test comparison of performance for the period 2014–2017 year z-test for percentage mean difference between macheo performance and country performance for students who can gain entry into university (p value) z-test percentage difference between macheo performance and country performance for students who can gain entry into technical institutions (p value) 2014 0.1275 0.015 2015 0.975 0.557 2016 0.567 0.409 2017 0.618 0.776 improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes the tables show that in the years 2014–2017, the absolute percentage of students transitioning from secondary to tertiary institutions was higher for the macheo mentoring programme than country-wide figures, apart from its first year of operation in 2014. this is corroborated by a significant difference in the p value of 2014 (comparing students who gained entry into third-level institutions country-wide with those in the macheo mentoring programme). it is important to note that there was a country-wide decline in performance in the years 2016–2017 because of a change in governance in the ministry of education which instituted new guidelines and a raft of changes, including how final examinations would be set and conducted. possible factors influencing student success students’ responses in terms of students’ responses, mentorship aspects which affected students’ academic success can be classified broadly into activities which happened before the actual mentorship (prementorship activities), activities which happened during mentorship (mentorship process activities), and activities which sustained students in the macheo mentoring programme. students indicated that the pre-mentorship activities that related to students’ success included: contacting prospective candidates to be mentored early on in the process (44 agreed on the importance of this, p=0.06); explaining the objectives of macheo from the start of the mentoring process, which influenced the types of skills students acquired (63 agreed on the importance of this, p=0.031); explaining mentorship objectives, which linked to students proceeding into tertiary institutions (67 agreed, p=0.05); matching of mentor and mentee (66 agreed, p=0.024); and development of skills (69 agreed, p=0.05). mentorship process activities associated with students’ success in school exams included: the topics that a mentor discussed (63 agreed, p=0.041), analysing students’ performance (64 agreed, p=0.00) and willingness of a student to continue in the macheo mentoring programme. this encouraged a student to persevere with macheo and would influence longterm involvement of the student (75 agreed, p=0.047). the aspects which sustained students in the macheo mentoring programme and contributed to student success were: willingness of students to continue with macheo (74 agreed, p=0.004) and discussion with the mentor about challenges students experienced (34 agreed, p=0.019). parents’ responses responses given by parents on what was likely to affect students’ academic success from the perspective of mentoring can be divided into two broad factors, macheo itself and the mentor’s role. in terms of the former, 53 parents agreed that if their children continued with macheo they would pass the kenya certificate of secondary exams [kcse] (p=0.034) and would make it to a tertiary institution (p=0.044); 52 parents linked improved performance to attendance (p=0.036). the more parents were informed of macheo mentoring programme activities, the more likely they thought their child would succeed (p=0.08). parents strongly agreed that, if they knew the mentor of their child (p=0.000), then their child would most likely succeed, and this would also enable them to receive regular updates kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes about their child (p=0.03). despite this, 37 mentioned that they did not know their child’s mentor and consequently few received updates. the responses above focus only on the significant relations – parents/guardians and students. there were other responses in the questionnaires which were not significant and not given too much focus in this research. it can be seen that the responses of students mainly focused on the macheo mentoring programme itself and their direct involvement in the mentoring activities from induction to exit, while the responses of parents mainly focused on their perceptions of macheo and not their direct involvement. however, parents and guardians can be directly involved if they have frequent contact with their child’s mentors. other challenges the research investigated other challenges that can directly or indirectly affect mentoring activities. many parents (47) indicated that they lacked money to pay the school fees and hence were not involved in school fundraising activities. engagement in fundraising activities needed extra time and sources of income from parents. a single mother said, ‘i am a single mother of four and cannot adequately support my children’; another parent said, ‘i’m sick and find it difficult to offer enough support to my child’. these extra funds from fundraising activities would have supplemented income schools receive from government and other sources and could lead to a reduction of school fees. the main reason for nonpayment of fees was lack of a constant source of income (25 parents). the reasons why some parents were not involved in fundraising activities at school was because of a lack of funds (7 parents), fundraising activities were not held in school (11 parents) and others did not have a concrete reason (56 parents). a parent expressed his inability to be involved in fundraising activities as follows: ‘i earn low wages and therefore cannot participate in school’s fundraising activities’. a total of 44 students indicated that their parents lacked funds. the challenges students experienced varied from lack of basic needs, lack of funds, no attention in the family, sickly guardians, living far from school, few school materials, insults from relatives, family conflicts, poor housing and living conditions, and lack of support from relatives. students thought that by being god fearing (10 students), conscientious hard workers (15 students) and having access to reading materials (6 students), they would succeed. other challenges experienced at home that could indirectly affect mentoring success were expressed by one student when she said, ‘i lack enough study time because of household chores’; others complained, ‘i have noisy neighbours’ or ‘i lack fare and school fees’. discussion complementary role of mentoring programs the macheo mentoring programme was designed to complement, not supplement, teaching and learning activities in schools (cochran-smith 2003). this implies that school activities act as a foundation for activities undertaken in mentoring programs. for example, a mentoring program may supply reading materials that are not readily available in schools (mullis et al. 2012) or parents cannot provide; provide extra support teachers for these programs, especially if the children come from schools with high teacher–pupil ratios (abuya & ngware 2016; mugo 2012); and may create extra reading environments where students can interact. in the macheo case, university lecture rooms or a community hall were used as improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes extra reading spaces on specific days. the complementary role points to having a stronger school–mentoring program connection in order to strengthen and support teachers’ roles. in some cases, providing short, rapid response courses to respond to challenges in schools can lead to further success of mentoring programs. mentors need to be known by parents/ guardians of mentees. effect of mentorship activities on student success mentorship activities can lead to students’ improvement in performance in specific subjects as well as overall performance (turner, meyer, midgley & patrick 2003). emphasis needs to be placed on specific subjects during mentorship where they have a strong relationship to other subjects. in the case of the macheo mentoring programme, it was established that improvement in mathematics would bring about an improvement in stem subjects and overall academic success (nrc 2013; shaban 2015). this implies that support teachers in mentoring programs should have a strong background and knowledge of stem subjects, in particular. enablers of a mentoring program certain features act as enablers in a mentoring program and help achieve positive outcomes. such enablers include making parents or guardians co-participants in the mentoring process (rhodes & dubois 2008) and breadth and depth of teaching and learning activities in schools (moir & gless 2001). at the student level, a positive attitude, critical thinking and concern for others help improve subject and student performance (dubois & silverthorn 2005; murray 2001). these can be fostered by mentoring programs. quality of support teachers in mentoring programs as mentioned above, the quality of support teachers has an impact on improvement in students’ scores (turner et al. 2003). quality support teachers need to work with mentors to guide students in specific subject areas. these teachers can provide further pointers to mentor– mentee–academic engagement, especially on how to help weak students. in order to attract good support teachers, funds need to be set aside to pay them. good support teachers can provide specific subject advice to teachers in informal schools where student mentees come from and may be used to organise short teacher enhancement courses to address any skills that need to be acquired within a short time. effect of government on mentoring programs government policies, structures and processes have an impact on schools’ functions and consequently on the success of mentoring programs ( judd 2017). radical changes made by government can either dampen or improve students’ success. in the case of the macheo mentoring programme, the strict changes in final year summative assessments made by the government’s national examining body brought uncertainty about the knowledge to be evaluated in different subjects. this had a negative effect on the schools and the academic success of macheo in the years when the radical changes were instituted. this implies a need for government to work together with schools, teachers and other stakeholders before instituting radical changes. kitawi gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 14 page number not for citation purposes impact of socioeconomic challenges on mentoring success since many students from informal settlements face many socioeconomic challenges, academic support should be coupled with life skills training. this will assist them to navigate life challenges they face in their situation. in addition, provision of materials not easily accessible in these schools will further improve students’ success. limitations a limitation of the study was the lack of pre-test and post-test comparisons of students’ performance since the study focused only on students engaged in the macheo mentoring programme and did not examine other students who were not, though country-wide score comparisons were made. the research would have benefited further from insights of other students in similar schools but not involved in macheo. however, this would have proven somewhat difficult as it is not easy to go into schools to perform investigations without explicit permission from education officials. other similar projects initiated by donors, together with country education officials, could make such comparisons. a deeper investigation into other aspects of students’ success, for instance, possession of life skills, creation of a sense of responsibility and formation of a positive attitude towards learning, was not conducted. examining possession of life skills and sense of responsibility needs more qualitative data of a longitudinal nature to highlight how such skills are being exercised by the students in society. assessing positive attitudes towards learning requires involvement from principals and teachers in the various schools, which cannot be easily done for reasons mentioned earlier. generalisability of these research findings is restricted to the outcomes of the macheo initiative. conclusions and recommendations the conclusion that can be drawn from this research is that there is a link between mentorship and students’ success in the years under study (2014–2017). there is a need to compare the outcomes of this research with other mentoring initiatives in the global south. such comparisons should take note of the mentoring approach, background of the students and other socioeconomic conditions (karcher et al. 2006). this research posits that, apart from service-based learning, which is important to ensure students are ready for the world of work, societal consciousness and student outcomes can be improved by incorporating mentorship programs such as macheo into mainstream university activities. universities, as with strathmore university, can share with other universities in the global south experiences and knowledge on how to better structure such programs within their own modes of operation. the macheo mentoring programme presented here is just one viable way to ensure improved academic and transition outcomes for underserved students. importantly, it demonstrates that there is a need to involve tertiary institutions in developing policies friendly to community service initiatives, especially where radical education changes are involved. there are untapped knowledge resources in tertiary institutions that can support educationfor-all initiatives in developing countries. many universities have networks with governmental, non-governmental and business organisations and have many students enrolled in their programs. these networks can be activated to respond to community challenges. government can formulate policies that encourage businesses to coordinate with universities to resolve community challenges and, in return, receive tax reductions. universities can assist government by creating a database of community challenges which universities can respond to, with improving transition rates of students in informal settlements into higher education: an analysis of the macheo mentoring programme gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes funding support from governmental, non-governmental and business organisations. students can receive credit for involvement in mentoring programs and businesses can incorporate this criterion in its advertised criteria for new employees. the macheo mentoring programme has contributed to improvement in subject scores and average performance of high-school students. furthermore, it has encouraged these high-school students in informal settlements to transit to tertiary institutions. acknowledgements the manuscript was first submitted to gateways as part of its pilot author+editor mentoring program in late 2017. the author and gateways journal would like to sincerely thank all those who contributed so generously to the article’s development. these include: the three peer referees dr joan kabaria-muriithi, kenyatta university, dr thoko mnisi, university of kwazulu-natal, and dr patti silbert, university of cape town; prof paul ashton for his input on final drafts; and margaret malone for her mentoring. dr penny o’donnell, university of sydney, is especially thanked for her generous donation to uts shopfront at the centre for social justice and inclusion, which made the mentoring pilot possible. references aai 2016, state of education in africa report 2015: a report card on the progress, opportunities and challenges confronting the african education sector, the africa-america institute, new york. abuya, b & ngware, m 2016, ‘reflection of teachers in the fpe era: evidence from six urban sites in kenya’, sage open, 12 february, pp. 18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016629189 african union 2006, african youth charter, african union commission, banjul, gambia, west africa. allavida 2012, access to and quality of basic education in kibera, uwezo, kenya. beins, b & mccarthy, m 2012, research methods and statistics, pearson, boston, ma. bordens, k & abbott, b 2011, 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https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55312-6_5 https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55312-6_5 shared voices, different worlds process and product in the food dignity action research project la via campesina, the international peasant movement, declared that ‘the people hold thousands of solutions in their hands’ for creating just, democratic and sustainable food systems (la via campesina 2010). given peak oil, peak soil, and a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (montgomery 2007; bakhtiari 2004; lemonick, 2008), we are likely to need all of those solutions and thousands more in order to feed our seventh generation. over three dozen people from five community organizations, three academic institutions and one non-profit ‘think and do’ organization are collaborating on a five-year us-based action research project called food dignity to identify, support and assess such solutions. we come from different worlds – personally, socioculturally, organisationally – but are sharing our stories, experiences and expertise. in this article, four of us outline our strategies, struggles and successes in our first three years of trying to share voices by bridging worlds in our work together for food dignity. our project, ‘food dignity: action research on engaging food insecure communities and universities in building sustainable community food systems’, was awarded us$5 million for five years from the usda national institute of food and agriculture for the agriculture and food research initiative. we started in april 2011. food dignity builds on four premises: —three billion people (43 per cent of the world’s population) suffer from malnutrition —the industrial food system is not sustainable —community-based local and regional food systems offer ethical and practical solutions —governments and philanthropists should invest in these community-based systems and learn from those leading and implementing these initiatives. the food dignity team envisions a society where each community exercises significant control over its food system gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 116–128 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 christine m. porter university of wyoming hank herrera center for popular research, education and policy & (until dec 2013) dig deep farms & produce daryl marshall east new york farms! gayle m. woodsum feeding laramie valley 117 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum through democratic negotiation, action and learning in ways that nurture all people in current and future generations. the team is collaborating on research that will help find the ways to get there. the five community organisations involved with food dignity have been working on creating just and sustainable food systems for a collective 32 years. the aggregate food movement and social justice organising experience of key leaders in those community efforts exceeds a century. academic partners bring tools from their disciplines, including public health nutrition, anthropology, development sociology, education, economics, agroecology, medicine and planning. however, the project’s knowledge foundations, research questions and guiding values are mainly by and for the community partners. in that sense, this is not a transdisciplinary project but a supraor post-disciplinary one. it also is radically axiological; that is, we use the ethical framework of the vision stated above and of ‘dignity’ as both a process and an outcome to guide our paths to knowledge production (pelletier et al. 2013; mcdonald 2004; wilson 2008; jacobson 2007; hicks 2011). our primary objective is to identify, develop and evaluate scalable and equitable strategies for organising sustainable community food systems to ensure food security. our approaches include: —developing, sharing and analysing the case studies of the work being done by our five community partners —each community testing and co-evaluating a us$65 000 per year ‘organising support package’, including funding for a community organiser, community-led research, travel and mini-grants —documenting practices, outcomes and impacts of selected actions and strategies, including mini-grants and home and community food gardens —conducting a sixth case study of the project collaboration itself to inform how academic partners can best support and learn from and with the community work. this article presents the personal experiences of three community-based participants and one academic as part of this ‘sixth case study’ of the food dignity action research collaboration. we each write a section below, describing strategies, struggles and successes in the first three years of working together on the food dignity project. though we come from different worlds – personally, socioculturally, organisationally – by contributing our stories, experiences and expertise, we share and yet also retain our individual voices. as the zapatistas wrote: dignity is a bridge. it needs two sides that, being different, distinct and distant become one in the bridge without ceasing to be different and distinct, but ceasing already to be distant (zapatista march of dignity, cited in bühler 2002). 118 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum feeling my way into the sixth case study (hank) christine and i first met, electronically, in 2008 through a childhood obesity prevention list serve that she started. she and i have been discussing how to build local food systems and how to create equitable and relevant action research relationships ever since. when the opportunity to apply for the usda grant arose, we agreed to collaborate. for the first three years of the project i had a duel role, one as a community-based researcher supporting the five community partners and the other as the general manager of one of those partners, dig deep farms & produce. as of 2014, i serve as lead investigator for the sixth case study. from the very start of the food dignity project, community members have had what we may call ‘close encounters of the oppression kind’ with academic partners. the project started in april 2011 and we held our first food dignity face-to-face meeting that may. in planning this meeting, christine and i talked about how to create a learning environment where community partners and academics could learn about each other and begin to build the collaborative, mutually supportive relationships that we would need as the energy to drive the project. as christine put it in her opening presentation, the top two goals of the meeting were ‘(1) to care about telling our stories, individually and collectively and (2) to trust that we at least might be able to do it well together’. we both knew that community residents and academics lived in different worlds. by the time we were planning this meeting, christine and i had spent three years grappling, often heatedly, with those differences. we talked by phone and in several face-to-face meetings to discuss, question, clarify, and slowly and deliberately move toward understanding. we did not cease to be different and distinct, but ceased to be distant. the project’s first face-to-face meeting was only three days long. among people from different worlds, this was hardly enough for a slowly unfolding conversation that fosters mutual learning and respect, especially in the face of entrenched sexism, racism and classism and fraught town–gown relations. many partners were coming from communities with long histories of trauma. historical trauma is the ‘cumulative trauma over both the life span and across generations that results from massive cataclysmic events’, such as enslavement, segregation, and physical and cultural genocide (brave heart 1999, p. 111). the term originated in relation to native americans but applies to african americans, latinos, asian americans, pacific islanders, indeed all groups oppressed by colonial practices of domination, extermination and exclusion. community members – especially those born and raised in poverty and in communities of colour – often suffer from the consequences of historical trauma, such as post-traumatic stress, depression, poor physical health, substance abuse and domestic violence. 119 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum community members talking among themselves may share their personal stories but rarely, if ever, share those stories with academics, in particular white academics. how does one tell those stories? in my case, how do i talk about what it felt like to have the 4th grade teacher talk about my people as ‘digger indians’? how do i talk about the cute 10th grader who told me i could not walk her home because her university professor father didn’t want her to go out with mexicans? how do i tell the story of the old white woman who refused my visit – as a medical professor in a white coat on rounds with students in tow – because, in her words, ‘i don’t talk to no beaner’? how do i explain discovering as an adult that in fact i am not mexican but ohlone, a native california tribe? that i didn’t know that because my father never told me, probably because, like many ohlone, his parents became ‘mexican’ to protect our family from the california policy of exterminating native people? (in 1851 and 1852, the california legislature authorised over us$1 million in payments to white men who could show they had murdered an indian. the state was eventually reimbursed by the federal government (laverty 2003).) every community member has his or her own stories, suffers from the personal and emotional impact of historical trauma, and may contain an explosive rage toward whomever appears in his or her world representing those forces that caused the pain. and so all of the food dignity partners – community and academic, white and people of colour – met in may 2011; some on guard, wary, uncertain, insecure. some with deep commitment to fighting for justice in our neighbourhoods. some knowing that life on our streets is hard, sometimes cold and extremely mean, where young friends and co-workers have buried their young friends and co-workers. some knowing that every day is a struggle to keep on going in spite of not having enough of the resources needed to do the job. and others smiling, happy, polite, curious, eager, interested, and sharing lovely stories of leisurely scholarship, trips to distant lands, meetings attended, papers presented, accomplishments, ideas, and of course knowledge – real knowledge, authentic knowledge, scientific knowledge, dominating knowledge, paramount knowledge – the reality-making knowledge that trumps anything those of us from the streets might have to offer. at that meeting in may, and in the collision of these dense and opposing worlds, the predictable happened: it all blew up. and just to make sure, we repeated the collision twice more, in october 2011 and may 2012. though in some technical ways the project was making significant strides in the research, the team largely remained different, distinct and distant. to put it more colloquially, each time, it blew up. community members – mostly people of colour and mostly poor – felt patronised by the academics. and in some cases, the academics displayed the most stereotypical patronising condescension possible. academics felt hurt and bruised by the hostility they felt from community members, all 120 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum the more so if they had been expecting to be considered ‘the good guys’. and, in some cases, community members said hurtful things. the community members wanted to address issues of race, class, power and privilege. the team agreed that we needed to bring in a facilitator to do anti-racism training in may 2012. some white people felt judged and distressed. community members reported that they had experienced all of the usual forms of oppression at each community site, such as structural racism, subtle expressions of racial prejudice, sexism, cultural insensitivity, and assumptions of power and privilege. over three years the catalogue has grown and have been enacted in ways unique to place. for example, in laramie, one way academic privilege manifests is christine frequently being credited for gayle’s work. all of the community partners and most of the academic partners have come to understand that this project requires us to confront the exertion and exercise of academic power and privilege. the goal of community partners is to exert our own community power and privilege and to assert the legitimacy of knowledge and wisdom that emerges from our daily life experience and the everyday learning that we need simply to survive. we now see this work as flipping relationships of power and privilege between community and campuses. learning from gayle’s leadership in the community campus partnership for health’s community network for research equity and impact, gayle, christine and i are establishing even more substantial guidelines and rules for engaging academic partners. community leaders don’t easily let in outside researchers. we don’t let others tell our stories. we consider outsider narratives forms of extraction and expropriation of our knowledge and wisdom – community wealth that we will share at our discretion. these elements of the project quickly became ‘the sixth case study’. the sixth case study research question is: how can and should universities support communities in building secure, sustainable and equitable food systems and in learning from that work? we are answering that question (and it’s opposite, how not to do it) through documentation and evaluation of our collaborative work on the food dignity project. the sixth case study builds on the following beliefs, proposed by community partners during development of the grant application and largely embraced by christine in its design: —experiential knowledge and contextual wisdom reside in communities. but communities lack resources, power and privilege —academies have a concentration of resources, expertise, power and privilege —change will occur with a shift in resources, power and privilege through the food dignity support package for community organising, community research, mini-grants and technical assistance. 121 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum we have already learned that the ‘support package’ is needed but by itself is not enough to create equitable communitycampus relationships in this project. we are now testing additional financial and leadership strategies to achieve the right balance. the resource gaps in our communities are profound. from a public health perspective, social inequities lead to health disparities; for example, life expectancy on the wind river reservation is only 49 years (williams 2012). through the sixth case study we hope to expand what counts in research, as shown in table 1 (prepared by author christine porter). dominant research narrative research in food dignity expertise professionals, academics, institutions, study also citizens, communities, associations, experience ethics last: used to apply knowledge gained about truth first: used to decide what we want to know and how we will try to find it out knowledge must be written generalisable scientific method can also be oral, visual may be transferrable stories the food dignity team is now using the following strategies to improve collaboration and equity between the community and academic partners: —pushing academics to work from the heart and soul, not just the head: ‘if research doesn’t change you as a person, then you aren’t doing it right’ (wilson 2008); ‘dignity is not something that one studies, it is something that one lives or dies. something that doesn’t walk in the head, something that walks in the heart’ (zapatista communications on dignity, cited in bühler 2002) —spending time together during food dignity team meetings, site visits, and conferences. we talk face to face as much as possible —writing papers together (such as this one), presenting together and designing research together —sharing financial resources, even if the shares are still not yet equitable. most recently, the university of wyoming and cornell university reallocated $200 000 from their budgets to support community-led action research and dissemination —working to share leadership of the project. recent strategies for this included expanding the number of community-based partners who are paid members of the project-wide team and hiring an outside facilitator for our most recent team meeting in may 2013 (in the course of which, we may have become less distant). after three years in this five-year action research project, several themes have emerged from the sixth case study: —food dignity is a project for academics, but this work is life and death for communities —some academics doing this work report feeling ‘fringe’ within the academy. but this ‘fringe’ is relative: the academy and the academics within it are well protected compared to the everyday table 1: expanding what counts as knowledge generation 122 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum life and death struggles of the truly marginalised groups represented by the community partners —community members’ radically varied locations and life courses, enmeshed in gross social inequities, create different lived realities. we are tackling the tall tasks of accounting for, acknowledging, and (as much as possible) bridging these realities in the struggle for the food dignity project and, more importantly, for living a reality of food dignity for our communities. east new york farms! (daryl) east new york farms! has been around since 1998. it was birthed out of community need for open space and activities for youth. residents met with non-profit organisations and the pratt institute to talk about what could be done. they realised that vacant lots were left empty due to the city’s financial problems of the 1970s, as well as white flight, redlining and the crack epidemic, and this opened the door for east new york farms! to start up urban gardens in our community’s abandoned spaces. east new york has been neglected because of its location, as well as the colour of its population. this burden of blight can be a deterrent to hope, and cause people to believe nothing is going to change. clearly, that is not the motto of east new york farms! staff and members. plans and preparation for unused land and talent created a place where food could be grown naturally and community youth, seniors and adults could work, learn and socialise together. these tangible things have carried us along for over 15 years so far. it has not been without hardship and struggle: pain caused through discriminatory practices and good ole statistics that say one is more likely to perish here than in perhaps almost any other area of this great metropolis. some say statistics don’t lie but they surely don’t tell the whole story of 180 000 and counting. my community boasts a head count greater than some cities. large groups of people in an overcrowded, publicly and privately disinvested area can be a cause for concern. our bordering neighbourhoods have not fared well either. our allegiance with food dignity and our practices and collective goals have gelled well. this has given us space to share our story and be inspired by what is happening not only in urban settings but rural as well. monetarily we have been able to seize the creativity and resolve of our community and fund action in the form of mini-grants. i have been personally moved by being able to help manoeuvre the vehicle known as the food dignity research project throughout the neighbourhood of east new york, brooklyn. the process has given me and our entire organisation many opportunities: tracking the yield of what our community grows is an empowering and a concrete way of showing ourselves and others we can grow food. writing our own story as a ‘case study’ reminds us of our humble beginnings and keeps us focused on 123 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum sustainability. having a national, and now international, platform to share our successes and challenges helps keep us sharp and grateful for the opportunity. i would like to see and help create more opportunities for people of colour to take a role in food justice work – because our lives directly feel the impact of food inequities. forging a community path for research that matters (gayle) every community project operates within a context of history and experience. the historical reality of research for most communities is that of an unmanageable beast that roars into town in the name of ‘it’s for your own good’, intruding on citizens’ time, good grace and vulnerabilities. once valuable data has been extracted from the process using financial and other supportive resources the community has little or no access to, off fly the lessons learned to be turned into publishing opportunities for ‘scholars’. i came into my work with the food dignity research project angry and sceptical. as a long-time community organiser for social change, i was working with feeding laramie valley (flv – a new grassroots program addressing food sovereignty issues in southeastern wyoming), when i was invited to provide input to the food dignity grant application, and to include flv as one of the five participating community partners in the project. the design of the project, the inclusion of community input at the start, the potential for a real community voice and ownership of research, and the financial support package promised to my community nudged my anger and scepticism over all the abhorrent historic truths just enough to get me to agree to sign on to this thing called the food dignity research project. but history and scepticism are not easily overcome. this work – the work of trying to achieve authentic partnerships between community and academia – is incredibly difficult. feeding laramie valley is passionately dedicated to and protective of community-led self-determination and control when it comes to doing a better job of feeding ourselves and each other in a way that is equitable, just and sustainable. we know there are questions to be asked, answered and analysed if we are to make positive change. we also know that we as a community must be in charge of the process to ensure true long-term benefits to all our citizens. these are not always concepts easily grasped by the academic machine that survives and thrives on being in control of this kind of work. as the food dignity project team members began to work together, the community partners (including those of us at feeding laramie valley) challenged the academic status quo, demanded power behind our loud voices, and took part in difficult conversations with the academic and administrative contributors to the project we’d signed on to. as glorious as the potential for something different seemed to be, i couldn’t shake the old pain of past wounds incurred in 124 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum the name of community research, nor the fresh pain caused by insensitive comments and resource inequities that popped up as the academic and community threads of the food dignity project tried to find a way to blend into a meaningful, cohesive effort. for nearly two years, the core premises kept me hanging on when the day-to-day practice of this community-university partnership faltered. more specifically, it was the willingness of the academic core team, led by christine porter, to hear community challenges without turning away or digging in (at least not completely or permanently) that kept me hanging on. the guiding premise of the project – that the answer to food security and dignity lies in sovereign community control of our food systems – which i gradually recognised as being genuinely aligned with my own and that of my community, did not waiver. it held up to our struggles. food dignity as a premise and food dignity as a research project are both steeped in recognising that community people hold the knowledge and ability to ask the right questions and find the right answers to their own needs. little by little, as all the project team members continued to struggle but did not turn away from each other, i began to see metaphor in the food sovereignty work of wyoming (harsh weather, geographic isolation, short growing season) and this unusual grant i’d attached us to. from a technical point of view, i have found radical practice possible in the fact that we have five long years of grant-supported project time and flexibility within the project design to make changes essential to authentic partnership work (such as making language changes to reflect community activist language rather than language of the academy, and the ability to shift grant funds provided to the community between budget lines). from a social justice point of view, i have found hope and inspiration in these unexpected resources that connect five disparate communities across geographic and cultural boundaries often enough and long enough to create relationships that teach, support and guide us toward a different kind of future. reclaiming rigour with dirty hands and open heart (christine) my first memory is of a ferry journey to newfoundland to visit my great grandmother about 40 years ago. from the boat, the water beckoned as the biggest swimming pool i’d ever seen. i must have shared this with my father, because he warned me that the water was full of jellyfish (his story) or sharks (my story). either way, for me the moral of this story was that the water went from being beautiful to terrifying, and i’ve been afraid of natural bodies of water ever since. thus, a cliff jump into such water feels scary and dangerous. however, when i was a peace corps volunteer in fiji in the 1990s, i learned to follow the leaping lead of local youth. i found that cliff jumping turned out to be fun and exciting. 125 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum that said, my next felt-daring-for-me leap came only in 2006, when i gave up the control and predictability of doing an armchair dissertation at cornell university and, instead, threw myself into a new community-based health project. i didn’t know what the research would be, but hoped that if i kept showing up and helping out, the research questions – and answers – would eventually emerge. it felt like jumping off a cliff. but it landed me with an amazing set of mentors and friends, and the framework for the food dignity project. through that work i met jemila sequeira, my first organising and anti-racism mentor, and organiser of the whole community project for food justice that was born out of that community-based health effort. i also met hank, as he describes, through my attempt to network such efforts. the whole community project is now one of the five community partners in food dignity, as is the dig deep farms & produce project that hank helped to found. until my last year as a phd student at cornell, i had proclaimed that i would never become an academic. however, in the end, i decided that as an activist academic, rather than an academically minded activist, i could bring more money to social justice work and help to amplify the wise voices of people doing that work to a wider and a powerful audience. (plus, i was a mediocre activist apprentice to jemila, at best.) however, i never once thought i would have the luxury, and the burden, of having us$5 million over five years to further that mission. i was terrified and excited at our first team meeting of food dignity partners three years ago. my learning curve was almost vertical and i spent a lot of time being afraid. today i am, by necessity, a new kind of brave, because i spent 2013 battling stage 3 breast cancer. with this new benchmark for risk, i ask myself: what have i been so afraid of? one lesson i’ve learned is that the worst possible place for leadership and good decision-making is one of reactive fear. i had lots of reactive fears. i was afraid of usda discontinuing our funding. i was afraid of academic partners – especially at cornell – of thinking this project was too ambiguous, too slow, too hard, and not enough like research. i had a nightmare that david brooks – the new york times columnist – told the president of a foundation i was working with that what i do is not research, it is storytelling. (funnily enough, this year brooks wrote a column about the importance of storytelling in creating and understanding knowledge (2013).) most of all, i was afraid that i’d disappoint the community partners and mentors, especially by being too racist, too blindly arrogant and not radical enough to do this work. i was afraid that i, and this project, would repeat the usual crimes in communitycampus research – including co-opting wisdom, knowledge, credit and funding. i was also afraid that we would get the stories of the community food work wrong. in discussions about a new action research pilot effort that grew out of the food dignity collaborations in wyoming 126 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum (a project we call ‘growing resilience’), gayle and i discussed whether the word ‘rigour’ in research was reclaimable. gayle said she felt it was used as a tool with which to bash her and other community research partners over the head. i argued that our food dignity collaboration is working to illuminate how false this dichotomy of rigour versus participation is; that for research involving communities, rigour requires participation, or we’ll get the story wrong. for example, the day before, gayle, wind river indian reservation partners, and my university of wyoming team had been reviewing and rewriting survey questions for growing resilience. a community partner revealed that when she wasn’t comfortable with wording in surveys she administered, she would simply reword the question. therefore, eliminating the co-design step of those surveys endangered the rigour of that research. (this truth argument is in addition to the ‘radical axiology’ ethical ones for participatory research; without it, the process and likely also the research questions will be wrong.) recently, a participatory research paper reinforced gayle’s rigour-as-bashing-tool case, by stating that their ‘aim was to maintain rigorous research, to follow a “clean mind” approach to research, but maintain principles of community participation which necessitate “a dirty hand”’ (makhoul et al. 2013). firstly, minds are never ‘clean’; they are filled with our life experience, and research rigour requires that we account for, not ignore, our world views (harding 2000). secondly, for research relating to community concerns, the ‘dirt’ is part of the story. sanitising hands means destroying key data. thirdly, what about the heart? i owe hank a lot of credit for holding me back from making important project decisions from that dangerous hole of reactive fear until i finally (mostly) found a better way. with the help of time, study and friends (including those on the food dignity team), i have been climbing out of that hole – embracing those fears along the way. i have discovered that acting with courage is so much easier than acting out of fear and, with some irony, makes my fears much less likely to be realised. i now know that, when i most want to turn my back, i need to pry open my heart. when i most wish to squeeze my eyes shut, i must force myself to witness. instead of defending, i should listen and learn. and never, ever, suppress my red flags. just as examples, here are two flags i should not have ignored. in my very first memo to the food dignity team i defended the indirect costs the universities take: ‘12% might sound high to community people, but it is well below the circa 50% that is a standard university rate, and the 28% allowed by usda’. share and discuss – yes – but why defend? i was so deep in my reactive fear hole that i was being proactively defensive, and about something i had no wish to defend. about a year later, in our first collaborative food dignity conference presentation, i submitted all the names of the team 127 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum members who were participating. the conference organisers came back and said we could list only two. after one weak attempt at getting an exception, i ignored a red flag that i felt and listed myself and hank as the leads in the project. as the conference drew near, the flag became more like a fire alarm and i wanted to run – even though i couldn’t articulate why. at the conference, jemila and gayle went from being warm with me to giving me the cold shoulder, after having seen the program, which did not list all the co-authors. they each tried to help me understand; and now i can glimpse how my behaviour represented one of the big risks for food dignity – that academic partners will appropriate and colonise and take credit for the work and wisdom of community partners. in a poster that some of us did for a community campus partnerships for health conference, we finally named some ways that food dignity perpetuates inequity (for example, all the academic partners are white and receive much better fringe benefits) (woodsum et al. 2012). this was so much easier than defending them. i still have a long way to go, as my co-authors could tell you. but i am not alone among the food dignity academics, i think, in learning to do this work with courage, working from an open-hearted place of love and hope instead of acting from fear and feigned detachment. i am also learning that coming to the research from this more ‘true’ place means that community partners are more interested in working with us to identify and share ‘true’ answers in our research collaborations. in other words, working from the heart, with love and courage, leads to research that is not only more ethically ‘right’ (and way more fun), but is also more rigorous. love, hope and courage have been my talismans on this journey of learning how to do social justice action research in community-academic collaborations. i have also learned that all of these feelings flourish when i work from a place of gratitude. i am grateful to hank for teaching me to work from the heart before the head; to gayle for her mentorship in leadership and in working with gratitude; and to daryl whose wisdom, tenacity and courage teach me hope. most of all, i am grateful to every one of the over three dozen people working in this project who struggle through the collision and collaboration of voices and worlds to reduce the distance – the distance between us, and the distance from here to food dignity. acknowledgements food dignity (www.fooddignity.org) is supported by agriculture and food research initiative competitive grant no. 2011-6800430074 from the usda national institute of food and agriculture. the growing resilience pilot is supported by grants from the national center for research resources (5p20rr016474-12) and the national institute of general medical sciences (8 p20 gm10343212) from the national institutes of health. http://www.fooddignity.org/ 128 | gateways | porter, herrera, marshall & woodsum references bakhtiari, a 2004, ‘world oil production capacity model suggests output peak by 2006–07’, oil and gas journal, vol. 102, no. 16, pp. 18–19. brave heart, m 1999, ‘oyate ptayela: rebuilding the lakota nation through addressing historical trauma among lakota parents’, journal of human behavior in the social environment, vol. 2, nos. 1–2, pp. 109–26. brooks, d 2013, ‘what data can’t do’, the new york times, 18 february, p. a23. bühler, u 2002, ‘participation “with justice and dignity”: beyond the “new tyranny”’, peace, conflict & development, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–16. harding, s 2000, ‘after the neutrality idea: science, politics, and “strong objectivity”’, in m jacob (ed.), the politics of western science, 1640–1990, humanity books, amherst, ny, pp. 81–101. hicks, d 2011, dignity: the essential role it plays in resolving conflict, yale university press, new haven, ct. jacobson, n 2007, ‘dignity and health: a review’, social science & medicine, vol. 64, pp. 292–302. la via campesina 2010, ‘via campesina declaration in cancún: the people hold thousands of solutions in their hands’, press release, viewed 30 july 2013, http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-eventsmainmenu-26/-climate-change-and-agrofuels-mainmenu-75/984-viacampesina-declaration-in-cancun-the-people-hold-thousands-of-solutions-in-their-hands. laverty, p 2003, ‘the ohlone/costanoan-esselen nation of monterey, california: dispossession, federal neglect, and the bitter irony of the federal acknowledgment process’, wicazo sa review, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 41–77. lemonick, m 2008, ‘global warming: beyond the tipping point’, scientific american, special edition, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 60–67. makhoul, j, nakkash, r, harpham, t & qutteina, y 2013, ‘communitybased participatory research in complex settings: clean mind– dirty hands’, health promotion international, 19 july 2013, online in advance of print, viewed 9 december 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/23872385. mcdonald, h 2004, radical axiology: a first philosophy of values, rodopi, amsterdam. montgomery, d 2007, dirt: the erosion of civilizations, university of california press, berkeley, ca. pelletier, d, porter, c, aarons, g, wuehler, s & neufeld, l 2013, ‘expanding the frontiers of population nutrition research: new questions, new methods, and new approaches’, advances in nutrition: an international review journal, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 92–114. williams, t 2012, ‘an indian reservation in crime’s deadly grip’, the new york times, 3 february, p. a1. wilson, s 2008, research is ceremony: indigenous research methods, fernwood publishing, black point, nova scotia, canada. woodsum, g, sutter, j, herrera, h & porter, c 2012, ‘food dignity’, poster presented at the community campus partnerships for health, community partners meeting, washington, dc, 9 december. http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-climate-change-and-agrofuels-mainmenu-75/984-via-campesina-declaration-in-cancun-the-people-hold-thousands-of-solutions-in-their-hands http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-climate-change-and-agrofuels-mainmenu-75/984-via-campesina-declaration-in-cancun-the-people-hold-thousands-of-solutions-in-their-hands http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-climate-change-and-agrofuels-mainmenu-75/984-via-campesina-declaration-in-cancun-the-people-hold-thousands-of-solutions-in-their-hands http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/-climate-change-and-agrofuels-mainmenu-75/984-via-campesina-declaration-in-cancun-the-people-hold-thousands-of-solutions-in-their-hands simulation as a tool for developing knowledge mobilisation strategies innovative knowledge transfer in youth services knowledge mobilisation (kmb), also known as knowledge translation or knowledge exchange, is a process that shares academic research and other forms of knowing with the goal of informing service delivery, community practice and public policy (phipps & shapson 2009). kmb has been widely developed in the fields of health care, education, international development and climate science (kothari & armstrong 2011; levin 2013), though is less well known among those who design and deliver social services. where social service providers have engaged in kmb, excellent models have been described that address the challenges of sharing research and evidence to inform policy and practice among human service professionals (greenhalgh et al. 2004; mclennan et al. 2006). these models, however, have tended to build on research undertaken in more structured settings like hospitals and large government agencies. one focal area for kmb that has had less attention is how human service providers share knowledge in less formal settings like community-based non-government organisations (ngos). here, practitioners are charged with applying knowledge to address so-called ‘wicked problems’ where no obvious solution exists and where myriad approaches to the issue may have already been tried (weber & khademian 2008). structural differences in clinical and community-based settings (such as access to research findings published in peer-reviewed journals, time for professional development and the support of staff dedicated to research) make academic research and expertise less accessible to community partners (hart et al. 2009; kothari & armstrong 2011; phipps 2011). when kmb has been theorised in community-based settings (bonnie 2010; estey, kmetic & reading 2008; smylie et al. 2004), the models have most often been adaptations of those that already exist. as greenhalgh and wieringa (2011) suggest, the metaphor of knowledge transfer and related concepts like kmb do not include sufficient scope to capture the range of possible activities that are involved. given the complexity of ‘wicked problems’, iterative designs based on efforts by stakeholders to find solutions to their own kmb challenges in poorly resourced settings are needed. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 100–117 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 michael ungar dalhousie university shelly whitman child soldiers initiative angie hart university of brighton david phipps york university 101 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps in this article, we build on our experience brokering relationships between research and community-based practice and report on an innovative approach to kmb model development. this was a knowledge mobilisation simulation designed to engage service providers concerned with the mental health needs of children and youth who have been exposed to chronic or acute adversity, a population we have called children and youth in challenging contexts (cycc). for three days, 65 policy-makers, senior staff of ngos, mental health professionals, kmb specialists, and youth participated in a series of interactive exercises to answer the following questions: 1 what are the barriers to kmb in less formal service settings and in settings primarily concerned with services for cycc? 2 what kmb strategies are already working in these settings? 3 building on the answers to the first two questions, how do we move knowledge of effective practices between service providers? our focus was on sharing both practice-based evidence and evidence-based practice. practice-based evidence is what is reflected in reports of ‘what works’ which are shared between practitioners. typically, we find practice-based evidence reported at professional workshops and in the grey literature, published sources that appear online or in print but have not gone through a rigorous peer-review process. practice-based evidence tends to reflect the experience of those delivering programs and to provide anecdotal evidence of program effectiveness. in contrast, evidence-based practice meets the criteria for rigorous evaluation of outcomes, is often published in peer-reviewed journals and meets the criteria for replication, meaning that studies can be repeated with a reasonable expectation that, if there is fidelity to the program design (program providers deliver the program as it was intended), similar results would be expected. our collective interest as participants at the simulation was in working with young people in contexts where resources may be poor and the challenges confronting them very complex. in such contexts, there may be far fewer examples of evidencebased practices as the evidence is time consuming and expensive to produce (mitchell 2011). furthermore, much of this work is performed by non-government organisations which rely on practice-based evidence, either through developing their own program solutions for vulnerable child populations or borrowing program elements from others who have reported success. in these less formal contexts where practice-based evidence is more commonly employed as the basis for decision-making, both a lack of resources and social complexity create daily hassles when identifying and delivering effective services and complicate the meta-challenge of figuring out how to mobilise knowledge across service providers. these challenging contexts include remote or culturally and socially marginalised communities, situations of violence or poverty, exposure to extreme forms of stigma, and 102 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps those where family or community systems present significant levels of adversity that threaten the healthy development of cycc. the adversity experienced by cycc requires service providers to adapt programming to be contextually and culturally responsive (mitchell 2011). the heterogeneity of cycc and the programming they need further complicates kmb, especially when services are delivered in community-based programs. in contexts like these, august, gewirtz and realmuto (2010) argue that most often youth services approach program innovation by identifying core elements of a preferred intervention while adapting program elements to local conditions in ways that will not jeopardise fidelity to the principles of intervention. as an alternative, they propose a different strategy for program innovation: an adaptive model of program development that engages clients in the process of decisionmaking. the clients help to decide the needs, dosage and sequence of care based on individual needs. clients have the support to make deliberate and effective choices about their services. as august, gewirtz and realmuto (2010) explain: adaptive interventions are important for two reasons in children’s mental health. first, they offer the potential of enhancing individual and aggregate behavioral health outcomes by matching services to the perceived needs of high-risk children and expressed preferences of their parents. second, adaptive interventions maximize intervention cost effectiveness by reducing the unnecessary services or intensities associated with fixed intervention models that may not fit the risk or preference profile of individual clients (p. 77). kmb, then, for youth services that meet the needs of cycc may be most useful when it emphasises program adaptation and contextualisation (the second approach). attention to the practice context has been demonstrated to be critical to effective implementation of health (jacobsen, butterill & goering 2003) and education (levin 2013) interventions. without standardisation, however, the exchange of best practices becomes especially complex. it was in this context of under-resourced services, challenging contexts and the need to adapt programs that we undertook an innovative approach to identify kmb strategies appropriate for youth service providers and other stakeholders. we were looking for ways of addressing the nature of the evidence for effective programming and of facilitating its adaptation in less formal service contexts. our work was guided by our knowledge of kmb models, notably the promoting action on research implementation in health sciences (parihs) model (kitson, harvey & mccormack 1998), which is a well-developed approach that we also drew on for the case studies used during the simulation. the parihs model has received recent attention as knowledge mobilisers search for a better understanding of the factors that drive research use (stetler et al. 2011). the parihs framework stresses the interplay 103 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps of three core elements: (1) the level and nature of the evidence; (2) the context or environment into which the evidence is to be placed; and (3) the way in which the process of kmb is facilitated. the simulation exercise embodied all three of these elements. the evidence was first summarised in the synthesis reports, then participants were asked to identify the best methods to facilitate the use of this information in different service contexts. simulation exercises a simulation may be either an opportunity to assess participants’ competencies at specific tasks or, as used here, an experiential learning tool to facilitate problem solving and program codesign in complex environments. as a tool for assessment, the literature on simulations describes exercises that train people in how to implement practices new to them. as an opportunity for collective problem solving, simulations have been used to find innovative solutions to problems in complex environments where no single solution is apparent. a rich tradition of simulationbased learning is discussed in the medical literature, with results of studies suggesting that the addition of experiential simulations to didactic learning improves both knowledge uptake and the soft skills associated with team work and problem-solving (aebersold 2011; mcgarry, cashin & fowler 2011; okuda et al. 2009; ricketts, merriman & stayt 2012; satter et al. 2012; shapiro et al. 2004; sperling, clark & kang 2013). for example, highfidelity human patient simulation and related techniques have been shown to cause changes in behaviour by professionals in their actual practices and to be an effective way to share basic clinical knowledge in educational settings. simulations that focus specifically on mental health programming have shown promise for changing attitudes among service providers (e.g. greater sensitivity to the needs of vulnerable families) though the effect is not universal, with some studies showing decreases in the tolerance shown by professionals to patients’ problems after participation in a simulation (riebschleger 2002). non-medical fields have also embraced simulations as a way of both sharing knowledge and problem solving. for example, a team from the department of psychiatry at the university of alberta and the edmonton police service used carefully scripted role plays to improve interactions between officers and mentally ill individuals that resulted in significant cost savings for the city and more appropriate care for people with mental illnesses (krameddine et al. 2013). likewise, international development organisations like doctors without borders and organisations that train soldiers like the roméo dallaire child soldiers initiative (csi) use simulations pre-deployment and during field operations to prepare professionals, soldiers and even politicians for the exigencies of in situ challenges. for example, the csi has used simulations to train more than 600 military officers from more than 60 countries on how to improve their interactions with child 104 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps soldiers. the techniques are reported to be effective in preparing soldiers for the challenges that exist in current conflicts, which in turn creates situations where children are more ably protected and the mental health of the soldiers is considered. in situations like this, the complexity of the setting in which knowledge must be applied requires simulation participants to address ‘wicked problems’ through innovative practices rather than by imitating best practices. our kmb simulation was designed to enable participants to experience much the same fluidity in response to the complex service ecologies that provide support to cycc. as the above examples show, simulations can help to generate changes to individual care practices, program design and policy development, and provide opportunities for values clarification. based on our experience with simulations in these other contexts, we anticipated that they could be used to good effect to generate change strategies at the level of individual practitioners, service teams and provider organisations unfamiliar with kmb. our goal was to do more than just ask service providers what they thought they needed to access program knowledge. the simulation added a degree of rigour and creativity to the process of discovering effective kmb strategies that fit the specific needs of a particular group of service providers largely unfamiliar with kmb. in this sense, the activity avoided abstractions and provided us with an opportunity to look critically at kmb strategies. we were able to problem solve how to make kmb most effective with our colleagues present as both commentators and facilitators of innovation. simulating knowledge mobilisation members of a network of practitioners, academics and researchers (the cycc network) concerned with the wellbeing of cycc designed a simulation exercise to explore innovative ways to both push knowledge from those providing and/or researching effective interventions and pull knowledge from those seeking to expand the scope of their practice. the federally funded network was established both to share innovative practice knowledge between stakeholders and to find ways to engage cycc service providers in kmb activities in contexts where the concept of knowledge mobilisation was relatively unknown. for this reason, few of the agency staff who participated had experience with kmb or could describe a specific approach, even though almost all had at some point during their careers adapted programming to meet the needs of their focal population. the following is a brief description of the logistics of the meeting and sequence of events: —the three-day event took place at a retreat centre to encourage informal contact between participants outside of the formal work sessions. —prior to the meeting, participants were provided with documents summarising evidence-based practices, practice-based evidence and local examples of services thought to be effective with cycc. these documents were co-produced by university researchers 105 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps and community partners and reflected the diversity of sources of knowledge that describe best practices. this co-production was important, not only to the engagement of stakeholders across the network, but also to the identification of best practices, most of which are not described in the academic literature. —a process of appreciative inquiry (watkins & bernard 2001), a methodological approach to focus attention on programs that work, was used to gather from participants examples of successful kmb that they had already experienced. —opportunities were provided to work through three scenarios. (an example is presented in appendix 1.) —participants were asked to focus on what they could do to effectively share best practices with their colleagues in different contexts based on each scenario. —after presentation of the proposed kmb strategies by teams of participants, discussions were held to explore the feasibility of the different approaches. —detailed process notes were kept and reviewed by meeting organisers. exit interviews were conducted with participants and summary notes shared with participants for their feedback. findings to report on the process of the simulation and its impact, detailed observation notes were made by graduate students who participated in the event, and exit surveys, both written and video recorded, were conducted to solicit feedback and to assess the potential for future impact. the team that organised the event, including the authors, reviewed these documents for common themes. results can be grouped broadly into two categories: (1) the experience of the simulation process as a tool to develop innovative kmb strategies; and (2) the kmb strategies themselves. process: successes and challenges participants were introduced to the simulation exercise at the beginning of the session with the following instructions: while all organizations working with children and youth need to understand knowledge mobilization, we will be looking more specifically at ngos big and small, and government programs that are strongly community-based. we want to explore how knowledge mobilization can work for them. our goal is to bring together roughly equal numbers of community members, academics, policymakers and youth. together we will problem solve how we can make the exchange of evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence much easier for organizations with very few resources. despite these instructions, it was difficult to keep the focus of the simulation on the exchange of best practice knowledge between service providers. conversations tended to focus instead on what works for particular vulnerable populations of young people and the contextual factors that impede program effectiveness. we will term these conversations first order (the exchange of immediate, 106 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps program-level information regarding effective programs) and second order (the exchange of best practice knowledge between service providers that results in improved programming). kmb strategies for the exchange of best practice knowledge between stakeholders and the co-production of strategies to adapt best practices to specific contexts are examples of second order conversations. at this level, the focus is on communication patterns rather than on the specific content that is shared (see bateson 1972). to explore first and second order exchanges of information, we used case examples borrowed from programs familiar to most participants, though the simulation proved disruptive when it challenged attendees to look at their own knowledge exchange strategies (how they access new sources of information for the programs they offer). in general, participants were more comfortable with first order exchanges of information than with higher order discussions regarding the effectiveness of what they do and the challenges they face sharing best practices between themselves and their colleagues. understandably, given the focus was as much on second order strategies as first order descriptions of interventions, several participants felt the meeting had not provided them with details of programming for the at-risk youth with whom they work. this problem was not unexpected, since the idea of kmb was new to most participants. after a second briefing on the simulation’s goals, participants engaged much better with the task of coproduction of innovative strategies. the confusion was also addressed through a change midway through the process to create more homogenous working groups. for the second scenario, for example, we invited participants to work with their peers by forming groups of policy-makers, frontline service providers, administrators, and program participants (young people and their advocates). for the third scenario, we asked participants to sort themselves by one of three ways they most liked to receive knowledge: in writing (including websites), through interactive social media (twitter, facebook, webinars, etc.), and through creative arts-based forms of communication (photography, videos, dramatic representations of client experiences, etc.). our experience was that these more homogeneous working groups were able to identify kmb strategies better than the heterogeneous groups where the context in which kmb was to take place was less well defined. it was also suggested by participants that the focus of each kmb simulation be narrowed to a particular type of program for a specific population (e.g. office-based therapies to help youth exposed to community violence). greater focus, it was felt, would help the working groups explore contextually relevant ways to share knowledge. finally, the presence of young people in the simulation was seen as mostly positive as they influenced conversations about both process and content. for example, it was decided that in a field that valued client empowerment and strategies that addressed young people’s marginalisation, having young people help with 107 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps kmb activities could add to the credibility of the knowledge that was transferred (e.g. if young people themselves said a program was effective, other program developers were more likely to believe the evidence). however, some adult participants at the simulation found the presence of the young people distracting. in written exit surveys they expressed concern that the presence of the youth may have caused conversations to focus too much on what works rather than how to share what works between service providers. youth, however, were very comfortable with the participatory atmosphere created by the simulation. kmb strategies the most common remark in the exit interviews was that the value of the simulation had been the opportunity to meet with peers from other organisations and share stories about effective services for young people. the simulation itself tended to emphasise what we termed ‘impact through relationships’. (a video summary of the simulation workshop and participants’ accounts of their experiences are available online at: www.cyccnetwork.org.) while innovations in the use of technology and the arts were considered important to kmb, in practice the role plays typically emphasised strategies for the dissemination of knowledge that were focused on building or maintaining relationships. among the strategies discussed were: —people look to people they know or people whom their colleagues know for evidence of best practices. the more credible the individual, the more program-effectiveness data would be perceived as trustworthy. —while search engines, websites and social media might be used during the preliminary stages of a search for innovative programming, participants preferred to make direct contact with the individuals who were operating the programs. even better, participants preferred to hear first hand from both service providers and clients regarding the effectiveness of a specific intervention. —participants perceived a need for knowledge brokers, individuals and organisations that have the capacity to build bridges between individuals who hold evidence of effective practices and those who need access to that evidence. funders were perceived as being ideally suited to play this role. —the more familiar the source of the evidence, the more it was preferred and considered trustworthy. local wisdom was viewed as more likely to be contextually relevant and easier to locate through professional networks. —participants tended to look for information about what they had already heard through the media, professional gatherings or word of mouth. very little consideration was given to conducting surveys of the extant literature documenting services for a specific population. —service providers wanted to talk with other service providers, policy-makers wanted to talk to policy-makers. each professional http://www.cyccnetwork.org 108 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps cohort wanted to find someone who could get them ‘up to speed quickly’ on new interventions and share knowledge relevant to their role in the decision-making process. —participants wanted others to notice what they were already doing right. a good exchange of knowledge was characterised by recognition that all those involved in the exchange had something positive to share. —participants responded best to a new program idea when there was a champion for the idea with whom they could interact. the more credible the champion, the more a program was perceived as effective. —participants wanted ‘just in time’ knowledge and easy to access mentors. —the sharing of stories describing the effectiveness of an intervention was preferred to the sharing of data. there were other preferred strategies for kmb that did not emphasise relationships, though all included a relational component. these included the need to evaluate program effectiveness in different contexts and with the participation of multiple stakeholders, the need to employ shortand long-term strategies to share effective practice and the need to account for differences between communities, again with reliance on local stakeholders to help knowledge mobilisers understand the context in which programs worked well. participants noted that larger organisations tended to be more data focused than relationship focused when involved in kmb. they relied more on systematic reviews of the evidence and decisions by committees rather than on a single advocate for a new initiative (usually connected to a program champion). larger organisations also tended to centralise decision-making, which distanced those with evidence of program effectiveness from those who might be interested in adapting a program to their specific context and clientele. furthermore, in larger organisations, it could be difficult to build commitment for a new approach to practice unless participants could assert, ‘i heard it from someone i trust’. interestingly, the simulation exercise itself provided a forum for this building of trust. the social dynamic of the simulation generated familiarity between participants, such that some participants emerged as more credible sources of knowledge on program design. discussion the simulation exercise allowed us to answer the three questions with which we began: what are the barriers to kmb in less formal service settings? what strategies are already working? and how do we move knowledge between service providers in settings without familiarity with kmb or the resources to document and share effective practices? our results highlighted the need for relationships as the basis for good kmb strategies. we note that this emphasis on relationships as the basis for kmb rather than 109 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps the exchange of knowledge through written or online sources is not unique to providers of youth services. this is similar to the collaborations that underpin knowledge exchange in social work settings (wilkinson, gallagher & smith 2012) and in ongoing knowledge-exchange partnerships between researchers and decision-makers in health services (mitchell et al. 2009). however, this focus on relationships was more prominent than some might expect given that most of the participants in the simulation were active users of social media and had graduate-level professional credentials. this is a recurrent theme familiar to those who have studied the process of kmb and is a key reason for privileging relationship building when engaging community partners in kmb (hart & aumann 2013). while the simulation activities identified preferences for particular kmb strategies among participants, it remains unclear whether these strategies would be effective in real-world settings. for example, a consistent theme was the role of bridge builders and knowledge brokers to facilitate kmb. however, as long, cunningham and braithwaite (2013) found in their research, there are costs to brokering the exchange of specialised knowledge. the broker may create a denser network but at the personal cost of being the gatekeeper and the one responsible to maintain the network. hart and aumann (2013) have recommended five ways to relieve this burden and yet still develop spaces in which kmb can be facilitated across a range of practitioners and service users. these are: 1 adopt a community of practice (cop) approach, with a clear passion for shared interest, which helps keep the focus on a specific knowledge domain. 2 encourage a membership culture, with network members taking responsibility for different tasks and supporting the distribution of leadership. 3 provide a regular and consistent space, either online or face to face, through which cop members can meet and exchange knowledge. the creation of these spaces and shared leadership means gatekeepers receive fewer individual enquiries over time and encourages cross-fertilisation of kmb approaches. 4 provide guidelines and ‘jargon busters’ during kmb events to help ensure an inclusive approach that avoids positioning those with specialised knowledge in socially superior positions. 5 find ways to minimise the costs of maintaining the network, which encourages sustainability and self-sufficiency. where broker involvement is particularly time intensive, such an approach is perhaps best suited to situations in which the broker gains specific benefits from taking on this role. in the community-university partnership context, for example, universities brokering kmb can secure benefits for their research and teaching, providing a win–win solution to the burdens of gatekeeping and network organisation. 110 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps though we used an iterative method of discovery (the simulation exercise) to identify the best strategies for kmb among service providers working with cycc, our results are similar to those of others who have also found that kmb works best when relationships are emphasised. for example, nutley, walter and davies (2007) have five mechanisms for the sharing of evidence among staff of public service organisations. these include: 1 dissemination of research findings to potential users in formats tailored to the target audience 2 interaction, by developing stronger links and collaborations between research and policy or practice communities 3 social influence, through relying on influential others such as experts and peers to inform individuals 4 facilitation of resources, to enable the use of research through technical, financial, organisational or social support 5 use of incentives, reinforcement and rewards, to strengthen appropriate behaviours. each of these five mechanisms was reflected in the strategies discussed by participants during the simulation, though attendees emphasised that relationships were necessary for effective dissemination, interaction, social influence, facilitation and the use of incentives. our experience suggests that in the context of community services for young people, relational factors are the single most important element for an effective kmb strategy. of course, this important finding may be a consequence of the methodology we used to explore kmb strategies. a simulation relies on interactions between participants, so it is plausible that, if we had discussed kmb using more didactic means, the kmb strategies preferred by participants may have been less relational. while this is possible, the evaluations by participants suggest that, when given the chance to engage in kmb activities in an experiential way with colleagues, relationships are given more value than any other knowledge-sharing strategy. this is consistent with the cop approach discussed above, which understands learning between stakeholders to be a situated social process. nutley, walter and davies (2007), too, have shown that research uptake is a process that needs to be facilitated through interactive methods connecting researchers and research users. this act of facilitation is also one of three elements in the parihs framework, along with the nature of the evidence and the context in which that evidence is implemented into policy or practice (stetler et al. 2011). interestingly, levin (2013) recently identified three similar elements for effective knowledge mobilisation in education: production of education research; the ‘use’ context; and mediation. these similarities arising from independent research in education and in health suggest that context, evidence and facilitation are elements in common across different settings, an important conclusion when considering knowledge mobilisation for cycc service providers. specifically, the simulation showed the need for active knowledge brokering. 111 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps we also note that, by creating greater homogeneity in the working groups during the simulation, it was easier for participants to work on the task of kmb. it has been shown elsewhere in the kmb literature that homogeneity among co-producers of knowledge facilitates familiarity and trust building, which is a key driver of success for kmb (bennet & bennet 2008). simulation participants preferred having knowledge mobilised through connections with trusted intermediaries or knowledge champions, on whom they could rely to provide evidence of best practices. this emphasis on leadership (i.e. champions) has also been identified as a key element for effective knowledge mobilisation in previous studies of kmb (hart & church 2011; wensing, bosch & grol 2009). we suggest that trusted organisations (like those represented at the simulation) can also play the role of knowledge brokers. the potential of this social and emotional role for individuals and their organisations, rather than the quality of the knowledge being shared, has been growing as a focus in the kmb literature. recently, the parihs framework was challenged to include the role of the individual in the process of implementation, with it being noted that ‘[a] robust and uncontested evidence base was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for practice change’ (roycroft-malone et al. 2013, p. 28). initiatives that seek to translate research into accessible formats, derive actionable strategies for program design from the evidence and make these strategies available in various electronic forms are insufficient on their own to generate engagement amongst stakeholders in the co-production of knowledge processes. the simulation showed that relational factors were very important to participants from community-based ngos. despite the high level of professional qualifications and confident social media use of our participants, a trusted intermediary was still their preferred route to knowledge exchange. conclusion simulation is a way of generating solutions to barriers to kmb and identifying innovative strategies for sharing best practices among members of organisations providing services to cycc. while the simulation does not compensate for a lack of resources, it can help service providers develop the confidence to implement kmb strategies that fit their particular service setting. our results suggest that participants can, with detailed instruction and facilitation, engage in second order conversations focused on knowledge sharing. by that we mean they can focus on the challenges of sharing their knowledge of what works rather than focusing exclusively on the programs themselves. this second order conversation ensures sustainability of kmb activities. as new programs develop, an organisation which has figured out how to learn from others and adapt program elements into their 112 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps own practice is going to be much more successful at designing and delivering effective services. the value of the simulation exercise, however, may have been mostly what it taught us about the need for relationships in kmb strategies. participants in this simulation relied heavily on kmb strategies that personalised the exchange of best practices rather than those that used new technologies, or other approaches to kmb. even when those other strategies were explored, it was still the opportunity for face-to-face contact that provided the most trustworthy means for the exchange of knowledge. our experience of facilitating this simulation adds to the accumulation of evidence demonstrating the fundamental importance of relationship formation and maintenance in kmb. this appears to be of particular importance in the context of addressing serious problems which have no clear and simple solutions and for service providers working in less formal service sectors where there are usually fewer resources invested in knowledge mobilisation. references aebersold, m 2011, ‘using simulation to improve the use of evidence-based practice guidelines’, western journal of nursing research, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 296–305. 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http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=m+j+shapiro&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=j+c+morey&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=s+d+small&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=v+langford&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=c+j+kaylor&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=l+jagminas&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/search?author1=g+d+jay&sortspec=date&submit=submit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3617787/ 115 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps —1 academic with expertise in youth gang prevention and mental health —1 police officer that is well known by the community —1 policy-maker from the department of justice —1 school principal —1 concerned community member who offers a local perspective of the needs and problems facing the community the scenario a refugee youth, amin, and his parents arrived at their new home in toronto, canada, just over a year ago. the family arrived with little financial support and few social connections in order to seek asylum from their war-torn home in somalia. all of amin’s family members have witnessed war-related violence in the past, and may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). amin and his older brother were recruited by an armed group when amin was just 15 and his brother was 19. although amin managed to escape and reunite with his parents in a refugee camp, he later found out that his older brother had been killed by the armed group during a failed attempt to escape. upon their arrival in toronto, amin and his parents were settled into a housing project in a vibrant and ethnically diverse neighbourhood in toronto that had become home to a number of other somali families in recent years. although this new community is much more secure than life in a refugee camp, amin’s family has encountered a host of new challenges since immigrating. many of the residents of the community have frequent encounters with police, and high levels of crime and violence are ongoing problems in the area. while amin’s parents speak very little english and have had a hard time adapting to their new life, amin has been making friends and learning the language with more ease. the problem, however, is that amin has made friends with other peers who are involved in a gang. amin was already struggling with school and failing his classes because of his years of missed schooling in somalia, but has recently started to not show up to classes at all. to make matters worse, he is constantly arguing with his parents who do not understand the music, clothes and the ‘western mannerisms’ he has started to adopt. his father, who has been unable to find work, and has never quite recovered from the loss of his eldest son, has also started drinking excessively and become increasingly violent towards amin and his mother. because of these troubles at home and at school, joining the gang was easy for amin. the gang quickly accepted him and now some of the older youth in the gang have become like brother figures to him. recently, amin was arrested by police for being involved in a violent crime and theft. he was referred to a gang prevention program known as safezone. this program is run by a group of dedicated community members, some of whom are former gang members themselves. safezone receives a small amount of funding 116 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps from the department of justice to provide recreational activities and a safe space for the youth to hang out. the staff’s emphasis has been on early prevention by getting the youth involved in recreation and sports, and encouraging young leaders to serve as role models for other youth in the area. increasingly however, the staff are encountering youth like amin, who have complex case histories and are displaying signs of trauma. none of the staff has had formal training to deal with trauma or mental illness and they often feel that this therapeutic component is a major gap in their programming. although safezone’s emphasis on youth leadership and recreation has definitely lead to positive and noticeable results with some of the youth, the staff realise that what is missing is a more comprehensive strategy to address the mental health needs of youth like amin. they want to begin a dialogue with the school and police department in the community about how they can further expand and improve their program. the simulation remember, the goal of this role play is not to solve amin’s problems, but to: 1 help the service providers from safezone access information that will help them to improve their program. 2 get a better understanding of how information can be shared with service providers in a way that is relevant and accessible. role play the service provider from safezone is trying to find strategies that better serve the complex mental health needs of gang-involved youth like amin. the service provider has arranged a community meeting. —where can safezone get the information they need to improve their program and meet the mental health needs of gang-involved youth? —once the information has been found, what does it have to look like for the service providers at safezone to be able to implement it and use it (i.e. how should the information be formatted)? how can the information be made useful to the service providers? barriers or challenges 1 there is a lot of promising work being done on youth gang prevention and mental health promotion, but the problem is that this information is not always shared or easily accessible. 2 the staff at safezone lack the training and partnerships to develop a therapeutic component for their program. 3 safezone has a modest budget that only covers their operational costs. designing a program that would address the youths’ multiple needs would require additional resources, collaboration and innovation. 4 practitioners do not always have the time to read rigorous research on effective practices. many would prefer 117 | gateways | ungar, whitman, hart & phipps that the information be packaged and shared with them in an accessible way. key guiding questions 1 where do you look for information? 2 what format does this information need to take in order to be accessible and useful to safezone staff? gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: comfort, m., raymond-flesch, m., auerswald, c., mcglone, l., chavez, m. and minnis, a. 2018. community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents: design and implementation strategies to study the social determinants of health. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 90-108. http://dx.doi. org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5721 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents: design and implementation strategies to study the social determinants of health megan comfort1,2*, marissa raymond-flesch3, colette auerswald4, linda mcglone5, marisol chavez6, alexandra minnis4,6 1 behavioral and urban health program, rti international, 351 california street, suite 500, san francisco, ca, usa 2 department of medicine, university of california, san francisco, 550 16th street, san francisco, ca, usa 3 division of adolescent and young adult medicine, university of california, san francisco, 3333 california street, suite 245, san francisco, ca, usa 4 school of public health, university of california, berkeley, 570-d university hall mc #7360, berkeley, ca, usa 5 monterey county health department, public health bureau, monterey county government center, 1441 schilling place, salinas, ca, usa 6 women’s global health imperative, rti international, 351 california street, suite 500, san francisco, ca, usa *corresponding author: megan comfort; mcomfort@rti.org doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5721 article history: received 31/08/2017; revised 13/04/2018; accepted 03/05/2018; published 31/05/2018 abstract the health of adolescents, perhaps more than in any other period of their life, is shaped by the social determinants of health (sdh). the constellation of sdh that disadvantages a specific group’s health may also make members of that population unable or unwilling to engage in health research. to build a comprehensive body of knowledge about how sdh operate within a specific social context, researchers must design studies that take into account how various vulnerabilities and oppressions may affect people’s experiences of being recruited, interviewed and retained in a study. in 2014, we initiated a prospective cohort study with latino youth declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article. funding this research was funded by the eunice kennedy shriver national institute of child health and human development and the office of behavioral and social sciences research of the national institutes of health under award number r01hd075787, alexandra minnis, pi. the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the national institutes of health. dr. raymond-flesch was funded by the maternal child health bureau’s leadership education in adolescent health program, grant number t71mc00003 and by the university of california san francisco, school of medicine dean’s diversity fund. 90 living in the agricultural area of salinas, california. we began this study with the understanding that it was imperative to develop methodological strategies that actively addressed potential challenges in ways that were culturally responsive, community engaged and inclusive. in this article, we describe our approach to developing best practices in four key areas: 1) building community partnerships and engagement; 2) consideration of staffing and staff support; 3) engaging youth’s perspectives; and 4) developing culturally appropriate research protocols. in our sample of 599 participants, nearly all youth identify as latinx (94 per cent), half (49 per cent) have at least one parent employed as a farmworker, 60 per cent reside in crowded housing conditions, and 42 per cent have mothers who did not complete high school. given these multiple vulnerabilities, we view a robust number of youth expressing interest in study participation, the willingness of their parents to permit their children to be enrolled, and the achievement of an ambitious sample target as evidence that our efforts to undertake best practices in community-engaged and inclusive research were well received. keywords community engagement, latino youth, rural environment, social determinants of health, cohort introduction groups of people who are systemically marginalised within a society have poorer health outcomes than those who have access to safe living conditions, non-hazardous work, a living wage, and educational, health and social welfare institutions (wilkinson & marmot 2003). these types of resources are frequently considered to be ‘social determinants of health’ (sdh), a term that broadly encompasses ‘the conditions in which people are born, grow, develop, live, work, and age’ (viner et al. 2012). importantly, the constellation of sdh that disadvantages a specific group’s health may also make its members unable or unwilling to engage in research: residential mobility, fear of arrest, non-comprehension of a national language, or a lack of transportation can all be barriers to optimal health and to research participation (george, duran & norris 2014). this has the potential to more deeply entrench health inequities as populations that go unstudied cannot benefit from interventions, treatments and services tailored to their needs (dodgson & struthers 2005; wilson & neville 2009). to build a comprehensive body of knowledge about how sdh operate within a specific social context, researchers must begin by considering how various vulnerabilities and oppressions may affect people’s experiences of being recruited, interviewed and retained in a study. for example, members of a population that have suffered threats of deportation may be wary of interacting with people from outside their community and thus be challenging to reach through standard recruitment and retention channels (teedon et al. 2015). likewise, a longstanding history of exploitation of low-resource communities by researchers who were not members of those communities could be another barrier to people’s willingness to participate (cacari-stone et al. 2014; sudhinaraset et al. 2017)wallerstein et al. 2014, sudhinaraset, ling et al. 2017. such exploitation by outsiders can have a negative impact that reverberates far beyond the research study itself. for example, the disclosure of the infamous tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the negro male, conducted by the united states health service from 1932 to 1972, has been found to be correlated with ‘increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men’ (alsan & wanamaker 2018). a local population’s sense of distrust or wariness about exploitation can also arise in the context of community-based organisations if they are perceived as being overly accountable to political funding sources or other outside interests (marwell 2004). comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 91 if populations underrepresented in research choose to enrol in a study, research or survey questions developed for mainstream populations may not resonate with them or adequately allow for their experiences, which may lead to discomfort, frustration or distress, as well as a perception among community members that research is unhelpful. a lack of consonance between a population and the questions being asked also could result in incomplete or poor quality data, and potentially an investment of funds in research that yields few results of interest or improvements in population health. under these circumstances, the risk of further stigmatisation and negative labelling of communities through the research process is all too real, and a problem-based approach can create a pathologising lens for researchers that obfuscates the strengths of communities. in this article, we discuss the a crecer (‘to grow’) study, which examines sdh among latino youth living in an agricultural community. we undertook this study with the knowledge that factors which potentially make these youth vulnerable to poor health outcomes may also pose specific challenges to enrolling them as research participants. we therefore understood that it was imperative from the outset of the study to develop methodological strategies that actively addressed these challenges in ways that were culturally responsive, community engaged and inclusive. as we set ourselves to this task, we interpolated our own identities in order to be reflexive about how members of this community would see us as ‘outsiders’, or different from them, as well as our shared experiences and commonalities. within this article’s authorship team (hereafter referred to as ‘our team’), which was responsible for the design and leadership of the study, two of us identify as mexican american and two as children of immigrants. some of our families struggled to make ends meet during our childhoods, including by working in the agricultural field economy , while others of us had the privilege of financial security. prior to attending college, a few of us lived in neighbourhoods or attended schools that experienced elevated levels of teen pregnancy and violence. none of us grew up in the community where we conducted our research, although one author has lived and worked there for over 30 years and another was raised in a similar community in california. in designing our approach, we understood that the youth we sought to enrol in our study and their families would consider us to be outsiders, and therefore our methodological strategies needed to address issues of building trust and rapport. with this in mind, we generated a series of questions about best practices for conducting research with rural latino youth that shaped our research development and implementation: (1) how can we best develop and strengthen community relationships and community engagement in the research? (2) what considerations are important when staffing our study, and how can we best support staff to do this work? (3) how can we engage youth’s perspectives in this study? (4) how can we develop culturally appropriate research protocols? below we present the methodological strategies developed in response to these questions and used in a crecer to recruit and retain a longitudinal cohort of 599 youth. we begin with a review of the literature to situate our work methodologically within other efforts to engage marginalised and oppressed populations in health research, as well as conceptually at the junction of adolescent health, sdh and rural latino youth. next, we provide an overview of the study purpose and settings to contextualise the community in which we work. we then detail our methodological strategies as they relate to our best practice questions. we conclude community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 92 by reflecting on our experiences undertaking this research, including the importance of sustaining a focus on community strengths and implications of this process for future studies. methodological approaches to engaging marginalised populations in health research research with members of marginalised populations has a long and troubled history that emphasises the importance of thoughtful engagement with such groups. certain populations may be difficult to recruit and enrol in health studies because of well-founded misgivings about the trustworthiness of researchers, but others may be elusive because ‘public acknowledgement of membership in the population is potentially threatening’ (heckathorn 1997). this frequently includes people who are at risk of arrest, harassment or violence due to a specific activity (e.g. drug use or sex work) or characteristic (e.g. undocumented immigration status). under these circumstances, participating in research may take on additional risk either because the topic of the study identifies someone as having a vulnerable status, or because being involved in a study could make someone easier to find or to prosecute if there were a breach of confidentiality. multiple methodological approaches have been developed in epidemiologic research to grapple with such challenges. respondent-driving sampling (rds), for example, constitutes one strategy that engages participants through their trusted social networks, a design that uses structured incentives and chain-referral methods to reach ‘hidden populations’ (heckathorn 1997). as its name implies, rds offers a recruitment strategy, yet does not necessarily address issues of marginalisation or vulnerability at other stages of the research process (e.g. study staffing, research instruments). another methodological approach that has been adopted for public health research is community-based participatory research (cbpr). a defining feature of cbpr is the cultivation of inclusive partnerships with shared decision-making and ownership of the research process (israel et al. 2013). building trust and respect between researchers and communities is foundational to successful cbpr work, yielding research that addresses locally identified needs, recognises a community’s assets, supports co-learning between diverse partners and is positioned to address health disparities (minkler & wallerstein 2008). cbpr is particularly effective in informing the development of interventions that address sdh (de sayu & sparks 2017), and cbpr methods have been applied to numerous public health issues, with successful examples found in areas ranging from chemical exposure for nail salon workers (quach et al. 2013) to hepatitis b vaccination (ma et al. 2017). for research on adolescents, youth participatory action research (ypar), is a form of cbpr that aims to engage youth directly (berg, coman & schensul 2009; langhout & thomas 2010). several ypar publications have focused on the opportunities for, and challenges encountered in, building empowerment and leadership development with youth, as well as defining a feasible and actionable research agenda (madrigal et al. 2016; ozer et al. 2013). in this article, we describe our approach to designing and implementing the a crecer study as guided by best practices in community-engaged research inspired by cbpr. the processes of cbpr have been explicated in detail, and there are manuals guiding the use of cbpr approaches (minkler & wallerstein 2008). however, applications of the cbpr framework may vary across stages of the research, and some research teams may not be equipped to fully adopt cbpr methods – which can be intensive – at all phases. we recognise that we did not follow the cbpr framework to the extent necessary to exemplify this methodology comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 93 in its fullest sense. however, through our awareness of our positionality as outsiders to the community and the concomitant need to build trust and rapport, we understood the benefit of incorporating the principles of respect for community stakeholders and responsiveness to community needs. despite increased use of community-engaged methods in research, there are few examples in the literature outside of cbpr-specific studies that explore how to establish multi-sectoral partnerships, build trust and engagement among partners, and advance a thoughtful research agenda that integrates the insights of local perspectives with research expertise (farquhar et al. 2014; mcquiston et al. 2005). our goal in this article is to elucidate our efforts in these domains. before providing an overview of our study purpose and setting, we situate our work conceptually within the literature on latino youth in agricultural communities. adolescent health, social determinants, and rural populations the health of adolescents is strongly shaped by sdh, including proximal sdh, such as family, education, employment and peers, as well as structural factors such as city ordinances, local criminal justice policies and national legislation. there is global and national recognition that the health of young people has generally been neglected, leading to young adults’ ‘surprisingly poor health’ in the words of the institute of medicine (institute of medicine and national research council 2014; resnick et al. 2012; united nations secretary-general 2015). the lancet commission report on adolescent health and wellbeing highlights the importance of addressing ‘inequalities in health and wellbeing in socially and economically marginalized adolescents, including ethnic minorities’, among other groups (kleinert & horton 2016). eliminating health disparities in the united states constitutes a national goal reflected in healthy people 2020, and addressing sdh is a core strategy for achieving this goal (satcher 2010). the ability to improve adolescent health is limited by a lack of technical knowledge and capacity to intervene, including a dearth of evidence regarding the effects of sdh on youth and a shortage of evidence-based interventions and policy. the scarcity of research is most evident among the youth who are most affected by inequities, including ethnic minorities, lowincome youth and the children of immigrant parents (auerswald, akemi piatt & mirzazadeh 2017). latino youth living in rural areas lie at the intersection of these categories. most of these youth grow up in immigrant families, whether as immigrants themselves or as children of immigrants (economic research service 2017) and frequently one or more members of these families is involved in low-paid seasonal agricultural labour (lopez & velasco 2011). the existing research on latino youth has focused primarily on urban latino populations (raffaelli, iturbide & fernandez 2016), but the few studies that have focused on rural youth in the united states have reported similar or higher levels of risk behaviour, particularly alcohol and other substance use, as well as lower uptake of preventive sexual health services compared to urban youth (roberts et al. 2017; vielot et al. 2017; wang, becker & fiellin 2013). these studies indicate a clear need for in-depth longitudinal research focused specifically on rural latino youth. while proximal individual-level factors associated with risk behaviours may be similar among rural youth to those found in urban populations, current intervention approaches do not address sdh specific to latino adolescents living in rural areas, such as the influences of the agriculture-based economy and the dominance of mexican (im)migration. understanding community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 94 these underlying contexts and how they might be contributing to health disparities is recognised as vital to achieving substantive improvements in health outcomes (bronfenbrenner 1994; krieger 2012; marmot 2005). notably, the centers for disease control and prevention has identified addressing urban–rural health disparities related to health care access as a national priority (healthy people 2020). the relationships of structural and interpersonal factors in rural environments to poor health outcomes for latino adolescents therefore constitute a largely unexamined but vitally important research area. however, conducting rigorous research with rural youth presents numerous challenges that are common to working with other populations facing health disparities. our goal in a crecer, from a methodological perspective, was to address these challenges by developing a set of best practices for engaging the local community and being inclusive in our approach to conducting rigorous research that would yield knowledge that was useful and actionable. we turn now to the study purpose and setting, followed by a discussion of our methodological strategies and innovations for developing and strengthening community relationships, staffing the study, engaging youth’s perspectives and developing culturally appropriate research protocols. study purpose, setting and sample a crecer was designed to examine the multi-level factors that influence latino adolescents’ wellbeing (including resilience, future orientation and educational engagement), as well as the onset of youth violence and sexual health risks associated with teen child-bearing. the study, which began in 2014, focuses on the transition from middle school to high school, a critical developmental period, thus examining trajectories through middle adolescence. recruitment began in november 2015 and the full sample was enrolled by march 2017. data collection is ongoing with a cohort of 599 youth. study participants complete a questionnaire at baseline and then every six months over the course of two years. all study procedures, including written consent provided by study participants, were approved by the rti international institutional review board. a crecer is being conducted in salinas, california, which offers a vibrant environment for a community-engaged study of the protective factors that influence rural latino adolescent trajectories. salinas is a migration destination for agricultural sector employment and is home to multiple generations of immigrants. eighty-nine per cent of salinas public middle school students identify as latino, nearly all of mexican origin (salinas union high school district 2017). salinas has a strong history of community organising for farmworker rights, engaged families and rich cultural ties. however, alongside these assets, youth experience high rates of entrenched poverty (82 per cent of middle school youth are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged), gang exposure and teen child-bearing (county of monterey 2017; salinas union high school district 2017). like other regions in california’s central valley, this area is experiencing tremendous growth in the latino population (california department of finance 2013; public policy institute of california 2012) and has disproportionately high teen birth rates (california department of public health 2011) alongside high rates of youth violence (national center for injury prevention and control 2010). a crecer aims to inform prevention approaches that strengthen protective factors and mitigate risk through interventions that attend to sdh in salinas and similar agricultural communities. comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 95 a crecer’s approach to the cultivation of community partnerships, study staffing, engagement of youth perspectives and development of research protocols contributed to the successful recruitment of our targeted study sample. figure 1 presents a diagram of enrolment efforts, starting with recruitment of 1099 8th grade youth from the four middle schools that comprise the school district with which we partnered for this study. youth were approached on school campuses by bilingual research staff members (see ‘staffing the study’ below) under the leadership of the project coordinator (marisol chavez). with input from youth advisers engaged during the formative research stage, staff created a brief, interactive ‘pitch’ for the study that they could deliver in classrooms and to small groups of students in schoolyards. during recruitment, eligible youth were asked to provide contact information for a parent who could provide permission for them to enrol in the study. the telephone-based verbal parent permission process was directed by a script that allowed for an interactive conversation with the study staff member initiating the permission process. these conversations were held in english or spanish, depending on the parent’s preferred language. as depicted in figure 1, study staff successfully made contact with 870 of the 1081 households. a parent gave permission for their child to participate in 92 per cent of cases. the 600 youth who enrolled in the study did so with an average of 4.9 contact attempts from recruitment through enrolment (median=4; range=1–29). figure 1 participant recruitment, household contact, parent permission and enrolment community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 96 as presented in table 1, the staff recruited a sample of youth that met the study objectives of balance between male and female youth, geographic distribution of residence within the community and variation in sociodemographic indicators. nearly all youth identified as latinx (94 per cent), mostly of mexican origin. half (49 per cent) of participants had at least one parent employed as a farmworker, 60 per cent resided in crowded housing conditions (based on the us census definition) and 42 per cent had mothers who did not complete high school. table 1 descriptive characteristics of participants, a crecer: salinas teen health study n % total 599 (100) mean age, years (sd) 13.2 (1) female 316 (53) immigrant generation 1st: not born in us 71 (12) 2nd: born in us and at least one parent born outside us 427 (71) 3rd+: born in us and both parents born in us 96 (16) unknown 5 (1) latinx1 566 (94) mexican origin 531 (89) central american origin 64 (11) unknown origin 20 (3) years lived in us entire life 525 (88) more than 5 years 55 (9) 5 years or less 19 (3) mother’s education less than high school 255 (42) high school/ged 177 (30) more than high school 149 (25) unknown 18 (3) receipt of government assistance past 6 months 320 (53) food insecurity (hunger) past 6 months 46 (8) household structure contact with father 454 (76) lives with father (at least part-time) 545 (91) at least one parent in agriculture 292 (49) comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 97 at least one parent moves for work 87 (15) crowded housing conditions 364 (61) 1 percentages add to >100% as participants may have more than one origin. given these multiple vulnerabilities, we see the robust number of youth interested in study participation, the willingness of their parents to permit children to be enrolled and the achievement of an ambitious sample target as evidence that our efforts to undertake best practices for community-engaged and inclusive research were well received. we turn now to describing those efforts. conducting research with rural latino youth: a crecer’s approach as noted, from the outset of a crecer we challenged ourselves to respond to a series of questions about best practices for conducting community-engaged and culturally inclusive research with latino youth living in salinas. understanding our status as people who were not members of this community, we firmly believed in the importance of undertaking research that respected community norms, listened to community voices and addressed questions of community concern. in the following sections, we detail the methodological strategies and innovations we generated and implemented in our efforts to build trust and rapport throughout the design of the study, development of the research protocols and recruitment of the study sample. we begin with our approach to the first question: how can we best develop and strengthen community relationships and community engagement in the research? community relationships and engagement: development of the proposal the a crecer study developed as a partnership between the principal investigator (pi, alexandra minnis), who is based in san francisco (roughly 145 kilometres north of salinas), and the monterey county health department’s youth violence prevention coordinator (yvpc, linda mcglone), who has coordinated teen pregnancy prevention, youth violence prevention and other prevention efforts in salinas for over 20 years. through her work, the yvpc has established relationships with diverse leaders and agencies working to improve adolescent health in the community. in 2011, she learned of the pi’s research with latino youth in san francisco and invited her to present at the natividad medical center grand rounds. this initial meeting led to interest in developing a collaborative research proposal that could examine the intersection of sexual health and youth violence in salinas. over the subsequent 18 months, the pi and yvpc established regular professional interactions, exchanging research articles, discussing the community environment in salinas and planning the grant proposal. as a long-time and well-known health department employee with extensive professional network ties in the community, the yvpc was able to actively facilitate early support for the project locally and build connections between the pi and a diverse range of local leaders, including identifying a local co-investigator (co-i) for the study at natividad medical center. table 1 continued community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 98 to inform the research design and refine the research questions in the grant proposal, the pi and yvpc met to discuss potential study objectives and the types of community perspectives that could provide ground-level insights into the core issues and concerns affecting youth in salinas. in order to learn about those perspectives, they decided to conduct a set of informational interviews with community stakeholders. drawing on the yvpc’s decades of work in salinas and strong relationships with community leaders and organisations, they identified key individuals and groups, including directors of youth leadership and gang prevention programs, a middle school teacher, former gang members working to stem gang involvement, a local city council leader, community health clinicians and social service providers. when conducting the initial interviews, they adopted an iterative strategy of asking the key informants to whom they spoke whom else they should approach to discuss the study. in total, they conducted 12 informational interviews. some of these individuals joined the study’s community advisory board (cab) and many agreed to support a crecer as partner organisations to facilitate parent engagement and local visibility. the pi and yvpc also solicited youth input through a discussion with peer leaders at a local high school. in addition to these joint meetings, the yvpc helped to mobilise support with the school district, the mayor, the local congressman and the community alliance for safety and peace, a coalition comprised of over 50 agencies working to reduce violence in salinas. this process was crucial to the design of the study as the research questions and approach reflected ideas and reactions offered by the individuals interviewed. most importantly, the research concept resonated with community stakeholders and stimulated great interest in supporting an effort to generate high-quality data to guide future prevention policies and programs. many stakeholders discussed community-level influences on youth’s trajectories, including gender and family norms; housing instability and employment structures for farmworker families; intergenerational gang involvement; and differences in access to community resources by immigrant generations. these factors informed our approach to identifying protective and risk factors in youth’s social and structural environments. the a crecer grant proposal was first submitted to the national institutes of health in 2012, resubmitted in 2013, and funding commenced in august 2014. community relationships and engagement: school districts and community stakeholders once a crecer funding began, the pi and yvpc focused on strengthening partnerships with the school district and community stakeholders. they jointly attended multiple meetings with school district administrators, during which they presented the project, emphasising how the study goals were aligned with those of the school district for supporting student success. they also met with individual school site teams, including principals, counsellors and parent liaisons (who were responsible for parent–school coordination). the process of soliciting input from a diverse set of community leaders at the proposal design stage established foundational relationships that supported the development of a crecer’s cab. convened by the yvpc and the co-i, the cab has met quarterly since the inception of the study. when recruiting members for the cab, the yvpc and co-i contacted a variety of colleagues working in youth development, teen pregnancy and violence prevention who were well respected within the community and known to be credible and trusted among local groups. tapping their networks accelerated development of the cab, attracting engaged and enthusiastic members. current cab membership mirrors the racial and ethnic demographics of salinas and includes parent representatives, school representatives, comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 99 a grassroots organiser of women working in agriculture, salinas service providers, the local hospital’s co-director of community medicine, and teen radio coordinator of the local bilingual radio station, among others. the cab advises the study on outreach strategies to parents, as well as recruitment and retention approaches. for example, cab members suggested the development of a website featuring the logos of member organisations in order to strengthen the perceived legitimacy of the study and deepen community connections; subsequent feedback from participants’ parents indicated that these endorsements boosted a crecer’s credibility as a study that was genuinely invested in the local community. in addition, a crecer data are presented to the cab for input on interpretation and analysis, which is a particularly important ‘validity check’ for the members of our team who are not based in salinas. to achieve language inclusivity at the meetings, simultaneous translation in spanish is offered. staffing the study: community-engaged professional development in addition to valuing the importance of grounding research in community partnerships, we asked ourselves : what considerations are important when staffing our study, and how can we best support staff to do this work? a focal point of our approach to this question has been our commitment to employing young adults from the local community as research staff, particularly because none of the senior staff members grew up in salinas and we felt it was important to include local voices in our daily work. by bringing community members to the table as salaried employees, encouraging dialogue and soliciting input, we hoped to increase accountability of the research to the people it would ultimately affect. furthermore, it was congruent with our ultimate goal, as a study seeking to support resilience and opportunities for youth, to invest research funds in creating jobs that could provide exposure to career paths in public health research to current undergraduates and recent graduates from the community. to maximise visibility, a crecer job announcements were listed online, posted on local community college and state university job websites, sent to the youth collaborative of monterey county and disseminated by cab members. in an effort to reach potential applicants who might not otherwise have considered working in research, job descriptions emphasised the desirability of skills such as knowledge of local culture and ability to establish rapport with youth. during the period from the study launch to enrolment of the full cohort, a crecer employed a total of seven salinas-based staff members, including five originally from the broader salinas valley and two from similar communities in california. six of the seven members of the staff identified as latinx, and all were bilingual in spanish and english. five staff members had attended a local college or university. for five staff members a crecer was their first job upon completion of an undergraduate or masters program as well as their first experience working in research. extensive training in research methods was provided to the a crecer research staff. inperson sessions facilitated by san francisco-based staff were valuable not only in terms of building capacity and skills among the newly hired junior members, but also in providing opportunities for the junior members to share knowledge about youth in salinas with the more senior members, and for team bonding. trainings included topics such as ethics and adherence to institutional review board protocols; effective recruitment techniques; quantitative interview administration; in-depth qualitative interviewing; adolescent development and health issues; sdh research; and how to provide facilitated referrals for distressed participants. several presentations of local public health data by monterey county health department staff strengthened knowledge of adolescent health inequities. trainings were ongoing and community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 100 responsive to the needs of the junior research staff. for example, when staff members remarked that numerous participants were worried about firearm incidents that had taken place in town, an adolescent health physician from the research team (marissa raymond-flesch) conducted a session on techniques for supporting youth exposed to violence and self-care for staff working with vulnerable youth. incorporating youth’s perspectives the question, how can we engage youth’s perspectives in this study?, has been central to a crecer from its inception. as a means of learning about youth’s perspectives early in the study, we convened eight focus groups with youth recruited from participating middle schools as well as from salinas youth leadership programs. (findings from these focus groups have been published elsewhere; see raymond-flesch et al. 2017) recruitment for these groups was conducted using strategies developed with input from the principal or vice-principal at each school, as well as the cab. information sessions, held on campus at lunch, offered students an opportunity to learn about a crecer, sign up for a focus group and talk informally with members of the research staff. to secure parental support for the focus groups, we solicited input from local implementers of family-based prevention programs and met directly with parents during regularly scheduled parent meetings at each of the middle schools where the focus group recruitment was to be conducted. at each parent group, the study staff introduced a crecer and its objectives; modelled a focus group discussion with the parents, having them role play the activities that would be conducted with participants during the group; discussed parent permission approaches; solicited input on what parents saw as the greatest needs for youth in the community; and offered an interactive educational session on adolescent health issues at a future date. these presentations were either bilingual or conducted in spanish. each presentation was led by one member of the san francisco-based team or the local co-i and a bilingual and bicultural field coordinator who was from the salinas community. a total of 42 youth participated in the eight focus groups, which followed an innovative structure. rather than posing questions to the entire group, youth were engaged in a series of activities aimed at generating conversation. in the first activity, participants used stickers to rank their relative agreement or disagreement with statements about family, gender and relationships (e.g. ‘it is very important for a guy to get respect from others’, ‘a woman must be a source of strength for her family’). they were then encouraged to discuss why and how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each statement. in the second activity, participants drew maps of their community, with prompts to include their home, school, recreational areas and transportation methods, and to indicate places where they felt safe and unsafe. participants then presented their maps to the group, indicating points of interest and providing further details (see figure 2). focus group findings informed questionnaire development and recruitment strategies. for example, youth’s strong orientation towards family as their primary source of health guidance and modelling pathways to adulthood, prompted us to expand the scope of measures related to family included in our questionnaires. in response to requests from parents of focus group participants to have an opportunity to learn more about the research and to contribute to the design of the parent engagement and permission procedures for the cohort study, the salinasbased co-i led a meeting for eight parent leaders from two middle schools, two of whom subsequently joined our cab. comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 101 figure 2 sample map from focus group we also convened a youth advisory board (yab) to provide guidance on study activities. in addition to conducting activities to engage youth in understanding the purpose of the research, the yab served to inform the development of the study name (a crecer) and logo through an art workshop, the design of study flyers, the development of recruitment messages that would resonate with youth, and the development of the referral guide for youth services and activities in salinas that is distributed to all participants during their study visits. development of culturally appropriate research protocols our final best practices question, how can we develop culturally appropriate research protocols?, is of utmost importance to our team. we aim to conduct rigorous research that will yield knowledge that is useful and actionable to those directly concerned with the health and wellbeing of youth in salinas and similar agricultural areas. it is therefore tremendously important that youth and their parents feel comfortable with, and preferably enthusiastic about, participation in the study. to this end, the a crecer team actively solicited and incorporated information regarding local culture, terminology and norms to inform recruitment and interviewing procedures for the cohort study. we drew heavily on the knowledge and insights of the salinas-based staff members, led by the project coordinator, particularly regarding how to best approach youth and their parents about study participation. staff framed the study as exploring ‘what it is like to be a teen in salinas’, and encouraged students to consider participating as a way to ‘share your voice’ and contribute to the community. the staff also noticed that peer leaders could quickly set the tone for whether youth would express interest in study participation, and they consciously adopted strategies community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 102 of ‘matching the tone’ of exuberant students, generating a sense of shared enthusiasm, while also telling students that they could join the study with friends and come to interview appointments together. as recruitment proceeded, the staff noted that they had developed ways of adjusting recruitment to different environments (schoolyards vs classrooms), groups (‘popular’ kids as compared to quieter youth who kept to themselves) and even schools (noting that students in some schools wanted many details about participation, whereas in others the main focus was on concerns about confidentiality). early on in their recruiting, the salinas-based staff discerned that both youth and their parents had concerns about what was meant by a ‘research interview’. realising that many people think of an interview in terms of what is seen on television news or talk shows, the staff began proactively explaining the quantitative interview more concretely. for example, they described the survey as ‘multiple choice’ and reiterated that youth could skip any questions they did not want to answer. they also specified that the answers were entered directly into a computer, which youth and parents alike found reassuring, often telling staff that they had been concerned that youth would be asked to write down responses. these explanations also helped parents understand a crecer as a research study, as opposed to an after-school program. in addition, the staff learned that parents were sometimes hesitant to enrol their children in a crecer because they feared negative consequences for their child if they were unable to bring him or her to an interview appointment. the staff therefore made sure to explain to parents that children were never penalised for missing appointments. they also clarified that parents did not need to stay on site during the interview, recognising that many parents had multiple responsibilities and could not spare the time to wait. these efforts to assuage parents’ concerns yielded not only higher numbers of enrolled study participants, but also a sense of pride among students and their parents who began to see study participation as a way of contributing to the community and benefiting youth. building on this perspective, we partnered with local school officials to arrange for youth to receive community service hours for their participation in a crecer. focus group findings also informed procedures for recruitment and obtaining parent permission for the cohort study. based on parent feedback obtained through recruitment for the focus groups, the staff developed a telephone-based verbal parent permission process that ensured parents had opportunities to talk privately by phone and also to meet staff in person, either at our study office or at one of the five community-based interview locations, in advance of having their child enrol in the study. concerns about literacy were also raised by youth during the focus groups, which confirmed our decision to use audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (acasi) for the more sensitive questions, and staff emphasised during recruitment that youth were not required to read or write on their own in order to participate. finally, we made use of multiple opportunities to build legitimacy within the community. for example, on two occasions, salinas-based staff members were interviewed by a teen-led youth radio show that aired on a bilingual radio station as a means of raising awareness about the study and demonstrating engagement with the community. discussion when conducting studies on sdh in communities that experience inequalities and marginalisation, researchers must be mindful of how the same conditions that may shape health disparities may also affect whether and how community members engage with research. we take a crecer’s ability to engage parents and school partners, achieve enrolment targets and comfort, raymond-flesch, auerswald, mcglone, chavez and minnis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 103 sustain high retention to date as indicators that our approach has been successful, not only by research but also by community standards. importantly, this engagement has also helped us to ensure that our research focus is well aligned with parents’ and youth’s priorities and community objectives regarding the promotion of adolescent wellbeing. while a crecer brings attention to challenges faced by youth in salinas and an evidence base for tailored solutions to address these challenges, the study team has been cognisant of the potential for reinforcing a negative image of salinas through the study findings. in focusing research on two of the most pressing public health problems facing salinas teens (teen pregnancy and risk of violence), we have strived to also acknowledge the importance of understanding resilience among adolescents who are engaged in school, volunteer in a community to which they feel attached and are connected to families with whom they share strong bonds. it has been a priority of the a crecer team to be vigilant about slipping into a problem-based characterisation of ‘at-risk’ youth in a disadvantaged community, and instead choosing to align with a growing movement to investigate what helps a community thrive, building on the strengths of its residents and a proud cultural heritage. collaboratively, the research team has challenged itself to incorporate protective factors such as school connectedness, resilience and a future orientation towards the measures of influences that lead to a positive trajectory. this focus grew naturally out of the strong communityresearch linkages forged by intentional community engagement during the formative stages of the study. this more balanced approach respects and nurtures growing community pride and has been welcomed by cab members, yab members and local stakeholders. our team is fully committed to the approach described in this article. we recognise that such engagement requires time, resources and a willingness of all parties to listen, be transparent and remain open-minded. it has been important – and meaningful – in a crecer for the san francisco-based researchers to spend entire days in salinas in an effort to better understand the context in which the study takes place, meet face to face with community partners and problem-solve on site with the local staff. likewise, the salinas-based research staff have worked evenings and weekends in order to maximise their ability to connect with parents, teachers and other community members, shared their observations and experiences in order to inform the aspects of the research that can be adapted to the local culture, and maintained the research protocols that need to be standardised with equanimity and good humour. within a study that focuses on rural latino youth, many of whom contend with immigration, acculturation, poverty and other issues that could potentially affect health outcomes, such efforts to create community-level trust and buy-in are key conditions for the production of high-quality data that can be used to support resources, solutions and paths forward. conclusion work that will meaningfully affect sdh must be conducted in ways that not only acknowledge community challenges but also recognise and build upon resilience. taking this approach promotes a growing community awareness of the barriers resulting from sdh and the drive to address these factors to further the development of a safe and thriving community. in the case of our research with rural latino youth, building in the active participation of the actors in charge of the settings where adolescents live, such as educators and parents, was crucial. indeed, developing these community partnerships and working to maintain them through accountability and transparency helped expand the reach of our study to a greater number of residents, thereby promoting community engagement and expediting participant community-engaged research with rural latino adolescents gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 104 recruitment. likewise, we found that by engaging local opinion leaders – including youth – early in the research process, support for the study spread through multiple channels, minimising the barriers that could have arisen for community members who feel wary of outsiders and instead prompting parents to come forward and enrol their children in what was perceived as a positive community-focused activity. despite their importance, building community partnerships and providing avenues to hear the voices of a study population is not sufficient. in order for research among vulnerable groups to be as relevant and ethical as possible, community perspectives and expertise must be deeply integrated into the study itself. two channels for this are research staff and protocols, the heart and soul of a study. by hiring young people from the local community and valuing and building their knowledge, we hope not only to improve the quality of our current work, but also to help train the next generation of scholars. similarly, by designing protocols that are culturally appropriate and respectful, we aim to broaden the community’s understanding of research, degree of comfort engaging with it, and expectations that it should lead to solutions that will be feasible and effective. in working towards these goals, we hope that a crecer will live up to its namesake by providing opportunities not only to learn, but for all of us involved – youth, community and researchers – to grow. references alsan, m & wanamaker, m 2018, ‘tuskegee and the health 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learning on emerging adult social competence a mixed-methods evaluation international service-learning experiences are associated with many positive outcomes for emerging adults, and the benefits have been well documented within the literature (metzger 2012). service-learning has been demonstrated to be beneficial to participants, communities, and educators (watkins & braun 2005). however, researchers have primarily focused on servicelearning in the context of being part of university curriculum. while that research is valuable in establishing empirical evidence for practicing service-learning within the classroom, we know very little regarding the impact of international service-learning experiences on emerging adults when the service-learning is experienced separate from course requirements. it is important to note that many college-age students are participating in service outside of class assignments (astin 2000). according to a nationally representative sample of 22,328 us college students, 46 per cent of participants reported participating in volunteering and service in their community outside of class requirements compared to 30 per cent of students who had only participated in servicelearning as part or their undergraduate degree (astin 2000). the purpose of the present study was to understand the impact of international humanitarian community servicelearning experiences on the development of social competencies in emerging adults. emerging adulthood is characterised as a time of instability, identity exploration, self-focus, feelings of being between life stages, and a time of possibilities (arnett 2004). this developmental stage is classified as the stage between adolescence and adulthood, typically referring to ages 18–25 (arnett 1994). it is a period of transition, where the individual is no longer an adolescent and is striving to acquire the capacities and characteristics of full adulthood (arnett 2004). specifically, this study examined the service-learning experiences of volunteers who had served in orphanages in latin america with a non-profit secular organisation orphanage support service organization (osso). the volunteers participating in the study were assessed, in a preand post-test design, for their development in areas of paul schvaneveldt weber state university todd spencer oklahoma state university © 2016 by p schvaneveldt & t spencer. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: schvaneveldt, p & spencer, t 2016, ‘impact of international humanitarian service-learning on emerging adult social competence: a mixedmethods evaluation’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 113–131. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4788 corresponding author: paul schvaneveldt; pschvaneveldt@weber.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v9i1.4788 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 9/no 1 (2016) 114 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer social competency such as identity, self-efficacy, self-esteem and ethnocentric attitudes. a mixed-methods design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative measures was used. in regards to service-learning, researchers have noted that universities function as a collaborator and partner with the community they are serving (metzger 2012). it is likely that other organizations such as osso can function similarly as universities in providing service-learning experience and connecting volunteers to a community in need. researchers found that providing service creates a dynamic learning experience for participants (underwood et al. 2000). as such, it is likely that the act of serving, and not the affiliated institution, is what primarily accounts for the positive outcomes involved with service-learning. while there is evidence that a correlation exists between happiness and belonging to or serving in voluntary organizations (dekker & van den broek 2004), further research is needed to understand how engaging in international humanitarian organizations such as osso are influencing the development of social competencies among volunteers. all of the participants in the current study were university students, however, their service experiences were not part of a formal university program or curriculum. background the orphanage support service organization (osso) is a nonprofit secular organisation that provides direct care to children residing in orphanages in many parts of the developing world. a primary way that osso provides care is to connect volunteers from the united states and canada with orphanages in latin america. the mission of osso is to do everything possible to help children living in orphanages to reach their full potential. its secondary mission is to create a two-way bridge of meaningful connection between children in need in developing countries and caring people in the united states and canada who have the means to help. the aim of osso is to change lives for the better on both sides of the bridge (osso 2016). to this end, osso operates orphanages and provides support to orphanages in the developing world. the first author of this paper has served as a volunteer with osso and developed training materials for volunteers. osso volunteers are expected to provide direct care to children for 50–60 hours per week for a 6–30 week period. these volunteers are typically emerging adults who are also university students attending a variety of public and private universities in north america. the participants of the current study were not enrolled in a university course related to their international humanitarian service, but volunteered to participate in the research project. volunteers pay for all costs related to their travel, housing, transportation and food. osso helps facilitate international humanitarian servicelearning experiences for volunteers through hands-on care at the community level in international orphanage settings. a study by 115 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer escueta et al. (2014) on the link between the emotional challenges of orphaned or abandoned children and their educational/ cognitive scores examined data from five countries and found that exposure to adverse experiences negatively impacted cognitive development scores, especially for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and where care providers reported lower levels of education. they suggested that interventions to improve the emotional and cognitive development of such children should involve care providers who have higher levels of education and training. in light of such findings, osso provides orientation and training for volunteers in early care and education of children residing in orphanage settings. first, volunteers learn about the local culture, people, basic spanish, foods and traditions, and about the orphanages and the experiences of the children and families in the communities where they are to serve. second, volunteers participate in weekly group meetings with site leaders, who reside with the volunteers and serve as mentors and coordinators, to discuss the needs of the children and the volunteer experience. the site leaders facilitate discussions on how the service-learning experience changes the individual volunteer, in their own lives and families at home, and on differences between cultures. the site leaders also engage the volunteers in individual meetings (once every two weeks) to discuss their personal experiences and challenges and to encourage them to reflect on their experiences and personal growth as a volunteer with osso in a journal. it is important to note that osso does not engage in shortterm orphanage support activities. both unicef and save the children have issued statements against short-term service in orphanages as many children from such circumstances have been trafficked and exploited for financial gain (birrell 2010; hartman 2014). osso cooperates with local community-based care providers and social service agencies to provide ongoing care of children who are abandoned or orphaned. osso volunteers serve only in orphanages operated by religious organisations or reputable foundations whose goal is to foster the healthy development of children (osso 2016). the current research received university irb approval and osso collaborated to identify volunteers who were invited to participate in the study. participants completed a questionnaire prior to their departure to serve with osso. they completed the questionnaire upon completion of their service with osso and their responses were matched with a code number. in addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with a group of volunteers upon completion of their service. literature review: outcomes of international service-learning among individuals who have participated in international servicelearning, 75 per cent described it as a transformational experience 116 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer that led to significant changes in their life. they also reported that it would have been unlikely for them to experience the same amount of growth if they had stayed in their home country (lough, mcbride & sherraden 2009). this transformational learning process is characterised by seeing the world from a different perspective and increasing personal commitment to the welfare of others (eyler & giles 1996). similarly, horn and fry (2013) found that international service-learning experiences that occurred in developing countries and were longer term (i.e. longer than 2–3 weeks) predicted later engagement in global citizenship. specifically, students were more likely to be involved in international development activities after completion of their initial international experience. mezirow’s (1996) theory of transformative learning is supportive of the notion that personal development occurs during service-learning and is facilitated by comparative experiences or points of reference. this change in reference occurs through critical reflection on the assumptions upon which our interpretations, beliefs and points of view are based. mezirow (1991) argued that active engagement with reflection activities were integral aspects of transformational learning. bell et al. (2014) reported that students who participated in a longer term service-learning experience in the south pacific experienced significant growth in self-esteem, self-efficacy, reduced ethnocentricity and commitment to the welfare of others as they engaged in the reflection process. academic achievement one of the most documented impacts of service-learning is the gains participants experience in academic achievement. specifically, 72 per cent of students who participated in servicelearning activities reported higher grades than peers who did not (astin et al. 2000). the overall grade point average of college students who were engaged in service-learning was 4.8 per cent higher than for non-service-learning students (strage 2000). additionally, service-learning students outperformed their nonservice-learning peers in critical thinking tasks, writing skills and class participation (martin et al. 2006). service-learning also appears to have longer term impacts on the educational achievement of students. many students reported a greater understanding of the opportunities that come with higher education (martin et al. 2006). additionally, students who participated in service-learning reported an increased ability to apply what they were learning to ‘real life’ (astin, sax & avalos 1999). academic improvements such as higher grade point averages, increased class participation and ‘real life’ opportunities to apply what was being learned provide strong support for the value of service-learning experiences for emerging adults. diversity competence one of the benefits of participation in service-learning is that it fosters intercultural understanding (astin et al. 2000). specifically, 117 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer participants in international service-learning report a greater appreciation for cultural differences, including how to recognise and navigate differences while maintaining respect for the other (hull et al. 2016). for example a nationally representative sample in the u.s. found that individuals who participated in servicelearning were more likely to have interacted and socialised with someone from a different ethnic group in the previous year, compared to non-service-learning peers (martin et al. 2006). likewise, students who participated in service-learning reported a higher sensitivity to people of a different age, race and socioeconomic status (martin et al. 2006). in a related study, 95 per cent of college students involved in international service reported an increased appreciation for other cultures and are more likely to participate in cultural events (lough, mcbride & sherraden 2009). participants engaged in international service-learning frequently develop a greater sense of ‘global citizenship’ (stoner et al. 2014). a global citizen is defined as someone who is engaged locally, nationally and internationally, while demonstrating environmental and social responsibility (hanson 2010). global citizenship is fostered as participants increase in awareness of global issues and reflect on their beliefs and world view, often leading to a transformational shift in perspective (stoner et al. 2014). for example, wynveen, kyle and tarrant (2012) observed that university students who participated in a program of study abroad reported an increased sense of personal responsibility for the environment and a personal obligation to minimise their impact on the environment. this is consistent with other research which found that individuals who participated in an international educational travel program were more supportive of sustainable environment policies upon completing their international servicelearning (tarrant et al. 2011). while there has been criticism of the effectiveness of short-term international service-learning, participants in an educational travel program demonstrated significant gains in their sense of global citizenship after only four weeks of volunteering (tarrant, rubin & stoner 2014). identity development individuals engaging in international service-learning frequently report an increased awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses (hull et al. 2016). research related to volunteering and role identity suggests that volunteering is intertwined with personal development (grube & piliavin 2000). research also suggests that volunteering is a means of expressing individuality and provides volunteers with an enhanced sense of identity (wuthnow 1991). upon returning home, american students participating in international volunteer service reported having a ‘reformed identity’ (dolby 2004). the international volunteer experience causes participants to examine their identity in both positive and critical ways (carlson & widaman 1988). 118 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer one of the ways that service-learning influences participant identity development is through fostering self-esteem and selfefficacy (astin et al. 2000). young people with greater levels of self-efficacy and self-esteem reported fewer risk behaviours such as substance use, delinquency, academic underachievement and risky sexual behaviours (bandura 1997). the concept of self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to accomplish tasks. it involves being able to organise and execute a course of action to manage situations, and impacts how people think, behave and feel (bandura 1977, 1994). individuals who demonstrate a strong sense of self-efficacy are able to view challenges as tasks to be mastered, develop a deeper interest in the activities that they participate in, have a stronger sense of commitment to tasks, and recover quickly from disappointments and setbacks (bandura 1977). according to bandura (1994), self-efficacy is achieved through mastery of experiences, social modelling, social persuasion and psychological responses. the nature of service-learning provides participants with opportunities to accomplish difficult tasks, to be around others who are also engaged in similar tasks, and to receive encouragement and feedback from others. previous studies have identified service-learning experiences as important factors in influencing greater social competence in emerging adults (waterman 1997). one of the ways that self-esteem is manifested among emerging adults who participate in service-learning is the further development of social competence (waterman 1997). participants of service-learning reported that working with people of differing backgrounds helped them learn how to communicate more effectively (martin et al. 2006). this is attributed largely to the increased ability to see the perspective of others and to work with people of differing ethnicities (martin et al. 2006). many participants also reported being more patient, which positively impacted their communication skills with others (martin et al. 2006). individuals who participated in service-learning reported an overall increase in self-confidence in social settings and an increased awareness of those around them (ngai 2006). psychosocial stages of identity and generativity in an effort to understand how service-learning facilitates personal growth, erikson’s (1950) psychosocial stages of identity and generativity provide useful insight. erikson argued that in order to avoid role confusion one must develop a sense of self and personal identity. during service-learning, students are able to see themselves grow as they take on responsibility and develop confidence (martin et al. 2006). more specifically, the immersion that takes place during international volunteering provides students with a better understanding of community and self (rhoads & neururer 1998). the opportunities for selfreflection associated with service-learning potentially assist in fostering identity development; as reported by pompa (2002), 119 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer participants with higher levels of immersion reported higher levels of self-reflection. according to erikson (1950), generativity is accomplished by assisting others to experience positive changes and creating a lasting impact on the life of others. from a study of 291 students who had participated in international volunteer experiences, 76 per cent reported that they had made lasting contributions to the people and organisations they had served (lough, mcbride & sherraden 2009). additionally, 69 per cent stated they had specific skills that had benefited the host organisation (lough, mcbride & sherraden 2009). similarly, over 80 per cent of students who had participated in service-learning while in college reported that their volunteering had made a difference to others and that they had learned from the service experiences (astin et al. 2000). it is likely that the positive impact that volunteers perceive provides experiences that are crucial in fostering identity development and a greater sense of generativity. in summary, the research on service-learning activities demonstrates many positive impacts on the development of social competencies among emerging adult and adolescent populations. however, no known study has examined the impact of a servicelearning experience on volunteers serving in an orphanage setting in a developing country over a longer period of time. the present study aims to better understand how longer international servicelearning experiences impact the development of self-efficacy, self-esteem, identity status, ethnocentrism, relationship skills, materialism, and other domains of social competence among emerging adults. methodology a sample of 68 emerging adult volunteers serving with osso for 6–32 weeks was examined. a matched pairs preand posttest design was used to assess the impact of this unique servicelearning opportunity in latin america on the development of social competence over time. participants completed a self-administered questionnaire designed to measure identity development, self-efficacy, self-esteem and ethnocentrism one week prior to their departure to latin america and service with osso. the participants then completed the same questionnaire on completion of their service with osso. the preand posttest responses were matched together. additionally, a subset of 15 participants responded to qualitative items assessing their perceptions and views on how the service-learning experience impacted them or fostered personal growth. the first section of the research instrument consisted of measures of demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, education level, and length of service with osso. the second section included the berzonsky identity style inventory (1992), in which composite variables for each identity style (diffuse, normative, information, and commitment oriented) were 120 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer identified. the third section consisted of measures for self efficacy and self-esteem. self efficacy was measured using a 17-item scale that reflected general self efficacy (ingoldsby et al. 2003). sample items included: ‘when i make plans, i am certain i can make them work’; ‘if i can’t do a job the first time, i keep trying until i can’; and ‘failure just makes me try harder’. rosenberg’s selfesteem scale (1965) was used to assess self-esteem. respondents indicated their agreement with each of the 10 items (e.g. ‘on the whole i am satisfied with myself’; ‘i certainly feel useless at times’) on a 4-point scale (4 = strongly agree, 1 = strongly disagree). in the fourth section, ethnocentrism was measured by five items that reflected openness to interacting with people from diverse cultures outside the united states. a higher value indicated lower levels of ethnocentrism. sample items included: ‘i feel most comfortable with people from the u.s.’ and ‘people should speak english just like in the u.s.’ qualitative data were also collected from 15 participants upon completion of their service with osso. participants were asked to respond to the following open-ended questions: 1) how did your experience with osso shape or influence you personally? 2) what did you learn about other cultures and people? 3) how did your service with osso impact your views on children, families, and opportunities for people? 4) how did your service with osso influence your competence in working with other people? participants provided written responses to these questions. the responses were transcribed and coded, and major themes were identified. results the mean age of participants was 19.80 (sd=1.41) and all but one were female. the mean level of education was college sophomore, and all but one participant identified themselves as european american. a matched-pairs t-test was performed to identify any changes between the pre-test and post-test measures. no differences were identified in length of service with osso. there were significant increases in self-efficacy and self-esteem levels after completion of their service. furthermore, there were lower levels of ethnocentric attitudes upon completion of service. surprisingly, there were no statistically significant changes in identity status scores. the results are presented in table 1. a qualitative thematic analysis was done on the written comments by participants and several major themes emerged: leadership; identity; parenthood and family; openness to diverse cultures and people; simple life/less materialistic; appreciation of family/things; self-efficacy; civic minded/community involvement; and regard and empathy for others. the themes reflected growth or changes in social competency in a range of attributes, discussed below, as a result of their international service-learning experience. 121 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer leadership the theme of leadership reflects the leadership and interpersonal skills that were fostered during the participants’ experience volunteering with osso. each volunteer was assigned to a leadership role, such as planning and organising educational activities for a group of children at the orphanage, coordinating food purchasing and meal preparation, and sanitation and health care. the volunteers were required to plan and organise the activities and lead other volunteers in accomplishing their assigned role. as a result of these experiences, many volunteers reported growth in leadership characteristics and abilities such as communication, interpersonal skills, consistency, responsibility and organisation as illustrated below: i learned the key to good communication and keeping a house of rules running smoothly is first, obey the rules yourself and, second, talk with the other volunteers so they better understand what you are [asking] of them. this will help me in my future as a leader because i was put into a position in [a] foreign place with rules that i was unfamiliar with and had to figure out for myself what i could do to better the situation in the house. overall, i learned that leadership is all about relationships. if the people you are leading respect you then they will want to follow you a lot more. they will like you more too. part of gaining respect is being prepared as a leader, being clear on what is expected of them, being consistent, and following through with what you said you would [do] and keeping your tone and emotions calm. if the instructions were not clear, the children did not want to do the activity. identity identity development was a dominant theme expressed by participants. many of the volunteers were uncertain of their future in regard to education, career aspirations and desired family roles and reported an increased sense of direction and a clearer identity as a result of serving in the orphanages. in some instances, participants were actively looking for guidance for their future and were hopeful that volunteering with osso would provide items pre-test mean and sd post-test mean and sd t-value self-esteem 31.65 (4.96) 33.66 (4.31) 3.60** self-efficacy 64.94 (10.11) 68.66 (8.01) 3.66** information-oriented identity 41.01 (5.66) 40.20 (5.43) .353 normative-oriented identity 33.26 (4.77) 32.82 (4.56) .937 diffuse-oriented identity 23.26 (6.12) 23.23 (6.05) .058 commitment towards identity 41.29 (5.10) 42.00 (4.74) 1.62 feel most comfortable with people from the usa 2.74 (1.09) 3.44 (1.09) 4.35** i can only relate with people from the usa 4.12 (.86) 4.60 (.55) 4.59** i fit best with people from the usa 2.94 (1.35) 3.46 (.99) 3.21** people should speak english like in the usa 4.35 (.82) 4.62 (.57) 2.60** i have good understanding of people from different cultures 2.82 (1.04) 2.41 (1.03) 3.41** table 1: paired sample t-tests: prior to service with osso and upon completion of service with osso (n=68)** p < .01 122 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer direction. they reported more clarity about their future life as a result of their service-learning experiences, as the following quotes illustrate. before i left, i was pretty indecisive about some of the things in my life. but after being in that environment for 3 months it helped me realize how important life is to me and how much i love my family. not only did i learn to love my family more, but i have more of a desire to be a good father and be a positive person in society. from this experience i don’t think that i could go the rest of my life doing something that doesn’t help someone else. i want to work with adoptions or with troubled youth. my plan is to achieve my master’s degree and continue to serve others through it. without this time in the orphanages i don’t think that i would realize what a good person can bring to the world and what can be done even here in the u.s. being on the other side of adoptions where the kids have been abandoned makes me want to be able to help them by finding loving homes for them. parenthood and family a common theme expressed by participants was appreciation for their own family of origin and the desire to be effective in raising their own children. the experiences in the orphanages provided volunteers with opportunities to interact as the primary care provider for the children. daily, volunteers fed, changed nappies/ diapers, taught activities and supervised play time. serving as a temporary parent figure, the participants were able to gain valuable experience on how to interact with children. the lesson i learned was that children will not respond and learn out of anger and frustration from someone in authority … teaching a child out of love and patience will last a lot longer on children than just the opposite. talking through conflicts in a calm manner will help a child, and even the adult, understand the center of conflict and the best resolution. i gained a bigger appreciation for my family because i was able to experience just a slight bit of how it would be without them through these children. the many experiences and lessons that i have learned will help me be a better mother in the future. it has shaped my views on children and taught me how to better interact with them, love them and teach them. openness to diverse cultures and people one of the key components of international volunteering is the participants’ immersion into a culture different from their own. participants reported that this exposure led to an increased openness to diverse cultures and people. common responses suggest that participants unknowingly had ethnocentric attitudes and had not considered that there were ways of life other than their own. the following quotes exemplify their growing openness. 123 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer i think by living in a different culture, i ended up learning a great deal more about my own culture. oftentimes people think that their way of doing things is the only way of doing things. after having spent time in a different country, i learned that there are many different ways of doing things, and that my way, or the american way, is not always the only way. i know better how to interact with people from other countries, especially south americans. it shaped my views of the catholic religion [as] well … the biggest thing that shaped my views was the orphanage run by catholic nuns. i never really had a view of them and it was because i didn’t have much knowledge about them but what i learned is the catholic nuns are the most unselfish people on earth. simple life/less materialistic a recurring theme among participants was the desire to have a simpler life and to value materialistic things less. for many, the experience with osso caused them to examine their definition of happiness and what they need in life to be happy. this reflection is often the result of interacting with impoverished individuals who, despite this, are happy. the following quotes illustrate a change in priorities and a desire for a simpler life that developed as they lived and served in latin america. although this might sound cliché, i did realize that i want a simpler life … some people had only a small house without windows or floors, a farm, food, their family, and they are happy … even the children (in the orphanages) were without many modern conveniences and without family and still had happiness in their lives. if i had not served with osso, i would not have learned these important lessons. i have a closet full of close to 60 pairs of shoes and i still complain that i don’t have a certain style or that i need this or that when these kids have one pair of worn out shoes and they would rather give to someone else. appreciation of family/things in addition to wanting a simpler life, participants reported an increased appreciation for what they have and gratitude for their family situation. this new-found appreciation is rooted in working in the orphanages, as well as exposure to individuals who go without food, clothing, shelter, etc. often they have taken these things for granted or haven’t given them much consideration because they have always been a part of their life. the quotes below demonstrate participants’ new sense of appreciation for their family and the things they do have. my experience in ecuador definitely made me realize how thankful i really am for my parents, my family, and for the support and love 124 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer that they show to me. family is something i took for granted before i went to ecuador. i now realize that not everybody has a family like i do, and i am very grateful for mine. the biggest lesson i think i learned is how blessed i am. not only with the material things that i have but i have a family, food, this country that keeps me safe, along with many other things. those were all things that i have taken for granted every single day of my life and sad to say know i sometimes still do. but without this experience i don’t think i would appreciate them as much as i do now. self-efficacy self-efficacy development emerged as a prevalent theme. participants expressed that, because their experience with osso was difficult, they now have greater confidence in their ability to accomplish challenging tasks. due to developing greater selfefficacy, participants have demonstrated more assertive tendencies in many life domains. the following quotes are examples of how international service learning experiences foster self-efficacy. i learned how to work hard, before i even got there … it was a lot of work to be able to get enough money to go to ecuador with the osso program. i put in many long hours with my fundraiser as well as sent out letters for people who were willing to sponsor me. i was amazed at how generous people were and how all my hard work had paid off. this taught me a great life lesson, it helped me realize that we as americans have it really easy, and that our main stress isn’t that main stress of survival as it is in ecuador … i want to be as hard working and as strong as these people are. they gave me motivation and understanding that even though you are going through a hard time in your life you can still work hard and push through. civic minded/community involvement the theme of becoming civic minded and involved in the community suggests that participants recognised the importance of being engaged locally and the ways in which they could continue to serve and improve their own communities. below are quotes that reflect these aspirations. when i returned home, i decided that i wanted to be a volunteer and help people in my own community. i did some research and started volunteering at the local ywca. i have been volunteering there once a week since i returned home. i have met some really neat people and have had the opportunity to work with some at-risk children there. i hope that throughout my life i will be able to find opportunities to do service wherever i am. i might not be able to change the world, but if i can make one person smile, then it will be worth my effort. 125 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer since i have been home, my role as a volunteer has shifted from aiding in healthier development of ecuadorian children and administering their basic necessities to being aware of individual situations, educating people in my community about service, and hopefully making my own children’s lives more fulfilling so that we can make our community a better place. regard and empathy for others participants reported a higher regard and increased empathy for others. most commonly, it was the interaction with the children in the orphanages that was the biggest influence on developing empathy. frequently, participants reported experiencing a deeper love for children than previously and learning about loving others. the following quotes illustrate how participants developed these important values. i felt my main job was just to love the kids. i remember thinking after my first day working in an orphanage that there was no way i would be able to remember the names of all the children there. i was wrong. not only did i learn the names of nearly 200 children we worked with, but i can say that i learned to love each and every one of them as an individual. i think that if you are going to serve someone, you have to learn to love them first. once you love them, your service is not a chore and cannot be considered as work. it becomes a blessing and a privilege, and something you look forward to each day. the last thing i will tell, but not the last thing i gained from my experience was the importance of children and love for children. this is something i know i could not have learned anywhere else. it changed my life’s course for the better and gave me direction. i feel it helped me personally to open up my heart in a way i never knew possible. it was amazing. life changing experience a final identified theme was how involvement with international service-learning became a life-changing experience. volunteers reported that their experience with osso significantly impacted their life in a positive way, as illustrated by the following quotes. my eyes have been opened to what really goes on outside the united states and i will never forget the things that i have seen. i have learned an immense amount of lessons from this one experience and i would do it again in a heartbeat. my life will be forever changed because [of] this experience and i will never forget it. when i was signing up for this experience i didn’t know that it would have such a big effect on me. i didn’t know that, because i went to ecuador, i would be able to not only figure out what i am truly passionate about in life but also that it would change me personally. i am not the same person that i was when i left for ecuador and i am very glad that i was able to change. my values in life have changed greatly. i see service as a top priority because i know that 126 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer when i serve, i am able to grow and feel good about myself. i take relationships with children much more seriously because i know that if i can be a good example, because of how impressionable children are, i could possibly [a]ffect in a good way a child’s life. i know now that hard work is what makes people strong and that through hard work you can not only grow personally but also you can be [an] example in others [lives] …. discussion this study examined the impact of international humanitarian service-learning experiences on the development of social competencies of emerging adults. specifically, the service-learning experiences of osso volunteers were assessed for development in qualities such as identity, self-efficacy, self-esteem and ethnocentric attitudes. the study also sought to better understand how the volunteer experience influenced development of these qualities and other domains of social competency. the quantitative analyses identified significant increases in self-efficacy and self-esteem levels in participants after completion of their service. consistent with other research on service-learning, participants had significantly lower levels of ethnocentric attitudes upon completion (astin et al. 2000; kiely 2005). surprisingly, the quantitative analyses did not identify statistically significant changes in identity status scores when measured by the berzonsky identity style inventory (1992, 1997). this lack of change is likely explained by the relatively higher scores in the areas of information-oriented identity style and participants’ commitment to an identity prior to beginning service with osso. it is also likely that there is a self-selection process impacting these analyses. those who were motivated to volunteer their time for 6–30 weeks, and to raise money to pay all of their own expenses to serve with osso, possibly had more sophisticated personal identities compared to other populations. however, the qualitative analysis revealed that international service-learning had a significant impact on the identity development of the participants. several consistent themes emerged from the qualitative analysis. specifically, participants’ reported that their experience with international service-learning was a transformational experience that promoted the development of leadership qualities, an increased appreciation for their families, a desire to live a less materialistic life, increased self-efficacy, a more refined identity, and a desire to remain civically engaged in their own communities. these findings are consistent with previous research that international service-learning is instrumental in helping participants’ view the world from a different perspective and develop a greater personal commitment to the welfare of others (eyler & giles 1996). in regards to identity development, participants reported an increased sense of direction in career, education and personal relationship choices as a result of their service in the orphanages. 127 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer other research supports these outcomes. dolby (2004) found that, upon completion of international service-learning, participants reported having a ‘reformed identity’. it is likely that this occurs because the experience causes volunteers to examine their identity in positive and critical ways (carlson & widaman 1988). research also suggests that volunteering is a means of expressing individuality, providing volunteers with an enhanced sense of identity (wuthnow 1991). relationships skills were enhanced: participants reported increased self-confidence in social settings and an increased awareness of those around them (ngai 2006). volunteering is believed to foster interpersonal trust and empathy for others (wilson & musick 1999). osso participants also reported a higher regard for people and increased empathy for others, and that the interaction with the children in the orphanage was a major influence on their development of empathy. frequently, participants reported experiencing a deeper love for children than they had previously experienced and that they learned from them a lot about loving others. providing care for the children was the primary catalyst for deepening the participants’ reported feelings of love for those they were serving and greater empathy for those around them. the study also lends support to research showing that higher levels of immersion lead to greater reflection and personal growth (pompa 2002). while short-term and local service-learning is valuable, this research shows that service-learning experiences requiring personal investment through time and money, that are longer term (lasting two to six months in duration), that are intensive (requiring 40–60 hours per week of service work), and immerse a young person into a diverse culture are particularly influential in developing social competency among emerging adults. additionally, as part of the immersion process participants reported an increased openness to diverse cultures and people over time. many participants became aware of their ethnocentric attitudes, and developed more sophisticated levels of cultural interpersonal competence (astin et al. 2000). specifically, participants reported an increased ability to see the perspective of others and to work with people of differing ethnicities (martin et al. 2006). finally, and perhaps most importantly, participants reported that this extensive service-learning experience was life changing. they stated that the growth and learning that occurred as a result of their international service-learning experience could not have happened without it. in previous research, 75 per cent of participants reported that their international service-learning experience led to significant life changes (lough, mcbride & sherraden 2009). this supports the notion that such servicelearning experiences have the potential to be incredibly influential for the healthy development of emerging adults. 128 | gateways | schvaneveldt & spencer limitations this study yielded many important findings, yet some limitations must be noted. the sample was homogenous, being almost entirely european american or european canadian females. also, the sample was not randomly selected, and there was no comparison group of volunteers with other organisations or emerging adults who had not participated in service-learning experiences. additionally, this project did not examine the long-term effects of international service-learning. further longitudinal research would be needed to establish the lasting impacts of these experiences. despite these limitations, the results of this study show that significant and important personal growth and development occurs among emerging adults who participate in longer term, intensive humanitarian service-learning opportunities. future research future research could examine the factors that predict why some engage in international humanitarian service-learning opportunities and others do not. there has also been insufficient research into the use of service-learning as an intervention for adolescents exhibiting lower levels of social competence or risk behaviours. it has been well documented that service-learning fosters prosocial behaviour in adolescents who display selfish attitudes and antisocial behaviour (brendtro 2001). programs that include volunteering as part of the treatment for at-risk youth report an increase in high school graduates from this cohort (magafas 1991). future research could evaluate the effectiveness of facilitating extensive international service-learning experiences for at-risk youth and emerging adults. the potential for intervention with young people engaging in internalising and externalising behaviours may prove to be a favourable strategy. finally, future research could examine how the reflective process leads to changes in social competence. it would be valuable to gain insight into the impact of intense international volunteering on individuals with lower levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy. references arnett, j 2004, emerging 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service-learning: from classroom to community to career, jist publishing, indianapolis, in. wilson, j & musick, m 1999, ‘the effects of volunteering on the volunteer’, law and contemporary problems, vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 141–68. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.2307/1192270 wuthnow, r 1991, acts of compassion: caring for others and helping ourselves, princeton university press, princeton, nj. wynveen, c, kyle, g & tarrant, m 2012, ‘study abroad experiences and global citizenship: fostering proenvironmental behavior’. journal of studies in international education, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 334–52. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1028315311426782 creating inclusive spaces for partnership responses from local leaders engaged in a community-university partnership centre established in 2004, the hartland partnership center is a community-university partnership offering programs to adults and youth living on the westside of salt lake city, utah. according to mai and schmit (2013), westside neighbourhoods are home to the majority of individuals with refugee or immigrant backgrounds in salt lake county. the us census bureau (2010) reported that 83 per cent of the city’s pacific islander population and 60.8 per cent of the city’s african population live on the westside of salt lake city (as cited in hunter and mileski 2013). in addition to this, the utah refugee coalition (2013) states that of the 46 000 refugees resettled in utah, with 1000 new arrivals each year, 99 per cent live in the salt lake valley (as cited in hunter and mileski 2013). given the demographics in the surrounding neighbourhoods, the majority of the individuals accessing the services of the hartland partnership centre are of refugee or immigrant background. the services offered are the result of the collaboration of eight community organisations and 10 university departments. the hartland partnership center brings together faculty, students, community agencies and residents to co-design and implement programs with the families living on the westside of salt lake city. the partners involved in the center work together to build upon one another’s strengths in an effort to facilitate programming that develops community capacity and helps to overcome economic, linguistic and social barriers experienced by new arriving communities of immigrant and refugee background and by families living in generational poverty. this asset-based, capacity-building model builds on the works of kretzman and mcknight (1993), providing families with a comprehensive set of services and educational resources where they live. this model works because the resources fit the reality, and a culture of reciprocal learning permeates the center. within all of the 10 on-site partnerships, each person is valued for his/her knowledge and the partnerships strive to create a space of shared power (unp 2014). the hartland resident committee (hrc) at the hartland partnership center serves as a community board of advisers. the gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 144–156 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 kara mileski abdulkhaliq mohamed rosemarie hunter university of utah 145 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter hrc informs the hartland partnership center as to what services are needed in the community and provides valuable feedback to the partners with regard to offering/facilitating culturally informed services that address the priorities of the community. the hrc members are also engaged in conducting cultural presentations at local schools, community centres and social service organisations, and are invited to be guest speakers in undergraduate and graduate classes at the university of utah. in conducting needs assessments, facilitating community meetings and participating in partnership teams, they are actively engaged in the development of services which meet the needs of diverse families in the community. the hrc members serve as a bridge between the community at large and partners from community organisations and higher education. this article focuses on the motivation and leadership of the members of the hartland resident committee. building on the expertise of current and past hrc members, this pilot project was designed to examine the motivations for members to become involved with the hrc and to sustain participation over the long term, as well as investigating areas requiring improvement. during 2012, a phd social work student and an hrc member conducted six interviews to identify effective methods of engaging individuals in the community and working with members in a sustainable and participatory manner. findings from this pilot study were implemented to improve the experience of hrc members and to create a more inclusive leadership model. this project also provided an opportunity to examine and delve deeper into the make-up of the hrc to understand more about how the committee has developed over time and what motivates members to remain engaged. theoretical foundation communities around the world are shifting focus and adapting as they face new and unexpected challenges. one of these challenges has been the generation of a culture of dependency arising from neo-liberal policies fostering hegemony (cabezas, reese & waller 2007; farmer 2005). charity models have failed to recognise the unique abilities of community members to inform policy development and positive social change (cabezas, reese & waller 2007). as easterling and millesen (2012, p. 20) say, ‘paternalism is no recipe for prosperity in the twenty-first century’. larger systems, built upon uneven power structures, ignore community input and leave communities vulnerable to shifts in policy (finn & jacobson 2003; gray & webb 2009). however, communities have the ability to inform growth and change within their own environment (wheatley & frieze 2011). empowering communities builds their capacity and engages people and groups to challenge existing power dynamics. empowerment places the individual and community practitioner in a position to challenge larger systems. a top–down approach, 146 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter on the other hand, contributes to systems that hinder an individual’s ability to function as an independent agent for change in their community (gray & webb 2009). through the lens of empowerment, community members are viewed as capable of becoming leaders in developing sustainable solutions, in spite of systemic challenges. such leaders represent diversity, strength and experience. as a result, solutions are a creation of coming together and defining what works for their own communities (ayon & lee 2009; gutierrez et al. 1996). capacity building within communities is one way to build community leadership. capacity building acknowledges that communities have many strengths and abilities that can be harnessed to address problems in the community (kegler, norton & aronson 2007). in doing so, community members emerge with multiple forms of knowledge and a multitude of skills that can contribute to developing a community leadership model (moll & gonzález 1997). for example, as individuals engage in leadership skill-building activities they gain experience with grant writing, community organising, building social capital and accessing community resources (easterling 2012; neighborworks 2012). additionally, in building the capacity of local leaders, we bring the experience and knowledge of communities to the forefront. the definition of knowledge varies across and within communities. within academic settings, knowledge is interpreted as dependent on level of education, whereas within community settings knowledge comes from life experiences. knowledge becomes rich and sustainable when these two cultures of understanding integrate and combine to provide best practices for all stakeholder groups. to develop successful knowledge creation, both mainstream and newcomer communities must be involved in a dynamic, multi-directional process through consistent interaction (bourhis et al. 1997). the hartland resident committee the hartland partnership center is one of 40 communityuniversity partnerships of university neighborhood partners (unp), a department of the university of utah. founded in 2001, its mission is to bring together university and community resources for reciprocal learning, action and benefit: a community coming together (unp 2014). designed to locate power within the joined hands of community members and university affiliates, knowledge integration and building the capacity of community leaders are at the forefront of unp’s work (unp 2014). in 2004, unp started the hartland partnership center in a three-bedroom apartment in hartland apartments (renamed seasons at pebble creek in 2008). serving as a gateway community for newly arriving populations of immigrant and refugee backgrounds, the complex is home to people from africa, central and south america, south east asia and many other parts of the world. 147 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter ninety per cent of the community lives below the poverty threshold (hunter et al. 2011). by creating a community-university partnership centre within the apartment complex, unp sought to create a space for residents to develop their capacity to work within their own communities. within the first year, and as a way to join with the community, the hartland partnership center developed the hartland resident committee, comprised of 10 residents of diverse backgrounds who provide leadership with regard to programming at the center and serve as community liaisons and cultural consultants. the hartland partnership center offers numerous programs that promote reciprocal sharing and learning. the programs include language classes, citizenship classes, youth programs, legal education, health education and screenings, employment and life skills classes, and social work services. these activities are delivered through community-university partnership teams that include higher education institutions, community partners (notfor-profit organisations, local schools, government agencies) and resident partners. while many residents participate at the center in a variety of roles (as participants, instructors, translators), the hrc members also participate in the center’s steering committee and are connected to each of the partnership teams. members of the hrc receive stipends to support their participation in guiding these partnerships (hunter et al. 2011). in april 2013, unp purchased a 930 square metre building adjacent to the apartment complex, and expanded its partnerships to include a women’s health clinic (clinical site of the college of nursing and department of midwifery) and a family counselling centre (existing community partner). the center also expanded its geographical area to include the surrounding neighbourhoods. currently, the hrc is composed of eight individuals, who meet bi-weekly to discuss issues facing them and their communities. in these discussions, members develop solutions to these issues, as well as ways the partners can respond. these responses may take the form of developing a class for the community, writing a letter to a policy-maker, or visiting the home of one of the residents in the community. the responses are varied and effective. crosby et al. (2013) found that, in evaluating their own community-academic partnership in health, it was not until community leadership was developed that the partnership was able to address the needs of residents. similarly, the formation of the hrc was designed to lead the partnership in order to meet the needs of the residents in their community. rather than creating programs for community members, engaging them in program development creates more effective involvement and contribution from community members (fraenkel 2006). the hrc brings together multiple stakeholders to co-create programs that benefit all involved. they welcome and value newcomer communities as partners in knowledge creation. for 148 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter example, when the center was created, the first task was meeting with residents of the community to determine which programs would be most beneficial to them. the information gathered informed the initial direction of the hartland partnership center, and today the hrc continues to develop, enhance and change the direction of programs at the center as new community priorities emerge. by examining the history of the hrc and interviewing hrc members, this study expands on the existing literature on community leadership. capacity building and empowerment are critical steps in creating sustainable and positive change in our communities; and, in turn, empowerment affects individuals, families, communities and organisations (prestby et al. 1990). however, once these systems are in place, what is it that encourages people to be involved and sustains their involvement? we sought to understand what it was about the organisation of the hrc, the community and individual experience that motivated members to remain engaged with their community over time. hrc members are members for at least one year, but often they remain members for several years, so we also looked at what it was that made them feel comfortable to contribute and share knowledge in this setting. method participant characteristics study participants included current and past members of the hartland resident committee. committee members are recognised as leaders representing their respective communities (ethnic and/ or geographic). members are a combination of self-selected leaders, leaders selected by the community, or leaders identified by staff through their involvement at the center and in the community. this sample reflected the diversity of the hrc and was composed of 6 individuals, of which 4 were female and 2 were male. ages ranged from 21 to 65, with a mean age of 43. participants had been living in salt lake city for between 4 and 15 years, with a mean of 10 years. individuals were from various countries of origin. the countries represented in this sample were sudan, somalia, united states, afghanistan and iraq. all individuals spoke english. as mentioned above, local residents are asked to serve on the committee for at least one year, although the majority of members continue to work on the hrc for longer. our sample reflected this. four participants were current hrc members and, of these, three had been on the hrc for just over one year, and one for four years. two participants were previous committee members, who had been on the committee for three and seven years. sampling procedures this was a convenience sample. current or past participants were notified of this project via telephone, email or home visit. of the eight committee members approached, six participated. all 149 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter interviews were conducted at the hartland partnership center; however, researchers offered to meet participants in any space that was convenient for them. the hartland partnership center is centrally located and familiar to the participants. prior to conducting the interviews, participants were read a consent to participate letter. interviewers chose to read the consent form with participants, as they were unsure of the english literacy level of all participants. this research was determined to be exempt by the university of utah institutional review board. research design an informal script was developed for the initial contact with possible participants to ensure that all participants received the same information up-front. interviewers also reviewed interviewing techniques together prior to interviewing members. semi-structured interviews were then conducted with the six current and past committee members. before conducting the interviews, researchers and participants reviewed the consent cover letter. in an effort to ensure the form was understood, researcher and participant read through the letter together. researchers explicitly stated that names and contact information would be withheld; and years served on the hrc would not be attached to an individual. names in this article and other print material have been changed in an effort to ensure anonymity for the community members; however, due to the small number of hrc members, identification may become obvious over time. interviews were audio-recorded, with the exception of the interview with one hrc member who preferred not to be. in this case, the interviewer typed the participant’s response. interviews lasted no longer than one hour. at the completion of the interview, participants were thanked for their time and invited to join researchers to present the results. audio-recordings were transcribed. transcriptions were then analysed to identify themes in the methods for engaging community members. findings content analysis was used to interpret the qualitative data obtained from the open-ended questions asked during the interview. both researchers served as coders and conducted an initial content analysis. categories were developed to capture the themes expressed in the interviews. from here, categories were evaluated to ensure they accurately represented the content of the open-ended questions. if there was disagreement or confusion, researchers discussed the questions of origin and results until a mutual agreement was met (neuendorf 2002). excluding questions capturing demographic information, participants were asked nine open-ended questions. these questions explored why they decided to become hrc members, what the purpose of the hrc was, their experience on the hrc, group dynamics and suggestions for growth. all participants responded to each question. to better understand why participants 150 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter chose to become hrc members and what it was that enabled them to contribute their knowledge in the hrc setting, the responses to six questions will be reported on. these questions were: (1) how and why they decided to become a hartland resident committee member; (b) what would they have done differently; (c) if and why people shared their ideas at hrc meetings; (d) whether or not they felt they were heard at meetings; (e) if people who organised meetings helped people open up, and if so, how; (f) if they were facilitating hrc meetings, what they would do to help people open up. all participants responded to all questions asked. themes from the responses to individual questions are reported below. this is my community! all members responded that they initially became involved as a result of their prior connection to the hartland partnership center. some people stated that, in addition to their initial connection to the center, hartland staff or friends recruited them to be on the hrc. from here, members were asked to expand on why they became hrc members. the response themes identified were: they wanted to support/help their community (n=5); they already worked/lived in the community (n=2); and they had personal or family history with the center (n=2). i decided to become a resident committee because, first of all, i’ve lived in [the neighboring apartments] … and i started coming to the center when i was 16 and that is when i started translating for my mom and my dad. seeing that throughout that many years … made me want to continue, you know, doing the same work i did for my family for other residents at [the apartments] ... like using my language skills by helping others and stuff. (fatima) meaningful involvement when asked what he or she would have done differently, each participant shared a unique idea for the hrc. one participant shared that there was nothing she would have done differently, stating, ‘i liked everything. i wouldn’t change anything’ (nimo). other responses were: visit other community organisations; maintain one cohort throughout the year; teach a class, and find more people to be involved on the hrc. when asked if there was anything he would have done differently at hrc meetings, one member spoke specifically to his own actions, stating, ‘not really except just try to respect one another. i know sometimes i act a little flashy …’ (matt). safe space and shared goals when asked if people shared their ideas at the meetings, all participants responded that people did tend to share their ideas. when asked why, we heard different responses from members. the themes we found were: facilitators shared experiences first (n=1); facilitators went around the table to ask for responses (n=1); facilitators called on people individually to respond (n=1); and people felt comfortable with being at a similar english level with the rest of the group (n=1). finally, the most common reason why 151 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter participants felt people shared their ideas at meetings was due to the fact that, although there were different cultures, everyone came together on one common goal (n=3): everyone is sharing how the community can help everyone … the main reason is because they all from different culture and find each other easy to get along with. because the english level … they were connected. they were all at the same level. (sarura) everyone’s from different cultures but everyone is one, so it’s easier. it makes you more comfortable to share what you have in mind. (nimo) participatory action when asked if they felt their voice was heard at the meetings, most participants responded positively. one participant said that he felt his voice was heard most of the time, but felt like he was able to give feedback to the group about this. for those that responded positively, when asked why they felt this way, a few themes emerged. one person said the facilitator taking notes was an indicator that they were being listened to and heard (n=1). participants also shared they felt they were heard because everyone was interested in hearing about and teaching their culture and personal experiences from the community (n=2). finally, the most common reason why people felt their voice was heard was because they saw the suggestions they made being implemented (n=3). ‘i do feel my voice is heard … if i share ideas, like, the next few meetings … i see what i’ve been sharing has been implemented. so that’s why i felt i’m heard’ (fatima). trusting and caring relationships the themes that emerged from how facilitators assisted participants with opening up were varied; however, all stated that facilitators had helped people engage in the meetings to share their thoughts or ideas. when asked how, the themes that emerged were that facilitators created a safe and respectful environment (n=2); checked in with group members at meetings (n=2); supported their endeavours and ideas (n=2); asked for feedback from the group (n=1); gave reminder calls to the group (n=1); hosted meetings at people’s homes (n=1); brought people with different cultures together (n=1); provided food during meetings (n=1); and gave/ watched presentations (n=1). um, i like the ideas of whenever we start the meetings you started to like, ask by bringing up how are ... you really care. to me it means that you really care by going around and checking in with each one of us and how you doing. i like sharing what’s going on with our life that moment. and usually, you can extend ideas of how you can help. if somebody like is going through something or they need help finding out on what they are going through … that means a lot to me. that makes me comfortable by you guys doing that check-in first. that means you care about each one of us. (fatima) 152 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter participant engagement responses to what methods hrc members utilised to assist with participant engagement ranged from offering positive interactions during meetings to providing an emotional component of respect and support for hrc members. the themes that emerged in response to the way participants would help people share ideas were to: give members time to talk about themselves during or outside of meetings (n=4); assign other members to facilitate meetings (n=1); make reminder calls (n=1); provide opportunities for members to ‘better’ themselves (n=1); provide food and snack (n=1); be yourself (n=1); be kind to members (n=1); and help individuals come to decisions on their own (n=1). you welcome them. smile, you say hi and say hello. be kind. be kind and smile warmly … and stop to talk to people. give people a chance to talk when you introduce yourself, and i think that will make them feel happy, and they will think, ‘oh, they are really welcoming me’. (husna) discussion the data from these six questions came together to inform our understanding of how to engage hrc members to share their ideas and remain involved over time. given that all participants had remained on the committee after the required one year, we hypothesised that participants felt their voice was heard and they were comfortable in their role as an hrc member. participants did respond positively to all questions regarding their comfort sharing in the group. interviews with current and past hrc members revealed a range of ideas regarding why individuals felt comfortable sharing and engaging with the hrc and how they felt community members could be engaged. in support of the existing literature, responses reflected a value for the individual, the organisation and the community (prestby et al. 1990). individuals not only became a part of the hrc to give back to the community, but also to support the center as an organisation. the responses reflected an individual connection created between committee members, which kept people engaged and sharing ideas at meetings. this connection created trust and friendship among members and developed into a comfortable environment – a space of belonging for hrc members to empower each other to be leaders in their community. gutierrez, delois and glenmaye (1995) specifically identified methods that contribute to empowerment. these included building a relationship, facilitating the group process and building capacity. easterling and millesen (2012) also supported capacity building as a crucial element in empowerment of communities and individuals. the responses and identified themes from the sample of hrc members reflect these previous findings. for example, with regard to building a relationship, responses from hrc members 153 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter highlighted the importance of facilitators actually caring about the lives of participants outside of the meeting space. facilitating check-ins with the group created a space for individuals to discuss their communities and to provide support for those individuals and their community. in light of the capacity building aspect of empowerment, one member asked organisers to provide more leadership skill-building activities for members. and finally, with regard to facilitating the group process, members stated that tangible practices such as reminder calls and offering food contributed to a comfortable and open space, where they could discuss and share ideas. the hrc members described the diversity of the group as a valuable tool in engaging community members and creating an engaging environment. as stated earlier, these six participants represented five different countries. all participants had lived in salt lake city for less than 16 years, with half of the participants living in salt lake city for less than 10. the cultural diversity spanned not only country of origin, but also length of time in salt lake city, individual values, age and gender. diversity was described as a strength in two ways. first, one participant felt that the similar english abilities of all members created an inclusive environment for her. second, individuals felt that, regardless of all of the cultural diversity in the group, their ability to come together on one common goal to aid the community created a safe space for them to share. gutierrez et al. (1996, p. 502) expanded on this definition of diversity to explain the process of multicultural organising: ‘multicultural organizing … recognizes and values the experiences and contributions of different social groups in an organization or community while working to bring groups together when necessary’. the hrc highlighted the importance of bringing their groups together to meet the needs of one community. thus, the community shifts from separate groups to one shared space. the hrc meetings were described as a space that created an opportunity to build this space, leading to more engaged leaders in their community. conclusion from this pilot study, we identified five methods that may create an open and engaging environment for local residents to serve as leaders in their community. first, provide opportunities for developing leadership skills. second, create a kind and warm meeting space – an inclusive environment. third, identify the common goal of the group while respecting diversity of individuals. fourth, sincerely care about the members and their communities, both in the meetings and outside of the meetings. finally, implement the decisions of the group members to the best of your ability. while these interviews may be instrumental in guiding the direction of the hrc at the hartland partnership center to empower community members as leaders, it is not without 154 | gateways | mileski, mohamed & hunter its limitations. this was a convenience sample and therefore may lend itself to sampling bias. the individuals who agreed to participate may have been more engaged members of the hrc and may have offered a different perspective on the process than someone who would not participate. those conducting the interviews were also facilitators of the hrc meetings. although the level of trust is high within the hrc, members may have felt pressure to respond positively to the questions asked. a randomised sample of individuals serving on leadership committees in other organisations in the area may generate a more generalisable list of recommendations for community empowerment and engagement. further research could be conducted with a larger sample to explore the differences in responses across ages. the youngest participant briefly remarked that her experience as a young community member participating in meetings with older adults challenged existing cultural norms for her. as this was beyond the scope of this study, we did not examine this further; however, we found this to be a common theme when informally discussing leadership roles with younger community members. future research could also explore the role of diversity in creating an inclusive space to share and engage as leaders in a community. this emerged as a theme, and contributes to our understanding of empowerment; however, the depth of the role and understanding of diversity could be explored further and greatly contribute to our understanding of creating engaging spaces for community leaders. acknowledgements we’d like to acknowledge the hartland resident committee, hartland partnership center, and university neighborhood partners staff who supported us in this endeavour. we are especially grateful for the time from our committee members who participated in these interviews. references ayon, c & lee, c 2009, ‘building strong communities: an evaluation of a neighborhood leadership program in a diverse urban area’, journal of community psychology, vol. 37, no. 8, pp. 975–86. bourhis, r, moise, l, perreault, s & senecal, s 1997, ‘towards an interactive acculturation model: a social psychological approach’, international journal of psychology, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 369–86. cabezas, a, reese, e & waller, m 2007, ‘introduction’, in a cabezas, e reese & m waller (eds), the wages of empire: neoliberal policies, repression, and women’s poverty, paradigm publishers, boulder, co, pp. 3–15. crosby, l, parr, w, smith, t & mitchell, m 2013, ‘the community leaders 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by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: bishop, l. darcy, s., sinnott, r., avery, s., pendergast, a., duggan, n. 2020. engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 6862. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.6862 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned lisa bishop1,2, stephen darcy2, rob sinnott3, susan avery2, amanda pendergast2, norah duggan2 1 school of pharmacy, memorial university of newfoundland, canada 2 discipline of family medicine, faculty of medicine, memorial university of newfoundland, canada 3 mental health and addictions, eastern health, canada corresponding author: lisa bishop; ldbishop@mun.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6862 article history: received 06/11/2019; revised 06/12/2019; accepted 02/03/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract as clinicians at a university-affiliated health centre faced with youth mental health and substance use concerns, we reached out to the local community for guidance. we partnered with community leaders to explore how to best understand the issues and engage with the community. using a community-engaged research (cenr) approach, we conducted a needs assessment to explore the issues and inform change. we formalised a partnership with the local school and community board, which led to the creation of a community alliance. our engagement efforts allowed us to understand the community more deeply and establish more effective change. our most successful outcome was the development of a youth mental health and wellness action plan which helped direct our strategies moving forward. this article highlights our community engagement activities, processes and lessons learned, which may be of benefit to other academic researchers and clinicians who are interested in cenr. keywords community engagement, community-engaged research, family medicine, youth wellness, mental health, youth declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received funding for the research described in this article from newfoundland and labrador applied health research; college of family physicians of canada; canadian institute of health research; memorial university; michaëlle jean foundation; and eastern health, newfoundland and labrador. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6862 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6862 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:ldbishop@mun.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6862 introduction as clinicians working in a university-affiliated community health centre in a small urban community in canada, we encountered increasing rates of undiagnosed mental illness and substance use disorders in our youth. this was concerning to us, so our health team met to discuss an approach to address these issues and decided that, in order to be effective, we would need to involve the wider community in the development of appropriate strategies (glandon et al. 2017). we were aware of a strong leadership group within the community, so we approached them with the idea of creating a partnership to develop solutions for better supporting these young people using a community-engaged research (cenr) approach. cenr values engagement with the community as partners and stakeholders (ballard & syme 2016; blachmandemner, wiley & chambers 2017), ranging from minimal engagement to full participation or collaboration, such as in community-based participatory research (cbpr) (blachmandemner, wiley & chambers 2017; goodman et al. 2017; israel et al. 1998; shea et al. 2017; vaughn et al. 2017). in keeping with the principles of cenr, we attempted to understand the history and structure of the community in order to effectively engage with them (atsdr 2019; ballsberry & acosta-perez 2017). the community is located on the outskirts of the main urban city and has a distinct sense of identity. it traces its roots back to the early 1930s when residents of the larger city moved there to escape the burden of city taxes. a strong sense of unity has been evident over 80 years of the community’s existence. community members support each other during times of hardship, for example, by rebuilding a home after a fire, or holding a large fundraising event for a family with an ill loved one. as depicted in figure 1, the impetus for an inductive approach arose from a clinical concern. this in turn led us to collaboratively reflect on an approach to the issue within the community, resulting in a strategy to help support youth wellness. the purpose of this article is to describe how we, as clinicians and researchers, engaged with a community to evaluate and promote youth mental health and wellness. we also describe our research and engagement process and our challenges and lessons learned, which may be of benefit to academic researchers and clinicians who are interested in cenr. figure 1 community engaged approach bishop, darcy, sinnott, avery, pendergast, duggan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 foundational work community consultation one of the unique features of this community is that it has always had leadership from within. this leadership has been expressed primarily through the local community board. the board started as a neighbourhood improvement association and is made up of community members, advisers from the local school, health centre and larger community, and representation from the city council. the mandate of the community board is to ensure that the strong value of community is promoted through various initiatives. the initial meeting between the health centre and the community was comprised of three leaders from the community board and representatives from the health centre, including two nurses, one social worker, one pharmacist, two receptionists and four family doctors. it was decided at this meeting to plan a community information night, the purpose of which was to discuss substance use in general and to elicit strengths and concerns from the community specifically. to advertise the event, brochures were distributed and a large sign was placed at the start of the road leading to the community. with guidance from community leaders, the sign read ‘let’s talk about drugs’ and depicted an injection needle. within hours of the sign being erected, significant negative feedback had been posted on the community facebook page as some in the community felt it was stigmatising the community. some of those objecting to the sign promptly removed it and laid it carefully on its side without damaging it. the team was apprehensive about continuing with this initiative, given this swift and robust demonstration by certain members of the community. the community leaders viewed these actions as an indication of both interest and the need to protect the privacy and reputation of the community, and urged the meeting to go ahead as planned with less provocative advertising. the event was subsequently announced by means of household flyers. given the initial controversy and the importance of the topic, the community information night was well attended and there was much frank discussion. the discussion confirmed the presence of drug use in the community, and those present speculated that it was no better or worse than other areas of the city or province. the group expressed a desire to find ways to prevent drug use problems and invited the organising members to lead in planning a strategy. with a commitment of support from the community, the planning group resolved to move ahead to further assess the situation and address the resultant needs. reflection on the initial community gathering confirmed a need for greater effort by us, as clinician researchers, to further strengthen our partnership with the community. determining the community’s needs and establishing a strategy for a needs assessment were recognised as important aspects of this community engagement (adams et al. 2017; brunton et al. 2017; cutforth & belansky 2015). team preparation our research team consists of members who cross disciplines, backgrounds and lived experiences, and range from novice to more experienced researchers. when we initially came together, we had only a rudimentary understanding of community-based research methods. as we began reading the literature and planning for our needs assessment, we realised that we wished to align our approach more closely with the principles of cbpr (israel et al. 1998) and engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 that some further education and familiarisation with both cbpr and cenr would be helpful moving forward (dubois et al. 2011; hardy et al. 2016; matthews et al. 2018; shea et al. 2017). it was from this point that we made a conscious effort to become more familiar with the principles of cbpr to prepare the team for community research. we reviewed background materials and articles, attended conferences and presentations, and held many discussions with community leaders and members. in addition, we consulted experienced researchers with expertise in the area of cbpr (matthews et al. 2018). through our collaboration with the community board, they suggested that the research initiatives be presented to the community as a partnership, and not as solely university-based research. thus the community alliance was officially formed, comprising the clinicians at the health centre, the local school administration and the community centre board. the alliance’s mandate was to explore and suggest actions to improve youth mental health and wellness in the community. this alliance has come to be the main collaborative group promoting youth mental health and wellness through a variety of strategies, including research, education, engagement and programming (figure 2). figure 2 the community alliance needs assessment the community was involved in the planning, design and delivery of the needs assessment, which is rooted in the idea that research involves meaningful involvement and sharing of power (arnstein 1969; yonas et al. 2013). in order to maintain this balance of power, all members of the team must have equal input, so it is crucial that appropriate levels of communication are maintained ( jones & wells 2007). initially we made great efforts to implement cbpr, assuming an iterative approach when responding to the community’s needs. we felt that we were conducting cbpr to the best of our ability during the needs assessment. the community was receptive to our research efforts and supported aspects of cbpr. eventually, however, we recognised that our approach was more consistent with cenr and in subsequent projects we were able to be more explicit about our methodology (goodman et al. 2017; vaughn et al. 2017). one of the first steps of our alliance was to agree upon the approach for conducting research. it was agreed that all research initiatives, community presentations and materials for documentation, publication or distribution (such as newletters, pamphlets, posters) would be vetted by the community as represented by the members of the community board. we offered to collaboratively develop a written research agreement as is frequently done in communitybishop, darcy, sinnott, avery, pendergast, duggan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 based research (yonas et al. 2013). however, the board did not see a need for a formalised agreement and was comfortable proceeding through ongoing dialogue. a community board member became a part of the research team, attended research meetings and contributed to the research. in addition, the alliance became a standing item on the agenda of board meetings, which were held every two weeks. this ensured that both new and existing initiatives would be vetted by community representatives. by incorporating the research process into the life of the community through its board, the alliance has served to bridge the gap between the university affiliated researchers and members of the community. it has also enabled the research to stay more grounded in the issues that face the community’s youth. with this structure in place to ensure participation by the community, the alliance formulated its research plan in the summer and autumn of 2012. we agreed that we would receive ethics approval for all research. an accurate picture of the current drug use and mental health status of the youth and young adults aged 12–34 was the initial goal. we decided to review the charts of all of the youth and young adults who attended the health centre to determine the prescribing patterns of the physicians at the health centre and the risk factors for substance misuse. this was determined by the use of a standardised risk calculator, the opioid risk tool (webster & webster 2005). the audit revealed a low rate of prescribing of opioids and stimulants, but also indicated that a relatively small proportion of youth attended the health centre. this was a concern as we recognised that there may be youth within the community who could benefit from the services that we provide. our other goal was to form a better understanding of the current substance use and mental health status of the youth and young adults in our community. we felt this was best achieved through surveying the community, using a well-validated survey tool (dep-ado 2007). despite much effort on behalf of the alliance to promote the survey in both paper and electronic formats and by offering a prize, not many surveys were returned. although the responses did not indicate that substance use and mental health concerns were prevalent, the results were not felt to be representative of the population given the poor response rate. the survey results captured a high proportion of the junior high school cohort, which was largely due to the support of the principal, who was a member of the alliance. based on feedback from the initial public community meeting, it was suggested that hearing the perspectives from all community members would be beneficial (dresser 2017). the alliance decided on a qualitative approach to obtaining further information from the community at large (fossey et al. 2002). our goal was to gather their perspectives on the status of substance use, the barriers that prevent addressing mental health and substance use concerns, and the strategies that could help. we initially offered focus groups to adult community members and professionals working in the community (e.g. medical staff, teachers, clergy). including professionals in the research was suggested by community members as they felt they would provide a unique insight. due to low interest from community members in participating in focus groups, likely due to the lack of anonymity, we subsequently offered the option of individual interviews. in addition, it was suggested that speaking directly to the youth would be informative, and a focus group was held with youth from the community. we sought the expertise of the university’s primary healthcare research unit in helping conduct the focus groups and interviews. from the needs assessment, a number of themes emerged around the issues of youth mental health and access to services. the themes fell into four categories: (1) geography of the community; (2) community attitudes and perceptions; (3) mental health and substance use services; and (4) prevention approaches. the themes were collated and presented to the engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 community for discussion and direction. presentations were given to the community board, the local school council of teachers and parents, students, and the community at large. at each venue the alliance sought feedback and direction, which was translated into an ‘action plan’ for youth mental health and wellness in the community. this plan, which is described more fully below, helped to shape future initiatives (cutforth & belanksy 2015; lamb et al. 2014). community engagement initially, our alliance was more focused on delivering education and conducting research. this was challenging as only a small number of community members were attending events or participating in the research. in an effort to keep the agenda at the forefront of the community, we organised several education activities centred around youth wellness and mental health. these too attracted limited attendance, causing us concern in the early stages of the project. as a result of these participation challenges, and through consultation with experts in the field of community engagement, we made a conscious effort to engage with the broader community in order to further develop trust and relationships (pullmann et al. 2013; stein & mankowski 2004). we began by attending and participating in a number of community events, such as folk festivals, community vigils and winter festivals, which not only increased our visibility (matthews et al. 2008; michener et al. 2012), but also gave us a sense of belonging and greater understanding. this engagement cemented the relationship between the researchers and the community, provided a venue for feedback, and strengthened mutual understanding and trust. in turn, this has translated into more community participation and support for initiatives undertaken by the alliance. figure 3 outlines our community engagement efforts. figure 3 engagement process arms during our engagement efforts, we noted that the community felt stigmatised by the constant reference to mental illness and addiction. they suggested using a more positive focus, and we started referring instead to ‘mental health and wellness’. this change addressed the sensitivities of the community and prompted a more strengths-based approach. the shift in language also effected improved willingness in community members to become involved with our research. after our research team completed the needs assessment, the findings were collated and presented for discussion in a number of public forums: (1) the community board; (2) the local school council of teachers and parents/students; and (3) the community at large. when planning the community event, we directly involved select community members. based on their suggestions, we invited two prominent members of the local artistic entertainment circle with lived experience of mental health issues to attend and speak about their struggles bishop, darcy, sinnott, avery, pendergast, duggan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 with mental health. the alliance presented the main findings from the needs assessment and facilitated discussion in small groups. we then compiled the feedback from all of the public forums and formulated a community action plan for the promotion of youth mental health and wellness in the community. the draft action plan was subsequently presented to the community board for their comment and approval (lamb et al. 2014). community action plan the mission of the action plan was to promote prevention, early detection, and appropriate treatment of mental illness and substance use in youth and young adults, and thereby promote their mental health and well-being. the action plan used a strengths-based approach and was designed to be inclusive, accessible, practical and outcomes-oriented. it has become our guiding document as it directly addresses methods to actively engage youth and support their mental health and wellness. the action plan centres around three main themes: (1) improving access to mental health services; (2) keeping youth healthy and happy; and (3) capacity building within the community. the plan is broken down into objectives and strategies for achieving these themes (appendix 1). much of our efforts to implement the strategies of the action plan have centred around identifying meaningful ways to engage with youth in order to help support their health and well-being (dunne et al. 2017). one challenge has been identifying funding sources to support the initiatives as each funder has their own agenda, which requires careful navigation to preserve the direction of the action plan. one of the initiatives under the new action plan was using drama and the arts to engage with youth. a drama project for the junior high students was the result of a great deal of collaboration on the part of the school and the alliance, and outside professional directing. the production of romeo and juliet involved a number of the youth and the performance attracted many parents, relatives and neighbours to the event. the following year, an arts program focused on the visual arts was offered. this program expanded the interface between arts and mental health more explicitly by including mental health education. the program ended with an exhibition open to the community, and many of the student artworks are on permanent display in our local health centre. both of these initiatives were positively evaluated by the young people who participated. unfortunately, funding limitations prevented us from continuing with these initiatives. concurrently with these initiatives, a youth council was formed. the council planned and executed events, such as a community clean-up, and provided ideas for future wellness projects. while this proved to be a great way to engage with youth, it required investment of time and human resources. the research assistant who was mainly involved in coordinating the council spent considerable time connecting with youth, checking in via text and social media, and helping to organise and facilitate meetings. since she was closer in age to the youth, she was able to establish some meaningful connections with them. however, while it was successful, it was eventually shifted to an existing community youth drop-in group to ensure its sustainability. our most recent initiative was securing a community-based, not-for-profit music program for the school-aged children of our community. this program offers free community-based string lessons to children residing in areas that have few opportunities for music education, with the intent that they will positively benefit growth and learning. part of the success of this initiative is that it is an established program in another area of the city and they had engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 the capacity to expand into our community. this program is run by a board of directors that obtains independent funding, enabling it to be sustainable. the program has now been running for three successful years in our community. evaluation and knowledge translation an evaluation was incorporated into all of our projects, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. this helped us determine the benefits and challenges of delivering these projects. the needs assessment helped inform the development of the action plan and the evaluation of specific projects helped provide guidance on the future direction of the alliance. the alliance placed an emphasis on knowledge translation efforts, in both community and academic forums, and with the media. community members have jointly presented with us at local events and academic conferences. their participation has provided a unique perspective and has resulted in richer discussion with the audience members (shea et al. 2017). print and radio media coverage has been useful in connecting with more people in less ‘academic’ settings (blachman-demner, wiley & chambers 2017; michener at el. 2012). for example, representatives of the alliance, a community member and two clinicians, presented at a national community-university partnerships conference. following the presentation, the media interviewed the community member, which resulted in an article in the local newspaper. throughout this process of design, study and engagement, we, as a team of researchers and clinicians, have participated in many reflexive discussions. we have reflected on the principles of cbpr and cenr, decisions on representation of voices from the community, and our roles as researchers (elliott, fischer & rennie 1999; fassinger 2005; stein & mankowski 2004). we have attempted to embrace a collaborative approach in all that we do, up to and including the writing process, using a web-based tool for real-time writing and editing, and a dropbox for access to documents and articles (flicker & nixon 2018). discussion: outcomes and lessons learned this long-term cenr and youth wellness initiative has resulted in successes, challenges and learning opportunities. cenr, which utilises community and academic partnerships, requires the building of capacity, leadership (hardy et al. 2016) and trust over time (balls-berry & acosta-perez 2017) to be effective in addressing health issues (goodman et al. 2017) and empowering community members involved in the research (khodyakov, mikesell & bromley 2017). being responsive to the community needs throughout the project has allowed us to modify our approach and better support the youth (figure 1). throughout this process, we have come to learn some valuable lessons about community engagement and conducting health research. we hope that other researchers interested in conducting cenr can learn from our lessons outlined below. take guidance from both experts and the literature. reaching out to experts in the field of cbpr and consulting the literature was extremely beneficial in helping guide our approach and research methodology. however, as we progressed throughout the project, we recognised that more formal training earlier in the process would have been advantageous (coffey et al. 2017; dresser 2017; dubois et al. 2011; matthews et al. 2018; shea et al. 2017). cbpr is a demanding methodology. our research team embraced and used many of the principles of cbpr (israel et al. 1998). however, similarly to mcelfish et al. (2019), we were not able to fully implement cbpr principles for many reasons, including the significant bishop, darcy, sinnott, avery, pendergast, duggan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 investment needed in terms of time, effort, training and resources. we realised that a shift towards cenr was more realistic and had more potential for successful outcomes (dubois et al. 2011). cenr is a valuable research approach. as clinicians, we recognised that collaborating with our community would be much more effective than working alone. our goal from the beginning was not only to explore the issues, but also to use the research and partnership with the community to inform change. we learned it was important to be flexible and iterative in the process and to negotiate priorities along the way. using the cenr approach (shea et al. 2017), we gained a deeper appreciation of the issues facing the community, which contributed to a more accurate interpretation of the findings. formalise the partnership. it is important to reach out to local community groups to determine who the leaders are within the community and engage with them to identify the key stakeholders. establishing the alliance was one of our main successes as this helped solidify our partnership and gave us standing on the community board. by incorporating the research process into the life of the community through the community board, the alliance served to bridge the gap between the academically affiliated researchers and members of the community. others have noted strength in overseeing projects through a community advisory board (holzer, ellis & merritt 2014; wine et al. 2019), which shares similarities with our model. share the vision. it is essential that all partners believe in the overall purpose of doing research. we surrounded ourselves with people who had similar goals. the formation of the alliance gave us the opportunity to establish a shared vision early in the process. listen deeply and be trustworthy. we aimed to consider the community’s goals above our own scholarly agendas. by being transparent and collaborative, the research team built the groundwork for mutual trust (khodyakov, mikesell & bromley 2017). through active listening and responding to the wishes of the community, we were able to adjust our approach, resulting in more valuable research. maintain the engagement and keep a visible presence. similarly to other cenr endeavours (cutforth & belanksy 2015; redman et al. 2017), we initially attempted to engage with community members through our consultations, a needs assessment and connections with board members. however, we recognised that there were times when we could have drawn upon the wisdom of more grassroots community members (dresser 2017; matthews et al. 2018). we have come to recognise that engagement is important for its own sake. invest in youth. our approach would have been strengthened by recruiting youth to become prominent members of the research team ( jacquez, vaughn & wagner 2013), including training them to conduct focus groups (pullmann et al. 2013; ramanadhan et al. 2016). a stronger presence of youth in the research process may have increased the success and outcomes of our projects (dunne et al. 2017; garinger et al. 2016; loiacono merves et al. 2015). disseminate the findings. we attempted to engage in different forms of knowledge translation, including presentations, news articles, community forums, manuscripts and social media (blachman-demner, wiley & chambers 2017; michener et al. 2012). we found it useful to involve community members throughout the dissemination process as this helped validate the research and also served as a way to inform more community members of the findings. this was not without challenges, such as time constraints, lack of interest in writing and changes in membership of the community board. engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 maintain the momentum. our research involved long periods of behind-the-scenes activity, during which it was hard to maintain visibility and momentum. participating in community events enabled us to sustain an active presence, kept us interested in the process and reminded us about the importance of our shared vision. achieve practical outcomes. the development of the action plan for youth mental health and wellness was our most successful outcome (appendix 1). it was the result of a consultative process that reflected the needs of the community and helped direct our strategies moving forward. our engagement efforts ensured a richer interpretation of the results and allowed us to operationalise our action plan more effectively. in keeping with the principles of cenr (shea et al. 2017), regular review of the action plan is needed in order to determine how well we are achieving our goals and to reaffirm that the strategies are still relevant. conclusion meaningful engagement with a community is realised through long-term partnerships and relationships built on trust. our experience, as clinicians in a university-affiliated community health centre, has taught us the importance of participating in the life of the community outside the confines of our offices. we have also come to increasingly value the voices and expertise of the community members as we work together to promote youth mental health and wellness. effective engagement involves active listening, a visible presence, flexibility and collaborative processes. we recognise that the engagement activities, facilitated through our community alliance, are an integral aspect of the research process. moving forward, we plan to maintain our momentum by continuing to nurture our relationships through an engagement and research process that is responsive to the needs of the community, to help us realise our shared vision of improving the mental health and wellness of youth in the community. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank melissa earles-druken, our community centre board and local school for supporting the project; rowan el-bialy and mercy winsor, our research assistants; mentor dr cheri bethune (memorial university discipline of family medicine); funding agencies (newfoundland and labrador applied health research, college of family physicians of canada, canadian institute of health research, memorial university quick start pubic engagement fund, michaëlle jean foundation, eastern health community development fund); meghan smith, christopher singleton, craig malone, tom dunne, mark mckelvie, meaghan coady, alicia brown, kayla mcnally, jillian mcinnis, hilary power and amy powell, students at memorial university who received summer undergraduate research awards; memorial university’s discipline of family medicine, school of pharmacy 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support/services. • to have a mechanism for regular updates to the community on mh services for youth. • to develop a partnership between the school and health centre to assess and detect mh needs of the youth. • to provide the right service to the right child at the right time in the right place. • to lessen or remove the perceived stigma of mental illness within the community at large and, in particular, among our young people. • to empower our young people to be spokespeople of a new view of mh. • to enlist the parents and professionals in the community in the campaign to reduce stigma. strategies school-based: • ensure that the teachers in our community have the training to recognise risks and symptoms in the children and know how to best address these issues. • create a school-based anti-stigma campaign. • offer creative and safe opportunities to explore the issues surrounding mh through art or music. • encourage peer support groups/mh days in the school. • facilitate the participation of other professionals/community members in the life of the school. clinic-based: • expand the existing mh services offered through the health centre. • consider outreach services based out of the clinic. • explore how to facilitate access to and/or develop mh crisis services. community-based: • foster a support group for the youth of the community. • create a community-based anti-stigma campaign. • advocate for the mh needs of youth in the community. • explore the optimal use of social media to influence attitudes and disseminate information to the community. • facilitate access to resources for parents to help them cope with the problems faced by the youth of the community. • promote the use of local resources for existing mh support/ services and continue to develop others as the need arises. bishop, darcy, sinnott, avery, pendergast, duggan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 14 goal #2 keeping our youth happy and healthy objectives • to promote the well-being of our youth in all aspects of development (mental and physical). • to ensure they are given the tools to help deal with the challenges they face. • to ensure they have access to effective role models, including both peers and adults. strategies • develop a ‘mentoring’ program for youth in the community. • involve and encourage youth to participate in all aspects of the development of any initiatives. • involve family units at all levels where possible. • directly address the issues involved in the transition to high school. • develop programs that include children with varied interests appropriate to their level of development (i.e. sports/non-sports related). • develop programs that improve students’ life skills (e.g. career, self-esteem). • encourage and support youth community leadership. goal #3 build the community’s own resources for the well-being of everyone objectives • to encourage the continued development of a self-sufficient and responsive community. • to encourage the participation of all age groups of the community in the future direction of the community. • to strengthen the role of the community board as the promoter of participation in the life of the community. strategies • create a community-led parent resource group that will provide support and information for parents of youth within the community. • provide information nights or skills workshops for youth and/or adults in the community. • form an action group whose mission is to advocate for resources for youth mh and wellness in the community. • create a mechanism for youth to anonymously submit ideas and feedback about youth activities and programs. appendix continued engaging a community for youth mental health and wellness: reflections and lessons learned gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 15 finding the community in sustainable online community engagement not-for-profit organisation websites, service-learning and research the current environment of changes to federal government policy and reduction in funding to australian universities has led to public universities contemplating new strategies to cope with budgetary challenges (mamun & rahman 2015). within this environment, the role for research and education is being debated, particularly by those in the higher education sector with an interest in engaging their communities and promoting the public good, despite less public funding (engagement australia 2015). at the same time, the not-for-profit (nfp) sector has been subjected to significant funding cuts (acoss 2014; murray 2014), creating a greater need for support and engagement from other sectors such as education. this article argues that there is an important role for universities in this environment to engage with their communities through activities such as service-learning and, most significantly, that effective engagement both requires and generates valuable research. as furco (2010, p. 381) argues in ‘the engaged campus’, public engagement can be used to advance the public service, teaching and research components of higher education’s tripartite mission. the case study presented in this article demonstrates that effective engagement and teaching is reliant on good research. while often framed as competing with each other, effective teaching, public service and research are interdependent. service-learning and the engaged campus there are now many definitions and a wide array of practices under the umbrella of service-learning, but it can be seen as both ‘a pedagogy and philosophy that links classrooms with communities and textbooks to the “real world”’ (butin 2010, p. xiv). service-learning has its roots in what ernest boyer (1990, 1996) termed the ‘scholarship of engagement’, in which universities become vigorous partners in addressing pressing social, civic, economic and moral problems of their communities. the underlying approach in service-learning engages students in experiential learning by integrating coursework and critical reflection with meaningful community service through which alice dodd university of south australia © 2017 by a dodd. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: dodd, a 2017, ‘finding the community in sustainable online community engagement: not-for-profit organisation websites, service-learning and research’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 185–203. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5471 corresponding author: alice dodd; alice.dodd@unisa.edu.au doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5471 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:alice.dodd@unisa.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5471 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5471 186 | gateways | dodd both students and community benefit (deeley 2010; furco 1996, 2001, 2010; kenworthy-u’ren 2003; soska, sullivan-cosetti & pasupuleti 2010). the key point that distinguishes service-learning at its best is that ‘there is an equal emphasis on service and learning, providing benefits to both the recipients and providers of the service’ (furco, 1996, p. 5). students may gain learning and developmental benefits, including: improved understanding of academic content (blouin & perry 2009, p. 121); skills in critical thinking, problem solving and analysis; increased self-esteem and confidence; communication and teamwork skills (deeley 2010, p. 44); and increased awareness of social issues and career options (furco 2010, p. 385). ideally, the recipient community partners benefit from tangible professional products for use in their local community (kenworthy-u’ren 2000, 2003). indeed, because service-learning has been shown to be beneficial for students’ learning and forging links between higher education institutions and the communities they serve, it is now a well-established pedagogical practice internationally and across all disciplines (holland 2016; rogers & andrews 2016). as holland (2016, p. 76) points out, the national and international discourse on community engagement has expanded around the globe, with the establishment of organisations such as the international association for research on service-learning and community engagement (iaslce), the engaged scholarship consortium and the talloires network encouraging research and the exchange of knowledge on the topic. service-learning, when done effectively, can extend beyond teaching and service to incorporate research that addresses authentic and complex social issues of relevance to the community and, therefore, the university it serves. furco (2010) argues that service-learning is a community-engaged approach that provides opportunities for more significant, higher quality research that benefits society. in furco’s (2010, p. 383) ideal model of the engaged campus, service-learning would be guided by and initiate community-engaged research. under this model, communities participate as valued research advisers, partners or co-investigators who can help identify appropriate research questions, engage in the research process and interpretation of findings, and provide perspectives on the implications for future research and practice. in turn, academics and their research departments benefit from exposure and access to social contexts and issues that guide research which is significant in addressing challenges in the community and public interest. of particular relevance to the research discussed here, not-for-profit organisations may benefit from access to information communication technology (ict) products, knowledge and skills that they otherwise have limited access to due to lack of personnel or resources (chang et al. 2014; dodd 2014; hettche & clayton 2013; nejmeh 2012). the key factor underpinning engaged service-learning and research, as noted by furco (2010, p. 384), is ‘how the 187 | gateways | dodd voices of members of the community, their expertise and their needs are incorporated, valued and honoured’. yet one of the problems identified in discussion of service-learning projects is that the voices and perspectives of community partners are often missing. service-learning initiatives are often evaluated for their outcomes for student learning, without addressing challenges or outcomes for the community organisations (blouin & perry 2009; bushouse 2005; littlepage, gazley & bennett 2012; stoecker et al. 2010). the problem is that without listening to and engaging the community partners in dialogue throughout the servicelearning project and beyond, there is potential to do more harm than good. this is particularly the case with ict and computerbased projects, where the real costs of a website or database are not in its initial development but in its ongoing maintenance and support (connolly 2012, p. 339). in addition, connolly notes that these student-created products can often shift an organisation’s limited resources away from their main organisational purpose to supporting and upgrading the new technological system. thus, such service-learning projects, rather than assisting organisations, place significant stress on organisations’ limited resources in terms of available time, personnel and materials. this is where dedicated, systematic and methodical research that engages the community partners could produce far better ongoing outcomes for the organisations, students and the university involved. this article now focuses on research conducted for a phd between 2008 and 2014 based on the sustainable online community engagement project to demonstrate how genuine community engagement and service, teaching and research are interdependent. sustainable online community engagement and service-learning the sustainable online community engagement project (soce) is a partnership between the office for volunteers, state government of south australia and the university of south australia’s school of communication, international studies and languages, which has been operating since 2001. students of the university of south australia create websites and other communication products for not-for-profit community organisations as part of their courses. the websites are hosted by the university at no cost to the organisations, and training and ongoing help desk assistance is provided by the project staff (marriott 2007; marriott & patterson 2004; wood & dodd 2010a, b). any not-for-profit south australian organisation, excluding political parties, can apply. between 2001 and 2015 soce assisted more than 400 south australian community groups, and at the time of writing hosted 160 organisations’ websites on www.communitywebs.org. soce fulfils the university’s learning and teaching strategy objectives of providing ‘experiential learning’ opportunities through ‘practice based learning and service learning through http://www.communitywebs.org 188 | gateways | dodd volunteer work’ (unisa 2009, p. 1). in theory, it also contributes to the university’s mission of engaging with its communities to address the major issues of the time (unisa 2017), in particular, the need for not-for-profit community organisations to build capacity in using internet-based ict (australian government productivity commission 2010; cisa et al. 2007; denison 2008; denison, stillman & johanson 2007; denison & williamson 2013; dimitrov 2008). a review of the literature (dodd 2014) on ict and service-learning projects in universities suggests that, while there have been many courses and initiatives where students build websites for not-for-profit organisations, for example, the civic nexus project (farooq et al. 2007; xiao & farooq 2013) and techshop in the usa (stoecker et al. 2010), the websites that are developed are not hosted by the universities or their affiliates. similarly, there are well-established initiatives, such as uts shopfront in australia (see http://www.uts.edu.au/partnersand-community/initiatives/uts-shopfront-community-program/ welcome), and many courses in which students build ict products for not-for-profit organisations; however, the soce project is unique in its ongoing hosting of the websites built and provision of help desk assistance. it is this hosting and training that enables the ongoing relationship with organisations, which in turn provides opportunities for research, genuine assistance to organisations and benefits to students. soce could thus serve as a model for the ideal service-learning initiative suggested by furco (2001, 2010), in which community partners, students and the university are mutually benefited. unfortunately, at the commencement of the research discussed below, soce appeared to be doing more harm than good by leaving organisations with websites they could not maintain. the research problem a significant problem experienced in the soce project was that, despite some ongoing assistance and training, the community groups reported that they often found it difficult to sustain effective use of their websites (dodd 2014). this is a problem that affects the broader not-for-profit sector and community organisations in australia (denison 2008; denison & johanson, 2007; denison, stillman & johanson 2007; denison & williamson 2013; digital business insights 2011; knox 2005) and internationally (greenberg & macauley 2009; manzo & pitkin 2007; waters 2010; zorn, grant & henderson 2012; zorn & richardson 2010). in 2007, a proposed solution to this was to develop an online community for the participating organisations, which would be a ‘self-supporting member-driven collaborative online environment’ enabling organisations to share information about web-based technology (marriott 2007, pp. 250–51). this online community of practice would follow preece’s (2000) model of online ‘community-centred development’: initially a prototype would be created, starting with a focus group of interested key community group members, or as http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/uts-shopfront-community-program/welcome http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/uts-shopfront-community-program/welcome http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/uts-shopfront-community-program/welcome 189 | gateways | dodd kim (2000) describes them, ‘leaders’, to elicit models suitable for the online community. the hope was that these leaders might then guide new members in the online community, with contributions from academic staff decreasing as participation from community members increased (marriott 2007). however, from the perspective of the author and project officer for soce, who was the main point of contact between community organisations and the university, the value of this for community members was questionable, prompting this research that sought to determine if the organisations hosted by soce were using their websites effectively and sustainably and to devise strategies for assisting them to do so (dodd 2014). prior research conducted in soce was either evaluative, focused on quantitative, reportable outcomes (such as number of websites built) to satisfy the government department funding the project, or focused on student learning outcomes (see marriott, patterson & temple 2004), with little follow-up on how successfully community organisations were using their websites on an ongoing basis. the project staff’s comprehension of the community clients’ needs and aspirations regarding website use and ongoing management was quite limited, and seemed to be based primarily on a single multiple-choice question in an online survey conducted in 2003, and again in 2005 and 2006. this survey asked how satisfied organisation members were with their website and gave options of responding from ‘very dissatisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’. respondents could provide qualitative answers in a final question that asked for other comments. in 2003, 30 community organisation members responded, followed by 37 in the 2005 survey; however, only 11 responses were obtained from the 2006 survey. this fall in responses and apparent lack of engagement raised questions about how websites were used by organisations. in particular, the results from the surveys suggested that the maintenance of the websites was the community organisation members’ major concern. furthermore, informal communication with community members through help desk, phone or email demonstrated a disconnect between academics’ understanding of technology requirements and the experiences and needs of community members. it was felt that research focusing specifically on the longer term outcomes for the community partners was required. this research should incorporate the community organisations’ perspectives and encourage their participation as co-investigators in order to initiate ongoing learning for all stakeholders if there were to be genuinely sustainable outcomes. method the subsequent research used a mixed-method ethnographic action research (ear) approach in three phases in order to determine: how the organisations were using their websites; whether this matched their aspirations for their sites; and any successful strategies used by the organisations to manage their 190 | gateways | dodd websites. as part of this, the research would gain feedback on the original proposal of developing a ‘self-supporting collaborative member-driven online environment’ whereby community members ‘would move forward from a simple web-based online presence into the realm of collaboration and information sharing using current online technology’ (marriott 2007, p. 251). the research was based on gurstein’s (2003, 2007) community informatics approach, in which ‘effective use’ is ‘the capacity to integrate ict into self or collaboratively identified goals’ (gurstein 2003). it is the users of technology who understand most clearly what applications or uses would be most beneficial in particular local contexts. guided by the ear approach, there was a focus on ‘simultaneous action and research in a participative manner’ (cohlan & brannick cited in hearn et al. 2009, p. 10) in order to find practical solutions to real-life problems (hearn et al., 2009, pp. 10–11). there was also the intention to initiate an ongoing learning process for all participants, which would lead to ‘new abilities to create knowledge’ (reason & bradbury 2008, p. 5). the first phase of the research was a content analysis and review of the editing records of the 135 organisational websites hosted on soce. the analysis examined 52 different variables, such as organisation type and stated mission, types of pages, interactive features, frequency of editing and longevity of the website being maintained. all website pages were examined, as well as all emails and hyperlinks, to determine whether they were functioning. this enabled the researcher to contact the organisations to discuss and resolve issues such as incorrect email addresses or broken links, as part of the research process. the second phase was an online survey consisting of 10 open questions and nine partially open questions which was sent to 145 community organisation members responsible for the management of these websites, resulting in 48 responses. the questions aimed to learn more about the organisations, their working environment, the organisations’ aspirations for their websites, opinions on interactive features and social software, barriers to maintaining a web presence and factors which would contribute to successfully maintaining their websites. the third and final phase of the research consisted of semistructured, in-depth interviews with 18 of the website managers from 12 selected organisations. interviews explored these issues further, as well as eliciting ideas on what the university project could do to help organisations become self-sufficient and confident in managing their websites. selected results and discussion the research findings have led to a better understanding of what the organisations wanted and needed from their website presence, the challenges faced in maintaining their websites and strategies that were most likely to assist them in sustaining an effective web presence. 191 | gateways | dodd significantly, the website content analysis and survey research revealed that the 135 organisations hosted by soce were representative of the majority of not-for-profit organisations. approximately 90 per cent of nfps globally operate without paid staff (lyons 2001; smith 1997, 2000, 2002). in australia there are between 600 000 and 700 000 not-for-profit organisations, the majority of which are small, all-volunteer organisations, and yet they contribute between 3.8 and 4.1 per cent of the gross domestic product (australian government productivity commission 2010; mcgregor-lowndes 2014). such organisations participate in all fields of life and include sports clubs, church groups, professional and scholarly associations, health-related interest groups, cultural and ethnic groups, environmental groups and policy advocacy groups (lyons 2001, pp. 71–96; lyons & passey 2006, p. 90). the small, voluntary and diverse nature of these organisations was found to be representative of organisations hosted by soce. figure 1 shows the types of organisations hosted that require assistance with websites. the content analysis and review of the websites also revealed some alarming information, demonstrating that the soce project was anything but sustainable. key results included: —60 per cent (80/135) of the websites had not been updated in the previous year —more than a third of the sites had been used only for one year and abandoned or were never used at all (still contained latin script, figure 1: types of organisations hosted in the sustainable online community engagement program in 2009 192 | gateways | dodd which is used as placeholder text by the student when designing the website) —42 per cent (58) were obviously out of date or had serious technical problems —33 per cent (45) of the sites had incorrect email addresses and 33 per cent (45) had no email listed – i.e. two thirds of the organisations were uncontactable via email on their websites. far from being ready to share information with each other in an online collaborative community, these organisations needed first to engage with and manage their own online presence. furthermore, the research found that the soce project was potentially doing more harm than good. like so many ictrelated service-learning projects that cause harm (connolly 2012), the soce project was diverting organisations’ limited resources from their purpose into struggling to maintain websites. in addition, most of these websites would have given the visitor a very poor impression of the organisations behind them. this situation was also doing a disservice to the students involved in building the websites, who could not use their work as part of their professional portfolio. the students would later learn that their work had not been of assistance to the organisation, despite being promoted as such by academic staff as a ‘feel good factor’ for students at the time. indeed, as raised by marullo and edwards (2000) in their discussion of social justice focused service-learning, the ramifications of this kind of failure may extend beyond the particular course by leaving the student with a negative impression of service-learning and the perception that the university’s actions contradict its rhetoric. further, in the broader community, the soce project could obviously do harm to the reputation of the university, and the government funding of this program could be viewed as a waste of taxpayers’ money. the survey results of the second phase of the research also suggested that the proposed development of a self-supporting, collaborative member-driven online environment encouraging members to share information about managing their websites would not be useful for community members, primarily due to their lack of time and interest in online interaction. the website managers (n = 48) were most often self-trained volunteers, donating their time and resources in order to sustain a web presence for the organisation. three-quarters of the website managers (n = 36) used their own home computers to manage the websites. only two organisations had websites managed by people paid specifically for that work. in the other 46 organisations the websites were managed either by committee members who performed other roles within the organisation (n = 19) or other volunteers (n = 25). furthermore, 43 out of 48, or 90 per cent, of the people managing the websites were juggling this duty with many other responsibilities in the organisation. these voluntary roles and duties included president, secretary, volunteer manager, chairperson, manager of services, treasurer and events coordinator. 193 | gateways | dodd significantly, 20 people (41.6 per cent) indicated they did not know what kind of software they used to edit their websites, so it was not surprising to learn that significant barriers to maintaining websites included lack of technical knowledge and skills (n = 20) and lack of time (n =13). other important barriers included lack of resources (n = 10) and lack of personnel to manage the websites (n = 6). typical responses to the question asking about barriers to maintaining websites included that of an australian breastfeeding association (aba) branch website manager, who explained the most significant barriers were: time and experience. time—as a volunteer, i have to combine this with my paid employment and my study. (sr12) a regional community website manager explained that barriers were: skills and knowledge to make the changes. time is always an issue— undertaking several roles within the committee on a volunteer basis means that the website updates get neglected. (sr1) the survey also revealed that most organisations aspired to present information in a simple easy-to-use website, rather than to use complex interactive features, such as forums, which require time to monitor and moderate. in many cases, the website was viewed as a means to disseminate information rather than encourage online communication and was designed to avoid more time-consuming or costly methods of communication. for example, a landcare group website manager explained that the purpose of the site was to: provide a resource for school project etc. enquiries; provide a contact point (less phone calls etc.); provide some on-line resources (limited); promote working bee dates etc (sr25) another stated that the main reason for the website was: so people don’t ring me up – lots of people want free advice & information (school projects etc.). can’t afford the time. (sr16) indeed, when asked what kinds of interactive features groups wanted in their websites, a third of the website managers (n = 16) stated that they did not view interactive features, other than an email contact for the organisation, as useful. this rejection of interactive features was not due to a lack of strategic understanding or knowledge about the potential of interactive website features, as many of these web managers later revealed in the interviews that they used forums, blogs and social media such as facebook for other purposes. rather, it was a deliberate strategy for effective use within the resource limitations of their organisations. the survey also revealed that, while one-third of the website managers understood the potential benefits of interactive features and the possibility of linking their website to social media but 194 | gateways | dodd rejected this option, another third said they might benefit from learning more through structured workshops delivered by the soce project staff or university students. more than one-third (n = 17 or 35.4 per cent) of these website managers were not confident enough in their knowledge of interactive features to make suggestions in response to the open question, ‘what interactive features (e.g. forums, chatrooms, listservs) do you think a good website, for your organisation, should have?’ four people did not respond and eight wrote short comments such as ‘don’t know’, ‘haven’t thought about this’, ‘not sure’ and ‘no idea’, indicating that a quarter of the respondents were either not familiar enough with, or interested sufficiently in, interactive features to comment. other people were interested in the potential of interactive features but either lacked knowledge or expressed reservations. for example, one person was interested in social software and explained: we would like to communicate with other masters swimmers – maybe like facebook but i don’t know how to do it. (sr43) a community visitors’ scheme website manager gave a lengthy answer explaining that she was still learning about these features and they may be useful in helping isolated people interact; however, the available time and skills of volunteers was an inhibiting factor. the organisation’s priority was: interaction that does not require you to be on line 24 hours & time to collect the information people are requesting. (sr27) the survey responses revealed that there were different levels of experience and skills in using interactive features and social media among website managers, but suggested that those with little experience would benefit more from guided, structured presentations and workshops delivered by educators, rather than unguided exposure through observation in an online ‘community’ of website managers. the third phase of the research, the interviews, explored other strategies for assisting organisations and confirmed that developing an online community for members to share information would not help them sustain their websites. it was clear that organisations were already time poor and those that were successful in maintaining their websites had deliberately stripped off time-sensitive information and interactive features as a time management strategy. explanations given in the interviews included: i sort of peeled off all the stuff that was time sensitive and just wanted to keep it so that it was just a static website, so that—yeah, you can get information from it. (andrew, landcare group, interview 20 july 2009) 195 | gateways | dodd that website has no interactive features and it has nothing that moves, it has no scripts, because i’m not prepared, at this stage anyway, to learn it. (brian, friends of conservation park, interview 6 may 2009) we do not need to make daily changes – we set it up so that most info would be ok for a longer amount of time. that said, there’s more updating we can do. we just don’t have the time and it seems to be serving its purpose. (rebecca, regional town progress association, email interview, 1–5 september 2009) the interviews also revealed that website managers who were successfully managing websites for organisations already used online networks and forums to assist them. in short, the potential ‘leaders’ (preece 2000) of the proposed community of practice were not sufficiently motivated to participate or lead others in yet another online community. two of the website managers who were intrinsically interested in website management and technology responded to the idea of the online community: but who would contribute? (brian, friends of conservation park, interview 6 2009) you also find that the volunteer groups aren’t much interested in each other, i reckon. so just because you’re a volunteer, you’re a volunteer because you’re interested in one thing, not because you’re interested in what other volunteers are doing. (andrew, landcare group, interview 20 july 2009) in response to the idea that some website managers might be interested in sharing knowledge, andrew replied: yeah, but quite a lot of time he’s got enough to do on his own, without some other person asking him questions. (andrew, landcare group, interview 20 july 2009) ultimately, an analysis of the results of each phase of the research suggested that, in direct contrast to aiming for more online interaction between organisations and their communities, the soce project needed to focus on devising strategies to assist organisations to maintain a basic ‘brochure’-like website. options such as linking a basic website to social media sites could then be explored as part of this. this research study concluded that not-for-profit organisations need to be able to manage a basic web presence effectively before introducing and managing more interactive features. rather than create yet more unmanageable technology ‘solutions’ for community organisations, the research revealed that the most useful strategies for helping third sector organisations maintain an effective, sustainable online presence include: —assistance with website hosting —use of content management systems 196 | gateways | dodd —developing strategies for shared management and succession planning in the organisations —delivery of hands-on training and information sessions about web 2.0 social networking platforms. actions implemented through research as a result of this research, the soce project changed to using a content management system (cms), developed and delivered more user guides and regular hands-on training sessions for community organisation members, and incorporated shared management strategies and succession planning into its community education. a cms enables the end-user (in this case a community organisation volunteer) to log into the website directly and edit the content using a what you see is what you get (wysiwg) interface, without any knowledge of hyper text markup language (html). prior to implementing a cms, soce websites had to be edited using software such as frontpage and files needed to be downloaded to the user’s computer, edited and uploaded to their website again. in contrast, the community organisation volunteer now logs directly into their website and edits using an interface that looks much like the ms word program. initially, soce used a customised cms developed by a company in collaboration with the project but, due to feedback from community organisations and the web design teaching staff, changed to using word press because it is easier for community organisations to use and is widely used by website development companies. this benefits both community organisations, which usually have volunteers who are untrained in website management maintaining their websites, and students, who can show they are job ready and able to design for a common content management system. figure 2 shows the editing interface of the custom-built cms adopted by soce before changing to word press. two hands-on training sessions each semester are held at the university for community groups who have had websites developed, and training participants are given a print version of a quick guide to editing their site, which is also available online. participants figure 2: editing interface of the custom-built cms first adopted by soce 197 | gateways | dodd are also invited to complete hard-copy surveys at training and an online survey evaluating their involvement that semester. in addition, all of the community organisations hosted are invited to complete an online survey about their websites and their ability to maintain them once a year. formal research examining the success of these measures is in progress, and it appears that the proportion of groups successfully sustaining their websites is much higher. for example, preliminary results from the 2014 online survey (130 surveys sent to website managers with 50 responses) showed that 92 per cent of the responding website managers had updated their websites in the previous year, while 50 per cent had updated their organisation’s website in the previous two months. encouragingly, 36 out of 43 of the website managers, or 83 per cent, indicated that the website was ‘very simple’ to ‘moderately simple and easy’ to update. these results suggest that implementing the content management system and more hands-on training through action research is genuinely assisting organisations to be more selfsufficient and successful in managing their websites. conclusion and implications the implementation of actions resulting from the research undertaken, such as changing to use of a content management system, is significant because the soce program remains in demand from community organisations and often cannot fulfil this demand logistically. in 2015, there were more applicants than students (e.g. 23 organisations applied for websites but only 13 students were enrolled in the particular course that was participating). thus, there are opportunities for many more students in tertiary education to develop their skills and knowledge by creating communication products for not-for-profit organisations in service-learning. in doing so, universities and their students will be addressing an authentic societal challenge to benefit their communities. significantly, many of the challenges and barriers to not-for-profit organisations maintaining websites reported in this research are cited in other australian (cisa et al. 2007; denison & williamson 2013; digital business insights 2011) and international research (manzo & pitkin 2007; waters 2010; zorn & richardson 2010). this supports the notion that there is scope for service-learning projects that genuinely assist organisations by providing access to ict skills, knowledge and resources available through universities and their students. new forms of digital engagement are one of the most significant and demanding developments for the not-for-profit sector (info exchange, connecting up australia & techsoup nz 2015; mayer & simsa 2014), particularly with decreases in funding from government and other sources. a report from connecting up, the peak organisation advocating for the not-forprofit sector in australia, concludes that this will require increased productivity and efficiency through ‘digital proficiency’ (info 198 | gateways | dodd exchange et al. 2015). many universities are in the position to connect the knowledge and skills of their staff and students with community organisations; however, the case study presented here demonstrates that this engagement requires dedicated research. service-learning initiatives can create benefits for students, the community and universities, but the perspectives and voices of the community participants must be sought and provide guidance throughout such projects. otherwise, as noted by stoecker et al. (2010), projects may simply become vehicles in which universities use communities to serve students or their own interests and there is potential to do serious harm. the soce project also demonstrates that effective community engagement creates opportunities for applied research that can address issues of concern to the local community and broader society. advocating service-learning as practice that serves the teaching, research and community service tripartite missions of universities, furco (2001, p. 70) argues that servicelearning involves ‘the theoretical and practical exploration and investigation of social issues through a particular disciplinary lens’ and that faculty can use the service-learning experiences of their students to engage their own expertise in the research of important community issues. however, the potential of servicelearning to initiate genuinely useful research extends beyond this. furco (2001, 2010) and chupp and joseph (2010) argue that service-learning has benefits for staff by creating longer term sustained partnerships with communities. in this process, the community partners help identify and research problems of significance to them. ideally, the community and academic staff, and their departments, become partners in a participatory action research process. while the research reported in this article modestly aimed for the ideal of participatory action research, it was inspired and enabled by the researcher encountering a real problem while working on a service-learning project. the continuity of access to the participants and research sites allowed the researcher to commence a three-year phd research project in order to find strategies to help not-for-profit organisations sustain an effective web presence. the process involved examining many aspects of the project, including the technologies used, the interaction between staff, students and community organisation members, and the ongoing training and knowledge management in 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http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/693/974 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-012-9265-1 _goback gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 october 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: silbert, p. 2019. from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 6620. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i1.6620 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context patti silbert schools development unit, university of cape town, neville alexander building, university avenue, upper campus, 7700, cape town, south africa *corresponding author: patti silbert; patti.silbert@uct.ac.za doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6620 article history: received 04/06/2019; revised 30/08/2019; accepted 09/09/2019; published 30/10/2019. abstract while partnerships are key to sustained engagement between universities and schools, structural and historical differences exist between partners at the level of both organisational boundaries and socioeconomic borders. differential relations, particularly accentuated in contexts such as south africa, are frequently masked by normative assumptions that have largely remained unquestioned. reciprocity and mutuality are two foundational concepts, regularly enlisted in the partnership literature. applied uncritically, these concepts function to obscure power differentials between partnering institutions – and between people who bring to those partnerships different histories and social positions. using the example of a south african university-school partnership, the article draws on the scholarship of keith (2005), stavro (2001) and young (1990, 1997a, 1997b) to develop a framework that moves beyond reciprocity and mutuality towards collective empowerment and solidarity. this discursive shift reflects the complexities of partnerships and partnering – and opens the space for more authentic forms of engagement, particularly in unequal partnering contexts. the article offers insights, from the perspective of the particular case presented, into how dialogic spaces might be created for interrupting normative discourses and practices, and for re-imagining new possibilities for partnering across contexts of difference.  declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6620 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6620 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://patti.silbert@uct.ac.za http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6620 keywords asymmetrical reciprocity, university-school partnerships, mutuality, collective empowerment introduction across the margins of interaction between universities and public schools, extreme structural, institutional and experiential differences exist at the level of social divisions and socioeconomic borders. these types of variances, particularly accentuated in contexts such as south africa, are frequently masked by normative discourses that suggest homogeneity and sameness. foundational concepts such as reciprocity and mutuality are frequently enlisted in the literature without critical examination and are referred to in ways that assume a shared understanding of their meaning (dostilio et al. 2012). when used uncritically, these terms function to obscure inherent power differentials that exist between partnering institutions – and between those who bring to the institutions different histories, social positions and power relations. building on the work of christie (2018), in which she critiques traditional concepts of partnership between universities and schools, the aim of this article is to problematise normative notions of reciprocity and mutuality that exist within dominant partnership discourses. the article explores how these concepts might be reframed in counter-normative ways (clayton & ash 2004; howard 1998) so as to reveal power asymmetries that have remained obscured within existing discourses. ultimately, the purpose of the article is to uncover the complexities of these terms and to contribute towards conceptualising a language that opens new spaces for ‘power sharing, communication, respectful relationships …’ (keith 2015, p. iv) and, ultimately, for building ‘collective empowerment’ (stavro 2001, p. 145). the article proceeds in three sections: first, the socioeconomic context in which the schools improvement initiative operates is presented. the relevance of history and context is key to understanding what it means to partner across unequal contexts and to comprehend how social dynamics inform understanding, positionality and intentionality of the partners (soudien 2018). against this background, an overview of the schools improvement initiative’s work is described as an illustration of a current south african university-school partnership. notions of partnership as normatively used in the initiative and in the literature more broadly are defined, with a specific focus on reciprocity and mutuality. the second section spotlights some of the ways in which notions of reciprocity and mutuality are broadly used in the partnership and civic engagement literature. iris marion young (1990; 1997a), elaine stavro (2001) and novella zett keith (2005) are drawn on to unravel some of the taken for granted assumptions that underpin these concepts, and to help develop a language which considers an ethics of communicative engagement based on ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’ (young 1990; 1997a). what is suggested in this section is that an understanding of reciprocity and mutuality that is unequal and asymmetrical enables an epistemological shift beyond mutual benefit towards co-creation (clayton et al. 2013) and the collective empowerment of all those engaged in the partnership. the third section attempts to connect the theoretical elements discussed in the previous two sections to the case presented, by considering new possibilities within our particular university-school-community partnership context. such insights, while informed by one particular partnership model, might be applicable to other partnering contexts in which there 2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert exist expectations of commonly held ideas of mutuality and reciprocity against a backdrop of embedded social differences and unequal power hierarchies. section one: context and background south africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income distribution (woolard 2002). cape town, like all other south african cities, is characterised by deep socioeconomic inequalities and social divides, with locked-in spatial structures, reflective of its apartheid past. khayelitsha, the area in which the partner schools of the schools improvement initiative are located, is a large sprawling township situated on the cape flats on the eastern edge of the metropole. the township, itself, is a typical example of late-apartheid town planning in that it is geographically located over 30 km from the city centre. khayelitsha’s 450 000 inhabitants are therefore dislocated from the city’s economic drivers, which include major concentrations of work and industry. with few factories and relatively limited small business opportunities, unemployment in the township is high, particularly amongst the youth: more than 50 per cent of young men up to the age of 23 are unemployed (clark 2018). the high levels of poverty and unemployment in khayelitsha mirror persistent inequalities for the majority of black south africans in the rest of the country in all aspects of existence: land, housing, health and education. within the country at large, income poverty continues to be strongly associated with race: 65 per cent of african youth live below the poverty line, as compared with just over 4 per cent of white young people (orthofer 2016). the structural inequalities in south africa are characterised by extreme disparities in the schooling system. twenty years after apartheid, stark differences continue to exist in educational achievement, particularly with regards to literacy and numeracy levels between the wealthiest 25 per cent of schools and the vast majority of schools serving largely poor black students (spaull & hoadley 2017). in an effort to address the structural inequalities in the schooling system, the schools improvement initiative was established by the university of cape town (uct) in 2012 as one of the university’s key strategic initiatives. the university’s focus on social responsiveness is reflected in goal one of its strategic plan 2016–2020: to forge an inclusive identity for uct through changing institutional practices that re-produce power relations based on patterns of historical privilege, and reconfiguring structures, policies, procedures and systems that impede transformation (uct, strategic planning framework, 2016–2019, draft). goal five of the strategic plan is similarly relevant in its aim to enhance the university’s scope, quality and impact of engaged scholarship with an emphasis on addressing development and social justice. the above two strategic goals suggest that uct has in recent years been engaged in reconceptualising its institutional culture towards deeper forms of community engagement with a clearly articulated social responsiveness agenda. the shift, both locally and internationally, towards promoting institutional practices that prioritise and deepen social engagement and transformation signals a new ‘geography of opportunity’ (cantor & englot 2015, p. 21), with significant implications for how we, as university staff, do our work, where we do our work, who we do our work with and how we think about scholarship. 3 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context in his discussion of transformation of south african universities, soudien suggests that higher education institutions must organise themselves to deliberately engage with their contexts. it is this, he suggests, that places socially responsive work at the forefront of the university’s transformation agenda (social responsiveness report 2015, uct). in keeping with this imperative, the overarching aim of the schools improvement initiative has from the outset been to develop a strong, engaged university-school partnership between the university and a targeted group of schools in the western cape township of khayelitsha (silbert, clark & dornbrack 2015; silbert, galvaan & clark 2018). the partner schools in this context fall into the category of what christie, butler and potterton (2007, p. 100) describe as ‘mainstream’ schools in south africa, which are populated largely by black students and teachers, with limited physical resources and high levels of under-achievement. notions of partnership for the schools improvement initiative in the context of the schools improvement initiative, partnership refers to the ongoing engaged collaboration between the university, its partner schools and the community, represented by education district officials, community-based organisations, and parents. this idea of partnership acknowledges that improvement in the quality of education requires multiple levels of collaboration between the university, the district, the school and the community. while the community is regarded as a key partnering subject, this article focuses on the partnership as it exists between the university and the schools (for a broader discussion of the community as partner, see silbert, galvaan & clark 2018). since its inception, the schools improvement initiative has been informed by a western model of a specific university-school partnership that originated at the university of pennsylvania’s netter center (harkavy 2006; harkavy & hartley 2009; harkavy et al. 2016). intrinsic to the netter center’s approach to partnership are two fundamental concepts: reciprocity and mutuality (see also corrigan 2000; deppeler 2006; groundwater-smith & dadds 2012; islam 2011; li 2017; nehring & o’brien 2012). reciprocity may be defined as ‘the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit’ (murray 1971). the term originates from the french réciproque and the latin reciprocus, suggesting ‘moving backwards and forwards’. the meaning of reciprocity is conveyed by its latin counterpart, as used in law, do ut des, translated as ‘i give so that you will give’ (keith 2005, p. 14). while reciprocity implies an exchange of both giving and receiving, the term, mutuality, means ‘having the same feelings for each other; standing in a reciprocal relation to each other’ (murray 1971). both reciprocity and mutuality, as defined above, imply an exchange of value of some kind, and are instantiated through partnership arrangements constructed through some form of shared engagement, complementarity and joint benefit. significantly, these concepts assume a basis of equivalence in terms of the value or worth of the exchange, thereby obscuring any possible power differences or asymmetries between the partnering subjects (oswald 2016). moreover, these terms adopt a shared interpretation in the literature, despite their complex and contested meanings (dostilio et al. 2012; miller-young et al. 2015). yet uct exemplifies a historically white, privileged institution located in an affluent, middle-class area, while the partner schools linked to the schools improvement initiative epitomise a township community afflicted by high levels of poverty and unemployment. this partnering context signifies a space, as soudien (2018, p. vii) highlights, in which ‘understanding, intentionality, history and negotiation carry inside of them the accumulated 4 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert baggage of more than 350 years of people managing their social differences’. it is this disparity between the partnering subjects that provides the context and basis for the article. drawing on a wide range of resources and expertise, the schools improvement initiative works in close collaboration with groupings both within the university and in the broader community, thereby extending its partnership model to include key role-players who are involved in the public schooling sector such as district based education officials. based on its work over the past six years (2013–2019), the initiative acknowledges unequivocally that partnerships are key to building effective and sustained relationships between universities and schools for the purpose of whole-school development. a whole-school approach to school development implies a multi-dimensional strategy that comprises a variety of interventions, including in-service teacher professional development, mentoring of principals and school managers, learner-based academic programs and psychosocial support for learners. the purpose of whole-school development is to support schools in challenged contexts to create an integrated and enabling environment for teaching and learning. in each of the above areas of support, the schools improvement initiative, in consultation with the schools, collaborates with a range of departments at the university, as well as the broader community, to strengthen the school-based support. interdisciplinary collaboration takes place across the university to facilitate student professional practice in the partner schools. this includes students undertaking their degrees in social work, drama, information sciences, architecture, occupational therapy, audiology, and speech-language therapy. additionally, students completing degrees in medicine are involved in service learning projects in the partner schools. external partnerships with community-based organisations enable expertise within the community to be channelled into the schools in ways that are responsive to the specific needs of the schools. in all of the above examples of collaboration, the schools are directly involved in the particular projects. the various types of engagement outlined above are facilitated by the schools improvement initiative and have been developed through the partnerships established with the schools. it is indeed on the basis of strong, enduring partnerships that the initiative has strengthened its interaction with its six partner schools (three primary and three secondary), and it is through this engagement that knowledge which has enhanced the university’s understanding of the types of processes required to build public partnerships within challenged community contexts has been generated. as an illustration of engaged scholarship, new insights have emerged into the ways in which partnership-based practices can build enabling environments for teaching and learning in disadvantaged schools. such insights have contributed to the growth of the partnership and, significantly, to the university’s ongoing social responsiveness agenda. details of the initiative are developed in the following section. while significant gains have been made at different levels of the partnership (silbert & bitso 2015, 2018; silbert, clark & dornbrack 2015; silbert, galvaan & clark 2018; silbert & verbeek 2016), a critical reflection of its work by university staff and school-based partners has yielded some important new areas of learning. we acknowledge that the schools improvement initiative was conceptualised according to particular assumptions, and it is these normative assumptions that the article seeks to confront, critique and disrupt. below, some of the key aspects of the initiative are outlined, thus providing a contextual framing for the conceptual discussion that follows. 5 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context the schools improvement initiative: an overview in response to an in-depth needs analysis undertaken in the schools at the start of the partnership, the initiative has, over the years, focused its interventions on building capacity at the level of teacher professional development and school organisational development. university approved short courses and two-year qualifications are offered to participating teachers, principals and members of the school management teams. professional development in the partner schools extends to classroom-based support for teachers in the areas of mathematics, the sciences and languages (isixhosa in the early foundation phase and english first additional language in the intermediate and senior phases). furthermore, through the schools improvement initiative libraries have been established in the partner schools (see silbert & bitso 2015 & 2018), and in one of the secondary schools the library also houses a number of computers purchased with donations from uct alumni. in 2017 the initiative helped fund the refurbishment of one of the school’s science laboratories, thereby enabling ongoing support to the natural and physical sciences teachers. at the level of the university, the focus on interdisciplinary collaboration has generated a new understanding of some of the ways in which ‘research without boundaries’ (wilson 2018) can effectively inform engaged scholarship across various departments and faculties. for example, departments such as occupational therapy and speech-language therapy in the faculty of health science have sought ways through the schools improvement initiative to broaden and reconstitute their academic curricula to prepare students more effectively for community sites such as those offered by the partner schools. in addition to mobilising professional practice in the partner schools, as outlined above, the initiative has facilitated numerous opportunities for university-wide student volunteerism. after-school programs (both credit and non-credit bearing) coordinated by university students and offered to learners in the primary and secondary schools include career guidance, life skills, academic tutoring, computer literacy, constitutional literacy, reading, homework tutoring and leadership development. the value of these programs, both for the university and the schools, is indicated in their dual gain: while university students are able to enhance their experience of service-learning within their areas of interest, school learners are offered an assortment of enrichment programs to which they would otherwise not have been exposed. by virtue of their mutual benefit, student volunteerism and service learning exemplify the initiative’s approach to reciprocity. indeed, this explicit modelling of reciprocity constitutes one of the initiative’s key objectives. an additional example of reciprocal engagement is the university recruitment program 100-up which is operational in all 20 secondary schools in khayelitsha, including the two secondary partner schools. at the beginning of grade 10, academically high-achieving learners are identified by each school to participate in this three-year program, which prepares them for all aspects of tertiary studies. the success of the program is reflected in the fact that enrolments at the university from all secondary schools in khayelitsha have almost tripled in recent years. from one of the two partner secondary schools, for example, prior to the start of the program in 2012, only one matriculant in the school’s history had been eligible for admission to uct. to date, since the start of the program, fifteen matriculants from that same school have successfully achieved university admission. the benefits of this recruitment program to the university, the schools and learners are noteworthy: while learners who successfully gain entrance to the university are directly benefited, the positive impact on the school community as a whole is significant. the boosting of morale for teachers, learners and parents is reinforced 6 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert by positive reputational effects within the community. from the perspective of the university, it is able to expand its student profile through this program by redressing social exclusion and inequality, while at the same time responding to the education crisis in the province. in ensuring the continued relevance of all the programs outlined above, offered through the initiative, ongoing dialogue between university-based project staff on the one hand and collaboration between project staff and school-based partners on the other have been critical in navigating challenges and in ensuring that the initiative has remained relevant and effective in addressing the needs of the schools (li 2017). collaborative planning and reflection across the various levels of engagement has created numerous opportunities for sharing diverse perspectives on specific aspects of the interventions, mostly with a focus on planning and implementation. this, in turn, has informed further strategies relevant to the schools’ particular needs and context. joint discussion and action have generated new knowledge and practice (silbert, galvaan & clark 2018), which has become integral to the partnership and to activating beneficial change within the schools. despite the positive outcomes suggested above, an important insight that emerged from these engagements was the need to develop more robust and appropriate platforms for dialogue with school-based partners. previously, opportunities for collaborative engagement had not been systematically established across the partnership, and it was agreed that such platforms were needed for critical reflection, review and planning. through dialogue, it was hoped that partners would be drawn into collaborative discussions, which in turn would deepen collaboration, trust and collegiality, and create opportunities for partners to raise concerns, explore ideas and critique normative practices, rather than uncritically adopting one another’s perspectives in the interest of consensus. this supports the concept of community engagement for social change: a notion, as explained by wood and zuber-skerrit (2013, p. 2), in which ‘beneficial change emanates from a process of social transformation (gauthamadas 2005), which has to be driven by the involvement of the community concerned’. the relational nature of this approach makes meaningful change possible and sustainable as participants see themselves as active agents in processes of change. the notion of dialogue in this regard is explored more substantively in later sections. while there has been an ongoing effort by the partners to create collaborative opportunities for planning, reflection, review and implementation, most of the discussions typically focused on operational aspects and on strengthening the learning environment for the purpose of school improvement. however, the deeper, more difficult political and social questions linked to power and privilege have not been confronted. and it is these signifiers which lie at the heart of the partnership, influencing ‘how people think, their understanding, intentionality, history and the ways in which they enter into processes of negotiation’ (soudien 2018, p. vii). in this regard, soudien suggests that addressing the complexities of partnering across contexts of inequality requires a new kind of learning, one that is contingent upon the ‘attainment of trust and mutual agreement for learning one’s way into the development of new spaces of possiblity’ (pp. x, xi). a deeper, more careful understanding of the social dynamics that constitute the partnership and an inquiry into the discourses that frame it would enable the type of learning that soudien refers to. keith (1999, p. 226) similarly reminds us: … disentangling and taking a critical look at these discourses requires going beneath the surface, to where the interest positions and power plays masked by seemingly neutral research findings and well-meaning research-based initiatives become more visible. 7 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context it is with this in mind that the discussion now moves in the second section to a deeper level of critique. by building on saltmarsh, hartley and clayton’s (2009) democratic engagement white paper, a more critical lens has been developed to frame a broader set of partnership discourses. iris marion young’s (1990, 1997a) notion of ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’ is enlisted and extended by drawing on elaine stavro (2001) and novella zett keith (2005). section two: problematising notions of reciprocity saltmarsh, hartley and clayton (2009) view reciprocity as the ideal form of participation emanating from civic engagement. these authors distinguish between place and activity on the one hand, and process and purpose on the other. they argue that a focus on place or location reduces civic engagement to some kind of externalised activity that occurs in the community, and that this overlooks the deeper complexities relating to the processes and purposes of the activity. an emphasis on activity and place, accordingly, privileges the institution as the knowledge producer. this delineation, as the authors suggest, is problematic for at least two reasons: firstly, locating expertise within a single domain assumes that the knowledge generated within the university can be externally applied to address particular problems within the broader society. secondly, the implicit distinction between academic knowledge and community-based knowledge positions the ‘community’ as singular, homogenous and separate – often reducible to historically disadvantaged and marginalised groups (badat 2013). furthermore, the notion of community as external to the context inhabited by the university reinforces the separation of social, cultural and institutional practices. this, as the authors suggest, highlights a normative problem-solving approach, often applied by universities to social responsiveness and community engagement. according to saltmarsh, hartley and clayton (2009), focusing on processes and purpose of community engagement rather than place and activity redefines the meaning and intentionality of the engagement, enabling a co-constructed and collaborative problem-solving approach. in terms of their framework, ‘partnerships’ and ‘mutuality’ are associated with place and activity, while ‘reciprocity’ is linked to processes and purpose. the authors therefore differentiate between partnerships and mutuality on the one hand, and reciprocity on the other, arguing that the discursive shift from ‘mutuality’ to ‘reciprocity’ is crucial in generating democratic values of engagement that ‘seek the public good with the public and not merely for the public as a means to facilitating a more active and engaged democracy’ (saltmarsh, hartley and clayton 2009, p. 9). ‘reciprocity’, in this sense, reflects intentional participation that is relational, localised and contextual, and implies that scholarship should be conducted with those in the community by way of shared authority, expertise and power ‘in all aspects of the relationship …’ (p. 10). although the authors emphasise the need for forms of participation that are relational and contextual, their analysis does not extend beyond this point, thus falling short of the opportunity to grasp and problematise the deeper complexities of reciprocity, especially in contexts in which partners inhabit a range of subject positions. writing within a service-learning framework, clifford (2017, p. 12) challenges traditional notions of reciprocity by asking whether reciprocity has become ‘a code for an exchange of goods and services that reinforces unequal practices’. she examines ways in which reciprocity might be connected instead to processes of building relationships with the community, thereby emphasising the importance of solidarity over reciprocity. solidarity, in this sense, is the recognition of structural inequalities that allows issues of power and privilege to surface. 8 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert clayton et al. (2013) usefully draw a distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ types of reciprocity, emphasising the importance of moving beyond mutual benefit (‘thin’ reciprocity) towards co-creation, so that ‘… all participants are co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge’ (clayton et al. 2013, p. 246). it is against this conceptual background that iris marion young’s (1990, 1997a) work on ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’ is introduced. in challenging conventional formulations of reciprocity, young proposes a deeper, more nuanced understanding which encompasses communicative interaction through dialogue. in the context of this article, the term dialogic exchange implies an ongoing conversation (oswald, gaventa & leach 2016) or process of communication between partnering subjects, and accommodates notions of asymmetrical reciprocity. the idea that knowledge is co-constructed and situated within a particular context, and exists in multiple forms, suggests that processes of knowledge production take place by bringing together diverse perspectives within these dialogic spaces (wegerif 2008). writing within a service-learning context, keith (2005) calls for dialogue as an encounter, rather than a reciprocal exchange. in this sense, instead of building a language of reciprocity between partners, keith proposes that it is their interdependence that needs to be promoted. asymmetrical reciprocity normatively, according to young (1997a), the act of communication, which aims to establish mutual reciprocity, entails people with different perspectives engaging with each other in ways that require impartiality and the ability to look at issues from the standpoints of others who are differently situated. young (1990, 1997a, 1997b) argues, however, that the idea of abstraction from the particularities of a situation promoting impartiality is impossible, and that reversibility of perspectives tends to close off the space for dialogue and differentiation among subjects. reversibility here means the ability to separate oneself from one’s own positionality and experiences in order to fully identify with the other. the problem with impartiality for young is that it legitimises the normative perspectives of those with power and results in such perspectives appearing universal and ‘normal’. impartiality therefore obscures difference by masking ‘the ways in which the particular perspectives of dominant groups claim universality, and helps justify hierarchical decision making structures’ (young 1990, p. 97). a universalist ideal serves to decentre issues of difference in the search for a common good, and continues to threaten the exclusion of minority groups. young therefore argues that one cannot extricate oneself from the particularities of one’s life through dialogue with others who represent different positionalities, histories and experiences (young 1997a). seyla benhabib (1992), on the other hand, believes that reversibility is possible and indeed necessary to maintain ‘the ties of reciprocity that bind human communities together’ (stavro 2001, p. 140). while benhabib (1992) believes that the act of seeing our actions through the eyes of another allows us to transcend the limits of our perspectives, dialogic communication cannot, according to young (1990, 1997a, 1997b), produce universality or consensus of thought. instead, it is a ‘way of testing political and moral norms by articulating multiple interests, diverse needs and standpoints’ (stavro 2001, p. 137). rather than adopting an impartial or objective standpoint, dialogic communication for young (1990) should be grounded in a politics of difference. reciprocity should therefore be based on presumed differences between people, as opposed to assumed sameness and the reversibility of subject positions. 9 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context while the notion of asymmetry in young’s (1990, 1997a, 1997b) argument is useful in disrupting normative discourses of reciprocity, the inferred absence of the potential for connectedness is limiting. it is on these grounds that stavro (2001) challenges young’s framework of asymmetrical reciprocity, arguing that the ability to find points of common interest is crucial in opening spaces for dialogic communication. she therefore extends young’s analysis, proposing instead a communicative interaction based on ‘bonds of connectedness that allow us to approach the other’ (stavro 2001, p. 139), in order to forge alliances and make compromises. stavro’s notion of a ‘situated relational body-subject’ (p. 140), acknowledges that, while communication is not unproblematic, we are nonetheless able to share our experiences through dialogue and conscious collaboration. situatedness for stavro suggests that participants enter into communicative spaces as subjects with different histories, knowledges, experiences and social positions – and that they engage with each other from these particular subject positions. the idea of the relational body–subject implies the ability to develop collective understanding and to work together across difference. it is this understanding, as keith (2005, p. 18) argues, that allows one to see ‘difference itself as an asset rather than a deficit’. section three: towards collective empowerment the notion of ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’, as outlined above by young (1990, 1997a, 1997b) and extended by stavro (2001), is useful in grasping the complexities and challenges inherent in the types of partnerships that exist across unequal contexts, such as those exemplified in this article, and between people who bring to those partnerships different histories, experiences, understandings and power relations. stavro’s (2001) divergence from young highlights the possibility for communication and collaboration across difference, in that she views communicative dialogue as not being synonymous with reversibility. in other words, dialogic interaction is not necessarily contingent upon adopting one another’s perspectives, or reversing one’s position to understand the other. developing some understanding of the situations of others does not require that we take up their standpoint. returning to the case of the schools improvement initiative at uct, and to the question raised earlier of what is possible within this particular partnership context, a move to broaden and deepen the conversation was made at the beginning of 2018 in the form of a two-day symposium. the rationale for the dialogue, which included representatives from the partner schools as well as the broader community, was based on the need to dig deeper into the work of the partnership to explore what it means to partner across contexts of difference. the symposium, which also included representatives from a second south african university that is also engaged in university–school–community partnerships, was intended to open the space for self-critique, reflection and dialogue. the sentiment that emerged from the symposium was that, because education is a societal issue, we need to engage more broadly, critique more deeply and work more collaboratively to ensure collective responsibility that encompasses solidarity, reflection and action. emerging from the dialogue, furthermore, was the need to bring greater focus at a national level to the question of what it means to create authentic partnerships across social divides. this pertains to the need to strengthen university–school– community partnerships to cultivate optimal conditions for learning and, more broadly, to generate actions that address the multiple complex challenges facing south african education. the discussions that took place at the symposium and the outcomes reached were documented in a summary report (see hartford 2018). 10 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert the key outcome of the symposium was a collective agreement between participants for a broader conversation involving a wider spectrum of south african universities and community representatives who are engaged, or have an interest in engaging, in university–school– community partnerships. this national dialogue, scheduled for september 2019, is intended to focus on the following questions, collaboratively formulated by the participants during the 2018 symposium: • what are the multiple forms of consultation that need to take place to establish authentic partnerships among the various stakeholders? • how do we build relationships across our partnerships and explore at deeper levels what our individual and collective understanding of partnerships may be? • how do we understand concepts of mutuality and reciprocity across unequal partnerships and how do we build solidarity into multi-stakeholder collaboration? • how do we ensure that no voices are left behind in the co-construction of relevant, contextual responses to the challenges confronting education? • what kinds of spaces need to be created to ensure that these multiple voices are continuously heard and validated in the process of responding to these challenges? the aim of the 2019 national dialogue was for maximum participation and multiple forms of expression to enable vibrant dialogue and divergence of opinion. the above questions were therefore framed to provide a vehicle by which conversations could take place across power differentials. through dialogic exchange, it was hoped that processes of establishing collective empowerment would be deepened and taken forward by university representatives into their respective partnership contexts. the notion of dissensus (de souza 2008) requires an awareness of asymmetry at the level of internal and external differences – both within and between individuals. an openness to the plurality of voices within a shared space of dialogue involves a degree of surrendering one’s own subjectivity to be receptive to the experience of others. drawing on hannah arendt (1958) and emmanel kant, young (1997a, p. 360) describes this as enlarged thought, in which dialogue participants take account of the multiple perspectives of others, enabling an understanding of others across difference: they have had to listen to those expressions with a moral humility which recognises that they stand in relations of asymmetry and irreversibility with others. by means of openness and questioning, as well as efforts to express experiences and values from different perspectives, people sometimes understand one another across difference, even when they do not identify with each other. herein lies the potential for ‘openness to difference’ which, as christie (2018, p. 242) maintains, ‘makes possible creative exchanges and new modalities of understanding’. young (1997a, p. 358) refers to this as ‘a respectful stance of wonder toward other people’, which brings to the interaction an openness and the capacity to ‘[await] new insights about their needs, interests, perceptions, or values’. the act of wonder, however, must involve a re-centring of our own subjectivities, a self-distancing – the ability to see our own position, assumptions and perspectives as strange or ‘other’. if not applied to ourselves, the idea of wonderment, 11 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 from reciprocity to collective empowerment: re-framing university-school partnership discourses in the south african context as stavro (2001) suggests, runs the risk of limiting communication altogether, with the assumption that our experiences are too different and therefore irreconcilable. moving beyond the traditional goal of mutuality and/or reciprocity, the project of partnerships, especially those that include diverse partnering subjects, might more usefully be conceptualised as co-creating dialogic spaces through which partners can achieve collective empowerment and solidarity. whereas striving towards mutuality or reciprocity assumes a shared identity of sameness (‘collective will’), the idea of collective empowerment acknowledges that social dynamics inform different understandings, intentionalities and histories, while making possible authentic points of connectedness. the idea of the situated relational body–subject opens the dialogic space for the multidimensional co-construction of relevant knowledges as well as for generating pluralistic ‘problem-solving ecologies’ (hunter quartz et al. 2017) across partnering contexts. it is through the situated relational body-subject that we are able to grasp the irreducible differences between subject positions and social groups, while simultaneously respecting their potential for interaction. through acknowledging reciprocity that is unequal, new knowledges can be generated with ‘multiple actors’ (oswald, gaventa & leach 2016). concluding thoughts the purpose of this reflective article has been to shed light on some of the key foundational concepts in the partnership literature by critiquing traditional notions of mutuality and reciprocity. by building a more robust, complex and critical language of partnership, all those involved, including university staff, students and school-based role players, might be better equipped to cultivate a communicative ethic which encompasses dialogic engagement and moral humility; an ethic that is not bound by uniformity of perspective, or assumptions of meaning, but accommodates instead the possibility for divergence and dissensus. rather than aspiring towards reciprocity and seeking to know the world of others based on one’s own position, this would require an openness to difference – a commitment to ‘build engagements through “appearance” or presence in speech and actions that ensure the vitality of the partnership around the common focus’ (christie 2018, p. 241). as young (1997b, pp. 52–53) says: communication is sometimes a creative process in which the other person offers a new expression, and i understand it not because i am looking for how it fits with given paradigms, but because i am open and suspend my assumptions in order to listen. christie (2018, p. 241) reminds us that the communicative ‘interactive spaces of this worldin-common need to be respected as fragile and its [sic] existence not taken for granted but consciously nurtured’. strengthening partnerships across unequal contexts requires building a new language of collective empowerment based on asymmetrical reciprocity rather than on assumptions of equivalence. discourses of partnership that push beyond the limits of reciprocity and mutuality might help inform the development of more authentic partnering practices. the implications of stronger partnerships across social divides and socioeconomic differences are important for all partnering subjects, both in terms of processes of partnering and indeed the purpose of the engagement. co-constructing authentic interactions requires that we build upon our differences rather than attempt to overcome them, so that we 12 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, october 2019 silbert understand who we and our partners are (keith 2015) and what is possible within our particular partnership context. a deeper understanding of these social dynamics might enable greater insight into how problems and potentialities of power inform understanding, intentionality and negotiation, and how this may be worked with as a ‘generative force rather than reproducing, or even exacerbating existing inequalities’ (soudien 2018, p. viii). the importance of understanding, negotiating and building upon our differences has implications for developing more authentic forms of community engagement through solidarity and 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https://doi.org/10.15700/201412171322 https://doi.org/10.15700/201412171322 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: bateman, n. 2018. a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship: insights on definitions, practice and evaluation policies. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 56-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v11i1.5579 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship: insights on definitions, practice and evaluation policies nicoleta bateman associate professor of linguistics, department of liberal studies, california state university san marcos, san marcos, ca 92096, usa. nbateman@csusm.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5579 article history: received 17/06/2017; revised 04/02/2018; accepted 23/02/2018; published 31/05/2018 abstract this article contributes to the current conversation surrounding the definition of communityengaged scholarship (ces) by providing critical insights from a linguist’s journey towards establishing a ces partnership with a middle school. i argue that a prescribed ces definition for all disciplines is neither possible nor desirable. ces has gained appeal in recent years because of the mutual benefits promised by the scholar–community partner collaboration. at the same time, the conversation around defining ces is ongoing, highlighting the difficulties in establishing a single definition of ces for all disciplines. in response, individual institutions have adopted their own definition in an effort to help their faculty members navigate ces and assist their efforts towards satisfying requirements for promotion and tenure. while designed to ensure rigorous scholarship and true community involvement, institutionalspecific definitions can unintentionally limit a scholar’s ces options, particularly given the expectations of the tenure and promotion process. as a result, scholars in disciplines which are not well understood outside academia, such as linguistics, find themselves ill-positioned to engage in ces. and as the general public is unfamiliar with the discipline and its benefits, developing mutually beneficial partnerships with community organisations requires an extensive amount of time – more than is usually required of other disciplines engaged in ces. furthermore, tenure and promotion timeline expectations may be incompatible with ces work for some disciplines. two solutions are proposed to address these challenges. first, scholars in disciplines such as linguistics must utilise multiple approaches to developing partnerships, such as volunteerism, community outreach and cross-disciplinary collaboration, and be intentional in college classrooms in engaging undergraduates in activities that make the discipline relevant outside academia. second, they must challenge current ces definitions and declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 56 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5579 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5579 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:nbateman@csusm.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5579 interpretations and advocate for policy changes to the tenure and promotion process on their individual campuses. keywords linguistics, ces definitions, interpretation and recognition, partnership prerequisites introduction this article is a critical reflection of a linguist’s journey towards community-engaged scholarship (ces). it presents insights gained from this process on how researchers in disciplines less known outside academia can begin to conduct ces, and on the current conversation surrounding the various definitions of ces and their interpretation for the tenure and promotion process. over the past two decades, a welcome shift has been experienced by academia as universities and national organisations supporting them place ever-growing importance on meaningful research and knowledge arising from facultycommunity partnerships because of the mutual benefit promised by such collaborations (boyer 1996). this does not mean that such meaningful work did not exist before, rather that it has taken centre stage (fitzgerald et al. 2016; gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013; morrison & wagner 2016). current approaches to engaged scholarship reside on the understanding that academia is not the exclusive generator of knowledge, and that non-academic settings are a source of tremendous learning opportunities and scholarship (boyer 1996; fitzgerald et al. 2016). furthermore, the current view of engagement ‘posits a new framework of scholarship that moves away from emphasizing products to emphasizing impact’ (fitzgerald et al. 2016). however, practice has lagged behind promise (ward & miller 2016). given the requirements and expectations of academics, such as the role of scholarship (publications) in tenure and promotion, and the creation of opportunities for students to engage in work with the community, exactly what counts as scholarship in the community has been the subject of much debate (barker 2004; fitzgerald et al. 2016; gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013; janke & colbeck 2008; o’meara & niehaus 2009; sandmann 2008; wade & demb 2009, 2012). because of the complexity surrounding the factors that influence faculty engagement (e.g. beliefs about student learning, pedagogy, connections to community, shared epistemology), it has been difficult to find a common definition of engaged scholarship (morrison & wagner 2016). in this article i argue that a prescribed common definition is, in fact, not possible or desirable. in general, community-engaged scholarship is ‘scholarship that involves a mutually beneficial partnership with community members or organisations outside of the academy’ (commission on community-engaged scholarship in the health professions 2005). however, because work with community partners includes service-learning, community-based participatory research and other types of community-based work, and because the conversation about how ces is defined is ongoing, some scholars wonder whether their research in the community qualifies as ces for purposes of tenure and promotion (calleson, jordan & seifer 2005; furco 2010; gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013). in an effort to support their faculty members, individual universities develop their own definitions – in itself an acknowledgement of the ongoing conversation. based on my experience as a linguist starting on a path towards ces, i argue that existing definitions and their campus-level adaptations can unintentionally limit understanding of what ces is for some disciplines, including linguistics. for scholars in these disciplines that are bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 57 little known outside academia, the path towards ces is much longer than for those in fields that are better understood by the general public, such as stem disciplines and public health, the birthplace of ces, and steps taken along the way should be recognised by institutions (https://www.ccphealth.org/); maurana et al. 2001). while developing trusting, meaningful relationships with community partners – a prerequisite for ces – is time-consuming and labour-intensive for anyone, regardless of discipline, i argue that some scholarly fields face an additional challenge because the community (here, anyone outside academia) is unfamiliar with their existence and the objectives of the discipline in the first place. as a linguist who primarily teaches prospective k–8 teachers, my interest in ces is fuelled by a desire to promote the personal and societal benefits of the scientific study of language to the broader community. here, i use ‘broader community’ to refer in general to people outside academia who may otherwise never consider the benefits of linguistics as they navigate the multiple communities to which they belong. the idea of community has typically been tied to place (dunham 1986); however, as language users and active social beings, we all belong to various communities, some defined by place, some by language, and some by other means such as common interests and undertakings (bloomfield 1933; gumperz 1971; labov 1972). for the purpose of this article, the community is viewed more specifically as a classroom with students and teachers, and it is also further extended to the school, the students’ and teachers’ families, and to those with whom they interact (battistich et al. 1995; brown 1997). while the benefits of understanding language from a scientific perspective are obvious to linguists, they are not immediately obvious to the community. of utmost importance is the issue of social justice centring around language use and recognition that all dialects of a language are linguistically equal. while most forms of expressing prejudice are frowned upon, overt discrimination based on language is still accepted today because the general public does not understand how language works. thus, non-standard dialects of english as well as various immigrant languages are viewed as ‘bad’ and therefore speakers of those language varieties are viewed as less valuable members of society (baugh 2005; crawford 1995). a clear case for understanding linguistic diversity as an issue of social justice is presented by bilingual education, which has historically been viewed as an issue for ethnic minority students. policies have generally favoured the linguistic and cultural majority, with most bilingual programs resulting in monolingualism rather than bilingualism. by making knowledge about language and linguistics accessible to those outside academia, transforming current practices into ‘communally-based practices of global learning’ can lead to achievable goals of bilingualism, biculturalism, and biliteracy both for ethnic minority and ethnic majority students (akkari & loomis 1998, 2012). with a better understanding of language via linguistic study prior to college, students and teachers would begin a ripple effect that would eventually spread throughout their communities, leading to less language-based discrimination. furthermore, this would have a greater societal impact than studying linguistics only in college, as not every student attends college, and not every college student studies linguistics. to get to this point, however, students and teachers need to understand the building blocks of language and language development in order to arrive at the conclusion that all language varieties are linguistically equal; this can be achieved via working partnerships between linguists and k–12 schools. nevertheless, because of the disconnect between what linguistics is and does, and the community’s unfamiliarity with or lack of understanding of linguistics, establishing such partnerships in a way that is mutually beneficial and not driven by the academy is extremely time-consuming. teachers need time to understand the potential contributions of linguistics a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 58 https://www.ccphealth.org/ to themselves and their students, and their potential contributions to the academy; the linguist has to do the same. while i am now engaged in such a partnership with a teacher at a local middle school, it took more than two years to develop a relationship based on mutual trust which, in turn, brought us to the point where we could begin a truly bidirectional partnership that also involved scholarship – in the sense of outcomes that are ‘rigorous and peer-reviewed’ (gelmon et al. 2012). in this article i reflect critically on insights gained from this process and offer linguists and scholars from other lesser known disciplines suggestions for becoming involved in ces, as well as encourage them to challenge the definitions of ces and their interpretation for the tenure and promotion process. ces definitions and their interpretations over the past two decades ces has been identified as one of the core missions of higher education (boyer 1996; gelmon et al. 2013, p. 58). one goal of ces is for disciplinary faculty to use their expertise in collaboration with community partners, thereby simultaneously creating new knowledge and contributing to the public good. this has been highly appealing to universities and researchers who want to take their work outside academia and create meaningful and mutually beneficial partnerships, responding to boyer’s (1996, p. 11) challenge for higher education to ‘become a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic and moral problems and … reaffirm its historic commitment to … the scholarship of engagement’ (italics added). while this sounds positive from all perspectives, it also presents some unexpected challenges. on the one hand, exactly how to define the ‘scholarship of engagement’ and community-engaged scholarship is still currently the subject of debate, which leaves room for differences in interpretation. on the other hand, current definitions assume that all disciplines should be able to engage in ces in the same way. over the years, the term engaged scholarship (or scholarship of engagement) has referenced a multitude of university-community collaborative work, including service-learning, community-based participatory research, outreach, community development, and different forms of civic engagement (calleson, jordan & seifer 2005; gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013; sandmann 2008). these different types of engagement obviously have different outcomes and levels of scholarship, which impact aspects of tenure and promotion expectations. sandmann (2008, p. 101), in her review of the literature on what the scholarship of engagement has meant over the years, concludes that ces is ‘still emerging from its “definitional anarchy” and is still evolving as an interdisciplinary field for academic research’. community-engaged scholarship currently combines ‘the principles of community engagement with accepted standards of scholarship’ (gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013, p. 59), and is thus defined further at the level of the institution. this is an important point, because scholars work both within their broader disciplinary framework and within the parameters established by their institutions. this may not be best practice, however, given the diversity of disciplines and the knowledge that communities have, or do not have, about those disciplines. morrison and wagner (2016) argue that the faculty perspective must be taken into account in the ces debate. in order to ‘make sense of the complex list of factors influencing how faculty engage, their reasons for doing it, and how institutions can support them’, we need to understand ‘how faculty define and make meaning of ces for themselves’ (morrison & wagner 2016, p. 9). and addressing the issue of potential research partnerships with non-academics, ward and miller (2016, p. 189) state, ‘how the individual work of both faculty and staff is marginalized, valued, validated, recognized, and rewarded through formal promotion structures and processes remains an area bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 59 of needed attention within and across institutions of higher education’. therefore, an argument can be made that a monolithic definition of ces is neither possible nor desirable. yet, faculty need guidance on how to situate their work. the california state university (csu) is the largest four-year public university system in the united states, with 23 campuses. a survey of the csu’s websites on community engagement shows that, at the time of writing, only six campuses specifically define or discuss community-engaged scholarship and emphasise the importance of reciprocity in universitycommunity partnerships. fourteen other campuses emphasise service-learning as the primary focus of community-engagement work, and a few others also encourage participatoryaction research, internships and other forms of research, teaching or service that benefit the community. this range of emphases is expected, and it is likely that more campuses will specifically address ces in the future. however, this also means that individual campuses may place a different value on various types of work that faculty conduct in the community. according to one institution’s definition, in the context of the broader national conversation, ces ‘is centered on a mutually-beneficial collaboration between the university and a community partner outside the academy’, contributes to the public good and ‘meets the needs of the community partner as defined and expressed by the partner’. moreover, for university-community partnership work to be considered ces (as opposed to servicelearning or participatory-action research, for example), it must either involve a ‘strong bidirectional relationship’ or be ‘community driven’, as shown in the last two columns in the chart in figure 1. this chart is provided on the institution’s ces webpage to help explain the campus definition of ces and to guide faculty towards rigorous ces work. the original source is a document created by the us environmental protection agency’s national center for environmental research (ncer, 2015), whose goal is to support funding for quality research related to the environment. however, recognising the importance of people within communities and how significant outcomes from community research can only be achieved through the direct involvement of the community, the ncer drafted a primer on community-engaged research (cenr). this document is directed to academics in general, recognises ‘the strengths of the community institutions and individual members’ and identifies cenr along a continuum of engagement between researcher and community partner, as outlined in the chart below. ces, as separate from service-learning or community-based research, involves only the last two columns. the above ces definition and its interpretation are helpful guides for scholars to determine what type of work constitutes ces. at the same time, faculty in disciplines which are not well known outside academia, such as linguistics, find themselves ill-positioned to engage in such scholarship for two reasons: (1) the community is unfamiliar with the discipline and its potential contribution to the public good, and is therefore unprepared to engage in true bidirectional collaboration, and (2) the linguist/researcher lacks a network of relationships with communities apart from those with which they conduct their research (e.g. documenting or extensively studying a language). the combination of these two factors leads to a lengthier process for linguists as they pursue ces if their ces work is outside the typical linguist’s communities of focus. a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 60 figure 1 spectrum of community involvement in research it is important to emphasise that this is neither the fault of the community nor of the field of linguistics. while more linguists today than at any other time are becoming involved in outreach and seeking to work with teachers in k–12 schools, convincing teachers and schools to incorporate linguistics in the curriculum has been slow because of a lack of understanding, curricular constraints, strong adherence to traditional notions of grammar and the nature of adopting curricular changes in general (reaser 2010). part of the reason for this, however, is that, traditionally, linguistics has been a higher education discipline and its broader value to society is not well understood by the general public, and this has been detrimental to both the field and the broader community. simply put, outside academia linguistics is primarily misunderstood as either the language police or the polyglot society. usually the first question people ask when they learn someone is a linguist is ‘how many languages do you speak?’, followed or preceded by a comment along the lines of ‘uh oh, i better watch what i say’. neither of these is actually true of linguists who generally concern themselves with speakers’ actual knowledge and use of language (though some linguists do speak multiple languages) rather than prescriptive grammatical rules. linguists have worked in and with communities to document languages or conduct other research, and sometimes this has served the needs of the community. for example, linguists have contributed a great deal to language documentation, whether the linguist sought out a community or vice versa. in the case of the kawaiisu speakers in tehachapi, california, it was they who approached linguist jocelyn ahlers to assist with the documentation of their language; the community-determined goals and outcomes constitute ces work even under more prescribed definitions (personal communication). the work of linguists also is critical to the conversation about bilingualism and bilingual education, bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 61 speech and language pathology, text-to-speech and speech-to-text software development, education, law and public health, to name a few of an ever-growing list of benefits. however, not all of these applications are obviously linked with linguistic study in the public view. linguistics is not usually discovered by students (myself included) until college. in recent years, recognising these shortcomings, linguistics has made it a priority for linguists to become more active in making the discipline ‘recognizable’ outside academia via public outreach and involvement in k–12 classrooms (denham & lobeck 2010; godley, reaser & moore 2015; linguistics society of america 2017; reaser et al. 2017). as a linguist who teaches prospective teachers, i have come to recognise the role that my current students will have in making language relevant to their students – and the communities to which they belong – beyond their expected understanding that language is used for communication, reading and writing. while the role of linguistics in the k–12 classroom was explored and recognised earlier by a handful of people (denham & lobeck 2010; fillmore & snow 2000; honda & o’neil 1993, 2008; honda, o’neil & pippin 2004; reaser et al. 2017), recognition has grown over the years, but not yet to a level where it has made a significant impact in our communities. thus, the general public still does not have a clear understanding of what linguistics is or does. on the other hand, linguists do not have first-hand experience working in k–12 classrooms and therefore are unfamiliar with the needs of students and teachers. as gelmon, jordan and seifer (2013, p. 63) state, ‘in some disciplines and institutions, faculty may not know where to find a “real” community-based organization or understand how a collaboration might be beneficial to their scholarship, their students, and their institution’. linguists have ideas of how linguistics can contribute to a faculty–community partnership. however, given the interpretation of the ces definition that the partnership be ‘bidirectional’ or ‘community driven’ as it addresses an issue ‘defined and expressed by the partner’, linguists such as myself find themselves in a difficult position. on the one hand, a potential community partner, in this case a school, or a k–12 teacher, does not know that linguistics exists, what it does, or that there are linguists at a university with whom they could collaborate and create new knowledge for the benefit of both partners. in fact, the community may not even know that an issue might exist in the first place. for example, discrimination based on language persists without notice even as other forms of overt discrimination are generally frowned upon. this can take the shape of discrimination based on non-standard dialects of english, languages other than english spoken in the us, or even english spoken as a second language. looking at language from a scientific perspective can help not only to develop students’ inquiry skills, but also to highlight the fact that all dialects are linguistically equal (crawford 1995; reaser et al. 2017). this is an issue of social justice and would potentially translate into less language-based discrimination in the school, family and broader communities with which the students and their families interact. but if the community is not aware of what linguistics does or of an existing issue that could be addressed, and if the linguist does not have a preexisting partnership that may have been established for some purpose other than ces, then the process towards ces will take that much longer – longer, i would argue, than for someone in a discipline that is at least somewhat better understood outside academia. furthermore, the impact of the work in the larger community, outside of the school, for example, may not be visible until much later, as the students become agents of change within their families and other communities. in turn, the characteristics of these communities – extended families or neighbourhoods – will also direct the impact of the work. it will take a lot longer to create a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 62 http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/school-curriculum change both with and by students whose families support the ‘english-only movement’, for example. if ces is defined in such a way that it is restricted to a collaboration instigated by the community partner to address a need experienced by that community, the linguist cannot approach a community partner with an idea for a project or an issue that could be addressed via the partnership. as i suggest in the later section on lessons learned, in order to achieve a truly bidirectional collaboration the scholar must first engage in various activities (e.g. volunteering, community outreach) that will nurture trust and inform the partner of the objectives and societal benefits of the discipline, and must in turn be informed by the partner and their needs. while this may appear true for any discipline, the crucial point here is that more familiar disciplines (e.g. art, stem, or health-related) will not face as long a process. in the next section i reflect further upon my own experience and offer suggestions for how linguists, and others from similarly challenged disciplines, can develop community partnerships that will lead to community-engaged scholarship. reflections of a linguist’s journey towards a ces partnership since beginning to work with undergraduates who are prospective k–8 teachers a decade ago, i have been contemplating the role of linguistics in the school curriculum. having graduated from a highly theoretical linguistics department, where we were all majoring in linguistics and then working on our doctorate degrees, i had taken it for granted that interest in linguistics was just there in the classroom. everyone was taking linguistics because they loved the subject for its own sake. however, faced with students who were taking linguistics classes not because they liked linguistics, but because they were required to take these classes, i found myself answering a lot of questions about the reasons we were studying language from a scientific perspective. while some students loved the subject, others struggled to understand its purpose. it was not difficult to demonstrate how certain aspects would be beneficial to them in their future profession as teachers. for example, learning about dialects, linguistic diversity and bilingualism were topics that most students immediately identified with and could see how they would be relevant. to some extent, learning about phonetics and phonology, the sound system of language, was also accepted as playing a role in how they could help their students to read and write, and understand their students’ phonetic spelling in the early grades. what was more difficult was keeping that interest when doing serious linguistic analysis, which can be tedious and challenging, and getting students to think of ways they could use linguistics when they became teachers. i further realised that i, too, had a limited understanding of how it might be relevant, and that without working in the k–8 classroom with teachers and students, i would continue to be limited in my understanding. the idea of working with teachers in the classroom is not a new one. as mentioned in the previous section, honda, o’neil, pippin, denham and lobeck have been involved in such work for some time on small projects that started either in their children’s classrooms or with teachers they already knew and who were comfortable with them. however, while this work constituted engaged scholarship, it was not necessarily community-engaged scholarship. this work was intended to introduce students to linguistics and was also a way to test the hypotheses entertained by linguists about the role that linguistics played in the primary and secondary grades, such as developing scientific thinking skills (denham & lobeck 2010; honda & o’neil 2008). the bidirectional and reciprocal components of the partnership were not obvious. bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 63 in spring 2015, i had not yet encountered the field of ces, but i wanted to begin working in a classroom. i approached my daughter’s former fourth grade teacher and suggested some ways in which we could talk about language and linguistics and how this could address some of the recent common core curriculum standards, such as developing scientific writing, under the college and career readiness standards, or developing foundational skills of word analysis (e.g. working with latin and greek roots). the teacher was very open to the idea and graciously offered class time for me to volunteer once a week during the semester. the lessons were primarily identified by me and approved by the teacher. the students enjoyed all the activities that we conducted (e.g. figuring out parts of speech from lewis carol’s jabberwocky, or greek and latin roots from harry potter’s spells); however, we did not create new knowledge, as necessitated by scholarship. i did not know how to properly articulate the goals of this work within the context of ces because i was not familiar with ces. i was focused on how linguistics could be used in the classroom in a way that would engage students, and what i could learn from the experience so that i could bring that to my own classroom for future teachers at the university. this had the potential to be ces, but it was not, and i really did not know how to do it. no research had been conducted, only practice of linguistics with fourth graders, and observation of what that might mean for my own prospective teacher students. during the same semester, my institution announced that there would be a year-long faculty learning community (flc) focused on community-engaged scholarship, and the brief description in the announcement seemed to be exactly what i needed for the work i wanted to do. i applied to participate in the flc, and joined the flc the following year. the flc had three other faculty members from different disciplines and two facilitators. i naively believed that, based on my experience with the fourth grade, i would be ready to engage in ces a year from then, and i saw the flc as a supportive environment for that type of work. the plan was to develop a new partnership (for practical reasons i wanted to work with a school that was close to my university) and begin the work as soon as possible. as we began discussing ces and what it entailed, i realised that i had not understood it properly. in particular, the requirement that there be a ‘bidirectional’ or ‘community driven’ partnership involved in identifying the issue to be addressed became an almost insurmountable challenge. approaching a teacher at a new school with an idea about a partnership in a field that was not well understood by the community, and expecting the teacher to recognise a potential need that the partnership could address, seemed impossible. also, the school i wanted to partner with was a new school that my children were attending. as such, i had the slight, but marginal, advantage of being an ‘insider’. the teachers knew me as a new parent, but we had no history and no relationship. nevertheless, this was helpful as i did not approach teachers as a complete ‘outsider’ (post et al. 2016). after a few attempts at connecting with teachers, which included offers by me to volunteer and collaborate on any language-related projects they might identify, i successfully connected with the teacher with whom i am currently working. this was a longer process than i had anticipated, spanning the academic year, which may have been attributable to a number of factors. first, the teachers may have been overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to accomplish during the year, and adding one more thing to the schedule had seemed prohibitive. second, and i would argue more likely, the relevance of linguistics and what a potential partnership could accomplish was not obvious to the teachers. third, and also probably equally significant, my in-between position as an insider–outsider at the beginning of the year shifted closer to ‘insider’ towards the end of the year, thus providing an advantage a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 64 (dwyer & buckle 2009). still, despite this advantage, it took more than two years to begin the ces work. when i met with the teacher, an 8th grade humanities instructor, i was forthcoming from the beginning about the goals of a potential partnership and shared with her a tremendously helpful tool, a matrix for planning and implementing a ces project (figure 2), adapted by my university from the original work of jeffrey howard at the ginsberg center, university of michigan (2007). the matrix outlines the purposes of a partnership and emphasises the role of the community partner. figure 2 matrix for planning and implementing a ces project i knew by the time we met, which was at the end of one year of effort and learning about ces, that community organisations are often tired of being approached by university faculty who want to conduct their research there (the ‘parachute’ approach), so i wanted to make it clear from the beginning that this was not that type of work. the teacher was excited to see that the goals were truly paying attention to the needs of the school, and even though we did not have a clear idea of how the project would work, we decided to give it a try the following year and see what happened. we discussed some possible things that we could do, and the teacher identified the need for her students to improve their fundamental knowledge of how english works so they could become better writers. that was a good start and the beginning of a developing relationship. over the course of the following school year we co-taught a group of 8th grade students once a week, each time responding to the needs of the students as identified by the teacher and the students. we worked on grammatical structure, latin and greek roots, and non-standard dialects of english. by the end of the year, we had an engaged partnership and we had built trust. we understood what each of us could bring to the partnership and how the students could benefit from our collaboration. so by the end of the first year of collaborative work we were poised to engage in ces the following year. the school is designed around project-based learning, a teaching methodology which is student-centred and via which students acquire skills and knowledge by engaging in long-term bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 65 inquiry around a particular problem or real-world question (blumenfeld et al. 2005; dewey 1959). while the actual work is outside the scope of this article, we are currently exploring ways to incorporate linguistics into the students’ projects, rather than have it as a peripheral subject of interest, with the goal of both strengthening their writing skills and making them more aware of linguistic diversity so they are more informed citizens and users of language. we have designed specific instruments to evaluate whether and how students achieve these goals, hence our work now includes scholarship and the creation of new knowledge, which will benefit both the community and the university. what should be clear from this reflection is that advancing to the starting line for conducting ces in a field such as linguistics is a very long process. in my case, it took over two years. some disciplines may have a shorter path because they are better understood by the community. for example, stem disciplines, because of their prominence in the media and in the school curriculum, may find it easier to engage in this type of work. likewise, the health professions, where this work began, are also better understood and the benefits to the community are more immediately obvious. even within the field of linguistics there are subdisciplines which are easier or more difficult for the public to access. for example, sociolinguistics and language acquisition are much more accessible, while the formal study of phonetics and phonology (sound systems) or syntax (language structure) is less accessible. linguists from these subfields, such as myself, must find ways to connect their work to the broader interests of the community and be committed to a long-term partnership so that eventually the more abstract aspects of linguistic study can become accessible and meaningful. for example, it would be difficult to form a partnership with a school on the grounds of studying the sounds of language without connecting it to the role that sounds play in learning foreign languages, or how non-native accents can be explained and why some accents are viewed as more desirable or less desirable than others. some linguists have forged pathways within the public health field, focusing on issues of public health literacy, and have successfully contributed to the public good by offering practical solutions to creating more accessible health information that is also linguistically and culturally informed (ellis, connor & marshall 2014; parmer et al. 2015; zarcadoolas 2005). this does not mean that the work for these more easily recognised disciplines is any less demanding – researchers still have to develop trusting relationships with community partners, and this is time-consuming. what it does mean, however, is that linguistics, in general, and potentially other social sciences and humanities have an additional obstacle to overcome, which is the fact that the community does not know that they exist. to sum up, there are two reasons why ces is difficult for linguists: (1) the definition of ces and its interpretation, which may discourage participation in ces in the first place, and (2) a lack of understanding of linguistics outside academia. in the next section i offer suggestions for how this type of work can be conducted more effectively by inviting linguists to contribute to the creation of policies clarifying community-engaged scholarship expectations for tenure and promotion at their institutions and beyond, and to engage in a number of activities that will improve understanding of linguistics outside academia in order to eventually break this cycle. lessons learned and potential solutions i learned two things from this two-year process. first, as new modes of research develop, we have to be careful with how we define them and how those definitions are interpreted, both at a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 66 the individual and the institutional level. second, linguistics as a field needs to do a better job of making the discipline a household name. students should not have to wait till college to hear about linguistics. regarding the first point, current definitions and interpretations of ces mean that ces will require additional time for some disciplines. as i have shown, it can take years to even begin to conduct research that may subsequently become published material, which is what promotion and tenure committees expect to see (gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013). because not all disciplines have the same standing in the community, they cannot all begin ces work in the same way or within the same timeframe. this has significant implications for the tenure and promotion process and may discourage scholars from participating in ces altogether, forcing them to focus instead on projects they can quickly turn into publications, but which may not be as meaningful. most universities do not offer the support needed by faculty to engage in this type of work, yet they expect this type of work to be conducted. a possible solution to this is for scholars to advocate for the development of promotion and tenure policies that recognise the lengthy preliminary work done by the scholar with the community partner as an explicitly essential and valid part of a faculty member’s scholarship productivity, even though that work may not be published or publishable in traditional venues. the community-campus partnership for health website provides a toolkit for scholars (https:// ccph.memberclicks.net/ces-toolkit) to help them prepare tenure and promotion portfolios highlighting their work in the community, and these scholars should be able to use the work entailed in building a community-scholar partnership that precedes actual ces work as scholarship, rather than service. with respect to the second point, the field of linguistics has already recognised the need to make linguistics better understood. if this were achieved, and people in the community understood ‘linguistics’ the way they understand ‘mathematics’ (mathematics itself has its own issues with being misunderstood by the public, yet it is still better understood than linguistics), then the journey for a linguist wanting to engage in ces might be somewhat shortened. some things are already being done to make this a reality, but the efforts are scattered across the country and conducted unsystematically by people like myself who are interested in this type of work. the linguistics society of america encourages public outreach, including participation in stem events where community members can see language as a science, and has a committee on language in the school curriculum charged with exploring and pursuing ‘ways in which the linguistics community can have an effect on school instruction in languagerelated topics, including linguistics’ (linguistics society of america website). current efforts include exploring more ways to incorporate linguistics in schools and encouraging more university faculty to partner with teachers, particularly at the high-school level, to introduce linguistics to students. in addition, linguists can follow the models of connor, rubin and zarcadoolas, who have successfully merged their linguistics interests and professional training with public health (ellis, connor & marshall 2014; parmer et al. 2015; zarcadoolas, pleasant & greer 2005). to these efforts i would add volunteerism, collaboration between linguists and faculty members in other disciplines to seek convergent goals and possible partnerships (anderson 2017) and working with university students who are studying to be teachers (see also denham & lobeck 2010 and fillmore & snow 2000). based on my experience, a linguist–teacher partnership requires a lot of volunteer time; therefore, linguists interested in pursuing this type of work should consider carefully their reasons for doing so (short-term product, long-term impact and product), the time they have to devote to it, and the level of departmental and institutional support. it is also critical that, bateman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 67 https://ccph.memberclicks.net/ces-toolkit https://ccph.memberclicks.net/ces-toolkit http://www.linguisticsociety.org/about/who-we-are/committees/language-school-curriculum in pursuing such a partnership, the linguist respond to the teacher’s and their students’ needs, which may require classroom observation, becoming familiar with state standards, and having open discussions about the needs identified by the teacher and how linguistics can provide inquiry-based creative ways of addressing those needs. because volunteering may not always be recognised as an academic pursuit, when discussing this work for the purpose of tenure or promotion, faculty members should highlight the contribution of the collaboration to the community and to their own professional development, as i have done here: it is a pathway towards ces and the work itself has academic value. furthermore, as more faculty members become involved in community-engaged work (whether service-learning or ces), linguists should seek out collaboration with faculty in other disciplines with whom they may share similar perspectives on ces (morrison & wagner 2016). while it is unrealistic and impractical to have a linguist conducting ces in every k–12 classroom, linguists who work with future teachers at the undergraduate level have the opportunity to make this type of work relevant and to prepare their students to become teachers who will use linguistics in their classrooms for all its individual and societal benefits. linguists need to develop partnerships with teachers so that they can tailor college-level linguistics curricula accordingly. one can envision an undergraduate course where prospective teachers regularly engage with students in schools with which the instructors (linguists) have established partnerships and actually conduct research. the prospective teachers might discuss the role of linguistics in education with each other and with their instructor, meet with the public school teachers, and together establish some research topic of interest to both (e.g. how can students learn what sentence fragments are, and how can they edit their own writing for fragments?). the prospective teachers might subsequently (1) discuss linguistically informed approaches to understanding fragments, such as inquiry-based exercises that illustrate what fragments are and how they are not always ‘bad’ as is typically taught (they are actually desirable in spoken language); (2) hypothesise what types of activities would lead students to recognise and edit fragments in their own writing; and (3) conduct research in the classroom to evaluate whether those methods were successful and whether students understood that there is a difference between spoken and written language. this discussion could be extended further to differences in registers and dialects, and has the potential to positively contribute to the public good. linguists who do not work specifically with future teachers would benefit from highlighting this type of work in their classes as well. most undergraduates in linguistics do not go on to become researchers, but rather become technical writers, lawyers, speech and language pathologists, or foreign language teachers. k–12 education is a profession they should consider, and it might be one they would consider if the connections between linguistics and education were made evident. researchers and teachers in fields that are in a similar situation to linguistics would benefit from the same suggestions offered above. whatever the field, finding service opportunities in order to develop relationships with community partners can lead to the development of a ces project. one can even envision a service-to-ces pathway where faculty and students engage in service-learning opportunities, building trusting partnerships between the university and the community partner, which then leads to ces (vogel & seifer 2011). service-learning can be used towards this goal, as in the case of prospective teachers working with linguistically and culturally diverse students as they themselves build sociolinguistic knowledge and language skills that they can use in their future classrooms (fan 2013). subsequently, this work can lead to ces for students and linguists alike. a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 68 designing a university curriculum that emphasises the role of the discipline to the broader community will create citizens who take that knowledge into the community. as scholars in these fields, we need to adopt a long-term perspective and expect future generations to have a better understanding of these lesser known fields than has the current generation. conclusions community-engaged scholarship is encouraged by universities and funding agencies as it offers opportunities for conducting meaningful work with community partners for the mutual benefit of the community and the researcher. as such, ces is both a challenging and a rewarding avenue for research, as well as a high-stakes item in the review process for tenure and promotion. these two factors, the topic of this article, have different implications given the current conversation in the ces field. as a relatively new concept that incorporates scholarship in community-engaged work, ces is still being redefined, even at the individual university level. current definitions and their interpretations can be too restrictive for disciplines that are not well understood outside academia, such as linguistics, thereby creating unanticipated challenges. while ces requires a significant investment of time for any faculty dedicated to cultivating trust-based community relationships – a prerequisite for ces work – faculty in these disciplines have to spend much more time not only cultivating the partnership, but also making the discipline and its benefits understandable to the partner without resorting to a top–down approach to research (where the academic imposes the research on the partner). this is necessary in order for both partner and researcher to arrive at a mutually beneficial project, which is a fundamental expectation of ces. a more prescribed definition, set at institutional level, can have the unintentional effect of limiting understanding of what ces can be, and in effect discourage the pursuit of ces by some disciplines. based on my personal experience with the process of engaging in ces as a linguist, i have offered suggestions for linguists and academics in similar disciplines on how to begin such work and how to advocate for such work to be recognised for tenure and promotion purposes. the faculty member can seek out service opportunities in the community to learn about the potential partner’s needs and inform them about their discipline as part of the partnership negotiation process. further, they can suggest and advocate for the creation of university policies that take the lengthy and complex preliminary work of ces into account as part of the faculty member’s scholarly work for the tenure and promotion process, and they can also participate in activities that will make their discipline more accessible to the 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sterling, va. zarcadoolas, c, pleasant, a & greer, d 2005, ‘understanding health literacy: an expanded model’, health promotion international, vol. 20, no. 2: pp. 195–203. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dah609 a linguist’s journey toward community engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 72 https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2015.0071 https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2015.0071 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v4i0.1789 https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2012.0019 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dah609 engaging evaluation research reflecting on the process of sexual assault/ domestic violence protocol evaluation research this article discusses and reflects on the community engagement that brought together our complex partnership to conceptualise, design, conduct and communicate evaluation research on one community’s sexual assault and domestic violence (sadv) protocol. our article sits within the scholarship on communityuniversity (cu) partnerships as a subcategory of the scholarship of engagement literature (see mcnall et al. 2009). it looks at our partnership through the lens of sadler et al.’s (2012) guidelines for ethical conduct of community-engaged research (cenr) projects. we critically reflect on the extent to which our cu partnership practices and community-engaged research fit with the following guidelines: 1) create an ethical framework; 2) promote diversity; 3) share decision-making; 4) share benefits; 5) train research partners. our goal is to offer other community-engaged/ community-based participatory researchers (cbpr), protocol evaluation researchers, practice/service researchers, practitioners and service providers practical insights into community-engaged evaluation research while satisfying the principles of ethical conduct for community-engaged research. the context for this cenr project starts with the work of the community partner. the guelph-wellington action committee on sexual assault and domestic violence (the action committee) is chaired by a local violence against women agency and represents 29 organisations from various sectors (including law enforcement, victim services, child welfare, social services, religious community, addictions and mental health, health care and education) within the guelph-wellington community which provide services and support to women and children who have experienced sexual assault and/or domestic violence. the action committee has been meeting in different forms for approximately 20 years. it is one of about 48 domestic violence community coordinating committees (also known as dv3cs and violence against women coordinating committees) in ontario, canada, and receives annual funding from the ontario ministry of community and social services. some of this funding has been used to create the position of an action committee coordinator, who supports the gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 7 (2014): 1–17 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 mavis morton anne bergen sara crann danielle bader university of guelph melissa horan wellington-dufferinguelph public health linzy bonham guelph-wellington action committee on sexual assault and domestic violence 2 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham work of the committee. the action committee coordinator and a representative from wellington dufferin guelph public health (one of the 26 agencies mentioned above) represent the community partners in this community-engaged evaluation research and are two of the authors of this paper. in 2003, the action committee came together to develop a first response protocol (‘the protocol’) after recognising the need to increase service provider collaboration to better assist women and children who have experienced sadv. the latest version of the protocol was published in 2010. the protocol ‘provides principles, guidelines and clarity on the role that participating agencies will play when encountering women, children and vulnerable adults in situations of sexual assault and domestic violence’ (guelphwellington action committee 2010, p. 2). the primary purpose of the research study was to conduct evaluation research on the protocol from a service provider and service user perspective, and to assess how well it was working to improve the community’s system response to sexual assault and domestic violence. based on the needs of the action committee, and guided by a literature review, the following research questions were articulated by the research team: (1) to what extent are the protocol objectives (i.e. caring and consistent response, limits of confidentiality, safety planning and risk assessment, referrals, follow-up and support) being met? (2) to what extent do the current protocol objectives meet the needs and issues facing women and children who experience sexual and/or domestic violence? (3) to what extent does the protocol meet the needs of service providers in their work with individuals who have been impacted by sexual assault and/ or domestic violence? we conducted 33 individual interviews, 94 online surveys and 5 focus groups and obtained additional secondary data (i.e. agency reported occurrences of sexual and domestic violence and other service delivery statistics). in addition to the community partners (the action committee coordinator and the public health representative), the university side of the partnership included a pre-tenured faculty member in the department of sociology and anthropology, three graduate students (one ma student in criminology, criminal justice policy, a phd student in applied social psychology from the university of guelph, and one masters of social work student from the university of windsor) and a knowledge mobilization coordinator from the institute for community engaged scholarship (ices)/research shop, university of guelph. in light of the composition of our cu partnership and the mutual interest we had in conducting evaluation research on the sadv protocol, a community-engaged research (cenr) methodology was an obvious approach. we concur with sadler and colleagues’ (2012, p. 463) articulation of cenr as research that includes ‘… varying degrees of collaboration between community and academic partners, and the specific methodologic approaches defined in cbpr include essential elements of trust 3 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham building and power sharing, finding shared interests, fostering colearning and capacity building, building on strengths and using an iterative process, and these elements ultimately result in the balance of research with action’. in fact, social justice and social transformation are supported by moving away from traditional methods of practice and community and university silos (israel et al. 2001, 2010; schensul 2010; stoecker 2010; wallerstein & duran 2006, 2010). by answering questions that the community wants answered in ways that are meaningful and relevant to that community, we increase the relevance and impact of research and therefore the chance it will lead to positive community-level change (leung, yen & minkler 2004; minkler 2005). in our case we employed principles aligned with community-based research (cbr) (flicker et al. 2008), community-based participatory research (cbpr) (israel et al. 2008), practice research (secret, abell & berlin 2011) and participatory action research (par) (mctaggert 1991). cbpr and par are complementary methodologies that align well within the broader principles of cenr. the w.k. kellogg foundation (n.d.) characterised cbpr as a collaborative process that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognises their unique strengths (ccph 2013). cbpr begins with a research topic of importance to the community and aims to create knowledge and action for positive social change (flicker et al. 2007). in our case ‘community’ refers to involvement by over two dozen serviceproviding agencies (who represent the non-profit and government sectors) and individuals with a common interest (women who have experienced violence and action committee member agencies) within a particular geographical location (guelph-wellington). our academic partners included five multidisciplinary (pivik & goelman 2011) researchers (in sociology, criminology, applied psychology, social work, and public health). in what follows we reflect on the characteristics of our partnership and our ability to practise principles that sadler et al. (2012) and others outline as crucial for quality, ethical and successful cu partnerships. as part of reflecting on our cu partnership as a means to train research partners, we specifically address the opportunity we had to teach and mentor students in cenr. characteristics and principles of quality, ethical and successful cu partnerships while quality, ethical and successful cu partnerships can occur within many kinds of collaborations, there is agreement in the literature on the characteristics and principles that allow such partnerships to develop, sustain and produce social change. in fact, frazier et al. (2008) argue that, in the context of ‘services’ research, collaboration is an ethical obligation. yet, pivik and goelman (2011) suggest that less is known about the elements that are important for successful partnerships, including community service providers, and processes. begun et al. (2010) suggest that 4 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham specific strategies need to be identified for building and sustaining research collaborations between university and communitybased social work professionals. secret, abell and berlin (2011, p. 9) concur that little has been written about collaboration strategies that can guide a practice research team through the research process. it is to this particular context that our case study contributes (see shoultz et al. 2006; secret, abell & berlin 2011). specifically, we explore the characteristics of our partnership and critically reflect on the extent to which our cu partnership practices and cenr research fit with sadler et al.’s (2012) guidelines below. 1. create an ethical framework in order to create an ethical framework, sadler et al. (2012) suggest that partner responsibilities need to be recognised, clear and valued. more specifically, they recommend signing a letter of understanding that specifies what is being agreed to and what the risks and benefits are to the individual/institutional partners. in our case, the action committee coordinator and the chair of the action committee worked with the faculty member and the knowledge mobilization coordinator from ices, university of guelph, to develop and negotiate a research contract as well as an ethics application, which was submitted to the university of guelph research ethics board for approval. working on both of these documents helped to facilitate conversations and negotiate roles, responsibilities and plans for mutual benefits and outcomes. however, the assumption inherent in this recommendation does not take into account how difficult this process is, especially at the beginning of a partnership. we agree with beere (2009) and many others (e.g. israel et al. 2008; secret, abell & berlin 2011) who argue that what is common among successful community-campus partnerships are relationships characterised by mutuality and a shared commitment to achieve an agreed goal. however, we would argue that being able to identify and agree on the roles and responsibilities of each partner at the contract stage is not realistic. if the cu partnership is new, developing an authentic, genuine relationship that is founded on respect, trust and communication can be a real challenge (beere 2009; furco 2010) and takes time. begun et al. (2010, p. 55) acknowledge that through their experiences they have come to appreciate that ‘for all its simplicity … collaboration also is immensely complex’ (kavanagh 1995, p. 46) and the reality is that research partnerships take time, strong social skills and patience to develop and evolve (bowen & martens 2006; gass 2005; reid & vianna 2001). in our case, a pre-existing relationship (see maurrasse 2001; mcnall et al. 2009; wiewel & lieber 1998) between the action committee chair and the faculty member was an important context for entering and negotiating the cu partnership, partly because of its authenticity and genuine character (ball & janyst 2008; el ansari, phillips & zwi 2002). for instance, the action committee chair was confident 5 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham that partnering with this particular faculty member would be beneficial and useful for the community. similarly, the pre-existing relationships between the action committee coordinator and service providing agencies catalysed opportunities for the research team to connect with, communicate with and obtain input from agency representatives. this personal and prior connection allowed for greater engagement by service providers in the research process. it also helped facilitate additional recruitment of research participants (service users and service providers) from these agencies that would not have been possible without these preexisting positive relationships. our cu experience revealed that pre-existing relationships and opportunities for new relationships to develop over time were instrumental to the success of our cu partnership and our community-engaged research. 2. promote diversity sadler et al. (2012) recommend that a true partnership requires both the university and the community to recognise and appreciate each other’s diversity. among other things, this means that the beneficiaries of the research need to reflect the diversity of the community as broadly as possible. in our case, our mutual interest in a cbpr and cenr approach ensured that we intentionally sought diversity at both levels. the initial engagement between cu partners embraced and valued the collaboration of the community and university as part of the research team. in addition to the diversity of the cu partnership and research team, our methodological commitments encouraged an intentional recruitment process from service providers and service users that reflected the diversity of guelph-wellington. for example, adult women who had experienced sexual assault and/or domestic violence in guelph-wellington and disclosed their experience of violence to an action committee agency (aka service users) were recruited from a community sample from a variety of sources. despite our attempt to hear from a diverse population of women (service users) who reflected the geography and demography of guelph-wellington, we were not completely successful. the majority of the women who ended up participating in interviews (n=33) were primarily white, heterosexual and low-income urban dwellers. in particular, we were unsuccessful in hearing from many of the rural women who live outside of the city of guelph. as for our ability to recruit service providers to participate in the research, we were more successful. out of 27 different agencies that were signatories to the protocol, we heard from 94 service providers. while we were satisfied with this level of diversity from service providers, it was not without a great deal of time, attention, resources and strategies that this response was realised. begun et al.’s (2010, p. 56) reference to sobell (1996) is particularly relevant to us: time-, personnel-, and effort-intensive partnerships can contribute to the development of research that has ‘real-world’ relevance to 6 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham the social work profession, greater engagement and ‘buy in’ by participating individuals, and improved reliability and validity of research results. in addition to our efforts to increase the diversity of our research participants, the diversity of our cenr team is worth reflection and analysis. eckerle curwood et al. (2011) suggest that these methodological approaches are increasingly utilised in university settings as they allow for equitable inclusion of diverse partners with different skills, understandings and expertise; enhance the relevance, quality, validity, practicability and sensitivity of the research; help to dispel community distrust of universities and research; and advance local community goals. in order to achieve these outcomes, eckerle curwood et al. (2011, p. 14) argue, ‘it is essential to have structures for collaborations that allow university and community partners to work together effectively’. we agree with eckerle curwood that our commitment to cenr/cbpr methodologies served us well with respect to increasing relevance, quality and validity and advancing cu relationships in guelph-wellington. yet, our diversity also resulted in real challenges and tensions. begun et al. (2010) write about their experiences of social work scholars collaborating with community-based social service agencies for the purposes of research. they remind us that knowing your partners’ motivation, organisational systems/structures and agency cultures is necessary to experience successful cu research partnerships. our analysis is that our diversity across motivation, organisational structures and agency cultures, not to mention our own intersectional selves and personalities, impacted the process and the outcome of our cu partnership and cenr in significant ways (doberneck, glass & schweitzer 2010). in particular, our diversity was a result of our composition across multiple disciplines (sociology, criminology, applied social psychology, social work and public health), our diverse academic and applied experience (e.g. partners with minimal or no cenr experience, and/or experiential or service provision experience, and/or qualitative and/or quantitative methodology experience) and the diverse organisational structures/systems within which we worked (e.g. academic institutions, not-for-profit organisations, multi-agency committees and government). 3&4. shared decision-making and shared benefits sadler et al. (2012) state that shared decision-making and shared benefits are the third and fourth requirements for ethical cu partnerships. both require early and meaningful involvement from the community, and that opportunities for their benefit are part of a study’s design. as previously mentioned, our early commitments to principles of cenr and cbpr prioritised the value and intention of shared decision-making and mutual benefit. this began with the very composition of our cenr team, which was comprised of the action committee coordinator and a service provider. the cu team consulted with additional service providers and service 7 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham users for feedback on the data collection tools we developed and used (e.g. online service provider survey, service provider focus group questions and service user interview questions) and on the project timeframe. keeping the action committee agency representatives informed and invested and treating them as important stakeholders and participants in the research design and process required ongoing, frequent communication. as articulated in the literature on cenr/cbr/cbpr/par, members of the community participated in the research process not as research subjects, but rather as valued research advisers and partners (furco 2010). practically speaking, this meant committing a great deal of time to updating the action committee on the research team’s process and progress and asking them to participate as part of the research process as they had valuable skills and knowledge to share which would strengthen and improve the research process and outcomes. for example, a follow-up focus group was offered and held after all interviews with service users had occurred, as a member-checking strategy to obtain a preliminary assessment of the extent to which the research team’s analysis of the qualitative interviews with service users rang true to those women who had participated in the interviews. in a similar way, preliminary data was presented at action committee meetings as a way to check the validity of the analysis that the research team was developing from the survey against the focus group data that had been provided by the service providers, and to update the action committee on the progress of the research team. however, while our approach, methodology and intention all aligned with these two guidelines, the tension within our cu partnership often absorbed time, making it hard to adhere to them. eckerle curwood et al. (2011, p. 21) note that ‘given the busy schedules of students, faculty and community organization staff, simply finding the time to come together around the same table presented a challenge at times’. in our case, the action committee met monthly and this provided ongoing opportunities for our cu research team to share emerging findings with them (secret, abell & berlin 2011). yet, practising this principle was often a challenge. given how time consuming each stage of the research was for us to complete, we rarely felt ‘ready’ to translate our emerging analysis into a presentation to be shared at these action committee meetings. we knew that doing so was methodologically appropriate and that it would increase the action committee’s understanding of and investment in the findings, yet often we were unable to put this into practice. in reflecting on our ability to practise shared decisionmaking and to continue to work to ensure shared benefits, we found effective communication was an essential characteristic. couto (2001) reminds us that the collaborative endeavour requires active listening, critical discussion of problems and implementation of agreed solutions. following from our first meeting, each team member made every effort to actively listen to each other as well as to the feedback received from 8 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham service users and service providers, in order to acknowledge, understand and attend to the diverse needs and perspectives of so many stakeholders. one practical example of our effective communication occurred in the initial meetings when the research team both articulated and listened to the specific needs/benefits of each team member and the demands they felt from their specific institutional context/culture. in more practical terms, we utilised multiple strategies and tools for effectively communicating with each other. for example, an online file-sharing site (basecamp) and online literature libraries (refworks, zotero) were used to help ensure the project progressed and to keep everyone apprised of and engaged with all aspects of the project. also, all research materials, including research questions, research tools and planning documents, were collaboratively produced and reviewed by each member of the research team (with the exception of the knowledge mobilization coordinator from ices, who was consulted as needed, rather than participating as a core team member) to ensure consensus and collaborative and reciprocal knowledge production. for instance, in an effort to problem-solve the initial low response from service providers to the online survey, and to get more agency focus group participation, there was a lot of communication and consultation with the action committee member agencies to make participating easier for them. there were many components and details to develop, review and coordinate, yet this was occurring at the same time that the research team was preparing to present our cu partnership project at the 2013 cu expo conference, not to mention the number of other projects and demands each team member was juggling. while this collaborative and shared decision-making approach enhanced the validity and rigour of the research project and stayed true to the principles of cenr and qualitative research design, it became more difficult to practise as we moved into the qualitative analysis process. scheduling time that worked for everyone was often difficult, as was carving out blocks of time to devote to the processes which cenr qualitative methodologies require (e.g. data immersion, developing the code structure, coding, analysis, member checking, reflexivity, etc.) (bradley, curry & devers 2007). given the large research team, our participatory approach and the large amount of data we were dealing with (33 individual interviews, 89 online surveys, 5 focus groups and additional secondary data), the decision was made to use a qualitative software program (nvivo) to help develop and manage a collaborative and rigorous process for data coding and analysis. the research team’s ability to use the program software was made possible because of the access that the university partners had to this resource. funding and in-kind items, such as laptop computers, administrative assistance and meeting spaces, were received from multiple sources, including the university, the action committee and action committee partner agencies. 9 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham this collaborative process resulted in the entire project taking much longer than expected. consequently, project deadlines had to be moved back at almost every stage of the project, and additional communication was required with the action committee and with all the service providers to negotiate new deadlines. thus, in spite of the mutual benefits of the cenr partnership, our cu partnership’s diversity across these areas resulted in challenges and tensions stemming from institutional and time-based pressures on the partnership. 5. train research partners sadler et al.’s (2012) final guideline refers to the importance of training all partners in the research endeavour in order to ensure an understanding of each partner’s contribution to and requirements for conducting the research, and as a way to promote community research. given the diversity of our cu partnership, this guideline was and continues to be one of the more interesting aspects of the project. our complex and diverse seven-person cu composition (i.e. multi-disciplinary and ranging from graduate students, faculty and staff to service providers) resulted in very different levels of training and experience being required for qualitative or quantitative research and/or cenr. generally speaking, this diversity resulted in a lot of co-learning and participatory knowledge production among all team members. like us, secret, abell and berlin (2011, p. 10) characterised their collaboration as an ‘… equitable exchange of practice and research knowledge’. our decision to work within a methodology that valued both community-oriented research and components of participatory research positioned us to look for, appreciate and respect the equitable inclusion of diverse partners in a two-way exchange of ideas, knowledge and expertise (eckerle curwood et al. 2011; gazley, bennett & littlepage 2013). for example, within our cenr team, students provided the in-kind resources that allowed for 33 service user interviews to take place. without their time and availability, this amount of data from service users would not have been possible to collect, transcribe and analyse. the phd applied social psychology student who works with ices/the research shop contributed her knowledge and experience by using computer programs for quantitative analysis (spss) and by teaching all of us how to use the qualitative data analysis software program (nvivo). the university partners, especially the students, provided the community partners with access to relevant academic and grey literature (e.g. on dv3cs and the sexual assault response team/sexual assault nurse examiner, service provider evaluations, community-engaged research, and sexual assault and domestic violence coordination). without university partners, the students in particular, this cenr project would have struggled to gain access to the academic literature provided through university library membership and the time and scholarly expertise required to curate this large shared literature collection to inform research practice and analysis. 10 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham the key training provided to the research team by community partners involved what qualitative researchers refer to as both ‘context’ (i.e. a more thorough understanding of the setting within which the research takes place) and ‘thick description’ (i.e. description that strives to provide meaning and context) (bradley, curry & devers 2007). in addition, the community partners contributed to our learning throughout the project as they drew on their own academic training and experience in social work and public health in research, evaluation and analysis. for example, they helped inform and direct the literature search and identify and interpret local relevance in the findings from both the academic and grey literature. in spite of the common goal for collaborative and reciprocal knowledge production in cenr projects (e.g. israel et al. 2008), a just as common historical criticism levied against the university side of these partnerships relates to an assumption, or arrogance, on the part of the academy that results in a ‘deficit’ or ‘charity’ model of engagement (morton 1995). the deficit/charity model assumes that it is the university or college partners who bring the knowledge and resources to the community and does not recognise the capacity (knowledge, resources and experience) that community partners bring to the collaboration (marullo & edwards 2000; morton 1995; secret, abell & berlin 2011). within the last decade, however, the engaged university regards their ‘public engagement’ opportunities with communities as a way to advance higher education’s tripartite mission of advancing public service, teaching and research (furco 2010). this engagement is now understood to provide an opportunity for mutual benefit and reciprocity, which in turn results in collaborative knowledge production. in spite of this more recent understanding of cenr on the part of universities, the graduate students who were part of our cu partnership experienced challenges in this regard. in the final section of this article, we therefore reflect on the opportunities and challenges to teach, mentor and learn from students involved in community-engaged research. cu partnerships as a means of teaching and mentoring students in cenr our cu partnership’s experience of student, community partners and faculty working together aligns with recent research on student advising/mentoring and cenr (e.g. jaeger, sandmann & kim 2011; mcnall et al. 2009; o’connor, lynch & owen 2012). consistent with the literature on effectively aligning student training and community engagement, we note that facilitating factors include a shared vision, mutual benefit, good personal relationships, individual and organisational flexibility, commitment and enthusiasm from universities and communities, and organisational infrastructure and support (o’connor, lynch & owen 2012, p. 110). similarly, jaeger, sandmann and kim (2011) suggest that characteristics common to the graduate student advisor–advisee 11 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham relationship include co-learning, negotiated decision-making, advocating/intervening and lack of campus support. higher education and outreach literature suggests that, although students are coming to graduate programs with interest and experience in community-engaged work, there are few opportunities intentionally included in graduate programs to develop the knowledge, skills and orientation needed for this work (jaeger, sandmann & kim 2011; o’meara 2008). this was our phd student’s experience. while she suggests that this is beginning to change, until recently there have been limited opportunities in her applied social psychology program to gain community-based research experience. this lack of opportunity was a catalyst for her to look outside her own department for other ways to engage in cenr and cbr. however, even though she found cenr opportunities outside her graduate program (as part of the research shop/ices and our protocol evaluation research), the value of her doing this work as it related to her program requirements was not immediately acknowledged within her department. a different but related example of the absence of campus support was experienced by one of the ma students, who found that funding opportunities prioritised graduate students carrying out traditional research with a primary author as opposed to cu partnership/community-engaged research with collective authorship. thus, even when cenr opportunities are available to graduate students, the institutional and graduate program culture may act as a barrier to working outside what is typically offered within a program. the faculty member also experienced an environment of cautiousness from colleagues in her department who are sometimes deterred from supervising students interested in doing engaged theses because of the additional time it can take. consequently, it can be interpreted as though the faculty member and/or the department and potentially the university are less ‘productive’ in producing graduate students according to the government’s current funding model. this is a good reminder – also in relation to the cases above – that students and faculty need to document the scholarly aspects of engagement, as we have done here, in order to create an academic ‘currency’ that is understood and valued by more traditional as well as engaged scholars. participating in a cu partnership or in cenr provides opportunities for students to develop their interpersonal skills (such as listening, communicating, empathising, understanding, trusting) as well as disciplinary knowledge and related academic skills (o’meara 2008). in our case, we created both structured and informal meeting and work contexts to allow all partners, not just students, with opportunities to get to know each other and thereby develop and build mutual trust, respect and shared knowledge/ skills. the characteristics of co-learning and negotiated decisionmaking used within this cenr project are consistent with what saltmarsh, hartley and clayton (2009) refer to as a democratic 12 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham approach to partnerships, which integrates the knowledge and experience of faculty, community members and students in a way that everyone contributes to education and community building (gazley, bennett & littlepage 2013). for graduate students, this can provide a unique experience of co-learning and shared decision-making, leading to skills that support both future cu partnerships and real-world problem-solving skills (hynie et al. 2011). one example of co-learning came as a result of the lack (or limited experience) the graduate students had in conducting focus groups. our public health partner had the expertise and resources to develop and provide focus group training, which the graduate students and the faculty member attended. similarly, training the graduate students to conduct face-to-face interviews with women who had experienced sexual assault and/or domestic violence was designed and carried out as a collaborative effort between the action committee coordinator, who holds an msw and also works as a sexual assault and domestic violence counsellor, and the faculty member, who had previous research experience conducting interviews with women who had experienced violence from their intimate partners. the result was training that provided an important mix of academic resources in interviewing women on sensitive research topics and an overview of experience-based wisdom from both feminist academic and feminist counselling perspectives. in our case, ma, phd and msw students conducted all the interviews. this is common since students are often a readily available resource and learning to interview can be a useful teaching and mentoring experience (campbell et al. 2009). in fact, one of the draws for all three graduate students to our cenr was the opportunity for them to conduct qualitative interviews with women who had experienced violence. yet, because these students had limited experience doing qualitative research on sensitive issues like violence against women, the action committee coordinator suggested that potential research participants should be screened for participation in the research by the administrative staff of the violence against women agency (part of the action committee) to determine their eligibility to participate in an interview. the cu team agreed that the administrator was best suited to screening participants based on her experience working with abused women. while some researchers might argue that involvement in the recruitment and screening process is part of what a qualitative researcher could do to build rapport (rakime et al. 2011), this was an example of a decision the partnership made in favour of the needs of women survivors of violence versus the positive effect this might have had on data collection. this tension can be particularly evident in practice-research collaborations. ‘often the research conditions under which scientific rigor can be achieved may not be compatible with what are perceived by practitioners to be ideal conditions for serving clients’ (secret, abell & berlin 2011). for example, as part of the training that was done 13 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham with the graduate students, the action committee coordinator explained that the emotional wellbeing of the women was of paramount concern and that, if a woman seemed particularly upset, the interviewer should stop, offer comfort and ask the participant whether she wanted to continue. elmir et al. (2011) suggest in their sensitive issue research study that demonstrating care and empathy was particularly important and often meant respecting periods of silence and women’s readiness to continue with the interview. for students involved in our cenr project, this was a transformative learning experience (fletcher 2008). during research team meetings, students would debrief and reflect on their interviewing experiences. all of them expressed how difficult this was to manage when it happened, but found that after conducting more interviews they felt better able to balance the needs of the women with their role as researcher. moreover, students’ experiences on this project are guiding their future research and training choices. based on the skills and confidence she gained, the phd candidate is undertaking a cenr dissertation project, with the support of her department, departmental faculty adviser and our team’s faculty member, as a committee member external to the student’s department. the msw student previously had mainly clinical and frontline experience in social work, but since being involved in our research, she has expressed interest in doing future research in the field of social work, recognising the value of cenr for social change. with ongoing calls for community-based agencies to rely on empirical data to guide practice and policy, this sort of cenr partnership facilitates community-based agencies’ use of data in the face of real economic pressures that might otherwise limit the research role. the mentoring/training from our community partners contributed to student cenr skills and therefore to the success of the project. we argue that recognition and uptake of community knowledge through cenr can impact not only community outcomes but also contribute to changing how the institution approaches student training (heffner, curry & beversluis 2011; hynie et al. 2011). conclusion this article reflects on a complex community-university partnership undertaken to conduct evaluation research on one community’s sexual assault and domestic violence protocol. our case study is best defined as a practice-research cu collaboration and it is from this particular context that we contribute to the scholarship of engagement literature. we reflect on and offer an analysis of university scholars and community members coming together to address issues of mutual interest, and the characteristics and principles of cu partnerships as a means of doing cenr and enriching the educational experiences of university students. our experience led us to recognise ways in which the characteristics and context of our cu partnership impacted our 14 | gateways | morton, bergen, horan, crann, bader & bonham ability to practise the guidelines laid out by sadler et al. 2012, which deliberately mirrored the principles of cenr, cbr and par that we planned would guide our research and work. cu partnerships for cenr often share high-level outcomes, in that the purpose of complex partnerships is to address complex social issues and work towards positive social change. cu partnerships for cenr also share values and principles of action through consideration of ethics, diversity, shared decision-making, mutual benefit, and co-learning and co-training. however, as our case study demonstrates, context is an important characteristic/ element that impacts cu partnerships and their processes/ outcomes. from our experience, when the application of cenr values and principles take place across multiple large bureaucratic institutions and agencies, these structures and pressures impact our needs and capacities, and must be understood and managed in an attempt to practise the principles of quality, ethical cenr. in the end, we had to sometimes make decisions that challenged both the institutional structures/pressures and the principles of cenr in an effort to move the project forward. for cenr to improve, cu partnerships have to embrace opportunities for working with/mentoring and learning from students. academic institutions can support student involvement in cenr work in several ways. the intentional inclusion of community-engaged work within graduate programs in all faculties as well as support for faculty to mentor students in this work are required to eliminate barriers experienced by students who wish to pursue cenr. understanding the length of time that cenr can take, compared with traditional research, as well as ensuring that involvement in cenr does not present a barrier for students to apply and receive funding, will also lend support to increased student involvement in community-engaged research. our research project is not complete and therefore our challenges are not over. however, the interdisciplinary composition of the research team has added to the rigour and quality of the research and all members of the research team have developed skills and knowledge as well as mutual trust and respect for each other’s roles and 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engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: haarman, s., and green, p. m. 2021. considering power in community-based research: shifting toward new pedagogical approaches with a ‘public work for public things’ framework. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–13. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7754 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article considering power in community-based research: shifting toward new pedagogical approaches with a ‘public work for public things’ framework susan haarman1 and patrick m green1 1 center for engaged learning, teaching, and scholarship, loyola university chicago, illinois, usa corresponding author: susan haarman; shaarman@luc.edu; patrick m green, pgreen@luc.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7754 article history: received 08/06/2021; revised 02/09/2021; accepted 14/09/2021; published 12/2021 abstract one of the fundamental questions of power in the pedagogy of community-based research (cbr) is who gets to decide what is research worthy and what is the focus of cbr questions? the reality of the power imbalance in community-based research and learning is often reflective of a systemic disengagement with the broader community. even when instructors and administrators are intentional in how they solicit feedback or think through the impact of their work, they may not know the neighbourhood. prioritising the voice of community partners does not provide a simple solution, as the individuals we work with to organise community-based learning opportunities may not be residents of the neighbourhood. this article adopts a theory-building approach to this crucial question. building on the work of boyte (2014) and honig (2017), community-based research is reoriented as ‘public work for public things’ (haarman 2020). after establishing the ‘public work for public things’ framework, the article explores how this new framework impacts collaborative research by addressing the power differential and creating new lines of inquiry – specifically the practice of ‘elicitation of concerns’. through the lens of critical service-learning pedagogy (mitchell 2008) and a practitioner-scholar framework (lytle 2008; ravitch 2013; salipante & aram 2003), we then interrogate two community-based research courses we have recently taught, examining how a ‘public work for public things’ approach would have altered the course and its methods. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7754 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7754 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7754 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:shaarman@luc.edu mailto:pgreen@luc.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7754 keywords community-based research; ‘public work for public things’; community-based learning; elicitation of concerns introduction in community-engaged teaching, learning and scholarship, one of the most common models referenced is community-based research. teaching a community-based research course, however, is often determined by a higher education institution’s priorities, whether it be disciplinary approaches of a specific course, community projects of a specific instructor, or pre-determined strategic goals of the institution. the community or partner organisation representative of the community may be brought in once the focus has been decided, but they may have little impact at the beginning of the process. the literature around community-based learning pedagogy, specifically through the lens of critical service-learning, suggests the need to engage in more equitable approaches with community partners regarding course design. this leads to the fundamental question of power in the pedagogy of community-based research: who gets to decide what is research worthy and what is the focus of cbr questions? the reality of the power imbalance in community-based research and learning is reflective of a systemic disengagement with the broader community, even when instructors and administrators are intentional in how they solicit feedback or think through the impact of their work. the institution of higher education may not know the neighbourhood – specifically public places and things where people gather to exchange ideas, information, knowledge and experiences. in the face of this challenge in teaching community-based research, it may seem simple to just default to prioritising the voice of the community partners with which we work. however, if the community partner is a non-profit or neighbourhood business or institution, that solution may raise many questions around power and representation. especially in the case of non-profits, the individuals we work with to organise community-based learning opportunities may not be residents of the neighbourhood. in our own surrounding neighbourhood of rogers park in chicago we face this challenge. the neighbourhood is exceptionally diverse, both racially and economically, and has been the primary resettlement neighbourhood for refugees since the 1940s. as a result, the neighbourhood is home to several community organisations and agencies that serve the refugee population, most of whom we work with. however, few of these organisations are staffed by individuals who live in the neighbourhood and fewer still include refugees on the staff or in leadership roles. while major issues of language fluency and resources can justify this discrepancy in valid ways, a lack of critical awareness of the power dynamics can potentially enable community partnerships to perpetuate marginalisation. highly diverse neighbourhoods also provide a challenge when priorities range widely across groups. the problem of ‘whose voice counts’ is often amplified when different populations in a community have different needs and desires. while a traditional asset based community development approach would simply suggest that you haven’t talked to the right people or you need to work with a smaller subsection of a population, the reality of engaging in civic learning and projects rarely allows you to do so, especially when resources are scarce. additionally, when engaging staff members to prioritise community-based learning opportunities, many are working from a narrow focus of their own agency’s priorities and goals. this presents the ongoing dilemma of whether or not community-based learning courses focused on communitybased research are actually community-driven or community-prioritised. in this article, we explore a theory-building approach to teaching community-based research courses. building on the work of boyte (2014), honig (2017) and haarman (2020), we focus on a reorientation of community-based research courses around a public problem-solving framework, which focuses on haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 undertaking collaborative research through the lens of ‘public work for public things’ (haarman 2020). through the lens of critical service-learning pedagogy (mitchell 2008) and a practitioner–scholar framework (lytle 2008; ravitch 2013; salipante & aram 2003), we then explore the practice of teaching such courses by interrogating two community-based research courses we have recently taught. how does ‘public work done on behalf of public things’ inform collaborative research and learning in practice and through pedagogy? how can honig’s understanding of public things and boyte’s model of public work change the way we approach community-based work? after establishing the ‘public work for public things’ framework in its formative stages of development and applying it to our courses, we explore how this new framework impacts collaborative research by addressing the power differential and creating new lines of inquiry as it needs to be tested in practice. such interrogation leads to necessity for new points of entry into community-based research methodologies, rooted in community wisdom and acknowledgement of ‘public things’, as starting places for research questions. public work for public things the sphinx’s riddle of ‘whose voice’ is most relevant when considering how generation of communitybased learning priorities may lead to unfocused efforts, slapdash partnerships and inaction. rather than fixating on ‘who’ has the most authority to decide, the authors of this article believe that the question of the broader purpose of these efforts must be recast. we must step back and reframe the work of communitybased learning as what harry boyte calls the public work of education, rather than the simple acquisition of knowledge (albeit in conjunction with community partnerships). a public work frame takes a broader and more active view of the voices that drive community-based learning priorities and is more inclusive of the voices in the conversation rather than pitting them against one another. boyte and kari (2000, p. 57) state that civic education must be recast as the public work of education. public work can be defined as ‘self-organized efforts by a mix of people who create things, material or symbolic, whose value is determined by a continuing process of deliberation’ (boyte & kari 2000, p. 57). public work is rooted in a deliberative process with no one community, person or institution controlling its direction in totality. to progress, people must remain in conversation with one another and work towards a mutually agreed upon common good. traditional power dynamics are challenged because of the mutuality that serves as a framing element of this approach. a public work cannot be accomplished by one constituency, instead calling for cooperative approaches that demand universities and other traditional power holders create more open relationships with community partners and others. boyte emphasises that public work must be supported by elements of deliberation because a public work’s power is rooted in its capacity to draw a variety of different ideological positions into a common project. ‘a public work approach does not eliminate the fierce debates about distributive justice or questions of values, but it allows people with great differences on such issues to work together on public tasks of large significance’ (boyte & kari 2000, p. 57). deliberative public work also helps participants come to value each other’s perspectives when they reflect on the importance of what they were able to do together. public work and deliberation in boyte’s model, the back and forth of deliberative communication becomes a crucial tool in public problem solving and the creation of publics. groups can leverage different voices and go through the intentional process of offering alternative plans and thoughtful consideration of consequences, gaining deeper insight and the potential for better and more widely acceptable ways of proceeding. by opening up a wider sense of the possible ramifications of both the public problem and its possible solutions, individuals gain a better sense of how consequences affect them. haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 when embracing a public work approach to community-based learning, university work should be in service to the community and in continual conversation with the community. we must shift away from a simplistic and legalistic approach to civic engagement and towards a more deliberative and democratic frame. this university would then cease to understand itself as apart from the broader community and who john dewey called ‘those who wear the shoes’ – individuals with direct experience of reality. beyond implementing effective and dynamic pedagogy, this university would claim a public work mission, sharing their expertise with those without the resources or capacities to fully analyse and resolve public problems. because public work arises from deliberation, the university would form priorities for action in conversation with the larger community, being attentive to an ever-changing conversation about what was needed for the greater good, and not just the institution’s interests. this university would understand itself as a part of a larger public, one of many actors seeking to implement and live into the ideal of democracy. boyte (1991) believes that key to this is reframing political involvement as more than voting and governmental procedure and shifting towards a conception of civic engagement as addressing public problems. framed now as public concerns in which their voices are needed alongside those of the wider community, students would be inspired to join in collective action. this would not resolve difference, socioeconomic inequalities or the pernicious white supremacy that is at work in many of our communities and our institutions, but it would shift community-based learning away from a zero sum gain of whose voice wins and instead move towards a frame, ‘in which diverse groups learn to work together effectively to address public problems, whether or not they like one another personally’ (boyte 2014, p. 3). what guarantees public work reflects public concerns? however, more voices, even when they are in discourse, does not guarantee that a process will be diverse or any more likely to accurately respond to neighbourhood needs. universities may have strong deliberative relationships with non-profits that do not represent the members of the community in values, identities or goals. particularly in diverse communities, it can seem like the only thing tying groups of people together is a zip code. this tension calls for a deeper reflection on the places and points where communities do come together and urges that community-based learning begin there. we may find a secure point from which to begin in bonnie honig’s (2017) conception of public things. in her work, public things: democracy in disrepair, honig uses the idea of ‘public things’ as a catalyst for democratic action. this concept helps illuminate where some of the potential for deeper political engagement through deliberative pedagogy in community comes from. honig intentionally does not precisely define public things, but she does say that they are subject to public oversight and objects of a public’s shared value and care – things like swimming pools, sewers, land, schools, and even public telephone booths. honig calls public things a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for healthy democracy – concentrating and focusing citizens’ attention and galvanising their efforts. they help to form publics, spurring collective action and even helping establish identity. ‘[public things] constitute us, complement us, limit us, thwart us, interpellate us into democratic citizenship’ (honig 2017, p. 25). community-based research and public things community-based research regularly places students in the orbit of public things. for instance, students at our university normally utilise chicago’s ‘l’ trains for pleasure or recreation. now they may find themselves taking the train to community sites. this initial shift of route allows them to see different residents of chicago, redefining their own sense of the make-up of the city. the common experience of the train may become a point of conversation with individuals different from themselves, with whom they previously would not have interacted. as students learn about their acquaintances’ long commutes to work or haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 experiences with poorly serviced bus routes, their understanding of how the chicago transit authority (cta) functions in the lives of chicagoans broadens. students may find that they have come to show care and concern about the cta, which invites a different level of engagement with their community. bus route placement becomes something to which they pay new attention. they may begin to decry the poor conditions of train carriages on primarily south and westbound routes. there is a subtle shift and these students are drawn into a larger public that is centered around the cta as a public thing. honig (2017, p. 28) says this occurs because a public things framework has people ‘first asking not “who are we?” but rather “what needs our care and concern?”’ honig’s framework of ‘what needs our care and concern?’ can actually encourage a deliberative approach that empowers students who otherwise might have found themselves conflict avoidant and unlikely to engage in discourse around power structures or politics. although it is ultimately a question of class and economic inequality, the students who are now concerned members of cta ridership are brought into the question through the lens of access to a public good. students previously resistant to broader questions of privilege and power may be more likely to advocate around the public thing they have come to care for. through public things, the self-avowed apolitical are more likely to begin to utilise or make demands on power structures, rather than not acknowledging their own capacity and access to power (haarman 2020). public things are named and claimed as valuable by a community. they become a flashpoint for public action and concern. they also become an expression of a community’s ideals and values. honig (2017) makes it clear that public things are never simply neutral, but instead facilitate action and space through which communities can manifest their core concerns. action on behalf of and around public things is then an expression of action that interrogates the use of power. in this regard, public things become an ideal site for public work because of their importance and their relative permanence. honig (2017) says part of the necessary ongoing work of democratic citizenship is coming together to construct public things, maintain them and establish their status as the transitional objects of democratic life. they also yield a level of permanence that encourages us to think about the ways in which the communities we live in and the work we are engaged in are more permanent than we are. students’ work in the community will likely end when the course does. but the cta and the chicago public school system remain, continuing to be sites in which democratic questions are engaged. community-based researchers may realise their own impermanence in this work, undercutting the troublesome ‘savior’ tendency that can come from community-based work. recentring community research on the needs and hopes of citizens, which is refracted through public things, will open up an approach from which meaningful public work can be pursued on behalf of public problems (haarman 2020). rather than continually wondering about whose agenda community-based research has advanced at the expense of another group in a neighbourhood, grounding the work in public things allows space for multiple voices. a methodology of public things a public things approach asks practitioners to think differently about the role of multiple voices when setting the agenda for community-based research. it centres the community as a physical space in which a cross-section of perspectives and needs interact, and urges an approach to community-based research that centres dialogue and citizenship. universities and non-profit staff will not be the only sources of important questions. a public work for public things approach also presents new potential lines of inquiry for communitybased research. the authors advocate using an elicitation of concerns approach to bring the priorities of the community to the surface. practitioners and researchers would ask questions and seek to understand community concerns and priorities through public things; they would practise being in and with public spaces. those seeking to undertake community-engaged work may first go to public things and haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 observe, participate and interact with people there. rather than just surveying individuals at high-traffic neighbourhood nexuses, taking a public things approach means that practitioners would go to public things to listen, observe and converse with members of the community. by using an open inquiry method, practitioners could perform an elicitation of concerns, inviting community members to share what they experience as the salient issues and priorities in the community as they see them. the inquiry would begin by locating questions around the usage or importance of the public thing (e.g. the condition of public transit lines or park usage), and then allow the community member to expand beyond that. this methodology differs from traditional open town hall meetings in that community members are met where they are physically, rather than asking them to travel to a city hall or university. in addition, the nature of public things is that they build and construct community around them, usually from diverse identities. as a result, eliciting concerns in and through public things allows for a broader level of representation and commitment to a community than a simple survey might. while one element of elicitation of concerns is active, another is more passive. this involves facilitation through public things. just as a public thing is used as a springboard to help community members actively share their concerns, observation of how individuals interact with a public thing also becomes a generator of potential concerns. practitioners can observe that a train station in a neighbourhood does not have ada access or that a library has become a de facto meeting space for running groups or teens studying after school. rather than trusting either their own ‘expertise’ or simply taking the word of one local non-profit or faith community leader, practitioners can build up a picture of the experiences and concerns of community members from how they are interacting with public things. public things then become a new lens through which to listen for and examine public concerns and identify potential for partnership and research into daily concerns. elicitation of concerns is not solely deficit focused in its approach. too often, community-based research has been deficit and damage focused, highlighting only what was perceived to be broken in a community. even if its end goal was to serve an ameliorative purpose, this research framing reduces community members to victims, divorcing them from agency and personal power. it is also reductionary in approach, failing to highlight the diversity of both need and experience within communities. while the process of an elicitation of concerns brings to the surface issues that community members believe need to be addressed, it is often the public things that ground the elicitation to serve as flash points for community care in addition to concerns. a school library may be a beloved public thing in a community, and an elicitation of concern there may reveal a common drive in a diverse community to create spaces where all children have access to the arts. this sifting through an elicitation of concerns mirrors eve tuck’s (2009) distinction of desire-based research. desire-based research focuses on the complex lived realities of communities, with particular focus on their self-determination. a public work for public things approach allows more space for community-based research to follow the desires and joys of a community, not just its struggles. when broader collaborative work is rooted in a public thing, there are typically more tangible manifestations of community desire. this is in contrast to community-based research that just examines a problem to solve. to provide an example of this essential nuance, imagine a community-based research course without a public work for public things frame that focuses on issues of literacy in a community based on conversations with a few non-profit organisations. this course may design reading and literacy interventions that respond to the specific needs of the community, but the narrative of this community-based research stops at a deficit place. this is a community struggling with literacy and in need of essential assistance. in contrast, imagine if the same course used a public work for public things framework and performed an elicitation of concerns at the well-loved local library. the course would still surface the need for literacy interventions, but it would now be a concern shared not only by non-profit staff who run programs there, but also by local parents haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 and their children who patronise the library. however, it is through the library – the public thing – that it is revealed that this need for literacy also comes from a place of joy and desire. the elicitation of concerns process allows community-based researchers to see parents lauding the essential role that weekly story-time programs play in the life of their children or teenagers as they pour over graphic novels together to try to design their own. as a result, desires can drive community-based research as much as deficits. the public work for public things framework clearly alters the approach to community-based research. the challenge to building the elicitation of concerns process into the pedagogy of community-based research lies within issues of power. as community-based research often emphasises a collaborative approach with the community, this approach challenges it to be even further driven by the community in potentially broader ways. the process of elicitation of concerns is dynamic in nature, with a large emphasis on openness to emergent themes and questions. as a result, community partners could participate in this process alongside community-based scholars. because much of the work also includes observation and non-scripted inquiry, community members could bring important additional lenses of observation and social capital that would encourage more communication and conversation. there are also tremendous research possibilities around how this methodology could be applied to challenge traditional structures of power around knowledge generation. elicitation of concerns, as a method, also has tremendous potential in highly diverse communities. as mentioned previously, community-based scholars often work with specific community-based agencies or population groups within a community. especially in diverse communities, these groups may have interests and priorities that differ from others. while these may be essential and valid priorities, it can be easy to take a narrow view of how a broader community is engaging with an issue or miss an essential minority view. for instance, in the aforementioned highly diverse neighbourhood of rogers park, the issue of school resource officers (sro) in the local high school became a focus of intense debate in the wake of george floyd’s murder. while most students, local parents and community members did not want to continue to employ an sro, there was notable dissent from refugee parents (who make up 20 percent of the school population) in strong favour of keeping the officers. an elicitation of concerns at the school would have likely surfaced this narrative, while working with the numerous nonprofits that serve students and attending public forums may not have done so. elicitation of concerns at and through public things promotes and requires a critical awareness of power and dynamic engagement with it. we turn now to our practice of teaching community-based research courses through a critical servicelearning lens. exploring power in community-based research best practice through a critical service-learning pedagogy lens community-based research best practice is usually situated in the literature of service learning, commonly referred to as community-based learning, and is heavily focused on practice and pedagogy. the robust canon of literature on community-based learning has certainly provided rich material focusing on the most promising practices and strategies for the pedagogical approach to community-based learning. in the design of community-based learning courses and experiences, the focus has been on the community-based activity, or on the community partnership, but issues of power often have not been highlighted or emphasised (heinrich & green 2020; mitchell 2008). perhaps the most significant shift in the literature is the scholarship of tania mitchell (2008), explaining how critical service-learning pedagogy is differentiated from traditional service-learning. in her work, she shifts the narrative from a charity model to a social change/social justice model, her analysis of the literature revealing three themes that distinguish a critical service-learning pedagogy: a social change orientation, haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 working to redistribute power, and developing authentic relationships. mitchell connects critical servicelearning pedagogy directly to issues of power: a critical service-learning pedagogy names the differential access to power experienced by students, faculty, and community members, and encourages analysis, dialogue, and discussion of those power dynamics. without looking at access to social power and the role of power (or the lack of power) in determining who receives service as well as what services are provided, the potential of using service-learning as a pedagogy that brings society closer to justice is forfeited (mitchell 2008, p. 56). the critical service-learning pedagogy clearly articulates a critical consciousness of both learning design and learning outcome for community-based learning courses. the emphasis is on an intentional design of the experience and the course that acknowledges the power differential of the community members, faculty and students. as mitchell examines the classroom component and community component of a critical service-learning pedagogy, she concludes: developing experiences with greater attention to equality and shared power between all participants in the service experience and challenging students to analyze the interplay of power, privilege, and oppression at the service placement and in their experience in that placement will ensure that a critical service-learning pedagogy questions and problematizes the status quo. (mitchell 2008, p. 62) the implications of this critical service-learning pedagogy have led to strategic pedagogical and course design approaches to community-based learning courses that include working with community partners as co-educators. this is the approach we applied to the development of our community-based research courses. community-based research became a distinct form of community-based learning, and emerged as a significant model of community-based learning (heffernan & cone 2003). strand et al. (2003) provided a strong foundation for framing community-based research in the context of the academy as a response to such factors as criticism of higher education as unresponsive to the needs and priorities of the community, as well as the renewed effort to build students’ civic capacity through community outreach efforts. in this foundational work, strand and colleagues established the core pedagogical principles of community-based research (cbr): • cbr is a collaborative enterprise between academic researchers (faculty and students) and community members • cbr validates multiple sources of knowledge and promotes the use of multiple methods of discovery and dissemination of the knowledge produced • cbr has as its goal social action and social change for the purpose of achieving social justice (strand et al. 2003, p. 8). although various models of community-based research exist historically, the explicit connection between people in the community educating themselves and conducting/participating in research to foster social change is a consistent theme (strand et al. 2003). as we sought to employ these principles along with a critical service-learning lens, our community-based research courses were shaped by these specific promising practices. if we apply the public things framework, does the course design alter how we partner and work in community-based learning courses, such as community-based research? does the elicitation of concerns as a prioritisation process through public things change how we design and teach community-based research? haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 a practitioner-scholar analysis of community-based research pedagogy and practice as practitioner-scholars working in the community engagement field for the past two decades, the emphasis on elevating community voice is not new to us or our practice. the literature around community-based learning has emphasised and called for an increase in community voice and participation in communitybased teaching, learning and research for the past two decades. stoeker et al. (2009) asked whether community voice was considered in the institutional practice of service-learning in higher education and, as referenced above, mitchell (2008) proposed a critical service-learning framework that would elevate justice, social change, power and authentic relationships, as well as the role the community plays. yet, the proposition of approaching community-based research and teaching via a public things framework is essentially changing the critique. the public things framework emphasises more than the role the community plays in community-based teaching and research: location and context are central to the dialogue. this approach fundamentally changes how we access community voices, acknowledging the power differential that exists when university faculty or staff interact with community members. by shifting the dialogue from raising awareness about community voice to accessing community voices in public spaces, this framework elevates community priorities through an elicitation of concerns. in essence, the role of community and accessing community voices within public spaces are central to issues of power in the public things framework. we wanted to interrogate this approach within our own community engagement practice through the critical service-learning pedagogy lens. as community engagement professionals, we serve as educational administrators who facilitate community-based learning programs, faculty development programs and curriculum development resources. we also teach a variety of community-based learning courses and serve as third space professionals (whitchurch 2013), blurring the spaces between academic administration and faculty, between student learning and development and faculty development, and between classroom and community. we are boundary spanners, identifying as both scholars and practitioners in the field (green, eddins, berkey & meixner 2018; whitchurch 2013). our positionality as practitioner-scholars informs our theoretical framing of this work, and we draw upon the reflective practitioner lens alongside critical inquiry on practice (ravitch 2014; schon 1983). through the lens of the practitioner-scholar framework and critical service-learning pedagogy, we explore two community-based learning courses we co-instructed with community partners over two different semesters at our university. the expl 290 and expl 291 courses are three-credit service-learning courses offered as an elective and meeting the engaged learning university requirement at the institution. entitled seminar in community-based service (expl 290) and seminar in community-based research (expl 291), the courses engage students in a community-based research project with a single partner organisation. the project is developed prior to the beginning of the semester with the partner organisation and the instructors. the research questions emerge from multiple meetings with the partner, identifying their priorities and projects requiring research. the following intentional planning process was followed in the creation of the community-based research courses through these steps: initial meeting to invite a partner to serve in the role of co-educator. the initial meeting with each partner began with a visit to the community site, intentionally situating us within the community context in which we wanted students to work. through previous meetings and conversations with each partner, they had already expressed interest. this initial meeting achieved two goals: (1) frame for the partner that we approach this work through the lens of co-education, and ask them to be a co-educator throughout the process, and (2) dialogue about possible community-based research projects to which the students could contribute. haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 creation of a research project. the multiple rounds of communication and dialogue via in-person meetings, phone conversations and/or email communication varied, but the dialogue process led us to articulate a project. syllabus description. we documented the project at these meetings so that we shared the same language, identified the intended deliverables, and described the process with a level of specificity, while also leaving room for some flexibility. site visit and community context. we intentionally started the course with a site visit (usually first or second class) and assignments related to the community context. this allowed students to connect immediately with the organisation and understand the context of the community in which it resides and offers services. scheduled class session in community context. there were several class sessions which we taught at the community site in an effort to extend learning beyond the four walls of the classroom and into the community. our learning space was often a room located at the non-profit organisation. validation check-in meetings about the research project. we built several check-in meetings into the course schedule, and naturally check-ins occurred with the partner scheduled to be in the classroom or the class meeting in the community. summative presentation of project findings to partner and/or designated audience. near the end of the course, students were assigned to present the final deliverable, whether it was a report, slide show or visual artifact. the process throughout these courses was an intentional approach, centred in critical service-learning pedagogy, so as to centre the community voice and address the community organisation representative as both partner and co-educator in the process. yet, what would the course have looked like had we approached the course design from a public things framework? where would there have been space for an elicitation of concerns? interrogating our practice: developing new points of entry approaching our course development through the lens of a reflective practitioner (schön 1983) and drawing on the scholar-practitioner framework of critical inquiry (lytle 2008; ravitch 2014), we interrogate the course construction and partnership approach to our community-based research course through the public work for public things framework. while the public work for public things orientation was not a consideration for the initial design or aim of the partnership, we do believe that self-reflexivity about how this approach could have illuminated other issues or possibilities is important. more than an exercise in methodological monday morning quarterbacking, the push to consider how a different framework would have impacted the approach to the partnership could reveal blind spots, unrecognised systemic dynamics and roads not taken. our inquiry approach demonstrates the need to critically examine issues of power from the beginning of the design process. our partnership approach, as previously detailed, involved the co-construction of the course, from learning outcomes to the research question and project implementation. yet, we may not have started in the right place. for example, one semester we partnered with a faith-based refugee resettlement program, associated with a large non-profit organisation. we taught the course on campus one week and at the non-profit organisation’s meeting room space in the community the following week. another semester we partnered with a quaker elementary school located in our campus neighbourhood community. although haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 these courses were often co-taught by the non-profit staff members and at the location of the non-profit organisation (in the community), they did not occur in or through public things. who we met and heard from was still essentially funnelled through the non-profits. thus, the community-based research questions and projects emerging from these courses were disconnected from public things. the lack of connection to the public work for public things approach meant that our partnership was disconnected from the very community we (and the school) sought to partner. we had limited contact with the refugees or the parents and children of the quaker school. we did not hear from them, nor their experiences, concerns, perspectives or insights. there was no elicitation of concerns, which the public things approach challenges us to pursue in the context of community engagement work. although a list of potential questions may be formulated to approach an elicitation of concerns, we suggest a more practical approach as questions may emerge from those in power. specifically, planning for an elicitation of concerns involves: 1. identifying public places within the context of the community. 2. generating questions specific to the public thing for the elicitation process. if already engaged with additional community partners, this process should be shared with them as well. these questions are not to be seen as exhaustive or prescriptive of inquiry that occurs during the elicitation of concerns. 3. developing an action plan to employ the elicitation of concerns. 4. during elicitation of concerns, participants should practise critical listening and observation, allowing for emergent themes to arise as individuals interact with one another through and with the public thing. this observation is meant to be done in a participatory and engaged way, recognising the observer’s own interactions with the public thing. in reflecting upon our courses, the power differential was, in fact, shifted from the university to the nonprofit partner, which suggests a need for a critical examination of power in the design of courses and partnerships. as we reflect on our teaching of these community-based research courses, utilising best practice, it appears that the community members were not empowered. power and resources shifted from one narrow set of hands to another and still remained separated from those on whom the research was focused. the practical implementation of this framework offers an invitation to faculty educators, along with community engagement professionals across higher education institutions, to employ the framework in their practice. further exploratory research on deliberative processes involving citizens may help to further develop the framework, as well as test it, and other key implications emerging from our inquiry. there are many professional organisations already dedicated to place-based community engagement and research involving institutions of higher education. while a place-based framework and a public things perspective share similar approaches, they are not synonymous. the public things framework is rooted in the facticity of the public things themselves. they are not only a geographic location, but also an object that individuals interact with. beyond that, they serve as catalysts for concern and community building, bringing people together. they are also often symbols of larger structural frames (e.g. a bus station is both the physical station and a symbol of the larger public transportation system), participating in the larger reality to which they also point. place-based approaches could utilise a public things framework for inquiry. the articulated differences, commonalities and potential for synergy between these two approaches is an area that needs further study. employing this framework in practice may inform and help to evolve the framework as we deepen our understanding of community-engaged work with and through public things via an elicitation of concerns. to start with, the focus of the community-based research could be an elicitation of concerns within a specific community context. from working with local government officials, educational institutions, libraries, public haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 parks and local museums in employing the public work for public things framework, it is clear there is room for further research, as well as an opportunity to better serve the communities we seek to engage. conclusion the elicitation of concerns, the inquiry approach to providing community members with the opportunity to share their concerns and priorities at and through public things, suggests a different pedagogical approach to teaching community-based research courses. in addition, the public work for public things framework has significant implications for partnership work. elevating the community voice and allowing the community to drive research on their articulated concerns and priorities, while also allowing public things to provide the environment for priorities to emerge, is imperative. when public things are introduced to the broader vision of the public and work being done by universities and community organisations, neither is able to centralise power so easily. a continual return to the common space in and through which communities are connected, interact and live will provide more voices to the necessarily deliberative process of public work. it will also ground the work in service to the daily reality of community – not necessarily the specific agenda of a university or non-profit organisation. more significantly, with the current call for place-based community engagement, the public work for public things approach challenges us to frame ‘place’ differently. it may also reveal a broader range of opinions and issues, and potential coalitions previously unconsidered by community members themselves. inquiry in public spaces and through public things may encourage an empowered approach by community members to engage as full partners in community-based research. situating community members and place-making in local public spaces will require community engagement professionals to approach our work differently. it will require us to begin our work through public things and listen to those who gather there. references boyte, h 1991, ‘community service and civic education’, the phi delta kappan, vol. 72, no. 10, pp. 765–67. boyte, h 2014, ‘deliberative democracy, public work, and civic agency’, journal of public deliberation, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 15. https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.190 boyte, h & kari, n 2000, ‘renewing the democratic spirit in american colleges’, in civic responsibilities and higher education, oryx press, westport, p. 37. green, p, eddins, e, berkey, b & meixner, c 2018, ‘exploring the borderlands through collaborative inquiry: a narrative introduction’, in b berkey, c meixner, p green & e rountree (eds), reconceptualizing faculty development in service-learning / community engagement: exploring intersections, frameworks, and models of practice, stylus publishing, sterling, va. haarman, s 2020, ‘public work for public problems’, philosophical studies in education, vol. 51, pp. 117–29. heffernan, k & cone, r 2003, ‘course organization’, in introduction to service-learning toolkit: readings and resources for faculty , campus compact, providence, ri, pp. 105–110. heinrich, w & green p 2020, ‘remixing approaches to experiential learning, design, and assessment’, journal of experiential education, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 205–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825920915608 honig, b 2017, public things: democracy in disrepair, 1st edn, oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.5422/ fordham/9780823276400.001.0001 lytle, s 2008, ‘practitioner inquiry and the practice of teaching: some thoughts on “better” research in the teaching of english, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 373–79. http://ezproxy.msu.edu/login?url¼https://search.proquest.com/ docview/215344856?accountid¼12598 haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.190 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825920915608 https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823276400.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823276400.001.0001 http://ezproxy.msu.edu/login?url¼https://search.proquest.com/docview/215344856?accountid¼12598 http://ezproxy.msu.edu/login?url¼https://search.proquest.com/docview/215344856?accountid¼12598 mitchell, t 2008, ‘traditional vs critical service-learning: engaging the literature to differentiate two models’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 50–65. ravitch, s 2014, ‘the transformative power of taking an inquiry stance on practice: practitioner research as narrative and counter-narrative’, penn gse perspectives on urban education, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 5–10. salipante, p & aram, j 2003, ‘managers as knowledge generators: the nature of practitioner-scholar research in the nonprofit sector’, nonprofit management and leadership, vol. 14, pp. 129–50. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.26 schön, d 1983, the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action, basic books, new york. stoecker, r, tryon, e & hilgendorf, a 2009, the unheard voices: community organizations and service learning, temple university press, philadelphia, pa. strand, k, marullo, s, cutforth, n, stoecker, r & donohue, p 2003, community-based research and higher education: principles and practices, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. tuck, e 2009, ‘suspending damage: a letter to communities’, harvard educational review, vol. 79, no. 3, pp. 409–28. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 whitchurch, c 2013, reconstructing identities in higher education: the rise of third space professionals, routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9780203098301 haarman and green gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202113 https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.26 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203098301 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203098301 transforming cities and minds through the scholarship of engagement: economy, equity, and environment lorlene hoyt (ed.), vanderbilt university press, nashville, tn, 2013, 262 pages lorlene hoyt addresses the difficult question of how the scholarship of engagement fits into, and is valued by, major research universities. arguing that ‘[t]he thesis experiment is broken’ (p. 213), hoyt sets out to redesign the individualised and isolating experience of writing a research thesis into a collaborative process driven by peer critique and support. this book presents the results of hoyt’s experiment. the book is framed around six chapters written by master of urban planning students at mit (assisted in three cases by co-authors), examining a linked set of themes: how are deindustrialised and distressed cities throughout the usa tackling the consequences of the great recession, and how are they dealing with the stimulus funding some received to address its consequences? the six chapters are organised into three pairs, addressing aspects of the economic, environmental and social equity foundations underpinning community redevelopment and revitalisation efforts. the research presented ranges from in-depth interviews with small business owners to comparisons of programs designed to upgrade home energy efficiency and create green jobs. in each case, the chapters conclude with recommendations for how revitalisation efforts could be improved. the six substantive chapters are bookended by hoyt’s description of and reflection on the collaborative learning approach. the students who contributed to this book were each involved in mit@lawrence, a federally funded city-university partnership based on action research principles, set within colab (community innovators lab) at mit. the partnership involves service-learning through internships and projects, as well as the provision of technical assistance to community development projects, representing a good example of the relative sophistication of community engagement efforts in the united states. federal funding has enabled a wide range of university-community outreach projects, aimed at breaking down the barriers between elite institutions and the often distressed communities in which they are located. this experience has resulted in a fairly rich gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 233–35 © utsepress and the author issn 1836-3393 heather macdonald 234 | gateways | review literature on action research and engaged learning in universitycommunity partnerships, which would have provided a helpful context for the ‘reinventing the thesis’ project presented here. the weakest chapters of the book are the introduction and conclusion, which return perhaps too often to hoyt’s dissatisfaction with not having been awarded tenure at mit. clearly, the lip service that universities give to the importance of a scholarship of engagement is not always reflected in the academic evaluation process, but the issue is not discussed in an even-handed way. veiled insults of a new head of department who was ‘conspicuously indifferent’ (p. 210) to student and community project presentations do not help. hoyt’s discussion of the collaborative learning process does not offer an in-depth, structured discussion of the challenges faced and how these were (or were not) overcome. instead, the introduction and conclusion are padded with personal profiles, transcribed conversations and overly detailed descriptions of events. conflicts between participants, other academic staff and hoyt are alluded to, but not explored. consequently, the book avoids critical engagement with the difficult and important questions raised by student-centred learning and action research. how did the communities studied respond to the research process and its outcomes? how were the research projects designed to address community needs as well as thesis requirements? how was peer critique balanced with external critique? the last of these deals with how gaps in the peer learning process can be addressed. in some chapters, arguments for a particular strategy are not balanced by any discussion of its potential limitations. for instance, while i was sympathetic to the arguments presented for a small-business-focused economic revitalisation strategy in camden, the author does not address the substantial losses that most such efforts have incurred. the argument in the chapter (and its practical relevance) would have been strengthened if the downsides of the strategy had been discussed. weaknesses in other chapters (such as lengthy digressions) also point to the limitations of relying on peer critique alone. student-centred learning, particularly when students bring a wealth of real-life experience to the process, can be very effective. however, it needs to be supplemented with constructive criticism from academic supervisors. reciprocal real-world-focused learning would be enhanced by feedback from community representatives. hoyt points to the failure of the academic research supervision process for most master’s thesis students; but there is not much evidence here for how her own leadership of the collaborative thesis project provided a viable substitute for individual supervisors. consequently, the book provides less guidance than it might for educators interested in exploring the links between community needs and the academic enterprise. the lack of rigorous critical engagement may have resulted in the uneven quality of some of the research reported here. chapters on camden, cleveland, oakland and lawrence 235 | gateways | review demonstrated sound research design that provided a credible basis for the recommendations with which they conclude. in particular, the lessons drawn from the spanish economic cooperative, mondragon, are applied very effectively to assessing cleveland’s local economic potential. the comparison between weatherisation programs in oakland, portland and seattle forms the basis for meaningful recommendations to refine oakland’s program. other chapters had less substance, and thus resulted in overly generalised recommendations. the book would also have benefited from an introductory chapter that outlined the scale of problems faced in the casestudy cities: how they fit into a regional economic context, and the nature of the stimulus spending that sought to transform economies, environment and equity. this would have eliminated some of the repetition among chapters, and could have framed each evaluation more consistently. the conclusion would also have been improved by more reflection on the commonalities in lessons learned in each of the studies, presumably one of the aims of collaborative research around overlapping themes. overall, the book offers an interesting set of case studies on how distressed us cities are responding to economic decline and the role federal stimulus funds have played in those responses; but its contribution to our understanding of the scholarship of engagement is less satisfactory. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: teeters, l. a., singer-gabella, m., jones, r. s., escarfuller, j. and heerman, w. j. 2018. operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 73-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v11i1.5806 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health leah anne teeters1*, marcy singer-gabella2, ryan seth jones3, juan escarfuller, william j heerman4 1 school of education, university of colorado boulder, 1134 co-93, boulder, co, usa 2 peabody college of education, vanderbilt university, 230 appleton place, nashville, tn, usa 3 college of education, middle tennessee state university, 1301 east main street, murfressboro, tn, usa 4 division of general pediatrics, vanderbilt university, 2146 belcourt avenue, 2nd floor, nashville, tn, usa *corresponding author: leah anne teeters; teeters@colorado.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5806 article history: received 22/10/2017; revised 05/02/2018; accepted 08/03/2018; published 31/05/2018 abstract our work brings together theories and methodologies from public health and the learning sciences to develop a culturally relevant community-based intervention aimed at promoting healthy childhood development. we present our approach to personalising a community-based family intervention to prevent childhood obesity that aims to enhance participants’ agency. we argue that situating obesity within the individual’s multi-layered context not only provides a more robust understanding of the causes, but also generates sustainable options for promoting healthy lifestyles. our findings emphasise the importance of a situated approach to learning that leverages social systems as a key resource for better navigating the environmental, material and ideational infrastructures that support healthy lifestyles. keywords personalised health, community engagement, obesity prevention, community health education, community intervention declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 73 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5806 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5806 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:teeters@colorado.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5806 introduction maintaining a healthy lifestyle is critical to the prevention of chronic disease. health-related behaviors – such as unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco use and illicit drug/alcohol use – account for 80 per cent of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, and 40 per cent of cancers (ezzati et al. 2004; spring, moller & coons 2012). these unhealthy practices are common and rarely occur alone: data from large national health surveys indicate that over 50 per cent of americans do not meet dietary or physical activity recommendations; the average number of unhealthy practices is 1.7 per us adult; and 17 per cent of us adults report more than three unhealthy practices (fine et al. 2004). these unhealthy practices are directly linked to obesity, and when they start in early childhood, put children at risk of lifelong health complications. indeed, our society is currently facing a childhood obesity epidemic. the most recent estimates suggest that 17 per cent of children in the united states are obese, and 33 per cent are overweight (ogden et al. 2015). this childhood obesity epidemic will have lasting consequences, including increased rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer (calle et al. 2003; leunissen et al. 2009). if trends in childhood obesity are left unabated, 30 to 40 per cent of today’s children may eventually develop type 2 diabetes and will be the first generation of americans to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents (olshansky et al. 2005). in the last two decades, public health scientists have conducted over 300 behavioural interventions to support healthy childhood behaviours and reduce childhood body mass index (bmi), which have achieved modest success (birch & ventura 2009; institute of medicine 2006; summerbell et al. 2005). these interventions often have been neither sustainable nor successful with culturally and linguistically diverse populations. childhood obesity is the result of multiple factors at the level of the individual, the family, the community and the larger society (huang et al. 2009). the multi-layered nature of childhood obesity makes prevention a complex undertaking. public health recognises the complexity of behaviour change and has developed models that account for the social determinants of health (csdh 2008; marmot & wilkinson 2006). while public health has done significant work to reduce health disparities, much of these efforts are orientated towards improving access, coverage and quality of healthcare (starfield 2006). although medical care is important, it is only one component of improving health (mcginnis & foege 1993). a complementary approach includes developing interventions that address social determinants of health and prevent the onset of disease. as such, increasing attention is being given to developing culturally responsive health interventions (bernal 2006). however, most health interventions aimed at meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse populations orient their approach dominantly around the inclusion of bilingual, culturally competent community health workers (henderson, kendall & see 2011). in the following pages, we argue that developing sustainable and successful interventions for diverse populations requires a novel paradigm informed by insights from the learning sciences, which have a long history of developing personalised interventions for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. by drawing on the learning sciences, we further situate human action in the social world, casting learning as an aspect of a learner’s participation within a culturally and historically situated community of practice (lave & wegner 1991). conceptualising health-related practices as socially situated necessitates approaches to learning that account for the variance in social and cultural practices and ways of knowing. however, medical interventions are typically conceptualised as one-size-fits all, meaning that teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 74 they often are not responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse populations. this raises a critical problem around equity. rates of childhood obesity are exacerbated in economically disadvantaged and non-dominant communities (ogden et al. 2015). thus, the frontier of childhood obesity research asks how we can develop personalised and sustainable solutions to establishing health-related practices in early childhood to prevent the subsequent lifelong consequences of obesity. applying a transdisciplinary approach that joins together public health and the learning sciences has several advantages in the attempt to personalise and contextualise learning of health-related practices. the medical literature cites the immediate cause of the development of obesity as the energy imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. as such, obesity has historically been seen as an individual-based problem due to an inability to regulate this energy balance. although this model is sufficient to predict obesity likelihood based on energy intake, it fails to account for the complexity of health-related practices and circumstances that contribute to obesity. food practices and energy expenditures are shaped by culturally situated practices and are enabled or constrained by environmental, material, ideational and social resources (gordon-larsen et al. 2006). the environmental dimension of health refers to the built environment; the material refers to technical tools that support access to health information; the ideational refers to knowledge related to health promotion; and the social refers to the relational resources that can enable healthy lifestyles. improving health fundamentally involves the learning of new practices that can facilitate navigation of the many factors that influence health outcomes – an area of research that is well known to the learning sciences. in the next sections, we present our approach to personalising a community-based family intervention for childhood obesity with the intent of moving away from the ‘treatment’ of individuals and towards an approach that seeks to enhance participants’ agency to navigate the environmental, material, ideational and social world of health. our approach bridges the fields of learning sciences and public health, with the aim of contributing to the methodological and theoretical understanding of sustainably changing health practices. we argue that situating obesity within the individual’s multi-layered context not only provides a more robust understanding of the causes, but also generates sustainable options for promoting healthy lifestyles. our findings emphasise the importance of a situated approach to learning that leverages social systems as a key resource to better navigating the systems that support healthy lifestyles. conceptual framework the paradigm of personalised medicine considers how best to tailor treatments to meet the unique needs of individuals. but, recognising which treatments work best and for whom has been traditionally limited to the fields of pharmacology and genetics. bringing together conceptual frameworks from the public health and learning sciences, our goal is to advance the paradigm of personalised medicine by (1) developing a personalised approach to supporting healthy behaviours in childhood to reduce obesity, and (2) using a multi-level framework to consider a broad range of contextual factors as potential determinants of an appropriately tailored treatment plan. in the context of childhood obesity, we draw on frameworks from health sciences to develop a multi-level understanding of the determinants of childhood obesity grounded in (1) self-determination theory, which helps articulate the role of competence, autonomy and relatedness in developing motivation, and (2) social cognitive theory, which posits that learning is a reciprocal interaction between individual, environment and behaviours. operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 75 we also draw on theoretical frameworks from the learning sciences including (1) competencybased learning, which focuses on personalised instruction that supports learners in developing competency in specific skills, and (2) scales of practice, which speak to the need to make learning sustainable over time, socially relevant and geographically situated. in our work, we aim to understand the conceptual overlaps and distinguishing factors between these disciplines, illustrating the value of transdisciplinary approaches to address complex social problems. two of the most common theories used to explain variation in health practices that contribute to childhood obesity are bandura’s social cognitive theory (bandura 1977) and selfdetermination theory (ryan & deci 2000). bandura posits that a person’s health practices are triadically and reciprocally influenced by social, cognitive and environmental factors. a central tenet of social cognitive theory is self-efficacy, where one of the main determinants of health is a person’s confidence in their ability to enact health-related practices. as individuals build confidence and competence, they become more likely to sustainably engage in health-related practices (davis et al. 2015). in self-determination theory people are thought to gain value through the development of competency, relatedness and autonomy. a theme common to both social cognitive theory and self-determination theory’s explanation of health-related practices is competency. in other words, gaining competency in health-related practices is an important determinant in supporting sustainable health-related practices and the resultant benefits to health and psychological wellbeing. competency development is a longstanding area of focus in educational research. in the context of childhood obesity, competency-based learning theory frames individual gains in proficiency over health behaviours (e.g. diet and physical activity) as the gaining of competency over specific skills and knowledge relevant to the health behaviour in question. for decades, experts in learning theory have recognised that reducing variation in learning outcomes requires increasing variation in instruction (i.e. a personalised approach) (bloom 1971). in 2007, guskey elaborated on this approach, highlighting two specific components of this type of learning: (1) actionable feedback, correctives and enrichment, and (2) instructional alignment through the development of clear, attainable objectives (see figure 1). this approach also allows for alteration of formative assessments depending on the nature of the learning objective, a degree of flexibility necessary for culturally tailoring of behaviour change interventions. competency-based learning has proven particularly effective in advanced cognitive functions like problem solving, which are important building blocks for effective behaviour change (bandura 1986). figure 1 personalised approach to learning, adapted from guskey (2007). however, we also recognise that for healthy practices to be consequential for participants they need to be sustainable over time, socially relevant and geographically situated. therefore, teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 76 our aim is to design learning opportunities that will be meaningful across scales of practice. scales of practice refer to the ways that ideas, technologies and practices are taken up across geographic (local, national, international), temporal (historical, present, future) and social (family, community) trajectories ( jurow & shea 2015; nespor 1994; tsing 2004). in our design for learning, we consider how to coordinate these scales of practice, asking how we can leverage participants’ knowledge so as to support them in expanding their agency in creating healthy lives for their families. we thus conceptualise attaining competency in health-related behaviours as developing agency to navigate health-related decisions within contexts in which they arise. by bringing these theoretical approaches together, we aim to develop a multi-level approach to promoting healthy childhood growth. combating obesity means more than eat less and exercise more. in our work, we recognise that health determinants include both macro-level influences (e.g. neighbourhoods, family, social norms) and micro-level influences (e.g. genetics, epigenetics, satiety set points) (huang et al. 2009). in our current project, we operationalise these health determinants by recognising the role of the built environment (e.g. limited access to healthy food, neighbourhoods without parks and footpaths), the material infrastructure (e.g. technology applications, fitness monitors), the ideational infrastructure (e.g. understanding nutritional needs) and the social infrastructure (e.g. immigration resulting in a small network of support) as key health determinants. research design an enduring aim of learning research is to understand human activity in context and the resultant implications for the design and organisation of learning. in pursuit of generating more equitable research, we ask how can we design for learning and promote healthier lives in a manner that is consequential and relevant for participants? this leads to questions such as how do participants generate new and valued means of participating in the world, and for whom and under what circumstances can new practices be taken up, and how are they sustained? to answer these complex questions, we turn towards community-based approaches to studying learning in diverse settings (bang et al. 2010; hall & jurow 2015). generating research designs to support learning and healthy practices involves designing interventions with community members, foregrounding ideas and methods that are relevant to their everyday lives (teeters & jurow 2016). the research study was developed by an interdisciplinary team in the department of pediatrics at a medical center at a university in the south of the united states. the research team dedicated to the focal project is interdisciplinary, bringing in expertise from paediatrics, community organising and the learning sciences. we drew on this diverse team to engage in recruitment efforts to draw in spanish-speaking community members from throughout the metropolitan area surrounding the university. we leveraged the lab’s existing relationship with local community centres to establish sites to implement our programming. the goal of our research was not to create a de novo health intervention. rather, our goal was to modify an existing intervention by developing a systematic and replicable approach to personalising the content of the intervention with sustainable behaviour change in mind. to this end, we used a previously tested and efficacious childhood obesity intervention called salud con la familia (healthier families). salud con la familia was a multi-level familybased behavioural intervention implemented in community parks and recreation centres. in a randomised controlled trial of 106 parent–preschool child pairs, salud con la familia operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 77 demonstrated reduction in paediatric obesity in a low-income minority population (barkin et al. 2012). the intervention focused on the parent–preschool child pair, recognising both the importance of parents as agents of change for their children and the close relationship between parent behaviours and child behaviours. the intervention consisted of 12 weekly group-based sessions that taught principles of behaviour change (goal setting, self-monitoring and problem solving) around key content areas important for healthy childhood growth (diet, physical activity, sleep, media use and engaged parenting). our approach positioned participants as key informants, and thus afforded the research team the opportunity to learn with latino community members about how to develop a community-based program to provide families with the skills to navigate environmental, material, ideational and social infrastructures so as to promote healthy childhood growth. with the previously mentioned theoretical frameworks in mind, our goal was to develop tools and conceptual models for operationalising participants’ agency in navigating these systems, so as to be active agents within their social–ecological system, all in the service of supporting childhood health-related practices. the development phase underwent four cycles of design, where analysis and iteration were embedded into each stage: (1) community interviews and conceptualisation, (2) pilot testing, (3) co-design, and (4) pilot iteration. the community interviews, conceptualisation and pilot testing were undertaken in the autumn of 2016 and the co-design and follow-up sessions were conducted late in the winter of 2017. community interviews and conceptualisation to begin, we conducted focal interviews with five community members to understand the barriers to living a healthy lifestyle that they faced with their family, how they related to goal setting and progress monitoring and if they would use digital tools, and how they related to healthy behaviour change. we conducted the interviews in local parks, libraries and community centres. we analysed the interviews, looking for themes across environmental, material, ideational and social scales of practice to help us understand how participants engaged with different constructs affecting health. initial pilot testing after revising the salud con la familia intervention material based on the community interviews, we tested a two-week pilot program with 18 families. the pilot session was led by facilitators who had experience facilitating salud con la familia. the facilitators were native spanish speakers and were trained in the conceptual elements unique to this pilot session. we collaboratively developed construct maps to support facilitators in assessing the participants’ shifting competencies. the facilitators engaged in practice sessions before engaging in live sessions with participants. our pilot sessions were held in a local community centre. the retention rate was 100 per cent for the duration of the pilot sessions as well as for the follow-up focus groups. the two-week pilot consisted of two core classes: choose healthy foods and plan healthy meals. choose healthy foods was designed to support participants in understanding the nutritional content of foods, deciphering nutrition labels and learning new cooking techniques. plan healthy meals supported participants in planning healthy meals and provided strategies for working with constraints such as time, money and access to grocery stores. each of these sessions lasted two hours. in between sessions, participants filled out a digital goal-setting form asking them: (1) what goal they had set in the last session; (2) to teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 78 evaluate their progress in meeting their goal; (3) what resources supported them in achieving their goal; (4) how the facilitators could support them with their goal; (5) what challenges they were facing; (6) and what elements from the previous class they would like to revisit in the upcoming class. the pilot program was audio recorded, and in the sessions we took detailed field notes with attention to participation structures, engagement and dialogue so as to understand which ideas were being taken up and how. we analysed data from the sessions and the digital goal-setting forms as we went along, sharing our findings with participants and incorporating the findings into the design and substance of subsequent sessions. in this way, data collection, analysis and iteration were mutually informative and ongoing. we conducted follow-up focus groups to understand how to further develop the program, and to understand if participants understood their engagement with healthy practices. co-design after our pilot test and follow-up focus groups with participants, we analysed our data from the pilot sessions and focus groups with attention to how participants related to their own learning and agency to implement healthy changes in their lives. using our data, we drew out key themes and drafted ideas to address participants’ needs and concerns. we then invited participants back to engage in co-design studios. in the co-design studios, we shared our findings and ideas, and mutually envisioned curricular materials that could address the needs of the community. after these co-design sessions, we designed sessions that would personally attend to participants’ needs, supporting them in enhancing their own agency, all the while maintaining attention on creating a program that could be replicated with different participants in various settings. we subsequently piloted two of these revised sessions, conducting follow-up focus groups to assess implementation and gather participant feedback. iterative pilot testing after our initial pilot test and our co-design sessions, we reorganised the structure of our sessions to include a section in each session that was orientated to the unique needs of participants. the focus of this additional section was to be determined by participants’ selfevaluations, both in class and in the digital goal-setting forms. in our follow-up pilot sessions, we implemented two sessions: be an active family, which focused on ways to increase physical activity, and healthy snacks and drinks, which supported participants in identifying healthy snack and drink options. the aim of these two sessions was to understand how we could incorporate personalised choice of content, based on the unique needs of participants. site and participants given our goal of mitigating health disparities, our research focused on a predominantly latino lower income community. developing an intervention to support participants in improving their health involves not just individuals and families, but also their support systems. therefore, we drew upon existing social networks as a key recruitment strategy. the members of our research team had diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds (puerto rican, white, dominican, mexican), as well as diverse professional expertise (paediatrician, community organiser, educator). we drew on our diverse expertise and positionalities, strategically leveraging existing social networks and co-membership (erickson & shultz 1982). specifically, we leveraged relationships with colleagues working in libraries, community operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 79 health clinics, immigrant coalitions and parks and recreation centres to use these sites to meet potential participants. interviews, pilot sessions and focus groups were conducted in spanish. after informed consent, irb approved this study. our recruitment efforts resulted in partnering with 19 spanish-speaking mothers between the ages of 19 and 58. participants had between one and six children. one participant was a grandmother. participants were all immigrants, from el salvador, ecuador, honduras and guatemala. seventy-five per cent of the participants reported speaking and reading only in spanish; 25 per cent reported speaking and reading in spanish more than english; 50 per cent of participants reported thinking only in spanish; 17 per cent reported thinking in spanish more than english; and 33 per cent reported thinking in both equally. participants self-reported that they regularly used technology. during our pilot, all participants used smart phones to access intervention resources, though the majority reported also having computers in their home. below we describe what we learned from our pilot and co-design sessions and how we operationalised these findings to generate a community-based program that could enhance children’s health outcomes. findings from the pilot in presenting our results, we integrate data from the interviews, focus groups, pilot tests and co-design studios along four constructs recognised in recent conceptualisations of behavioural health as associated with obesity (gordon-larsen et al. 2006) and learning (nasir 2012): environmental, material, ideational and social infrastructure. we found these constructs helpful in understanding how participants understood and enacted changes for themselves and their families in their health-related practices. in the discussion, we report on how we operationalised these findings to generate a novel community-based health curriculum that supports participants in creating healthier lives for themselves and their families. environmental the built environment can both enable and constrain health-related activities. when asking about participants’ experiences in navigating the process of attaining healthy food and finding places to engage in physical activity, participants reported no difficulty with either aspects of the built environment. participants shared that access to healthy grocery stores or fresh, affordable produce was not a limitation to eating healthily. however, some participants did not have consistent access to a car and/or did not have a driver’s licence. therefore, the activity of shopping for groceries was dependent on a family member or friend. similarly, participants did not cite access to places to exercise as a limiting factor to physical activity. rather, they shared that they were more motivated when they had peers to ‘hold [them] accountable’ and with whom to visit new healthy restaurants and attend new exercise classes. when we invited participants to think with us regarding the logistics of planning a 15week healthy family program, concerns over the built environment became more tangible. participants lived in different parts of the city and expressed that getting to the community centre was a concern. they reported that they did not use the local bus, citing tight schedules, the need to pick up children, and ease as reasons against using the city’s (limited) public transportation. one participant shared that she did not drive and had arranged to get a ride from a friend to attend the pilot session. but when the friend’s child was sick on the day of the session, she scheduled a ride share via uber so that she could arrive at the centre on time. teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 80 one participant who lived 16 kilometres from the community centre shared that she had driven to the community centre, even though she did not have a us driver’s licence. she added that, since the inauguration of president trump and his executive order aimed at immigrant populations, she was no longer comfortable driving outside of her neighbourhood. other participants echoed her concern. in addition to the unease about exposing themselves to too much time on the road, participants expressed concern with regard to the site where the sessions would be held. for them to attend three months of classes, the location had to be ‘safe’, ‘comfortable’, ‘inviting’. when asked at what type of institution they would prefer to meet, participants all suggested three spaces: (1) local schools, (2) churches, and (3) participants’ homes. participants shared that they felt comfortable, safe and relaxed in schools. with regard to churches, participants explained that the denomination or faith of the church didn’t matter, and that they would feel comfortable in any faith-based institution. lastly, participants were eager to suggest their own homes or homes of their friends. only when our research team probed and specifically asked how they felt about having the sessions at a community recreation centre did they confirm that yes, that would work, and that yes, they were comfortable at the community centre. they did, however, say that which community centre and its proximity to their own home mattered significantly. it is important to note that all of our pilot and co-design sessions occurred in a community centre. we located them at two different community centres in different regions of the city where the participants lived. during this time, participants became familiar with both the staff and the facility, a process brokered by our research team. although participants did not directly share that finding locations to engage in physical activity or to acquire healthy foods was a constraint, throughout the course of our collaboration we were able to understand the less visible ways that environmental factors did in fact constrain the ways that participants navigated the built environment. these less visible factors, such as feeling uncomfortable driving outside of the neighbourhood and the need for safe meeting places, correlate to macro factors (the current political environment of the us and anti-immigrant policies). changing behaviours and developing competency involves supporting participants in identifying the less tangible factors that constrain their participation in healthy activities. material when considering adapting health practices or adopting new health practices, technical infrastructure can be a key tool to support participants as well as facilitators. however, the plethora of options to track diet and exercise can be overwhelming and the inundation of information can be confusing. our research team aimed to identify which technical tools could be helpful supports for participants and how. we invited them to share the platforms that they were currently using and to think about possible technical support they may need. in our interviews with community members, all participants shared that they regularly used a smartphone and many also used a computer or tablet. they used technology to communicate with family and friends over applications such as facebook, text messaging and whatsapp. only one interview participant indicated that she used the internet to search for healthy recipes, but all interview participants shared that they used the internet when they had healthrelated questions for themselves and/or their child. an integral component of behaviour change is goal setting and progress monitoring. the original intervention, salud con la familia, incorporated goal setting and progress operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 81 monitoring as a central element of the program: participants set goals on paper and charts and reviewed them in sessions on a weekly basis. however, since the program’s inception seven years ago, access to and use of technology has proliferated. in our work with immigrant populations, whose families are in other countries, participants shared that they rely heavily upon technology to stay connected to their families and communities around the world. we therefore aimed to explore how technology could be used to support participants to remember, monitor and achieve their goals. with input from our interviews, we created a simple digital goal reflection form. we asked participants to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely (smart) goals in the session, with support from the facilitator and other participants. we then sent participants a text with the goal-setting tool, which asked them what their goals were, what resources they were using to achieve their goals, what challenges they were encountering, and how facilitators could support them. all participants filled out these surveys. we analysed the surveys to help us prepare for the upcoming lesson, to ensure that participants’ needs were addressed in the session. in this way, the technology tool served as a formative tool that allowed for the session to be responsive to participants’ unique needs. that is, the technology ended up being a tool to enhance (not replace) the social infrastructure. in our focus groups after the first pilot, participants shared that the digital tool served as an accountability tool for them, reminding them of their goals. and then, when the session was responsive, incorporating feedback from the surveys, participants shared that it incentivised them to complete the survey and monitor their own goals. as one participant shared, being accountable for one’s own goal setting and actions made them feel as though they ‘have the ability’ (tengo la capacidad) to enact behaviour change, sharing also that they wanted more technology resources. in fact, after the first two pilot sessions, participants found both each other and the research team on facebook and friended them, taking the initiative to enhance their own social network, and creating health-related support systems. participants exchanged phone numbers and further contact information at the end of the pilot. developing new healthy practices requires technical and social support. in our pilot work, we were able to identify the technical tools that participants were currently using so as to leverage those tools, extending their use in new directions. by supporting participants to use their phones and ipads to set and monitor goals and to connect with other participants allowed for technology to be a tool that expanded participants’ ideational habits and social participation. ideational generating healthy lives involves not only acquiring knowledge about health but creating the structures to implement new practices that promote better health. taking up new information and creating sustainable practices that promote the health of all family members is neither simple nor linear. in our research, we paid close attention to how participants engaged with ideas about health. we found that modelling of healthy practices and social support were the leading mechanisms for enhancing participants’ ability to enact changes to their behaviour. at the end of each pilot session, co-design studio and focus group, our research team prepared a healthy meal for participants. we conducted the sessions in community centres with kitchens, facilitating this process. we planned meals that were fresh, healthy and easy to prepare for groups. these meals were intended to share our gratitude for participants’ time and expertise. however, we learned that they were a key component of our teaching. at every teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 82 meal, participants took photos of the brands that we bought, asking what store they could find them in. after a session where we taught participants to read nutrition labels with attention to low sugar and high fibre content, participants looked at the nutrition labels on the bread and deciphered its nutritional content. they then took photos with their phones of the labels and brands. several participants took the empty bread bags, preprepared salad mix containers, healthy lunch meat wrappers and labels of soda water home with them, to look for the items in their local store. we identified this practice as a desire for experiential learning opportunities. after the first collective meal where we saw participants engage with the food items as a concrete teaching tool, we then planned our sessions to incorporate more hands-on applications of the lessons and explicitly planned our meals as teaching tools. for example, at one session, we purchased multiple brands of tortillas, whole wheat, corn and white flour. we analysed the labels and compared the tastes with participants, later incorporating them into our lunch. the meals provided by the research team were designed to make knowledge of healthy eating and meal preparation visible. importantly, we also incorporated opportunities for participants to share their knowledge with each other. leveraging collective expertise and knowledge was a key component of supporting participants in enhancing their own agency and transferring new ideas into actual sustainable action. when discussing their progress towards meeting their goals, engaging in shared problem solving was also a critical component. participants shared their goals and their struggles to meet their goals, citing challenges such as children who were picky eaters, spouses who were specific about their ideas of a proper meal, and the schedules of family members. participants readily shared their strategies for addressing these challenges. hearing how their peers were incorporating new concepts and practices of healthy eating and activity inspired participants to try similar techniques. seeing their peers as models inspired a sense of agency that they too could enact healthy practices. developing new practices around healthy eating involved modelling healthy practices through cooking demonstrations and sharedmeals. in these sessions, participants had the opportunity to experiment with new cooking techniques and recipes. in this way, the learning that transpired took on an apprenticeship model, where members of the community had the opportunity to engage in meaningful activities, learning how to incorporate new ideas into their repertoire of practices. participants supported each other in envisioning how new ideas of health could be incorporated into their daily lives. all the while, the research team and facilitator played critical roles of providing new information and probing existing perceptions of healthy behaviour. social in our pilot sessions, participants reported that the social element of the sessions was extremely important and the most valued tool for learning. after the first pilot sessions, we asked participants in a short survey, ‘what motivated you to come to these classes’ (¿qué le motiva a venir a estas dos clases?). for some participants ‘the conviviality’ (la convivencia) was the sole motivator. for others, improving the health of their kids and family was the motivating element. and for some, the social element was not a motivating factor. these participants reported being motivated to ‘be healthy’ (estar saludable), ‘learn to choose and cook healthier [food]’ (aprender a escojer y cocinar mas saludable), ‘to avoid many illnesses’ (a evitar muchas enfermedades). however, when asked what their favourite element of the session was, over operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 83 80 per cent of participants included the social element as their favourite part of the healthy living classes: ‘to socialize and learn’ (convivir y aprender); ‘all of the topics covered and that which i learned from my peers’ (todos los puntos que se trataron ya que aprendí de las demás compañeras); ‘the communication’ (la comunicación); ‘the sharing of the experience’ (el compartir la experiencia); ‘i liked making friends’ (me gustó que hicimos amistades); ‘i liked working as a group’ (me gustó mucho trabajar como grupo). participants’ feedback that the social element of the classes was integral to their learning experience was similarly reflected in their responses captured via digital self-reflections. in a text-based survey that we sent out to help pilot participants self-evaluate, we asked: ‘how do you feel about how your family is choosing healthy foods?’ the response options were (1) i am starting to understand; (2) we can do it with help; (3) we can do it without help; and (4) we can do it and we can help other families. we intended this to be a scale. but when participants responded, over half selected both (2) and (4), indicating that, though they needed support, they could also support others in the process. this response helped our team understand that the process of health behaviour change is both communal and non-linear. they did not perceive supporting others as an activity that would happen only once their confidence in executing healthy behaviours was solid. rather, supporting their community was part of their learning process and a tool for increasing agency. our field notes from our sessions corroborate this finding that supporting others is a process, and not an outcome, of learning healthy behaviours. participants engaged in shared problem solving and collective reflection. they listened to each other’s experiences, validating them, affirming solidarity, and suggesting potential strategies to navigate the lived experiences of health. at the end of the pilot sessions, participants self-organised to exchange contact information, suggesting ideas such as group meals of healthy food and morning walking groups. this sense of community building was a leading tool for learning and could enable the sustainability of new practices. participants’ social support enabled them to navigate the constraints of the environment, by sharing rides, going to the gym together and creating safe places for gathering. participants relied on each other and their social networks to develop new ways of using technology and material resources to engage in healthy practices. the social network was key to developing new practices that facilitated uptake of new ideas about healthy practices. from all these actions, we can see how the social infrastructure helped participants navigate the environmental, material and ideational systems so as to create sustainable healthy practices. discussion design implications in our interviews, pilot sessions and focus groups, we found that a key tool in supporting participants to develop new practices of healthy living involved building social infrastructure to support implementation of new ways of engaging with the built environment, as a motivator to use technological tools, and as a critical component in taking up new ideas and incorporating them into routine practice. for participants to navigate the built environment, they needed social networks to organise rides, to be motivated to engage in exercise and to feel comfortable in new places. we felt that technology could be a useful tool to empower participants to monitor their own progress, but its routine use would rely upon a responsive social infrastructure. we found that participants responded most consistently when they teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 84 understood that facilitators used their responses on digital platforms to inform content and delivery of instructions. participants reported that they learned the most from activities we developed that were based on their reflections on their goals. new ideas were most readily implemented and sustained when participants had social systems to hold them accountable and to support them with implementation. to operationalise these findings, we developed a personalised health curriculum from the pilot that could prove responsive to participants’ changing needs. the curriculum foregrounds social infrastructure as a key tool in supporting new ways of participating with environmental, material and ideational resources. the curriculum will be tested in a randomised control trial to test efficacy before considering implementation at scale. to support participants in developing familiarity with the built environment, we will hold the program in local community recreation centres. we will teach participants how to navigate the fitness classes and amenities together, with each other and their children, so that they can collectively maximise their use of the recreation centres. to address participants’ concerns that sessions be held in physical locations that are easy to access, safe and welcoming, we will offer the program at community centres throughout the city, recruiting and assigning participants to sites that are conveniently located to their homes. to support participants in using technical tools to monitor their goals, we will ensure that facilitators provide participants with timely feedback to support cultivating agency in this regard. this will involve responsive engagement with participants’ self-reporting as well as scaffolded learning opportunities that provide multiple opportunities to revisit and understand content. the digital tool will not only ask about the participants’ goals and progress towards achieving them, but also the resources they are using for support. this information can then be used by facilitators to identify areas requiring additional support. this feedback will then be used in the ensuing session as part of what we call a ‘zoom-in’. we developed the idea of ‘zoom-ins’ to provide participants with choice in the structure and content of the intervention. a ‘zoom-in’ is a segment of the class in which participants choose the focus, in order to ‘zoom-in’ on those areas where they would like extra support. participants will determine the skills and concepts in which they would like additional support after analysing their personal goals, their progress, and their successes, challenges and obstacles. ‘zoom-ins’ will provide the opportunity for participants to continue working on their goals as they achieve greater competency. they will also allow participants to work with one skill or concept via different activities and in different settings. moreover, the ‘zoom-ins’ will leverage participants’ shared expertise to collectively problem solve. we will dedicate sessions, which we refer to as intercessions, before and after each unit to revisit topics that have been hard to implement. the intercessions will be informed by participants’ ongoing feedback and developed so as to promote collective problem solving and leverage participants’ shared experiences. as demonstrated via the ‘zoom-ins’ and intercessions, our emerging curricular approach is dynamic; we identify key constructs that are proven to improve health outcomes, and then develop multiple ways to teach and reinforce those concepts as participants deem necessary. it is via such curricular decisions that we will operationalise the concept of agency within our intervention. to attend to our finding that the social infrastructure plays a critical role in implementing healthy behaviour change, our intervention design will intentionally build the social system alongside each element of the healthy family program. facilitators will leverage participants’ histories, cultures and lived experiences via shared problem solving, group discussion, operationalising agency: a personalised approach to public health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 85 personalised goal setting and progress monitoring. before and after each unit, we will plan for intercessions, where participants can revisit content that they continue to struggle to implement. these sessions will be organised so as to highlight the knowledge of the group, supporting participants in recognising their own agency to enact healthy behaviour change. in our pilot sessions, we consistently found that taking up new ideas involved experiential learning of strategies as well as ongoing social support. experiential learning refers to modelling strategies for incorporating healthy practices. social support involves leveraging collective expertise and incorporating peer and facilitator feedback. leveraging collective expertise was an important component of recognising participants’ experiences, cultures and practices. drawing on their experiences and learning from each other, all the while incorporating new concepts and techniques, allowed for healthy practices to be grounded in existing practices, making the process of healthy living more sustainable. implications for theory in our work, we draw on theories from both public health and learning sciences. public health recognises the complexity of behaviour change and thus we have developed models of behaviour change that account for the multiple levels, or scales, on which practices are enacted. by drawing on learning sciences, we further situate human action in the social world, casting learning as an aspect of a learner’s participation within a culturally and historically situated community of practice. we expand on social cognitive theory by including material resources on social, cognitive (what we refer to as ideational or conceptual) and environmental factors. our work suggests that, while health is influenced by these factors, changing health practices requires attention to coordination between influencers. for example, if people acquire new ideas regarding health but do not have access to healthy foods, they cannot enact change. similarly, if an individual acquires new concepts and skills regarding health but does not have the support of their family, enacting change is extremely difficult. as individuals and communities acquire new concepts and skills, they need the context in which to enact change. therefore, behaviour change has to be thought of as the acquiring of new practices within changing communities of practice (lave 2012). consequently, health interventions require attention not only to new practices, but to the configured world in which the participants can enact those new practices. moreover, our initial findings expand, and even challenge, notions of competency-based learning. in our findings, we maintain that attaining competency is integral to enacting healthy behaviour change. however, we recognise that achieving competency is neither discrete nor linear. that is, there is not a clear map to competency. as we observed when we asked participants to identify their competency in health-related behaviours, they reported not having high confidence in enacting those skills, yet having high confidence in supporting others. this suggests that there is not a clear trajectory for a skill to be acquired, improved and then shared, but rather a messy process that involves access to resources (e.g. time, healthy food, walking paths) and community support. health-related choices involve complex and competing decisions. moreover, our analysis suggests that competency is not a discrete point; rather, participants may attain competency in a concept or skill, their social, environmental or material resources may then shift, and thus their relationship to competency. as we focus on the scales of practice in which healthy behaviours are enacted, it becomes essential that participants not only have the conceptual resources, but also the ability to enact their knowledge and skills so as to navigate the complicated systems in which they live. thus, rather than foregrounding competency as the desired aim, we expanded this notion to focus teeters, singer-gabella, jones, escarfuller and heerman gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 86 on agency. our aim has thus become to support participants in attaining a sense of agency to enact change and to recognise the components necessary for sustainability. this pivot from competency to agency is fundamental. by centralising agency, we centre the participant’s ability to navigate the world in which they live and identify participants as central agents in control of their own health outcomes. conclusion preventing diseases is not and cannot be understood as a one-size-fits-all approach. generating healthier communities necessitates culturally responsive approaches that leverage the assets of culturally and linguistically diverse communities, all the while recognising the institutional challenges surrounding access to health-related resources. supporting individuals and families in becoming healthier involves generating tailored plans that allow them to increase their agency in navigating the environmental, material, ideational and social contexts that influence health. we recognise the 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upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: anorico, h.c. 2019. service-learning in the philippines: the university of santo tomas’ national service training program. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 5944. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v12i1.5944 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au snapshot article (non-refereed) service-learning in the philippines: the university of santo thomas’ national service training program heiden c. anorico facilitator, ust national service training program, university of santo tomas, españa blvd., sampaloc, manila, philippines 1008, hcanorico@ust.edu.ph doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5944 article history: received 08/03/2018; revised 15/11/2018; accepted 08/01/2019; published 22/02/2019 abstract service-learning in the educational sector has shown increased impact on student lifelong learning and institutional commitment to the community over the past decade. universities in the philippines provide various service-learning programs for their partner communities, to address students’ understanding of real-life community needs. however, there has been little study on students’ service-learning in geriatric institutions. this article first discusses higher education in the philippines, noting the impact of the national service training program on institutions’ programs. it then describes how one university, the university of santo tomas, has responded to this policy framework with the development of community programs that also meet its goals for social transformation. one particular program is examined – a servicelearning program involving college students and a geriatric institution in manila. early qualitative feedback provides an understanding of college students’ perceptions of the elderly and the service-learning implemented by the university. it also offers a strong foundation for continuing to improve the current service-learning program. from this study an 8-loop model has been developed for future evaluations of the service-learning program in this geriatric institution. keywords service-learning, elderly, geriatric institution, philippines higher education declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5944 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5944 https://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au https://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:hcanorico@ust.edu.ph https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.5944 introduction service-learning was coined in the 1970s and has been promoted in the curricula by various educational scholars. a range of definitions of service-learning have emerged since the 1980s. service-learning, according to john dewey, is the interaction of knowledge and skills with experience (giles jnr & eyler 1994). it is the combination of academic learning and community service that promotes critical and reflective thinking in order to develop civic responsibility and commitment and skills in identifying community problems and needs. in the philippines, university-based service-learning programs are emerging and generally focus on education, general health, and indigent socioeconomic wellbeing and livelihood (for example, see guardino et al. 2015; pottier 2013; and tuaño & pacardo 2013). informing the development of service-learning and other community-engaged programs at filipino universities is the national service training program (nstp) act of 2001, which was established by virtue of republic act 9163. its statement of declaration asserts that the state will promote civic consciousness among youth in recognition of youth’s vital role in nation building. the nstp has three program components, or courses. the reserve officers’ training corps (rotc) provides military training to organise and mobilise students for national defence preparedness. the civic welfare training service (cwts) focuses on activities that contribute to the general welfare and betterment of life of members of the community or enhancement of their facilities. the literacy training service (lts) trains students to teach literacy and numeracy skills to schoolchildren, out-of-school youth and other segments of society in need of their services. the nstp program is a compulsory one-year course for all filipino university and college students (republic act no. 9163, 23 january 2002). students undergo only one component. they may choose to take rotc, cwts or lts in their first year or second year of university. students enrolled in these courses, particularly cwts and lts, participate in off-campus projects to provide them with opportunities to become familiar with the community structure and to immerse themselves in the partner communities of the university. the university of santo tomas (ust) is a private roman catholic university in manila, philippines. it was established in 1611 by bishop miguel de benavides o.p. its original campus was located inside intramuros, a walled area of manila. the university has withstood the philippine revolution and the filipino–american war and has become the alma mater of great filipino men and women. the ust’s community development program is geared towards fulfilment of the university’s mission to generate, advance and transmit knowledge to form competent professionals committed to serving the church and the global community. for the university’s quadricentennial celebration project (2010–2012), the community development department used the term simbahayan, which is a combination of the words simbahan, bayan and tahanan (church, nation and home), the three foci of the project. the university commits to the continuous improvement of christian formation and university partner communities becoming agents of social transformation. development and implementation of community programs is based on its social transformation strategy, tomas. t stands for training and education for capacity-building; o for organising for empowerment; m for management of program development; a for advocacy, research and documentation; and s for spirituality of transformation. the national service training program of the university has helped support continuity of the various programs for the university’s partner communities for more than 10 years. it has provided assistance and anorico gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes training to community partners and its members to become interdependent, empowered and self-reliant today and into the future. most of the university’s partner communities are from the provinces of central and southern luzon. students from different colleges implement various programs which may include education, health, livelihood, environmental sustainability, disaster risk reduction, socio-pastoral ministry and evangelisation programs. generally, the university receives letters of request for partnership from different schools, institutions and communities. these requests usually seek assistance and support for their members due to issues of funding resources. projects must be aligned to the program areas namely health and wellness; equitable and inclusive education; socio-pastoral ministry and evangelisation; heritage, culture and sports development; and environmental sustainability and action. a project proposal is submitted and, when approved, participating faculty members and students from different colleges are identified. funding for the project will come from the university and sponsorship from university partners. the faculty’s role is to coordinate with the partner institution seeking assistance, the community development office, students, and sponsors from university partners for utilisation of materials to avoid conflict in schedules. projects vary from classroom construction, library rehabilitation, feeding programs and tree planting to tutorial services for basic education students. however, the university also receives requests for assistance and partnership from different institutions. these requests are assessed through background checks of the requesting institutions and a series of meetings relating to long-term partnership. this leads to the establishment of new institution or community partnerships with the university. a recent service-learning program at the university was established between the university and a home for the elderly as it was felt that there was not sufficient study related to students’ service-learning in geriatric institutions within the philippines. limited service-learning opportunities with elderly members of the community hinder students’ understanding of the need to support the concluding stages of the human life cycle – mature and late adulthood. the university of santo tomas sought to address this gap in filipino students’ understanding of real-life elderly needs through the establishment of a service-learning program between the university and the little sisters of the elderly st teresa jornet home in san juan, metro manila. this article gives an overview of the program and presents some qualitative feedback from the participating students. it is hoped that this and future research can be used to improve service-learning programs to meet the needs of the elderly, students and educational institutions in the philippines. service-learning with the little sisters of the abandoned elderly the population of the philippines is projected to reach 107.3 million at the beginning of 2019. an estimated 4.3 per cent of the total population is 65 years old and above. in actual figures, there are around 4.3 million persons above 65 years of age. the average life expectancy for the philippines is 71.7 years (68.7 years for males; 74.7 years for females). these people belong to the dependent population (population of philippines 2015, n.d.). in the philippines, these numbers cause increased concern for the welfare of the elderly. generally, elders in the philippines are disadvantaged. although filipinos continue to have a high regard for their elders, socioeconomic challenges force many working adults to look for jobs abroad, leaving the elders of these families to other people’s care. furthermore, families service-learning in the philippines: the university of santo thomas’ national service training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes with limited financial capabilities may choose to address other financial concerns over the elderly’s needs (lucentales n.d.). these are two reasons why some families abandon their elders and why some elders choose to leave their families and live in a geriatric institution. this service-learning program started in january 2014, and the participating students were all enrolled in the national service training program under the cwts component. the goals were to assist, educate and train the cwts students in proper interaction with and care for the elders, and to provide activities for the elderly that would help their wellbeing and life in a geriatric institution. the institution for elderly women was established in 2010 and is managed by the spanish sisters. they envisioned a home that was simple and comfortable where the elderly could spend the autumn of their lives and be taken care of. the elderly women admitted to the facility were either abandoned by their family, voluntarily chose to live with the sisters or were recommended by priests from different parishes as they were homeless. support for the projects of the institution is dependent on the generosity of persons, organisations and other institutions. this geriatric institution requested the assistance of the university for their elderly women members due to insufficient funding. upon recommendation following a needs assessment, the university agreed to a partnership with this institution. students involved are from the colleges of education, fine arts and design, science, and engineering, and the conservatory of music. these colleges were randomly chosen for exploratory purposes for this engagement. all students are given an equal amount of time of four hours per week for engagement with the elderly. they have time for oneon-one and group interaction during each visit. students prepare various activities based on their respective disciplines and curricula. for example, education students prepare activities using theories and concepts in instructional planning. fine arts and design students provide activities focused on the arts and painting, using the principles of creation and design from their academic subjects. students from the college of science prepare activities that encourage mental fitness in the elderly, which usually take the form of games. students from the conservatory of music perform various musical pieces, classical and pop, for the elderly, and since some of the elders were also music teachers in their younger years, they pair up and discuss topics related to music. engineering students mostly provide talk sessions with the elderly. these may not be directly aligned with their discipline; however, their exposure to the elderly and their needs provides information that can feed into their project proposals for construction of facilities or design of communication. the spanish sisters from the institution offer instruction and assistance to both students and elders during these sessions. course grading requires students to prepare a community development plan, a reflective journal, and a magazine that presents their overall experience of servicelearning and other activities completed during the term. prior to engaging with the elderly, student participants attend an orientation where they are asked to prepare the community development plan, showing the varied activities that they will incorporate in their interactions with the elderly. the reflective journal encourages students to discuss their thoughts, feelings and challenges during the interactions. an optional reflective journal format includes guide questions about the challenges encountered during interaction, realisation of values, suggestions for improvement, advocacy, and future commitment to service-related activities. the final output is a magazine that showcases the students’ overall experience. the magazine includes articles, features and an editorial written by the students, as well as a photo gallery. anorico gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes early student feedback on impacts and challenges the service-learning program with this institution has yet to be systematically evaluated. as a first step, a researcher produced survey questionnaire was employed to evaluate the service learning program in 2016 and was given to 305 tertiary students from the different faculties and colleges. this will be reported on separately. for the purposes of this article, just the two open-ended questions that accompanied the questionnaire will be discussed. they were: • how did your visit to the elderly institution impact your views about the elderly? • what are your suggestions to make the activities more responsive and effective in catering to the needs of the elderly? the following themes emerged. respect for and valuing the elderly. service-learning activities provide a venue for college students to learn respect for the elderly. this respect is shown in the way they interact with the elderly members of an institution. respect is also shown in valuing elders as part of the family and a contributor to the community. several participants said that the elderly deserve respect because of what they have done and what they have contributed to the society. they may seem weak due to deteriorating physical abilities; however, they still have much to offer. a number of respondents said: they may look fragile but when you hear their stories, you will know how strong they really are. the reason why i think elderly people deserve so much respect is because they have been through so much. (college of science, 18) compassion for the elderly. exposure to an environment where many elderly people spend the sunset of their lives offers an opportunity for students to show compassion for the elderly and the life they live in a geriatric institution. feelings of concern, kindness and care were realised through the service-learning program. on the other hand, some students felt pity for the elders who were living in the institution and being cared for by people other than their family. one respondent said: honestly, i initially felt sad for the elderly for the reason that their relatives and family chose to bring them to institutions like this instead of them being attended by their own family. (faculty of engineering, 17) selfless joy. interaction of the students with the elderly created a positive feeling of being selfless. students realised the significance of caring more for others and putting the needs of others first. the impact of being selfless led to feelings of joy. this positive feeling around meeting the elderly brought joy to several participants. the joy that they felt seemed to amaze some of them. one respondent’s reaction: it was very memorable & a fun filled experience. it was beyond ordinary for i got a chance to meet & visit these lolas which does not happen in an ordinary day. (college of education, 18) volunteerism. another impact of service-learning on students was a desire to volunteer. upon learning of the life of elders in the institution, students were moved to voluntarily support and help programs for the benefit of the elders. this was not limited to supporting those who live in a geriatric institution. in response to the situation of the elders whom they had witnessed, most students were motivated to take action. one student said: service-learning in the philippines: the university of santo thomas’ national service training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes i have realized that there were indeed hardships and life stories that i only thought were seen on movies. it inspired me to do volunteer works in order to help and at least make the elderly happy in my own little way. (college of science, 18) continuation of the program. many of the respondents suggested continuing the servicelearning program in the geriatric institution. students expressed desire to address and support the needs of the elders. this could be done through an increase in exposure, regular visits to the institution and interaction with the elders. they said: the time spent there should be extended because i feel that it wasn’t enough to really address to their problems and needs. (college of fine arts & design, 19) moreover, there were students who suggested that service-learning with the elders should be offered even to those who are not enrolled in the course. encouraging and giving other students the opportunity to participate would facilitate the continuation of the program. preparation and orientation. a number of students emphasised the significance of student preparation before participation in implementing service-learning for the elders. improved preparation of student activities for the elders could be achieved through orientation in the mission and administration of the geriatric institution and information about the elderly participants, such as a brief biography of each elderly participant, their likes and dislikes, their physical capability and their daily routines. this would also help students broaden their awareness of geriatric care and appropriate interaction with the elders and to prepare activities that would cater to their needs. some of them said: i think that the visit to the elderly will be responsive and effective if we know the background of the elderly we will be handling so that we can prepare ahead of time what must be done to cater [to] their needs. (faculty of engineering, 18) student attitude. students also recommended addressing certain mindsets about elderly people such as apprehension and fear of interacting with the elders. emotional and mental preparation of students is essential since this will be the first instance of student interaction with the elders. students should be made aware of the need to be extra-sensitive, tolerant and accommodating of the elders’ different moods and needs. some students said: give respect and give more time to them because they are moody. give more patience. (faculty of engineering, 18) concluding thoughts from the above, the following observations were identified: students generally enjoyed the activities with the elderly; stereotypical thinking about elderly people was minimised; students understood that learning the needs of the elders is important; students learned of the importance of family relationships for elders; and they learnt to value the contributions of the elderly to the family and society. this initial feedback offers a strong foundation for continuing and improving the current implementation of the cwts program. these results guided development by the author of a conceptual model for evaluation of the service-learning program (figure 1) that could be used for future evaluations. anorico gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes figure 1 the 8-loop model for cwts program evaluation of service-learning in a geriatric institution student feedback suggests that interaction with the elderly through the service-learning program helped in their holistic formation as a student, reduced the differences of views between people of different generations and contributed to the university’s vision and mission, and that this engagement with the elders should be sustained and enhanced. suggestions on how to improve the current program include an increased focus on preparation and orientation and addressing student attitudes. future research should consider the perspectives of the administration of the institution and the elderly participants in the university’s servicelearning program. the success of service-learning for students also depends on the cooperation and participation of service-learning program beneficiaries. it would thus be useful to examine the impact of student service-learning on the elderly participants in the program. the voice of community partners could bring vital information to identifying steps on how to plan for a sustainable program for this and other geriatric institutions. additionally, a closer look at the service-learning program could provide clear guidelines to the university on how to improve and carry out the tomas social transformation strategies. higher education in the philippines focuses on its vital role in social and human development, with emphasis on creating linkages to universities and other institutions to serve its mission through three programs: research, instruction, and community service. research and instruction focus on the application of generated knowledge to serve the community. community service builds strong partnerships between community-based organisations and the academe (cook & meredith 2004). the university of santo tomas is committed to generating and transmitting knowledge to form competent and compassionate professionals in the service of the global community. on the other hand, the national service training program promotes civic consciousness and recognises youth’s vital role in nation building. the service-learning activities provided by the university, in partnership with various institutions and partner communities, are just one example of how universities can respond to this drive for higher education in the philippines. references cook, c & meredith, n 2004, ‘service learning for housing and the aging’, housing and society, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 159–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/08882746.2004.11430505 giles, d & eyler, j 1994, ‘the theoretical roots of service-learning in john dewey: toward a theory of service-learning’, service learning, general, paper 150. service-learning in the philippines: the university of santo thomas’ national service training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes file:///d:/uts_localwomat/process/.%20https:/doi.org/10.1080/08882746.2004.11430505 guardino, c, becker, s, cannon, j & bustos, t 2015, ‘the impact of an international service learning opportunity in the philippines on american pre-service teachers of the deaf ’, 22nd international congress on the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, athens, greece. lucentales, r (n.d.), ‘the philippine response to the challenges of ageing. a paper presented before the asean conference in japan’. population of philippines 2015 (n.d.), viewed 7 august 2016, http://countrymeters.info/en/philippines pottier, l 2013, ‘health sciences program’s service learning case study’, unpublished manuscript, loyola schools ateneo de manila university, philippines. republic act no. 9163, 23 january 2002, viewed 29 july 2016, http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ ra2002/ra_9163_2002.html tuaňo, p & pacardo, s 2013, an assessment of four economics 177 service learning initiatives, unpublished manuscript, loyola schools ateneo de manila university, philippines. anorico gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, february 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes http://countrymeters.info/en/philippines http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2002/ra_9163_2002.html http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2002/ra_9163_2002.html gently, gently a school-university participatory research partnership in a post-disaster setting this article reports on a school-university partnership that emerged gradually and respectfully as the partners came to know and understand each other. it was set in the context of a city coming to terms with a series of devastating earthquakes. the lead researcher had been a teacher and educator in the city and saw first hand the way schools had risen to the occasion to support students and their families through this traumatic time. once the initial emergency response phase was over and schools were beginning to recover, offering the resources of the university and the skills of its personnel to assist schools to process and record the events appeared to be one way of giving assistance. as well as supporting students to process their experiences, it was hoped that due recognition might be given to the role that principals and teachers had played throughout this difficult time. this article charts the process undertaken in this sensitive context as the research team from the university gently moved forward to engage schools and build relationships. many lessons were learned along the way and that is the purpose of this article – to share these experiences and analyse the factors that made the schooluniversity partnerships in this project rewarding for both parties. the article begins by discussing the disaster literature and the particular earthquake context in which the project was set. it then reviews relevant literature on school-university partnerships before describing the approach undertaken in this project – one that would be participatory, flexible, ethical and sensitive; one that respected the schools’ experiences and in which both parties had children and young people’s wellbeing at the core. the story of engaging each school is told in a narrative style to reflect the sometimes convoluted and serendipitous path that the project took. to conclude the article, we reflect analytically on the process and outline the factors that contributed to the project’s success. the factors emerging from this analysis are dispositional, relational and contextual. we argue that, for a school-university partnership to be successful, both parties need to have a disposition of goodwill based on mutual trust, respect, sensitivity and openness. from that base, an approach that is genuinely participatory, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 79–99 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 carol mutch sarah yates chris hu the university of auckland 80 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu flexible, authentic and purposeful can be negotiated. problems can be solved willingly, creatively and sensitively. finally, an understanding of the purpose of the collaboration and the context in which it will evolve, including articulating responsibilities and benefits, is important in building and sustaining a relationship that sees the joint activity through to a rewarding conclusion. disasters and schools disasters can be defined as ‘… the consequences of events triggered by natural hazards that overwhelm local response capacity and seriously affect the social and economic development of a region’ (ferris & petz 2012, p. xix). most descriptions in the literature highlight the suddenness or lack of preparedness, the unexpectedness of the size of the event and ensuing damage, and the inability of existing systems to cope. there can be large-scale death or dislocation, and often a lack of immediate access to food, water, shelter and medical aid (cahill et al. 2010; ferris & petz 2012; ferris, petz & stark 2013; mutch, 2014a; smawfield 2013; winkworth 2007). schools play a range of roles in disaster response and recovery. schools can be the site of the disaster, as in a school shooting, kidnapping or building collapse. they can be immediately affected by a natural event, such as earthquake, flood, tsunami, tornado or bushfire. they can be in the vicinity of a technological disaster, such as a nuclear meltdown, plane crash or factory explosion. or they can be affected by other disasters or traumatic events, such as war, terrorist activity, epidemics or famine. if a disaster or traumatic event happens at school, principals, teachers and other adults must make life-saving decisions for the students in their care. they then need to act in loco parentis until students are reunited with their families or are cared for in a safe place. many vivid accounts have come out of the 2011 triple disaster in japan, which began with a magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of japan on 11 march 2011, followed by a devastating tsunami reaching 30 m (98 ft) in height. students were evacuated to the top floors of their schools or to higher ground. teachers then looked after cold, hungry, distressed students with no food, no water, no power, sleeping on the floor and singing to keep up their spirits (ema 2013; japan society 2011; ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology 2012; parmenter 2012). post-disaster protocols encourage getting children and young people back into education as quickly as possible, often in very difficult circumstances. for example, the 2008 sichuan earthquake in china disrupted schooling for 2.5 million students (zhong 2013). locations for schooling needed to be found and students prioritised. students preparing for examinations were the first priorities and were sent to neighbouring provinces or housed in prefabricated classrooms or tents. child friendly spaces provided 81 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu day care for young children, informal education for school-aged children, life skills training for adolescents and support for parents (zhong 2013). schools that are undamaged are often used as safety shelters, community hubs, or drop-in centres. the principal at riverside school in canterbury, new zealand, whose school was an earthquake shelter during the 2010/2011 earthquakes, recalls: we were set up as a civil defence base, so for the first week and a half there were families from not only our community but the other schools as well coming here to receive support from civil defence. there was an overnight area in our hall where people stayed so we were getting a good picture of the needs of our community … (mutch 2014b) when disasters happen off-site to students, their families or the community, this also impacts on schools. in 2008, a group of new zealand school students and their teacher were swept away and drowned in a flooded river. the tight-knit school community was in shock. the principal needed to deal with multiple priorities such as liaising with police, families, media, the ministry of education and his own staff. he needed to draw on his skills as a leader and the relationships that he had already established in order to bring his school through this tragic time (tarrant 2011a,b). most school-related disaster recovery literature focuses on strategies and resources for the social, emotional and psychological recovery of students. disasters can have serious long-term effects on children and young people’s health and wellbeing (australian psychological society 2013; bonanno et al. 2010; brock & jimerson 2013; norris et al. 2002), but the severity of their reactions often depends on risk factors such as (a) pre-existing experiences, for example, previous traumatic experiences or mental illness and (b) exposure to the event – the level of physical destruction, injuries, loss or dislocation (bonanno et al. 2010; brock & jimerson 2013; lazarus, jimerson & brock 2003a,b). many children and young people experience symptoms of distress and anxiety but, for most, these usually reduce over time (australian psychological society 2013; bonanno et al. 2010; la greca & silverman 2009). their sense of safety and security, their ongoing development and their social relationships may all be compromised (gordon 2004; mcdermott & palmer 2002; mcdermott et al. 2005). children and young people who survive disasters report that the loss of loved ones and places, order and opportunity upsets their sense of a predictable and hopeful future (betancourt & kahn 2008). they might become irritable or aggressive, not want to go to school, display sleeping or eating disturbances, learning problems, poor concentration, or loss of interest in friends and activities (australian psychological society 82 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu 2013; bonnano et al. 2010; cahill et al. 2010; lazarus, jimerson & brock 2003a,b; national association of school psychologists 2008; prinstein et al. 1996). children and young people severely affected by trauma need specialist support (australian psychological society 2013; lazarus, jimerson & brock 2003a,b; national association of school psychologists 2008), but those not severely impacted benefit from opportunities to process the events without dwelling too much on the aspects they find distressing. talking to a caring and trusted adult, finding support from their peers, expressing their feelings through creative activities and returning to normal routines are ways that support young people’s recovery (cahill et al. 2010; national association of school psychologists 2008; prinstein et al. 1996). research on helping children and young people adjust after trauma suggests that emotional processing (caruana 2010; gordon 2007; prinstein et al. 1996) is an important post-trauma activity. emotional processing is defined as ‘a diverse set of physical, cognitive and affective actions that lead to absorption of emotional disturbances …’ (prinstein et al. 1996, p. 464). without appropriate absorption or opportunities to put events into perspective, reminders of the event can interfere with normal functioning, resulting in nightmares, distress or listlessness. carefully managed and repeated exposures through calm rehearsals, relevant conversations, drawing, play or drama can contribute to appropriate absorption. apart from inclusion in post-trauma psychological or medical studies, children and young people are often underrecognised or ignored in wider disaster research (cahill et al. 2010; gibbs et al. 2013; la greca 2006; save the children 2006). as cahill et al. (2010, p. 6) suggest, ‘caught between the perceptions that infants are the most vulnerable and adults are the most capable, there can be a tendency to overlook their needs’. our wider study, ‘christchurch schools tell their earthquakes stories’, collected children’s and adults’ stories to assist school personnel to process their experiences and help them frame a more positive future (see mutch 2013 and mutch & gawith 2014 for more detail). the focus, in this article, however, is on the process involved in building relationships between the university researchers and the participating schools post-disaster. the canterbury earthquakes on 4 september 2010, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the city of christchurch and the surrounding region of canterbury, new zealand. the earthquake caused major damage to buildings, transport links and infrastructure such as electricity, water supply and waste removal. a state of emergency was declared. fortunately, as the first earthquake struck in the early hours of the morning, no deaths occurred. many residents found accommodation in emergency shelters until they were able 83 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu to assess what had happened and consider what to do next (canterbury earthquakes royal commission 2012). over the next three years, a further 12 000+ aftershocks, including four major quakes (over 6 on the richter scale), each causing more damage and disruption, prevented the mammoth task of removing, repairing and rebuilding from getting underway. the worst of the aftershocks occurred on 22 february 2011 – a 6.3 magnitude jolt with an upthrust of twice the force of gravity. thousands of people were injured, 185 people were to die, over 100 000 homes and businesses were damaged, and the city’s central business district was demolished (canterbury earthquakes royal commission 2012). following the september 2010 earthquake, many local schools became evacuation or drop-in centres for local communities. when schools reopened several weeks later, they continued to provide support to their students, staff, families and wider communities. when the february 2011 earthquake occurred on a school day, school personnel played a more immediate role in disaster response as they evacuated, calmed and cared for students until they were collected by family (education review office 2013). at the time of the earthquakes, carol mutch, the lead researcher on the project discussed in this article, was working for an evaluation agency that had an office in christchurch. prior to that, she had been a long-time teacher and teacher educator in the city. she knew first hand how principals and teachers had looked after the children and young people in their care in the immediate aftermath and then returned to schools, once they reopened, to support their students, despite the chaos and distress in their own lives. as principals were later to tell her: i’ve just been so amazed with some teachers in particular whose homes were badly damaged in town and they were offered discretionary leave to sort out their own lives but all of them wanted to be here for the children and when i asked them (or pleaded with them)—they said, ‘we deal with that outside of school hours. this is a fantastic distraction for us. we want to be here for our children, for our classes.’ i’ve just had so much admiration for the teachers throughout the whole process. (principal, riverside school) teachers are great. i can’t say enough about how much strength, how much integrity, how much they would go the extra mile to drop kids off, to look after kids in their classrooms after school, to buy them special treats, take them to mcdonalds, all those sorts of things … to find clothes for them, to find a pram for a mother who didn’t have a pram to wheel her baby to school … (principal, east avenue school) the dual purpose of supporting children and young people’s post-disaster wellbeing and recognising the role principals and teachers played in disaster response and recovery required a negotiated approach, where schools felt the university was genuinely engaging with their lived experience and not simply 84 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu taking advantage of their situation of vulnerability. before describing how the university research team approached this challenge, we review some of the available literature on schooluniversity partnerships. school-university partnerships institutions, such as universities, engaged in the social and educational development of children and young people need to build positive relationships with schools. as patton (2012, p. 13) states: ‘both parties are committed, at least in part, to continuous learning and intellectual development, and both play a major role in socializing and preparing … youths for future roles in society.’ further, if it is necessary to go on site to observe the everyday workings of a school, to implement or evaluate a program, or to gather data for a research project, supportive relationships are needed to smooth access, foster communication and reduce difficulties (chorzempa, isabelle & de groot 2010; patton 2012; richmond 1996). in the field of teacher education, the necessity for pre-service teachers to experience the reality of the classroom has been long understood (goodlad 1993; martin, snow & franklin torrez 2011; trent & lim 2010). other professions, such as counselling or social work, also use schools as sites of clinical practice. in educational research, the phenomenon of teaching and learning, and those who engage in such undertakings, has grown in interest over the past century, as have the ways in which this research is conducted. unfortunately, such significant relationships have often been fraught with tension. patton (2012) reports that lack of mutual trust and respect between the partners, poor communication about the purpose and direction of the relationship and reliance on onetime or infrequent interactions have marred these relationships. researchers frequently note that in university-school relationships the power differential favours the university (clavier et al. 2012; hooper & britnell 2012; richmond 1996; trent & lim 2010). when using schools for research purposes, hooper and britnell (2012) conclude that schools are often suspicious of university-generated research because of a history of hierarchical relationships, resulting in the interests of the school rarely being incorporated in the study. the researchers generally hold the funding, expert knowledge and resources and, despite using the school to achieve their goals, they do not often reciprocate or return research results. trent and lim (2010) suggest that universities need to understand that each partner comes to the relationship from an organisation with differing structures, purposes and cultures. martin, snow and franklin torrez (2011, p. 300) agree, and comment: ‘to that end, understandings of how university-based educators actively work towards bridging boundaries and establishing collaborative relationships are critical.’ university-based researchers undertake their work in schools across a range of fields, such as teacher education, subject disciplines, counselling, public health, mental health and youth 85 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu work. they bring a range of theoretical stances. in reviewing this literature, we found systems theory, socio-ecological theory, social constructionism, third space theory, bourdieu’s field theory, schön’s reflection on action/inaction, actor-network theory, post-colonial theory and critical theory. methods ranged from positivist and quantitative, such as randomised experiments, to narrative or arts-based qualitative approaches. in general, where the quality of the partnership was the focus, more participatory approaches were used, such as action research, participatory action research, reflective practice, communities of practice, appreciative inquiry, and culturally responsive research practices. in these participatory approaches, the emphasis is on mutual benefit. as martin, snow and franklin torrez (2011) explain, they require cultivating multiple interactions, negotiating webs of relationships, navigating the school-university interface and understanding the joint venture as social and dynamic. to conclude the literature review, we have synthesised the development of positive school-university partnerships into several phases (as shown in figure 1). in reality, the process can be more fluid and circular, but by setting it out this way we highlight key aspects to be considered along the way. the phases are: (a) setting up; (b) maintaining; and (c) concluding the partnership (atweh, kemmis & weeks 1998; chorzempa, isabelle & de groot 2010; davis et al. 2012; duncan & conner 2013; goodlad 1993; hooper & britnell 2012; luter, lester & kronick 2013; martin, snow & franklin torrez 2011; mclaughlin et al. 2006; mutch & wong 2008; patton 2012; reason & bradbury 2008; richmond 1996; trainor & bal 2014; trent & lim 2010). setting up the partnership requires: —clarification of the need for the partnership —a tentative approach through gatekeepers, networks or a facilitator —a preliminary phase where the request is made and agreement reached —a willingness to negotiate respectfully within the relevant parameters —a shared understanding of the purpose, timeframe and anticipated outcomes —a clear understanding of lines of accountability for different aspects —a developing understanding of each other’s contexts, situations and limitations —trust in each other and respect for what each partner brings. maintaining and sustaining the partnership requires: —navigating ongoing relationships —communicating clearly —acting in an ethical and sensitive manner —providing accurate information —sharing decision-making —respecting diversity —employing culturally safe practices figure 1: negotiating successful school-university partnerships 86 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu —maintaining the authenticity of the activity —continuing trust —providing time for reflection —continually revising purpose, methods and expectations —keeping the bigger picture in mind. concluding the partnership or an activity within the partnership requires: —agreeing ownership of various outcomes —agreeing dissemination formats and outlets —assuring reciprocity of shared benefits —acknowledging time and effort —keeping promises, such as returning findings. successful partnerships, we argue, work best in an ‘ethic of care’ (nugent & faucette 2013, p. 569), with thoughtful design, nurturing over time and realising, as is often found, that partnerships are much more complex than they might appear (martin, snow & franklin torrez 2011). despite the inherent difficulties, much research reports positive outcomes for both parties (duncan & conner 2013; mclaughlin et al. 2006), but as patton (2012, p. 13) concludes, ‘yet despite this apparent synergy, there are relatively few published examples of successful partnerships between schools and university [programs] aimed at mutual development and improvement.’ methodology and ethics research in ongoing disaster settings, as was the case in canterbury, suggests 12–24 months after the onset of the ongoing disaster event to be a useful time to start to make sense of what happened (bornemisza et al. 2010). as schools are intimately involved in the aftermath of disasters, they are logical settings in which to conduct research that explores how children and young people might be affected (la greca 2006; smawfield 2013). there are advantages and disadvantages when using schools for disaster-related research. one of the advantages is that researchers can select from large representative samples; another is that they can interview children in familiar surroundings (gurwitch et al. 2002; prinstein et al. 1996; silverman & la greca 2002). the challenges include that schools themselves might have suffered damage, school staff might be coping with their own home and family issues related to the disaster, communication and transport might be affected, and schools might prefer to focus on re-establishing routines or catching students up on missed work (la greca 2006; smawfield 2013). the ‘christchurch schools tell their earthquake stories’ project was an attempt by the lead researcher, carol mutch, to capture the stories of principals, teachers and students as they came to terms with the traumatic events. it was also conceived as a way of recording the impact of these events for history – for the participants, schools, communities and the nation. 87 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu the stories of students, principals and teachers from the wider project can be found in mutch 2013, mutch 2014a, and mutch and gawith 2014. the emphasis in this article is on the process rather than the outcomes. the first step was for carol to discuss her ideas with a principal in an affected school. the principal thought it was a good idea but wanted to talk it over with her school board and staff first. meanwhile, carol put together a research design and a funding application and began the process of applying for ethical approval from her university. she also checked with the canterbury primary principals’ association about how they thought their members might feel about the project. being known in the city’s education circles helped in gaining their approval. as the city was still reeling from the disaster and struggling with ongoing aftershocks and post-disaster recovery, it was important to move cautiously and build confidence and trust in the first school. she attended meetings with the school staff and community, listening to their concerns and reshaping the research design to suit. it helped that she had experienced the earthquakes herself and was able to empathise with their situation. it still took five months from the initial approach to the first day the research team arrived on site. the first funding application was unsuccessful, as the funder did not think there was a significant need for such a project. luckily, unesco provided seed funds to allow the approach to be trialled in the first school. unesco was willing to allow carol and her team to use a flexible, facilitative and participatory design. because of the nature of the undertaking, a sensitive, contextual and ethical approach was needed (dickson-swift et al. 2007; liamputtong & ezzy 2005). ethical considerations included the common requirements of informed consent, right to withdraw, school and parental permission for children to participate, children’s assent, and confidentiality. as the project was also an archival record of real events with real people’s stories, anonymity was negotiated to suit the purpose. for the school’s records, for example in the illustrated book, real names were used and participants were able to review anything that used their names before it was published. when raw data were aggregated in cross-case analyses and shared more widely, such as in conference presentations or journal articles, pseudonyms or numerical identifiers were used instead. finally, it was important to have support mechanisms, such as a trusted teacher or counsellor available, in case the interviews or activities caused distress. christchurch schools tell their earthquake stories the next section of the article tells the story of gaining access, building rapport and engaging four of the schools in the project – hillview, riverside, beachlands and forest park (not their real names). all schools are mid-sized (200–500 students) full primary schools (students aged 5–12 years). 88 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu hillview school hillview school wanted their stories to be told in an illustrated book that could be made available to the whole school community. they wanted it to have a range of stories from children of all ages, teachers, parents and the principal. two of the children at hillview had lost a parent in the earthquakes and the school was still feeling very fragile. they were very concerned that the retelling of earthquake stories might cause more distress. the school asked that the interviews be in groups – of children from the same class, of siblings, or of children with their parents. as researchers, we also suggested that we find ways to get children to talk about the events without being too direct or dwelling on the aspects that might upset them. we used a variety of strategies. children were asked to describe earthquakes to people who had never been in one; to imagine they were grown up and telling their grandchildren what it was like during the earthquakes; to explain to visitors to the city how to be prepared; or to reimagine the city in the future. the school organised the groups and the logistics of moving children to and from class. interviews were videoed or audio recorded, according to the participants’ wishes. the interviews were undertaken over several days. there were two experienced researchers working in tandem at each interview. one led the interview, while the other watched participants to ensure they were feeling comfortable and not showing signs of distress. two of the research team also shared parts of their own stories so that the children could feel that we understood what they had been through. although we did not foresee it, we found the group interviews very intense for the interviewers – asking, listening, rephrasing, empathising, probing, and anticipating how far to push and when to pull back. by alternating as interviewers, we could regain equilibrium between each group. on the first day, we interviewed students in their groups. they were initially nervous, so we used a conversational style to put them at ease. as we built rapport, they opened up and shared vivid descriptions and thoughtful insights. while tears were sometimes close to the surface, we were able to acknowledge their feelings but gently deflect them so that they could begin to see their own experiences in a broader context. the group situation worked best for the older students as they were able to interact with and build on each other’s comments. not all the children’s stories were sad. a favourite story was how the local café, whose freezer was defrosting because of the power outage, sent bags of ice creams to the school for the children. they also talked about what they had learned and what they were most proud of. a brother and sister discussed how they had learned that ‘… stuff didn’t matter – you can buy new stuff but you can’t buy someone’s life back’, and others told how they had overcome their fears: ‘i’m pretty proud of me because i haven’t become a scaredy cat’. the next day, teachers and parents reported that the children were not distressed but in fact felt pleased that they 89 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu had taken part. they were more confident about recalling their experiences, so much so that we had more people asking to be interviewed the following day, including their older siblings. over the next few days, we interviewed the principal, teachers and families. we continued interviewing until people stopped asking. we were eventually able to compile a book of the school stories and a dvd of the children’s interviews to give to the school. in return, as a research team, we were able to use the interview transcripts for more detailed analysis and cross-case comparison (see mutch 2013, 2014b; mutch & gawith 2014). the participants (and families) whose stories were in the book were involved in negotiating the way their transcripts would become published stories. it took a further year of the book script going to and fro between the researchers and the school before the book was launched. the principal made particular note of how the process had been sensitively handled, as well as expressing the school’s appreciation of the finished product. beachlands school the success of the partnership with the first school meant we were able to get further funds from the lead researcher’s university to continue with the project. the deputy principal at beachlands school was known to one of the research team. he was keen for us to come to his school but he wanted a project that was not adult driven but involved ‘kids talking to kids’. the school had senior students (aged 10–12) who had been learning how to film and edit videos. we discussed how best to proceed, what level of skill the children had and what support they might need. we organised a trainee film director to support the students with filming, directing, interviewing and editing. the students designed the interview questions and practised on each other until they felt comfortable. the students who wanted to be interviewed chose the setting for their interview, often where they were when the february 2011 earthquake happened – in the library, in the playground, by the school garden shed, or on a school trip to the beach. the student interviewers showed remarkable flexibility in adapting the questions to suit the age of their peers or the flow of the story. as the students’ stories unfolded, they talked of where they were, how they felt and what they had learned from the earthquakes (see mutch 2013). in case children became distressed, a teacher or researcher kept within watching distance of the interviews. because the children being interviewed were able to frame their story as they wished, they were remarkably candid and calm. preparing their story for others to view meant that they were able to gain a measure of objectivity and see their story as others might see it. framing the concept, designing the narrative flow, selecting the location and rehearsing the production meant that they were able to normalise the events and begin to absorb them into their personal history (cahill et al. 2010; gordon 2004; prinstein et al. 90 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu 1996). their stories were lucid, engaging and insightful. here is an excerpt that exemplifies the stories told on camera. this boy was on the school trip to the beach (mutch 2013, p. 451): all of a sudden a huge earthquake struck. i tried to crawl away but the earthquake threw me back down again. they always say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die and i was waiting for that to happen. this was something that was completely unreal. i didn’t think this would happen at all, especially here at canterbury … i was really nervous and was wondering: ‘how was my brother coping, how was mum coping, how was my dad coping?’ … we made our way across to [a nearby school]. i felt sorry because there were little five year olds there and every time an aftershock came, they were crying and i thought this is no way for a five year old to live … (student, beachlands school) several hours of video footage was edited and trimmed to create a video that could be shared with the community. on the third anniversary of the february earthquake, children and their families gathered in the school hall to view the video. some of the older children who had since gone on to high school returned for the occasion. the children involved in making the video were immensely proud of what they had achieved – it was their story, told their way. riverside school at the same time as we began working at beachlands, we also began discussing the project with a school on the outskirts of the city most affected by the september 2010 earthquake. this partnership was again based on a prior relationship. the principal had been a student teacher when carol was a teacher educator. the riverside school principal’s first reaction was that he felt the children had done enough talking and writing about the earthquake. he wanted the children to do something for the community – to create a memorial in which the experiences of all the children and their families would be represented and remembered. after wider discussion, the idea that emerged was to create a garden and seating area within the school grounds, where the property had been ‘red-zoned’ (designated for demolition), populated with plants from the families’ gardens. the garden was also to include mosaics, as one student said: ‘with bits of bricks from broken houses’, which would tell the community’s story. at the end of 2012, two of the research team facilitated a brainstorming session with a group of senior students (aged 10– 12). they wanted people in the future to know what had happened: ‘to remind them of what was there in the past and of what had been lost’; ‘we want them to know what we went through’; ‘… how we stayed together and worked it out’ and ‘for memories of people who died’. the students discussed lost buildings and icons, both in their town and the nearby city of christchurch. they wrote and drew preand post-earthquake symbols and representations that would form the basis of a set of four panels. the first panel would be their town 91 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu in early times, the second would represent their town in modern times and the third would show their town being torn apart by the earthquakes. the fourth would identify their hopes for the future, framed by words such as courage, community, stay strong, kia kaha (stand tall), faith, band together and new world. one researcher took the ideas away and drew a rough sketch of the four panels as they might appear when completed. she took the drawings back to the students to check they felt all their ideas had been captured and were represented as they wished. the local river became a motif that connected all four panels. one boy had drawn a well-known sailing ship that was anchored in the river. when asked what it represented, he said it was ‘sailing through a river of emotions’, and when asked where it was going, he replied, ‘getting to calmer seas’. the ship has pride of place in the final panel and the name of the mosaic became ‘river of emotions’. it was a huge undertaking, which took over a year to complete. the school wanted every child to be part of the project. this required careful organisation to coordinate the researchers and timetable the activities so that every child was cycled through the various stages of turning sketches into bold shapes that could be ‘mosaicked’, cutting tiles, cleaning bricks, or placing, gluing and grouting tiles on the mosaic panels. a fine arts graduate student from the university, sarah yates, was employed as art director and project manager. the mosaic was mainly created inside in a spare classroom. outside, the site had to be prepared – bulldozed, drained, filled with gravel, rolled, concreted and bricked. the project was so huge and time consuming that it went far beyond the resources that either the school or the university had budgeted for. sarah was not deterred. she contacted local organisations and community newspapers. the community responded with goods, services and labour. a local men’s organisation built the seat to go in the centre of the four mosaic panels. a group of youths on periodic detention, under the watchful eye of the probation officer, laid the bricks. community members dropped by and cut and laid tiles alongside the children. to ensure that every child participated, even the newest children at the school, who arrived as the panels were being finished, were given a tile to place in the mosaic. in 2014, to commemorate the february earthquakes, a community unveiling was arranged. the children, their teachers and parents, and the 72 community volunteers were invited. the final piece of the mosaic was laid by a local member of parliament. the ceremony was led by students who explained the meaning of the four panels and then presented carol and sarah with flowers: carol for believing that nothing was impossible and sarah for making the impossible happen. forest park school in 2012, the government announced that it was going to close or merge schools in christchurch that were no longer viable because of earthquake damage or population shifts. principals, teachers and communities were shocked and angry, saying the proposal was ‘unfair and cruel’. as one teacher commented: 92 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu school is the safe place that they [schools] have tried to provide. children were at school for the big february earthquake and it created a stronger bond in their communities, so it is very challenging when the ministry wants to break that up in some communities and schools. (teacher, forest park) there is not space in this article to discuss the further disruption and trauma this caused the affected school communities. one school that was slated for closure was forest park, which approached us to help them tell their story. the school itself was only moderately damaged in the earthquakes, but all around it homes were shattered and abandoned. despite many families being relocated, they made their way across the city daily to continue to drop off their children because they had such loyalty to the school and because it had been so supportive of their children during the earthquakes. over a hundred children from the school, with teachers and parents, had been at a local swimming complex learning water safety skills when the february earthquake struck: my thoughts then were never, ‘we aren’t going to get out’ or that it would collapse, but my thoughts now when i look back is that the whole place could have fallen in. we were so jolted that we stood up then we were jolted back down the force was so great. there was a group of children in the boat and all we could see was the whole thing swamped with the big waves and we couldn’t even get to them. we tried to stand and go forward but we were just knocked back … the lights went out and the children were screaming. all i remember is the siren noise and i went and grabbed a few of the year 4 children out of the pool and i just huddled with them. (teacher, forest park) forest park school closed at the end of 2013, with the staff and students being merged with another school to create a new school. the acting principal of forest park, appointed to see it through to closure, stated: ‘in military terms, it would be called “collateral damage”.’ he continued: how does that affect the staff? the emotional ties and the relationships are torn apart; families that have been associated with the school for decades have gone. that kind of link and historical connection, and knowledge of the community and the school and its involvement goes as well. history goes; it travels with the people. [forest park] has been around for 141 years … it’s not a place of recent history, we’re looking at quite a significant place in the community and the community’s grown up around the school. (acting principal, forest park) late in 2013, after yet more funding had been found, a social psychology graduate student, chris hu, supported a teacher to help the students gather the school’s stories – both earthquake stories and school closure stories. chris and the teacher created a video documentary, while carol interviewed the principal, teachers and parents. the final video showed students walking around their 93 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu school and saying what they liked about it, what it meant to them, how it had helped them get through the earthquakes and how they felt about it closing. in may 2014, chris returned to interview participants in their newly merged school, or in schools they since had moved to. he was welcomed back, not just because they remembered him, but because he represented someone who cared enough about them and their situations to return and find out how they were coping. discussion although carol was an experienced researcher, this was a new experience for her. from the start, there was no pre-determined research design beyond a wish that, with her help, schools in her home town in the post-disaster recovery phase could record their experiences in a way that worked best for them. at the same time, she could gather data that might contribute to the growing understanding of the role of schools in disaster response and recovery. when we finally took stock of what had been achieved, we were exhausted but exhilarated. the project had far exceeded our expectations. carol’s initial idea was that she might undertake some interviews, compile a few case studies and return these to the schools to share with their communities, all in a space of a few months. what happened, instead, was a fluid and unpredictable project, spanning three years and involving hundreds of participants, including principals, teachers, students, parents, families and community members, which consumed as much time and energy as the ever-growing research team could give it. and it’s not finished. the journey with riverside, for example, is continuing. another of the university’s arts-based researchers is returning to riverside to help them make a permanent record of the mosaicmaking story. carol is aiming to link project schools with schools in other disaster contexts. she is currently facilitating a link between one of the schools and a school in victoria, australia, whose community is recovering from devastating bushfires. in hindsight, what are the features that made the project so successful? we summarise these below as a mixture of dispositional, relational and situational factors. the factors are interdependent and the balance of each might differ with each partnership and context, but we discuss each separately here for clarity. dispositional factors are the values, attitudes, experiences and expertise that each person who engaged in the project brought with them. the strongest of these factors was trust – they were people who were trusting and trustworthy. they engendered trust with their openness, willingness to listen and ability to engage with others in a genuine way. prior relationships helped get the environment of trust underway quickly, but other factors were required to maintain it. first of these was sensitivity. all members of the research team, whether local or not, were entering into a world where people’s lives had been turned upside down, literally and figuratively. the 94 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu approach needed to be empathetic yet not patronising. the second factor that helped sustain trust was respect. each partner had to respect the ideas, experience and expertise of the others. this didn’t mean we would always agree, but it meant that discussions started from a base of goodwill. the varying strengths and areas of knowledge of the partners were also valued. the lead researcher brought credibility as an educator, local knowledge because of her own earthquake experience, and expertise in the field of research. her research team were selected, first, because of their qualities of openness, interest in others and willingness to try something new and, second, for particular areas of expertise – qualitative interviewing, video-production, art-making, social psychology, or arts-based research. luckily, they also had unlimited potential in risk-taking and creative problem-solving. the second group of factors was relational. the partnership began with a high-level discussion between the lead researcher and the principal (or deputy principal). they agreed to a tentative approach, timeline and outcome before other people were brought into the partnership – teachers, students and parents on the school side; funders, administrators and other members of the research team on the university side. relational factors included reaching agreement on purpose, roles, participants, approaches, communication and dissemination. trickier factors such as ownership, benefits, responsibility and accountability also had to be negotiated. for the partnership to flourish, agreements had to play out in the practice of shared decision-making, shared problem-solving, shared commitment, and renegotiating tasks and timelines as needed. when difficulties arose, and they did, they needed to be handled in a way that kept the relationship intact. the reciprocity needed to be authentic, articulated and acknowledged. in fact, part of the success of this project was that each partner thought that they had the best end of the bargain – schools were delighted with the process and the end products; the research team were delighted with the privilege of the experience and the richness of the data generated. the final set of factors was contextual. each setting was completely different. each school was located in a different geographical and socioeconomic area. each had a different ethnic mix. each had a different earthquake experience. each had a different school culture and way of operating. approaches to gaining access, managing logistical arrangements and engaging staff, students and families all varied. what worked in one setting might not necessarily translate to another setting – or if it did, it would shape up differently. the research team could not make assumptions, have set expectations, or readily generalise from one school to another. for the project to be successful for both partners, each of the sets of factors needed to come together in particular ways, in order to craft an authentic relationship and a unique process for each context. 95 | gateways | mutch, yates & hu conclusion this article describes the process of one university research team building relationships and negotiating a process with four different schools participating in the ‘canterbury schools tell their earthquake stories’ project. the project began with the lead researcher wanting to support schools affected by the 2010/2011 canterbury earthquakes. the project developed gradually as schools felt there was value in participating. the size, make-up and roles of the research team varied to match the needs of each individual school. the partnerships with each school developed in different ways but always had the students at the heart of the agreed outcome. the willingness of both partners to work together in an emergent and collegial manner, in which the power was shared and the decisions jointly made, strengthened the partnerships, the process and the outcomes. in this article, four school projects within the wider research project are described to give a detailed insight into how the research team tailored each individual school’s process. these cases go some way towards offering counter examples to the way school-university partnerships are sometimes portrayed (hooper & britnell 2012; patton 2012) and adding to the literature that suggests more positive possibilities (goodlad 1993; luter, lester & kronick 2013). the factors that led to the successful partnerships are 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humanitarian response, bloomsbury, london, pp. 127–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022466912436397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.06.012 http://www.acu.edu.au/about_acu/faculties,_institutes_and_centres/centres/institute_of_child_protection_studies/our_work/publications/publications_by_year/?a=469255 _goback _enref_23 _enref_35 _enref_41 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 january 2019 practice-based article development and evaluation of a communityengaged research training program: building capacity of marshallese stakeholders and academic researchers to conduct health research pearl a mcelfish1*, brett rowland2, britni l ayers1, gail e o’connor3, rachel s purvis2, nia aitaoto4, lucy capelle5, melisa laelan5, holly c felix6, m kathryn stewart6 and karen hk yeary7 1 college of medicine, university of arkansas for medical sciences northwest, 1125 north college avenue, fayetteville, ar, usa 2 office of community health and research, university of arkansas for medical sciences northwest, 1125 north college avenue, fayetteville, ar, usa 3 association of asian pacific community health organizations, 101 callan avenue, suite 400, san leandro, ca, usa 4 department of nutrition and integrative physiology, college of health, university of utah, 250 south 1850 east, salt lake city, ut, usa 5 arkansas coalition of marshallese, 614 east emma avenue, suite 210, springdale, ar, usa 6 fay w boozman college of public health, university of arkansas for medical sciences, 4301 west markham street, little rock, ar, usa 7 department of health behavior and health education, university of arkansas for medical sciences, 4301 west markham street, little rock, ar, usa *corresponding author: pearl a mcelfish; pamcelfish@uams.edu doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6198 article history: received 26/05/2018; revised 14/07/2018; accepted 01/08/2018; published 15/01/2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: mcelfish, p.a., rowland, b., ayers, b.l., o’connor, g.e., purvis, r.s., aitaoto, n., capelle, l., laelan, m., felix, h.c., stewart, m.k. and yeary, k.h.k. 2019. development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program: building capacity of marshallese stakeholders and academic researchers to conduct health research. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 6198. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i1.6198 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre.epress. lib.uts.edu.au declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the translational research institute at uams supported the community engagement that allowed us to develop this project through the national institutes of health (nih) national center for research resources and the national center for advancing translational sciences (grant ul1tr000039). in addition, the cert program was funded by patient centered outcomes research institute (pcori) (grant #1513-uams). one of the research projects was funded by a uams intramural grant from the sturgis foundation endowment and a second project was funded by the university of arkansas pi theta nursing honor society (grant #0402-82275-21-0000). the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders. 1 page number not for citation purposes mailto:pamcelfish@uams.edu http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6198 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au abstract pacific islanders are a growing, yet understudied population who suffer from high rates of chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. given the historical trauma experienced by pacific islanders, community-based participatory research (cbpr) is an appropriate way to conduct research focused on reducing the health disparities observed in this population. this article presents the process of engaging the marshallese community to design, conduct and evaluate a community-engaged research training program. the goal of the program was to build the capacity of both academic researchers and community stakeholders to conduct cbpr for the purpose of addressing health disparities identified and prioritised by the marshallese community. the program included both didactic training and experiential mentored research components delivered over a period of two years. eleven marshallese community stakeholders and eleven academic researchers participated in the program. results indicated that the program successfully increased participants’ knowledge regarding the cbpr process. groups of participants have completed exploratory research projects based on the topics identified by the community. the evaluation adds important insights to the current cbpr training literature and can inform future cbpr trainings. keywords community-based participatory research, community-engaged research, pacific islanders, minority health, health disparities, interprofessional training introduction the pacific islander population is growing rapidly in the united states (us). between 2000 and 2010, the population of pacific islanders in the us grew by 40 per cent, with the fastest growth in the southern us (66 per cent) (hixson, hepler & kim 2012). for example, arkansas had a 252 per cent growth in the pacific islander population, the vast majority of which are marshallese migrants from the republic of the marshall islands (rmi). arkansas now has the largest population of marshallese living in the continental us (hixson, hepler & kim 2012). pacific islanders residing in the us, and marshallese specifically, have significant health disparities, including high rates of chronic and infectious diseases (cardenas et al. 2016; fischer et al. 2009; mcelfish, rowland et al. 2017; rothfeldt et al. 2016; woodall, scollard & rajan 2011). despite significant health disparities, pacific islanders are under-represented in health research, resulting in limited scientific knowledge, masked health disparities and insufficient resource allocation for culturally appropriate research and programs (park et al. 2009; ro & yee 2010; roehr 2010; srinivasan & guillermo 2000). to help fill the gap in research on health disparities among pacific islanders, the university of arkansas for medical sciences (uams) developed a community-engaged research training (cert) program. the program brought together marshallese community stakeholders and academic researchers to address the health disparities of the pacific islander/marshallese community in arkansas. this article presents: 1) the process of engaging community stakeholders and developing the unique cert curriculum; 2) implementation of the cert program; and 3) results of the community-engaged, mixed-methods program evaluation. results from this article can serve as a useful model for other community-academic partnerships addressing health disparities in under-served populations. mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes understanding historical trauma any research training program targeted at reducing health disparities within the pacific islander/marshallese community must consider the historical relationship between the us and the rmi. the us military tested more than 60 atomic and thermonuclear weapons in the rmi from 1946 to 1958 (barker 2012; simon 1997). marshallese who inhabited the islands and atolls where the testing took place were relocated prior to the tests; however, those living on nearby islands and atolls were not evacuated (barker 2012; simon 1997). as a result, many marshallese were exposed to radioactive fallout (barker 2012; cronkite et al. 1955; lessard et al. 1984; robison et al. 1997; simon 1997; takahashi et al. 2003). us researchers studied the effects of the nuclear radiation on exposed islanders in a study termed project 4.1 (barker 2012; simon 1997). informed consent of marshallese community members was not provided and the study was conducted without translation of information into the native marshallese language (barker 2012). us military reports stated that exposure to nuclear radiation was accidental (cronkite et al. 1955); however, many marshallese believed that the exposure was not an accident (barker 2012). consistent with other populations that have experienced historical trauma, the marshallese community often exhibits distrust towards health professionals and academic researchers (barker 2012). one way to address this historical trauma in the marshallese, as well as in other pacific islander communities, is through community-engaged research focused on topics prioritised by the community, with full participation from community members. communityengaged research shares power and builds trust between academic researchers and community stakeholders (israel et al. 1998; minkler & wallerstein 2008). community-engaged research encompasses a wide range of community participation in research and has been referred to by several terms, including action research and patient-centred outcomes research. included in community engagement is community-based participatory research (cbpr), whereby community and academic partners collaborate completely on every aspect of the research project. given that the partnership described in this article used a cbpr approach, the authors will use the term cbpr throughout the article. methods engagement and program development engagement process. in 2013, the lead author began a concentrated effort to better understand the health disparities of the pacific islander/marshallese community in northwest arkansas and formed a community advisory board composed of marshallese community stakeholders to partner in the process (mcelfish et al. 2015). the process began with uams researchers asking marshallese community members to share their history, stories and perspectives on health and research. additionally, uams researchers and community stakeholders compiled and reviewed secondary data about the arkansas pacific islander/marshallese population from the census, local school districts, the adult and youth behavior risk factor surveillance system (brfss), arkansas department of health vital records and needs assessments conducted in 2004 and 2010 by the local home-town health coalition and community foundation. the lead investigator conducted qualitative interviews with participants to better understand the most pressing needs of the community (hallgren, mcelfish & rubon-chutaro 2015; mcelfish, hallgren et al. 2016; mcelfish, purvis et al. 2016). additionally, the cbpr team surveyed almost 300 marshallese participants regarding self-reported health status (from development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes the brfss), health research priorities, and perceptions regarding participation in research (mcelfish, long et al. 2018). defining assets, needs and priorities. after the asset and need assessments, interviews and survey responses were compiled, focus groups were held with community stakeholders to document their interpretation of the data and prioritise the community’s most pressing issues. community stakeholders identified diabetes, chronic disease management, obesity, physical activity and culturally appropriate health care as top priorities (mcelfish et al. 2015). stakeholders also identified their collectivist culture and faith-based community as assets in addressing health disparities. in addition, community stakeholders voiced the need to build the capacity of community members to partner with academic researchers in order to address the health disparities of the marshallese community. after establishing the research priorities with community stakeholders, the lead author and team members met with academic researchers with expertise in the areas identified by community stakeholders to discuss their willingness to partner with the community to address the stated needs. in total, we met with 28 researchers. while there was significant interest in the research that could be done, none of these researchers felt fully equipped to conduct cbpr with the marshallese community. although the lead author had successfully conducted cbpr with the marshallese community in northwest arkansas, additional academic researchers and community stakeholders needed to be trained to collaboratively address the health disparities identified by the community. to close the gaps in training identified by both academic researchers and community stakeholders (described below), the cbpr team developed a collaborative research training program: the community-engaged research training (cert) program. developing the training program. the cert program was collaboratively developed to meet the needs identified by both community members and academic researchers. the lead researcher met with community stakeholders who had been conducting cbpr with uams researchers and asked them to describe the areas of research training they wanted to receive, and what areas they felt researchers needed to better understand in order to conduct research with the marshallese community. community stakeholders requested assistance in understanding: 1) the definition of research and how it helps the community; 2) how the community can be true partners in the research; and 3) resource sharing and budgeting. furthermore, community stakeholders suggested that academic researchers needed assistance with: 1) respecting community knowledge; 2) partnering with the community; 3) respecting community partners; and 4) pacific islander/marshallese history and culture. the lead researcher also had discussions with local academic researchers in order to understand their research training needs. researchers requested assistance with: 1) understanding cbpr; 2) how to conduct cbpr; 3) how to recruit and retain hard to reach participants; 4) how to fund cbpr; 5) institutional review board (irb) issues with cbpr; and 6) how to partner with communities. in addition, researchers identified gaps in the community’s knowledge from prior attempts to conduct research with the marshallese community. specifically, researchers recommended community stakeholders have training to understand: 1) research design; 2) random assignment; 3) informed consent; and 4) quantitative and qualitative research methods. the goal of the cert program was to build the capacity of both academic researchers and community stakeholders to conduct cbpr for the purpose of addressing health disparities identified by the marshallese community. the cert program includes both didactic training mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes and experiential mentored research components delivered over two years. the cert program views community stakeholders and academic researchers as equals who both have knowledge and wisdom to contribute. program implementation recruitment and selection. the cert program was advertised to community stakeholders through community non-profit partners, social media and community health workers, and was advertised to academic researchers at three local universities through those universities’ email lists. the inclusion criteria for researchers to engage in the cert program were: 1) have expertise in one of the priority areas identified by community stakeholders; 2) be committed to working in the community on cbpr projects for at least five years after the program; and 3) commit to attending all training sessions and spending at least six hours per month engaged in research planning and execution with their community partners during the two-year training period. the inclusion criteria for community stakeholders were: 1) have an interest in learning about research; 2) be open to working with academic researchers for at least five years after the program; and 3) commit to attending all training sessions and spending at least six hours per month engaged in research planning and execution with their academic research partners during the two-year training period. both community stakeholders and academic researchers completed an application that described why they wanted to participate and confirmed their time commitment to the program. participants were selected with input from a community co-investigator. eleven researchers and eleven community members met the inclusion criteria and were selected to participate in the program, which meant no-one who met the criteria was excluded. each participant signed a memorandum of understanding that outlined the expectations and the amount of time that would be dedicated to the training. this evaluation was reviewed by the uams irb and received an exemption (irb #207156). cert modules and implementation. the cert program was a two-year training program, implemented from august 2015 to july 2017. the first year focused on interactive training, and the second year focused on implementing mentored group research projects. eight training modules were presented monthly during the first year. meetings were not held during june, july, november and december. each session lasted approximately three hours. the interactive training modules covered the most important topics identified by the community stakeholders and academic researchers (see table 1). based on community stakeholder input, the cert program was designed so that training was delivered to both community stakeholders and academic researchers together in the same sessions. community stakeholders were compensated $50 per training; academic researchers were not compensated for participation. table 1 cert curriculum overview module focus area module 1 pacific islander/marshallese culture and history module 2 introduction to cbpr and pcor module 3 overview of research design and analysis module 4 community perspectives/wisdom: how they improve research module 5 pcori methodology standards development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes https://clara.uams.edu/clara-webapp/protocols/207156/dashboard module focus area module 6 ethics in research module 7 disseminating results module 8 facilitating qualitative interviews note: cbpr = community-based participatory research; pcor = patient-centered outcomes research; pcori = patient centered outcomes research institute formation of groups and research topics for group projects. as part of the third module, community stakeholders and academic researchers began working together to develop research topics of interest. three groups were formed and continued to work together throughout the rest of the program. each research group consisted of at least three community stakeholders and at least three academic researchers. each group identified a broad research area to work on, and collaboratively presented their research idea(s) and received feedback from the other participants. during the remaining five sessions, groups spent at least an hour each session refining their research topic. (see table 2 for a description of the groups’ projects.) table 2 overview of group projects group overview group 1 title exploratory study of barriers to and facilitators of medication adherence in marshallese patients study aims aim 1: to understand marshallese patients’ perceptions of and experiences with barriers to and facilitators of medication adherence aim 2: to understand healthcare provider identified barriers to and facilitators of medication adherence by the marshallese in northwest arkansas aim 3: to understand marshallese community health worker identified barriers to and facilitators of medication adherence for the marshallese in northwest arkansas participants 65 participants: 40 marshallese patients, 15 health care providers and 10 marshallese community health workers method qualitative design with both focus groups and individual interviews; surveys to document participant demographic information funding $25,000 intramural grant group 2 title exploratory study of infant and child feeding practices and customs in marshallese community table 1 continued mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes group overview study aims aim 1: to understand infant and child feeding practices in the marshallese community aim 2: to understand the factors that may influence infant and child feeding practices participants 29 participants: marshallese women with children 1–3 years of age and caregivers of those children method qualitative study design with four focus groups; survey to document participant demographic information funding $5000 intramural grant group 3 title exploratory study of food practices in the marshallese community study aims aim 1: to understand marshallese knowledge, beliefs, cultural norms and definitions of healthy eating aim 2: to understand marshallese experiences with purchasing, preparing and eating food participants 40 participants: marshallese adults aged 25 or older method mixed methods with food practices survey and qualitative interviews funding no funding was received mentored research phase. the mentored research phase was designed to take participants through the research preparation and proposal process over a one-year time period (see table 3). groups met monthly to collaboratively develop: 1) research ideas; 2) protocols for irb approval; 3) data collection instruments; and 4) recruitment and consent documents. groups progressed at different speeds, with one group collecting and analysing data during the second year of mentored research, another group completing their protocol and collecting about half of their data during the second year, and the third group completing the planning and irb approval process by the end of the second year. table 3 timeline of year 2 – mentored research phase month objective 1 • confirm research topics • discuss and identify who else needs to participate in study 2 • confirm your research questions and aims • identify whether funding is needed for the projects table 2 continued development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes month objective 3, 4, 5 • develop protocols, including: ⚬ participant inclusion criteria ⚬ sampling ⚬ recruitment methods ⚬ participant incentives ⚬ data to be collected ⚬ data collection instruments ⚬ data analysis plans 6, 7 • collect data 8, 9, 10 • analyse data 11, 12 • write up results • disseminate results to the community the cbpr investigators/trainers. the cert program was developed and delivered by two cbpr researchers, both of whom spent the majority of their careers outside academia implementing programs and conducting research in community settings. in addition, community co-investigators provided significant input into training in the areas of cultural competency, research topics important to the community, and culturally appropriate processes for engaging with the community and implementing research. marshallese community health workers who had facilitated health research projects co-taught four of the modules. approximately half of all presentations were presented by a pacific islander researcher, pacific islander community health worker, or pacific islander community co-investigator. once the cert program entered into the mentored research phase, each of the three groups was supported by a uams research associate who facilitated meetings, assisted in research design, and helped draft the protocol, consent document and study instruments. evaluation of the cert program evaluation methods. a multi-component, mixed-methods program evaluation was designed and implemented (tashakkori & teddlie 2010). the mixed-methods evaluation had three components: 1) a pre/post-test survey; 2) implementation of a continuous process improvement model; and 3) qualitative focus group interviews with academic and community investigators. the pre/post-test survey assessed participants’ knowledge, experiences and opinions related to: 1) health research; 2) the cbpr process; 3) the benefit of medical research; 4) importance of community partners; 5) pacific islanders’ knowledge of cbpr; 6) academic researchers’ knowledge of pacific islanders/marshallese; and 7) future participation in cbpr. the survey was conducted at the beginning of the first training session and again at the end of the last training session held during the first year. descriptive statistics were computed for the community stakeholders and academic researchers. pre/post-test survey results were analysed using paired sample t-tests. second, a continuous process improvement model, based on the kaizen approach, was used to make real-time adjustments to the training based upon participants’ feedback (imai 1986, 1997). during the last 20 minutes of each training session, feedback from participants table 3 continued mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes was gathered on which elements of the training were working well and which elements were not working well. participant feedback and the resulting changes made to the program were systematically documented. third, qualitative focus group interviews with community stakeholders and academic researchers were conducted at the end of the interactive training phase (first year) and mentored research phase (second year) of the program. a semi-structured interview guide was used to gather the cert program participants’ thoughts on what worked well and did not work well. the broad questions were asked in several different ways to elicit feedback on the program. these interviews were conducted by the lead author with two research associates taking field notes. the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. text was coded using emergent thematic analysis by a primary coder and a confirmation coder who had extensive training in qualitative methods. summary analysis and quotes that best represented participants’ feedback are presented below. results quantitative results participant characteristics. as shown in table 4, a total of 11 community and 11 academic investigators participated in the training. the mean age of all participants was 39 years (sd = 9.9). the majority of participants were female (77.3 per cent). ten of the 11 academic researchers self-reported their race as white, and one self-reported as multi-racial. all community stakeholders self-reported their race as pacific islander/marshallese. more than half of the participants had completed college (54.5 per cent), and half had prior experience with health research. among the academic researchers, there were five pharmacists, four nurses, one dietitian and one cultural anthropologist. the vast majority of participants indicated a positive perception of research, as well as the importance of community involvement in research (see table 5). table 4 participant demographics characteristic n % age (m ± sd) 38.8 ± 9.9 gender male 5 22.7 female 17 77.3 race white 11 50.0 pacific islander 10 45.5 other/multiracial 1 4.5 education some high school 1 4.5 high school graduate 2 9.1 development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes characteristic n % some college 7 31.8 college graduate 12 54.5 type of researcher academic 11 50.0 community 11 50.0 note: only valid percentages shown. percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. n = number; m = mean; sd = standard deviation. table 5 participants’ attitudes and experiences related to health research response category n % ever participated in a health research study? no 11 50.0 yes 11 50.0 how was your experience with health research studies? all positive 4 36.4 some positive/some negative 7 63.6 medical research is done for the benefit of humankind yes 22 100 medical research is done for the benefit of my community yes 22 100 ever been involved in cbpr? no 12 54.5 yes 10 45.5 how important are community partners to health research? very important 21 100 how important is it for the community to understand research in order to be partners in research? very important 22 100 is the input of community partners valued as much as academic partners? no 1 5.6 yes, by some academics 8 44.4 yes, by all academics 9 50.0 note: only valid percentages shown. percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. n = number. mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes pre/post-test results. results of the pre/post evaluation questions indicated a perceived gain in participants’ knowledge regarding the cbpr process. participants’ post-program scores (m = 2.57, sd = 0.51) were significantly higher than their pre-program scores (m = 1.79, sd = 0.43), t(13) = 5.08, p < .001, d = 1.36. likewise, survey results showed an increase regarding how knowledgeable participants felt pacific islanders/marshallese were about cbpr. participants’ post-program scores (m = 2.08, sd = 0.64) were significantly higher than their pre-program scores (m = 1.69, sd = 0.63), t(12) = 2.74, p = .018, d = 0.76. though the scores increased, no significant difference was observed between the participants’ preand post-program scores for the item assessing academic researchers’ knowledge of the needs and values of pacific islanders/marshallese (p = .189). (see table 6.) table 6: comparison of pre/post-survey responses measures preprogram score (sd) postprogram score (sd) n t df p how knowledgeable do you feel about the cbpr process? 1.79 (0.43) 2.57 (0.51) 14 5.08 13 <.001 how knowledgeable do you feel pacific islanders/ marshallese are about the cbpr process? 1.69 (0.63) 2.08 (0.64) 13 2.74 12 .018 how knowledgeable do you feel academic researchers are about the needs and values of pacific islanders/marshallese? 1.43 (0.51) 1.64 (0.63) 14 1.39 13 .189 note: of the total 22 program participants, analyses are based on the number who fully completed each preand post-measure. bolded p-values are statistically significant. sd = standard deviation. continuous process improvement the continuous process improvement approach led to three major changes to the training procedures. table 7 documents the initial plan, participant feedback, and how that feedback was implemented as a process change in the training program. table 7 process improvement changes initial plan participant feedback change every training session will be 70% didactic and 30% interactive/ group projects after modules 1–4, participants wanted to reduce the amount of didactic training and increase the amount of interactive/group work. modules 6 and 7 adjusted to 50% didactic and 50% interactive/ group work; modules 7 and 8 adjusted to 20% didactic and 80% interactive/group work. development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes initial plan participant feedback change form 11 groups with one community stakeholder and one academic researcher per group participants said they would feel more comfortable and be able to accomplish more work in larger groups. three groups were formed with three to four community stakeholders and three to four academic researchers per group. form groups and choose topics during the last month of the interactive training participants wanted to form their groups earlier so they could discuss and apply what they had learned with their topic in mind. groups were formed during month 3, and after each training module, the groups discussed how the information would be integrated into their project. qualitative results when asked questions regarding what worked well in the cert program, what was most beneficial and what should be repeated if the cert program were implemented again, community stakeholders and academic researchers identified three broad areas: 1) group interaction, collaboration and co-learning between community stakeholders and academic researchers; 2) the interprofessional nature of the academic researchers; and 3) presentations from pacific islander researchers, community health workers and community stakeholders. group interaction, collaboration and co-learning between community stakeholders and academic researchers. the interaction and opportunity for teamwork between community members and academic researchers was consistently mentioned as the most successful part of the program. a community stakeholder noted, ‘i really like the way that we are all communicating and trying to find the solutions to our problems, because that is the reason why we are still here, we want to help our community.’ participants discussed their appreciation of the interactions between academic researchers and community members as they allowed for a more productive learning environment and also increased their humility about their level of knowledge. as we moved into the mentored research phase, participants appreciated the continued interaction and also cited an increased level of trust that allowed community stakeholders to be more candid with researchers regarding research design. as one academic researcher explained, ‘i appreciate the fact that they [community members] were so honest. the fact that they said, “no, that is not going to work”, i very much appreciated that.’ a community stakeholder stated ‘i enjoyed that we had the sessions in the groups, because we had community [members], but also researchers, and we were able to discuss and start coming up with a framework for a project.’ one community stakeholder reflected on prior research they had participated in and how this process was different: they [researchers] all came and were trying to do research on us and the [marshallese] community. so when they were working with our people it was always, ‘no. no, it’s not like that.’ they would try to bring up their ways to research on our lives and what i like about this research, because you guys are willing to learn our ways. if it’s not our ways, then it’s not going to work and we don’t need it, because that’s the truth. we work together and that’s what makes us strong. so it’s not just easy to just come in and say ‘oh, this is the way to do it, because we’re researchers, we’re doctors.’ i really like this mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes [training program] because people are willing to respect our ways. i like to do research with you guys. interprofessional nature of the academic participants. in addition to the interaction between community stakeholders and academic researchers, participants voiced an appreciation of the broad academic and health care professions represented in the cert program and the opportunity to conduct interprofessional research with the community. one academic participant explained, ‘for me, i think the interprofessional [faculty] and also the community partners that were here to be able to work in a team. even though sometimes it is difficult because we all came with different backgrounds and levels of knowledge, i liked working with everybody, a variety of people.’ another academic researcher agreed stating, ‘working with people outside of your profession . . . i get to work with an awesome group of nurses and i am the only pharmacist on their team so i would not have had that opportunity if we were just working in the pharmacy department. and working with different universities . . . this is with a different institution and perspective as well.’ a community stakeholder added, ‘we got to see the professionals of each individual that is working for the health systems here like the pharmacists and nurses. it was cool.’ presentations from pacific islander researchers, community health workers and community stakeholders. the participants, especially the academic researchers, appreciated learning from pacific islander researchers, community health workers and community stakeholders. one researcher explained, ‘i learned so much from community health workers that i would not have even thought of.’ another academic researcher summarised, ‘i loved hearing all of the [community stakeholders] stories.’ specifically, academic participants stated that the sessions from pacific islander presenters helped them broaden their research perspective: ‘i learned so much. listening to the stories and hearing how to do things in the pacific islander culture helps me. . . really broadened my knowledge, and helps me to identify new areas of research.’ hearing directly from pacific islanders/marshallese about their culture seemed to create a greater sense of cultural understanding and cultural humility among many academic participants, who reflected that they thought they knew more about the pacific islander/marshallese culture than they actually did and credited the training for helping them understand their lack of knowledge. one academic participant explained, ‘i think i knew the culture as a medical provider but i didn’t really know the culture. so i think that was huge for me.’ another academic researcher stated, ‘i have learned a lot about the marshallese and especially in relation to research. i’ve learned a lot of new things. i thought i knew more than i knew, i now know more than i did know, but i still have a whole lot left to learn.’ pacific islander community members also appreciated that academic researchers wanted to hear directly from them. a community participant said, ‘i really liked it that more people are aware and are very interested in learning more about us and trying to find ways to find a better life for us.’ when asked questions regarding what did not work well and what should be done differently if the cert program were implemented again, participants identified three areas: 1) deepen the relationships between academic partners and community members; 2) parts of the training were elementary; and 3) the location of the training. deepen the relationships. both community stakeholders and academic researchers stated that they appreciated the opportunity to work collaboratively, but thought there was more that could be done to deepen the relationships between community stakeholders and academic researchers. participants’ primary recommendation was to incorporate a ‘buddy system’ that development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes paired an academic researcher with a community stakeholder, so they could spend time together getting to know the pacific islander community without the difficulty of scheduling group meetings. both community stakeholders and academic researchers voiced that this would have the dual benefit of deepening relationships while also keeping community stakeholders involved and engaged throughout the two-year cert program. a community stakeholder participant suggested, ‘in the beginning at the initial gathering, maybe assign a community member to each [researcher].’ an academic researcher echoed, ‘pairing up some mentorships where a marshallese [community member] could mentor you and then you could mentor them on the research side. it would be very mutually beneficial. then you would have that contact and that friendship.’ another academic researcher stated they needed ‘more time to build those relationships with the community, because that is what it really is all about. without them there is no trust. . .with a relationship they will share more and we will share more.’ parts of the training were elementary. although there was a conscious decision to include all participants in all modules, the academic researchers found the modules related to research ethics and the irb redundant. an academic researcher explained, ‘the module where we went over what is irb. . .i felt like i was zoning out, so maybe having that for people who were not familiar in a separate group.’ another academic participant described the research ethics module as her least favourite and stated that it seemed ‘elementary’ since she had completed research ethics training multiple times. the location of the training. the trainings were held on the uams campus, approximately 16 kilometres from the primary residences of the community stakeholders, and concern was expressed about the location where the trainings were held. participants noted that the location required some community stakeholders to find transportation to each session. furthermore, it was expressed that having the trainings in a non-academic setting could make community stakeholders feel more comfortable. both community stakeholders and academic researchers recommended that some or all of the training sessions be held in the community. a community stakeholder summarised, ‘i think that the biggest setback was that the trainings was here [at uams] and you have the community in springdale.’ another community stakeholder noted that data collection events held in the community are better, ‘i really like that we did our focus groups in the community at the arkansas coalition of marshallese office, because i think that really worked out well.’ academic researchers also saw value in making sure some of the training sessions were held in the community, ‘maybe one of the classes could be somewhere in the community? maybe early on, to make it feel like this is more of an equal partnership.’ another academic researcher agreed and voiced concern that ‘we learned about their community but we never went into the community as a group.’ discussion national funding agencies, including the national institutes of health (nih) and the patient centered outcome research institute (pcori), have encouraged cbpr as a way to improve translational research and address health disparities in disenfranchised communities (michener et al. 2012; national institutes of health 2017; patient-centered outcomes research institute 2014). cbpr is increasingly cited as an important tool in addressing health disparities in communities who have experienced historical trauma (laveaux & christopher 2009; minkler & wallerstein 2008; wallerstein & duran 2006). however, conducting cbpr requires building the capacity of both community stakeholders and academic researchers (crosby et al. 2013; goytia et al. 2013; kwon et al. 2012). though several cbpr engagement mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 14 page number not for citation purposes and training models have been published (allen et al. 2013; baquet et al. 2013; cole et al. 2013; crosby et al. 2013; goytia et al. 2013; healey, reed & huber 2013; martin del campo et al. 2013; rideout et al. 2013; smith, kaufman & dearlove 2013; young-lorion et al. 2013), few have focused on work with pacific islander communities (distefano et al. 2013; kaholokula et al. 2014; kwan et al. 2012, 2014; palmer 2014). the cert program is one of the first published cbpr training programs with pacific islander communities in the southern us. the mixed-method evaluation showed that the program was successful in improving cbpr knowledge among participants. furthermore, the evaluation documented participants’ assessments of what they liked about the program and how they felt it could be improved. this evaluation of the cert program expands the literature through several key insights that can be integrated into other cbpr trainings. the cert program is unique, in that it was designed to have community stakeholders and academic researchers attend all training sessions together. most other cbpr training programs instruct community stakeholders and academic researchers separately and then pair them together for research projects after the training sessions. the evaluation shows that the collaborative learning model has both benefits and challenges. both community stakeholders and academic researchers voiced their appreciation for the time spent together and cited this as a primary benefit of the cert program. however, academic researchers found some of the sessions, such as the research ethics and irb training, to be at an elementary level, and noted it was an area that could be improved. a hybrid model may be needed to keep the benefits of joint training, but reduce the unproductive time for academic researchers. the cert program appeared to be effective in helping academic participants increase their cultural humility (tervalon & murray-garcia 1998). academic researchers showed evidence of self-evaluation and self-critique of their knowledge of pacific islander/marshallese culture. when asked related questions in the focus group, academic researchers reflected that they thought they knew more than they actually did when they began the program. this finding could indicate some level of response shift bias in the quantitative findings, due to an overestimation of knowledge at the outset of the program. furthermore, the academic researchers credited the co-learning environment and presentations directly from pacific islanders for helping them identify their gaps in knowledge and strengthen their commitment to continuous learning and partnership. this process of self-evaluation and self-critique of one’s own knowledge and the cultural humility that comes from such reflection is a critical component of conducting cbpr (laveaux & christopher 2009; minkler & wallerstein 2008; tervalon & murray-garcia 1998; wallerstein & duran 2006). the most common positive feedback was the opportunity to learn about, with and from each other. the co-learning between community stakeholders and academic researchers and between researchers from multiple universities and multiple professions was cited as extremely valuable. in addition to the co-learning environment, academic researchers voiced appreciation that more than 50 per cent of the presentations were delivered by pacific islander/marshallese community members. having members of the pacific islander/marshallese community present about their culture was key to the success of the cert program. the cert program is one of the first trainings to incorporate both an interactive training component and a year-long mentored research component. while the mentoring phase was successful, the program evaluation showed areas that should be considered if the training were implemented again. while all the projects were similar in scope and design, the projects progressed at different rates, and only two of the three projects received outside funding. development and evaluation of a community-engaged research training program gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes in future trainings, it would be best to secure funding for all projects prior to beginning the mentored research phase of the training. furthermore, based upon input regarding process improvement, we moved from a model that paired one academic researcher with one community stakeholder to a group model with six to eight members (half academic researchers and half community stakeholders). while this change was based upon participant input, qualitative feedback suggests that a more balanced approach is needed. future implementations should consider combining the one-on-one and group models so that each community stakeholder is paired with an academic researcher, and then facilitate a move to three pairs working together in a focused research group. the cert program sought to model cbpr principles in its implementation process. this goal was achieved in some ways, but failed in others. the primary way that the cert program modelled cbpr principles was through the continuous process improvement that sought input from participants, discussed possible solutions and made real-time changes to the program. the collaborative process of discussion, debate, and willingness to make changes to protocols is an essential component of cbpr (laveaux & christopher 2009; wallerstein & duran 2006). participants were able to engage in this collaborative decision making as part of the training, which should help them feel more comfortable integrating it into their future cbpr projects. in addition, the cert program modelled the importance of community leadership through a majority of the presentations being delivered by members of the pacific islander/marshallese community. however, it is important to note that the cert program failed to model cbpr principles in choosing the location of the training. the training was held approximately 16 kilometres from the primary residences of the pacific islander/ marshallese community. holding the trainings on the university campus saved money and was convenient for academic researchers, but community stakeholders voiced their concern that the location was more difficult to get to and required transportation for community stakeholders. furthermore, it may have created a shift in the balance of power because training was in an academic setting rather than a community setting. future trainings should consider holding all or part of the sessions in community settings. this could help facilitate community stakeholder participation and would also model principles of cbpr. limitations this mixed-methods evaluation of the cert program is not without limitations. first, the pre/post-test data did not analyse community stakeholder and academic researcher data separately. the choice to keep the pre/post-surveys anonymous and not have participants disclose if they represented academia or the community was intentional; however, it did reduce the analytical value of the data. furthermore, several participants were unable to attend the final training session where post-surveys were completed; thus, the results of the inferential tests should be interpreted with caution, due to the restricted sample size. as mentioned previously, the qualitative results indicated that using a traditional pre/post-survey design may have led to inaccurate pre-program ratings. future studies should employ a retrospective pre/post-survey design to reduce the potential for such bias, or conduct both traditional and retrospective pre/post-tests simultaneously in order to observe whether a response shift exists, and to what degree (drennan & hyde 2008; howard 1980; pratt, mcguigan, & katzev 2000; rohs 1999). participants were provided the opportunity to do an individual interview or participate in a focus group interview. all participants chose a focus group. while this may point to the trust developed among members, it may have also constrained responses. finally, the training program only included 22 participants: 11 community stakeholders and 11 mcelfish, rowland, ayers, o'connor, purvis, aitaoto, capelle, laelan, felix, stewart and yeary gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 16 page number not for citation purposes academic researchers. the small sample size provides limited information about the ability to scale the cert program to larger groups or different populations. conclusions this is one of the first cbpr training evaluations with pacific islanders to be published. although there were issues encountered in the inaugural cert program, it was successful in accomplishing its goal of building community-engaged research capacity among pacific islander/marshallese community stakeholders and academic researchers in northwest arkansas. overall, participants perceived an increase in their understanding of cbpr and expressed satisfaction with their experience in the program. the process of conducting this evaluation and group reflection on what worked and what did not work incorporated elements of cultural humility, shared power and shared decision making, which are foundational principles of cbpr. the evaluation adds important insights to the current 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https://doi.org/10.5032/jae.1999.04028 https://doi.org/10.5032/jae.1999.04028 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6533a7.htm https://doi.org/10.1097/00004032-199707000-00001 http://muse.jhu.edu/article/521224 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.90.11.1731 https://doi.org/10.2188/jea.13.99 https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2010.0233 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524839906289376 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/7/10-2036_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/7/10-2036_article http://muse.jhu.edu/article/521225 improving health and education outcomes for children in remote communities a cross-sector and developmental evaluation approach early childhood is one of the most influential developmental life stages. attainments at this stage will have implications for the quality of life children experience as they transition to adulthood (coag 2009; cosdh 2007; maggi et al. 2005). children residing in remote australia are exposed to disadvantages that can contribute to developmental delays and resultant poorer education and health outcomes. remoteness is defined in the australian context by geographical location through the australian standard geographical classification — remoteness areas (asgc-ra). communities in far west nsw are identified as ra3 — outer regional, ra4 — remote, and ra5 — very remote (abs 2013). in addition, remote locations have been identified as sharing common characteristics that include higher levels of health risk and disease burdens, limited access to health services, health workforce shortages and socio-economic disadvantage (mcgrail & humphreys 2009). a number of these characteristics are evident in far west new south wales (nsw) communities and have contributed to children with speech and motor skill delays experiencing no to limited access to allied health services for a number of decades. more recently, growing awareness that no single policy, government agency, or program could effectively respond to these complexities or ensure appropriate allied health service access for children in these communities led to the development of a new model and approach to providing essential health services that were aligned to community need. the allied health in outback schools program (ahobsp) commenced in 2009 and was first described in the literature in 2010 as a peer-reviewed conference paper (jones et al. 2010). at this time, the program was known as the allied health student-run clinic initiative. the concepts of community first (carney & hackett 2008), shared governance (jackson et al. 2008) and student-run clinics (moskowitz et al. 2006) were core features. the initiative was underpinned by the establishment of cross-sector partnerships and a shared aspirational aim that sought to improve the developmental outcomes of children in the region and so enhance gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 8/no 1 (2015): 1–22 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 debra maria jones david lyle claire brunero the university of sydney (bhudrh) lindy mcallister the university of sydney trish webb nsw dept. of education and communities, far west network stuart riley nsw ministry of health, far west local health district list of abbreviations used ahobsp: allied health in outback schools program bhaecg: broken hill aboriginal education consultative group bhudrh: broken hill university department of rural health, the university of sydney fwlhd: far west local health district fwn nsw dec: far west network of the nsw department of education and communities 2 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley their later life opportunities. initial partner organisations included the far west local health district (fwlhd) of the nsw ministry of health and the far west network (fwn) of the nsw department of education and communities (nsw dec), state-funded entities with direct health service and school education roles within the public sector, the broken hill aboriginal education consultative group (bhaecg), and the broken hill university department of rural health (bhudrh), the university of sydney, a federally funded department with carriage of health professional education and coordination of pre-registration clinical fieldwork experiences in far west nsw. the bhudrh drew on established relationships at the local level and its organisational relationship with the university of sydney to actively engage cross-sector representatives from health, school education and higher education sectors, including representatives from the university’s faculty of health sciences who had carriage of allied health pre-registration education. it was identified early that the initiative had the potential to deliver beneficial outcomes for communities and partner organisations. these included improved access to allied health services; enhanced developmental, education and social outcomes for primary school aged children; expanded remote health placement capacity; and education and primary health care practice opportunities for preregistration allied health students. although not explicit in the early stages of program evolution, a developmental evaluation approach was adopted. local partners with longstanding relationships, experiences and networks within the region were aware of the challenging dynamics and realities associated with developing innovative projects to address complex and protracted health service inequities. and external representatives from the faculty of health sciences were aware of the additional complexities associated with ensuring quality educational and practice experiences for their students within an emerging service-learning pedagogy being developed and delivered in remote australia. over the last five years the model has been the catalyst for partnership consolidation, expansion and diversification, while model adaptation and refinement experiences have provided valuable insights that have informed health and education policy and enabled the model to be responsive to changing community needs, emerging policy and funding reforms. this article describes the local need that drove model development, key partner organisations and their roles, and the processes associated with the establishment of crosssector collaborations. model characteristics, outcomes to date, contributions to expanding value-adding opportunities within the school setting and scalability of the model are also discussed. in addition, the article explores the challenges and implications associated with the development of a new approach to health service delivery, health workforce development, program evaluation and research. the authors propose that a community3 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley centred developmental evaluation approach to service innovation in remote locations is required. contemporary logic-based policy development and funding allocations, with fixed interventions and predetermined program deliverables and outcomes, are no longer capable of responding to the complexity experienced by remote australian communities. the need international and national literature identifies the need to provide young children with the best possible start in life to ensure they achieve their optimal potential and are able to contribute meaningfully to society (coag 2009; maggi et al. 2005). timely and appropriate access to services that identify and address developmental delays earlier in life help to prevent later life disadvantage and higher cost burdens of curative interventions (baum et al. 2009). young children residing in remote australian communities are exposed to socioeconomic disadvantage that can contribute to developmental delays and diminished life outcomes (aihw 2008), including socioeconomic disadvantage (simon et al. 2013), poorer health (aihw 2008) and lower educational attainment (abs 2008). for many families, this lived disadvantage is an intergenerational experience (mclachlan, gilfillan & gordon 2013). the amplification of this disadvantage for remote aboriginal populations is well documented (abs & aihw 2008). children residing in remote areas are likely to experience limited or no access to paediatric allied health services (ahpa 2013; mcallister et al. 2011). the maldistribution of australia’s health workforce (hwa 2011; aihw 2010), as well as health workforce education and service systems that are focused and funded towards curative models of health service provision (anpha 2013), are identified barriers to community orientated care. these barriers hinder the development and implementation of primary healthcare models of service provision that are aligned with individual community needs, delivered in accessible community settings, and focused on health promotion and disease prevention (doha 2010; douglas et al. 2009; wakerman et al. 2009). there is a growing body of international (sanger et al. 2001) and national evidence (mcallister et al. 2011; snow & powell 2012) that associates later life disadvantage with undiagnosed or untreated speech, language and communication delays in early life. studies conducted by snow and powell (2012) identified that over 50 per cent of male juvenile offenders within a community sample had significant deficits on measures of language and narrative skills and that disengagement from education and social systems had commenced in early schooling. the 2006 international adult literacy and life skills survey (alls) identified that 40 per cent of employed and 60 per cent of unemployed australians had 4 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley poor or very poor english language and literacy. improvement in these domains was called for to enhance effective participation in education, the labour force and society (doi 2010). children residing in remote new south wales have been identified as being at greater risk of developmental vulnerability or delay in two or more of the domains of the australian early development index (aedi) on entry into the primary school system (nsw dec 2013). children and their families have experienced difficulty accessing allied health services for a number of decades, not least because of the vast distances they need to travel. far west families with financial capacity travel up to 500 km to larger regional or metropolitan sites to access these services, but this is not normally an option for disadvantaged families. services, when available through the public health system, can be overwhelmed by extensive waiting lists, whilst recipients of services may experience fragmented and at times duplicated occasions of service. financial barriers to accessing private allied health professionals exclude a number of socioeconomically disadvantaged families from selffunded service access (ahpa 2013). challenges experienced by rural and remote communities in the recruitment and retention of appropriately qualified health professionals are well documented (doha 2010; hwa 2010). the lack of health professionals in these regions directly impacts the capacity to provide pre-registration clinical placement experiences, which limits exposure to rural and remote practice and further exacerbates workforce shortages. in 2008, a delegation of primary school principals approached the broken hill university department of rural health (bhudrh), the university of sydney, seeking support to address the intergenerational educational and social impacts experienced by pupils in their schools who were unable to access speech pathology services. the cross-cutting nature of this issue and its implications for health service provision, school education, pre-registration allied health student education and community agencies was drawn on by the bhudrh to bring a diverse range of stakeholders together for initial discussions to identify viable solutions to improving access to paediatric allied health services. partnership establishment representatives from the fwlhd, including senior management and allied health clinicians, fwn nsw dec primary school principals and learning support staff, bhudrh senior management and academics, and representatives from the bhaecg met in early 2009. they explored historical approaches to service delivery and contributing factors to their lack of success in addressing service requirements to ensure past mistakes were not repeated. new alternatives to service provision were also explored. the development of an allied health service-learning model that aligned educational and clinical practice experiences for final-year students with unmet service needs within the region was viewed 5 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley as the most viable option for consideration. access to expertise in the area of pre-registration allied health education and clinical fieldwork was drawn on from representatives of the faculty of health sciences, the university of sydney. these key stakeholders became the foundational partners for model development and implementation. site visits to broken hill were undertaken in early 2009 by faculty representatives who engaged in cross-sector meetings with local partners to progress the development of the model. once the foundational structure of the model had been decided upon, ongoing involvement from the faculty was through teleconference. local partners continued to meet routinely over the coming months to further consolidate the model and identify organisational roles and responsibilities prior to a pilot phase in september 2009. partner roles the fwlhd committed to provide clinical supervision; fwn nsw dec principals committed to the provision of a key school contact person, classroom engagement and pupil withdrawal for therapy when required. the bhudrh committed to placement and program coordination, development of onsite pre-placement education and provision of student accommodation. the bhaecg committed to informing regional aboriginal organisations of activity and findings from the initiative. the university of sydney faculty of health sciences committed to the provision of student participants to ensure appropriate student numbers and discipline mix. no external funding was sourced during the initial development and pilot stages of the initiative. partner organisations self-funded their own contributions by drawing on existing human resources and infrastructure. partnership development the partners were aware of the challenges associated with addressing allied health service access and workforce shortages. evidence of successful approaches to addressing allied health service inequity within remote locations was identified as a gap within the existing literature. model development therefore involved an extensive review and sharing of literature by the bhudrh in the areas of community-campus partnerships (ccph 2013), service and transformative learning educational pedagogies (dirkx 1998; moskowitz et al. 2006), and complex systems theory (mitchell & newman 2002). this review informed our approach to partnership establishment and sustainability – power distribution, crosssector complexities, need for flexibility, sharing of resources, time investments; education – community-centred, supported authentic learning and teamwork opportunities; location of service delivery – community settings in preference to hospitals; and evaluation framework – developmental in preference to formative 6 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley and summative. interpretation and adaptation of the literature to the local context, resources and aims of the model formed the foundation for model implementation. the adoption of a developmental evaluation framework in preference to traditional formative and summative approaches to model evaluation was considered to be a key contributor to model responsiveness, acceptability and sustainability. developmental evaluation is suited to social innovation, where there are high levels of uncertainty associated with the actions that are being implemented. this approach supports the development of innovative ideas and visionary interventions, providing a period of exploration and adaptation of emerging models prior to more traditional evaluation approaches being introduced (patton 2011). a cross-sector working group was established to work on model design and delivery. senior leaders from across the partner organisations provided strategic endorsement and support for the initiative. feedback on model progression was routinely provided by the working group through quarterly written reports to the senior leaders to ensure they were fully informed of developments and had capacity to respond to identified opportunities and challenges. the model: development and evolution 2009–2014 the adopted approach saw cohorts of final-year speech pathology and occupational therapy students from the university of sydney undertaking their clinical placement experiences in primary school settings in far west nsw across three school terms. prior to their placement, participating students took part in a discipline-specific, five-day comprehensive preparation for practice program on site in broken hill. this was in recognition of the potential challenges students could confront in transitioning from a traditional hospital experience to a remote community-centred primary health care practicum, with an expectation that they would have a leadership role in therapy development and delivery. the students, under the supervision of qualified disciplinespecific clinicians, provided screening, assessment and therapy for children identified with mild to moderate needs. children identified with complex developmental delays and emotional and social needs were referred to hospital clinicians for more intensive assessment. supervision in the initial stages of model development was supported by academics and clinicians employed through the university of sydney and the fwlhd. for more detail on these initial processes, see jones et al. 2010. the model currently sees up to six speech pathology and four occupational therapy students undertaking service-learning placements for periods of six to eight weeks across four school terms, three communities and 12 primary school campuses. a total of 24 speech pathology and 16 occupational therapy students are placed annually through the program. students now participate in an interdisciplinary five-day preparation program prior to 7 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley placement. program content is adapted when necessary based on parent, school, allied health student, clinician and academic feedback to address emerging needs. guides have been developed to structure student and supervisor activities within each term. screening of kindergarten children occurs in term 2 instead of term 1, enabling teachers to implement literacy and phonological activities prior to screening, mitigating false positive findings. student cohorts develop therapy plans and individualised handover documents that identify successful pupil–therapist engagement strategies and assessment outcomes, inform the activities of the next cohort of students, and guide teacher and parental involvement in classand home-based therapy, which embeds continuity of therapeutic engagement. student cohorts change across the four school terms, with continuity of therapy delivery and partnership engagement being maintained through the stability of academic staff. an evolving focus on interprofessional learning and practice between disciplines further aligns the model to contemporary best practice (thistlethwaite & moran 2010). students participate as an interdisciplinary group in elements of screening, assessment, therapy, clinical education sessions and placement debriefs. therapy delivery is refocusing to reflect ‘responsiveness to intervention’ (rti) processes through a multi-tiered approach to service delivery, to address the range of needs experienced by children. therapy delivery includes individual, small group and whole-of-class sessions. whole-of-class sessions support universal prevention approaches (fairbanks et al. 2007) and enhance skills transference between teaching staff and allied health students (asha 2000; mccormack et al. 2011). table 1 provides an exemplar overview of allied health student activity undertaken during a typical week of their placement in term 3. supervision approaches now incorporate disciplinespecific and multidisciplinary academic and student peer supervision (kuipers et al. 2013). teachers provide an additional layer of supervision for classroom activities. weekly clinical case discussions support the development of critical thinking in students, providing an opportunity to discuss therapeutic approaches and alternative methods of therapy delivery (facione & facione 2008). weekly pastoral care sessions support students in adapting to and understanding practice approaches, their placement communities and socioeconomic contexts. a recent development for the model has been enhanced service delivery integration with fwlhd allied health clinicians. clinicians are now referring school-aged children directly into the program and modelling speech, language, communication and motor skills therapy required by these children to the allied health students, further enhancing continuity of therapy. additionally, health service clinicians are extending their role by retaining case management for children who are jointly engaged with their 8 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley service and the model. clinicians meet with academics and allied health students at the beginning and end of each school term to discuss therapy requirements and outcomes. the ongoing alignment of the model to federal and state policy, funding opportunities and changing community need has contributed significantly to the capacity of the community to address what was considered an intractable inequity in access to services. senior cross-sector leaders continue to work collaboratively on strategic aspects of the model through promotion and lobbying at the state and federal levels and identification of relevant policy and funding opportunities. as the model has matured and partners have developed clarity of understanding associated with their roles and responsibilities, the activities of the cross-sector working group have been integrated into daily practices. the aspirational aim of the model has not altered; however, program partners have learned that the path that leads to these outcomes can be unclear and divergent, requiring flexibility in responses and long-term commitments to achieve shared outcomes and sustainability (hamann & acutt 2003). model characteristics 1. adaptation as the model matures, the conceptualisation and reconceptualisation of the service and educational elements has resulted in the trialling of various approaches to service delivery and allied health student education. adaptations have been driven by new learnings informed by parents, schools, clinicians, academics and participating allied health students through informal and formal evaluations. how allied health services and broader health and social service access and delivery are monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday 0800–0900 arrive at school and prepare for the day clinical in-service arrive at school and prepare for the day planning day arrive at school and prepare for the day 0900–0930 individual pupil therapy session arrive at school and prepare for the day class-based therapy session individual pupil therapy session peer supervision 1000–1010 fruit break screening and assessment individual pupil therapy peer supervision individual pupil therapy session 1000–1100 class-based therapy session 1100–1130 recess recess recess recess 1130–1200 individual pupil therapy session — interprofessional approach screening and assessment individual pupil therapy session – interprofessional approach clinical case notes referrals 1200–1315 clinical case notes referrals screening and assessment class-based therapy session individual pupil therapy session 1315–1400 lunch lunch lunch lunch 1400–1600 clinical case notes referrals clinical case conference clinical case notes referrals individual pupil therapy session clinical case notes referrals table 1: overview of weekly student activity, school term 3 9 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley interpreted has become increasingly complex and interconnected across health, education and social domains (mclachlan, gilfillan & gordon 2013). 2. developmental evaluation traditional linear, logic-based models (roorda & nunns 2009) for addressing complex problems (assessing issues in isolation with a limited set of possible options) have been replaced by developmental evaluation, which acknowledges unpredictable and unplanned phenomena, momentum shifts that can include periods of slow or rapid change, and tipping points associated with policy and funding opportunities and challenges (patton 2011). this approach has enabled the model to adapt to emergent, complex and at times ill-defined issues across remote health, health workforce, and education policy and funding domains. 3. credibility and consistency remote and indigenous populations tend to have a healthy level of cynicism towards new programs and their longevity. our model is concerned about such perceptions of consistency and credibility. however, parents continue to support their child’s engagement with student-led services, while teacher engagement within the classroom and with the program continues to strengthen each term that students and academics are present within the school system. engagement with clinicians employed through the hospital system is consolidating, with a growing sense of service integration, coordination and collaboration. in addition, other universities are seeking access to the model for their students based on student learning, practice outcomes and attainment of work-readiness skills. 4. commitment commitment to the ‘long haul’ by key stakeholders in the initial stages of model inception was informed by past experiences of short-term funded, externally driven programs that were unsustainable (osborne, baum & brown 2013). a verbal agreement across partners to a minimum seven-year program commitment has enabled partners to respond to a number of crucial factors, including expanding partnerships, funding and policy changes, and value-adding opportunities that may not have emerged within a short-term, prescribed framework. 5. flexibility each school engaged in the program has its own unique approach to service integration, activity, policy interpretation, parental engagement and leadership. school leaders and teaching staff change within school settings, parental engagement across schools can be variable, school priorities and aspirations can and do change, and clinician accessibility can fluctuate. having capacity to respond quickly to these factors is critical to avoiding poorly aligned approaches and model vulnerability. 6. trust the literature and experiences of partners confirm that meaningful partnerships are underpinned by trust (vangens & huxham 10 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley 2003). trust is not created from top–down directives and cannot be enforced by formal contracts; rather, it develops gradually as working relationships evolve (nyden et al. 1997). cross-sector partners need mutual understanding of the individual and shared interests of the partner organisations, as well as faith that the partners will remain in the relationship despite obstacles or challenges that inevitably arise (enos & morton 2003). with trust comes a greater capacity for open and honest discussions on how best to progress model evolution and responsiveness (vangens & huxham 2003). 7. cross-sector collaboration establishing partnerships across health, school education and higher education sectors is complex. transitioning the theory of partnerships to the practical application of partnering requires time and resource commitments; individual partners also need to invest time in building their own capacity to work across sectors (bpd 2002). the approach of starting small, achieving and sharing successes and then expanding activity has proven critical as the model has evolved. model outcomes 1. improved service access in 2013, academics and allied health students screened 253 kindergarten children (85 per cent of total enrolments in the region), focusing on children with teacher-identified need in the communities of broken hill, menindee and wilcannia. in total, 12 schools across the region were engaged with the model. service access results included: —71 per cent (n=181) of children screened were identified as requiring support with mild to moderate delays —46 per cent of pupils received individual or group therapy sessions —31 per cent of pupils received individual therapy —47 class-based therapy sessions were delivered. when requested, academics and allied health students were actively engaged in pre-school settings with children with identified needs. individual pupils with intense needs can receive up to 20 occasions of allied health service annually. key areas of identified need for children residing in the region were speech delays, storytelling, pre-literacy, and fine motor skill delays. in 2013, 20 pupils with complex/severe needs were referred to allied health clinicians employed by the fwlhd. ten pupils from more remote communities were also referred to fwlhd clinicians, and a further ten pupils were referred to hearing services for additional assessment. additional challenges exist for more remote families who are required to travel up to 200 km to broken hill to access services. alternative approaches to very remote service delivery are currently under development. service acceptability of the model in far west nsw is reflected in the number of regional primary schools engaged in the program (100 per cent) and parental consent rates for participation (95 per cent and higher) annually. additional research is planned 11 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley to explore the impact on developmental attainment for service recipients. it is envisaged that this critical component of the program will be reported on in more detail in subsequent articles. 2. increased clinical placement capacity figure 1 depicts the growth in clinical placement capacity for paediatric practicums as a result of model development from 2009 to 2014. between 1997 and 2008, there were no paediatric speech pathology placements, though small numbers of occupational therapy students had access to traditional hospital-based placements. the decline in student capacity in 2013, as shown in figure 1, reflects a stage of model restructure. the opportunity for further growth in pre-school and social service settings is limited by supervisory capacity and on-site student accommodation availability. model expansion 1. participating universities allied health students from four regional and metropolitan universities are now engaged in the model. this expansion has contributed to: —cross-university professional networking, team building and collaboration through a shared experience (thistlethwaite & moran 2010) —normalisation of a collegiate approach within the pre-registration education experience —commitment to guaranteed student numbers and mix of disciplines across all school terms. university engagement, student participation and academic collaboration in the program are facilitated locally through the bhudrh to ensure clarity of communication, coordination and integration of activities across university partners. 2. discipline engagement social work and dietetics students have been integrated into the model in response to social and additional health needs identified figure 1: clinical placement growth – paediatric speech pathology and occupational therapy (ahobsp 2009– 2014) 12 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley by school leaders. social work students are exploring strategies to engage parents and school communities in education, health and social programs. dietetic students are working with the schools to explore locally responsive approaches to addressing physical inactivity and poor diet. the parental engagement strategies being identified by the social work students are being drawn on by the speech pathology, occupational therapy and dietetic students to inform their approach to program development, delivery and parental involvement. 3. staffing and supervision the bhudrh and fwlhd conjointly employ academics to enable integrated and consolidated approaches to student supervision, education, program development and service delivery. this approach mitigates supervision and student coordination demands for remote health service clinicians who experience high demands for service delivery and enables greater numbers of students to be engaged in service-learning activities. value adding initiatives 1. federal government health and hospital fund in 2009, the australian government committed $5 billion to the health and hospital fund (hhf) to invest in major health infrastructure programs. round 4, 2011, targeted projects aimed at improving access to essential health services for rural and remote australians (doha 2010). a lack of appropriate infrastructure within primary school settings was identified as a barrier to expanding and integrating health, education and social service activity. new infrastructure that supports integrated service delivery through cross-sector collaborations and co-location of staff and activity was identified as a key requirement in supporting the transition of additional services to primary health care approaches in the school setting (doha 2010). the bhudrh, as lead agency, and partners lodged a submission to establish multipurpose health and wellbeing infrastructure, ‘school health hubs’, directly on six public and one catholic school education sites in broken hill. in 2012, partners were informed that their application for $4.7 million had been successful. complex cross-sector funding contracts are in the final stages of completion. 2. health workforce development funding in late 2009 and 2010, the bhudrh applied for funding through the federal government and health workforce australia’s (hwa 2010) clinical training fund (ctf) to support the growth of clinical placement capacity in far west nsw for allied health disciplines to expand student engagement within the model. federal and hwa funding of $350 000 supported the conjoint appointment of allied health academics. these appointments have been critical in ensuring that the model addresses higher education professional accreditation requirements. 13 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley 3. nsw department of education and communities rural and remote education strategy in 2013, the nsw department of education and communities released the rural and remote education strategy: a blueprint for action (nsw dec 2013). the strategy highlighted that disadvantage experienced by rural and remote pupils begins in early childhood. a key area of the strategy is the establishment of strong relationships between nsw dec schools, their communities and other agencies. the strategy referenced the issue of limited or no access to allied health services and the difficulties experienced in linking pupils and families to these professionals as an area for strategic investment (nsw dec 2013). the strategy supports the establishment of a statewide network of specialist centres to provide assistance to pupils and families through a single, coordinated local point of contact. these centres will bring together local education, health and social services for two key purposes: (1) to support schools in managing complex cases where students are at risk of disengaging from education as a result of learning, health and wellbeing concerns; and (2) to engage in collective impact approaches to address education, social and health determinants that contribute to disadvantage and poorer life outcomes. broken hill was identified as a pilot site for the establishment of a specialist centre in 2014, acknowledging the existing cross-sector partnership, health and hospital fund infrastructure and collective action that is already occurring (nsw dec 2013). 4. nsw ministry of health integrated care strategy 2014–2017 the nsw ministry of health integrated care strategy (nsw moh 2014) focuses on providing seamless and effective care that is responsive to the needs of individuals and families. the strategy aims to develop a system of care and support that provides the right care, in the right place, at the right time. a commitment of $120 million over four years has been made to develop locally led models of integrated care across the state (nsw moh 2014). partners are working collaboratively with the university of sydney, faculty of nursing and midwifery (sydney nursing school) to develop a submission that will build on existing integrated activity in the school sector. the submission will seek to enhance health promotion activity, improve access to early identification and intervention services, and provide coordinated support for children and families experiencing complex physical and mental health conditions through the establishment of new graduate transition to practice initiative that will see primary health care nursing positions co-located within the school health hubs. scalability of the model the bhudrh is engaged with academic departments in geraldton, western australia, and katherine, northern territory, on the adaptation and implementation of the model. these communities are drawing on the broken hill experience, expertise and networks to develop similar approaches to address areas of unmet health 14 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley need. there is an expectation that the models developed will be adapted to respond to local communities. additional interest in the model is being expressed by academics working in other australian university departments of rural health. academics have visited broken hill to gain a greater depth of understanding of how the model was developed, partnership establishment, model structure, and impact on service recipients and participating allied health students. challenges and implications 1. policy and funding there is currently no established range of systematic population health directed programs and funding for the prevention, early detection and intervention for speech and communication deficits (wylie et al. 2013). only 1.7 per cent of australia’s total health care budget of approximately $140 billion is allocated to preventative health programs (anpha 2013). there is a growing need to redress this imbalance and lack of continuity across prevention and curative treatment models. the national health and medical research council (nhmrc) identified the need for a service and funding focus on population groups that have the greatest potential for improved health outcomes, such as children living in poor socioeconomic conditions and aboriginal populations (nhmrc 2006). the national public health partnership (nphp) identified that an investment in children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families was likely to have an enormous positive effect on improving the quality of life of children, as well as resulting in far-reaching positive outcomes for the australian economy (nphp 2008). however, the inverse care law continues to apply to these populations, where those with greatest need have the least access to services to address their needs (watt 2002). the recent focus on the prevalence of speech, language and communication delays and speech pathology services in australia in the 2014 senate inquiry (parliament of australia 2013) highlighted the complex challenges associated with service accessibility. without identified funding to redress service inequity, australian children, especially those from rural, remote and indigenous backgrounds, are likely to be subjected to the ongoing later life disadvantage identified within the literature (nphp 2008). 2. parental engagement there are substantial gaps in knowledge of how best to engage with remote and aboriginal parents to define developmental need and provide health services that are culturally responsive. the role of parents in engaging with therapy planning and delivery influences how successful strategies to address developmental delays will be (roberts & kaiser 2011). parental consent for their child’s participation in the model is high within the region; however, engaging directly with parents through individual or open school meetings can prove difficult. the literature identifies a range of 15 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley factors that can influence the level of parental engagement, and additional investment is needed in this area to identify acceptable and appropriate approaches (higgins & morley 2014). 3. service-learning as a valid educational pedagogy much of the service-learning activity in australia to date has been heavily informed by international literature and experiences (jacoby 2010; moskowitz et al. 2006). whilst service-learning remains an emerging educational pedagogy for health science students within the australian context, there has been a growth of service-learning activity over the last five years (chambers & lavery 2012). if australia is to adopt service-learning as a meaningful approach to pre-registration education for future health professionals, then theory development and practice implementation that account for australia’s unique geography and vast population spread, as well as our health and education systems, needs to be at the core of this movement. robust research that explores the impact of service-learning for service recipients, communities, participating students and higher education institutions is urgently required to identify the efficacy of australian responsive models. 4. health workforce development recent changes within australia’s health workforce development portfolios, the rationalisation of federal government agencies in 2014 and the integration of hwa into the federal department of health have created a level of uncertainty in relation to current and future funding opportunities (coa 2014). the development and expansion of our model was substantially supported by innovation funds accessed through hwa to appoint clinician/ academic staff. sustainability of the model and sister programs that have been developed may be challenged without secure funding sources. access to allied health services for rural and remote populations is dependent on the availability and accessibility of suitably qualified health professionals within these regions (ahpa 2013). health workforce evidence identifies that students who experience a rewarding and valuable clinical placement in these locations are more likely to consider returning to rural and remote practice post-graduation (katzenellenbogen et al. 2013). students engaged in the model are exposed to primary health care approaches to service delivery and indigenous and remote health care, broadening their scope of practice and capacity to respond appropriately in these environments. allied health students contribute to improving the educational, health and social outcomes of children who, due to their socioeconomic status and geographical location, are at greater risk of developmental delays and service access inequity. 5. higher education the challenge for higher education institutions is to develop and deliver coursework and clinical fieldwork experiences for health students that align to contemporary remote australian community 16 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley health needs and expectations. rebalancing the educational disparity between curative and primary health care practice and associated workforce development is essential. the inclusion of primary health care practice in contemporary approaches to speech pathology and occupational therapy education and service delivery is being supported by leading national and international experts. these experts are challenging traditional curative approaches to service delivery, calling for a continuum of care that is responsive to the needs of at-risk and under-served populations (wiley et al. 2013). higher education institutions in the united states have been challenged by community sectors to locate themselves alongside community-focused agencies to contribute meaningfully to resolving complex social, educational and health disparities (jacoby 2010). there is a clear message in the us that the university sector has a social responsibility mandate. how or if this is interpreted and translated into practice within the australian context in the current policy and funding environment will impact on the relevance of higher education institutions across the broader australian population and remote subpopulations. 6. cross-sector collaborations the growing collaborative approach across sectors in nsw is being influenced by education and health policy. the nsw dec specialist network centre initiative and the nsw moh integrated care strategy provide remote nsw communities with a platform to construct new approaches to working across sectors to address local areas of need. government agencies promoting these changes have to ensure that remote communities are afforded the flexibility to interpret these policy changes to best align with local needs. these agencies need to work collaboratively with remote regions to ensure that allocated funding from across a range of health, education and social sectors is spent within these regions to enhance service accessibility. community engagement and leadership in decision making on how best to utilise allocated funds is essential in aligning services to need and will increase clarity and transparency of resource allocation and expenditure. evaluation and research framework developmental evaluation has supported the process of innovation within and across partner organisations. developmental evaluation informs us that innovations are often in a state of continuous development and adaptation, unfolding in changing and unpredictable environments (patton 2011). developmental evaluation assists with clarity on where and why an initiative started, which forks in the road have been taken, what helped inform those decisions and what has been learned along the way. this form of evaluation is an ongoing process, enabling continuous improvement and adaptation. developmental evaluation can create challenges for inflexible systems and traditional funding streams. the lack of 17 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley definitive answers in the initial stages of program development, higher levels of uncertainty, and long-term processes that may not provide immediate benefits or may have poorly defined start and end points can be difficult for government agencies to comprehend (patton 2011). in contrast, ahobsp partners have been able to develop and consolidate activity based on a deeper understanding of the issues and provide strong rationales for why certain approaches or activities have been selected and why other options have been discounted. decisions are informed by a number of sources and evaluation processes, including parents, teaching staff, school principals, participating allied health students, the academic partner and clinician feedback. the bhudrh, as an academic department, works closely with key stakeholders to ensure evaluations are conducted. evaluation processes for allied health students include mid and end of placement focus groups. meetings are held with school principals and key teaching and support staff prior to placements commencing each term. these meetings enable school staff to highlight successes, identify concerns and suggest improvements. parent meetings are scheduled across the school terms to encourage information sharing and to seek parental feedback on the program. external academics provide independent feedback on student experiences and clinical and professional learning outcomes, enhancing the academic robustness of the program. a comprehensive research framework has been developed to explore program impact on service recipients and the impact on developmental outcomes, families, community partners, participating allied health students and their academic institutions. funding is currently being sought to progress this research. the model is the focus of a qualitative phd study that is exploring the impact of program participation for community leaders – school principals and pre-school managers, senior managers and academics from fwn nsw dec, the bhudrh and the university of sydney, and participating allied health students. findings from this research will be published in subsequent articles and will assist in refining the broader research agenda. conclusion no single policy, government agency or program can effectively respond to the complexities experienced by remote populations or ensure appropriate allied health service access for children in these communities. new models, policy development approaches and funding streams are required to ensure services align with community needs and expectations. as policy and funding reforms across australian government agencies refocus on improving their responsiveness to local needs and priorities, meaningful community engagement and leadership will have to become a critical component of service planning, implementation and evaluation. balancing tensions between government requirements and community expectations will prove challenging but is 18 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley essential if we are to ensure flexible, responsive and fit-for-purpose services for remote populations. developmental evaluation highlights that social change innovation occurs when there are alterations in practice, policies, programs, resource flows and structures at the organisational level (gamble 2008). the model has influenced allied health education, practice and service access within far west nsw, has been a catalyst for the extension of service-learning activities within the school setting, and has influenced the flow of resources through federal and state health and education systems. the complexity of establishing and sustaining cross-sector partnerships and time and resource contributions of partners to promote model success and sustainability cannot be underestimated. continually re-conceptualising the issues, solutions, opportunities and partnership approaches has been critical. committing to the ‘long haul’ has its challenges but they are far outweighed by the benefits accrued by communities and partner organisations. much of the theory and evidence presented in this article will resonate with proponents of remote health, primary health care, community-engaged practice and service-learning. what this article has endeavoured to do is to provide a deeper insight into one remote australian community’s experience in redressing allied health service access inequities through the establishment and consolidation of meaningful cross-sector partnerships over the last half decade. references allied health professionals australia (ahpa) 2013, policy paper: australia’s workforce of allied health professionals, ahpa, canberra, act. american speech-language hearing association (asha) 2000, guidelines 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communication disorders quarterly, vol. 23, pp. 17-26 simon, a, pastor, p, avila, r & blumberg, s 2013, ‘socioeconomic disadvantage and developmental delay among us children aged 18 months to 5 years’, journal of epidemiological community health, vol. 67, no. 8, pp. 689–95. snow, p & powell, m 2012, ‘youth (in)justice: oral language competence in early life and risk for engagement in antisocial behaviour in adolescence’, trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, no. 435, australian government, australian institute of criminology. thistlethwaite, j & moran, m 2010, ‘learning outcomes for interprofessional education (ipe): literature review and synthesis’, journal of interprofessional care, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 503–13. vangens, s & huxham, c 2003, ‘enacting leadership for collaborative advantage: dilemmas of ideology and pragmatism in the activities of 22 | gateways | jones, lyle, brunero, mcallister, webb & riley partnership managers’, british journal of management, vol. 14, suppl. pp. 61–76s. wakerman, j, humphreys, j, wells, r, kuipers, p, jones, j, entwistle, p & kinsman, l 2009, ‘features of effective primary health care models in rural and remote australia: a case-study analysis’, the medical journal of australia; vol. 191, no. 2, pp. 88–91. watt, g 2002, ‘the inverse care law today’, lancet, vol. 360, no. 9328, pp. 252–54. wylie, k, mcallister, l, davidson, b, marshall, j 2013, ‘changing practice: implications of the world report on disability for responding to communication disability in underserved populations’, international journal of speech-language pathology, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1–13. community-based research decisionmaking experiences and factors affecting participation with the exception of participation as research subjects or patients, members of the public’s participation in research decision-making has for many years been marked by their exclusion. scientifically produced knowledge was seen as the sole reliable source of robust knowledge, and producers and holders of this knowledge were amongst the few seen as capable of making decisions or setting policies associated with research production (irwin & wynne 1996; ravetz 1971). however, in the post world war ii period, scientific and technical knowledge alone has gradually come to be seen as insufficient for solving complex societal problems: normative choices and consideration of economic, ethical and moral interests are also necessary (jasanoff 2007). community-based research (cbr) is an approach to research which makes use of the knowledge of members of the public, also referred to as community members. public participation in cbr means that members of the public work in collaboration with university members, ‘in all phases of the research process, with a shared goal of producing knowledge that will be translated into action or positive change for the community’ (lantz et al. 2006, p. 239). as an approach to research with tenets that support active public engagement, participation in the decision-making or governance of community-based research therefore appears to be an essential and integral component. however, specific focus in the literature on the organisation and implementation of decisionmaking in community-based research is sparse, and there is a paucity of material which addresses the theory and practice of governing cbr, and the contributions of community members. in particular, participation in the governance of communitybased research appears to be poorly understood, understudied and underdeveloped (barrington research group 2004). not properly evaluating the importance of the public’s participation in governance can limit knowledge production through research and potential benefits for communities. we were therefore interested in determining the experiences of community members in governing community-based research as a basis for understanding their participation, and designed a qualitative study to investigate this. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 6 (2013): 22–37 © utsepress and the authors issn 1836-3393 vivien runnels caroline andrew university of ottawa 23 | gateways | runnels & andrew in this article we discuss the importance of participation in the governance of community-based research, using arnstein’s (1969) theory of public participation in governance as a guide. we describe the study methods and the findings, and follow these with a discussion. the terms, participation, engagement and inclusion, are often used interchangeably in the literature and in day-to-day usage, and we follow this precedent. the terms, public, member of the public, lay or local person and community member or citizen, are also used interchangeably and similarly in this article. building on a definition of governance by dietz and stern (2008) which is, ‘any of a variety of mechanisms and processes used to involve and draw on members of the public or their representatives in the activities of public or privatesector organizations that are engaged in informing or making environmental assessments or decisions’ (dietz & stern 2008, p. 12), we came to define governance in the context of communitybased research as an organised process whereby members of defined communities, in collaboration with academic researchers, democratically participate in making decisions towards producing new knowledge from the context and experience of their lives. the context for our study was canada, where public research funds are the major source for community-based research projects. participation in governance in the context of community-based research of the many descriptions and definitions of governance in democracies, focus is given to decision-making through interactive structures and processes regarding sharing, allocating and coordinating of responsibilities, resources and knowledge (flinders 2002; fung 2007; kaufmann, kraay & zoido-lobatón 2000; sloat 2003; stoker 1998). the concept of participation is also valued in decision-making, with participation of the public seen as a ‘good thing’ (arnstein 1969). in the context of community-based research, which is understood as an approach or orientation to research in which people from universities and communities bring their different knowledge, experiences and skill sets, collective decision-making or governance takes place, with the goal being generation of new knowledge to address social and health problems (green et al. 1995; israel et al. 1998; lantz et al. 2006; minkler & wallerstein 2008). definitions and principles of cbr also clearly affirm that both community members and academics should participate in all aspects of the research (cargo & mercer 2008; hall, tremblay & downing 2009; ibáñez-carrasco & riaño-alcalá 2011; israel et al. 1998, 2003; mykhalovskiy & mccoy 2002; williams et al. 2005). while conducting principled community-based research is important, it is also necessary to have useful models for the production of knowledge by ‘non-traditional’ researchers, to guide their participation and the inclusion of lay knowledge (callon 1999; gibbons et al. 1994). not all community-based 24 | gateways | runnels & andrew research principles and models of knowledge co-production specify participation in the governance of community-based research per se, although for some contexts, such as development, some authors have offered typologies of participation (cornwall 1996, 2008; pretty 1995). arnstein’s (1969) theory of public participation offers a critical basis for analysing a combination of the nature or depth of public participation in decision-making and the decision-making power that accompanies it. her typology, referred to as the ladder of citizen participation, illustrates steps that correspond ‘to the extent of citizens’ power in determining the end product’ (arnstein 1969, p. 217). higher rungs on a continuum of participation indicate active public participation and involve decision-making. power is distributed such that citizens have a direct say in the decisions that affect their lives. on the lower steps, citizens do not participate, are prevented from participating, or participate without power, with the consequence that the public is excluded from democratic benefits. arnstein’s typology of participation has continued to offer a basis for analyses of the nature or depth of public participation in decision-making, and the decision-making power that accompanies it, with implications for equity (arnstein 1969; fung 2006; gustafsson & driver 2005; hatch et al. 1993). representation and trust in community-based research decision-making representation in governance is an important issue that has potential consequences for research outcomes (brown et al. 2005). however, there are diverse opinions on who should represent certain populations in making decisions about research. for example, members of communities interviewed for a collaborative research project (the seattle partners for healthy communities) thought that representatives of formal community-based organisations were more likely to focus on their own agendas rather than representing communities as a whole. grassroots activists without institutional membership were also viewed as likely to miss the bigger picture of a community issue (koné et al. 2000). discussions of participation and representation have also raised issues of trust as a constant theme in the literature of community-based research. trust amongst research collaborators, and between collaborators and the communities that they represent, is purportedly a critical and necessary quality for the successful development of cbr collaborations. trust can help to counter reluctance to participate, can address scepticism of the value of research and can lead directly to better quality, more relevant research (mattessich, murray-close & monsey 2004, o’fallon & dearry 2002). trust, however, is not inevitable or immediate and some evidence suggests that trust may actually decline when collaborators become more familiar with each other, also suggesting that relationships are fluid, not always 25 | gateways | runnels & andrew stable, and that trust cannot be viewed as a constant (provan et al. 2003; provan & kenis 2008). even in collaborations where inclusion, particularly of the vulnerable or marginalised, is assured, meaningful participation and representation are not, and trust as a qualitative indicator of inclusion, participation and representation is difficult to measure. selection of any one of inclusion, participation and representation for critical focus is problematic, as to operate effectively each must operate in relation with the others. one solution lies in including a broad enough spectrum of stakeholders in the collaboration to mirror the problem (gray 1989). collaborative governance, ‘... a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative ...’ is one ‘species’ of governance that appears to offer an approach to solving complex problems in community-based research (ansell & gash 2008, p. 544; chrislip & larson, 1994). method to collect descriptive and experiential data of respondents’ participation in cbr governance, we designed semi-structured in-depth interviews to be conducted with a purposeful, nonprobabilistic sample of community and university members who had first-hand experience of participating in governing cbr collaborations. equal numbers of community and university members were sought to help present balanced views of participation from different perspectives. potential participants were recruited via announcements of the study through electronic mailing lists and networks that included community-based research amongst their interests, and through the authors’ personal contacts. potential participants either self-referred or agreed to participate in reply to an invitation sent by email. if potential participants had had firsthand experience of governing community-based research either as members of the university or the community, they were then given information about the purpose of the study, a list of general thematic questions to elicit discussion and information about their experience in cbr governance, how they might expect the interview to proceed including any associated risks of participation, and their rights in participating or not participating in the interview. anonymity was assured through the removal of any personal and geographical identifiers and references to the studies in which participants were involved. interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed by a professional transcriber. the research study was approved by the university of ottawa research ethics board and a certificate of ethical approval issued by the university’s research grants and ethics services (certificate of ethical approval file #06-08-37). coding and analysis coding of respondents’ experiences and observations was carried out by determining discrete units of meaning to which a code was applied, similarly to charmaz (2006) who suggested ‘line-by-line’ 26 | gateways | runnels & andrew coding. in order to organise data in line with arnstein’s (1969) theory of participation in governance, the following questions were posed: ‘who participates in making decisions?’; ‘when does participation in governance take place?’; ‘where does governance take place?’; ‘what enables participation in governance?’; ‘how is community participation assured in decision-making?’ answers to these questions can indicate the location of control and power at different stages of research and can suggest the effects of participation on different actors (cornwall & jewkes 1995). the first steps in the analysis fell under the approach of qualitative description, which is a low-inference approach to help categorise and organise data and to describe ‘the facts of the cases observed’ (sandelowski 1998, p. 376; 2000). further steps utilising grounded theory as the analytical guide were undertaken through memo writing, iterative readings of the data, the making of connections and relationships of meaning between codes, and comparing participants’ experiences to find differences and similarities and to develop abstractions (charmaz 2009, p. 138). in vivo quotes from those interviewed are used to illustrate the results. results fifty-five interviews were conducted with members of community and university research collaborations who had had firsthand experience of governance in community-based research. (one interview was discarded because data were not first-hand experiential data.) forty of the participants were engaged in governance of community-based poverty, homelessness and food insecurity research. the other 14 participants were engaged in governance of a variety of community-based, health-related research studies. twenty-six respondents were affiliated with the community (as individual members of the public and as members of community organisations). twenty-eight respondents held university affiliations. university respondents were employed as academics and research project coordinators. community members included paid workers and volunteer board members, users of community services, lay persons, and people with lived experience of the issues under study. analysis of the data suggested that the experience of participation by community members in governance of community-based research was shaped by four groups of factors, categorised as (1) pre-existing conditions, (2) arrangements of governance, (3) actions of academic researchers, and (4) actions of community participants. 1. pre-existing conditions – research funding as a pre-condition of participation in decision-making pre-existing conditions describes the conditions already in place before a community-university research collaboration is struck, or engaged in research. the experiences of community respondents suggest that there is one key pre-existing condition, research funding, over which they have little control and which strongly 27 | gateways | runnels & andrew influences or modifies their participation in research decisionmaking. in canada, public research funding agencies have formal arrangements with post-secondary institutions. funding arrangements with community-based organisations (cbos) are possible in some circumstances under prescribed conditions, but occur rarely. in the respondents’ experiences, the majority of public research funds for community-based research are administered and managed by universities. furthermore, although money may be allocated to cbos, the research project money that cbos receive may not adequately cover research-related costs, and this affects participation. as one of the community respondents explained, ‘the fundamental issue on the community side is no core funding, and short term project money. it’s a real barrier for involvement of community partners and their ongoing participation.’ some participants suggested that a lack of up-front access to funding, or delayed payment of expenses or transfer of funds to community members and organisations by the university fund-holder, necessarily limited community participation. according to some respondents, arrangements were often made in the research proposal to cover costs to facilitate individual community members’ participation in governance, including travel and childcare expenses, and costs of communication such as telephone or internet access. otherwise, participation in governance by community members was voluntary and unfunded. 2. arrangements of governance arrangements of governance incorporate structures of governance such as steering committees, membership and formalised decision rules, which set the conditions for participation in decisionmaking. certain structures or arrangements of governance in the respondents’ experience provided descriptive boundaries for members’ roles and responsibilities. some collaborations used agreements or letters of understanding to describe and clarify expectations regarding the participation of community and academic members. joint discussions with regard to arrangements of governance provided opportunities to determine and clarify all participants’ positions and preferences. however, the findings suggested that discussions on the arrangements of governance were limited in the case of most of the collaborations. in some collaborations, formal governance structures were actively resisted. in these cases, formal structures were seen to restrict participation and exclude participants, particularly community members who may not have had previous exposure to formal governance settings. as one respondent explained, ‘if everything’s formalized … you also have a very structured and determinative relationship with your community members’, which was seen as a deterrent to participation. flexibility, defined by one university respondent as ‘a hallmark of participatory research’, was proposed as an essential ingredient for organising governance. although seemingly positive, 28 | gateways | runnels & andrew ‘flexibility’ in one community-based research collaboration was seen as a ruse for limiting participation and ensuring that the community members of the research collaboration never met with their academic counterparts, despite the community’s ongoing calls for meetings. 3. actions of academic researchers we have already seen in the first two categories of factors that academic organisations and researchers occupy a dominant position in decision-making and influence in shaping community members’ participation. we now look specifically at actions taken by academic researchers as well as the reactions of community members to these actions. in the preparation phase of the research proposal, community members’ participation was often limited to agreeing to participate and expressing interest in participation by providing letters of support. although both community and university respondents talked about collaboration development and the work needed before the research proposal was submitted to a funding agency, most suggested that, in this phase, community members did not participate in decision-making to any great extent. furthermore, between submitting the research proposal and learning about funding decisions (usually several months later), little need was felt for meetings, as the funding decision was seen by academic researchers as signalling the real beginning of the research project. how members of the community became participants in governance of community-based research was, in most cases, conditional on a decision and an invitation extended by academics. academics invited some participants because they were known to have experiential knowledge related to the research problem, for example, of being homeless or food insecure, and presumed to represent a particular group or community. their contributions to decision-making were therefore respected as legitimately based on their experience. other participants, such as community workers, were invited because they possessed content expertise and they could provide access to research participants. reflecting on knowledge, participation and representation, one respondent said: we spend a lot of time thinking, ‘well, who should be at that (decision-making) table? … do you want people who work in the front line or do you want management? because they see the situation in different ways. they have different kinds of knowledge, and i’m not privileging one or the other, but you have to think about why would you want a manager there as opposed to the front line worker, or vice versa. why certain community members were invited to participate in governance as representatives of a ‘community’ of individuals with lived experience was problematic for some participants, raising questions regarding the real meaning of representation. 29 | gateways | runnels & andrew one community respondent questioned the repeated participation of some community members in a variety of local research projects as they were thought to have been invited ‘because they can speak the bureaucratic language’ and not because of their ability to represent a particular community. another respondent felt the selection of representatives of lived experience made the process appear fair to outsiders and helped to ensure funding, but that this did not have any connection to ensuring participation: ‘you could feel as though you’re being used … it looks good to have “x” number of community representatives sitting on a steering committee, right? i’m just here to guarantee funding.’ the participation of people with lived experience, characterised by one respondent as ‘people who are already dominated in so many aspects of their lives’, required academic members to approach the inclusion of vulnerable or marginalised people with sensitivity and care, not by adding to their oppression. in trying to give ‘legitimacy to the contributions of people who are living the experience and who may not be as articulate’ , some collaborations took positive steps towards ensuring people participated as equals: ‘there wasn’t this hierarching [sic] the levels of participation in the group or marginalizing the people who were less involved. there was a lot more ethical consideration.’ in another collaboration, academics took special steps to ensure community members’ participation because they valued their participation: ‘we (academics) involve them (community members) in a substantive way. they are the conceptual engines of our project.’ however, some collaborations ensured representation but not participation. one respondent spoke of a lone community representative with lived experience on a governing committee ‘who was open to give as much expertise from his experience as was required, but he was not utilized as effectively as he could have been’. academics recognised, as one said, ‘no matter how equitable we try to be there’s always a tendency for academic researchers to dominate the discussion or to drive the agenda’. in some research collaborations, skilled facilitation appeared to enable participation in meetings. as one respondent noted from experience, ‘you could see that one or two people were dominating and you have to be quite careful and quite skilled in those situations and not just a nominal facilitator or chair’. the amount of time that community members spent voluntarily in meetings was generally treated by academic investigators as a limited resource to be protected, respected and carefully expended. respondents told of care taken in planning meetings to ensure participation. one spoke of ‘a very circumscribed participation in terms of honouring the time that they have’, and ‘to be very clear about what the time commitment is, and to use that very efficiently to draw out the expertise’. despite academics’ actions to ensure and enable participation, some community members saw themselves as quite 30 | gateways | runnels & andrew different in status from academic members, which negatively affected their ‘voice’ and their ability to perceive and present their own points of view as equally important and valuable. one community member said, ‘well these are not really my peers. these are academics, you know’. 4. actions of community participants this group of factors looks at how community members saw their own actions in their experiences of participation in governance, and how those actions were seen or understood by the academic researchers. community members’ attitudes towards research influenced their decision to participate in governance of communitybased research. some community members wanted some understanding of research, or needed to value research in order to participate. others needed to see some concrete benefits from their participation, although some adopted a position that research as an end in itself was important. on occasion, community members and community organisations showed reluctance to participate at all. some community members’ attitudes towards research were summarised in one university member’s experience: ‘for them there’s no need for research. research is just like a useless task for them.’ some community members separated the governance or decision-making role from the research operations. one respondent, for example, found that community members ‘don’t want to be bothered. they don’t want to have to get called in on the operational stuff’. and an academic respondent noted that: we try and involve all people in every kind of decision … but you also get push back from community members and from agencies who say ‘well you’re the expert. you propose something and if it sounds good we’ll do that … you take that role, you take that responsibility and that’s fine with us. sometimes community members who might have initially been interested in participating left a research collaboration because, as this respondent explained, ‘it winds up being too hard … it’s a painstaking process … it requires a lot of time and effort’. in addition, the quality of relationships with academic researchers also influenced decisions to participate or not. a small number of community members stated that, because of negative experiences, they would not collaborate with particular academics and their universities in the future. these negative experiences were attributed to their collaborators’ failure to involve them in decisionmaking, and for academic partners failing to carry out their agreed upon responsibilities. lack of clarity with regard to community members’ roles and responsibilities also proved frustrating. disseminating and translating knowledge after the completion of research was a phase in which community members in this study rarely participated. community members seemed to associate knowledge translation with academic writing, rather 31 | gateways | runnels & andrew than translation of research results for a wider public that included community members. whether or not this was the understanding of knowledge translation given, assisting in the production of reports and peer-reviewed academic literature was ‘not necessarily valued by people in the community sector [even though] we would always invite somebody from the agency to contribute … but that’s not the business they’re in’, as one academic explained. acknowledging that community members expect different outcomes for their participation, including resources for implementing programs or changes suggested by the research findings, one community member said: they [community members] don’t give diddly squat [sic] about authorship, order and pure academic journals ... what they [the community] might care about is, what do you need for your work to continue? we know what we need. one exception that appeared to augment the amount and quality of community members’ participation was when community-based organisations rather than universities hosted research projects and had a significant role in supervising research staff. some community and university respondents equally felt that, when a research project was located at the university, the power and culture of the university dominated community partners and diminished community member participation. as one community respondent said, ‘we have located in the community deliberately from the very beginning knowing that universities tend to absorb, and you become part of that system’. when located in the community, as opposed to the university, community member participation was felt to be assured. discussion in this study, the experience of community members’ participation in governing community-based research was influenced by certain groups of factors. the research projects were supported by institutional arrangements that gave academics fund-holding power, determined academic control and limited budgets, or excluded budget categories which could have assisted community organisations or individuals to participate more readily. while arrangements of governance in the form of documentation, membership, bodies and meetings can create frameworks for defining and enacting participation, lack of attention, and sometimes resistance to these, may have meant that many collaborations did not have the ‘governance discussion’ at any time, and consequently had limited input to decision-making. the third group of factors, actions of academic researchers, suggested many ways in which academic members’ actions and decisions affected participation of community members and resulted in participation that was controlled by university members, without input by the community. community members also modified their participation in response to funding arrangements and actions of academics. 32 | gateways | runnels & andrew participation in decision-making by community members was tied to the acts or decisions of ‘others’ with power to set limits on resources and place constraints on participation. these same ‘others’ were largely responsible for determining arrangements of governance, again setting the terms of participation. although some community participants showed reluctance, ‘push back’, and the occasional reported refusal to participate, most pondered their participation and made decisions to participate at a level that was satisfactory to them. compared to the experience of the study’s community respondents, arnstein’s (1969) highest participation levels (citizen control, delegated power, and partnership) were not attained, with the possible exception of one of the respondents who recorded comprehensive and direct community control of decision-making. most respondents’ experiences of participation suggested middle and lower level participation. arnstein suggests that, at these levels, it is not possible for participating citizens to have any significant impact on decision-making. for collaborators who expect or consciously seek higher level participation, lack of opportunity to participate is likely to be problematic and frustrating. at the lower rungs of the ladder of participation, arnstein (1969) uses ‘therapy’ and ‘manipulation’ to describe nonparticipation. her attribution of the terms ‘chicanery’ and ‘sham’ to the activities of power-holders at the lower rungs of the ladder suggests that, once exposed to participation in governance where they are essentially disregarded, community participants who are aware or become aware of the pretence are likely to be twice shy of a future experience of participation, which did occur, as some of our respondents reported. according to arnstein’s thinking, because participants do not object to the terms of their participation in decision-making, and do, in fact, participate, they are likely unaware of manipulation by academic power-holders. however, our data suggest that most community members were aware of their limited levels of participation, but found a means of justifying the level and adjusting their participation so that it was ‘good enough’, without much in the way of consequence or personal harm. perhaps more importantly, lack of awareness of a ‘less-than-optimal’ participation can apply to non-reflective power-holders as well. furthermore, efforts made by academics to accommodate the limited time and resources of community members may have had the inadvertent side-effect of reducing participation and minimising the contributing role of community members to decision-making. the data and our analysis support arnstein’s (1969) framework to some extent, with the factors shaping participation showing who had the opportunities, designated responsibilities and power and control to make decisions. however, with participation in governance generally conditional on the structures and actions of ‘others’, explaining the willingness of community members to voluntarily engage and continue participating in governance of community-based research seems to require further thought. given 33 | gateways | runnels & andrew that community members appeared to have little in the way of control, resources or power in participating in governance of cbr, how can any participation be explained? with the exception of those who were somewhat scathing of research, community members appeared to uphold the importance of research and to give commitment to the production of knowledge, regardless of the conditions or requirements of participation. they participated at a level that they deemed satisfactory, that is, they determined a level of participation that they were prepared to be satisfied with, even if in their own estimation their contribution was limited. community members were willing to make certain investments in participating in decision-making as long as the returns on investment were judged as proportional to the effort and risk of participating. community participants determined risks, assessed expenditures and losses of time, money, resources and status, and measured their input to governance to bring about a process that they were satisfied with, but not necessarily one that was participatory in any ideal sense. as one respondent explained this approach, ‘it matter(s) more that there be real benefits generated than it does to have some sort of hyper-participation’. another said: i don’t care if i participate all the time, every time, on every decision. as long as there’s transparency, as long as i see the money goes where it should go, i’m happy to be a member. i don’t have to be the chair as long as those benefits are flowing. as soon as i see no benefits to my people or my organization, i’m going to bail. limited participation in decision-making was therefore not bad, but ‘good enough’, from community members’ perspectives, as long as some benefits were apparent. most community participants did not feel they had a lot to risk by a limited role in decision-making. the suggestion of ‘good enough’ participation from the perspective of community participants in the governance of community-based research places a different emphasis on traditional accounts of participation and non-participation in cbr. as already noted, much of the cbr literature has centred on the importance of trust for participants (centers for disease control and prevention 2008; horowitz, robinson & seifer 2009; myser 2004; oberly & macedo 2004; smith 1999). attentiveness to developing trusting relationships in community-based research is intended to address problems of participation (beyrer & kass 2002). however, trust that is needed to participate in research as a research participant may have a different quality to the trust that is needed to participate in governance. to participate in decisionmaking may be more influenced by what potential decision-makers feel they have to gain or lose personally and organisationally, which may relate more closely to issues of assessing ‘risk’ than to issues of trust or assessing potential for harm. 34 | gateways | runnels & andrew concluding thoughts further investigation of research relationships, co-design of community-based research and collaborative governance models might be helpful to academics, members of the public and community organisations. in addition to acquiring practical knowledge of different cultural approaches to collaboration which might be important for ensuring decision-making participation in multicultural and mult-ethnic societies such as canada, and understanding interpersonal behaviour in groups, further development of collaborative governance theory could be helpful in the selection of governance/decision-making models for use in the context of community-based research. the development of methods of assessing or evaluating governance of communitybased research and measuring satisfaction with participation, whether employing quantitative or qualitative approaches, can take on board ideas of ‘good enough’ participation to account for the fact that not all participants may be concerned with reaching ideals, but nonetheless are still interested enough to provide a voice of ‘public reason’ in governance of cbr. also proposed for further investigation is the role of skilled and critical facilitation, which has potential to help maximise the quality of community members’ participation (see, for example, minkler 2004 and stoecker 2009). notwithstanding these suggestions for future research, arnstein’s (1969) typology, which recognises differing levels of participation and their effects on distributing power, when applied to decision-making in the governance of cbr projects, continues to be a useful basis and tool for raising sharply the issues of non-authentic participation, and for challenging pretensions by some power-holders who make use of lightweight evidence to demonstrate participation in governance. community-based activities which are intended to deepen university-community relationships are becoming more common in canada. community-based research is one such activity in which they engage. research collaborations can take steps to ensure favourable conditions for more equitable distribution of power, knowledge and resources. better understanding by all participants of the theory and practice of participation in governance or decision-making in community-based research shows promise for maximising democratic participation and knowledge co-production. acknowledgements the authors would like to 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randall, j & muhajarine, n 2005, ‘establishing and sustaining community and university partnerships: a case study of quality of life research’, critical public health, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 291–302. _goback gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: agustina, r., fatmawati, f. a., zahriani, f., zulwati, p. r., fauziah, s., faridah, i., hartanti, t., insyaroh, n., ardiansyah, h. 2023. gardening education in early childhood: important factors supporting the success of implementing it. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8478 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article gardening education in early childhood: important factors supporting the success of implementing it rohmatin agustina1,*, fitri ayu fatmawati2, faridah zahriani3, putri rahma zulwati2, sukma fauziah1, ifa faridah3, tri hartanti3, nailul insyaroh3, heri ardiansyah4 1 department of agrotechnology, universitas muhammadiyah gresik, gresik, jawa timur 2 department of early childhood islamic education, universitas muhammadiyah gresik, gresik, jawa timur 3 aisyah bustanul athfal 42 kindergarten of gresik, jawa timur 4 department of computer engineering, universitas muhammadiyah lamongan, kabupaten lamongan, jawa timur, indonesia corresponding author: rohmatin agustina, rohmatin@umg.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8478 article history: received 08/12/2022; revised 21/01/2023; accepted 28/03/2023; published 06/2023 abstract preparing children to become the rabbani, or godly, generation is the parents’ choice when educating their children. in indonesia, children are seen as an investment in the nation, state and religion as they will become the generation to change civilisation for the better. through gardening education in nursery school, it is hoped that children’s monotheism and cognitive, psychomotor and affective development will be achieved. this article offers a service-learning program, developed with the aid of agricultural science and early childhood university education, and partnered with a large social charity, muhammadiyah. methods used in this program are group discussion forums, gardening education for class teachers and class action by students in the class. the program involves 60 students aged six at a nursery school, aisyiyah bustanul athfal, in east java province, indonesia. this program is important as it involves measurable assessment of the educational model, learning tool requirements, methods of delivery and evaluation of activities. the 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8478 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rohmatin@umg.ac.id https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8397 program and results shared here demonstrate that gardening education can be accomplished at the nursery school level. gardening tools are needed, but can be modified to suit this age group. gardening education for these young children is conducted in accordance with pre-prepared lesson plans. multilevel learning methods, ranging from reading books, telling stories and watching documentaries to practising and reflecting on gardening activities, are part of the success of this type of gardening education. school support for the implementation of this program markedly determined its success. keywords service-learning program; gardening education; early childhood; nursery school; learning methods introduction the presence of children in a family is a gift from god, for which we are very grateful. preparing them to become rabbani, or godly, is the choice of all indonesian parents. children are also an investment in the nation, state and religion as each generation will hopefully change civilisation for the better. education for young children is thus very important. according to the united nations’ sustainable development goals, point 4.2 regarding education, by 2030 all girls and boys should have access to early childhood care and development so that they are ready for basic education (un 2023). preparing for a child’s education begins in the womb and continues for some years. according to the us-based national association for the education of young children (naeyc 1997), early childhood spans eight years. we know that in early childhood children’s motoric, cognitive and emotional skills are actively growing and developing, and that the pattern of education in early childhood adjusts the pattern of growth and development in children of this age. in the act of the republic of indonesia number 20 of 2003 concerning the national education system, article 1, paragraph 14 states that early childhood education is a coaching effort aimed at children from birth to the age of six, which is carried out through the provision of educational stimuli to assist growth and development – both physical and spiritual – so that children are ready to enter a higher stage of education (depdiknas 2003). meanwhile, unesco, with the approval of its member countries, divides education into seven levels in its international standard classification of education (isced) document. as set by unesco, early childhood education is included at level 0, or preschool level, namely for children aged 3–5 years. this article discusses a service-learning program undertaken by university teachers and a large charity organisation based in east java, indonesia, that specialises in childhood education. while similar programs have been conducted in the past in indonesia, they have been carried out in the absence of fully prepared lesson plans and methods of assessment. lesson plans provide the teachers with the appropriate learning methods (activities) to use in order to achieve specific learning objectives. based on the character of early childhood and an appropriate curriculum, learning methods are important in effectively conveying learning objectives. the outdoor learning method is effective in early childhood, as it is a form of learning through life simulation activities, creative, recreational and educational games, both individually and in groups, with the aim being self and group development (hamzah 2020). outdoor learning through gardening is effective, even in early childhood. it has a positive impact on children’s development and helps them to understand science more easily (mirawati & nugraha 2017; sonnia 2021). it also increases environmental awareness (budi & krisna 2013; dwi marietta et al. 2021) and children’s cognitive development (fitriah et al. 2021). it encourages an entrepreneurial spirit in early childhood (fithriyana et al. 2016) and interest in nutritional education (hinga & indriati 2019); increases knowledge of the natural environment (indrayani 2021; resi meirahayu 2017; utami 2020); spurs language development in early childhood (toyibah 2018); and fosters monotheism and islamic values (ananda 2017) . agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 rationale and goals for the outdoor gardening program gardening education, amongst other things, can be achieved if it fulfils the matrix indicators of early childhood development (wood 2018), as outlined below. 1. health domain. (a) children will be motivated to enjoy eating vegetables if they are introduced to vegetables and gardening activities early in life. activities, such as planting, caring for, harvesting, and cooking and eating vegetables together at school with friends and teachers will help them to enjoy these activities. (b) physical activity and education in gardening are held for at least 60 minutes 5 days per week as these activities can strengthen children’s motor skills. (c) after every gardening activity, the children are offered milk to drink. (d) when participating in gardening education, students bring a supply of fruit or vegetables from home. (e) mental health develops well because children learn while tending plants in the garden. 2. learning domain. (a) children will be more active in learning as they do this while playing in the garden. (b) children’s language will develop well as they add new words to their vocabulary. (c) children will be able to count to more than 10 in sequence and understand standard units, for example, long, short, small, large. (d) children will advance in literacy because gardening education includes reading story books. (e) children will be able to recognise basic shapes easily through witnessing various forms of plant organs, including leaves, stems, roots and flowers. (f ) various methods of education will be included, starting with teachers reading books and storytelling, and then colouring in, drawing and gardening practices. (g) understanding of letters and numbers, the vocabulary of living things and language development will be achieved using easy-to-understand media in the garden. (h) gardening materials and tools made according to indonesian national standards (sni) will be used. (i) increased knowledge of the environment will occur. (j) increased motor skills will be developed by the children. the outdoor area is a garden facility that is safe for children. learning is done in groups, divided into large groups and small groups, and each child receives gardening tools. 3. social and emotional development. (a) children develop good social behaviour because gardening education teaches them to work together in groups. (b) they learn patience as they observe and follow the growth of the plants until they are harvested. (c) they also become more independent because each is given responsibility for planting, caring for and harvesting their crops. (d) the children develop the courage and willingness to articulate the process of growing their plants. (e) they also exhibit good social-emotional balance through cultivating patience and responsibility, as well as independence. 4. family context. (a) at home, children who have attended gardening education classes may become more loving to their family. (b) they also may become more disciplined and independent at home. (c) some of the activities encouraged by this education method are reading plant books with parents, and drawing and colouring in plants with parents at home which can build a healthy emotional relationship and two-way communication between the parents and the children. (d) at home, children may become more attentive and affectionate with their pets. (e) they also independently learn to make decisions about situations they face, for example, understanding that if the plants are not watered, they will die. 5. community context. (a) children are taught to share their crops and what they have learnt with friends, family and teachers. this hones the social nature of children and children’s empathy for the environment. (b) as mentioned, the school environment is islamic-based, and as such gardening education supports understanding of monotheism (divinity). agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 as can be seen, there are many positive values that are awakened in early childhood through planned gardening activities. the university implements learning at an early age through gardening activities, in partnership with nursery schools at aisyiyah bustanul athfal in east java, indonesia. partner profiles community service activities are one of the tridharma (three teachings) of higher education; the others are research and teaching, which must be carried out by lecturers. the directorate general of higher education in indonesia supports the tridharma programs. the community service undertaken by lecturers involves implementation of the research results. the gardening community service is carried out by a team of devotees from the agricultural science cluster and the field of early childhood education at muhammadiyah universities. the partner in this community service activity is aisyah kindergarten, an educational institution which is also a muhammadiyah charity. muhammadiyah is one of the largest social organisations in indonesia, with one section being a business charity working in the field of education from early childhood to senior level. aisyah kindergarten is part of muhammadiyah, whose movement is administered by women. aisyah’s head of the centre gives directions on the importance of protecting nature and the environment in controlling natural disasters, which is in line with his directive. we, as a service team from the universities, feel it is necessary to instil love for the environment in children at an early age, through penetration of gardening education for students aged five to six years, in partnership with aisyah kindergarten. aisyah’s vision is to establish an islamic independent nursery school, with the mission of (1) conducting creative islamic pre-school education; (2) equipping students with good character (akhlakul karimah); and (3) providing students with life skills on a global scale based on information and communications technology. the objectives of the nursery school are (1) to educate muslim children and adults to be noble, capable, confident and useful members of the society, nation and state; (2) to help lay the foundation for the development of good attitudes, behaviour, knowledge, language and creativity needed by children to adapt to the environment and their subsequent growth and development; (3) develop the seeds of faith and devotion to allah swt in children’s personalities from an early age, which will manifest in the development of both a physical and spiritual life in line with their level of development. over the last two years, aisyah’s kindergarten has used the 2013 curriculum and also integrated it with the local curriculum for nursery school, aisyiyah bustanul athfal, which has adapted it to the local wisdom of the institute and integrated it with the covid-19 emergency curriculum, as one of the teaching guidelines for teachers in undertaking their duties as educators, teachers and caregivers. in developing and improving their competence and coaching, various useful activities are undertaken in order to develop strong personalities and professionalism to improve the quality of education in nursery school. in supporting learning, the nursery school provides various facilities, including swimming pools and school gardens. gardening education is an effective option for early childhood education as it uses methods appropriate to early childhood development. development and growth in early childhood involves several characteristics, including curiosity, fantasising and imagining, which have the most potential for learning, an egocentric attitude and short concentration (amini & aisyah 2014). based on these characteristics, the following aspects of early childhood education curricula are of concern (kartadinata & sunaryo 2003): (a) children require a sense of security, rest and good food; (b) they come into a world programmed to imitate; (c) they need routine and practice; (d) they need to ask lots of questions and receive answers; (e) they think differently from adults; (f ) they require direct experience; (g) for them trial and error is the most important aspect of learning; (h) playing is the world of childhood. based on these features of early childhood development and requirements, an early childhood education curriculum was developed (suryana 2014). religion-based early childhood education institutions have also developed an early childhood education curriculum, incorporating islamic values in their learning (ananda 2017). agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 partner situation analysis implementation of gardening learning has gradually occurred in schools, starting with play groups (kbs) and continuing on to nursery school level. previously, gardening learning was undertaken by the teacher by introducing plants to the classroom, while later students undertook the planting and harvesting of plants in the garden without measurable assessments as indicators of learning outcomes. context gardening learning is carried out in the form of community service in aisyiyah bustanul athfal 42 gresik play group/nursery school in east java, an early childhood school with an islamic religious platform. the institution is one of the charitable efforts of social organisations in indonesia, namely muhammadiyah, which is engaged in education. the age level of children in the playgroup (kb) is three to four years, and in the nursery school (tk) it is five to six years. nursery school is divided into tk a level at the age of five years and tk b at the age of six years. the students involved in our activities were 60 nursery school level b students (aged 6 years), who were divided into three classes, each class comprising 20 students, with one class teacher. program implementation the method of implementing this program was through group discussion forums, training for class teachers, class action by students and evaluation of activities. group discussion forums related to the preparation of activities were held with the school principal, class teachers and service teams from tertiary institutions before the activities began. the purpose of the discussion was to convey the plans and objectives of the activities to partners, and to determine the rules for implementing activities, work descriptions and the schedule of activities so that later they would work well. the training of class teachers was conducted by the teaching team and involved class action exposure training, which would be carried out for children by the class teacher and the service team. further, a class action was carried out to demonstrate the implementation of gardening education. class actions included reading books together, telling stories, practising planting seeds, caring for plants, harvesting, cooking vegetables and eating vegetables. learning tools for early childhood gardening education learning tools for gardening education in early childhood include two things: hardware in the form of garden facilities and infrastructure, and software in the form of a learning syllabus. the existence of land or gardens is important in gardening education as an education facility. the garden model can adapt to the local wisdom of the school, while garden infrastructure is in the form of gardening equipment and materials. gardening materials include seeds, planting media, water and fertiliser. the necessary gardening tools include aprons, gloves, shovels, a small hoe and a small rake. in addition to the hardware required, a learning syllabus is needed. lesson plans are prepared for every class meeting or class action. learning intervals can be based on predetermined learning outcomes along with achievement indicators. to measure the achievement of indicators, an assessment is carried out on each class action. the assessment is prepared based on a measurable assessment rubric with certain intervals of numbers and points. methods of delivering material on early childhood gardening education universities work with partners to implement a gardening education model for children in early childhood, applying several measurable class actions to each learning achievement. agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 determination of learning outcomes, with multi-level achievement indicators, is very important in the early stages of the process so that the learning objectives can be realised. achievement indicators for each aspect of learning are measured through assessment. our gardening education syllabus requires learning outcomes of increased knowledge of monotheism, science, naturalism, love for the environment and students’ islamic character, including: (a) students are able to show knowledge of monotheism through understanding the nature of allah (asmaul husna); (b) students are able to understand the form and function of plants through knowledge of plant growth processes, and an ability to distinguish plant organs, namely leaves, roots and stems, as well as the function of each plant organ; (c) students exhibit knowledge of nature through plant caring activities, such as watering plants, fertilising and cleaning weeds; and (d) students are able to show good character (akhlakul karimah) and love for the environment through their ability to grow, maintain and harvest plants. based on this learning, the level of success can be measured. the achievement indicators include: (a) students are able to show, name and distinguish objects created by allah from those created by humans; (b) identify plant organs, draw them and state their functions; (c) measure plant growth; (d) water plants, provide fertiliser and clear weeds from the plants; (f ) plant plants and maintain them properly; (g) harvest crops; and (h) cook and eat the vegetables harvested from their gardens class action is the implementation stage of delivering predetermined learning outcomes. the classroom actions that we undertook with the students measured their cognitive, psychomotor and affective abilities. some of these are outlined below. 1. book reading the initial class action involved reading storybooks on the topic of gardening. this activity aimed to deliver an initial understanding of the gardening activities in which the children would be participating. our procedure involved the class teacher reading the book to the students, and the students listening and then retelling the story. finally, both students and teacher would read the book as an act of reflection. this activity helps train children’s cognitive abilities so that children can understand the process of plant growth and the benefits of plants to life through literacy skills, for example by colouring in and drawing plants. figure 1. storybook reading activity agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 2. storytelling storytelling is the act of conveying a story using expression and songs so that children become more receptive to what the storyteller is conveying. storytelling was implemented in the second stage, after the students had listened to the story of pak budi’s garden, in the hope that they would better understand the gardening activities in which they would be involved. when participating in storytelling, children become more enthusiastic and expressive. this activity can help train children’s language and expression skills, that is, they can express their understanding through spoken language or gestures. figure 2. storytelling 3. watching documentary films in animated form in the third stage, we invited children to watch documentary films in animated form on the theme of plants. the goal was for children to gain a visual picture of the process of plant growth and farming. this activity can help train children’s cognitive and language abilities, and can also help them to increase their knowledge of plants scientifically, from growing to producing seeds. through film, children can acquire a better understanding of the procedures for growing plants, caring for plants, and harvesting and cooking crops. figure 3. watching a documentary film agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 4. learning about farming practices in the garden practices include planting and caring for plants (fertilising, removing weeds) and harvesting. these activities can train children’s psychomotor skills through activities such as planting seeds, watering plants, fertilising plants, clearing weeds and harvesting vegetables. they can help children’s understanding of plant growth through such activities as measuring plant height and number of leaves. they also help cultivate a compassionate attitude towards living things through caring for plants by watering, fertilising and clearing weeds from the plants. (a) (c) (b) (d) (e) figure 4. learning practice in the garden: (a) planting seeds, (b) clearing weeds, (c) watering the plants, (d) harvesting mustard greens, (e) harvesting lettuce agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 5. cooking and eating vegetables the final activity for the children was to cook the vegetables and eat them together. this activity trains children’s psychomotor skills, including cutting vegetables and holding a knife, a frying pan, and a fork and spoon. affective training includes cultivating a patient attitude through eating together, getting used to praying before and after eating, and tidying up eating utensils independently. children like to eat vegetables when they know the health benefits of them. (a) (c) (b) (d) figure 5. (a) preparing vegetables, (b) sorting vegetables, (c) cooking vegetables, (d) eating vegetables together. evaluation of activities evaluation required distribution of questionnaires to 25 respondents, including school principals, class teachers and student guardians. the evaluation covered assessment of the program learning tools, the education model and the delivery methods. topics of the questions were (a) suitability of the activities for early childhood learning; (b) suitability of the materials used in gardening education for those in early childhood; (c) methods of delivering gardening education material to those in early childhood; (d) suitability of the gardening education learning tools used in early childhood (e) appropriateness of gardening education class actions in early childhood; (f ) program benefits; and (g) program sustainability. answers to questions were measured using likert scale criteria, namely very weak (score 1), weak (score 2), agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 adequate (score 3), strong (score 4) and very strong (score 5). the data analysis used spss software version 26. we undertake this after all stages of the class action have been completed. table 1 below shows the results of the activity evaluation questionnaire. table 1. learning evaluation instruments for gardening education in early childhood instrument score criteria frequency % standev (a) suitability of activities for early childhood learning 60–80 strong 14 56 1.03 80–100 very strong 11 44 (b) appropriateness of learning material for gardening education of children in early childhood 60–80 strong 15 60 2.91 80–100 very strong 10 40 (c) methods of delivering gardening education materials to children in early childhood 60–80 strong 9 36 1.74 80–100 very strong 16 64 (d) appropriateness of learning tools for gardening education in early childhood 60–80 strong 14 54 1.98 80–100 very strong 11 66 (e) appropriateness of class action gardening education in early childhood 60–80 strong 18 72 1.39 80–100 very strong 7 28 (f) program benefits 60–80 strong 18 72 2.06 80– 100 very strong 7 28 (g) continuation of the program 60–80 strong 20 80 1.71 80–100 very strong 5 20 discussion it is considered important that gardening education is implemented in nursery school as, in practice, it takes a long time, beginning with planting the seeds. the goals of gardening education include achievement of an understanding of monotheism, development of cognitive insight, affective development of children, development of children’s psychomotor gross and fine motor skills, as well as the development of children’s skills working with nature. all are considered important in supporting learning achievements in schools. reading books, storytelling, gardening, and cooking and eating vegetables together are also an essential part of gardening education. learning tools, such as garden facilities and infrastructure, generally determine the success of gardening education in early childhood. however, it is possible to adapt existing tools through innovation and creativity. a learning implementation plan (rpp) is considered important for smooth agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 management of gardening education and needs to be prepared according to school learning outcomes. it is also considered beneficial for school teachers, child students and guardians of students. in the words of the school principal: this program has a positive impact on student learning outcomes, where previously gardening education had only been carried out for students to grow crops, but through this program, a structured learning achievement and indicator of achievement had been developed, the material presented, the methods used in learning and gardening infrastructure, so that the school supports this program. a student guardian testimony stated: my child at home likes to water plants, can name various vegetable plants and starts to like eating vegetables. and a student said: i like to study and play in the garden, i like to eat lettuce, the lettuce tastes sweet this program and the gardening facilities could not have been run well without the support, participation and cooperation of the school, namely the principal, teachers, staff and school advisers. in future, the school will include lesson plans for gardening education in this program as part of the school curriculum, and if possible have teachers take part in gardening workshops for young children. university involvement in the form of assistance with implementation of our research results has been quite important in supporting implementation of gardening education in a variety of disciplines. agricultural science clusters are needed to assist in garden construction design that is in accordance with early childhood education, plant cultivation processes and knowledge about plants. an early childhood education science cluster is needed to prepare lesson plans, gardening education learning methods, accompany class teachers, prepare learning media, such as pop-up books for growing vegetables, and compile achievement assessments in each gardening education activity. conclusion the application of gardening education to early childhood learning can be done at the nursery school level. gardening learning tools are needed, but can be modified to suit school facilities. the implementation of gardening education in early childhood can be carried out in accordance with prepared lesson plans. multi-level learning methods, ranging from reading books, telling stories and watching documentaries, to practising and reflecting on gardening activities, are part of the success of gardening education. school support for the implementation of the program greatly determines its success. acknowledgements thank you to dppm university of muhammadiyah gresik 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berkebun sebagai media pembelajaran terhadap perkembangan kognitif (pengenalan sains) pada anak’, prosiding seminar nasional pengabdian masyarakat lppm umj, vol. 1, no. 1. https://jurnal.umj.ac.id/index.php/semnaskat/article/view/10677 hamzah, n 2020, pengembangan sosial anak usia dini. https://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aizpdwaaqb aj&oi=fnd&pg=pa57&dq=pengertian+anak+usia+dini&ots=6e0qlpsc3z&sig=nbmn_56vf2i38uahgq4corpezuo hinga, iat & indriati 2019, ‘efektifitas metode gardening class sebagai media edukasi gizi bagi anak usia dini pada paud di kota kupang’, chmk applied scientific journal, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 57–62. https://doi.org/10.37792/casj. v2i2.520 indrayani, d 2021, ‘mengembangkan kecerdasan naturalistik anak melalui kegiatan berkebun di tk teratai kelompok b sukarame bandar lampung tahun ajaran 2020/2021’. http://repository.radenintan.ac.id/15351/ kartadinata & sunaryo 2003, ‘konseptualisasi pendidikan anak dini usia di indonesia’, buletin padu jurnal ilmiah anak dini usia ‘konseptualisasi sistem & program paud’, edisi khusus 2003, jakarta: dit. padu depdiknas, pp. 68–80. mirawati, m & nugraha, r 2017, ‘mmeningkatkan ketrampilan proses sains anak usia dini melalui aktifitas berkebun’, early childhood: jurnal pendidikan, lppm universitas muhammadiyah tasikmalaya, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 13–27. https://doi.org/10.35568/earlychildhood.v1i1.50 naey 1997, developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8, n.w., washington, dc. resi meirahayu 2017, ‘pengaruh metode proyek berkebun terhadap kecerdasan naturalis anak usia dini: penelitian quasi eksperimen terhadap kelompok b tk 63 jayagiri bandung’. http://repository.upi.edu/34115/ sonnia, s 2021, ‘meningkatkan aktivitas sains anak usia dini melalui metode berkebun’, http://repository. radenintan.ac.id/14427/ suryana, d 2014, ‘kurikulum pendidikan anak usia dini berbasis perkembangan anak’, jurnal pesona dasar, vol. 1, no. 3. toyibah, y intan 2018, ‘efektivitas penerapan kegiatan berkebun terhadap perkembangan bahasa anak usia dini’. http://repository.ump.ac.id/7838/ agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202312 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v1i1.28 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v1i1.28 http://repository.ump.ac.id/3026/ http://www.arb.ca.gov/railyard/hra/bnsf_sb_final.pdf http://www.arb.ca.gov/railyard/hra/bnsf_sb_final.pdf https://doi.org/10.31851/pernik.v2i2.4088 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v2i2.39 https://jurnal.umj.ac.id/index.php/semnaskat/article/view/10677 https://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aizpdwaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa57&dq=pengertian+anak+usia+dini&ots=6e0qlpsc3z&sig=nbmn_56vf2i38uahgq4corpezuo https://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aizpdwaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pa57&dq=pengertian+anak+usia+dini&ots=6e0qlpsc3z&sig=nbmn_56vf2i38uahgq4corpezuo https://doi.org/10.37792/casj.v2i2.520 https://doi.org/10.37792/casj.v2i2.520 http://repository.radenintan.ac.id/15351/ https://doi.org/10.35568/earlychildhood.v1i1.50 http://repository.upi.edu/34115/ http://repository.radenintan.ac.id/14427/ http://repository.radenintan.ac.id/14427/ http://repository.ump.ac.id/7838/ utami, f 2020, ‘pengaruh metode pembelajaran outing class terhadap kecerdasan naturalis anak usia 5-6 tahun’, jurnal obsesi: jurnal pendidikan anak usia dini, universitas pahlawan tuanku tambusai, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 551–58. https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v4i2.314 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v4i2.314 wood, r 2018, metrics for early childhood systems: a national scan, johnson foundation. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ed602930.pdf agustina, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202313 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v4i2.314 https://doi.org/10.31004/obsesi.v4i2.314 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed602930.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed602930.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 2 december 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: holland, b., and malone, m. 2019. editorial: institutional engagement – intentional, innovative and rigorous. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6984. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v12i2.6984 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au introduction editorial: institutional engagement – intentional, innovative and rigorous barbara holland1, margaret malone2 1 distinguished professor, university of nebraska omaha; senior scholar, university of north carolina greensboro; senior scholar, indiana university-purdue university indianapolis 2 managing editor, gateways; centre for social justice and inclusion, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: barbara holland; holland.barbaraa@gmail.com doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6984 article history: received 30/11/2019; revised 14/12/2019; accepted 17/12/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract around the world, universities are exploring new strategies to improve the quality and impact of their community engagement agenda, thereby strengthening their potential to offer greater value to both institution and the communities with whom they engage, be they local or international. this issue of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement focusses on institutional-level improvement of engagement structures and impacts, as well as innovative changes in academic culture and partnership strategies. the articles presented here are intended to encourage a growing movement to position higher education institutions around the world as a key resource and partner in efforts to address current global and local challenges. keywords: systemic institutional change, community engagement, partnership strategies declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 introduction around the world, universities are exploring new strategies to improve the quality and impact of their community engagement agenda, thereby strengthening their potential to offer greater value to both institutions and the communities with whom they engage, be they local or international. this issue of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement focuses on institutional-level improvement of engagement structures and impacts, as well as innovative changes in academic culture and partnership strategies. the articles presented here are intended to encourage a growing movement to position higher education institutions around the world as a key resource and to partner in efforts to address current global and local challenges. while engaged universities have strived to ensure that engagement with communities is mutually beneficial, the lack of a cohesive and sustained agenda of engagement has sometimes led to mixed results for all involved. the historic academic culture around the world has long valued solo scholar achievements, with some exceptions. to be frank, this focus on individual faculty work has contributed to loss of public appreciation of the roles of higher education in contributing to intellectual and public progress, well-being and equity. in some nations, the government and/or other public voices are skeptical of the value of degrees and, sometimes, of research activity. in our view, the growing interest in universities engaging with their communities is having a good effect on the public’s appreciation of universities as valuable citizens. at the same time, contemporary global and local challenges are complex and fast changing and create multiple and diverse effects in different settings. climate, health, safety, food security, water, fair employment, migration, housing and many other issues require multiple sources of expertise to develop innovative strategies that will help show a way forward. these challenges are urgent and complex; they require academic institutions to shift their culture and join in the development of effective actions. every academic institution needs to consider its connection and contribution to public progress through a planned agenda of directing campus expertise and areas of inquiry toward the purpose of productive interactions with citizens, government, business and non-government organisations. universities around the world must learn to collaborate deeply across disciplines and across other societal sectors to develop new approaches to local and global challenges. there can be no underestimating the difficulty or urgency of this challenge. indeed, as we prepare for publication, in the usa, where barbara holland lives, articles of impeachment are being prepared, while in australia, bushfires, which started in winter, still rage out of control. a theme that emerges in this volume is the necessity of addressing, with some sophistication, the often-times competing global and local pressures, which may include disciplinary, technical, bureaucratic and market-driven imperatives. davis (2017), discussing the dawkins reforms to australian higher education in the late 1980s, notes: ‘only with the benefit of distance does it become clear that bold change in fact reinforced an existing model of the university, and spread it still further across the nation’ (davis 2017, p. 85). rather than establishing a unified national system, the result was a uniform national system. davis’s research points to ‘a paradoxical conclusion – that competition can lead to conformity rather than real difference’, due to a ‘“reputational race” that drives universities towards the same goals’ (davis 2017, p. 100; citing van vught). the question may then become, if not competition, what else? clearly, this volume of articles suggests, strongly and repeatedly, that collaboration is one key response. collini holland and malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 (2017, p. 232) argues that universities ‘need to adopt a perspective which is less individualistic, less proprietorial, and less confined to the present generation’. fortunately, this may well be underway already. new generations of young faculty, many of whom experienced servicelearning as students in school or university, are now leading internal cultural and policy change in their institutions to create more opportunities for collaborative scholarship, including community engagement. a new academic culture is emerging around the globe, and it will be grounded in collaborative research and dissemination within and beyond academia. the new generations of faculty and staff should give us all a sense of optimism and a new inspiration to deepen collaboration and engagement within and beyond our university borders. this volume of gateways contributes to this vision of greater public impact through institutional change processes by presenting diverse articles that reveal new strategies for academic organisational and culture change, wider access to academic research, collaborative research models and new views of internal and external partnerships. abbott and tiffen, from the university of technology sydney (uts), make a compelling case that the movement towards open access of university scholarship (research publications) can contribute to greater scholarly appreciation of community-engaged scholarship. the authors give a rigorous and clear description of the traditional academic culture regarding publishing, and how publishers have used that cultural trait to increase profits by raising prices for accessing articles. in other words, because academia tends to reward faculty for publication in ‘top’ journals, the top journal publishers have developed strategies that make it expensive for the original author, libraries and others to access the material. ironically, as the internet made it easier to access information, these publishers locked up material behind firewalls and charged more for access. the relevance of these moves towards open access for the future of community engagement is based in the desire to make academic knowledge and research more accessible to the public and to recognise engaged scholarship produced by faculty. indeed, the positive, transformative potential of open access is substantial – if unassured. ibrahim (2017, p. 80) argues that, today, ‘two global forces are driving rapid change: the digital information revolution – and perhaps related – the global emergence of seemingly spontaneous peoples movements’. abbott and tiffen note that commitments to the ‘plan s’ goals of providing open access to publicly funded research by 2021 have been made in europe and latin america and by china. communities, individuals, organisations will soon have unprecendented access to cutting-edge knowledge. as ibrahim asks of engaged institutions, ‘are there ways our global project for universities could harness the strengths and guard against weaknesses of both the it revolution and 21st century social movements?’ (ibrahim 2017, p. 80). abbott and tiffen give a thorough overview of the development and progress of the open scholarship movement and its contributions to community engagement actions involving students, faculty and communities. scholars have worked together to start new open access journals – and these are growing rapidly. this journal you are reading is one of those open journals. the authors point out that an important sticking point in creating broad access to academic literature lies in the promotion and tenure policies of every university. all faculty are assessed by multiple measures, but the highest bar for traditional research is typically a one author article published in a highly ranked journal in the author’s disciplinary field. this system also affects community engaged scholars who often do research in and with communities, so their publications are not always recognised as research by colleagues and may be labelled as public service. fortunately, policy changes are being made and faculty performance measures are changing rapidly as many universities seek to demonstrate their editorial: institutional engagement – intentional, innovative and rigorous gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 contributions to public good. the authors offer useful strategies for leading cultural change in academia and for engaging the public in accessing data and findings. the second article by gusheh, firth, netherton and pettigrew describes the innovative and effective organisational change project undertaken at the university of technology sydney (uts) that led to the development of the uts social impact framework. early in their article they wisely acknowledge the recent and expanding efforts to integrate measures of community engagement into international ranking systems, an initiative which is well underway, yet not recognised by many universities. charged by their vice chancellor and other senior executives, an impressive and inclusive process of group dialogue shaped the development of a new and more intentional approach to engagement at uts. central to their institution-wide change process was the use of established models for guiding collaborative planning processes, such as appreciative inquiry (cooperrider, whitney & stavros 2003) and theory of change (funnell & rogers 2011; rogers 2008). these organising frameworks gave structure to the work sessions involving numerous staff and faculty in highly participatory dialogue meant to lead to new principles and strategies to focus and increase engagement activity. such an intentional design process with broad participation is not common in higher education, so this case study will be valuable to many institutions seeking to develop a more intentional planning process to craft new campus initiatives. one goal, among others, was to develop a clearer and more specific agenda for engagement across the whole institution, something few universities around the world have done. without a central and focused agenda that incorporates clear goals and measures, how can a university measure its impact or know what to replicate or change? this new framework will be supported and implemented by the centre for social justice and inclusion, which is also responsible for leading a university-wide mapping project and facilitating campus/community collaboration. the numerous and actionoriented sessions were successful in creating a more common understanding of the context and potential of engagement. cross-institutional dialogue can also lead to more interdisciplinary engagement. hopefully, uts continues to monitor the effect of this more intentional strategy and will share findings and outcomes in the future as they seek to develop a more focused agenda of engagement across their university. ‘activating social and design literature’ is an exciting article that reveals new insights into approaches to exploring and understanding collaborative change in communities. the cincinnati region was an early adopter of a new community organising concept called ‘collective impact’ (kania & kramer 2011). this article by busch, jean-baptiste, person and vaughn tells us that this strong framework for inclusive cross-community dialogue and planning is still contributing to cincinnati’s focus on knowledge creation and problem solving through participatory and collaborative actions. the authors report on their search for and analysis of peer-reviewed scholarly publications (across disciplines and countries) to ‘identify practices that transcend individual disciplines, sectors, and contexts to achieve collaborative change’. their analysis of these articles reveals new insights into important factors and aspects of collaborative change research, evaluation and design, abbreviated as ccred. this article identifies distinctions across those terms and common areas of weakness in application, and also offers insights about the contexts in which these methods of participatory inquiry are used. given their interest in encouraging full and rigorous use of participatory methods of ccred, it is not surprising the authors also offer advice on recognising pitfalls and improving implementation. we agree heartily with the authors that this vision for ccred and participatory community processes needs to be more strongly linked to community holland and malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 engagement. the connection of engagement and ccred would strengthen community voice in the development of initiatives that affect their lives and interests. aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe and demissie document the history and analysis of an innovative partnership between two universities, one in canada, the other in ethiopia. this is a strong and creative example of the growing global connections across higher education. universities around the world share similar challenges, as do our communities, citizens and environments. the more we collaborate and exchange effective discoveries and new strategies, and share skills that support those actions, the better for people and for the planet. this article describes a 10-year partnership that is distinctive in its focus on reciprocity and mutual benefit as opposed to historic models, which the authors describe as activities planned and funded by ‘northern actors’ without much input from ‘southern’ communities. the authors share with us the factors that created a greater sense of equity and valuable exchange in the process of building and sustaining this specific partnership between queen’s university (canada) and the university of gondar (ethiopia). this collaboration is based on a connection between the two institutions’ expertise in working with people with physical disabilities, including teaching innovations at bachelor, master and doctoral levels, as well as shared research and practice on new techniques and equipment for enhancing mobility. the partnership is funded by the mastercard foundation. the authors report that this partnership has been successful in creating networks, improving student learning and building new skills. for queen’s university, an international partnership leads to international experiences for students and faculty, a greater appreciation of diversity in scholarly interests and perspectives, and the opportunity for their campus to host ethiopian students. for gondar, the partnership has contributed to modernising curricula, learning new techniques, and the opportunity for their students to get an advanced degree at queen’s. be assured, this is no ordinary partnership. the authors are straightforward about the challenges and benefits, but the outcomes to this point are felicitous for all. the frequency and depth of interaction, the shared discovery of new interventions, the new skills developed to work with people with a wide range of disabilities … tell us this partnership is making an impressive impact. the benefits for staff, faculty, students and communities are clearly positive on both sides. that said, there are also persistent challenges regarding different bureaucratic systems, management structures, time zones and government requirements. this article is an excellent case study of the realities, challenges and benefits of distant international partnerships. the final article in this volume reports on a study of the science shop movement in europe. the authors, vargiu, cocco and ghibellini, have written a facinating article that reveals the impact that has been created by science shops. science shops began in the 1970s in the netherlands and expanded over the years to about 65 shops across europe (and we note there are several in other countries around the world). for those not familiar with this concept, the authors describe them as: ‘science shops are not “shops” in the traditional sense of the word. these shops are small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines – usually for free – on behalf of curious citizens and local civic society’. these entities are usually linked to a university, and generally run by students. in this article, the authors report on two different research projects concerning the science shops. the context for their reflection on the research results arises from the authors’ concerns for the viability of community engagement endeavours in the context of dramatic changes in the economy, politics, regulation, and other troubling trends. in this article, they consider how community engagement, as a form of teaching, research and public service, can endure in the contemporary environment. the science shops are an amazing, yet relatively simple editorial: institutional engagement – intentional, innovative and rigorous gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 idea: create a convenient public place where clever students and supportive faculty can meet with curious community members who have questions about a wide variety of topics. the quantitative evidence of community participation and interaction with the shops is impressive. the analysis of the two studies of science shops leads to a set of recommendations for durability of such partnership services and other forms of community engagement. each article in this issue is unique, but they all share a rather positive outlook for the future of higher education and its role in an ever-changing world. we share that view as well. what they emphatically make clear is that high-quality, sustainable and mutually beneficial engagement with communities does not represent any kind of turning away from the core principles of scholarly, evidence-based and open-ended inquiry. rather it signals an expansion; akin to boyer’s vision of a more ‘capacious’ scholarship. alfred north whitehead, writing not long after the end of world war 1, with its horrors still fresh in mind, argued eloquently for a ‘make-weight which balances the thoroughness of the specialist intellectual training’. he goes on, ‘when you understand all about the sun and all about the atmosphere and all about the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset. there is no substitute for the direct perception of the concrete achievement of a thing in its own actuality. we want concrete fact with a high light thrown on what is relevant to its preciousness’ (whitehead 1975, p. 236). with this in mind, we hope that you, the reader, will learn much from these articles, and perhaps acquire some new strategies to strengthen community engagement programs and research in your own institutional context. references collini, s 2017, speaking of universities, verso, london. cooperrider, d, whitney, d & stavros, j 2003, appreciative inquiry handbook, berrett-koehler publishers, san francisco, ca. davis, g 2017, the australian idea of a university, melbourne university press, melbourne. funnell, s & rogers, p 2011, purposeful program theory: effective use of theories of change and logic models, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1035719x1401400107  ibrahim, b 2017, ‘higher education in contested settings: the global-local challenge’, in guni (eds), higher education in the world 6: towards a socially responsible university – balancing the global with the local, guni, girona. kania, j & kramer, m 2011, ‘collective impact’, stanford social innovation review, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 36–41. rogers, p 2008, ‘using programme theory to evaluate complicated and complex aspects of interventions’, evaluation, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 29–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389007084674  whitehead, a 1975, science and the modern world, fontana books, uk. holland and malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 may 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sheehan, l., ballentine, s., washington, l., canser, m., connor, j., jones, r., laster, e., muhammad, k., noble, s., smith, r., walley, g., kundert, c. and corrigan, p. 2021. implementing communitybased participatory research among african americans with serious and persistent mental illness: a qualitative study. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:1, 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.6894 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article implementing community-based participatory research among african americans with serious and persistent mental illness: a qualitative study lindsay sheehan1, sonya ballentine1, lorenzo washington, mark canser, john connor, renee jones, edward laster, khalilah muhammad, scott noble, rhonda smith, gary walley1, carla kundert1 and patrick corrigan1 1 psychology department, illinois institute of technology, chicago, illinois, usa corresponding author: lindsay sheehan; lsheehan@iit.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.6894 article history: received 13/11/2019; revised 02/01/2021; accepted 19/04/2021; published 05/2021 abstract community-based participatory research (cbpr) is an approach that involves community members in research, not as research participants, but as partners. however, few studies have examined cbpr projects conducted among african americans with serious and persistent mental illness (spmi). this article focuses specifically on the inspiring change (ic) model, which includes a leadership trio comprised of an academic researcher, health service provider and an african american with lived experience of spmi. our purpose is to investigate how the ic model shapes not only how research is conducted but how research is understood and experienced by the community. we achieve this purpose by (1) describing an innovative cbpr model and pilot projects that involved african americans with spmi in all stages of the research project; and (2) presenting findings from qualitative interviews conducted with cbpr team members about strengths, challenges and leadership particular to this model of cbpr, an area rarely explored in cbpr literature. with the guidance of an advisory board and the manualised ic curriculum, two cbpr teams initiated and conducted nine-month long research projects focusing on health disparities for african americans with spmi. members of the two cbpr teams (n = 13), which included individuals with lived experience, service providers and researchers, completed qualitative interviews. benefits of cbpr projects included opportunities to declaration of conflicting interest the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding research reported in this article was funded through a patient-centered outcomes research institute (pcori) engagement award (1081-iit). the statements presented in this article, are solely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of pcori, its board of governors or methodology committee. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.6894 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.6894 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:lsheehan@iit.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.6894 learn, a sense of purpose in helping others and increased trust of research participants. challenges pertained to disorganisation of leadership, lack of transparency with compensation, time pressures and interpersonal conflicts. these challenges highlight the importance of preparing and supporting those from both academic and lived experience backgrounds in skills necessary to thrive in leadership roles for cbpr projects. keywords community-based participatory research; serious and persistent mental illness; psychiatric disability; african american introduction individuals with a serious and persistent mental illness (spmi) die about 15 years earlier than same age peers (martens 2001; who 2003) and have a higher risk of chronic physical disabilities, including heart disease (osborn, nazareth & king 2006), diabetes (dixon et al. 2000), stroke (hansen, maciejewski, yu-isenberg & farley 2012), and other illnesses (sokal et al. 2004). difficulty with social skills, problems regulating emotion and disinterest in others (li, shi-ni hu & yi, 2011) can interfere with community participation in advocacy, organising and research efforts that seek to address these stark health disparities (corrigan, pickett, batia & michaels 2014). in addition, social exclusion related to stigma and disability can lead people with spmi to become discouraged and give up trying to engage in meaningful life roles (corrigan, larson & rüsch 2009; corrigan & rao 2012). the project we describe here is an effort to engage african americans with spmi in solutions to these health disparities through community-based participatory research (cbpr). while cbpr methods are meant to enhance research partnerships with community members, previous cbpr studies have rarely involved african americans with spmi in all aspects of the project or in leadership roles, and have not documented the perspectives of these cbpr team members. the model of cbpr described herein (inspiring change: ic) provides a framework for implementing more inclusive practices in cbpr. this article focuses specifically on the inspiring change (ic) model, which includes a leadership trio comprising an academic researcher, a health service provider and an african american with lived experience of spmi. our purpose is to investigate how the ic model shapes not only how research is conducted but how research is understood and experienced by the community. we achieve this purpose by (1) describing an innovative cbpr model and pilot project that involved african americans with spmi in all stages of the research project, and (2) presenting findings from qualitative interviews conducted with cbpr team members about strengths, challenges and leadership issues particular to this model of cbpr, an area rarely explored in cbpr literature. literature review african americans are notably under-represented in research samples (huang & coker 2010; milani et al. 2020; webb, khubchandani, striley & cottler 2019; zhang, tsang, wijeysundera & ko 2013), which is not surprising, given the discrimination, ethical violations and mistreatment committed against african americans by the research profession (brandt 1978; shavers, lynch & burmeister 2000). in the infamous tuskegee experiments, which persisted over four decades through the early 1970s, researchers withheld life-saving medical treatment from african americans infected with syphilis (brandt 1978). in the 1950s, henrietta lacks’ cells were harvested without her consent and subsequently utilised in medical research that profited from her cells (shah 2010). collective memories of the tuskegee study and other research transgressions persist in african american communities despite subsequent protections and safeguards against further abuses, leading to a lack of trust that needs to be re-established by researchers (bonevski sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20212 et al. 2014; gamble 1993; nooruddin et al. 2020; shavers, lynch & burmeister 2000). recruitment strategies that neglect african american cultures and make little effort to appeal to african americans have further limited participation (erves et al. 2017; huang & coker 2010). lack of cultural competence in african american research can result in an emphasis on problems and weaknesses rather than strengths and solutions (fenwick 2016). to better understand and address the needs of a community, it is vital that community members (in this case, african americans with spmi) are involved in developing research (bonevski et al. 2014; huang & coker 2010; las nueces et al. 2012). community-based participatory research is one approach to research that can help reduce health disparities and increase the diversity of perspectives in research (wallerstein & duran 2006). in cbpr, academic researchers partner with community members to formulate and investigate research questions that are important to the community. cbpr team members provide vital information on community resources, culturally sensitive recruitment strategies, interpretation of results and translation of findings into practice (hatch et al. 1993). cbpr has been successfully implemented to address african american health disparities in hiv (berkley-patton et al. 2010; griffith et al. 2010), cancer (bone et al. 2013), diabetes (austin & clairborne 2011) and hypertension (dodani et al. 2011). given the heightened risk of disparities for african americans with spmi, who face both race-based and disability-based discrimination (breslau et al. 2005; cdc 2014; earl et al. 2016; orsi, margellosanast & whitman 2010), a few studies have implemented cbpr for african americans with spmi. the studies include development of a peer navigator program to improve health for the homeless (corrigan et al. 2017), a family intervention for youth with depression (breland-noble, burriss & poole 2010) and a mental health program for young adults (mance et al. 2010). the studies describe cbpr team roles as primarily in program development or participant recruitment. for example, corrigan and colleagues (2017) partnered with a group of african american people with spmi who were homeless to design a peer navigation curriculum and recruit participants for a randomised controlled trial. similarly, mance and colleagues (2010) used a cbpr team to adapt an existing intervention, while breland-noble and colleagues (2010) formed an advisory board of parents to give feedback on a youth treatment manual. unfortunately, these cbpr studies seemed to lack involvement of persons with lived experience throughout the entire span of the research project. furthermore, they provided only a cursory description of cbpr team involvement and did not describe the experiences or perceptions of the cbpr members themselves. for people with spmi, cbpr has been described as a moral imperative – to borrow from the disability rights movement, ‘nothing about us without us’ – that improves research quality and impacts the lives of those who take part in cbpr (collins et al. 2018; hancock, bundy, tamsett & mcmahon 2012). cbpr might benefit team members in their own mental health recovery by providing structure, purpose and opportunity to help others in the community (case et al. 2014). potential challenges with cbpr have also been well documented, such as the intensive time for training community members who are inexperienced with research, as well as the significant time commitment in joining a cbpr project, which can last months or even years (case et al. 2014). commitments and priorities of researchers (e.g. pressures of publication, teaching and grant-writing obligations) may conflict with those of community members (collins et al. 2018). the status and power of academic researchers can discourage the contributions of community members and threaten the principle of equal partnership in cbpr if these are not carefully navigated (case et al. 2014). multiple roles and relationships between individuals in cbpr (e.g. doctor and patient) can be challenging for cbpr team members to manage, as they may be doing research alongside providers or in institutions where they also receive services (collins et al. 2018). despite the extensive use of cbpr to reduce health disparities (minkler & wallerstein 2011), limited research explores cbpr team members’ perceptions of the collaborative process. while several studies have evaluated cbpr stakeholder perspectives on community-academic partnerships (e.g. blevins et al. 2008; leclair, lim & rubin 2018), a review of the literature found no research exploring the experience of sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20213 cbpr teams that include african americans with spmi, especially those involving people with spmi in leadership roles. thus, the goal of this project was to examine the experiences of cbpr members who are working on projects to reduce health disparities for african americans with spmi. specifically, we sought to explore how the ic model of cbpr shapes how research is conducted, understood and experienced by the community in terms of benefits, challenges, team engagement and leadership perceptions. background context researchers at the chicago health disparities center, illinois, usa, had previously received a federal grant to develop and test a health intervention for african americans with spmi using cbpr. however, when implementing the project, they found limited resources on cbpr that were specific to this population. thus, the principal investigator (pc) partnered with a lived experience cbpr member (sb) to refine methods in cbpr for african americans with spmi. the first (ls), second (sb) and last author (pc), research associate, lived experience co-investigator and principal investigator respectively, applied for and received funding through eugene washington patient-centered outcomes research institute (pcori) engagement award (see figure 1 for the sequence of project milestones). they established a training and development advisory board (tdab) to develop the curriculum and help guide implementation of cbpr. the tdab was recruited through flyers distributed at local mental health agencies and members were selected by the first and second authors through an application and interview process. the board was comprised of mental health providers (n = 2), researchers (n = 2) and african americans with spmi (n = 8). the group used a landscape review and stakeholder interviews to design a cbpr training curriculum called inspiring change (ic). the african americans with spmi who comprised the tdab elected to call themselves ‘people with lived experience’ to highlight the importance of their experiences rather than their illness. the ic curriculum used this terminology throughout; thus, cbpr team members with spmi are described as having ‘lived experience’ in this article. in the ic model, the cbpr teams are comprised primarily of people with lived experience and are jointly led by a researcher, a healthcare service provider and an african american in recovery from spmi. thus, the cbpr team is a unit that includes all three stakeholder groups (researchers, healthcare providers and people with lived experience). for the current study, the tdab conducted a full-day training (based on the ic curriculum) for interested individuals and teams of researchers, healthcare providers and individuals with spmi from local non-profit agencies. the training included interactive, bi-directional activities aimed at highlighting the important role that people with lived experience have in cbpr projects. researchers and health care providers on cbpr teams learned how to navigate their role on the project while acknowledging inevitable power differentials and cultural misunderstandings. at the training, the tdab distributed a request for proposal, inviting cbpr projects that could help reduce health disparities for african americans with spmi. the tdab assisted individuals with lived experience who had completed the ic training and who were interested in co-leading a team in recruiting a healthcare provider and a researcher to partner with. the trio of leaders then worked together to submit a research proposal. the tdab, in conjunction with outside academic reviewers, selected two projects for funding based on the proposal’s adherence to cbpr principles and research feasibility. leadership trios from two local social service agencies were each awarded $20,000 to carry out time-limited, nine-month research projects embedded within their agencies. together, these two groups of three leaders developed a preliminary research plan and recruited three to four additional african americans with spmi who were service recipients of their organisations. these additional team members with lived experience were selected collaboratively by the leadership trio following an application and interview process with interested individuals. one of the cbpr teams conducted focus groups and surveys with african american male survival sex workers to explore barriers and stigma sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20214 experienced in healthcare settings. the second team designed and pilot-tested a series of health selfmanagement workshops for african americans with spmi. once leaders had recruited the additional cbpr team members, the ic curriculum provided activities and worksheets that team leaders used to establish ground rules, develop group decision-making strategies, address power dynamics, help all team members understand basic research design, and disseminate research findings. team leaders had monthly check-ins and received technical support from the tdab on implementation of the cbpr projects. monthly check-ins lasted one hour and had a standing agenda, including: project successes, progress on timeline, anticipated changes in research plan, team engagement, challenges, and next steps. the ic curriculum also included resources such as templates for meeting agendas, timelines and research plans. the curriculum is available free at www.chicagohealthdisparities.org. the lived experience leader and team members with lived experience were paid an hourly rate (minimum of $15 per hour) for attendance at research meetings, recruitment, data collection and other study-related tasks. researchers and health service providers were paid through their organisation at their regular hourly rate for their percentage of work on the project. to better understand the experiences of participants within the cbpr model, the tdab designed and conducted qualitative interviews with members of the two cbpr teams (n =13), described in detail below. the tdab members who wished to be involved in the data analysis and manuscript preparation sessions are co-authors on this article. academic and lived experience project leaders obtain funding training and development advisory board (tdab) members hired tdab develops inspiring change cbpr curriculum tdab holds inspiring change training for the community tdab reviews cbpr research proposals and accepts two for funding tdab provides technical support to two cbpr projects over nine months tdab conducts qualitative evaluation with cbpr team members figure 1. graphic representation of project sequence. method the twelve-member training and development advisory board (tdab), comprised of mental health providers, researchers and african americans with spmi, designed qualitative interviews to be conducted with members of two cbpr teams, whose health disparity research projects were funded and guided by the tdab. qualitative interviews were aimed at identifying the experiences of participants in cbpr broadly, as well as experiences specific to the inspiring change model, described above. sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20215 http://www.chicagohealthdisparities.org participants participants (n = 13) in the current study were members of the two cbpr teams who had conducted research projects on health disparities, as described above, including the researcher, healthcare provider and individuals with lived experience. cbpr team members (referred to hereafter as participants) were compensated with a $50 gift card and all team members (seven from the first team and six from the second) who were involved in the two projects agreed to participate. most participants had lived experience of mental illness (n = 10). mental health diagnoses included major depression, substance use disorder, ptsd, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. both healthcare provider participants and all nine participants with lived experience were black. for both projects, the lead researcher was white and did not report lived experience of mental illness. participants ranged in age from 24 to 63 and included four men and nine women. healthcare providers and researchers were employed full-time by their organisations, while most participants with lived experience were not employed (n = 7). materials the interview guide was developed collaboratively by the tdab, with questions cross-checked against curriculum topics (e.g. inclusion, power differential, group dynamics, benefits, challenges and leadership needs). example questions were: ‘how did your team go about making decisions in the group setting?’ and ‘how did your team handle conflict in the group?’ all interviewees were asked the same questions. (the full interview guide is included in the appendix.) procedure the research protocol was developed by the tdab and approved by the institutional review board at the illinois institute of technology. participants were recruited via a brief presentation during each team’s cbpr meeting and interested participants were invited to complete the informed consent, ask any questions about the study and provide their phone number. interviews were conducted from a private office at the illinois institute of technology during the final month of the nine-month long cbpr project. two research assistants were trained to conduct and transcribe the semi-structured interviews. the research assistants were briefed on the goals of the project and practised by conducting an interview with a member of the tdab. research assistants were instructed to ask questions in order, but to ask relevant follow-up questions or seek clarification on responses as needed. interviews lasted between 15 minutes and 1 hour. data analysis the tdab used an emergent strategy of thematic analysis (braun & clarke 2006) to analyse transcripts in maxqda 12, with a goal of generating comprehensive themes and sub-themes for each research question (marshall & rossman 1999). preliminary codes and a coding system were iteratively developed by the first and second authors after a thorough reading of the transcripts (braun & clarke 2006). the first author, a doctoral-level researcher with experience in qualitative coding, trained the second author (co-investigator with lived experience) and third author (master’s level student with lived experience) in identifying distinct items (bytes of information) for coding. during the process of coding the first three transcripts, the coding structure was reorganised several times by the second and third authors in response to the emerging data. after the larger themes were developed for the first three transcripts, the second and third authors iteratively developed sub-themes by grouping similar items (e.g. ‘i learned about research in the group’ and ‘i learned a lot’ would both be categorised into ‘self-improvement’ within the theme of ‘benefits to team members’. after coders reviewed the themes and sub-themes in the first three transcripts, a codebook was established so that the second and third authors could code independently. two additional transcripts were sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20216 coded independently and compared; at which time they reached an 80 per cent interrater reliability. the second and third authors proceeded with coding the remaining transcripts independently. themes and sub-themes were reviewed by the first and second authors in relationship to the codes and to the overall data, which allowed for discussion and reorganisation of themes (braun & clarke 2006). results were not separated out by role (lived experience, health provider, academic) in order to preserve the anonymity of interviewees. finally, the authors created tables to name and define themes (braun & clarke 2006). results tables, discussion points and the manuscript itself were presented to all authors for discussion, amendment and final approval. results benefits of cbpr benefits of cbpr were divided into benefits to team members, benefits to community, and benefits to the research. individual team members reported that cbpr work gave them a chance to improve skills, knowledge, or self-confidence: ‘it gave me a chance to overcome my fear and work on the struggles that i have to overcome. i’m just trying to get comfortable with having lived experience.’ other skills included learning about research and leading group sessions. participants talked about the satisfaction of contributing to a purpose (‘being a part of something new that we built from the ground up’), the enhancement of their social interactions (‘…everyone was like family, we praised one another, we gave each other feedback, and picked each other up’) and the benefit of having income from their work on the project (table 1). one important benefit to the community mentioned many times by participants was the chance to help others (‘serving the community that was underserved’). on this theme, participants spoke about how the cbpr project allowed for research and services that better reflect the interests of the community, and allocated resources in the form of research funding. participants also spoke about how the research highlighted the needs and strengths of the black community, hopefully leading to increased services that are community driven. themes for benefits to the community also included improvement of the partner agency through a better understanding of the community that they were serving, and the opportunity to challenge stigma (‘well people need to see that african americans have these issues but they’re still working on them’). participants identified ways that the research process itself could benefit from cbpr. they discussed how they were able to give suggestions based on their lived experience (e.g. providing research participants with more privacy to complete questionnaires), how they helped recruit difficult-to-engage populations in research (e.g. finding male sex workers in local parks), and how they could relate with research participants. one cbpr team member who helped with data collection for one of the projects noted: ‘the participants saw value because they were listening to people with similar experience, so that creates a level of trust.’ team members with lived experience said they engaged their potential research participants through shared language (street slang) and built trust with them through a brief disclosure (e.g. ‘i been where you are.’). the shared experiences of having mental illness (or being black, unemployed, homeless, a sex worker, etc.) allowed the research participants to feel less judged and more open to answering questions about mental health or other sensitive topics. challenges of cbpr leaders of the cbpr teams sometimes struggled with managing the project, both from their own perspective and from that of the rest of the team. cbpr members reported difficulties with communication, organisation and motivation. one said, ‘for me, what was frustrating was, that our [leader], over a period of time, became disinterested in the project.’ the leaders with lived experience on the project also expressed some difficulties in feeling like a real leader. as one put it, ‘… i felt that even though i was a team leader, i sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20217 wasn’t included for some parts of it.’ leaders felt pressure to get tasks done on time and please other team members, while members of the team sometimes wished they had more guidance and training from leaders (table 2). participants believed that limited finances and time were significant challenges. some said that access to a computer, more money and more time would have been helpful. one comment sums up several comments relating to the time pressure: ‘yeah, i think part of the problem… we all felt the same frustration, which was time.’ along with that were annoyances with some team members’ lack of participation, in the form of being late, not showing up, or not putting in as much effort as other members. other participants related challenges specific to their research project. it was especially difficult for team members to orient themselves to the distinction between doing research and providing help to peers: ‘it was just data we collected. we weren’t able to give any suggestions or refer them to services.’ others reported challenges understanding the research design or with data collection. participants noted problems with recruiting enough participants for the research and feeling stressed when their research participants shared their stories of trauma or their current difficulties. getting along with members of the team was another reported challenge. some participants wanted more transparency (e.g. information and updates) on the project, more unity on the team, or had perceived differences in workload (‘a couple of us had to step up and do his part.’). trust amongst team members was sometimes a challenge, but one participant described how this improved: ‘…in the beginning i thought they [team members] would be judgmental… but later on we got comfortable.’ in terms of communication, participants thought that the leaders could be more direct in their communication. participants also noted specific limitations of team members (e.g. symptoms of mental illness, active addiction, low literacy) that held the team back. engagement strategies leaders and team members identified various engagement strategies as crucial to the involvement of lived experience members on cbpr projects. the engagement strategies (table 3) employed by team leaders during the cbpr projects were meant to ensure that team members felt a part of the project and were able to meaningfully participate. one way all three team leaders engaged team members with lived experience was by emphasising the importance of their role on the project, which was done by asking for table 1. benefits of cbpr theme sub-theme # coded items benefits to team members self-improvement 53 being able to contribute to a purpose 23 social interactions 22 income 4 benefits to community helping others 87 good for agency 4 challenge stigma 5 benefits to research give suggestions based on experience 21 help with recruitment 3 relate with research participants 18 sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20218 their input (‘we let them know that their opinions are as good as the next person.’) and pointing out their individual strengths. team leaders asking team members to contribute in important ways was also essential (‘i administered the surveys, talked, and gave suggestions about locations that i thought we would help to fulfill the quota that we needed to have.’). participant team members frequently talked about the importance of ongoing contact and support. team leaders accomplished this by scheduling regular meetings, trainings and social events, and reaching out through phone calls. given the involvement of people with disabilities in the research, reasonable accommodations were also mentioned as important: ‘…to see any special needs like wheelchair and going up and down stairs – all of that was factored into finding sites to have these meetings.’ accommodations were provided that were not directly related to disability, such as giving bus cards to those in need. participants discussed how the structure of the ic curriculum, including activities and worksheets, provided ways for team members to become involved. decision-making practices also helped to engage the team. participants recognised many ways that the team made decisions; these included relying on the expertise of a particular member (‘if someone had table 2. challenges of cbpr theme sub-theme # coded items leadership1 communication between leaders 5 leader preparation and organization 41 leader motivation and engagement 12 alienation of leader with lived experience 4 pressure on leaders 4 lack of guidance and training from leaders 5 finances resources 5 compensation 37 time pressure felt pressured/stressed for time 12 other responsibilities interfere with work on project 2 participation late arrivals 8 no shows 10 lack of effort 6 research understanding of research 5 data collection 17 getting along transparency 5 unity 6 perceptions of fairness 8 trust 4 communication 23 team member limitations 24 1 leadership themes refer to project leaders collectively sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20219 experience in a specific situation then they would help out’), having the leader make the decision, discussing the decision within the group, or voting. participants noted that sometimes having the leader(s) resolve a conflict might be appropriate (‘scheduling work sites was difficult, so the project lead handled conflicts’), while at other times taking a break, or planning ahead to avoid conflict-laden situations were suggested as appropriate choices. other strategies included discussing the conflict outside the meeting time, discussing the conflict within the group, or letting it go (‘some people were totally happy with the outcome, some weren’t, but they accepted it.’). participants said that sometimes deferring to group rules or updating group rules could help with conflicts. a few participants said that allowing or encouraging a team member to leave the group permanently might be necessary if it was a significant conflict, although this strategy was not used on either team. table 3. engagement strategies theme sub-theme # coded items emphasize importance of role ask for input 6 point out individual strengths 4 involve in project tasks 41 ongoing contact and support regular meetings 7 trainings 9 social/team building events 1 phone calls 1 reasonable accommodations disability-related 3 other-related 3 structure use curriculum 18 follow schedule/agenda 11 decision-making practices defer to person with expertise 2 leader(s) make(s) the decision 13 discuss in group 25 vote 4 conflict resolution discuss in group 17 leave it to the leader 1 take a break 6 plan for it 2 discuss outside meeting 1 let it go 4 refer to group rules 2 allow group member to leave/resign 2 sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202110 desired characteristics and responsibilities of cbpr leaders both leaders and team members discussed the desired characteristics and required responsibilities for leaders on cbpr projects. these results are summarised in tables 4 and 5. characteristics were coded as consistent, assertive, reflective, knowledgeable, hard-working, patient, confident, professional, and effective listeners. in terms of responsibilities, participants said that leaders should be able to select team members who would contribute to the project, and then they would be able to identify and use the strengths of each team member by delegating tasks to them. the cbpr teams for these projects held meetings several times a month; thus, facilitation of meetings was an important task. further, participants noted that leaders should be able to make decisions, solve problems, communicate effectively and motivate the team. one table 4. desired characteristics of cbpr leaders characteristics # coded items consistent 4 kind/compassionate 6 assertive 8 reflective 1 knowledge of topic 6 hard working 9 patient 4 confident 6 professional 7 effective listening 3 table 5. desired responsibilities of cbpr leaders responsibilities # coded items solve problems 3 select appropriate team members 3 identify strengths of team members 6 delegate tasks 1 facilitate meetings 12 make decisions 10 communicate effectively 11 motivate and engage the team 12 manage time 14 be organized 12 manage stress 3 sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202111 leader stated: ‘you need to be able to deliver the message that you have to deliver without having to have that authority figure and without making others feel judgment.’ finally, managing time, being organised and managing stress were also seen as the responsibility of leaders. ‘anticipate that it [the project] is time consuming and will take a lot of planning…. you need to look at each of the steps, resources, team members, responsibilities and how they’ll be handled.’ discussion our study highlights the potential benefits of cbpr for the individual team members, a concept that has seldom been empirically examined (case et al. 2014). participants described instances in which they personally benefited from participation in the study, including through developing social connections and feeling a sense of purpose. of particular salience were the opportunities for self-improvement discussed by participants, suggesting that individuals who participate in cbpr, especially those from marginalised backgrounds, can gain professional skills, self-esteem and knowledge that might improve their lives and translate into future opportunities. research shows african americans with low incomes often report a prominent sense of alienation from the community and the political process (washington et al. 2009). individuals with spmi experience similar alienation and distance from their communities (pelletier et al. 2009). the benefits outlined in this study suggest that cbpr can provide people with spmi important roles and enhance their civic engagement. sense of purpose may emerge through being able to tell their stories and being involved in meaningful research that positively impacts the community. within the theme of ‘benefits to the community’, a substantial number of items were categorised into the sub-theme ‘helping others’. clearly, participants viewed cbpr as a vehicle for social change, with accompanying actions that could help their community. while participants highlighted the contribution their cbpr projects made to the communities, they also discussed accompanying personal benefits in terms of pride and satisfaction in their ability to contribute. the ability to help fellow peers who experience a mental illness may allow lived experience team members to turn the difficult experience of spmi into one that has greater purpose and meaning for them. cbpr team members in this study described feeling a sense of being able to relate with the research participants in the study. this sense of connection may allow for recruitment of marginalised populations within the african american community (e.g. male sex workers) and make research participants more trusting and comfortable sharing potentially stigmatising information about their lives. future research could explore the potential mental health benefits of participating in cbpr teams, or make comparisons with benefits to other populations engaging in cbpr. while these cbpr projects seem to have some similar challenges to traditional research projects (e.g. financial and time pressures), the fact that cbpr uses a collaborative process means that interactions are more complex and require skilled leaders who can manage the different personalities and research challenges. challenges identified by our research participants somewhat overlap with those of past research in cbpr, including time limitations and communication (case et al. 2014). clarity and transparency around compensation for team members and budget allocation for the project emerged as especially important in this data. historically marginalised individuals with unreliable sources of income may benefit from explicit expectations and communication around compensation, such as set payment schedules and regular budget updates. specific limitations of team members noted within the challenges of ‘getting along’, such as symptoms of mental illness, addiction, or low literacy, highlight the need for project leaders to be sensitive to these needs by providing support and accommodation. communication, another challenge that prominently emerged around ‘getting along’, indicates the need for leaders to be skilled communicators who can listen and directly address unique needs of team members. sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202112 schulz and colleagues (2003) summarise group dynamics in cbpr, with an emphasis on the need for open communication, conflict resolution, collaborative decision-making, shared power, trust and organised project management (schulz, israel & lantz 2003). similar challenges were also present in our data; however, participant responses in our study seemed to emphasise the important role that project leaders played in team dynamics. the cbpr teams examined in this study were unique in their inclusion of african americans with spmi in a leadership role. while leaders navigated challenges similar to those of other research projects, leaders with lived experience were new to this role and were in the position of straddling two worlds: the lived experience and the professional realm. for example, lived experience leaders reported that team members asked them for advice, referral to services or to talk about the project during their personal time. thus, leaders with lived experience had the additional task of connecting with and advocating for the lived experience team members, while fulfilling their professional responsibilities to the project and to the co-leaders. this study provides important information for researchers, healthcare providers and individuals with lived experience as they initiate research projects. engagement strategies that emerged as particularly important included involving the team in project tasks, group discussions and use of the ic curriculum. curricula such as ic provide a framework for meetings, including activities that encourage involvement of the team in each step of the research project and plans for a prearranged number of meetings and group discussions. the ic curriculum recommends that once leaders have established preliminary project goals they then collectively select the remaining members of their team, who should mostly be people with lived experience. thus, leaders should ensure that they begin with carefully defining the role of each team member, including their time commitment and pay. leaders need to interview and screen potential members for lived experiences consistent with the project goals, for their commitment and understanding of the project, and to make sure they fully comprehend that they are research partners rather than participants. the team may need extra people to account for dropout (e.g. the ‘starters’ and the ‘bench’). use of meeting agendas, consistent meeting times and places (with flexibility for accommodations), and a structured meeting format may help improve team engagement. teams should understand that they can expect ‘bumps in the road’ and try to prepare for those. this study identified meeting facilitation, motivation of team members, time management and organisation as key responsibilities of cbpr leaders. it is interesting to note that participants did not emphasise a need for leaders to have research skills, but rather commonly discussed project management responsibilities that centred mostly on their interactions with the team and ability to move the project forward in an organised and timely way. while this is hardly surprising given the collaborative, participatory nature of these projects, it does suggest that leaders do need the time, dedication and stamina to fulfil these important responsibilities. further of note was the finding that these key responsibilities were mentioned by participants more often than personal characteristics of the leader (e.g. patience, assertiveness). this suggests that competence in required tasks may take precedence over personality or leadership styles. teams that want to pursue cbpr should be prepared for difficulties during project start-up when they are determining the needs of team members and the personalities involved. agency partners (i.e. health care providers) and academic researchers must invest time in the project and be able to treat the team members as valuable partners in research with unique expert knowledge, while learning how to provide reasonable accommodations. as well, team leaders should discuss with members the potential for traumatic experiences, mental health symptoms, substance use, and other difficult or triggering subject matter that might emerge during research meetings or data collection efforts. academic researchers also need to take an active role in explaining the project-specific research methods to the rest of the team, ensuring that team members understand and have an opportunity to ask questions. cbpr team leaders can also take steps to create a welcoming and sensitive environment, to ensure members with lived experience can participate fully and effectively. given that people with spmi are among the most marginalised members of the african american community, reasonable accommodations for team sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202113 members with lived experience were essential in beginning to address some of their barriers to participation, including substance abuse, symptoms of mental illness, housing instability, incarceration, low literacy and deficits in critical thinking skills. accommodations included additional breaks during the meetings, check-ins between meetings to ensure understanding, and days off for doctor or therapy appointments or mental health/rest days. leaders should also work with the team members to establish trauma-informed procedures, identify resources for members in need, and recognise methods of supporting team members when challenging discussions arise. limitations this was a small, qualitative study that explored the perspectives of cbpr team members from two projects using the ic cbpr model. participants interviewed for this research took part in time-limited (nine-month) projects in the local community that were focused on improving health care for african americans with spmi. thus, the results of this research might not represent the way that all team members experienced cbpr and therefore might be unable to address differential impact of participant characteristics (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, role on project). another limitation is that, while 6 of the 13 interviewees had a leadership role on the project, we did not examine leader responses separately from those of other cbpr members and did not explore benefits inherent in each leader type (academic, provider and lived experience). this was done in an effort to protect the anonymity of participants given the small sample size, but limits the specificity of the data. finally, results presented here do not account for the outcomes of the two research projects and how those outcomes might be related to the process of participating in cbpr. while cbpr has the potential to produce research outcomes that are more culturally responsive, this is also dependent upon the cultural competence of researcher and research environment (academic or healthcare setting). experiences of racism and discrimination based on disability were largely absent in our data, as was a discussion of how african american status may have affected the projects. perhaps these biases were so pervasive and implicitly accepted that participants did not find them worth mentioning. internalised, eurocentric white views of leadership could be reflected in our findings on desired leadership characteristics, especially considering that data on leaders were general rather than specific to the leader role (service provider, academic or lived experience). internalised stigma of mental illness might also impede participant reflection on disability-based discrimination. future research teams could consider how to elicit responses from participants on these important topics and how to illuminate the unique qualities that lived experience leaders might bring to the team. while on this project the tdab provided the initial cbpr training and supported potential lived experience leaders in connecting with researchers and non-profit organisations, the ic curriculum recognises that not all cbpr projects might be initiated in this fashion. the curriculum suggests ways for stakeholders to come together organically within the confines of organisations and for lived experience individuals to initiate projects by seeking organisational partners. in real-world settings, the process of initiating projects with strong lived experience input during start-up may be undermined by financial constraints, power imbalances, stigma and lack of organisational support for cbpr. future work could identify how best to support lived experience leaders on project initiation and equitable partnerships with academic researchers and healthcare organisations. conclusion while cbpr has been widely implemented, rarely has it involved individuals with spmi as research partners or project leaders. this article describes the ic model of cbpr, which involved a group of african americans with spmi as partners on a research team, including one person with lived experience in a leadership role. our qualitative study examined the perceptions of cbpr team members who had sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202114 implemented the model, with a particular emphasis on leadership needs. in the ic model, a triumvirate of co-leaders (academic researcher, person with lived experience and health service provider) recruited additional cbpr team members with lived experience to conduct the research project. the results presented here can provide important information for potential cbpr project leaders in terms of understanding potential benefits and challenges of cbpr with this and other marginalised communities. the needs of the leadership team that are outlined in this study can aid future projects in choosing leaders and give potential leaders insight into what to expect on such projects. for example, cbpr projects require leaders who can lead a diverse team, navigate reasonable accommodations for team members, and employ engagement strategies to fully involve them in the project in meaningful ways and to highlight the contributions of lived experience team 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manual and workbook used? what parts of the manual/workbook were most helpful? 8. can you name a couple of things that were frustrating about being on the team? 9. were you satisfied with your payment on the project? why or why not? 10. did each member of the team do about the same amount of work on the project? 11. what impact do you think your project will have on your agency/your community? 12. what do you think that people with lived experience (african americans with mental illness) brought to the project? 13. tell me about the work that you personally did on the project. 14. what unique ideas did you bring to the project? 15. what other training or preparation do you think would have been helpful to have at the beginning of the project? 16. what strengths does the leader of a cbpr project need to have? 17. do you notice any differences between the leaders and the rest of the team? 18. what do you think the leaders could have done differently? 19. were you able to communicate your frustrations, needs, ideas, etc. effectively in the group? 20. did you feel that your input was valued? were your comments respected? 21. would you want to be on a cbpr team again? why or why not? sheehan, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202119 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 1 june 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: plummer, r., witkowski, s., smits, a., and dale, g. 2022. appraising hei-community partnerships: assessing performance, monitoring progress, and evaluating impacts. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:1, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i1.8014 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) appraising hei-community partnerships: assessing performance, monitoring progress, and evaluating impacts ryan plummer1, samantha witkowski1, amanda smits1, gillian dale1 1 environmental sustainability research centre, brock university, st. catharines, ontario, canada, l2s 3a1 corresponding author: ryan plummer; rplummer@brocku.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8014 article history: received 11/12/2021; revised 13/04/2022; accepted 24/05/2022; published 06/2022 abstract momentum of the creation of partnerships between higher education institutions (heis) and communities is strong. as their significance intensifies, the question of how to judge their value is garnering increasing attention. in this perspective article, we develop a framework for comprehensively appraising hei-community partnerships. constituent parts of the framework are unpacked, and application of the framework is then discussed. the appraisal framework provides a mechanism to document evidence of worth, and most importantly contributes to the continuous improvement and learning imperative of heicommunity partnerships. keywords appraisal; continuous improvement; evaluation; hei-community partnerships; monitoring; performance assessment introduction the relationship between higher education institutions (heis) and their community is being reimagined amidst pressing global challenges, the changing nature of knowledge production, and dialogue regarding the functions of higher education in contemporary society ( jongbloed et al. 2008; nelson 2021). sentiment is widespread that heis should meaningfully contribute 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8014 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8014 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rplummer@brocku.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 to society (e.g. compagnucci & spigarelli 2020; hart & northmore 2010). this outlook has captured the attention of governments, funders and non-governmental organisations (de boer et al. 2015; plummer et al. 2021a; secundo et al. 2017). over the past two decades, the emphasis on strengthening relationships with communities has increased (e.g. bawa & munck 2012; tremblay 2017) and community engagement itself is being recognised as central to the mandate of heis (nelson 2021; plummer et al. 2021a; secundo et al. 2017). hei-community relationships take many forms and encompass the triumvirate of research, teaching and service. it is heuristic to conceive of these forms along a spectrum of participation, with consultation being the least interactive and collaboration being the most (iap2 2014). we focus on partnerships between heis and community because they specifically help heis meet engagement mandates, as well as enable alignment of hei functions with community needs (groulx et al. 2021). similarly to many terms that have gained prominence in popular lexicon, the term partnership in this context is imprecisely employed and variously understood (drahota et al. 2016; luger et al. 2020). we discuss this challenge in the section that follows, concentrating on formal partnerships because they are a prominent means for heis and the community to actively engage with diverse societal challenges and to realise opportunities; offer explicit and agreed upon parameters regarding goal(s), functioning and aspirations; afford context specificity as determined in the initiation phase by the partners themselves (estrella & gaventa 1998), and have been recognised as an appropriate unit of analysis, which is an intervening variable as well as an ‘… outcome of “impact” in itself ’ (cruz & giles 2000, p. 31). the myriad of potential benefits from hei-community partnerships is increasingly being recognised (buys & bursnall 2007; groulx et al. 2021; holton et al. 2015; meza et al. 2016; williamson et al. 2016). such collaborations leverage access to knowledge and expertise, thereby facilitating diagnosis of community challenges as well as formulation of potential solutions (buys & bursnall 2007; hart & northmore 2010; meza et al. 2016; williamson et al. 2016). engaging community partners through these types of partnerships aspires to eliminate tokenism and connect content experts (professionals, staff within each organisation, service providers, etc.) with context experts (those with lived experience (attygalle 2017). additionally, capacity-building opportunities for community partners increase (holliday et al. 2015; holton et al. 2015; muse 2018; williamson et al. 2016), leading to more resilient communities. at the same time, such collaboration broadens the range of perspectives considered and diversity of knowledge employed (meza et al. 2016). it also ideally enables learning that is reciprocal (holliday et al. 2015). ultimately, partnerships serve to advance the exchange of knowledge and education, enhance community practice and inform decision-making (buys & bursnall 2007; holton et al. 2015; muse 2018; wlliamson et al. 2016). as the importance of hei-community relationships increases and excitement about potential benefits from partnerships grows, the need to gauge success is intensifying. this concerted concern for measuring success stems from the accountability agenda in higher education (holton et al. 2015; shephard 2018; wiek et al. 2012). despite these intensifying needs, ‘there is a lack of consensus in the field regarding what defines partnership success …’ (brush et al. 2019, p. 1). as hei-community partnerships continue to rise in prominence and importance, there is a clear need to devise corresponding mechanisms to identify, gauge and track the success of these unique arrangements (holton et al. 2015; nelson 2021; plummer et al. 2021a). in this article, we examine how to gauge the success of formal hei-community partnerships. as a perspective article, it is essential at the outset to detail the authors’ positionality. the authors are all affiliated with the environmental sustainability research centre (esrc) at brock university in canada. sustainability science is an overarching imperative for the centre, which aims ‘… to strengthen the exchange and integration of different disciplinary and non-academic knowledge, enabling mutual learning between scientists and practitioners’ (brandt et al. 2013, pp. 1–2). innovative partnerships were initiated by the esrc in the spirit of bridging the science–societal divide and as such encompass our research, education and service endeavours. partnerships are established with both government and nonplummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20222 governmental organisations, with memoranda of understanding (mous) setting out the aims, associated responsibilities and budgetary contributions of all parties. the importance of communities was elevated at brock university in the present strategic plan for the institution (brock university 2018) and advanced in the associated community engagement strategic plan (brock university 2020, p. 1): the ‘… connection to community is fundamental to the university’s strategic mission. community engagement will support each of brock’s strategic objectives’. in seeking to draw upon current experience, the president encouraged the authors to catalyse community connections across the institution as well as determine how to gauge the success of formal community partnerships. the authors thus embarked on a multi-year program of inquiry into the performance of higher education institution– community partnerships (plummer et al. 2021a), including measuring the performance of sustainability science initiatives (plummer et al. 2022) and evaluating transdisciplinary partnerships for sustainability (plummer et al. 2021b). while sustainability science informed some of the empirical investigations, the program of inquiry transcended disciplinary, geographic and institutional contexts. with the experience and perspective of the authors acknowledged, we start by scrutinising challenges that make this a particularly vexing dilemma – terminological and conceptual differences, multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, inconsistency about what constitutes success, and measurement messiness. we then provide a conceptual framework for measuring the success of a partnership, from both hei and community partner perspectives, that is clear, cohesive and comprehensive. the manner by which the framework can be operationalised within hei-community partnerships is then detailed. the proposed framework bolsters the capacity of hei-community partnerships to navigate key challenges and gauge their success. measuring the success of hei-community partnerships: a quagmire individuals interested in measuring the success of hei-community partnerships are immediately confronted with a paradox. on the one hand, there are numerous accounts appraising hei-community partnerships in great detail (e.g. brinkerhoff 2002; butterworth & palermo 2008; holton et al. 2015; mcnall et al. 2009; plummer et al. 2021b; tyndall et al. 2020; wiek et al. 2012; williamson et al. 2016). on the other hand, consensus does not exist between scholars as to what constitutes hei-community partnership success (brush et al. 2019). often, studies focused on appraisal (e.g. buys & bursnall 2007; holton et al. 2015; wiek et al. 2012) address success from a hei perspective and the view of the community partner(s) is absent (hart & northmore 2010). additionally, many existing accounts and frameworks focus only on a single component of hei-community partnerships. for example, blackstock et al. (2007) provide a framework for undertaking a summative evaluation of participatory research. similarly, van tulder (2016) provides an analytical framework for partnership impact assessments. while these frameworks offer a snapshot of the evaluation component, which takes place near the end of the partnership, they do not adequately capture every component throughout the duration of the partnership process, including how they are interconnected and shape hei-community partnerships throughout their lifecycle. contrastingly, jagosh et al. (2015) undertook a realist evaluation of 11 concluded research-based partnerships in order to understand the contextual factors (e.g. trust, power sharing, resource sharing, etc.) that impacted the overall outcomes of the partnership. in this example, the appraisal is more invested in the partnership process and what circumstances led to various outcomes. ultimately, these accounts and proposed frameworks do not present a holistic view of partnerships or encompass all essential components and considerations of hei-community partnerships. scholars are explicit regarding the requirement to better understand and appraise hei-community partnerships (drahota et al. 2016; holton et al. 2015; luger et al. 2020; nelson 2021). these calls are complemented by arguments regarding the need for mechanisms to identify, gauge and track success plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20223 (holton et al. 2015; plummer et al. 2021a; van tulder et al. 2016). in the following section we address key challenges which contribute to this contradiction and create an entangled dilemma in measuring the success of hei-community partnerships. terminological and conceptual differences terminological and conceptual differences pose a substantive challenge. the term partnership itself is imprecisely used and variously understood (drahota et al. 2015; luger et al. 2020; nelson 2021; plummer et al. 2021a). drahota et al.’s (2015) systematic review on this matter found that terms used to describe partnerships ranged broadly, from community-academic partnerships and community-based participatory research (cbpr) partnerships to university-community partnerships, community-university partnerships and academic-community partnerships. this may be explicable in the light of varying degrees of formalisation (brinkerhoff 2002) and/or discipline-specific terminology (horton et al. 2009). in this article, we follow the comprehensive definition by brinkerhoff (2002, p. 21), who describes a partnership as a ‘… dynamic relationship among diverse actors, based on mutually agreed objectives, pursued through a shared understanding of the most rational division of labour based on the respective comparative advantages of each partner. partnership encompasses mutual influence, with a careful balance between synergy and respective autonomy, which incorporates mutual respect, equal participation in decision-making, mutual accountability and transparency.’ as plummer et al. (2021a, p. 2) observe, ‘one immediate challenge within this area of literature is the imprecise and interchangeable uses of terms such as “relationship”, “engagement”, and “partnership”’. these terms are often colloquially used to describe partnerships when they actually describe very different circumstances. this is further complicated by the tendency for disciplines and communities of practice to also define partnership in different ways, leading to misunderstandings and inconsistencies across disciplinary boundaries and fields of practice (horton et al. 2009). there are also more fundamental conceptual differences in hei-community partnerships. drahota et al. (2015) highlight the extent of these disparities in their systematic review. for example, cbpr partnerships are understood there as arrangements among structurally unequal groups that come together to address problems such as poverty, crime and housing (drahota et al. 2015). however, benoit et al. (2005, p. 265) describe partnership arrangements as ‘a process of ongoing negotiation through which academic and community partners establish their respective expectations and responsibilities in the partnership, always taking into account changes in personnel, agendas, and budget allocations, among other things’. the conceptualisation of ‘community-academic partnership’ (cap) is used by drahota et al. (2015) to reconcile understanding across different disciplines and the need for equitable control. multiple perspectives and different ways of knowing  a considerable challenge of hei-community partnerships is ‘respecting, balancing, bridging, reconciling and/or sometimes integrating differing knowledge systems, values and processes among disciplines and with partner communities, which translate into potentially differing assumptions about what constitutes effective interaction and credible knowledge generation’ (steelman et al. 2021, p. 633). hei-community partnerships are evident across the gamut of scholarly areas and, depending on the discipline, they can take different forms and encompass varying activities (ansari et al. 2001; plummer et al. 2021a). the involvement of individuals from different professions, disciplines and scholarly areas brings unique challenges with regard to integrating their different perspectives (blecher & hughes 2020). the magnitude of this challenge is amplified by the emphasis on transdisciplinarity (brandt et al. 2013; lang et al. 2012), combined with an emphasis on community partnerships. plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20224 scholarship on measuring partnerships has largely emphasised the view of heis (e.g. buys & bursnall 2007; sargent & waters 2004; wiek et al. 2012) and often excludes the community perspective (sandy & holland 2006). hart and northmore (2010, p. 6) observe that ‘the rigorous and comprehensive incorporation of community perspectives in audit and benchmarking is almost entirely absent across the higher education sector ...’. however, the importance of the perspective of community partners is critical (srinivas et al. 2015) as it provides a more complete picture of how the partnership is operating and/ or the overall success of the partnership (plummer et al. 2021a). this situation is complicated as hei and community partners may enter into a partnership for different reasons, have divergent expectations and uniquely perceive benefits, all of which affect gauging success (klein 2008; plummer et al. 2021a; sandy & holland 2006). moreover, cogent areas, professions and communities may have implicitly and/ or explicitly established methods and associated criteria for evaluating partnership success (belcher et al. 2016). for example, research evaluation approaches may emphasise measures of academic outputs, such as publication of books or prestige journals, whereas community organisations may emphasise the number of people attending a public partnership event or the number of responses to a community-based survey. also, evaluation criteria from more than one discipline or community of practice may be contradictory or conflicting (gaziulusoy et al. 2016; klein 2006). hei-community partnerships pose a particular challenge in this regard as they are often context-specific (hansson & polk 2018). ultimately, ‘the failure to grapple with understanding the community perspective may have potentially dire consequences because there is considerable room for misunderstandings between higher education and community partners …’ (sandy & holland 2006, p. 31). it is imperative to be cognisant of the multiple perspectives that may be underpinned by unique ways of knowing and manifest knowledge systems (plummer et al. 2022; steelman et al. 2021) and that actors must accommodate, reconcile and/or integrate different knowledges (norström et al. 2020). this poses challenges as each can be viewed as legitimate, valid and credible. for example, indigenous methods of evaluation may be very different from those of western academics. western approaches tend to focus on objectivity and the systematic collection and analysis of data, whereas an indigenous method of evaluation may be a decolonising and spiritual process of deep reflection (evans et al. 2020). further, it is important to acknowledge that certain ways of knowing have become entrenched, so heis may be reluctant to create space for different ways of knowing for fear that they may be perceived as less credible or legitimate. what constitutes ‘success’? measuring the success of hei-community partnerships requires shared understanding, while defining success is difficult as there are multiple perspectives. linquist-grantz and vaughn (2016) focus on the relationship between process and outcomes, whereby individual contexts within the processes of a partnership are critically examined to rank the success of the community-academic partnership. ensuring not only multiple perspectives are included within the process, but also individual contexts are considered within the partnership evaluation framework is considered critical. as with the scholarship on measuring partnerships, often studies (e.g. buys & bursnall 2007; holton et al. 2015; wiek et al. 2012) lack inclusion of the perspectives of the community partner(s) (hart & northmore 2010). much of the literature exploring what constitutes partnership success resides in the field of communitybased participatory research (e.g. brush et al. 2019; israel et al. 2020; luger et al. 2020). brush et al. (2019, p. 565) identified 28 indicators of success and concluded that the multi-dimensional construct goes beyond outcomes and includes ‘some combination of characteristics of partners, relationships among/between partners, partnership characteristics, processes, resources and capacity, along with partnership outcomes’. not only are indicators of success numerous, but much like indicators for evaluation, they tend to be discipline specific, with many disciplines having well-established criteria and processes for evaluation. plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20225 beyond the nature of the data itself, heis are ill-equipped to collect the required data to track community partnership work and, more specifically, measure the success of such partnerships as most existing enterprise systems focus on the institution’s instruction and academic aspects (holton et al. 2015). a measurement mess  a final challenge is the actual measurement of success. measurement nomenclature is often used interchangeably and employed imprecisely (see plummer et al. 2021b). each has a specific meaning and purpose, which we describe in the next section. there are also broad monikers for subject areas or fields, and developments within these further exacerbate confusion (ansari et al. 2001). for example, evaluation is a field of study with numerous specific types therein (e.g. formative evaluation, program evaluation, impact evaluation, process evaluation, etc.), which causes blurring of boundaries and the potential to collect or focus on imprecise and/or irrelevant information in relation to the hei-community partnership.   issues in nomenclature are compounded by operational and conceptual measurement considerations. many measurement tools and case studies exist, but these come from diverse disciplines/fields (e.g. benoit et al. 2005 in public health/medicine, and weik et al. 2021 in sustainability science; see drahota et al. 2016 and luger et al. 2020 for others). however, they tend to be singularly focused and measure different aspects of hei-community partnerships. for example, buys and bursnall (2007) focus on indicators for understanding the partnership process, without making connections to outcomes or impacts. contrastingly, azaroff et al. (2011) primarily concentrate on evaluating the impacts of a public health campaign on the choices of community members. despite the existence of numerous measurement tools, ‘… empirical evaluation of [hei-community partnerships] are inadequate’ (drahota et al. 2016, p. 195). the foregoing leads luger et al. (2020, p. 509) to observe that while ‘many practical lessons learned, and conceptual models can be found in the literature ... models and concepts of engaged research still remain muddy’. a proposed framework for capturing hei-community partnership success while the aforementioned challenges are substantial and difficult, we argue that appraising success is imperative to strengthen hei-community partnerships as well as address matters of accountability, transparency and value. we endeavour to overcome these challenges and advance this subject by (1) providing clear definitions and parameters of assessment, monitoring and evaluation; and (2) conceptually establishing a comprehensive framework for the consistent measurement of hei-community partnership inputs, processes, outcomes and impacts.   our framework (figure 1) builds upon foundational work on assessing the performance of heicommunity partnerships by plummer et al. (2020). it sets out and illustrates the relationship among three salient components for appraising hei-community partnerships: assessment, monitoring and evaluation. each component is briefly summarised and then the overall workings of the framework are addressed. at the outset, it is imperative to recognise that the three components are dynamic and not mutually exclusive; they connect in complementary ways throughout the appraisal process to measure the success of a given hei-community partnership. component 1: assessment assessment involves identifying the present status of a given partnership in reference to desired conditions and determining how to close gaps in performance. this includes ‘comparing the current condition to the desired condition, defining the problem or problems, understanding the behaviours and mechanisms that contribute to the current conditions, determining if and how specific behaviors and mechanisms can be plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20226 changed to produce the desired condition, developing solution strategies, and building support for action’ (gupta et al. 2007, pp. 14–15). it occurs through the systematic, continuous collection of data on specified indicators to provide insight into the current performance of the partnership itself (caplan et al. 2007; estrella & gaventa 1998; onyango 2018; stem et al. 2005). assessment takes place after the initiation/ formalisation of a partnership through a memorandum of understanding (mou), and can occur iteratively throughout the lifecycle of the partnership, as illustrated in figure 1. qualities associated with the performance of partnerships are abundant. in drawing upon the recent synthesis of this scholarship in relation to hei-community partnerships (plummer et al. 2020), we highlight the qualities that comprise a good partnership: the circumstances surrounding their formation (inputs), how they function (processes), and what they may accomplish (outcomes). these three categories have recently been established and their associated qualities have been validated as appropriate indicators and measures for assessing partnership performance (plummer et al. 2021a). we provide a synopsis of each below (see also plummer et al. 2021a for the full suite of associated qualities and indicators). inputs inputs are the contributions bestowed to the enterprise by the entities at the initiation of the partnership (figure 1). effective communication during initiation is imperative as each entity articulates their motivation for seeking entry into formal partnership and thereby a commitment to the jointly shared aims. clarity at the outset on what each entity will contribute to the partnership is also important. these supports should align with the aims of the partnership as they will shape the process as well as the capacity for what can be accomplished. the availability of financial resources, for example, is often identified as a key influence on many other aspects of a partnership (e.g. scope, duration, activities, etc. (buys & bursnall 2007; holton et al. 2015; sargent & waters 2004). resources can also dictate the roles of particular collaborators (sargent figure 1. a conceptual framework to appraise success of hei-community partnerships (adapted from plummer et al. 2020) plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20227 & waters 2004). human resources (citizens, experts, faculty, students, staff ) clearly play an important role in success, so developing networks is highlighted as cultivating connections among actors may enhance opportunities for different types and sources of support (bringle & hatcher 2002; holton et al. 2015; sargent & waters 2004; schulz et al. 2003). process the second category in the assessment portion of the framework (figure 1) is process (plummer et al. 2020). process refers to how the partnership functions (mcnall et al. 2009). a process which promotes respectful and constructive interactions between/among actors is imperative for success as the partnership transitions from initiation to implementation (sargent & waters 2004). it is important that the process fosters mutual understanding of perspectives, a collective understanding of the problem, and a basis for joint decision-making (amey & brown 2005; mcnall et al. 2009; schulz et al. 2003). effective communication, established in the initiation phase, continues to be imperative for smooth operation of a given partnership (amey & brown 2005; bringle & hatcher 2002; holton et al. 2015; schulz et al. 2003). the process also engenders the essential quality of trust, so that individuals come to expect no harm from the others involved, and ideally develop confidence that others will complete actions if their control is relinquished (mayer et al. 1995). reciprocity and mutual respect, which often develops as trust is built, are further qualities of successful partnerships. it is especially important to recognise in the context of hei-community partnerships that individuals bring unique perspectives, skills and contributions to the process, and it is this diversity that strengthens the partnership process (schulz et al. 2003). outcomes the final category of outcomes in the assessment portion of the framework (figure 1) encompasses what is produced as well as the effects on those directly involved in the partnership (plummer et al. 2020). the realisation of outcomes is broadly influenced by the employment of available resources and the effectiveness of the process in goal attainment (schulz et al. 2003). outcomes are not temporally constrained and can occur throughout the life of the partnership (koontz & thomas 2012). the three-fold typology of outcomes for partnerships (plummer et al. 2020; sargent & waters 2004) highlights objective outcomes, subjective outcomes and learning outcomes. objective outcomes are tangible products (e.g. publications, reports, etc.) that are easily quantifiable and often used as measures of productivity in reporting. subjective outcomes (e.g. satisfaction, trust, etc.) have value for, and are interpreted by, those involved in the partnership. finally, learning outcomes include knowledge creation and acquisition, integration of diverse perspectives to address multi-party challenges, and skill development and attainment (amey & brown 2005; sargent & waters 2004). component 2: monitoring monitoring involves the practice of conducting systematic observations to gain information about progress (estrella & gaventa 1998; onyango 2018). data is collected using indicators that provide insight into aspects of the partnership as well as activities (stem et al. 2005). monitoring should take place regularly over the life cycle of the hei-community partnership, as illustrated in figure 1. it provides routine feedback, and thereby a basis for continuous improvement (estrella & gaventa 1998) and learning. although the importance of monitoring partnerships is recognised within the literature (calderon & mathies 2013; kagan & duggan 2009), heis acknowledge that the ability to track and measure partnerships is a key challenge in practice (plummer et al. 2021a). secundo et al. (2017, p. 232) observe that ‘the nature of relevant data required to track third mission activities is considered as invisible, tacit, plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20228 unquantifiable, informal, and in most cases, it is not collected by administrators’ (see also shephard 2018; 2020). reflective of, and contributing to, the challenges experienced in practice, there is currently no consensus within the literature regarding monitoring procedures/documentation or indicators of success (kagan & duggan 2009), or exactly how to institutionalise tracking across disciplines/types of partnerships. monitoring of hei-community partnerships is two-fold. first, it involves tracking performance over time and determining progress (buys & bursnall 2007; pellegrino et al. 2014), while assessment considers a single point in time. second, monitoring focuses on activities that take place throughout the partnership (bäckstrand 2006) and, specifically, on the achievement of activities as milestones, signalling advancement toward their aims, goals and/or objectives. monitoring is typically accomplished through tracking variables, or key performance indicators (kpis). kpis are measurable indicators used to signal progress or achievements against pre-defined standards or objectives. traditionally, and especially in an academic context, kpis are often quantitative and used in order to obtain ‘objective’ data for evaluation purposes (garlick & langworthy 2008). however, as partnerships require both objective and subjective outcomes, it is important that kpis for appraisal represent a wide range of qualitative (e.g. perceptions) and quantitative (e.g. number of academic publications) information, which may be tracked for different purposes (garlick & langworthy 2008; plummer et al. 2022). in line with the two-fold purpose of monitoring above, kpis for hei-community partnerships come from existing scholarship as well as the specific context of a given partnership. monitoring hei-community partnership performance over time, for example, can benefit greatly from adopting and systematically applying indicator measures which are established and validated in relation to hei-community partnership performance for each category described above (plummer et al. 2021a), and are also transferable to different types of partnerships (disciplines, stages, etc.). conversely, kpis regarding actions or activities that signal progress towards their aim, goals and/or objectives are unique, and therefore need to be established and agreed upon by the partners. component 3: evaluation evaluation is a field of inquiry in its own right and comprises diverse conceptualisations (ansari et al. 2001; shephard 2020). generally, evaluation entails determining the extent to which objectives have been achieved and intended impacts realised (onyango 2018). it is prudent for evaluation to occur near the end of the partnership (see figure 1) for three reasons. first, the duration of a partnership is typically identified in a formal agreement and should align with expectations that the objectives can be realistically accomplished over this time. second, information gathered through monitoring should enable ongoing adjustments to keep the partnership on track and inform evaluation. third, evaluation near the conclusion of a partnership serves as a mechanism to consider what has been achieved and how to move forward. the partners may wish to continue their collaboration, revise their formal agreement and the accompanying aims, or cease working together. as evaluation of hei-community partnerships is essential, a ‘culture of evidence’ has emerged whereby heis and institutions more broadly must increasingly document their performance, achievements and impacts (calderon & mathies 2013). this culture has largely been driven by the issue of accountability – the ‘obligation to report to others, to explain, to justify, to answer questions about how resources have been used and to what effect’ (trow 1996, p. 310). emergence of the accountability agenda is widespread (de boer et al. 2015; jongebloed 2018), being embraced and influential in shaping public administration in a businesslike way (huisman & currie 2004; plummer et al. 2021a). although clearly an essential process, evaluation of hei-community partnerships is, surprisingly, an uncommon practice. for example, a recent study of canadian heis found that most heis ‘occasionally’ use some form of monitoring and evaluation, and 25 percent of institutions reported that they do not employ plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20229 any form of monitoring or evaluation (plummer et al. 2021a). evaluative studies of hei-community partnerships are also rare. in one notable example, bowen and martens (2006) tested a collaborative ‘utilisation focused’ approach to evaluation, whereby community partners were meaningfully incorporated into planning, developing and evaluating all aspects of the partnership/project. more recently, shephard (2018) investigated how hei-community partnerships were valued at the university of otago and showed that partnerships used different types of evaluation, including explicit and formalised evaluations, informal evaluations and implicit evaluations. efforts in both practice and scholarship are hampered by the lack of guidelines and consensus on how to effectively evaluate hei partnerships and their impacts. this often leads to the imposition of ineffective, inadequate and varied approaches to describe, understand and evaluate both their activities and impacts (shephard 2020). this problem is exacerbated by the contextual specificity of both evaluation and partnerships. in an effort to address the above matters, evaluation of the proposed framework specifically focuses on effectiveness and impact. effectiveness evaluation measures whether the objectives of the partnership have been achieved (bowen & martens 2006; deniston et al. 1968). as illustrated in figure 1, the agreed upon objectives are typically codified in a document (e.g. an mou) and are an expression of the desired outcomes of the partnership. they imply one or more necessary conditions which must be met to result in accomplishment (deniston et al. 1968). as such, the effectiveness indicators are context specific and determined in the initiation phase by the partners themselves (estrella & gaventa 1998). relatedly, impact evaluation is concerned with the causal effects from an intervention (such as a partnership). it encompasses ‘positive and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended’ (oecd-dac 2010, p. 24). it is important to give consideration to the temporal dimension of impact assessment in this context. while some of the intended impacts from the partnership are set out during the initiation phase, it is important that the partners are open to unforeseen impacts and document these throughout the partnership life cycle. additionally, impacts may develop after the partnership has officially ended (as determined in the mou). it then becomes more difficult to isolate long-term effects or impacts, both logistically and resource wise (van tulder et al. 2016). impacts are distinguished from outcome assessment and effectiveness evaluation in two ways. first, impacts refer to the extent to which the intervention (partnership) has made a societal difference (van tulder et al. 2016; worton et al. 2017). societal audiences, as illustrated in figure 1, may include students, governments, non-government organisations, industry, academics, citizens, and so on. second, impacts need to be measured from the perspective of these different audiences (srinivas et al. 2015). a guide to assessing performance and evaluating the impacts of transdisciplinary partnerships for sustainability by plummer et al. (2022) outlines key steps in the evaluation process and provides a navigational pathway forward through the process. while the techniques to carry out effectiveness and impact evaluation will be unique to each hei-community partnership, the suggested framework can assist with overcoming challenges, offer mechanisms to document evidence of achievements and ultimately provide a foundation for transformative change. practical application of the framework while undoubtedly some hei-community partnerships implicitly incorporate one or more of the components set out above, to the best of our knowledge there is currently no appraisal framework which brings together assessment, monitoring and evaluation. the scholarly basis for such an appraisal framework is provided above. however, the appraisal framework has little heuristic value if it cannot be applied in practice. here we consider application of the appraisal framework in relation to frequently observed life-cycle stages of hei-community partnerships (cf bringle & hatcher 2002; lewinson 2014). although the plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202210 timeframe in which hei-community partnerships go through these stages varies, we illustrate them unfolding over a five-year formal partnership. our intent is to provide a general appraisal guide applicable to hei-community partnerships, while also acknowledging the specific parts that are context dependent and ultimately require the sound judgement of the entities involved in the appraisal. an appropriate entry point is creation of a hei-community partnership. the reason(s) for collaboration is paramount at this initiation stage. instrumental rationale for partnering includes gaining particular knowledge, leveraging complementary skills, gaining access to unique opportunities, and so on. potential enjoyment from collaboration and cultivating enduring relationships is a common intrinsic motivation. these motivations often precipitate formal codification through a mou, which sets out the aims, duration, scope, funding contributions, legal considerations, and so on. ideally, the partners consider when/how often assessment, monitoring and evaluation will occur as well as what each will entail. the performance assessment component of the appraisal framework coincides with the implementation phase of the partnership lifecycle. in this phase, entities are concerned with enacting collaboration. assessment gauges performance at a particular point in time. there is no prescribed timeline for conducting performance assessment; however, it is important that assessment is continuous so as to provide ongoing feedback for the duration of the partnership (figure 1). from our experience with hei-community partnerships, we suggest that performance assessment is undertaken annually as this allows sufficient time for tangible consideration while also permitting ideal response time for feedback. the hei-community partnership performance index (hcppi; plummer et al. 2021a) is a recent validated rapid assessment tool that can easily be completed by hei and community participants to assess the performance of their collaboration. it involves a 47-item questionnaire designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of a given hei-community partnership’s strengths and areas for improvement across the three broad categories of assessment (inputs, process, and outcomes). as partnerships make incremental adjustments based on this evidence, they employ an adaptive approach for continuous improvement (folke et al. 2005; lee 1994). this adaptive approach aligns well with the dynamism and complexity of hei-community partnerships (plummer et al. 2020). monitoring coincides with the implementation phase of the partnership lifecycle and is considered iteratively throughout (figure 1). it captures progress of an hei-community partnership in terms of performance and progress towards its aims, goals and objectives. in regard to the former, monitoring provides information on how the partnership is performing over time. in applying the appraisal framework, this part of monitoring is a logical extension of performance assessment and is achieved by tracking the results of the hcppi over time. more specifically, the results obtained within the first year provide a baseline or benchmark for subsequent performance. monitoring performance thus affords a barometer by which the partners can gauge their maintenance, improvement and/or deterioration in particular aspects. including all entities in the partnership is critical to accurately gauge performance as well as learn from feedback and make continuous improvements. monitoring also concentrates on determining progress. these milestones should be established at the outset of the partnership and revisited as necessary. determining kpis that capture the essence of the overall goals or milestones should occur at the outset of the partnership. these kpis manifest as indicators to measure progress towards goals. kpis can be qualitative and/or quantitative, and may adapt or change over time as the partnership evolves. a given milestone or goal may have multiple relevant kpis. the most important consideration regarding kpis is that they reflect the overall goals and are agreed upon by all entities. monitoring progress may occur at different times in different partnerships, depending on the length of the partnership and the intended milestones. often, multi-year partnerships identify yearly milestones and deliverables. plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202211 evaluation of the framework offers guides to practically tackle critical questions about hei-community partnership success, including effectiveness and impact. the intentions of the partnership are typically articulated at the outset in some type of document (figure 1) or are developed in the formative stages of the partnership lifecycle. when setting out intentions, partnerships will benefit greatly from articulating what they aspire to accomplish as well as whom they seek to affect. in so doing, the stated aims offer a clear understanding of the desired effects and impacts. specificity in these intentional statements (or substatements) is strongly encouraged to facilitate the operationalisation of evaluation. while intentions are mainly established at the outset, partners need to be aware of, and open to, emergent opportunities in terms of accomplishments as well as audiences. evaluation typically occurs at the completion stage of the partnership life cycle (sargent & waters 2004) and entails two main considerations. evaluating effectiveness is anchored to the goals and objectives established at the outset of the partnership, and is made operational by agreed upon indicators or milestones. whereas monitoring documents’ progress to evaluate effectiveness uses kpis and other credible evidence to cumulatively judge achievements. critically, all entities in the partnership should participate in evaluating effectiveness, thereby coming to a shared understanding of accomplishments. impacts are a related consideration of evaluation when applying the framework. aspirational societal impacts as a consequence of the partnership are commonly discussed during the initiation phase and evolve over the lifespan of the project. identifying specific target audiences associated with the intended societal impacts, cultivating relationships with those audiences, and devising ways to assess if they have experienced changes due to the partnership are all essential. engaging multiple, and often diverse, audiences in evaluation can be logistically difficult, expensive and time-consuming. there are, however, numerous quantitative and qualitative tools that are well suited to conducting impact evaluation. questionnaires, interviews and/or workshops are powerful examples of means to gain insight into partnership impacts from the perspective of multiple and diverse audiences. conclusion hei-community partnerships are on a steady upward trajectory. appraising their success is of increasing importance; however, a myriad of challenges immediately confronts those interested in this enterprise. these include terminological and conceptual differences, multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, inconsistency about what constitutes success, and measurement messiness. in addition to confronting this quagmire, a rigorous and dynamic framework for appraising hei-community partnerships does not yet exist (holton et al. 2015; plummer et al. 2021a; srinivas et al. 2015). in this perspective article, we set out a conceptual basis for a comprehensive appraisal framework which encompasses the complementary components of assessment, monitoring and evaluation. the framework provides a general guide to transferability across hei-community partnerships. assessment considers the present state in relation to aspects and qualities. monitoring provides important information regarding how the partnership is performing, as well as the impacts created through the partnership. evaluation provides evidence of goal attainment and demonstrates the societal benefits of a partnership. in discussing how to apply the framework in practice, we have taken an initial step in reconciling conceptual and applied considerations when appraising hei-community partnerships. employing the appraisal framework in a variety of hei-community partnerships is needed next. flexibility and adaptation are encouraged as consideration of context as well as the perspectives of the participants is paramount. as experience using the framework accumulates, opportunities will emerge for lesson learning, transferability and further refinement. plummer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202212 acknowledgements the authors would like to express 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of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: mccole, d., malete, l., tshube, t., mphela, t., maro, c., adamba, c., machuve, j., and ocansey, r. 2022, sparking entrepreneurial tendencies in youth: lessons from sport and life skills education in three african cities. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8207 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article sparking entrepreneurial tendencies in youth: lessons from sport and life skills education in three african cities dan mccole1, leapetswe malete2, tshepang tshube3, thuso mphela4, cyprian maro5, clement adamba6, juliana machuve7, reginald ocansey8 1 department of sustainability, michigan state university, east lansing, michigan, usa 2 department of kinesiology, michigan state university, east lansing, michigan, usa 3 department of sport sciences, university of botswana, gaborone, botswana 4 department of management, university of botswana, gaborone, botswana 5 department of physical education and sport sciences, university of dar es salaam, dar es salaam, tanzania 6 department of education and leadership studies, university of ghana, legon, accra, ghana 7 department of mechanical and industrial engineering, university of dar es salaam, dar es salaam, tanzania 8 department physical education and sport studies, university of ghana, legon, accra, ghana corresponding author: dan mccole, mccoleda@msu.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8207 article history: received 31/05/2022; revised 21/07/2022; accepted 30/09/2022; published 12/2022 abstract this practice-based article describes a program that aims to instil an interest in entrepreneurship among african youth by helping them make a connection between the skills they have developed through their participation in sport and the skills required of successful entrepreneurs. the program was developed in partnership between scholars at four universities (university of botswana, university of dar es salaam, university of ghana and michigan state university), as well as schools at other community organisations in three african cities: gaborone, botswana; dar es salaam, tanzania; and accra, ghana. the program, which seeks to contribute to the well-established need for job creation in subsaharan africa, integrated basic entrepreneurship and life-skills training activities into a sports camp for youth athletes. the program appears to have developed entrepreneurial 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8207 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8207 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mccoleda@msu.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8207 tendencies among youth sport participants in these african cities, suggesting that job creation efforts could benefit from targeting youth sport participants and helping them to recognise the important skills they have developed through their participation in sport, and helping them to identify ways in which that skill development could positively impact their futures. keywords entrepreneurship; job creation; sport; youth sport; youth development; africa introduction the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) were adopted in 2015 ‘as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity’ (undp 2015). goal number 8 of the sdgs (decent work and economic growth) identifies job creation and encouragement of entrepreneurship as key to achieving this goal (undp 2015). job creation and entrepreneurship have drawn particular attention throughout sub-saharan africa where many of the countries are experiencing a ‘youth bulge’, a demographic pattern whereby large percentages of the populations are comprised of children and young adults (canning, raja & yazbeck 2015; lin 2016; mueller et al. 2019). although the large number of young people has created a sense of urgency among governments and the international development community (resnick & thurlow 2015), others see an opportunity for the region to turn the youth bulge into a ‘demographic dividend’ if enough young people can be fully employed in productive activities when they reach working age (lin 2012). the opposing view increases the likelihood of a ‘demographic bomb’ (lin 2016), characterised by social ills, such as violence, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, and civil unrest. developing interest in entrepreneurship youth programs that emphasise development of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets will be an important component in developing an entrepreneurial culture and addressing the challenge of job creation. however, many leaders of such programs will face the challenge of how to encourage youth interest in entrepreneurship (kirby 2004; morselli 2018). within the realm of youth development, some endeavours, such as sport, have been found to accentuate certain skills and competencies in youth, such as creativity, selfefficacy, self-discipline, resiliency, leadership and teamwork (holt 2016). the most ubiquitous youth programs today are sports related, largely because youth enjoy playing sport. sport can keep youth constructively engaged, and is valued for its health benefits and capacity to teach life skills, such as those mentioned above, as well as goal-setting and emotional control (gould et al. 2007; gould & carlson 2008). more importantly, and relevant to the united nations sdgs, many of the other skills developed through participation in sport (e.g. interpersonal communication, social skills, time management, calculated risk taking, goal-setting, autonomy, problem solving, decision making, etc.) are the same ones needed to be a successful entrepreneur (caird 1990; cronin & allen 2017). the use of sport in nurturing entrepreneurship is based on the premise that sport offers a viable approach to building long-term sustainable life skills. moreover, self determination theory (sdt) proposes that sources of motivation should be viewed on an intrinsic–extrinsic continuum to meet a set of basic and universal psychological needs, namely the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness (deci & ryan 2008; ryan & deci 2000). sport participation frequently delivers on all three of these components of motivation. for most youth, participation in sport is a choice they make and endorse (autonomy). skill development and mastery comes with continued participation (competence), and youth sport participants often report feeling connected to others and a sense of belonging with teammates and even competitors (relatedness). mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 the program described in this article aims to show that participation in sport can inspire african youth to reach for employment and entrepreneurship. this can be achieved by providing positive activities, such as participation in sport, that help them to absorb life lessons from sport and learn basic entrepreneurial skills. the primary objective of the program is for youth athletes to experience significant improvement in life and entrepreneurial skills as a result of the program. the link between the program as an intervention and an entrepreneurial activity (participants starting a business or pursuing education to support job creation) is seated in the theory of reasoned action (ajzen 2000), which suggests that intentions precede behaviour. as it applies to this program, it is expected that intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities can be formed in two ways: (1) by helping participants recognise that the skills they have been developing over the years through their participation in youth sport (e.g. resilience, interpersonal communication, time management, calculated risk taking, goal-setting, etc.) are the same skills required of successful entrepreneurs; and (2) by providing them with some basic education and skill development specific to entrepreneurship. by recognising that they have already been developing entrepreneurial skills, and providing them with introductory education related to starting and operating a business, participants will recognise a potential path for their futures, and realise they have a head start along this path. sport-based youth development program the sport-based intervention program was collaboratively developed by eight faculty members (project leaders) from four universities in ghana, botswana, tanzania and the us, with the help of community partners in each country. the program ran at approximately the same time in three african cities: accra, ghana; dar es salaam, tanzania; and gaborone, botswana. each city ran separate camps at separate facilities, but followed the same curriculum and format. program planning from its conceptual phase, the program advanced to the design and implementation phases with funding from the alliance for african partnerships (aap) at michigan state university (msu). aap seeks to build and strengthen equitable and collaborative relationships between and among msu and african universities in order to transform lives and address global challenges. funding allowed for the eight project leaders from the four universities to meet in person and virtually, and over a period of six months, this team developed the initial program to test proof of concept. the project leaders had backgrounds and experience in community engagement, as well as design and implementation of research and outreach programs in youth sport, life skills, pedagogy, entrepreneurship education, and community sustainability. the project leaders worked collaboratively throughout the planning period to design the format, curriculum and duration of the program. throughout the planning period, project leaders from each of the three african countries also engaged with community partners, local governments, schools and university colleagues to form country-specific project implementation teams. under the guidance and supervision of the project leaders from the respective countries, the implementation teams partnered with local schools to recruit participants, identified facilities at which the camps could operate, recruited staff to work at the camps, and liaised with other community partners, such as government economic development offices, entrepreneurship incubators and ministries of education to identify post-program resources for participants. participants the project teams for each country worked with schools to identify youth athletes in sports that are commonly played by males and females in all three countries, such as volleyball, netball, football (soccer), mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 and track and field. each country had approximately 50 participants (total of 146 participants) with a roughly equal representation of males and females. participants reported playing sport on average three times a week and had two to three years of experience playing their favourite sport. in botswana, 43 student athletes (20 female) were recruited from five different schools in the capital city of gaborone. in tanzania, 50 students (25 female) were recruited from four schools in dar es salaam, and in ghana, 53 students (26 female) were recruited from four schools in accra. costs related to the camp (i.e. housing, meals and transportation) were fully covered by the program using grant funds. because the study was conducted to assess the impact of the program on developing entrepreneurial tendencies, participants were randomly assigned evenly to either an intervention group or a control group. members of the control group did not receive the entrepreneurship training. as this is a practice article with the aim of describing the program as it relates to engaging young people and their futures in african cities, a detailed description of the study methodology and results are not included, but are summarised in a section below. the research study of this program was published separately in malete et al. (2022). program description the intervention included two overnight camps, the first lasting 14 days and the second, six months later, lasting 8 days. daily activities during the camp were organised into three main programmatic groupings: (1) training in the participant’s relative sport (e.g. volleyball, track and field, football); (2) facilitated teambuilding activities designed to develop a variety of skills, such as interpersonal communication, planning, goal-setting, problem-solving, emotional regulation and leadership; and (3) age-appropriate experiential training workshops on topics related to entrepreneurship, including market research, identifying business opportunities, and financial literacy. activities early in the entrepreneurship portion of the program were designed to help participants identify similarities between life skills developed through sport and skills identified as important to the success of entrepreneurs, such as goal-setting, calculated risk-taking, resilience and leadership. to enhance the learning of individual life skills and entrepreneurship, as well as demonstrate the connection between them, the daily program was structured to deliver these as both separate and combined activities. in the evenings, participants took part in a variety of social activities, including movies, board games, etc. entrepreneurship lessons a subset of the project leadership team, who had expertise in teaching entrepreneurship, developed the lesson plans for the entrepreneurship portion of the camp program, guided by five fundamental principles. the lessons should: 1. be appropriate for the ages and education levels of the participants 2. be as experiential as possible to better engage participants, keep their attention, and be consistent with the overall camp experience 3. be able to be delivered consistently in each of the three countries, given the differences in culture, facilities and community resources 4. cover an appropriate selection of topics related to entrepreneurship without overwhelming participants 5. be facilitated in a way to continually reinforce the link to sport through sport analogies, metaphors, etc. a number of resources were used in preparing the entrepreneurship lesson plans. first, project leaders conducted a review of research into entrepreneurship education and determined best practices for teaching entrepreneurship generally, teaching entrepreneurship in africa, and teaching entrepreneurship to young mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 people. they then identified a number of different open-source resources and lesson plans for teaching entrepreneurship in contexts similar to this project (e.g. dsw 2014). finally, project leaders drew on their experience as teachers of entrepreneurship and creating experiential learning opportunities. the result of these efforts was a curriculum guide with 60-minute experiential lesson plans on the following topics (appendix 1 shows a sample lesson plan): • characteristics of entrepreneurs and the link to sport participation • personal branding • creativity and identifying business ideas • marketing, market research and target markets • financial literacy • prices, revenues and expenses • hiring and managing people • business plans. the lesson plans themselves were typical of most lesson plans, consisting of sections such as learning objectives, time and materials required for each part of the lesson, trainer preparations, instructions and tips. a curriculum guide, containing the lesson plans in an easy to use and follow format, was prepared for each trainer. the lessons were sequenced to build on each other and culminate in a business simulation where groups of participants competed against each other. at the end of the camp, invited speakers from community organisations shared resources and ways participants could continue to pursue their interest in entrepreneurship either through education or by exploring resources for entrepreneurs. program outcomes as previously mentioned, project leaders conducted a study that examined several research questions related to this program during the initial implementation of the program. this study is explained in detail in malete et al. (2022). the purpose of that study was twofold: to provide proof of concept and to feedback to project leaders to inform future iterations of the program. the study used a comparison group in each of the three countries. this comparison group attended the sports camp, but did not attend the entrepreneurship portion of the program. to prevent the treatment and control groups from interacting, camps were either run at different sites or at different times, depending on the facilities and school schedules in each country. to operationalise the concept of entrepreneurship for this program, we used howard stevenson’s definition that ‘entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled’ (eisenmann 2013). working from this definition, we defined the entrepreneurial mindset as the ability to recognise, passionately pursue and exploit opportunities through innovative and creative problem solving and risk mitigation even in the context of significant resource limitations. both groups were assessed for entrepreneurial tendencies using the get2 (general enterprising tendencies) test, an established instrument for measuring enterprising tendencies (caird 2013), at the beginning of the camp and at the second camp’s conclusion months later. findings from that study showed that, while scores for the comparison group remained essentially the same over the course of the program, the overall scores for enterprising tendencies increased for participants who received the entrepreneurship training. this suggests that the program was successful in increasing interest in entrepreneurship. although an increase in entrepreneurial tendencies is promising, actual behaviours are more telling. to this end, project leaders plan to follow participants over time to track whether those who underwent the entrepreneurship portion of the program pursued education or became entrepreneurs at higher rates than those who did not receive the entrepreneurship training, or compared to similar youth who did not participate in sport. mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 in addition to receiving objective research results, many participants reached out to program leaders to share stories about how impactful the program was. one young woman in tanzania, who opened a food stand after the course, wrote about how the program helped give her the confidence to start the business. she even launched an instagram account ‘to encourage other athletes to get involved with entrepreneurship’. a paper that uses qualitative research methods to analyse comments from participants is currently in development. as with any program that operates in three different countries, this program faced several challenges of consistency between the three countries related to the varying facilities, school schedules, sport organisational systems, etc. additionally, although the camp model seemed to work well, it required significant planning and resources beyond the scope of the program’s main objective, with participants having to leave their homes and regular schedules to attend the camp. project leaders therefore wondered if other models for introducing youth to sport (e.g. an after-school program) might be more efficient and generate similar outcomes with fewer resources. as for the study design, the authors wished they had measured outcomes with another comparison group of young athletes who did not attend either camp. such an alteration to the study design would have provided insight into whether simply being invited to participate in a camp program had an impact on youth. next steps in addition to continuing to monitor participants from the initial program, the project leaders hope to experiment with different program formats to determine whether similar positive outcomes could be realised with formats other than the overnight camp-based program. the project leaders believe that the most instrumental parts of the program were: (1) helping young athletes realise that they have developed skills through sport that are needed by entrepreneurs; and (2) providing athletes with minimal training in entrepreneurship that could spark their interest and build enough confidence in them to experiment with entrepreneurial behaviours, or seek further education and training. if these beliefs are accurate, other formats, such as an after-school program or a program that spreads lessons out over a greater period of time than the condensed version at the camps, might also result in positive (or even more positive) outcomes. other formats might also be better positioned for partnerships and therefore more financially sustainable. the project leaders have considered partnering with school systems, corporate sponsors, ngos,and government agencies related to job creation and/or youth development. future collaborations should seek to explore program models that better suit the needs of community partners. the project leaders are also interested in additional research related to the program. one interesting approach could be to assess parents’ perceptions of change in their children on a wide range of shortterm and intermediate development outcomes during and after participation in the program (academic achievement, sense of belonging at school, creativity, innovation, wellbeing, etc.). another line of inquiry could be to explore whether trainers experienced positive outcomes from their involvement in the program. finally, the project leaders are continuing to identify ways to make the program financially sustainable. they are seeking additional funding to support efforts to build on the successes of the initial program and co-create community-based interventions to nurture youth enterprises, in collaboration with youth, government and the private sector. regardless of the format of future iterations of the program, there seems to be great potential for youth 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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.1990.tb00002.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.1990.tb00002.x http://www.get2test.net https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0489-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2016.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012801 https://pdflife.one/download/4657689-manual-entrepreneurship-development-training-dsw https://pdflife.one/download/4657689-manual-entrepreneurship-development-training-dsw https://doi.org/10.1080/17509840701834573 https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200601113786 https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200601113786 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315709499-1 https://doi.org/10.1108/00400910410569632 https://doi.org/10.6531/jfs.2016.21(2).a21 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261809 https://doi.org/10.1108/et-06-2017-0093 https://doi.org/10.1177/0160017617751029 https://doi.org/10.1177/0160017617751029 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315737768 https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.55.1.68 https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals appendix 1 sample lesson plan what is entrepreneurship? characteristics of entrepreneurs duration: 60 minutes session overview materials required 1. welcome, introduction to entrepreneurship 2. introducing the characteristics of entrepreneurs and athletes • flipchart or blackboard • markers or chalk • tape • tables • chairs • notebook • pens or pencils • a bucket and at least five balls (around the size of a tennis ball, but the exact type of ball doesn’t matter) objectives 1. demonstrate a basic understanding of entrepreneurship. 2. cite traits of a successful entrepreneur. 3. recognise traits common to entrepreneurs and athletes. trainer preparations 1. prepare the room in advance for risk-taking exercise described below. time activity number/title 15 mins 1. welcome, introduction and interest in entrepreneurship activity details welcome, introduction and interest in entrepreneurship: • introduce yourself as the instructor and your experience with entrepreneurship. introducing entrepreneurship ask the participants what they think entrepreneurship is. when there are no more responses, write the following phrase: ‘the definition of entrepreneurship is the act of organizing and operating an income generating activity, and taking a financial risk to do it.’ pose the following questions and encourage participation • does anyone practise business in your family? • what are some examples of entrepreneurship in your community? • which businesses are the most successful in your community? why? mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 time activity number/title 45 mins 2. characteristics of entrepreneurs activity details risk-taking exercise • set up the room: { place a bucket in the room. { one metre away from the bucket, place a chalk mark (or tape) with the number ‘1’ written on it. two meters away mark the number ‘2’. at three meters away mark the number ‘3’. { set up the flip chart, putting the score sheet (see below) on one page. • break the participants into small groups and provide each group with 5 balls. • instruct the participants that they have four choices for each ball. they can either attempt to toss it into the bucket from line #1, line #2 or line #3 or they may choose not to toss the ball. each team will attempt to earn points based on the following scoring system: { a ball successfully tossed into the bucket from line #1 earns 2 points, but a miss is minus 3 points. { a ball successfully tossed into the bucket from line #2 earns 3 points, but a miss is minus 4 points. { a ball successfully tossed into the bucket from line #3 earns 4 points, but a miss is minus 5 points. { a ball that is not tossed earns 1 point. • provide teams with a few minutes to plan their approach. teams may decide to have one person take every shot or share the throws in any way they desire. • tally the scores for each team. debrief this exercise by facilitating a discussion about the following: • have groups briefly describe their strategy and why they chose it. • in what ways does risk-taking play a role in this exercise (e.g. more risk = more potential reward, but a greater chance of loss)? • in what ways does risk-taking play a role in sport? • in what ways does risk-taking play a role in entrepreneurship? • besides the ability to take calculated risks, what other characteristics are shared between sport and entrepreneurship? trainer note: the list might include several of the following characteristics. fill in missing items to enhance the discussion: • willing to take calculated risks • ability to set and achieve goals • uses efficient management practices • perseveres, even when times are tough and especially after some failure • ability to use creativity to solve problems • listens to others. • has good relations with other individuals • ability to motivate and lead others • manages time well • can communicate clearly • work in group settings mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 trainer note: the above debrief is critical to setting the stage for the rest of the program. risk-taking is not necessarily a more important characteristic shared by athletes and entrepreneurs, but is meant to be a launching point for a discussion about other characteristics shared by both, and why this program connects sport and entrepreneurship. mccole, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: francis, j., yan, m.-c. and gill, h. 2018. exploring community-based research values and principles: lessons learned from a delphi study. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 37-55. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v11i1.5584 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article exploring community-based research values and principles: lessons learned from a delphi study jenny francis1*, miu-chung yan2, hartej gill3 1 school of public administration, university of victoria, a302 3800 finnerty road, victoria, v8p 5c2, canada 2 school of social work, university of british columbia, 2080 west mall, vancouver, v6t 1z2, canada 3 faculty of education, university of british columbia, 2125 main mall, vancouver, v6t 1z4, canada *corresponding author: jenny francis; jenny.h.francis@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5584 article history: received 22/06/2017; revised 25/11/2018; accepted 14/12/2018; published 31/05/2018 abstract community-based research (cbr) is a relatively new methodology characterised by the co-generation of knowledge. as cbr is integrated into institutional frameworks, it becomes increasingly important to understand what differentiates cbr from other research. to date, there has been no systematic study of cbr values and principles, which tend to be offered as a list of considerations that are taken as given rather than problematised. similarly, research has not explored the ways in which understandings of cbr’s underlying values differ among individual researchers compared to the broader research values of a large university. in this article, we report the findings of a delphi study which addresses these gaps through a systematic, cross-disciplinary survey of cbr researchers at a large canadian research university. our findings indicate diverse and complex understandings of both the potentially political nature of cbr and the perceived values of the respondents’ institution. keywords community-based research, participatory research, delphi, research ethics, participatory action research, cbpr declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 37 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5584 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5584 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au emailto:jenny.h.francis@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5584 introduction in standard research practice, the scientific obligation to objectivity distances the researcher, as a legitimate producer of knowledge, from the researched, who neither influence the findings nor collaborate in the research process. in response, the past 20 years have witnessed the emergence of participatory approaches that seek to reduce the distance between researchers and the ‘subjects’ of research by engaging directly with local stakeholders. communitybased research (cbr) is a relatively new methodology often aligned with critical theory and characterised by co-generation of knowledge and shared decision-making between researchers and community members. as such, cbr may challenge traditional ways of ‘doing research’. supporting cbr has increasingly become a strategic priority for universities due to its potential to enhance research impact (hall 2009; speer & christens 2013). as cbr is integrated into institutional frameworks and a growing number of researchers incorporate cbr into their research practice, it becomes increasingly important to understand cbr research principles and values. however, the idea of cbr itself can be contestable. in this article, we use cbr as an umbrella term for research that involves community engagement. other terms that may fall under this umbrella include action research, participatory action research, communitybased participatory research, community-based participatory action research, peer research, (community) engaged research, and inclusion research. in some fields, such as health sciences, it is important to distinguish between cbr, which indicates that research takes place in the community, as opposed to the laboratory, clinic or hospital, and community-based participatory research, in which the community plays an equitable role in every phase of the research (blumenthal 2011). within the literature, scholars have unpacked the terminology frequently associated with cbr, including action (reid, tom & frisby 2006), participation (cornwall 2008), community (ross et al. 2010), engagement (flicker et al. 2008), research (wells & jones 2009), peer (roche, flicker & guta 2010) and inclusion (owhn 2009). scholarship has investigated methods of knowledge dissemination (chen et al. 2010), levels of engagement (flicker et al. 2008) and relationships with institutional ethics review boards (shore et al. 2011). however, to date there has been no systematic study of cbr values and principles guiding the research process or of how the application of cbr principles differs across academic researchers and community partners in various disciplines in one large university institution. often, cbr values and principles are provided as a list of ethical considerations that are taken as given rather than negotiated by those directly involved in the research process. moreover, the means by which particular principles or values are identified is not explained, or is done descriptively, usually by narrating research processes. similarly, research has not yet explored the ways in which understandings of cbr’s underlying values differ with respect to the faculty member’s own research compared to the broader research values of a large university with many faculties and departments which may hold rigid ideas of what counts as ‘real research’. in order to address these gaps, our purpose for this study was to provide a forum for discussion of cbr values and principles (vps) across disciplines for both faculty and community partners. in this article, we report the findings of a systematic cross-disciplinary survey of cbr researchers and community partners at a large canadian research university. we also explore some common understandings of cbr’s defining values and principles among different groups of stakeholders engaged in community-based research. through the delphi approach, this study generated a set of community-based research vps. however, the findings francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 38 also uncovered diverse and complex understandings among the respondents of the potentially ‘political’ nature of cbr. we highlight the complexity of defining vps of cbr in one institution, given the issues of relationality and power reflected in the study. literature review the major themes in the literature on cbr values and principles may be grouped under three broad, interconnected concerns: relationships, power and social change. relationships refer to the multifaceted relations among community members engaging in research, the community organisations representing community members, university researchers and their institution. power denotes access and control over resources, data and decision-making as well as over the definition of legitimate academic knowledge production. social change references the desire of many cbr researchers to better the living conditions of research participants or provide support and capacity-building for greater equity and justice. we explore these issues in more detail below. relationships most authors agree that the relationship between the researcher and the researched is central to cbr. accountability, trust, reciprocity, respect, solidarity and collaboration are frequently mentioned in the literature; moreover, for cbr scholars, relationships are part of a process that is at least as important as scholarly outcomes such as publications (brydon-miller 2009; elliott 2012; israel 2008; jacklin & kinoshameg 2008). several scholars suggest that cbr partners must commit to long-term research relationships and emphasise the iterative nature of the cbr process (camh 2011; horowitz, robinson & seifer 2009). drawing on kirkness and barnhardt’s (2001) earlier work, stanton (2014) proposes that cbr should adhere to the ‘four rs’ of respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility. cbr researchers also stress the importance of open and inclusive processes and acknowledgement of one’s social location (brydon-miller 2009; cochran et al. 2008). stanton (2014) examines the potential for cbr to disrupt mainstream research paradigms that privilege ‘individual merit’, hierarchical prestige, methodological and discursive norms, and work that culminates in publication, to instead value the lived experiences of individuals and communities and ensure dissemination of knowledge gained to all partners. in this sense, cbr blurs the line between the researcher and the researched by recognising research participants as active ‘subjects’ rather than passive ‘objects;’ everyone is an expert (owhn 2009). for example, st denis (1992) argues that cbr is for and with rather than about or on research participants. cbr’s focus on relationships and accountability creates an affinity with indigenous research methodologies. as in cbr, indigenous researchers develop relationships in order to seek knowledge (wilson 2008). relationality in indigenous research is not concerned so much with statistical significance or validity, but rather with accountability to relationships; this requires an unsettling of binaries such as knower/known and subject/object (wilson 2008). cautioning that, from the vantage point of the colonised, ‘research’ has been, and for the most part continues to be, a tool of imperialism and colonialism, smith (2012) affirms ‘research’ to be one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary, and sets an agenda for research that takes seriously indigenous ways of knowing and being by posing a series of questions similar to those asked by cbr researchers. these include ‘whose research is it? who owns it? whose interests does it serve? who will benefit from it? who has designed its questions and framed exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 39 its scope? who will carry it out? who will write it up? how will the results be disseminated?’ (p. 10; see also flicker, roche & guta 2010; minkler 2004; owhn 2009). in these contexts, cbr may go some way to addressing conflict between the western values of the academic setting and those of marginalised and indigenous communities (cochran et al. 2008). power in conventional research methodology, the ‘objects’ of research provide data which the researcher (‘subject’) analyses and owns. conversely, many cbr scholars share the objective of creating equity in research relationships through attention to social inequities and shared ownership of the project, and findings for the benefit of all partners (heffner, zandee & schwander 2003; horowitz, robinson & seifer 2009; jacklin & kinoshameg 2008). breaking down traditional understandings of research subjects and objects through partnerships based on shared ownership implies disrupting existing power relations. for example, cochran et al. (2008) argue that conventional research has perpetuated a myth that indigenous people represent a ‘problem’ to be examined and solved and that they are passive ‘objects’ requiring assistance from outside experts. cbr responds to the limitations of traditional research approaches by acknowledging different ways of knowing, valuing the voices of community residents and generating knowledge that meaningfully addresses locally identified problems (fletcher 2003; jacobson & rugeley 2007). generating equity in relationships means cbr must challenge power explicitly (elliott 2012; owhn 2009). accordingly, most writing on cbr begins with an assumption that cbr is more openly political (in the sense of naming and unsettling relationships of power) than conventional research aimed at objectivity. for example, brydon-miller and maguire (2009, p. 79) suggest cbr is an ‘unapologetically political approach to knowledge creation through and for action’. for many authors, ethics and empowerment are two key pillars of cbr (blumenthal 2011; camh 2011; elliott 2012; israel et al. 2001 jacklin & kinoshameg 2008; minkler 2004). building on these ideas, some scholars insist on the importance of anti-oppression principles and an acknowledgement that research is not value free, arguing that claims to objectivity have been used to subordinate research participants (camh 2011; owhn 2009; savan et al. 2009; schwartz & van de sande 2011). cbr scholars assert that cbr is a response to conventional research that has failed to protect or benefit participants and directly or indirectly led to significant harm (wells & jones 2009). because of cbr’s explicit attention to power relations, some critics contend that cbr is unscientific, overly political and susceptible to bias, that community interests supersede theoretical and scientific rigour, and that it constitutes activism rather than research (hernández 2015; mcareavey & muir 2011; ochocka and janzen 2014). in other words, scholars have identified a perceived tension between the values of scientific rigour and those of community participation (elliott 2012; minkler 2004). however, advocates argue that cbr has greater potential for meeting the standards of scientific knowledge creation than conventional social science precisely because researchers are engaged directly in the transformation of the phenomena they study (brydon-miller, greenwood & maguire 2003). similarly, feminists have long pointed to the value of acknowledging the situated nature of knowledge (haraway 1988). francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 40 social change following from the focus on power relations, several authors suggest that a key principle of cbr involves the integration of knowledge and action for social change, with the objective of transforming fundamental structures that sustain inequalities in order to improve the lives of those involved, as they define improvement (brydon-miller & maguire 2009; camh 2011; elliott 2012; jacklin & kinoshameg 2008; owhn 2009; stanton 2014). for ross et al. (2010), social justice is a goal of cbr that includes ensuring research priorities respect the needs of marginalised communities and promote self-determination. similarly, st denis (1992) argues that cbr must be committed to critiquing the status quo and building a more just society. as part of promoting positive social change, many authors stress the commitment of cbr researchers to capacity-building, co-learning, and expansion of critical consciousness (brydon-miller & maguire 2009; camh 2011; horowitz, robinson & seifer 2009; owhn 2009; stanton 2014; stoudt, fox & fine 2012). for example, freudenberg and tsui (2014) argue that improvements in health equity requires addressing the social determinants of health; consequently, policy change becomes a public health goal. power dynamics are woven throughout policy efforts to improve health, and the work of public health researchers is inherently political because it concerns power relations (freudenberg & tsui 2014). in sum, the literature reveals cbr as an ethical research practice that calls for researchers to be reflexive throughout the research process, leading to social transformation. although the literature speaks to the values and principles of cbr, they have not been clearly articulated. to address this gap, we conducted a delphi study among active cbr researchers at a research university in western canada. methodology the university in which we conducted this study piloted a cbr initiative a few years ago. a steering committee under the vice-president research was set up to increase the visibility of cbr and promote the adoption of best practice at the university. despite the fact that cbr is widely practised on campus, there has been a concern among cbr researchers that they are disadvantaged in research ethics reviews and tenure and promotion processes by the lack of understanding of the values and principles (vps) of cbr. to address this concern, we conducted this study to generate a list of vps that could be used as reference for these reviews and processes. as a comprehensive research university with over 5000 research faculty members, cbr researchers come from a variety of disciplines, each of which has its own research tradition, stakeholders and understanding of cbr. it is therefore difficult to identify all cbr researchers. besides, the very essence of cbr entails the participation of community partners; therefore, it was also important that we involve their voices in a study to explore the values and principles of cbr. the actual number and identification of all community partners involved in cbr with this university was hard to determine. thus, it was technically difficult to generate a frame for sampling via a traditional survey method. since broad generalisation was not our goal, we decided to employ the delphi technique developed by the rand corporation in the 1950s (dalkey 1967) to conduct this study. the delphi method is a popular approach widely used in different fields to generate agreement through synthesis of a diverse range of expert opinions (hasson, keeney & mckenna 2000; yan & tsang 2005). as a research tool, delphi depends on group dynamics rather than exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 41 statistical authority to achieve consensus among experts (okoli & pawlowski 2004). it is a systematic, multiple-step process to solicit and collect information from respondents who are experts in a subject area. the design of a delphi study is flexible and responsive to the actual data collection process. the number of rounds of data collection is contingent on the emergence of consensus which, although mainly based on majority view, is achieved without respondents feeling they are being judged (geist 2010). delphi also allows respondents to respond to emerging ideas during the research process in a time-effective manner (tersine & riggs 1976). in the absence of a face-to-face group discussion, respondents can express and exchange ideas freely in a confidential and anonymous fashion (okoli & pawlowski 2004). respondents following the delphi tradition, respondents in our study were presumed to be experts in community-based research. prior to this study, the steering committee organised several events to promote cbr on campus. an email list of approximately 200 cbr research practitioners was compiled. phone, email and in-person invitations to take part in the study were sent to all registered researchers. we also invited people on the list to refer to us other cbr researchers who might be interested in participating, and an email was sent to all university deans with a request to forward the invitation to members of their faculties who may have been actively involved in cbr. we also invited researchers who confirmed their participation to recommend at least one of their community partners take part in this study. a total of 106 people, including 50 faculty researchers, 37 community partners and 19 staff, who are research staff supporting and working on cbr research projects conducted by faculty researchers, were finally confirmed. they were invited to participate in three rounds of data collection, which were to take place from april to july 2015. generally, delphi prefers a stable and small group of respondents throughout the process. however, as it was difficult to monitor this large group of respondents, particularly when their participation was anonymous due to a requirement of the institutional ethics review protocol, ultimately only 70 of the 106 (66 per cent) confirmed participants took part in the first round of the survey. attrition rate in round 2 was 38.6 per cent and in round 3, 48.6 per cent. despite this, as noted in table 1, there was a fair representation from faculty, community partners and staff in all three rounds. however, due to the small sample and the purpose of the study, we did not compare the answers from these three groups of respondents. table 1 respondent rate round 1 round 2 round 3 n % n % n % faculty 33 47.1 25 58.1 16 44.4 community partners 27 38.6 12 27.9 10 27.8 staff 10 14.3 6 13.9 10 27.8 total 70 100.0 43 100.0* 36 100.0 *does not total exactly 100% due to rounding. francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 42 procedures the delphi method is a stepwise process. the first step involved creating a draft list of values and principles. based on an extensive literature review, which included records generated from previous cbr activities organised by the steering committee, 13 major categories (see table 2) with a total of 150 itemised vps were generated. the list was reviewed and discussed by a working group which had been set up to advise the steering committee on ethical issues related to cbr. minor adjustments were made based on the discussion. in view of the diverse terminologies used by researchers from different disciplines across the campus, the working group also recommended not to provide an operational definition of cbr in order to allow respondents to describe their practice in an open-ended way. an online survey tool was employed in the three rounds of data collection. table 2 values and principles categories original list 1st round results category no. of vps no. of vps 1. accountability 26 17 (9) 2. action for positive social change 7 6 (1) 3. addressing power relations 19 4 (15) 4. capacity building 8 7 (1) 5. collaboration/partnership 16 9 (7) 6. empowerment 5 4 (1) 7. long-term relationship 10 6 (4) 8. participation 6 3 (3) 9. value process and outcome 5 5 (0) 10. reciprocity 15 13 (2) 11. reflexivity 18 11 (7) 12. self-determination/research ownership 10 2 (8) 13. transformation of fundamental structures 5 1 (4) total 150 88 note: the number of items eliminated in the first round of the survey based on the cut-off point (discussed below) appears in brackets. the aim of the first round of the survey was to refine a list of vps for community-based research rooted in the experiences of the researchers and community members involved in the study. this list then formed the basis of subsequent rounds of delphi. respondents were asked to indicate whether each category, and its itemised values and principles, was significant for their cbr practice and therefore could remain on the list in subsequent rounds. a comment box was provided under each vp for additional comments. the final question asked respondents to describe their cbr practice. forty-three respondents provided a total of 252 comments in the first section, and 52 respondents provided descriptions of their cbr practice. delphi generates consensus largely and arbitrarily based on a majority rule. however, determining a reasonable cut-off point for sufficient consensus can be controversial (yan & tsang 2005). according to the literature, the minimum cut-off is 51 per cent, and some delphi studies employ up to 80 per cent. following completion of round 1, a workshop was held to discuss the desirable cut-off point. all survey participants were invited. twelve people exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 43 attended the workshop (five faculty members, three staff, three community partners and the project ra). following previous delphi studies reported in the literature, attendees at the workshop decided to adopt a two-third majority rule, i.e. 67 per cent, as the cut-off point; the same figure was used for the round 2 and 3 surveys. although the 67 per cent cut-off was in fact arbitrary, it was considered by workshop attendees to represent a reasonable figure that was neither too restrictive nor too open. in round 1, respondents were asked to select items from the provided list of vps. vps chosen by two-thirds or more of respondents were included. in rounds 2 and 3, the delphi survey questions were about importance and relevance as they perceived them. answers were arranged on a likert scale from 1 (least) to 5 (most). only vp items for which two-thirds or more of respondents checked ‘4’ or ‘5’ were retained. as a result, the total number of itemised vps was reduced to 88 from 150. workshop attendees and the study researchers also discussed rewording some vp categories and itemised values and principles, for example, ‘participation’ became ‘equitable participation’. further, since only one itemised principle under ‘transformation of fundamental structures’ passed the cut-off, it was decided that we would eliminate this category and move the remaining item to the category of ‘long-term relationship’, where it was more appropriately located. the round 2 survey had two parts. in the first part, the central question concerned the relevance of the remaining itemised vps in each category. specifically, we asked, ‘on a scale of 1–5 (with 5 being “most relevant”) how relevant is this itemized vp to: a) your cbr practice? b) the university?’ each section included a space for respondents to share additional comments. part 2 was an optional question that asked whether any of the vps or refined meanings that had fallen below the 67 per cent cut-off in round 1 were crucial to respondents’ research. round 3 focused on the importance of the 12 remaining vp categories. respondents were asked, ‘on a scale of 1–5 (with 5 being “most important”) how important is this vp to a) your cbr practice? b) the university?’ each section included a comment box for respondents to share additional comments. since the intention of this round of the survey was to prioritise these 12 categories based on their importance, no cut-off point was used. instead, totals were derived from the sum of the percentage of respondents who indicated the importance to be either four or five. at the end of the round 3 survey, we provided an opportunity for respondents to share their thoughts on possible uses of the results from this study as well as any other comments they wished to share. twenty people provided a total of 23 comments. limitations this study has its limitations. it was hard to provide a universally accepted definition of such a heavily laden term as cbr. by not providing an operational definition, we were able to include diverse opinions, but the respondents might have answered the questions from different or even contradictory perspectives. due to the nature of the research design, we were not able to compare these diverse perspectives in the answers of the three major stakeholder groups. further, the delphi method is meant to solicit opinions from a group of experts through a methodologically ‘neutral’ medium, a survey in this case. however, the ‘majority rule’ in determining criteria unexpectedly raised some of the same political challenges that many cbr researchers have already experienced with regard to their cbr practice vis-a-vis the university and their departmental colleagues, in that some respondents found some of the vps most important to them were not held in the same regard by other respondents and therefore not included in the final list. francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 44 findings throughout the delphi exercise process, we did not define cbr for respondents. instead, in round 1, we deliberately asked respondents to describe their cbr practice. the descriptions that we received set the context for understanding the delphi results. according to the descriptions provided, respondents’ research practices involved an extensive range of types and intensity of collaboration with community partners/researchers. specific methods also varied widely and included both qualitative and quantitative methods. for some respondents, cbr starts with community needs, and the research questions, methods and actions taken are defined by community members. for other respondents, research questions and methods originate from the researcher and there is no expectation that action will be taken on the findings. dichotomised views some respondents acknowledged that addressing power relations was important but resisted the characterisation of such efforts as ‘political’. for example, one participant stated: the research itself need not be (perhaps, should not be) political or politically motivated... however, the issue of power relationships between researchers, community groups and community members is important and must be consciously and overtly addressed. others found descriptors such as ‘anti-oppressive’ and ‘empowering’ to be too negative and/ or pathologising, preferring more positive framings, e.g. ‘social justice’. the controversy around the political nature of cbr was well reflected in participants’ narratives, particularly regarding the adherence to indigenous epistemologies and anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonial or decolonising perspectives. for some respondents, these overtly politicised perspectives were critical to their work. as one participant aptly noted: with the dropping of the above vps [related to these perspectives], academic researchers maintain their privileged ability to define, design, and implement…ideally we should all be aiming to protect the most vulnerable and be committed to praxis that contributes to decolonizing and anti-oppressive methodologies and theoretical frameworks. through the process, we also heard a strong voice from a few respondents who repeatedly pointed out the relevance of indigenous and anti-colonial frameworks to cbr. for example, one respondent stated in the second round: i feel strongly that the values related to indigenous and anti-colonial frameworks need to be included, otherwise we will continue to conduct research that is colonial and creates harm. i am not sure how many indigenous communities or partners participated in the first round, but it might be important to offer this again if the n is low. however, not all participants agreed that cbr is always conducted with marginalised groups or that all ways of knowing should be respected. for example, as one participant suggested, ‘community collaborative research is not always about isms and oppression.’ these dichotomised views were also evident in the results of the survey. indeed, as reflected in the narrative data, we can see a divergent perspective on the ‘political’ nature of cbr (table 3). the two vp categories, ‘addressing power relations’ and ‘transformation of fundamental structures’, which were perceived by some respondents as ‘political’, were trimmed down exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 45 significantly in terms of the number of itemised vps and, in the latter case, removed entirely. as indicated above, many of the more overtly political itemised vps did not reach a majority consensus in the first round of the survey; for instance, ‘problematizes systematic relations of power in the social construction of knowledge’ (44 per cent), ‘based on an anti-oppression framework’ (41 per cent) and ‘fundamentally challenges the structures of oppression’ (54 per cent). table 3 divergent perspectives on the political nature of cbr less political more political the [vps and refined meanings] are highly charged politically...objectivity is actually not evil. part of our research portfolio includes… seeking to unsettle power dynamics, to analyze power structures, to highlight situations of marginality and injustice. [cbr is] not about a particular ideological orientation... [although some] researchers enter cbr to pursue a political ambition, and will side with like-minded people and help them succeed. [cbr] is committed to building a more just society… and bringing community-based knowledge into the domain of ‘respected evidence’ that can disrupt and inform systemic structures and decision making. part of a resurgence. ‘solidarity’ -ick -sounds like communism to me. cbr involves...seek[ing] to make changes in the lives of people who experience some form of othering, oppression or inequity. objectivity is not a complete negative. granted all things are relative, but still we can agree what is grass and what is sand. cbr seeks to identify and address power imbalances…by paying attention to discrimination, systemic inequalities, history, social location and how status and privilege impact partnerships. the question of whether ‘action’ is an objective of cbr also provoked disagreement (table 4). while a number of respondents characterised their research as ‘community-based participatory action research’, others did not suggest any action after the research, if at all. related to this question, participants also varied in their perspectives on whether cbr questioned the status quo. for example, one commented, ‘sometimes the status quo is not that bad.’ table 4 divergent perspectives on action as a goal of cbr action is not a goal of cbr action is a goal of cbr cbr should not be tied to action it is about discovery, not necessarily action. this suggests removal of individual and community selfdetermination. [cbr] moves research to action to improve and transform colonial structures, relations, practices, and dynamics. [cbr involves] a commitment to social action according to the needs expressed by the community-based participants. values and principles a central purpose of this study was to generate a list of vps that different stakeholders could use as a reference for research ethics applications, tenure and promotion reviews, and formal collaboration agreements (readers who would like to view the complete list of itemised vps should contact the lead author). however, when formulating this study, we were francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 46 reminded at the outset that cbr researchers have frequently perceived discrepancies between the research values that are important to them as individual researchers and the priorities of the university as an institutional collective. therefore, in both rounds 2 and 3 we asked respondents to rank the relevance and importance of vps for both their own cbr practice and that of the university community. the discrepancy between individual and institutional research values is indeed reflected in our findings. relevance of itemised vps as reflected in the list, respondents place great emphasis on a few key vps that have been discussed in the literature, such as dialogue, togetherness, reciprocity, respect for local knowledge, accountability to the community, and the importance of iterative processes, to name a few. however, our findings also show that the respondents hold different perspectives in terms of the relevance of the vps to their own cbr practice versus the practice of the university as an institution. in table 5, we summarise the number of itemised vps relevant to both respondents. table 5 vps relevant to cbr categorical vps no. of itemised vps relevant to own cbr no. of itemised vps relevant to the institution 1. collaboration/partnership 7 4 2. accountability 12 8 3. values process and outcomes 4 1 4. action for positive social change 5 3 5. reciprocity 10 4 6. long-term relationships 4 1 7. capacity building 7 4 8. reflexivity 9 3 9. equitable participation 3 3 10. empowerment 4 0 11. self-determination 2 2 total 67 33 looking into each vp category, we notice that, with one exception, most itemised vps within the categories that are perceived to be relevant to the institution are also on the top of the list for researchers’ own cbr practice. for example, respondents placed significant emphasis on ‘accountability’ for both their own cbr practice and the practice of the institutional community as a whole. most researchers suggested that, in terms of their own practice, accountability was primarily to their community partners. the excepted item was ‘researchers are accountable to the university’ in the category of ‘accountability’. while 74.4 per cent of respondents perceived this principle to be relevant or very relevant to the institution, it did not pass the cut-off point for respondents’ own cbr practice. several participants also emphasised that researchers were accountable to outside funders; as one stated, ‘in the excitement to collaborate we sometimes forget who is the funder and it is the funder who ultimately pulls the strings.’ exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 47 although there are two vps (‘equitable participation’ and ‘self-determination’) for which respondents indicated equal numbers of itemised vps as relevant to both their research and that of the university as an institution, there are major differences in most categories. the greatest differences were in the categories of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘reflexivity’. filtered by the cut-off point (67 per cent), 67 out of the 88 itemised vps included in the survey were thought to be relevant or very relevant to respondents’ own cbr practice and only 33 to the practice of the institution. importance of vp categories many vps inform cbr practice; however, not all bear the same importance. in round 3 of the survey, we asked respondents to rank the perceived importance of the 11 vp categories to their own cbr practice and that of the institution. comparing the percentage ranking of importance for almost all vp categories, respondents tended to assign a lower importance to the work of the institution than to their own work (table 6). ‘collaboration/partnership’ and ‘accountability’ topped both lists, albeit in different order. to illustrate, one participant asserted: ‘cbr respects diverse epistemologies and ontologies’; another stated, ‘all who are actively involved in the research are accountable to each other and to an ethical research process’. the difference in perceived importance was greatest for ‘equitable participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘self-determination’. these differences may reflect many cbr researchers’ uncertainty about the extent to which the university, as an institution, respects and supports their cbr work. as suggested by one respondent: i believe as an organization [our university] is most interested in outcomes rather [than process]. this stems from the discourse about research (and other) excellence wherein funding dollars, prestige and numbers of publications still appear to be valued most highly. table 6 percentage ranking of importance for vp categories perceived importance to own cbr practice total* perceived importance to the institution total* 1. collaboration/partnership 100.0 1. accountability 96.7 2. accountability 97.0 2. collaboration/partnership 87.5 3. values process and outcomes 81.9 3. action for positive social change 75.0 4. action for positive social change 81.6 4. values process and outcomes 68.7 68.768 5. reciprocity 78.8 5. reciprocity 68.7 6. long-term relationships 77.7 6. long-term relationships 68.7 7. capacity building 75.8 7. capacity building 65.6 8. reflexivity 71.9 8. equitable participation 59.4 9. equitable participation 69.7 9. empowerment 46.8 10. empowerment 66.7 10. reflexivity 45.2 11. self-determination 53.1 11. self-determination 36.6 *total percentage of respondents who assigned 4 or 5 to this item. next, we present our reflections on the findings outlined above and suggest some implications for cbr researchers. francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 48 discussion and implications our findings indicate that researchers engaging in cbr have diverse understandings of the nature of cbr. despite this diversity, the findings show some consensus among respondents on vps that are central to the practice of cbr. the final list of itemised vps may fill a gap in the literature. here, we highlight a few observations on the discrepancies we identified with respect to participants’ perspectives on relationships, power and action for social change. we then interweave these observations with reflections on the delphi research process, especially with regard to the political nature of cbr. the ethics of cbr as shown in the literature, cbr is a value-driven research approach. however, while there was broad agreement on the importance of trust, respect, collaboration, partnership and dialogue across disciplines, each cbr researcher tended to adhere to different vps. values and principles related to indigeneity raised some concerns among participants. research is viewed negatively by many members of indigenous groups because it has been used as a tool of exploitation and colonialism (smith 2012). some researchers see cbr as a potential means of overcoming these issues and addressing past harms, but it is not possible to simply insert an indigenous worldview into the dominant research paradigm, which is based on the belief that knowledge is an individual entity. conversely, indigenous paradigms arise from the fundamental belief that knowledge is relational and experiential (wilson 2008). these ideas raise the question of what it means to take indigenous worldviews seriously when some researchers do not see decolonisation as a meaningful research objective. there was a sense among some respondents that anti-colonial frameworks and respect for indigenous epistemologies were only relevant when indigenous people were directly involved in the research. from a decolonial perspective, this is problematic as we are all (settlers and indigenous) negatively affected by colonial structures and, arguably, collectively share responsibility to address these structures in society. participants pointed to the importance of respecting diverse ontologies and epistemologies, but also emphasised that not all worldviews should be respected (e.g. nazism). still, most participants agreed that cbr is an ‘ethical research practice’. although ‘ethical’ was not defined precisely, such comments seem to imply that not all research is or has been ethical, a point which is also made strongly in the literature (e.g. smith 2012). the high ranking accorded collaboration/partnership in the survey is consistent with the major discussion in the literature, reflecting the nature of cbr as a collaborative project (brydon-miller & maguire 2009; camh 2011; elliott 2012). indeed, this is the vp that was least contested. in other words, there was a lot of agreement on the means (collaboration) and less on the ends (e.g. decolonisation, production of new knowledge) of cbr, and also whether power relations should form a consideration. questions were also raised about the nature of the relationship in terms of whether solidarity was a desirable element. it is somewhat surprising to us that many researchers who are engaged in collaborative partnerships with community partners resisted characterisation of their research as ‘political’, when equitable inclusion (which all respondents acknowledged as important) is an overtly political intervention that challenges university hierarchies of knowledge production (stanton 2014). on the other hand, if cbr is being conducted with powerful groups who hold reprehensible worldviews, ensuring equitable inclusion may be problematic for researchers committed to both cbr and social justice. exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 49 while we are cognisant that the final list of vps is a result of consensus based on the majority rule, i.e. an artificial cut-off point, it has provided a common base from which cbr researchers can engage in dialogue among themselves as well as with their stakeholders, particularly the university administration. the following observations may be useful for cbr researchers who have to negotiate their work constantly with their affiliated institution. it is not uncommon to hear cbr researchers complain that their work is not treasured, particularly under the current neo-liberal managerial atmosphere of the academic setting. first, in terms of importance, respondents proposed a similar ranking of the categorical vps for both their own cbr practice and their expectation of their institutions. however, 67 vps were considered to be relevant or very relevant to respondents’ own cbr practice compared to 33 for the institution; among the 33 itemised vps deemed relevant to the university community, eight (24 per cent) concern ‘accountability’. in other words, there is a perception that the institution is concerned most with accountability and publications and less with relationship building, which accords with the broader neoliberal context. cbr researchers, even those who resist the characterisation of cbr as political, seem to want to insert ethical considerations into research processes, while the university is more concerned with measurable outcomes in terms of publications. finally, principles such as ‘values process and outcomes’, ‘long-term relationships’ and ‘reflexivity’ seem to matter to respondents’ own practice more than to that of the university as an institution. this may reflect respondents’ perception of the administrative emphasis of the university as an institutional organisation or a cynical attitude on the part of researchers who feel their research is not held in high regard by their institution. indeed, it is this perceived lack of regard that lay behind the creation of the cbr initiative at the university in question. the politics of cbr questions of power are inherently political because, in broad terms, politics concerns the distribution of power and resources in society. coming from social work, education and geography disciplinary backgrounds, we had understood cbr and indeed all research to be ‘political’. however, some of the responses we received to the survey reveal that this is not the view of all cbr researchers. here we explore the implications of respondents’ differing perspectives on equality/equity, anti-oppression and objectivity. it became evident early in the study that, when we tried to define cbr, many tensions emerged amongst faculty members in various disciplines, between those doing more quantitative research than qualitative research, and between faculty and community members and researchers and their institution. interestingly, the main tensions seemed to be rooted in the epistemological, ontological and axiological positions of the respondents, which were closely tied to their discipline and institutional context. this was further complicated by the reality that, despite our efforts as researchers to be as inclusive as possible through various recruitment methods, including institution-wide invitations, faculty-wide invitations and personal invitations, our participants were inevitably only partially representative of the faculty, staff and university community. the absence of many voices led us to question the ethical nature of the research that we were undertaking, especially when we read many of the comments on the study in round 3 concerning the importance of respecting diverse epistemologies, addressing power imbalances and accountability to an ‘ethical research process’. admittedly, the consensus-seeking nature of the delphi approach might have further marginalised some political views held by cbr researchers from some disciplines and, as a francis, yan and gill gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 50 result, in many ‘political’ vps being eliminated. most participants agreed that building equality or equity in relationships means addressing power explicitly; however, based on the 67 per cent cut-off, itemised vps that included openly political terms such as power, anti-oppression, indigenous and anti-colonial were dropped following the first round. in other words, at least among the respondents to this study, most did not agree with the ‘political’ nature of cbr. however, some respondents in the second round expressed concerns with this result. we realised that we did not have the means, given that the consensus of the group determined the final list of vps, to deeply address the many tensions and systemic inequities that seemed to mark the texts of the survey responses. fortunately, some members of the study spoke up during our workshop after round 1 and consensus was reached to reinstate several vps that otherwise would have been eliminated from the final list, due mainly, in our view, to the absence of certain marginalised voices, disciplines and non-mainstream approaches to research in the survey process. this was due in part to systemic inequities and institutional absences. removing the most overtly politicised vps was perceived by some respondents to leave academic researchers in the privileged position that many scholars claim cbr is supposed to redress, and perhaps to undermine decolonial and anti-oppressive methodologies. in short, the tendency of the majority of respondents to opt for a relatively objective and apolitical position was viewed by others as masking what were fundamental issues of injustice which have significant impact on institutional practice of tenure, promotion and ethical approaches to cbr. these findings raise many questions. what does it mean to suggest that cbr (or, indeed, any research) is nonor apolitical? what are the implications of resisting acknowledgement of the political nature of research? one of the critiques of objectivity in the literature is that it has been used to subordinate research subjects within specific projects as well as cbr researchers in the academy (absolon & willett 2005; deloria 1997; wells & jones 2009). is it possible or desirable to acknowledge one’s positionality and simultaneously claim objectivity? why do some researchers resist designating their research anti-oppressive or anti-colonial? what are the effects of this resistance for researchers, research participants, and cbr more broadly? what is cbr for? building on the debate over the political nature of cbr, the question of whether positive social change was a meaningful research objective was also contested by participants. although respondents agreed that cbr results should benefit all participants, there was less agreement on whether improving lives was a desirable or reasonable goal of cbr. it is interesting to note in this context that no itemised vp from the category of ‘empowerment’ passed the cut-off point. related to these questions, for some researchers critiquing the (presumably inequitable) status quo was crucial to their practice, while others argued that the status quo was not always in need of critique and that the goal of cbr should be discovery and knowledge creation. yet, we wonder if cbr is simply aimed at the creation of new knowledge, how can researchers avoid reinscribing colonial relations or repeating the mistakes of past research that mined community members for their ‘data’ without improving their lives? to be critical of power relationships implies the desire for change. we expected to see these concerns reflected in our findings. although ‘action for positive social change’ remained important for many participants, ‘transformation of fundamental structures’ was removed after the first round. once again, the more overtly political actions tended to be rejected. in exploring community-based research values and principles gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 51 other words, there was some agreement that action is an important principle of cbr, but much less agreement on the nature of the action, for example, whether the goal of action is to further decolonisation or something more mundane (e.g. publication of a report). this goes to the heart of the disagreement among participants: is cbr a political research approach aimed at action to improve lives, or is it an objective research approach that seeks to create new knowledge? can it be both? implications for future research based on the findings and our related reflections, we propose the following additional questions about cbr may be worth exploring further: what does ‘political’ mean in the context of cbr, and how political should cbr be? as a research method, should cbr have a ‘predetermined’ outcome? does cbr require different forms of accountability compared to other methodologies? is ‘action’ an objective of cbr? what is the relationship between cbr, action and justice? is cbr only for marginalised/colonised groups? to what extent should cbr be informed by a particular discourse? is there any element that distinguishes cbr from other research approaches on which all cbr researchers could agree? should cbr be defined? to conclude, cbr is a growing research approach increasingly being adopted by researchers from diverse disciplines. while the findings reported here may fill a gap in the literature on which values and principles matter to cbr, they also raise additional questions for further exploration. the 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to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: gusheh, m., firth, v., netherton, c., pettigrew, c. 2019. the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6453. http:dx.doi. org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6453 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change mitra gusheh*, verity firth, clare netherton, claire pettigrew centre for social justice and inclusion, university of technology sydney, australia *corresponding author: mitra gusheh; mitra.gusheh@uts.edu.au doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6453 article history: received 30/01/2019; revised 21/09/2019; accepted 19/11/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract the relationship between education and public purpose has been historical and remains fundamental to the core mission of the higher education sector. alongside the growth of engaged scholarship and practice, increasing and, at times, competing forces work to influence institutional focus and direction. key amongst these are global university ranking systems, which have begun to shift their gaze beyond traditional notions of academic excellence to also consider impact and engagement. the tension between external and internal drivers for social engagement can fragment institutional focus and undermine community impact. in the face of this challenge, holistic institutional frameworks that systemically and culturally underpin, enable and make inherent engaged scholarship remain scarce. their absence risks marginalising engaged university practice, teaching and research, thereby limiting the potential impact of universities. this article aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the question of how universities can create a whole-of-institution approach to their public purpose agenda. using the university of technology sydney as a case, the development of the uts social impact framework is shared here. we detail the use of appreciative inquiry and theory of change as underpinning participatory methodologies that have resulted in a systems approach to change, based on institutional strengths. the resulting framework articulates a shared vision and outlines a guiding roadmap encompassing six domains of change, expressed as outcomes, and an additional three preconditions. woven together, these create a robust image of the systemic and cultural dynamics needed to realise the shared vision of the university, ensuring that contribution to social outcomes remains a core mission of this higher declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6453 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6453 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mitra.gusheh@uts.edu.au http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6453 education institution. the adopted approach used in this study can inform the development of contextually relevant frameworks across the sector, with potential to reposition engagement, beyond an aspect of practice, as a systemic precondition that enables broader social change. keywords: public purpose, engaged scholarship, higher education, system change, social impact introduction the purpose of universities and the potential value they offer society are well recognised and debated (see, for example, beaulieu, breton & brousselle 2018; beere, votruba & wells 2011; bradley et al. 2008). through research, teaching and non-academic programs, universities have a tremendous capacity to contribute to solving complex social challenges. boyer (1996) iterated this notion in his seminal text, the scholarship of engagement. citing examples that spanned 350 years of higher education practice, boyer pointed to the historic link between education and public purpose. responding to the ‘decline in public confidence’ (boyer 1996, p. 11) in higher education institutions, boyer argued for a renewed and strengthened connection to purpose as it relates to community benefit, stating that higher education institutions need to ‘become a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems, and must reaffirm [their] historic commitment to … the scholarship of engagement’ (boyer 1996, p. 11). by leveraging teaching, research and service, higher education institutions, it was argued, could work alongside community partners to respond to societal challenges and arrive at mutually beneficial outcomes. the introduction of the idea of scholarship of engagement brought reciprocal partnerships and practice with purpose into prominence. since the publication of boyer’s paper in the mid-1990s, efforts in this space have flourished. indeed, the increasing number of cited cases of universities taking up their public purpose role through engaged scholarship illustrates a shifting landscape (beaulieu, breton & brousselle 2018). there is now a growing movement of engaged practice in higher education evidenced by increased publications, conferences, membership of networks and external investments (hoyt & hollister 2014). across the globe, universities are increasingly, and explicitly, committing to this space through embedding affirmative statements in their missions and strategies, operationalising these through practice, and further evidencing their contribution through an engagement with established and emerging networks, reporting mechanisms and classifications. a visible increase in networks and classification systems with a focus on enhanced university contribution to community speaks to the exponential growth in institutional commitment to this space. in 2005, the talloires network, an international association of higher education institutions established in support of engaged scholarship and the enhancement of university civic responsibility, came together with 29 signatories from 23 nations as its founding members. by 2019, the network had grown to 388 members from 77 nations (the talloires network n.d.). a similar trend can be seen in relation to the uptake of the carnegie foundation’s community engagement classification – an elective classification that recognises community-engaged higher education institutions and actively aims to support self-reflection, institutional growth and improvement in community-engaged practice (giles, gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 sandmann & saltmarsh 2012). in 2015, 361 united states higher education institutions held the carnegie foundation’s community engagement classification, with 83 of these receiving the classification for the first time (brown university n.d.a). in the same year, the foundation began exploring mechanisms for extending the classification beyond the united states, with ireland becoming the first international pilot site (brown university n.d.b). in 2018, as the program continued its expansion, australia and canada joined the international pilot (simon fraser university n.d.; university of technology sydney 2018). while the growth of engaged practice across the higher education sector is evident, it is important to view this growth within a context of, what is itself, an expanding sector. the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen an explosion of higher education institutions worldwide (collini 2012). in 2018, the estimated number of such institutions across 25 nations was set at over 21,700 (csic 2018) – rendering the number of recorded institutions in engaged scholarship networks pale in comparison. this exponential growth in the number of higher education institutions has been driven by the knowledge-based needs of the new global economy and corresponding increases in government and industry investment in developing and rising nations (rhoads, li & ilano 2014). alongside the growth in engaged institutions, therefore, we see a growth in the number of institutions more broadly, some with aligned priorities and others that place greater importance on the drivers that potentially sit in tension with engaged scholarship and social impact. even within the engaged cluster, it is important to note that the form, depth and scale at which institutions take up their public purpose role varies enormously. the growth in engagement also does not progress along a single trajectory and can easily change direction. when looking beyond the pockets of excellence, we in fact see a potentially fragile sector that is susceptible to diverse internal and external influences. an examination of one such area highlights the dynamics at play. key amongst factors that influence the higher education field are the global ranking systems that now dominate the landscape in terms of how the sector values excellence and quality. rankings, until recently, have shown little interest in assessing or rewarding the broader public or social benefit of universities. their influence on engagement has been an indirect one, with a privileging of research intensity. increased competition to do well in the ranking systems, which in turn allows universities to attract additional global research investment as well as income from international students, has led to claims that modern universities are allowing ‘the more localized, public good function of the university … [to] be lost in the fray’ (rhoads, li & ilano 2014, p. 29). a recent university-led initiative, the joint effort of king’s college london, the university of chicago and melbourne university, speaks to the recognised inherent power of rankings. the body of work currently underway aims to recognise and elevate the value of engagement through proposing the inclusion of engagement specific indicators as part of existing ranking systems (bull & grant 2019). more recently, global ranking system, themselves, have begun responding to a changing world that is requiring a demonstration of impact and engagement, creating a direct link between this space and rankings. the newly launched times higher education university impact ranking, as an example, makes its attempt at measuring the impact of universities by using the sustainable development goals (sdgs) as a framing (bothwell 2018). though the effect of this coupling, and the direct focus of the ranking systems on engagement and impact, is not yet clear, knowledge of the existing ranking systems and how they, in and of themselves, impact the higher education field (hazelkorn 2013) would imply that intended and unintended consequences are likely. relying on a limited set of quantitative indicators to the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 demonstrate engagement and impact inevitably results in inadequate proxies which, in turn, have the potential to misdirect behaviour. global rankings are but one of a diverse range of inevitable, and often necessary, internal and external influences that work to shape universities. economic drivers, government funding patterns and policies, and related frameworks and assessments – such as the research excellence framework in the uk and the engagement and impact assessment in australia – can pull universities towards or away from engaged scholarship and practice, and are also worth exploring. combined, these forces can greatly impact universities. proposing a potential response to this context, this article provides a case study account of the university of technology sydney’s (uts’s) approach to developing its institution-wide agenda for social change. the authors, as project leads and central actors in the process, provide an insider’s lens. the resulting framework and the process by which it was created are detailed in an effort to support the building of intentional and strategic institutional responses that contribute to public purpose and progress the field. implications of the current trajectory and the case for a systems approach higher education institutions are increasingly engaging in socially related endeavours and, as such, the resulting teaching, research and service outcomes are offering increasing benefits to the community. the diverse set of levers that interplay with the sector means, however, that existing efforts can remain disconnected and even sit in tension with one another. checkoway (2013, p. 8) speaks to this, stating that ‘institutions have developed multiple purposes and, in so doing, [have] de-emphasized their civic mission’. the risk of the current trajectory is that the dominant frames being applied to the sector, rather than deliberate strategic intent by the sector, can become self-fulfilling prophecies that limit the potential of what universities can, and do, truly offer. in effect, the intent of external influences, amplified by equally diverse internal drivers, can act as proxies for institutional purpose – thereby taking a more central role in higher education than intended. a contextually relevant system approach is needed to break away from this emerging paradigm and offer a holistic perspective that extends beyond the diverse set of intentions currently at play. setting comprehensive institutional agendas would counter the potential risk of mission drift in this space. outcomes and their interrelationships would be detailed, as would be the preconditions required for achieving them. as indicated previously, experience in this space is abundant. the increasing uptake of engaged practice across higher education has been accompanied by an equal measure of publications that share sector knowledge and offer reviews and insights into the field (beaulieu, breton & brousselle 2018; fitzgerald, burack & seifer 2010a, 2010b). this literature provides significant documentation of the historical accounts of progress in this space, perspectives on the enablers of engaged scholarship and good practice cases that detail interventions at the project, or program, level. although pockets of excellence are increasingly available for analysis, details of holistic institution-wide strategies and, in particular, methods by which they are derived remain scarce. the lack of detail on unified agendas in this space is also reflected in the annual institutional reporting, which tends to be dominated by ‘backward-looking … compliance disclosures’ gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 (adams 2018, p. 332) and narratives that share institutional successes across the student, teaching and research spaces. in more recent times, there has been an increasing interest in impact measurement and reporting for monitoring and evaluation of institutional impact (see, for example, fitzgerald, burack & seifer 2010b). in response to these emerging efforts, lunsford, bargerstock and greasley (2012, p. 116) argue that the ‘breadth of indicators and measures support documentation efforts, but are not the kind of well-defined measures that could inform more systematic research studies’. in support of enhanced validity and reliability, more rigorous modes of assessment and measures are advocated (lunsford, bargerstock & greasley 2012). advancement in this way would not, however, negate the disparate nature of measures that speak to diverse efforts. again, a well-defined institutional purpose as a unifier, and articulation of the processes by which they may be defined, are lacking. in response to this gap in knowledge, a case study account of uts’s approach to developing its institution-wide vision and agenda for social change is shared. the process of developing the uts social impact framework social impact offerings are not new to any university, including uts. evidence of impact can be found across the organisation’s 30-year history – from the contribution of its diverse community through to its institutional impact. in 2016, when uts embarked on the journey that resulted in the uts social impact framework, it began with this knowledge and understanding. social justice was seen to be part of the institution’s dna (university of technology sydney 2016). across many facets of the organisation, this was, in fact, the case. examples demonstrating excellence across student engagement, research, business operations and teaching peppered numerous publications (see, for example, university of technology sydney 2016). cited cases of excellence are not always reflective of their broader context (lunsford, bargerstock & greasley 2012), nor do they sufficiently reflect holistic institutional impact. as boyer articulated in his 1996 paper, ‘what’s also needed is not just more programs, but a larger purpose, a larger sense of mission, a larger clarity of direction’ (p. 20). this nuanced understanding of the landscape shaped the purpose of the journey. uts moved away from reflective reporting on institutional best practice to take a proactive approach to setting its own agenda in relation to the public benefit role of universities. the uts social impact framework, therefore, began with the intention of developing an encompassing cross-institution, cross-faculty agenda. an agenda that would guide future efforts and support learning and growth through demonstration of the institution’s collective impact towards a shared vision (university of technology sydney 2017). executive support alongside broad participation the creation of the uts social impact framework began with support at the highest level of the organisation, with the initial mandate for developing an institution-wide response to social change emerging from the office of the vice-chancellor, professor attila brungs. this level of support was echoed across senior executives and actioned through the establishment of the executive director, social justice role. the executive director role was deliberately established as an integrator role across the university. this position was independent of a faculty, but reported to the provost alongside faculty deans. the executive director had considerable the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 resources at her disposal, initially through the equity and diversity unit of the university and later through the establishment of the uts centre for social justice and inclusion. further funding was made available to employ a manager of social impact to work full-time on the development of the framework. the process for developing the framework was, however, far from a top–down approach. over 150 uts students and staff, both academic and professional, and encompassing casual, fixed-term, permanent, part-time and full-time representatives, actively engaged in the process, ensuring broad input that was representative of the whole university. selecting and structuring participation the initial design of the process aimed to gather contributors with a broad range of experience and expertise from the university community. in order to ensure the presence of sufficient knowledge in specific relevant areas, three working groups – focusing on academic and professional ‘staff ’, ‘students’ and ‘organisation’ – and a steering group were created. the external ‘community’, as a specific cohort, was not included in this initial phase of the process. the reason underpinning this decision was the fact that the work being undertaken was focused on developing an organisational theory of change as opposed to a programmatic or impact framework. insider knowledge of processes and systems was therefore seen as essential. the boundary between the internal and external community was also seen to be porous. for example, some students and staff involved in the initiative lived in the local community, other students were also industry partners, while still others had been connected to outreach programs prior to arriving at uts. these members could input diverse knowledge into the process. whilst this phase, and what we are reporting on in this article, primarily relied on the voice of our internal community, this work has led to similar processes being applied to our local community engagement practices. as an example, appreciative inquiry is being used as part of local precinct efforts in order to uncover community needs as a precursor to informing the potential role of the university. participation in the identified groups was to result from a combination of self-nomination and direct appointment. self-nomination was sought via an open invitation issued through the office of the executive director, social justice, with participation being further encouraged by the vice-chancellor. the initial invitation offered two positions for each of the groups that were to be established. direct appointments were to make up the remainder of the positions, with the aim of each group comprising 15 members. over 160 applications were received for the eight self-nominated positions that were made available. an examination of these revealed the calibre of the candidates, the richness of their experience and the depth of knowledge across the organisation. recognising that the development of the framework would only be strengthened by the involvement of the diverse array of applicants, the organisers opted to change the design of the process rather than limit the pool of candidates. as such, a fourth group – the advisory group – was formed, to which all applicants were invited. based on the quality of the self-nominated candidates, the portion of appointed positions was narrowed. the pool of self-nominated candidates was assigned to the various working groups, ensuring diverse representation in terms of faculty, unit and role. directly nominated positions were then used to balance the representation. by the completion of the selection process, 137 staff and students were identified as key participants. these students and staff came together for a year-long process, both as part of gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 their individual groups and as an entire cohort, to develop the uts social impact framework. together, the participants brought cross-institution input and support to the process. the specific make-up and contribution of each group was as follows: • the advisory group one hundred and thirty-seven uts academic and professional staff and students, representing a diverse cross-section of the university, self-nominated to be involved in the process. the group included undergraduate and postgraduate students and casual, fixed-term and permanent staff from every level of the organisation. initial student numbers were deemed to be insufficient, with a total of five joining the advisory group. in response, an additional process was put in place to specifically recruit students. working through student leadership groups, a further 20 students were engaged. members came together at the start of the journey to contribute their knowledge through an appreciative inquiry process, the details of which will be shared in the next section of this article. the group met two other times across the year to provide feedback, check assumptions and respond to questions that emerged through the process. • working groups three working groups were formed around the areas of ‘staff ’, ‘students’ and ‘organisation’. membership was based on expertise in relation to each subject area. indigenous voice and equity considerations were also deemed significant and therefore each group had representatives from jumbunna institute for indigenous education and research and the university’s equity and diversity unit. working groups actively contributed to the development of the framework and supported verification through alignment with existing research. in addition to the advisory group meetings, working groups participated in two workshops. • steering group senior leadership from across the university, including from jumbunna and the equity and diversity unit, made up the steering group. the group offered a meta-perspective, worked to synthesise the effort of the working groups and supported the socialisation of the work across the institution. the steering group joined the advisory group meetings and came together for an additional two workshops across the 12-month period. the guiding process two process models informed the development of the uts social impact framework: appreciative inquiry (cooperrider, whitney & stavros 2003) and theory of change (funnell & rogers 2011; rogers 2008). in this section of the article, we detail their use within the context of this initiative. social change initiatives are often based on problem-solving models of change, which tend to hold a deficit approach. they begin with the challenges being faced and examine potential root causes that require a response. in contrast, appreciative inquiry offers a strengths-based approach that is solution focused. the model proposes a multi-step process that begins with an inquiry into ‘the best of what is, in order to imagine what could be’ (bushe 2013, p. 41). appreciative inquiry operates under the assumption that the questions most often asked by institutions set the direction in which they move. shifting the dialogue from the deficits to strengths, therefore, is believed to result in positive asset-based narratives that lead to transformational change. the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 7 recognising the real strengths of uts, we began our process with appreciative inquiry. following the model’s established guide on formulating appreciative questions (cooperrider, whitney & stavros 2003), an interview template was developed. the questions asked participants to share cases of social impact at its best at uts and then guided them to further elaborate on related enabling factors. potential barriers were touched upon by asking participants to articulate their wishes for what could be different. the simplicity of the tools and the structured nature of the questions meant that this phase of the initiative could be carried out in a participatory fashion, with those involved in the process both contributing and collecting stories of impact. the initial gathering of the group, therefore, brought the advisory group together across three sessions, where members interviewed each other and documented the narratives that were to underpin the institution’s shared purpose and interrelated set of outcomes. figure 1 across three separate meetings, advisory group members interviewed each other to uncover stories of social impact at its best at uts and their enabling factors. these initial sessions resulted in the collection of extensive rich data in the form of qualitative interviews and written responses to questions. textual analysis, as a qualitative approach (corbin & strauss 2015), supported the development of the purpose statement that remains central to the framework: that uts is an agent for social change. informed by grounded theory (corbin & strauss 2015), content coding was used to develop an initial set of five categories as descriptive representations of the themes that emerged from the narratives. the five categories, as detailed in table 1, became the basis of the next phase of this initiative. as illustrated later in this section, the rich data gathered through the appreciative inquiry sessions continued to inform the development of the framework as the process unfolded and the thematic areas evolved. gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 8 figure 2 making sense of the data gathered through the initial advisory group meetings. figure 3 sample comments highlighting the need for internal and external connections and collaborations. the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 9 appreciative inquiry, as previously asserted, is a strengths-based approach that begins with the best of what already exists within the organisation. by focusing on the internal assets, it results in the development of a strong foundation that can support contextually relevant pathways forward. being conscious of the focus on internal strengths inherent to this process, we wanted to ensure that any factors beyond our immediate gaze were not missed. as such, our work informed by appreciative inquiry was complemented by a second layer of activities that used theory of change as a guiding model. theory of change (funnell & rogers 2011; rogers 2008) is a framework that can support the demonstration of how and why an intended change happens in a particular context. it links what an organisation does to what it hopes to achieve through a process of identifying an overarching purpose and then backward mapping to disclose the necessary preconditions and objectives that are needed to make the vision a reality. this process results in an outcomes framework that can support the development of interventions and indicators, against which progress can be tracked. in contrast to the act of determining outcomes as a logical progression of why activities are undertaken, the practice of backward mapping ensures that all necessary preconditions to the desired change are considered. theory of change as a process, therefore, seeks to identify each of the necessary outcomes that together become sufficient for achieving the shared purpose (taplin & clark 2012). table 1 five categories as descriptive representations, alongside supporting quotes from the appreciative inquiry interviews, 2017. representative categories quotes: what are your wishes for the future? 1. staff are enabled to maximise their social impact ‘recognising social impact… [and] engagement in uts promotion guidelines (this could be communicated more)’ ‘disciplines and transdisciplines in vibrant collaborations’ ‘training for mental health awareness etc. for casual staff’ 2. students and graduates are ethical and empowered citizens ‘having and seeking a diverse student base is central to our approach to recruitment, not an add on’ ‘developing truly inclusive curriculum with a focus on developing individuals with the social impact focus and the willingness to enact change at whatever level they feel that they are able to’ ‘not just targeting specific areas of social impact (e.g. racism stops with me campaign) but adopting an approach that gives students and staff who are already involved to be able to start/facilitate a movement for social impact give them agency’ gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 10 representative categories quotes: what are your wishes for the future? 3. uts enables systemic changes for social mobility ‘[work towards] empowered citizens and social mobility’ ‘social mobility. idea that changing the cohort of the law school would have a flow-on effect to the profession and therefore society more broadly’ ‘power of education’ 4. uts’s commitment to social impact is reflected in its strategies, resourcing and policies ‘ingraining social impact considerations into the policies, structures, systems so that it becomes part of uts’ dna and cannot be broken by changes in leadership’ ‘that it becomes mainstream in our growth strategy. we are making large demands of our staff, and this has to be central to staff and students everyday experience if it is to have the depth of meaning that we are capable of’ ‘move away from the dominance of financial impact measures, requirements to a+ publications in favour of targeting local constituents who can really use information’ 5. meaningful internal and external community connections and collaborations are in place ‘it is shared outside of the university uts’ commitment and vision of itself as social justice/ impact university is recognised by others outside of uts’ ‘enhance and establish better community partnerships’ the data generated through the first phase of this initiative was used as the starting point for the theory of change sessions implemented. a sequence of working group and steering group workshops began with a high-level theory of change based on this information. respective groups iteratively worked to further develop the framework, in each case beginning with the purpose statement, or a high-level outcome, and then backward mapping the necessary set of preconditions. table 1 continued the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 11 figure 4 the initial high-level theory of change based on the data gathered through the appreciative inquiry sessions. figure 5 student working group meeting to contribute to the development of our theory of change. figure 6 verification of a later development of the uts social impact framework against the narratives shared by the advisory group. gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 12 figure 7 progressive development of the theory of change that resulted in the uts social impact framework. for a detailed version of the development of the framework, see: https://tinyurl.com/vn6act7 upon completion of each round of working group and steering group meetings, the advisory group reconvened to verify content and clarify questions. the emerging framework was also validated against the initial narratives gathered through the appreciative inquiry the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 13 https://tinyurl.com/vn6act7 sessions and against existing relevant research. the process progressed in this manner, cycling through working group, steering group and advisory group gatherings until, through consensus, the uts social impact framework was delivered. the resulting uts social impact framework figure 8 the uts social impact framework articulates the university’s theory of change and the outcomes needed for uts to reach its vision of being an agent for social change. for a detailed version of the framework, see http:// bit.ly/sif-uts the uts social impact framework (university of technology sydney 2017) acts as a roadmap that articulates the university’s vision, in terms of its public purpose role and its intended pathways for change. at the heart of the framework is the shared vision for uts’s role in this space. that is, uts seeks to be an agent for social change, transforming communities through research, education and practice. the desire to see uts take up this role is based on the belief that this will result in: • increased contribution to public good; • increased social mobility and equity; and • environments enabling communities to thrive. by positively influencing these three core areas, it is believed that uts will contribute to a healthy, sustainable and socially just society. the theory of change articulated in the framework essentially offers collective understanding of how this desired vision for uts can become a reality. in order for uts to be an agent for social change, six domains of change have been identified as overarching gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 14 http://bit.ly/sif-uts http://bit.ly/sif-uts outcomes that are each necessary, and together become sufficient for the purpose statement to become a reality. these are: • domain 1: students from under-represented target groups participate in, and successfully complete, a higher education degree at uts. • domain 2: students have the agency to enact personal and social responsibility. • domain 3: staff have the confidence and are supported to maximise their social impact. • domain 4: targeted research, teaching and program outcomes have social impact and actively contribute to communities. • domain 5: uts is an advocate, critical voice and thought leader on issues that concern and impact communities. • domain 6: uts business operations and strategies reflect a long-term independent commitment to social impact. though articulated as separate domains, the inherent relationship between students and staff (both academic and professional), and their impact through research, teaching and practice are recognised and demonstrated via the interlinking of domains 2, 3 and 4. in essence, these six domains offer outcomes that work together to support uts to achieve its purpose. each domain is also reliant on its own set of interrelated outcomes and interventions as prerequisites, as outlined below. domain 1: students from under-represented target groups participate in, and successfully complete, a higher education degree at uts in order for students from under-represented target groups to participate in, and successfully complete, a higher education degree at uts, they need to access uts in increasing numbers. they also need to be supported by the institution to stay at university and complete their higher education degree. accessing a higher education institution itself relies on three interrelated outcomes: relevant access schemes and pathway programs need to be in place; potential students need to have improved academic awareness and outcomes prior to entering university; and they need to have awareness of, and the confidence and motivation to, engage in higher education. enabling all three factors are the policies of key internal and external influences. the latter two outcomes relating to awareness, confidence and motivation are made achievable through teachers, schools and communities having increased capacity to support students – and through communities having the social, cultural and economic capital to enable access. domain 2: students have the agency to enact personal and social responsibility while students arrive with considerable civic capacity, uts also recognises its institutional role as an enabler in this space. the outcomes that are needed, and work together, to achieve domain 2 are: • students demonstrating competence in ethical reasoning and empathic decision making; • students engaging in critical thinking and collaborative inquiry; • students having the confidence to act; and • students working with others across difference to solve public problems. the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 15 together, these proficiencies enable students to take personal and social responsibility and positively impact the communities of which they are a part. these factors themselves rely on the following set of interrelated outcome areas: • students experiencing diverse perspectives from their home, community and social networks (including at university); • civic literacy being embedded in teaching and learning; • students being recognised and rewarded for social impact related learning and engagement; • basic and academic needs of students being met; and • teaching and learning practices being enabling, accessible and inclusive – with this outcome also acting as a contributor to domain 1. one final outcome sits alongside these factors as a necessary precondition to domain 2, as well as to other key domains of change in the framework: • transformative and generative partnerships being in place. the establishment of long-term relationships, grounded in mutual trust, will enable twoway learning opportunities that can result in deepened knowledge, improved capacity and impactful engagement in social change. this outcome is related to three other areas of the framework. as detailed in the relevant sections below, transformative and generative partnerships also contribute to domains 3 and 4. they also have a direct relationship to notions of social capital and trust – a precondition which we detail later in the article. domain 3: staff have the confidence and are supported to maximise their social impact social impact and the desire to support the positive transformation of communities are embedded in the fabric of uts. a clear demonstration of this is the contribution of uts staff. as established earlier in this article, staff work vigorously, both within and externally to their professional roles, towards social change. uts values the contribution of its staff and, through institutional strategies, processes and programs, it can further recognise and support staff to maximise and multiply their impact. four complementing necessary conditions have been identified in relation to this domain. for staff to be supported to maximise their social impact, the following outcomes need to be realised: • staff need to have the opportunity to develop their capacity to contribute to social impact (knowledge, skills and abilities); • staff need to be recognised and rewarded for their social impact; • uts organisational structures, policies and processes need to support staff contributions to social impact; and • staff need to work effectively in coordination, collaboration or partnership with others. as previously indicated, the outcome relating to transformative and generative partnerships relates to domain 3, making a direct contribution to this outcome statement. domain 4: targeted research, teaching and program outcomes have social impact and actively contribute to communities the uts social impact agenda is ambitious in scale. in addition to its focus on widening participation and its contribution to enhancing the social impact of students and staff, gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 16 the achievement of uts’s vision for change requires a whole of institution approach that brings together the efforts of the university community. to this end, a commitment to targeted research, teaching and programs that have social impact and actively contribute to communities is required. transformative and generative partnerships that are reciprocal and interdependent in nature are, again, a necessary precondition of this outcome. deeply integrated and longstanding relationships can give meaning and relevance to selected zones of focus. in addition, three other factors need to be simultaneously realised. these are: • uts staff need to be afforded academic freedom within the scope of their field of expertise or when supported by evidence. academic freedom, itself, is reliant on two factors: the uts environment encouraging creativity, radical ideas and interrogation of the status quo, and staff acting as evidence-based critics being protected from retribution; • internal and external funding and resources need to support focused practice; and • research, teaching and program practices need to be ethical. domain 5: uts is an advocate, critical voice and thought leader on issues that concern and impact communities universities act as vessels through which social, cultural and human capital flow and grow. with this comes advocacy and thought leadership responsibility. to effectively take up this role, uts needs to engage in meaningful dialogue with society. this form of exchange requires both trust and respect for academic integrity by communities – and this in turn relies on academics acting with integrity. two other outcome areas sit alongside meaningful dialogue with society in supporting advocacy and thought leadership. they are: • appropriate channels of communication need to be used to popularise ideas; and • explicit financial support or resources need to be in place for staff to work in this way. domain 6: uts business operations and strategies reflect a long-term independent commitment to social impact uts’s investment in the social impact framework reflects the organisation’s long-term commitment to the public purpose role of the institution. the critical role the organisation itself plays in bringing about social change is well recognised and acted upon in its operations. the roadmap identifies five outcomes that can work together to further enhance uts’s position in this space. they are: • uts business practices need to be ethical, responsible and sustainable; • uts must strive for exemplary workforce policies and practices; • uts must be inclusive and accessible; • recruitment and retention of staff from under-represented target groups must be exemplary; and • uts processes must be fair for staff and students. preconditions the six domains covered, and their respective prerequisites, speak to the change that is needed at uts in order for its public purpose intent to be realised. underpinning these are a number the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 17 of significant elements – articulated as preconditions – that also need consideration. the preconditions act as foundational elements that support the domains, without which change would not be possible. these are shared through the framework under two broad categories: • uts leadership and culture uts leadership and culture underpin the domains of change identified. without supportive and inclusive cross-level leadership and culture, the desired change at uts would be unattainable. in the framework, this is represented by the precondition statement: leadership and the culture at uts is inclusive and supports the public purpose role of the university. • social capital and trust social change does not happen in isolation. meaningful relationships, strengthened by mutual trust and respect, are essential preconditions to the transformational change to which uts seeks to contribute. an area of significant importance, therefore, is uts’s social capital, both within the organisation and in terms of the relationships it holds with the communities of which it is a part. relating to this is the relationships that the institution holds with its alumni and partners, who can support greater social impact by acting through, and with, uts. external influences the impact of external influences on universities is well recognised and referenced earlier in this article. the framework identifies four significant external influences that can impact progress in positive or negative ways. these are: government policies and practices; international frameworks; industry demands; and media. discussion utilising an integrated approach that weaved together appreciative inquiry and theory of change allowed uts to create a comprehensive framework that builds upon institutional knowledge and simultaneously draws upon the broader context. the participatory approach and comprehensive reach across the organisation were important aspects of the initiative as they paid respect to uts’s existing role and achievements in this space. by working alongside an engaged community, the process for developing the framework harnessed existing efforts and knowledge as foundations for driving the strategy forward. many of the factors identified through the process reiterate notions expressed in wellestablished research. the significance of reward and recognition (o’meara 2012), the need to find an alignment with social inclusion strategies and recruitment, the need to work across disciplines for the purpose of solving public challenges, and the need to share this information beyond academic publications (hoyt & hollister 2014) are just a few examples. the proposed framework builds on these understandings by unifying the elements under a single and expanded umbrella. in doing so, it brings potential new considerations to how these aspects interrelate and are understood. this notion can be demonstrated through an examination of the broader debate around the scholarship of engagement, where the act of engagement itself often takes a central position. although the contribution of engaged scholarship to society is well understood, the enabling factors and barriers are often presented as separate cases and debated in isolation. they can gusheh, firth, netherton, pettigrew gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 18 even lack the link through to the impact of engagement or the desired change that results from engaged scholarship. in comparison, the uts social impact framework begins with the institutional purpose and impact statements. this shift in focus reformulates the interrelationship between many of the previously identified factors, repositioning them as a set of connected and related outcomes that directly contribute to the institution’s social change agenda. transformative and generative partnerships and engaged practice therefore sit alongside reward and recognition – for both academic and professional staff – as critical and necessary systemic preconditions that enable broader social change. for uts, the development of the framework has resulted in a system response that brings strategic connection to diverse efforts from across the university. the interconnection supports effectiveness and enables the organisation to identify new strategic interventions that can step it closer to where it needs to be. the influence of the uts social impact framework on institutional direction and action is already evident. public purpose and social impact are central to the new uts 2027 strategy (university of technology sydney 2018a), with the framework being adopted as the evaluative tool that supports the organisation to evidence its impact and move towards its purpose. a significant demonstration of the institution’s commitment to this space is its investment in the centre for social justice and inclusion as the body responsible for driving delivery of the framework and strengthening social impact across the institution. the presence of the centre has itself led to the emergence of cross-institution interventions, including a university-wide mapping project that hopes to enhance understanding of the organisation’s social impact efforts and create new links across teaching, research and practice. some examples of new areas of work across the domains that have emerged following the development of the framework include: • domain 1: students from under-represented target groups participate in, and successfully complete, a higher education degree at uts: new widening participation strategy that challenges traditional notions of practice with the intention of significantly increasing under-represented target groups. • domain 2: students have the agency to enact personal and social responsibility: an expansion of the university’s soul leadership program to include ethical leadership training. • domain 3: staff have the confidence and are supported to maximise their social impact: evaluation capability building offered to staff in order to support enhanced understanding and demonstration of social impact. • domain 4: targeted research, teaching and program outcomes have social impact and actively contribute to communities: new social impact practice and research grants to support engaged scholarship. • domain 5: uts is an advocate, critical voice and thought leader on issues that concern and impact communities: the official signing of the climate emergency declaration by the university and the institutional support that enabled collective action in the lead-up to and during the climate change strike. • domain 6: uts business operations and strategies reflecting a long-term independent commitment to social impact: the social impact framework placed at the heart of uts 2027 strategy. the creation of the uts social impact framework: a collaborative approach for transformational change gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 19 aside from providing strategic organisational direction that informs practice, developing a whole-of-university response also enables the university to negotiate its relationship with external influences in a strategic and empowered manner. in the case of social impact or engagement rankings, for example, the university may very well choose to engage in order to benchmark its data or better understand its position in the context of a global sector. concerns of reductionism can be countered by the depth and breadth of the university’s framework. utilising a systems approach ensures that externally driven factors, and the more readily measurable preconditions and outcomes, do not silence their equally relevant social impact counterparts. in other cases, the framework may challenge the validity of external measures and give the university the power to disengage. in essence, the framework ensures a holistic and intentional response, and enables the institution to advocate for the public purpose role of higher education in its most comprehensive form. concluding comments although the participatory nature of the methodology utilised in the development of the framework makes it contextually relevant to uts, application of the framework and adoption of the mechanism by which it was developed may bring real potential value to the broader sector. testing the relevance of the process, the set of outcomes and the language adopted in the framework against those of a broad range of urban and regional institutions, both locally and internationally, offers rich research opportunities. the uts social impact framework is still in its infancy. whether the framework succeeds in driving ‘institutional attentiveness’ (strum et al. 2011, p. 6) to a shared set of social impact goals remains to be seen. the framework, as an outcome in itself, acts as a guide to inform uts strategies, policies and practices, and underpins evaluation processes. it offers the pathways to change and gives the institution the evidence-based underpinnings that can support advocacy for a holistic and strategic response to the public purpose role of universities. the participatory and strengths-based methodology used in creating the framework has provided a strong foundation. the journey ahead, however, remains uncharted and will bring with it significant challenges. the internal and external drivers that compete for attention are themselves historic and deeply entrenched. in the face of such challenges, sustaining, and growing, the institutional culture and interconnecting the pockets of excellence that have informed the work to date will remain critical. continued research, alongside implementation, will allow this work to gain and share knowledge in the hope that the framework maintains its focus towards enhanced impact. references adams, c 2018, ‘debate: integrated reporting and accounting for sustainable development across generations by universities’, public money & management, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 332–34. https://doi.org/10.10 80/09540962.2018.1477580 beaulieu, m, breton, m & brousselle, a 2018, ‘conceptualizing 20 years of engaged scholarship: a scoping review’, plos one, vol. 13, no. 2, p. e0193201. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193201 beere, c, votruba, j & wells, g 2011, becoming an engaged campus: a practical guide for institutionalizing public engagement, 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https://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/who-we-are/talloires-network-members/ http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/social-justice-uts/social-impact-framework http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/social-justice-uts/social-impact-framework http://www.uts.edu.au/about/uts-2027-strategy/delivering-positive-social-change http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2018/11/universities-join-carnegie-community-engagement-classification http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2018/11/universities-join-carnegie-community-engagement-classification gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: nkula-wenz, l., sitas, r. brown-luthango, m. 2022. urban youth – engaging young people and their futures in african cities. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–10. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 guest editorial urban youth – engaging young people and their futures in african cities laura nkula-wenz1,2,*, rike sitas1, mercy brown-luthango1 1 african centre for cities, university of cape town 2 urban studies, university of basel corresponding author: laura nkula-wenz, laura.nkula@uct.ac.za doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8487 article history: received 10/11/2022; revised 11/12/2022; accepted 11/12/2022; published 12/2022. abstract the twin reality of africa as the world’s demographically youngest and most rapidly urbanising continent should, by default, make it a hotspot for youth-centred urban research. and yet, the voices of young africans remain grossly absent in public discourse, policy debates and mainstream research on issues that directly affect them. this lacuna propelled the conceptualisation of this themed volume, entitled urban youth – engaging young people and their futures in african cities. showcasing submissions that not only push the envelope in terms of conceptual debates but also reflect in unconventional ways on experimental methods of co-production, this volume contributes to contemporary youth scholarship in three ways: firstly, by bringing together empirically rich, theoretically profound and collaborative scholarship from africa; secondly, by showcasing cities in general and african cities in particular as productive, epistemological and relevant sociopolitical settings; and thirdly, by highlighting the importance of collaborative, multimodal research with youth that takes seriously their agency, aspirations and lived experiences, as much as the everyday structural challenges they face. to situate the volume, we first look briefly at common representations of young people, and particularly young africans, within global media and policy discourses. to outline the broader knowledge project this volume connects to, we then discuss a few basic epistemological overlaps between the emerging fields of global south youth studies and southern urbanism. introducing the rich array of creative, rigorous, experimental and propositional practices and researchbased contributions that make up this themed volume constitutes the heart of this editorial. in conclusion, we argue that to secure our common urban future, it is pivotal declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding laura nkula-wenz's work on this volume was financially supported by the swiss national science foundation. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:laura.nkula@uct.ac.za https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8487 to centre the voices of africa’s youth. for this, creative multimedia approaches to knowledge coproduction and representation will be needed, as will robust, multimodal afro-centric partnerships. keywords urban futures; southern urbanism; african cities; engaged scholarship; co-production introduction ek sal dit nooit gebelieve het  die epidemic was lank al predicted  ons was te worried oor facebook en mxit  en nou moet jy gan vir ‘n toets as jy siek is  hulle se jy moet releks en…  terwyl jy wag oor die next plan  die virus mutate soos ‘n x-man  i would have never believed it the epidemic has long been predicted we were too worried about facebook and mxit and now you have to go for test when you’re sick they say you must relax and … while you wait over the next plan the virus mutates like an x-man fortuin cited in mazetti et al. (this volume, p. 9) “new voices must be heard, there must be much more space to have these conversations”, youth participant, cited in sitas et al. (this volume, p. 14) contradiction, hyperbole and paradox persistently shape perceptions of today’s youth: young people are cast as the pinnacle of hope, as our global social, environmental and political consciousness tasked with somehow squaring the circle between socio-economic progress, planetary sustainability and socio-cultural wellbeing. and yet, they are often unseen and unheard; remaining systematically excluded from decisionmaking, either because they are belittled as mere recipients of adult care, infantilised as ‘empty vessels’ (fuh 2012) not (yet) fully capable to comprehend the consequences of their actions; or because they increasingly disengage in conventional socio-political structures, fueling the stubborn myth of political ‘youth apathy’ (cammaerts et al. 2014; malila 2015; mattes 2012) . this themed volume, urban youth: engaging young people and their futures in african cities, emerged from our shared interest in understanding how youth are actively shaping urban life across the continent. as applied and action-oriented researchers, based at the african centre for cities at the university of cape town, we were keen to invite submissions that not only contributed conceptually, but also pushed the envelope with regard to what it means to research with rather than just on behalf of youth. moreover, that the majority of articles included in this themed volume have been co-authored by collectives of two or more people illustrates the benefit of sustaining diverse knowledge partnerships beyond the data collection phase, to also inform collaborative modes of analysis and writing. we are thus pleased to present an exciting array of research and practice-based articles that are putting the voices of africa’s urban youth centre stage. ‘we’ are laura nkula-wenz, an urban geographer working nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 on the nexus of urban governance, cultural production, engaged pedagogy and critical urbanism (cupers et al. 2022; nkula-wenz 2018), rike sitas, a researcher on the humanities side of the social sciences interested in the role of youth, culture, technology and artful methods of urban enquiry (sitas 2020), and mercy brown-luthango, a researcher interested in issues of socio-spatial justice and inclusion in the city, with a focus on youth and marginalised communities (brown-luthango 2019). to situate this themed volume, we start by looking at how africa’s youth is commonly viewed and talked about in global media and policy discourses. we then go on to highlight how this volume straddles the shared epistemological space between the emerging fields of global south youth studies (swartz et al. 2021) and southern urbanism (parida & agrawal 2022; pieterse & simone 2014). following a brief discussion of why co-production matters in collaborative research processes, particularly when it comes to engaging africa’s young people, we introduce the individual articles included in this volume. we conclude by arguing that engaging young urban africans in research processes can reveal how they develop aspirations and exercise profound agency in adversity, indicating how centring youth voices is pivotal to securing a common global urban future. engaging (from) a youthful continent with a median age of 20, and 60 percent of the population under the age of 25, africa is considered the world’s youngest continent (el quassif, 11 march 2021). the consequences of this ‘youth bulge’ have been discussed in a rather polarised fashion: on the one hand, young people and, in particular, young men are viewed as a danger to society, ‘as both troubled and trouble’ (fuh 2012). notwithstanding the reality that youth have, of course, been central in creatively and vociferously demanding political change across the continent, from tunisia’s ‘jasmin revolution’ igniting the arab spring to nigeria’s #endsars campaign against police brutality, this ‘trouble(d) youth’ narrative frequently reduces young people to mere spectres of protest, violence and mass migration. on the other side of the spectrum, young africans are hailed as an untapped reservoir of cheap labour and consumer power that can prop up both ‘africapitalist’ futures (ouma 2019) and more established international marketplaces that have to contend with their rapidly ageing populations. these bifurcating perspectives see african youth as either merely instrumental cogs in the wheel of economic growth, or as grit in the clockwork of staid political systems. this ignores the reality that young people across the continent are savvy and connected. they wield social, cultural, economic and political agency, and are exercising their influence in new and ever-surprising ways that we have yet to fully grasp (honwana & boeck 2005; cuervo & miranda 2019). the category of ‘youth’ is a broad and unwieldy one and can include someone anywhere between the age of 14 and 35, depending on where you are. it is therefore disingenuous to even claim the category as homogenous or universally applicable. yet, the un population fund has aptly noted: ‘how we meet the needs and aspirations of young people will define our common future’ (kollodge & das gupta 2014). while there is nothing to disagree with in this statement, it implies that we already accurately know the needs and aspirations of young people today and can make decisions on behalf of youth, based on this knowledge. in fact, though, we know considerably less about young people – what motivates them, the challenges they face and how they perceive the world – than is frequently assumed in global policy programs and actions. this imbalance between assumptions and actual understanding is further skewed when considering africa’s youth and how their lives are shaped by cultural, environmental, psycho-social, political, economic and spatial factors that are marked to a far greater extent by poverty, unemployment and precarity than those of their euro-american peers (banks 2015). filling these knowledge gaps is what propels the thriving interdisciplinary field of youth studies (cuervo & miranda 2019), whether in its more psychologically oriented form that focuses on individual adolescent development, or in its more critical form, which grapples with more systemic questions of youth marginalisation and social justice (macdonald & king 2021). particularly in its more critical rendering, youth studies present a platform for questioning ‘the dominant social constructions of youth’ that can nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 ‘reveal the motives and strategies of the powerful’ (macdonald & king 2021, p. 288). recently, this critical line of inquiry has also been expanded by using approaches of ‘southern theory’ to problematise the way in which youth studies ‘often assume universal generalizability, despite rarely making the global south, or its youthful populations, ontologies, values and politics the focus of research’ (cooper et al. 2019). beyond being a mere empirical lacuna, understanding young people in the global south also presents an urgent political-epistemic project, one that has been powerfully spelled out in recent publications such as youth, inequality and social change in the global south (2019) and the oxford handbook of global south youth studies (2021). as part of this nuanced debate, it has been aptly noted that ‘the south’ is not a predefined cardinal direction or fixed geographic location. rather, it is, first, a research-political stance that seeks to destabilise the ways in which social theory is being developed in and from non-western locations, reorienting modes and places of theory production. and second, it is a relational ontological category that can include ‘those everywhere, whose livelihoods have been made precarious by geohistorical processes of colonialism and globalizing capitalism’ (leitner et al. 2008), echoing de sousa santos’s (2014) articulation of the global south as ‘that large set of creations and creatures that has been sacrificed to the infinite voracity of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy’. as swartz et al. (2021) point out, pursuing youth studies ‘for’ the global south does not mean to outrightly dismiss all scholarship that has been formulated based on the experiences of youth in western europe or north america. in fact, they acknowledge the contribution of this scholarship as ‘invaluable’, yet note that many of their contextual and material assumptions are at odds with the lived realities of young people in africa, latin america and some asian countries (cooper et al. 2019). moreover, theorising from and for the south does not just mean challenging erroneous assumptions of universality by pointing to local differences. rather, and more ambitiously, it shows how experiences, tactics and strategies of young people in the global south – including how they contend with the intergenerational trauma of colonialism and structural violence, and adapt to high levels of precarity, political disenfranchisement and increasing environmental risks to name but a few – can contribute to imagining alternative futures in different locations, including western europe and north america (ibid.). in other words, the aim of adopting a southern lens in social science scholarship is not to exclude and ostracise, but rather to include and take seriously different ways of knowing and being in the world. and this world is an increasingly urban one. not only is africa home to the world’s most youthful societies, but the continent is also leading the charge in terms of having the most rapidly growing cities worldwide (kopp 13, august 2021). in other words, the present and future of africa’s cities are inherently linked to that of its young people, and vice versa. in his rich ethnographic study of youngmen (sic!) in cameroon, fuh (2021) aptly describes african urban youth as ‘fixers’, i.e. agents of positive social change who shape the realities, institutions and structures of living in the city, as ‘urban innovators and accomplished social veterans’. how african urban youth are forging a future for themselves and the planet in the interstices of the city has also been recently shown by kimari (2022), who has studied youth-led greening movements across nairobi’s ‘slum’ settlements. debunking the myth of youths’ alleged political apathy, she stresses: ‘[t]hese actions are not informed by an apolitical environmentalism, an aesthetic preoccupation with green devoid of intersectionality. rather, this “outlaw” greening is invested with a radical desire to change socio-ecological and material conditions and to question the very logics that consider these areas unworthy of nature and basic rights.’ yet, with all this transformative energy on display, it remains important to flag how african cities remain places where young people’s dreams are routinely deferred, and their aspirations exploited (adeniyi-ogunyankin 2022). fundamental to our interest in africa’s urban-youth nexus, and underpinning our editorial approach, is the desire to show what engaged scholarship with youth can look like, while not shying away from also leaning into the various challenges and limitations of this co-production of knowledge and practice. co-production is, of course, a much debated concept within disciplines such as planning (galuszka 2019), nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 organisational management and the social sciences more broadly (brown-luthango & arendse 2022; culwick et al. 2019; durose et al. 2022; simon et al. 2020). whilst there are many definitions and forms of co-production, here we think of co-production as a process which involves multiple actors that contribute their unique resources, knowledges and skills to the production of knowledge that is context-specific, context-sensitive and mutually beneficial. though we recognise that structural power differentials, such as the uneven distribution of financial and social capital, affect co-production processes, rendering them not always truly equal, we contend that co-production can still contribute to a process in which a communitybased partner, such as a youth group, can influence the direction and focus of the collaboration to meet their specific needs at a particular time. over the course of the collaboration, this can result in mutual learning, shared reflection and, in some instances, can even inform a redistributive politics. in summary, recognising both the relevance and urgency of understanding the challenges, needs, dreams and aspirations of young people as a vital precondition for our ability to imagine and ultimately create alternative planetary futures, this themed volume contributes to contemporary youth scholarship in three distinct ways: firstly, by providing context-sensitive, empirically rich and theoretically profound insights from different african locales, which remain underrepresented in global scholarship; secondly, by affirming the urban as a productive empirical, practical and epistemological space for engaging youth and their variegated lived experiences; and thirdly, by advancing the methodological discussion of how we produce and make sense of our data in a way that takes seriously the lived realities, concerns and aspirations of africa’s young people. hence, contributions to this themed volume are not merely interested in youth as research subjects but rather – in line with gateways’ focus on engaged scholarship – in how we can deploy different methodological approaches of collaboration and co-production to research with youth. we are thus delighted to introduce the rich mix of research and practice-based contributions that make up this volume. co-production in action: collaboration and pivoting towards youth-oriented urban research when it comes to understanding how young people experience and drive social change today, one of the most popular and complex thematic has been the question of how they navigate what alcinda honwana has called ‘waithood’, i.e. the ‘prolonged, difficult, and dynamic transition into adult life’ (honwana 2019). several articles in this themed volume take a thorough empirical look at how young people experience being stuck, suspended in a perpetual state of waiting, but also what they do ‘in the meantime’ and how they exercise agency against the odds. for example, in their comparative study of ethiopian and south african youth, rubin et al. (this volume, p. 4) demonstrate that ‘waithood is not an absolute state’ and that young people’s experiences of being stuck in structurally untenable situations are interspersed with moments of movement. in other words, young people do not ‘just wait’ passively but are consistently making moves to counter stasis, ‘hustling’ to piece together a livelihood that can generate both financial independence and a sense of personal fulfilment. in deploying a cornucopia of engaged research methods – from the co-production of research instruments via life history interviews to media training – the project generated rich information on the different dimensions of youth’s agency and struggles. unintentionally from the side of the authors, and without discounting the larger structural dynamics that continue to marginalise youth in both places, joining the project, in itself, became a way for some of the young people to use the skills and relationships forged through the research to come unstuck and realise moments of personal incremental progress. recognising the ability of africa’s young people to be nimble and maintain a ‘capacity to aspire’ (appadurai 2013) amidst the many structural challenges they face is also the main focus of brownluthango and van rooyen’s contribution to this volume. using narrative photo-voice as a methodology to research with youth from resource-poor neighbourhoods across cape town, the authors provide a rich nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 meditation on what it means to – in the words of one of their participants – ‘own your freedom’. while youth across the continent arguably wrestle with their individual and collective (in)capacity to realise different dimensions of freedom in their daily lives, the authors show how south africa’s young people have to contend with a distinct additional layer of societal expectations based on their country’s recent history. referred to in public discourse as the ‘born free’ generation, those born after the end of the apartheid regime in 1994, are commonly expected to reap the benefits afforded to them by the advent of democracy. however, as brown-luthango and van rooyen show, young people of this generation do not necessarily feel free and grapple with the extent of their agency and their ability to make good choices in the face of persistent social, economic and spatial inequality. despite an acute awareness of the numerous structural challenges which impact their experience of different kinds of freedom on a daily basis, the youth find different means to construct hope for a better future for themselves and their communities. these perpetual moments of waiting and the truncated sense of agency that often corresponds with it does, however, not mean that young people are apathetic and despondent. it is quite the opposite, as the remaining contributions to this themed volume illustrate. for example, in her incisive ethnographic study of youth activism in lephalale, a small town in south africa’s limpopo province that is home to one of the country’s largest coal-fired power stations, luckett challenges the reductionist view of young people as individualistic, apolitical consumer citizens. her work highlights how young people negotiate the paradoxical politics of securing local urban development and employment opportunities, while asserting their constitutionally established rights to a healthy, clean and safe environment. using both invited spaces, such as community forums with local politicians and fossil fuel companies, as well as invented spaces like protests, public radio shows and door-to-door campaigns, she traces how local youth activists deploy a variety of different tactics to challenge authority and reimagine a future beyond coal extractivism. methodologically, luckett’s article also elucidates that activist research about youth, when conducted with an ethics of care and in the spirit of ‘slow scholarship’, can in fact lay a solid foundation for collaborative future research with youth. sitas et al.’s practice-based intervention also illuminates the contradiction that climate politics rarely consider the voices and visions of young people, though it is them who are already bearing and will continue to bear the brunt of the accelerating global climate crisis. reflecting on an arts-based participatory action research (par) process crafted around the challenge of plastic pollution in the coastal areas of cape town, their article centres the voices of their young collaborators to unpack the opportunities and challenges of co-developing knowledge for enhancing climate literacy that is both academically and politically rigorous. their responses provoke us to grapple with a central conundrum any future exercise in a southern context must face: ‘how can one begin to reimagine futures when basic physical needs are not being met?’ thus, the authors show that it is imperative for engaged research to meet young people where they are at, and that collective art-making can be an effective tool for enroling young people in the co-production of knowledge and climate action. sitas et al.’s difficulties in realising their final participatory mural also attests to the increasing difficulties faced by young people who seek to use physical public spaces to assert their rights and claim their citizenship.  given the prominence of central locations, such as cairo’s tahir square, in recent political uprisings, coupled with the urge to conjure the image of a ‘world class’ city, there has been a strong tendency in many african municipalities to increase surveillance and public order policing. while civic engagement in physical public spaces had already been seriously curtailed, the extensive lockdowns during the covid-19 pandemic further diminished any possibility for public gatherings. sharing experiences from #slam4urlife, an arts-based social media competition carried out in south africa in mid-2020, mazetti et al. argue that digital public spaces can act as alternative platforms for young people to be heard and seen (as well as see and hear each other), particularly in cases where this is made physically impossible. beyond providing a virtual platform for young south africans to creatively process their complex feelings during the early nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 onset of a life altering global pandemic, the competition also created a context-sensitive digital archive of everyday pandemic realities in south africa, as viewed through the eyes of its young people. from a research-tactical point of view, the article also attested to the agility of established community-governmentuniversity partnerships that know and can play to each other’s strength in times of great uncertainty to spot an opening for innovative and timeous community engagement. like mazetti et al., the contribution of mccole et al. shows that the strategic resourcing of african partner institutions and the involvement of local academics as research leaders – rather than junior partners or mere enumerators, as is still too often the case in many north-south research programs – is a pivotal precondition for realising genuinely engaged scholarship. through hosting sports camps with community partners in gaborone (botswana), dar es salaam (tanzania) and accra (ghana), the multi-institutional research partnership, which included international and local university partners, as well as schools and other community partners, sought to show young people’s interest in sports can be leveraged to encourage interest in entrepreneurship. the work of mccole et al. also points to a key idea that resonates across this volume: that engaged scholarship is not about ‘capacitating’ youth, but rather about recognising the abundance of capacity that already exists. asking, in other words: how do we engage with what is already here? the multimedia intervention by chloé buire gives us a creative and candid response to this question. taking us along on a journey of collaborative film-making with young angolans in the capital of luanda during a critical time of political transition from the autocratic dos santos regime, her ‘histórias do kakwaku’ lay bare the nuts and bolts of this politically, logistically and personally intricate process. in doing this, she complicates the simple assumption of documentary film-making as a ubiquitously democratising process, showing both the moments where the collaboration was and was not able to live up to this ideal, and why. moreover, buire (this volume, p. 13) does not shy away from sharing how many of her own initial assumptions about her young collaborators – e.g. ‘that because they were part of one particular youth political movement, they were automatically friends and somehow all thought alike’ – were thoroughly debunked. ultimately, this level of honesty and process orientation, she argues, opens up new ‘spaces of intersubjectivity’, i.e. moments of engagement that blur the line between researcher and participant and allow everyone to ‘see together’ (buire, this volume, p. 15). agency, aspiration and action-oriented youth scholarship in and from africa in conceptualising, curating and editing this themed volume, we pursued three interconnected goals: (1) to bring together empirically rich, theoretically profound and collaborative scholarship from africa that (2) showcases its cities as productive epistemological and relevant socio-political settings for (3) collaborative research with youth that takes seriously their diverse constraints, aspirations and lived experiences. to conclude this editorial, we wish to share three observations that cut across the different contributions and that we believe are key to consider for future action-oriented youth scholarship in and from africa. firstly, much of the literature on african youth has been preoccupied with identifying different dimensions of waithood (e.g. stuckness, suspension, dreams deferred), its causes and effects. while several of this volume’s articles show how various states of waiting remain an empirical reality for young people across the continent, they also problematise a singular focus on waithood as inadequate for understanding the complexities of how young people exercise their agency in adverse urban conditions. in other words, as much as we need to remain attentive to and explicit about how young people continue to be marginalised and excluded, we also need to find ways to recognise the many dynamic, aspirational and imaginative ways in which young people act and improvise ‘in the meantime’. secondly, and closely connected to the first point, how to capture and represent the full spectrum of young africans’ lived experiences remains a productive challenge for engaged urban youth scholarship. here, nkula-wenz, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 the majority of contributions aptly demonstrated the value of mixed multi-media approaches, including digital platforms, social media tools, film and photography for both carrying out the respective research project and representing its findings. while deploying an array of multi-media methods has proven prolific for many of this volume’s authors, be it in terms of drawing young people into the research, co-producing data or creating space for collective sense-making, many articles also wrestled with how to accurately share their empirical evidence and account for its depth and rigour. here, the ability to leverage gateways’ flexible, open-access journal format, which accepts both practice and research-based contributions, allowed us to showcase a number of deeply experimental, creative and captivating articles, whose representational registers stretch the boundaries of conventional academic publishing. thirdly, all articles in this themed volume underscore an obvious, yet salient point: in order to tackle pressing global issues, such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis, lack of gainful employment, or deepening levels of social, spatial and economic inequality, we need to centre the voices of those who will be most affected by long-term decision-making. this focus has to squarely include young people in african cities who are already bearing the brunt of these problems, but who have rarely been heard and seen at the centre of debates to address them. as this themed volume demonstrates, putting engaged youth scholarship into practice requires multimodal and afro-centric partnerships between universities, civil society organisations, schools, communities and, not least, young people themselves. yet, as many of the contributions attest to, building and maintaining these relationships takes time, resources, activism, tenacity and sustained commitment. it also comes with a set of critical concerns around, for example, power and resource imbalances, social responsibilities and research ethics, which need to be acknowledged and continuously grappled with. overall, however, we believe that this volume shows that action-oriented research with rather than on behalf of african urban youth is a matter of both epistemological justice and practical necessity if we are to collectively imagine inclusive urban futures on the continent and beyond. acknowledgments as guest editors of this themed volume, we are first and foremost profoundly grateful to all the authors who have trusted us with the publication of their important work. thank you for your enthusiasm, responsiveness and tenacity throughout the year. we also want to thank margaret malone, paul ashton and the other members of the gateways editorial committee for their continued support in bringing this volume to fruition and giving us such a wonderful platform to showcase an innovative and unconventional array of contributions. here, we want to especially acknowledge margaret malone for her diligence, patience and unwavering commitment to getting this volume across the finish line. it is in no small part thanks to her tireless efforts that we have been able to draw on a fantastic pool of high-quality reviewers, made up of equal parts global north and global south-based scholars, whose exceptionally detailed and encouraging feedback has been greatly appreciated.  this paper has been updated to acknowledge that the corresponding author was financially supported by the swiss national science foundation. references adeniyi-ogunyankin, g 2022, city of the future: lagos and the afropolitan imagineering project of owambe urbanism, international journal for urban and regional research, spotlight on. https://www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/ african-futures/city-of-the-future-lagos-and-the-afropolitan-imagineering-project-of-owambe-urbanism/ (accessed 12/6/2022). appadurai, a 2013, the 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concentrating on shared value creation in recent decades, partnerships between community-based organisations and universities through service-learning programs have proliferated, with service learning increasingly recognised as a ‘work integrated’ way of learning with enormous benefit; not only for students – producing ‘work-ready’ graduates with an understanding of socially responsible professional practice – but as a means of addressing complex issues, and building bridges between university, community, student and faculty expertise. it is a recognition of the shared value of learning, teaching and knowledge in context – that is, ‘useful, usable and used’. uts shopfront community program (shopfront) is a dedicated unit that has operated for over 20 years at the university of technology sydney, australia. as the longest running crossfaculty community-engagement program (cep) at an australian university, today it offers the following services: brokering community-based projects and curricular internships with finalyear or postgraduate students; recruiting students from any stage of their degree for skilled or unskilled volunteering activity through an extracurricular, community leadership ‘award’ program; brokering expert volunteering of university staff based on community need; and supporting and publishing academic research with a social purpose. this article examines the longest running component of the services offered: community-based projects undertaken under academic supervision as part of disciplinary coursework by finalyear or postgraduate students with local small to medium (sme) non-profit organisations. although this activity has been running for 20 years – leading to the completion of more than 1000 pro bono community projects – the analysis will focus on evaluation data collected over 10 years, from 2006 to 2016. before exploring in detail the processes and stages of the service-learning model, a review of the literature provides some guidance to those aspects that underpin best-practice service learning. data analysis sheds light on the value that this program creates for community clients lisa andersen university of technology sydney © 2017 by l andersen. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: andersen, l 2017, ‘useful, usable and used: sustaining an australian model of cross-faculty service learning by concentrating on shared value creation’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 58–77. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5574 corresponding author: l andersen; lisa.andersen@uts.edu.au doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i0.5574 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5574 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i0.5574 59 | gateways | andersen and students, while also highlighting difficulties. the article concludes with some thoughts on key characteristics essential to best-practice service learning, as well as challenges and next steps. literature review in recent decades, partnerships between community-based organisations and universities have proliferated, with an increasing number of higher education institutions arguing that community engagement should be understood not as an addon but a core part of higher education’s mission (holland 2006): a third pillar of equal importance to research and teaching. certainly, recent research in the us reveals that higher education institutions have implemented a wide variety of programs for ‘curricular and co-curricular student engagement’ (campus compact 2015), as universities strive to offer their staff and students an enriched research and learning environment while fulfilling their civic obligations (benson, harkavy & puckett 2000). one of the most widely implemented models is service learning, which, as its name suggests, links a service experience with a civil society organisation with specific curricular outcomes. there is a substantial body of research demonstrating the benefits of service-learning programs to students, including: the development of critical thinking skills; improved communication skills and self-knowledge; greater civic engagement and political awareness; improved technical and analytical skills; and strengthened ability to work collaboratively (bringle & hatcher 2002; buys & bursnall 2007; egeru 2016; jacoby 2009; schamber & mahoney 2008; steinberg, hatcher & bringle 2011). for universities, service-learning engagement models create advantages in the form of ‘increased legitimacy’ (boyle 2007) and enhanced community relations (eyler et al. 2001). these models can also be a response to the increasing criticism that higher education promotes learning that is disconnected from practice, which leads to the compartmentalisation of knowledge by discipline, fails to prepare students for work in highly complex environments (dallimore & souza 2002) and lacks connection to students’ personal lives, public issues and the wider community (dumas 2002; godfrey, illes & berry 2005; khurana 2010; papamarcos 2005). less often explored, however, is the benefit to community organisations (lester et al. 2005; grossman 2002). in 1998, giles and eyler argued that understanding community impacts of service learning was one of the top 10 unanswered questions in service-learning research; more recent research would seem to suggest this remains an issue (see, for example, blouin & perry 2009; eyler et al. 2001; stoecker & tryon 2009; stoecker 2009). bortolin (2011) posits this knowledge gap is due to a general privileging of the university over the community in these types of partnerships, while stoecker and tryon (2009, p. 3) suggest the imbalance might stem from service learning’s early focus on 60 | gateways | andersen ‘illuminat[ing] college students about the real world’. they call attention to the need to ‘transform service learning into a practice that serves communities’, stating that the ‘hallmark of an evolved view of higher learning is the willingness to look at issues from different angles with an open mind and change course where appropriate to ensure the sustainability of the practice’ (stoecker & tryon 2009, pp. xv, 5). others have echoed the call for active and respectful inclusion of community voices as essential for truly ‘transformational learning’ (sandy & holland 2006). indeed, in their definition of service learning, campus compact squarely focuses on what they see as the ‘novel and provocative’ goal of service learning: ‘[the] development of civically minded students who possess analytical problem solving abilities and self-identify as community change agents as a direct consequence of their community-based learning experiences’. in acknowledgement of this gap in knowledge, increasingly efforts are being made to more respectfully listen and learn from community partners. sandy and holland (2006, p. 31), in their research on 99 experienced community partners, began by asking, ‘what do we know, versus what do we assume to know about these “other worlds” with whom we are entwined in the work of service-learning?’ in their us-based research, stoecker and tryon (2009) found three main reasons for community participation in service learning: to serve as a centre for student learning; to develop future support for their group or their work; and to forge or strengthen relationships with universities. students are also the greatest source of immediate and tangible benefits: student labour frees up staff time and increases organisational capacity for new projects; students’ ideas and energy bring fresh perspectives; student commitment to quality outcomes can inspire staff to reflect on their own work; students can introduce (and build confidence to use) new technology. (cronley, madden & davis 2015; gazley, littlepage & bennett 2012; gerstenblatt 2014). if the benefits for community organisations can be real and tangible, so too can the risk (gray et al. 2000). difficulties can stem from students’ unreliability, lack of professionalism, poor work ethic, lack of preparedness and awareness regarding the community organisation’s mission and population they work with. community organisations have also noted the disproportionate burden they bear to train and support students, draining their resources and time. sandy and holland (2006), among others, note the potentially serious repercussions for community organisations that can result from some of these issues, ranging from staff disruptions, harm caused to vulnerable individuals, and negative impacts on the organisation’s ability to do its work (see also blouin & perry 2009). the literature notes time and again that a fundamental aspect of successful service learning is the quality and nature of the relationships that underpin it. blouin and perry (2009) state that service learning, when done well, emphasises ‘shared power 61 | gateways | andersen and shared control’, involving ‘partners rather than subjects or recipients’ (p. 131); godfrey, illes and berry (2005) note the crucial importance of ‘reciprocity’, where community organisations work as partners with students and each party contributes knowledge and learns from each other; while dorado and giles (2004) highlight the importance of developing committed relationships as a means to ensure long-term viability – and many others concur (see also bringle & hatcher 2002; kenworthy-u’ren 2008; kenworthy-u’ren & peterson 2005). this article hopes to shed some light on how the above ideals of mutuality and respect can be realised by presenting in detail a service-learning program in an australian city, developed over 20 years in one institution, involving multiple faculties and a wide range of local community organisations. it is also hoped that by describing the model, accompanied by an analysis of data from 2006 to 2016, this article will contribute to answering a persistent critique of service-learning research, which is that, even as it attempts to include community voices and perspectives, it struggles to reflect the variety of service-learning activities, disciplines involved, and the range of community partners participating (blouin & perry 2009, p. 123). the program: concentrating on shared-value creation the service-learning activity reported hereon is a university-wide program where final-year or postgraduate students undertake pro bono disciplinary-based projects as part of their coursework and under academic supervision. projects are initiated by sme local non-profit organisations in response to their own needs. the university has around 44 500 enrolments in undergraduate and postgraduate coursework and research degrees in the disciplinary fields of analytics and data science; business; communication; design, architecture and building; education, engineering; health (not including medicine); information technology; international studies; law; and science. the analysis covers the period from 2006 to 2016: figure 1 shows a distribution of projects across the community sector by social mission, and figure 2 shows a breakdown of project type by discipline. from the outset and to this day, projects are undertaken in response to community need. this is an important distinction to make, as it distinguishes this service learning from professional practicums or internships. in those programs, periods of guided workplace-learning experiences with working professionals are built into degrees such as medicine and health, social work and teaching. they are typically mandatory for entire course cohorts, and external partners are likely to see ‘serving as a centre for student learning’ (stoecker & tryon 2009) as part of their ongoing mission. instead, in this model, community groups, as the initiators of projects, are viewed by both the shopfront and the clients themselves as partners, not ‘subjects or recipients’, 62 | gateways | andersen or mentors or ‘co-teachers’ required to provide professional disciplinary guidance. as one community partner commented, ‘primarily we were relying on the advanced skills of the students and their teacher to bring it all together.’ this orientation has an impact on the aims of the service learning, too, in that a key objective of the program is to support sustainability in community partners through delivering discrete projects based on their own self-identified need and internal lack of skills and resources to otherwise undertake the project. students are not directly engaged learning ‘at the counter’ of professional service delivery, but instead create value by applying ‘faculty expertise’ (calleson, jordan & seifer, 2005, p. 318). that is, students are akin to external ‘consultants’ working in response to a specific project brief, providing coverage across organisational capability gaps. as shown in figure 2, above, the common organisational skills/capability gaps in the local sme non-profit sector where they seek support through student coursework projects include figure 1: projects by sector, 2006–2016 figure 2: community project by discipline, 2006–2106 63 | gateways | andersen design, research, communications, business planning, financial management, governance and in the development of new technological infrastructure. following is a detailed breakdown of the process and key elements of the service-learning program as it is now, after 20 years’ practice, reflection and adjustment. each year, insights and lessons learned are used to develop further improvements to shopfront, which are subsequently piloted and embedded in the process. stage 1: pre-semester project initiation call for project applications via the uts shopfront website, our networks, social-media channels etc., we call for applications from local not-for-profits to submit projects based on their need for upcoming semester coursework. project scoping shopfront assists client organisations to focus the project and clarify goals. it also provides continuity with communities, allowing larger, multi-disciplinary projects to be defined, planned, broken down and completed across disciplines and over time. project breakdown this facilitation ensures that projects are student-ready and manageable, usually within a 12-week semester timeline, and that students, academic supervisors and community organisations clearly understand the schedule, roles and responsibilities. brief development the shopfront project coordinator helps clients fill in a project brief to assist them with developing the aims of the project, clarifying their needs, target audiences, and resources available for the project (for example, time commitment, personnel/ expertise to assist the students). selection of projects based on specific criteria the shopfront project coordinator and the academic supervisor of each course review relevant project applications and select projects based on the following criteria: a the ability of the client to work with and support the students at that time b the significance of the project to the client organisation c the nature of the client organisation (with priority given to issues of social justice and access) d the degree of interest the project has for students. stage 2: project process, tools and support development of project management timeline students are expected to manage their project effectively, to develop clear individual roles and responsibilities if they are working in a team, keep minutes of client meetings, and use online systems for communication and document development. community clients are asked to commit to the students’ coursework assessment timeline and make available (a minimum of) two hours per week to support the students’ work. initial client–student meeting the shopfront project coordinator attends the first meeting between the student(s) and community client to ensure that the final project scoped meets the client’s needs, fits the student skill sets and is manageable within the semester timeframe. project scoping the project ‘scope’ or ‘plan’ document is prepared by all students/student teams as the agreed plan for actions and deliverables and is signed-off both by the academic supervisor and community client. table 1: description of coursework community projects process and elements 64 | gateways | andersen project monitoring the shopfront project coordinator monitors progress and relationships during the semester. the student team is asked to update the client, academic and the project coordinator regularly about the progress of their work. formal assessment formal assessment is spread over the semester, and includes the establishment by students of their goals and objectives for their project; these become benchmarks for the final assessment. feedback frequent feedback (both formal and informal) is provided by the academic supervisor, the shopfront project coordinator and the client. such extensive feedback maintains student motivation and responsiveness while enabling students’ autonomy. stage 3: project delivery and finalisation professional presentations on-campus students usually present their project to their community client, the academic supervisor and shopfront project coordinator during a final presentation session. students are usually assessed on the professionalism of this presentation, which should include an explanation of the process, presentation of the final outcomes, handover of knowledge, and any implementation plan. clients are invited to the university for this presentation. as many see universities as ‘closed’ institutions, this invitation can bridge many cultural and social barriers. final assessment and review project reports/designs/digital production/plans represent the major coursework assessment. they are evaluated by the faculty (not shopfront) based on their practical value, evidence of original thinking, and design and delivery. this includes an assessment on whether the recommendations are a sound and innovative response to the issue, the quality of method, and the usability of the outcomes. community ownership of outcomes the university classifies the student projects as commissioned research and the results and intellectual property (ip) are transferred to the community partner. in some cases, shared ip is negotiated and structured – most often around academic publication of results. communication of value created for the university information on the completed projects is communicated by shopfront for inclusion in the university’s quality reporting, such as annual report, social justice report and disciplinarybased reports, for example the report to the united nations on the implementation of the principles for responsible management education (prme). information about specific projects is shared with university communication offices and is regularly featured in internal and external media. generative communityuniversity partnerships final projects very often recommend and/or handover the basis of follow-on projects in a different disciplinary area (for example, a research report becomes the basis of a lawreform campaign; a strategic plan leads to branding design; a community consultation leads to a funded research project). shopfront maintains the relationship management with the community partner and stewardship through the university and to broader external expertise and input. pre-semester project initiation in the first stage, the focus is on ensuring there is a real need and real commitment from the community client to the students’ work and the project timeline. only those projects which ‘would not otherwise go ahead’ due to internal resource gaps are undertaken. this ensures pro bono student projects are not replacing paid work (and, potentially, employment for university graduates). currently around 75 per cent of projects submitted go ahead within a year 65 | gateways | andersen of submission, across a range of organisations. the diversity of the client base adds interest for the students, as they see their peers working on other projects, and demands versatility across the student cohort in their approach to planning for different clients and target audiences. also in the project initiation stage, shopfront can work with individual course coordinators on tailored designs that may include course requirements for: group work or individual student projects; intensive block teaching, weekly classroom sessions or blended learning modes; and single-semester or yearlong courses. in addition, when working with courses to build in service learning, scp has learned to require that the servicelearning project component has a minimum weighting of 60 per cent (but preferably closer to 100 per cent) of the course mark to ensure adequate focus on the specific project brief and greater depth of student engagement, necessary for delivering value to the community client. project process, tools and support in stage two, the focus shifts somewhat from the client to the student: a key part of this stage is to ensure optimal student learning and delivery of good-quality outcomes. in undertaking these projects, ‘students apply previously learned topics to an unstructured problem [and] … seek out and learn methodological techniques on an as-needed basis’ (gorman, 2010, p. 565). particularly in the early weeks, assessment and discussion occurs between students, the academic supervisor and the shopfront project coordinator to identify if any additional expert or professional practice input and/or skills development sessions (such as cultural awareness training or presentation skills workshops) is needed. this closes any knowledge and skill gaps and supports good performance. with some courses, volunteer industry coaches are also recruited (usually as part of corporate social responsibility programs) to provide guidance on professional practice for students. interaction between the client and students can occur through site visits, university-based meetings, skype, email and telephone. these interactions create opportunities for the students to share what they have learned in their degree and demonstrate they can apply their knowledge and skills appropriately when interacting with external parties. this also sees knowledge and skills transferred to the community client; in return, community clients transfer their professional knowledge of the non-profit sector and their social mission. for the majority of students, this is their first engagement with the non-profit sector and these specific social issues. as professional practice, students usually sign confidentiality agreements allowing client organisations to seek support for the most relevant issues, including issues that are sensitive or confidential. project delivery and finalisation in this stage, students present the final outcome (research report, design, plan, digital production, etc.) to the client, the faculty, 66 | gateways | andersen the shopfront project coordinator and, where confidentiality arrangement allow, their peers. this represents the major coursework assessment. students are also often assessed on their presentation skills as part of final presentations to community clients. students are often enthused to support their community clients in an implementation phase outside their coursework, and many students have gone on to become volunteers or board members within their client organisation. evidence for the success of a shared-value focus qualitative researchers argue that study of a single case can not only provide insight into practice but can also, where it offers unusual access to a specific area of interest, have exemplary value (eisenhardt 1989; yin 2014; thomas 2011). shopfront represents such a case of ‘unusual access’ because the author has worked on its development and delivery for many years and used this participant observation alongside extensive survey data and course materials and documents collected over an extended period of time to analyse and reflect on the elements of the program that facilitate its delivery of value to community organisations and students/faculties. for the purposes of this article, quantitative data was gathered from student and community-client evaluations of 458 projects completed between first semester 2006 to the end of second semester 2016. at the end of every semester, customised online surveys are sent to students and community organisations in order to evaluate their experience. the surveys sit alongside other evaluation processes including project tracking and troubleshooting during the semester, and telephone or face-to-face community-client feedback at the conclusion of every project. in each of the surveys (for students and community clients), a fivepoint likert-type scale was used, whereby (1) indicates ‘strongly disagree’ and (5) indicates ‘strongly agree’ (see also snell et al. 2014). in the customised student survey, students are asked to indicate their level of agreement with 10 statements about the quality and significance of their learning experiences, as well as respond to open-ended questions asking them to provide additional reflections on their experiences, including what elements of the community project they found most or least helpful. from 2006 to the end of 2016, 594 custom surveys have been completed by students – a response rate of 35.5 per cent of the total student population (1671). the community-client survey asks the client representative to indicate their agreement or disagreement with seven statements related to their experience with the student coursework project, the quality of the students’ work, the opportunity for knowledge exchange with the university, the usefulness of the project for their organisation, and whether they would work with scp again, and includes additional open-ended questions to reflect on the worst and best parts of the experience and suggest ways to improve 67 | gateways | andersen the engagement. from 2006 to the end of 2016, 275 communityclient surveys have been completed, 65.7 per cent of the 418 community clients who have participated in coursework projects. this evaluation sits alongside the community program’s client management and troubleshooting process during the project, so the program team is kept aware of all clients’ experiences throughout the semester. (note: the number of projects completed during those 10 years (458) is greater than the number of clients (418) as, with 12 projects, clients worked with four or five different student teams over the semester, each co-contributing their specific project work to a larger project outcome; in these cases, the clients completed only one evaluation.) value for students evaluation evidence shows that the students’ service-learning experiences contributed to their professional and personal development: 89 per cent of the total cohort agreed or strongly agreed that the work was relevant to their professional development; and 87 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that the work was relevant to their personal development. further, 90 per cent of students would recommend the experience of doing a community coursework project to other students. table 2, below, provides a summary of student evaluations. work was relevant to professional development work was relevant to personal development i would recommend cep projects to other students response % % % str.agree 49.7 41.6 51.7 agree 39.7 45.7 37.9 cum.% 89.4 87.3 89.6 undecided 7.7 9.6 8.7 disagree 2.6 2.2 1.4 str.disagree 0.3 0.9 0.3 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 mean 4.36 4.25 4.39 std. deviation .761 .785 .732 asked why they would recommend the experience, students focused on the value of applying learned skills in a ‘real’ setting coupled with the value of doing something useful, as summarised by the following two comments from students: it gives the student actual work experience and a great feeling of accomplishment, that their work is actually going to be used. the project was great overall, teaching me so many things, and the fact my work was appreciated for such a great cause made it all the more worthwhile. i would recommend all students to do a community project before entering the workforce because valuable lessons are learnt in regards to skills, dealing with a crisis and learning how to ask questions to table 2: summary of student evaluation responses, 2006–2016 68 | gateways | andersen get correct information from the community group. it also taught me how to become independent and apply what i have learnt over the years to this project. table 3, below, summarises the value the students’ perceived they had gained from their experience. the primary value was attributed to the ‘real world’ application of disciplinary knowledge with an external client while working towards an outcome that was genuinely needed and would be used. as one student reflected about her team’s work: it was about helping not-for-profit organisations to be able to provide better services to people who are in need of their support. the fulfilment of seeing them satisfied with the recommendations that we have provided was worth all the challenges we have experienced in this project. it is clear that the students’ experience acts as a gateway to professional practice – marking a change in the service-learning participant’s self-view from ‘student’ to ‘independent professional’. as one student commented, ‘the best thing was the autonomy and empowerment provided that enabled me to complete the work as a trusted professional.’ new skills and knowledge learned and the experience of collaborating as a member of a team (if relevant) were also valued. in addition, given the context of ‘service’, the students valued the social good of their skills contribution and their enhanced understanding of the mission behind the organisation, alongside gaining an understanding of non-profit organisations in general. for one student: [the experience] was a personal growth of understanding [of] how i can contribute to society. furthermore i saw a development in my interpersonal skills as i dealt with numerous people whom i otherwise would never have met. graduates reported that they were able to use their project experience in job interviews to both demonstrate professional practice and serve as evidence of their social responsibility (an attribute increasingly sought by local employers). response % application of disciplinary knowledge/skills in real world setting 14.6 doing something important that will be used 14.4 engagement with a real client/workplace 14.2 teamwork and collaboration 11.4 learning new skills/knowledge 7.1 the social value of my work 6.7 working as a professional for the first time 6.1 the challenges of working outside my comfort zone 4.5 pride in the quality of the outcome produced 3.0 learning about other cultures/ diverse people 2.8 supportive client/workplace 2.8 learning about non-profit organisations 2.6 table 3: summary of what students liked most about their project, 2006–2016 69 | gateways | andersen learning about social issues 2.4 being held accountable to produce outcomes 1.6 being part of my client’s community values and service 1.4 new networks 1.2 being creative 1.0 project management processes 1.0 seeing my ideas realised .8 problem solving .6 total 100.0 value for community partners ninety-seven per cent of community clients agreed or strongly agreed that the project was of value to their organisation, 98 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that they would recommend the experience to other organisations, and 99 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that that they would work with shopfront and the university again. when asked why they would recommend working with shopfront, comments included: i found the process a little more focused and productive than other student placements i have had, in part because it was a very specialist field of expertise in which i have very little experience. so for me [what] was really valuable was to develop new aspects of the work we do here through a different lens. this is a quality program bringing academic and industry rigour as well as the students’ experience, skills and expertise to bear on reallife issues for organisations that could not otherwise afford this level of assistance. in terms of the role shopfront plays in supporting the initiation of projects and ongoing project management, 93 per cent of community clients agreed or strongly agreed that the project coordinator assisted in defining the project and scope. one client commented, ‘the process forced [our organisation] to present a very focused research brief. this really helped us to prioritise our needs.’ ninety-seven per cent agreed or strongly agreed they had adequate avenues for contact throughout the project, with one client commenting on the importance of shopfront’s role in being ‘proactive in moving the project forward and ensuring all parties are “in sync”’, in order to ensure a quality outcome. table 4, below, provides a summary of community-client responses. in a 2015 study on motivations for community partners to engage in service learning, cronley, madden and davis found that the desire for increased organisational capacity emerged as one of the strongest motivators for participating in service-learning partnerships. table 5 provides insight into what community organisations most specifically valued about student coursework projects. for one third of community organisations, the primary value was in the delivery of an outcome that could be used. this 70 | gateways | andersen ‘useful, usable and used’ value is also reflected in the next topfour responses, where application of the outcomes provided a new strategic direction (18 per cent), improved service delivery (15 per cent), enhanced the organisation’s profile (6 per cent) or enhanced the organisation’s professional reputation (6 per cent). a sub-group of project types submitted to shopfront relate to organisations seeking to examine the feasibility of a new direction or social enterprise activity, or develop prototypes for new services or infrastructure – now usually around digital platforms. the value in this subset of projects is reflected in the evaluations, where 5 per cent of organisations appreciated the opportunity to prototype new services, products or infrastructure, and assess and determine their feasibility pre-investment. for one client the value came through: fresh thinking. critical evaluation. an external view of the organisation. a logical, well-presented report. as requested, the students also completed a ‘plain english’ version of the presentation for our members (not university educated). a well-thought-out actionable report that will make a difference to our organisation. response % usable outcome 33.2 provided a new strategic direction 17.9 improved service delivery 15.2 enhanced our professional reputation 6.0 raised our profile 6.0 prototyped/tested concept 4.9 saved money 3.3 enhanced sustainability 3.3 rigor and quality of research 2.7 provision of objective advice 2.2 table 5: summary of the value community organisations received from student coursework projects, 2006–2016 table 4: summary of community evaluations of service learning projects, 2006–2016 the project will be of value to our organisation the student(s) were professional in their approach there were adequate avenues for contact with cep staff cep was of assistance in defining the project the project provided an opportunity for skills/ knowledge exchange i would recommend doing a project to other community organisations i would work with the cep again response % % % % % % % strongly agree 72.0 63.6 67.2 60.4 47.4 86.3 84.4 agree 25.5 31.6 30.2 32.6 40.4 11.8 14.4 cumulative % 97.5 95.2 97.4 93.0 87.8 98.1 98.8 undecided/ neutral 1.8 2.9 2.2 6.3 11.5 1.8 0.7 disagree 0.7 1.1 .4 0.7 0.7 0.0 0.0 strongly disagree 0.0 0.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 mean 4.69 4.56 4.64 4.53 4.34 4.85 4.83 standard deviation .545 .679 .546 .649 .708 .410 .451 71 | gateways | andersen developed skills/knowledge 2.2 lead to public policy change 1.6 contributed to community development 1.1 valued the whole process .5 total 100.0 note: an additional 2.2 per cent of organisations said they did not use the project outcomes. discussion the overwhelmingly positive feedback from both students and community clients demonstrates the real potential that bestpractice service-learning programs can offer. based on handson experience, as well as reflection and analysis of the data, the author argues that this distinct model of curricular service learning is a generative and sustainable program because its starting point is the vital need for specific contextual knowledge of community groups’ motivations and requirements. such an attitude helps to ensure that shopfront is community-facing. deliberately built into the program at various points are opportunities to learn; ‘what do we know, versus what do we assume to know about these “other worlds”?’ (sandy & holland 2006). student-learning opportunities are then built around this key primary understanding. furthermore, the facilitated nature of the program ensures that communication channels, processes and evaluation are appropriate, detailed and responsive. while others have suggested communication is a four-way cycle (see cronley, madden & davis 2015), in this model, communication is considered and varied depending on the stage of the process. twenty years’ ‘deep’ experience delivering shared value – within the constraint of rigid semester timelines – has identified key principles and touchpoints to ensure successful outcomes that include: a project coordinator as the relationship manager, who is present at the first student–community client meeting to manage the project’s scope; students’ developing a project plan/ scope of agreed deliverables and a timeline; students attending on-site meetings at the client organisation to engage first hand with client issues; ongoing communications between the students, client, academic supervisor and project coordinator; a scheduled mid-point in-class project-troubleshooting session; delivery of draft outcomes for client review prior to final presentations; and opportunities to rehearse student teamwork presentations. from both personal observation and feedback, it is clear to the author that community clients are very aware of the twoway knowledge exchange taking place. data shows that 89 per cent of community clients agreed that the projects provided the opportunity for skills and knowledge transfer to both their own organisation and to the students (see table 4). reflecting that the nature of this service-learning model is not one where community partners have the capacity to act as mentors/co-teachers in students’ disciplinary fields, community clients saw their main 72 | gateways | andersen contribution to student knowledge was in building students’ understanding of the specific social mission of the organisation (and this is reflected in student evaluations) and the broader non-profit sector, alongside enhancing professional practice, client management and research skills. the key knowledge transfer to community partners – as reflected in the literature – was a greater understanding of new technologies. what is new from this analysis is the finding of a transferred value that enhances organisational capacity to use new design thinking, business planning and research methods. it is clear that the ‘expert, external consultant’ nature of these projects – with students often applying new theoretical knowledge from outside the client’s own disciplinary background – is itself a driver of organisational development. (see figures 3 and 4 for a summary of the top-five skills exchanged, as perceived by community clients.) however, of course, this program has not always run as it should, or achieved the results hoped for. as part of the post-project evaluation, community clients were asked what they liked least about their projects; table 7 summarises the top 13 responses. figure 3: top five responses on knowledge/skills transferred to community clients from students (%) figure 4: top five reponses on knowledge/skills transferred to students by community clients (%) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 u nderstanding of social m ission client m anagem ent professional practice research m ethods 73 | gateways | andersen response % nothing i did not like 44.5 longer project time needed 9.6 project communications 7.7 client's own time constraints 7.2 ongoing support needed post-project 3.8 availability and scheduling issues 2.9 confusion during the project scoping phase 2.4 student(s) lacked depth of understanding 2.4 student(s) lack of commitment 2.4 lack of clarity on timelines and requirements 1.9 wanted more face to face meetings with students 1.9 poor quality outcome 1.9 tensions within client’s organisation 1.9 while the overall quality of the experience working with shopfront is reflected by the fact that 44.5 per cent of respondents said there was ‘nothing’ they did not like, issues raised include community partners wanting projects to run over a longer time period than the semester schedule allows, or wanting more support to be provided post-project for implementation. as one client commented, ‘the short timeframe was difficult when doing something which requires a lot of consultation with our team.’ while, for another, the ‘short deadlines towards the end meant quick decisions [had] to be made – rather than slower, more considered decisions’. project-management issues included (in order of prominence): poor communications during the project; conflicts around scheduling and personnel availability; confusion during the initial project-scoping phase; and a lack of clarity around timelines and requirements. one client commented, ‘at some stages the project felt a little rushed and client communications were not as comprehensive as they could have been (in an ideal world).’ while for another client, ‘the timing was not ideal … it was important to hit the ground running to fit into the university timetable.’ clients’ own time constraints to contribute to the project were also a concern. for one client, ‘the pressure of supervising three students and my other work commitments made this project extremely difficult – i was so time-poor and felt that i let the students down.’ in terms of outcomes, the students’ lack of depth in their understanding of the problem could lead to naive or shallow solutions to the client’s problem, and their lack of commitment also led to poorer quality outcomes. shopfront responses to these issues include: —ensuring substantial weighting of the course mark and time allocated during semester for the project so students have time and motivation to immerse themselves in the project to safeguard against ‘off the shelf’ or naive outcomes; —managing client expectations, tracking and communicating project-failure rates, and ensuring all projects continue to be delivered pro bono; table 7: top 13 responses to what the community client liked least about their project, 2006 to 2016 74 | gateways | andersen —with some subjects, where the student cohort may have a lesser capacity to produce successful outcomes, working with a one-tomany/client–student team engagement scenario; —failure procedures that usually activate mid-project to ensure that community partners have the choice to not continue committing resources to a project unlikely to produce an outcome of value for them. other, more structural and institutional challenges faced by the program over the past two decades have included: maintaining and resourcing this commitment to community engagement against a backdrop of changes in senior management and strategic planning; scoping ‘student-ready’ briefs with community partners that fit inflexible semester timelines; managing risk, commitment and workload; designing and refining coursework structures to deliver shared value; and achieving the ‘holy grail’ of transdisciplinarity – working across entrenched disciplinary/ faculty silos to deliver community projects requiring inputs from multiple disciplines – currently done by scoping projects into ‘phases’ over time and across disciplinary fields with students and staff involved in ‘passing the baton’. one recent challenge that has emerged for shopfront is that other nearby universities are realising the value of servicelearning offerings as an important component for delivering ‘work-integrated, employment-ready graduates’ and resourcing new programs accordingly. in the future, a more crowded marketplace for community clients may impact on shopfront, while providing greater opportunities for community organisations to ‘pick and choose’ and create value to their communities through engagement with multiple, local community-engaged programs. concluding thoughts from many years of delivering the shared value of ‘useful, usable and used’ projects, the author offers the following seven components that underpin the success and sustainability of the shopfront model of coursework service learning: —projects are initiated by sme not-for-profit organisations based on community needs and their own skills gaps, but rely on their capacity to commit to a curriculum timeline; —utilises a cross-university community-engagement program with ethics and risk-management structures in place (including failure procedures) for stability of relationship management through the university; —a project coordinator is assigned to individual projects and specific courses to facilitate relationship and project management, from project scoping to finalisation; —engages with final-year and postgraduate students with developed disciplinary skills; —university courses offering service learning are structured, timed and weighted to ensure adequate depth of student immersion and commitment; 75 | gateways | andersen —disciplinary guidance is provided by suitable academic supervisors and (where necessary) through sourcing and connecting other faculty or external experts into specific projects or even courses; —community ownership of outcomes or structures are in place for sharing of ip. recent program expansion at uts shopfront saw the introduction of a co-curricular student volunteering program, uts soul award, in 2014. alongside non-skilled and short-term volunteering activity in the community sector, soul has enabled voluntary disciplinary internships to take place out of semester – with timelines more suited to the schedules of community need – and it has made the forming of transdisciplinary student volunteer teams to address community need easier; 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purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: fanjoy, m. and bragg. b. 2019. embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6342. https://doi. org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6342 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | https://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women martha fanjoy1*, bronwyn bragg2 1 school of global access, bow valley college, 345 6 ave se, calgary, ab, t2g4v1. mfanjoy@ bowvalleycollege.ca 2 school of global access, bow valley college, 345 6 ave se, calgary, ab, t2g4v1. bbragg@ bowvalleycollege.ca *corresponding author: martha fanjoy; mfanjoy@bowvalleycollege.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6342 article history: received 01/11/2018; revised 01/04/2018; accepted 08/04/2019; published 24/05/2019. abstract this article discusses a co-creation project carried out by a post-secondary immigrant-serving agency and retired immigrant women. we posit that, by engaging with immigrant women in co-creation, we not only deepen our understanding of the challenges they face in retirement, but also generate valuable insights into the process of participatory design and collaboration; namely, the importance of recognising complexity as a productive, rather than challenging, aspect of knowledge co-creation and collaboration. we show that, by intentionally embedding methods which address issues related to reflexivity, power and difference into the co-creative process, the challenges posed by complexity can be mitigated, leading to positive outcomes for all partners. keywords co-creation, participatory research, immigrant women, seniors, post-secondary community partnerships, collaboration declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research was made possible through funding provided by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc). 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6342 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6342 https://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au https://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mfanjoy%40bowvalleycollege.ca?subject= mailto:mfanjoy%40bowvalleycollege.ca?subject= mailto:bbragg%40bowvalleycollege.ca?subject= mailto:bbragg%40bowvalleycollege.ca?subject= mailto:mfanjoy%40bowvalleycollege.ca?subject= https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6342 as the canadian population ages, and the baby boomer generation continues to retire in greater numbers, a new group of retirees – senior immigrants – is emerging as a population of interest to researchers and policy-makers. given the long-term influence of migration on an individual’s life, and the over-representation of immigrant women amongst those facing underemployment, discrimination and social isolation, there is a growing consensus that their experiences of retirement may be different from those of canadian-raised women and therefore merits further exploration (bauder, 2003, mcdonald and kennedy, 2004, shin, 2014, teelucksingh and galabuzi, 2005). attempts to fill this knowledge and programming gap tend to treat retirees as an undifferentiated population, use a deficit model of engagement, or fail to go beyond individual level interventions and address systemic challenges to successful ageing and retirement (shin, 2014, teelucksingh and galabuzi, 2005). this article discusses our efforts to deliberately work differently with retired immigrant women and to engage with them as partners in research and action planning. we posit that co-creation not only deepens our understanding of the challenges they face in retirement, but also generates valuable insights into the process of participatory design and collaboration; namely, the importance of recognising complexity as a productive, rather than challenging, aspect of knowledge co-creation and collaboration. we show that by intentionally embedding methods which address issues related to reflexivity, power and difference into the co-creative process, the challenges posed by complexity can be mitigated, leading to positive outcomes for all partners. following a brief discussion of the project background and data collection methods, we explore the idea of co-creation. we then summarise the significant developmental moments experienced during the co-creation process and critically reflect on how our methods to deal with reflexivity, power and difference enabled, and sometimes hampered, the process. while the focus of this article is on the particular experience of engaging retired immigrant women in a co-creative research process, the findings presented here are important for researchers engaging under-represented populations in participatory processes. we identify promising practices for working within a collaborative and participatory framework based on the lessons learned from this project. these insights may be valuable for researchers interested in translating research into more responsive and impactful program and policy designs. methods the co-creation approach emerged from a joint research project between a local community college and an immigrant-serving agency. from its inception, this project aimed to do more than simply collect data that would sit in a tidy report on a shelf. rather, the goal was to move from research findings to action. the aim was for team members from both organisations to work with a group of retired immigrant women to co-analyse data and co-create initiatives. as such, this was imagined as a collaborative process between staff and research participants to inform the creation of meaningful interventions by drawing on the lived experiences of retired immigrant women. the project’s methods reflected our desire for a co-creation approach. we intentionally used the data collection phase as a means of building relationships and trust. semi-structured interviews, for example, invited participants to shape the discussion and their narratives on their own terms. these in-depth conversations built rapport between the researchers and participants. following the interviews, participants were invited to re-engage with the project fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes through a three-month participant observation phase of data collection. the contribution of participant observation to a deeper understanding of our data is detailed below. however, it also allowed the team to continue building trust and relationships. working with our community partner, and using purposeful and snowball sampling techniques, 25 research participants were recruited to participate in the semi-structured interviews. we sought a diverse sample of women from various ethno-cultural backgrounds and with varying educational and professional experience (see table 1). all participants shared the common characteristic of having a minimum of two years’ experience in the canadian labour market and being retired for at least two years. we were interested in exploring the experiences of retired immigrant women as a subset of senior immigrant women. it is important to note that we do not use ‘immigrant’ to signify the technical and legal status of not being a citizen. similarly to man (2004), we employ the common, everyday usage of the term to refer to people who are seen as immigrants, either by themselves or others, regardless of their legal status. it is clear, however, that the data cannot be considered through the homogenising lens of ‘retired immigrant women’. the multiple and overlapping social positions and structural factors that shaped their lives required an intersectional analysis. the adoption of an intersectional lens reminded us to move beyond static, homogenising categories of ‘immigrant’ and ‘women’ to reflect on how identities overlap with factors such as ethnocultural background, language skills, education, employment history, year of immigration, and family composition. further, it encouraged consideration of how these factors interact with existing structures and systems that impact daily lives (fanjoy, 2017). table 1 participant demographics age 50–59: 3 60–69: 7 70–79: 10 80–89: 5 marital status single: 2 divorced: 5 married: 10 widowed: 8 countries of origin lebanon, el salvador, antigua, iran, china, hong kong, philippines, macao, pakistan, holland, poland, india, vietnam, afghanistan, ethiopia, france years in canada 0–9: 1 10–19: 7 20–29: 4 30–39: 6 40–49: 6 50–59: 1 years retired 0–9: 11 10–19: 7 retired, and since returned to work for economic reasons: 7 education less than high school: 3 high school: 3 college diploma: 3 undergraduate degree: 13 postgraduate degree: 3 embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes our research questions sought to unpack the effects of migration on women’s labour market experiences throughout their life course, and thus in later life, their retirement. questions focused on the experience of retirement and immigration, and how these experiences affected their career and social participation as well as engagement in the community postretirement. fifteen stakeholders were interviewed, including program managers at immigrantserving non-profit agencies, government policy-makers, and those who work closely with retired populations. the interviews aimed to understand the broader structural context of immigration, ageing and retirement, including policies and services. to contextualise and triangulate the findings from interviews, the research team carried out participant observation with a sub-sample of 10 women from the larger sample of interview participants. observation occurred approximately once a week over a period of four months. the research team engaged in periods of observation of the daily lives of the women, allowing participants to guide the process and include the researcher when and where this felt comfortable and appropriate. observation took place in both public and private spaces and involved a wide variety of contexts, including fitness classes, faith-based activities, volunteer activities, home visits, classes and workshops, and family events. this allowed for an intimate picture of how participants engaged with others, how they built relationships or created ties in the community, what barriers they faced, and their opportunities for social engagement or wellbeing. researchers recorded the women’s interactions, communications, body language and social context. after the observation sessions, researchers conducted social and event mapping exercises to trace meaning and connections. this aspect of the research was key to strenthening our description of our participants’ social participation (geertz, 1973). for example, one participant spoke at length in her initial interview about the importance of her weekly aquacise class and how much she misses it in the winter when the poor weather often prevents her attending. through the participant observation phase of the data collection, a member of the research team was able to attend several classes with her over a three-month period. the team member mapped the interactions she observed at the classes – extra health and nutritional advice shared by the instructor in post-class chats, tips on grocery deals, clothing sales etc. shared by classmates in the hot tub after class, and the highlight of a weekly lunch with some classmates after class at the local fast food restaurant. observing and mapping these interactions allowed the team to deepen our understanding of why the participant prioritised her aquacise class and the important interactions that were missed when she could not attend. once the interviews and participant observation phases were complete, a group of six women opted to participate in the analysis and action planning phase. we met over a seven-month period to co-create strategies and initiatives aimed at combating isolation and overcoming the challenges associated with ageing. during this time, the co-creation group met bi-weekly to discuss and refine the research findings. the group transitioned from discussion to action by developing and testing two pilot initiatives exploring how to tackle the challenges facing retired immigrant women. this part of the process is described in more detail in the later section on ‘key developmental moments in the co-creative process’. in many ways, the perceptions and experiences of the immigrant women retirees who participated in the project align with existing research on retirees. they were keen to stay active and engaged, and to continue contributing to society outside the realm of paid labour. they believed that social and civic participation was key to their wellbeing as they aged and did not view retirement as a period of decline and withdrawal. however, important points of divergence emerged when we started to explore the intersection of life experiences with systemic contributors and barriers to wellbeing and social participation. stop and start entries fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes into the labour market, financial precariousness and fuzzier boundaries have always been what retirement looks like for a large number of women and precarious workers (mcdonald, 2006). immigrant women’s over-representation in these groups, however, puts them at greater risk of social and economic marginalisation as they age (man, 2004, preston, 2014, premji et al., 2014). for example, participants’ experiences of labour market marginalisation through lack of credential recognition intersected with language barriers and lack of familiarity with canadian pension systems to negatively impact their economic wellbeing later in life. at the same time, the gendered nature of caregiving duties was compounded by the challenges of raising children in an unfamiliar society, as well as cultural norms and values related to spousal caregiving in old age. the accumulated impact of these challenges led to an increased risk of social isolation for many of our project participants. (for details on research findings, see (fanjoy, 2017) co-creation co-creation research, which engages participants in meaningful ways throughout the process, is increasingly seen as having value, especially when that research aims to address social inequities (mulroy, 2004). collaborations between educational institutions, community organisations and people with lived experience of the research subject are understood to be ‘vital sources for teaching, research and practice’ (strier, 2011). scholarship on collaborative research projects suggests that inclusion of community residents and participants with lived experience relevant to the investigation may generate different kinds of knowledge and information from that of traditional research praxis (silka, 1999). in sum, ‘by including community residents in research and planning, researchers can create programs that have immediate relevance and policy implications’ (farquhar and dobson, 2005). the participation we seek in co-creation is more involved, however, than in most participatory projects. if participation is viewed broadly to consist of the spectrum from passive through to active engagement, co-creation is firmly planted on the active end (voorberg et al., 2014). it also involves a shift from dialogical to transformative relationships. rather than simply seeking input from participants, the researcher seeks to co-create a transformation, or shift, in social conditions through the process (beebeejaun et al., 2013). while collaborative research agendas and knowledge co-creation are laudable goals, they also raise methodological and ethical challenges. much of the research in this area points to the role that power relations play in such processes. while the ‘co’ in co-creation suggests an equal sharing of responsibility, such processes – like all social relations – are shaped by the way stakeholders are positioned in relation to one another. one of the challenges with knowledge co-creation lies in the way knowledge and power are conceived, and these conceptions can limit or impede the outcomes of research (olesen and nordentoft, 2013). for example, often co-creation efforts are shaped by ideas of ‘democratic collaboration and knowledge production’ but this collaboration is based on fixed positions and power relations (for example, research participant and paid staff person). there are also epistemological challenges with co-creation: to what extent are we truly able to understand another’s world view across profound difference in age, gender, class, or immigration experience? a critique of collaborative knowledge creation processes offers that they are challenged by the reality that ‘we want to let go of control; at the same time, we want to stay in control’ (olesen and nordentoft, 2013). despite the ideals of democratic participation and shared knowledge production, research projects take place within a real-world context of limited resources, short timelines and unequal power relations, all of which come to play a role in how knowledge is produced, shared and experienced. embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes there are also questions about the efficacy of co-creation methods in achieving systemic or structural change. a review of co-creation projects in the public sector found that, while most projects report on processes and factors that influence the success or failure of the work, they rarely touch on outcomes (voorberg et al., 2014). strier (2011) also raises questions as to whether partnerships and collaborative research are a means to solve complex social challenges, or if the main result is merely an endless cycle of relationship building. we acknowledge that collaborative research and knowledge co-creation is complex and imperfect; however, at its core it is an emancipatory process that seeks to include the voices and experiences of research participants in the problem identification and resolution finding process. therefore, while this work is complex, it should not be abandoned in favour of less participatory – and more traditional – research methods. we argue that, by acknowledging and addressing rather than glossing over the complexities inherent in the co-creation of knowledge through collaborative research, these challenges can be mitigated. in the following section, we describe the key developmental moments that emerged from our co-creation process. these moments represent the main challenges to, as well as opportunities for, knowledge co-creation that we encountered throughout our process, and how the research team responded to them. key developmental moments in the co-creative process in the section that follows, we identify five ‘key developmental moments’ in the life of this project. we use these moments as a way of articulating the productive challenges and key learning experiences that emerged through the process. dozois, langlois and blanchet-cohen (2010, p. 41) define developmental moments as ‘instances when the initiative shifts or moves forward in some significant way; moments of clarity, strategic insight, serendipity, connections, and/or movement’. it is important to emphasise that these five moments can only be identified in hindsight – this was not a timeline developed in advance of the group but rather emerged in collaboration with the co-creation participants, the facilitators from both the immigrantserving agency and the college, and in relation to external events. building the group a sample of women from the 10 research participants that were involved in the focused ethnography formed the co-creation group. in hindsight, the research team reflected that it was unlikely that research participants would have had the same level of interest and buyin had they only been engaged in the interviews. of the 25 women who participated in interviews, 10 participated in the participant observation, and of those 10, five became active members of the co-creation group. one action team member participated in the interviews, but not the participant observation, making a total of six participants in the analysis and action planning phase. when the co-creation began, the research team hoped to engage 10 women as members of the group. it became evident, however, that despite expressing interest in being involved, these participants faced personal barriers that prevented them from being engaged. reasons for not participating included personal health issues and declining health of a spouse and the need to be available for care. there were also unstated or unclear reasons for not participating. one participant expressed concerns around social anxiety and geographic isolation during the interview, so this may have been a factor. in the end, the six participants who attended the first and following co-creation meetings were eager to be involved and engaged. there are several key factors to note about the cocreation group that emerged early on and were ongoing throughout the process. first, the fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes presence of pre-existing peer groups was a factor that likely facilitated engagement in the co-creation process (people are more likely to attend an event if they can go with friends). this was especially the case for three women who were more recent immigrants and attended all their social activities and community activities as a group. these peer groups were positive in that they encouraged participation of individuals who may not have been involved if not for their peers. however, these peer groups also challenged the building of a cohesive shared group identity (discussed further below) and occasionally created challenges for facilitation. another positive/challenge was the strong bond that had developed between the research assistants (ras) and the co-creation participants during the participant observation phase of the research. this factor also likely contributed to the women’s engagement and participation, yet created an expectation that the ras would remain involved throughout the co-creation period (which was not the project team’s role and, as expected, diminished during this stage of the research). it proved a delicate operation for the ras to carefully and thoughtfully extract themselves from co-creation once the group had met a few times and there was greater comfort participating without their presence. both these factors – the presence of pre-existing peer groups and the trust between the ras and the participants – point to the importance of trust-based relationships for securing participation in a new initiative. they also point to the challenge of balancing operational realities (the end of ra contracts, for example) with the need to sustain relationships built over time and through research. reflecting on research findings the co-creation group’s first activity was to review the key findings from the interviews and observations, and to provide comments and feedback. the goal of this activity was twofold. first, to hear from retired immigrant women themselves about what they thought of the key research findings – were they applicable to their life experience? did these findings make sense? were they accurate? did they reflect their life experience? was there anything we missed? this process would add depth and strengthen the initial findings. the second goal was to encourage co-creation participants to take ownership of the research data and to feel like they were active contributors to the research process. the reflection meeting was structured to encourage ownership. the lead researcher shared the key findings on powerpoint. the group was then split in two to facilitate small group discussion. each group was given a copy of the presentation, which they went over slide by slide, discussing the key points and considering their relevance/applicability. this strategy was effective in allowing the participants to feel their perspectives and opinions mattered. it also allowed the research team to go deeper into the research findings, adding context and specificity to the initial findings. reflecting back on the process, several participants commented that they appreciated having the opportunity to be involved in the generation of research knowledge and making systems and policy recommendations. one participant commented: ‘i had the opportunity to give suggestions, resolutions. i’m glad i went through something like this because i can see the overall [picture].’ identifying priority areas the initial co-creation meetings focused on building group cohesion and refining the research findings. because the goal of the co-creation process was to create two activities or pilot initiatives related to supporting retired immigrant women, it was important to move from this initial group-building process to a process that would lead to the development of activities. the process adopted identified several priority areas related to the civic engagement and social embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes participation of immigrant women. these were brainstormed by the group and included a variety of challenges and barriers facing retired immigrant women. following this process, the research team and co-creation participants voted on the areas they felt were the most important to address. they settled on ‘loneliness and isolation’ and ‘caregiving challenges’. over the course of several meetings, the co-creation participants worked with the research team to dive deeper into the causes, solutions and actions related to each of these issues. the goal in this process was to work as a group to explore and identify possible opportunities for action and program development. action planning based on the brainstorming during the previous sessions, two possible activities for the group to work towards were identified. rather than asking the co-creation participants to come up with an idea for an activity on their own, the facilitators were to present an idea and have the participants provide feedback. this decision was made based on the facilitators’ sense of the group’s readiness and capacity to develop an idea from scratch. in the past, it had proven effective to make a series of suggestions and have the group critique them and provide insight and expertise. this process helped to identify possible activities for the co-creation group to pilot. the following activities were presented to the group: issue: loneliness and isolation > activity: peer support group issue: caregiving challenges > activity: toolkit for service providers to identify signs of caregiving challenges when presented to the group, nearly half of the participants were enthusiastic and eager to move forward. the others seemed confused and unsure about both the process and the activities. this division in the group happened to fall along peer lines. participants who had been in canada longer, and had stronger english language abilities and a higher level of comfort with this kind of action planning, jumped in and started making suggestions. the participants who had been in canada for a shorter period of time, and had weaker english language abilities and a lack of familiarity with this kind of action planning process, seemed confused by what was being suggested and disengaged. the facilitator opted to divide the group along these lines, with the participants who were ‘ready to go’ in one group, and the other participants in another group. in the past, mixing the groups had been successful in helping bridge the two group dynamics. in this case, however, the facilitator felt it was important for the former group to move forward with their momentum, and for the other group to have the opportunity to ask questions and ultimately move towards understanding the process in which they were engaged. it was also the case that the group that was more eager to move ahead included participants with the capacity to offer peer support, and had already demonstrated these skills in relation to the other participants in the group, whereas the other group had more experience with caregiving issues and could perhaps (the facilitator hoped) focus on those issues. this moment revealed several challenges within the co-creation process. first, until this point, the group had remained at the discussion and brainstorming stage of the process and this was the first opportunity to move from ideas to an action-oriented activity (i.e. help plan and execute the two pilot activities). while half the group had the capacity to jump in and fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes take this step (and expressed an eagerness to do so), the other half of the group expressed uncertainty and a lack of clarity around the proposed activities. second, this tension revealed the challenge presented by the diversity within the group. in previous meetings the differences between the participants (in terms of english language capacity, experience working in groups and leadership skills) had been evident but productive. those participants who had been in canada longer offered support, guidance and recommendations to those who had been in canada for a shorter period of time. as the group moved into action planning, these differences became more salient as the different abilities within the group came to the fore. the facilitators had to make decisions about how to support the very different needs and abilities of the participants within the group while also keeping everyone engaged and interested in participating. it was clear that the idea for a toolkit for service providers to address the needs of caregivers did not have the same level of interest or buy-in as the peer support model. therefore, this idea was dropped and the group focused on peer support training. the peer support training and pilot allowed for all participants to be engaged but at different levels. the facilitators also focused on a second pilot initiative that would be more facilitator directed but still provide opportunities for the participants to engage and offer feedback. ultimately, this became a knowledge exchange event between the city of calgary’s age friendly team and the cocreation participants (discussed further below). two key learnings stem from this developmental moment. first, it is critical to acknowledge – rather than ignore – the differences that exist within a group. this may be especially pressing when the group is vulnerable or faces barriers to engagement (i.e. retired immigrant women). while the goal of this project was to develop and test two actions to address the barriers to social and civic participation, it was also critical that participants not be left behind in this process. there were moments when it would have been tempting to simply push on and inform participants of what was going to take place, but the research team felt that would risk alienating the more vulnerable participants. this points to the second key learning, which is that it is important to be flexible and adaptive in these emerging processes to the needs and desires of the group, as well as to the group’s ability to take action collectively. in being flexible and allowing plans to shift, we were better able to keep participants engaged while also meeting the desired project outcomes. executing actions ‘in the midst of complexity, taking action can be daunting because there is always more to do [which] might increase your chances of success. however, you won’t learn much if you never actually try anything. developmental evaluators play an important role in helping groups understand the importance of quick iterations; of learning by doing’ (dozois, langlois & blanchet-cohen 2010, p. 45). peer model the peer support program was formalised as one of the pilot initiatives for this project. the group was enthusiastic about a peer support program and identified training they felt important to include: where to make referrals, boundaries and expectations, cross-cultural communication, confidentiality and privacy, and effective listening. working in partnership with an immigrant-serving agency was advantageous as they had a program for retired and/ or elderly immigrant women. this program, my community, my home, offered a good space embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes to test the peer support process. participants from the co-creation group, once trained, would attend my community, my home and act as peer mentors to the program’s participants. the co-creation group underwent two formal trainings to prepare them for attending my community, my home. this included cross-cultural communication training and training on active listening. following the training, participants from the co-creation group attended my community, my home. staff also attended the program to observe interaction between the two groups. it was evident that the co-creation participants were able to offer support and assistance to the other women. this program draws a more vulnerable group of senior and retired immigrant women – many of whom struggle with english, are not familiar with public transport and/or don’t drive (so depend on others to leave the house), and have less experience attending programs. the co-creation participants were able to offer a gentle form of mentorship by speaking about their own experiences. an unintended but valuable consequence of building the peer support program within an existing program was that participants from the co-creation group had a program to continue going to after the co-creation process ended, which provided important continuity for those seeking social connection and continued interaction with one another. knowledge exchange in addition to the development of the peer support program for retired immigrant women, the co-creation group settled on planning and organising a knowledge exchange event between policy-makers and research participants. this idea emerged out of the group’s desire to gain a better understanding of how policy decisions are made and how they might engage with decision-makers. the facilitators felt that a knowledge exchange event would be a better fit since the original idea (a toolkit for support workers) had not gained traction within the group. the co-creation group identified calgary’s age friendly strategy as a key policy lever for meeting the needs of retirees from both immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds. in november 2017, the team set up a meeting with staff from the city of calgary (city) to learn more about the age friendly strategy and civic engagement more broadly. the facilitator met with the city of calgary staff in advance of the knowledge exchange event in order to identify areas of shared concern. the city expressed an interest in learning from the research participants about the facilitators and barriers to attending available programs in the community. they also suggested doing a presentation on civic engagement and the age friendly strategy. to prepare for the meeting, the city gave the research team sample discussion questions regarding social participation. the co-creation group worked together to answer these questions and prepare for the discussion with the city staff. on 22 november 2017, staff from the city of calgary, the co-creation research participants, and members of the research team from the college and immigrant-serving agency came together for a productive three-hour knowledge exchange meeting. the event itself was an opportunity to see how differently positioned stakeholders can come together to share information and learn from one another. the knowledge exchange format provided space for the participants of the research group to share ideas and ask questions directly of city staff (and vice versa). as such, it was a positive two-way learning opportunity. the event also sat well with the overall goals of the research project of influencing systems and policy by connecting those with lived experience to those who help shape the systems and structures that impact older adults from immigrant backgrounds. fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes discussion the five developmental moments identified above highlight some of the challenges encountered in the process of moving from data collection through to action implementation. upon reflecting on the five moments, and how challenges emerged and were dealt with, three important themes became apparent: reflexivity, power and difference. in the remainder of the article we discuss how, in hindsight, the methods we chose to embed in our co-creative process addressed all three. reflexivity ‘reflexivity enables us to highlight the political dynamics of our endeavours, attention to which would otherwise tend to be absent from the representation of our project’ (orr and bennett, 2009). reflexivity addresses the need to be attentive to the process of knowledge creation and the various positions collaborators inhabit within the process. building on strier’s (2011, p. 95) contention that successful partnerships depend on ‘the capacity of the leaders to provide a learning and reflexive organizational culture’, we strove to ensure reflexivity was built into the process, from data collection through to project implementation. developmental evaluation was chosen as the means through which intentional reflexive practices would be built into the research and project design. evaluation can take many forms. summative evaluation looks back on the arc of a project and assesses project impact through outputs and outcomes. formative evaluation takes place during the project, but is also oriented towards understanding and evaluating impact. in contrast to these approaches, developmental evaluation is embedded alongside the project as it progresses. it is best suited to projects that ‘work in uncertain territory, developing and testing their strategies as they proceed’ (dozois et al., 2010) and is oriented around supporting learning and growth as projects emerge and their purpose is clarified. while the team had a general idea of the goals it hoped to achieve, the exact path forward was not predetermined. as a participatory project that sought to include the perspectives and lived experiences of participants, the research team wanted to leave the ‘how’ of the project open. in order to do so, it was critical that researchers be flexible and responsive to the ideas of the research participants. this required establishing a balance between the structure of the project and the power differential and competing interests embedded within it, and the desire to be participatory and open to new ideas and suggestions. to maintain this balancing act, the research team drew on the principles of developmental evaluation to support the learning of the project, to offer course correction when needed and to document the process of this emergent design for future initiatives. methodologically, this included journaling by team members, reflective interviews with all participants at various stages throughout the process, and ongoing reflection on process through the review of meeting notes. as detailed in the developmental moments captured above, this reflexive process contributed to the regrounding of the action plans in participant priorities and the move away from a service provider toolkit to the development of a peer support program. power ‘we want to let go of control; at the same time, we want to stay in control’ (olesen & nordentoft 2013). embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes power dynamics are an inevitable component of collaborative work. the research team found it more productive to identify and acknowledge the dynamics of power within the group rather than ignore them. from the outset, the group with the most power in the meetings was the research team, who were leading the meetings, planning the discussion topics and managing the overall execution of the co-creation process. the other actors with considerable power were staff at the partnering immigrant-serving agency who held power as content experts as well as having roles as co-facilitators. the privilege accorded to the facilitators was likely reinforced by the participants’ previous experiences at immigrant-serving agencies, either as clients or volunteers. participants had varying degrees of experience in similar groups, but many were used to being in service-provider/client relationships and this relationship was reproduced through these meetings. this is not to say that the relationship between participants and facilitators was totally predetermined by this dynamic, but just to emphasise that the structure of this relationship did influence the interactions between facilitators and participants. as discussed above, research participants were invited to engage as ‘co-analysts’ at our bi-weekly meetings. their engagement in reviewing data, commenting on themes emerging from the literature review and sharing ideas and feedback allowed for the demystification of the research and analysis process. the goal was to open the role of knowledge creator to all participants and remove some of the privilege from the research team. our work, however, was also shaped by the institutional parameters that surrounded the research. for example, the meeting location was predetermined, while the timing was somewhat flexible. as described, with the change from toolkit development to a sole focus on the peer support model and meeting with municipal staff, the participants were encouraged to take ownership of the work, but external timelines shaped the pace and nature of that ownership. therefore, the project was largely successful because of the ability to be flexible and adaptable within the context of these institutional parameters. this meant a degree of flexibility on the part of all participants, including organisational partners, facilitators, researchers and research participants, and recognition through reflexive practice of the limits of our attempts to mitigate the power imbalances we had set out to erase. there were also power dynamics between participants. power comes from a variety of locations and subjectivities, and shifts depending on context and relations. at the beginning of the process, it is fair to say that the three participants with higher levels of english language capacity tended to have more power in the group discussions. they occasionally positioned themselves – or were positioned by other participants – as experts on particular issues (for example, other programs available to seniors and retirees in the city). their superior knowledge of english, as well as having been in canada longer, provided them with a level of comfort in participating openly in the group. at first, the other three participants were somewhat quieter and more withholding. over time, however, this dynamic shifted. the more reticent participants became more confident within the group and at times came to dominate the conversation, taking this opportunity to ask numerous questions, occasionally unrelated to the topic at hand. as this group opened up, the women who had previously held dominance were required to take a more active listening role and to be patient as the conversation occasionally veered off course. this shifted the power dynamics somewhat and at some points led to tension or frustration. such tension was mitigated to a certain degree through the approach taken to acknowledging and working with difference described in the next section. fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes difference ‘the strength of these partnerships depends on the capacity of the leaders to provide a learning and reflexive organizational culture and a participative organizational structure capable of making room for the supplementing, competing or even conflicting agendas embodied in these partnerships’ (strier 2011). as a collaborative initiative, the project’s success was contingent upon the active participation of both institutional partners. as an educational institution and an immigrantserving agency, these partners were differently positioned, with different expertise, organisational structures, and shared – but distinct – project goals. a key learning drawn from the research was the importance of valuing the different contributions that each partner brought to the work. strier (2011) suggests conceiving the differing perspectives within a group as frames. these frames offer a way of thinking about the different perspectives and experiences that stakeholders and partners bring to the group (strier, 2011, gray, 2004). identifying, acknowledging and, where possible, addressing the differences in frames across a research collaborative allows for more generative and realistic outcomes. from the inception of the project we mapped out the perspectives of each of the three groups (researchers, service providers, community members) and continued to check in with the varying perspectives, attempting to view project priorities and milestones through multiple frames. for example, while the researchers from the college were interested in supporting the research and knowledge generated through this process, the immigrant-serving agency was interested in learning about how to leverage the research and co-creation process into opportunities to improve programming and service delivery to the population they serve (immigrant women). these goals were not mutually exclusive and overlapped in generative ways, allowing both groups to meet their goals. regardless, it was important to acknowledge these differences and work towards achieving both visions simultaneously. a learning from the broader findings that related to retired immigrant women’s wellbeing was the need to acknowledge the complex intersections that shape the retirement experiences of immigrant women. this meant being attentive to the way class, race, immigration trajectory, work experience, physical ability and english language proficiency (among many other variables) impacted their access to services and supports. recognising these differences was as significant as staying true to our co-creation approach throughout the project. as the process brought together a diverse group of retired immigrant women, with the aim of having them work together towards shared outcomes, it was not possible to gloss over the differences in life experiences between them. one of the key differences that played out within the group was the different immigration trajectories of the participants. some of the participants had been in canada for close to 50 years, others had arrived more recently, within the last decade. those who had arrived more recently had been sponsored by adult children, while those who arrived decades ago had come as economic immigrants or with their spouses and had raised children in canada. those who had come earlier had had a considerably different ‘settlement’ experience from those who had arrived more recently. this was visible within the group through things like english language proficiency (verbal and written), comfort and experience working in a group setting in english, and knowledge of services and resources available in the community. while all the participants had worked in canada, the type of work they did – as well as the length of time they had been employed in canada – varied widely from 40 years down to two years. some had had professional careers in the oil and gas industry, others had worked in day care. this wide range of personal, immigration and professional experiences – as well as distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds – meant the group was rich in diversity embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes and experience. it also meant that facilitation, group activities and action planning had to take into account the varying levels of comprehension, experience and comfort within the group. participant feedback identified an overall theme: a sense of accomplishment in having seen the project through to completion. one woman commented: ‘i am the type of person that i want to see through a project from beginning to end. and i feel a sense of accomplishment if i do that, so with this project i have this sense of accomplishment. that, yes, i was able to contribute. so that’s a sense of accomplishment’. others reflected on their contributions and ideas being valued: ‘they made us feel as though we’re contributing to something, to some sort of research project which is really nice. they even said that we could look at it after it was finished which was really nice…i liked breaking out into groups and forming an action plan – all sorts of ideas coming from everybody coming together.’ for other participants, their enjoyment was shaped simply by the opportunity to ‘meet other nice ladies and share stories’. thus, the motivation for attending and the reasons each continued to participate were shaped by different factors. for some, this was an important opportunity to contribute ideas and possibly inform service delivery and policy; for others it was a valuable social occasion to interact with other women who shared similar experiences. from this feedback, it was important to acknowledge both the diversity in motivation and the need to create opportunities for participants to take ownership of the process – whatever that looks like for them. the feedback from participants in our knowledge exchange event with the city of calgary was overwhelmingly positive. participants shared that they appreciated having the opportunity to have their ideas heard and to learn more about the policy-making process. many of the participants also shared that up until that point their experiences had been as recipients of services and support and rarely had they had the opportunity to work at ‘a higher level’ (as one participant described it), that is, at the level of crafting programs and policy. overall, the project team was successful in adjusting the in-group activities to the different abilities and interests within the group. it was important to manage expectations of the level of ownership that different participants might take within the group. while some participants were more eager to take an active leadership role, others were more interested in the social interaction and camaraderie the group provided. rather than trying to have everyone at the same level, it was beneficial to create space within the group for different interests and abilities to take shape. also important was taking time to work together as a group to lay parameters around how discussion could and should work (through the establishment of ground rules), as well as ongoing reflexive conversations to re-ground all team members in the overarching goals of the project – immigrant retirees’ wellbeing – despite the differing frames brought to the table. conclusion while ‘emergent design’, ‘participatory research’ and ‘knowledge co-production’ are all distinct concepts, they draw on similar approaches to addressing complex social problems by seeking collaboration between differently positioned stakeholders. in order to be successful, then, collaborative and co-creative work ‘requires a constant, on-going investment in increasing trust and face to face knowledge between partners’ (strier 2011). as detailed in the above account of our five developmental moments, challenges that could have derailed the co-creative process arose frequently. however, by intentionally building methods aimed at encouraging reflexivity, recognising and mitigating power relations, and embracing difference into our praxis, we were able to build, and maintain, a level of trust between partners that kept us grounded in our co-creation principles from project inception through to action fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 14 page number not for citation purposes implementation and evaluation. therefore, while collaborative work often focuses on finding commonalities between stakeholders, our work with retired immigrant women demonstrates the productive space that can be opened up when the multiple frames and forms of power held by differently positioned stakeholders are acknowledged. rather than glossing over the complexity created by power and difference, reflexively recognising differing priorities and positions and then working together to find parallel or intersecting interests contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenge at hand and, subsequently, to the development of programming and policy recommendations that are adaptable and responsive to a more diverse set of needs. acknowledgements the authors wish to acknowledge the time and dedication of the retired immigrant women who participated in the research. without their contributions this work would not have been possible. we thank our community partner, the calgary immigrant women’s association, for sharing their time, knowledge and expertise, as well as the community stakeholders who helped to frame our research questions and who continue to play a critical role informing our understanding of the unique retirement trajectories of immigrant women. finally, we would like to acknowledge the guidance and support of the project’s steering committee, whose insights and expertise provided an important foundation for this work. references bauder, h. 2003. “brain abuse” or the devaluation of immigrant labour in canada. antipode, 35, 699717. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003.00346.x beebeejaun, y., durose, c., rees, j., richardson, j. & richardson, l. 2013. public harm or public value? towards coproduction in research with communities. environment and planning c: government and policy, 31. dozois, e., langlois, m. & blanchet-cohen, n. 2010. de 201: a practitioner’s guide to developmental evaluation, the j.w. mcconnell foundation and the international institute for child rights development. fanjoy, m. 2017. ehancing the wellbeing of immigrant women retirees. calgary bow valley college. farquhar, s. a. & dobson, n. 2005. community and university participation in disaster-relief policy and practices: an example from eastern north carolina. journal of community practice, 12, 203217. geertz, c. 1973. the interpretation of cultures, new york, basic books inc. gray, b. 2004. strong opposition: frame-based resistance to collaboration. journal of community and applied psychology, 14, 166-176. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.773 man, g. 2004. gender, work and migration: deskilling chinese immigrant women in canada. women’s studies international forum, 27, 135-148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2004.06.004 mcdonald, j. t. & kennedy, s. 2004. insights into the healthy immigrant effect: health status and health service use of immigrants to canada. social science and medicine, 59, 1613-1627. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.02.004 embracing complexity: co-creation with retired immigrant women gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.02.004 mcdonald, l. 2006. gendered retirement: the welfare of women and the “new” retirement. in: stone, l. (ed.) new frontiers of research on retirement ottowa, on: statistics canada. mulroy, e. 2004. university civic engagement with community-based organizations: dispersed or coordinated models? journal of community practice, 12, 35-52. https://doi.org/10.1300/j125v12n03_03 olesen, b. r. & nordentoft, h. m. 2013. walking the talk? a micro-sociological approach to the co-production of knowledge and power in action research. international journal of action research, 9, 67-94. orr, k. m. & bennett, m. 2009. reflexivity in the co-production of academic-practitioner research. qualitative research in organizations and management, 4, 85-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465640910951462 premji, s., shakya, y., spasevski, m., merolli, j. & athar, s. 2014. precarious work experiences of racialized immigrant women in toronto: a community-based study. just labour: a canadian journal of work and society, 22, 122-143. preston, v., weiser, n., king, k., mandell, n., kim, a.h., & luxton, m. 2014. worked to death: the diverse experiences of economic security among older immigrants. in: kilbride, k. m. (ed.) immigrant integration: research implications for future policy. toronto on: canadian scholars press inc. shin, j. h. 2014. living independently as an ethnic minority elder: a relational perspective on the issues of aging and ethnic minorities. american journal of community psychology, 53, 433-446. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-014-9650-6 silka, l. 1999. paradoxes of partnerships: reflections on university-community collaborations. research in politics & society, 7, 335-359. strier, r. 2011. the construction of university-community partnerships: entangled perspectives. higher education, 62, 81-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9367-x teelucksingh, c. & galabuzi, g. e. 2005. working precariously: the impact of race and immigrant status on employment opportunities and outcomes in canada. ottawa on. voorberg, w. h., bekkers, v. & tummers, l. g. 2014. a systemic review of co-creation and co-production: embarking on the social innovation journey. public management review. fanjoy and bragg gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 16 page number not for citation purposes https://doi.org/10.1108/17465640910951462 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-014-9650-6 leveraging 3d technology for students with autism an innovative university-community collaboration for skill development and vocational exploration the transition to adulthood is identified as a crucial period for individuals with asd (chen et al. 2015; chen, sung & pi 2015; hendricks & wehman 2009; levy & perry 2011; schall, wehman & mcdonough 2012; taylor et al. 2012; wehman et al. 2014b). given the limited services, resources and opportunities that specifically address the needs of young adults with asd, the transition after high school can be difficult, especially in terms of postsecondary education and meaningful employment (migliore, butterworth & zalewska 2014; wehman et al. 2014c; wei et al. 2015). partnerships across a wide range of agencies, including universities and the business and corporate sectors, are crucial to addressing this transition (chappel & somers 2010; wilczynski, trammell & clarke 2013). while the role of universities as professional intermediaries in community development has been examined (fehren 2010), here the focus is on how university-based professionals coordinated with community organisations and business entities to address an aspect of habilitation services for youth with asd in relation to vocational readiness. as shattuck and roux (2014, p. 698) contend, there is a critical need to begin a new conversation on both innovation and investment in the context of autism across the life course. they state: this new perspective recognizes people on the autism spectrum and their families as valuable members of our communities – with roles to play, dreams to achieve, and contributions to make. there is also the need to document how programs integrate services, research, training and policy to create better outcomes, and this requires convergence of best practice in research and in public and private sector innovations (doehring & volkmar 2016). it is with this perspective that we engaged in the development and implementation of a unique educational curriculum that leverages 3d technologies as a pathway to learning computercheryl a wright scott d wright marissa l diener deborah rafferty allison sampson university of utah © 2017 by ca wright, sd wright, ml diener, d rafferty & a sampson. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: wright, ca, wright, sd, diener, ml, rafferty, d & sampson, a 2017, ‘leveraging 3d technology for students with autism: an innovative university-community collaboration for skill development and vocational exploration’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 265–282. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5000 corresponding author: cheryl wright; cheryl.wright@fcs.utah.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5000 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) declaration of conflicting interest cheryl wright and scott wright have a financial interest in the social enterprise neuroversity. 266 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson based skill sets, social competency, vocational exploration and self-determination. this educational program is built on a collaborative model, working with families and individuals with asd, school systems, non-profit agencies, businesses and communities, with corporate support. the partnerships involved in this project are ongoing and have evolved over the past five years, engaging undergraduates, graduate students and faculty from five colleges (nursing, social and behavioral sciences, education, health, and business) in partnership with non-profit organisations, schools and private businesses. the binding mission of this diverse group was to work together to offer a 3d technology program for youth with asd to enable skill development and vocational exploration. challenge of employment there are many issues that make this a critical topic today. employment is a major part of an adult’s identity and greatly impacts quality of life (roux et al. 2015; sung et al. 2015). the application of acquired skills to a meaningful job translates to an enhanced perception of quality of life and subjective wellbeing for young adults with asd (gal et al. 2015). some 50,000 people with asd turn 18 every year in the united states and represent the largest group seeking employment in the autism population (sung et al. 2015). the literature indicates that adults with asd are reported to be among the least successful groups of individuals in terms of community integration, post-secondary education and employment outcomes, even when compared to populations with other disabilities (burgess & cimera 2014; neary, gilmore & ashburner 2015). this is most likely due to social difficulties and social anxiety in young adults with asd (fortuna 2014). most young people with asd are not only unemployed but live in their family home and have jobs considered low wage and ‘unskilled’ (neary, gilmore & ashburner 2015; roux et al. 2013). specifically, for those young individuals with asd who had exited high school, fewer than 50 per cent had participated in post-secondary education or employment, and six years after high school only 55 per cent of participants had paid employment during this time (shattuck et al. 2012). furthermore, individuals who found employment were often under-employed and had difficulty remaining employed (shattuck et al. 2012). adults with asd do wish to be employed, yet there are limited opportunities for employment in competitive markets (jacob et al. 2015). one reason for these low employment rates is that many individuals with asd have difficulty interpreting and navigating social situations and this can create challenges in the workplace (jacob et al. 2015). one challenge is their difficulty in understanding and communicating with supervisors, which can be a primary hindrance to job performance and often lead to their being terminated from the workplace (wehman et al. 2014a). some may also find the social skills necessary during the job application and interview process difficult to navigate (hendricks 2010). 267 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson individuals with asd have unique vocational needs, and the support services available to this population are often limited and less than optimal (jacob et al. 2015). compared to services for other people with disabilities, services for individuals with asd are more expensive and often do not provide sufficient support (burgess & cimera 2014). people with asd are also more likely to be denied services as their disability is regarded as too severe (hendricks 2010). in examining transition services for youth with asd, those aged 18 and younger represented the largest group, and only 47 per cent of them secured employment after receiving services (chen et al. 2015). given the significant heterogeneity in asd, there can be an array of challenges for individuals entering adulthood such as co-morbid health conditions, impairment in social functioning and reduced capacity for independent living that may lead to poor educational outcomes and employment prospects (spain & blainey 2015). one important strategy in addressing this employment crisis is to involve a multi-disciplinary team of professions, agencies and businesses. this article describes a case study of a university-community partnership in a technology education program that recognises the strengths of the individual with autism. the partners in this community collaboration include an interdisciplinary team of university professors and students, a community employment centre, a school district, a construction company and the university’s entrepreneurial centre. this case study is a part of the larger technology educational program described below. a technology program for transition-aged students with asd the neuroversity™ program was developed in an effort to increase vocational readiness for students with autism by teaching them 3d technology skills (diener et al. 2015). criteria for inclusion in this program require students with an autism diagnosis to be verbal, have an interest in technology and be visual–spatial learners, and typically from regular education classrooms and capable of working in a group setting. trimble sketchup, a free downloadable 3d modelling program, is the foundation software used in this program. sketchup is used in a wide variety of professions including architecture, construction, engineering, computer science and video-gaming. many students with autism are visual learners and interact with sketchup modelling tools and design techniques with confidence and creative ability (grandin 1995; kennedy & banks 2011; wright et al. 2011). during workshops, students create intricate 3d models based on individual interests, ranging from ideal living spaces to fantasy worlds. a sketchup expert, a professional who uses sketchup in their career, provides sketchup demonstrations at the beginning of each day and is a role model of a professional working in a 3d design field. two facilitators, typically professionals with asd experience, work with 268 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson the students, monitoring behaviours and assisting students as they learn sketchup. classes range in size from 10 to 12 students who are in their transition years (16–22 years old). foundational workshops focused on basic sketchup skills are offered in a twoweek, half-day workshop format, primarily during the summer months, followed by after-school programming workshops during the school year. the program is evidence supported and has served over 80 students with asd (with a wide range of diversity and disability) in four states of the usa and internationally in south africa over the last five years (d’astous et al. 2013; diener et al. 2015; diener, wright & smith 2014; wright et al. 2011; wright 2014a). the program provides students the opportunity to work and socialise with peers and to build on natural skills and abilities that can potentially benefit them in the workplace. the program also emphasises the importance of visual–spatial strengths in fostering creativity (diener, wright & smith 2014). a very important dimension of the program is the emphasis on community partners. the program uses a collaborative community, multi-faceted skill development model (personal, social and vocational) to program structure and curriculum (wright et al. 2014). community partners, as well as families and students, are important contributors to program design. the university-community partnership case study took place over two weeks during the summer. students attending the workshop were paid to create 3d models based on exact specifications from 2d plans provided by the construction company. funds for this pilot study were provided through a grant from the state’s technology, commercialization, and innovation program (tcip). method/implementation process the implementation of the study was successful because of the involvement of a wide range of professionals and agencies with similar missions. the university provided the staffing and expertise for implementation of the study and the community employment centre provided the space and computers. the school district identified and recruited students and families and provided technology support. the university’s entrepreneurial centre brought us all together, planned meetings and took minutes, and created action items to ensure continuing group progress over the six-month planning period. the business graduate students from the entrepreneurial centre surveyed local architecture and construction companies about their use of sketchup for their 3d drawings and whether they outsourced this design work. one large construction company was particularly interested in our program and provided a sketchup construction job for the students in our case study to complete and a sketchup expert who facilitated successful completion of the job. this case study was designed for participants in the transitional ages of 16–18 years. the local school district transition 269 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson specialist contacted high school special educators who nominated students with autism with visual–spatial skills and an interest in technology. enrolment required a family member (parent, sibling, grandparent or significant other) to be available for the designated two weeks in the summer, to provide transportation and attend the student presentation component of the workshop, and be able to attend a student/parent orientation. at the end of the two-week recruitment period, seven families registered for the orientation meeting. at the orientation meeting parents and students were introduced to the program and students participated in a sketchup demonstration. three students from previous workshops were recruited as peer teachers and helped with the orientation and participated in the workshops. thus, a total of 10 students and their families attended the orientation and all participated in the two-week summer workshop. participants parent reports indicated that 8 out of the 10 students had an autism diagnosis, including asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism. one parent did not provide a diagnosis and another reported that their child had other related disabilities (learning disability and social challenges). as reported by parents, 97 per cent of students had social problems, 79 per cent exhibited perseveration, 60 per cent engaged in atypical communication and development, and 68 per cent had mood disturbances. these figures were based on indicators from the checklist for autism spectrum disorder (mayes et al. 2009). all of the students met the minimum cut-off as per the checklist for autism spectrum disorder for an autism diagnosis. this measure shows high diagnostic agreement and strong convergence with other autism instruments (mayes et al. 2009). participating students were male and ranged in age from 15 to 18. parents reported in their background information that the students had few friends and little success in enrichment or extracurricular activities. one mother in this case study wrote that her son did not participate in activities because he was always ‘kicked out’. parents reported many failure experiences when they had enrolled their student in previous group activities. the program was held for three hours each weekday for the two-week period. in the first week, the sketchup expert, a theme park designer, demonstrated sketchup basics. students created 3d models based on their interests using their newly acquired modelling skills. student projects included such designs as a neighbourhood, a home, a dragon world, a casino, a planetary world (figure 1) and an entire community (with stores, parks, homes). during the second week, students worked each day on the assigned sketchup job that required following directions to the specifications of the construction company sketchup expert (figure 2). specifically, the students built tilt panels for a building foundation. the daily workshops followed a structured schedule that included a demonstration, work time, break (with a socialisation 270 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson goal), presentations of their 3d designs and goal-setting. students were paid a total of $50 for their work on the construction job, earning $10 per day. the program had a 100 per cent attendance rate for the two weeks. many students started to come earlier than the 9 am start time to work on their projects. one mother, who had a reluctant son on the first day, said that by the end of the first week her son was rushing her out of the house to get to the workshop. goal-setting was a daily activity, in which students identified their accomplishments for the day and created goals for the following day, to help them remain focused on making progress with their designs. family members participated in the goalsetting with the students, reinforcing goals achieved and goals set. goal sheets were posted at each student’s computer workstation to remind them of the goals. many students referred to their goal sheets to plan what to do next and to see their progress. there were daily preand post-evaluations by the staff that focused on what went well, what did not, and what modifications and behaviour supports were needed for individual students. for example, adjustments were necessary in seating arrangements and break activities. one facilitator, a behaviour therapist, created action plans and individualised accommodations that included headphones, additional breaks, and individually focused behaviour supports to keep some students on task. evaluation students and family members (parents, grandparents and siblings) were active participants in the development of the program through their feedback and evaluation. for this case study, parents and students were essential participants in program evaluation. these evaluations are reported on below. parent evaluation at the end of each week, the parents were given open-ended surveys to evaluate the program. parents noted individualised learning, creativity, and increase in self-confidence, social engagement and flexibility as student outcomes from program participation. individualised learning and creativity were identified by parents as contributing factors to student success. one father commented in relation to his son’s experience, ‘if he had a question about something he could raise his hand and someone would come over and give him individual help and that paradigm works really well for him’. parents also reported that what they liked about the program was the ‘creative’ use of technology. in their background information many had expressed concern about the amount of time their child spent on technology (primarily gaming activities) – gaming was seen as unproductive time. one parent explained the strength of the program to be ‘the environment, the creative emphasis in the program, really allowed him [the son] to grow and thrive and i would say that would be the most valuable aspect of the program for him’. 271 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson as in past workshops (wright et al. 2011), parents reported that the program helped with their child’s confidence and increased social interactions with peers in the group and with family members who attended presentations, and that the students learned new computer skills. the opportunity to present and explain their designs to their classmates and family members encouraged positive social interaction throughout the duration of the workshop. the workshop provided an opportunity for students to see each other’s work, ask questions and provide feedback to each other. many parents highlighted the social aspect of the program as important, however one parent noted, ‘he didn’t make any friends, there wasn’t a big social component for him, which i think actually made it more friendly for him, less anxiety provoking because there was not pressure on him to make friends or to socialize’. one concern from parents before the workshop was the inflexibility of their students in dealing with unanticipated changes or problems. parents also expressed concern about an increase in co-occurring conditions such as anxiety. computer problems that had the potential to increase anxiety and inflexibility were encountered throughout the two weeks. the students, however, demonstrated flexibility by managing to problem solve these frustrating situations with each other and the facilitators. during the two weeks students had to deal with numerous technology issues including program crashes (when their designs got too large), slowing of the computer speed with different design elements (shadows, fog), computers freezing, and having to reset lost work. to prevent the loss of a design in the event of a program crash or disruption, the facilitators enabled ‘autosave’. autosave saved the current version of the design at the expense of program speed. when students became frustrated with a lagging computer, facilitators gave them the option to turn off autosave. the students were also prompted to save their work often. one student who encountered lagging computer speed opted to disable autosave. he was then responsible for saving his work regularly as he was working on a large multi-day project. at the end of the day’s work period, he stood up to go to break and knocked his hard drive tower off the desk. he controlled his frustration and emotions and went to work on problem solving the situation. while other students went to break, he stayed with the sketchup expert and to the best of his ability recreated his project for presentation time. students expressed their understanding of his disappointment in losing his project and were complimentary about how he was able to reconstruct his 3d design project in a short amount of time. although parents worried about their students having emotional meltdowns due to technology frustrations, there were no meltdowns. students supported each other and demonstrated great empathy. another instance of flexibility occurred when students were unable to access the 3d warehouse, a function 272 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson within sketchup that allows downloading of pre-made models into designs. the students decided, instead, to focus on building other parts of their projects. although parents expressed initial anxiety about their student’s likelihood of success in the program given prior failure experiences, all participating families perceived multiple levels of success for their students at program completion. as one father said, ‘on the first day, i just waited around for the phone call [to come and get his son] and it never came’. it is important to note that both the parents and the students had experienced many failures together, so both perspectives were essential to program development and evaluation. parents are the best source of information on their student’s skills, abilities and challenges. student evaluation students were interviewed on camera about their experiences at the end of the two weeks; all students except one agreed to the video interviews. this student was interviewed and staff recorded his verbal responses. the purpose of the video evaluations was for the students to reflect on their work and their experiences during the workshop. students’ self-reported successes were in the areas of creative, social and 3d modelling skill development and vocational exploration. an important aspect of the program that facilitated skill development was the interactive creative teaching and learning style. as one participant enthusiastically noted, ‘we were able to be creative and be free spirited, we can create our own objects through sketchup and basically we have lee way and it’s quite easy to learn the program.’ another student wrote about his experience, ‘i truly enjoyed sharing my work at presentation time. it helps me connect with others, allows feedback to be given and can give me ideas.’ presentation time was also used to reinforce sketchup tool use and peer-to-peer teaching as the students demonstrated how they created things in their designs. one student said about presentation time, ‘it’s fun and entertaining to show your projects. as well you might get some feedback on how to improve it, whether it is positive or negative, doesn’t matter because you can improve on it. take those tips and stand and show everybody your piece of work.’ students also received genuine positive feedback from their peers and the sketchup experts about their designs. students felt a sense of respect and accomplishment, which led to their having a successful experience. a student commented, ‘i think i was most successful in learning the tools and how to use them and with my self-confidence.’ one student in his video interview talking about what he liked best about the program said, ‘i liked meeting new people and learning how to use this program, to build my dreams’. the social component of the program was enhanced by students sharing their interests and talents in the presentations of their 3d designs. another aspect of program success was the student– instructor–peer relationship dynamic. redirecting the traditional 273 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson teaching path from teacher to peer-to-peer and student-toinstructor provided multiple opportunities for conversation, problem-solving and relationship-building. most peer teaching is designed with a neuro-typical student teaching social skills to a student with autism (chan et al. 2009). in this case study, students with autism taught one another, which was an empowering experience for participants in building self-confidence. the students quickly became comfortable with helping one another, and staff encouraged students to ask their peers when they had questions about sketchup design tools. three returning peer teachers who had attended previous workshops and had good proficiency in sketchup were also present to offer assistance. the veteran students were strategically placed between the new students. when a student needed assistance, instructors would turn first to the veteran student to offer help. peer teachers were guided to comment positively on other students’ work and to answer new student questions as needed while working on their own 3d designs. one of the peer teachers commented in his video evaluation, ‘i’ve always been kind of a leader so it just kind of, it was just like natural to me. yeah, i was confident in myself when i helped.’ students often turned to one another to figure out problems, but they also asked for additional help from the sketchup expert or facilitators. another peer teacher noted, ‘i get those connections with people, we are doing sketchup and we comment about each other’s work and find out something in common like you know me and one kid we found out we both like movie villains and we talked a lot about that’. the students developed a genuine camaraderie with the staff and among themselves in this short period of time. one parent noted, ‘there was no tension with the boys, there was not, like in school, in high school where he was, it seemed like he was always on the outside’. she added, ‘he was right in the middle of the group, he was participating, he was enjoying, he was laughing, there was no tension, it was just camaraderie and pleasantness’. furthermore, this camaraderie helped to promote peer collaboration. for example, two students worked on a collaborative dragon world design, and students made helpful suggestions on each other’s designs and adopted creative ideas learned from the projects presented. students also gained exposure to the idea that they might be able to use their skills and interests in a career, something many of the students had not yet considered. one student stated in his evaluation, ‘i like that it’s sort of real world so we get some experience on what we would do if we were to join a company like that.’ another student remarked, ‘i liked leaning about architecture; that was really cool.’ one student commented during the video interview, ‘i liked learning how this program could be used for modern day construction.’ and another student realised the real-life application of being able to build and replicate designs like the tilt panel foundation exactly to scale in sketchup. he enthusiastically noted, ‘it was cool that this design could exist in the real world’. 274 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson the monetary reward at the end of week two was a highly motivating factor for these students. the reinforcing aspect of earning money enabled one student, in particular, to work through frustration issues that were limiting his ability to complete work. the initial work period of 30 minutes would earn the student $10. as the facilitator could see his agitation increasing, she put a note by him that said, ‘you have already earned $5. would you like to try for another $5?’ reinforcing that he had already successfully earned part of a pay cheque for his work redirected his focus away from frustration and back to being a successful employee. when he became frustrated with assembling a part of the building, he worked through his limited ability to accept suggestions from other people. students were explicitly told that they were being paid for their time spent working on task. pay was not dependent on task completion. however, students were very motivated to keep up with the work of their peers. they were very focused on their job, as well as finishing their own creative project. one student wrote in his evaluation, ‘i like to share because i like to show what i can do. i like sharing my hard work.’ this sense of accomplishment was motivating for students. one student ended his evaluation interview with ‘i want to thank you for helping me learn about sketchup, helping me prepare for a job, and i made a lot of friends here.’ another student remarked, ‘it was good actually quite fun, just because i was able to make friends. i was able to knock my passion of creating new things, when it comes to graphics, and basically be able to use my imagination the way i feel fit.’ this positive, supportive learning environment fostered student success in technology skills and in the social engagement domain. through shared interests, students developed authentic friendships with their peers in the program. they shared contact information (unprompted) and went to each other’s homes, and one student had a party and invited all of the enrolled students (and most of the students came). this case study shows successful application of 3d skills and completion of an assigned job by students with autism who were paid a stipend. the 3d modelling skills students learned in the workshop can translate into a number of different careers that the students were exposed to by the sketchup experts (theme park designer and construction manager). students not only gained technology skills, but also learned and demonstrated the essential vocational preparation skills of critical problem-solving and self-monitoring. discussion this university-community partnership focused on developing technical and vocational skills in young people with autism, and the program provided a place to practise flexibility, problemsolving skills and social skills in an accepting environment. within this positive, supportive environment, students gained confidence as they experienced success. most students who come to the workshops have a history of failure. on any given intake form, 275 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson failed attempts at involvement in activities and social isolation are indicated. in the current study, several elements of the program overcame these failure experiences, including staffing expertise and the strength of the community partnership, which are discussed below. staffing a component of the success of this case study was staffing expertise. the study involved two sketchup experts: the theme park designer taught sketchup basics in week one and the construction manager guided the students through the work project in week two. two graduate students experienced in working with students on the autism spectrum served as facilitators in both weeks. one of the graduate students was a special educator with positive behaviour support training. she took the lead in assisting the sketchup experts and managing any behaviour issues that arose. she used the competing pathway model for developing behaviour support plans (o’neill et al. 2015). our research team had previously documented the characteristics of sketchup experts and facilitators that lead to student success (diener et al. 2015). these characteristics included patience, enthusiasm, humour and sensitivity to individual student needs, all of which are elements of a positive supportive environment. the staff also helped to maintain this environment by focusing on the students’ positive behaviours and problem-solving behaviour issues as they arose. the sketchup experts were professionals in a field that used sketchup and they led the sketchup instruction. lessons were brief and individual assistance was provided as the design expert walked around the classroom. the facilitators had strong positive behaviour support skills (diener et al. 2015). the sketchup expert in week one was a theme park designer who was part of the design team that created the harry potter theme park at universal studios, florida. that wow factor, coupled with impressive computer skills, made him a cool guy in the eyes of the students. in the facilitator sketchup training before the workshop, he modelled how he teaches lessons. he demonstrated a few of the fundamental design tools to the workshop facilitators, and then said, ‘in the workshop, you don’t need to worry about the kids looking at the screen during my lesson – they’re listening.’ he emphasised, from his experience from previous workshops, that students don’t need to demonstrate traditional behaviours of ‘paying attention’ such as eye contact with the instructor, or looking at the screen. ‘they’re taking it all in – trust me’, he said. the format of the workshop encouraged students to ask the expert questions. as he answered, he validated their question and treated it as a professional problem-solving collaboration. the case study experts and facilitators limited their involvement to answering questions, encouraging collaboration and proactively supporting positive social behaviour. the approach emphasised being a ‘guide on the side’ and the instruction team created a supportive learning environment designed specifically 276 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson around the learning styles and interests of the students. the instructors accepted the differences in the students and embraced their quirkiness. university-community collaboration most importantly, this university-community collaboration was very successful in its joint mission of teaching students with asd 3d modelling as a potential employment skill. it was a particularly successful collaboration that reached its goal of ‘every student needs to experience success’. yet, there are always challenges in university-community collaborations in balancing missions and resources. for example, coordination across four large agencies (university, school district, community centre, construction company) required many meetings and negotiations. also, a member of the community centre was recruited and trained to become a facilitator and work alongside the implementation team. however, by the end of the program, she had taken another position in another state. this transition left a gap in our goal of sustainability. as noted previously, there were many technology challenges, and off-site technical assistance was required from the school district. this created some problems when the weekly passwords were changed without notification and the wrong version of sketchup was loaded onto the computers (instructors did not have access to download programs). the school district had planned a technology system check during the summer, but the internet connection to access the 3d warehouse was not available to our students. another challenge occurred when the fire alarm went off 30 minutes before the first class session; fortunately, the instructors were able to convince the administrators to shorten the emergency drill so that it was not going on when the students arrived. given the students’ typical hypersensitivity to their environment, this could have been a disastrous start. these technology and administrative issues were unanticipated. student behaviours were sometimes challenging and our interdisciplinary team in preand post-conferences problem-solved such situations. on many occasions our community partners joined in the daily evaluations and provided suggestions and resources. for example, some students struggled with staying on task and needed more breaks, which required coordination with the busy community centre staff and clients. individual positive behaviour support plans were developed to address situations that might arise. for example, one student had an auditory processing disorder and would become very anxious if too many instructions were given, so a staff member began working with him one-onone. although one of the goals of the program was increased social engagement, one student did not want any social interaction with other students or staff. surprisingly, he attended the party held by one of the students and commented to the staff, ‘these kids [in the workshop] just talk too much’. one student, in particular, had a difficult time containing his comments during presentations 277 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson and irritated a few students with his constant talking during work time. another student frequently went to other sites on the internet (breaking a program rule) and had to be monitored closely by the staff. thus, behaviour challenges were a daily occurrence that required skilled team members familiar with positive behaviour strategies (schall 2010). conclusion this case study presented a university-community based technology program that matched the skills and abilities of students with asd. in addition, social interactions were naturally facilitated through the program design. although some professions might be critical of the program not being inclusive (serving only students with autism), most of our students are in inclusive settings and this was an opportunity to show their talents and abilities to similar peers. behavioural issues were minimised because students were highly motivated to create designs based on their interests and were paid for their work for the construction company. professionals could replicate this experience for some students with autism by similarly focusing on technology skill development. additionally, a community engaged program brings more stakeholders to the agenda of providing students with asd job opportunities that match their strengths and abilities. one profession overlooked in this partnership was vocational rehabilitation (vr). our community partners made us aware of the mandate that 15 per cent of each state’s public vr funds must be used for transition services (sung et al. 2015). we are currently working with our state agency, which has identified clients with asd for transition funding in our program. with its focus on technology skill development for clients with asd, our program is a nice complement to the many services being provided by vr. many professionals, including vocational rehabilitation counsellors, struggle with the complexity of behaviour issues associated with clients with asd and employment (nicholas et al. 2015). an emerging theme in the literature is the pivotal role of employment services, the school system, transition planning and the building of community partnerships in facilitating efficacy in vocational rehabilitative services (gal et al. 2015; jacob et al. 2015; mcdonough & revell 2010; schall 2010; sung et al. 2015). for example, some research has emphasised the importance of social support, mentoring, vocational opportunities and successful outcomes during the transition to adulthood (tobin, drager & richardson 2014). chappel and somers (2010) propose that school systems and their vocational rehabilitation partners need to make a commitment to work together to provide a comprehensive transition plan for students with asd. community partnerships are also essential to successful programming. more important is the premium placed on developmentally appropriate strategies for transition-age students with asd (tantum 2014). although there are difficulties and challenges for 278 | gateways | wright, wright, diener, rafferty & sampson the individual with asd, in recognising and helping to develop their strengths there is potential for a fulfilling life (lai et al. 2013; wright et al. 2014b; wright 2016). future directions, as an extension of the workshops, include the development of internships and supported employment. parents expressed many concerns about their student’s future. one mother said, ‘it would be wonderful if there was a work study program, he could get his feet wet, even without pay would be great. we would jump at the opportunity.’ the international navigational company trimble (which owns sketchup) is supporting this aspect of the program and providing the necessary in-kind services for development. students on the autism spectrum need multiple levels of positive support for successful employment, and a model is being developed in collaboration with trimble that incorporates mentors, managers and job coaches. university-community collaborations and university-based partnerships are promising strategies to resolve the unacceptable rates of unemployment and underemployment of students with asd (chappel & somers 2010; sung et al. 2015; wehman et al. 2014c; wilczynski, trammell & clarke 2013). in summary, well-designed community partnership programs and services that are implemented in a strategic fashion and targeted at optimal age levels can improve adaptive skills in individuals with asd (wehman et al. 2014a). furthermore, it has been shown that supported employment services for individuals with asd involving many community partners, including universities, are a worthwhile investment and can lead to economic benefits by decreasing lost productivity and resources costs (jacob et al. 2015). as wehman et al. 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insights, vol. 5, pp. 21–73. wright, s (ed.) 2016, autism spectrum disorder in mid and later life, jessica kingsley publishers, london. figure 1: three-dimensional design created by a student, 2014 figure 2: sketchup design construction project, with two-dimensional plans at left, and 3d sketchup design with embellishments at right http://www.hoajonline.com/autism/2054-992x/1/1 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 may 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: haque, s., krawec, t., chu, j., wong, t., chowdhury, m., and tanvir chowdhury, t. 2021. undergraduate students’ perceptions of community engagement: a snapshot of a public research university in canada. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:1, 1–9. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.7665 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au snapshot article undergraduate students’ perceptions of community engagement: a snapshot of a public research university in canada sarika haque1, taylor krawec1, joan chu1, tammy wong2, mohammad chowdhury3,4 and turin tanvir chowdhury3,4 1 department of biological sciences, faculty of science, university of calgary, alberta, canada 2 department of psychology, faculty of arts, university of calgary, alberta, canada 3 department of community health sciences, cumming school of medicine, university of calgary, alberta, canada 4 department of family medicine, cumming school of medicine, university of calgary, alberta, canada corresponding author: turin tanvir chowdhury; turin.chowdhury@ucalgary.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7665 article history: received 22/01/2021; revised 02/04/2021; accepted 06/04/2021; published 05/2021 abstract students who participate in regular community engagement (ce) often experience benefits in different areas of their lives. many academic institutions have implemented action plans to increase ce within the student population. at the university of calgary, canada, this is done primarily through its broader eyes high strategy. as there remains a gap in the literature about students’ perceptions of ce and their awareness of university ce strategies, this study aims to identify undergraduate students’ awareness of the eyes high strategy, attitudes towards and levels of engagement, and challenges and potential methods to increase ce participation. data was collected through a voluntary online survey (n=528). participants were recruited through posters, social media, online faculty platforms and by faculty members. survey results indicated students lacked knowledge regarding the eyes high strategy. it was noted that students’ knowledge, attitudes and practices of ce increased as they spent more time at the university. the top perceived challenges to ce were lack of time, accessible information, support and incentives. to increase accessibility and student participation, we suggest introducing the eyes high declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7665 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7665 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7665 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:turin.chowdhury@ucalgary.ca http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7665 strategy and ce activities early to the undergraduate population through workshops, credit-based courses and/or professional development requirements. our data suggests that students are not well informed about the eyes high strategy. there is thus a need for the university to build a campus-wide, student-informed initiative to proactively engage students. this research will serve as a gateway to further explore communicative methods that might better convey university priorities to students. keywords community engagement; university; undergraduate students; perceptions introduction community engagement (ce) is a broad term that encompasses various activities. within universities, it is seen as an ongoing partnership between higher education institutions and the community, both at local and regional levels ( jacob et al. 2015). previous studies have found that students who participate in regular ce often experience benefits in different areas of their lives as a result (bowman et al. 2010; van wynsberghe & andruske 2007). students who participated in ce were able to apply their curricular knowledge to realworld contexts and gain interpersonal communication skills (bednarz et al. 2008). another study indicated that extracurricular experiences encouraged intellectual curiosity among students, improved institutional commitment and prompted continual high graduating and return rates (marti 2008). one study found that actively engaging with one’s community while pursuing higher education had positive long-term effects, as students who volunteered or enrolled in at least one service course during their studies experienced greater life satisfaction as an indirect effect of their ce experiences (bowman et al. 2010). many academic institutions have implemented action plans to increase ce within the student population. these frameworks often address students, faculty members, other universities and the wider community. the university of calgary has implemented a strategy called eyes high, which focuses on several aspects of campus life, including ce (university of calgary 2019). the ce priorities defined by the eyes high strategy include thought leadership, cultural enrichment, community service, collaborative partnerships and alumni engagement. however, despite efforts to increase ce, little is known about students’ perceptions of ce and their awareness of university ce strategies. the current study aims to identify undergraduate students’ awareness of the eyes high strategy, their attitudes towards ce, levels of engagement and challenges, as well as potential methods to increase ce participation. having a more detailed understanding of students’ knowledge and behaviours will provide opportunities to build greater awareness and participation in ce within the student body. method participant engagement online surveys were completed by university of calgary undergraduate students. survey participants were recruited through social media websites such as instagram. survey links and flyers were also posted on online faculty platforms such as d2l and emailed to faculty members to disseminate amongst their communication channels. in addition, posters with the survey qr code were displayed across campus. data collection data was collected from an online multiple-choice survey using qualtrics. the first section asked participants about their age, gender, faculty, club involvement and other demographic information. the main series of questions assessed the participants’ knowledge of university of calgary ce initiatives and their haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20212 attitudes towards and practices of ce, both on and off campus. the survey was conducted from december 2019 to june 2020. the study was approved by the university of calgary conjoint health research ethics board. analysis all completed online surveys (n=528) were included in the analysis. data was analysed quantitatively. weighted data was used for all analyses. descriptive analysis was conducted for each of the components of students’ knowledge, attitudes and practice-related variables. results demographics five hundred and twenty-eight responses (total 621 responses, 93 incomplete) were analysed. the sample of respondents consisted of 85 first-year students, 103 second-year students, 179 third-year students and 161 students in their fourth year or higher. approximately 68.2 per cent of respondents were female (n=360), 30.5 per cent were male (n=161) and 1.3 per cent identified as other (n=7). the respondents were spread across all faculties, with the greatest representation being from the faculty of science (n=208) and the faculty of arts (n=188). participants ranged in age from under 18 years to over 65; the majority of participants were between the ages of 18 and 25 (n=488). details of the demographic profile distribution of the survey respondents are provided in appendix a, table a1. knowledge students in upper years were more aware of the eyes high strategy: 32.3 per cent of students in fourth year or higher were aware of the strategy, in comparison to 25.9 per cent of first-year students. on average, 29.2 per cent of students were aware of the university of calgary’s eyes high strategy, which includes the ce strategy. attitudes table 1 (below) demonstrates students’ attitudes toward ce. more students in their fourth year or higher at the university responded that ce was ‘very/extremely important’ than students in lower years. as the year of study increased, students’ respective opinions on the importance of ce increased. however, there was a decrease in ‘very/extremely important’ responses between firstand second-year students. the level of ce importance least identified within each year was ‘slightly/not at all important’. table 1. attitudes towards ce among university students in varying years of study (number (%) responding to the question ‘how important is ce to you?’) very/extremely important moderately important slightly/not at all important 1st year 37 (43.5) 38 (44.7) 10 (11.7) 2nd year 38 (36.9) 46 (44.7) 19 (18.5) 3rd year 86 (48.0) 76 (42.5) 17 (9.5) 4th+ year 93 (57.8) 53 (32.9) 15 (9.6) haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20213 practices in appendix b, table b1a reveals that first-year students, on average, participated in ce activities less frequently than upper-year students. more upper-year students participated in ce activities at least once every two weeks compared to firstand second-year students. table b1b shows that, regardless of the year of study, the majority of respondents believed they could be doing more to get involved in ce. however, there was a greater percentage of upper-year students who believed they were doing enough or more than enough compared to first-year students. table b1c indicates that first-year students were less likely to participate in ce on campus than upper-year students. ce on campus can include a variety of activities, such as research, club involvement, student politics and volunteering. as a whole, the undergraduate student population was most likely to participate in ce on campus, followed by in neighbourhoods and youth communities. fewer students practised ce in religious and elderly communities, and a smaller proportion of students did so in other areas, including with vulnerable populations and in animal shelters. figure 1 shows the awareness of the eyes high strategy among students with varying frequencies of participation in ce activities. overall, regardless of frequency of participation, 60–80 per cent of the students in each category were unaware of the strategy. as frequency of participation increased, awareness of the eyes high strategy also increased. among those students who participated most frequently (27.5 per cent), 36.6 per cent were aware of the strategy, but 63.4 per cent of students were still unaware. similarly, among students who participated in ce activities least frequently (36.6 per cent), 76.2 per cent were unaware of the strategy, with only 23.8 per cent being aware of it. similar distributions of awareness versus unawareness were seen among students who participated in ce activities once every two weeks or at least once a month. figure 1. percentage of survey respondents with regards to their frequency of participation in ce activities. split bars indicate the percentage of respondents who were unaware or aware of the eyes high strategy within each category. haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20214 perceived challenges and potential solutions when asked to select major challenges faced when trying to become more involved in ce, 81.8 per cent of respondents indicated being too busy was a barrier, while 39.0 per cent indicated that not knowing where to access information was a major barrier and 36.4 per cent indicated a lack of support from the university. additional barriers included a lack of incentive to be involved, financial constraints and language/cultural barriers. of respondents, 1.9 per cent indicated that they had not faced any barriers or challenges to their ce involvement. respondents were asked to select all options that would encourage them to participate in ce activities. easier access to information was the most common response (64.2 per cent). of participants, 54.7 per cent indicated that additional information on ce activities would encourage their participation and 47.5 per cent indicated receiving credit for participation would encourage them, while 2.7 per cent indicated ‘other’ potential ways to increase participation in ce, including increased accessibility, activities tailored to student interests, and incentives (e.g. food) to attend events. discussion compared to other students, first-year students were less aware of the university of calgary eyes high strategy, which includes the ce strategy, because they had been part of the university community for a shorter time. our data suggests that knowledge of the eyes high strategy increases with students’ years of study, but it does not vary greatly. table 1 highlights that upper-year undergraduate students perceived ce to be more important than students in lower years, although this change was small. interestingly, there was a decrease in ‘very/extremely important’ perceptions of ce between firstand second-year students, which is a potential avenue for future research. upper-year students reported higher levels of participation in ce activities compared to lower-year students (table b1a). a factor contributing to this trend may be that upper-year students are more likely to gain positions of leadership on campus. it is also likely that, as these students are closer to their after-graduation plans and future careers, they may be more compelled to gain experience in areas such as volunteering, research or community leadership. career aspirations often influence an individual’s participation in ce. such experiences may also cause students to perceive ce as more important than they previously thought. based on figure 1, it is possible that increased participation in ce activities increases exposure to the eyes high strategy, rather than the other way around. this suggests that student participation in ce increases their knowledge of university ce goals and strategies. the current study revealed, however, that even the majority of students who participate in ce most frequently were unaware of the eyes high strategy, suggesting that its relationship with ce participation is weak. regardless of the frequency of participation, the majority of students remained unaware of the eyes high strategy, indicating a broad lack of awareness. it is therefore important to strengthen the relationship between ce participation and awareness of the eyes high strategy in order to ensure that the university-funded ce initiatives are having their intended effects. across all years, the majority of respondents believed they could be doing more to get involved in ce (table b1b) but were hindered by time constraints and lack of information. studies by ellis (2004) and tansey and gonzalez-perez (2006) found that a lack of time and information are major barriers preventing younger people from volunteering. these studies also found that a lack of information about opportunities could be linked to hesitance and apprehension about specific requirements or qualifications to participate in ce activities. the value of encouraging new students to get involved in ce is described by tinto (2006). he emphasises that the way new students participate in ce appears to be a potential avenue for increasing haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20215 knowledge of ce. depending on the type of ce opportunity being offered, it may be beneficial for organisations or clubs to widely advertise opportunities and be clear about the required qualifications (or lack thereof ). additionally, we suggest that the university set up workshops throughout the year, particularly during orientation week, to inform students about the eyes high strategy and campus ce opportunities. integrating the concepts of the eyes high strategy, specifically the community engagement initiatives, into orientation week and first-year education could allow first-year and newly transferred students to gain exposure to ce early in their journey at the university of calgary. one study reported that integrating students as early as possible is important because this provides a sense of community and ownership (brisbin & hunter 2003). alternatively, students could be expected to complete a minimum number of professional development hours as a degree requirement, and the workshops could be a way to fulfil them. having credit-based electives dedicated to ce could also encourage students to partake in ce activities. one study demonstrated that offering academic credit in exchange for work in the community provided students with many authentic experiences that they would not have encountered otherwise ( jung 2011). as such, we suggest advertising and offering broader co-op and internship opportunities, as this could immerse more students into the community. limitations and future directions limitations of this work include the small sample size and that the collected data may not be representative of the entire university population. additionally, we were unable to determine trends in ce based on faculty or compare domestic versus international students. future studies should include a larger and more representative sample from all faculties and years of study, in proportion to the academic institution’s population. this would increase generalisability and provide additional information about ce within certain student demographics. furthermore, due to the specificity of our survey to ce at the university of calgary, the results may not be generalisable to other post-secondary institutions. volunteer bias is another consideration; it is likely that the students who completed the survey are already more engaged than the average student on campus. we hypothesise that the students who were unaware of the survey or unwilling to complete it would have even lower levels of knowledge and practices of ce. finally, within the current study, there was a risk of social desirability bias, which could be addressed in future research using a precise manipulation check. conclusion this study was able to identify university of calgary undergraduate students’ knowledge and practice of ce and their responses to it. practical implications of the study include increasing awareness of ce opportunities for students by collaborating with representatives of the eyes high strategy at the university of calgary. it is widely known that participating in ce activities is beneficial both for the community and the participant, and the university of calgary strives to foster vibrant campus ce through the eyes high strategy. our study aimed to gauge undergraduate students’ awareness of the university’s ce initiatives and identify any areas for improvement that could increase engagement. survey data revealed a lack of awareness of the eyes high strategy and related ce initiatives within the student population and a lack of involvement in ce. our data also revealed barriers to engagement, such as a lack of information about opportunities and being too busy to engage. creating more accessible ce-focused resources for the student population could encourage student engagement. integrating the eyes high strategy and other ce initiatives into different aspects of the overall university experience could enable more effective communication with students and increase student awareness and participation in ce. the benefits of haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20216 increased ce among the undergraduate population are not limited to the campus, but may be likely to lead to further engagement with local communities and groups. with further understanding of students’ knowledge of the university of calgary’s ce initiatives, we anticipate that this research will serve as a gateway to explore communicative methods that will enhance undergraduate students’ engagement with the community. furthermore, there is a need for academic organisations to collaborate with students to further promote ce and build a campus-wide ce initiative that is student-informed. references bednarz, s, chalkley, b, fletcher, s, hay, i, le heron, e, mohan, a & trafford, j 2008, ‘community engagement for student learning in geography’, journal of geography in higher education, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 87–100. https://doi. org/10.1080/03098260701731553 bowman, n, brandenberger, j, lapsley, d, hill, p & quaranto, j 2010, ‘serving in college, flourishing in adulthood: does community engagement during the college years predict adult well-being?’, applied psychology: health and wellbeing, vol. 1, pp. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-0854.2009.01020.x brisbin, r & hunter, s 2003, ‘community leaders’ perceptions of university and college efforts to encourage civic engagement’, the review of higher education, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 467–86. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2003.0009 ellis, a 2004, ‘generation v: young people speak out on volunteering’, institute for volunteering research, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–11. jacob, w, sutin, s, weidman, j & yeager, j 2015, ‘community engagement in higher education: international and local perspectives’, sense publishers, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-007-9_1 jung, j 2011, ‘assessing learning from a student community engagement project’, education + training, vol. 53, nos. 2/3, pp. 155–65. https://doi.org/10.1108/00400911111115690 marti, c 2008, ‘dimensions of student engagement in american community colleges: using the community college student report in research and practice’, community college journal of research and practice, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668920701366867 tansey, l & gonzalez-perez, m 2006, ‘university platform & student volunteering: harnessing student civic engagement through volunteering’, community knowledge initiative national university of ireland, april, pp. 1–14. tinto, v 2006, ‘research and practice of student retention: what next?’, journal of college student retention, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.2190/4ynu-4tmb-22dj-an4w university of calgary 2019, ‘eyes high strategy’, viewed 5 october 2019, https://www.ucalgary.ca/eyeshigh/strategy van wynsberghe, r & andruske, c 2007, ‘research in the service of co-learning: sustainability and community engagement’, canadian journal of education, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 349–76. https://doi.org/10.2307/20466638 haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20217 https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260701731553 https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260701731553 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-0854.2009.01020.x https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2003.0009 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-007-9_1 https://doi.org/10.1108/00400911111115690 https://doi.org/10.1080/10668920701366867 https://doi.org/10.2190/4ynu-4tmb-22dj-an4w https://www.ucalgary.ca/eyeshigh/strategy https://doi.org/10.2307/20466638 appendix a table a1. demographic profile distribution of survey respondents (n = 528) demographics value frequency % gender male 161 30.5 female 360 68.2 other 7 1.3 faculty1 cumming school of medicine 22 3.7 faculty of arts2 188 33.2 faculty of kinesiology 44 7.8 faculty of science3 208 36.1 haskayne school of business 29 5.1 schulich school of engineering 45 8.0 werklund school of education 22 3.9 other4 18 3.4 year of study 1st year 85 16.1 2nd year 103 19.3 3rd year 179 33.9 4th+ year 161 30.5 on-campus club affiliations 0 208 39.4 1 164 31.1 2+ 156 29.6 1 percentages do not add up to 100 as multiple faculties could be selected by each respondent. 2 faculty of arts includes social sciences, languages, communication, and fine arts. 3 faculty of science includes biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, geoscience, mathematics, statistics, physics and astronomy. 4 other includes undeclared, open studies, faculty of nursing and faculty of social work. haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20218 appendix b table b1. (a) ce practices among undergraduate students at the university of calgary. (b) perception of personal ce (number (%) of students who feel that their participation in ce is enough, not enough, and more than enough). (c) location of ce activities. a. year of study i participate in ce activities... at least once a week at least once every two weeks at least once a month less than once a month 1st year 21 (24.7) 10 (11.8) 23 (27.0) 31 (36.5) 2nd year 30 (29.1) 14 (13.6) 18 (17.5) 41 (39.8) 3rd year 44 (24.6) 35 (19.5) 37 (20.7) 63 (35.2) 4th+ year 50 (31.1) 15 (9.3) 38 (23.6) 58 (36.0) b. regarding my level of participation in ce... year of study i am doing enough i could do more to get involved i am doing more than enough 1st year 16 (18.8) 69 (81.2) 0 (0.0) 2nd year 20 (19.4) 78 (75.7) 5 (4.9) 3rd year 38 (21.2) 137 (76.6) 4 (2.2) 4th+ year 37 (23.0) 113 (70.2) 11 (6.8) c. year of study my ce takes place in… the oncampus community my neighbourhood the youth community the elderly community the religious community other 1st year 37 (43.5) 26 (30.6) 22 (25.9) 5 (5.9) 12 (14.1) 2 (2.4) 2nd year 55 (53.4) 34 (33.0) 23 (22.3) 5 (4.9) 15 (14.6) 3 (2.9) 3rd year 104 (58.1) 54 (30.2) 40 (22.4) 13 (7.3) 32 (17.9) 8 (4.5) 4th+ year 93 (57.8) 60 (37.3) 29 (18.0) 8 (5.0) 26 (16.2) 8 (5.0) note: percentages do not add up to 100 per cent because the question directed respondents to select all of the locations where their ce took place. haque, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20219 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 13, no. 1 may 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: hall, b., tandon, r. 2020. editorial: knowledge democracy for a transforming world. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7225. http:dx. doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v13i1.7225 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au introduction editorial: knowledge democracy for a transforming world budd hall1, rajesh tandon1 1 co-chairs, unesco chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education corresponding author: budd hall; bhall@uvic.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 article history: received 25/05/2019; revised 27/05/2019; accepted 28/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract the past five decades have seen enormous, worldwide growth in, and appreciation of, knowledge democracy – the discourse which we have found best contains the various theoretical approaches, values and practices within which participatory research exists. this introduction outlines our understanding of knowledge democracy, which can be expressed by a number of principles: (1) recognition of a multiplicity of epistemologies and ways of knowing; (2) openness to assembling, representing and sharing knowledge in multiple forms (including traditional academic formats and all manner of social and arts-based approaches); (3) recognition that knowledge emerging from the daily lives of excluded persons is an essential tool for social movements and other transformational strategies; and the (4) requirement to carefully balance the need to protect the ownership of communities’ knowledge with the need to share knowledge in a free and open access manner. we are pleased to present five articles from around the world that broaden and deepen our understanding of knowledge democracy – from a theoretical perspective, a practice perspective, an ontological perspective, and an action or political perspective. keywords: knowledge democracy, community-based research, participatory research, engaged scholarship, open access journal declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:bhall@uvic.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 introduction we welcome readers to this special issue of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement. this issue contains five articles that were written in response to a call to contribute to a themed issue on knowledge democracy. on behalf of the journal’s editorial committee, margaret malone, the managing editor, invited the two of us, budd hall and rajesh tandon, to be guest editors for this issue of gateways. interestingly, several other manuscripts came in for consideration without referring to the theme. as it turned out, these three additional articles are complementary to the first five and, in fact, offer us opportunities to expand the conversation. we will comment briefly on all articles. so how did it all begin? in 1974, budd hall was invited to give a talk to the communications department at stanford university on his research on radio study group campaigns in tanzania in the early 1970s. his afternoon talk went well, prompting respectful listening and interesting questions from the audience. later in the evening, the host brought together a group of academics to his home for more informal conversation. he asked budd if he had any other work that he would be willing to share with the group for a few minutes. budd thought about it and decided to share some of his early ideas on participatory research, ideas that had emerged within the research community of the university of dar es salaam during those days, influenced by the thinking of the then president of tanzania, julius k nyerere, and others, such as paulo freire, who had visited that country. he told a short story about emerging thinking on non-colonial, community-based participatory research methods which privileged the experiential knowledge of those women and men living challenging lives of poverty and exclusion. included in his talk were a number of critiques of the dominant approaches to research of the day, which were based on top–down expert knowledge paradigms. when his talk ended, budd recalled that, ‘the room exploded with noise, hands in the air, and shouts’. the assembled group of progressive academics, many of them considered to be among the brightest in the world because of their stanford university positions, were furious. budd’s critique of the dominant academic mode of production had touched a nerve, and the room, to a person, pushed back. they couldn’t get him out of town fast enough. budd, as we know, was not stopped by this experience, nor by many other similar experiences in those years, and together we (budd and rajesh) created the international participatory research network in 1978. rajesh had had a similar rejection of his participatory research experience working with tribal peoples in southern rajasthan during the early 1970s. when he first attempted to write up his work for his phd in organizational development at case western reserve university in the usa, rajesh was told that it was not acceptable scholarship and to start again. he did not stop, but rather found a young academic willing to take him on and support him to develop a phd using participatory research approaches. we share these stories because they underscore how far we have come. the creation of gateways as an open access journal devoted to building awareness of the growing world of participatory research, community-based research, participatory action research, engaged scholarship and the many other family members of this important movement marked an important step in the maturation of community-based participatory research. supported by internationally respected universities and open to contributions from community and social hall, tandon gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 movement-based intellectuals, gateways occupies a special place in our global architecture of engaged scholarship. such a journal would not have been possible 45–50 years ago. so we were delighted to be invited by the editors of gateways to be guest editors for this issue, which includes five articles responding to the idea of knowledge democracy. knowledge democracy is the discourse that we have found best encompasses the various approaches, values and practices of participatory research. knowledge democracy, as we have most often expressed it, embraces a number of principles: (1) recognition of a multiplicity of epistemologies and ways of knowing; (2) an openness to assembling, representing and sharing knowledge in multiple forms, including traditional academic formats but also a range of social and artsbased approaches; (3) recognition that knowledge emerging from the daily lives of excluded persons is an essential tool for social movements and other transformational strategies; and (4) sharing research findings in a free and open manner, while protecting the ownership of knowledge held by communities. readers can learn much more about our thinking on these matters from a range of resources on our unesco chair website (see www.unescochaircbrsr.org). the articles in this issue bring to attention what knowledge inequity means from a practical point of view. they come from very different parts of the world: urban frenchspeaking quebec, the atlantic coast of english-speaking newfoundland, canada, the andean mountain regions of colombia, the drylands of northern kenya and the acholi territory of northern uganda. from them, our understanding of knowledge democracy is broadened and deepened from a theoretical perspective, a practice perspective, an ontological perspective, and from an action or political perspective. we are pleased to note that three of the five case studies have been contributed by persons associated with the knowledge for change consortium on training in community-based participatory research, the training network with which both of us are associated. this issue opens with an article by baptiste godrie and his colleagues in quebec on ‘epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community’. the article, based on work done by a quebec research group, has a focus on poverty. the project brought together academics who had an interest in poverty from several disciplinary perspectives, and community and social movement activists associated with poverty action groups. they add an important set of theoretical contributions to the discourse on epistemic justice and remind us of the important work of fricker (2007), who writes about epistemic injustice occurring through hermeneutical injustice. we are grateful to godrie and his colleagues for sharing both their framework and the practical tool they have developed for evaluating participatory research. notably, they also remind us that participatory research supports accumulation of knowledge ‘with a very high level of contextual validity’. it builds theory as well as responds to transformation. nkatha mercy was born and raised in the drylands of northern kenya. now coordinator of the knowledge for change community-based research training hub based at the ms training centre for development cooperation in arusha, tanzania, she notes that for the past 20–25 years western development ‘experts’ have been coming to her homeland to ‘empower’ local women and men to better care for the land, the animals and the people. she asks us why external euro-centric knowledge is superior to the african indigenous knowledge of the borana, the turkana or the rendile. following a detailed presentation on the complexities and realities of her region from an ecological perspective, she takes us into the epistemological sophistication of the pastoralists who have been living in this region for millennia. she speaks of the interweaving of language, of spirituality, of place, of humans editorial: knowledge democracy for a transforming world gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 http://www.unescochair-cbrsr.org http://www.unescochair-cbrsr.org as simply a part of energies of life. she speaks of the women’s knowledge arising from their specific engagement in rural life. her article closes with reference to a hopeful development, university mtaani, a form of outreach to those previously excluded from higher education by tangaza university college. offered in community locations, learning and community dialogues are combined in a pedagogy of praxis. colombia, so recently emerging from a 50-year civil war, is the location for gateways’ third offering by daniel and angela lopera-molano from the university of ibagué. their work is located in the village of gaitania in the andean foothills, near where the farc guerilla movement began. the authors are part of an academic program in critical design at the university. they entered into an agreement to work with the nasa wes’x indigenous community, 150 ex-combatants, and an association of coffee producers on a community enterprise project. the project worked so well, that the collaboration created a new brand of coffee, called the third agreement, based on the territory’s autonomous peace processes. third agreement coffee is now marketed in towns in colombia, including bogota. (by happy coincidence, both budd and rajesh have had the chance to taste this excellent coffee.) an important contribution to knowledge democracy is their creation of several words in spanish that articulate principles of knowledge democracy in quite a powerful way. the word plandisposición combines planning and disposition. escuchacción combines the spanish words for active listening and action. sentipensar-actuar combines acting, thinking and feeling. the importance of creativity in language invention in languages other than the all too hegemonic english is seen in the article from gulu university in uganda as well. a team from gulu university, a community-based university in northern uganda, includes lecturer david monk, vice-chancellor george openjuru, senior lecturer martin odoch, community leader denis nono and simon ongom. one of their contributions to deepening and broadening concepts of knowledge democracy is found in their title, acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo. in english this means acholi knowledge for protecting the world. it is an element of african epistemology that underpins all their work. like nkatha mercy’s work on pastoralist epistemology, they raise up their work as an acholi contribution to the body of knowledge available for all of us wanting to make this a better world. they share three stories with us. the first is about work done by a local ngo to help youth move forward. the young people create ideas for their futures through dance, stories, theatre and the arts. their second story is the experience of an environmental activist working with communities concerned about the cutting of trees for charcoal production. eighty per cent of the villagers were opposed to the tree cutting, which resulted in profits for the charcoal makers, and this had been going on for a long time. while the story is not over, their work has succeeded in getting the local council to ban tree cutting. the final story reports on how gulu university created a new degree program in water engineering. rather than take a blueprint from some western university model of what a water engineering program should look like, they brought various ministries, ngos and community members together to imagine what the curriculum should be. the university was amazed at the quality of the contributions, and reports much interest by the community in registering for the course. the final article in this themed collection is by gardner and scarth, who bring the world of young people from low-income communities to our attention. working out of st john’s newfoundland and the memorial university of newfoundland, they have taken on the myth that low-income communities are the reason for poor performance of students in schools. to do so, they developed a research and engagement approach to working with community members and teachers based on principles of knowledge democracy. through their work, they hall, tandon gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 developed seven ‘knowledge practices’, which include storytelling, use of ecological metaphor, strength-based approaches, and the arts. their work emphasises celebration, and community assets rather than deficiencies. it also offers three ‘ways of knowing’: lived knowing, interconnected knowing and participatory knowing. they use a graphic, ‘tree of community knowledge’, to document, categorise and share what they have learned. their work underscores the power of the arts to challenge outdated stereotypes and to raise the confidence of young people and low-income community members to confront obstacles to advancement. extending the conversation we have taken a look at the three additional articles and would like to draw readers’ attention to how they might also be understood from the perspective of knowledge democracy, beginning with the article by lisa bishop and her colleagues from memorial university in newfoundland, canada, the same part of the world that the earlier gardner and scarth article came from. they are based in a university health centre and wanted to find ways to better support mental health issues in youth. rather than find a model from some other part of the world and apply it, they initiated a community-engaged research approach which resulted in the creation of a community alliance on youth mental health and a youth mental health action plan – all done by taking into account the lives and words of youth themselves. janzen and ochocka are co-directors of the community based research centre in ontario, canada. they are among the most respected people working in the field of community-based participatory research and evaluation. their article shares their reflections on the use of a community based research excellence tool (cbret), which they developed for assessing excellence in three syrian refugee research projects in ontario. they provide evidence that cbr, itself, contributes to social change. they identify six aspects of cbr that are key when looking at excellence in this type of work: community-driven, participation, rigour, knowledge mobilisation, community mobilisation and societal impact. sarah walker and her five colleagues are community conservation specialists working out of colorado state university in the usa. their article is on the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, northern kenya. they were involved for several years with unity women’s village, a unique women’s and children’s only village in samburu. they begin with the words of women from the village speaking about outside researchers, ‘they don’t tell us who they will share their stories with’. these are words that could come from nearly every community around the world that has experienced external researchers. they raise important questions about the ethics of doing research when one is not from the community. gateways welcomes all comments on our themed issue on knowledge democracy. we hope that many of you reading these articles might decide to submit journal articles of your own on knowledge democracy in the future. of course, both budd hall and rajesh tandon are most eager to hear from you as well. references fricker, m 2007, epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing, oxford university press, oxford, uk. editorial: knowledge democracy for a transforming world gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 january 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: levac, l. and denis, a.b. 2019. combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 6193. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v12i1.6193 issn 836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets leah levac1* and ann b denis2 1 department of political science, university of guelph, 50 stone road east, guelph, on, n1g 2w1, canada 2 school of sociological and anthropological studies, university of ottawa, 120 university private, ottawa, on, k1n 6n5, canada. *corresponding author: leah levac; llevac@uoguelph.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6193 article history: received 18/01/2018; revised 15/08/2018; accepted 31/08/2018; published 14/01/2019 abstract as hankivsky & cormier (2011) and denis (2008) note, the theoretical evolution of intersectionality has outpaced its methodological development. while past work has contributed to our understanding of how to apply intersectionality in research (criawicref & dawn-rafh 2014; morris & bunjun 2007; simpson 2009), gaps persist. drawing on a four-year community-university research collaboration called ‘changing public services: women and intersectional analysis’, we explore the incorporation of feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments into secondary data analyses, specifically a scoping review and secondary analyses of two statistics canada data sets. we discuss our application of these commitments across all stages of designing and undertaking these analyses, in particular drawing into focus the importance of dialogue and deliberation throughout our process. our application of feminist intersectional and community-engaged commitments – including prioritising community benefit and practising self-reflexivity – revealed gaps and silences in the data, in turn improving our understanding of differences in people’s experiences, our critiques of policies and our identification of new research questions. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors gratefully acknowledge the following financial support for the research discussed in the article: the canadian social sciences and humanities research council, the canadian union of public employees, the public service alliance of canada, the canadian union of postal workers, the canadian labour congress, and the university of guelph, canada. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6193 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6193 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6193 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:llevac%40uoguelph.ca?subject= https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6193 the lessons learned, we conclude, are valuable for scholars, whether or not community engagement is central to their scholarly commitment. keywords feminist intersectionality, community-engaged research, scoping review, logistic regression, community-university partnerships, canadian public services introduction this article presents the research design and methodological adaptations of a scoping review and a statistical analysis of large-scale survey data, two components of a community-engaged feminist intersectional, interdisciplinary research project about the impacts of changes to canadian public services on diverse women as service users and providers. focusing on the community-engaged and feminist intersectional adaptation of secondary data analyses within large community-engaged research projects reveals important gaps in policy-focused research. as hankivsky & cormier (2011) and denis (2008) note, the theoretical evolution of intersectionality has outpaced its methodological development. while past work, for example by the bilingual canadian research institute for the advancement of women, criawicref (e.g. criaw-icref & dawn-rafh 2014; morris & bunjun 2007; simpson 2009), has contributed to our understanding of how to apply intersectionality in research, gaps persist. scholars have also focused on the application of intersectionality in policy analysis (hankivsky & cormier 2011) and on the role of diverse communities in policy development and analysis (e.g. christensen, krogman & parlee 2010; murray 2015), but these practices remain elusive and are not necessarily driven by community-identified needs. concurrently, as universities increasingly espouse the benefits of working collaboratively with research partners outside the university to advance scholarship and increase impact (canadian federation of humanities and social sciences 2017), and as recognition of the importance of communityidentified research questions grows, the related methodological protocols and institutional mechanisms sometimes lag (hall, tandon & tremblay 2015). we begin with a brief discussion of our understanding of community-engaged research and feminist intersectionality and an overview of the research project, changing public services (cps), on which we are focusing. we then describe how we incorporated community engagement and feminist intersectionality into the research design and, more specifically, into its two secondary analyses – a scoping review and a statistical analysis using statistics canada data. while recognising the limitations of referring generically to ‘diverse women’, we use the term to signal not only our attention to women’s heterogeneity (on such bases as their race, socioeconomic status, gender identity and sexual orientation, primary language and indigeneity) which informs our intersectional analysis, but also our recognition that women’s diverse identities and positions differently structure their social and economic experiences, including their access to, and provision of, public services. our main argument is twofold. first, in large community-engaged research partnerships, upholding commitments to feminist intersectionality and community-engaged scholarship within secondary analyses that are part of the project design is important. second, the insights and challenges emerging from the reflexivity required by both feminist intersectionality and community-engaged research helps us identify gaps – and silences – in the available literature and data. these gaps and silences help us better understand differences in people’s experiences and raise new research levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes questions. thus, we assert that the lessons that follow are valuable for scholars, whether or not community engagement is central to their scholarly commitments. community-engaged research changing public services (cps), described in more detail below, was developed with a unique commitment to principles of community-engaged research and feminist intersectionality. ‘community engaged research’ (cer) is an umbrella term recognising that ‘knowledge acquired in the academic setting is strengthened and enhanced by the real world experience found in communities … [and that] a mutual, reciprocal, and respectful exchange of ideas, practices, and applications among the engaged partners’ (whiteford & strom 2013, p. 72) provides invaluable opportunities for identifying important research questions and answers and, ultimately, achieving social change. while there is not space here to detail the rich history and development of cer, it is important to note that cer is not a new phenomenon. its roots go back decades. it is often connected to instrumental action research (the ‘northern tradition’, frequently associated with the work of kurt lewin (adelman 1993) and/or to popular emancipatory education (the ‘southern tradition’, which frequently cites freire’s (1970) pedagogy of the oppressed as foundational). generally, the former emphasises individual development and change, and the latter social justice (wallerstein & duran 2008, pp. 28–29). cer has also been examined from an institutional perspective, particularly in an effort to understand how meaningful community-university partnerships can be created and supported (e.g. hall, tandon & tremblay 2015). across disciplines and over time, various terms (e.g. participatory action research, community-based participatory research, emancipatory research) imply similar – though not identical – research approaches (see etmanski, hall & dawson 2014 for a comprehensive overview of terminology) that fit within cer. the principles and protocols informing these approaches have evolved across disciplines, but all emphasise the importance of reciprocity, responding to community-identified needs, ensuring high-quality investigation (beaulieu, breton & brousselle 2018; mikesell, bromley & khodyakov 2013), and self-reflexivity (wallerstein & duran 2008), or understanding one’s own positionality in the research process. the attention paid to the purpose, principles and institutionalisation of cer has not been matched by its application in secondary analyses, including scoping reviews and statistical analyses. feminist scholars across social science, health, education and planning disciplines have a longstanding involvement with participatory, partnership-based or collaborative research with a variety of communities (creese & frisby 2011). much feminist research was and is ‘tied to the feminist movement and … [is] critical of how traditional social and scientific theories obscured women’s experiences, while portraying men’s behaviours as the human norm’ (frisby, maguire & reid 2009, pp. 17–18). further, criaw-icref and relais femmes are examples of feminist organisations involved in partnerships between community groups and academics; both have conducted community-engaged research for many years (morris 2002; lacharité & pasquier 2014). as well, indigenous responses to colonial research paradigms insist on reciprocity and relationship building (tobias, richmond & luginaah 2013) and on community ownership and control of data (first nations information governance centre 2014). across critical, feminist and indigenous scholarship, a common refrain has been to emphasise working with, rather than on or for communities (creese & frisby 2011; smith 2012). thus, where diverse women’s experiences are the focus, there are compelling reasons to combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes couple the theoretical and methodological orientations of cer and feminist intersectionality (fi). feminist intersectionality intersectionality is a theoretical and methodological orientation to research and an analytic tool constantly under construction (collins & bilge 2016). without necessarily using the term ‘intersectionality’, feminists in various countries (for example, in the uk (anthias & yuval-davis 1983), canada ( juteau-lee & roberts 1981) and the usa (collins 2015) had begun independently during the late 1970s and early 1980s to critique the assumption that all women are white, middle-class and heterosexual (denis 2008). the term ‘intersectionality’, introduced as a metaphor by kimberlé crenshaw in 1989, has been widely adopted. crenshaw used it initially to discuss race and social class in relation to sex/gender, especially in the context of legal rights. dimensions of the concept found across contemporary literature are synthesised as inequality, social context, complexity (collins & bilge 2016; scott & siltanen 2017), with the former adding relationality, power and social justice. intersectionality involves the concurrent examination of multiple sources of subordination that cut across each other, and understands that the impact of a particular source of subordination (such as gender or social class) may vary, depending on its combination with other potential sources of subordination (or of relative privilege). intersectionality is concerned with the ways in which systems, institutions and social structures of power intersect with individuals’ identities and/or social locations to create temporary or sustained experiences of privilege and exclusion. contemporary intersectionality is relational and does not automatically prioritise a particular criterion of inequality or assume additivity. it may consider multiple levels of analysis, from the individual to the institutional to the societal and the global. it refers variously to identity and social position/location, with some authors combining the two (collins & bilge 2016). intersectionality acknowledges the possibility of contradictory social positioning (for an individual, a group or a society) and that it is important to consider concurrently both the disadvantages (subordination) and advantages (privilege) of relations of inequality. it also highlights the importance of context, in both time and space, as this can result in differing and changing salience of aspects of specific social attributes, including for power relations. mccall (2005) distinguishes three types of intersectional analysis. whereas anticategorical analysis emphasises the unique configuration of a specific case, intracategorical and intercategorical both highlight comparisons within and between groups respectively. our statistical analysis, discussed in more detail below, illustrates both type of comparisons. if one rejects the assumption that one source of difference is automatically key, what makes an intersectional analysis feminist? we use the term feminist intersectionality (fi) to suggest that gender is a dimension of inequality that must be examined in any intersectional analysis (rather than being either ignored or assumed), but that a priori assumptions about which dimensions of inequality and power will be most relevant in a particular context should be avoided. fi can also involve considering the patriarchal (and heterosexist) societal context of most, if not all, contemporary societies – including canada – and the possible influences of this context not only on data analyses, but also on human lives. for example, scott and siltanen (2017) suggest using context as a higher order level of analysis to assess regressions from a feminist (and intersectional) perspective. levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes changing public services: women and intersectional analysis the changing public services (cps) project was a four-year research partnership (2013–2017) between national community organisations, national unions that organise public sector workers, university researchers and universities. cps was initiated and coordinated by criaw-icref. the partnership used both primary and secondary data collection and analyses to develop a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of how changes to public services across canada are being variously and disproportionately experienced by women. to ground this work, we drew on ross and savage’s (2013) broad definition of public services; they see the public sector as being concerned with the provision, production, distribution and allocation of public goods and services, and thus public services as including those services that are both publicly provided and publicly funded. there is considerable evidence of different and disproportionate impacts on women as a result of changes to public services. for example, women make up more than half of the federal public service (treasury board secretariat 2011), so job cuts will likely affect women disproportionately. women with disabilities, women who are recent immigrants, women who are lone mothers and women living in poverty are disproportionately reliant on public services (dobrowolsky 2009) and are thus more severely affected by service cuts. further, francophone women may be affected by changes to requirements for the provision of bilingual services, and indigenous women may see services eliminated (orsini & papillon 2012) or be caught in the quagmire of jurisdictional conflicts. at the initiation of the cps project, while there was widespread concern about these and related issues, there was no research network, guided by both community-engaged commitments and a feminist intersectional perspective, dedicated to tracking and analysing ongoing public service changes and their consequences. while this overarching goal ultimately proved too ambitious, we nevertheless achieved a number of outcomes, including developing a better understanding of the consequences of changes to municipal public transportation, by holding focus groups with both bus users and bus drivers (ahmed & pollack 2017) and analysing the causes and consequences of precarious public sector work based on a scoping review and ongoing discussions with union leaders (levac & cowper-smith 2016). moreover, work continues to emerge from this network, contributing to our growing knowledge about the intersectional consequences of public service changes. the project’s leadership team was comprised of two academic partners and two community organisation partners, who were also retired labour organisers and thus able to provide an ongoing connection with other union members involved in the project. the leadership team was supported and directed by a guiding group, a larger circle of community, union and academic partners who worked in four distinct regional clusters across the country (halifax, ns; the national capital region, on/qc; saskatoon, sk; and vancouver, bc) and met annually to draw together insights from across the project’s sites. this design, which was intentionally meant to create a more accessible and equitable project leadership structure, eventually needed to be complemented by additional discussions with union partners to try and further ensure equitable participation by community-based members. each regional cluster identified a priority area of focus for their cluster’s research, based on the needs and preferences of collaborators in each region. for example, the saskatoon team focused on the impacts of saskatchewan’s adoption of private sector management principles in health care, whereas the national capital region focused more generally on diverse women’s access to public services and changes that both service users and providers had noticed over the previous seven years. in addition, the two types of secondary analyses discussed in this article were combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes developed through ongoing dialogue and deliberation with the guiding group, with the results being available for use by all the partners in the network. overall, cps was initiated, designed and executed in collaboration with all partners, in keeping with commitments common to cer and fi. our efforts to uphold these commitments led to this article’s main contribution: guidance on incorporating cer and fi in the process of conducting secondary data analyses as part of large-scale community-engaged research projects. in so doing, we also offer guidance on using secondary analyses to track and analyse impacts of changes to public services in ways that consider diverse women’s experiences, particularly by highlighting data gaps and silences. incorporating feminist intersectionality and communityengaged research into changing public services project design our commitment to being guided by fi and cer principles builds on the work of others who have pointed out that incorporating feminist theory into participatory action research (par), a form of cer, allows us ‘to be transparent about our interest in understanding, through participatory processes, how gender inequalities intersect with other axes of oppression and how they can be transcended’ (frisby, maguire & reid 2009, p. 20). first, as noted, the leadership circle and guiding group for the project were comprised of both community and academic partners, who raised critical intellectual questions that underpinned our overall approach and thus some of our research decisions. for example, as discussed elsewhere (levac & cowper-smith 2016), established definitions of the public sector ranged from being narrowly focused on the central government to incorporating publicly funded and publicly provided services. based on concerns – raised particularly by our union partners – about the steady move towards privatisation of both national and sub-national public services, our partnership approach enabled ongoing discussion about how best to define public services for our purposes. this ultimately led us not only to use a broader definition of public services, but also to include services that advocates across canada and its provinces have long recognised as warranting public funding (e.g. for child care), and/or that are under significant threat of privatisation (e.g. transportation, health care). a second general project design feature that reflected our commitment to fi and cer principles was the internal review process for the project’s publications. before release, each product (e.g. community reports, fact sheets, technical reports) under the changing public services banner underwent a review by both an academic and a community team member who were not involved in its development. internal peer reviewers used a framework, adapted from a past criaw-icref project, to consider, among other things, the document’s: (a) inclusiveness (e.g. ‘does the output include often-marginalised groups of women in ways that reject and work to transform relationships of oppression?’); (b) commitment to intersectionality (e.g. ‘does the analysis explicitly address the multiple and varied situations of women as well as the silences and absences of groups of women?’); and (c) participatory nature (e.g. ‘in what ways did the communities involved in the research participate in its writing or production?’). not only did this process help to ensure the scholarly rigour and community validity of outputs, it also ensured that we learnt from each other as we strove to uphold our commitment to recognising and revealing diverse voices and experiences. beyond the general effects of our cer and fi commitments on our work, they also informed two core secondary analyses that were part of our research – a scoping review and levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes a statistical analysis using large-scale survey data. our scoping review aimed to uncover empirically reported impacts of changes to public services on service users across canadian jurisdictions, particularly leading up to and following the 2008 recession. our emphasis on service users complemented other dimensions of the cps project, which focused on service providers, including a report on precarious public sector employment (levac & cowper-smith 2016) and statistical analysis. our statistical analysis drew on two statistics canada data sets, the survey of labour and income dynamics (slid) and the public service employees survey (pses). we used these to explore the characteristics of women working in the federal public service relative to the labour force as a whole during this period, complemented by a more detailed comparative analysis of their employment in the federal public sector. no data sources allowed comparable analyses of provincial or municipal public sector workers. scoping review adaptations scoping reviews ‘commonly refer to “mapping”, a process of summarizing a range of evidence … [in] a field’ (levac, colquhoun & o’brien 2010, p. 1). comparing them to systematic reviews, arksey and o’malley (2005) describe scoping reviews as ‘[tending] to address broader topics where many different study designs might be applicable … [and as] less likely to ... address very specific research questions …’ (p. 20). building on arksey and o’malley’s (2005) work, levac, colquhoun and o’brien (2010) offer additional methodological guidance for undertaking scoping reviews (see table 1). specifically, they offer complementary recommendations for each of the six stages (five required and one optional) outlined by arksey and o’malley (2005), and argue that all six stages should be required. incorporating fi and cer commitments into our scoping review necessitated adaptations to four of the six stages proposed by levac, colquhoun and o’brien (2010), the last of which, consultation, we argue, should be described instead as dialogue and deliberation, and should cut across all the other stages. an overview of these adaptations is presented in table 1. columns 1 and 2 are based on the original framework by arksey and o’malley (2005) and adaptations from levac, colquhoun and o’brien (2010) respectively. column 3 highlights our additions based on our cer and fi commitments. table 1 feminist intersectional community-engaged scoping reviews framework stage specifications of framework stage feminist intersectional and community-engaged considerations in scoping reviews 1. identify the research question combine research question with clear scope of inquiry, including rationale for research • incorporate dialogue with collaborators, especially those with diverse and historically excluded or undervalued knowledge and voices, to determine rationale • centre community expertise combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes http://table 1 framework stage specifications of framework stage feminist intersectional and community-engaged considerations in scoping reviews 2. identify relevant studies balance breadth and comprehensiveness based on research question and rationale; assemble methodological and content expertise; justify decisions to limit scope • develop and revise search terms and search sources (databases, thematic and organisationbased websites, etc.) with collaborators • prioritise student training 3. study selection iterative process of searching, refining and including; discuss inclusion criteria and co-review to ensure inter-rater reliability 4. chart the data collaborative development of data charting and extraction form; incorporate qualitative analysis for process-oriented data 5. collate, summarise and report results comprised of three stages: analysis, report results to produce overall outcome, consider meaning and implication of findings • include a focus on whose experiences and needs are being considered and met (or not) in the literature • consider social change and policy implications, in particular with regard to whose experiences need further consideration 6. consult establish clear purpose and use preliminary findings to inform consultation; incorporate opportunities for knowledge exchange • include deliberative components throughout study stages 1 and 2: as noted, the goals of our scoping review were to establish a broad understanding of the extent to which recent public service changes and their impacts on diverse women users had been studied across the country, and to identify key gaps. ‘identifying the research question’ and ‘identifying relevant studies’ included embracing the expertise of community collaborators. discussions and deliberations – which included partners’ personal and professional experiences with public service changes – helped to clarify the scope of the review and build a comprehensive set of search terms. through this process, and combined with an initial scan of the literature, we created a catalogue of four categories of search table 1 continued levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 8 page number not for citation purposes terms: (a) terms related to gender; (b) terms related to gender plus other socio-demographic considerations (to reveal particular intersections); (c) terms related to changing public services; and (d) terms defining the jurisdictions of focus. in addition to relevant english and french academic databases, we identified a range of community literature sources, including research conducted by think tanks, community organisations and union partners themselves. this process, highlighting similar commitments to those discussed by bassett and mcgibbon (2013) in their scoping of literature, helped ensure that our search terms and the locations in which we looked for materials were reflective of social identities/social locations, power structures, and collaborators’ knowledge of, and experiences with, the impacts of changing public services on service users. while these efforts successfully extended the reach of our search, its breadth created a challenge in terms of managing the large number of possible search combinations. we also struggled with, on the one hand, wanting to identify empirical impacts on women of changes to public services, and on the other hand, wanting to avoid implying that the impact(s) of policy changes should only be taken seriously if they could be or had been studied empirically. this created a particular challenge in discussions with our community partners who had extensive direct knowledge and experience of the consequences of changing public services, even when those changes were not easily identifiable in the literature. without undertaking individual policy analyses, it is difficult to control enough variables to determine causality between a policy change and the situation of individuals. nevertheless, particularly given ongoing commitments to undertaking gender-based analyses across canada (hankivsky 2012; status of women canada 2016), trying to take stock of the gendered impacts of policy changes, specifically the impacts on women, insofar as possible, was important. finally, our community-engaged commitments, which included treating students as meaningful members of a research team and training them to take up the complexities of cer, inspired us to ensure extensive student participation in the process. this demanded breaking the search into small pieces so that students, especially those on time-limited research placements, could take on manageable chunks of the work. it also necessitated extensive attention to students’ inclusion/ exclusion decisions about the potential sources identified. stages 3 and 4: our methodological innovations do not suggest changes to stages 3 and 4 as outlined and elaborated by arksey and o’malley (2005) and levac, colquhoun and o’brien (2010). we do note that levac, colquhoun and o’brien (2010) suggest at least two reviewers for both abstracts and full articles; since this was not possible given the range of articles reviewed, we instead tested inter-rater reliability with a sample of abstracts at the beginning of each reviewer’s work on the project and, partly due to our community partners’ interests, adopted the practice of ‘erring on the side of inclusion’ to help guard against missing important details. also, and elaborated further below in our discussion about stage 6 (consultation), these stages included ongoing invitations to community partners to help uncover sources for inclusion, and to reflect on preliminary findings and offer analyses based on their own experiences. stage 5: the fifth stage, ‘collating, summarising, and reporting results’, was a key point at which feminist intersectionality was incorporated since it pushed us to consider literature gaps in particular ways; it also led us to ask who was invisible in the reported impacts, as opposed to focusing solely on the general lack of attention to empirical impacts. for example, across jurisdictions, we uncovered very little literature focused on the experiences of young women. the literature we did uncover pointed to the importance of provincially legislated policy areas in young women’s lives. this led us to examine the extent to which young women’s experiences combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 9 page number not for citation purposes and needs are considered or reflected on in provincial public policies (levac & worts 2018), and revealed a persistent failure to address their unique experiences. this finding, with its clear policy implications, revealed the importance of simultaneously considering several dimensions of identity/social position as called for in an fi analysis. another observation was the frequent silence about precisely who had been studied and the lack of gender disaggregation in the presentation of the results. stage 6: the ‘consultation’ stage is described as an optional step for ‘including the perspectives of others with knowledge of, and a vested interest in, the area under examination [to give] an important additional dimension to the reviewing process’ (arksey & o’malley 2005, p. 30). levac, colquhoun & o’brien (2010) suggest that this stage should be mandatory. we suggest that, based especially on the commitments of cer, consultation should be approached as an underlying practice throughout the scoping review, rather than as a stage in the process, and should be understood as dialogic and deliberative rather than as consultative. consultation implies that power remains in the hands of the (typically university-based) ‘consultant’, whereas deliberation invokes a commitment to dialogue and to arriving at mutually agreeable decisions (gutmann & thompson 2009). for example, our ongoing deliberations with community partners led us to create another category of literature during our review that we called ‘exclude-keep’. this category addressed our partners’ interests in gathering details about the context in which changes were, and are, taking place. in essence, we opted to gather – for future use – relevant research about the broader context of changing public services. deliberation throughout the process should also, we argue, include discussions about relevant outputs, particularly given the limited utility of academic articles for most community partners and organisations providing frontline service and doing advocacy work. to this end, we imported and tagged all the identified literature into a literature repository that we could share with project team members and built a searchable excel file providing a summary of many of the key results of the review. statistical analyses statistical analyses using secondary data take many forms, but are generally useful for understanding broad trends across a population or over time, and for trying to establish causal relationships or correlations. in designing its surveys, statistics canada undertakes consultations – but largely with academics, other professionals and other government departments which have commissioned the survey and/or will be important users of the results. while there is also community consultation, marginalised groups within communities are not necessarily those included in these nationwide consultations. furthermore, consultations are not always accompanied by a commitment to seriously considering the implementation of people’s feedback. while much feminist research is qualitative, several feminists, such as elson (1998), o’neill (1995) and reinharz (1992), acknowledge the relevance of quantitative methods within feminist research (see scott & siltanen 2017 for an overview of this literature). the survey questions asked, the categories offered for responses, the statistical analysis of the data and the interpretation of the results are all components of statistical analysis in which the use of a critical feminist lens is recommended (bowleg 2008; harnois 2013; luxton 1997). for example, while regression analysis has been identified as a helpful statistical technique for intersectional analysis, the limitations of some of its applications have also been highlighted, together with suggestions about how to at least partially overcome them (bowleg & bauer 2016; mccall 2001; scott & siltanen 2017; winker & degele 2011). levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 10 page number not for citation purposes bearing these debates in mind, a secondary analysis of two statistics canada data sets was conducted as part of the cps project, to offer our team a national overview of diverse women’s experiences with paid work, primarily in the federal public sector. we are not familiar with a discussion about the design stages of statistical analyses comparable to those just discussed about scoping reviews (arksey & o’malley 2005; levac, colquhoun & o’brien 2010). in the absence of such a framework, the description of the analytical stages for the statistical analysis that follows is informed by those frameworks (see table 2). stage 1: in ‘establishing the research rationale’, we determined that the goal of this examination of women’s (primarily public sector) employment experiences was to concurrently consider various employment outcomes or experiences, such as the likelihood of being employed or being in precarious employment, along several comparative (and intersecting) axes, including time (in relation to the 2008 recession); gender (female or male); another socio-demographic variable (specifically aboriginal status, visible minority status, disability); and employment sector (private versus public). these parameters were the result of early and ongoing deliberations within the research team. table 2 feminist intersectional community-engaged statistical analyses analytical stage feminist intersectional and community engagement considerations in secondary statistical analysis 1. identify the research question; establish research rationale • incorporate dialogue with collaborators, especially those with diverse and historically undervalued knowledge and voices, to determine rationale • include a focus on whose experiences and needs to consider in the analysis 2. identify relevant data sets; attend to breadth of issues covered vs. comprehensiveness of coverage, and assemble methodological and content expertise • with collaborators, develop a ‘wish list’ of information • drawing on the knowledge of all team members, identify possible data sets for consideration • discuss trade-offs of using various data sets (e.g. dates and frequency of surveys, sample size, variables included) with collaborators 3. identify relevant variables (and their answer categories) determine, in discussion with collaborators: • which variables (specific questions and derived variables) to consider • relevance of available answer categories • how to group (if needed) the answer categories of each variable combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes analytical stage feminist intersectional and community engagement considerations in secondary statistical analysis 4. prioritise analytical questions to answer with statistics and select statistical techniques; conduct analyses • discuss recommendations by statisticians about what statistical techniques to use to conduct intersectional analysis • make decisions with collaborators about prioritising questions (and hence statistical analyses) and trade-offs of these choices 5. summarise, interpret (including in non-technical terms) and report results relative to initial research questions • review results, including how to present them in a form accessible to non-statisticians • interpret results in relation to initial research questions • report results and their implications to various audiences 6. consult and consider meaning and implications of findings • include deliberative components throughout study stages 2 and 3: the dimensions of marginalisation, identified by both the experience and research of community partners and by academic research, in combination with various measures of the ‘employment’ variable, helped us ‘identify relevant data sets’ and variables. only statistics canada data sets available through canadian research data centres (rdcs) were considered. our primary research assistant’s familiarity with the data sets, including their publicly available documentation, was invaluable: necessary considerations included the population studied, sampling design and sample size, the frequency of the survey’s administration and the topics examined, both of those related to employment and to sociodemographic characteristics. three and four cycles respectively of two national data sets – the slid (survey of labour and income dynamics) and the pses (public service employees survey) – were selected, so that we had data for three salient points in time: 2005 (before the recession of 2008), 2008 and 2011 (the most recent year since the recession for which the results of both surveys were available). when using the pses, from which 2014 data were also used, only comparisons within the federal public sector could be made, but it was possible to examine more nuanced aspects of employment, including those about experience with and knowledge about unions. on the other hand, with the slid, public–private comparisons were possible, but less detailed social identity/position data were available. our feminist intersectional analyses and commitments were upheld by using two data sets, as each offered a different opportunity for comparative analyses of several historically marginalised groups of workers. once the data sets were determined, there was a great deal of further dialogue and deliberation about what variables to include and how answer categories should be grouped. still, omissions remained. for example, despite team members’ reflections on the potential effects of sexual orientation on workplace experiences, sexual orientation was not analysed because none of the data sets considered included appropriate variables. as well, gender table 2 continued levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 12 page number not for citation purposes was only available as a dichotomised variable. variables relating to being a member of a visible minority, being aboriginal, and having a disability were all dichotomised due to a combination of considerations, which included the type of information available in the data set, the requirements of available options for statistical analysis, and the number of cases in the cells when two or more variables were examined concurrently. the terms ‘visible minority’ and ‘aboriginal’ are problematic. ‘visible minority’ is used by the canadian government – and thus in its surveys. we prefer the term ‘racialised’, which connotes situations in which human biological (and cultural) characteristics have been used (usually by a dominant group) to construct differentiated social collectivities (castagna & dei 2000, p. 21), while acknowledging that not everyone who is ‘racialised’ has the same experiences. ‘aboriginal’ is also problematic. it is homogenising, may be equated with the state’s definition of who is an ‘indian’ according to the indian act, and is rejected by many indigenous peoples. we therefore use the terms ‘visible minority’ and ‘aboriginal’ when referring to specific details of the surveys, but ‘racialised’ and ‘indigenous’ in our broader discussions. stage 4: the retained employment variables intentionally allowed for nuanced analyses. for instance, the various groups were compared according to their status as ‘employed at all’ and as ‘employed all year’. the nuance offered by using both of these employment variables is illustrated by aboriginal women’s experiences. women who identified as aboriginal were significantly less likely than other women or aboriginal men to be ‘employed all year’, but not significantly less likely to be ‘employed at all’. priorities for data analysis were determined through deliberation with our collaborators, while continuously referencing the project’s original research questions. as part of the analysis, logistic regression models were used. by creating new variables which incorporated two dimensions of potential marginalisation at a time (i.e. gender and indigeneity, gender and racialisation, gender and disability), it was possible, using logistic regression analyses, to compare, for example, women with disabilities to women without disabilities, and men with disabilities to men without disabilities. this allowed us to incorporate simultaneously two dimensions of marginalisation and thus avoid the pitfalls of ignoring the interaction effects that bowleg and bauer (2016) illustrate. by doing regressions for each year, it was possible to discern whether time, as a contextual variable (see scott & siltanen 2017 on levels of analysis), affected the outcomes. unfortunately, in a few cases the sample size of those marginalised in respect to two variables was too small to permit release of the results by the rdc (and therefore use by the cps team). had we analysed concurrently three axes of marginalisation – such as being a woman, who was indigenous and who had a disability – considerably more cells would likely have been too small for release and use. using the rdc facilities, however, enabled the implementation of both our fi and cer commitments because this allowed those team members with rdc access to work out, in dialogue with the broader team, the parameters of the desired analyses through multiple iterations, and then to conduct the analyses under statistics canada’s secure conditions. this would not have been possible had we had to contract statistics canada to conduct the analyses for us. despite the benefit of rdc access, those team members with access were exclusively academic partners, which inevitably resulted in a few small decisions being made without the inclusion of community partners. stage 5: this stage emphasises using multiple fora and formats for presenting findings of relevance to community and academic audiences. once the analyses were completed and released by the rdc, the results were summarised in language which was understandable by non-statisticians and presented in a range of formats so that all partners could make use of combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 13 page number not for citation purposes them. one illustration of this diffusion was an initial selective overview presented as part of a un-ngo session that criaw-icref organised at the 61st meeting of the commission on the status of women (denis 2017). as predicted, the public sector has been a better – and more equitable – employer for marginalised women than has the private sector. this was true when comparing their experiences with those of their female and male counterparts in the private sector, and with all other women, and all other men in the private sector. moreover, marginalised women (whether in the public or private sector) were often less disadvantaged in comparison with other women than they were in comparison with men who were marginalised in the same way as they were. not surprisingly, non-marginalised men seemed to have the greatest advantage in terms of the various measures we used. the results, which were almost all statistically significant (p < .001), revealed not only the benefits of undertaking a feminist intersectional analysis, but also the critical policy implications of such work. another illustration of dissemination was a 2017 roundtable discussion by community and academic partners, held at the annual congress of the social sciences and humanities in canada and hosted by the canadian political science association. a final example was a clear language summary of findings focused on how knowledge about their collective agreement and comfort with submitting grievances varied in complex ways among unionised public servants. these variations were independent of whether or not the unionised public servants were marginalised in terms of gender, (dis)ability, indigeneity or racialisation (pollack, stinson & levac 2018). stage 6: as with the methodological innovations in our scoping review, dialogue and deliberation with our research collaborators underpinned the entire research process. these discussions were more challenging in this component of our research than for the scoping review, since many people had limited first-hand experience with undertaking or interpreting the relatively complex statistical analyses that an intersectional analysis requires. our efforts to collaborate throughout this process included inviting the research assistant, who was both familiar with the database and able to articulately explain the statistical results in nontechnical language, to speak directly with the research team at one of our annual gatherings, and hiring additional research assistants to present the findings in a (non-technical) summary report in order to try to increase the accessibility of the results. challenges of implementing community-engaged and feminist intersectional commitments there were of course challenges in incorporating fi and cer principles into our work: the innovations described above were both time-consuming and difficult. overall, this community engagement required considerable commitment from both community partners, some of whom were volunteering their time, and academic partners, whose work is still commonly evaluated more for its traditional scholarly contribution than for its community contribution(s). as discussed by others (e.g. ross et al. 2010), this point demands ongoing attention, particularly when developing community-university research partnerships such as the one described in this article, and when considering how academic institutions and funding bodies can better resource such complex partnership research. trying to incorporate feminist intersectionality into our scoping review and statistical analyses was also challenging. as mentioned earlier, data disaggregation by gender is often omitted from published research results, particularly its intersection with such other variables as age, indigeneity, (dis)ability and racialisation. we thus uncovered large gaps at these intersections in the literature during our scoping review. in the statistical analyses, we were levac and denis gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 14 page number not for citation purposes constrained by the questions asked in the surveys and by the answer categories offered. for instance, the slid did not provide information about union membership, experiences of discrimination and inequity in the workplace, or experiences with seeking redress in such circumstances. and, as noted earlier, none of the surveys reviewed included questions about sexual orientation or offered the option of non-binary gender responses, a shortcoming that is finally being addressed by statistics canada (2018). another limitation in the survey data was the small sample size at the intersections of marginalised groups, such as women who are also indigenous and disabled. small sample size may also preclude differentiating experiences of marginalised groups in particular contexts, such as at the provincial level. where a survey is about a particular dimension of marginalisation, such as statistics canada’s (2014) canadian survey on disability 2012, although finer comparisons can be made among those experiencing that aspect of marginalisation, it is typically difficult or impossible to compare the results with those for the population at large, primarily because of the use of different questions across surveys. thus, while we welcome the return of the canadian long-form census as a signal that data matters to government policy-makers, we argue that there is nevertheless a continuing need for vigilance regarding sampling and content in government surveys. concluding remarks this article argues that upholding fi and cer commitments – such as prioritising community benefit and practising self-reflexivity – includes considering their application in secondary data analyses within a project and highlighting several ways that these commitments can be incorporated into scoping reviews and secondary analyses of statistical data. a common theme across this account is our argument that, although described as a stage in the scoping review process (arksey & o’malley 2005), ‘consultation’ should instead be considered ‘dialogue and deliberation’ and should be an underlying component of the entire research process, rather than a discrete stage. in our scoping review, ongoing dialogue and deliberation informed our choice of search terms, our inclusion of important non-academic sources of knowledge, our inclusion/exclusion criteria, and our decisions about how to organise and make available resulting data. in our statistical analyses, our ongoing collaboration informed our research questions, our selection of data sets, our construction and use of variables in our analyses, and the type of statistical analyses done. the development of a range of clear language outputs for a variety of external audiences, but also for internal team use, was a result of thinking carefully about how power differentials can be exaggerated through inaccessible data outputs. our efforts to make the results of complex analyses more accessible are consistent with established cer principles, as outlined by whiteford and strom (2013). especially important to our commitment to incorporating fi was the use of strategies that helped make visible historically overlooked populations. in the fifth stage of our scoping review (collate, summarise and report results), this included organising our findings in several different ways (e.g. by social identity/position group, by public service area) to expose different gaps in the literature. the third and fourth stages of our statistical analyses (identify relevant variables and prioritise analytical questions) included the decision to undertake three types of regression analyses, comparing, for example, racialised women’s experiences to those of racialised men, all other women, and all other men. our dual commitments to cer and fi challenged us to critically examine established ways of conducting secondary analyses. the principle of self-reflexivity was especially helpful in identifying combining feminist intersectional and community-engaged research commitments: adaptations for scoping reviews and secondary analyses of national data sets gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, january 2019 15 page number not for citation purposes gaps and silences in the available literature and data. for example, as noted above, this included careful thinking about how to reveal often invisible experiences of which we were aware, in many cases because of our own experiences and expertise. our commitments also led us to explore new ways of asking research questions, of evaluating existing data, and of interpreting the results of the two components of secondary data analysis discussed earlier – scoping reviews and the use of large government-generated data sets. especially because of the focus of this project on changes to public services and on the experiences of diverse public sector women workers, our adaptations offer guidance not only for researchers interested in advancing a feminist intersectional and community-engaged approach to research, but also for those interested in informing public policy in line with these commitments. acknowledgements we humbly recognise the conduct of this work on indigenous lands, and are committed to continuously pursuing more reciprocal and just relations. we also acknowledge all of the union, community, and academic partners involved in this work, including the supporting and coordinating function played by the canadian research institute for the advancement of women (criaw-icref). parts of this research were conducted within the canadian research data centre network, and the authors acknowledge this resource with thanks. the canadian research data centre network (crdcn) is supported by funds from the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc), the canadian institutes for health research (cihr), the canadian foundation for innovation (cfi), and statistics canada. although the parts of the research and analysis are based on data from statistics canada, the opinions expressed do not represent the views of statistics canada. several research placement students and research assistants from the university of ottawa and the university of guelph participated in the scoping review described in this article. the very helpful and patient research assistant who undertook the statistical analyses which are also discussed in this article was dr. bradley seward. research assistants tara sutton and sloane sweazey also worked on components of the statistical analyses. references adelman, c 1993, ‘kurt lewin and the origins of action research’, educational 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https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506810386084 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: ward, e. c. and lortan, d. b. 2021. decolonial dreamers and dead elephants. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–9. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.8016 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au reflections decolonial dreamers and dead elephants elaine c. ward1 and darren b. lortan2 1 department of higher education and special assistant to the president for civic and community engagement, merrimack college, massachusetts, usa 2 department of mathematics, durban university of technology, durban, south africa corresponding author: elaine c. ward; warde@merrimack.edu doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8016 article history: received 01/12/2021; revised 14/12/2021; accepted 20/12/2021; published 12/2021 abstract the 11 articles in this special themed issue examine the complexity of issues of power between individual researchers, between researchers and community organisations or higher education institutions, and between community organisations and institutions in relation to community-engaged research and scholarship. the articles uplift the pain and joy in community-engaged research, the harm and the benefits, the contradictions and tensions, and the true gifts and understanding gained in research with communities for the purpose of co-creating transformational change. we weave our own knowledge and experiences together with these individual articles as we seek ways to reimagine the future of community research and engagement. specifically, we connect the near obliteration of african elephants and loss of indigneous ways of knowing in africa with the diverse communities, contexts and issues of power in community-engaged scholarship represented in this special volume. we, like the authors, hold a dream for the future of engaged scholarship that is more equitable, inclusive and morally just. we believe this dream is not only possible but achievable, as evidenced by the work of the authors in this volume. we present an african indigenous knowledge system, ubuntu, whose principles, values and tenets simultaneously promote the conservation of the community as a whole and the harmonious existence of the individual within the community. we posit that the adaptation and adoption of this knowledge system within the scholarship and practice of community-university partnerships and community research relationships may enable the development of a mutuality and reciprocity that levels power hierarchies within the personal, organisational and societal arenas of community-university partnerships. we 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8016 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8016 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:warde@merrimack.edu http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8016 demonstrate that many of the cases described by contributors to this special volume resonate with this knowledge system, which itself has survived colonisation and its concomitant epistemicide. together, the authors help paint a pathway for those who want to become decolonial dreamers (la paperson 2017) daring to reimagine the nature of power in research as we collectively find ways to dream bigger in order to uncover new and exciting possibilities for this work we call community-engaged scholarship. keywords indigenous knowledge and inquiry; ubuntu; power and research; decolonising community-engaged research introduction the depth, breadth and richness of this compilation of community-engaged scholarly work rendered it a challenge to synthesise and draw implications from the vast and ever-growing interdisciplinary field of community-engaged research. we were invited to consider what the contributions individually and collectively meant for the field of community-engagement scholarship and to draw some conclusions on where the field should go from there. this invitation was, and continues to be, a gift, as we were welcomed into a truly transdisciplinary and transformational international community of scholars intent on pushing the boundaries of our epistemological, ontological and inquiry-based scholarly paradigms and practices. originally from ireland, elaine now lives in massachusetts with her family and is associate professor of higher education and special assistant to the president for civic and community engagement at merrimack college. elaine has worked in us higher education for more than 20 years in the areas of access, student affairs and the institutionalisation of community engagement. darren is an applied mathematician by training, who slowly surrendered some of his love for mathematics to embrace all who enable its perpetuation, especially those beyond the borders of the academe. darren has held multiple leadership roles at durban university of technology, south africa, and serves on the board of the international association for resesarch on service-learning and community engagement. with gratitude, we accepted the invitation and humbly attempted to learn from and participate in a collaborative learning partnership with the authors, via the author collective process, before even attempting to draw meaning from, synthesise and illuminate some guideposts for future directions of the field. we were guided by the authors and guest editors, margaret and morgan, as well as those who have come before us in this work. specifically, we wish to acknowledge ancestral origins and other sources of knowledge (ubuntu, irish, indigenous, feminist, african-american, critical, collective, collaborative and relational ways of knowing) that shape, guide and sustain our own paths in this work. the 11 articles are authored by graduate students, community change agents, and university staff and faculty researchers from many backgrounds, disciplines, institutional types and countries. the authors identify important considerations for the future of community-engaged research, including our need as researchers to unlearn traditional positivist research practices in order to ensure the future of communityengaged collaborative research. this requires reclaiming feminist and indigenous elements of research that are political, critical, affective and relational, have an ethic of care, and for which love itself is a research methodology (fabos et al.). together, the authors help paint a pathway for those who want to become ‘decolonial dreamers’ (la paperson 2017), daring to reimagine the nature of power in research and in higher education more broadly, to truly feel like they belong (fabos et al.), as we collectively find ways to dream bigger in order to uncover new and exciting possibilities for this work (wong) we call community-engaged scholarship. themes of disruption and dismantling of traditional research paradigms are present throughout the contributions ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 (sousa; loh et al.). the merging of knowledges (osinski) and deep storytelling in public and communitycentred spaces are further cornerstones of collaborative, co-created community-engaged research (ross et al.; haarman & green; fabos et al.). notwithstanding the diversity of perspectives, approaches and contexts of the contributors, there is sufficient commonality for our commentary to comprise a voice of the collective that is more symphonic (voices in conversation) than cacophonic (voices clamouring for attention). we hope that our thoughts on the contributions represent an integration of those of the contributors and a meaningful reflection of the issues explored and their potential impact on the engagement field. dead elephants and ivory towers the impact of the hegemony of the occident on knowledge processes across the globe and the subsequent responses to the power structures that prevail have been raised in many of the contributions (haverkamp; sousa; osinski). we add our own here through an extension of the often used metaphor of universities as ‘ivory towers’, which depicts the spaces of the esoteric academe as distinct and distant from those occupied by mundane lay people outside of those towers. although sousa (in this issue) adroitly reconceptualises the community’s positionality in his article, in the parlance of community engagement the community is considered to be part of those outside these ivory towers. epistemicide, a consequence of the hegemonic dominance of occidental ‘ivory towers’, is best illustrated by recognising that every piece of ivory bears testament to a dead elephant. this term was coined by de sousa santos (2007), and amplified by hall (2018) among others, to describe a culling of knowledge systems in colonised territories. new ‘ivory towers’ followed the colonisers and many of these institutions of higher education in africa continue to serve, reproduce and promote colonial western values (lebakeng 2006). further extending the metaphor, elephants were abundant and renowned for their memory (o’connell 2015) in pre-colonial days, especially across africa. like the elephants, many of the flourishing indigenous knowledge systems (iks) across the globe relied on memory as part of their sustainability. oral dissemination of iks across generations relied on memory and practice. these genres included, but were not limited to, fables, proverbs, myths, riddles and storytelling (kamwangamalu 1999). the near obliteration of elephants in the african wild resonates with the notion of epistemicide. marfo and biersteker (2011) assert that education must (1) be locally relevant and (2) transmit a society’s enduring values and best traditions across generations. despite these compelling standards, the euro-western education system continues to dominate in africa, inter alia, negatively impacting cultural identities and breaking intergenerational continuity in the core values and traditions. they argue further that these euro-centric traditions that have governed educational practice on the continent, together with the history of colonial domination supporting those traditions, could have exacted a lasting impact on africa’s cultural psyche in ways that have profound implications for african people’s sense of worth and identity. equally, australasia and the americas and parts of europe have not been spared the derogation of their iks. although many of the first nations peoples on these continents suffered epistemicide on a continental scale, many of their diaspora continue to be treated as subaltern through their limited access to higher education. this can extend to their experience of epistemic injustice through their participation in community-university partnerships (haverkamp; piñeros shields; ross et al.; wong). this special issue represents a contribution to the realisation of knowledge democracy and/or epistemic justice. one of the collective appeals from the authors is to entrench these notions as part of the foundations of future work of engaged scholars and practitioners. all contributions are in alignment with the principle formulated by post-colonial scholars, of restoring equity to the epistemologies of, or epistemological access to, the subaltern. ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 ubuntu, indigenous ways of knowing and power ubuntu, which has its roots in african traditional society and philosophy, means humanness or the quality of being human and espouses the ideal of interconnectedness among people. gade (2011, pp. 316–18) defines ubuntu, as it was understood through the different historical periods, as a human quality, connected to a philosophy and an ethic, as african humanism and as a worldview. as darren and elaine collaborated on this article, darren shared his experience working with communities on a knowledge-sharing project between remote communities and a number of south african universities. his experience reflected so many of the themes running through the authors’ articles we were reading. darren shares this vignette here to illuminate relational power through african indigenous knowledge. a few years ago, i accepted an invitation to attend an inaugral gathering for a community-university partnership with a women’s organization in a remote village about 90 miles from the closest university that was working with the women. the gathering was the first time the university and community partners were all meeting together. my university was one of three universities that were collaborating on a research project exploring contributions from the global south in advancing knowledge democracy and epistemic justice in higher education. my colleagues and i were part of the team invited to join the gathering. the community leaders explained to us that the village was abuzz with excitement that they were to receive and host such ‘distinguished’ visitors as ourselves. the gathering was turning into a celebration of the academics. in the days before the gathering, we made attempts to downplay the celebratory nature of the gathering with us as ‘distinguished guests’. we held the view that in being treated with such heraldry, we were complicitly contributing to power differentials inherently at play in such partnerships. we insinuated that we were being treated like royalty. our pleas were met with disappointment by our hosts who pointed out that we were being treated as visitors. they went to great lengths to remind us of their impression of ubuntu which they had assumed we shared – that the village visitor is not so much a guest as they are a transient member of the village passing through or more personally a member of the extended family passing through, and as such the village should do all it needs to ensure that the planned first visit would not be the last. it did not matter who we were or what rank we held. it did matter that we were from afar and would therefore require greater rest and respite, which is why a ‘pop in’ was not even contemplated. three observations from the planning and execution of the visit are pertinent to this special edition. the first is that there are many ‘meanings’ of ubuntu, some of which are employed in the field of community engagement – especially in sub-saharan africa. many of these are easily forgotten when meetings between university and community partners are exempted from the cultural nuances usually on display when africans first meet each other. these exemptions usually occur when one of the parties may determine that said meetings ought to be formal and void of any fanfare. an open air gathering, surrounded by singers and dancers, then gives way to meetings in a village ‘hall ’ too small to accommodate many of the villagers. the second observation is that we had no choice but to surrender our stance as we were politely reminded that, as guests, we did not have a say in the nature and extent of the reception. it is the privilege of the host to determine what is manageable and it is to their satisfaction that the efficacy of the function would be assessed, not ours. they would gauge from the expressions on our faces and conviviality of our conversation whether they were succeeding as hosts. the third was more of a realisation: that the village would welcome other visitors in the future. neither the future visitors, nor those past or present, would be able to ascertain which of the visitors were more, or less, esteemed; nor would they be able to gauge by participation in their event alone, whether a correlation ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 exists between the extent of the fanfare and the esteem of the visitor to the village. as i recall the entire event, i remain at once embarrassed by our presumption, and delighted by one of my fondest memories. i remain embarrassed by the realisation that we had appropriated for ourselves the role of the coloniser in attempting some vague semblance of decoloniality in our quest to feign humility (by unconsciously exploiting power within the relationship to harness power over the outcome of an event). i remain delighted that our hosts did not condescend to our approach (by consciously exercising power within the relationship to mitigate and counter power over the outcome). instead indelible memories were created that remain both theirs and ours (an unheralded artefact of our collaboration). the african indigenous knowledge (ik) values of ubuntu safeguard the conservation of the community as a whole and promote the harmonious existence of the individual within the community (bonn 2007, p. 2). when visited by strangers (especially those who arrive in peace), the community seeks to welcome such visitors in a manner that promotes both the visitors and the community. if a relationship is established as part of the visit or ensues beyond, the visitor essentially becomes part of the community. in some ways this is akin to the notion of relational power, frequently described in most of the articles. this power within the established relationship is sustained if the values that underpin it are adhered to for the duration of the relationship by all parties. otherwise the visitors retain their status as visitors and do not fully become part of the community. whether these partners represent universities or communities, whether these partnerships span neighbourhoods, cities, states or continents, a welcome is a necessary part of orienting visitors into and across communities. this fundamental commitment to values and principles, akin to those that prevailed in sub-saharan africa prior to colonisation, could provide a means to begin the disruption of power differentials at play, especially when the preservation of the whole (the partnership) is being pitted against the interests of some of the parts (individuals or one partner). the illustrative unpacking of the multiple roles of boundary spanners, brokers, shakers and workers in the context described by ross et al. (in this issue) is an example of the tension of differing interests of the parts and the whole, especially when one part plays multiple roles at various stages of the evolution of the partnership. the african philosophy and principles of ubuntu emphasise that the individual realises her/his humanness through the wellbeing of others and the community as a whole. connected to the proverb, ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’, ubuntu is identified as integral to traditional african values and generally translated as ‘people are people through people’ (republic of south africa). in its broad manifestations, ubuntu generates amongst its adherents a strong sense of the self and of the community to engender compassionate, harmonious and respectful coexistence. this sense of interdependence is captured in ‘i am, because we are and since we are, therefore i am’ (teffo 1999, p. 154). an adaptation of this principle of coexistence within the context of a community-university partnership is that each of the participants in the partnership is a participant because of the partnership and the partnership is a partnership because of each of the participants. when power asymmetries threaten to rupture the partnership, participants may act to mitigate potential, perceived or real imbalances and this may lead one or more participants to suspend (yet not necessarily abandon) their right to dissent in favour of the common good. alternatively, should knowledge hierarchies threaten participants, the partnership through other participants may close ranks to centre the voice of the threatened without silencing or diminishing the voice of the whole. in this issue, demeulenaere, haverkamp, loh et al., lowery et al., osinski, piñeros shields, ross et al. and wong explore, to varying degrees, responses to power asymmetries and their impact on the co-production of knowledge and action, while providing an account of the integrity of the partnerships over space and time. central to the ubuntu philosophy and ways of knowing is that each person exists through the other, mutually and reciprocally (mabovula 2011, p. 42; metz 2014, p. 71). in the context of the reception of visitors, arriving empty handed is potentially offensive. while the exchange of gifts (even a scarf or ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 food) is acceptable, the gift of a western-style university has proven more pernicious. ubuntu, as an african humanist system, promotes interconnectedness and interdependence with all life forms, and the communitarian african indigenous ubuntu values reinforce the social solidarity ethic and affirm cultural identity (msila et al. 2015). in her doctoral study, padayachee (2021) explores the extent to which ubuntu values and fosters social responsibility and civic participation. she describes ubuntu humanism to demonstrate its benefits to individual and community wellbeing and wholeness. the concepts of social responsibility and civic participation are explained to show the potential of ubuntu values in inculcating social responsibility and active citizenry. these contribute to participatory democracy, which resonates with some of the overarching goals of engaged scholarship, often reflected as a quest for social justice. if ‘visitors’ from the academe and/or the community who enter the arena of community engagement through community-university partnerships consider adopting an approach to power within partnerships that is akin to the coexistence espoused in ubuntu, by focusing on the humaneness of all within the partnership, it may be possible to preserve the integrity and the wellbeing of the whole when confronted with power asymmetries that threaten to derail the partnership. recognising some actors as more powerful does not necessarily imply that others are weak or weaker. this recognition could be the outcome of a ‘full disclosure’ of all interests and the identification of potential conflicts which may pose a limitation to the efficacy of the partnership. an example of this is a researcher who procures services for the partnership under the auspices of the university. such a person in the partnership holds considerable power, but the rules of procurement may constitute a threat (weakness) to the partnership, especially where there is unanticipated expenditure. procurement officers may need to be recruited to the community-university partnership at the beginning. they may require briefing on the modi operandi of the partnership as regularly as the community representatives may require briefing on the potentially debilitating procurement practices. many of the partnerships described in the articles comprising this themed issue attest to perturbations in the partnership that had the potential to derail the integrity of the collective process (loh et al.; demeulenaere; wong; osinski). while the responses varied, the integrity of the whole remained foregrounded in the responses to the threats. decolonial dreamers: dreamscaping the future of community research and engagement the african indigenous knowledge system of ubuntu holds principles, values and tenets that simultaneously promote the conservation of the community as a whole alongside the harmonious existence of the individual within the community. the adaptation and adoption of this knowledge system as a research ethic within the scholarship and practice of community-university partnerships and community research relationships could enable the development of mutuality and reciprocity that levels power hierarchies within the personal, organisational and societal arenas of community-university partnerships. the research methods, guiding concepts and values described throughout this themed volume resonate with the ubuntu knowledge system, which itself has survived colonisation and its concomitant epistemicide. the authors together help paint a pathway for those who want to become decolonial dreamers (la paperson 2017), daring to reimagine the nature of power in research as we collectively find ways to dream bigger in order to uncover new and exciting possibilities for the practice of community-engaged scholarship. as we reimagine a future for community-engaged scholarship, how might we undertake the work in ways that promote harmonious existence and a deep interconnectedness and so move from being a visitor to becoming fully part of the community? this interconnectedness addresses the power imbalance that is reflective of a systemic disengagement with the community (osinski) and is reflective of the deep, deliberate community-rooted relationships and research methodologies (wong; lowery et al.) that reflect the furture of this work. ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 the articles are bold evidence of the future of community-engagement research and can be analysed through la paperson’s decolonial dreamers and dreamscapes where ‘[d]ecolonization is, put bluntly, the repatriation of land, the regeneration of relations, and the forwarding of indigenous and black and queer futures—a process that requires countering what power seems to be up to’ (2017, p. xv). within this frame and to affect public change we need to ‘take effective decolonizing action, [and] have a theory of action that accounts for the permeability of the apparatuses of power and the fact that neocolonial systems inadvertently support decolonizing agendas’ (p. xv). all 11 articles in this themed volume grapple with the multiple and transdisciplinary ‘apparatuses of power’ in community research and engagement and address, interrogate and counter those traditional structures of power within higher education and throughout our community engagement research. taken together, these contributions identify emergent and impactful methodologies, relationships and practices that guide our considerations for the future of truly equitable, ethical, inclusive and just community-engaged research. from the many definitions of power contemplated in this edition, we choose to focus on the notion of power as the capacity to act and/or influence, particularly within the processes that constitute knowledge production, dissemination and mobilisation (cooper, rodway macri & read 2011). loh et al. explore the tensions between the dominance of academic knowledge, yet present the tensions as opportunities for disrupting and transforming towards greater equity in the relationships. for these researchers, equity in community-engaged research relationships is achieved through reflective practice and an ethic of care as trust is developed over time. the researchers agree that it is ‘messy work’ that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. yet a relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations. a relational approach to power reminds us that no matter what practices we have institutionalised, our individual beings, organisations and communities are always in a process of becoming. in this process of becoming, the authors are aware that the partnerships themselves are often challenged by the unequal power relations they are trying to confront. all authors in this issue speak to the importance of the relationships in spite of differentials in power between and among individuals and institutions of higher education and communities. yet the authors remain visionary, optimistic and hopeful about the possibility that a relational approach to power can support deeper, more transformational partnerships, and ultimately breaks the binary between community and university. these deeper relationships could over time help the readers of these articles see the ‘possibilities for a decolonizing university’ (la paperson 2017, p. xxii) as well as the time, resources, strategies, trial and error, and humility it would take for those situated within the academy to effectively and equitably partner with communities. it makes us sad when you ask us these questions’… i knew then that my work, my constant informal interviewing and asking about the loss ... had imposed upon the people who i had come to love a painful exercise of knowledge production (haverkamp, in this issue). while there is consensus among the authors that relationships, trust, humility and vulnerability are important in countering power imbalances, haverkamp challenges us to go further as she holds space for ‘the political, relational, ethical dimensions of collaboration and engagement’ and resituates par within ‘a feminist and indigenous ethics of care’. a love–care–response is not a research methodology legitimagised in the academy, yet is reflective of the values of ubuntu and is an approach that offers a way for communityengaged researchers to counter the harm communities and individuals can often experience at the hands of external researchers. harm can be experienced when community knowledges are commodified by the academy. haarman and green’s framework encourages us to consider that some forms of knowledge should refuse the university and intentionally carve out spaces apart from the university where both community and indigenous knowledge is valued without turning them into commodities. haarman and green, as decolonial dreamers, ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 contend that power imbalance is indeed a result of the systemic disengagement of universities and academic researchers from the broader community. they propose or dream of ‘elicitation of concerns via public work for public things’, whereby community-engaged researchers can rebalance power structures toward the community, ‘elevating the community voice and allowing the community to drive research on their articulated concerns and priorities, while also allowing public things to provide the environment for priorities to emerge’ (haarman & green, in this issue, italics added). ross et al. (in this issue) provide decolonial dreamers with a framework for understanding how ‘power is negotiated in the boundary zones of partnership’. they use third generation cultural historical activity theory (chat) and activity systems as a conceptual framework to ‘analyze the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action in our partnership have occurred ... [using] research and data to span, broker, and shake institutional boundaries for the purpose of youth violence prevention and intervention (yvpi)’. the authors reconfigure power and place in an attempt to ensure that power is realigned, harnessed and directed towards transformational and systemic change to improve the lived experience of youth with whom they work. such efforts are not without risk and not always successful. in their article, the authors reflected on how they did not achieve all they wanted as their ‘boundary work expanded, shook, but ultimately maintained boundaries between organizations intent on addressing the drivers of youth violence. in the end, by creating the space around the needs of the formal leaders and decision-makers, the yvpi created a new boundary that has made it difficult for grassroots and communitybased partners to enter the boundary zone’. the authors asked a crucial question all community-engaged researchers should ask when unable in our work to achieve our own intended goals: how might we ‘open spaces for other boundary shakers in these moments’. and how do those of us who have been in this work for some time open space for the next generation of community-engaged scholars to influence the direction of our work? the authors in this volume are not the first to critically consider the harm and good derived from the power relations at play in our community engagement and research. but the depth of the explorations in this one volume has surfaced much insight for the future of this work. our hope for the field is that this volume opens us all to the possibilities they have set before us. the richness across three continents, numerous disciplines, geographic communities and social issues is immense. each time you return to this issue, you will assimilate new learning and understanding. the lived experiences and the repository of knowledge within communities remain all too often unheralded, unpublished, unrewarded. the academe cannot continue to draw from this repository of knowledge, skills and experience without fully acknowledging, legitimising and rewarding the work being done. in closing, we encourage all partners committed to the future of engaged scholarship and practice to continue this work, to disrupt, dismantle, disassemble, reassemble (la paperson 2017) and dream a community engagement and research dreamscape that births power-with (piñeros shields, in this issue) and where the subaltern takes the leading role in partnerships from inception to resolution of the problem. references bonn, m 2007, ‘children’s understanding of “ubuntu”’, early child development and care vol. 177, no. 8, pp. 863–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430701269291 cooper, a, rodway macri, j & read, r 2011, ‘knowledge mobilization practices of educational researchers in canada’, paper presented to the american educational research association, new orleans. gade, c 2011, ‘the historical development of the written discourses on ubuntu’, south african journal of philosophy, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 303–29. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v30i3.69578 ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430701269291 https://doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v30i3.69578 hall, b 2018, ‘beyond epistemicide: knowledge democracy and higher education’, in m spooner & j mcninch (eds), dissident knowledge in higher education, university of regina press, regina, saskatchewan, canada, pp. 84–101. kamwangamalu, m 1999, ‘ubuntu in south africa: a sociolinguistic perspective to a pan-african concept’, critical arts: south-north cultural and media studies, vol. 13, pp. 24–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560049985310111 la, paperson 2017, a third university is possible, university of minnesota press, minneapolis. https://doi. org/10.5749/9781452958460 lebakeng 2006, ‘epistemicide, institutional cultures and the imperative for the africanisation of universities in south africa’, alternation, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 70–87. mabovula, nn 2011, ‘the erosion of african communal values: a reappraisal of the african ubuntu philosophy’, inkanyiso, journal of human & social science, vol. 3, no. 1. https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ijhss/article/view/69506 https://doi.org/10.4314/ijhss.v3i1.69506 marfo, k & biersteker, l 2011, ‘exploring culture, play and early childhood education practice in african contexts’, in s rogers, ed., rethinking play pedagogy in early childhood education: contexts, concepts and cultures, routledge, london, pp. 1–24. metz, t 2014, just the beginning for ubuntu: reply to matolino and kwindingwi, south african journal of philosophy, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2014.892680 msila, v 2009, ‘africanisation of education and the search for relevance and context’, educational research and review, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 310–15. http://www.academicjournals.org/err msila, v 2015, ubuntu: shaping the current workplace with (african) wisdom, knowres publishing, gauteng, south africa. o’connell, c 2015, elephant don: the politics of a pachyderm posse, university of chicago press, chicago. https://doi. org/10.7208/chicago/9780226106250.001.0001 padayachee, k 2021, ‘integral education for early childhood development: building values through indigenous knowledge’, unpublished doctoral thesis, durban university of technology, durban, south africa. republic of south africa, department of justice 1998, ‘truth and reconciliation commission of south africa report’, department of justice, pretoria, south africa. sousa santos, b de 2007, ‘beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledge’, eurozine, vol. 33, pp. 45–89. teffo, l 1999, ‘moral renewal and african experience(s)’, in m makgoba (ed.), african renaissance: the new struggle, mafube publishing & tafelberg publishers, sandton & cape town, pp. 149–69. ward and lortan gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 https://doi.org/10.1080/02560049985310111 https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452958460 https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452958460 https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ijhss/article/view/69506 https://doi.org/10.4314/ijhss.v3i1.69506 https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2014.892680 http://www.academicjournals.org/err https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226106250.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226106250.001.0001 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: brewer, j., kliewer, b. 2023. front porch conversations: methodological innovations to participatory action research & asset-based community development. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–16. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8670 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) front porch conversations: methodological innovations to participatory action research & asset-based community development josh brewer1,* and brandon kliewer2 1 executive director, manhattan area habitat for humanity; doctoral student, leadership communication, kansas state university 2 associate professor of civic leadership, staley school of leadership studies, kansas state university. corresponding author: josh brewer, jobrewer@ksu.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8670 article history: received 17/06/2023; revised 09/11/2023; accepted 15/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract complex public problems are resistant to top-down, technical solutions creating the need for new and innovative ways of approaching community. in response, many practitioners working in community development organisations have embraced community strengths or asset-based approaches to community development, including asset based community development (abcd). similarly, those scholars committed to social change have started to include action research/learning and participatory approaches to their research design, including participatory action research (par). this article describes a qualitative method that was developed by a non-profit practitioner working for a local habitat for humanity affiliate and a researcher from a land-grant university in manhattan, kansas to operationalise a neighbourhood revitalisation framework with a community conversation series called front porch conversations. the qualitative method developed by the university-nonprofit partnership –called the front porch development procedure – serves as both a par-informed mode of inquiry and an abcd-informed mode of development. this method provides an example of how university-community partnerships can approach changemaking in novel ways by considering abcd and par approaches. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8670 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8670 mailto:jobrewer@ksu.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8670 keywords asset based community development; participatory action research; action learning; leadership as practice; neighbourhood revitalisation; habitat for humanity, international introduction a neighbourhood is a network of spatially bound social relationships between people – neighbours – who live and feel close to one another. a neighbourhood may also represent a community of individuals who feel a sense of belonging within a social group, but those neighbours likely belong to multiple communities, including faith communities, workplace communities, political groups, etc. that transcend neighbourhoods. in addition to social closeness, a neighbourhood also represents a space which contains disharmonious relationships. for these reasons, this article will consider the neighbourhood as a socio-material frame and refer to community when discussing the broader publics which are represented by individuals within a neighbourhood. we, the authors of this article, begin with this frame because we are interested in the ways emancipatory change emerges from within neighbourhoods and the evolving relationships of which they are constituted. this interest is related to our work as a nonprofit practitioner and a scholar of civic engagement, and our commitments to advancing change in ways that are transformational, reciprocal and mutually beneficial to our organisations and the unique neighbourhoods in which we live and work. in this article, we introduce a dialogic procedure that we developed to facilitate strengths-based, grassroots community conversations, which represent a community-driven mode of inquiry and development. we approach this work as community members committed to social change, as professionals who work to recognise knowledge, and as neighbours who would like to see our neighbourhood provide all our neighbours with the opportunity for a high quality of life. our work recognises the lived experience of low-to-moderate income neighbours who have experienced waves of disruption, including public disinvestment, privatisation, gentrification, inconsistent policing and displacement over the past several decades in american neighbourhoods (desmond 2023). our contemporary phase of disruption largely began in the 1970s when white opposition to desegregation policies emboldened politicians to reorient the benefit of public welfare policies from support for pathways out of poverty, such as public housing and education, and support for labour, such as a stable minimum wage and union protections, to focus on the maintenance of wealth (desmond 2023). the policy change has been effective, as inequality in income and wealth has soared, while middleclass progress erodes and lower working-class ambitions stagnate (horowitz, igielnik & kochhar 2020). for those neighbours living in disrupted and disinvested neighbourhoods, this reality is experienced as a series of challenges that defy technical solutions despite the clear need for change, and, at times, resources to advance change. nevertheless, these neighbours and their neighbourhoods persist as long as neighbours can rely on their network of relationships to struggle with these challenges and improve their shared quality of life. whenever possible, our conversations take place on front porches to recognise the cultural role of front porches as a space of civility and fellowship, and, at times, female and anti-racist resistance, where residents are seen by passers-by and work at becoming neighbours (hooks 2009). the front porch is a liminal space where outside agents, who we will refer to as guests in the neighbourhood, may join neighbours in their efforts to advance change. the liminal space of the front porches creates a container where neighbours can reimagine systems and structures of power (hooks 2009). liminal spaces, in this case, the front porch, are an inbetween space that does not quite exist. as such, the liminal space of front porches invites consideration of what is, what can be, and what ought to be. neighbours join one another on front porches, breathe life into values and weave together the social fabric of their shared humanity (carlon 2021). in a practical sense, our facilitated conversation series aims to empower neighbours as they recognise and consider their shared experience, and possibly advance social change. brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 we represent our institutions as we enter neighbourhoods, and these institutions hold resources and a privileged social position relative to our community. while our relatively small non-profit organisation is based in and governed by the local community, our institution of higher education has access to significantly more resources than the neighbourhoods. our institution, like others in higher education, has described our work outside the university as service, outreach and, increasingly, community engagement (weerts & sandmann 2010). our university context reflects an increased awareness of our land grant mission, in line with a longstanding call from engagement scholars for the transformation of institutions and practices of higher education, to become more supportive of engaged scholarship (sandmann, saltmarsh & o’meara 2008). we support replacing the unidirectional approach to knowledge transfer from university to community with a mutually beneficial collaboration focused on recognition and development of knowledge (weerts & sandmann 2010). we also support a reconsideration of the positionality of neighbourhoodbased communities as being on the margins of university-based learning communities, and the incorporation of facilitators from neighbourhood communities to facilitate our conversations (sousa 2021). in disrupting the campus-community binary, we applaud the work of non-profit practitioners and engagement scholars who recognise their shared interest in community challenges and build bridges between campuses and surrounding neighbourhoods through boundary spanning (weerts & sandmann 2010). boundary spanning is a complex and diverse set of practices that exist at organisational and individual levels that varies by individuals’ task orientation and their social closeness to university and community settings (weerts & sandmann 2010). boundary spanners, which is how we identify, include practitioners and scholars who approach community challenges with diverse motivations and backgrounds. regardless of our focus, we often find an interconnected, tangled mess of complexity surrounding even the most straightforward problems in community settings. as boundary spanners from non-profits and public agencies seek public resolution in their work, they bump into others working within academic institutions who are equally curious about the complexities of social issues. these researchers typically represent educational institutions, which have more resources than community-based organisations, and often speak about their work using unfamiliar language and who are detached from the experiences of community members, which heightens distinctions between a researcher’s and the community’s priorities (tyron & stoecker 2008). further, structures within institutions of higher education, such as publication, tenure and promotion, often do not require or even value the social change efforts of the community (weerts & sandmann 2010). the contrast between the priorities of community members and academic institutions is even more pronounced when those working from a needsor deficit-based research perspective interact with practitioners of asset-based community development (abcd). practitioners of abcd believe that community challenges are best addressed by mobilising existing resources to action, in contrast to those working with traditional social service models, which focus on mobilising outside resources to address community deficits or gaps (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). in this article, we show the potential for practitioners of abcd to find common ground with scholars working within the paradigm of participatory action research (par) as they believe that knowledge is not created for or on a subject, but alongside a partner in a community context. these scholars recognise the emancipatory purpose of action research and see the participatory turn in the social sciences as an opportunity to understand an issue in a deeper way through involvement in the community context and through iterative interpretation (schubotz 2020). we believe that the practices of abcd and par are not only complementary but represent a potential value-add. abcd, as a mode of development, combined with par, as a mode of inquiry, provides a viable strategy for a research agenda for public engaged scholarship (giles 2016). as a demonstration of that potential, the dialogic procedure described in this article embeds a par approach to inquiry in an abcd development practice. the front porch conversation holds space whereby common assumptions may be explored and new identities may emerge at the individual, group and community levels. the abcd-par brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 relationship is possible due to theoretical and practical commitments to collective meaning making and empowerment. this potential is demonstrated in our development of an event series called front porch conversations, which operates according to an underlying procedure called the front porch development procedure (fpdp). the fpdp leverages abcd and par to hold space where neighbours can recognise community assets, seek resolution of community challenges and advance change to improve their quality of life. the objective of this article is to highlight how dialogic procedures like the fpdp can combine elements of par and abcd that cooperatively function as a mode of inquiry and community development. our experience with fpdp suggests that engagements directed by abcdand par-informed procedures have the potential to advance change that results in new forms of knowledge and improved community well-being. our development of the fpdp demonstrates how boundary-spanning scholars, especially practitioners of par, may develop research opportunities within abcd contexts. as a mode of inquiry, we argue that this facilitated conversation series illuminates a potential theoretical convergence between par and abcd that may be further explored by boundary spanners in academic and communitydevelopment contexts. to advance this argument, we provide a brief introduction to habitat for humanity’s neighborhood revitalization program and quality of life framework, asset based community development and participatory action research before outlining the theoretical framework used to develop the front porch development procedure. we found that this procedure successfully operationalises habitat for humanity’s quality of life framework while offering conceptual and methodological approaches that connect par to abcd and to a wider audience of boundary spanning scholars and practitioners. the front porch conversation series is currently operating. this article is not a case study or an evaluation of the front porch conversation series, though our perspective is informed by practical experience. in this article, our intention is to focus on the framework and theoretical underpinnings of the fpdp itself. to be clear, the authors of this article wrote and facilitated the fpdp because we are invested in the outcomes of these conversations. we will be successful when our neighbours are successful. in sharing our work, our hope is that the fpdp can motivate similar approaches to neighbourhood empowerment in other communities. habitat for humanity’s quality-of-life framework habitat for humanity, international is a non-governmental organisation (ngo) best known for its integrated home construction and mortgage finance operations, which in 2016 topped the builder 100 as the largest private homebuilder in the united states (croce 2016). at the same time, neighborhood revitalization programming emerged through the organisation’s grassroots structure as local affiliates embraced an abcd framework called the neighborhood revitalization quality-of-life framework to affect change via a resident strengths-based approach (habitat for humanity 2023a). local habitat for humanity affiliates are independent ngos that oversee construction, mortgages and discount retail lines of business in compliance with habitat for humanity policies, under the direction of a local board of directors (habitat for humanity 2023b). the manhattan area habitat for humanity is an intermediate-sized local affiliate which has provided housing services in two counties in northeast kansas since 1994 (manhattan area habitat for humanity 2023). adjacent to kansas state university, a midwestern land-grant university, and fort riley, a large military base, this affiliate serves a diverse region of rural and urban communities, and works to develop its neighborhood revitalization program with the detailed quality-of-life framework, habitat for humanity international, provided to its affiliates (manhattan area habitat for humanity 2023). however, in developing neighborhood revitalization programming, the affiliate found a gap in moving the theory towards a practice framework capable of implementation. with the abcd methodology in mind, this affiliate recognised the opportunity to partner with a unit at kansas state university committed to forms of community-engaged scholarship and capable of cobrewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 developing a place-based process by which citizens could shape community development activities in their neighbourhoods. the resultant dialogic process, called front porch conversations, held expertise-driven institutional knowledge alongside local experiential knowledge of neighbours, demonstrating that university partners could share power with citizens within an abcd framework when the process was designed with power-sharing in mind. front porch conversations are organised using a core document called the front porch development procedure (fpdp), detailed later in this article. the fpdp process is designed in ways that attempt to account for operation of power at multiple levels. first, the fpdp attends to the ‘power within’ the process to identify self in relation to others and systems differently. next, the fpdp attends to ‘power with’ or the ways that the dialogic process creates conditions to co-create new ways to understand community, leadership and power. finally, the fpdp attends to ‘power to’ by focusing on the collective agency that helps unleash a range of community-development efforts. habitat for humanity’s quality of life framework presents a holistic approach to neighbourhood revitalisation (habitat for humanity 2023a). to effect change, the quality-of-life framework centres the beneficiaries of change efforts and their hopes, dreams and concerns (habitat for humanity 2023a). the use of the term beneficiary recognises that cross-sector partnerships between outside agencies and neighbours produce value and centre the beneficiary of that value in line with a critical theory of value creation (le ber & branzei 2010). including a developed concept of the beneficiary in the fpdp is not inherently inconsistent with our practices of abcd and par, as it recognises that community-based partners benefit from change efforts, while some benefit more than others. under the quality-of-life framework, the beneficiary of our change efforts is the individual neighbour who effects systemic change through three foundational outcomes: 1. sense of community: identifying with the neighbourhood, feeling connected and supporting one another. 2. social cohesion: being willing and able to work together. 3. collective action: sustaining ongoing projects and advocacy efforts (habitat for humanity 2023a). once change is reflected in these foundational outcomes, the quality-of-life framework posits that sector level outcomes in housing, economic opportunity, safety, transportation, health, education and amenities may be monitored and evaluated (habitat for humanity 2023a). in this framework, change is not directed from community deficits, as defined by comparable approaches or expert-driven definitions, but by a community asset, its people, and their perspectives. this participatory and asset-oriented approach is not unique to habitat’s framework but has been shown to provide space for critical engagement in community issues, within which unique and effective solutions may emerge (taliep et al. 2020). abcd and par participatory action research (par) is a liberating mode of inquiry that moves practitioners beyond the binary of community change efforts and objective, expertise-driven social science research to empower communities through action and recognition of knowledge claims (hersted 2019). par draws on the work of scholars from the global south with deep commitments to emancipatory change, including freire (1970) and tandon (1988). in these foundational works, an emphasis on participation lessens the distinction between community participants and university researchers as learners (tandon 1988). as a form of action learning (al), par is connected to a broader educational approach that uses group dialogue to ‘generate learning from human interaction during the solution of real-time (not simulated) work on [community] problems’ (raelin 2006, p. 6). al has a long tradition of infusing participatory and democratic elements into brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 knowledge creation and problem-solving processes; however, in practice, many activities have prioritised benefit to the university over off-campus communities (sousa 2021). the narrower concept of participatory action research (par), which remains deeply committed to liberation, typically assumes that integrating expertise within participatory processes creates forms of knowledge better suited for real-world challenges than al or expertise can produce alone. however, even the best efforts to create community-driven and participatory action learning have not been able to remove or adequately attend to dimensions of power associated with creating and applying new knowledge to address social problems. power differentials inherently shape how knowledge is created in groups (christenson 2016; olesen & nordentoft 2013; olesen & nordentoft 2018; phillips & napan 2016). instead of trying to remove or somehow equalise power differentials, there have been growing efforts to recognise power as an essential element of group dynamics and the knowledge-creation process. by attending to power as a part of the knowledge-creation process, we support forms of ‘co-production’ that strengthen the integrity of collaborative learning and action processes (nordentoft & olesen 2018). by using a par approach that acknowledges the practice as inherently valueand power-laden, we hope to create learning opportunities embedded within the abcd framework. participatory action research is an approach to inquiry and knowledge creation that empowers action. par creates new forms of knowledge that can mobilise action and make progress on real-world challenges that confront communities. therefore, the objective of knowledge creation, in the context of par, is to mobilise action. this empowering and action-oriented notion of knowledge aligns with the underlying assumptions of abcd. two commitments of abcd, ‘nothing about us, without us’ and ‘everything for us, by us’, provide simple guardrails that encourage beneficiaries to participate in change efforts. within these boundaries, learning focuses on community assets, relationships and networks to release individual, organisational and community capacities for positive change (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). when combined with par, abcd becomes an effective framework to navigate and account for power dynamics in community and group-processes, to co-produce rich ways of understanding wicked problems and to reach resolution for action. as par proposes to increase the capacity of change efforts through insider action research, abcd provides the framework for raising curiosity about those assets, which may be taken for granted in community conversations. this capacity, referred to as ‘preunderstanding’ is essential for effectively effecting change within a system (coghlan & shani 2015). to speak briefly to positionality, abcd and par are deeply political practices and aspire to emancipatory change. however, we must recognise that practitioners have a standpoint from which they engage in community change. this standpoint affects the strategies for leveraging strengths to address community concerns. theoretical framework beyond the methodological commitments that structure our practices of inquiry and development, theory represents an essential way of making sense of our experiences in the world. as authors, we recognise that the theoretical commitments that underly the fpdp reflect our values, positionality and limited set of experiences; and, we acknowledge that those commitments influence and limit the potential community and scholarly outcomes of the broader front porch conversation series. it is only fair to make these commitments explicit, and so we provide here a brief orientation to the theoretical framework that influenced our composition of the fpdp. the fpdp was developed with clear theoretical commitments regarding the nature of reality, or ontology, and the nature of knowledge, or epistemology. the fpdp follows a relativist ontological tradition that rejects the cartesian distinction between subject and object inherent in ontological realism, recognising that reality cannot be separated from human practices (heidegger 2010). instead, this work recognises intersubjectivity and interconnection as fundamental to reality and focuses on relationships and networks rather than individuals when brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 considering change. within those relationships, language, space, place and socio-material interactions provide the framework to constitute and reconstitute reality and to socially define knowledge. in this view, meaning is not coded into language for transference, as suggested by the signal-channel-receiver model of communication, but the use of language presupposes meaning through metaphor, diction and syntax. in this view, to know reality is to constitute reality through interpretation, which inevitably imbues it with biases (gadamer 2013). knowledge, in this view, does not reflect an objective truth about physical reality, but reflects the a priori commitments that link us to one another (gergen 2009). these relationships are co-constitutive in the sense that they are intelligible based on previously agreed-upon norms, while mediating norms through their very constitution. this commitment is at the heart of a social constructionist epistemology, which acknowledges that ‘all reality, as meaningful reality, is socially constructed’ (crotty 1998, p. 54). this perspective rejects the positivist definition of singular truth, in favour of agreement between networks of people who exist within a cultural and historical context (dugan 2017). for this reason, the social constructionist perspective of the fpdp is less interested in what is true or false and more curious about who benefits from a particular way of knowing and the effect of discourse on socio-material relations (barrett 2015). this recognises that our agreed-upon norms are value-laden, and for that reason often reflect and reproduce power differentials. this recognition orients the fpdp towards the tradition of critical theory, which aims to reveal power structures through reflective practices, often referred to as critical reflexivity (dugan 2017). finally, the composition of and participation with the fpdp is a practice of leadership, which our theoretical framework considers an emancipatory practice by which we attend to the exigencies of our time by reshaping socio-cultural norms (dugan 2017). our perspective recognises that the practice of leadership takes place within complex adaptive systems (cas), which are experienced relationally. cas is a group of semi-autonomous agents or groups that interact in ways that produce system-wide patterns, which loop back and influence future interactions (dooley 1997; eoyang and holladay 2013; lichtenstein 2014). taking systems of power into account, this work recognises knowledge emerging from leaderful community practices (raelin 2011). leadership as practice (lap) is foundational to this framework because it moves the focus of research from the individual to the processes, practices and socio-material interactions of community-based work. this approach follows a definition of leadership as a ‘socio-spatial process of accomplishing direction’ (alvehas & crevani 2022, p. 232). by studying leadership as practice, this framework moves beyond a competency-based paradigm towards a practice-based paradigm where activity happens and from which knowing emerges within community contexts (carroll et al. 2008). by approaching leadership as something that emerges from our experience with social and material elements of places, scholars and practitioners have a powerful lens through which to understand and create leaderful spaces. in this view, leadership is embodied in socio-material spaces and is experienced through interactions with physical materials and social norms (ropo, sauer & salovaara 2013). this experience is made meaningful by emotions, but also the memories of previous experiences, referred to as a ‘backward reflexivity’ (ropo, sauer & salovaara 2013). these spaces are not inert; rather, they reflect and constitute dominant power relations, allowing critical researchers additional data for understanding hegemonic pressures and practitioners’, and new experiments for creating power-with (ropo & salovaara 2018). the lens of socio-materiality also affects this work as it explores how leadership practitioners leverage liminal spaces to create democratic experiences that challenge the dominant structure. the evolution from dominant spaces to liminal spaces allows us to better understand and leverage the socio-material to affect power relations. the experience of equality, or ‘communitas’, is considered a fundamental basis of organisation and cooperation in changing structural norms (turner 1969). focusing on these spaces, poyhonen (2018) writes in ‘room for communitas’: brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 this rich opportunity for temporal, out-of-norm behavior makes these spaces home for antistructural thinking and action; it is within these organizational spaces that the experiences of liminality and communitas most easily arise, especially within a hierarchical organization ... the experience of communitas, then, especially plays into construction of more plural forms of leadership, as it unmasks the equal human beings behind their formal ranks and the rules their normal social structure entails (poyhonen 2018, p. 596). following a leadership as practice approach, the fpdp is an example of activist scholarship which explores liminal threshold spaces with a focus on out-of-norm behavior, that create opportunities for rewriting dominant power relations. this explicitly critical, discursive approach to cultivating a leaderful practice recognises language as a lively, non-fixed element embodied with foucauldian power as discourse, which reflects and actively constitutes reality through its performative impact (ford 2015). this work embraces dialectical tension to explore gaps and exploit contradictions (collinson 2019). this work also moves beyond the inheritance of heroic leadership thinking to embrace a collective leadership model that embraces outsider perspectives (ospina 2019). such a shift toward a critical leaderful practice full of lively language has implications for both practice and research. in both applications, it is worthwhile to remember that a critical approach to leadership is emancipatory. we work toward the reduction of injustice in the world. we work to build power with one another, especially with those who are excluded from decision-making processes. such a commitment is appropriately called critical hope, a recognition of the realities of injustice and oppression that also affirms resilience and sets direction for moving forward (dugan 2017, p. 51). this perspective leads us to embrace new ways of knowing, of non-standard traditions of sharing knowledge, such as storytelling, and outsider perspectives in capturing a more holistic view of community challenges. when taken together, this critical approach to knowing through leaderful practice has the potential to engage scholars in community work, add capacity and creativity to practitioner efforts, and build desperately needed hope in an unjust world. critical leaderful practice is made possible by combining abcd and par, which creates a communityengaged methodology that co-creates a mode of inquiry and a mode of community development. these complementary practices are the result of deep collaboration between activist academics who seek emancipatory change through their research activities and community practitioners who lead change efforts in community settings. together, abcd and par efforts can surface novel ways of knowing by inviting non-dominant perspectives while leveraging the capacity of institutional assets. for this emancipatory potential to be realised, practitioners of abcd and par should be conscious of their critical project and reflective on the success of their interventions. with theoretical consciousness and reflexivity, practitioners can co-develop purposeful practices with community that create conditions for social change to emerge. the front porch development procedure is one process that creates conditions for emancipatory change to emerge. front porch development procedure the front porch development procedure (fpdp) described in this article combines commitments to par and abcd to allow for new knowledge on neighbourhood dynamics, while simultaneously increasing neighbourhood capacity for leadership and community development. the fpdp structures a hyper-local event called a front porch conversation, which seeks to operationalise habitat for humanity’s quality of life index. four roles will be described in this section: a community-based convener, a trained facilitator, a notetaker, and a steward who is a boundary spanning practitioner of abcd and/or par. as a mode of inquiry and brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 development, the fpdp recognises under-leveraged community assets necessary to advance neighbourhood revitalisation, such as schools, parks, key relationships, or stories, leading to new ways of knowing and being in the community. fpdp roles the fpdp begins with a steward who is either a practitioner of abcd or par and has a boundary spanning role. the steward is responsible for ensuring that the front porch conversation engagement remains mutually beneficial and true to its theoretical commitments. the steward is also responsible for promoting the conversation series to residents through local networks, such as neighbourhood associations and common spaces, such as community centres and churches. when a resident first signals interest to host a community conversation, the steward meets with them to provide an overview of the fpdp and to share promotional materials, including a yard sign and flyers describing the quality-of-life framework, which is based on abcd principles. as a representative of an institution with power and resources, and potentially educational privileges, the steward should provide the resident with a choice to convene the conversation or reduce the social pressure to serve their neighbours in this capacity. when the resident schedules their conversation, they become a convener. the convener is usually a long-time neighbourhood resident with connections to many of their neighbours. the convener approaches their neighbours in the way they feel is most appropriate, whether by door knocking or electronic communication. when the convener connects with neighbours, they can choose to share the materials that the steward has prepared for them or not. the convener has the choice to organise their front porch conversation around a meal, beverages, or a shared activity. whichever way the gathering is organised, it is important that the steward empowers the convener to gather their neighbours on their terms. as the convener speaks with neighbours, they share that the purpose of the conversation is to identify community assets, community aspirations and neighbourhood revitalisation interventions, and increase understanding of potential neighbourhood improvements. front porch conversations are facilitated by an individual who has received training in the fpdp. facilitator training is an effort to ensure the process is fair, equitable, and can attend to power dynamics that may influence the substance of the dialogic process. during the event, facilitators are responsible for moving through the process and creating conditions that support full participation from the convener and their neighbours. full participation is an asset-based aspiration that each neighbour will have a meaningful opportunity to contribute ideas and offer perspectives that have the potential to shape the direction of the discussion. the process and facilitation practices represent a commitment to recognise the inherent dignity of each participant. part of recognising this is to acknowledge that each participant has important knowledge to share individually, and with appropriate support, co-create new knowledge with others (eoyang & holladay 2013). facilitators are trained to solicit input from neighbours who have not shared and to highlight non-dominant perspectives during the front porch conversation. facilitators are also trained to create ‘holding environments’, which participants can use to make sense and meaning of the conversation on leadership and community development. facilitator interventions help shift leadership and community development mindsets and support participants to co-construct asset-based mental models capable of revitalising neighbourhoods. while facilitators create the conditions for this work, notetakers capture key information on large paper tear sheets so that participants can hold onto shared touchpoints as the conversation evolves. the partnership between the notetaker and the facilitator is essential for a successful front porch conversation as both listen for colliding perspectives and highlight key information so that learning may take place. for example, while the facilitator may ask for more to be said about contradictory claims, a notetaker can capture a record of the conversation, including key assets, insights, opportunities and emergent knowledge, brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 for participants. the notes create an emergent artifact that helps participants make sense and create meaning associated with their conversation. notes may be shared with participants and referenced in follow-up actions and meetings. the exchange between the facilitator and the notetaker, and the actual act of notetaking, are practical means of managing contestation, and visually represent any power dynamics emerging from the conversation. the fpdp requires only a few supplies to produce notes and artifacts. the essential materials are as follows: the habitat for humanity quality of life framework, which is printed on a larger posterboard, and individual sheets, tear sheets, red-, yellow-, and green-dots, and some refreshments. prior to the exercise, tear sheets should be hung, and dot sheets torn so that each strip includes a red, yellow and green dot. the following section details how these roles and materials should be used to create an asset-based learning and development environment. operational procedure when neighbours arrive at a front porch conversation, the convener, steward, facilitator and notetakers should work to quickly create a shared and collective sense of purpose by greeting every person, inviting them to sign into the meeting and identifying themselves using a nametag. each neighbour will be handed a torn dot sheet and a copy of the habitat for humanity quality of life framework. the convener should thank every person by name for attending the meeting and introduce themselves to anyone unfamiliar with it. once it is time to begin the meeting, the facilitator should introduce themself to the group and ask neighbours to introduce themselves and offer one reason why they were motivated to say ‘yes’ to the meeting. next, the facilitator should invite the steward to introduce him or herself and the purpose of the gathering. the steward will speak about the mission of the organisation in which they serve and the aims of abcd and par. if multiple stewards are present, they will each speak to their organisational mission and to their background of either abcd or par. the steward will also communicate their definition of leadership as practice and the view that leadership capacity deepens when learners have a space to experience ‘heat’ or be included in stretch conversations, be challenged by perspectives different from their own, and also have space for critical reflection. ( jones chesley & terri 2020; petrie 2015). the steward will ask the neighbours if they have any questions about their motivations for the gathering and answer any questions succinctly if they arise. finally, the steward will recognise the notetakers’ role in documenting the discussion themes and the facilitator for their work supporting the discussion using the fpdp. the fpdp calls for the conversation to start with three ground rules: seek full participation, hold space for multiple viewpoints and listen with curiosity. these ground rules should be written on a tear sheet prior to the beginning of the session. the facilitator should note that these ground rules align with the conditions that support leadership and community development. facilitators will invite participants to contribute additional ground rules to ensure a successful discussion. as neighbours share ground rules, notetakers will record anything that is added. if the group is reticent to share, the facilitator will point to rule number one – seek full participation – to demonstrate how the ground rules will be used in the discussion and to manage interpersonal dynamics. introducing the quality-of-life framework the facilitator will invite the steward to frame the conversation via the hfhql framework using a poster detailed in figure 1. the steward should introduce the quality-of-life framework as a way of understanding the community. the steward will begin by describing sector level outcomes – housing, healthcare, neighbourhood amenities, safety, etc. – pointing out how much community-level discussion focuses on these topics as if they were disconnected from one another. the steward will then recognise how sector outcomes, such as housing, are the result of decisions by experts, policy makers and community brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 members, and the complex community context that surrounds the sector. the steward will highlight how the sector outcomes experienced by the community today are the result of agreements among neighbours over generations and are always changing with each interaction between neighbours – good and bad – with the acknowledgement that agreements exist within the context of economic or political structures. figure 1. habitat for humanity quality of life framework the steward then introduces three foundational outcomes as determinant factors in producing the conditions for sector level outcomes. first, the steward will define the sense of community as the ability for neighbourhood residents to feel connected to one another whether by associations, faith communities, mutual aid networks. the ‘cup of sugar’ rule – that a neighbour may ask another for a cup of sugar or a pat of butter –illustrates this capacity. next, the steward will define the sense of social cohesion as the willingness for neighbours to work together to address shared challenges. for example, the steward may ask for an example of a time when a problem arose, and ways neighbours banded together in small groups or a large group. finally, the steward will define the sense of collective action as the shared experience of working together on projects or advocacy efforts to improve the neighbourhood quality of life. taken together, the steward will explain how these foundational outcomes are recognised as essential to making change in the neighbourhood. the steward then invites neighbours to share any thoughts or questions about foundational outcomes. finally, the steward should recognise the neighbours, their community associations and community partners as the core of the quality-of-life framework. each neighbour brings unique gifts and dreams, but also concerns to the neighbourhood and to the conversation. the steward then explains how these unique gifts are the root of the foundational outcomes and represent the core focus of the facilitated conversation. to conclude, the steward will summarise the framework again from the core outward as the gifts, dreams and concerns of the neighbourhood affect the foundational outcomes which produce the sector level experiences that are often referred to as the quality of life that a person experiences in a neighbourhood. neighbours are encouraged to explore the quality-of-life framework further after the meeting. brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 the majority of the fpdp, at least 45 minutes, should be dedicated to a dot voting exercise introduced by the facilitator. the facilitator’s role is essential to the fpdp and can be understood within the context of praxis (raelin 2005). facilitation in this context should aim to realise the power structures that contextualise neighbourhood dynamics while empowering neighbours to take action through dialogue and as a result of dialogue. within the conversation, learning is the result of facilitated praxis and is the ultimate responsibility of the facilitator. as a critical exercise, facilitation should create the dialogic conditions for emancipatory action. to begin, the facilitator will invite each neighbour to look at their dots. the facilitator will explain that yellow dots represent gifts, green dots represent dreams and red dots represent concerns. the facilitator will then direct the notetaker to write each sector-level outcome –housing, healthcare, neighbourhood amenities, safety – on a tear sheet and place it in an accessible place. the facilitator will then explain that where neighbours place their dots will advance the conversation about the type of leadership and community development capacity necessary to make sector-level change. the facilitator should ask if the neighbours have any questions about the exercise, and once the group has clarity, invite the neighbours to place their dots on sector-level outcomes that they see as gifts, dreams and concerns. as neighbours place dots on the tear sheets, facilitators should listen for conversation between neighbours about their dots and look for moments of curiosity or surprise. this interest should guide the facilitator’s attention. once all the dots are placed, facilitators will ask neighbours to identify patterns associated with gifts and dreams. for example, a group of green dots may be focused on housing and yellow dots on neighbourhood amenities. in this case, the facilitator would encourage individuals who placed those dots to share more about what that placement represented for them. as neighbours explore assets and dreams, the facilitator should pay particular attention to information that seems novel to some group members and encourage others to engage their curiosity. once the sharing of dreams and assets begins to slow, the facilitator should ask about patterns associated with red dots or the concerns of the neighbourhood. the facilitator should take special care to maintain the asset-orientation of the discussion and to manage conflict. where possible, the facilitator should highlight and direct the conversation toward areas of tension between the assets, dreams and concerns. for example, if housing is recognised as a gift, but community safety is seen as a concern, the facilitator may ask if neighbours feel unsafe inside their homes, in their yards, on the footpath or on the road. when the conversation recognising assets, aspirations and concerns subsides, the facilitator should ask the group to consider how the assets referenced were developed. the facilitator may ask this question broadly or specifically. for example, if tree-lined streets were identified as an asset, the facilitator may ask, ‘who planted the trees?’ and ‘how did tree planting become a priority?’. in asking these questions, the facilitator should listen for and highlight patterns demonstrating asset leveraging and times where leadership and leadership learning made way for community change. when identified, facilitators should encourage participants to explore how that leveraging or learning came to be, who was involved, and how that may be reproduced in addressing current concerns or to achieve aspirations. in this section of the discussion, the facilitator should feel comfortable with pauses in the conversation as neighbours consider the questions. to ensure full participation, the facilitator may need to ask individual neighbours if they have learning to share with the group. facilitators and notetakers should aim to leave participants with energy and a shared purpose, necessary for making progress on shared issues, by focusing on the quality of the conversation, as opposed to the quantity of topics covered. sense and meaning making for future action in the final 10 minutes of the fpdp, the group focus on making sense of new learning and discussing leadership and community development capacity. the space allows participants to make observations on specific ways their leadership and community development capacity increased during the exercise or to brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 highlight areas in which deeper capacity would need to be developed to advance sector level change. to begin, the facilitator may ask a simple question, such as ‘what did we learn tonight?’ or ‘what ways did we grow as a group?’. once progress has been named, the facilitator will ask the group to identify potential next steps without fully committing to any specific action. the purpose of this question is to increase awareness of community possibilities. the facilitator should listen for moments when neighbours invite one another to join ongoing efforts and highlight areas of shared purpose. to conclude, the facilitator should thank the group for their participation, the convener for gathering their neighbours, and the notetaker for documenting the work that has been accomplished. the facilitator will then invite the steward to address the group to close the gathering. the steward should begin by thanking the facilitator for their work in advancing the conversation and thanking the neighbours, convener and notetaker once again. the steward should then congratulate the group on areas of significant learning that they heard in the conversation. finally, the steward should explicitly highlight the potential for front porch conversations to create new knowledge that increases leadership and community development capacity. the steward then concludes the fpdp. concluding thoughts front porch conversations employ the fpdp to create momentary adaptive-discursive spaces to shift neighbourhood thinking from forms of knowledge limited to recognition of deficits requiring outside intervention to emancipatory forms of knowledge that celebrate assets and enable change from the inside out. the fpdp aims to activate what bell hooks calls ‘a democratic meeting place, capable of containing folks from various walks of life, with diverse perspectives’ (hooks 2009, p. 147). with new ways of knowing, neighbours are more likely to consider sector-level challenges that affect their well-being, in the context of their social networks and the relationships within those networks, or their neighbourhood. this partnership found that, by combining par and abcd processes, they were able to more effectively operationalise habitat for humanity’s quality of life framework to effect change, while situating learning and capacity building within the experiences of community members. recognising these new forms of knowledge not only empowers neighbours to effect change democratically, but also acknowledges that collective and assetbased forms of leadership and community development will be required to create the type of sector-level change needed to improve community well-being. community integration results in significant learning on the nature of knowledge produced within an abcd-par experience. as abcd is focused on community-driven change from an asset-based approach, its integration with par creates a future-oriented learning environment. knowledge produced in this environment does not only seek to understand an issue in an objective, positivist manner, but must be deeply committed to action and forms of knowledge that increase the capacity of community to act. by combining practices of abcd and par, the fpdp functions as both a mode of inquiry and a mode of leadership learning and development. from a development perspective, par creates the potential for more effective solutions to emerge from neighbourhood contexts than may be called for in a more conventional top-down approach. further, by attending to power within, a par practice of inquiry and an abcd practice of development through co-production, more diverse knowledge forms can be recognised and engaged so that grassroots community change can emerge through relationships within spatially oriented networks, which we have referred to as neighbourhoods. the inquiry process described in this article not only creates new forms of knowledge but does so in a way that builds social connection – identity, efficacy and motivation to collectively address challenges in common. this approach to abcd-par recognises the essential role of agreed-upon or shared knowledge in making progress on community challenges. knowledge creation processes consistent with par also require full participation and a recognition of the ways knowledge is co-created through shared context and dialogic and relational interaction. when brewer & kliewer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 done intentionally, community learning can develop leadership capacity through participation in inclusive practice and processes. as participants move through a facilitated abcd-par exercise, such as the fpdp, each neighbour has the opportunity to collectively join a momentary adaptive container to deepen neighbourhood leadership capacity, i.e. to positively effect change. each time a front porch conversation occurs using the fpdp, new neighbours have new opportunities to create knowledge in ways unique to the particular collective in the context of their neighbourhood at that time. changes that follow front porch conversations are often small – organising a community clean-up or a collective social event – but continue to develop beyond the conversation and the outside agency that serves as steward. while the outcome may not appear liberating at first glance, each instance represents a small group of individuals who create new forms of knowledge and act collectively – usually for the first time – to improve their own quality of life by leveraging neighbourhood assets. with a theoretically informed fpdp, the next step for this project is to facilitate more front porch conversations and to document new knowledge that emerges through a community writing project. front porch conversations with a focus on connecting with conveners from our historic black and disinvested neighbourhoods will take place across our community. each conversation will continue to focus on coproduction of knowledge and recognition of community assets, and will be followed by a writing prompt to be described in future work. this community writing project will produce information on a community asset map to be shared within the community via arcgis storymaps. this technology will enable community members to highlight assets identified during front porch conversations, in addition to others. ultimately, it is the hope that, with this knowledge and increased leadership capacity, community change efforts will effectively emerge through the neighbourhood networks to improve community well-being. this article has laid the foundation for future work by providing a brief overview of the theoretical framework informing the front porch development protocol (fpdp) 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the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: godrie, b, boucher, m, bissonnette, s, chaput, p, flores, j, dupéré, s, gélineau, l, piron, f and bandini, a 2020. epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 6703. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.6703 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community baptiste godrie1, maxime boucher2, sylvia bissonnette2, pierre chaput2, javier flores2, sophie dupéré3, lucie gélineau4, florence piron5 and aude bandini6 1 department of sociology, université de montréal (québec) cremis 2 groupe de recherche et formation sur la pauvreté au québec 3 faculty of nursing science, université laval (québec) 4 department of psychosociology and social work, université du québec à rimouski 5 department of information and communication, université laval (québec) 6 department of philosophy, université de montréal corresponding author: baptiste godrie; baptiste.godrie@umontreal.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6703 article history: received 01/08/2019; revised 19/09/2019; accepted 23/01/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract this article presents an innovative framework to evaluate participatory research. the framework, comprising both a methodology and a self-assessment tool, was developed through a participatory approach to knowledge production and mobilisation. this process took place over the last two years as we, a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers and communitybased organisation members from the groupe de recherche et de formation sur la pauvreté au québec, were building a scientific program on social injustices and participatory research. we argue that participatory research can help provide a university-community coconstructed response to epistemic injustices embedded within the processes of knowledge production. from our perspective, the mobilisation of knowledge from the university and the community, initiated at the earliest stages of the creation of a research team, is part of a critical approach to the academic production of knowledge. it also constitutes a laboratory for observing, understanding and attempting to reduce epistemic injustices through building bridges between team members. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6703 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6703 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:baptiste.godrie@umontreal.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6703 the article focuses on two dimensions of the framework mentioned above: (1) the methodology we established to build co-learning spaces at the crossroads of university and community-based organisations (recruitment of a coordinator to organise and facilitate the workshops, informal and friendly meetings, regular clarification of the process and rules of operation, time for everyone to express themselves, informal preparatory meetings for those who wanted them, financial compensation where required, etc.); and (2) a self-assessment tool available in open access that we built during the process to help academics and their partners engage in a reflexive evaluation of participatory research processes from the point of view of epistemic injustices. throughout we pay particular attention to challenges inherent in our research program and our responses, and finish with some concluding thoughts on key issues that emerged over the course of two years’ research. keywords: epistemic injustices; participatory research; co-learning process; inequalities in knowledge production; community-based groups; reflexive evaluation introduction this article presents an innovative framework, based on the concept of epistemic injustices, for evaluating participatory research. consisting of a methodology and a self-assessment tool, the framework was developed through a participatory approach to knowledge production and mobilisation that took place over the last two years as we, a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers and community-based organisation members from quebec (canada), were working on social injustices and participatory research. we argue that participatory research can help provide a university-community co-constructed response to a certain type of social injustices – namely epistemic injustices – embedded within the processes of knowledge production. the first author of this article has been working for the last 10 years at the centre de recherche de montréal sur les inégalités sociales, les discriminations et les pratiques alternatives de citoyenneté (montreal research center on social inequalities, discrimination and alternative practices of citizenship), located in downtown montreal. with a group of colleagues, he has conducted a varied range of participatory research with different health and social services professionals and community-based groups of people stigmatised according to their social status, gender, age or race (for example, see godrie et al. 2018). this practice has shaped a critical perspective on knowledge production and mobilisation in the context of social inequalities. in october 2017, three of the authors (bg, sd and sb) received a one-year grant from the research centre to support the creation of a research team on epistemic injustices and participatory research. this grant provided an opportunity to bring together researchers and social justice activists experienced in participatory research in the field of poverty to share our practices and challenges in current and past research projects on knowledge production and its use in challenging inequalities. we were already aware of the well-known barriers to participatory research, such as the lack of appropriate funding and time, and the differences in organisational culture between university and community-based organisations. for these reasons, we specifically aimed to investigate the challenges connected to hierarchies of godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 knowledge and status in knowledge co-production processes, and ways to reduce them where appropriate. this article presents our methodology for building co-learning spaces at the crossroads of university and community-based organisations and some of the challenges inherent in our research program, and also provides a self-assessment guide to epistemic injustices and participatory research that we collectively built during this process. we are not drawing upon empirical studies directly, but rather are reflecting upon our research and knowledge mobilisation process, while also relating our work to the existing scientific literature on participatory research and epistemic injustices. a research program on epistemic injustices and participatory research pluralistic and non-hierarchical epistemologies participatory research encompasses a broad range of methodological approaches on a spectrum of engagement, such as participatory action research, collaborative research, engaged scholarship, community-based participatory research, practitioner inquiry, and public sociology. broadly speaking, participatory research brings together people/groups from different backgrounds, as opposed to traditional research which involves professional researchers only. coming from different backgrounds, these people/groups do not speak the same language as the researchers and do not see the issues from the same angle, which leads to constant clarification, debate and redefinition of the terms that are taken for granted by each party. for example, the term ‘autonomy’ refers to different realities for a 15-year-old girl still under parental authority, a professional of a home-care support unit for the elderly or a researcher interested in the impact of a reform on the decision-making power of managers. these different community members may have an active role in several or all stages of the research process, but are usually confined to collecting data and disseminating findings. in this scenario, the research process is usually characterised by an ‘ontological separation between scientific knowledge and people’s knowledge without interrogating the validity or social-situatedness of science itself ’ (casas-cortés, osterweil & powell 2008, p. 48). in an arguably more participatory approach to knowledge production, participants are recognised and treated as effective knowledge producers and included throughout the research process. they are co-investigators, rather than merely ‘research subjects’, sources of data or knowledge recipients, leading, for instance, to the establishment of ethical guidelines on the collective ownership of knowledge and recognition of them as co-authors of what is produced. in this instance, participatory research is a process that allows its participants to question the power relationships in the production of scientific knowledge, as well as the boundary between what is recognised as scientific knowledge and what is not. in this sense, participatory research is crucial in supporting reflexivity and enables critical awareness of hierarchies and power relations that are otherwise taken for granted. reflexivity refers, here, to continuous attention and reflection upon the social practices of positioning and differentiation during the research process (including the positioning of the researchers), as well as analytic reflection upon epistemic, social and political struggles (carstensen-egwuom 2014). this approach stems from a global south tradition of academics throughout latin america, asia and africa, initiated in the 1970s (fals borda & rahman 1991; freire 1982; gélineau, dufour & bélisle 2012; reason & bradbury 2001). academics and epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 communities rooted in this tradition are still active in various regions and fields such as indigenous studies, adult education and rural studies. this kind of research challenges the monopolisation of the research process by career researchers and criticises the european and north american scientific normative frameworks, favouring pluralistic and non-hierarchical epistemologies (connell 2007; smith 2012; tandon 2002). other prominent attributes of this participatory research perspective are: a clear commitment to social justice; an attention both to intersectionality and positionality, and the way they shape knowledge hierarchies and production; research as knowledge-merging practice (not appropriation practice); and work that disrupts power structures and transforms social reality through knowledge and collective action (ávila penagos 2005; contreras 2002; merçon et al. 2014; godrie et al. 2018; merçon 2018). we distinguish intersectionality and positionality according to yep and mutua (2016, p. 85), who write, ‘intersectionality is a concept that illustrates the multiplicity of social forces that shape our situated experiences and identities, whereas positionality points out the fact our identities are always relationally shaped within hierarchies of power’. our group aligned itself with this participatory research perspective, while also acknowledging some shortcomings of the tradition, especially the ‘tendency towards essentializing or romanticizing the knowledge of certain groups’ that we noticed in some cases (casas-cortés et al. 2008, p. 48). epistemic injustices and knowledge production the relationships between social inequalities and knowledge production are particularly well analysed by feminist and decolonial frameworks (code 1991; harding 1998; santos 2006, 2016; smith 2012; visvanathan 2009). several studies show that members of certain historically stigmatised social groups see their testimonies and knowledge discredited from the outset when they express themselves on a subject (godrie & dos santos 2017). even though communities have experienced/witnessed and reflected upon this for a long time, the formalisation of this concept is attributable to english philosopher miranda fricker who, in her book, epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing (2007), examines the role of social perceptions and prejudices in credibility judgements and testimonial exchange situations. fricker distinguishes two types of epistemic injustices. the first injustice refers to our capacity to make sense of our own social experiences, especially of the injustices and inequalities we experience because ‘the powerful have an unfair advantage in structuring collective social understandings’ (fricker 2007, p. 147). the second injustice refers to our capacity to convey knowledge to others by testifying. fricker defines these two injustices using the example of sexual harassment in the workplace. according to fricker, before this concept was coined in the 1970s in the united states, women who were experiencing these injustices were isolated and did not have the interpretive resources to name and make sense of these abusive situations. physical and verbal aggression against women by men in the workplace was not considered a societal issue of concern. women who experienced these situations spoke little about them and, when they did, they could face several negative reactions from people around them who could justify these behaviors as ‘flirting’ and experience guilt when they were blamed for lacking a sense of humour and ‘asking for it’. these situations sometimes led women to either endure these attacks or to leave their jobs. fricker (2007, p. 151) refers to these situations in which a ‘gap in collective interpretive resources places someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to reporting on their social experience’ as hermeneutical injustice. in the case of sexual harassment, the interpretative resources did not exist for either the aggressors or the victims, even if this void was especially detrimental to the latter since they felt guilty (‘maybe i am godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 responsible for this’) and isolated, and thus remained vulnerable to harassment. for this reason, when experiencing hermeneutical injustices, people are less likely to publicly expose such violence and to have the structural supports in place (for instance, women in leadership to influence change in workplace culture) to collectively put an end to it. more generally, hermeneutical injustices occur when the knowledge of some groups simply cannot find its way into public debates because it does not fit into dominant paradigms – colonialist, productivist, medical, positivist, sexist – that are usually used to understand the world. secondly, fricker (2007, p. 20) characterises what she calls ‘testimonial injustice’ as a ‘wrong that specifically affects someone in their ability as a knower’. she also states that testimonial injustice occurs ‘when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word’ (p. 1). the term ‘injustice’ emphasises that the difference in consideration given to the speech and knowledge of members of social groups results from their location in the hierarchy of credibility and legitimate knowledge, i.e. from unequal social relations between minority and majority groups. in particular, injustice related to testimony is a form of inequality emanating from harmful and wrongful treatment of a person’s speech because they belong to a historically marginalised social group (fricker 2007, p. 150). returning to the example of harassment, it may be the situation of a woman who is sexually harassed and who is not believed by her relatives or by the people who register her complaint. in this case, even if the members of the group have the interpretative resources to account for the systemic experience of oppression, this interpretation is kept at the margins, if not rendered invisible. this denial of credibility can itself be experienced as a form of violence. it can also produce a loss of self-confidence and self-exclusion from social interactions. this type of injustice is produced and maintained because of a hierarchy of legitimacy and knowledge based partly on stereotypes and dominant ideas that naturalise and legitimise the existing social order. for example, meritocracy and individualisation reinforce the idea that those at the top of the social scale owe it solely to their individual skills and efforts. in some other cases, knowledge is ignored or set aside because of lack of time or because people do not have the appropriate training to reveal it and take it into account. at a deeper level, these situations of epistemic injustice can lead already oppressed groups to internalise historically and socially produced cognitive biases about their intellectual capacities. these epistemic injustices are systemic in two ways. first, they strike people whose rights have been historically denied, that is to say their membership of a group suffers from a ‘negative identity prejudice’ (fricker 2007, p. 27). second, they are accompanied by a set of inequalities that affect other spheres of these people’s lives, whether it be access to decent employment or the possibility of walking safely in a public space. theoretical application in the framework although not investigated by fricker, these two types of epistemic injustices may also arise during the research process between researchers and participants. researchers have their own prejudices, or mental representations, that can lead to discrediting social groups and their members. researchers can invalidate their world view and knowledge by labelling them as opinions, superstition, symbolic constructions, beliefs or feelings. a whole set of situations of epistemic injustice falls outside the categories proposed by fricker. for example, a person who has to write a scientific paper in a secondary or tertiary language suffers an epistemic injustice compared to someone writing it in their mother tongue. and this injustice is reinforced by the fact that the most highly valued languages in the scientific world – english, french, spanish – are the languages of the colonising countries. as a result, some research (and the epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 regions of the world in which it takes place) is given a lot of visibility and other research is invisible because it is not published or published in languages considered peripheral. the structure of the academic world, itself, and its writing and publishing norms can contribute to systematic epistemic injustice by excluding forms of knowledge that fail to conform to propositional knowledge. indeed, many choices are not questioned or discussed with research participants when it comes to negotiating the traces that will be left by action research projects (books, scientific articles, reports, blogs, posts) and the questions they raise: signed by whom? published where and how? in which language? most importantly, marginalised group members whose voices are often not heard are not always in a position of constructed ignorance or denied the possibility to develop their own understanding of their situation. they may recognise the injustices they suffer and have their own interpretation of why they are being oppressed. however, the problem might be that their understanding is not heard, taken into account, or publicly discussed. in this respect, rather than establishing a dialogue with marginalised groups, or including them in formal knowledge production, scholars are more often ‘in conversation with previously published research that … itself excludes the knowledge, interests, and concerns of those communities’ (glass & newman 2015, p. 32). although a philosopher preoccupied with ethics and social justice, fricker does not mention the potential for participatory research between scholars and communities to reduce epistemic injustices. in considering individuals outside the academy as knowledge bearers and knowledge producers and ‘embracing a plurality of knowledge from diverse perspectives of legitimate epistemic agents who enter into dialogue with one another within a research relationship’ (paphitis 2018, p. 364), this type of research, if done well, might contribute to what visvanathan (2009) calls cognitive justice. participatory research is not just a way to work towards cognitive justice, it’s also a way to produce research results with a high level of contextual validity. this context sensitivity is, according to mccollum (2012, p. 199), a component of hermeneutical justice because ‘it serves the social scientist well to realize that studies take place in an always already stratified context but also against a theoretical backdrop that must be amended to bring the complexities of social interaction to light, especially in the service of the disadvantaged’. knowledge produced through participatory research is not only reliable, it’s also ‘socially robust [because] validity is no longer determined solely, or predominantly, by narrowly circumscribed scientific communities, but by much wider communities of engagement comprising knowledge producers, disseminators, traders, and users’ (nowotny, scott & gibbons 2003, pp. 191–92, in mccollum 2012, p. 197). and arguably more relevant to address the issues of community members themselves. co-learning space at the intersection of university and community as we have seen above, participatory research aims to produce knowledge by establishing fairer relationships between all types of knowledge and their holders. despite this ideal, we – the co-authors of this article – knew from our research experience that some participatory processes could maintain or even increase epistemic injustices between participants. our aim was therefore to critically examine the relationships between different participatory research philosophies and practices and the possibility of reducing epistemic injustices during the process of knowledge production itself or as an outcome of the research process. our focus godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 was on the following questions. to what extent do participatory research processes constitute laboratories for the production of knowledge in more egalitarian relationships? do these processes provide a space to challenge the reproduction of hierarchical relationships between knowledges, for example, through the renewal of the division of labour in writing, analysis and dissemination of knowledge? or, do they neutralise and depoliticise the knowledge they incorporate, particularly due to the institutionalisation of participatory research practices in universities (hall & tandon 2017)? did the research project make it possible to hear voices or knowledge previously absent from the public space? despite some articles cited in the previous section on the subject, a literature review led us to share paphitis’s (2018) statement that questions of epistemic injustice in relation to community engagement activities have rarely been interrogated. methodology to answer these questions and develop a research program on this topic, it seemed important to us to develop a methodology that allowed dialogue between different experiences, knowledge, academic and professional disciplines, and positionality. to be consistent with our topic, we wanted to open a co-learning space at the intersection of university and communitybased organisations that could help us gradually build our research program by accumulating exchanges with a diversity of people from various backgrounds over time. according to tineke et al. (2017, p. 492), a dialogical model of co-learning, as opposed to a linear knowledge transfer process, has the potential to reduce epistemic injustices between participants by considering them as knowers and learners: such collaboration supports the creation of meaningful dialog, and the variety of stakeholder perspectives in the dialog can broaden the scope and place possible understandings and solutions within a larger societal framework. in other words, such collaboration can lead to the development of a range of solutions, if stakeholders are willing to see many different types of knowledge and information as being valid. below, we identify the eight main elements characterising the co-learning approach we developed from november 2017 to june 2018. (1) in november, we contacted and gathered together a group of 10 people belonging to three categories that were not mutually exclusive: social activists living in poverty and members of a community-based organisation called groupe de recherche et de formation sur la pauvreté au québec (grfpq) (research and training group on poverty in quebec), a non-profit organisation based in montréal (québec), whose mission is to contribute to the advancement of knowledge about the causes of poverty and its consequences for people experiencing it; social work professionals from various fields (mental health, homelessness, advocacy) offering community-based services; and academics from a range of disciplines (sociology, anthropology, philosophy, nursing, community health). all were experienced in participatory research and/or had theoretical knowledge and/or lived experience of epistemic injustices. in our view, a small group would facilitate exchanges by maximising speaking time for each person and reducing the possibility of intimidating anonymous meetings, as is often the case when there are many more participants. (2) the research grant allowed us to hire a research coordinator for two days a week for a year, whose mandate was to organise our meetings. his prior experience (training in epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 social work, work experience in the grfpq, particularly in a participatory research project, and his knowledge of the academic world as a masters student) identified him as an ideal candidate to facilitate the dialogue. his work consisted of logistics (booking rooms, providing virtual solutions for participants who were unable to travel and who wished to participate remotely), keeping in touch with the participants (taking people’s pulse via email and telephone contact between our encounters) and scientific tasks (taking notes, compiling cross-cutting issues arising from the discussions). (3) before starting our series of co-learning meetings, the research coordinator conducted six interviews with a small number of the participants (four researchers and two members of the grfpq). the interviews helped identify a number of questions and challenges, and helped shape the case case study, definitions and references related to the group’s research topic, as well as set an agenda of themes and determine the people in charge of facilitating each co-learning session. these interviews were transcribed, and the ideas were organised into a working plan for the coming year that was then shared and discussed with the rest of the participants. (4) we planned five co-learning sessions (november 2017, january, february, april and may 2018). these sessions were three hours long. each had a different theme that was presented in turn by one or two participants. for instance, the topics covered the history of participatory-action research, cognitive justice in relation to open access science, and diversity of knowledge in relation to the issue of relativism in social sciences, which helped us focus on and discuss the following questions: what counts as data and who owns it? when does the research process seek to mitigate systemic inequalities? to what extent do researchers have to meet university norms for warranted standards of evidence and arguments when working toward epistemic justice with communities? what hermeneutical resources do we need to understand various possible perspectives that are both epistemically correct and just? for each session, two texts were sent two weeks in advance to help participants prepare for each meeting. on this point, in our review of the process at the end of the year, we realised that almost all the references sent were to scientific articles and that it was hard to find articles in french (our primary language). if we reproduce this format in the future, we will definitely include a diversity of formats (audio, video, movie or novel extracts, testimonials, art). (5) because the texts sent were academic articles and grfpq members were not used to reading such texts, we organised preparatory meetings a week before the work meetings. these preparatory meetings were intended to bring together those who wished to do so in order to prepare for the theme of the co-learning session, to discuss in advance the issues and questions raised by the texts and to allow grfpq members, especially, to feel more legitimate in their exchanges with the other participants. we found this approach worked better too with community researchers, who often felt uncomfortable speaking up in researcher dominated meetings, but would have lots to say when we would talk to them. (6) during the first co-learning session, we shared our experiences and personal commitments regarding the theme of participatory research and epistemic injustices. it seemed important to us not only to share our professional or personal experiences, but also to clarify our positionality at the crossroads of different characteristics and intersectionality (economic situation and social status, gender, age, level of education, etc.) and its impact on our points of view. we established a common commitment that our discussions and work would have a political dimension, i.e. contribute to the godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 reduction of epistemic injustices and, more broadly, of all other systemic inequalities. this involved, first of all, creating a safe space for participants, speaking to the ‘i’ by referring to his or her readings and personal and professional experiences, and listening and exchanging respectfully without invalidating the point of view of others. this was made possible by, in particular, a facilitation which ensured that everyone spoke at least once during the exchanges, either on the content of the topic or on the process, and through a friendly atmosphere. it was particularly important to us to recognise that it was normal to make mistakes, to hesitate, not know, and to express ideas, intuitions, emotions and life stories without being afraid of being hurt. popular education methods helped facilitate the sessions and fostered a diversity of points of view. we had a check-in after each session and the coordinator would later have a regular follow-up (phone calls and emails) with us. however, this did not prevent some members from experiencing epistemic injustices. for example, despite the inclusive environment, highlighted by many participants, one person shared with us that she felt her point of view was not taken into account and that the person leading the discussion in the subgroup was too prescriptive. (7) the exchanges were recorded in order to produce a faithful and exhaustive account of them. this document was produced by the coordinator and the co-facilitators of the meeting, and then shared as a google doc with the rest of the participants for additions/validation. all these documents allowed us to accumulate a set of issues, references and research questions that would contribute to our research agenda. the drafting of these documents, reflecting the diversity of exchanges, debates and points of view, served as a basis for our scientific presentations and the drafting of the plan for this article. subsequently, the first author of this article prepared a working version for the co-authors. the proposal was improved and validated collectively. in our discussions with non-academic participants of our group, it was clear from the outset that putting them in a position to write parts of the article was an unfair burden because, unlike the academics, they were not paid to do so, did not have the appropriate training and could not spend as much time on it. (8) finally, the research grant allowed us to allocate a financial compensation of $100 for each three-hour session (including preparation). this compensation was given to each of the grfpq members to recognise their time and the value of their contribution to the exchanges, and in the context of the other team members being there as part of their job as researchers or as students working on closely related topics. these amounts certainly did not recognise the true value of the grfpq members’ contributions, but we consider that they were a step in that direction. by september 2018, the research grant was coming to an end and we could no longer hire the coordinator on a part-time basis. in addition, we wanted to open our meetings to more people in order to create a space in montreal where people interested in or practising participatory research could exchange, with the same spirit of cross-fertilisation of knowledge and viewpoints that had guided our co-learning sessions so far. since september 2018, we have organised four seminars on topics that were put forward during the first year: ‘the analysis in participatory research: what co-analysis practices open this last bastion of research?’ ( january 2019); ‘decentralizing research and co-constructing knowledge outside university’ (march 2019); ‘towards more symmetrical relationships? strategies for collaboration between community organizations and academia’ ( june 2019); and ‘authorship practices in participatory research and epistemic injustices’ (november 2019). epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 these seminars were held at the research centre on social inequalities (centre de recherche de montréal sur les inégalités sociales, les discriminations et les pratiques alternatives de citoyenneté, cremis), were open to all, publicised through a mailing list of our contacts and on social media, and brought together around 20 to 30 people each time (see photo). they comprised a presentation by two or three interlocutors from the university and communitybased organisations, workshops in small working groups, and plenary sessions. the seminars were oriented towards the presentation of case studies and supported the development of participatory research to challenge epistemic inequalities. seminar on practices of co-analysis in participatory research, montreal, january 2019 self-assessment guide on epistemic injustices and participatory research despite some shortcomings, highlighted above, we believe that this methodology helped create a polyphonic space respectful of the diversity of socially situated positions, and fostered our capacity to reduce some asymmetries in terms of social status and perception of legitimacy among the participants. in june 2018, we presented our work during a study day on ‘epistemic injustices and participatory research’ that brought together 30 people, including 11 employees or members of various community-based organisations in the field of social justice (front commun des personnes assistées sociales du québec, clinique spot, collectif pour un québec sans pauvreté, atd quart monde, relais femme, etc.), as well as researchers and students. a buffet was served, and we split the transport and compensation fees of the community participants with the community-based organisations. as we are aware that academic language can be one of the sources of production or maintenance of epistemic inequalities, and that some people may feel intimidated or be afraid of being judged, we wanted the participants to be able to interact godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 through art. in the morning, in subgroups of five or six people, they identified and discussed situations in which they had experienced epistemic injustices, and then performed a small play. the day also aimed at mobilising research projects in which participants had taken part, identifying the most promising research strategies for reducing epistemic inequalities and creating research-community groups interested in the epistemic dimensions of participatory research. from the very beginning, we wanted our reflections to lead to new collaborations and have a concrete impact, without really knowing exactly what it might be. the researchers, however, expressed a need to publish the group’s reflections on epistemic inequalities and participatory research in order to establish a dialogue with the scientific community. community-based organisation members especially, and some researchers, stressed the importance of making the results of our exchanges accessible not only to researchers, but to community-based organisations in order to attract better recognition of their knowledge of participatory research. that is why we opted to produce a variety of texts in various languages (english, spanish and french) targeting different audiences, such as peer-reviewed academic journals, professional magazines of social and health practitioners, and posts on action-research blogs. as the exchanges progressed during the first year, the idea emerged of a tool that could help academics and their partners to engage in a reflexive evaluation of participatory research processes from the point of view of epistemic injustices with groups whose members are seldom heard. to our knowledge, none of the tools and guides already available to support researchers and their community-based group partners had targeted this specific angle. we decided it would take the form of a reflexive tool that would summarise the main challenges identified during our co-learning sessions. this document (see appendix) is a self-assessment guide organised into seven sections, each containing several questions that members of a participatory research project can answer. while the guide does not retain fricker’s definition of epistemic injustices, it does allow those who use it to question consideration of testimonial and hermeneutical injustices during the research process and from the perspective of results from different participants or social groups. the definition of epistemic injustices used in the guide is deliberately broad and refers to a particular type of inequality related to access, recognition and production of knowledge. this current guide can be applied to ongoing or already completed projects. the current version is the result of a process of ongoing exhanges. the first version was produced in may 2018 by two of the authors and was then validated by the other participants. it was then applied to two participatory research projects during a co-learning session in may 2018. subsequently, a version was discussed and enriched during several events, including the study day in june 2018 and a symposium on epistemic injustices and participatory research held on 7 and 8 february 2019 in namur, belgium. during these two events, the guide was divided into several parts and distributed to sub-groups who discussed its form and content. on the first occasion, all the groups shared their comments in a plenary session and, on the second occasion, we collected all the written comments made by each sub-group. occasionally, people sent their comments or suggestions directly via emails to the first author. these exchanges led to several improvements to the initial version. for example, after a seminar held at the cremis where we discussed the ocap (ownership, control, access and protection) principles, developed by the indigenous communities to decolonise research (first nations information governance centre 2014), we included questions such as ‘who has the right to mobilize the research results?’ and ‘who participates in the knowledge mobilization process?’ in the fourth section of the guide (knowledge production) and fifth section epistemic injustices and participatory research: a research agenda at the crossroads of university and community gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/6703/7447 (knowledge mobilisation). on many occasions, members of several community-based groups argued that access to the knowledge produced during the research process, for example, via printed or pdf copies of published documents, or access to videos and photos taken during the process, was also a key action to increase epistemic justice. participants at the symposium in namur stressed the importance of short-circuiting the emphasis on academic and professional knowledge in exchanges, allowing time for testimonies, storytelling and lay references, e.g. folk wisdom and proverbs (see section 3: participants and their knowledge). the current version is the third version and future versions will be developed according to the uses and feedback made by users. the document is under a creative commons cc by 4.0 license, which allows it to be freely shared and adapted subject to crediting the original source. conclusion in this article, we have presented a participatory approach to knowledge production and mobilisation on epistemic injustices and participatory research, focusing on the methodological, theoretical and epistemological components of our research. in conclusion, we reiterate the essential elements of our approach, hoping they might inspire other groups of researchers and members of community-based organisations. in our view, participatory research constitutes a laboratory for observing, understanding and challenging epistemic injustices through building bridges between participants and their knowledge. the dialogical relationship between social scientists and community-based organisation members whose voices are often not heard seems to be a necessary component of testimonial and hermeneutical justice (mccollum 2012). we believe that participatory research processes have this potential since they aim to clarify tensions and bridges between distinct points of view that in turn become new sources of ideas and practices. participatory research also leads to questioning the division of tasks and the nature of the knowledge used and produced. this type of research is likely to allow its participants to ‘move from consensus based on dominant knowledge, or shared assumptions about knowledge in action, to allow new understandings to emerge’ (cook et al. 2019). however, the relationship between participatory research and the reduction of epistemic injustices is neither obvious nor necessary. working to establish more horizontal relationships between the different types of knowledge and their holders requires constant attention, especially since researchers have not been trained for this at university. the challenge is all the more important in the case of participatory research with stigmatised groups who may have had negative experiences with researchers in the past, as particularly highlighted by smith (2012), and for the community-based groups participating in our seminars who may have had a sense of being instrumentalised for the benefit of a researcher’s career, of having participated in research without ever having any news of the results, or of having wasted valuable time addressing the concerns of academics who, however, have no understanding of their daily life and living conditions. hence we gave special attention to the following issues during the building of our research agenda on epistemic injustices and participatory research over the last two years: • situating our reflection on epistemic injustices in an academic and activist framework, recognising in particular the intellectual traditions and social movements at the origin of these concepts. godrie et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 • explaining our values and positionality regarding the theme and what each of us would gain (for example, making visible the unequal social relations in the production of knowledge, publishing articles) and potentially risk by participating in this project (for example, exposing oneself to situations of epistemic injustices). in our experience, the constant explanation and discussion of our positionality became an epistemic resource to push our thinking further. the co-learning space was intended from this point of view to create what nicholls (2009, p. 121) calls a ‘liminal, in-between space, decentering themselves by challenging traditional notions of objective control between researchers and research participants’. • having an impact beyond the members of our group. this led us to create seminars in montreal that are ongoing. this is also why we decided to produce a guide that would allow researchers and community-based groups to assess participatory research experiences in the light of epistemic inequalities and that would support them to reflect on egalitarian relationships in research. • seeking to maximise the spaces where we could test the relevance of this guide in order to develop it over time in a non-linear process of knowledge transfer. from our perspective, the mobilisation of knowledge coming from the university and the community-based organisations, initiated at the earliest stages of the creation of the research team, was part of a critical approach to the academic production of knowledge (hall & tandon 2017). this participatory knowledge transfer is not only a technical activity, as pointed out by tineke et al. (2017, p. 501), but also a ‘socio-political activity … embedded in heterogeneous societal networks with many different stakeholders’. • integrating this tool and research agenda in our research practices and respective classes because university curricula in social sciences in quebec do not currently train students in these participatory practices and epistemic challenges. for instance, one of the authors created a three-hour workshop for phd students in her classes. we hope this work may assist the future work of others undertaking similar processes and contribute to the research agenda on epistemic injustices and participatory research. references ávila penagos, r 2005, ‘la producción de conocimiento en la investigación-acción pedagógica: balance de una experiencia’, revista colombiana de educación, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 503–19. https://www.redalyc.org/ articulo.oa?id=29831312 carstensen-egwuom, i 2014, ‘connecting intersectionality and reflexivity: methodological approaches to social 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https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483399164.n5 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: demeulenaere, e. 2021. helping homeless youth: epistemological implications of power in a ypar project. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–14. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7773 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) helping homeless youth: epistemological implications of power in a ypar project eric demeulenaere1 1 associate professor of education, education department, clark university, 950 main street, worcester, ma, 01610, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7773 article history: received 16/06/2021; revised 07/08/2021; accepted 11/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract text from nasma: “i’ve started moving my things out of the house. i’m putting it in your office for now.” thus began the story of how one of the youth i had worked with for four years on various ypar projects became homeless and turned to me for help. entering this crisis with nasma took time and an emotional toll, and it affected the power dynamics of our relationship when finishing our ypar project. youth participatory action research (ypar) works to rebalance power in inequitable relationships based on roles, age, race, gender, etc. providing care to nasma as she confronted the traumatic situation of homelessness affected our collaborative relationship as she became dependent on me for basic economic resources. through this process, the inequities in age and material resources between nasma and me were centred, displacing the more equitable interactions that we had constructed through ypar projects. this article employs critical autoethnography to examine the epistemological ‘risks of care’ and argues that the calls for ‘care-full’ scholarship still need to contend with the pitfalls of differential power dynamics in ypar. keywords youth participatory action research (ypar); horizontal relationships; risks of care; relational power dynamics; epistemology introduction this article uses critical autoethnography (garrett-walker, cann & demeulenaere, in press) to examine the complexity and precarity of power in relationships involved in 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7773 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7773 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7773 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7773 youth participatory action research (ypar). inherent to the work of academics involved in ypar is the complicated negotiation of power differentials in social identity related nearly always to age and education and often to class, race and gender. to truly embrace the epistemology of ypar, participants must navigate these power differentials so that the voices and ideas of the youth can guide the inquiry and analysis, referred to as constructing more horizontal relationships (freire 1970; von kotze, walters & luckett 2016). in this article, i examine the relationship i had with a student named nasma1 with whom i worked over several years in a youth film producer’s program and later in a ypar project. in the years we worked together, we had to navigate our relationship across differences of race, class, gender, education level, age and immigrant status. i am a white male middle-aged professor of education, while nasma is a young black immigrant woman who was in and, later, just out of high school. i also examine how the success of creating a more horizontal relationship with nasma, whose voice, ideas and leadership were central to the success of the ypar project, occurred through nasma maintaining boundaries that worked to decentre the differences in our social status. indeed, the epistemological strength of ypar and all participatory action research (par) is rooted in the voice and contribution of all the participants, across the power differentials of varied social identities. when a personal crisis forced nasma to become vulnerable and dependent on me, the differences in our social status became more salient. as the following narrative illustrates, this moment of crisis resulted in a more authentic and caring relationship as it pushed us both to be more vulnerable and made our social realities more transparent. but it also brought to the foreground the inherent power differentials tied to class and age, which, in turn, eroded the horizontal relationship we had cultivated to make the ypar project effective. i use critical autoethnography to examine (1) the ways in which the construction of horizontal relationships necessary for ypar can also prevent more authentic relationships from forming; and (2) how crises may foster what i call ‘risks of care’ that bring to the fore relational power dynamics that can create dependencies that undermine these horizontal relationships. this article argues that we need to attend to the complexities of these relational dynamics and how the power differentials in these relationships affect the epistemological dimensions of ypar. the narrative part 1: the crisis friday, 5 may 2017, 11.45 pm hey, eric, i’m in a difficult spot. so bahati totally dipped and left me hanging. she’s still in worcester but doesn’t stay in the apartment. tomorrow the landlord is coming to check the apartment and i’m worried he’ll see my things and kick me out. i’m not sure what to do now. saturday, 6 may 2017, 8.49 am just want to let you know that i’ve started moving my things out the house (i’m putting it in your office for now) just so when the landlord comes this morning my things aren’t in the house. 1 all names, except the author’s, are pseudonyms. demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 saturday morning, as i prepared for a conference call, i noticed that i had received the above two texts from nasma. i quickly responded that it was okay to drop stuff in my office and that i would call her when i was free. after i finished my conference call that rainy saturday morning, i called nasma to check in. she was riding in an uber to work at sam’s club when i reached her. earlier that morning, before the landlord arrived, she had hauled all of her possessions in two separate trips through drizzling rain to unload everything into my office, three blocks away. she had a full day of work, but she was going to try to call some people to see if she could find a place to crash temporarily. i told her i would put the word out to my networks to see if i could locate any housing for her or find a room in an apartment that would be available for rent. i posted a request for help to a friend on facebook and sent out a bunch of emails on my iphone during the conference call. several people offered to help, but no one offered to take her in. nasma and i texted intermittently throughout the day while i was engaged in activities with my family and she was at work. i went to my friend’s birthday party that night, hoping nasma had figured out something since she was getting off work about the same time. i didn’t head home from the party until after midnight and i called nasma to see if she had found a solution, but was sad to learn that she was in my university office as she had no place to go for the night. i dropped my spouse at home and headed to the campus. arriving at my office around 12.45 am, i found nasma sleeping behind my desk where she had laid out some blankets and a pillow. her bags and boxes were strewn across my office. not having any alternative, i brought her home to spend the night at my house, setting her up in my office, which also served as a guest bedroom. the next morning i introduced nasma to my daughters and spouse during a somewhat awkward breakfast as everyone was atypically quiet. the previous monday, we had flown back from a conference in san antonio, texas. nasma had the extra key to my office because in the weeks prior to the conference, she had been working to finalise the documentary film we were to present as part of a larger youth participatory action research project we were working on. she ended up staying in my home for over two weeks while i scrambled and pushed her to find a more stable housing situation. critical autoethnography i pause here in the narrative, before going into a more detailed background to the story, to explain the analytical and epistomolgical approach i use in this article. for the type of analysis i wish to make, the use of detailed story is central, and so i rely on critical autoethnography (cann & demeulenaere 2020; garrettwalker, cann & demeulenaere in press), recognising with sara worth (2005, p. 19), that ‘traditional forms of knowledge (knowing how and knowing that) are not sufficient to cover a third kind of knowledge (knowing what it is like) in the way that storytelling can’. through sharing a detailed story of what i have termed the ‘risks of care’, i seek to engage others in complicating the epistemological implications of power differentials when conducting research and reconsider the notion of inevitability that often is ignored in the final presentation of research (bourdieu 1977; rosaldo 1993). critical autoethnography enables me to reflexively turn the research gaze onto myself, which is necessary for analysing the complications of power dynamics in my relationships with others in a collaborative research project, in which we all have different social identities that reflect different forms of social power. this is all the more requisite in the ypar projects in which i, a white cisgendered male professor in my fifties, engage with high-school age youth of colour from low-income neighbourhoods in worcester, massachusetts. through the use of detailed narratives combined with ethnographic analysis, critical autoethnography enables me to uncover the subtle ways that power is enacted. dimensions of power are present in all relationships, but often they are revealed only in subtle ways over time. detailed narratives, combined with critical and reflexive analyses, are necessary to uncover and make sense of them. demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 attending to the more subtle dimensions of relational power, critical autoethnographies, as adams (2017, p. 79) describes: ascertain vital and often unforeseen connections between personal experiences and cultural experiences; identify manifestations of power and privilege in everyday practices; discern social injustices and inequities; and describe beliefs and practices that should—and should not—exist. critical autoethnographies also offer strategies to curtail abuses of power and privilege; challenge social injustices and inequities; change dangerous beliefs and practices; improve living conditions; promote resistance and transformation; and determine how to get along better, together, in ways that recognize and celebrate difference. this is an important component of the critical in critical autoethnography. it is about identifying how, to use bell hooks’ (1997) wording, the ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ becomes manifest through everyday interactions and relationships. critical autoethnography attempts to humbly pull back the curtain to the processes of learning and developing new knowledge, which is often quite messy and filled with uncertainty. too much academic research relies on analysis after the fact without any narrative accounting, which leaves it devoid of what bourdieu (1977) called tempo. such analyses hide the multiple levels of ‘uncertainty as to what may happen … to overcome the effects of time (bourdieu, 1977, p. 9). the construction of neatly crafted analyses at the end of an inquiry process portrays authors as brilliant and all-knowing rather than as learners or co-learners, which highlights another level of power in the research process: authorial power through the control of tempo and the construction of the narrative. further, these analyses, often removed from the narrative, hide the relational power dynamics which may not only undermine the portrayal of authorial brilliance, but also authorial benevelonce. just as freire (1970) sought to demystify the dimensions of power embedded in the banking model of education by indicating that teachers need to reveal themselves to be co-learners in process and in dialogue with their co-learning students, so too must researchers share their learning process through attention to a processural analysis (cann & demeulenaere 2020) that only a detailed narrative and analysis can capture. critical autoethnography opens a window into the vulnerable process of reflection in freire’s praxis cycle, whereby the researcher can critically analyse and reflect on the actions that took place. we can come to understand that the actions that occurred were never inevitable and often fraught with uncertainty, improvisation and relational power dynamics. i have written elsewhere about what my co-author and i termed critical co-constructed autoethnography (cann & demeulenaere 2020), in which the narrative of autoethnography is co-developed by multiple authors. given the critical examinations of power dynamics between nasma and me in this story, this would have been an ideal experience to employ this methodology. i reached out several times to nasma to see if she would be willing to co-author the article or even just the narrative, or collaborate with me in some way. i felt that the process of co-authoring, or at least collaborating on this manuscript, could have afforded us the dialogic space to process what had happened in our relationship and really work through the tensions that developed after i brought her to my house. she never responded to my repeated suggestion. this likely stemmed from the distance that developed between us after she stayed with me and my family. nevertheless, it raises additional questions about authorial power in storytelling. while this story is definitely a story i experienced, it involves others in the narrative, as do nearly all of our stories. what are the power dynamics and ethical implications of telling stories that involve the lives of other people involved in the story? how are those power dynamics and ethical implications impacted when the person authoring the story has more social power? how are they impacted when the person with the more marginalised identity declines to participate? what are the implications for reflective story-telling, even when the goal is to critically and reflexively examine power dynamics in an experience? below, i provide a more detailed background and nuanced story of my relationship and collaboration with nasma. i do this to capture the subtleties, processes and shifts over time. afterwards, consistent with demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 critical autoethnography, i interrogate and analyse the story to examine the ways that power is manifested and how that had epistemological implications for my research project and for ypar more generally. i pick up the story below a few years earlier to identify the collaboration nasma and i had over the years preceding the narrative crisis that opened this piece. narrative part 2: the backstory in her second year in high school, nasma became a student in a critical media and youth film-makers program i ran. she was such a strong leader in her first year in the program that my co-founder and i invited her to be a teacher assistant the following year. in the second year of working with her, she not only became a leader in the program, but also one of the four youth featured in the film the youth developed that year on colourism. to complete her role in the film, she had to be vulnerable and share details about her life and her experiences of growing up with a dark skin tone. but she never talked about or shared with me some of the difficulties she was dealing with at home. through the years of collaborative film-making, i travelled throughout the country with nasma and other youth and colleagues to present films at conferences and film festivals. these trips were fun. we ate together and explored the cities we travelled to. we laughed a lot. we practised our presentations together in hotel rooms. we grew close on these trips and nasma and i learned more about each other. but nasma also maintained a certain level of distance. it became clear that she could be vulnerable, but it was always on her own terms. she would reveal herself in certain vulnerabilities for the film or in a college essay, but she remained in control. she never presented herself as needy. she never asked for rides home after meetings. she willingly ate the pizzas we often provided, but unlike some of the other youth, she never requested my co-facilitator or me to order them. at the beginning of her senior year in high school, i received a small grant to begin a ypar project to examine the impact of the youth film-makers’ program i had co-founded four years earlier. i recruited nasma to be a part of this project and she quickly emerged as a leader. throughout her senior year of high school, we interviewed all the previous participants in the program and some of the parents. nasma suggested that i should not be a part of the interviews of the youth as she felt that they might try to give me the answers they thought i would want to hear. based on her suggestion, the ypar team, including me, agreed. thus, the high school students conducted all the interviews of the youth. i was only present for parent interviews. also, during her senior year, i wrote letters of recommendation for her college applications and supported her as she completed the applications. at the end of the senior year, i attended her graduation and cheered when she walked across the stage. by most accounts we had developed a close working relationship. she offered ideas for the project that we mostly followed. she also offered critiques and modifications of the ideas brought forward by others, including ones that i offered. although only in high school, she was a full contributor and a strong leader in the ypar project. she was funny and we laughed a lot. the other youth on the team looked to her as a leader. soon after her graduation from high school, as we were about to enter into a more intensive period of analysing the data, writing up our findings and editing the interviews into a documentary film, nasma called me. she said she could no longer work on the project because she had some personal problems and was going to live with her uncle in maryland. in fact, she was already down there. she didn’t offer any further explanation, and i didn’t pry. i was completely oblivious of there being trouble in her home life. i wished her well and told her to let me know if i could be of any help. i hired someone to replace her in the role she was to play in the ypar project and we continued on with the paper and documentary film over the rest of the summer. demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 i learned from some of the other youth that towards the end of the summer nasma had returned to worcester and was preparing to attend a college in the city where she had received the best financial aid package. i had not really interacted with her since she left town, aside from a few texts. then, in the middle of september, i received a text from her: hey, eric, i need your help. so i’m not liking [my college] at all and i want to transfer really bad i’m talking as fast as this semester. would you be able to help me with that process? of course. where do you want to go? umass boston, georgia state or a school in maryland. i want to try leaving worcester again. we later spoke on the phone and i learned more about nasma’s current predicament. when she left for maryland earlier in the summer she was experiencing conflict at home. her uncle, who had come up for her graduation, took her back to maryland to stay with him. she came back to worcester towards the end of summer to reconcile and prepare to attend college. she only stayed at home for a couple weeks before the conflict re-emerged and she became homeless. she stayed at a friend’s home for a while, and later went to sleep on the couch of another friend. she had her old job back selling pizza slices and hot dogs at sam’s club and had started college. amidst the stress of everything, her many hours of work and the difficulty of getting to her college campus without a car, she started to miss classes. by the time i met up with her in october she had basically stopped attending classes. when she reached out to me, she wanted to try to simply start over in the spring semester, change her major and move onto a campus away from worcester. most of the schools she was interested in had either already passed their deadlines for spring admissions or did not accept spring admissions. i offered to ask the admissions folk at clark university, where i taught, if they might accept her application for the spring semester even though the deadline had passed. surprising both of us, they said ‘yes’. nasma decided to try to make that work and to see if she could move onto clark’s campus in the spring. together, we scrambled to get all the components for her application into clark in under two weeks. she submitted the application and was soon notified that she had been accepted. her financial aid package expected her family to cover a portion of the costs, but since nasma was no longer supported by her parents, she applied for an additional loan to cover that portion. nasma was supposed to move into her dorm room on sunday and have a day of orientation on monday, martin luther king jr day. but since she had still not heard about the status of her loan application, she was uncertain about what to do. in the end, i helped her move into her dorm room on sunday. on monday she went to orientation. on tuesday, she learned that she had been rejected for the loan. she received an email that day from the university indicating that she needed to move out of the dorm and return her key, and that she would be billed for any meals and nights spent there if she did not move out right away. nasma said she could not go back to her friend’s apartment where she had been staying and that, basically, she had outstayed her welcome at all her friends’ homes. so we both began to scramble to find her a place to live. i put the word out to my students, asking if any of them knew of rooms for rent. i quickly heard back from bahati that there was a room available in her apartment. i called bahati and she said that the room was furnished and that she could get her connected with her landlord. it was clearly not the demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 outcome that nasma wanted, but we agreed to try to work to get her into a better situation for the autumn semester. we made arrangements with bahati so she could get a key and move in right away, and bahati said she would work out the arrangements with the landlord. that was how i left it. i assumed that they would add nasma to the lease and she would pay her share. what i didn’t realise was that they didn’t add nasma to the lease and bahati just made an arrangement to have nasma pay half of her room rent, so that they both could save money. even though i was unaware of the living situation they had worked out, i stayed more connected with nasma that spring. i found money to hire her to help finalise the film and the paper that had been mostly completed the previous summer. she, along with some other youth involved with the project, came to present with me at a conference in philadelphia in february. she continued to further develop the film in preparation for our presentation at a national education conference at the end of april in san antonio. we continued to talk and i helped her prepare her applications to two colleges in georgia. we also strategised about how she could be viewed as financially independent from her family for the purpose of financial aid. i was concerned about her wanting to attend school away from worcester without much of a support system there, but i didn’t want to dissuade her. i shared my concern for her as i would with any friend or colleague, but i didn’t try to talk her out of attending college so far away. again, this was about maintaining a level of distance in support of our more horizontal relationship. truth be told, i was going to miss her – both the insights and the laughter she brought to our work. i really cared about her. i had urged her to think about coming to clark if we could secure her financial situation. i felt like i would be able to connect her with a group of critically conscious students of colour with whom she could develop some meaningful relationships. but i also understood her desire to move away from a difficult family situation and such a cold climate. we had a good conversation about her future on the plane trip home from san antonio. it was nearly midnight and raining lightly when i dropped her off at her apartment after driving from the boston airport. nevertheless, i hopped out of the car to help her get her bag from the trunk and to give her a hug and thank her for all her work preparing our film for the conference presentation and the way she shined at the conference. we made plans to connect in a couple of weeks after my semester wrapped up, knowing i would be pretty busy with final projects and grades. things seemed pretty good between us until i received the text messages that prompted this article merely four days after we returned from the conference in san antonio. i did not know what to do when i learned that she had moved out of her apartment and had no place to go. i brought her home to my house thinking i could figure things out in the light of the new day. on monday, i spoke with city officials from the housing office about programs that served homeless youth and even with a woman who used to work in a youth program that nasma was a part of, who now worked with a non-profit that addressed homelessness. all these people were kind, supportive and sensitive, but none of them provided any material support or guidance. we were not looking for free housing as nasma had a job and was willing to pay rent. despite extensive communication with several people employed in government and non-profit organisations focused on homelessness or housing, we found no available housing options for nasma. i kept asking and pushing nasma to follow up with some of these individuals who were not always easy to reach. one of my students offered his room in a shared apartment for nasma to rent for the rest of the summer for a rate she could afford. but it was only going to become available after the current tenant moved out following clark’s graduation two weeks later. for the two weeks that nasma stayed with my family and me, she continued to work at sam’s club. when she was not working, i invited her down to eat meals with my family. but for the most part she stayed in the guest bedroom/office. we stopped talking about college planning and finalising the paper for publication; we were focused on her housing crisis. demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 not finding any other solution, we waited for my student’s room to become available. this situation took up a lot of time for both nasma and myself right in the midst of finals for me at the university. it affected the dynamic of my relationship with nasma as we were working to finalise a paper and a documentary film for publication/distribution. there was a growing sense of awkwardness between nasma and me. the humour, joy and small talk diminished. she also probably felt the tension between my spouse and me, which no doubt affected everyone in the house. after a little over two weeks, i helped nasma move into the summer sublet that my student had offered. we communicated during the summer, but not as often as before and it was more serious, with less of the teasing and banter that had marked our relationship previously. we pretty much stopped working on the video, which was mostly done, and our rare conversations were about getting her established in her new college in georgia or finding housing down there. in the end, she bought tickets and flew to georgia without telling me or saying goodbye. i remember being surprised when i called her to check in and discovered she had already moved. i worked to try to stay connected with her. i emailed and texted her, but rarely heard back. although i had intended to do so earlier, i sent her a house-warming gift card for target in late september, but i never heard if she received it. later, i learned that she had struggled to make ends meet in georgia and ended up returning to maryland to live with her uncle before she could finish the fall semester. since then i have reached out to nasma on occasion, but have only been able to exchange text messages with her twice, one of those because one of the other youth from the ypar project had told nasma to text me back. that was when i had been trying to reach her to work with me on this manuscript. eventually she reached out, but never responded to my requests to collaborate on the project. i have stayed in much more regular contact with some of the other youth to whom i had never been so close. discussion youth participatory action research (ypar) strives to rebalance inequitable relationships based on roles, age, race, gender and other factors. in my efforts to enact ypar, i seek to create projects that centre the voice, ideas and questions of the youth with whom i work. yet in my efforts to help nasma as she confronted the challenging and traumatic situation of homelessness as a 19-year-old, our collaborative relationship shifted as she became dependent on me and the resources i, because of my many privileges, could provide for her. through this process, the inequities in material resources – which are linked to age, education and social class, and indirectly to race and gender – between nasma and me were centred, complicating the more equitable interactions that we had previously constructed in our knowledge creation through collaborative work in the ypar projects. these types of power differentials raise questions about dependency and independence in constructing equitable relationships. they pose challenges to what it means to develop close and caring relationships through ypar work, recognising that those relationships extend beyond the connections developed through the research project. care-full scholarship recently there has been a call for greater care in our research practice in response to the dehumanising neoliberal forces at work in the academy. this focus on ‘care-full’ scholarship has at times emphasised the humanity and needs of academic scholars (mountz et al. 2015; puãwai collective 2019). in addition to recognising the need to care for our own humanity as scholars within neo-liberal universities, moriggi (2021, p, 2) argues that care-full scholarship is a call to change the ‘tangible practices [scholars] perform when engaging with research participants’. she developed a framework that involves five interconnected forms of care: (1) caring about, (2) caring for, (3) care giving, (4) care receiving and 5) caring with. given the product-driven dehumanising space of the neo-liberal university, the call for care-full scholarship seems not only a welcome respite, but a moral imperative. however, a deeper examination of the framework demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 reveals a missing power analysis which, in turn, allows us to disregard the possibility of what i term ‘risks of care’. while moriggi’s framework is visually represented in a circle with the idea of reciprocity in the centre, the realities of power differentials based on social inequities are real and often material, and can at times undermine reciprocity in caring relationships. the argument i am making is that enacting care in our research relationships, especially when there are existing inequities of power related to different social identities and lived material realities, can create a sense of dependency and shift the power dynamics in the relationship. while we may aspire to the construction of reciprocity in our caring relationships, differential needs related to different social realities can make the reciprocity unattainable or, at least, feel unbalanced. this can have epistemological effects as it shapes the nature of the relationships and collaborations. below, i analyse this story to examine the complications of power differentials and these ‘risks of care’ in providing material help to youth in crisis. from moriggi (2021) building horizontal relationships ypar’s epistemological lineage links to freire’s critical pedagogy (cammarota & fine 2010). freire (1970) recognised that the liberatory educational endeavour becomes undermined when facilitators solve the problems on behalf of the oppressed, what he called ‘charity’, because it positions the oppressed as passive recipients rather than historical agents of change. one of the primary problems of charity is that it fosters dependency, which leads to hierarchical relationships between those who exert their agency and those who are constructed as passive recipients lacking agency. critical pedagogy and ypar seek to disrupt hierarchical relationships fostered by class, race, age and other factors and instead foster more horizontal relationships. writing about participatory research, von kotze, walters and luckett (2016, p. 103) state, ‘an important first task in any popular education undertaking is the attempt to establish more horizontal relationships of power’. further, they continue, ‘these must be consciously established and continuously re-negotiated’. what these combined comments demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 reveal is that the more equitable relationships necessary for engaging in effective participatory research projects are not easy to foster or maintain. the efforts to build more horizontal relationships with participants in ypar projects are even more challenging as they must overcome the power differentials related to age, education and often class and race, and other social identity power differences. my efforts to develop authentic ypar projects with youth meant that i worked to create more horizontal relationships with them, to situate their voice, ideas and power as valuable and essential to the work. to do so, i sought to decentre my own voice, perspective and power. i also specifically talked with those involved in the ypar projects about differential positional power related to race, class, age and, at times, gender. my previous work with nasma involved working on two films and for both, my co-teacher and i taught students how to engage in the technical aspects of film production, but they conceived, shot, directed, edited and produced all aspects of the film. my past work with them and my willingness to trust them with the data collection further established our trust and fostered a more horizontal relationship as we interacted on the ideas and approach to the research questions. when we began the analysis of the data, we developed a collective process where we all wrote our reactions to the data that we coded individually, and then shared it to develop a collective analysis. i worked hard to make sure that the young people’s perspectives were central to our full analysis of all the data. i listened to and valued their perspectives. risks of care there is a complicated challenge, what i call a ‘risk of care’, inherent in the relational work essential for effective ypar projects. we need to develop close caring relationships based on trust with our youth collaborators to enable us to form horizontal relationships that are not characterised by hierarchy and inequality. in creating these, we focus on the value of different ideas, perspectives, ways of reading our data and experiences that we all bring to collective work. but in attempting to build more horizontal relationships, we tend to de-emphasise the obvious differences related to age, wealth, independence and, in the case of nasma and me, race and gender. while we acknowledged these differences openly, and at times humorously, construction of the horizontal relationship was based more on the value of our different perspectives in the work and the area of ideas. part of our initial ability to create a more horizontal relationship was due to nasma’s efforts to appear and remain independent. i am sure part of the reason that i saw her as responsible and mature was because of the ways she did not entrust me with her more personal struggles. perhaps part of why i thought we had a more equitable relationship was because she did not openly reveal the various challenges she faced. it was only when her housing crisis escalated and she couldn’t see any way out that she reached out and i was offered more insight into her private world. this raises interesting questions about trust in ypar relationships. in writing about them, mirra, garcia & morrell (2016, p. 43) state that it is ‘crucial to build relationships of caring and trust with young people’. but given the narrative i offer above, it seems that care and trust need to be understood as two separate elements that may inversely affect each other. care is about attending to the needs and desires of another. however, there is a power dynamic involved in all forms of care giving and care receiving (cushing 2003; freire 1970) — power associated with the generosity in giving and humility in the receiving. the power is balanced when there is reciprocity. but when different social locations undermine the possibility of reciprocity, a power imbalance develops which can create a sense of dependency and shame in the receiver and power in the giver, regardless of the intentions behind the giving. in contrast, trust requires independence and some degree of mutuality. one person may initiate trust by being vulnerable or sharing secrets with another, but if this only ever goes in one direction, then typically it is not sustainable. and if one person breaks another’s trust, the trust is broken in both directions. so if the care i provided to nasma created an imbalance or even a sense of indebtedness as it could not be easily reciprocated, how demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 did that affect the level of trust between us in our work? was the trust that i thought we developed only experienced by me? if she had confided more in me, would that have undermined the equity we seemed to have developed while working on the project? did her voice in the project shrink because of how she felt or because such knowledge would affect the way i perceived her? the closeness of the relationships developed in ypar often affords us access to vulnerability in moments of crisis. it was clear that nasma didn’t know where to turn when i received the texts that opened this article. she didn’t want to ask for help, but didn’t know what else to do. she turned to me because we had become close over the years as a result of our collaborations. seeing her in a moment of crisis, i wanted to reach out and help her. and i had the means. i had an extra bed in my home and money for food. regardless of the reasons for nasma’s situation, she was in need, and i could help. my heart broke for nasma when she ended up in my office late at night with nowhere else to turn. not only did i empathise with the material reality of her not having a bed to sleep in, i also felt for what must have been a deep sense of loneliness at that time. i didn’t hesitate. i offered her shelter in my home even before checking in with my family. at the time, i couldn’t see any other option. i didn’t even think about what it would mean for my family or what the long-term implications could be in terms of my working and personal relationship with nasma. my decision to help nasma in this situation shifted the focus of our relationship from being relatively equal to one of dependency, thereby reinscribing the hierarchical aspects of power that ypar seeks to transcend. she became the recipient of care and i became the giver. this brought to the fore the differences between us in wealth, which were directly tied to our differences in age, class and educational levels, and no doubt implicated race and gender as well. her becoming dependent on me diminished her independence which, in turn, affected the nature of our horizontal relationship and her own sense of agency and power in our relationship and the collaboration. how did this, then, shape our interactions moving forward and what were the impacts on epistemological aspects of our work? face work erving goffman’s theories on face work (1959, 1967) offer some insights into how we might make sense of what occurred in the ‘interaction ritual’ between nasma and me. goffman presents a dramaturgical framing of social interactions where most interactions involve a level of performance, in which actors engage to maintain not only their own dignity, but the dignity of all individuals in the interaction. the chain of interactions builds over time, and effort is made to maintain the consistency of face so that people can work to maintain the performance of the self that was developed in the previous interactions. most often, the roles we each portray are established by the stage on which we are cast, and we work to maintain our portrayal of our role and the role of the others in this stage. we engage in face work to maintain a consistent portrayal of ourselves, as failing to do so, ‘losing face’, can result in embarrassment, shame or even stigma (goffman 1963). thus we hide aspects of ourselves that, if revealed, might cause us to lose face. the question i ask is how was the stage constructed that established homelessness, financial insecurity or neediness as a form of losing face and what was my role in the construction of that stage which may have led to certain forms of face work? when i presented an initial draft of this manuscript as part of a panel of ypar papers, an astute audience member questioned the panel on why we always expect the low-income youth of colour, with whom we work on our ypar projects, to be heroes? this question really struck me. those of us who engage in ypar and have a deep commitment to its epistemological underpinnings really believe that the ideas and voices of the youth with whom we work are critically important. indeed, drawing on feminist standpoint theory, there is deep belief that the youth with whom we work are ‘members of marginalized groups [who] possess epistemic privilege’ (park 2018, p. 111). as janack (1997, p. 126) frames it, ‘members of oppressed groups … have a perspective on the demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 world that is not just different from the perspective available to members of the ruling class, but is also epistemically advantageous’. i subscribe to this epistemological stance. it is evidenced in my commitment to ypar. indeed, my focus on ypar seeks to disrupt many of the predominant white saviour myths that are routinely constructed in the media and in school classrooms. but is this work and my belief in the voice and perspective of young people constructing a stage that makes the youth with whom i work feel like they have to be heroes without flaws? in my disruption of white saviour tropes, am i inadvertently and unfairly constructing youth of color as new saviours? i took nasma to multiple conferences and film festivals around the country where she dazzled audiences not only with her films, but also with her presentation skills. afterwards, people, sometimes prestigious scholars, would line up to talk with her and express their appreciation. in many ways, i set her up to be exalted, literally. when a crisis caused her to falter, was the pain of embarrassment caused by the height of the pedestal onto which i helped elevate her? how much did that construction shape her need to hide? how did it shape the face work she had been engaged in? how could i have set up the stage differently? conclusion i sorely wish that i could have written this article with nasma. it would have been healing for our fractured relationship, i believe, to have collaborated in this analysis and reflection. my own reflective analysis reveals i have a lot of work to do in how i engage in ypar with youth across the divides of age, class, race and gender. my learning would have been enhanced by having nasma’s perspective and insights on all of this. building on the framing of critical autoethnography by adams (2017, p. 79), i have tried to employ this to ‘identify manifestations of power and privilege in everyday practices’. the telling of a more detailed story is important to reveal the nuances and subtle ways that power is made manifest in everyday interactions. figuring out the appropriate amount of narrative detail to enable effective analysis is a difficult balance to walk. what is important, i believe, is that the analysis of the story critically interrogates the ways that power becomes manifest in both subtle and unintended ways so that as i continue to engage with ypar i do so with greater consciousness of my own enactment of power. particularly, i have tried to situate my analysis in the spaces where i had agency in the narrative. there are many complexities to power in ypar. at times these power differentials simply exist, and perhaps the best we can do is acknowledge them. in hindsight, i now realise that many of these performative aspects of power and face work remained unacknowledged, and i wonder what explicit conversations about this might have done to offset the awkwardness that occurred when i stepped in to help nasma when she became homeless. the analysis of this story raises more questions than it answers. when we develop long-term caring relationships with the youth with whom we work on ypar projects, we are afforded access to the lived realities that extend beyond the scope of our collaborative research, particularly when they encounter crises. in these moments of crisis, it is difficult to know how best to respond. but of course these are the very moments when the risks of care are brought to the fore and must be recognised and negotiated. my sense of care and empathy for nasma in the moment when i found her lying down behind my desk meant that i would take her to stay in my home. looking back, i would probably not change my response. there are, of course, a host of ethical considerations attached to risks of care that i have not taken up here. should she have had a key to my office? what would be the ethical and professional implications of a student sleeping in my university office? similarly, what would the ethical and professional considerations be of taking her to my home? there were also familial implications that i barely noted. while this article does not explore these ethics, nor how we should respond in terms of emotional and material support in such situations, it does recognise that how we respond will impact the relational dynamics which has epistemological implications. this article reveals that there are important navigations of the power dynamics as we build the stage to develop more horizontal relationships in ypar. how did my own commitment to creating horizontal demeulenaere gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 relationships and my belief in nasma’s epistemic privilege build a stage that forced nasma to engage in face work that prevented her from being her more authentic self ? this raises important questions for ypar. how might we develop ypar projects that both affirm the voice and epistemic privilege of youth of colour while not placing an unfair and inauthentic performative burden upon them? could i have constructed the space and the relationship differently, such that the crisis did not disrupt the powerful work we had been doing together? second, the work we had done to develop a more horizontal relationship in regard to the ypar project and to overcome the hierarchical power dynamics related to our social identities became undermined when i offered the material help that i could easily access. there was a power dynamic in being in a social location where i could offer material resources that nasma both lacked and needed, and this asymmetrical power dynamic affected our working relationship moving forward. it created a feeling of and material dependency that shaped the dynamics of our relationship. this is not to say that i regret my decision to help nasma in this situation. but i do recognise that there were epistemological and social consequences for our ypar work. both of these relational power dynamics are central to the epistemological stance of ypar. too often, ypar projects are presented without attention to the complexities of relational dynamics and how power differentials in those social relationships affect the epistemological dimensions of the inquiry. we are asked 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copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: walker, se, bruyere, bl, grady, m, mchenry, a, frickman, c, davis, w, and unity women’s village 2020. taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7090. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.7090 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya sarah e walker1, brett l bruyere1, meredith grady2, alexandra mchenry2, carrie frickman2, will davis2 and unity women’s village 1 human dimensions of natural resources department, colorado state university, usa 2 conservation leadership through learning graduate program, human dimensions of natural resources, colorado state university, usa corresponding author: sarah e walker; sewalker@colostate.edu doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7090 article history: received 11/03/2020; revised 16/04/2019; accepted 18/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract biodiversity is under threat at a global level, and many of the most biodiverse hotspots are in developing regions of the world. in many of these communities, livelihoods are often dependent on the same natural landscapes that support biodiversity. as a result, achieving global conservation and development goals is a priority in these regions, and therefore they attract the interest of both local and international researchers. however, research by outside, western-based researchers can present ethical and practical challenges in these areas. fortunately, community-based participatory research (cbpr), if managed well, can contribute to responsible conservation research in these regions. in this article, we investigate strategies to address ethical issues associated with cross-cultural conservation and development research. our analysis draws on the experiences of a women’s village in northern kenya and six western researchers. using qualitative methodologies, we identify common themes in ethical conservation and develop research including critical consciousness, relationship-building, reciprocity, and adaptive research processes. we discuss the implications for ethical cbpr and, specifically, the need for both researchers and funders to only conduct such research if they can devote the resources required to do so ethically. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7090 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7090 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sewalker@colostate.edu http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7090 keywords: community research, conservation, development, research ethics, samburu, kenya introduction they don’t tell us who they will go share our stories with. and they don’t even come back to share any report with us. the last time you will see them is the last day that they take our stories and they will go and never come back. – community member from samburu, kenya many of the world’s most species-abundant and ecologically at-risk regions are located in developing regions of the world, including central and south america, southeast asia, oceania, and the horn of africa (fisher & christopher 2007; hughes 2017). socialecological systems research in these regions is therefore important for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes at a global level (ban et al. 2013; berkes, folke & colding 2000; walker et al. 2004), including research on the human dimensions of behaviours, perceptions and attitudes that often underpin many threats to biodiversity (bennett et al. 2017). however, conservation and development research is a persistent challenge in developing world settings; it is frequently conducted by outsiders, oftentimes individuals from more privileged western countries and representing demographics associated with power, historic marginalisation and colonialism (castellano 2014; minkler 2004). while advancements have been made in conservation research to make it more collaborative, inclusive and respectful of local communities, much of the research decision-making and practice is still conducted by people with foreign and/or outside identities (gould et al. 2018; minkler 2004; 2005; taylor 2015). this presents risk of adverse and unintended consequences to the communities under study and, as a result, undermines the value and validity of the research for researchers, institutions and funders. these risks include dilemmas over protecting participant identities (banks et al. 2013; reid & brief 2009), exploitation of close community relationships by researchers (banks et al. 2013; minkler 2005), lack of appropriate processes by institutional review boards (brittain et al. 2020), and others. as a result, addressing concerns of how to effectively and ethically conduct cross-cultural research is critical for ethical and effective conservation and development. the purpose of this article is to address, in depth, what it means to conduct ethical crosscultural research in the context of conservation and development in biodiverse rich regions such as northern kenya. to do so, we describe and analyse our collective experience, including the experience of our local participants, over multiple years in which we (six western-based conservation social science researchers) facilitated research addressing questions related to conservation and development with a group of 25 women from a rural village in samburu. our reflections are presented based on a free-listing method, resulting in a series of thematic categories and codes with implications for how cross-cultural conservation and development research can be conducted effectively and ethically, and the barriers that make it difficult to do so. we also compared our free-listing activity with a set of established guidelines for working with researchers, developed by the women, to compare how we respectively perceived the best practices of ethical cross-cultural research. we discuss our outcomes within a context of the literature on community-based participatory research, and conservation and development, highlighting lessons learned from both successes and challenges from our experience. walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 literature review conservation and development initiatives social-ecological systems theory posits that relationships between social and ecological components are critical to understanding systems in landscapes around the world and designing initiatives that aim to keep those systems intact (berkes, folke & colding 2000). in an effort to apply this systems approach, conservation initiatives, particularly in developing countries, have shifted towards simultaneously addressing ecological components and the social and economic aspects that often are the basis of biodiversity threats. this shift has resulted in a diverse array of conservation and development initiatives that address livelihoods, human wellbeing and local management of natural resources as strategies for achieving longterm ecological outcomes. examples of such approaches include community conservancies in northern kenya that utilise local governance strategies to address pastoral livelihood and development needs, while also protecting wildlife, largely funded through tourism dollars (letoiye 2014); livestock insurance programs in central asia that compensate pastoral herders for livestock loss to predators and reduce the risk of retaliatory killings (simms et al. 2011); and clean cook stove programs around the globe that aim to decrease respiratory illness caused by indoor air pollution while also reducing the demand for timber fuel (rosenthal et al. 2018). as more conservation and development initiatives emerge, so does the need for interdisciplinary social science research to guide and evaluate such programs (bennett et al. 2017; sunderland, ehringhaus & campbell 2007; woodhouse et al. 2015). conservation in developing countries has a long history of being driven by foreign or colonial outsiders, often at great cost to local communities (igoe 2006; mammides et al. 2016; mbaria & ogada 2016). while conservation and development research has moved in a direction that is both more effective and more inclusive of community perspectives (berkes 2004; shackeroff & campbell 2007), control of and decision-making for these initiatives still often remain with their external scientists and funders. while often well-intentioned, such outsider research has the potential to exploit significant power imbalances between researchers and community members, and often lacks local context and knowledge, resulting in inappropriate, inaccurate and potentially harmful research (brittain et al. 2020; minteer & collins 2005). community-based participatory approaches to conservation and development research as one method for addressing some of the ethical concerns associated with outsider research, community-based participatory research (cbpr) can guide conservation and development more responsibly than traditional research methods. in cbpr, local participants and/or stakeholders in the research are closely involved in all aspects of the research process, research decision-making is shared equally between researchers and community members, and the research is intended to result in tangible outcomes that communities can apply (bastida et al. 2010; horowitz, robinson & seifer 2009). minkler (2004, p. 684) defines cbpr as ‘a partnership approach that breaks down the barriers between the researcher and the researched, and values community partners as equal contributors to the research’. some of the benefits associated with cbpr include: (1) reduction in power imbalances between local communities and the researcher (bastida et al. 2010); (2) integration of diverse sets of local knowledge, increasing the potential for research to understand complexity taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 and local context (wallerstien & duran 2010); and (3) relationship-building based on reciprocity, trust and respect, thereby increasing the likelihood of community acceptance of and engagement with the research (wilmsen et al. 2012). these benefits are significant in the context of conservation and development research because the power dynamics that often exist between stakeholders and individuals conducting the research are reduced (béné et al. 2009; brockington 2004; hoole 2009). sharing control of the research process with community members also encourages the production of meaningful outcomes from research projects for communities (minkler 2004), a critical outcome for achieving community investment in and trust for a research community that has a long history of extractive and exclusive practice. additionally, cbpr’s potential to capture diverse knowledge types is particularly relevant to a conservation and development research context, because of the inherent complexity in capturing the interaction between the social and the ecological components of a system. the ability to triangulate varying sets of knowledge provides multiple lenses by which to analyse the social-ecological interactions at the crux of conservation and development issues (bohensky & maru 2011; tengö et al. 2014). while cbpr has potential to address some of the shortcomings associated with many of the conventional approaches to conservation and development research, it can result in negative and damaging consequences if not managed well. first, because of the opportunity costs associated with participating, cbpr can exclude community members who cannot afford to contribute their time (minkler 2004; wilmsen et al. 2012). as conservation and development work often occurs in communities where securing basic needs is a challenge, the time requirement can be a real barrier to engaging people from local communities. second, since cbpr often requires participants to work collaboratively with project stakeholders and other participants, the confidentiality of participants is often difficult or even impossible to ensure (banks et al. 2013; reid & brief 2009; wilmsen et al. 2012). further, as illegal behaviours, such as extracting resources from protected areas, are common issues addressed by conservation and development projects, participants, if not entire communities, can be placed at risk in the absence of strict anonymity or confidentiality measures. third, sharing control over the research design, however well-intentioned, can create tension between researchers and communities (banks et al. 2013; castellano 2014; flicker et al. 2007; wilmsen et al. 2012). conservation and development research is particularly susceptible to this weakness due to the pre-existing tension between social and ecological goals. finally, while cbpr is intended to help address power imbalances between researchers and communities, the practice of cbpr does not guarantee such an outcome (banks et al. 2013; minkler 2005). designing research questions and methodology from the perspective of participants can elevate the voice of the researched. however, power dynamics and privilege associated with gender, race, class and income can go unaddressed and continue to impact relationships between participants and researchers. while conservation and development research is at risk of negative consequences, significant work has been conducted to help researchers avoid these pitfalls, with a particular focus on the role of relationship-building and reciprocity. in their book focused on critiquing the use of participatory research in community-based natural resource management, wilmsen et al. (2012) argue that the tension which often occurs between researchers and communities can be successfully negotiated through relationship-building, resulting in increased trust and mutual respect. maiter et al. (2008) further discuss this connection between relationshipbuilding and reciprocity, arguing that significant time and resources must be dedicated walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 to relationship-building before researchers are able to recognise and practise appropriate reciprocity. in a global systematic review of indigenous participation in environmental research, davidchavez and gavin (2018) suggest six considerations specific to the research process that are important for conducting responsible research with indigenous groups. they established a framework for evaluating indigenous community research participation, using the following indicators: (1) access of findings to local communities; (2) giving credit to local community members for their contributions to the study via co-authorship and acknowledgements; (3) reporting standard ethical guidelines followed in research deliverables, such as free and informed consent (also emphasised by aluwihare-samaranayake 2012); (4) describing relevance to local community needs; (5) acknowledgement of a commitment to cause no harm and protect intellectual property; and (6) producing research deliverables that are appropriate for and of applied value to local communities. the authors also developed a list of 10 guiding questions for responsible research, which encompasses the following indicators and principles (see table 1). table 1 questions for guiding responsible research with indigenous communities (david-chavez & gavin 2018) are indigenous community members included in the decision to initiate the study? to what level do indigenous community members have authority in the research design? to what level do indigenous community members have authority regarding the implementation of the research? to what level do indigenous community members have authority regarding the analysis of the research? are findings accessible to indigenous community members? are findings reported in the context of concerns, issues or interests defined by indigenous community members? how were indigenous community members credited for their knowledge contributions and efforts (i.e. acknowledgement, co-authorship)? did the study report ethical guidelines followed, such as free prior and informed consent? did the study address intellectual property rights or risks for indigenous communities? did the study report any outputs or outcomes for the indigenous community? in addition to such guidelines that transcend all aspects of research, researchers should consider the cultural appropriateness of specific methods as well. focus groups, surveys, interviews and random sampling are common data collection methods in social science research (creswell & creswell 2017). however, these approaches can be limiting or problematic in some contexts based on variables related to cultural practices, historic marginalisation, cultural communication norms and prior experiences of participants, among others. in michel and bassinder’s (2013) study of indigenous individuals’ satisfaction taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 with government in australia’s northern territory, for example, the authors concluded that self-reflection by outside researchers on their assumptions, power and privilege is imperative, and the authors further advocated for mixed methods approaches that prioritise interpersonal interaction and de-emphasise high sample sizes if they are at the expense of ethical interactions. similarly, in their recent article in conservation biology, brittain et al. (2020) reflected on their experience as new conservation social scientists and highlighted the important role of reflexivity and engaging critically with ethics review processes to help mitigate issues with power dynamics and research processes that are incompatible with local contexts and cultures. these considerations collectively point to a need for researchers to attain proficiency in what aluwihare-samaranayake (2012) calls ‘critical consciousness’. critical consciousness is rooted in self-reflection, whereby researchers assess, analyse and reconstruct their research approaches as they gain awareness ‘from multiple angles from outside in and inside out in the process of creating transparency to all thoughts, actions, and ways of being, taking into consideration different socio-cultural, economic, and political contexts’ (p. 66). it requires researchers to think beyond the traditional aspects of their work, to consider their power in the research process, and to understand the historical inequities between researchers and community members in the regions where they work. aluwihare-samaranayake (2012) also argues that introspection prior to research, and retrospection afterwards, will ultimately contribute to more positive outcomes for local participants and lessen the occurrence of unintended adverse impacts. background historically home to several hunter-gatherer groups (ehret 2002), present-day kenya is highly diverse, with 42 federally recognised tribes, 68 languages, and an array of relationships between indigenous tribes and local ecosystems (eberhard, simons & fennig 2019; meacrd 2019). the british empire colonised kenya in the late 1800s as part of the east africa protectorate, in large part for access to the country’s productive central highlands. the traditional grazing lands of pastoral tribes, such as the samburu, were resettled by approximately 10,000 europeans. after significant political movements and tensions, kenya gained its independence from britain in 1964, but conflict between pastoral communities and british descendants over land rights continues today (sena 2017). present-day conservation in kenya is largely a product of the country’s colonial legacy. conservation organisations are predominantly run by white western foreigners, funded by international donors, and frequently partner with researchers from out-of-country institutions. as a result, conservation research in northern kenya has largely been conducted by external researchers. research conducted in regions such as samburu and turkana started largely in the 1950s and 1960s, primarily in the fields of anthropology and ecology. as conservation and development initiatives gained more attention globally in the 1980s, conservation and development research began in earnest in northern kenya. much of this research has focused on topics such as community conservancies, land tenure schemes, human–wildlife conflict and livelihood diversification. based on a recent review of research conducted in samburu since 2000 (more than 200 articles), only a small segment of this research utilised a communitybased participatory approach, and most of the articles appeared to be extractive, benefiting the researchers but not the participants. walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 our work was guided by the following question: ‘what are the behavioral strategies of outside, western researchers that lead to ethically-conducted community-based conservation and development research in northern kenya?’ methods research site archer’s post, kenya, is a small settlement of about 6000 people in samburu county, 300 km north of the capital, nairobi. the community is characterised by a semi-arid landscape, receiving 438 mm of rain annually and home to several endemic and vulnerable or endangered species such as the grevy’s zebra (equus grevyi), reticulated giraffe (giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) and beisa oryx (oryx beisa). due to the high biodiversity and pressures on rangelands, several protected areas are located in the region, from government-run national reserves to locally governed community conservancies. the conservancies are managed for the dual purposes of wildlife conservation and conserving rangelands for pastoralists, while also generating financial resources from donors and tourism enterprises to support development projects such as clinics, livelihood diversification programs, water security projects and educational scholarships (northern rangelands trust 2016). many of these initiatives are in response to major changes in the region over the past generation, including more frequent and intense droughts, a shift to a private land tenure system, and changing social values that promote formal education and women’s rights. the samburu tribe, one of the more populous pastoral tribes in the region, relies heavily on livestock herding, in addition to tourism and small business, as their primary livelihoods. traditionally, decision-making power is stratified by gender and age set, with older males responsible for most decision-making (spencer 1965). however, archer’s post is a community undergoing rapid and significant change, and the decision-making power of women and youth is increasing. the specific community of our study is unity women’s village, an all women’s village comprised of approximately 20 women and 50 children (note: members of unity women’s village suggested use of the village name, rather than anonymity). many of the women have stories of violence, abuse and/or extreme marginalisation, and fled these situations to establish or join the village. they rely on livestock, sales of beadwork and visits from tourists for their livelihood. persistent challenges to the village include lack of accessible, healthy rangeland for grazing, human–wildlife conflict and affordability of basic services such as medical care. this group of women also practise entrepreneurism, recognise the importance of income diversification, and work cooperatively to build resilience and adaptability to changes in their landscape, climate and community. due to its uniqueness as an all-women’s village in a patriarchal society, and the fact that the village is situated geographically in an area with high biodiversity and ecological threats, the community has received attention from researchers and journalists from around the world. various aspects of the village’s story have been collected and shared in technical reports, theses and dissertations, and in the media. yet, with few exceptions, the women in this village never know what becomes of the information and stories they share with researchers and journalists. the village has also built a relationship over the past 10 years with our team, which consists of a conservation social scientist and his colleagues and students (i.e. the authors of this article) taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 from an american university. this relationship has experienced both successes and challenges, creating an opportunity for reflection on lessons learned from research projects conducted over many years and focused on topics such as evaluating the conservation related impacts of a small-scale income generation program, exploring the relationship between women’s perceived agency and livestock-related decisions, and understanding the shifting priorities of youth as formal education became more accessible. our description of the village and the results of this study were discussed, adapted and approved by the women of unity village. data collection two strategies comprised our methodology. first, we (six researchers) collectively participated in a free-listing activity about our experiences conducting research with unity village. freelisting is a technique commonly used in the social sciences and involves asking participants to list as many answers as possible to a particular prompt (bernard 2017). in this study, we (the western researchers) responded to two prompts: (1) what actions/strategies did you use with unity village that made you feel like you were doing ethical work? (2) what actions/strategies do you wish you would have done in your research to make your work feel more ethical? the second source of data was a guidelines document, which was created by participants, with the assistance of our team, based on interviews, focus groups and scenario planning, and encouraged members of the women’s village to reflect on prior experiences with researchers. the women recalled stories in which they felt the research process went well and instances in which it did not, and from those stories, extrapolated principles they would require in future collaborations with researchers. with these principles in mind, the women generated a written guidelines document (hereafter referred to as the ‘guidelines’), which is distributed to researchers (and journalists) who contact the village with a request to collect stories and/or data. this document was analysed as the second source of data for this study. ethics approval for this study was obtained from the institutional review board at colorado state university, as well as from the women of unity village. data analysis the free-listing data and guidelines were analysed by three members of our team using thematic analysis, as outlined by braun and clarke (2006). free-listed items were bundled based on commonalities, which led to initial codes. the codes were reviewed by the same three researchers (intercoder reliability > 90%), differences were discussed and resolved, the codes were then (re)named and defined and, lastly, bundled into categorical themes. the guidelines were then analysed and coded independently by the same three individuals using the codes from the free-listing analysis (intercoder reliability > 90%). the results were shared and reviewed with members of the women’s village and revised accordingly. results one hundred and forty-one (141) responses were generated from the free-listing activity, which led to 13 codes; 89 of the responses were generated from the first prompt (the actions/ strategies we used that led to ethical outcomes) and 52 of the responses were generated from the second prompt (the actions/strategies we wished we had used). these codes were then utilised to deductively review the village’s guidelines document, which resulted in an additional code (i.e. ‘participant rights’). codes were later clustered into four themes based on their commonalities: (1) critical consciousness; (2) relationship-building; (3) reciprocity; and walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 (4) respectful research methods. the frequency (free-listing) and presence/absence of codes (guidelines) are reported in table 2. table 2 themes, associated codes, and the number of times each theme was coded theme code number of free-listed items assigned to code present in guidelines (y/n) and frequency critical consciousness self-awareness and reflection 6 no cultural understanding 15 yes relationshipbuilding break the ice 11 no live alongside 14 no extend trust and power 8 no relationships before research 4 no relationships for the long term 3 no reciprocity benefits and compensation 6 yes compensation options 7 yes respectful research methods transparency 4 yes engaging methods 7 no co-create the research 16 yes share the results 11 yes participant rights 0 yes theme: critical consciousness critical consciousness, as discussed previously, describes the need for researchers to gain proficiency beyond the technical aspects of their research, incorporate a deep understanding of the culture in which they work, and utilise reflection and subsequent adaptability throughout their cross-cultural experience (aluwihare-samaranayake 2012). the two codes that comprised this theme were ‘self-awareness and reflection’ and ‘cultural understanding’. these codes were represented almost exclusively within the researchers’ free-listing items, by items such as ‘engaging in critical and intentional self-reflection’ and ‘more frequent internal self-reflection’. ‘cultural understanding’ was the code with the second greatest number of free-listed items overall, represented by items such as ‘knowing how to show gratitude in a way that is relevant/ taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 typical in samburu’ and ‘working with local women instead of men as research assistants’. by contrast, only one excerpt from the village’s guidelines was assigned to a code within this theme (cultural understanding): ‘review your intended questions and activities with liaison to ensure appropriateness within the cultural context of the region’. theme: relationship-building building relationships was the theme with the most free-listed items associated with it overall and consisted of five codes. the theme was defined by behaviours that extended beyond the traditional scope of research and that contributed to a foundation of mutual understanding between researchers and community. the codes (and examples from the free-listing) included: ‘living alongside’ (‘spending time in the village outside of research time’, ‘walking to the village rather than driving’); ‘breaking the ice’ (‘learning all of their names and the names of their kids’, ‘learned their language better’); and ‘extend trust and power’ (‘letting the women decide what our days looked like’, ‘spent time doing activities where the women were the experts’). the other two codes included ‘relationships before research’ (‘time spent getting to know the women before conducting research’) and ‘relationships for the long-term’ (‘phone check-ins with the community after the research project was over’). similarly to the critical consciousness theme, relationship-building was represented almost entirely by the free-listing data; it was not represented in the village guidelines. theme: reciprocity reciprocity is the intentional practice of acknowledging the value of community participation in the research. reciprocity was categorised into two codes: ‘benefits and compensation’ and ‘compensation options’. ‘benefits and compensation’ was used to code examples that simply acknowledged the need to remunerate participants, whether that be for their time, recognition of their participation, or other reasons. an example of this code from the guidelines includes: ‘prior to arriving, negotiate plans for reciprocity and compensation (if applicable) before starting your work.’ examples of free-listing items for this code include ‘brought food to share, took and shared family photos’ and ‘get more feedback if participants felt like the research benefited them.’ ‘compensation options’ was used to code the possibilities for how remuneration could occur, monetarily or otherwise. monetary compensation emerged from both the western researcher free-listing activity and from the guidelines, but other options such as giving time, providing food and helping build local capacity were also mentioned. theme: respectful research methods the final theme was comprised of characteristics associated with the process of conducting actual research. we define ‘respectful research methods’ as a data collection process built around prioritising the dignity of participants. codes from this theme included: ‘transparency’, or having open and honest discussions around the purpose of the research and how results would be used; ‘engaging methods’, which are methods wherein participation in research itself can provide benefits to participants; ‘co-create the research’, defined as researchers and community members collaboratively designing and adapting the research process; ‘share the results’, meaning dissemination of the results in an appropriate format; and ‘participant rights’, which means ensuring community members understand that their participation is voluntary and that all agreements of mutual benefit are honoured. walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 the ‘co-create the research’ code emerged most frequently from the free-listing data within this theme. an example of a free-listed item assigned to this code was ‘allowing methods to change based on participants’ feedback’. ‘participant rights’ was the most frequently applied code in the guidelines and was represented in sections of the guidelines such as ‘these rights include the freedom to choose whether or not to participate, and the ability to discontinue participation or not answer individual questions’. additionally, ‘transparency’ and ‘share the results’ were present in both the free-listing items and the guidelines, while ‘engaging methods’ emerged only from the researchers’ free-listing activity. discussion our results yielded a number of findings that revealed insights and observations which might help guide research in conservation and development between outside researchers and local participants. these insights are likely transferable to other disciplines as well. strategies prior to research the free-listed items led to themes related to critical consciousness and relationship-building; however, these themes were generally not represented in the guidelines. this outcome was unsurprising because relationships are a central part of samburu culture and therefore it may not have seemed necessary to specify them within the locally created guidelines. as western researchers, we come from cultural backgrounds in which relationships are less emphasised in professional environments. as such, the process of intentional relationship-building was unique for us and required a considerable and memorable up-front investment of time. greeting every woman individually in the village upon each arrival, learning their names and the names of all of their children, constructing huts, learning how to bead and similar activities were practised day after day, often hours at a time, and before research was initiated. these were novel, and at times exhaustive, relationship-building steps to us, though to a samburu woman it may not have seemed remarkable or necessary to specify such normal (to them) steps in written guidelines. critical consciousness is closely linked with relationship-building. gaining an appreciation of the role and importance of relationships in samburu required reflection, which could lead to an openness to learn about the culture, humility to put one’s own natural tendencies and norms aside, and self-awareness to anticipate how every behaviour might impact the research process. developing a level of critical consciousness also contributes to a deeper understanding of power dynamics between and among researchers and community members. unity women had numerous stories of researchers who showed up intending to start their research on day one; some even showed up on their initial visit with recording devices in hand, prepared to record their very first interactions. by contrast, a researcher who practises critical consciousness would first assess how to effectively and appropriately interact in a cross-cultural setting and avoid unfavourable interactions, especially ones that reinforce power imbalances, as described in many of the stories from the unity women. both critical consciousness and relationship-building require time that might not initially seem ‘productive’ by western standards. we recognised that time and money are often limited in research, but the process of reflecting, gaining a deep understanding of a culture and building relationships requires researchers to stretch those resources further. however, we also recognised that our research would not be ethical or successful without such an effort. engaging in critical consciousness and relationship-building created an environment in which taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 the women provided feedback on the relevance and appropriateness of proposed methods, which ultimately improved the quality of the research. by contrast, the women from unity village had stories of researchers who did not familiarise themselves with the local culture and did not invest in building relationships and were eventually asked by the women to discontinue their work. we implore social science researchers to consider the importance of relationship-building in the places where they work and to plan for the resources necessary to understand where they are working and to build rapport with the participants. likewise, funders of research must recognise the value of building relationships and gaining cultural understanding, and provide resources that support those activities. lack of time and resources to go through these steps results in unethical research, disenfranchised participants and, potentially, invalid research results. our results show that understanding samburu culture was paramount to conducting ethical research. gaining this understanding required a significant amount of reflection and the help of cultural ‘insiders’ of whom we could openly ask questions. while we believe strongly in the value of relationship-building and critical consciousness, we also recognise that using only these strategies is ethically insufficient and that these are just initial steps. strategies while conducting research unsurprisingly, both the free-listing items and the village guidelines frequently addressed specific aspects of conducting the research, although different aspects were emphasised in the two data sources. the guidelines often presented content related to ‘transparency’ and ‘participant rights’. this stemmed from numerous prior experiences in which researchers arrived, collected the data they wanted and departed, never fully explaining the research purpose or how the women’s stories would be shared. the impact of these experiences on the women included feelings of marginalisation and confusion on realising that researchers were likely using their stories in some way that benefited the researchers, but not themselves. in order to avoid similar future instances, the guidelines included specific instructions that addressed transparency and the rights of the women as participants. in contrast, our free-listed items mostly pertained to the other codes of ‘co-creating the research’ and ‘sharing results’. when incorporated, these can enhance the overall quality of the research. the action of co-creating the research process incorporates local perspectives and knowledge, which is often essential to understanding complex social issues and also increases research relevancy. furthermore, sharing results with local participants can support action that potentially leads to positive change. co-creating research and sharing results not only require time but also adaptability. feedback from local community members often leads to changes to research questions or methodologies, leaving researchers to resolve how to balance the trade-offs of prioritising community input with the potential consequences of adjusting methods described in proposals to funders and institutional review boards (irbs). researchers and funders, and the rigid institutions we operate within, must evolve to create space for adaptive management in order to co-create research and share results. though we identified some strategies focused on research quality and engagement in our free-listing exercise, we made no mention of participant rights strategies, which was striking to us when we later realised it during analysis. while we recalled going through the standard institutional approval-seeking steps and outlines related to ‘participant rights’ (e.g. free and walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 informed consent), none of those actions were identified by us in the free-listing data as critical to ethical research practice. we have some thoughts about why this omission occurred. social science researchers must complete human subject training and submit research plans to irbs, which have institutional oversight on ethical research. as a result, we took a ‘check the box’ irb approvalseeking approach and treated it as a proxy for ensuring participant rights were addressed. unfortunately, this approval process is void of perspective from the actual people participating in the research and, in our case, framed participant rights as steps to go through in an approval application. our results are a reminder of the importance of engaging actively with local participants regarding their rights, revisiting those rights ourselves (e.g. through critical consciousness) and with communities throughout the process, and going beyond reading approved scripts and/or soliciting signed consent forms. reciprocity the free-listed items and village guidelines both addressed reciprocity. while the free-listed items rarely mentioned financial compensation explicitly, the language in the guidelines implied monetary compensation more clearly in some places. the women had stories about researchers who were put off by reciprocity requirements and shared stories about researchers who promised non-monetary types of reciprocity and then failed to follow through. upon reflection on our practice of reciprocity, which was primarily in the form of nonmonetary goods (e.g. food, water, sugar, building supplies), there was no clarity on the exact purpose of the exchange, as promoted by gelinas et al. (2018). while we knew reciprocity felt ethically appropriate, in hindsight it was unclear whether we were using reciprocity to compensate for the women’s time, as an incentive to participate, as acknowledgement of their contributions, or a combination of all three. open discussion among the research group and with the local participants regarding reciprocity would have defined a clearer purpose for reciprocity and, subsequently, the appropriate type and amount. the guidelines clearly state that compensation should cover the cost of women’s time to participate in research: ‘it is reasonable for the women to consider the cost of their reallocated time’. such clarity can help researchers determine the appropriate value of the women’s participation. a common example given by the women regarding reciprocity was that researchers said their participation would raise awareness about persistent women’s issues in the region, which in the past had led unity women to believe that such awareness might create direct opportunities for them or their families. in reality, our greater awareness of the historic marginalisation of samburu women resulted in little to no direct benefits to them. it may contribute to a larger (and global) benefit, but rarely benefits research participants directly. at the same time, researchers publish manuscripts that contribute to academic reputation, promotion and professional recognition, while the individuals on whom these articles are based receive little, if any, benefit. we urge researchers to address reciprocity for participants with the same seriousness with which they consider the benefits they receive from their research communities. limitations while we believe the results of our study include valuable lessons that can be applied both within and outside the context of conservation and development research, there are several limitations that impact our results. first, despite our efforts, power dynamics can likely never taking stories: the ethics of cross-cultural community conservation research in samburu, kenya gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 be diminished completely because, for example, some members of our and other research project teams are men. in an explicitly patriarchal culture, power imbalances are nearly impossible to eliminate. the men on our research teams recognised this as well, reporting that their interactions often felt different. additional factors, such as english-speaking ability, different levels of closeness that emerged between researchers and some women from the village, formal education differences, and race, all contributed to power imbalances interacting with one another. these imbalances led to varying levels of validity or accuracy in what the women shared with us as researchers. another limitation of our study lay in the number of western researchers who participated in the study. the six western researchers in this study have collaborated on several projects with unity village, but we did not include other researchers who have worked with the village. therefore our results represent only our experiences and perceptions. its generalisability thus has limits. conclusion as we reflected on our findings, we observed that many of the most salient results might seem at odds with those of some conventional approaches to conservation and development research. efficiency is often a guiding principle in research, given the limits of time and money. however, building relationships, gaining an in-depth cultural understanding and soliciting input to influence the research process all require time that is above and beyond what is needed to simply collect data. if we believe in a conservation and development agenda, researchers should plan on spending ‘pre-research’ time with their participants to establish relationships, refine their cultural understanding and cultivate an environment of mutual trust and benefit. this also means that funders need to engage more deeply in the discussion around ethical cbpr and value the resources required to conduct ethical cross-cultural research. many of the themes that emerged from the data are supported by previous literature, both within and outside the conservation and development discipline. notions of relationship building, reciprocity, participatory research paradigms and cultural understanding have been discussed in detail by other scholars (israel et al. 2005; kimmerer 2013; kindon, pain & kesby 2007; nelson 2008). in addition, the women’s guidelines highlight reciprocity, transparency and their rights as research participants, all of which are emphasised in several indigenous research ethics studies (aluwihare-samaranayake 2012; chavez & gavin 2018; wilmsen 2012). our research also aligned with wilmsen’s (2012) conclusions about the importance of building trust and relationships. the relationship-building theme received more coded free-listed items than any other theme. complementary to relationship building, our results supported the importance of critical consciousness in research, as advocated by aluwiharesamaranayake (2012). while our results largely support the findings of previous work, these themes do not exist in a singular framework. conservation and development research is highly reliant on frameworks to guide our work. as researchers, we need to put the same effort and thought into the frameworks that guide how we conduct responsible and ethical community-based research as we put into the frameworks that guide what we research. this study brings together, from the perspective of both researchers and participants, the components of ethically practised cbpr in conservation and development. altogether, relationship building, critical consciousness, reciprocity and respectful research practices are critical behavioural components walker, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 14 for outside researchers to engage in ethical community-based, participatory conservation and development research and have the potential to result in greater relevance, enhanced reliability, and community empowerment. if outside researchers are unable to prioritize these practices, we argue they should not be engaging in conservation and development community-based participatory research in places like samburu. acknowledgements we thank apin yasin, doriana nasieku lekwancha, elizabeth lenaiyasa, and the archer’s post community in samburu, kenya, for their continued generosity, hospitality and guidance. their contributions were imperative to this research. references aluwihare-samaranayake, d 2012, ‘ethics in qualitative research: a view of the participants’ and researchers’ world from a critical standpoint’, international journal of qualitative methods, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 64–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100208 ban, n, mills, m, tam, j, hicks, c, klain, s, 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upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: caperon, l., ahern, s., saville, f., better start bradford community reference group. 2023. voice, choice and power: using co-production to develop a community engagement strategy for an ethnically diverse community. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8085 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) voice, choice and power: using co-production to develop a community engagement strategy for an ethnically diverse community lizzie caperon1,*, sara ahern1, fiona saville2, better start bradford community reference group2 1 bradford institute for health research, bradford, uk. bd9 6da 2 better start bradford, bradford, uk corresponding author: lizzie caperon, elvcaperon@yahoo.co.uk doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8085 article history: received 02/03/2022; revised 11/01/2023; accepted 05/06/2023; published 06/2023 abstract the context of the covid-19 pandemic has amplified the need to increase co-production activities to empower communities. the pandemic has further highlighted systemic health and socioeconomic inequities, especially for those from ethnic minority communities and in areas of economic deprivation. this research article presents a complex, collaborative process of co-production we undertook as part of the service design of community engagement work within the better start bradford programme; a program of projects for pregnant women and families with children aged 0–4 years living in an ethnically diverse area. using theory of change as our underpinning theoretical framework, we co-produced a community engagement logic model or ‘strategy’. our approach involved nine 90-minute workshops with a range of community stakeholders. we used the seven scottish national standards for community engagement and communities’ self-identified key concepts of ‘voice’, ‘choice’ and ‘power’ to structure the partnership activity. workshop discussions were analysed using qualitative framework analysis, and we developed a comprehensive, multi-faceted community engagement logic model with the community. discussions with the community highlighted that (1) the covid-19 pandemic had opened new avenues of community engagement, primarily virtual ones, and a blended offer of face-to-face and online activities; (2) vital support for community readiness to engage, facilitated through culturally sensitive engagement delivered by trusted sources, 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this study received funding from the national lottery community fund as part of the better start bradford programme. the national lottery community fund has not had any involvement in the design or writing of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8085 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8085 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:elvcaperon@yahoo.co.uk https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8085 transparent governance processes and informal consultation, combined with a flexible approach to adapting to the community’s needs; (3) the need for a continuous reflective process of recruitment to key governance roles to include a range of diverse voices to ensure power is given to community voices. a strong two-way feedback loop is at the core of our community engagement strategy, with both the community and the organisation playing equal roles. keywords participation; co-production; community engagement; service evaluation; community health; social inclusion introduction the context of the covid-19 pandemic amplified the need to increase co-production research to empower communities. however, levels of community engagement and involvement have reportedly reduced in some areas despite clear guidance on how to carry out ethical and valuable work in an emergency (bernheim 2016; ramsbottom et al. 2018). the pandemic further highlighted systemic health and socioeconomic inequities, especially in bradford, west yorkshire, where this study took place (bbc news 2021). others argue it has created new possibilities for health research that decentralise power and value co-production (tembo et al. 2021). this article describes a co-production process conducted with a diverse community in bradford, uk, during the covid-19 pandemic. the process was implemented as part of a review of ongoing communityengagement work being undertaken by better start bradford (www.betterstartbradford.org.uk), a national lottery community funded program that aims to improve outcomes for children in three wards of the district. a series of workshops were conducted with community members and staff from the better start bradford (bsb) team. community-engagement principles were used to structure discussions and develop a theory of change and a logic model for effective community engagement. these workshops aimed to establish whether co-production could be used to develop a community-engagement strategy for an underserved community. the methods chosen were an attempt to amplify community voices to better understand how the needs of often neglected, under-resourced communities could be met. this article discusses the successes and challenges of this process and presents the key findings from the workshop discussions. our research methodology co-production co-production, a key component of community engagement and involvement, is common to health research and offers a range of potential benefits. it is a collaborative and inclusive process that involves those people who use services in their design and delivery. co-production broadens and deepens public services so that they move from being controlled by professionals or commissioners to being a shared responsibility, building and using a multi-faced network of mutual support (ryan-collins & stephens 2008). coproduction also helps to ensure that health research contributes to building knowledge and generating innovations that benefit users of research (shaping our lives 2020). involvement of the community in the design of community projects has been shown to improve implementation and render high impact more likely (crocker et al. 2018; staley 2015). there are challenges to co-production research, including problems with relationship building, community disengagement, politics, access and inclusion, and finance and resourcing (green, boaz & caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 http://www.betterstartbradford.org.uk stuttaford 2019; hickey 2018; tembo et al. 2021). such short-term interactions with communities, especially if there is no lasting benefit to them or sustainability of the engagement activities, can be counterproductive or exploitative (clark 2008), leading to community disengagement, especially where researchers do not disseminate their findings (gbadegesin & wendler 2006; huang, lipman & mullins 2017). therefore, it is important to ensure that community engagement involves building trusted relationships over time with a range of stakeholders, using methods that establish responsive mutual communication and build capacity for research by encouraging participatory approaches, such as citizen science (tembo et al. 2021). a key component of successful co-production research is identifying and communicating with all relevant stakeholders, including vulnerable and marginalised groups (avac 2011). this minimises resistance, distrust and unrealistic expectations, and ensures that the research is reflective of the diverse make-up of the community. theory of change and logic models increasingly used by researchers and funders (breuer et al. 2016), theory of change (toc) approaches allow for the strengthening of planning, implementation and evaluation of impact strategies and impactoriented research (weiss 2011). a toc outlines the mechanisms of change and describes how a program will bring about long-term outcomes through a logical sequence of shorter term outcomes (department of international development uk 2012). developed in consultation with stakeholders, the toc involves the collection of evidence of need and context, the agreement of intended and plausible impact, and the establishment of timelines to plan resources. this provides a framework for program development and evaluation, allowing for the investigation of causal pathways (de silva et al. 2014). toc approaches have been used successfully in program development and evaluation by uk government funders, as well as private funders, such as comic relief and the gates foundation (de silva et al. 2014; james 2011). when accompanying toc, logic models identify and articulate in more tangible detail the resources and activities needed for success (alter & murty 1997; conrad et al. 1999; dykeman et al. 2003; mclaughlin & jordan 1999). by breaking down activities and relevant outputs, logic models not only support evaluation of effectiveness, but also promote understanding of what influences successful implementation (smith, li & rafferty 2020). logic models have been used to successfully evaluate interventions (hense, kriz & wolfe 2009; mayne & johnson 2015 & torghele et al. 2007) and together with toc have been found to lead to culturally responsive community-based interventions that create change with communities, not for them (meyer, louder & nicolas 2021). logic models also allow for rapid learning where data collection aligns with outputs as well as outcomes, and help to explain not only whether a program is meeting its goals, but why this is the case. for a program like bsb, being delivered over ten years in a fluctuating local and national context, this is considered an important benefit for the program partnership. in addition to forming a basis for evaluation, logic models also offer a clear and concise way of articulating a program and its intended consequences to stakeholders. they summarise often complex interventions in their core components and associated resources, allowing the reader to better understand how each element contributes to the planned outcomes (kaplan & garrett 2005). for a community partnership program, such as bsb, this represents an important advantage of using the toc and logic model approach. finally, a logic model provides a living document that can be revisited by stakeholders when learning about a program and its activities. it also supports adaptation and improvement. bsb is a program that involves significant investment and attracts high stakeholder expectation, making it vital that learning can be gathered quickly, but also be applied quickly to optimise opportunity for success. caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 method setting bradford, situated in west yorkshire in the north of england, is one of the largest metropolitan districts in the uk. the three wards served by the bsb program (bowling and barkerend, bradford moor and little horton) have diverse ethnic populations and are considered amongst the most disadvantaged in england (dickerson et al. 2016). the majority of residents are of pakistani heritage, with those of white british and central and eastern european backgrounds representing the other largest ethnic groups. all three wards experience lower life expectancy than the district average and have young populations, with nearly a third aged under 16 years. the bsb program funded by the national lottery community fund, the bsb program is a collaborative partnership of key voluntary and public sector organisations and the local community, implemented over ten years (2015– 2025). bsb provides pregnant women and families with young children support and services to promote children’s healthy physical and emotional development. the program is being evaluated so as to understand what works best for better start bradford families. the success of the bsb initiative relies on the community engaging with the program’s key messages and the projects and services it commissions, which in turn relies on those projects and services meeting the needs of the community. including community voices in the planning and delivery of the program has therefore been a core objective of the partnership. bsb currently includes community members in a number of roles across the program, including within the governance structures. the program also has a dedicated family and community engagement (face) team whose purpose is to develop community partnerships, support parent-led group activities and to recruit volunteers to the bsb program. however, monitoring data suggests that some communities are still underrepresented across the program and more needs to be done to ensure families are reached. this mid-program review of the bsb program’s community-engagement strategy was an opportunity to reflect on the work done to date and allow for planning for the second half of the bsb program. the context of covid-19 rendered this review even more critical. it was led by the better start bradford innovation hub, the research and evaluation partner of bsb. ethics this review was an exercise in service design and will inform future service evaluation of community engagement in the bsb program and, as such, did not require formal ethical review (hra decision 60/88/81). no identifying personal information was obtained or recorded for the purposes of research or any other use. all participants provided written consent for output from the workshops to be published. participants potential participants were identified through discussion with the bsb face team. their existing relationships with a range of community members meant they were well placed to invite individuals to take part in our workshops. following this consultation process, through purposive sampling, we identified 10 bsb community members (including parents, volunteers, ward officers and social prescribers) who represented a range of ethnicities and genders to take part in our nine workshop sessions. all community members were deemed important voices in the discussion around community engagement efficacy in caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 the bsb area and offered a range of perspectives. additionally, we included bsb face team members to ensure trusted community liaison workers were present and able to offer valuable insights to past and current community engagement activities. recruitment and consent all prospective participants were contacted by the face team in person or by telephone and invited to take part in the study. the objectives of the workshops were explained and initial verbal consent to take part was procured. further verbal consent was sought at the start of each workshop. it was made clear that no direct quotations would be recorded or used in data analysis or write-up, and no data provided would identify participants as it would be anonymised at the point of analysis. finally, written informed consent was sought from all participants before write-up of the workshop findings. workshop framework in october 2016, initial work identified three core community principles: voice, choice and power. these principles were developed as part of a collaborative activity by community members from a range of backgrounds and two members of the bsb team. the principles were defined by the community as: • voice – to contribute knowledge, ideas, experience and influence at every level of bsb’s operation • choice – to take part in and shape bsb’s work • power – to be part of the decision-making at every level. this process formed the basis of our community-based participatory research and an inductive qualitative method to develop a community-focused approach (minkler & wallerstein 2011; wallerstein & duran 2006). the community’s ownership of these principles made them an important foundation for the workshops and discussions which emerged. as well as incorporating the bsb community’s principles for community engagement, workshops were thematically structured around the seven scottish standards for community engagement (ssce), a summary of which can be seen in figure 1. the ssce offer good practice principles, designed to inform and support community engagement processes and deliver improved engagement. originally launched in 2005 and reviewed in 2016, the standards have been used in scotland in areas such as community planning and health and social care (voice scotland 2021). the seven ssce are inclusion, support, planning, working together, methods, communication and impact, as shown in figure 1. the ssce are based on fairness, equality and inclusion, and highlight that community engagement should have clear and agreed purposes. while other principles for community engagement exist, including for implementation research (blythe et al. 2013; glandon et al. 2017), these can lack clarity in the form of an implementable interconnected structure, which the ssce provides. they can also lack focus on the diversity of communities, such as those in our study (chuong, walton & marini 2015). the values and principles of the ssce are especially important for our diverse, multi-ethnic community and were previously identified by bsb as an approach aligning with their values. workshop process nine 90-minute workshops were conducted between november 2020 and march 2021. the first workshop outlined the planned review and introduced relevant terminology. seven subsequent workshops discussed each of the ssce in turn. the final workshop provided an opportunity for the research team to feedback findings and sense check with community members. prior to each workshop, a ‘workshop guide’ with an caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 agenda and key questions was circulated. questions explored the ssce standard theme of the workshop according to the principles of voice, choice and power, and were used as prompts to spark discussion. an example workshop guide is included in appendix 1. workshops were conducted online via zoom, a videoconferencing platform increasingly used to conduct qualitative research (archibald et al. 2019). access to zoom calls was password restricted so that discussions could remain secure and confidential. the research team ensured that the planned workshop series was accessible and convenient for all participants. sessions took place weekly at the same time to offer consistency. note-takers recorded discussions, which were then passed to the researchers for analysis. workshops were not transcribed verbatim and for this reason we do not include direct quotations in this article. figure 1. scottish national standards for community engagement caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 analysis workshop data was transcribed by two members of the research team, and transcripts were compared for accuracy following each session. the research team then met to discuss the data and suggestions were made for how to further democratise the sessions. one of the suggestions was to split the group into two small breakout rooms for some discussions to allow quieter members of the community to speak more freely. this worked well and improved data outputs. a basic framework analysis was used (gale et al. 2013) to apply a matrices structured around the three core principles of voice, choice and power. since the purpose of this study was to produce a logic model for community engagement, the three principles were mapped against current and aspirational engagement activities (appendix 2). a matrix was completed for each of the seven ssce workshops so that specific activities and related themes (e.g. building relationships, developing community readiness, etc.) could be identified across the series and related back to relevant principles and standards. data was initially analysed in microsoft excel using this framework with the activities and themes. activities and themes were indexed systematically, a process which entailed comparison within and between each of the workshop matrices. at this stage, we rearranged segments of the data to ensure that entries were placed under the heading of the standard and principle that most appropriately suited them. findings were consolidated in a logic model format within microsoft powerpoint to present to the community at the start of each workshop, to gather further feedback or suggestions on the analysed data. this provided the community with an opportunity to contribute their own analysis of the data, further amplifying the community voices and validating the process. results following are key highlights from our review, which have been organised according to community defined principles of voice, choice and power. voice discussion elicited useful insights into how the community does and can contribute their knowledge, ideas, experience and influence at every level of bsb’s operation. the face team has worked with the community to develop community champion advocacy roles within the organisation. these advocates also work within the community to promote key program messages and projects to families. it was felt that opportunities were being provided for a range of community voices to be included in the ongoing planning and development of the bsb program. furthermore, the community was being supported to get involved. forums included a range of under-represented voices, such as groups aimed at dads, which allowed them to design activities for themselves. the importance of inclusion and focusing efforts on groups less well represented within the program was continually highlighted. examples included grandparents, eastern european and roma communities, and the white british population. connected to this was the suggestion to translate key bsb project materials and publicity into different languages and to increase use of interpreters. while bsb were praised for much of the existing work taking place, it was acknowledged that there was still room for improvement with regard to communication, specifically the two-way feedback mechanism between bsb and the community, to ensure transparency. understanding what decisions had been made, but also how and why they had been made, was seen as valuable for maintaining positive relationships with the community. caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 it was agreed that direct methods of communication were most effective with the bsb community, given so many existing barriers to engagement. examples were face-to-face door knocking, approaches at existing community centres, such as gp surgeries and family hubs, or simple word of mouth between community members. it was acknowledged that the covid-19 pandemic had reduced opportunities for this type of community engagement and that the program had had to adapt quickly to ensure continued reach. with regard to the initial shift to online working, both in terms of the projects being delivered to the community and the engagement activities of the program, it was highlighted that there was a real risk of people being left behind. the face team had worked with community champions and neighbourhood workers embedded within other key community organisations to identify families lacking access to technology and/ or the skills to engage online, and tried to provide more face-to-face or telephone support for them. they had also worked collaboratively with other community organisations to provide technology where possible. however, it was felt that more could and should be done to ensure the program remained accessible to the community moving forward. face team members stated that bsb had used a ‘test and learn’ approach to implementing engagement strategies and activities in order to maximise impact. this had allowed them to see what worked and what didn’t, and what to keep or cease based on this approach. alongside the use of ‘soft intelligence’ from the community and community partners about what was and wasn’t working well led to carefully targeted activities designed to have high impact and effectiveness amongst the community. relationship building and maintenance was a key theme throughout all of the workshop discussions and was felt to be particularly important in ensuring community voices were included across the program. the community felt it important that the bsb face team and neighbourhood workers were supported to have the time and capacity to sustain relationships, particularly with those members of the community struggling during covid-19 and needing extra support. choice the community felt there were many ways they could take part in the program and in shaping bsb’s work and discussed a variety of existing projects, activities and forums. removing barriers to engagement was seen as vital to ensuring the community had access to the aspects of the program with which they wanted to engage. some of the ways bsb was already addressing barriers were discussed, including offering care for dependents (e.g. crèche provision), using accessible venues, providing interpreters, covering travel expenses, scheduling appropriately and providing reminders. continuing to identify and reduce barriers was felt to be an ongoing priority. providing ‘stepping-stone’ or informal warm-up activities was thought to be an important way of starting to build relationships with new families prior to attempting to engage them with some of the more structured projects and activities on offer. this was seen to support families to feel confident in taking part and reducing anxieties, therefore creating ‘community readiness’. a couple of the examples given were walking groups and coffee mornings. similarly, bsb’s parents in the lead fund offered individuals and small groups the opportunity to apply to manage their own activities. this was aimed at families with young children living in the bsb area. all of this gave the community even more choice in how they engaged with bsb and created gateways into the broader program. collaboration with other community organisations was also seen as a success of bsb’s engagement strategy in building community readiness. an important example of where this was working well was the current neighbourhoods project, which embedded bsb neighbourhood workers within other organisations with existing relationships with the community. neighbourhood workers therefore acted as a first point of bsb engagement with many families and thus could promote key messages, signposts and referrals. it was agreed that external collaboration should include schools, faith organisations, ‘friends of ’ groups, community centres, healthcare providers and others so as to bridge barriers to engagement. caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 the bsb team worked with a range of partners and services in the community, including ward officers, social prescribers, parent champion groups and community champions to develop and deliver a range of options, with which the community could engage. the face team described using a blended approach of face-to-face, telephone and online activities, and had discussed using social media channels, local radio and television to promote the program. they agreed that new methods to improve engagement should be considered, such as launching a podcast for parents and a new mobile app, to streamline project information for parents and increase accessibility. as well as discussing some of the challenges brought about by the covid-19 pandemic, the group highlighted some of the opportunities it had created. for example, while it was acknowledged that a move to online provision could create barriers for some families, for others it could make engagement more convenient. it allowed people to join in from home and dip in and out of online offerings, such as antenatal courses. several participants stated that, as a result of covid-19, they had observed an increase in community mindedness and motivation to volunteer for community projects. power the group agreed that being supported to take part in transparent processes was key to ensuring community engagement in the governance of bsb. current governance structures were briefly touched upon, but it was acknowledged that the wider community was unlikely to have a real understanding of how they could feed into this. community board members currently sit on both the partnership board and the commissioning advisory group and contribute directly to decision making. however, it was agreed that existing consultation should aim to engage a broader range of community members. overall, community members did feel they were involved with developing the bsb work plans. those within the group who had been involved in program governance felt they had gained valuable skills, which had empowered them. however, it was clear that communication was an area for improvement, with transparency and feedback being a strong theme throughout the discussion. it was agreed that the community could be better consulted on funding decisions. the group called for consistent and transparent funding criteria which they believed would foster more trust from the community. one community member suggested that funding local groups could make the program more sustainable as large organisations with big contracts often disappear when funding ends. several community members felt that developing a clear complaints procedure and disseminating an organisational structure to the community would help to increase transparency. it was agreed that an improved clear communication strategy detailing how commissioning decisions were made at bsb would be widely appreciated. face team members stated that the community has the ability to give direct feedback through a range of channels, such as their parenting groups and community champions. this information is then fed into the program via its governance structure. one community member suggested that other methods, such as comment boxes in strategic locations, could be used to encourage feedback. it was also noted that informal feedback forms are used after bsb activities to gather more information on how to plan future activities. discussion our workshops showed the value of the co-production process in supporting a diverse community to develop a community-engagement strategy. using a clear framework which brought together the established principles of community engagement (ssce) and concepts and language chosen by the community (voice, choice, power) promoted rich discussions and supported the community to share experiences and ideas. caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 thus, using a toc and logic model approach and working with the community, we defined what would practically be needed to deliver a community-engagement strategy, as outlined below. provision of an open forum for discussion and opportunities to summarise and provide feedback over several weeks allowed the research team to build trust with the community and ensure that the resulting logic model reflected their experiences of, and aspirations for, bsb. as well as providing a communityengagement strategy for the bsb program, the logic model might offer valuable insight into how diverse communities could be engaged post-covid-19. below are the key themes of our logic model. 1. take advantage of opportunities created by covid-19 the context of the covid-19 pandemic drastically altered the nature of community engagement at the grassroots level and made it necessary for organisations to adapt quickly to support their communities. our workshops revealed that collaboration across community organisations in bradford was an essential part of maintaining support for the most vulnerable families. there was also strong evidence that trusted relationships were vital for effective community engagement (tembo et al. 2021; wilkins 2018) and our workshops highlighted the value of working collaboratively with smaller organisations that already had strong connections with their local communities and the cultural knowledge and skills necessary to engage them. covid-19 produced a necessary shift towards more online engagement activities and those which involved minimal prolonged face-to-face contact, such as door knocking and phone calls. planning engagement in the future should thus involve maximising the benefits of activities which could be conducted virtually and those which should continue face to face. our findings suggest some online activities were more convenient, adding to evidence that online community engagement can be effective (london assembly 2021; manikam et al. 2021). however, those community members without access to technology or technological skills needed to be catered for also, as digital inequalities were particularly apparent in ethnic minority groups and those from low socio-economic backgrounds (watts 2020; webb hooper, nápoles & pérez-stable 2020). the use of blended approaches to engagement, such as those described in our logic model, are vitally important to engaging poorly reached communities so as to address health inequalities (burgess et al. 2021; gilmore et al. 2020; latinovic 2020). furthermore, strategies that look to improving access to technology and upskilling the community, as highlighted in our workshops, have the potential to produce benefits beyond engagement with the program. 2. optimise readiness to engage as well as increasing accessibility to the bsb program, interventions to improve the community’s confidence with technology are likely to increase community readiness to engage – something which is being increasingly formally measured (community toolbox 2020; edwards et al. 2000; islam et al. 2019). the importance of increasing community readiness for engagement was highlighted throughout our workshops, particularly in relation to some of the groups less well represented in the program. previous research on the bsb had found low levels of community readiness for intervention (islam et al. 2019). our participants felt that the provision of more informal activities that built trust, developed confidence and fostered relationships could act as a bridge to the program for poorly reached groups. within the bsb program, activities such as walking groups and coffee mornings could function as consultation opportunities, allowing seldom heard voices to feed into planning and decision making, or act as ‘stepping-stones’ for families to some of the more structured projects on offer. the community was keen to develop further strategies that would improve representation across decision-making structures of the bsb program, particularly by the eastern and central european, roma, refugee and asylum seeker communities. however, it was acknowledged that support, in the form of caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 training, must be offered to those recruited to ensure they were adequately equipped to take up community champion and other governance roles. 3. empower community voices promoting representation of community voices to the planning of the bsb program is itself a form of co-production that equalises power dynamics (lokot & wake 2021). this approach is also likely to optimise impact (crocker et al. 2018; staley 2015) and make the program more cost-effective because, by ensuring services are better targeted to the community’s needs, the community is likely to stay engaged with services to improve their health outcomes (garlatti et al. 2020). overall, the process and structures we used throughout the workshops strengthened community involvement and amplified community voices. the voice, choice and power concepts complemented the ssce by drawing out the diverse opinions of the multi-ethnic communities we worked with. for example, standards such as ‘inclusion’ allowed for the full expression of the experiences (voice) and ideas (choice) of our diverse communities, as well as allowing them to express opinions on the inclusive nature of choices and decision-making structures within the organisation (power). ensuring a continuous reflective process of recruitment to key community governance roles is therefore vital. this includes providing consistent and transparent information to the community about allocation of funding and other resources, procedures and organisational structures. these mechanisms should be contained in a clear communications strategy, which explains to the community how decisions are made and where power lies in decision-making. strengthening the two-way feedback loop between the community and the organisation is vital. co-production activities, such as those employed in our workshops, could allow communities to use existing power structures to lobby for more power and influence (slutsky et al. 2016), and help bsb ensure power is placed firmly in the hands of community members (shalowitz et al. 2009; wallerstein & duran 2010). this demonstration of working with communities could then create space for greater community control over services designed for them (beebeejaun et al. 2015; osborne, radnor & strokosch 2016; williams et al. 2020). limitations and reflections our workshops were not without limitations. we recruited, via the bsb face team, a relatively small number of community members, all of whom had previous involvement with the program. we were aware that this could introduce bias. some bsb groups were underrepresented and, given the timing and format of the workshops, we were unable to include members of the community who did not have access to, or skills in using technology. we recognise that more voices would have added value to the discussion. connected to this, variation in skill and confidence may have affected the extent to which some participants could contribute to the workshops. however, reflective practice used by the research team meant that the structure of the workshops was able to be adapted across the series to support participants to contribute. we have presented the experiences and ideas of the bsb community and developed a strategy specific to that context. we cannot generalise our findings to other geographical locations as different communities may need different community-engagement strategies. further work would be required to investigate whether the same principles apply to other geographical, ethnic and socio-economic groups. while conducting workshops online may have restrict access to potential participants, we do not believe that it negatively impacted our co-production process as evidence has shown that virtual co-production can deliver excellent insights (meijer 2011). participants expressed that they felt able to participate and have their voices heard. however, as is often the case with research, power dynamics could not be eliminated from our process. co-production and co-design techniques involve facilitating, managing and co-coordinating a complex set of psychological, social and cultural interactions (farr 2017). these interactions are particularly caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202311 important to consider when working with diverse communities, such as those included in our workshops. we made efforts to consider these power dynamics throughout the process, and the female research team, comprising one researcher who lived outside bradford and three who identified as white british undertook regular reflective practice. a reflexive and reflective approach to co-production is important (oliver, kothari & mays 2019). in future, we would attempt to include a more diverse team, ideally including some community member participants, in the transcription process. diversifying the research team could potentially identify other areas in which the ce logic model could be expanded. we attempted to challenge power relations by ensuring the focus of discussion was community members’ opinions, expressed individually and collectively. conclusion in using methods centred on the community, we found our use of co-production workshops to be invaluable in providing insights into community needs. our co-production process developed a comprehensive community-engagement logic model which provides a blueprint for community engagement in three wards of bradford. using a framework developed using terminology defined by the community, we were able to identify strategies for empowering them to contribute to program decision-making processes at all levels. whilst we understand that our workshops are not without challenges, we do find that the insights from our structured and theoretically grounded approach, including for the first time the integration of community-defined voice, choice, power concepts, and the use of the ssfce helped to expand the literature in the area of co-production research. we believe that our approach using ssfce and vcp, combined with tools such as the logic model and toc, provides an innovative method for structuring and grounding co-production research. therefore, our workshops demonstrate an important step forward in placing more power in the hands of often overlooked communities to develop effective communityengagement practices. our findings also highlight the importance of informal planning and consultation with communities, including assessment of their readiness to engage, combined with a flexible approach to adapting activities to communities’ needs. opportunities for new ways of working following covid-19 should be capitalised on to maximise reach, and combine virtual and face-to-face activities. a continuous reflective process of recruitment to key governance roles so as to include a range of diverse voices reflecting the make-up of the community is also important. finally, a strong two-way feedback loop, whereby the community and the organisation could play an equal role, was at the core of our community-engagement strategy. our innovative co-produced findings represent an opportunity to explore and test the transferability of our strategy and logic model to other communities in the uk and globally. furthermore, our co-production method, including key principles, such as voice, choice and power, defined by the community themselves, could be transferable to other settings to elicit valuable insights into how community-engagement can be conducted effectively to meet community needs. acknowledgements this study was only possible due to the enthusiasm and commitment of the members of the community reference group. we are grateful to all the participants – the community reference group, the better start bradford partnership and staff, bsb projects, and the health professionals and researchers who helped to make this study possible. caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202312 references adhikari, b, pell, c & cheah, p 2020, ‘community 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co-production’, health research policy and systems, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-00558-0 caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202317 http://www.voicescotland.org.uk/ https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.184036 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2589-7500(20)30169-2 https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.8598 https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000000953 https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000000953 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-00558-0 appendices appendix 1: workshop guide for support standard item timings 1. welcome and share agenda 5 minutes 2. present planning activities from last week and ask for further feedback/ comments 10 minutes 3. review of the scottish national standards – impact 10 minutes 4. breakout session 1 focus of session is impact – assessing the impact of the engagement and using what we have learnt about the engagement to improve our future community engagement a) community perspectives 1. do the decisions bsb takes reflect the views of community members involved in the engagement process? [power] 2. have local outcomes or services been improved as a result of the engagement process? if so, how? [voice] 3. will participants in the engagement process use improved skills and confidence to take part in community engagement in the future? how? [choice] 10 minutes 5. feedback on breakout group 1 share with full meeting 15 minutes 6. breakout session 2 impact: prompts and questions a) wider learning and partnerships 1. are partners involved in the monitoring and reviewing of the quality of the engagement process? what has happened as a result? [power] 2. is feedback provided to the wider community on how the engagement process has influenced decisions? if so, what has changed as a result? [power] 3. has our learning and evaluation helped to shape our future communityengagement process? how? [voice & choice] 20 minutes 7. feedback on breakout group 2 share with full meeting 15 minutes 8. next steps: to populate and refine impact data collected today and present at next session / close meeting 5 minutes caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202318 appendix 2: example analysis matrix for the inclusion standard please note: italicised text varies according to the standard being analysed voice the voices of all communities and organisations working with families across the better start bradford area are included at every level of the programme choice a range of opportunities are provided for communities and organisations to engage at every level of the programme power community voices are heard, valued, and have real influence at every level of the programme activities taking place already activities which could be improved new activities which could be introduced to improve community engagement caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202319 appendix 3: example logic model components for the inclusion standard a summary of the inclusion workshop structured as a logic model. outcomes and impacts are structured by voice, choice and power. inputs activities outputs outcomes impacts budgets e.g. volunteering budget people e.g. 1 x full-time equivalent community engagement coordinator other resources e.g. bsb website, it equipment for inclusion standard examples: community board members, volunteers and community champions are recruited from the different communities and organisations across the bsb area parents and community led organisations are invited to apply for funding for the parents in the lead fund to set up their own activities for the community bsb sets up or contributes to steering groups and forums with a focus on communities less well represented across the program, e.g. the bradford dads matter steering group and dads engagement forum links are made with existing groups hosted by community partners to increase reach and inclusion of target community voices. for inclusion standard examples: no. of community members reflecting the wider bsb community on steering groups no. of activities involving informal consultation with the community no. of different communities/ groups represented by community board members, community champions and volunteers no. of parent/ community-led organisations that are invited/ supported to apply for funding for the parents in the lead fund no. of steering groups/ forums set upby, or contributed to, by bsb no. of community members represented across the bsb program governance no. of new activities developed with partner organisations and groups no. of outreach activities targeted at groups/areas of low take-up for inclusion standard voice – the voices of all communities and organisations working with families across the better start bradford area are included at every level of the program choice – a range of opportunities are provided for communities and organisations to engage at every level of the program power – community voices are heard, valued and have real influence at every level of the program voice: decisionmaking across the program reflects the views of the community choice: the community is involved in monitoring and reviewing the quality and success of the program power: the community has improved their skills, confidence and ability to engage in the future, and local outcomes and services are improved as a result of their engagement informal consultation results in changes to/ development of bsb activities community members provide input into review meetings caperon, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202320 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: lowery, b., cranston, j., lavers, c., may, r., pilgrim, r., and simmonds, j. 2021. harnessing the power of stories for rural sustainability: reflections on community-based research on the great northern peninsula of newfoundland. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7766 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) harnessing the power of stories for rural sustainability: reflections on community-based research on the great northern peninsula of newfoundland brennan lowery1, joan cranston2, carolyn lavers3, richard may4, renee pilgrim5 and joan simmonds6 1 postdoctoral researcher, school of science and environment, grenfell campus of memorial university, st. anthony, nl, canada 2 coordinator, bonne bay cottage hospital heritage corporation, norris point, nl, canada 3 port au choix, nl, canada 4 executive director, nortip development corporation, bird cove, newfoundland and labrador, canada 5 traditional chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist, st. anthony bight, nl, canada 6 manager, french shore historical society, conche, nl, canada doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7766 article history: received 15/06/2021; revised 18/10/2021; accepted 25/10/2021; published 12/2021 abstract stories have the power to shape understanding of community sustainability. yet in places on the periphery of capitalist systems, such as rural and resource-based regions, this power can be used to impose top–down narratives on to local residents. academic research often reinforces these processes by telling damage-centric narratives that portray communities as depleted and broken, which perpetuates power imbalances between academia and community members, while disempowering local voices. this article explores the potential of storytelling as a means for local actors to challenge top–down notions of rural sustainability, drawing on a community-based research initiative on the great northern peninsula (gnp) of newfoundland. five of the authors are community change-makers and one is an academic researcher. we challenge deficiencies-based narratives told about rural newfoundland and labrador, in which the gnp is often characterised by a narrow set of socio-economic indicators that overlook 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors acknowledge with gratitude funding support from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, grant/award number: (too big to ignore: global partnership for small-scale fisheries research, grant number 895-2011-1011), and collaborative applied research in economics (care) at memorial university of newfoundland and labrador. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7766 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7766 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7766 the region’s many tangible and intangible assets. grounded in a participatory asset mapping and storytelling process, a ‘deep story’ of regional sustainability based on community members’ voices contrasts narratives of decline with stories of hope, and shares community renewal initiatives told by the dynamic individuals leading them. this article contributes to regional development efforts on the gnp, scholarship on sustainability in rural and remote communities, and efforts to realise alternative forms of university-community engagement that centre community members’ voices and support selfdetermination. keywords rural development; sustainability; storytelling; community-based research; self-determination; newfoundland and labrador introduction stories are uniquely powerful in shaping our understanding of community sustainability. yet, in rural and natural resource-based regions, this power can be used to question community viability (bebbington 1999), reinforcing uneven capitalist development patterns (kühn 2015). furthermore, academic research often tells damage-centric narratives that portray communities as depleted and broken (tuck 2009), rather than foregrounding local ways of knowing (christensen, cox & szabo-jones 2018) and acknowledging the holistic value of community assets (winkler et al. 2016). rural coastal communities in newfoundland and labrador (nl), canada, are often cast as victims in the story of the 1992 fisheries collapse that shook the province’s foundations (davis 2014). in particular, the great northern peninsula (gnp) is often associated with high rates of population ageing and youth out-migration (roberts 2016; simms & ward 2017). however, these narratives overlook the gnp’s many assets, such as natural resources, social cohesion and cultural heritage (parill et al. 2014). in both the gnp and other rural regions, the value of these assets is often under-recognised in traditional economic development models (arias schreiber, wingren & linke 2020), overlooking the diverse resources available to communities to start a ‘spiraling up’ of vitality (emery & flora 2006) and excluding rural communities from the story of change towards sustainability. in this article, we explore the potential for communities to use storytelling to challenge top–down narratives of rural sustainability. we contribute to scholarship on the role of storytelling in sustainability transition (veland et al. 2018), including how ‘deep stories’ can motivate social action (hochschild 2016) and how rural and resource-based communities are often excluded from dominant sustainable development narratives (lowery et al. 2020). we also demonstrate an alternative relationship between rural communities and academia in describing our co-creative process as an author team including an academic researcher and community change-makers from the gnp. reflecting on power in our process, we acknowledge how university-community engagement often perpetuates colonial patterns of extraction (walker et al. 2020) and thus seek to centre community members’ voices and share power in the research process. our research question is: how can storytelling enable communities on the gnp to challenge top–down narratives of rural sustainability, and what lessons can be learned for engaged research on the role of stories in power, selfdetermination and community sustainability? conceptual approach we approach community sustainability as a holistic agenda balancing global goals, such as climate action, gender equity and food sovereignty (united nations 2015) with community-level priorities (bridger & luloff 1999). however, in regions made peripheral relative to centres of power and wealth (kühn 2015), it may be more appropriate to approach sustainability by ‘[starting] with what is strong, instead of what lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 is wrong’ (russell 2016). we draw from asset-based community development, painting a ‘glass halffull’ portrait of community sustainability that can be especially appropriate for marginalised communities (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). we also consider notions of ‘diverse economies’, acknowledging the value of self-provisioning, volunteering, social enterprise, and other activities on the fringes of capitalist exchange (arias schreiber et al. 2020). in this broader conception of value, intangible assets, which often are not measured by mainstream sustainability indicators (ramos 2019), can be harnessed to trigger a ‘spiraling up’ of community wellbeing, combining interdependent forms of social, natural, economic, cultural and human capital (emery & flora 2006). in search of inclusive visions of community sustainability, we highlight the potential of storytelling. oral history, ethnography and indigenous methodologies have often used storytelling to foreground the knowledge of marginalised peoples (christensen, cox & szabo-jones 2018; ritchie 2014). similarly, cultural planners have acknowledged the importance of narratives as one of ‘multiple epistemologies’, whereby oral histories can be used to identify diverse cultural assets (ashton, gibson & gibson 2015), but are often silenced by western knowledge systems (young 2008). policy researchers have also highlighted how tropes like the ‘rags to riches’ stories or tales of a lost golden age can shape collective understanding of planning proposals (sandercock 2005), and how actors use political myths to explain current struggles in relation to an imagined past (bottici & challand 2006). similarly, the ‘deep story’ concept reveals how the latent frustrations of disenfranchised groups can be manipulated to fuel xenophobic social movements (hochschild 2016). in contrast, storytelling may be a tool for mobilising citizens around an inclusive sustainability agenda that motivates action across a broad audience (veland et al. 2018). yet, research often tells an urban-centric story in which rural and natural resource-based communities play no part in sustainability transitions (lowery et al. 2020). inheriting western cultural narratives that equate urbanity with modernity and progress, sustainable development research and practice often overlook differences between rural and urban contexts (markey, connelly & roseland 2010), or even disparage resource-based livelihoods as antiquated and unsustainable (hall & donald 2009), while undervaluing community assets that remain after disruptions like boom and bust cycles (winkler et al. 2016). for rural and resource-based communities to tell their own sustainability stories, community members must articulate unique visions for local wellbeing while aspiring to an inclusive agenda that reflects global priorities. rural sustainability narratives on the great northern peninsula since i was a child, i’ve driven the peninsula, always going somewhere else…i was back and forth the peninsula to the airport, the university, back from vacations. i left home when i was 17. and that peninsula was just a throughway. it was just a way to get through. and it was always beautiful, but i never stopped anywhere to appreciate it. i didn’t explore any of it because i was always trying to get somewhere else. renee pilgrim, resident of st. anthony bight the gnp is home to 69 communities spread across 17,483 km2 on the northwestern tip of newfoundland (gibson 2014). the region has a rich heritage of indigenous and settler cultures, including maritime archaic peoples, north america’s only viking settlement (parks canada 2021 a, b), and intersecting english, irish, mi’kmaq and french identities. its 2016 population was 15 485 people, including the largest community of st. anthony (2255), with the nearest city, corner brook (19 547), a 2–5 hour drive to the south. however, in popular and academic discourse, the gnp and other rural nl regions often are discussed not for their assets, but their challenges. rural coastal communities were devastated by declining cod stocks in the late 20th century and resulting federal moratorium in 1992 (davis 2014). today, influential voices lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 use socio-economic indicators to tell a negative story about rural nl, highlighting the province’s economic uncertainties to justify withdrawing public services from rural regions. when releasing the 2021 provincial budget, finance minister siobhan coady stated that ‘solutions are needed to address long-standing structural issues, such as the high cost of providing services to nearly 600 communities across a large figure 1. map of the great northern peninsula lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 geography, chronic deficits, dependence on volatile oil revenues, as well as a declining and aging population’ (antle 2021, para. 11). hit hard by the moratorium, the gnp continues to experience rapid demographic decline, losing 7.1 per cent of its population between 2011 and 2016 (community accounts 2020). media and academic attention focuses on these trends; for example, a report by memorial university (mun) researchers predicted that the gnp’s population could shrink by up to 40 per cent by 2036 (simms & ward 2017). similarly, roberts (2016, para. 5) concluded: ‘[t]hat’s the story of the northern peninsula: heavy youth out-migration; one of the oldest median ages in the country; an economic base teetering on the brink’. although these assessments may make for eye-catching journalism or compelling research, they impose top–down narratives on to the gnp, privileging expert knowledge over that of rural residents. furthermore, these narratives fail to acknowledge the very assets that communities can harness to reverse these trends. community-engaged research methods this article portrays a story of community-engaged research that both reflects and challenges power relations between rural communities and academia. as the academic author, i draw on my phd work in the first person singular (‘i’). this research would not have been possible without the knowledge and guidance of community co-authors, which we share here using the first person plural (‘we’). we also describe a new university-community partnership called the gnp research collective, in which many of us are engaged. we outline these efforts in figure 2.                     figure 2. timeline of community-engaged research methods in late 2017, i visited the gnp for the first time to attend a workshop, led by mun, where local leaders expressed frustration about the recent report highlighting the region’s demographic challenges (simms & lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 ward 2017). they were eager to show that the region had many assets that could be used to fight these trends. during subsequent visits, i met informally with community leaders to explore how asset mapping could challenge this decline narrative and highlight new development opportunities. in fall 2019, i lived in port au choix and conducted semi-structured interviews across the region. these interviews served as both data collection tools and storytelling sessions, inviting residents from diverse backgrounds to share their life stories and knowledge. the interviews followed an informal and narrative structure, asking what people felt their community’s greatest strengths were and what stories often were told about the region (appendix 1). i also asked questions about a previous asset mapping project conducted on the gnp (parill et al. 2014), for which local stakeholders expressed a desire to expand into a regional asset inventory. to engage the most inclusive group possible, i followed a purposive sampling rationale, selecting community members representing local government, non-profit organisations, businesses, and provincial and federal government, but also seeking residents who did not occupy formal leadership roles. participants came from a variety of stakeholder groups (table 1); to our knowledge, one participant self-identified as indigenous and the rest were caucasian. table 1. summary of interview and focus group participants participants interviews focus groups gender women – 18 men – 12 women – 15 men – 8 stakeholder groups residents – 7 municipal – 3 non–profits – 8 businesses – 8 provincial/federal government – 4 residents – 3 municipal – 7 non–profits – 5 businesses – 2 indigenous leader – 1 provincial governments – 5 total 30 23 we concurrently conducted four focus groups across the region to member-check preliminary findings with residents, engage with a diverse set of stakeholders in a group setting, and share an initial draft of the regional asset inventory to gather additional feedback (see appendix 2 for guiding questions). participants came from a wide range of stakeholder groups (table 1); one participant self-identified as an indigenous leader and all others (to our knowledge) were caucasian. several members of the author team have become involved in a new initiative called the gnp community place (gnpcp), which seeks to establish a clinic in port au choix to improve access to primary care and offer various wellness programs not available in the area. this includes a bottom-up research collective that hopes to use community-based research to guide the design of the gnpcp. our collaboration on this article is part of the larger research collective. three months after this primary research concluded, covid-19 was declared a global pandemic and the province went into lockdown. nevertheless, we continued to hold virtual discussions on how to use this research to support community development initiatives in the region and share it with a wider audience, particularly through the recently formed research collective. once in-person gatherings were safe, we held community meetings in port au choix and st. anthony in february 2021 to share our findings with a wider group of community members and facilitate a discussion on how they may inform the community place and other local initiatives. we also shared various drafts of the manuscript with community members across lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 the gnp and discussed it on a community radio station (voice of bonne bay radio: https://vobb.org/) to share the findings with a wider group of residents. a deep story of sustainability on the great northern peninsula i remember priscilla renouf said to me one time…“over the 5,000 years of history we’ve had…the commonality between all of the cultures that was in and out of port au choix over the years is that we all came here chasing resources, and that was the fishery”…that’s what the maritime archaic was doing here, that’s what the groswater was doing here, that’s what the dorset was doing here…and then the european came, and that’s where we came from…but it’s all connected to the fishery. carolyn lavers, resident of port au choix many cultures have moved across the gnp over the millennia. the region has been inhabited by indigenous peoples, including the maritime archaic, dorset, groswater and beothuk, and continues to be home to the mi’kmaq. l’anse aux meadows hosts the only known viking settlement in north america (parks canada 2021a). these historical peoples have attracted academics like archaeologist priscilla renouf and historian selma barkham, whose research informed numerous heritage interpretation sites. more recent european settlement by the french and basque peoples centred around the seasonal cod fishery, and they were followed by english and irish settlers. the region was visited later by dr wilfred grenfell, a british doctor who came to st. anthony in the 1890s and built hospitals, orphanages and social housing, and was responsible for agricultural initiatives (wood & lam 2019). in contrast to these heroic journeys of the past, recent stories about the gnp often feature crisis and decline. before the cod moratorium that shook the entire province to its foundations, the fishery was transformed by the rapid introduction of large-scale vessels and industrial processing. carolyn lavers describes the fisheries boom in port au choix: i was here in the last five years of the 70s and the early part of the 80s…there was 12 months of the year there was fishing going on…because the boats had become much larger. the 65-footers had been introduced with all this modern technology on them, so they could move up and down the whole coast…in the winter they moved to port aux basques and fished – and of course that was part of the problem because we fished the spawning season… personal communication, 6 november 2019 just as pronounced as its boom, the bust following the moratorium was catastrophic for port au choix. another resident described that: when the moratorium happened, you saw people leaving…i recall so vividly watching the news and seeing…people in their 40s and 50s who lost their jobs at the fish plant…picking up their belongings and heading west. personal communication, 25 november 2019 although residents told stories of decline, they also expressed optimism about the potential to revitalise local economies. one common source of hope was vacant public buildings, such as schools, which represented both a sense of loss and untapped opportunities to foster local economic development. richard may mused that: …if for argument’s sake…i won $10 million…to be able to sit down…and say, ‘ok, i got this idea. where might the best spot for that be?’ ok, out in port au choix would be a great place to put that. they’ve got a school that’s not being used. there’s not so many people working at the fish plant as lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 https://vobb.org/ there was. the population in the region has been relatively stable, so there must be unemployed people looking for work. personal communication, 7 march 2019 we now look across these community stories to identify three overarching themes about regional sustainability that directly address the narrative of decline. in each theme, we describe a key tension, reflecting both a problem-based message of vulnerability and a message of hope. honouring the past while looking to the future the first tension is a sense of nostalgia for the pre-moratorium days, contrasted with an understanding that the region cannot return to these times. many port au choix residents reminisced about a time when wharves were full of fishing boats, streets were busy with traffic and the community’s nightlife venues were bustling. according to a former port au choix resident: …we had everything. we had a movie theatre. we had three or four clothing stores…you know, there was…how many gas stations? there was three take-outs and a restaurant, and there was two clubs, and there was a live band at each club every weekend. personal communication, 21 march 2019 figure 3. boat-blessing ceremony in port au choix, 1980 (retrieved from canadian broadcasting corporation nl, ‘land and sea’ series, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tgay54wscdk) nonetheless, residents also acknowledged that the past had problematic elements. for example, the role of women in sustaining communities was discussed as both an important element of traditional livelihoods and a part of the region’s history that is often undervalued by both local leaders and external actors. one lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgay54wscdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgay54wscdk resident of roddickton described the workforce of the pre-moratorium days as ‘100% employment… the men fished and the women worked in the fish plant, for the most part’ (personal communication, 14 november 2019). a resident of conche described this gendered division of labour before industrial fish processing was introduced: ‘women made the fish, they used to call it “making the fish”, you know…and [looked after] the boats, and the grass, and everything, and the children…’ (personal communication, 4 december 2019). joan simmonds shared this memory: i remember one time, my mother…we had sheep, so she used to collect the wool and send it into… st. john’s to get spun into wool, right, for knitting… after she washed all the wool…she would have to wait for a nice day with no wind to lay out all the wool…and she had just put all the wool out in the meadow, and the wind came out. and…there was 10 of us running around, getting the wool, collecting the wool. and she was almost in tears because she knew that if she lost her wool, she wouldn’t get nothing knitted for the winter…”. personal communication, 4 december 2019 another undervalued aspect of the region’s past and current identity is indigenous stories. due to systemic racism, indigenous peoples in newfoundland have often concealed their identity to avoid discrimination. today, the histories of ancient indigenous groups, such as the maritime archaic, often receive less attention than colonial heritage, as revealed by a local tourism representative: ‘within the community, there seems to be more interest in our french heritage than in the indigenous heritage’ (personal communication, 25 november 2019). furthermore, self-identifying indigenous people were largely excluded from receiving official status in the qalipu first nation, with the northern peninsula mekap’sk mi’kmaq band making recent efforts to increase the recognition of indigenous people in the region (the telegram 2018). many residents have called for greater awareness of the role of indigenous peoples in both the region’s past and the identities of present-day community members. according to a local indigenous leader: ‘along our coast … i think there is a very big lack of knowledge … of the indigenous history, or indigenous culture’ (personal communication, 2 december 2019). when reflecting on the more positive aspects of the region’s past, residents often had a pragmatic sense of it being impossible to return to this heyday. a forestry stakeholder reflected that: …there was at least twenty to twenty-five trucks a day moving…and besides the logs that were going to the sawmills…now, we can never go back to that …because at the time…people were harvesting manually, right, so…most of them were people with chainsaws in the woods. personal communication, 8 november 2019 whether due to mechanisation in forestry, which shifted from chainsaws to large harvesting equipment, or ecological collapse, such as the moratorium, residents often expressed a sober outlook, that the region could not return to this golden age. a fisheries stakeholder reflected on fish processing plants: ‘…all those plants that died over the years, they’re not coming back, unless they got something to come back to’ (personal communication, 18 november 2019), acknowledgeing that cuts to fisheries quotas had reduced the number of processing plants that could be economically sustained. these stories suggest that residents have a deep sense of nostalgia, but also acknowledge the need to recognise undervalued elements, such as the role of women in sustaining communities and the region’s indigenous cultures in striving for a more equitable future. reducing dependence on external heroes the second key tension is a sense that some outside entity will save the region from its problems, contrasted with a rejection of external dependence and desire for self-determination. the region’s history is marked by lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 figure 4. leif eriksen statue at l’anse aux meadows national historic site lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 the heroic journeys of outsiders coming to the region. for example, the gnp’s main highway is called the viking trail, commemorating the norse landing site at l’anse aux meadows. perhaps the most celebrated external hero is dr grenfell, whose journey to the gnp to alleviate poor health conditions is a source of pride for st. anthony and other communities (wood & lam 2019). according to a st. anthony resident: even in…englee, conche…roddickton, i mean, dr. grenfell’s legacy…even through flower’s cove, daniel’s harbour, that area, right. got a connection pretty much all over. personal communication, 17 november 2019 more recent external saviours include large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects. several projects were being discussed at the time of the research, including a wood pellet plant in hawke’s bay spearheaded by british firm active energy group (aeg), a proposed tunnel between the peninsula and labrador (which is currently connected by ferry) and a port development at crémaillére harbour to service the oil industry. however, residents also felt that these projects perpetuated external control over local resources. one forestry stakeholder described how …we’re in a precarious situation…because two thirds of our timber rights now have been given to aeg, their office in england. so, all we can do is look at it grow. we got no control over it. personal communication, 14 november 2019 community members told stories of saviours fallen from grace: development projects that sparked hope among local stakeholders but ultimately failed. for example, holson forest products received government funding to operate a sawmill and pellet plant in roddickton-bide arm, but was shuttered in 2014. a local forestry stakeholder reflected: …we thought we had something moving when they give the money to holson forest products… we thought that would be the bright spot, or the saviour of the forest industry, but that didn’t work out. personal communication, 7 november 2019 these failed projects damaged not only regional economic conditions, but also the psychological wellbeing of residents. community members’ stories suggest a ‘boy who cried wolf ’ dynamic, in which local stakeholders believe that the right project will come some day, but perhaps will not receive adequate support because of these past failures. this dynamic reflects an overall sense of external dependency on regional development. one recent newcomer to the region said: …there is a lot of newfoundlanders who live up here who have lost an internal locus of control. everything is because of an external source, and they feel so little ability to affect their situation. personal communication, 13 november 2019 in contrast to this external dependence, many residents identified the need for individuals to foster greater self-reliance by taking on leadership roles in local organisations, such as town councils, small businesses and non-profit organisations. the founder of the recently formed norpen status of women council described the challenges faced by those seeking to launch new initiatives: …trying with this status of women council…i could have give up a dozen times along the way, and said ‘oh this is too much work’…and you run into little obstacles that…you want to throw your hands up and say ‘i’m giving this up!’, or whatever. but i think…you have to be persistent, persistent, and be positive… personal communication, 2 december 2019 lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 rediscovering local conceptions of wellbeing the final tension is that residents learn from a young age that they should leave the region to be successful, contrasted with an identified need for youth to rediscover local ideas of wellbeing. in other rural regions, brain drain has been linked to a tendency for educational systems to teach that rural lifestyles are not valuable (corbett 2007). on the gnp, carolyn lavers described that: one of the things that we never did – and that goes back even from when i was in school – we never, never, never told our children the benefits of living in rural regions. oh, and i’m still hearing it – you get your education and you leave, ’cause there’s nothing here for you. personal communication, 6 november 2019 residents described a generational divide that occurred after the moratorium, in which younger generations became geographically severed from their communities and lost touch with traditional ways of life and values. a port au choix resident shared that: ‘…we’ve lost the connection. so we’ve got the aging people, aging parents who by now are dead, a lot of them…so the middle-aged people, some of them will come back and retire, but the younger people’s not coming back… my boys, they moved away to get work out of school, basically, because, you know, there wasn’t no longer work available here… personal communication, 25 november 2019 to restore this connection, residents discussed traditional practices, such as food self-provisioning, as a way for younger generations to rediscover local ideas of wellbeing. self-provisioning activities are important figure 5. roadside garden near st. anthony bight lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 sources of food across nl: 44.2 per cent of nl residents engage in some amount of fishing to supplement their diet (21.9 per cent above the national average) and 39.3 per cent in foraging (22.9 per cent above the national average (atkinson et al. 2020). on the gnp, self-provisioning may be even more prevalent, with one resident estimating that ‘…just on very broad strokes, i’d say 20% of people’s income is on average from berries or getting your moose, or you know, dragging scallop, or getting fish’. personal communication, 13 november 2019 a recent study on the region’s roadside gardens, a tradition originating from the grenfell mission, identified high rates of household agricultural production (wood & lam 2019). a resident of englee reflected: …we grew our own vegetables, we sustained ourselves…there was no grocery, there was no refrigerator, there was no power. so we had to sustain ourselves on the wild, and do our own gardening, and keep it all winter in our cellars… personal communication, 4 december 2019 in reflecting on traditional practices, such as self-provisioning, residents highlighted the need to celebrate local livelihoods and identities rather than striving for external notions of wellbeing. this challenges prevailing wellbeing indicators, which tend to privilege narrow quantitative measures like per capita income over intangible factors (ramos 2019). more broadly, residents identified the need to teach youth that they do not need to leave to be successful, but rather instil an appreciation for the region’s rural culture and lifestyle. stories of community renewal i was filled with hope today when a community member said to me “it is time to tell a new story about the health and wellness of newfoundlanders. it is not all doom and gloom; some of us are healthy and living well in our rural communities”. when we start changing the narrative ourselves, telling our own ‘new rural story’, that is how we can really take charge and start shaping our own future. joan cranston, resident of norris point the perspectives shared above demonstrate that the deficiencies-based narrative often told by powerful actors does not tell the whole story of the gnp. they also challenge academic research not only to critique dominant stories, but to work hand-in-hand with community members in telling a new story based in potential and possibility. in that spirit, we now share stories of community renewal initiatives that are imagining alternative futures for the gnp, told by the local change-makers who are leading them. based in four communities across the region, these initiatives have taken different approaches to mobilising community assets and are at different stages of development, but have each engaged with the deep stories of their communities to enhance self-determination and community well-being. french shore interpretation centre by joan simmonds in 2000, some conche residents founded the french shore historical society (fshs) as a formal organisation to present the region’s history and culture, and has since created an interpretation centre for local people and an attraction for tourists (website: https://www.frenchshore.com/en/ attractionsanintriguinghistory.htm). building on the preservation of historical sites, the town and fshs share the goals of preserving their cultural history, promoting its continued strength, using it as an economic development tool, and providing a sense of shared community among residents. lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202113 https://www.frenchshore.com/en/attractionsanintriguinghistory.htm https://www.frenchshore.com/en/attractionsanintriguinghistory.htm to begin their heritage development, the town provided a building for the museum and both groups worked to raise funds for renovation and exhibit development. work on this project was provided by local craftsmen, volunteers, town staff, regional government agents and external non-profit organisations. fshs collaborated with the town on expanding and maintaining a growing heritage infrastructure, with different funding agencies to help support the programs. there are a number of groups and committees in the french shore region, including representatives from the town and fshs, that develop and work on heritage development projects. tourism businesses also play a role in this. as in many rural places, residents wear ‘several hats’ and collaboration is key to sustaining the economy and lifestyle. fshs has also reached out to cultural groups in france that share their history. the outreach has resulted in joint publications, conferences, and exchanges between museum staff. after ten years of participating in many partnerships with funding agencies, universities, and arts and craft councils, fshs decided to use our history to create a piece of artwork that would tell the story of the french shore. the french shore tapestry would be utilised to enhance the economic benefits of tourism for the community and would give the local population an increased awareness of their own history. the tapestry has become an anchor attraction for this region. since the opening of the french shore interpretation centre, we have seen an increase in the number of visitors to our town and an increase in the cultural activities within the town. the town has two airbnb accommodations and last year, in the midst of the pandemic, a new wellness-based tourism experience was launched within the town, called moratorium children, started by a young woman who recently returned home to conche after living away. the french shore interpretation centre is playing an active role in helping people research the history of the french shore of newfoundland. this research will not only increase community members’ awareness of our history, but also share the story of conche with the wider world, resulting in a positive impact on our town. the old cottage hospital by joan cranston the former bonne bay cottage hospital was built in 1939 in norris point as part of the cottage hospital system put in place by the commission of government to provide healthcare in rural communities. it was built using locally donated labour and material. the government paid for the nails and the wages of the foreman. the hospital provided high-quality care to the communities from daniel’s harbour in the north to trout river in the south for over 60 years, until it closed its doors in 2001 when a new modern hospital was built. a group of community volunteers recognised the value of preserving this unique piece of community heritage infrastructure and formed a not-for-profit community corporation to take ownership of the building. the old cottage hospital now functions as a social innovation/rural research/community response centre, offering a safe, accessible place that serves the needs of the surrounding communities, and also a different model of sustainable economic and social development (website: https://oldcottagehospital. com/about/). we work in partnership with many community, government and academic agencies and institutions to provide programs and services that help to preserve local culture and heritage, promote community health and wellness, and foster community economic and social development. the old cottage hospital is home to numerous initiatives and programs, such as a community kitchen that serves healthy plant-based meals, a library, a community radio station, a local concert series, and hopefully a daycare centre that is currently being developed to meet the growing need for childcare for young families in the area. in the words of one community member, the centre ‘was built by, and belongs to, the community. it reflects our past; it supports the present; it will enrich our future.’ lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202114 https://oldcottagehospital.com/about/ https://oldcottagehospital.com/about/ gnp community place by joan cranston the gnp community place (gnpcp) offers a social enterprise solution to a ‘wicked’ healthcare problem for communities on the rugged coast of the gnp. lack of access to health services, such as physiotherapy, massage therapy, mental health, addictions counselling and other health and wellness services in rural areas, as well as lack of treatment for chronic pain, arthritis, injuries and other physical and mental health conditions leads to poor health outcomes and preventable disability. one of the factors contributing to this problem is the absence of appropriate clinical space for these services. a group of citizens in port au choix met with a community broker to create a solution. they formed a not-for-profit community corporation and adopted a social enterprise approach to the problem. they are raising the funds to purchase a community heritage property and to redevelop it as a ‘community place’. it will be designed to provide the following: • private treatment rooms and offices available for rent by visiting professionals, such as physiotherapists, massage therapists, counsellors, other health practitioners, and researchers • a fitness centre for individualised exercise programs • a community kitchen to increase access to healthy food through education, cooking classes and food security initiatives • community café/meeting room, which will provide a flexible space for meetings and workshops, and serve as a ‘place’ for the community to gather to engage in health and wellness activities • accommodation for visiting professionals and researchers. revenue from the rental of space to visiting professionals and other services located in the ‘place’ will help to offset the costs of heating and lighting, insurance, etc. this will be a partnership between the community (people), private practitioners and the public health system. the project will involve other partners as well, such as research partners, funding partners and corporate partners. this project is unique in that it offers a social enterprise solution to an identified issue, in which we are blending non-profit funding strategies, such as grants with market-based tools, but prioritising community reinvestment over profit. it utilises an interdisciplinary collective impact approach and a ‘3-p’ partnership model (public/ private/ people/community), while introducing the concept of community brokers. it will be evidence-based and supported by the involvement of the gnp research collective. food sovereignty initiative by renee pilgrim since development of the roads up the gnp, these are now peppered with roadside gardens constructed from the remaining piles of topsoil. residents of the gnp are resourceful people and the available soil also meant more food for families and communities from the gardens. before that, people had little gardens around their houses, up over a hill or anywhere they could find fertile and workable soil. with a short growing season and limited resources, growing food was an incredible effort endured to sustain families over the winter. dr grenfell recognised the nutritional health challenges and developed the grenfell gardens for the hospital, and supported communities with seeds and start-up materials (wood & lam 2019). gardens weren’t a hobby or supplemental; they meant survival. with the arrival of roads and access to fertile soil gardens, the locals could feel abundant. roads also opened up travel for work, and families left. more food was imported and the need for gardens declined, as did the population. lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202115 gardening was challenging, but food could be bought and many had money. growing food had become a choice for some, for others still necessary to feed a large family or supplement a seasonal income. the perspective had shifted and some folk took pride in not having to grow a garden. a sign of progress. over these same years, diabetes, heart disease and obesity grew province-wide and notably in this area. no longer suffering from starvation, scurvy or rickets, the population developed new nutritional health challenges, being overfed and undernourished. the beat of rural life turned towards the mainland. as people left for bigger city centres, we imported packaged food: carrots from israel, apples from mexico and potatoes from ohio, anything frozen or in a box or can. generations separated from the land and sea, losing interest in what had long kept us here. fresh and local produce is scarce on the gnp, except in the fall when gardeners have enough turnips, cabbages, carrots, potatoes and beet. some have enough to last the winter where there is storage, but cold storage has proved to be another barrier for local farmers. the growing season is another challenge – it isn’t long enough for too many other varieties of vegetables and the population is more likely to eat packaged, frozen and foreign foods. a study of the history of grenfell gardens and other factors (wood & lam 2019) raised the question: would a greenhouse be a valuable resource to supplement the short season? in february 2021, the gnp research collective hosted a community meeting, where it was determined that a community assessment was needed, to be headed by brenda whyatt. additionally, interested members formed the st. anthony & area gardening alliance (saaga), headed by myself, traditional chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist renee pilgrim, to address the skill loss of younger generations, share resources and create a community network around growing local nutritious food. the town of st. anthony provided the friendship park greenhouse. to date, we have held four public events: a seed exchange, plant exchange, compost talk by 3f waste recovery and a harvest. more people have planted crops this year than previously, maybe a side-effect of covid-19. the retired roadside gardens are coming back in droves and, along with the potholes, will make for a slow sunday drive as people tend to gardens this season and in many more to come. people are still growing the same things; however, resource sharing, diversified crops, adequate soil and cold storage are some of the bigger items we’re identifying, and hope to address in time. concluding thoughts through both the deep story emerging from local voices and stories that community change-makers have told of their renewal efforts, this article contributes to scholarly understanding of sustainability in rural and resource-based regions and efforts to achieve it in practice. we conclude by identifying the article’s main practical and academic contributions, reflecting on both the joys and the challenges of the research process we have followed, and highlighting potential paths forward for applying its lessons to the gnp and beyond. telling a new story about rural sustainability we contribute to scholarly understanding of the potential of storytelling for facilitating empowerment in rural and resource-based communities. building on the long-standing use of narrative approaches in indigenous research (christensen, cox & szabo-jones 2018), we show how storytelling also can be used to centre the knowledge and experience of non-indigenous communities on the periphery of uneven development processes (kühn 2015). rural regions have often been abandoned by capitalist systems once primary resources are exhausted (winkler et al. 2016), while largely being overlooked in the theory and practice of societal transitions to sustainability (lowery et al. 2020). ironically, the deep story concept – which explains how communities left behind in these processes can fall prey to xenophobic political lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202116 movements (hochschild 2016) – can also help identify inclusive visions of community sustainability emerging from residents’ deep-seated experiences and memories. thus, we extend research on the role of storytelling in sustainability transitions (veland et al. 2018), while reinforcing the importance of narratives in cultural planning and asset mapping (ashton et al. 2015). on the gnp, stories of boom and bust in primary industries and dependence on external heroes reveal an entrenched myth that will take considerable effort to uproot – particularly due to the external locus of control described by residents and collective traumas from failed development projects. our findings hint at potentially valuable links between psychological well-being and community self-determination, which future research could explore by examining the relationship between individual trauma and collective efforts to make sense of these experiences (maitlis 2020). yet, our community renewal stories also show how residents are challenging these myths through self-directed initiatives such as community clinics, local agriculture movements and heritage sites. in particular, the french shore tapestry represents a form of visual storytelling, weaving the region’s history into a story narrated by local voices. stories as tools for identifying undervalued assets we also offer new insight into how communities can use storytelling to show the value of often undervalued assets. communities that are characterised as deficient by powerful actors often turn to asset-based development approaches (bebbington 1999), demonstrating the value of intangible assets that often are overlooked in prevailing sustainability indicators (ramos 2019), and highlighting the diverse ways communities sustain themselves beyond mainstream economic development models (arias schreiber, wingren & linke 2020). local actors on the gnp are using a multitude of local assets to renew communities. however, these assets often are overlooked in dominant narratives that favour quantitative indicators like demographic decline (simms & ward 2017). these narrow measures do not tell the whole story about rural sustainability, including the interdependence of diverse forms of community capital ranging from labour markets to cultural identity (emery & flora 2006), while ignoring the entrenched values and beliefs that inform residents’ decisions to leave or stay in their communities. by exploring generational divides that occurred after the moratorium and lessons that children learn about their communities, we build on previous research about rural brain drain (corbett 2007), while offering new insight into how rural communities can restore intergenerational connections through traditional practices, such as self-provisioning. by highlighting these local practices, we reaffirm the power of asset-based approaches (kretzmann & mcknight 1993) and challenge damage-centred narratives that tend to privilege external interventions over endogenous solutions (tuck 2009). the stories told by community change-makers, for example, the saaga initiative, which is reconnecting communities to their agricultural history, demonstrate how grassroots efforts can harness valuable knowledge and skills that often have been lost, while forging new bonds between older and younger generations. storytelling to reimagine academic-community relationships finally, we demonstrate that storytelling, as research process, can facilitate participatory methods and reduce power imbalances between academics and community members. considering how academic research often perpetuates extractive colonial practices (walker et al. 2020), new approaches to community-based inquiry that centre community members’ voices and share power in both conducting and writing about research are needed. by using storytelling methods in both collecting primary data and writing the research findings, we seek to place power in community members’ hands through a co-creative process. in particular, the community renewal stories demonstrate that local residents can claim power by sharing their experiences, aspirations and successes in their own words. lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202117 there are many ways that we could have embodied participatory processes more fully, such as engaging with a more diverse set of residents or approaching the writing process in a more participatory manner. as the academic author, i recognise my incentive to publish and acknowledge the burden i have asked of the community co-authors. we also could have engaged more proactively with the region’s indigenous identities by exploring decolonising approaches to telling these long-suppressed stories – an opportunity that we hope to explore further in partnership with local indigenous leaders. while far from fully participatory, our approach aimed to demonstrate the potential of storytelling as both a theoretical lens for understanding rural sustainability and a practical way to do research that strives for more equitable power relations. yet, this story is only the beginning. on the gnp, we will continue using community-based research to demonstrate the potential of local initiatives, such as the community place and saaga, engaging with residents to explore their own research questions and striving for more participatory methods. we will also continue engaging with a global network of community-based researchers to learn from universitycommunity collaborations in other places and explore how our storytelling approach might be adapted in similar contexts. we conclude with a challenge: to reimagine the role of research in creating sustainable communities, critically reflect on the power of the stories we tell, and uplift new stories of empowerment and possibility. acknowledgments the authors are very grateful to the many community members on the gnp who shared their knowledge, perspectives, and time to make this research possible. we thank the department of industry, energy, and technology of the government of newfoundland and labrador, the town of flower’s cove, the town of roddickton-bide arm, and the college of the north atlantic for support in conducting focus groups. we also acknowledge the support of drs. kelly vodden, john dagevos, ratana chuenpagdee, doug may, mery perez, and natalie slawinski, the grenfell office of research and engagement, and myron king (environmental policy institute, grenfell campus) for his assistance in creating maps. we also thank the gateways editorial team, the special issue guest editors and co-contributors, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. references antle, r 2021, ‘n.l. budget pledges “change” and shift in status quo to rescue fiscal 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https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/7090 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/7090 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7090 https://doi.org/10.3390/su8030284 appendix 1: guiding questions for semi-structured interviews participant’s background in the region • can you tell me about your previous professional background and any involvement you may have had with other types of community development or sustainability projects in the past? • what geographical scale has your community development work focused on (e.g. your community, the entire great northern peninsula region, a smaller region, other)? • what does sustainability mean to you, for your community and for the great northern peninsula region overall? story of community strength • can you tell me a story about your community or about the broader region that symbolises to you what makes it a great place to live? in this story, you may choose to discuss any of the following:  your personal story, including your role in the community in which you live, either professionally or as a volunteer, and how you came to take on that role  a story that highlights what is strong about your community, including anything that you are proud of or feel makes your community a good place to live  stories that show how the community has sustained itself over time and continues to do so  stories about the cultural heritage of the community or region, or other heritage assets  stories about the broader region (whether a sub-region or the region as a whole). familiarity with previous asset mapping project • are you familiar with the asset mapping project that was carried out in the region in 2014? • were you involved in that project? if so, what was the nature of your involvement? • did the project have any strengths or weaknesses that you think would be important to consider if building on it in the future? perspectives on a regional asset mapping initiative • how could future efforts to identify and mobilise regional assets learn from the successes and failures of the previous project? • how could regional asset mapping be used to tell the story of the great northern peninsula and its communities, such as the stories of community strength you have shared? • what challenges might arise in creating a regional asset mapping tool? • what could be done to make such a process beneficial for regional economic development? • how could it be incorporated into regional governance efforts? • in what ways could these regional assets be visualised or otherwise shared so that people in the region could learn about them and use them in decision-making? • do you know of any similar initiatives that have occurred in the region or elsewhere that may be worthwhile considering? • what other thoughts or recommendations would you offer to inform this kind of effort in the future? lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202121 appendix 2: guiding questions for focus groups review of regional asset inventory • based on our individual discussions during the interviews, do the additions to the regional asset inventory seem to accurately reflect the assets in your communities that we discussed? • what other assets do you think should be added to the inventory, either for a particular community or for the region (or sub-region) overall? • are there any assets you think should be removed from the inventory? if so, why? • how well does the asset inventory portray the assets of your home community, this sub-region, or the great northern peninsula overall? • what could be done to ensure that the inventory portrays community and regional assets more effectively? perspectives on use of regional asset inventory • how can this inventory be used by individuals and groups in the region, or in specific communities? • which groups or organisations do you think would be most likely to use the inventory, and for what purposes? • how could regional asset mapping be used to tell the story of the great northern peninsula and its communities? • what could be done to make this asset inventory beneficial for regional economic development? • how could it be incorporated into regional governance efforts? • what challenges might arise in using this tool, or other asset mapping tools, in community and regional development? • in what ways could these regional assets be visualised or otherwise shared so that people in the region can learn about them and use them in decision-making? • do you know of any similar initiatives that have occurred in the region or elsewhere that may be worthwhile considering? • what other thoughts or recommendations would you offer for making this inventory as useful as possible for the region? lowery, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202122 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 13, no. 1 may 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: godrie, b, boucher, m, bissonnette, s, chaput, p, flores, j, dupéré, s, gélineau, l, piron, f and bandini, a 2020. injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7110. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.7110 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au article de recherche injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés baptiste godrie1, maxime boucher2, sylvia bissonnette2, pierre chaput2, javier flores2, sophie dupéré3, lucie gélineau4, florence piron5 and aude bandini6 1 department of sociology, université de montréal (québec) cremis 2 groupe de recherche et formation sur la pauvreté au québec 3 faculty of nursing science, université laval (québec) 4 department of psychosociology and social work, université du québec à rimouski 5 department of information and communication, université laval (québec) 6 department of philosophy, université de montréal auteur de correspondance: baptiste godrie; baptiste.godrie@umontreal.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7110 article history: received 01/08/2019; revised 19/09/2019; accepted 23/01/2020; published 05/2020. résumé cet article présente un cadre d’analyse innovant ancré dans le concept d’injustices épistémiques pour évaluer les recherches participatives. composé d’une méthodologie de travail et d’un outil d’autoévaluation, ce cadre d’analyse a été développé au fil d’un processus participatif de production et de mobilisation des savoirs qui a pris place au cours des deux dernières années. l’équipe multidisciplinaire ayant entrepris ce processus est composée des chercheur-es et des représentant-es du groupe de recherche et de formation sur la pauvreté au québec travaillant à l’élaboration d’un programme scientifique de recherche sur les injustices épistémiques et les recherches participatives. nous défendons que les recherches participatives peuvent contribuer à apporter des réponses coconstruites entre les milieux universitaires et communautaires à certaines injustices sociales – dans le cas présent, les injustices épistémiques – qui sont enchâssées dans les processus de production des connaissances. de notre point de vue, les recherches participatives constituent des laboratoires permettant d’observer et de comprendre la production des declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7110 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7110 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:baptiste.godrie@umontreal.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7110 injustices épistémiques et, le cas échéant, d’offrir des leviers pour les réduire grâce à la construction de ponts entre les différentes personnes et les savoirs qu’elles détiennent. l’article est centré sur la présentation de deux dimensions de notre travail: (1) la méthodologie que nous avons mise sur pied pour bâtir des espaces de coapprentissage à la croisée de l’université et des organismes communautaires et (2) un guide d’autoévaluation disponible en accès libre que nous avons bâti durant notre démarche afin d’aider les universitaires et leurs partenaires à s’engager dans une évaluation réflexive des processus participatifs de recherche du point de vue des injustices épistémiques. l’article met également de l’avant des défis inhérents à l’élaboration de ce programme de recherche ainsi que des réponses que nous avons pu leur apporter, et se termine par des réflexions sur les enjeux clés ayant émergé en cours de route. mots-clés injustices épistémiques; recherches participatives; processus de coapprentissage; production des savoirs; organismes communautaires; évaluation réflexive introduction cet article présente un cadre d’analyse innovant ancré dans le concept d’injustices épistémiques pour évaluer les recherches participatives. composé d’une méthodologie de travail et d’un outil d’autoévaluation, ce cadre d’analyse a été développé au fil d’un processus participatif de production et de mobilisation des savoirs qui a pris place au cours des deux dernières années. l’équipe multidisciplinaire ayant entrepris ce processus est composée des chercheur-es et des représentant-es d’organismes communautaires du québec (canada) qui travaillent dans le champ de la justice sociale et des recherches participatives. nous défendons que les recherches participatives peuvent contribuer à apporter des réponses coconstruites entre les milieux universitaires et communautaires à certaines injustices sociales – dans le cas présent, les injustices épistémiques – qui sont enchâssées dans les processus de production des connaissances. le premier auteur de l’article travaille depuis dix ans dans le centre de recherche de montréal sur les inégalités sociales, les discriminations et les pratiques alternatives de citoyenneté (cremis) situé au centre-ville de montréal. avec un groupe de collègues, il a réalisé plusieurs projets de recherche participative avec des professionnel-le-s de la santé et des services sociaux ainsi que des organismes communautaires oeuvrant auprès de personnes stigmatisées en vertu de leur statut social, genre, âge ou origine ethnique (voir, par exemple, godrie et al. 2018). ces expériences ont contribué à façonner une réflexion critique sur la production des savoirs et leur mobilisation dans un contexte d’inégalités sociales. en octobre 2017, trois des coauteur-es (bg, sd et sb) ont reçu une subvention de recherche d’une année pour soutenir la création d’une équipe de recherche sur le thème injustices épistémiques et recherches participatives. cette subvention nous a permis de réunir des chercheur-es et des activistes pour la justice sociale expérimenté-e-s dans les recherches participatives dans le champ de la lutte contre la pauvreté. il s’agissait de partager nos pratiques et les défis rencontrés au cours de projets de recherche en lien avec la production des connaissances et leur usage dans une perspective de réduction des inégalités sociales. nous étions déjà au fait des obstacles bien connus à la mise en œuvre de projets participatifs de recherche, tels que le manque de fonds et de temps, ou encore les différences de culture godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 organisationnelle entre le monde universitaire et celui des organismes communautaires. pour cette raison, nous souhaitions spécifiquement aborder les défis reliés à la hiérarchie des savoirs et au statut des différents savoirs dans le processus de coproduction des connaissances ainsi que les manières de les réduire, le cas échéant. cet article présente la méthodologie que nous avons mise en œuvre pour élaborer des espaces de coapprentissage à la croisée de l’université et des organismes communautaires, quelques-uns des défis inhérents à l’élaboration de ce programme de recherche, ainsi que le guide d’autoévaluation sur le thème des injustices épistémiques et des recherches participatives que nous avons produit collectivement durant ce processus. nos réflexions ne sont pas issues d’une étude empirique réalisée sur cette expérience : elles sont le fruit d’un retour réflexif sur cette démarche de mobilisation participative des connaissances. ces réflexions sont arrimées à la littérature scientifique existante sur les recherches participatives et les injustices épistémiques. un programme de recherche sur les injustices épistémiques et les recherches participatives épistémologies pluralistes et non hiérarchisantes le terme recherche participative regroupe un ensemble d’approches méthodologiques renvoyant elles-mêmes à un large spectre de participation de personnes, telles que les recherches-actions participatives, les recherches collaboratives, les recherches engagées, les recherches participatives communautaires, l’enquête réflexive des praticien-ne-s et la sociologie publique. de manière générale, une recherche participative rassemble des personnes/ groupes appartenant à différents horizons, par opposition à une recherche non participative qui implique uniquement des chercheur.es de carrière. provenant de différents horizons, ces personnes/groupes ne parlent pas tout à fait le même langage que les chercheur-es de carrière, ne voient pas les enjeux tout à fait sous le même angle, ce qui conduit à expliciter, débattre et re(définir) constamment les termes qui sont pris pour acquis chez les uns et les autres. par exemple, le terme autonomie renvoie à des réalités différentes que l’on soit une jeune de 15 ans encore soumise à l’autorité parentale, une personne travaillant dans une unité de soutien à domicile auprès de personnes âgées ou un-e chercheur-e intéressé-e à comprendre l’impact d’une réforme sur le pouvoir décisionnel des gestionnaires. les personnes issues de la communauté jouent un rôle actif dans plusieurs ou toutes les étapes du processus de recherche, mais sont habituellement cantonnées à la collecte des données et à la diffusion des résultats. dans ce scenario, le processus de recherche est habituellement caractérisé par une ‘séparation ontologique entre le savoir scientifique et le savoir des personnes sans interroger la validité ou le caractère socialement situé de l’activité scientifique elle-même’ (casas-cortés, osterweil & powell 2008, p. 48). dans une seconde perspective résolument plus participative de la production des connaissances, les personnes qui participent sont reconnues et traitées en tant que productrices légitimes de connaissances et incluses tout au long du processus de recherche. ces personnes deviennent alors des cochercheures plutôt que de simples « sujets » ou « partenaires » de recherche, sources de données ou réceptacles de connaissances, ce qui peut conduire, par exemple, à l’établissement de lignes directrices en matière d’éthique concernant la propriété collective des données et à les reconnaitre en tant que coautrices de toutes les productions. dans ce cas de figure, la recherche participative est un processus qui permet aux personnes injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 qui participent de questionner les relations de pouvoir dans la production des connaissances scientifiques ainsi que la frontière entre ce qui est reconnu en tant que savoir scientifique et ce qui ne l’est pas. en ce sens, les recherches participatives jouent un rôle crucial pour soutenir une pratique réflexive de recherche et favorisent la prise de conscience des hiérarchies et des relations de pouvoirs qui peuvent, autrement, être tenues pour acquises. la réflexivité renvoie, ici, à une attention et à une réflexion continues sur les pratiques sociales de positionnement et de différentiation durant le processus de recherche (incluant celles mises en œuvre par les chercheur-es), autant qu’à une réflexion analytique sur les luttes épistémiques, sociales et politiques entre les membres des groupes en présence (carstensen-egwuom 2014). cette seconde approche provient de traditions universitaires et militantes qui ont émergé au cours des années 1970 en amérique latine, asie et afrique, et essaimé ailleurs en occident (fals borda & rahman 1991; freire 1982; gélineau, dufour & bélisle 2012; reason & bradbury 2001). les universitaires et les communautés ancrées dans cette tradition sont encore actifs dans plusieurs régions et domaines de recherche, tels que les études autochtones, l’éducation des adultes et les études rurales. ce type de recherche conteste la monopolisation des processus de recherche par les chercheur-es de carrière et critique les cadres de travail scientifique normatifs européens et nord-américains au profit d’épistémologies pluralistes et non hiérarchisantes (connell 2007; smith 2012; tandon 2002). d’autres traits saillants de cette perspective de recherche sont : un engagement clair en faveur de la justice sociale; une attention à l’intersectionnalité et à la positionnalité des participant-es ainsi qu’à la manière dont elles façonnent les hiérarchies de savoir et la production des connaissances. nous distinguons ici l’intersectionnalité de la positionnalité en reprenant la disctinction établie par yep et mutua (2016, p. 85), la seconde soulignant ‘le fait que nos identités sont toujours façonnées de manière relationnelle à l’intérieur des hiérarchies de pouvoir’ et la première illustrant ‘la multiplicité des forces sociales qui façonnent nos expériences situées et nos identités’; la recherche est conçue comme un processus de croisement des savoirs et non une pratique d’appropriation des savoirs; elle est aussi un travail d’ébranlement des structures de pouvoir et de transformation de la réalité sociale par le savoir et l’action collective (ávila penagos 2005; contreras 2002; merçon et al. 2014; godrie et al. 2018; merçon 2018). les membres de notre groupe étaient plus en phase avec cette deuxième perspective, tout en reconnaissant plusieurs limites de cette tradition, notamment la ‘tendance à l’essentialisation ou à la romantisation du savoir de certains groupes’ qu’on peut constater dans certains travaux (casas-cortés et al. 2008, p. 48). injustices épistémiques et production des connaissances les relations entre les inégalités sociales et la production des savoirs sont particulièrement bien analysées par les courants de recherche féministes et décoloniaux (code 1991; harding 1998; santos 2006, 2016; smith 2012; visvanathan 2009). plusieurs études montrent que les membres de certains groupes historiquement stigmatisés voient leurs témoignages et savoirs discrédités d’emblée lorsqu’ils s’expriment sur un sujet donné (godrie & dos santos 2017). les communautés font l’expérience de ces réalités depuis longtemps et en ont fait un objet de réflexion important. cependant, la formalisation du concept d’injustice épistémique est attribuable à la philosophe anglaise miranda fricker qui analyse, dans son livre intitulé epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing (2007), le rôle des perceptions sociales et des préjugés dans les jugements de crédibilité et les situations de témoignage. fricker (2007) distingue deux types d’injustices épistémiques. le premier, les injustices herméneutiques (hermeneutical injustice), se rapporte à notre capacité à penser et à rendre compte de nos propres godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 expériences sociales, en particulier celles qui se rapportent aux injustices et aux inégalités que nous vivons du fait que ‘les puissants ont un avantage injuste dans la structuration de notre compréhension collective du social’ (fricker 2007, p. 147). le second type, les injustices de témoignage (testimonial injustice), se rapporte à notre capacité à transmettre des savoirs grâce au témoignage. fricker définit ces deux injustices en utilisant l’exemple du harcèlement sexuel dans le milieu de travail. d’après fricker, avant l’introduction de ce concept dans les années 1970 aux états-unis, les femmes américaines qui vivaient ces expériences étaient isolées et n’avaient pas les ressources interprétatives pour nommer et rendre compte de leur situation de violence. les agressions physiques et verbales des hommes envers les femmes au travail n’étaient pas considérées comme un problème social. les femmes qui vivaient ces situations les gardaient souvent pour elles ou, lorsqu’elles les partageaient à d’autres personnes, pouvaient se heurter à des réactions de justification des comportements des hommes en tant que ‘drague’ et vivre de la culpabilité lorsqu’elles étaient blâmées en raison de leur manque supposé de sens de l’humour ou parce qu’elles l’avaient ‘cherché’. ces situations conduisaient parfois les femmes à continuer à endurer ces agressions ou à démissionner de leur travail. fricker (2007, p. 151) désigne ces situations dans lesquelles un ‘écart dans les ressources interprétatives collectives donne à une personne un désavantage injuste lorsqu’il s’agit pour elle de nommer son expérience sociale’ d’injustice herméneutique. dans le cas du harcèlement sexuel, les ressources interprétatives n’existaient ni pour les agresseurs ni pour les victimes, même si ce vide était essentiellement préjudiciable pour ces dernières puisqu’elles pouvaient vivre de la culpabilité (‘peut-être que je suis responsable de tout cela’), se sentir isolées, et donc demeurer vulnérables au harcèlement. pour cette raison, lorsque les personnes font l’expérience des injustices herméneutiques, elles sont moins susceptibles d’exposer publiquement de telles violences et de bénéficier d’un soutien structurel (par exemple, qu’il y ait des femmes en situation de pouvoir ayant une influence positive dans le milieu professionnel) pour mettre fin collectivement à celles-ci. plus généralement, les injustices herméneutiques se produisent lorsque les savoirs de certains groupes ne peuvent pas se frayer un chemin dans les débats publics parce qu’ils ne cadrent pas avec les paradigmes dominants – colonialistes, productivistes, médicaux, positivistes, sexistes, etc. – qui servent généralement de cadre de compréhension du monde. deuxièmement, fricker (2007, p. 20) caractérise ce qu’elle appelle des ‘injustices de témoignage’ en tant que ‘tort qui pénalise spécifiquement une personne dans sa capacité à se positionner comme sachant’. elle précise que ce type d’injustice survient ‘lorsqu’un préjugé d’une personne qui écoute donne un niveau de crédibilité diminué au discours d’une personne qui s’exprime’ (p. 1). le terme ‘injustice’ souligne ici que la différence de considération donnée à la parole et aux savoirs des membres des groupes sociaux résulte de leur positionnement dans la hiérarchie de la crédibilité et des savoirs légitimes, c’est-à-dire de rapports sociaux inégalitaires entre des groupes majoritaires et des groupes minoritaires. en particulier, les injustices reliées au témoignage sont un traitement dommageable et illégitime de la parole d’une personne en raison de son appartenance à un groupe social historiquement marginalisé (fricker 2007, p. 150). si l’on revient sur l’exemple du harcèlement, il peut s’agir de la situation d’une femme qui est harcelée sexuellement et qui n’est pas crue par ses proches ou par les personnes qui enregistrent sa plainte. dans ce cas, même si les membres du groupe disposent des ressources interprétatives pour rendre compte de leur expérience systémique d’oppression, leur interprétation est cantonnée aux marges, quand elle n’est pas simplement invisibilisée. ce déni de crédibilité peut, en lui-même, être vécu comme une forme de violence. et il peut produire une perte de confiance en soi et une auto-exclusion des interactions sociales. ce type injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 d’injustice est produit et maintenu en raison d’une hiérarchie de la légitimité des personnes et de leurs savoirs qui repose en partie sur des stéréotypes et des idées dominantes qui naturalisent et légitiment l’ordre social en place. par exemple, la méritocratie et l’individualisme renforcent l’idée que les personnes qui sont au sommet de l’échelle sociale le doivent à leurs seuls efforts et compétences. dans d’autres cas, les savoirs sont ignorés ou mis de côté en raison du manque de temps ou parce que les personnes n’ont pas la formation ou les outils appropriés pour expliciter ces savoirs et les prendre en compte. à un niveau plus profond, ces situations d’injustice épistémique peuvent conduire des groupes opprimés à intérioriser des biais cognitifs produits historiquement et socialement à propos de leurs propres capacités intellectuelles. ces injustices épistémiques sont donc systématiques en deux sens. premièrement, elles touchent des membres de groupes sociaux dont les droits ont été historiquement niés, c’est-à-dire souffrant d’un ‘préjugé négatif attaché à leur identité’ (fricker 2007, p. 27). deuxièmement, elles s’accompagnent d’un ensemble d’autres inégalités qui affectent d’autres sphères de la vie de ces personnes qu’il s’agisse de l’accès à un emploi décent ou de la possibilité de marcher en toute sécurité dans l’espace public. application théorique bien que cela n’ait pas été étudié par fricker, ces deux types d’injustices épistémiques peuvent également surgir durant le processus de recherche entre les chercheur-es et les participantes. les chercheur-es possèdent leurs propres préjugés, représentations mentales, qui peuvent conduire au discrédit de groupes sociaux et de leurs membres. les chercheur-es peuvent invalider leurs visions du monde et savoirs en les étiquetant en tant qu’opinions, superstitions, constructions symboliques, croyances ou émotions. dans le processus de recherche, un ensemble de situations d’injustices épistémiques s’ajoute aux catégories proposées par fricker. par exemple, une personne qui doit écrire un article scientifique dans une seconde ou une troisième langue vit une injustice épistémique comparativement à une personne qui écrit dans sa langue maternelle. et cette injustice est renforcée par le fait que les langues les plus valorisées dans le monde scientifique – l’anglais, le français, l’espagnol – sont des langues de pays colonisateurs. il en résulte que des recherches (et les régions du monde dans lesquelles elles se déroulent) reçoivent une plus grande visibilité tandis que d’autres recherches sont invisibilisées parce que non publiées ou publiées dans des langues considérées comme périphériques. la structure du monde universitaire en elle-même avec ses normes d’écriture et de publication peut contribuer à produire des injustices épistémiques systématiques en excluant des formes de savoir qui ne se conforment pas au savoir propositionnel. en effet, quantité de choix ne sont pas remis en question ou discutés avec les participant-es des projets lorsqu’il s’agit de négocier quelles seront les traces laissées par les projets participatifs de recherche (livres, articles scientifiques, rapports, blogues, posts), et les questions que cela soulève: traces écrites et signées par qui? publiées où et comment? dans quelle langue? de manière plus fondamentale encore, les membres de groupes marginalisés ne sont pas toujours placés dans une position d’ignorance ou ne se voient pas nier leur capacité à développer une compréhension de leur situation comme semble le présupposer fricker. ces personnes sont tout à fait susceptibles de reconnaitre les injustices dont elles sont victimes et de développer une compréhension des raisons de leur oppression. cependant, le problème peut être que cette compréhension n’est pas entendue, prise en compte ou publiquement discutée. plutôt que d’établir un dialogue avec des groupes marginalisés, ou de leur accorder une place dans le processus formel de production, des universitaires font plus souvent le choix de ‘converser avec des recherches publiées précédemment qui… excluent d’emblée les savoirs, godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 intérêts et préoccupations de ces communautés’ (glass & newman 2015, p. 32), ce qui peut renforcer les injustices épistémiques. en dépit de son intérêt philosophique pour l’éthique et la justice sociale, fricker ne fait pas mention du potentiel des recherches participatives entre universitaires et communautés pour réduire les injustices épistémiques. pourtant, dans la mesure où elles considèrent les personnes extérieures au monde académique en tant que porteuses de savoirs et productrices de connaissances, et ‘embrassent la pluralité des savoirs depuis des perspectives d’agents épistémiques légitimes qui entrent en dialogue les uns les autres dans le cadre d’une relation de recherche’ (paphitis 2018, p. 364), ce type de recherche, s’il est bien conduit, semble pouvoir contribuer à ce que visvanathan (2009) appelle la justice cognitive. les recherches participatives ne sont pas uniquement une façon de travailler à plus de justice cognitive; elles sont aussi une manière de produire des résultats de recherche avec un haut niveau de validité contextuelle. cette sensibilité au contexte est, selon mccollum (2012, p. 199), un composant de la justice herméneutique parce qu’elle ‘aide le chercheur en sciences sociales à bien comprendre que les études se déroulent dans un contexte déjà stratifié, mais aussi dans un contexte théorique qui doit être modifié afin de mettre au jour la complexité des interactions sociales, en particulier au bénéfice des désavantagés’. les savoirs produits grâce à des recherches participatives ne sont pas seulement fiables, ils sont aussi ‘socialement robustes [parce que] la validité n’est plus uniquement déterminée, ou de manière prédominante, par des communautés scientifiques étroitement circonscrites, mais par des communautés d’engagement beaucoup plus larges comprenant des producteurs de connaissances, des disséminateurs, des commerçants, et des utilisateurs’ (nowotny, scott & gibbons 2003, pp. 191–92, in mccollum 2012, p. 197). et ces savoirs sont également davantage pertinents afin de répondre aux enjeux vécus par les membres des communautés. espaces de coapprentissage à l’intersection de l’université et des communautés ainsi que nous l’avons noté précédemment, les recherches participatives ont pour objectif de produire des savoirs en établissant des relations plus justes entre les différents types de savoir et les personnes qui les détiennent. en dépit de cet idéal, nous savions en raison de nos expériences de recherche que les processus participatifs pouvaient maintenir ou même accroitre les injustices épistémiques entre participant-es. notre objectif était donc de soumettre à un examen critique les relations entre les différentes approches et pratiques de recherche participative et leur impact sur les injustices épistémiques, soit dans le processus même de recherche, soit en tant que résultat du processus de recherche. notre attention portait sur les questions suivantes: dans quelle mesure les recherches participatives constituent-elles des laboratoires pour la production de rapports plus égalitaires entre les savoirs? les recherches participatives offrent-elles un espace de reproduction des rapports hiérarchiques entre les savoirs, par exemple, par le biais de la reconduction de la division des tâches en matière d’écriture, d’analyse et de diffusion des connaissances? ou ont-elles pour effet de neutraliser et de dépolitiser les savoirs qu’elles incorporent, notamment par l’institutionnalisation des pratiques participatives de recherche à l’université (hall & tandon 2017)? les projets de recherche ont-ils permis d’entendre ou de rendre visibles des voix et des savoirs auparavant absents de l’espace public? malgré plusieurs articles cités dans les précédentes sections sur le sujet, une revue de la littérature sur ces enjeux nous a amené injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 à partager le constat de paphitis (2018) selon lequel ces questions de justice épistémique en relation avec les organismes communautaires ont jusqu’à présent rarement été examinées. méthodologie afin de répondre à ces questions et développer un programme de recherche sur ces sujets, il nous apparaissait important de développer une méthodologie qui favorise le dialogue entre les différents expériences, savoirs et positionnalités. pour être cohérents avec notre thème, nous souhaitions ouvrir un espace de coapprentissage à l’intersection de l’université et des organismes communautaires qui nous permettrait de construire progressivement notre programme de recherche en accumulant les échanges avec une diversité de personnes. selon tineke et al. (2017, p. 492), un modèle dialogique de coapprentissage, par opposition à un modèle linéaire de transfert des connaissances, possède le potentiel de réduire les injustices épistémiques entre participant-es en les considérant chacun comme des sachants et des apprenants: une telle collaboration soutient la création d’un dialogue significatif, et la variété de perspectives des parties prenantes en dialogue peut élargir et rendre possibles des compréhensions et des solutions à l’intérieur d’un cadre de travail sociétal plus large. en d’autres mots, une telle collaboration peut mener au développement d’un éventail de solutions, dans la mesure où les parties prenantes sont disposées à considérer les différents types de savoir et d’information comme étants valides. nous identifions, ci-dessous, huit principaux éléments qui caractérisent le processus de coapprentissage que nous avons développé du mois de novembre 2017 jusqu’au mois de juin 2018. (1) en novembre, nous avons contacté et rassemblé un groupe de 10 personnes appartenant aux trois catégories non mutuellement exclusives suivantes: des activistes sociaux en situation de pauvreté et membres du groupe de recherche et de formation sur la pauvreté au québec (grfpq), un organisme communautaire sans but lucratif basé à montréal (québec) dont la mission est de contribuer au développement et à la diffusion des connaissances sur les causes de la pauvreté et ses conséquences sur les personnes qui la vivent; des professionnel-le-s de l’intervention sociale de plusieurs champs (santé mentale, itinérance, défense des droits) offrant des services dans la communauté; et des universitaires d’une variété de disciplines (sociologie, anthropologie, philosophie, soins infirmiers et santé communautaire). toutes ces personnes avaient une expérience en matière de recherches participatives et/ou détenaient une connaissance théorique et/ou vécue des injustices épistémiques. le fait d’être un petit groupe de personnes a facilité les échanges en maximisant le temps de parole de chaque personne et en réduisant les possibilités de réunions intimidantes et anonymes, comme c’est parfois le cas lorsqu’il y a des nombreuses personnes. (2) la subvention de recherche nous a permis d’embaucher un coordonnateur de recherche à raison de deux jours par semaine, dont le mandat était d’organiser les rencontres de l’équipe. son expérience (formation en travail social, expérience professionnelle au grfpq, en particulier dans un projet participatif de recherche, et sa connaissance du monde universitaire en tant qu’étudiant à la maitrise) faisaient de lui un candidat idéal pour faciliter les échanges. son travail comprenait des tâches logistiques (réservation de salles, solutions virtuelles pour les participant-es à distance ou ne pouvant pas se godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 déplacer) et scientifiques (prise de notes, compilation des enjeux et idées récurrentes émanant des discussions) en plus du contact avec les participant-es (prendre le pouls des personnes grâce à des courriels, des appels téléphoniques entre les rencontres). (3) afin de commencer notre série de rencontres de coformation, le coordonnateur de recherche a conduit six entrevues avec quatre chercheur-es et deux membres du grfpq. ces entretiens ont aidé à identifier un certain nombre de questions et défis, permis l’identification de cas d’étude, de définitions et de références en lien avec le sujet de recherche de l’équipe, tout en élaborant un premier agenda de thèmes et de personnes responsables de l’animation de nos rencontres de coapprentissage. ces entrevues ont été retranscrites, et les idées organisées en un plan de travail pour l’année à venir qui a, par la suite, été partagé, discuté et ajusté avec le reste des participant-es. (4) nous avons planifié cinq sessions de coapprentissage (novembre 2017, janvier, février, avril et mai 2018). ces sessions avaient une durée de trois heures. chacune d’elle abordait un thème différent présenté à tour de rôle par un ou deux participant-es. les sujets couverts ont été, par exemple, l’histoire de la recherche-action participative, la justice cognitive en lien avec la science ouverte, et la diversité des savoirs en lien avec l’enjeu du relativisme en sciences sociales, ce qui nous a aidé à nous concentrer sur les questions suivantes: qu’est-ce qui compte comme une donnée de recherche et qui la possède? à quel moment le processus de recherche peut-il mitiger les inégalités épistémiques? dans quelle mesure les chercheur-es doivent-ils et elles se conformer aux normes universitaires garantes de la qualité de la preuve et de l’argumentation lorsqu’ils et elles travaillent dans une perspective de justice épistémique avec les communautés? quelles ressources herméneutiques mettre en œuvre pour saisir la diversité des perspectives possibles sur un sujet pour qu’elles soient à la fois valides et justes sur le plan épistémique? lors de chacune des sessions, nous envoyions deux textes deux semaines à l’avance aux participant-es. lors du bilan de notre processus à la fin de la première année, nous avons constaté que les références envoyées étaient essentiellement des articles scientifiques et qu’il était, de plus, difficile de trouver des articles en français (notre langue maternelle). si nous reconduisons ce format à l’avenir, nous veillerons à inclure une diversité de formats (audio, vidéo, film ou extraits de livres, témoignages, œuvres d’art). (5) parce que les textes envoyés étaient des articles universitaires et que les personnes du grfpq n’étaient pas habituées à lire de tels textes, le coordonnateur organisait des rencontres préparatoires une semaine à l’avance avec elles. ces rencontres préparatoires avaient pour objectif de réunir les personnes qui le souhaitaient afin de préparer le thème de la session de coapprentissage à venir, de commencer les échanges à l’avance et d’aborder certains des enjeux soulevés par les textes. l’idée était de permettre aux membres du grfpq de se sentir plus légitimes dans les échanges avec les autres participant-es. nous avons constaté que cette approche permettait à des personnes qui ont beaucoup de choses à dire, mais qui ne le font pas dans les rencontres dominées par les chercheur-es, de s’exprimer d’avantage. (6) lors de la première session, nous avons partagé nos expériences et engagements personnels relativement aux recherches participatives et à la justice épistémique. il nous semblait important de ne pas simplement partager nos expériences personnelles et professionnelles, mais aussi de clarifier notre positionnalité et notre intersectionnalité et leurs impacts sur notre point de vue. nous avons partagé notre engagement commun à ce que nos discussions et notre travail aient une dimension politique, c’est-à-dire injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 contribue à la réduction des injustices épistémiques et, plus largement, de toutes les autres inégalités systémiques. cela impliquait, tout d’abord, de créer un espace sécuritaire d’échange pour les participant-es, de prendre la parole au ‘je’ en se référant à des lectures ou à des expériences personnelles ou professionnelles, et d’écouter et d’échanger respectueusement avec les autres sans invalider leur point de vue. cela a été possible, en particulier, grâce à une facilitation des échanges qui permettait à chaque personne de s’exprimer en plénière ou en plus petits groupes, sur le sujet en question ou sur le cadre même des échanges, le tout dans une atmosphère amicale. il était particulièrement important à nos yeux de reconnaitre que cet espace était ouvert aux erreurs et aux hésitations, à l’ignorance, ou encore propice à l’expression d’idées, d’intuitions, d’émotions ou de récits de vie sans craindre d’être blessé. les méthodes d’éducation populaire ont facilité l’animation des sessions et favorisé l’expression d’une diversité de points de vue. en fin de rencontre, nous faisions un petit bilan entre nous et le coordonnateur assurait un suivi régulier avec chacune des personnes. malgré cela, cette façon de faire n’a pas empêché que des personnes vivent des injustices épistémiques. par exemple, en dépit de l’environnement inclusif souligné par les participant-es, une personne nous a partagé qu’elle avait senti à plusieurs reprises que son point de vue n’était pas pris en compte et qu’une personne animant un sous-groupe de discussion était trop directive. (7) les échanges étaient enregistrés de manière à produire des comptes-rendus fidèles et exhaustifs de nos échéances. le document était produit par le coordonnateur et les personnes responsables de l’animation des séances, puis partagé sur un google doc avec le reste des personnes pour des ajouts/validations. la production de ces documents nous a permis d’accumuler un ensemble de questionnements, références et questions de recherche qui se trouvent au cœur de notre agenda de recherche. l’écriture de ces documents, reflétant le plus possible la diversité des échanges, des débats et des points de vue a servi de base à plusieurs présentations scientifiques dans des colloques et a également fourni des éléments pour le présent article. par la suite, le premier auteur de l’article a préparé une version de travail pour les co-auteur-es. cette proposition a été corrigée, améliorée et validée collectivement. il ressortait de nos échanges avec les personnes non-universitaires de notre groupe qu’il ne leur serait pas demandé d’écrire des parties d’article, ce qui était jugé comme un fardeau injuste puisque, à l’inverse des universitaires, elles n’étaient pas payées pour le faire, n’avaient pas la formation aux codes de l’écriture scientifique et ne disposaient pas du temps suffisant à consacrer à cette tâche. (8) enfin, la subvention de recherche nous a permis de donner des compensations financières de 100$ canadiens pour la participation des personnes du grfpq à chacune des sessions de coformation. cette compensation était donnée pour reconnaitre l’investissement de temps et la valeur de la contribution des membres du grfpq dans un contexte où les autres membres de l’équipe étaient présents sur leur temps de travail ou parce qu’ils et elles étudiaient dans un domaine étroitement relié. ces sommes ne reconnaissent pas la contribution de ces personnes à leur juste valeur, mais elles constituent un pas dans cette direction. en septembre 2018, la subvention de recherche touchait à sa fin et nous ne pouvions plus maintenir le contrat du coordonnateur. de plus, nous souhaitions ouvrir nos rencontres à davantage de personnes de manière à créer un espace, à montréal, où les personnes se posant des questions similaires pourraient échanger, tout en conservant le même esprit de croisement godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 des savoirs et des points de vue qui avait guidé les sessions de coapprentissage. à partir du mois de septembre 2018, nous avons organisé des séminaires sur des sujets identifiés durant la première année : ‘l’analyse participative dans la recherche: quelles pratiques de co-analyse pour ouvrir ce dernier bastion de la recherche?’ (janvier 2019); ‘décentraliser la recherche et co-construire des savoirs en dehors de l’université’ (mars 2019); ‘vers des relations plus symétriques? stratégies de collaboration entre organismes communautaires et universités’ (juin 2019); et ‘pratique de co-autorat dans les recherches participatives et injustices épistémiques’ (novembre 2019). ces séminaires se sont déroulés au cremis, étaient ouverts à tout le monde, publicisés grâce à une liste d’envoi de nos contacts et sur les médias sociaux, et rassemblaient 20 à 30 personnes à chaque reprise (voir photographie). ils consistaient en une série de courtes présentations par deux ou trois personnes de l’université et des milieux communautaires, des ateliers de travail en petits groupes et des sessions plénières d’échange. ces séminaires étaient orientés sur la présentation de cas d’étude et favorisaient la réflexion sur les recherches participatives comme moyen de réduire les inégalités épistémiques. séminaire sur les pratiques de coanalyse dans les recherches participatives, cremis, montréal, janvier 2019 guide d’autoévaluation sur les injustices épistémiques et les recherches participatives malgré la portée limitée de cette démarche, soulignée précédemment, nous croyons que cette méthodologie de travail a contribué à créer un espace polyphonique favorisant l’expression respectueuse de la diversité des positionnements situés, tout en renforçant notre capacité à réduire certaines asymétries liées aux statuts sociaux et à la perception différenciée de la légitimité des participant-es. en juin 2018, nous avons présenté notre travail d’équipe à l’occasion d’une journée d’étude au cremis sur le thème ‘injustices épistémiques et recherches participatives’ qui a rassemblé 30 personnes, dont 11 membres et employé-e-s de plusieurs organismes communautaires injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 dans le champ de la justice sociale (front commun des personnes assistées sociales du québec, clinique spot, collectif pour un québec sans pauvreté, atd quart monde, relais femme, etc.), ainsi que des chercheur-es et des étudiant-es. la nourriture, le transport et les dédommagements financiers, en plus de nos liens personnels avec ces personnes, ont favorisé la participation du milieu communautaire. conscients que le langage universitaire est une des sources de production et de maintien des inégalités épistémiques, et que des personnes allaient se sentir intimidées ou craindre d’être jugées, nous souhaitions que les participantes puissent interagir par l’art. en matinée, en sous-groupes de cinq personnes, nous avons identifié et discuté de situations dans lesquelles les personnes avaient vécu (ou été témoins) des injustices épistémiques afin de les jouer sous forme de scènes de théâtre. la journée visait également à mettre en valeur des projets de recherche dans lesquels les personnes présentes avaient pris part, en identifiant les stratégies de recherche les plus prometteuses pour réduire les injustices épistémiques, et à créer une communauté de personnes intéressées à approfondir ces questionnements. dès le début de notre démarche, nous souhaitions que nos réflexions mènent à des nouvelles collaborations et aient un impact concret, sans savoir vraiment en quoi cela pourrait consister. d’une part, des chercheur-es exprimaient le besoin de publier les réflexions de l’équipe de manière à établir un dialogue avec la communauté scientifique. d’autre part, des membres d’organismes communautaires et des chercheur-es soulignaient l’importance de rendre les résultats de nos échanges accessibles non seulement à des universitaires, mais également aux organismes communautaires de manière à contribuer à une meilleure reconnaissance de leurs savoirs et contributions aux recherches participatives. cela nous a amené à produire une diversité de textes dans différentes langues (anglais, français, espagnol) ciblant différents publics, tels que des revues scientifiques évaluées par les pairs, des journaux de professionnelle-s de la santé et des services sociaux, et des posts sur des blogues de recherche-action. au fur et à mesure que les échanges progressaient durant la première année, l’idée de créer un outil qui pourrait aider les universitaires et leurs partenaires de recherche à s’engager dans une évaluation réflexive des processus participatifs sous l’angle des injustices épistémiques a émergé. à notre connaissance, aucun des outils et guides disponibles pour aider les chercheures et les groupes communautaires partenaires possédaient cet angle spécifique. nous avons alors décidé que cet outil prendrait la forme d’un guide réflexif qui soulignerait les principaux enjeux discutés durant les sessions de coapprentissage. ce document (voir appendix) est un guide d’autoévaluation organisé en sept sections, chacune contenant plusieurs questions auxquelles les personnes qui participent à un projet de recherche participative peuvent répondre. même si le guide ne s’appuie pas centralement sur la définition des injustices épistémiques donnée par fricker, il prend tout de même en considération les injustices de témoignage et herméneutiques durant le processus de recherche et les interroge du point de vue des membres des différents groupes sociaux qui participent. la définition des injustices épistémiques retenue dans le guide est délibérément large et réfère aux inégalités vécues dans l’accès aux savoirs, à leur reconnaissance et aux rapports sociaux durant le processus de production des connaissances. ce guide peut être appliqué à des projets en cours ou complétés. la présente version est le résultat d’un processus continu d’échanges. la première version a été produite en mai 2018 par deux des coauteurs de l’article et validé par les autres coauteurs. elle a été appliquée à deux projets de recherche participative durant une session de coapprentissage. par la suite, une version a été mise en discussion et enrichie à l’occasion de plusieurs évènements, incluant la journée d’étude de juin 2018 et le colloque injustices épistémiques: comment les comprendre godrie et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/7110/7451 ? comment les réduire? tenu à namur (belgique) les 7 et 8 février 2019. durant ces deux évènements, le guide a été divisé en plusieurs parties et distribué à des groupes qui ont discuté de sa forme et de son contenu. dans le premier évènement, les groupes ont partagé leurs commentaires en session plénière; dans le second, nous avons collecté les commentaires écrits de chacun des groupes. des personnes ont également fait parvenir des commentaires ou des suggestions directement au premier auteur. ces échanges ont conduit à plusieurs améliorations de la version initiale. par exemple, après un séminaire tenu au cremis où nous avons discuté des principes ocap (pour ownership/propriété, control/contrôle, access/accès et protection/protection) développés par les communautés autochtones afin de décoloniser la recherche (first nations information governance centre 2014), nous avons inclus des questions telles que: ‘qui a le droit de mobiliser les résultats de recherche?’ et ‘qui participe au processus de mobilisation des connaissances?’ dans la quatrième (production des savoirs) et la cinquième (mobilisation des savoirs) section du guide. à plusieurs reprises, des membres de groupes communautaires ont argué que l’accès aux savoirs produits durant le processus de recherche, par exemple, sur des formats imprimés ou des copies pdf de documents publiés, et que l’accès aux vidéos et photos prises durant les projets, étaient également une action clé pour favoriser la justice épistémique. les participant-es du colloque de namur ont souligné l’importance de courtcircuiter l’accent mis sur les savoirs universitaires et professionnels dans les échanges afin d’accorder de l’importance aux témoignages, aux récits et aux références de la vie quotidienne, par exemple, à la sagesse populaire et aux proverbes ce qui a également été intégré (voir section 3: les participant-es et leurs savoirs). la présente version est une troisième version et d’autres versions seront développées selon l’usage et les commentaires des personnes qui l’utilisent. ce document est sous licence creative commons cc by 4.0, ce qui permet aux personnes de le partager librement et d’y apporter des modifications en créditant la source originale. conclusion nous avons, dans cet article, présenté une approche participative de production et de mobilisation des connaissances sur le thème des injustices épistémiques et des recherches participatives, en mettant l’accent sur les dimensions méthodologiques, théoriques et épistémologiques de notre agenda de recherche. cette conclusion rappelle les ingrédients essentiels de notre approche, en espérant qu’elle puisse inspirer d’autres groupes de recherches et organismes communautaires. de notre point de vue, les recherches participatives constituent des laboratoires permettant d’observer et de comprendre les injustices épistémiques et, le cas échéant, d’offrir des leviers pour les réduire en permettant la construction de ponts entre les personnes et les savoirs qu’elles détiennent. la relation dialogique entre les chercheur-es en sciences sociales et les représentant-es d’organismes communautaires dont la voix n’est pas souvent entendue apparait comme une composante nécessaire de la justice testimoniale et herméneutique (mccollum 2012). nous croyons que les processus participatifs de recherche sont porteurs de ce potentiel dans la mesure où leur objectif est de clarifier les tensions et les voies de passage entre les différents points de vue ce qui favorise, par la suite, l’émergence de nouvelles sources d’idées et des pratiques. les recherches participatives conduisent également à interroger la division des tâches et la nature des savoirs mobilisés et produits. ce type de recherche nous apparait alors susceptible de permettre aux participants de ‘s’éloigner d’un consensus fondé sur les savoirs injustices épistémiques et recherche participative: un agenda de recherche à la croisée de l’université et des communautés gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 dominants, ou des hypothèses partagées sur le savoir en action, pour permettre à de nouvelles compréhensions d’émerger’ (cook et al. 2019). cependant, les liens entre recherches participatives et réduction des injustices épistémiques ne sont ni évidents ni nécessaires.travailler à établir des relations plus horizontales entre les différents types de savoir et les personnes qui les détiennent demande une attention de tous les instants, d’autant plus que les chercheur-es n’ont pas été formé-e-s pour cela à l’université. et les défis sont d’autant plus importants à relever dans le cas de recherches participatives réalisées avec des membres de groupes stigmatisés qui ont pu connaitre des expériences négatives avec des chercheur-es par le passé tel que souligné particulièrement par smith (2012) ainsi que les participant-es des séminaires. parmi ces expériences figurent: le sentiment d’être instrumentalisé au profit de la carrière de chercheur-es, avoir participé à un projet sans jamais recevoir les résultats ou encore avoir l’impression de perdre un temps précieux à répondre à des préoccupations d’universitaires qui n’ont aucun écho dans la vie quotidienne des personnes qui participent. par conséquent, nous avons placé une attention spécifique sur les enjeux suivants durant l’élaboration et la mise en oeuvre de notre agenda de recherche sur les injustices épistémiques et les recherches participatives au cours des deux dernières années: • situer notre réflexion dans un cadre universitaire et militant sur les injustices épistémiques, en reconnaissant notamment les traditions intellectuelles et les mouvements sociaux à l’origine de ces concepts; • expliciter nos valeurs et notre positionnalité respectivement à la thématique, ce que chacun d’entre nous gagnait (par exemple, rendre visible les rapports sociaux inégalitaires dans la production des connaissances, publier des articles) et risquait potentiellement en participant à ce projet (par exemple, s’exposer à vivre ou à revivre des injustices épistémiques). à notre sens, l’explicitation en continu de notre positionnalité peut devenir une ressource épistémique pour pousser plus loin notre réflexion. l’espace de coapprentissage bâti dans cette perspective visait à créer ce que nicholls (2009, p. 121) qualifie d’‘espace liminal, d’entre-deux favorisant un décentrage grâce à la mise au défi des notions traditionnelles de contrôle objectif entre chercheur-es et participant-es à la recherche’; • nous souhaitions que nos réflexions aient un impact au-delà des membres de notre groupe ce qui nous a mené à créer des séminaires à montréal qui sont toujours en cours. c’est également la raison pour laquelle nous avons produit un guide permettant à des chercheur-es et des membres d’organismes communautaires d’autoévaluer des recherches participatives à la lumière des inégalités épistémiques et de les soutenir dans la réflexion sur la création de relations de recherche plus égalitaires; • travailler à maximiser les espaces où tester la pertinence de ce guide de manière à en assurer le développement dans un processus non linéaire de mobilisation des connaissances. à notre sens, mobiliser les connaissances universitaires et communautaires dès les tous débuts de notre démarche de création d’une équipe de recherche s’inscrit dans une perspective critique de la production universitaire des connaissances (hall & tandon 2017). cette activité participative de mobilisation des connaissances n’est pas une activité technique, mais bien une ‘activité sociopolitique… inscrite dans un réseau sociétal hétérogène avec beaucoup de parties prenantes différentes’ tel que souligné par tineke et al. 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of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 17 http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483399164.n5 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: buire, c. 2022. ‘histórias do kakwaku’, an experience of collective documentary film-making in the periphery of luanda, angola. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8208 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article ‘histórias do kakwaku’, an experience of collective documentary film-making in the periphery of luanda, angola chloé buire1 1 ifas research – cnrs, po box 31551, braamfontein, johannesburg 2017, south africa corresponding author: chloé buire; chloe.buire@cnrs.fr doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8208 article history: received 31/05/2022; revised 22/07/2022; accepted 10/09/2022; published 12/2022. abstract this article reflects on histórias do kakwaku, a documentary film about social activism in the urban margins of luanda, produced as part of a partnership between myself, an academic working on urban citizenship, and an angolan political youth organisation, projecto agir. the article details the whole process of collective film-making and questions the impact of this method on the film-makers, both individually and collectively. from our initial brainstorming sessions to our final editing decisions on the computer, i show how we slowly drifted away from the initial political objectives dictated by the organisers of projecto agir and opened unexpected spaces for engagement that allowed us ‘to see together without claiming to be another’ (haraway 1991). following the chronological steps of collective film-making, we used practice as a point of departure from which to approach storytelling more broadly. although i provide practical details about our logistics, our equipment and our working documents, this is not a one-size-fits-all recipe for collective documentary film-making. rather, the focus is on what can be described as an exercise in intersubjective writing, neither entirely under control nor totally serendipitous. i argue that telling a story in images, words and sounds is a dynamic process, open to constant reinterpretation. combining the unpredictability of collective writing with the somewhat narrow imperatives of audiovisual storytelling creates an opportunity to question participatory research beyond the binary of the researcher and the researched. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8208 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8208 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:chloe.buire@cnrs.fr https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8208 keywords collaborative film-making; intersubjectivity; storytelling; youth; community politics; angola introduction tuesday 11th of may – the session started with the ‘usual suspects’ with whom i start to have a good relationship but bit by bit, more people arrived. at noon, there were two dozens of young people under the shade of the big acacia. i was quite unsettled. from the start, i made it clear that i would not be able to train more than 8 to 10 participants. the discussion i hoped to have turned into a one-way class. anyway, we still managed to come up with a few key points to help us define the objectives of the movie. thursday 20th of may – only five people showed up today. the long introduction i gave about ethics of research and the importance of detailed writing before pressing any recording button must have deterred most of those who came last time! those who came today were more engaged though. they liked the idea of interviewing people in their neighbourhood even if it is still not very clear what they will be asking. it is not easy for them to move beyond the official motto of the organisation. tuesday 1st of june – writing session with the group who will work in bairro bate chapa. the initial idea was to investigate what is going on with the water plant that causes regular flooding but other topics came up: the street fights that burst out almost every night, the abandonment of the cultural centre, the small businesses launched by the youth. nelo is excited to interview the local administrator but sambongo is skeptical the man will speak to us. branca and yepuka seem more interested in getting footages of daily life. this article reflects on the creation of a documentary film made in 2021–2022 as part of a three-year political ethnography i led in luanda, angola. the general objective of the research was to document the emergence of new spaces for political expression in the context of the transition away from josé eduardo dos santos’s long-standing regime (1979–2017). projecto agir is one of the organisations i have been following closely since its informal beginning in 2017. it reached a political climax in 2020 when it headed a strong lobbying campaign for the adoption of the legislative framework that would allow the organisation of local elections. at the time of writing, it is one of the leading organisations in a broad movement of community-based political organisations in angola. the political work of projecto agir is beyond the scope of this article, but it is important to note that the method i present here was developed not only as part of my own academic research project, but also as part of the effort of my partner in developing its skills in terms of communication and marketing. the individual motivations of my co-film-makers also shaped our collective engagement and opened the film up to horizons beyond the organisation’s general objectives. in discussing our film, histórias do kakwaku (the film is available in english at: https://youtu.be/1jcqnfcqdm), i do not offer a replicable model of collaborative film-making, nor do i advocate for a specific school of participatory visual method (for a critical overview of these methods, see pauwells 2015). more humbly, i want to uncover the different phases of this work and the multilayered questions raised along the way. i argue that the obstacles we faced obliged each participant to try and think through the position of others, eventually opening up what i call a ‘space of intersubjectivity’. some obstacles were primarily practical and technical and were resolved with some adaptive bricolage. others related to the underlying power dynamics that exist in any participatory project. our take on these followed the principles of feminist epistemologies. we approached the film as ‘a dialogic process [that could] enable communities to critically analyse their own “realities” and to explore the construction of meaning’ (kindon 2001, p. 143). in order to interrogate the ‘transformative potential’ of this work, the article focuses buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 https://youtu.be/1jcqnf-cqdm https://youtu.be/1jcqnf-cqdm on the key exercise of film-making, namely how to tell a story with sounds and pictures. whose story are we telling? how do we make sure we will be heard? and by whom? those questions are, of course, difficult and will probably not be fully answered, but they are an invitation to think of our film as a reflective device, i.e. a tool that allows us to look at ourselves in a mirror, but also to reflect on our impact beyond the movie itself. i contend that because we had to navigate multiple authorial intentions and face multiple practical limitations along the way, we eventually shifted our initial viewpoints and ended up creating a story that none of us would have been able to write on our own. in histórias do kakwaku, we bring together forms of expression that are usually disconnected from each another. the result is a documentary that is inspired by the approach of rouchian direct cinema, but also embraces a broad spectrum of audiovisual forms, from classic political interviews to dance videos, to self-promotion videos and eye-to-eye testimonies. we intend to speak to the constituency of projecto agir and also send our film to indie film festivals. admitting to this fairly loose framing is also to acknowledge that the reflective potential of our film is still very much unfolding. at the time of writing, histórias do kakwaku premiered during a small ceremony we organised in cacuaco (december 2021). it was a finalist in one of the very few film festivals in angola (cinefest viana, july 2022). more screenings are programmed, mostly in the various communities with whom projecto agir works regularly. the paper is organised in three sections, corresponding to the three phases of production of the movie. the first covers the training workshops we held in may and june 2021, during which we established the main objectives of the movie and wrote our synopsis. this phase was dedicated in part to technical training, but mostly involved discussions about the ethics of fieldwork and the difference between propaganda and documentation. the second section focuses on the actual making of the film, both on-site (shooting) and on the computer (editing). contrary to common belief, holding a camera, managing the record levels of a microphone and using editing software are not straightforward technical tasks. they imply choices that eventually affect the narration, and thus the story itself. the third section questions the impact of this process. histórias do kakwaku stands between the two ‘strands of participatory media projects’ identified by luttrell and chalfen (2010, p. 197). it belongs to projects in which ‘image-making and specific images […] represent a mid-point rather than an end-point in knowledge production, interventions and social action’. the process is as important as the result. this is true not only for me, who, as an academic, gained precious insight to the politics of community organising, but also for each participant who was introduced to the world of film-making and now will take her learning to the next level. in interrogating the field of social action, our work eventually led to the question of listening. making a film together taught us to listen to one another and, more radically, to listen to new opportunities, beyond what we thought we knew about ourselves, and luanda and angola in general. finding our story, or the slow process of writing a film collectively the decision to make a documentary film with the members of projecto agir was two-fold. on the one hand, understanding popular politics is at the core of my research interests, and film-making is one of my preferred research methods for it allows me to contribute concretely to the needs of the people i work with. i adhere to the idea that sharing the tools of my research is a way to de-centre my own gaze while giving others a direct entry into the research. as luttrell and chalfen (2010, p. 198) attest: there is a ubiquitous invocation that participatory visual research is valued for its ability to ‘give voice’ to marginalised, less powerful people. the tacit assumption is that putting cameras into the hands of participants is a resource for having ‘a say’ in public discourse and decision-making. buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 on the other hand, the very creation of projecto agir came from the realisation by angolan grassroots activists that they needed to market their political work in a more media-friendly way and to ground their action in the daily life of their own communities rather than in the competition between political parties. my concern to ‘give voice’ to the activists quite naturally met their own strategic objectives. however, this natural meeting of interests is not to be taken naively. luttrell and chalfen, cited above, continue: ‘yet, how is “voice” being conceptualised, produced and analysed through these different collaborations? with what certainty can we attribute whose voice is whose?”’ although i prefer the word ‘story’ for it better conveys the narrative dimension of a movie, these questions about ‘whose voice is whose’ were very much at the core of our project from the start. by the time covid-related restrictions eased enough to allow the workshops to begin, i had been following the organisation for more than a year, and i knew it had been through some serious internal turmoil. the new leadership was lacking in multimedia skills and the lobbying campaign was losing its momentum as the local elections, initially planned for 2020, had been shelved. projecto agir was now focusing on outreach programs. it needed to demonstrate its electoral credibility, should the elections finally happen, while trying to convince the ruling party that they could be viable partners in the meantime. in that context, projecto agir’s executives saw our collaboration as a means to legitimate their work and their agenda. ‘the film must serve to present the actions of projecto agir to social networks and to the angolan political authorities in order to re-assert the role of projecto agir in the struggle for the implementation of elected local governments’ was their wording. i shared their diagnosis of the angolan state as being excessively centralised and systematically biased to favour the ruling party. however, my observation of projecto agir had also made me realise that the organisation reproduced some of the malfunctions it criticised. it was quite hierarchical. its leaders were dedicated and charismatic, but they were more at ease showcasing their academic eloquence than engaging in mundane community work. i had hoped that making a movie together would help me scratch off the varnish of formalism and empower them to find new ways of engaging with their public. this was certainly naive of me, but all in all, i can affirm that we started the project on the basis of genuine respect and reciprocal curiosity about what would come out of our collaboration. we agreed that projecto agir’s leaders would select up to 10 participants to work with me and that they would be in charge of circulating the information internally. after our second workshop, the terms of engagement were clear to everyone. i was the coordinator of the project; i decided on the content of the training, managed the calendar and kept track of our conversations via a powerpoint document that i updated after each session. the participants committed to identify the key themes of our film, the people we should interview, the places where it was safe and interesting to film, etc. a clear mistake i made was that i assumed that the participants had a common idea of the film they wanted to make. moreover, i took for granted that the official discourse held by the board members of the organisation was what our movie was meant to be about. although two board members actively contributed to writing the movie, they did not participate in the ‘making phase’, probably because they saw it as a training reserved for the foot soldiers. in fact, the seven grassroots members chosen for the project did not hold a formal position in the leadership of the organisation. while the board members held formal jobs as teachers in local high schools, the foot soldiers were either high school students, self-employed or unemployed. i must admit that i had not anticipated this implicit hierarchy and, more problematically, i did not allow much space for the expectations of those who would eventually become the actual film-makers in this project. felix, yepuka, josé, ivonny, nelo, albano and branca were present and active during the first sessions, but they only took ownership of the film when we started working in smaller groups and focusing on the documentary aspect of the movie, rather than on its propaganda objective (see figure 1). buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 objectives of the movie synopsis sequences to be shot as planned on 20th may – in bold what was actually shot 1. to present the actions of pa 1a. seminar about national reconciliation and autarquias 1b. litter-picking up activity > to be organised 1c. soup kitchen > using archives from pa 2. to present the general context of the citizens’ struggle for the implementation of autarquias 2a. pictures from the protest 2b. scans of the docs produced by pa during the lobbying campaign 2c. interview with spokesperson and/or president of pa 3. to show pa’s capacity to participate in parliamentary debates **this objective does not require a specific sequence, it will be reflected in 1a, 2b and 2c** 4. to explain what is at stake with the legislative package 4a. interview with a law specialist from pa 4b. reproduction of key documents (pieces of legislation) 5. to document cacuaco’s social and environmental realities 5a. problem of the water in bairro bate-chapa: how an infrastructural problem ends up causing social problems 5b. problem of the fallen bridge in bairro paraíso: connect local problems to broader urban failures at the scale of luanda **1b will also respond to this objective** 6. to present the solutions developed by the citizens 6a. short documentary about a community project that is not a direct initiative from pa **this objective will also come through seq. 5a and 5b** figure 1. from general objectives to synopsis (adapted from the notes taken during the writing sessions in may 2021) figure 1 shows the progressive refining of our synopsis. over the course of four weeks, we focused on the script, alternating between formal lectures and hands-on practice. the first day, we discussed the main objectives and arrived at a list of six key themes, four of which were dedicated to the internal life of projecto agir (objectives 1 to 4). this shows how strong the initial impetus was to produce a propaganda film of the organisation rather than a documentary. the last two objectives, however, attracted most of the attention of the participants. josé and nelo, in particular, were eager to make sure that their neighbourhood would be represented in the film, so both of them took responsibility for coordinating the shooting phase, respectively in paraíso and bate chapa. only sambongo volunteered to develop the first four objectives. the objectives (numbered 1 to 6) were then broken down into thematic sequences – or secondary stories (1a, 1b, 1c, 2a etc). it was only then that we established smaller groups to list more precisely the audiovisual materials to be collected for each sequence. filming the internal life of projecto agir did not raise much enthusiasm. the team filmed only one seminar and shot two interviews. the groups in charge of collecting materials outside the organisation were much more dynamic. they decided to start in bairro bate chapa. after two hours of discussion, what was initially numbered ‘sequence buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 5a’ had transformed into a little documentary on its own (see figure 2). new themes appeared: criminality, failing cultural institutions, youth entrepreneurship. undoubtedly, these themes echoed the personal concerns of the participants who came that day. they mirrored the challenges faced by young people rather than the rhetoric of a political movement. i think it was at this stage that i realised there were several stories in our film and that my job would be to somehow reconcile them. i had no idea how to do so. figure 2. the blackboard summarising the synopsis of the sequence dedicated to bairro chapa. the themes defined on that day were also used to guide the second team in bairro paraíso. photo by the author, 01/06/21 during these first sessions, i introduced the team to the equipment. this included two ‘pixel 4’ smartphones, two external microphones (rode videomic me) and two tripods (one standard and one tabletop). we made various tests of video and sound recording. i also demonstrated how to use a semiprofessional audio recorder (zoom h4n) and a small lapel microphone (rode smartlav). it was crucial for me that the team realised the importance of capturing clear sounds to ensure the movie’s success. the time spent using the equipment contributed to building our team. because all of them were members of projecto air, i thought they were used to working collaboratively, but i soon realised that they expected to execute tasks, rather than take decisions on their own. we had lots of fun rehearsing various shooting situations, such as a group discussion on the street or a portrait of someone at work. we spoke about the beauty and challenges of natural light, and i called their attention to the importance of bringing the camera to the eye level of the person we were interviewing. from this rose discussion about the ethical and political implications of our work. buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 we therefore debated whether or not we would show the faces of children. our decision was to remain true to what we saw on the street. if children happened to be there, we would ask their permission, and if an adult related to them was there, we would double-check this oral consent. we would neither lie on our purpose nor selfcensor. the bottom line was never to capture anyone’s image without their permission. in angola, filming on the street is still generally perceived as a risky endeavour that can be interrupted by the police at any time. for most activists, hidden cameras remain the safest way to produce images. another debate arose about the ubiquitous presence of dumpsites. lack of garbage collection was an important item on projecto agir’s agenda and, as shown in figure 1, we had initially planned to shoot a litter collection activity. but during training, we discussed the delicate balance between denouncing the hardships of the people and building a positive image of cacuaco. some participants were very reluctant to show dirty streets, antisocial behaviour or signs of poverty. others envisioned the film as a provocation addressed to the government and wanted to amplify everything that was wrong in cacuaco. i tried to frame the debate by recalling that fiction and documentary are on the same continuum. no documentary ever represents ‘the untouched reality’. even the most controlled propaganda film always tells us something beyond the utopia imagined by the film-maker. in the end, we did not shoot the sequence about rubbish but included various views of sandy roads full of litter. the training phase was therefore not just about learning where the rec button is on the camera, but included broader reflection on where, how and why we would film one thing in preference to another. writing is never a straightforward process. in the context of collective documentary film-making, it is primarily about building a triangulation that includes everyone’s individual expectations, the constraints of the particular field about to be documented, and the untold expectations the project reveals. in our case, the elephant in the room was the idea that the board of projecto agir had a specific idea of what the film should be about. figure 3 summarises this triangle as a dialectic between three kinds of stories: the stories we imagine for ourselves, those we think others have in mind, and those that are dictated by the environment. figure 3. the triangulation of collective film writing: creating a space for intersubjectivity buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 the triangle is useful as it captures the idea of intersubjectivity by materialising the ‘space-in-between’ that does not belong to anyone but can be seized by everyone. it helps to move beyond the common description of the participatory approach as a binary relationship between the researcher and the researched (usually called ‘the participants’ in the plural form but imagined as a uniform partner). sara kindon (2003) does not speak directly about intersubjectivity, but her focus on the multiple relationships at play in her research is very close to my argument here. quoting from donna haraway’s famous essay about situated knowledge, she contends that ‘participatory video demands critical attention to the exercise of power within research relationships, it challenges us to explore reflexive ways that enable us to “join with another, to see together without claiming to be another”’ (haraway 1991, p. 193; kindon 2003, p. 146). i like very much the cautious phrasing borrowed from haraway. in the process of making histórias do kakwaku, we were indeed often tempted to ‘claim to be another’. when we watched the footage to select what would eventually be included in the film, we often had lively discussions about what people actually wanted to say in their interviews and whether that was relevant to us at all. in the next section, this process is presented in more detail. how did we actually make the movie we wrote? what practical solutions did we develop to allow a fairer distribution of power amongst us? here again, kindon (2003, p. 149) provides an important background to the discussion: ‘the challenge, as i see it (!), is to be more explicit about the power involved in how we work with video, to democratize its use in ways that embrace multiple and partial ways of looking and open up new possibilities for knowledge.’ so, how did we create a movie that reflects our ‘multiple and partial ways of looking?’ making the film or how practical constraints are also a part of storytelling the phase of shooting on the streets of their neighbourhoods and in the houses of their friends and relatives was undoubtedly the part that raised most expectation and enthusiasm from my fellow film-makers. yepuka, ivonny and albano already had a bit of experience in music video making. felix knew from the start that he wanted to develop film-making as a professional skill and he has since been extending his training with other workshops across luanda. however, i was pretty insecure in my position, so instead of assisting them on the ground, i decided to just accompany them to each neighbourhood on the first day and then let them get to work. the idea was that they would not be dependent on my schedule to plan their interviews and could be spontaneous and record whatever occurred that fit with our script. it is important to emphasise that the pedagogy was to be mundane and practical. it takes me thirty to forty minutes to come to cacuaco, i am not able to navigate the sandy streets of a remote neighbourhood like paraíso alone. having to wait for me is clearly a burden. more importantly, as a white woman, my presence on the street always raises interrogations or even concern. ordinary residents fear that i represent a private company seeking to evict them from their home. official representatives fear that i come to spy on their work. they are also more likely to report my presence to their superiors than to monitor a handful of young residents playing around with smartphones. and, of course, for my partners, having me around when they had to frame their images and set their microphones up added a lot of pressure since i would inevitably made them feel as students under the scrutiny of their professor. initially i thought that we would be able to screen the footage after each shoot, but it proved logistically impossible as most ended up being collected over three to five days. nelo, who was responsible for the filming in bate chapa, explained to the team in paraíso that it was better to work intensively: ‘stick to the people you already know, you don’t need to go and interview strangers, speak to your family, your friends and in a few hours it’s done!’ this comment unsettled me as i thought it was important for them to approach outsiders. i later realised that it was the familiarity between them and their subject that made our film unique. buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 my stepping out of the filming process was thus extremely important to allow our intersubjectivity to grow in new directions. each participant used these moments of filming differently but creatively. for example, josé woke up at 4 am to film the tuktuk that supplies fresh bread to his corner store. he did this on his own and did not hesitate to include himself in the movie using the ‘selfie’ mode on the camera. while the footage was shaky and partly unusable, we managed to secure enough images to introduce our movie with a dynamic early-morning bike-ride on the streets of paraíso. another good example of creativity beyond the script was yepuka’s interview. yepuka was the only member of our team who also appeared as a character in the movie. we initially planned to film him during a dance class in cacuaco, but his classes were suspended due to covid restrictions. instead, yepuka performed a solo dance and delivered a very short monologue, his eyes centred on the lens of the camera. retrospectively, i realised that only felix and branca closely followed the directions given during the training phase. their footage focused on the gestures of their subjects. felix interviewed elisa for about 20 minutes, but spent the whole afternoon with her in order to collect footage of all aspects of her work as a stylist, from cutting the fabric to improvising a catwalk in her living room. branca very patiently filmed the students in the modest classroom of cantinho do saber, a community project set up by nelo’s brother in response to the lack of public schools in his neighbourhood. in both cases, the footage is technically quite rich. they give our film a solid backbone in terms of documentary value. they also convey a sensibility and a certain sense of propriety that a professional camera operator might not have captured. these examples suggest that logistical autonomy resulted in stylistic freedom. this of course didn’t come without downsides. the fact that i couldn’t check the footage in real time meant that recurrent technical mistakes were made. we only noticed them afterwards, when it was not possible to repeat the filming. collecting such diverse and technically different materials also forced us to reconsider our synopsis quite figure 4. rewriting scenario 1: organising our footage around the themes raised in the interviews buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 radically. figure 4 is a reproduction of the notes i took during a session with felix in july 2021. after listening carefully to bengue and sambongo’s interviews, we realised that we would need to break them up into thematic sequences and build a dialogue between the two. we used a colour code to distinguish between our different materials: green, the interview with bengue; light blue, the interview with sambongo; purple for the ‘documentary’ parts; dark blue for our rephrasing of the sequences. a few days later, we presented our ideas to the rest of the team and that led to another document (figure 5). this time, the presentation was closer to an editing plan, i.e. a chronological presentation of the themes covered in the film. in this document, the four sections are entitled ‘context’, ‘projecto agir’s philosophy’, ‘projecto agir’s actions’, ‘impact and perspectives’. we later used this four-part structure to organise our workflow on the editing software, where we re-named them ‘context’, ‘solutions’, ‘actions’ and ‘conclusion’. figure 5. rewriting scenario 2: an editing plan in four sections figures 4 and 5 illustrate the power balance that was created during this last phase of editing. i was the one holding the pen and took the lead in defining the narrative backbone of the movie. i was cautious not to foreclose alternative ideas, but i must acknowledge that i did not anticipate how challenging the editing phase would be. it was virtually impossible for my fellow film-makers to make counter suggestions since they had no experience in preparing an editing plan. we collected more than 20 hours of video, including ten interviews, two seminars, two dance sessions and one long motorbike ride, in addition to numerous improvised recordings on the street. as we reviewed the material, we found that many files were unusable, either because of the quality of the video (too shaky, too much movement, low light), or of the audio (microphone plugged in incorrectly, background noise), or buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 simply because they were too short or unrelated to other footage. although no-one complained, i believe this assessment was not welcomed by my partners who had spent a lot of time organising interviews only to find that we could not use them for the film. another technical problem was that the smartphones turned out to be very sensitive to heat, requiring them to stop recording to let the phones cool down. here again, they didn’t want to inform me about this difficulty as they didn’t want to be seen to be complaining, as they considered it a privilege to use the equipment. in the editing phase we also faced more structural obstacles. in terms of logistics, we now had to work in an office space in town. instead of going to cacuaco in my private car, they had to commute by public transport. financial costs could be compensated but not the hour-long trip to the city. still today, i wonder whether this physical distancing from projecto agir’s territory played a role in the progressive loosening of our narrative. compared to the story we had written in cacuaco, the movie we edited in town amplifies the life, creativity and entrepreneurship of the youth in general while downplaying the political discourse of the organisation itself. last but not least, our collaboration, which had been pretty hands-on so far, took quite an academic turn when we started working on the computer. firstly, each film-maker roughly transcribed a couple of interviews and identified the bits that echoed each other. figure 6 shows how much this exercise relied on the writing capacity of the transcriber. secondly, we discussed whether the messages conveyed by the people interviewed corresponded to the political vision of projecto agir. for example, many young people interviewed on the street complained about the lack of state intervention but did not suggest any solutions. should we retain the complaints (for they reflect a common stance) or should we instead focus on those who offered solutions (which was the position of projecto agir)? in other instances, interviewees emphasised their entrepreneurship mindsets and encouraged others to follow their steps, but tended to evade structural difficulties and systemic obstacles. should we encourage their optimism or balance it with our perception of the challenges they faced? once again, not all of us were interested in unravelling the ‘hidden scripts’ in our interviews. nelo and albano were overtly skeptical when they realised we could spend a full hour discussing which of three sentences we would keep. felix and josé, on the other hand, were delighted to bring the rhetoric of projecto agir into question. do we have to include those lengthy legal explanations about the constitutionality of local elections? can we just say that projecto agir is a ‘citizens’ organisation’ without referring to the debate on registration as an ngo versus a political party? yepuka and ivonny, who were more familiar with the aesthetics of music videos, were instrumental in creating artistic sequences based on performances rather than speeches. we spent a full month finalising the first version of the movie. i felt sometimes profoundly challenged by our discussions. the neat division of labour between facilitator and participants was long gone, and i felt insecure giving my own interpretation on some topics that touched directly on the political strategy of projecto agir. however, i believe that, when filming or editing, we somehow found a balance between following our initial script and exploring new directions, between building a solid sense of common purpose and allowing free space for individual visions, and between ‘doing the job’ and having fun. taking a step back from the film-making process itself, i believe this experience, as a whole, sheds new light on the question of ‘co-authorship’. in making histórias do kakwaku, different people were involved in different ways at different times. the film reflects this diversity and certainly delivers a multi-layered message. those who are familiar with the political agenda of projecto agir might feel that the message of advocacy for local elections is too enmeshed in the stories of ordinary citizens. on the other hand, a young man who saw the movie when it premiered in cacuaco in december 2021 expressed a certain disappointment for he had expected a proper socio-political diagnostic. to him, our documentary failed to buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 reflect on the key question of unemployment, for example. this testimony opens an important question: what happens next? once the movie is finished, once it has its own autonomous life through public screenings here and there, the collective dynamic of our film-makers’ team comes to an end. each one of us now has to use this experience to build his or her own ‘next step’. figure 6. hand-written transcription of the interview with joão muimba mukongo by felix and nelo – in red the first selection of relevant extracts, in blue the timecode used for final editing buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 ‘and now that we’ve made the movie, what does it make us?’ a few months after we released the film, felix sent me a message: ‘now that we’ve made a movie, what does it make us? are we journalists? film-makers? sociologists?’. the question was put jokingly, for felix knows how uncomfortable i am with giving titles to people, but it says something of the professional expectations that his participation in the project had raised. when luttrell and chalfen (2010) stress that, in the more academic strand of participatory visual methods, the final product is only a portion of what matters, they do not only refer to the benefits of the approach for the academic facilitators but also insist on the notion of ‘voice’ for everyone involved in the research. they contend that by ‘lifting up voices’, participatory visual research enhances ‘a capacity for reflection, commentary, perspicacity, creativity and reflexivity about oneself in relation to one’s social context’ (luttrell & chalfen 2010, p. 199). i’d like to dedicate the last section of this article to a few hypotheses about how histórias do kakwaku might contribute to lifting up the voices of those who made it. although we did not conduct specific sessions about our introspective journeys, each of us testified to our individual transformation at one stage or another. nelo, for example, told me that he now watches the news differently. he has noticed that many interviews are heavily edited and that what he thought were neutral reports are always the product of storytelling. his criticism goes beyond a mere denunciation of state-owned media propaganda. he explained that news reports include illustrative shots that are not related to what people say. we discussed the difference between mere cutaway shots and more problematic trends of manipulation. i had many moments of reflexivity myself, but the one that struck me most came in november 2021, when felix and i presented the first five minutes of our ‘almost-done’ film to an academic audience (mostly architecture and planning students). when asked about what we learnt during the experience, he said that he had met new companions. from the beginning, i had taken for granted that they all knew each other from their common engagement in projecto agir. i had not realised how much their friendship actually came from participating in the workshop. worse, i had assumed that because they were part of one particular youth political movement, they were automatically friends and somehow all thought alike. when felix highlighted that these new friendships meant new horizons, i realised how much our workshop had been a social and personal journey, a discovery of the power of our voices. more pragmatically, making this movie provided us with a ‘first experience’ that opened up new spaces of engagement. although i had conducted participatory visual research before (buire, garçon & torkaman-rad 2019; buire 2021), i had never made a collective documentary. in december 2021, i had an opportunity to organise another workshop , in partnership with ingrid bamberg, a sociologist specialising in participatory visual methods. the four-day workshop culminated with an exhibition that can be consulted online: https://microlab.hypotheses.org/678. on this occasion, i discovered the principles of photovoice, developed by the centre for visual methodologies for social change (university of the kwazulunatal) and had the privilege to share the training space with famous south african photographer cedric nunn, who used documentary photography as a weapon against apartheid in the 1980s. the film-makers of historias de kakwaku participated in the workshop alongside nine other young audiovisual creatives, amongst whom several had won prizes for their photographic and/or filmic work, and two were enrolled in a university course in cinema and television. the encounter between those ‘informed amateurs’ and the freshly proclaimed film-makers from cacuaco was spectacular. i was deeply touched to witness how the novices i had met a few months earlier had grown into confident film-makers able to converse about the politics of representation, typologies of visual activism or dialectics of the self and the other. the experience of film-making changed from being a personal education opportunity to being a common language for thinking about social change (the theme of the photovoice workshop led by ingrid). sara buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202213 https://microlab.hypotheses.org/678 kindon (2001, p. 143) describes this ability of participatory video to move past the individual in order to unsettle structural inertia as its ‘transformative potential’. such a dialogic process can enable communities to critically analyse their own ‘realities’ and to explore the construction of meaning. this collaborative and negotiated use of video has considerable transformative potential, not only in terms of the action it may generate, but also in terms of the structure of relationships between the researcher and research participants. new collaborations developed after this workshop. felix currently works on a music video with one of the ‘artivists’ he met there. another participant, specialised in sound-editing helped me finalise the postproduction of histórias do kakwaku. it is of course impossible to quantify the bonds we created with each other, but these friendships constitute a real social capital and translate into concrete opportunities. if i was far from confident that i would be able to meet their training expectations when we started the film, i was finally reassured: the young men and women who worked with me have the resources to craft their own platforms. of course, they gained new technical skills in film-making and discovered the arcane of storytelling. they also engaged in difficult discussions about deontology and made their own choices between political marketing, cultural mediation and sociological exploration. interestingly, these outcomes are quite remote from the initial objectives we had imagined. i opened this article with three short summaries of my field notes in may 2021. at the time, i imagined that our film would help me access the political imagination of projecto agir and the leaders of the organisation hoped that they would train their media team in the art of political marketing. a year later, we’ve grown into a bunch of film-makers who are engaged, curious and critical of ready-made solutions. we built our movie as a careful navigation among various viewpoints. histórias do kakwaku is probably too many things (a documentary, a music video, a student project …), but it cannot be accused of being a mere mouthpiece for projecto agir. as far as i’m concerned, i feel that it eventually conveys a veiled critique of projecto agir. as film-makers in charge of editing the interviews of two leaders of the organisation, we could not fail to notice that part of their discourse loops on itself. we had to cut out the intricate digressions about legal considerations for they were demonstrations of eloquence rather than clear explanations for the neophytes. we also realised that many propositions merely paraphrased the official motto (‘my community, my priority’) without fleshing out how this ideology translates in the community. a few spectators confessed that they wished to see more of the work of projecto agir on the ground and suggested we add footage. in fact, histórias do kakwaku already covers the whole range of the organisation’s activist routine. it includes the interviews and political analyses provided by the leaders of the movement to local media, the seminars organised in their headquarters, and the more informal talks given to community members (often associated with a ‘cultural event’, such as a talent show or an ephemeral street library). the power of documentary filmmaking resides precisely in its capacity to contrast verbal claims (projecto agir presents itself as a champion of community empowerment) with effective actions (projecto agir works mainly as a promoter of political debate and cultural entertainment). the discrepancy between what spectators expected to see and what we actually captured on the ground links the question of voice to the reception of the film. who does histórias do kakwaku speak to? who will see it and what will they make of it? to borrow the concept developed by tiffany fairey (2018, p. 122), who will listen to it? the promise of participatory photography projects lies not only with who is taking the pictures but also with the people who are looking at them and who take them seriously. ‘[…] if we are to adequately listen to marginal voices we have to learn to listen to stories that might sometimes be unsettling or painful, histories that are uncomfortable, perspectives that are critical, told in buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202214 languages that are not familiar or easy to understand. […] the need is for projects to not only support communities to negotiate their voice but to work to ensure that those voices are listened to. fairey speaks here in the context of institutional participatory photography projects where ‘the images produced hold a communications currency that the ngo inevitably needs to control’ (2018, p. 121). in our case, the fact that the film did not respond exclusively to projecto agir, but also followed my own academic questions, probably made it easier for us to tell a story that is open to multiple interpretations. fairey (ibid., p. 122) calls the facilitators of participatory visual projects to ‘commit to being transparent about their production processes and to creat[e] multiple sites and ways for representing and understanding the issues at stake’. i hope the present article is a first step in that direction. conclusion in this article, i intended to reflect on participatory film-making, not only as a practical tool for engaged scholarship, but more fundamentally as a method of storytelling that opens unpredictable spaces of intersubjectivity. from framing our initial narrative intentions to making our final editorial choices, we juggled between multiple expectations and sometimes contradictory narratives. as the facilitator of the project, i maintained a certain power over the whole process. i was the one who knew what a synopsis is and how to import, cut and edit footage on the computer. i did impose minimal aesthetic choices (such as avoiding camera’s movements or shooting interviews on a tripod). but i did not choose the people we interviewed, nor did i conduct the interviews or intervene in the transcription and summary coding of the interviews. all of this resulted in our movie being a de facto experimentation in what could be called ‘intersubjective writing’. none of us really made the movie he or she had imagined. but neither did we merely enact what we thought others were expecting from us. the fact that we were working with audiovisual material brought its own challenges, and we had to make adjustments to our story depending on the quality of our footage. this was difficult to accept at first, but eventually helped us to narrow the story and keep our focus on what really mattered. the working documents presented throughout the article are testimony to how we achieved this. as a result, histórias do kakwaku is best described as a documentary collage rather than a film. we even sidelined our initial political objectives by giving a voice to artistic performances, accounts of selfentrepreneurship and records of daily life. in donna haraway’s words, our film experiments with what it means ‘to see together without claiming to be another’. histórias do kakwaku is not tailored to be shown in film festivals. its technical profile is too low, its narrative frame too loose, its production context too vague. tiffany fairey’s reflection on listening provides an interesting counterpoint to our endeavour. borrowing from dreher’s (2010) reflection on the politics of listening, fairey insists that in facilitating participatory photography projects, learning to listen is a whole process in itself. how do we listen to each other, and how do we listen to what unsettles our certainties? this deserves an article of its own, but i hope i have provided a few answers by reflecting on how each of us who participated in the making of histórias do kakwaku took this experience further. the impact of our work can be felt on both a personal and an interpersonal level. we slightly derailed the expectations of projecto agir and we played with the rules of academic engagement. by doing so, we grew confidence in our capacity to build our own voice and we started to listen to others. we also acquired new vocabularies that will allow us to reach out to other partners. i do not claim that collective film-making grows the seeds of revolution, but our experiment shows that it does allow a partial rewiring of social relations that extends beyond the binary coupling of researcher and researched. i can only hope for more projects to develop, for spaces of intersubjectivity to grow bigger and buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202215 for researchers to keep losing control in order to challenge the boundaries of what can be heard, in academia and beyond. references buire, c, garçon, l & torkaman-rad, e 2019, ‘partager la géographie. regards croisés sur l’audiovisuel participatif ’, revue française des méthodes visuelles, vol. 3. https://rfmv.msha.fr/numeros/3/articles/5-partager-lageographie/ buire, c 2021, ‘engaging with social cohesion as an ethnographer: opportunities and pitfalls of a participatory audiovisual method’, lesedi, vol. 24, https://issuu.com/french-institute/docs/2021-lesedi24 dreher, t 2010, ‘speaking up or being heard? community media interventions and the politics of listening’, media, culture and society, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 85–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443709350099 fairey, t 2018, ‘whose photo? whose voice? who listens? ‘giving,’ silencing and listening to voice in participatory visual projects’, visual studies, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 111–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2017.1389301 haraway, d 1991, simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, free association books, london. kindon, s 2003, ‘participatory video in geographic research: a feminist practice of looking?’, area, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 142–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4762.00236 luttrell, l & chalfen, r 2010, ‘lifting up voices of participatory visual research’, visual studies, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 197–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2010.523270 pauwels, l 2015, ‘participatory’ visual research revisited: a critical-constructive assessment of epistemological, methodological and social activist tenets’, ethnography, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 95–117. https://doi. org/10.1177/1466138113505023 buire gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202216 https://rfmv.msha.fr/numeros/3/articles/5-partager-la-geographie/ https://rfmv.msha.fr/numeros/3/articles/5-partager-la-geographie/ https://issuu.com/french-institute/docs/2021-lesedi24 https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443709350099 https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2017.1389301 https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4762.00236 https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2010.523270 https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138113505023 https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138113505023 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 may 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: butel, j., braun, k. l., davis, j, bersamin, a., fleming, t., coleman, p., leon guerrero, r. and novotny, r. 2021. community social network pattern analysis: development of a novel methodology using a complex, multi-level health intervention. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 7485. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.7485 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article community social network pattern analysis: development of a novel methodology using a complex, multi-level health intervention jean butel1, kathryn l braun2, james davis3, andrea bersamin4, travis fleming5, patricia coleman6, rachael leon guerrero7 and rachel novotny1 1 college of tropical agriculture and human resources, university of hawai‘i, honolulu 2 thompson school of social work and public health, university of hawai‘i, honolulu 3 john a burns school of medicine, university of hawai‘i, honolulu 4 department of biology and wildlife, university of alaska, fairbanks 5 cooperative research, extension, and education services, northern marianas college, saipan, northern mariana islands 6 department of community and natural resources, american samoa community college, malaeimi, american samoa 7 office of research and sponsored programs, university of guam, mangilao, guam corresponding author: jean butel; jbutel@hawaii.edu doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7485 article history: received 29/10/2020; revised 08/04/2021; accepted 13/04/2021; published 05/2021 abstract community social networks (csn) include both individuals and groups, and those with strong partnerships and relationships are well positioned to implement community-based interventions. however, information on the nature of csn relationships, which is required for multi-level community-based interventions, is not present in the literature. using data from the multi-level children’s healthy living (chl) trial to reduce child obesity in nine pacific communities, this study aimed to develop a methodology based on social network analysis (sna) to understand how csn evolved over the course of a two-year trial, as well as the characteristics of csn most successful in impacting indicators of childhood obesity. the two-year trial was conducted over four six-month intervals. within each interval, implemented activities, as recorded in chl monthly reports, were coded by activity implementer(s), e.g. government agency, school, or community-based group, as well declaration of conflicting interest the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the children’s healthy living (chl) trial was funded by the agriculture and food research initiative grant no. 2011-68001-30335 from the usda national institute of food and agricultural science enhancement, coordinated agricultural program. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7485 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7485 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:jbutel@hawaii.edu http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7485 as for collective efficacy impact of the activity, e.g. to leverage resources from outside the csn or to facilitate civic engagement. coded data were used to create csn maps for the four time intervals, and sna techniques examined the csn characteristics. csn density increased over time, as measured by the number of ties within the network. schools, community-based groups and large organisations were identified as the primary implementers of the chl intervention and formed a community implementer backbone. social leveraging, i.e. linking local groups to people with authority over outside resources, was shown to be a central component in intervention success. it took time to develop strong csn, and stronger (denser) csn were more successful in building social cohesion and enacting community change. findings illustrate a methodology that can be useful for tracking the development and impact of csn. keywords social networks; community intervention; childhood obesity; collective efficacy; multi-level intervention; native hawaiian and other pacific islanders introduction making changes to improve health in low-income communities is a challenging task requiring community partners to work together at the local level. to implement complex community interventions, a ‘placebased’ organising framework involving collaboration among community-based partners is recommended (singh et al. 2017). coalitions of diverse organisations that work towards strengthening communities offer opportunities to leverage resources, expand reach and develop skills to impact the health of communities (butterfoss 2007). by working towards a common goal, community coalitions can mobilise resources, coordinate activities, join together to limit the duplication of activities, and ultimately improve outcomes (gibbons & weiss 2012; scanlon et al. 2012). in addition, the broad reach of diverse groups offers opportunities to increase public support for policies and community action, creating a potential for larger collective impact (kendall et al. 2012). social network analysis (sna) is a systems approach to understanding the dynamics of multi-level interventions that identifies the networks of social relationships that make up the system and the variety of roles that exist and can be created within networks (hawe, shiell & riley 2009). theorists have used sna to look at how interventions may transform the structure of community social networks (csn) through the creation of new events that differ by activity setting (hawe, shiell & riley 2009). sna has also been used to explore workplace change processes and resource sharing networks (callon 1984; orlikowski & robey 1991). valente, chou & pentz 2007 examined the density of community coalition networks and the uptake of evidence-based interventions; however, the use of sna with multi-level, community-based interventions is still in the early stages. the lack of methodology to demonstrate relationships between activities and outcomes has been cited as a potential reason for under-appreciating the impact of community collaborations on community health (kreuter, lezin & young 2000). interventions affect csn, change relationships, displace existing activities, and redistribute and transform resources (hawe, shiell & riley 2009). therefore, understanding the dynamic relationships involved with the implementation of community-based interventions is necessary. collaborations and coalitions occur within csn. csn can be informal relationships between individuals and groups, with various relationship strengths and degrees of trust (gilchrist 2004). these individuals and groups may also be connected through a formal network of organisations, such as the land grant college system. csn can be described according to the amount and quality of social interactions within communities and between people with similar behavioural norms that allow for mutually beneficial cooperation (forrest & kearns 2001). communities include a complex system of social networks that have butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20212 strong and weak social ties. strong social networks can bring social cohesion to communities, creating a capacity for social action (frantz 2016). social network structure primarily focuses on the number and frequency of connections among members, without examining the type of connection, such as friendship or shared goals (moody & paxton 2009). however, social capital theorists focus on the ‘content’ of social networks, referring to the resources that are exchanged. networks where all members know each other amplify actions (coleman 1988). however, the strength of the connection varies. strong connections occur between members who are more socially involved (i.e. close friends), and weak connections occur between members with less social involvement (i.e. acquaintances) (granovetter 1985). however, there are benefits in having both strong and weak connections within networks (burt 2000). networks comprised of mainly strong connections have denser networks, and this amplifies actions (coleman 1988), while weak interactions allow for a broader range of information sharing (granovetter 1985). the foundational work of social capital and network theorists provides the basis for examining csn. using data from the multi-level children’s healthy living (chl) trial, the aim of which was to reduce child obesity in nine pacific communities, our study’s purpose was to illustrate a methodology based in sna that could be useful for tracking the development and impact of csn working to improve health. we incorporated precise measures of social structure from social network theorists. measures that distinguish trust, support, empowerment were drawn from social capital research, to add dimension to the dyadic models, providing a better way to examine and understand csn (moody & paxton 2009). theoretical framework this study examined csn engaged in the chl trial using the collective efficacy (ce) mechanism of action model (ce mam). as defined by sampson (1997), ce signifies social cohesion combined with willingness to act/intervene for the common good (sampson, raudenbush & earls 1997). collaboration and social networks are central to ce (kleinhans & bolt 2014). the ce mam (figure 1) shows how intervention activities, such as hands-on training, leadership development, peer mentorship, community events, directed projects, and advocacy, can strengthen the five ce building blocks, social bonding, social bridging, social leveraging, empowerment and civic engagement (explained in more detail below). strengthening the five ce building blocks can improve overall ce (social cohesion and willingness to act), which in turn can improve community health outcomes (butel & braun 2019). however, the various figure 1. community social networks across the collective efficacy mechanism of action model (ce mam). butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20213 types of csn that are needed to conduct the community activities are not identified in the ce mam. furthermore, the literature does not provide a description of the types and density of analysis needed to build csn so as to achieve their common goals. ce is composed of five building blocks: (1) social bonding; (2) social bridging; and (3) social leveraging – which make up the social cohesion component of ce; (4) empowerment; and (5) civic engagement – which make up the willingness to act/intervene component (butel & braun 2019; collins, neal & neal 2014). thus, ce looks at how different types of relationships work together, with some being closer than others. the ‘reciprocated exchanges that promote ce or trust and cohesion among residents combined with expectations for informal social control related action’ (browning, feinberg & dietz 2004) can be examined within csn. these interactions can then be categorised as low frequency exchanges or high frequency exchanges and can be found in the social cohesion building blocks of social bonding, social bridging and social leveraging (domínguez & arford 2010). although sampson uses the term social cohesion (sampson, raudenbush & earls 1997), the subconcepts of social bonding, social bridging and social leveraging are also identified as social capital (domínguez & arford 2010; larsen et al. 2004; larson, story & nelson 2009), and understanding social capital is central to examining the interactions between individuals and groups in communities (moody & paxton 2009). social capital is defined as ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition’ (bourdieu 1986). to put it another way, it is social connections between people with similar behavioural norms that allow for mutually beneficial cooperation. looking further at the sub-concepts of social capital, social bonding can be defined as self-efficacy and esteem in peer groups (domínguez & arford 2010). social bonding at the neighbourhood/community level requires trust and association (larsen et al. 2004). larsen et al. (2004, p. 65) further states that ‘trust refers to passive emotional sentiments, and association refers to the behaviors that produce familiarity, such as informal socialising or lending a tool or assistance to complete a household task’. social bridging refers to more distant ties to other groups, such as loose friendships and co-workers. compared to social bonding, it is more inclusive of other races, ethnicities and other cultural dividers (babaei 2012). it is based on generalised trust and is more reciprocal in nature. social bridging brings in more resources, connections and opportunities (babaei 2012; domínguez & arford 2010). by reaching out to other groups, social bridging is akin to ‘getting ahead’, whereas social bonding is akin to ‘getting by’ (putnam 2002). social leveraging is the linking of community to people and/or groups in positions of authority and power (woolcock 2001). the linking to groups outside the community, such as government institutions, policy makers, businesses and funders, can provide key resources to develop capacity and resources in the community (babaei 2012). the combination of social bonding, bridging and leveraging can vary as a community changes and evolves (woolcock 2005). together, bonding, bridging and leveraging within csn perform important functions in everyday life and are the building blocks of social capital and social cohesion (forrest & kearns 2001). research suggests that social cohesion and the willingness to act/intervene (key components of collective efficacy) are affected by building social capital in communities (collins, neal & neal 2014). thus, increasing social capital is a critical step in the process of increasing collective efficacy, which can in turn improve health outcomes. the other component of ce is the willingness to act/intervene. the willingness to act/intervene embraces the ce building blocks of empowerment and civic engagement. empowerment involves building capacity in social networks, and civic engagement is political or civic activity that is intended or designed to address butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20214 an issue of common concern (collins, neal & neal 2014; cramb 2006; forrest & kearns 2001; harknett 2006; henly, danziger & offer 2005; lin 2001). chl intervention study design the chl trial was funded for five years (2011–2016) to develop and test a community-driven, multi-level, multi-jurisdiction intervention. funding was obtained from the us department of agriculture (usda) agriculture and food research initiative to address the growing prevalence of obesity in the united states affiliated pacific (usap) region. the chl trial was based at the university of hawai‘i at mānoa. the chl coordinating centre subcontracted with four other land grant institutions in the usap (university of alaska at fairbanks, american samoa community college, northern marianas college and university of guam) to carry out the objectives of chl in their respective jurisdictions. participating institutions in each jurisdiction obtained institutional review board (irb) approval themselves or ceded approval to the university of hawai‘i at mānoa. the chl intervention’s effect was tested through a community randomised controlled trial (crct) in five jurisdictions, where nine communities received the intervention, and nine matched communities served as delayed intervention controls (wilken et al. 2013). another nine communities served as temporal controls. the crct aimed to evaluate the intervention’s impact on anthropometric indicators, including body mass index (bmi) and waist circumference, acanthosis nigricans, and six behavioural objectives, among children aged 2–8 years. behavioural objectives included increasing fruit and vegetable intake, water consumption, physical activity and sleep duration, and reducing recreational screen time and sugarsweetened beverage consumption (wilken et al. 2013). the intervention had a significant positive effect on decreasing prevalence of overweight/obesity status and acanthosis nigricans, and was protective of increase in waist circumference (novotny et al. 2018). prior to the development of the chl intervention, a 14-month long community engagement process was conducted with over 900 community members from the five chl intervention jurisdictions (fialkowski et al. 2014). this community engagement process sought to identify and build on what was working in communities by engaging community partners and members in ways that were sensitive to their cultures and placed the health and wellbeing of young children at the forefront of community decisions and actions. in addition to informing the chl intervention, the engagement process identified potential community partners, began establishing trusting relationships between diverse community partners and chl staff, and created a balanced partnership between chl staff and community partners (fialkowski et al. 2014). as recommended by the analysis grid for environments linked to obesity (angelo) framework, the team designed the multi-level intervention by merging community input and evidence-based strategies identified in the literature (braun et al. 2014; fialkowski et al. 2014; nigg et al. 2016). the resulting intervention required sites to implement 19 activities categorised into four cross-cutting functions: (1) improving preschool policy; (2) advocating and partnering for environmental changes; (3) promoting chl messages related to healthy behaviours; and (4) training trainers (braun et al. 2014). the chl intervention worked with community partners to implement activities. due to the diversity of chl communities, the chl intervention template guided the communities on ‘what’ activities to implement and allowed the communities to determine specifically ‘how’ to implement the activities (table 1). for example, one required activity was to ‘work with coalitions to advocate for better access to parks that are safe and inviting’. however, it was up to the community to decide exactly how parks could be improved and which resources to leverage. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20215 table 1. chl trial cross cutting functions (ccf) and activities ccf1. assess pre-school policy and community environment related to the six chl behaviors* 1a. assess existence and quality of preschool wellness policy 1b. assess community physical environment for policy change ccf2. environmental change 2a. work with organisations/coalitions to advocate for: 2ai better access to parks that are safe and inviting 2aii better access to clean water 2aiii safer environments for walking, biking, etc. (e.g., bike lanes/racks, sidewalks, greenways) 2aiv better food placement/availability 2av gardens and hydroponics 2b partner with existing entities to purchase or obtain sponsorship for: 2bi water in the preschools and childcare centers 2bii gardening supplies for preschool kids 2biii sports equipment for preschool kids 2biv campaigns and messages ccf3. promote the chl message 3a support role models to deliver chl messages in various ways 3b enhance exiting social marketing campaigns in the intervention communities, and/or develop low-cost local social marking campaigns related to the six chl behaviors 3c advertise chl or other activities that promote six chl target behaviors* ccf4. train the trainers 4a train individuals to promote gardening in preschools and communities 4b train individuals to lead interactive, hands-on sessions to promote the six chl behaviors* 4c train individuals to organize and lead family-based activities that support the six chl behaviors (park clean-ups, hikes, cooking sessions, etc.) 4d provide technical assistance to preschool and childcare staff on wellness policies 4e train childcare providers and preschool teachers in curricula related to six chl behaviors* 4f train role models (community champions, role celebrities, role models) to promote and provide curricula related to the six chl behaviors* * the six chl target behaviors are: increasing fruit/vegetable consumption; water consumption; physical activity; and sleep time; and decreasing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and screen time. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20216 working with partners was central to the chl trial (braun et al. 2014; fialkowski et al. 2014). various community partners at different levels of influence were engaged to expand the reach of the chl trial. for example, schools were approached to implement physical activity training for teachers, while community groups were approached to clean up parks and make them safer for play. in essence, the chl trial relied on csn and promoted ce among community members, groups and chl implementing staff. below we describe the methodology by which chl attempted to measure csn development over time. over the two-year intervention period ( january 2013 through to december 2014), each of the nine chl trial communities submitted monthly intervention process reports to the chl coordinating centre. of the nine communities, two communities filed 24 reports each, while seven communities filed an average of 20 reports over 24 months. for the missing reports, chl staff communicated with community leaders to request completion of the reports or to confirm that no activities had been conducted. we used cross-case analysis of the nine chl intervention communities to examine csn and how the intervention developed over the course of the project. specifically, this article illustrates how, through csn pattern analysis, we examined the density and patterns of csn throughout the chl intervention by exploring the evolution over time of: (1) different types of community implementers who implemented activities that impacted the various ce building blocks; (2) relationships among community implementers; and (3) interactions between ce building blocks. analytic methods for analytical purposes, the csn was conceptualised as a non-directional mapping of relationships or ties to depict csn that developed in the chl intervention communities. to examine social structures, this study visualised csn through maps and utilised graph theory (rosen 2012) to model pairwise relationships between community partners and ce building blocks. social network maps characterise networked structures as nodes, and edges are the relationships or interactions that connect them. community partners and ce building blocks were nodes in the csn social network maps, and the edges identified the connections between the nodes. to eliminate the visual bias of the maps, descriptive statistics, graph density (connectedness of the graph), and average weighted degree (average number of connections between nodes) were estimated in the analysis. to understand the evolution of csn during the implementation of the chl trial, three separate social network analyses were undertaken. the first two social network analyses identified the networks that assisted the implementation of activities. the third social network analysis identified interactions between the ce building blocks. these three social network analyses allowed for the mapping and exploration of community partners who assisted in implementing the chl intervention over the two-year period, grouped into sixmonth intervals. a total of 12 maps, 4 for each csn, were developed. this allowed for description of the csn that was central to chl. the exploratory analysis compared csn patterns over time. social network maps developed for each of the five ce building blocks were examined for similarities and differences over time. the data for social network maps were developed using a multi-step process. step one: for each sixmonth interval, the chl intervention monthly progress reports were tallied to estimate a dose for each chl activity: the number of events conducted ‘times’ the activity effectiveness score ‘times’ the total number of participants ‘divided’ by the intended number of participants (butel et al. 2019). effectiveness scores were assigned by consensus of two investigators, based on work by cheadle et al. 2012, 2013), who examined the effectiveness of various activities in reducing obesity. these ranged from 0.33 for low to 1.00 for high. for example, two home-gardening training workshops were conducted, each with 8 participants, although 10 had said they would attend. the number of activities would be two (2), the efficacy score would be 0.67 (moderate), the total number of participants would be 8, and the intended number of participants would be butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20217 10. the activity dose equation would be 2 x [0.67 x (8/10)], resulting in an activity dose of 1.07. the activity dose scores in the six-month intervals of time were then summed. step two. the chl monthly process reports were re-examined to determine which ce building block(s) – social bonding, social bridging, social leveraging, empowerment, and civic engagement – had been addressed by each implemented activity. a community gardening activity, for example, may have brought community members together (social bonding) with extension workers (social bridging) and secured free gardening materials and supplies for the community (social leveraging). a ce building block weighted value of 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, or 1 was based on the degree to which the activity addressed each respective building block. ce building block(s) that were assigned a ce building block weighted value of 0.75 or 1 were considered to be ‘meaningfully addressed’ and were given a code of ‘1’. if the score was less than or equal to 0.5, the activity was given a code of ‘0’. the activity dose from step 1 was multiplied by 0 if the ce building block was not addressed or not meaningfully addressed, or multiplied by 1 if it was meaningfully addressed. scores were checked by a second reviewer, with 96 per cent agreement between the two reviewers being essential; agreement was reached on the remaining 4 per cent of codes following discussion. scores were summed for each of four six-month intervals and overall for the two-year intervention. step three. the chl intervention monthly process reports were again re-examined to identify the community implementers of each activity. these identified implementers were assigned a nominal code based on their characteristics, for example, school or church (table 2). step four. the first stage in creating the csn maps involved developing tables with the ce building blocks as columns and the community implementers as rows for each intervention activity. social network mapping nodes were generated from the ce building blocks and the community implementers. next, a two-node csn map (or bipartite csn map) examined the ties occurring between the ce building blocks and the community implementers. gephi, an open-source network mapping visualisation software (bastian, heymann & jacomy 2009), was used to create a bipartite network map for each community implementer for the four six-month intervals of the trial. additional unimodal maps, used to examine ties existing between a set of nodes, were created to look at relationships between community implementers and table 2. community implementer types, definitions and assigned code community implementer type and definition code churches: places of worship and/or clergy (e.g. priest, minister, catholic church) 1 community-based groups: non-profit groups that work at a local level (e.g. community-based organisations) 2 role models: community members who received chl role model training 3 large organisations: entities outside the community that employ over 50 people (e.g. colleges, departments of health) 4 preschools/schools: institutions for educating children 5 elected: individuals or groups who hold public office (e.g. mayors, community/neighbourhood boards) 6 coalitions: group of people and organisations who join together for a common cause (e.g. non-communicable disease coalition) 7 cooperative extension: land grant college personnel who educate communities in a variety of family, health and agricultural programs (referred to as ‘extension’) 8 butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20218 ce building blocks. the node sizes were based on the number of community implementers in the coded category, and the thickness of edges (lines) were determined by the number of times assistance was given to implement the activity related to the ce building block. as noted above, data were grouped into four intervention time intervals: the first six months of the intervention (0 to 6 months (t1), 6 to 12 months (t2), 12 to 18 months (t3) and 18 to 24 months (t4). bipartite csn maps were generated for each of the four intervention time intervals. thus, a total of four (one for each time interval) bipartite maps were generated. bipartite csn maps characterised the community social networks that helped to implement the chl trial in terms of nodes of community implementers and their link to the ce building blocks. the csn were interpreted via maps and compared for patterns of relationship between community implementers of the ce building blocks and the nine communities. descriptive statistics of the number of nodes and edges (lines) present in the maps were reported, along with the graph density (number of ties in the social network as a proportion of total possible ties), and the average weighted degree (how much of the implementation was due to that particular community implementer code) was calculated for each map. line thickness was based on the number of times the community implementers assisted in applying the same ce building blocks. in the maps, the weight of each edge was ‘1’ and the weights of each edge were summed. the average weighted degree was the average of the sum of weights of the edges of the nodes, which was used to identify which community implementers played a central role in implementing ce building blocks during the chl intervention. the edge weight was used to identify how closely community implementers worked together. each bipartite csn map generated two unimodal network maps: one identified relationships between community implementers; and the other identified relationships between the ce building blocks. a total of eight unimodal, unidirectional maps were generated. the size of the text reflects the average weighted degree between community implementers. the second map used the same descriptive statistics to identify the ce building blocks most important to the chl intervention and ce building block clusters. the size of the text reflects the average weighted degree between ce building blocks. line thickness was based on the number of times the same building blocks were addressed by community implementers. comparisons were made over time to determine which csn were present in communities as the chl trial was implemented. differences in graph density (number of ties in the social network as a proportion of the total number of ties), edge weights (number of ties between nodes), and average weighted degree between the nodes were examined at six-month intervals for the duration of the trial (frantz 2016). results community implementers’ relationship to ce building blocks the csn maps provide a visual representation of the community implementers, shown on the left of each set of maps, and their relationship to each of the ce building blocks, shown on the right side of each set (figure 2). table 3 displays the descriptive statistics of graph density and average weighted degree by time interval. the graph density increased between t2 and t3. the average weighted degree increased between t1, t2 and t3 intervals with a slight decrease between t3 and t4. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20219 table 3. community social network graph density and average weighted degree by six-month time interval of the chl trial six-month time interval 1 2 3 4 graph density 0.37 0.37 0.46 0.46 average weighted degree 16.92 31.39 59.23 57.01 the number of times each type of community implementer assisted with an intervention activity was tabulated. schools most frequently assisted in total chl activities (n=269) followed by community-based groups and large organisations, 244 and 240, respectively (figure 3). figure 4 examines the distribution by percentage of intervention assistance provided by each community implementer for each ce building block. community-based groups, large organisations and schools had the largest percentage of chl trial activities for all building blocks, with the exception of social bonding. the top three community implementers for social bonding were schools (26%), community-based groups (25%), and role models (18%). figure 2. community social network maps at four six-month intervals of the chl trial. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202110 figure 4. percentage of chl trial implementation assistance provided by type of community implementer and by ce building block. sbo = social bonding; sbr = social bridging; sl = social leveraging; e = empowerment; ce = civic engagement. relationships among community implementers the unimodal maps provide a visual indication of the relationships among community implementers (figure 5). the maps also show the progression of the relationships over time. the pattern of the relationship between large organisations, community-based groups, and schools emerged in time interval 1 and continued to strengthen over time. the connections between all community implementer groups were most evident at time interval 3, with churches not being as connected in time interval 4. the edge weight (number of connections between nodes) between large organisations, schools, and community-based groups formed a strong triad at time interval 2 and continued to increase at time interval 3 and time interval 4. graph density increased 2.5 times from time interval 1 and time interval 3, and it reached one (indicating the maximum number of ties possible for the network) during time interval 3. the average weighted degree (average number of connections between nodes) was highest at time interval 3 (table 4). figure 3. number of chl trial activities by type of community implementer. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202111 figure 5. unimodel community social network map of relationships between community implementers. table 4. community implementer csn graph density and average weighted degree by time intervals six-month time interval 1 2 3 4 graph density 0.37 0.96 1.0 1.0 average weighted degree 284.75 968 3504.75 3182.25 butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202112 interactions between ce building blocks the unimodal maps provide a visual representation of the interactions between ce building blocks. the maps show the progression of the interactions between ce building blocks over time. ce building block unimodal maps showed social leveraging was implemented with the other building blocks most frequently, at all four time intervals (figure 6). civic engagement was leveraged the least among the ce building blocks. the maximum graph density (graph density =1) is achieved when each node is connected to all other nodes. all ce building blocks were connected, as seen by the graph density =1, at all four time intervals (table 5). the average weighted degree increased during time interval 1, 2 and 3, with slight decrease during time interval 4 (table 5). figure 6. unimodal community social network map of interactions between ce building blocks. butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202113 table 5. ce building block csn density and average weighted degree by time interval six-month time interval 1 2 3 4 graph density 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 average weighted degree 339.2 1223.2 4214.8 3683.6 discussion this study developed a novel methodology to understand connections and interactions between csn and ce building blocks across time. the four-step method provided a means to assess the strength of connections, applied social network mapping to visualise community change across time, and enabled through sna to draw inferences about the csn as a whole and about the relationships between members and ce building blocks. the analysis of the social network maps showed the development of csn during the chl trial. by coding the data in six-month intervals, we were able to track the development of the csn over time. this methodological approach revealed that the csn took at least six months to develop. as the intervention progressed over time, the maps showed increased community partner engagement and increased implementation of activities. supporting the maps’ visual display, sna showed increases in graph density and average weighted degree quantified that relationships were forming during time interval 1 and progressing through the subsequent time intervals (tuckman 1965). in time interval 1, the graph density and the average weighted degree were low, indicating that the relationships were still forming and the roles of the partners were still being determined. during the second time interval (6 to 12 months), ce building block activities and interactions between the community implementers became stronger. during the third time interval (12 to 18 months), the relationships continued to develop, communities became more empowered, and civic engagement activities increased. there was a slight decrease in activities during the last time interval (t4) when chl funding was ending. however, chl staff worked to transition backbone functions to the community as one of the goals of the chl intervention was sustainability. it is possible that implemented activities were not known to the chl staff and were therefore not recorded in the reports. the chl program sought to support implementation of activities that could be continued after the trial period, and the last six months focused on supporting ongoing community efforts. the long-term success of the intervention is currently being evaluated. these findings indicate that the method of mapping the csn in six-month blocks was sufficient to show the evolution of the csn in the chl trial. by assigning identified implementers by a nominal code based on their characteristics, insight was gained on relationships between the csn. the unimodal maps showed a pattern emerging between large organisations, community-based groups and schools, suggesting a strong relationship between these types of community implementers, creating a csn backbone. this infers substantial implementation assistance by the three community implementers in the chl intervention. these three implementer types (large organisations, community-based groups and schools) represent multiple types and levels of influence. for example, large organisations provided skills development training, community-based groups provided cultural context and community structures, and schools provided community-based locations and access to the target population (2–8 year olds). this supports the recommendation by the u.s. department of health and human services (singh et al. 2017) that a collaboration of community-based partners engaged in multi-factorial approaches is necessary for the implementation of complex community interventions to effect community change, and that cross-sector efforts need to be aligned (sandel et al. 2016). butel, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202114 in coding chl trial activities by their ce building block, we were able to identify that building capacity and social capital within the csn was key to trial implementation. one study (slater et al. 2005) found that the lack of local support, leadership and/or resources can create significant challenges in implementing complex interventions. the implementation of complex interventions that address health disparities in a comprehensive manner requires building collaborative capacity to take collective action (kendall et al. 2012). in addition, the central role of social leveraging in the chl trial was identified. examining the connections (edge weights) to the other building blocks suggests that social leveraging of resources, such as providing skills training and building on activities of similar programs, was central to: (1) developing community trust, e.g. by providing playground painting supplies (social bonding); (2) establishing connections between community implementers, e.g. local non-profit bringing program to head start classrooms (social bridging); (3) building community capacity, e.g. training families and teachers how to grow food (empowerment); and (4) providing opportunities for civic engagement, e.g. getting permission from park department and officials to improve park facilities. this study had identifiable limitations. first, the retrospective nature of this study limited the ability to obtain clarity when questions arose regarding community implementers. however, the system of monthly reporting on paper, followed by confirmation by phone, helped assure that reports were robust. second, this method examined the actions of the community implementers but did not measure behavioural concepts behind the actions, and therefore did not capture the behaviours (i.e. willingness) that preceded the actions. third, the ce building blocks were binary coded (yes/no) as to whether or not they were addressed, potentially losing insightful information. fourth, the small sample size (n=9 communities) and lack of comparable data in the control communities limited the types of quantitative analysis that could be conducted and thus the conclusions that could be drawn. consequently, the analysis was limited to descriptive methods for identifying and depicting csn that were present in the chl intervention. conclusion the social network maps showed the development of csn during the chl intervention. the systematic approach to developing and analysing the maps indicates the methodological potential of applying sna to multi-level community-based interventions. by analysing the development and strength of the connections in csn, we were able to draw inferences about the csn as a whole and about the relationships between members and the ce building blocks. this novel approach provides a visual way to understand csn and capture the evolution of csn over the course of a two-year trial. by applying sna we were able to quantify select important characteristics of the csn and the ce building blocks. the emergence of a csn backbone, the increasing density of the csn over time, and the central role of social leveraging provide insight for conducting successful multi-level community interventions. these findings support the development of a method to systematically assign an activity dose to implemented activities in a community intervention, relate the dose to ce building blocks, and examine community partners who assisted with activity implementation over time. this methodology allows for csn maps to be developed and csn patterns to be analysed to examine relationships with and between multiple types of community implementers, to understand the nature and characteristics of these relationships, and to provide guidance on the evolution of csn during community-based interventions. this 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https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5328.918 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2016.01.013 https://doi.org/10.21106/ijma.236 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-004-6094-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-004-6094-1 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2005.063644 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2005.063644 https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-944 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sousa, j. w. 2021. community members as facilitators: reclaiming community-based research as inherently of the people. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–14. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7767 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) community members as facilitators: reclaiming community-based research as inherently of the people josé wellington sousa1 1 faculty of education, university of regina, saskatchewan, and international academic programs, crandall university, new brunswick, canada doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 article history: received 15/06/2021; revised 27/10/2021; accepted 26/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract this article aims to rethink the positionality of community in community-based research collaboration and advocate the need for community members to facilitate cbr processes to counter power imbalances in community-university engagement. i reflect on my lived experience as a community-based facilitator through a feminist post-structural lens focused on the interplay between concepts such as subjectivity, margin-centre and performativity. i argue that, despite the community-engaged scholarship egalitarian ideal, university-community engagement still echoes the old researcher-researched binary in which academics remain the hegemonic pole. in addition, as a medium of power/knowledge, the university fabricates the community and its marginality. thus, a margin-centre relationship is established, in which community groups must claim their marginality to receive a share of the centre (the university), such as research skills and information. in these margin-centre dynamics, university and community can be understood as identities and subject positions to be taken up by individuals. in essence, these positions are expressions of regulatory power that normalises subjectivities, a condition in which individuals exist as subjects in the social space. insights from the work of judith butler lead to the understanding that, in order to conceive community members as cbr facilitators, normalised and stabilised binary identities (university-community) should be unsettled. this entails individuals who are subjected as ‘the community’ to escape subjection by moving towards recognition of a subjectivity that is not prescribed or is still marginalised within the discourse. in escaping subjection, community groups may exercise power in order to establish new power relations in which cbr becomes more community-led, yet still collaborative. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 keywords margin-centre; subjectivity; performativity; community-university partnership; facilitation; community-led development introduction this article aims to explore the idea of university-community partnerships by rethinking the community’s positionality in community-based research (cbr) beyond a place of marginality. i am motivated by the understanding that cbr is historically a social movement and an approach that belongs primarily to the people. however, it has evolved into a collaborative academic endeavour where scholars invite community members to participate as equal partners throughout the investigative process. in this latter configuration, academic researchers are more likely to perform the role of facilitator, which is a pivotal role in cbr (hall et al. 2016; narayanasamy 2009). facilitators are leaders (hogan 2002) and managers of change (groot & maarleveld 2000). their role involves building trust, listening to and engaging people in processes of reflection and action while managing different perspectives on the issue partners wish to resolve (hall et al. 2016; white 1999). consequently, in the community-university relationship, community members are at the margins, excluded from roles such as that of the facilitator. despite the equality ideal, the community’s position seems not only to be a necessary prerequisite of engaged scholarship, but also dictates the limits, perhaps the impossibility, of imagining community members beyond a place of marginality. in this sense, i ask the question: how do community and university power relations produce the community in cbr? in addition, how could an alternative understanding of these relations be used towards more emancipatory ends? in particular, i examine the role of community members as facilitators in driving an understanding of cbr as inherently of the people. my research questions are inspired by the notion that discourse, an ‘ensemble of rules’ (foucault 1980, p. 132), emerges within power relations, constructing both reality and the subjects within it (hekman 2010). as such, it establishes a regimen by which people live their lives. in essence, people become subjects through discourse and consequently are able to exist in the social space. in other words, a person comes into existence by taking up subject positions prescribed in the discourse. thus, discourse defines the very contours of one’s subjectivity or how one is allowed or not allowed to exist in that social space (heckman 2010). this article draws on the cbr literature and my lived experience as starting points for theorising and opening dialogue with those interested in cbr theory and the flaws and tensions of communityuniversity partnerships. in the first section, i present my lived experience and how it helped me problematise community positionality in cbr. i then offer a feminist post-structural analysis, exploring concepts such as margin–centre politics, performativity and subjection. in concluding, i suggest that community members and facilitators exist as subjects by claiming marginality and escaping subjection in order to experience with the community higher levels of autonomy in pursuing their own research and liberation agenda. in essence, this article invites scholars to rescue and strengthen the radical community development cbr roots, whereby action-oriented research initiatives belong primarily to the people rather than being a collaborative academic endeavour. it is also an indication that one should question the very notion of the community in order to create new and more ethical power relations between the university and community groups. i found myself being ‘the community’ my work as a community development practitioner with river communities in the brazilian amazon challenged my understanding of community. in my first visit to a river community, i anticipated ferdinand tönnies’ (2001) concept of gemeinschaft. thus, i imagined a pre-capitalist group of people living along a river sharing with me a tacitly constructed worldview and practice. this european definition tricked sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 my eyes, preventing me from seeing that the traditional amazonian population is non-capitalist (costa 2005; lira & chaves 2016) and adheres to a peasant economic rationality (costa 1995). furthermore, as i began to work with them, the strong influence of the base ecclesial communities (becs) in shaping the concept of the community became apparent. becs are christian religious groups that define as community members those who are committed to and/or involved in the becs’ social task forces and activities. so, being part of the community did not necessarily connote a shared geographic location. living with and joining the people in their everyday activities, such as forest management and fishing, and front-door conversations at the end of the day, made me question my epistemic assumptions about them and made me willing to learn from them. this is particularly relevant because i was born in the amazonian region and started to embrace the culture only in my adulthood. in addition, as i shared elsewhere (see: sousa, in press), while working with river communities, i was also trying to understand and apply concepts such as people paradigm (chambers 1997), partnership (freire 1997) and asset-based community development (kretzmann & mcknight 1993; mcknight & block 2010). these concepts moved me from a service-driven approach towards my commitment to community-led development, whereby cbr, within this framework, entails community building, knowledge production, learning and action (ledwith 2020; stoecker 1999). in this process, the community and outside experts collaborate, while the people are equipped with community organising and research skills in order afterwards to facilitate the process without the presence of outsiders. at this stage, the community owns the project (attygale 2020); the people are able to self-mobilise and act collectively (kumar 2002; negri et al. 1992; pretty et al. 1995). later, i was motivated to apply for a two-week cbr training in a north american university. my intention was to deepen my understanding of community-led models focused on research and change. i also had in mind to resume my academic studies based on action-oriented and collaborative scholarship. the training was designed for, but not limited to, equipping community practitioners from the global south with participatory research skills. in essence, full-time southern practitioners were more likely to receive financial support, with preference given to marginalised southern groups. although the global south is commonly used to refer to populations that primarily reside in developing countries predominantly situated in the southern hemisphere of our planet, this terminology also refers to oppressed groups and people living in poverty anywhere (greenwood & levin 2011). the latter definition encompasses ‘those, everywhere, whose livelihoods have been made precarious by geohistorical processes of colonialism and globalizing capitalism’ (sheppard, leitner & maringanti 2013, p. 898). in essence, these characteristics of the global south are also present in the global north. the application process and the two weeks of the intensive cbr workshop opened my eyes not only to the necessity for, and tensions in, university-community cbr partnerships, but also to a new reality about myself: i am also seen as ‘the community’. my application form revealed to me that i belong to the global south. i fit the description! i followed the instructions and checked the box, justifying my position. i am of the community as much as the river people are. although my experience can be easily understood through an intersectional lens in which the intersection of identities uncovers different levels of oppression, i never thought of myself as a southern person. that application form made me think about my identity, cultural background and the way i existed in the world, as a practitioner working with river communities and being reconciled with my own amazonian roots, as well as someone characterised by others as the community. i was not able to problematise my experience at that time; i did not have the vocabulary. the understanding and words came later and are still coming. i had feelings and perceptions about different ways to exist as the community, particularly through my experience of entering the gates of the university to participate in cbr training. this experience made me pose the question: how do power relations between community and university produce notions of community in cbr? in addition, taking into consideration community-led development as a larger context for my work, i asked: how can community members be conceived as cbr facilitators? what are the implications for cbr from such a shift in roles? sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 community-based research: reclaiming and strengthening the global south roots cbr is a research paradigm that challenges the assumptions of objectivity and neutrality of orthodox social research by inviting the community into the research endeavour as equal partners (hall 1992; reason 1994). hence, cbr practitioners attempt to dismantle the binary subject–object by proposing a subject-tosubject relationship between community groups and researchers. consequently, it democratises knowledge by recognising different voices and ways of knowing. furthermore, it creates an alternative knowledge system and validation in order to counter hegemonic practices that result in oppression and marginalisation (reason 1994). despite the commitment to community engagement and social change, the different ways that cbr is defined in the literature reveal contextualised nuances that suggest a variation of emphasis and consequently different degrees of participation and community autonomy in university-community engagement. for instance, in the us-based literature, cbr can be placed under the emerging rubric of community-engaged scholarship (giles 2019a). according to giles (2019b), community-engaged scholarship is the current preferred terminology to represent the scholarship dimension of the bigger movement of community engagement in higher education. the movement includes engaged research and other forms of engagement that rely on the partnership between the university and the public and private sectors in order to integrate and enhance research, teaching and service. despite the implicit notion of mutual benefit and reciprocity (mcilrath et al. 2021; sandmann, furco & adams 2019), american approaches appear to emphasise scholarship and university student learning, which benefit the institution far more than community groups (giles 2019b; ross & stoecker 2017; stoecker 2016). this might explain the lack of community voice that mcilrath et al. (2021) identified while exploring possibilities for adapting the carnegie community engagement framework – a us-based tool for institutionalised community engagement assessment – to an irish context. in contrast, etmanski, dawson and hall (2014), writing from a canadian context, defined cbr as the preferred umbrella term when referring to a range of research approaches that are action-oriented and participatory. while intending to promote cbr as a catch-all term, they highlighted that their understanding of cbr was influenced by the participatory research (pr) tradition (etmanski et al. 2014). the pr tradition is rooted in the work of practitioners and critical theorists of the global south, such as freire (1997), fals-borda, and rahman (1991) and tandon (1988), who rely strongly on the liberatory power of people’s knowledge and leadership to create a more just society. it was not a university-driven endeavour, but the ‘people’s own independent inquiry’ (rahman 1991, p. 17) in such a way that they not only own and control their knowledge but also its means of production (tandon 1988). thus, research is performed by the people and for the people (gaventa 1993), while researchers are invited to join in the process according to the community’s needs (rahman 1991). under the southern tradition, cbr is defined as research performed by community groups, whether autonomously or in collaboration with the university, in order to bring change according to the interests of the community (hall et al. 2016). as a collaborative enterprise, the communities involved exercise meaningful control over the research process and subsequent actions (etmanski, dawson & hall 2014). for instance, in the canadian équisanté project, health-related ‘blended participatory and merging of knowledge research’ (carrel et al. 2017, p. 119) with people in poverty in quebec, community members actively participated as co-researchers. they were involved in data analysis and, as part of the collaborative project, were able to construct collective knowledge independent of academic researchers and health professionals (carrel et al. 2017). in so doing, expert knowledge was confronted by knowledge grounded in sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 people’s lived experience. community members can also participate in supervisory committees which have decision-making power over research methods, knowledge dissemination and so on (otis 2015). despite attempts at conceiving community groups as partners, the endeavour of breaking from orthodox social research is not an easy task. researchers’ habitus – ‘schemes of perception, thoughts and action’ (bourdieu 1989, p. 13) are internalisations of social structures that are reinforced through social interactions in the academic social space. hence, any attempt to challenge the academic status quo does not readily imply a revolutionary change in how academia operates. foucault (1980, p. 132) asserted that people live by regimes of truth or discourse; ‘an ensemble of rules’ that emerges within power relations. in this sense, the university is not only an institution that can create regimes of truth that shape the broader society (mcgushin 2014), but it can also define the contours of the subjectivity of those who enter its gates. then, academics are both subjected to power and able to exercise power based on positions assigned to them in the discourse (feder 2014; foucault 1972). subjection has to do with the embodiment of what it means to be an academic, what it means to produce knowledge, and what it means to work with the community in the process of knowledge production. this theoretical articulation indicates that it is critical for academics to be mindful not only of their own positionality in their community engagement, but also of the need for theorising how, as the hegemonic pole of university-community relations, they also create and subject the community. ross and stoecker’s (2017) study of the under-acknowledged emotional aspect of community engagement is an example of how academic disciplinary discourse works on researchers. ross and stoecker interviewed residents of a neighbourhood in new orleans who survived hurricane katrina. according to the authors, the neighbourhood received different kinds of interventions, including traditional research initiatives and cbr. to their surprise, residents made no distinction between community-based and traditional researchers. in addition, some of the residents expressed that they felt used by the researchers and noticed that academics were ‘less caring and providing fewer immediate benefits’ (ross & stoecker 2017, p. 11) than student volunteers. ross and stoecker (2017, p. 17) elucidated that ‘the problem may be rooted in academics’ tendency to treat research as research, rather than as integrated with action’. by treating research as research, cbr academics echo the position of the traditional social scientist, a contained and isolated investigator, one who is not influenced by the group being studied (burawoy 1998). ross and stoecker (2017, p. 13) also stated that ‘many academics in new orleans believed they were using the best practices of community-based research’. these findings raise concerns around the extent to which radical subversion is possible in academia and show the need for community protagonists in cbr projects. in other words, it demonstrates the necessity to rescue the southern critical tradition of cbr by reimagining the community members as facilitators, and hence able to mobilise their people and produce knowledge that is action-oriented and grounded in people’s lived experience. flaws like those revealed by ross and stoecker (2017) make sceptical scholars point out that cbr does not deliver what it proposes. for example, janes (2016) asserts that cbr is a co-opted approach which expropriates community knowledge while maintaining power asymmetries. furthermore, in the context of participatory development, cbr is seen as tyrannical (cooke & kothari 2001), manipulative (mosse 2001), exclusionary and colonial. in essence, as kapoor (2005) denounced, it reveals the complicity and desires of the western world. these flaws are not a surprise when one takes into consideration the power of institutionalised western colonising beliefs and practices that shape the imaginary of university researchers (berger & luckmann 1966), including researchers in the global south (gamage 2016). hence, it becomes critical to theorise power relations in community-university engagement, particularly how the community is produced in these relations. definitions rooted in the southern tradition, such as those employed by etmanski, dawson and hall (2014) and hall et al. (2016), evoke a return to the idea of community-led initiatives that may counter co-optation in community-university collaboration. furthermore, it shows the need to explore ways to sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 imagine community members as cbr facilitators. by this, i mean participatory interventions by community members that promote collective learning and action (groot & maarleveld 2000) and involve community organising and skills mobilisation (narayanasamy 2009) to create ‘knowledge in action’ (ledwith 2020, p. 136). community members would then be more likely to take up the role of facilitators in participatory research. this understanding is found in community-engaged scholarly works mainly published in the 1990s by such authors as fals borda (1992), gaventa (1993), hall (1993), negri et al. (1998), park (1993) and rahman (1991). the southern tradition also evokes the idea that ‘the distinction between the researcher and the participant is irrelevant’ (tandon 1988, p. 12). tandon’s statement relies on the assumption that the researcher and participants are taking up the same roles; they research and participate together, even though the emphasis is on community leadership. however, this community-led emphasis seems to have faded away over the years as the literature on cbr shifts the focus to collaboration, which is more likely to be a university driven endeavour designed to include community groups (e.g. hacker 2013; hall et al. 2016; strand et al. 2003). although collaboration is a key aspect of cbr, scholars and practitioners should not forget the participatory ideal, whereby communities are able to mobilise and carry out their own agenda without outsiders being the initiators or facilitators (kapoor 2002; negri et al. 1998). indeed, community-led initiatives should be encouraged and receive more attention from academia. this article is therefore an attempt to provoke a discussion about the possibility of building universitycommunity partnerships where the community leads in such a way that community members can also facilitate cbr processes and not be only a source of consultation or hired interviewers for specific research projects. i argue below that a post-structural perspective provides an interesting starting point for this endeavour, particularly spivak’s margin–centre politics and butler’s performativity. margin–centre politics and the fabrication of the community a response to the question of how the community is produced through university-community partnerships can be elaborated through spivak’s (2009) notion of margin-centre politics. the concept of margin-centre is in part an elaboration of the foucauldian concept of disciplinary discursivity and is employed in the context of the university. spivak (2009) defined the university as the teaching machine. jackson and mazzei (2012, p. 37) clarified that, for spivak, the higher education institution is a ‘vehicle of power/knowledge that seeks to locate and define what counts as authentic inhabitants of the margin’. indeed, spivak (2009) pointed out that when the margin enters the centre, that is, the higher education institution, the centre works towards defining this intruder, leading to power struggles. spivak’s margin–centre concept helped me to define two moments when the community is fabricated in different ways in relation to the university. in the first moment, the community is fabricated as an object of study, a category of analysis. as an object, the community is not invited into the university but is maintained at a distance, passive, ready to be controlled in order to be scrutinised. bruhn (2011) explored different ways of defining community from 1840 to 2000 in both european and american traditions. community conveys the idea of a prototype of how people exist in relation to one another. community echoes the idea of tradition, the common good and values; it is a society in an earlier stage and opposes the individualistic lifestyle of an industrial and capitalist society. this understanding is rooted in the classic european sociology of karl marx, ferdinand tönnies, émile durkheim and max weber. for this tradition, community is transitionary, something inferior, old-fashioned and threatened by modernisation (bertotti, jamal & harden 2011; bruhn 2011). the north american tradition is also based on a historical–evolutionary understanding. some of the references in bruhn’s (2011) list are robert park, c. wright mills, herbert gans, barry wellman and amitai etzioni. he suggested that, overall, the authors of this tradition are concerned with issues of dynamics within urban settings, such as lifestyles and cultural changes, social class structure, sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 community power, decision-making and networks, to cite a few. more recently, the discussion around community has been influenced by the debates between liberals and communitarians and attempts to find a middle ground where neither side is threatened by oppressive discourses (bruhn 2011). bruhn defined this position as ‘loosely connected communities’ (p. 44). community is also defined as a people group that is not part of mainstream society, commonly victims of structural injustice such as colonialism, poverty and racism. they are ethnic minority groups (adelman 1993; delemos 2006; shiu-thornton 2003) ‘deprived and disenfranchised people’ (park 1993, p. 1), grassroots groups (fals borda 1996), and so on. nevertheless, community can also be defined in organisational terms, which may also represent minority, oppressed and/or marginalised groups. for strand et al. (2003), communities are defined as educational institutions, community-based organisations, public service agencies, groups formed based on identity and/or common interests. which do not depend on geographical location; they go from a local to a global scale. these perspectives on community are strongly founded on empirical sociology that relies on the relationship subject–object to produce knowledge. for this, researchers typically limit their involvement with research participants, or ground themselves in theory that guides them through their reflective exercise (burawoy 1998). hence, academics’ applied surveys, ethnographic methods (bruhn 2011), documental, cross-section and longitudinal analysis (putnam 1993) and other methods are used in order to approach the object. the application of institutionalised research methods, in association with the subject who performs them and the approval of peers, gives knowledge the status of legitimate, valid or superior. consequently, any alternative knowledge that is rooted in a different epistemology is deemed inferior (casas-cortés, osterwei & powell 2008). this socio-historical academic discourse and the consequent disciplinary power that shapes academics’ subjectivity must be taken into consideration, even while the same academics attempt to challenge this knowledge hierarchy for the sake of epistemic justice. in the second moment, which aligns with spivak’s concept more precisely, the community is no longer distant, but is still at the margin. the community is a guest invited to enter the teaching machine as well as to walk alongside it as a partner. by entering the machine, the ‘outside’ picks up on a subject position provided by the centre in order to identify and control the margin. at the same time, the centre fosters a fetish of identity as if the margin were a pure essence (spivak 2009). the community is an essentialisation of the oppressed, the marginalised (whether based on class, gender, ethnicity, race and so on) and the global south that, under the cbr paradigm, becomes the object of emancipation (park 1993). the community is me, a latino and amazonian entering the teaching machine. by conceiving that the contours of the margin are defined by the centre, spivak (2009) questioned if the marginal, the subaltern or the people can really speak. on that, spivak (1988, p. 27) stated, ‘[f ]or the “true” subaltern group, whose identity is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself ’. yet, spivak is not implying that the margin does not have a voice or agency; she is arguing that there is no absolute isolation of the oppressed from the effects of discourse and institutional practices (ashcroft et al. 2013). spivak’s idea is particularly important because, ideally, cbr scholars are concerned with equipping the community with research skills as a way for them to transform their own reality (hall 1993; park 1993). this equipping process involves deepening the relationship between academics and the community through university-based and non-formal education training (strand et al. 2003; tandon et al. 2016), as well as through the research process (strand et al. 2003). in this sense, according to spivak (2009), the outsider becomes an outside-in, whereby the margin is constituted within the centre. nevertheless, these benefits, or share of the centre, which also include upward mobility, are available only to those who perform strategic essentialism, hence claiming their marginality (spivak 2009). this can be illustrated through my experience filling out the application form to access cbr training in a north american university, which, along with my fieldwork, helped me to access a doctoral program. my marginality also gave me the opportunity to sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 design and teach undergraduate and graduate courses on diversity and inclusion. thus, the subject-position that i claimed, a southern person, allowed me to enjoy both the margin and the centre. perhaps, community-engaged scholars would not recognise ‘control’ as part of their practice. indeed, cbr practitioners, particularly those coming from the southern tradition, are committed to emancipation, which is exactly the opposite of control. nevertheless, academics should be aware of taylor’s (2014, p. 173) warning about how subjectivities are ‘formed in and through relations of power’. she stated: there are not emancipatory institutions and norms that enable us, on the one hand, and oppressive or normalizing institutions and norms that constrain us, on the other; rather, we are simultaneously enabled and contained by the same institutions and norms. although taylor’s statement sounds somewhat pessimistic, she also encourages people to become aware of how they are enabled and constrained, as well as figure out strategies to resist subjection and explore different ways of being in the social space. community and performativity understanding of centre-margin politics gains greater depth when one considers judith butler’s concept of performativity. this is particularly useful for my analysis because i am not only interested in how the centre creates the margin or even how it defines the margin’s subjectivity. following taylor’s advice above, i am also concerned with how those in the margin escape subjection. in other words, i am interested in understanding how community members come to take up a different subject position as cbr facilitators and/or leaders, which is a function commonly attributed to academics. i am aware that my elaboration is based on a clearly defined university/community binary. dwyer and buckle (2009) contested this position by saying that an individual can occupy both an insider and an outsider position at the same time. however, identity and the power embedded in it still deserve consideration. in addition, the lived experience and struggle of those who occupy a ‘neither...nor’ position in the context of community-engaged scholarship is seldom explored in the literature. butler coined the concept of gender performativity by relying on derrida and foucault (butler 1990; 2004). she is concerned with how to become a subject that is not aligned with discursive identities proposed by society. according to jackson and mazzei (2012, p. 67), butler’s goal is to ‘unsettle the stabilizing gender categories that attempt to normalize and regulate people and accentuates a process of repetition that produces gendered subjectivity’. butler (2004) agreed with foucault that regulatory power operates on gender, which leads to the understanding that gender is a norm. as such, it ‘governs the social intelligibility of action’ (butler 2004, p. 41), which allows for the identification of practices and the regulation of what is permitted to appear in the social space. a subject, particularly a subject of gender, is one that is required for and induced as the subject by the social space. in essence, butler is theorising on the relationship between identity and subject (heckman 2010). she explains that a subject is and seeks to be attached to its identity. this attachment is caused by regulatory power and becomes a means of self-enhancement and self-preservation; it gives an individual the possibility of a livable life (butler 2002). therefore, as walton (2012) clarified, the idea that gender is performative rests on the understanding that there is no essentialised gender identity; its apparent essence that evokes femininity and masculinity is fabricated by the normative discourse. however, this normalisation has a limit. butler (2002) explained that anyone who does not fit the norm is not recognisable. she stated that ‘it is precisely that domain of ourselves which we live without recognizing, which we persist in through a sense of disavowal, that for which we have no vocabulary, but which we endure without quite knowing’ (butler 2002, p. 17). in this sense, butler focused on one escaping subjection by moving towards recognition of identities that are still not prescribed in the dominant sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 discourse. regarding this, butler’s work engages with derrida in the sense that identity and meaning are vulnerable to subversion and re-contextualisation, given positive possibility and structure of language through extraction (nealon 1996). in this sense, agency is founded in the tension between performativity and escaping subjection ( jackson & mazzei 2012). for butler (1990, p. 144), ‘the question of agency is reformulated as a question of how signification and resignification work’. it allows variation of repetition, even though signification is limited by ‘the orbit of the compulsion to repeat’ (butler 1990, p. 145). yet, it makes alternative ways of social intelligibility possible and therefore new possibilities for gender identities. butler’s theory of performativity allows one to understand gender identity in terms of performative acts, and this understanding can be extrapolated to other identity categories such as black, women, academics, the facilitator and the community. these are all identity categories recognised according to their performativity in the social space. this is particularly important because people commonly defined by historical marginalisation and collective identities, such as ethnicity, gender and race (adelman 1993), are commonly given the subject position of the community in cbr discourse (for example, delemos 2006; hacker 2013; mckinnon 2018) and not the facilitators, the researcher, the centre (hall et al. 2016). others may disagree, but kerstetter (2012) explained that academic researchers can be community insiders or be positioned in the ‘space between’ an insider and an outsider. kerstetter (2012) also emphasised that the researcher’s identity in relation to the group they are working with is dynamic and not fixed. this affirmation is reasonable, but what kerstetter did not mention is that, despite researchers being able to be identified with the collective identity of the community, this does not imply that the performative acts are the same. performativity relates to the idea of becoming a subject through repetition, which is different from performance ( jackson & mazzei 2012). it has to do with what it means to be an academic or a researcher repeating your acts in the social space every day and what it means to be the community. for instance, i remember that, during my cbr training, we were required to write a mini-cbr proposal. in one of our feedback sessions, our instructor told one of my classmates: ‘this is too academic! make it less academic!’ that student, who was also from the global south, was doing her master’s degree while taking the course. that experience reminded me of who i was in that context and who my classmate was. indeed, we were not academic researchers; we were the community daring to do research. did it mean that we could not be too academic? and what does it mean to be too academic? this was power working on us, shaping and disciplining us as the community. in this sense, community is performativity. yes, we could do cbr, but not as academics, only as representatives of the community. my proposition is that, in order to imagine community members (the community) as facilitators, one must pose the question: who is this community member who ‘being outside the norm is in some sense being defined still in relation to it’ (butler 2004, p. 42)? this understanding suggests that to inquire how community members become cbr facilitators is to inquire about their process of escaping subjection and the struggle of becoming a recognisable subject within the cbr discourse. in this struggle, it is important to be conscious (freire 1997) of how discourse both constrains and enables the community (taylor 2014). for example, after my classmate’s experience, i made my community subjectivity visible by avoiding discussions that might sound too academic, only having them in the right place with the right people, including my interest in a phd program. these strategies of resistance and compliance were attempts to escape subjection: to be while not being; embracing marginality to exist, but looking for ways to express other facets of my existence. at the same time, it was important to determine ‘ways in which existing practices have the potential to loosen constraints’ (taylor 2014, p. 173). a year later, i entered the teaching machine again, now as a graduate student. i still embrace my marginality to speak and invite scholars to rethink the cbr discourse and the community’s positionality in it. my dissertation is in progress. i am exploring how community members become cbr facilitators. taylor (2014) suggested that certain practices not only have the potential to lose constraint but also to create new sousa gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 practices and new relations. the works of otis (2017) and carrel et al. (2017) provide examples of these new ways, whereby the community holds greater autonomy and leadership in the process of knowledge creation. final considerations cbr is a research approach that challenges the knowledge hierarchy and attempts to break from the traditional binary, researcher–researched, by inviting the community into a partnership to create collaborative knowledge for social change. this approach places discussions on power relations between researchers and community groups at the forefront of academic attention. despite the subject-to-subject ideal, the university is still the partner that holds the greater power in research. in spivak’s (2009) terms, the university is the centre and a teaching machine that views the community as a subject of marginality, necessary for maintenance of the cbr enterprise. in this sense, as i exemplified through my lived experience, the community must partner with the centre to benefit from it through the acquisition of research skills and other resources. as a subject, the community entails performative acts (butler 1999), which allow the margin to be recognised in community-university partnerships. in other words, the community is a discursive norm that defines the limits of more egalitarian engagements. in this article, i argue that cbr needs to be understood fundamentally as a social movement of the people, imagining the community beyond a place of marginality and strengthening its emancipatory ends. in this shift from an academic endeavour to an inquiry by the people, the discourse may allow variations of repetition (butler 1999), making possible community members’ escape from subjection to emerge as cbr facilitators, who may partner or not with the university. this shift would mean reclaiming and strengthening cbr in the global south and its emancipatory roots, whereby knowledge production would be community-led and produced in action (ledwith 2020). on this path, there would be no difference in capability between researchers and the community (tandon 1988). this article is my attempt to invite scholars and community members to discuss the community’s positionality on cbr. i acknowledge that it is mostly a theoretical reflection based on my lived experience and that further research is needed on how power relations produce the community in universitycommunity partnerships, and how the community escapes subjection within these relations. i hope that dialogue and research in this direction may lead to practices that are able to loosen community subjection and contribute to new understanding of community-university partnership. i also look forward to contributing to more people-led cbr initiatives, in which they own the means of knowledge creation and are supported by it in shaping their own futures. references adelman, c 1993, ‘kurt lewin and the origins of action research’, educational action research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965079930010102 ashcroft, b, griffiths, g & 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research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: chupp, m., hirsch, j., malone, m. 2023. introduction: integrating asset-based community development and community-based research for social change: a beginning. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–12. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8968 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au introduction integrating asset-based community development and community-based research for social change: a beginning mark chupp1, jennifer hirsch2 and margaret malone3 1 associate professor, jack, joseph and morton mandel school of applied social science, case western reserve university, usa 2 senior director, center for sustainable communities research and education, georgia institute of technology, usa 3 executive editor, gateways journal, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: mark chupp, mgc2@case.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8968 article history: received 17/10/2023; revised 25/11/2023; accepted 12/12/2023; published 12/2023 abstract this themed volume is grounded in a set of diverse case studies that bring community and university partners together using two aligned methodologies: community-based research (cbr), which evolved from higher education, and asset-based community development (abcd), which evolved from community practice. the volume places these methodologies in dialogue with each other, to examine and begin to answer the question that guided the volume’s call for articles: can cbr and abcd be compatible agents in equitable and sustainable change? from the case studies emerge five themes that we explore in this guest editorial: (1) the benefits of community-university partnerships; (2) the risks of community-university partnerships; (3) notions of community expertise and ‘community partner’; (4) the centrality of relationship-based methodologies in partnerbuilding; and (5) explorations of power, equity and justice. the editorial opens and closes with discussion on the important systemic question of power imbalances between universities and communities, which has to be addressed for these methodologies to be effective, whether used on their own or in combination within community-university partnerships. it concludes with a discussion of the ‘deep, wide and connected’ community engagement that the articles as a whole suggest is necessary to have equitable and sustainable impact. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8968 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8968 mailto:sbaker18@elon.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8968 keywords asset based community development (abcd); community based research (cbr); community-university engagement; power imbalances; equity; sustainability introduction power differentials are a given when institutions engage with communities, especially those who have been historically marginalised. research is typically driven by the agenda of university scholars and controlled by the resources at their disposal. institution-based research most often focuses on community needs and deficits, which contributes to a dominant narrative of the institution having superior knowledge and expertise and the capacity to fix problems or bring solutions. other areas of interaction, such as servicelearning and outreach, can be similarly framed and implemented in top-down fashion (lee & espino 2010; mitchell 2008). the imbalance in power and sense of agency is compounded when research, teaching and learning fail to acknowledge systemic issues, such as racism and disinvestment, as primary causes of the many needs these communities face. these inequitable dynamics must be acknowledged and addressed through redefining the relationship between institutions and communities and through a shift in approaches and methods of collaboration. two growing movements challenge this dominant narrative and set of assumptions. asset-based community development (abcd) has emerged as an important framework for bringing a strengths-based and relationship-centred approach to addressing challenges faced by communities and individuals. abcd recognises that all communities have assets; that community members are the experts on their own lives and communities; and that change is most meaningful and most sustainable when it is driven by the community (kretzmann & mcknight 1993; mathie & cunningham 2003). abcd is grounded in the recognition that individuals and community groups have expertise, skills and resources that are essential to effecting positive social change in their local communities (roy 2017). today, abcd work is employed by community-based organisations, non-profits, ngos and funders throughout north america, europe, africa, australia and other parts of the world. similarly, community-based research (cbr), with its emphasis on reciprocity and participatory methodologies, challenges conventional, hierarchical research frameworks that position expertise outside of communities and instead understands critical collaborative research to be with communities rather than on or for them. community-university engaged research has been steadily growing in institutional legitimacy and visibility over the past few decades. globally, there is now a significant and rich body of evidence attesting to the diversity of collaborative and innovative research initiatives underway, in which community partners participate as co-investigators and experts, rather than merely research ‘subjects’. this movement has taken on various forms. historically, participatory action research (par), which originated in the southern hemisphere, integrates the expertise and lived experience of the community with the pursuit of knowledge around real-world issues that then leads to mobilisation for action and social change (schubotz 2020). community based participatory research (cbpr) grew out of the public health field and emphasises equitable relationships between the university and the community, with community members serving as co-investigators at every stage of the research process (wallerstein & duran 2017). both abcd and cbr can be understood as part of a much larger, evolving and long-standing struggle by the many to be recognised by the few as legitimate ‘considerers of the world’, capable of improving the world (freire 2017, p. 64). at the global level, there is growing momentum for asset-based communityuniversity engagement, in all its guises (farnell 2020; hall & tandon 2021). this volume seeks to contribute to this momentum. while it remains primarily a method employed in community-based work, attention to community assets is slowly being introduced into higher education research, teaching and learning (chupp & joseph 2010; hamerlinck & plaut 2014; hirsch et al. 2023). in some cases, cbr initiatives that use chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 methods such as par or cbpr integrate an asset-based approach within their work, demonstrating the confluence of these two methods in practice (hall 2011; janzen & ochocka 2020; stoecker & tryon 2009; suarez-balcazar et al. 2008). this themed volume sets out to explore the benefits and challenges of a more explicit combination of these two aligned, yet distinct movements. it asks: are abcd and cbr compatible agents in equitable and sustainable change? the guest editors we came together as guest editors based on our shared interest in examining theory and practice linking community-based research to asset-based community development, to identify the benefits, as well as the limitations, of intentionally linking these two movements. the four of us approached this work from very different backgrounds, positions and geographies. mark chupp identifies as a white, christian, upper middle-class scholar-practitioner from cleveland, ohio, usa. his career began in restorative justice and peacemaking, working as a practitioner in the usa and central america. after 15 years, he transitioned to an academic career focused on community-engaged research and community building. mark provides training and consulting to community groups wanting to use strength-based approaches to change. he is in the social work faculty at case western reserve university, where he chairs the master of social work concentration in community practice for social change. he holds an msw from the university of michigan and a phd in social welfare from case western reserve university. mark has been affiliated with the abcd institute at depaul university since 2015. jennifer hirsch identifies as a white, jewish, upper middle-class scholar-practitioner from chicago, illinois, usa. her career has centred on facilitating university-community partnerships, using her training as an applied cultural anthropologist. drawing on her background as an administrator of participatory action research, jennifer works to apply abcd within higher education, focusing specifically on research and teaching partnerships related to sustainability and environmental justice in the southeastern united states. she has spent almost 20 years living in the u.s. south. jennifer received her doctorate degree from duke university for researching a grassroots economic justice network, and currently works as the senior director of the center for sustainable communities research and education at the georgia institute of technology. jennifer has been affiliated with the abcd institute at depaul university since 2013. nabiela naily is a lecturer at the faculty of sharia and law at uinsa, indonesia. graduating from uin syahid jakarta in islamic studies, in cooperation with al azhar cairo, she studied sociology at the university of gajahmada (unfinished). her master degrees are in islamic law from uin sunan ampel surabaya and a masters in asian studies at the australian national university. her areas of expertise are family law, islamic law, gender and child protection, and university-community engagement. previously head of the sile/lld project promoting university-community engagement, nabiela is currently director of the international office of uinsa, as well as coordinator for the indonesian k4c hub, part of the global knowledge for change (k4c) consortium, an initiative of the unesco chair of communitybased research and social responsibility in higher education. hanna nel is an emeritus professor in the department of social work and community development at the university of johannesburg and a passionate researcher and educator. the focus of her research in the last 15 years has primarily been on community development, and specifically asset-based citizen-led development (abcd) in south africa. she has a publication list of 59 articles and chapters in accredited journals and books. she was a co-author with two colleagues of a book on community development, of which the second edition was published in 2021. hanna has guided 59 post-graduate students at master’s and doctoral levels to graduation. chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 this volume the call for papers asked authors to respond to any or all of the following questions: 1. how does asset-based community development relate to and interact with academic research? who benefits from this interaction? 2. can an asset-based orientation help position community participants as peer ‘experts’ alongside their academic partners, sharing power and authority in the collaboration? if so, how? if not, why not? 3. what are the benefits and risks of bringing an institution-based research focus to place-based community development initiatives? 4. what examples of community-based research utilising an asset-based orientation already exist? share success stories, but also mishaps, misadventures and serendipities: lessons learnt the hard way. the guest editors, gateways executive editor and members of the journal’s editorial committee received many abstracts before selecting and working with the authors in this volume, who represent a wide variety of contexts, programs and approaches. as we worked on the manuscripts, beginning with two online writers’ workshops in which the authors also provided feedback to each other, it became clear that each article provided examples of how cbr and abcd come together in practice. just over half of the articles feature university and community-based co-authorship teams. through this richly varied empirical and experiential lens, five core themes emerged from the articles: 1. benefits associated with community-university interactions and partnerships; 2. risks associated with community-university interactions and partnerships; 3. the nature of community expertise and diverse definitions of ‘community partner’; 4. the centrality of relationship-based methodologies to ensure lasting, trusting and equitable partnerships; and 5. critical and practical explorations of larger, ongoing discourses of power, equity and justice. these themes point back to this volume’s core question: are asset-based community development and community-based research compatible agents in equitable and sustainable change? the articles suggest that they can be, and that they have enormous potential to drive social, cognitive and institutional change. at the same time, they highlight the importance of continuing to ask, at each stage of research: ‘whose knowledge counts?’ the themes and this important question serve as the organisational basis for the discussion that follows. theme 1: benefits associated with community-university interactions and partnerships the case studies in this volume offer clear evidence of the benefits of taking an asset-based approach to institution-based research intended to advance community development. in general, an asset-based approach promotes a shift to a more equitable and reciprocal relationship between the institution and the community, and to ways of working together that strengthen communities, institutions and their partnerships. when properly implemented, abcd principles help move groups from traditional top-down practices to participatory and collaborative practices (lasker & weiss 2003). the articles demonstrate a variety of benefits, and the ways in which they are multi-directional. perhaps the most vital benefit – and the foundational aim – of an asset-based approach to community development, with or without institutional partners, is that it widens the frame of what is considered a valuable asset. chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 kitamura et al., for example, propose that among the assets of rural communities in japan (in this case, noto) are the ‘traditional social-ecological systems of satoyama and satoumi’ (landscapes and seascapes), traditional food-producing systems and various cultural assets, ‘including traditional festivals in each local community, the purpose of which is to express reverence and gratitude to the deities of nature’ (p. 3). brewer and kliewer reference the work of bell hooks (2009) to argue for the importance of everyday spaces as community assets, explaining that ‘[w]henever possible, our conversations take place on front porches to recognise the cultural role of front porches as a space of civility and fellowship, and, at times, female and anti-racist resistance …’ (p. 5). in a third, very different setting – that of an online community selling handmade goods – close and lohr give a compelling example of the power of an asset-based approach to inform community-based research for change. they designed a methodology based on abcd principles and included the concept of expertise as a community asset: we posited that the knowledge of what an ideal marketplace platform should look like – an ‘asset of the mind’ – was already distributed among the many members of the isg [indie sellers guild] and the wider handmade and vintage communities. what the isg then needed was a way to concretise that knowledge into expertise, which could form the basis of the accreditation program (p. 8). at the same time, many articles made plain the ways in which institutional knowledge and methods can add rigour and credibility to partnerships, helping to increase the effectiveness of community-driven change efforts. coley et al. describe the work of the ormond center in durham, north carolina, usa, as a way for the community to benefit from partnering with an institution grounded in disciplinary-based research and training. through a community listening and learning process, themes emerge from the analysis that then become the focus of educational sessions in the community. for this careful work, a ‘ground truthing’ tool is used in interviewing so as to learn from community members what they see as the heart of the issue. goodman et al. employ service learning and the cooperative extension models from an asset perspective to create community partnerships that are mutually beneficial. students learn in real-world settings as they strengthen community groups by bringing survey research, mapping and community-engagement methods to the projects. another benefit of the experiential learning associated with service learning and cooperative extension programs is the promotion of active citizenship, social responsibility and a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness between academia and society. goodman et al. show how resources, researchcentric information and support from the institution help build community power and leadership. watson et al. offer a third example. they note that academic partnerships can enhance the community organisations’ evaluation capacity and credibility, helping them to satisfy funders’ expectations for resultbased accountability. these authors explore the important role played by place-based initiatives (pbis): non-profit, semi-outsider organisations. the authors conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with leaders and staff from three pbis in charlotte, north carolina, usa. they found that pbis ‘play a critical role in coordinating resources, services and expertise across multiple organisations and sectors, and that this coordination can build on local assets to transform neighbourhoods’ social, structural, physical and economic conditions and promote intergenerational economic mobility’ (p. 3). at the same time, pbis must meet often demanding funding requirements. one way to do this, without sacrificing community-led goals, is by leveraging partnerships with academic institutions to incorporate both abcd and cbr principles into their work. further, academic partners also have the standing to challenge the exclusive use of traditional metrics for reporting and instead co-create new metrics more consistent with an asset-based approach. the above examples point to a deeper benefit of equitable and asset-based partnerships: the means to challenge systems and power dynamics in general. many authors argue that institutions can actively help drive a shift in power by connecting groups to resources and resource networks. goodman et al. (p. 20) suggest that institutions should take a ‘build together’ approach to combat ‘deficit thinking and the systems of oppression and inequality that exist within the landscape of funding sources’. kitamura et al. (p. 2) chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 explore the creation of an accessible, online cbr database by a transdisciplinary community of practice in rural noto, japan. their exploratory case study argues that through the establishment of a communitymanaged mechanism like a database, scholarly outputs ‘can themselves become an asset for use by local communities, and thereby help to address pressing issues, such as the wellbeing of the people’. similarly, morales (p. 23) develops an asset based critical engagement framework for service-learning courses to leverage ‘the strengths, talents and skills of students, faculty, and community to create classrooms and community spaces that critically analyze and interrogate systems of inequality’. theme 2: risks associated with community-university interactions and partnerships along with the benefits come risks. a common critique of abcd is that focusing on community assets risks ignoring systemic inequities and the responsibility of the state and institutions to effect social change. an asset-based approach can lay the responsibility for improvement onto individuals and the community, in a variation of the old trope, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’. in their exploration of place-based organisations, watson et al. note that such organizations, while effective in building trust with local communities, are sometimes pressured to focus on accountability to funders’ demands for impact, leading to an unfortunate shift away from community-driven goals to results-based management. similarly, coley et al. note the recent slowing in faith-based community--development organisations’ asset-based social change efforts, and a shift instead to more charity-based work that does not address the root causes of poverty. while acknowledging this decline, these authors from the ormond center at duke divinity school, durham, nc, usa, seek to ‘pick up on the faith-based community’s long, if intermittent, history of profound social innovation’ by arguing for a ‘renewed imagination and intentionally practiced asset-based community development’ in critical and participatory collaboration with other faith-based partners (p. 3). at the same time, in response to the academy’s traditional deficit-based lens, there is an emerging shift by researchers and professional practitioners towards asset-based approaches to collaborative research, understood as engagement with, rather than on or for, communities. sheppard and fuerst’s article offers a reflective case study of the challenges involved in navigating these multiple currents. they present a discussion of an evaluation assessment in a diverse, complex and traumatised community that is far from ‘power-neutral’ (p. 3). out of a sensitivity to the horrific nature of a mass shooting, these authors intentionally chose not to suggest an alternative approach to the needs-based evaluation requested by the community, which appeared at first to be the result of ‘unified community intentions’ (p. 2). only later did they discover in the archived material that some in the community had earlier created a strength-based, eight-point vision of a thriving community. in retrospect, the authors recognised that they had missed an opportunity to leverage their authority as outside evaluators to propose and design a process that could have integrated the ‘community-voiced assetbased vision of recovery and growth with the needs-based assessment required by applications for grants and emergency funding’ (sheppard & fuerst, p. 6). they note the importance of using a ‘trauma informed lens’ when working with communities, as it can reveal ‘possible challenges to a best practice like abcd that can include a lack of trust and social cohesion; lack of stability, reliability and consistency; inability to vision the future; disempowerment and lack of a sense of community ownership; high level of personal needs; and the real depth and breadth of community needs’ (weinstein, wolin & rose 2014, p. 6; quoted in sheppard & fuerst, p. 10-11). another risk pertains to the institution getting ahead of the community by leading the research agenda and implementation without first being properly connected with the community through trusting and mutually beneficial relationships. or, conversely, deciding when partnership goals have been met. bhatt and chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 singh relate how a partnership involving a university, a community organisation and a rural community of artisanal potters was challenged after the newly built and installed kilns were damaged. they write (p. 10): while the de jure responsibility for a linear community-development framework would seem to have halted with the design, development and installation of this technological artifact, adhering to the iterative and integrated framework, the academic team de facto assumed their responsibility as partners with the village community, to ensure smooth adaption to, and operation of, this co-developed technological artifact. in view of this, the team decided to conduct another round of stakeholder consultation to gauge their concerns and perceptions of these issues. this example points to another very important aspect of community-university partnerships: the vital need for equitable sharing of resources, both social and material, such as funding, time and decision-making authority. all of these examples point to the larger risk to meaningful and mutually beneficial research collaborations, which is the conservative, self-preserving nature of institutions that limit systems change thinking and action. collaboration and engagement are always at risk of becoming self-serving, at least in part, rather than a vehicle for substantive change. these risks and challenges are significant and not to be taken lightly. beyond limiting effectiveness, they can actually create harm in communities that have already endured marginalisation, disinvestment and exclusion. this collection of articles is rich in detail and insight, but our discussion below focuses on two key issues occurring throughout the article: recognition of community assets and expertise, and the importance of leveraging both abcd and cbr to effect meaningful change; in effect, the very heart of what abcd and cbr offer to community-university partnerships. by paying critical, material and methodological attention to both, partnerships can do a better job of negotiating the complex and entrenched issues of power, legitimacy and resource sharing. theme 3: the nature of community expertise and diverse definitions of ‘community partner’ an abcd approach explicitly challenges the deficit model that marginalised communities are often subjected to by institutions such as universities. many of the case studies in this volume shed vivid light on the strength and diversity of community assets. bhatt and singh, for example, explain how an asset-based approach enabled the university-based team to recognise the existing local assets, skills and resources of their rural community partners as complements to the researchers’ technical knowledge. paying attention to all of these factors was essential if the new kilns were to be robust, used and community owned. they write: ‘the academics acknowledged pottery making as a traditional, intergenerational knowledge, constituting the village’s cultural asset. secondly, the local pottery kiln technology was recognised as a community asset’ (p. 14). by recognising the local kiln technology as valuable, a co-created solution was developed that modified and improved it, rather than replaced or rejected it. this outcome rested on an earlier recognition: the need for widespread involvement, which in this case included potters as well as non-potter families, community leaders, academics from a leading technical institute and the national cooperative union of india, which served as a trusted bridge between academia and the rural community. close and lohr offer another excellent example of how an attentive asset-based framework can facilitate recognition, articulation and mobilisation of collective expertise among community members, which can then lead to wider social change. the authors note that among online independent sellers (of handmade goods, in this case), there is an overrepresentation of ‘those who have been pushed out of the traditional workforce: people with disabilities or chronic health issues, caregivers, and trans and non-binary individuals’ (p. 4). yet those crafters began self-identifying as ‘capable agents of change’, which included instigating the research shared in this article and, eventually, forcing policy change. the authors (p. 10) write: chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 indie sellers are often told, particularly by platforms, that any problems they encounter are a result of deficits in their craft and business skills. a proposed solution is for them to individually seek help from outside experts, for example, taking a business course. however, we argue that this is wrong on multiple levels. our research demonstrates that, while any one individual seller may be able to improve on a skill, creative independent sellers collectively possess clear expertise. t hey are ‘content experts’, possessing gifts both of the hands and the heart. morales’ conceptual contribution to critical and asset-based engagement emphasises the importance of recognising indigenous knowledge. she argues that for institutional-based assets and practices, such as service-learning courses, to be beneficial, it is essential to challenge the traditional framework of whiteness and class privilege that can typify such offerings, particularly in predominantly white institutions. in her research, she uses yosso’s (2005) theory of community cultural wealth to refer to the expertise that her interviewees – latinx students at a hispanic serving institution in the usa – bring to their education and to their service-learning experiences. according to yosso, community cultural wealth includes ‘aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance assets’ – assets that educators can use to better ‘understand how latinx students’ access and experience college, from an asset-based perspective’ (morales, p. 22). morales advocates that institutions develop a philosophy of engagement that sees community partners as co-educators, and for institution-based educators to think deeply about what it means to take an abcd approach to classroom practices and pedagogy: when applied to service learning, asset-based community development becomes an integral component of a social justice oriented course. it addresses issues of power, challenges students to look beyond how they might have been taught to view communities and their residents, and invites recognition of the local knowledge of community residents … (p. 9) relatedly, in the case studies shared by goodman et al., an extension agent used this same approach to act as a facilitator rather than a problem solver, by bringing community members together to ‘focus on the strength of our county. when our community comes together, we understand our opportunities to address challenges’ (p. 16). these detailed and nuanced depictions of community are important because they place any collaboration with institutions of higher education within wider sociopolitical and historical contexts – which are complex, changing and contested. they emphatically show that terms such as ‘community’, ‘expertise’ and ‘partnership’ are layered with complexity. indeed, some university personnel are members of the community being researched. the case studies of sheppard & fuerst and watson et al. advise against treating the community as one monolithic entity, inappropriately assuming that a group of residents is representative or can speak on behalf of the entire community. theme 4: the centrality of relationship-based methodologies to ensure lasting, trusting and equitable partnerships perhaps not surprisingly, there is consequently a great variety and richness to the partnerships described in these articles. partnerships include anchor institutions with local faith-based organisations and community stakeholders; a transdisciplinary community of practice involving researchers, local government officials and engagement practitioners; and a range of institutions of higher education partnering with an equally varied range of place-based organisations. however, a common theme among this diversity is that organisations and partnerships leverage both abcd and cbr methodologies in their work together. collaborative and action-oriented community-based research (cbr) approaches are grounded in equitybased, non-hierarchical and reciprocal principles and practices designed to empower community members in the research process. abcd approaches stress that the community is an intellectual space, with its own strengths, networks and agency, which can be forgotten in the rush to engagement. there is strength in their chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 combined use. this leveraging is done for a number of reasons, but we suggest it is profoundly connected with the desire to drive change: epistemological, material, methodological and social. watson et al. (p. 15) found that place-based organisations (pbis) that utilise both abcd and cbr can act as ‘ the conduits for both creating space for community agents to enact asset-based community development and the mediator of community-based research higher education partnerships’. a number of articles provide detailed discussion of the epistemological and conceptual basis for their partnerships as a means to co-creating situated knowledge that drives change. brewer and kliewer, for example, developed their front porch development procedure (fpdp) by combining both abcd and par. they explain (p. 26): changes that follow front porch conversations are often small – organizing a community clean-up or a collective social event – but continue to develop beyond the conversation and the outside agency that serves as steward. while the outcome may not appear liberating at first glance, each instance represents a small group of individuals who create new forms of knowledge and act collectively – usually for the first time – to improve their own quality of life by leveraging neighbourhood assets. in fact, a number of authors argue that using abcd to recognise and build on the key assets of community expertise to strengthen relational networks is crucial to partnerships’ goal of achieving lasting impact. bhatt and singh argue for the importance of building collaborative networks if long-term sustainable solutions are to be attained. more emphatically, they argue that such work ‘attempts to create knowledge equilibrium by bridging the gap between dominant knowledge and systematically repressed knowledge(s). in this way, these approaches can aid in decolonising knowledge and power’ (bhatt & singh, p. 18). just as some focus on the conceptual underpinnings to a combined abcd and cbr framework, other articles concentrate on the methodological and process implications. kitamura et al. (p. 2) argue that ‘[r] esearch towards identifying the actual processes for achieving abcd through cbr has only just begun’. these authors propose that ‘two facilitating factors are needed’: a transdisciplinary community of practice (tdcop) and a well-designed facilitation mechanism – in this case, an online accessible database – to ensure that the research process is collaborative, inclusive and action-oriented. indeed, a number of articles present complex and ongoing undertakings. as one example, coley et al. (p. 5) provides the following description: we expand this concept [cbr] to advance ‘faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research’ (fb-cppr), by asking, ‘how might a faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research team motivated through teaching, training and learning be deployed to address complex social barriers to thriving in their local context, and thereby seek opportunities for positive social change? moreover, what are potential social impact projects that might spring from faith-based communityacademic partnered participatory research teams? lastly, how might the collaboration partners implement the projects together? across these articles, we see how a focus on equity and justice is able to be explicitly articulated as partnership and project goals, through the harnessing of both abcd and cbr. for institutions and community organisations, this involves being up front about naming and addressing power imbalances, creating infrastructure for resilient, lasting partnerships, and addressing the issue of unequal resource distribution and the need for material institutional support from the academic partner. watson et al. caution that, when not fully invested in, even participatory methods like cbpr can exacerbate the academiccommunity divide. goodman et al. point to resource allocation as one key aspect of institutional powersharing, with particular emphasis on compensating partners financially for their time and expertise, as well as sharing resources such as ‘funding opportunities and networks, intellectual property, and physical meeting spaces’ (p. 21). morales focuses especially on interpersonal relationship building, pointing to the importance chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 of educators examining their own – and that of their students’ – positionality. here, reciprocity is integral to relationship-based service learning, where ‘engagement for upliftment’ is in the service of bettering, empowering or uplifting the community. in so doing, the community and students receive and experience mutual upliftment. sheppard and fuerst highlight the need to listen, not just to the most empowered within organisations, and reflect on what may not be appearing on agendas. theme 5: critical and practical explorations of larger, ongoing discourses of power, equity and justice the articles in this themed volume on abcd and cbr add to our understanding of what it means to share power and authority in a community-academic partnership – and why this even matters. as mentioned above in the discussion on theme 2: risks, abcd is of ten critiqued for paying inadequate attention to power and ignoring structural and historical inequities, including, but not limited to, race, despite its intention to flip power dynamics on their head by privileging communities over institutions. a few of the articles in this themed volume point to particular practices that might do a lot to help researchers, practitioners and community partners engage on more equitable ground. one such practice is to take care to employ the abcd principles of centring the stories, experiences and voices of traditionally marginalised groups (e.g. youth, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc.) in research and action. morales’ focus on latinx students brings issues of historical marginalisation to the fore in an interesting twist. through an examination of interpersonal relationship-building, morales points to the importance of examining our own – and our students’ – positionality, reframing it as an asset that strengthens local knowledge and connections. similarly, upon reflecting on the evaluation process, in which white people engaged as white evaluators of a black community, sheppard et al. (p. 8) posited the imposition of an abcd approach as potentially a ‘white saviour complex (meaning that we had the solution, i.e. proposing abcd as an alternative to the community desire to assess needs)’ that seemingly ‘placed the burden on them to “fix” everything that had gone wrong’. their introspective reflection situates research and practice relationships within historical and systemic contexts, and warns against imposing abcd upon communities when they are asking for different approaches. sheppard et al., along with goodman et al., emphasise one way in which abcd could be used specifically to focus on structural inequities, and that is to make sure to partner with community groups other than the most empowered community-based organisations, thus echoing abcd’s focus on informal associations rather than formal organisations. furthermore, goodman et al. point out the need for equity and justice to be explicitly articulated as partnership and project goals. in conclusion this themed volume set out to explore the question: are asset-based community development and community-based research compatible agents in equitable and sustainable change? this introduction explored five key themes from the articles in this volume – (1) the benefits of community-university partnerships; (2) the risks of community-university partnerships; (3) notions of community expertise and ‘community partner’; (4) the centrality of relationship-based methodologies in partner building; and (5) exploration of power, equity and justice. in the end, of course, all of this work should be judged by its impact – by the changes that it leads to in both communities and institutions involved in the partnerships. a number of the authors in this volume argue that meaningful, sustainable impact requires deep, wide and connected community engagement. bhatt and singh echo a common refrain among many of the articles when they write: building ‘a collaborative framework, based on mutual trust, respect and benefit … will chupp et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 ensure that community knowledge is acknowledged, its opinions are heard, and its needs are met, resulting in long-term sustainable solutions’ (p. 4). a key takeaway is that abcd and cbr practitioners and researchers need to be not only skilled listeners, but skilled conveners, able to nurture collective wisdom. deep, wide and connected community engagement will not happen on its own or through short-term research or narrowly prescribed service-learning projects. creating sustainable and equitable relationships with tangible benefits to both the community and the university requires a commitment by the university to share power and to invest in building trusting relationships over time. just as a well-organised and unified community is more effective in working towards change, universities need to ensure that the approaches to research and educational initiatives are operating from a shared set of values and principles of practice that guide university-community engagement. intentionally bringing community members and university representatives together to co-create these principles and learn from each other increases trust and their shared capacity for community problem solving (chupp et al. 2021). the articles included in this volume provide a broad range of theoretical frameworks and case studies demonstrating the productive – and potentially productive – ways in which abcd and cbr, as methodologies grounded in community and in higher education, respectively, can be used in tandem to nurture deeper, more productive, and more impactful community-university partnerships. there are so many complementary practices among these fields that we wonder if perhaps someday the two fields will merge into one field that is greater than the sum of its parts. acknowledgements the guest editors and executive editor would like to thank the 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rural setting medical schools have a social responsibility to use their expertise and resources to serve those with the greatest need (murray et al. 2012). for many countries, those with the greatest need are found in rural communities. most of the world’s medical schools are situated in large cities; their medical students come from affluent urban areas with little exposure to rural healthcare needs. most graduates eventually work at urban practices, with a minority returning to serve rural populations (rourke 2010). medical schools can influence this in a variety of ways, for example rural student selection; staff with values, attitudes and skills to teach in this area; institutional values; or a curriculum with a rural focus (curran & rourke 2004; henry et al. 2009). to this end, the international medical university (imu) in malaysia has been seeking to fulfil its responsibility to society through community engagement activities. community engagement activities have been a core project of imu since its inception in 1992. all community engagement activities at imu are assimilated under the structured entity within the university known as imu cares. the philosophy of imu cares is to help create ‘a community of scholars and professionals committed to serving society, promoting the development of students to reach their true potential to become competent, ethical, caring and inquiring citizens, and visionary leaders’. today, more than 50 community engagement projects operate under the banner of imu cares. as a university with a focus on healthcare education, many imu cares projects are rooted in healthcare provision or health education. in addition to their exposure to community health as part of the curriculum, imu medical students are required to participate in a minimum of three community engagement activities as part of their medical training. one of the longest-running projects under imu cares is kampung angkat project (malay for ‘adopted village project’) in the rural indigenous village of kampung tekir. the project started in 2007, providing primary rural healthcare to the villagers. the project helped to promote competencies in imu students, particularly in the areas of service to society, professionalism, chin hoong wong lee ping chen kwee choy koh siew houy chua darren chee hiung jong nurliyana mardhiah mohd fauzi sue yin lim international medical university © 2017 by ch wong, lp chen, kc koh, sh chua, dch jong, nm mohd fauzi & sy lim. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: wong, ch, chen, lp, koh, kc, chua, sh, jong, dch, mohd fauzi, nm & lim, sy 2017, ‘serving an indigenous community: exploring the cultural competence of medical students in a rural setting’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 97–120. doi: 10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5427 corresponding author: chin hoong wong chinhoong.uk@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5427 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) mailto:chinhoong.uk@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5427 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5427 http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/index http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/index 98 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim leadership and clinical skills within a rural setting. it also facilitated research into rural healthcare and the indigenous populations of malaysia. the initiative received the macjannet prize for global citizenship in 2013 (tufts university 2013). in 2012, the project in kampung tekir extended to the neighbouring village of kampung sebir to provide primary rural healthcare and educational services. both kampung tekir and kampung sebir are orang asli villages, predominantly of the temuan people, a subgroup of orang asli people. the orang asli (which means ‘original people’ in malay) are the indigenous people of malaysia and they are a heterogeneous group consisting of three main groups and 18 ethnic subgroups (nicholas 2000). the temuan people normally reside in the lowlands within the malaysian states of selangor and negeri sembilan. traditionally swidden cultivators and collectors of forest resources, many of them are now involved in traditional forms of agriculture, animal husbandry and factory work. their proximity to more prosperous developing areas has put them under considerable pressure from surrounding development, such that many of their villages have been described as an ‘island in a sea of development’ (toshihiro 2009; baer 1999). the villages of tekir and sebir are situated about 13 kilometres from the city of seremban, which is the capital of the state of negeri sembilan in malaysia. although the orang asli make up less than 1 per cent of the national population, nearly three quarters live below the poverty line (department of statistics malaysia 2010). in addition, the infant mortality rate among this community is as high as 51.7 per 1000 live births compared to the national average of 5.7. their average life expectancy is 53 years compared to the national average of 73 years (idrus 2011). more significantly, the indigenous people of malaysia face significant challenges in the unscrupulous attempts to dispossess them of their native land and natural resources. their spiritual belief in animism is also threatened by the pressure to convert to other religions. laws and policies that govern indigenous affairs and the government institutions appointed to execute such powers have proven ineffective in alleviating these challenges (idrus 2011; masron et al. 2013; nicholas 2000; nicholas et al. 2010). the authors recognise they cannot do justice to the historical struggles of the orang asli within the scope of this paper, but more information is found in the references. the cultural diversity unique to the orang asli people calls upon medical schools in malaysia to ensure their graduates are culturally competent. cultural competence has been highlighted as essential in the professional development of medical students (jha et al. 2015; turner et al. 2014). currently, medical schools in malaysia expose their students to rural communities through various community-based activities (azila et al. 2006; lim 2008). however, little research has been done to assess the cultural competence of the students or graduates. 99 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim cultural competence has been defined as ‘the ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with persons from cultures and/or belief systems other than one’s own’ (mcgraw-hill 2002). it can also be a set of behaviours, attitudes and policies that come together to enable a system, agency or group of professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. in the context of healthcare, cultural competence is defined as the ability of providers and organisations to effectively deliver healthcare services that meet the social, cultural and linguistic needs of patients (betancourt et al. 2002). the terms ‘cultural competence’, ‘cultural sensitivity’, ‘cultural humility’ and ‘cultural responsiveness’ have been used interchangeably both in the literature and in their application. foronda (2008) famously defined cultural sensitivity as employing one’s knowledge, consideration, understanding, respect and tailoring, utilising awareness to self and others, when encountering a diverse group or individual. foronda (2016) later conceptualised cultural humility as ‘a process of openness, self-awareness, being egoless, and incorporating self-reflection and critique after willingly interacting with diverse individuals … achieving mutual empowerment, respect, partnerships, optimal care, and lifelong learning’. in australia, cultural responsiveness has been defined as ‘the capacity to respond to the healthcare issues of diverse communities’ (victoria state government, department of health 2009) and ‘an extension of patient centred care that considers the social and cultural factors in managing therapeutic encounters with patients from different cultural and social backgrounds’ (iaha 2015). probably the most all-encompassing definition of cultural competence has been put forward by the national center for cultural competence in washington, dc (adapted from the work by cross et al.): cultural competence requires that organizations: —have a defined set of values and principles, and demonstrate behaviours, attitudes, policies and structures that enable them to work effectively cross-culturally. —have the capacity to (1) value diversity, (2) conduct selfassessment, (3) manage the dynamics of difference, (4) acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge and (5) adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of the communities they serve. —incorporate the above in all aspects of policy making, administration, practice, service delivery and involve systematically consumers, key stakeholders and communities. —view cultural competence as a developmental process that evolves over an extended period. both individuals and organizations are at various levels of awareness, knowledge and skills along the cultural competence continuum (cross et al. 1989 cited by nccc). a culturally competent healthcare system is widely recognised as fundamental to improving health outcomes and quality of care and eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities, particularly for indigenous people (bainbridge et al. 100 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim 2015; georgetown university 2004). however, there is still a lack of quality evidence to show that educational interventions aimed at improving cultural competence are improving patient outcomes. there are also concerns about the sustainability of efforts to improve cultural competence (goode et al. 2006; horvat et al. 2014). the indigenous communities served by imu have their own unique belief system, way of life, language and culture, which are largely unfamiliar to the medical students. therefore, the development of cultural competence for students has several key benefits. firstly, the students will need to have sufficient cultural competence for the project to function effectively; an absence of cultural competence among students would not only affect the success and sustainability of the project but may marginalise the community even further and diminish any hope of the latter achieving self-management and self-determination (trudgen 2000). secondly, when such cultural competence disseminates through the university, there is a potential that the institution will shift towards greater institutional cultural competency (gorringe et al. 2008). thirdly, and crucially, the development of such cultural competence may have longitudinal implications on the effectiveness of imu’s graduates in serving the indigenous population. the training of medical students must incorporate cultural perspectives and experiences that can help prepare them to work with indigenous people in the future (bainbridge et al. 2015, price-robertson et al. 2011). methodology objectives and study design we conducted this study to determine the cultural competence among imu medical students who participated in community engagement activities in an indigenous community, and provide insight into how their cultural competency can be further enhanced. our research aimed to answer the following questions: 1 what do the perceptions of participating students about the orang asli people tell us about their cultural competence? 2 what do the students’ views on community service in relation to their personal and professional development tell us about the way they engage with different cultures; that is, their cultural competency? this was intended to be an exploratory qualitative study using a content analysis of reflections from imu medical students who participated in the activities. setting since 2013, medical students from imu have been providing primary healthcare services once a month to the indigenous people living in kampung sebir. the project in kampung sebir is an extension of the project in kampung tekir. kampung sebir has a population of approximately 200 temuan people. the healthcare service is led by an executive committee of medical students who 101 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim are mentored by imu faculty members, who are experienced clinicians. two of the investigators, chw and shc, are also mentors in the project. the executive committee are empowered to run all aspects of the project: organising and planning services; acquiring, monitoring and dispensing of equipment and medication; volunteer management; and auditing and reporting. the project is also supported by local government health services with medication supplies. student involvement, supervision and experiential learning approximately 10 medical students in their clinical years of training visit the village each month to provide healthcare services. participation by medical students in the project is on a voluntary basis. the students are led by members of the executive committee, with mentoring by chw and shc. the students are assigned to perform various tasks in the village including setting up the clinic, registering villagers, clerking, formulating therapeutic plans, and dispensing medication. during each visit, students may see patients of different ages as well as a mixture of acute or chronic diseases. each student may see from one to five patients in a single visit. although students are encouraged to come as often as they can, the limited places mean that most students can only come once. as part of their learning, the students are asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of the visit. the questionnaire has been designed specifically to help them reflect on their experience and form the basis for a focused group discussion led by the executive committee with supervision by chw and shc. the focused group discussion takes place immediately after each visit. a copy of this questionnaire is attached (see appendix a). data collection and analysis for this study, we looked at the responses of the students to questions two to six in the questionnaire: 2 in your view, who are the orang asli people (consider aspects like origins, culture, behaviour, personality, etc.)? 3 in your view, what are the challenges faced by the orang asli people? 4 how do you view community service? 5 how is community service part of your life? 6 in your opinion, how should community service be a part of your development as a doctor? we analysed the reflective responses of medical students who had participated in the project from january to december 2015. we contacted each of them by email or telephone to obtain their consent to use their questionnaire responses for this study. students who did not respond after three attempts to contact them were designated as non-responders. a purposive sampling method was used to select the most ‘information-rich’ responses that cover the broadest range of 102 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim themes relevant to the objectives of the study. two researchers working in tandem selected all the appropriate responses and transcribed them verbatim onto a spreadsheet. a thematic analysis method was used to analyse the responses (braun & clarke 2006). subthemes were identified by concepts and ideas expressed by the students; we then grouped related subthemes into major themes. as the review proceeded, the authors revised and updated the coding scheme when new subthemes arose or it became necessary to revise major themes. areas of disagreement were resolved by consensus during regular meetings. findings we analysed the reflective responses of 112 medical students who volunteered to serve in kampung sebir between 1 january 2015 and 31 december 2015. most of the students had little or no experience serving in a rural indigenous community prior to their participation in the project. the responses of the students were grouped into common recurring themes that had emerged from the thematic analysis described above. (note: the code after each response corresponds to individual students.) medical students’ perception of the indigenous people theme 1: an independent, culturally distinct and indigenous people the indigenous people were described by the medical students in two ways: (1) a culturally distinct, original people; (2) having a desire to preserve their own way of life. many students described the indigenous people as the original people of the land who are culturally distinct from the rest of society. their origin is in tanah melayu [an old name referring to peninsular malaysia], they may have totally different cultures which are not shared or known by non-indigenous people. (p8–3) aborigines who are the actual bumiputeras [malay for ‘sons of the soil’]. [they] have their own set of cultures and social norm[s]. [they] may be reluctant to commune with outsiders but once familiar, are usually friendly. (p6–3) the students also felt the indigenous people desired to preserve their own way of life – that is, their culture, heritage and lifestyle. this desire was seen to contribute toward their reluctance to accept changes introduced by outsiders, and their different priorities in life compared to main society. furthermore, it was also perceived to impede them from accessing resources available within mainstream society and their development as a community (this is explored further in themes 2 and 3). the indigenous people are a close-knit community that are trying to preserve their own heritage. (p9–7) 103 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim [they are] natives who are generally reserved and protective of their culture. they are generally welcoming towards outsiders. however, they may need to be coaxed to accept some changes. (p6–4) they are people deprived of the advancement of the world they refuse to be part of and insist on living the way they [are] used to. (p7–1) theme 2: an isolated community the students viewed the indigenous people as an isolated community. isolation was described by the students in various ways: the geographical location of their village; their people being a minority community; their low socio-economic status; their lack of health awareness; the lack of access to education and healthcare facilities; and their native tongue. many of these factors were perceived to have either predisposed or exacerbated their isolation, or emerged because of their isolation, or both. for example, the indigenous people who do not have a good grasp of the national malay language due to a lack of educational opportunities face challenges in assimilating themselves into mainstream society because of the language barrier. on the other hand, the lack of education would isolate them further due to their inability to communicate well with society through a common language, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle. some students perceived the isolation from society to be intentional to some degree, because the indigenous people preferred their own culture, behaviour and social circle. a lack of formal education was perceived by students to impact the long-term development and outlook of the indigenous people. orang asli are the people who are aborigines [and] who live in the forest. but some of them have moved out from their origin … i have a friend who is an orang asli. they do not give importance to education and they earn their living by selling the items collected in the forest … [there is a] lack of facilities and knowledge among the indigenous people. they do not place importance on knowledge; this prevents them from developing and exploring the world outside. (p4–5) most of the students described the lack of access to facilities and services as a contributory factor toward the isolation of the indigenous people and their lack of socio-economic development. one student described the lack of access to information, particularly social media, as a problem for the indigenous people. i feel that they are still backwards socio-economically. they still have very poor access to basic facilities and healthcare services. (p4–7) [they are] people who are somehow disconnected from social media [and] public information. (p8–1) 104 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim some students described how society had neglected or abandoned the indigenous people. the students also linked the isolation of the indigenous people with ongoing discrimination. they associated neglect, abandonment or discrimination as exacerbating problems in other areas, such as education, facilities or other kinds of benefits. they face the challenge to change and get out from their community, to strive to improve their quality of life and finance … they face challenges [in accessing] facilities and health education. they were neglected by society. (p5–4) [they are] oppressed due to lack of education and [are] taken advantage of for the benefit of others. [this] seems to be common among the indigenous community of any country … [they are] often looked down upon and they do not receive the same privileges or attention accorded to other ethnic groups due to the common perception that the indigenous people are somehow inferior. (p5–1) finally, some students perceived the social isolation of the indigenous people to be the result of direct threats – in particular, relating to their native land rights and resources. development projects might jeopardise [the indigenous people’s] resources. (p4–1) i think rapid development everywhere [has] invaded and destroyed their home land. (p9–1) theme 3: barriers to health the students perceived many of the factors that isolated the indigenous people from society were the same factors that prevented them from achieving better standards of health. lack of access to healthcare was perceived to be a major issue, either due to the geographical location of the indigenous people; the lack of availability of accessible healthcare services; or the lack of financial capability to afford such services. [the indigenous people] lack knowledge especially on health; [they] do not have access to health services due to transportation and financial problems. (p4–2) they are the aborigines of malaysia living in the rural area. they have a suboptimal lifestyle. this causes them to be unaware of many issues regarding health. (p4–6) poor living environment was perceived by students to contribute further to the health problems of the villagers. most of them presented with problems that we seldom see in an urban community. they face problems of poor hygiene and [effects from] open burning. these will definitely pose health-related problems for their community. (p8–4) 105 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim … their living environment is quite dirty with stagnant water which provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes. (p9–14) many students felt that a lack of awareness of health problems and a lack of access to healthcare services were major barriers. the students associated the lack of awareness to geographical isolation, resulting in indigenous people favouring traditional treatment over allopathic treatment for ailments. they may not have enough knowledge on what is going on with the development of healthcare systems … they are isolated [although they] do have access to [the nearby] town. their knowledge is limited but [they are] willing to receive new information. some of them are facing financial, health [and] education problems. (p8–8) [the indigenous people] are not well exposed to health care in terms of screening and management of chronic illnesses. many believe in traditional medicine rather than western medicine. (p6–1) a lack of formal education was perceived by students as another factor that compounded the indigenous people’s lack of health awareness. in terms of education, they lag behind us. they have less awareness about their health … in my opinion, the indigenous people are less aware about hygiene and their own health problems. they have minimal facilities in their village. (p2–2) since they do not give importance to education, it is difficult for them to understand the importance of health. therefore, it was difficult for us to help them. (p4–5) the students perceived that the indigenous people appeared to have different priorities concerning health. the women appeared to be more health conscious than the men, while parents appeared to have a negative influence on standards of family health and hygiene. they definitely lack education in terms of healthcare … the men do not give priority to their health, while a lot of women have encouraging mind-sets. nevertheless, it will be hard to implement lifestyle changes in this community. (p5–1) the indigenous people have their [own] culture and beliefs. it is difficult to change their mind-set to accept the new treatments. the parents are not very concerned about the health of their children. (p8–1) some students felt that a lack of trust toward outsiders was a significant barrier toward healthcare. the indigenous people are a very small and close-knit community. trust is very important in physician and patient interaction. [distrust] is one of the barriers to seeking treatment besides accessibility. (p9–2) 106 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim theme 4: bringing change to the indigenous people many students were encouraged by evidence of change within the indigenous community, particularly in the improvement in the community’s attitude towards outsiders. most of the indigenous people are friendly and cooperative [although], in my opinion, some of them lack confidence towards modern medicine … (p3–1) some students were surprised to discover the living conditions of the indigenous people change beyond their expectation, given the perceived challenges the community faced. the better-than-expected living conditions were largely attributed to the availability of utilities, although, despite this, the students recognised that the health and hygiene of the indigenous people were still at unsatisfactory levels. their living condition was better than what i expected. there was water supply and electricity supply to every household. however, the cleanliness of the environment was bad. (p6–5) my views have changed to a certain point. they were friendly, their living environment was beyond my expectation, and they do have good water and electricity supply. [nevertheless,] their level of health was below that of the urban community. (p8–3) the students appreciated positive changes in the way the indigenous people had accepted the provision of healthcare by the medical students, as evidenced by their willingness to adhere to recommended healthcare interventions. some indigenous people were aware of their health and were articulate about their complaints. they are generally polite and reserved. some do lack health education, but some have actually adhered to interventions recommended by the volunteers after being adequately counselled. (p6–4) the indigenous people are actually very friendly. they live a simple life. surprisingly, most of them actually returned for follow-up and are compliant to their medications. (p9–14) they are actually quite knowledgeable. they knew about their illness and knew how to convey their complaints/illness to us. (p8–7) students views on community service and its relationship with their personal and professional development theme 1: community service was valued by the students for their own development the students valued the ways that community service developed their own skills, including improving their awareness of health issues in the community; improving their attitude (empathy and compassion), knowledge or skills specific to working in the 107 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim community; and developing their ability to work in resourcelimited settings. students also recognised that working in the community called for specific knowledge and skills. community service should be part of a medical student’s life as it gives a whole new experience on dealing and reaching the community. the objective and intervention in community basis is different in comparison to dealing with patients in a hospital setting. (p2–3) i was able to reach out to the community and offer help to them instead of just providing help in the hospital. i was also able to improve my communication skills. (p5–3) [community service] has shown me a different part of society that is in dire need of proper access to healthcare. it helped me develop a caring attitude towards people living in rural areas. (p10–1) while all students agreed that community service was valuable for their development, the motives and manner of their development were varied. some viewed development through community service for seemingly personal gains. as a pre-exposure to learn how a doctor has to behave and manage a patient before housemanship [medical internship]. (p4–4) it is very important to build myself up as a doctor who is able to function optimally at all levels of society, including [at] times with [patients with socio-economic] limitations. should practice it regularly [and] if possible daily. (p9–9) other students viewed the main goal of their development was to serve the community. by involving actively in community service, we have a better insight of [their] culture and behaviour. with that, we get to know them better and [are able] to put ourselves in their shoes. (p9–11) being able to recognise and understand differences in culture and belief of members of the ethnic group will aid in tailoring treatment plans to suit their needs, increasing compliance to treatment. (p9–9) some students recognised their development as a continuous ‘journey of self-discovery’ that will eventually help others. it is an important journey in discovering the importance of using our knowledge to serve and help people wholeheartedly [and to prepare us to serve] people from all races, culture that we will face in the future.(p9–6) theme 2: the purpose of community service is to improve the health of the disadvantaged the students viewed community service as a means to improve the health of a community, particularly the health of those who are most disadvantaged. this seemingly narrow focus is probably consistent with their background and training as medical students 108 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim and hence their preference for serving the community in their area of expertise but potentially neglecting other areas crucial for community development. community service is a platform [for me] to help the community to improve their [own] health. we can deliver health promotion right up to their doorsteps. community service has not just brought benefit to the indigenous community, it has also benefited me. (p2–1) community service is part and parcel of the healthcare system as it is an effort to provide healthcare services to people living in rural areas. i think our monthly visits are a very good way to provide community service. (p8–5) discussion cross et al. (1989) described five steps that a practitioner should consider to achieve cultural competence: 1 acknowledge cultural differences and to become aware of how they affect the helping process. 2 self-examine and reflect – recognise the influence of their own culture on how they act and think. 3 understand and work with the ‘dynamics of difference’ between cultures. 4 understand client’s behaviour in the context of their culture. 5 grow knowledge and skills continually. these steps can be related to an understanding of worldviews, defined as the cognitive orientation or perspective of an individual or society towards the world (vidal 2008). a comparison of the perspectives and worldviews of the students and the orang asli people has important implications (table 1). we will explore the differences outlined in the table below in the subsequent sections. cultural perspective or worldview students orang asli needs and priorities in life good health education modern amenities old way of life is sufficient for needs (nicholas 2006) what is important for the future? advancement and development pragmatic survival (nicholas 2006) view on health westernised (preventative) pragmatic (baer 1999) perceived challenges for the indigenous community isolation contest for resources (see references below) view on change in the indigenous community resistant conditionally open (baer 1999) appreciating different worldviews and cultural differences the background of the indigenous people of malaysia and the challenges they face have been well documented (idrus 2011; lye 2011, 2013; nicholas 2000, 2006; nicholas et al. 2010; nicholas table 1: comparisons of cultural perspectives and worldviews of students and orang asli 109 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim & lasimbang 2004; toshihiro 2009)indeed, throughout the world, they use both social and ecological methods to enhance their chances of survival in this changing environment: socially, they have developed networks of trading and marriage partners; ecologically, they maintain patches of key resources that are available for future harvesting. as evidenced in the case of the batek (orang asli. dr colin nicholas, founder of the center for orang asli concerns in malaysia, describes the orang asli approach to life: the knowledge of the orang asli is enshrined in daily living, ritual, and taboo underlining how culture, language, religion, psychology and spiritual beliefs cannot often be separated from their understanding of the natural world. this knowledge has passed through generations and assures not only the survival and sustainability of the forest but the people and cultures also depend upon this knowledge and the ecosystem … the ethos, as such, of orang asli knowledge is holistic and ecological (nicholas 2006.) he further writes: economic pragmatism (a very down-to-earth approach to procuring maximal return to labour) and opportunism (a flexible posture toward seizing opportunities) seem to be the rule which traditional communities such as the orang asli apply in the management of their environments. this approach is neither conservation-oriented nor destructive (nicholas 2006). the students, on the other hand, prioritised good health (most likely seen as the absence and prevention of disease), education (tertiary education being the ideal), and amenities (as available in modern society). this is hardly surprising given that the students’ worldview and culture has been ingrained from a young age to prioritise such needs. medical education has also ‘conditioned’ them to view health in this way. during one visit to kampung sebir, one of the village men (himself a father of four children) shared: ‘cukup makan, cukup pakai … cukuplah’ (‘enough to eat, enough to wear … that is enough’). indeed, baer (1999), who has worked with, and published extensively about, the orang asli, similarly quoted an orang asli, who said: ‘if you can eat and work, you’re not sick’ (baer 1999, p. 9). regarding challenges for the orang asli, the responses of the medical students suggest they could perceive correctly the immediate issues unique to the indigenous people; that is, their cultural uniqueness, isolation and the barriers to healthcare. the latter was probably of greater interest to the students due to the nature of their profession. on the other hand, the students’ responses suggest that they lacked an understanding of some of the deeper issues that affect the indigenous people described in the literature above; specifically, their socio-political marginalisation from mainstream society, the erosion of resources traditionally belonging to them, and paternalistic attempts to assimilate them 110 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim into mainstream society; eventually leading to the loss of land, loss of autonomy and poverty (chung 2010). many of these issues are social determinants of health for the indigenous people (solar & irwin 2010). appreciating the dynamic nature of culture the students also underestimated the orang asli’s capacity for change. the capacity for change within orang asli communities is certainly nothing new: a foreigner who is friendly and who brings wonderful drugs which cure yaws and malaria will soon find himself in a position where many things are possible. provided he does not force his investigations on his hosts before they have understood and accepted them, and provided he respects without question the beliefs and customs of the people, he will find them extremely cooperative (ivan polunin, 1953, cited in baer 1999, p. 7). two recent studies on the orang asli demonstrate the improved awareness and expectations of the orang asli people concerning issues such as nutrition, education and health (edwin & chuen 2012; ng et al. 2005). this highlights two main issues in relation to the students’ responses: firstly, it is possible the students had formed stereotyped impressions of the orang asli; secondly, even if such stereotypes were true in a previously encountered context, it is possible that the students are yet to grasp that culture is dynamic and can change over time, from place to place, and even person to person. teaching medical students about the realities and impacts of stereotypes can be a starting point for addressing racism and health inequities (ly & crawshoe 2015). self-reflection and continuous improvement – the basis for engagement we have already highlighted that the ability to reflect on oneself is key to building cultural competence (cross et al. 1989). the students could highlight differences in their worldview and culture in comparison with the orang asli people. however, there is little to suggest they had considered the reasons their perspective could be different – that is, their worldview or culture has been shaped differently. a self-reflecting student may have asked themselves the following questions: —why do i value education? do the orang asli people think the same way as i do? —what does good health mean to me? how does that compare with what good health means to the orang asli people? the self-reflecting student should be able to understand the influences their own culture or worldview brings to the relationship. the responses of the students to questions relating to community service are particularly insightful and highlight this point further. the students viewed community service as important for improving the health of the orang asli people. this view had two assumptions: firstly; the orang asli were unhealthy; secondly; the orang asli agreed they needed help to improve their health. 111 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim the view of students on the purpose of community service demonstrates the basis of their engagement with the orang asli. the differing worldviews and cultures combined with a lack of self-reflection eventually leads to an engagement that is focused on promoting health as viewed from the students’ perspective. this is probably compounded by medical education that teaches students to frame patients in a biopsychosocial model: formulate a diagnosis and provide treatment. such an approach immediately assumes the orang asli people have the ‘problem’ and the students have the ‘solution’. instead, the basis of every engagement should start with connecting, building relationships and organising the community (ctsa consortium 2011). the students had differing views on how community service would feature in their personal and professional development. the value of community service for their development is consistent with studies elsewhere (benson et al. 2015; daly et al. 2013). however, only a few recognised that learning in this area is a journey of continuous improvement, a core principle of cultural competency (cross et al. 1989; gorringe, et al. 2008). cross et al. (1989, p. 34) states: ‘… the average worker cannot achieve comprehensive knowledge. more important is knowing where or how to obtain the necessary detailed information for use in specific cases.’ for continuous improvement, we need to acknowledge that we can never know everything but also remain ready and eager to learn. motivating the volunteer – stimulating cultural competence and volunteerism gorringe et al. (2008) described individuals as beginning at a stage of being ‘uninformed’ and progressing to being ‘aware’, ‘engaged’, ‘mobilized’ and finally to a stage of ‘action and implementation’ when developing along the continuum of cultural competence. through these stages, the individual first demonstrates cross-cultural awareness (knowledge), then crosscultural sensitivity (empathy), followed by cultural competence (behaviours, skills and practices), and finally cultural proficiency (embedding, and cultural shift within organisations) (gorringe et al. 2008). when the responses of the medical students in this study are framed against this continuum, it is possible that the students were either at the stage of cross-cultural awareness or cross-cultural sensitivity within the continuum described above. their responses indicate community service has empowered them to reach out, provided opportunities for them to ‘practice their craft’, and helped them develop knowledge and understanding concerning the indigenous community that they served. as part of the project, the project mentors attempted various approaches to encourage the development of cultural competence in line with this continuum: —we encourage the students to return to kampung sebir to continue looking after patients they have seen. repeated visits can enhance the receptiveness of patients towards medical students, improve cross-cultural care, communication skills, and helps to build 112 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim stronger relationships by gaining trust and confidence (maley et al. 2009). —we teach them that engagement should be based on building relationships on the following principles: 1 relationships should be based on compassion, humility and trust. 2 compassion can be demonstrated by showing genuine interest and concern about their daily lives and struggles. 3 humility means that the community is the expert on their own lives. the initial focus of the relationship is therefore to learn from the community rather than to seek to change them. humility is also about learning and respecting their customs and cultures. for example, we would pay respect to the village elders at the start of every visit. we also took interest to learn about their customs and traditions by attending important events, e.g. town hall meetings, weddings. 4 trust can be earned through commitment – in fulfilling agreements, in services offered and fulfilled, in time that is given. —our debriefing sessions focus on building the volunteers. one of the key hopes we have is that the project in kampung sebir will not only impact the village but will also inspire volunteers to continue to positively impact lives in whatever capacity or role they find themselves. we recognised that many of the volunteers may not return to help and their visit with the villagers may be the only time they can be inspired. we teach them that community service is not just about kampung sebir – it’s what happens after that. we raise the following issues with the volunteers: 1 what other needs do you see in the community around us? what will you do about it? 2 what lessons have you learnt from today that you can apply to your lives in the future? 3 you are being trained with skills that can heal and change lives. what will your life look like five years from now? ten years from now? the work in kampung sebir has inspired some of the volunteer students to step forward to lead projects of their own. the educational service in kampung sebir and the project in kampung tekir are led by students who previously volunteered with the project in kampung sebir (ramasamy 2017). broader strategies at an institutional level the approach to build cultural competence for the students who visit kampung sebir should be viewed as a broader institutional effort. the following are some key areas that merit consideration: —medical students at imu undergo formal training and have other informal exposures that increase their cultural competence. for example, all medical students are trained as part of the unesco bioethics curriculum that contains training in cultural diversity (unesco 2008). this is in addition to the 113 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim numerous other informal exposures that are organised within a multicultural university, including but not limited to educational religious festivals from different ethnicities, events in a variety of community settings, and interaction with students and staff from diverse backgrounds. the greater challenge for the university and for imu cares is to assess how the exposure has contributed towards increasing the cultural competence of the students. —successful working relationships with all stakeholders can help lay the groundwork for an environment that builds cultural competence. we learnt that relationships should be based on humility, mutual respect and equal standing with the communities to build lasting relationships. stakeholders may include organisations who govern the affairs of the indigenous people and the influential people within the community itself, that is, the village elders as well as key individuals or groups within imu itself who can influence the direction of the project or contribute resources or expertise. —imu cares learnt that training cultural competence requires teachers who are appropriate role models and culturally competent. such teachers need to be supported by sufficient provision of time and resources (for example teaching materials, expertise) (power et al. 2016). regular self-reflection among academic staff is also crucial (doutrich et al. 2012). sorensen at al. (2017) advocates the need for medical schools to have recruitment policies that promote the recruitment of staff with competencies in this area and who themselves reflect the cultural diversity they serve. imu consists of staff who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. within imu, there exists inherent knowledge and the potential to develop behaviours, skills and practices that increase cultural competence in staff, particularly those who lead imu cares projects. to this end, imu cares has leveraged on resources, such as the center for orang asli concerns (www.coac.org.my/), and has worked with organisations such as malaysian care (see www.malaysiancare.org/). —the support and stance of the university is vital for the success of community engagement projects of this nature. projects that stand out can inspire change within the institution leading to institutional cultural change as described by gorringe et al. (2012). to encourage this, imu has sought to celebrate the successes of imu cares projects during its university day. imu’s university day is the university’s annual celebratory event that highlights the achievements of the university in the past year, an event that is very much a part of imu’s culture. in doing this, imu is taking a public stand on what it believes, both within the university and to the wider community. conclusion the study revealed that medical students who provided health services in an indigenous community have a developing cultural competency. we demonstrated this through an exploration of http://www.coac.org.my/ http://www.malaysiancare.org/ 114 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim their perceptions of the indigenous community and their views of community service. the study also reflected on the project itself and provided insights into the teaching of cultural competence at a project and institutional level. acknowledgements the authors gratefully acknowledge choon mui tham and inthirah narayanan from imu, both of whom contributed towards managing the research project, coordinating data collection and organising meetings. 115 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim appendix a: questionnaire for kampung sebir volunteers name: form no. this questionnaire has 2 pages dear participant, thank you very much for joining us at kampung sebir. your participation is very important to us. to make your experience as beneficial for you as possible, we need you to complete this questionnaire. please feel free to be as honest as possible. your answers may be used for auditing, reporting, research, or presentations concerning this project, but no personal details will be disclosed at any time. 1 tell us the reasons you decided to join this project. _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 2 in your view, who are the orang asli people (consider aspects like origins, culture, behaviour, personality, etc.)? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 3 in your view, what are the challenges faced by the orang asli people? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 4 how do you view community service? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 5 how is community service part of your life? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 6 in your opinion, how should community service be a part of your development as a doctor? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 7 in your opinion, what makes a good leader? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ please turn over 116 | gateways | wong, chen, koh, chua, jong, mohd fauzi & lim 8 what does it mean to be a good team member? ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ please read each statement and circle the response that most applies to you. please ask for clarification of any statements that you do not understand: question st ro n gl y d is a gr ee d is a gr ee d on ’t k n ow a gr ee st ro n gl y a gr ee 1 i am confident about my communication skills with patients. 2 within a professional capacity, i am confident when communicating with my colleagues/fellow students. 3 i feel confident about briefing my colleagues/ fellow students on a project i am working on. 4 when in a group, i can facilitate the discussion 5 my colleagues/ fellow students feel confident with me as a leader. 6 i feel confident when communicating with orang asli patients. 7 orang asli patients understand me when i communicate with them. 8 when working on a project, i can handle last minute changes. 9 when working on a project, i am able to cope when expectations change. 10 i can prioritise when asked to do several things at once. 11 my work is completed on time. 12 when working in a team, i can appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of other team members 13 when working in a team, i support other people in their tasks beyond what i have been assigned to do. 14 i am comfortable working in a rural setting. 15 this project has helped me in my career. 16 i perform community service on a regular basis. 17 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(what is a worldview?)’ in van belle h & van der veken j (eds), nieuwheid denken. de wetenschappen en het creatieve aspect van de werkelijkheid, acco, leuven wilson, l 1982, ‘the skills of ethnic competence’, unpublished resource paper, university of washington, seattle https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.09.073072 https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.09.073072 https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.587a.0333 https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.587a.0333 http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/macjannet-prize-2013-winners/ http://talloiresnetwork.tufts.edu/macjannet-prize-2013-winners/ https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2014.909586 http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/bioethics/ethics-education-programme/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/bioethics/ethics-education-programme/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 13, no. 1 may 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: janzen, r. and ochocka, j. 2020. assessing excellence in communitybased research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers . gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7037. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.7037 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers rich janzen, joanna ochocka centre for community based research, waterloo, ontario, canada. corresponding author: rich janzen; rich@communitybasedresearch.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7037 article history: received 24/01/2020; revised 06/04/2020; accepted 18/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract in this article, we critically reflect on three syrian refugee research projects that were conducted simultaneously in ontario, canada, in order to: (1) strengthen the community system of support for refugee newcomers; (2) address social isolation of syrian parents and seniors; and (3) promote wellbeing of syrian youth. our purpose in this article is to demonstrate a tangible way of assessing research projects which claim to be community-based, and in so doing gain a deeper understanding of how research can be a means of contributing to refugee newcomer resilience. our assessment of the three studies was done through the reflective lens of the community based research excellence tool (cbret). cbret is a reflective tool designed to assess the quality and impact of community-based research projects, considering the six domains of community-driven, participation, rigour, knowledge mobilisation, community mobilisation and societal impact. our assessment produced four main lessons. the first two lessons point to the benefit of holistic emphasis on the six categories covered in the cbret tool, and to adaptability in determining corresponding indicators when using cbret. the last two lessons suggest that research can be pursued in such a way that reinforces the rescue story and promotes the safety of people who arrive as refugees. our lessons suggest that both the findings and the process of research can be interventions towards social change. the diversity of the three case examples also demonstrates that these lessons can be applied to projects which focus on both individual-level and community-level outcomes. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received financial support for the research from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and from immigration, refugees, and citizenship canada. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7037 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7037 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rich@communitybasedresearch.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7037 keywords: community-based research; refugee newcomers; refugee resettlement; research excellence introduction a community-based approach to research aspires to engage community members in a way that will lead to their wellbeing and effect positive social change. by researching ‘with’, not ‘on’, vulnerable populations, advocates of community-based research emphasise capacity-building and agency of community members in addressing pressing issues that affect their lives. but how do research partners assess whether they have delivered on this promise? more specific to this article, how is this assessment done when researching with refugee newcomers? the purpose of this article is to critically reflect on three syrian refugee research projects through the lens of the community based research excellence tool (cbret). cbret is a reflective assessment tool for assessing the quality and impact of community-based research projects in relation to the six domains of community-driven, participation, rigour, knowledge mobilisation, community mobilisation, and societal impact (ochocka, janzen & stobbe 2018). cbret has been piloted across canada and internationally. the three projects involving syrian refugee newcomers were conducted simultaneously in ontario, canada, in order to: (1) strengthen the community system of support for refugee newcomers; (2) address social isolation of syrian parents and seniors; and (3) promote wellbeing of syrian youth. our intent was to demonstrate a tangible way of assessing research projects which claim to be community-based, and in so doing gain a deeper understanding of how research can be a means of contributing to refugee newcomer resilience. the article begins by describing the three research projects. cbret is then defined and its theoretical underpinnings and implementation reviewed before using cbret to assess the extent to which the three projects were community-based in promoting refugee wellbeing and empowerment. finally, the article reflects on the implications for future community-based research in promoting favourable conditions for people who are vulnerable, including refugee newcomers. the syrian newcomer projects three concurrent research studies related to syrian refugee newcomers were led by the centre for community based research during 2016–2017. the centre for community based research is an independent, non-profit research organisation located on the university of waterloo campus in waterloo region, canada. waterloo region is a mid-sized urban centre (about 0.6 million) of three cities and four townships in southwestern ontario. this community was seen to be a promising case study, given the presence of a well-established and functional newcomer support infrastructure ( janzen, walton-roberts & ochocka, 2012; janzen et al. 2012) led by the waterloo region immigration partnership (wrip). the region is also one of 36 resettlement assistance program (rap) communities in canada equipped to receive government assisted refugees. waterloo region received at least 1630 syrian refugees between november 2015 and the end of january 2017, an increase of about 250 percent over previous years (ircc 2017). by the end of january 2017, canada had resettled 40 081 syrian refugees, setting the record for the total number of refugees resettled in a calendar year and surpassing the previous record in 1980 during the indochinese refugee movement (unhcr 2017). janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 given such unprecedented numbers of refugee arrivals, the federal immigration department (immigration, refugees, and citizenship canada – ircc) launched a multi-pronged research strategy. one strategy was to partner with an academic funder, social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc), and issue a targeted call for rapid academic research with syrian refugees. another ircc strategy was to issue a request for proposals for research studies to identify, test, analyse and compare innovative approaches that showed potential to improve integration outcomes for syrian refugees. we discussed these opportunities with the local immigration partnership (wrip) and with a group of key refugee gatekeepers. these community stakeholders supported the idea of developing three research applications, one for the joint ircc-sshrc grant and two for the ircc call on syrian parents/seniors and syrian youth. all three applications were successful, and each was about ca$25,000–$30,000 in monetary value. these three projects are described in more detail below. study 1: community system of refugee support a ten-month research study was conducted in waterloo region between september 2016 and june 2017. the purpose of the research was to collaboratively explore the disruptive impact of the recent syrian refugee influx on the way local communities support newcomers. this was done in order to: (1) determine innovations in how local communities could better support refugees, and then (2) determine how public policy could reinforce those innovations. the project was funded through the targeted joint ircc-sshrc research call. the study was developed and guided in consultation with a steering committee of local non-government and government organisations/departments. using a system change analytical framework (trickett 2009), the study’s main research questions explored the disruptive impact of the syrian influx on the vision, structure and process of the local refugee support system. four mixed-method approaches were used to obtain answers to these questions from multiple stakeholder perspectives: (1) a review of local media and organisational documents; (2) semi-structured interviews with 11 key informants who provided a ‘balcony level’ view of the local response; (3) an online survey completed by 38 individuals and organisations active in the local response; and (4) three focus groups involving 14 purposively sampled participants representing leading organisations in the local response. research results were presented to and discussed at three local community forums and with about 50 federal policy-makers in ottawa. study 2: syrian parents and seniors the purpose of this three-month project was to explore how to reduce social isolation for syrian parents and caregivers who stay at home with their children and for syrian older adults. the study had four main objectives: (1) to provide the opportunity for syrian refugee parents and older adults to identify barriers and challenges related to syrian integration in the community; (2) to provide the opportunity for service provider organisations and religious/ community leaders to reflect on issues of social isolation and social integration for the syrian community as a whole; (3) to support syrian parents and older adults to conduct, analyse and present research with other researchers; and (4) to develop recommendations for solutions to reduce social isolation among syrian refugee parents and older adults. several community organisations in waterloo region helped to develop and guide this project by participating on the steering committee. we also hired, trained and supported two syrian adults (one mother and one father) and one university student fluent in both assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 arabic and english. these community researchers assisted in data gathering, analysis and dissemination. they also provided critical feedback on the study processes and deliverables during weekly research team meetings and monthly steering committee meetings. regarding methods, we spoke with 57 individuals through focus groups and interviews (38 syrian mothers and fathers; 8 older adults and 11 service providers/community leaders), all in waterloo region. the research team presented research findings, including eight new interventions/models, to a group of over 80 people, including syrian refugee parents, older adults and service providers at a community celebration on 25 march 2017 at kitchener city hall. study 3: syrian youth the purpose of this three-month study was to explore solutions with syrian refugee youth regarding their issues and challenges, which were emerging as priority concerns. the study had three main objectives: (1) to provide opportunities for syrian refugee youth to identify research priorities related to their situations; (2) to train and support syrian refugee youth to conduct and analyse research with and relating to their peers; and (3) to identify possible solutions to the key challenges that syrian refugee youth faced when integrating into their new communities. the main research questions were organised according to three priority areas that reflected the major challenges that syrian youth faced in canada: school integration, family responsibilities and mental health. the project hired, trained and supported four youth as community researchers, three of whom were originally from syria and one from iraq. all project activities were guided by the same joint 19-person steering committee with study 2. the research team gathered data through focus groups in waterloo region, windsor, london, ottawa and greater toronto (gta), with a total of 75 syrian refugee youth. most focus groups were held face-to-face in secondary schools, community organisations and other youth-friendly venues (e.g. coffee shop), while two were held via skype and teleconference. all focus groups were conducted in arabic, each by two community researchers. research results were presented at the community celebration described in study 2. community-based research excellence tool (cbret) cbret was developed following a national summit (funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada) titled ‘pursuing excellence in collaborative community-campus research’. the 2014 summit was attended by leading canadian practitioners of community-based research who worked in diverse university, government and community settings. summit discussions generated a list of ‘indicators of excellence’ for conducting community-based research, which were subsequently organised into an assessment tool that was piloted and further refined by canadian and international researchers and their community partners (see ccbr 2019 for more details about the summit and the development of cbret). cbret was developed to fill a perceived gap. as we detail elsewhere ( janzen, ochocka & stobbe 2016), our intention was to develop a shared, yet implicit, theory of change to underpin community-based research projects. commonly used in the field of program evaluation, a theory of change is an explicit model of how the actions within a social intervention (i.e. its activities) contribute to a chain of impact (i.e. anticipated outcomes) (funnell & rogers 2011). research can be viewed as social intervention; not only the findings of research but janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 also its processes inform social innovation and change (kemmis & mctaggart 2005). but what underlying theory of change supports such an understanding of research? while many describe the principles, values and ideologies underpinning community-based research (briefly reviewed below), to our knowledge there is no explicit theory of change within the community-based research literature. in developing cbret, our ambitious goal was to offer a generic theory of change for research that claims to be community-based. consistent with other theories of change, it would function to: (1) clarify what makes research distinctly community-based; (2) provide a roadmap to implementing community-based research; and most importantly for this article (3) be useful in evaluating the quality of a community-based research project. the challenge was to develop a theory of change that was sufficiently comprehensive to capture the many distinctive elements of community-based research, yet generic and flexible enough to adapt to the uniqueness of individual research projects (see janzen, ochocka & stobbe 2016 for a more detailed review of cbret’s theory of change). below we briefly describe the theoretical underpinnings of cbret and how it is practically implemented. theoretical underpinnings the term ‘community-based research’ is emerging as a common descriptor of research that seeks both to challenge and provide an alternative to externally led and expert-driven research. the term is gaining traction in canada (neufeldt & janzen 2020; travers et al. 2008) and globally, as evidenced by the establishment of the unesco chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education (guni 2015). a variant term, ‘community-based participatory research’, is used more frequently in the united states (israel et al. 2005; minkler & wallerstein 2008). other similar terms are used, including (but not limited to) action research (e.g. stringer 2007), community-engaged scholarship (e.g. kajner 2015) and participatory action research (e.g. kemmis & mctaggart 2005). regardless of terminology, and after decades of practice, a community-based approach to research is becoming mainstream in many institutions of higher education and community organisations around the world (hall, tandon & tremblay 2015). below we identify three hallmarks of community-based research: community-driven, participatory, and actionorientated. these hallmarks draw on israel et al. (1998) and on our own collective practice at the centre for community based research (400 projects over 38 years) (see also strand et al. 2003 and wiebe & taylor 2014 for comparable descriptors). combined, they incorporate perspectives from diverse world regions across the global north, global south and indigenous communities (ochocka & janzen 2014). community-driven is a hallmark of community-based research that recognises the preeminence of the community member’s agenda over that of the researcher. it stresses that research should be responsive to the community context and be practically relevant to those most affected by the research. community members should gain voice and choice through the research process (smith 2012), with the research drawing on ways of knowing that resonate with them (kemmis & mctaggart 2005). this hallmark draws on indigenous research traditions in which research processes promote community self-determination (kovach 2015; wilson 2008). participatory emphasises that community members and researchers share control of the research agenda through active and reciprocal involvement in the research design, implementation and dissemination (hall 1975; nelson et al. 1998). it draws on the assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 participatory research tradition of the global south which acknowledges that, when people are conscious of their situation and the power that oppresses them, they can collectively work towards emancipation and a better future (fals borda 1987; freire 1970). an emphasis on equitable participation assumes engagement of committed activists and other ‘decisive stakeholders’ who are central to the research issue, and who may or may not have had previous experience in research activities (chaudhary, dhar & tandon 1989). action-oriented honours the so-called action research tradition of the global north that is frequently associated with kurt lewin. this research tradition emphasises progressive change through successive reflective action cycles (lewin 1948, 1951), that is, the research results in practical outcomes in the lives of participants (stringer 2007). an action-orientation therefore views research as social intervention where both the process and the results of the research are useful to community members in making positive social change and in promoting social equity (kemmis & mctaggart 2005; ochocka & janzen 2014). community-based research is linked to social innovation as diverse stakeholders are engaged to creatively tackle pressing societal issues (hankivsky 2012; ochocka & janzen 2007). another way of thinking about community-based research relates to the function of research: what goals does research fulfil? community-based research functions at three levels: to produce knowledge, to mobilise knowledge, and to mobilise communities. these three functions are described in turn below. knowledge production: as with all research, community-based research extends knowledge through systematic investigation. within community-based research, knowledge is coproduced as both community members and researchers are engaged in designing and conducting research for knowledge generation (hall 2011; stoecker & tryon 2009). community-based research recognises community members as knowledge-rich partners, offering their experiential and practical knowledge to complement theoretical knowledge held by outside experts (heron & reason 1997; ochocka, janzen & nelson 2002). such an approach responds to fundamental issues of fairness and equity; ‘knowledge democracy’ is advanced as community members are seen as full partners in research that impacts their lives (de sousa santos 2006; hall 2011). such an approach also has epistemological implications in challenging the exclusivity of conventional western scientific norms (e.g. objectivity, validity, replicability and reliability) while privileging the assumptions of stakeholders, who may have alternative ways of knowing beyond western norms of what constitutes evidence (visvanathan 2009). knowledge mobilisation: community-based research also functions to activate knowledge for use within society (levesque 2008). research findings are disseminated and communicated in strategic and creative ways that inform and motivate various audiences to transform society within their respective spheres of influence (hall 2011; hall, tandon & tremblay 2015). following phipps (2011), knowledge mobilisation includes products developed and disseminated by researchers (producer push) and requested by end users (user pull), as well as events where researchers exchange research findings with community members, policy-makers and others (knowledge exchange). community mobilisation: finally, community-based research is a relational exercise in that it enables diverse stakeholders to work together in new ways. community-based research therefore functions to initiate community engagement and enhance social movements in a way that serves to maximise research utilisation (kemmis & mctaggart 2005; small & uttal janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 2005). in other words, research produces not only a vision for future collective action but also builds a sense of community and enables people to work towards that vision (stringer 2007). taken together, these three hallmarks and three functions represent the foundational theoretical underpinnings of cbret. as can be seen in figure 1, the cbret framework includes three main components (i.e. research engagement, rigour, and impact), which are further divided into six categories corresponding to the three hallmarks (in red) and the three functions (in blue) of community-based research. the ordering of the main components is important as it emphasises a belief that both the design quality (rigour) and ultimate research utility (impact) of community-based research are largely determined by how well the research is driven by and equitably involves those stakeholders who lives are effected by the issue under study (engagement). figure 1 cbret theoretical framework the three main components and corresponding six categories outlined in figure 1 represent the outcome domains of a community-based research project’s theory of change. that is, implementing research in a way that is community-based (the research activities) should make a difference in how the research-engaged stakeholders produce rigorous evidence and ultimately impact society (the research outcomes). traditionally, assessing the quality of a given research study focused primarily on standards related to rigour, whether through the lens of positivism (e.g. campbell & stanley 1963) or alternative paradigms such as naturalistic inquiry (e.g. lincoln & guba 1985). however, recently, there has been growing interest in assessing scholarly inquiry in terms of its impact on society (e.g. stoecker 2005) and how well it has engaged community members (e.g. curwood et al. 2011). our cbret framework brings elements of these three assessment dimensions together in a single, unified theory of change. practical implementation the community-based research excellence tool (cbret) is a reflective tool used to assess the quality and impact of community-based research projects and proposals. it can be used either individually or collectively, formally or informally, and by people internal or external to assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 the research partnership. cbret can also be used for the purposes of planning, monitoring and evaluating research studies conducted with communities. cbret assesses community-based research excellence according to six categories (see figure 1 above). each of the six categories are divided into two or three sub-categories, each with a list of sample indicators. for example, the category ‘driven by communities’ has three sub-categories: (1) evidence of community entry being engaging and relevant; (2) evidence of those most affected by the issue under study control the research agenda; and (3) evidence that research is aligned with community norms, needs and capacities; each having seven to eight sample indicators and space for listing additional indicators. providing sample indicators rather than prescribed indicators within each sub-category stresses that cbret is not a standardised tool. instead, cbret instructions encourage users to adapt the tool to the unique circumstances and context of each community-based research project. a research project or proposal can be evaluated within each cbret sub-category in one or both of two ways: (1) quantitatively by using a nine-point scale (from poor to exceptional) to rate those indicators that apply; and (2) qualitatively by writing out the project’s or proposal’s key strengths and weaknesses related to the indicators of that sub-category. the final cbret assessment page provides opportunity to tally all scores across the six categories (when using cbret quantitatively) as well as opportunity to add three open-ended appraisals (when using cbret qualitatively). in the next section we use cbret to assess the three recent syrian research studies in which we participated. assessing the three projects this section assesses the three community-based research projects mentioned above using the cbret theoretical framework as a reflective lens. this was a qualitative self-assessment done by the authors of this article after the completion of the projects and was not part of a systematic project evaluation. we adapted cbret sample indicators that were deemed appropriate for our three studies (summarised in table 1 in the appendix). we also highlighted key strengths and weaknesses of each project within each of the three domains of excellence (engagement, rigour, impact). studies 2 and 3 were assessed together because both projects were implemented concurrently and by a joint research team. research engagement: all three projects were strong in terms of facilitating a community-driven process in which stakeholders meaningfully participated even if short timelines were limiting. regarding strengths, all three studies engaged key community-defined gatekeepers in the research exploration during the proposal writing stage. in study 1 we brought news of the joint ircc-sshrc rapid research call to the refugee services action group of the waterloo region immigration partnership. this action group was made up of the various local refugee serving organisations who agreed to respond to the call for proposals. the group helped to shape the research purpose and questions and responded to drafts of the research proposal. selected members of this community group were also formally listed as co-applicants on this academic grant application and later became actively involved on the project steering committee. in studies 2 and 3, we approached several syrian community members and their supporters as soon as the ircc call for proposals was issued. initial contacts were made through a local masjid, a muslim service organisation, local immigration and settlement organisations, and high schools serving syrian youth. these key individuals helped to organise janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 two exploratory meetings: one at a private sponsorship organisation (with representatives from syrian youth, teachers and youth organisations) and one at the local masjid (with a number of syrian parents, faith leaders and service providers). an arabic-speaking university student was involved as a translator. these two gatherings were key in building interest in the research studies, in shaping the research purpose and activities, and in reviewing proposal drafts (all within a two-week period). all three projects worked collaboratively with community stakeholders. they placed high value on experiential knowledge and on community input to guide research activities. the collaborative structure included cross-stakeholder steering committees that served as a mechanism for ongoing community input into the research agenda. each committee acted as project ‘conscience’ – reacting to ethical challenges, suggesting strategies, and guiding each research step and product. community stakeholders contributed to recruiting research participants and to disseminating research findings (e.g. co-organising a community forum, crafting a policy brief ). in studies 2 and 3, we merged the steering committee with the research team, benefiting from the synergy and from efficiency during the studies’ short duration. several research partners stated that they felt a shared ownership of the research processes and outcomes as well as a great ‘synergy’ in the teamwork. in studies 2 and 3 we shared financial resources with the community, allocating 35 percent of funding to community researchers. six community researchers were hired, trained, supported and mentored. these individuals, suggested by community gatekeepers, were hired based on their ability to communicate with and activate the syrian community. their research skills were secondary in the selection criteria as the project provided them with solid research training and ongoing support, both individually and as a group. we managed to earn their trust to the extent that some shared personal painful experiences and ongoing struggles with us. students on the research team who spoke arabic were helpful in enhancing community researchers’ understanding of research concepts and the canadian job context. when i first arrived and before i got my job [with organisation name], i was almost socially isolated. i did not know anyone here except our sponsor family and they are busy most of the time. when i got my job [with organisation name] i started meeting new people (syrians and canadians) and i started to feel that i am not alone in this new community. – community researcher all three projects emphasised the importance of aligning research with community norms, needs and capacities. for example, each research team and steering committee meeting started with personal check-ins and with appropriate food. each meeting also included reflections about overall project learnings and ongoing impacts on individual and community capacities. as a group, we collaboratively planned next steps and evaluated past activities. these regular discussions helped to identify cultural nuances and build trusting relationships that lasted beyond the project duration. for example, in studies 2 and 3 we listened and addressed research challenges, honouring community ways of acting and knowing. one of the first hurdles that the researchers encountered was the hesitancy of participants in providing informed consent. we discussed numerous strategies to increase participants’ comfort and trust, such as holding the focus group in an informal settings (e.g. participants’ homes), using icebreaker activities and emphasising that there were no negative consequences to participating (e.g. that participating in the focus group would not threaten their family’s reputation or status in canada). in addition, researchers noted that research participants were more likely to participate if they had a personal connection to the individual who invited them (e.g. a assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 leader at the mosque) and if the transportation was arranged for them in advance. researchers also had to consider the time of day when organising focus groups, as many parents and older adults had language classes either in the morning or the afternoon. other considerations for scheduling included timing of prayers, meals and children’s schooling. regarding weaknesses, the most notable challenges were brought about by the short project durations, particularly in studies 2 and 3. the initial engagement with syrian community members was rushed in building trust and in resonating with a range of culturally appropriate understandings. representatives from the emerging local syrian organisations were consequently not included on project steering committees. the research team overcame this challenge by building on existing trusting relationships in our local community and by applying experience from previous research conducted with refugees and immigrants (and in intercultural contexts). another weakness was a lack of funder involvement on the steering committees. in studies 2 and 3 it was particularly unfortunate that no federal government representative was able to join the groups in order to be ‘the face’ of canadian authority. their inclusion would have helped to demystify the role of research in canadian democracy for syrian researchers and would have improved the effectiveness of knowledge mobilisation. research rigour all three projects produced meaningful and useful data and interpretations despite the existence of limitations. in terms of strengths, all three projects chose research methods that were appropriate for the research purpose and research questions and captured the comprehensiveness of stakeholder perspectives. all three projects used multiple methods of data collection. project 1 implemented both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (individual and focus group interviews) methods to gain both breadth and depth of opinion across the community. this combination of methods allowed for triangulation of stakeholder opinions, with positive response rates. studies 2 and 3 used qualitative methods only (i.e. individual and focus group interviews), to which research participants responded very positively (all interviews were conducted in arabic). in all three studies, the steering committees provided valuable advice in determining appropriate sampling criteria as well as respectful and effective participant recruitment strategies. with regard to ethical practice, the cross-stakeholder steering committees played an ongoing role in discussing ethical issues, using community verifications of studies’ results. in addition, study 1 was externally approved by the community research ethics office (creo). this formal ethics review added an external check in following not only the three ethical principles of academic research in canada (respect, welfare and justice) but also adding a fourth principle related to community benefits and harm (see creo 2019). data analysis was linked to the study purpose and main research questions and involved diverse stakeholder perspectives. for all projects, triangulation analysis involved using multiple researchers to reduce the potential bias that can result when a single person conducts analysis. in study 1, data analysis occurred by method sequentially before cross-method analysis and relied on the steering committee to make suggestions of how to fill in data gaps. in studies 2 and 3, researchers first worked with arabic translations and interpretations, using a common analysis template. in all studies, the research themes were first discussed by the research team before being verified by the steering committee and later by research participants at the janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 community forums. the combination of multiple methods and collaborative stages of data analysis strengthened research rigour and improved the trustworthiness of research findings. there were also weaknesses in research rigour in the studies. in study 1, the survey distribution relied on the contact list of the local immigration partnership. while this list likely included the bulk of those most active in the local syrian refugee response, there were others (particularly private sponsors) who could have been missed. as a result, the generalisation of survey results must be done cautiously. in addition, the study focused only on the opinions of people most active in supporting syrian newcomers over a relatively short time period. a larger study over a longer period of time could have better understood the broader community’s opinions. studies 2 and 3 had very short timelines (three months), which limited the extensiveness of data collection and analysis. data collection was intense and conducted within limited sites (mostly in waterloo region and in a few regions in ontario). the transferability of study findings is therefore limited. qualitative data analysis was also rushed, which led to a lack of theoretical depth. however, the overarching goal for these projects (which was to gain insights on new and alternative ways of supporting the integration of syrian refugees in canada) was met. both studies suggested models of intervention grounded in the syrian refugee experience and in collaboration with supporting stakeholders. research impact all three projects mobilised knowledge and community members, which produced short-term outcomes but has had limited long-term and policy impact to date. all three projects demonstrated that research was not only used to create knowledge but to move knowledge into action. research findings were shared widely, utilising strategies appropriate for the intended audiences. for example, the three studies (and their respective steering committees) combined forces on two different community events. first, research findings were shared and verified at a large community gathering at city hall where waterloo region celebrated the one-year arrival of syrian newcomers and the local community response. about 600 people and politicians attended and enjoyed the presentations, music and food. included in this community celebration was a feedback session on study results attended by about 80 people. this session was an ideal convening moment to publicly hear and legitimise the key challenges faced by syrian refugee youth and adults and for providing feedback on suggested models and interventions. all three projects delivered presentations at an ‘immigration research day’ in waterloo region, organised by the waterloo region immigration partnership with the active involvement of a range of project community partners. in addition to these local events, study 1 also made numerous external presentations at immigration conferences and at the ircc ottawa offices to about 50 ircc policy-makers. several written products were produced for various audiences. final reports for all three studies were posted on the respective project websites and short research summaries were produced for research participants and public audiences. in addition, for study 1 a detailed nine-page policy brief was developed, with considerable input from the steering committee, and submitted to ircc ( janzen & ochocka 2017), and an academic journal article was written summarising project findings ( janzen, ochocka & english leis, under review). finally, given the demand of requests for information related to all three studies, an online ‘syrian refugee research packet’ was distributed through centre for community based research’s e-news and website, providing links to the three projects’ written products. assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 the mobilisation of people for short-term impact was also successful to a certain degree throughout the projects. for example, the three studies contributed to the aforementioned community celebration. the celebration reinforced a main finding of study 1 that resettlement of refugees in waterloo region was not the responsibility of one or two refugee organisations but of the whole community. this notion of a ‘resettlement community’ seems to be taking root as recently funded refugee projects in waterloo region have a strong emphasis on finding creative ways of engaging community members in refugee support (e.g. language classes in the workplace, youth involvement in community centres). we have also witnessed in the three projects an increased valuing of resettlement research that is done collaboratively, with research capacity built through stakeholder involvement. generally, all three studies have contributed to deeper capacity for a settlement ‘learning community’ in waterloo region and have sparked a new research proposal to build evaluation capacity across the local settlement sector. at the individual level, another tangible short-term outcome emerged when interacting with syrian community members. some individuals expressed feeling empowered as a result of their active involvement in working towards collective community change. others started to value the government of canada’s approach of seeking input, engaging new partners and developing forward-looking strategies to improve newcomer outcomes. studies 2 and 3 were especially valuable to community researchers as they gained confidence in their skills and abilities, earned valuable canadian work experience, and built their personal and professional networks. this project gave me the chance to work with passionate, hard-working and caring people who want to create a better community. i have been very lucky to be able to work on this project where every second of this job has been a unique learning experience that has helped me grow as a human. i am very thankful for all the learning, relationships and every moment i got to spend working on this project. - community researcher longer term outcomes have been weaker to date. all three studies worked hard to create opportunities for syrian newcomer families and their supporters to gather and learn. still, the longer-term fruit of these efforts has been limited. in study 1, the ultimate goal of creating an innovative and strengthened local refugee support system that would be scalable and sustainable is still a work in progress. while the local immigration partnership has recently renewed conversations about how to leverage learnings from the syrian influx, they have yet to establish a ‘new normal’ for the community’s refugee support system. in studies 2 and 3, the ultimate goal of informing new interventions for refugee newcomer youth and parents has been limited. local community expectations were raised, but democratic change was not experienced by the people involved in these research projects. perhaps the greatest disappointment across the three studies relates to policy impact. it is unknown what policy impact studies 2 and 3 had and there is no evidence of any direct ircc-funded programming changes. despite the successful community forum (to which ircc was invited but did not attend) and our direct follow-up to ircc, it remains unclear whether ircc delivered on its initial promise of using the research results to create new and alternative ways to support the successful resettlement and integration of syrian newcomers in canada. study 1 was more successful in its policy efforts as the project had direct audience with policy-makers. for example, the study was one of many efforts across the country encouraging communities to close the gap between support received by government assisted refugees and that received by those who were privately sponsored. the centre for community janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 based research also was successful in a national proposal to the ircc to build the evaluation capacity of refugee-serving organisations across the country (see: www.eval4refugee.ca). still, many other recommendations outlined in the policy brief remain unaddressed. implications for future community-based research assessment in this section, we highlight four overarching learnings from our assessment that may be helpful for other community-based researchers. the first two lessons are more generic to the implementation of cbret, while the second set of two lessons may be of interest to researchers working with refugee newcomer populations. lessons related to implementing cbret the first lesson is to actively pursue all cbret categories when assessing communitybased research projects that aim to promote transformational social change. indeed, the six categories (i.e. driven by community; meaningful participation of stakeholders; meaningful and useful data and interpretations; mobilisation of knowledge; mobilisation of people for action; and societal issues addressed through research) are interdependent, each relying on the other in creating momentum towards the desired social transformation. for example, study 1 demonstrated that waterloo region emerged from the syrian influx with a stronger refugee support system. the research study, itself, can be seen as one small component in reaching that desired outcome by offering opportunity for systematic community reflection. but this outcome required researchers to make efforts to be community-driven, participatory and rigorous, and actively mobilise knowledge and the community members, all towards the goal of transforming a local refugee support system in which refugee newcomers would thrive. conversely, the shortcomings we acknowledged through our cbret self-assessment can be seen as limiting factors in maximising the research’s potential to promote refugee resilience. this holistic emphasis supports block et al.’s 2013 contention that refugee participation in research is not automatically empowering as it also requires a larger social transformation agenda. this first learning also helped to unpack stringer’s (2007) claim that research can produce not only a vision for future collective action but can also be a direct intervention in enabling people to work towards that vision. the six cbret categories produced concrete goals that community-based researchers can strive towards as they build sound evidence and an activist community through their research. put differently, the categories can be seen as building blocks for social innovation as diverse stakeholders creatively tackle pressing societal issues (hankivsky 2012; ochocka & janzen 2007). the three case studies show that these cbret categories can apply equally to projects in which the unit of analysis is the direct lived experience of refugees, as it does to those studies which have a community-level unit of analysis for supporting refugee newcomers. the second lesson is to value the tailoring of cbret sample indicators for each community-based research project. the indicators developed for each of the six cbret categories of community-based research excellence are to be seen as sample indicators rather than indicators that are prescribed to be used precisely. they encourage consideration of ways to advance the quality of community-based research, while allowing freedom for modification and expansion. the benefit of this adaptability in self-determining appropriate indicators is that the assessment is more likely to capture the unique context of each community-based assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 http://www.eval4refugee.ca research project. the intention of cbret is to assess the research process by using the sample indicators as reflective prompts. the adaptability of those prompts helps to capture project nuances. such an ideographic (i.e. non-standardised) approach to assessment is consistent with naturalistic inquiry where the aim is to develop interpretations that are contextualised (i.e. not generalised) and afford deep insights of a particular setting (lincoln & guba 1985). as an illustration, in our assessment of three case studies, we considered all 75 cbret sample indicators, but only used 65 percent of them, some slightly adapted. we also developed new indicators that we thought were relevant to our specific project circumstances. for example, we added: (1) translators used in research explorations; (2) stakeholders responded to drafts of research proposals; and (3) greater capacity towards a resettlement ‘learning community’ in waterloo region. our modifying and expanding of the sample cbret indicators signifies that the assessment tool provides aspirational targets that require its users to be reflective agents who are able to adapt and interpret those targets within their understanding of what is important. there are those who suggest that, ideally, communitybased research is an exercise in the democratisation of knowledge (e.g. de sousa santos 2008; gaventa 1991; hall 2011). while this notion of knowledge democracy is typically understood in the context of knowledge production (i.e. building evidence that values multiple ways of knowing), our contention is that knowledge democracy can also extend to assessment of how that knowledge is being produced. having a reflexive tool that is tailored and adaptable to various contexts helps facilitate the cultural relevance of the reflection. lessons related to researching with refugee newcomers in addition to lessons related to the cbret tool, we learned two lessons about researching with refugee newcomers. one is to pursue research in such a way that reinforces the rescue story of people who arrive as refugees. research with refugee communities can be an intervention towards their resiliency. to do so, the uniqueness of the refugee experience (i.e. being forced to migrate for fear of persecution or death) must be considered as distinct from the settlement experience of other migrants (i.e. choosing to migrate in hope of a better life). research can support refugee newcomers to make the shift from fleeing destruction to rebuilding and reclaiming life in a new home. this shift can be facilitated through collaborative research that helps to promote autonomy and rebuild capacity among people with refugee backgrounds (mackenzie, mcdowell & pittaway 2007). it does so by reinforcing two key elements of the refugee self-rescue story: foregrounding a person’s eligibility to exist (identity) and their ability to act (agency) (kyriakides et al. 2018). our cbret assessment sheds light on how collaborative research can reinforce the refugee rescue story according to these two key elements. regarding identity, in all three studies, the syrian newcomers were invited to be research participants contributing to their new identity; no longer refugees fleeing but permanent residents whose opinions matter in building canadian society. studies 2 and 3 extended this sense of new identity by providing new roles for syrian newcomers as researchers, as steering community members and as forum participants. regarding agency, all three studies provided opportunity for syrian newcomers to be agents of change in helping to create new supports for newcomers. the hiring and training of syrian newcomers as researchers in studies 2 and 3 was particularly profound, not only in providing newcomers with financial resources, but in building skills, self-confidence and selfefficacy. for some, the (admittedly brief ) research experience was pivotal in securing future employment and education in canada, and in increasing their ability to act in ways consistent janzen and ochocka gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 14 with pre-flight life. in short, the three research projects provided newcomers opportunity to assert their authority to be and act as ‘persons of self-rescue’ in pursuit of a life beyond refuge (kyriakides et al. 2018). a final lesson is to pursue research that promotes safety for people who arrive as refugees. the vulnerability of refugees as research participants is well documented. potential sources of vulnerability include precarious legal status, unequal power relationships, low literacy rates, unfamiliarity with research and western consent procedures, emotional fatigue/distress in sharing personal stories, and mistrust/conflict within refugee communities (see block et al. 2013; clark-kazak 2017; mackenzie, mcdowell & pittaway 2007). awareness of this vulnerability has given rise to articulation of ethical considerations in refugee research. for example, clark-kazak (2017) offers four guiding principles when researching with people in situations of forced migration: equity, right to determination, competence and partnership (principles which strikingly mirror the hallmarks of community-based research). others offer strategies to conduct trauma-informed research when researching with individuals who have trauma histories, as many refugees have (andrews, pepler & motz 2019; mackenzie, mcdowell & pittaway 2007). the primary concern of these strategies is to promote the safety of refugee newcomers by recognising and appropriately responding to signs of trauma and by resisting retraumatising practices. our cbret assessment points out both the pros and cons of how the three studies promoted refugee newcomer safety. on the negative side, studies 2 and 3 had no formal ethics review, given the funder-imposed short timelines. instead, the projects were guided by a cross-stakeholder steering committee whose collective responsibility included acting as an ‘on-going ethics committee’ to offer insight into minimising harm and creating a positive and safe environment. while the committee composition was diverse, with members active in mitigating power differentials and building mutual trust, the absence of waterloo’s emerging syrian leadership on the committee represented a potential gap in identifying safety issues. to compensate, the diverse research teams provided a mechanism for encouraging a shared responsibility in promoting safety, not relying on the expertise of one or two researchers but relying on the collective – a collective which in studies 2 and 3 included those with lived refugee experience. finally, formal project evaluations could have better teased out the extent to which the studies promoted refugee newcomer safety. conclusion community-based research can be defined as an approach ‘that involves active participation of stakeholders, those whose lives are affected by the issue being studied, in all phases of research for the purpose of producing useful results to make positive changes’ (nelson, ochocka, griffin & lord 1998, p. 12). while definitions like this found in the literature serve to highlight broad principles of conducting research, there is considerably less clarity about how to concretely evaluate the extent to which these aspirations have been met. the communitybased research excellence tool (cbret) attempts to address this gap. it does so by offering a structured way to assess the quality and impact of research projects and proposals claiming to be community-based. we used the theoretical framework of the cbret tool to reflect on three research projects with syrian refugee newcomers, led by the centre for community based research. our intention was twofold. first, we wanted to demonstrate a comprehensive and generic framework for assessing community-based research projects. in addition, we wanted to gain assessing excellence in community-based research: lessons from research with syrian refugee newcomers gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 15 insights into how 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2020 20 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsid=45112#.wu068-vyvry http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsid=45112#.wu068-vyvry http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: watson, s, potochnick, s., case, a., cole, j., whitlow, c., langhinrichsen-rohling, j., scott, v., mcdonald, jr., w., capers, t., beavers, h., kilmer, r. 2023. ‘can you put down your mission and plug into mine?’ how placebased initiatives leverage collaborations with academic institutions to enhance their abcd and cbr potential. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8671 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) ‘can you put down your mission and plug into mine?’ how place-based initiatives leverage collaborations with academic institutions to enhance their abcd and cbr potential sharon watson1, stephanie potochnick2, andrew case3, jaylan cole1, clysha whitlow3, jennifer langhinrichsen-rohling3, victoria scott3, william mcdonald, jr.4, tiffany capers5, hannah beavers6 and ryan kilmer3 1 university of north carolina at charlotte, department of anthropology, u.s.a. 2 university of north carolina at charlotte, department of sociology, u.s.a. 3 university of north carolina at charlotte, department of psychological science, u.s.a. 4 renaissance west community initiative, u.s.a. 5 crossroads corporation, u.s.a. 6 freedom communities, u.s.a. corresponding author: sharon watson, watson.s@charlotte.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8671 article history: received 17/06/2023; revised 01/10/2023; accepted 21/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract place-based initiatives (pbis) involve efforts to mobilise and coordinate local resources, services and expertise across multiple organisations and sectors in order to strengthen the social, structural, physical and economic conditions of historically disinvested neighbourhoods. while promising, these initiatives have had some documented challenges, and some are leveraging partnerships with academic institutions to address those challenges. in this article, we explore perspectives of leaders and staff from three pbi organisations in charlotte, nc to better understand the benefits of pbi-academic partnerships and the conditions under which they are most effective. thematic analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews revealed that pbis leverage partnerships with academic institutions to accomplish two key goals. first, these partnerships stimulate assetbased community development (abcd) by connecting community organisations and neighbourhood residents with academic resources and by strengthening pbi service 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received funding from the university of north carolina at charlotte ignite grant and the gambrell foundation’s faculty fellowship program administered through the uncc urban institute. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8671 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8671 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:watson.s@charlotte.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8671 delivery. second, some partnerships give rise to community-based research efforts that help address external accountability challenges and inform pbi programming. the findings also illuminated several pitfalls in academic-pbi partnerships, sometimes rooted in conflicting priorities and approaches of academic researchers and non-profit practitioners. finally, insights delineate key recommendations for improving pbi-academic collaborations, including countering academic exploitation by plugging into pbis’ mission and respecting pbi expertise. keywords community-academic partnerships; pbi; cbr; engaged scholarship; abcd introduction heightened awareness of economic immobility and barriers limiting people’s success and wellbeing has spurred action in non-profits and higher education institutions to collaboratively address the complexity of factors constraining mobility. among non-profits, place-based initiatives (pbis), with their defining focus on improving neighbourhoods’ physical, social and economic conditions, are uniquely positioned to help ensure that residents have the opportunity to attain upward mobility (purpose built communities 2019; rood & mcgroder 2017). at the same time, many higher education institutions are increasing their community-focused, place-based and collaborative commitment. as major social and economic entities, many higher education institutions are recognising that they have a social responsibility to help address complex community problems, including the long-standing inequities that plague many of the geographic areas in which these institutions are located (brown & moore 2019; holliday et al. 2015; olson & brennan 2017; yamamura & koth 2019). productive pbi-academic partnerships reflect one means by which pbis and higher education institutions can increase community impact (drahota et al. 2016). in their efforts to advance place-based economic mobility, pbis and academic institutions sometimes incorporate asset-based community development (abcd) and community based research (cbr) – both of which are deeply rooted in the need to rectify unjust collaborations and to advance economic mobility in lower income communities. abcd pushes back against ‘client neighbourhood’ approaches, where influential institutions (e.g. foundations, universities, ngos) strive and thrive on the deficit narrative of collecting and analysing the problems and needs of beneficiaries – to promote a strengths-based, internally focused and relationship-driven neighbourhood transformation process where lower-income people and their neighbourhoods’ local capacities, skills and assets are the control centre for developing policies and actions (kretzman & mcknight 1993). similarly, cbr, which developed in response to historical mistrust and poor relations between the ‘academy’ and community members who often felt exploited by institutions and researchers, promotes partnership-based approaches to social change that emphasise co-learning, reciprocal transfer of expertise, and joint decision making between researchers and community members (viswanathan et al. 2004). in practice, however, pbis and academic institutions often struggle to exploit the full potential of abcd and cbr approaches. for instance, though there is variation among pbis, some incorporate abcd (e.g. value local knowledge, strength-based delivery approach) and cbr principles (e.g. commitment to strategic learning) in their mission (dart 2018). furthermore, while pbis typically are not founded in grassroots abcd movements, they tend to have some community credibility (e.g. long-term community presence or connections with people and entities who do) that helps offset their institutional, semi-outsider structure (e.g. professional staff, external oversight and funding). in light of this background, pbis must continuously negotiate their community credibility. in terms of cbr, critics have raised concerns that in higher education, and the academy broadly, community-engagement has become more of a ‘buzz-word’ than a genuine commitment for some; consequently, many academics and institutions may struggle to develop watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 the type of authentic community collaborations (e.g. equitable, strength-based) that aligns with abcd and cbr principles (curwood et al. 2011; seifer et al. 2012). given that pbis and academic institutions are increasing their collaborative efforts to advance placebased economic mobility and equity, insights are needed to address the inherent challenges each face in incorporating abcd and cbr approaches, as well as challenges that hinder collaborative efforts. to this end, this article explores, from the perspective of pbis’ leadership and staff, the following research questions: • how do pbis leverage academic partnerships to strengthen their abcd efforts and better incorporate cbr to improve their own work? • what recommendations do pbis have to improve community-academic collaborations? to answer these questions, we focus on three pbis in charlotte, north carolina (usa) – a city with relatively low economic mobility (chetty et al. 2014) – for those with the fewest resources and multiple academic institutions, with which to collaborate. we conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with the pbi leadership and staff to gain their perspectives on the benefits of, and barriers to, partnering with academic institutions and to elicit their suggestions for improvement. promises and challenges of abcd and cbr for place-based initiatives in charlotte, as in many cities, place-based initiatives (pbis) have emerged in neighbourhoods facing layers of structural and historical discrimination. based on empirical evidence demonstrating that the neighbourhood in which one is born and raised strongly predicts economic disparities, low intergenerational mobility is seen as a ‘local-problem’ that requires place-based solutions (chetty et al. 2014; purpose built communities 2019). to address these place-based disparities, pbis can play a critical role in coordinating resources, services and expertise across multiple organisations and sectors, and that this coordination can build on local assets to transform neighbourhoods’ social, structural, physical and economic conditions and promote intergenerational economic mobility (liu & berube 2015; rood & mcgroder 2017). as part of their mission, pbis often incorporate elements consistent with abcd and cbr, including a strength-based delivery approach, and work with community members to identify priorities, build on local knowledge and commit to using data and evidence to inform programming decisions (dart 2018). thus, both abcd and cbr have the potential to play an important role in pbis’ work and mission, but like other community organisations, pbis often face challenges in implementing these approaches. as noted by critics of abcd and cbr in general, there is often a gap between the ‘ideals’ of each approach and their ‘real-world’ implementation, especially when power and economic differentials make it difficult to establish equitable collaborations, and where limited person power capacity exists (freidli 2013; janes 2016; sousa 2021). for pbis, challenges include the ability to address systems of power, which constrains community resident participation, develop trusting relationships with community members, and the internal capacity to adapt to external accountability pressures, which limits their ability to utilise abcd and cbr fully. the crunch of the american reality – low wages, unaffordable housing, expensive health and child care, and access to social support programs only if you can prove and maintain need – makes citizen participation in abcd difficult. in the u.s., individuals must have an extremely low income in order to qualify for federal support. for context the us median household income was $70,784 in 2021, while the 2022 federal poverty level (fpl), the prerequisite for accessing social support, was an income of $27,750 for a family of four. all of these issues create unique challenges for citizens and community organisations, such as the pbis, who are important mediating agents in helping citizens participate, connect to, and activate the various forms of social and institutional assets. however, amid growing concern over abcd proponents who acknowledge external power systems, but do little to address power imbalances, place-based watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 development experts increasingly recognise the need for development efforts to simultaneously address community-level solutions and combat oppressive structures. responding to this critique, maclure (2023) outlines an augmentation to the abcd model that integrates both freirean emancipatory pedagogy and anti-oppression theory. likewise, sousa (2021, p. 11) argues for the reintegration of cbr into the practice of abcd, thus returning to the emancipatory roots of cbr in the global south, where it was a social movement of the people and where knowledge production was community-led and produced in action. like other organisations that support abcd, pbis must regain the trust of people who have been historically let down by statutory services or have had difficult life experiences in untrustworthy and underresourced environments (harrison et al. 2019). gaining this trust may be particularly challenging for pbis because they do not always adhere to a pure citizen-driven internal agent of change abcd approach. instead, pbis often have a ‘semi-outside’ structure, with professional staff working to coordinate voices and assets for the community, which reduces the burden to participate that can often hinder abcd efforts (maclead et al. 2014). this means, however, that pbis must be self-reflective about their semi-outsider status and intentional in cultivating community voices. they do, in part, by providing connections to resources to improve everyday life, and creating protected communal space for convening internal actors, some of whom would never otherwise have met. additionally, their ongoing community presence and the positionality of staff help mitigate power imbalances and foster community engagement. nonetheless, pbis must be intentional in these trust-building efforts. pbis must also overcome external accountability and evaluation challenges that can hinder abcd – an area where cbr could be beneficial. with the heightened focus on accountability and responsibility models, abcd-oriented organisations often face intense donor pressure to demonstrate impacts (harrison et al. 2019). this is similar to the pressure some pbis face in demonstrating their impact, for example, their promise to mitigate intergenerational poverty, advance health equity and facilitate mobility, but limited research has examined the effectiveness of their efforts (e.g. mcgowan et al. 2021). consequently, these organisations are consumed by impact evaluation tasks (e.g. planning, monitoring and evaluation planning) that, combined with limited internal capacity, can hinder their community-driven mission and service focus, and result in hierarchical structures laden with top–down, results-based management (harrison et al. 2019). moreover, funders often fail to understand that organisational impacts should not only capture the outcomes of individuals and families in the community, but also the role of the organisation in stimulating and sustaining genuine community-driven development. in abcd approaches, impact evidence lies in the linkages to, and networks of community members in continuing to access information, services and opportunities independent of the organisation (mathie 2005). leveraging pbi – academic collaborations to harness the potential of abcd and cbr pbis often collaborate with a diverse range of academic institutions – universities, colleges, community colleges, and different entities within each institution, service-learning programs, faculty, individual researchers and academic programs, as a means to enhance their organisational and neighbourhood capacity to create intergenerational mobility opportunities (purpose built communities 2019). though academic institutions are just one of the many organisations with which pbis collaborate, pbis may be able to use these relationships to mitigate some of their abcdand cbr-related challenges. for example, pbis may be able to employ the cbr knowledge of academic researchers and institutions well-versed in cbr practices to further community trust and address external accountability pressures. community-based participatory research (cbpr), one of the more egalitarian forms of communitybased research, holds significant promise in fostering and measuring meaningful community impacts. this is, because cpbr is grounded in equity-based multicultural principles (e.g. includes diverse watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 stakeholders, facilitates equitable participation) aimed at empowering community voices in the research process (viswanathan et al. 2004). given that many academic institutions are increasing their place-based community–collaboration commitments, pbis may be able to leverage this commitment and the cbr and cbpr expertise, including applied research and evaluation skills, in these institutions to address the external ‘impact’ evaluation challenges that they face. at the same time, this process of co-creating research with pbis and their residents builds upon their own assets by increasing knowledge, skills and connections to academic resources (e.g. educational programs) that together can strengthen the pbis’ level of community trust. thus, combining the diverse resources of academic institutions (e.g. student person power, academic expertise and programs) with their own local knowledge can strengthen their programming and service delivery (seifer et al. 2012; suarez-balcazar et al. 2005). given that pbis increasingly collaborate with academic institutions, they can provide insight on how pbis and academic institutions can collaborate to enhance their implementation of abcd and cbr approaches. we examine three charlotte-based pbis to provide these key insights and to identify ways to strengthen pbi–academic collaborations. method study overview this community-engaged pbi research study grew out of a new partnership involving interdisciplinary university faculty and three charlotte-based pbis. in spring, 2020, the university-based team, with pbi input, developed a multi-step, mixed-methods evaluative research plan intended to garner the insights of different pbi stakeholders – pbi staff/leaders, collaborating agencies, neighbourhood residents and funders – and capture relevant programmatic and administrative data. the overall project aims were to elucidate facilitators and barriers to pbi work, build pbi’s data capacity, identify common pbi impact measures, improve pbi programming, and foster longer term pbi–university team collaborations. the first-step of the project – conducting pbi staff/leadership interviews – is the focus of this article. it highlights the university team’s emphasis on utilising a cbpr approach. although each university team member had a community organisation and evaluation background, they varied in their experience working with pbis. thus, by first interviewing pbi staff and leaders – the experts on pbis and on each of their respective pbi neighbourhoods and programs – the university-based research team took on the role of the learner, seeking to better understand the pbis and their collective facilitators and barriers (the initial research priority), while simultaneously building stronger collaborative relationships. participants & data collection first, we met with each pbi executive director individually to introduce ourselves and discuss initial interview topics and question ideas. we then created a draft interview guide and protocol, which we shared with the pbi directors for their suggestions and refinement. after collaborative agreement on the guide and institutional review board (irb) approval to proceed, the university team conducted 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews with pbi staff and the leadership. interview items asked about the respondents’ role, their perceptions regarding the strengths of their pbi and the challenges they encounter, community contextual factors (e.g. funder dynamics), the impact of structural racism, and other topics. the present study focuses on the data regarding collaboration with academic-based partners. interviews ranged from one to four hours and took place between spring and fall of 2021. based on self-identification, 20 pbi respondents were female and 3 male; and 14 self-identified as black, 8 as white and one as hispanic. ages ranged from 30 to 64. only three participants lived in the watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 pbi neighbourhood; seven were native to charlotte. their organisational positions ranged from project implementation staff, to ceos, to the directors of outreach and funding, and their time in the organisation varied from three weeks to twelve years. data analysis analysis occurred in two stages: (1) a preliminary analysis and report of the main findings to pbi leaders for feedback and member checking; and (2) a more rigorous, in-depth qualitative analysis focused on pbi– academic collaboration themes specifically. in both stages, all zoom audio files were first transcribed using otter.ai. this approach proved suitable for interviews with speakers of white ‘standard’ english, but, because a majority of the interviewees did not fit this profile, there were serious transcription errors. thus, we sent some audio recordings out for professional transcription. after transcription, a research team member re-read each transcript to locate errors and to identify any potentially sensitive or identifying information. then, based on the initial guide of interview questions, we defined and applied deductive structural codes using maxqda analysis software. in the initial analytic stage, we analyzed the full-interview protocol for 12 of the 23 interviews. following a process of team-based applied thematic coding (macqueen et al. 2008), we then divided our university team of faculty and graduate student researchers into four groups. each group was assigned text segments and structural codes based on specific questions from the guide. each team member read through their selected sections and independently identified emerging themes that they then compared with those completed by another team member to identify overlaps and discrepancies. together, team members defined new inductive codes. they next coordinated a second reading of the segments to apply the new inductive codes and identify salient quotes and examples. based on this process, we identified four main thematic areas – collaboration, organisational facilitators and barriers, funding and metrics – and sub-themes within each area, including those related to pbi-academic collaborations. in fall, 2022, we reported these preliminary results to the pbi directors in an in-person feedback session and a second online meeting with the pbi directors and a key pbi funding agency. these member check sessions are an important component of cbpr; they verify that our initial analysis has accurately captured the data and that the project continues to align with the three pbis’ respective research needs. in the second stage of the analysis, we conducted an additional focused analysis of pbi-academic collaborations – a prominent sub-theme identified in the first analytic stage. for this stage, we analysed all 23 interviews. during this analysis, we focused on the interview guide content and questions related to pbi-academic collaborations (e.g. benefits and challenges, improvement suggestions; see appendix a). additionally, to ensure we captured interview content related to pbi-academic collaborations, we conducted a second, indirect key word search of each interview based on key words identified in the first stage. we used maxqda and a similar team-based applied thematic coding process as used in the first stage, i.e. multiple team coders, deductive and inductive coding techniques, and repeat reading and coding of the interview transcripts. the approach adopted for analysing the study drew on the applied thematic analysis described by guest et al. (2012, p. 16), where the primary concern ‘is with presenting the stories and experiences voiced by study participants as accurately and comprehensively as possible’. results overview: charlotte’s low economic mobility and the pbi response similar to other us southeast cities, charlotte nc is grappling with population booms that are increasing cost of living and exacerbating long-standing economic and racial inequities. despite a thriving economy, watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 charlotte ranks last in economic mobility among the 50 largest u.s. cities (chetty et al. 2014). in charlotte, as in many cities, pbis have emerged to transform neighbourhoods and other geographically bounded areas. the three charlotte-based pbis that participated in this study were working with three different historically black neighbourhoods. these neighbourhoods are unique, but share common challenges. they are all located in charlotte’s urban centre. additionally, compared to neighbourhoods in charlotte broadly, the three pbi-serving neighbourhoods (1) are more racially/ethnically isolated on average, nonhispanic black persons make up 82 percent of the pbi neighbourhoods versus 32 percent in charlotte neighbourhoods broadly; (2) face more economic hardship – an average neighbourhood poverty rate of 47 percent versus 13 percent in charlotte broadly; (3) have more single-parent households (32 percent versus 8 percent); and (4) have a higher share of residents with low levels of education (i.e. less than a high-school degree: 27 percent vs 10 percent (us census 2019). though the three pbis vary in origin, approach, funding and stage of organisational development, all three developed to address the multifaceted and deeply rooted challenges in their neighbourhoods. consistent with abcd approaches, these three pbis work with community members, leaders and organisations to amplify resident voices, connect neighbourhood resources, and facilitate collaboration to tackle systemic barriers. below is a brief description of each pbi and their overall priority areas: • crossroads corporation for affordable housing and community development, inc.: established in 2008, crossroads seeks to honour the history and rejuvenation of a historically black neighbourhood founded in 1886 by sam billings, a former enslaved black man. billings was the first black man on record to have purchased over 100 acres in mecklenburg county. today, the community founded by billings is an island within charlotte’s most wealthy and sought-after neighbourhoods. crossroads strives to drive community improvement, focusing on five social determinants of health: economic stability, education, social and community context, health and access to health care, and the neighbourhood and built environment. crossroads provides some direct services and coordinates the efforts of numerous partner organisations in providing diverse services (housing, medical, financial, educational, workforce development pathway, programs and experiences. • renaissance west community initiative (rwci): in 2009, the charlotte housing authority received a $20.9 million hope vi grant to revitalise the boulevard homes public housing site as a mixedincome community. rwci was launched to lead the implementation. their ultimate goal was to contribute to the economic revitalisation of their targeted geographic area. to this end they: (1) developed and implemented a high-quality cradle-to-career educational continuum that includes a child development centre and pre-k–8 schools; (2) coordinated 50 partners to ensure wraparound services that would meet their unique needs related to health, mental wellbeing, job training, parent support, education and social services; and (3) supported the development of mixed-income housing in their area. • freedom communities: established in 2017, in direct response to charlotte being ranked last in economic mobility (chetty et al. 2014), its founding board members convened to identify tangible ways to personally, professionally and through their churches address the challenge of upward mobility. they mobilised philanthropic and impact investments to activate real estate and programmatic opportunities. their work focuses on one of the six geographic sites identified by the city and the mayor’s racial equity initiative. freedom communities makes targeted investments, coordinates efforts, and establishes partnerships to address the priority areas of housing, education, employment and wellness. watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 overview: pbis’ diverse academic collaborations across the pbis, academic institutions are viewed as a key collaborative partner – a sentiment best highlighted by the following pbi-staffer quote: ‘[w]e’ve got a great university, broad base university system in the area, and love to see those [collaborative] opportunities come together.’ in the charlotte-metro there are 13 different academic institutions and each pbi collaborates with a diverse array of them, including the area’s largest community college (central piedmont community college, cpcc) and a public four-year university (unc charlotte). there is wide variation in the types of collaborations that pbis form with academic institutions. as one pbi staff member noted, ‘[f ]rom interns, to research assistants, to professors, we’ve been lucky because our work ... i don’t know if our work is considered an innovation, or because our work is so broad, that people can find the place that’s of their research or academic interest.’ as a result, pbi-academic collaborations take many forms. a main commonality, however, is that each collaboration aims to help pbis meet some part of their place-based mission. broadly, each pbi–academic collaboration can be classified as either aiming to (1) advance pbi programming and service delivery, or (2) support pbi evaluation, grant and fundraising efforts. to improve programming/service delivery, pbis collaborated with academic institutions to both help staff enhance current pbi services and create new opportunities and connections for residents. pbis relied on student interns, field placements (e.g. social work practicum) and volunteers to help staff a wide variety of programs. for example, they engaged college student volunteers to mentor neighbourhood youth and the early child development field placement students to staff the pbi child development centre, and had student interns create pbi branding materials. pbis also used academic collaborations as a way to connect neighbourhood residents with new opportunities, particularly in terms of workforce development. pbis worked hard to connect neighbourhood residents with academic degree programs/certificates and training opportunities (e.g. ged assistance) provided by academic institutions. in turn, they invited collaborators from academic institutions to talk with the residents about ‘the different programs, [and] the grants that are available’, encouraged and facilitated the academic institutions to create scholarships for their neighbourhood residents and created youth college mentoring programs. the second pbi–academic collaboration classification type centred on collaborations that aimed to support pbi evaluation, grants and fundraising efforts. pbis often partnered with different faculty, graduate student researchers and academic institutes/centers within an academic institution on a variety of researchbased endeavours, for example, data collection and management, logic model development, program evaluations, grant development and program implementation. generally, the pbis hoped to use these efforts to make internal improvements and to enhance their own competitiveness for external funding (e.g. draw on data in grant applications). how pbis leverage academic partnerships to strengthen their abcd mission and incorporate cbr approaches to strengthen their work the pbis leveraged academic collaborations and resources in a variety of ways to strengthen and sustain their community connections and to meet and challenge external pressures and power systems that might hinder their abcd mission. as part of this, pbis often used cbr resources, particularly data and evaluation skills, of academics. however, in their collaborations with academics, pbis had to work to ensure that challenges associated with academic collaborations did not hinder their own trustworthy reputation. using academic partnerships to facilitate immediate and long-term community connections pbi staff and leadership believed that academic collaborations created direct and indirect benefits that enhanced their ability to develop genuine, sustained community connections. in terms of direct benefits, watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 by collaborating with academic programs and services, pbis were able to bring new resources into the community and/or connect community members to new opportunities (e.g. job training programs) that empowered them as individuals. arguably, this was important for transforming neighbourhoods and strengthening community trust in the pbi and demonstrating pbis’ accountability and responsiveness to community-member preferences and needs. the pbi leadership and staff also identified an indirect benefit – new academic social connections with neighbourhood residents. pbis felt that the process of collaboration and physical exchanges by neighbourhood residents with students and researchers served as a lever of change towards improving the health and mobility of residents. for instance, several respondents noted how simply participating in programs and research exposed residents to career possibilities in research and offered an opportunity for social bridging. participants described how youth interacting with students from higher education institutions had an opportunity to demystify academic pursuits: ‘the exposure of what being a college kid looks like . . . being around collegiate students and having that exposure there and seeing what life is like there . . . [and] scholarship opportunities too’. thus, the academic–social connections created by pbi–academic partnership (i.e. the mentoring program) had the potential to benefit the residents of neighbourhoods served by pbis. lastly, pbis often viewed investing in students at academic institutions as a way to give back and create employment or a volunteer pipeline for their pbi to promote long-term social change. i think, with the students, teaching them about the reality of these communities and what they look like, how they work, how they’ve been affected by systemic challenges over the years, understanding history better. there’s a lot to be learned for the students as they go out into any field ... [s]ome of that will inspire them, whatever they happen to do, to maybe, not forget about that. and whether they stay engaged philanthropically, or they stay engaged from a volunteer standpoint, or … they vote a different way. i think it’s a good part of the academic experience. thus, beyond the present day, student involvement in pbis is viewed as a way to plant seeds for longer term social change, and expand philanthropic and volunteer networks that may help the specific neighbourhood and pbi build trustworthiness, as well as advance the broader cause of creating a just and equitable society. thus, pbis are demonstrating a long-term accountability commitment to social change. using academic cbr partnerships to advocate for more meaningful abcd metrics pbis viewed academic partnerships, particularly research and evaluation partnerships, as especially useful in helping them meet funders’ ‘result-based’ accountability demands. this was so even among pbi staff members who were critical of data demands and skeptical that quantitative data could truly capture the difference pbis make in residents’ lives. … hearing stories with tears or seeing celebrations in person, that’s just what i believe in. and i think there’s an understanding that comes with that that can’t be done, by watching the numbers … having said all that sounds like i’m against the metrics and helping to measure, but frankly, the measurables are one of the greatest benefits that universities can bring to our work ... because some of that is access to data that the universities had that we can never have. and then overlaying that to some of the reality pieces that we can bring to the table. i think that’s a huge asset there. here we see the potential for academic partners to meaningfully document person-centred indicators as well as the ways these organisations are facilitating sustainable changes in local actors. for those in the thick of program implementation, data collection can seem like a challenging add-on to their work. however, cbr partnerships can help ease this burden: watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 the capacity we have is just, you know, trying to keep up with data as we get it, as we can collect it, as we know it… but it’s an add-on to everything everybody does... and that’s where university situations and others can help us, is to sometimes say to us, “can you collect this?” … [can you] interpret what we do collect? the participants described a type of credibility and social capital afforded to them both by publicising their relationship with academic institutions and via the data and reports generated by academics: i’d like the data because the data then helps me inform my investors…i just think... universities can bring...a level of credibility that these pbis need. and if you can actually get the research out of it ...not even published, reported...cause i know there’s terminology ... that it’s validated data that i can use with funders and with my volunteers and all that. if you can come in and leave with some kind of proven outcome, that then also allows that non-profit to have even more credibility and legitimacy. that should be your goal, that you’re loaning your social capital. the above quote reflects a deep understanding by the community partner of the nuances of academic terminology and the core value of having externally recognised and validated data associated with their work. this participant goes on to explicitly link this asset of credibility to their sustainability in demonstrating their impact and securing funding. cause those sophisticated funders, they love that. they love to be part of research. they’re just not funding a charity. they’re funding something that can be – if it’s done in the way that research is done – then you’re going through eliminating stuff that doesn’t work. because we probably got thousands of people out here doing stuff that doesn’t work, but they don’t know it doesn’t work because they don’t really research it. thus, the academic partnership helps the organisation go beyond the selective telling of stories of success to a deeper process-oriented and systematic understanding of what is working well versus less well and how data may guide improvements. at the same time, the academic researcher is in a position to challenge some of the top–down metrics and co-create new, complementary ways to document how pbis are stimulating and sustaining asset-based community development. using academic partnerships to enhance internal validation & challenge power systems pbi leadership and staff noted that academic partners, both researchers and students, often provided the type of inspirational anchor and internal validation and motivational support that pbi staff – who are often drained by rigorous schedules and unending demands – need to fulfil their mission and challenge external power structures: i think a part of what i’ve seen as a benefit is the ability to have, quote-unquote, these growing edge moments, places and spaces where you can have the necessary intellectual conversations about the work as a practice, as a discipline. as a nonprofit, we spend the vast majority of our time acting, reacting or responding to the needs of the community and constituents we serve. we don’t always have the time and space or we have to intentionally create the space to be strategic—to think about being a place-based initiative theoretically while in the midst of being a place-based initiative in actuality.. you need to have this intellectual honesty about the work that you’re doing and the mission you are serving and trying to advance … i think the greatest part, in our collaboration with you all, is just like the solidarity … you get us in … in a way, that’s … really encouraging. because when you’re measured with a ruler … to be able to just celebrate something … is really freeing, and … validates our work in new levels that are really important when so often you’re measured in a numbers way. the underlying message here is that academic partners can engage in critical discussions that create space not only to reflect on structural factors, but to implement an abcd approach that promotes internal participation and social action, while also targeting external power systems (maclure 2023). watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 along these same lines, students were the most inspirational and internally motivating benefit noted across interviews on this study. participants repeatedly described students’ positive energy and curiosity as important contributions: ‘the students are the best part of universities. i think there’s a thirst for knowledge and thirst for understanding.’ student collaborations facilitated the ability of pbi staff to connect back to the ‘big picture’ and their own initial motivations. i would say 98% of the students that we worked with have just been like … how i was when i learned about it, like ‘this is amazing.’ and … the enthusiasm and energy that they bring into it … they’re generally hard-working and … want to help [pbi] be successful. that’s been huge. pbi staff also learnt new skills on social media and new perspectives from students, benefits that could help the pbi staff be more effective in their own work, especially in finding new ways to connect with residents. ensuring academic partnerships do not hinder pbis’ mission and exploit community members lastly, when collaborating with academic partners, pbis had to ensure that their own reputation would not be damaged or their mission derailed. for instance, though participant responses were overwhelmingly positive about student interactions, they cautioned that mediocre student performance could negatively affect residents and pbi community relationships. unfortunately, there are situations where interns are not committed or lack preparation/competencies for the role in which they were placed. as one pbi staff respondent noted, students do not always ‘take things seriously. we’re place-based so the community is always watching, so that reflects on us’. similarly, the cyclical nature of student involvement can hurt the pbis’ image and force them to guard against students and their academic supervisors taking advantage of community members for research or credit. [students are] a great asset, but they cycle through. and so there’s limitations to how much you can actually connect them with your clients, with the residents ... so, part of doing this work, one benefit of being a place-based initiative is that we’re a constant presence in the community. and so as long as we’re constant, then the other people coming and going is a different narrative, versus if it was just a free for all and no community quarterback, then it would take on an air of exploitation, not necessarily negative exploitation, but still exploitative [opportunistic]. as this quote shows, a unique strength of pbis is that they are able to leverage academic resources and partner to their benefit, without letting challenges associated with these partnerships hurt their community mission and trustworthiness. pbis also have to protect residents from being over, or inappropriately, researched. because of their stable and central role within the community and with numerous partnering community organisations, pbis are uniquely poised to ensure relevant research is conducted and that findings are used to inform policy and programmatic decisions. the failure of academics to report back to community members, for instance, can contribute to perceptions of academic exploitation and to the need for pbis to protect their community members from research. as one staff member explains: ...[some community] feedback is like, ‘well, but the universities walk away with the data, and the data is of value to them, but the community never really gets supported in implementing what the data says.’ and so i think … some of these community people … have interpreted it as exploitative, that the universities come in, and they exploit for data, not money or power, but for data … that’s how these people perceive it, ‘ you guys swoop in here and you do all these...’ we’ve had 20 research projects done, and it helps people get their phd, it helps the university get a grant, it helps ... but what does it do for the community? watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 consequently, pbi leaders and staff noted that, when collaborating with academic researchers, they often need to ensure that the pbi and community needs are being addressed, that research is beneficial for the pbi and the community, and that there are not unintended consequences for residents. you know, we have to be careful that we understand research is needed and it helps, but we also have to be careful that people are not looked at as you know, experiments … we have to be that protector of the residents … but also be able to help bring [the research] back to us, to serve us in our day-to-day operations. across interviews, participants noted the regular failure of academic partners to bring information back to the organisations so they could apply what was learned. in fact, in some instances, there were communitydriven calls for action towards academics and academic institutions working in these settings: and so most recently, i’ve seen where these same community leaders are saying, ‘we’re not gonna participate unless you promise to use your capital, your social capital, to move the needle in the thing that you want to research. given the historical and structural discrimination faced by those living in and serving these communities, the overall concern about academic exploitation – both data exploitation and failure to ensure communities benefit from research – emphasises the importance of pbis in serving as mediators in helping academics develop more equitable community relationships. recommendations for beneficial community–academic collaborations pbi staff and leadership provided several suggestions on how to facilitate more beneficial pbi-academic partnerships. many suggestions were linked with the different pbi-academic challenges they highlighted. these provide a roadmap to fostering better pbi-academic collaborations and, more broadly, efforts to employ abcd and cbr principles. establish and maintain a common purpose first, they recommend that pbis and academic partners establish and maintain a common purpose. doing so will better enable pbi-academic partnerships to overcome the structural constraints and the timing and communication challenges that can hinder development. community and academic partners often identify a broad purpose in working together, but success requires maintaining and clarifying the common purpose over time: … doing as many things together as we can, getting the community, identifying purposes, you know, what do we want to accomplish? if we’re gonna collaborate, our greatest collaboration for success will be to have a common purpose ... i think sometimes there are challenges that we don’t identify our purpose very specifically enough, that we know when we’ve been successful. having an identified and updated common purpose is key to building the relational foundation for achieving mutual goals. this need is widely recognised as central within the cross-sector partnership literature (coburn et al. 2013; kania & kramer 2011; lanford et al. 2022). in a similar vein, efforts to identify and address needs of relevance to all partners are critical components of relationship trust and sustainability (e.g. author et al. 2021). dear students: partner with a passion and a purpose though student involvement was the most cited pbi-academic collaboration benefit, respondents articulated student-associated challenges. one pbi staff member stressed the importance of students (and by default their advisers) partnering with intentionality: watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 as collegiate students … we wanna make sure that what we’re involved in is something that speaks to what we really wanna do and something that we’re really passionate about. we just don’t wanna waste time collecting data and doing it just because it was an assignment. if that’s the case, then you’re gonna make yourself miserable along with (laugh) the people you are partnering with. and so, i think just partnering with a passion and a purpose. like if it’s something that you are really into, or if it’s something that you feel like you can really provide support to [the pbi] … do it that way while also gaining the experience and knowledge for yourself to move on as a student as well. this suggestion highlights the need for students and their advisers to approach collaboration with the pbis with the utmost professionalism, in a manner that aligns with the community-based work already in progress, and with the goal of adding value to the organisation. though not explicit, this suggestion hints at the reality that sometimes the fit is just not right, and the student (or adviser) should not proceed with pbi placement. pushing poorly matched students into these placements to fulfil degree requirements can be detrimental to the student, the organisation, the residents and the community, and the pbi-academic partnership’s long-term viability. dear researchers: ‘can you put down your mission and vision and plug into mine?’ pbi staff and leadership noted that they need to be the main drivers of the pbi-academic partnership and that, as with students, there needs to be a conversation about ‘fit’. respondents noted that academics need to be mindful of potential power or positionality differences and engage in practices that support the partnership, including respecting and valuing the capacity and competencies of their community partners. given that the pbis are the experts on their neighbourhood and its residents, they need to be the main drivers of the partnership: can you really see and value that organisation’s mission and vision? so, i would wanna say, ‘can you put down your mission and vision and plug into mine?’ and then we come back to, ‘okay. what is it ... what outcomes do you need?’ so it’s evaluating the fit, and being comfortable having the conversations about whether or not there is a fit and being able to walk away when it doesn’t really fit ... [a]s the pbi, we are the broker for the community. so, you need to take a second seat ... now, i’m not saying take a second seat in your areas of your expertise, i’m saying take a second seat when it comes to the mission and vision that’s going on in that community. and so be complementary of the work and not dominate the work and ... assume that the people already out here know what they’re doing. as this staff member underlines, it is important to have uncomfortable conversations evaluating fit; there is a need to be able to walk away when the partnership is not suitable. academic partners choosing not to walk away should embrace that collaboration with pbis necessitates thoughtful curation of communication and deliberate articulation of and action toward the steps for moving forward together. as part of this ‘fit’, academic partners must also respect and value the knowledge base of pbi staff, the leadership and neighbourhood residences: in the community, you speak a different language. and just because it’s not the queen’s english doesn’t mean it’s unintelligent. and so sometimes, you get that. that would be the advice. yeah. it’s all the stuff that they probably teach. don’t talk down to people when you’re in the community, make sure that they’re heard, make sure that they’re legitimised. [c]ome in as a partner, not as a saviour. the message here is that academic collaborators have to know their place and proceed with humility in these partnerships. this may mean that pbis do not offer direct access to their residents. as much as academic partners may think that they are not ‘that person’ coming in as a ‘savior’, they should tread very lightly and engage in substantial self-reflection, with checkpoints to ensure they are leaning into the partnership with respect. watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 conclusion because place-based initiatives are launched with the intention of transforming neighbourhoods facing historical, racial and structural discrimination, collaboration is critical to their work. each of the three pbis in this study – all located in charlotte nc, usa – collaborated extensively with a diverse range of academic institutions and entities within each institution to offset challenges related to place-based effectiveness. based on the perspectives of leaders and staff from these pbis, we demonstrated how pbis leverage pbi– academic collaborations to incorporate abcd and cbr principles that strengthen their work. we also provide suggestions for improving pbi–academic collaborations. first, pbis in this study utilised their partnerships with academic institutions and programs to strengthen their abcd approach. though each pbi was unique, each used an abcd approach to amplify resident voices and work collaboratively with residents to facilitate change. most pbi leadership and staff did not reside in the neighbourhoods that they served. furthermore, the founding and funding for these pbis relied heavily on external actors and institutions. consequently, each pbi was intentional about connecting with community residents and capitalising on diverse pbi-academic collaborations as one way to facilitate immediateand long-term community connections. each of the pbis was highly sought after by a diverse array of academic institutions and programs/researchers within each academic institution. in response, the pbis put to use different academic resources, e.g. job training programs and new resident–academic social connections to strengthen community trust in the pbi and demonstrate that pbis are accountable and responsive to community-member preferences and needs. such steps are seen as important for transforming neighbourhoods and for addressing inherent trustworthiness abcd challenges that pbis and similar abcd organisations face (harrison et al. 2019). second, pbis utilised their academic partnerships to help address external accountability challenges and inform pbi programming. intense funder accountability demands and external power structures can often derail abcd and make it difficult to sustain genuine community-driven development (harrison et al. 2019). pbis in this study, however, utilised academic partnerships and cbr efforts to minimise these challenges. for instance, pbis pragmatically put to use their academic partners’ data capacity and ‘credibility’ to fulfil funder requirements to measure program impacts. at the same time, however, they drew on these same resources to push for more meaningful person-centred and process-oriented impact metrics that better highlight the longer-term, intergenerational social change foundations they are building. this and other examples demonstrate how, by collaborating with academic partners, pbis can simultaneously address community-level solutions and combat oppressive structures that often derail abcd effectiveness (maclure 2023). given the results of pbi staff asking academics to ‘use your capital, your social capital to move the needle’ and the role of holding space for staff to engage in ‘intellectual honesty about the work that you’re doing and the mission you are serving and trying to advance’, it is essential to consider the potential for pbi-academic partnerships to integrate abcd and cbr towards addressing structural factors and internal and external systems of power. findings also illuminated several pitfalls in pbi-academic partnerships being rooted in sometimes conflicting priorities and approaches between academic researchers and community practitioners. however, a particular strength of the pbis in this study is that they were able to use pbi-academic relationships to strengthen pbi effectiveness, while still maintaining their own pbi identity and mission. in particular, the three pbis were able to minimise many of the pitfalls associated with community-academic collaborations and cbr. as the ‘backbone’ resource coordinators of the community, pbis are well-positioned to manage long-standing academic-community power imbalances and to ensure that cbr and other communityacademic collaborations benefit the community (instead of harming the community via academic exploitation). that is because throughout all pbi-academic collaborations – student and research-based – the pbis worked hard to ensure community, and not just academic, needs were being addressed. watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202314 finally, our findings delineate recommendations for improving pbi-academic collaborations, including countering academic exploitation by plugging into the mission of pbis and respecting pbi expertise. to ensure that pbi-academic collaborations truly benefit the community and fully harness the combined power of abcd and cbr to promote social change, pbis need to be the drivers of the collaboration. academic institutions need to be willing to say yes when community partners literally or figuratively ask ‘can you put down your mission and plug into mine?’ pbis are the organisations best placed to support community involvement, and for academic institutions to partner with them, not the other way around. this is because pbis and other abcds are the conduits for both creating space for community agents to enact asset-based community development and the mediator of community-based research higher education partnerships. importantly, pbis and academic collaborators need to find a common purpose. to do so, pbi and academic partners must have honest, even if uncomfortable, conversations that assess ‘fit’. to be a good ‘fit’, the academic partner – whether comprised of students, researchers and/or a centre – should support and complement the pbis’ efforts, not dominate them. this requires that, in the pbi-academic collaboration, the pbis function and are recognised as the experts on their neighbourhoods and their intended beneficiaries (the residents), and that the academic partner – particularly students, but also researchers – partner with a passion and intentionality (e.g. prioritise the pbi’s mission), and, in the case of research-based collaborations, provide useful and practical study results to the entire pbi community. by doing so, academic partners can minimise the academic mismatch and exploitation risk that can hinder pbi-academic collaborations, and build the trustworthiness necessary to promote participation and social action. though valuable, our study’s lessons have limitations. most importantly, our research team, a mix of faculty and students, conducted the in-depth interviews with pbi staff and leadership. consequently, they may have been hesitant to fully discuss challenges and critiques related to pbi-academic partnerships. additionally, our study provides only the perspective of the community partner, not the academic partner. the latter faces their own institutional challenges, which may limit the applicability of some of the pbi-provider suggestions. nonetheless, based on the collaborative expertise of pbis, our study provides key insights regarding how pbis leverage pbi-academic partnerships to strengthen their community connections and programming, and overcome external accountability challenges. 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tract-level data (author sp calculations), us census bureau. viswanathan, m ammerman, a, eng, e, gartlehner, g, lohr, k, griffith, d, rhodes, s, samuel-hodge, c, maty, s, lux, l, webb, l, sutton, s swinson, t, jackman, a & whitener, l 2004, community-based participatory research: assessing the evidence, evidence report, technology assessment no. 99, agency for healthcare research and quality, rti-unc contract no. 290-02-0016. https://doi.org/10.1037/e439622005-001 yamamura, e & koth, k 2019, ‘leadership practices for place-based community engagement initiatives’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 181–96. watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202317 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7767 https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198104269512 https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198104269512 https://doi.org/10.1037/e439622005-001 appendix a: content analysis focus questions • we’ve talked about the relationship between pbis, now i would like to shift to talking about your collaborations with university partners, not just our group or university, but in general. • what are the benefits in partnering with individuals from universities? in your experience, what has gone well? • what challenges have you faced in your attempts to partner or collaborate with university-based researchers? • as we are thinking about your initiative as well as other pbis, what suggestions can you provide to university-based partners that would help them to fulfil the potential of this type of collaboration? what sorts of resources or support would be of most benefit? what would help facilitate more collaboration? watson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202318 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 1 october 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: coles-ritchie, m., power, c. a., farrell, c., and valerio, m. 2022. pedagogy matters: a framework for critical community-engaged courses in higher education. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i1.8144 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 research article (peer-reviewed) pedagogy matters: a framework for critical community-engaged courses in higher education marilee coles-ritchie1, cathleen a power2, chelsea farrell3, maria valerio4 1 professor and faculty fellow for katherine w. dumke center for civic engagement, school of education, westminster college, salt lake city, utah, usa  2 independent scholar, st. louis, missouri, usa  3 assistant professor, department of criminology and criminal justice, university of rhode island, kingston, rhode island, usa  4 deputy clerk, salt lake county, salt lake city, utah, usa corresponding author: marilee coles-ritchie, mcoles-ritchie@westminstercollege.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8144 article history: received 02/04/2021; revised 13/08/2022; accepted 22/08/2022; published 10/2022 abstract this article describes specific pedagogical components of a community engagement project between students in a psychology course and youth at a juvenile justice centre (jjs). the purpose of the research was to illustrate how feminist and critical pedagogies can create reciprocal community engagement that provides a space for learning at both college and community sites. the researchers involved in this study included the professor of the psychology of women course, a senior college student who previously took the course, the jjs volunteer coordinator and an education professor. together, they employed qualitative, single case study methodology in order to understand the complex social phenomena of this community-engaged course. the results demonstrate that lessons addressing social inequities are beneficial for youth in jjs and offer a way to alleviate the gap in gender-specific programming. they also create community and offer an empowerment lens. by explicitly focusing on the pedagogical choices of the partnership, this research contributes to an understanding of how critical community engagement can provide mutual benefits. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8144 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8144 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mcoles-ritchie@westminstercollege.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8144 keywords community-engaged learning; critical pedagogy; juvenile justice; service learning; civic engagement; community partnerships introduction critical community-engaged pedagogy matters. the way instructors thoughtfully, intentionally and systematically design their community-engaged courses is essential if they are to challenge social inequities rather than reify them (tinkler et al. 2019). however, pedagogical support for instructors at colleges and universities, even those focused on teaching, is often limited (berrett 2012). thus support for understanding critical pedagogy and, even more specifically, critical community-engaged pedagogy is sparse at best. while research is available on the theoretical foundations of critical community-engaged courses (da cruz 2017, 2018; hale 2008; latta et al. 2018; mitchell 2008; mitchell et al. 2012; rodriguez et al. 2021), seldom are specific pedagogical tasks outlined. thus, this article explains some practical pedagogical strategies used for a community-engaged project, and details results drawn from focus group data demonstrating their efficacy. [note we use the language of community-engaged learning rather than the term service-learning as service can imply a unidirectional relationship where one group serves another. however, service-learning is used when we reference others who use this term.] the community-engaged project examined in this article was undertaken in a psychology of women course taught at a small liberal arts college. an integral goal of the course was to provide students an opportunity to apply the theories from the course to social change efforts outside the classroom. the professor partnered with the volunteer coordinator of the state’s juvenile justice services ( jjs), who co-taught part of the class on the college campus, to familiarise the students with the organisation and model co-teaching practices that blurred and blended teaching and learning roles. this modelling was important because students were asked to co-teach in the context of their work with youth in jjs. they also used this time to complete paperwork required of all jjs volunteers, structure the days and times of visits, and ask questions. it was essential for the professor to include the elements of critical service-learning pedagogy to foster critical consciousness (mitchell et al. 2015). the professor and the jjs coordinator intentionally planned the partnership with all who were involved (professor, college students, staff and girls in jjs) through a dialectic and responsive process that encouraged analysis and action to address issues at both local and systemic levels. this partnership was initiated by jjs, which was interested in partnering with the college to offer more gender responsive programming for girls in jjs. the partnership continued for ten semesters. like cipolle (2010, p. 5), the professor encouraged her students to ‘question the hidden bias and assumptions of race, class, and gender; and work to change the social and economic system for equity and justice’. framework the design of the course was informed by critical (freire 2018) and feminist (webb, allen & walker 2002) pedaogies. community-engaged learning involves individuals participating in activities of personal/ public concern that benefit both their individual lives and the community (association of american colleges and universities 2009). clark-taylor (2017) critiques dominant community-engagement models that are charity focused, or set up so that college students go out and ‘give’ to an organisation and or ‘help’ marginalised communities. these models of service learning, even if well intentioned, actually perpetuate the structural oppression of communities by falsely situating students as capable of ‘fixing’ problems that marginalised communities face through presumed superior knowledge or skills (e.g. white saviourism, paternalism) (mitchell et al. 2012). [note we capitalise white and whiteness when referring to people who are racialised as white. to capitalise ‘white’ is to name it as a race as opposed to viewing it as a neutral coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20222 identity.] further, these well-intentioned, or ‘benevolent’ service-learning projects can be more insidious that overt bigotry, as we know from research on ambivalent sexism, disability and racism (see, for example, glick & fiske 2001; hayes & black 2003; hughey 2012). in short, students in charity focused servicelearning courses do interact with the community, but they also implicitly or explicitly absorb hegemonic, racist, classist, heterosexist, cissexist, and ableist systems. critical pedagogy offers a counter to these problems. those associated with critical pedagogy (freire 2018; giroux 2011; hooks 2003; mclaren et al. 2004) assert that teachers should push students to develop critical consciousness by learning to question knowledge as an objective ‘truth’, and instead uncover how it is hegemonically situated through historical socio-political power dynamics. freire (2018) and shor and shor (1987) conceptualised critical consciousness as a borderless dialectical process of thought, action and reflection. the course utilised the freirean assertion that true critical reflection leads to action. pivotal to critical reflection is freire’s idea of conscientização, which occurs when stakeholders ‘achieve a deepening awareness of the social realities which shape their lives and discover their own capacities to recreate them’ (baltodano, darder & torres 2009, p. 14). the course also utilised feminist pedagogy to enrich freire’s idea of conscientização by addressing issues left unexplored in freire’s work: that is, questioning the role and authority of the teacher in the course, recognising the importance of personal experience as a source of knowledge, and explicitly exploring intersectionality (weiler 1991). this extension was essential for two reasons: first, because the college students would be inhabiting a teaching role with the youth in jjs; and second, because the college students and community participants occupied different social locations that were embedded in inequitable power relationships. freire’s students held relatively similar places within social hierarchies and this was built into his pedagogical choices. thus, it was essential that power imbalances were interrogated inside of the class, in addition to questioning societal power imbalances more broadly. additionally, utilizing personal experience and intersectionality as knowledge sources obligates instructors to design curricula that centres voices that are often silenced. in this class, that meant centring the voices of youth in jjs. hooks’ (2003, p. 197) framework for teaching community articulates the goals of this community-engaged project, ‘dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community’. thus, critically conscious engaged pedagogy, where the students, professors, community partners and community members at the site developed a community of conscience was key (kornbluh, et al. 2020). to promote examination of injustice in society, it was necessary to create a community of conscience in the classroom that did not erase the contradictory positions of oppressors and oppressed that the teachers/ students occupied, and that further asked, ‘how are we to situate ourselves in relation to the struggles of others?’ (weiler 1991, p. 455). creating a community of conscience required fostering an environment where students’ lived experiences, thoughts and ideas were encouraged by their instructor and peers, and that this was continued through to the exchanges between college students and the youth in jjs. mcdonough (2015) writes that, when performing conscientização, not enough attention is given to how it is developed. indeed, watts and serrano-garcia (2003) pushed against critically conscious pedagogical framing that reproduced individualistic cognitive approaches to youth development. focusing on individual development while ignoring the collective frameworks that communities develop within the dominant historic, sustained, historical colonial power dynamics, could mean power structures are reified. when partnerships pay attention to ‘thick’ reciprocity that ‘emphasizes shared voice and power and insists upon collaborative knowledge construction and joint ownership of work processes and products’, all involved benefit ( jameson et al. 2011, p. 264). developing critical consciousness among students in experiential minded courses creates community. critical consciousness refers to a reflective awareness of the inequalities embedded in the social relationships coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20223 in society (camus et al. 2021; carmen et al. 2015; roberts et al. 2016; smith 2012). course content that focuses on structural inequities requires all involved, including students, instructors and community partners, to unlearn a narrative myth of fairness and equality. this discussion almost always includes people with a myriad of life experiences. therefore, in these varied and fluid spaces for developing critical consciousness, a pedagogical task that may be effective in initiating one student’s step towards developing a critical consciousness may not be effective for another student who is further along their journey (or vice versa). importantly, critical and feminist pedagogy is highly contextualised and localised, and based upon the mutually determined needs and foundations of those involved in critical inquiry at a particular moment in time and a particular site of inquiry. despite the complexity of these movements, we attest that developing and engaging in these spaces, all in the collaboration, are more apt to move towards conscientização. in the 2019 special issue of the journal of experiential education, warren (2019, p. 3) questions how educators can share their research so that it answers queries such as, ‘what is the place of experiential education in social change movements? can and should experiential education be an educational agent of social justice?’. we answer this question with a resounding ‘yes’, acknowledging that more specific examples of praxis are crucial to support educators in implementing the sometimes messy and nebulous terms of social justice work. because praxis is central to critical conscious pedagogy, educators have an obligation to share how this work is accomplished in contextual spaces. warren (2019, p. 5) goes on to say that: ‘the issues and examples they raise also remind us that just because a program uses experiential activities or claims to use an experiential approach, this does not automatically yield social justice related outcomes; programs using experiential activities can be sites of social reproduction as well’. therefore, the primary question of this case study project is: how can a critical communityengaged course be designed to impact social change for students and community participants without perpetuating ‘benevolent’ oppression through logics that result in white saviourism and paternalism? method: case study the researchers included the professor of the psychology of women course, a senior college student who had previously taken the course, the jjs volunteer coordinator, now was a full-time employee of jjs, and an education professor. together, we employed a qualitative, single case study methodology (yin 2017). our goal was to understand the complex social phenomena of this critical community-engaged course. as such, we focus on the intentional pedagogical choices of the professor teaching this course, in collaboration with the jjs coordinator, to illustrate how these practices can move all participants towards conscientização. together, we articulated the learning experiences of both the youth in jjs and the college students as they intersected with class material on structural inequities. using qualitative methods, we explored the pedagogical methods implemented and how they enhanced the learning of both the college students and the youth in jjs, remaining aware that the learning on these structural inequities was informed by the positionalities that the participants held within these structures. we chose qualitative methods because of their attention to and valuing of contextual evidence in research (magnusson & marecek 2012). the institutional review board committee at westminster college and the department of human services approved the study. course description psychology of women is a core course at this small liberal arts college, which focuses on: (a) psychological literature on women and gender; (b) how mainstream psychology is gendered, which explores feminist psychological approaches to studying women and gender; and (c) the diversity in women’s experiences and coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20224 how their lives are shaped by their gender, race, class, age and sexuality. the instructor chose the course readings to highlight transformational feminist psychology through a critical theoretical lens. college and youth participants the participants included women college students in the class who agreed to participate in focus group interviews. of this group of eight, seven identified as white and one was an arapahoe indian. in addition, 17 youth aged 13–17 from jjs participated. thirteen identified as girls: three were latina, nine white and one american indian; three identified as bi-racial boys: latino/black, mexican-american and filipino/ white; and one participant was transgender white/cherokee. data collection we collected and analysed data from the course material and four focus groups, three with youth in jjs who were still in jjs at the completion of the semester, and one with students in the course. the course material included lesson plans, rubrics and syllabus for pedagogical tools used to enhance the conscientização within the project. the focus groups lasted approximately 45 minutes to an hour. we chose focus groups because of their collective nature and structure. promoting social change was a goal of this critical community-engaged learning project; therefore, we used a method that feminist researchers have found helpful in fostering social change by allowing people to use their own voice to describe their experiences and reducing the self–other relationship that many traditional research methods create between the researchers and the participants (madriz 2000). the semistructured design plan for the focus groups was also intended to foster genuine responses and limit the researchers’ input by having a loose set of follow-up questions to keep conversation flowing when necessary (madriz 2000). questions centred around (a) gaining insight into how the jjs participants felt about having the college students work with them; (b) their perceptions of the content presented; and (c) the ways in which it was presented. jjs participants were invited to share in the focus groups what they liked and didn’t like about the learning materials and activities, and their experiences with the college students. similarly, in the focus groups with participating college students, questions focused on their experiences during the project, their reactions to working with the youth in jjs, and the successes and challenges of designing lesson plans and putting them into action. our goal was to understand what impact the project had by creating both vertical and horizontal data to minimise the power structures that typically exist between researchers and participants (madriz 2000). as such, the student researcher, who was closest to the lived experiences of the participants, conducted the focus group interviews. we transcribed the audio and initially coded it line-by-line using a grounded theory approach (ryan & bernard 2000). each researcher coded all of the dialogues independently using an open coding process to see if categories would emerge (lichtman 2010; saldaña 2008). together, the researchers shared the initial codes and discussed commonalities between codes, categories and themes that were found. two sets of initial codes were particularly relevant for understanding if and how the course design could impact social change for students and community participants and inform the current study. the first set centred around forms of mutual learning and was generated by examples of participants recognising, applying and using concepts about inequity at both the individual and structural level. the second set focused on participant perceptions of the curriculum and the pedagogical tools. taken together, these were examined in connection with the pedagogical decisions made by the professor. they revealed important insight into how instructors might design courses that foster meaningful community through co-teaching, lesson plan development, critical reflection and power redistribution. this methodological approach could allow for coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20225 practical connections between the actual course curriculum and the pedagogical tools used by the professor/ researcher, and provide evidence of mutual learning and perception of the learning tools from the participant perspective. results the results informed our understanding of the ways instructors can enhance their community-engaged courses through intentional, reciprocal pedagogy. these methods are described and analysed below to provide details on how other instructors might apply theoretical ideas on experiential learning to lived pedagogical practices that would intentionally benefit the community member participants and students in the college class. the study found that the college participants, jjs participants, the instructor, and the coordinator of jjs all recognised that the experience was elevated through relevant curriculum. such curriculum was rooted in efforts to raise critical consciousness by applying deep oral and written reflection and modelling, encouraging authentic relationships between the participants at the community partner site and the college, and a consistent effort to redistribute power in all interactions (cocieru et al. 2021; mitchell 2008). while many studies analyse community-engaged learning projects and share findings through themes, few explicitly discuss the practical and specific pedagogical practices that are used and how they are applied. each of the elements the professor used is explained and analysed so that others can learn about specific pedagogical elements that supported critical learning for all involved in the project. the pedagogical components included: (1) modelling co-teaching; (2) students developing lesson plans for jjs; (3) critical reflection; and (4) embedding redistribution of power within partnerships. these pedagogical elements are illustrated using data from participants’ focus groups, reflections and course material. (1) modelling co-teaching with the jjs coordinator too often, college students are sent off to teach in community centres with little to no background in effective pedagogy (mitchell et al. 2012). most critical educators extol the importance of relevant experience, but relevancy is enhanced when the primary portion of the course is connected with a community agency and the professor intentionally creates a meaningful relationship with the community partner. in this course, the professor and the jjs coordinator worked together to ‘minimize the distinction between the students’ community learning role and [the] classroom learning role’ (howard 1993). often in college classrooms, students are expected to assume a more passive learning role, with a higher level of direction from the instructor, whereas in community settings students are expected to take on a more active learning role. to bring the learning environments into better alignment, the students took on more of an active learning role in the classroom and were also given more direction in their community role by the volunteer coordinator. this blending of learning roles across the classroom and the community was achieved through intentional modelling by the professor and the jjs coordinator. it is worth noting that both were critical of a criminal punishment system that criminalises children for systematically navigating racist, sexist, classist, heterosexist, ableist and xenophobic contexts. in effect, the professor and the volunteer coordinator were working to challenge this system, albeit in small ways. the professor and the jjs coordinator met before the course began to discuss the curriculum and to share current issues the jjs residents were experiencing so they could jointly choose guest speakers and relevant readings, texts and films that addressed these issues through a critical lens. in addition, the professor invited the jjs coordinator to co-teach with the professor in the college classroom over five sessions and also coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20226 in the community setting. the professor demonstrated to students that she valued the jjs coordinator’s input, knowledge and expertise by creating time and space in the classroom for the coordinator to offer her insights. the students thus experienced a model of co-teaching that required them to share in pairs and small groups, think deeply, question and reflect often. in addition, the professor and the jjs coordinator modelled collaborative decision making and made sure they explicitly connected with the teaching groups to work through any interpersonal conflicts. the college students saw the coordinator as an integral and informative partner who was essential to understanding core goals of the course, including the integrated community-engaged learning project. further, the communityengaged learning project was an essential opportunity to observe, apply, critique and modify theories from the class, utilising insights from the students’ own lives, and the community setting. students learned how the academic fields of women’s and gender studies and sexuality studies, including feminist psychology, emerged out of the women’s movement, thus highlighting the potential, contentious and always evolving interplay between experiential activism and academic learning. this enabled the professor and the coordinator to model, in class, that everyone in the room was simultaneously a teacher and a learner, and to challenge the students to position the youth in jjs, not just as students, but also teachers, and knowledge holders and creators. (2) developing lesson plans for jjs one of the primary elements of the course, designed for reciprocity and growth, was having college students share what they were learning in class with the youth in jjs. however, it was essential that the college students be prepared to share this learning. in order to facilitate their preparation, students created lesson plans and facilitated conversations based on their learning about psychology and power, which they more fully explored with the youth at jjs. the college professor and volunteer coordinator required that the eight lesson plans be prepared within the framework of critical consciousness, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and active learning. these plans detailed the content and activities they would use for each of the sessions they facilitated at the jjs site, but also required that the plans be designed such that the ideas and expertise of the youth in jjs would be integrated within each of the sessions. students shared their plans with the professor, the jjs coordinator and the lead staff at their respective facility. the professor evaluated the lesson plans using a rubric and required each student member in the group to evaluate themself and each of their team members based on a rubric of engaged interactive teaching and learning. this ensured that the students were prepared in advance for each of the sessions at jjs, and that they had intentionally created plans that involved all the participants, college students and youth in jjs, as teachers and learners. the course material (e.g. readings, videos, classroom discussions and activities, guest speakers) the students engaged with before facilitating lessons raised their awareness of and engagement with the relevant topics, and the context in which they would be teaching and extending their learning. students regularly shared in women’s and gender studies that they would have benefited from learning/developing a critical consciousness of these topics earlier in their lives. thus, the project was framed for students as a way to share what they were learning with younger people who, like them, would not likely have had an opportunity to learn about the topics in their current middle school or high school educational contexts. the current understandings of the topics were presented as continually growing and changing. students also learned about how our understanding of particular topics is often limited to what we understand from more dominant cultural perspectives, and thus is, by definition, incomplete. as a result, the young people in jjs themselves would have insights and knowledge that would contribute to a more complete understanding of the topics for everyone involved. it is important to note that these findings were constrained by the context in which the course took place and each participant’s prior understanding of critical consciousness. although we cannot know what level of understanding each student coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20227 brought to the classroom initially, the curricular choices and ordering of lessons allowed the professor to introduce this material intentionally to all students and for them to work through their new understandings during the lesson plan creation process. it appeared as though the material was relatively new to most students and that there was variability in student openness to the material. however, focus group data demonstrated that the youth in jjs related to the material being discussed and had personal experience with the topics. they expressed that their views and understanding of the topics were no less valid because they were in jjs than those of the college students. the college students learned that developing relationships was foundational to enhancing learning for everyone involved and fostering the ability to understand inequity, particularly the youths’ experiences, through a systemic lens. one 15-year-old latina youth shared, ‘[the college students] were nice, they respected us and they didn’t think of us as any less because we are in a program or in the system. they just treated us like we were like them.’ a 16-year-old latina youth talked about the relevancy of the curriculum and, in turn, students in the course shared with the youth what they had learned about gender-based violence and community organisations that support survivors of such violence. the latina youth said, ‘i liked that they talked to us about being raped and what we should do about it instead of talking about rainbows and unicorns ... because most girls my age do get raped and they don’t have anywhere to turn to, no one to talk to ... and i found it really useful that they gave us numbers that we can call and talk to anonymously about that because i think that would help a lot of girls my age ...’ this youth’s comment represented the responses of many of the youth participants. she voiced that ‘being raped’ was real in their context and needed to be discussed openly. to her, talking about relevant but hard issues was more important than discussing topics she considered trivial, such as ‘rainbows and unicorns’. the youth participants valued these lessons because they were research-based and current issues they faced, and connected them to the goals of the course on women and power. as the college students actively listened to the youth’s lived experiences and then incorporated them into the lessons, they saw more engagement with the topics. one college student explained, ‘risky topics that most people aren’t willing to talk about was what our girls really responded to because it is applicable to them and nobody ever asked them to share what they had to say about these topics’. fejes and miller (2002) discuss how girls in jjs want to be heard and also want gender-specific programming that incorporates sexuality. similarly, our data demonstrates that the relevant topics are the ones that girls in detention never get to discuss. the students explained that ‘risky’ and ‘taboo’ topics engage youth because they are close to their lived experience. many of the youth expressed surprise that the college students provided them with the opportunity to discuss them. topics like rape, sexuality and sexism were those that most interested the youth and gave them the opportunity to feel heard. mitchell (2008) emphasises that the art of critical service-learning lies in developing authentic relationships through long-term connections. our results indicate that the college students and the youth formed bonds with one another. though the youth were incarcerated, they had the choice to attend the sessions facilitated by the college students. in turn, the college students could choose to teach at the jjs or participate in alternative assignments that did not include community-engaged learning. this suggests that it may not just be time, but that other components may facilitate connection during these short-term relationships, such as the lesson topics and their relevance, similarity in age, and the structure of the learning environment. one way the youth felt they were able to bond with the students was through activities. this finding points to interactive and hands-on activities being effective pedagogical tools that can help facilitate the building of relationships. during the focus group with the youth in jjs, a latina participant explained that ‘they didn’t just talk, they actually got us to interact with them. we just got to know each other in a way that we could actually get along and do activities together.’ it was not by accident that the college students moved away from a banking model (freire 1972) of teaching that is so prevalent on college campuses. they designed interactive coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20228 lessons because the college professor included and emphasised intentionally student-centred, actionbased teaching. the rubric designed for the assignment included elements of critical pedagogy, interactive teaching, and connection. because the college students facilitated engagement with the youth during each of the lessons, the youth repeatedly shared that they could see how the concepts played out in their lives and those close to them. the college students often noted that, when the youth participants were unaware of more academic terminology, the meaning became clear when they shared their experiences as examples. the youth articulated this learning during the focus groups even when they didn’t remember the academic terminology. for example, one youth participant explained benevolent sexism when she said, ‘i learned like guys may ... i forgot the words, the guys would say something that was sexist, like he would say it in a nice way too, like he would say, “oh honey, i don’t want to be with the kids because you are so much better at it” like he would make it in a good way, but it is still sexist …’. this quote illustrated the youth participant’s heightened critical consciousness when she shared that a ‘guy’ says words that seem respectful, but in reality make assumptions about gender. the youths’ lived experiences with oppression in relation to power helped them connect to the concepts with depth and clarity. one 16-year-old latina girl said, ‘i actually kept my papers so i could take them home to my little sisters and i could explain to them all about that stuff … and the gender thing would be really helpful for them to know.’ in this quote, the youth also referred to handouts that the college students brought to one of their lessons. another youth explained that they appreciated learning about the difference between sex and gender: ‘i thought it was interesting because, for me, that’s how i was, like, i was supposed to be a chick when i was born but i’m a dude clearly. and i think it was cool to learn about it.’ this also provided a space for the cisgender identified youth to question gender binaries, and to express support for their peer. for example, in the same focus group another participant responded to the trans youth [note trans is our label, not the label that the youth themselves used. this youth was still making sense of their gender identity and so we use ‘trans’ as an umbrella term to describe that this youth’s gender did not aling with the sex they were assigned at birth. also, while this youth communicated that they were supposed to be a ‘chick’, at the time of the focus group, the youth was using he/him pronouns/], ‘i am completely proud of him and ya know, other people here are like what? that’s sick, what kind of guy would want to do that, but ya know, i think it’s brave of him …’ for the youth involved in the project, the content of the sessions was relevant to their lives. (3) critical reflection reflection is central to all high-impact critical community-engaged courses (latta et al. 2018; warren 2019; wellesley 2021). prompt creation is critical if students are to see the clear connection between the goal of the course and the experiential learning. the college professor assigned reflection papers that specifically focused on issues of power and structural inequity. each student wrote eight reflection papers responding to critical prompts, one after each of the lessons they facilitated, with the students, professor and jjs youth engaging in deep reflection throughout the experience. students commented on how much they learned through writing on and discussing what they had experienced. the verbal and written reflections were facilitated via carefully constructed questions that investigated personal relationships as well as root causes and structural inequities. further, many of the reflections could be directly tied to the course content and the experiences that all the participants had with the content. the professor recognised that students’ lived experiences would shape how they engaged in this project and interacted with youth in jjs. the nature of the reflections allowed students to consider not only the topics discussed at their jjs site, but also how their own identity and experiences might shape their understanding of existing inequities. further, the course materials encouraged them to recognise that structural inequities need to be challenged in order to create change, not that the youth in jjs need to be changed. for example, one college student said: coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 20229 it was super frustrating for me because again i had the typical stereotype about going in and then seeing my opinions switch...so i guess it was frustrating for me knowing that with lack of, i don’t know, opportunity that a lot of these girls will end up back there. knowing that, having conversations with them and knowing how smart they were...one of the girls that, i can’t remember her name, she came in twice or three times and we saw her and i was like, ‘stop coming back,’ and it’s so easy for me because of my opportunities to just be like it’s easy, stop coming back you don’t need to be in here but understanding that they don’t have the opportunity...so i think that was the sad thing, the most frustrating part cause i couldn’t fix their problems. another student responded: but i think that, like i agree that was a big frustration knowing you can’t do anything about the outside variables but it helped connect it to the material that we are learning because these are the things we are learning in class is why they keep coming so you’re like it can give you all the more reason to try to change it...you’re like okay things need to change because these smart girls do not deserve to be in here. these quotes point to the college students grappling with the idea of blaming the victim, which was part of their initial assumptions. in his foundational text, ryan (1972, p. 6) coins the term to name the ways that those with privilege focus on individual victims rather than on social contexts that create social problems, and that ‘victim-blaming is cloaked in kindness and concern, and bears all the trappings of statistical furbelows [ornamentation] of scientism …’. in short, he explains that ‘social problems are a function of the social arrangements of the community or society, and that, since these social arrangements are quite imperfect and inequitable, such problems are both predictable and more important, preventable through public action [rather than “fixing” individuals]’ (ryan 1972, p. 17). through course discussions and assignments students are able to recognise that there is no easy individualistic ‘fix’ that they can offer or that the girls themselves can implement, a realisation that is needed in order to move away from ideologies of white saviourism and paternalism, and towards questioning social systems. one of the reflection papers intentionally created an opportunity for the students to grapple with these ideologies. use ryan’s chapter, ‘blaming the victim’, to help you write this reflection. your reflection should demonstrate your understanding of the chapter. how might well-intentioned programming for girls in jjs serve to blame the victim? how has this come up in this service project thus far? if it hasn’t, why do you think it hasn’t? are there instances where you might have fallen into the trap of blaming the victim, even if you were well intentioned? how do we structure programming (in general) to avoid blaming the victim? how can this project be structured to avoid blaming the victim? how can you personally work to avoid blaming the victim while working with the girls in jjs? the guided critical reflection in groups and their personal writing illuminated what they observed and the theories they studied. another practice involved using the critical incident reflection to asked questions such as: ‘based on this event, what conclusions can you draw, or not draw, about people, groups, organizations, society?’ (adapted from eyler, giles & schmiede 1996). this prompt pushed students directly towards the contextual elements of the organisation and the concepts they were studying. in anderson et al.’s (2019) study, they ask why the reflections their students wrote were so rich. they determined that the participants found the service-learning experience to be professionally enriching when instructors ‘learned to implement problem-solving and encourage them to think critically’ (anderson et al. 2019, p. 242). in addition to written reflection, the professor facilitated six whole-class reflection discussions. data showed that she would often redirect questions students asked so that they were more actively involved in solving them. because these students were not involved in teacher education, the professor took time to teach them explicit lessons on group dynamics and lesson planning that involved active learning from the coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 202210 students. through writing and small group discussion, students learned from their successes and weaknesses. the professor also asked them, for example, to choose something in a lesson they had conducted that they thought went well or poorly. they also had to unlearn teaching practices that were based on a transmission or banking model. because the college students had experienced deep reflection, they were able to create deep discussions in the field. the youth valued that the college students did not simply talk to them, but also became involved with the youth in a way that fostered their getting to know one another. this reiterates the importance of interactive pedagogical tools and demonstrates how community-engaged learning projects can use this type of pedagogy to address two of the goals of critical service-learning, building authentic relationships and working to redistribute power (mitchell 2008; maxwell & chesler 2019). previous research found that student transformation through community engagement can be influenced by building personal connections with the community they are working with (simon & cleary 2006). our data supports this finding, indicating that student–youth connection makes students feel even stronger about wanting to do something about the systemic inequities the girls in jjs experience. simons and cleary (2006, p. 316) discuss how community-engaged learning can reduce stereotyping and help students learn to alter their ‘preconceived notions about community through social bonding and interpersonal interactions with community recipients’. our data depicts a similar finding. through deep reflection, students demonstrated how initial misconceptions about the youth in jjs were mitigated, and how through reflection, students were encouraged to adapt their lesson plans to create an environment of equity that led to valuable experiences. creating a brave space (arao & clemens 2013) allowed one white woman-identifying college student to share her biases, ‘i thought they would be more hard and dangerous, so i was kind of expecting that going into detention, but when i got there, they are not that way at all, they are not the people that i thought they would be.’ with the biases exposed, the college students could discuss and analyse them, and work to mitigate them through the experience. without the reflection and connection to conceptual understandings of stereotypes of those incarcerated, those biases could have been reified. (4) embedding redistribution of power in partnership redistribution of power was embedded in the pedagogical development of the course and the partnership in the following ways. first, the professor and the jjs coordinator shared the planning and teaching of the course to ensure that both the student learning goals and the goals of the jjs coordinator were met. the jjs coordinator’s goals were threefold. first, the jjs coordinator sought to better educate college students on the challenges faced by girls who interfaced with the jjs system as girls in jjs were often portrayed in popular media as sensationalised stereotypes of violent ‘bad girls’. however, while the number of girls in jjs had increased, violent crime among girls had not. what was new was the way that both police and society punished girls who did not conform to the stereotype of ‘good girls’ (chesney-lind & irwin 2008). second, the jjs coordinator wanted to provide better access for girls in jjs to gender responsive programming that addressed their specific needs. girls often enter the jjs system because of the ways that we culturally criminalise girls’ responses to gendered violence that they experience (e.g. running away, substance use). thus, the jjs coordinator wanted the girls to have access to programs that were strengths based, trauma informed, and relational (sharpe & simon 2004). third, the jjs coordinator wanted some of the topics to address challenges that the girls sometimes encountered with staff, given that staff and girls were both present during the sessions with the college students. for example, the jjs coordinator asked if the students could provide information on sexuality, as the staff were often dismissive of girls who identified as lgbtqia+. coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 202211 in order to meet these varied goals, the coordinator was invited to co-teach on campus to explain the background, rules and expectations of jjs. together they worked to challenge the inequitable systems that they both saw present on the college campus and at the jjs. secondly, the students were invited into the classroom space as co-creators of knowledge. third, the college students were encouraged to teach the course content to the youth in jjs in a co-constructed way, whereby the jjs participants’ voices could be heard as valid sources of knowledge. the response of the youth helped validate that redistributing power as a pedagogical tool could be beneficial in similar critical community-engaged learning projects because it was refreshing for this particular population to be treated equally and not seen as less because of their ‘record’. another way students were able to help redistribute power through the lessons was to demonstrate that they could relate to the youth’s experiences primarily as femmes. a white college student shared a story during one of the workshops about how she responded when a girl was questioning why girls are called whores and boys are praised for having sex with multiple people. the staff member present told the girl to stop acting ‘that way’ if she did not want to be called things like that. in response, the college student was able to demonstrate how a response like that blames the victim and fails to recognise the big picture. ‘i told her, “i have had experiences like that” and i tried to relate to her and explain that it was a systemic problem and that it wasn’t just her.’ this quote provides one illustration of a common theme: regardless of being a student or a girl in jjs, sexism was experienced by all of them; however, recognising how the experience of sexism played out may be different because of the intersection of various group memberships. instead of simply saying that it was a systemic flaw, the student first related to the girl’s experience, which furthered the goal of redistributing power from being held exclusively by those in positions of authority in the room (the college student and the jjs staff person) to the girl by aligning herself with the girl and naming how sexism permeates the lives of all women in some way or another. this was another example of that student’s raised consciousness. conclusion this community-engaged project addressed the gap in the literature on critical communityengaged learning praxis in higher education. the specific tools this professor and coordinator used enhanced collective critical consciousness within the college students and the participants in jjs. these conclusions can inform instructors in higher education, civic and community engagement centres and administrators in higher education on tools they might use to create meaningful connection and deep learning in their classes. critical community engagement emphasises the importance of maintaining long-term relationships with participants; however, our results demonstrate that even short-term community-engaged learning projects can build authentic relationships (mitchell 2008). this result may be due to the topics discussed in the lessons and their relevance in the lives of both women college students and girls in jjs. because they were all close in age to one another may have facilitated the quick relationship building, and also aided the deconstruction of power structures that exist in typical student–teacher relationships. additionally, while the relationships between the college students and youth in jjs were relatively short-term (semester long or shorter, depending on the length of time that the youth were in the jjs programs), the relationship between the professor and the jjs volunteer coordinator lasted for multiple years, with collaboration over ten semesters. in summary, this critical community-engagement project benefited both the college students and the youth in jjs involved in the project. specifically, students were given the opportunity to build connections with youth who had lived experiences that exemplified the course material and reflected on how abstract/ theoretical concepts operate in reality. the youth also benefited from connection building through learning coles-ritchie, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 september 202212 about/naming the structural inequities that operated in their own lives and by being part of a space that provided an opportunity to share their perspectives on topics they viewed as relevant. limitations and future implications although this research informed us on the efficacy of specific pedagogical practices designed to promote critical community-engaged learning and gender-specific programming (garcia & lane 2013), there were limitations that needed to be considered. one limitation was our sample size. due to the transitional nature of jjs, many of the youth who participated in the project were released or moved to other facilities during the semester and were therefore unable to participate in the focus group sessions; however, this led us to unexpected valuable information. even those youth who took part in only a single lesson learned something, yet, as to be expected, those who took part in three or six lessons demonstrated more learning on both an individual and structural level. the results from this study are applicable only to this critical community-engaged project; however, similar findings of other service-learning projects demonstrate some similarity in the benefits that students experience. this study offers an aspect of community-engaged research that is often forgotten – the community participants’ reactions. in addition, our results demonstrate that lessons addressing social inequities are beneficial for youth in jjs and offer a way to alleviate the gap in gender-specific programming. as seen in previous research, critical community-engaged learning has the potential to transform students by critically reflecting on how the theoretical concepts discussed in class are applied (simon & cleary 2006). by incorporating the three main components of critical service-learning – social change, redistribution of power and development of authentic relationships – in all levels of the project, we found that both students and youth in jjs could understand and use the information they had learned (mitchell 2008). the methodology chosen for the project and how to study and analyse it kept these three aspects top of mind. the results demonstrate that pedagogy and curriculum that fit with these aspects are beneficial to learning about systemic inequities and wanting to do something to change them. acknowledgement the authors appreciate the support of the katherine w. dumke center for civic engagement at westminster college, specifically the director, julie tille, m.ed.  references anderson, k, boyd, m, ariemma marin, k & mcnamara, k 2019, ‘reimagining service-learning: deepening the impact of this high-impact practice’, journal of 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https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825918820662 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825918820662 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825918823680 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023022603667 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.61.4.a102265jl68rju84 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825920952829 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825920952829 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: godrie, b. 2025. resisting scientific extractivism: a post-extractivist policy of knowledge production with marginalised communities. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) resisting scientific extractivism: a post-extractivist policy of knowledge production with marginalised communities baptiste godrie school of social work in université de sherbrooke, quebec, canada corresponding author: baptiste godrie, baptiste.godrie@usherbrooke.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326 article history: received 01/07/2024; revised 20/12/2024; accepted 09/01/2025; published 01/2025 abstract this article analyses scientific extractivism as a research process in which the experiences, discourses and knowledge of members of marginalised social groups are subalternised, i.e. reduced to raw data appropriated by academics. what has been captured and assimilated is then largely reinjected into closed circuits operating essentially between academics, from which marginalised communities are largely excluded. ultimately, extractivism produces scientific careers and minefields; it confers disproportionate benefits to academics and little or no benefit on communities in material support, intellectual credit, or contribution to social struggles, which may lead them to turn away from academia. this analysis then raises the importance of developing post-extractivist approaches in the social sciences, based on an ethics of knowledge production rooted in the concepts of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability. i introduce a set of post-extractivist research postures and practices: clarifying and negotiating expectations of research projects; promoting a relational ethics on issues of epistemic and social justice in the production of knowledge with communities; countering the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of qualitative methodologies in the social sciences; valuing reciprocity and accountability towards communities; and reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions. this analysis is based on pioneering work on this subject, particularly in a context of the relationship between the global north and the global south, such as those of rivera declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:baptiste.godrie@umontreal.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326 cusicanqui (2010), tuhiwai smith (2012), betasamosake simpson (klein 2013), gudynas (2013) or grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b). they are also informed by my experience in participatory research with community-based organisations that work with marginalised communities in the field of the fight against poverty, homelessness and mental health in quebec (canada). keywords scientific extractivism; marginalised communities; epistemic justice; post-extractivist knowledge policy; relational ethics; accountability introduction as an academic, writing about scientific extractivism is not a neutral gesture, since it leads me to consider the power relationships at play at the very heart of the scientific knowledge production process, and thus to question the privileges i enjoy. such a project involves answering several questions. firstly, how can we define scientific extractivism and the mechanisms on which it is based? secondly, for whose benefit is it exercised, and what does it do to the marginalised communities confronted with it? finally, what are the practices and postures aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of scientific extractivism, or even to resist it, and to support a post-extractivist policy of knowledge production? the answers provided to these questions in this article are informed by pioneering work on this subject, particularly in the context of the relationship between the global north and the global south, such as those of rivera cusicanqui (2010), tuhiwai smith (2012), betasamosake simpson (klein 2013), gudynas (2013) or grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b). they are also informed by my experience in participatory research with community-based organisations that work with marginalised communities in the field of the fight against poverty, homelessness and mental health as a sociologist working since 2006 as a researcher in a research centre on social inequalities in montreal, and since 2021 as a professor at the school of social work in université de sherbrooke (quebec, canada) (godrie, fournier & mcall 2017; godrie et al. 2018, 2020). the term ‘marginalised communities’ that i use in this article refers to non-homogenous social groups that experience realities such as discrimination and marginalisation due to unequal social relationships. depending on the context, i also use ‘indigenous peoples and communities’ (in canada, referring to first nations, inuit and métis peoples) and ‘community-based organisations’ (i.e. non-profit third sector organisations) that intervene with and alongside marginalised communities. in addition to these research experiences, my experience as scientific director of two research centres for four years led me to establish new research collaborations with community-based organisations and various people belonging to marginalised communities and, in so doing, to discuss their previous experiences of collaboration with academics. this academic journey led me to take a critical look at extractivist research conceptions and practices (including those i may have adopted in my training in sociology and philosophy and at various stages of my research journey) according to a definition i give in this article, and to experiment with post-extractivist research practices in the social sciences. this analysis thus raises the importance of developing post-extractivist approaches in the social sciences, based on an ethics of knowledge production rooted in the concepts of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability. scientific extractivism and its consequences in the social sciences, the terms ‘collecting’ and ‘exploiting’ data reflect a research posture that tends to consider people/communities as research objects. in my academic career, which has been marked by research collaborations with community-based organisations in the fields of poverty and mental health in quebec, i have found that this research approach presents scientific and ethical problems of such a degree that it has led me to transform my research practices. as a preliminary remark, it can be said that this traditional godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 position is likely to nurture disappointment in and even distrust of academics, which can compromise subsequent research collaborations, as well as fuelling a sense of powerlessness among members of marginalised social groups. invisibilisation and subalternisation of experience and knowledge in my experience, people who take part in research projects do so for many different reasons, which are not mutually exclusive. in the case of people working in community-based organisations (whether in management/coordination or field staff ), it may be to get away from the urgency of daily work and open up spaces for reflexivity about their guiding principles and practices, reconnecting with the academic world (a lot of workers in the organisations having a university degree in the social sciences), gaining a better understanding of the marginalised communities and their needs as well as the impact of their actions on these audiences, or even enhancing the value of the results of their action to secure or diversify their funding. despite the diversity of these motivations, and the satisfaction they sometimes derive from collaborating with academics, these people often share several grievances with the research community. the primary grievance they have is the lack of feedback from academics who have come either to do field research in their organisation or to reach out through them to members to conduct research interviews. to understand this grievance, which is particularly prevalent among community-based organisations in my experience, we need to explain the costs of collaboration: these organisations are often underfunded, they have to free up staff, whose time is then not devoted to administrative tasks and intervention, to read research documents, take part in meetings and research interviews, recruit people from among their members to take part in individual or group interviews in addition to their regular duties, usually in a form of free labour or with financial compensation that partially covers the investment of their time. and it’s the staff of these organisations who must deal with the disappointments experienced by their members in their interactions with academics, if any. between 2018 and 2020, i co-organised a series of 10 half-day seminars on power relationships in participatory research, involving employees and members of 30 montreal community-based organisations in the field of poverty and social exclusion that have had collaborations with academics (godrie et al. 2020). i also directed a research project conducted in 2023–24 with 10 community-based organisations working with marginalised social groups in sherbrooke aimed at better understanding their collaboration with the research community. these projects highlighted various grievances that are frequently directed at academics. these grievances are as follows. firstly, it takes too long for research results to be communicated to the communities and individuals who participated, sometimes up to five years after the start of the project, which makes them less relevant. the context, as well as the people who were the link with the research team, may have changed. in some cases, the results simply don’t come back at all. secondly, the results are available but inaccessible to the people, because they are published in journals that are not in open access, communicated in paid or inaccessible conferences, or published in a language that is not read by them (for example, in english while they are largely french-speaking). thirdly, the results are accessible but in irrelevant formats, because they are disseminated according to academic standards that do not favour their appropriation, and their circulation in environments where they could be mobilised for action. this is due, partly, to exclusionary academic jargon (academic writing is often described as ‘incomprehensible’), conceptual or abstract writing that rarely (if ever) includes recommendations on what could be changed or improved in the field, or what could be the subject of public demands and/or mobilisation. fourthly, the results are available and can benefit organisations, but they deplore the lack of solidarity from academics when asked to support citizen demands/actions based on research results. these grievances and situations reflect wrong or unfair treatment such as the non-accessibility of research results and the exclusion of people from spaces of knowledge dissemination, resulting in a mode of knowledge production that i, along with others, describe as ‘scientific extractivism’. godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 the concept of extractivism was developed by latin american activists and academics, including eduardo gudynas who coined this term, and by indigenous peoples and communities, as part of an analysis of the combined effects of colonialism and capitalism (gudynas 2018; schuldt et al. 2009). extractivism was originally conceptualised as a process of extraction of natural resources ‘in large quantities or high intensity, and intended primarily for export as raw materials without transformation or with minimal transformation’ (gudynas 2013, p. 3). the concept has also an analytical focus of extractivist models stemming from colonial history, and the activities, policies and ideologies they promote, as much as a militant one through the implementation of resistance and the establishment of antior post-extractivist alliances (tuhiwai smith 2012; willow 2016). the analysis of extractivist processes was subsequently extended to other themes and logics of exploitation, appropriation and institutionalisation at work in societies. originally, this extension of the concept referred to the appropriation of indigenous knowledge by international institutions, resulting in the sidelining of the political radicalism and alternative vision carried by indigenous peoples and communities. this appropriation goes hand in hand with a reframing and misappropriation of knowledge, since the latter is then most often used in a productivist and/or commercial context that it did not initially have, as illustrated by the practice of illegal appropriation and patenting of indigenous traditional knowledge and resources by states, companies and academics (bio-piracy) analysed by vandana shiva (1997). a growing number of activists and academics are gradually applying it to the scientific field, including wilmsen (2008), rivera cusicanqui (2010), grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b), tilley (2017), davis (2018) and, more recently, alcoff (2022) and demart (2022), under several names often used as synonyms such as ‘cognitive, scientific, intellectual, academic or epistemic extractivism or appropriation’. ramòn grosfoguel (2016a, 2019) attributes one of its origins in the field of knowledge to the anichinabe intellectual and activist, lianne betasamosake simpson, who, in an interview with naomie klein in 2013, referred to a project initiated by the united nations to mobilise traditional knowledge in the environmental field as a ‘cognitive extractivism’ as much as a physical one (klein 2013). in this interview, lianne betasamosake simpson linked extraction and assimilation as two intertwined mechanisms of the colonial system (which she also referred to as an ‘extraction-assimilation system’) leading to the erasure of relations that give meaning to what is torn away or stolen violently from the communities: the act of extraction removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted meaning. extracting is taking. actually, extracting is stealing—it is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts that extraction has on the other living things in that environment. that’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest. colonialism has always extracted the indigenous— extraction of indigenous knowledge, indigenous women, indigenous peoples. (klein 2013) previously, rivera cusicanqui (2010, 2012), an andean sociologist from bolivia, produced an analysis of the mechanisms of scientific extractivism operating from indigenous communities to universities in the global south and from universities in the global south to universities in the global north. she analysed what she called ‘americanised authors of the postcolonial current’, such as mignolo, dussel, walsh and sanjinés, who have invisibilised the indigenous sources of their own thought or selectively integrated certain ideas, purposely leaving out the most polemical ones. in this process, the decolonial struggle becomes solely a decolonial discourse, in what she calls a ‘logocentric and nominalistic version of decolonization’ (rivera cusicanqui 2010, p. 64). here is an extract from the chapter entitled ‘ch’ixinakax utxiwa. una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores’ from her 2010 book, in which she methodically analyses the mechanisms operating at the heart of scientific extractivism: ideas flow, like rivers, from south to north, becoming tributaries of the great streams of thought. but, as in the global market for material goods, ideas also leave the country transformed into raw material, godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 which returns regurgitated and in a great blend in the form of a finished product. this is how the canon of a new field of social scientific discourse is formed: the ‘postcolonial thought’. this canon makes certain themes and sources visible, but leaves others in the shadows. javier sanjinés, for example, writes an entire book on mixed people in bolivia, while ignoring the bolivian debate on the same subject in an olympian fashion. cooptation and mimèsis, mimèsis and cooptation, selective incorporation of ideas, certifying selection of those that are most valid to nourish this armchair multiculturalism [multiculturalismo de salón], comfortable and depoliticized, which allows accumulating exotic masks in the living room and a top-down dialogue about future public reforms. (rivera cusicanqui 2010, p. 68) las ideas recorren, como ríos, de sur a norte, y se convierten en afluentes de grandes corrientes de pensamiento. pero como en el mercado mundial de bienes materiales, las ideas también salen del país convertidas en materia prima, que vuelve regurgitada y en gran mescolanza bajo la forma de producto terminado. se forma así el canon de una nueva área del discurso científico social: el ‘pensamiento postcolonial ’. ese canon visibiliza ciertos temas y fuentes, pero deja en la sombra a otros. así, javier sanjinés escribe todo un libro sobre el mestizaje en bolivia, ignorando olímpicamente el debate boliviano sobre este mismo tema. cooptación y mímesis, mímesis y cooptación, incorporación selectiva de ideas, selección certificadora de cuáles son más válidas para alimentar ese multiculturalismo de salón, despolitizado y cómodo, que permite acumular máscaras exóticas en el living y dialogar por lo alto sobre futuras reformas públicas. (original spanish quote, translated to english by the author of this article.) here, extractivism is based on the appropriation and invisibility of concepts originating from social movement activists or academics from the global south by academics from the global north, notably through bibliographic non-referencing or referencing in closed networks (connell 2007; rivera cusicanqui 2010). the break that then occurs with the life experience of the people/communities at the origin of these concepts and theories subsequently authorises a decontextualised treatment of these same concepts and theories. this leads us to make explicit another central mechanism of extractivism, namely the subalternisation of local knowledge, which is thought of as data to be collected and analysed and never as legitimate critical knowledge and theories (godrie 2021; grosfoguel 2016a, 2016b; rivera cusicanqui 2010). social critical theories are not exclusive of academics: several marginalised communities are at the origin of concepts and theoretical currents to account for their minority social position in society, as illustrated by their contribution to the understanding of matrices of domination such as colonialism, racism, sanism, ableism or even heterosexism (luchies 2015). in this sense, scientific extractivism differs radically from mining extractivism: what is extracted in social science research is never raw data, as is the case in the extraction of raw minerals from the ground. what is extracted from communities are experiences, skills, cultural traditions, local knowledge and worldviews forged by collectives, often over generations. the reduction of this heterogeneous ensemble to raw data by academics allows it to be requalified as scientific knowledge after analytical processing. unilateral appropriation and closed science what more specifically characterises scientific extractivism is the dispossession of communities’ knowledge in favour of the academics who benefit — wholly or disproportionately — from those profits to advance their careers (alcoff 2022; grosfoguel 2016a, 2016b; rivera cusicanqui 2010; tilley 2017). rivera cusicanqui uses the term ‘political economy of knowledge’ to refer to these mechanisms of appropriation (integral or selective) of communities’ thought by academics, as well as the disproportionate material and epistemic benefits (opportunities, titles, invitations, prestige) they provide these individuals: godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 postcolonial discourse in north america is not only an economy of ideas; it is also an economy of salaries, commodities and privileges, as well as a certifier of values, through the awarding of degrees, fellowships, master’s degrees, invitations to teach and publication opportunities (rivera cusicanqui 2010, pp. 65–66). el discurso postcolonial en américa del norte no sólo es una economía de ideas, también es una economía de salarios, comodidades y privilegios, así como una certificadora de valores, a través de la concesión de títulos, becas, maestrías, invitaciones a la docencia y oportunidades de publicación. (original spanish quote, translated in english by the author of this article.) scientific extractivism manifests itself in other ways. it tends to marginalise the expectations and concerns of marginalised communities in the research process and, by dispossessing these communities of their knowledge, to some extent it dispossesses them of their power to act. this dispossession can have profound and lasting deleterious effects, as can be seen in the case of indigenous communities and peoples who have learned to their detriment that social sciences can be a source of epistemic violence (coburn et al. 2013; tuhiwai smith 2012). in the same vein, wilmsen (2008) notes that scientific extractivism undermines reciprocity, i.e. the quality of social relations in research, mutual learning and action: ‘participation without reciprocity, mutual learning, and other elements of healthy partnerships is an empty promise leading ultimately to extractive research, frustration, and continued marginalisation on the part of community members.’ this reciprocity is based, for example, on the sharing of information on the identity or life experience of academics and not only on unilateral collection as it is often the case in research interviews or on offering research workshops to transfer research skills to people. i explore these elements in more depth in the last part of the article. furthermore, it can be argued that scientific extractivism denies the centrality of relationships in knowledge production, and the idea of the accountability of academics to the communities that undergo this extractivism. it is in this sense that alcoff (2022) characterises scientific extractivism as non-relational or anti-relational. in this view, the disqualification of certain communities as holders and producers of knowledge justifies their status as research ‘objects’ rather than collaborators in the knowledge production process. this is how academics rooted in an extractivist approach become the designated experts in problems experienced by marginalised communities. a coordinator from a community-based organisation involved as a co-researcher with me in a research project on homelessness, lucid about this phenomenon, once confided to me: ‘you have to be the one to speak up for me to be heard.’ indeed, as academics, we are the ones who are most often invited to speak out in various forums, particularly in the media, on behalf of communitybased organisations and the marginalised communities they represent or work with; we build our scientific credibility by widely communicating our results in journals or symposia that are not, or hardly, accessible to non-academics, which contributes to increasing inequalities of access and circulation of knowledge for these communities. this exclusion from knowledge production doubles the social, economic and epistemic violence suffered by marginalised communities. and yet, in the context where it is these groups who experience difficult, sometimes brutal realities (poverty, domestic violence, homelessness, food insecurity, forced migration, etc.), and where research results are likely to contribute to making a vital difference in the environment, it can be argued that guaranteeing this accessibility is an ethical duty (tuck 2009). post-extractivist ethics and science policy minefields, resistance from social groups conventional research fuelled by the extractivist posture is not necessary of lower scientific quality than antior post-extractivist research. nor is it devoid of potentially positive spin-offs for the field: research godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 reports are often mentioned in the annual activity reports of community-based organisations, sometimes fuel the team meetings’ agendas and even contribute to the transformation of policies or practices. i provided notable illustrations of these contributions in a previous article highlighting how traditional, nonparticipatory and largely extractivist research had contributed (and still contributes) to the empowerment of alternative mental health community-based organisations as well as supporting psychiatric survivors’ criticisms of psychiatric institutions (godrie 2017). however, one of the tangible problems of scientific extractivism is that it produces ‘minefields’ in at least two senses. firstly, it produces fields that have been disproportionately epistemically exploited for the benefit of academics as described above. it produces careers: scientific careers. secondly, it produces explosive fields (also often referred to as ‘burned fields’) in which we, as academics, must tread carefully, as they are inhabited by people who feel they have been used, and who harbour a distrust of new perspectives of scientific collaborations. as i discuss below, demining research fields requires the adoption of research ethics that enables us to take care of wounded and broken bonds before even considering new research collaborations. as authors such as gudynas (2013) and willow (2016) note, extractivism and resistance to extractivist schemes from local communities are inseparable. over the years, some communities have developed practices of resistance to deal with and politicise extractivism, that is, to make it a matter of public discussion. among health-related mobilisations, we can cite the movements of hiv activists (epstein 1995) or patients with mental health problems and/or disabilities, in particular, those united around the slogan ‘nothing about us without us’ (barnes 2003), extending this slogan initially concerning care practices to scientific investigation. in my experience with community-based organisations in quebec, i have identified a range of artisanal and formal practices developed to cope with scientific extractivism. these practices are organised into three main strategies: 1) controlling access to academics by establishing blacklists of academics with whom communities no longer wish to work (which can penalise communities in smaller settings where research collaborations are limited) or, conversely, lists of academics with whom to prioritise collaborations in a context of multiple academic requests that cannot be all met, by conducting interviews with academics to learn about the values and positions of the academics who ask for their collaboration; 2) negotiation to introduce reciprocity by verifying their degree of openness to taking their expectations into account in the proposed research projects, to negotiating the research question or to promoting research results. it can also involve asking academics to volunteer to help them get to know the environment better and create a link with the organisation and the people who work there or benefit from it; 3) laissez-faire, laissez-aller: some community-based organisations also accommodate extractivist research practices because of some positive benefits they perceive (for example, because the seal of research can give value to their action in the eyes of actual of potential funders), because they are not familiar with alternative research models, or because they do not have the adequate resources, expertise or interest to propose alternative forms of research, but yet wish to contribute to developing knowledge. groups have unequal capacities to deal with extractivist practices and postures. some groups are over-extracted and others organise themselves to be underextracted by academic circles by restricting access to their group because they rely on secrecy regarding illegal practices, they develop their own community research practices or because they exclude researchers who are not part of their community. alongside these more or less formal and widespread practices of resistance to scientific extractivism implemented by community-based organisations, there is a set of post-extractivist research postures and practices that can be developed by social sciences researchers. godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 post-extractivist research postures and practices as wilmsen points out, extractivism is not about to disappear, at least in the current university system. in his eyes, the challenge is not to practice research that would be based solely on other bases than extraction, but to manage to ‘bring together extraction and empowerment in a kind of creative tension’ (wilmsen 2008, p. 135) for both researchers and communities. but can we be satisfied with this pragmatic compromise? in my research experience, the consequences of scientific extractivism can be greatly mitigated or even counterbalanced by the adoption of post-extractivist research postures and practices. and these practices and postures have even more chance of contributing to this other way of doing research if they are discussed, analysed, experimented with, and reshaped by different people in multiple contexts. this last section thus focuses on the definition of a post-extractivist ethics of knowledge production, rooted not in dispossession, but in accountability. this ethics also consists in the discussion of the expectations of communities and their consideration, including when they are in tension with the expectations of academics, and the definition of guidelines surrounding the production of knowledge with community-based organisations and marginalised communities. the main pillars of such ethics are the practice of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability. to achieve a multilevel transformation, i introduce a series of post-extractivist postures and practices affecting both our ways of conducting our research, as academics, and the academic institutions and policies that support our practices. clarifying and negotiating expectations for research projects in my experience, one of the sources of tension between academics and community-based organisations and marginalised communities is that they do not primarily have the goal of accumulating more knowledge about poverty or developing explanatory theories of poverty: they are rather aimed at reducing poverty, proposing various policies and actions such as reducing prejudice against people on welfare, increasing welfare and the minimum wage, constructing social housing, etc. although, it’s important to note that some community-based organisations are also working to change the dominant discourses on poverty, which focus on individual shortcomings, in favor of explanations centered on the unequal distribution of wealth and the existence of discriminations. in this case, producing or mobilising social theories is as crucial as collective action. in this respect, wilmsen’s article (2008) highlights the importance of open communication between communities and academics concerning the distinctive (and sometimes convergent) aims of action and knowledge. open communication in research makes it possible to identify and negotiate the interests/ expectations of the different actors involved, and how these interests/expectations impact on communities and on the credibility of research results. the ability to discuss and negotiate these issues is embedded within the power status of relationships. the quality of the relationship and the level of trust that exists or is built up between career academics and co-researchers from different communities can help establish this dialogue while acknowledging these power differences. this issue therefore calls for the promotion of a relational ethic that focuses on issues of justice/injustice in the production of knowledge. promoting a relational ethic on issues of epistemic and social justice-injustice in the production of knowledge with communities we need to go beyond the level of negotiation of expectations regarding research projects and to engage in reflection with communities on the issues of epistemic and social justice/injustices in the production of knowledge (godrie & dos santos 2017). this is the proposal put forward in a previous contribution where, with colleagues, we reported on a participatory approach that led to the development of a guide for community-based organisations and marginalised communities to help rebalance the power relations surrounding the production of scientific knowledge (see godrie et al. 2020). godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 in the guide, questions were addressed to communities that were solicited by academics, such as, ‘by whom were the issues problematised in the first place?’ and ‘were oppressions and/or inequalities identified from the outset of the project as an integral dimension of the situation?’, directly addressing the type of framing proposed (or imposed) by academics in their work. these issues are often implicit and not discussed openly with the communities, thus leading to the marginalisation of their own questioning and findings regarding the very realities that are being researched by academics. the guide also helps to raise the question of (co-)ownership of what is being collected and produced, and the responsibility attached to this (co-)ownership, a central issue at the heart of the transformation of extractivist practices, as demart reminds us: the question therefore would not only be how knowledge could be co-produced, but also whether this co-produced knowledge with the ‘researched’ should be translated in a policy of co-ownership. in this era of decolonial aspiration, it might be important to reflect upon the politics of data co-ownership and to include this issue in any ethical and methodological discussion related to research or projects conducted among groups that are politically and epistemically dominated (demart 2022, p. 13). these exchanges also concern what findings can be analysed and disseminated in scientific and nonscientific arenas, with the development of practices of co-presentation of findings, and consideration of non-publication of certain findings of fragile knowledge to guard against the potential for assimilation and institutional violence. research ethics protocols or principles specific to certain communities that have historically been subjected of colonial violence also offer examples of such a relational ethics that enriches the procedural ethics usually proposed by research ethics committees (vander kloet & wagner 2024). examples include those proposed by linda tuhiwai smith in decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (2012), the san code of research ethics in south africa (schroeder et al. 2019), the ocap principles (for ownership, control, access and protection) (first nations information governance centre 2014) or the canadian tri-council policy statement: ethical conduct for research involving humans (tcps2 2022), especially its chapter 9 ‘research involving first nations, inuit or métis peoples of canada’. relational ethics also lead to discussion of the ways in which academics can limit as far as possible, or avoid, the free labour of community-based organisations and members of marginalised communities who contribute their time, experience and ideas to research. this may involve material recognition in some cases (through compensation or remuneration) and intellectual credit for ideas and analysis that serve to develop scientific knowledge. this is one of the contributions of the relational epistemology (epistémologie du lien) proposed by the anthropologist florence piron (2017), which commits academics to crediting all types of sources including informal conversations that may have played a decisive role in research in the same way as scientific sources are credited. counter the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of qualitative methodologies in the social sciences teaching the nature and impact of scientific extractivism, particularly for masters and phd students, and especially in epistemology and research methodology courses, is another post-extractivist antidote. these courses could teach approaches and methodologies designed to counter the subalternisation of knowledge, encourage students to move from the idea of ‘data’ to be interpreted to a reflection on the heterogeneity of what is called research ‘data’ (which, as we said earlier, can include life experiences, discourses, representations of the world, social theories and experiential knowledge). this can also include teaching participatory research methods more likely to make visible subalternised understandings of the world, including in research, and dialogue with theses worldviews within the research process itself (alcoff 2022; wilmsen 2008). godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 in the above-mentioned guide, questions such as, ‘have the groups/persons concerned been given the means to share their interpretation of the situation? what status was given to these perspectives (e.g. beliefs, life experiences, experiential or scientific knowledge, etc.)?’ point toward this direction (godrie et al. 2020). in short, the aim of these courses is to offer teaching that is open to pluralistic epistemologies, and that teaches students to engage in dialogues with communities, even when academic deadlines are tight, for example, through meetings in the community to exchange with people about the fruit of their work. valuing reciprocity and accountability to communities reciprocity and accountability go hand in hand: they aim to create two-way relationships in which the benefits of scientific knowledge production are shared more equitably. reciprocity can be based on simple practices (when relevant) such as telling people with whom we want to conduct interviews why we are interested in them and their experience, telling our story (or part of it) to people from whom we ask for life stories, or giving back to people what we have understood through the research process and what we are doing or what we intend to do with the research results. despite the imbalance of power that often exists, this reciprocity may develop over time and through informal moments that allow personal subjectivities to meet and not only professional postures or roles. the notion of accountability refers to what luchies calls an ‘ethic of relevance’ (luchies 2015), in that it questions what is returned to social groups throughout the research or at the end of the process, and how the research process and results can support them in their ongoing challenges. this accountability thus questions the relevance of the formats and languages used to nurture the dialogue with people. such an ethic of relevance is likely to support social struggles, as luchies points out: ‘researchers can help to offset potential weaknesses of activist knowledges like limited access to information, the reproduction of accepted wisdom, and the limitations of volunteered time and resources’ (luchies 2015, p. 529). tilley also reports on creative practices in which academics transfer some of the benefits of their privileges by using research funds to facilitate networking between social movements and academics at regional and international levels and support the participation of community members in scientific activities (2017). tilley’s words sum up this idea: ‘institutional privilege can easily be put to use in the service of social justice’ (tilley 2017, p. 40). reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions in order not to restrict responsibility for the changes we need to make solely to the research approaches and practices of individuals, it’s important to target structural transformations. extractivist research practices are produced and fuelled – among other factors – by the circumstances of academic careers within university institutions which are subject to national and even international competition and pressure to publish and excel. these values dictate a pace of research that pushes us to move from one research project to another, and to approach field work from the angle of the number of articles to be obtained, as i sometimes hear people report. this is what leads kuntz (2015) to point to the neoliberal framework of academic research as responsible for the ‘logic of extraction’ that reduces the socially transformative potential of qualitative research (kuntz 2015, p. 19, cited in caron 2017, p. 73). reducing extractivism can be achieved by building relationships with communities before even thinking of starting a research project, creating spaces for the expression and negotiation of expectations and addressing issues of epistemic justice-injustice in the research relationship, including the possibility of non-publication of certain fragile forms of knowledge, and so on. all of these require time that is often unavailable in the headlong rush from research project to research project and from grant application to grant application. of course, these career issues are encountered differently depending on one’s position within the university hierarchy, whether it’s on the side of stability or that of precariousness in tenure. godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 having achieved status and advancement in one’s career may make it easier to escape the extractivist logic, but can also go hand in hand with a deeper internalisation of this logic. ensuring fair funding for communities the relationship of scientific extractivism is likely to persist if current research funding modalities remain inequitable for communities. in the academic contexts i am familiar with, scholars cannot reallocate part of their research funds to the communities they work with. generally speaking, research grants do not include a budget line allowing for equitable financial recognition of marginalised communities, aside small amounts dedicated to compensation for participation in interviews or workshops. one of the reasons put forward by universities and funding agencies is that this would create an economic power dynamic favoring academics. on the one hand, academics could sanction communities by withdrawing research funding and, on the other hand, the communities’ ability to refuse certain research collaborations would be weakened and/or could be motivated by financial prospect. in canada, there is one important exception that suggests this picture might be rather different. over time, canadian institutes of research changed the rules so funding could go directly to indigenous communities rather than universities and researchers. this practice provides a dual economic recognition: firstly, a recognition of the communities’ contribution to the production of scientific knowledge; secondly, a recognition of their autonomy in managing these funds to support their participation to the research process. this practice could inspire research carried out with other marginalised communities. in other cases, practices such as parity of funding between researchers and community conducting a project together should certainly be considered. if these amounts come from research funding agencies or universities, is it however essential that they do not replace the obligation of public authorities to financially support communities and community groups. conclusion: a post-extractivist policy of knowledge production with marginalised communities the first part of this article defines scientific extractivism as a research process in which the experiences, discourses and knowledge of members of marginalised social groups are subalternised, i.e. reduced to raw data appropriated by academics. this data is then shaped (refined, if we follow the metaphor of extraction) according to the routines and norms of scientific knowledge production (i.e., theorisation, analysis and publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals). once captured and assimilated, knowledge is largely reinjected into closed circuits, that is those that operate essentially between peers, and from which people are excluded. ultimately, extractivism produces both scientific careers and minefields; it confers a disproportionate benefit on academics and little benefit on community-based organisations/marginalised communities in material terms, intellectual credit and contribution to social struggles, that can lead to distrust in academics. some people will argue that this idea of closed circuits must be nuanced considering the mobilisations in favour of open science (chan et al. 2020) and the growing concern of the academic world for knowledge mobilisation, but the criticism that i report here is based on experiences reported by many members of marginalised communities and community-based organisations working with academics. even if scientific extractivism appears as one of the fundamental and driving forces of knowledge production in the academic world, in the second part of the article i highlight a set of postures and practices, derived from the scientific literature and my own research experience, favouring post-extractivist research postures and practices: clarifying and negotiating expectations of research projects; promoting a relational ethics on issues of epistemic and social justice/injustices in the production of knowledge with communities; countering the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of methodologies and epistemologies in the social sciences; valuing reciprocity and accountability towards marginalised godrie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 communities; and reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions. many of these elements are also pillars of feminist, indigenous and decolonial research traditions, particularly in their radical participatory variations, which have criticised some aspects of scientific extractivism (godrie, juan & carrel 2022). other practices that appear just as important would merit further development: supporting the research capacities of community-based organisations to deconcentrate resources (including fundings)/expertise from academic circles; supporting services offering scientific mediation such as université du québec à montréal’s service aux collectivités or science shop to support the capacity of organisations to negotiate post-extractivist research relationships with academics; training academics and students in these directions acknowledging that the power of academics to experiment with post-extractivist knowledge policy depends on their location on the ladder of power within the university; and support open science policies that include open access, but go beyond this to encompass scientific practices for and with 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http://www.rosalux.org.ec/pdfs/extractivismo.pdf#page=187 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516656992 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516656992 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2291058 https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030055 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789087905941_011 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 july 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: lonbay, s., pearson, a., hamilton, e., higgins, p., foulkes, e. and glascott, m. 2021. trauma informed participatory research: reflections on co-producing a research proposal. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:1, 1–8. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.7728 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article trauma informed participatory research: reflections on co-producing a research proposal sarah lonbay1, amy pearson2, emma hamilton, pat higgins, emma foulkes and michelle glascott3 1 senior lecturer, school of social sciences, faculty of education and society, sunderland university, uk 2 senior lecturer, school of psychology, faculty of health sciences and wellbeing, sunderland university, uk 3 nurse consultant, adult acute care, tyne and wear nhs foundation trust corresponding author: sarah lonbay; sarah.lonbay@sunderland.ac.uk doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7728 article history: received 22/04/2021; revised 20/05/2021; accepted 08/06/2021; published 07/2021 abstract this article discusses the development of a co-produced research proposal. the authors reflect on the process of this work and some of the challenges that were experienced by a team who had a mix of lived, clinical and academic experience of the research topic. we highlight the need to embed trauma informed principles into co-produced research and the ways in which doing so can support the development of co-produced work. as such, the article focuses on how we established safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment during the process of developing the proposal. within this we offer our reflection on some of the challenges we experienced and our learning from undertaking this work. keywords co-production; participatory research; trauma informed research; inclusion; epistemic justice declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7728 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7728 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7728 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sarah.lonbay@sunderland.ac.uk http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7728 introduction participatory and co-produced research is gaining popularity with researchers and funders. to undertake research in this way means all interested parties work in partnership to design, deliver and disseminate projects. people who have been affected by the issues the research is exploring often have a unique understanding as a result of their lived experience. they see things in a different way, which gives the researchers a greater insight into how their research will affect the community. in this way they can help ensure that research questions get to the heart of the matter and that the results are relevant to the very people the research affects. however, achieving the goals of co-production within health and social care research has some way to go. as lambert and carr (2018, p. 1276) point out, ‘it is challenging to resist the systems and influential peers that mandate that “good” mental health research must reflect clinical methodology and medical models, and that any diversification from these approaches inevitably jeopardizes objectivity, therefore impairing research quality and reliability’. by placing people with lived experience at the centre of the research, the aim is to shift the narratives from those that are imposed upon a marginalised group to those where people are enabled and supported to be heard on their own terms and in their own ways. while the benefits and value of working in a participatory manner have been amply explored within the literature, what is missing is a consideration of some of the challenges that can arise when developing a co-produced research proposal. in particular, there is little published on drawing on the principles of a trauma informed approach to support such participatory work. others have also commented on the lack of a ‘frame of reference’ for increasing ‘collaboration, inclusion, and emancipation […] in the processes and practice of pr’ (aldridge, 2017, p. 27). this article addresses this gap by providing a reflective account of the experiences of a group of researchers who coproduced a research proposal. the research context the reflections in this article are situated in the context of a research proposal developed during 2020. the proposal was a response to a tender calling for research exploring autism and personality disorder. the initial idea to respond to the tender came from a member of the team who had personal experience of the topic. thus, the development of the research proposal was grounded in these experiences, and the final research team that came together was composed of people with lived, and/or clinical and/or academic experience of relevance to the topic (discussed further below). the ethics of the research was of primary concern to us and we worked carefully together to identify and discuss the ethical considerations of the research we were proposing. despite very positive feedback on our proposal, we were unsuccessful with this bid; however, we intend to apply for another funding opportunity, and we will use what we have learned (presented here) to support further development of the work. after we had finished developing the proposal, we spent time reflecting together on the experience and sharing some of the issues that were raised for us. whilst each of us understood the principles and values that underlie participatory and trauma informed working, enacting these in practice (and within a very limited timeframe) proved challenging. as a team, we recognised the likelihood of there being a high prevalence of trauma in the people with whom we wished to engage for the research. we understood how trauma affects people and had a strong commitment to ensuring that our research did not have a negative impact or re-traumatise the people who chose to engage with the work. as such, we embedded the principles of trauma-informed practice within the research design and process and intended to critically reflect on the work and the ethical implications throughout the research process (should we be successful with our bid). it was also important for us to consider how we embedded these principles into our work together as we developed the research proposal. lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20212 this article provides a reflection on how we sought to do this and some of the lessons we learned during the process and through the conversations we had afterwards. the principles of trauma informed work are safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment. in the following sections we explore each of these principles and share reflections from different members of the research team on how we sought to embed them in our work. making use of this framework enabled us to think carefully about the ethics involved in working together (although formal ethical approval was not required in order to develop the research proposal) and also to think about the ethical aspects of the work we were proposing to undertake. whilst we have dealt with each of the principles separately within this article, it is also important to acknowledge that they intersect and that seeking to work within a trauma informed framework means acknowledging the interplay between these key principles (for example, it would be very difficult to ensure safety without employing the other principles). we also discuss the challenges that we faced and make recommendations on how these challenges might be addressed by others who are developing research in a similar way. the article is a collaborative team reflection, and it should be emphasised that much of the insight and reflection came directly from the members of the team, who also brought their own lived experiences to the work. we begin with an overview of how the team was brought together, before reflecting on the key principles of a trauma informed approach and how these supported the way that we worked together. the research team in the uk it is a requirement for higher education institutions to involve people with lived experience in social work education. one of the academic members of the team had previously been the lead for this within her department and had therefore developed a range of strong relationships with individuals and organisations. the idea for the research came from a research team member who had been involved in social work education and therefore had an established relationship with this academic (whom she approached with the idea). through conversation (over the phone and by email), the rest of the team were identified and approached. this meant that, although most of the team knew the academic who had been initially approached, we did not all know each other. all of us who were involved because of our lived experience had previously been involved in working with social work students. such work included participation in the design, delivery and evaluation of social work programs. this involvement was supported in a number of ways, including through the provision of training (lonbay et al. 2020). this meant that we were all used to speaking about aspects of our own experience, although in a very different context. we did not allocate specific roles to each team member, instead agreeing that each of us would contribute towards all aspects of the project in order to ensure that everyone’s voice was heard and as a way of avoiding ‘othering from within the team’ (michael 2021). the following sections outline how we drew upon the principles of a trauma informed approach to work together and develop the proposal. safety establishing both physical and emotional safety whilst conducting research in an area that had a tangible personal impact on our lives was essential. as a team, we knew first hand that receiving a diagnostic label could, in itself, be traumatic ( jowett, karatzias & albert 2019; rumball, happé and grey 2020). during the research process, we realised that there was a lack of explicit work on staying safe (though of course such work is happening all the time covertly). lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20213 for our team, this issue was particularly apparent when we were working to review the current literature. throughout the project, we had many group conversations about the power imbalance in relation to the roles of researcher and ‘participant’, and how triggering the language could be. we discussed our dislike of using words like ‘patient’ or ‘participant’ to describe people who should be people first and research volunteers second. the language used in academic literature is often medicalised, particularly in regards to autism and personality disorders, and focuses on participants as ‘other’ (botha, hanlon & williams 2021; bottema-beutal et al. 2021). the use of ableist language in research can be particularly dehumanising for marginalised researchers, standing as a constant reminder of our difference. as a group, we felt that current academic literature and service provision was still dominated by the medical field with its core stance of rescripting and reshaping the voices of service users within the biomedical/illness paradigm. russo and beresford (2015) speak of ‘seeking a place for mad people’s knowledge in academia’. our goal was not to reconstruct the experiences of service users, but to represent their voices in a genuine and enlightening way, validating the knowledge of an overlooked and marginalised group. only in hearing and bringing to light these voices can progress be made in co-production of research in academia, and in narratives, ideologies and service provision. this echoes some of the fundamental principles of knowledge democracy and the central role of the lived experiences of the marginalised (hall & tandon 2020). however, in order to engage with the research topic, we were forced to engage with research that was constructed within the paradigm of the medical model. this was a challenge for those of us who had poor experiences with that model. the research remit was clear: autism and personality disorder. however, if you have been labelled with any mental health ‘problem’, the last thing you want to do is be oppressive to others from whom you seek to learn by continuing to define them by their label. as much as we wanted to focus our work on bringing to life the experiences of people, not labels, we had no choice but to engage with the very thing we were wanting to challenge and that was in itself emotionally difficult. this highlighted for us that, to achieve a sense of safety when working in this way, we needed to acknowledge the impact of engaging with the academic literature. we needed, as a group, to openly explore this and talk about it together in order to create a space of safety where each of us could share any concerns. there was also the wider need for all of us to reflect on the ways in which we write and the language that we use. the knowledge we produce and disseminate is not benign. we need to stop using pathologising language. choice and collaboration ensuring that we worked well together and had an equal say in making choices was another important aspect of the work. again, though, there were challenges in achieving this. developing a research proposal as a group inevitably presented many decisions that needed to be made. broadly, these can be divided into two types of decisions: those that related to the group and the way we worked together (for example, the ways in which we collaborated) and decisions about the research project itself. we first started working together during 2020 while the uk was in lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, which meant that we had to get to know each other using video chat rather than meeting in person. on a practical level, we corresponded via email ahead of each meeting to agree the times, and whilst teams was the university’s platform for video chat, we used zoom to meet as this was expressed as a preference by some members of the group. zoom meetings were set up by one of the academic team members. agendas were agreed by email ahead of time (by the same group member), which meant that everyone had an opportunity to add items and shape what was discussed in the meetings. google drive was also used to support development of the proposal. all documents that were being used were placed in a shared folder, which every team member was able to access. this meant that we could all view and edit documents and share literature that we found. this also meant that every team member actively contributed to writing the proposal. this again was agreed during meetings where we discussed who would write which sections of the proposal. lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20214 our time was often limited, meaning that we had to work hard to ensure that there was enough space to talk and reflect with each other in the meetings. this was particularly difficult to achieve within the timeframe towards which we were working. we all felt that we worked well together, developing a strong and cohesive sense of identity as a research team. this didn’t just ‘happen’ for us; we worked to develop this trust and a sense of shared power through frequent discussion and getting to know each other, taking time to process what was discussed during meetings, and group reflection. for example, we had open conversations with each other about our personal and professional experiences and our own relationship with the research topic. we spent time reflecting on the process, although in hindsight we should have built in more time to do this during the development of the proposal. our reflections helped us to realise that we did not always get things right, and we spent a lot of time working out what we could do to deal with these issues. one example relates to the discussion of the literature above. we had agreed within meetings the different parts of the proposal that we would each contribute to writing. it was only through conversation afterwards that the full impact of engaging with this literature became clear. it would have been helpful to have discussed this earlier in the process as this would have enabled us to better support each other during the writing process. another challenge we faced was the differing level of knowledge and experience related to research. it was therefore important to spend time discussing and explaining different approaches so that each member of the group could make choices about the research design. in future, it would be beneficial to build in extra time to do more in-depth work on this so that all members of the group would have a good understanding of research methods and be able to make informed choices about how to develop the design of the proposed research. for those undertaking co-produced research in the future, we urge you first and foremost to create space where each member of the team can be open and honest with each other and feel comfortable to ask for support. make sure that you build in extra time to talk and share things with each other, including ‘debrief ’ time at the end of each meeting and at the end of the process for reflection. take time to pay attention and have conversations about how people work, what they prefer and why they need to access the academic world (including training around research methodology, should this be required). make sure these are provided. also, take breaks when they are needed and provide down time (with a point of contact should this be needed) between meetings. there are further questions that need to be unpicked, including whether additional support should be offered to people involved in the research process. with co-produced and participatory research, a clear pathway is needed to support those involved. this should be tailored for the individual: we need to ask at the start what support might be needed. this support, if required, should continue after the research ends, because the impact of reliving past trauma can last for a long time. if researchers get this wrong, it can cause more emotional and psychological harm. such support is beneficial for all members of the research team. researching difficult topics can raise emotions for everyone who is involved. this should be acknowledged and addressed, not ignored. as holmes (2010, p. 147) stated, ‘emotions are core to reflexive processes’, and there is widening recognition of this across a range of disciplines (wilcock & quaid 2018). trustworthiness as a group, we felt that developing trust in each other and establishing clarity over our roles was crucial. some of the team expressed concerns initially about their ability to carry out the work as they felt they may not have the ‘necessary’ skills and knowledge to contribute in a meaningful way. early conversations therefore included discussion of what the roles in the group were and what each person brought to the team. we discussed, as a group, how each of us brought unique and important skills and knowledge to the team, lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20215 and that alongside that each of us also had gaps in certain areas. these conversations helped us to build trust in each other. the mixed experience within the group meant that some of our earlier conversations were about our confidence and ability to engage in academic work. it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the ‘academics’ can supply the information and knowledge needed for those with lived experience to contribute to research, but the reality is that none of us can hold all of the pieces of the puzzle. the academic members of the team had a stronger understanding of research and the process of developing a funding bid, but what they did not have was the unique understanding of the research area that other members of the team brought. the academics might be at ease with the scholastic dance, but those with lived experience understood implicitly the essence of the subject under investigation. both ways of knowing had an equal seat at the table. listening and learning from each member of the team challenged accepted ways of working. academics are used to picking up and producing proposals and other work within very short timeframes. what is missed through this approach, however, is the time and space to talk, listen and reflect, but what emerges when we do so is powerful. empowerment we wanted to make sure that we worked together in a way that was validating and inclusive of every member of the team. however, in the medical and research fields there were basic issues where we felt discomfort. those of us who are seen as ‘mentally disordered’ can be marginalised in both areas; we are ‘other’. practitioners in the healthcare field may see us as unable to think clearly or rationally, or to have legitimate views. many service users’ experiences are that the ‘sick role’ is still alive (and kicking) within mental health care (lebow 1982; mitchel 2013). in academia, access is affected by structural forces that often affect those with mental health issues disproportionately. yes, the movement for ‘experts by experience’ has been around for some time, but we are still the ‘other’; still very much on the margins, and not fully included and involved (michael 2021). within any profession there is language and culture that excludes those outside of the group. our reptilian brains tell us to find our group, our community; we need to belong to survive and so the professionals align with their community and the experts by experience with theirs. the exclusive language and jargon of academia and the healthcare field keeps the ‘patient’ firmly in their group, and prevents the development of meaningful relationships. and there’s nothing like prohibitive paywalls restricting access to vast amounts of professional literature to ensure one group has less power than the other. if some of us have multiple identities, as researcher/service user/practitioner, then we are often placed in an uncomfortable position and are likely to shift between the two groups depending on context. the position of being the enquirer as well as the subject is tricky. it can bring positives to the group process, allowing us to ‘walk in two worlds’, but it also opens us up to potential claims of bias. independence is seen as valuable (‘don’t work on a group if you are in that group’), making a distinction between the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’. the movement of co-production seeks to address such dilemmas, but it is still about groups working with each other and not acknowledging that some will be members of two groups or more. seeing the world in such binary terms has ‘caused untold horror and helped to create a rigid epistemology we now assume we cannot evolve’ (aluli-meyer 2006, p. 267). until we can see and declare ourselves as the messy complex humans that we all are, we will continue to switch between groups determined by our survival needs at any given time, perpetuating the illusion that any activity can be without bias. conclusion the process of developing a research proposal together proved to be both challenging and rewarding in a number of ways. in this article, we outlined some of the challenges that we experienced and offered some lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20216 suggestions for how to overcome these. most importantly, we feel that fostering a strong sense of belonging in the team and taking the time to reflect and share thoughts and feelings that arose through the process were essential. this includes acknowledging that the language and content of research literature can be triggering and difficult for people to engage with (particularly within certain fields). openly exploring this, as a group, was therefore important. participatory research can offer spaces for these conversations to take place and an ongoing platform within which to challenge and change the narrative (from decision making about what to research through to dissemination of research findings). if we are to promote and continue to work in collaborative ways, then we must ensure that we have the time to do so properly and in a way that allows important ideas and feelings to be explored. there is a push for co-production, but this doesn’t consider the impact on people or the complexity of the processes involved. as fanjoy and bragg (2019, p. 5) state, ‘despite the ideals of democratic participation and shared knowledge production, research projects take place within a real-world context of limited resources, short timelines and unequal power relations, all of which come to play a role in how knowledge is produced, shared and experienced’. this resonates with our experience and we agree with the authors’ conclusion that, rather than ‘glossing over the complexity’, we must openly acknowledge this and discuss the ‘differing priorities and positions’ that exist within the teams undertaking co-produced research (fanjoy & bragg 2019, p. 15). finding the space to reflect on and share learning from this work is important. paying attention to the emotional side of being involved in the research process is also important. we need to work together to identify and find ways to challenge unhelpful and marginalising processes and actions. if we do not do this, then we risk doing more harm than good when we get it wrong; not only to ourselves, but also to others. we all learned a lot from this process, including from the time we spent reflecting on and talking about it afterwards. those of us who had lived experience of the research area also learned a lot from thinking about our own experiences in relation to the impact they had on our mental health. we enjoyed the mental challenge and the stimulation we received through sharing our own ideas and concepts with the group. in turn, it made the whole experience more positive and constructive. we all felt fully included, not as nameless ‘participants’, or ‘patients’, but as equals. this had a very positive impact on our self-confidence and we felt valued and treated as people in our own right, instead of as nameless entities. with this in mind, we 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https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/images/external-websites/www/research/institutes/wilcock-and-quaidcass-working-paper.pdf lonbay, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 july 20218 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7225 https://doi.org/10.1177/ https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12248 https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12499 https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.91.2.244 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1843615 https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0019 https://www.england.nhs.uk/blog/ed-mitchell-2 https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2306 https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.957925 https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/images/external-websites/www/research/institutes/wilcock-and-quaid-cass-working-paper.pdf https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/images/external-websites/www/research/institutes/wilcock-and-quaid-cass-working-paper.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 2 december 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: busch, md, jeanbaptiste, e, person, pf, vaughn, lm. 2019. activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:2, article id 6693. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i2.6693 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature melida d busch1, elizabeth jean-baptiste2, pamela f person1, lisa m vaughn3 1 education innovations & community partnerships, college of education, criminal justice, and human services, university of cincinnati, 2600 clifton avenue, cincinnati oh 45220 2 college of education, criminal justice, and human services, university of cincinnati, 2600 clifton avenue, cincinnati oh 45220 3 pediatrics, cincinnati children’s hospital medical center/university of cincinnati college of medicine, joint appointment, college of education, criminal justice, and human services, educational and community-based action research, university of cincinnati, 2600 clifton avenue, cincinnati oh 45220 corresponding author: melida d busch; melida@knowful.org doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6693 article history: received 24/07/2019; revised 14/11/2019; accepted 25/11/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract researchers, evaluators and designers from an array of academic disciplines and industry sectors are turning to participatory approaches as they seek to understand and address complex social problems. we refer to participatory approaches that collaboratively engage/ partner with stakeholders in knowledge creation/problem solving for action/social change outcomes as collaborative change research, evaluation and design (ccred). we further frame ccred practitioners by their desire to move beyond knowledge creation for its own sake to implementation of new knowledge as a tool for social change. in march and may of 2018, we conducted a literature search of multiple discipline-specific databases seeking collaborative, change-oriented scholarly publications. the search was limited to include peerreviewed journal articles, with english language abstracts available, published in the last five years. the search resulted in 526 citations, 236 of which met inclusion criteria. though the search was limited to english abstracts, all major geographic regions (north america, europe, declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6693 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6693 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:melida@knowful.org http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6693 latin america/caribbean, apac, africa and the middle east) were represented within the results, although many articles did not state a specific region. of those identified, most studies were located in north america, with the middle east having only one identified study. we followed a qualitative thematic synthesis process to examine the abstracts of peer-reviewed articles to identify practices that transcend individual disciplines, sectors and contexts to achieve collaborative change. we surveyed the terminology used to describe ccred, setting, content/topic of study, type of collaboration, and related benefits/outcomes in order to discern the words used to designate collaboration, the frameworks, tools and methods employed, and the presence of action, evaluation or outcomes. forty-three percent of the reviewed articles fell broadly within the social sciences, followed by 26 percent in education and 25 percent in health/medicine. in terms of participants and/ or collaborators in the articles reviewed, the vast majority of the 236 articles (86%) described participants, that is, those who the research was about or from whom data was collected. in contrast to participants, partners/collaborators (n=32; 14%) were individuals or groups who participated in the design or implementation of the collaborative change effort described. in terms of the goal for collaboration and/or for doing the work, the most frequently used terminology related to some aspect of engagement and empowerment. common descriptors for the work itself were ‘social change’ (n=74; 31%), ‘action’ (n=33; 14%), ‘collaborative or participatory research/practice’ (n=13; 6%), ‘transformation’ (n=13; 6%) and ‘community engagement’ (n=10; 4%). of the 236 articles that mentioned a specific framework or approach, the three most common were some variation of participatory action research (n=30; 50%), action research (n=40; 16.9%) or community-based participatory research (n=17; 7.2%). approximately a third of the 236 articles did not mention a specific method or tool in the abstract. the most commonly cited method/tool (n=30; 12.7%) was some variation of an arts-based method followed by interviews (n=18; 7.6%), case study (n=16; 6.7%), or an ethnographic-related method (n=14; 5.9%). while some articles implied action or change, only 14 of the 236 articles (6%) stated a specific action or outcome. most often, the changes described were: the creation or modification of a model, method, process, framework or protocol (n=9; 4%), quality improvement, policy change and social change (n=8; 3%), or modifications to education/training methods and materials (n=5; 2%). the infrequent use of collaboration as a descriptor of partner engagement, coupled with few reported findings of measurable change, raises questions about the nature of ccred. it appears that conducting ccred is as complex an undertaking as the problems that the work is attempting to address. keywords: collaborative change, social change, qualitative synthesis, literature review, collaborative research, collaborative evaluation, collaborative design introduction researchers, evaluators and designers from an array of academic disciplines and industry sectors are turning to participatory approaches as they seek to understand and address complex social problems. participatory approaches expand the tools available to investigate multifaceted issues; they differ from traditional methods by intentionally integrating local community norms and knowledge into discovery processes to develop more relevant research questions, inform research interpretation, share findings, innovate, and foster sustained change busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 (balazs & morello-frosch 2013; cargo & mercer 2008; chang et al. 2013; person et al. 2016). these contextual and relationship-driven participatory approaches strive for different outcomes and new understandings that represent lived experience and value the standpoints, expertise and direct involvement of stakeholders and end users of research, evaluation and design. such approaches offer a research-to-action imperative that bridges the common gap between research and practice (cargo & mercer 2008). approaches such as community-based participatory research, empowerment evaluation, human-centred design, and citizen science engage stakeholders with differing backgrounds or expertise as collaborative partners in knowledge creation and problem solving towards positive social change. we have coined the umbrella term – collaborative change research, evaluation, and design (ccred) – to collectively refer to the array of participatory approaches utilised by researchers, evaluators and designers who work in this ‘bridge’ space of research and practice for positive social change. background globally, institutions of higher education are facing serious challenges as to whether they are preparing students who are able to effect positive social change and fulfil social/community/ global responsibilities (gamoran 2018; hayter & cahoy 2018). gamoran (2018) asserts that ‘institutions that turn their attention to serving the public good may be best poised to thrive and deliver lasting value’. institutionally, much knowledge has been generated with the intention to solve complex problems; however, knowledge alone is inadequate to bring about sustainable social change (lotz-sisitka et al. 2015). striving to meet such challenges requires ‘action-oriented capabilities’ (lotz-sisitka et al. 2015) and will likely require institutions to rethink and re-tool traditional approaches to research, evaluation and design, which more often than not are deficit-based and siloed, and compounded by a lack of collaboration across sectors and disciplines. furthermore, traditional approaches to research, evaluation and design fail to have social impact because they are ‘not sufficiently timely, relevant, or accessible’ (gamoran 2018). those researchers, educators and designers who seek to utilise their efforts to contribute actively to society are attempting to employ participatory methods in order to bridge the gap between contributing to an inert body of knowledge and implementing this knowledge to achieve positive real-world change. people who work in the ccred arena focus on resolving complex social issues, such as improving public health, achieving equitable public education and preserving the environment, to achieve better life conditions. social change is the aim. in their influential case study on successful social change efforts, kania and kramer (2011) articulated a social change operating framework, which they named collective impact (ci). ci seeks to shift problem solving of complex community-based issues away from efforts by multiple practitioners working in isolation from one another towards engaging a collective of practitioners and affected stakeholders to collaboratively mobilise their resources towards shared learning and solution design and evaluation to achieve agreed upon goals and bring about large-scale systemic change. the ci framework is driven by a neutral backbone organisation, through a network of relationships between organisations, their common vision, constant communications, leveraged and mutually reinforcing activities, and shared measurement of change (cabaj & weaver 2016; kania & kramer 2011). with a goal of creating knowledge and structures that improve life’s conditions, ci is one example of a participatory approach that has emerged in the last 10 years, and one with which we have been engaged through our work at the university of cincinnati. in 2018, the national science foundation granted the university of cincinnati (uc) an includes (nsf #1812795) award that aims to ‘broaden participation projects’, ‘catalyze activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 the stem enterprise to collaboratively work for inclusive change’ and ‘support scholars engaged in broadening participation research’. a review of the literature was one of the grant’s initial steps in understanding the scope of language and practice being used across disciplines, seeking to create a space within which to unify and expand collaboration. during a convening of local university and community-based practitioners of participatory change methods, where an early version of the themes in this synthesis were discussed, multiple layers of difference became apparent. in addition to variance in academic disciplines represented, within disciplinary groups there were differences in understanding, terminology and approaches used by people who identified as researchers, evaluators or designers. our experience with ci in a variety of social change endeavours over multiple years provides context for this synthesis review. the ci operating framework implies key drivers for resolving social issues that need to be made explicit, for example, systems perspective, cross-sector partnerships, engaged stakeholders, shared understanding, transparent power and known collaborative change practices. in our ci work we found ourselves engaging with teams of community-based, cross-sector and cross-discipline partners and stakeholders – including researchers, evaluators and designers – who possessed critically important and diverse perspectives, but who rarely came together equipped with commonly held terminology, principles, tools, methods or measures to effectively create change. to begin addressing the need to equip practitioners who hold differing expertise and roles, and who employ a wide range of designs, methodologies and methods, we sought to understand the current field of participatory and collaborative change research, evaluation and design across industry sectors and academic disciplines, with the intent of providing a synthesis that would bridge ccred approaches and their practice. we now discuss three broad areas of ccred – participatory research, participatory evaluation and participatory design. participatory research reason and torbert (2001) argue that the purpose of research has evolved. they describe the ‘action turn’ phenomenon in social science research, which has extended the purpose of research beyond that of knowledge generation for the sake of science. research is also conducted to ‘forge a more direct link between intellectual knowledge and moment-tomoment personal and social action, so that inquiry contributes directly to the flourishing of human persons, their communities, and the ecosystems of which they are part’ (reason & torbert 2001, p. 6). this more participatory research-to-action turn is a ‘radical shift’ from the unquestioned traditional research grounding in empirical positivism. in contrast to traditional approaches that conduct research on persons, an action-oriented approach suggests the importance of practical knowing and a collaborative approach to inquiry – research with people – ‘including them both in the questioning and sensemaking that informs the research, and in the action which is the focus of the research’ (reason & torbert 2001, p. 10). the action turn phenomenon can be seen over the last decade as researchers have increasingly sought to engage service users, consumers, patients, families, youth and other individuals normally considered passive subject participants in more active, influential roles, including as research collaborators and decision-makers (brett et al. 2014; cabassa et al. 2017; concannon et al. 2014; domecq et al. 2014; ellis & kass 2017; nilsen et al. 2006; shen et al. 2017; shippee et al. 2015). this shift in participant roles begs questions about what level of collaboration researchers should seek. regardless of the level of engagement – minimal busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 (e.g. focus groups), medium (e.g. advisory) or high (e.g. shared decision-making), successful researcher–stakeholder collaboration is inclusive and reflects shared leadership, trust and authentic interaction around solving the issue at hand (cashman et al. 2008; newman et al. 2011; nih 2011; salimi et al. 2012; wallerstein et al. 2018). elevated engagement with the community voice – local knowledge, norms and desires, and socio-cultural, historical, political, economic, and ecological contexts of the people affected – is now integral to knowledge discovery and sustainable social change in participatory research (ganz 2010; rosenthal et al. 2014; vaughn et al. 2017; wallerstein et al. 2018; weisbord 2012). participatory evaluation collaborative and participatory approaches to evaluation seek to engage those who have the greatest stake in a program’s effectiveness – from a program’s beneficiaries to its funders – in all phases of evaluation development and implementation (fetterman et al. 2017; o’sullivan 2012; patton 1997). participatory evaluation broadly represents several collaborative evaluation approaches, including empowerment evaluation and transformative evaluation (cooper 2014; cousins & whitmore 1998; fetterman et al. 2017; fetterman & wandersman 2005; mertens 2008). focusing on the stakeholder involvement aspects and the essential features of participatory evaluation rather than the specific type, the american evaluation association, for instance, combines participatory evaluation approaches in their collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation topical interest group (fetterman et al. 2014). such participant-oriented evaluation approaches range on a continuum in three ways: (1) control of decision making, ranging from evaluator to stakeholder; (2) depth of participation, ranging from consultation to deep participation; and (3) diversity of stakeholders invited to participate, ranging from limited to diverse. in contrast to more traditional approaches to evaluation, collaborative and participatory evaluation ensures that the evaluation is focused on topics and questions that are relevant to the community’s context; generates knowledge that is reflection-oriented and can be practically applied to improve program performance; honours local talent and expertise and empowers the local community to control decision making about things that affect them; builds expertise and capacity for future leadership and growth; strengthens community resources and networks; and supports sustainability (cooper 2014; cousins & whitmore 1998; fetterman et al. 2017; fetterman & wandersman 2005; mertens 2008). participatory evaluation differs from conventional evaluation in that it shifts the locus of power from funders, program managers and outside experts and instead shares it with multiple stakeholders, including community members, staff and others engaged in or affected by a program in order to ‘acknowledge and elevate the perspectives, voices, and decisions of the least powerful and the most affected stakeholders’ (rossman 2000). rather than serving as outside experts, lead evaluators function as coach or facilitator of the evaluation (zukoski & luluquisen 2002), with goals of strengthening evaluation designs, optimising data collection and analysis, and improving stakeholder use of the evaluation results (o’sullivan 2012). the key distinction among these participatory types of evaluation is the degree of control between evaluators and stakeholders. in collaborative evaluation, evaluators oversee the evaluation with stakeholders, giving input at each stage of the evaluation (o’sullivan 2012). in participatory evaluation, evaluators and stakeholders engage in joint control of the evaluation. often, ‘control begins with the evaluator but is divested to program community members over time and with experience’ (cousins, whitmore & shulha 2013, p. 14). empowerment evaluation views stakeholders as the primary controllers of the evaluation, with evaluators activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 serving as critical friends and coaches to guide the process (fetterman & wandersman 2005). transformative evaluation emphasises social justice and the inclusion of marginalised groups and communities who have traditionally been excluded from traditional evaluations (cooper 2014; mertens 1999, 2008). there is debate in the evaluation field as to whether or not stark distinctions between these approaches are important to maintain, with cousins and chouinard (2012) arguing that context and guiding principles, rather than a predetermined purpose or form of collaboration, should drive decisions about the most appropriate type of collaborative evaluation to use. most evaluation contexts, they say, are complex and ‘messy’. they are ‘unpredictable and in constant flux … there is no right answer; rather, over time, patterns can be discerned, and a path forward emerges. in complex contexts, there are many opportunities for creativity and innovation’ (cousins & chouinard 2012, p. 17). participatory design the design field is remarkably diverse, drawing theorists and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and epistemological roots. johansson‐sköldberg, woodilla and çetinkaya (2013) have identified influential thinkers and practitioners in the design field who have backgrounds in economics, political science, philosophy, music, art history, architecture, and business management, as well as design. their research on design and design(erly) thinking discourse identifies themes in academic (scholarly) discourse that can be categorised as: creating artifacts, reflexive practice, problem-solving activity, way of reasoning or sensemaking, and creating meaning. within management (applied) discourse, they identify themes that can be categorised as: a way of working, a requisite skill for managers (across disciplines and industries) and part of management theory (including change management). design(erly) thinking, they conclude, ‘is not one but many’ approaches in ‘an ongoing design practice, a reality that is not a discrete and coherent practice, and is far from standardized, but is nevertheless the basis for generalizations, descriptions and theories’ ( johansson‐sköldberg, woodilla & çetinkaya 2013, p. 131). buchanan’s 1992 breakthrough article, which introduced a new way to contextualise design solutions within overlapping spaces, rather than creating design solutions in sequential steps, positioned design thinking as a participatory field especially well suited to addressing complex social issues, called ‘wicked problems’. wicked problems are ‘a class of social systems problems with a fundamental indeterminacy without a single solution and where much creativity is needed to find solutions’ ( johansson-skӧldberg, woodilla & çetinkaya 2013, p. 125). brown and wyatt (2010) describe design thinking as ‘deeply human’. they explain that design thinking can be conceived of in terms of three overlapping spaces: inspiration (problem/ opportunity), ideation (generating, developing and testing ideas) and implementation (prototyping, refinement, communication for launch). the process involves inclusive teams and is experiential, participatory and interdisciplinary, with ‘empathy for people and for disciplines beyond one’s own’ a key concept. in the context of inspiration, ‘design thinkers become embedded in the lives of the people they are designing for … relying on local partners and ‘cultural guides’ to help inform and continue to participate in the processes of ideation and implementation (brown & wyatt 2010, p. 33). busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 collaborative change research, evaluation and design (ccred) these participatory and action-oriented approaches to research, evaluation and design promote bidirectional communication, enhanced trust, shared leadership and ownership, and mutual benefits between academics and communities in the research process. furthermore, the quality and rigour of research, evaluation and design are improved by participant engagement, contextually relevant questions, externally valid data interpretation, and culturally valid measurement instruments and techniques (balazs & morello-frosch 2013; buchanan, miller & wallerstein 2007; diaz, spears johnson & arcury 2015). the results of such approaches are often more widely disseminated (chen, weiss & nicholson 2010) and have greater potential for real-world impact and sustainable actions. there are many commonalities, shared practices and guiding principles across these approaches, yet siloes remain intact, with fierce kinship to discipline and approach-specific nomenclature and guidelines. there is an opportunity for disciplines to benefit from shared definitions, principles, tools/methods, and measures of outcomes in terms of change, impact and action. ccred intentionally invites partners to work on complex, transdisciplinary issues from multiple perspectives. the purpose of this synthesis review was to systematically examine peerreviewed articles to identify effective practices that transcend individual disciplines, sectors and contexts to achieve ccred. we examined the terminology and titles used to describe ccred, details of the process, setting, content/topic of study, type of collaboration and related benefits/outcomes. specifically, we aimed to answer these research questions: 1. what terminology is used for and how is collaboration defined within ccred across disciplines? 2. what types of frameworks/approaches are being used within ccred? 3. what are the methods and tools used in ccred? 4. when change/action is discussed, what is the nature of the change/action in ccred and how is it measured/evaluated? method peer-reviewed literature search strategy we performed a literature search in march of 2018 and updated it in may of 2018 to include new and non-usa publications (table 1). the search targeted multiple discipline-specific databases to gain the widest possible perspective of collaborative, change-oriented scholarly publications across the areas of research, evaluation and design. the following strategy was utilised in each database: (‘social change’ or ‘change research’ or ‘collaborative change’) and (‘socially engaged’ or ‘community engaged’ or ‘community engagement’ or ‘action research’ or ‘community action’ or ‘coproduction’ or ‘design thinking’ or ‘collaborative research’ or ‘co-design’ or ‘collaborative design’ or ‘participatory design’ or ‘peer researcher’ or ‘co-researcher’ or ‘participatory research’) and (research or design or evaluation). selection criteria the search was limited to include peer-reviewed scholarly articles, with english language abstracts available, published in the last five years. non peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, reports, theses/dissertations and book chapters were removed from the search activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 7 results. post de-duplication of the 526 returned citations, 390 citations, including author(s), title, journal name, year of publication and abstract, were loaded into covidence, a systematic review management system, for the team’s initial review. data screening, eligibility and extraction of the 390 publications in covidence, 81 were removed for not meeting the initial requirements for coding, that is: (1) they were non peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, reports, theses/dissertations, or book chapters; (2) did not have an english abstract; or (3) were not ‘on topic’. see figure 1 for a visual of the screening process. to begin the coding process, 50 of the remaining 309 citations were randomly selected for review. table 1 databases and number of citations database citations art full text 7 avery index to architectural periodicals 1 biosis citation index 7 education research complete 131 humanities index 66 psychinfo 106 pubmed 73 socindex with full text 135 figure 1 article screening process busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 8 based on this initial review, the team created an agreed-upon extraction database/codebook and definitions to be used to (1) further assess eligibility, ensuring that the selection criteria had been met, and (2) as the basis for summarising and analysing retained articles. the database included the following column categories for each publication: type of article; named participants/collaborators; terminology to describe collaborators; setting/context/geographic location; discipline; topic/area of concern; specific named frameworks/approaches; terminology of engagement/collaboration; specified tools/methods; action taken; and outcomes/reports of change. see table 2 for a summary of agreed definitions, categories and codes. we reviewed our initial work and all four members of the team coded an additional 73 articles using discussion and consensus to resolve disagreements about coding. for the remaining 184 citations, the team then worked in three rounds of rotating pairs to code 60–65 articles per round. after each round of coding, we met as a team and reviewed our codes, resolving any disagreements through consensus, and sharing the finalised codes. for each of the records retained, examination of the abstracts (and full articles when details were unclear) and data synthesis were conducted. during this in-depth exploration and coding of the articles, an additional 73 articles were excluded as they did not meet the selection criteria. post-review, a total of 236 articles included collaborative change efforts and were fully coded according to our review aims. any uncertainties about how to code individual article information were discussed among the team members until consensus was reached. data synthesis due to the nature of the review aims and the diversity of the literature retrieved, we conducted a qualitative thematic synthesis (thomas & harden 2008) of the data in contrast to a metaanalysis. we relied explicitly on the method’s functionality in ‘identifying key concepts from studies and translating them into one another’, allowing us to group concepts appearing across the abstracts reviewed, though these concepts were not articulated using precisely the same wording (thomas & harden 2008, p. 3). across the 236 publications included in the review, patterns in the data were summarised inductively to examine and describe collaborative change efforts across research, evaluation and design. table 2 definitions of categories and codes category description type of article classification of article as research study, process, review or mixed participants group of people or community involved in the study (data collected from or about) collaborators/true coresearchers those who partnered in the design or implementation of the collaborative change effort terminology used to describe collaborators titles/names used for the collaborators (i.e. coresearcher and community health worker) setting context of project (i.e. neighbourhood, school) country/geographical region city and/or country where project was conducted activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 9 category description discipline area of practice/knowledge/study area of concern/topic content area framework/approach to collaborative change theoretical perspective or orientation to collaborative change (i.e. action research, design thinking) terminology of engagement/ collaboration term(s) used to describe engagement/collaboration within project methods tools used to collect data or conduct collaborative change work (i.e. photovoice, interviews, case study, surveys, ethnodrama) action/change outcomes of project results the 236 abstracts included in the review were coded as being focused on ‘research’ (n=128; 54%), ‘process’ (n=65; 28%), ‘mixed’ (n=38; 16%) or ‘review’ (n=5; 2%). ‘research’ articles represented a study which yielded some type of conclusion, results or new knowledge. ‘process’ articles described methods or design of a study or proposed a new model for further study based on previous research. those categorised as ‘mixed’ included any combination of the other categories, though the majority were a combination of ‘research’ and ‘process’ (n=34; 89.47%). ‘review’ articles concentrated on systematic reviews of the literature regarding a particular aspect of collaborative change-oriented work. representing over 150 distinct journals, the top six journals for publication across the 236 articles were: journal of community practice (n=9; 3.8%); action research (n=9; 3.8%); educational action research (n=8; 3.4%); american journal of community psychology (n=6; 2.5%); science and engineering ethics (n=6; 2.5%); and global public health (n=5; 2%). over 40% (n=105) of the 236 articles did not specify a geographic location for their work in the abstracts. approximately 21% (n=50) of the articles specified that their collaborative change work was conducted in north america, primarily in the united states. the work in the remaining articles mostly occurred in europe (n=35; 15%), africa (n=21; 9%), australia (n=14; 6%) and south america (n=12; 5%). forty-three percent of the 236 articles fell broadly within the social sciences (i.e. psychology, sociology, social work, ecology, organisation development and community practice/ development) followed by 26% in education and 25% in health/medicine. across all the articles, there was a cross-cutting interest in: (1) identity, community and inclusion (n=54; 23%); (2) participation and participatory processes (n=40; 17%); and (3) youth voice and focus (n=31; 13%). representing the complexity and broad range of biopsychosocial, ecological and cultural change efforts across disciplines, there was a wide array of topics and areas of concern covered in the 236 reviewed articles. specific topics within the social science articles ranged from human trafficking, immigration, violence prevention, climate change and intercultural relations to creativity and sexuality. within education, article topics varied from higher education, leadership, science education, cooperative learning, disability education and literacy to educational inequities and racism. within the health/medicine articles, specific topics table 2 continued busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 10 included elder care/ageing, indigenous health, nutrition/food, disease prevention, physical activity and racial/ethnic disparities. terminology and collaboration in ccred in terms of participants and/or collaborators in the articles reviewed, the vast majority of the 236 articles (n=203; 86%) described participants, that is, those who the research was about or from whom data was collected. the most common descriptors for participants were ‘youth’, ‘students’ and ‘community members’. the descriptors varied widely, including aboriginal children and young people, engineering students, south african grandmothers, families, junior high students, residents living in public housing, members of multi-ethnic communities, mongolian teachers, college students with incarceration histories, first nations peoples and violence prevention practitioners. thirty-two of the 236 articles (n=32; 14%) named partners/ collaborators for their projects. in contrast to participants, partners/collaborators were individuals or groups who participated in the design or implementation of the collaborative change effort described. for instance, 18 older adults took a primary role as co-researchers to conduct interviews and participate in reflection meetings as part of a research project to develop age-friendly communities in manchester, uk (buffel 2019). in another article, yup’ik elders, who were collaborators in the research effort, served as co-authors for the resulting publication (ayunerak et al. 2014). the most common descriptor for collaborators was ‘community members’; other descriptors for collaborators included ‘stakeholders’ and ‘co-researchers’. unique descriptors for collaborators included ‘co-creators’, ‘co-enquirers’, ‘insiders’, ‘cultural navigators’ and ‘change agents’. in describing collaboration, doing the actual work and/or the goal of the work in the 236 articles, the most frequently used terminology related to some aspect of engagement and empowerment. terminology included ‘participation or participatory’, ‘collective’, ‘equity’, ‘inclusion’, ‘capacity’, ‘social justice’ and ‘democratic’. common descriptors for the work itself were ‘social change’ (n=74; 31%) followed by ‘action’ (n=33; 14%), ‘collaborative or participatory research/practice’ (n=13; 6%), ‘transformation’ (n=13; 6%) and ‘community engagement’ (n=10; 4%). frameworks and approaches within ccred across research, evaluation and design articles, the majority mentioned more than one specific framework or approach within the context of social change or community engagement. of the 236 articles that mentioned a specific framework or approach, the most common framework/ approach, which was highlighted in 60 articles, was some variation of participatory action research (par) (n=30; 50%), i.e. community-based, feminist, inclusive, arts-based, including participatory research (pr) (n=19; 31.7%), i.e. anthropological, educational, visual, and youth participatory action research (ypar) (n=11; 18.3%). the second most common framework/approach described in the 236 articles was some variation of action research (n=40; 16.9%). within the action research (ar) articles, specific types of ar included collaborative, group, critical utopian, ethnographic, reflective, systemic, service outcomes, and community, community-based or community-engaged. the third most common framework/ approach specified in the 236 articles was community-based participatory research (cbpr) (n=17; 7.2%) or a related variation (n=10; 4.2%), i.e. community-based participatory video, community-based arts, community-based service learning. activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 11 although these frameworks and their variations were used broadly across all disciplines within the 236 articles, par and ar were most prevalent in education-related articles and cbpr was more commonly specified in health-related articles. beyond par, ar and cbpr, as described above, other named frameworks within research-specific articles included social change, partnership, transformative, empowering, and advocacy-oriented research. named frameworks within design-specific articles included design thinking, user-centred, humancentred, user-led, participatory, participatory research and public design, e.g. when discussing the use of user-centred design by neural engineers seeking to better understand the experiences and needs of potential end-users of the brain computer interface technologies (sullivan et al. 2018). within evaluation-specific articles, stated frameworks included participatory, inclusive, developmental, illuminative and action evaluation. for instance, van winkelen (2016) used developmental evaluation methods to determine support resources in several communities of practice. methods and tools in ccred approximately a third of the 236 articles (n=76; 32.2%) did not mention a specific method or tool in the abstract. of those that did, the methods/tools varied considerably and/or used multiple methods in the same project. the most commonly mentioned method/tool (n=30; 12.7%) was some variation of an arts-based method (photovoice, participatory theatre, video, media posters, etc.), followed by interviews conducted either one-on-one or in a focus/ discussion group (n=18; 7.6%), case study (n=16; 6.7%) or an ethnographic-related method such as observation or ethnodrama (n=14; 5.9%). table 3 contains a more detailed list of tools and methods used in the 236 articles. table 3 specified methods and tools method/tool number of articles (%) 2–3 example articles detailed example/ description no method/tool specified 76 (32%) miscellaneous (e.g. future conference, social network analysis, survey, communitybased auditing, participatory appraisal, etc.) 41 (17%) action research in nursing homes (andersen & bilfeldt 2016). experiences in conducting participatory communication research for hiv prevention globally: translating critical dialog into action through action media (parker & becker-benton 2016). participatory demographic scenarios addressing uncertainty and transformative change in ethiopia (tegegne et al. 2016). using future workshops as a methodological tool in a joint action research project between care workers, residents at the nursing home, and researchers, this article details changes made to improve public elder care quality (andersen & bilfeldt 2016). busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 12 method/tool number of articles (%) 2–3 example articles detailed example/ description arts-based (e.g. photovoice, participatory theatre, video, media posters, etc.) 30 (13%) participatory filmmaking with qur’anic students in kano, nigeria: ‘speak good about us or keep quiet!’ (hoechner 2015). picturing the wheatbelt: exploring and expressing place identity through photography (sonn et al. 2015). beyond the page: a process review of using ethnodrama to disseminate research findings (taylor et al. 2017). based on a participatory docudrama with traditional qur’anic students in nigeria, the author reflects on the limitations of participatory research as a tool of empowerment (hoechner 2015). interviews, including focus and discussion groups 18 (8%) everyday mobilisations among grandmothers in south africa: survival, support and social change in the era of hiv/aids (chazan 2014). involving people with intellectual disabilities within research teams: lessons learned from an irish experience (garcía iriarte et al. 2014). the author conducted interviews and focus groups in south africa to understand the stresses and strains for ageing women, aka ‘grandmothers’ who are caring for vulnerable children (chazan 2014). case study 16 (7%) governance experiments in water management: from interests to building blocks (doorn 2016). enabling organizational cultural change using systemic strategic human resource management – a longitudinal case study (molineux 2013). the author used a case study design to report on interest groups and stakeholders who developed new water policy (doorn 2016). multiple methods/ tools used in same project 15 (6%) climate-sensitive health priorities in nunatsiavut, canada (harper et al. 2015). empowering engineering students in ethical risk management: an experimental study (guntzburger et al. 2019). this study used in-depth interviews, photovoice workshops, and community surveys to examine climate and environmental health priorities in nunatsiavut, labrador, canada (harper et al. 2015). table 3 continued activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 13 method/tool number of articles (%) 2–3 example articles detailed example/ description ethnographicrelated (e.g. observation, ethnodrama, etc.) 14 (6%) beyond the page: a process review of using ethnodrama to disseminate research findings (taylor et al. 2017). ‘we always say: and then came the water…’ flint’s emergent latinx capacity building journey during the government-induced lead crisis (duntley-matos et al. 2017). authors describe the process of planning and implementing an ethnodrama to explore men’s health in north carolina, usa (taylor et al. 2017). story/narrativebased 7 (3%) recipes and revolutions: consciousness–raising and feminist picnics (coombs et al. 2016). creativity as an intervention strategy with mayan women in guatemala (lykes & crosby 2014). through participatory creative workshops containing mayan storytelling and rituals, authors highlight rural mayan women’s experience and understanding of the 36-year guatemalan armed conflict (lykes & crosby 2014). design-based 7 (3%) beyond design and participation: the ‘thought for food’ project in flanders, belgium (cox et al. 2014). human‐centered design projects and co‐design in/ outside the turkish classroom: responses and challenges (emmanouil 2015). within a participatory urban design framework, authors used designbased scenarios as the methodological tool for participants to discuss and understand opposing viewpoints about a landscape enhancement project in belgium (cox et al. 2014). reflection 6 (2.5%) older co-researchers exploring age-friendly communities: an ‘insider’ perspective on the benefits and challenges of peer-research (buffel 2019). community health workers as cultural producers in addressing gender-based violence in rural south africa (de lange & mitchell 2016). older adult co-researchers participated in reflection meetings to share their experiences and viewpoints about the co-research approach used in a study to develop age-friendly communities in the uk (buffel 2019). table 3 continued busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 14 method/tool number of articles (%) 2–3 example articles detailed example/ description qualitative research method(s) 6 (2.5%) losing fears and gaining perspective: a case study on youth participation (aguirre garcía-carpintero et al. 2017). institutional reform and violence reduction in pernambuco, brazil (hoelscher 2017). the purpose of this study was to understand influences of youth participation through the lens of technical workers who work with high school students in the region els ports (castellón). multiple qualitative methods were used, including interviews, participant observation and group meetings (aguirre garcía-carpintero et al. 2017). change and action in ccred while some articles implied actions or changes, the literature often does not specify action as a significant aspect of the collaborative change process. only 14 of the 236 articles (6%) stated a specific action or outcome that occurred as a result of ccred, and only half of those 14 directly linked the action to a report of change. eight additional articles reviewed specified a change but did not associate it directly with the action taken. most often, the creation or modification of a model, method, process, framework or protocol – or the strategies or principles that directed that work—was the change that occurred (n=9; 4%). modifications to education and training methods and materials were the next most common change indicated in ccred (n=5; 2%). quality improvement, policy change and social change (n=8; 3%) exemplified the potentially powerful outcomes that could result from ccred. overall, the literature rarely reports change with quantitative or qualitative outcomes. to provide context for the results above, table 4 provides a concise view of articles we consider exemplars of ccred. these articles highlight work that displays high levels of collaboration and change-related outcomes while also illustrating a range of terminology, frameworks and methods. table 4 ccred exemplars article topic terminology/ engagement framework methods change/ outcomes inclusive research: making a difference to policy and legislation (johnson et al. 2014) the article describes two studies and their outcomes to show how people with intellectual disabilities and their supporters can use research that they have done to change policies and laws that affect them. actively involved in undertaking research partners in design, content focus and results analysis empowering research inclusive qualitative research qualitative methods: life stories, focus groups playwriting film-making people with disabilities became advocates for change advocacy led to a change in government policy about sexuality and people with disabilities table 3 continued activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 15 article topic terminology/ engagement framework methods change/ outcomes engaging with communities, engaging with patients: amendment to the napcrg 1998 policy statement on responsible research with communities (allen et al. 2017) the purpose of this research project was to reconsider a policy statement adopted by the north american primary care research group (napcrg) about responsible participatory research participatory processes community responsibility napcrgaffiliated research partners participatory research workshop qualitative analysis napcrg endorsed and updated policy statement young people’s perspectives on participatory ethics: agency, power and impact in domestic abuse research and policy-making (houghton 2015) informed by a larger study about children’s help and solution seeking, this project engaged young expert advisers on domestic abuse policy young expert advisors codevelopers participatory action research developed a new, participatory ethical approach that promotes the inclusion and empowerment of young child abuse survivors in research and policy developing conceptual and methodological foundations in community engagement (aday, jr et al. 2015) this article describes the efforts of two undergraduate projects to promote lasting social change for improved health and healthcare in marginalised communities team members community partners social change individual and collective capacity communityendorsed marginalisation ethnographic descriptions social network analysis gis mapping increased social infrastructure communityendorsed fiveyear plan established regional and international partnerships brentwood community health care assessment (goodman et al. 2014) this project assessed health care utilisation and identified existing barriers to health care access community members academiccommunity research partnership community based participatory research cbpr approaches survey instrument improved data collection provided access to a vulnerable community end-of-life conversations and care: an asset-based model for community engagement (matthiesen et al. 2014) authors describe use and results of an asset-based approach to facilitate community-led awareness initiatives concerning end-of-life conversations and care co-creators involvement community engagement communityled awareness communityidentified priorities asset-based community engagement four-step process of engagement an approach other communities can use to catalyse communityled awareness initiatives and sustainable community engagement table 4 continued busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 16 we observe that all of the above articles begin with a mandate for utilising the results of a participatory process to contribute to social change by producing an actionable outcome. while a further examination of the elements which contribute to successful movement from new knowledge to collective impact/social change is outside the scope of this review, further analysis could contribute to an understanding of how truly effective ccred can be conducted. discussion this review sought to document the current understanding, use and measures of ccred. taken together, the results of the review suggest that, although various practices are shared across disciplines, ccred currently operates without a common definition, with limited standards for implementing tools/methods and, most notably, with a lack of standards for evaluating outcomes quality, including whether change and action occurred and their impact. throughout the review process, we found ourselves frequently asking ‘what counts as collaborative?’ ‘what counts as change?’ and ‘what counts as research?’ we call on all who labour in ccred arenas to actively work towards a shared understanding of ccred and from it develop and validate measures to further legitimise it, while continuing to create new methods of approach to ccred work. below we consider some important observations and questions regarding ccred. what terminology is used and how is collaboration defined within ccred across disciplines? most reviewed articles (86%) describe ‘participants’ as those from whom data is collected. the terminology here often relies on the naming of some characteristics describing the participants (e.g. age, ethnicity, cultural grouping, place of residence). in contrast, ‘partners or collaborators’, as noted in 14 percent of the articles, participated in the design or implementation of the collaborative change effort. the difference in terminology between participants and partners/ collaborators seems to denote that there is recognition by authors that a greater level of involvement – collaboration – is a distinguishing feature of ccred and that the nature of the work is changed by this attribute. ‘community members’ was the most commonly used term for those who collaborate. however, other terminology, such as ‘co-researchers’, ‘co-creators’ and ‘co-enquirers’, was also used and seemed to imply that they were more fully engaged throughout the research process and, at the highest level of engagement, their specific knowledge frameworks were utilised and honoured (hall & tandon 2017). we urge those who engage in ccred efforts to (1) consider that deeper engagement with participants, that is, making an effort to engage them as partners or collaborators, leads to more effective results and greater social change impact, while also being more in line with the emerging ethos of ccred; and (2) use more specific terminology to define the collaborator roles, in conjunction with ‘levels of engagement’, in order to create a more common understanding across studies. what types of frameworks/approaches are being used within ccred?  it appears that determining how best to approach ccred is as complex an undertaking as the problems that the work is attempting to address. while we discovered that some frameworks are more prevalent in education (par, ar) and healthcare-related (cbpr) projects, the frameworks and variations identified in our review were used broadly across all activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 17 disciplines and industry-based contexts represented within the 236 articles. additionally, most authors did not utilise specific frameworks exclusively; rather, they drew upon multiple frameworks or approaches to support their ccred projects. regarding ccred frameworks, we question: (1) do authors lack clarity on distinctions between the various participatory approaches they name? (2) do authors focus on commonalities rather than distinctions among various frameworks to guide their work? (3) do ccred practitioners blend multiple frameworks to create an investigative approach because the available distinct frameworks are inadequate to address context-specific problems? reliance on multiple frameworks may be, in part, due to the newness and evolving nature of participatory approaches. burke et al. (2013) provide an example of how participatory research evolves to address context-specific challenges. they describe how comparative effectiveness research (cer) can address newly installed legislative requirements for engaging stakeholders by utilising cbpr practices. adopting cbpr within cer blends approaches to create new, interdisciplinary investigative frameworks and collaborations. cope et al. (2019) suggest that a new field of inquiry, engagement science, is emerging to help researchers determine which frameworks to apply in order to best engage multiple stakeholders. they describe five traditions of engaged science: action research; community-engaged research; citizen science/ public participation in scientific research; team science; and patient-centered research/ patient-centered outcomes research. their taxonomy is helpful for ccred project leaders seeking clarity about how participatory frameworks are both connected to and distinct from one another by identifying their origins and their characteristic contributions to participatory research. we suggest that the ccred community would be well served by a process of collaboratively creating a methodological guidebook which provides definitions, best practices, and guidance around existent and emerging participatory frameworks and methodologies. what are the methods and tools used in ccred? the most commonly mentioned methods/tools described in the reviewed articles were artsbased methods or qualitative methods, such as interviews, case studies and observations. this is not surprising, given that arts-based methods are ideal for ccred because they allow personal expression and critical inquiry as part of the research process (thomas & rappaport 1996) and also have the potential to be supportive, collaborative and participative, and to enhance connections with people so as to share visions for the improvement of society (lowe 2001). furthermore, traditional research approaches often do not provide a creative avenue for researchers to express themselves, nor do they increase engagement in the research process (bringle et al. 2012). the use of interviews and other qualitative research methods serve a purpose in ccred efforts as they are often more accessible and easily implemented by collaborators not academically trained in research, evaluation or design. meyer (2000) explains that qualitative methods are frequently used in action research because qualitative research methods facilitate simultaneous focus on the process and the outcomes of change inherent in action research. almost a third of the reviewed articles did not mention a specific method or tool. it is possible that specific methods and tools were not referred to because authors believed that methods were implied by specifying a participatory approach, such as action research or community-based participatory research. or they might not have thought it necessary to mention specific methods or tools in the abstracts. one limitation of our work is that we reviewed only abstracts and not the full articles where details on methods or tools might busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 18 have been provided. regardless, there is a need for methods and tools that fully engage stakeholders and partners in all aspects of the research process, regardless of their educational or professional background, demographics, or level of experience. to this end, we recommend expanding one’s methodological toolkit for ccred to become familiar with methods and tools that allow for ease of collaboration and promote transformation/change. for example, group-level assessment (vaughn & lohmueller 2014) and concept mapping methodology (trochim & kane 2005; vaughn & mclinden 2016) are two participatory methodologies that actively engage stakeholders in the research process and have action steps built into the process. when change/action is discussed, what is the nature of the change/ action in ccred and how is it measured/evaluated? in terms of reporting change and action, more questions than answers were provided in the literature we reviewed. of the 236 abstracts, only 14 clearly indicated that action was taken, while 23 included a report of change. and only half (7) of the articles clearly linked that the action taken was what led to the reporting of change. numerous questions remain concerning what authors considered ‘action’ and what was reportable ‘change’. as the field of ccred continues to develop in terms of creating a shared definition and expanding the options for effective methods and tools, it is imperative that we develop measures which define and evaluate the quality of ccred. some of the articles in this review reported outcomes such as participants becoming more aware or knowledgeable about an issue. in other articles, the change was in the form of a deliverable – a new protocol, strategy, curriculum, or framework. while such outcomes can be positive contributions to communities, it is difficult to determine if action-oriented change was achieved. we also wrestled with issues of how ccred is situated in a system that has been created for, and therefore promotes, traditional research. the nature of ccred is that it is inherently an iterative process and can often be time consuming. it is not unusual for a ccred practitioner to work with an individual community or on a particular issue for the duration of their career. in an academic system that touts a ‘publish or perish’ mentality, the researcher is forced to write and report ‘change’, no matter its significance or contribution. in our review, we observed that ccred articles are distributed in publications singularly focused on either process or results. this is a strategy that responds to the demands of the academy and its focus on publication. many of the articles we reviewed were what we deemed ‘process-oriented’. while there are potentially numerous reasons for this, we suggest it is often due to the centrality of relationship building in conducting ccred (silka 2005). we therefore call on ccred authors to present both process and results as a complete narrative, even when publishing across multiple journals. we suggest, also, the importance of transparently sharing the entirety of work on a project-centric platform (e.g. research gate) or, more optimistically, calling for the creation of such a platform specifically for ccred. conclusion there is a growing appreciation of the benefits of ccred, leading to a desire, and increasingly an expectation, that work which seeks to effect positive change be undertaken in collaboration with those for whom the change will be most relevant (e.g. public and patient engagement focus on the patient-centered outcomes research institute, patient experience and involvement within england’s national health service, etc.). as with any emerging activating social change together: a qualitative synthesis of collaborative change research, evaluation and design literature gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 19 practice, patterns of productive methodology, as well as gaps which prevent progress, are becoming apparent. it is our hope that this review provides those concerned with practising ccred an opportunity to 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partnership for the public’s health, vol. 5, pp. 1–6. busch, jean-baptiste, person, vaughn gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 26 https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190243654.003.0030 https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190243654.003.0030 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: malone, m., davis, j., muecke, s., schwartz, k., trudel, c., weaver, l. 2025. editorial: writing research differently. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1– 9. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v18i1.9579 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 editorial writing research differently margaret malone1, jourdan davis2, stephen muecke3, karen schwartz4, chantal trudel5, liz weaver6 1 executive editor, gateways journal, university of technology sydney 2 assistant professor, political science and public administration, university of north carolina charlotte 3 senior research fellow, nulungu research institute, the university of notre dame australia 4 professor emeritus, school of social work, carleton university 5 director, school of industrial design, carleton university 6 former co-ceo, tamarack institute, canada corresponding author: margaret malone, margaret.malone@uts.edu.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9579 article history: received 17/12/2024; revised 28/01/2025; accepted 29/01/2025; published 01/2025 abstract this themed volume explores writing research differently: both the social practices that might foster experimentation and participation and the semiotic innovations needed to articulate knowledge plurality in our published scholarly texts. this collection of community-based research articles explores the many ways in which the standard genre conventions of the research article – order, structure, headings, images and quotes – can be creatively called upon to make visible on the page other worlds, other futures, other ways of knowing and being. together, they demonstrate that coherence and cohesion – clarity – come in more shapes and forms than generally admitted, and can be welcoming frameworks for the rarely admitted: hope, sustenance, complexity, conflict and change. keywords community-based research; research writing; journal practices; social semiotics; experimentation 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9579 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9579 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:margaret.malone@uts.edu.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9579 introduction there is a norm, and both writers and reviewers are conditioned toward that norm. but it begs the question that, outside of academic circles, how much of this research informs practice and why not? … there should be a research/practice/ learning/research/validation through publishing/practice improvement continuum of sorts but in each there are exit points which prevent continual improvement toward better outcomes for research and for communities. sigh. and so, we reinvent practice and research over and over again – all with the hope of improved outcomes. [liz weaver, co-editor] writing research differently responds to the idea that research is a process, and that the ‘output’, the finished research article that is published, has mostly deleted what went into making it: conversations, fieldwork, searches for data, readings, negotiations, first drafts, and so on. this is the stuff of communitybased research and engagement – knowledge democracy, participation and collaboration – but is rarely acknowledged within traditional publication processes. so, once the manuscript is submitted to the journal in response to the call for proposals, the process goes on: more reading, peer review, editorial consultation, revisions and resubmission. if ‘the thinking is in the writing’, as is often said, then it is also in the collaborations, the thinking together that both community-based research and journal production foster. there is also an epistemological perspective to ‘research as process’ that interrogates the communicative framework. in the natural and social sciences, the idea of ‘writing up’ research has come to been seen as some sort of neutral, unengaged act of transcription, the transparent representation of the object. this epistemological framing sets up an artificial divide between the subject position of the writer (and reader) over here, while the object lies at some distance over there, a divide that is properly bridged through the orderly, linear, disinterested use of language. as if in writing there were not a constant zig-zagging, with detours and corrections, as a pathway is found for the writing to follow. the object – be it research findings, methodology, partnerships, theory or much else besides – has to be represented in some way in the writing, certainly. but we should not forget how the subject is also constructed as relatively distant or engaged, masterful or modestly unknowing; in other words, as a subjectivity that engages (or not!) the reader’s interest from the moment they open the journal to read the articles. establishing, justifying, stabilising the multiple relationships in a text, any text, is hard work. this is especially true in texts where much is at stake, such as in peer-reviewed research articles. here, social, epistemological and material goods such as legitimacy, credibility and authority are very much at play (gee 2014). this is the critical work that authors of community-based research and practice engage in when they share their collaborative efforts in an academic journal. we can think of this as the rhetorical work of communication, occurring within – and against – an institutionalised genre, with its particular rules of the game. charles bazerman (1988, p. 6) gives a helpful definition of rhetoric, as ‘the study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities. rhetoric is ultimately a practical study offering people greater control over their symbolic activity’. he goes on to make plain the connection between rhetorical strategies and genre writing: ‘as these solutions become familiar, accepted, and molded through repeated use, they gain institutional force. thus, though genre emerges out of contexts, it becomes part of the context for future work’ (bazerman 1988, p. 8). a very good example of this is the standard organisation of the research article: introduction-method-results-discussion. evolved over time as a means of organising and prioritising different elements of an experiment in the natural sciences, it is now a widely used and expected feature of the scholarly communication of research that emanates far from the lab, including much social science and community-based research (malone 2024). yet these same conventions can also be viewed as a ‘way in’, the tangible means by which we can challenge habitual routes or explore alternative communicative pathways for sharing new and diverse knowledges and practices. following understandings such as those proposed by social semiotics and critical malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 discourse analysis, this volume examines the research article as a specialised genre, whose development over time emerged as part and parcel of language-use-in-the-world in specific, recurring contexts for specific social purposes (atkinson 1999). moreover, the genre continues to evolve, shaped by and constitutive of larger, ongoing, contested worlds. by this understanding, genre conventions are resources to be grasped, not rules to be adhered to. at least, not in this volume. as norman fairclough (2003, p. 69, italics in the original) noted, genre should be understood as ‘a potential which is variably drawn upon in actual texts and interactions’. this volume sought to experiment with this inherent potential in order to make more visible on the page the values, standards and methodologies of engaged research and practice: participatory practices, reciprocity, knowledge democracy, shared authority, relevance and accessibility. anna tsing (2015, p. vii) puts it well: humans cannot survive by stomping on all the others … the time has come for new ways of telling true stories beyond civilizational first principles. without man and nature, all creatures can come back to life, and men and women can express themselves without the strictures of a parochially imagined rationality. this editorial thus works as we hope to carry on: by valuing transparency, accountability and experimentation. the following discussion features some of the many written contributions to this volume, including quotes from external reviewers, participating authors and some of our own reflections on the process and outcomes. together, we hope they give a sense of the thoughtful and generous zig-zagging undertaken by the various interested and invested parties to this volume, keen to help clear new rhetorical pathways that rigorous, critical and relevant writing might adopt. we highlight some of the important solutions and innovations that authors developed, and finish with a few reflections by the editorial team. the process, and some early reflections this themed volume was co-led by an editorial team of margaret malone, jourdan davis, stephen muecke, karen schwartz, chantal trudel and liz weaver. of the 20 proposals submitted to the call by late january 2024, we invited 15 of them to submit full manuscripts by june of that same year. in the intervening period, across march, april and may, the editorial team held a series of voluntary online writers’ workshops for all to collaboratively support manuscript development. given the geographic spread, we split into two teams, roughly breaking into one group for those in the americas (nine author teams, with karen, chantal, jourdan, liz and margaret), and another group with those from europe, africa and australasia (six author teams, with stephen and margaret). each group offered three workshops, to allow for differences in availability. most authors and editors attended two workshops. the workshops were loosely but intentionally structured. the first workshop was a place for all attendees to introduce themselves, their partnerships/collaborations and the focus of their work. we asked: ‘what is it that you want to talk about in your manuscripts? what do you want to make visible in the text that might normally be excluded? how might you do it?’ in the second, we focused on the research article as a form of genre writing, concentrating on its ‘top-level’ conventions: authorship, the organisation, introduction and sub-headings, and emphasis on the written word and archives (as opposed to images, speech, art, movement, memories, for example). we discussed the potential impact and (ir)relevance of these features for communicating community-based research and practice, and ways they might be used, modified or replaced with alternatives. in the third workshop, we focused on authors developing their manuscripts and sharing their approaches, insights and challenges. following are some quotes from submitting author participants about writing research differently, its relevance to their work and the workshop process: it’s been a huge challenge in allowing the traditional system of ethics approval to make space for communities to generate their own frameworks of knowledge production … so, in terms of how our methodology informs writing research differently, it begins with this ethical stance. malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 in these communities where the walking happens, small torches will light the way when they have to walk in the dark, which was one of the main findings from the study about the perils of walking at night and during load shedding. so, literally, starting the paper with a walk, where we’re brought along this journey. you know, [it’s been] eye opening. and i think i’ve learned so many lessons now with understanding this field that i’ve been working in for so long, and actually not really knowing it, to be honest. i had to be very frank and honest with myself, just viewing it from an academic lens … reading what you shared on the screen now, just shows the transformation of doing and writing research differently. i kind of feel that what we did today was a bit of peer review in a very non-traditional, non-structured, unstructured, or differently structured sense. in giving feedback that was conversational and engaging. which is often not the way the peer review is done … but [here] doing it in very much a collaborative sense, which is in the spirit of this special volume. of the 15 accepted proposals, we received 11 full manuscripts. each submission was read by two editors, who then shared their assessment with the full editorial team. assessment focused on the following key questions: • does it respond to the focus of this themed volume to ‘write research differently’? • is it an example of community–university engaged research and/or practice? • is there a clear and compelling focus and purpose to the manuscript? • how might it be strengthened or improved? editors could choose from the following recommendations: • accept for external peer review • request revisions (ranging from minor to major – be specific) • decline (consider whether a general volume of gateways would be suitable) each editor took responsibility for particular manuscripts, seeing them through all the subsequent stages of reviews and revisions. not all have reached publication, for a whole range of reasons. even at launch, two were not quite ready, and will be added soon (we hope). finding the time and resources for writing, editing and reviewing is getting harder and harder. this is another reality of research that is too often left up to individuals to somehow grapple with. we designed the collaborative editorial processes and workshops for this themed volume as integral elements of writing research differently. although as yet only small steps, they signal important alternative approaches to traditional journal operations. experiments in writing research differently: what the reviewers pondered my review relies on two sets of criteria: the reviewer guidelines for gateways and the criteria implied in the call for the special issue on writing research differently. … if the theme of the special issue is ‘writing research differently’, then i expect the writing itself (the style of writing, if you like, not just the processes of research and collaborative writing workshops) to exemplify difference. [reviewer 6, emphasis in the original] this paper is a creative essay that intentionally departs from academic writing standards. both the summary and the introduction are very clear about this and the reader is gently encouraged to accept these malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 premises … i’m not entirely sure what ‘reviewing’ this kind of paper might mean and overall recommend to accept this submission as it is. [reviewer 3] seventeen external reviewers participated in this volume, based in angola, australia, belgium, canada, germany, new zealand, south africa and the usa. in all, they contributed just over 13,500 words. as shown above, reviewers were attentive to the specific theme of this volume. some key themes emerged in their recommendations regarding writing research differently but still persuasively. the work of social semiotician gunther kress is useful here. kress (2010, p. 148) writes: [a] text is a multimodal semiotic entity, seen as ‘having completeness’ by those who engage with it. its sense of completeness derives from a (shared) understanding of the social occasions in which it was produced, in which it functions or to which it alludes. the text has features of internal and external cohesion and, as an integrated meaning-entity, of coherence. cohesion and coherence were repeatedly central concerns of the external reviewers. the key marker they used to assess these qualities was ‘clarity’: what’s going on here, where are we going, and why? the traditional linear, orderly structure of the research article – introduction, literature review, method, results, discussion – goes a long way to settling in advance questions related to what should be included, where and with what prominence. moving away from this conventional framework throws the burden of finding credible alternative rhetorical solutions onto the authors. this is not easy work. how do we differently maintain and communicate clearly and coherently all the elements that are part of participatory research and practice? because this is a different kind of approach than a conventional km paper, the demands for clarity in explaining things and organising the text are higher. … what’s missing is the connective ‘tissue’ that brings the story together in a way that someone can better learn from as a whole, not just the parts. [reviewer 11] at the end of section 4 [you write]: ‘the process of writing this article has allowed us to reflect over time and to make the emerging community build up slowly’ – maybe show this more explicitly in the structure of the article: maybe explain a bit more in detail what the emerging community of practice looks like or in what ways relationships ‘have taken on a life beyond the initial meeting’. [reviewer 2] using the figure elements as the central coherency thread would provide a touchpoint for the reader to orient and reorient with the paper’s purpose as they progress through the narrative. this could perhaps be achieved by simply using the same category names throughout the descriptive content … [reviewer 9] it was especially important for authors to establish clarity of direction and purpose in the introduction section. this is true for any research article: research has long shown that an article’s introduction is often the most contested, revised and commented-upon section (knorr-cetina 1981; latour 1987). perhaps not surprisingly, a very dominant genre convention has emerged to respond to this need, first described by genre analyst john swales as a three-step move to ‘create a research space’. this rhetorical strategy is commonplace in social science research articles, including (with modifications) in community-based research. the threestep move involves: one, establish a research territory through reference to the literature; two, find a gap; and three, fill the gap with your present research (swales 1990, 2004). it is responsible for setting up all that follows, balancing the tension between novelty and recognition. first of all, i think the article would benefit from a more ‘standard’ introduction section. while the very comprehensive introduction of the [project] is interesting, i am not sure whether … it is the focus per se. an introduction would also be useful to clarify a bit more specifically, what the purpose/s of the article are. [reviewer 2] malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 i am also curious how research ‘gaps’ replicate a colonial perspective. ‘oh, look at the gap i found; i think i’ll set up my homestead’, the settler in my head murmurs when i hear someone telling a student to find a gap. meanwhile, the ‘gap’ is teeming with growth and movement. your paper captures this – but i think a bit more unsettling the gap could add more poetry and play to your creative and curious writing style. [reviewer 8] reviewers also drew attention to the occasional loss of material, both theoretical and ‘real world’. this was particularly true for references to the literature. authors were perhaps unsure of how and where to include it, if one no longer had recourse to, or wanted to separate it within, the ‘literature review’ section. the result was that previous scholarly work was sometimes left out. a number of reviewers urged restitution: its involvement in dialogue with other expert contributors was a crucial way to make visible on the page the epistemological and methodological framework of the research being described. its situated inclusion actively contributed to the authors’ objectives. further work is needed to put the article into dialogue with existing scholarship, as citations are light and could be engaged with more thoroughly … further theoretical engagement with the collaborator statements will also address this concern. [reviewer 5] i appreciate you are trying to circumvent traditional academic conventions (for example literature review) but, at the same time, this literature is actually highly relevant to your argument … i think this sustained ‘academic advocacy’ is crucial to the point you are trying to make and needs to be acknowledged to develop your argument wholly. [reviewer 7] other missing details also concerned the very real world of context and collaboration, as well as manuscript co-production: my first suggestion would be to help us [the reader] get a more precise idea of the ‘kind of research’ the authors are usually doing … i was left with a sense of intangibility that contrasted with the importance given to actual commitment to communities in their own environments and political struggles. [reviewer 3] i missed a discussion on the production of the manuscript. was this a collaborative effort? if so, what was the process, who was included and in what roles? [reviewer 6] innovations in writing research differently, and why this matters charles bazerman (1988, p. 62) argues that the traditional scientific research article has only one ‘accountability’: ‘scientific discourse, therefore, is built on accountability to empirical fact … over all other possible accountabilities (such as to ancient texts, theory, social networks, grant-giving agencies), and must subordinate other forms of accountability … to the empirical accountability’. community-based research and practice, in contrast, seeks to uphold multiple obligations – to subject (author and reader), to the object, to context and history, and to reciprocal and respectful relationships, both human and more-than human. the task we have explored in this themed volume is how to communicate in writing those multiple, diverse and complex accountabilities. this volume contains at launch five experiments in doing just this, plus a final article that critically and comprehensively examines the pressing reasons for doing so. we are thankful to baptiste godrie for this contribution; he has done much of the heavy lifting required to put this volume in its wider context. below are our small descriptive impressions of the five experimental research articles, stepping stones into the volume. individually and as a whole these contributions show how we can engage more vigorously with the conventions of scholarly writing and experiment with alternative rhetorical strategies as rigorous elements malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 in communicating new knowledges and important practices. they use movement, space, different notions of time, voices, stories, transcripts and anecdotes, drawings, photographs and graphs, metaphors, the seasons, the sharing of food and much more besides to record research differently. the result is a noticeable absence of hierarchy; instead, a sharing of this space. these articles are not predicated on scarcity and competition – as commodities are in the market economy – rather, as robin wall kimmerer (2020) writes, they are explorations of abundance and reciprocity, in which ‘all flourishing is mutual’. the articles experimenting with twilight learnings and twilight writings for community engagement we were charmed by the character of the tiny house on wheels. it was like a travelling diplomat, moving from place to place engaging different kinds of people’s interest in living differently. the tiny house thus seemed to create its own mobile alternative ‘network’, as the writing made good use of the insights of actor network theory. the process of writing and the article itself made space for the hidden and ‘marginal’ stages of a research project – sometimes troubled, more often hopeful. in doing so, the authors were able to bring together a ‘community of actors’, including the tiny house as a very active object, to assemble ways of making and knowing ‘different kinds of worlds’. a curated walk with peer researchers and their communities: engaging a research journey toward meaningful impact using an honest and refreshing royal ‘we’, the author collective demonstrates how writing with peer researchers can build important reflective bridges across geographies and lived realities. providing a curated narrative of how young men from low-income communities in london and cape town experience walking in their respective cities, they trouble the conventional thinking about young men as ‘invulnerable and walking without concern’. while showing that peer researchers are indeed experts of their own lives who provide pivotal first-hand data that should – ideally – be central to any progressive urban mobility policy worth its salt, the authors also give a detailed account of what it takes to practically steer a meandering ‘walking-writing’ process. as they argue, positioning curation as an ethics of care and act of solidarity is premised on mutual but differentiated lines of accountability. while being mindful of the multiple power imbalances – between center and periphery, north and south, young and old – and mitigating them wherever possible, the authors are also transparent about the specific allocation of research and writing tasks and how these were woven together in the vignettes shared. in combining the actualities of walking with the possibilities of informing future mobility policies through a collaborative writing process, the authors offer new pathways for propositional community-based research. curating life in vacant spaces: community action research and reversing the process of academic knowledge-making broken spaces, such as those that resulted after the earthquakes in christchurch, aotearoa new zealand, in 2010 and 2011, create powerful opportunities for renewal, reconnection, innovation and action. the authors of this article identify that broken spaces don’t benefit from frameworks and research but rather from the immediacy of action and response. they invite readers to join them on a backwards journey, from immediate action, through impact, clarifying results through organising frameworks and finally to consider the research question. during this backwards journey, the authors ask compelling questions about impact, sensemaking and academic research. they also consider how the use of a ‘thinking framework’ to organise the research may actually hinder the results. in this article, the authors describe their research as a curation and narration malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 approach. the actions speak first, the impact follows. this approach enables action and emergence in generative and compelling ways. reflections on multimodality: making the most of kairotic moments this article is in one sense about letting go – letting go of prosaic written language privileged in ‘traditional’ academic writing which, by and large, can’t convey experience. to do this, the authors embraced a multimodal approach to explore possibilities for sharing insights with friendship groups of people living with dementia. this involved drawing on visual communication and creative approaches to knowledge mobilisation. the authors also let go of conventional research schedules in adopting a kairotic methodology. serendipitous occurrences in the research process – a chance meeting or a new experience – are unpredictable but potentially transformative. participatory esol as process and product: community-based participatory research with refugee english learners this article intertwines two types of stories. the first story is that of the researchers as they engaged with and adapted the curriculum of an english as a second language (esol) program to be more relevant and engaging for the students and themselves. inviting students to write and share their stories of experience created deeper connections, understanding and language competency. the article also provides a theoretical context for this curriculum adaptation. participatory practice is not new to the community sector: sharing its insights in the scholarly literature in ways that do not ‘filter’ the students’ insights through scholarly expertise is important. in the classroom, teachers and students collaboratively build and interpret the curriculum; in the article, the participants’ voices and lived experiences are weaved with theory. in both spaces, the esol program participants bring rich cultural histories which, when explored, create bridges to their new country. some final reflections, from the editors i guess the insight for me is, it went beyond the how to write research differently, to how to review, how to review research differently. and then how do you talk about that? so basically, i’m saying that i think that there’s several different conversations that came out of this experience. so, like, do we need more discussions about the methodologies? do we need more examples of how research could be done differently? do we need more examples of how [research could] be written up differently? do we need more discussions about peer review? and so, i think that that’s something that we could talk about … because the idea is so different that every aspect of the process needs to be reevaluated. i think it’s moving towards a greater transparency about process, that [in] the traditional production of an academic article, all the peripheral stuff falls away, and you’re left with a beautiful, finished product. but we’re trying to be transparent about all the other bits and pieces that unnecessarily get removed in the process. i think the spark for me [is] that the innovation is actually the fact that we have a journal coming out. that’s the innovation. all the articles that appear in this journal, because, like, we could have had 30 people doing the training and all that kind of stuff, and ended up with 0 right? and it might not be cohesive, might not be comprehensive. it might not be all the things we had hoped it would be. but we’re starting a journey. and this is the first step of the journey. so, the innovation is the fact that we actually have something at the end of the journey. malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 and i think, you know, from my perspective, not being an academic or in the academic realm, it’s felt a little bit like i’ve been a fish out of my water that i swim in. so yeah, so that’s always kind of like weird. so, like, even though the whole point of this was to make it more accessible, the fact that you still felt like a fish out of water might be worth noting in our editorial about how, even when we put in this effort, there’s still so much work to be done. i wonder what might be done differently, should a second edition of writing research differently be done? references atkinson, d 1999, scientific discourse in sociohistorical context: the philosophical transactions of the royal society of london, 1675-1975, routledge. bazerman, c 1988, shaping written knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article in science, the university of wisconsin press. fairclough, n 2003, analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research, routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203697078 gee, jp 2014, an introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method (4th ed.), routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9781315819679 kimmerer, rw 2020, ‘the serviceberry: an economy of abundance’, emergence magazine, vol. 10. knorr-cetina, kd 1981, the manufacture of knowledge: an essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science, pergamon press. kress, g 2010, multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, routledge. latour, b 1987, science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society, harvard university press. malone, m 2024, writing research differently: how community-university partnerships re-imagine the research article, cambridge scholars publishing. swales, jm 1990, genre analysis: english in academic and research settings, cambridge university press. swales, jm 2004, research genres: exploration and applications, cambridge university press. tsing, a 2015, the mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins, princeton university press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873548 malone et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203697078 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203697078 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315819679 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315819679 https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873548 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 2 december 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: vargiu, a., cocco, m., ghibellini, v. 2019. ensuring durability of communityuniversity engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6726. http:dx.doi. org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6726 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops andrea vargiu, mariantonietta cocco, valentina ghibellini department of humanities and social sciences, university of sassari, italy corresponding author: andrea vargiu; avargiu@uniss.it doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6726 article history: received 09/08/2019; revised 21/11/2019; accepted 12/12/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract universities’ community engagement is confronted with growing pressure from increased competition and marketisation of knowledge, along with widespread adoption of new public management measures. this context is notably challenging for forms of engagement that are based on such principles and practices as cooperation, knowledge democracy and public value. within this framework, this article identifies competencies and strategies that may ensure durability of community-university partnerships. the article presents the results of two different, yet coherently connected, research endeavours on science shops in europe. science shops are a unique way to organise relationships between science and society mainly by responding to research questions arising from citizens and/or civil society organisations (csos), usually by means of a participatory methodology and active involvement of students. empirical evidence for this article was gathered by means of a wide range of different techniques, such as structured questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, direct observation and document analysis. in the first research effort, a questionnaire was delivered to european science shops in order to produce mainly descriptive statistics prior to progressing to case studies and focus groups which would generate more in-depth knowledge and understanding. the second study program was connected to formative and summative evaluation of a european commission funded project aimed at embedding responsible research and innovation (rri) in higher education curricula through science shops (namely enrrich declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6726 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6726 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:avargiu@uniss.it http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6726 – enhancing responsible research and innovation through curricula in higher education). participatory evaluation was carried out mainly on pilot projects run by project partners. results are discussed in the light of relevant literature regarding possible strategic assets that may enable science shops and community engagement units to overcome observed fragility and ensure durability. this can be pursued through systematic mobilisation of specific knowledge, competencies and abilities. combinatory capacity and boundary spanning are pinpointed as specific components of science shops’ action, which – we maintain – are also key strategic assets to consolidate their role and ensure durability. the distinction between the ‘instrumental/operational’ and ‘strategic’ function of boundary spanning is introduced in order to analytically develop this argument. keywords: community engagement, higher education, science shops, knowledge brokers, boundary spanners, systemic alignment introduction the extent and pace of change faced by societies across the world in the last two decades of the 21st century has been unprecedented, and this has deeply impacted the way knowledge is now produced and shared. higher education systems (hess) and higher education institutions (heis) have faced profound transformation, and the life of people working in these institutions today is extremely different from that of their colleagues 30 or 40 years ago. while some authors have pointed out a progressive shift from what they called mode 1 to mode 2 of scientific work (gibbons et al. 1994), a parallel shift was also observed to be taking place at the very heart of the world’s leading economy as to its core components. in 1994, economist john w kendrick observed that the stock of gross capital and gross real investments in the immaterial sector of the united states business economy was, for the first time in history, higher than that of the material sector. according to kendrick (1994, p. 6), the same shift was observable in the economy of the usa between 1980 and 1990 and, subsequently, in several other countries (see roth and thum 2010 for a literature overview). official statistics account for knowledge and information as relevant components of the immaterial sector, hence their growing relevance as strategic assets and economic goods. the notion of a ‘knowledge economy’, an expression coined in the early 1960s by fritz machlup (1962), has grown progressively crucial to the research and education policy agenda (godin 2002). the neoliberal orientation of public policy and the ensuing changes in the private sector favoured by progressive market deregulation, along with transformation of world trade and new forms and distribution of labour, are some of the most relevant components of structural change that have led to progressive commodification and marketisation of knowledge throughout the latter part of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st. in parallel, and both as a consequence and a driving factor, public institutions across the world – heis among them – have been called upon to adopt new organisational and governance arrangements in line with the directives of new public management (clark 2002; hood 1995). we see this context as challenging to forms of engagement that are based on such principles and practices as cooperation, knowledge democracy and public value. furthermore, along with the profound consequences of the radical technological shift came totally different approaches to the way knowledge is governed, produced and used. stilgoe, vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 owen & macnaghten (2013, p. 1568) note that ‘in the second half of the 20th century, … science and innovation have become increasingly intertwined and formalised within research policy …, and … the power of technology to produce both benefit and harm has become clearer.’ this, they argue, implies the reframing of the public value of science and of knowledge production regimes. in parallel, technological advances in collecting and sharing information have opened up the possibility for an increasing number and variety of people to participate in science; hence, the rise of research practices which tend to hybridise expert and non-expert inputs and, more generally, the increasing spread of open science. object and rationale the scenario synthetically sketched above is a challenging one for engaged research and community-university cooperation, notably for intentional initiatives that aim to achieve structural continuity. it sets the contextual framework for a broad research question as to whether and how community-engaged research and teaching can persist and eventually evolve within such a challenging setting. to address this wide-ranging issue, our research focuses on the durability and vulnerability of the ‘science shops’, which originated in the netherlands in the early 1970s. this makes them an interesting case study for our questioning, since their existence spans the last 50 years, which is when the major changes outlined above took place. we highlight some key moments in the history of the science shops movement; examine current practices and modes of operation; and draw on empirical research to identify competencies, actions and strategies that can strengthen organisational capacity to ensure the durability of these university-community partnerships into the future. to do so, we discuss some results from two separate empirical research and study programs concerning science shops in europe. we anticipate that one main finding will be that responses are very context specific. this is a partial answer, which we will try to enrich by highlighting some regular patterns that emerge from empirical observation. in this way, some inferences arising from our evidence can be extended beyond that geographic area. the two research streams actually originated from somewhat different research questions. however, looking retrospectively at the two relatively specific sets of data emerging from the two studies, we came to realise that they could be combined to converge into a common analytical framework, which is presented and discussed here. the first set of data provides descriptive statistics to illustrate some of the key features of science shops’ organisational structure and modus operandi. furthermore, it sets the argument for further analysis from the second research stream, since the questionnaire survey results provide evidence that a crucial component of both the work process and the outcomes of science shops is relationships. this provides the analytical key that is hereafter developed to present and discuss some of the evidence emerging from peer evaluation of the enrrich project, our second research stream. two analytical tools will be used in this respect: knowledge brokering and boundary spanning. the former is used mainly to shed light on the role of science shops in the knowledge (co)production process. we briefly argue that the use of this notion can contribute to the debate on abilities and competencies needed for organising and running engaged teaching and research. it is thus considered mainly for its heuristic value in analysing individual work and its organisational dimension. although partially overlapping with the notion of knowledge brokering, boundary spanning is hereafter used to articulate the analysis of the elements which characterise science shops’ work at a more strategic level. notably, we introduce a distinction between ‘instrumental’ and ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 ‘strategic’ boundary spanning. the former refers to the operational and organisational level: this is the analytic declination of the concept which is commonly found in the literature. our evidence brings to light a further functional dimension of boundary spanning which we define ‘strategic’ to delineate a specific ambit of actions which can be observed at different intraand inter-institutional levels to ensure sustainability and durability over time. methodology in the first research segment, a questionnaire was delivered to european science shops to secure mainly descriptive statistics prior to embarking on case studies and focus groups, which would generate more in-depth knowledge and understanding. all european members of the living knowledge network, as registered on the network’s website at the time of survey (2016), were invited to fill in the questionnaire online. notwithstanding several solicitations, only 25 out of 65 organisations responded. five questionnaires were not retained for various reasons. hence, results were drawn from a total of 20 questionnaires, which was around 30 per cent of the targeted population. this response rate is generally considered usual for selfadministered questionnaires. response rate and self-selection of respondents do not allow for generalisation of results. a focus group was organised to discuss evidence emerging from the survey with three key persons in the living knowledge network who were chosen for their extensive knowledge and practice in science shops: emma mckenna (coordinator of queen’s university belfast science shop), henk mulder (coordinator of bèta wetenschapswinkel at university of groningen) and norbert steinhaus (board member of wissenschaftsladen bonn: bonn science shop). in addition, participant observation and structured document analysis of science shops in ireland (seven months) and italy (one year) was drawn on to complete our knowledge emerging from the survey and focus group and gain a more thorough understanding of issues and dynamics. the second research stream considered in this article relates to formative and summative evaluation of the enrrich project aimed at embedding responsible research and innovation (rri) in higher education curricula through science shops (see the project’s website at www.enrrich.eu). this research was primarily driven by key questioning, such as ‘what works (or doesn’t) work?’ and ‘how and why does this happen?’ the study mainly concerned the piloting by enrrich consortium members of activities aimed at embedding rri in their own institution. in total, 150 pilots were run, engaging more than 6000 students mainly involved in bachelor and master’s programs, and touching upon different disciplines within a total of 79 university courses. in accordance with the project’s objectives, a total of 231 civil society organisations (csos) were involved in the planning and delivering of pilots. the 11 enrrich consortium members who ran pilots make up the 11 case studies that provided empirical data for what we hereafter will refer to as the enrrich study. empirical evidence was collected by participants in the project through mutual evaluation activities based on non-standard, in-depth research techniques such as unstructured and semi-structured interviews, focus groups, analysis of documents and participant observation. interviewees and focus group participants were generally people responsible for pilots and other primary stakeholders, such as teachers, students and cso members (see vargiu 2018 for more details). results emerging from peer evaluation exercises were shared with both enrrich consortium and advisory board members by means of single reports that were vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 http://www.enrrich.eu progressively assembled and reorganised on the basis of insights emerging from cooperative analysis. origins and main features of science shops science shops are engaged research units which together are often referred to as a ‘movement’. as mentioned, they originated in the netherlands in the 1970s, but are today organised across europe in an informal network called living knowledge (lk). science shops are a distinctive way to organise the relationship between science and society. they act in different ways, yet often according to a collaborative approach (mulder & de bok 2006) and within a common operational framework conceived to respond to research questions arising from citizens and civil society organisations (csos). they are frequently university-based units, but several science shops are csos themselves and some are mixed entities. usually, science shops act as intermediaries that drive research projects through synergic involvement of different actors, such as students, csos, citizens and researchers. the direct active involvement of students is one distinctive feature of science shops. a science shop project is usually run by students under scientific supervision of academic tutors. this way, activities are typically run in synergy with ordinary teaching and research endeavours (mulder & de bok 2006; zaal & leydesdorff 1987). this ensures the relatively low costs of the research process along with the scientific robustness of its outcomes, which are strengthened through the synergic articulation of the research, teaching and service mission. the results of our data collection from 20 science shops via questionnaires largely confirms the above: the term ‘science shop’ actually does not designate a specific management, organisational model or institutional form, but rather a particular way to arrange science– society relationships within a common frame for action and a shared set of principles (fischer, leydesdorff & schophaus 2004; gnaiger & martin 2001; mulder et al. 2001). according to fischer et al. (2004), this very much depends on four interrelated factors which are often related to where and when the science shop was set up: (1) the condition of civil society and the ngo community; (2) political culture and public discourse; (3) resources; (4) science policy. similarly, in our results, of the 20 respondents, 14 were university-based units (of which 10 served the whole university, and four worked with a single department), while six science shops were non-university based (see graph 1; all graphs are contained in the supplementary file). further, as table 1 below shows, most science shops worked on a relatively small number of projects per year which tended to involve limited numbers of students (mostly on projects involving one–two students) and tutors. in this respect, the enrrich study allowed for distinction between what were defined as a ‘light’ and a ‘deep’ approach to students’ engagement. typically, the former allows for involvement of large numbers of students for relatively short time spans and generally implies feeble interactions with external stakeholders. this was the case, for instance, in hackathons that involved students for a whole day in addressing a community concern. on the contrary, a ‘deep’ approach is characteristic of a ‘classic’ science shop project which concerns just one to a few students who are called to effectively engage with community partners on a medium to long time span. these two ideal types require mobilisation of different capacities and result in rather diverse outcomes. provided that operational resources are available, they are compatible with each other, and were observed to be generally used to involve students at different stages of their study course and level of engagement maturation. ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 table 1 projects, students and tutors involved: median values and variability of distribution median min max lower quartile* upper quartile* per year projects 5,0 3,0 63,0 3,5 10,5 students 15,5 2,0 273,0 3,5 44,5 tutors 5,5 2,0 25,0 2,3 10,8 per project students 1,7 0,2 18,8 1,0 4,4 tutors 0,9 0,2 2,8 0,4 1,6 per student tutors 0,5 0,1 2,0 0,1 1,0 ects** 5,0 0,3 12,0 1,4 11,8 * quartiles are calculated excluding extreme values. ** ects is the acronym for european credit transfer system: it designates a standard measure to calculate study workload associated with a learning activity. later in this article, we will argue that the diversity of the science shops concept seen on the ground, along with agility connected to its relatively small dimensions, might be two relevant factors that have allowed the persistence of these experiences over time despite both institutional and political turbulence. one interesting result that emerged from our questionnaire survey was the change in disciplinary focus of the science shops’ projects over time. the origins of the science shop movement in the netherlands some 50 years ago were strongly connected to the growing attention at that time on environmental issues. hence, the first dutch science shops, albeit keen on interdisciplinary work, often focused on chemistry and other hard sciences (wachelder 2003). this is not the case today for our survey respondents, who run projects that are almost exclusively centred on the social sciences and humanities (graph 2). in our follow-up discussions with experts, this shift was thought to be most probably connected to the higher familiarity of social sciences researchers and students with communitybased participatory approaches, thus entailing more interest and willingness to engage in a science shop project. still, the shift points out the difficulty for ‘hard sciences’ to renew their commitment to working with societal stakeholders, at least through the science shop approach. in terms of impact, respondents considered students as the principal beneficiaries of activities, followed by science and society (graph 3). quite surprisingly, community members and other non-academic stakeholders were considered to be the least impacted. for students, involvement in science shop projects resulted in learning experiences that, notably, touched upon all five relevant components of the dublin descriptors (graph 4): • knowledge and understanding • applying knowledge and understanding • making judgements • communication • lifelong learning skills (https://ec.europa.eu/education/ects/users-guide/glossary_en.htm. accessed july 30th 2019). vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 https://ec.europa.eu/education/ects/users-guide/glossary_en.htm.%20accessed%20july%2030th%202019 https://ec.europa.eu/education/ects/users-guide/glossary_en.htm.%20accessed%20july%2030th%202019 besides the impact on students, survey respondents valued their potential to broadly affect science–society relationships and policies. this was made clear through the large direct involvement of the general public at open events, in which the number of non-academic participants at such events was almost three times higher than that of academic audiences (graph 5). methods of dissemination further confirmed this tendency to assign priority to forms of communication not necessarily intended for academics. data from 15 respondents showed that, while the great majority of project outputs took the form of reporting ‘grey literature’, the bulk of the remaining forms of dissemination, such as conferences and press releases, were clearly conceived to reach non-academic publics, and amounted to about 36 per cent of the overall total (graph 6). in summary, the survey results indicate the enduring double focus of science shops’ projects on students and non-academic stakeholders. this is consistent with the original inspiration and the general bottom–up research orientation of the science shops’ approach, distinguishing them from other kinds of structures aimed at filling the gap between science and society. in accordance with the literature, farkas (1999, p. 35) recalls that, in the early days, science shops’ clients had to: • have no commercial aims (and therefore allow all research to be public) • be able to make a concrete policy change based on the research • have limited financial means available to them to do the research. notwithstanding a small number of projects serving market organisations, this still seems to be the rule for a large majority of the projects (three projects out of four) mentioned by our respondents. the presence of projects originating from state or market actors indicates, once again, the variety of science shop activities possible within this common operational framework (graph 7). a final question focused on outcomes from one year of activities: responses from 13 science shops indicated new products and new services as the most common outcomes (graph 8). in the longer run, outcomes generated wider impact – indeed, some of the changes reported by our respondents are rather concrete, such as the creation of new science shops or participatory research centres (graph 9). yet, the great majority of reported impacts are immaterial and prevailingly relational in nature. this clearly connects with the role played by science shops and gets to the very heart of their specific character. knowledge brokering, boundary spanning and system alignments as said, science shops’ main role is to act as intermediaries between universities and society. they typically do so by activating relationships between students, teaching staff and organisations outside university. hence, the very heart of the science shop’s function is relational. one detailed study of the dutch science shops over time (wachelder 2003, pp. 262–63) evidenced that brokering is a constant key activity which is independent from structure, organisational form or aim of the science shop. this was also observed throughout the enrrich case studies, where mobilising different actors, and their capacity and knowledge within and outside university, required expert knowledge brokering and adequate operational/organisational infrastructure. knowledge brokering originated as a peculiar form of knowledge management in the private sector to facilitate circulation of knowledge within and between organisations (cooper 2014; oldham & mclean 1997). ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 7 for instance, the newly established science shop in vilniaus technologiju ir dizaino kolegija (lithuania) ran different pilot activities within the enrrich project. one pilot engaged 4 ba graphic design students in work on promotional graphics for a popular flower market in vilnius. another pilot brought in another ba student to conceive a visual information system for the lithuanian archives of literature and art, while two more graphic design students worked on valorising memorial sites of horse-drawn trams in vilnius. in reporting on this case study, the peer evaluator stated that: during all of the cbr/rri pilots, students engaged in a real-life learning experience while working with the partners on projects which were developed in collaboration with partners. in all cases, the lecturer worked extensively with the partner to design the brief for the pilots to make sure they were useful for […]. in each case, students were expected to respond to the brief created by the lecturer and partner, and to continually reflect upon and communicate their own and the partners’ expectations, and to evaluate and incorporate feedback into the project as the project developed. this whole process required continuous and intensive brokerage work by the local science shop’s personnel. this was needed, notably, to activate and facilitate relationships among different individual and collective stakeholders, ensure quality of engagement, regulate expectations and potential conflicts, provide a safe learning environment for students, and set up and strengthen the basis for future cooperation with and among involved actors. as ward, house & hamer (2009, p. 268) point out, ‘knowledge brokerage can reside in individuals, organisations or structures’. science shops are structures that act as knowledge brokers, and knowledge brokering competencies are a key requirement for people working in science shops, as well as in any public engagement unit. the concept of knowledge brokering acknowledges the complexity of intermediation, thus overcoming the simplistic views sustaining such concepts as knowledge transfer or knowledge translation (davies, nutley & walter 2008); hence, the large diversity of competencies that are needed for effective knowledge mobilisation to ensure larger impact of research activities. in the engaged scholarship context, knowledge brokering is connected to such concepts as knowledge democracy and epistemic justice (hall & tandon 2017). bayley et al. (2018) go as far as identifying a set of 80 different competencies retained in 11 categories that compose what they define as a ‘knowledge mobilisation competency framework’. throughout the enrrich study, this variety of competencies was observed at work in several contexts and as a key feature of science shop personnel that complements researchers’ skills in ensuring that different kinds of knowledge are mobilised throughout the research process. these are typical bridging and enhancing functions of knowledge brokers; yet some more specific functions can be observed in science shop projects. in fact, the involvement of students in activities implies that brokering competencies mobilised throughout the process become a key component of the students’ learning experience. this was observed to be the case for both learning outcomes and pedagogic principles. this induces us to consider that brokering not only specifically implies working with relationships, but also working out relationships. to put it another way, brokering is a process which relies on relationships, and a process which produces relationships. graph 9 clearly shows that among the main results of brokering relationships are … relationships. what we did not detect through the questionnaires, but was possible to perceive through close observation of case studies, was the meta-relational impact of brokering upon teaching. a further observation emerging from the enrrich study and which aligns with some of the vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 8 evidence shown in graph 7 is the more general impact that some science shops’ projects can have not only between organisations but also within organisations. this is an issue which is often raised in the literature on knowledge brokering and is also specifically addressed through the notion of boundary spanning (meza-guarneros & martin 2016). based on seminal work by friedman and podolny (1992), weerts and sandmann (2010, p. 638) conceptualise boundary spanning as follows: [boundary] spanning is best viewed at both the individual and organizational levels. at the individual level, spanners are actors who are primarily responsible for interacting with constituents outside their organization. … in the context of community engagement, university spanners perform teaching and learning functions to promote mutual understanding among the institution and community representatives. they further suggest that: … boundary spanning is not confined to an individual job description; rather, it refers to broader institutional strategies to engage with external partners. this broader definition of boundary spanning suggests that institutional relationships with community partners are multilayered and may serve various purposes at multiple levels. building on an empirical study based on close observation of six institutions, weerts and sandmann identify four ideal types of boundary spanners that perform different kinds of functions depending on pre-eminent kinds of tasks and on prevailing orientation towards institution or community. the different types are synthetised in a four quadrant diagram, as shown in figure 1. figure 1 university-community engagement boundary-spanning roles at public research universities (weerts & sandmann 2010, p. 651) ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 9 the great majority of cases that were observed in the enrrich study can be located in the two left quadrants. yet, weerts and sandmann’s diagram suggests that other roles can also be played by science shops, albeit not as prominently. for instance, activities such as building external, political and intra-organisational support are sometimes undertaken by some science shops. we shall return to this later in this article. weerts and sandmann associate ideal types on the right side of the diagram with leadership roles within institutions which are more connected to strategic planning and decision making. hence, they are crucial for institutional uptake and enhancement of community engagement. this is clearly a schematic view which necessarily reduces the complexity of tasks and roles as they are actually performed. as knowledge brokers, personnel running science shop type of work would be engaging more as a ‘community-based problem solver’ or ‘technical expert’, whereas institutional responsibilities connected to actual sustainability of the science shop itself, necessitate what, in weerts and sandmann’s scheme, are called ‘socio-emotional, leadership tasks’. this right area of the diagram is clearly connected to power dynamics: an issue that we will address more explicitly further on. the enrrich peer evaluation report on an experience of vrije universiteit brussels underlines the crucial role played by intra-organisational support given by senior management in ensuring positive uptake of proposed pilots by academic staff. furthermore, the report stresses the relevance of this relational work in ensuring structural uptake of initiatives through complementary boundary spanning, that is, vertical intra-organisational boundary spanning by senior management, along with science shop personnel’s direct work with academics running pilots on the ground. this was associated with horizontal inter-organisational action enacted by science shop with community partners. eventually, this experience favoured relevant institutional developments for the institution, as the peer evaluation report states: ‘this project represents the first steps towards collaboration between the directorates of research and education’, which were previously much more loosely connected. overall, the report concludes, ‘enrrich provided the incentive to start developing more links across the university and pushing for strategic inclusion.’ this case shows that relational work aiming at cultivating connections between the different sides of the diagram (left–right; up–down) is crucial to providing for enhancement and promotion of community engagement, but is also key to strengthening the overall institutional conditions for continuity and sustainability of community engagement units. this suggests that systematic boundary spanning across the different quadrants of the diagram is a key task in addressing consolidation and continuity of science shops. overcoming fragility and ensuring the durability of science shops this leads our discussion to a crucial issue in institutionalisation of science shops and, more generally, community engagement units: durability. along with the strengths of science shops, the enrrich study also evidenced potential for vulnerability. as seen above, most of the surveyed science shops are rather small entities that run relatively few projects per year. these are often units which rely on the work of a few people or even just one key person. notwithstanding budgetary constraints, the complexity of tasks and competencies attached to knowledge brokering and boundary spanning, briefly highlighted above, makes the recruitment of skilled science shop personnel and their training particularly challenging. for instance, wachelder (2003, p. 258) described the eindhoven and utrecht science shops vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 10 in the netherlands in the following way: ‘at eindhoven, the chemistry shop’s management is still almost entirely in the hands of the students. … shops that have opted for independent courses are hardly affected by financial cutbacks, but on the other hand, their financial means are limited. … moreover, given the relatively short time students are enrolled at the university, the continuity of the shop poses a recurrent problem.’ as wachelder notices, this is a typical concern for voluntary organisations, which implies that a large share of resources needs to be devoted to systematic ‘internal reporting and training to improve the continuity of […] activities’. the above refers to dealing with sustainability and continuity over time as being connected to factors that are intrinsic to the science shop itself. literature on science shops (de bok & steinhaus 2008; leydesdorff & ward 2005; wachelder 2003) maintains that such internal factors come to interplay with external ones to a relevant extent and determine organisations’ durability. the dutch experience is often reported in literature as paradigmatic (farkas 1999). in the early 1970s, the strong emphasis that the student movement put on democratisation of universities led to the opening of the first wetenschapswinkels (in dutch, wetenschap means ‘science’ and winkels means ‘shops’) in the chemistry departments of the university of amsterdam and the university of utrecht where ‘groups of active students started to do some advisory work for environmental and local groups’ (farkas 1999, p. 35). such forms of activism were to rapidly expand to other universities in the netherlands as they also connected with the widespread political orientations of organisations such as unions, but also environmentalists, patient groups, development activists and feminist groups, as well as dominant parties, hence national government. thanks to the positive alignment of such factors, ‘what was initially a rather loose association between science shops and university organisations gradually grew into a close relationship’ (wachelder 2003, p. 253) and ‘by the end of the 1970s, almost all dutch universities had a science shop in which staff worked on research requests from civil society groups’ (de bok & steinhaus 2008, pp. 171–72). this experience eventually had an influence beyond national borders and the science shop movement gained a presence in other european countries and beyond (leydesdorff & ward 2005). yet, in the netherlands, the initial political drive was eventually to change direction: ‘broadly speaking, in the 1990s, the dutch political climate moved in a more conservative direction … in 2000, it was no longer true that each dutch university housed a science shop’ (wachelder 2003, p. 255). wachelder (2003) and, to a minor extent, farkas (1999) present and discuss the different strategies adopted by dutch science shops to cope with the new situation. notably, wachelder maintains that diverse responses to this problem more broadly depended on how each science shop addressed the issue of the democratisation of science and technology. a diffused debate on this is needed – wachelder argues – to reach a deeper theoretical understanding of crucial issues that marked the science shop movement from its very origins, and which must be discussed in the light of changes that have occurred over time and of learning from past experiences. this opens a wide issue that cannot be dealt with here in much detail. yet, it is a crucial one which has to do with the very capacity of the science shop movement (and of the engaged scholarship movement at large) to affect the research policy agenda, which, as briefly mentioned in the introductory notes, is presently challenged by a growing demand for democratic governance and, more broadly speaking, the need for a new social contract for research (owen, macnaghten & stilgoe 2012). this sets the debate called upon by wachelder in a wider perspective and, at the same time, calls for engagement to be enacted at different levels: practical, strategic and political. as said, the dutch example shows that alignment of various factors at different levels (student ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 11 orientations, institutional preconditions, generalised support by political and civil society organisations, national policy orientations) is crucial. our evidence suggests that timing is a key component of how such alignment (or misalignment) can affect the very life of the science shop and the way people understand it and deal with it. during focus group discussion on the results emerging from the questionnaires, the science shop coordinator at queen’s university belfast, emma mckenna, noted: i suppose, for us, i think the changes in the uk system are in theory really good in a sense … this idea of public engagement … it’s the european agenda … well, all of that is good for us: when you talk about engagement, people get it, when you talk about students needing to engage, people get it … you know you don’t have to spend … it used to be that the first half of any conversation was persuading them all … that public engagement was a worthwhile activity. the science shop at queen’s university belfast was set up in 1988 and is now one of the most established science shops in europe, and a quite large one: over the last three years it has worked with 80 community organisations and 770 students from across 35 academic pathways to complete almost 200 community-engaged research projects with organisations across northern ireland. mckenna’s words clearly refer to recent changes in the uk’s higher education policies concerning engaged research and teaching. owen, featherstone & leslie (2016) pinpoint 2006 as a key date when specific funding was allocated to promote engagement through the higher education innovation fund. two years later, in 2008, the beacons for public engagement initiative and the national coordination centre for public engagement were set up. much earlier than that – in the 1980s – when the science shops were flourishing in the netherlands, the debate on science–society relationships in the uk was at a much earlier stage, still largely focused on the notion of public understanding of science (royal society 1985). at the same time, the uk was undertaking institutional changes that were yet to arrive in the netherlands, such as new public management measures initiated under the first thatcher-led government, which had started to inform organisation, funding and governance of uk’s public institutions. those changes would eventually affect british universities before national policies started addressing public engagement in higher education and research. the latter came to maturity at a time when new public management policies had been under scrutiny for a while and were thus undergoing relevant revisions. mckenna’s words underline the indirect effects of a broad-based appreciation of the meaning and value of public engagement. the timing of public engagement and of relevant institutional changes in the uk was the inverse of what happened in the netherlands (see pollitt & bouckaert 2011 for a comparative overview). incidentally, it must be noted that, on the other hand, the living knowledge network played an active role in the shaping of the european research policy agenda, leading to what was finally named as the science with and for society programme (swafs). in parallel, the lk network acted as a catalyst for science shops to interact, so as to join eu funded projects under the swafs programme (and enrrich among those). these are two forms of, respectively, vertical and horizontal boundary spanning which, further on in this article, we will define as ‘strategic’. both our research streams evidence that alignment of factors at different levels is a key contextual enabler for science shops, as it provides the chance for them to prosper and eventually grow (or decay and eventually perish, in the case of misalignment). a good example vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 12 of positive alignment of factors is the case of carl, the community-academic research links initiative, which operates as a science shop based at the school of applied social studies of university college cork (ucc) in ireland. first established in 2006, carl began its first projects with community partners in 2010. it was established as a small unit, which eventually started evolving thanks to european funding through the perares project (https://www.livingknowledge.org/projects/perares/), which eventually also provided carl with the possibility to reach out to international connections in a more stable way, while gaining visibility and relevance within its own institution. evidence from the enrrich study is clear in this respect: besides economic resources, all enrrich project consortium members insisted on the relevance of eu funding in providing a policy and conceptual framework, along with legitimation and credibility. some explicitly remarked that the eu’s legitimation was a key factor in overcoming resistance to change and institutional inertia. this can be regarded as a truism, but which nonetheless acquires a different relevance if considered in relation to other factors. among consortium members of the enrrich project, carl could eventually build further on this contingency when ucc delivered its civic engagement plan 2017–2022, titled ‘together with and for community’ (https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/centralmedia/ ucc_civic_engage_2017a.pdf ). institutional strategy at ucc aligned with policy focus at the national level on community engagement, which was set by the irish national strategy for higher education to 2030. within this national policy focus, an action plan named ‘campus engage’ was agreed, to secure funding and support for capacity building in universitycommunity engagement (bowman, adshead & morris 2018). carl had expertise, capacity and legitimation and was therefore actively involved at all stages of this process. this case points out also how positive alignment of factors can be pursued through engagement enacted at different institutional levels: within one’s own university and among universities, as well as across a wider policy context, by including different kinds of public and private actors, both at national and international level. albeit very different in some relevant respects, the history of the rise and (partial) fall of the dutch science shops, briefly recalled above, can be regarded as a sequence of alignments and misalignments. those experiences, along with others observed in the literature (millot 2019) and other evidence from the enrrich study, suggest that excessively relying on a single source for existence may be fatal for what are often fragile structures; be this an exclusive source of funding or the presence of one or a few key people. as with business and territorial development, diversification of resources was observed to be a beneficial strategy for science shops’ continuity. agility and boundary spanning as strategic assets system circumstances were observed to play a relevant role as contextual enablers. we have seen that alignment can be considered one such contextual enabler for science shops to develop their potential, and to eventually endure and prosper. the heuristic usefulness of this notion couples with its strategic relevance. other overall circumstances were observed to be playing a relevant role as contextual enablers, eventually in combination with alignment. for example, regulatory stability and flexibility. the enrrich study showed that overruling, bureaucratisation and unnecessary formalisation of procedures played a negative role. it could not be otherwise. instability of regulatory arrangements generates turbulent operational conditions that exacerbate power asymmetries and hamper cooperation. this was observed to particularly affect science shops ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 13 https://www.livingknowledge.org/projects/perares/ https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/centralmedia/ucc_civic_engage_2017a.pdf https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/centralmedia/ucc_civic_engage_2017a.pdf as they usually have limited power within academic and institutional hierarchies (and typically advocate for the powerless) and base their action on cooperation. furthermore, overruling hinders flexibility and agility, which are often strategic assets of small units such as science shops. during a reflective evaluation meeting involving all enrrich partners and the project’s advisory board members, several comments identified agility and flexibility as key factors which can be observed both at operational and strategic level. furthermore, this was observed to be related to the diversity of science shops’ experiences, along with another of their key features: combinatory capacity. typically, science shops combine different resources to serve a common interest: they bring together researchers, students and community members and work to harmonise and optimise their aptitudes. they combine classic higher education missions of teaching and research to pursue a third one: community engagement. creative combination of factors and resources that are at hand is therefore a key feature of science shops’ work and of their role. resources and constraints are very context dependent, hence the variety of combinations leading to the diverse organisational and operational solutions observed among science shops. the common feature is centrality of this combinatory capacity, and the guiding principles to put it to work. the enrrich study showed that, when combinatory capacity is at its best, positive alignment of factors can be exploited to the full. this leads to advance some considerations which are connected to the notion of ‘adjacent possible’. this concept originates from the work of stuart kauffman (2000) on biological evolution and from his interest in the mechanisms which guide a system’s organisation and its adaptation to the surrounding environment. kauffman’s conclusions can be applied to any complex system. the concept of adjacent possible refers to all the elements that are outside but close to the system that can be used to drive the system’s change. hence, adjacent possibles are elements that are located just near the system’s boundaries: they are opportunities for innovation, which come to their full potential once the system builds new connections and expands to incorporate them and turn them into system components. this makes the notion of adjacent possible particularly interesting for understanding how innovation processes work. at the time of case study visits for peer evaluation, for instance, enrrich partners at wageningen university (nl) were building on relational opportunities provided by the project’s activities to contribute to the setting up of a responsible innovation centre and were working at involving diverse people in many different ways in this initiative. this once again connects with evidence presented in graph 9. spanning across boundaries, which we have spotted as a specific feature of science shops, is a key constituent of adjacent possible. this makes it an argument for science shops and, more broadly, community engagement units that act as boundary spanners to be seen as bearers of innovation potential. this can be declined at three different levels: practical/operational, strategic and political. albeit not absent from the former, the last two levels clearly raise the issue of power relations and power dynamics. building on meza-guarneros and martin (2016), we observe that boundary spanning takes place among as well as within organisations. as stated above, science shop’s boundary spanning among organisations is typically seen as an operational function which serves the knowledge co-construction process. yet, the enrrich study evidenced intra-organisational spanning to be taking place to support and enhance collaborative work. this is reflected in sinclair (2017), who adds a further analytical dimension as he introduces a difference between vertical and horizontal boundary spanning. this produces a quadripartite diagram, as shown vargiu, cocco, ghibellini gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 14 in figure 2. as said, typical science shops operational activities concentrate on the lower left quadrant. figure 2 examples of boundary spanning activities (source: sinclair 2017, p. 14) yet, we argue that another relevant issue can be explicitly raised by the introduction of differentiation between horizontal and vertical boundary spanning, and this concerns power relations and strategic action. examples proposed in figure 2 refer to actions which typically address practical/functional issues. yet, boundary spanning can also serve strategic or political aims. for instance, as briefly mentioned above, the lk network acts both as boundary spanner at eu level, pursuing policy change (vertical, among organisations) and promoting collaborative work (horizontal, among organisations). more generally, the vertical axis is the one where the kind of alignments pointed out above take place. yet, both alignment and combination of adjacent possibles can take place at the horizontal and vertical level to pursue positive change and innovation, for instance regarding university-community engagement policies. this is a totally different kind of work from boundary spanning to enhance the collaborative enterprise, which requires the mobilisation of an often similar (yet not totally identical) set of relational competencies within rather diverse contexts to serve significantly different objectives. we believe that carl’s experience, briefly mentioned above, showcases how these multiple movements across axes can fit into a more general strategy aimed at impacting the policy context while reinforcing one’s own organisational stability. this calls for an explicit differentiation between an ‘instrumental/operational’ function of boundary spanning and a ‘strategic’ one. this only partially coincides with sinclair’s distinction between horizontal and vertical boundary spanning, which accounts for the prevailing ambit for actions rather than the purpose that such actions aim at. concluding thoughts in summary, we have seen that combinatory capacity, knowledge brokering and boundary spanning are constitutive components of science shops’ role and main functions. they imply the mobilisation of specific knowledge, competencies and abilities. these precious resources should be seen not only as having a practical function in the running of basic activities and ensuring durability of community-university engagement in a challenging context: empirical evidence on science shops gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 15 projects (instrumental/operational boundary spanning), but also as key strategic resources to address sustainability and continuity of science shops themselves, as well as a means to promote institutional and policy change towards more systematic engagement with communities. we defined this strategic boundary spanning as a kind of action which requires a thorough understanding of the overall context, which, as we briefly argued in the introductory notes to this article, is one of increased complextity in the relationship between scientific research and technological innovation and in the progressive marketisation of knowledge. all of which demands a new social contract for science. in order to play an active and conscious role at both strategic and political levels within such a challenging context, a solid theory of change is needed. in his analysis of the history of the science shops movement in the netherlands, wachelder (2003) remarked that diverse understandings of the political and social issues at stake led to different adaptive strategies which resulted in rather diverse outcomes. hence, the need for a thorough conceptualisation of what democratising science means and implies (hall & tandon 2017), to lay the foundations of a general theory of change for the science shops movement – and, more broadly, engaged scholarship – to thrive. acknowledgements this article is the outcome of collective writing. nonetheless, authorship of specific parts of the text can be assigned as follows: m cocco: part 4; v ghibellini: part 3; a vargiu: introduction and parts 1, 2, 5 and 6; m cocco, v ghibellini and a vargiu: concluding thoughts. the empirical work leading to this article was made possible thanks to the support and contribution of various people and institutions. the authors wish to thank all enrrich consortium members who actively cooperated in all levels of the study. special thanks go to co-researchers from vrije universiteit brussels, queen’s university belfast, dublin institute of technology, corvinus university budapest and université de lyon who collected evidence and provided valuable insights on enrrich pilot projects. precious suggestions were also provided at various stages of the study by enrrich advisory board members. we also wish to thank emma mckenna, henk mulder and norbert steinhaus for sharing their thoughts and understandings during a focus group on first results emerging from the survey. we are also very grateful to the anonymous referees who provided very useful insights and suggestions. precious support and valuable indications came from gateways’ editorial committee. of course, responsibility for conclusions on the research process and allegations made herein is solely that of the authors of this article. we also wish to thank our friends and esteemed colleagues at carl – community-academic research links initiative – at university college cork for hosting and supporting valentina 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doi:%20https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11779075 doi:%20https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11779075 https://doi.org/10.1093/spp/14.6.310 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 october 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: wen fen, b., abdul latif, l. 2023. stroke rehabilitation centre (score): a community transformation program. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–8. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au snapshot article stroke community rehabilitation centre (score): a community transformation program beh wen fen1 and lydia abdul latif2 1 senior lecturer, department of music, university malaya, kuala lumpur, malaysia 2 professor, department of rehabilitation medicine, university malaya, kuala lumpur, malaysia; chief medical officer, department of rehabilitation medicine, regen rehab hospital, selangor, malaysia corresponding author: beh wen fen, senior lecturer, department of music, university malaya, kuala lumpur, malaysia, beh.wenfen@um.edu.my doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 article history: received 22/03/2023; revised 05/05/2023; accepted 20/09/2023; published 10/2023 abstract stroke is the second most prevalent disease in malaysia, so promoting awareness of stroke is essential as it is preventable and treatable if action is prompt. long-term rehabilitation at the community level is also crucial to reducing congestion in acute care hospitals. hence, establishing an evidence-based community rehabilitation centre would help educate the community and support the welfare of stroke survivors. this article discusses a community-engagement initiative launched by experts from university malaya rehabilitation medicine in partnership with pusat pemulihan kesihatan (perkim), a religious and social welfare organisation in malaysia, to transform an existing non-functional community centre run by perkim into the stroke community rehabilitation centre (score). this was achieved through the provision of expert input into how to improve service provision, knowledge transfer to the community, and implementation of more thematic and creative components to the model of care currently offered. importantly, under this new model, stroke survivors and the wider community would be considered learners and active participants in their own care, not mere passive recipients of charity. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors wish to acknowledge two grants received in support of this research: score stroke community rehabilitation centre for the east, grant number: ru013-2017v; and rehabilitation ambulatory team (rehat) grant number: ru006v-2015. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:beh.wenfen@um.edu.my https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 since its inception in 2016, the number of patients has almost doubled, increasing to over 100. thus, the stroke community rehabilitation centre benefits the stroke community by providing resources and education to facilitate recovery at a reduced cost to hospital-based care. with its adherence to the recommended features of the community-based rehabilitation model, as outlined by who, the success of score is an exemplary model for future stroke community rehabilitation centres in malaysia. keywords community engagement; stroke community rehabilitation centre (score); stroke; stroke survivors; university malaya rehabilitation medicine introduction stroke is a leading cause of disability in adults. in malaysia, there were 47,911 incidents, 19,928 deaths, 443,995 prevalent cases, and 512,726 disability-adjusted life years lost due to stroke in 2019 (tan & venketasubramanian 2022). as the second most common disease in malaysia – after cardiovascular diseases – it is important to promote awareness of this issue as stroke is preventable and treatable if immediate action is taken. following a stroke, a person’s condition can deteriorate rapidly, reducing their quality of life (gbd 2015). as stroke is a life-long condition, rehabilitation is the cornerstone of stroke treatment. hence, it is important to provide long-term rehabilitation at the community level to reduce congestion in acute care hospitals. in this article we discuss a collaborative project aimed at transforming an existing but ailing centre into a sustainable and evidence-based community rehabilitation centre, as well as an effective model for promoting the welfare of stroke survivors and providing lifelong learning for the stroke community (survivors and their families and carers). thus, it is hoped that the stroke community rehabilitation centre (score) will benefit the stroke community by granting them access to the resources they need in their journey towards recovery. to successfully establish score, it was crucial that the concept focus on the community. in bringing in university-based experts to contribute evidence-based practice and empirical evidence, consideration was given to the practical aspects of providing care for stroke patients in a real-world setting. this included appropriate training for the staff at the centre, as well as a focus on educating the community at large to give patients agency over their rehabilitation journey. raising awareness of stroke prevention and treatment was also important for score to fulfil its purpose. the implementation of a dedicated rehabilitation centre within the community will have a major impact as it can help raise awareness of stroke (clarke & forster 2015). based on research conducted by researchers at universiti malaya (um), it was found that the medical expenditure of stroke survivors was high (akhavan et al. 2015). the score project leader and team members also conducted a survey to assess the availability of stroke rehabilitation services within the klang valley region. people in the community reported that there was limited access to these services, especially on the east coast of malaysia. the klang valley constitutes an urban cluster in malaysia, its focal point being located within the federal territories of kuala lumpur and putrajaya. it also encompasses the surrounding cities and municipalities situated in the state of selangor. another study identified a higher risk of cognitive impairment and fatigue in stroke survivors (rutkowski, sabri & yang 2021). furthermore, based on the findings of our research, chronic stroke survivors were more susceptible to depression and spasticity, which negatively affected their recovery (mohd zulkifly et al. 2016). another study conducted by um researchers observed that the rate of return to work post-stroke was 49.5 percent ( jee & abdul latif 2017). thus, as there is a high occurrence of stroke in malaysia (department of statistics malaysia n.d.), it is important to educate the public on the risks of wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20232 stroke. furthermore, fostering a bond between the public and academia would promote an understanding by the community of how research efforts pertaining to stroke benefit society. transforming an ‘ailing’ model of health care into community-based rehabilitation: approach and implementation • stroke community• national blue ocean strategy (nbos) • department of rehabilitation medicine, university malaya • perkim government academia societyindustry figure 1. quadruple helix model in implementing this project, score incorporated approaches introduced in the quadruple helix model (figure 1), where cooperation and participation between the government, universities, industries and the community continue to be enhanced and strengthened (caravannis & campbell 2009). at score, a team of academics are involved in the development of educational programs curated to meet the needs of the stroke community. this is considered integral to the rehabilitation process as active participation from the community will provide ongoing insights into improving the current program. the islamic welfare society of malaysia (perkim) is an organisation that supports various welfare activities involving preaching, education and general health. it is also involved in the stroke community collaboration with the universiti malaya medical center (ummc). perkim was central to the project through its allocation of resources to community-based rehabilitation programs. the national blue ocean strategy (nbos), a government-mandated national development strategy, was also key to these efforts as it maximises community participation through strategic allocation of the involved parties, allowing the stroke community to effectively implement professional advice. nbos was formulated and executed through the nbos summit, a unique and dynamic national strategy platform, which brings together ministries, agencies, all levels of government and the private sector on a voluntary basis to develop initiatives that are high impact, low cost and rapidly executed. in utilising the quadruple helix model, it was hoped that score would positively impact the stroke community, including the patients’ families and caregivers, which it did! a once non-functional community centre was transformed into score, a sustainable community-based wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20233 rehabilitation (cbr) centre in a strategic location aimed at helping stroke survivors in underprivileged communities. the project had four main objectives: 1. to transfer and scale up an ‘ailing’ community centre through knowledge transfer from academia to community. 2. to provide expert input to improve service provision. 3. to improve the current model of health care with more thematic and creative components. 4. to ensure long-term sustainability by improving the program through the provision of continued and ongoing care, as well as active patient involvement and insights. the community-engagement initiative was launched in 2016 by a team of experts from the department of rehabilitation medicine, um, in partnership with perkim. the team includes a medical rehabilitation doctor, an occupational therapist, a physiotherapist, a speech therapist, a nurse and a research assistant. the project is supported by a umcares grant as well as collaboration with the national blue ocean strategy (nbos). central to the project was the belief that a charity model would not be a feasible foundation for sustainable cbr, so the concept adopted by the cbr centre was ‘for community, by community’. through our research, in collaboration with industry experts from non-governmental organisations focused on improving the wellbeing of the underserved communities, we identified that community rehabilitation centres in the klang valley area, as well as other regions of malaysia (1) were not run by medical personnel; (2) did not receive any input from medical experts; (3) were run on a charity model; (4) were poorly maintained, and (5) lacked facilities that are essential to the rehabilitation process. the previous centre lacked trained manpower and the facilities were not conducive to patients’ rehabilitation. prior to the intervention, the centre was not equipped to effectively provide rehabilitation to stroke patients. as seen in figure 2, treatment was not provided by a physiotherapist and the equipment available was dated and inadequate. although patients frequented the centre to receive treatment, they were not receiving optimal care due to there being limited facilities and staff. this project emphasised the need for a cost-effective rehabilitation centre that could be established within a short time frame. experts from the university were brought in to assist in transforming the centre. this was done through collaborative workshops and interactive seminars, in which rehabilitation physicians and therapists shared their expertise in evidence-based practice, as well as the latest advances in stroke care, with the centre’s multidisciplinary team. with the funding available, the centre was able to be renovated and fitted out with improved equipment that would assist patients in their rehabilitation process. new staff, including a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist and a speech therapist, were recruited to provide appropriate care for the patients. not only that, instead of establishing a new rehabilitation centre, it was decided to renovate the existing centre. score was set up with a budget of rm 75,000, much less than the cost of building a new rehabilitation centre (rm 250,000). it took two months to renovate the existing centre, compared to the 18 months it would have taken to build a new centre. fostering long-term collaboration via the signing of the memorandum of agreement (moa) between the university and the community also minimised the cost and ensured the sustainability of score. along with its re-launch as score, the centre was transformed through expert planning to accommodate more patients, upgrade facilities, recruit new staff and provide care at a reduced cost. through knowledge transfer, a creative program was designed to improve patients’ rehabilitation experience. among the implemented programs were: wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20234 figure 2. prior to the launch of score, the rehabilitation centre was in a dilapidated state and the equipment was dysfunctional. there was also a lack of trained staff to provide care. figure 3. after the launch of score, the rehabilitation centre was fitted with new equipment and new staff were trained, allowing effective provision of rehabilitative care to more stroke patients. wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20235 1. healthy heart for stroke: designed to improve the endurance of stroke patients, this program was implemented as reduced endurance is a common complication of chronic stroke. 2. gym for active elderly (goal): aimed at encouraging the elderly to be active through physical activities conducted throughout the program, thus reducing their risk of stroke. 3. score 0:2: with its ‘zero in, double out’ policy, patients at score might have minimal knowledge when they first enter the centre, but by the time they leave, they will gain at least twice the knowledge on health issues such as stroke. they will be educated on the risk factors, how to recognise stroke and the rehabilitation process. 4. strokecare continuum: a long-term support and follow-up program designed to nurture stroke patients’ progress and empower them for a brighter future. with personalised care plans, telemedicine services and engaging peer support, strokecare continuum ensures continued success on the recovery journey. patient and community benefits previously, there had been only 152 patients over a span of 8 years. however, since its inception in 2016, the number of patients has almost doubled, with an increase of over 100 patients. while the doubling of patients could have presented challenges, score rose to the occasion by implementing an innovative model, which is a combination of improved resource allocation, communication enhancements, scalable infrastructure, an expanded medical team, data-driven insights, educational initiatives, and a commitment to continuous improvement. by transparently showcasing these measures, the centre can gain confidence in the stroke survivors’ ability to manage the increased patient load effectively and ensure a seamless experience for all involved. additionally, score addressed the previous issues of lack of trained manpower, old equipment, and failure to deliver effective programs to assist patients’ rehabilitation journeys. today, the centre functions efficiently and, with its new infrastructure capabilities, no longer faces over-occupation, and more patients are benefiting from the project. this is indicative of the effectiveness of score. score serves as a sustainable cbr that will continue to elevate the provision of care for the stroke community. with its ageing population, the occurrence of stroke in malaysia will increase (hwong et al. 2021); therefore, there is a need to promote stroke awareness, particularly primary prevention of stroke. the centre is close to hospital kuala lumpur, an acute care centre, so our efforts have alleviated the congestion at the hospital by providing care at the community level. by providing further training for the physiotherapist at score and implementing more programs, such as neurologic music therapy, we could potentially bring about a new age of treatment where cbr is the focal point of providing accessible and effective treatment to stroke patients. score also provides a platform for previous patients to continue their rehabilitation in a community setting, which is more convenient for the patients and their careers. as a result, the patients are no longer reliant on receiving treatment from hospitals, reducing their healthcare expenditure. through knowledge transfer to patients, the centre has become a beacon in the community as it provides stroke patients with improved and ongoing beneficial care through patient-centric education. as such, score focuses on empowering patients so that, rather than perceiving themselves as passive recipients of charity, they are active and ongoing learners in their own care. overall, we have seen the following impacts: 1. improved function of stroke survivors 2. increased number of attendees at the centre 3. improved quality of life 4. shared and applied empirical knowledge in a real-world setting 5. raised awareness of stroke wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20236 6. improved access to rehabilitation facilities 7. promoted wellbeing of elderly in the community. conclusion and next steps previously known as pusat pemulihan kesihatan (perkim), score transformed from a charity-based centre into a sustainable cbr centre that helps stroke survivors in underprivileged communities. the relationship created through this concept is in line with the principles introduced through the nbos (ministry of human resources, 2017). as a result, it increases community participation, while also involving experts who can provide professional input. with its adherence to the recommended features of the world health organisation (who) cbr model, score is an exemplary model for future stroke community rehabilitation centres in malaysia. as 2030 approaches, there is a growing need to address who’s rehabilitation 2030 initiative (world health organisation 2015). with the increasing number of people living with chronic diseases, providing access to rehabilitation is a growing concern (yasin et al. 2012). many individuals in underprivileged communities go without treatment due to the lack of resources (abdul aziz et al. 2014). furthermore, malaysia is a developing country, and 2.91 million households are in the lower income group, with a monthly income of less than rm 4,850 (mahidin 2021). a majority of malaysians are uninsured and cannot afford treatment at private hospitals. hence, score aims to provide them with the care that they need to avoid further complications and to uplift their quality of life. due to the success of score, efforts are being made, in collaboration with perkim, to implement the resultant cbr model in other malaysian states. efforts are already being made to expand the reach of score to the state of kelantan by identifying the barriers to, and necessity of establishing a stroke rehabilitation centre in kota bharu. score’s initiatives align with sustainable development goal (sdg) 3.8, which aims to provide universal health coverage for all (united nations 2015). these efforts also support sdg 4.7, which aims to provide learners with the right knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development (united nations 2015). this could signal a new age of administering rehabilitation at the community level, in which score could serve as the model for the future. this community-based rehabilitation model could radically change the landscape for stroke rehabilitation. by extending research efforts to application within the community, many stroke survivors would benefit from the programs implemented. hence, it is important to continue the research and further develop the project model to streamline implementation in other areas that require more cbrs. in summary, the joint venture with perkim to extend the reach of score aims to bridge the gap in provision of rehabilitation within the community by pivoting from a charity-based model to one that incorporates collaboration, sustainability, and multi-partnership with the university, industry, government and community. through this, stroke survivors would be given agency over their own care, rather than being perceived as recipients of charity. areas where access to medical rehabilitation is challenging would be emphasised because limited access to medical rehabilitation could lead to preventable declines in health and functional abilities. as a result, individuals in those communities would be faced with unsustainable healthcare costs in the long run due to the deteriorative nature of conditions that could have been effectively managed through timely rehabilitation. hence, score aims to target the communities that need these services the most. references abdul aziz, a, mohd nordin, n, abd aziz, n, abdullah, s, sulong, s & aljunid, s 2014, ‘care for post-stroke patients at malaysian public health centres: self-reported practices of family medicine specialists’, bmc family practice, vol. 15, no. 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-15-40 wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20237 akhavan 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4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-8-4 wen fen and abdul latif gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 october 20238 https://doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2015025 https://doi.org/10.1504/ijtm.2009.023374 https://doi.org/10.1504/ijtm.2009.023374 https://doi.org/10.2147/jmdh.s68764 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(16)31678-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(16)31678-6 https://doi.org/10.5334/gh.791 https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.2.29992.62728 https://mohr.gov.my/index.php/en/trade-union/9-site-content/75-nbos-archives?boxed=1 https://mohr.gov.my/index.php/en/trade-union/9-site-content/75-nbos-archives?boxed=1 https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/3456943 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255538 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255538 https://doi.org/10.1159/000524271 https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-8-4 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: ross, l., byrne, k., and safford, j. 2021. navigating the boundaries of youth violence prevention and reduction: reflections on power in community engaged scholarship. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7756 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) navigating the boundaries of youth violence prevention and reduction: reflections on power in community engaged scholarship laurie ross1, katie byrne2 and jennifer safford3 1 professor of community development and planning, department of international development, community and environment, clark university, worcester, ma usa 2 detention reform specialist, commonwealth of massachusetts, usa 3 director of operations, collaborative for youth and community justice, clark university, worcester, ma, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7756 article history: received 09/06/2021; revised 08/10/2021; accepted 15/10/2021; published 12/2021 abstract community-engaged scholars grapple with power asymmetries in community-university partnerships, generally working from the assumption that deliberate practices are required to moderate the researchers’ power vis-a-vis that of the community. in this article, we suggest that this dyadic framing masks the complexity of power dynamics within communities, of which the university is just one part, and examine how power is negotiated in the boundary zones of a partnership. we use third generation cultural historical activity theory (chat) as a conceptual framework to analyse the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action in our partnership occurred (engeström 1996). a brief story sheds light on our boundary work which uses research and data to span, broker and shake institutional boundaries for the purpose of youth violence prevention and intervention. our analysis illuminates the potential and limitations of our power to foster transformational change. it also allows us to show that underestimating power differentials and the diversity of values and cultures within an organisation and between a university and a community partner, and certainly across multiple institutions in the case of a cross-sector partnership, can slow down and even thwart work to address societal problems. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7756 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7756 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7756 keywords boundary work; boundary objects; community-university partnership; youth violence; research partner introduction recognising that persistent societal problems require authentic knowledge co-creation (ramaley 2014; saltmarsh & hartley 2011; wegemer et al. 2020), community-engaged scholars have been compelled to grapple with power asymmetries in community-university partnerships. community-engaged scholars generally work from the assumption that deliberate practices are required to moderate researchers’ power vis-a-vis that of the community (stoecker, hilgendorf & tryon 2009; wallerstein & duran 2017). our experience working in a long-term (8+ years) cross-sector initiative to reduce youth and gang violence suggests that this dyadic framing masks the complexity of power dynamics within communities of which the university is just one part. even models that attempt to differentiate positions, roles and actors within communities and universities tend to amplify the complexity of the university over that of the community (bringle, clayton & price 2009; sandmann et al. 2014). underestimating power differentials and the diversity of values and cultures within an organisation, between a university and a community partner, and certainly across multiple institutions in the case of a cross-sector partnership, can slow down and even thwart work to address societal problems. rather than examining the dyadic or cross-sector partnership as the unit of analysis, a group of scholars across multiple disciplines are finding it generative to examine how power is negotiated in the boundary zones of a partnership (akkerman & bakker 2011; mcmillan, goodman & schmid 2016; penuel et al. 2015; romero 2014). more specifically, third generation cultural historical activity theory (chat) offers a conceptual framework to analyse the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action occur (engeström 1996). before delving deeper into a discussion of boundary zones and chat, we tell a brief story that highlights the nature of the boundaries we navigated as the research partner in the youth violence prevention initiative (yvpi), a city’s cross-sector organisational change response to youth and young adult violence. located in a mid-sized city in the northeast region of the united states, the yvpi is an uneven collaboration of local and state government, law enforcement, public schools, non-profit organisations, youth and families affected by violence, and ourselves as the research partner. we use the term uneven to acknowledge that our ability to involve youth and families as collaborators has been a challenge over the years. part of the reason authentic community involvement has been challenging is due to the design of the yvpi. siloed efforts and lack of communication and information sharing across public and non-profit sectors had been identified as factors that made it difficult to reduce violence in the city. we needed the sector and organisational leaders at the table so they could use their positional power to make needed policy and systems change. yet, the decision to structure the initiative around the decision-makers proved to make community involvement challenging (wolff et al. 2017). in march 2018, the city manager and his chief of operations invited us (the research team) to a meeting that had been requested by the chief of police to discuss the yvpi. as the research partner providing the research and data to undergird the yvpi’s plan, we became the point of contact for concerns related to the plan as we were viewed as having the power of the pen through the reports we generated. the chief attended the meeting, accompanied by the police captain most involved with the yvpi. in this meeting, we learned that the police were concerned by our use of the term structural racism in the initiative’s materials because they did not believe structural racism was a factor in youth violence in the city. they felt so strongly about this that they said they could no longer participate in the initiative if we continued to use the term structural racism. ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 we were surprised by the police concern, largely due to timing. since 2016, the following had been the mission of the yvpi: the youth violence prevention initiative was founded on the mission to reduce youth violence in the city by eliminating structural racism and promoting trust, safety, healing, and opportunities for our most under-resourced youth and families. this will be achieved through policy and system change that ensures equitable distribution of resources and opportunities, collaboration that breaks institutional and organisational siloes, and transparency of process and outcomes through consistent information sharing. this statement had been read out loud at the first governance council meeting in 2017, at which the police had been present. the initiative’s planning team, a group comprising a liaison of each sector leader and ourselves that meets weekly, crafted the mission statement. we had anticipated that there might be pushback on the use of the term, but no one at the governance council meeting even commented on it. from that day forward, we intentionally included the mission in every monthly data report we produced to keep the focus on the purpose of the yvpi. as we reflected on what could have caused their concern a year and half after we had highlighted structural racism as a causal factor of violence in the city, we thought about the work we had started in fall 2017 for an updated community assessment of the drivers of violence. as part of that preparation, we developed an analysis of arrest and gun/knife incident data from 2015 (our baseline year) through 2017. we found that youth arrests had declined 12.5 per cent and gun/knife incidents had declined almost 20 per cent. yet, when we disaggregated the data by race and ethnicity, we found that inequities markedly increased between white youth and youth of colour. rates of white youth arrests and involvement in gun and knife incidents were decreasing faster than those for black and latinx youth even though white youth were not the primary target population for most of the yvpi’s strategies. we therefore began to include a relative rate index analysis of youth arrests in the monthly data reports to highlight the growing inequity. a relative rate index (rri) facilitates comparison of different groups of youth within the juvenile justice system. when groups (e.g. black youth and white youth) are treated equally, both will have an rri of 1, regardless of differences in sizes of the groups. rris greater or less than 1 indicate an inequity in treatment and outcomes. at our next governance council meeting ( january 2018), we presented the year end 2017 report, including the rri, which clearly showed the growing inequity. police representatives did start to ask whether arrests were an appropriate indicator of youth violence. we sensed that, by asking this question about the use of arrests as an indicator, the police were feeling like we were challenging their work and actions rather than focusing on the initiative’s overall effort to reduce violence. and so this brings us to the march 2018 meeting with the city manager and chief of police and their staff. in spite of our surprise regarding their concern and that we were deeply conflicted about not calling out structural racism, we recognised the police as being a key partner in any efforts to reduce youth violence. and so we worked with them to develop alternative language. in the end, it was a small adjustment. we replaced ‘structural racism’ with the term ‘structural violence’. when defining structural violence, we used keith morton’s (2019) definition: evidence of structural violence is found by studying patterns of social suffering and asking what produces them: why is poverty so consistently correlated with one or more social identities such as race? why is domestic violence enacted disproportionately by men against women? why does enforcement of drug laws result in mass incarceration of people of color? structural violence happens when we do not recognize how one thing is connected to another, or when we determine that elements of systems are not connected or can be treated differently. structural violence becomes visible as we practice an ecological way of seeing relationship.  ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 we find it interesting that this definition sat more easily with the police even though it directly implicates institutions in perpetuating inequity. it suggests to us the extent of fragility around the term racism. in addition to this operating definition of structural violence, we included an explanation for why we used measures of arrests, school discipline and court-based outcomes to monitor the yvpi’s progress. from that point forward, in the written explanation that accompanied our monthly data reports, we emphasised that we were not inherently interested in arrests or suspensions, but that they were the only available data that could serve as indicators of systemic change in the community. with these modifications, the police agreed to continue participating and sharing their data. this brief story provides a glimpse into what was a much more complex dynamic, fraught with tension and many discussions and emails with other members of the yvpi. we worried that, while we only made a small change to the language, this change could signal to other partners and community members affected by violence a retreat from working on structural racism as a causal factor. the story also provides an opening to examine the nuanced ways power operates in cross-sector initiatives that involve university partners. theorising the boundary zone through chat cultural–historical theories see diversity and difference as inherently valuable to social and professional activity rather than as obstacles to be overcome (penuel et al. 2015). chat posits that, in the context of relationships in communities of practice, learning and action are developed through dialogue and reflection (foot 2014). due to its emphasis that learning and action is contextual and that it emerges from communities, chat is a useful framework for visualising how power is negotiated within the boundary zones of a partnership. activity systems are the building blocks of boundary zones. activity systems consist of six components that interact to produce knowledge and action. these six components are illustrated in figure 1 (adapted from mcmillan, goodman & schmid 2016): subjects rules community division of labour object tools outcome: youth violence preven�on/ inequity reduc�on figure 1. single activity system we illustrate these six components within the activity system of our research team. the subjects, the individuals involved in the activity, are the authors of this article. one of us is a tenured professor, one works as a project manager on our youth violence grants and is an adjunct professor, and one of us is a former ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 student and research assistant on the yvpi. the community is the broader group interacting in the activity, of which the subjects are a part – in our case the larger community is our university. the rules encompass both formal and informal agreements, norms, habits, conventions and routines that govern the behaviour of the subjects – in our case institutional review board (irb) policies that guide research with human subjects, memoranda of understanding (mous) that spell out terms of partnerships, including data sharing agreements, represent the formal rules that shape the conditions of our engagement. the division of labour refers to the different roles played by actors in the system – in our case, our group consists of the principal investigator, the project manager and a former graduate research assistant. the object is the reason for the activity system; in our case, it is to develop the youth violence assessment and monthly data reports for the yvpi. these objects are the visible manifestation of the work of our research team’s activity system and are what are brought into the boundary zone of the partnership. the tools are what the subjects use to generate action on the object; in our case, tools include research team meetings and collaborative documents. the outcome we are striving for through our activity system is a reduction in youth violence and a reduction in inequitable patterns of punishment that disproportionately and negatively affect black and latinx youth. in this activity system description, we tried to isolate the research team in order to understand the opportunities and limitations of its contribution to the yvpi; however, in third generation chat, two activity systems are the minimal unit of analysis (akkerman & bakker 2011; mcmillan, goodman & schmid 2016). our objects – the youth violence assessment and other data-based tools that guide decisionmaking about programming and resource allocation – are negotiated, interpreted and used by the other activity systems that make up the yvpi. by using third generation chat to examine the boundary zone created by the 12+ partner organisations’ activity systems that come together in the governance council of the yvpi (which itself is just a subset of all of the actors involved in the yvpi), we begin to make visible the origins of tensions and contradictions in our cross-sector partnership’s willingness to identify structural racism as a causal factor for youth violence (see figure 2: multiple activity systems form a boundary zone, which is a partial picture of the partners involved). the size of the individual activity systems is meant to illustrate the unevenness of the partnership based on differences in power and influence the various actors exercised in the particular case discussed in this article. in order to understand the work it takes to introduce and deliberate over objects in the partnership boundary zone, we must delve deeper into boundary concepts. boundary zones, boundary work and boundary objects following akkerman and bakker (2011), we understand boundaries as not only representing the extent of an organisation’s work, but also the sociocultural differences between organisations that give rise to discontinuities in interaction and action when attempting to do joint work on something as complex as youth violence. the boundary zone can be understood as a transactional space where there is a coming together of individual areas of practice or individual activity systems with the intention of creating a shared area of practice or a joint activity system (mcmillan, goodman & schmidt 2016). even with shared intention, attempting to bring together differently situated activity systems means that boundary zones can be ‘places of challenge, contestation, and playing out of power relations’ (mcmillan, goodman & schmidt 2016, p. 23). there is a fluidity to these spaces due to the reshuffling that occurs through the development of shared language or common measurement systems (oldenhof, putters & stoopendaal 2016). boundary work, therefore, requires negotiating between multiple roles at the interstices of different organisational groups (azambuja & islam 2019; oldenhof et al. 2016). due to the challenges navigating what is often a chaotic web of competing and complementary aims, strategies and tactics, the change seen through boundary work is likely to be incremental versus revolutionary or swift (greenwood & hinings 1996; oldenhof, putters & stoopendaal 2016; stern & green 2005). figure 2 attempts to provide a visualisation ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 of this chaotic and uneven web of interests coming together and how the boundary object of any one partner may be visible and recognised, but also contested and misunderstood. boundary workers need to be seen as credible within and between organisations to be effective in communicating the intention of boundary objects (steadman 1992). trust is crucial in generating momentum for the cross-sector partnership when different activity systems’ boundary workers interact (van meerkerk et al. 2017). the successful management of diversity of interests and perspectives requires focus on overcoming discontinuities in actions or interactions, not overcoming or avoiding the difference itself (akkerman & bakker 2011). boundary work, therefore, does not mean trying to homogenise partners or force unity, but rather learning how to work together to co-generate change in a context of sociocultural difference: different world views, histories, sources of knowledge and practices (mcmillan 2011). outcome: youth violence preven�on/ inequity reduc�on police research team schools city manager courts figure 2. multiple activity systems form a boundary zone ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 given this context, effective boundary workers are savvy and understand the informal and formal norms of external organisations, as well as their own agency’s operations and politics (steadman 1992). boundary workers take on different roles and are referred to by different names within the literature depending in part on their primary function. boundary-spanners manage the interface between organisations and their environments, link systems with at least partially conflicting goals or expectations, and facilitate information sharing between people or groups separated by some physical, cognitive, or cultural organisational barrier ( johlke & duhan 2001; oldenhof et al. 2016; rugkasa, shortt & boydell 2007; steadman 1992; van meerkerk & edelenbos 2014; van meerkerk, zwanenburg & van eerd 2017; williams 2002). boundary brokers attempt to resolve conflict and increase collaborative spaces (long, cunningham & braithwaite 2013). boundary shakers influence existing organisational networks, gather and use knowledge of the organisational political context and motivations of others to pursue transformative change (balogun et al. 2005). boundary workers are not necessarily trying to cross over into other activity systems, but rather are navigating, facilitating and managing at the boundaries of the intersecting systems to achieve a shared objective. to do this, boundary workers use boundary objects to assist with spanning, brokering and shaking of boundaries (penuel et al. 2015). boundary objects are intended to satisfy the informational needs of the partners. as shown in figure 2, the object’s meaning emerges and is contested at the nexus of the multiple perspectives, increasing the importance for partners to have some level of understanding of the activity systems shaping the boundary zone (star & griesemer 1989). we can ascribe these different boundary roles to our work, as the research partner, through how we use the boundary object of data, which we consider to be our currency within the initiative. our negotiated and facilitated use of data as a boundary object contributes to a level of continuity in the context of socio-cultural difference within the boundary; however, as the story above shows, we did not achieve unity or consensus. we share examples of how our use of data performed different boundary roles and, in so doing, illuminate limitations to our power to foster transformational change. case study: data as a boundary object with our conceptual framework laid out, we go back to the story of the meeting with the city manager and the chief and what led up to that meeting. we explore how data and findings derived from them are the boundary objects we bring into the boundary zone of the yvpi. early in the development of the yvpi, we occupied a boundary spanning role. one of the first tools that we felt was important to develop to aid communication within the initiative was a monthly data report. to develop the template for this report, we met individually with the superintendent of schools, the department of youth services, the county’s district attorney and the chief of police to explore with them the data they could share that would be most relevant to the aims of the yvpi. we were then able to develop a data report that presented changes in these indicators to the governance council on a monthly basis. it is important to note that the city manager’s liaison accompanied us at these meetings, his presence facilitating the sector leaders’ willingness to share data. the resulting data report can be thought of as a boundary object produced by the research team’s activity system. by joining data from these four sectors into one report, we were able to begin to facilitate information sharing among groups with at least partially conflicting goals or expectations. the mission of the yvpi was written on the data report, but in the first year of sharing the reports, we did not explicitly link trends in the data to a structural racism explanation. what we did was provide a structure and a framework within which the partners could operate and process progress on the yvpi. we also hoped the report would help hold people accountable to the work of the initiative. ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 as we started preparing the 2018 community assessment, using relative rate index analysis, a clear picture of increasing inequity emerged. arrest rates for females and white youth were decreasing at a faster rate than for males and youth of colour even though females and white youth were not the intended primary beneficiaries of the yvpi interventions. as the research team, we recognised that there could be multiple explanations for this trend. we considered that the initiative may be implementing the wrong interventions or that the interventions were not being implemented with fidelity – meaning that there were insufficient levels of support, insufficient numbers of youth involved, or that programs were not serving young people with sufficient levels of risk. we were cognisant that these types of explanations came from a deficit mindset and could be seen as focusing fault on the implementing organisations or the youth themselves. wanting to highlight ways systems and structures may be undermining programmatic responses, we began to frame the discussion in terms of inequity in the context of structural racism. in taking this stance and focusing on systemic and structural causes, such as racism, instead of individual behaviour, we understood our boundary work at this time was as boundary shakers. we were using the boundary object of our monthly data reports and presentations to the governance council to pursue transformative change, by problematising the issue outside of the individual and even the agencies providing services, and onto community systems and structures. up until the 2018 governance council meeting, it could be argued that, while we had consistently been sharing information that showed disparities, our boundary work had been characterised as spanning. the monthly data report, as the boundary object, was meant to communicate across difference and bring partners together for the shared purpose of youth violence prevention and reduction, and create dialogue at the boundary of socio-cultural difference. when we attempted boundary shaking by framing the boundary object in terms of structural racism, our interpretation was contested by the police who were prepared to leave the yvpi and stop sharing their data. at this point, the city manager operated as a boundary broker, attempting to resolve conflict and maintain the collaborative space. we followed suit in a brokering role and agreed to change the language on the report and provide a rationale for why we use the indicators we do to monitor yvpi progress. it can be argued that the yvpi has been successful in generating needed programs and initiatives. developed at least in part due to community needs identified through our research, examples include an intervention program for early childhood trauma, a crisis response team to provide a non-policing response to shooting and stabbing incidents, and a juvenile court diversion program. there is evidence that, when we have been able to achieve a shared understanding of what the data are saying, we have been able to shape and influence community change. yet, we have been struck by the brokering work we have had to do in providing alternative interpretations of our boundary objects to keep some of the leaders at the table and remain part of the process. sector leaders are needed because they can create and change policy, and they now feel like they are on the same page and have become more comfortable about making change collaboratively. yet, we are aware that this is a group of people who already had power and then we put them in a position to have more power over the process. we had hoped that the boundary objects we produced would help them use their power to apply an equity lens to their policy work. yet, we are coming to an uneasy recognition that the power dynamic within the boundary zone can reinforce the status quo. through our attempt at boundary shaking, we learned that we could jeopardise our access to the data we need to perform our role – a role that has contributed to new community interventions. this realisation constrained us in terms of the risks we were willing to take. we have also come to realise that brokering work can act as a process of exclusion of community involvement. the boundary work to keep the leaders at the table had begun to formalise the yvpi as its own activity system – one that had been unable to acknowledge the role of structural racism in youth violence and, in doing so, denied the reality of communities affected by violence. ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 this happened in 2018, leaving us to wonder what if it was happening now? would we still make the same decision to adjust the language used in the mission statement? the nationwide community uprising that occurred after george floyd was murdered was a powerful and demonstrative account of the strength of a community mobilisation effort aimed at calling out injustice and racism and setting demands for systemic change. in fact, in february of 2021, the city manager signed an executive order acknowledging the role structural and institutional racism has played, and continues to play, in the city. although it should not take the murder of a black man for city officials to acknowledge the role of racism in systems, structures and institutions, that is what it took for the terms that the yvpi had been using and being challenged on to be incorporated into an executive order, albeit symbolic. although we cannot change the fact that we decided to step into the boundary brokering role when the police contested the term ‘structural racism’, we can think about what it could have looked like if we had started the initiative by bringing community members on board as equal partners with equal power. discussion during our reflections, we have come to realise the importance of attending to power in the boundary zone of community-university partnerships. the actors within the partnership treated us as a legitimate part of the yvpi. our legitimacy stemmed partly from the data and research we brought to bear, and how we used the boundary tools to bring systems together. our partners appreciated that the research and data legitimised the work by allowing us to measure progress through performance indicators. this appreciation diminished, however, when we connected increasing inequity in outcomes with systemic racism. as we demonstrated through the juxtaposition of our initiative with that of a community uprising, calling out racism does not work if it only occurs internally within an initiative. perhaps boundary shaking is not enough, and the move to address systemic racism and inequity would be boundary breaking through what roth and lee (2007) refer to as a ‘third perspective’, such as a community voice that could disrupt the power of the status quo. understanding the yvpi as a boundary zone illustrates how power plays out in community-university partnerships and the various boundary roles available to research partners. we have come to wonder if our brokering work may have supplanted the power a larger and louder voice from the community could have had, especially if there was shared power within the initiative with the affected community from the beginning (kegler et al. 2019). our boundary work established a level of trust within the boundary zone that we were afraid to lose by shaking boundaries, but this trust may have come at the expense of transformative change. the boundary-spanning role allowed for progress to be made, so we could argue that it was necessary for the health of a collaborative group, but the constraints we faced leave us with questions about alternatives for university-based research partners. • given the initiative’s need to bring together and keep sector leaders at the table, what possibilities existed for us to build authentic mechanisms of community involvement in ways that would have avoided the concentrated power of the governance committee? • what if we had spanned to governance from a boundary zone consisting of community-based organisations? could our energy have been better spent building community power that could have more deeply influenced formal institutions and policies in ways that would have had more impact on inequity? • could we have built data boundary objects in this community-based space to support community activism so that it would have been armed with the legitimacy of research and data sufficient to break boundaries and constitute new forms of power? would this have allowed a bigger inflection point of change to happen because the motivation would not have been to hold the partnership together, but to let the struggle between the status quo and transformation play out? ross, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 • given that the lead research partner was a tenured professor with job security, should she have continued to push the yvpi from within the boundary zone as she would have faced minimal threat to her career and standing in her university? we are not the first to engage with these types of questions, or to think about an alternative model that centres resident power and leadership from the beginning and makes explicit the need to focus on structural issues and systemic racism. the collaborating for equity and justice toolkit outlines six principles for collaborative-based work in communities that cover some of the themes we have outlined were missing from the core of the yvpi (wolff et al. 2017). conclusion by focusing on the boundary zone of our partnership, we were able to explore how power operates in the yvpi and the ways in which our development and introduction of boundary objects reinforced and/or disrupted the status quo, specifically as it related to addressing race-based inequities in youth experiences and outcomes. our boundary work expanded, shook, but ultimately maintained boundaries between organisations intent on addressing the drivers of youth violence. in the end, by creating space around the needs of the formal leaders and decision-makers, the yvpi created a new boundary that has made it difficult for grassroots and community-based partners to enter the boundary zone. boundary work allows us to explore questions about how power operates and in what ways our actions and inaction reinforce the status quo, as well as what possibilities exist(ed) for us to open space for other boundary shakers. ultimately, these reflections raised questions about the value of a university partner. while research and data – our boundary object – can create legitimacy for an 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redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: abbott, s.w., tiffen, b. 2019. democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:2, article id 6480. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i2.6480 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship scott william abbott, belinda tiffen office of scholarly communication, uts library, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: scott william abbott; scott.abbott@uts.edu.au doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6480 article history: received 15/02/2019; revised 28/08/2019; accepted 21/10/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract community-engaged scholarship is at a transitional moment, seeking to effect cultural change in academic and research institutions, which will expand the concept of scholarship to encompass the methodologies and definitions of scholarship embodied in communityuniversity research and engagement. open scholarship is similarly employed in transforming scholarship to broaden its scope, influence and impact beyond traditional modes of academic practice. written from the perspective of practitioners of open access publishing, this article explores the development and current state of the open movement and considers intersections and opportunities for collaboration with community-engaged scholarship. keywords: open scholarship, open access, f.a.i.r., scholarly communication, engaged scholarship introduction community-engaged scholarship (ces) and open scholarship (os) share similar aims to ensure universities achieve a public good and utilise their significant resources to help resolve local, regional, national and international issues. they both seek to extend scholarship beyond the walls of the university to the wider community and civic life. since emerging in the 1990s, community-engaged scholarship and open scholarship have become integrated into academic declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6480 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6480 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:scott.abbott@uts.edu.au http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6480 processes and practices at the individual, institutional and national levels. this acceptance has been achieved through a combination of top–down support in the form of policy innovation, national reports and compacts, and funding support, as well as bottom–up approaches, including specific local projects, joint community-university initiatives and new forms of scholarly activities conducted by faculty. despite substantial progress over the past 30 years, both forms of scholarship have encountered significant challenges in being accepted as part of mainstream teaching and research within the traditional university model. the most significant of these challenges is the current academic reward system, which incentivises practices perpetuating traditional concepts of scholarship and scientific knowledge, while disadvantaging faculty and institutions that are exploring new modes of creating and sharing knowledge and focusing on the university’s civic mission, as embodied in both ces and os. to create an environment in which both engaged and open scholarship are central to academic life, significant policy and cultural change is necessary to widen the concept and practice of scholarship, including new types of academic practice and research focused on the democratisation of knowledge and positive social change. the need to effect changes in the academic reward system appears, therefore, to provide a point of convergence where open and engaged scholars can fruitfully collaborate. to date, there has been little evidence of convergence or cooperation between the two movements. written from the perspective of practitioners of open scholarship, this article begins a dialogue with the aim of bridging this divide. through exploring current practices and innovations in open scholarship at the institutional and national levels, it is hoped that the synergies of open scholarship and community-engaged scholarship will be highlighted. through these commonalities, the two streams of academic practice – openness and engagement – may find ways in which to intersect and collaborate to implement the types of long-term institutional, national and international changes in systems, policies and culture that will embed openness and engagement within higher education and assist universities to fulfil their potential as agents of positive societal change. open scholarship and its parallels with community-engaged scholarship open access – the precursor to the broader concept of open scholarship – emerged in the 1990s as a response from scholars to a growing dissatisfaction with current norms of scholarly communication. early proponents noted financial and social inequities in the system of academic publication whereby scholars produced research, gave the written results of that research to academic publishers, and then paid the publishers large amounts of money – sometimes directly as individuals, but more normally via the institutional library – for access to the journals in which their own research was published (suber 2009). embedded in these practices was a geo-political privileging of scholars in wealthy institutions and developed regions which could afford to participate in this increasingly expensive mode of scholarly production and exchange (adcock & fottrell 2008; evans & reimer 2009; lor 2007). the advent of online publishing and widespread internet access in the 1990s led corporate academic publishers to offer a new business model to university libraries: large online collections of journal titles packaged for an amount much less than the aggregate sum of purchasing each title individually. the practice was commonly known as ‘the big deal’ and was generally taken up enthusiastically by libraries which saw a way to exponentially increase their library’s holdings and offer the convenience of online access to their patrons. however, abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 the big deal had far higher overall costs than the previous practice of purchasing title by title – even though the average cost per title was drastically reduced – and removed flexibility in library budgets (carlson & pope 2009; frazier 2001; friend 2003; poynder 2011). corporate academic publishers often took advantage of the new monopolistic hold they had on libraries through sharp annual price increases to maintain these online journal collections (ball 2004; dingley 2002–2005; fortney & basile 1998; kronenfeld & schlimgen 2004). the effect of this ‘journal crisis’ was exacerbated by the consolidation of academic publishing into the hands of a few corporate publishers – often at the cost of small guild-based publishers. moving into the new millennium, many libraries found themselves facing the reality of drastically cutting their online collections as the cost of providing access to information rapidly outpaced the ability of institutional budgets to cope (anderson 2017; harvard university 2012; siler 2016; sparc 2018). as the costs of accessing scholarship increased, many of those involved in the scholarly communication cycle as producers, consumers or administrators of information sources became aware that the costs of this rapid shift were not only financial but also educational, cultural and social. as costs spiralled upwards, fewer institutions and individuals could afford to access current research as it was published in the academic literature. scientists, researchers, educators and students were being cut off from information – ironically at a time when the advent of the internet made the broad and rapid dissemination of information technologically easier than ever before (rao 2001). the flow-on effects in terms of educational standards, the pace of new scientific discoveries, and the potential retardation of innovation in business, government and society were difficult to quantify, but were to be deeply feared. the budapest open access initiative (boai) was one of the first attempts to articulate this mood in an international framework that could drive change. drafted at a meeting of the open society foundations in 2001, the boai provided both a statement of principles and a roadmap for practice. its goal was to implement changes in scholarly practice that could remove inequality in access to information, which was seen as an increasing barrier to universities and scholars fulfilling their core mission: to apply new knowledge and research to improve society (guédon 2017). an old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. the old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. the new technology is the internet. the public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge (budapest open access initiative 2002). parallel with the emergence of the open access movement, community-engaged scholarship was gaining traction, particularly in us universities. unlike open access, which was a predominantly bottom–up initiative driven by individual scholars organising into loose associations to advocate for change, the impetuses for community-engaged scholarship were multiple: faculty and higher education leaders, government and communities articulating a need to bridge the divide between universities and the communities in which they were democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 located but from which they were seen to be increasingly isolated (boyer 1990; groark & mccall 2018; soska 2015). while ces often aimed to have an immediate and direct impact on the community through collaborative projects which tackled social issues at a local level (maurrasse 2010), the movement’s overall mission included a more comprehensive public good. specifically within the us context, community-engaged scholarship sought meaningful, broad-based social change by enhancing or returning to the publicly funded university’s original mission of producing civicly minded students whose education would benefit not just the student but the broader national demos of which he or she was a part. this mission can be summarised as generating ‘democratic, community-based knowledge and action’ (saltmarsh, hartley & clayton 2009). as it expanded beyond the us, the ces movement explored broader questions of what constitutes knowledge and who should be included in scholarly conversations shaping the near and distant future. hall and tandon (2017), for example, argued for including various ancient systems of thought that lay beyond the comparatively young and exclusive western notion of knowledge. by first recognising, and then drawing on, the knowledge systems of ancient and demonstrably more sustainable cultures, they argued that, through western science, we were more likely to be able to learn together and work together to achieve the shared economic sustainability and ecological balance that currently eludes us. in its attempts to broaden the concept of scholarship beyond western scientific rationalism and to apply other forms of knowledge to the resolution of global issues, communityengaged scholarship has moved further than the open access movement in revolutionising the concept and practice of scholarship. while open access sought to enact public good through the belief that wide and unfettered access to information would result in an uplift in knowledge, education, research and innovation, it has not radically questioned the nature of western academic empirical knowledge. nevertheless, both practices share a common goal in progressing traditional modes of research and academic practice to more directly apply the fruits of scholarship to pressing social, economic and health issues beyond the walls of academia. open scholarship, as it has progressed, has also called for greater contribution to the academic conversation from those with often disenfranchised voices. this, of course, supports the work of established engaged scholars such as hall and tandon (2017). given these shared aims, it is unfortunate that there appears to have been little systematic awareness between the two groups of scholars and no cross-pollination of ideas at this early stage. foundational works of both practices do not reference the parallel changes happening in open and engaged scholarship (see, for example, bok 1990; boyer 1990, 1996 on community-engaged scholarship; harnad 1995, 1997; suber 2012 on open access). this silence is perhaps explained by the disciplinary boundaries between proponents of each concept. open access arose largely within scientific disciplines, its leading scholars were mostly scientists, and the problem was often framed as one of ‘scientific’ communication rather than ‘scholarly’ communication. engaged scholarship, conversely, was often – although by no means exclusively – focused on humanities and social science faculties, and sought from quite early on (boyer 1990) to advocate for the inclusion of community-based intellectuals and practitioners in both public and scholarly debate. since these early origins, both practices have had marked success. the open access movement, for instance, has expanded well beyond its initial focus on journal publishing within the scientific community to encompass an interest in removing barriers to all forms of scholarly activity, including monograph publishing, data publishing and sharing, and the creation and dissemination of educational resources – generally captured under the umbrella abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 term of ‘open scholarship’ (sparc, ‘setting the default to open’). the component elements of open scholarship are described below, highlighting some of the major innovations and some points of relevance to community-engaged scholarship. many of these component elements and innovations are contained in the recently published ‘ad hoc task force on open access to mit’s research’ (mit 2019), which emerged from the highly influential ‘institute-wide task force on the future of libraries’ report also commissioned by mit and published in 2016. open scholarship today open access publishing the open access movement initially focused on finding new and fairer means of distributing research than the traditional academic journal. great progress towards this goal has been achieved through a combination of top–down and bottom–up approaches. scholars working individually or in informally constituted associations have contributed to a shift in the scholarly communication landscape. for example, they have chosen to publish in open access journals or to self-archive in institutional or discipline-based repositories to ensure wide and free access to their research publications, with arxiv.org (2019) being a particularly early and notable success as a discipline-based open repository. scholars have also banded together to start new open access journals exploring alternative business models and removing the economic, technical and legal barriers which prevent traditional journal articles being widely shared, read, cited and used by those outside affluent universities. the open humanities press and the public library of science (plos) are two key examples of these enterprising new publishing arrangements (open humanities press n.d.; plos n.d.). scholars have become activists, boycotting authoring, editorial and peer review roles at traditional paywalled journals in favour of volunteering their labour to open access journals. notable examples of scholar activism include the cost of knowledge project, which calls on academics to boycott elsevier journals and to date has garnered over 17,000 signatories, and the 2015 mass resignations of members of the editorial advisory committee of australia’s leading medical journal, medical journal of australia, in protest at what members saw as unethical commercial arrangements with elsevier to publish the journal (the cost of knowledge n.d.; mcinerney 2015; patty 2015). this grassroots movement has resulted in large-scale policy change at the institutional, national and international levels. individual departments and entire universities have implemented open access policies requiring academics to make a version of published works freely available in an open access format. latest figures from the open access policy tracking service, roarmap (n.d.), estimate that 732 universities or research institutions and a further 75 sub-units of research organisations (e.g. faculties, departments, schools) have an open access mandate. this is increasingly becoming a requirement of funders, who require the outputs of grant funded research to be made openly available. roarmap lists 85 funders and 57 research organisations (such as university aligned research centres) as having an open access mandate, led by major american and european funders such as the bill and melinda gates foundation, the european research council, wellcome trust and national institutes of health. governments have also mandated open access publishing, although with mixed success. in 2012 the uk government commissioned a report ‘to develop a model, which would be both democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 effective and sustainable over time, for expanding access to the published findings of research’ (finch 2012). the aim of the year-long review was to address the types of issues which the open access movement had raised, but the proposed solution was met with widespread dissatisfaction. the key recommendation was to follow a ‘gold oa’ route, whereby authors or their institutions would pay an article processing fee (apc) to publish an article under an open model. while the results did see an increase in the percentage of research being published open access, it resulted in large increases in expenditure for institutions (offset by government subsidies) paying these apcs, mostly to large publishers who offered a ‘hybrid’ publication model under which they continued to charge subscription fees to read the majority of their content, but would make individual articles freely available where authors had paid apcs (earney 2018; jubb 2017). this ‘double-dipping’, where publishers established two revenue streams from institutions, which paid to publish and then paid to read, has been widely condemned, and the outcomes of the finch report have been met largely with disappointment and scepticism by open access advocates (harnard 2012; kingsley 2016). this case demonstrates many of the complexities and divisions within the open access movement as to how to achieve its aims to make research more widely available. other national and international efforts have been more cohesive and successful. since 2006 the european commission (ec) and the european union (eu) have funded openaire (open access infrastructure for research in europe) to coordinate projects ‘aimed to support the implementation of open access in europe’. with a broad mandate and members from 33 countries, openaire supports large-scale national infrastructure projects to provide the necessary technological underpinning for open and free access to research publications and data, as well as policy innovation to ‘position open access and open science onto national agendas’ (openaire 2018a). the vision of openaire, which encompasses inclusive scholarly practice to foster social benefits, could equally be applied to engaged scholarship: ‘[to] transform society … [and] allow citizens, educators, funders, civil servants and industry [to] find ways to make science useful for themselves, their working environments, the society’ (openaire 2018b). the f.a.i.r. principles have also transcended national boundaries. initially developed specifically as a set of guiding principles for the sharing of research data, they have since been adopted more broadly and applied to all research outputs (force11 2015). the concept of f.a.i.r. (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) moves beyond simple open access to consider how research may be easily discovered, shared and used by both humans and systems to ensure ongoing access and reuse. in australia, the f.a.i.r. principles have been adopted by peak library and other bodies, such as the council of australian university librarians (caul 2015) to advocate for national action at the governmental level. the two major national research funders, the national health and medical research council (nhmrc 2018) and australian research council (arc 2017) have both introduced open access policies for funded research to facilitate open sharing of research and research data. the open and f.a.i.r. scholarship movements have also grown beyond the often anglocentric sphere of academia, with a range of national funding and research bodies in both developed and developing nations providing institutional statements of support and direct financial commitments to the european commission’s coalition s initiative – ‘plan s’. perhaps most significantly, national libraries and research funders from china, one of the largest producers of research, have made statements of commitment to the plan s goal to provide open access to research from 2021 (schiermeier 2018). meanwhile, latin american countries have their own strong history of driving research sharing through regional abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 collaborative intiatives, such as scielo and redalyc, which predate euro-centric policies such as plan s (minniti 2018; sayer 2019). in the wake of these national and international principle statements and policy changes, there is evidence that the open access movement has achieved real changes in academic culture and practice, and that this has resulted in research being more widely distributed and disseminated. the number of academics involved in some form of open publishing practice is one measure of this. while it is difficult to quantify numbers, the 17,000 signatories to the cost of knowledge project and the growing number of research institutions and funders tracked via roarmap indicate widespread adoption. studies have also attempted to quantify the number of materials being made available openly and the impact of this work (tennant et al. 2016). quantitative statistical analysis has demonstrated that the number of open access research publications is growing. a recent large-scale survey suggests that 28 per cent of scholarly literature is now open access, and claims a strong citation advantage for open articles, with oa articles receiving 18 per cent more citations than the average (piwowar et al. 2018; on the citation advantage of oa see also davis & walters 2011; eysenbach 2006; harnard & brody 2004; lewis 2018; mccabe & snyder 2015; tang, bever & yu 2017). measuring the societal and economic advantages of open access publishing has been harder, but new ‘alternative metrics’ have been developed to measure engagement with research publications via web-based news and social media channels to track how research is achieving readership and visibility beyond the academy (galligan & dyas-correia 2013; mehrazar et al. 2018; priem et al. 2011). others have demonstrated that economic growth and improvements in community health and public life can arise when research is widely shared (gruen, houghton & tooth 2014; tennant et al. 2016). engaged scholars have certainly adopted some of the practices of open access, and there is strong evidence of open access journals publishing the work of community-engaged scholars. however, to date, engaged scholars, as an organised group, do not appear to have been a strong voice in the rapidly evolving cultural and policy changes of open access. this seems a missed opportunity, as the mutual and equitable relationships on which engaged scholarship rests are bolstered by the open sharing of information (community partner summit group 2010). open education the open movement has expanded beyond a focus on open access to research publications to include open education, which focuses on making educational material freely available for reuse, adaptation and remixing as a means of reducing the costs of producing and acquiring vital education resources (mcgill 2010; oecd 2007). this may be a single document such as a lesson plan, an entire online course, or an open textbook, and all can be shared by individuals or organisations free from financial costs, but also from restrictive copyright limitations which prevent reuse and adaptation. engaged scholarship has a strong educational and student focus, with many university programs focused on service-learning to develop civic values in students and enrich learning through community-engaged programs. there is an obvious synergy between open educational practices and learning inspired by and delivered through community engagement. however, the authors have been unable to find current examples of service-learning programs sharing learning materials as open education resources to allow the dissemination and wider adoption of these pedagogical approaches. democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 7 open data the open data movement advocates sharing research data and enabling its reuse. this is seen as having two important consequences for scholarship. it reduces the amount of time and resources required to conduct research by minimising duplicate studies and experiments, allowing academics to utilise existing data sets rather than undertaking their own data gathering and to subject them to further analysis and interpretation, which in turn drives innovation and further discoveries of benefit to academia as well as economically (manyika et al 2013; piwowar & vision 2013). it also increases the quality and veracity of research findings by allowing raw data behind research publications to be verified, replicated and subjected to independent assessment (chen 2019; nosek 2015). while the open data movement has focused primarily on the stem disciplines and areas of basic research and has therefore been predicated on the basis of storing and sharing scientific quantitative data, increasingly there is awareness that the social sciences and humanities also generate datasets which could be valuable for reuse, adaption and reinterpretation. applied research, such as that undertaken in engaged scholarship, could be particularly beneficial to both academics and practitioners, potentially producing economies of scale and savings in time and resources, and enabling data gathered in the course of community-engaged research, service-learning and community activities to be applied in contexts beyond the original projects. the evidence that open scholarly practices break down disciplinary and academic– community barriers speaks directly to the vision of engaged scholarship: to work with communities to help address social issues and improve public life. engaged scholarship works at the nexus between research, teaching and outreach to improve both the university and the communities they serve through educational programs and service-learning approaches, which resonates with the aims of the open education movement to make learning accessible and authentic. engaged scholarship also co-creates data which could be reused as part of applied research projects and civic programs, if it adopted the principles of f.a.i.r. and open data. the evidence therefore suggests greater interaction could provide mutual benefit to both open and engaged scholars. for proponents of engaged scholarship, fuller participation in the range of open practices, including open data and open educational practices, would further its mission to enact wide public benefit from research and broaden participation in knowledge creation and scholarship beyond the academy. for open scholarship, greater engagement with ces’s questioning of the western scientific tradition as the basis of knowledge and scholarship would increase the impact and relevance of its attempts to share knowledge and enact public good from university-based scholarship. perhaps the most fruitful focus of collaboration, however, lies in addressing the shortcomings and inequities of the current university reward system. as noted earlier, the barriers to adoption of more engaged and open scholarship are largely related to the value and reward systems prevalent in academia, and the privileging of basic research disseminated by traditional means over applied and innovative research and scholarship. in the next sections we will explore this value system in more detail and the changes necessary to enable wider adoption of open and engaged scholarship. the academic reward and incentive system in recent decades, the development within universities of career incentives that reward the individual academic for research publication in high-ranking journals and focus measurement abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 8 of research success at the institutional level around international ranking tables has seen the work of civic service and community engagement by scholars relegated to a lower tier of importance and prestige within the academic world (birch, perry & taylor jr 2013). this prioritisation of scientific research and publication output over teaching and scholar– community engagement, despite the core educational and civic missions of publicly funded universities, presents a significant barrier to more fully embedding the practices of both community-engaged scholars and proponents of open scholarship into research workflows and academic life. perhaps more critically, it acts as a brake to recasting the university as an ‘anchor institution’; a responsible and contributive stakeholder within local, state, national and international communities (birch, perry & taylor jr 2013). the need to develop reward systems that embed the values of community engagement within institutional and government policies has long been recognised by engaged scholars (barnett & moher 2019; ellison & eatman 2008; kaplan 2015; saltmarsh et al. 2009; ward 2003). as ward (2005, cited by saltmarsh et al. 2009) points out: faculty members, in their roles as arbiters of the curriculum, teachers, knowledge producers, and citizens, hold a prominent role in realizing the goal of making higher education more responsive to community and public welfare. for faculty to claim, own, and foster institutional efforts to connect the campus more meaningfully with society calls for reward structures that clearly define and reward this type of work. groak and mccall (2018, p. 8) have made the point more bluntly: … faculty in many universities that emphasize basic research and scholarship as a criterion for promotion do not value research and other types of projects that have local rather than national relevance and are conducted in the messy laboratories of the community. advocates of open scholarship have also recognised the ‘publish or perish’ culture of the academy as the greatest impediment to the changes in research culture and academic practice that would result in more open sharing of research outputs. publication in prestige journals – where prestige is measured by traditional citation metrics and well-established journal ‘brands’ – has become entrenched as the standard by which academic output is valued. academic reward and ranking systems reward publication in journals which score highly on traditional citation measures, such as impact factor, driving a cycle which entrenches the position of established journals, with no reward for academics who seek to publish in ways that engage readers beyond the academy, or innovate new forms of publishing and scholarly communication, such as open peer review and multi-media and interactive web-based publishing. public, the open access, multimedia digital journal of community-engaged learning and research, is an example of how effectively new forms of publishing can communicate and engage across disciplines, and between researchers and practitioners and communities. however, these types of publications remain relatively rare as the academic reward system favours publication of traditional research in high-profile established outlets. this situation has led to organised movements aimed at changing the current value system which links personal academic career progression and institutional rankings, prestige and funding to crude quantitative measures, especially citation metrics. the declaration on research assessment (dora) and the leiden manifesto (hicks et al. 2015) are notable collaborative efforts that urge publishers, libraries, universities and individual academics to ignore journal impact factors as a measure of the value of research. democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 9 the need to challenge traditional reward systems based on simplistic bibliometrics has also been identified in a recent european commission report aimed at directing research towards pressing social issues. the report urges that stakeholders: when participating in research assessment, for example in hiring, promotion and tenure, and funding decisions, focus on the merits and impact of a researcher’s work and refrain from the use of metrics particularly journal-based metrics as a proxy. in particular, they should incorporate the recommendations from dora and the leiden manifesto into the assessment process. (directorate-general for research and innovation, european commission, 2019, p. 8) points of convergence and the road forward from within the current academic reward system there emerges clear points of convergence for open and engaged scholars to work together. through more systematic collaboration, advocacy and practice, both groups could more effectively enact the kinds of cultural and policy changes required to widen the concept of scholarship and support more inclusive practices. this broader concept of scholarship should include new types of insight from the community and other knowledge systems that have all but been displaced by western knowledge. by democratisating knowledge in this way, and creating and sharing new knowledge on topics of global importance such as sustainability, academic practices could be established that cogenerate socially responsive research that would have broader and more fundamental societal impact. this article posits that one powerful way to change the global university policy and research culture would be to consider models incorporating ‘more socially responsible criteria for ranking universities’ (barnett & moher 2019). by including openness and engagement as key criteria against which universities are ranked, and subsequently financially supported by government and funders, university administrators would be freed to apply top–down directives that reward engagement and openness through researcher employment, tenure and promotion. there are encouraing signs that funders, universities, and national and international organisations are starting to recognise the need for a more inclusive, engaged and open scholarship, which may drive necessary changes in reward and ranking systems. a number of statements have emerged recently, which, while predominantly focused on evolving the scholarly communication system by making research open and f.a.i.r., also assume – sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly – that such change must include research collaboration with the broader community. the 2019 european commission report referenced above, for example, sums this up poetically by reference to h.g. wells’ ‘world brain’ as an analogy for how academic–social collaboration may help solve the planet’s most pressing social and environmental challenges: … wells’ vision rests on all human beings partaking in some fashion in all the world’s knowledge. because knowledge is accessible to all, researchers as well as other individuals, all across the globe, can become active participants in a worldwide structure of distributed intelligence. this powerful metaphor provides for a vision of an ideal state of scholarly communication. (directorate-general for research and innovation (european commission) 2019, p. 24) the report invites all key actors in the scholarly communication system to act, and thereby facilitate change. for ‘practitioners, educators, and other societal groups’, the ec authors abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 10 https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail?p_p_id=portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=maincontentarea&p_p_col_count=3&_portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet_javax.portlet.action=author&facet.author=rtd&language=en&facet.collection=eupub 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recommend four clear steps to engage and participate and thereby shape the local, national and global publicly funded research agenda for direct social benefit. the four steps are: 1. organize and advocate for free access to, and right to reuse of, publicly funded research results. 2. reach out to funders, research institutions, and policy makers in order to develop new communication channels, new forms of co-creation and co-planning of research, and new forms of funding in response to needs, concerns and issues emanating from the population at large. 3. look for opportunities to engage with research topics/results that are of interest to societal groups and their communities. 4. bring forward research topics/questions that are misor underrepresented (e.g. by contacting relevant researchers, attracting the attention of other actors in the science system, or mobilising action in organised interest groups). (directorate-general for research and innovation (european commission) 2019, p. 49) the ec report echoes the 2018 league of european research universities’ paper on open science in advocating for cultural change towards open and f.a.i.r. scholarship with a community focus (ayris et al. 2018). its 41 recommendations for cultural change within universities include a section on ‘citizen science’ and engagement in research by scholars, nonprofessional scholars and the public to shape beneficial public outcomes via applied research (ayris et al. 2018, p. 20). drawing these statements together into a plan for practical action, plan s is the ambitious project of the european union (eu) to make all their publicly funded research open access by 2021. currently the eu, along with 13 other (mainly european) national funders, make up ‘coalition-s’. they will require that from 2021: … all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in open access journals, on open access platforms, or made immediately available through open access repositories without embargo. (science europe 2019) the move towards large-scale, funder-driven open scholarship, which plan s requires, will help drive the cultural change necessary within the research ecosystem to bring open and engaged scholarship into the mainstream. by unlocking research at scale, it will bring a far broader cross-section of the public, previously hidden behind publisher paywalls, into the orbit of published scholarship. if widely adopted, plan s will also disrupt the economics of the current scholarly communication and research ecosystem driven by traditional publishers and ranking-driven governmental funding, enabling a greater role for funders focused on social and community goals. this disruption may allow for wider concepts of the purpose and nature of scholarship, beyond traditional western scientific research, to gain greater prominence. in such a system, the community, who funds research, will be able to freely access, read and reuse research outputs, as well as actively co-design research projects to better meet their pressing social and environmental needs. it is research that the community can contribute to, not just as research subjects or as data sources, but as peer collaborators and research co-designers whose aforementioned needs can help guide the research agenda. democratising the knowledge commons: the shared goals of open and community-engaged scholarship gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 11 https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail?p_p_id=portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=maincontentarea&p_p_col_count=3&_portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet_javax.portlet.action=author&facet.author=rtd&language=en&facet.collection=eupub 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https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail?p_p_id=portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=maincontentarea&p_p_col_count=3&_portal2012documentdetail_war_portal2012portlet_javax.portlet.action=author&facet.author=com,ecfin,taskf,oil,giw,oib,repres_nld,repres_lva,jls,markt,mare,regio,bepa,press,bds,elarg,pmo,repres_lit,agri,repres_spa_bcn,spp,echo,repres_gbr_lon,repres_est,fpi,repres_spa_mad,casstm,cnect,digit,home,ener,repres_hun,comp,repres_cze,repres_bgr,scr,repres_mlt,repres_prt,repres_cyp,repres_hrv,clima,repres_swe,repres_svn,del_acc,infso,ethi,dg18,dg15,dg10,repres_deu_muc,repres_pol_waw,estat,devco,dgt,epsc,grow,sante,near,fisma,just,com_cab,scad,repres_gbr,repres_pol,taskf_a50_uk,repres_spa,repres_fra,repres_ita,acshhpw,pc_budg,iab,rsb,pc_conj,com_coll,acsh,evhac,pc_mte,repres_deu,repres_svk,justi,repres_deu_bon,scic,repres_fra_par,sj,sg,repres_pol_wro,olaf,repres_deu_ber,ccss,fsu,repres_irl,hr,repres_lux,repres_fin,taxud,commu,sanco,entr,audit,igs,repres_ita_mil,move,budg,repres_rou,rtd,ias,btl,btb,cmt_empl,dg01b,dg01a,repres_bel,repres_gbr_cdf,env,dg23,dg17,dg07,dg03,dg02,dg01,repres_aut,empl,eac,trade,tren,repres_ita_rom,relex,aidco,repres_grc,repres_gbr_bel,repres_fra_mrs,repres_gbr_edi,repres_dan,jrc,dev,srss,has,stecf,dpo&language=en&facet.collection=eupub conclusion open scholarship seeks to make changes to the way universities engage with their local, regional, national and international communities by making knowledge available free of financial, technical or legal barriers so that it may be applied to the benefit of society. this goal is closely aligned to the vision of engaged scholars to effect change and address social issues through active engagement and partnerships with their communities. both groups have made significant progress in making these new approaches an acceptable part of the academic and research workflow, and in some cases university policy. however, there are still significant barriers to overcome before they are accepted as mainstream practices. most significant of these barriers is the current reward and incentive system within universities. the system is one which favours basic research, disseminated via traditional models of publication in established journals. this method of valuing academics and institutions disadvantages those who seek to work beyond traditional academic boundaries and directly with communities on issues of local, regional and national significance. effective change requires expanding the concept of scholarship to include openness and engagement and to embed those elements into the university reward and tenure system. this work has already begun with the recent inclusion of an ‘open access’ category within the cwts leiden ranking league table which measures the openness of a university’s research, and the development of the carnegie community engagement classification as a measure of a university’s community engagement. notably, however, these moves towards new measures of openness and engagement have proceeded in parallel, but without collaboration on a more coordinated approach, to revolutionise the university incentive and recognition systems. scholars working within the open movement and scholars engaging with communities could benefit from closer collaboration to forward their agendas. for engaged scholars, working and publishing in more open modes presents opportunities to socialise their research and practice to a wide audience, both within academia and to the communities who are partners in their scholarly endeavours. for advocates of open scholarship, publishing engaged research would help to fulfil the most basic mission of openness – to make quality scholarship available to all audiences who may benefit from and use research to effect real social change. this in turn would help advocates of openness and engagement build the evidence base they need to drive policy change at institutional and national levels, embedding incentives that reward new concepts and practices of scholarship. bibliography adcock, j & fottrell, e 2008, ‘the north-south information highway: case studies of publication access among health researchers in resource-poor countries’, global health action, vol. 1, no. 1, article 1865. https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v1i0.1865 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kezar, t chambers & j burkhardt (eds), higher education and the public good: emerging voices from a national movement, josseybass, san francisco, ca. abbott, tiffen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 18 file:///users/scott/downloads/%20https:/f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v3 file:///users/scott/downloads/%20https:/f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v3 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sheppard, s., fuerst, e. 2023. reflections on evaluators’ role in community needs assessment. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8669 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 practicebased article reflections on evaluators’ role in community needs assessment sandra m. sheppard1,* and elyse fuerst2 1 senior evaluation associate, ccny, inc., buffalo, new york 2 evaluation associate, ccny, inc., buffalo, new york. corresponding author: sandra m. sheppard, sssheppaprd@ccnyinc.org doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8669 article history: received 17/06/2023; revised 28/09/2023; accepted 05/10/2023; published 12/2023 abstract evaluators play a critical role in shaping evaluation practices, but in practice this can be challenging to accomplish in ways that are productive as well as healing. this article discusses evaluation practices in the context of a project commissioned as needsbased to assist with community recovery after a racially motivated mass shooting in an urban neighbourhood marginalised by crime, income, race and unemployment. development of an unmet needs survey included incorporating initial data collected by empowered community leaders with subsequent data collected by evaluators through focus groups and surveys. evaluators then analysed and organised the data into a report that community leaders could submit to local and state officials. identifying details were omitted out of an abundance of concern and respect for the privacy of the communities and constituents that were directly and indirectly affected by the tragedy that inspired this discourse. this article presents a reflective discussion between evaluators on whether or not it would have been appropriate to suggest integrating an assetsbased community development (abcd) approach within a commissioned community needs assessment. it also covers the evaluators’ process of using a critical lens to retrospectively assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of adopting an assetbased community development (abcd) approach. the discussion emphasises the importance of acknowledging and engaging with the diverse perspectives held by the wider evaluation community. it recognises, too, the value of ongoing dialogue and debate to encourage evaluators to critically reflect on the appropriateness and implications of integrating a variety declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8669 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sssheppaprd@ccnyinc.org https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8669 of approaches within community needs assessments. this article also explores how the authors ‘made space’ for this conversation, including aspects of content analysis and consideration of crucial conversations, parameters and ethics, in the hope of further stimulating discussion and fostering a decisionmaking process that would encompass a range of viewpoints, ultimately driving more effective and responsive community development practices. keywords evaluators; community needs assessment; assetsbased community development; evaluation perspectives; critical reflection; mindset introduction this themed issue of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement posed the question: ‘can an assetbased orientation help position community participants as peer “experts” alongside their academic partners, sharing power and authority in the collaboration?’ this question reflects the inherent desire of abcd practitioners to elevate community participants to the level of ‘peer’ and for professionals to accept guidance through the insights and voices of community participants. this article reframes the question in order to explore how the mindset of empowered community leaders can predetermine roles for both community and professional partners in ways that foreclose recommendations rooted in community voice or professional expertise (authority). the decision to write this article was inspired by the lead author’s concern that this project had not adequately considered the efficacy of using an assetsbased approach to assessment. the article was intended to highlight a reflective and thoughtful discussion between the lead author/coevaluator and the lead evaluator, when examining what appeared to be an omission of best practice in the context of seemingly unified community intentions. however, the process of analysing archived material somewhat shockingly revealed that community voices had clearly articulated an eightpoint assetbased vision for a thriving community and expected outcomes of that vision. the archived material also revealed a recommendation to include this vision when constructing the assessment tool, but this methodology did not make it to the centre of the evaluation commissioned by community leaders who were, and still are, deeply rooted and trusted community individuals and organisations. this combination of welldefined vision and expected outcomes unmistakably suggested starting points for an assetsbased approach, and inspired the idea that our article should be guided by two critical themes: how evaluators consider the intersection of assetbased and needsbased evaluation methods, and how evaluators conduct selfevaluation. as such, this article explores common and uncommon ground between evaluators who served in different roles and thus had different perspectives on the evaluation process: one served fully immersed with empowered community members who directed both development and implementation of the needsbased assessment; the other (lead author) served externally and supportively as a focus group facilitator, session host and content analyst. as evaluators committed to equity, it was tempting to advocate outright for assetsbased evaluation because it appears to create allyship with marginalised communities and populations by lifting up the ‘social networks, history, small businesses, [and] talents of the people living there’ (axellute 2019, p. 1e). an assetsbased approach certainly changes some of the language used to describe communities but, for some, a concern remains that: using exclusively positive language can have similar kinds of problems with feeding into the “bootstraps” narrative as deficitbased language does — if everything is so great, what’s the problem? why are we putting resources there? if we don’t name the harm that has been done and assign responsibility, are we really undoing the perception that populations and neighborhoods in trouble brought it on themselves? (axellute 2019, p. 1e). sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 it has been suggested that, by focusing on internal community assets, abcd can seem to gloss over persistent systemic harms, specifically the power in these systems that is inextricably linked to issues including poverty, inequitable access to healthcare, inequitable access to capital, and homelessness (mcclure 2023). unaddressed, these powerbased systemic harms may continue to define communities by disparities and negative statistics because they cannot be overcome solely by citizens leveraging local assets. discussing the adaptation of abcd to address oppressive power systems is beyond the scope of this article, but the authors acknowledge that communities are not powerneutral. in our case study, the decision to frame a community response to the tragedy as needbased versus assetbased was very much determined by empowered community leaders’ understanding of who (or what) entity in the community was capable of influencing outcomes (christens 2019). we hope this article will prove beneficial to readers who are interested in, or contemplating, development of approaches that combine best practice, with multiple voices representing multiple aspects of that community. the contributions of context and voice are critical to making decisions about how to proceed in a way that both respects the power of the community and fully utilises the experiencebased authority of the evaluator. the case study the communitybased steering committee (cbsc) in direct response to the tragedy, a communitybased steering committee (cbsc) was assembled from community members and trusted local organisational leaders. as a first step towards healing, the cbsc conducted ‘listening sessions’ with community stakeholders. these involved facilitated breakout groups, in which participants answered questions about assets, gaps (needs), the ongoing role of the steering committee, and community inter and intracollaboration efforts. the breakout sessions included discussion of a future community vision and some references to assets but were primarily focused on gaps (resources missing or needed). an online interactive community resource map was introduced, but asset icons were limited by the software to customary and ordinary public institutions (churches, colleges/universities, government offices, hospitals/clinics, libraries, museums and schools) and so did not have options for revealing community assets rooted in local associations, informal networks, land, residents and shared stories (russell & mcknight 2022). the cbsc hosted at least three subsequent community meetings to communicate their findings, ongoing efforts and learning, using powerpoint guided agendas that generally consisted of an empathetic opening (poetry) and remarks from a community leader, followed by slides that detailed their actions in and with the community. the presentations concluded with information regarding resources, upcoming activities and comments from partner organisations (the evaluation team, local nonprofits and representatives of local government). the last powerpoint slide provided a series of questions intended to guide the conversation of attendees after they divided into smaller breakout sessions that ran in length from 5 to 15 minutes. the questions ranged from survivors’ needs to coordination of organisational communication, capacity building for sustainability and speedidentifying future action items (the fiveminute group). eventually, the cbsc determined a general need for professional evaluation support to address the immediate and longterm needs of community members who were impacted by the racially motivated violence. this was defined as assistance with developing a survey that would elevate the participation and voices of community members during the process of identifying unmet needs. more specifically, the cbsc wanted analysis of the survey data that could be used to assist with securing funds to support itself and other local cbos; in other words, funding ‘the internal needs of organizations before addressing the needs of the community’. with this support, the cbsc hoped to present findings that would satisfy what state sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 funding offices described as a ‘flexible and holistic’ traumainformed response to the community violence that would meet with approval at multiple state levels. in relation to the survey, the cbsc reviewed the intentional design and implementation of the instrument for ‘collect[ing] data about unmet needs to help secure funding/resources and inform the planning of services at local cbos’. however, despite creating multiple access points (paper and online/ qr links) and providing supportive administration guides, consent forms, flyers and a support person, the cbsc found that it was not receiving enough community response to generate meaningful survey information. in consultation with the evaluators, it was decided to implement focus groups that would mimic the format of the successful initial listening sessions, while discussing unmet needs and survey questions, and incentivise participation through a catered evening meal and amazon gift cards for all participants. focus groups developed collaboratively by members of the cbsc and the evaluators, the focus groups mimicked the format of the initial cbsc listening sessions but were no longer held in the local community centre. instead, a training room in the evaluators’ agency was deliberately chosen for its accessibility and neutrality. the familiar format was modified by the presence of evaluators as participant researchers. actively involving the community in research in this way required obtaining verbal permission from all participants before evaluators could be engaged to ‘scribe’ these meetings for the purpose of analysing, reporting and archiving the shared information. two family groups and three survivor groups convened on consecutive dates for the purpose of focusing on ‘the unmet needs’ of individuals in these groups. after sharing a meal, participants joined a group led by a member of the cbsc, the partner organisation, who followed a scripted outline of the needs survey. the valuator/scribe recorded participant responses to questions about needs in the following areas: finances, services and support. additional groups convened in the training room to solicit the wishes of family members and survivors regarding any activities that might take place in commemoration of the victims. during the local trial, community members further utilised the training room for a threehour respite space that provided a shared meal, the solace of privacy, and unobserved family activities. the final report the final report presented a narrative and visual analysis of participant responses to the needsbased survey questions, which were grouped as follows (abbreviated here, in order of most frequent verbatim responses): • financial (childcare, transportation, rent) • medical, mental health and counselling support (vacation, therapeutic massage, mental health counselling, open bar events) • community support and gatherings (coworker hangouts, neighbourhood support, neighbour/friend gatherings) • healing, bonding and grieving (more togetherness, youth sports and activities, walks in the public park, talking about problems, public benches) • communication. additionally, the report discussed ideas for moving forward that would reflect the groupings referred to above. these highlighted: sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 • a general lack of information regarding support in all the referenced areas, which included identifying specific supports and access routes to those supports • limitations on emergency response funding, which included dispersal to organisations rather than directly affected individuals and discouraging application processes for individuals seeking compensation • a need for ongoing gatherings so as to fully understand the needs of the community. this report was given to the governor’s office, which advised that the content would be used to inform funding decisions for community programming. at the time of writing, it was unclear how that process would proceed and if it would address both the assets and needs of the community. at one of the last cbsc meetings (at the time of writing) federal and state funding to date was reviewed, and this was directed towards agencies and organisations and was unmistakably oriented towards clinical interventions. powerpoint slides identified specific activities for achieving goals in these areas, including a visual reference to utilising existing relationships while building and leveraging new ones. however, the last slide diminished the potential for leveraging communitybased relationships when it presented an organisational chart that put the assets of mostly outside agencies and organisations in positions of committee leadership. discovering the eightpoint vision for a thriving community as mentioned, it was only much later that we were able to undertake content analysis of early documentation and material in a more thorough and less rushed fashion. it was then that we discovered the communityvoiced eightpoint vision for a thriving community, which appeared across four slides presented during a meeting of the cbsc. all four slides shared the title ‘vision for a thriving community’. the eight points were presented as bullet points across three of the slides, while the fourth slide offered a list of outcomes. below, the vision points are shared unedited and in the order in which they were originally presented: 1. community bonding/building • programs that target youth / programs that target seniors • culinary classes • picnics for seniors • senior meetings • bingo • knitting • dancing • writing • painting 2. mentorship opportunities • for youth and adults to connect 3. community outreach • more outreach workers to be engaged with the community • increase in organisations serving hot meals within the community 4. resource accessibility • agencies for mental health support to be closer • educational stipends and resource linkage 5. more businesses within the community • more grocery stores to be available • provision of ice cream shop/hardware store/movie theater/fast food restaurants sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 • extended hours for the nfta transportation • extended hours for businesses 6. strict gun laws and their accountability 7. viable jobs within the community 8. proper surveillance • security staff receive updated training on how to respond to and handle dangerous situations • security with proper equipment to protect • security in stores and an increase in its presence • crime prevention involving environmental design programs and community input the expected outcomes did not directly correspond to specific points in the eightpoint vision. below, they are shared unedited and in the order in which they were originally presented: • cohesion, good communication, and general respect across generations • space for youth to be youth • restoration of the community • diversity and inclusion incentives • sense of safety within the community • security staff in stores and an increase in their presence. what we missed the communityvoiced eightpoint vision for a thriving community we, the evaluators, missed the significance of the communityvoiced eightpoint vision for a thriving community that appeared during a meeting of the cbsc. looking at the vision now, it’s easy to imagine how these categories rose out of an awareness of assets already present in the community, those which could enable residents to either meet their own needs or meet those needs with some support. we missed the opportunity to clarify aspects of the vision for greater understanding. additionally, we missed an opportunity to ask exploratory questions that would have actually built on the assetoriented narrative of a thriving community that is suggested by the visionary examples supplied above by participants: • where in this community can you find places for picnics? • where in this community can you find a lively game of bingo? • where in this community are you likely to run into people who create things (artists, cooks, dancers, knitters, painters, writers)? • where in this community can you find some kind of congregate dining? • where in this community can you find places where age and youth interact and develop mentoring relationships? • where in this community would there be a good place for a hardware store? fast food restaurants? an ice cream shop? a movie theater? subsequently, we discovered that the embedded evaluator had been recorded in meeting minutes suggesting that survey development be structured around the four thematic areas identified in the initial listening sessions, which included the vision for a thriving community. the remaining themes included assistance and resources received/not received, and the personal impact of the tragedy. we also missed an opportunity to appropriately leverage our authority, as evaluation experts, in a way that could have resulted in overlapping a communityvoiced assetbased vision for recovery and growth with the needsbased assessment required by applications for grants and emergency funding. sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 focus groups we also missed an opportunity to fully explore a majority of suggestions from focus group participants that community members might have been able to produce themselves using assets from within the neighbourhood. and we missed an opportunity to fully explore the power inherent in the persistent ‘sharing of selfasanasset’, in the form of mutual aid and networking that occurred within these groups. this was expressed in what one evaluatorscribe noted as ‘some participants seemed to be deflecting questions asked by the facilitators, preferring to talk about other sources of support in the community, i.e. mutual aid.’ therefore, additionally, we missed an opportunity to acknowledge and build on the fact that these gatherings were, in effect, opportunities for mutual community bonding/building so frequently mentioned in the examples used by community members to describe the eight points in their ‘vision for a thriving community’. community meetings we also missed an opportunity to fully explore the balance between addressing the immediate needs of empowered community organisations like the cbsc and addressing the ongoing needs of relatively unempowered community residents. fully exploring the nuances of this balance would have further informed our authority, as evaluators, to recommend assessment approaches designed to achieve useful outcomes for both the organisations and the communities that they serve. the opportunity presented itself in two of three powerpoint presentations, in which the cbsc appeared to convey a belief that the community would not get their needs met if the cbsc was not able to do its work properly, and thus the needs of the cbsc (and other organisations) had to be met first. this clearly identified the priority given to ‘funding the internal needs of organisations before addressing the needs of the community’, and appeared to highlight the interdependence and crucial role that such organisations play in supporting and serving communities. understanding this interaction is essential for effective community development and well being. q & a between evaluators acknowledging we missed truths made us bold in reviewing our processes and decisions. axellute’s (2019) powerful argument for truth telling in evaluation supports our reflection on what we might have missed by focusing on needs only rather than assets or a hybrid methodology. our reflection on using a single method of assessment (needsbased) began the process of creating space in which to discuss how, when and why we, as evaluators, would recommend using alternate or hybrid methods. our intention was to emerge more mindful of how we must analyse our practices and results carefully for aspects of truth that may help both evaluators and participants move beyond accepted mindsets. • what was the advantage to us, the evaluators, in utilising a needs approach over an assets approach? we, the evaluators, had not really considered utilising an assets approach. the community inserted us in a part of their needsfocused subcommittee within the larger steering committee because of the known traumainformed structure of our organisation and our unique experience in evaluation methodologies. from the start, we were tasked with implementing evaluation activities that assessed what the community experts described as ‘the immediate unmet needs of survivors, employees, and loved ones of the victims. once this assessment was completed, we planned to play a part in assessing what the community experts described as the ‘longterm, unmet needs of this community’. reflecting back, we can understand the benefits to us of using a needsbased approach instead of an assetsbased approach, based on the concept of meeting the participants where they were. they had just sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 lived through an unspeakable act of hate and were simply trying to get through each day. it was a fine line we walked between avoiding the impression of the ‘white saviour complex’ (meaning that we had the solution, i.e. proposing abcd as an alternative to the community desire to assess needs) wanting to ‘fix’ everything for individual participants, and giving the impression that recovering from this tragedy placed the burden on them to ‘fix’ everything that had gone wrong. • how could a discussion about abcd, or a hybrid of abcd, and needs assessment have been introduced into community conversations? conversations about assessment development were initiated by the community experts, and from the start focused on needs. as contracted experts, we felt a primary duty to be guided by the community leaders and their identified goals (meeting the requirements of funding applications) rather than evaluating their decisionmaking process or discussing whether or not a needs approach could meet the desired outcomes identified by community participants in their vision for a thriving community. looking back, knowing what we know now, we can see that, from our supportive role, we might have been able to perform content analysis in a timelier fashion, and then present and recommend the results as supplemental to the focus on needs. in this way, the community voice would have stayed on the table and our authority as evaluators could have been utilised to provide a truly grounded context for considering the merits of combined asset and needsbased assessment. in considering the greater likelihood of achieving the communityidentified outcomes through either an assetsbased approach or a needsbased approach, or a combination of both, one evaluator said ‘both’ and one evaluator said ‘assets’. the evaluator who hesitated to identify one approach over the other described the inherent complexities in white evaluators suggesting assetbased practices to leaders of an african american community that has been defined for generations by its needs, and thus able to command resources for programming and services by amplifying those needs through charity and grant applications, and lobbying efforts. the evaluator identifying ‘assetbased’ as the preferable approach referred to the participants’ list of outcomes as more suggestive and supportive of the capacities, gifts and skills – the assets – inherent in community residents and associations, with the exception of security personnel in community stores. both evaluators agreed that this list of outcomes was significantly impacted by unmet needs in the community, but that nearly every outcome could be reached through the supported strength of community connections. if we had suggested transforming the assessment approach from needs to assets, we would have explained the differences between those approaches and supported the participants’ informed choice for using one or the other in advocating for change in their community. however, being truly traumainformed in this partnership would have meant recognising how community building and community selfsufficiency are impacted by racial disparities that affect what issues are addressed and who makes the decisions on them. it would also have meant being aware of how marginalised communities are often blamed for poor outcomes and then abandoned so they can discover their own assets or ‘bootstraps’. • who would have benefited from transforming the focus from needs to assets? when we, the evaluators, became a part of this project, we knew from experience and training that we had to approach the work through a traumainformed lens. a traumainformed lens ‘understands and considers the pervasive nature of trauma and promotes environments of healing and recovery rather than practices and services that may inadvertently retraumatize’(institute on trauma and traumainformed care 2015). as evaluators, our experience generally allows us to know which methodologies will produce the best information for answering the identified questions, or our experience guides us into a discovery process that reveals a more appropriate methodology. as we retrospectively consider the benefits of shifting sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 methodology in this project, we have to recognise that not everyone would benefit in the same way, or benefit at all, and we must also include ourselves in this analysis. a traumainformed approach dictates that participants should always be prioritised over the evaluation process, but it also includes elements that support making wellinformed processual suggestions: boundaries, task clarity, consistency and a strengths based focus. in this instance, we could speculate on how participants would have benefited from an assets focus. in each gathering, participants shared selfasanasset, shared assets made up of knowledge, skills and space, and identified the strong sense of association created by this communal tragedy as an asset. an assets based approach might have built on that tendency towards mutual aid by mapping resources embedded in the eightpoint vision for a thriving community: picnic areas, active bingo games, creators and makers, congregate dining, intergenerational mentoring, tools, good food, dessert food, entertainment, etc. • does timing make a difference when considering introducing new approaches? the completion rate for the needsbased surveys was poor. would there have been a better response to an assetsbased survey? now that a year has passed, perhaps the timing would be more appropriate for an assetbased assessment of the community, beginning again with the original eightpoint vision for a thriving community and desired outcomes for it. interestingly, a group of thirteen community leaders convened on the anniversary of this community tragedy. the group included state and county department heads, elected state, county and municipal politicians, and local nonprofit directors and board members. roughly 50 percent of this group had immediate and personal ties to this community. one person, among those with community ties, viewed community assets as a resource, for which state funding could be used to strengthen and support existing capacities rather than be a replacement for community assets. this person also referred to the capacity of this community to come together and restore what others had tried to tear down, and the collaborative ability of residents to build a thriving community. this community voice reamplified the overlooked eightpoint vision for a thriving community that inspired the discussion in this article in the first place. it also suggested that power should be shifted back to ownership and control by the community. • what was it like for us to participate in this conversation? first and foremost, this conversation was remarkable for critically and respectfully exploring common and uncommon ground between evaluators. one evaluator was deeply involved in the community process and with residents and survivors from the beginning, while the other was engaged in a supportive role, gathering background and research material, facilitating and scribing group discussions and providing some qualitative analysis. the less deeply involved evaluator discovered the overlooked eightpoint vision and started asking questions about why an assetbased approach had not been considered. it would have been easy for the evaluator more intimately familiar with the most deeply affected community residents to take offence at these questions and the invitation to ‘talk about them’. however, it was the more deeply involved evaluator who pointed to our shared social work training and commitment to a critical social work mindset who sought to be both educational and insightful. we don’t know how the survey is being used or whether we will be invited to participate in the next phase of assessment. the original communitybased response structures are reorganising themselves around the control of state funding. the limited time frame did not allow us to gain clear insight into the impact of influence, power and privilege exerted by people in their own community. we appropriately ceded power to the community without fully understanding the difficulty some community members might experience in taking ownership and responsibility for the assessment, in the context of millions of dollars being made available for community recovery. sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 how we created space for this discussion setting the stage the lead author set the stage for this discussion by reading and reviewing the archived evaluative process for responding to a community tragedy, reflecting on personal experiences, soliciting reflections from an evaluator deeply engaged in the process, and participating in a crucial conversation with colleagues who knew something about comparing and combining abcd methods with other modalities. archived evaluative materials documented the process of a steering committee, gatherings for listening to families and survivors, gatherings for processing a commemoration of the tragedy, and the process of making safe space. personal experiences included observations by evaluators involved in the planning and delivery of these experiences and services. crucial conversations included feedback sought from other professionals practising or teaching assetbased community development and from the evaluators directly involved in the committees, groups, meals, spaces and surveys described in this article. crucial conversations the desire to initiate this discussion was stimulated by what appeared to be a singular focus on the ‘needs’ of a traumatised community rather than discovery and investment in local health, power and wealth, as suggested and practised by wellregarded assetbased community development leaders (russell & mcknight 2022). altschuld, hung & lee (2014, p. 91) described the validity of criticising a ubiquitous needsbased approach to evaluation and went so far as to say that ‘perhaps the two ends of the needsversusassets spectrum overlap to a higher degree than apparent upon first glance … and a synergism across them is appropriate and worthwhile’. current literature across several disciplines, including community development, public health, social work and trauma, offered important discourse that comparatively reflected on the effective and practical applications of both assetbased and needsbased approaches to evaluation (altschuld 2014; cunningham et al. 2022; kennedy 2021; nel 2020; panzarella et al. 2023). through reflective conversation with other authors contributing to this themed journal (gateways themed volume writers’ workshop, personal communication, 5 may 2023), it became evident that any effort to understand our part in choosing a needsbased approach over an assetsbased approach would require broadening our discussion to include the reality of how ‘trauma, anxiety, and despair [can] reduce the capacity of people to take control over their lives and engage in collective action’ (curato 2019, p. 1). this reality could actually make a wellintentioned assetbased approach seem insensitive to: [the] power in surviving tragic moments. misery provides affective foundations for democratic politics to take root. bearing witness to others’ suffering can drive spectators to become political actors by interrogating the underlying causes of misery, while building solidarity with those suffering from a distance (curato 2019, p. 2). evaluators must be able and willing to filter the intentions of any approach through traumainformed community building (ticb) principles (do no harm, acceptance, community empowerment and reflective process) and intentional strategies at the levels of individual, interpersonal, community and systems (weinstein, wolin & rose 2014, p. 13). a traumainformed lens prompts our consideration of ‘assumptions about inclusiveness, voice, and accountability in relation to the material, social, and affective consequences of communities surviving a spectacular tragedy’ (curato 2019, abstract), and reveals possible challenges to a best practice like abcd that can include lack of trust and social cohesion; lack of stability, reliability and consistency; inability to vision the future; disempowerment and lack of a sense of community ownership; sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 high level of personal needs; and the real depth and breadth of community needs (weinstein, wolin & rose 2014, p. 6). acknowledging those challenges forced us to take into consideration the ‘value’ of holding on to a deficits perspective. in the wake of enduring economic and social neglect, a community and its constituents might find solace, solidarity and strength in being able to command the deficitbased attention of larger community systems that share responsibility for that neglect. this intense needsbased attention drives beneficial service delivery, even as it reinforces what kennedy (2021) refers to as the traumatic perception of lacking something and therefore need to be ‘fixed’’ and brought into the norm in order to be successful … historically, if there is support available, it is entirely focused on bringing others into the norm, rather than changing the norm to accommodate others. this can be a painful, even violent experience (chelsea heinbach, interviewed by kennedy). evaluators must be able to talk critically and openly amongst themselves and with community partners about identifying the lived experience of challenges to both asset and needsbased approaches. the discussion parameters how do evaluators start a conversation among themselves about reconciling asset and needsbased practices with traumainformed best practices and a variety of community voices? it is duly noted that evaluating self and ‘how things could have been done differently’ often sparks uncomfortable feelings that coworkers have difficulty expressing in ways that feel healing and productive, both personally and professionally. yates (2018, p. 1e) refers to how ‘the perceived fear of evaluation interferes with the brain’s capacity to take on new information, generating an ‘awayresponse’ that minimizes danger”. the reflections shared in this practise article are intended to help evaluators emphasise a development focus that generates a ‘towardresponse’ that maximises reward, while having crucial conversations about their own work. a rewarding conversation can include, but is not limited to, setting goals, the gift of feedback, relevant coaching and honest appraisal (p. 1e). therefore, our discussion assumed the adequate utilisation of the skills of inquiry, listening and learning (forbes coaching council 2017) as ways and means of maintaining the following: • showing respect and staying objective • maintaining collaborative communication • starting with what is working • pointing out opportunities, not faults • focusing on how to change. the discussion ethics dawson (2014, p. 1e) writes that ‘tragedy is an industry and one that our society is implicitly comfortable with’. as public health and social workers, the authors of this article share a keen awareness of how their disciplines benefit from the commodification of community tragedies in terms of profit, praise, publishable material (like this article), enhanced reputation and visibility. there is no doubt that communities weathering the trauma of mass shootings are also actively mined for ‘points of convergence for the interests of employers, businesses, and academia; the messages of the media; and the services of governmental public health agencies and the health care delivery system’ (us institute of medicine 2002, p. 178). benefits are accrued to professionals and public institutions through engaging in the provision of programs and services, rather than appreciating and engaging the role of the community in achieving health, power and wealth for themselves. this discussion endeavours to be cognisant of this accrual that favours helpful outsiders. sheppard and fuerst gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 concluding thoughts in this article we have explored how one clearly defined combination of communityvoiced vision and outcomes was excluded from the focus of an evaluation process. as evaluators, we have to ask ourselves, if we had recommended an assetbased approach, or at least some kind of hybrid of assets and needs, would that have facilitated (1) a more thorough review of the material collected from the initial listening sessions with survivors, and (2) greater collaborative sharing of power (community) and authority (evaluators) so that the alternative eightpoint vision and related outcomes could have been included in the report recommendations? initiating and sustaining this kind of dialogue between evaluators creates a mindset that challenges all evaluators to subject their actions and processes to continuous review, even if their practices appear to follow abcd methodology. this kind of discussion and reflection is challenging for all members of the evaluation process (nel 2020), but it is a good way to ensure that the hard work of building connections and mobilising the community to meet expectations of funders doesn’t overshadow the nuances of a communityvoiced eightpoint vision for a thriving community and strategies for mapping and supporting existing community assets that support that vision. at the very least, this kind of dialogue supports creating space for using ‘two working groups so that needs and assets can be looked at independently, not contaminated by the other before comparing what is found for each’ (altschuld 2014). as evaluators guided by utilisationfocused principles, which include ‘make sure intended users understand potential methods, controversies and their implications’ and ‘be accountable, learn, and improve’ (better evaluation 2022), it is prudent to reflect on at what point we, as evaluators, could have directed attention to an alternative method for assessing community needs, perhaps as a function subsequent to focusing first on the inherent community assets. clearly, this needsbased request was of and by the community, and this discussion does not question the decisions made by an empowered community leadership, but rather the onus was on evaluators to challenge a deeply rooted mindset. as evaluators, we are questioning ourselves and our decisionmaking (or lack thereof ) in light of an apparent mindset shift evidenced in growing support for assetbased community development. emerging evidence suggests that highlighting capabilities, dignity and empowerment (lifting up) inspires funding as much as the idea of rescuing victims (charity) (thomas et al. 2020). navigating this shift highlights the dynamic and sometimes complex nature of participatory evaluation processes that amplify community voices, then encounter a wide range of perspectives that may not align with established best practice. as evaluators, we challenge ourselves to respectfully address that misalignment as a way of finding solutions that are both evidencebased and respectful of the unique needs and values of the community being evaluated. the difficulty for people transitioning to an abcd approach when they have become used to a needs based approach is that it requires a change in mindset. bringing about such a change is challenging and calls for capable and resourceful organisers and facilitators. it requires a mindset change, not only within communities and organizations driving the processes, but across all levels of society and including all stakeholders, such as government, funders and the business community (nel 2020, p. 275). the experience of conducting this retrospective discussion reminded us to keep in mind both simple and complex points when working with historically needsoriented communities that, with 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https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daad015 https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2021.2021964 https://doi.org/10.15270/56-4-857 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.117122 https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/what-is-abcd/ https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917046117 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 january 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: osinski, a. 2022. the persistence of power: reflections on the power dynamics in a merging of knowledge research project. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–14. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7762 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) the persistence of power: reflections on the power dynamics in a merging of knowledge research project agathe osinski1 1 centre for philosophy of law, uclouvain, louvain-la-neuve, belgium doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7762 article history: received 12/06/2021; revised 20/10/2021; accepted 23/12/2021; published 01/2022 abstract collaborative research approaches emphasise the need to transform the way the academic community produces science by integrating knowledge from different disciplines, but also by including non-academic knowledge in order to address the challenges of sustainability and social justice. this approach – known in the literature on sustainability science as transdisciplinarity – has been used increasingly in research to resolve sustainability problems, including those related to poverty and socio-economic inequalities. this article seeks to shed light on the power dynamics that exist and emerge in transdisciplinary processes by analysing a case study on food poverty. following fritz and meinherz’s (2020) approach, i use amy allen’s (1998) typology of power to track and trace the way that power played out between and within actor groups in a project that applied a transdisciplinary methodology known as the ‘merging of knowledge’. although the merging of knowledge model seeks to identify and address power differentials between the participating groups, power relations remain complex, dynamic and – to some extent – inevitable. collaborative processes would benefit from an analysis of the way that power dynamics emerge, persist and evolve to enhance awareness of different forms of power that coexist in research, and to ensure that imbalances present outside the research process are not reproduced within it. keywords power differentials; transdisciplinary research; poverty; merging of knowledge 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this study was co-funded by innoviris-anticipate (2016-prfb-22a, project city4coen) and two fnrs-frs projects (wisd 2017 ‘formative scenarios for sustainability’ pdr.wisd.x.3001.17 and wisd 2017 ‘science écocitoyenne-territoire durable’), and the fondation roi baudouin, who generously financed the transdisciplinary project workshops. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7762 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7762 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7762 introduction in the face of an unprecedented environmental crisis, rising inequalities and persistent poverty, the need for an ecological and social transition has become urgent. collaborative research approaches (see e.g. hirschhadorn et al. 2006) emphasise the need to transform the way in which the academic community produces science by integrating knowledge from different disciplines, but also by including non-academic knowledge in order to address the challenges of sustainability and social justice. this approach is known in the literature on sustainability science as transdisciplinary research (tdr). it has been used increasingly in diverse areas of research, including those related to poverty and socio-economic inequalities (see e.g. conde 2014; marshall, dolley & priya 2018). interrogation of how power operates within transdisciplinary research has received relatively little attention in the literature, despite its central links to knowledge (fritz & meinherz 2020). in this article, i draw on amy allen’s (1998) typology of power to analyse the power relations in a case study conducted using a transdisciplinary methodological approach known as the ‘merging of knowledge’. i first define what is meant by ‘transdisciplinarity’; i then present the historical background to the merging of knowledge approach, outlining the tools and methods used to ensure the active involvement of all participants in research processes. next, i present the case study: a research process conducted between 2018 and 2019 involving (current or former) users of food assistance programs, social workers involved in the distribution of food assistance, and academic researchers from different disciplines. using material from ex-ante and ex-post interviews that i conducted with the project participants, i analyse the power relations that emerged, persisted and evolved during this research process. through this exercise, i hope to shed light on the multidimensionality of power and how it plays out in a research process. i argue that it is insufficient to put in place tools and methods that attenuate only the most obvious power dynamics at play; instead, a more nuanced understanding is necessary if we are to construct a research process in which each individual and group’s knowledge is integrated. it should be noted that the analysis and views expressed in this article are my own attempts at a reflexive exercise on the power dynamics at play in a research process that i initiated and co-led and may not reflect the perspectives of other participants in the research process. this article is based on several sections of my doctoral thesis. theoretical framework in this article, i seek to adopt a foucauldian understanding of power that sees it as dispersed and distributed across social relations rather than as a force exerted unilaterally by an individual or a group onto another (gaventa & cornwall 2009, p. 467). as rendered explicit by barnaud et al. (2016), beyond a naive dichotomy between strong and weak actors, power can intervene in many different ways and forms. in ‘rethinking power’, amy allen (1998, p. 22) revisits the feminist literature to offer a typology of power that seeks to overcome the ‘conceptual one-sidedness of existing approaches’. in other words, allen refuses the idea that power exists only in a single form, instead arguing that it can take several forms, all coexisting within relationships. she distinguishes between two different conceptions of power that were typically considered in opposition to one another (i.e. existing either as one or the other, but never concurrently): power as domination and power as empowerment (allen 1998). the first type of power – ‘power-over’ – allen argues, refers to a ‘master-subject’ relationship, whereas the second refers to agents’ ‘power to transform themselves, others, and the world’ (allen,1998, p. 7). ‘power-over’ is thus to be distinguished from the second conception of power (‘power-to’), which she defines as ‘the ability of an individual actor to attain an end or a series of ends’ (p. 34). empowerment or resistance constitute forms of ‘power-to’ because they demonstrate ‘how members of subordinated groups retain the power to act despite their subordination’ (p. 35). in addition to these two types of power, allen introduces a third dimension: ‘power-with’, which she defines as the ‘ability of a collectivity to act together for the attainment of a common or shared end or osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20222 series of ends’ (p. 35). thus, rather than a binary, oppositional arrangement, allen sees power as taking three possible forms (power-over, power-to and power-with), which can and do coexist: as she writes, ‘each tells only one side of the story’ (p. 22). similarly, in a transdisciplinary process, it may be too simplistic to view experts (e.g. researchers) as holding power. indeed, while they may control some or part of the process, they are also likely to be responding to the requirements and demands of funders, for instance, who, in turn, also constrain their choices. in this article i thus seek to go beyond the ‘one-sidedness’ of each of the types of power that allen identifies, acknowledging, as she does, the coexistence and persistence of various forms of power within the same relations. for example, just as a woman may not only be dominated (the subject of ‘power-over’) by a man, but may also at the same time resist that power (demonstrating ‘power-to’), i acknowledge the complexity and multidimensionality in transdisciplinary research, where certain actors or groups may simultaneously hold and lack different forms of power. indeed, borrowing from and building upon the literature on participatory action research, an analysis of power in transdisciplinarity must go beyond the simplistic idea that power is ‘an attribute that some have and others [lack]’, with structures, organisations and experts holding power and the oppressed, grassroots or marginalised lacking it (gaventa & cornwall 2009, p. 465). by drawing on ex-ante and ex-post interviews with the groups involved in the merging of knowledge process, i show that the story is, indeed, far more complex. this echoes the work of fritz and meinherz (2020) who conducted a multidimensional analysis of power in transdisciplinary sustainability research, identifying dynamics of ‘power-over’, ‘power-to’ and ‘power-with’ in the different phases of the research, from the development phase to the dissemination phase. merging of knowledge as a transdisciplinary approach transdisciplinary research (tdr) is defined by its key authors as a ‘reflexive, integrative, method-driven scientific principle aiming at the solution or transition of societal problems and concurrently of related scientific problems by differentiating and integrating knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge’ (lang et al. 2012). in this article, we consider the merging of knowledge, as applied in this case study, to be a transdisciplinary approach because it seeks to integrate knowledge from academics specialising in different disciplines, practitioners and persons experiencing poverty, thus both the participatory and interdisciplinary conditions are satisfied. participatory approaches to poverty research arguably began with the use of participatory rural appraisals (pras) and participatory poverty assessments (ppas) by international organisations in the 1990s. these approaches sought to complement household surveys by capturing poor people’s perceptions of their own situation and possible solutions with a view to improving the effectiveness of poverty eradication policies. around the same time as the world bank was scaling up its use of ppas, the international poverty eradication movement, known as atd fourth world – short for all together in dignity – began experimenting with a different kind of participatory approach. the merging of knowledge (mok), as it came to be known, was based on the intuition of atd’s founder, joseph wresinski, as to the capacity of persons experiencing poverty to be teachers of others and to engage in a dialogue with other members of society (ferrand et al. 2008, p. 15). like feminist epistemologies and decolonisation theories, which consider each person as possessing knowledge coming from their own situated experience of reality, atd fourth world’s philosophy began from the conviction that persons experiencing poverty have the potential to bring unique thoughts and actions to the knowledge production process, based on their life experience (ferrand et al. 2008, p. 15). from its early days, the international movement has been firmly rooted in this conviction, and it seeks to integrate the knowledge of persons experiencing poverty by involving them at all levels and in all spheres of the organisation. already in 1980, speaking at a unesco committee session composed of academics, osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20223 joseph wresinski spoke of the duty of researchers working on questions related to poverty to ‘make room for the knowledge held by the very poor and excluded about their own condition and the world that imposes it on them, to rehabilitate [this knowledge] as unique, essential, autonomous and complementary to all other forms of knowledge, and to help it to develop …’ (ferrand et al. 2008). to this, he added that the knowledge stemming from practitioners working alongside people in poverty, as well as the knowledge of researchers as ‘external observers’, are both complementary to that of persons experiencing poverty themselves. in his speech, wresinski conveyed the idea that the knowledge of researchers is ‘partial’ (moosa-mitha 2015) and that they should assume an ‘attitude of a learner, one who does not know but through the act of empathetic imagination and by possessing critical self-consciousness comes to garner a sense of what the other knows’ (moosa-mitha 2015, p. 89). three years later, in 1983, wresinski once again turned towards universities at a conference held at the sorbonne. in his speech, he evoked the ‘moral and political responsibility and the scientific rigor that obliges universities to turn towards the fourth world, not to teach, but to learn and to engage in a dialogue’ (ferrand et al. 2008, p. 16), noting that ‘the time has come for a reciprocity of knowledges … it is time to ask a population that is at the foot of the social ladder to deliver us its thoughts that only it knows’ (ferrand et al. 2008, p. 16). from 1993 to 1995, a working group composed of atd fourth world activists (persons experiencing poverty), permanent volunteers (members of the atd volunteer corps) and academics became involved in designing a research program that would seek to elaborate the conditions necessary for reciprocal dialogue among three types of knowledge: the knowledge of those with the experience of poverty and social exclusion, the knowledge of those working with persons in poverty and the knowledge of academics. since the launching of the research program, the mok approach has been used throughout the world to support work in health, social work, education, the humanities and social sciences. most recently, an international study led by atd fourth world and oxford university, titled ‘the hidden dimensions of poverty’, made use of the principles and practice of the mok to contribute to the debate on defining and measuring poverty. in merging of knowledge projects, people experiencing poverty are included in every phase of the research. the projects are often governed by a steering or coordination committee. these committees are responsible inter alia for recruiting participants, designing the methodology, facilitating meetings, and taking and transcribing notes during peer group and plenary sessions. while the steering committees ensure that the project goals are met throughout the phases of research, the remaining participants (i.e. persons experiencing poverty, practitioners and academics) also participate actively, for instance in the collaborative definition of the research question, the collection of data, analysis of findings, and the drafting of key project outputs such as reports. applying the merging of knowledge: tools and methods the principles applied in mok research are outlined in the ‘guidelines for the merging of knowledge and practices when working with people living in situations of poverty and social exclusion’. they outline the prerequisites for merging knowledge as well as the conditions for implementing the approach. according to the first of the prerequisites, every actor engaging in the mok must ‘be aware that change is necessary’. in other words, he or she must recognise that poverty is not inevitable and that the current social, economic and cultural realities must be changed. secondly, one must ‘see each and every person as possessing knowledge’ and be capable of distancing themselves from their own situation to reflect on it. third, nobody should be left on their own, that is, each participant in a mok process should be part of a group ‘which reinforces and consolidates’ their knowledge and provides security, as well as space and time, to reflect and express themselves. these groups are known as ‘peer’ groups, which operate as ‘safe spaces’ for participants, particularly for those who are experiencing poverty or whose knowledge is more fragile and/or osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20224 marginalised. as carrel et al. (2018) note, considerable attention is paid in the mok to ensure that persons experiencing poverty (as well as the other participants) do not contribute to the research based on their individual experience alone, but that they construct knowledge based on their collective experience of living in poverty. therefore, before knowledge from the three groups of participants is effectively ‘cross-pollinated’ between groups in plenary sessions, it must first emerge through a collective effort. this is achieved in these peer groups, in which activist, practitioner and academic participants meet on their own. referring to such safe spaces, philosopher iris marion young (1990, p. 168) notes that: … members of oppressed groups need separate organizations that exclude others, especially those from more privileged groups. separate organization is probably necessary in order for these groups to discover and reinforce the positivity of their specific experience … contemporary emancipatory social movements have found group autonomy an important vehicle for empowerment and the development of a group-specific voice and perspective. young’s contribution thus highlights two important functions of these peer groups. safe spaces are important to develop a ‘group-specific voice and perspective’, but they are also ‘an important vehicle for empowerment’. indeed, for members of disadvantaged or oppressed groups, such safe spaces allow them to find reassurance and comfort in the presence of others who may have lived through similar experiences, and for all groups, they enable the construction of collective thought through the confrontation and triangulation between individual knowledge and experience. this has been identified by patricia hill collins as ‘the power of self-definition’ (collins 2000, quoted in carrel et al. 2018). the fourth and final prerequisite for the mok is that each and every person must be seen as being part of the research team. this entails each participant being involved – to varying degrees – in each stage of the research process. participants are the subjects, not the objects, of the research, and they participate in its elaboration and execution. in many cases, mok processes are initiated by atd fourth world, or as a joint initiative between a research institute and atd fourth world. this is not common practice, even in transdisciplinary research. as rosendahl et al. (2015, p. 23) note, in transdisciplinary projects, the ‘initiative is often taken by scientists alone, who become responsible for engaging other actors more deeply connected to the practicalities of the issue’. this situation potentially leads to an unbalanced ownership of the project and fails to empower the non-academic participants, in particular the persons experiencing poverty. once the prerequisites are met, the mok can take place under specific conditions outlined in the guidelines. first, the physical presence of people living in poverty must be guaranteed: they cannot participate through ‘simple verbal or written testimonies or video presentations’. moreover, nobody can intervene on their behalf. second, the conditions must be met to ensure that the different knowledges can be shared: on one hand, participants should be independent of one another (i.e. no teacher–student or social worker–client relationships) and peer groups must be formed. third, a space of security and trust must be created, including a form of contract specifying the confidentiality rules, as well as an ethical framework outlining the values inherent in a dialogue between people: ‘active listening, respect for what the other says, a willingness to be critical about one’s own knowledge and ideas, and a conviction that all knowledge is always “under construction”’. fourth, the conditions for a true dialogue must be guaranteed by applying a range of tools and methods necessary for ‘creating the conditions where everybody’s voice carries the same weight’, i.e. for seeking to attenuate power differentials between participants and participant groups. these tools and methods include the presence of discussion facilitators (one per peer group and ideally two for plenary sessions), who must hold extensive knowledge and have considerable experience in working together with persons experiencing poverty. most often, the facilitators are members of the permanent volunteer corps of atd fourth world. this function has been described by some as facilitation, support, mediation or ‘gatekeeping’ (carrel et al. 2018) without a clear formalisation of the role. while the image of a ‘bridge’ enabling the mediation between two different worlds or thought styles has been evoked, it has also osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20225 been rejected by some as problematic because, according, for example, to francoise ferrand, one of the early practitioners of the merging of knowledge, the role of the atd permanent volunteer is not to mediate, but rather to be ‘on the side of the persons experiencing poverty’ (carrel et al. 2018), i.e. to fully support them and advocate in their favour. others have pointed out that the role of the facilitator is to avoid arriving at a situation in which the persons experiencing poverty become silent and unable to express their criticism, when faced with the expertise and eloquence of the other, more powerful participants (carrel et al. 2018). the guidelines specify that these conditions should be put in place by a steering or coordination team, which ‘should be made up of people who have known, over a good number of years, those living in poverty, their difficulties and resources, and also people from the world of academics or professionals’. the role of discussion facilitators is to ‘ensure that all participants can express themselves and be understood, and also respect the time given to each person to speak’. other foundations of the mok approach include using one’s life experience as a starting point for exchanging knowledge because ‘[g]iving an account of one’s life experience allows all the participants to start on an equal footing’), taking the time to build trust among participants and to establish meaningful dialogue, and building together in order to improve the relationships between the different participant groups seeking to build the potential to experience ‘power with’. the case study: ‘food assistance: what alternatives?’ project the project that serves as a case study for this analysis was initiated by the author (a doctoral researcher) who contacted atd fourth world in belgium to launch a collaborative research project on the way that persons experiencing poverty participate in the sharing economy. initially, the problem field was left partly undefined, leaving atd to decide whether it preferred to focus on the sharing of objects, mobility, food or housing. after a period of reflection, the organisation specified that food-sharing, and food assistance more specifically, constituted a key problem for its members. on the one hand, the use of food banks and soup kitchens by persons experiencing poverty may be a source of humiliation. on the other hand, such places remain critical for the survival of increasingly large portions of the population. the term ‘food assistance’, as used in this article, refers broadly to ‘a continuum of practices between welfare and charity initiatives that aim to alleviate food poverty and hunger’ (hebinck et al. 2018). the research project received funding from several sources. part of the project was financed by the doctoral student’s university through funds provided for a research project about the sharing economy. the funds to cover the materials and meals for participants were provided by a foundation, atd, the federation of social services (fdss) and the university (ucl), and each assigned a staff member to work part-time on the project. the funding bodies had little say over the project and no explicit expectations. they did not intervene throughout the process. the project was conceived as a small-scale merging of knowledge research project. a coordinating team was constituted, consisting of the doctoral researcher, a member of the permanent volunteer corps at atd fourth world and a staff member of a federation representing food assistance organisations (the fdss). participants were recruited by the coordinating team: between five and seven persons experiencing poverty (former or current users of food assistance), between five and seven social workers involved in the distribution of food aid, and five academic researchers, hailing from different disciplines (law, political science, sociology). the three members of the coordinating team were responsible for recruiting participants, defining the content and methodology of the workshops, taking and transcribing notes, and coordinating the research project. a legitimate question concerns the lack of activists (persons with direct experience of poverty) in the coordinating team. in merging of knowledge processes, activists are sometimes – but not always – involved in the coordinating teams of such participatory studies. whether they are included in the coordinating teams and the extent of their participation depends on their experience, their legitimacy osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20226 vis-à-vis their peers, the time taken for the study and decisions regarding methodological components, and their willingness to take part in decisions concerning methodology, strategy, etc. in this context, no specific activists were identified (or self-identified) who could ensure such participation on the coordinating team, also given the short time-frame of the study. however, as noted below, the activist peer group was intensely involved throughout the process. seven participants in the research project (later this number was reduced to five when two members of this group left the project) were persons with experience of poverty. two key conditions guided the selection of participants in this group. first, the participants were required to be or had been involved in atd fourth world’s people’s universities for some time. atd fourth world’s people’s universities are ‘a forum where people from different backgrounds can come together … the basis of this encounter is the recognition that the knowledge and experience of people living in poverty has value. therefore, this type of forum creates a space where people freely express themselves. this gives birth to new ideas, projects and proposals’ (atd fourth world n.d.). second, they had to be former or current users of food assistance programs (including soup kitchens, social pantries and food parcel distributions). this ensured that their participation was based on and grounded in an actual experience of poverty and of food assistance programs; however, they also had to have undergone a form of ‘training’ through participation in people’s universities, which provides an experience of public speaking and analysis of a wide range of subjects relating to poverty. it is important to note that the group of activists met extensively within their peer group outside the five merging of knowledge workshops to prepare future sessions and debrief previous ones. they worked closely with the member of the permanent volunteer corps of atd fourth world – who was also part of the coordinating team – to provide feedback on the methodology followed. in this respect, the role of atd fourth world was key: by preparing the participants for each workshop and supporting them throughout the process, engagement and trust were established early on in the process. initially, seven participants in the research project (then five, as with the above group) were social workers or other employees of food assistance programs. the projects in which they were involved varied considerably: some social workers were employees of large-scale international organisations involved in the distribution of food assistance; others were working for neighbourhood soup kitchens or local food pantries. while four of the five social workers came from ‘institutionalized’ food assistance programs, one participant worked at a grassroots initiative that distributed unsold organic food products without any conditions and on a pay-what-you-want basis. five participants were academics involved in research and/or teaching activities. the academics were four doctoral students and one professor, hailing from different disciplines (law, political science and sociology). each of the academics focused on themes directly or indirectly related to food assistance in their research: human rights and discrimination, sustainable food systems, poverty and homelessness, and food assistance policies. the research process was organised as five full-day workshops that were held over a six-month period at the headquarters of atd fourth world in belgium. the first two workshops were devoted to collectively defining the specific research question that would guide the rest of the research project. a number of tools were used to obtain a consensus on this research question among all above-mentioned participants. after two full-day workshops dedicated to this step, the research questions were ultimately phrased as follows: ‘how can we understand the violent and degrading situations (in food assistance)? through what other possibilities can we improve the relationship between food assistance users, services and society in order to contribute to creating a real place in society and a better life for those experiencing the most difficulties?’ the next three workshops were devoted to answering the research questions to the extent possible. again, a number of tools were used, based on the methodology prepared by the coordinating team. the coordinating team first asked the persons experiencing poverty and the social workers to produce narratives/ osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20227 stories about difficult situations in food assistance that they had experienced first-hand. two stories were selected by the coordinating team and these were collectively analysed in the workshops. the analysis was organised in two steps: first, the same story was analysed separately by each of the three peer groups, i.e. persons experiencing poverty analysed the story in their group, as did the social workers and academics. second, the analyses were shared in a plenary session. a second tool that was used was a simplified version of photovoice, a technique that facilitates expression and dialogue using images. by asking participants to select a photo which best captured the message they wanted to deliver to the other peer groups, the photovoice exercise enabled individuals to express themselves openly about the perceived problems related to their experiences and knowledge of food assistance. it also enabled the full involvement of those participants who could not read and write. during the fourth workshop, peer groups were mixed. the two ‘mixed groups’ worked on analysing a second story, which was presented to the other group as theatre scenes, drawing on ‘forum theater’, a tool developed by augusto boal and others in the favelas of sao paolo. in this exercise, the audience (i.e. the other group watching the theatre scenes) intervenes by replacing characters in the scene in order to redress a situation perceived as unjust. a facilitator assists the group in analysing the situations, the alternatives explored through the interventions, and the effects of these on the characters and the unfolding of the scene. the aim of the exercise is to enable ‘participants to try out courses of action which could be applicable to their everyday lives’, thus becoming a ‘political tool for change’ (farmer 2021). in the project, forum theatre was used to illustrate two scenes related to the violent and degrading situations that arise in the distribution of food assistance. the fifth workshop was devoted to summarising the evidence collected throughout the research process, formulating conclusions and discussing the next steps of the project (the preparation of a public presentation and the drafting of a report). analysis of power relations power-over amy allen (1998, p. 33) defines ‘power-over’ as ‘the ability of an actor or set of actors to constrain the choices available to another actor or set of actors in a nontrivial way’. there are several ways in which groups or individuals exerted power-over others in this research project. first and foremost, the coordinating team played a central role throughout the process, including by inviting and recruiting participants based on their profile and interest in the project, defining the research topic and designing the methodologies for the five transdisciplinary workshops. the coordinating team also held considerable power over the process and its participants by facilitating the workshops, distributing speaking time, choosing to emphasise or accentuate certain aspects rather than others, etc. beyond the power exerted by organisers of a participatory process (who may have control over the inclusion/exclusion of participants, the capacity to shape the theme and the agenda, etc.), a common risk in participatory processes relates to the power that dominant individuals exert over others. this can occur when an individual or group of individuals that are well-endowed in ‘bases of power’ (french & raven 1959) impose their ideas on others by ignoring or dominating the views of others (barnaud et al. 2016). based on previous analyses of power relations in participatory processes, a common dynamic that arises in projects involving academic and non-academic participants relates to the power exerted by the former over the latter. for example, van der riet and boettiger (2009, p. 4) note that in the context of rural south africa, ‘the power dynamics between resourced, urban, educated researchers and under-resourced and marginalized research participants are often accentuated’. however, in the case of the project presented in osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20228 this article, it seems that the researcher peer group did not exert significant power-over the non-academic participants. in other words, the academics did not unilaterally impose their preferred research question onto the group (it was negotiated by the three peer groups), nor were they involved in designing and leading the methodological choices of the research process (this was done by the coordinating team). they also did not take the floor in a disproportionate degree, nor serve to either validate or discredit the experiential or action-based knowledge of the activists and practitioners. i suggest that this may be explained by several interconnected reasons. first, the members of the academics’ peer group seemed to be sensitive to power relations themselves. as one academic put it: especially at the beginning, as researchers, the place of research was questioned. we were holders of knowledge, but we had to be careful not to become holders of power to orient the group too much. second, the researchers were not experts in food assistance per se; instead, they were specialised in relevant subjects that were directly or indirectly related to the theme of the research. as a result, despite their status as ‘holders of knowledge’, they did not seem to be ‘holders of power’ since they did not, in fact, possess specialised expertise on the subject at hand. third, most of the academic participants were early-stage researchers who had not taken part in participatory research in the past. interviews with the members of the academics’ peer group suggest that the researchers were eager to engage with the activists and practitioners and to learn from their ‘real-world’ experience. their posture thus seemed closer to that of students than that of experts. as one academic later recalled: before, i had the intuition that in the academic world, we are a little detached from the real world. and here, i saw that it is true. in a separate interview, a practitioner expressed the position of the academics in the following way: i think most of the academics were a little detached from these problems. they didn’t know what food assistance is and how it is organized. they had a very simplistic image of food assistance and they had trouble understanding the main issues behind it. during the forum theater exercise, they were the first to say that their solutions were imperfect, and that they had difficulties finding possible answers. i think they revisited their positions and they have a better understanding of reality now. indeed, as one academic put it: i saw the system from the inside. i had never done research specifically on food assistance before. based on the interviews and my own observations of the interactions between the three peer groups, the academics’ group did not exert significant power-over the two remaining groups. instead, the researchers’ group often served as a buffer – or mediator – between the activists’ and the practitioners’ groups, particularly in conflictual situations. on the other hand, the activists played a central role in the process, given that merging of knowledge seeks specifically to integrate the knowledge of persons with the experience of poverty. without them, the process could not have taken place. had the activists decided to leave the research, the project would have ended. this gave the persons experiencing poverty (the activists) significant power-over the other participants, because the activists’ presence was required for the legitimacy of the project. it may explain why some persons participating in or observing the process expressed the feeling that the two other peer groups (the practitioners and the researchers) made significant efforts to please, or comply with, the activists’ requests. moreover, the research process physically took place within the walls of the organisation that sought to represent and empower the persons experiencing poverty – atd fourth world. this may have given the activist group additional security throughout the process. this impression is confirmed by the reflections expressed by one of the activists in the ex-post interview: osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 20229 what i realized at times is that the academics and activists were on the same wavelength, and at other times the practitioners and activists were on the same wavelength. it depended on the subject … for me, i did not feel that our group of activists was isolated. this excerpt shows that the activists played a central role; at times, the practitioners ‘sided’ with them, at other times, the academics and activists grew closer. finally, negotiation theories often discuss the batna (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) of participants. the higher a negotiator’s batna, the lower his or her incentive for negotiations to succeed, because the possible alternative to a negotiated agreement is advantageous to them. in the merging of knowledge process, the persons experiencing poverty had the lowest batna of all other participants: they had the least leverage for producing an outcome favourable to them outside of the negotiated research process. in other words, the status quo situation – food assistance as it is currently organised – is least favourable to them, marking the importance for a ‘negotiated’ or collective research process to bring about positive changes. thus, their group was both essential to the merging of knowledge process, whilst at the same time, to the extent that they worked on behalf of other persons experiencing poverty beyond their own immediate interests, they also had the most to lose from leaving the process. power-to according to amy allen (1998), ‘power-to’ is ‘the ability of an individual actor to attain an end or a series of ends’. the unequal distribution of financial and time resources is an objective measurable factor that should be taken into consideration when analysing this ability. in the merging of knowledge process, some of the participants were involved in the process on their own time, while others were engaged in the research professionally and could therefore include the time spent in the workshops in their working hours. moreover, the financial situation of the practitioners and academics was overall significantly more comfortable than that of the activists’ group, some of whom were still dealing with very difficult material and social conditions, such as homelessness and/or poor living conditions, unemployment, single parenthood, etc. it should be noted that, while their transportation and meals were reimbursed, the activists were not financially compensated for their involvement in the project. however, atd fourth world continuously provided other forms of support before, during and after the study was completed, ensuring a supportive, long-term relationship with the activists. despite these differences, the methodology sought to involve all participants on an equal footing. the approach required each person to participate fully in the study, including in the various exercises, such as photo voice and forum theatre. by taking part in exercises that forced them to abandon their usual roles and comfort zones, the participants encountered each other on a more level playing field. as one academic put it: since we participated in the forum theater, we stepped out of our comfortable role as intellectuals and we were obliged to position ourselves among the practitioners and the activists. moreover, the use of spokespersons and the active role played by the facilitators sought to balance the power relations within the peer groups. indeed, the rotating function of spokespersons enabled each person within the peer groups to experiment with speaking on behalf of their group in plenary sessions and taking on a leadership role. however, this form of power-sharing among the participants of different peer groups should be nuanced. indeed, within peer groups, some power differentials may have remained. for example, as mentioned before, in the academics’ peer group, four of the participants were doctoral researchers, while one was a tenured professor. as one academic remarked in an ex-post interview: osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 202210 even among researchers, we sometimes had trouble understanding one another: we speak different languages … i think the other groups did not notice, but there are differences between where we are at in our trajectories … power-with amy allen (1998) defines ‘power-with’ as the ‘ability of a collectivity to act together for the attainment of a common or shared end or series of ends’. although the research project has been alluded to as a negotiation process in this article, the participants were also encouraged to attain common goals from the very beginning of the project. indeed, the first two transdisciplinary workshops were devoted to the collaborative definition of the research question, with every member of the research team participating in this phase. the collaborative definition of the research question was conducted as follows: first, the ‘peer groups’ brainstormed potential questions concerning the food assistance system and food aid initiatives. in a plenary session, these questions were presented to the other peer groups. in a second phase, the coordinating team reorganised these questions, categorising them as responding to the questions of ‘who?’ (i.e. questions concerning the beneficiaries of food assistance), ‘what?’ (i.e. the content of food assistance programs), ‘how?’ (i.e. the practical organisation of food assistance), ‘what effects?’ (i.e. the effects of this assistance on beneficiaries), and ‘what alternatives?’ (i.e. potential alternatives to existing food assistance programs). after a collective discussion about these questions, the peer groups met once again to propose a single research question to the other groups. in a final phase, the groups reconvened in a plenary session to negotiate and agree on a research question together. the objective was clear: the different groups were challenged to go beyond their differences and to find common ground in order to agree on the question that would guide the remainder of the research project. collective empowerment was also sought by building trust among participants, who gradually transitioned from working in ‘peer’ groups to working in mixed groups, requiring interaction with the members of the other groups. as one participant put it: i don’t know if i’m over-interpreting it, but i had the impression that there was more distrust … at the beginning, and then it became warmer and more understanding at the end. collective empowerment also seems to have been one of the key outcomes of the research process, based on ex-ante and ex-post interviews conducted with all of the participants (osinski 2020). indeed, one of the questions in the interviews asked participants whether they felt that they had the power or means to make a change in the way food assistance is distributed in belgium. although at the beginning of the research process many of the participants interpreted this question as relating to their individual power or means to make a change, by the end of the research process, they answered the question by referring to collective efforts. for example, in the ex-ante interview, one participant answered: yes, through my motivation and my desire. for me, it’s really through practice, through putting in place initiatives, and through work … at the end of the process, the same practitioner answered as follows: … in this framework, clearly, i do not feel that i can change anything in terms of public policy. but what has changed since this merging of knowledge, is that i have a better understanding of the actors and i think we should create a lobby, to put ourselves together, to create a collective in order to have more impact and be invited to these types of events and political discussions … collectively, i think we could have an impact … osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 202211 discussion using amy allen’s three notions of power, the analysis above shows that power relations as observed in the ‘food assistance: what alternatives?’ project were complex and dynamic. while no single individual appeared to dominate the entire process, different groups of actors constrained the choices of others throughout the project, exercised their ability to act or reach certain objectives and worked together to achieve a common purpose. unlike in other analyses of power in participatory research, it does not appear that the group of academics unambiguously exerted power over others; instead, depending on the perspective taken, the notion of power examined and the stage of the process, both the practitioners and the activists seemed to hold certain forms of power. paradoxically, perhaps, the coordinating team, whose role was – among other things – to attenuate the power relations that existed and emerged among the various participants, seemed to hold the most power over the process. its members held key responsibilities – and thus also control – in defining the topic for research, selecting the participants, the methodological approach and the specific tools to be used. the coordinating team also facilitated the peer groups and the plenary sessions, which gave its members considerable power-over the direction taken in the workshops, the distribution of speaking time and the rhythm of the sessions. power was also exercised by other actor groups. all three peer groups were empowered to participate fully at all stages of the research; moreover, collective empowerment was achieved through the negotiation of the research question by all participants involved, as well as through the trust that was built both within and across peer groups. i argue that the reason for the shift from an individual understanding of power (‘powerto’) to collective empowerment (‘power-with’) might be explained by the fact that, while participants may have initially been optimistic about their capacity to change or improve the current food assistance system, the research process demonstrated the complexity of the problem at hand, leading them to re-evaluate their individual agency in this regard. the intensive cooperation between different actor groups over a relatively long period (six months) was likely also to have convinced several participants of the value of working together to attain common goals. while the merging of knowledge seeks specifically to attenuate power differentials that exist between academic researchers, persons experiencing poverty and practitioners, the guidelines do not provide insight or guidance on handling power relations within peer groups. indeed, while the presence of an experienced facilitator is considered to be key to moderating the peer groups as well as the plenary sessions, little has been written about the challenges and potential solutions for resolving issues of power among persons experiencing poverty, among practitioners or among researchers, as if these groups are considered to be homogeneous in terms of power distribution. this is unlikely to be the case in reality: power relations can exist between members of different disciplines in the academic world, between different levels of power in organisations for practitioners and between different individuals for activists. for example, race and gender may play an important role in the power that individuals hold in a collaborative process. thus, further research could focus on how to handle such power differentials within the peer groups themselves. concluding thoughts and recommendations power pervades research in a variety of ways and forms. while methodological approaches like the merging of knowledge, developed by atd fourth world in the 1990s, seek to attenuate power dynamics between groups of participants, the unequal distribution of financial and time resources, differences in bargaining power and batnas (best alternatives to a negotiated agreement) and different positions in the research process are – to a certain extent – inevitable. in the research process of the ‘food assistance: what alternatives?’ project, the considerable power held by the coordinating team shaped the process through its osinski gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 january 202212 selection of the participants, the research topic, the methodological approach and the tools used. moreover, the analysis of power dynamics conducted in this article sheds light on the different – and sometimes unexpected – ways in which actor groups have ‘power-over’ others and the ways in which participants are empowered, both individually and collectively. the interviews conducted before and after the process generally show that, while individual feelings of empowerment remained stable or waned, collective empowerment grew as a result of the collaborative research process and the realisation of the complexity of the problem at hand. in other words, participants realised that, on their own, triggering a change in policies related to food assistance was difficult; together, however, they may be able to achieve more. based on these conclusions, i suggest that the merging of knowledge as it was practised in the ‘food assistance: what alternatives’ project raises several important questions. first, how can coordinating teams more systematically involve persons experiencing poverty, to ensure that activists’ voices are present when strategic decisions are being made? what conditions must be ensured for such participation to be rendered possible? second, how can the power of the coordinating team be devolved to other participants of the research 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-020-00077-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.10.011 https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630903900101 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 13, no. 1 may 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: lopera-molano, d., lopera-molano, a.m. 2020. diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7209. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.7209 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au artículo de investigación diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia daniel lopera-molano1, angela maría lopera-molano1 1mysco research group, universidad de ibagué, colombia autor para la correspondencia: daniel lopera-molano; daniel.lopera@unibague.edu.co doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7209 article history: received 27/03/2020; revised 28/04/2020; accepted 07/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. resumen gaitania es un corregimiento ubicado en la cordillera de los andes, muy cerca de donde se formó la guerrilla de las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de colombia, farc, a mediados de la década de los 60. en este contexto, se realizó un proyecto de investigación y educación con organizaciones estatales, civiles y comunitarias, incluida la agencia para la reincorporación y normalización del gobierno colombiano, arn, asociaciones de productores de café en el sur del tolima, la comunidad indígena nasa wes’x y 150 excombatientes, así como profesores y estudiantes del programa de diseño de la universidad de ibagué, colombia. el propósito de este artículo es demostrar cómo la formación en diseño puede transformarse orgánicamente de aprendizajes instrumentales a maneras creativas autónomas. este proyecto estableció procesos colectivos de reflexión-acción que funcionaron en conjunto con cuatro objetivos críticos de aprendizaje, según lo especificado por el programa de diseño. se realizaron talleres para la co-creación de una marca colectiva de café, que reunió a víctimas y victimarios en un proceso conjunto de reconciliación e intercambio de memorias. a través de la generación de una marca colectiva de café especial, llamada el tercer acuerdo, la cual actualmente se comercializa, se está recuperando y construyendo memoria sobre los procesos de paz autónomos del territorio y sus propios esfuerzos de autovalidación. también, se desarrollaron habilidades críticas en estudiantes y comunidades para que pudieran comprender las implicaciones de producir un diseño que respondiera al mercado, al tiempo declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7209 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7209 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:daniel.lopera@unibague.edu.co http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7209 que se reconocía la importancia de construir caminos de transición para los participantes, especialmente en contextos de guerra y paz. las reflexiones de los estudiantes condujeron a la construcción de distinciones para la praxis, como la plandisposición, escuchacción, síntesis honesta y sentipensar-actuar, que nos revelan una conciencia crítica de cómo el diseño puede abrir posibilidades para crear futuros en los que coexistan muchos mundos. palabras clave: investigación-acción, diseño, rehumanización, educación, café, acuerdo de paz. introducción el presente artículo expone una serie de análisis y reflexiones sobre un proyecto participativo de investigación y educación realizado en colombia. reunió a organizaciones estatales, civiles y comunitarias, incluida la agencia para la reincorporación y normalización del gobierno de colombia (arn), asociaciones de productores de café, la comunidad indígena nasa wes’x y 150 excombatientes; así como maestros y estudiantes del programa de diseño de la universidad de ibagué, colombia. el propósito de este artículo es demostrar cómo la formación en diseño puede transformarse orgánicamente de aprendizajes instrumentales a maneras creativas autónomas. lo anterior, sustentado en la comprensión de que todo lo diseñado inaugura o reproduce una serie de formas de ser y conocer (escobar 2017; willis 2006). tener conciencia plena de esto implica, en la práctica creativa, estar atento a un proceso participativo que favorezca la autonomía, como principio invaluable de construcción de paz. las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de colombia (farc) fueron la organización guerrillera más antigua de américa latina. esta organización campesina, que representa a la población rural de colombia, adoptó un enfoque marxista-leninista frente a situaciones complejas que ocurrían a mediados del siglo xx en el país, muchas de estas, con consecuencias que aún prevalecen en la actualidad. algunas causas de su surgimiento se atribuyen a la débil presencia del estado en los territorios, especialmente en las zonas rurales, y las guerras bipartidistas entre posturas políticas liberales y conservadoras, que llevaron a armar a la población civil, con el propósito de exterminar al adversario, acompañado por una débil democracia y centralismo. durante este tiempo, el crecimiento escalonado de situaciones interrelacionadas, como el tráfico de drogas, los asesinatos selectivos, el desplazamiento forzado, los ataques contra la población civil y los secuestros fueron noticia de todos los días. al mismo tiempo, se estaban llevando a cabo intentos por elaborar acuerdos humanitarios y construir diálogos de paz seguidos, tristemente, de incumplimientos y una escalada de violencia sistemática. la responsabilidad de esta violencia recaía no solo en los diferentes grupos guerrilleros, sino también en las organizaciones estatales y pro-estatales fuera de la ley: los paramilitares. durante sus años de lucha armada, las farc fueron consideradas un grupo terrorista por varios países. en colombia, no era el único grupo guerrillero, pero llegó a ser el grupo con más poder. su capacidad de acción era evidente; llegaron a tener presencia en 24 de los 32 estados de colombia y, en su apogeo, contaban con 18 000 guerrilleros armados (mapping militant organizations, 2019). estos datos allanaron el camino para dos medidas políticas importantes: el exterminio del grupo por parte de las fuerzas militares y los paramilitares, o la reactivación constante de las conversaciones de paz. la primera medida, con población colombiana tanto a favor como en contra, aumentó la violencia, estigmatizó al otro como malo y perpetuó el lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 asesinato y la muerte como forma de respuesta. la segunda medida vio en el diálogo el único camino posible para lograr una paz duradera. los casi 50 millones de colombianos se han visto afectados, directa o indirectamente, por estas dos formas de respuesta. en 2016, colombia experimentó uno de los eventos más importantes en su historia de conflicto armado. el estado y los representantes de la guerrilla de las farc firmaron el acuerdo final para la terminación del conflicto y la construcción de una paz estable y duradera. esto implicó, entre otras cosas, seguir una política integral de desarrollo agrario, dejar las armas, lograr la verdad, la justicia y la reparación, y favorecer la participación política, principalmente. con respecto a la eliminación de las armas, se crearon las llamadas zonas veredales o áreas rurales que, mediante la intervención de las naciones unidas y la oficina del alto comisionado para la paz, acreditaron a la población de excombatientes para que pudieran comenzar el proceso de reincorporación a la vida civil. en relación con los crímenes cometidos, algunos de sus autores se beneficiarían de la jurisdicción especial para la paz, jep, y otros de la ley de amnistía. la jep fue creada para ofrecer verdad y reparación a las víctimas, enfocándose en los crímenes más serios que habían cometido los excombatientes de las farc. toda vez que se entregaron las armas en las áreas rurales, estos lugares fueron renombrados como espacios territoriales de capacitación y reincorporación, etcr, y aquí es donde ahora se llevan a cabo los procesos esenciales de capacitación para el desarrollo agrario y la generación de actividades productivas rentables. a la fecha de febrero de 2020, había 2893 personas que residían en los 24 etcr del país. el departamento de tolima se encuentra en la parte central del país, con su ciudad principal, ibagué, a unas tres horas en automóvil de bogotá, la capital de colombia. hay dos etcr en este departamento, uno en icononzo y otro en gaitania dentro del municipio de planadas. gaitania es un corregimiento ubicado en la cordillera de los andes, muy cerca del surgimiento histórico del conflicto armado colombiano con las guerrillas de las farc. marquetalia, una de las 22 veredas del municipio de gaitania, es reconocida por la organización guerrillera como el lugar de su nacimiento hace más de 50 años. esto, ha significado que durante mucho tiempo gaitania y sus habitantes han sufrido los estragos de la guerra y han tenido que lidiar con sus consecuencias, por ejemplo, el histórico cultivo de la amapola a lo largo de sus imponentes montañas. a las prósperas poblaciones de gaitania y planadas les ha implicado un arduo trabajo modificar gradualmente los prejuicios de la población colombiana, que aún persisten sobre este municipio, y transformarse en lo que ahora conocemos como el lugar que produce uno de los cafés más especiales del mundo. no es sorprendente que hayan ganado ya dos veces la taza de la excelencia en café de especialidad (en 2006 y 2015). líderes cafeteros y excombatientes, así como la comunidad indígena nasa wes’x, convergen en este territorio; antes conocidos, de manera polarizante, como víctimas y victimarios. paradójicamente, ahora trabajan para lo que, en sus propias palabras, significa construir vida comunitaria. en este contexto, se desarrolló un proyecto situado de investigación y educación. el proyecto construyó varias alianzas con organizaciones estatales, civiles y comunitarias, tales como la agencia para la reincorporación y normalización del gobierno colombiano, arn, asociaciones de productores de café en el sur del tolima, la comunidad indígena nasa wes’x y 150 excombatientes pertenecientes al etcr denominado marquetalia cuna de la resistencia; todos ellos, actuando con la colaboración del programa de diseño de la universidad de ibagué. este proceso, que ha durado más de un año, comenzó a principios de 2019 con un equipo de estudiantes de la asignatura en diseño y futuro. frente al enorme desafío de reparar un país, diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 durante muchos años fracturado por las guerras, pero ahora afrontando la posibilidad única que se abrió con el acuerdo de paz de 2016: la academia tiene la obligación ético-política de participar. para complicar lo anterior, están las manifestaciones cada vez más evidentes de un país que, lamentablemente, no ha dejado de escenificar la guerra como representación hegemónica de la relación entre sí mismo y aquellos considerados diversos. manifestaciones concretas de lo anterior son la actual regeneración de conflictos violentos y la reocupación de territorios por parte de las élites que permanecen en el poder. una consecuencia asociada ha sido la excesiva cantidad de asesinatos de líderes sociales que ronda la deplorable cifra de 817 personas asesinadas, desde la firma de los acuerdos hasta febrero de 2020 (indepaz, cumbre agraria campesina étnica y popular, coordinación social y política marcha patriótica e instituto de estudios para el desarrollo y la paz, 2020). aquellos, especialmente afectados, son agricultores, líderes indígenas, miembros de juntas de acción comunal, líderes comunitarios, líderes afrodescendientes, entre otros (indepaz, cimep, iepri y comisión colombiana de juristas, 2017). todo esto, relacionado con el mantenimiento de los centros de poder, la expansión del extractivismo y los cultivos ilícitos, el sabotaje de los acuerdos de paz por parte de políticos de derecha y la devastación ecológica, soportados por enfoques neoliberales que arrasan con todo a su paso. estas preocupaciones no solo deberían estar en el centro de la atención nacional, sino que también deben perpetuarse en la academia como ejercicios constantes de reflexión-acción. el presente artículo pretende demostrar cómo los procesos creativos comunitarios pueden favorecer orgánicamente el aprendizaje autónomo, un aprendizaje que se moviliza mediante una práctica de diseño distintiva, que coloca la rehumanización en el centro de su proceso. los hallazgos presentados aquí se centran, principalmente, en la construcción de distinciones de praxis aplicadas al diseño de comunidades en paz. el marco teórico deshumanización este proceso comienza con una preocupación compartida, una preocupación que nos vincula con un grupo de otros diseñadores, académicos, líderes sociales, estudiantes y ciudadanos que observan en el mundo occidental la generación de una cierta crisis. una de las manifestaciones de esta crisis radica en el dominio constante de las lógicas del mercado sobre las diferentes formas de ser y habitar el planeta (por ejemplo, comunidades indígenas, comunidades rurales, movimientos sociales, poblaciones vulnerables). la forma en que esto se reproduce en el ser humano moderno es convirtiendo a todos en un objeto de uso (heidegger 1994) y, en este ejercicio, el diseño hegemónico ha jugado un papel principal. el diseño dominante se ha investido con la deshonrosa tarea de ver y traer a presencia todo aquello que pueda ser comercializado e instrumentalizado. en este proceso, se cubre con los mantos del progreso, innovación y desarrollo para justificar su causa. definimos a este ejercicio como deshumanización, en la cual el ser humano pierde conexión con su propia pregunta por la existencia y se convierte en un objeto del mercado, en mercancía. una de las principales causas asociadas no es el mercado en sí, sino los valores occidentales modernos y las formas de conocimiento, instrumentalización, colonialismo, patriarcado y dualismo que lo han creado (escobar, 2017). en otras palabras, estos procesos están cargados de formas de ser y conocer, e imponen esa lógica hegemónica a las comunidades. sin lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 embargo, podrían surgir formas alternativas de transición para contrarrestar esta dominación. la transición implica reconocer que la actual estructura de apoyo socioeconómico de las comunidades debe entablar relaciones con el mercado global, pero en ello, tiene a cargo desmantelar su racionalidad colonial. al hacerlo, los valores, prácticas y formas de relacionarse en los procesos creativos tendrían que ser radicalmente diferentes. diseño y rehumanización los estudios de diseño actuales hablan sobre la orientación ontológica que tiene toda creación, reconociendo que, cuando una cosa es diseñada, esta, a su vez, comienza a influir en nuestras formas de ser y conocer (willis, 2006). por ejemplo, muchos apartamentos modernos están diseñados con secciones preestablecidas (sala de estar, comedor, cocina) que podrían favorecer la fragmentación de las relaciones. pero una maloca (casa ancestral utilizada por las comunidades indígenas de la amazonía), a través de su diseño, crea condiciones para la interacción comunitaria. es decir, cuando diseñamos algo, también instauramos prácticas, maneras de relacionarnos y formas de conocimiento. la función encomendada a este diseño no radica solo en diseñar cosas nuevas sino en reparar, en las comunidades, la capacidad olvidada de crear sus propias formas de vida. esto, entendido como una praxis ético-política de diseño, puede denominarse diseño autónomo (escobar, 2017). escobar menciona que cada comunidad practica algún tipo de diseño de sí misma y, al hacerlo, reconstruye constantemente su sentido vital y su significado de vida. aquello tiene que ver con la rehumanización; con recuperar el sentido y el significado de la vida (cañas-fernández, 2010). rehumanizar implica la rearticulación de un proyecto de vida comunitaria, para vivir con dignidad. es un enfoque teórico-práctico para la re-existencia; un proyecto creativo vital en el que diversas formas de ser y conocer encuentran su forma de resistir y coexistir. bajo el lente de esta crisis, y como respuesta potencial, al igual que dentro del marco de un programa de diseño en una institución regional de educación superior es esencial preguntarse: ¿cómo podemos educar a los nuevos diseñadores para que puedan contribuir a la creación de condiciones de posibilidad para la rehumanización? lo anterior, teniendo en cuenta que cuando hablamos de diseñadores, no solo hablamos de diseñadores profesionales, sino de todos los que participamos en el diseño del mundo. aprendiendo en contexto el aprendizaje es un proceso social (freire, 2005). la pedagogía no es un ejercicio preestablecido, realizado por alguien llamado maestro a alguien llamado estudiante. es un proceso relacional que emerge de nuestra red de relaciones recurrentes a medida que adquiere coherencia en el contexto de la experiencia. el aprendizaje que no puede incorporarse a la práctica no podría concebirse como aprendizaje, porque la repetición de información es adoctrinamiento. aprendemos al sentirnos parte de algo y reconocerlo como valioso. se requiere el contexto mismo, se requiere la vida misma que construya sentido para transformar y aprender juntos. concibiéndonos como colectividades en interdependencia, reformulamos la posición fragmentada del yo y recuperamos la concepción de la inter-existencia. el territorio no está allá, también reside en nosotros. es una actitud ético-política, no solo responder al ejercicio de saqueo y exclusión de las personas de su territorio (predominante en nuestros pueblos de violencia física y epistémica) sino, sobre todo, reparar la relación que se rompe cuando el diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 territorio es también retirado de la gente (según lo descrito por un líder colombiano de la asociación de cabildos indígenas del norte del cauca, acin, citado por escobar, 2015). las pedagogías del territorio buscan liberarnos de los matices enjaulados de los claustros universitarios, para favorecer el aprendizaje en la dinámica misma de las comunidades y sus propias formas de responder a los desafíos del presente. la pedagogía de la que estamos hablando es una pedagogía en transición: en transición hacia la recuperación de otros mundos, reparándose a sí misma desde la visión instrumental que se le ha impuesto (freire, 2005). también, es autocrítica en sus propios objetivos de aprendizaje. específicamente, el programa de diseño de la universidad de ibagué, en el que se lleva a cabo este enfoque central, ha tomado como base los objetivos críticos de aprendizaje de marilyn frankenstein (2001) como punto de referencia. estos son los siguientes: 1. comprensión del diseño para la rehumanización: es decir, la comprensión conceptual de que cuando diseñamos estamos trayendo a presencia no solo cosas sino formas de ser. es decir, que la forma en que damos sentido y significado a la vida es indivisible de la forma en que traemos cosas a la existencia. 2. comprender el diseño para la rehumanización del conocimiento político: es decir, cómo el diseño nos habla del mundo que reproduce y de los mundos que niega. en otras palabras, tal comprensión nos expone el conocimiento político que se oculta a través del mundo diseñado, en este caso, el mundo diseñado hegemónicamente. cada diseño nos cuenta sobre el mundo y sobre los mundos que niega. 3. comprender el diseño como política para el conocimiento de la rehumanización: es decir, qué es lo político que se oculta en el ejercicio del diseño. esto incluye la agencia política del diseño: que al diseñar algo también nos estamos diseñando a nosotros mismos (willis, 2006). 4. comprender lo político del conocimiento: esto se refiere a la necesidad de reconsiderar lo que hoy se concibe como un conocimiento válido del diseño y abrirnos a otras formas de diseñotrear (recorriendo las palabras del profesor alfredo gutiérrez-borrero). este breve resumen de los objetivos de aprendizaje es el lugar teórico-práctico de enunciación y desarrollo del proceso pedagógico del programa de diseño. retomando a frankenstein (2001), esto requiere del programa: disolver la dicotomía entre las formas de aprender y las formas de enseñar diseño; comprender el marco cultural del conocimiento del diseño; y estudiar el diseño con un enfoque profundo en cuestiones complejas de la sociedad (por ejemplo, guerra y paz). todo esto, con la constante intención de leer el mundo a través del diseño. el proyecto el enfoque metodológico descrito aquí está vinculado a la tradición de la investigación-acción participativa, así como a las prácticas pedagógicas del aprendizaje-servicio. lo anterior implica que la realidad se concibe como una construcción colectiva que ocurre a través del lenguaje para que, en este flujo de relaciones consensuales, se favorezca la acción política informada (ortiz, 2016). asimismo, es una perspectiva y un proceso orientado no solo a la transformación de los grupos en términos de sus manifestaciones, sino también, a la transformación de las condiciones de posibilidad que hacen emerger estos fenómenos. el enfoque, por lo tanto, está atento a la forma en que la situación problemática se presenta como un ejercicio constante de consenso, además de estar atento a la forma en que se atiende a la situación. responder lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 creativamente a algo, requiere la expansión de nuestros marcos de percepción, como también sucede cuando dialogamos (bohm, 2013). el proyecto comenzó a la par de la creación de la mesa técnica cafetera de gaitania, mtc, que representa a tres comunidades: líderes cafeteros, comunidad excombatiente del etcr marquetalia y comunidad indígena nasa wes’x. inicialmente, se le solicitó a la universidad de ibagué que apoyara el proceso de creación de una marca colectiva de café que representara a las tres comunidades. esta marca, según sus propias voces, debía representar el proceso de posconflicto que están viviendo y ser un símbolo de construcción colectiva de paz. inicio de los talleres de co-creación en el etcr de gaitania. el tercer acuerdo: un proceso de reflexión-acción el proyecto se caracterizó por el aprendizaje mutuo. se hicieron varias visitas al territorio, el cual se encuentra a unas seis o siete horas de ibagué, la capital del tolima. varios talleres preestablecidos tuvieron que ser repensados orgánicamente in situ como un ejercicio de aprendizaje y escucha cuidadosa. los 22 estudiantes y los dos docentes se reconocieron aportando desde sus distintos roles y, a partir de un diálogo horizontal, se lograron definir actividades para cada uno. de esta manera, surgió información y se analizó colectivamente. los instrumentos para la recopilación de datos fueron los diarios de campo, relacionados con el ejercicio del diseño, la sistematización de charlas reflexivas y su síntesis en un libro denominado diarios del tercer acuerdo (lopera-molano, 2020). el proceso de análisis de la información se realizó en equipos. hubo dos o tres niveles de análisis: un primer nivel con los datos cualitativos obtenidos de y con los actores relevantes; un segundo nivel de datos interpretativos individuales; y un tercer nivel de interpretación consensuada para la toma de decisiones, acompañado de ejercicios meta-reflexivos que suscitaron categorías. diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 en todos estos procesos, los diversos actores implicados participaron como el punto central del ejercicio participativo y la toma de decisiones. cabe señalar que el proceso se desarrolló cíclicamente y las acciones se relacionaron entre sí, no necesariamente a partir de una cierta evolución cronológica, sino más bien a partir de un despertar orgánico que se hizo cada vez más significativo y logró conectarse con otros problemas a los que anteriormente se les había dado relevancia. vale la pena mencionar que los propios estudiantes crearon sus bitácoras de campo, con algunos textos sugerentes sobre cómo prepararse para el diálogo, la escucha y la participación. mientras se llevaban a cabo los talleres de co-creación, fue en la mtc donde se tomaron las decisiones de diseño más importantes, respetando el espacio colegiado y las voces de los diferentes actores. por ejemplo, la mtc decidió no solo las propuestas de diseño gráfico, sino también el diseño del mensaje en sí, que incluía las formas colaborativas de organizarse y la forma en que deberían presentarse como un ejemplo vivo de lo que estaban contando. el proceso duró aproximadamente siete meses y requirió siete viajes a gaitania. inicialmente, se realizó un taller intensivo de tres días que requirió que todos los estudiantes se desplazaran a gaitania; encontramos alojamiento en una finca cafetera, durmiendo en camarotes junto a bolsas de café recién recolectado. era impresionante ver la emoción de los estudiantes, ya que no querían dormir después de escuchar las increíbles historias de las tres comunidades. del mismo modo, debe mencionarse que ninguno de ellos había conocido a un excombatiente antes y algunos tenían una cierta idea negativa sobre ellos. sin embargo, los días pasaban y los prejuicios fueron cambiando. con respecto a esto, llevamos a cabo talleres para revisar supuestos y abrirnos a perspectivas diferentes a las obtenidas de la historia hegemónica colombiana. además, participamos en cuatro mtc para la toma de decisiones en gaitania. los viajes de ibagué a gaitania fueron realizados por pequeños grupos de estudiantes, siempre acompañados por el profesor. estos, no fueron fáciles, ya que toman casi un día completo. el camino de planadas a gaitania no está pavimentado y solo puede ser recorrido por camperos. los estudiantes cubrieron el costo de los viajes y la comida, y también dedicaron al proyecto una gran parte de sus fines de semana y tiempo libre, durante el primer semestre de 2019. su compromiso fue significativo, ya que las demandas de la comunidad crecieron a medida que vieron progresos. por ejemplo, varios de los estudiantes apoyaron el cuidado de los hijos de los excombatientes para que sus padres pudieran participar en los talleres de co-creación, y también apoyaron el desarrollo de dos murales sobre la paz, uno en el etcr y el otro en gaitania. los recursos para las propuestas de diseño fueron, en parte, proporcionados por los mismos estudiantes como parte de su proyecto académico. los registros de marcas, los diseños industriales y los gastos de viaje de los docentes corrieron a cargo de la universidad. durante todo el proceso, la formación integral fue necesaria. no avanzábamos en un diseño gráfico específico hasta que no construyéramos un diálogo apropiado entre todos nosotros. en varias ocasiones tuvimos que frenar el progreso para abordar cuestiones de respeto por otras voces y asumir nuestras tareas de manera responsable. así surgió la palabra inventada, chancunchan. los estudiantes crearon una lista de acuerdos sobre respeto y responsabilidad compartida, y necesitábamos un término que sonara divertido y que pudiéramos usar para recordarnos, en momentos de falta de respeto entre nosotros, los acuerdos éticos que habíamos alcanzado. todavía estamos usando esta palabra en nuestras conversaciones y formación pedagógica con los mismos estudiantes. parece que, mientras construíamos estas formas pedagógicas, en la mtc se concebían ideas similares relacionadas con acuerdos propios. lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 para comprender la importancia de lo anterior, debe tenerse en cuenta que a veces la participación de la comunidad indígena nasa wex´s dependía de solo unos pocos miembros que llegaban a representarla. pero la presencia de uno de ellos, al comienzo de las reuniones, fue tan importante para el proyecto que ayudó a darle sentido y valor. don ovidio paya es un indígena nasa wes’x que participó hace más de 20 años en lo que ellos mismos denominaron su primer acuerdo de paz. este acuerdo sigue vigente, respeta la diversidad y fue construido de forma autónoma, sin mediación estatal. una nueva conciencia de este primer acuerdo surgió cuando, en una de las reuniones del proyecto, mencionamos el acuerdo de paz, refiriéndonos al de la habana, y don ovidio paya nos desafió, diciendo que para él no era el único o el primer acuerdo. somos conscientes de que en colombia ha habido innumerables intentos de paz, varios, basados en convenios y pactos colectivos. sin embargo, para este territorio y su memoria, se reconocen dos acuerdos. el acuerdo de los nasa wes’x con las farc en 1996 y el acuerdo de la habana en 2016. este segundo acuerdo, aunque muy criticado por los propios excombatientes, sigue siendo el que crea las condiciones para poder hablar en los etcr sobre la urgente necesidad de un trabajo colectivo hacia proyectos productivos rentables y el respeto relacional por la diversidad. proceso para compartir historias durante la conceptualización de la marca. el resultado comprendió que, durante este proceso de creación de paz, se diseñó una marca colectiva en reconocimiento de las tres comunidades y los tres acuerdos en territorio. el último de ellos es el tercer acuerdo. este acuerdo nació de la apremiante necesidad de aprender de la memoria colectiva de las tres comunidades y evitar que se pierda. lo anterior, debido a que existe el riesgo de que se pierda (nuevamente) en la reproducción de dinámicas comerciales y en la urgencia de la capacitación para producir o generar un negocio; políticas que parecen tener una mayor prioridad en la agenda del gobierno. diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 la memoria colectiva de los procesos de paz que han vivido estas comunidades es importante, ya que les ayuda a aprender de los errores del pasado. olvidar estos procesos de paz implicaría que han perdido la oportunidad de aprender de las enseñanzas de cada ejercicio de paz. cuando hablamos de estas tres comunidades, estamos hablando de una gran diversidad de personas que se agrupan y que, en la dinámica del desarrollo moderno, pueden perder sus propias formas de ser y conocer. el reconocimiento de la diferencia es fundamental para cumplir un acuerdo, en el contexto de la construcción de una paz estable y, sobre todo, duradera. por ejemplo, la historia de cómo es vivir en las montañas y subsistir como guerrillero, las lecciones de vida aprendidas y las formas particulares de vivir en una organización al margen de la ley tienen mucho que enseñarnos sobre la vida nómada, el cuidado mutuo y conceptos como camarada y subsistencia. la historia de los nasa wes’x liderando el acuerdo de paz de 1996 podría revelarnos lo que no funcionó y lo que funcionó, y por qué. también está la historia de la resistencia de los líderes cafeteros que se negaron a abandonar su territorio a costa de sus propias vidas. estas historias todavía están vivas debido a la enseñanza que traen. lo que uno elige recordar también es parte de las negociaciones y debates en curso sobre la forma en que estas tres comunidades estructuran el diseño de su futuro. han elegido estructurarlo sobre la base de recordar, desde diferentes perspectivas, lo que sucedió en sus acuerdos de paz anteriores, y como un ejercicio crítico para leerse a sí mismos y sus propias formas de crear el cambio. se destaca como importante esta decisión ético-política que toman las comunidades para no repetir la guerra en su territorio. diseñar un tercer acuerdo con personas que no quieren repetir sus años de guerra, al tiempo que, reconocemos las causas estructurales del conflicto siguen aún vigentes, es un enorme reto. para esto, se necesita trabajar desde la estructura socioeconómica actual y, a partir de ella, considerar otros valores y formas de relación. en este sentido, el café, como la vocación actual del territorio, fue la razón para que este grupo creara condiciones de paz. fue una oportunidad para desarrollar otras formas de relación que también fueran productivamente rentables, pero cuyo enfoque no radicaba en el bien económico per se, sino en la construcción de una sociedad que reconociera la diferencia y también valorara el cuidado de la tierra y el desarrollo de productos propios que pudieran disuadir y resistirse frente a las industrias extractivistas y a otras formas de devastación. la inscripción en la etiqueta del café del tercer acuerdo fue co-creada por los participantes y contó con sus voces, especialmente la de una excombatiente. en ella, se lee: en las mismas tierras que hoy ven nacer uno de los cafés más especiales del mundo, hace más de 20 años la comunidad indígena nasa y las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de colombia celebraron, de manera autónoma, lo que denominaron su primer acuerdo de paz. el siguiente acuerdo de paz, reconocido por estas comunidades, se firma entre el gobierno de colombia y los líderes de la organización guerrillera. en éste, pactan la terminación del conflicto armado en toda la nación. de manera complementaria, un colectivo de líderes cafeteros, excombatientes e indígenas vienen construyendo un tercer acuerdo localizado, particular y requerido para sus propias necesidades y las características del territorio que habitan y aman. este tercer acuerdo les recuerda día a día que la paz se construye desde el calor humano de cada comunidad. les implica un ejercicio de reconciliación histórica autónoma lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 que, gracias a la diversidad y alta calidad de su café, logra cultivar en ellos una nueva esperanza de futuro. aunado a lo anterior, los estudiantes diseñaron un estand para presentar no solo el café especial sino, esencialmente, la propuesta de paz que representa. esta presentación se realizó inicialmente en la universidad de ibagué y contó con la presencia de líderes de la nueva organización política de la farc (fuerza alternativa revolucionaria del común), miembros de la onu y de la arn, empresarios de la región y directivas universitarias. un excombatiente, en particular, que participó en todo el proceso, copresentó junto con los estudiantes. después de este prelanzamiento, el lanzamiento oficial de la marca tuvo lugar en expoplanadas el 26 de julio de 2019, la misma fecha en que, hace 23 años (26 de julio de 1996), se logró el primer acuerdo de paz en el territorio. en esta presentación participaron excombatientes, especialmente aquellos ahora capacitados como catadores de café y baristas. los materiales promocionales fueron desarrollados por estudiantes con el propósito de llamar la atención sobre el tercer acuerdo, reconociendo la necesidad de comunicar y comercializar el proyecto de manera adecuada y amplia. los miembros de la mtc estuvieron de acuerdo con esto, aunque fueron tomando alguna distancia para concentrarse en procesos más relevantes de su vida diaria como la recolección del café. la universidad continuará con este proyecto en territorio cuando los mismos estudiantes desarrollen su semestre social de paz y región en 2020b, que oficialmente deben cursar todos los estudiantes de la universidad de ibagué, al finalizar su proceso formativo de pregrado. diarios del tercer acuerdo: propuestas para la praxis esta sección explora el proceso de análisis realizado por los estudiantes y profesores. se puede resumir como un proceso de interpretación, meta reflexión y síntesis en categorías, como se describe en el libro diarios del tercer acuerdo, escrito por los estudiantes. en este han recopilado sus experiencias y reflexiones en el marco de un proyecto de diseño rehumanizante, y surgieron las siguientes categorías, ancladas a los procesos prácticos realizados: • plandisposición. • escuchacción. • síntesis honesta. • sentipensar-actuar. plandisposición (planeación-disposición): comúnmente, los docentes mencionan que debemos planear la clase, una planeación cargada de objetivos de aprendizaje, competencias, didácticas, actividades, entre otras, que surgen como expectativas para desarrollar con los estudiantes. está claro para nosotros que este ejercicio de planeación debe llevarse a cabo, pero no puede ser el único, de lo contrario se genera una imposición instrumental que excluye aquello que sucede en el aquí y ahora de la clase. lo mismo nos ocurrió en los procesos de cocreación. no era posible formar desde y para la autonomía si operamos simplemente desde lo planeado. esa es la carga epistémica y política de una metodología preconcebida. en general, los prejuicios de diseño se enmarcan en concepciones altamente mercantiles: diseño de marca, diseño publicitario, diseño de productos, ropa, etc. estas predeterminaciones juegan un rol preponderante en la forma en que otros conciben lo que hacemos y organizan los espacios bajo sus expectativas. nosotros, que estamos formados en diseño, también fallamos al pensar que un proceso comunitario creativo puede ser estrictamente planificado, prefigurado. diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 como alternativa, también nos damos cuenta de que los procesos creativos suceden y depende de nosotros, ser conscientes de las condiciones de posibilidad que los hacen emerger. plandisponerse es un reconocimiento de la necesidad de estar dispuesto en el momento presente y que todo puede cambiar radicalmente, excepto la comprensión esencial de lo que hace posible el evento. los estudiantes reconocen esto cuando escriben: “hemos estado aprendiendo de lo orgánico, para navegar entre las dinámicas de la comunidad” (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020 p. 103). llamamos a estas metodologías, metodologías orgánicas y corresponden a un reconocimiento de lo que no encaja en la planeación y lo que necesita ser liberado para abrirnos al diálogo, la creación colectiva y la incertidumbre. max-neef (1991) ha expresado esto como poder navegar en la incertidumbre mientras se mantiene un estado de máxima alerta. de acuerdo con lo anterior, los estudiantes hicieron una serie de 14 tarjetas llamadas “tarjetas de conocimientos prácticos para metodologías orgánicas” (colectivo diseño de futuros u.i., 2019). cada tarjeta expone un proceso con su debida descripción de creación colectiva y creatividad comunitaria. las tarjetas son evidencia de la apertura que se generó hacia formas de aprendizaje diversas. a continuación, presentamos dos ejemplos de tarjetas: teji-tejiendo y el mamarracho. 1. teji-tejiéndonos sentido: abrir mundos requiere desarrollar una escucha cuidadosa. con esta tarjeta te proponemos crear un tejido basado en tu experiencia, en los recursos escritos y gráficos que tienes en tus manos y en la información que te pueden brindar tus compañeros. ten en cuenta el sentido desde el cual construyes: ¿qué esperabas que pasara?, ¿cómo te dispusiste para ello?, ¿en qué contexto se desenvuelve la situación? puede haber imprevistos, pero eso enriquece la experiencia y lo mejor es que se puede ir transformando orgánicamente. una vez vayas construyendo una comprensión integral (a manera de tejido) de la situación, puede surgir el oportunicuerdo (oportunidades/recuerdos/acuerdos). esto permite recrear un modelo de la situación con el fin de tomar decisiones según lo ocurrido. por lo tanto, para que este tejido promueva oportunicuerdos es esencial que incluya todas las voces de los actores relevantes (incluyendo tus supuestos, reflexiones y sentires). nota: para que la recreación de la situación se registre de la mejor manera posible, te sugerimos hacer uso del diario de campo, grabaciones, fotos, bitácora con dibujos, frases y cualquier herramienta que consideres valiosa para recopilar cuidadosamente información (colectivo diseño y futuro, 2019, p. 5). 2. el mamarracho sentido: abrir mundos requiere atesorar expresiones sinceras de creación. podrás encontrarte con diversas propuestas a la hora de plantear una solución y unas pueden ser más entendibles que otras a primera vista. lo importante es que sean claras para el colectivo y para la persona que las está planteando. si te encuentras con un mamarracho, te recomendamos atesorarlo; es una expresión sincera de creación. recuerda que estamos trabajando con personas que han nacido en un mundo que les ha indicado que solo algunos dibujan bien y otros mal. el mamarracho puede ser una valiosa oportunidad para recuperar la capacidad de dibujar, de crear y de pensar que todos podemos construir propuestas válidas y coherentes. lo importante es preguntarse: ¿qué quiere contarnos el mamarracho? lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 nota: estemos dispuestos a ofrecer a todos la misma importancia y no seamos selectivos (colectivo diseño y futuro, 2019, p. 17). estos conceptos clave se enmarcan en la necesidad de un diseño-en-el-tiempo para la transición. esto implica comprender que, en el proceso de diseño, en su metodología, podemos estar negando mundos; es decir, la agencia de lo que está diseñado es la reproducción de la autoridad. por otro lado, el aprendizaje experimental amplía la lectura de lo importante que es recuperar el tiempo y la disposición consciente hacia las metodologías creativas. el hecho de que el diseño se entienda no como un resultado, sino como un proceso político consciente, aumenta la capacidad de las comunidades para rearticular su proyecto de vida y crear condiciones para la autonomía. lo anterior demuestra que los estudiantes entendieron que la dignidad también reside en cómo creamos algo, no solo en lo que vamos a crear. escuchacción: surge de la comprensión en el territorio sobre el escuchar; que no es simplemente un ejercicio pasivo de prestar atención a lo que otro dice. es un ejercicio de acción sobre la forma en que ese mundo, que otro intenta narrarnos, aparece en el diálogo. los estudiantes lo mencionan con fuerza más de una vez: “tienes que aprender a escuchar a la gente” (diarios del tercer acuerdo, 2020, p. 43); “sobre todo [lo demás], diseñar es escuchar el territorio y su gente” (p. 124); “[es] entender que el diseño diseña, lo importante es cómo nos acercamos al otro y realmente nos abrimos a escuchar” (p. 29). indican que es una “capacidad constante que se debe tener, no tratar de entender a las personas, sino escucharlas” (p. 84). escuchar da apertura a la acción-dinámica, es decir, que enactúa; se adquiere en la acción y te da apertura para la acción; es por esto que se llama escuchacción. la síntesis honesta: esta categoría surgió cuando intentábamos entender a qué nos referíamos realmente como el resultado de un diseño, sea objetual o gráfico. uno de los estudiantes argumentó que el propósito del objeto es sintetizar voces diversas con una honestidad que debería caracterizar cualquier ejercicio de construcción de paz, y a partir de allí surgió toda la reflexión posterior. por ejemplo: “mencionamos constantemente que deberíamos hacer una síntesis honesta de la marca y, en esa búsqueda, poco a poco, comenzamos a reconocer que realmente hacer algo concienzudamente con una comunidad puede hacer cambios en nosotros mismos” (diarios del tercer acuerdo, 2020, p. 102). esto sugiere que la forma en que haces algo, y las posiciones ético-políticas que asumes, también comienzan a diseñarte. la síntesis honesta, como postura de diseño, también emerge como un referente de rehumanización a través de su conexión con la justicia restaurativa; restauradora del tejido vital de las comunidades que todavía están conectadas a él. por lo tanto, la honestidad, como premisa de la síntesis en el diseño, se traduce en la recuperación de la capacidad creativa de las comunidades, ya que solo ellas pueden darle sentido. nuestro papel es acompañar ese proceso, siendo honestos sobre cuán lejos podemos llegar para comprenderlo. al hacerlo, también estamos siendo honestos con nosotros mismos. en otras palabras, estamos recuperando un sentido relacional en respeto por la diversidad. ser consciente de esto es muy relevante para el ejercicio del diseño mundial. si los estudiantes han entendido las ideas de las categorías presentadas anteriormente, es porque han conectado su práctica como un proyecto ético-político. han logrado reconocer en el diseño su carácter ontológico para la creación de un mundo rehumanizante. en esto, se acercan a una emancipación consciente de los procesos de creación del diseño, lo que resulta en un diseño que rearticula su significado con el de las propias comunidades con las que crea. esto es esencial en un contexto de paz, porque, como mencionó un estudiante, el “conflicto ha ocurrido [también] porque una gran población de nuestro país ha querido tener la libertad diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 de crear y elegir su propio futuro y no se le ha permitido [ ...], esto también puede ser la raíz de la paz” (diarios del tercer acuerdo, 2020, p. 120). mantener memoria sobre lo sucedido y recordar constantemente el valor de la reconciliación es lo que hace que el tercer acuerdo sea mucho más que una marca, y es lo que hace que el proceso de diseño sea mucho más que un ejercicio de ideación. aprovechar esta posibilidad de proyecto productivo como memoria aprensible del primer y segundo acuerdo, y recuerdo vivo del tercer acuerdo, al igual que como un ejercicio de reconciliación entre excombatientes y víctimas fue, para los participantes de este proyecto, también un proceso de recuperación de sentido de vida. sentipensar-actuar: evidentemente, este concepto puede estar relacionado con otras propuestas del sur global y, claramente, es consistente y resuena con la investigación-acción participativa y las narrativas populares de nuestros países. precisamente, el sentipensar surge de la jerga popular de los pescadores colombianos y fue acuñado por fals-borda (2015) como base clave para su sociología latinoamericana. como señaló un estudiante, “es gratificante cómo todo un grupo de estudiantes está dispuesto a crear un cambio para ellos y para otros a través del diseño, no solo cualquier diseño, sino uno que piense, sienta y actúe preservando esa comunicación y coherencia con la vida” (diarios del tercer acuerdo, 2020, p. 152). esto implica que el sentipensamiento actúa en ti y se manifiesta como una representación coherente con lo que piensas. parece, entonces, que nació la tercera parte para la tríada: actuar en coherencia con lo que siento y pienso refleja no solo un ejercicio de emoción y razón interconectadas sino, sobre todo, de praxis. ¿qué es el diseño del mundo sino una praxis política? afortunadamente, como lo mencionaron los estudiantes, deseamos ser un ejemplo de una praxis corazonante. reflexiones para concluir las categorías anteriores nos muestran un proceso de reflexión-acción en contexto, señalando cuestiones esenciales como la decolonialidad, el futuro, el diseño del sur, la paz, la historia del conflicto y las epistemologías del sur, entre muchos más. estos, son enfoques que luego se conectan con lecturas cada vez más profundas del mundo, pero que siempre están anclados al territorio. son despertares críticos para una época de posible rehumanización. en este sentido, estas categorías nos vinculan, sobre todo, con el primer y el segundo objetivo de aprendizaje crítico propuesto por frankenstein (2001). los estudiantes lograron posicionar conceptos para comprender el mundo políticamente y, a su vez, construir nuevos. esta novedad en la construcción nos acerca al cuarto objetivo de aprendizaje que implica hablar sobre la otredad, lo que no se percibe fácilmente, lo que el diseño hegemónico niega. los procesos pedagógicos y solidarios utilizados en este proyecto permitieron a los estudiantes adquirir significado y transformar estos conceptos teóricos. estas transformaciones se evidencian en la riqueza de nuevos conceptos y marcos creados conjuntamente, o incorporados por los propios estudiantes y maestros para desarrollar el proyecto. los conceptos aparecen entretejidos con la práctica en sí y no como asuntos aislados para marcar en una lista de verificación. el tercer objetivo de aprendizaje, mencionado anteriormente, se manifiesta con fuerza en las propuestas de síntesis honesta y objetos de transición. los estudiantes fueron diseñadores conscientes de la agencia política del diseño, no solo en el campo de la materialidad, sino también en las formas de ser que están diseñadas a partir de lo que creamos (fry, 1999). es, en este acto de conciencia crítica y transformadora, que la rehumanización adquiere un posible camino que le permite contrarrestar al diseño dominante. lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 14 la rehumanización, en este caso, se percibe no como un objetivo sino como un ejercicio consciente en el aquí y ahora que impulsa tanto el cómo, al igual que los por qué y para qué. es por esto que la rehumanización ocurre en procesos que están atentos a cultivarla, desde sus propias formas de acercamiento, diálogo, respeto por las voces y escucha atenta, entre otros. la creación de condiciones de posibilidad para la rehumanización nos modifica como humanos, a medida que tejemos desde el cuidado para la apertura relacional. se resalta aquí la mención sobre el sentipensar-actuar llegando a estar anclada, en su totalidad, al contexto particular del proyecto, lo que podría hacer a la sociedad más sensible a las preocupaciones de cada comunidad para construir conjuntamente en y para la autonomía. finalmente, consideramos que el proyecto presentado aquí es una referencia inicial para los procesos de rehumanización en términos de: • la formación ético-política de estudiantes y docentes que lograron relacionar sus prácticas con cuatro objetivos de aprendizaje críticos, permitiendo desarrollos autónomos y la aparición de nuevos conceptos, ante el agotamiento de los hegemónicos. • la construcción activa de posibilidades iniciales de autonomía en comunidades con historias de violencia en sus territorios; posibilidades que dignifican sus prácticas y sus propósitos y que valoran el ejercicio del diálogo para la creación, la imaginación y la crítica sincera. • la propuesta pedagógica de un diseño que se compromete honestamente con sus propias formas y actúa como una referencia ético-política para la transformación de la práctica del diseño y de los diseñadores que enfrentan los desafíos de nuestro sur. • la comprensión del diseño en contextos de guerra y paz, destacando la necesidad de reorientarlo para que sea relevante frente a nuestras propias realidades. aquí, hay un gran desafío para la imaginación de la re-existencia. también, reconocemos que el desafío continúa expandiéndose porque, aunque el tercer acuerdo ya es un proyecto productivo, la dinámica del mercado se ha convertido en el aspecto más relevante de las conversaciones recientes, debido a la cantidad de demanda de trabajo que requiere este proceso. asumimos, aparentemente, que al haber dejado de lado el ejercicio social de la memoria colectiva, esto representa un nuevo reto que debemos comprender y seguir acompañando. agradecimientos un sincero homenaje a todos los diseñadores que, con o sin título, participaron en este proyecto de creación colectiva. es su imaginación la que nos ha permitido comprender que todavía hay oportunidades para construir otros sentidos de vida. a los líderes cafeteros de gaitania, a la comunidad indígena nasa wes’x, a los excombatientes del etcr-el oso, a la arn y a la gente vigorosa y trabajadora de planadas, tolima; reconocemos en el colombiano, en aquellos que están construyendo este país desde los territorios, su dedicación y compromiso firme en creer que es posible, como nosotros, sentipensar-actuar una colombia en paz. referencias agencia para la reincorporación y la normalización (arn) 2019, ‘acuerdo final para la terminación del conflicto y la construcción de una paz estable y duradera’, gobierno nacional de colombia. diseñar comunidades en paz: enfoques participativos de investigación-acción anclados a una educación regional en colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 15 agencia para la reincorporación y la normalización (arn) 2020, ‘arn en cifras corte febrero 2020’. 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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t8-lpnzzjbsiro79ezg8i4bjzydjzabe/view?usp=sharing http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/informe-parcial-julio-26-2019.pdf http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/informe-parcial-julio-26-2019.pdf http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/resumen-ejecutivo-web.pdf http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/resumen-ejecutivo-web.pdf https://doi.org/10.35707/9789587543315 https://doi.org/10.35707/9789587543315 https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/revolutionary-armed-forces-colombia-farc https://doi.org/10.2752/144871306x13966268131514 https://doi.org/10.2752/144871306x13966268131514 challenging the empowerment expectation learning, alienation and design possibilities in community-university research as community-university partnerships have become mainstream, many have celebrated their success in bridging different communities and building capacity, particularly in underresourced neighbourhoods. across the spectrum of approaches to these partnerships, researchers and funders have argued that community-university partnerships generate important collaborations, learning and development (currie et al. 2005; israel et al. 2006; king et al. 2009; lederer & season 2005; williams et al. 2005), and these positive outcomes define allocation of project funding. researchers also argue that community-university partnerships generate ‘a process of ongoing collaboration and mutual learning, [that] will foster comparative research, training and the creation of new knowledge in areas of shared importance for the social, cultural or economic development of communities’ (sshrc 2011). these are ambitious goals, and many of these projects do strive to develop egalitarian research collaborations that will enable community organisations to thrive. many also aim to generate transformative learning and social action through their research processes, as well as their results. research on how well these projects achieve their ambitious goals reflects the diversity of the field. many studies report positively on their processes and their findings (gaventa 1988; guevara 1996; hall 1985; kidd & byram 1979; park et al. 1993; tandon 1981), but recently there have been studies that have troubled the waters, especially when examining the impacts on the frontline workers who carry out the community-university research on behalf of their communities (edwards & alexander 2011; greene et al. 2009; kilpatrick et al. 2007; warr, mann & tacticos 2010). these studies have highlighted the challenges community researchers, or peer researchers, face, and while they conclude that these projects are on the whole empowering, they question the assumption that these partnerships are inevitably empowering sites of learning. while the outcomes of learning, social action and empowerment are largely treated as a given in discussions of joe curnow university of toronto © 2017 by j curnow. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 unported (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: curnow, j 2017, ‘challenging the empowerment expectation: learning, alienation and design possibilities in community-university research’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 10, pp. 229–248. doi: 10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5151 corresponding author: joe curnow; joe.curnow@utoronto.ca doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v10i1.5151 issn 1836-3393 published by uts epress http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ journals/index.php/ijcre/index gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol 10 (2017) 230 | gateways | curnow community research, i question this and raise a counter-example of disempowerment and alienation generated through community survey collection. using the case of the community learning collaborative (clc), a pseudonym for a canadian community-university partnership committed to addressing poverty through communitybased participatory action research in low-income communities of colour, i examine what community researchers learnt through their participation in a survey of their neighbours. rather than assume that their learning generated social action, i look at what they learnt and how they attempted to mobilise their learning. i argue that, while speaking to their neighbours during the survey process enabled community-researchers to learn a great deal about their communities and validated their existing knowledge, it did not necessarily generate engagement in community-led social action, and instead generated alienation. this contributes a counter-story to the dominant logic underlying community research, not to contest its potential or argue against its implementation, but to call for more careful consideration of how the design of research partnerships may enable or constrain participation and for more detailed accounts of what enables learning and empowerment in these collaborations and what does not. rather than expect that empowerment and social action will naturally flow from community-university research projects, i argue for more specified claims that will help us to create more accountable and generative projects. in the sections that follow, i first review the literature on community-university research partnerships, examining the assumption that access to information and research processes in a neighbourhood will inevitably create the conditions for increased community engagement. i also review the studies of peer researcher impact, which raises questions about the universality of the claims of community research. i then review the context of the clc where i conducted this evaluation. next, i review the methods used for generating data of a subset of the community researchers in the project. i then turn to the types of learning that the community researchers reported, first focusing on those who supported the goals of community-university partnerships and then reviewing the learning and alienation that we encountered as community-researchers became overwhelmed with the problems their respondents identified in the communities. overall, i argue that community-university partnerships can be sites of learning and, within the clc, that community-researchers learnt skills and were also able to critique their communities, which helped them engage with them more effectively. however, this was not enough to spur social action, and without infrastructure for mobilising these ideas collectively, a sense of disempowerment and alienation was created. i conclude by arguing that, for community research projects to meet their objectives of generating learning, 231 | gateways | curnow collaboration and community development, they need to design more opportunities for meaningful collaborative action in response to the findings of the research. community-university partnerships and transformative learning goals community-university partnerships have become a mainstream approach to conducting research that bridges neighbourhoods and universities, bringing together multiple stakeholders and advancing an approach to knowledge that strives for accountability, capacity building and utility. communityuniversity research partnerships are intentional relationships between the two, designed to generate knowledge that serves to develop community organizations and the communities they are a part of (currie et al. 2005). within the broad mandate of community-university partnerships, there are many collaborative approaches to research, from community-based research (cbr), to participatory action research (par), action research and any number of other iterations of research that centre on partnership with impacted communities. these partnerships are increasingly popular (woloshyn, chalmers & bosacki 2005) and attempt to meet the goals of multiple stakeholders. they have the potential to foster strong relationships of mutuality and to produce rigorous, relevant research that can be mobilised in multiple sites. one of the explicit goals embedded within communityuniversity alliances is that of mutual learning and community development. while some community-university alliances place less emphasis on co-learning and social action, participatory action research partnerships explicitly work towards political transformation via learning opportunities generated during the research process. par focuses on learning for social action, arguing that building partnerships between the university and community organisations can develop research programs that benefit and include participation of community members. in this approach the academic and community-based researchers are co-learners, and there is community participation in the development of the research and its use for education and change (gaventa 1988; guevara 1996; hall 1985; minkler 2000; park et al. 1993; tandon 1981). furthermore, all of the approaches argue that research needs to comprise social investigation, education and action in order to share social knowledge with oppressed people (maguire 1987). this methodology relies on the freirean idea of the educative process (freire 1970), in which people first reflect on their experiences, then make connections among their co-community members, and then use that information to develop a systemic analysis of the problem, which they then mobilise to address unjust power relations. participatory research was born from popular education theory and practice and strives to create knowledge with 232 | gateways | curnow and for marginalised communities so that they are better able to change their living conditions (hall 1985). all knowledge produced is intended to be mobilised in the interest of social transformation. as an explicitly liberatory research strategy, it is not enough for people to merely understand the causes of the problems in their communities, they must also work collectively to change the systems that negatively impact their lives (alvarez & gutierrez 2001; maguire 1987; sohng 1996). within par, significant emphasis is placed on the utilisation of research results by the community partners and many research agendas include the action component as part of the research project data (gaventa 1988; paradis 2009; sohng 1996). gaventa (1991, p. 121) describes participatory research as ‘simultaneously a tool for the education and development of consciousness as well as mobilization for action’, underscoring the need for mobilisation in relation to the learning and knowledge mobilisation components of a participatory research project. paradis (2009, p. 46) argues that ‘participatory research should support the empowerment of participants and communities in three ways: it should leave them feeling more capable and confident, it should help them exercise real political influence, and it should build skills which can be applied to other self-initiated projects’. all of these authors make it clear that building capacity for social action is an integral component of participatory research, and that through the dialectically related research-action process, community organisations and universities should create learning spaces that require and enable social action for transformation. while there are many community-university research partnerships that successfully centre learning and enable social action in response to findings, many have warned that we should view these processes cautiously and engage with the substantive challenges of community-engaged research (israel et al. 2006; minkler 2004; smith et al. 2010; stoecker 2008; travers et al. 2013; warr, mann & tacticos 2010). they call for research that interrogates the challenges in community research and a grounded assessment of power relations, institutional constraints and other challenges that emerge in community-based research projects. in particular, several studies focus on the challenging role of community researchers and the potential for their experiences to be productive and empowering, or not (edwards & alexander 2011; greene et al. 2009; kilpatrick et al. 2007; warr, mann & tacticos 2010). these studies focus on the role of community/peer researchers in community-based research studies, documenting both scepticism and, at times, empowerment, despite the challenges on the ground. greene et al. (2009, p. 365) trace peer researchers’ experiences of capacity building, demonstrating their frustration with being ‘capacity-built’ and treated as tokens, as well as feeling a lack of connection to the community they were supposed to represent. on the other hand, they found the experience of becoming a peer researcher empowering, but 233 | gateways | curnow they felt sceptical and concerned about the conditions in their community. similarly, kilpatrick et al. (2007) document the experiences of peer researchers, tracing how they learnt to do research and highlighting their contributions to the project. the article also identifies the ways that youth researchers learnt skills that they thought would be valuable, while also noting a lack of clarity as to whether they were being effective. warr, mann and tacticos (2010) note the lack of attention to the impacts on community researchers of conducting research as peers and the challenges, including the emotional impact of documenting distress and isolation in the community. but they also document the personal benefits of the peer research process, as well as the collective benefits and strong sense of community that was built. thus, while these studies trouble the notion that communityuniversity partnerships conducting research in communities using peer researchers are an unquestioned good, they find that they are generally beneficial for the research, the university and the peer researcher – despite the problems the latter may experience. edwards and alexander (2011) are less sanguine about the prospects of community/peer researchers, arguing that calls for democratised research in the form of peer/community researchers often masks instrumental concerns about access to respondents and labour management, where claims to empowerment and learning are secondary to completing research tasks in an increasingly demanding neoliberal university environment. significantly, edwards and alexander argue that, while community researchers learn useful research skills, many may need help in exiting their roles and leaving the positionality of a researcher. they also argue that ‘there seems to be little acknowledgment in the literature of the fact that peer researchers remain in the community after the research and have to deal with any consequences’ (p. 275). their work points to positive outcomes in community research, but warns that the dual rationale of political empowerment and pragmatic data quality instrumentality may be a myth, and that we have little data on the impacts on peer researchers beyond their involvement as workers for the community-based research projects. these studies of community/peer researchers point to new questions, which challenge the widely held assumption that learning through community research is necessarily empowering. what happens when a community-university research project that is intended to drive social action and community engagement fails to empower and build capacity? what happens when peer researchers experience community research as disempowering and alienating, rather than enabling deeper political engagement? i engage with these questions, bridging the assumptions of freireaninspired participatory action research projects and the calls for attention to challenges on the ground, particularly for peer researchers embedded in the community. i examine what they 234 | gateways | curnow learn and how their learning impacts their ability to participate in the community, troubling the assumption that knowledge of one’s community is adequate to produce the conditions for social action. the project this article examines the survey component of a five-year funded alliance between three universities and eight local community organisations in toronto that made up the community learning collaborative, or clc (the project name is a pseudonym). this community-university partnership explicitly sought to connect research on learning, community development and social action in the interest of building capacity for community organising in toronto’s priority neighbourhoods. priority neighbourhoods are identified by the city using indicators such as socio-economic status, proximity to services and the number of homicides, in order to funnel public and private resources to the most vulnerable communities. the clc partnered with community organisations, including neighbourhood service organisations, health centres and activist groups, to conduct a study of community participation. this community-based research process included detailed case studies of neighbourhood organising, as well as a cross-city comparative study based on mixed-methods surveys conducted by community-based researchers from the participating communities. the community-based surveys undertaken by clc in nine toronto neighbourhoods aimed to create a particular type of social engagement that blended research, community organising and civic engagement, and also offered participants opportunities to learn skills, investigate their communities and develop critiques of learning and social change strategies in their neighbourhoods. the survey attempted to gain a big-picture understanding of the anti-poverty organising and civic engagement that occurs every day in toronto. the survey was designed by university researchers and was field tested and refined by one of the neighbourhood organisations’ community-based researchers. the survey contained qualitative and quantitative questions, including likert scales, multiple-choice questions and requests for descriptive qualitative responses. among the qualitative questions, it asked participants for assessments of their geographic communities, their involvement in community activity or campaigns, and what they had learnt through their involvement. community researchers carried out the survey, using their social networks to recruit participants. these peer researchers were selected by the community organisations. the community researchers reflected the racial and ethnic diversity of their neighbourhoods. they reported different reasons for joining the teams, including being asked by staff or friends to do so, the financial stipends offered for each survey and gaining canadian work experience that they could list on their resumes. their level of engagement in their communities and organisations varied widely, depending on the neighbourhood. in some neighbourhoods, the community researchers were experienced leaders in the community 235 | gateways | curnow organisation and had long been involved in community activism. in others, the community researchers were invited to participate as a way of bringing them into the organisation; these researchers were newcomers to canada and had fewer ties to the community and the community organisation. all community researchers were trained in basic research methodologies and on how to conduct and record these extensive surveys with their neighbours. all were asked to conduct 30 surveys. each survey interview lasted between 30 and 90 minutes and was audio recorded. the surveys were conducted in multiple languages and respondents were drawn from the social networks of the community researchers and the user base of the community organisations. the survey data was coordinated by university researchers and entered and processed at the partnering universities. method in this article, i reflect on community researchers’ experiences as part of the clc process. for my analysis, i focus on a subset of the community researchers. i examine the role of the community researchers who collected the survey data through interviews with people in their communities in order to understand how community researchers’ participation impacted their views of community activism in their neighbourhood and their role within that work. participants in this reflective analysis were selected based on their status as community researchers who had completed the survey process for the research project. they were recruited from four organisations in three neighbourhoods where surveys were collected. all participants were active volunteers or staff within the community organisations and represented the racial and economic diversity of their neighbourhoods. one of the groups was made up of all white women, many of whom were involved in psychiatric survivor and affordable housing advocacy. another group included latina women, while another included black youth. the final group was ethnically mixed, including recent immigrants from south and central asia. three focus groups representing different neighbourhoods were conducted. the first focus group included two participants from the local community organisation. the second included six participants from the community organisation and two universityaffiliated participants. the third comprised six community researcher participants and five university-affiliated participants. as part of the facilitation of a reflective process, community researchers mapped their neighbourhoods. they collectively drew the geographic landscape, identifying the boundaries of their neighbourhood and indicating the important areas of social life. they drew neighbourhood institutions, assets and places where people gathered. they were then asked to note the places they had learnt about or discovered through the community survey process. this question proved to be instructive, precisely because the 236 | gateways | curnow community researchers said they had not learnt about new things in the neighbourhood and could not add anything to their maps as a result. throughout the mapping process, participants were asked to discuss what they had heard from the people they had interviewed, what they had learnt about their communities and how, and how they planned to integrate this new information into their lives. discussion in the focus groups was transcribed in full and community maps were photographed and included as part of the transcription. codes and categories were developed through an abbreviated grounded theory process and iterative cycles of analysis. after the first transcription, initial codes emerged. these codes were added to and categorised after the review of the second transcription. major themes of what people had learnt included skill building, grievance construction, systemic analysis and recognition of local knowledge. the upside: learning, validation and empowerment community researchers immersed in survey collection learnt through formal and informal means and in multiple environments. they acknowledged the value of the knowledge they already had about their neighbourhood, gained research skills, learnt how to improve their community organisations, developed grievances based on the survey interviews, and constructed an initial analysis of the causes and potential solutions to some of those grievances. recognising their own knowledge notably, what was acknowledged or relearnt was the information and knowledge the community researchers already had. they said they didn’t really learn new things from the process, but it helped them to know what they already knew. when asked if they had learnt of any new resources that people access in their neighbourhood, one researcher said, ‘no. we already knew! i learned about the issues and needs of the people, but not about any new things.’ repeatedly, community researchers said things like ‘yeah, i knew it from living here’. the process helped them to bring together what they knew from their experiences and to situate those experiences within a larger understanding of their communities. this recognition of the local knowledge also motivated some community researchers to do something about the problems they perceived in their communities. when asked about how the research had affected her, a community researcher said, ‘it didn’t change what i really knew. it just made me more, ok things need to get done. more like, ok, action, that’s what i’m about.’ as they discussed the problems they faced in attempting to arrange or conduct interviews, they identified their solutions. the space to reflect and share proved valuable to the community researchers. one said, ‘mind you, i’m new to this place, so it’s learning … so this is actually a good activity for me – just 237 | gateways | curnow visualizing the area.’ the process of documenting what she already knew was helpful in solidifying and validating knowledge. other exchanges between community researchers as they negotiated the co-construction of their maps allowed them to share information about their communities. they also shared about resources and assets, such as services or day care, discussed current events, such as recent police raids, and identified cultural spaces that other community researchers had not known about, for example, a sri lankan community mosque, a filipino church and a colombian community group. this process of reflection was important to their learning and something for which one community member specifically wanted more opportunities. she said that having more reflective spaces within the project would ‘strengthen it, it would support the volunteers who are doing the research, and at the same time, the agency who’s trying to sort it out.’ research skills one significant thing that community researchers learnt was how to do research. this is the area where learning was most evident. community researchers gained interviewing and research administration skills that informed their practice. the interview skills community researchers gained occurred through formal learning in a training setting, where faculty and graduate students facilitated lectures and practice sessions for them. from the experience, community researchers developed strategies for improving their interviews. they were quite reflexive in their learning, and with each survey they conducted they refined their practice and informed each other’s practice. the community researchers also developed their own language for talking about the survey and why it was important, rejecting the framing the university had provided. several said things like ‘i think you should not go with this “anti-poverty” thing. people don’t understand this, so go something like house issue, home issue, employment issue, then they’ll understand you.’ they developed strong critiques of the survey and in some instances supplanted the sections that did not work for them with different explanations or descriptions that they felt were more appropriate to their community, and also suggested changes to the survey. these included reframing the questions in the survey to be less repetitive, including more resident input in the survey, incentivising participation, and employing someone from the community to serve as the liaison between the community organisation and the university. these suggestions represent significant learning about how one conducts research and may enable both community researchers and university researchers to become better researchers in the future. unfortunately, a different partnering community organisation had piloted the survey, and so the critiques that were developed were not integrated into the survey design, frustrating the community researchers and diminishing their sense of ownership over the research process, potentially leading to subsequent feelings of disempowerment. 238 | gateways | curnow improving the community organisation through the process of interviewing community members and reflection, the community researchers developed several recommendations for improving their community organisations. organisational outreach to the community was a key area that community members reflected on. at one site, community researchers connected immigrants’ need for canadian work experience through volunteer work to the organisation’s need for outreach volunteers in an innovative way. one researcher said: this office, they need to communicate with everyone in the neighbourhood, so they should use volunteers for this purpose. i can take their brochures, or their literature or whatever to buildings. so it can be a small job. but whenever there is some seminar [at the community organisation], they have to struggle a lot to gather people, so volunteers can do this work. the problem is that there are potential volunteers, but they are not being used. other community researchers learnt how limited the outreach of the community organisation was and were surprised by how few people were familiar with the services available to them. some community researchers immediately began to develop strategies to close the gap between services offered and what was perceived to be available in the neighbourhood. additionally, the research process gave community members a space to critically reflect on their community organisation. one set of community researchers made connections between the widespread lack of local hiring in their neighbourhood and the lack of local hiring within the organisation. as one posed, ‘so if the [community organisation] is not doing that, how do you expect some big place like coca-cola to do it?’ the researchers recognised the inconsistencies that were playing out within the organisation and wanted the community organisation to modify its hiring practices so that they would be more aligned with the values the community researchers held. grievance construction the community researchers all conducted surveys in their own neighbourhood. through these interviews, they learnt about the specific problems that the survey probed, focusing on housing, food security/nutrition, safety, education and health. from this process, the community researchers gained an intimate understanding of the problems of their community. this was a process of ‘learning about the problems of the people’, as one researcher said, as they interviewed and learnt from their neighbours. this process enabled the community researchers to construct grievances, as they became experts on what was going on in their neighbourhood, and these were distinct from the findings of the surveys as a whole. in each neighbourhood, the responses were different, but reflected the specific concerns of the community members. the researchers commented on a number of concerns, including youth issues (gangs, lack of activities, 239 | gateways | curnow youth as targets of police), housing issues (affordability, low quality, security, poor management), unemployment (especially for newcomers), immigration (deportation, credential problems), transit, day care, isolation, overpopulation, the economic mix of the neighbourhood (gentrification), gender roles and culture, amongst others. one community researcher said, ‘i learned a lot of the issues. i was thinking, i am living in this area i surveyed last year also, but this survey was different from last year.’ analysis of grievance issues in some cases, the community researchers were able to identify patterns in responses and move beyond the basic iteration of grievances. they began to analyse the causes of the problems and think systemically about the broader phenomena. out of the more than 15 grievances named, community researchers only began to dig deeper on three. from the grievance of unemployment, both groups of community researchers identified the lack of local hiring as a central impediment to people from the community gaining employment. one researcher said: another thing is that here we have a big mall, lots of stores, but the people who are working here, most of them are coming from the other communities. why they are not giving us – we have qualifications, we are hard workers ... like, most of my participants they said, ‘why they are not giving us chance to work here first?’ many other researchers shared this assessment. they looked at the mall, the stores, the local factories, and identified that the companies hired from outside the community and could have provided a significant number of jobs to people within the neighbourhood. they did not understand why this was happening, but questioned the bigger picture. they understood that it was endemic to the area and that this could be a key improvement if they could change the hiring practices. one group of community researchers interrogated the problem of recognising the credentials of well-educated newcomers to canada, which also related to unemployment. they not only understood that unemployment was a problem in their neighbourhood, but also understood the reasons why so many newcomers could not get good jobs. in some cases, the analysis was coming directly from the community members who were interviewed, and in other cases, the analysis emerged from the researchers hearing multiple stories and fitting the pieces together themselves. the community researchers felt obligated to act on what they perceived to be a systemic injustice, saying: i want to write to people, the canadians who work in embassies back in my country, and ask why are they encouraging people to come here, when we say ‘this is the qualification we have, this is the type of professionals we are,’ why are they encouraging and saying this is available, and when we come here we’re left alone? because that’s what happened to all these people here! and ask them why? it’s 240 | gateways | curnow not that people are desperate to come here, they want to come here because canada is a better place, but they are professionals in their field. once they come here and they say ‘no, we are not recognizing you, i don’t recognize this.’ it doesn’t make any kind of sense. the community researchers also identified patterns in the low quality of affordable housing, where one building management company was not meeting its obligations to tenants in numerous buildings within the neighbourhood. because the researchers were interviewing many people, they were able to see the bigger picture in a way that individual respondents could not. below is an example of the way the community researchers identified broader problems in social housing in the neighbourhood: robin: one of my respondents, she was living in flemingdon (the neighbourhood), i think she was living in [public] housing, one of the problems she mentioned was security, security is not safe. because if they lock their stuff in the downstairs, then they break the lock and remove everything. her main concern was this, that it’s not safe. linda: it’s the same thing in thorncliffe. we have a problem in 26, 27 and 50 – it’s the landlord, you wrote the letter, or you have a problem in the apartment, he only just wrote the letter to say you have to pay the rent, and that’s it. so that problem is, because i live in 27, and we have the same problem – they broke the locks, and they steal all the things. so i think yeah, we have that problem in 27, 26 ... keith: i think the administration is the same for these buildings. transglobe. i haven’t seen such unprofessional people in my life. whatever – you abuse them, you scold them, there is no result. jenny: wait, you live in one of those buildings? ah, you live in 26 ... the conversation continued, as the community researchers began to discuss the ways they could hold the management company accountable for the poor conditions in their buildings. this was among the most concrete example of community researchers translating their community surveys into an analysis and strategising around collective actions they could take. these examples demonstrate an initial interrogation of the grievances that the community researchers were introduced to through the surveys and their lived experiences in the community. their understandings of the issues, while sophisticated in some respects, were still in the formative stages. with more time, reflection and investigation, they would deepen their analysis and identify root causes and potential interventions. the downside: alienation and disempowerment while the researchers learnt through their experiences of conducting research, one particular gap in their learning was observed. as described in the literature, participatory action research entails a commitment to social action and should build 241 | gateways | curnow capacity for social change within the community. yet, within our survey process, as participants identified grievances and built skills, they did not reach the point of self-organising to address the problems they identified in their communities through the survey process. the survey in and of itself was an insufficient tool for generating a strong enough critique to mobilise people to action, which led to complicated feelings about the research project. through the focus group discussions, i found that the community researchers felt disempowered by the survey process. they reflected that they had learnt/relearnt about all the problems in their communities and they felt like there was nothing they could do about all the grievances they were constructing. when asked what they would do with the information they gained, one respondent said, ‘what do you mean? like we have to take action or something? if we had power we could say anything. we don’t have power.’ as a group of newcomer immigrants, many of the community researchers felt disempowered and alienated in toronto more generally. several had come to canada as skilled professionals, as had many of their neighbours, and they found their experience of joblessness because they lacked ‘canadian experience’ as deeply demoralising. their sense that they lacked power was related to their community’s larger context, the expansive sense of lack of opportunities and racism. further, these participants were not and had not been embedded in organised social action in canada. their sense of possibility was perhaps constrained differently from some of the other neighbourhood survey groups, who had infrastructure and history participating in community organising. the possibility that the former participants could build power was foreign to them; when a university researcher encouraged them to consider collective action to build power, they responded sceptically. another respondent said, ‘mostly the problem is employment, so we can’t do anything about it, you know. we can’t hire them, because we don’t have jobs for ourselves.’ the grievances they constructed and the analysis they developed collectively drove them to very narrow opportunities for intervention. the responses that community researchers encountered in their interviews with their neighbours did not invite them to think about collective action. instead, the community researchers reported that their respondents were critical of their conditions but thought there was little possibility of the conditions changing. these responses generated, and likely reproduced, demobilising frames, where the problem and its potential solution lay outside the scope of what community members could address. even where there might have been opportunities for the peer researchers to explore other examples in toronto of immigrant-led catering cooperatives and non-profits engaging in social enterprises that created jobs and training opportunities, the community researchers in this 242 | gateways | curnow group framed their problems in ways that limited, rather than expanded, their opportunities to engage. thus, when encouraged to participate, they could not imagine this happening. the process of survey collection left the community researchers feeling ‘powerless’ and without clear means of acting on their problems. although some participatory research clearly focuses on collective action, this case left community researchers in a gap between information and activation. they reported being submerged in negative information about the community, despite all of the positive things that they also reported learning. this was an interesting outcome, indeed, because the structure of the survey did not necessarily ask respondents to report on the deficits of the community. yet, the peer researchers reported that they had learnt of so many problems in the neighbourhood that they felt worse about the community and their potential, as participants in the community organisation, to create change. most troubling was the statement by a community researcher about her feelings: ‘it’s not powerless, like we take our issues, like for example our meeting today. you people (the university researchers) know about our issues, we, hopefully, like you said you will be talking about these things in the future, so we feel a little bit powerful, because we brought those issues to you.’ she abdicated her power to the university, and rather than feel obligated (personally or as a community researcher) to fight to change her community, she saw the university affiliates as responsible for taking the information and creating whatever changes they saw fit. she believed that the university researchers, particularly the faculty, had access to policy-makers and that they could, and would, take the results of the survey, interpret them and produce significant change in the neighbourhood. her thought process was, in many ways, steeped in the dominant paradigm of research, where academics have historically held all the power to determine the results and mobilise them. however, this was particularly frustrating, in that the university researchers thought they had been working to foster a collaborative project, where community organisations and peer researchers had a sense of ownership of the process. there were two exceptions. community researchers identified mobilisation as a possibility that emerged from their interviews; the other emerged as a response to a university faculty member. when prompted about starting a campaign, one community researcher said, ‘if you (the academic) have a demonstration or a walk-out, i’ll be there.’ while this respondent was willing to take action, he, like his other community researcher colleagues, deferred to the university affiliates to take responsibility for coordinating the action. rather than building a sense of capacity, the survey process inadvertently left community researchers feeling dependent on the university to address the issues raised by the survey questionnaires. the community researchers were ready to act and looking for an outlet for the grievances they had constructed and the 243 | gateways | curnow analyses they were developing. one researcher said, ‘unless we get someone who is in power, like a government representative, or some employer, unless we engage such people, it is useless. i mean, sitting together and having a cup of tea, or having dinner or lunch – afterwards it is of no use.’ he identified the reflection process as useless and argued that there was no connection between the research work and the potential to change policies. despite the clear desire among the community researchers to improve their communities, the survey process seemed disconnected from any actions that might be taken with or on behalf of their communities. at the other site, participants also struggled to put their information into action. one community researcher asked of the data: where is it heading? like, ok this research takes place, we get all this information, it’s a great initiative, it’s a great work, and i’m glad that we are doing it, ’cause one thing is to make sure people’s stories are told, but where are we heading? but how impactful will it be? how realistic will it be? are specific people going to be engaged in the process of achieving whatever it is? without a focus on action or a venue for the community researchers to continue their involvement, they struggled with feelings of disempowerment and irrelevance. despite their efforts to build a sense of ownership of the research project, the above community researcher had no sense that she could control the direction, or that she even knew why they were doing the research. this participant, unlike those in the group previously described, was an established organiser who understood social action and had strong ties to activists in the community. the fact that she too ceded the responsibility and ownership to the academics in the room raised a red flag. unlike participants at the other community site, participants in this group did not report feeling less able to participate, but they did share feelings of directionlessness and having no way of embedding the knoweldge that they had spent months gathering into a coherent strategy that would impact their communities. the disconnect between learning and action became a central discussion point among the university-affiliated participants, and steps were taken to continue the survey process beyond what was originally planned in order to address feelings of irrelevance. in collaboration with the community partners, we designed and implemented a collaborative data analysis process that we hoped would bridge the praxis gap that our initial survey process failed to address. after the university-based researchers collected the surveys and processed the qualitative data using spss, members of the survey teams were trained in quantitative analysis and were invited to participate in collaborative data analysis sessions. these multi-day sessions brought the community researchers together with the university-based researchers to interpret the findings that were emerging. these sessions included 244 | gateways | curnow bringing one community researcher from each neighbourhood across the city to conduct cross-case analysis and develop a comprehensive analysis of the results. the results from this process were documented and circulated to the community organisations via the clc newsletters. the findings included were written by both community-based researchers and university-based researchers. while the collaborative data analysis process is outside the scope of this article, it is important to note that the project leadership team took these concerns very seriously and worked to create actionable strategies that might provide concrete opportunities for engagement. unfortunately, the majority of the community researchers were not involved, largely because of financial limitations, so many of the participants whose views are documented here concluded their participation feeling dissatisfied with their experience as researchers and uncertain of how to continue their involvement in the community. conclusions while there have been studies that look at the impact of community research on peer researchers, they tend to highlight the positive aspects of learning while glossing over the challenges. some studies have identified the challenges peer researchers face as they straddle two identities, one as researcher, one as community member, and try to navigate the conflicting accountabilities. however, in this article i have argued that little has been written on the situation where community research projects have been experienced by peer researchers as disempowering and as having reduced their willingness to participate in community action. this is particularly important for us to examine because so much of the community-university partnership research literature assumes that, through the collective process of researching and analysing data, community researchers will become more invested in community-based social action. this research counters that narrative as it describes cases where community researchers became alienated through their participation in their communities. it points to flaws in the implementation of peer interview surveys that collect large amounts of data, but offer few opportunities for community researchers to process the negative feedback about their community or to funnel their sense of injustice into purposeful and winnable social action. the resulting sense of disempowerment suggests that, as research teams design and implement community interviews and surveys, we cannot assume that the process and results will be inherently empowering for the community researchers, and instead must design ways to link the survey process to ongoing campaign work that can shift their sense of alienation and provide substantive outlets for the grievances they construct. clc’s survey process demonstrates that communityuniversity alliances can and do produce important sites of collaborative learning. what is clear, though, is that learning more about one’s community, gaining skills, affirming one’s 245 | gateways | curnow knowledge of the community and developing grievances are critically important, yet insufficient for flowing into, supporting, or fomenting social action for community development. we discovered that if our goal is, indeed, to strengthen community engagement work that is being carried out in neighbourhoods, we must do more than train community members to survey their peers. the critical learning opportunities lay in developing a collective analysis of what their respondents said, why they said it, and what it means for their community. this analysis must be tied to mobilisation strategies that enable people to feel empowered and begin to challenge the problems their surveys unearth. through the reflection process, it became clear that many of the learning opportunities available through this community-university survey partnership were embedded in the analysis, but that without concerted attention, the opportunity to truly leverage and mobilise community action based on the results of the survey was lost. several of the neighbourhoods that participated in this project had clearer paths to participating in social action via their organisational partners’ programs. however, those included in this study had weaker ties to the organisations, and the organisations themselves were less involved in community activism. this meant that these community researchers had far less infrastructure to support their engagement in the community and fewer explicit links between the survey and social action. these tenuous links generated the dissatisfaction with the process and the overall sense that the community was in dire straits and that only the university’s researchers could save it. these weak ties point to strategies that might mitigate the alienation documented here. the survey, in particular, did not have clear guidance for the community researchers and respondents to become involved in action based on their grievances. in communities where there were more links between the surveys, the case studies and ongoing social action in the neighbourhood, there were clearer trajectories for engagement. in those cases, the community researchers had more opportunities to be involved, to target their critiques and use the relationships they built to engage in their communities. while my data does not speak to the experiences of those community researchers, it clearly suggests that generating grievances among community researchers is an important part of learning that takes place in community-university partnership research projects, but it also suggests that, without intentional strategies for mobilising this learning, these research projects can become alienating for peer researchers rather than empowering. the community survey may yet be an important tool for constructing grievances, developing a systemic analysis and planning actions to address the problems the community members and researchers identify. but the initial process only facilitated community researchers through part of a freirean process (freire 1970). however, we have asked participants to reflect on their experiences and make connections, but have only begun to develop 246 | gateways | curnow the systemic analysis that will hopefully provide the foundation for a campaign seeking to address the root causes of the concerns raised by community members. in all, the process was ripe with opportunities for learning, and though the survey component may have fallen short of its potential to catalyse collective learning for social change, there are opportunities to continue to leverage the experience and data in ways that will strengthen the communities involved and fully realise the goals of partnership in communityuniversity partnerships. references alvarez, r & gutierrez, l 2001, ‘choosing to 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open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: coley, l. s., howze, e. s., mcmanamy, k. 2023. faith-based communityacademic partnerships: an asset-based community development strategy for social change. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–19. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8672 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) faith-based community-academic partnerships: an asset-based community development strategy for social change linda silver coley1, elizabeth stryon howze2, kyle mcmanamy3 1 executive director, the ormond center at duke divinity school, duke university, 407 chapel dr., durham, nc 27708. 2 director of the academy of teaching, training, and learning, the ormond center at duke divinity school, duke university, 407 chapel dr., durham, nc 27708. 3 director of strategic projects, the office of the dean at duke divinity school, duke university, 407 chapel dr., durham, nc 27708. corresponding author: linda silver coley, lcoley@div.duke.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8672 article history: received 17/06/2023; revised 22/10/2023; accepted 03/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract faith-based community anchor institutions are important collaborators in community development. they are respected social innovators who deploy their assets for the common good, especially good works aimed towards helping marginalised communities and those in poverty. more recently, the pace of faith-based social innovation and community development leadership has slowed substantially (jones 2016). seeking renewed imagination, will and ability for asset-based social innovation among faith-based communities, the ormond center at duke university’s divinity school has developed a curriculum, based on a human ecology framework, that engages faith-based ‘communityacademic partnered participatory research’ (chen et. al. 2006) towards social change. our approach starts by working with congregations to discover community-level barriers to thriving in their local context. we then walk alongside faith-based communities to identify strengths-based, relationship-centred opportunities to collaboratively integrate congregational assets with community assets towards positive social change. this curriculum has been tested by the ormond center with several diverse, multidenominational congregations in communities located in north carolina and virginia. its 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the ormond center receives funding from the duke endowment | the duke endowment | a private foundation and | lilly endowment inc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8672 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8672 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:lcoley@div.duke.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8672 https://www.dukeendowment.org/ https://lillyendowment.org/ potential to encourage asset-based community development for social good is supported by tangible evidence. this article takes the reader through the process of changing a semester-long graduate course, designed by the academy for the academy, to a six-week course that walks alongside faithbased lay leaders and pastors in their local context, towards asset-based community development for positive social change. five viable asset-based solutions to community-level social issues are shared, and lessons learned are offered. keywords asset-based; endowments; faith-based; human ecology; relationship-centred; social innovations introduction asset-based community development (abcd) links the assets of local communities to social change. in earlier years, american faith-based communities practised a version of asset-based community development. these faith-based community development organisations (fbcdos) invested their assets in local places, projects and people groups to effect positive social change. supporting this point of view, l gregory jones (2016, p. 5) offers, ‘for most of american history, faith-based communities led the way in innovative approaches in sectors such as education, health, housing, and food, just to name a few.’ an example from the education sector reminds us of the time in united states history when african americans were forbidden access to higher education. then, fbcdos stepped in to address this racial inequality that caused educational disparities and birthed more than two hundred historically black colleges and universities (hbcus) that continue to serve us communities today (see consecrated ground: churches and the founding of america’s historically black colleges and universities | national museum of african american history and culture: smithsonian). john p kretzmann & john l mcknight (1993, p. 143) also lend insight to the contributions and significance of faith-based institutions in asset-based community development, claiming that: [n]eighborhood religious institutions have an abundance of resources that can contribute directly to the process of rebuilding communities. as a matter of fact, many churches and synagogues have already begun to utilize their resources within the community in extremely creative and innovative ways and thus have become centers for interaction between local individuals, groups, associations, and institutions. in other words, at the present time many contemporary religious leaders have come to understand that they cannot continue to remain viable within their community unless they learn to develop vital links to the development and improvement of that community. this understanding has led to an astounding variety of creative approaches to community-building by religious institutions. however, as jones (2016, pp. 5–8) claims, more recently, the pace of faith-based communities’ asset-based social innovations appears to have slowed substantially. while we do not have a specific answer for this, it coincides with the rapid pace of decline in church attendance and religious affiliation noted between 2007 and 2019 (smith, schiller & noland 2019, pew research center). other research suggests not only has the pace, but the depth of social-change efforts, appear to have altered. in his book about community economic development, david kresta (2021, p. 9) acknowledges that, while churches ‘[… have] a long history of social service programs, … a common critique of social service programs is that they do not address the root cause of poverty nor create long-term change.’ in apparent agreement with kresta’s opinion, fitzgerald (2009, p. 181) highlights the more traditional view of fbcdos’ role in the community, which is ‘providing charity … (e.g. soup kitchens and temporary shelter), before he acknowledges movement ‘into other forms of social service provision including job training, permanent low-income housing and small business loans.’ this latter type of social service provision might suggest the potential for innovative, long-term positive change. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/consecrated-ground-churches-and-founding-americas-historically-black-colleges-and#:~:text=the%20freedmen%27s%20aid%20society%20of,%2c%20bishop%20college%2c%20morehouse%20college%2c https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/consecrated-ground-churches-and-founding-americas-historically-black-colleges-and#:~:text=the%20freedmen%27s%20aid%20society%20of,%2c%20bishop%20college%2c%20morehouse%20college%2c https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/consecrated-ground-churches-and-founding-americas-historically-black-colleges-and#:~:text=the%20freedmen%27s%20aid%20society%20of,%2c%20bishop%20college%2c%20morehouse%20college%2c this article seeks to pick up on the faith-based community’s long, if intermittent, history of profound social innovation, asking: what would be the societal impact if faith-based communities everywhere experienced renewed imagination and intentionally practised asset-based community development with a goal of generating sustainable positive social change? put another way, what if faith-based community partners innovatively operationalised the biblical charge to live out faith in action ( james 2:14-17) in collaboration with other community constituents and stakeholders to serve the marginalised and address the barriers to thriving in their shared community? seeking answers to such questions, the ormond center (toc) at duke divinity school (dds) posits that faith-based community-academic partnerships with renewed imagination, will and ability can be deployed towards sustainable social change, using asset-based community development strategies that address barriers to thriving congregations and communities. believing that an intentional process could generate opportunities for social impact creation, toc and its faith-based partners identified some of the major barriers to thriving congregations and communities in their local context and sought opportunities to address them together (see figure 1). we believe that if congregations participate in the process of identifying, understanding and addressing these complex barriers to community thriving, then congregations will thrive as well. figure 1. thriving congregations and communities: barriers and opportunities to guide our hypothesis, we developed a theory of change (see figure 2). it begins with iterations of research, innovation and evaluation, and ends with impact co-creation alongside faith-based organisations in the communities that we share. the hope is to be able to scale the innovations towards evidence-based sustainable change across local, state and global communities. to implement this theory of change, the ormond center reorganised into three distinct areas, translational research, the academy of teaching, training and learning, and pathways towards impact (see figure 2). working alongside local congregations in durham and chapel hill, north carolina, we integrated local faith-based organisations and community stakeholders into the asset-based community development conversation using a curriculum based on human ecology theory. according to tulchinsky & cohen (2023), coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 [h]uman ecology stresses the fact that cities are neither collections of autonomous individuals or discrete problem areas (like poverty or affordable housing) each hermetically sealed from one another; nor do cities behave like mechanical systems that can be managed and controlled by rational experts from on high. … a human ecology approach sees cities as complex, asymmetric, and dynamic social organisms that both empower and constrain the ways of life and life chances of their residents. the concept of human ecology thus enables us to think about the shape and character of concrete places and people in the most culturally and historically robust terms. in the next section, we introduce the human ecology framework, and take the reader through the development of one of our programs designed to drive faith-based academic–community social innovation. finally, we share some of our projects that are in progress in north carolina and tidewater, virginia. scholars are keenly aware of a need for new ways to understand, study and address complex social, cultural and historical problems that prevent human flourishing and thriving communities. thus, according to wright et al. (2011, p. 1), quoting minkler & wallerstein (2008), ‘in recent years [… there are] increasing demands for research and program implementation that is community-based, rather than merely community placed.’ also, according to wright et al. (2011, p. 1), ‘in the united states, community-based participatory research (cbpr), with its emphasis on the creation and use of community-university or communityacademic partnerships, is the prevailing paradigm to address complex community challenges’. scholars generally define cbpr as a ‘collaborative partnership approach to research that involves community members, organisational representatives and [academic] researchers in all aspects of the research process’ (ahmed et al. 2001, p. 141). one approach to cbpr, coined by chen, jones & gelber (2006), is community-academic partnered participatory research (cppr). figure 2. human ecology theory, which was ‘introduced in the 1920s and revived in the 1970s, attempts to apply theory from plant and animal life to human communities’. application of the human ecology concept to the abcd conversations generally ‘involves the interrelationship among people, other organisms and their environment’ (steiner 2008). taking a quasi ‘human ecology theory’ approach to human flourishing and reflecting on the work of urbanist jane jacobs (2011), joshua j yates (2017), who developed the human ecology framework to capture shalom in practice, expands human ecology theory, saying coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 we expand this concept to advance ‘faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research’ (fb-cppr), by asking, ‘how might a faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research team motivated through teaching, training and learning be deployed to address complex social barriers to thriving in their local context, and thereby seek opportunities for positive social change? moreover, what are potential social impact projects that might spring from faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research teams? lastly, how might the collaboration partners implement the projects together? background our fb-cppr work integrates the human ecology framework advanced by the thriving cities lab at the university of virginia’s institute for advanced studies, which became the thriving cities group, into faith-based, community-level social change conversations. this human ecology framework provides a lens through which to view societal issues, places and assets as interconnected and related to the wellbeing of people. specifically, in explaining their framework, they offer: the human ecologies of an area contain and depend upon an array of different, but fundamental endowments. the first three of the six endowments build on the classical ideals of the true, the good, and the beautiful; the last three are more modern ideals of the prosperous, the just and well-ordered, and the sustainable. the human ecology framework is a tool for understanding and assessing urban thriving for the 21st century (the thriving cities group). these referenced ‘endowments’ are depicted in figure 3. as happens with the term ‘asset’, the word ‘endowment’ is often used in financial sectors and is more commonly associated with resources, usefulness, or a thing of value. figure 3. the human ecology framework source: thriving cities group understanding the nature of community-level endowments could suggest a pathway forward for impactful social change where needed. for example, ‘the true’ endowment assesses the realm of knowledge and knowing, which entails educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities, etc.); bookstores and libraries; a community’s general level of education (and who has education and who does not); what propositions are taken for granted in a community vs. those that are challenged; which knowledge sources are considered reliable, and which are not, etc. an application question for the true endowment is, ‘what might the impact on asset-based community development be in the long run if a faith-based community re-purposed their place of worship to become a place that lovingly cultivates learning, especially among children in families experiencing intergenerational coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 poverty, who may need a little extra love and support?’ for example, this could be accomplished by a place of worship becoming an after school and summer tutoring partner that helps children who experience educational and social and emotional learning gaps. adding perspective to this question and idea, amy l sherman (2022, p. 102) says, ‘today, too many precious young minds are not being lovingly cultivated.’ this suggestion about the power of love in the process of cultivating learning speaks to us because the concept of love is fundamental to faith-based organisations. including the concept of love amid addressing intergenerational poverty is confirmed by harvard professor jack p. , whose research is at the forefront of integrational poverty. he adds, ‘when we ask anybody’s grandmother about what you need, it’s just somebody to love you’. and, he adds, ‘what science says is you need someone who will create an environment that’s well-regulated and protective and predictable [; and the impact is that] kids are developing and thriving’ ( ). importantly, linking social disparities of health and development to community development, p. 125) also advocates community-level place-based interventions. we agree with ahmed et al. (2001 p. 142) when they write, ‘communities and academic institutions must desire and learn how to work together.’ our goal is to transform theological and missional aspects of complex social issues, such as education inequity or inequality, learning gaps, food insecurity, poverty, homelessness, oppression, mental health, climate change, marginalisation, and many other barriers to thriving, by teaching, training and learning the practical aspects of addressing these issues alongside faithbased communities. to accomplish this goal toc modified the ‘community craft’ (cc) curriculum, which is based on the university of virginia’s human ecology framework, for use by churches and community partners. dr joshua j yates first taught this curriculum in the master of divinity (mdiv) and doctor of ministry (dmin) programs at dds in 2020. in addition to the classroom version, dr yates beta tested the concept with a graduate student in an independent study of a local north carolina community. in all cases, the curriculum was modified for utility in the divinity context by integrating a more faith-informed expression of the concept. mdiv and dmin participants begin their curriculum journey by considering their own social location, history, and congregational and community assets. the curriculum requires students to do further research to fully understand the interconnectivity of community assets and how they are being deployed by community people and institutions in the communities that they share. thus, participants continue their learning journey, conducting investigations into census data, community asset-mapping and ground-truthing through qualitative research, such as focus groups and interviews, among those who live and serve in the community. the quality of some of the student projects suggested a potential for deploying fb-cppr teams in local communities to address barriers to thriving. the question then became, ‘how do we move this curriculum strategy for asset-based community development from the classroom (among scholars who pay for an mdiv and dmin education) to the community to achieve social intervention among faith-based community people who are not all interested in the rigour of academia and do not have resources or time to attend universities?’ methodology before moving the semester-long curriculum from the academic classroom to the community for free consumption, we needed to shorten the curriculum. in addition, the academy and our faith-based partners needed more relationship building, community information sharing, and mutual teaching, training and learning. therefore, a process of mutual dialogue and information exchange was developed to undergird potential future faith-based community-academic partnerships. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 shonkoff, md (2019) shonkoff (2021 shonkoff, center on the developing child, harvard university first, we conducted listen and learn focus groups to intentionally generate dialogue about a common social issue among established dds/toc faith-based community partners. choosing a social concern important to established partners helped to facilitate dialogue about solutions for a mutually significant and contextually relevant barrier to thriving. second, we conducted a five-month speaker series of lectures on topics that surfaced from the listen and learn focus group, alternating speakers between faith-based community leaders and university-based academic divinity scholars as the content experts. the goal of the series was to offer learners theological foundations, practical tools, stories of transformation, and to highlight skill sets that fostered a commitment to addressing factors that hindered community thriving. third, we reduced the 17-week semester long graduate course to six weeks and three days, and piloted it for utility in faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research among participants in two regional markets. at present, toc continues to test iterations of the community-level course, which is modified through a process of continuous improvement, participant feedback and toc’s observations in various local contexts of interest. during their onboarding process, all participants are informed that the ccc is a pilot program and are given opportunities (written and verbal) to provide written consent to toc at dds to use media/ information (video, website, publications) about them and share learnings, in whole or in part on any communications and materials related to toc’s/dds’ mission(s). the materials in this article, including church names, videos, images and online links, have been vetted by participants, and some have been included in e-newsletters sent directly to participants. all information collected and shared is for teaching, training and learning, not for commercial gain. the findings and results from this sequential methodology are discussed in detail below. then, the asset-based christian social innovations that were generated among the two regional cohorts are presented. we end with our walk alongside strategy that helps to ensure asset-based community development implementation, which we call a ‘pathways towards impact’ process. findings and results curriculum pre-launch insights toc convened a ‘listen and learn’ focus group lunch to hear the immediate needs and concerns of local faith leaders who were serving in minority communities that have a history of social disparities. the goal was to listen to and learn from pastors and congregations in the communities that we share for ways the academy might best come alongside and mutually support community thriving. pastors or ministry leaders of seventeen african american congregations, with established relationships within the local durham community, as well as the office of black church studies at dds, were invited to participate in the focus group. fourteen of the invited leaders (6 female, 8 male) accepted the invitation. since the group was convened during the initial stages of the covid-19 pandemic, the prevailing topic of conversation was the impact of the pandemic on the lives of minority communities. the focus group session was entitled: pressing our way through covid-19: catalyzing, curating, and convening mindsets, toolsets, skillsets, and soul-sets. the question that best summarised group-consensus at the end was: how do we help our congregations grieve the loss of what was, and still move forward with joyful anticipation of what can be? additionally, five major themes were identified and used to inform the creation of a five-month speaker series to enhance respect for mutual teaching, training and learning between the community and the academy. next, qualitative data and insights that were acquired from the focus group survey, as well as formal/ informal conversations among congregational and university leaders who participated in the focus group, coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 led to a five-month virtual speaker series taught by local community subject-matter experts and divinity school faculty subject-matter experts. the series focused on the perceived most urgent covid-19 related challenges within african american congregations and communities. tailored for the faith-based community and academic partners, the topics and speakers were: (1) for such a time as this (rev. dr david e goatley, then associate dean of academics and director of black church studies at dds, now president of fuller theological seminary); (2) buildings and communities (rev. dr patrick duggan, church-owned real estate finance and development expert); (3) asset stewardship and sustainability (rev. dr donna coletrane battle, practitioner who focuses on justice and holistic wellness at the intersection of race, gender and spirituality); (4) reshaping leadership (rev. dr herbert r davis, founder and senior pastor of a local durham church); and (5) recalibrating worship (rev. dr luke powery, dean of the chapel at duke university). again, the goal of the series was to offer learners theological foundations, practical tools and stories of transformation, and highlight skillsets that fostered a commitment to community thriving. a website was created by duke learning innovation to house the speaker series: pressing our way through covid-19 – with skillsets, toolsets, mindsets, and soulsets (duke.edu). sessions were attended by at least fourteen local congregations, representing six denominations, and included participants from congregations as far away as canada. a follow-up survey reported overwhelmingly positive feedback. many respondents expressed gratitude, stating that they felt ‘encouraged, invigorated, and equipped’ to adapt their ministries to achieve positive social impact. this sentiment was captured by one survey respondent who said: ‘my “aha” from the series is that the bible already has a plan of what durham has to do to become better, but when we come together to learn about who we are, where we are going, and what resources we have, we can better know the possibilities of where we can go.’ learnings from the focus group and lecture series offered insight to launching a faith-based community academic partnership, using the community craft curriculum originally developed for mdiv and dmin and students. the redesigned course for the faith-based community and their partners was named the community craft collaborative (ccc). faith community relationship partners who attended the focus group and/or the lecture series were the first to be offered the course. the underlying aim of the pre-launch was to funnel congregations into the ccc program as a ‘next step’ once the speaker series had ended. two pilot launches of the continuously developing asset-development for social change curriculum will be discussed next. curriculum launch insights participants in the focus groups and lecture series communicated a desire to maintain this emerging community-university learning partnership. they wanted ‘next step opportunities’ that provided ‘further resources’, ‘hands-on training’ and ‘practical processes’ that would assist them in crafting innovative solutions to complex local social and emotional challenges in their community. toc listened and learned. as a result of communal listening and learning, the cohort-based learning journey program, titled the community craft collaborative (ccc), was developed over an eight-month period to fit the unique context of faith-based academic-community partnerships. the primary goal of the learning journey was to offer high-impact training using an asset-based curriculum that was substantially shorter than its universitydriven, semester-long counterpart. other important goals were peer-to-peer learning and development of an interdisciplinary toolkit and a research-based theological framework. the underlying objective was to help congregations and academic partners journey together towards faith-inspired imagination and faith-informed action, ultimately fostering innovative social improvement and community economic development. to increase the value of the experience to participants, toc offered the course with a continuing education unit (ceu) credit option and a stipend towards implementation. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 https://sites.duke.edu/pressingourway/ https://sites.duke.edu/pressingourway/ https://sites.duke.edu/pressingourway/ toc embodied a shared leadership model throughout various stages of the ccc program’s planning and implementation phases. for example, toc partnered with durham cares, a durham-based nonprofit which utilises a holistic and community-driven approach modelled on the eight key components of christian community development to create initiatives for collaboration and teach principles that foster healthy community engagement. durham cares staff and cohort participants were invited (at various stages) to assist with planning logistics, co-convene the cohort, review the curriculum and advise on key decisions that would inform program outcomes. furthermore, collaborative recruitment efforts for the beta cohort leveraged toc’s pre-existing relationships (interpersonal and professional) within the local durham/ chapel hill community. newly cultivated relationships from the pre-launch phase, and the relational capital housed within the office of external relations at dds were also leveraged. while nine local congregations expressed serious interest and perceived readiness, six community-based congregational learning teams joined the first ccc cohort, which was launched during november of 2022. these six faith-based communities included thirty-five participants, representing six denominations within the durham/chapel hill north carolina region. the six congregations were (1) chapel hill bible church (non-denominational, predominantly white); (2) city well united methodist church (predominantly white); (3) cole mill rd. church of christ (predominantly white); (4) mt. level missionary baptist church (predominantly black); (5) nehemiah church of god in christ (predominantly black) and (6) wings of eagles christian church (non-denominational, predominantly black). pre/post surveys were administered in-person to the thirty-five participants during the cohort’s opening and closing events to gauge participants’ learning in four primary competency areas, which were grouped as (1) mindsets: adaptive to context and continually changing to meet the challenges of complex conditions, and growth in possibility, flexibility in approach and willingness to change one’s mind based on new perceptual and experiential information; (2) skillsets: knowing how to do something. we needed to be able to put our mindset to work, including understanding how to create, design, construct, implement and learn from experience; (3) toolsets: what mechanisms did we need to be able to reach our goal/objectives? while participants built up their toolset, they also needed to develop the skill of discernment so that they [might] choose the correct tool for the job; (4) soul sets: the theological foundations and black church traditions upon which this work is built (past, present and future). a virtual focus group and formal/informal interviews were used to evaluate the program and its methodology, as well as collect suggestions for design improvements and future learning opportunities. the participant feedback (video) added insight to the effectiveness of the curriculum. the second ccc pilot cohort was launched in the tidewater region of virginia in april 2023. the launch followed four months of data analysis and faith-based community-academic collaboration, which led to program and curricular updates, as well as to the design of additional resources used to enhance participant learning outcomes. while a wealth of insight emerged from these learnings, three outcomes were most notable: (1) the community craft collaborative website was redesigned to offer current and potential participants enhanced clarity on ccc’s purpose, methods and anticipated outcomes; (2) a participant workbook was created to offer participants increased accessibility to training material; and (3) the curriculum was updated to further amplify the theological connections. again, leveraging pre-existing interpersonal and professional community relationships, toc partnered strategically with the co-presidents (rev. dr veronica r coleman and rev. dr melvin t blackwell) of the metro ministers’ conference of virginia (mmcv), formerly the historical tidewater metro baptist ministers’ conference of virginia, in its virginia-based recruitment efforts. the mmcv has approximately 125 members who serve at 50 historically black churches in the hampton roads area. the virginia included five community-based congregational learning teams, totalling 35 participants, representing three denominations within the hampton roads region of virginia. the congregations were (1) mt pleasant baptist church (norfolk); (2) rehoboth baptist church (seatack); (3) new light full gospel church coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 https://durhamcares.org/about/ https://durhamcares.org/what-is-christian-community-development/ https://durhamcares.org/what-is-christian-community-development/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cfwysjfjgw4cxg2top9uooqqfvx-axai/view?usp=drive_link https://ormondcenter.com/join-the-collaborative (virginia beach); (4) first baptist bute st. (norfolk) and (5) new jerusalem ministries (kempsville, nondenominational). as with the first pilot test, pre-post surveys (in person) and formal/informal interviews were used to evaluate the program and its methodology, as well as to collect suggestions for design improvements and future learning opportunities (these results are still under review). however, a newly designed virtual feedback survey was piloted to enhance toc’s insights on participants’ attitudes towards the human ecology framework, as well as the hybrid peer-learning method. examples of feedback from this survey are shown below. when asked how the human ecology framework training enhanced or diminished their current understanding of ‘cultivating community thriving’, one participant responded: a thriving community must view and include aspects of the 6 endowments. this in-person and virtual learning experience provided space and time to think about, research, observe, and apply knowledge gained. the bible is replete with jesus modeling and explaining his kingdom in heaven and on earth that involves the ‘good, prosperous, true, sustainable, just & well-ordered, and beautiful! i believe the groundwork that was laid during the in-person training provided a great foundation of the endowments, our roles in the project, and how it all ties together. as with the process of teaching and learning, what has been taught will be ‘caught’ in future endeavors. although we applied the knowledge for our pitch, this knowledge is long-lasting; meaning, we will be able to apply it to future experiences and be able to say, ‘hey, here we go again with ‘endowment thinking’. in response to the same question, another participant wrote: the in-person explanation of the endowments gave me another method of seeing the community in relation to the world surrounding us. i will revisit the human ecology framework on a continuing basis and use it to point young people toward employment positions which they may wish to pursue. additionally, as pastor i am constantly looking at the systems behind the problem. i fight constantly with not falling into a sense of hopelessness when we see the causes beneath the surface of so much suffering in our community and the world. the findings and results from the two regional cohorts support the potential of fb-cppr to drive assetbased social innovation. from idea to implementation: pathways towards impact we now share five of the faith-based communities’ ideas pitched during the two pilot studies. all five ideas for asset-based solutions, one from the north carolina cohort and four from the virginia cohort, represent promise for meaningful social change. this final step in our faith-based community-academic partnership process is referred to as ormond’s ‘pathways towards impact’ (pti) process. the pti process allows toc to continue to humbly walk alongside community partners beyond the ccc program, seeking asset-based pathways towards tangible solutions to systemic marginalisation, poverty, oppression and injustice. the idea is to help clergy, congregations and communities to get closer to the asset-based social impact creation finish line. cohort 1: north carolina case study cole mill rd. church of christ (cmrcc), durham, nc joined ccc in november 2022 hoping to gain clarity around their church’s deeply rooted desire to repurpose underutilised property assets and building coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 resources for social good in the local durham community. toc uses the term ‘placemaking’ to refer to this type of repurposing of church land and building assets. as defined in toc’s april e-newsletter: placemaking is a process and philosophy adopted primarily from urban landscape designers and architects. used by this sector since the 70s, placemaking describes the process of re-imagining underutilized public space. known in some church communities simply as ‘church property redevelopment,’ placemaking has a long history among congregations. underutilized church property is increasingly in the hands of churches in every north carolina neighborhood [and neighborhoods across the nation], both rural and urban. this significant asset has the potential to foster thriving while generating economic impact. see placemaking and renewed imagination (campaign-archive.com). the e-newsletter further explains that ‘cmrcc’s proposal is not just about self-interested economic benefit, but about a life-giving impact to make a place for those who are marginalized’ to live. because cmrcc’s proposal aligned well with toc’s mission and vision (about – ormond center), toc invited cmrcc to continue the newly formed fb-cppr relationship, with a focus on developing an integrative approach to placemaking and asset community development through the ormond pti process. cmrcc accepted the invitation (february 2023). their vision for deploying their underutilised church property assets, shown in figure 4, is being operationalised for the common good. figure 4. an in-depth feasibility study was completed in june 2023 by wesley community development corporation (wesley cdc ), a commissioned toc partner. the study provided a detailed site analysis, a geographic analysis, a space utilisation study and a financial forecasting model. the results offered the critical clarity needed to move forward with continued discernment, congregational visioning and the development of critical next steps towards innovative placemaking in durham, nc. the next phase will be to facilitate congregational focus groups that will inform cmrcc members of the feasibility study findings, capture feedback and collaboratively discern next steps. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=00d6fe63c299d9357ef005af6&id=2f55cd7630 https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=00d6fe63c299d9357ef005af6&id=2f55cd7630 https://wesleycdc.com/ cohort 2: four virginia case studies toc launched the tidewater virginia community craft collaborative program on 1 april, 2023. the closing event was held on 20 may, 2023. four ideas crafted for social impact creation are shared below. congregation 1: new jerusalem ministries (njm), kempsville, va proposed project: the c.l.u.b (creative, learning, unity, belonging) project: building pathways to advancing equity in educational outcomes) njm, located in historic kempsville, is near two elementary schools within the virginia beach public school system. their proposed project considered community-based research, which highlighted the educational disparities in academic achievement between black and white students from 2021 to 2022 across all virginia beach public schools. furthermore, their research found that socio-economic inequities have a profound impact on student academic achievement, mental health and future opportunities for thriving. additional contributing factors to low student academic achievement included limited access to quality early childhood education, inadequate resources, systemic inequities and the effects of the pandemic on under-resourced families. when reporting on their findings, participant 1 stated: using the ‘ground truthing’ tool, we learned, through various interviews with local educators (active and retired) and public-school administrators, that the pre-k students needed help with recognizing their alphabets, and that, overall, students needed a sense of belonging … we also learned that addressing these disparities can contribute to a better skilled and educated workforce that is able to attract business and promote economic development (njm pitch proposal, 2023). using the human ecology framework, the njm team identified an opportunity to: (1) narrow disparities and foster stronger, healthier communities (the sustainable); (2) increase wisdom and intellect to contribute to more meaningful lives (the true); and (3) encourage positive social mores and ethics (the good). at the conclusion of the learning journey, njm proposed the launch of two after-school clubs: (1) the mighty as for pre-k second grade students to focus on improving reading and mathematics skills and (2) the young students of promise chess club for grades 3–5 to focus on character building through chess. the clubs will be piloted over a seven-month period and facilitated weekly in ninety-minute sessions. additionally, njm plans to host quarterly mentoring and enrichment sessions to bring families together and encourage parental involvement. identified stakeholders, partners and leadership team members include the njm clergy leadership team, the njm citizens and volunteers group, a norfolk state university intern, who will coordinate the program, the virginia beach health department, the virginia beach cooperative extension agency and the virginia beach department of human services. congregation 2: mt. pleasant baptist church (mpbc), norfolk, va proposed project: seeds of hope community garden mpbc is a historic pillar in the titustown community. it is located one block from the tucker house community, which is a 127-unit senior living facility located on three acres. tucker house is home to 50–75 residents who regularly attend mpbc worship services and events, and/or receive ministry support from the church (i.e. clothes, food, outings, personal and household items, bill payment). the residents live at or below federal poverty guidelines and face numerous barriers that impact food access and food choice. while discussing the findings of mpbc’s community-based research, participant 2 said: coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 we noticed that many of our seniors were having to choose between food and basic needs. when we started exploring data about senior care and aging populations, we learned that one of the most vulnerable and under-served populations in the united states of america is the aged or senior population who are 65+ years; specifically, the aged who live in senior or assisted living facilities…we also found that 43% of senior households in norfolk earn less than $30,000 per year and 25% of people 60 and over receive food stamps (mpbc pitch proposal, 2023). during the ccc learning journey, mpbc identified an opportunity to address food insecurity among the aged and senior population in their local community and, specifically, the tucker house community. at the conclusion of the learning journey, mpbc proposed the ‘seeds of hope community garden’ (shcg). an example of the proposal’s integration with the human ecology framework is shown in figure 5. figure 5. shcg will be launched in three phases over five months. the anticipated completion date of the first phase is june 2023. activities include: engaging the congregation, securing major stakeholders, creating a garden design and blueprint, defining roles and responsibilities, establishing a budget and exploring types of vegetation. identified stakeholders, partners and leadership team members include: the titustown civic league (volunteering, advertising and donations), plant/horticulture doctors, scholars and students from norfolk state university (consultants, expertise, donations and support), the norfolk master gardeners urban agriculture program (consultants, expertise and donations), toc (financial donation, research, continuing education opportunities) and the mpbc congregation (volunteering, donations and overall support). congregation 3: first baptist bute street (fbbs), norfolk, va proposed project: the crown project fbbs is a historic church, founded in 1800, that currently houses three businesses. reflecting on fbbs’s motivation for joining the ccc program, participant 3 stated: coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 our church leadership and congregation have been at the forefront of development and support in the city of norfolk for a long time. our church has grown over the years, and we want to continue to establish ourselves as leaders and forward thinkers with ministries and businesses…we live in the thirdmost populous city in virginia… norfolk holds a strategic position as the historical, urban, financial, and cultural center of the hampton roads region and is the 37th-largest metropolitan area in the united states. (fbbs pitch proposal, 2023). fbbs used community-based research to highlight rising violence in many heavily populated urban cities, including norfolk. their findings reported a 34 percent increase in homicides in 2020, with 90 percent of murder victims being african american. fbbs correlated these statistics with increasing levels of stress and hopelessness brought on by the economic challenges following the pandemic. participant 4 stated: unlike wealthier people, poor people clustered in poor neighborhoods are more likely to have their jobs eliminated or hours cut because of the challenging economic times… also, neighborhood food pantries and other resources were stretched thin and many places that offered enrichment to children were forced to close or reduce services. all of this has contributed to the rise of hopelessness and violence in our community (fbbs pitch proposal, 2023). during the ccc learning journey, fbbs identified an opportunity to further explore the connection between anger and low self-esteem amongst youth by using a three-prong approach to address the physical, mental and emotional health of participants as a countermeasure to depression, anger, fear, anxiety, stress and worry. at the conclusion of the learning journey, fbbs proposed ‘the crown project’ (tcp), an enrichment program for youth. while available to all youth aged 7–13 who live or attend school in downtown norfolk, tcp will primarily target those who were adversely affected by the pandemic and who experienced decreased social interaction as well as increased exposure to neighbourhood violence. tcp will be launched in 2023 and piloted for one year. fbbs will facilitate three eight-week cohorts, each containing thirty youth. each cohort will offer activities such as interactive instructional sessions, field trips, mentoring opportunities and parent nights. through collaborative engagement with community-based assets, tcp hopes to cultivate (1) emotional well-being (the good); (2) personal health and well-being (the sustainable); and (3) entrepreneurship (the beautiful and the prosperous). an example of tcp integration with the human ecology framework is shown in figure 6. figure 6. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202314 reflecting on tcp, participant 3 also stated: while we see the violence, poor academic performance, and incarceration rates, our solution addresses the underlying (iceberg) beliefs and systemic structures that intentionally or unintentionally contribute to the facts we see and read about on the news and in our media (fbbs, pitch proposal, 2023) mbbs has identified five subject-matter experts from inside the congregation and two from within the community to fill various program roles. congregation 4: rehoboth baptist church, seatack, va proposed project: keeping it real 100 rehoboth baptist church (rbc) is situated in the historic community of seatack, the oldest settlement on the east coast of free african americans and is within 1.5 miles of two low-income apartment housing complexes of approximately 350 families. using community-based research, the rbc learned that the complexes have a reputation for high poverty rates, drugs, gangs and gun troubles. upon completing a community-based interview, participant 5 stated: i learned there is a need for young people to talk to somebody about what appears to me as an unprecedented stress level. it seems to me young people are so stressed out about life decisions, where they fit in, being accepted by peers, and what to do with all of the worldly freedom they have. it makes them feel hopeless to the point of considering harming themselves or others (ground truthing worksheet, 2023). during the ccc learning journey, rbc identified an opportunity to address the need for intergenerational dialogue, peer support and empathy-based relationship building. participant 5 stated: as a pastor, i have been made aware of two incidents of young adults being so frustrated and confused that they have mentioned to their parents the desire to commit suicide. another young person within our sphere of influence has expressed the idea of living in two worlds, his church world and his ‘real life’, which y’all don’t understand.’ and he was right. we don’t understand what it is like to be 16 years old and going to school where anything goes and the world around them is in tumult. as an adult, i struggle sometimes with all of the contention. but as a minor child, who has to depend upon others to care for them, he can’t express everything he is feeling because he thinks we can’t understand (challenge response worksheet, 2023). a 12-year-old interviewee and community resident stated: church is very judgmental … like, if you look some type of way, dress some type of way then they’re not going to accept you and i feel like church should accept everybody no matter what relationship they have with god … because, like, if somebody walks in and you don’t even know who they are, you can’t just judge a book by its cover cause that’s not right cause you don’t know what that person has gone through … and you’re just like, ‘oh, they don’t belong here’ (rbc pitch proposal, 2023). at the conclusion of the ccc learning journey, rbc proposed keeping it real 100 (kir1), a youth focused social media podcast created to invite and enable young people to discuss their lives, feelings, dreams and disappointments, so that the church may discern how to expand, alter and/or create new ministries to aid youth in reaching their respective goals. participant 5 stated, ‘they get to talk; we get to listen and ask, “how can we help”’ (rbc pitch proposal, 2023). kir1 will: (1) foster two-way learning between youth and adults, community and the church (the true); (2) champion god’s social reality as a way to offer hope to those who feel hopeless (the good); (3) emphasise the importance of civic engagement and youth leadership (the just and well-ordered); (4) introduce youth to opportunities that cultivate employable skills (the prosperous); (5) identify and amplify the creativity of local youth (the beautiful); and (6) provide a positive coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202315 opportunity for youth to address low self-esteem, hopelessness, and concerns for their futures (rbc pitch proposal, 2023). participant 5 stated: by providing the forum for our youth to speak out, we are addressing this problem on the structural level as we look at how we allocate funds, resources, and our time. the mental level of both the church and stakeholders benefit as we get to see what is important in the eyes of teenagers and young adults. in return, the church has fresh input by which to implement ministries for those who need the church (challenge response worksheet, 2023). kir1 will be launched in two phases. the first phase will invite youth to come and talk about ‘their lives and challenges in their way, in their language, and to use social media to reach their peers’ (rbc, pitch proposal, 2023). phase 2 will invite previous youth participants to co-lead roles (e.g. moderator, producer, production crew, etc.). a mobile component will be incorporated to allow for community-based interviews. podcast episodes will be hosted on a you tube channel that will be co-created by the youth-adult leadership team. participant 5 stated: we believe the mission of the church is to share god’s word and salvation with them [youth] but we need to reach them in order to do so … we realize if we are going to ask them to share, participate, and ultimately run this program, we need to make space for what they think is important and what they wish to do, or it [kir1] will not succeed (rbc pitch proposal, 2023). identified stakeholders, partners and leadership team members included four youth participants, four rbc members, a local middle school teacher and two local ministers (one being the ceo of a local production company and the other, a retired professor with valuable podcast experience). conclusions and next steps the intentionality and practicality of our theory of change, the organisational framework that we built (based on our theory of change to drive impact creation) and the resulting six projects shared in this study track well with the nine guiding principles of community-based participatory research cited by wright et al. (2011). these principles resulted from ‘an inclusive review of the literature’ (wright et al. 2011, p. 84). the cited principles or characteristics are: (1) recognising community as a unit of identity; (2) facilitating a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of the research, involving an empowering and power-sharing process that attends to social inequities; (3) building upon strengths and resources within the community; (4) integrating and achieving balance between knowledge generation and intervention for mutual benefit of all partners; (5) fostering co-learning and capacity-building among all partners; (6) focusing on local relevance [. . .]; (7) disseminating results to all partners and involving them in the dissemination; (8) involving systems development using a cyclical and iterative process; and (9) involving a long-term process and commitment to sustainability (wright, et al. 2011, p. 85). in addition to tangible evidence, we introduced the concept of a faith-based factor into the asset-based community-academic participatory research community conversation; and we agreed with wright et al. (2011, p. 85) when they opined, ‘it is important to note that no one set of principles will be applicable to all partnerships; rather, all partners need collaboratively to decide what their core values and guiding principles will be.’ we see our role in the academy, community and church, or faith-based partnerships we are developing, as that of facilitator, convenor and capacity-building research partner in the triadic network (figure 7) while the networked partnerships attend to social inequalities or disparities in the communities that we share. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202316 figure 7. we began this article with questions associated with sustainable and deep impact creation at the community level through fb-cppr. we explored the questions through a sequential and mutual faithbased/academic-informed process that linked the human ecology framework concept and a graduate curriculum modified for community use. projects generated by graduate students exposed to the curriculum caused our team to wonder, ‘how do we move this curriculum strategy for asset-based community development from the classroom (among emerging scholars who pay for it) to the community for social change among faith-based community people who may not have the interest in, or resources for, formal university programs?’ we continue to explore this question and implement viable answers through generous grants from the duke endowment and the lilly foundation. initial results and findings suggest that faith-based community-academic partnered participatory research teams can be motivated through a teaching, training and learning process to pursue complex social problems towards positive social change. we introduced here five of the twelve projects that sprung from fb-cppr teams between november 2022 and april 2023 that show immediate potential. while it is still too early to quantitatively measure the effect of our fb-cppr on impact creation at the community level of the economy, our qualitative insight and the enthusiasm of the partners in our pilot programs look promising. consequently, we believe that this type of faith-based academic partnership approach could indeed generate sustainable asset-based community development for positive social change, locally, regionally, nationally and beyond. therefore, the ormond center at duke divinity school will continue to walk alongside these five faithbased partners through its pathways towards impact process, by supplying capability grants, sponsored partnerships and no-cost consulting. at the same time, the lessons learned from participant feedback and team observations during the first two pilot launches of the community craft collaborative continue to improve the evolving curriculum. new launches are also being planned for western and eastern north carolina and south carolina. we believe that the lessons learned during this process can be applied to the academy. for example, the case studies in this fb-cppr can be used as exemplars in the classroom. the six-week rather than the 17week semester long model could also be adopted for summer school and emersion type learning initiatives in for-profit and non-profit corporations and organisations. as has been observed in this work, when faith-based communities and academic institutions collaborate, their shared learning and labours can promote thriving communities. what might happen if congregations everywhere were taught how to connect community-based assets for the good of their neighbours? coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202317 what might occur if different community anchors within local ecologies – universities and churches – brought their knowledge and assets to partnerships? this article highlights the immense potential of such collaboration, rendering these questions worth asking and solutions worth seeking 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the good society and human flourishing’, yale values and human flourishing conference, yale university, new haven, ct, 26 march. coley et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202319 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-008045405-4.00626-1 https://thrivingcitiesgroup.com/our-framework https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-822957-6.00008-9 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v4i0.1784 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 13, no. 1 september 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: o’brien, m, cancino, b, apasu, f and chowdhury, tt 2020. mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7208. http:dx. doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v13i1.7208 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta mary o’brien1, berenice cancino1, francis apasu1, tanvir turin chowdhury2 1 school of languages, linguistics, literatures and cultures, university of calgary, canada 2 departments of family medicine and community health sciences, university of calgary, canada corresponding author: mary o’brien; mgobrien@ucalgary.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7208 article history: received 17/05/2020; revised 20/07/2020; accepted 29/07/2020; published 09/2020. abstract as immigration to canada increases, so, too, do the complexities associated with serving various groups of newcomers, including immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students. a range of stakeholder groups, such as grassroots community organisations, immigrant service provider organisations and academic researchers, have developed knowledge about how to best serve newcomers as they integrate into life in canada. to date, there have been few opportunities for members of these and other stakeholder groups to work together to ensure that the needs of newcomers are being efficiently met. in this article, we describe a multi-step process of reciprocal knowledge engagement involving diverse stakeholders and led by the newcomer research network at the university of calgary. this engagement has the ultimate goal of developing a knowledge mobilisation hub focused on building capacity in community-engaged research with newcomers. in order to understand how we will reach this goal, this article outlines the efforts, priorities, challenges and important lessons learned that occurred as part of the multi-step process undertaken to establish a knowledge exchange with newcomer communities at its core. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received funding from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) to host the symposium described in this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7208 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7208 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7208 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mgobrien@ucalgary.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7208 keywords newcomer; immigrant service provider organisation; grassroots community; healthcare; social care; education introduction in 2019, canada posted the highest population growth of all g7 countries, and this growth was primarily due to immigration (statistics canada 2019). this means that the face of canada is changing. according to the most recent canadian census data from 2016, nearly 22 per cent of canadians are immigrants, with 30 per cent of these newcomers arriving since 2006. no province has experienced the impact of immigration more than alberta, which has welcomed more immigrants per capita than any other province since 2001. the number of newcomers to alberta – including immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students – nearly tripled between 2001 and 2016, with 17.1 per cent of new immigrants in canada residing in the province (statistics canada 2016). newcomers are diverse, hailing from a number of ethno-geographical backgrounds and exhibiting differences in their sociocultural and life practices, which, in turn, influence their settlement needs, including social care, education and health (ahmed et al. 2015; gérin-lajoie 2008; simich et al. 2005). within the canadian context, local immigrant service provider organisations (spos), funded by the federal government’s ministry of immigration, refugees and citizenship canada, are a fundamental component within a decentralised model for newcomer settlement and integration. they ensure service provision and provide, for example, language training, job placement and community engagement opportunities (neudorf 2016). in their study of 53 spos in alberta, salami et al. (2019) demonstrate the important role played by these organisations in compensating for the lack of diversity in local community organisations where newcomers live. they also found that spos help to strengthen the sense of community belonging, in turn improving overall newcomer mental health. spos, including governmental and non-governmental entities, along with frontline practitioners and grassroots immigrant community organisations, face significant challenges in the development and implementation of appropriate settlement interventions to overcome the hurdles faced by newcomers (kaushik & drolet 2018; miller 2017; rajkumar et al. 2012). given that a strategic approach to settlement and integration, through a continuum of formal and informal social supports, has an important influence on positive integration experiences (shommu et al. 2016; simich et al. 2005), it is imperative that academic researchers and spos work in partnership with the newcomers themselves to ensure that their needs are being efficiently met. currently, there are relatively few opportunities for knowledge mobilisation among spos, grassroots ethnic community associations and researchers. the purpose of this article is to outline a multi-step process for reciprocal knowledge engagement with diverse stakeholders that was led by the interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral newcomer research network at the university of calgary. the focus of the knowledge engagement is to identify and explore research questions, emerging issues and priorities in order to address these mutually identified issues and areas of opportunity. the ultimate goal of these efforts is to develop a knowledge mobilisation hub centred on developing competency in community-focused research with newcomers. we outline and critically reflect on the process undertaken in the hope that sharing our challenges, strategies and outcomes will be useful for others seeking to build o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 2 relationships among stakeholders that authentically brings together diverse knowledge and experiences. newcomer engagement newcomers to canada integrate to a greater or lesser extent into their communities. for the purposes of this article, we view integration as a dynamic two-way process of adaptation in which both the newcomer culture and the host culture adapt to one another ( jiménez 2011; lindsay & singer 2003). integration is distinct from assimilation as it does not require newcomers to give up their language or culture (wrigley 2012); the expectation is that newcomers will ultimately achieve equity and the ability to participate in their new society (seat 2000, p. 9). we acknowledge that integration is a long-term, complex process that can be benchmarked against a number of factors, including, but not limited to, language proficiency, political participation, socioeconomic attainment and social interaction within the community (wrigley 2012). newcomer civic engagement plays an important role in integration ( jensen 2008; wrigley 2012), and research conducted in a host of fields shows that engagement among newcomers is associated with educational success, increased happiness, healthier behaviours and more just access to housing (e.g. georgis et al. 2014; patten, o’meara & dickson-swift 2015). within much of the literature on newcomer engagement, immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers and international students take part in research endeavours as participants from whom data are collected and analysed. in these situations, researchers set the agenda, establish goals, develop research questions, design instruments, and collect and analyse the research data (e.g. deckers & zinga 2012; edward & hines-martin 2014; georgis et al. 2014; lowenhaupt 2014). for the purposes of our project, however, we extend the notion of newcomer engagement in a number of ways. newcomers and spos are true partners in the research process from the outset. they both play a crucial role in identifying real-world problems that need to be addressed, and both are valued for their knowledge and experience and viewed as critical to the success of the project from start to finish (e.g. pegno 2019; wine et al. 2019). researchers such as cook (2008), macpherson et al. (2017) and minkler (2005) point to the value of community-engaged projects in improving the relevance of research, the quality of the research process and the interpretation of research findings. moreover, as facer and enright (2016, p. 8) note, partnered research projects allow for the ‘creation of a new public knowledge landscape where communities, and the universities that form part of those communities, can collaborate to question, research and experiment to create new ways of understanding, seeing and acting in the world’. a number of previous projects have engaged newcomers and the agencies that serve them in the ways we have defined here. in the field of social care, drolet et al. (2018) describe a project in which they partnered with spos in edmonton to address the challenges faced by older chinese immigrants in accessing mainstream services. the researchers worked with an advisory committee from the outset of the project, co-developing culturally appropriate and safe interview and focus group questions and ultimately participating in a knowledge-sharing forum at the completion of the project. educational research has also made use of engaged approaches with school leaders and parents, taking on the role of research partner (see, for example, georgis et al. 2014). within the healthcare field, a number of projects have involved community engagement at multiple levels. montesanti et al. (2017) partnered with community health centers to determine how best to serve two groups of newcomers in ontario. they describe a collaboratively designed mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 3 community development approach to expand capacity within the communities. mcelfish and colleagues (2019) engaged marshallese community stakeholders in southern usa to better understand and address the health disparities within the community. the researchers and community members worked together to interpret the data and set priorities. at the university of calgary, there has been a concerted effort to develop a strategy that encourages, recognises and rewards work in knowledge mobilisation, knowledge translation and community-engaged scholarship. termed knowledge engagement, the university defines it as ‘a dynamic and reciprocal process in which multiple stakeholders (including diverse groups such as corporations, community organizations, health and social service providers, academics, policy and decision makers, government, and public at large) come together to address mutually identified problems. the purpose of this deliberate engagement is for the co-creation, synthesis, and application of knowledge and evidence to benefit the community at large.’ it is within this context that the work described in this contribution is currently taking place. the newcomer research network the newcomer research network (nrn) at the university of calgary is an interdisciplinary community of researchers from the faculties of education, nursing, arts, social work and medicine who work to advance and advocate for research that will inform intercultural practices supporting newcomers across the university of calgary and the surrounding communities, nationally and internationally, through interdisciplinary collaborative partnerships. since its establishment in 2016, the nrn has signed memoranda of understanding with spo partners, including the alberta association of immigrant serving agencies (aaisa), immigrant services calgary (isc) and the calgary local immigration partnership (clip). the nrn has also put forward a multi-pronged vision, the central aspects of which include: • conducting research that is informed and endorsed by newcomer communities and community-based partnerships; • contributing to cultural understanding as a form of literacy for collaborative and crosscultural communication; and • equipping the next generation with respectful and productive human interactions in a multilingual and multicultural society. after establishing a web presence, carrying out a series of scoping reviews and engaging in focused research projects with community partners, the nrn and its community partners decided in 2018 to increase the scope of their work (figure 1). making connections beyond the nrn the goal of expanding the nrn has been carried out in three distinct phases to date (figure 1). the first, a one-day mobilizing knowledge on newcomers symposium, was designed to build on the existing relationships between the nrn and its spo partners and to expand the scope of collaborations by highlighting community-engaged research with newcomers. this was followed by a post-conference town hall meeting with grassroots newcomer community leaders, which had the goal of discussing their views on what the upcoming partnership’s activities should look like. it was imperative to include their voices because this partnership has newcomer communities at its core. the third and final event was a debriefing event with o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 4 the spo and newcomer socio-cultural organisation leadership to co-formulate the next steps that will enable us to address the issues that were identified through the previous phases. figure 1 process of connecting beyond the newcomer research network mobilizing knowledge on newcomers symposium preparing for the symposium: early planning the mobilizing knowledge on newcomers symposium was sponsored by a connection grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. this grant is designed to support events and outreach activities that have knowledge mobilisation as their goal. specifically, the grant finances events that make scholarly knowledge accessible to wider academic and non-academic audiences; supports strong collaborative relationships between researchers; aids the creation of networks that facilitate academic research; and makes these networks accessible to a larger community, including non-academic audiences (sshrc 2019). after one unsuccessful grant attempt, we determined that we had made a number of flawed assumptions in our conceptualisation of the event. first, because the timeline was short, we provided relatively little time for feedback from co-applicants and community partners. second, in spite of a real desire for true collaboration with spos and grassroots communities, we initially framed the event as primarily an academic one with a series of presentations and relatively limited interaction among the wide range of participants. in planning for a revised grant application, we made a number of fundamental changes to the grant application process. importantly, we started our work well in advance of the application deadline and requested written feedback from community partners and academic collaborators. this extra time allowed for the organisation of a three-hour in-person meeting among all of the stakeholders, at which we laid out our shared overarching goals for the grant, discussed practical considerations for the event and engaged in detailed editing of the proposal document. the joint discussion of goals and practical considerations (e.g. the need for opportunities for formal and informal cross-sector discussions, the importance of newcomer voices) ensured that all stakeholders established a sense of ownership of the symposium. detailed editing of the document, which was undertaken in smaller groups, ensured the proper use of terminology (e.g. our use of the term ‘immigrant serving organization’ was replaced by the preferred term mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 5 of immigrant ‘service provider organization’ – spo) and a more broadly accessible description of the event. this new approach better aligns with the central goals of knowledge engagement and ensures a more meaningful approach to knowledge mobilisation. the co-constructed goals of the symposium were as follows: • to give key stakeholders an opportunity to share their insights and strategic objectives; • to inform spos, researchers and graduate students on the current state of the art of research with newcomers; • to provide a theoretical context for the practice of service providers and help to improve service delivery through research; and • to establish a research agenda for future knowledge mobilisation activities and research partnerships. because this was the first event of its kind in alberta, we determined that knowledge sharing had to be the central component. all stakeholders agreed that every type of knowledge – practical, theoretical, research-focused – was equally important and deserved its space at the symposium and in follow-up discussions. only in this way would it be possible to work together to effect change in a cross-sectoral way. the grant requires additional collaboration: applicants must secure matching funds (either cash or in-kind contributions) along with letters of support from partners. in the case of the current grant, the nrn provided monetary support and two of the three spos offered inkind contributions. ultimately, a budget of just over $20,000 canadian enabled us to hire a project assistant and two graduate student research assistants, rent a venue (rooms, audiovisual equipment, display boards for the poster symposium), and pay for materials and supplies (nametags, abstract books) and food (small breakfast, lunch, reception) for event attendees. preparing for the symposium: planning the event planning for the symposium involved three key components: (1) communication; (2) soliciting and evaluating potential presentations; and (3) encouraging cross-sectoral attendance and active participation. up to the point of preparing for the symposium, the nrn did not have a functioning website. although there were plans to develop one, a clear and easily accessible website became an urgent need. our project assistant oversaw the development of the website content, but all materials were uploaded centrally. this was because the site, which, due to the interdisciplinarity of the nrn, was permitted to reside on the main university website, primarily overseen by the vice president (research) office at that time. while this ensured that the site was visually appealing and adhered to high standards, it also required more lead time for the posting of content. additional communication took the form of emails to researchers across campus and established spo and grassroots community partners, as well as a range of new spos and ethnic and sociocultural associations across the province. ensuring that all stakeholders had a voice at the symposium required appropriate messaging: community partners needed to know that their contributions were of central importance to the success of the symposium. although we initially began by soliciting presentations through spos and grassroots community organisations, it became clear that more personal interaction was required. we reached out on a personal level to academics as well as organisations to share information about the symposium’s aim and objectives. we encouraged partnered presentations from them to showcase the collaborative knowledge creation work. because both academics and non-academics submitted presentations, we chose a free platform for abstract submissions o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 6 that was not tied to a particular research field. easy chair provided us with the sort of flexibility we were looking for, as well as enabling online evaluation of proposals on the basis of userdefined criteria. we also offered our guidance to those who wished to prepare an abstract for the symposium. ultimately, we received more abstracts than we could accept, so we encouraged those participants whose abstracts were not accepted for a presentation to participate in the poster symposium. when making decisions about the content of the parallel sessions, we worked to ensure a relatively equal distribution of researchers and community partners. a guiding principle for ensuring participation of the widest range of stakeholders was making sure the event was easily accessible. this meant that we did not charge for registration, the venue was readily accessible by public transport and there were opportunities for meaningful formal and informal discussion. a number of tools enabled online conference registration. many of the tools – including those made available by the university – are for profit ventures that require a per-participant fee. eventbrite, on the other hand, is free and easy to use, and it provides conference organisers the opportunity to customise registration (e.g. partial attendance, dietary preferences) and enables the downloading of a participation spreadsheet that can then be used to create email lists and conference badges. we planned to provide participants with all their meals as a way of ensuring that they would stay at the event venue and socialise while eating. we hoped that rounding out the day with a formal roundtable discussion would encourage more formal small group and ultimately plenary discussion about the outcomes and next steps. conducting the symposium presentations and posters highlighted projects in four main areas: healthcare, education, social care and grassroots community engagement. a central aspect of all of the research presented was newcomer engagement, and most of the presentations were co-delivered by community partners (spos, grassroots newcomer groups or newcomers themselves) and researchers. table 1 presents a summary of the symposium’s 199 participants and their affiliations. table 1 participants in the mobilizing knowledge on newcomers symposium affiliation attendees academia 92 local government 2 non-government organisations 49 private sector newcomers business 12 medicine 29 not affiliated 15 presentations and outcomes the symposium was divided into five sessions: a plenary, two sets of parallel sessions, a poster session and a roundtable. the plenary session included presentations on the use of immigrants’ health data in community action; identification of barriers to engaging a newcomer community in research; emotional wellness of refugees; transition programs for international medical graduates; and the creation of inclusion charters for temporary workers and their workplaces. mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 7 the first parallel session included a panel on education and one on grassroots community engagement. the education session comprised presentations on collaboration between teachers and parents of refugee children; an ethnographic study of newcomer youth and their integration into high schools; gender implications for newcomers as english learners; and evaluation of a skills and language training program for newcomers. the community session dealt with civic participation of ageing immigrants; a review of police strategies to engage emerging communities; collaboration with newcomer communities on research; and institutional transformation aimed at supporting marginalised groups. the second parallel session delved into research on social care and health and wellness of newcomers. the topics of the social care session included integration needs of skilled immigrants; experiences of refugee youth; assessment of resettlement of refugees through a community-based approach; the experiences of newcomers with sport integration programs; and an institutional ethnography of resettlement services. the health and wellness session delved into the creation of a coordinated mental health system for refugee youth; the changes experienced by a refugee health clinic as they received more patients; programs to enhance clinicians’ creativity and multicultural competency; patients’ perception of care in a refugee clinic; access to healthcare services by immigrants and refugees based on their literacy levels; and the evolution of a shared care model to treat refugee patients with hepatitis b. the poster session was designed to highlight the work of grassroots community organisations and graduate student researchers. a total of 20 teams participated. as mentioned previously, posters focussed on the same key areas as the parallel sessions: healthcare, education topics, social care and grassroots community engagement. the highly interactive and informal session encouraged deep discussions among participants. the final event of the day was a plenary roundtable. designed to highlight key outcomes from the event and to set an agenda for moving ahead, this session addressed the issues summarised in table 2. table 2 roundtable responses by topic topic responses barriers to newcomer inclusion • there is a need to convert the challenges in working with newcomers into opportunities by focusing on developing capacity among newcomers (e.g. building language proficiency, intercultural communication and work skills), which will benefit everyone. • understanding and addressing the complex needs of newcomers requires an interdisciplinary, crosssector approach. that said, the needs of newcomers do not always align with those of researchers. • research without any action is meaningless. there is an urgent need to translate the findings into action. • resources tend to focus on groups instead of individuals, but it is individuals who have unique needs. • some of the greatest needs include more funding, the need for a quick turnaround from data collection to analysis, a housing program that goes beyond settlement, mental health data and programs, and greater capacity within the spo sector. o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 8 topic responses recommended next steps • involving more governmental agencies and ngos in effective integration planning. • establishing a repository of needs, resources and plans for knowledge mobilisation, current projects and plain language results would represent a positive next step. • providing training workshops for researchers, spos and grassroots newcomer agencies to equip these groups with tools for moving forward. • finding ways to connect newcomer agencies, spos and researchers with similar needs and interests would allow the establishment of partnerships from the outset of projects. • organising an annual symposium and more regular world cafés would provide an opportunity for regular knowledge mobilisation. most important outcomes • reconceptualisation of the term ‘newcomer’ in order to understand their diverse needs. • inclusion of newcomers (and especially refugees). • awareness of the complexity of newcomer issues and taking this into account when dealing with them. • moving away from a deficit view of newcomers. • keeping up to date with research outcomes. • developing effective ways to share research and knowledge. • actively involving newcomers in projects through sharing research results with them and developing solutions together. the challenges faced by diverse groups of newcomers and the unique needs of individual newcomers were understood differently by each of the stakeholder groups. the collective knowledge of participants in the room pointed to a number of complex issues, pressing needs and opportunities for collaboration that a sustained cross-sector engagement approach could best undertake. this points to a need to engage in partnerships early, conduct meaningful research, share findings and create effective solutions. post-conference town hall meeting with grassroots communities a month after the symposium, a town hall meeting was held with champions from diverse newcomer communities from south asia, the middle east, central asia, east asia, latin america and africa. the event began with an introduction to the nrn and its work to date and a discussion of the notion of community. according to the participants, the notion of community for them has to do with place (i.e. where they are from and where they are now) and language. in groups, they discussed the challenges that they found most pressing for their newcomer communities. the discussions revealed a vast range of challenges faced by the mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 9 newcomer communities including, but not limited to, issues of domestic violence, integration and resettlement, difficulties in obtaining employment, nostalgia for their home countries, building capacity for newcomers, and access to information on resettlement. moreover, participants pointed to the need to become active members of the local communities in which they live – to get to know their neighbours and to contribute to the activities in their neighbourhoods. after these group discussions, participants shared their perspectives on current research being done with newcomers. attendees agreed that one of the biggest challenges in working with researchers is the difference in time scale. pressing issues in newcomer communities deserve immediate attention, but researchers require time to obtain grant funding and ethics approval, and to develop instruments to collect the required data. in addition, leaders indicated that researchers often collect data from their communities but never return to report on the findings or work with communities to develop solutions to their problems. these insights demonstrate the need for a knowledge engagement approach that begins with collaboratively identifying problems, continues throughout the research process and includes the collective development of solutions. partner debrief and brainstorming for next steps as a final preparatory step, we conducted a debriefing meeting with our existing and potential partners from the spo and community-based sociocultural organisations. participants included leaders from seven spos, academics from three universities and representatives from various levels of local government. discussions were held after a brief presentation on the learning from the previous events. the discussions focused on three key themes: (1) facilitating a community of practice; (2) supporting community-based knowledge creation capacity; and (3) strengthening knowledge mobilisation. a clear need was expressed by all stakeholders for the development of a community-based knowledge platform, where all parties across service, research, education and policy would have the opportunity to work together towards the common goal of newcomer empowerment. figure 2 illustrates the connection across domains and the central role played by the community. figure 2 proposed model for knowledge engagement with newcomer communities o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 10 the role of graduate students a central component of sshrc’s funding schemes includes the training of highly qualified personnel. this means that graduate students who are hired with the funds need to receive the appropriate training and perform meaningful work. the two graduate students who were hired for the event each received funding for about 60 hours of work. the work that they did ranged from routine tasks (e.g. setting up and printing name tags, checking in conference participants) to conference attendance, note taking and participation in the discussions, to summarising and presenting the results of this work at the town hall, in the current contribution and in the form of infographics created for community partners. both graduate students involved in the organisation of the symposium reported learning a great deal from the experience. they highlighted an appreciation for the current work with newcomers, the insights they gained into collaborative projects generally, and the benefits of learning about conference organisation. lessons learned we learned a great deal from this experience, which we will rely upon as we move ahead with work related to this project and as we plan future knowledge mobilisation events. we invited key stakeholders to provide feedback for the purpose of this ongoing work. they all acknowledged the benefits of this diverse cross-sector collaboration and the mix of presentations from researchers and practitioners. they also appreciated the formal and informal opportunities for networking, the relatively large number of presentations throughout the day and the inclusion of grassroots community members in presentations. a community partner indicated feeling encouraged by the insightful work shared by students at the poster symposium. these same individuals also indicated that a more central location for the event would have enabled fairer access to the venue and that more involvement from grassroots community members would have been beneficial for all participants. in addition, although there were opportunities for networking, stakeholders indicated that it would have been beneficial to offer more planned opportunities for cross-sector discussion throughout the symposium. everyone who provided feedback indicated a desire for future events of this nature, and the stakeholders from grassroots community organisations were insistent about the need to continue discussions to ensure that the events result in action as opposed to tokenism. there are a number of things that we will do differently the next time we organise a series of large-scale events such as these. firstly, we will apply for ethics approval early in the process. because participants did not sign a consent form upon entering the events, we were unable to quote valuable data in the form of individual participants’ contributions that we collected from the roundtable discussion, town hall meeting and partner debrief session. moreover, data from the post-event survey are not reported here. the feedback provided by stakeholders for the purpose of this article was solicited after the event in response to emails sent to particular individuals. secondly, we would charge a nominal fee for participation in the event. although close to 200 people attended, more had registered. this meant that we ordered and paid for extra food and beverages. thirdly, the event was originally scheduled to piggyback on an event planned by one of our partners. because this partner relies on governmental funding for the majority of its events, it was unable to plan its event at the same time as ours. finally, not all of the spos and community organisations had exposure to or experience in this field. supporting the spos and community organisations to create abstracts and then present their work at future events will ensure meaningful engagement. this will also promote the culture of knowledge creation among these sectors. mobilising knowledge on newcomers: engaging key stakeholders to establish a research hub for alberta gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, september 2020 11 next step: towards a community-based knowledge mobilisation hub the recommendations from the engagement work to date include promoting further knowledge sharing (through, for example, workshops, interactive activities and a defined set of events per year), promoting cross-sector research partnerships and including newcomers as equal contributors. this can be achieved through creating a community-focused hub. future plans for the knowledge mobilisation hub the results of the engagement to date have demonstrated that the individual efforts of each research team have effected change within the relevant communities. the newly expanded group, which includes members of the nrn, additional spos and researchers, and grassroots community members, has dedicated itself to developing a knowledge mobilisation hub (online and physical) with the goal of encouraging collaboration across these groups. plans for expansion include extending the reach to include government and non-government agencies, policy-makers and think tanks along the lines of that of wine et al. (2019). the foci of this partnered initiative are as follows: • create a community of practice (cop) that meets, at least online, at regular intervals. in addition to focusing on a specific newcomer issue each month, it will facilitate the development of community-based projects and enhance knowledge exchange and collaboration across projects. • support community-based knowledge creation capacity through the provision of research support, guidance and training. this will involve in-person office hours with members of the nrn as well as written and video-based guides. • collaboratively establish a research agenda for knowledge mobilisation activities and reciprocal partnerships after a series of inclusive discussions. • collectively define and prioritise research questions. • engage with communities involved at the conclusion of data collection activities to make the results accessible to them and to enable the co-creation of real-world solutions. the combined engagement effort to create a collaborative network will enable a profound cross-sectoral impact. concluding thoughts pegno (2019) reminds us of the long-term nature of engagement of this sort, while montesanti et al. (2017) recognise the diversity of newcomer communities and thus the need to rely on a range of approaches to engage them. importantly, this is a participatory relationship that relies on reciprocity. that is, it is ‘multi-directional, in that both service providers and the client population are actively engaged in the participatory process and equally benefit from improved knowledge and skills’ (montesanti et al. 2017, p. 647). based on the work to date, we believe that our cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary and partnered approach will facilitate the multidirectional flow of knowledge among researchers and the community, which will enhance societal and economic benefits for newcomers. as we move ahead with the creation of a community-based knowledge mobilisation hub, we will rely crucially upon the continued engagement of all of the relevant communities. systematic evaluation of the proposed impact that takes both potential impediments (i.e. o’brien, cancino, apasu, chowdhury gateways: 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4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: wong, d. 2021. promiscuous care in movement-based research: lessons learned from collaborations in manhattan’s chinatown. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–11. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7765 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) promiscuous care in movement-based research: lessons learned from collaborations in manhattan’s chinatown diane wong1 1 department of political science, rutgers university, newark, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7765 article history: received 15/06/2021; revised 15/11/2021; accepted 23/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract decolonial and feminist studies scholars have long recognised the intricate ways in which the personal and academic are deeply interwoven and that the co-production of knowledge is essential for social transformation. this article examines the cultural organising of the chinatown art brigade, an intergenerational collective of artists, activists, writers, educators and practitioners driven by the fundamental belief that cultural, material, and aesthetic modes of production have the power to combat gentrification. specifically, i situate the collective within a longer lineage of asian american cultural organising in manhattan chinatown and draw from years of movement-based research as a member of the collective. incorporating personal reflection and interviews conducted with brigade members, this article speaks to how the themes of power, temporality and affectivity show up in movement-based research. how can we think more capaciously about academic and non-academic collaboration, to push the boundaries and explore new possibilities that honour the time, expertise and trauma of directly impacted communities? in reflecting on my work with the chinatown art brigade, i discuss the nuances of intergenerational co-production of knowledge and interrogate how a feminist ethics of promiscuous care can uncover new possibilities for collaboration between cultural workers, organisers and movement-based scholars within and beyond the neoliberal academy. keywords promiscuous care; community engagement; displacement; research methods; cultural activism; chinatown 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7765 http://://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7765 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7765 introduction although manhattan chinatown continues to be an important destination for asian immigrants, it faces major transformation as a site of mass displacement. being in such close proximity to tribeca, soho, the financial district and the east river waterfront promenade, chinatown is often described as the ‘final frontier’ for redevelopment by city officials and real estate developers. in the years directly after 9/11, the city’s housing and land use policies under the bloomberg administration accelerated the gentrification of chinatown by allowing for upzoning and real estate developers to build without any accountability to existing residents (kwong & stein 2015). between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of asian residents living in chinatown dropped by 18 per cent due to rent increases and forcible evictions (caaav 2008). despite community protests, there have been dozens of luxury hotels and high-rise developments built in chinatown without public hearings, environmental impact assessments, or input from residents (wong 2019). nearly 30 per cent of businesses in chinatown are now classified as ‘high-end’, including clothing boutiques, upscale restaurants and galleries, in particular, artist-run spaces, white box galleries, pop-up spaces and arts nonprofits (li 2013). as of 2015, 40 per cent of all new galleries had opened in chinatown, outpacing chelsea, bushwick and upper east side (moy 2016). a lion’s share of these galleries have opened in clusters along delancey, orchard, grand and chrystie streets, contributing to speculation, increasing rents, and the displacement of longtime tenants and small businesses. while much of the scholarship on gentrification interrogates the complicity of artists in the process of gentrification, i consider here the radical possibility of socially engaged artists in shaping the emancipatory future of neighbourhoods (deutsche 2002; deutsche & ryan 1984; lin 2019; molotch, harvey & treskon 2009; zukin 1982). in what follows, i centre the work of the chinatown art brigade, an intergenerational collective of artists, activists, writers, educators and practitioners driven by the fundamental belief that cultural, material, and aesthetic modes of production have the power to combat gentrification. specifically, i situate the formation of the collective within a longer lineage of asian american cultural organising in manhattan chinatown, and draw on several years of involvement as an active member, as well as personal interviews with other collective members. i am particularly interested in exploring how the themes of power, temporality and affectivity show up in community-based research, and how we can dream more capaciously about academic and non-academic collaboration in order to push the boundaries and explore new possibilities that honour the time, expertise and trauma of those most impacted. i draw inspiration from decolonial, feminist and disability scholars who have written about how the personal and academic are deeply interwoven, and why knowledge production that centres the construction of care infrastructures is essential for deeper structural changes. i conclude by sharing lessons learned from my work with the brigade and discuss how a feminist ethics of promiscuous care can uncover new possibilities for collaboration with multiply marginalised communities. from the basement to the brigade: artist collectives in manhattan chinatown in the autumn of 2015, artists tomie arai, mansee kong and betty yu came together to form the chinatown art brigade (cab). as asian american visual artists with roots in chinatown movements, the brigade grew out of a series of informal conversations and from their individual relationships with caaav: organizing asian communities (caaav) over the span of two decades. founded in 1986, caaav is a grassroots organisation in manhattan chinatown, established in the wake of anti-asian violence in the 1980s, including the murder of vincent chin in 1982. the three women came together to discuss possibilities for the collective, and with guidance from caaav to strategise how cab could produce cultural work that was accountable to those most impacted by gentrification (yu 2017). those dialogues were the beginning of the brigade as a collective, as betty recalled: ‘our goal as artists is to wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 work with caaav and to advance their tenants’ rights work, solidarity work with them is central to our entire cultural production process’ (yu 2016). similarly, tomie, who has the most experience working in collectives, explained why the collaboration between cab and caaav presented a new model of cultural organising: ‘we are accountable to those most impacted. past cultural collectives never worked directly with an organization the way we do, with constant contact, issue identification, and base building. we are still working to understand what it means to be accountable not only to the community but also to the people who are supporting us (arai 2016). importantly, cab’s work must be understood within a longer lineage of asian american cultural organising in chinatown, a neighbourhood that has been a hub for intergenerational collaboration through various artist collectives. in 1969, a group of writers, artists, curators, musicians and activists met in the basement of a tenement building on catherine street to form what later became known as the basement workshop. largely influenced by national conversations around black power, third world liberation, the anti-vietnam war movement and local socio-cultural transformations in the city, early members of the basement workshop came together to exchange ideas about asian americaness and to produce place-specific cultural work that spoke to the material conditions of a fast changing chinatown (chiang 1988). basement workshop functioned as a community arts space and sponsored the amerasia creative arts program, which organised cultural programs, literary events, screenings, performances and exhibitions, and offered art workshops on film, silk screening, photography and choreography (chang 2009; ishizuka 2016; maeda 2012). it also created a space for young asian americans in new york city to connect their individual artistic practices to broader structural issues facing their communities, such as poverty, healthcare access, housing, police brutality and militarisation. fay chiang, who was the director of basement workshop, wrote a short reflection titled ‘looking back’ about the work of the collective, she recalled: ‘many of the people involved were like myself: second generation chinese americans who had lived most of our lives in the boroughs, whose parents worked in laundries, sweatshops, shirt-press factories, or restaurants’ (chiang 1988). as a poet, visual artist and community activist, fay became involved in basement workshop through yellow pearl and would later spend four decades of her life working to build an asian american cultural movement in new york city. basement workshop ran programs for at-risk asian american youth and campaigned for special education programs for new immigrants and their children in chinatown. their work also included selfpublished diy zines to promote representation in efforts to challenge portrayals of asian americans as model minorities, a term coined by sociologist william petersen in 1966 that continues to have negative consequences today (saval 2018). in 1976, basement workshop launched bridge magazine, a quarterly asian american movement publication aimed at building pan-asian american political consciousness and identity. the collective also published bilingual newspapers, such as workers viewpoint, and the feminist graphic anthology yellow pearl (chang 2009; liu, geron & lai 2008). in an article written by michelle chen, whose parents were involved in student activism in chinatown in the 1970s, she reflected: ‘the basement workshop also had artistic renderings of asians in america that complimented their activism in the neighborhood, as activists they organized demonstrations and street fairs’ (chen 2013). basement workshop inspired the formation of other collectives, such as chinatown health fair (now known as charles b. wang community health center), asian american art center, asian cinevision and the museum of chinese in america. many of the artists involved with basement workshop later became community leaders and went on to found other chinatown-based organisations and collectives, including the godzilla: asian american arts network and, more recently, the chinatown art brigade. i became involved with cab in the spring of 2016 directly through my work with caaav. as an organisation, caaav has a long history of combating anti-asian violence in all its forms, from evictions to police brutality to labour rights for sex workers, domestic workers, street vendors and garment workers. while still a graduate student at the time, i signed up to volunteer with caaav’s chinatown tenants wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 union (ctu) and became involved with their eviction defence and housing justice campaigns. founded as a branch of caaav in 2005, ctu organises low-to-no income tenants in chinatown around eviction and displacement. as a volunteer, i went door knocking twice a week in buildings to see if tenants had heat, water and access to basic repairs. it was common for tenants to be on the brink of being forcibly evicted from their homes or dealing with landlord harassment. at the same time, i saw the scope of creative resistance tactics that residents were using to combat gentrification, with the work of cab at the forefront of the movement to stay. the cultural organising of cab is instructive in broadening the scope of how we understand collaboration between cultural workers, organisers and movement-based scholars, especially around issues of urban dispossession. in what follows, i draw inspiration from the work of decolonial, feminist and disability scholars to propose an ethics of promiscuous care as a framework for understanding the cultural organising of cab and the importance of relational, experimental and restorative collaboration that disrupts the particular temporalities produced by the neoliberal university. towards a praxis of promiscuous care we live in a time of multiple crises that have exacerbated existing vulnerabilities, including asymmetrical relationships that differently marginalised communities have with precarity. from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on unhoused people worldwide to preventable climate catastrophes in the global south to the murder of unarmed black men, women and children in the united states, we have witnessed the urgent need for alternative forms of care and mutual interdependencies. for marginalised communities that have to reckon with the impossibility of living in prolonged crises, we have also seen the emergence of more capacious notions of care in the form of mutual aid, coalitional alignments, and the redistribution of resources (hobart & kneese 2020; spade 2020). in this section, i draw inspiration from what the care collective calls an ethics of promiscuous care as a framework for collaborative praxis between cultural workers, organisers and movement-based scholars working alongside already vulnerable communities. in opposition to self-care, which some argue has been depoliticised under the neoliberal imperatives of individualism, promiscuous care, as an alternative, extends outwards in ways that challenge traditional conceptions of intimacy and kinship (the care collective 2020). as a framework for praxis, promiscuous care reimagines how collaboration can be a restorative experience vital to the deeper understanding and collective healing of black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, queer, trans, disabled, poor and incarcerated communities. in the care manifesto (the care collective 2020), the authors describe promiscuous care as multiplying who we care for and how we care, and put forth ‘an ethics that proliferates outwards to redefine caring relations from the most intimate to most distant’. as a framework for collaborative praxis, promiscuous care necessitates caring for one another in ways that are capacious and constructive of care infrastructures that reflect sustained community input and participation and that resist bureaucratised timeframes. there are numerous ways that we can radically democratise and build caring infrastructures so as to achieve more livable futures. they include mutual aid, expansion of public green space, cooperative housing, youth clubs, worker cooperatives, nurseries, libraries and neighbourhood support groups that allow communities to deepen coalitional alignments and gain access to material resources, space, skills and expertise. to foster an ethics of promiscuous care opens up the possibility for a sustainable model of cooperative knowledge production that foregrounds abundance, improvisation, embodiment and reciprocity as central to the collaborative process. as research becomes increasingly commodified, privatised and inaccessible due to the gatekeeping nature of the neoliberal academy, imbuing an ethics of promiscuous care in community collaboration enables us to imagine new ways of sharing knowledge that are more inclusive and alternative methods of researching, writing, publishing and knowing that are affective and alive. wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 promiscuous care introduces a temporal element to collaborative praxis that critiques linear, normative and progressive time. this is related to what alison kafer calls crip time as a means to enact alternative notions of temporality. she writes ‘rather than bend the bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds’ (kafer 2013). it seems more apparent than ever that we need to adopt a feminist ethics of personal and collective care – making time to take care of ourselves, each other, and the communities with whom we write in solidarity. in discussing audre lorde’s a burst of light on the devastating effects of overextension, queer feminist disability studies scholars jina b kim and sami schalk propose a form of radical self-care that exists outside of capitalist temporalities and that simultaneously reckons with the ‘complexities of claiming time for ourselves to slow down, to take care, while also understanding the real urgency of our contemporary movement’ (kim & schalk 2021). crucially, promiscuous care serves as a reminder that to slow down is an act of refusal to accept the capitalist pressures of hyper-productivity that often replicate harms and reinforce unrealistic expectations in collaborative work. leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha writes in care work, crip time is also about making time to tend to each other’s needs, desires, dreams and visions – it is about building care webs that create collective access so that those most precarious are able to fully participate in the work with autonomy and dignity (piepzna-samarasinha 2018). when we prioritise restoration as central to collaborative processes, we find ways to dream bigger. in what follows, i interrogate the cultural organising of cab through an ethics of promiscuous care, and specifically focus on a project called ‘here to stay’ as a rich, local exploration of what it means to prioritise the construction of caring infrastructures in collaboration. who did you displace to be here? here to stay mobile projections in the summer of 2016, cab grew to include other artists, educators, activists and residents, including mimi yaw, liz moy, emily chow bluck, huiying b chan, kahean chang, linda luu, anna ozbek, figure 1. chinatown art brigade member writing on the people’s pad (photo: kahean chang) wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 lena sze, louis chan, daphne xu, si wang and myself. the conversations with caaav continued for months before culminating in a project titled ‘here to stay’, which involved a series of workshops with ctu tenants and a large-scale outdoor projection. the goals of this collaborative project were twofold: to visually chronicle narratives of displacement and to amplify the chinatown community-led rezoning plan that would increase tenant protections. on a humid night in august, dozens of residents crowded around the middle school m.s. 131 on hester street. there were crowds of youth and elders standing around the building and pointing up towards the illuminated images, graphics and hand-drawn messages that were live projected from the top of a parked van. the content came from oral histories, photos, graphics and videos that were slowly gathered over the span of an entire summer during a series of collaborative workshops with ctu tenants. according to betty, these workshops were critical in determining the overall project direction and pace of collaboration: ‘through placekeeping walks, mapping, photography, story circles, drawing exercises, together we created what would be projected onto the buildings in chinatown. it wasn’t like we were “parachuting” in to extract from the people, the process of co-creation was important’ (yu 2016). the first workshop held that summer was in the form of a story circle. the meeting was held on a sunday afternoon and a group of 15 people sat around a table to share personal experiences with gentrification. the purpose of the story circle was to offer everyone a chance to share their immediate housing concerns and to curate a space for creative intervention. the story circle also provided the opportunity for cab members and ctu tenants to become familiar with one another and to deepen relationships across age and language. many of the ctu tenants shared their personal experiences with eviction and how they became involved with housing justice work in chinatown. the younger cab members shared about their connections to the neighbourhood and identified gentrification-related changes that they had observed over the years, including the increased presence of police on the streets. in another workshop, the cab cofounders shared their own artistic practice and described how cultural modes of production could support the broader movement for housing justice. the group then participated in a collaborative mapping exercise, which involved locating places in chinatown with which people had deep connections, including specific buildings, parks, and grocers. during the mapping exercise, attendees collaboratively created a map of all the locations and named it the people’s placekeeping tour of chinatown, a play on words that exposed the place-making tactics used by developers to gentrify neighbourhoods. the place-keeping walk took place shortly after the mapping workshop. during the walk, liz moy, who is a lifelong resident of chinatown, took the group to where she grew up on bayard street, next to the chinatown ice cream factory, and then to her family business on bowery street. mimi yaw walked everyone to where she and her mother live on canal street and spoke about the many struggles they have had to endure with the landlord who has tried to evict them numerous times under the guise of renovating the building. mimi invited everyone to her apartment and, while walking up three flights of stairs, explained what inspired her to become a member of ctu. ms zheng, who started out with ctu in 2005 as an intern, brought the group to the garment factory that she worked in for three decades as a seamstress and then to her apartment on delancey street. ms zheng spoke in mandarin about how she successfully formed a tenants association in her building to fight back against the landlord. there were others who also shared their stories during the place-keeping walk. betty reflected on the process afterwards: ‘we made stops at places that tourists do not know or care about. like, the first unionized restaurant in chinatown or the theater called music palace where we used to pay three dollars and watch movies. these places are coded and filled with memories, it’s important that personal associations are well preserved for future generations’ (yu 2016). the purpose of the place-keeping walk was to cultivate community knowledge and collect stories and visuals to be projected onto buildings as narratives of resistance. to incorporate the materials collected from the workshops and place-keeping walk in the projections, cab worked with ctu tenants to create a slideshow montage using materials that could be projected onto a chinatown building. the series of workshops leading up to the projections allowed tenants to develop wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 their own visual direction and storytelling skills. tomie recalled working with a ctu tenant leader who was very active in the production process: ‘david is a creative person, i mean he independently took photographs of the conditions in his apartment, created photo albums, burned these discs with the images, and designed posters for actions’ (arai 2016). after several back and forth feedback sessions with the ctu tenants during their monthly meetings, the result was a slideshow that included dozens of images, messages, chants and slogans that came from the place-keeping walk, story circle and mapping workshops. the feedback sessions were critical leading up to the projections because they helped to identify a clear message and a target audience, which included other chinatown residents and elected officials. many of the projections were quotes from the place-keeping walk; others in the slideshow were of tenant demands that included uplifting active building campaigns and the community-led rezoning plan. to ensure language accessibility and the interconnectedness of gentrification struggles in chinatown, two bridges and the lower east side neighbourhoods, many of the projected messages were translated to english, chinese and spanish. on the night of the projections, residents stopped to observe the words and images that illuminated the building. those who were walking by were also invited to write their own personal messages on a people’s pad, which was live projected onto the building. reflecting on the goals of the projections, betty shared: ‘we hope to project messages onto buildings to reach more tenants. i imagine tenants who are facing eviction can feel extremely alone. we are reaffirming that their experiences are not isolated and that residents are fighting back. we are also sending messages to gentrifiers by asking critical questions like who did you displace to be here?’ (yu 2016). cathy dang, who was executive director of caaav at the time, felt it was important that the projections were able to create dialogue between the organisers and the tenants. she recalled: ‘there were hundreds of residents playing mahjong and weren’t paying us that much mind but once the projections were on the building wall everyone stopped to look. it gave us a chance to have conversations with residents and to hand them flyers about our rezoning townhall’ (yu 2016). for others, the most memorable moments came from the reactions on people’s faces. tomie recalled: ‘i remember there was a crowd of people in the park looking up at the projections and there were smiles, i felt at that moment that we had not only succeeded in sharing a message but somehow it was also a sense of celebration, a sense of common purpose’ (arai 2016). at one point in the evening, ctu tenants participated in karaoke together and rewrote lyrics to a well-known chinese song and sang it lightheartedly in public. figure 2. projections on the m.s. 131 building on hester street (photo: kahean chang) wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 lessons learned from intergenerational collaboration cab’s work offers an alternative model for cultural workers, public scholars and organisers in the academy to collaborate on community-driven projects that move in tandem with grassroots campaigns and are responsive to the material needs of those most impacted by displacement. over the years, the brigade has grown as a collective and has worked on various other collaborative projects, including the ‘placekeeping in chinatown augmented reality project’ and the ‘housing for the people mapping project’. the latter involves a bilingual map that illustrates housing victories and grassroots campaigns in chinatown, two bridges and the lower east side. the collective also took the ‘here to stay’ project to philadelphia, collaborating with vietlead and the ‘chinese youth organizing project’ of asian americans united on a series of youth-led workshops that culminated in an outdoor projection event around the intersecting issues of immigration, displacement and deportation. the collective is now a part of a national network of organisers, artists, tenants and practitioners from los angeles, vancouver, toronto, montreal and seattle chinatowns invested in making connections between gentrification, sex work decriminalisation and abolition. however, as with any collaborative process, there are challenges that demand deeper engagement and critical reflection. in what follows, i draw from lessons learned from working in partnership with nonenglish-speaking and immigrant tenants that can serve as guidance for those pursuing similar collaborative projects. one of the main challenges we confronted early on was honouring the time of tenants and learning how to recalibrate as necessary. as a collective, we realised that we had to respect whatever time tenants had to commit to the project and remain flexible about the pace of the collaboration. the dangerous and precarious housing circumstances that many tenants faced often meant that they related to time differently in daily life – time was always discussed in scarcity terms of ‘buying time’, ‘stalling time’ or ‘being out of time’. in addition, many ctu tenants were already attending other meetings, working through the weekends, taking on caregiving duties and navigating their own housing struggles. we were constantly checking in with caaav and ctu tenants to figure out how to reshape certain aspects of the workshop series to better reflect the time constraints and individual capacities of the tenants. betty reflected on the importance of flexibility in collaboration: ‘instead of asking tenants, especially elders, to come to us, we went to them. if there were tenants organizing meetings or active building campaigns, we met them there and supported their efforts by helping them make banners or sharing creative tools to amplify their fight. we were taking cues from them. they were the ones leading the direction for the project. we learned how to lend ourselves up’ (yu 2016). creating flexible timeframes also involved building networks of collective care to open up more time, including for childcare, economic access, interpretation, transportation, nourishment and other forms of material support, to encourage tenants to fully participate in the work with autonomy. another lesson learned was how to cope with the emotional stress that results from creative collaboration and requires recovery from what is traumatic. as mindi fullilove (2004) writes, loss through displacement leads to what she calls ‘root shock’ or the ‘destruction of one’s emotional ecosystem’, which can induce a visceral traumatic stress reaction. for some tenants and cab members, the hypervisible projections were manifestations and reminders of ongoing loss due to gentrification. many of the images shown were of places that no longer exist in the neighbourhood, including photos of music palace, the dried goods store on elizabeth street and other historical landmarks. tomie recounted that, for her, one of the most difficult moments involved responding to the flash flood of emotions that the projections evoked for people: ‘for someone who has lived in chinatown their entire lives, these places can mean a lot to them. i remember a man who was having a tough time after seeing a projection of the theatre. i think that image carried weight because his grandfather used to take him. this creative process opens wounds and so for me if we invite this trauma back into someone’s life we have to be there to help them pick up the pieces’ (arai 2016). even when individuals have not experienced first-hand trauma, legacies of loss and grief from displacement can wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 be transmitted across generations or from living in proximity. this realisation led us to explore traumainformed approaches to cultural organising in chinatown and to commit to individual and collective forms of healing justice, a movement that first emerged from the atlanta-based kindred south healing justice collective in 2006. finally, one of the power asymmetries we encountered in collaboration involved language access and english language dominance. there were concerns about language accessibility, not only in terms of working across multiple dialects of spoken chinese (cantonese, mandarin, fujianese, wenzhounese, taishanese, shanghainese), but also coming up with new ways to talk about art that resonated with working-class chinese immigrants and elders. for the project to be accessible from start to finish, it was crucial for cab, as a collective, to recognise that language justice was central to the cultural production process. in following the core principles laid out by the highlander center and groups like antena aire, we saw language justice as a political commitment and one that would guide the pace of collaboration – from brainstorming sessions and project development to art-making and public-facing events like the place-keeping walk and the outdoor projections. during each step of the process, we worked with interpreters and found multiple ways to communicate with each other, often in ways that might not have been imaginable otherwise. in an interview, mansee shared her reflections on the immediacy of language justice in collaborative work: ‘we are exploring the idea of creating an interpreter’s collective that would be centered around language justice and social justice. this was an idea that came out of our work, as part of the brigade’ (kong 2016). in february 2017, mansee and a few other cab members went on to form the 共鳴 gòngmíng chinese interpreters collective, a group of individuals based in new york city who provide interpretation, translation and language capacity building from a movement-based perspective. on building aftercare practices i conclude with some reflections on engaged practice that continue to inform my community collaborations. first is the importance of developing what oral historian piper anderson calls aftercare practices to ensure that trauma evoked from conversations during the collaboration are not stored within the body. during several workshops that cab held with tenants, the conversation centred around the physical, emotional and health consequences of evictions, which can cause retraumatisation, either consciously or unconsciously. it was important as a collective to develop our own aftercare practices throughout the collaborative process and to carve out spaces for participants to transform, intervene in, or process trauma without shame or judgement. over time, some of the aftercare practices that we developed as a collective involved staying in chinatown for a meal together, peeling fruits to share with one another, ending the day with a walk around the neighbourhood, or checking in on someone the next day. to pursue collaborative work is exhausting; it is not easy and much of it is trial and error plus persistence. it requires sustained relationship building, deep listening, and the ability to move at the speed of trust as the guiding compass. these aftercare practices were essential in deepening connections and feelings of trust that seeded further opportunities for collaboration. these reflections are also instructive for university ethics review processes, which tend to focus on the wellbeing of participants as a project unfolds, more consideration should be placed on what happens once a project concludes and on developing aftercare practices. lately, i have been reflecting on access in community collaborations as a sphere of care, especially in terms of developing multiple embodiminded approaches to thinking with communities about shaping knowledge that create deeper structural interventions. over the years, cab has collaborated with ctu tenants on other projects situated at the intersection of housing justice, language access and innovative technologies, including the placekeeping in chinatown augmented reality project, which was later transformed into a large-scale interactive mural with multimedia components. the augmented reality map, along with the mural, remain accessible to anyone who wishes to interact, and they sit in stark contrast wong gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 to much of the knowledge produced within academia that becomes only accessible to those who have institutional access or can afford to pay. it is critical to imagine experimental ways to democratise knowledge and to iterate more capacious ways of knowing, creating, writing and sharing with the communities with whom we write in solidarity. i have found what oral historian crystal baik calls a praxis of promiscuous writing to be instructive, she writes that ‘antithetical to an approach that is casual or indifferent, promiscuous writing foregrounds that our work is meaningful in reach and impact only when it is generous, pleasurable, experimental, relational, and multiple—in form, genre, and context’ (baik 2021). to produce knowledge that disrupts the parameters of the neoliberal academy requires us to push the boundaries and explore new possibilities for collaboration—and be open to the possibility that what we produce together now can become life forms of their own far into the future. references arai, t 2016, ‘interview conducted by betty yu’, 21 october. arai, t, 2016, ‘parallel fields: 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https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2019.0032 https://doi.org/10.1386/vi.6.2.173_1 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: piñeros shields, a. 2021. ‘midwife for power’: towards a mujerista/womanist model of community organising. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–16. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7771 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) ‘midwife for power’: towards a mujerista/womanist model of community organizing alexandra piñeros shields1 1 the heller school for social policy and management, brandeis university, waltham, massachusetts, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7771 article history: received 16/06/2021; revised 08/09/2021; accepted 15/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract in recent years, communities have responded to police violence in u.s. cities through confrontational models of community organising that evolved from patriarchal and male approaches. very often, these approaches have not produced the hoped-for outcomes. in this article, i argue that a women-led community organising model, grounded in feminine relational power-with epistemologies, can lead to innovative policy changes, including in contexts of intractable problems, such as police misconduct. this article presents the midwife for power community organising model, which creates space for women organisers to nurture solidarity and creativity across all lines of difference, centres personal testimony and uses collective inquiry to create relational power to address injustice. theoretically, this model draws on the rich insights of black and latina organisers and scholars, as well as traditions of intersectional solidarity. in order to illustrate the model, this article presents an empirical case study of a successful police accountability campaign. keywords women-centred organising; participatory action research; community power; police accountability 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7771 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7771 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7771 introduction on 17 july 2014, eric garner, a 44-year-old african-american man, was killed by daniel pantaleo, a white police officer, in new york city. a few weeks later, on 9 august 2014, michael brown, an 18-year-old african-american man, was killed by darren wilson, a white police officer, in ferguson, missouri. these murders ignited public protest throughout the united states and a nascent political project that had begun a year earlier as a social media hashtag, #blacklivesmatter, emerged as the main vehicle of resistance to police brutality. over the following years, public protest after murders of civilians by police in many u.s. cities leveraged the powerful narrative embedded in the hash tag, #blacklivesmatter. however, the alinsky-style confrontational power tactics (alinsky 1971 & 1989; betten & austin 1990; bobo, kendall & max 2001; ganz 2009; schutz & miller 2015;) that communities used to hold local police departments accountable led to stalemates (garza 2020; taylor 2016). in contrast to the alinsky tradition, this article presents an emerging mujerista/womanist community organising model that has been effective in addressing the intractable problem of police misconduct in the u.s. in the tradition of feminist community organising ( joseph et al. 1991; mizrahi 2007; stall & stoecker 1998), this model is based in women’s meaning-making by centring their personal experiences and testimonies (fernandez et al. 2020; garlington 2019; villenas 2019), but goes beyond feminist identity politics (mizrahi 2007) to promote intersectional thinking and action through solidarity and creativity across many lines of difference (collins & bilge 2016; crenshaw 1989; garlington 2019). additionally, and indispensably, the model leverages participants’ (hereafter referred to as leaders) innate rationality to understand and critique the world around them (mellon charron 2012) and drives collective critical inquiry and praxis using community-initiated and community-led participatory action research (fals-borda & rahman 1991; fine 2018; maguire 1987). these three strategies, (1) personal testimonies; (2) intersectional community and solidarity; and (3) community-initiated and community-led participatory action research, leverage feminine power processes that promote community and lead to experimentation and creative problem-solving. as a result, leaders birth their own knowledge and, in so doing, birth their own power. i call this model the ‘midwife for power’. this article seeks to present the theoretical underpinning of this model and illuminate its workings through a detailed case study. through critical reflection, i propose that the ‘midwife for power’ model offers an answer to the central question in community organising: how do we create the necessary condititions that enable people to step into their own power? to illustrate this emergent model, i describe a case of community organising for police accountability in one mid-size city in the northeast of the united states. in september of 2014, an inter-faith communityorganising ngo (which will be referred to as haki) joined the growing social movement to hold their local police accountable. this 33-year-old ngo was well versed in traditional community organising confrontational ‘power-over’ strategies. using these, haki had won many of its organising campaigns over the years. however, these masculine power-over community organising tactics proved ineffective in getting the local police to engage in implicit bias training, which was the goal of the organising campaign. haki leaders therefore used collective critical inquiry to interrogate the stalemate they found themselves in. through community-initiated and community-led participatory action research, both leaders and organisers (paid staff whose job is to organise a community) were able to step out of the organising blueprint they had been trained in. having dislodged themselves from the formulaic behaviours they were accustomed to, leaders and organizers were then faced with a newly constructed problem to strategize around. to the new formulation of the problem, they applied feminine relational power-with strategies, drawing on the repertoire of their religious rituals. this transformative paradigm shift (kuhn 1962) culminated in haki conducting implicit bias training with the police and achieving ongoing success towards police accountability. piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 in the section below, i highlight key aspects of alinsky-style organising and contrast that tradition with women-centred models of community organising in order to ground the midwife for power model in the literature. i then present a case study on police accountability in community organisng to illustrate the midwife for power model. in the last section, i present an analysis and identify emerging lessons. traditional organising model: confrontational power-over the principles and practices developed by saul alinsky in the late 1930s in the back of the yards neighbourhood of chicago have dominated the field of community organising in the united states. his vision for social change rested on polarising confrontational power based on the self-interests of neighbourhood residents to advance a public policy agenda (alinsky 1971, 1989; betten & austin 1990; schutz & miller 2015). alinsky argued that in order to organise a community, the organiser needed to ‘rub raw the resentments of the people of the community’ (alinsky 1971). mainstream community organising today follows alinsky’s tradition by focusing on the social inequity that needs to be changed and utilising instrumental and confrontational strategies to secure policy change (bobo et al. 1991; schutz & miller 2015). the parlance of the field, which is based in military language (fights, campaigns, allies, wins) reveals the inherent masculinity in this model. in this tradition, the expert knowledge of organisers (and allies in the campaign, such as lawyers, policy analysts and researchers) is prioritised. power is understood in terms of a zero-sum calculation and thus reflected in confrontational power-over tactics. perhaps the most influential organiser in the alinsky lineage is ernesto cortés. starting in the 1970s, cortés worked in san antonio, texas, using alinsky’s key principles to organise congregations across different faith traditions, laying a foundation for faith-based community organising in the u.s. while cortés emphasised ‘relational organizing’ (wood 2002) internally so that members of different faith traditions and community grassroots organisations could develop strong ties and trust (warren 2001), externally, he maintained the alinsky-style confrontational tactics when making demands of public officials or others holding official power. internal relational power is promoted only so participants can trust each other enough to engage in confrontational tactics (alinsky 1971; betten & austin, 1990; schutz & miller 2015). the focus is not to empower or develop individuals, but rather to create powerful community organisations that can win material gains for a given community (alinsky 1971; stall & stoecker 1998). in the u.s., alinsky is considered the father of community organising and his legacy still dominates the field in terms of training ideology and everyday strategies and tactics. women-led community organising: relational power-with while women in the u.s. organised their communities to advance social justice throughout the last century and a half, a distinctly feminine or woman-centred (stall & stoecker 2004) approach to the field of community organising was not written about until the 1970s and 1980s ( joseph et al. 1991; mizrahi 2007; stall & stoecker 1998). in 1989, women organisers came together for a three-day national women’s organising conference (education center for community organizing [ecco] 1990) and developed a framework for feminist organizing ( joseph et al. 1991), which still has significance but not complete resonance today (mizrahi 2007). according to this framework, the goals of feminist organising include: 1. creating a more democratic and egalitarian society; transforming society through the reduction of class, status, and power differentials. 2. meeting human needs through resource recovery and development that support the ecological balance of earth and universe. 3. eliminating sexism. 4. eliminating racism, ageism, homophobia, and discrimination against the disabled. piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 5. building community (cooperative economic, social, and political arrangements). 6. enhancing recognition and respect for diversity and differences (by color, class, sexual orientation, religion, age, ethnicity, and healing system). the framework also includes a detailed methodology to guide women in their community organising. the approach privileges (1) the democratic participation of community members through collective problem solving; (2) residents’ experiential knowledge and definition of the problem to be addressed; (3) process as important as end goals; and (4) consciousness-raising of individual community members. it sought to advance ‘unity and wholeness’ by emphasising ‘consensus, cooperation, collaboration, and coalition building’ (education center for community organizing [ecco] 1990). while the masculine/feminine dichotomy may be an oversimplification (garlington 2019), there are clear differences in these two models of community organising, of which power dynamics and epistemological questions are the clearest. perhaps the most fundamental distinction between masculine and feminine models of organising is the overarching goal. for women-centred organising, personal and community transformation is as, if not more, important than specific policy wins (garlington 2019; mizrahi & lombe 2006; stall & stoecker 1998). the importance of engaging in a democratic and inclusive participatory process reveals women organisers’ understanding of the nature of justice. stall and stoecker (1998) write, ‘women-centered organizers view justice not as a compromise between self-interested individuals but as practical reciprocity in a network of relationships that make up a community’. while power dynamics were not explicitly explored in the literature reviewed, they are implicit in the issues discussed. the nature of how change is understood as possible assumes the construction of community as an ever-expanding space of inclusion. furthermore, the aspirational vision of inclusive community presupposes power-with relations. of particular interest to the questions explored in this article are the epistemological assumptions in women’s organising. numerous scholars highlight the centrality of personal testimony in both constructing knowledge necessary for political activity (garlington 2019; fernandez et al. 2020) and developing deep relational bonds that promote trust and community (villenas 2019). villenas (2019) argues that ‘witnessing and testimonio were at the center of relational pedagogies that promoted relational politics’. fernandez et al. (2020) look to yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth framework to unpack the inherent power in women’s use of testimony. in this framework, ‘linguistic capital’ is one of the six forms of capital oppressed communities of colour use to build resilience and resistance. ‘linguistic capital’ includes the ‘culturally grounded modes of story-telling in oral histories’ (fernandez et al. 2020). this is in contrast to the alinsky model, which uses personal testimony as a strategic tool for confronting public officials and securing a policy win rather than as a means towards leadership development, personal and community empowerment, and ultimately, an epistemological shift away from expert knowledge to community knowledge. the strategies used in women-centred organising reflect a move from the moral framework of individual rights undergirding the alinsky model to an ethic of collective well-being (stall & stoecker 1998). thus, there is a focus on building trust and solidarity to promote the development of a strong community. while intentionally nurturing the collective, organisers also focus on developing the leadership of individuals. because leadership development is seen as the basis for collective wellbeing and power (guinier & torres 2000; harris 2010; isasi-diaz 1996; mellon charron 2012; ransby 2005), organisers acquire a long-term perspective when working for social justice since the time and resources needed to develop leadership in individuals are considerable (belensky, bond & weinstock 1997; dyrness 2008; gaventa 1980; gittell et al. 2000; isasi-diaz 1996). black and latina organisers and scholars have rejected the notion that there is one type of feminist organising and are expanding the vision of organising from one grounded in white feminism to one that leads with an intersectional lens and is open to communities in all their diversity (collins 1990; garlington piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 2019; gutierrez & lewis 1994; isasi-diaz 1996; hooks 2000; mizrahi & lombe 2006). villenas (2019) describes ‘creating race-conscious learning communities’ as central to movement building. given that, unlike the alinsky model that insists on having expert outsiders as organisers and privileged positional power, women-centred organising creates leadership development spaces and scaffolding for community members to emerge as leaders and become paid organisers. this is evident in the legacy of civil rights leader ella baker who believed everyone could become a leader and dedicated her work to the development of leaders among students in the student nonviolent coordinating committee (ransby 2005). this commitment enabled residents of colour to become their own community’s leaders. although scholarship focusing on women-centred community organising has increased over the past two decades, there are still few empirical examples of women-centred community organising informing theories in the field (mizrahi 2007). this article adds to the growing literature by expanding current theses to include collective critical inquiry and providing a case study of the application of womanist/mujerista community organising principles. midwife for power model – birthing transformational power-with in line with feminist scholars’ call for reflexivity (reinharz 1997), i will make my positionality explicit. as a latina immigrant, i have experienced the toxicity and violence of nativist, racist, anti-immigrant and anti-poor public policies since i arrived in the u.s. as a child. as an adult, i chose to become a community organiser because of my personal experiences, but also because of my moral and political worldview which is grounded in radical democracy. i have organised for social justice for over 25 years in numerous communities. as a result of the victories and failures, i have come to understand that my role is to be a creator of life-giving spaces where people can step into their power. over a decade ago, rooted in a vision of womanist/mujerista organising (fernandez 2020; mizrahi 2007; villenas 2019) and my birthing experiences with my three children, i began to identify myself as a midwife for knowledge, which evolved over time into a midwife for power (foucault 1980). few community organisers write about their work (mizrahi 2007). in this article, i share the lessons i have been constructing over the years as i engaged in womanist/mujerista organising strategies, which i call the midwife for power model. the midwife for power model challenges the eurocentric masculine white patriarchal capitalist logics of the alinsky/cortés organising tradition that uses confrontation and power-over (garza 2020; mizrahi 2007; stall & stoecker 2004). it is inspired by antiracist democratic logics characterised by trust, mutuality and reciprocity across lines of difference. in the ancient tradition of midwives, we have a useful metaphor. in many ways, midwives have been the protectors of the collective wisdom of women over thousands of years. this wisdom has ensured and maintained the life of our species. midwives teach, support, encourage, but they do not birth life. the mother does the labour. it is the mother who creates life. it’s painful. it’s dangerous. the labour does not always progress in a linear predictable fashion. and it’s really messy. through it all, the midwife is there to guide. she points to the light at the end of the tunnel. the midwife doesn’t try to speed up or control the process. she listens and identifies a mother’s strength. she leverages that strength to support the labour process. midwife and mother work as a team, trusting in one another. the work is organic. the result is a life-changing creation. so it is with birthing power. the organiser is there as a guide. she has to identify the strengths of the individuals and community she is working with and leverage them to advance an organising agenda/ campaign. by collectively labouring to imagine life-giving processes and just policies, people are able to experiment, to experience their agency, to understand themselves as powerful. but birthing power is not easy. it’s hard work. sometimes it’s painful, even dangerous. usually, a step forward is followed by multiple steps backwards. often, people do not believe they will be capable of their role in a campaign. they may not believe that they can create strategy or actually make a difference. they have been told, in many ways, that piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 they are not capable or intelligent. their dignity has been denied them so many times they cannot see their own power. the field of organising has long established strategies and tactics for campaigns. strategies and tactics can be charted on excel sheets, classified, interrogated and revised. but people’s power cannot be so easily systemised. it is neither linear nor predictable. it is born of an organic process that is life-giving and life-creating. it is the labour of a community. the midwife for power model is an example of women-centred organising (fernandez 2020; mellon charron 2012; ransby 2005; villenas 2019). however, it builds upon previous models of women-centred organising by insisting that people cannot fully enter their own power without engaging in collective critical inquiry. a review of the literature revealed that collective critical inquiry has not been identified as one of the key pillars of women-centred organising. i am not suggesting that critical inquiry does not occur in women-centred organising, but only that it has not been presented as a central element. the midwife for power model centres collective critical inquiry. here, i draw on the legacy of paolo freire (1974) and black women leaders of the civil rights movement, septima clark, (mellon charron 2012) and ella baker (ransby 2005), as well as gustavo gutierrez and his framework of liberation theology (1974; 1983). they all argued that every person has the capacity to interrogate their oppressions and analyse the world around them and the texts of their cultural traditions. moreover, they argued that lasting social change requires the action of those most impacted by social inequalities. while the notion that every person can think and act for themselves may seem basic and commonly accepted, i have met few practitioners in the field, whether community organisers or social workers, whose actions reflect this reality (mcknight 1996). the midwife for power is predicated on an unwavering commitment to the innate rational capacity of people regardless of the opportunities they have had for formal schooling. it is also committed to creating spaces and processes that allow individuals to collectively interrogate and critique the injustice they have experienced and then imagine and co-create a vision of liberation and strategies to advance that vision (christens, tran-inzeo & faust 2014). to this end, the midwife for power uses community-led participatory action research as the primary tool to maintain spaces for collective critical inquiry. stall and stoecker (2004) have suggested that there is a need for an ‘integrated humanist’ model that moves beyond masculine and feminine modes of community organising. while there is merit in this call, i have found that the metaphor of the midwife for power provides clarity about the role of the organiser (a guide) and the purpose of organising (power). the midwife for power decentres the organiser. the case study below describes the implementation of the midwife for power model. case study: a police accountability campaign haki is a network of 40 christian and jewish congregations that organises for racial and economic justice. it is led by a latina immigrant with a staff of black, latina and jewish women. in the fall of 2014, motivated by the murder of michael brown in ferguson, missouri, about a hundred black, latino and white haki leaders met to discuss police misconduct in their city. after black and latino leaders shared stories of being stopped by police when driving for no apparent reason and being subjected to excessive use of force, the membership reached consensus that the organisation would embark on a campaign to hold the police accountable. an interracial steering committee of women and men clergy and lay leaders was established to design the campaign. after learning from each other’s stories of interactions with the police and studying research about police misconduct, the steering committee decided that an implicit bias training for the police would be the first campaign goal. leaders invited a former state police officer who conducts implicit bias trainings for police departments across the state to present to the committee, who would then compare what they had heard to the highly successful model used in oakland, california (https://www.coalitionforpoliceaccountability.com), piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 https://www.coalitionforpoliceaccountability.com which posits that implicit bias trainings are most effective when police officers and community members receive training together. in the first months of 2015, a small group of clergy had an initial meeting with the police chief. at that meeting, they presented the experiences of leaders of colour routinely being pulled over while driving, without legitimate cause, and of excessive use of force. the police chief questioned the stories, claiming that there were no specific facts to support the allegations of racial profiling carried out by the police department. in response to the clergy’s request that the police conduct an implicit bias training together with leaders, the police chief argued that they followed all the state requirements on police training, which included issues of racism, and did not need to conduct any additional training since there wasn’t a problem to solve. the clergy presented research from a local university professor (hakstian 2014) that supported the anecdotal evidence they had shared, positioning the city in the worst top ten in the state for police racial profiling. the police chief countered that his own data demonstrated that the police department did not racially profile individuals. because the murder of michael brown had ignited a growing social movement, #blacklivesmatter, the police chief made reference to the events in ferguson and stated that inferences were being made that portrayed all police officers everywhere as racist and biased. it was a contentious first meeting. through conversations with the aclu, the u.s.’s premier civil rights organisation, leaders learned that the reason for the discrepancy in the research findings was that the police department’s data on traffic stops used the city’s population as its universe, while hakstian’s (2014) research compared traffic stops to the driving population of the city. the latter is considered best practice given the low levels of car ownership among low-income people of colour. the leaders realised that debates regarding methodological approaches to quantitative data collection and analysis only served to deepen the stalemate, so they decided to systematically collect stories from residents about being racially profiled and/or the victim of excessive use of force at the hands of the police using a participatory action research framework. an initial training with 60 leaders was conducted by haki’s executive director. the key challenge was to get leaders to understand themselves as researchers. over the next several months, haki held follow-up research meetings/trainings in four black congregations and one latino congregation because leaders had decided to hold interviews at their congregations. however, leaders faced difficulties finding respondents for interviews. the steering committee met to address the problem and realised that the population most often targeted by police, young black and latino men, were not typically church-goers, so the group realised that outreach within congregations would not be enough. meanwhile, the clergy group succeeded in getting the police chief to agree to attend a public assembly hosted by haki at the baptist church. the steering committee planned the meeting using the traditional alinsky/cortés-style tactic, a public accountability session, which is a key part of the community organising repertoire, in which community members present testimony and research and then ask for commitment from a public official. a week before this planned meeting, the police chief backed out of the public assembly because he did not approve of the flyer which said, ‘please attend – we need to fill the church to show our power!’ the steering committee decided to hold the public meeting anyway to highlight the police chief ’s decision not to attend. at the meeting, people brainstormed strategies for the research and identified locations for potential respondents: barber shops and basketball courts. subsequently, the police chief agreed to reschedule a meeting with the community for the following month as long as the agenda and questions to be posed were given to him ahead of time. leaders presented several testimonies of racial profiling and excessive use of force from the data being collected through the participatory action research project. leaders also presented research on best practices for effective implicit bias training of law enforcement. after the presentations, a black woman minister and member of the steering committee asked three questions: piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 1. given what we have heard about the most effective results for implicit bias training, will you implement implicit bias training across all levels of your department, from command staff to regular officers? 2. will you include leaders from haki congregations in the implicit bias training to ensure the best impact of the training? 3. will you work with haki to develop a strong partnership that will be mutually beneficial by developing trust and respect between the community and the police department through ongoing communication, meetings, joint trainings, and joint projects? in response, the police chief said that they were complying with all state-mandated anti-bias trainings and did not see the need to go beyond that. according to the alinsky/cortés model of community organising, when the target of a campaign refuses to agree to the demands of the community, the community group should escalate their political pressure tactics by designing increasingly confrontational tactics until the target of the campaign relents and gives in to the demands of the community, thus, reinforcing the power-over paradigm of that organising model. although the campaign had not been successful, the training in participatory action research and the interviews that leaders conducted during the summer months promoted a culture of collective critical inquiry. to reflect on the failure, haki held a meeting of about 30 leaders. leaders used the question formulation technique – qft (rothstein & santana 2011), a strategy from the right question institute, to interrogate the police chief ’s decision. over the course of two hours through two rounds of question generation (brainstorming exclusively in questions) and prioritising questions, the group arrived at a set of key questions to guide the work forward. in january 2016, the steering committee met to create an action plan based on the questions that were prioritised the month before. as the group discussed and debated, a question, which had been identified as a priority question, but had not survived the process of elimination, caught the team’s attention: instead of trying to get the police to hold an implicit bias training and inviting ourselves to it, why don’t we just hold an implicit bias training and invite the police to our training? this question shifted the campaign goal 180 degrees. using this question, the steering committee began to strategise in a way that turned the campaign goal on its head but kept previous tactics of sharing testimonies and presenting research. the committee asked themselves what testimonies would they give to ask the police to come to haki’s implicit bias training? quickly, the committee realised that leaders would testify to the many ways they had internalised bias and racism. then they would present research on the benefits of implicit bias training and offer a specific trainer to conduct the training. in april 2016, unlike previous large public accountability sessions in black congregations, a group of 25 haki leaders met at a white catholic church with the police chief, his deputy and six officers of colour. the meeting was led by a black woman minister from an a.m.e. church. after introductions, three leaders, a white woman, who was a retired emergency room psychiatric nurse and member of the catholic church, a black man, a jamaican-immigrant baptist minister, and a latina immigrant from another catholic church shared personal stories of occasions in which they had acted, unintentionally, in racist ways and concluded by acknowledging they had implicit biases that needed to be uprooted and exposed. once the testimonies were over, a black male leader presented research on the benefits of training that enabled people to see their implicit biases, making it possible for them to overcome those biases. then, the black woman who was facilitating the meeting said: we know the haki membership will benefit from an implicit bias training and we think the police department would benefit as well. will you join us and attend the training? piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 to our shock, the police chief said, ‘yes, of course’! then the chief also agreed to assign a police captain to work with the trainer, a nationally recognized facilitator whose services had been secured, on developing the implicit bias training, and offered several possible dates for the training. the meeting ended and most people, haki leaders and police officers, stayed for over 20 minutes mingling and chatting. the next day, the police chief called haki’s executive director and said, “that was a great meeting last night. i have an idea. let’s make it easy. instead of having to figure out where to have the training and getting the police there, why don’t we just have it at the police station and you can all come to us? the executive director responded, “that’s a great idea. let’s do that.” when leaders heard about the call, they responded, “that is exactly what we have been asking for since the beginning – for almost a year and a half !” the implicit bias training took place in july at the police headquarters. in addition to the entire command staff, 22 captains and the police chief, 75 haki leaders participated in the training. of key importance was creating an opportunity for police and community members to be in dialogue to promote understanding across their respective positionalities. at the end of the training, a journalist from the local newspaper arrived. he talked to a small group of participants. in that conversation, the police chief referred to having had a difficult ‘rocky’ start with haki, but after a ‘great meeting in april’, the training was made possible. after the police chief characterised the process several times using those words, haki’s executive director asked the chief, ‘you mentioned having a rocky start and then having a great meeting in april. what happened at the meeting in april to make today possible?’ the police chief responded quickly, ‘that’s easy. you saw us as human beings.’ analysis and emerging lessons in the u.s., the divide between the police and the community is seen as an intractable problem (garza 2020). in this case, collective critical inquiry through community based participatory action researh (cbpar) and the qft methodology led to innovation because they motivated participants to employ collaborative power-with strategies to build community internally to the public arena with the police. what is extraordinary about this is that it required a complete reorientation to the training and experience they had about the tactics necessary to win organising campaigns. in the end, this is a story of community transformation, even if it is partial and time-limited. it gave participants a glimpse of what is possible. the innovation expanded leaders’ notions of community and leveraged personal testimony through radical vulnerability. moving from us and them to we – power-with strategies in seeking to find common ground across differences in faith traditions, race and class (collins & bilge 2016), organisers leveraged haki’s 40 member congregation’s long-standing commitment to creating community within their congregation. the centrality of community building and bonding social capital (putnam 2001) to congregational life cannot be underestimated as a variable in understanding the way power is understood in relational terms for internal community organising. organisers built upon this deep-seated ethic of community (belensky, bond & weinstock 1999) to develop solidarity across faith, race and class differences (collins & bilge 2016). as putnam (2001) argues, bonding social capital is necessary for nurturing bridging social capital. faith-based organisers understand the work of building solidarity and a common agenda across faith, race and class lines (bridging social capital) as central to building internal organisational power that will enable the organisation to advance a social change agenda (warren 2001; wood 2002). concretely, organisers worked to promote interfaith solidarity by using sacred texts that highlight the primacy of working for justice (gutierrez 1973), whether it be economic justice, such as the jubilee year (isaiah 61:1-2), or welcoming immigrants (leviticus 19:33-34). arriving at a common ethical vision piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 leads to the development of what delehanty and oyakawa (2018) refer to as moral imaginary, an ethical framework that links people’s troubles to collective action. birthing a moral imaginary required nurturing trust and mutuality as well as an understanding that a collective moral vision, a moral imaginary, is power. power that is relational: power-with not power-over. in addition to creating bridging social capital (putnam 2001), stories or ethics from sacred texts can be wielded to change public opinion and the positions of public officials (braunstein 2017). haki’s jurisdiction spans an entire county, which includes wealthy white suburban communities as well as cities with significant populations of colour, so the membership represents the racial and class diversity of the region. the economic inequality and racial segregation that characterises this county (rothstein 2017) has been addressed by haki’s organisers promoting meaningful relationships across race and class and by training on shared scriptural principles (swarts 2011). this organisational objective is understood as intersectional power-building (collins & bilge 2016; crenshaw 1989). these commitments to the value of community and shared scriptural understandings of social justice mandates created enough bridging capital in the form of interracial and interclass trust and social/political will to come to consensus on working on police accountability after the murder of michael brown. once the campaign entered the public sphere, the feminine power-with strategies of interfaith, interracial and interclass solidarity were put aside. instead, dichotomous thinking of us and them replaced a sense of community. moreover, the us and them division was not deployed neutrally. rather, it was laden with moral/ ethical meaning. haki organisers and leaders understood themselves as the righteous, upholding the moral north star, passing judgment on the police who represented immoral unethical behaviour. the categories of victims and villains permeated the thinking. this strategy was used intentionally. faith-based organisers are trained in the methodology developed by ernie cortés (warren 2001), which proffers the idea of moral power as a strategy for moving public officials. from william wilberforce’s 18th century abolitionist movement (metaxas 2009) through the 1950s and 1960s’ civil rights movement for racial justice (branch 1989), many social movements for such justice have deployed the strategy that frames racial justice as a moral issue rather than just a political or policy issue. however, after a year and a half of the power-over tactic of wielding the high moral ground, it was clear the tactic was counterproductive. in addition, the haki organisers deployed a racial analytic lens to all its interactions with the police chief. following the thinking of guinier and torres (2000), they trained leaders in the concept of race as a diagnostic tool to understand racism as structural and not simply interpersonal. by looking at the experience of people of colour with the police, one could understand policing as a structural problem. in other words, the problem was not, as the police chief kept suggesting, one of ‘a few bad eggs’ ruining it for the rest of the police force; rather, the root of the problem was inherent in the structures, systems, policies and practices of contemporary u.s. policing. in addition, haki’s positionality in wielding arguments and actions grounded in a moral high ground underpinned a confrontational strategy that challenged police conduct by implicitly questioning the morality of police as individuals, as well as the very core of policing structures and culture in the city, and not just the isolated conduct of a handful of officers. these masculine adversarial strategies were in line with alinsky-style community organising models, but these methods did not work with the police, which became increasingly evident over the course of a year and a half of community organising. tactics of personal testimony transformed into a ritual of ‘public confession’ the leaders interrogated the stalemate using collective critical inquiry through the qft and thus birthed innovation. as leaders began to develop the agenda for holding an implicit bias training themselves instead of the police, they moved into a phase of introspection and acknowledgement of their own externalised racism on the part of white leaders and internalised racism on the part of leaders of colour (people’s center for survival and beyond – https://pisab.org). this process of self-interrogation dislodged the masculine piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 https://pisab.org power-over methods that had wielded an unexamined moral high ground and ongoing moral gaze (foucault 1975). as leaders planned the meeting with the police, they employed the tactics they were accustomed to using at public accountability meetings – personal testimonies. the testimonies of the varied ways their actions exhibited racism shifted from previous testimonies of being victimised by police misconduct to ways in which they also participated in perpetuating racism in the community. furthermore, for some leaders, this act of naming participation in what they considered ‘an evil’ was, at least unconsciously, grounded in religious traditions of confessing one’s sins, whether to community members or to their god. in this way, leaders continued the custom of leveraging the repertoire of religious ritual to advance their political agenda. they understood that a solution to the problem they were addressing required participation of all stakeholders because, as people of faith, they believe in the interconnectedness of people. in other words, the process of planning a meeting with the police chief that would argue that everyone participates in racism (kendi 2019) enabled leaders to apply the principle that they used routinely to build feminine relational power-with across lines of difference. the shift also allowed leaders to see police officers as working-class people who, in many ways, were affected by societal injustices as well. they thus moved from seeing police as ‘the other’ to seeing them as members of the same community, at the very least in geographic terms. this is not to say that leaders forgave or now dismissed police misconduct, but rather that they could see the police as members of the community. when the police chief reviewed this case study, he commented on the alinksy model saying, ‘it’s very confrontational and forces the sides apart even further’. he added that the implicit bias training was made possible because ‘both sides “deescalated” themselves, saw the problem from a broader perspective, and began to listen to each other instead of trying to push a one-sided perspective from either direction.’ radical vulnerability the idea of acknowledging, admitting or confessing the ‘sin’ of racism to the police chief was a form of radical vulnerability. it was not only admitting fault, but it was conceding that they were also ‘guilty’ of the very issue they had been accusing the police department of, albeit without the physical violence. by making themselves vulnerable, the leaders were able to argue, logically, that they needed implicit bias training. and by extension, the logic they utilised made it clear that everyone needed implicit bias training, including the police. this use of public vulnerability in front of public authority is counter to the theory and practices of alinsky-style community organising that posits power-over tactics to bring the apparatus of the state to acquiesce to the demands of the community. public demonstrations of vulnerability or complicity in any sense would usually be considered an exhibition of weakness in male-oriented paradigms of community organising. yet, it was this feminine model of power that allowed for the exhibition of vulnerability that, in fact, disarmed the police chief and his officers in this campaign and led them to agree to implicit bias training. it is an example of the power of collective moral reimagining (delehanty & oyakawa 2018). in summary, the innovations made by leaders to birth feminine power-with in the public sphere were: (1) enlarging their definition of community to include the local police; (2) engaging in a ritual of ‘public confession’ as one leader put it; and (3) employing radical vulnerability. these innovations transformed the campaign, not only through having the police chief say, ‘that’s easy. you saw us as human beings’, but also a year later, in his newly elected position as sheriff, saying at the local mosque on the annual open mosque day, ‘raise your hand if you have implicit bias. you should all be raising your hand because we all have implicit bias. i learned that from haki.’ those powerful and far-reaching innovations were possible because organisers (1) nurtured a community characterised by intersectional solidarity and mutuality; (2) believed in the innate problem-solving capacities of leaders; and (3) trained those leaders to engage in collective critical inquiry. furthermore, the impact of this work not only changed the thinking and actions of one police chief but has enabled an ongoing piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 relationship with the police department to address racism in the police and the city. in effect, this campaign redrew the social boundaries of the power dynamics (howard 2000 in dworski-riggs & day-langhout 2010) that existed between the community and the police. ongoing impacts of the police accountability campaign the womanist/mujerista community organising vision of mutuality and community transformation is evident in the outcomes, both internal and external, that emerged from the police accountability campaign. the table below outlines the impacts of haki’s organising. date externally – police internally – haki 2016 haki trains all of the command staff of the police department and 75 community members together. haki leaders engage in a six-month series of small interracial study groups over pot-luck dinner, culminating in a three-day antiracism retreat. 2017 at open mosque day, the police chief acknowledges having implicit bias and encourages everyone to acknowledge it as well. haki unifies its criminal legal system reform and immigration policy reform work into a joint analysis of mass incarceration in both systems as it builds deeper solidarity across race, nationality and faith tradition. 2019 haki leads anti-racism training for every police officer through one-on-one conversations between police officers and community members. haki institutionalises a core strategy team of black and latino leaders to guide all campaign decision-making. 2020 haki organises the city’s first hearing on racism with three hours of testimonies. city agrees to the establishment of a committee to explore the possibility of an unarmed crisis response team. haki leaders organise several marches and vigils to stand in solidarity with the community in minneapolis after the murder of george floyd. haki leaders join statewide campaign for state-level police reform. 2021 police department agrees to officers wearing body cameras while on duty. mayor accepts the community’s proposal for an unarmed crisis response team and allocates $500,000 for its implementation. haki begins a new participatory action research project to explore alternative economic structures to build black and latino economic power. limitations this article represents the experiences of haki organisers and leaders, both clergy and lay members. the board of the organisation gave permission to write about their organising. the police chief read and approved the case study, making a few suggestions. since he was not available to be interviewed for this article, there is no information on the variables at play internally at the police department. however, in 2016, the police chief announced he would run for sheriff, an elected position, a month after the april meeting during which he agreed to the implicit bias training. clearly, his decision to run for public office had to be part of the calculus when he agreed to have the police department participate in the implicit bias training. it is not clear if he would have made the same decision had he not been about to run for sheriff. piñeros shields gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 on the other hand, the police department, after his departure, continued to work with haki as is shown in the table above. in addition, it is impossible to know whether or not the power-with model would have produced a successful outcome if it had not been preceded by power-over confrontational methods. however, it does seem unlikely that a small interfaith community organisation would be able to out powerover the police. another variable at play during the course of this campaign was the national movement known as black lives matter (blm). this movement injected a powerful critique of policing in the u.s. into the public discourse. the strength and pervasiveness of this movement across the country had an impact on police departments. the chief of police referred to blm in one of the early meetings with clergy, saying that he would rather work with haki than with the blm people on the streets. haki organisers reasoned that their work might not have been possible without the conditions created by the blm movement, which created a sense of urgency for police reform at all levels of government throughout the nation. conclusion the midwife for power model seeks to create the conditions for people who have been oppressed or marginalised to birth their own power and advance communal transformation. some of the essential elements for promoting the birth of power or what could be called the midwife for power toolkit include: (1) unconditional belief in the innate intelligence/power of every human being; (2) an unwavering commitment to the idea that people are liberated only through their own agency; (3) creativity in designing spaces and strategies that enable people to use their life experiences to make meaning and move into action; (4) fostering of solidarity and mutuality across lines of difference; and (5) engaging in collective critical inquiry as a way 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open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: nkatha, m 2020. centring knowledge democracy within policymaking for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7107. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.7107 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article centring knowledge democracy within policymaking for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands nkatha mercy ms training centre for development cooperation – actionaid denmark, p.o. box 254, usa river, arusha, tanzania. corresponding author: nkatha mercy; nkatham@gmail.com doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7107 article history: received 02/02/2019; revised 23/04/2019; accepted 06/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract culture, environment and, therefore, knowledge of socioeconomic constructs are intricately interwoven. over the past decade or two, pastoralists without formal education in kenyan drylands have increasingly found themselves on the receiving end of community empowerment trainings that lean towards human–wildlife conflict and environmental conservation. why would research entities set aside mega budgets to teach the pastoralist about human–wildlife conflict? a pastoralist who has long roamed drylands with his livestock grazing alongside elephants and lions, and whose major life transition ceremonies, celebrations, songs, riddles, proverbs, sayings, poetry and jokes fundamentally feature wildlife. what makes these trainings in ‘imparting knowledge’ superior to the ‘indigenous knowledge’ already in the custody of the borana or the turkana or the rendile? this article explores the relevance of community-based knowledges in addressing sustainable development and climate resilience, as articulated by the sustainable development goals (sdgs). the specific setting for this discussion is the kenyan drylands, which are central to the achievement of the sdg agenda given that they constitute 84 percent of kenya’s total land surface. they also host up to 75 percent of kenya’s wildlife population, account for more than 80 percent of the country’s eco-tourism interests and support about 9.9 million kenyans, or approximately 34 percent of the kenyan population. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7107 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7107 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:nkatham@gmail.com http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7107 today, the drylands are impoverished, deficient for both humans and nature. their vulnerability to disasters is amplified, while their resilience to shocks is greatly weakened, a situation made worse by climate change. to understand the importance of community-based knowledges within policy making for sustainability and resilience, this article examines in detail epistemological, social, historical, political and environmental factors converging on the kenyan drylands, as well as the opportunity to address this complexity that the sdgs represent. keywords: drylands, policy, knowledge democracy, resilience, sustainable development goals introduction this article focuses on the need for community-based knowledge to be truly situated at the heart of any attempt to achieve equitable and sustainable development. it discusses the sustainable development goals (sdgs) and how they envision integration of indigenous knowledge within policy and institutional frameworks rooted in euroamerican ways of knowing that are tasked with guiding environmental governance in drylands. by demonstrating, in part, how community knowledge in drylands is organised towards environmental resilience, the article proposes making room for knowledge democracy as a potential means towards building climate change resilience for a people situated within a complex, variable environmental and ecological setting. it also briefly looks at what social responsibility for the sdgs could look like for higher education in kenya. the specific setting of this discussion is the kenyan drylands, which have been plagued by a history of social, political and epistemological neglect and wilful ignorance. the thoughts in this article are the author’s own, based on living in kenya and implementing human development interventions there. the author coordinates unesco’s knowledge for change (k4c) hub based in arusha, tanzania, known as nyerere k4c hub. this is part of a global consortium that seeks to build community-based participatory research capacity to address locally pressing societal challenges, including the un sdgs, while providing a unique interface between higher education, science and policy-making institutions. the first section of this article takes a general look at drylands as part of a global natural ecosystem and then focuses on drylands as they exist in kenya and the ecological and human development challenges within them. the second part looks at the sdgs and interrogates their call to ‘leave no one behind’ against the capacity and capability of traditionally marginalised dryland communities to meaningfully engage with them, specifically with regard to data, relevant knowledge for research production, and dissemination and application of research findings to dryland community development challenges. the third part is an examination of where we are at present with regard to contestations in knowledge production that shapes local development policy vis-a-vis the futuristic endeavour to leave no one behind by the year 2030. it is also an attempt to bring into focus and to showcase how community knowledges can be used to inform sustainable development. the final section of this article is a reflection on how the academy in kenya can move forward and begin to reorient their teaching and learning towards pedagogies that inculcate the country’s intangible heritage as part of their social responsibility in higher education for sustainable development. nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 drylands drylands occur in every continent. they are some of the world’s most diverse biomes by way of plant and animal diversity and microbial and soil communities, and they exhibit high levels of genetic differentiation among populations, making them of paramount importance to ecological multifunctionality, ecosystem goods and services, and human development (maestre et al. 2012; maestre et al. 2016; safriel et al. 2005; white, tunstall & henninger 2002). characterised by high variability in rainfall over space and time, drylands are considered arid when they have a ratio of annual precipitation to potential evapotranspiration that ranges between 0.05 and 0.065 (aridity index). they are classified into four categories based on rainfall: dry sub-humid, semi-arid, arid and hyperarid (see figure 1). almost 100 percent of all hyperarid lands are in the developing world. they comprise about 40 percent of the earth’s land area, including north, eastern and southern africa, western north america, australia, middle east and central asia. they are home to about 2.7 billion people and they sequester more than one-third of the global carbon stock (mcsweeney 2019; unep 2011). figure 1 global patterns of aridity 1981–2010 (eu 2019) given these environmental and climatic realities, the primary economic function of drylands is rangeland. the society for range management defines rangelands as lands that produce a kind of vegetation that only animals can consume and that can be converted into products beneficial to humans; lands that are not suitable for sustained cultivation; and lands incapable of supporting arborescent forests (squires 2010). the human adaptation of rangeland management is pastoralism. pastoralism is the opportunistic response to the spatial and temporal variations of the drylands’ resource base (wit & verheye 2009) and it is this that necessitates the characteristic pastoral–nomadic movement. it is an extensive land use system that often facilitates cohabitation with wildlife, including large mammals, and one that hinges upon a sophisticated understanding of interactions between man, land and animals. because it is an extensive land use system, the pastoralist land tenure bedrock has historically been communal: open pasture and open access to water points encompassed within a very robust rangeland governance system. this is the first important inflection point in this discussion. as mentioned earlier, pastoralism contributes to ecosystem services such as biodiversity centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 conservation, soil fertility and water regulation (mcgahey et al. 2018). for these reasons, drylands ought to be a significant part of multi-level conversations and research focus on human-centred development. this also makes them significant to conversations on the sdgs and knowledge democracy. consistently, drought is the highest disaster risk in drylands across africa by way of those affected, those killed and economic damage (preventionweb 2020). while droughts are endemic to drylands, global climate change has exacerbated their frequency, intensity and geospatial coverage in recent years. the images in figure 2 show a comparative analysis of precipitation/drought data in the african continent. figure 2 maps of the african continent comparing drought/rainfall patterns between 1910–11 and 1979–2010 (masih et al. 2014). drylands and the pastoralists within them are among the most marginalised areas and people in society. their endowments and entitlements greatly hamper their capabilities. about kenyan drylands according to the latest world bank figures (2018), in sub-saharan africa where kenya is situated, 60 percent of the population is rural, as opposed to urban or modern (as defined by the world bank). given some of the characteristics of an indigenous community, as identified by the un, we can say that most of what drives everyday life in rural africa is indigenous: distinct languages, distinct culture, distinct beliefs, exclusion of most indigenous inhabitants from dominant groups of society, historical continuity of pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies etc. (un, n.d.) in kenya, 84 percent of the total land surface is drylands. so not only is the country rural, it is also characterised by drylands (see figure 3). they account for more than 80 percent of the country’s eco-tourism interests, up to 75 percent of its wildlife population and over 75 percent of the country’s meat and milk production, and they support about 9.9 million kenyans, or approximately 34 percent of the country’s population (gok 2012b; mortimore et al. 2009). nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 figure 3 kenyan drylands (gok 2012a) kenyan drylands register the highest incidence of poverty, the lowest indicators of development and the deepest regional inequalities with regard to access to basic public services (gok 2012a). this is a function of an ironic perception of and attitude towards drylands as unproductive wastelands and pastoralism as an outdated mode of economic production, as well as the long shadow of kenya’s history – the persistence of colonial policy and institutions in arid and semi-arid lands (asals). we shall explore this further later in this article. while asals clearly play a significant role in the kenyan landscape, rainfed agriculture is considered the backbone of the kenyan economy. not all kenyan drylands are created equal. northern kenya arid lands, in particular, are isolated and insecure and suffer from weak economic integration and limited political leverage. in addition, they host two of the largest refugee camps in the world and 18 of the 20 poorest constituencies in kenya, where 74–97 percent of pastoralists live below the poverty line (gok 2012b). poverty, inequality and underdevelopment, which are prevalent here, are known to translate into increased vulnerability to the effects of global climate change, often leading to starvation and death of both people and livestock. this intersection of variables clearly poses an enormous challenge to overall human development and raises economic and environmental concerns, all of which are what the sdgs are dedicated to addressing. further, they touch on the triple p pillars of development (people, planet and profit) and, additionally, threaten peace centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 and global partnerships. it is these concerns that the sdgs seek to address in their rallying call to ‘leave no one behind’. the question, here, of whether to pursue alternative ways of knowing towards attaining the sdgs in kenyan drylands is borne of contemplation of the very poor development policy outcomes thus far for pastoralists and drylands, as outlined above. the long shadow of institutions responsible for kenyan dryland development interventions, overwhelmingly operating from within euroamerican epistemological frameworks, is illuminated here in an effort to demonstrate the need to understand their continuing influence and potential to short-circuit the aspirations of the sdgs. sdgs: challenges and opportunities for dryland community knowledge a number of sdgs and targets are strongly linked to land and the role of traditional knowledge, indigenous people, pastoralists, local communities and culture. they include sdg 15 – life on land; sdg 1 – no poverty; sdg 2 – zero hunger; sdg 4 – quality education; and sdg 13 – climate action (general assembly 2015; un 2020). notable is the explicit mention of indigenous people, culture, pastoralists, local communities and traditional knowledge within 5 out of 17 sdgs. community knowledge becomes a fundamental asset in this context, given its wealth of understanding of how to navigate drylands, including the use of tools, technologies, skills, capacities, culture and social organisation that have allowed pastoralists to thrive in drylands since time immemorial. however, the sdgs are data intensive. while references are made to indigenous peoples’ culture and traditional knowledge as contributing to sustainable development, as per the curated sdgs above, the sdg global policy framework has elevated the centrality of metrics (costanza et al 2016; el-maghrabi et al. 2018; holden, linnerud & bannister 2014; miola & schiltz 2019; steve 2016). the sdg global policy further frames development challenges as technical and thereby situates the power to address them in field knowledge experts who can measure and evaluate according to set parameters. this, according to fisher and fukuda-parr (2019), shows how the agency of people is undermined, especially taking into consideration the infrastructure of measurement. the challenge for dryland community knowledge here is that a majority of pastoralists are not sufficiently educated in a formal/western-style classroom. in fact, most are illiterate, and in abiding by the standard for measuring and evaluating the sdgs, they are therefore unqualified to engage as they cannot be plausibly labelled field knowledge experts. merry (2019, p. 2) defines the infrastructure of measurement as being ‘the material and technological basis of deciding what to count, how to count it, and how to analyze and present the data’. she further postulates that this infrastructure of measurement is a function of the material objects for data collection and analysis, the social organisation of expertise, bureaucracies, hierarchies of management and funding sources, and a knowledge system about ways of converting ideas about social life into numbers (emphasis mine). this is a nod at the reification of knowledge. it is also, inherently, a power and political process. viewed through this lens, dryland community knowledge becomes difficult to inject into this ontology of knowledge production and measurement. the framework outlined above does not auger well for a people whose social construct is based on the concept of interdependence and social organisation premised on: olla fi dudan dhabatu – the village(rs) is the backbone that makes you stand straight. at a macro level, there is the unequal distribution of and access to development data between the global north and the global south, between public and private actors, and between international development actors and local civil society. questions about whose data, how it is collected and analysed, who participates in its collection and analysis, and how it nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 gets disseminated, and by whom, all deserve enquiry. similarly, at a micro level, this tension is replicated by the dichotomy between research hypothesis and the application of academic theories and knowledge in development of dryland policy interventions and the everyday practice and application of community-based knowledge, which is variously labelled by academia and those at the macro level as being local or indigenous or traditional or cultural. pastoralist knowledge and its application to dryland management i would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones i set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past—with all its imperfections—was not one long night of savagery from which the first europeans acting on god’s behalf delivered them. (chinua achebe, ‘the novelist as a teacher’, 1965.) the sdgs decade of action presents an important opportunity to centre knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience in kenyan drylands. given the convergence of present-day disadvantages in (kenyan) drylands, and their history of sociopolitical, economic and epistemological neglect, actors in the development space must reflect on: what ought to be the role of community knowledges towards attaining these goals? are pastoralists’ ways of knowing and being relevant to sustainable development? in as much as it concerns higher education, how should community knowledge intersect with academia to shape government policy for expanding pastoralists’ capabilities? put simply, moving forward, who’s knowledge counts? we begin the discussion by revisiting the first inflection point in this article: the bedrock of the pastoralist dryland tenure system and its economic and sociopolitical base: communal rangeland management. communal rangeland management is characterised by open grazing land access, open water points access within a well structured system of governance, and a succinct understanding of the interaction between man, nature and animals. mounting scientific research evidence shows that livestock and human mobility in drylands is the best adaptation to and the most productive use of the asal environment as it is linked to pastoralists’ ability to manage risk and uncertainty (behnke & muthami 2011; behnke & scoones 1993; dyer 2013; homewood 2008; jode 2010; scoones 2018). just the fact that the practice of pastoralism has persisted to date is telling evidence that it is indeed the best adaptation to asal management. tied to communal rangeland management is pastoralists’ interaction with nature and the environment by way of their cohabitation with livestock, basic wildlife and large mammals. this interaction is centred on everyday practice and application of knowledge by communities and hinges upon a sophisticated understanding of interactions between man, land and animals. pastoralists’ community management of this cohabitation is tightly woven into the fabric of their culture – how they make meaning out of their environment, which in turn is a function of their language, how they name things, how they name places, how they name themselves. in essence, it is an epistemology that derives from being, because their land is. it results in a knowledge that proceeds from this reality and is encapsulated in the inclusion of livestock and wildlife in major life transition ceremonies, celebrations, songs, riddles, proverbs, sayings, poetry, jokes – the full gamut of most of africa’s oral tradition. it manifests in dryland political and socioeconomic constructs, which include concrete cultural commitments to protect the environment. the result is environmental sustainability. centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 polycarp (ikuenobe 2014) invites us to consider that africans’ epistemological view is fundamentally experientialist and that african ontology blurs the distinction between object and subject, so that the observer cannot escape responding to it. what this translates into is a merging of the natural, the supernatural, the spiritual and the sacred as spirits that dwell in forests and rivers, hence the need to take care of them; and totems that protect, herbs that heal and sacrifices that appease, hence the need to do well by your goats and sheep. contrasted with the anthropocentric approach, culture is a biocentric approach (nature as an end in itself, respected for its own sake: sacred, divine, in harmony with humans, and with an inherent moral worth which derives from its role in cosmic and ontological order and its moral and religious primacy). this approach was geared towards a harmonious interaction of all things in nature. loss of harmony would bring about illness or drought. seen from this orientation, magic and mysticism were not efforts to overcome separation of man from nature; rather, they were to restore balance and harmony between man and the universe (abungu et al. 2009; gathogo n.d.; ikuenobe 2014; sone 2014; ssozi 2012; teresa & raga 2018). in addition, and as noted earlier, most pastoralist communities had an expansive clan-based system of rangeland governance, complete with language subsets, across the different functionings of the rangeland. for instance, there was language and governing rules around watering different types of livestock and wild animals, movement from one pasture ecosystem to another, access to wetland reserves, etc. women deserve honorary mention, being the primary custodians of food, food production and food security. women understood the diversity of food plant species (everyday, domestic, wild and contingency), organic farming, storage and household waste management. firewood, being a central cog in the food custody space, inherently meant that forest and vegetation conservation was also a key function performed by women. firewood was gathered from the forest floor and from specific trees, and trees were never cut down to provide fuelwood, hence the language frame of “collecting” firewood. these understandings were passed on through stories, riddles and jokes around an evening fire and a pot of food, sometimes served on the palm of a child’s hand. the use of a hand as a plate and; clay, palm fronds and swamp reeds to construct everyday household items ensured that they would be reintegrated in nature (or recycled in the case of clay) once they got to their end of use. the practice of thatching a manyatta by pastoralists, used grass that goat kids and calves could eat before they got strong enough to go to pasture with the rest of the herd. the use of thatch and mud was/is an architectural aesthetic, ensuring blending with nature as opposed to standing separate from it. it also served the functional purpose of keeping the manyatta cool so that expectant mothers, babies and little children could rest inside during the peak of dryland sun. when it was time to migrate, the entire manyatta was pulled down back to the earth that it had come from. dryland management in kenya: the long shadow of institutions in order to genuinely explore knowledge democracy as a tool towards enhancing climate change resilience in kenyan drylands, it behoves us to ruminate on where we are at present, in order for us to launch ourselves into the kind of world we want for future generations and the role of knowledge in the creation and representation of that world. kenyan drylands in particular, have to contend with development paradigms born of epistemologies centered on normative philosophies of knowledge curation, and singular ways of knowing as put forward by the global north. wenzel (2017) notes that many of the academic disciplines in the modern university trace back their origins or institutional consolidation to colonialism. nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 she observes that, during the early days of european exploration and subjugation of africa, language around nature was commodified and reframed in anthropocentric terms, including ‘raw materials’, ‘natural resources’ and ‘wildlife’. european study treated people and plants in remarkably similar ways, subjecting them to taxonomies of classification and, where necessary, ferrying them off to the home countries for further scientific research. even death did not stop this claimed objectivity of scientists. nothing demonstrates this better than the case of the ‘hottentot venus’ (funambulist 2020). conversations about agricultural improvement, which fuelled the agricultural and industrial revolutions, went hand in hand with the introduction of private land tenure systems characterised by land demarcation and enclosure. this, tied to research on enhanced agricultural production, was at the same time a disparagement and destruction of existing land tenure architecture and stewardship, as well as an introduction to a non-communal extractive economic land management model, solely centred on looting and appropriation of nature and the people within it. science dislocated viable economic production methods and permanently introduced the ignoble concepts of poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, and with it, insecurity and conflict, a reality that cuts across most african drylands today. central to all of this was land. alongside the anthropocentric framing of nature, there emerged a narrative among colonial settlers that dryland people deforested their own land, leading to its degradation and desertification. essentially, they were blaming the community for the environment they found themselves in, thereby necessitating the mobilisation of western science and expertise to stop desertification and to improve the lives of their colonial subjects. this narrative is known as the ‘desiccation theory’ (benjaminsen 2017; davis 2016; kubat 2015). at its core, the theory of desiccation states that deforestation causes aridification. it was supported by prominent scholars of the enlightenment period, including edmond halley and john woodward, and it gained currency among french naturalists like pierre poivre (1719–1786), who introduced a land development program and tools, as practised in england and france, to their newly acquired dryland colonies. this was used to justify dispossession, capital accumulation by england and france, and drylands underdevelopment. also introduced were privatisation of common lands, afforestation (despite scientific evidence that rangelands cannot support arborescent forests), irrigation, livestock improvement, fire suppression, sedentarisation of pastoralists and criminalising of pastoralists through new laws controlling forest use, and controls over the movement of people and livestock. prosopis juliflora, a raucous, invasive species and the bane of all pastoralists’ goats existence, was introduced to indian rangelands as forest cover during this time. it has become an ecological disaster in kenya. tying the theory of desiccation to the long shadow of institutions and the persistence of colonial policy and knowledge frameworks mentioned earlier in this article is the sessional paper number ten of 1965 on african socialism and its application to planning. this government paper has proved to be the biggest policy malfunction ever to be implemented by the government of kenya in the context of drylands and development. below is a sample of its contents: provincial balance and social inertia 133. one of our problems is to decide how much priority we should give in investing in less developed provinces. to make the economy as a whole grow as fast as possible, development money should be invested where it will yield the largest increase in net output. this approach will clearly favour the development of areas having abundant natural resources, good land and rainfall, transport and power facilities, and people receptive to and active in development (emphasis mine) (gok 1965) centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 a finger wag at pastoralists by their own government and a copy/paste of the desiccation theory. it is interesting to pause here and note that the areas being favoured because of their abundance of natural resources, good land and rainfall is about 18 percent of the total kenyan land surface, otherwise referred to as ‘the white highlands’. (these are areas from which colonial settlers expunged crop-growing communities to set up estates of export cash crops, including coffee, tea, wheat and pyrethrum. so, even here, malnutrition and food insecurity was introduced. challenging the legitimacy of pastoral land management institutions and knowledge systems through state imposed strategies and programs set the stage for the gradual weakening of resilience of herders. they failed because of pastoralists’ resistance that was rooted in a pragmatic understanding of their natural endowments and precisely because their livelihoods would have been wiped out through such measures. the result, however, was the cutting off and marginalisation of pastoralists and drylands: no schools, no water, no health care facilities, no tangible economic investment. predictably, pastoralists in the drylands begin to appear as a people, ‘not receptive to or active in development’. this lingering effect is a consequence of what chimamanda would call ‘the danger of a single story’ (adichie 2009) and it lasted until the year 2013, barely seven years ago, when operationalisation of devolution provided an opportunity to reset the desiccation theory. a point of reflection: it is because the euroamerican scientific approach to dryland development failed to take root and erode the pastoral-nomadic communities’ lived experiences that they were able to continue their lifestyle and retain their livelihood systems. it is also precisely because of this that their knowledge system is labelled by both macro and micro institutions as being indigenous. what was happening in the vacuum left by the absence of government in dryland kenya? international non-governmental organisations (ngos) of all shades: ngos concerned with food aid, water provision, dryland agriculture, beekeeping, girl child education, livestock management, women empowerment, health, wildlife conservation, alternative income generation, disaster risk reduction, value chain management and so on, and so forth. western educated subject matter experts, expatriates and technical personnel landed and continue to land in the asals with the sole mission of engendering dryland development. this they do, using methodologies, pedagogies and normative understandings steeped in euroamerican education systems. to say that this is the direct cause of the continued dryland epistemicide and cultural imperialism would not be to overstate. in addition, given that the research conducted by these entities is geared towards securing development aid and therefore, by extension, securing their jobs, ngos’ research and research findings have a tendency to confirm the objectives of donor requests for proposals for dryland development. when scientific methods of inquiry labelled these knowledges traditional, cultural and indigenous, based on their biocentric, cosmic and ontological ordering, they effectively rendered them no good for policy making and development planning. through questionnaires, gis and focus group discussions that primarily relied on community elders and women for data, these local knowledges needed to be studied, measured, quantified, classified and published as groundbreaking research, while patenting rights to the healing herbs (harry 2014; whitt 2009). the magic and mysticism was redirected towards the one true (colonialist) god. above all, from an anthropocentric lens, a reification of indigenous stories, proverbs and riddles happened, which they needed to translate into money. so, the expansive communal land, the foundation of rangeland management, upon which the pastoralists had once freely interacted with lions and elephants, went the way of land fragmentation, hived off to game parks, game reserves and conservancies. this, so that the tourist gaze can gently rest on the amazing wildlife without having to be confronted by an angry borana or maasai community nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 who have just lost to a new conservancy their open access to a water point during a drought. further, money is earmarked to study the causes of conflicts in drylands, after which, having established a credible one, more money is meted out to train the aforementioned angry borana and maasai community on how to manage human–wildlife conflict. it is easy to point to population growth in the drylands as being the major cause of human–wildlife conflict, were it not for the fact that, at present, donor money is being channelled to expand mostly white owned conservancies as models of wildlife conservation in drylands. currently, such conservancies control 10.8 million acres of land or about 8 percent of the total kenyan land mass. insidious plans are underway to bequeath these conservancies the title of world heritage sites by unesco which will consequently make it impossible for communities to ever reclaim their land (cavanagh et al. 2020; gatu 2019; halakhe 2019; mbaria 2017; ogada 2019; review 2018). lastly, we contend with the labelling of knowledge, which i postulate is a function of the commodification of knowledge. once knowledge becomes commodified, naturally a split has to emerge and a clear distinction made between high-value knowledge, represented by those who know, and relatively low-value knowledge, represented by those who live it. oddly, those who do not know are the ones from whom the high-value scientific knowledge is extracted and then hidden behind a paywall. this mined knowledge is what fetches research funding and project money. its source material remains local/cultural/traditional/indigenous and only good enough to incorporate as and when deemed necessary. we therefore need to make room for knowledges and multiple ways of knowing, analysing and presenting data and research results. knowledge democracy becomes key to achieving this, especially in the context of data inequalities and the aspiration of the sustainable development goals to leave no one behind. there needs to be a reckoning of how to navigate an infrastructure of measurement that leans heavily into knowledge systems which require the conversion and quantification of ideas and practice of social life into numbers. admittedly, given the function of power, politics and inequality, it is a tall order. in the sdg conversation, kenyan drylands and the people within them have to contend with the tension between community knowledge and ways of being, which has seen them cut off from mainstream development and marginalised from around 1920 to 2013; newly acquired access to modern schools and curricula that is unfailingly orientated towards promotion of euroamerican epistemologies and; the increasingly high-pitched call to fall back on and leverage so-called indigenous knowledge that essentially crippled their capabilities preand post-independence, to attend to the emergency of global climate change. coupled with concerns around bio-colonialism (harry 2014) it is hard to tell how this will play out. a third dimension of this tension is the lingering potency of dryland colonisation theories and consequent policies, and the permeation of these 19th-century understandings of drylands into the un system. the un absorbed european understandings of arid lands and desertification, and un agencies largely replaced colonial institutions as the main actors in supporting and reproducing the desertification narrative, as framed by the desiccation theory (benjaminsen 2017). this adoption was so pervasive that the first ever global conference organised by the united nations environment programme (unep) in 1977, following its establishment in 1972, was on desertification. leading the discussions were dryland experts with data and research findings extracted from communities, but no community representation. this small group of experts continue to dominate the un convention to combat desertification. this top–down approach, backed by a 19th-century thought process, might explain the mismatch centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 between science and policy and the colossal failure of dryland interventions, which have had real life consequences for asals and the people who live there. social responsibility in higher education: knowledge democracy and the academy in drylands what should the academy do to help situate community knowledge at the heart of achieving the sdgs? on 9 march 2015, chumani maxwele, a black student at the university of capetown, hurled human excrement from a bucket toilet that he got from the township of khayelitsha on the face of a statue of british colonialist cecil rhodes, which stood in the campus (fairbanks 2015; saho 2015). maxwele’s action catalysed student activism and movements across south africa and beyond. it also sparked (political) discourse on the transformation of university learning in the african continent and around the world. its ripple effect touched oxford university, blacklivesmatter and palestine, among others. it was on the back of the #rhodesmustfall protests that achille mbembe (n.d.) called for a reinvention of: … classrooms without walls and different forms of intelligence ….. in which we are all colearners; a university that is capable of convening various publics in new forms of assemblies that become points of convergence of and platforms for the redistribution of different kinds of knowledges. essentially, he called for a democratisation of access, under which the university would deprivatise and rehabilitate its public space so that it would be accessible to all, and one where the teacher–student relationship and the teaching of obsolete forms of knowledge with obsolete pedagogies would be interrogated and redefined. a moving away from constructs of knowledge that perpetuate euroamerican ways of knowing and whose pedigree is marked by being a rhodes scholar. a way towards this type of liberating democratisation of knowledge and social responsibility in higher education is perhaps to take the academy out to the community. new universities like garissa university, kenya, have an opportunity within the sdg development agenda to learn from #rhodesmustfall and to innovate around the living heritage that is part and parcel of the so-called indigenous knowledge, even as the un turns to it – albeit selectively – to save the planet. mawere (2015) talks about how indigenous knowledge can and ought to be a teaching and learning tool in the continent’s public education and a mechanism to address complexities plaguing the world such as those in the sdgs. he talks of social values, including language, oral traditions, taboos, rituals, music, dance, knowledge forms, art, folklore, riddles, idioms and cultural spaces, all of which fall within the realm of indigenous community knowledge because these values can only be manifested through lived ways of knowing, such as traditions, customs and practices (as in the traditions of dryland management, in the customs of social order that ensured survival in the event of droughts, in the practice of coexistence of pastoralists and lions). mawere proposes that community knowledges be used to, among other things, deracialise education by recognising local languages as the means for preserving, transmitting and applying traditional/local/indigenous/ community knowledge in schools, thereby providing an opportunity for learners to confront and engage with incoming knowledge with what they know. community knowledge can be used to promote innovative thinking as it provides the basis for problem-solving strategies for communities. this needs to be understood in the sense that indigenous/local/traditional/community knowledge is not static and that invention of tradition nkatha gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 actually happens in response and in relation to a community’s environment. intangible heritage is also useful in evaluating the effectiveness of conventional science. as demonstrated elsewhere in this article, african communities hold and teach beliefs and practices related to plant growth, human nutrition, childbearing, pregnancy, food preparation and preservation, medicine, animal husbandry, etc. these are packaged as science and agriculture in the formal education system. by incorporating these teachings into formal curricula, this knowledge would not only help learners evaluate the effectiveness of the new knowledge being presented to them, it would augment it. it would then become a source of motivation for students and generate interest; it would connect languages but maintain a sense of self-consciousness and cultural identity; it would be useful for dissemination of indigenous knowledge across cultures; promotion of interpersonal relationships and reciprocal obligations (versus individualism/score tests), all while promoting the cultural dimension of development. as the world bank (1988) noted, knowledge, not capital, is the key to sustainable social and economic development. a way to take the academy into the community, to reinvent a classroom without walls (akin to an open-access rangeland system) to reorient the learning relationship, and to produce and disseminate contemporaty dryland knowledge that is useful for the attainment of the sdgs could perhaps be achieved through service learning. by way of illustration, and the fact that it is the only university in kenya using this approach to date, university mtaani is a concept developed by tangaza university college and run by the institute of social ministry. a mtaa is kenyan slang for hood, oftentimes used to refer to informal urban settlements. university mtaani is an outreach initiative that proactively takes university education to the community and deliberately targets those who have been neglected by universities. learning happens in the mtaa and lecturers have to find their way and deliver course content. the course content and curriculum are co-constructed with the learners and the course organisation takes into consideration time budget constraints as experienced by residents of urban informal settlements. using multidimensional educational approaches, university mtaani blends classroom learning and community dialogues, thereby engaging students to generate mtaa-relevant knowledge through their engagement with these dialogues. importantly, university mtaani is delivered in sheng, swahili and english, because of the multi-ethnic composition of urban informal settlements. they use a methodology that they have dubbed the ‘cycle of praxis’ to address the challenges of the communities. the cycle of praxis involves insertion, social and cultural analysis, and theological reflection and action. the teaching method used at university mtaani is problem solving and application oriented. what learners pick up in class, they apply to solving their communities’ problems by organising community dialogues. through these engagements with their communities, students work with them to co-construct community solutions to community concerns (health, security, garbage, water, etc.) and in so doing students generate knowledge that informs classroom learning (dzinekou 2017). the university mtaani approach to pedagogy broadly mirrors the principles of service learning regarding acquisition of knowledge (understanding), the analysis of issues (meaning making) and the application of skills (doing) (cress et al. 2010; flinders 2013; hart 2006; mason & dunens 2019). embracing such a pedagogy might offer a pathway towards engendering knowledge democracy in drylands. this might be a model that could be negotiated between learners, researchers and pastoralists and a way of incorporating pastoralists’ living heritage with that of the lecture hall. it might also offer an opportunity to ‘publish’ their lived realities and, in this way, bridge the yawning gap between science and dryland policy, even as we enter the sdg decade of accelerated action. centring knowledge democracy within policy-making for sustainability and resilience: a discussion of the kenyan drylands gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 references abungu, g et al. 2009, traditional conservation practices in africa, iccrom, rome. achebe, c 1975, ‘the novelist as a teacher’, in morning yet on creation day: essays, doubleday anchor books, london, pp. 40–46. adichie, c 2009, ted the danger of a single story, viewed 7 march 2020. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=d9ihs241zeg behnke, r & muthami, d 2011, ‘the contribution of livestock to the kenyan economy’, igad livestock policy initiative, 21 september, pp. 2–57. behnke, r & scoones, i 1993, ‘rethinking range 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https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118472262.ch28 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.rur.totl?locations=zf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: loh, p., ackerman, z., and fidalgo, j. 2021. a relational approach to transforming power in a communityuniversity partnership. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–16. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7749 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peerreviewed) a relational approach to transforming power in a communityuniversity partnership penn loh1, zoë ackerman2 and joceline fidalgo3 1 senior lecturer and director of community practice, department of urban and environmental policy and planning, tufts university, ma usa 2 2020 master of arts graduate, department of urban and environmental policy and planning, tufts university, ma usa 3 2021 master of public policy graduate, department of urban and environmental policy and planning, tufts university, ma usa; former deputy director, dudley street neighborhood initiative, boston, ma usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7749 article history: received 05/06/2021; revised 29/10/2021; accepted 03/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract we use a relational understanding of power to analyse power dynamics at the institutional and interpersonal levels in our multiyear coeducation/coresearch (core) partnership between tufts university department of urban and environmental policy and planning (uep) and dudley street neighborhood initiative (dsni). power in communityuniversity partnerships is often examined only at the institutional level, conceiving of power as a resource to be balanced and shared. indeed, core has advanced institutional shifts through cogovernance, equitable funding, coproduction of curriculum and crossflow of people. while institutional policies and practices are critical, they alone do not transform deepseated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. to understand how intertwined interpersonal and institutional practices can reproduce or transform these cultural and ideological dynamics, we use a relational approach, understanding that power flows in and through all relations. as community members, students and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions we have encountered in core. we examine how we reinforce the dominance of academic over community knowledge, even as we leverage institutional power to further community goals. these tensions can be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable relations, but they can also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. through reflective practice and a relational ethic of care, we can try to recognise when we might be 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7749 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7749 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7749 shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. this is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. a relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations, every day. and it reminds us that no matter what we have institutionalised or encoded, our individual beings, organisations and communities are always in a process of becoming. keywords communityuniversity partnership; transforming power relations; relational power; institutional power; equitable partnership; colearning introduction communityuniversity partnerships (cups) often aim to address societal injustices, but in practice are challenged by the same unequal power relations they seek to confront. welldocumented barriers to more equitable cups include unequal sharing of resources, forcing community practice into shortterm academic calendars and prioritising university benefits over community impact. participants often address these barriers by changing institutional policies and practices to shift power, where power is conceptualised as a resource that universities typically have more of than community partners. while the focus on institutional power dynamics is critical and necessary (and one that we have paid much attention to in our own cup), we contend that it is insufficient for transforming power relations and realising the aspirations of many cups. the power asymmetries in cups are not just institutional, but also cultural and ideological. they include the devaluation of local and practitioner knowledge, narrow standards of academic excellence and selectivity that limits access to the university. of course, institutional policies and practices are bound up in reproducing these dynamics. to transform them requires a relational view of power, where power is not something to be wielded or possessed, but rather exists in and through all relations. this relational approach foregrounds the interpersonal interactions in cups. these everyday relations (or micropractices) can disrupt or reinforce power dynamics and thus are also sites for transforming them. in this article, we use a relational view of power to examine both institutional and interpersonal levels of power, which are not separate at all, but rather deeply intertwined. we explore power in our own cup, the coeducation/coresearch (core) partnership between tufts university department of urban and environmental policy and planning (uep) and dudley street neighborhood initiative (dsni), a renowned community organising and planning group in boston. after collaborating for decades, uep and dsni piloted the first core partnership (2016– 2019). core aspires to cultivate sustained transformative partnerships that coproduce knowledge and action towards creating a more just, sustainable and democratic society. core explicitly addresses the institutional barriers and inequalities stated above. core was founded on the premise that the institutional relationship between dsni and tufts would be dependent on the strength of interpersonal relationships. we have tried therefore to take a relational ethics approach towards our partnership (garlick & palmer 2008), centring relationships as intrinsically valuable. however, we have encountered tensions and contradictions, what hanson and ogunade (2016) refer to as ‘discursive frictions’. institutional shifts alone do not necessarily lead to transformation of deepseated hierarchies of knowledge and cultures that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. both universities and communitybased organisations are embedded in, and part of, reproducing systems of oppression. yet, we are not fated to simply reproduce this dominance. at the interpersonal and institutional levels, we can disrupt, dismantle and practise other ways of being together – transforming power relations, ourselves and our institutions in the process. loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 we begin by introducing our method for this article and ourselves, as we each have played different and multiple roles in core. we then lay out our approach to conceptualising power, followed by a fuller description of core, including three vignettes of our own experiences. we unpack and reflect on the tensions – discursive frictions – that we encountered and conclude with thoughts on how core can further transform power relations and lessons learned. our method this article draws primarily on an action research method, where practitioners inquire into and reflect deeply on their own work in order to strengthen it (mcniff & whitehead 2006). the three authors of this article have been involved in core as researchers, faculty, students and community partner. the institutional impacts of core are derived from a program assessment of core conducted in spring– summer 2020 (ackerman, loh & alias 2020). the assessment analysed core documents and outputs and conducted seven semistructured openended interviews with dsni staff involved in core. this assessment revealed some of the benefits and challenges of our work at the interpersonal level and led us to think more deeply about relational power. from november 2020 to march 2021, we engaged in joint reflection on relational power in core, from which we learnt some useful lessons. we had four meetings, each of 1.5–2 hours, and three sessions with the author collective, facilitated by this special issue’s guest editors. in between reflection sessions, we read various articles (including those in our literature review) to inform and deepen our perspectives on power, and journaled responses to reflection questions. below we provide brief descriptions of ourselves and our organisations to add context to our method. zoë ackerman: i grew up in charlottesville, virginia, in an environment marked by white privilege and economic security. by the time i started the master’s program at uep in the autumn of 2017, i had become politicised through organising around environmental justice, antiracism and queer liberation. i applied to graduate school because i wanted to leverage institutional resources to disrupt status quo governance in support of black and indigenousled organising and the solidarity economy. from 2017 to 2020, i was consistently connected to core activities. i worked as a teaching assistant for, and wrote my thesis on teaching democracy (a popular education training program associated with core); i interned with another core community organisation; and i served as primary researcher for the assessment of core presented in this article. joceline fidalgo: a child of immigrants from the cape verde islands, i grew up in the dudley neighbourhood of boston. my family was extremely involved in the community and dsni. i grew up attending community meetings, cofounded the dudley youth council and joined the dsni board as a youth. after college, i returned to dsni in multiple staff roles over eight years, including resource development director and deputy director. after learning more about uep from a colleague who was a recent graduate, i enrolled as a parttime midcareer master of public policy (mpp) student in 2017. while a student, i served as a core graduate assistant, designed internships and field projects for students, prepared collaborative grant proposals and participated in panels. after leaving dsni in june 2020 and beginning my last year at uep, i became a research assistant on the action research project funded by the federal grant that i had helped secure. penn loh: i joined the uep faculty in 2009, after more than 15 years in the environmental justice field, including nine years leading a grassroots organisation in boston. as an asianamerican male, i lived the ‘model minority’ myth, excelling in maths and science and attending mit. after an internship designing missile guidance systems, i became politicised and involved in radical campus movements against the military–industrial complex. i found my first job in a nonprofit environmental consulting firm, which led me to another elite university for a master’s degree in environmental science and policy. there, i discovered the burgeoning environmental justice movement and found a path to combine my formal education with loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 my activist commitments. as a tufts lecturer, i have been deepening our community strategies and working with community and social movement organisations as an adviser, board member, researcher and teacher. i have been the lead faculty building core. dsni is a communitybased planning and organising nonprofit dedicated to the revitalisation of the dudley neighbourhood of boston, a working class community of colour with a diverse mix of african americans, latinx and cape verdeans. formed in the mid1980s, dsni is renowned for establishing community control over development and for creating a community land trust (clt) that owns over 30 acres, on which they have developed hundreds of units of permanently affordable housing, as well as parks, urban farms and a greenhouse. uep was formed in 1973 as an interdisciplinary, professional master’s program to address integrated problems of urban development, land use planning, design, and social and environmental concerns. dedicated to ‘educating practical visionaries’, uep integrates community partnerships into its curriculum, research and practice. uep and dsni’s relationship spans three decades, during which students have conducted numerous field projects, internships and masters theses. prior to core, one uep alumni had been hired as a dsni staff member and three dsni staff members became uep mpp students. several faculty have had strong ties to dsni, beginning with melvyn colón, who helped found dsni and then lectured at uep from 1989 to 2001. our approach to power power in cups is often examined only at the institutional level, where power is a resource to be balanced and shared. while the institutional level is critical, we believe it is insufficient to address the deeply embedded ideological and cultural aspects of power that also operate at the interpersonal level. thus, we take a relational view of power as theorised by foucault (1977, 1979) and poststructural feminists (cameron & gibson 2005) and build on the work of contemporary engaged scholars who use a relational view in their communitybased and participatory action research (see cahill 2007). in this view, power is infused in and through all social relations. it is not something that can be possessed, either by institutions or individuals. a relational view allows us to look at both institutional and interpersonal levels and how they are intertwined in cups. it leads to a focus on the relationships between people from the university and the community, and the care and negotiation necessary to cultivate a relational ethic. it foregrounds the tensions and contradictions that arise across difference and the everyday micropractices that can reinforce existing power relations, as well as disrupt and transform them. three faces of ‘power over’ a classic conceptualisation of power starts with ‘power over’, or the ability of one party to get another to do something they would not otherwise do. power is a substance or capacity that can be held and used. lukes (1974) theorised three faces of power (as power over), which gaventa (2006) then reframed as visible, hidden and invisible power. the first dimension examines visible power relations in decision making in an open, pluralist political system, where all interests are visible and in conflict and competition (dahl 1957). this first face is often how power is talked about in public discourse and among community organisers and advocacy groups strategising to influence decision makers. this view was critiqued as inadequate by bachrach and baratz (1970) because it did not account for how certain interests and their issues were suppressed, never making it to the decisionmaking arena in the first place. they posited that power had a second face, hidden, through nondecisionmaking processes, where certain issues are prevented from getting on the political agenda. this second face has been described as the political infrastructure of coordinated and overlapping networks of interest groups and think tanks (and universities), such as those that have loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 been built by a corporate conservative alliance to advance a conservative right agenda in the us (healy & hinson 2017). lukes introduced the third dimension of power to explain why some grievances and conflicts never become consciously recognised. this invisible level of power shapes meaning, consciousness and worldviews. in this third face, the relatively powerless may internalise oppression, what freire (1970) called a culture of silence, and what secondwave feminists addressed through consciousness raising methods. the dominance of the powerful in shaping the making of meaning (creation of ‘common sense’) is what gramsci called cultural or ideological hegemony. thus, there are some interests that never even rise into consciousness to be organised into or out of the political agenda. the first two faces of power are often employed in discussions of power between communities and universities. in the visible pluralist version of power, universities are seen as having more power because they can advance their interests, such as lobbying for public research funding, gaining control over land to expand campuses, investing hefty endowments and influencing debates through expert knowledge. community organisations are seen as scrappy, lowresourced groups with limited political influence and little formal knowledge. cups often claim to advance pluralist power by employing the expert knowledge of universities in the service of community agendas. in the hidden second face of power, universities operate as part of the political infrastructure to shape which issues, perspectives and knowledges have more credibility and legitimacy in the public sphere. because community is often seen as relatively powerless in shaping the political agenda, cups can bring community into research and knowledge production to shape new agendas and have them taken more seriously. how well community goals are served by these collaborations depends on who initiates the partnerships and how partners share resources. because universities often hold more resources, they can exercise more power to shape the agenda and ensure that their goals are prioritised (glover & silka 2013). efforts to diversify faculty and students in universities can function in the second face of power by shifting who are seen as knowledge producers, experts, researchers and teachers. the invisible third dimension of power is also at work in universities and communities in shaping consciousness and a sense of possibilities. universities, as selfproclaimed producers of knowledge, become gatekeepers of what is valid and what is not – reinforcing a hierarchy of knowledge that privileges western scientific ways of knowing. communities can exercise power in this third dimension through popular education (freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed) to support critical consciousness building that can fuel transformative social movements. cups can play a role in consciousness raising by disrupting and dismantling ideologies of dominance and hierarchies of knowledge, and contributing to the development of liberatory ideologies and knowledges. recent movements that have helped create broad shifts in consciousness, such as occupy and black lives matter, all have allies in the academy. relational power while all three faces are conceptualised as ‘power over’, where power is wielded by the more powerful over the less powerful, it can also be conceived as ‘power to’ and ‘power with’. to understand this, we draw on a relational view of power. according to foucault and poststructural feminists, power exists in and flows through all social relations; in fact, it is constitutive of social relations (part of what makes relations). hanson and ogunade (2016, p. 43) explain that ‘power is neither a commodity nor solely embodied in a person, institution or structure to be used for organisational or individual purposes’. power exists only between people and through their multiple interactions, practices and discourses. power analysis begins with the everyday interrelations amongst people and also includes the organisations, institutions and structures that are constituted by these relations. moreover, power is inextricably bound up with knowledge. ‘power and knowledge directly imply one another ... there is no power relation without the correlative constitution loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’ (foucault 1977, p. 27). while foucault examined everyday micropractices and how power and knowledge can create constraints and reinforce dominance, he also saw the possibilities for power relations to be changed. foucault affirms ‘the right ... to rediscover what one is and all that one can be’ (as cited in gaventa & cornwall 2008). if dominance and inequalities are produced through relations, then they can also be transformed through them. this insight turns the third face of power from an invisible negative force to a potentially emancipatory one, in which cultural and ideological power produce shifts in subjects and their own identities, as well as practices, discourse and actions. indeed, a relational view of power sees possibilities for shifting and transforming power relations in all three faces of power, which are themselves intertwined. this relational view of power is poststructural, in that it does not assume that structures exist independently beyond our representations of them. the language we use to describe structures is part of what they are made of. thus, language and discourse are never politically neutral. instead of trying to find stable structures underlying reality, we encounter multiple discourses that create multiple realities. it is in these relations and discourses that subjects (individuals) are formed. ‘in poststructuralist thought there are no depths to plumb for the subject’s true essence or identity; rather the subject is understood as always in the process of becoming, of being shaped in a multitude of ways by various discourses and practices’ (cameron & gibson 2005, p. 317). power, then, is not a fixed essence possessed by an individual or institution, but something that is flowing between and through the interactions between subjects who are constantly being shaped by and shaping these relations. power in communityuniversity partnerships this poststructural, relational approach helps us to look at how power is flowing in and through the everyday relations between the people in cups (and in our core partnership). first, relationships are central, both as a goal of cups and a means to advance other objectives. we agree with ritterbush (2019, p. 1297) ‘that these relationships, forged through shared commitment, collective care and acts of consciousnessbuilding take time to cultivate and keep alive, time that doesn’t fit neatly into academic temporalities of semesters or tenure processes’. cahill, quijada cerecer & bradley (2010, p. 408) see their participatory action research practice as a ‘feminist praxis of care and solidarity that is decentered, conflicted, and committed to negotiation’. this centring of relationships is described by garlick and palmer 2008 (drawing on bauman 1995) as a relational ethic of beingfor. they posit that the neoliberalised university ‘fosters and favours connections that are fragmentary, momentary, and occasional. the conditions are characterized by values of competition, efficiency and individualism’ (garlick & palmer 2008, p. 74). instead of beingfor (where each person in a relationship is seen as fully human and precious), neoliberal conditions lead to beingaside (where the other is recognised as present but not a person) and beingwith (where the other is recognised as a person but only to the extent necessary for a particular transaction). second, there are always multiple possibilities for power relations in any communityuniversity engagement, including in all three faces of power. hanson and ogunade (2016, p. 43) point to discursive frictions arising from power imbalances as ‘neither inherently emancipatory nor repressive’. discursive frictions refer to the ‘tensions that can arise when various national, social, organizational, and individual cultural differences materialize in our everyday discourse and practices, often privileging, but at times shifting traditional, colonial, and postcolonial power relations’ (murphy 2012, cited in hanson & ogunade 2016, p. 42). how these differences are navigated can reinforce existing power dynamics and inequalities and/or disrupt and transform them. cahill (2007, p. 270) engages in participatory action research ‘for producing new subjectivities, that in the words of freire “affirms men and women as beings in the process of loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” (freire, 1997 [1970], p. 65, italics original)’. third, without critical reflection and reflexive practice, cups can reinforce or contribute to further inequalities. gaventa and cornwall (2008) describe how even the world bank has adopted participatory research methods, raising critical questions about whose voices are raised and heard. ritterbush (2019, p. 1301) warns of ‘participatory bluffing’ where participatory action research (par) has been depoliticised and become ‘a strategy to coopt knowledge in the name of participation (torre 2009:111)’. she reflects on her own involvement in ‘“lite pedagogies”—watereddown, universitypermissible par pedagogies and research practices’, where ‘methodologically oriented par curricula and servicelearning frameworks run the risk of creating unilateral, semesterlong relationships with communities in which the timing of interactions and contact is dictated by class schedules rather than by the daily and enduring urgency of injustice’ (ritterbush, 2019, p. 1297; p. 1301). we draw on this relational approach to analyse the power dynamics in our own cup, in the hope of understanding how we might further transform our power relations (and ourselves and institutions). delving deeper into our power dynamics through a relational approach helps to identify where discursive frictions have arisen and where we have been disrupting and/or transforming power relations, as well as where we have been reinforcing them. note that we want to avoid separating interpersonal and institutional levels of power. indeed, a relational view includes not just the production of individual subjects but also of institutions and their collective knowledges. coresearch/coeducation (core) partnership tufts uep and dsni’s core partnership was intentionally designed to shift institutional relations in all three faces of power. we piloted a threeyear partnership from 2016 to 2019, building on three decades of collaboration. we envisioned a colearning model (see loh 2016) that could address some of the often named challenges of cups. these include student learning being prioritised over community needs (blouin & perry 2009; cruz & giles 2000; hoyt 2005), rigidity of the academic calendar (ritterbush 2019; sandy & holland 2006, tryon et al. 2008), shortterm semestertosemester engagements, fragmentation across research, teaching and practice, production of peerreviewed articles taking precedence over community benefits (gomezmejia & balkan 1992; katz 1973), excellence becoming defined synonymously with selectivity ( jennings 1989), prioritisation of pursuing large research grants (fisher, fabricant & simmons 2005) and international work being accorded more status than local community development projects (fisher, fabricant & simmons 2005; mohrman, ma & baker 2008). we understood that there were imbalances in resources and capacities that affected the power dynamics between universities and community groups. community organisations, usually smaller nonprofits in precarious financial situations, can feel pressure to pursue funding that steers them towards less controversial and depoliticised projects and methods, a dynamic that has been named the nonprofit industrial complex (incite! 2007). this dynamic makes community organisations susceptible to transactional and potentially exploitive partnerships with larger wellresourced universities. core aspires to cultivate sustained transformative partnerships that coproduce knowledge and action towards a more just, sustainable and democratic society. starting with joint inquiry and planning, community and university stakeholders integrate teaching, research and practice over a cycle of three to five years and, if sustained, coevolve in place over decades (see figure 1). core’s theory of practice draws upon traditions of action research, servicelearning, scholarship of engagement, and universities as anchor institutions. it is a political project inspired by popular education, black radical traditions, and the struggles of third world peoples to democratise universities and advance racial and economic justice in the 1960s and 70s. loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 figure 1. core’s communityuniversity coevolution model (loh 2016) in 2016, tufts and dsni signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) that set out learning, research and action goals for a threeyear partnership. core committed the partners to collaborate on communitycontrolled economic development, with a focus on the food economy and community land trusts. tufts and dsni agreed to make decisions together and to jointly raise funds to support dsni’s role in the partnership. this mou was approved as an official partnership by the tufts administration. tisch college of civic life at tufts contributed $10,000 per year over the threeyear partnership to support dsni’s role. the core mou included activities that were already established and resourced, such as a field project each spring semester, summer graduate student fellowships, master’s theses, and a codesigned community practicum held every other autumn. core also led to the joint development of the teaching democracy popular education training program. through core, uep and dsni pursued and were awarded a multiyear federal community action research grant that has supported dsni’s community planning work with the city of boston to develop an arts and innovation district in the upham’s corner section of the neighbourhood. core’s institutional impacts in 2020, we conducted a program assessment of core, with a focus on how the partnership impacted dsni (see ackerman, loh & alias 2020). the results showed how power has been shifting at the institutional level between tufts uep and dsni through cogovernance, shared funding, joint creation of curriculum and agenda, and crossflow of people over a threeyear period. many interviewees felt that the partnership set a new standard for reciprocity in cups. harry smith, a former dsni senior staff member, believed that formalising the partnership ‘moved us from a projectbyproject orientation to tufts becoming the research arm of dsni, nimble enough to adapt in the face of change and advance the clt [community land trust] movement and our work around land use and planning’. shared funding, including valuing dsni’s time, was another critical component of core. according to sharon cho, a uep student who then became a parttime staff member at dsni, ‘oftentimes, with the university, there’s an assumption that with a student team or intern, you’re offering free research capacity. but it takes time and capacity to support projects and students. so i think it’s valuable to frame it as community partners bringing something to the table, not the other way around. if you’re a university, you should be finding a way to pay community organizations.’ the commitment by tufts to provide multiyear loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 funding for dsni allowed it to plan ahead, and together with tufts, dsni secured a threeyear federal action research grant from americorps to support its planning efforts in upham’s corner. core also supported the development of new curricular resources for dsni and tufts, including a codesigned community practicum and teaching democracy (discussed below). the crossflow of people has helped cultivate a deeper bench of leaders at dsni. during the partnership, two dsni staff enrolled in uep’s midcareer mpp program, while three uep graduates were hired as dsni staff. our assessment found that centring relationships and a relational ethic in core created conditions for reciprocity and going beyond transactional relations. smith noted how important it was that people at uep ‘exercised humility by coming in and asking the partners, “what do you need?’” according to former dsni organiser bayoan rossellócornier, ‘dsni could trust in a certain level of cultural competence of the students they’d work with. other universities would send teams of white students to take pictures of people’s homes. land trust owners worried that their homes were being sold. you’re a white kid in a patagonia sweater taking pictures … this is not a safari. you have to approach it carefully, respectfully.’ fidalgo, when interviewed as dsni deputy director, explained that ‘despite transitions and staff turnover, tufts still wanted to be connected, to figure out how to shift and adapt its focus. it suggested that the partnership went beyond the university and students being able to benefit, and was about supporting the organization, even through some of its challenges.’ three experiences of core to delve deeper into interpersonal power relations, we share three firstperson vignettes of our experiences in core. each helped advance dsni’s goals and affected how it operates within the three faces of power. but each is also fraught with contradictions, as our successes also reinforced or reproduced knowledge hierarchies. launching the greater boston community land trust network (penn) the launch of the greater boston community land trust network (gbcltn) in 2016 was a poignant example of how our partnership could support dsni to move its policy agenda in the visible (first face of ) power arena. on a weekday evening in april 2016, i (penn) was speaking to more than 100 residents, community leaders, and city officials about the clt model and presenting the findings of a report that five of my graduate students had worked all semester to draft. i touted the benefits of community land trusts (clts) and how government could support them. i remember feeling very proud of our work, not just that spring but over the preceding two years to support the development of gbcltn. after my moment in the spotlight, i was interviewed by a journalist and got a lot of positive feedback from attendees. i felt affirmed in a very public way that i and my students were adding value to important community and policy work. my students, who had volunteered to staff the registration and educational tables, were also very pleased and excited. a photo of us at the event captures how we felt (see figure 2). we were overcoming one challenge of cups being short term and not well synchronized between academic and community calendars. the lead organizer of gbcltn had, in fact, planned the launch to coincide with the end of the spring semester, so that the students’ work could have the most impact. reflecting back, there are a few details that do not seem quite right. i was the first speaker on the agenda, right before a resident board member of dsni’s land trust. the universityvalidated knowledge that i presented took precedence over a community resident sharing her lived experience. the report itself compiled community and practitioner knowledge into a 12page professionally laidout document designed to influence decision makers and funders, which was a central goal of the event. at the time, i, my students, loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 and network members never raised critical questions about whose voices and knowledge were being centered and how we might be subtly reinforcing knowledge hierarchies by putting a university stamp of approval on community knowledge. being a resident and tufts researcher in upham’s corner (joceline) the upham’s corner action research project illustrates the way in which our cup can affect the hidden (second) dimension of power where the community partner is coresearcher driving the agenda, legitimating their role as knowledge producers. when i ( joceline) became a research assistant with the tufts team in fall 2020 on this project, i also brought my experiences as a resident and former dsni staff member. my deep connections enabled me to quickly understand and document the complex set of stakeholders and roles in this process and better advise dsni in using the learnings from our action research. in december 2020, i was asked to present to the dsni board on the upham’s corner process. i was excited to play this role and to reconnect with board members who i had developed relationships with over the years. two staff members and i highlighted the community engagement strategies up until that point, the next steps, and a map of the different stakeholders. judging by the few questions i received, it seemed that what i presented was clear and reasonable. a couple of board members even chimed in to thank me for the presentation and praise the dsni staff for their hard work and commitment. a few weeks later, one of the staff revealed that the board had specifically wanted me to represent the tufts team, because there was some tension and confusion about the role that tufts had been playing in the upham’s corner work, that perhaps tufts carried too much weight in the process. reflecting back, i realized that i was so focused on sharing information from our research that i didn’t take the time to explain tufts’ role. though we relied on my extensive history with the organization to make the board more comfortable, i didn’t explicitly clarify tufts’ role and our collaboration with dsni. without doing that, board members who were not involved in the partnership came to be suspicious of a university figure 2. tufts students and faculty at greater boston community land trust network launch, 27 april 2016. from left to right: lylee rauchkacenski, sharon cho, penn loh, tessa salzman, koko li and hanna migliorato. loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 partner as potentially undermining dsni’s work to build community control. it was not until a board meeting in february 2021 where we decided that penn should present instead of me, that concerns were allayed by diving deeper into the history of tufts’ role. cofacilitating teaching democracy (zoë) teaching democracy is a popular education training program specifically designed to intervene in the invisible (third) face of power. the twoday course was codesigned with three community organizations, including dsni, and several departments at tufts, including uep. first piloted in 2016, it is now an annual offering with 2030 participants per year, with roughly equal numbers of students and community members. may louie, a former dsni senior staffer of 20 years and a uep mpp alum, codesigned teaching democracy and has cotaught the course since its inception. dsni has supported seven board members and three staff to attend this training. i (zoë) was a student in teaching democracy in 2018 and cofacilitator in 2019. my master’s thesis, completed at the end of 2019, sought to understand what participants learned and how the program could shift to more deeply center community knowledge and needs. in february 2020, i joined the teaching democracy design team for a second time, excited to bring some of the recommendations in my thesis to life. while facilitating the first workshop, i decided unilaterally to shift portions of the curriculum. early in the day, i skipped over a part where participants articulated their goals for the session in order to save time. later on, i decided (on the fly) to hand over facilitation of a particular section to a participant. when reflecting on day one with the facilitation team, various members expressed surprise, confusion, and anger over my changes and questioned why i felt i could make unilateral decisions. at first, i felt defensive and justified my actions as both rooted in my research and in embracing a sense of ‘emergence’. after this meeting, i engaged in deeper reflective conversations with members of the group. we surfaced more of our own assumptions and needs. the process was uncomfortable and resulted in my own realization that i had assumed a selfanointed sense of authority about the program, partly due to indepth engagement through my thesis, which completely contradicted the principles and practices of popular education. i now see my actions (specifically making unilateral decisions without consulting the design team) as emerging from my own unpacked patterns of whiteness and assumption of a privileged education conferring expertise and unilateral power. i now see the creation of structured and intentional space for reflection as essential to disrupting power and privilege. with the support of the design team, i identified several growth edges in myself to slow down (rather than jumping to conclusions) when i don’t understand a process or perspective, to gently and honestly hold the contradictions of doing work within communityuniversity settings, and most importantly, to walk with more humility through it all. core’s discursive frictions as these examples show, core’s everyday interrelations are rife with discursive frictions. these tensions and contradictions arise from the cultural, institutional and individual differences embedded in our various positionalities and identities. a relational view of power helps unpack the power dynamics in our vignettes, to identify where inequalities might be reproduced and reinforced, as well as how they might be disrupted, dismantled and transformed. leveraging the university’s institutional power to support community goals produces opportunities for transforming power, at the same time reinforcing the dominance of academic knowledge over community knowledge. on the one hand, penn’s story shows that gbcltn members wanted to use tufts institutional credibility to bring the importance of their work to the notice of decision makers and funders. according to juan leyton, dsni’s executive director at the time of the network launch, projects like this ‘provided loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 a space for the organisation to make a case for perspectives about what’s important, that cities and foundations may not see as flashy or as valuable’. though it is not easy to ascertain the difference tufts’ support has made, the gbcltn has garnered more foundation funding and has succeeded in shifting some city policies and resources. yet, leyton pointed out that ‘if a community organization has a university validating its ideas, that’s both a good and a bad thing. it can feel disempowering to the organization, to need to have information validated by an institution.’ in penn’s story, knowledge hierarchies were reproduced through micropractices, such as having a university faculty speak first before community leaders and having the faculty present the work of students. in joceline’s story, dsni board members who had not been directly involved in previous collaborations questioned tufts’ role in the upham’s corner work. there was suspicion about whose interests tufts was serving and whether they were aligned with dsni’s goals of community control. despite decades of collaboration between people at dsni and uep and a formal mou codifying cogovernance and sharing of funding, these perceptions persist. joceline was asked to represent the tufts team initially because she had a community and dsni identity and deep relationships of trust with board members. penn, despite having worked for decades with dsni, had developed relationships primarily with staff and had limited interactions with board members. importantly, the core mou was negotiated with dsni staff and signed by the executive director, but not deliberated on by the dsni board. this story illustrates the limits of institutional (and written) agreements and the importance of direct relationships in cups. while the mou will have lasting effects for tufts and dsni as organisations, transforming power dynamics must also happen through everyday interrelations, which both shape and are conditioned by institutional arrangements. without more direct interaction with a university person (penn as a faculty member), board members defaulted to their common sense, to be wary of a university doing research on communities. an mou can be a tool for producing more equitable power relations, but only to the extent that the mou and its principles are recognised by stakeholders (including board members) and made real through everyday interactions. zoë’s vignette shows how the micropractices of facilitation are also infused with power relations and caught up in hierarchies of knowledge. teaching democracy used university resources to create a training with community partners for their members. yet, the contradictions in having a university sponsor a course on popular education was not lost on its participants, some of whom reflected that it was an oxymoron. zoë herself experienced this paradox, having produced a master’s thesis relying on both action research and more conventional qualitative methods, thus becoming an ‘expert’ on the training. this expert knowledge subtly led to her shifting the program unilaterally while she was facilitating. her experience is a reminder that power is enacted in all relations, between community and university, teachers and students, and among a facilitation team. for zoë, reflection and dialogue with the facilitation team led to deeper learning and showed that, through praxis, it is possible to interrupt and adjust, to not unwittingly reproduce power dynamics. this power in all relations also manifests within communities. joceline reflected that it was not just how tufts showed up with institutional power in the community, but also that dsni itself had become an institutional power within the community and had to recognise how it showed up in its own community. our reflections on these experiences reveal not only the ways that we reproduce power relations, but also suggest ways that we could change them in everyday practice. in penn’s case, what if he had worked with gbcltn members to develop a collaborative presentation, weaving in stories of their experiences in clts? what if zoë had brought her concern about the lack of time to the group to decide collectively on an adjustment and/or reflect on how a ‘sense of urgency’ is a characteristic of white supremacy culture? what if joceline had asked board members what they knew about the collaboration with tufts and taken the time to loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 explain the history? these are just some of the ways that we could have acted differently to change some of the power dynamics in the moment. lessons learned and conclusion in this article, we used a relational view of power to examine power dynamics in our cup at both institutional and interpersonal levels. at the institutional level, we found several key shifts: • cogovernance codified in an mou. • sharing of funding by tufts to more fully value dsni as a coproducer. • a 3year partnership allowed tufts to become dsni’s “research arm” and leverage its status to influence decision makers and funders towards community goals. • coproduction of curriculum and tools to help build community capacity. • deepening of the leadership pipeline by recruiting community members into degree programs and graduate students to staff of dsni. while these institutional shifts can help address some of the challenges of cups, they, alone, do not necessarily lead to transformation of deepseated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practice and people over community. to analyse these power asymmetries, we used a relational approach to examine how we could reproduce or transform these dynamics at interconnected, interpersonal and institutional levels. the discursive frictions encountered across difference in cups could be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable and emancipatory power relations, but they could also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. through reflective practice (praxis) and building authentic beingfor relationships, we could try to recognise when we might be shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. this is messy work that requires a lot of communication and trust. all of this relational work takes time. the institutional shifts we have described are vital to transforming power as they change the conditions within which interpersonal everyday relations happen. for instance, funding available to and shared by dsni and tufts affects how much time they can dedicate to their collaboration. it also affects the material conditions and livelihoods of their staff. core’s mou codifies a cogovernance process and sets expectations for how dsni and uep set the agenda, decide what activities to pursue, and how to jointly fundraise and share resources. yet, cogovernance is assured only through everyday practice of making decisions together. with limited time and resources, it can be easy to miss meetings needed to make such decisions. unilateral decisions can be made, but rely on the good faith and trust that has been built, as zoë experienced. while operating on faith can serve for a time, cogovernance relations must be constantly renewed, as in joceline’s story with the dsni board. a relational beingfor ethic in cups requires time. the relationship is the goal, not a means to an end. core’s multiyear timeframe creates possibilities for relations to endure and deepen, going beyond episodic semester engagements. penn would not have been able to develop a core partnership with dsni, if not for the relationships he had built over the decades with people at dsni. the timing of the gbcltn launch was designed to coincide with the end of the student field project course, because the relationship had deepened and the network organiser understood the semester schedule and what students were capable of. zoë could not have had the deeper followup reflections with the teaching democracy facilitation team without the trust built from working together in prior years. joceline would not have been the one called to represent tufts if she had not had a prior relationship with the board. this relational work can be seen as extraneous, or a privilege only afforded where resources and time allow. but it is time spent in this space that may be the most transformative for cups. loh, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202113 we agree with cahill, quijada cerecer & bradley (2010) and ritterbush (2019) that a relational (being for) approach to cups requires a feminist praxis and ethics of care and solidarity. it is an ethics that says we are in this together and accountable to one another. there will be confusion over what we are trying to do together and how we want to be with one another, necessitating pushback and deeply hearing each other. this work of holding oneself and others accountable is a form of emotional labour, a type of work that is not typically viewed in academia as valuable (or even as labour), even though it can be the site of some of the deepest learning and transformation. as facilitators and practitioners of critical reflection and care, it is not easy to support ‘students to linger in the fraught spaces of uncertainty and collectivity, which are some of the most important learning spaces for par work’ (ritterbush 2019, p. 1305). transforming power relations does not come only through intellectual dialogue, but is also bound up in emotions and embodied practices. our reflections now bring us back to how we can improve core. sustaining core over the long term requires building a culture of relationality that extends beyond penn as the founder. more faculty can be brought into the partnership, though attention must be paid to the rewards and disincentives for this type of work in universities. regular reflection and learning sessions should be built into the cycle of activities. though students come and go, they can transmit their knowledge and experience of core from one cohort to the next and cultivate a continuing community of practice with core alumni. we conclude with some lessons that may be helpful for others attempting to build equitable and transformative cups in their own contexts. first, centre relationship building as an end in itself, not just as a means to other ends. this relational ethic of beingfor may run into resistance when partners have pressing needs and goals. what we have learned in core is that the relationship itself is not only valuable for itself, but that other goals are compromised if the relationship is weak. second, time has to be dedicated to being in relationship over the long term. this means not only spending time together on the work, but also being there for one another beyond the formal partnership. finally, regular reflection and reflexive practice are critical to advancing more equitable and transformative partnerships. we have taken time in our formal core governance meetings, as well as in our various projects, to assess not just project results, but our relationships and process of working together. as zoë experienced with the teaching democracy facilitation team, reflection and dialogue led to even deeper learning and personal transformation, while also pointing to ways to improve their facilitation process. regularity and expectation of reflection always being a part of the process can lead to opportunities to name and address the discursive frictions that will inevitably arise in any cup, particularly around knowledge hierarchies and whose knowledge is being centred. these tensions are sites of potentially transformative change. in addition to the monthtomonth processes, we found it helpful to also deeply reflect on and assess our formal threeyear core partnership, of which one of the results is this article. our collective reflection for this article has left us feeling more inspired to deepen core and our commitment to transforming cups. a relational approach to power provides hope that, every day, we can be part 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international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: goodman, h. p., yow, r., standberry-wallace, m., dekom, r., harper, m., nieto gomez, a., watson, a. d. 2023. perspectives from community partnerships in three diverse higher education contexts. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–13. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8693 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article perspectives from community partnerships in three diverse higher education contexts hunter, p. goodman1,*, ruth yow2, miranda standberry-wallace3, rachel dekom4, mamie harper5, amalia nieto gomez6 and alicya d. watson7 1 university of arkansas system, division of agriculture, cooperative extension 2 center for sustainable communities research and education, georgia institute of technology 3 steans center, depaul university 4 saged consulting (student alumna, georgia institute of technology) 5 carrie’s closet of georgia 6 alliance of the southeast (ase) 7 university of arkansas system, division of agriculture, cooperative extension, cleveland county corresponding author: hunter p. goodman, hgoodman@uada.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8693 article history: received 27/06/2023; revised 10/10/2023; accepted 21/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract asset-based community development (abcd) approaches in higher education have the potential to benefit a diversity of higher education settings and partners, but they can also present challenges and opportunities for growth in higher education institutions. cocurricular community engagement and academic service-learning programs may struggle to balance the broader political and logistical constraints imposed by the university with equitable, long-term, community-guided relationships that reflect a genuine commitment to abcd. extension programs may face difficulty engaging community members and maintaining their commitment to the long-term nature of abcd in an environment where abcd is not universally utilised. although these challenges may seem daunting, partners in all three contexts can draw on a wealth of abcd tools and resources, including case studies like those anchoring this discussion, in order to answer the question: how can abcd approaches be utilised most effectively in higher education contexts to address challenges and improve outcomes? specifically, can an asset-based orientation help position community participants as peer ‘experts’ alongside their academic partners, declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8693 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8693 mailto:hgoodman@uada.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8693 share power and authority in the collaboration? if so, how? if not, why not? the authors explore these questions using a case study methodology, allowing for nuanced portraits of three different contexts depicting interactions among community and university partners seeking to ground their collaborations in the mobilisation of assets, gifts and strengths. this article also seeks to identify key lessons learned in each setting of the three participating united states universities – the public, four-year research institution, the private religious university and the land-grant college/cooperative extension in order to make recommendations on using abcd to build and nurture academic-community partnerships that are generalisable across other contexts. keywords abcd; community partners; equity and justice; partnership building; higher education; abcd challenges introduction for those to whom the origins of asset-based community development (abcd) are well known, it is intuitive that partners in higher education settings – whether they be faculty, staff or students – can adopt an abcd approach with enormously positive outcomes. in the late 1960s, tasked with creating new infrastructure for community engagement and urban studies at northwestern university, john mcknight and his colleague jody kretzmann rejected the deficit lens that university researchers had traditionally brought to communities. in mcknight’s (mn disability minnesota 2023) words: to me it was just apparent that you could never…understand urban neighborhoods if you looked at what the universities were telling you was the important data, because all they knew about was what was wrong. i often use a half-full glass as an example of that. they were always studying the empty half. they seemed to have no knowledge of the full half. and therefore, i thought, if i’m at a university, the thing i can do that will be useful will be to document the full half. the use of this ‘glass-half-full’ approach – now widely known as asset-based community development (abcd) – produces a profound reframing for university partners because it is a necessary starting point, in that solutions reside in communities and their myriad assets, not in academic institutions. abcd seeks to create sustainable solutions to local challenges by harnessing the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, the resources of institutions, the physical spaces in communities, the economic resources of local places, and the history and culture of the neighbourhood (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). this approach has the potential to benefit community-engagement work undertaken by colleges and universities, including public four-year research institutions, private religious universities and land-grant colleges’ cooperative extension services. we thus explore abcd in each of these three contexts, outlining both the benefits of abcd approaches and the challenges that accompany infusing abcd into these diverse higher education settings. to explore our key idea of positioning community partners as experts who share power equitably, authors at each of three us academic institutions – depaul university, georgia institute of technology and the university of arkansas system division of agriculture, cooperative extension – invited co-authors from among their closest community partners to participate. throughout this article, we refer to ‘academic partners’ and ‘community partners’ or ‘communitybased partners’. academic partners are situated in universities or colleges and have the resources of their academic office or centre at their disposal. community partners are those operating in the context of local communities with a web of collaborators – for example, academic, municipal, philanthropic and others – but without, generally, the large staff and deeper pockets of large non-profits. goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 we interviewed our partners and spoke to them of setting up a foundation for co-writing. we were seeking to underscore ways in which abcd’s successes in its ‘traditional’ spheres, such as neighbourhoods, could translate to higher education settings that revealed aspects of abcd approaches in each context, and that explored what lessons higher education partners have learned in engaging abcd as a primary mechanism for stronger and more fruitful university-community collaborations. higher education institutions may be a less obvious target for an abcd case study than neighbourhoods, faith communities or voluntary associations, and that may be why there is limited research on abcd’s adoption in higher education. through interviewing and co-writing, we cultivated a lively dialogue around expertise, powersharing and the abcd ‘recipe’ for successful university-community collaboration. literature review benefits of abcd asset-based community development (abcd) is an approach to sustainable community-driven development that has the transformative potential to build stronger communities. mathie and cunningham (2003) argue that abcd emphasises the importance of recognising and valuing the experience and expertise of community members, which positions them as active participants rather than passive recipients of external interventions. by intentionally centring community voices and recognising community members as experts in what their community needs and wants, the abcd approach challenges the traditional top–down approach to community development and seeks to reconfigure power dynamics (mathie & cunningham 2003). this shift in power dynamics enables communities to define and drive their development agenda, resulting in more sustainable and contextually appropriate solutions that are also more likely to respect cultural traditions and nuances (mathie & cunningham 2003). an alternative to traditional deficit-based models, the abcd approach has several key benefits for all constituents engaging in collaborative work for community benefit. the overall aim of abcd is to empower communities, promote collaborative problem-solving, recognise and mobilise assets, generate sustainable solutions, and enhance social cohesion and resilience (kretzmann & mcknight 1993; mathie & cunningham 2003). this approach enables communities to take ownership of their development, fosters inclusive and participatory processes, and leverages existing resources and capacities (delgado 2016; lasker & weiss 2003). these benefits make abcd a valuable framework for community practitioners, researchers and policymakers seeking to foster community-driven and sustainable development outcomes. abcd and higher education gaining recognition as an effective approach to community development in the context of local communities and higher education institutions, abcd can play a crucial role in broadening participation by actively involving diverse stakeholders in problem-solving processes. lasker and weiss (2003) and holland (2012) attest to the potential of abcd approaches to foster collaboration, community engagement and social change. lasker and weiss (2003) take the position that using abcd principles in higher education settings can promote a shift from traditional top–down approaches to community engagement toward more participatory and collaborative practices. holland (2012) emphasises the role that abcd can play in connecting higher education and the community, and linking students, staff and faculty to the world outside academic settings. holland (2012) discusses how service learning, aligned with abcd principles, enables students to apply their academic knowledge and skills to address community needs. the abcd approach, aligned with an experiential learning pedagogy, promotes active citizenship, social responsibility, and a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness between academia and society. lasker and weiss (2003) contend that civic goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 engagement initiatives based on abcd principles create opportunities for students, faculty and community members to collaborate on community-driven projects, leading to meaningful and sustainable social change. however, further research needs to explore the long-term impact and scalability of abcd initiatives in diverse contexts as it relates to the application of abcd in higher education partnerships with and within the community. challenges and limitations while abcd plays a crucial role in broadening participation by actively involving diverse stakeholders in problem-solving processes in both community and higher education, it is not without challenges and limitations. the literature acknowledges the challenges in implementing abcd within community and higher education partnership settings. implementing asset-based community development (abcd) in higher education comes with obstacles: (1) faculty members may lack familiarity with abcd principles and practices, necessitating training and professional development to effectively integrate abcd into their teaching and research (holland 2012). integrating abcd into the curriculum can be intricate, often requiring faculty to redesign courses to align with abcd principles, demanding both time and effort (brown & jones 2013). (2) securing institutional support is crucial, as higher education institutions need to provide financial resources and administrative backing to sustain abcd initiatives (tregaskis & newton 2013). if academic partners want to pay community-based collaborators honoraria and stipends, acknowledging the mentoring that community-based partners provide and the expertise they share, the university must be willing to support those stipends (hirsch et al. 2023). (3) another significant challenge lies in addressing power imbalances between higher education institutions and communities. while abcd aims to empower communities, existing power dynamics can impede genuine collaboration (lasker & weiss 2003). while the literature underscores the transformative potential of abcd in strengthening communities and fostering community-driven development, it is crucial to recognise that realising this potential requires overcoming significant challenges. in the upcoming section, we will delve into case studies from three distinct academic institutions. these case studies l shed light on how these institutions have grappled with and navigated challenges related to capacity-building, offering valuable insights into the real-world application of abcd principles within higher education settings from the perspective of a public fouryear research institution (georgia institute of technology), a private four-year higher education institution (depaul university), and a public land-grant institution (university of arkansas). methodology our conversations with partners were held on zoom, and while they were structured loosely around the themes described below, each conversation followed the course defined by the partners’ specific insights and reflections, constituting their unique offerings on our guiding question regarding how higher education institutions can use abcd approaches most effectively to address challenges and improve outcomes, and how an asset-based orientation can help position community participants as peer ‘experts’ alongside their academic partners. after the interviews, university and community-based partnered pairs met again to discuss what material would be included in the piece and to co-write key sections related to specific partner insights and experiences. the following questions constituted the foundations of the interviews. our questions focused on (1) how the organisation embodies abcd principles; (2) how the organisation challenges the deficit models common in their sector; (3) how the organisation nurtures relationships in their local community; and (4) how the organisation and its leadership would assess higher education institutions’ efforts to take an abcd approach, in concert with community partners. goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 case 1: a public four-year research institution the center for serve-learn-sustain (sls) was launched in 2015 as georgia tech’s quality enhancement plan (qep) with the provost’s office committing $6 million to the initiative over five years. the plan merged two themes that qep reviewers found equally compelling for enhancing undergraduate education at georgia tech – sustainability and community engagement. hence, sls’s primary charge was to engage students and faculty in community-based partnerships aimed at advancing sustainability in communities across atlanta and georgia. from the outset, the center sought to counterbalance georgia tech’s focus on sustainability interventions and curriculum in technology, design and engineering that drew primarily on expertise from georgia tech, with a strong emphasis on elevating the expertise of local community partners working in sustainability areas like urban farming, watershed health, environmental justice and educational access. from the beginning, sls foregrounded the equity and justice issues that are sometimes neglected in sustainability discourses dedicated narrowly to environmental or economic sustainability. a central framework for sls’s educational mission and its relationship-building efforts with community partners is asset-based community development. sls’s first partnership principle is ‘start with assets’ (partnership principles 2019). each of the principles is at work in the case described here, but the particular emphases are starting with assets and focusing on equity and justice, which are inextricable in taking assetbased approaches to community higher education partnerships. the discussion below was adapted from two conversations with sls partners, one with community partner and social impact entrepreneur mamie harper and the second with both harper and her former intern and georgia tech alum, rachel dekom. mamie harper leads the community-based organisation, carrie’s closet of georgia, which she founded in 2015 and named after her mother, carrie, a social worker, community leader and gifted ‘connector’ in the language of abcd. staffed only by harper, supported by a network of volunteers, carrie’s closet initially focused on providing clothing to youth in foster care – before expanding into advocacy for foster children and clothing and hygiene support for people experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness. after her internship with harper in 2020, rachel dekom focused her job search on mission-driven social impact organisations that had a profound local impact. she now works with saged consulting. founded to support impact-driven leadership, saged consulting specialises in authentic executive coaching and development, community-building and equitable innovation. dekom and harper both participated for multiple years in sls’s sustainable communities internship program, and harper has also had other engagements with georgia tech faculty and programs. mamie harper as a community partner, i see the importance of centering the lived experience and expertise of the partner and the communities the partner supports. i am both a full-time social worker and an entrepreneur. the relationship building approach of carrie’s closet – a focus on interconnection and interdependence rather than on deficits – has made the organization indispensable in communities across atlanta, especially those cultivating resilience in the face of continual dispossession and economic stress. in light of those realities, one of the challenges interns at carrie’s closet face is the “culture shock” they sometimes feel entering communities and attempting to shed an inculcated deficit approach. it is essential to integrate history into the interns’ experience and help students understand that at many points in history there have been incredibly rich [black] communities with very successful citizens. i also use on-site learning and on site “privilege-busting,” laced with grace and mercy that doesn’t make anyone feel isolated. i do systems education; i say there are systems in place that make the poor, poor and the rich, rich; can we agree on that? it is this kind of grounded expertise that impacts students, an expertise that is honored through sls’ assetbased approach and its efforts to support students in fully participating in their engagements with partners as transformative learning experiences – about themselves and about the systems they move through (harper 2023). goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 rachel dekom my internship with carrie’s closet of georgia was part of a series of learnings from black women social impact entrepreneurs regarding how universities and community partners traditionally interact. a lot of higher ed institutions have a “build it and they will come” mentality, which isn’t the same as “we will build this in partnership with you” and this produces different results, because the partners with lots of resources may “come” but those without resources can’t always. relatedly, staff and faculty in higher education settings are used to being perceived as the experts . . . but that expertise is different from that of someone working on the ground. not enough emphasis is placed by academic institutions on the expertise of people doing the work in communities. the community expertise is the secret sauce to making partnerships and programs work – building with community partners and amplifying the expertise of partners on the ground (dekom 2023). this case study addresses the challenge that dekom articulates of ‘building with’ partners. higher education institutions can play a critical role in connecting partners, especially bipoc entrepreneurs and organisation leaders, to resource networks. seeking to create a program that supports its increasingly black and brown cohorts of internship hosts, sls pays the full stipend of each partner’s intern and requires that all interns participate in a weekly seminar as well as weekly reflective journaling. the seminar focuses on themes of equity and justice in the contexts of social innovation and the un sustainable development goals, supporting interns to approach their work – whether it be in advocacy for youth, urban farming, or watershed health – with an equity lens and an attention to history. mamie harper what carrie’s closet and many organizations led by black women need most is continuous capacity building and wraparound services. an internship program with an asset-based approach can provide essential support to us, especially through interns who, like rachel, are prepared to really engage with issues of race and power. there isn’t enough conversation when it comes to black and brown entrepreneurs; some founders who don’t share my identity can use the homes and resources of their families. the way they would use an intern is very different than how i use mine; in this sense the interns are a lifeline. at carrie’s closet, we need them in order to do the work. that is a way that universities like georgia tech can play a constructive role; if carrie’s closet and other community-based organizations like it can depend on, for example, having a full-time intern every summer who is equipped to do sophisticated project work then leaders like me don’t have to spend additional time applying for funding to execute those same projects (harper 2023). as this case suggests, when a university or its affiliated centre takes an asset-based approach to developing student programs and forming partnerships, the foundation has been laid to ‘build together’ and thereby address several of the challenges identified in this article; specifically those related to power imbalances (challenge 3); creating infrastructure for resilient, lasting partnerships (challenge 2); and addressing the issue of unequal resources and the need for material institutional support from the academic partner (challenge 2 and challenge 3). when universities take an asset-oriented approach to collaborating with community-based partners, there is an opportunity for engagement that acknowledges historical and current structural inequity, centres the strengths of communities, and thereby begins to reimagine university-community partner relationships as fundamentally grounded in the deep knowledge, gifts and vision of communities and their innovators. case 2: private four-year institution of higher education located in chicago, the third largest city in the us, the depaul university steans center was established through the steans family endowment in 2001. the steans center provides an academic bridge between the university and the community that supports student learning, community development, and faculty teaching and scholarship. the centre’s mission is to develop mutually beneficial relationships with community goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 organisations to engage depaul students in educational opportunities grounded in vincentian values of respect for human dignity and the quest for social justice. the steans center is a dynamic, multifaceted community-engagement centre that fosters community connections and a deeper understanding of social issues, and promotes a more holistic, authentic approach to community development that focuses on assets rather than deficits. emphasising the abcd framework as the foundation for reciprocally beneficial relations between the institution and the community, the steans center recognises the expertise and resources that exist within the communities it serves and works collaboratively with community partners to support their initiatives. by intentionally engaging with organisations and community members through an asset-based approach, the steans center supports local residents to take an active role in addressing critical issues affecting their neighbourhoods when partnering with faculty and their students via community-based service-learning partnerships that the centre facilitates. in the reflection-based discussion with amalia nieto gomez, executive director of alliance of the southeast (ase), we gathered several insights as she shared her experience of academic course partnerships supported by the steans center. since 2016, ase has connected with depaul students through a cbsl project-based course partnership with professor heather smith’s geography course: geo 200-sustainable urban development. geo 200 is an intermediate geography course designed to explore aspects of sustainable urban development, for which many students choose to conduct real-world projects for alliance of the southeast. amalia nieto gomez has served as executive director of ase for more than ten years. nieto gomez, a neighbourhood resident and previous longstanding board member of ase, has been with the organisation since operating under its previous name, alianza, and through the alianza/ase transition. nieto gomez shares her experience in connecting with depaul university through course-based service-learning projects. amalia nieto gomez alliance of the southeast (ase) organizes around community-initiated agendas and movements, mobilizing community members, businesses, schools, churches, and community organizations to address challenges facing southeast chicago neighborhoods. we develop grassroots leaders to carry out community and social change, impact decision-makers, and win real improvements in our neighborhoods. we (ase) appreciate our partnership with depaul university, and the irwin w. steans center for community-based service, in our work fighting for social justice. ase has been a long-standing steans center community partner and has participated in a service-learning course partnership, including advocacy, solidarity, and project-based opportunities to collaborate. the research and documents that depaul students have created are valuable resources that we continue to use, as we advocate for equitable development and environmental justice. through one course partnership, students created maps of pollution and city investments (tax increment financing tif) in chicago and handouts showing the need for equitable development. we have used maps and research done by students, including an air pollution map of cook county, showing the southeast side to be oversaturated, with 3 of the top 5 air polluting companies in cook county. we continue to share these findings with city, state, and federal officials, as we advocate for resources for our community and fight against development that harms our air, land, and water quality. i believe it is so important for ase and the depaul partnership to continue to create asset and impact maps of our neighborhoods. the insights revealed have supported our ability to educate our community about the environmental and health impacts in our communities, so that we can mobilize even more community residents and allies. our work ranges from community meetings, to holding rallies and public events, to advocating for city, state, and national policies. goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 http://www.asechicago.org in addition to course partnerships, depaul has exhibited solidarity with ase by including us in other events, like the depaul placemaking summit, and through presentations with a graduate course with the asset-based community development institute at the steans center. we are excited about this partnership, and are interested in expanding our relationship. we have encouraged students to show up in solidarity at some of the events, which they have. we really appreciate the support and enthusiasm of depaul students. connecting with students has been rewarding. we listen and learn from each other, and that’s the best part (nieto gomez 2023). abcd helps position community participants as peer ‘experts’, sharing power and authority collaboratively with their academic partner, the faculty. as this case suggests, when a community partner takes an asset-based approach to lifting up what is working and raising up relationships in the urban community, the foundation has been laid to build the work collaboratively within an asset-based framework. related to the first and second challenges we described pertaining to faculty development and securing institutional support for long-term relationships, the academic institution can (1) co-create new programming and service-learning courses that are community driven and based on existing relationships with, and strengths of, students, faculty and community members; (2) sustain long-term relationships while leveraging the content knowledge of university and community partners in ways that co-create results; and (3) utilise findings and shared research for funding and additional support of the community and faculty research. in doing so, the community’s self-identified needs and opportunities will be met. case 3: public land-grant institution the university of arkansas system division of agriculture cooperative extension service (uada-extension) grounds its community, workforce and economic development work in a shared vision for building the capacity of individuals, associations and institutions in ways that strengthen local communities and predominantly rural counties in arkansas. cooperative extension is a unique model in higher education grounded in the belief that research-centric information strengthens local community leadership. the land grant model of higher education focuses on strengthening each state through a local lens. it has four primary areas of focus: agriculture, family and consumer sciences, 4h and youth development, and community and economic development. it is important to understand the context of the cooperative extension service within the land grant university system. in 1862, the us congress passed the morrill act, which designated a university be constructed in each state. they were known as land grant colleges. in 1914, with passage of the smith-lever act, the cooperative extension service was created to ‘extend’ research best practice beyond the university classroom and into the community (osu extension 2023). the university of arkansas’s system division of agriculture cooperative extension’s mission is to ‘strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices’ (uada 2023). as part of the extension approach in arkansas, uada-extension serves 75 counties, with full-time professionals serving each county. the agents are trust brokers and connectors with a deep understanding of their community. support is provided to county agents and community members by extension staff and faculty, with the goal of supporting community organisations and empowering them as leaders through capacity building support. in cleveland county, the uada-extension community and economic development faculty works in partnership with county agents to support the local vision for vibrant growth. cleveland county extension has a focus on community, workforce and economic development that addresses quality of life. alicya danielle watson is the county family and consumer sciences extension agent and staff chair of the county, where she oversees the administrative leadership of the agent team and serves as a trusted expert in family and consumer sciences for her county. she works closely alongside county leadership, mayors and county judges to create a county where residents want to stay, raise their family and be a vibrant part of the goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 community. alicya danielle watson reflects below on both ways abcd is utilised: as a practice lens in her community and as a lens for the faculty and agent relationship. alicya danielle watson when i look at our community, i see a glass half full approach. our county has so many positives. we have a strong group of volunteers who want to focus on the strength of our county. when our community comes together, we understand our opportunities to address challenges. along with extension volunteers in the community, we can partner to create something bigger. while it is easy to look at the negatives, in our county, the local committees who advise extension look at challenges in the communities and then focus on the top five priorities. they leave it up to us to provide focus for the needs in the community. we use abcd more than anything else because with the asset-based community approach, doing it together as a community is more effective with our community partners than just doing it by ourselves. our community has relationships! we’re not so focused so much on what we need but how we can serve and support each other, so abcd has been a great one for us. things in the county are different than they are in other parts of the state, so it is important to understand the challenges of the rural community in southern arkansas. it is also important to understand the diversity of the county, so everyone has a voice to make a difference. as we build on assets, our county is a special place and i want others to know it like i do. we have many retirees, and a few people do a lot for all. as we grow and keep our community vibrant for future generations, we want to engage all people and celebrate their view in what we do. it is important. (watson 2023) using an abcd lens, watson has developed a workforce development committee of partners across a multi-county region and has supported the county’s focus on making broadband internet more accessible to all in the community. to address the issues identified in both the second and third challenges, related to institutional support and unequal power, land grant institutions can take an asset-oriented approach to collaborating with community members. when they do, there is an opportunity for engagement that acknowledges the rural context, culture and economic realities while centring the strengths of communities. thereby, the community building vision and actions are fundamentally grounded in the deep knowledge, gifts and vision of communities and their members. emerging themes the discussions with community partners explored abcd in each of those three contexts: a public fouryear research institution (georgia tech’s center for serve-learn-sustain), a private four-year institution of higher education with a focus on the service-learning centre (depaul university’s steans center) and a public land-grant institution, cooperative extension, with a state-wide emphasis (university of arkansas system division of agriculture cooperative extension service). in every conversation, the aim was to gather both the benefits of abcd approaches and the challenges that accompany infusing abcd into these diverse higher education settings. after analysing the synopses of interviews designed to gather insight into the impact of higher education partnerships using an abcd driven community development approach, authors noted the following themes that emerged across their institutions. ‘if you build it, they will come’ versus co-creating partnerships based on the assets of the community service-learning and community engagement centres have benefited from a maturing discourse on how universities can better support community partners, rather than partners struggling to find a footing within goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 institutions that don’t engineer opportunities with partners in mind. at their worst, service-learning and community-university research relationships are extractive – drawing on the time, talent and resources of community partners to provide an educational experience for students that reinforces their understanding of expertise as located within higher education institutions rather than communities (mitchell 2008, 2013; tryon & stoecker 2008). when higher education institutions adopt asset-based approaches, especially in conjunction with community partners who also engage abcd in their work, the co-creation of partnerships is possible. an abcd focus on mobilising gifts and strengths can often lead university collaborators to shift their focus to the intellectual, cultural and social richness that partners bring to each engagement, rather than remaining lodged in a framework that is focused on the services or expertise that faculty and students can provide. additionally, a key theme energising partner discussions was the importance of centring the lived experience and expertise of the partner and the communities the partner supports. partnerships that acknowledge and honour partners as experts, who are not only closely connected to local efforts, but oftentimes lead, have been more impactful and better received by the community. institutional partnerships become less effective in shortand long-term impact, when driven by the institution’s perceived goal of the community. institutional partnerships are more impactful when they engage the community as peer collaborators with expertise needed to actualise sustainable efforts. community partners emphasised the importance of building on existing relationships as well as forging new relationships. particularly in rural communities where abcd is used in partnership with higher education, it is crucial for higher education to recognise the deep linkages that already exist in the community through associations and networks. community members connect with abcd practices most deeply when they uplift their relationships as a way to better leverage local assets. co-creating partnerships with a focus on identifying, amplifying and building up assets when it comes to supporting the expertise of partners, higher education institutions can play a critical role in connecting black entrepreneurs – or any social innovators traditionally excluded from funding opportunities – to resource networks. it is thus best for institutions to strive to take a ‘build together’ approach to developing programs and other resources that can be instrumental for partners, especially bootstrap entrepreneurs led by people of colour. developing wrap-around systems and services that support and expose them to skills and networks they deem necessary, in collaboration with partners, leverages partner expertise while also providing a safe space for them to be proactive with requests for support. this also helps combat deficit thinking and the systems of oppression and inequality that exist within the landscape of funding sources for organisational development efforts. in the end, partners gain necessary skills and build their capacity to participate in partnerships as co-creators with institutional constituents. one partner emphasised the importance of ensuring there were more black and brown leaders at the table of community conversation. while community discussion and decisions are mostly voiced by white people in the community, one potential benefit of abcd is the ability to uplift traditionally marginalised voices to the table. students also benefit from this, in that these partnerships often result in a call to action for all to selfreflect on privilege, assess assets, and expose opportunities to deepen their own impact. students engaging with entrepreneurs, especially people of colour and women, and who share both the challenges they meet in racist funding ecosystems and the triumphs they experience by insisting on the importance of their contributions, perspectives and lived experience, have lasting effects on student learning and their f activism. goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 institutional level support: advocacy, solidarity and mobilising mutually beneficial relationships are a baseline for developing authentic partnerships. partners noted the importance of having the institution publicly acknowledge their privilege when supporting local efforts. this can take shape in many ways. for example, writing letters of support to policy makers and funders, utilising university space to host meetings, press conferences, etc. on campus, mobilising students on buses to support lobby efforts, and much more. when institutions don’t lean into their privilege in these ways, it can harm the impact and efforts made by the community and create mistrust amongst partners and residents. partners also noted a need for commitment to utilising abcd as a sustained approach by the institution, alongside community partners, to achieve long-term results. given abcd places an emphasis on community-driven, people-led change, it is easy to say there have been no identifiable results over a short time frame. yet, an abcd lens on community partnership and engagement, especially when utilised in a shared walk between the institution and the community partner, yields long-term, sustainable results that can be evidenced over time. equity and justice a final key common thread is the need to address equity and justice in our work and in partnerships with higher education institutions. abcd approaches that underscore the specific gifts of culture, identity and history within partner organisations and the people within the organisation are an excellent lever for highlighting equity and justice because they are tools for exposing structural and historical forces that must be named. partners spoke to the importance of foregrounding equity, both personally and structurally. interpersonal relationships – mentoring, teaching and intellectual collaboration – must keep equity in the foreground, and building strong partnerships should acknowledge historical power imbalances in resources too often cordoned off by universities, such as funding opportunities and networks, intellectual property and physical meeting spaces. when the explicit aim of university partners is to centre equity, it becomes possible to build equitable relationships; when that aim is left implicit, or when only partner organisations name it as a partnership priority, there is far less opportunity to truly ‘build with’ and hold universities accountable when power is not shared. abcd, at its core, strengthens and uplifts leadership that includes all members of the community at the decision-making table. just as one partner noted, it is not enough for a community to have diversity of involvement. there must be diversity, and in turn equitable relationships within engagement and decision making. this shift from community members being informed versus being engaged and honoured for their thoughts, views and ideas in an accessible way is a critical component of an abcd approach. conclusion through a case-study approach, utilising a public four-year research institution, a private religious university and a land-grant university, through the cooperative extension service, this discussion explored the use of abcd in all three us contexts. by looking at three diverse higher education settings, the benefits and challenges of abcd utilisation were better understood. the opportunity to co-authorship and weave together perspectives from three academic–community partnered teams yielded results that reflect our shared abcd orientation. as abcd practitioners, we carry with us the lesson that individual gifts are at the centre of every abcd success story, and so in the co-learning of this writing journey, we were able to enjoy how the individual wisdom, storytelling and insights of each author could impact our writing practice and our perspectives on our partnerships and programs. learning more about the unique structure and impact of extension services, the approaches of a highly successful academic service-learning model and an internship program that prioritises lifting goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 up the expertise of partners provided a key chance to absorb very different models for ‘doing’ abcd in higher education, and allowed us to contemplate, in our own work, what the lessons of our writing partners’ experiences might catalyse if unleashed in our own institutional contexts. as nieto gomez reminds us, ‘we listen and learn from each other, and that’s the best part’. together, we explored the questions: how can abcd approaches be utilised most effectively in higher education contexts to address challenges and improve outcomes? and, as called out as a key exploration of this issue, can an asset-based orientation help position community participants as peer ‘experts’ alongside their academic partners, and share power and authority in the collaboration? if so, how? if not, why not? building on robust community partner conversations with leaders who work alongside all three institutions, the cases, combined with the resulting themes that uplift community partners’ perspectives, provide insight into guiding principles for utilising abcd in higher education. a few key challenges are explored in this article, specifically, the need to build durable infrastructure for partnerships; the importance of placing partner relationships ahead of material outcomes and taking these relationships off an institutionally prescribed timeline, transparently foregrounding issues of power and unequal resources in the development of service-learning courses and co-curricular activities, and in the remuneration of partners for their labour. finally, the role of strong service-learning courses with committed faculty members is also highlighted, as are the powerful results that are realised when an assetoriented approach guides the development of course projects and faculty-partner relationships. the cases and resulting analysis found that, indeed, an asset-based orientation helps position community partners and participants as peer ‘experts’ and co-creators within their academic partnerships. power and authority can be successfully shared, though it is a collaborative journey, not a destination, that takes continual work and shared understanding to achieve sustained results. references alliance of the southeast 2023. https://asechicago.org/ asset-based community development institute at depaul university 2023. 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[zoom]. goodman et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2023.2176767 https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2023.2176767 https://www.jeder.com.au/ https://doi.org/10.1093/jurban/jtg014 https://doi.org/10.1093/jurban/jtg014 https://doi.org/10.1080/0961452032000125857 https://doi.org/10.1080/0961452032000125857 https://mn.gov/mnddc/mcknight/johnmcknight01.html https://extension.osu.edu/about/mission-vision-values/osu-extension-brief-history https://extension.osu.edu/about/mission-vision-values/osu-extension-brief-history https://serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/2022https://serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/2022https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/ https://www.uaex.uada.edu/about-extension/mission-statement.aspx https://www.uaex.uada.edu/about-extension/mission-statement.aspx © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: hauber-özer, m., decker, j. 2025. participatory esol as process and product: community-based participatory research with refugee english learners. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v18i1.9019 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 research article (peer reviewed) participatory esol as process and product: communitybased participatory research with refugee english learners melissa hauberözer*, joseph decker department of learning, teaching & curriculum, college of education & human development, university of missouricolumbia corresponding author: melissa hauberözer, mhauber@missouri.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9019 article history: received 29/06/2024; revised 27/11/2024; accepted 12/12/2024; published 01/2025 abstract adult english for speakers of other languages (esol) courses are crucial for the social and economic integration of immigrant and refugee families. these programs need to be customised to learners’ diverse educational backgrounds, needs and objectives. however, adult esol programs consistently face demand that surpasses capacity, and neoliberal funding requirements prioritise workforce integration. this paper results from a communitybased participatory research (cbpr) partnership established to address these intersecting challenges through esol instruction shaped by the needs and priorities of refugee adults. participatory approaches have been used widely to engage adult learners in research, from needs analysis to curriculum development and program evaluation. however, in this paper we argue that cbpr is both process and product, an effective method for facilitating learning and knowledge production. through vignettes recreated from field notes, a learnerauthored story and a participatory evaluation of the course, we examine the process we have undergone simultaneously as adult education and research about adult education. by examining the data for instances of vivencia, praxis, and conscientisation, we confirmed that critical adult education is participatory research. community concerns sparked the project, and the expertise of those closest to the issue informed the solution, resulting in individual conscientisation and action toward broader social change. by centring learners’ own words in the paper, we aim to trouble the presumed divisions between community and university, researcher and participant, and education and research. we encourage fellow communityengaged scholars to 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors thank the adult literacy and learning impact network (all in) research small grants initiative for financial support of this research. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9019 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9019 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mhauber@missouri.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9019 reconnect with the roots of this powerful approach and recognise the importance of living out their ontoepistemological commitments in both the process and the product of participatory inquiry. keywords communitybased participatory research; universitycommunity partnership; participation; critical pedagogy; adult esol introduction vignette 1: welcome house on a sunny day in october 2022, melissa stepped into the large, open lobby of welcome house. a newly arrived family from the democratic republic of the congo sat at a table with the school liaison, who was walking them through public school enrolment forms for their two young children. a woman selected a coat for her son and shampoo and laundry detergent from the basic needs closet while her husband, who worked as an interpreter for the united states military in afghanistan, met with the professional development specialist to draft a resume. a care coordinator ushered a young man from myanmar into her office with a friendly smile, checking that he brought the necessary paperwork to apply for permanent residency. an elderly volunteer greeted melissa, directing her to the conference room upstairs for her meeting with candace, the director of education and a former public elementary school teacher. the two had first met a month or so earlier when melissa, a newly hired assistant professor of qualitative inquiry at the nearby university, had volunteered at a welcome house fundraiser and mentioned her background in teaching adult literacy and english for speakers of other languages. knowing that the local refugee advisory council had identified adult english classes as a top priority, candace set up a meeting with melissa to discuss the possibility of starting a class at welcome house. adult english for speakers of other languages (esol) courses are crucial for the social and economic integration of immigrant and refugee families (hofstetter & mchugh 2023). these programs need to be customised to learners’ diverse educational backgrounds, needs and objectives. however, adult esol programs consistently face demand that surpasses capacity, and neoliberal funding requirements prioritise certain groups, often those pursuing high school equivalency, citizenship or workforce credentials (cacicio, cote & bigger 2023; hofstetter & mchugh 2023). furthermore, due to funding constraints, esol and literacy instructors face difficulties obtaining evidencebased teaching materials and professional development opportunities, as they are often overburdened and underpaid (barbara bush foundation 2021; cacicio, cote & bigger 2023). this paper results from a communitybased participatory research (cbpr) partnership designed to address these intersecting challenges through esol instruction shaped by the needs and priorities of refugee adults. participatory approaches have been used widely to engage adult learners in research, from needs analysis to curriculum development and program evaluation (guo et al. 2024; hanson 2014; kastner & motschilnig 2022). however, in this paper we argue that cbpr is both process and product, an effective method for facilitating learning and knowledge production (see also callcummings & hauberözer 2020). through vignettes recreated from field notes, a learnerauthored story and a participatory evaluation of the course, we examine the process we have undergone simultaneously as adult education and research about adult education. we aim to disrupt the presumed divisions between community and university, researcher and participant, and education and research. this manuscript is effort in ‘radical recognition’ (malone 2023, p. 190) of the contributions and perspectives of our communitybased researcherlearners and an act of resistance and refusal toward an exclusionary, detached research paradigm. hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 communitybased participatory research cppr is part of a family of changeoriented approaches to inquiry which are driven by community concerns and privilege the expertise of those closest to a problem in developing solutions (falsborda & rahman 1991; wood & mcateer 2017). these approaches aim to democratise the knowledge production process by equalising the relationship between researcher and participants (callcummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023; glassman & erdem 2014). in the participatory paradigm, community members take an active role in determining and carrying out the research agenda and developing and sharing findings while universitybased researchers facilitate the process ( janzen & ochocka 2020). participation often fluctuates and takes different forms throughout a project based on differing interests, priorities, and responsibilities, but building trusting relationships and sharing ownership along the way are crucial (callcummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023). rather than simply documenting the status quo or implementing topdown interventions, the goals are to foster emancipation at the individual level (falsborda 1987; freire 1972) and to provoke social change at the community level and beyond (kemmis & mctaggart 2005). moreover, participatory approaches represent an ontoepistemological orientation to inquiry that rejects the conventional positivist research paradigm defined by a linear, systematic process and detachment from research subjects (callcummings & hauberözer 2018). the cbpr process often follows the action research cycle developed by kurt lewin (1948, 1951) to reduce intergroup conflict in the postworld war ii united states (us), which comprises flexible, responsive phases of planning, acting, observing and reflecting on outcomes (kemmis & mctaggart 2005). however, the distinct participatory strand of action research developed as part of a grassroots movement against colonial oppression across the global south in the 1960s and 1970s (glassman & erdem 2014). as a result, participatory inquiry is inherently revolutionary and designed for transformative rather than palliative goals (glassman & erdem 2014). it is guided by three interrelated concepts: vivencia, praxis, and conscientisation (falsborda & rahman 1991). vivencia, coined by a colombian leader of the participatory movement, orlando falsborda (1987), describes deep understanding through participation in another’s lived experience and possibilities. this engagement spurs praxis, a process of critical reflection and action in the pursuit of liberation (freire 1972). through this dynamic process, individuals develop conscientisation, critical awareness of both the sociocultural forces shaping their lives and their power to enact change (freire 1972), thus prompting further action. critical adult education as cbpr cbpr ontoepistemology aligns closely with the critical approach to adult education, which demands that educational programs, content and methods address learners’ specific needs and challenges, while promoting greater social justice (glassman & erdem 2014; wood & mcateer 2017). in traditional, hierarchical pedagogy, which brazilian adult educator paulo freire (1972) called the ‘banking’ model of education, the teacher determines what knowledge is valuable and delivers it to students. in contrast, freire’s critical pedagogy is a dialogic, problemposing praxis that centres marginalised individuals as experts of their own lives and experiences (kincheloe 2005; luciovillegas 2018). learners actively participate in creating the curriculum and gain critical consciousness (conscientisation) of possibilities for their lives and their ability to pursue them, which enables them to take action on the realworld challenges they face (freire 1972). in fact, several leaders of the participatory research movement saw it as one and the same as adult education. this perspective diverges significantly from the neoliberal lifelong learning model, which primarily aims to prepare individuals for the labour market. instead of reinforcing existing power structures, critical adult education seeks to foster learners’ autonomy (glassman & erdem 2014; wood & mcateer 2017) as well as to challenge and transform dominant ideologies, social systems and structures (luciovillegas 2018). hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 sharing communitybased knowledge communitybased approaches are increasingly used and recognised as promising for solving urgent social, political and ecological challenges ( janzen & ochocka 2020; malone 2023). however, the increased uptake of communityengaged, collaborative and interdisciplinary scholarship has not translated to a corresponding change in publishing expectations and conventions at the institutional level. gap filling and generalisability remain the dominant approaches to establish the importance of a research topic rather than bringing the situated and relational knowledges of an underrepresented group to light (malone 2023). at the same time, the unrelenting pressure on early career researchers to ‘publish or perish’ requires increasing numbers of publications in closedaccess, highimpact journals and prioritising sole or lead authorship to prove independence and expertise in the field. peer review practices also reinforce the formal writing style and standardised structure of a research article (malone 2023). for qualitative research, this typically means following standard coding procedures which break data down into digestible, decontextualised chunks and establish patterns across participants. in addition, institutional ethics boards typically demand that participants’ identities be anonymised. as a result, communitybased researchers remain largely absent from authorship roles in peerreviewed literature (malone 2023). these practices are entirely at odds with cbpr ontoepistemology, which values collaboration, coconstruction of knowledge and shared ownership of research products (callcummings & hauberözer 2018; janzen & ochocka 2020). in participatory research, data generation and analysis are often blurred processes of meaningmaking rather than distinct phases (callcummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023). furthermore, consensus among coresearchers and transferable results are not necessarily the goals; rather, the research collective works to reach mutual understanding and transmit members’ diverse and sometimes divergent viewpoints holistically and with relevant context (callcummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023). malone (2023) asserts that research articles have potential ‘as intentional drivers of institutional change’ (malone 2023, p. 3) and offers guiding principles for realigning the research article with cbpr values. such writing, she asserts, should represent diverse ways of knowing, present both ‘theoretical and practical justification’ (malone 2023, p. 196) for the research, reflect the dynamic and evolving nature of the collaboration, challenge conventional structures, meaningfully involve and acknowledge all contributors, and be judged by appropriate quality markers and peer review processes (malone 2023). we take up these guiding principles for cbpr writing, centring learner voices and ways of knowing in the paper and structuring it to reflect the collaborative, messy, changeoriented process. moreover, we resist the demands of exclusivity and distance by choosing an openaccess outlet and writing in a straightforward style to ensure that the results of our work are accessible and relevant to our organisational partners. below, we tell the story of our evolving partnership, guided by the question: what do vivencia, praxis, and conscientisation look like in a participatory esol class? establishing the partnership: year one truman, a college town of about 130 000 in the midwestern us, hosts a small but growing population of refugees who speak a variety of languages and have a range of prior educational experiences and literacy skills. launched by a group of community members in 2010, welcome house provides postresettlement support in basic needs, education and professional development. the nonprofit organisation has expanded rapidly in response to the increasing number of refugees settled in the area and moved to a larger building in the fall of 2022 to accommodate new staff and programs, which are supported by dozens of dedicated volunteers and several interns from the local university each semester. in recent years, the adult esol program run by the public school district has not been able to keep pace with the increase in multilingual residents, resulting in long waiting lists. in january 2023, candace and melissa recruited two retired teachers who were volunteering with the organisation in other capacities to hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 form an adult education team (current team members opted to use their real first names in the paper). carla had taught spanish and esol in the local public schools and then helped launch a sheltered middle school esol program for newcomers (newly arrived refugee and immigrant children), while barbara (pseudonym) had taught special education and adult literacy. as a team, we began to plan for a class based on what we knew of potential learners’ needs and gaps in existing services. knowing that transportation and childcare were common barriers to education for refugee adults, particularly women, melissa insisted on providing both for the classes, which required additional volunteers. when candace shared the intake testing scores of the welcome house clients who had been waiting months for placements in public esol classes, melissa noticed that most were afghans who tested at the preliteracy beginner level, indicating a gap in services for those who were new to both english and print literacy in any language and recommended targeting this group. when we were ready to begin offering twohour classes two mornings each week in early march, welcome house staff invited the learners from the waiting list, and the word spread. vignette 2: first class new learners trickled hesitantly into the classroom, several carrying infants or leading toddlers by the hand. since they had not yet found a volunteer driver, candace had picked some up in the welcome house van, while others had arrived in their own vehicles. the education team and two volunteer classroom aides, both retired women with some experience tutoring english learners, encouraged the learners to choose seats at the three round folding tables set up around a portable whiteboard. an additional volunteer invited the children to join her in a play area on the other side of the classroom. the team had planned to use a simple registration form and practise greetings and introductions in order to informally assess the learners’ written and oral proficiency levels. it quickly became clear that there were at least two distinct levels represented in the group, with some requiring assistance to write their names and others easily filling out the form and conversing about personal information. this required impromptu adjustments to group learners homogeneously and find materials for the more advanced group. while debriefing after this first class, the team decided to split the group into two classes – carla and melissa would coteach the beginner group, and barbara would teach the intermediate learners. approximately eight learners, all women from afghanistan and myanmar with varied educational and migration backgrounds, regularly attended the beginner class during that initial sixweek session, which focused on exchanging greetings and personal information and establishing print literacy, which was a new skill for many of the learners. the intermediate class served on average six to eight learners from myanmar, afghanistan, libya, and russia and focused mainly on more advanced literacy skills. as welcome house was unable to accommodate additional children while k–12 schools were closed, our classes paused for the summer break. formalising the partnership: year two for the 2023–2024 academic year, melissa secured a small grant targeting shortterm, communityengaged research on adult literacy and obtained approval for the project from her institutional review board (irb). this funding enabled the team to pay teachers a modest stipend, hire an aide for the beginner class who spoke pashto and dari, purchase curriculum materials, and offer participation incentives to learners. joe, a phd student and graduate research assistant working with melissa that year, joined the team in the fall of 2023 to observe the intermediate class. joe had experience in adult education, lived in myanmar for 10 years, and is married to a burmese woman. beginning in late august, classes were reduced to 1.5 hours each day due to space and childcare constraints. hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 data generation and analysis throughout this year of the partnership, joe recorded instructional activities and resources in a google document shared with learners, collected classroom artifacts and kept detailed field notes, in which he captured reflections and curiosities. similarly, melissa kept a record of instructional activities and field notes for the beginnerlevel class, supplemented by carla’s notes for the days when melissa could not be present. melissa and joe met weekly to debrief and brainstorm, recording several of these analytical conversations as well. to develop this manuscript, we reviewed the data pertaining to the intermediate class, met several times to identify the focus and designate tasks, and drafted the paper collaboratively in a google document during the spring and summer of 2024. this was an ongoing and iterative process, incorporating reviewer feedback and our developing understandings. given the constantly evolving nature of participatory research and our crystallising perceptions of what occurred in the classroom, the resulting paper takes an entirely different form than we first conceptualised. ultimately, we decided to focus on the ways that vivencia, praxis and conscientisation materialised in the classroom. to communicate these embedded processes of collaborative meaningmaking as valid and valuable knowledge production and resist conventions demanding detached ‘expert’ analysis by university based researchers, our findings comprise descriptions of joe's efforts to enact problemposing critical pedagogy (kincheloe 2005) paired with dialogic vignettes recreated from field notes and a learnerauthored story. from the large corpus of data, we selected instances that relate to issues that learners identified as most important in initial topic generation and an endofcourse participatory evaluation. learners since our irb’s requirements precluded officially recognising learners as coresearchers, they were positioned by the university as participants and had to provide informed consent. joe requested consent using explanations in conversational english with supplementary explanations in burmese for those who speak the language. nine learners consented and appear in the narrative; joe selected pseudonyms to reflect their cultural identities. due to their unpredictable schedules, having all learners in the class at the same time was rare. they spoke five different languages, lived in various parts of the city, and worked at different locations. tuyana, from the republic of buryatia in russia, came to class most regularly. she was fluent in russian, but her mother tongue was buryat. when she first joined the class, tuyana had been in the us for less than a year. yousef came from afghanistan and was the most recent arrival to the us in the class. his first language was pashto, but he spoke dari fluently as well. ahmad also came from afghanistan but had been in the us already for a couple of years. his first language was dari, but he also spoke pashto. the four other regular learners, thiri, thaw thaw, mary and thet came from myanmar originally and had all been in the us for around 10 years. also from myanmar, bo phyu and san attended less regularly. though they all spoke burmese as a lingua franca, each came from a different ethnic region and had a different mother tongue. the classroom was incredibly linguistically diverse, including widely varying levels of english. vignette 3: traditional pedagogy the first class about how to write the beginning of a letter had been a long lecture with very little input from learners for almost the entire two hours. the second class started much like the first, with a 30minute lecture and little participation from the learners. barbara was discussing the difference between ms, mrs and miss. she had written the titles on the board and discussed how ms is pronounced with a ‘z’ sound on the end and miss is pronounced with an ‘s’ sound on the end. she had the learners recite the pronunciations. it was unclear whether the learners understood what barbara was saying as she did not check for understanding. when the teacher asked the learners what their last names were, joe took the opportunity hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 to interject, explaining that most people in myanmar don’t have last names and there aren’t exactly first names either. the names come as a set; in instances where people do have family or titular names, these names often come first in the order. this led to a conversation about names and naming with all the learners present that day, who were from myanmar and russia. each learner talked about the meaning of their name and where it came from. some had multiple names, for instance, a karen name, a burmese name, and an english name. the learners translated what their names meant into english for their classmates, and the conversation lasted until the end of class. this distinct increase in learner participation clearly seemed to be ignited by the connection joe made to their cultural and personal identities. after two weeks of observations, barbara shared that she was trying to find a replacement, and joe volunteered to teach the course. this decision was mainly driven by his observation that teachertalk and decontextualised learning dominated the classes. this traditional approach did not seem to be particularly engaging or relevant to learners’ lives. vivencia when joe began teaching the course, he aimed to develop a participatory curriculum shaped by learners’ realworld experiences and concerns. to do so, he relied on his previous 10 years in adult education as a subject and english language teacher, inspired by paulo freire’s (1972) critical pedagogy. first, he engaged in what freire (1972) described as a radical ‘ethnographic phase’ in participatory research where the literacy educator ‘needed to immerse themselves for a period of time in the daily lives of the students’ communities and identify critical social issues’ (bryers, winstanley & cooke 2014, p. 12). while timeconsuming and challenging due to the diversity among language learners, the ethnographic phase is a crucial component of participation, facilitating genuine relationship building and equitable dialogue. in addition, the issues that learners identify, which freire termed ‘generative themes’, direct further instruction. vignette 4: generating themes in order to generate themes, joe asked the learners about situations where they would like to practise english speaking, maybe interactions in which they had encountered confusion or difficulty. thiri immediately said: doctor. the rest of the learners nodded in agreement. thaw thaw: getting medicine. joe: okay, ‘doctor’ and ‘going to the pharmacist’. what else? ahmad, who had recently dealt with car problems, suggested: mechanics. thiri: going to the market. joe: tuyana, is there was anything you’d like to practise? tuyana: everywhere! mary: teacher meeting. thet joined in, proposing: playing sports. finally, san suggested: cooking. this discussion resulted in some pragmatic topics to guide dialogic exploration in the classroom and stimulate learning of vocabulary and grammar needed to communicate about them. based on these hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 generative themes, joe developed an initial praxisbased curriculum that integrated action (roleplaying and situated english practice) with critical reflection (crosscultural analysis and discussion). praxis since many of the learners discussed confusion regarding going to the doctor and the american medical system, joe designed a unit on healthcare, first going over vocabulary and phrases one might use at the doctor’s office and showing videos depicting doctor–patient interactions. once learners had gained some confidence using related language, he scaffolded a roleplay activity where learners had to navigate an interaction with the doctor. while not a full expression of the method, these roleplays were inspired by boal’s (1985) forum theatre technique, which involves roleplay of a series of oppressive actions, against which spectactors are encouraged to take action in subsequent replays of the roleplay. for instance, joe acted simultaneously as the doctor, the one who held power in the situation, and the joker, enticing other learners to come up with creative solutions to misunderstandings between the doctor and the patient. in our roleplays, interactions involved the tension of the ‘communicative burden’ (lippigreen 2012) between the native english speaker who held the power in the situation and the learneractor trying to communicate a need, be it regarding a medical symptom, a prescription for medicine, or a problem with their car. in this way, joe aimed to foster the learners’ skills and confidence in responding to powerladen situations they might encounter in the real world, through which he also gained a deeper understanding of their experiences and perspectives. in the following vignette, even though joe understood thiri’s english, he pretended not to because thiri repeated the pronunciation in a manner other than standard american english. this choice was informed by his awareness that individuals from myanmar faced increased difficulty being understood by monolingual english speakers. after providing sample dialogues of a patient going to the doctor, joe asked for a volunteer to model the interaction with. thiri volunteered – joe would be the doctor, and thiri would be the patient. vignette 5: roleplaying joe: what brings you here, thiri? thiri: i have a fever. joe: anything else? thiri: i have a stomachache. joe: i’m sorry i don’t understand. could you repeat that? thiri: i have a stomachache. joe: ah, i see. let me check a few things. joe mimed checking a few things and then continued: alright, i think you have a virus. it’s very common these days. it’s going around. thiri: i have a runny nose. that makes sense. joe: okay, i’ll write you a prescription for some medicine that will make you feel better. how does that sound? thiri: good. hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 after the roleplay, the learners reflected on the interactions in small groups, critiquing and comparing the american situation to that of the learner’s home country. in the case of going to the doctor, many learners expressed frustration with the american medical system and explained how the system in their own country was better in many ways. joe noticed that participation and conversation were liveliest during these small groups and that learners’ fresh perspectives on the us facilitated critical analysis and earnest discussions about the country’s advantages and disadvantages. the following vignette demonstrates one such instance. vignette 6: crosscultural analysis joe: how is going to the doctor different from other countries you’ve lived in? ahmad: you don’t need to make an appointment. you can just go directly to the doctor. you don’t need a prescription for medicine. the doctor will just give you the medicine the same day. thet: if you have a toothache, you go to the doctor. if you have shoulder pain, you go to the doctor. one doctor does everything. cheaper. thiri: you don’t have to worry about insurance. the class responded with a collective groan. joe: you don’t have insurance in your countries? all the learners shook their heads. taken together, these two vignettes illustrate the nature of praxis in a participatory esol classroom – (inter)action and critical reflection are natural components of adult language learning. the role of the critical educator is to create conditions for this to occur. however, the vignettes also point to an everpresent tension in adult education between centring learners’ ways of knowing and experiences and equipping them to function within us culture, dominant ideology and structural inequities. the following section explores how joe sought to navigate this tension by centring learners’ lives as curriculum (weinstein 1999). conscientisation as learners began to feel more comfortable sharing about their personal experiences and challenges as immigrants in the us, joe designed lessons around this generative theme. he introduced how i learned english by paula massadas pereira (2015), a pedagogical picture book that depicts a mexican girl’s experience migrating to the us and acquiring the dominant language. as they read the story and noted points of comparison or divergent experiences, one of the most pressing social issues that learners identified during this dialogic unit was a sense of alienation from one another and from the dominant society. the learners’ countries of origin faced many social and political challenges – lifethreatening problems, in fact, that forced them to flee their homes – but alienation was rarely one of them. in many cases, extended families and closeknit communities had been dispersed by violence or persecution. promoted by these conversations, joe designed a unit on friendship because learners shared that they hoped to gain new friendships in the class. he also wanted to learn more about the learners’ vivencia as part of his ongoing ethnographic investigation as a critical literacy educator. vignette 7: friendship joe introduced the learners to the new unit on friendship. they initiated their exploration of the generative theme with a few discussion questions: who is your best friend? what makes a good friend? who is a new hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 friend you’ve made? the learners discussed in pairs and then shared what they talked about with the class. bo phyu shared that classmate thiri is a friend that she has now, maybe her best friend. ahmad said, ‘my first friends are my classmates.’ san shared a story about a friend she made in seattle, another refugee, who she became so close to that when san moved to truman, this friend and her family followed her there. they eat meals in each other’s houses almost every day. as the learners continued to form bonds and share their personal stories, joe recognised an opportunity for them to author the curriculum. this pedagogical approach resembled established methods using learnergenerated stories to scaffold reading and writing instruction, incorporate relevant grammar and vocabulary, and build community (freire 1972; nicholas, rossiter & abbott 2011). in addition to focusing on learners’ experiences and ideas, joe believed that this would help him better understand and address each learner’s reality (that is, viviencia) and unique language needs. when he proposed structuring the course around storytelling, the learners showed interest but were concerned about the time required for writing. joe reassured them that writing stories was optional and could be as brief as a few sentences. the learners then agreed to try this approach, and joe designed a storytelling unit that included our stories carried us here (vang, rozman & kaczynski 2021), a graphic novel featuring 11 immigrant and refugee stories, along with youtube videos selected by the learners depicting traditional stories from their cultures. the unit also incorporated vocabulary, basic storytelling concepts, and exercises such as collaborative story creation and generating stories from ai images. throughout the unit, joe continued to introduce grammar topics within storytelling lessons, tailoring his instruction to the learners’ writing and speaking. each class allowed ample time to discuss learners’ stories, which ranged in topic from car problems and work experiences to immigration and dreams for the future. tuyana was one of the first to bring a story to class. story: 'russia' by tuyana i want to tell you about russia. it ranks first in the world in terms of area. over 190 nationalities live in russia, with a population of 147 182 123 people. it borders on 18 countries of the world (16 by land and two by sea). it is rich in many mineral resources – jade, diamond, uranium, gold, silver, oil, gas, coal, nickel, and much more. russia is a cold country, 65 per cent of the territory is covered with permafrost. the capital of russia is moscow. in moscow live 13 104 177 people. of the 190 nationalities, culture, language, traditions are forgotten and destroyed, so 99.4 per cent of the population speak russian. end. tuyana’s story presents a factual description indicating pride in the size, diversity and resources of the country she was forced to flee. however, she closes with a critique of the epistemicide of minority cultures and languages – including, presumably, her own – by the dominant russian ethnic group. in this tension between pride and critique, tuyana’s story demonstrates critical consciousness about her home country. discussion to critically reflect on the second year of the partnership and determine directions for the future, joe facilitated a participatory evaluation of the course at the end of the spring 2024 session. consistent with our ontoepistemology, this critical reflection functioned as blended data generation and analysis (call cummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023) and informed future stages of our project. we constructed this final vignette directly from a recording of the discussion, lightly editing it for length and interspersing hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 our interpretations. in this conversation, learners’ roles as coresearchers became more prominent as joe explicitly invited them to inform the research findings and project planning. welcoming learners into the classroom, joe explained that he would ask them to share their ideas about the class and suggestions for improving it in the future: vignette 8: evaluation joe: it’s kind of hard to answer this honestly with me in the room, probably. but what did you like about this class? you all have been taking it since the fall. ahmad: everything. everything is very interesting. joe: is there anything that you really, really liked? because we want to take this research and tell other teachers in other cities. your advice is helpful for making new english classes. thiri: uh, write a story. joe: what did you like about writing a story? thiri: um, i read tuyana’s writing. so we know how different our country culture. ahmad: yeah. and we learned about moscow. yeah. how many people are there. what they have for the people, that they have a good public transportation. and also they have a lot of aluminum. joe: you have a good memory! yousef, what did you like about this class? yousef: i would like to thank you teacher for helping us for speaking english. plus, we was so happy. i’m so proud to be here. i like more things in the class, communication in the classes. and we gave the information about the different society. and culture, we can see difference in country classmates. it’s a very good for me. i liked it to know about another society and another culture. this is very good for me. joe: awesome. those are some of the things i like most too. you’re very kind, smart people, so it’s nice to talk with you. and then i like learning about your experiences and about the countries where you’ve come from and i really like learning about what you think about america too, you know? because i think your perspective is very fresh. you can see the differences very clearly. the learners’ positive evaluation of the class, albeit possibly coloured by the presence of the teacher, indicates that they found the participatory esol approach motivating and effective. while still imperfect, the class had moved closer to the goal of democratising adult learning, prioritising learners’ needs, motivations, and goals in the selection of topics (freire 1972; knowles, holton & swanson 2005). joe was a fellow learner gleaning generative themes, selecting and developing meaningful materials rooted in learners’ lives, and facilitating coconstruction of new knowledge (knowles, holton & swanson 2005). compared to the initial discussion about class topics (vignette 4), learners spoke more confidently and extensively about their learning goals. they referenced dialogues, roleplays and classmates’ stories from earlier classes as meaningful in their learning, highlighting the collective nature of this process and the importance of community building. though she had shared it several weeks earlier, tuyana’s story about russia proved memorable to her fellow learners as a way to engage in vivencia and understand differences in their lived experiences. when joe encouraged thiri to add her comments, she identified pronunciation as the most important thing she learned, explaining, ‘when i speak, i think that word but when she don’t understand me.’ this echoed the roleplay from the fall session in which the ‘doctor’ could not understand her accent. ahmad extended the class’s critique of the us healthcare system with a recent example: hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 ahmad: yeah, a lot of things about the america. my friend’s wife, she has a hearing aid. yesterday, he went to doctor. he gave some medicine. they make an appointment for after two months. now she have too much pain. they make appointment for after two months. i don’t like this in america. joe: yeah, healthcare in our country is a problem. yousef: in our country, the second we go to the doctor, maybe after one hour, we can get the appointment to the doctor. ahmad: some place don’t need appointment. joe: yeah, you just walk in. yeah. yeah. it’s the same in myanmar. yeah, stuff like that i love learning about. ahmad: also cheaper in my country. yousef: this little expensive for healthcare. the system is very different, expensive. learners openly critiqued us society, namely the healthcare system, and made positive comparisons with their home societies. these comments indicate critical consciousness (freire 1972) about their new country. joe then moved to the second question: joe: what did you learn about yourself ? and what did you learn about your community here? ahmad: about myself … i can speak a little bit english, reading, writing. the community. we are very happy about my community. i know each other. and so we know about study some countries. joe: yeah, cool. tuyana, anything to add? tuyana: it’s good that welcome house gives you give the opportunity to learn english and more, for example, artisan classes, sewing classes, crochet classes. for me, just english classes. ahmad: also they help everyone, every time. and also sometimes we need some things. we have good community. these responses indicate that learners gained confidence in their english proficiency, a sense of community within the class, and awareness of social and material support available through welcome house. these socioemotional outcomes are arguably just as important as increased language proficiency. lastly, joe elicited learners’ suggestions for the next year of the program: joe: okay, what would you like us to do differently next time? and what other topics or skills would you like to work on? yousef: i think the next time i like we have more time for the grammar, for the reading. tuyana: writing. yousef: okay, writing, yeah. thiri: and reading [chuckles]. yousef: because i know everyone, every people, the first time come to the usa, they have the more problem in the language. i think we need to spend more time in the english language. and we learn the english little seriously. for example, you give the more time for the academic things, grammars. i know we learn in this class tense, okay. i think we need the more time for the grammar. we learn the active, passive, and another kind of language. for example, noun, adjective. maybe in the little things, we learned read advanced things in the useful to improve another skills because grammar is very important in us. when we learn know about the grammar, we can make the reading, writing. i think the next time i hope we hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202512 have these things in our education system. and little more time, for example, two hours, three times in the week, six hours. are you agree with me? ahmad: no, is okay. yousef: he say no, two days is better. ahmad: two days for the week and also without the stop, like summer, winter, no stop. joe: oh, i see, without breaks between the sessions. yousef: this is our suggestion; we don’t know. joe: yeah. no, it’s good for welcome house to think about this. because of the democratic environment of the class, learners were able to advocate for their needs and provide constructive suggestions for the focus and format of the class, such as including more grammar instruction and increasing the hours of class each week or reducing breaks. joe acknowledged this critique and the limitations of the program: joe: yeah, i mean. it’s hard. this is different from full time school, you know? just ‘cause everyone’s working; many people are busy. have to do what we can, but it’s so good to know. ahmad: sometimes we need more volunteers because we talking with american people. we can learn what he say, what she say. with american people, conversation and everything is broken. yousef: i don’t know. it’s a very different. when i talk with another people in some place, i don’t know what he said. when i talking with you, with another volunteers, i know. but i don’t know in the outside. ahmad: american people also sometimes i talk with him, the person sometime, i see him. i am, ‘sorry, i don’t understand.’ the american people is not good. here, ahmad and yousef introduced an additional critique providing further justification for their requests based on challenges they continued to face. they suggested that involving more volunteers would prepare them to speak with local residents who may have very little exposure to english learners, unlike the sympathetic interlocutors they interacted with regularly at welcome house. expanding the partnership: year three and beyond the team has implemented the learners’ suggestions as much as possible by expanding the partnership to include a nearby excel center adult high school, funded by goodwill industries, for the third year of the program. moving the classes to the excel center campus facilitates more frequent interactions with local residents in a supportive environment. it also enables us to offer yearround classes in more suitable classrooms with greater childcare capacity, a generous curriculum budget and sustainable teacher pay. although joe transitioned to a different research project, welcome house teacher carla currently instructs both levels, and wholegroup classes are supplemented by selfpaced computer modules and applied english practice through cooking and craft classes. excel administrators are eager to scale the esol program up to their other five locations in the state. while we are optimistic about the potential of this expansion, staying true to the highly contextualised, praxisbased model will require critical educators and thoughtful adaption to a different learner population and local context. closing thoughts in this paper, we sought to illuminate the pursuit of vivencia, enactment of praxis, and expression of conscientisation that occurred in a participatory esol classroom. in keeping with our epistemological hauber-özer and decker gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202513 commitment to shared ownership, we sought to honour the learners’ expertise in our analysis and reporting of findings (malone 2023). the structure of the paper reflects this commitment, centring learners’ worlds through their words. by incorporating dialogic vignettes and a learnerauthored story as findings, we offer an alternative to positivist conventions of filtering communitybased researchers’ ideas through ‘expert’ analysis. adult learners are the experts on their experiences, and the findings we present are the results of their analysis. we close with pedagogical and methodological implications of our work. although critical pedagogyinspired participatory esol is not new, our exploration contributes an example of the infusion of such pedagogy into cpbr. the partnership with welcome house and the expansion to include the excel center allowed us to address persistent challenges in adult education (barbara bush foundation 2021; cacicio, cote & bigger 2023) by circumventing neoliberal funding restrictions and developing a customised curriculum around learners’ lives and priorities. in this effort, we worked to enact participatory esol pedagogy (bryers, winstanley & cooke 2014; cooke et al. 2023), positioning the instructor as a facilitator of learning and centring learners’ experiences and perspectives. based on learner feedback and our observations, our findings indicate that a pedagogical model combining participatory approaches (for example, roleplaying, storytelling and critical discussion) and traditional grammar and vocabulary instruction was effective for language learning (bryers, winstanley & cooke 2014; cooke et al. 2023). more importantly, the democratic classroom environment made it possible for learners to actively participate in their own learning and advocate for the structure and content that they wanted going forward. in his field notes and our weekly debriefing meetings, joe frequently questioned what ‘counted’ as conscientisation, wrestling with the tension between centring learners’ experiences and preparing them to function in the dominant language and culture. however, when we revisited the data and constructed the vignettes, we found clear evidence of learners’ critical consciousness about both their home and host countries as well as the course content and structure. joe’s engagement in their vivencia to design learner centred curriculum and enactment of praxis, pairing action and critical reflection, seemed to facilitate their expression of this awareness. similarly, melissa often wondered whether the project ‘counted’ as participatory inquiry. after all, irb requirements and traditional teacherstudent relationships positioned learners as research subjects and recipients of instruction rather than coresearchers and cocreators of knowledge. as is common in cbpr, participation has taken different forms and involved various members of the partnership at different times (callcummings, dazzo & hauberözer 2023). the refugee advisory council provided the impetus for the project by identifying a community concern – a lack of adult english classes. praxis occurred through a series of actions and reflective discussions to develop a solution (freire 1972), first between melissa and candace, then among the newly formed adult education team, and then between joe and the learners and melissa and joe. the learners’ assessments indicated that they experienced meaningful change, and their suggestions prompted further action to expand the program’s capacity and impact. by examining the data for these three concepts – vivencia, praxis and conscientisation – we confirmed that critical adult education is participatory research (glassman & erdem 2014). community concerns sparked the project, and the expertise of those closest to the issue informed the solution (falsborda & rahman 1991), resulting in individual conscientisation and action toward broader social change (falsborda 1987; kemmis & mctaggart 2005). we encourage fellow communityengaged scholars to reconnect with the roots of this powerful approach and recognise the importance of living out 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article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: monk, d., openjuru, g., odoch, m., nono, d., and ongom, s. 2020. when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7194. http:dx. doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v13i1.7194 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo david monk1,2, george openjuru1, martin odoch1,3, denis nono1,3, simon ongom1,4 1 centre for community based research and lifelong learning, gulu university, uganda 2 faculty of education and humanities; institute for peace and strategic studies, gulu university, uganda 3 faculty of agriculture and environment, gulu university, uganda 4 partners for community development, gulu, uganda corresponding author: david monk; capelton15@gmail.com doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7194 article history: received 11/04/2020; revised 11/05/2020; accepted 26/05/2020; published xx/05/2020 abstract this article calls attention to the responsibility of universities to transform, through partnership, the community in which they are embedded. the authors suggest that, to find solutions to the various community challenges and achieve the un sustainable development goals (sdgs), universities need to engage in partnerships of knowledge co-creation with the community in ways that value local knowledge and experience. the article elaborates on the efforts of gulu university centre for community based participatory research and lifelong learning, located in northern uganda, to show the potential of co-constructing knowledge for community transformation. the centre is part of the knowledge for change (k4c) global consortium, which is a growing network for community-based research. the authors share three research stories of community-based research that reflect distinct challenges faced in northern uganda and effective community-engaged solutions. through an exploration of the acholi ontology and epistemology of interconnection, the authors demonstrate that local communities have the knowledge and experience to define and address local problems. keywords: community-based research, african universities, sustainable development goals, knowledge democracy, community transformation declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7194 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7194 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7194 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:capelton15@gmail.com http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7194 when the guns fell silent – oh! the tears were fresh and flowing then the people ask what shall we do to make our lives better? what shall we do to make our lives better? this is what we are going to do let’s build ourselves together, no one will do it for us rich cultures and natural resources we have they can take us far. the sky is our limit for the pain in the past is gone and the future is bright. introduction gulu university is located in gulu district, a rural community of acholi in northern uganda. uganda gained independence from british colonialism in 1962 and has endured a somewhat rocky political and social period since that time. as the country negotiated cold war influences and colonial induced tribalism, there has been a series of military coups to install different leaders. most recently, from 1986 to 2007, there was the civil war between government and the lord’s resistance army (lra) across acholi lands. gulu university was founded during the war and it now plays a large role in rebuilding the community. this article represents the commitment of gulu university to be a local and regional leader and partner in community transformation and sustainable development. we, the authors of this article, are five (male) members of the centre for community based participatory research and lifelong learning, recently established at gulu university as part of the unesco knowledge for change (k4c) global consortium. k4c is a global research network that aims to respond to what ndlovu-gadsheni calls the ‘visible crisis of northern epistemology’ (omanga 2020 n.p.). through community-based research (cbr), k4c hubs are attempting to bridge the gap between traditional university knowledge making and community knowledge making processes, which are often undervalued. one of the authors is the founder of the centre and the vice chancellor of gulu university. four of us are lecturers at the university and one is a director of a community-based organisation. four of us are acholi and one is white, born and raised in canada but now living and working in gulu. we are all certified teachers of cbr under the k4c program and co-facilitate workshops, with emphasis on arts-based inquiry, as part of our work at the centre. the introductory poem, written by members of the centre, affirms that we need to shade ourselves from the hegemony of what wangoola wangoola ndawula (2017) terms ameripean epistemology (referring to american and european cultural hegemony and reclaiming ‘western’ spaces in africa) and water our own local endogenous seeds of change. we affirm, as with the title of this poem, acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo (acholi knowledge for protecting the world), that local (acholi) ontological and epistemological perspectives are essential, not only for local solutions, but as contributions to a diversity of approaches to cultivating a bright future in africa and in the world. chilisa, major & khudu-petersen (2017, p. 328), suggest that scientific research needs an african epistemology based in connectedness and spirituality that ‘promotes harmony and balance as well as critical inquiry and fearless aspirations for new paradigms … deriving its assumptions from the ‘weness’ and ‘usness’ monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 and the i/we relationship’. our (the authors) ontological and epistemological foundations are based in an interconnected world view. the trees and plants are important representations of us and our research goals. we are seeds, we are water, we are together the soul of the world. we believe that learning requires diversity, and research therefore needs to be democratic. traditionally, in acholi, as elsewhere, we learned through rigorous testing and observation of the world around us. we listened carefully and respected the world around us, upon which we were (and are) so dependent. over centuries we learned how to live well in this world. we analysed our research around the campfire, with input from everyone, including youth. we disseminated our knowledge across generations through stories and riddles and we celebrated life through ceremony. these processes resonate today with the processes of communitybased research – a care-full, egalitarian, social justice oriented approach to research based in knowledge democracy. in this article we seek to demonstrate how ameripean science and endogenous communitybased epistemologies and practices can work ethically together to produce knowledge and actions that serve community needs that cannot be produced by either in isolation. the aim of this article is to demonstrate how community-based research can harness community and university-based knowledge to help us understand and respond to community-driven questions. it is emphatically a partnership that seeks transformative on-the-ground change. importantly, this partnership has the goal of community involvement and improvement. this article lies in the intersecting space of university and community academic traditions. we begin by briefly introducing community-based participatory research. we present here three brief research stories of community-engaged research practices, in which the centre has been involved and which we use (among others) as local case studies in our courses at the centre. the stories are written, one each, by three of the authors. the stories shed light on some of the particular challenges faced by the fragile and postconflict acholi sub-region of northern uganda: high levels of out-of-school and unemployed youth; major deforestation, land grabbing and livelihood loss; vulnerability to climate change and water shortages. we use the term postconflict, without a hyphen, because new and emerging conflicts that are directly related to the war between the lra and the ugandan government are present and continue to impact the lives of everyone in the region – here, and elsewhere in africa, postconflict represents another state of conflict characterised by multiple forms of violence, injustice, disenfranchisement and alienation from land and community. the challenges are thus significant and intersectional. they are grounded in a history of colonialism and war that has been imposed on acholi people and land for a century. we then weave the stories together in an analysis of the participative and empowering nature of the research, and we conclude by reflecting on the potential of community-engaged research practices to create new knowledge to address current and future (unpredictable) challenges. we assert that building knowledge collaboratively can help us to view the world as having potential to make good things come to pass and imagine possibilities that we don’t yet know exist. community-based participatory research community-based participatory research (cbpr) emerged from the field of radical adult education. adult educators like paulo freire in brazil and julius nyerere in tanzania inspired in the 1960s–1980s a movement of liberatory and empowering education for social change, which valued local knowledge and experience and asked students to reflect and act on their positionality. out of this movement emerged similar radical, empowering and engaged ways of studying the world, through approaches variously termed, such as community-engaged when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 participatory action research. budd hall, marja liisa swantz and orlando fals borda are other radical adult educators who were important early advocates for community-based participatory research and inspired many others in the global movement towards communityengaged research for social justice. of course, community-based research practices have existed for millennia in various cultures and regions of the world, including acholiland; however, they were silenced and delegitimated through colonialism and what santos (2014) defined as epistemicide. ndlovu-gadsheni (2018) details how the white male western europeans positioned themselves as the makers of knowledge and culture, presenting a historicity that ignored and demoted all other cultures and ways of knowing. community-based research (cbr) is a movement that challenges ‘what constitutes knowledge production and who is allowed to take part in this process’ (tandon et al. 2016, n.p.). hall (1985) explains that community-based research is a collaborative process of knowledge creation which recognises that solutions to community problems must come from the community itself. cbr is social justice oriented, whereby the process of doing the research contributes to the output, which is a tangible solution to the issue raised. importantly, cbr is not a prescription, but an approach that calls into question hierarchies of power, centres healthy relationships and begins from an understanding that everyone is an expert in their own lives and in their own ways. the following cbr principles are very important for us in our research practice: 1. community members and researchers work together in all stages of the research process. 2. all participants (researchers, community and partners) are involved in decisions about the research process from the beginning until the end. 3. the research process strives for consensus and enables participation from all members. 4. the relationship between researcher and community members is built on respect and trust. 5. the research process lays the groundwork for the exchange of knowledge, skills, resources and ownership between the researcher and the community. 6. there is continuous discussion/verification of data between all partners in order to generate meaningful, useful and accessible results that can inform actions. 7. the research addresses the interest and needs of the community/organisation. 8. research builds on and contributes to the strength and resources of the community. research is a fundamental component of learning, adapting and acting in the world. community-based research, as an egalitarian process of studying the world, is an important break from and radical confrontation to hegemonic power reinforced and rationalised by oppressors’ claims to universal knowledge. shifting processes of research to value all knowledge shifts power and comes to create a new social charter from the bottom up. as such, it is a revolutionary practice of social change and social justice. we hope that our three stories, through their difference and diversity, will demonstrate the radical and care-full contribution of cbpr to building the world we want now. research story 1: youth connection and art-based pedagogy i (david) am a straight white male canadian. i lecture at gulu university and chair the centre for community based participatory research and lifelong learning. i am interested in learning systems, including indigenous ones, that are based in world views that emphasise interconnectedness and interdependence across species and time, and encourage learners to take responsibility for their learning and that of their community. it is perhaps not surprising, monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 then, given my pedagogical outlook, that i found myself in early 2018 sitting around a campfire with a grassroots community youth group, starface camp, sharing stories, riddles, theatre and dance depicting the aspirations, oppressions and challenges at the centre of this youth world. starface camp’s mission is to ‘empower marginalised youth and embrace humanity through arts and culture’ (personal correspondence with starface camp director). the learning and talent that emerges through traditional acholi learning in art, mentorship, stories and campfire circles at starface camp is empowering and inspirational. most of the youth are early primary school leavers for a variety of reasons. many were born in internal displacement camps during the war and, as with almost everyone in the region, they lost parents or other close relatives during the war. i have engaged with starface camp for approximately two years as a community member and as a university lecturer, including through theatre of the oppressed type productions and presenting at conferences with the youth. my interest in their teaching and learning practices is what drew me to starface initially. i wanted to engage with the youth about what and how they were learning, but the youth wanted to emphasise that art is integral to life, so we decided to examine the question. they wanted to promote the arts to their teachers, parents and the community. i initially proposed the research idea to a group of about 60 youth in my fumbling acholi language at one of their campfires. i think they let me join them because they appreciated my effort to speak acholi, and perhaps because of my unbridled appreciation of their capabilities. speaking broken acholi lowered the barriers between white university lecturer and teenage school drop-out because it immediately showed them that they had a lot to teach me. on splitting into groups according to their art preference, a number of options emerged: one (larger) group wanted to create a dance, another wanted to write a play, a third group wished to create a beatbox–spoken word– rap performance, a fourth wanted to make a short film of the whole process, and the final group wanted to use painting. in the end, the play and the movie did not materialise, but the dance, beatbox–spoken word–rap and painting interventions did. these were shared with the wider community, involving a short introduction, a performance, and then a discussion. the story presented here focuses on the painting project, which i was involved with, along with a group of 10 artists, three of whom were girls and six were boys between 14 and 18 years old. the research utilised a collaborative, community-based art inquiry method taught to me by my close colleague, dr bruno de jayme oliveira (see sanford, jayme & monk 2018). this technique involves handing out pre-cut squares of canvas and asking participants to paint a picture that represents an answer to the research question (in this case, why are the arts important to you?). participants then collate their pictures onto a larger canvas, which prompts a conversation about the paintings. the arts are valuable tools of inquiry because they facilitate a deep and emotional understanding of self in the world (clover 2011; darder 2011). this is fundamental to understanding and exposing power dynamics and structures that are at the centre of struggles for social justice, a key goal of community-based research and the starface program. the research was conducted in three stages. first, i trained some of the youth in the process; second, the youth facilitated a community intervention; and third, we coded and analysed the data together. we had to modify the data collection process to suit the materials that were available (we used a bed sheet instead of canvas, for example), but generally we were able to follow the process outlined above. the intervention was attended by about 150 community members. figure 1 shows the process of painting. when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 figure 1 process of painting by the participating youth during the universitycommunity engagement on youth connection and art-based pedagogy after the intervention, the youth facilitators and i reflected on participant responses, the images and the general inquiry process. we also coded and analysed the themes that emerged. i took written notes of this animated discussion, which left us using our cell phones as flashlights as it ended well after the mosquitoes had stopped biting at our legs. i compiled them and we shared them with the broader youth group. some of the key themes identified by the youth were: freedom; self-expression; hope and possibility; knowing yourself and appreciating difference; diversity and collaboration; culture and connection to the village; and vulnerability. cultural identity was seen as an important connection to art, which participants felt was absent from school and the city. the participants identified art with learning around the campfire, storytelling, traditional dancing and the ‘songs of birds’. hope and possibility were another common theme that emerged. one participant described art as ‘possibility in the palm of my hand’. another explained that ‘art means doing it all, art is freedom, art itself is everything’. one participant recounted that art helped her find her way: ‘i never did well in school, but i started dancing and i got inspired’. likewise, another explained, ‘i wasn’t anyone, i lost hope. from nowhere, i started bringing hope back through painting’. linked to this sense of hope was an understanding that art is important in helping you know yourself. participants suggested that art was essential to being free to express yourself; they felt that they needed to ‘break the corporate monoculture’. participants agreed that ‘everyone has a different perspective’ and that embracing art was important because it encourages and embraces difference and diversity. a break dancer explained, ‘those moves when breaking individual moves may be not much, but when they come together they make something nice like this art.’ love and embracing humanity were generally seen in the context of building a strong world. they were associated with mothers, who participants felt supported them in their dreams ‘without judgment’. monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 overall, it was established that art brings out important aspects of life and living together that are essential for individual identity building, empowerment and community development. youth felt that art is missing from education and social life in the modern city world. they felt that their message was well received by participants in the intervention and that more interventions such as this one could be successful in building an art movement. they expressed that, as a result of this research process, they felt more capable of expressing why and how the arts are important. the canvas is displayed at the k4c consortium’s centre for community based participatory research, based at gulu university. figure 2 photograph of the final canvas several ongoing and unanticipated outcomes emerged from this research. the first was the attendance of the mayor and district youth representative, who sat down after the initial performance to discuss how they could improve the art scene in gulu. they pledged to host a national break dance competition in gulu and gave money for a follow-up community arts day (two more of these events have since taken place). second, the youth really embraced the painting method of engagement and we have used it in subsequent community interventions. we have also been invited to a neighbouring town, kitgum, to facilitate an art-based workshop. a local primary school teacher also reached out to us and we helped facilitate a session in one of her classes. we have now connected with a university student group to build the arts scene on campus, and we continue to work together on various community initiatives. research story 2: environmental justice as an environmental activist working with a grassroot, community-based organisation, partners for community development, i (simon) am accustomed to using cbpr to promote social, environmental, political and human rights’ aspirations. one of the areas that we, as an organisation, are actively involved in is tackling the problem of deforestation in the amuru district of northern uganda. unsustainable exploitation of forest resources for fuel wood remains a hard-hitting challenge to most communities in uganda. consequently, the country has lost more than 75 per cent of the initial 8.2 million hectares of forest cover in under 100 years. there has been when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 a vast increase since 2005, particularly in northern uganda (branch & martiniello 2018). in the charcoal producing district of amuru, there is rapid loss of vegetation despite substantial efforts by the local government and non-government organisations (ngos) to sustain forest cover. the phenomenon has accelerated in the last decade due to a relatively lucrative charcoal-for-energy business and international timber exportation. branch and martiniello (2018) explain that the problem is complex and connected to the demand for large-scale agriculture, illegal land grabbing and forceful evictions. in totality, these developments are largely exploitative of the local rural population who have limited alternative means of income and are often tricked or harassed into selling their land. partners for community development, the grassroots, community-based organisation where i work, decided to use cbpr to assess the impact of deforestation on the community and try and find a solution to the problem. a big part of our goal was to bring community together to reflect on what was happening and how it impacted them. we convened four community reflection action groups with the purpose of mobilising community knowledge through discussion and action on deforestation in amuru district. the process included field data collection, stakeholder and situational analysis, data dissemination to the local government district officials and direct community action. each community reflection action group consisted of 80 people, both men and women. we used community mapping, photo/video inquiry, storytelling and discussions to co-collect and co-analyse the data with a focus on enabling action to improve the community. the community mapping process was done by groups drawing maps in the dirt to identify the hotspots for tree cutting within their villages. the processes required power sharing and a lot of adjustments to the maps until consensus was established. thereafter, video and photography were used to document the deforestation camps, the process of charcoal being burnt and transportation trucks being overloaded. collectively, the numbers of charcoal loaded trucks and trees being taken each day from the district was established. for storytelling, the participants listened to the stories of elders who explained the extent of degradation and shared the cultural, medicinal and spiritual value of some of the trees being lost. throughout the process, problems associated with tree cutting emerged and stakeholders were identified. thus, formal space was provided for each group to discuss the problems, identify who the key stakeholders were and develop a plan of action. depletion of forest land resources due to charcoal production was identified as one of the most serious environmental issues in the district. participants pointed out that there was a need to prevent the indiscriminate cutting of trees in order to ensure that the current forest is better conserved. the threat of the problem is best highlighted in the village of amora, which produces about 70 per cent of all the charcoal from the amuru district. in this village, about 50 truckloads of charcoal are harvested each week. also, it was reported that community members were being exploited by charcoal traders from outside the district. the community members reported that they thought that they were signing contracts for a certain number of trees, but unknowingly ended up signing away their land titles. further, the charcoal producing households earn on average 200 000 uganda shillings per month from the sale of about 20 bags of charcoal. in contrast, the charcoal traders earn approximately 1 600 000 uganda shillings at the current market rate for the same number of bags. the community members also pointed out that, at the current rate of forest depletion, approximately 146 000 acres will be deforested within 10 years. the mathematical basis for their projections is provided in more detail in appendix 1. monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 elders in the groups shared that some people in the community believe that, when they die, their spirits go into the trees, and thus if trees are cut without the appropriate rituals, the ancestors are being murdered. in addition, shea trees, which are among the most important species for medicine and human healthy wellbeing, are targeted by tree cutters due to the high quality of their charcoal. it was pointed out that, traditionally, community by-laws forbid the cutting of shea trees. this is because the shea nut tree is crucial for the sustenance of natural vegetation, medicine, livelihoods and culture. unfortunately, the charcoal burners have a strong preference for shea trees due to the desirable quality of charcoal that the wood produces. the participants also expressed concern that, due to their observation, the majority of tree cutting in the district was currently being done by power saws, which in their opinion is wasteful compared with hand cutting the trees. they also reported that the charcoal burners do not replant trees in the areas deforested. the only potentially sustainable measure adopted in the district is agroforestry, whereby pine trees are grown for timber by mainly multinational companies. the community members also mentioned that the areas where trees are cut and burnt usually damage the surface of the topsoil and nearby shrubs. as a result of the digging and burning, the areas do not revegetate for several decades even when the rainfalls are enough to support regeneration of the vegetation. they also observed that, because a lot of the trees were being cut, natural wells and rivers were drying up more frequently. thus, community members have to walk long distances for access to water, which usually means boreholes with access fees involved. also, they are now forced to walk long distances to find firewood for cooking. both of these issues mainly impact the women and girls because these are traditionally their tasks. the community also believes that the prolonged dry seasons are a result of massive tree cutting, making it difficult to grow crops, which directly impacts their livelihoods. this is because most people rely on subsistence farming in the regions. however, when it does rain, it pours, and this causes landslides and flooding probably because the roots of trees are no longer keeping the soil together. this is believed to cause not only desertification but also loss of soil fertility. these close observations of the community mirror findings found elsewhere (for example, for brazil, see pedlowski et al. 1997; for sierra leone, see morie & zang 2018). also, the large transportation trucks carrying the trees and charcoal are usually overloaded and cause destruction of the village access roads. in the absence of sufficient livelihoods from agriculture, incomes from charcoal production enable community members to acquire items such as bicycles, motor bikes, roofing materials and clothing, and pay for water and children’s school fees. however, still more than 80 per cent of the community members participating were strongly opposed to tree cutting. the extensive cutting of trees has resulted in adverse social, economic and ecological consequences. reduced access to resources that are necessary for survival is seen as the cause of increasing conflict and tension in the community. often it is the local communities who are blamed for cutting down the trees; however, this research demonstrates that in fact the communities are aware of the damage inflicted by deforestation and are generally opposed to it. the community compiled a report of the findings, documenting the negative environmental and social impacts of charcoal production and deforestation on the amuru district. we presented this to local district officials in a subsequent dissemination meeting, along with a list of 14 recommendations for the local district government, to mitigate the current challenge of deforestation. when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 thus far there have been two key direct consequences of this collective mobilisation. first, in the face of indisputable community demands, local district councillors took the recommendations seriously and instituted a ban on all commercial tree cutting, effective january 2020. they also started community tree nurseries. second, when the implementation of the ban was not carried out effectively, the community mobilised in direct action on the camps they had mapped out, destroying them and forcing out the workers. while there remains much to be done to curb the deforestation in the area, the research has been an effective tool for real solutions. research story 3: integrating water program in university training over recent years, as a water resources engineer engaged in training and research at gulu university, i (denis) have appreciated that providing high-quality education requires collaborative efforts between the university and the community. with the concept of cbpr gaining ground as the best practice in conducting research to find engineering solutions to community problems, the department of biosystems engineering at gulu university has effectively applied this concept to the development of new training programs that are responsive to community needs. in 2018, a group of communities in northern uganda petitioned the vice chancellor of gulu university to establish a faculty of engineering to offer degree programs that could address water challenges, among other things. sustainable access to water of suitable quality and quantity remains a critical development challenge in northern uganda and the country at large. a ministry of water and environment report (2019) indicates that more than 34 per cent of the rural population in uganda lacks access to potable (safe) water. also, access to water for agricultural production is reasonably constrained and only the few ugandans living close to surface water bodies are able to practise irrigation. in addition, the increase in population and economic activity and the impact of climate change due to anthropogenic activities, such as burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, mining and industrialisation, have exacerbated the current water challenges. and finally, there has been increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as drought, floods, landslides and heat waves, in uganda. to respond to the community demand to address these water challenges, the department of biosystems engineering at gulu university initiated development of a degree program in water resources and climate resilience engineering (wrcre) to train graduates who would be capable of providing solutions to the community water problems. there is a saying that ‘water is life’, which in the local language of the community in northern uganda (the acholi) is interpreted as ‘pii aye kwo’, meaning without water they cannot grow crops, they cannot raise animals and their bodies will not survive. a study was therefore launched, involving the university and the community, to identify the skills/competencies required to support the development of a program that would produce graduates who were responsive to contemporary water challenges in the era of climate change. the skills that would be required of graduates were categorised into technical, soft/transferable, business, entrepreneurial and writing/reporting. the study also covered gender mainstreaming and explored ways in which the university could collaborate with the community to enhance skilling of the graduates. monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 the community members were drawn from (1) local government technocrats – district engineers, water officers, agricultural engineers and environmental officers; (2) ministry of water and environment (mwe) – regional staff of the directorate of water development (dwd), directorate of water resources management (dwrm) and department of climate change; (3) ministry of agriculture, animal industries and fisheries (maaif) – regional staff from the department of water for production; (4) private sector – national water and sewerage corporation (nwsc), water consulting companies and well drilling companies; (5) non-government organisations running water development projects; and (6) alumni from the department of biosystems engineering. the community members were also drawn from organisations to which graduates from the proposed program were expected to be attached for field training and in which they may eventually get employment. the views of the community members on the required skills/competencies of the graduates were crucial to the development of the proposed program. the department of biosystems engineering at gulu university worked in partnership with colleagues from the department of civil engineering, university of new south wales (unsw) and the department of biosystems and agricultural engineering, makerere university. the conduct of this study was guided by the principles of community-based research. hall (1985) explains that cbr is a collaborative process of knowledge creation which recognises that solutions to community problems must come from the community itself. he further observed that cbr is social justice oriented, whereby the process of doing the research contributes to the output, which is the tangible solution to the issue raised. the research took a qualitative approach. data collection was conducted through two phases. in the first phase, 60 selected community members were interviewed about the skills that would be needed by the graduates. purposive sampling was used to identify the community members from the organisations. key questions to the community members covered the technical, soft/transferable, business, entrepreneurial and writing/ reporting skills they desired of the graduates of the proposed program. responses from the community members were compiled and discussed in a second phase of data collection, the stakeholders’ workshop. again, a purposive sampling method was used to identify 20 participants for the stakeholders’ workshop who would review the responses from the interviews. focus groups were used in the workshop to identify gaps in the skills proposed during the interviews in the first phase and also to discuss community-university collaboration and gender mainstreaming in the program. see appendix 2 for a summary of the community-compiled list of skills needed by graduates to address the water crisis. these lists were used to guide the next steps in the curriculum development, which included formulation of learning outcomes and identification of relevant courses. the university again worked with the community to translate these skills into a curriculum for training the graduates. one of the surprising outcomes of the research was that, through the process of conducting the research, the proposed program gained stature in the eyes of the community. they felt that the university was addressing their needs, and because they were involved, the university was also serving them. in the long run, this will probably improve relationships with the community so that when the university wants to send students for internships or conduct other research they will be responsive. furthermore, it demonstrated the relevance of the university to the community. thus, the university is more likely to attract students to the program, and the students are more likely to find employment. when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 weaving the stories, connecting cbr and community transformation this article is our campfire. we present to you these three stories that have made important contributions to the development of our community, with our community. our stories are bound together in a cooperative approach to research that values and requires the diversity of expertise and experience of an entire community. the research stories shared here have important lessons for community-engaged research and building equitable relationships with community. they demonstrate the potential for universities to authentically participate in community development. they are based in an ontological perspective of interdependence that reduces patriarchal power hierarchies and recognises that the university is a part of the community, not above it. this perspective recognises that university researchers and community members alike have particular skills and resources that are needed to mobilise community transformation. the process of community building is especially evident in northern uganda as we seek to rebuild our lives and cultural institutions after living in the middle of a particularly brutal civil war. a process of research that accompanies the rebuilding of relationships, businesses and livelihoods and helps us to understand our collective capability and imagine a prosperous future together is essential for this region. the university has important resources and expertise that can accompany this process. here we elaborate a few of the ways we observe this happening. the research contributes to creating and sharing new knowledge. in all of the stories new knowledge was created. story one presented rich data about art-based learning; in the second story the extent and consequences of deforestation came out; in the third story, a program to address water scarcity in the region was produced. the research was empowering. hall (1985) articulated that community-based research is a social action process that combines research, education and action to challenge unequal power structures and empower exploited peoples. in the process of recognising and validating the knowledge, community actors were empowered to believe in their potential. following the long colonial history, communities in northern uganda have repeatedly been told that they don’t know, and that they should listen to experts who do know. the participative process is therefore an act of empowerment. the researchers in these stories also became empowered by embedding themselves in the community. in the first story, the empowerment of the youth was especially prominent. the participants in starface camp are mostly marginalised youth. many of them have left school, and many are orphans without very much support outside of this program – a result of the recent 30-year war they were born into. starface camp is a place where they are encouraged to pursue their dreams. as they developed the question of why the arts were important, the youth were speaking from their hearts. they were also answering the underlying question of ‘why am i important to society?’. their integral ownership of the research process and collective reflection was fundamental to learning for self-empowerment and self-realisation. in all three stories, the research was collaborative and democratic. deliberating and coming to consensus was an important part of the research – this is particularly evident in the second and third stories. in the second story, participants had to deliberate at length to decide together on the number of trees being cut and on developing a list of demands and actions to be taken. in the third story, participants decided on key components of a water program, including a list of skills needed by graduates. the collaborative process included collaborative interpretation and analysis in all cases. monk, et al gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 the research was facilitated in recursive phases of engagement in action and reflection, as in the case of the second story, where participants mapped out the research on the ground, compared maps, and then went and took videos and photos of the spaces. they came back and deliberated again to form a list of demands for their political representatives. in the third case, the participants participated in discussions and interviews about the needs of the program, and then came together to co-analyse the data and formulate a list of skills needed by graduates. in the first and second cases, traditional learning practices were used. participants were engaged in circles, in case one around the campfire, in case two under a tree. elders were consulted and traditional cultural values and knowledge emerged as key insights. in case two, the medicinal value of the trees came out in this process, and the traditional acholi connection to the trees as ancestors built the importance of keeping the trees. the elders had knowledge of the ecosystem that the trees supported. the research conducted here engaged the community to address the challenges they face and to begin to take action for their collective future. tandon (1988, p. 6) asserts that participative research has ‘enormous potential as a major contributor in transforming the struggles of poor and deprived peoples’. this transformative agenda is clear in these research stories. in the second story, for example, the community was able to collectively shift policy and political action, and mobilise to physically dismantle the camps and chase away the tree cutters. banks, herrington and carter (2017) explain that in participatory research the impacts are considered to be non-linear and ongoing as opposed to traditional notions of impact occurring after research is complete. we would like to emphasise and elaborate on this point in two ways. first, the individual research stories presented briefly here demonstrate that social justice action was ongoing throughout the individual processes. this was happening through empowerment, engagement with a broader community and mobilisation of collective action across the cases. second, the broader impact of this type of research is felt in the longer term. building relationships of trust and value are integral to this type of research. the research is not simply a one-off, issue-driven project. while the individual issues are important, what we have tried to demonstrate here by presenting three very different cases is that, as with any healthy ecosystem, there is a trust and interdependence that emerges over time. this builds sustainable communities that are capable of identifying and solving current issues and preventing future issues. individually, these stories represent important social justice action; combined, they show the longer term impact of community-engaged research practices for community development. the participative nature and value of endogenous knowledge is important for building healthy communities because it challenges power structures that hide behind claims of ‘knowing better’ to control and oppress and maintain inequalities. building knowledge democracy into community breaks down these barriers and opens the opportunity for diverse and creative solutions to the many problems facing the world today. concluding thoughts: a university-community hub for transformative change the 24–27 february 2020 session of the african regional forum on sustainable development proclaimed that it would only be possible for africa to achieve the sustainable development goals (sdgs) if ‘universities in africa collaborate in research, teaching and community or societal engagement’ (ligami 2020, n.p.). the regional forum is an intergovernmental when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 platform convened by the economic commission for africa (eca) in collaboration with the african union commission, the african development bank and the united nations system. the outcomes represent african contributions to high-level discussions on the sdgs. the forum called for local partnerships to address the distinct challenges faced by particular regions and for pan-african networks to share solutions to common problems. the k4c consortium emphasises that, as knowledge organisations, universities have a responsibility to generate knowledge for community change, with the community (hall & lucio-villegas 2011; mukherjee & tandon 2011). the gulu centre for community based research and lifelong learning reflects the goals of the university to be socially responsible and relevant to the community. with the goal of imagining possibilities that don’t exist yet for our community, we are committed to developing reciprocal and equal relations with diverse partners. ndawula (2017) suggests that ameripean science and culture continues to dominate the development discourse. he asks: why should we trust a science and culture that has been so destructive to the entire planet and is based in hierarchy, exploitation and military might? we, the authors, don’t think we should. it is becoming increasingly clear that the colonial–capitalist–patriarchal means of arranging society does not work and is not sustainable. we believe that a different, caring and socially just world is possible if we look for it, experiment and collaborate together. it is time to join and empower a rising tide of committed social justice activists doing research collaboratively and bring back an interconnected and interdependent paradigm of being. there is plenty of deep wisdom in the world, and if universities are really committed to community transformation, it is essential that they seek it out. communities too. with the whole world reeling from the covid-19 crisis, the call to universities from the african regional forum for sustainable development to address local challenges is especially relevant. considering the positive results of the global movement for engaged research (hall, bhatt & lepore 2017), we believe that this kind of community-university configuration based on mutuality, responsibility, recognition and acceptance will contribute to the production of socially, economically and democratically relevant knowledge that will likewise contribute to human development and peaceful societies. for the guns have stopped roaring, and we are finding our way together, to a better world. join us! references banks, s, herrington, t & carter, k 2017, ‘pathways to co-impact: action research and community organising’, educational action research, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 541–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.201 7.1331859 branch, a & martiniello, g 2018, ‘charcoal power: the political violence of non-fossil fuel in uganda’, geoforum, vol. 97, pp. 242–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.012 chilisa, b, major, t & khudu-petersen, k 2017, ‘community engagement with a postcolonial, african-based relational paradigm’, qualitative research, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 326–39. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468794117696176 monk, 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(eds), knowledge and engagement: building capacity for the next generation of community based researchers, pp. 7–39, university of victoria and pria, victoria, bc. when the guns stopped roaring: acholi ngec ma gwoko lobo gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 15 https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750310396950 https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750310396950 https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2011.9.6.780 https://www.mwe.go.ug/sites/default/files/library/spr%20final%20book%202019.pdf https://www.mwe.go.ug/sites/default/files/library/spr%20final%20book%202019.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00597906 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200303074939736 https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-programs/decolonization-decoloniality-and-the-future-of-african-studies-a-conversation-with-dr-sabelo-ndlovu-gatsheni/ https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-programs/decolonization-decoloniality-and-the-future-of-african-studies-a-conversation-with-dr-sabelo-ndlovu-gatsheni/ https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-programs/decolonization-decoloniality-and-the-future-of-african-studies-a-conversation-with-dr-sabelo-ndlovu-gatsheni/ https://doi.org/10.1016/s0169-2046(97)00030-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0169-2046(97)00030-3 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 may 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: baker, s. and meletzke, a. 2021. prioritizing partnership: critical steps towards relationship development for sustaining community-university partnerships. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:1, 1–10. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.7595 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article prioritizing partnership: critical steps towards relationship development for sustaining community-university partnerships stephanie baker1 and ann meletzke2 1 assistant professor of public health studies, elon university, elon, north carolina, usa 2 executive director, healthy alamance, burlington, north carolina, usa corresponding author: stephanie baker; sbaker18@elon.edu doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7595 article history: received 17/02/2021; revised 25/03/2021; accepted 22/04/2021; published 05/2021 abstract the increase in undergraduate programs in public health within liberal arts institutions in the united states creates an opportunity for community-engaged research with local public health organisations. this type of engagement is one way to connect community members, agency representatives, students, staff and faculty around social justice organising efforts that impact entire communities. authentic relationships and partnerships can reduce real barriers to building bases of support for intervention development, local advocacy efforts and policy change, to achieve a more just and equitable society. this practice-based article describes key steps to partnership development between a private, engaged-teaching liberal arts institution and a local public health non-profit located in central north carolina. the partnership was formed to use community-based participatory research (cbpr) approaches to address health equity. to create an authentic cbpr partnership, an intentional partnership development process took place with key steps that were integral to the formation. structured learning experiences and mentorship provided by previously established cbpr partnerships were critical to partnership development. shared capacity building experiences, consistent meetings and goal setting facilitated progress. this partnership has lasted since 2015 and continues to grow. partnership development is an important foundational activity for cbpr and is feasible for local community organisations and undergraduate public health studies departments outside of schools of public health. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7595 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7595 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7595 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sbaker18@elon.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7595 keywords partnership development; community-academic partnership; community-based participatory research (cbpr); health inequities; community research; community engagement introduction undergraduate public health programs in the united states have seen a recent increase in volume; in 1992 there were 45 institutions with undergraduate programs in public health and by 2012 the number had increased to 176 (leider et al. 2015). some departments reside in schools that also offer graduate-level public health degrees, often accompanied by greater resources and administrative support for research, while some undergraduate public health departments are in liberal arts institutions within, for example, a college of arts and sciences, where no graduate-level public health degrees are offered (riegelman & albertine 2011). liberal arts institutions are committed to baccalaureate-level education, award most degrees within arts and sciences majors, and tend to have smaller class sizes and more intentional interaction among faculty and students. over the past decade, there have been more publications investigating pedagogy owing to the increasing number of undergraduate programs in public health (barnes et al. 2012; caron 2013; nelson-hurwitz & tagorda 2015; yeatts 2014), but there is less in the literature about the opportunities and potential benefits undergraduate programs present to the communities within which these liberal arts institutions reside. many liberal arts institutions support engaged-learning, and the presence of a public health studies department creates an opportunity to expand upon engaged-learning to include engagedresearch, using a community-academic partnership approach that is practised among public health workers and researchers, for example, community-based participatory research (cbpr). cbpr is an approach to research adapted by public health researchers and practitioners that sets high standards for equitable processes, power sharing and community leadership, and participation in all aspects of the research process (israel et al. 2005). cbpr is an effective approach to address health inequities (israel et al. 1998; parker et al. 2012; wallerstein & duran 2006). a critically important stage in the cbpr approach is partnership development and capacity building (allen et al. 2011; coombe et al. 2018; corbiesmith et al. 2015; israel et al. 2005; parker et al. 2012). while new undergraduate public health departments have the opportunity to create cbpr partnerships, the first stage of the process of partnership development may be unique for programs that reside within liberal arts colleges without graduate degree programs because these programs often lack a history of partnership development and may also lack the expertise and resources that exist in programs with a greater emphasis on research. the communities within which these institutions exist may also be unfamiliar with cbpr, but the process of relationship development could equip these community and academic institutions with important tools, skills and resources to address health inequities. authentic engagement in mutually beneficial community-campus partnerships using cbpr has the potential to create more opportunities for social justice work at the local level for community, students, staff and faculty. the basic tenets of cbpr include intentional engagement of those most impacted as well as shifting power towards marginalized communities. a cbpr approach creates the environment for universities to find their role in supporting the leadership of community organisers and activists, who have lived experiential expertise. while this expertise may not fall directly in line with a specified project, it is important expertise and should be valued. the relationships that develop can lead to community members seeking resources and assistance from institutions in order to play their part in movements for equity and justice. institutions must follow the lead of community members as top-down solutions to problems are rarely based on an accurate and in-depth understanding of the problem or viable, practical and realistic solutions. baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20212 this article aims to provide a picture of what partnership development can look like for regional communities and the liberal arts colleges within them. it does so by describing the partnership formation and key steps in shared capacity building of a community-academic partnership between a private, engagedteaching intensive liberal arts institution in south-east united states and a local public health non-profit organisation located in a regional city and suburban county community that did not have previous exposure to cbpr. the article also shares lessons learned that can be applied more broadly to partnerships in a variety of developmental stages. partnership formation elon university, the academic partner’s institution, has a community engagement centre, the kernodle center, which facilitates service learning and volunteer and community engagement opportunities, and also hosts a lunch once each semester to create space for faculty and the leadership of local community agencies and organisations to meet and network. a networking guide containing contact information for participating faculty and representatives from the community organisations is created and distributed. attendees at the event are assigned to tables based on shared interests. during three rounds of networking, kernodle center staff help to connect potential partners in conversation. event participants are provided with a gift card for a local coffee shop to encourage continuing interaction. at one of these events, the faculty member, who worked in the department of public health at elon university, and the executive director of healthy alamance, the potential partner in the project, were assigned the same table due to their shared interest in public health. the elon faculty member had belonged to a community-academic partnership in the city of her previous place of employment and was actively looking for a community partner who would be interested in working together to address health equity challenges in alamance county (described below). the potential community partner had a history of engaging with elon faculty through guest lectures and academic service-learning projects, and was interested in collaborating around research. healthy alamance was interested in a cbpr approach as they transitioned away from traditional public health interventions, such as addressing obesity through support of farmers’ markets and nutritional programs, to more community-engaged, participatory and structurallevel change strategies. to achieve these changes, more creative ways of partnering with communities most impacted by inequities was critical. these shared interests led to a follow-up meeting, a series of email exchanges, and ultimately a decision to apply to the detroit community-academic urban research center’s community based participatory research partnership academy for assistance in growing and strengthening a partnership (see below for more details). this all happened within a two-month period. community characteristics alamance county is located in central north carolina and 70 per cent of the residents live in rural areas (accessnc dashboard n.d.). approximately 68 per cent of alamance county residents are white, 20 per cent are black and 13 per cent are hispanic/latinx (piedmont health counts :: demographics :: county :: alamance n.d.). among residents 25 years and older, 85 per cent are high school graduates and 23 per cent have a bachelor’s degree or higher (u.s. census bureau quick facts, alamance county, north carolina, n.d.). poverty rates in alamance county (16% of the total population) are worse than the poverty rate for the state of north carolina (12.4%), and the poverty rate for children is 30% (alamance county community health assessment 2018). while a larger number of white residents in the county live in poverty, a disproportionate number of people of colour do so: 26%, 35% and 32% of black, hispanic/latinx, and baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20213 american indian/alaskan native people, respectively, live in poverty compared to 13% of white people (u.s. census bureau n.d.). approximately 34% of black children, 24% of hispanic/latinx children and 6% of white children reside in areas of concentrated poverty (selected indicators for alamance county, north carolina n.d.). additionally, median household income is higher for white (us$54,410) compared to black (us$37,797) and american indian/alaskan native residents (us$31,486) (piedmont health counts :: demographics :: county :: alamance n.d.). black residents have a much higher rate of cancer, heart disease and stroke, and die at an earlier age compared to their white counterparts (alamance county community health assessment 2018). as presented in figure 1, a study conducted through a collaboration between alamance county health department, alamance gis department, the guilford county health department, and the state center for health statistics shows an 11-year difference in life expectancy between west burlington and east burlington, even though this area is where the primary focus of public health interventions has occurred (n.c. state center for health statistics 2019). figure 1. life expectancy (le) mapping of alamance county. moving left to right (west to east) on the above map, lighter orange areas represent predominately white residents who live closer to resources like healthcare and the university. residents to the east are predominantly people of color, living in neighborhood where there are fewer resources, more poverty, and little economic growth. there is a growing conversation in the community around root causes of inequity and its effects on health because a developing body of evidence suggests that where you live in alamance county determines the quality and length of life a resident can expect. historically, community collaborations have exclusively included social service and healthcare institutions and their leaders and there have been few partnerships with those whose health is most impacted by these issues. baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20214 key steps in partnership development and shared capacity building figure 2 presents the six key steps in our partnership development and shared capacity-building process. while they are shown linearly, there was iterative movement back and forth between steps over the course of time. figure 2. key steps in partnership development and capacity building. step 1. our first step involved a commitment to co-learning about the cbpr approach. although the academic partner had previous experience with cbpr, learning alongside the community partner was an effective strategy to manage power dynamics with respect to knowledge. soon after our initial meeting, the detroit community-academic urban research center (detroit urc) released an application for a cbpr partnership academy, a year-long opportunity to support the development of community-academic partnerships (https://www.detroiturc.org/cbpr-partnership-academy.html) (coombe et al. 2018). the five main components of the partnership academy included: ‘a weeklong intensive course, development and implementation of a partnership development planning grant, mentoring by an expert community-academic pair, structured online learning activities and peer exchange, and an ongoing network’ (coombe et al. 2018). our partnership applied for and was selected to participate in this program, and our participation resulted in a more defined and developed partnership in several ways. the community partner received formal training in the cbpr approach and examples of existing cbpr partnerships, through which they gained an in-depth understanding of the history of cbpr and its research methodology. we were thus able to more clearly delineate our work as separate and different from our previous community engagement efforts that typically involved working with a class for a semester-long project. we agreed to focus our partnership on the issue of health equity – broadening our partnership to extend beyond its narrower focus on a farmers’ market in a neighbourhood with low access to affordable fresh fruit and vegetables – and to think more deeply about food as a tool for equity. our participation in the cbpr academy also led to writing a small seed grant proposal for our first research project. the development of the proposal was accomplished with strong support from the academy’s assigned academic and community mentors in the form of conference calls and email exchanges to assist with planning and problem solving, and written feedback on the actual proposal. the grant was agreed and the project included survey data collection from customers at north park farmers’ market, a market originally created with a goal of improving food access in a neighbourhood classified as a food desert. while the initial development and implementation of the farmers’ market intervention included surveying the community, it did not adopt a cbpr approach. step 2. a second intentional step to strengthen partnership development was to create more structured ways for the academic partner to be a part of the ongoing work of the community organisation. the baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20215 https://www.detroiturc.org/cbpr-partnership-academy.html academic partner was invited to become a member of the farmers’ market steering committee and eventually was invited to join the healthy alamance board of directors as an academic liaison for healthy alamance. this role was the first of its kind for the board. the expertise of the faculty member helps to centre community engagement and partnership, and examine problems and solutions through an equity lens, while formalising the relationship between healthy alamance and elon university. additionally, it allows for discussion involving a broad cross-section of board members, from elected county commissioners to institution leaders and farmers, on health equity for healthy alamance and their work. these conversations have influenced more organisations to provide racial equity training for their employees and to incorporate intentional community engagement strategies into their work. step 3. in order to align our goals for the partnership, we realised there was also a need to align our theoretical perspectives and analytical lenses on the causes of racial health disparities. the academic partner had previously committed to using a racial equity lens in their work and the community partner saw this lens as appropriate and applicable to their work. therefore, the community partner attended a two-day phase i racial equity workshop delivered by the racial equity institute in greensboro, nc (https:// www.racialequityinstitute.com). this workshop introduced a historical, structural, systemic and institutional analysis of racism in the united states. the academic researcher also attended this workshop, but as an alumna, because she had previously attended multiple times, was a local organiser of these trainings in her home community and utilised this lens in her work. having the community partner attend the workshop increased the capacity to apply racial equity analysis in their shared work in two main ways: (1) it created a common language around health inequities and (2) it emphasised analysis of the ways in which structures and systems can lead to inequitable health outcomes among communities of colour. step 4. the next step involved co-learning around specific engaged methodologies. the community partner was previously involved in implementing a photovoice project and desired to use this method in their partnered work, but the academic partner did not have experience with photovoice. therefore, step 4 involved organising a two-day photovoice training workshop to strengthen their shared capacity to conduct qualitative research. photovoice is a participatory action research approach where people create and talk about photographs with the goal of inducing personal and community change (wang et al. 1998). both the academic and the community partner attended as participants and invited other community and organisation representatives to participate as well. the workshop prepared participants to facilitate a photovoice project, emphasising the importance of skill development in focus group moderation. the capacity-building workshop was intended to support our ability to involve all partners in qualitative data collection for a planned community health assessment (cha). the state requires every county to submit a cha every three years. while, historically, alamance county has been recognised for partnering with public health hospitals and social services to produce the assessment, no consideration had been given to including community residents as partners and stakeholders. step 5. a fifth key step in partnership development and capacity building included committing ourselves to evaluate and reflect on the state of our partnership. we had the great fortune to participate in an engage for equity training workshop, which was developed by a partnership of the university of new mexico center for participatory research, the university of washington, community-campus partnerships for health, the national indian child welfare association, university of waikato new zealand, rand corporation, and a think tank of community and academic cbpr practitioners (leider et al. 2015). the two-day participatory workshop focused on sharing tools and resources to enhance partnership reflection and growth. prior to participation, we completed surveys to evaluate the key components or promising practices of our partnership, or strong cbpr partnerships identified by engage for equity. at this workshop we created an historical timeline for our partnership, engaged in a visioning exercise using the cbpr conceptual model developed by the engage for equity team to identify goals for our work, reflected on the results of our survey for promising practices, and participated in knowledge sharing and exchange baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20216 https://www.racialequityinstitute.com https://www.racialequityinstitute.com with other cbpr teams in attendance. during the workshop, we realised that we needed more community members and more people directly affected by health inequities to be a part of the foundational partnership team, which led to a photovoice project. step 6. in our final partnership development step, we co-created an actual research project. both partners worked together to organise a five-week photovoice project to engage more members in the communityacademic partnership. we recruited participants in a variety of ways, including by email, social media and phone, from those who had participated in focus groups for the cha, attended a community forum where findings from the cha focus groups were reported back to the community, and other stakeholders identified from participation in health-related activities and organisations. to demonstrate shared power, we hired an outside facilitator so that we could be participants like all other attendees. our goal of the photovoice project was to involve all participants in making decisions about the direction this communityacademic partnership would take to address health inequities in alamance county using a cbpr approach. in addition to developing weekly themes connected to the topic of health equity in alamance county, we introduced the cbpr approach to participants, provided examples of successful partnerships, for example, the greensboro health disparities collaborative (greensborohealth.org) in greensboro, nc, and intentionally emphasised shared decision-making, shared power and shared leadership in keeping with core cbpr principles as described above. discussion: achievements and lessons learned the partnership’s achievements included: (1) embedding a cbpr approach within a farmers’ market survey and making adjustments to operations; (2) forming a community health assessment and forum; (3) disseminating our work to the community and at professional conferences; (4) organising communityacademic cbpr training in the community over two days; and (5) planning for a forthcoming community of practice on cbpr for university staff and faculty. we believe that our commitment to partnership development was critical to these accomplishments. below we focus on the major lessons learned across the six steps of partnership development and capacity building. step 1 lesson: co-learning about the cbpr approach we learned that to create a successful and long-lasting partnership we must dedicate time to partnership development, commit to regular meetings and adhere to those commitments, utilise the support offered from mentors, and create momentum to continue the journey. mentors emphasised the importance of valuing the needs of community partners, sharing information with stakeholders and community members, and considering the needs of the academic partner in publishing findings in journals and presenting at professional conferences. step 2 lesson: structured involvement there is great value in having both the community partner and the academic partner together at decisionmaking sessions. this communicates to others that power sharing and shared decision making happen consistently and that the organisation is serious about taking a cbpr approach to its work. this serves as checks and balances for the board on issues related to equity and community involvement. step 3 lesson: partner alignment on issues of race and racism in order to authentically address racial inequities in outcomes, those working together must have a shared understanding of the structural and systemic nature of racism and how it affects the communities they baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20217 http://greensborohealth.org are serving. race was evident in our partnership: the community partner is white, the academic partner is black, and the communities in which many of the health inequities are experienced are communities of colour. the county itself has a complicated and painful history of racism that contributes to present-day realities regarding race. participation in the workshop opened up space to have honest conversations about race and racism, particularly on how it may influence our work. step 4 lesson: partner co-learning in engaged research training other colleagues in cbpr approaches is critical to accomplishing tasks that require people power. increasing the capacity of colleagues to support focus group data collection was necessary to be able to embed cbpr approaches in the county’s community health assessment (cha). step 5 lesson: intentional self-reflection and evaluation as we traced the history of our partnership through visioning and reflection activities, a noticeable gap in active and consistent participation from those living in the community was clearly identified. an expansion of our partnership was needed in order to centre the voices of those most impacted by health inequities in our work. step 6 lesson: co-creating a research project there is a desire among community members to have an active role in improving health equity in the county. many community members have been harmed in the past by feelings of tokenism and have felt that their contributions have not been valued or taken seriously. this five-week process, led by an external facilitator, was essential to recognising the imbalance of power in the relationship and the need for a more authentic approach to the partnership. conclusions this partnership development and capacity-building experience may provide other similar community and academic partners with strategies for partnership development. our partnership, whch started in october 2015, has lasted almost six years, and there is no intention to end it. it demonstrates the benefits of expanding an undergraduate public health department’s capacity to participate in community-engaged research with their local communities, particularly by investing in authentic relationships with those most impacted by health inequities. cbpr partnerships can be created in communities where resources to support the work are limited. while some of the specific co-learning opportunities, with which this partnership engaged, were unique, time-specific and based on grant-funded training programs, both the detroit urban research center and university of new mexico engage for equity groups maintain active websites offering resources and tools for partnerships to utilise. in order to be successful, partners need to allocate time to the development of the partnership and seek ongoing training and funding opportunities, while intentionally embedding the partnership into the institutional structure of their respective agencies. the next phase of our work will include implementing the strategies and activities that the newly expanded partnership has identified and integrating undergraduate students more intimately into the work of 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https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/13.1.75 yeatts, k 2014, ‘active learning by design: an undergraduate introductory public health course’, frontiers in public health, vol. 2. www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00284/full. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00284 baker and meletzke gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202110 https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/customreports/4910/any https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/customreports/4910/any https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/alamancecountynorthcarolina https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/alamancecountynorthcarolina https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/13.1.75 http://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00284/full https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00284 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 11, no. 1 may 2018 © 2018 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: levkoe, c. z. and stack-cutler, h. 2018. brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 11:1, pp. 18-36. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v11i1.5527 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework charles z levkoe1*, holly stack-cutler2 1 department of health sciences, faculty of behavioural sciences, lakehead university, 955 oliver road, thunder bay, ontario, p7b 5e1, canada 2 faculty of extension, 10230-jasper ave, university of alberta, edmonton, ab t5j 4p6, canada *corresponding author: charles z levkoe; clevkoe@lakeheadu.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5527 article history: received 19/05/2017; revised 28/11/2018; accepted 14/12/2017; published 31/05/2018 abstract academic institutions and community-based organisations have increasingly recognised the value of working together to meet their different objectives and address common societal needs. in an effort to support the development and maintenance of these partnerships, a diversity of brokering initiatives has emerged. we broadly describe these initiatives as coordinating mechanisms that act as intermediaries with the aim of developing collaborative and sustainable partnerships that provide mutual benefit. a broker can be an individual or an organisation that helps connect and support relationships and shares knowledge. to date, there has been little scholarly discussion or analysis of the various elements of these initiatives that contribute to successful community-campus partnerships. in an effort to better understand where these features may align or diverge, we reviewed a sample of community-campus brokering initiatives across north america, canada and the united kingdom to identify their different roles and activities. from this review, we developed a framework to delineate characteristics of different brokering initiatives to better understand their contribution to successful partnerships. the framework is divided into two parts. the first part examines the different structural allegiances of the brokering initiative by identifying the affiliation and principle purpose, and who received the primary benefits. the second part considers the dimensions of brokering activities in respect of their level of engagement, platforms used, scale of activity, and area of focus. the intention of the community-campus engagement brokering framework is to provide an analytical tool for academics and community-based practitioners engaged in teaching and research partnerships. the categories describing the different declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research was financially supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada 18 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5527 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5527 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:clevkoe@lakeheadu.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v11i1.5527 structures and dimensions of the brokering initiative will encourage participants to think through the overall goals and objectives of the partnership and adapt the initiative accordingly. keywords brokering initiatives; community-based research; community-campus engagement; partnerships; service learning introduction academic institutions and community-based organisations have increasingly recognised the value of working together to meet their different objectives and address common societal needs. building effective research and teaching collaborations between communities (e.g. organisations in the private, public and non-profit sectors) and academics (e.g. postsecondary students, postdoctoral fellows, instructors, professors and their institutions) have resulted in many fruitful outcomes (buys & bursnall 2007; hart, maddison &wolff 2007). schwartz et al. (2016, p. 178) explain that community-campus partnerships can provide ‘an avenue to address challenges that face society in new and innovative ways by bringing together knowledge, tools, and skills not previously combined’. examples exist across a range of sectors and issue areas including community food security (andrée et al. 2014; andrée et al. 2016), poverty reduction (calderόn 2007; schwartz et al. 2016), violence against women (bell et al. 2004; jaffe, berman & macquarrie 2011), and community environmental sustainability (baker 2006; molnar et al. 2010), to name only a few. while a diversity of approaches exists, in ideal conditions of community-campus engagement (cce), partners share decision-making and equalise power throughout the research process (lindamer et al. 2009), co-develop mutually beneficial outputs and outcomes (levkoe et al. 2016; naqshbandi et al. 2011), build capacity for under-resourced community-based organisations (baquet 2012; sandy & holland 2006), engage new perspectives to increase knowledge (mcnall et al. 2009), and sustain an ability to work together beyond the life of a specific project (naqshbandi et al. 2011). despite the many successes, community-based practitioners involved in cce have faced a number of challenges. while community groups typically enter into research relationships being promised mutually beneficial outcomes, studies show that academics and their institutions often benefit far more from these kinds of partnerships (alcantara et al. 2015; bortolin 2011; cronley, madden & davis 2015). for community partners, barriers to participating in cce can include limited time and resources to fully engage (keyte 2014; lantz et al. 2001), minimal support for building and maintaining partnerships (dorow, stackcutler & varnhagen 2011; petri 2015; sandy & holland 2006), power imbalances (schwartz et al. 2016), lack of trust (lantz et al. 2001; petri 2015) and high levels of staff and volunteer turnover (keyte 2014; schwartz et al. 2016; van devanter et al. 2011). despite recognition of these challenges, institutional structures are typically designed to support academics (cronley, madden & davis 2015; dempsey 2010; ward & wolf-wendel 2000). studies have also identified significant barriers faced by academics when participating in cce, including having limited time and resources and being discouraged from community-engaged pedagogies through tenure and promotion structures (levkoe, brial & danier 2014). while most responses tend to occur on a case-by-case basis, some have called for more institutionalised and sustained support mechanisms (chen 2013; dorow, stack-cutler & varnhagen, 2011). levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 19 cce brokers have emerged as one response to these challenges. in this article, we broadly describe brokering initiatives as coordinating mechanisms that act as intermediaries between community-based organisations and academic institutions with an aim to develop collaborative and sustainable partnerships. a broker is an individual or organisation that helps connect and support relationships and share knowledge. while many different forms of brokering initiatives have emerged, there has been little synthesis or analysis on the various features of these initiatives that contribute to successful partnerships. most brokering initiatives share a common goal of fostering relationships between community and campus partners; yet, they tend to be heterogeneous in their motivations, mandates, organisational structures, target groups, activities, and the sectors they serve. because brokering initiatives differ on so many dimensions, it is necessary to consider their similarities and differences and assess which elements may be valuable for a particular type of cce. in this article, we present a framework for comparative analysis that identifies the different features, roles and activities of cce brokering initiatives. this framework provides an analytical tool for academics and community-based practitioners to reflect on how the different characteristics of brokering initiatives may contribute to successful cce partnerships. we begin by summarising the relevant literature, describing key features of cce brokers, their different functions, and the various factors for success and challenges they face. describing and differentiating cce brokering initiatives brokering initiatives aim to support participants at different stages of a partnership and vary depending on their structures, targeted populations and specific activities. experiences of cce tend to be context-specific and a cce broker’s role is dependent on the specific project and the needs and assets of each partner. brokering initiatives must also be flexible and open to change depending on the phase of the relationship. tennyson (2005) identified three key differences, which provide a basis for understanding how brokering initiatives might function in different situations. first, she described internal brokers as those working within one of the partnering organisations and taking responsibility for preparing and conditioning the different actors, representing the organisation for the duration of the partnership, and managing various aspects of the collaboration. internal brokers bring together relevant partners but may also share in decision-making throughout a project. these functions can be compared to those of external brokers who may be contracted by the partners to set up agreements, build capacity, and/or maintain and track ongoing effectiveness. external brokers support partners and equip them with tools to ensure the project is moving forward, but tend to take on little, if any, decision-making responsibility. second, a broker can be an individual or a team working within or outside one of the partner organisations and tasked with building relationships on behalf of the organisation. third, proactive brokers initiate and build partnerships, while reactive brokers coordinate partnerships or implement decisions on an organisation’s behalf. while some cce brokers play a key role in developing a partnership, others support a partnership after its initiation. the three differences identified by tennyson demonstrate that brokers can take on many roles, depending on the particular partners’ needs. besides recognising the many differences, tennyson and baksi (2016) point to a series of common roles and activities among brokers. these include supporting partners throughout the phases in the partnership cycle from scoping and building (e.g. providing outreach and opportunities to engage, managing expectations), managing and maintaining (e.g. facilitating dialogue and governance arrangements, problem-solving), reviewing and revising (e.g. establishing and implementing an ongoing evaluation plan, supporting changes to the brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 20 partnership) to sustaining outcomes (e.g. knowledge mobilisation, celebrating achievements, managing closure/next steps). given the variation in the needs of partners and partnership phases, brokers are likely to take on many roles within and across projects, developing a suite of skills to support and benefit partnerships. while some brokering initiatives take on a single role across community-campus partnerships, such as making an initial connection between two partners, others assume a combination of roles, supporting partners throughout the life of a project. specific to community-campus projects, cce brokers act as an intermediary between community-based organisations and academic institutions. they have been shown to support community and academic partners in designing and implementing a project, establishing initial connections, delivering skills training, problem-solving, supervising students’ community-engaged research and learning activities, evaluating a project’s impact, and using results to improve future programs while contributing to positive changes in communities (keating & sjoquist 2000; phipps, johnny & wedlock 2015; tennyson 2014). cce brokers have also promoted learnings and insights, and addressed concerns of power and resource imbalance by ensuring community and campus partners share control equitably (keating & sjoquist 2000; phipps, johnny & wedlock 2015). in addition, because community organisations and universities face high levels of personnel turnover, cce brokers can help by sustaining a project over the long term (keating & sjoquist 2000). to avoid leaving community-based organisations with unfinished projects, cce brokers can help overcome constraints of an academic schedule by continuing to complete tasks after the end of a term. in particular, brokering initiatives can be an accessible and responsive point of contact (keating & sjoquist 2000). for example, community-based organisations have expressed interest in having platforms to share research needs and interests, connect with academics and learn about opportunities for professional development (dorow, stack-cutler & varnhagen 2011; tryon & stoecker 2008). brokering initiatives use physical platforms that include providing accessible office space and community workspaces, and staging events that bring partners and other stakeholders together. they also use virtual platforms such as websites, forums and matchmaking databases to bring diverse partners together to share ideas and information, especially when they are not in the same place. lacking, however, is an understanding of how these different activities meet partners’ needs and the opportunities and limitations faced by cce brokers when developing collaborations. factors for success and challenges of brokering initiatives in this section, we draw on the existing scholarly literature to highlight factors for success and challenges in initiating and maintaining brokering initiatives and cce partnerships. factors for success during the early stages of developing a brokering initiative, significant planning and investment is required (tryon & ross 2012). to improve the chances for success when setting up a brokering initiative, pauzé and level 8 leadership institute (2013) stressed the importance of first identifying the goals of the brokering initiative and then selecting a governance structure accordingly. further, studies have found that brokering initiatives can benefit from having more formalised administrative infrastructure (keating & sjoquist 2000), a clear definition of their relationship with partnerships (tennyson 2005), established levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 21 guidelines and tools to address partners’ needs (phipps, johnny & wedlock 2015) and flexibility in providing long-term support (dorow, stack-cutler & varnhagen 2011). cce brokers must also give significant attention to planning before brokering partnerships and initiating projects. for example, brokers at the institute for sustainable solutions at portland state university developed a strategy screen to map out potential impacts and the resources required by partners to help them decide on appropriate cce projects. accordingly, an ideal project should have a high impact while requiring low resources from community partners (holliday, defalco & sherman 2015). by considering the purpose of the brokering initiative and the capacity of the community-based organisation, cce brokers can assess existing capacity (e.g. time, human resources, funds) to identify ways they can best support the partners as a project progresses (keating & sjoquist 2000). this is especially important, considering that both academic and community partners tend to lack sufficient time and resources for cce. brokering initiatives can help academics share knowledge and research skills with community partners and address perceptions of cce’s uneven benefits (keating & sjoquist 2000; ward & wolf-wendel 2000). to address issues of limited community capacity and trust, brokering initiatives can develop funding agreements to more equitably share financial resources, an activity complicated by most academic funding structures (lantz et al. 2001; naqshbandi et al. 2011; phipps, johnny & wedlock 2015). building trust, however, takes time and commitment, and is a long-term process. indeed, evans and mcclinton-brown (2016), brokers from the stanford university office of community health, attempted to build on their many years of community-based work and their pre-existing relationships in an attempt to establish a community advisory board to support cce efforts. yet, they found that, in working out of the university, community members did not feel connected and many voiced feelings of alienation from the process. through persistence and negotiation with the community advisory board members, an understanding was eventually established and the partnership was able to move forward. likewise, in developing a pan-canadian network of partners in first nations communities, naqshbandi et al. (2011) stressed the importance of valuing the different ways of knowing among the partners in order to be able to communicate in a manner that honoured and respected those involved (see stiegman & castleden 2015). to achieve stability, cce brokers benefit from identifying problems, developing strategies for overcoming challenges, putting plans in place, and providing ongoing evaluations (naqshbandi et al. 2011). brokering initiatives also require competent and consistent leadership to sustain themselves and the partnerships they support (ivery 2010). as techniques and tools are refined, successful brokers are often able to empower and support the different partners without excessively controlling the partnership (partnership brokers association 2012). in this way, they can play a management role, investing time and commitment but also being flexible as priorities develop and change (lindamer et al. 2009). tennyson (2005, p. 5) advised: good brokering is not a substitute for good partnering. it is always the partners themselves that are central to, and ultimately responsible for, making their partnership work. so a good broker works continuously to build capacity and systems within the partnership – thereby promoting healthy interdependence between the partners rather than partner dependence on the broker. maintaining and sustaining brokering activities involves evaluating the process and developing strategies for continued engagement (burke 2013; evans & mcclinton-brown 2016). to brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 22 establish an evidence-based process for monitoring brokering initiatives, phipps, johnny and wedlock (2015) recommended tracking a broad range of outputs, including the number of opportunities for partnerships, the number of partnerships attempted, the number of partnerships developed, the reasons partnerships did not develop, and the impact of projects on partners. a utilisation-focused evaluation approach allows brokering initiatives to examine the partnership throughout the stages of the research process (mundy 2013), which helps to identify successful partnership characteristics, key benefits, and challenges that can then be assessed (hundal 2013; mcnall et al. 2009). the partnership brokers association (2016) recommends brokers use specific tools for self-assessment and professional reflection rather than reflecting generally on the partnership. challenges there are several pitfalls that can affect the success of brokering initiatives. one common challenge occurs when cce brokers fail to find the right balance between directing the partnership and letting the partners lead. if brokers hold too tightly to their own ideas, it can be detrimental to the partnership (partnership brokers association 2012). thus, it is important for cce brokers to know when to step back (evans & mcclinton-brown 2016). another common challenge for cce brokers is having to navigate project partners’ perceptions and assumptions of research in general, and those of brokers in particular. for instance, while internal brokers may be well-informed and have experience working through organisational issues, partners may perceive them as biased in favour of their own organisation’s way of operating and reluctant to accept new ideas. external brokers can be impartial to organisational politics, while partners may view them as being too distant and less committed when difficulties arise (tennyson 2005). because cce brokers can be situated within or outside a partnership or community, they must proactively address partners’ concerns. limited resources or a lack of core funding can also challenge the ability of a broker to provide useful services to sustain partnerships and projects (naqshbandi et al. 2011). without consistent funding sources, cce brokers tend to devote significant effort towards grant writing (baquet 2012; keating & sjoquist 2000). keating and sjoquist (2000, pp. 155–156) found that, in some instances, ‘the choice of projects that are undertaken is largely determined by whatever kinds of projects are popular with funding agencies. the needs of communities can be overlooked if they do not require the kinds of projects that funding agencies are willing to underwrite.’ the reluctance of academic and community participants to participate in timeconsuming projects that do not yield outputs that are directly beneficial (e.g. publications, funding, policy change) can challenge cce brokers. when project partners feel overburdened by excessive meetings, participation and enthusiasm within community advisory committees has been found to decrease (keating & sjoquist 2000). of note, just as community and academic partners interested in cce struggle to find sufficient resources, brokers too are not immune to these challenges. despite the valuable insights generated in the literature thus far, limited documentation exists about the specific role cce brokers play and ways they can establish and maintain more mutually beneficial partnerships. in response, we present an analytical framework to articulate the potential contributions of brokering initiatives to community-campus partnerships. we reflect on learnings from our review, highlight the opportunities and limitations of our analytical framework, and provide suggestions for future research and practice. levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 23 a review of community-campus brokering initiatives the purpose of this review was to examine a sample of brokering initiatives, evaluate the commonalities and differences, and gain a better understanding of their contributions to successful community-campus partnerships. the initial research for this article was completed as part of the community first: impacts of community engagement research partnership (cfice; see https://carleton.ca/communityfirst/). we began by compiling a list of brokering initiatives through online searches of community organisations and academic institutions. search terms included ‘broker’ and ‘brokerage’ by themselves and each combined with ‘partnership’, ‘community-university partnership’, ‘community-campus partnership’, ‘community-based research’, ‘community-engaged research’, and ‘community-driven’. from our search, we selected brokering initiatives that fell within our broad definition presented in the introduction to this article. we shared an initial list with a number of academics and community-based practitioners involved in cce work to ensure accuracy and identify additional brokering initiatives we may have missed. from our review, we selected a sample of 23 different brokering initiatives within canada, the us and the uk. while the brokering initiatives we reviewed varied significantly, the key criterion for inclusion in this study was that each brokering initiative’s mandate was to initiate and/or maintain partnerships between community and academic partners for the purpose of community-engaged teaching and research. for each initiative, we developed a profile, which included information gathered from websites and in some cases informal discussions with staff to obtain detailed descriptions of their work. using cross-case analysis (patton 2015), we categorised the information about each brokering initiative and established a classification system. after analysing the 23 brokering initiatives, we discontinued our search for new examples because we were no longer finding new information or codes to add to the dataset (fusch & ness 2015). a framework for analysis the brokering initiatives we reviewed revealed a range of services, focusing on a variety of partners and thematic areas. in considering the commonalities and differences, we identified variation in two key areas. first, from examining the different attributes by identifying affiliation, principle purpose and who received the primary benefit, and comparing this information, we generated five separate categories that delineate the basic structural allegiance of each brokering initiative: (1) community-based, (2) university-based, (3) communityuniversity-based, (4) resource-based, and (5) brokering networks. second, we classified brokering initiatives into four key dimensions that consider the kinds of activities being undertaken. these categories include (1) level of engagement, (2) type of platform, (3) scale of activities, and (4) area of focus. we then describe the categories within the analytical framework in which to situate different brokering initiatives. following this description, we highlight ways this framework might be used to help inform decisions about the establishment, development and long-term sustainability of brokering initiatives. part 1: structural allegiance table 1 provides a description of each of the five categories of structural allegiance to indicate who cce brokers are, what they do and the impact of their work, together with examples of the different brokering initiatives we reviewed. brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 24 https://carleton.ca/communityfirst/ table 1 summary of structural allegiance categories category description examples communitybased brokering initiatives • embedded in the community • exist independently of academic institutions (many are registered as non-profit organisations, some have charitable status) • facilitate opportunities for community organisations to collaborate with academics and/or researchers on community-driven projects • prioritise community objectives and goals • centre for community based research (canada) • vibrant communities canada (canada) universitybased brokering initiatives • embedded within a university • support faculty members, students and staff to engage in research and teaching partnerships with community groups • university-driven or community-driven projects • community engaged scholarship institute (canada) • universitycommunity partnerships (us) communityuniversitybased brokering initiatives • embedded within the community or a university; co-managed by a team of academic and community representatives • assist community and campus partners in establishing partnerships • prioritise community objectives and goals • the helpdesk (university of brighton, uk) • trent community research centre (canada) resourcebased brokering initiatives • funding bodies offering a series of grant programs along with extended support services • aim to broker relationships for various purposes • provide training and consulting to academic and community partners • social science and humanities research council of canada (canada) • national coordinating centre for public engagement (uk) brokering networks • established as independent arrangements • connect relevant stakeholders for a common purpose • differ on prioritisation of community and university goals (depending on network) • communitycampus partnerships for health (us) • canadian rural research network (canada) levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 25 community-based brokering initiatives are rooted in communities and their primary purpose is to provide opportunities for community organisations to collaborate with academics and/ or professional researchers on projects that address community objectives. the initiatives we reviewed worked with individuals and organisations in the public, private and/or non-profit sectors to accomplish a range of tasks, such as defining research questions and developing proposals, making initial connections with potential academics and other research partners, managing community-driven research projects, and providing training and mentoring in community-based research for all participants involved. brokers pay particular attention to each community’s needs and work to ensure the community’s priorities drive the project. brokers work with partners to make sure knowledge is co-created and projects are actionoriented, meaning that partners can use findings to make positive changes within their communities. brokers build the capacity of community partners and community members by collaboratively developing training opportunities and resources. stakeholders often include staff members and volunteers from community-based organisations, community residents, marginalised groups, academic institutions and government ministries. one example of a community-based brokering initiative is the centre for community based research (www.communitybasedresearch.ca/). located in waterloo, canada, it is an independent non-profit organisation which aims to promote collaborative approaches to the co-production of knowledge and innovative solutions to community needs. the centre is committed to social justice and employs community researchers with insider perspectives. it uses a participatory and action-oriented approach, bringing people together with diverse expertise to contribute to positive community change. a second example is vibrant communities canada (http://www.vibrantcanada.ca/) which engages a pan-canadian audience to connect people, organisations, businesses and government to reduce poverty in canada. their efforts are community-driven and focus on supporting solutions to reducing poverty. members connect through in-person events and online opportunities, including joining discussion groups or learning communities, contributing blog posts and searching member profiles. university-based brokering initiatives typically aim to encourage the university population to engage in cce through training, partnership matching, funding and ongoing support. these kinds of models may support initiatives such as science shops, service-learning courses, community-based research projects and community outreach services. many of them also offer support for community-based organisations working with academics by providing a range of services such as facilitating initial connections and partnership development, and offering templates for partnership agreements, financial and human resources and troubleshooting on an ongoing basis. academic institutions typically house and fund university-based brokers to meet institutional needs. while community partners play an important role in projects working with academic faculty or students, a key purpose of these brokering initiatives is to ensure academics have opportunities to conduct research and learn within community organisations. the community engaged scholarship institute (www.cesinstitute.ca/) is one example of a university-based brokering initiative. it is located in guelph, canada, and acts as a hub for engaged scholarship within the university of guelph and the broader community. staff members work with faculty members and students, community-based organisations and government, building capacity for participation in community engagement and social innovation projects. the institute leverages resources, builds and maintains partnerships, and addresses obstacles to participating in community-engaged research. another example is brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 26 http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/ http://www.vibrantcanada.ca/ http://www.cesinstitute.ca/ university-community partnerships (http://ucp.msu.edu/). located in east lansing, us, it provides a range of services for developing research networks among campus partners at michigan state university and community partners. staff match university partners interested in working with a community group or partner on a grant proposal or maintaining a longterm campus partnership with a community group. university-community partnerships balances university and community needs and priorities, promoting projects that provide mutual benefits for all partners, build capacity in communities and encourage long-term partnerships within research networks. as a hybrid of the previous two categories, community-university-based brokering initiatives are often managed by a team of academic staff, students and/or faculty, as well as communitybased organisational representatives. initiatives in this category are typically driven by both community and academic partners, although it is common to see explicit reference towards prioritising community objectives and goals. these types of brokering initiatives typically operate using a mix of resources from postsecondary institutions and external grant funding. an example of a community-university-based brokering initiative is the helpdesk of the community university partnership programme (www.brighton.ac.uk/business-services/ community-partnerships/index.aspx), housed at the university of brighton in the uk. the helpdesk’s work is community-driven and collaborative, with an emphasis on ensuring that community and academic partners are able to build equitable relationships and gain mutual benefit (rodriguez & millican 2007). it acts as a gateway to the university for both representatives from community-based organisations enquiring about funding for starting up a research project and faculty members who might have relevant research interest in collaborating on a project; and as a contact point for university staff and students interested in making contact with community-based organisations for collaborative research and teaching purposes. initiated through philanthropic seed funding, the helpdesk currently receives the majority of its funding through its university host. another example is the trent community research centre (www.trentcentre.ca/) located in peterborough, canada. the centre is community-based, with project proposals prioritising community needs coming from community-based organisations. brokers match trent university students seeking to engage in community-based projects as volunteers or to fulfil part of their course work with community partners to conduct community-based research projects. they ensure that community partners’ priorities drive the project, as well as supporting the university students throughout the project. resource-based brokering initiatives include grant programs that provide resources to community-based organisations and academic researchers and/or institutions that aim to address key challenges through research and action. while some resource-based brokering initiatives simply provide monetary resources, others prefer to play a more active role in the partnership by taking on management responsibilities and/or offering extended support services such as training and knowledge mobilisation services. for example, the social science and humanities research council of canada (http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_sujet/ partnerships-partenariats/index-eng.aspx) offers a series of grant programs to support partnerships between academics at different universities, as well as between businesses and non-profit organisations. funds are granted to carry out research, training and knowledge mobilisation activities using approaches that involve partners collaborating and sharing leadership. funds can be used to establish new partnerships, test partnership approaches and expand established partnerships. as a second example, the national coordinating centre for public engagement (www.publicengagement.ac.uk/), located in bristol, uk, supports universities throughout the uk to increase how often and how well they engage in levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 27 http://ucp.msu.edu/ http://www.brighton.ac.uk/business-services/community-partnerships/index.aspx http://www.brighton.ac.uk/business-services/community-partnerships/index.aspx http://www.trentcentre.ca/ http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_sujet/partnerships-partenariats/index-eng.aspx http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_sujet/partnerships-partenariats/index-eng.aspx http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/ community-based research and learning activities. it works with campus staff members and students to develop skills for community-engagement activities and offers training sessions (e.g. funding, impact, evaluation) and consultancy to researchers, research managers and staff members in community-based organisations. finally, brokering networks, the broadest of the brokering initiative categories, describe initiatives that tend to operate independently to foster relationships through a series of mechanisms. with brokering networks taking on a range of formal and informal structures, they often require little commitment from members and minimal resources to sustain. networks can also work across geographies to provide a channel for sharing information, resources and ideas (ontario health communities coalition n.d.). brokering networks offer opportunities to develop partnerships, collaborate on projects and share information in a more indirect way than the other four structures. the community-campus partnerships for health (www.ccphealth.org/) is a membershipbased cce network that provides numerous opportunities to promote and connect communities and academic institutions around health equity and social justice (communitycampus partnerships for health 2017). through their website, multiple listservs and biennial conference, the network mobilises knowledge, provides training and technical assistance, conducts research, builds coalitions and advocates for supportive policies. as a brokering network, it unites community practitioners and academics from diverse fields around community-based participatory research principles and practices. on the other hand, the canadian rural research network (http://rural-research-network.blogspot.ca/) acts as a hub for rural stakeholders across canada, including academics, practitioners, formal and informal community groups, and government officials, to share research outputs. members can stay upto-date on rural research, connect with various rural stakeholders, and develop and maintain research partnerships. the network has no budget, but is sustained by its members who serve on various committees. part 2: dimensions the second part of the framework involves four categories that speak to the kinds of activities undertaken by brokering initiatives. these categories address details of what cce brokers do and how they develop programs, governance and infrastructure accordingly. below we present a description of each of the four categories as well as examples of some of the different kinds of brokering initiatives. first, level of engagement covers the frequency of support and duration of involvement that brokers have with stakeholders throughout a cce project. the level of engagement of the different brokering initiatives can be conceived of as a continuum that meets the needs of cce partnerships in a variety of ways. at one end are brokering initiatives that provide ‘lighttouch’ engagement, which often involves cce brokers having initial contact with partners, being less involved after the partnership has been established, and allowing the partners to take on leadership. for example, some brokering initiatives we reviewed supported communityengaged learning projects by pairing students with community-based organisations to fulfil coursework requirements, identifying faculty members to work with a particular community partner, and offering training sessions, one-time learning events, or meeting spaces to be used on an as needed basis. at the other end are brokering initiatives that offer a deep level of engagement. this involves establishing partnerships and playing an active role throughout the duration of the project by working with partners to manage and conduct community-driven brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 28 http://rural-research-network.blogspot.ca/ research. the trent community research centre, for example, maintains contact with partners throughout the course of a project and sometimes beyond. these cce brokers also engage in project-planning and decision-making, helping to secure project funding, and in the case of community-based research activities, playing a direct role in the research (e.g. data collection, analysis and interpretation, and knowledge mobilisation). second, brokering initiatives differed in respect of the types of platforms they used to manage services. some brokering initiatives maintained a physical centre within an academic institution or an office in the community. having a physical presence within a community or on campus allowed these types of brokering initiatives to host face-to-face meetings with community and university partners or make workspaces available for planning, data collection or informal discussions. learning events, such as workshop series, presentation panels and informal meet-and-greets could also be used to bring community and academic partners together for face-to-face interaction. other brokering initiatives, such as the canadian rural research network, used virtual platforms that offered community and academic partners the opportunity to connect through online communication tools, such as discussion forums, listservs, researcher wanted boards, expertise or member profile searches, volunteer or partner matching databases, and virtual platforms for group collaboration. some brokering initiatives offered a combination of physical and virtual platforms as multiple ways to connect diverse partners. third, brokering initiatives differed in their scale of activities. some brokering initiatives were primarily focused on supporting partnerships in their local community or region. examples include brokering partnerships between community groups and students to establish a food rescue program in a city, establishing connections with local housing providers and professors to develop innovative opportunities in a low-income neighbourhood, and working with local libraries to match university students with children in need of reading mentors. other brokering initiatives reached a national audience. for example, establishing partnerships between rural researchers and practitioners across canada, connecting diverse stakeholders to explore national poverty solutions, and bringing together community-based organisations and academics in the uk over issues of food security. other brokering initiatives spanned a much wider geography, working with partners on an international scale. examples include promoting an exchange of ideas and knowledge-sharing at international health and social justice conferences on community-based participatory research, implementing an international in-person community-campus partnerships course and follow-up mentoring, and promoting online global dialogue and resource-sharing for students and community activists interested in social action and research. lastly, the areas of focus varied among the different brokering initiatives. some initiatives engaged in particular issue-based activities and services. for example, a brokering initiative focusing on community food security hosted webinars and workshops, posted articles on their website and sent out newsletters to members. other issue-based efforts covered poverty reduction, rural research, hiv/aids, and housing. in general, these activities tended to be more issue-based than those in the other brokering initiative categories. some brokering initiatives had a much broader focus, however, with cce brokers engaging in projects using community-engaged approaches to teaching and research, focusing on a broad range of issues and areas, such as community resilience and health promotion. upon examination of the four categories, level of broker engagement and types of broker platforms, appeared to be the most informative for developing a brokering initiatives matrix. areas of focus tended to vary among the brokering initiatives and few patterns levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 29 could be identified from that dimension. and while we noticed that brokering initiatives using virtual platforms tended to reach more national and international audiences, whereas physical platforms lent themselves to a local scale of activity, descriptions of activities within the level of broker engagement and type of broker platforms seemed most informative for guiding brokering initiatives. figure 1 provides a summary of these two brokering initiative dimensions. figure 1 broker initiative dimensions matrix brokering initiatives in the virtual-light touch quadrant offer opportunities to share knowledge and establish connections with a wide span of members or partners. the canadian rural research network (http://rural-research-network.blogspot.ca/) is one example of this type of approach. some drawbacks to this approach include members engaging in passive interactions (e.g. scanning a blogpost), but not reaching out to members, and offering limited member contact by not promoting regular member or partner contact. brokering initiatives in the virtual-deep engagement quadrant offer members more engaging opportunities to connect by promoting ongoing project sharing, regular meetings and frequent news updates. while this approach has great potential in deeply connecting diverse stakeholders, we did not come across this kind of brokering initiative in our search. drawbacks to this approach could be the increased resources required within the brokering initiative to moderate discussions, host meetings, and provide regular coaching and member interaction. brokering initiatives in the physical-light touch quadrant offer services to connect people within communities while requiring fewer resources to sustain a deep engagement initiative. the helpdesk is an example of a brokering initiative that uses this approach. a drawback could be that partners might not be able to sustain engagement without a broker’s ongoing support. finally, the physicaldeep engagement brokering initiative offers partners opportunities to deeply engage with one another throughout the life of a project. the centre for community-based research is an example of this type of brokering initiative. drawbacks include the resources, such as time, space and funds, necessary to support partners at each phase of a project. conclusions in this article, we have presented an overview of the features, roles and activities of brokering initiatives and a framework to better understand their contributions to successful communitybrokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 30 http://rural-research-network.blogspot.ca/ campus partnerships. our intention has been to provide an analytical tool that can support academics and community-based practitioners engaged in teaching and research partnerships. there are a number of ways this framework might be used in developing new or existing brokering initiatives. first, the categories in each of the two parts of the framework describing the different structural allegiances (i.e. community-based brokering initiatives, universitybased brokering initiatives, community-university-based brokering initiatives, resource-based brokering initiatives and brokering networks) and dimensions (i.e. levels of engagement, types of platforms, scales of activities and areas of focus) could encourage partners to think through their overall goals and objectives. the framework could also help participants to better evaluate the purpose of a brokering initiative and the various mechanisms to be used to meet those objectives. further, it might enable consideration of the strengths and limitations of various brokering initiatives in order to understand what each might accomplish, its limitations, and how it could adapt accordingly. for example, a cce broker interested in disseminating knowledge, keeping participants up-to-date on activities and providing a place for input and sharing ideas might adopt a virtual light-touch engagement model. this type of model would require few resources to maintain (e.g. staff members, infrastructure, costs). a brokering initiative interested in regularly engaging a wide reach of partners or members, but at a low cost, might wish to use a virtual deep-engagement model. this could keep overheads low as only a few key staff members would be required to maintain online communication tools and activities (e.g. website, discussion moderation, web coaching, webinars). by contrast, a brokering initiative seeking to have a wide community impact by reaching many diverse partners might decide to use a physical light-touch model. by offering matching services, but not requiring resources to provide ongoing support to partnerships throughout a project, this type of initiative would require minimal staff members to review proposals and match partners. the most resourceintensive choice is the physical deep-engagement model. a brokering initiative with the goal of establishing and maintaining cce partnerships and supporting partners long-term would need to ensure they had adequate, ongoing funding available to sustain such a model. as more cce projects turn to brokering initiatives as a way to support their work, it is important that all partners have a clear sense of the initiative’s purpose and what is involved. the framework could also be used to consider where and how to situate a brokering initiative. for example, a brokering initiative based in the community would be more accessible for community-based organisations and more understanding and responsive to their needs than if based in a university. this would be especially true if there was concern that a particular institutional structure might not address the needs of community participants in a meaningful way. however, university-based brokers might have more success securing funding and other resources to support their work. universities could also facilitate broader based partnership networks, while many non-profit organisations would have limited capacity to build and maintain relationships beyond those related to their immediate work. with university funding, however, comes additional expectations (e.g. prioritising faculty and students, adhering to a university’s strategic plan). as another example, as brokering initiatives in a physical location are typically housed in community-based centres or university-based offices, they are well positioned to respond to their immediate community, an important element in building trust. network brokers, on the other hand, tend to use virtual platforms, which limit face-to-face contact but allow them to reach a much wider constituency. brokering initiatives could also use this framework when mapping out the resources needed to sustain their work. common to most brokering initiatives we examined was the levkoe and stack-cutler gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 31 importance of having a steady source of funding to develop infrastructure, hire staff to carry out the necessary tasks and sustain the initiative over the long-term. cce brokers that are funded or based in a university tended to have the most stability and capacity as a result of solid institutional backing. in fact, some of the brokering initiatives we studied began as independent organisations based in the community, but over time chose to relocate to the university due to funding opportunities and the institutional resources and supports available. having stable funding appeared to lessen the anxiety of participants and allow cce brokers to focus on improving the content of their activities and services. in a number of cases, added stability also enabled participants to more seriously consider and address power imbalances within their relationships. some of the networks we examined, such as the canadian rural research network, did not have funding and, as a result, operated primarily as a shell, with activities driven completely by participants (typically those with grants to do their work). the source of funding also made a significant difference to the work cce brokers could take on. for example, one brokering initiative reported that having support from an external funder over the course of several years allowed them to respond better to community needs, take risks and experiment with new types of activities rather than worrying about whether they were addressing the university’s strategic plan. for many academics, a well-funded, secure and long-term partnership provided added legitimacy for engaging in, and in some cases leading, cce projects. we propose several directions for future research on cce brokering initiatives. first, there is very little research documenting and evaluating case studies of brokering initiatives, especially in peer-reviewed journals. these kinds of scholarly studies are important as a means of sharing information and comparing and contrasting the efforts of different initiatives. the framework is a first step towards that in-depth analysis and could be used to further examine the process of building and maintaining cce brokering relationships and models. second, limited research exists on both the factors for success and the challenges faced by cce brokering initiatives. to share learnings, we suggest that researchers analyse experiences and document lessons learned from attempts at brokering community-campus partnerships in relation to the categories proposed in this article. finally, cce practitioners would benefit from studies of the different tools available to support brokering initiatives. we propose that these tools could be conceptualised in relation to the framework. while this framework provides a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating brokering initiatives, it is not intended to be static. in most cases, we found that the categories were not fixed and that many of the brokering initiatives we examined took on more than one of the structural allegiances and/or dimensions simultaneously. this speaks to the context in which many of these brokering initiatives operate (e.g. reacting/responding to changing funding realities, program priorities of community organisations, emerging/unanticipated needs, etc.). also, as technology changes along with the needs of cce, new tools are being developed that may require different kinds of frameworks to understand and interpret cce activities. thus, while we compared brokering initiatives in order to understand their different attributes, we are not advocating a standardised approach to evaluation. our research and experience leads us to suggest that brokering initiatives must be context-specific and respond to the needs of both community and academic partners. however, we need mechanisms to support community-campus partnerships in a more institutional and sustained way. it is our hope that the analytical framework will make a meaningful contribution to this endeavour. brokering community-campus partnerships: an analytical framework gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 11, no. 1, may 2018 32 acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the assistance and support of the academics and practitioners involved in the community 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http://partnershipbrokers.org/w/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/appointing-a-partnership-broker-feb-2016sm.pdf https://doi.org/ 10.1353/cpr.2011.0032 https://doi.org/ 10.1177/00027640021955586 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: close, s., lohr, c. 2023. asset-based community development in an online context: crafting collective experience into an asset of expertise. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–15. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8684 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) asset-based community development in an online context: crafting collective experience into an asset of expertise samantha close1, chiarra lohr2 1 assistant professor of communication, depaul university, chicago, illinois, usa 2 executive director, indie sellers guild, usa corresponding author: samantha close, sclose@depaul.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8684 article history: received 21/06/2023; revised 03/08/2023; accepted 31/10/2023; published 12/2023 abstract this article analyses a case study for which an asset-based community development (abcd) orientation was used to conduct community-based research (cbr). the community in question is, unusually, a digital community comprised of people who sell handmade crafts and vintage goods through digital marketplace platforms. this project, headed by a team of one academic and one community organiser, demonstrates a process by which cbr can be initiated by a community itself in order to effect change in the structural inequalities with which they are faced. to do so, we argue that community members’ expertise is a key asset, both individually and when collectivised through the research process. involving community members in research on this basis helps change the way they look at themselves and their situation, and strengthens the bonds of this virtual community. keywords asset-based community development; e-commerce; digital communities; community-based research; crafts; expertise 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors wish to acknowledge and thank the depaul vincentian endowment fund discretionary grant for its support of the research that this article discusses. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8684 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8684 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sclose@depaul.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8684 introduction this article details a case study in which the two authors, one an academic and the other a community organiser, used an asset-based community development (abcd) approach to conduct research that was initiated by the community itself. this fundamentally alters the typical balance of power in the research process, conceptualising community members and academic researchers as experts working together rather than one as information source and the other as an expert extracting knowledge. we first lay out the background of this particular case study, focusing on the power dynamics between communities, technologies and institutions. we continue by reviewing the relevant literature on online communities, abcd, and their expertise in the context of independent craft entrepreneurship. we then explain the methodology of the study, with particular attention to how we incorporated abcd principles and ideas of expertise in our study process, before turning to a discussion of what we gained by using this approach rather than a more traditional academic approach. the case study the platform online marketplaces are ‘platforms’, or intermediary websites that ‘provide storage, navigation and delivery of the digital content of others’ (gillespie 2010, p. 348). customers search for items and make their purchases through the platform itself, rather than directly from each individual business which lists its wares on the platform. the platform takes a fee from sellers in exchange for this service and is also in charge of the technological infrastructure, policies, marketing and branding of the marketplace. handmade marketplaces are those online platforms specifically used for the selling of handmade and vintage items. each of these marketplaces has its own policies and enforcement rules for what types of items may be sold on its platform. etsy, the largest handmade marketplace, allows handmade and vintage craft supplies, and items designed by a creative indie seller, but produced by another company, to be sold on their platform (seller policy 2022). other marketplaces are more specific; for example, ravelry is a marketplace for knitters, crocheters and other fibre artists. there is a significant power imbalance between handmade marketplaces and the creative indie sellers who use the platform (close 2018; postigo 2014). the relationship between a seller and the marketplace is treated as a business-to-business relationship, with an underlying assumption of equal leverage. however, although creative indie sellers are technically small business owners, the majority of them are a business of one – themselves – who work out of their home (etsy employees 2021). platforms like etsy are large, publicly traded global corporations with hundreds of employees, though often headquartered in the usa. much like a boss sets work hours, conditions and terms, platform companies use tools like policy and the website’s algorithms to strongly encourage those who sell through their websites to behave in particular ways (rosenblat & stark 2016). there is often an assumption that platform users, such as creative indie sellers, who are unhappy with one platform can simply leave the site and join another. the reality is very different (cassidy 2022). large online marketplaces like etsy, ebay and amazon handmade attract the vast majority of customers for handmade, vintage and craft supply products. as one business news outlet put it, ‘for many sellers, there are few alternatives’ because of etsy’s domination of the search results for handmade goods, the higher transaction fees charged by alternative services and the technical know-how required to set them up (kaziukėnas 2022). an individual seller has no real power to change or challenge the policies set by these large marketplaces and often cannot afford to leave. in this way, individual indie sellers can end up trapped on platforms that close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 provide the majority of their customers, but whose policies and fees make it more and more difficult to run a sustainable business. in the world of handmade crafts, vintage goods and craft supplies, etsy originally played a large part in creating the indie seller community following its founding in 2005. it offered workshops on different topics to help sellers grow their businesses and created ‘street teams’ that helped sellers negotiate better rates for vending at in-person art fairs (lee mccarty 2021). etsy became a certified bcorporation, a business which meets certain requirements in terms of its profit distribution, community relationships and environmental impact in 2012. b-corporations that go public are ‘legally required to consider the interest of all stakeholders in making corporate decisions and allocating resources, not just the interests of shareholders in maximizing profit and financial return’ (chou 2018). but after their initial public offering (ipo), etsy dropped its b-corporation certification (silverman 2017). the drive to return a greater and greater profit to its venture capital investors led to several leadership changes at etsy as well as the discontinuation of these seller support programs (lee mccarty 2021). the community as luckman (2013) argues, times of rapid technological advancement and integration into society commonly see countercultural movements that embrace traditional ways of making items, such as handcraft. this was absolutely the case for the recent so-called digital revolution and rise of the internet. knitting, for example, was embraced by young women in ‘stitch ‘n bitch’ groups, which saw the percentage of american women under 45 who could knit or crochet double from 1996 to 2003 and then continue to expand (stoller 2003). despite their emphasis on handmaking, these crafters were highly connected through the internet (levine & heimerl 2008). within this large and diffuse subcultural movement exist many smaller self-aware communities. one such example is the indie sellers guild (isg), a grassroots non-profit organisation that ‘fight[s] for a better, fairer internet—where makers, artists, designers and other creative indie sellers can run sustainable online businesses’ (indie sellers guild 2023). its members are indie sellers themselves as well as ‘allies’, such as the customers who shop at independent businesses. this type of small business is very community driven. handmade and vintage sellers usually start off as handmade and vintage hobbyists who are encouraged to start businesses by their crafty friends (close 2014; kim 2019). customers shop with these kinds of businesses because they want to know who they are buying from and how their items were made or found (dudley 2014; matchar 2013). isg has organised itself according to the methods that its members are used to; for example, creating a discord server and facebook community so that its globally dispersed membership can come together and discuss online, as well as hold monthly online meetings using tools like zoom. what differentiates the isg as a community is that it is an organisation focused on labour rights that was self-organised by handmade crafters and vintage sellers. in april 2022, nearly 30,000 etsy sellers went on a week-long ‘strike’ to protest policy changes to the platform. the strike mobilised from among the more than 80,000 signers of kristi cassidy’s petition on change.org that initially demanded etsy roll back a 30 percent increase in the fees they charged to sellers. it grew, however, to encompass five key demands: cancel the fee increase, crack down on dishonest ‘resellers’ who pass off mass-produced items as handmade crafts, provide better customer support to sellers, end the ‘star seller’ program which many perceived as pushing them to work faster and longer, and allow sellers to opt out of offsite ads, for which etsy charged an extra fee to provide to the sellers. the strike made news headlines around the world and eventually did win some concessions from etsy management (indie sellers guild 2022). however, by the end of the strike it had become clear that, in order to achieve lasting change for workers, it would take more than a single week of grassroots action. unlike most formal employer–employee close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 relationships, people who work through platforms are not covered by labour regulations that ensure fairness on the job (gray & suri 2019; rosenblat & stark 2016). to that end, the etsy strike 2022 organisers came together to build a lasting democratic organisation of independent online sellers, the isg, to advocate for their interests collectively. lohr was elected as the executive director of the isg. though there is no exact count of creative independent sellers globally, etsy alone has 6.3 million sellers, of whom roughly 3.3 million are in the united states (etsy employees 2021). according to the demographic research done for this study, isg members roughly mirror the larger population of etsy sellers in that they come from around the world, but tend to concentrate in the us, the uk and canada, range significantly in age, and the majority are female. similar proportions identify as male and as non-binary/ third gender and are in the majority white. the largest difference between etsy’s census data and our participants is that 37 percent of our participants identified as lgbtqia+, while only 14 percent identified as such in etsy’s census. etsy did not collect data on disability or caregiving responsibilities; however, many of our participants had these identities. fourteen percent identified as physically disabled, while 27 percent identified as mentally disabled or neurodivergent. twenty-four percent had primary caregiving responsibilities, such as childcare, eldercare, or disability care. what these demographics tell us is that indie sellers are non-traditional business owners and entrepreneurs in terms of their gender – in the united states, only 40 percent of entrepreneurs and 43.2 percent of small business owners are female (‘entrepreneur statistics’ 2022; main 2022). most studies of entrepreneurs do not collect data on sexuality, disability, or caregiving responsibilities. this indicates that indie sellers overrepresent those who have been pushed out of the traditional workforce: people with disabilities or chronic health issues, caregivers, and trans and non-binary individuals. a creative small business provides them with a way to make supplemental income or even a living from home, and the ability to work to their own schedule and around their other needs using skills they already possess. such people are even more dependent on platforms because they cannot easily re-enter the traditional workplace. they also suffer more from platform policy and algorithm changes that micro-manage how they work. for instance, the star seller program requires that sellers respond to every message sent through the platform within 24 hours and gives preferential placement in search results to star sellers. but how could someone with a chronic health condition who started an etsy shop be available every single day? literature review online communities ‘community’ is a powerful and oft-invoked concept, as demonstrated by the names ‘community-based research’ and ‘asset-based community development’. but as with many such concepts, the precise definition of community is contested and difficult to pin down (bradshaw 2008). in the context of abcd, communities are often assumed to consist of people in close physical proximity to each other. for instance, kretzmann and mcknight (1993) often refer to communities as ‘neighborhoods’, and this focus on physical place has persisted in the field. even place-based communities, however, have a sense of virtuality to them. early theorists of community, such as weber (2013) and tönnies (2001), suggested that one type of community was the ‘community of the mind’, in which the felt sense of belonging was as or more important than physical closeness. benedict anderson (2006, p. 6) influentially theorised that nations, as imagined communities, ‘imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. urbanisation is often argued to have undermined community (putnam 2001). yet some see it more as a process of people shifting from belonging in place-based communities to close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 belonging in community with those of similar profession, religion, sexuality, or even interests (bradshaw 2008). howard rheingold (1993) was one of the first to apply the idea of community to the then-new phenomenon of the internet, optimistically praising the potential for new forms of community-building online. subsequent literature often referred to ‘online participation’ (carpentier & dahlgren 2011) or ‘participatory culture’ ( jenkins 2008) rather than community-building, per se, while still discussing many of the features associated with communities. participatory culture communities have a few key specific features: a creative dimension, in which members create and share artistic works with each other, a social dimension, in which members see themselves as part of a community group, and a motivational dimension, in which participation is associated with a social purpose (lutz et al. 2014). this literature has been critiqued as overly optimistic, with some questioning whether online participation meets the standards for community-building set by face-to-face organisation (hay & couldry 2011; turkle 2011). some of this scepticism might be prompted by the evolution of web 1.0, characterised by email lists and discussion boards, into the social media of web 2.0, characterised by platforms that allowed users to create profiles and engage with each other, and corporate encroachment on the concept of community ( jenkins et al. 2013). similarly, some scholars critique the technological determinism of ideas like a ‘facebook revolution’ spawned by the arab spring uprisings, in which activists and everyday citizens utilised social media tools to organise and protest (allagui & kuebler 2011; morozov 2014). that being said, online communities are particularly important for people who work via online platforms. gray and suri (2019) found that crowd workers, or people who do the small tasks that fuel ai, collaborate with each other via online social networks in order to manage administrative overhead, find better work, and receive the social support traditionally associated with in-person workplaces. maffie (2020) found that ride-hail drivers, who work via platforms like uber or lyft, were significantly more interested in joining a labour organisation when they interacted more frequently with other drivers via social media. joyce, stuart and forde (2023) argue that unions and union-like organisations are more successful with workers in the platform economy when they build on the existing, often online, social networks workers have formed with each other rather than depending on the workplace-specific organising tactics used against auto manufacturers, for example. asset-based community development (abcd) abcd is, at its heart, an approach that seeks to build on a community’s strengths – its assets – rather than looking to address its needs (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). in this, abcd shares some core ideas with amartya sen’s capabilities approach to development, which emphasises people’s ‘actual ability to achieve various valuable functionings as a part of living’ rather than quantitative and material measurements such as wealth or personal utility (sen 1993, p. 30). abcd assets include six different types: individuals, associations, institutions, land and the physical environment, exchange, and culture and stories (garcía 2020). abcd often takes physical neighbourhoods as the theoretical environment in which research or development will take place. as such, the asset of individuals would be people living in the neighbourhood. the asset of associations would be the kind of informal gatherings that often make up the social life of a neighbourhood, such as a knitting circle or a regular pick-up after a basketball game. institutions are associations that have been formally concretised – for instance, a non-profit operating in a neighbourhood, a local business association, or a church. land and the physical environment are assets: buildings, which might be used for meetings; empty lots, which might be turned into gardens; or restaurant kitchens, which might be able to host events or supply a community food bank. the asset of exchange relates to local economies: how money and goods flow through a community. this often refers to the kinds of businesses operating in a neighbourhood, for example, small, locally owned shops that keep money within the community rather close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 than extracting it, as large corporations do. but it can also refer to money-less exchanges, such as a clothing exchange or ‘buy nothing’ groups. the asset of culture and stories is the knowledge that lives within the community, such as stories about what happened the last time researchers came to the community, or histories of the neighbourhood. as these examples demonstrate, assets are mergers of tangible and intangible things. for instance, an individual can have ‘gifts of the head (subjects residents know)’, ‘gifts of the hands (practical skills that residents know)’ and ‘gifts of the heart (issues residents care deeply about)’ (garcía 2020, p. 70). abcd often begins from a practice of asset-mapping, whereby researchers help community members recognise all of the assets they already possess (haines 2014). one impetus behind abcd is a desire to avoid continually associating already marginalised communities with deficits or needs, as this approach can make the communities themselves seem like ‘the problem’. it can also ‘lea[d] concerned outsiders into becoming charitable “fixers”’ rather than concentrating power within the community (bergdall 2013, p. 1). one key difference between needs-based development and abcd is that for needs-based development, financial resources are the most important resource, whereas for abcd, people and relationships are the most important resource (garcía 2020). once assets are mapped, abcd works to connect them together, when these connections do not already exist. this multiplies the power of each individual asset (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). asset connection is a particularly powerful part of abcd in the context of cbr, where partnerships between academic institutions and communities are common. these partnerships are usually begun with great hope, but often run into many problems, such as ‘terminological and conceptual differences, multiple perspectives and ways of knowing, inconsistency about what constitutes success, and measurement messiness’ (plummer et al. 2022). the abcd approach helps to cut through this potential morass by providing a clear framework for identifying the unique strengths of all involved, both researchers and community members. abcd is more often associated with local development projects than it is with research projects, per se (garcía 2020; kretzmann & mcknight 1993; mathie & cunningham 2003, 2005). however, many of its core values and ideas are reflected in cbr. for instance, mathie and cunningham (2003, p. 474) write that ‘the appeal of abcd lies in its premise that people in communities can organise to drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilising existing (but often unrecognized) assets, thereby responding to and creating local economic opportunity’. this clearly resonates with cbr, as such research is ‘genuinely collaborative and driven by community rather than campus interests; that democratizes the creation and dissemination of knowledge; and that seeks to achieve positive social change’. (strand et al. 2003, p. 5). the obvious points of overlap are self-determination by community members and a clear end goal of social change. we see expertise as another crucial point of overlap. expertise is an asset when considered under the abcd framework, and recognising the expertise of community members is crucial in order to ‘facilitate collaborative, equitable partnerships in all phases of the research’, a key principle under the cbr framework (roche 2008, p. 3). abcd is not without its critics. the idea of focusing on marginalised communities’ strengths sounds, to some, much like the neoliberal ideal of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (macleod & emejulu 2014). friedli (2013, p. 140) similarly argues that abcd’s ‘fatal weakness has been the failure to question the balance of power between public services, communities and corporate interests’. it is true that much of abcd’s foundations come from situations in urban america where the possibilities for outside assistance, from the state or other sources, were considered ‘bleak indeed’ (kretzmann & mcknight 1993, p. 5). this state of affairs has unfortunately expanded since kretzmann and mcknight did their work. we argue that abcd is still a highly productive approach despite these critiques. pairing abcd with a research-based political economic analysis, as in cbr, can address some of the blind spots identified by critics. further, as we will demonstrate in this case study, taking an abcd approach does not have to mean close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 letting the state off the hook for its responsibility to support its citizens. community assets, such as culture and stories, can be mobilised by community members to influence legislators and affect public policy, which can change the power relations in which the community is embedded. expertise expertise presents a conundrum for technologically advanced democracies. it is, on the one hand, necessary to build, maintain and advance technology. on the other hand, it necessarily introduces differences between people in an anti-democratic fashion, separating the population into expertise haves and havenots (faulkner et al. 1998; schrock & close 2017). activists have targeted the idea of expertise as a vector for social change. some community organisations, such as black girls code, seek to disperse expertise, for instance, teaching technology skills to those under-represented in technological fields. others, like low-fi radio activists prometheus, attempted ‘to break the conventions of expertise as it is traditionally constructed in order to promote an egalitarian ideal’ (dunbar-hester 2014, p. 186). expertise is often conceptualised in relation to professional work – as a special kind of knowledge, in that expertise carries with it social esteem and often a paid position (brown 2014). particularly in the contemporary digital moment, science and engineering or ‘stem’ fields form a bastion of expertise that is socially validated (faulkner et al. 1998). that being said, there is a literature that explicitly considers expertise in relation to craft. sennett (2008) takes an individualistic perspective which valorises the expertise of the master craftsman and his satisfaction in a simple job done well, which mcrobbie (2016) has critiqued on gendered grounds. patel (2020) has most comprehensively developed a theory of the contemporary cultural worker’s unique expertise. her model of ‘aesthetic expertise’ incorporates competence within the skills of creative production – rather than the aesthetic judgement of the art critic – as well as the capacity to signal those skills, particularly in an online context, and the ability to balance their primary creative activity with the entrepreneurial activity necessary to earn a living. but is expertise solely an individual property? digital media studies have suggested a different approach, which takes a large crowd, rather than a credentialled professional, as the potential source of expertise. there are two major theories: the wisdom of the crowd paradigm and the collective intelligence paradigm. the wisdom of the crowd argues that ‘even if most of the people within a group are not especially well informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision’ (surowiecki 2005, p. xiii). as an example, proponents of the wisdom of the crowd often use the curious phenomenon that when a crowd of people all guess the answer to a question, such as how many gumballs are in a jar, the average of their guesses is likely to be correct. in other words, the wisdom of the crowd is all about aggregation, particularly the aggregation of strangers. it underlies processes, such as ‘crowd work’ platforms, where a single job is broken up into micro-level ‘tasks’ and each one given to a different person from a very large pool. rather than any particular individual inside the crowd, no matter their gifts, the crowd itself is the ‘expert’. this view has become particularly common among owners of digital platforms. the collective intelligence paradigm, by contrast, depends on socialising and connecting within the crowd (lévy 1997). as jenkins (2008, p. 4) put it, ‘none of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills.’ a good example of collective intelligence is actually the abcd ideal: a community whose assets are known and connected with each other. for instance, a church (institution) might work with a local women’s group (organisation) to put on a thrift sale (exchange) to help raise money to create a new community garden in an empty plot (land). no one member of the church or customer at the thrift sale could have accomplished all of this on their own. neither could the aggregate crowd of people involved without the social network that tied them all together. in a very powerful sense, everyone involved is simultaneously an expert in something and a close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 layperson in something else. this idea of expertise diminishes its anti-democratic properties and suggests that expertise lies in networks rather than crowds of strangers. methodology cunningham and mathie (2003, p. 476) explain abcd as ‘an approach, as a set of methods for community mobilization, and as a strategy for community-based development’. here we envision cbr as a tool that can be deployed within the abcd approach that the isg is taking. flyvbjerg (2012, p. 33) argues that the basic questions of values rationale, or phronetic social science research, with reference to a specific community, are ‘where are we going? is this development desirable? what, if anything, should we do about it? who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power?’ in this case study, the isg and its members had already answered the first two questions: we are going in a direction where a small number of online platforms will have total power over the working environments of independent online sellers, and this is extremely undesirable. alternative marketplace platforms exist, but they tend to be smaller and – as evidenced in discussions among isg members and the larger online crafting subculture – varied dramatically in quality. the isg answered flyvbjerg’s third question (what should we do about it), by suggesting the idea of a marketplace accreditation project, as a community labour organisation, whereby the isg could vet marketplace platforms on how well they treated the sellers who worked on them and whether they provided what different groups of sellers needed. there was one problem: the isg was not sure what constituted a ‘good’ marketplace platform for sellers. individual isg members had personal opinions on the topic, such that an ‘etsy alternatives’ discussion channel was created early on in the organisation’s discussion server. but members freely admitted that their opinions depended heavily on their own situations – their particular craft, their geographical location, their level of coding knowledge, whether they were full-time or part-time sellers, and so forth. close conducted a review of the literature on marketplace platforms and discovered that there were two major approaches. first, an abundance of business literature on online marketplace platforms existed, but it was almost exclusively from the point-of-view of the companies owning the platforms – not that of the people working on them (evans & schmalensee 2016; sanchez-cartas and león 2021). second, media and communications scholars had developed a burgeoning literature on ‘platform studies’, but it tended to be more critical and theoretical rather than concerned with the practical and day-to-day policies and features by which marketplaces could be judged (duffy 2017; gillespie 2010; nieborg & poell 2018). thus, new research was needed to determine what standards the isg should use for its marketplace accreditation program. we designed a methodology based on abcd principles and included the concept of expertise as a community asset. we posited that the knowledge of what an ideal marketplace platform should look like – an ‘asset of the mind’ – was already distributed among the many members of the isg and the wider handmade and vintage communities. what the isg then needed was a way to concretise that knowledge into expertise, which could form the basis of the accreditation program. close suggested that she serve as an outsider catalyst whose research skills could help to draw out the collective intelligence of the community as an asset of shared expertise. outsider catalysts are people from outside a community who ‘hold up a mirror so residents can see themselves as they really are ... [using] analytic tools and exercises that help community residents to identify and recognise strengths and capacities which they may have overlooked or ignored in the past’ (bergdall 2013, p. 4). as the term implies, catalysts should stimulate or encourage community members to develop projects, rather than taking on leadership roles. we accomplished this by considering close’s academic expertise to be primarily useful in creating spaces for community members to recognise their own expertise. close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 the research was a multi-stage process. first, close hosted an online workshop for isg members. lohr posted an open invitation to the event in the community’s discord server and facebook group. seven members attended and participated in the workshop. in a traditional abcd study, this would be a session dedicated to asset-mapping. however, these techniques are designed for place-based communities, such as neighbourhoods, and do not translate easily to a geographically dispersed community like that of indie sellers. we focused on the assets of exchange and culture and stories. close asked attendees to imagine what online marketplaces might look like for indie sellers in the year 2100 if they developed in the best possible way (see results in figure 1). this naturally transitioned into community members sharing stories about their experiences when things went well, along with challenges they encountered. close documented the discussion by writing virtual post-it notes as people talked, then asking the community members to organise the post-it notes into common themes. figure 1. exchange and culture and stories asset-mapping workshop result close and lohr then wrote an open-ended survey that covered the topics around which workshop attendees’ ideas had coalesced. we also added questions similar to those asked in the workshop, such as ‘if your ideal online marketplace was a physical space, what would it look like? we then shared this draft of the survey with community members for their feedback. as discussed earlier, many crafters are disabled, and their ideas significantly impacted the framing of our demographic questions around disability. they rejected ‘person-first’ language common in academia, such as “i am someone with a physical disability,” in favour of language which recognised disability as an identity, such as “i am disabled.” after revisions, we offered the survey to both sellers and customers of handmade, vintage and craft goods online, using the isg’s social media to spread the word throughout the community. there were 215 responses, drawn primarily from the isg membership, roughly a 10 percent response rate. we then took the qualitative data from the open-ended survey and applied a similar process to that following the workshop: identifying common themes as well as areas of agreement and disagreement. close read the answers to the questions addressed to sellers and lohr read the answers to the questions addressed to buyers. each author prepared a summary of the responses to each question. after comparing our summaries, we wrote a multiple-choice survey covering the same topics as in the qualitative survey, but close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 with more specific questions. for example, two questions drawn from the responses to the question about communication between self and the marketplace platform were: in most cases, the best method of communication between the marketplace site and me is ... (followed by communication channels such as phone call, email, etc.). when problems occur, the best method of communication between the marketplace site and me is ... (as above). these questions derived from our discovery in the open-ended survey that sellers felt these two communication contexts were different and likely required different communication channels. in this section, we also asked ‘when i’m communicating with the marketplace, it’s most important that ... (communication is fast and easy to access/i feel heard and the communication is respectful/the issue is resolved).’ this arose from reading that these three values of speed, respect and resolution were important, but it was difficult to tell which was of primary importance due to the openended nature of the survey. the multiple-choice survey was then distributed among isg’s membership and throughout the broader community of creative independent sellers via social media posts and keyword-based advertisements. at the time of writing, over 1200 people had responded. the isg will take the results of the multiple-choice survey and use them to develop its marketplace accreditation program. it will use the survey results as a concrete explanation of community members’ needs and desires for marketplaces and also use them to create a standard by which to judge marketplace platforms, both large ones such as etsy or ebay, and smaller, newer platforms attempting to enter the space or to specialise in one craft area. this program will help the community break etsy’s monopoly over handmade crafts and vintage goods by making it easier to tell which platforms are worth sellers’ time and effort to use. over time, sellers will migrate away from platforms which exploit them and towards platforms that work with them fairly. discussion indie sellers are often told, particularly by platforms, that any problems they encounter are a result of deficits in their craft and business skills. a proposed solution is for them to individually seek help from outside experts, for example, taking a business course. however, we argue that this is wrong on multiple levels. our research demonstrates that, while any one individual seller may be able to improve on a skill, creative independent sellers collectively possess clear expertise. they are ‘content experts’, possessing gifts both of the hands and the heart (attygalle 2017; garcía 2020). the community’s gifts of the hand lie in their aesthetic expertise: they know how to craft or locate an item, how to photograph that item, how to list that item, how to pack and ship an order, and how to engage with customers about their purchases. their gifts of the heart consist in their collective vision for sustainable businesses that value their own voices and ‘the handmade’. we align with roy (2017) in that abcd is a way to enhance the collective and build solidarity, values opposed to neoliberalism’s individualism and privatism. taking part in this cbr project helps crafters and vintage sellers to reconceptualise themselves as experts in conducting independent creative businesses online. it is their ideas that determine which aspects of marketplaces are important, as well as what kinds of policies and features will best support them. further, it became clear to indie sellers that the problems they encounter are shared. this supports an understanding of their relationship with marketplace platforms as one beset by structural inequality, not one in which all their problems would disappear if they simply worked harder or smarter. the value that the community puts on the idea of the handmade emerged from the research process. we go into some detail here about this to demonstrate the kind of findings that cbr can produce when using an abcd orientation. most participants in the qualitative survey emphasised the importance of a marketplace having only ‘truly handmade’, ‘actually handmade’ and ‘genuinely handmade’ items available for sale. clearly this concept close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 was of great importance to the community, perhaps even serving as the basis on which members built their own aesthetic expertise. and yet, it was also clear that indie sellers disagreed about the precise definition of handmade. one seller responded, ‘high end, completely hand made only. people designing and making their own items from scratch, without production partners.’ another answered, ‘handcrafted items, items that are printed or manufactured with the help of a second party, or raw materials/tools for crafts.’ these definitions directly contradict each other. this finding was not one anticipated by the workshop, nor would it have likely emerged from a study looking at the existing literature on e-commerce marketplaces, which tend to gloss over handmade marketplaces. it only emerged through considering indie sellers to be experts on handmade marketplaces and asking them what kinds of items should be sold on such platforms. this dissensus on the definition of handmade poses a serious challenge for isg’s marketplace accreditation program, as it must be sensitive to the competing definitions of ‘handmade’ present in the community. after receiving this feedback, we added an entirely new section to the multiple-choice survey to help tease out the different definitions of handmade. understanding the subtlety of how the creative indie seller community defines handmade will not only make the eventual marketplace accreditation program more likely to be successful, but will be critical to defining the boundaries of the community itself. if the community of creative indie sellers involves ‘small businesses run by artists, makers and curators selling handmade, unique, vintage and craft supplies’, as defined earlier, then how members of the community define handmade is critical to its self-understanding. this touches on one key way this case study is different from other abcd work. the creative indie seller community is not defined by location, socio-economic status, racial or ethnic identity, or employer. it is a community defined by the kind of work that members do, in a profession that does not have clear outside definitions or credentials. this kind of community is increasingly more common in our digital and globalising world and should be considered as a site for community development, particularly when it is a site of community economics. what this research process also demonstrates is the value of conceptualising expertise according to the theory of collective intelligence. this theory highlights the importance of social connections between community members, which here has culminated in the indie sellers guild. the isg can now build on the combined expertise of its members to create the marketplace accreditation program, which will begin to challenge the structural inequalities facing creative independent sellers. no one person’s expertise could do this alone. conclusion j.k. gibson-graham (2006, p. xxx) writes that she is often approached with the question ‘why do these things always fail?’ in response to her work on post-capitalist and community economic projects. a similar gloom hangs around press coverage of the isg, for example, in the washington post: ‘i admire their effort, though i suspect it’s in vain. just as the arts and crafts movement couldn’t last, a large-scale online marketplace of handmade goods in the age of amazon prime seems increasingly like a hopeless endeavor’ (wagner 2023). this is an ironic statement at a time when etsy facilitated the sale of 12.2 billion dollars of goods in 2021 alone – –hardly a marketplace on the verge of collapse (etsy employees 2021). gibsongraham (2006, pp. xxx–xxxi) asks whether this mindset has ‘a theoretical investment in failure ... [where] anything in relation to capitalism is understood to be dominated, if not actually controlled by it’. using an abcd approach that helps creative indie sellers see themselves as capable agents of change, with expertise and a community behind them, directly counters this cynicism. co-researching questions that matter to the community shows people how their expertise can be the basis for a new and better version of e-commerce, one focused on sustainability and support rather than exploitation and extraction. close and lohr gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 cbr like this, carried out in the context of abcd, can also help communities influence state policymaking. in july of 2023, us senator baldwin (wi-d) reached out to the isg to ask their opinion on new legislation that would require anyone selling a new, foreign-made item online to disclose their item’s country of origin. this touches directly on the issue of ‘what is handmade?’ that arose in our study, as resellers often buy items made outside the united states before passing them off as handmade within the united states on platforms like etsy. there was a strong consensus from the community’s responses to our survey that such practices should not be allowed. following this research, the isg was able to confidently issue a statement of support for the proposed legislation and also provide data to back up its claim that the legislation would be strongly supported by creative indie sellers. the hitherto lack of existing research on what this community needed in a marketplace, as well as its dispersed, ‘crowd-like’ nature, meant that the marketplace platform owners had previously spoken for the community to legislators. they had successfully lobbied against previous versions of the bill, claiming that it would be a hardship for indie sellers, in direct contradiction to our research findings. this time, the bill progressed out of committee’s hands 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https://www.etsy.com/news/business-as-a-force-for-good-defining-etsys-path https://fortune.com/2022/04/04/thousands-of-etsy-sellers-are-planning-a-strike/ https://fortune.com/2022/04/04/thousands-of-etsy-sellers-are-planning-a-strike/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: luckett, t. 2022. youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of lephalale: the struggle for employment and climate justice in a coalrich region of south africa. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8215 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peerreviewed) youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of lephalale: the struggle for employment and climate justice in a coalrich region of south africa thembi luckett newcastle university, uk corresponding author: thembi luckett, thembi.luckett@newcastle.ac.uk doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 article history: received 03/06/2021; revised 08/09/2021; accepted 20/10/2022; published 12/2022 abstract southern africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. the region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decision making spaces – especially those living in global and urban peripheries. in this article, i speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. i do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of lephalale in limpopo, south africa – not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in south africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. the complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the lephalale unemployment forum and the waterberg environmental justice forum. with climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, i argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the financial assistance of the national institute for the humanities and social sciences, in collaboration with the south african humanities deans association, towards this research is acknowledged. this research was also supported by the ivan karp doctoral research award and by the international center for development and decent work. opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:thembi.luckett@newcastle.ac.uk https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 through the methodology i employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, i aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in contextspecific powerladen social relations. while it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationshipbuilding before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. this way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis. keywords youth politics; coal extractivism; climate justice; global south; south africa introduction southern africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected (awojobi & tetteh 2017; betts et al. 2018; beukes 2021; engelbrecht et al. 2015; ipcc 2018; vogel et al. 2022). the region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. the drying of the limpopo basin has been noted as a concern (maúre et al. 2018; vogel et al. 2022). in this context, notwithstanding a lack of financial clarity, cop26 made an unprecedented announcement regarding a just energy transition partnership ( jetp) with south africa to accelerate its transition from coal (burton 2022). despite the fact that young people are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from the policy and decisionmaking spaces – especially those in global and urban peripheries (beukes 2021; han & ahn 2020). nkrumah (2021) argues that young people are often given a tokenistic role in policy debates regarding climate change matters that most affect them. furthermore, while scholars have explored the nexus between youth and social and economic justice, less attention has been paid to youth activism and participation in climate justice and climate politics in the global south, including south africa (nkrumah 2021). correspondingly, o’brien, selboe & hayward (2018) call for greater recognition of the multiple forms, spaces and expressions of youth dissent in the face of climate change. in this article, i speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics, in response to the above lacuna in scholarship. i do so by unpacking the everyday concerns, negotiations and paradoxes of youth activists in the urban periphery of lephalale in limpopo, south africa – typically not seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. the complexities of how youth are navigating their futures in the context of coal development and unemployment are explored through two case studies. in exploring the complexities of everyday politics, i heed sitas’s (2020) call to avoid simplistic binaries that set up youth as either passive or as sites of pure revolutionary politics; african cities as either sites of catastrophe or of optimism; or a simplistic binary between employment and development or environmental justice. in this framing, the city is understood as a complex entanglement of catastrophe and aspiration and local and global processes, as the socialspatial dialectics of the city both shape and are shaped by the politics and practices of its youth. this article is structured into four sections: first, i introduce researchasactivism, the methodology i employed to engage with members of lephalale community organisations; second, i sketch an overview of the place and its politics; third i discuss two case studies – the lephalale unemployment forum followed by the waterberg environmental justice forum; and fourth, i reflect on some of the complexities and paradoxes surfaced through the two case studies and the research process that i engaged in. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 research-as-activism the research project on which this article is based used critical ethnographic methods, informed by feminist research principles, including attentiveness to lived experiences, subjectivities, alternative and situated ways of knowing, and cognisance of multiple and intersecting relations of power. i conducted fieldwork between 2015 and 2017, with site visits varying from four months to several weeks, and with followup interviews in 2019. this data was supplemented with ongoing media analyses into 2022. in my fieldwork, i traversed different sites in the town of lephalale and its surrounding areas, including its informal settlements, the small town of steenbokpan and surrounding farms, and the villages under the gaseleka royal council. i conducted participant observation at sites such as power stations, farms, and community and trade union meetings. i also conducted interviews with 80 residents (names of interlocutors have been protected using pseudonyms), including workers, the unemployed, and activists from environmental and women’s organisations. for the purposes of this article, i focus on the everyday negotiations and political practices undertaken by community and environmental organisations and activists in marapong, the township designated for black people during apartheid. reflecting on the research process i adopted for this project and future research to be conducted in environments of similar complexity, it is important to understand how research is embedded in complicated, powerladen social relations, with contestation over political stakes (von holdt 2022). oldfield (2008, p. 270) explains that these powerladen social relations are not only between universities and communities, but also structure complex ways in which ‘nongovernmental organizations link to community organizations and community organizations to “communities”, a mix of residents with specific local identities and interests’. the analysis of the relational topography is contextspecific and impacts research processes, products and afterlives (oldfield 2008). through the methodology employed, i aimed to be cognisant of some of this complexity and, while it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationshipbuilding before, during and after the research process. this is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as research traversing the boundary between academia and social movements. this approach aligns with hailey’s (2001) reflections on the importance of moving beyond formulaic participatory research to intersubjective and informal processes of building mutual trust and respect. furthermore, as an intersubjective process, cognisance of one’s positionality is required. hall (1990, p. 18) states, ‘[t]here’s no enunciation without positionality. you have to position yourself somewhere in order to say anything at all.’ positionality is not only about one’s embeddedness in power relations – and as a white researcher, complicity in settler colonialism – but also about how one actively positions oneself in the research process and daily life. that i came to this research following involvement as an activist in labour and student movements, having already shared some political life with activists in lephalale, facilitated relationship building. before and during the research process, i spent time with organisations – attending meetings and assisting with workshops and media statements. this all contributed to a slow process of relationship building in a context permeated by suspicion and mistrust. caretta and faria (2020, p. 2) reflect on the importance of ‘time and care, for building those relationships of trust, respect, and conviviality so essential for rigorous research and for understanding complex social and spatial processes’. writing from a servicelearning perspective, winkler (2013) highlights the importance of building and maintaining transparent and trustworthy longer term relationships between university and community partners so that power imbalances and unrealistic expectations can be continuously addressed. thus, without these relations in place, it may be necessary to ask luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 who benefits from universitycommunity partnerships. according to baum (2000, p. 244), creating relations of trust and accountability, requires ‘sophisticated knowledge and skills, [and] years of time’. these relational processes are significant ‘products’ of research even if not typically viewed as a research outcome (oldfield 2008). the intangibles of mutual sharing, learning, engaging and acting together are significant in shaping and enabling future processes, as well as shaping how we imagine relations and spaces that could allow for human flourishing across traditional boundaries (oldfield 2008). the relationshipbuilding processes between myself and organisations in lephalale will extend into the future, such that, after many years, a more explicitly collaborative research project is now possible. the next phase of research involves working with the waterberg women’s advocacy organisation on a participatory arts project to investigate the gendered impacts of coal, with the aims of feeding into broader campaign work against coal development and supporting local and collective power to change corporate and government practices. this highlights the importance of recognising and affirming different ways of knowing, local knowledge and experience in research processes that can feed into policy work (oldfield 2008; sandercock 2003; winkler 2013). my ongoing research is embedded in this vision of working collaboratively with activists in the area and imagining other worlds in an attempt to ‘find ways to exist in a world that is diminishing’ (ahmed 2014, n.p.). the place and politics of lephalale the town of lephalale lies in the northern limpopo province of south africa. previously an agricultural space, lephalale developed around a coal mine and coalfired power station in the 1980s. with the development of the coalfired medupi power station, and possible future coal developments, it has become a place of interest. the site is a contradictory and contested symbol of ‘modernist progress’ and ‘fossil fuel catastrophe’. it is marked by modernist imaginaries of a future built on mega coal projects, neoliberal aspirations and foreclosure of habitable futures owing to social and environmental destruction. this locality is of particular significance as it holds south africa’s largest remaining coal reserves. the economy relies almost entirely on fossilbased energy and is one of the most carbonintensive economies in the world (ashley et al. 2020). this trajectory continues in the face of an existential catastrophe: that of anthropogenic, or humaninduced, climate change. the plans for increasing fossil fuel development in lephalale and its surrounds will radically alter the town and, in turn, its social relations and relations with nature, as well as further the trajectory of existential catastrophe. for these reasons, it is meaningful to explore youth politics and practices to uncover alternative futures for this site. following the boom in the 1970s and 1980s, a second boom in coal extractivism occurred with the development of medupi. lephalale is described as a postapartheid urban centre and a coal mining and petrochemical city of the future (mgojo 2016). the town, comprised of three urban nodes, ellisras, onverwacht and marapong, is located approximately 40 kilometres from the border of botswana (lephalale local municipality 2016b). in terms of its spatial organisation, lephalale municipality extends beyond the town to include 38 sparsely scattered villages, a few informal settlements, and farm areas (lephalale local municipality 2016a; monaledi 2016). despite the increased urbanisation, approximately 65 per cent of the population still live in rural villages and on farms located outside the town (lephalale local municipality 2016b). according to the 2011 census, youth, as defined between the ages of 15 and 34, represented the largest proportion of the population within the municipal area at 43 per cent – more than the national average of 37 per cent (south african government 2020). women comprise 54 per cent of the population of limpopo, but lephalale municipality has a dominance of men, constituting more than 54 per cent of the population (statistics south africa 2012). the 2016 community survey projected a 21.8 per cent increase in the male population compared with a 13.5 per cent increase in the female population (lephalale local luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 municipality 2019). this gender differentiation can be explained by the high prevalence of contract workers and professionals coming into the area to seek job opportunities in maledominated sectors, such as mining and construction (lephalale local municipality 2016a). despite the rapid population increase and urbanisation, which may have led to greater spatial integration, the spatial geography of lephalale remains divided and fragmented along race and class lines, perpetuating apartheid spatial planning and continued uneven and fragmented development (phadi & pearson 2018). the model of development as one based on extractivist megaprojects continues to be propagated even though 65 percent of the population still reside in rural areas. du toit (2017) argues that south africa’s postapartheid model of development and modernity was very much orientated towards the idea of the metropolitan, and out of touch with the lived realities of marginalised rural populations. subsistence agriculture has been largely ignored, with little state agricultural support or access to informal markets, water and land (du toit 2017; okunlola et al. 2016; sukume, mavedzenge & murimbarima 2015). the villages surrounding lephalale engaging in subsistence farming activities are no exception in this regard, continuing to be neglected and receiving little developmental support or socioeconomic opportunities, despite their central anchoring as a place of home in people’s lives. through the construction of medupi, the african national congress (anc) government attempted to discursively regenerate an image of great feats of engineering and modernity, around which a city would be built, but constant technical failures, soaring debt and corruption scandals overshadowed the project, with medupi now representing more a failed project of modernity. the neoliberalisation of the project through contracts with scores of private companies and with little accountability and oversight by the parastatal organisation generated high levels of labour dispensability. workers were cast aside after short term contracts expired and compelled to find ways of surviving in dusty marapong, waiting, perhaps for years, to ‘secure’ their next contract job. a form of dispensability was also generated through the health and environmental costs of extractivism that are unevenly distributed. davies and mah (2020) argue that environmental injustice unfolds wherever social inequality and pollution collide. in lephalale, residents of marapong, situated in the shadow of a coal mine and a power station, are particularly affected by the intersecting and reinforcing brutalities of slow violence and structural violence, which renders some lives disposable (davies 2022; murphy 2004; nixon 2011). some aspects of slow violence are literally driven into ‘the tissues of subaltern bodies’ (armiero & fava 2016, p. 79). thus, the infrastructures of lephalale’s megaprojects not only produced an affective landscape of possibility and aspiration, resulting in an influx of people from neglected rural areas, but also produced landscapes of loss, death and rupture. in this crisisridden terrain, the anc dominated processes of ‘development’. local political networks were crucial in controlling flows of resources and job opportunities. in conjunction, medupi functioned as a pivotal feature around and through which capital flowed and political networks were established. in the context of masculinist constructions of work and artilleries of power, women were often sexually exploited. for example, a lephalale unemployment forum activist explained the process of obtaining employment on the coal megaprojects: if you want the job [and] you are a woman ... you have to use sex ... your own body, using it like toilet paper ... it’s the councillor, hr [human resources manager] ... who uses women ... anc councillors because anc is the leading party … and they say ‘when you come with this [sex], i will give you the job’ (interview, lesego, 16 february 2017). these networks of power also played out through political violence. in 2021, two people were shot and 16 injured during an anc branch meeting for the selection of local councillors, resulting in anc meetings being called off. the violence was attributed to the mayor’s supporters, who used it to intimidate members and secure power (madia 2021a, 2021b). von holdt (2019) emphasises that violence has become an important resource in factional struggles over access to opportunities and capital, and in supressing luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 contestation. ‘patronagedependent accumulation’ patterns are constitutive of class formation where gatekeeper politics and patronage struggles, in a context of extreme inequalities, are part of the production of the everyday political economy (beresford 2015, p. 229; von holdt 2019). a politics of inclusion and exclusion (re)produces configurations of power that influence social and spatial dynamics, such as flows of capital, who has access to what (workplace and home) spaces, and under what conditions. as noted above, these configurations of power are deeply patriarchal and are constituted not only at the macrolevel – for example, through the allocation of tenders in the construction of medupi – but significantly through everyday practices at the local level. in this context of multiple crises – environmental, social, political, economic – there are political practices that potentially push towards alternative horizons. in marapong, activists and community organisers have built unemployment, environmental and feminist organisations, such as the evergreen arts centre, lephalale unemployment forum (luf), the waterberg environmental justice forum (wejf) and the waterberg women’s advocacy organisation (wwao). below, i focus specifically on two case studies: the lephalale unemployment forum and the waterberg environmental justice forum, which were both led by youth activists, as selfidentified by research participants. through my analysis of these case studies, i aim to highlight the everyday and paradoxical politics that young people undertake in lephalale in the complex navigation of their futures. the lephalale unemployment forum and the struggle for waged labour in lephalale, the hope (often frustrated hope) of a job, thought to make possible the building of a life, is constantly referred to. for instance, this hope was expressed by unemployed residents staying in the informal thular park shack settlement in marapong: ‘we have a belief maybe we’ll get a job. but it’s just a belief ... maybe one day we can get a better life’ (interview, 13 april 2016). this was a recurrent theme expressed by unemployed residents of lephalale. one such resident was lesego, who was in her twenties and a member of the luf leadership. she grew up in kroemhoek in rural limpopo and was the only child raised by her mother and father. her parents were born in the area and her father worked on a potato farm until he died when she was still at school. she moved to lephalale in 2013 in search of work; however, she did not manage to find work. at the time of the interview, she was staying in a shack in marapong with her boyfriend, who had initially found employment at medupi but was now unemployed. even though lesego was politically active in the luf, attending meetings and organising in her community, she experienced much of her time as ‘waiting’ and ‘wishing’ for a job for herself or her boyfriend. reflecting on her daily thinking, she pointed out: ‘sometimes i say “why don’t i get a job, so i’ll have my own house with my own family? that is why i don’t want to think to have kids right now because i’m suffering myself, what about if i have kids? no, let me wait for a kid”’ (interview, 16 february 2017). thus, ‘waiting’ for a job is also ‘waiting’ for and deferring a future, while simultaneously finding ways to navigate the present and the everyday. lesego’s future of ‘adulthood’ with a family and a house has been put on hold, but remains everpresent in her imagination. the project of building a life can only be planned for and actualised when the ‘waiting’ for (a job) comes to an end. lesego’s actions on their own were insufficient to realise a job, leading to a waiting state of ‘planning what cannot be planned’ (dobler 2020, p. 9). thus, young people organised collective action to intervene in their regimes of waiting. the lephalale unemployment forum was formed in response to the precarious waiting in time and space experienced by many in lephalale. waiting can come at ‘social and personal costs’, but can also be generative of action (mujere 2020; schwartz 1975; stasik, hänsch & mains 2020). the forum, comprised of disgruntled anc, economic freedom fighters (eff) and democratic alliance (da) members, was not aligned to any political party. it was an organisational space of collective luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 and active waiting – turning waiting into a shared experience around which social action and solidarity could be built (dobler 2020). lesego explained that her vision for the organisation was to stop people in lephalale being ‘used like toilet paper’ and under the control of the councillors, and to stop the suffering from the coal mine and coal power stations. she elaborated: i want them [the community] to enjoy the way they want to live at marapong. if they say, we don’t want this here at marapong, they don’t want it … i don’t want community to worry all the time … the water is there, the electricity is there, there is no shack, you have a toilet. i want that (interview, 16 february 2017). political repertoires to intervene in ‘waitings’ the luf took action to intervene in the ‘state of waiting’ and to shift the collective experience of ‘stuckness’ in relation to imagined futures, meeting up to three times a week on an open patch of land in front of the marapong library and the marapong job information centre. the meetings had a regular rhythm, with up to 100 attendees. the committee reported back on meetings held with eskom, exxaro and the municipality, and provided information about upcoming meetings and hiring processes (field notes). the luf initiated a range of protest actions and submitted memoranda of meetings with medupi and the local municipality. on several occasions, the luf saw it as their role to ensure fair recruitment processes by stopping political interference (field notes). in a meeting between medupi officials and luf representatives, the luf highlighted the role of the community liaison officer (clo), arguing that the clo was not performing their function in terms of sharing recruitment information. luf representatives proposed that the community should be involved in the appointment of the clo and that the officer should be accountable to the community and not only to eskom. the luf further advocated that it should be part of recruitment monitoring for fraud and corruption, thereby attempting to involve the organisation in processes around ‘waiting lists’ (field notes, 15 february 2017). on another occasion, the luf leadership reported at a community meeting that matimba had agreed to inform the luf of job openings, thereby creating dual processes of job information sharing and setting up the possibility that the luf might appropriate the bureaucratic recruitment practices (field notes, 21 february 2017). in these invited spaces, the luf also advocated for skills development and education as a means for people to achieve longer term decent employment. a committee member asked in a meeting with medupi, ‘there are locals who have been general workers for years and didn’t go on skills programmes and now have been demobbed [retrenched]. are you just going to demob people who don’t have skills?’ (field notes, 15 february 2017). he elaborated, ‘we want progress in this society. the most important progress is skills.’ the committee advocated for a free training centre in lephalale that companies should invest in. a better job and a better future for one’s children were often articulated through the importance of education. for example, for lesego, education was seen as the means of securing a better life. ‘i want them [future children] to enjoy life, not live like the way i’m living … education is the key’ (interview, 16 february 2017). as such, the imagined ‘good life’ does not significantly challenge the order of things, but the luf pressed for greater inclusion in this imagined horizon. however, the luf did not only engage with companies in invited spaces, but also pushed to invent spaces through more disruptive actions. here, i draw on miraftab (2004) to think through the intertwining practices of ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces. while the above examples focused on activities to which the luf was invited and legitimised by government and parastatal companies, the organisation also created ‘invented’ spaces in which they directly confronted authorities. these two repertoires do not work in opposition, but luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 rather are flexible strategies employed by grassroots organisations to confront daily suffering and hardship (miraftab 2004). the oppositional and defiant strategies also opened doors to invited spaces by positioning the luf as a significant force in lephalale. on one such occasion of defiance, in october 2016 the luf organised a protest to lephalale local municipality to highlight issues regarding lack of employment opportunities, corruption and the environmental impacts of medupi. despite repeated notifications to the municipality regarding the protest, the municipality failed to respond. the forum decided to proceed with the march, which was violently stopped by police at 6 am (right2protest project, n.d.). lesego explained: the police came. they said, ‘you are not going anywhere’. they came with rubber bullets and started shooting, while we are sitting down. people ran away… that day, it was painful, but the community did nothing… what have we done? (interview, 16 february 2017). some of the luf leaders were arrested, including lesego. she described her night under arrest: ‘i was crying the whole night [in a cell] because we didn’t do anything. what kind of public violence are they talking about? what have we done? nothing’ (interview, 16 february 2017). the following day, forum members went to the police station to find out what had happened to their comrades, and a further five were arrested at the police station. they were all charged with public violence (right2protest project, n.d.). lesego explained that the arrests and police violence created fear amongst community members, especially women: ‘after the march, the women got scared and disappeared. they left me [in the organisation]’ (interview, 16 february 2017). repression is employed in order to preserve the power of local anc political authorities and that of private and state corporations. this is an attempt to limit people’s imaginaries of decent work and fair processes. despite this repression, the luf continued to intervene in shared waiting spaces and to invent and disrupt space in order to shift the political and social terrain of lephalale. lesego explained, ‘our organisation is powerful. [it] fights against corruption, maladministration … every radio station talks about that’ (interview, 16 february 2017). thus, through a combination of invited meetings and consultations, and more disruptive actions, the luf was able to build leverage to affect waiting regimes and future imaginaries around a central concern of employment in the lives of youth in lephalale. the waterberg environmental justice forum and the struggle for a future the waterberg environmental justice forum (wejf) was established in 2012 for lephalale and the broader waterberg area, working in six municipalities. boitumelo and molefi established the environmental organisation and, paradoxically, both were part of the leadership of the luf. boitumelo explained that they were moved to do so, with other youth in lephalale, because they ‘saw bad conditions in other mining areas and thought this is what is going to happen here’, given the projected coal developments. the wejf criticised the form of development happening in the area, contending that, ‘if you [companies] are busy killing us, you better not come’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). current coal developments and the likely future loss and destruction of natural spaces threatened their concept and experience of home as well as the futurity of home for their children. this is illustrated by boitumelo’s projection: ‘our children will never know a lot of things that happened back then, but i wish everything was still the same and they can experience what we experienced’ (interview, 8 april 2017). youth activists in lephalale incorporated multiple temporalities into their politics owing to a concern for ‘intergenerational equity for the yet unborn’ (nkrumah 2021, p. 331). despite being an urban centre, lephalale is surrounded by villages and vast farmlands and is thus still constituted through relations to luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 land as a source of livelihood and integral way of living. for many of the wejf activists, an appreciation of nature and its beauty was developed through their childhood experiences of growing up in the surrounding farms and villages. boitumelo was born in botshabelo village in gaseleka. his mother sewed clothing using a small machine, while his father worked at iscor’s mine in the 1980s and then at matimba in the 1990s as a ‘kitchen boy’. he dropped out of school when he was 16 to look for employment in lephalale because his family was struggling. at the time of this research, he was unemployed, living in marapong and trying to provide for two children. boitumelo explained that as a child, ‘i was loving my home and loving the nature, going to the bushes and enjoying the nature. there was a lot of things we could live on … those villages are no longer the same as before. the wetlands are always empty’ (interview, 8 april 2017). similarly, itumeleng, a committee member of wejf and a queer activist, explained that his childhood was a ‘beautiful experience’. he grew up on a farm in steenbokpan in the 1980s with his grandfather while his father worked in the mine. his grandfather was a farm worker who had a small patch of land allowing for subsistence farming. they planted ‘every vegetable or food you can think of ’. he continued, ‘we never went to bed hungry … we used to go in the morning … to the bush to hunt for rabbits’ (interview, 15 may 2017). the wejf’s vision for communities in the waterberg region is for sustainable development, including smallscale agricultural development, renewable energy and, importantly, to build youth activism in order to participate in the development taking place. a committee member explained, ‘we want to see young people coming out and not be[ing] afraid. young people keep quiet here, but we need young people to come out. we want to motivate young people. as young people, we must know that we have the power to challenge government’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). this power is understood as the potential to challenge both government and corporations in order to safeguard their futures. the vision to develop youth activism and their voice emerged from life trajectories. it was through these journeys that these activists were motivated to organise the youth to say, ‘no is no’ when confronted with harmful development. for itumeleng, for instance, it was important for him not to be ashamed of his sexual identity and to share this with other youth in the area. as the founder of the evergreen arts centre, he used art and theatre as a way of expressing and emboldening voice (interview, 15 may 2017). this was also connected to his environmentalism – expressed as a lifelong love of the environment and doing community work. for boitumelo, he went on strike at medupi in 2012 when he was a construction worker. as a consequence, he was arrested and charged with public violence. it took more than two years for the charges to be dropped and he was subsequently blacklisted from working on the megaprojects. he explained that this experience confirmed his resolve to ‘struggle and raise my voice … that’s when i started to be an activist’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the wejf’s vision for sustainable development was grounded in their experiences of rural life. boitumelo elaborated: you go to the agricultural project in the villages, there are no young people there, it’s only old people because they [young people] are saying, ‘we are going to the project of medupi, there is a lot of money there.’ yes, there is a lot of money, but you need to think ... the power stations don’t give us life, the thing that gave us life is this thing that they [the coal power stations] are destroying (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). the foundations of life are understood to be the land and the environment, which need to be sustained. thus, even though paradoxically the same activists were involved in campaigning for waged labour through the luf, they also understood that this was not to be at the expense of the foundations of life and that rural livelihoods needed to be supported. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 for boitumelo, when he was employed on the megaprojects, life was experienced as unhealthy and damaging. he explained: i think it’s better where i am [unemployed activist] because in a job i made a lot of debt. ... i was [a] money maker and chasing girls but that was not life. and even if i can go ask those guys, that’s all they do in lephalale, sitting and drinking all weekend. there are no activities here, there is no life here (interview, 8 april 2017). rejecting the life that formal employment enabled and adopting one of activism entailed personal costs and sacrifices for boitumelo. he survived by selling products that he bought in johannesburg when he went there to attend civil society workshops, as well as through the stipends that he received from ngos. these resources were used to support his children, but his familial relations were destabilised and disrupted through his loss of employment. thus, the complex and concrete life trajectories that led to environmental activism and the building of the organisation did not come without ramifications. political repertoires of the waterberg environmental justice forum the wejf developed different organisational focal points, including waste management; community health with an emphasis on hiv and aids and tuberculosis (tb); air, water and noise pollution; and safeguarding general biodiversity. these four foci developed in response to conditions on the ground. for instance, the area is the leading subdistrict in limpopo province for tb, with 9.8 per cent of deaths caused by it in 2012 (ramaliba et al. 2017). residents in the area suffer from sore eyes and sinuses and respiratory infections from the dust and air pollution. in order to address the above, the wejf undertook different political strategies. unlike the luf, the wejf placed greater emphasis on research, community education and awareness raising. employment, and the lack thereof, was an immediate concern for youth and residents of marapong, whereas environmental concerns, despite their importance, were seen as somewhat distant from the immediacy of breadandbutter issues. thus, the necessity for education and awareness activities. the wejf also engaged in practices of engagement with local government, companies and other key stakeholders; deployed constitutional rights; protested; and produced spaces of solidarity and alternative visions. here again, there was a movement between invited and invented spaces in these grassroots strategies. like the luf, wejf intervened with local government and companies in invited spaces, specifically in processes of consultation. these included participation in forums, such as the local economic development forum’s environmental group, and attendance at public consultation meetings for mining applications. wejf mobilised around human rights to push for more inclusive and democratic processes, arguing that these are ‘not apartheid days’ (field notes, 23 february 2017). the south african constitution, especially chapter 2, section 24 on environmental rights, was seen to be useful in monitoring noncompliance with environmental policies and rights. section 24 states that everyone has the right to ‘an environment that is not harmful to their health’ and to ‘have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations’ (south african government 1996, pp. 1251– 52). wejf utilised this as a basis for protecting the environment, youth and future generations of lephalale. the wejf committee inserted themselves into processes of development, asserting that ‘we make sure that companies recognise us and also the municipality’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016), signalling the importance of youth constituencies. both government and private companies were criticised for their inadequate processes of consultation and lack of independent processes and accountability. the government was also criticised for conflating its processes of consultation with internal anc processes rather than working with nonpartisan community forums. companies, such as exxaro, were seen as having ‘their own people’ rather than nonpartisan processes for environmental reviews. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 part of this work involved campaigning for transparency and accountability. for example, the ‘publish what you pay’ campaign was an attempt to hold mining companies accountable and pressure them to publish their profits as well as what they pay to social investment programmes (mabula 2018). another instance of mobilising democratic rights occurred with the development of sekoko coal mine in steenbokpan. in 2020, working with alliance partners, such as wwao, wejf involved the south african heritage resources agency (sahra) to assist families with access to protected ancestral graves that were inside the mine yard. sahra ruled that the graves must not be destroyed, damaged, altered, exhumed or removed from their original position given that the graves were heritage sites. and further, that the graves should be protected with fencing, and families must be given access to visit their ancestral graves (waterberg environmental justice forum, 2020). wejf also engaged in their own ongoing research and monitoring of developments in the area in order to participate in invited spaces effectively and engage in more disruptive actions when necessary. as boitumelo explained, ‘we must know things so we can challenge authorities … you must know your area better – you must know what is happening around’ (field notes, 23 february 2017). the organisation encouraged a culture of research in the community. at meetings, they advocated for information and evidence gathering: ‘you must go to any meeting where people are gathering just to listen and ask around what’s going on’ and further that, ‘sometimes when you take things emotionally, you are going to have a serious problem and so do some research first and make sure you have a solid ground’ (interview, 8 april 2017). residents and activists were encouraged to attend community meetings, local government sittings and environmental impact assessment meetings. wejf emphasised the importance of research in understanding the full and longterm implications of the megaproject developments rather than simply adopting discourses on development, as promulgated by local government and corporations: ‘they say lephalale is going to be a city and you jump up and down. no! … it’s not a city because you don’t have lights here. the lights are only for the power stations and mines’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the organisation placed an emphasis on education, awareness and campaigning in order to scythe through ideological dissimulations to comprehend the unfolding of toxic geographies and uneven development. this was undertaken through activities, such as community radio talk shows, programs at schools, doortodoor campaigning and community meetings. campaign work was often appreciated, for example, by older generations, including the seleka royal council which learnt about their environmental rights from the youth activists in the wejf (field notes, 11 april 2017). as such, the wejf’s practices of inventing space were focused on the slow building of alternative visions within different constituencies in marapong and surrounding rural areas. with employment being seen as the urgent and necessary horizon for a liveable life, the organisation did not have the mass base that the luf had in order to intervene in the status quo. rather, wejf had to navigate the immediate needs and the needs of future generations by finding ways to advocate for development that would not destroy the foundations of life instead of focusing on employment through megaprojects, which would result in the ongoing marginalisation of rural livelihoods and denigration of the natural environment. reflections on paradoxical youth activism in lephalale these two case studies highlight the paradoxical nature of youth politics in the unfolding of concrete and particular social– spatial relations. in a place such as lephalale, which has been spatially produced through the intersection of fossil fuel industries and rurality, there is no discrete separation of the rural from the urban, or linear development from rural to urban, but rather intersecting, uneven and adverse forms of development (du toit 2017; luckett 2021). in this model of development, it is unclear if the time of ‘the job’ will ever arrive for the youth of lephalale in urban informal settlements and rural villages. this waiting, which entails suffering under luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 capitalist conditions, is described by wrangel (2017) as a constant deferral of the future. in this sense, hope for a job can constitute a ‘stuckness’ in relation to time and space (potamianou 1997), as social life becomes a set of repetitive practices for economic and emotional survival, to ward off defeat in the neoliberal order (berlant 2011). however, in contrast to auyero (2011, 2012) who emphasises the state’s domination over subjects through imposed bureaucratic forms of waiting, theorists such as mujere (2020) and stasik, hansch and mains (2020) investigate shifting contestations and emphasise the productive or generative aspects of temporalities of waiting in africa. the precarious nature of work in and around medupi led to investment in ‘the job’ and ‘waiting for a job’ as sites of future possibilities (see kenny 2018 for an indepth analysis of work as a site of possibility and horizon of becoming). i have shown through the luf case study how the surplus or generative aspects of waiting for employment in lephalale include social action and forms of solidarity developed through a collective experience of waiting. the shared experiences and political repertoires described above point to the complexities of working both within and against the status quo in the struggle for liveable futures. these futures are not only about having employment in order to obtain ‘adulthood’, but also about having a safe and healthy environment in the present and for future generations. this struggle for future generations, however, often comes at personal and social cost. boitumelo’s experience of remaining a committed activist for wejf, despite his loss of employment, speaks to white’s (2013) analysis of the interpenetration of money and social relations, arguing that our relations are framed by the circulation of capital. economic activities become ‘conditioning stuff ’ of relationships and social relations become ‘subject to’ capital, or the lack thereof (white 2013, p. 141). familial and intimate social relations, which appear to have very little to do with political economy, are in fact mediated by the circulation of capital for realisation of intimacy and care. in this context, adopting alternative life strategies and a political vision is entangled with personal and relational loss; hence the significance of boitumelo’s statement: ‘i am passionate to teach our fellow lephalale community members to say it’s not about getting a job and making a living, as long as you understand what is [happening] around’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the two case studies highlight the importance of understanding the concrete dynamics of local and global processes and the role of youth politics in shifting terrains of struggle. in lephalale, youth intervened in invited spaces regarding both employment practices and environmental justice. given the neglect of rural villages and livelihoods, youth activists adopted seemingly paradoxical positions in demanding waged labour on extractivist projects and campaigning for environmental justice. they expanded spaces of inclusion through more disruptive actions and through the slow work of community education and awareness raising in order to shift political horizons and the modernist conception of development. the concrete life trajectories and paradoxical political practices of youth activists in lephalale reveal some of the complexities entailed in moving towards greater social and environmental justice. conclusion in this article, i have argued for the importance of exploring the nexus between youth activism and environmental justice politics in the global south, particularly in urban peripheries. i have shown, counter to discourses of passivity, that multiple forms and expressions of youth dissent emerge in the face of social and environmental injustices and precarious and uncertain futures. despite the complexities, hardships and repression that youth in lephalale encounter, many still struggle to use their voice to strengthen others and build spaces of collectivism and solidarity. youth activists embedded in local politics showed the necessity of bringing together immediate needs and future horizons in a context of gender, economic, social and environmental injustices. this was at times done in contradictory and paradoxical ways, especially in the situation of an extractivist model of development, alongside rural neglect and lack of genuine participation luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 in decisionmaking processes, thereby highlighting the complexities of struggling for liveable presents and futures. reflecting on my role as activistresearcher, it is important to highlight that it would not have been possible to explore these two case studies without the trust and conviviality of the activists in the luf and wejf. this trust and conviviality in turn places an ethical demand on scholaractivists, not only in relation to accountability and transparency in research practices, but in the politics of everyday life. the slow processes of building and maintaining relationships of solidarity and trust require time, energy and emotional labour, which is not well understood or supported by the universityasbusiness that drives research ‘productivity’ as a highly individualised, competitive enterprise. flexible and slow processes are not often accommodated within the time frames and requirements of grantdriven research projects and university pressures. while knowledge production generated through engaged scholarship is receiving more attention in higher education (winkler 2013), little has been implemented in terms of resources, time and platforms to support ways of doing research otherwise. this is of particular importance in a context such as south africa, with a history of colonialism and ongoing forms of violence and extractivism, thus requiring a refusal to repeat relations of (knowledge) extractivism and rather contributing towards the transformation of social relations both within and outside the academy. finally, returning to the words of boitumelo, who warned that children will not experience flowing water – as limpopo increasingly becomes a desert – this moment of deep crisis signals the urgency of safeguarding the futures of unborn generations and natural worlds. in this context, there are no guaranteed outcomes and, moreover, no guaranteed progressive outcomes, but as solnit (2016) writes, ‘it is in the uncertainty that hopeful possibilities exist’. acknowledgements i thank the activists of luf, wejf and wwao for making this research possible. i also thank the intellectual guidance of my phd supervisors, prof bridget kenny and prof noor nieftagodien, as well as the collaborative process facilitated by the guest editors of this special issue. references ahmed, s 2014, ‘selfcare as warfare’. 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https://www.facebook.com/waterberg-environmental-justice-forum-wejf-1102360689788825 https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2013.11500054 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x12474312 https://societyandspace.org/2017/06/13/the-post-trump-desire-for-hope/ https://societyandspace.org/2017/06/13/the-post-trump-desire-for-hope/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 1 may 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: adams, lb., alter, tr., parkes, mw., reid, m., woolnough, ap. 2019. political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the field. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 12:1, article id 6342. https://doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v12i1.6496 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | uts epress | http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts. edu.au snapshot article (non-refereed) political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the field lisa b. adams,1* theodore r. alter,2, 3 margot w. parkes,4 michael reid,5 andrew p. woolnough6, 7 1 lisa adams and associates, melbourne, victoria 3000, australia 2 department of agricultural economics, sociology, and education, the pennsylvania state university, university park, pa 16802, united states 3 australian center for agriculture & law, university of new england, armidale, nsw 2351, australia 4 school of health sciences, university of northern british columbia, prince george, bc v2n 4z9, canada 5 agriculture victoria, department of jobs, precincts and regions, 1 mckoy street, wodonga, victoria 3690, australia 6 office of victoria’s lead scientist, department of jobs, precincts and regions, 121 exhibition street, melbourne, victoria 3000, australia 7 ecology and evolutionary biology, school of biological sciences, the university of adelaide, adelaide 5005, australia *corresponding author: lisa adams; lb_adams@bigpond.net.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6496 article history: received 06/03/2019; revised 17/04/2019; accepted 30/04/2019; published 18/06/2019. abstract empowering integrative, sustainable and equitable approaches to wicked socio-ecological problems requires multiple disciplines and ways of knowing. following calls for greater attention to political economics in this transdisciplinary work, we offer a practitioner perspective on political economy and collective action and their influences on our community engagement practice and public policy. our perspective is grounded in a pervasive wicked problem in australia, invasive rabbits, and the emergence of the victorian rabbit action network. the network grew out of a publicly funded research project to support communitydeclaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 page number not for citation purposes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6496 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6496 http://www.kettering.org/catalog/product/connections-2010 http://www.kettering.org/catalog/product/connections-2010 mailto:lb_adams@bigpond.net.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i1.6496 led action in rabbit management. victorian residents and workers affected by rabbits – public and private land managers, scientists, government officers and others – were invited to engage in a participatory planning process to generate sustainable strategies to address the rabbit problem. each stage in the process, which involved interviews, a workshop and consultations, was designed to nurture the critical enquiry, listening and learning skills of participants, advance understandings of the problem from multiple perspectives, generate collective options to guide decision-making, and encourage community-led collective action. we reflect on our understanding of these processes using the language and lens of political economics and, in particular, the context of democratic professionalism. in so doing, we define terms and refer to information resources that have enabled us to bring a practical working knowledge of political economics to our professional practice. our intent is to motivate academics, community members, government officials and scientists alike to draw on their knowledge and field experiences and to share practice stories through the lens of political economics and collective action. this is an opportunity to engage each other in the small ‘p’ politics of how we understand and act on wicked problems, to negotiate and connect across disciplines, practical experiences and human difference, so that people may work more creatively and effectively together to address the challenging issues of our time. keywords community engagement, wicked problems, political economy, collective action, socioecological issues, practice story introduction empowering integrative, sustainable and equitable approaches to wicked socio-ecological problems is demanding work, requiring multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, and complex systems thinking (brown, harris & russell 2010; schmid 2004; waltner-toews, kay & lister 2008). this article supports the call for greater attention to political economics in this transdisciplinary work (bardosh 2016). a useful step in this direction is to cultivate a common language of political economics and foster conversation on its relevance to people’s work on these problems. to this end, this article offers a practitioner story and perspective on the topic, grounded in a pervasive wicked problem in australia: invasive rabbits. the perspective draws on the specific example of the victorian rabbit action network (vran). the emergence of vran is described as a pretext to draw out insights on political economy, collective action and wicked problems, and as they relate to public policy. the victorian rabbit action network the european rabbit was introduced to australia in the 1850s for hunting. this invasive species has since colonised the continent and the hearts and minds of its people (box 1). alongside these emotional attachments are ecological and economic impacts; rabbits threaten over 300 vulnerable native species (department of the environment 2016) and cost agribusinesses more than aud200 million per year (gong et al. 2009). these and other factors make rabbit management a pressing socio-ecological public policy issue in australia. adams, alter, parkes, reid, woolnough gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 2 page number not for citation purposes an ongoing challenge is to develop sustainable landscape-scale management strategies that have community support (campbell 1997; cooke 2012; martin et al. 2016). in response, a publicly funded research project to support community-led action in rabbit management (the ‘rabbit project’) led to the creation of the victorian rabbit action network (adams 2014). the rabbit project applied a ‘systems-strengthening, democratic, participatory approach’ to developing rabbit management options for victoria (adams 2014). underpinning the approach was the hypothesis that sustainable strategies are those created by the people most affected (chambers & conway 1992; kemmis & mckinney 2011). thus, victorian residents and workers affected by rabbits – public and private land managers, scientists, government officers and others – were invited to engage in a participatory planning process, which included one-on-one interviews, a workshop and follow-up consultations. each stage was designed to nurture critical enquiry and listening and learning skills of participants, advance understandings of the problem from a range of perspectives, acknowledge and engage difference and tension, generate collective options to guide future decision-making, and encourage community-led collective action (curato, niemeyer & dryzek 2013; mathews 2014). the process used to identify interviewees was purposive: care was taken to seek out diverse groups, interests and experiences. a first-person narrative of interview extracts informed a subsequent workshop with interviewees. the narratives helped participants identify their common passions and concerns, the sheer complexity of the problem, the location-specific box 1: australia’s conflicted socio-political history with the rabbit when in 1859 thomas austin released wild rabbits on his barwon park estate to breed as game for shooting parties, it was in the commercial and cultural spirit of colonialism and the acclimatisation society of victoria (asv). within a decade a rapidly growing wild rabbit population was raising alarm. the asv folded, its policies discredited. by 1883 australia’s colonies had implemented rabbit destruction legislation and a rabbit export industry had been formed. while farmers and graziers wanted rabbit extermination, trappers and processors wanted ongoing trade, and trappers, seeking bargaining power with processors, unionised. federation in 1901 coincided with droughts and large-scale environmental degradation, especially in arid lands. whilst pastoralists blamed rabbits for the degradation, scientists like francis ratcliffe later argued it was overstocking of sheep. state-sponsored rabbit campaigns burgeoned, serving as an economic stimulus and bolstering much needed employment in rural communities, but the rabbit plagues continued. community awareness of the environmental degradation caused by rabbits increased through the combined efforts of scientists, pastoralists, government officials and others. introduction of the viral diseases myxomatosis in 1950 and rabbit haemorrhagic disease in 1995 resulted in enormous socio-ecological benefits. these benefits were curtailed, though, due to lack of follow-up coordinated effort using conventional controls and the co-evolution of virus virulence and rabbit disease resistance. following the decline of one-on-one government agricultural extension services in the 1980s, new institutions emerged. the collective effort of community-led landcare groups and regional catchment management authorities for instance now complement the work of individual land managers. whilst the socio-political context has changed dramatically over time, the rabbits remain a costly, wicked socio-ecological problem. (sources: coman 2010; cooke 2014; eather and cottle 2015; munday 2017; watson 2014) political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the field gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 3 page number not for citation purposes nature of solutions and the critical role of coordination in long-term landscape-scale change (black 2008; peters, alter & shaffer 2010). workshop participants then considered what types of interventions could help people to better plan, coordinate and evaluate their actions to manage rabbits. these ideas were further developed using complex systems and rich picture maps (monk & howard 1998). the overall process led to the creation of the victorian rabbit action network and an associated skills-based steering group (vran 2018a). the steering group worked with experts from the community, government and industry to implement a field-based training program in rabbit management. program participants then elected to create their own learning network, which they named ‘leaps and bounds’. leaps and bounds’ members have since initiated networks and action plans in their own locales. in this way, vran is supporting a network of networks that connect local and expert knowledge and know-how to on-ground action. vran impacts and benefits can be understood through the ecological restoration example (box 2), a series of video stories (vran 2018b), a formative evaluation (furze 2016) and an impact analysis (acil allen consulting 2017). box 2: how vran empowers collective action in victoria’s rangelands the mallee rangelands in northwest victoria have been degraded by a 150-year history of grazing pressure from livestock, rabbits and kangaroos (sandell 2011). for over 25 years, land managers, government officials, scientists, pest contractors and others have worked together on a restoration ecology project to remediate the degradation. ned’s corner station, victoria’s largest, privately owned conservation property covers over 30 000 hectares of the project area. the removal of rabbits from the station and direct seeding and planting of more than 60 000 trees have led to the re-emergence of rare native plant species and grasses (sandell 2011; vran 2018c). through membership of leaps and bounds, the station manager has had access to the vast pool of knowledge, ideas, inspiration and support that comes from being connected to a wider community. insights regarding political economy and collective action we bring a practitioner perspective to understandings of political economy and its relevance to collective action on wicked socio-ecological problems. for us, political economics concerns human relationships and interdependence, and how formal rules (e.g. law and regulation) and informal rules (e.g. associated with cultural, organisational and behavioural norms) advantage some interests and disadvantage other interests. our interest is to understand the impacts of these rules and how they manifest, and in turn the dynamics that lead to change in the rules themselves and change in the resultant distribution of impacts (ostrom 1990; schmid 2004; waltner-toews 2008). selected terms are defined to aid understanding, provoke thinking and encourage others to share practice stories. before turning to the vran story, we note the role of rabbits as powerful agents in australia’s socio-political and economic history and how this has manifest over time (box 1). this history highlights the importance of how formal and informal societal rules shape individual, group, organisation and community outcomes. during the early period of european settlement, dominant commercial and cultural interests drove how rabbits were adams, alter, parkes, reid, woolnough gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 4 page number not for citation purposes seen and utilised. later on, the power of the rabbit industry influenced economic policy affecting rabbits and their perceived utility. ongoing alarm concerning the production losses and environmental degradation caused by rabbits shifted the science, policy and on-ground management focus towards biocontrol measures. these socio-political and economic forces have shaped perspectives on rabbits and rabbit management in australia. vran is the product of diverse actors who together identified rabbit management as a wicked problem requiring collective action (for further details, see adams 2014). the defining feature of wicked problems is that people and groups understand and define these problems in different ways and as part of broader socio-ecological issues and concerns (rittel & webber 1973). the problems and possible solutions are complex, uncertain, socially and politically contested, and change over time. we observed that the collective action to identify the features of the wicked rabbit management problem in victoria motivated action, which gave effect to creative, new ways to connect knowledge and know-how to on-ground action. systems thinking and acting beyond self-interest were evident. public policy responses to wicked problems involve authoritative, competitive and collaborative strategies. power is dispersed differently among stakeholders under each strategy (apsc 2007). power refers to having capacity to exercise an opportunity in your opportunity set, the ability to visit costs upon others, and the ability to have your interests count (schmid 2004). collaborative strategies, such as those used by the rabbit project and vran, place win– win at the core of problem solving and are favoured when sustainable individual and collective behaviour change is desired. politics and power relationships affect the policies and programs adopted and implemented under any type of strategy. these instruments in turn determine whose interests are best served. this distribution of advantages and disadvantages reflects the political economy of the rabbit problem. for instance, framing the rabbit problem as an agricultural economics issue at the national level may limit landscape scale change on private and public land due to economic and financial influences on mindsets and investment flows (cooke 2012), particularly when a community may be motivated by conservation outcomes (e.g. kearney et al. 2018) rather than economics. vran empowers alternative narratives grounded in experience in a locale. these narratives, emphasising environmental quality, landholder collaboration and learning, and community–government shared responsibility, influence the rules and cultural expectations governing behaviour and what and who is advantaged or disadvantaged in the locale (ostrom 2009, 2010). in the rabbit project and vran, ecological restoration and strengthening citizen commitment and community partnerships, for example, can sit comfortably alongside agricultural economics as dominant narratives. politics is ubiquitous in the context of wicked problems requiring collective action. small ‘p’ politics refers to citizen-centred democratic politics (boyte 2004). power plays are also ubiquitous because different interests naturally strive for advantage. power play refers to behaviour or tactics intended to increase a person’s or group’s influence or power (schmid 2004). alongside a rich history of politics in rabbit management (coman 2010; munday 2017), power plays were evident in the rabbit project; for example, connected to a suggestion to promote a single graphic representation of the ‘rabbit management system’ in victoria. this suggestion was at odds with the rich, complex picture maps generated by the workshop participants. this political tension was connected in part to a desire to offer a single lens for determining decisions and action at the state level, whereas from differing local perspectives the rabbit management system was not a singular, unified system. in effect, there were multiple political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the field gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 5 page number not for citation purposes systems depending on whose perspectives, interests and narratives were being shared or considered. being mindful of these dynamics and drawing on principles of the politics of citizen engagement and associated empirical evidence (campbell 1997; chambers & conway 1992; curato, niemeyer & dryzek 2013; kettering foundation 2016; ostrom 1990), the rabbit project assumed that an open invitation to participate would advance recognition of the need for collective action and tap into people’s desire to effect change. it also assumed that widespread ownership of a collective action strategy would most likely arise when all parties with fundamental and differing interests in the problem participated in discussions about their differences and possible solutions. the rabbit project and vran embodied these politics of citizen engagement: citizens embracing small ‘p’ politics to understand a complex problem, apply critical thinking, negotiate difference, and reach collective agreement on future actions. responses to wicked problems require imagination and integration of many types of knowledge (brown, harris & russell 2010; hallstrom, guelstorf & parkes 2015). in practice, integration requires openness to learning from others as well as sharing of tasks and authority: a ‘democratic professionalism’ (dzur 2008, 2017, 2019). the integration of local knowledge into socio-ecological strategies may challenge established hierarchies that prioritise government and formal scientific expertise (boyte 2004; fischer 2000). the rabbit project sought out local knowledge to ensure the creation of a joint solution, the victorian rabbit action network (adams 2014). vran is thus grounded in the experience of people at the frontline of rabbit management, with scientific and government expertise regarded as ‘on tap not on top’ (boyte 2016). this approach fosters respectful relationships, reciprocity, critical thinking, learning and accountability, and in ways that empower everyone involved (for empirical evidence we look to brugnach et al. 2010; curato, niemeyer & dryzek 2013; matthews 2014). the rabbit project sought to create a safe space for people to realise the transformative potential of engaging difference, individual and social learning, collaboration and collective action. gaventa (2006, p. 26) provides a useful analysis of power in participatory spaces: ‘power relations help to shape the boundaries of participatory spaces, what is possible within them, and who may enter’. the spaces are dynamic; change agents can build horizontal alliances that link strategies across spaces and vertical links between actions at different levels (gaventa 2006; parkes 2015). transformation occurs when the power gained in one space (e.g. through new knowledge or skills) positively influences other spaces, and when change happens at both the grassroots and global levels. transformation is evident in the new networks formed to create landscape-scale change. path dependence is present when the path of change is heavily influenced by past changes (schmid 2004). path dependence and habitual thinking are barriers to change, creativity and effective community-led action. they preference habit and history over the creative potential embedded in the dynamic web of interpersonal, socio-political and cultural relationships that underpin communities (matthews 2014). our experiences in the rabbit project suggest that participatory planning (co-creation) and policy development linked to social learning (learning as strategy) can address path dependence. for example, the leaps and bounds network originated from vran members. leaps and bounds’ policies accommodate local visions, contexts, issues and insights, and mechanisms to integrate knowledge acquired through collective trial and error (taleb 2012). on the one hand, community-led plans that evolve in response to on-the-ground learning may challenge government agencies with commandand-control mentalities and accountability systems that are distant from what success might adams, alter, parkes, reid, woolnough gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 6 page number not for citation purposes look like in communities. on the other hand, policy-makers can take the wrong kinds of risks when they do not have to experience the setbacks of policy failure on wicked problems in communities. taleb (2012) describes this potential inequity in terms of fairness in the dispersion of risk. an opportunity for future research on co-creation and learning as strategy is to uncover ways around these potential organisational challenges to create more effective responses to wicked problems (see allen 2016; hermans, klerkx & roep 2015; patrizi et al. 2013). narratives and stories help us frame what we see as possible. for instance, path dependent narratives limit our individual and collective ability to see new ways forward. reframing the narrative, on the other hand, opens up new possibilities for change. stories can also help people negotiate complexity, uncertainty, and moral and cultural differences (black 2008; brugnach et al. 2010; howard et al. 2019). the rabbit project used narrative and rich picture maps to inform workshop discussion and expand individual and collective participant imagination and understandings of problems and solutions. collective action emerges over time and through dialogue as interest holders work together to navigate the power dynamics and everyday politics inherent in wicked problems. the work of the rabbit project, vran and leaps and bounds suggests that people’s passions, desires, stories, concerns, experiences, commonalities and differences can be harnessed to generate creative solutions and action. the rabbit project experience validates our belief that people can indeed find ways to work better together (brown & harris 2014; mathews 2014; ostrom 2009; peters, alter & shaffer 2010). the formation, functioning and ongoing emergence of the rabbit project in victoria and vran are grounded in a range of insights regarding political economy and collective action. while often overlooked, these insights can help transform current approaches to wicked socio-ecological problems. for us, a central organising idea reflected in these insights is the notion of democratic professionalism. what distinguishes the democratic professionals in our schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, courts, government agencies and other traditional fields? they are the reform-minded innovators and collaborators who see citizens as having a stake in public decisions affecting individuals and groups; who share authority and knowledge; who act as enabling intermediaries between citizens and institutions; and who share experience, expertise and power in naming, framing and acting on important issues (dzur 2008, 2017, 2019). their slow-burn, load-bearing work, as described and evidenced by dzur, shifts power balances mediated usually by tradition, funding agendas, technology and other means, thus changing social and organisational cultures to be more participatory and democratic. democratic professionals’ professional practices and personal lives respect and bring others into decisionmaking processes in democratic ways. an invitation we invite others, academics, community members, government officials and scientists alike, to draw on their knowledge and field experiences and to share practice stories through the lens of political economics and collective action. as with the rabbit project, the opportunity is to engage each other in small ‘p’ politics of how we understand, address and act on wicked problems; to negotiate and connect across disciplines, practical experiences and difference, so that people may work more creatively and effectively together to address the challenging issues of our time. political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the field gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 1, may 2019 7 page number not for citation purposes acknowledgements the authors acknowledge funding support from agriculture victoria, the former invasive animals cooperative research centre (crc) and the australian government through the crc program. this work was also supported by the usda national institute of food and federal appropriations project pen04633, accession number 1014522. we thank the many people who have contributed to the victorian rabbit action network and siena baker, kylie lingard and tessa sontheimer for their editorial assistance. references acil allen consulting 2017, victorian rabbit action network impact 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may 2019 11 page number not for citation purposes http://www.rabbitaction.com/about-vran/ http://www.rabbitaction.com/stories/ http://www.rabbitaction.com/stories/ http://www.rabbitaction.com/stories/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 1 may 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: mcilrath, l., broderick, c., mcdonnell naughton, m., and kelly, m. 2021. the irish carnegie community engagement classification pilot: a critical analysis on culture and context from a community of practice approach. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:1, 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i1.7343 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article the irish carnegie community engagement classification pilot: a critical analysis on culture and context from a community of practice approach lorraine mcilrath1, céire broderick2, mary mcdonnell naughton3, maria kelly4 1 community knowledge initiative, institute for lifecourse and society, national university of ireland, galway 2 department of spanish, portuguese and latin american studies, school of languages, literatures and cultures, university college cork 3 department of nursing and healthcare, athlone institute of technology 4 reach rcsi programme, royal college of surgeons in ireland corresponding author: lorraine mcilrath; lorraine.mcilrath@nuigalway.ie doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i1.7343 article history: received 29/07/2020; revised 08/10/2020; accepted 30/12/2020; published 05/2021 abstract this article provides a reflective critique of the process undertaken to pilot the carnegie community engagement framework in ireland between 2015 and 2016. of particular interest to the authors is the cultural specificity of employing a us-centric selfassessment data capturing tool in a heterogeneous irish context. taking the reader through from conception of the idea to its execution and post-pilot reflections, we examine the cultural appropriateness and translatability of the tool to irish higher education. to frame the discussion of the process, we employ the concept of a community of practice, as defined by wenger (1998). this was adopted to promote a culture of collaboration in an ever-growing neoliberal system that promotes competition between institutions, rather than facilitating their co-construction of knowledge. in the analysis, we demonstrate how forming this community of practice allowed for a cohesive assessment of the challenges and opportunities that arose through the pilot process. this was particularly important since each participating institution had different motivations for engaging with the pilot. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:lorraine.mcilrath@nuigalway.ie reflecting with some distance, we consider the value that comes from operating as a community of practice, as well as some shortcomings that we identified as specific to this pilot. keywords community of practice; challenges; competition; collaboration; neoliberalism; community engagement; cultural context introduction the purpose of this article is to provide a reflective critical analysis of the process of piloting the carnegie community engagement framework within the irish higher education culture and context. the cultural context is key to this discussion, given that the data capturing tool was developed with a us system and audience in mind. here, we explore how our unique community of practice challenged the processes and conceptions of this us-centred tool in an irish context. the article is structured around two broad themes. the first explores why a community of practice approach (wenger 1998) was central to the irish pilot, and how this was enacted in terms of the pilot process. it also addresses how a culture of collaboration can be embedded in a neoliberal era of competition and corporatisation within higher education. the second theme assesses the challenges and opportunities encountered during the pilot process, arising from the community of practice, the framework tool and issues of cultural appropriateness and translation. the irish pilot project brought together 12 diverse irish institutions of higher education, each having motivation for participation that both overlapped and diverged, and will be explored later. from the outset of the project, a community of practice approach underpinned and guided the collaborative process, both theoretically and philosophically, so as to share knowledge and expertise, develop a shared vision and document impact, counteract increasing competitiveness in higher education, and understand the limitations and enablers of community engagement in ireland. face-to-face national meetings were held to allow for the project leads and participants to discuss processes, data collection, issues related to the framework tool as regards the irish context, language, and the context of higher education in ireland. however, while collaboration and partnership were central, more challenging issues related to competition and a growing culture of neoliberalism seeped into the process as discussion of data ownership and future publication opportunities arose. below, we analyse how these issues were dealt with during the unfolding process to ensure consistent and ethical collaborative practices. from a community of practice perspective, we also assess the framework tool and challenge conceptions, philosophies and practices that are mainstream in the us but incompatible with irish understandings, structures and practices. specific examples explored later in the article include diverse conceptions of community engagement and terminology between ireland and the us, as well as the culture of philanthropy in the us context that is simply not mainstream in ireland. we start by outlining the cultural context and the administrative and institutional practicalities of undertaking this exercise that were specific to the pilot. the notion of a community of practice (wenger 1998) is then explored, as this provided the theoretical underpinning for the pilot. in this analysis, we discuss both its value and its shortcomings as a theory when undertaking such a project in the specific cultural context of irish higher education in which we operated. we raise here issues that arise when operating in an ever-increasing neoliberal system, particularly in a country with a longstanding tradition of committed engagement with the community. thereafter, language and terminology become the focus as we consider the translatability of such a tool, highlighting divergences between the irish and us contexts as well as offering some solutions we employed to overcome them within the pilot. our conclusions, in drawing together the key points raised in the article, provide some ‘lessons learned’ and highlight the mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20212 importance of democratic approaches, reflective practice and cultural specificity when undertaking a multiinstitutional, transnational project such as this. conceptions and overview by way of background, the carnegie foundation elective community engagement classification has existed in different forms in the us since the early 2000s. higher education institutions there elect to participate and use the framework developed by the carnegie foundation to capture data related to institutionalised community engagement in a process of self-assessment. this is then submitted to the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching and learning that offers classification to those that have reached a certain benchmark. there are no hierarchies in the classification; institutions are either awarded or not, based on the quality of the institutional submission. the award of classification can be used for benchmarking, as well as for promotional purposes. prior to the irish pilot, the tool had never been formally used outside the us context, hence the importance of this reflective exercise. for more information on this framework and the critical responses to it, consult mccormick & zhao (2005), driscoll (2008) and saltmarsh & johnson (2018). the irish carnegie framework pilot project was conceived in boston in early 2014 when irish and us higher education colleagues engaged in formal and informal conversations on community engagement within higher education in the irish and us contexts. in 2014, the community engagement director based at the national university of ireland, galway, and two us professors based respectively at the university of massachusetts, boston, and merrimack college discussed the ongoing challenge of quantitative measurement versus qualitative data and opportunities for institutional self-assessment of community engagement. they also discussed why policy-makers might prefer quantitative metrics, whereas they felt that qualitative understandings provided richer narrative accounts of community engagement and resulted in wider impact. this became a main motivation for exploring how the carnegie framework might be tested in a context different from that of the us, and to explore community engagement qualitatively, and thus inform, perhaps, ongoing policy development and measurement within ireland. the three colleagues scoped out the pilot project during 2014–2015 and became the project leads, having attained funding from the new england research centre for higher education (nerche) at the university of massachusetts, boston, the talloires network based at tufts university and the community knowledge initiative at nui galway. permission was granted by the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching and learning to test the tool in ireland. however, this came without classification opportunities as at the time the carnegie foundation was not interested in internationalising the tool. on reflection, conception of the pilot project bore some community of practice hallmarks (wenger 1998), particularly regarding the leads’ identities. one of the us-based professors was culturally attuned to both us and irish systems of higher education, having been born in ireland and spent significant periods of student and professional life in both contexts, and so acted as a type of broker within the pilot. the practice of ‘brokering’ is essential to communities of practice to allow for ‘new connections’, ‘enable coordination’ and ‘open new possibilities for learning’ (wenger 1999, p. 109). some participants within these communities have at times been described as ‘boundary spanners’ (hart & wolff 2007, p. 200), as they facilitate ‘different ways of seeing and doing across different domains’ (hart et al. 2013, p. 282). certainly, at project inception and through the pilot process, this irish-born, us-based professor demonstrated these brokering characteristics as her knowledge of culture and higher education allowed for the translation of practice, culture and contexts and the brokering of relationships among and between those in ireland and the us. in ireland, the project commenced in september 2015 and formally ended in december 2016. all irish higher education institutions (heis) were invited to participate in the process, and the lead project team was keen to attract five or six higher education institutions, both universities and institutes of technology mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20213 (it). at the outset, the irish higher education institutions were made aware of their commitment to the project in terms of establishing a cross-campus committee to work on completing the framework, gaining commitment from their presidents, designating a campus lead for the project, and committing to participation in the support sessions offered by the project team. the following benefits for the participating irish higher education institutions were highlighted as: • utilising the carnegie community engagement classification framework to catalogue and document community engagement work; • receiving detailed external review and feedback from the us carnegie community engagement classification review team, with a view to developing individual campus strategies to advance community engagement; • contributing to the potential adaptation of the framework to an irish context; • consulting with international experts in the area of community engagement assessment and receiving support for individual campus efforts; and • participating in potential publication opportunities. the first introductory workshop was hosted in dublin in september 2015, in partnership with the irish national network for civic engagement, namely campus engage. the government department with responsibility for funding and policy for higher education, the higher education authority (hea), was also in attendance and offered their support for the pilot. the workshop, facilitated by the project leads, laid out the project process, developed an understanding of the tool and thematic areas under exploration, the duration of the project and institutional commitment. this was then followed by a letter of invitation to the presidents of all higher education institutions, with a return date of 30 october 2015, for inclusion in the pilot. the letter of invitation stressed that this pilot represented an opportunity to: . . . find appropriate tools to build an evidence-base of irish higher education institutions’ contributions to civic and community engagement that aligns with the national higher education policy context and campus engage priorities (irish pilot project communication 2015) twelve higher education presidents accepted the offer to become part of the pilot project. this included athlone it, university of limerick, it carlow, it tralee, trinity college dublin, nui galway, university college cork, galway mayo institute of technology and royal college of surgeons in ireland, and three institutions affiliated with the tu4 dublin alliance. at the time, the tu4 dublin was an alliance of three higher education institutions, dublin institute for technology, blanchardstown it and tallaght it, seeking university status. this status was to be granted by the irish government in 2019 as the technological university dublin. their participation in the project was used as a mechanism to bring the three institutions together and consolidate their work under the community engagement thematic pillar. the irish pilot process as a community of practice the irish pilot embedded a community of practice theoretical framework (wenger 1998) as a means to develop collaborative relationships across the 12 pilot institutions and to possibly enable a democratic approach to the pilot process and outcomes. communities of practice can create ‘connections between people from different organisations, cultures, sectors or localities, brokering and translating varying perspectives, and facilitating the application of ways of seeing and doing across different domains’ (hart et al. 2013, p. 282). communities of practice have been described as . . . groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (wenger et al. 2002, p. 4). mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20214 with these qualities in mind, the carnegie pilot process brought together diverse institutions from ireland and the us, which nonetheless shared common concerns. the common concerns, or what we call motivations, shared within the community of practice were multifaceted in nature. firstly, it was an opportunity for each individual campus to gather data and to develop a consolidated, coherent narrative on the role of the individual institution in the community and society, so that it could tell a larger and more compelling story. another concern was to counteract the national neoliberal culture of valuing quantitative metrics over qualitative ones. at the time, the irish government was proposing to fund activities in community engagement and track their impact, as per the higher education authority (hea) compact agreements. these compacts were asking institutions to compile quantitative data that related to the number of students volunteering, the number of service-learning courses and participating students, and the number of community-engaged research projects. the pilot of the carnegie community engagement framework allowed for an alternative qualitative approach to be explored with the aim of attaining richer and more narrative-based data. from a national policy perspective, the irish national strategy for higher education to 2030, which was published in 2011, had a new emphasis on engagement as a core pillar for the sector, with higher education embedded as a partner with community organisations and society to encourage social change. the pilot project offered opportunities to ascertain if and how policy was being enacted in practice (maguire, ball & braun 2012). other concerns focused on a desire to counteract the polarisation of higher education institutions, particularly along binary divides between the institutes of technology system and the universities. as of 2015, the institutes of technology were no longer part of campus engage, and remain so. this independent pilot project represented a means to bring both systems together in a process of learning and sharing on the theme of community engagement. in addition, the three individual institutions making up the tu4 dublin alliance saw it as an opportunity to create cohesion and consolidation to prepare for their future designation as a university. wenger’s community of practice is also a social theory of learning that can be conceptualised as social participation where people come together to actively engage in the ‘practices of social communities’ and to construct ‘identities in relation to these communities’ (wenger 1998, p. 4). the more social aspects of the pilot project were instrumental to the process, in that the pilot institutions during the project lifecycle met for one and two-day meetings in different locations across ireland, hosted by members of the communities of practice within their higher education institution. the purpose of these meetings was to develop a new identity as a cluster of pilot institutions within ireland, and to both pioneer and explore the carnegie community engagement framework. we aimed to do so within a different cultural context to that of the us, to learn and share knowledge and develop and share data gathering methodologies. this also allowed us to link in with the more experienced us-based project leads and develop collegial relationships over meetings, project dinners and lunches. thus, the irish pilot developed a uniquely cooperative and collaborative approach, distinct from the way in which the framework is administered within the us. we feel this was a real strength of the pilot in ireland in terms of social interaction. it could be argued that the us process of application for the classification perhaps isolates rather than facilitates cooperative relationships as there are no formal mechanisms in the us to forge relationships across institutional boundaries. the community of practice approach embedded in ireland laid a firm foundation in terms of developing a shared vision and new ways of knowing and doing, while pioneering the possibility of internationalising the carnegie framework. while this approach within the context of ireland was very positive, there were some challenging aspects, which will be dealt with later in this article. wenger (1998) argues that a strong sense of identity exists among members, which is directly tied to that community, and the practice is developed through engagement with others in it (wenger 1998). wenger and snyder (2000) suggest that a community of practice, as a unit, differs from more formal groups, such as professional work or project team groupings, as these are typically assigned by their superiors. they are mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20215 gathered together to perform a task, they work to a deadline with a reporting structure and disband after the task is completed. in the case of the irish pilot, this strong sense of identity as an informal group has been sustained since 2015. the formal pilot project ended in december 2016, but the participants have retained a connection through their desire to articulate the lessons learned from a number of conference presentations since that time, as well as various written and reflective opportunities. according to wenger and snyder (2000), communities of practice are ‘fundamentally informal and self-organizing’ and ‘they benefit from cultivation’ as they ‘generate knowledge’, and in turn ‘they renew themselves’ through their engagement with knowledge. there was no roadmap or blueprint for the irish pilot as it was the first time the framework was nationally and collectively explored within a different cultural context. the group self-organised and decided on the range of meetings to be held and the themes to be explored. each meeting led to another meeting that the group collectively decided upon in terms of theme, time and location. during these meetings, knowledge was generated on the tool and the process, this knowledge was shared, and fears were dissipated collectively through group reflection and discussion. the meetings also presented the group with an opportunity to use technology to call in and connect with the project leads in the us for their advice and support. wenger (1998) states that communities of practice exist to develop a mutual enterprise with a joint mission in order to achieve something on an ongoing basis and are in concert with each other. the joint mission in the case of the irish pilot was to explore and find new ways in an environment that favoured quantitative metrics to articulate a deeper narrative on community engagement. the framework tool provided a mechanism by which we could be in concert with each other. five meetings were held across ireland between september 2015 and december 2016 that brought the institutions together to introduce them to the ireland pilot and the framework tool, to share knowledge on data collection and methodology, and to close the project with individual institutional and aggregate findings offered by the expert review team. wenger (1998) also articulates that communities of practice share a repertoire in terms of the work that they engage in, but also share methods, tools and techniques. one major fear, or challenge, was the vast amount of work required within each institution to actually embed the pilot project and gather data for the framework. in essence, through mutual conversation and the cultivation of greater knowledge of the tool, the group was constantly in renewal mode as each developed a deeper repertoire related to the framework, its requirements and how to apply it to each individual institution. thus, the approach was democratic at all stages, with maximum inclusivity at the core of decisions taken. the next section engages critically with the challenges facing such a democratic process, and identifies some shortcomings in wenger’s 1998 theory of community of practice.   community of practice challenges and shortcomings in our effort to create the type of community of practice, about which many scholars theorise, we identified some shortcomings in their approach, specifically in relation to the possibility of conflict arising within the community due to imbalance of power and the implications that can have on individuals, their higher education institutions and the wider community of practice. we contend that conflict is, or can be, a natural consequence of any relationships, be they familial, friendship, romantic or professional, and if dealt with meaningfully, can allow for more positive experiences and better relationships. fuller et al. (2005, p. 66) view failing to fully explore the significance of conflict and unequal power existing internally and externally to the community of practice as a shortcoming on wenger’s part. in addition, easterby-smith, snell and gherardi (1998, p. 265) contend that this theorising of the community of practice does not pay sufficient attention to formal structural power or the significance of the positions of the people participating in it within those structures. in the case of our community of practice, this potential for conflict arose, for instance, from the dual nature of the roles that some participants assumed in the process. mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20216 contradictory and complementary roles within a community of practice a key example of such roles is exemplified in the role of the irish project lead, who was also campus lead for one of the participating higher education institutions. this colleague fulfilled a contradictory and often complementary role in being an internal participant in the community of practice, while also holding an external position, with global perspective of the project, alongside accountability to the funders. in this way the irish lead acted as a boundary spanner, but this dual role proved complex. while the participating higher education institutions worked closely and in partnership with the irish lead and colleagues in the us, the reality was that these lead partners needed to have some distance in order to ensure the national pilot was carried out to the standards set out by carnegie and the various funding bodies. as the person who conceived the idea of piloting the carnegie tool in the irish context, this colleague drove the recruitment of higher education institution participants in ireland. in collaboration with the us-based project leads, this colleague laid the groundwork for the reflective tool to be piloted in as many higher education institutions as possible and facilitated the initial above-mentioned workshop, which led to an expression of interest to participate from the presidents of the irish higher education institutions. given this dual role of project lead and participant, questions arose around data collection and protection, and competition within the sector. it must be noted that this was not a common sentiment across the community of practice, but noted by one institution during the course of a national meeting. with mounting pressure on each higher education institution to compete for and attract funding, some participants sought reassurance that, as a stakeholder in the irish higher education sector, the irish lead would not have access to data from other campuses that could potentially provide unfair advantage to her home campus, or for solo publications in the future to further her professional career. while this use of data was never something that this colleague had considered, as a group we sought to address this challenge in a democratic fashion.    since undertaking the pilot in 2016, we have reflected on the motivation for this discourse. while we do not aim to speak here for all individuals involved in the community of practice, we do recognise general factors that could give rise to the need for clarity around data collection, its use and those who have access to it. the growing pressure faced by colleagues involved in irish higher education under neoliberal policies fosters competition, distrust and unequal platforms from which to operate. stephen ball’s (2016) analysis of neoliberal policies in the higher education sector, both in ireland and the uk, are useful in negotiating and identifying potential challenges faced by communities of practice like the one we sought to forge. indeed, the neoliberal elements evident in the irish context are not only relevant to this discussion, but to those who drive the us higher education sector under which the carnegie classification initially developed. part of our pilot was to critically engage with the classification tool developed by carnegie and assess its cultural appropriateness within an irish context. coming from an environment where private funding and philanthropic support are commonplace, the tool reflects the requirements of interest groups there. campuses pay a fee to be assessed when seeking accreditation by carnegie. the results of the self-reporting process are then used by middle and senior management as proof of community engagement and to lever more money from funders.   within the irish context, where higher education is still primarily funded by the state, this seemingly utilitarian or neoliberal attitude to recording community engagement for economic benefit is not at the level it is in the us, but it is becoming increasingly influenced by funding sources and those who contribute to and benefit from these activities on campuses. corporate lexicon, such as stakeholders, profits, best practice and even referring to students as ‘customers’, is increasingly accepted within the sector. holland, hughes and leitch (2016, p. 1044) stress that the alignment of education with the economy has been detrimental to education as a social good. this notion of education as a social good is fundamental to community engagement activities on the campuses involved in this pilot. in finding systematic means to record and thus mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20217 seek further support for actions that would break down barriers between campuses and the communities they should be serving, the reciprocal exchange of knowledge and resources and a general democratisation of knowledge were some of the driving factors for our higher education institutions participating in this process. therefore, when the issue of data protection, particularly in relation to the irish lead’s specific situation, threatened to overshadow the joint effort to forge a comprehensive community of practice that demonstrated the significance of this vital facet of irish higher education, it was a difficult reality to face.   performativity pressures according to ball (2016, p. 1053), the pressures of performativity within the neoliberal system create competition across the sector. ‘performativity is a technology that relates effort, values, purposes and selfunderstanding directly to measures and comparisons of output.’ engaging in an exercise that brought these ‘measures and comparisons of output’ to the fore understandably brought the element of competition to the discussion and could explain in part the queries that arose in relation to the irish lead’s role and whether she would have access to the data from campuses across the country. within the pilot, none of the campuses were competing, since the option of being awarded the carnegie classification was not a possibility. instead, the participating campuses were interacting more widely on other projects. however, they had similar struggles to achieve recognition for the work they were doing and to ensure community engagement was reflected in policies developed for irish higher education. the growing external factors driven by neoliberal policies also operated against the collective approach of community engagement. indeed, we could argue that the reluctance on the part of some participants to have campus data shared across the community of practice could simultaneously have been in resistance to neoliberal policies and compliance with them. by refusing to share this data, campuses were not bowing to the neoliberal tendencies to demand transparency in order to classify and rank campuses (and the funding they receive) according to league tables and measurements. on the other hand, by not sharing the campus-specific data, there were certain limitations to the democratisation of knowledge produced in the pilot process. while motivations varied, it was clear to everyone that an appropriate solution to moving forward in a way that participants in the community of practice knew they had certain assurances was vital.   towards transformation seeking to provide assurances related to the use of data, and in an attempt to diffuse potential conflict, the group agreed to draw up a terms of reference document for how they would work as a group, so that the project would be beneficial for all involved. this document, devised by the lead partners, and edited and approved by the whole community of practice, provided specific guidelines that clarified the roles and responsibilities of all participants. furthermore, it clarified the use and protection of data for the individual campuses and that the data would be seen only by the us project team and assessors, not the irish lead, and the relevant people on each campus. data ownership was thus clarified. it was agreed that aggregate data would be shared with all participants in the pilot, as well as relevant national agencies and interested parties. this was also important, since the pilot had been funded by the talloires network and endorsed by other groups, which required reports on progress as part of that support. furthermore, the terms of reference (2016) defined the mission, goal and values of the community of practice. the values, in particular, help clarify the discussion here:   … this project underpins the concepts of collegiality, knowledge sharing and trust in terms of creating a community of practitioners and practice that is enabling the development of an appropriate tool to capture data related to civic and community engagement in ireland that is indigenously meaningful.  mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20218 in order to ensure this was possible, the data protection agreement explicitly names the irish lead and home campus at the end of the document, stating that at no point in the process would either have access to data from any other campus, despite this colleague’s complex role as participant and lead partner in the national process. this terms of reference document served as a guarantee that the intentions of all involved were clear and no information would be misappropriated. furthermore, for national meetings, the community of practice continued to meet on different campuses and invited external facilitators to chair the meetings, so the element of democracy and reciprocal sharing of practice and knowledge remained the focus of the activities.   while we found a solution that served the purposes of the community of practice at that time through creating the terms of reference and ensuring external facilitators of meetings, further research on the nature of negotiating complex roles within a community of practice is needed so that one colleague is not singled out and publicly named in the process, and their motives and professional conduct called into question. we have theorised on the potential rationale behind the misgivings raised in relation to the irish lead’s situation with a view to understanding and providing a means of navigating it, with growing competition in the sector as a result of neoliberal policies being the most likely motive. however, what our solution did not cater for was the impact that this part of the process had on our colleague, as a person, researcher, project lead and campus lead. as the person who conceived the project in the first place, she removed herself and reduced her role in the pilot for the greater good of the community of practice, to ensure no further questions remained regarding her motivations for undertaking it. the community engagement aspect of irish higher education encompasses a relatively small community. we therefore must recognise that, in national projects like ours, some participants will undoubtedly find themselves in a similar position to this. thus a process needs to be established that is respectful of such individuals, as well as the community of practice in which they operate.  contextual and cultural nuances while the above process was demanding, other challenges that directly related to contextual nuances in the framework tool and its appropriateness within an irish context emerged. a collective discussion and voice in the community of practice meetings allowed for the irish pilot institutions to grapple with these issues and to find ways to overcome them collectively. in some instances, this involved a change or an amendment to the actual framework tool; at other times, an exclusion of certain aspects not applicable to irish higher education; and in other situations, it involved an advisory collective voice in terms of how the tool could be adapted or even improved for an irish, if not an international, audience. challenges and nuances related broadly to language, a culture of philanthropy in the us, one to student volunteering in ireland, and the silence of community voice. language and clarity language and localisation issues were identified as common areas of concern for the members of the community of practice, since the us-centred tool could not reflect the cultural and institutional specificities of those participating. in our face-to-face meetings, we held break-out sessions dedicated to the challenges we had to confront in this area, and common ground for all was the issue of defining community engagement. community engagement is defined differently in the us and ireland and needed to be adapted to suit each country and their higher education sector. indeed, even within the irish context, the concept of community engagement is nuanced differently depending on the experience and activities of the higher educational institute in question, making streamlining of such a term problematic within the irish higher education sector. the carnegie framework tool we used defined community engagement as: mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 20219 community engagement describes the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. the purpose of community engagement is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good. there was little dissent among the community of practice in terms of their alignment with the carnegie definition of community engagement. within the context of ireland, the national network for civic engagement, namely campus engage, has a definition that shares many commonalities with that of carnegie. however, within an irish context, it is more commonplace for the sector to discuss the civic role of higher education rather than the community role. in ireland, civic engagement is defined as a: mutually beneficial knowledge-based collaboration between the higher education institution, its staff and students, with the wider community, through a range of activities, including: service learning / community based learning; community-engaged research; volunteering; community / economic regeneration; capacity-building; community-campus partnerships; and, access / widening participation (lyons & mcilrath 2011). here we discuss the civic role versus the community role of higher education in ireland, where civic engagement and civic literacy have been prominent aspects to irish conceptions of engagement. to further explain this nuance, during the celtic tiger years (1994–2007) – a period of rapid economic growth in ireland resulting from foreign direct investment – there was widespread concern that levels of social capital were declining and materialism and commercialism rising as a result of increased wealth on the island. as a result, irish conceptions of community engagement sought to redress this imbalance and give students an opportunity to become active and engaged citizens. in addition, a sense of community engagement as social responsibility was common to many approaches across the irish higher education sector. likewise, as a group, we agreed that often people are not always aware that their activities could constitute community engagement, and the pilot presented an opportunity to highlight this for our colleagues, depending on the definition chosen. when choosing which aspects of community engagement should be reflected in this process, some institutions wanted the line drawn at work that was carried out as part of staff members’ professional roles, not activities completed in their personal time. others highlighted the necessity to include students’ participation in modules or in extra-curricular activities as fundamental when considering community engagement on their campuses. the inclusion of students in our discussions of this definition brought even more complex debates around the tendency to discuss community-based education as synonymous with community-based learning or community engagement for undergraduates, which is not always the case. likewise, colleagues emphasised the fact that community-based research and communitybased learning are inextricably linked, and should be treated as such, with each feeding the development of the other, as with all integration of research, teaching and learning. related to this discussion of community engagement and the learning environment is ‘service learning’. this is an american term that needs to be translated into the specific cultural context of irish higher education. in ireland, service learning has been translated and localised and is termed community engaged or community based learning. in addition, the term ‘service’ has both punitive and religious underpinnings in ireland and is not appropriate for a higher education context. mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202110 community voice community consultation, cooperation, reciprocity and partnership are core to community engagement internationally. the framework tool respects the individuality of each institution and is comprehensive in documenting all aspects of the engagement cycle, exploring the manner in which institutional infrastructure is designed to facilitate and support community engagement work and to ensure the reciprocity of community partnerships. the process is weighted, however, in favour of the institution, in that input to the framework is not directly invited from the community. there is exploration of the instruments used for systematic assessment of community perceptions. however, the irish community of practice strongly agreed that the creation of opportunity for the community and, indeed, student voice to be heard in relation to the framework would create a holistic and authentic representation. another term that ignited discussion within our community of practice was ‘collaborative’, described as ‘working in partnership for the benefit of all’. further, it was recognised that ‘collaboration’ should also include the concept of inclusiveness and embrace all people according to their talents, skills and/or abilities. embodied in this notion of collaboration was the reciprocal nature of community engagement as highlighted in the carnegie data collection tool. however, irish pilot participants noted that, despite this reciprocity being highlighted, there was again no space to include the community voice, our democratic partners in engagement, when reflecting on our institutional practices. volunteering and social capital another challenge that we faced related to capturing the vibrant culture of volunteerism that has long been strong in ireland, contributing to the cultivation of social capital, and enhancing the social fabric of the local and national communities. this culture is reflected within irish higher education institutions’ and the individual’s multifaceted relationship with their respective communities, which has evolved over time. in 2014, all institutions of higher education in ireland were members of campus engage and all the presidents became a signatory to the campus engage charter that commited each institution to enacting and embedding community engagement practice. the charter includes volunteering as a core practice and places value on staff and student volunteering as an integral component of irish community engagement. as the irish pilot project progressed and participants grew increasingly familiar with the tool, dialogue developed, both within the teams formed at pilot institutions and together as a community of practice. these conversations were principally around the challenge of perceived exclusion of staff and student volunteering, and the disparity between the centrality of volunteering in the irish community engagement landscape and that of the us, as evidenced by the design of the framework. commitment to and continued involvement of staff in volunteering was demonstrated in the outcomes of campus-wide surveys of community engagement activity conducted by members of the community of practice during the early stages of the self-assessment process. as a community of practice, much discussion took place, firstly around the array of volunteering activity identified therein that academic, professional service, research and support staff was involved in, both within their institutions and externally, either in a career-related or personal capacity. ultimately, this conversation evolved into a collective struggle by participants regarding the lack of scope for this work to be fully documented within the framework and concern going forward that this may have a negative impact on the future of the work if considered unworthy. moreover, in the case of student volunteering, there was overwhelming consensus amongst the community of practice regarding the intrinsic value and positive reciprocal impact of their volunteering and non-credit-bearing community engagement activities in the irish context. the perception was that this work was almost relegated to the ‘outreach and partnership’ section of the framework, in comparison to the detailed analysis allocated to curricular engagement activity, perhaps a legacy of the original designation as subcategories (pearl 2014). mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202111 finance and philanthropy a significant portion of work on the framework tool focused on monetary commitment in terms of the allocation of internal budgets and the sourcing of external funding through philanthropy. as a community of practice, we identified that finance for community engagement within higher education in ireland is a significant struggle and does not follow the same pattern as that of the us. also, community engagement within the context of ireland was mainstreamed during the height of the global recession, and funds for the higher education sector and for new innovations were decimated at that time. the carnegie classification in relation to the philanthropy scale did not really resonate with an irish audience. the scale of donations in the us is considerable owing to university graduates who have become wealthy and formed prestigious alumni groups. in the us, the bonds that are developed between past students and their alma mater run deep. it could be argued that graduates from irish higher education have the same bond, but have a lot less financial backing or fewer connections. thus, the carnegie classification in relation to specifically measuring philanthropy was not always suitable to the irish situation. in fact, it was a considerable challenge in ireland. also, many irish higher education institutions have strategically avoided embedding a culture of funding in an effort to transcend the traditional charitable conceptions in favour of a model of capacity and relationship building and knowledge exchange. while funding is indisputably necessary, in the irish context could it be argued that time is often more valuable than money? conclusion by joining the irish carnegie framework pilot project in 2015–2016, the participating higher education institutions made a commitment to the systematic embedding of community engagement in their institutional practices and consolidation of a national group of pioneers that would drive the shared values promoted through this process. as we have outlined here, the motivations to participate were diverse. the institutions, known today as the technological university dublin, united under the community engagement pillar to demonstrate meaningful collaboration prior to their formal amalgamation; other institutions seized the opportunity to take an evidence-based approach to lobbying for better integration of community engagement activities and support systems within their institutions; and collectively, it was envisaged that there would be more meaningful investment and interest in community engagement, as outlined in the irish national strategy for higher education to 2030, as well as a systematic irish approach to gathering community engagement data. from the outset, the project leads and all higher education institutions that joined the project were dedicated to a democratic and horizontal organisational structure. to reduce hierarchies and promote this more horizontal perspective, we adopted wenger’s (1998) theory of community of practice. with a common concern and shared passion for highlighting and formally integrating community engagement into our institutional and national frameworks, our community of practice engaged in reflective discussions with a view to deepening our knowledge and understanding of the types of metrics that were suited to capturing community engagement in an irish context and allowed for a deeper narrative. this was particularly beneficial given the diversity across the irish higher education sector, with public universities, not-for-profit institutions and institutes of technology all participating and providing heterogeneous perspectives on the practices and challenges of community engagement in ireland. to understand the complex interplay within and among these institutions, as well as the bodies governing them, from a community engagement perspective, the social aspect of this community of practice was fundamental. geographically, ireland is small, so face-to-face meetings, which enhanced this community of practice, were possible, helping us forge lasting relationships founded in sharing knowledge and practice. where possible, we would highly recommend this approach in other regions and nations. by sharing our challenges and methodologies for data gathering, we built long-lasting collegial relationships that reinforced our community of practice in a mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202112 way that, we believe, would not have been possible under the us model, which is driven by neoliberal and performance-based metrics. indeed, as we have shown here, the community of practice approach is not without its limitations. conflict, in its many forms and levels, is a normal result of collaboration and interaction. what is needed, therefore, is recognition of this possibility and development of tools to overcome potential tension. rather than creating an obstacle for our community of practice, however, it provided an opportunity to test the democratic and reflective approach that had been instilled in the project from its inception. the complex role that the irish project lead undertook embodied a reality that many colleagues operating within community engagement in irish higher education institutions could face, given the close-knit nature of and geographical proximity between institutions. this is still a relatively small community of practice and colleagues who hold national, international and institutional roles simultaneously are sometimes faced with the challenge of extricating themselves from one role in favour of another to reduce conflict of interest. this was the situation within our community of practice. while our solution of ensuring an external chair for all future meetings and co-creation of terms of reference by which all members of our community of practice were bound helped, this did not resolve the potential implications for this colleague, from a professional and personal point of view. further work is needed on this issue, which is undoubtedly experienced in other communities of practice, to find a fair outcome that protects participation and the needs of all in communities of practice, and which does not sacrifice opportunities for the individual in question. other challenges that we identified as a community of practice when piloting the tool included deciphering the differences in language and clarity and lack of inclusion of a community voice, which is fundamental to the cycle of engagement, and therefore pivotal in authenticating and completing the framework. furthermore, the perceived differences in the role of volunteering, social capital within varied community engagement landscapes, and disparity of funding and philanthropy in the irish context were highlighted in our discussions. common threads among the challenges were how community engagement is defined and the need to recognise that individual characteristics of community engagement in one country are likely to differ from another, while in the main remaining true to the internationally accepted principles of reciprocity and mutuality. in keeping with the methodology adopted during the original development of the tool, to respect the diversity of approach of each institution to community engagement (driscoll 2008), as the tool advances towards an international stage, and data is gathered from participating countries, further consideration and respect needs to be afforded to encompass the multiplicity of engagement approaches of each. in light of our reflections and ongoing interrogation of the literature, we concur with the ideas and recommendations articulated by watson et al. (2011), taylor (2014) and mcilrath (2019) that community engagement and its assessment should be viewed through cultural and historical lenses, particularly when we begin to explore the nature of community engagement internationally. watson et al. (2011) likened the founding charters and missions of universities to dna, leaving an indelible imprint forever on their evolution and on the expression of community engagement. they argue that culture and history have a huge bearing and influence on the nuanced nature of community engagement at institutional, regional and national levels. taylor (2014, p. 97), drawing on vygotskian theory that cultural historical theory has been overlooked and is in effect readily applicable, claims that ‘the idea of knowledge as an abstract and autonomous reality detached from issues of real practice, history, and politics is increasingly untenable’. while mcilrath (2019, p. 182) argues in her study of community engagement in europe that ‘diversity exists in all of its guises – from localised terminology, community of practice formation, conceptions of civic engagement, stages of enactment and structural challenges’. on the basis of this argument, a sensitised assessment tool and process should be cognisant of historical and cultural influences as this might provide what taylor describes as ‘new insights’ (2014, p. 95). our advice to a growing critical mass of those looking to assess community engagement is to adopt a democratic community of practice approach, but to be mindful of the mcilrath, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 1 may 202113 underpinning influence of historical and cultural factors that permeate and nuance the nature of community engagement. dedication this article is dedicated to the life of caroline murphy, our esteemed colleague, friend and former president of carlow institute of technology. caroline was a partner in the irish carnegie pilot project, but sadly passed away during our work together. she is missed but not forgotten at this time. references ball, s 2016, ‘neoliberal education? confronting the slouching beast’, policy futures in education, vol. 14, no. 8, pp. 1046–59. 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commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: gardner, mk and scarth, k. 2020. the tree of community knowledge and engagement. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 6745. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ ijcre.v13i1.6745 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article the tree of community knowledge and engagement morgan k gardner1, kate scarth2 1 faculty of education, memorial university of newfoundland 323 prince philip dr, st. john’s, nl a1b 3x8 2 applied communication, leadership, and culture, faculty of arts, university of prince edward island, university of prince edward island 550 university ave., charlottetown, pe, canada c1a 4p3 corresponding author: morgan k gardner; mgardner@mun.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6745 article history: received 24/08/2019; revised 11/10/2019; accepted 21/11/2019; published xx/05/2020. abstract deep-seated educational discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion. these deficit discourses reflect top–down knowledge hierarchies and a lack of knowledge democracy in education (de sousa santos 2007; hall & tandon 2017; visvanathan 2009), and they are in need of ‘critical and diverse knowledge reckoning’ (malone 2019, p. 2) by low-income communities themselves. this article relays how a community-university participatory action research (par) partnership became a dynamic site of knowledge democracy from which to counter and transform deficit-based knowledge systems imposed on economically disadvantaged communities. steeped in the generative enactments of par, storytelling, ecological metaphor, strength-based approaches and the arts, this article explores a low-income/social housing community’s knowledge practices that are energising and growing its community power to support the success of their youth in school. these seven knowledge practices are narrated through the ecological metaphor of trees, specifically via a co-constructed par team narrative called the tree of community knowledge and engagement. in the telling and retelling of this counternarrative-in-the-making, this article embodies knowledge democracy. here, community members’ energising knowledge practices are recognised as invaluable forms of everyday educational knowing and leadership for their youth. this article further explores three broad ways of knowing that reside within and across community members’ seven knowledge practices: lived knowing, interconnected declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the research was funded by the sshrc/vice-president’s research grants at memorial university of newfoundland. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6745 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6745 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mgardner@mun.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.6745 knowing and participatory/power-in-relation knowing. the three community ways of knowing illustrate how the community is growing its power to support youth’s success via a transformative educational worldview, from which other schools and universities could learn and, indeed, thrive. key words: participatory action research, knowledge democracy, low-income communities, marginalised youth, high school, cognitive justice introduction deep-seated societal, educational and professional discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion (aber & nieto 2000; neiuwenhuis, hooimeijer & meeus 2015). low-income communities, including social housing communities, have been reported to have inadequate skills, poor attitudes towards education, and no clear educational expectations and/or supports for youth to succeed academically (aber & nieto 2000; neiuwenhuis, hooimeijer & meeus 2015). schools perpetuate the notion of low-income students and their communities as a ‘culture of poverty’ when seen through the lens of ‘cultural deficit’ (gonzalez et al. 2005, p. 36). epistemologies which discount or marginalise community members’ own ways of knowing how to support youth’s success in school perpetuate knowledge hierarchies and lack knowledge equity and democracy (de sousa santos 2007; hall & tandon 2017; visvanathan 2009). by contrast, an emphasis on knowledge democracy furthers social, ecological and democratic justice by recognising the value of diverse knowledges and the ways such multiplicities of knowing can reside in tandem with and/or challenge formalised knowledges, such as ‘officially’ sanctioned educational curricula (hall & tandon 2017). by focusing on forms of ‘critical and diverse knowledge reckoning’ (malone 2019, p. 2) – in other words, on a dynamic reimagining and redefining of what knowledge is via critique and expansion – this article builds on the notion of a ‘knowledge democracy’. it does so in order to connect the ‘values of justice, fairness and action’ to the creation and use of knowledge (hall & tandon 2017, p. 13) in relation to a particular low-income community. our research shows a need to redefine educational ‘knowers’, i.e. those whose knowledge of how to support youth’s high school success is considered valuable and legitimate. when education systems recognise and engage social housing communities as equal knowers and participants in education, these community members can support more equitable understanding of educational knowledge and transformation of the educational system into one that more successfully supports their lowincome youth’s educational success. our work highlights social housing communities’ accounts of their own knowledge practices and strengths and thus participation in necessary change. the power, inspiration and change potential of community members’ knowledge practices are this study’s most impactful research ‘outcome’. an inter-generational community-university participatory action research (par) team cogathered and co-explored social housing community members’ energising knowledge practices of supporting their youth’s school success. as a par team, we defined energising knowledge practices as actions, behaviours, thoughts, emotions and interpersonal engagements that lowincome community members themselves experience and/or understand as igniting, inspiring, energising and/or empowering in their daily lives. the ‘knowledge’ of ‘knowledge practices’ gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 2 highlights that this research gives power and validity to low-income community members’ knowledge that is equal to academic knowledge. the ‘practices’ part of the term ‘knowledge practices’ emphasises knowledge, or ways of knowing, rooted in lived, localised, embodied experience. such knowledge is not abstract but is imbued with individual and collective experiences that community members carry into their lives and improve on in response to the strengths and challenges of daily life, such as unstable socioeconomic conditions. energising knowledge practices are described by participants with words like ‘positive’, ‘inspiring’, ‘energising’, ‘celebrating’, ‘moving forward’ and ‘working so well’. sometimes energy is implicit in participants’ stories, as in accounts of sharing, togetherness, pride and personal growth. at other points in the storytelling process, the energising aspect of knowledge practices is nonverbal and is reflected in participants’ physical actions and reactions. this article captures the language, ideas and physical reactions of community members and the par team (for example, by quoting participants’ stories and through the par team’s tree image). the article also draws on academic language, research and discourse in order to give credibility in this venue – an academic journal – to the knowledge relayed in the research. through the research’s multiple modes of dissemination (e.g. a mural in the community centre and an academic article) and discourses (community members’ stories and educational/social justice literature and analysis), this article models a community-university partnership through dissemination as well as process. as team members, we steeped ourselves in the generative enactments of par and emphasised storytelling, ecological metaphor, strengths-based approaches and the arts. our team’s research became a site of critical and restorative engagements from which to counter and transform deficit-based knowledge systems and inequitable ‘power relations of knowing’ imposed on economically disadvantaged communities. while articles on par research often emphasise process, this article centres our findings on community members’ knowledge, with the direct intent of challenging abstract academic knowledge of low-income communities’ lives, which often frames them in terms of deficit. our par team emphasised the sharing of findings about community members’ knowledge. we constructed a written and visual narrative, using the ecological metaphor of trees, called the tree of community knowledge and engagement, to relay community members’ seven core energising knowledge practices. the wall-sized mural (figure 1), located in the public hallway of the social housing community centre, symbolises the claiming and celebrating of community members’ energising knowledge practices and their multifaceted support of community youth’s school success. the tree mural is, moreover, an invitation for ongoing horizontal dialogue and community exchange via storytelling. building on the par tree’s richness, the co-authors developed a three-part ontology of knowing, or what we, the authors, have called the tree’s canopy, that encompasses community members’ seven knowledge practices, while, at the same time, resonating with each of the seven community knowledge practices. low-income communities, knowledge democracy, and youth success in high school youth’s non-completion of high school is a complex issue involving many factors that occur over time in students’ lives (tilleczek 2008). low socioeconomic status is often cited as the most prevalent influence on early school leaving (tilleczek et al. 2008), suggesting a significant impact of the youth’s neighhourhood context on their development and educational achievement (neiuwenhuis, hooimeijer & meeus 2015; wodtke, harding & elwert 2011). the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 3 studies on low-income communities often focus on what is lacking in these contexts via theories and concepts such as social isolation, social disorganisation, or socioeconomic stress (aber & nieto 2000; sykes & kuyper 2009; wodtke, harding & elwert 2011) rather than exploring communities’ own ways of knowing that foster agency and wellbeing. by failing to highlight or even explore communities’ strengths, cognitive or epistemic injustice can occur (de sousa santos 2007; hall & tandon 2017; visvanathan 2009). in contrast with such epistemological injustice towards marginalised persons/communities, ‘knowledge democracy’ recognises ‘the existence of multiple epistemologies’, celebrates diverse expressions of knowledge creation and representation, and views knowledge as a ‘powerful tool for taking action’ for social justice, democracy and wellbeing across human and ecological communities, both locally and globally (hall & tandon 2017, p. 13). for example, recognising the challenges of engaging low-income youth due to their disconnection from or skepticism of institutions, yoshitaka iwasaki (2015) conveys how vital youth-led initiatives are. truly collaborative, strengths-based approaches create a research process that is empowering for marginalised people and youth specifically in iwasaki’s work. such methods lead to meaningful, holistic changes and action for these individual youth and their community, as iwasaki’s work demonstrates. our article also challenges and transforms the marginalisation or erasure of communities’ local knowledge through a celebration of the multiplicity of knowledges. as low-income communities become change agents for educational justice (smyth 2009; warren & mapp 2011), a crucial shift from ‘intervention in the community to community as intervention’ takes place (eheart et al. 2009, p. 47). knowledge democracy is of particular importance to this change work. equitable education begins with recognition of the diverse strengths and contributions of low-income communities’ strengths-based ways of knowing and acting. if inequitable school-community power relations are to be reduced, communities and schools need to value low-income communities’ knowledge practices, which are connected to their own traditions, histories, experiences and identities (warren & mapp 2011). democratic community-university research partnerships, with their emphasis on equitable power relations, are key to igniting such thoughtful epistemological realignment or critical and diverse knowledge reckoning. local context, perspectives and research process an umbrella organisation for social housing in newfoundland and labrador (nl), canada, sought to increase the educational success of youth living in these communities. as a member of this organization, the director of a local community centre contacted this article’s first author to discuss a potential research partnership to improve the high school graduation in her own social housing community, the rabbittown community, located in st. john’s, nl. numerous youth in the rabbittown community had been research participants in a prior par study by gardner et al. and conversations led to the creation of a community-university par study. participatory action research (par) is ‘the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it’ (elliott 1991, p. 6). par is tied to democratic and social justice principles and goals in both the research process and anticipated social actions. a 14-member par team was established, comprising community centre staff and volunteers, youth and adult community members, community association members and university researchers, including two master’s students, a postdoctoral researcher and a faculty of education professor. team collaborations occurred via team meetings, four team retreat days, and phone and email correspondence. the academic researchers supported the gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 4 team’s learning about par and researcher roles, while community team members situated, translated and expanded these learnings within the context of their community’s socioculture context, thereby supporting the co-construction of knowledge and processes of engagement. community and university team members planned and implemented the study as a democratic partnership, in terms of research questions, participant outreach, and data analysis and dissemination. team members contributed diverse strengths of knowledge, skills, interests and experiences. team-building activities took place and decisions were made via team dialogue. the team reached an early consensus to explore the community’s strengths, contributions, energy and visions related to supporting youth success in school. team members were not interested in adopting deficit-based perspectives, sharing that ‘there is enough of that already out there’ about social housing. it ‘wasn’t the problems’ that needed attention but ‘what is working’, and, in the words of one community member, our ‘strengths’ reflect ‘what we are about as a community’. strengths-based perspectives assume that all individuals, groups and communities possess assets, engage in successful practices and have capacities to become ‘abundant communities’ that ignite and build their own community power (gardner & toope 2011; kretzmann & mcknight 1993). the team viewed the gathering of community members’ stories about their knowledge practices as an assertion of the community’s strengths and power. story-telling was a natural (i.e. comfortable, meaningful) way for community members to share experiences and for the team to collect ‘data’. after all, ‘[h]umans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives’ and ‘tell stories of those lives’ (connelly & clandinin 1990, p. 2). ninety-three community members from the urban 294-unit social housing community participated in the study, including community centre staff and volunteers, adult and youth community members, youth’s parents/families, and community association members. potential participants were recruited through face-to-face contact, emails and telephone conversations. participants had the choice to participate via individual interview, focus group and/or community forum. data was collected via nine focus groups, two individual interviews and four community forums that were part of community-wide events. approximately one-third of participants were youth (29) and two-thirds were adults (64). all data collection events were mixed in terms of participant demographics (e.g. age, gender, education, profession). during these semi-structured data-gathering forums, team members invited participants to share stories of supporting youth success in school, particularly experiences in which they felt energized, inspired and/or ignited. participants were also invited to envision ways of further building community power and to discuss factors impeding their vision. participant data was collected via audio-tape (and transcribed) and/or via researcher notes (typed or handwritten). consistent with par’s cycles of action and reflection, data analyses were ongoing processes. our team goals were to: listen to, discuss, reflect on, interpret and share participants’ stories. our meaning-making was guided by the hermeneutic circle of continually relating the whole body of data to its parts (porter & robinson 2011). the team began by reflecting on community members’ stories without imposing categories or themes. next, the team examined stories and practices of supporting youth success and of being energised in these contributions across and within each grouping (e.g. youth, parents, community centre staff ). the team identified key knowledge practices and themes. data analysis processes involved continual telling and retelling, constructing and reconstructing, as data and analyses proliferated and became organised. the team identified seven community knowledge practices for supporting youth success in school, which the tree of community knowledge and engagement relays. these the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 5 findings further led to the co-authors’ articulation of the three-part ontology of knowing, or what we have called the tree’s canopy, which sweeps across community members’ seven knowledge practices, while simultaneously dwelling within each practice. tree of community knowledge and engagement during a team retreat, team members explored metaphors as ‘rich and relatable ways of conveying interpretations’ that could relay the research findings’ power (moules et al. 2015, p. 133). through felt-sense and reflection, the team identified with the ecological metaphor of the tree, both in its whole and in its parts, as representative of community knowledge practices. many cultures view trees as symbols of knowledge and wisdom, inviting alignment with the community’s deep understanding of how best to support their youth. rooted in community, family and individual identities and histories, this community’s knowledge practices have longevity, like trees, because they are embodied and energising (e.g. life-giving, sustaining). always living in relation to their environments, community members, like trees, also embody continual learning and knowledge creation via everyday life. the tree represents the community’s seven core knowledge practices of supporting youth success in school: (a) roots of putting my best foot forward while being true to myself; (b) trunk of being there for each other; (c) branches and leaves of mutual learning and fostering each other’s growth; (d) pollen of accessing community resources that support us to thrive; (e) fruit and apples of celebrating each other; (f ) compost of supporting youth success amidst injustices and their adverse impacts; and (g) sun of always living and growing our vision. this section briefly overviews the tree’s seven community knowledge practices, their key characteristics and connections to the tree metaphor (see figure 1). gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 6 roots: putting my best foot forward while being true to myself community members powerfully articulated their personal values, ideals and visions in the midst of hardships and inequities. the tree roots represent individual members’ knowledge practices that ground and nourish them as they support youth school success. root knowledge practices: • rooting myself in the person i am and want to be • staying true to myself despite hardships and inequities story of root knowledge practices: ‘i’m always putting positive messages out there on facebook. i’m always talking about things that are very important in life and society. and then, i see my kids turn out and either share something i put out there or they’ve responded to something i’ve said and i’ve seen them share it with their other friends…it makes you feel really inspired and energised, it just puts you in a whole new plateau…’. – parent trunk: being there for each other community members shared stories of trunk knowledge practices, of having a strong community core by standing tall by being there for each other and ensuring everyone supports youth school success. trunk knowledge practices: • helping each other and working together • sharing what we have • knowing our voice counts stories of trunk knowledge practices: ‘we are relating to where youth are in terms of their schooling’. – staff ‘as a community we’re here for each other … we collaborate so well together that people within our community know that if they need that support, it will be there’. – staff branches and leaves: mutual learning and fostering growth community members are both teachers and learners, fostering greater mutuality and equality. just as growing branches and leaves reflect a tree’s flourishing, mutual learning inspires collective growth in supporting youth success. branches and leaves knowledge practices: • experiencing mutual learning • utilising and valuing community knowledge, experience and practice • witnessing each other’s growth stories of branches and leaves knowledge practices: ‘you don’t always have to be the teacher – sometimes your kids are’. – adult the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 7 ‘it is totally energising to see growth and change in others… in this community we inspire one another’. – parent ‘when youth share their viewpoint, i am learning too … ways to make changes so that our programs work better for them’. – staff pollen: accessing community resources that support us to thrive just as pollen supports the fertilisation and reproduction of trees, the community engages pollen knowledge practices when they access community centre resources that support youth to thrive, both directly and implicitly. pollen knowledge practices: • engaging community resources • contributing to the community • feeling valued and at home • being supported and met by others where we currently are in our lives • helping us look towards where we want to go stories of pollen knowledge practices: ‘in school, you are judged for your sexuality, clothing, way you look, size, skills, intelligence but at the community centre you aren’t judged even when we are different from each other’. – youth ‘it’s not the centre staff ’s building. it’s the community’s building’. – staff apple: celebrating each other like enjoying a tree’s fruit after carefully tending to its growth, community members’ apple stories relay the community successes and celebrations. apple knowledge practices: • celebrating accomplishments, both large and small, as a ‘big deal’ • knowing that youth’s successes are about more than academic success • celebrating youth’s accomplishments as successes for the whole community stories of apple knowledge practices: ‘my dad cried when i got a scholarship’. – youth ‘youth success in school is a success for the whole community’. – parent ‘success is usually measured by wealth. but what is wealth? wealth is lots of things. to us, wealth is family and friends. it is internal. it’s who we are. it’s how we pray’. – adult ‘… we’re celebrating their [youth’s] accomplishments at each moment as … they’re going through struggles and getting out of that struggle, we’re celebrating that they get over that hurdle’. – staff gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 8 compost: transforming injustices and adverse impacts community members negotiate injustices and their adverse impacts, inspiring others to support youth. compost knowledge practices are members transforming adversity, nurturing the conditions for change, and taking actions to create hope, possibilities and new life. compost knowledge practices: • recognising and dismantling injustices via critical reflection, resistance and transformation • engaging in hope, understanding and compassion to heal and transform the adverse impacts of injustice stories of compost knowledge practices: ‘understanding youths’ situations and home lives is important. just because a kid has a bad attitude or acts badly does not make them a bad kid. seeing the good in youth even if they have a bad reputation is how i see things and is important to me’. – parent ‘never give up! some teachers give up on you very easy if you don’t get it’. – youth ‘overcoming challenges is one big facet of our community’. – staff sun: always living and growing our vision imagining and envisioning the future energises community members. just as the sun is essential to a tree’s life and growth, vision is central to the community’s hope, agency and light. sun knowledge practices: • living our vision • doing more of what is working well • imagining new possibilities stories of sun knowledge practices: ‘… with this research it allows us to stop, look at what we’re doing, what’s working well … how we should be moving forward, whereas if we didn’t do this we would be moving forward but it would have been a lot slower pace’. – staff ‘we want the centre to be a place that feels like home, where everyone is involved and connected, where everyone is always learning and growing, and where everyone is working together as one’. – staff canopy of ontological knowing the tree’s canopy further illustrates the significance of community members’ empowering knowledge practices. the canopy sweeps across the community members’ seven core knowledge practices while simultaneously dwelling within each knowledge practice. this canopy has three parts: lived knowing, interconnected knowing and participatory/powerin-relation knowing. the interwoven canopy reflects an ontology or life-source energy from which community members’ knowledge practices germinate and bloom. drawing from members’ stories, experiences and memories, this section explores the connections between the three-part canopy and members’ seven knowledge practices. the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 9 lived knowing community members’ seven core knowledge practices, described above, are all examples of lived knowing, the first part of the tree’s canopy. knowledge practices are rooted in community members’ own direct experience and in community spaces. the community members see and grow their embodied – not conceptual or abstract – knowledge practices through first-hand experience of navigating the complexities, constraints, possibilities and nuances of their daily life, including their contexts, strengths, values, identities and dreams. whether sharing stories of putting their best foot forward (roots), being there for each other (trunk), mutual learning (branches and leaves) or breaking down injustices and their adverse impacts (compost), the community is energised in supporting youth success via lived knowing practices. community members sow tree knowledge practices in their local home communities, so their wisdom, struggle, strength and ongoing transformations collectively belong to the community as their living (breathing) knowledge. the tree reflects the sustenance of the community’s wisdom and the emergence of knowledge creation, like the ongoing growth of a tree’s inner rungs reflects its development. dominant educational cultures strive to fix social housing community knowledge by delivering what is deemed to be the ‘correct’ knowledge necessary for high school graduation, thereby marginalising the community’s own ways of knowing. our research sought to rupture these cognitive injustices and inequitable knowledge hierarchies (de sousa santos 2007; hall & tandon 2017; visvanathan 2009) by giving power and voice to community members’ lived knowledge practices. via par, the team engaged community members as knowers and knowledge co-constructors of their lives, stories and experiences via democratic horizontal practices. community members spoke in their own ‘language’ and ways of knowing within their community contexts. during a storytelling focus group at the community centre, one parent said that this process ‘did not feel like research’ but like ‘neighbours chatting’. the authors noticed the repetition of personal pronouns across the storytelling – i, me, we, us – emphasising that community members’ knowledge practices are rooted in their own lived experiences. the par team witnessed the research participants’ collective ownership of their knowledge practices as they often seamlessly ‘took over’ the dialogue with their wealth of empowering memories and stories. participants invited the research team into deep listening, presence and learning. while initially defining social housing in terms of social–economic precarity, many community members shared stories of transforming such views through direct experience of community living (an example of a compost knowledge practice). drawing from his experience living in social housing, a community centre staff member stated, ‘if i hear someone say something negative about social housing, i challenge them’. participants shared stories of togetherness and mutual support that benefit all members, including youth. a parent shared coming together as a community when there is a lack of food: that’s like with meals a couple of days before everyone is getting money and whatever you might have a few potatoes in your house, i might have a bit of carrot or whatever. we … all get together and throw it all in one pot and whatever we came up with everybody ate. nobody walked away hungry. the community’s lived knowing of working together (trunk knowledge practice) ensures youth have enough to eat to support their learning. through ongoing community knowledge traditions – not one-off, expert interventions – youth learn the community’s wisdom of how collaboration supports shared success. many youth adapt this lived knowing to their own gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 10 contexts, recounting stories of helping each other with homework (branches/leaves knowledge practice) and supporting one another during tough times at school (roots, trunk). community research participants are educators in their own right, modelling positive change for youth, other community members and the research team. storytelling’s horizontal dialogue paired with par’s explicit social justice/democratic tenets fostered safe openings for participants to narrate structural injustices. the sharing of such injustices is often dismissed as ‘whining’ or taboo in other contexts. as one parent said, ‘it can be tough trying to help our kids through school. talking about it now, i know i’m not crazy to feel this way. it helps’. our par storytelling focus groups often became spaces for participants to collectively recognise that they are ‘not the problem’, nor are they ‘imagining things’. community members often then recognised that their youth-supporting knowledge practices are a ‘big deal’ and are successes for the whole community. in passionately advising his peers, based on his direct school experience, to ‘never give up!’, one youth went on to exclaim that ‘some teachers give up on you very easy if you don’t get it. they think you’re a lost cause, especially if you’re in ‘basic’ courses, because you’re not on their level’. in observing this youth’s claim and modelling his lived knowing of the need to stand up to injustice, the focus group recognised that he was supporting the whole community’s success. he was deconstructing injustice (compost knowledge practice), being true to himself and putting his best foot forward (roots), and celebrating his success of challenging injustice as a ‘big deal’ (apples). while challenges are pervasive in this community, participants identify and celebrate their community’s strengths, such as their close, supportive environment. for its members, this social housing community is an asset, not a liability. for example, one participant stated: we … are an actual community … [we] know each other … and not just your neighbour next door but it could be two streets over … you’re inspiring each other … to do better as a community member in your community. that’s just huge. members’ lived experiences of belonging to an ‘actual community’ foster many energising knowledge practices directly tied to supporting youth school success. a favourite story was how good it feels to be seen as a ‘parent’ by community youth . one adult recounted, ‘so many kids in the community call me “mom”. there’s nothing feels any better’. members view their support of youth as a community-wide issue, which, in turn, inspires the whole community; in this case, the young person feels supported, while the adult becomes a second ‘mom’. youth described eating meals, hanging out and doing homework at the homes of neighbourhood ‘moms’. while the community’s support of youth success has histories rooted in place and community, such lived knowing is not stagnant. members identified how their knowledge practices evolve and expand to gather community dreams, resources and strengths. for instance, two centre staff members, who were raised in the community, infuse their neighbourhood’s history of lived knowing into their own leadership styles by centring the community’s knowledge, strengths and contributions. these staff members also ensure that the community centre belongs to community members, while simultaneously inviting local residents to keep living and growing their vision (sun knowledge practice). the creation of varied and accessible physical representations of community members’ lived knowing – for example, the wall-sized tree mural, a community pamphlet shared with neighbourhood households, a youth skit celebrating knowledge practices – fostered knowledge democracy by acknowledging, celebrating and sharing the power of the community’s lived knowing. these accessible representations invite engagements of sight, touch, sound and feel, the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 11 akin to the community’s lived knowledge practices. through par’s social justice commitments, the team did not psychologise, objectify or decontextualise community members. specifically, the seven core knowledge practices (i.e. research findings) are firmly rooted in the community’s contexts, experiences, histories and knowing. interconnected knowing the community’s knowledge practices are not just lived, they are also interconnected, overlapping and in tandem with one another. the community functions like a tree – a living community drawing from the canopy of its ecosystem of roots, trunk, leaves and pollen. for example, during a storytelling focus group, a member highlighted the vitality of community interconnectedness, saying ‘it’s kind of like each person in our community joins in a web … and then spreads out from there’. such interconnection gives life and energy to community support of youth’s education success. members’ interconnected knowledge practices highlight the rich multidimensionality of community knowing and engagement. schools that frame low-income youth and their communities as lacking the knowledge to support student success or schools that are primarily interested in official school knowledge strategies (e.g. attending parent–teacher nights) propagate forms of epistemological injustice. top–down, expert, logical, reductionist and problem-based knowledge approaches do not offer visibility or justice to communities’ rich, overlapping and flexible knowings. the tree’s energising, interconnected knowledge practices make this epistemicide explicit. through our par strengths-based, transformative approaches, our team, in partnership with the community, excavated and celebrated interconnected knowing’s range and fullness, including realities of injustice and adverse impacts. par’s open dialogue, storytelling as research method and the emphasis on metaphor invited this weaving of community members’ multiple ways of knowing. during storytelling events, community members collectively reflected on the past, clarifying, contextualising and adding to stories; they also connected the past to the present while imagining the future. interconnected knowings draw from multiple, complex social relationships, re-establishing, strengthening and growing relationships, thus igniting community strength and power. in everyday life, community members engage in multiple knowledge practices at once. youth and adults volunteering at the community centre’s after-school program simultaneously engage in knowledge practices of being there for themselves (roots), practising mutual growth (branches/leaves), helping youth access resources to thrive (pollen) and celebrating successes (apples). members’ interconnected knowing is often formed through their multiple roles – community centre staff, parent, child, neighbour. this flexible interplay between individuals’ many roles ignites possibilities for them to be true to themselves and to meaningfully support each other. these interconnections build collective capacity, supporting collaborative support of youth. for instance, a youth spoke of the power of a community centre girls’ social group. both youth and staff shared more of their life stories than they would in other contexts (trunk, compost, sun). these exchanges, in turn, fostered mutual learning (branches/leaves) and success (apples) in the young women’s lives; through these conversations, these youth made connections between disparate parts of their lives and amongst each other. like a tree, the community grows its life-enhancing knowledge practices via the interconnectedness of its collective roots, trunk, leaves and branches. the horizontal, democratic dialogue, fostered by the team’s par methods, storytelling, and metaphor (i.e. the tree), fostered community engagement. through this engagement, gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 12 members created a diverse, expansive and holistic vision of community knowing and strengths. as one member said of the research, ‘this is the first time we have a community vision that comes from the whole community … youth, families, volunteers, staff, other residents … we have not had that kind of input from the whole community before … this is important’ (sun). interconnected knowing enables new understandings of one’s community, including its members, strengths, constraints, relationships and possibilities for further transformation. interconnected knowing can be life-changing when put into action. for example, many members voiced fear of being reported to the governmental social housing agencies. one participant recalled a new canadian single-parent family who had been ‘keeping to themselves’ while adjusting to their new community but were facing imminent eviction. the ‘… family had a problem. they were gonna get evicted because they didn’t have their house cleaned up’. this participant described the community response: within two days a group of community members all got together, went down to her house, said, ‘look we know you’re in a bit of trouble. we can help’. she was hesitant at first but she said, ‘well, okay’ … they painted it, got it all straightened up for her, she lived there for many years …. her kids were … more playful with the other kids … and like she got to know who everybody was. in this story, the community weaves many knowledge practices. this participant celebrated the actively caring neighbours and the mother’s courage to trust ‘unknown’ residents during a crisis (apple). the mother then composted this crisis by embracing greater community connection. education happens in the community as well as in the school: members model community support and power for each other, energise themselves by sharing their best selves and values, and empower others, including youth. interconnected knowing ignites personal, family, community and educational transformations. participatory/power-in-relation knowing community support of youth’s school success is rooted in participatory, power-in-relation knowing. across their varied roles/groupings (e.g. staff, youth, gender, ethnicity, dis/ability), members’ energising practices highlight relational power and engagements that are mutually enhancing and co-creating. in contrast with hierarchical or authoritarian top–down power or power-over approaches, power-in-relation knowing reflects ‘a direct relationship, between a democratic form of life and how … we are able to realise our capacities as human beings’ (couldry 2019, p. 69). a member shared an example of mutual learning and contribution: … we’re a community that teaches one another, we have a lot to offer… there are so many brilliant and wonderful people here, there are people who are musicians, … artists … good academically … great mechanically … people here who have talent beyond talent. examples of democratic power-in-relation include youth studying together at the community centre as well as laughing, crying and socialising together as they navigate school challenges (trunk and compost). community stories of participatory/power-in-relation knowing often described mutual inspiration, such as members’ courage to offer each other what they have (resources, advice, time, affection, expertise), despite social–educational barriers/injustices. an example of powerin-relation knowing is a mom navigating the grey zone of help and harm, good and bad, specifically in relation to her son: ‘those people who have the worst names in the community the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 13 are the very people who are going out of their way to give my youth recyclables because they see my youth going around looking for recyclables’. this mom acknowledged individuals’ strengths amidst stigma. the community centre is a key site of shared power. one youth experienced shared power and voice with staff: ‘at the [community] centre, we have voice with the activities. they let us choose, unlike school, where teachers push their opinions on others and are biased.’ a community elder, linking school success and community engagement, said that the ‘community garden’ is the ‘best thing happening in this community’. members come freely, ‘chatting’ as ‘equals’ and sharing stories without the ‘pressure’ of presumed roles, expectations or reputations while their hands grow food. for many, the centre feels like ‘home’ and is a ‘hub’ for supporting youth success. both informal supports like chatting in the garden and formal ones (e.g. youth leadership programs and homework clubs) are imbued with forms of mutual power: community members define relationships which benefit them. energising power-in-relation knowledge practices that support youth success often occur in daily life’s minutiae. knowledge practices are commonly quiet, informal, organic and/or unrecognised. for example, one youth described how she and her boyfriend were allies; he ensures she gets up for school in the morning. knowledge practices are often not conferred epistemological value because they are not school sanctioned or professionally led interventions. for example, a community centre staff member commented that many youth successes and informal youth-supporting actions are not ‘counted’ by funders or schools because they cannot be measured or made to fit into a discrete timeframe. examples include youth’s power-in-relation knowledge practices of joking around together to release school stress or a parent and child quietly teaming up to negotiate barriers at school (root, trunk, branches/leaves, compost). yet, the community acknowledges and celebrates members’ informal, subtle, small-scale strengths and achievements. par’s horizontal storytelling supported participants to experience, recognise and value their already existing participatory, shared power. during storytelling, participants often had a palpable ‘taste’ of inclusive relational power being (re)membered and grown in the moment. one member exclaimed, ‘can you feel it too?’ referring to the shared energy being created in the room, and others responded, ‘yes!’ during another story, multiple members excitedly blurted out, ‘i was there too!’, ‘yeah, i remember that’ (while smiling/laughing) and ‘me too!’ these spontaneous exchanges expanded members’ shared community experience igniting greater co-created community power. power-in-relation knowledge practices invite a ‘rethinking of democracy as a mode of social organisation … providing recognition due to all human agents’ (couldry 2010, p. 69). shared power reflects an ‘ecology of knowledges’, whereby the ‘concrete outcomes intended or achieved by different knowledge practices’ (couldry 2010, p. 15) give ‘preference’ to ‘knowledge that guarantees the greatest level of participation to the social groups’ (de sousa santos 2007, p. 16). yet, community members sometimes distance themselves from energising knowledge practices for fear of being targeted, wrongly accused and/or reported by neighbours or community centre staff. therefore, knowledge practices rooted in mutual power are crucial amidst neo-liberal government surveillance tactics of monitoring families on social income support (aber & nieto 2000). such knowledge practices must be rooted in the community. while educational practices can benefit youth and their communities, residents’ stories show that community power is not grown via educational or professional practices that are one-way, inequitable, authoritarian, judgmental and/or binary relationships and thus add further layers of inequity to community members’ lives. in contrast, community members’ power-in-relation gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 14 knowledge practices provide fuel to cope with and/or ignite energy to resist social–educational injustices, such as surveillance, poverty, discrimination and low academic expectations. these knowledge practices are often hard won given the pressures to become more individualistic, rather than community minded, in the context of a neo-liberal, competitive marketplace and increasing government surveillance of social housing communities. discussion as a community-university par team, we engaged in horizontal dialogue, storytelling, metaphorical interpretations (i.e. the tree), the arts (i.e. the mural) and strengths-based perspectives. through these approaches, the team explored, represented and shared a social housing community’s energising and inspiring knowledge practices and canopy of knowing, particularly focused on their support of youth school success the team sought to reflect knowledge democracy’s aims of ‘intentionally linking values of justice, fairness and action to the process of [creating and] using knowledge’ (hall & tandon 2017, p. 13). knowledge democracy is vital to the school success of youth living in social housing communities. educational institutions fault low-income communities for their youth’s school struggles. research conducted on marginalised communities using theories and concepts that frame them (and their lives) in terms of lack, deficit or need fuel and perpetuate such blame. our democratic community-university partnership resisted the cognitive injustice of deficit discourse by opening restorative possibilities for a low-income community to gather, narrate and explore their knowledge practices. our research revealed that who is considered a valued and legitimate ‘knower’ of how to support youths’ high school success needs expansion; simultaneously, equitable distribution of that knowing is vital in order to contest and (re) configure existing educational hierarchies of knowledge. this transformation involves lowincome communities exuding proud, vocal ownership of their knowledge practices and strengths, while schools and universities justly acknowledge low-income communities’ significant, life-giving knowledge contributions to their youth’s success. our work participates in such necessary change. the power of inclusive, democratic participatory research nurtured by storytelling, ecological metaphor, strengths and the arts is generative. in their pluriverse of sensitivities to multiple (and emergent) ways of knowing and engagement, these methods highlighted, expanded and galvanised abundance in community members and the par team, particularly in relation to supporting youth school success. the research contains community stories, knowings, identities, connections, experiences, expressions and possibilities that are life supporting and life giving. this abundance energises community members’ support of youth success in school amidst the structural, material and epistemological injustices that they face. through these life-giving capacities, the team embodied and enacted par research’s commitment to social justice action, democratic change and knowledge democracy’s assertion that ‘knowledge is a powerful tool for taking action’ (hall & tandon, 2017, p. 13). our representations of the tree and canopy narratives highlight the life-giving merit of the community’s ways of knowing. the wall-sized mural of the community tree of knowledge and engagement in the community centre (see figure 1) visualises the community’s diverse and intergenerational power, strength, beauty and knowledge. the funny, poignant youth performance of community members’ knowledge practices during the community’s annual christmas dinner was an arts-based community experience of sharing, celebrating and gratitude giving, which reflected and expanded collective knowledge. the community the tree of community knowledge and engagement gateways: international journal of community research and engagement,, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 15 pamphlet, skit and publication will ignite diverse and broad dissemination of the community’s knowledge practices. the creation of the pamphlet, mural and skit engage community members in accessible ways via local knowledge and the arts. the present academic journal article speaks to academics, educators and community workers seeking to work in democratic partnership with local communities. via whatever means audiences learn about our research, the tree has practical implications. our par team encourages low-income communities and their allies to make time for storytelling as our research demonstrates its transformational power. stortelling emphasizes the value of taking the time to gather together as community members. our par team invites our multiple audiences – academics, practitioners, community members – to find their own ways of sharing stories, for example, with groups of varying demographic configurations and via different media, including analog and digital forms – and to explore their own models and metaphors. the tree is a suggestion, an inspiration, a metaphor, which our team invites other communities to reconfigure for their own contexts and stories. by using metaphor to demonstrate how community knowledge is akin to a tree’s ecosystem (e.g. roots, trunk), the team conveyed members’ knowledge practices as a living, interconnected whole. this concerted indwelling with trees enlivened the research via expansion of curiosity, playfulness, meaning-making and resonance. team members’ collective energy became particularly animated when talking through the ‘languages of trees’. ‘taking in’ the tree mural at the community centre ignited members’ conversations, wonder and response. the tree narrative and mural deepened connection to the power and wisdom of the community’s energising knowledge practices. recognition grew within the par team and the community that members are invaluable, everyday educational knowers and leaders because of their vital and ongoing youth-supporting knowledge practices. community knowledge practices grounded and inspired youth, supported them through tough school days and taught them what truly makes a positive difference in life (such as, being true to myself and putting my best foot forward, and being there for each other). to embody knowledge democracy, communities, high schools and universities need to accord recognition, merit and influence to community-based knowledge practices. educators and communities need to position communities’ energising knowledge practices as indispensable educational knowing and leadership in supporting youth’s school success. in situating knowledge practices within the interwoven three-part canopy (of lived, interconnected and participatory/power-in-relation knowings), a further critical and diverse knowledge reckoning occurs. these ways of knowing reflect a life-giving ontology that germinate and energise youth-supporting knowledge practices in one social housing community. in contrast to neo-liberal western hierarchies of knowledge in canadian high schools, which prioritise knowledges of competition, rationality, specialisation, individualism, efficiency, outcomes and standardisation, community members embody and share transformative educational narratives, through which schools and universities can better support democracy and social justice in education. concluding remarks in communicating the study’s findings, especially the use of the tree metaphor and quotes from community stories, we, the authors, drew from the community’s and par team’s ways of knowing and expression. we did so to give them recognition and to allow readers to experience the community’s energising impacts, further encouraging a knowledge reckoning within academic journals themselves. conventional knowledge shared in scholarship (e.g. instrumental, logical-linear, expert, or evidence and outcomes-based) does not best facilitate gardner and scarth gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, april 2020 16 dissemination of the knowledge democracy that our study’s process and findings show is important. how to best communicate the study’s findings emerged through the knowledge reckoning itself, specifically via the team’s ongoing sensitivities to listening, language, power, dialogue and respect for community members’ voices, the par approach and the team processes. as previously mentioned, social housing residents’ voices, stories and strengths have been marginalised and not given ‘just’ recognition by schools, scholars and/or community members themselves. community members’ knowledge practices were the most significant research ‘outcome’ of the study because of their power, energy and transformative potential. the team’s identification of knowledge practices ignited the creation of the tree, wall-sized mural, youth skit and pamphlet for the neighbourhood. these representations/disseminations occurred because the research was guided by the energy that the knowledge practices held for the team and the community. by continuing to engage in par’s positioning of the community members as knowers, experts and change agents after the research, community centre staff members used the knowledge practices to inform the centre’s strategic planning. youth embraced a leadership role, wanting to present the findings to their high school; meanwhile, staff spoke of inviting school personnel to come and see ‘what is happening’ in the community and to get to ‘know them better’, and a community member offered to carve a wooden sign with the tree image for the community centre. community members continue to organically grow their community power by acknowledging and celebrating their valuable knowledge practices. in turn, community members are relaying the importance of knowledge democracy in the context of supporting youth school success. as one member exclaimed, ‘we can show what we offer … what we do … we’re an important player’. research protocols guided by predetermined deliverables would have quelled members’ and the team’s energy around emergent knowing and expression. par ignited and transformed community knowing. our par team hopes that readers become curious to learn from the community’s wisdom and lived experiences as shared via our tree and canopy narratives. what might these knowledge practices mean for your community-university research partnerships and community-school relationships? how might our exploration of knowledge practices help you challenge neo-liberal educational practices that are not life supporting? how might such research, in turn, promote the high school success of socially/economically marginalised youth? acknowledgements thank you to par team members and the rabbittown community centre (contact lilly lush at lilly@rabbittown.ca), our community partners, for the privilege of sharing our story of research in this paper. thanks to youth artist, mikaela clark-gardner (mclarkgardner@ gmail.com), for the design and painting of the tree mural (figure 1). gratitude to memorial university’s sshrc/vice-president’s research grants award for the funding of this study. references aber, m & nieto, m 2000, ‘suggestions for the investigation of psychological wellness in the neighborhood context: toward a pluralistic neighborhood theory’, in d cicchetti, j rappaport, i sandler & r weissberg, eds, the promotion of wellness in children and adolescents, cwla press, washington dc, pp. 185–220. connelly, f & clandinin, d 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journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: kitamura, k., kinoshita, y., ito, k., kawabe, s., kobayashi, h., naya, h., sugimori, h., takata, y., teraguchi, m., baba, c. 2023. formation of a transdisciplinary community of practice in rural areas, with an interactive database of co-created knowledge: a case study in noto, japan. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8696 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based formation of a transdisciplinary community of practice in rural areas, with an interactive database of co-created knowledge: a case study in noto, japan kenji kitamura1, yasuko kinoshita2, koji ito3, sakiko kawabe4, hideki kobayashi2, haruka naya5, hiroaki sugimori6, yoshihiro takata2, manabu teraguchi7, chiharu baba8 1 otemon gakuin university, osaka, japan 2 kanazawa university, ishikawa, japan 3 gifu university, gifu, japan 4 national museum of japanese history, chiba, japan 5 haru design, ishikawa, japan 6 suzu city office, ishikawa, japan 7 noto town office, ishikawa, japan 8 former local vitalization cooperator, suzu city, ishikawa, japan corresponding author: kenji kitamura, k-kitamura@otemon.ac.jp doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8696 article history: received 29/06/2023; revised 06/11/2023; accepted 09/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract many rural areas suffer from severe depopulation, and the absence of a university is one reason for outmigration. where research and education are valued, however, such rural areas can attract scholars and students visiting from universities and other external institutions. scholarly outputs of research, such as research articles and project reports, particularly those from community-based research (cbr), can themselves become an asset for use by local communities. we consider that cbr can contribute to asset-based community development (abcd) when a transdisciplinary community of practice (tdcop) emerges and drives the processes of collaborative creation and use of the knowledge. a particularly critical mechanism, which is currently lacking, is to allow the local community to collect knowledge outputs and make them easily available to interested actors 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research received support from noto sdgs laboratory, noto future society sdgs research program, otemon gakuin university and jsps kakenhi grant number jp21k12348. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8696 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8696 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:k-kitamura@otemon.ac.jp https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8696 within and outside of the community. we assume that a core tool in this mechanism is an interactive database. it can be equipped with a user interface, allowing enjoyable and active searches, and possibly a mechanism by which users themselves can contribute to gradual development of the database. we formed a study group of researchers and practitioners to conduct a case study in the noto region of japan. we identified the existing assets in noto, including the knowledge created through cbr, and then collected and shared our own experiences and practices, as well as lessons learned from other regions in japan, to explore the principles of designing a database. a cbr database should not only be a static inventory of past research, but also capable of facilitating new cycles of knowledge co-creation. with a comprehensive and easily accessible inventory of knowledge in place, we conclude that there is high potential in enabling cbr itself to be an asset, which can help achieve abcd in rural communities. keywords asset-based community development; community-based research; transdisciplinary community of practice; database; noto introduction many rural communities around the world face shrinking populations and contracting economies. these communities typically have no university or institution of higher education (referred to generically as ‘university’ in this article), prompting local youth to move to cities for better educational and professional opportunities. a decreasing youth population makes it even less feasible for a university to be established there, which results in a difficult-to-break vicious cycle effect. the absence of a university also means that the local community is disadvantaged in terms of opportunities for community development. this is because a university has the potential to play the role of an anchor institution, which promotes socio-economic development in its host community through research, education and, more specifically, collaborative knowledge creation with local residents (drucker & goldstein 2007; o’farrell, hassan & hoole 2022). there are potential means, however, to revitalise such local communities, if existing local assets are identified and used purposefully. the concept of asset-based community development (abcd) can be applied to this endeavour, where the community actors map and mobilise their assets for community development (kretzmann & mcknight 1993; nel 2018). this article explores how the scholarly outputs of research, particularly those from community-based research (cbr), can themselves become an asset for use by local communities, and thereby help to address pressing issues, such as the wellbeing of the people. cbr is defined as a methodological approach to research that is equitable, collaborative and actionoriented, involving both community members and researchers (israel et al. 1998; minkler 2005; strand et al. 2003; takeda 2015). its research outputs include peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, blogs, newsletters and visual presentations. in this article, we argue that cbr can shed light on local assets, and cbr itself can become an asset if actively managed by the local community in partnership with others, such as researchers. as such, it is a realistic possibility, not just a conceptual idea, that cbr can become an asset for community development. the question then arises as to how that possibility can be realised. research towards identifying the actual processes for achieving abcd through cbr has only just begun. this study hopes to add to the emerging interest in how abcd and cbr can better support each other. specifically, it is an attempt to contribute to, or address, what these processes might constitute. in order for the outputs of cbr to become a usable and positive asset for the local community, we argue that two facilitating factors are needed: a transdisciplinary community of practice (tdcop) and a mechanism for the collaborative, accessible and action-oriented harnessing and sharing of research. kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 first, we assume that the question of whether or not a tdcop emerges and functions in the course of abcd is significant. community of practice describes a group of people who ‘share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (wenger, mcdermott & snyder 2002, p. 4). where researchers, possessing various kinds of expertise beyond their academic disciplines, alongside citizens, policy makers and others, pursue shared learning, this constitutes a tdcop, which co-creates purposeful knowledge (cundill, roux & parker 2015). where a tdcop is well moderated to connect diverse stakeholders, different bodies of knowledge can be translated and integrated to address complex problems in society (chapman & schott 2020; kitamura, nakagawa & sato 2018; sato, chabay & helgeson 2018). therefore, we regard knowledge co-creation as the process of local and external actors sharing diverse bodies of understandings, spanning traditional wisdom through to scientific discoveries, in forms that are useful for community development. second, for a tdcop to function, there need to be enabling mechanisms for collecting the knowledge outputs of cbr and facilitating their use. such mechanisms are not easy to build because knowledge management requires both expertise and manual labour, and incentives for this work are often insufficient (matsumoto 2019). our study explores the design of an online database, as the main mechanism by which access to and promotion of cbr can lead to abcd via the formation of a tdcop. we undertook a case study in the noto region, located in a rural part of japan, to identify design principles for a database, as well as mechanisms for promoting its use. this article reports on the key findings of our study and discusses the significance and future prospects for our study. noto region – the case study site the noto region lies on the noto peninsula in central-north japan (figure 1). it is a rural part of the country with a rapidly ageing and decreasing population. this trend is particularly severe in okunoto at the northern end of the peninsula. for example, the population of suzu city, the northernmost municipality in noto, was 13,700 in 2020, accounting for less than half of the population a half century earlier. approximately 50 percent of the current residents in the city are 65 years of age or older (suzu city 2021). one of the factors accounting for the ageing and decreasing population is the outmigration of the youth, who seek professional and higher educational opportunities in large cities elsewhere. noto does not have its own university, although it has a few branch-type facilities of universities headquartered elsewhere. on the one hand, therefore, the contraction on social-ecological-economic fronts in the noto region is undeniable. on the other hand, however, the noto region has a wealth of assets. during this study, we identified three types of assets that had particular relevance to cbr. the first were the traditional social-ecological systems of ‘satoyama and satoumi’, which are described as landscapes and seascapes with ‘a mosaic of different ecosystem types, including secondary forests, agricultural lands, irrigation ponds and grasslands, along with human settlements’ (duraiappah & nakamura 2012, p. 3). this feature led to the designation in 2011 of noto’s satoyama and satoumi as a site of globally important agricultural heritage systems (giahs) by the food and agriculture organization of the united nations. university students and researchers find academic and educational value in noto, largely due to this asset, and visits to noto for field studies are a consistent feature (takahashi 2018). the assets of noto’s satoyama and satoumi relate to food and other primary products, such as rice, vegetables, mushrooms, fish, shellfish and seaweed. the traditional production systems associated with these products contain and embody a wealth of local knowledge on what we now refer to as sustainability. this knowledge also ties in with cultural assets, including traditional festivals in each local community, the purpose of which is to express reverence and gratitude to the deities of nature (yiu 2014; yiu & nagata 2018). kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 preceding the giahs designation, in 2006 kanazawa university opened a branch, called the noto school, in suzu city, at the very tip of the peninsula. four to five researchers with doctorates have since been based at the school. they are residential researchers, who live in the local community and mediate processes of knowledge co-creation (nakamura & kitamura 2018; sato, chabay & helgeson 2018). kanazawa university, in collaboration with the local authorities, has offered a capacity development program at the noto school since 2007, targeting the local population, mainly in the age range from their 20s to 40s. the recurrent program, currently called the noto satoyama satoumi sdgs meister program, has provided hundreds of participants with opportunities to gain basic and practical knowledge that would be helpful for their livelihoods as well as for local development in noto. as of march 2023, a total of 232 people have successfully completed the program, which combines lectures, workshops, fieldwork and individual research projects. each participant selects their topic of research, generally related to their livelihoods, and must pass an oral exam at the end of the program. some of the areas covered in past figure 1. location of noto in japan kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 research projects that can be cited include topics on food and agriculture, charcoal production, tourism development based on natural and/or cultural values, mechanisms for reusing old vacant houses, and development of products, including handicrafts using local resources. the program targets not only the original residents of noto, but also people who have recently moved or returned to the noto area. for the latter group, the program supports their livelihood plans and network building. human and social capital accumulated through this kind of collaboration between local communities and a university can be regarded as a second type of asset in noto, built on the first assets, i.e. satoyama and satoumi (kitamura, utsunomiya & ito 2020). we consider the knowledge co-created with local residents, students and researchers as a third asset in noto. tangible outputs of such knowledge include academic papers and project reports. the knowledge created in the meister program should also be included in these assets. these three types of assets are already contributing to community development in noto to some extent. there are alumni of the meister program, for example, who have become entrepreneurs in agriculture, tourism, textiles and other handicrafts, as well as various kinds of specialist enterprises, after applying the knowledge gained from noto’s satoyama and satoumi. a particularly critical mechanism, which is currently lacking, is to allow the local community to collect knowledge outputs and make them easily available to interested actors within and outside the community. with a comprehensive and easily accessible inventory of knowledge in place, there would be high potential for furthering community development in noto. we believe that a core tool would be an interactive database, which could be equipped with a user interface, allowing enjoyable and active searches, and possibly a mechanism by which users themselves could contribute to gradual development of the database. study group as a small tdcop as our major means of collecting and analysing data on designing a database in noto, we formed a team, called the noto community-university collaboration (cuc) study group. its members included researchers based in or deeply engaged with noto and those knowledgeable about information science, as well as local government officials and practitioners with experience in cbr in noto. there are numerous concepts describing the same process used in a synonymous or near-synonymous context as cuc, including ‘university-community (or community-university) engagement’ (bell et al. 2021; chupp, fletcher & graulty 2021; sousa 2021), ‘university-community (or community-university) partnership(s)’ (fisher, fabricant & simmons 2004; hidayat & stoecker 2021; johnson butterfield & soska 2004; kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt 2013), and ‘higher education institutions (heis)-community partnership’ (plummer et al. 2022). we chose to place the community first, emphasising its initiating role. the reason for our using the word ‘collaboration’ is that it has a literal meaning of joint labour, which we consider is stronger and more action-oriented in terms of the nature of the relationships than other synonyms. with the above intentions, the noto cuc study group regarded itself as a facilitator for participatory learning and action (chambers 2007; kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt 2013). it aimed to resemble a tdcop in trialing a mechanism aimed at driving cycles of cbr, which would ultimately contribute to abcd. the study group had six online meetings from 2021 to 2022 (table 1), complemented by communication via email and other means of information gathering, to share our own relevant ongoing activities or projects relevant to the three types of assets in noto or database development. there was no ethical examination or approval required in this study because it was not targeting any specific human subject. regarding intellectural property rights, we made it clear that they should be protected with respect in all of the processes of our research. this was particularly important because our study aimed to promote kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 co-creation and use of knowledge, in which intellectual property rights of knowledge creators needed to be securely protected. in addition to mutual learning by the members of the study group, we learned from good practices presented by external guests. the second meeting had a guest lecturer from the municipal government of tsushima city. tsushima, like noto, is a rural region in japan, where a comprehensive package of cuc had been implemented in the past decade. the fifth meeting of the study group had another invited guest lecturer from the research institute for humanity and nature, who explained the purpose and design principles of the visual keyword map for global environmental studies. this is a highly interactive database, in which end-users can browse and choose from keywords of interest. by navigating through the options, users can use the system to find concise definitions, as well as sources of more detailed information about a particular keyword. the guest lecturers provided us with clues, tips and insights, as well as networking opportunities, to familiarise ourselves with other practitioners and their practices elsewhere, for possible future collaboration. table 1. meetings of the noto cuc study group no. date main topic(s) of discussion 1 01/09/2021 membership, self-introductions, purpose and agenda of the study group 2 27/10/2021 case study of cuc in tsushima, japan 3 16/11/2021 overview of databases and repositories, and the concept of successive disclosure of data 4 30/11/2021 case studies of public libraries and databases of the noto town, the society for noto studies, and the concept of ‘loose preservation’ for local tools and everyday objects 5 19/01/2022 case study of the visual keyword map for global environmental studies 6 04/02/2022 preliminary conclusion of the study group with the basic design principles of the proposed database the sixth author of this article had a facility for organising and producing graphic representations of information. she applied this skill to producing 18 sheets of graphic records to visually summarise the main points of discussion at meetings. one of these (figure 2), for example, summarises part of the guest lecture on tsushima, mentioning the local community itself as a valuable site for field study, through which university students from elsewhere could gain practical learning experience, while at the same time helping the host community to revitalise itself. the graphic records also view the tsushima studies forum as a regular event where local residents can learn about cbr projects ongoing in tsushima. we regard the graphic recording as possibly an effective tool for communication with a broad range of people. we also find much potential in graphic recording in the context of a tdcop, which will be discussed later. the study group also compiled a report in japanese in march 2022, showing its activities and practical findings ( ). a number of the active members of the study group decided to present the report in an academic format as a record of the knowledge gained: this article is the result of that process. the aim was to position our practical findings in the broader context of cuc, and to promote new cycles of collaboration. we found the themed volume of gateways journal highly compatible with our topic and goal. communication with the editors, as well as discussions at the writers’ online workshop organised by the editorial team, helped us in achieving clearer context for our article and higher relevance to the journal’s theme. kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 noto cuc study group 2022 key findings as its preliminary outcome, the study group found the following design principles for the proposed interactive database of cbr in noto. who will use the database? we identified three broad and approximate user categories: end users, content providers, and facilitators for use. with respect to the first category, the study group engaged in active debate as the fundamental design principles would depend largely on the definition of end users. it makes a substantial difference for design of a database, for example, if the choice is made to target either professional researchers or children in local schools as the main user category. at the end of the discussion, we concluded that the database should nevertheless target anyone interested in any studies related to noto, including students in local schools, participants and alumni of the noto satoyama satoumi sdgs meister program, and scholars and students visiting from universities outside of noto. this is a very broad and vague definition, which makes specification of the design principles somewhat complicated. that said, however, if the database aims to promote tdcop formation, such inclusiveness is an inevitable requirement. we regard this user diversity as one distinguishing feature of the community-based interactive database. a second user group we discussed is content providers: those who produce outputs of studies related to noto. researchers and students typically fall into this user category. such researchers and students can access several kinds of benefits from use of the interactive cbr database. a first benefit is that, as end users, figure 2. one of the series of 18 sheets of the study group’s graphic records , titled ‘the second meeting of the cuc study group on the new movements of cuc’ kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 they can search for existing knowledge from past studies, which is particularly important at the early stages of research. another benefit is that, as content providers, they can achieve exposure for their own outputs, such as project reports, published research articles and books, from their studies related to noto, among those interested in their theme. outputs included in the database will have an increased chance of being referred to by other people undertaking research on noto. particularly in the later stages of research, this will have important benefits in terms of facilitating improved impacts and use of their knowledge outputs. these two kinds of benefits indicate that there is an overlap between the first and second categories of the database users. the study group identified as a third user group those who design and facilitate situations involving use of the database. such facilitators include teachers and librarians affiliated with existing institutions, such as local high schools, local libraries and universities, which send students to noto for fieldwork sessions. when all the above categories of users are working together, multiple and potentially endless cycles of cbr can occur, from which everyone can benefit. what to include in the database? the study group then discussed how to define the types of information to include in the database. the working definition we reached is ‘materials related to noto and edited for a certain purpose’. while excluding arbitrary types of information, such as private posts on social media, our definition is still rather broad and vague. this reflects our position to be as inclusive as possible. the actual types of information contained in the database will be two-fold. one is meta-data simply accumulated in a database, like the items of information listed in a library catalogue, and the other is information published and made available through an interface with user-oriented design. with respect to the first type of information, the already existing outputs typically include books, journals and journal articles, and project reports. statistical data and conventional scientific academic articles will appear in the database, while outputs of cbr will also occupy an important part; for example, reports of the projects conducted by the noto satoyama satoumi sdgs meister program alumni, as well as those by university students on their field research, will constitute valuable contents in the database. other forms of outputs, such as video and census data, may also be included, provided that they are purposefully edited. where available, digital object identifiers (doi) and other types of access information will be included so that the end users can easily find the actual materials they are seeking. as a first step, the study group began in 2021 to make a list of meta data of past research outputs, which will be the basis of the proposed database. the tenth author of this article, who, as a university student, visited noto on fieldwork, later worked for the same university, dispatching students through the noto fieldwork programs. she subsequently took up residence in noto, where, as a local community member, she hosted university student visits and undertook the aforementioned listing work for research outputs. the results of the listing work proved to be a reminder of the vast outputs already in place pertaining to studies on noto. the work also exemplified the difficulties involved in deciding whether to include particular outputs that are in a grey zone of the criteria, such as articles in magazines. another challenge was to decide at what stage of development it would be appropriate to allow public access to, and use of, the database. the study group also considered it important to explore mutual linkages with existing databases, whereby the proposed database in noto would also function as a meta-level database. the knowledgebase of historical resources in institutes (khirin), provided by the national museum of japanese history, is an example of such a meta-level database providing added value to its users (goto 2019). interlinkages with local library catalogues might also be beneficial to users of all the databases in the new digital network. kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 another point which came up in the study group’s discussion was that raw data collected in cbr should be considered for inclusion, with proper accreditation, in the database, without waiting for publication of research articles or even data analysis, to accelerate open science and knowledge co-creation ( ). the second type of information in the database that we found important is that made available through the user interface, by which end users access and interact with the data stored therein. in particular, because the database targets broad user groups, including high-school students and other non-academics, we concluded that it should incorporate a fun-to-navigate and explore user-friendly design in the graphic interface, which will serve as the doorway to the database. the visual keyword map for global environmental studies, mentioned earlier, is an excellent example of a user interface design (kumazawa 2023) which achieves this. our use of the graphic records proved a useful trial run for incorporating visual materials of this type into the interface as a means to create a user-friendly entrance to the database. to illustrate this, non-academic users of the database may be less inclined to read highly technical academic papers. however, if a group of academics or specialists were interested in a particular topic, they could be encouraged to read and discuss such a paper and produce a graphic record illustrating its main points and interpretations of its relevance. this, in turn, would create an accessible entry point for a broader range of users. ideally, this graphic data would be linked to other sources in the database to facilitate synergies among various outputs of the cbr. how to maintain database sustainability? another important question was ‘how can the database be maintained so that it is sustainable?’ if the time, money and labour required to maintain the database were a burden to a particular person or organisation, less and less care would be invested in its maintenance and it would ultimately risk becoming a mere repository of dead data. it is therefore critically important to design mechanisms so that no single actor will shoulder an excessive burden. two elements render database maintenance sustainable in the long term. the first is technical: creating a database over-reliant on technical complexities for its administration and updating is inadvisable. nor should it rely on the work or presence of one particular person with a defined skillset. if the technical aspects are relatively simple to comprehend and negotiate for many actors, and if any modifications can be easily completed, this will contribute to the likelihood of the database being maintained properly over the long term. the issue of who should maintain the database leads to the second question of database sustainability. a well thought-out design for a mechanism whereby multiple user groups can participate in the database development and maintenance will be important. the third user group, mentioned earlier (facilitators), will play a particularly important role. this group includes librarians at local schools and public libraries, who support student and citizen learning. another important group includes researchers and practitioners who have built close relationships with local communities, such as some of the members of the study group, and can play the role of knowledge curators and translators in the database development. here it is relevant to invoke the concept of ‘loose preservation’, which is currently proposed in the field of museum collection management when dealing with everyday objects of historical and cultural value. because strict museum-based preservation has limitations in terms of the temporal and spatial extents possible, maintaining these objects by keeping them in use involving various actors outside museum settings in the society can be an effective alternative way of preservation (kawabe 2022). researchers and practitioners working together as a tdcop and maintaining the database through consistent use of its content will facilitate it becoming a sustainable and equitable mechanism for knowledge co-creation. kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 horii et al. 2019 how to actively ensure use of the database? constructing a database and ensuring that it is used are two distinct issues. in its capacity as a tool to help form and sustain a tdcop, in particular, the database should be in continuous use. in other words, if it exists merely as a static storage site, not much can be expected in terms of its impact on community development. the means employed to design and implement the mechanisms of database use are thus important factors. we considered the potential in noto of several means to ensure the active use of the database (table 2), while also referring to similar examples found elsewhere, including those from tsushima. table 2. means by which to ensure active use of the database and its potential when applied to noto means potential in noto recurrent learning programs high (precedent – noto satoyama satoumi sdgs meister program) lectures and workshops at local schools high hosting of facilitated fieldwork high research funding medium (possibly through the noto future society sdg research program) non-academic activities high (precedent – festivals of modern art) conferences for a broad range of participants high (precedent – society for noto satoyama satoumi studies) first, recurrent learning programs for capacity development are highly promising. there is a high level of potential for participants in the noto satoyama satoumi sdgs meister program to become the primary group of end users of the database. we are also aware of a wide age range of opportunities to learn about sustainability in local contexts, provided by the tsushima glocal university to both local and external participants, for example. lecture materials and videos are constantly being added to, and made available through the cbr database in tsushima. these recurrent programs can become important sources of new content for the database as the participants produce reports of their research projects. second, those providing lectures and workshops at local schools will certainly find the database useful. collaboration in school learning is already underway in noto, as it is in tsushima. in the case of the visual keyword map for global environmental studies, the researchers of the research institute for humanity and nature designed and implemented a workshop with local high school students, using the keyword map as the primary database (kumazawa & soda 2020). a greater degree of participation by teachers and librarians in what we regard as a tdcop has the potential to enrich student learning experiences using information accessed via searches of the database. third, the database can be used when hosting fieldwork by researchers and students of external universities. these visitors will benefit from the database as they will be able to access existing cbr outputs, as well as add their own subsequent outputs, to achieve greater impact for their research. visitors who are undertaking fieldwork are already a feature in noto, and they will undoubtedly become important potential users of the database. fourth, research funding is another way to promote use of the database. tsushima has a program of research funding, which invites research proposal applications to help local and external actors plan and implement collaborative studies in tsushima. as demonstrated by the example of tsushima, the amount kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 of funding available for each project does not need to be substantial for this to have a positive impact. the funding program also functions to visualise local issues of sustainability, prompting both external and local actors to contribute solutions. kanazawa university’s noto future society sdgs research program, operating in parallel with the meister program, has the potential to establish such a funding program. this would involve the researchers based at the noto school working together with fund recipients. fifth, the database can be used in activities that are not generally considered academic. an example in noto is the okunoto triennale. this is a large-scale modern arts festival held once every three years in suzu city. most of the participating artists come from outside to learn about the local assets of satoyama and satoumi in noto, and express what these inspire through the creation of artworks. the database could be an excellent means by which the artists could acquire an initial knowledge of noto’s natural and cultural environment. this would in turn be an example of using the cbr database for broader purposes and contexts, going beyond academic research to facilitate uses in various cultural and artistic activities in the local community, in collaboration with external actors, while integrating the cerebral and playful aspects of modern art. last, but not least, events involving diverse user groups have the potential to be an important means of facilitating increased access to the database. in the case of tsushima, the municipal government took the initiative and organised an annual conference, called ‘tsushima studies forum’, to bring together the local population, including the students of local schools, researchers and university students to share and further develop their studies on tsushima. we consider this process an example of tdcop formation, which also makes use of a database to collect outputs, as an asset for community development. the noto region has several citable activities with some similarities. among these, perhaps the highest potential lies in the society for noto satoyama satoumi studies. while its name may suggest an academic association, it is in fact an annual event, only partly resembling an academic conference. it is open to anyone who is interested, including local residents, practitioners and researchers, to gather together and listen to keynote lectures by invited guests, parallel sessions with oral and poster presentations, as well as small hands-on workshops to highlight the skills of the alumni of the meister program. if an increased budget and human and other resources become available, it will potentially become a core space of tdcop in noto, while the database could be used as an effective tool for knowledge co-creation. in summary, we consider the principles for promoting active use of the database to be unique and important in designing the cbr database. there is a japanese proverb, ‘making a buddha statue without putting a soul into it’, which has a similar meaning in english to ‘ploughing the field and forgetting the seeds’. even from the early stage of planning, it was important to picture situations in which the database would be used to promote tdcop formation and enhancement. the tdcop in turn can promote shared and active use of the database by designing an appropriate interface and providing opportunities for collaboration among diverse users, together with funding programs to create an asset for community development. by these combined mechanisms, the tdcop will be functionable, with participation open to diverse actors, and will also preclude overreliance on a person or persons with a particular skill set. conclusion this article reported the key findings of our study group pertaining to the local assets already in existence, and the principles for designing an interactive cbr database. taking into account the purpose and nature of the database, it should be inclusive in terms of the target users as well as the contents. we emphasised the importance of mechanisms to promote its active use, while making sure that it can be maintained in the long run. if all the conditions are met, the database and the accompanying mechanisms, should likely enable a tdcop to emerge and grow over time. kitamura et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 to our knowledge, there are few, if any, extant studies specifically focused on the database as a driving tool for tdcop formation. this article addresses this gap in terms of the practical matters involved. we conclude that cbr has high potential to be an important part of abcd, through the formation of a tdcop, with well-designed facilitation mechanisms in place. acknowledgements we are grateful to tsuyoshi maeda and terukazu kumazawa for sharing their insights and experiences; all the collaborators in our study group for their support; and philip brunton for his support in editing the manuscript. we also thank the editorial committee of gateways journal and guest editors for their helpful guidance, as well as the reviewer for their insightful comments. the process towards publication, including the writers’ workshop offered by gateways journal, was like a transdisciplinary community of practice, from which we learned a great deal. 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https://ouik.unu.edu/wp-content/uploads/road_to_giahs.pdf gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 17, no. 1 june 2024 © 2024 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: suchomska, j., goszczyński, w., laborgne, p., cámara-menoyo, c., pierce, a., wróblewski, m., porto de albuquerque, j., jirka, s. 2024. digital tools for knowledge exchange and sustainable public food procurement in community kindergartens: a case study of słupsk, poland. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8287 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 research article (peer reviewed) digital tools for knowledge exchange and sustainable public food procurement in community kindergartens: a case study of słupsk, poland joanna suchomska1,*, wojciech goszczyński2, pia laborgne3, carlos cámara-menoyo4, andrea pierce5, michał wróblewski2, joao porto de albuquerque6 and simon jirka7 1 department of human ecology, institute of sociology, nicolaus copernicus university 2 department of sociology of culture, institute of sociology, nicolaus copernicus university 3 karlsruhe transformation center for sustainability and cultural change (kat) and european institute for energy research (eifer), karlsruhe institute of technology (kit) 4 senior research software engineer, centre for interdisciplinary methodologies (cim), university of warwick 5 biden school of public policy & administration, university of delaware 6 deputy director of the urban big data centre, university of glasgow 7 52°north gmbh corresponding author: joanna suchomska, joanna.suchomska@umk.pl doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8287 article history: received 27/07/2022; revised 26/09/2023; accepted 21/01/2024; published 06/2024 abstract this article presents a case study on the experimental co-creation process of a digital platform supporting sustainable public food procurement (spfp) in public kindergartens in a medium-sized city in poland. the organisation of spfp requires a dedicated technological infrastructure to ensure the information flow among food producers, kindergarten employees, children and parents. to this end, a digital platform was designed to enable contact, assessment of food quality and food procurement environmental impact, and the communication of needs and problems among all the actors involved in the food procurement system for kindergartens. the article also declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the experiment was conducted as part of the ‘creating interfaces – building capacity for integrated governance at the food-water-energy-nexus in cities for the water project, which ran from 2018 to mid-2022. the project was funded within the framework of the sustainable global urban initiative (sugi) food-water-energy nexus program. this program was set up by the belmont forum and the joint programming initiative (jpi) urban europe and received funding from the european union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8287 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8287 mailto:joanna.suchomska@umk.pl https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8287 discusses the results of the field research and the method of urban living labs, highlighting the key challenges faced by those seeking to combine knowledge about food and the natural environment with public food procurement. the principal difficulties include the availability, accessibility and possible application of data on the environmental costs of food production, the individualisation of needs and motivations related to public catering in educational facilities, and the specific nature of the public sector responsible for public food procurement. keywords sustainable public food procurement (spfp); urban living labs (ull); knowledge co-creation; technology; innovation; community institutions; hybridisation of relationships introduction this article presents critical findings from a process of building sustainable public food procurement at a local level. this seemingly simple image of a balanced meal that we tried to create in a kindergarten canteen represents the complex social processes of mediation among food, technology, people and a local community. as a team of specialists in food studies, participatory action research, data gathering and visualisation, we used a digital platform of knowledge exchange to initiate discussion on the potential effects and possibilities of greening the public food procurement system in słupsk’s kindergartens. together with local residents and officials, we applied the ull method to develop a space for the collection and exchange of knowledge about food. the aim of this article was to present an analysis of the results of a social experiment conducted in two kindergartens in słupsk, a medium-sized city in poland, and to show the possibilities and limitations of using participatory processes, digital communication and knowledge sharing tools to create sustainable public food systems. sustainable public food procurement the theoretical axis for this article is underpinned by the concept of sustainable public food procurement (spfp). the european commission defines it as a process in which ‘public authorities seek to purchase goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life-cycle compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function which would otherwise be procured’ (https:// ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/versus_en.htm). this approach provides the public sector with an opportunity to find a balance between the economic efficiency of procurement and social and environmental sustainability when ordering and distributing goods such as food (morgan 2008; morley 2021). food plays a unique role in public procurement. it involves a critical procurement market for key institutions, such as kindergartens, schools, hospitals and other social institutions (kevin & morley 2014; schutter et al. 2021). if designed carefully (i.e. with a focus on sustainable innovation), this market could serve as one of the supporting elements of a sustainable food system on a local or even larger scale. this could be achieved with the support of local producers by considering non-economic factors in the procurement guidelines, such as a carbon footprint, production of greenhouse gases, and methods of food processing and transportation. spfp could also be used as an effective tool to build relationships among local authorities, food producers and consumers. raising social awareness of the linkages between food and the natural environment is another important aspect of spfp-based systems ( jones 2021). its potential lies in the fact that spfp extends beyond education and the activity of individual organisations. it would seek to be a catalyst for change by tapping into the market power of the public sector, and would be capable of shaping market behaviour through the size and stability of the procurement orders (kevin & morley 2016; knutsson & thomasson 2014). suchomska et al. 2 programme under grant agreement #730254, and the following national funding agencies. the u.s. national science foundation (nsf) funded this work under grant #1830933; the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) funded this work under grant #01uv1803a; the national science center (nsc) of poland funded this work under grant #umo-2017/25/z/hs6/03046 and grant agreement no. 2017/26/d/hs6/00869, and the executive agency for higher education, research, development and innovation (uefiscdi) of romania funded this work under grant #cofund-eranet-ensugi-creatinginterfaces. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/versus_en.htm https://ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/versus_en.htm broadly defined, spfp is a system of political tools intended to distribute sustainable food, support individual family farms, enable access to high-quality food to large groups of consumers, and implement sustainable development policies (parsons & barling 2022). it involves combining the top–down activities and development policies managed by public actors with the activities of individual farms, independent food processors and consumers. the important elements of spfp worth exploring are outlined below: 1. mode of governance: this is defined as a system of management and decision-making related to costs, decision-making methods, expected goals, and the division of responsibilities and roles. 2. production, consumption and procurement practices: these are related to the available food production and processing methods, consumer expectations and behaviour, as well as food distribution and transport networks. spfp systems are frequently based on short food-supply chains (sfsc) connecting local farmers and food processors with consumers, which have been recognised to offer an opportunity to develop sustainable local production and consumption (galli & brunori 2013). 3. procurement infrastructure: this requires legal standards, regulations, available technological solutions, warehousing, storage, transport, and processing capabilities to manage the food supply chain. the importance of this component extends beyond mere legislative or technical frameworks. spfp refers not only to the processing plants, warehouses and canteens, but also an ordering system and interactions between suppliers and consumers. this is where the formal infrastructure of the local procurement system blends, more or less, with the informal one that is more open and more focused on communication. 4. relationships among spfp actors: spfp systems attract entire constellations of social networks connecting food producers, consumers, and intermediaries such as local government authorities, public institutions and catering companies. points of contact may be varied. they may include direct contact between consumers and producers or be mediated by institutions responsible for the organisation of food procurement or distribution (e.g. school canteens). spfp is not limited to procurement and production procedures and technologies, but also has a social function. its very nature requires interaction between actors operating in different areas and at different levels of local communities. it creates an institutionalised relationship between rural and urban areas, and among producers, officials, consumers, institutions and citizens. according to adrian morley (2021), modern public procurement is essentially a democratically controlled process, and on the other hand is managed by the public sector, which moderates the relationship between production/supply and the social expectations of citizens. spfp engages actors and becomes a platform for the socially embedded processes of knowledge co-creation – through communities of practice – and is limited by the space of a given community (bleda & chicot 2020; uyarra et al. 2017; walker & brammer 2012 ). it provides an anchoring effect – a discussion space or a base that offers tools for social innovation governance (felt & fochler 2011). if it is to meet its objectives, spfp cannot focus solely on the technical aspects of food production, but must enable discourse and activate engagement mechanisms, co-creation of knowledge, control and more generally, social governance of change. it should also be in line with the broadly defined sustainable development goals, which, besides access to high-quality food, also call for increased transparency and greater influence of individuals on the food system (preuss 2009; prier et al. 2016). this is hardly a simple process. numerous problems have been highlighted regarding the legal framework, its impact on economic efficiency, the lack of management skills in the public sector, and its reluctance to take risks and implement actions beyond the existing, long-established and rather bureaucratic procedures (eikelboom et al. 2018; uyarra et al. 2014; wahlen et al. 2012). roberta sonnino has described suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20243 the challenges faced by spfp. while discussing the role of inclusivity, integrated character and the dynamics of the entire process, she also stresses the importance of its perception, organisational skills and the technological solutions behind the initiative (sonnino 2009; sonnino et al. 2014; sonino 2021). organisation and facilitation of knowledge flows are emerging as critical elements in ensuring the open character of spfp. given the aforementioned points, the tools used to manage such a network assume much significance. these tools can be based on norms and contracts, leaving no space for the activity of community members. they can also use more complex ways of building relationships among producers, network organisers and consumers. the growing popularity of digital technologies for spfp is an interesting phenomenon (lulio & kovacs 2014). the use of shopping platforms, social media, dedicated applications and instant messaging carries a new dissemination potential, as well as new challenges in connecting food and community with digital worlds (collison et al. 2019). besides organising deliveries and reducing the significance of physical distance, the digital nature of the new tools contributes to the distribution of knowledge about food, its origin, and the environmental impact of its production. the use of digital tools allows the food value chain to meet within one foodscape, while showing how food supply (food security) connects to other vital processes in the community. this further complicates the already complex sustainable food systems that connect the local (tacit) knowledge of food producers and processors with the knowledge of experts operating at different levels (fonte 2008; fonte & papadopoulos 2016). the latter is highlighted in the analyses of popular programs for distributing local food to school canteens. researchers highlight the importance of planning and personal relationships in the process of creating and consolidating spfp (triches et al. 2021), as well as improving food literacy regarding the importance of environmental and social costs in various types of food networks (mikkelsen 2020). spfp and its interfaces become particularly important in food procurement systems for educational institutions, such as schools and kindergartens. they are the places where the habits, interests and exclusions of parents, children, public institutions and entrepreneurs can mix, and where there is a strong focus on public policies to educate and develop good eating practices by linking the activities of farmers and food processors with those of children (dyg & mikkelsen 2017). on the other hand, kindergarten and school foodscapes can also be problematic (boni 2014; 2015; 2018; haden 2006; hansen & kristensen 2017, harman et al. 2018). they carry the element of power relations, pressure, and frequently one-sided communication, and promote class-based nutrition standards. in this sense, the kindergarten canteen is a complex space of power, interests and influence, which can strengthen the local food system but exclude those whose eating practices do not conform to socially acceptable standards (warin 2011). hence, given its potential, spfp is such a sensitive mechanism that it deserves attention. while offering the potential to localise activities, sustainable development goals, and community wellbeing (for example through its ability to strengthen local economic systems, choose solutions with the lowest environmental impact and improve the quality and value of the menu), it ventures beyond legal regulations to consciously shape the food flows, resources used, and relations among all actors involved (vicovaro et al. 2021). spfp emerges as a platform for social relations and dissemination of knowledge. this seemingly simple image of a balanced meal in a kindergarten canteen represents complex social processes of mediation among food, technology, people, and the local community. methodology this article analyses an experiment, a social innovation, within which we developed spfp-dedicated interfaces as part of socio-technological solutions. the experiment was conducted in słupsk, a mid-sized city suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20244 in poland, where two public kindergartens served as the testing ground. the strengthening of the relations and the visibility of interdependencies among the actors of the local food system was to be achieved through a socio-technological tool, the task being to create a conversation space for food producers, the city, kindergarten staff, parents and children in słupsk. the experiment was expected to trigger processes of knowledge co-creation concerning the sustainable impact of a locally functioning public food system. urban living lab as an experiment the complexity of spfp systems requires an approach that integrates knowledge and methods from different disciplines and actors involved in creating sustainable local food systems. such methods can be developed in the form of ulls, as an experimental governance approach (voytenko palgan et al. 2016). we used the ull method to conduct our experiment. according to mccormick and hartmann (2017), urban living labs can be considered both as an arena (geographically or institutionally bounded spaces), and as an approach for intentional collaborative experimentation by researchers, citizens, companies and local governments. consequently, they provide a methodology and an environment for social and technical innovations (veeckman et al. 2013). in practice, the ulls use collaborative activities to test new approaches to the identification of problems and potential solutions, based on the needs of stakeholders and dispersed knowledge of actors other than the principal urban institutions. consequently, the ulls provide a framework to conduct an open and experimental process, analyse its results, and use the latter to permanently change certain aspects of the city’s functioning (dańkowska et al. 2022). rather than focus specifically on defining the solutions, the ull process provides for their implementation on a micro-scale, evaluation and re-implementation, to enable the replication of the developed methods in other environments (steen & van bueren 2017). 1. the first stage in the ull process, the initiation phase, focuses on the diagnosis and definition of the problem or challenge at hand and coming up with an innovative idea on how to respond to it and engage the necessary stakeholders. 2. in the subsequent stages, the implementation and testing of the innovation, stakeholders co-create their vision and agree on the direction in which the solution will be developed and the manner of its implementation. they are also involved in the test implementation and the ultimate implementation of the innovation in the real environment. 3. the final stage of the ull process, the evaluation and replication planning, involves a joint evaluation of the functioning and implementation of the innovation to verify whether the intended aims and objectives have been achieved, how much the innovation has contributed to solving the original problem or challenge, and how it can be further developed. the ull approach does not determine the research techniques or tools used to maintain the involvement and cooperation of stakeholders, search for solutions, or manage and evaluate the implemented innovation. researchers using this approach have a lot of freedom in choosing tools to work with stakeholders. the ull method is part of an alternative research paradigm (the concept of ‘mode 2 science’, e.g. gibbons 2000; gustafsson 2013) that transforms the relationship between research and practice, science and society, making it the primary activity of researchers in establishing cooperative relationships to solve real-life problems. in this approach, researchers share the knowledge provision task with other stakeholders. besides observation and analysis, it is also their role to initiate and catalyse the process of knowledge co-creation among stakeholders to develop solutions together (laborgne et al. 2021). hence, the ull approach is based on a variety of workshop techniques complemented by research methods. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20245 the urban living lab in słupsk as mentioned earlier, the experiment was conducted in two public kindergartens in słupsk between 2019 and 2022. taking the general ull methodology as a starting point, the design of a digital tool to support food information exchange and food system management in słupsk’s kindergartens was a multi-stage process. its specific components are described in the diagram below (figure 1). figure 1. local experiment – the co-creation of the food knowledge exchange platform. source: developed by the authors. the initiation phase the process started with the build-up of general interest in the topic of sustainable food at słupsk’s educational institutions and the collection of data about the city’s food management system. then we conducted an online survey among parents of children from primary schools, kindergartens and nurseries. data was collected through a total of 192 questionnaires. the study was not representative. educational institutions, primarily city kindergartens and nurseries, helped us reach the respondents using their communication channels with parents. the survey aimed to explore the field and understand civic stakeholders’ needs and expectations regarding child nutrition in educational institutions. the implementation phase the next stage of the experiment was to design, test and evaluate a dedicated digital tool for the exchange of knowledge on food in kindergartens. using the ull approach, we managed to implement the following: 1. it tool design as part of workshop 1. this workshop was attended by 14 participants: three mothers, a representative from a non-governmental organisation (ngo), three representatives from suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20246 public nurseries, one representative from a public kindergarten, and six representatives from other public food procurement institutions. this workshop was organised to (a) identify the priorities related to the public food system and how to obtain information thereon, and (b) collect opinions about and determine the need for the information technology (it) tool to be designed as part of the project. the focus of the group activities facilitated during the workshop was on the following two objectives: (a) gain an in-depth understanding of the problems concerning food procurement in słupsk and (b) formulate a vision for the food system in słupsk, define the needs regarding food in the city, and develop solutions for the it tool that would address these needs. 2. the it tool testing involved a group of 14 parents from two public kindergartens, and the it tool evaluation was part of workshop 2, attended by 17 participants: two directors of public kindergartens, three representatives from the słupsk city hall and 12 parents. at this stage of the ull process, we worked closely with two public kindergartens interested in testing the digital tool in return for their experience-sharing concerning public food in their institutions, along with relevant inputs from the participating parents. this workshop enabled us to evaluate the it tool in terms of its usability, the validity of the collected data and technical solutions, and the tool’s possible future use in słupsk’s kindergartens and by parents. this workshop included group work (wherein the participants were given assignments to learn how to operate the it tool) and discussions on the participants’ takeaway lessons from the group assignments. the evaluation and replication planning phase besides the analysis and summary in the form of a report, the project results were processed using various workshop techniques. the process of the spfp local experiment in słupsk’s kindergartens concluded with a roundtable meeting. as the group of decision-making stakeholders, we discussed how the experience from our project and the constructed it tool could be employed for the development of the spfp policy in słupsk, and explored the possibility of permanent implementation of the it tool in słupsk’s kindergartens. our most important findings, based on the data collected during the experiment, are presented in the results section. results the initiation phase results: the diagnosis and expectations of the food systems in the kindergartens there are 20 public kindergartens in słupsk. they operate a loosely connected system of public food catering (each kindergarten orders and purchases food individually), which is financially and organisationally supported by the local authorities. all kindergartens but one have their own kitchens, so food is prepared on-site. though kindergartens have some freedom in the choice of the products they buy, in practice, they largely use the same providers. in most cases, the purchase is primarily determined by product availability, priceand nutritional value. local produce is served only rarely, while organic (certified) or fair-trade food is hardly ever available to the children. kindergartens do not buy food from supermarkets, preferring the local wholesale distributors. local products are most often purchased in spring and summer, in the form of fruits and juices from local orchards or fish directly purchased from local wholesalers. in 2015, some changes were attempted in słupsk’s kindergartens, as part of the educational project ‘fashion for healthy food’ (in polish: moda na zdrową żywność). the activities, implemented in collaboration with the słupsk city hall and kindergartens, aimed to promote local and organic food and the principles of healthy eating. part of the food-related practices introduced under this initiative continue to this day. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20247 communication with the parents in kindergartens and their contribution to the menu is limited to informal conversations with them or ideas provided by the parents and children during their daily interactions with the kindergarten staff. all specific dietary requirements for children are complied with. nevertheless, food is not a topic of a broader, deliberate and more organised debate with the parents; nor does it prompt a discussion about the role of local food in economic systems or the impact of the local food production and distribution system on the environment. the survey among the parents and the workshop meeting conducted during the initiation phase of the ull process helped us ascertain the specific character of attitudes and expectations regarding food in kindergartens. we were interested in issues related to the perceived quality of food in educational institutions, the importance of the criterion of local and organic food, and expectations regarding food access data in kindergartens. the data obtained in the process was to serve as the starting point for developing a technological solution to the environmental aspects of food in kindergartens and to make apparent the relevant linkages to the local food system. meals served to children in educational institutions were analysed in terms of characteristics sought by parents. the primary finding was that food in kindergartens was an important topic for parents: 81% of our respondents were interested in what children ate in kindergarten, and for 30%, whose children attended kindergarten, the quality of food was one of the most important aspects when choosing the facility. interestingly, a similar number of respondents indicated their intention to consider this aspect if they had access to such information. parents listed the menu, detailed meal composition, source of food products, and information about allergens as the most significant information for them about the food served in educational facilities (see figure 2 below). concerning expectations regarding food, parents indicated: • healthy (84% of responses), varied (65%) and tasty (52%) meals as the most important characteristics; • nutritious (37%) meals adapted to the child’s age (31%) as an important feature; and • organic (10%), and cheap meals prepared from local produce (7%) as the least important characteristics of food served in the kindergarten. for parents, food safety was a top priority. besides a small group of progressive parents, most respondents did not recognise the significance of aspects related to food sustainability. the ecological nature of food production, the environmental footprint, and fair profit sharing proved to be secondary to food safety, taste and nutritional value. this did not rule out space for the introduction of spfp mechanisms in the kindergartens studied. in the following questions, respondents were asked to refer to the characteristics expected of a food distribution system in the local community. the majority of respondents indicated that the produce used in the meals prepared in kindergartens should be organic (although not necessarily certified) and purchased locally. the requirement for improved quality of meals served in educational institutions was correlated with the quality of food products and their local origin. in other words, parents believed in improving the quality of nutrition in the facility attended by their children by increasing the nutritional value of food and relying on local produce. among the respondents convinced of the latter, most indicated healthy and varied meals as the most important characteristics. the problem diagnosed by both parents and kindergarten employees concerned the ways of communication and the transfer of food-related knowledge among kindergartens, parents and their children. representatives of kindergartens wanted parents to have better access to information about food served to children. from their viewpoint, greater data accessibility would strengthen the credibility of the institutions and perhaps also facilitate the adoption of these practices by children’s families. parents too had their expectations regarding food-related knowledge and communication in kindergartens (see figure 2). suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20248 figure 2. parents’ expectations regarding information about food served in educational institutions in słupsk. source: developed by the authors. concerning technology, the kindergartens included in the study already had various tools (websites, electronic communicators and specialist menu-making software). however, used principally for communication and knowledge exchange purposes, they were neither participatory nor a regular form of contact or information sharing. in most cases, kindergartens merely sent self-selected meal-related data. parents had only a limited influence on this system. this status quo seemed to result from the highly technical nature of the infrastructure used by the public entities and local government for knowledge and data management. another obstacle was the clear institutionalisation of the participation processes initiated by the city and the general problem of involving citizens in the processes of data collection and use of non-expert knowledge as this would reflect negatively on the public food procurement systems. technical and oriented towards control and regulation, they would leave no room for experimentation, and would engage a broader spectrum of actors in the process. what was needed was a two-way infrastructure, based on it solutions, for management of knowledge about the city, including issues related to food. however, the city hall, as the supervising body, realised the untapped potential of local producers. organisationally, public institutions seemed capable of introducing changes, although the translation of these potentials into actual facilitation and organisational management of the food distribution system was missing so far. the focus was on the impact of food and nutrition on children’s health, with educational activities structured around it. the communication and environmental impacts of food had not yet been given much voice to public food procurement. the implementation phase results: construction of the it tool to support spfp knowledge of the local public food system, tools and technology used by management for communication with stakeholders, and expectations concerning food in kindergartens enabled us to move to the implementation phase. this was a participation-oriented and workshop-based process (workshop 1) intended to co-design an it tool (online platform) for communication and knowledge exchange regarding sustainable food procurement for selected kindergartens. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20249 the results of workshop 1 indicated the needs of stakeholders regarding the local food system, which were similar to those reported by parents in the survey questionnaire. the participants of workshop 1 defined the following values (see figure 3) as important to the local food system: food must be healthy and of local origin, and information about it must be verifiable. access to local food emerged as an important aspect of supporting local producers and building a sense of local identity – ‘local food is good because it is ours’. however, doubts were raised about whether local food was indeed healthy and safe. hence, the participants felt the need to control local producers and operate a verification system to ensure the quality of local market products. access to healthy food and verification of this knowledge also emerged as key topics during workshop 1. easy access to this information was reported by respondents as another important aspect, on par with the possibility of children and parents assessing meals as a form of data verification. as kindergarten children were too young to assess a meal, parents could do it only by proxy. at best, parents could monitor the nutritional value of the meal, based on the declared ingredients. information about the ecological footprint of kindergarten food proved the least important. figure 3. collected needs related to food system operation in educational institutions determined by the participants in workshop 1. source: developed by the authors. at a particular stage in the workshop, the participants were asked to design a tool for communication and knowledge exchange on sustainable food in kindergartens. this phase was intended to define their expectations, technical functionalities and the scope of information provided by the it tool. the participants proposed that the latter should contain: • a database based on a map with information on local food and local food suppliers • information about the quality of food in local shops, markets and restaurants • information about places where people can leave food they do not need • data on food in kindergartens, e.g. menus, recipes, simple comparisons of food products (meat/fish/ vegetables/fruit) and the quantities used per week/month/year, and transparency of the supply chain • an educational section dedicated to healthy food • a smartphone app as potential users would expect this tool. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202410 the proposed functionalities of the it tool would provide sufficient space and potential for cocreating knowledge about the local food system. for example, the database of local producers would be supplemented by citizens and the producers themselves in assessing local food, initiating food-sharing processes among citizens, exchanging recipes and information on healthy eating between educational institutions and citizens, as well as among citizens themselves. using the collected data, the project partners responsible for the it solutions developed tools for the collection and visualisation of food data in słupsk’s kindergartens. a view of the data collection tool is shown in the graph below (figure 4). figure 4. menu in local kindergartens and the database of local producers. source: developed by the authors. the following functions were available to respond to the needs expressed by the stakeholders: • information about meals served in the kindergarten (menu). • detailed information about the main products used in the preparation of meals (weight of the dish and main ingredients, calories, allergens, photo of the meal, the amount of waste generated during meal preparation, and the origin of the food – essential for our project purposes – labelled as local, regional, domestic and from abroad). • scoring of meals served in the kindergarten by children and parents. • map of local food producers, local wholesalers, and shops where kindergartens procure products, with an option for parents to add new vendors. • option for parents to share their ideas for meals – by adding photos and recipes. the tool was supplemented by researchers with the relevant indices of sustainable food production and consumption, such as distance between the producer and the consumer, the local/national/global nature of the distribution network, the carbon and water footprints, and greenhouse gas emissions. the data-gathering component of the tool was based on a graphical interface presenting the meal and detailed information thereof, a map to locate the places where kindergartens purchase food products, a graphical summary of meal assessments by parents, an analytical part for the visualisation of the carbon and water footprint, and the presentation of summary data sets. the view of the visualisation data tool is shown in the graph below (figure 5). one of the most important elements of the tool for parents was the ability to assess the meals served in kindergartens. the resulting data was visualised using a simple system of star suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202411 and heart symbols. the ratings of parents and children, as well as the average scores, could be compared. the tool also gathered information about perceived healthiness, apart from the sustainability of the meal, to emphasise the most important data. figure 5. it tool for data visualisation – presentation of detailed data on the meal and its assessment. source: developed by the authors. the visualisation component (cámara-menoyo et al. 2022) displayed the data collected from the kindergartens and combined it with other data sources essential for sustainable community development, such as the water footprint and co2 emissions, based on the ingredients’ location. products were assigned a category based on their place of production, i.e. local, regional or national (poland), from europe or from outside europe. data collection proved to be a significant challenge and a difficult barrier to making the public food procurement system more aligned with sustainable community development. this was due to the difficulty in visualising the strong linkages between community, food and environment (more specifically), and how all of these are impacted by food choices. to make that possible, products were assigned a category based on their place of production: local, regional, domestic (polish), from europe, and from outside europe. consequently, the comparisons of products processed by kindergartens could serve as the springboard for a discussion about the introduction of more sustainable catering or educational material. attention was also paid to the meal scores, a vital element in making decisions about possible food changes. the first was related to the specificity of a food system. even relatively simple factors, such as food miles, carbon or water footprint, can turn out to be difficult to measure in practice. there was also a lack of knowledge and specific data on places of origin and exact food production, processing and transport methods. consequently, we were forced to rely on general data on global production. the experiment revealed that it was easiest to obtain this data from local or regional food producers, as both their attitude and manufacturing processes were more transparent. eventually, several direct food providers were tracked down, while the trail of other food suppliers, such as local food wholesale distributors, bakeries and shops, was quickly lost. there were also technical problems. during the testing phase, the participants pointed out that the data collection process was not automated. at the stage of tool construction and testing, it turned out that the new it solution did not communicate automatically with the current software used in kindergartens. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202412 consequently, most of the work on data had to be carried out manually. this was one of the key reasons why representatives of kindergartens showed limited interest in further development of the tool and its potential for permanent implementation. representatives of kindergartens felt uncomfortable about the tool being overtly open to feedback from parents and children. however, their major concern was that parents could seek changes in the child nutrition system, with which kindergartens may not be able to comply. certain limitations were pointed out, arising from compliance with the internal rules and central legal regulations on child nutrition. another potential risk related to the proposal to assess meals served in kindergartens. from the institutions’ perspective, it would be difficult to consider meal changes in response to negative assessments of the meals, due to their perceived nutritional value or children’s tastes. another challenge during the implementation phase was the involvement of local food system stakeholders in the processes of kindergartens. the task that the kindergartens and parents faced at the initiation stage (i.e. participation in the survey) was specific, set in time and not difficult. given the requirement of more advanced forms of cooperation and greater involvement (e.g. participation in workshops, ongoing work on tool testing and implementation), the stakeholders’ participation and enthusiasm in the process decreased. eventually, we continued our work with two public kindergartens and a dozen or so parents. this situation might have been due partially to the lack of a broader discussion of food in the city and in kindergartens, and the limited experience of the local community and institutions with similar practices. insufficient legitimacy of the process by the city authorities, who have an impact on decisions made by public kindergartens, was probably another negative factor. possibly, the very specificity of the process made it even more difficult for them to become more involved. its experimental nature, general framework and lack of any way of knowing the result may not have been a sufficiently transparent or comfortable decision-making structure for most people. although it covers the fundamental values of participation processes, based on developing solutions in cooperation with stakeholders and in response to their needs, possibilities and resources, it can be a challenge for local communities. the evaluation and replication of planning phase results: a potential for knowledge-based decision-making in spfp given the purpose of the experiment, it was important for us to evaluate the solutions for linking the community with food production and distribution. the data on the usability and functionality of the it tool and the possibility of the latter’s future use in kindergartens in słupsk was collected based on the it tool’s evaluation with participants during workshop 2 and the roundtable meeting. we thus obtained knowledge from the most important stakeholders in the experiment, who were directly involved in the activities and had an impact on decisions made by the city authorities and institutions. the evaluation phase of the ull process showed that parents were most interested in information from kindergartens (menus, detailed information about meals) and much less in the functionalities, allowing them to add information about local food producers or the meals prepared at home. this shows that users perceived the it tool explicitly as a means of obtaining information, rather than sharing the information themselves. initially, they focused on what constituted essential knowledge to them – the taste, quality and composition of the food. food safety and the health of children in kindergartens were their priorities. nevertheless, during the platform testing, we observed certain changes and the first signs of people focusing on the value of sustainable food systems. we thus assume that the hybridisation and creation of the spfp system will be a long-term and gradual process. the platform attracts parents by allowing them to control meals served to children in kindergartens and, therefore, a feeling of safety. parents start using the platform and, consequently, become involved in the cognitive process of knowledge exchange. the it platform turns into a forum where parents, kindergarten staff, officials and food producers can learn about the complexity of the food chain, regardless of their initial motivations. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202413 while the paramount status of knowledge about health and food safety remained beyond question, respondents highlighted the innovative input of the platform. some directly expressed their surprise at the presented data – for example, carbon dioxide emissions for specific products. some data worth presenting, according to the participants, concerned another environmental issue related to food – the amount of waste generated by leftovers after meals. this is an important factor, present in the public debate and consumer culture, to nclude in the tool. playing the role of a gatekeeper, relevant information for consumers, producers and the public sector could be used to raise awareness of the linkages between food and the environmental costs of its production. the stakeholders recognised the potential for this it tool in its possible future use. users highlighted the role of the tool in increasing knowledge and raising residents’ awareness of food, and the possibility of creating local knowledge as a bottom-up movement, by adding information about local producers. conclusion our experiment aimed to use a digital platform for knowledge exchange to initiate a discussion about the potential effects and possibilities of greening the public food procurement system in słupsk’s kindergartens. to this end, we applied the ull method to develop, together with local residents and officials, a space for the collection and exchange of knowledge about food. in the process, we identified primary challenges that may hinder or support the process of linking knowledge about food and the natural environment with the system of food ordering, preparation and distribution in public institutions: 1. sustainable food systems cannot be limited to ensuring good quality, nutritional value and safety of food (all of which were crucial according to the stakeholders in our experiment). however, beyond onboarding these aspects, sustainable food systems must also ensure sustainable management of available resources, minimise the environmental costs of food production, and support the local economy. a strong consumer focus exclusively on health-related issues reduces the spfp development potential and its impact on the local community. even though food safety is a good starting point to inspire citizen participation, it took a lot of effort to expand our activities to include other aspects of food. 2. our experiment showed the importance of technical design and data visualisation. the tool must be simple and user-friendly, and cannot generate an excessive workload for those responsible for platform management. most importantly, the collection of data on meals must be automated. graphic content also plays a crucial role. in our case, simple visualisations of environmental pollution made parents interested in food production costs, while photos of kindergarten meals inspired a discussion about food among parents. 3. another important conclusion from our experiment was the necessity of having local entities and people managing the local community truly involved in the decision-making processes. changes in the local system of sustainable food procurement must be preceded by work on the multilevel mode of community governance. the local community, its representatives and its institutions must join in the process. they should become an integral part of it and internalise the objectives of the activities. the most important conclusion from our experiment concerns the fragility of the proposed solutions. despite all limitations indicated at the individual stages of the process, what proved to be the biggest challenge was not the construction of the it tool or securing the involvement of the parents and kindergarten representatives, but the consolidation of the experiment and the attempt to extend it beyond the timeframe of the project. suchomska et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202414 engaging ngo and university activists, it specialists, kindergarten staff, city officials and parents in the experimentation and co-creation process required complex, time-consuming and costly interventions, such as organising a series of workshops, having several meetings and putting in place a robust data collection system, not to mention the translation of 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http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7791 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) when consensus falters, we co-create: attending to power in a practitioner/scholar partnership to amplify newcomer belonging anita h. fábos1, craig mortley2, hilda ramirez3 and adam saltsman4 1 professor and associate director, international development, community, and environment , department, clark university, worcester, massachusetts, usa 2 independent community advocate and graduate student arizona state university, tempe, arizona, usa 3 executive director, latino education institute, worcester state university, worcester, massachusetts, usa 4 assistant professor, urban studies department, director, urban action institute, worcester state university, worcester, massachusetts, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7791 article history: received 26/06/2021; revised 06/11/2021; accepted 10/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract this article interrogates the politics of belonging in scholar–practitioner collaborations by analysing and reflecting upon a group project that advocated for a more equitable approach to newcomer belonging and integration in an urban setting in the united states. the structure of our collaboration revealed unaddressed and unspoken dynamics that collectively reinforced boundaries and hierarchies in our group, despite a level of intentionality around democratic praxis among the community-engaged scholars who initially brought participants together. the article asks: how can we work towards a notion of belonging if we haven’t worked out an equitable approach within our own group where everyone, including newcomers, feels like they belong? the article relies on a methodology of critical reflexive dialogue between the four co-authors – two scholars and two practitioners – to analyse and reflect on the ways that power imbalances are bound up in questions of belonging and representation. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7791 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7791 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7791 keywords belonging; knowledge co-creation; white methods, code-switching; critical reflexive dialogue introduction in september 2019, eight community-based organisations involved in service provision to newcomer and migrant populations in worcester, two community-engaged scholars from worcester state university and clark university, and representatives of the city’s office of diversity and human rights came together to create the shared belonging worcester initiative. this group of scholars, practitioners, city officials and folk from migrant or newcomer backgrounds discussed questions of representation for newcomer communities and the organisations that represent, serve and advocate for them. the conveners were committed to uniting the diverse group to amplify the voices of these communities. the group shared a commitment to ideals of equity, participatory visioning and shared decision-making, which we brought to bear on planning a launch event for april 2020. however, the emerging pandemic shifted our conversation to a focus on the city’s covid-19 response. because of the pandemic, we planned a series of smaller engagements, widened the scope to address newcomer inclusion in support services planning and brought in additional representatives. we then experienced a lack of consensus around immediate outcomes and a lack of clarity on how to connect this new approach with overall goals. after six months of productive dialogue and planning, with an agenda and list of panels and keynotes drafted, our process stumbled shortly after we went remote in the early weeks of the pandemic. though we kept meeting virtually, the context had radically shifted and something within our collaboration had shifted too. over the subsequent weeks and months, it became clear that we had lost our way. this affected our interactive process and raised additional questions about academic/practitioner dynamics. two months after the group stopped meeting, two community collaborators and two scholars from the shared belonging initiative came together to reflect on this unsuccessful attempt at collaboration. we shared awareness or experience of exclusion within community-engaged work in worcester and found this to be an opportunity to reflect on our work together. those conversations yielded greater understanding of the challenges of collaboration and co-creation. while many projects broke down or transitioned during the upheaval and uncertainty of 2020, we co-authors realised that we could not blame covid for getting in the way, at least not entirely. rather, the pandemic had merely rendered more prominent a set of power imbalances that shot through the shared belonging collaboration. despite a level of intentionality around democratic praxis among the community-engaged scholars who initially brought participants together for the conversations that became shared belonging worcester, the process was full of unaddressed and unspoken dynamics that collectively reinforced boundaries and hierarchies. the irony was not lost on us. while we had mobilised to advocate a more equitable approach to newcomer belonging and integration, the structure of our collaboration appeared to have been doing the opposite. how could we have worked towards a notion of belonging if we had not worked out an equitable approach within our own group where everyone felt like they belonged? in this article, we interrogate the politics of belonging in scholar–practitioner collaborations, especially in work that is, itself, focused on the question of newcomer belonging, and on inclusion and exclusion in urban spaces. castañeda (2018, p. 126) locates the latter question within interactions between migrants and the cities where they are situated, considering the importance of immigration laws, employment opportunities, hierarchies of race and ethnicity, patterns of urban segregation, and the possibilities for political voice and participation, among other factors. while our shared belonging collaboration spoke to many of these points, we also considered the notion of belonging as constructed and political (yuval-davis 2011). as cities are spaces in flux that are produced and reproduced amidst unequal power relations, the questions of who is fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 on the margins, who has a voice at the table and who has access to urban resources suggest that belonging is a struggle that affects both non-citizens and citizens, albeit in different ways (ramírez et al. 2021). keeping this in mind, we frame our conversation in this article around ‘power’ in community-engaged scholarship and practice primarily in terms of the shared belonging project, but we do so with the broader context of worcester in mind, a city where many of us strive for an integrated and meaningful role for immigrant and refugee communities in co-creating the city as a dynamic space. we ask: which power relations were left unacknowledged or unaddressed initially in the shared belonging project, yet became increasingly visible as the context shifted around us? how did these relations constitute barriers that eventually threatened our process of co-production? both questions can help us untangle how to make sense of, and learn lessons from, collaborative processes that fall apart. to reflect on these ideas, we rely on a methodology of critical reflexive dialogue between us, the four co-authors, to analyse the ways that power imbalances are bound up in questions of belonging and representation. our discussion here weaves or braids (donald 2012) our diverse voices together, situating the micropolitics of our collaborative process within larger questions about how newcomers and those often portrayed as others struggle for belonging in an urban space. rather than attempting to blend our diverse voices into one, we allow our individual voices to be heard and, in so doing, illustrate that collaboration does not necessarily mean consensus. indeed, as our disparate voices emerge in this article, moments of both divergence and convergence will be seen. writing this provides us with the space to co-create in a way that calls into the conversation our own positionalities, deepening our analysis and pushing back against the power dynamics of ‘traditional’ academic writing that has, in its own way, articulated the boundaries of belonging when it comes to the work of intellectual production. consequently, our article does not strictly adhere to the common structure of academic articles. in the next section, we introduce our individual backgrounds to provide a glimpse of our divergent positionalities. we then provide an overview of the shared belonging project, including our motivations for coming together and how we organised the process between september 2019 and april 2020. following this, we outline the methodological approach on which our authors’ collective relied to reflect on, speak and write about shared belonging in its aftermath. we then address key themes on which we converged through multivocality and conclude by offering thoughts around the emergent practices that have come from our conversations and will serve as a guide for how we engage in collaborations in the future. these include ways of better attending to power so that there is more democratic ownership of the process from the beginning, and centring relationships and difference as part of our praxis. importantly, the ideas articulated below do not represent a consensus, but rather the divergent perspectives that we have braided together. the co-authors hilda: i came to the us at the age of ten from the dominican republic and grew up in new york city. a city where people from all backgrounds come together in public spaces. while people live in different neighborhoods, everyone seems accepting of each other and curious of each other’s norms and cultures. learning from each other, for example through the arts, and transcending boundaries is the daily way of life. that is my experience of belonging, a city that is not asking me to give up who i am but rather, is creating opportunities to bring people together through the built environment. in contrast, as a professional working for a mission to lift my latino community in worcester, i don’t feel we are respected. i find that in many ways, the leadership of this city does not want to change the negative perceptions it carries of anything that is different from a eurocentric american perspective. we need to get at the core of why some groups feel marginalized so that we can understand each other and rise above the differences. my language fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 and culture are really important to me and i appreciate when institutions are welcoming of other languages so it’s not just about one language. anita: i developed a profound interest in belonging stemming from my own experience and curiosity as the american-born child of mixed european immigrant parents. the complicated refugee story of my hungarian father was particularly influential in my learning about the nuances of otherness in different contexts. my marriage to a sudanese migrant in cairo attuned me to other experiences of inclusion and belonging, but also the intense white colonial privilege of my euro-american background. a subsequent blended household in london introduced me to parenting children of color as a white privileged woman, and new conversations about cosmopolitanism and multiple heritage identities influenced my understanding of ethnicity, race and belonging. my relocation to my small ‘hometown’ in massachusetts similarly reshaped my thinking about place, home, and identity, all of which emerged as questions related to dominant ideas of refugee and immigrant belonging in worcester. my own consistent feeling of ‘unbelonging’ stems from how i experience my visible whiteness, as well as my class privilege, as a mask for a more unsettled and mixed set of identities. craig: as an asylee from jamaica who came to the us seven years ago, i often feel little attachment to worcester, despite being relatively integrated into many aspects of life in the city and being actively engaged in advocacy work on several racial and social justice initiatives which have a refugee focus. being a person from a forced migration background, i often feel like i am in a state of constant transition. although i am a refugee practitioner, belonging is a concept that i struggle with even in my native jamaica because of my experiences of feeling rejection and isolation as a queer individual. although i enjoy more freedoms in relation to my queer identity in my resettled home, as a black queer man in the us, i continue to feel a sense of unbelonging within my caribbean diasporic community, us queer communties and among the various black/african american communities. in additon to experiencing exclusion because i am queer and an immigrant, as a black man living in the us i am impacted by racism and white supremacy culture which is deeply rooted in the dna of this country. despite fleeing jamaica in order to be free and to find a place where i belong, experiencing discrimination did not stop upon my arrival to the united states. i continue to face prejudice, harassment, social exclusion, rejection, homophobia, threats, violence, and alienation from my diasporic community and settled americans because of my immigration status, race and sexual orientation. my many intersecting identities such as my race and immigration status often result in me experiencing challenges finding a community in worcester where i am genuinely accepted. adam: i grew up in southern california as white and jewish, on the inside of dominant groups, but also aware of the edge. i often felt like i was in the position of having to strive to belong within the idea of a dominant group, which invokes one of the things about whiteness that really makes an impression on me, which is the way that whiteness often represents kind of the absence of cultural identity, it often represents the sacrifice of cultural or ethnic identity in exchange for power and property. i don’t live in worcester, but i work there. as an outsider, and also as a consequence of my race and class privilege, i have a level of freedom to pick and choose where and how i want to work without navigating my own historical relationships with the place and its communities. from a cultural perspective, i feel like a total outsider in this city, and i have not figured out the cultural codes to ‘fit in’, if that’s even a possibility. context: a shared belonging process in a diverse city to better understand our critical reflexive dialogue process, it is helpful to outline the shared belonging project that initially brought us together, starting with the city’s historical and social dynamics from which this project arose. worcester is a mid-sized, ethnically and racially diverse city in central massachusetts, usa. historical migration stories and the heritage identities of worcester’s residents are widely celebrated through museum exhibits, landmarks and media coverage (e.g. latinohistoryworcester.org). foreignfábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 born residents increasingly hail from central and latin america, africa and asia, with the largest groups of international migrants hailing from ghana, brazil and vietnam (goodman et al. 2015). the ethnic composition of worcester’s residents is also increasingly diverse – linguistically, culturally and in terms of religious practices – stemming from its appeal as a refugee resettlement locale. the ongoing transformation of worcester as a result of the movement of people to and through the city is reflected in the high percentage of households that speak english as an additional language (between 60 and 70 per cent by various estimates; see goodman et al. 2015), the rise of businesses and non-profit organisations founded by migrants, and the central role that migrants and people from migrant backgrounds play in the labour force, particularly in essential or frontline jobs. however, newer residents and residents of colour note that they have yet to see themselves represented or hold positions of power in key economic and political spaces (sami 2021). this extends to most city institutions, including the school committee, which was the subject of a federal voting rights lawsuit against the city, alleging discriminatory electoral processes (ebbert & toness 2021). a consequence of deep-seated historical inequality in the city became especially clear during the pandemic, with disproportionate impacts on the health, wellbeing and economic stability of black, indigenous and people of colour (bipoc) residents. the substantial lack of access to technology for virtual learning during the pandemic further highlighted the educational inequality experienced by the city’s black and brown communities. it was in this context that shared belonging emerged. adam and anita – the two participants who are white academics, though immigrant-adjacent – independently noted an absence of opportunity for immigrant and refugee groups to think collectively about their participation in city decision-making, and came up with the idea of convening what became the shared belonging group without initially consulting the rest of the participants. they invited a wide range of groups to the initial meeting, prioritising those led by people from refugee and immigrant backgrounds. they also included representatives of the city’s office of human rights, key program officers from what was, at the time of writing, the sole refugee resettlement agency, and several interested academic colleagues from worcester state and clark university, none of whom were from a refugee or immigrant background. in all, eight organisations regularly sent representatives to shared belonging worcester meetings. adam and anita began a process of what might be considered ‘facilitated advocacy’ (haylor & savage 2018, p. xi) to ‘bring together people situated across diverse spheres to engage with each other in ways that are equitable and that contribute to identifying ... changes in policy and practice’, for which the group could advocate. adam and anita set up monthly cross-organisational conversations with the eight groups, adhering to a process they believed would centre participants' voices and interests with a view towards crosssectoral collaboration. they designed meeting agendas that included time dedicated to sharing experiences and both large and small group work across the groups to identify and unpack obstacles and dilemmas shared by a range of communities and groups. adam and anita included polls, feedback ‘homework’ and other iterative techniques to hone in on shared ideas around which the groups might coalesce. adam and anita shared note-taking, agenda-setting and meeting-convening responsibilities, though at no time did they invite other members of the group to co-facilitate or take over the process of designing activities and capturing outputs of the process. the group met every month with the expressed goal of assembling an event together, a kind of nonacademic conference, but one that would bring together academics, practitioners and community members around the idea of belonging in worcester. through our discussions, a salient point on which many of us agreed was that the key to addressing patterns of exclusion was opening these spaces to people from different backgrounds and histories to create new patterns of shared belonging that would overlay the older bounded spaces of exclusion. therefore, our aim with the shared belonging worcester project was to create a platform to advocate for equity and inclusion of newcomer and migrant background communities in worcester. fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 the group met in person approximately five times between september 2019 and march 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic forced us to revert to remote planning. though we had agreed upon a clear agenda for our conference, the group decided that it no longer made sense for us to hold the event amidst the crisis unfolding before us. as the pandemic wore on, fewer participants attended the regular meetings, now on zoom, as many were pulled into meetings related to covid response work. the group decided to pivot and focus on how the city was responding to the pandemic and how well newcomers and other minoritised communities were represented in decision-making. an idea emerged to develop a survey tool to expand our circle of collaborators and gather data from practitioners about community representation in covid response discussions. even as we prepared our outreach strategy and survey, it was clear that our group dynamic had shifted, though at the time it was not clear why. before carrying out this new phase of the project in august 2020, participants came together one final time, agreed that our process had diverged from our initial agreed-upon goals, and that it was time to pause. a methodological approach to critical reflexive dialogue two months after the shared belonging project faltered, the four co-authors met in order to reflect on why our process had not worked out. this section outlines the process we followed to reflect on and co-create the knowledge that informs this article. in the spirit of deepening our understanding of why the larger shared belonging group was not able to continue its work, and with the hope of re-engaging with our initial objectives, we agreed to co-write this article. the methodology for this writing project aspires to create a set of conceptual frameworks that deal with collaboration and the co-creation of knowledge. our dialogic approach reflects scholar–practitioner collaborations that involve a substantial level of reflexivity and iterative dialogue for the purpose of cocreation and/or action. reflexivity refers to collaborators centring ways they are situated in systems of power and privilege and the relationship between these systems, the topic of research and the process of co-producing knowledge. critical reflexive dialogue involves exploring how intersectionalities relate to or impact the nature of collaboration, an emergent or evolving discussion of difference, and the problematising of relationships and power relations within our collaboration (collier & lawless 2016). while scholars often practise individual reflexivity, we assembled what rankl and colleagues (2021) describe as ‘team-based reflexivity’. they outline a process whereby collaborators structure time in their process for relationship building and iterative critical reflection on their research. similarly, we made an effort to merge collective and individual reflection iteratively. our approach takes the notion of team-based reflexivity a step further than the model offered by rankl and colleagues by operationalising our dialogue through joint writing. it has been important to us to keep all our voices centred on the project of writing, which is itself an aspect of co-creation. our efforts to weave multiple voices echo in some ways the practice of ‘braiding’ ( jimmy & andreotti 2019, which emphasises a breaking down of traditional academic methods and barriers between those who are typically thought of as ‘insiders’ and those considered ‘outsiders’ to the research process (donald 2012). braiding has been described as the weaving together of many strands of knowledge and the overlapping of theory, practice and ethics. like denzin and lincoln’s (1994) notion of bricolage, which stresses flexibility, plurality and reflexivity in the creation of theory, it centres the kinds of knowledge that emerge through relationality and collaboration, requiring ‘dedication to the reciprocating interpretive process and attentiveness to the insights that arise from it' (donald 2012, p. 544). while braiding evokes an image of coherent strands of knowledge intertwining and overlapping to form something stronger, jimmy and andreotti (2019, p. 21) are quick to assert that to braid is to uphold difference and acknowledge the contradictions and forms of historical and structural violence that intersect in co-creation. braiding is both full of possibility and a kind of productive uncertainty. fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 we decided to adopt a dialogic analysis to interrogate our understanding of the power relations at play among practitioners and scholars involved in the partnership. meeting monthly, we first decided on key dialogue questions to address power and knowledge creation in practitioner/researcher projects and to examine our work together. we then recorded our four conversations on the virtual platform zoom. our dialogues unfolded as organically as we could make them, with no preordained structures or rules, and no one facilitating the conversations. in this way, we were each able to come to the table to try to examine our own engagement with each other in frank and open ways, unpacking our own implicit assumptions and sharing our different analyses of how power showed up in the shared belonging worcester project at different levels and across different sets of relations. our dialogue revealed rich diversity in intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, rooted in our identities, personal and professional goals for community engagement, spaces of equity, participatory visioning, shared decision-making, and meaningful collaboration. after reading and reflecting on the transcripts of our dialogues as individuals and then as a group, we collectively crafted an outline to guide our co-writing and divided sections among us. finally, we generated a round of collective reflections on power, knowledge and belonging for the final analysis. weaving together our divergent voices as we wrote demonstrated that there were multiple ways of seeing and framing the shared belonging project. at times we made explicit which of us was writing, while at other times we opted for a collective voice. this interplay between a singular anonymous voice and multivocality enabled us to write together without forcing consensus, a strategy to protect the independence of each author's viewpoint and the importance of our diverse positionalities. the decision to write a research article precipitated a division of labour between those of us familiar with some of the scholarly debates on belonging and methodological inquiry. while we had collectively produced the key ideas around belonging and the role of power in our work and relationships, the academic partners ultimately drafted the sections that presented these ideas as part of ongoing academic debates. as redress, we pledged to write a complementary piece geared towards practitioners in the communities with whom we are involved. as the following sections show, we distil insights that are helpful for thinking about scholar-practitioner collaborations on newcomer experiences. emergent themes in our author dialogues in this section, we share salient points from the reflexive dialogic process, which enabled us to think together about the shared belonging project and approach to our writing. making belonging and power personal to work towards an analysis of the shared belonging worcester initiative, the four of us took time to reflect on how we each thought about belonging. to us, this was an important step in our collaboration, and it also provided insights into the nuances of the concept of belonging and the divergence in our own perceptions, differences rooted in our personal histories and positionalities. hilda: one experience of feeling isolated was when i was elected to serve on the worcester school committee. decision making in the committee is connected to trusting those who have been in office for generations and less about making decisions that impact the community of students and parents. decision making is done behind closed doors and by generations of the same people in power who have only their own lived experiences as a perspective but are making decisions for many who do not share the same perspective. this style of decision making was problematic for me as somebody who values transparency and is looking to improve the conditions for all students and families. it is for this reason that i become sceptical when anyone approaches me about coming together to work and co-create. the question of power is often distorted in these relationships. fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 craig: belonging for me as a black queer refugee is complicated to define but involves developing some shared habits and experiences with my diaspora community, queer communities and general society and is more than merely a legal status assigned as part of the integration process. as a person from a population that is often in motion, belonging for me is often viewed in contrast to my precarious state of feeling in limbo because of being forced to wait on a bureaucratic immigration system to grant me certain immigration privileges that are often equated to acceptance and belonging to my newly resettled home. this state of limbo and tenuous sense of belonging continue to persist even though i am no longer on the move. despite wanting to belong, several factors prevent me from feeling a sense of belonging in my resettled home. chief among these factors is the assumed requirement that i need to erase much of my identity and culture to fit in, which is a part of the forced assimilation into american society as a newcomer during the integration process. because of this, i often find myself in a constant struggle to resist being americanised to retain my cultural heritage. additionally, while i am in community with and experience similar marginalisation and oppression as black americans and lgbtq communities, the past trauma and lived experiences with injustice are different for me as an immigrant and sometimes conflict with feeling a sense of belonging to both communities. instead, what i often experience within many spaces of the worcester community is tokenism, which is often presented as inclusive but is heavily influenced by a culture of white supremacy. to this end, i am often intentional about not attaching myself to an american value system that does not truly represent inclusion. anita: my sense of a disconnect between the discourse around belonging and my experience of it has been profound. i think a lot about immigrant communities, about people who share a language or share a cultural background, but my experience was different. with parents who were from two very different backgrounds, i don’t know how they made their marriage work. when i think about ‘community’, i do so from the perspective of my parents and a first husband who was a sudanese muslim raised in cairo as an immigrant. i recall my mother disapproving of me for marrying a ‘foreigner’, although despite her attempt to claim a common european identity, she had to explain her ‘foreign’ husband to her parents too. this double standard, and my feelings of alienation from a communal identity, did not allow me to have that sense of belonging described by hilda– a dominican world that’s sort of self-contained and has its own logic and its own norms and language. i didn't feel like i had any of that, and i think it's probably one of the reasons that i spent so many years in egypt after my university studies in the us. adam: when i think about newcomer experiences and belonging, i think about power and identity. at the same time, i do not feel like i ever really belonged in the places where i lived, but that’s just in terms of my own internal compass, not related to my level of privilege in society. i have spent a lot of the last fifteen years living outside the united states, and for whatever reason i felt more of a sense of attachment in those other places, including in southeast asia and france, rather than in the united states. thinking about how craig and hilda were talking about ‘belonging’ versus how i think about it in my own life – or how anita was describing it, i realize that for me, belonging is primarily a social question – do i share a way of engaging with the world and ask the same questions as the people around me? do we relate in ways that make me feel understood? it hasn’t ever really been a question of power for me. that being said, my family's story is one of diaspora and movement, from eastern europe and the middle east to the united states. i grew up hearing stories about exclusion and the struggle to belong. but i also know there are stories in my family's history about marginalising others, preventing others from feeling a sense of belonging – we do not tell these. the silence around such moments is itself a form of power. ***** these perspectives embody multiple meanings for ‘belonging’, and rather than attempt to achieve consensus on a single definition, we choose here to let these different personal experiences and fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 understandings sit together as a way to illustrate heterogeneity within our knowledge construction work. we suggest that bringing this diversity of perceptions and experiences to the surface is important for collaboration in its own right. as the next section demonstrates, the various ways we view and feel belonging or exclusion suggest why the shared belonging project stalled. multivocal analysis: what went wrong with shared belonging academic control over the process of collaboration as outlined above, the two academics who were part of this process not only initiated the shared belonging project, inviting others to the table, but also retained control of the facilitation and note taking. our multiple points of privilege influenced the way we organised shared belonging, from our identification and recruitment of potential participants to the format and facilitation of group meetings themselves. meetings always took place at one of our academic institutions and during our work days; while we were careful to respect each other by alternating institutions, the process remained soundly within an academic space and time. co-authors noted a key moment when academic logic threatened the shared belonging process. as we sought to shift the focus to our covid response and newcomer representation, the idea of carrying out a community outreach survey emerged and adam and anita both offered to incorporate student interns to support this effort. for anita, ‘tensions emerged specifically because our interns had work that they needed to complete for their programs of study … [and] that maybe drove me to adopt activities that didn’t need to be done’. adam added that this moment felt like sliding unwittingly into archetypal academic roles and that ‘the survey idea was like a nail in the coffin of the process and a lot of people had a really negative reaction to it’. the authors recognise that such dynamics echo what zuberi and bonilla-silva (2008) call ‘white logic’, describing an entrenched pattern whereby social scientific research reinforces racial hierarchies through the privileging of white analytical frameworks, and because of white anxiety over the pervasiveness of white supremacy in scholarship. anita echoed this sentiment, noting: academic ways of knowing have been hard for me to jettison ... i found myself drawn back to my tried-and-true techniques of data capture, analysis, and evaluation only to recognize that these practices often excluded both my colleagues and other ways of knowing. within the shared belonging project, and in the partnership involved in producing this article, meetings were sites of contestation and, often, domination. this included an unspoken centring of whiteness and academia as the epistemic space in which deliberation and co-production take place. as leach and crichlow (2020, p. 125) suggest, this includes a grounding of process and action in the ‘privilege of the dominant group’ and a retention of power among such actors to decide who gets to be at the table. for craig, questions of how settler colonialism inheres within academic-community collaborations as a dominant way of knowing were pertinent, with knowledge production being particularly relevant here. a settler–colonialist dynamic has been a consistent theme historically in much community-engaged work between academics and non-academics and indigenous communities, surfacing in eurocentric narratives and practices that researchers may deploy (arvin, tuck & morrill 2013). when working with marginalised and minoritised communities, scholars must attend to the inherent historical links to oppression, control and dominance reflected in social patterns of hierarchy related to race, gender and other intersecting identities. to craig, the survey process seemed to evoke ‘the historical trauma of the extraction that happens oftentimes with these groups’. fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 despite some researchers’ intentions to create equity and flatten power dynamics, they can often be perceived as intellectual colonists who engage in extraction, treating practitioners and research partners as mere objects of their studies and sources of data. that is, it is never possible to erase the history (or presence) of oppressive scholar-community engagement which pervades the field. hilda reminded us that, at the time we set out to gather data for shared belonging, surveys were ‘everywhere!’ she continued: i went to every meeting [and] it was like this mentality of ‘let’s take care of the poor, let’s survey them to see what they need’, and that’s not what the community needed at the time. we don’t have to go survey people to know that through a pandemic people that are already vulnerable need services. that is exactly what i worry about: that there’s a tendency to over ask and then not deliver. just enough trust hilda’s comment above translates to another key dilemma co-authors identified in our reflections. part of the work of collaboration in research and action involves the establishment of trust among a variety of actors that have come together. scholars have referred to this as ‘just enough trust’ (hershberg & lykes 2012, p. 71). as noted, our shared belonging collective attempted to do this through democratic meeting practices and consensus building. for many of us, it initially felt like there was an adequate level of trust in our collaboration for deliberation, disagreement and reflection. we were able to plan out a full daylong conference from the ground up, coming up with each aspect of our work through these democratic principles. this was significant, perhaps, but partial:  craig: it was like we had blinders on in getting something done. it’s easy to put on a conference with just enough trust because it’s a one-off thing, and even if i don’t feel fully integrated in the process, i will stick with it if i have two or three points that i’m looking for. this suggests that the level of understanding and trust this group sought to establish might have been far from what participants felt among one another, despite being able to engage in the level of co-production involved in planning a single event. but when the context radically shifted in march 2020 as a result of covid-19 and further in summer 2020 when people across the us erupted in protest at the murder of unarmed black men and women by the police, we suddenly found ourselves aware that we lacked what it would take for us to pivot cohesively.  while none of us felt that the issue of newcomer belonging in worcester was any less important than it had been, the practitioners suddenly found themselves responding to a crisis, coordinating aid to communities and solving problems. meanwhile, as the numbers of covid-positive cases, hospitalisations and deaths continued to mount disproportionately among many of the same newcomers at the centre of our shared belonging concept, the realities of our unjust and unequal society took on new urgency. the group agreed our conference, as planned, did not fit this new environment. further, perhaps the goals that had brought us together initially no longer fit the immediate objectives, given the urgency of the moment. or perhaps the systemic inequities infiltrating the initiative made many participants feel that it was no longer worth the effort. code-switching the concept of code-switching and why it happens came up in our dialogues as well. it can be defined in multiple ways, but within the context of this process, it was described as a method to conform to the dominant culture by ‘adjusting one’s style of speech, appearance, behavior and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of others in exchange for fair treatment, quality service, and employment opportunities’ (mccluney et al. 2019: 2-3). this suggests that code-switching often occurs in spaces where fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 negative stereotypes run counter to what are considered ‘appropriate’ norms and behaviours for a specific environment. one of the manifestations of inequality in multi-racial, multi-ethnic collaborations in worcester, like in many places, is an uneven burden to code-switch. hilda, who has been active in the city for many years, found that ‘the responsibility has been on me to code switch and to come into a space and know it is a white space’. she described her impression of these spaces as ‘cold’ where ‘people don’t make eye contact’. she has grown so familiar with this culture that she ‘can name it’ when she sees it. ‘this is worcester, right?’ she noted that, with those in power being predominantly white, they set the culture ‘so the people [of colour] are forced to code switch, but if you don’t know how to code switch right you’re sitting there’ on the outside. there is no thought about getting to know each other, building trust and being clear about what is the expectation for all involved. anita jumped in and made the link to shared belonging: well, how can you co-create anything if there’s only unidirectional code switching going on, and it’s always the people with less power [having to code switch]? … why don’t we teach white youth how to code switch? why aren’t they learning how to code switch and being able to move in different spaces? … if we’re talking about shared belonging, i feel like the onus is really on the people with power to learn how to share. reflecting on our planning process, our collaborative space was always a university and the organisers of the discussion were always two white academics. even if our collaboration followed an avowedly democratic format explicitly focused on co-creation, how could we assume that non-academic participants and participants of colour were not code-switching to adapt to our predominantly white space? what is lost in terms of co-creation when participants do not feel ownership of the space? envisioning social transformation that would reduce the exclusion that manifests in codeswitching, hilda noted: so the real question and struggle is to have relationships in a community where we all can remain authentic. practicing inclusion and belonging starts with ourselves as a daily practice that requires a strong sense of self or leadership that is curious about engaging using cultural differences as a way of building trust. inequitable meeting spaces many of the dynamics described above have to do with how equitable a dialogue or meeting space is, i.e. the extent to which meeting spaces like ours contest and/or reproduce unjust power relations. white fragility (diangelo 2018) and the normalisation of white dominance in professional meeting spaces constitute a serious threat to open and equitable dialogue, among other harmful dynamics that reaffirm the status quo. as adam reflected:  what does it mean to be in a professional space where meetings are run in a certain way? this is a racialized question in a sense: what we address and what we leave unspoken and don’t bring to the center to discuss, what kind of dialogue we engage in, what kind of space there is to build relationships. all these are mediated by – can’t be divorced from the racialized dynamics of who is in that space.   these questions relate not only to shared belonging meetings, but also to the common practice of meetings, which is a significant part of our own professional lives, whether as practitioners or academics. in these spaces, ‘sometimes people come in and they want to work on their own agendas’, as hilda put it, ‘but they fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 don’t take the time to really process and think about why someone is quiet’, referring to a common reaction to the kind of unequal relations that characterise professional meetings. we began making connections between shared belonging, as a space where diverse positionalities converged on an unequal playing field, and the ways that meetings have often embodied inequality and exclusion for newcomers struggling to advocate for a place in worcester. in hilda’s words:  my reflection is that not everyone is in a shared understanding because of the isolation that we experience. and that comes into play in a lot of spaces in worcester–people just not having exposure from a lack of being in [diverse] spaces, not knowing how to make the connection to what [communities] are saying. in the history of the city, the city itself has physically divided people in the west side from the other neighborhoods.  with these words, hilda pointed to sets of social barriers that are a product of urban segregation and that often inhibit mutual understanding in meeting spaces. she identified one form of exclusion that many newcomers face in a city that is divided and where power has been entrenched for a long time. in this sense, the dynamics we produced and reproduced in our shared belonging process as we attempted to co-produce knowledge are interrelated to the spaces in worcester where newcomers encounter the practices of ‘othering’ and minoritisation. despite worcester being populated by such a large percentage of newcomers and people of colour, municipal government and other institutions of power continue to be unequally concentrated along racial and ethnic lines in the hands of white residents (ebbert & toness 2021). the kinds of microlevel race politics that play out in meetings dominated by the city’s power elites are part of what the shared belonging coalition organised to push back against, but as we reflected on our process, we realised that such dynamics might have infiltrated the politics of our collaboration in subtle ways that we did not name or address.   even when participants are able to have a united agenda and achieve mutual understanding, trust and a sense of equity remain crucial aspects of genuine co-creation. as hilda put it, challenging us to do better:  i go back to the process that we had, whether planning the conference or this conversation and [the work of ] writing [this article]. it’s always about grappling with the equity question: about how we can be more deliberate about structuring conversations so that they are equitable in that they’re not leaning towards power like in a university-community partnership. in the next section, we analyse our reflections on key practices in which shared belonging engaged or could have engaged to create more space to call out and address inequity and trust dilemmas, perhaps better enabling us to pivot our co-creation process as everything around us fell apart in the spring of 2020. emergent practices towards belonging and co-creation what practices for improving our efforts to collaborate and co-create in ways that foster a sense of belonging, democratic praxis and equity emerged from our process? central is the notion of relationshipbuilding – that is, establishing trust and a shared commitment to lay a foundation for working together beyond meeting agendas and planning. when we discussed alternate ways to organise shared belonging, we distilled a set of three emergent practices that we share here, offering reflection rather than prescription, recognising that other groups encounter a diversity of barriers and opportunities for democratic praxis. planning and engaging first, in terms of shared belonging’s inception, we concur that ownership of such a project must be democratic from the very early stages. as craig reflected, ‘a more inclusive process might [involve] making the invitation as open as possible [to] identify members who are more connected’ to the issues and who are fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 interested in being core players at the beginning of such a project. this could help to reduce the challenge of tokenism. in practice, this would involve finding creative ways to invite the people most affected by the problem, including inviting those who are not in leadership positions. craig noted that thinking early on about ‘what knowledge production [means], what constitutes data, what constitutes knowledge ... would probably help folks know that they are contributing to and creating knowledge’ as well. we also suggest making broader forms of knowledge production beyond academic practices more explicit. for example, we could discuss ways to use or co-create indigenous research methods in our shared projects. creating safe environments for everyone our shared learning includes some obvious ways to create welcoming and safe places to co-create, and some not so obvious. we now plan to rotate meetings between community spaces and academic spaces, and to unsettle issues of ‘academic time’ in running meetings, setting agendas and other assumptions that are built into academic practice. in addition to finding inclusive ways to facilitate meetings, we aim also to take turns facilitating meetings. regarding decisions around who to invite to the table, we now recognise the need to be more intentional in expanding the group. for academics, if we are involving students in our projects, we must make sure that other participants share in the decision to bring them in, and we must help students understand their responsibility to focus first on the process, not necessarily the outcomes of the project. for community leaders, hilda reminded us, ‘to speak about an issue, i will always speak to [folks from] that community to figure out how i can put that community in front to speak for themselves ... advocacy has to be from the community that is most affected.’ for either party, when we are invited to convene people, we should do so, but also be prepared to play a supporting role. however, we ought to avoid brokering situations where we are not sure whether the interests of the community are at the centre. while we should strive to widen participation, there are agendas at play for all actors. authentic listening to communities is hard work but absolutely needs to be done in order to get cocreation right. we must not only acknowledge power relations but openly talk about how to move forward when we get into difficult spaces, when we are not in agreement. hilda advocates a process whereby participants check in with their level of commitment and engagement, ‘having everybody go around and say “here’s why i’m coming to the table; this is what i’m hoping to get. and [we should] continue to do these”’ check-ins throughout, which would also facilitate building relationships. we want to err on the side of deliberate inclusion, along with deliberate discussion of aims and objectives, without necessarily having to align; we have learned much from using ‘braiding’ to address differences. it helps to acknowledge that consensus might not be possible, but we can still co-create a multi-pronged approach under a collaborative umbrella. working on systems change while embracing multivocality we acknowledge that timeframes and funding are often driven by the requirements of the funding environment and universities. we also see two levels of collaborative work that address the politics and power in grant making: on one level, scholars and practitioners could move deliberately at their own pace to build trust and communication; on another level they could advocate for appointing more people from migrant and refugee backgrounds to grant agencies, city agencies and universities to better represent the perspectives of grantees’ shared experience. defying the pressure to maximise efficiency, we suggest reserving time in meetings for relationshipbuilding, thus creating a foundation for working together that goes beyond preparing a meeting agenda, and instead involves planning a conference, which is also about trust and a sense of shared commitment. fábos, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202113 finally, we stress the need to move away from pushing for consensus at every turn. adam notes that it can be useful to reflect on ‘where we can be deliberate about not having consensus, and instead centring the fact that there are many [divergent] ways of thinking about issues like belonging or what it means to be excluded – not represented – and a wide range of reasons for being at the table.’ concluding thoughts this article’s analysis may serve as a caution to those embarking on practitioner-scholar collaborations. good intentions or, as janke (2013) writes, ‘increased community presence’, are woefully inadequate. as we have shown, the struggle to address oppression that sits in and beyond our collaborative spaces must also accompany a meaningful redistribution of the power to lead and own the work of co-producing knowledge if all participants are to feel they belong. to do this, we insist, requires a challenge to dominant ways of organising partnerships. sometimes, practitioner–scholar efforts to achieve consensus fail. but such failure is, as we have shown, generative and an important site for rebuilding and co-creation through acknowledgement, relationship building and democratic praxis. we may realise that consensus is not necessary – that it may even get in the way or mask forms of unjust hierarchy. instead, we argue, multivocality, difference and braiding represent a kind of collective power in their own right that we can use to push for transformative change. authors note fábos, mortley, ramirez, and saltsman contributed equally to the design and implementation of the study, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript. acknowledgments we would like to express our gratitude to the members of the worcester shared belonging working group including ayman abdelgadir, rasha ahmed, meg gallo, joanne jaber gauvin, alford green, derrick kollie, miriam nyante, jozefina lantz, katie larrivee, laura martinez, heather silber mohamed, lina nguyen, thu nguyen, anh vu sawyer, jayna turchek, and laura van engen. we thank the members of the authors’ collective convened by co-editors of the special issue, margaret post and morgan ruelle. margaret and morgan also provided guidance and support throughout the writing process. finally, we are grateful for the helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers and the steady hand of margaret malone on behalf of the gateways editorial committee. references arvin, m, tuck, e & morrill, a 2013, ‘decolonizing feminism: challenging connections between settler colonialism and 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https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978815667 https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732321998062 https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2021/10/22/worcester-city-council-candidate-thu-nguyen-nonbinary-community/8509706002/ https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2021/10/22/worcester-city-council-candidate-thu-nguyen-nonbinary-community/8509706002/ gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 2 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: bhatt, p., singh, m. 2023. partnership for change: a collaborative framework for transformative engagement with the communities. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–21. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8512 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) partnership for change: a collaborative framework for transformative engagement with the communities purva bhatt*, manju singh malaviya national institute of technology jaipur, india corresponding author: purva bhatt, purvabhatt7@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8512 article history: received 20/06/2023; revised 29/10/2023; accepted 05/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract institutes of knowledge production, namely higher educational institutes, interpret their role in relation to engagement in various forms. this article focuses on one such collaboration between academia and a local rural community intended to address their socioeconomic problems through a technological intervention based on an integrated community engagement and asset-based community development framework. whilst these collaborative partnerships between academic and community experts can themselves take a range of forms, this article argues that, to be effective, researchers have to deal with not just the practical issues of how the community participates in research, but also the sublime issues of knowledge and power, especially in places where colonial imprints still persist. thus, drawing on empirical examples from two significant initiatives of indian academia, namely the unnat bharat abhiyan and the rural action technology group, this article, through a project initiative, highlights the significance of the relational dimensions to these collaborative partnerships and the significance of equitable partnership-based trust, reciprocity and mutual respect using case study analysis. through ethnographic field experiences of a rural indian village, it identifies what could produce epistemically just dynamics, critical to achieving transformative engagement. in doing so, the article makes a case for meaningful ways in which the efforts of the higher education institutes could be interlinked with assets of the community to help restore them to thriving and resilient communities, as witnessed in the pre-colonial rule of india. it further offers researchers and community-engagement practitioners a pragmatic way forward, along with caveats for achieving such transformation. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8512 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8512 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:purvabhatt7@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8512 keywords community engagement; asset-based community development; knowledge; power; participation; decoloniality coloniality and antiquity of epistemic traditions – the indian context in various indian epistemological traditions, increased gravitas is laid on pramana, a valid source of knowledge acquisition and construal of reality (ganeri 2010). thus, in situations when one may struggle to find empirical evidence, seeking guidance from the oldest person in the village is considered valid pramana. their profound understanding of reality, gathered through their rich experience of the world, equips them to pass on their deep-rooted wisdom, astute acumen, erudition and anubhav in the form of locally contextual transgenerational knowledge. indian knowledge culture spans both horizontal and vertical realms. with wide geographical spans, coupled with its civilisation antiquity, india sustains a multifaceted tapestry of knowledge systems, each rooted in the local context and often expandable to wider milieus. such heterogeneous knowledge cultures are not limited to texts taught in academic temples, but reach far beyond, manifesting in the form of cultural assets (andersen & malone 2013), for example, community folklores, customs, mores, traditional knowledge, trans-generational knowledge, social sanctions, taboos, social incentives and mere everyday ways of living (bhatt & singh 2023). the resilient indian samaj throughout antiquity, india has maintained a distinct cultural identity, rooted in its community-centric way of life, placing increased gravitas on collective wellbeing and communal values. the cultural ethos of the land thus bolsters a social framework that prioritises the interdependence and welfare of communities, thus shaping various aspects of its social, political and economic structure, for example, familial and community relationships, governance structures and societal norms (balagangadhara 2012). further, the state evinces a deep reverence for the community’s autonomy by following restraint and abstaining from undue intervention in domains that justly lie within the authority of the community (hall & tandon 2017; paranjape 2017;). the underpinnings of such distribution of power and responsibility emanate from its philosophical tenets, which consider samaj, the community, a self-reliant and autonomous unit capable of leveraging its assets and knowledge of issues that affect it. this approach exemplifies a nuanced understanding and respect for the delicate equilibrium between the state and the autonomy of the community, thus cultivating an ecosystem that fosters community members as part of the knowledge episteme, thus allowing them to partner in knowledge production. it is based on the postulate that the members of the community are capable of harnessing their own inherent assets, for example, their trans-generational knowledge, wisdom and contextual understanding, when discerning their preferred interests, and they also prefer locally relevant solutions (balagangadhara 2012; nye 2006; rajan 2019). the samaj, referred to as the ‘republic of selves’ (paranjape 2017), thus were empowered to make informed decisions on matters relating to education, the environment, religion and welfare, and thus were able to shape their trajectory and elevate their overall well-being without being contingent on the state. nonetheless, during the colonial occupation in india, the activities that traditionally fell within the domain of the community, such as knowledge creation, were gradually encroached upon by the colonial state and the markets. this self-reliant community thus transferred a portion of its freedom to the state, bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 thereby making it dependent, vulnerable and contingent upon it (bhatt & singh 2023; movsesian 2017); tussman 1999. even post-independence, the continued top–down dispensation governance model systematically grabbed the community’s right to participate in knowledge production, further diminishing its autonomy over matters that concerned it. therefore, despite huge expenditure by the state on social justice, the policies proved to be poorly suited to addressing issues on the ground (korkut 2007), especially those of the marginalised. this represented true loss of political and social freedom, rendering the community submissive after having been inertly contingent on the state’s pity. the book, aaj bhi khare hai talab (mishra 2017), provides a comprehensive understanding of actionable traditional ecological knowledge locally possessed by various indian communities. it also elaborates on pre-independence indian water harvesting practices, communal construction and ownership of ponds by community members without being contingent upon the state. community members acknowledge that they all possess innate resources, i.e. intellectual prowess, collective wisdom and actionable knowledge, to proactively safeguard themselves against potential calamity. it was also considered their own responsibility to ensure their members’ well-being, eschewing reliance on any external aid. only during colonial rule did the state strategically usurp the community’s autonomy on such vital issues. in the indian state of mysore, for instance, after colonial domination, community members were ridiculed for their traditional knowledge and were subsequently discouraged from the communal construction of ponds. later, the colonial administration snatched ownership of such ponds from its people. consequently, the place, which had long been shielded against the ravages of famine and drought throughout its entire history, was subjected to an incessant series of debilitating water shortages and thus became dependent upon the state’s grace. in this way, a self-reliant community transferred a portion of their freedom to the state by forsaking their belief in their own knowledge, competencies and power to make judicial decisions. later, academics, policymakers and other community members recognised the urgency to reinstate the power of the communities usurped by the state by reverting power to them (rajan 2019). this article argues that the most effective way to correct such historical lapses is to reinstate the power of such communities by making them not just beneficiaries, but equitable partners. today india suffers from four-pronged epistemic discrimination. first are the colonial vestiges and their imprints in facile universalisation of academic discourse, which still today date forbids an alternative knowledge culture to permeate the academic temples. secondly, the hegemony of western scientific knowledge, wherein scientific nuisances are shelved as matters of esoteric conundrums requiring the scholarship of experts, thus remaining bereft from the pool of knowledge that the communities carry in the form of contextual experiences, alternative medicinal knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge and local techniques. thirdly, the corporatisation of knowledge, whereby knowledge is discriminated at the behest of benthamanian principles of cost–benefit analysis. such epistemology ignores cultural assets, such as rituals, stories, folklore, festivities and collective wisdom (andersen & malone 2013) as sources of knowledge, and lastly, as a consequence of the aforementioned concerns, an inculcation of inferiority and lack of belief in its own locally contextual knowledge systems. thus, any attempt towards sustainable change in indian communities needs to start with recognising epistemic follies that have led to severe immediate and long-term catastrophic effects. among other impacts, this reality has resulted in the existing academic postulates being questioned, discarded or replaced, with alternative knowledge receiving increased attention (singh, bhatt & singh 2021). furthermore, post covid society has witnessed the tumbling of archaic, antiquated structures, institutions and processes that have failed to solve complex issues of peace, hunger, extreme poverty, climate change and inequality, nudging the world community to rethink the philosophies and ideas that should guide humanity onwards (holland & malone 2019). bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 rectifying the epistemic follies – the present indian landscape due to the visible lapses caused by the inefficacy of present approaches, stakeholders are increasingly deliberating on the urgency of embracing alternative approaches that foster transformative impact by ensuring community participation in developmental processes, while recognising their unique strengths and resources. such a collaborative framework, based on mutual trust, respect and benefit, between academic institutions and rural communities will ensure that community knowledge is acknowledged, its opinions are heard and its needs are met, resulting in long-term sustainable solutions, both at global and local levels. against this background, the role of public institutions comes to the fore, as, historically, higher education institutions (heis) have functioned as archetypal community institutions by orienting their mission as per the community’s needs (iwanebel 2016; kempers 2002; sulanam, naily & iwanebel 2016). the ascendancy of colonialism, followed by neoliberalism and capitalism, has shaped a fundamental alteration in the way these institutions have altered their institutional reality (olssen & peters 2005). consequently, this has resulted in the corporatisation of higher education (giroux 2002; skrtic 1991), which has led to the disengagement of heis from the community, thereby moving away from the historical aim of such institutes of contributing knowledge to ensure community development and social justice (naily et al. 2023). thus heis, by returning to their historical aim of fulfilling their ‘public service’ mission, can co-generate knowledge, solutions and processes that generate socially just solutions for a sustainable future. in such a milieu, the policymakers of the government of india, in collaboration with various stakeholders, formulated two significant initiatives for their implementation at the level of higher educational institutes. the two initiatives, namely unnat bharat abhiyan (uba) and rural technology action group (rutag) are fundamentally enveloped in the core values and guiding principles of community engagement (ce) and asset-based community development (abcd) approach respectively (unnat bharat abhiyan n.d., rural technology action group (rutag), n.d.). these are construal upon the theoretical frameworks of engagement and asset-based approaches, which emphasise the deeper engagement of communities in developmental processes and recognise the inherent assets and competencies within their local contexts. unnat bharat abhiyan (uba) and the community engagement principles uba, a flagship program of the government of india, is an initiative that advances the vision for transformational change in rural development processes (bhatt et al. 2023). it is inspired by the spirit of hind swaraj, a concept discussed by mahatma gandhi for promoting self-reliant villages (gandhi 2014; heredia 1999). the program is essentially based on the principles of ce, and promotes the idea of creating both mutually respectful and mutually beneficial partnerships between heis and the local rural communities through varied modalities to identify development challenges, thereby developing appropriate solutions for accelerating sustainable growth. its intention is to create a virtuous cycle between rural communities and academia, whereby each benefit. the uba 2.0 in this way encourages heis to achieve the following goals (unnat bharat abhiyan n.d.): • to promote heis to enlarge their scope of work by encompassing development agenda within heis and developing their institutional capacities to promote rural development; • to reorient the social responsibilities of heis by promoting them to incorporate techniques and methods, such as stakeholder consultations; • to deliver to the rural communities in india increased access to the professional resources of heis, more particularly from science, engineering and technology, and management fields; • to enhance research efficiency and the social relevance of research by creating novel professions and innovative processes that sustain and engage the research outcomes; and bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 • to utilise the advances of science, society and the environment in fostering a renewed dialogue within the larger community. uba acknowledges the significance of meaningful participation by the community in the decisionmaking, planning, implementation and monitoring processes, and thus envisions a collaborative approach to enable subalterns to articulate and determine their local needs, aspirations and priorities. this is aimed at bolstering community empowerment and ownership, guaranteeing that developmental initiatives are contextually relevant and socially valid, and ensuring that the community is given back the autonomy that the state once usurped. this is the essence of what is known as communityengagement in higher education. rural technology action group (rutag) and the abcd approach the current rate of technological development is dominated by private technological corporations, which are essentially guided by the virtues of economies of scale and thus ignore the development of locally relevant technologies due to thin profit margins. this has led to an uneven distribution of technological diffusion in rural india. with such hindsight, rutag aims to balance the excessive domination of market-led technological development with local technology action groups that leverage local technological knowledge and assets in developing local technological solutions (saha & ravi 2019). this program, targeted at local rural development through technological interventions, conforms to the abcd paradigm in acknowledging and harnessing the existing assets of the rural community. rutag maps and leverages local knowledge, skills, competencies and resources through developing a robust network of partnerships, based on the values of cooperation, equality and mutual respect (singh, su & saha 2020). as an attempt to rectify past epistemic follies, the initiative acknowledges that communities have a pool of knowledge and assets that can propel their own development. like the abcd approach, rutag facilitates community members to proactively participate in knowledge co-construction, problem-solving, innovation, and designing and deploying appropriate technologies by tapping into the community’s combined wisdom, intellectual prowess and creative expression. this approach fosters self-reliance, resilience, community-driven solutions, and a sense of ownership of developmental processes, using local actionable knowledge and assets. rutag thus aims to do the following (saha & ravi 2019): • identify local rural technological knowledge and assets present in the villages, or have the potential to reach rural areas. • provide higher incomes or more employment to reduce the drudgery of the people in rural areas by leveraging village assets and knowledge. • collaborate with relevant r&d institutions on technology appropriate for local use, especially where there are problems with technology adoption in the villages. in this way, rutag points to problems and issues with the grassroots in rural and marginal areas, such as lack of livelihood generation in those areas, drudgery, unavailability of technology, need for enhancement of productivity or processes, and need for provision of higher incomes, knowledge generation and resource management. drawing insights from empirical examples from two prominent policy initiatives in indian academia— unnat bharat abhiyan (uba) and the rural action technology group (rutag)—this article delves into a collaboration between academia and the local rural community of khurampur village, aiming to address their socioeconomic challenges through a technological intervention grounded in an integrated community engagement and asset-based community development framework. the article examines field experiences bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 from khurampur village, identifying key factors conducive to establishing epistemically just dynamics, crucial for achieving transformative engagement. in doing so, it advocates for meaningful integration of hei efforts with the community’s assets. it aims to contribute to the revival of thriving and resilient communities reminiscent of pre-colonial india. the article presents a pragmatic pathway for researchers and community esngagement practitioners and analyses possible hiccups in navigating this transformative journey. conceptual framework the theoretical postulates of the ce and abcd approaches are exemplified in uba and rutag programs. the overlapping commonalities and distinct attributes that the two approaches embrace may effectively fill each’s lacunae. uba and rutag facilitate equitable partnerships among stakeholders, such as local communities, institutions of higher education and local governmental organisations, to establish rich collaborative networks that honour local knowledge and utilise existing assets and capacities (chinyowa, sirayi & mokuku 2016). by embracing such principles, this integrated framework aims to foster inclusive and locally driven development, ultimately contributing to the empowerment of community and altering the existing epistemology of knowledge by enriching it with alternate knowledge traditions. in hindsight, to leverage the benefits of both community engagement through uba and asset-based community development approaches through rutag, this integrated conceptual framework was applied by a premier technical institute of national importance in india, iit delhi, to engage with a local rural village, khurampur, on a technological intervention. this framework presents a methodology for facilitating community development by merging asset-based capacity development (rutag) and community engagement (uba) approaches. 1. understanding community context: this preliminary phase, common to both approaches, involves thoroughly understanding the rural community’s demographic and socioeconomic conditions, cultural nuances and environmental conditions. this analysis is imperative as it proffers a comprehensive understanding of the community’s distinctive attributes, essential for creating equitable partnerships. 2. identification of community needs: this phase of assessing community needs is an essential component of the ce approach. it includes identification of the pressing needs and impending challenges of the community through stakeholder consultations (tandon et al. 2016). it also involves evaluating the urgency and importance of various needs, in collaboration with the community members. this phase is crucial in ensuring that the development plan designed to address the community’s most critical needs is socially valid and relevant. 3. mapping of community assets: this phase involves recognising the community’s assets and resources, locating local networks, associations and institutions, and further mapping the skills, competencies and capabilities of community members. this asset-oriented abcd approach further complements ce efforts in assessing needs by placing increased gravitas on the local present knowledge, assets and resources, which can be used to co-create the development plan. 4. co-developing an integrated community development strategy: this phase essentially focuses on integrating ce and abcd strategies to design a comprehensive development plan that matches the community’s needs with its existing assets. it also involves stakeholders’ engagement to ensure the plan’s local relevance. 5. action and implementation of plan: implementation involves translating the community’s resources and assets into actionable knowledge for addressing the issue. it also encourages partnering with the community and other stakeholders, such as local self-help groups and non-governmental bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 organisations, to track progress and tailor the plan as required. the team incorporates this step to ensure that the development plan is effectively executed and is in line with evolving circumstances. 6. impact evaluation and feedback: this phase involves evaluating the validity and effectiveness of the proposed intervention at each of the levels and marking areas requiring change or improvement. it also involves disseminating findings to all stakeholders through various methods, as required. the impact assessment helps formulate generalised reflections to guide similar rural interventions. methodological approach the framework was fluid and iterative, which allowed for the recognition that engaging with the community would be a non-linear process of dealing with ever-evolving situations, necessitating a strategy that proposed open feedback loops and constant learning and unlearning. it conceded that the village community was not static and may have to change its needs and aspirations, thus mandating continuous evaluation, feedback and assessment (collinson & best 2019). it further allowed mending the strategy at each level by incorporating varied perceptions, new insights and emerging challenges. the cyclical approach of the hierarchical method focused on equitable relationships and partnerships with the community at all levels, as well as evaluation, impact assessment and dissemination (hall et al. 2016). it fostered proactive participation among the varied stakeholders, i.e. communities, institutes, figure 1. integrated conceptual framework bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 non-governmental organisations and practitioners, by acknowledging the unique assets and resources each possessed in their own field. based on the integrated postulates of abcd and ce, this participatory framework attempted to design a flexible and adaptive collaboration suited to the community’s changing needs (chinyowa, sirayi & mokuku 2016; tandon et al. 2016). it thus provided a pathway that enabled the community to identify their emergent needs, channel their assets into finding tailored solutions to their local challenges, and thus become a self-reliant community striking out towards sustainable development. this conceptual framework, based on ce and abcd approaches, offered a comprehensive and integrative methodology for introducing an intervention that would be adaptable to the community’s distinct context, needs and assets. in hindsight, iit delhi, under the uba and rutag program, provided an integrated conceptual framework for steering the community development initiative with the local rural community of khurampur village. this article adopts a robust case study analysis methodology with the intention of exploring and extracting knowledge through immersive ethnographic field experiences in khurampur, a rural indian village. this analytical approach was deemed suitable for analysing the intricate nuances inherent in the relational dimensions of an integrated framework. through an investigation in khurampur, the study aimed to identify factors contributing to establishing epistemically just dynamics, which are critical for achieving transformative engagement. the approach is also suited to a comprehensive analysis of the synergistic potential of partnerships between higher education institutions (heis) and communities in attaining shared goals. moreover, the in-depth examination of the intervention will provide valuable insights and practical guidance for researchers and engagement practitioners seeking to navigate a path towards meaningful and impactful community involvement, while highlighting essential considerations and potential caveats that must be addressed in this pursuit. ethical considerations for the study, stringent ethical considerations were paramount. respect for the autonomy, dignity and rights of the all stakeholders, especially the members of the khurampur village community, was upheld at all stages of the research. an informed consent was diligently obtained, including for the use of photographs, ensuring that all stakeholders fully understood the nature and purpose of the study before their involvement. further, confidentiality measures were rigorously applied to safeguard the privacy of all stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in this study. the research team was committed to ensuring that the study benefited the community and respected their cultural norms and local values. the team made constant efforts to establish transparent and bi-directional communication channels, fostering trust, mutual understanding and respect. weaving local and technological knowledge for transforming the rural pottery industry and preserving traditional craftsmanship – a case study of artisanal potters of khurampur village the community members of khurampur village reached out to the national cooperative union of india (ncui), the apex organisation of the indian cooperative movement, to engage iit delhi as a partner for change. under the flagship program of uba and rutag, iit expressed its willingness to collaborate with khurampur village to achieve common goals. ncui aims to foster a cooperative movement by mentoring and guiding the communities. ncui is already engaging with khurampur village in collaboration with another non-government organisation. this collaboration is unique as it incorporates values from both ce and abcd approaches. iit delhi engaged with this village under its ambit of rutag, but later decided bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 to include uba missions to embrace sustainable development of the community by fostering robust bonds through deeper engagement. this collaboration further aimed at encouraging multi-stakeholder partnerships between diverse partners, khurampur village community, iit delhi and ncui, to embrace the unique assets and resources each brought to the cohort. while the village members had their own distinct knowledge, competencies and experiences, ncui had rich experience in building bridges in the village based on trust, cooperation and mutual understanding. iit delhi furthered that academic prowess by leveraging existing assets to achieve sustainable outcomes. khurampur village: context and dynamics villages are wrongly assumed to be monolithic blocs, but they have their own vibrancy, context and localised knowledge that the village community members may embody (andersen & malone 2013; saha & ravi 2019). the structure of khurampur village is multifaceted. it comprises several complex institutions, cultural associations and socioeconomic systems. with such a background, any attempt to understand the village, its issues, needs, capacities and strengths without consulting its stakeholders would be in vain. therefore, a team consulted most of the stakeholders in the village, for example, national rural livelihood mission (nrlm) workers, village leaders, school principals and local artisans to assess the present state of khurampur and its future possibilities. the team also developed a plan based on shortand long-term needs assessment, existing assets, and future scope for local capacity development. identification of needs and mapping the assets pottery making is a traditional artisan craft in the village of khurampur for making clay artifacts but, most importantly, earthen pots. the rural pottery industry is highly energy-intensive, and thus most of the rural potters are contingent upon the traditional kilns that are highly polluting and energy inefficient.  figure 2. pottery artefacts by the village artisans rural industrialisation has enabled an overhaul of rural india through local employment generation and cessation of migration, thus making villages self-sustainable. technology and, therefore, technological institutes play a pivotal role in embracing such transformation. technological interventions or downsizing a technology to suit the rural context can reduce costs and improve productivity and the quality of the products (ravi, dhar & kohli 2007). pottery art in india, as a cultural asset, dates back several thousand years. according to archaeological evidence, pottery making in india may date back to the indus valley civilization, which thrived in approximately 2500 bce. various cultures have enriched this artisanal craft through generations of artisans over the centuries. bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 nonetheless, the village of khurampur was witnessing a lack of involvement by the present generation in the pottery-making business due to its reducing profitability for the village artisans. the footprints of migration and change of profession were visible in the present generation of sculptors, locally termed prajapatis, who were willing to leave this occupation for alternative jobs. however, pottery making still offers a potential source of income generation due to its constant appeal in the urban markets. however, pottery is an energy-intensive technology. like khurampur, most rural villages are dependent upon traditional pottery kilns, which are energy inefficient, so after stakeholder consultations, it was concluded that the already available high-efficiency pottery kilns used in the organised sector were unaffordable for the small-scale rural pottery sector. secondly, there was a lack of interest by private technology companies to invest in such low-cost, high-energy and cost-efficient pottery kilns as they would not promise returns to the economy. thus, there was a need to improve the traditional pottery kilns used by the khurampur village artisans by making them efficient and affordable. this was seen as scope for intervention by iit to co-design and adjust existing local kiln technology to meet the community’s needs. below are the major setbacks to using traditional kilns (ravi, dhar & kohli 2007). • the smoke from the furnace leads to objections from other families in the potters’ neighbourhood. • low firing temperatures lead to poor ware strength, colouration and quality, leading to low product prices and, thus, less income. • low furnace efficiency leads to high fuel consumption. action – implementing the technological intervention after several rounds of stakeholder consultations and energy audits, the team co-designed and developed an energy-efficient and less polluting kiln for the potters of khurampur. the team also carried out an energy audit of two up-draught kilns in the field to locate the possible causes of their low energy utilisation. based on this assessment by the team of professors at iit delhi, along with the traditionally contextual knowledge of the community members, an improved kiln was developed for the potters of khurampur. the improved kiln led to around 50 percent savings in fuel (ravi, dhar & kohli 2007). further, it resulted in a reduction in the capital cost of construction, and was thus more efficient and less polluting. iteration–impact assessment, evaluation and feedback after installing the redeveloped energy-efficient pottery kiln in khurampur, the team conducted an impact assessment in the village after six months to assess the post-machine installation. however, they faced a challenge. they were informed that the newly developed potters’ kilns had been damaged at the installation site by some individuals from the village. while the de jure responsibility for a linear communitydevelopment framework would seem to have halted with the design, development and installation of this technological artifact, adhering to the iterative and integrated framework, the academic team de facto assumed their responsibility as partners with the village community, to ensure smooth adaption to, and operation of, this co-developed technological artifact. in view of this, the team decided to conduct another round of stakeholder consultation to gauge their concerns and perceptions of these issues.  to ensure inclusive participation, the team involved all internal stakeholders from the village community and a few external ones, such as the ncui community practitioners. the stakeholders came from various backgrounds, statuses and classes, and were engaged in the discussion to ensure a range of viewpoints. they included the village head, sarpanch, village elders, local leaders, potters and their families. all participated in the stakeholder consultation process with a six-member team of academics from iit delhi. the iit delhi team also engaged and collaborated with the ncui members. the intention behind this collaboration was to draw on the expertise of the ncui, which has extensive experience working on the ground with bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 figure 3. schematic diagram of traditional potter’s kiln figure 4. raw material used for fuel by the potter community figure 5. stakeholder consultation with the potter community figure 6. inspection of newly developed kilns at the installation site bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 the rural community, to gauge their perceptions and practices. as the issue at hand was not one requiring a technological solution, but rather a human solution, the team felt that partnering with community practitioners like ncui, who had a knack for building bridges in the village and fostering participation, would be useful. after the stakeholder consultation, the following points were identified as the hiccups that were leading to an inadequate adaption of the new, improved furnaces by the rural community: • village politics and dominant power. the team ascertained that the damage done to the new kilns could be due to the kilns’ location. as the kilns were installed on common village land (panchyat land), this could have brought resistance from other groups, especially those not involved in the pottery business. • financial constraints to building a shelter. the potter family wanted monetary resources to build a shelter around the premises so that such incidents (breaking the kilns) were not repeated. the shelter would also help them to store and secure their pottery artifacts within the same premises.  • human technology integration. the team gauged feedback from the potters related to machine usability. it was found that, despite the new kilns having more benefits than traditional kilns, potters tended to continue to use traditional kilns as they found it difficult to adapt to this behavioural change. as the potters had been acclimatised to traditional kiln usage, switching to a new, improved furnace required subtle behavioural changes. figure 9. stakeholder consultations with the village community figure 7. stakeholder consultations with the village community figure 8. stakeholder consultations with the village community figure 10. inspection of the newly designed kiln bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 in pursuit of an inclusive and collaborative resolution, the research team spearheaded extensive consultations that brought together non-potter families, potters, community leaders including the sarpanch, and engaged the national cooperative union of india (ncui) due to their rich experience in navigating complex dynamics within diverse communities. these deliberations aimed at fostering a collective understanding of the abovementioned concerns like the placement of kilns on common village land, financial constraints and acclimatisation of potters with the new furnace. as a result of these inclusive dialogues, a consensus emerged, charting a path toward shared use of the common village land. this consensus was rooted in a commitment to equitable resource distribution, acknowledging the proportional rights of all community groups to the common land. the research team played a facilitating role, ensuring that academic insights were channelled toward promoting an amicable solution that prevented further destruction of the kilns. this collaborative approach not only addressed the immediate challenges but also laid the groundwork for a sustainable framework that respects the differential power dynamics within the community. by actively involving all stakeholders, including the ncui, the resolution exemplifies a commitment to communitydriven decision-making and the prevention of further disruptions to the kilns. analysis and interpretation the matrix analyses the approach-specific benefits and immediate and long-term impacts offered by the collaborative framework of ce and abcd approaches: deeper engagement with the village community of khurampur, harnessing of their local assets, and the customising of technological intervention to fit their tailored needs, local context and available resources. reflections the following points are recognised as crucial to achieving the desired impact of intervention on the ground. building bridges in the village – honest engagement efforts with all stakeholders in the village could have been the most daunting task. while the institute made enhanced efforts in this direction, it was recognised that the initiative’s success would require deeper engagement with the village community, and that this would require continuous engagement and dialogue with the rural community within smaller intervals.  building local partnerships – this required establishing partnerships with local youth or community leaders who were socialised and acclimatised to village norms, traditions and values. this helped the institute understand the village’s nitty-gritty and subtle nuances, and helped them make a more profound impact on the community. these local leaders could be provided with mentoring support from the institution or through other partners (e.g. community practitioners, ngos and cooperatives).  localised model – the success stories in rural intervention often become case-specific; thus, scalability and replicability might become an issue. this is so because each village has a specific local context and dynamic. similar interventions have often met different fates due to different situations, so any straightjacket approach towards rural transformation is bound to fail. thus, there is a need to conceptualise and design localised models of intervention, based on specific circumstances and issues. contrary to the centralised approach, such a model needs to be democratised and suited to the local landscape.  bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 approach indicators for epistemically just dynamics community engagement (ce) approach asset-based community development (abcd) approach impact of the collaborative (ce and abcd) framework matching the needs with assets ce allowed ease in the identification of community needs and aspirations of the community. in the case of khurampur village, the economic distress from the rural pottery industry made nextgeneration artisanal potters forsake their traditional knowledge to become industrial labourers. abcd enabled recognising and leveraging of existing local assets, skills and resources to drive technological interventions. the academics acknowledged pottery making as a traditional, intergenerational knowledge, constituting the village’s cultural asset. secondly, the local pottery kiln technology was recognised as a community asset; thus, academia downsized and modified the existing technological artifact. technology, therefore, was used as an enabler and agent to foster economic sustainability in the village. democratisation of knowledge the comprehensive framework led to a nuanced matching of the community’s current needs with its assets without creating any dichotomies between both approaches. the result of such amalgamation was capacity building for the rural artisans in more energy and costefficient technology. it further proved to be a pedagogical innovation, allowing academics to apply their theoretical knowledge to bringing sustainable solutions to real on-ground issues. inter-cultural and contextual sensitivity community engagement facilitated tailoring of the intervention to the unique cultural, social and environmental context of the village community of khurampur. the abcd approach enabled utilisation of intercultural knowledge in designing interventions that considered the community’s cultural practices, values and environmental ethos. balancing power dynamics acknowledging intercultural and contextual sensitivity further led to a balance of power between all stakeholders and ensured that the resultant intervention wasn’t imposed, but rather communally built. bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202314 approach indicators for epistemically just dynamics community engagement (ce) approach asset-based community development (abcd) approach impact of the collaborative (ce and abcd) framework engagement and empowerment of community the approach led to engaging community members in all intervention processes, thus fostering ownership and active participation. stakeholders’ perceptions, priorities and critical viewpoints were embraced at various stages, enabling them as co-partners. empowering community members to proactively participate in solving identified issues, promoted self-reliance and collective action. the village community’s involvement in the design and development of the technology proved to be crucial, as the modified technology was developed with the local context in mind (such as availability of locally available raw material for the furnace), the technicalities of pottery making (suitable temperatures, specific height and width of the furnace, and sequential processes). fostering technological diffusion through the codevelopment of technology the collaborative engagement and empowerment approach complemented the efforts in bringing a sustainable impact for change into the khurampur village. this led to co-designing a technology that matched the local rural context and needs, which otherwise would have been ignored due to no economies of scale, and thus lack of profits for the markets. this itself spurred technological diffusion, contributing to rural communities reaping the benefits of technological advancements. coconstruction of transdisciplinary knowledge the ce approach allowed the coconstruction of transdisciplinary knowledge as an engaged scholarship through varied teaching and learning modalities, research and service learning. further, the abcd approach allowed the integration of traditional knowledge, cultural assets and skills of community members into the intervention, ensuring its contextual appropriateness. rectifying the epistemic follies the team valued the collective wisdom, intellectual capacity and contextual knowledge of the community members, which is evident in the honest attempt to involve them at each intervention stage. the team also valued the local cultural pottery-making asset bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202315 approach indicators for epistemically just dynamics community engagement (ce) approach asset-based community development (abcd) approach impact of the collaborative (ce and abcd) framework and thus the intervention, which contributed to its enduring sustainability for the next generation of artisans. further, the co-development of the technological artifact was interwoven around the locals’ academic and actionable knowledge. social cohesion and social capital deeper engagements with the community strengthened community bonds and fostered collaboration among members for collective action. it also resulted in a positive perception of the academic community by community members. the abcd approach leveraged existing networks and new bonds by creating social capital and fostering collaboration among community members and stakeholders. the collective action further spurred a robust social spirit in all stakeholders. it also created social capital with the academic community, nongovernmental organisations and cooperative societies. reviving the resilient samaj/community (i) the creation of social capital and increased social cohesion, along with the factors above, contributed towards the transfer of power back to the communities, which was (as earlier discussed) usurped by the state and the markets. by making contextually relevant decisions and leveraging its existing assets, the village gained selfreliance and autonomy in deciding the pathways towards equitable and inclusive development. (ii) further, the increased trust built due to the values of reciprocity, mutual benefit, mutual respect, bi-directionality of communication, and reverence for each other’s unique knowledge, competencies and skills not only made communities more resilient, but also helped bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202316 callon (1987), in co-construction of transdisciplinary knowledge, asserts that ‘engineers who elaborate a new technology, as well as all those who participate at one time or another in its design, development, and diffusion, constantly construct hypotheses and forms of argument that pull these participants into the field of sociological analysis. whether they want to or not, they are transformed into sociologists, or what i call engineer-sociologists.’ while identifying a problem, theorising a design, or implementing a technological intervention and gauging its feedback, the team must constantly blur the knowledge boundaries. they need to falsify the assumption that treating technological knowledge is strictly esoteric, and open the borders to other knowledge systems that may include local, traditional or indigenous knowledge, skills, experience and community wisdom. in merging and meshing various knowledge systems, academics can create scholarship and technological artifacts that benefit academia and the community equally. approach indicators for epistemically just dynamics community engagement (ce) approach asset-based community development (abcd) approach impact of the collaborative (ce and abcd) framework trust and collaboration building trust and fostering collaborative relationships among stakeholders led to effective implementation. encouraging collaboration and shared responsibility among community members, educational institutions and ngos leads to project success. academia achieve their historical aim of contributing towards social well-being and serving as archetypical community institutions. this ultimately strengthened the third pillar, community, by balancing it against the dominant forces of the market and state. self-reliant community nudging change based on locally relevant needs and emergent issues generated a ripple effect that promoted sustainable development in the village. the abcd approach led to acknowledging and revering community members’ adroitness, skills and capacities for harnessing the people’s power, referred to as lok shakti, to spur change. harnessing lok shakti or people’s power as discussed in the earlier sections, ancient india embraced a community-centric life whereby dependence on the state for all matters was discouraged. contemporary collaborative approaches, such as this one, in the indian context can help restore the people’s power by fostering selfreliant and sustainable communities. bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202317 this approach critiques the colonial rationality of hierarchising academic knowledge at the top most stratum and treating other knowledge forms as inferior. the fact that villages are striving and sustaining in and of itself substantiates the pool of knowledge the village community embodies, in experiences, tales, mores, customs and traditions. therefore, any attempt to ignore this in the mainstream academic discourse will lead to incompleteness of the scholarship. therefore, any overhauling of such an approach requires decoloniality, which, as its first step, requires unlearning and shedding of academic biases. bhatt & singh (2023) assert that the limits and failures of liberal pluralism in achieving epistemic justice have been discussed widely by academic scholars (such as, mignolo 2013), and thus decoloniality has attracted increased attention from practitioners. the triple helix model of decoloniality (ndlovu‐gatsheni 2015) proffers a conceptual framework to reclaim the usurped authority over being, power and knowledge from the colonisers. the pursuit of decoloniality therefore requires overhauling of the present knowledge and power discourse and laying the foundation of a pluriverse of knowledge. its architecture should have the strength of steel, along with the agility of water, to absorb within it heterogeneous knowledge systems, plurality of worldviews and diverse methods (not just textual, but also beliefs, experiences and wisdom) as well as the capacity to inquire into any idea that may advance the idea of a socially just world. in such light, integrated community engagement and the asset-based community development framework have the ability to create a platform of ‘collaboration, engagement, mutual exchange and co-creation of knowledge’ with multiple stakeholders, including disenfranchised communities (singh, bhatt & singh, 2021). this attempts to create knowledge equilibrium by bridging the gap between dominant knowledge and systematically repressed knowledge(s). in this way, these approaches can aid in decolonising knowledge and power, which will lead to decoloniality over time. deliberation by the three professors on identifying ways toward building bridges in khurampur village will substantiate the above postulate. despite the successful instalment of the potter’s kiln in the village and the subsequent damage to it by some individuals in the village, an academic may shift the blame onto the community. however, this did not happen. when the iit delhi team and professor saha were discussing this with professor sangeeta and professor ravi, they said, ‘maybe we need to work harder to understand things from their point of view, maybe we need to keep our ears on the ground’, with which the other two professors humbly agreed. such humility and respect towards other knowledge systems (indigenous, traditional, local beliefs, practices and knowledge) define the true spirit of community engagement and asset-based community development approaches. conclusion as it exists in academia today, ce has been shaped through a series of developments, resulting in the increased importance it is presently accorded. heis in both the global north and the global south are at the forefront of advancing ce in higher education, albeit in distinctive ways. here it is important to note that different countries are at varying maturity levels in integrating and mainstreaming ce practices in their higher education discourse. the same is true of india. while ce is not a new concept in indian higher education, it has absorbed a fresh approach and perspective over the past decade owing to several factors. with india gradually emerging as a ce hub in the global south, it has great potential to grow and advance in the future. in this context, an amalgamation of unnat bharat abhiyan (uba) community-engagement principles and the rutag program, which encompasses the asset-based community development (abcd) framework, has proven to be a comprehensive participatory academic intervention in the rural village of khurampur. this merger allows for active participation of community members in decision-making processes, thus recognising the group’s particular strengths and resources. the uba program emphasises community engagement by building collaborative networks based on mutual trust, respect and benefits to bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202318 academic institutions and rural communities. this engagement guarantees that community knowledge is acknowledged, its opinions are heard and its needs met, resulting in long-term sustainable solutions. the abcd paradigm is used by the rutag program to shift the focus from community deficiencies to assets and capacities. the intervention empowers the community members and encourages the virtue of selfreliance through mapping of assets and community resources. overall, this approach, while teaching manifold lessons 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http://rutag.iitd.ac.in/rutag/?q=about https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6435-8 https://novapublishers.com/shop/social-capital-issues-challenges-and-perspectives/ https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.61.2.0q702751580h0617 tandon, r, hall, b, lepore, w & singh, w 2016, ‘training the next generation of communitybased researchers’, vol. 20, p. 2021. tussman, j 1999, ‘the religion of the marketplace’, new oxford review, vol. 66, pp. 29–35. unnat bharat abhiyan n.d., viewed 18 june 2023. https://unnatbharatabhiyan.gov.in/view-themes bhatt and singh gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202321 https://unnatbharatabhiyan.gov.in/view-themes gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 14, no. 2 december 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: haverkamp, j. 2021. where’s the love? recentering indigenous and feminist ethics of care for engaged climate research. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–15. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.7782 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) where’s the love? recentring indigenous and feminist ethics of care for engaged climate research jamie haverkamp1 1 department of sociology & anthropology, james madison university, virginia, usa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782 article history: received 19/06/2021; revised 20/10/2021; accepted 16/11/2021; published 12/2021 abstract across a range of environmental change and crisis-driven research fields, including conservation, climate change and sustainability studies, the rhetoric of participatory and engaged research has become somewhat of a normative and mainstream mantra. aligning with cautionary tales of participatory approaches, this article suggests that, all too often, ‘engaged’ research is taken up uncritically and without care, often by pragmatist, post-positivist and neoliberal action-oriented researchers, for whom the radical and relational practice of par is paradigmatically (ontologically, epistemologically and/or axiologically) incommensurable. resisting depoliticised and rationalist interpretations of participatory methodologies, i strive in this article to hold space for the political, relational and ethical dimensions of collaboration and engagement. drawing on four years of collaborative ethnographic climate research in the peruvian andes with campesinos of quilcayhuanca, i argue that resituating participatory action research (par) within a feminist and indigenous ethics of care more fully aligns with the radical participatory praxis for culturally appropriate transformation and the liberation of oppressed groups. thus, i do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, rather this article provides a hopeful reworking of the participatory methodology and, specifically, participatory and community-based adaptation (cba) practices, in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response. in so doing, i strive to reclaim the more radical feminist and indigenous elements – the affective, relational and political origins of collaborative knowledge production – and rethink research in the rupture of climate crises, relationally. the ethico-political frictions and tensions inherent in engaged climate scholarship are drawn into sharp relief, and deep reflection on the responsibility researchers take on when asking questions in spaces and times of ecological loss, trauma and grief is offered. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this work was supported by the united states national sience foundation igert program (#dge – 1144423). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.7782 keywords care; relationality; knowledge production; participatory action research; climate adaptation; peru introduction ‘it makes us sad when you ask us these questions.’ yovana’s comment stopped me from the next bite of my breakfast. her face was a mixture of grief and nostalgia. she didn’t need to say anything more. i knew then that my work and my constant informal interviewing and asking about the loss of the glaciers, the loss of the waters, the loss of the frogs, fish and harvests had imposed upon the people who had invited me into their community a painful exercise in knowledge co-production. it was at this moment in the peruvian andes when yovana, a dear friend and community collaborator on this participatory research project, called my attention to the affective and relational dimensions of my research. four years into my doctoral research and my fourth field visit to a single highland valley in the peruvian andes – quebrada quilcayhuanca – i finally began to feel the embodied gravity of the ecological loss and notice the subtle signs of communal love and communal grief in the wake of radical environmental change. the loss of kin relations with humans and non-humans is expected to be amplified in the coming years, decades and centuries under extractive terracide and colonial-capitalist climatic change (even under scenarios where there is ambitious climate action). when researchers show up in communities under climate or environmental distress, ‘inclusively’ asking the people about environmental change, they are directly asking about loss, and in some cases loss as great as losing a member of the family. the loss of kin relations; diminished sharing and resource exchange; loss of traditional medicine; and the loss of human and more than human relatives, social cohesion, reciprocity and mutual aid leave climate impacted communities with feelings of ‘dislocation and uncertainty that pervades their everyday lives’ (peterson & maldonado 2016, p. 343). given the affective and material dimensions of climate impacts and social vulnerability, in this article, i draw into question the ethico-political frictions and tensions inherent in engaged climate scholarship. in particular, i ask: what responsibility does a researcher take on when asking research questions in spaces and times of ecological loss, trauma and grief? what knowledge is generated from these encounters and who does this knowledge serve? part of the impetus for this article stems from noticing that research funding and programmatic incentives are increasingly directed towards knowledge production on crises and complex socioenvironmental changes – e.g. the climate crisis, the crisis of mass extinction, the covid-19 crisis and the crisis of racial inequality, among others – using collaborative and engaged research approaches (brondizio et al. 2016; norström et al. 2020). however, critical feminist and indigenous scholars highlight the lack of attention given to the relational and ethical dimensions of these research practices, which are too often ambiguously ‘engaged’ via neocolonial and extractive (masculinist) knowledge-making practices (coombes et al. 2014; kanngieser & todd 2020; tallbear 2014; tsing 2015). throughout, i explore what it means to do research under the banner of ’participatory’, ‘collaborative’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘engaged’ modalities in the rupture of a crisis; what does it mean to produce knowledge in situations of suffering and loss; and what is the responsibility of the universities and researchers who make inquiries and interventions in these spaces? these questions summon up the ethical and relational dimensions of engaged research, not only for research carried out today, but these questions will become increasingly salient in the uncertain and troubling future that a certain kind of humanity has set in motion. this dystopic present and future is characterised by untold socio-environmental change, disasters and increasing inequality, as well as, paradoxically, ‘opportunity zones’ and new ‘research frontiers’ that i argue are structurally designed to benefit an already privileged social class. beginning with the view that power and the political are woven throughout the life of research, i suggest that research conducted about, and even with, so-called ‘vulnerable’ communities involves a complex haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 negotiation of power that has historically proven to be prone to power imbalances and the wrong use of power (tuhiwai smith 2005). in this article, i draw upon my own attempt at collaborative climate ethnography over a four-year timespan with campesinos (small-scale farmers and agropastoralists) of the peruvian andes. reflecting on this research program in the wake of devastating climate impacts of rapid glacier melt and ecological devastation and loss, i hope to elucidate the relational, ethical and political dimensions of what it means to be an engaged researcher in the rupture of crisis. by storytelling and reflecting on the relational and affective moments of my collaborative research project, such as the dialogue with yovana at the beginning of this article, i intend to illuminate the power relations that are inherent in participatory and engaged research. i argue that collaborative and participatory methodologies taken-up uncritically remain extractive and neo-colonial, even when mobilised through liberalism’s language of ‘inclusion’ and ‘justice’. despite this critique, i do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, but provide here a hopeful reworking of the participatory action research (par) framework in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response. in so doing, i strive to reclaim par for engaged climate research from all too uncritical and rationalist (masculine) interpretations imbued with notions of ‘objectivity’, ‘concern’ and ‘individualism’ – and also reclaim the more radical feminist and indigenous elements, the affective, relational and ethico-political origins of this participatory research tradition. new ways of knowing are needed for just climate action participatory action research (par) has long stood as a methodology for taking colonial oppression, power and relationships seriously in the production of knowledge. as a counter-methodology, par is a mode of knowledge-making that resists colonial research and the tradition of positivism, which values knowledge only after what is ‘knowable’ has been divorced from the relational, political, emotional and spiritual context in which it is embedded/embodied. the architects of par fiercely reject the epistemic violence and colonisation produced by a universalising scientific superiority that asserts western ways of knowing as the best way of knowing. latin american par is perhaps the most radical and transformative branch of participatory inquiry and is attributed to the thinking of fals-borda & rahman 1991, orlando fals-borda 1988 and paolo freire 1970, among other latin american scholars. in this tradition, fals-borda explains that the purpose of par is clear – ‘to create knowledge upon which to construct power for the oppressed in their struggle for autonomy and self-determination’ (fals-borda, 1988). the autonomy and self-determination that fals-borda sought to address through a liberatory par praxis remains an ongoing struggle for local and indigenous communities under climate duress. colonialism and intensified globalisation, coupled with the post-political imaginary of climate change urgency (swyngedouw 2013), usher in new kinds of (neo)colonial land and resource grabs in the emerging climate frontier space (benjaminsen & bryceson 2012; fairhead, leach & scoones 2012). inherent in the political project of resilient world making (formal politics, policy and development) remains an unfettered commitment to western knowledge production and politics as usual, where market-based and technoscientific climate solutions rooted in enlightenment rationalism remain privileged and desirable in the climate knowledge– policy interface (nightingale et al. 2020). the conventional alliance between colonial knowledge production and climate resilient worldmaking (planning and policy) is increasingly called into question by climate justice scholars and activists (haverkamp 2017; mcgreavy et al. 2021; nightingale et al. 2020; whyte et al. 2016; yeh 2016). for these scholars, just adaptation to climate change is not myopically about addressing carbon budgets and biophysical climate impacts, but requires ‘changing hegemonic systems of knowledge production and opening-up of deliberative spaces for defining possible futures’ (nightingale et al. 2020, p. 344). here, just resilient worlding requires renewed commitments to multiple knowledges and plural worlds (ontologies), which returns us to par’s original intention to resist imperial processes of knowing and worlding, and to take up the peoples’ struggle for sovereignty and self-determination. haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 rejecting neocolonial climate adaptation and technoscientific decision-making from above, participatory research approaches under new names, such as community-based adaptation (cba), have (re)emerged as alternative modes of collaborative knowledge production that operate with and for climate-afflicted communities (forsyth 2013; schipper et al. 2014). a critical approach to participatory and collaborative adaptation, like a critical par praxis, is far more than a mechanism for participation and inclusion. it is a mechanism for social transformation and depends upon a relational way, as opposed to a rational way, of knowing and meaning-making with the aim of overturning entrenched social, political and economic inequalities and systems of oppression. however, as participatory research modalities have rapidly increased in popularity, they themselves have become (paradoxically) hegemonically enshrined as ‘best practice’ for doing ‘engaged’ research in the context of environmental change: climate change and disasters (button & peterson 2009; crate 2011; roncoli 2006; schipper et al. 2014); conservation and biodiversity loss (berkes 2007; brosius et al. 2005; roncoli 2006); and development and sustainability planning (brondizio et al. 2016; chambers 1994; mcgreavy et al. 2021; norström et al. 2020). noticing this trend, geographer david demeritt states that ‘[f ]rom natural resource management to medicine, the rhetoric of public engagement, participation and dialogue has become something of a mantra across a wide sweep of policy fields that were once the exclusive preserve of scientific experts’ (demeritt 2015, p. 2). through the popular institutionalisation of par, the liberatory, participatory and dialogic praxis for environmental justice is made palatable and complicit in dominant worldviews and values, and thus devoid of the potential for decolonial and transformational ends (nightingale et al. 2020). a co-opted par asserts a more rational agenda through instrumentalist and disembodied (objective) reasoning that seeks to employ par for the purpose of better science (i.e. increasing knowledge production, scientific accuracy) and for obtaining consensus and community buy-in for expert-led interventions – all things that do nothing to redress longstanding power imbalances and social inequalities. after several decades of critical participatory inquiry (cooke & kothari 2001; lindroth & sinevaara-niskanen 2014; mosse 1994; nadasdy 2003, 2021; willow 2015), it can be argued that, too often, participatory and collaborative research is taken up uncritically and without care, often by pragmatist, post-positivist and neoliberal research programs, for which the radical and relational practice of liberating methodologies is paradigmatically incommensurable. recentring feminist and indigenous ethics of care in climate knowledge-action the institutionalisation of par and its methodological variants in environmental knowledge production and decision-making is most often employed from a rationalist (masculine and ethnocentric) moral philosophy – an ethics of justice and concern anchored in western onto-epistemologies. feminist thinkers are particularly helpful here in understating how rationalism’s dichotomy between reason (rationality) and emotion, in which the former is ascribed to a masculine (public) domain and the latter to the private, domestic and feminine sphere (plumwood 1991) stymies the realisation of transformative environmental justice goals (e.g. healing, liberation, decolonisation).  a rationalist (masculine) praxis of par centres around liberalism’s rights-based discourses, and specifically on achieving procedural equity through the upholding of fundamental democratic rights of participation (demeritt 2015). yet, as feminist critiques of liberalism suggest, a rights-based justice is cognitive and universal: it is the ‘rational’ and normative discourse that appeals to ngos, policy worlds and donors in a secularised knowledge economy that demands a politics of reason, not emotion. feminist thinkers have urged us to rethink individualistic rights-based justice after locating it as part of the ‘prestige of the public sphere and the masculine [domain]’ (plumwood 1991, pp. 8–9). for plumwood, a more promising approach, and one that is much more in line with the current directions in feminism, ‘would be to remove haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 rights from the centre of the moral stage and pay more attention to some other, less dualistic concepts such as respect, sympathy, care, concern, compassion, gratitude, friendship and responsibility’. a feminist and indigenous approach to engaged climate research centres around a relational axis. this means bringing the heart, feelings and senses back into the research praxis, not separate from reason but with mind/reason. arturo escobar (2016; 2020), drawing upon fals-borda, has referred to this as a praxis of sentipensar, or thinking-feeling, with the earth, and here i also mean a thinking-feeling with human and nonhuman others. indigenous and non-indigenous scholars anja kanngieser and zoe todd refer to the relational, attentive, thinking–feeling methodology with human and more than human kin – which acknowledges the radical interconnectedness between ‘land and ocean, people, plants, animals and spiritual worlds’ – as ‘kin-studies’, and not as ‘case-studies’ (kanngieser & todd 2020, p. 388). for relational knowledge making in indigenous worlds, indigenous scholars call upon engaged researchers to ‘bring their whole selves’ to research (montgomery, personal communication, 27 january 2021). engaging in holistic meaning-making involves using the heart (emotions), mind (intellect), body (physical action) and spirit (spirituality), as well as recognising the relationships of these realms to oneself, family, community, land, environment and wider society (archibald 2008, p. 4). as colonial domination and worldmaking violently disrupt human relationships with the environment (whyte 2018), a relational approach to climate change knowledge-action opens up to possibilities of decolonising, restoring and healing human and more-thanhuman relations. drawing participatory methodologies into an intimate conversation with feminist and indigenous ethics of care allows me to think through an alternative framework to the rationalist deployment of collaborative and participatory research, driven by a cognitive ethics of (masculine) concern and justice, and to recentre the relationality of engagement. taking root in a love-care-response framework the spanish word for ‘care’ is a fuller approximation of the care that i am trying to invoke here. cariño, as peruvian anthropologist marisol de la cadena reminded me (personal communication 2020), is a ‘lovecare-response’, for which there is no english synonym. taking cariño as my conceptual framework, i use it here to think through the praxis of engaged research. specifically, to ask what engaged research might become if it is de-linked from colonial, rationalist and masculine orientations of concern-rights-justice and re-linked to indigenous and feminist moral orderings of love-care-response. in what follows, i strive to breathe life into the love-care-response framework by animating it with my own experiences of undertaking collaborative climate research with campesinos of the peruvian andes. the collaborative climate research reflected on in this article is the participatory ethnographic work of my doctoral studies. from june 2015 to april 2018, i worked with campesinos of the peruvian cordillera blanca mountains, specifically 250 agro-pastoralists of quebrada quilcayhuanca, on issues of climate impact, adaptation and resilience. engaged climate ethnography in the andes meant co-researching with campesinos and at times included work with government officials, ngos and other actors related to climate adaptation in qulicayhuanca. twenty-one semi-structured interviews, 17 oral histories, 2 participatory adaptation workshops and 35 questionnaire responses were gathered (for more on methodology see haverkamp 2021). the struggle with climate impacts in quilcayhuanca is both cognitively known and physically embodied. quilcayhuanca, a historically stable, glacier-fed waterway, cuts through the hybrid grassland–wetland valley floor in an alpine mountain landscape that is vast and expansive. the cordillera blanca (white mountain range) is a glacierscape, home to over 6000 tropical glaciers, which have stood as the water towers of peru for millennia (carey 2010). today, quilcayhuanca river no longer carries the cool blue–green colour of alpine glacier melt, but rather runs a copper-reddish colour. this aesthetic change serves as a dystopic daily haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 symbol of the sweeping ecological changes and climate impacts facing campesinos and their ancestral lifeways. the reddish colour of quilcayhuanca river is the result of rapid glacier melt, which has triggered unprecedented mineral leaching of the newly thawed and exposed bedrock. the increased loading of heavy metal minerals into quilcayhuanca from glacier melt has brought the river to a ph of 3 in some places, a level so acidic that it is not suitable for animal or human consumption, nor can it sustain the forms of life(ways) that thrived in this landscape throughout the holocene. quilcayhuanca was clean before. it wasn’t contaminated; you could drink it. my grandparents, my parents used to drink it … but in these last years it has changed a fair amount. some ten years ago it became contaminated i believe, because there used to be trout too, there were in that river that descended quilcayhuanca. in the past, i was still going to fish. [but] now there simply aren’t any left due to the minerals, because a lot of iron – rust i believe in quilcayhuanca… yes, this has killed everything. (hernando ucharima, interview 16 january 2018) to show up and ask questions in quilcayhuanca about environmental change is to incur a responsibility for radical transformation, loss, death, killings, grief, and even hopeless hope (haverkamp 2021). in what follows, i reflect on what it is to navigate this research terrain through a love-care-response approach. love my research training in western knowledge centres failed to prepare me for doing relational research. despite graduate courses in qualitative and mixed methods, the completion of a two-year national science foundation integrative graduate education and research traineeship (nsf-igert) and summer research workshops that characterised my graduate education in geography and anthropology, i was not prepared for navigating the relational dimensions of knowledge (co)production for climate adaptation. instead, my approach to research was disciplined, according to eurocentric and masculine worldviews and ways of knowing. accordingly, emotions, subjectivities and feelings were to have no place in rigorous and objective scientific knowledge production. for me, the process of unlearning the received wisdoms of masculinist and positivist training and relearning the importance of affective and relational matters (feelings, emotions and sentient connections) was made possible through ethnographic engagements with andean campesinos with whom i collaborated. in particular, learning the role of love in the context of engaged climate research came from the informal, everyday teachings of campesinos such as sr pablo pachari, an andean campesino and president of the users’ association of quebrada quilcayhuanca. pablo and i co-laboured to create a safe and generative space for campesino-led, justice-centred climate dialogues through the organisation of participatory adaptation workshops. an ongoing history of extractive and (neo)colonial relations characterises the andean highland landscape today. campesinos of quebrada quilcayhuanca experience a racialised and marginalised position in environmental governance and have resisted and negotiated engagements with the state in various ways since the 16th century spanish inquisition (de la cadena 1998; rasmussen 2015). as the climate crisis unfolds within this socio-political context, state-led and technoscientific adaptation solutions continue to impose patriarchal, rationalist and colonial ways of knowing and being on the campesinos of quilcayhuanca – even when its through the language of ‘resilience’ and ‘adaptation’ (haverkamp 2021; carey 2010; rasmussen 2015). in particular, the state-led adaptation plan – an ecosystem-based adaptation (eba) design – continues the centuries-old colonisng discourses and visions in quilcayhuanca. through the proposed eba project, developed by a transnational network of scientists, ngos, state agencies and international aid donors, campesinos’ agrarian ways of life are imagined as that which must be ‘adapted’ and ‘transformed’ so as to haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 avoid dangerous climate change. colonial adaptation in quilcayhuanca does not hold the global capitalist economy accountable as the primary threat to highland livability despite the climate-induced acidification of the glacier waters, but rather leverages rationalist and racialised malthusian narratives of ‘overgrazing’ to frame campesinos and their agropastoralist way of life as the greatest threat to a livable future under rapid glacier melt in quilcayhuanca (haverkamp 2021). the eba project thus incentivises campesinos to move away from agro-pastoral activities in their homelands in the name of adaptation, without providing any viable options for their indigenous and ancestral ways of life to survive and flourish. it is by way of the neocolonial and rationalist adaptation design that the erasure of quechua indigeneity persists in the 21st century and campesinos may be dispossessed of their agro-pastoralist livelihoods and ancestral homelands. through an ad-hoc approach to implementing the eba project, state agencies and ngos impose the green eba plan through various governance strategies, including coercive grassland management and neoliberal ‘voluntary’ payment for ecosystem services schemes. regardless of the coercive or neoliberal governance approach taken, the overall goal of the eba project remains consistently fixed on the erasure of campesinos and their ‘irrational’ way of life from quilcayhuanca. in this political context, pablo and i began to co-organise participatory workshops for campesinos to discuss their own climate change experiences, knowledges and adaptation visions in a dialogic fashion. i understood this work to be grassroots and in resistance to managerial (albeit ‘collaborative’) and technocratic approaches. community-led adaptation that resisted neocolonial and technoscientific adaptation planning seemed an appropriate counter-approach. yet, pablo challenged my own western dualistic notions of ‘us/ other’ and ‘local/global’ when he decided to create a participatory workshop that was porous and open to ‘those who care for quilcayhuanca’ (fieldnotes, 22 april 2018) – including historically antagonistic state agencies. instead of reinscribing an ‘us/other’ (nos/otros) colonial binary, and leading a locally exclusive grassroots adaptation planning process, pablo’s instruction to gather ‘caring’ participants together for collaborative adaptation was a way of stakeholder mapping that ruptured my own western notions of stakeholders fitting neatly into separate spatial and political scales. pablo destabilised the discursive boundaries that i had drawn around those who ‘belonged’ to quilcayhuanca and those who did not (including my own unease with my researcher identity as another western researcher in the so-called ‘global south’). my geographic imaginary of quilcayhuanca was predicated on colonial constructs of land rights and maintained notions of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ according to land claims, property rights and colonially imposed borders. yet instead, affinity networks connected by relations of love-care are more akin to pablo’s inclusive and anti-colonial practice. accordingly, quilcayhuanca itself was not overly determined as indigenous space, campesinos’ land, or property of the state (i.e. national park huascarán), but rather was conceptualised as what feminist geographers call relational space (massey 2004). while planning the workshop, pablo was asking me to ontologically shift to understand those who belong in conversation with and for quilcayhuanca through a relational, not just a historical or critical, frame. in this way, quilcayhuanca is not static, fixed or essentialised space, nor is it historically and structurally determined, but is processual, dynamic, agential, and always in-becoming through the relationships, partial-connections and interconnections that compose it. pablo’s relational ontology necessitated transgressing the human/ non-human, local/global, past/present and indigenous/modern binaries inherent in my own rationalist assumptions of procedural justice and notions of who belonged at the adaptation decision-making table. pablo’s ethico-political commitment to multiple belongings, respectful interdependence, mutual aid and land stewardship demonstrated – and evoked in me – a politics of love for place, for people and for creation. this, i argue, is the foundation for ethical participatory research with communities in crisis. this ethicopolitical praxis of love is the necessary foundation for realising climate actions that aim for just transitions, just transformation, and community healing. love, as storied through these moments of co-labouring with pablo, is not sentimental or romanticised; rather, it is understood as a relational force of inclusion politics (tsing 2010). like gravity, which draws things into relation with one another – love is a force that gathers haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 participants together. when love is the propensity that gathers, unlikely alliances are able to be brought into relations of co-learning, co-labouring and co-belonging capaciously. by this i mean love is the force that enables a relational politics, whereby relations across human, and more than human, differences exceed the ‘self/other’ border thinking imposed by dualistic reason and recognise radical inter-dependence and multiple belongings. from a politics of love, the seed of separateness cannot manifest into ‘nature/culture’, ‘self ’/’other’, ‘insider’/’outsider’ dualities. instead, love disrupts this colonial frontier space and dissolves the apartheid of dualistic onto-epistemologies. love in participatory research is not new. early par practitioners also recognised the importance of loving relations in knowledge production for emancipatory social change. according to orlando fals borda (1991), there is no revolution in which the oppressed can be liberated without love. the critical pedagogies of paulo freire similarly argue that research and a pedagogical praxis encoded with love is the only praxis that can be transformative (2005 [1970]). for freire, the liberation of the oppressed comes through dialogue. ‘love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. it is thus necessarily the task of responsible subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. [...] love is commitment to others. no matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause – the cause of liberation’ (freire 2005 [1970], p. 89). freire’s dialogic praxis is increasingly called for in climate adaptation and crises research (haverkamp 2021; fazey et al. 2021; mcgreavy et al. 2021; norström et al. 2020). just as climate change adaptation necessitates transformative social change, liberation theory instructs that just and equitable transformation necessitates a praxis of love. in quilcayhuanca, pablo graciously navigated contentious encounters in the ‘climate frontier’ space with those who had historically been hostile and oppressive to agro-pastoralists’ way of life. his approach to working across campesino, state and ngo worlds was relational, loving and inclusive. yet, i do not want to romanticise this approach, or claim it as a panacea for ‘safe’ collaboration. for when the participatory workshop occurred and state and ngo participants came to the table with the campesinos of quilcayhuanca, the encounter was neither loving nor dialogic, an experience i chronicled elsewhere (haverkamp 2021). pablo’s conviction in and advancement of collaborative and inclusive adaptation planning, even with those most antagonistic to campesinos, i believe was a courageous act of love – love for his people, for his lands and for all his relations (including non-human, ancestral and multi-generational). however, not all actors came to the workshop from this ethico-political space and our intention for dialogic praxis, in which all were able to speak and all were able to listen, was not realised. instead, the workshop became another hostile neocolonial experience, in which eurocentric technoscientific expertise commanded the room and dominated the discourse on climate realities and adaptation solutions. the co-opting of the participatory workshop by state and ngo technical ‘experts’ denied campesinos full participation by discarding their knowledges, wisdoms and visions through patriarchal and managerial corrections. the hegemony of western ways of knowing and the legacy of shaming quechua-speaking and illiterate campesinos resulted in the silencing of andean knowledges, wisdoms and experiences. the women – las campesinas – in particular, fell silent and did not speak of pachamama or the indigenous, sentient and affective dimensions of environmental change that they had previously shared with me. retelling this moment calls attention to the situated vulnerabilities of participants in collaborative research undertaken in stratified social contexts and suggests that a love-care-response approach necessitates that all participants entering into collaborative and participatory action must gather through an ethical-obligation of love that is anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-discriminatory. asymmetrical love is not an option as it opens the door to abusive and traumatic encounters for vulnerable and oppressed groups. a day after the workshop, pablo and i reflected on the workshop happenings. after this workshop, i was convinced that the oppressed cannot work with their oppressors towards liberating ends. yet pablo charted a less-dualistic path. he turned not to the hostile actors at the workshop, who were unable to hear, haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20218 unable to understand and unable to love. rather, his next steps were full of hope in collaborating with those with whom he had found affinity and solidarity (fieldnotes and interview, 1 may 2018). this was a heterogeneous and selective group of state and ngo participants. i share this outcome from the workshop to illuminate the fierce politics of inclusion that love enables, and to notice that pablo’s love-care-response approach makes possible his openness to collaboration, which also requires his vulnerability to collaborative harms. for pablo, this condition meant not always remaining open, but also closing the door to ‘adaptation options’ presented by stakeholders at the workshop who were not gathering through the same love ethic, but by other motivating forces such as ‘empowerment’, ‘capacity building’ and ‘winning’. thus, in the practice of par, encoded with cariño (love–care–response-ability), the objective is not to become ‘empowered’ per se, but rather how to become vulnerable. this may sound strange, but i wonder what justice would mean if, instead of all becoming equally powerful actors endowed with our weapons of individual rights and knowledge claims, we were to become equally vulnerable agents of love-care. justice, then, would no longer be defined by liberalism’s rationalist imagination, but as feminist indigenous scholar michelle montgomery says, ‘justice is about recreating a new world that really is about love’ (montgomery 2021).  care i started this article in conversation with yovana lliuya – a friend and par collaborator – calling my attention to the ways in which my research in quilcayhuanca intersected with the profound experiences of loss and grief that were ongoing in the community. she noticed that my research questions about environmental change summoned up sadness and grief for research participants and called my attention to these cultural/affective/emotional dimensions of the study. asking questions about the loss of the glaciers summoned up responses more profound than the rationalist framing of water (in)security and instrumental use of resources could register. similarly, the drying of quilcayhuanca grasslands is more than an ‘impact’ on land use; the emaciation of campesino’s cattle and the disappearance of frogs and native plants species are more than ‘losses’ in biodiversity and livelihood options. these are relational losses. to name the experience of climate change in quilcayhuanca is to name a suffering as great as the loss of ‘a member of the family’, sr maximo morales, a campesino of quilcayhuanca, explained to me in 2016. i did not know this loss, this grief, until the loss of my own baby – a year after my last field visit. living intimately within a web of relations in which part of your interconnected-self dies is a kind of love-grief that can only be engaged with the most radical praxis of lovecare-response. showing up in any other way is to deny the vulnerability of the situation and the intimacy of our interconnectedness, and shuts down any possibility for healing, liberation, or just transformational outcomes. interdependent relationships based on giving, nurturing, healing and protecting are a relational politics of care that i ground in my embodied knowledge as a mother and primary care-provider to six children. the sleepless nights devoted to moments of tireless care: walking, holding, rocking, singing, nursing, affirming and thus caring for the sleepless baby to whom i am committed. this is not only a cognitive exercise of love-care-response; these acts of nurturing and care are the heart-mind-body of my mother-work. i extend these experiences to research, in which relational research is not only made up of cognitive (masculine) concern, but also a feminist ethics of care that demands action and response-ability beyond contemplation, worry and theorisation (rationality and reason). i make this statement in cautious awareness of essentialising notions of the ‘feminine’ that have relegated women to the motherly or domestic role. yet, i do not want to deny the wisdom of the so-called ‘domestic’ sphere, and so i draw upon my motherwork as the grounding source of my lessons in care and to draw care out as a ‘labour of love’ (puig de la bellacasa, 2017) that is not only a matter of the mind, but a matter of the heart and body – the matter required for creating a nourishing research praxis.   haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20219 in the age of the anthropocene, characterised by mass extinction, unprecedented environmental disasters and climate change, researchers are incentivised to engage in community struggles and to ‘care’. counter to positivist assumptions of pure a-political research, granting agencies and philanthropic foundations now award problem-based research that sells crises through affective frames of novelty, urgency, finitude and techno-optimism. yet, still rooted in rationalist research approaches, knowledge production in the anthropocene hegemonically narrates grounded climate realities, flattening the relational, emotional, spiritual and embodied elements of climate impacts through discourses of ‘(in)security’, ‘resources’, and ‘loss and damage’. these meta-discourses are in service to policy experts, and technical and managerial interventions. the problem with such global abstractions and generalities is that the reality of loss becomes disembodied and dis-emplaced, and distorts grounded realities. a solely rationalist approach to par, or community-based research, is myopically cognitive and disembodied, and asserts reason over the emotional, spiritual and embodied experiences of research participants. as rational friends showed up in moments of intervention to my own embodied experience of the loss of my daughter, their secularised, dis-placed and dis-embodied interventions imposed a reality that distorted my own reality of stillbirth, of life and non-life, and failed to tend to what remained vital. in quilcayhuanca, death and loss of glaciers, species, waters and harvests are not so clearly defined by an absolute finitude – or an end to life and livability. nor are local ‘solutions’ imagined through a human/ nature binary and a mastery and control over the lands and resources. rather, moments of destruction and loss are also fertile ground for nurturing and caring interventions – a vital politics that works in service to a flourishing of ecological, human and non-human creation. i was confronted with this paradox of death and loss that manifested simultaneously alongside life and vitality as esteban nicanor, a sixty-five-year-old campesino elder of llupa, described the farmers’ experiences with unseasonal precipitation and frost events. ‘cold snaps,’ sr nicanor declared – ‘when the cold snaps come they come like thunder and damage the fields. […] the skies are clear, there is no fog, the cold snaps come [without warning] and damage everything when they are just beginning to sprout’ (sr nicanor, interview 17 january 2018). cold snaps that kill the harvest lead to real material conditions of destroyed foods, loss of labour, seeds and fertiliser – ‘you do lose all of that’, sr nicanor explained. and yet, in the next moments he goes beyond this reality of loss, stating that – ‘obviously not everything is ruined. at least a little remains … [it] doesn’t spoil everything, isn’t that true. of course, where the cold snap hits things are ruined, but if there is a small section [unburned/unfrozen]with just that you can sustain yourself with food, with what remains. and also, that which is injured by the cold sprouts again if it’s still young. if it’s mature it can’t anymore. that’s why we need to have two, three little plots, so that in another plot, some can survive to fix all of this’ (sr nicanor, interview in llupa, 2018). when looking at climate impacts in quilcayhuanca through a rationalist policy framing of food and water insecurity, the possibility for tending to that which remains is obscured and the fear-driven emphasis on control and securitisation of ‘resources’ leaves little room for reimagining the practice of cultivating, caring and nurturing the remainders. similarly, by focusing on the ‘loss’ of my daughter, relatives and wellwishers overlooked the continuation of my relations (visible and non-visible, knowable and unknowable, physical and metaphysical), and in so doing did not see or hear my reality and my experience. taking care of that which remains in the wake of disaster, traumatic events, or even death necessitates grounding in a particular embodied, emplaced reality, queering rationalist binaries, and engaging the possibility of an otherwise. this is critically important, because in spaces of transformation and crisis, the narrative process of meaning-making and naming of reality is done. indeed, moments of grief and loss are sacred and transformational spaces that require nothing less of researchers than a love-care-response commitment. haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202110 response-ability throughout the duration of the participatory project in quilcayhuanca, i encountered researcher fatigue and scepticism among the local agropastoralists. many of them would ask me directly, what can this research do for them? – a legitimate question to ask of a probing researcher who is posing intimate questions around their experiences with climate change and thus loss, death and grief. for over half a century now, far too many engineers, ecologists, geologists, glaciologists, anthropologists and interventionists have been poking around the cordillera blanca, promising projects of hope, improvement, knowledge and aid, most without fruitful outcomes for the highland inhabitants. after speaking with estaban nicanor at his home in llupa about the cold snaps and frosts, he confronted me with this scepticism of western research and researchers: “how can you help? in what way are you going to…? for all of that, you must have time. sure, you can say, “we’re going to do this, we’re going to…” but there isn’t enough time. [turning and speaking to my translator] she’ll be doing something else, the other …, a year passes, two years and they [researchers] don’t live up to their promises. they don’t live up to their promises. when she finishes her studies, she won’t even remember this place and that will be the end. [for] what she has studied, she has seen how it is, but after all that she won’t do anything. that’s how it is.” (esteban nicanor, interview 17 january 2018) moments like this one with esteban were recurrent when meeting with campesinos and required a great deal of reflection and humility. esteban’s statement holds the historical trauma of extractive research and a fierce critique of the wrong use of knowledge/power. indeed, i had seen the communities’ struggle with capitalist climatic change and its articulation with the coloniality of power in which it was entangled. it was clear that climate adaptation in quilcayhuanca was not only about climate, but also, once again, about the struggle for sovereignty (that is, not government abandonment) and self-determination. esteban was directly asking, how could my study aid campesinos in adapting to climate change in a way that was also about justice. i had no easy answers to the serious question ‘how can you help?’ steeped in privileged positionalities and through the logic of ‘co-benefits’, researchers often suggest that a study will usher winwins for all participants – for both the oppressed and the oppressors, will inform policy, or will ‘empower historically marginalised groups’. yet, how could such claims be made after a year, four years, or even a decade of collaborative research in the face of centuries-long colonialism, racism and hetero-patriarchy? in offering my response, i take my cue from feminist indigenous philosophies to rethink ‘help’ in less cognitive and masculine justice-framed terms and instead reimagine procedural and restorative justice relationally. in this way, what i could offer campesinos through my engaged climate ethnography were spaces in which to gather – to be in community, allyship, love, care, friendship and nourishing connection with each other in troubling times. through a labour of love for the people and place, i co-laboured with campesinos in order to gather together and co-produce knowledge that would be in service to campesinos’ cause of self-determination and just climate futures. i have no fantasies that this work ‘empowered’ campesinos or restructured power-relations, and i remain sceptical of studies that assert participatory successes over short time scales and according to win-win logics or co-benefits. engagement alone does not offer any guarantees of equity, justice or liberated peoples and knowledges, and must be more humbly acknowledged as a multi-generational and relational process of the heart-mind-body-spirit. esteban’s statement exposed this local critique of western research, but he also included a flicker of hope for doing research otherwise: an invitation to do research another way, a non-extractive way, a relational way that registers and meets the needs of oppressed communities. linda tuhiwai smith calls researchers’ attention to the importance of moments of invitation, the exchange, the ask and the response. she writes that:  when the invitation comes, many research institutions are ill-prepared—[…] many discipline-based researchers may not even understand the issue and have often turned communities away rather than listen haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202111 deeply to their concerns. being invited is a first and tentative step in rebuilding a relationship between indigenous communities and researchers–how often those invitations come is entirely dependent on how researchers respond (tuhiwai smith 2012, p.20). estaban’s critique was not only a critique, but an invitation to respond. the questions he posed were sceptical about what he and his community will gain from this research engagement, and simultaneously an invitation for doing collaborative research another way. he did not close me out, but instead invited me into his home, offered me time and an interview, and then posed his inquiry. the responsibility of a communityengaged researcher is to show up, open and ready to be in relation with people, history and place over an untold trajectory of time and space that will likely exceed the project horizon. yet, a researcher’s response to this invitation is shaped as much by their situated motivations and positionality as it is by larger structures of the academy and western knowledge production. in this way, the ability to do research otherwise, decolonially and relationally, often goes against the institutionalised norms and values of modern positivist science. enabling infrastructures (policy, platforms, research calls, funding solicitations) for doing relational research rarely exist, although they are flourishing for participatory and collaborative research that is complicit and compatible with current power structures that privilege the rational over the relational. national science academies seek ‘measurable’ and ‘concrete’ outcomes in relatively short time scales; however, relational outcomes are messy, often intangible and unquantifiable. this is not a challenge to quantify and make measurable the messy intangibles of relational research (feelings, emotions, senses and experiences). rather, it is a call for loosening the totalising grip of a certain way of knowing and registering the invisible relational labour (care) embodied in ethical engaged research. in the last recorded interview with campesinos after four years of relationship building, four cycles of showing up in community – leaving – returning, and two participatory climate workshops, i feared that i had not met the expectations of the community, that my work had not elevated their voices or aided their struggle for just climate adaptation. this (perhaps not unusual) anxiety of a community-engaged researcher is rooted in linear and short temporalities, and ‘best practice’ rhetoric for liberalism’s participatory justice. although my own par research did not realise goals of liberated knowledges, restorative justice, or level power relations across stakeholder groups in ‘measurable’ ways, it was not without meaning and value to the community, and myself, and is still unfolding in untold ways. during my last day in community, pablo met with me, thanked me for co-labouring with him on the participatory adaptation workshops and invited me back. his comments reassured me that this research had meaning for the community and recentred the relational research elements of mutual aid, respect, reciprocity and care: thank you for gathering us….then at least they [state agencies] will realize that there is a volunteer lady who has come to gather us all together. […] yes, thanks for your cooperation, to show us how to do it [organize community climate workshops], eventually we’ll do the same, because if we don’t do it, they [the state] will never care about campesinos. [...] we needed more dialogue but it’s over now. god bless you […] and the day you think of peru, you’ll be welcome and we’ll talk [with you] in our valley about our reality and experiences (sr pachari, interview 1 may 2018). at this moment, i was unsure of when i’d return to ‘fieldwork’ – to continue co-labouring. my funding had run out, my dissertation was due, and i had no academic job secured for the next year. the precarity of academic life imposes hardships on relational research in ways that rational and extractivist approaches don’t endure. however, instead of adhering to funders’ research timelines and capitalist temporality, pablo’s ‘goodbye’ was not an end to the project, but a vision of a cyclical, continued relational research commitment, reminding me that this research is in its infancy, and that this is just the beginning of our relational research engagement. haverkamp gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 202112 conclusion calling participatory research into an ethics of love-care-response only makes sense when engaged research is conceived of as relational research, and is therefore situated as a political, historical, subjective and affective mode of knowledge-making. the more that scientific experts and practitioners of engaged research can forefront this reality, the more possible it then becomes to disrupt the rationalist (masculine) and colonial narratives and norms that have co-opted the transformative potential of this methodology. by reflecting on my own collaborative climate ethnography work in the wake of devastating climate impacts of rapid glacier melt and ecological death, i highlighted the relational, ethical and political dimensions of what it means to be an engaged researcher in the rupture of crisis. in this article, i strived to reclaim a co-opted par and reconnect it with its origins as a praxis of knowledge-making that serves the cause of liberation of oppressed peoples. 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post, m. a. and ruelle, m. l. 2021. guest editorial: power in engaged scholarship: dimensions and dynamics of knowledge co-creation. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 14:2, 1–9. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v14i2.8009 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au introduction guest editorial: power in engaged scholarship: dimensions and dynamics of knowledge co-creation margaret a. post1 and morgan l. ruelle1 1 international development, community, and environment, clark university, worcester, ma, usa doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8009 article history: received 01/12/2021; revised 07/12/2021; accepted 13/12/2021; published 12/2021 abstract collaboratively engaged research is shaped by dynamic power relationships among individuals, institutions and communities. where some disciplines have explored the theoretical and methodological implications of power relations, the engagement movement writ large has suffered from a lack of explicit conceptual models and in-depth analyses of the role of power in the process of knowledge co-creation. over the last 30 years, considerable attention has been paid to how resources and expertise within academic institutions can be brought to bear on the intractable social and economic problems of local communities. a necessary, yet under-theorised aspect of these dynamics is the extent to which the positionality and interpersonal relationships between actors impact the outcomes and durability of these processes. in this introductory article, we describe our effort to cultivate a conversation about power in engaged research. we organised an author collective for scholars and practitioners with a wide range of perspectives to expand our theoretical understanding of power’s role in universitycommunity engagement. by reflecting on identities, approaches and experiences, the authors in this issue explore power as a vehicle for understanding the impact of positionality and interpersonal relationships on the process and outcomes of collaborative research. keywords engaged scholarship; power; collaborative research; knowledge co-creation 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8009 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8009 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v14i2.8009 introduction this special issue will be published as the world turns the corner into 2022. over the two years since the covid-19 pandemic gripped communities across the globe, we have witnessed a rapid transformation of higher education. civil society and government have likewise been transformed as community organisations and public institutions face urgent public health, economic and social challenges. we have been plunged into new ways of being teachers, scholars and practitioners, responding to the dramatic crises in health, education and socio-economic wellbeing. adapting to the circumstances of this new reality has catalysed many of us to re-examine our commitments, the focus of our work and the legacies we hope to leave for future generations. three decades ago, boyer (1990) wrote of the university’s call to civic action in the world. while boyer was writing specifically about the context of higher education in the united states, he and his counterparts across the globe were at the forefront of the international modern engagement movement. boyer, and later lynton (1994), offered a compelling vision for how universities, especially faculty, could be positioned to use their resources and capacities to contribute to the public good and to the renewal of cities and communities in which they were located. following the geo-political upheaval and widening income inequality of the 1980s, along with rising neoliberalism around the globe, their work invited scholars and university leaders into a new and exciting process of outward-facing knowledge creation and action just as rampant disparities in income and wealth, social and political change, and the global climate crisis were coming into sharper view (saltmarsh & hartley 2016). these early decades of the modern university-community engagement movement pointed the way for higher education to reorient its position and power in response to the pressing challenges of the time. the experiences of the covid pandemic have once again highlighted the need for deeper engagement between universities and communities to co-generate knowledge and action strategies that are relevant to the intersectional challenges of our time. the necessity for engaged scholarship has never been greater. examining power in engaged scholarship collaboratively engaged research is shaped by dynamic power relationships among individuals, institutions and communities. while some disciplines have explored the theoretical and methodological implications of power relations, the engagement movement writ large has suffered from a lack of explicit conceptual models and in-depth analyses of the role of power in the process of knowledge co-creation. over the last 30 years, considerable attention has been paid to the institutional question: how can resources and expertise within academic institutions be brought to bear, in partnership with communities, on the intractable social and economic problems of local communities? a necessary, yet under-theorised aspect of these dynamics is the extent to which the positionality and interpersonal relationships between actors also impact the outcomes and durability of these processes. for example, loh et al. (herein) ‘centre relationships as intrinsically valuable’ to university engagement and partnerships. they further suggest that engaging with a relational view of power allows for individual, institutional and community transformation. this themed volume examines the intertwined relationships in collaborative research through a multidimensional lens that considers the dynamic processes of individual and collective power. using this approach, we argue, it is possible to see more clearly the ways in which institutional hierarchies, authority and control intersect with individual agency and community transformation. defining our terms american civil rights’ leader, martin luther king (1967), defined power as: ‘the ability to achieve purpose’. the genius of this definition lies in the idea that power extends beyond position, strength of resources and post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20212 limits of capacity by orienting its potential equally across entities and individuals. king’s visionary belief in equality and in individual and collective power as its point of origin catalysed radical institutional shifts as well as cultural transformation. policy change alone could not transform racial justice. following king’s definition, advancements towards justice require transformation of power in individuals, communities and institutions. the source of power is neither static nor finite. power in this vein is dynamic and expansive. to understand power in engaged scholarship, we begin with jacquez, ward and gogeun’s (2016, p. 81) definition of collaborative engagement research, which is similarly dynamic and expansive. they argue that collaborative engagement research is grounded in four elements: (1) community driven priorities; (2) shared equitable decision-making; (3) co-creation of knowledge; and (4) social and cultural change. echoing dr. king in 1967, their definition centres power and equity in the conceptualisation of engaged scholarship. jacquez, ward and gogeun (2016) build on the traditions of boyer (1990), lynton (2004) and other engagement pioneers from around the world and they also include the rich traditions of feminist, indigenous, activist, and action research methodologies (greenwood & levin 2006; kimmerer 2013; simpson 2017; smith 1999; zavala 2013). they offer scholars a multi-disciplinary lens through which they can view and consider how their work is responsive and of benefit to broader publics and communities anchored in a transformative and dynamic process of expansive power. as we developed this issue, we were guided by the perspective that power is a critical dimension of collaborative and community-based teaching and scholarship, and that addressing positionality and the relationality of power is a necessary aspect of these endeavours. when knowledge is authentically co-created, researcher and practitioner alike can experience power through and within relationships of solidarity, reciprocity and respect. this kind of collective power and democratic knowledge production contributes to the joys and mutual benefits of engaged scholarship. we intentionally anchored our exploration of power in engaged scholarship in these propositions. we thus view and investigate power not as a negative, constraining force, but as a dynamic process of action, reaction, capacity and intention that can facilitate self-efficacy, wider participation and more sustainable change. as piñeros-shields argues in this volume, power is not a problem to be solved, but an access point to liberation and transformation. this special issue is an effort to cultivate a conversation about these dynamic processes of power in engaged research. we have created space for scholars and practitioners with a wide range of perspectives to advance a more expansive theoretical understanding of power’s role in university-community engagement by reflecting on our identities, approaches and experiences. while many of the authors in this issue pay critical attention to institutional relationships, they also explore power dynamics between individuals as a vehicle for understanding the often unrecognised impact of interpersonal relationships and positionality on the outcomes of collaborative research. our partnership as guest editors was born from a shared interest in exploring how power operates in our own scholarly work. margaret was trained first as a community practitioner, instructed in how to develop direct action by analysing who holds positional power and authority, building shared power with others, and using that power through collective action to challenge unjust structures. this early career experience guided her approach to researching grassroots organisations, whereby she aims to understand how power materialises through community change strategies and results in concrete progress. as an engaged scholar, she strives to understand the theoretical underpinnings of how power operates in research, the classroom and communities, and the higher education context. this project has been one space where these interests converged. morgan is an ethnobotanist who studies how biodiversity contributes to food sovereignty, specifically how human relations with plants facilitate adaptation to climate change. he is particularly interested in how diversities of knowledge within communities contribute to collective power to transform food systems. although he was trained in participatory action research methodologies, this is his first experience working within the engagement movement. collaboration with margaret and the other authors has provided an post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20213 important opportunity for him to reflect on past projects and consider how to assess and address power dynamics in ongoing and future research. by bringing together scholars and practitioners who work in various academic disciplines and contexts and are at different stages in their careers, we fostered dialogue around how power operates within efforts to co-generate knowledge and action. we were particularly interested in constructs and frameworks that enabled scholars and practitioners to assess and address power dynamics when diverse entities come together for collective work. ultimately, we sought to understand the outcomes and impacts of collaborative engagements when power is acknowledged and addressed. our call for articles raised four questions: • what are the benefits, joys, tensions and challenges of the collaborative research process? • in what ways is power revealed in the process of co-creating knowledge? • how can power be recognised and addressed in collaborative research processes? • when power is explicit and central, what are the lasting results for individuals, institutions and communities? these questions were examined using a mix of conceptual ideas, analytic frameworks and in-depth case analyses to illuminate the dynamics of co-created knowledge and practice. the authors reflected on opportunities and challenges in their work, not only by describing their projects and experiences, but also by exploring their experiences of and with power. in this context, the authors considered how their engaged research disrupts traditional notions of power, such as power as domination or power as a finite resource. we also wanted to anchor the authors’ work within the engagement field, recognising it is a diffuse transdisciplinary movement. in our efforts to build an author community, we sought to identify opportunities that strengthened connections across established boundaries among academic disciplines and communities, while also facilitating communication of ideas and examples across networks. in this way, the authors supported fresh imaginings of the role of universities and faculty members in society. finally, plural knowledges are a fundamental element of the articles in this issue. many authors identify risks associated with the pursuit of consensus, the value of engaging multiple ways of knowing in practice, and the outcomes and multi-layered benefits of co-created knowledge. to address the framing questions, it was important for us, as engaged researchers, to situate ourselves and understand our work in broader ideological frameworks and institutional and historical contexts of power. the articles in this issue have been guided by diverse theorists of power (i.e. dahl 1957; fals-borda 1988; fals-borda & rahman 1991; foucault 1980; freire 1970; gaventa 1980; gaventa & cornwall 2008; lukes 1974) who offer alternative lenses through which power can be analysed. utilising the diversity of these frames, the authors theorise new ways power can be revealed during the collaborative research process. they articulate concepts and practices that explain power relations within engaged scholarship and thereby enhance its value for multiple publics. for example, the framing of boundary spanners, brokers and shakers by ross et al. offers a unique lens for situating individuals within the intersecting systems of the collaborative research process. sousa envisions community facilitators moving ‘beyond a place of marginality’ (p. 2) and disrupting their subjection in academic-community partnerships. loh et al. conceptualise transformative power through a relational approach that examines both interpersonal and institutional relationships. these conceptualisations reflect the integration of well-known theories of power with the lived realities of the engaged research process. the author collective in the autumn of 2020, we convened a community of scholars and practitioners who are experienced in various forms of engaged scholarship, including participatory action research and community-based post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20214 research, initiated by academic researchers and community members. as with any call for articles, we invited individual authors and author teams to submit their ideas in the form of an abstract or article proposal. unlike a typical call, we asked authors to commit to meeting virtually several times over the course of a year to discuss each other’s work as we developed our manuscripts. through what we came to call an ‘author collective’, our aim was to share our diverse experiences and to develop and refine frameworks to understand how power relations impact and influence community-engaged projects. this issue of gateways is one outcome of the author collective’s continuing work. it includes the voices of faculty members, community researchers and community practitioners, although some members of the author collective move between these roles and defy easy categorisation. in our roles as guest editors, we followed a process of collaborative accompaniment, akin to walking alongside one another, visioning together and sharing the rewards of a mutual endeavour. our collaborative accompaniment approach prioritised relationship and process, along with outcomes. this approach was intended to foster spaces in which ‘learning through discourse’ occurs (fear et al. 2006). according to fear et al., p. 109), this space of critical engagement, examination and reflection facilitates ‘significant, deep, and structural learning that leads to new understandings; new ways of thinking about organizational or community life; and new ways of conceptualizing and enacting solutions’. in our communications and meetings with authors, our grounding principle was to edit with care by offering feedback that would challenge and support authors’ creative process. during our meetings, we organised the members of the author collective into peer-review groups to share their work-in-progress before and after they received editorial and peer reviews from the journal. we were struck by our colleagues’ appreciation of this process, revealing a need to develop community around the writing and publishing process. our work with the author collective was only the beginning of a larger conversation, and we are excited to continue hosting the collective through our university in the years to come. themes on power in engaged scholarship the articles included in this issue tackle questions of power in engaged scholarship from as many different perspectives as there were participants. the authors draw on multi-disciplinary theoretical frames as well as diverse experiences and positionalities in their reflecting on and writing about power. multiple ways of knowing were evident among the author teams and in how they addressed the topics. this diversity of perspective was the source of the many insights that emerged from the articles. in summary, the articles align around both diffusion and disruption: diffusion across the disparate domains of action and research, while also disrupting traditional boundaries of individual, organisational and community relationships. power is revealed in the disruption of boundaries, hierarchies and norms of traditional academic scholarship, as well as in the diffusion of ideas, examples and relationships explored. with an emphasis on co-creation of action-oriented knowledge, the articles examine how engaged research endeavours to disrupt traditional academic scholarship, and what the implications of this are when an analysis of power is at the centre. a key proposition surfaced here: that power operates within (1) the development of the scholarly identity (how does one see oneself as a powerful actor with the capacity to act and mobilise change?); (2) the research process (how does the researcher co-create the design, implementation and products of the research endeavour? who catalyses and drives the process?); and (3) the outcomes of the scholarship (what are the lasting effects? who controls the findings and their use?). figure 1 illustrates this proposition with attention to the nexus of power – within the interconnected shaded spaces one can view and analyse the dynamics of power at play within collaboratively engaged research and university-community partnerships. while not all the articles are located at the centre point of the image, each author or author team explores power from the intersecting points. post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20215 figure 1. power in engaged scholarship this collection includes new insights on familiar discussions of engaged scholarship. four themes emerge across the articles. most authors explored power through examples, striving to elucidate broader themes of co-creation, relationships and boundaries, institutional responsibilities, and the mutual benefits of collaborative research. it was through this exploration that each article shaped a new conversation about power in engaged scholarship. 1. incorporating feminist and indigenous theories of power several of the authors draw on feminist and indigenous theories of power. haverkamp proposes that recentring participatory action research (par) on indigenous and feminist notions of relationality is essential to reinvigorate the roots of par as a radical methodology of liberation. sousa draws on feminist theory to critique construction of communities as marginal in community-based research. drawing on the diversity within feminism, piñeros-shields develops a community organising model she calls ‘midwife to power’, which aims to encourage leaders to ‘birth’ their own collective power. wong also builds on decolonial and feminist theories of power in her call for ‘promiscuous care’, which pushes back against capitalist productivity and prioritises taking time for rest and relationship-building in collaborative research. 2. unpacking relationality: interpersonal power through care, trust, vulnerability and safety several authors address the interpersonal dynamics of power within their research experience, focusing on elements of care, trust, vulnerability and safety. through his encounter with nasma, demeulenaere invites readers into the complex emotional and epistemological vulnerability of youth participatory action research. his reflection reveals the persistence of vertical power relationships, even in projects intended to disrupt hierarchy, and highlights a tension between care and trust. wong, in fostering an ethic of promiscuous care, proposes that ‘care infrastructures’ create opportunities for more inclusive and sustainable methods, practices and outcomes. haverkamp shows how working in the ‘rupture of crisis’ requires renewed attention to relationships, and advances the notion of cariño, or love-care-response, as a way to transform power dynamics within research processes. fabos et al. use a critical reflexive dialogue to investigate post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20216 power imbalances between scholar and practitioner partners. they unveil how experiences of belonging, representation and emergent trust can be exposed when power dynamics are explicitly named and explored. 3. uplifting perspectives of practitioners on power a key feature of this special issue is the many contributions by community practitioners. in her role as an organisational leader, alexandra piñeros-shields is uniquely positioned to tell the story of ‘midwife to power’, an emergent mujerista/womanist community organising model that has been used to hold law enforcement accountable to local communities. in the article by fabos et al., the practitioner authors (ramirez and mortley) highlight the need for practitioners like themselves to code switch, i.e. speak the language of academia within their collaborations. loh et al. likewise challenge the dichotomies of academicpractitioner relationships in their investigation of power asymmetries, belonging and transformation. the article by lowery et al. weaves together the stories shared by practitioner co-authors to challenge assumptions and disrupt prevailing narratives about communities in rural newfoundland. 4. addressing power among different ways of knowing several of the articles emphasise the value of diverse ways of knowing in collaborative research, and how to address power relations that reinforce the dominance of any one epistemological approach. loh et al. reflect on how hierarchies of knowledge often result in research outputs centring university knowledge rather than the lived experiences of community participants. osinski examines a ‘merging of knowledges’ project to consider how power shapes the intellectual contributions of academics, practitioners, and persons with experience of poverty. fabos et al. reflect on their own positionalities and power relations and find ways to resist consensus, adopting a process of ‘braiding’ their voices to honour the diversity of knowledge among their author team. ross et al. theorise power in the ‘boundary zone’ where boundary workers enact different roles as they navigate multiple objectives, norms, forms of action and degrees of influence. these articles also illustrate what haarman and green prioritise in their approach to teaching community-based research methods, the centrality of eliciting the concerns and priorities of community members within public spaces versus only within the boundaries of institutions and organisations. conclusion in our exploration of power in engaged scholarship, we invited authors to explore topics related to positionality and influence; inequality; risk and uncertainty; and the creative tensions and opportunities for transformation in collaborative research and engagement. we encouraged authors to reflect on their experiences of power in terms of solidarity, reciprocity and respect. this was an invitation to be vulnerable. to generate discussion of these issues beyond the primacy of the written word, we used an iterative process of writing, dialogue and reflection to develop the articles. we wanted to allow for spaciousness, emergence and reflection, while adhering to the customary timelines and processes of peer-review publishing. we worked to develop trust in and respect for each other, something that came naturally to our co-editing partnership. despite the different disciplines we come from, we found remarkable synergies in how we each address (and avoid!) power dynamics in our work. for some of the authors, participation in the author collective was their first exposure to the global ecosystem of boundary spanning scholars and practitioners who make up the engagement movement. for this volume, we deliberately incorporated a multi-voice conversation about how power operates in engaged scholarship in order to represent the many dimensions and shades of collective inquiry, elevating especially participatory, critical, feminist and indigenous methodologies. this approach was an important aspect of our work, aimed at centring power analysis as a crucial element of the scholarly experience and moving historically marginalised voices to the centre. post and ruelle gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 14, no. 2 december 20217 in their closing commentary, ward and lortan forge the path before us, reflecting on the implications of the special issue and the author collective for the engagement field and suggesting where we should go from here. from our perspective, the articles in this special issue, taken together, explore the hidden dynamics and complex relationships at the boundaries of university-community partnerships. their nuanced, in-depth and multi-vocal considerations of these spaces help us see new ways to co-create knowledge within communities and to use that knowledge for actionable change. the authors provide new conceptual lenses through which engaged scholars may find strategies for reflecting on and transforming power dynamics in their work so as to enhance the public benefits of their collaborations. a final note of thanks bringing this special issue to fruition would not have been possible without the time, talent and wisdom of our many contributors and reviewers. to our colleagues, elaine ward and darren lortan, we thank you for your visionary collaboration in supporting the author collective and sharing your insightful commentary. the pages of this issue reflect the richness of our conversations and the spirit of hope born through our dialogue together. to editors margaret malone, paul ashton, and the other members of the gateways editorial committee, thank you for your willingness to traverse new terrain with us in service to our field. we are grateful for your openness to a different approach and your tireless, diligent efforts to bring us all across the finish line. we are indebted to the many reviewers who shared their valuable time and insights with us. your feedback and ideas contributed to the strength of the articles in this issue. finally, we are profoundly grateful to all the members of our author collective, including those whose work does not appear in this special issue, but who nonetheless made critical contributions to our discussions. as we have wrestled with the dynamics of power in engaged scholarship, our work together has sparked joy, inspired optimism and given each of us new hope in our collective work to democratise knowledge. references boyer, e 1990, scholarship reconsidered, carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, princeton, nj. dahl, r 1957, ‘the concept of power’, behavioral science, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 201–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/ bs.3830020303 fals-borda, o 1988, knowledge and people’s power: lessons with peasants in nicaragua, mexico and columbia, indian social institute, new delhi. fals-borda, o & rahman, m 1991, action and knowledge: breaking the monopoly with 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14, no. 2 december 20219 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-293-8_4 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02248-9 https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt77c gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 november 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: edwards, m., rankin, j. c. 2023. inciting change makers in an online community engaged learning environment during pandemic restrictions: lessons from a disability studies and community rehabilitation program. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8695 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practicebased article inciting change makers in an online community engaged learning environment during pandemic restrictions: lessons from a disability studies and community rehabilitation program meaghan edwards1,* and joanna c. rankin1 1 community rehabilitation and disability studies, community health sciences, university of calgary, alberta, canada corresponding author: meaghan edwards, meaghan.edwards@ucalgary.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8695 article history: received 29/06/2023; revised 21/08/2023; accepted 16/09/2023; published 11/2023 abstract this practicebased article presents strategies employed in the shifting of the community engaged learning (cel) components of an undergraduate program in community rehabilitation and disability studies (crds) to an online modality during the 2020 2021 covid19 restrictions. the crds program, based in calgary, canada places high importance on cel with a focus on critical engagement, mentorship, and community action for social justice. the inciting change makers (icm) framework, which we present here, is foundational to our teaching and learning in this field. during the pandemic restrictions, we found the framework not only supported us to engage learners in our focus areas for inciting change, but also provided the opportunity to consider ways that the online learning environment enhanced the cel practica experience. using vignettes, we demonstrate the successful use of the icm framework in an online cel context to develop a more authentic, engaged and inclusive community of learners. three vignettes illustrate specific approaches used to carry out meaningful, impactful cel opportunities in a mandated online environment. lessons from these strategies may assist similar programs in adapting their own community engaged learning programs in an increasingly online world. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8583 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:meaghan.edwards@ucalgary.ca keywords online learning; disability studies; pandemic restrictions; community engaged learning; community of learners; critical engagement introduction disability studies is an area of critical scholarship that finds its roots in the disability rights movement and examines how disability is constructed, created and related to in everyday life (cameron 2013). disability studies is concerned with dismantling the ableist systems and structures in society that exclude, marginalise, pathologise and oppress disabled people (goodley 2011; oliver 2013). the field of disability studies, which emerged as an area of scholarship in the 1980s, has significantly shaped policy such as the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (uncrpd; united nations 2006), the americans with disabilities act (1990) and the accessible canada act (government of canada 2019) and has impacted the design and delivery of disability services and supports on a global scale. disability studies are now included in many training and postsecondary educational contexts (goodley 2013), emphasising a theory and praxis connection aimed at social transformation. community engaged learning is particularly important in this field as it is essential to practise disability studies in partnership with disability communities in order to democratise scholarship and promote learning and engagement beyond university walls (nishida 2018). one such program, the community rehabilitation and disability studies (crds) program at the university of calgary, aims to promote justice for people with diverse abilities by delivering programs in the domains of leadership, community capacity development, and innovation. students who have completed our fouryear degree often go on to work in allied health fields and take on leadership positions in advocacy and service organisations. the development of an inclusive and engaged community of learners is central to the crds program and provides the support required to carry out the challenging work of critical analysis and community action for social justice. in line with the wider disability studies field, we ask our students to work outside the classroom in communityengaged learning opportunities where they must apply their critical theory skills in community settings, such as disability services and advocacy organisations. our inciting change makers (icm) framework (figure 1) forms the basis of our educational approach. the icm provides structure for critical thinking and planning for practical social change. the framework includes three tenets. the first, critical engagement and disruption, supports students to apply critical thinking in their future careers as leaders in community agencies, government organisations, or healthcare settings. the second, meaningful mentorship, recognises that students engaged in the critical work necessary to shift cultural systems of oppression need to be supported by instructors, by one another, and by the community. the third tenet, community action, is focused upon social change and allyship, and is rooted in values of justice and citizenship. community engaged learning (cel) is a key modality through which the icm operates. our students learn to design, deliver and evaluate support services, and engage with policy analysis and impact strategies in collaboration with our community partners, including governmental offices, both municipal and provincial, disability service and support organisations, educational settings, indigenous organisations, advocacy groups and health care settings. this cel approach aligns with the larger field of disability studies in recognising that social change begins when individuals develop a clearer sense of their own values and begin to understand and critique the political, economic and social conditions that impact their lives, and the lives of community members, through critical thinking and honest dialogue. our approach to cel involves mutually beneficial relationships for the purposes of colearning and cocreating knowledge, in turn contributing to positive social change. similar approaches have been taken in aligned critical educational fields. lum and morton (2012), for example, describe their pedagogical approach within a critical race edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20232 framework as requiring students to address inequality by examining power, identity and their own privilege when working in community settings. morton et al. (2019) present a similar position, emphasising the importance of collaboration and partnership in critical communityengaged learning in gender studies. the transition of education to an online format during covid 19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021 affected our program at a foundational level as the delivery of the icm model relied upon celbased programming on the ground, at the frontline of services, support and policy development. in the online format, faceto face mentorship and student interactions were not available. our community partners who provided cel practica opportunities to our learners were forced to dramatically change their daily operations during covid 19. these changes meant that hosting our students in person or even offering extra support online was often impossible. the transition of our cel programming online was complex and multifaceted, and we experienced both successes and failures. the icm framework supported and provided structure for the pivots we undertook in our transition online. in the following sections, we use short examples, or vignettes, of actual situations that arose in our program during covid19 restrictions. we offer one vignette to illustrate each of the three tenets of the icm (critical engagement and disruption, meaningful mentorship, and community action) to describe ways the icm was used prepandemic, and the pivoting that occurred by students, instructors and community agencies when forced to move online. under the three tenets of our framework, we show some of the ways that we used the icm strategies (opportunities to practise critical thinking and reflection, ongoing support, purposeful planning for impact, participatory curriculum development and reciprocal relationships) in these cel contexts. figure 1. the inciting changemakers framework edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20233 illustrative vignettes icm tenet 1: critical engagement and disruption our icm framework provides a way to understand and encourage opportunities for students to apply their critical thinking in cel experience and in their future careers as leaders in community agencies, government organisations and/or healthcare settings. we ask our students to engage in critical examination as a path to disrupting the systems and structures that create oppression and maintain an ableist culture that actively excludes disabled people. preparation to disrupt systemic injustice and uphold disability rights is facilitated through the kinds of critical engagement developed and required in our communitybased placements. through constant questioning, reflection and engagement between the university and the community, students learn to identify multiple perspectives and pathways to social justice. in practice, in crds educational environments, much of the critical questioning and dissent has been carried out in seminars with faculty and peer support. the practice of disruption carried out at the site of cel placements is often in collaboration with community and facilitates opportunities for ongoing change within and beyond the university. this collaborative work is carried out in parallel with the crds seminars and is relational in design. trust is built with community partners through ongoing conversations, and planning occurs between the student and the community partner. crds faculty supervisors generally participate in these conversations once a semester during a supervisory visit to the community site. our first vignette presents an example from an important cel setting for our students, a vocational service provider. we pivoted our cel approach online in this context through a variety of strategies, including a movement to small group seminars and a focus on reflective writing, as well as increased opportunities for peer collaboration and online meeting opportunities. vignette 1 provides further details. vignette 1: vocational rehabilitation people who are injured/disabled at work are supported through insurance systems (i.e. long term disability, worker’s compensation) to return to their preinjury job or to new employment. participation in vocational programs is often mandatory to receive ongoing benefits. three students completed their senior level practicum concurrently with a vocational service provider during the covid19 pandemic. each student completed a separate project with the organisation, working with employers, injured workers and potential employers to develop resources and assist injured workers in their return to employment. services were offered online, in many instances for the first time, creating challenges for the service provider, service users, students and faculty. prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot ongoing support instructors meet with individual students and supervisors → practicum meetings were held with groups of students rather than individual students to encourage collaborative learning. monthly online student seminars led by practicum instructors on topics of advocacy, reflective practice and leadership → (semester 1) monthly online seminars were run as small group peerrun seminars on topics determined by students on critical engagement in practica. (semester 2) small group writing preparation for a reflective journal article was facilitated by an instructor. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20234 prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot planning for impact project often predetermined to reflect the need for flexibility in human services field and incorporate antiableist focus → project planning with crds graduate site supervisor allowed groups to brainstorm projects to address critical questions around clientcentred practice and mandated programs. clients attend programs at the community site office → appointments occurred online, allowing students and clients to attend from home, making students question the accessibility and inclusivity of fully officebased services. participatory curriculum development project setup and design frequently completed by phone; draft project proposals shared via email → consultation and preparation of ideas were completed in a more visual, conversational format via zoom, with options to share documents simultaneously. students prepared documents in a more visual format, i.e. powerpoint, to share their ideas. students complete individual coursework involving theory and practice → students worked collaboratively on aspects of their assignments (i.e. peer review of a social justice paper), which assisted in critical analysis and the reflective paper required for the cel practicum. reciprocal relationships students sign up for areas/projects based often on interest and proximity, and accessibility of site to students’ homes → students were able to access a larger number of sites to best suit their interests and abilities as they were not restricted by their geographical location. students bring experiential and cultural knowledge to share with site, but at first may feel intimidated to speak up in person → the ability to use chat functions on online learning platforms encouraged greater levels of engagement and sharing of knowledge, and also encouraged discussion of informal knowledge since the format seemed less intimidating to students. opportunities to engage critical thinking and reflection students develop clientcentred interventions → new ways of engaging with clients outside of traditional office meetings created opportunities to consider barriers to participation for mandated programs (i.e. transportation and medical appointments). seminar facilitation with group on activism, reflective practice and leadership → students provided critical thinking tools and cheat sheets to facilitate critical questions and examination in these seminars. also provided opportunities to practise with peers. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20235 tenet 2: meaningful mentorship the second tenet of the icm is based on the assertion that students engaged in critical work need to be supported by instructors and by one another. critical elements of mentorship include reciprocity, learning relationships, partnerships, collaboration, mutually defined goals and development (zachary 2012). contemporary models of mentorship illustrate the shifting of traditional mentorship relations to include undergraduate students and highlight changing boundaries between students and faculty (barretteng et al. 2019). the assurance that student mentorship is equitable, diverse and inclusive is central to its impact (rankin et al. 2022)institutions of higher education emphasize a tripartite mission of teaching, research, and service. different institutions place varying weight on these mission areas, both in policy and in practice. most institutions now also include a commitment to diversity as an institutional priority, although diversity statements are sometimes criticized as more performative than substantive (hoffman & mitchell, 2016. this highlights the importance of students having equitable access to mentorship from faculty and community. students also work together as both mentors and mentees. they are often mentored by communitybased crds alumni, who have gone on to take leadership positions in the disability sector after graduation. mentors use transdisciplinary approaches, which reflect the realities of the social service and policy world into which these future changemakers will graduate. we also instill the need for support and mentorship that our students will need once in the field. the demands of their work as leaders in their communities may make the task of inciting change difficult and daunting but ensuring the habit of mentorship and support of one another through critical engagement may strengthen resolve and provide the essential social support and social capital needed to be empowered to enact change. we also mentor each other as faculty through the difficulties in navigating this critical space and delivering education both online and facetoface. our second vignette presents an example from an increasingly vital element of the social service landscape: programming and support for the ageing population. we pivoted our approach to cel in this context through a variety of strategies, including increased and regularly scheduled meetings with instructors and supervisors, enhanced use of technology, reflective writing and critical thinking, and action around the value placed on the lives of older people during population health crises and beyond. vignette 3 provides further details. vignette 2: research and program development with seniors seniors’ programs exist in residential, day program and community service formats across the city. two prominent issues these programs attempt to address are isolation and caregiver burnout. inperson and residential programs offer opportunities for seniors to connect with staff and peers and engage in health and recreational activities, while providing respite for caregivers at home. with the onset of the covid19 pandemic, which hit seniors and longterm care facilities particularly hard, many of these programs were required to cease or limit operation to fulltime residents and staff. four students completed their senior practicums at three different programs for seniors, which included longterm care residents, and users of day programs and community supports under covid19 restrictions. students’ projects included working with seniors, care givers and agency staff. students in the three locations were supervised by program managers, including one site where two students were supervised by a crds graduate. prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot ongoing support students complete individual projects with ongoing support from instructors and site supervisors. → two sets of students completed their projects in pairs. they consulted with each other regularly and developed practices and resources together to foster peer support. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20236 prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot students meet with site supervisors and practicum instructors as needed. → students checked in more regularly via zoom with the practicum instructor to discuss accommodation needs during the pandemic. flexibility with projects and deadlines was required. planning for impact projects reflect the need for flexibility in the human services field and incorporate antiableist focus. → students planned time for technology to be set up and for individual users to be guided through the process. clientdriven programming was developed, including individualised and oneonone supports for seniors and their caregivers. active collaboration with seniors was initiated to determine their wants, especially in terms of program planning. → a telephonebased survey was developed to engage seniors and also to understand their needs during the pandemic. reciprocal relationships students developed projects to be used moving forward. → the programs developed will continue to be used for those who are unable/prefer to attend online. students brought experiential and cultural knowledge to share with the site. → students gained unexpected knowledge around the technological abilities of seniors while sharing new platforms and ways to connect with them and their caregivers. opportunities to engage critical thinking and reflection students entered a program which described the needs of its users. → covid19 required us to question the needs of the different groups being served and to consider the ways that seniors are devalued in society, and how this is reflected in the types of programming available. services and programming were provided for seniors. → the projects required students to consider the available supports for caregivers when inperson programming was unavailable. there were peer reviews of journal submissions, but no requirement to submit to the journal. → student journal submissions reflected on the societal treatment of seniors in care as well as tools to diminish isolation in a system that promotes it. tenet 3: community action our program is focused on social change in our critically engaged coursework and in our cel placements. the coursework and placements create opportunities for action through scholarship and learning, generating new knowledge through the combining of academic and communitybased expertise, which is reflected in the third tenet of the icm, community action. this particular practice of community engagement is rooted in values of social justice and citizenship, and prompts academics and universities, in their roles of teaching, research and service to society, to work in ways that will build mutually beneficial and reciprocal edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20237 bridges between university activity and civil society (beaulieu breton & brousselle 2018). although research on cel suggests positive impacts for students and communities alike (boyer 2016; comeau et al. 2019), the approach is not without difficulties. cel practice often struggles to match the needs of the community with the priorities of academia, with communication issues and power differentials often creating barriers to successful practice (edwards & milaney 2020; gelmon, jordan & seifer 2013). the strategies we use to support cel within our icm framework purposefully seek to dismantle these differentials amongst community and academia and to provide genuine opportunities for students to engage in social change at the frontlines of services, systems and policy. our third vignette presents an example from a setting that seems to be becoming more popular with our students every year: communityled research for social change. we pivoted our approach to cel in this context by making space for increased community leadership (in this case disabled people and disabled people’s organisations), an increased recognition and use of students’ technical expertise, and a reliance on studentled initiatives. vignette 5 provides further details. vignette 3: communityled research a community alliance made up of service agencies, selfadvocates and stakeholder groups serving the disabled community was convened in may 2020 to respond to emerging issues of exclusion in the city of calgary. a former crds student working with the alliance mentored three crds senior level practicum students working with selfadvocates to develop an accessible survey asking disabled people and their families about their experiences with covid19 related restrictions and policy decisions. the development of the survey, the collection of the data and the analysis of the preliminary results made up the students’ cel practicum project for the 2020– 2021 academic year. a crds faculty member was the site supervisor, as is often the case in researchbased practica. prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot successful strategies planning for impact research was designed with students in collaboration with the community group to ensure the research was community led and community driven, with measurable outcomes. → research questions were largely community driven, with some input from students. most information was translated to students via the site supervisor as the time restraints of the community alliance members allowed little time for exploring questions in collaboration with students. outputs were cocreated with students, with policy documents for wider distribution usually being produced by the site supervisor and/or community leaders. → students were able to produce infographic outputs utilising their graphic design and experience in an online format that required little editing by project leaders. participatory curriculum development students explored research methodology and collaborative research approach in initial months of practicum guided by the site supervisor. → students developed a plan to build research knowledge and background knowledge on covid19 and its impacts upon disabled people. students found and participated in several online courses under their own initiative. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20238 prepandemic approaches postpandemic pivot successful strategies although working in teams, much of the course work was individually based, including reflective writing and project planning documents. → students worked collaboratively on aspects of their assignments, which assisted in critical analysis and a reflective paper required for the cel practicum. students also undertook project planning and evaluation as a team. reciprocal relationships students built trusting relationships with community partners, working together to ensure equitable research practice. → due to the restrictions on facetoface meetings, these relationships did not have a chance to develop, especially with selfadvocates, who often did not have access to the technology necessary for online meetings such as zoom. the site supervisor often acted as a gobetween. students brought experiential and cultural knowledge to share with each other and the site. → the ability to use chat functions on online learning platforms encouraged greater levels of engagement and sharing of knowledge amongst students. opportunities to engage critical thinking and reflection students critically examined research methodologies that regularly excluded disabled people. → exclusion became very clear to students as they observed lack of inclusive policy, income disparity and a resistance to plain language translations, making critical examination meaningful and accessible. group online seminar facilitation to group on activism, reflective practice and leadership → students provided critical thinking tools and cheat sheets to facilitate critical questions and examination in these seminars. they also provided opportunities to practise with peers. discussion through our experience as instructors delivering cel practica experiences in a fully online environment over a year, we discovered that we were able to use our icm framework as a foundation for cel in this new and changing environment. while recognising some of the difficulties faced by students, community sites, instructors and service users in a virtual world, we were also able to identify a number of successful strategies that we believe not only upheld the values and commitments of cel practica experiences, but also revealed new ways to teach and learn in virtual settings that uphold more inclusive practices in building a more engaged community of learners. the vignettes presented exemplify some of the ways in which the icm framework was successfully used. this allowed students to continue to, and in many ways, add additional options when engaging in meaningful cel experiences. the vignettes presented provide examples of online learning opportunities that we can learn from in future online iterations of cel practica experiences, and in future inperson learning courses. we have identified key learnings from these examples that demonstrate the ways in which we believe the online environment has enhanced student learning and promoted the goals of the icm during the year of fully online delivery. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 20239 authentic collaboration while online learning is often critiqued for lacking opportunities for engagement and collaboration, during their cel practica students developed meaningful and authentic collaboration opportunities. students were able to collaborate with more stakeholders in an online environment than they had been facetoface and were able to engage in genuine change making. the students who worked with seniors, for example, were able to talk to them about their needs and desires, and their ability to engage with technology while facing isolation during covid19. the removal of geographic boundaries allowed for collaboration with a wider scope of stakeholders, including community leaders and service providers. the opportunity to collaborate with a greater number of people created opportunities to engage with those at the forefront of social change, as was the case with students involved in the community alliance to address exclusion in the city of calgary. working with this diversity of voices, students were able to identify issues around topics such as inclusive policy and income disparity. rather than critically examining this exclusively in the classroom, students brought together theory and practice in this context to develop authentic collaborative work with the potential to impact social issues. students also worked more collaboratively with peers in the online environment during seminars. where previously student work was mostly completed individually, the online practica offered more easily accessible options for collaboration. using the chat function during seminars, for example, allowed opportunities for collaboration by those who did not feel comfortable speaking in class. working in small groups, students engaged in a peer review process for a journal submission and together developed practical tools, such as critical thinking tools and cheat sheets, to facilitate questions in seminars. the value of informal knowledge and skills developed outside of the classroom, such as online collaboration and social media expertise, was also emphasised when learning moved beyond the walls of the classroom/service provider site. learners were increasingly able to build connections and use their prior experience to engage in changemaking processes. students with graphic design experience, for example, created infographics to demonstrate project findings and shared the findings widely in online formats. the use and sharing of these skills and experiences with the larger group show some of the ways in which an online environment can promote the value of prior learning and the possibility for increased collaboration. increased inclusivity while there has long been debate in the disability studies field around the benefits and barriers created by technology and the digital divide around access, ability and use of technology (macdonald & clayton 2013), in this case the use of online learning opened opportunities for a more inclusive learning environment to many students. students with employment commitments, for example, were able to access practica sites without commuting, geographical or transit barriers. the sprawl and limited transport available in calgary, especially in the industrial areas where many disability services are housed, sometimes limit opportunities to access sites where cel practica are offered. engaging with sites online thus gave more opportunities for a ‘good fit’ between the site and the students. one student was able to complete her cel practica from the philippines. learning opportunities also became more readily available to students who often had limited availability. many practica sites offered professional training as part of the cel practica (i.e. first aid, data analysis, organisation specific training). as sites were forced to go online, professional training opportunities were offered asynchronously or online, making them more readily accessible to students. it should be noted that participatory opportunities were limited for some students because of time constraints and access. the requirement to pivot to new ways of engaging learners in online formats also forced instructors to consider the traditional presentations of academic learning and the utility of presenting their work in more holistic and inclusive ways. moving beyond traditional written essay formats for seminar assignments edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 202310 allowed a diversity of learners the opportunity to share their learning in a multitude of ways. students copresented their critical reflections regarding their sites as narrative reflections (i.e. podcasts) or through visual media (i.e. photovoice) and participated in an online ‘community connector’ event where students presented an overview of their projects to site supervisors and practicum instructors. the online learning space also facilitated students’ identification of gaps in inclusive practice and in systems and service provision. students reported that being on site at disability organisations could, at times, be an intimidating setting from which to explore critiques of the systems and structures used by the organisations themselves. it seemed to be easier for students to share critiques and suggestions with community site supervisors in online formats rather than facetoface. students seemed to be able to brainstorm projects collectively and more confidently and disrupt and critique programs when the work took place online. greater engagement by a community of learners the online cel practica experience demonstrated ways that students were more engaged as a community of learners and more readily able to engage in the icm principles. recognising the centrality of instructor presence online (baran & jones 2020; beltran et al. 2020; brook & oliver 2003; northcote 2008; passmore 2021) to engage learners and create a community, instructors provided online office hours, regular virtual site meetings and seminars to support learners. the implementation of online office hours greatly increased student use of this time, serving as an opportunity to answer questions, critically assess their placement and provide mentorship. we, as faculty members, were able to meet with students more often and found that students showed up to meetings more reliably when online. before the move online, instructors had to physically travel to meet with placement supervisors and groups of students. being able to do this online meant that there were more meetings, and we were able to respond more quickly to situations as they arose. the opportunity to collaboratively develop ideas and projects with other students changed the power dynamics, and we also noted as a faculty that students seemed to feel more confident in their building and questioning of ideas, systems and practices when online. working collaboratively on projects within a single organisation also created more opportunities for peer engagement, which resulted in individualised and needsbased projects that created meaningful opportunities for students. a group of students, for example, worked on a plain language translation of covid19 documentation. this information was used to develop an online survey with over 200 participants and to communicate research findings to the community. finally, the practice of critical thinking and reflection with small groups online, using breakout rooms, provided the most obvious example of the development of a community of engaged learners, demonstrating the tenets of the icm. we observed that students seemed to feel free to discuss and question ideas, to challenge assumptions and service provision, and sometimes stay beyond the duration of the seminar to continue their discussions. student groups also frequently worked together in their own online meetings. conclusion as we implemented the icm framework during covid10 restrictions, it was sometimes difficult to see obvious connection points between the online cel practica experience work and the three tenets of the framework. the five icm strategies, however, provided a direct pathway between these interconnected practices and values. using the identified tenets of the icm framework as foundation for our cel experiential practica and other course work in our program, we see the values and principles of disability studies reflected. the purposeful development and implementation of such a framework provides cel practica instructors a means to evaluate and ensure that the strategies we use to support students are effective in facilitating the confidence and competence of students to engage in their cel experiences. this is ever more important in a virtual environment where informal assessments of these skills are less easily carried out. edwards and rankin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 november 202311 working online through the cel experiential practica provided significant challenges. however, the vignettes illustrate the ability, flexibility and engagement of the students and instructors in engaging in and inciting change in this essential work. although covid19 restrictions have ended, we have continued to use the learnings from our program in the following ways. authentic collaboration • we have made space for hybrid practica placements where students can engage with clients and join community advocacy and service groups in an online format, allowing for more choice and active participation. this has increased the range of opportunities for students and has enhanced student engagement as they may not need to physically travel to other locations. we continue to notice students sharing ideas and opinions more often when they are able to use a video and/or a chat box to communicate. • modelled on the successful virtual breakout rooms we used during covid restrictions, the in person cel seminars are now often divided into smaller peerled discussion groups, with faculty present only when needed so that students can feel free to share ideas amongst one another, and can build relationships and increase peer support. we have noticed that student reflection papers and assignments seem to have improved a great deal with this increase in peer support and collaboration. • we have continued to allow opportunities for students to use their expertise and knowledge of virtual environments by redesigning assessments to include online presentations and use of media, such as virtual photography, videos and art. increased inclusivity • we now allow for virtual participation in practica for those who request it and often allow for hybrid designs. meetings with faculty and community sites often take place online, making activities more accessible for students, and often for clients and the community as well. • online meetings are now common amongst faculty supervisors, students and community sites. we have continued to observe students participating in critical engagement and project planning more confidently when connecting with faculty and community supervisors in a virtual environment. greater engagement by a community of learners • we, as faculty, have continued to offer virtual meeting hours and an increased frequency of meetings with students and the community. a virtual format allows us to be more responsive, especially when extra support is needed in a timely manner. • we have continued to collaborate with students and the community online. frequently, planning and sharing goals has become easier and the possibilities for larger group meetings are increasing. • our annual congress, when students report findings and experiences to the entire group of our community practica partners, has moved online. we have found that students feel more at ease presenting virtually. the timing of the event has become more effective, and the attendance of our community members has increased. drawing on our collective experiences over the duration of our online experiential practica, the lessons learned have resulted in what we believe is a stronger, more responsive and more varied cel program. the resulting practices for supporting crds cel students continue to employ the tenets of the icm framework and support both virtual and inperson strategies. the icm framework has provided the structure we needed to adapt, and it will continue to be used to take 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engagement vol. 13, no. 1 may 2020 © 2020 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: lopera-molano, d., lopera-molano, a.m. 2020. designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 13:1, article id 7167. http:dx. doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v13i1.7167 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia daniel lopera-molano1, angela maría lopera-molano1 1mysco research group, universidad de ibagué, colombia corresponding author: daniel lopera-molano; daniel.lopera@unibague.edu.co doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7167 article history: received 27/03/2020; revised 28/04/2020; accepted 07/05/2020; published xx/05/2020. abstract gaitania is a rural town located in the andes mountain range, very close to where the colombian armed conflict with the revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc) guerrillas began in the mid-1960s. in this context, a situated research and education project was conducted with state, civil and community organisations, including the agency for the reincorporation and normalization of the colombian government, coffee producer associations in the south of tolima, the nasa wes’x indigenous community and 150 excombatants, as well as teachers and students from the design program of the university of ibagué, colombia. the purpose of this article is to demonstrate how creative (design) work can be organically transformed from the instrumental to the creative, favouring autonomous ways of learning. this project established collective reflection–action processes that worked in conjunction with four critical learning objectives, as specified by the bachelor design program. workshops were conducted for the co-creation of a collective brand of coffee that brought together victims and victimisers in a joint process of reconciliation and memory sharing. through generation of a special coffee brand called the third agreement – which is now being commercialised – memory of the territory’s autonomous peace processes and the community’s self-validation efforts were recovered and developed. critical skills were also developed in students and communities so that they could understand the implications of producing a design that would capture the market, while also recognising the importance of building transition paths declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7167 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7167 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7167 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:daniel.lopera@unibague.edu.co http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7167 for participants, especially in the contexts of war and peace. the students’ reflections led to the construction of new praxis distinctions, such as plandisposición (planning-disposition), escuchacción (active-action-listening), honest-synthesis and sentipensar-actuar (feeling-thinkingacting), which indicate critical awareness of how design can open possibilities for creating futures in which many worlds co-exist. keywords: action research; design; rehumanisation; education; coffee; peace agreement introduction this paper presents an analysis of and reflection on a participatory research and education project conducted in regional colombia. it brought together state, civil and community organisations, including the agency for the reincorporation and normalization of the colombian government (arn), coffee producer associations, the nasa wes’x indigenous community and 150 ex-combatants, as well as teachers and students from the design program of the university of ibagué, colombia. the purpose of this article is to demonstrate how creative (design) work can be organically transformed from the instrumental to the creative, favouring autonomous ways of learning. such an approach is based on the understanding that everything designed inaugurates or reproduces a series of ways of being and knowing (escobar 2017; willis 2006). being fully aware of this implies, in the creative practice, being attentive to a participatory process that favours autonomy, as an invaluable principle of peace building. the revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc) were the oldest guerrilla organisation in latin america. this peasant organisation, representing the rural population of colombia, took a marxist–leninist approach to complex situations that were occurring in the mid-20th century in their country, many of them with consequences still prevalent today. causes of its emergence are attributed to the weak presence of the state in the territories, especially in rural areas, the bipartisan wars between liberal and conservative political stances, which led to arming the civilian population with the purpose of exterminating the adversary, accompanied by a weak democracy and centralism. during this time, the staggered growth of interrelated situations, such as drug trafficking, selective killings, forced displacement, attacks on the civilian population and kidnappings, were a part of the every day. at the same time, attempts to draw up humanitarian agreements and conduct peace dialogues were taking place, sadly followed by non-compliance and escalation of systematic violence. responsibility for this violence lay not only with the different guerrilla groups, but also with state and pro-state organisations outside the law – the paramilitaries. during its years of armed struggle, the farc was considered a terrorist group by various countries. in colombia, it was not the only guerrilla group, but it was the group with the most power. their ability to act was evident; they came to have a presence in 24 of the 32 states of colombia, and at their peak amassed 18 000 armed guerrilla members (mapping militant organizations 2019). these data paved the way for two major political measures: the extermination of the group by the military forces and the paramilitaries, and the constant reactivation of the peace talks. the first measure, for which the colombian population was both for and against, increased violence, stigmatised the other as merciless, and perpetuated murder and death as a form of response. the second measure saw dialogue as the only possible lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 2 means of achieving a lasting peace. colombia’s entire population, of almost 50 million people, has been affected, directly or indirectly, by these two forms of response. in 2016 colombia experienced one of the most important events in its history of armed conflict. the state and the farc guerrilla representatives signed the final agreement for the termination of the conflict and the construction of a stable and lasting peace. this involved, among other things, pursuing a comprehensive agrarian development policy, laying down arms, achieving truth, justice and reparation, and favouring political participation. concerning the laying down of arms, the so-called zonas veredales or rural areas were created, which, through the intervention of the united nations and the office of the high commissioner for peace, accredited the ex-combatant population so that they could begin the process of reincorporation into civilian life. in relation to the crimes committed, some of the perpetrators would benefit from the jurisdicción especial para la paz – jep (special jurisdiction for peace) and others from amnesty law. the jep was created to offer truth and reparation to the victims, focusing on the most serious crimes that ex-farc combatants had committed. once the weapons in the rural areas had been handed in, those areas were renamed espacios territoriales de capacitación y reincorporación – etcr (territorial spaces for training and reincorporation), and this is where training now takes place in essential agrarian development and generation of profitable and productive activities. as of february 2020, there were 2893 people residing in the country’s 24 etcr. the tolima department is located in the central part of the country, with its main city ibagué about three hours away by car from bogotá, the capital of colombia. there are two etcr in this department, one in icononzo, and the other in gaitania within the municipality of planadas. gaitania is a rural town located in the andes mountain range, very close to the historical emergence of the colombian armed conflict with the farc guerrillas. marquetalia, one of the 22 villages of the township of gaitania, is recognised by the guerrilla organisation as the site of its birth more than 50 years ago. this has meant that for a long time gaitania and its inhabitants have suffered the ravages of war and have had to deal with its consequences, for example, the historical cultivation of poppy along its imposing mountains. hard work by the thriving populations of gaitania and planadas has resulted in the gradual modification of the prejudices directed towards this municipality by the colombian population, as well as their transformation into what we now know as the place that produces some of the most special coffee in the world. not surprisingly, they have twice won the cup of excellence in specialty coffee (in 2006 and 2015). coffee leader, ex-combatant and the nasa wes’x indigenous community now converge within this territory, previously being known in a polarising way as victims and victimisers. paradoxically, they all now work for what, in their own words, means building community life. in this context, a situated research and education project was developed. the project built several alliances with state, civil and community organisations, such as the agency for the reincorporation and normalization of the colombian government (arn), coffee producer associations in the south of tolima, the nasa wes’x indigenous community and 150 excombatants belonging to the territorial space for training and reincorporation, called marquetalia, cuna de la resistencia (cradle of resistance); all of them in collaboration with the design program of the university of ibagué. this process has lasted more than a year, starting in early 2019 with a team of students from the subject, design and future. faced with the enormous challenge of repairing a country – for many years fractured by wars, but now designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 3 confronting the unique possibility that was opened up by the 2016 peace agreement – the academy has an ethical–political obligation to participate. complicating the above, are the increasingly evident manifestations of a country that sadly has not stopped staging war as a hegemonic representation of the relationship between itself and those considered diverse. concrete manifestations of this are the current regeneration of violent conflict and the reoccupation of territories by elites who remain in power. a consequence associated with the above is the excessive number of murders of social leaders that is bordering on the deplorable: 817 people have been murdered from the signing of the agreements until february 2020 (indepaz, cumbre agraria campesina étnica y popular, coordinación social y política marcha patriótica e instituto de estudios para el desarrollo y la paz 2020). those especially targeted are farmers, indigenous leaders, members of community action boards, community leaders, african-descended leaders, among others (indepaz, cimep, iepri y comisión colombiana de juristas 2017). all of this is linked to the maintenance of power centres, expansion of extractivism and illicit crops, sabotage of peace agreements by right wing politicians, and ecological devastation, supported by neoliberal approaches that obliterate everything in their path. these concerns should not only be at the centre of national attention, but must also be perpetuated in the academy as constant exercises in reflection–action. this article aims to demonstrate how community creative processes can organically favour autonomous learning – learning that is mobilised by a distinctive design practice that places rehumanisation at the centre of its process. the findings presented here focus primarily on the construction of praxis distinctions applied to designing peaceful communities. the theoretical framework dehumanisation this process begins with a shared concern, a concern that links us to a group of other designers, academics, social leaders, students and citizens who observe in the western world the manifestation of a crisis. one of the manifestations of this crisis lies in the constant domination of market logics over the different ways of being and inhabiting the planet (i.e. indigenous communities, rural communities, social movements, vulnerable populations). the way in which it reproduces in the modern human being is by turning everyone into an object of use (heidegger 1994), and in this exercise hegemonic design has played a leading role. the dominant design has been invested with the dishonourable task of imagining and creating everything that can be commercialised and instrumentalised. in this process, it covers itself with the mantles of ‘progress’, ‘innovation’ and ‘development’ to justify its cause. we define it as dehumanisation, in which the human being loses touch with his/her own existence and becomes an object of the market – a merchandise. one of the main causes of this is not the market itself, but the modern western values and ways of knowing – instrumentalism, colonialism, patriarchy and dualism – that have created it (escobar 2017). in other words, they bring other forms of being and knowing and impose their hegemonic logic on communities. however, alternative transitional ways of counteracting this domination could emerge. transition implies recognising that the current socio-economic support structure of the communities must enter into relations with the global market, but it must dismantle its colonial rationality. in doing so, the values, practices and ways of relating on creative processes would have to be radically different. lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 4 design and rehumanisation current design studies talk about the ontological orientation that all creation has, recognising that, when a thing is designed, this thing in turn begins to influence our ways of being and knowing (willis 2006). for example, many modern apartments are designed with preestablished sections (living room, dining room, kitchen), fragmenting relationships. but a maloca (an ancestral house used by indigenous communities of the amazon), through its design, creates conditions for community interaction. which is to say that, when we design something, we are also designing practices, ways of relating and ways of knowing. the function of this design is not only to design new things but to repair, in communities, the forgotten capacity to create their own ways of life. this, as a praxis of design, has been called ‘autonomous design’ (escobar 2017). escobar mentions that every community practises some sort of design of themselves and, in doing so, rebuilds their vital sense and meaning of life. this relates to rehumanisation; to recover the sense and meaning of life (cañas-fernández 2010). rehumanising implies the rearticulation of a community life project, to live with dignity. it is a practical and theoretical approach to re-existence; a vital creative project in which various ways of being and knowing find their way of resisting and coexisting. under the lens of this crisis and a potential response, and within the framework of a bachelor design program in a regional institution of higher education, it is essential to ask: how can we educate new designers so that they can contribute to the creation of conditions of possibility for rehumanisation? note that when we talk about designers, we are not just talking about professional designers but everybody who participates in the designing of the world. learning in context learning is a social process (freire 2005). pedagogy is not a pre-established exercise carried out by someone called a teacher to someone called a student. it is a relational process that emerges from our network of recurring relationships as it acquires coherence in the context of experience. learning that cannot be located cannot be conceived as learning because the repetition of information is indoctrination. we learn from feeling part of something and recognising it as valuable. the context itself is required, life itself is required to construct meaning for transformation and learning together. conceiving us as a collective and interdependent, we reframe the fragmented position of the self and recover the conception of interexistence. the territory is not beyond, it also resides in us. it is an ethical–political attitude, not only to respond to the exercise of looting and exclusion of people from their territory (predominant in our towns from physical and epistemic violence) but, above all, to repair the relationship that breaks when the territory is also removed from the people (as described by a colombian leader from asociación de cabildos indígenas del norte del cauca – acin, quoted by escobar 2015). pedagogies of territory seek to release us from the caged nuances of university cloisters, to favor learning in the very dynamics of the communities and their own ways of responding to the challenges of the present. the pedagogy we are talking about is a pedagogy in transition: transitioning towards the recovery of other worlds, repairing itself from the instrumental vision that has been imposed (freire 2005). it is also critical in itself and in its own learning objectives. specifically, the design program of the university of ibagué, in which this central approach is being carried out, has taken marilyn frankenstein’s (2001) critical learning objectives as a reference point. these are as follows: designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 5 1. understanding design for rehumanization: that is to say, the conceptual understanding that when we design we are bringing into presence not only things but ways of being. this is to say, that the way we give meaning and sense to life is indivisible from the way we bring things into existence. 2. understanding design for the rehumanization of political knowledge: that is, how design speaks to us of the world it reproduces and the worlds it denies. in other words, such an understanding tells us about the political knowledge that is hidden by the designed world – in this case, the hegemonically designed world. every design tells us about the world – and about the worlds it denies. 3. understanding the politics of design for rehumanization knowledge: that is, what is the political that is hidden in the doing of design. this includes the political agency of design: that by designing something we are also designing ourselves (willis 2006). 4. understanding the politics of knowledge: this refers to the need to reconsider what today counts as valid knowledge of design and open our eyes to other forms of diseñotrear – designotherness (tracing the words of professor alfredo gutiérrezborrero). this brief outline of the learning objectives is the theoretical–practical place of enunciation and development of the pedagogical process of the design program. returning to frankenstein (2001), this requires of the program: dissolve the dichotomy between the ways of learning and the ways of teaching design; understand the cultural framework for design knowledge; and study design focusing on the deep and complex questions of society (i.e. war and peace). all this, with the constant intention of reading the world through design. the project the methodological approach described here is linked to the tradition of participatory action research as well as pedagogical practices of service learning. it implies that reality is conceived as a collective construct that happens through language so that, in this flow of consensual relationships, informed political action is favoured (ortíz 2016). likewise, being highly imbued with the previous theoretical proposals, it is a perspective and process oriented not only to the transformation of groups in terms of their manifestations, but also to the conditions of possibility in which these phenomena are made possible. the approach, therefore, is attentive to the way in which the problematic situation is portrayed as a constant exercise of consensus, as well as being attentive to the way in which the situation is responded to. responding creatively to something requires the expansion of our frames of perception, as also happens when we communicate (bohm, 2013). the project began with the initiation of the recently created mesa técnica cafetera of gaitania – mtc (technical coffee table), which represents three communities (coffee leaders, the ex-combatant community etcr marquetalia, and the indigenous community nasa wex’s). the university of ibagué was asked to support the process of creating a collective brand of coffee that would represent the three communities. this brand, according to their voices, should represent the post-conflict process that they are living and be a symbol of collective peace building. the third agreement: a reflection-action process the project was characterised by mutual learning. several visits were made to the territory, about six to seven hours from ibagué, the capital of tolima. several pre-established workshops lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 6 beginning of co-creation workshops at etcr, in gaitania. had to be re-thought organically in situ as an exercise in learning and careful listening. the 22 students and the two teachers worked to try and recognise the various roles, but in horizontal dialogue, and to define activities for everyone. in this way, information emerged and was analysed collectively. the instruments for data gathering were field diaries linked to the exercise of design, the systematisation of reflective talks, and their synthesis in a book, diarios del tercer acuerdo (diaries of the third agreement) (lopera-molano 2020). the information analysis process was carried out in teams. there were three levels of analysis: a first level with the qualitative data obtained from and with the relevant actors; a second level of individual interpretive data; and a third level of consensual interpretation for decision-making, accompanied by meta-reflective exercises that elicited categories. in all these processes, the various actors participated as the central point of the participatory exercise and decisionmaking. it should be noted that the process developed cyclically and actions were learned from each other, not necessarily from a certain chronological evolution, but rather from an organic awakening that became increasingly meaningful and managed to connect with past issues that had previously been given much relevance. it is worth mentioning that the students themselves created their own field logs, with some suggestive texts on how to prepare for dialogue, listening and participation. while the co-creation workshops were taking place, it was at the mtc that the most important design decisions were made, respecting the collegiate space and the voices of the different actors. for example, the mtc decided not only the graphic design proposals, but also the design of the message itself, on the collaborative ways of organising themselves and on the way in which they should present themselves as a living example of what they were saying. the process lasted approximately seven months and required seven trips to gaitania. initially, an intensive three-day workshop was held that required all students to move to designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 7 gaitania, where we found accommodation on a coffee farm, sleeping in cabins next to bags of freshly brewed coffee. the students did not want to sleep after hearing the amazing stories of the three communities. likewise, it should be mentioned that none of them had known an ex-combatant before and had a certain negative idea about them. however, the days were passing and prejudices were changing. regarding this, we carried out workshops to review ‘assumptions’ and open ourselves up to different perspectives than those gained from the hegemonic colombian history. further, we participated in four decision-making mtcs in gaitania. the trips from ibagué to gaitania were made by small groups of students, always accompanied by the teacher. these were not easy, as they take nearly a full day. the road from planadas to gaitania is mostly uncoated and can only be travelled by rented campers. the students covered the cost of the trips and food, and also dedicated a large part of their weekends and spare time throughout the first semester of 2019 to the project. their commitment was significant, since the demands of the community grew as they saw progress. for example, several of the students supported the care of children of ex-combatants so that their parents could be involved in the co-creation workshops, and they also supported the development of two murals on peace, one in the etcr and the other one in gaitania. the resources for the design proposals were, in part, provided by the students themselves as part of their academic project. trademark registrations, industrial designs and travelling costs for the teachers were borne by the university. during the process, training was necessary. we did not advance a specific graphic design until we had built an appropriate dialogue between us all. on several occasions, we had to slow down progress to take up issues of respect for other voices and to responsibly assume our tasks. this is how the made-up word, chancunchan, emerged. the students created a list of agreements around respect and shared responsibility, and we needed a term that sounded funny and that we could use to remind ourselves, in moments of disrespect between us, of the ethical agreements we had reached. we are still using this word in our conversations and pedagogical training with the students. it seems that, while we were building these pedagogical forms in the mtc, our community partners were remembering similar ideas related to their own ‘agreements’. to understand the importance of the above, it must be noted that sometimes nasa wex’s indigenous community participation was reliant on only a few members being able to represent it, so the presence at the beginning of one of them was of such significance for the project that it helped to give it meaning and value. don ovidio paya, an indigenous nasa wes’x, participated more than 20 years ago in what they call the first peace agreement. this agreement remains in force, is respectful of diversity and was built autonomously, without state mediation. fresh awareness of this first agreement arose when, in one of the project meetings, we mentioned the peace agreement, referring to that of havana, and don ovidio paya challenged us, saying that for him it was not the only or the first agreement. we are aware that in colombia there have been countless attempts at peace, several based on collective agreements and pacts. however, for this territory and its memory, two agreements are recognised. the nasa wes’x agreement with the farc in 1996 and the havana agreement in 2016. this second agreement, although highly criticised by the ex-combatants themselves, is, however, still the one that creates the conditions for being able to speak with the etcr and respond to the urgent need for collective work towards profitable productive projects and relational respect for diversity. lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 8 the result is that, during this process of creating peace, a collective brand was designed in recognition of the three communities and three agreements on territory. the last of them is the third agreement. this agreement was born from the pressing need to learn from the collective memory of the three communities and to prevent it from being lost. there is a risk that it may be lost (again) in the reproduction of commercial dynamics and in the urgency of training to produce or generate a business. policies that seem to have a higher priority on the government’s agenda. if our coffee were a story, what story would it recount? the collective memory of the peace processes that these communities have lived through is significant as it helps them to learn from the mistakes of the past. to forget these peace processes would imply that they have missed an opportunity to learn from the teachings of each peace exercise. when we talk about these three communities, we are talking about a great diversity of people who are grouped together and who, in the dynamics of modern development, may lose their own ways of being and knowing. ways of recognising each others’ differences are fundamental to fulfilling an agreement, in the context of building a stable and, most of all, lasting peace. for example, the story of what it is like to live in the mountains and subsist as a guerrilla, the life lessons learned, and the particular ways of living in an organisation outside the law have much to teach us about nomadic life, mutual care, and concepts like comradeship and subsistence. the story of nasa wes’x leading the 1996 peace agreement revealed what didn’t work and what did, and why. the story of the resilience of the coffee leaders who refused to leave their territory at the cost of their own lives. these stories are still alive because of the teaching they bring. what one chooses to remember is also part of the ongoing negotiations and debates about the way in which these three communities structure the design of their future. they have chosen to structure it on the basis of remembering, from different perspectives, from what happened in their previous peace agreements, and as a critical exercise in reading themselves and their own ways of creating designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 9 change. importantly, it is the ethical–political decision that these communities have made not to repeat war on their territory. designing a third agreement with people who did not want to repeat their years of war, while recognising the structural causes still in force, was a huge task. it required working from the current socioeconomic structure and, from it, considering other values and forms of relationship. in this sense, coffee, as the current occupation of the territory, was the reason for this group to create conditions of peace. it was an opportunity to develop other forms of relationships that were also productively profitable but whose focus did not lie in the economic good per se, but in the construction of a society which recognised difference and also valued care of the land and development of products that would deter extractive industries and other forms of devastation. the inscription on the label of the third agreement coffee was co-created by the participants and featured their voices, especially that of a former combatant. it reads: in the same lands that today see one of the most special coffees in the world being born, more than 20 years ago the nasa indigenous community and the revolutionary armed forces of colombia independently celebrated what they called their first peace agreement. the second peace agreement, recognized by these communities, is signed between the government of colombia and the leaders of the guerrilla organization. in it, they agree to end the armed conflict throughout the nation. in a complementary way, a group of coffee leaders, ex-combatants and indigenous people have been building a third agreement, located, particular and required for their own needs and the characteristics of the territory they inhabit and love. this third agreement reminds us day by day that peace is built from the human warmth of each community. it involves an autonomous historical reconciliation exercise that, thanks to the diversity and high quality of its coffee, manages to cultivate in them a new hope for the future. en las mismas tierras que hoy ven nacer uno de los cafés más especiales del mundo, hace más de 20 años la comunidad indígena nasa y las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de colombia celebraron, de manera autónoma, lo que denominaron su primer acuerdo de paz. el siguiente acuerdo de paz, reconocido por estas comunidades, se firma entre el gobierno de colombia y los líderes de la organización guerrillera. en éste, pactan la terminación del conflicto armado en toda la nación. de manera complementaria, un colectivo de líderes cafeteros, excombatientes e indígenas vienen construyendo un tercer acuerdo localizado, particular y requerido para sus propias necesidades y las características del territorio que habitan y aman. este tercer acuerdo les recuerda día a día que la paz se construye desde el calor humano de cada comunidad. les implica un ejercicio de reconciliación histórica autónoma que, gracias a la diversidad y alta calidad de su café, logra cultivar en ellos una nueva esperanza de futuro. in addition, the students designed a stand to present not only the special coffee but, essentially, the peace proposal it represented. this presentation was initially held at the university of ibagué and was attended by leaders of the new farc political organisation (fuerza alternativa revolucionaria del común), members of the un and the arn, business people from the region and university executives. one former combatant, in particular, who participated in the whole process, co-presented together with the students. after this prelaunch, the official launch of the brand occurred at expoplanadas on 26 july 2019, the same lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 10 date on which, 23 years ago (26 july 1996), the first peace agreement in the territory was achieved. involved in this presentation were ex-combatants themselves, especially those now trained as coffee tasters and baristas. promotional materials were developed by the students who wanted to draw attention to the third agreement and who recognised the need to communicate and market the project appropriately and widely. the members of the mtc agreed with this, but, this time, at a distance, as they did not see it as relevant to their daily life. the university will take this project into the territory when the students complete their social semester on ‘peace & region’ in 2020b, which officially occurs at the end of all university of ibagué programs. diarios del tercer acuerdo: proposals for praxis this section explores the process of analysis undertaken by the students and teachers. it can be summarised as a process of interpretation, metareflection and synthesis into categories, as described in the book, diarios del tercer acuerdo, written by the students. in it, they have collected their experiences and reflections on them within a framework of a rehumanising design project. the following categories emerged, anchored to the practical processes carried out: • plandisposición (planning-disposition) • escuchacción (active-action-listening) • honest-synthesis • sentipensar-actuar (feeling-thinking-acting). plandisposición (planning-disposition): commonly, teachers say that we must ‘plan the class’, planning that is loaded with learning objectives, competencies, didactics, activities, among other things, that arise as expectations to be developed with students. it is clear to us that this planning exercise must be carried out, but it cannot be the only one, otherwise an instrumental imposition of planning is generated to the exclusion of what happens in the here-and-now of the class. the same thing happened to us in the co-creation processes. it was not possible to build in and for autonomy if we operated merely from what was planned. that is the epistemic and political burden of a preconceived methodology. generally, design prejudices are framed within highly mercantile conceptions (brand design, advertising design, product design, clothing, etc.). these prejudices play a preponderant role in the way in which others conceive of what we do and arrange the spaces and their expectations for it. we, who are trained in design, also fall into thinking that a creative community process can be strictly planned. however, we also realise that creative processes happen, and it is up to us to be aware of the conditions of possibility that make them emerge. plandisposición is a recognition of the need to be available in the present moment and that everything can change radically, except the essential understanding of what makes the event possible. the students demonstrate this when they write, ‘we have been learning from the organic, to navigate among the dynamics of the community’ (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020, p. 103). we call these organic methodologies and they correspond to a recognition of what does not fit into planning and what needs to be released to open ourselves to dialogue, collective creation and uncertainty. max-neef (1991) has expressed this as navigating in uncertainty while maintaining a state of maximum alertness. in accordance with the above, students made a series of 14 cards called ‘practical knowledge cards’ for organic methodologies (colectivo diseño de futuros u.i. 2019). each designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 11 card featured a process and description of collective creation and community creativity. the cards are evidence of everyone’s openness to each others’ ways of learning. below, we present two examples from the cards: teji-tejiendo and el mamarracho. 1. teji-tejiendo (weaving us) meaning: opening worlds requires developing careful listening. with this card we propose that you build a weaving based on your experience, on the written and graphic resources you have and from the information that you can provide to your colleagues. take into account the sense in which you are building: what did you expect to happen? how did it discourage you? in what context does the situation unfold? there may be unforeseen events, but that makes the experience richer, and the best thing is that it can be transformed organically. once you build a comprehensive understanding (a weaving) of the situation, the oportunicuerdo (opportunities/memories/agreements) can emerge. this makes it possible to recreate a model of the situation in order to make decisions according to what happened. therefore, in order for this weaving to promote oportunicuerdos, it is essential that it include all the voices of the relevant actors (including your assumptions, reflections and feelings). note: so that the recreation of the situation is recorded in the best possible way, we suggest using a field diary, recordings, photos, blogs with drawings, phrases and any tool that you consider valuable for collecting information (colectivo diseño y futuro 2019, p. 5). 2. the mamarracho (ugly drawing) meaning: opening worlds requires treasuring sincere expressions of creation. you will encounter various ideas when posing a solution and some may be more understandable than others at first glance. the important thing is that they are clear to the group and to the person who is posing them. if you come across a mamarracho, we advise you to treasure it; it is a sincere expression of creation. remember that we are working with people who were born in a world that has indicated that only some draw well and others poorly. the mamarracho can be a valuable opportunity to recover the ability to draw, create and think that we all can build valid and coherent proposals. the important thing is to ask yourself: what does the mamarracho want to tell us? note: be willing to offer everyone the same importance and not be selective (colectivo diseño y futuro 2019, p. 17). key concepts are framed by the need for a designing-in-time for transition. this implies understanding that, in the design process, in its methodology, we can be denying worlds; that is, the agency of what is designed is the reproduction of authority. on the other hand, experiential learning broadens the reading of how important it is to recover time and conscious disposition in creative methodologies. the fact that design is understood not as an outcome but as a conscious political process increases the capacity for communities to re-articulate their life project and create conditions for autonomy. the students understood that dignity also lies in how we create something, not only in what we are going to create. escuchacción (active-action-listening): this arises from understanding in territory, in which listening (escuchar) is not merely a passive exercise of paying attention to what another says. it is an exercise in action and acting in the way in which that world, which another is trying to narrate to us, appears from dialoguing. the students mention it forcefully more than once: ‘you have to learn to listen to people’ (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020, p. 43); ‘above all [else] is to design listening to the territory lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 12 and its people’ (p. 124); ‘[it] is to understand that design designs, the important thing is how we approach the other and we really open ourselves to listening’ (p. 29). they indicate that it is a ‘constant quality that must be had, to not try to understand people, but to listen to them’ (p. 84). listening opens you in an active-action, it enacts you, it is acquired in action and it opens you for action; therefore, it is called escuchacción. the honest-synthesis: this category emerged when we tried to understand what we were referring to as design objects or graphic designs. one of the students argued that the purpose of the object is to synthesise diverse voices with an honesty that should characterise any exercise in peace-building, and from there all subsequent reflection grew. for example: ‘we constantly mentioned that we should make an honest synthesis for the brand and in that search, little by little, we began to recognize that really doing something conscientiously with a community can make changes in ourselves’ (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020, p. 102). this suggests that how you do something, and the ethical–political positions you assume, start to design you as well. the honest-synthesis, as a design posture, also emerges as a referent of rehumanisation through its connection with restorative justice; restorative of the vital weaving of the communities that are still connected to it. thus, honesty, as a premise of the synthesis in design, translates into the recovery of the creative capacity of the communities, as only they can make sense of it. our role is to accompany that process, while being honest about how far we can go in understanding it. in doing so, we are also being honest with ourselves. in other words, we are recovering a relational sense towards our life. being aware of this is highly relevant to the exercise of world design. if the students have understood the idea of the categories presented above, it is because they have connected their practice with an ethical–political project. they have managed to recognise in the designed its ontological character for the creation of a rehumanising world. in this, they approach a conscious emancipation from design making, resulting in a design that rearticulates its meaning with that of the same communities with which it creates. this is essential in a context of peace, because, as one student mentioned, the ‘conflict has occurred [also] because a large population of our country has wanted to have the freedom to create and choose their own future and has not been allowed [...], this can also be the root of peace’ (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020, p. 120). keeping a memory of what was done and constantly remembering the value of reconciliation are what makes the third agreement something much greater than a brand, and it is what makes the design process something much more than an ideation exercise. taking advantage of this productive project opportunity as an apprehensible memory of the first and second agreements and a living memory of the third agreement, and as an exercise of reconciliation between ex-combatants and victims was, for the participants in this project, to also recover a sense of meaning in life. sentipensar-actuar (feeling-thinking-acting): obviously, this concept can be related to other proposals from the global south and clearly is consistent and resonates with participatory action research and popular narratives of our countries. precisely, sentipensar arises from the popular jargon of colombian fishermen and has been taken by fals-borda (2015) as a key basis for his latin american sociology. as one student noted, ‘it is gratifying how a whole group of students are willing to create a change for themselves and for others through design, not just any design, but one that thinks, feels and acts preserving that communication and coherence with life’ (diarios del tercer acuerdo 2020, p. 152). this implies that sentipensamiento (feeling-thinking) acts in you and is a coherent enacting with what you think. it seems, then, that the third leg of the triad was born: acting in coherence with what i feel and think reflects not only an exercise of interconnected emotion and reason but, above all, designing communities in peace: participatory action-research approaches embedded in regional education in colombia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 13 of praxis. what is the design of the world but a political praxis? hopefully, as the students mentioned, we wish to be an example of a corazonante (heart-reason) praxis. concluding thoughts the above categories show us a reflection–action process in context, pointing to essential issues such as decoloniality, the future, design of the south, peace, the history of the conflict and epistemologies of the south, among much more besides. these are approaches that later connect with increasingly profound readings of the world, but which are always anchored to territory. these are critical awakenings of an epoch of possible rehumanisation. in this sense, these categories link us, above all, with the first and second critical learning objectives as proposed by frankenstein (2001). students managed to position concepts to understand the world politically and in turn build new concepts. this novelty in construction brings us closer to the fourth learning objective that involves talking about otherness: that which is not easily perceived, what hegemonic design denies. the pedagogical and solidarity processes used in this project allowed the students to acquire meaning and transform these otherwise theoretical concepts. these transformations are evidenced in the wealth of new concepts and frameworks co-created or incorporated by the students and teachers themselves to nurture the project. the concepts appear interwoven with the practice itself and not as isolated matters to tick off on a checklist. the third learning objective listed above is manifested forcefully in the proposals of honestsynthesis and transitional objects. students were conscious designers of the political agency of design, not only in the field of materiality but in the ways of being that are designed from what we create (fry 1999). it is in this act of critical and transforming consciousness that rehumanisation acquires a possible path that allows it to counter the dominant design. rehumanisation, in this case, is perceived not as a goal but as a conscious exercise in the here-and-now that drives both the how and the why and for what. that is why rehumanisation happens in processes that are attentive to cultivating it, from their own ways of approach, dialogue, respect for voices and listening, among others. the creation of conditions of possibility for rehumanisation is modifying us as humans, as we weave from care to openness. not surprisingly, it is mentioned that sentipensar-actuar is a whole anchored to the particular context of the development, making society more sensitive and becoming more sensitive to the concerns of each community to co-build autonomy. finally, we consider that the project presented here is an initial reference for rehumanisation processes in terms of: • the ethical–political training of students and teachers who managed to relate their practices to four critical learning objectives, allowing for autonomous developments and the emergence of new concepts in the face of the exhaustion of hegemony • the active construction of initial possibilities for autonomy in communities with histories of violence in their territories, possibilities that dignify their practices and their purposes and that value the exercise of dialogue for creation, imagination and heartfelt criticism • the pedagogical design proposal that honestly engages with its own forms and acts as an ethical–political reference for the transformation of design practice and of designers facing the challenges of our south lopera-molano, lopera-molano gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 13, no. 1, may 2020 14 • the understanding of design in contexts of war and peace, highlighting the relevance of reorienting it to make it relevant to our own southern latin american realities. here, there is quite a challenge for the imagination of re-existence. we also recognise that the challenge continues to expand. although the process of the third agreement is already productive, market dynamics have become the most relevant aspects of recent talks because of the amount of work that this process requires. presumably, by putting aside the social exercise of collective memory. this represents a challenge on which we must continue working. acknowledgements a heartfelt tribute to all the designers who, with or without a title, participated in this collective creative project. it is your imagination that has allowed us to understand that there are still opportunities to build senses of another life. to the coffee leaders of gaitania, to the nasa wes’x indigenous community, to the ex-combatants the etcr-el oso, to the arn, and to the vigorous and hard-working people of planadas, tolima: we recognise in the colombian people, in those who are building this country from the territories, their dedication and staunch faith in believing that it is possible, like us, to sentipensar-actuar a colombia in peace. references agencia para la reincorporación y la normalización 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(2024). rhythm interactive special enablers (r.i.s.e.) – a collaborative community engagement program. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 10. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9348 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 snapshot article rhythm interactive special enablers (r.i.s.e.) – a collaborative community engagement program wen fen beh1,*, edwin lawrance nathaniel2, swee chuan tan3, kenny s.l. cheah4, florence kuek5, joanne pei sze yeoh6, yiing siing wong1 1 faculty of creative arts, universiti malaya 2 music mart pj, selangor 3 pertubuhan kebajikan fajar harapan 4 faculty of education, universiti malaya 5 faculty of arts and social sciences, universiti malaya 6 faculty of human ecology, universiti putra malaysia corresponding author: wen fen beh; beh.wenfen@um.edu.my doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9348 article history: received 17/09/2024; revised 20/11/2024; accepted 02/12/2024; published 12/2024 abstract rhythm interactive special enablers (r.i.s.e.) is a collaborative community engagement program designed to improve motor function, engagement and selfesteem through musicbased intervention in children with cerebral palsy (cp). cp is a movement disorder caused by brain damage during development, with spasticity significantly affecting mobility and quality of life. utilising drum circles, a form of group drumming, r.i.s.e. aims to stimulate neuroplasticity, enhance motor skills and provide a creative and enjoyable therapeutic experience. the program implemented at the spastic children’s association of selangor & federal territory (scas&ft) involved 12 biweekly workshops that combined rhythmic exercises and music with the objectives of improving motor coordination, fostering teamwork and boosting participants’ selfconfidence. through structured drum circles, the participants engaged in rhythmic activities that stimulated both cognitive and physical functions. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors wish to acknowledge two grants received in support of this research: suruhanjaya kebangsaan unesco malaysia (gau0042023); and umcares (ruu00623ce). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9348 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9348 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:beh.wenfen@um.edu.my https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9348 the program was assessed on participant retention, engagement and the incorporation of music into rehabilitation exercises. feedback from participants and caregivers indicated improvements in motor skills, confidence and community connectedness. additionally, a ‘train the trainer’ initiative was implemented to ensure longterm sustainability, enabling scas&ft to autonomously run the program. moving forward, the program aims to expand to other neurological conditions, ensuring wider accessibility through training and resources. keywords rhythm interactive special enablers (r.i.s.e.); cerebral palsy; drum circles; music-based intervention; community engagement introduction cerebral palsy (cp), a static, nonprogressive movement and posture disorder, arises from damage to the developing brain. affecting roughly one to two per 2000 newborns, cp prevalence increases tenfold in premature infants and those with low birth weight (khoo 2010). studies conducted in malaysia estimate a cp prevalence of 2.6 per 1000 live births, compared to a range of 2.3–4.2 per 1000 live births reported in australia and europe (ismail et al. 2022; sellier et al. 2020). spasticity, a common cp symptom, can significantly impact a child’s quality of life as a result of limited mobility, coordination and overall physical function (odding, roebroeck & stam 2006; vameghi et al. 2023). while traditional therapeutic approaches offer benefits, they often fail to address the holistic needs of the patient, highlighting the need for innovative and integrative methods. the brain’s inherent capacity for neuroplasticity allows it to adapt and restructure itself in response to consistent patterns of behaviour (cramer et al. 2011). for individuals with cp, music could serve as a catalyst for neuroplasticity by offering a fresh and engaging approach to addressing therapeutic goals (zaatar et al. 2023). musicbased interventions, such as playing instruments, can be effectively combined with other therapies to promote greater engagement and potentially achieve more successful outcomes (chatterjee, hegde & thaut 2021). through these interventions, music could activate neuroplasticity, potentially facilitating improvements in motor function for individuals with cp. children with cp often face difficulties performing the necessary movements to promote neuroplasticity, as they may lose interest in conventional forms of exercise (damiano 2006). however, incorporating music into these exercises could capture their attention and maintain their engagement. by leveraging the power of music, children are more likely to stay engaged and perform the necessary repeated movements to improve their motor functions. the greater the level of engagement, the easier it becomes for children to achieve their therapeutic goals and enjoy the benefits of neuroplasticity (paul & ramsey 2001). recognised for centuries, the therapeutic potential of music manifests in various forms of musical engagement that promote physical, emotional and cognitive wellbeing (chen 2023; macdonald 2013; welch et al. 2020). one significant advantage of music is its universal appeal, as individuals are familiar with music and rhythm regardless of culture and background, allowing it to transcend language barriers and foster a sense of connection and inclusion (laukka et al. 2013). moreover, music is inherently engaging, tapping into emotions and cognitive processes, which enhances motivation and participation in rehabilitation programs (thoma et al. 2013). it also serves as a noninvasive and costeffective intervention, as it does not require expensive hightech equipment or extensive training. drum circles, a group drumming activity where participants create rhythm collectively, have gained attention for fostering social connection, reducing stress and enhancing motor skills (ascenso et al. 2018; ho et al. 2011; mason, sonke & lee 2021). the inherent qualities of rhythm and movement in drum circles offer a promising complementary intervention for children with cp. they offer an engaging, beh et al. 2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 2024 nonverbal medium that can stimulate neuroplasticity, improve motor coordination and foster a sense of accomplishment and joy (colverson et al. 2024; pantelyat et al. 2016; tee & kuan 2021). drum circles can take various forms, ranging from freeform improvisational drum circles to culturally specific drum circles, with facilitated community drum circles occupying a middle ground (hull n.d.). a freeform improvisational drum circle, characterised by its lack of rules and leadership, allows participants to explore and express their rhythmic spirit spontaneously. in contrast, a culturally specific drum circle follows strict rules with little room for improvisation, focusing on the disciplined execution of traditional rhythm parts with cultural significance. a facilitated community drum circle combines elements of both extremes, providing structure through a rhythm event facilitator while allowing freedom of expression and interactive musicality. this balance makes it particularly suitable for therapeutic settings, promoting rhythmical connection and collective creativity (hull n.d.). building on the concept of facilitated community drum circles, a musicbased intervention program, rhythm interactive special enablers (r.i.s.e.), was formulated for children with cp. this community engagement initiative aimed to showcase social responsibility, encourage research opportunities, foster collaboration, participate in community outreach and advance skill development from academia to community. by participating in this community engagement initiative, universiti malaya (um) made a meaningful contribution to local communities, creating an impact through strategic collaboration with diverse groups. our partnership the r.i.s.e. program was implemented at the spastic children’s association of selangor & federal territory (scas&ft) at the heart of petaling jaya, a strategic location on the west coast of malaysia, making it easily accessible to the participants. established in 1960, scas&ft became a vital resource for families seeking support for children with spasticity. scas&ft operated a spastic centre that provided a comprehensive range of services tailored to these children’s needs, including free transportation, education, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and more (scas&ft n.d.). to expand on these efforts, um, through its community engagement centre, umcares, collaborated with scas&ft to develop the r.i.s.e. program. by fostering partnerships with community groups and working on initiatives that address specific identified needs to promote inclusivity, this program aligns with um’s mission to reduce health inequities and enhance quality of life in its targeted communities. dr beh wen fen, a senior lecturer from the faculty of creative arts, identified the potential for therapeutic interventions using creative arts. with insight from discussions with scas&ft’s leadership and community members, she proposed the r.i.s.e. program, and secured funding from umcares and unesco to bring the initiative to life. a multidisciplinary team comprising experts from music, psychology, medical, education, social sciences and industry partners have been assembled for the program. the r.i.s.e. program built upon scas&ft’s existing offerings by introducing a musicbased intervention designed to improve various development skills in children with cp. the program leveraged the engaging and stimulating qualities of music to achieve practical, nonmusical goals, such as promoting neuroplasticity and enhancing the effectiveness of existing therapeutic interventions. the project aimed to achieve four main objectives: 1. to cultivate and boost selfesteem, discipline and teamwork in children with cp, fostering a desire for personal growth and achievement. 2. to establish a musicbased intervention program accessible at the community level. 3. to enrich the rehabilitation process by introducing and incorporating a musicbased intervention program. 4. to empower the community by providing training in musical therapeutic techniques, ensuring sustainability of the program. beh et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 december 20243 the r.i.s.e. program the project was implemented in four distinct phases: (1) development of the r.i.s.e. program; (2) implementation of the r.i.s.e. program; (3) project sustainability and exit plan; and (4) program impact evaluation. the first phase focused on developing the r.i.s.e. program, which was then implemented (phase 2) and evaluated at scas&ft. the program’s efficacy was closely monitored and assessed during this phase. this project intended to enrol members of the cp community, specifically children living with cp. the program was monitored based on: • the number of cp participants enrolled in the program; • the number of cp participants retained in the program; and • the number of exercises that are incorporated with music. in the final stages of the project, the focus shifted towards ensuring the program’s sustainability and evaluating its longterm impact. during phase 3, the project successfully established a sustainability and exit plan, with the program now being run independently by the facilitator. in phase 4, the impact of the program was evaluated based on feedback gathered from the cp children participants and their caregivers, specifically regarding the effectiveness of the musical therapeutic module, r.i.s.e. phase 1: development of the r.i.s.e. program for cp children the development of the r.i.s.e. program drew upon research on neurologic music therapy techniques (thaut & hoemberg 2014). past studies were reviewed to identify effective rehabilitative approaches suitable for the program’s design. the r.i.s.e. program was built on the concept of facilitated community drum circles. in these circles, participants play hand drums and percussion instruments while seated in a circle. unlike traditional music ensembles, drum circles are freeform, meaning the music has no predetermined start or end. additionally, all players are considered equal and there are no ‘wrong notes’ in a drum circle. participants actively listen to one another and respond intuitively, joining the rhythmic exploration when they decide to. the emphasis is on collaborative participation rather than individual technical mastery. a facilitator or coordinator may guide the group through various rhythmic patterns during a drum circle. importantly, prior musical experience is not required for participation. the core objective is to create a positive and enjoyable experience for all participants. the r.i.s.e. program followed a structured progression designed to promote incremental growth in the participants. there were eight key parts, constructed in increasing complexity in terms of the range of physical movements and coordination, making the learning process more manageable for the participants. the figure below shows the arrangements of the eight parts in order of complexity: the program began with breathing exercises synchronised to simple musical beats, preparing participants for the increased complexity and coordination required in subsequent program sections. this culminated in a collaborative ensemble performance, where participants contributed to music creation as a team. it was crucial to emphasise that the program prioritised therapeutic benefits over the mastery of percussion and musical skills. this philosophy shaped the program’s overall pedagogy, focusing on creating a safe and supportive environment. games, humour, positivity and encouragement were utilised to maintain a lighthearted, friendly and uplifting environment for participants. the rhythmbased exercises and activities in the r.i.s.e. program benefitted the participants in the following ways: beh et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 december 20244 • instilled attentiveness and discipline; • cultivated creative selfexpression; • boosted selfconfidence; • induced relaxation and relieved stress; • fostered a sense of connectedness, belonging and community; • encouraged teamwork and cooperation; and • improved fine and gross motor functions, strength and mobility (especially for participants with cp). phase 2: implementation of the r.i.s.e. program the r.i.s.e. program was implemented at scas&ft. the program targeted members of the scas&ft community, specifically children with cp and relevant staff members. the program consisted of 12 onehour workshops delivered biweekly over a sixmonth period. to ensure program sustainability, scas&ft staff and members were trained during the implementation stage (see figure 2). phase 3: project sustainability and exit plan to ensure the longterm viability and impact of the r.i.s.e. program beyond the initial implementation phase, a comprehensive approach to sustainability and capacity building was undertaken. the aim was to create a resilient and selfsustaining model for continuous learning and skill development, facilitating the immediate success of the program whilst guaranteeing its longevity and adaptability within the community; thus, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and empowerment. this involved the following: 1. structured train the trainer program: to ensure the longterm sustainability of the program, a structured training program was developed to equip scas&ft staff with the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver the r.i.s.e. program independently. 2. detailed training modules: a comprehensive training module was formulated to serve as a resource for trainers delivering the r.i.s.e. program, which was shared with the community. figure 1. the eight parts of the r.i.s.e. program in order of complexity beh et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 december 20245 3. highquality video recordings: recordings showcasing the r.i.s.e. program were developed for educational and outcomes dissemination purposes. phase 4: program impact evaluation the r.i.s.e. program was designed to offer holistic support to children with cp and to potentially benefit individuals with other neurological disorders. to assess the program’s effectiveness and sustainability, a multiphased evaluation plan was implemented. this approach outlined shortterm, intermediate and longterm goals. the phases included detailed analyses, feedback collection, practice expansion and eventual integration into broader healthcare settings. this structured plan aimed to create a robust framework for the adoption and growth of musicalbased intervention programs in various therapeutic and rehabilitative environments. shortterm intermediate longterm analysis based on findings of the musical therapeutic module intervention assessment. analysis based on feedback from the cp children participants/caretaker. increase practice of music based intervention program for cp children or those with other neurological disorders. expansion of musicbased intervention program to rehabilitation centre. take up of program by industry/ngos/gov/at hospital, health clinic centre, etc. figure 2. r.i.s.e. program – train the trainer beh et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 december 20246 in the shortterm phase, a comprehensive analysis was conducted to evaluate the program’s initial impact. the primary goal was to examine the suitability of the program’s eight components and determine whether they could be followed and performed effectively by the children, while also gathering caregivers’ feedback on whether they would like their children to continue participating in the program. this included assessing the performance of children with cp (32 participants) using an activity performance assessment form and gathering feedback through structured interviews with a randomlyselected subset of caregivers (five participants). the data was analysed by the project leader, team and community members, with key insights shared among the research team and pilot program stakeholders. this collaborative process informed future research planning and program refinement. by focusing on feasibility, participant engagement and preliminary outcomes, the shortterm phase laid the foundation for the program’s intermediate and longterm development. in the intermediate term, the focus will shift to reflecting on lessons learned and planning the next steps for program development and expansion. lessons learnt and next steps with the implementation of the program, several challenges arose, primarily due to the concerns of the parents and scas&ft who feared that loud sounds might cause additional stress for children with cp. the team successfully addressed these concerns and edwin nathaniel, the key trainer from the music industry who played a significant role in developing the program, noted, ‘there were some who thought that the loud noise would affect their hearing. but the opposite happened, and they loved it.’ another challenge was public perception of the use of music as a therapeutic tool when the team promoted the program to the community. this highlighted the need to be flexible and to adapt the program based on feedback and the evolving needs of the community to ensure its success and sustainability. as evidenced by many successful models, engaging stakeholders – ranging from information sharing to capacity building for decisionmaking and participation in determining courses of action – is crucial (wells, lehigh, & vidmar 2023). moving forward, the next steps involve expanding the program to be accessible to a wider population, customising it to suit the needs of participants with various learning challenges, including autism spectrum disorder (asd), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) and down syndrome (ds). however, the lack of financial resources poses a significant challenge in expanding these programs to rehabilitation centres. to ensure the project’s sustainability, a structured trainingoftrainers program, detailed training modules and highquality video recordings are essential, as they represent the minimum cost for promoting the program effectively. this program has the potential to significantly impact research and knowledge generation by advancing the understanding of musicbased interventions in community settings. the program could offer valuable insights into the therapeutic benefits of rhythmic activities for diverse populations, particularly those with special needs. by fostering collaboration between researchers, practitioners and community members, the program could serve as a model for communitybased participatory research (cbpr), highlighting the importance of community involvement in generating relevant and impactful knowledge and practice. conclusion today, as the caregivers at scas&ft would testify, the r.i.s.e. program has given the community unprecedented opportunities for personal growth and development. one of the parents shared their perspective, ‘to be honest, i did not have any expectations initially, but now i am thrilled with how the r.i.s.e. program has made a positive impact on my kid’s motor skills, confidence and happiness, all through the engaging use of rhythm and music.’ beh et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 december 20247 since the inception of the train the trainer program, 32 children with cp have consistently participated in the r.i.s.e. program. notably, some participants on the autism spectrum have been trained to become facilitators themselves, leading music performances and practice sessions at the centre as well as displaying qualities and abilities that would have otherwise remained dormant. the program’s potential is exemplified by scas&ft’s fundraising concert held by the participants in august 2024 (see figure 3). one of the audiences commented, ‘i was moved by the energy and unity of the drum circle.’ another shared, ‘it was amazing to see how the participants are able to come together regardless of their differences mentally and physically, and i’m reminded again of how incredible music is.’ figure 3. fundraising concert at scas&ft a key aspect of the r.i.s.e. program is its collaboration between industry, academia and researchers at um. this partnership aimed to achieve a dual purpose – yielding credible research outcomes and meeting the needs of the cp community. both goals have been successfully achieved with next steps focused on cbpr planning to use validated instruments for future outcomes dissemination. the needs of the cp community have been consistently met through the weekly r.i.s.e. program, which is now sustained at scas&ft and has become one of their regular services. the collaboration has proven to have positive shortterm impacts on stakeholders, with the intermediateterm impact of the program expected to expand to a wider population through a structured train the trainer program. this will 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cited and states its license. citation: rooks, r. n., mccarthy, s., graybeal, b., and griffin, s. 2022. communityengaged research on social capital and older adults’ health: lessons learned. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i1.7832 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article community-engaged research on social capital and older adults’ health: lessons learned ronica n. rooks1, sarah mccarthy2, britanie graybeal3 and stephen griffin4 1 associate professor and college of liberal arts and sciences’ director of online education, department of health and behavioral sciences, university of colorado, denver, colorado, usa 2 independent consultant, fairhill & company, denver, colorado, usa 3 director of quality and risk management, encompass health rehabilitation hospital of littleton, littleton, colorado, usa 4 research analyst and owner, strategic policy advising llc, and elementary special education paraprofessional, denver public schools, denver, colorado, usa corresponding author: ronica n. rooks, associate professor and college of liberal arts and sciences’ director of online education, department of health and behavioral sciences, university of colorado, denver, colorado, usa, ronica.rooks@ucdenver.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 article history: received 24/07/2021; revised 05/11/2021; accepted 07/03/2022; published 06/2022 abstract most adults in the united states prefer to age in their own homes and communities. however, many ageing-in-place models rely on expensive external services, negatively affecting access by lower socioeconomic status (ses) and other vulnerable groups. this article documents two pilot projects conducted by a community-academic partnership that examined associations between social capital, ageing in community, and health among older adults. the first project explored the association between social capital and health across community ses levels. the second project explored one type of social capital, timebanking, and its association with health. we highlight here our lessons learned from these community-engaged research (cer) projects: (1) our partnership needed to improve our study design and data collection by enhancing our recruitment strategies, community site partnerships, survey instrument and data matching, and research team workload allocation issues. (2) we should have validated our instruments for use with older adults who had mild cognitive and visual impairments, acknowledged how community ses differences influenced our data collection, and included more research assistant support 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this work was supported by a colorado clinical and translational sciences partnership development and joint pilot grants. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:ronica.rooks@ucdenver.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 during our community meetings. (3) we would have benefited from protocol development for recording and responding to issues raised by participants. our projects also led us to relational insights, such as reinforcing the need to foster clear communication across team members, involving community advisory boards earlier in the cer process, seeking network input on research strategies to meet older adults’ needs, and developing plans to sustain long-term relationships. we hope these lessons learned are useful to other community-engaged researchers. keywords social capital; ageing in community; community-engaged research; timebanking, older adults; socioeconomic status introduction most models for ageing-in-place in the united states of america (usa), such as village models, are unaffordable for lower income older adults. village models are community-based, nonprofit organisations offering health and social services to increase community-dwelling older adults’ ability to age-in-place (village to village network 2022). the authors of this article, an academic gerontologist and a community organiser and activist in colorado, partnered as co-principal investigators (co-pis) to examine alternatives to fee-based village models. we wanted to learn if reciprocity, i.e. neighbours helping neighbours at no cost, as part of ageing in community (aic) grassroot efforts to help people remain in their homes and communities as they age, could minimise older adults’ health challenges (thomas & blanchard 2009). this article documents our community-based research on two pilot projects and examines other models for engaging older adults in their communities. the academic partner was an assistant professor at the university of colorado denver and the community partner was the executive director at the neighborhood resource center of colorado (nrc). prior to its closure, nrc’s mission as a statewide nonprofit organisation was to build the capacity of others to build community. based on our interest in ageing, communities and health, we connected with the colorado clinical and translational sciences institute (cctsi) and statewide community groups working with older adults to secure funding and partnership support. our first project focused on aic strategies associated with older adults’ health across community socioeconomic status (ses) levels. it included a social science and ethnographic researcher, a former area agency on aging worker, a doctoral student in interdisciplinary health and behavioral sciences, and two masters in public health students as research assistants (ras). the research team worked with older adults during community meetings and assisted the co-pis with data collection and analysis. our second project examined the suitability and sustainability of timebanking as one method to build social capital, or community capacity, for older adults. we examined associations between timebanking participation and older adults’ health. the research team included an undergraduate in public health and a post-graduate ra working with the co-pis on data analyses, presentations and writing. our goals for these projects were to leverage aic models and build social capital through partnerships with colorado’s older adult service organisations. this article describes our research team’s challenges and lessons learned from our two pilot projects. we critically examine our methods and older adults’ assets and needs using aic models. we provide insight to the importance of developing strong community-academic partnerships through clear role assignment, duties expected of team leaders, strategies for developing a community advisory board (cab) and site partnerships, and tactics to ensure useful data collection and analysis for those new to community-engaged research (cer). the lessons learned may be beneficial to academic researchers interested in cer in supporting older adults’ health across community ses levels. rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20222 background social capital and ageing in community most americans prefer to age-in-place, i.e. continue to live at home with support services, as an alternative to nursing homes (binette & vasold 2018; rosenwohl-mack et al. 2020). however, some researchers express concern as to whether the ability to age-in-place is universal, particularly amongst socially vulnerable groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, african american and latino older adults (blanchard 2013; golant 2008; thomas & blanchard 2009). ageing-in-place programs frequently fail to consider how unequal access to assisted external services, due to lower ses, fewer family and social networks, and/or greater health disparities or chronic conditions may affect some older adults and their quality of life (thomas & blanchard 2009; vanleerberghe et al. 2017). additionally, social isolation and comorbidity rates among all older adults show clear differences in individual ses (finlay & kobayashi 2018; nicholson 2012). thus, we assessed the value of building social capital as a health-promoting strategy for older adults. we used bourdieu’s (1986) definition of social capital, which to paraphrase is the aggregate of actual or potential resources linked to a network of institutionalised relationships. in other words, social capital implies group membership, providing each member with ‘… collectively-owned capital, a “credential” which entitles them [members in a group] to credit in the various senses of the word’ (bourdieu 1986). building on bourdieu’s definition, carpiano (2006) asserts that social capital consists of actual or potential resources within social networks that can be drawn on by community members and is aligned with a community’s socioeconomic conditions. we explore carpiano’s assertion below. social capital is widely shown to influence individual and community health outcomes (coll-planas et al. 2017; pérez et al. 2020). this may be particularly important for older adults in later stages of the life course (norstrand & chan 2014; nyqvist et al. 2013) or in social isolation due to declining health and/or mobility (siette et al. 2021; yiengprugsawan, welsh & kendig 2018). moreover, social capital may help older adults with limited literacy and access to the internet or social media stay connected to family and friends (barbosa neves et al. 2018; litchman & edelman 2019; zhu et al. 2021). ample evidence connects lower ses to lower social capital, both relating to greater social inequalities in health and healthcare (kim et al. 2021; uphoff et al. 2013). however, few empirical studies explore differences in social capital by community ses or the pathways relating social capital to health (browneyung, ziersch & baum 2013; child et al. 2020). browne-yung, ziersch & baume (2013) found that the resources needed to develop social capital, such as social networking ability, differed by community ses, while child et al. (2020) found access to neighbourhood and network social capital varied by individual ses. information on the variation in social capital across community ses levels could inform the types of community development programs implemented to address older adults’ increased need for healthcare and long-term care costs. social capital is a key component of successful aic initiatives (greenfield 2014; hou & cao 2021; thomas & blanchard 2009). aic requires coordinated support services, tutoring and volunteering (chou & kroger 2014; hunter, neiger & west 2011) to keep older adults in their homes and connected to their communities. aic eliminates a major barrier to ageing-in-place for lower ses older adults, offering an alternative to paying for external services. our research used an aic framework to reduce the need for external health and social services for older adults. one proposed community building strategy, timebanking, facilitates social capital building. timebanking is a concept created by cahn and rowe (1992). timebank members volunteer their service time to help others in exchange for earning one time dollar, a unit of ‘service-oriented barter currency’, for each hour rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20223 spent performing a service, regardless of the type of service (cahn & rowe 1992; dakin 2007). time dollars can be used to meet a timebank member’s own service needs later. the transactional nature of timebanking as an intervention focuses on maintaining or improving older adults’ community capacity, sense of belonging and health, as well as reducing societal-level healthcare costs. timebanking is associated with increased emotional and physical wellbeing, decreased social isolation and depressive symptoms, improved independence, and reduced medications and hospitalisations among older adults (collom 2008; dakin 2007; lasker et al. 2011; lee et al. 2020). we believe the reciprocity and equality of participant services associated with timebanking make it an advantageous social capital building strategy (spinelli et al. 2019). our research focused on testing the timebanking model with older adults to improve or maintain their health. community-engaged research with older adults we conducted two projects using mixed methods with funding from cctsi (see the appendix). this institute is funded by the national institutes of health’s community and translational sciences award programs in the usa, established to improve the translation of basic and clinical findings to benefit health (blachman-demner, wiley & chambers 2017). our cer projects used a community-academic partnership, based on the partners’ complementary skills. we used cer principles in both research projects. cer is a conceptual and methodological framework which values community partner and stakeholder engagement at any phase of the research process (bishop et al. 2020; blachman-demner, wiley & chambers 2017; pasick et al. 2010). community participation can range from minimal engagement to full participation in, or collaboration on research such as communitybased participatory research (cbpr). community partners may include community-based institutions, advocacy or grassroots groups, or community members from these groups. cer encourages community stakeholders’ perspectives on refining study questions, implementing strategies and data collection plans, identifying results that may be applied to practice and shaping how results can be used in future research. thus, cer is essential to the translation of research into meaningful health improvements for the community. the purpose of this article was to describe how we engaged communities to evaluate whether older adults’ health could be improved through social capital building activities, and then to share the lessons learned in the hope they may benefit academic researchers and community partnerships. method community-academic partnership development training cctsi’s community engagement core provided training for new co-pis to develop community-academic partnerships, including three sessions during the partnership development pilot and one session during the joint pilot grants. our training involved exercises for the partners to learn about each other, explore cbpr principles and examine communication styles. we discussed how to leverage our similarities and differences when developing our partnership and agreed to use the community capacity building tool, an instrument designed to support consensus-based partner discussions. we also engaged with a cbpr coach, who facilitated future discussion sessions to advance our project. our joint pilot grant training for established community-academic partnerships refreshed our understanding of cbpr through mentorship. we received support on conducting research, capacity building and disseminating results. all four trainings appraised available resources for our projects, such as community engagement consultations, ethics, participant recruitment, etc. (see https://cctsi.cuanschutz.edu/community). rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20224 https://cctsi.cuanschutz.edu/community community advisory board previous research shows cabs assist in accurately representing their community’s interests, particularly when attention is given to socio-demographic and healthcare experiences within these communities, and they are influential in study design and implementation (goris et al. 2015; stewart et al. 2019). while most clinical and translational sciences awards currently have cabs (stewart et al. 2019), our first project on social capital and aic did not create a cab. we did not realise the value of a formal cab for input, nor did we have knowledge of its use with pilot projects at the time. however, based on our funder’s suggestion, we created a cab to assist with our second project. our cab was composed of five active older adult members from the communities examined. cab members represented their region’s socio-demographic characteristics (e.g. low ses and race, ethnicity and geographic location diversity) and had knowledge about their communities’ assets and needs. we recruited cab members from nrc’s networks. cab members joined our project to learn about community resources to help maintain older adults’ health, which they could use personally, as well as in their advocacy organisations. our cab was involved in each stage of the data collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination process (main et al. 2012). their mission included assisting the co-pis with community interactions and decision making throughout the research process, and giving feedback on planned research materials and meetings. they helped us determine which products to create and how to inform and distribute our results to participants through older adult service organisations or neighbourhood association newsletters, websites and/or community meetings. finally, our cab served a dispute resolution role for airing and resolving difficulties if they occurred. we asked our cab for feedback on our proposed activities, including creating a pros and cons list about timebanking and determining if timebanking was suitable or sustainable, as represented by our interactions with international, national and colorado timebanks. if our cab did not think timebanking was suitable or sustainable in colorado, we asked them to suggest alternative social capital building strategies. we also asked our cab for feedback on interview questions for local colorado timebank leaders and if there were other concerns they would like us to address during or in follow-up to our timebank interviews. site partnership development our community-academic partnership goal was to learn about existing grassroots efforts, where neighbours were helping neighbours within communities to address challenges faced by older adults. for our first project, we selected site partnerships from nrc’s prior work on aic. we identified potential denver communities representing varied community ses levels and single to multi-family unit housing styles. we consulted with communities, local government and older adult service organisations that had an interest in learning more about how to assist and enable older adults to use community capacity building strategies or other social support efforts. from a map created by nrc, our community co-pi suggested community meeting locations in low, middle and high ses communities. we found meeting sites in two older adult housing complexes, a community centre and a church. we tried to secure another location with residents from a middle ses community; however, the site was not willing to participate at that time. with our second project, we randomly sampled existing international and national timebanks listed in the directory of timebanks (http://community.timebanks.org/) and hourworld (http://www.hourworld. org/) to generate a broad array of timebanks to participate in our survey. we emailed invitations to 326 international and national timebank coordinators. thirty-three timebank coordinators responded, with a 10 percent response rate. we reached out to all seven existing colorado timebanks and received five positive responses to our collecting data from their members. three colorado timebanks were in urban communities and two were rural. timebank leaders and participants joined our project to learn and share information rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20225 http://community.timebanks.org/ http://www.hourworld.org/ http://www.hourworld.org/ about how other timebanks were structured and financially sustained, maintained active exchanges among members and recruited new members. community participation to attract participants for our first project, we held community meetings at locations easily accessible by older adults and where lunch could be served. as compensation, participants were served lunch and given us$4 vouchers for public transportation. to increase participation, we altered our study design for our last two meetings. we shortened our presentation by replacing lunch with snacks. we also shifted the timing of our community meetings to coincide with the sites’ schedule preferences and gave participants us$5 grocery cards instead of transportation vouchers, based on site leaders’ and participants’ suggestions. for our second project, we held meetings to learn about colorado timebanks and their members in members’ homes, a public library and community centres. when convenient for the timebank, we attended the group’s usual meeting, or scheduled a separate meeting. we kept meetings to one hour with snacks served, solicited input on a list of the pros and cons of timebanking, and discussed our survey findings from the national and international timebanks sampled. each of the five colorado timebank leaders who attended our meetings received us$50 gift cards, and older adult participants received us$10 grocery cards. lessons learned improvement in our study design despite our best efforts, more intentional project planning would have improved our study design and data collection. reviewing the literature, integrating cctsi’s advice, incorporating a cab in our second project and other improvements were insufficient. sample size and data collection issues: in our first project we had a small sample size and most participants were women. our sample size may have been attributed to using a convenient sample rather than a representative one. we also had fewer older adult participants from high ses communities. we likely had more low ses community attendance because our selected sites were older adult housing facilities and participants did not need transportation to participate in our research. in the future, we could obtain more ses variation through systematic searches of older adult centres, housing developments and advocacy organisations in order to gauge their interest in participating in our study. however, a drawback to this strategy would be not having pre-existing relationships with leaders from these communities to invest in our research. an alternative participant suggestion was to ‘piggyback’ on an existing organisation’s meeting to secure older adults for our research. we could visit their meeting to discuss our upcoming community meeting and then hold our meeting afterwards. with institutional review board (irb) approval, we had a chance to act on this suggestion later. the quality and usability of our data were compromised in part by community meeting barriers. outreach to participants, including telephone calls to organisational leaders and site flyers, did not effectively advertise or communicate a clear understanding of our research to community members. thus, many older adults did not comprehend the meaning of social capital, for example, resulting in unclear information from them. across our two projects we learned and used improved recruitment suggestions. for example, our community co-pi made a few visits to our site partners prior to our community meetings to build trust and relationships with the leaders and participants. we improved our community meeting flexibility by reiterating points to accommodate entrants who arrived late, shortened the duration of our rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20226 meetings to maintain participant interest, and later ensured our community meetings did not conflict with other previously scheduled events at the site. other community meeting challenges included a lengthy data collection timeframe and unanticipated events, which hindered our research momentum. during our first project, meetings occurred two to four months apart, over 18 months, due to scheduling conflicts and the need to add two meetings to increase our sample size with irb approval. we experienced research team changes and needed to hire new ras, and we did not have spanish interpreters at one meeting due to miscoordination between the site leader and community co-pi. thus, we learned to send reminder emails or make calls to site leaders about our upcoming community meetings. the importance of location: we learned that there were advantages and disadvantages in holding community meetings at older adult housing facilities compared to other sites, as the former impacted our sample size and data variability. housing facilities were communities in themselves, where we had greater participant numbers, more group interaction, ease in group discussion and community cohesion. housing facilities also allowed for collecting more in-depth rich data from older adults. however, a disadvantage was that these older adults had fewer neighbourhood experiences outside their housing facilities. relocation to age-restricted communities often represent older adults’ first transition out of their homes and into supportive environments that may not have communities similar to those where they had lived previously (hertz et al. 2016). relocation and distance could initially limit older adults’ social and physical environment interactions. other environmental barriers included acoustic difficulties within the housing centre’s gym, creating difficulties in hearing our presentation and instructions for completing the surveys. we therefore used a local church as it was a free site; however, some participants suggested that it may have turned away potential participants because it was not seen as a neutral location. in response, we scheduled meetings in a public library and considered recreation centres. pre-meeting tips: we ran out of information packets at one large community meeting. this difficulty delayed our start and distracted us as presenters. additionally, it prompted some participants to start their surveys prior to our presentation. solutions to these difficulties included asking the site for a head count of participants the day before our community meeting and refraining from handing out our information packets until we finished presenting. we had difficulty also in analysing our data, as we could not link each survey to the correct participant. while we had anonymous number codes on our survey packages, we did not include a number code on each survey within those packages for each research project. a part-time project manager may have helped to avoid this problem by reviewing all things needed for the success of the research. role and workload clarity: despite training discussing the different roles and strengths the co-pis brought to the community-academic partnership, workload allocation difficulties led to challenges. the academic copi focused on hiring and managing our ras, irb submissions and revisions, data collection, presentation creation, article writing, and finding future funding sources. the community co-pi focused on partnership building and networking, working with our cab, identifying other innovative groups focused on neighbours helping neighbours, meeting planning and facilitation, and keeping our partners informed of our progress via emails. we learnt from each other and built trust but neglected discussing workload distribution for the writing of publications and grant proposals to support future research. workload tensions may have been exacerbated by not having a project manager, leaving the co-pis overwhelmed with managing all aspects of networking, scheduling, study design, data analysis, writing, and unexpected difficulties. rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20227 influence of cognitive and visual impairments and community ses differences on data collection we found that cognitive and visual impairments limited many low and middle community ses older adults’ understanding of our social capital instruments, whereas these difficulties were not as prevalent among high community ses older adults. some participants needed help with cognitively processing the information in our asset-based community development individual capacity inventory (kretzmann & mcknight 1993) and sense of community index-2 survey (chavis, lee & acosta 2008), including assistance with talking through the questions, clarifying the meaning of terms used and providing examples, and needed time for reflection. some participants wanted to give a yes or no response instead of the four-item likert scale response to questions, while many surveys were not completed. we realised later that these instruments were not validated for use with older adults, which may explain our lower response rates and large amounts of missing data. however, we noticed that older adults were more likely to participate in discussions about the world bank’s qualitative social capital assessment tool (grootaert & van bastelaer 2002). in the future, we need to use validated instruments for older adults or pilot test them with older adults at varying income, literacy and cognitive levels. while our first project examined strategies for older adults from different community ses levels to age in community, we were surprised by how much community ses impacted participants’ ability to fully engage in research. while the community co-pi had previously done cer, this was the academic co-pis first cer project. based on existing literature, we expected to see relationships between community ses (a pre-existing confounding factor) and older adults’ social capital and health. but there is a difference between theoretically reading about a topic and observing the pathways to how community ses relates to participants’ cognitive functioning, mobility, social connections and community engagement. we believed that what constituted participants’ communities was dependent on their mobility, which was driven by their community ses level. therefore, low ses older adults might limit their community environment interactions. we were unprepared to deal with these factors in our research, as this required a larger research team at community meetings and longer meeting times to provide participants one-on-one assistance. moreover, longer meetings seemed unfeasible as our initial meetings were two hours with lunch, and we realised we were not maintaining participants’ attention over this lengthy time. another explanation was that ses may be associated with older adults’ perceptions of ‘hot button’ issues. our research topic of building social capital among older adults and its association with health may not have been as important or as likely to contribute to discussion across all ses groups. our second project’s timebanking surveys were better received by participants, which may have been due to our cab’s input on survey creation. we learned, after scanning the room for any confused looks, to ask participants if they needed assistance in filling out the surveys and offered help. all research team members participated in individual assistance as needed, but in the future we would increase the number of ras attending community meetings to assist participants with completing their surveys. some participants believed they had nothing to contribute to their communities. their reluctance may be in part attributed to their cognitive and physical functioning difficulties, as some participants mentioned needing help with their transportation from children living nearby. their reluctance could be attributed to community ses differences, as low and middle versus high ses participants had different understanding of our instruments, definitions of community, involvement in their communities and perceived geographical boundaries of their communities, which likely influenced our data collection. high ses participants had better self-rated physical health and a broader perception of what they considered as their geographic community. thus, we needed to acknowledge the many pathways involved in the relationship between ses and older adults’ health. ses differences existed in older adults’ community views, sense of belonging and time available for community involvement. these differences warrant offering varied participation incentives that may attract more high ses participants. rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20228 addressing issues raised by participants during our community meetings, participants raised concerns about their housing and surrounding area related to, but outside the scope of, our research questions. for example, at one site participants mentioned speaking out about elevator issues within their housing facility, parks and recreation service problems, and street hazards, but they were not heard by an ‘absentee’ management company run from another state. we recorded their comments, as this input made us more aware of how participants viewed and interacted with their local communities. we considered connecting people to housing and urban development or inviting a city council member to future meetings, but we did not have a protocol to address these problems besides conveying their concerns to our site contacts. after our first community meeting, we considered adding a short multiple-choice evaluation to gain meeting feedback from participants’ perspectives. however, we did not include this additional survey because our meetings were already long and needed shortening to maintain participant engagement. on reflection, our decision would be to add a short multiple-choice evaluation with an open-ended question or oral feedback evaluation at the end of our community meetings, allowing participants to quickly voice their opinions. we needed a protocol and/or toolkit of community capacity building for capturing, resolving or making referrals, and following up with participants about issues they raised, even if they were outside our research project focus. these efforts will continue to build participant relationships and trust in our ongoing research. discussion a common element in aic programs is the promotion of social capital and community reciprocity to supplement or replace professional fee-for-service assistance often needed by older adults to stay in their homes. these grassroots efforts coincide with a national policy shift towards consumer-directed healthcare and nursing home diversion programs, emphasising livable community initiatives underscoring social and physical environment changes (blanchard 2013; spinelli et al. 2019; thomas & blanchard 2009). we found that aic strategies, such as timebanking, can reduce older adults’ need for external health and social services and increase their sense of belonging, promoting positive mental, physical and social health. our lessons learned focused on three areas: improving our study design, acknowledging cognitive and visual impairments and community ses differences, which influenced our data collection more than we expected, and creating a protocol on how to address issues raised by participants. these projects reinforced the importance of clear communication in maintaining equitable partnerships. the academic co-pi acquired a better understanding of the assets and needs of denver communities and made valuable organisational networks involving older adults. the community co-pi realised her community knowledge could become research and influence our ras’ professional development and interest in serving older adults. but we had to confront two language barriers in our projects. we needed time to develop a common language between the academic and community partners, and to resolve definitional differences ‘in community’ between older adults and us. in anthropology this refers to the difference between our outsiders’ meaning and interpretation (etic) and our participants’ insider cultural perspective (emic) when thinking about community and its impact on older adults’ health (scrimshaw & lane 2020). we also want to emphasise the importance of cab involvement at each stage of research. despite cctsi training in partnership development and cbpr, a knowledge gap remained between our theoretical preparation and our actual experience in implementing cer. this gap highlighted the value of having a cab, as did our difficulties with sample recruitment and data collection in our first project. a cab’s insights could have alerted us to cer challenges we encountered and offered solutions from their organisation, other networks, or literature. instead, we searched for resources to address these problems. for example, we needed specific cer methods that effectively worked with older adults. better together rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20229 (government of south australia 2016) discussed effective engagement practices and strengths and weaknesses of different data collection methods with older adults. liljas et al. (2017) discussed facilitators and barriers to engaging older adults, particularly those aged 80+, and underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities and low ses groups. wright-bevans, walker & vosper (2020) discussed the world café method, a series of timed round table discussions focused on pre-set questions or topics adapted for use with older adults. we needed training in cer best practices, such as research examples on the steps to take when creating a community-academic partnership and points for discussion in developing sustainable, long-term relationships (centre for studies on poverty & social citizenship 2019). cramer et al. (2018) mention cab members’ perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for community–academic research collaboration. moreover, sargent et al. (2022) mention conducting community-academic partnership assessments to improve and sustain transdisciplinary team science partnerships. for example, we needed advice on how best to involve the research team and community members in writing for publication and grant proposals (see stampfer et al. 2019, discussing pitfalls in cer, particularly project sustainability and funding mechanism responsiveness). while our community co-pi has more than 30+ years of community organising participation, she had no academic research experience. one of her goals in working with an academic partner was to gain research expertise in measuring the possible impacts of community-building strategies among older adults. further discussions early in our relationship about the methodological steps involved in doing research and assigning work tasks would have been time saving in disseminating our results. there are a few limitations to our lessons learned. our lessons learned were derived from a small number of participants, drawn from a convenience sample in a limited geographic area in colorado, making generalisations difficult. we had few high ses community participants. we assessed information from our meeting notes, including verbally shared participant comments, but we did not include external or participants’ assessments in our data collection. in our first project, we received feedback from some site leaders to improve our meetings by shortening the meeting length and changing our incentive from transportation to grocery cards to benefit participants. we hoped that our association with site leaders, who could vouch for our community pi and connect us to participants’ concerns, would be an additional incentive for participation. in our second project, older adults informally shared stories about their timebanking activities, wanting to positively spread the word about timebanks. thus, while some literature mentions participant concerns about cer not always benefiting a community and power imbalances between researchers and cabs (safo et al. 2016), our site leaders, older adults and cabs, did not express these concerns with our two studies. in the future, we should conduct participant and cab evaluations as part of our data collection, as recommended by cramer et al. (2018). we hope to focus future longitudinal research on the health of older adults participating in timebanks. we could compare timebank participants to those in other community capacity building groups and those who are not members of any groups to assess timebank’s health benefits for older adults. with this knowledge we may be able to establish a timebank referral system for older adults, perhaps where timebanks are included with clinically recommended support groups as an intervention for older adults’ health. conclusion as we move forward with our cer on social capital and older adults’ health, we believe our lessons learned can be useful to other researchers conducting cer with older adults. we plan to take several steps based on our lessons learned, such as identifying better instruments to measure social capital qualitatively and quantitatively in association with older adults’ health. we will spend more time with leaders and subject matter experts in our targeted communities 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mediating role of social capital’, healthcare (basel), vol. 9, no. 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9050559 rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202214 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-021-02295-7 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-021-02295-7 https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00019 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245132 https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2019.389 https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2019.389 https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-12-54 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1651-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1651-0 https://www.vtvnetwork.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=691012&module_id=248578 https://www.vtvnetwork.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=691012&module_id=248578 https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2467 https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2467 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1655-9 https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9050559 appendix 1 summary of two pilot projects funded by cctsi characteristics first project second project brief description aims: • examine if there is a positive association between social capital and health among older adults, as well as if this association varies by community ses. • determine if and how ageing in community programs promotes social capital among older adults in their communities. • identify and adapt instruments to measure social capital among older adults and its impact on their health. aims: • understand the sustainability (i.e. perceived assets and barriers) of timebanking among older adults. • evaluate the suitability (i.e. socio-demographic characteristics and perceived benefits associated with health) of timebanking among older adults. • disseminate and discuss our findings during a combined meeting with our community organisations. cab input • no • yes, as well as feedback from seven older adult service organisation partners sample/ participants/ incentives • older adults aged 55+ in the denver, colorado metropolitan area • n=47, across four communities • provided lunch (later snacks to shorten our meetings) • provided $4 usd public transportation voucher (later $5 usd grocery cards) • randomly sampled national and international timebanks from timebanks usa (http:// community.timebanks. org/) and hour world exchange (http:// www.hourworld.org/) directories, using timebank coordinator surveys (n=33) • provided colorado site leaders $50 usd gift cards • older adults aged 55+ participating in three urban and two rural colorado timebanks (n=54) • provided older adult participants $10 usd grocery cards rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202215 characteristics first project second project data collected • we collected qualitative community meeting and quantitative survey data from four sites across low, middle and high community ses levels to assess associations between social capital and health among older adults. • we collected quantitative and qualitative data from: • a socio-demographic and health survey • sense of community index-ii (sci-2) survey (chavis, lee & acosta 2008) • a modified world bank’s social capital assessment tool (socat); (grootaert & bastelaer 2002) • a modified asset based community development (abcd) individual capacity inventory (mcknight & kretzmann 1993). • we collected qualitative data from national and international timebank coordinators on: • year the timebank was founded • recruitment strategies • financial resources • perceived factors relating to the assets and barriers of sustaining timebanks • perceived benefits provided to members. • we collected quantitative data from colorado participants from: • a socio-demographic and health survey • the geriatric depression scale (gds15) survey (sheikh & yesavage 1986) • the lubben social network scale (lsns6) survey (lubben et al. 2006) • sense of community index-ii (sci-2) survey (chavis, lee & acosta 2008). outcomes • self-reported health • health service use • self-reported health • health service use • depressive symptoms (gds-15) • social isolation (lsns-6) analysis • we analysed data using descriptive statistics and content analyses. • we assessed qualitative characteristics by old vs. new and colorado vs. national and international timebanks. • we analysed quantitative data using chi-square and anova tests to compare urban vs. rural and sci-2 by our health measures for timebank members. cctsi (the colorado clinical and translational sciences institute, a national institutes of health clinical and translational sciences awards program) rooks, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 202216 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: montanini, m. ngubelanga, x. 2023. ‘entrance fees’: black youth and access to artistic production in gqeberha, south africa. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8249 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) ‘entrance fees’: black youth and access to artistic production in gqeberha, south africa marta montanini1,*, xolisa ngubelanga2 1 interuniversity department of regional and urban studies and planning, politecnico di torino, italy 2 theatre director, performing artist and writer, gqeberha, south africa corresponding author: marta montanini, marta.montanini@unito.it doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8249 article history: received 22/06/2022; revised 18/01/2023; accepted 25/05/2023; published 06/2023 abstract the arts sector in south africa is portrayed as a multiracial, emancipatory and inclusive sector that promises to reduce youth unemployment and to mitigate inequality. in postapartheid art institutions, artistic merit and perseverance are deemed to be sufficient in order to access the art sector and its market. the paths of individual black artists from poor areas who have succeeded in accessing the institutional art circuit are praised by the media, policymakers and curators. a romanticisation of their efforts is coupled with identifying them as role models for younger generations. despite emphasis on the inclusivity of the art sector and the hailing of successful paths, black artists report a long-standing difficulty in gaining access to, and being fully accredited in, the institutional art circuit. the ambiguity of the art sector, which claims to be inclusive in word but is de facto exclusionary, deeply affects young black artists whose first steps into the art sector are often accompanied by a feeling of uneasiness and bewilderment. drawing on the multivocal accounts of the everyday life of young black artists who work in the field of performance art in gqeberha, this article unveils the ‘entrance fees’ that black artists have to negotiate in order to access the institutional art circuit, i.e. the obstacles they have to overcome, but also the deals and concessions they have to make in order to build their career and be fully recognised as artists. moreover, the article sheds light on a double invisibility in the performing arts sector: on one side the economic, spatial and reputational obstacles that artists deal with are 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8249 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8249 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:marta.montanini@unito.it https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8249 dismissed as part of the everyday life of individuals coming from marginal areas; on the other side, the performing arts and spaces that young black artists create within alternative or complementary circuits are not considered part of the city’s artistic production. keywords black youth; performing arts; south africa; access; community; inequalities introduction the reflections presented in this article are a continuation of a dialogue that began in 2015, more than seven years ago, in port elizabeth (which is called gqeberha today), eastern cape, south africa. as part of her thesis, marta montanini was analysing the construction of informal performance spaces that serve as alternatives to institutional circuits in marginal areas of the city. xolisa ngubelanga was, and still is, a resident of kwazakele, a peripheral neighbourhood and an area formerly designated as a black township under apartheid rule, and also a black theatre director and cultural activist. he was in his early thirties. at the time, our dialogue was mostly about the agency of young black artists, namely their ability to create alternative underground art spaces and projects despite the challenges that they faced daily. over the years, we noticed that these alternative spaces, although highly interesting and active, remained fragile and disconnected from the institutional circuits of the city centre. moreover, we remarked that, despite being proud of their artistic achievements and successes, many young black artists in gqeberha were experiencing a feeling of continuous fatigue and a sense that they would never be fully included in the art system of the city. exacerbated by the hinderances to the everyday work of young black artists due to the covid-19 pandemic, we felt impelled to urgently change our focus. thus we decided to expand our attention on the tactics and practices through which young black artists produce alternative culture spaces in marginal places in the city, to the difficulties these artists face on a daily basis. these difficulties include an uneven landscape of hidden obstacles, both monetary and spatial, but also various kinds of concessions and deals that artists must make in order to build a career and gain legitimacy in the art sector. we define the combination of these obstacles, concessions and deals as ‘entrance fees’ as they constitute an unavoidable burden for black artists, which is difficult to negotiate and overcome as access to the institutional art circuit is prohibitive to them. in this article we discuss the presence of ‘entrance fees’ for young black artists as a political stand, since in south africa the art sector is portrayed as multiracial, emancipatory and inclusive. according to this narrative, artistic merit, passion and perseverance are deemed to be sufficient in order to access the art sector and its market. furthermore, a romanticisation of the efforts and paths of individual black artists from marginal areas or poor urban contexts prevails, and the presence of black artists within the institutional art circuits is saluted as a success, while a discussion on the sector-wide obstacles black artists face, and thus the inequality of opportunities that continues to exist, is neglected. this article draws on five interviews with young black performers from gqeberha. by analysing the ordinary and shared experiences of young black artists in light of the context in which they take place, a post-apartheid city, where various forms of socio-spatial segregation persist, we aim to recentre the discourse not only on young black artists’ access to the arts sector, but also on the way black youth respond, as they inhabit the city and navigate its inequalities. as such, this article makes an important contribution to the literature on black youth and ordinary citizenship (neveu 2015) in contemporary south africa. montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 romanticisation and uneasiness in the south african art sector in south africa, art is perceived as a powerful tool for fostering inclusion, promoting social cohesion and enhancing social mobility (see, for instance, the nac website, 29 october 2021). the idea that art can contribute to levelling inequalities is rooted in south african history, and is shared by artists and activists who work in rural areas and in disadvantaged neighbourhoods (hagg 2010; van robbroeck 2004). the arts sector is therefore presented both as a market-oriented industry that should be productive, and as a source of educational values and transformative practices that should serve as a tool of social policy, especially in the context of youth inclusion. in post-apartheid times, the individual paths of black artists from poor areas who have succeeded in accessing the institutional art circuit are praised by the media, policymakers and curators. thus, artistic merit, passion and perseverance are deemed to be sufficient in order to access the art sector and its market. however, what is celebrated, above all, are careers that can be treated as exemplary in democratic south africa (perryer 2005). the artists who are praised have progressed through the public education system or completed community-based courses and projects. they claim roles as activists or as volunteers, and popularise south africa by exporting ‘township art’ to renowned foreign galleries and theatres (see sabc news 2022 on the visual artist sakhumzi nyedwana, sabc news 2019 on the visual artist giggs kgole, and de beer 2013, who discusses a zwakala festival-winning production called the journey. in the interview, the director, simphiwe kaya, who is from gqeberha, explains that the play was rehearsed in the bush due to a lack of rehearsing spaces. despite the emphasis on inclusivity in the art sector and the hailing of successful stories, black artists report an ongoing difficulty in gaining access to, and being fully accredited in, the institutional art circuit. makhubu (2013, p. 418), an artist and scholar who has written widely on this issue, points out that ‘many [art] institutions are seen as spaces of white proprietorship even though they are civic establishments’. moreover, ‘the “apartheid burden on the artist” can be a setback when the caged life of the majority in black township spaces continues and remains a trope for inferiority. the abiding sentiment is that significant transformation cannot take place if the command of resources remains in the hands of a few’ (makhubu & simbao 2013, p. 300). makhubu identifies two main problems: the persistence of art institutions whose structure and organisation are perceived by outsiders as still reminiscent of apartheid segregation, and the persistence of the ‘apartheid burden’ on black artists, namely the condition of training oneself and creating from unequipped, isolated spaces with few economic resources. in addition, curatorial practices and market trends end up favouring individual rather than collective pathways: ‘the rampant pressures to commercialize increased the emphasis on idolized individual artists and curators. this phase can be characterized as one in which the political concerns of artists are not shared or common but personalized into individual identity issues that form a currency in commercial and mostly white-owned galleries’ (makhubu 2013, p. 300). the focus on individual pathways, the silencing of common obstacles and the ambiguity of the art sector, shaped by market logics, post-apartheid democratisation processes and persistence of segregation dynamics lead to a sense of profound uneasiness. black artists are told they are fully entitled to inhabit institutional artistic spaces, yet at the same time they struggle to take ownership of art spaces and production processes. gamedze (2016) highlights that she does not feel comfortable visiting museums and art galleries because their interior and curated content often reinforce her feeling of otherness. musila (2016) reflects on the duality of the south african audience: while black artists should ideally also address black audiences, their audiences remain mostly white, both at national and international levels. makhubu (2019) talks about ‘anatopism’, that is, the perception of feeling out of place that accompanies south african citizens in the post-apartheid era. according to makhubu (2019), this perception is linked to the difficulty in interpreting the contradictory messages of the post-apartheid city, in which all are officially equal, but still segregated. montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 the socio-spatial complexities of the post-apartheid city are the great absentees when talking about the path of successful black artists. on the one hand, artists are acclaimed for the kinds of strategies that they adopt, which eventually influence their artistic productions and, in some cases, their styles and aesthetics, which are highly context dependent. on the other hand, the contexts in which they lived and worked before becoming famous are not problematised. attention is focused on the presence of black artists, especially those from disadvantaged areas, while the daily struggle of artists in their journey from their homes to galleries, museums and performing spaces in the city centre is completely neglected. ultimately, the romanticisation of the life trajectories of black artists minimises the responsibility of city administrators and institutions. narratives of individual success emphasise merit and perseverance, while responsibility for an inclusive urban art sector is allocated exclusively to artists. art, inequality, and black youth in gqeberha the eastern cape, where gqeberha is located, is not a key province for artistic production. in 2017, the eastern cape accounted for 8 percent of south african cultural employment (30,500 jobs), while gauteng accounted for 29.4 percent, the western cape for 18 percent and kwazulu-natal accounted for 17 percent (saco 2022, p. 10). this means that there are fewer opportunities to work in the arts sector in the eastern cape than in other regions. data also shows that the percentage of young individuals who are employed in the cultural sector (29%) is lower than the national average (32.9%) and that few employees in the arts sector have completed their tertiary education (9%, compared to a national average of 25.5%). in addition, ‘cultural workers in the eastern cape are less likely to be permanently employed (48.8%) than both noncultural workers in the province (50.4% permanent) and cultural workers nationally (66.9%)’ (saco 2022, p. 12). this tendency is also associated with the proportion of informal workers in cultural occupations in the eastern cape (64.8%), which is higher than the south african average (46.3%; saco 2022, p. 12). gqeberha, which is a part of nelson mandela bay, is the most important cultural hub of the region. the city has four main cultural venues: the mandela bay theatre complex (mbtc), the little theatre, the savoy, and the mendi arts centre. while the first three venues have been located in the cbd since the colonial period, the fourth is located in a peripheral area. for a long time, the mbtc has been the most important performing arts hub in the city. the city is still highly fragmented spatially, and several programs and projects are devoted to reconnecting urban areas physically and symbolically. the perceptions of proximity and distance are still strongly influenced by apartheid-era urban maps. physical proximity does not always translate to mobility. for example, outsiders still find it difficult to access new brighton, a historically black township that is next to the cbd. perceptions of ease and discomfort and of security and insecurity also shape audiences at cultural venues. the more central the venue, the more diverse and wealthier the audience. conversely, cultural venues in peripheral areas are often perceived as unsafe or as not being welcoming to ‘outsiders’ (montanini 2020). although numerous projects that are intended to reorganise transport and its main hubs in the city are underway, mobility across different neighbourhoods remains limited. connections are particularly difficult to access in the evening and at night, when many shows are held, both in the centre of the city and in its peripheral areas. the public transport system is modelled around the hours of work of factories, restaurants and offices, not around leisure activities. in order to attend a show, residents from peripheral areas must often make sleeping arrangements and return home on public taxis the morning after the show. urban fragmentation therefore still has a significant influence on the sociality of the inhabitants and on the places and times of cultural and artistic gatherings. according to a 2016 statsa work, which drew on 2011 census data, gqeberha is the most segregated city in south africa (statsa 2016). montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 research methodology and process this article is based on five interviews that touch upon the experiences and trajectories of young black artists who live and work in gqeberha (see box, below). the interviews were conducted by xolisa in early 2022 and unfolded as dialogues between friends or colleagues rather than as interviews between researcher and their informants. five artists were interviewed. tom mzimkhulu (mzidaslampoet) was born in veeplaas and grew up in zwide (gqeberha). he is a 25-year-old poet who started writing poetry after participating in a project at zwide library when he was a teenager, and continued through his university years. he has organised several performances and poetry productions. in 2020, he became the chairperson of the south african arts and culture youth forum (saacyf). he is also the founder of the saacyf schools festival and a radio co-host at ifm 88.3. charney piet was born and raised in the northern areas of gqeberha. she is 21 years old and is currently enrolled as a live performance student at afda gqeberha. she expects to major in both screen and stage acting. anovuyo nqeto was born in tsolo, a small town in the eastern cape. he is 23 years old, and is enrolled in the live performance course at afda gqeberha, from which he is expected to major in screen and stage acting. shafiq kalumo was born in malawi, nkhota-kota district, traditional authority malenga chanzi. he is a south african-based performing artist in his thirties. in 2015, he joined the stageworld theatre school, and in 2018 obtained a diploma in the performing arts (speech and drama). he is a founder of linga creatives, where he educates high-school students on theatre, radio and acting. he is also a presenter, producer and on-air technician at ifm 88.3. nobesuthu nlovu was born and raised in walmer, gqebera. she is in her thirties. as an artist, she uses different media, such as poetry, writing, singing, dancing and public speaking. from 2004 to 2008, she participated in theatrical productions and musical performances at makhanda festival. the whole research process was based on ‘friendship as method’, as defined by tillmann-healy (2003). ‘friendship as a method’ means that ‘the lines between researcher and researched blur, permitting each to explore the complex humanity of both self and other […] researchers get to know others in meaningful and sustained ways’ (tillmann-healy 2003, p. 733). this approach is based on establishing a dialogue ‘where the subject to object relationship of positivism becomes a subject-subject one, in which academic knowledge combines with everyday experience to reach new and profound understandings’ (tillmann-healy 2003, p. 733). ‘friendship as a method’ requires also sufficient time, care and sharing in order to get to know the others. this research is based on two ongoing dialogues: firstly, an ongoing dialogue between us, the authors, and secondly, an ongoing dialogue between xolisa and the interviewees. the long-lasting collaboration and friendship between us, the authors, entails an ongoing dialogue, in presence and at distance, on our lives and working conditions. progressively, we felt that the discussions we were already having on obstacles and the ordinary struggles of black artists in gqeberha, such as xolisa, had to be enriched by the ideas, thoughts and experiences of other young black artists. montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 later, when lecturing in a drama course in an art college, xolisa noticed that his young black students were experiencing a strong sense of uneasiness, which led us to think that it was important to give voice to younger and less experienced artists. we thus decided to select interviewees from among xolisa’s acquaintances, colleagues and students. despite the interviews having been completed over a short period, they refer to previous dialogues and events that xolisa and his interviewees had experienced together, which were based on pre-existing trust. in our case, therefore, adopting a stand of friendship meant above all starting from a consolidated close relationship, which allowed us, the authors, to be empathetic among ourselves and with the interviewees. we, as authors, agreed on a set of topics that would be discussed. at the same time, xolisa allowed themes to emerge spontaneously and in line with the interests of each interviewee. sometimes, references were made to previous events or conversations. the first question that was posed to all interviewees concerned the main stages of their career (‘when did you decide to become a performing artist? where did you learn how to act?’). this question was sufficient to initiate conversations about obstacles. we strove to choose interviewees with different backgrounds and life paths. the interviews were held in cafes or at cultural centres. they were recorded with the informed consent of the interviewees, and each lasted approximately an hour. the interviews were then analysed jointly by marta and xolisa. the interviewees were informed that their interviews would be heard and interpreted by marta. they agreed to the publication of their names in this journal. this agreement was an important sign of trust in us as authors and especially in xolisa, who is known for being a critical voice in the artistic circles of the city, as well as of the perceived importance of the purpose of this article. due to covid-19 restrictions, we collaborated remotely by phone and email. discussing findings long distance certainly made our dialogue less spontaneous and more mediated by technology. at the same time, technology and distance enabled us to describe our reflections more precisely. moreover, working asynchronously allowed us to let our thoughts settle, to reflect on our interpretations and to revise them. this article benefits from both the reflections of the interviewees and from xolisa’s mediation and interpretations. given his proximity to the interviewees, he was able to position individual experiences within the larger framework of the arts sector of the city. the interviewees did not have the opportunity to discuss the reflections that are contained in this article; however, it is intended as a starting point for future dialogue between artists and between artists and institutions. in this article, we use the term ‘black youth’ in the broadest possible sense. the term ‘black’ includes individuals who define themselves as black, such as, black africans, coloured people, people of indian or asian origin, and people who are not south african nationals but reside in south africa. in south african discourse, this expanded definition is often referred to as ‘biko black’, in the tradition of anti-apartheid activist steve biko’s black consciousness movement. we did not establish a priori criteria for defining ‘blackness’ because we agreed to respect the selfidentification of each interviewee. we use the term ‘youth’ to refer to individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, the criterion that saco (2022) adopted. the term ‘performing artists’ refers to individuals who define themselves as artists and who work in the performing arts as directors, actors, performers, poets and dancers, but also to individuals in training who hope to find work in the field in the near future. the performing arts include numerous and varied artistic forms that focus on the body. in south africa, artists often tend to specialise in several such forms (for an account of the variety and intensity of the modes of performing arts in south africa, see pather and boulle 2019). in the following sections, we present the main findings from the interviews. first we focus on the obstacles the artists identified, then on the tactics the artists used to overcome the difficulties they faced, and finally we analyse the obstacles and tactics by situating them within the context of the post-apartheid city. montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 accessing the gqeberha performance art sector: obstacles in this section, we present the main obstacles in the forms in which they emerged during the interviews that we conducted. extracts from the interviews are transcribed from the recordings and reported as they were formulated orally. detachment of black artists from art institutions the responses of the interviewees to questions on aspirations and the challenges of being an artist in gqeberha revealed a multi-faceted picture of institutional art networks in the city. the interviewees described a small artistic community in which everyone knew each other. at the same time, they portrayed the most influential personalities in the arts and culture as members of a closed and impenetrable elite circle. the most powerful artists were said to have strong political links and to often benefit from institutional assignments. it is interesting to note that the interviewees did not refer to colour (black or white). instead, the divide appeared to be between those who did not want the art system to be reformed (‘conservatives’ and ‘conservative institutions’) and those who wished for change. one respondent spoke about the presence of a problematic ‘narrative of excellence’: ‘you cannot say there is excellence if you are always elected and nobody challenges you’ (interview with tom 2022). in order to explain why the status quo was seldom questioned, he added, ‘if i keep bringing this menu and i do not bring another one, how do you know it tastes good?’ (tom 2022). another respondent said that it was exceedingly difficult to access public cultural spaces if one was not a member of ‘the inner circle’ of influential artists and if one was unknown to institutions: ‘you have to fight: you have to sit down, talking to people, force what you want to do’ (interview with shafiq 2022). in general, there was a perception of separation between the ‘inner circle’ and the rest of the artists in the city: ‘you do not see people of institutions on the ground at events … people who got the skills have built high wall’ (interview with tom 2022). in addition, public cultural venues (theatres in city centres and cultural centres in peripheral areas) were perceived as difficult to access. one of the respondents spoke about the bureaucratic labour that was necessary to petition for a rehearsal or performing space. for this reason, being successful was not so much a matter of ‘having a network’ but of ‘having a good network’, one that was in contact with ‘the inner circle’, and being seen and considered by its members. limited mobility of black artists and audiences the arts sector is situated in the city centre, where the most important performing venues are. building a career as an artist implies progress towards the city centre and requires a strong willingness to be mobile and follow opportunities. speaking about the difficulties of being an artist from the peripheral areas, nobesuthu gave the following explanation: ‘you can’t afford to travel and go support other events because they are far, and that’s where you build relationships […] because you have to attend, to meet new people, that’s how you grow. all this [the distance] is limiting, walmer is isolated, it’s alone’ (interview with nobesuthu 2022). her point of view is important because walmer is not far from the cbd, but transport connections between the two are poor. obstacles to mobility affect not only the artists as performers, but also the audiences of other shows. anovuyo, a performing arts student, explained that going to shows required money and time, which was why he did not go to the theatre often (interview with anovuyo 2022). the difficulties of accessing shows during one’s studies also had clear repercussions for training and network creation. the interviewees also highlighted that reaching the city centre was not a guarantee of success. gqeberha offers few opportunities, which is why it is necessary to move to cape town or johannesburg, both of which are rightly perceived as the real centres of art development in south africa. anovuyo explained, ‘(in gqeberha,] there is the potential, but you do not earn money and you haven’t got the same audience […] montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 i might go to cape town, get a name, work on my brand, and one day i will come back here […] or, if i haven’t got a job, i might move to cape town or johannesburg and learn more about theatre industry and then go back to my hometown’ (interview with anovuyo 2022). the inaccessibility of the cbd institutional art venues to performing artists, together with the lack of affordable rehearsal rooms and venues, also have consequences for the confidence of young artists. when xolisa asked anovuyo and charney what was preventing them from trying to organise and perform their own shows, they both answered that they did not feel confident doing so. when encouraged by xolisa to elaborate on this view, both students focused on the fact that they had had few occasions to perform, which was why they did not feel ready to meet the public (interview with anovuyo and charney 2022). fragmented and clustered audiences mobility issues and lack of affordable rehearsal and performing spaces also affect audiences, which are highly fragmented. tom explained that, if an event is to succeed, one needs a base of supporters, but also ‘a variety of people, not just friends’. diversified audiences shape the creation of networks and increase the likelihood of the artist gaining recognition in different parts of the city. at the same time, it is difficult to create spaces that are accessible to different kinds of audiences. while venues in the city centre are both more difficult to access for artists and more expensive for audiences, venues in former black areas are few in number and are sometimes perceived as dangerous. nobesuthu explained, ‘as people from walmer, we live under a stigma that our township is rough, so we took the initiative of going to the police and asked them if they could increase visibility around the venue … because we had to be proactive, since this was around a time when there was a lot of shooting in the township’ (interview with nobesuthu 2022). the audiences mostly comprise affluent adults who live in the city centre rather than young individuals from peripheral areas. tom said that ‘art must be brought to people’, and he advocates for audience development in the most disadvantaged areas. english is often the preferred language in the performing arts and is spoken widely, but at the same time, the use of english can hinder comprehension of black artists’ performances in black areas of the city. tom said that, after shows, he would sometimes explain the meanings of his poems. students and young artists, such as anovuyo and charney, also highlighted the importance of seeing their own acquaintances as members of the audience. charney also said that she ‘would like to help young artists and elders [from her hometown] to understand that art can bring an income and tell our stories’ (interview with charney 2022). the interviewees shared their idea that it was important to create audiences in peripheral places, which, in turn, could create different ways of narrating the experiences of black youth. recognition and reputation accessing the art sector was also described as a shift from an informal to a formal job and from invisibility to recognition. the urgency with which formal work is sought became clear when the interviewees highlighted the importance of (1) ongoing training and the quest for professionalisation; (2) applying for grants and public funding; and (3) working on social projects in addition to one’s work as a performing artist. interestingly, discourse on labour and intellectual property rights was absent from the interviews, while access to formal jobs was seen as being tied to visibility and recognition. tom thought that it was important for him to develop leadership skills in order to learn how to coordinate a team and write successful grant applications, while shafiq tried to link his job as an educator to public funding as he was trying to establish a theatre festival for the young. in this sense, recognition was intimately linked to public rewards. recognition was also strongly linked to reputation. the reputation of young artists from areas that were perceived as difficult was connected to the reputation of the latter. nobesuthu explained, ‘obviously, our montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 main challenge has been the issue of crime, you see, all that has been happening in walmer [she is talking about recent gang shootings] that has been our challenge … even when we introduce ourselves to people – ‘i am from walmer’ – you can see in their eyes that they become suspicious of your character, but we got to let them know, ‘listen there are people staying in there and not all of us come from the same home’… we can only make the best of what we have, and these conditions are what we have. i come from walmer, and in gqeberha, there is a certain respect for artists from each community. for example, if an artist comes from new brighton, then that person already demands a certain respect because they come from a popular township, whereas some communities have to work double as hard. you see?!’ (interview with nobesuthu 2022). artists from urban areas who are portrayed as dangerous or unsafe and those from rural areas who are portrayed as remote are compelled to serve as ambassadors for the art sector, that is, as translators or guides for wealthy audiences. they are also regularly cast in specific roles (for example, as township youth). at the beginning of her interview, charney, who comes from the northern areas, which often make headlines following gang shootings, explained that her childhood and early youth did not correspond to the stereotypes of the northern areas, and thus she likes to represent non-stereotypical stories in her artwork. likewise, anovuyo explained that it was important for him to change the narrative on black communities in small towns. he wanted to make this change by talking about his experience of being black and queer. he also said that he was aware that producers often tend to minimise such stories by reducing their complexity in order to make them appealing to a wider range of audiences. accessing and re-imagining the gqeberha performance arts sector: tactics referring to the difficulties of access to funding and art venues, tom explained that one must ‘break the window because the doors are closed’ (interview with tom 2022). his statement does not refer to the idea of dismantling the system, but focuses on finding alternative means of entering the profession. those means can be formal or informal and recognised or unrecognised. in the city of gqeberha, several strategies and practices are adopted in order to overcome the obstacles and difficulties related to artistic careers. the most common strategy is to build networks and links, although networks are not organised formally. artistic collectives are also formed. they mainly consist of series of contacts and exchanges between art practitioners and their peers. practitioners exchange information on upcoming grants and opportunities, as well as favours. for example, an artist may perform several hours of unpaid labour for another artist, who subsequently returns the favour by other means. alternatively, artists may lend equipment to each other or grant free access to rehearsal spaces to their peers. networks are built not only between artists who live and work in the city, but also with artists from other cities, especially cape town. this, in turn, opens possibilities for mobility (artists in cape town may host artists from gqeberha and vice versa), even when they are not financed by a production or a grant. in some cases, networks are highly aleatory – they are left dormant until an appropriate opportunity arises or until finance becomes available. for example, shafiq explained that he had been organising a festival for three years and that he had already contacted performers from cape town and even from other countries in africa. he was waiting for funding, but he had already invited artists. these kinds of networks can connect multiple cities, expand funding opportunities and improve the distribution of resources – when some member of the network accesses public funding, they try to distribute some of it to other members. most of the artists who live and work in peripheral areas have two working lives and two circuits. they try to be present in the cbd to gain recognition from the ‘inner circle’ of influential artists and local representatives, but they also maintain their roots in their neighbourhoods. this duality sometimes means montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 that artists promote two different projects, one for the cbd and the institutional circuit and one for their neighbourhood. the latter project is often executed in a community hall or a cafe. ticket prices are characterised by the same duality and can vary widely between venues. working around venue policies, artists try to grant discounts for shows in their neighbourhoods in order to encourage the young to attend, thus attempting to establish future audiences. individual purchasing power can fluctuate considerably over a month. nobesuthu explained that she was used to advertising her shows towards the end of the month: ‘you need to be strategic and know that on the 30th even people who depend on social grants will have money … we sold our tickets at r100 for one and r160 for two people …’ (interview with nobesuthu 2022). importantly, her audience includes individuals who are entitled to social grants, while, usually, performing arts audiences comprise more affluent individuals. as noted by shafiq, artists who work as educators try to establish links between the institutional art venues of the cbd and the schools where they work. the aim is to indicate to the young that those venues are, or at least should be, open to all citizens. since rehearsal spaces and institutional art venues are not easily accessible, artists create parallel art circuits in peripheral areas. these circuits are not created to compete with institutional circuits, but to create opportunities, spaces and venues where artists can perform. the venues are usually small or medium in size and may include cafes, private spaces, such as the backyards of family homes, and vacant plots of land that are particularly suitable for events. usually, artists act as organisers, producers and performers. shows such as poetry slams are advertised on social media. the audiences of these shows comprise young individuals from neighbouring areas. sometimes, transport to the venue is provided. these shows and circuits enable young artists to gain visibility, to perform in front of live audiences and to establish professional connections. moreover, they contribute to the creation of new art venues and gathering places, which are often free to access, in areas where such spaces are scarce due to the long-lasting effects of apartheid planning. these places offer opportunities for socialisation that revolves around cultural events and are intended to be as comfortable and as inclusive as possible. the art venues are built as safe places, and the young are encouraged to attend and to feel at ease. negotiating the entrance fees in the post-apartheid city the interviews strongly indicate that the social and spatial context in which young black artists operate is decisive for access and in shaping artists’ approaches to their future professions. the recurring themes include not only the lack of economic means, opportunities and training, but also the persistent unjust and inequitable spatial and social effects of segregation on the everyday life of artists. as far as spatial aspects are concerned, the issue of mobility across parts of the city and cultural spaces was prominent in many of the interviews. the difficulty of finding well-equipped and affordable spaces for rehearsals in former townships was a key determinant of movements from the periphery of the city to its centre. turning to the socio-spatial, the interviewees pointed to the separation between the city centre and marginal areas. art institutions, which are mostly located in the city centre and in buildings with strong colonial appeal, are still attended by a predominantly white or affluent public and continue to seem almost impenetrable. moreover, the interviewees were frustrated by the necessity to rely on more powerful or whiter individuals in order to be included in the circles that matter. this problem shows how social mobility, which also implies a capacity to build social capital outside of one’s neighbourhood, continues to be a source of difficulty for young black individuals. another important point that emerged from the interviews had to do with representation. in public discourse, black artists are referred to as ‘community’ artists. the word ‘community’ is mainly used to refer to black townships. however, in order to pursue their careers, black artists often have to leave the communities montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 in question, as anovuyo and charney noted. not only do they need to be closer to their places of work, which are often in the city centre, but they must also become familiar with the culture and the praxis of the ‘inner circle’. finally, it is important to note that black artists receive ambiguous messages from institutions. they are encouraged to create artistic productions that contribute to development, social cohesion and the inclusion of the young. at the same time, the institutions in question are reluctant to equip them with the necessary resources. conclusions in this article, we identify and describe the ‘entrance fees’ that young black individuals must negotiate when they try to make a living from their artistic pursuits. the voices and the opinions of some young black artists who live and work in gqeberha revealed that the obstacles which they face (e.g. the means to access training) are not entirely or mainly economic. above all, they must overcome the socio-spatial inequalities that post-apartheid cities perpetuate. these obstacles include fragmented (and expensive) urban mobility, lack of public safety, and the limited availability of free and conveniently located places where artists can gather and create. furthermore, the reputation of the neighbourhoods where young black artists live and perform can determine the recognition that they receive as artists and the legitimacy of their participation in cultural policy-making at the city level. these difficulties, in turn, affect the artists’ perception of themselves and their self-confidence. as highlighted by the interviewees, given the difficulties of access to the institutional art circuit, young black artists from former townships are responding by experimenting with alternative ways of creating and performing. in particular, they are building small and resilient artistic circuits by focusing on proximity, accessibility, collaboration and mobility. in addition, they are finding means, often cheap and effective, of bringing art closer to the young in marginalised and peripheral neighbourhoods and of facilitating access to performing spaces for young artists. while both obstacles and alternative artistic circuits are a reality, they are rarely acknowledged by those in power, with both realities rendered invisible. on the one hand, the economic, spatial and reputational obstacles that artists have to deal with are usually dismissed as being part of the everyday life of individuals coming from marginal areas. such topics are held to be too obvious to be discussed; that is why they are not taken into account when talking about art production or careers in the artistic sector. on the other hand, the artworks, performances and performing spaces that young black artists create within alternative or complementary circuits are not considered as part of the artistic production of the city. when it is time to redistribute public resources and support the art sector, these circuits, artworks and spaces are not taken into account as they are not institutionalised or formalised. cultural and social policies for the inclusion of young artists focus on the provision of grants and are therefore based on rewarding artistic merit. however, the difficulties that the young artists reported are mainly associated with structural problems. individualised support for artists will not suffice; it is also important to demolish the barriers that make the arts sector unequal. as ndzuta (2021) argues, ‘the growth problems of the creative and cultural sector are firmly rooted in south africa’s development agenda. the sector cannot solve its own problems in isolation from other public policies. just as personal selfdevelopment happens in an enabling environment, sector development is possible in a supportive public policy space’. instead of promoting a romanticised narrative of the journeys of young black artists, institutions should not only recognise and try to eliminate the ‘entrance fees’ that artists must shoulder when they attempt montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202311 to enter the arts sector, but also make an inventory of the tactics that young artists employ to overcome obstacles in their day-to-day work. makhubu (2013, p. 418) advocates for ‘the engagement with and contestation of intimidation in [art] institutions [and] for the restoration of these spaces as common’. recognising that multifarious ‘entrance fees’ are part of the collective experience of young black artists, and that the art sector is not sheltered from the socio-spatial dynamics of segregation, are the first steps in building genuinely innovative and shared art spaces and a truly emancipatory art sector in this post-apartheid city. references de beer, d 2013, driven by a passion for storytelling, iol, viewed 1 december 2022. https://www.iol.co.za/ entertainment/whats-on/driven-by-a-passion-for-storytelling-1508415 gamedze, t 2016, the art world in south africa observed, viewed 1 december 2022. https://africanah.org/the-art-worldin-south-africa-observed hagg, g 2010, ‘the state and community arts centres in a society in transformation: the south african case’, international journal of cultural studies, vol. 2, no. 35, pp. 163–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877909356724 makhubu, n 2019, ‘artistic citizenship, anatopism and the elusive public: live art in the city of cape town’, in j pather & c boulle, eds, acts of transgression: contemporary live art in south africa, wits university press, johannesburg. https://doi.org/10.18772/22019022798.5 makhubu, n 2013, ‘ephemeral democracies: interrogating commonality in south africa’, open debate, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 415–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.796200 makhubu, n & simbao, r 2013, ‘the art of change’, third text, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 299–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/095 28822.2013.798180 montanini, m 2020, ‘the “creative township” in the post-apartheid: globalisation, nation building or gentrification?’ international journal of cultural policy, vol. 6. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2020.1811247 musila, g 2016, ‘lot’s wife syndrome and double publics in south africa’, pmla, vol. 5, no. 131, pp. 1452–61. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2016.131.5.1452 national art council 2021, ‘five ways art can fight youth unemployment in south africa’, 29 october. https://www. 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south africa: a brief history’, in g falken (ed.), inheriting the flame: new writing on community arts in south africa, arts and media access centre, cape town, pp. 41–52. montanini and ngubelanga gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202313 https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=7678 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: rubin, m., meth, p., tshuwa, l., charlton, s., kinfu, e. 2022. eternal urban youth? waithood and agency in ethiopian and south african settlements. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) eternal urban youth? waithood and agency in ethiopian and south african settlements margot rubin1,*, paula meth2, lesego tshuwa3, sarah charlton4, eshetayehu kinfu5 1 school of geography and planning, cardiff university and nrf research chair in spatial analysis and city planning, school of architecture and planning, university of the witwatersrand 2 department of urban studies and planning, university of sheffield, uk, and school of architecture and planning, university of witwatersrand, south africa 3 independent researcher 4 school of architecture and planning, university of the witwatersrand 5 institute of policy and development research, hawassa university, ethiopia corresponding author: margot rubin, rubinm@cardiff.ac.uk doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314 article history: received 11/08/2022; revised 16/09/2022; accepted 06/12/2022; published 12/2022 abstract it is often reported that young people in africa, the middle east and north african regions are stuck in situations of ‘waithood’, unable to progress to full adulthood. utilising a series of innovative research methodologies that included life history interviews, surveys, media training and qualitative interviews, the research project’s aim was the co-production of data, in order to delve into the housing and work nexus in two non-central locations in ethiopia and south africa. the variety of mixed methods that were used yielded a depth of engagement and allowed the researchers to deepen and nuance ideas of waithood and stuckness. the rich and varied data showed how young people move through moments of stuckness and moments of movement, and that some movement is possible even when faced with difficult and sometimes overwhelming structural challenges. it also demonstrated how co-produced research can assist young people in moving forward and countering the experience of stuckness and waithood. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received funding from the british academy for this research, grant reference: british academy yf\190036. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rubinm@cardiff.ac.uk https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314 keywords urban youth; waithood; marginal urbanism; hawassa; ekangala; hustling introduction: being stuck it was a saturday morning in may and the wits university project team was expecting 13 young people from ekangala, north of pretoria (south africa), to arrive by bus to continue their research methods training. the previous week, 15 young people aged between 18 and 35 had come to the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg and begun their training as ‘youth representatives’ (yrs), learning how to conduct surveys and contributing to co-producing the research instrument that they would use. however, as the project team, we were called by them, saying that they were stuck in ekangala, held hostage by local taxi drivers who were demanding that we, as the university research team, pay r15,000 (equivalent of £750) to the ekangala taxi association to release our youth representatives and the bus driver and pay for a ‘permit’. the taxi drivers stated that we had not asked for permission to use a bus to transfer students and that they should have been consulted and paid a fee to transport the yrs in their territory. the police were called, but could not help, and so for many hours the youth representatives were stuck on a patch of ground just outside their hometown of ekangala, unable to move, while the university team, the taxi drivers and the owners of the bus negotiated their release and the eventual release of the driver and the bus. in the end, money was paid by the university team to the taxi drivers to take the yrs home (even though they objected and wanted to walk home) and by the bus company to the taxi association to release the bus driver. the event was an inconvenience for the project in terms of time, money and the research program, but also a disappointment for the yrs who had looked forward to their training and a day out in johannesburg. more than that, however, the event was a microcosm of, and metaphor for, the many forces that shape young people’s lives in this area. stuck often at the mercy of wider forces, with other people making decisions for them, their voices remain unheard. this form of what honwana (2014, p. 28) calls ‘waithood’ (as opposed to adulthood) is common across africa as young people are unable to climb the next step in life, as they remain unemployed and so are dependent on family members, friends or the state. honwana describes the situation in which, ‘after they leave school with few skills, they are unable to obtain work and become independent, to build, buy or rent a house for themselves, support their relatives, get married, establish families and gain social recognition as adults’. thus, despite chronological age, young people are not socially recognised, nor recognise themselves, as adults, but remain in limbo awaiting attainment of adulthood (dhillon & jousef 2009; honwana 2014; salehi-isfahani & dhillon 2008; singerman 2007). however, this article speaks back into the literature and demonstrates that despite difficult socioeconomic conditions, lack of formal jobs and often lack of access to housing, waithood is not an absolute state and young people ‘hustle’ (thieme 2018), improvise (finn 2018) and ‘make do’ ( jauregui 2014) in a variety of ways. through getting married, having children, finding some kind of livelihood strategy or moving out of home, young people are not completely stuck, but nor are they able to transition to adulthood. thus, below we demonstrate the tangible ways in which young people challenge their ‘stuckness’ and adds complexity and uance to the ways in which waithood is understood in the literature. research shows that it is not all or nothing, nor are their challenges to waithood restricted to livelihood strategies, but are more varied and complex. by examining these moments of countering stuckness, young people’s agency and ability can be highlighted so that they are not perceived merely as passive recipients of the status quo. they actively respond to and resist the situations in which they find themselves and fight back, and these qualities of grit and determination are importantly explored below. given the prevalence of this phenomenon in africa and the global south at large, waithood is an important dimension of young people’s lives that needs to be investigated and analysed. often researched rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 through qualitative interviews (cf. finn & oldfield, 2015; honwana 2014a), we decided to put youth at the centre of the method, building on cuzzocrea’s (2019) emphasis on narrative and agency. sensitive to the disempowerment that many young people face, we wanted to ensure that young people felt empowered and heard through the research, and that they became a part of the research process. as such, the team constructed a research process that was consciously intended to create a mixed-method approach with strong elements of co-production and mutual learning (porter 2016). in many ways, this approach of life history interviews, media training, numerous online and face-to-face platforms and surveys worked even better than we had hoped for, and allowed for profound insights into the way that waiting works and gave us evidence to nuance and elaborate on the notion of ‘waithood’ even further. this article thus offers an account of the methods that were used and demonstrates the utility of a mixed-method approach that puts young people at the centre. we argue that such an engaged account of young people’s daily lives provides important nuance and offers a finer gradation of the dynamics of waithood than has been offered in much of the literature. the research took place in two sites: hawassa in ethiopia and ekangala in south africa, both of which experience high youth unemployment but offer useful and fascinating contrasts. in 2016, ethiopia invested in africa’s largest state-sponsored industrial complex, in hawassa, creating new employment for youth, often female migrants. yet low wages and scarce housing prohibit sustainable futures. in south africa, wavering historic investment in greater bronkhorstspruit, a former industrial decentralisation site under apartheid, has contributed to the high youth unemployment. successful provision of state housing means some youth are housed through beneficiary family members, yet often households, and youth particularly, cannot afford living costs. however, youth faced with this wicked conundrum often respond creatively, managing these near-impossible conditions, with differing outcomes. following is a short examination of existing literature on ‘waiting’ and the nexus between youth and the worlds of work and income generation. the focus then moves to the methodology that was used in the study and describes some of the findings, arguing that our intense multi-method approach led to our being able to draw deeper conclusions about waiting. the method also allowed the researchers to gain insights from the two studies, and to demonstrate that, although the youth are often ‘trapped’ or stuck, being trapped is not a binary, but rather a spectrum, as moments of waiting are interspersed with moments of moving forward. this is largely because young people do not lack agency and often find small ways to push towards adulthood, hustling, forging ahead and making inroads so that their status and their categorisation as youth is complexified and blurred. dissecting ‘waithood’ much of the literature around african youth refers to the idea of waithood, ‘a term used to describe the state in which young people find themselves when they are stuck in their transitions to adulthood’ (mcevoylevy 2014, p. 312). it is seen as a liminal state in which young people are unable to fully become adults, but neither are they children. the term has been used to describe ‘a generation in waiting’, or a situation of ‘involuntary waithood’ or ‘wait adulthood’ (dhillon 2008; dhillon & jousef 2009; honwana 2014; salehiisfahani 2008; singerman 2007). sommers (2012) refers to it as being stuck and a situation in which young people are trapped in ‘a state of permanent ambiguity’, largely unable to attain ‘the cultural prerequisites for adulthood’. these might include owning a house, getting married or being able to support oneself financially (sommers 2012, p. 3). unfortunately for many people, it is not just a passing phase but can last for decades, and honwana (2014) argues that, in some parts of the world, it is replacing adulthood entirely. there is some sense that the main components of adulthood are constituted by economic independence, family formation and political citizenship, as well as overall wellbeing (kurtenbach 2012a, p. 6). here, wellbeing is seen as encompassing protection from poverty, violence, exploitation and conflict (larsen 2009, rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 p. 10). in the world bank’s conceptualisation, regarding the middle east and north africa (mena) regions, housing replaces political citizenship (barakat et al. 2010, p. 39), largely because owning a house is the precursor to other ‘adult’ milestones, such as getting married and having children. given the importance of home ownership as a signifier of adulthood, this is an important revision when considering young people’s journeys in many african cities. however, these factors do not operate in isolation and ‘[t]he relationship between these components of the transition from youth to adulthood is often complex. moreover, failure to achieve one of these milestones often prevents young people from achieving any of the others’ (strachan 2015, p. 2). waithood is, however, not conceptualised as passive, but often as an active ‘making do’ and ‘getting by’ ( jeffrey 2010), containing moments of experimentation, innovation and improvisation to cope with daily life. it highlights young people’s agency and their ability to traverse the difficulties and challenges of daily life. waithood is more than a tired acceptance of social and economic marginalisation. finn and oldfield (2015, p. 38) note that waithood is not ‘empty time’, but an opportunity to build social networks, learn new business strategies, and imagine and plan a different future’. it pushes what vigh (2009) sees as a ‘tenacious struggle’, filled with action and challenging the status quo. thieme (2013) views this as part of the ‘hustle economy’ using mathare, kenya, where young people are in a state of ‘protracted liminality’, pushing young men to engage in activities in the informal waste economy. it is in these margins that young people shape niches to provide livelihoods. finn and oldfield (2015) note the political significance of hustling and point out that thieme (2013, p. 390) sees ‘the hustle [as] an implicit critique of the state’s failings, while ceasing to expect anything from or even “see it”.’ in this conceptualisation, young people effectively carve out lives that are far removed from the state, unless this is in moments of conflict and contestation. finn and oldfield (2015) add to the active notion of ‘getting by’ or hustling, with the idea of ‘straining’. ‘straining … captures the difficulty of the improvisational work that these men undertake in order to eke out a living to support themselves and their families. in other words, straining refers to a type of work that is innovative and opportunistic, but also takes a toll on the people performing it’ (finn & oldfield 2015, p. 39). thus, although it is difficult to say what constitutes adulthood, it does become clear that young people are often trapped in situations of ‘not adulthood, unable to move from the positionality of child, dependent on parents or older figures, and unable to start or having to delay their own families or households, or progress professionally’. it may also limit the positions that they can take up within their communities. as a consequence, young people’s dreams, hopes and aspirations are often deferred until some unknowable point in the future. but this does not mean that there are no steps towards adulthood, or that it is a blanket form of waiting; some progress may be made in one dimension but not in another. it is thus important to acknowledge where there is growth and dynamism and where people are ‘stuck’, so that ‘waithood’ isn’t presented as a uniformly blanketing weight that does not allow any movement. furthermore, much of the literature exploring the dimensions of adulthood are quite northern-centric. within the global south, children and young people, of whatever age, often remain firmly ensconced in financial and caring relationships with their families throughout their lives. there is, as cuervo and miranda (2019, p. 192) write, a ‘… blurring [of ] boundaries of childhood-youth-adulthood embedded in these labouring and caring practices in the global south …’. this has also been an observation by the south african project team as many of the yrs live in a context characterised by informality and precarity. following a methodological discussion, the subsequent sections unpack the questions of ‘waiting’ and ‘stuckness’, and demonstrate how they are not uniformly experienced; that they are uneven, with moments of waiting and moments of moving forward. the empirical work reveals that young people find themselves being highly dependent on friends and family members, unable to attain financial independence, but that does not mean that they are idle. many of the respondents ‘hustled’ and had a number of different streams of income, and were constantly on the look out for opportunities. these small steps towards independence rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 and self-reliance demonstrate that ‘waithood’ is not absolute, and that, despite significant structural and economic challenges, young people do not wait passively for the moment of adulthood to arrive. collaborating and co-producing in hawassa and ekangala the work that this article is based on comes from two case study sites, one in hawassa, ethiopia (figure 1), and the other in ekangala, south africa (figure 2). to offer some background: hawassa is a rapidly growing city, 270 kilometres south of addis ababa. it is home to over half a million people living in the centre and the surrounding semi-rural kebeles. in contrast, ekangala, in south africa, is part of what were called bantustans, or old homeland areas. it is close to the town of bronkhorstspruit and just over a hundred kilometres from the capital city of pretoria/tshwane. ekangala has a small population of under 50,000 people, who reside in a series of townships scattered throughout the area. an industrial park was established in the mid-1980s, but was not successful and most of the businesses have deserted the area. there have, however, been large-scale state infrastructure investments, mostly in the form of state-subsidised housing. working across these sites was intentional. hawassa offered a site of state intervention in the economy with the intention of creating jobs and opportunities for young people. ekangala offered a counter point whereby the state intervened significantly in the housing market but left the economy largely alone. as such, these two cases offered a contrast with each other, and allowed the researchers to use different points of focus when looking at the same nexus of youth, housing and employment. figure 1. location map of ekangala rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 figure 2. location map of hawassa as already mentioned, the project used a mixed methods approach – outlined below – to examine the youth work/housing nexus and the everyday experiences of youth in both cities. the project trained 28 youth representatives to undertake surveys with their peers and matched this with intensive life history interviews (lhis) around the youth representatives’ own experiences. the principle of collaboration underpinned the study from its conception, with the research team recognising the limitations of research which privileged the researchers’ agenda. this was particularly important given the stated focus on youth experiences of the work/housing nexus, and the team were adamant that young people needed to articulate what the key research agenda should be. we don’t claim to have followed an orthodox ‘co-production approach’ in our project (see bell & pahl 2018), although many of our tactics do fall under this label. our project wasn’t ‘fully co-produced’, for example primary research aims and objectives were not established in collaboration with our youth participants, but rather through project proposal writing long in advance of their recruitment. we emphasise below the collaborative principles of our methodology and, where relevant, we tease out coproduced elements. selecting youth representatives (yrs) inspired by the work and reflections of porter (2016) on the benefits of collaborative peerresearch, the project placed meaningful collaboration at the heart of its approach and specifically limited the number of research participants in order to facilitate a deeper engagement. rather than obtain extensive data from numerous young people, we opted instead for a smaller scale intensive study with fewer participants, more suited to collaboration at key moments in the project cycle. the youth participants were involved in the development and evolution of the research instruments (detailed below) as well as in engagement and interpretation of the findings. this meant that there was a long-term engagement with the youth in both contexts that persisted beyond the conventional boundaries of research. to facilitate meaningful collaboration, in both contexts, a suitable research manager was hired to engage directly with the youth. they were supported by research assistants, all of whom were responsible for identifying and helping to select the youth representatives (yrs). the yrs were selected based on fitting into the age parameters (18–35) as well as living within the confines of ekangala and hawassa, and living in different types of accommodation. attention was paid to ensuring that there was a geographical spread within these settlements and a gender balance, a spread of different household and family configurations rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 (married versus not married; with and without children), encapsulating the experiences of employed and unemployed youth. not all of the yrs that started the project in south africa completed the full course. some had to drop out as they had work commitments that they could not afford to risk, or take time off from to work on the project. there were some important differences between the youth that were selected for the project in the two countries. in hawassa, all 15 youth representatives who worked on the project and were respondents were in their 20s and all had finished high school. most had some form of tertiary qualification. several of the respondents had migrated to hawassa for study or seeking work, or family migration when younger. there were, however, stark disconnections between the educational levels achieved and their ability to find employment, with very few employed in their particular fields. interestingly, many of the respondents noted that they had little choice in what they studied and were often directed by older family members or by the state. in the latter case, the ethiopian government allocates people to specific courses and degrees and they have little say in the choice. in addition, many people have multiple degrees or qualifications in numerous disciplines in the hope of becoming more marketable. in ekangala, the 13 people selected as yrs were a bit older, many in their late 20s and 30s. a number of them had not finished high school and none had any form of post high school qualifications. most of the respondents had grown up in ekangala or had spent a significant amount of time there in their childhood and adolescence. a number of the respondents had children and many were unmarried or had long-term partnerships. all of the yrs were included in our hybrid subject/researcher approach. following porter (2016), the project aimed to extend and overcome the usual relegation of participants as mere subjects, and to offer training, skills development and payment as an explicit outcome of the study. it sought to utilise young people’s knowledge of their own neighbourhoods and peers to determine the research focus, and to use their communication skills to advance an understanding of the wider youth housing/work nexus. the extent of engagement and the ‘repeat’ nature of interaction with our youth representatives (through the hybrid approach) facilitated a more meaningful and deeper understanding of their individual lives. youth were thus the ‘subject’ of the research in the sense that they were to be interviewed, and their life histories would form a core component of the project’s data pool and shape media outputs developed by youth later in the project. they were also active researchers, surveying up to 15 other youths and delivering the surveys to the team for analysis. capacitating, centering and training yrs to support this hybrid approach and to facilitate co-production, after the youth were selected, they were invited to training sessions where they were introduced to the projects, sensitised to interview techniques and then given the draft survey instrument to workshop. together, the yrs went through the draft survey, and tested the questions for comprehensibility, translatability, and to see if they just made sense and what may have been left out. after this, the inputs from each group were integrated into the questionnaire. at the second session (delayed quite substantially in the south african case due to the issues described in the opening section), the re-jigged questionnaire was once again tested in small groups and the yrs had an opportunity to work through the research instrument and make any final changes. the instrument was then finalised (this was done by testing the instrument on 25 respondents in hawassa, and some of the questions were rewritten to avoid observed ambiguity in meanings) and the yrs were trained in how to conduct research. the yrs were also given mobile phone data for the period june 2021–june 2022, to assist with communication and to allow them to conduct interviews. the research managers in both contexts also set up whatsapp and telegram groups for the teams, on which official and social communication took place (see figure 3). the whatsapp and telegram groups were important not only for communicating key pieces of information on the project, but also because they became sites of virtual friendships, camaraderie and rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 figure 3. social interaction on the whatsapp and telegram platforms rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 mutual support. it was largely through having these small intimate groups online and offline that established the social relationships and coherence so important for the project. it also allowed the research managers to build a high degree of intimacy with the yrs and, in doing so, gain deeper insight into their lives. in april and may 2022, two further processes were undertaken: the first was the development of a series of media outputs with the yrs; and the second was when the yrs, the research teams, and selected key informants and key figures, such as local government officials and community leaders, were invited to a feedback session to test the findings and to think through the way forward. the media outputs were workshopped with the yrs, and in the case of hawassa mostly consisted of yrs developing podcasts to talk about their life histories and researchers using local radio stations to discuss the project’s findings. in ekangala, a media consultancy was contracted to work with the yrs to develop their media outputs. these included a song, spoken word poetry, a podcast, and written and illustrated life histories. at the time of writing they had not been made public, but some of the material was presented at the final workshops, discussed below. in hawassa, the final workshop took place over two days: on the first day the yrs, field workers and coinvestigators were presented with and reviewed the project’s preliminary findings (including the preliminary results from sa), and generated recommendations to the policy makers. the policy recommendations of the yrs were systematically structured and organised so that they could be presented to the stakeholders by the next day. on the second day, key stakeholders joined the workshop. they included officials from the mayor’s office and regional bureaus, elders, kebele/local administrators, and delegates from ngos and cbos. the stakeholders were presented with the same materials as those offered on the previous day. some of the media outputs and the recommendations of the yrs by their representative, who was described by the research manager as ‘bold and energetic’, were followed by reflections and deliberations by all attendees. the workshop in ekangala followed a similar format, but also included a presentation from a local youth accelerator, harambee, and featured more of the yrs media outputs. although the yrs were enthusiastic and well-prepared, none of the invited officials from local government turned up, and only community workers from ekangala arrived. while the ethiopian yrs were able to engage with more senior officials and express their dissatisfaction with the role of the government and their current conditions (something that the sa group could not do as the officials did not arrive), what became clear was how little was in their control, and although the yrs could make small changes, and there was energy and excitement and a sense of agency, making the yrs feel that they were moving forward, larger changes were beyond their control. thus, although in these ways the project reflected their ‘stuckness’, in other ways the project served to facilitate connections and build relationships, making modest inroads into some of the isolation and disconnect typically experienced by youth in the area. researching side-by-side in ethiopia and south africa research across two very different contexts brings with it a host of challenges and exciting prospects. as there were some important similarities in the two contexts, the yrs and the team became very committed to the project and personal relationships developed between the yrs and the research manager and the research assistants/fieldworkers (who were slightly older, but still quite young black men and women). the south african project team had faced moments of sharing young people’s struggles and some of the yrs had needed more ‘support’ than others. this had been offered through an extended engagement with the yr in need. the sa context was difficult in this regard as, at times, the team had to monitor a yr who was not coping and help them through their daily struggles with sensitivity and kindness. the ekangala yrs operated as a team (see box 1) and it was their enthusiasm and willingness to get the job done that contributed to the overall success of the project. there was also a great deal of reciprocation from the rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 research manager and research assistants, who also used the whatsapp platform (see figure 4) to share information about prospective jobs and training that the youth could access. despite the very similar approach taken by the two teams in the two countries, local context and academic traditions mattered and differed quite substantially, as did approaches and networks. in both contexts, researchers built on their existing network. in hawassa this meant engaging with graduates for the most part, since many of the yrs were known to the researchers through their studies at the university of hawassa. it also meant that the sample was slightly skewed in favour of graduates rather than low income workers, for example at the hawassa industrial park, who had been the subjects of other studies in hawassa (mains & mulat 2021). the use of graduates also meant that there were fewer issues around literacy and capturing data than in the ekangala case. ekangala’s respondents were chosen based on previous work that two of the team members had undertaken for a research project on urban peripheries and so used previous networks to gain access to youth for the current project. the hawassa co-is had a stronger policy focus as they worked mostly in the policy arena. in addition, there is a strong tradition of positivist and quantitative research in ethiopia, which was the training and background of many of the researchers from the hawassa team. the south african team comprised social scientists (planners and geographers) whose emphasis was on qualitative work. thus, the surveys undertaken in the two contexts had a different ‘flavour’despite the teams using the same base document. this was due to the backgrounds of both the research teams as well as the yrs, and the specificities of language, history and context. as such, the research, although comparable and steps being taken to ensure similar methods were used in both contexts, it was not exactly the same process and should be viewed more as research that took place side-by-side rather than replicating exactly the same steps in both countries. box 1. field notes from research manager survey material was delivered to site on 13 october 2021. we decided that the drop off point would be barcelos [a local restaurant]in bronkhorstspruit as this is the workplace of yr-t, one of the yrs. a delivery of this nature required some technical planning on our part as a project team because we had to ensure that the right number of surveys was dropped off on site and we realised that the delivery could not be done overnight as it was a pretty big one. the yr really exceeded my expectations when they worked as a team as yr-i volunteered to collect the material on his way home from work for the other yr because they had complained about transport costs being an issueif they were to collect from yr-t’s workplace. yr-t also lives far from the other yr as she is the only participant from zithobeni which requires a taxi ride out from the other areas. yr-i lives in rethabiseng so he was able to drop the documents off for the yr from ekangala in that area and leave the dark city documents with yr-v’s sister who lives in rethabiseng. this type of team work has been beautiful to observe because this group, despite not everyone initially knowing each other, has grown very close since the start of the project. working, waiting and income generating in the two sites the following section investigates the intricate dynamics of waiting from different vantage points of what conventionally constitutes adulthood, including economic independence, family formation and well-being, all seen as encompassing protection from poverty, violence, exploitation and conflict. it demonstrates two rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 things. first, from a methodological angle, the utility of our mixed-methods approach shows how constant engagement develops relationships of intimacy that allows confidences to be shared. in addition, the mixed methods approach and media training were important in gaining a range of insights into the lives of youth in the two sites. second, on an empirical level, it revealed the unevenness of being stuck and how youth can experience some aspects of waithood and not others, but it can mean that their dreams and aspirations have to wait for many years. it also shows the difference that context, cultural settings and structural issues can make in young people’s ability to move out of ‘waithood’ or be forced back into situations of stuckness? figure 4. sharing info on the whatsapp platform rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 poverty, dependence and well-being as mentioned previously, the team utilised a mixed-method approach that included consistent engagement over a long period of time, and generated in-depth responses to the questions that the researchers asked, as well as responses to specific prompts over whatsapp and telegram. these provided photographs, messages and voicenotes, which helped the research team to gain some insights into the daily experiences of the yrs. this, combined with the surveys that the yrs conducted, provided some statistical sampling of the wider communities in which the yrs lived, which was used as a baseline for the wider project research. the lifehistory interviews and the consistent engagement with the yrs meant that the research team was able to see that many of the young people who were interviewed experienced high levels of poverty and deprivation as a consequence of not being employed and having to generate their own income. the life history interviews (hereafter: lhis) and the findings from the surveys that the yrs conducted in south africa were able to show that the local conditions echoed the national situation where over 40 percent of adults were unemployed. whilst the hawassa yrs were better qualified, they too suffered from low employment rates, and many of them were still dependent on parents and other family members. the methods also showed the unevenness of waithood, with young people finding ways to push forward by getting married, having children, leaving home and ‘hustling’ (thieme 2018) or straining to find income (finn & oldfield 2015). however, this happened in bits and pieces and frequently was not accompanied by other forms of independence, often keeping young people in situations of limbo as neither full adults nor children (honwana 2014). through the lhis, respondents described how family members provided ‘what i need at home including food’ (e1, hawassa) and that even in cases where young people were married and living with their partners they were still dependent, as was the case for one young woman living in hawassa, who said, ‘for my expense, my mother also gives me some amount of money when she comes to hawassa. if she does not come regularly she sends me via family members’ (m1, hawassa). getting married or moving in with partners or moving out of home goes some way to moving young people forward and ensuring that they are not stuck in ‘waithood’; however, when that is combined with parental or kinship support, it means a compromised sense of adulthood. through spending time with the yrs and forming relationships of trust, they were willing to describe how, no matter what, parents still took care of their children even if they could not physically be with them. in ekangala, many yrs described how parents still assisted them, with a young woman noting that her father recognised her lack of income and so ‘he [my father] takes out the money [from his savings], he doesn’t want us to pay for anything because he says we don’t make money’(p1, ekangala). through the interviews, conversations and survey it became clear that extended family and dependence on social grants were also very much in evidence for young people in ekangala, with one young woman describing that ‘the kids get a grant’ and that ‘electricity and food, my aunt buys that’ (b1, ekangala). the survey in hawassa revealed that large numbers of young people are dependent on their friends for support when they are not earning an income. the sense of dependence and poverty was felt acutely by the young people, who saw it as fundamentally dehumanising and as something that compromised their experience of life, their relationships and their sense of self. it is difficult to attain a sense of autonomy when dependent on the state or other people, even close family. during the media training exercise, one young woman eloquently described her sense of powerlessness and poverty by saying: we hate poverty so much because it is the worst enemy one can face. poverty can make you someone you are not and can turn people into animals. poverty can make one envy the life of another. it can build hatred, jealousy and selfishness in a person’s heart. poverty can make you a beggar. when you rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 are poor, you always have to compromise. you make friends because there is something to gain from them, you laugh even when your heart and stomach are empty [sic] (p1, ekangala). other work elsewhere (parker & rubin 2018; rubin and parker, 2022) also demonstrates the connection between the idea of what it means to be a good parent, integral to which is the ability to provide for one’s children. when chatting to the yrs and through the lhis, it became clear that young people who cannot provide for their children do not feel like full adults, as the notion of parenting and adulthood are integrally linked. young people thus take some steps forward in having children and becoming parents, but since they cannot always provide for their children on their own, it is a compromised move. it became clear during the various discussions that poverty affects not only young people’s physical well-being (their lack of material things), but also their mental well-being as they feel compromised, disempowered and less than. figure 5. shared accommodation in hawassa employment, unemployment and dreams deferred through discussions with young people at the various events, the lhis and the surveys, it became clear that the financial and work situation in both contexts demonstrated some strong similarities, with chronic lack of jobs for well-educated people in hawassa and for all residents in ekangala. most available jobs were labour intensive or unskilled. while there were far more jobs in hawassa than in ekangala, in both cases the jobs were hard to come by and respondents in both sites mentioned that social and political networks, along with the exchange of sexual favours in the case of ekangala, were the only ways to secure employment. rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202213 in the lhis and during the workshops, this situation elicited a great deal of anger and discontent. when work is secured, it is generally not very satisfying, and the pay is low and conditions poor, despite significant effort and hard work. this included work at the hip. a few had managed to secure work in line with their qualifications, but they were the minority. in both contexts, youth struggled to find suitable jobs, but in the sa case there was less chance of any formal employment (though a few of the sa respondents did have jobs in the formal sector), and the statistics indicate that their possibility of ever being employed is quite low. as mentioned earlier, due to the sense of familiarity and confidence that the relationships had managed to generate, the yrs revealed their various strategies for gaining an income and the ‘hustling’ and making do that they undertake on a daily basis. in sa, while there are no grants to support youth directly, social grants such as pensions and child support are crucial for young people as indirect beneficiaries. the sa government introduced the social relief of distress grant during the covid-19 pandemic, of which most of the youth in the country are recipients. however, it is a relatively small amount and it is unclear how long it will continue. these sources of income are not available to young people in hawassa as ethiopia does not have a social welfare system. interestingly, in the ekangala case, there are indications of a generational decline in employment (some older generation [parents] had employment but lost it) and very little formal employment for younger people. as such, a degree of ‘hustling’ (various, often informal activities or short-term jobs to bring in income) was evident in both contexts, but more frequently in the sa situation. many people have multiple streams of income, such as grants, piece work, short contracts and small businesses that help to bring in some money. the hustling and multiple strategies should be read as important agenic moments, as moments in which youth showed agency, in which young people are not simply waiting but are actively taking steps to move their lives forward. trying to earn an income, and not just passively waiting, is a moment of significant autonomy and a push towards individuation and achieving the milestone of adulthood. the consequences of poor employment scenarios are that many of the youth simply do not have sufficient money to be able to derive a sense of independence and fulfilment. when discussing these issues with young people, it became clear that a lack of employment didn’t just mean that people were unable to purchase the items that they would have liked. it also meant that they were dependent on family members, grants or friends in order to meet their needs, and meant that, despite their ages, they were not able to contribute to household expenses. in some cases, young people had to compromise in order to move forward in some way. for example, this could mean that they had to live at home and depend on family members whilet they reskilled and tried to ensure that they had some kind of income and future, or whilst they started businesses. the lhis and workshops revealed that this made young people feel despondent and that they were not living up to the expectations of their families. even young people with jobs, or some form of income, no longer living at home found that their incomes were being supplemented by family members, including for basic items such as rental, bills and food. many of the young people experienced judgement and judged themselves for not being able to bring in sufficient income, and this affected their sense of self-esteem and social value. they felt a great deal of social pressure about not being able to contribute to their households, or to survive without their family’s help.  the lack of jobs, coupled with parental and social expectations, also meant that many young people had to put their dreams aside either completely or for extended and uncertain periods of time. one yr from hawassa recounted: wow, my dream was to be an author/writer. it was my wish and ambition. as i mentioned before, as a teenager i used to write stories, you know; but my dad stopped me from pursuing to be a writer and i drop it. – z1, hawassa rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202214 another yr took the disappointment philosophically: i wanted to become a doctor. i don’t feel bad that i did not become one because life has other plans for us. growing up i realised that not everything will transpire as planned. – m1, ekangala others found it more difficult to give up on their dreams: interviewee: okay when i grew up i wanted to be a cop. a police cop. .. so now i’m no longer a police cop i’m a junior technician. interviewer: okay, and how do you feel about that? that you didn’t fulfill your dream of wanting to be a policeman? interviewee: it’s very hard, sisters. interviewer: why? interviewee: because i still want to be a police. – f1, ekangala concluding thoughts the literature on waithood sees young people trapped in a state of advanced youth, not quite adults but not quite children either (honwana, 2014a; honwana, 2014b). young people cannot easily achieve the milestones that mark the transition into adulthood, but do not accept this situation passively and constantly innovate and take the initiative to counter these forms of stasis, hustling and straining (finn & oldfield 2015; thieme 2013, 2018). these accounts emphasise the agency that young people have and their ability to resist situations of precarity and difficulty by finding ways to earn some form of income. our research builds on this foundation, but demonstrates the numerous acts of agency and resistance that young people undertake in countering waithood. these are not just economic and income generating, but include aspects of their personal lives, such as getting married, having long-term partners and having children, and moving out of home. this research demonstrates these counter moments and highlights how the approach of collaboration, with elements of co-production, was able to nuance and make tangible the everyday ways that young people adopt to ensure that they do not just wait and that they find small, but significant ways to move forward in their lives. those working on the project undertook an ambitious array of research methods over an 18 month period: workshops, co-production of research instruments, training, online engagement through social media, as well as lhis, and media training, which meant that the project generated a substantial amount of material. it also meant that the team was able to establish profound relationships of trust and intimacy with the respondents, blurring the lines of subject and researcher and becoming part of the research ‘team’. in so doing, the project was able to gain deeper insights into the daily lives, experiences and emotions of the respondents in a way that was intentionally reciprocal and attempted to avoid elements of extraction and exploitation. it was also intended that the project empower and capacitate the yrs so that they walked away from the project with some employment and new skills. unintentionally, the project thus became a way for young people to push forward and to, in some small ways, counter their experiences of waithood. the method allowed the researchers to see that the lack of employment meant that young people have extended periods of dependence on their parents and family members or on social grants, without having the ability to find financial independence or progress in their chosen fields due to lack of training or job opportunities (honwana 2014a). many of the young people aspired to marry and have children, but said that they would have to wait until they could support a family or access better accommodation that would be more appropriate to being married and raising a family (sommers 2012). the research revealed that many young people will never have the prospect of a formal job and will live their lives on the economic margins, with very little possibility of saving and so achieving better quality housing, and will be forced to live at rubin, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202215 home even when they have children of their own. thus young people effectively remain ‘young’, unable to achieve the signifiers of adulthood and trapped in a form of eternal youth that is neither desirable nor appreciated, but which is the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of young people across the continent. through the extensive engagement, however, it was uncovered that waiting is not an all or nothing sum game, rather it is a situation of nuance and increment, with young people able to move forward in some ways but not in others. relying on the confidences shared by young people, it was shown that the movement is also contingent on context and culture: in south africa, young people may not be able to marry as the bride price is often difficult to obtain and people are simply not earning enough. however, due to the social acceptability of having children outside of marriage and people living together, many are still finding ways to achieve a certain level of familial autonomy and thus some form of adulthood. they sometimes get married, find partners, have children, move out of home and ‘hustle’ innovatively and creatively. in hawassa, the more conservative ethiopian approach to family life means that young people remain unpartnered and do not often become parents outside the confines of formal marriage, largely due to social stigma. the ability to live informally in ekangala as a family unit or to move out into a backyard room also provides more space for independence than the more formal situations in hawassa, where young people do not generally move into shacks and instead remain in their familial homes. however, the young people interviewed in hawassa were far more qualified and had moved further in their studies than their sa counterparts. although both groups showed signs of ‘hustling’ (thieme 2018) and ‘straining’ (finn & oldfield 2015), the prospects of formal jobs and the attainment of a professional career path largely elude both groups. the research both helped to move people forward in moments, but also reflected and surfaced their moments of stuckness. the excitement and enthusiasm that the youth experienced during the workshops and the camaraderie and collegiality that they experienced, as well as the skills that they attained during the research, helped them to push forward in moments, and assisted in allowing for small moments of progress. however, young people face systemic issues in not being able to find significant forms of employment and remaining in situations of dependency, which is difficult for them to combat. the wide array of 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cited and states its license. citation: gendle, m. h., senadeera, b., tapler, a. 2023. a novel instrument for the community-centred assessment of outcomes resulting from visits by foreign student groups. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8428 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article a novel instrument for the community-centred assessment of outcomes resulting from visits by foreign student groups mathew h. gendle1,*, bandula senadeera2, amanda tapler3 1 director of project pericles and professor of psychology, elon university, elon nc, usa 2 international unit, sarvodaya, moratuwa, sri lanka 3 associate director of project pericles and senior lecturer in public health studies, elon university, elon nc, usa 1 corresponding author: mathew h. gendle, mgendle@elon.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8428 article history: received 28/10/2022; revised 11/03/2023; accepted 20/03/2023; published 06/2023 abstract academic institutions in the united states have increasingly emphasised communitybased global learning (cbgl) programs within international contexts. these programs are assumed to have positive outcomes, but often lack substantive assessment data to support their claims. although meaningful program evaluation has increasingly become a priority, these investigations frequently overlook the views, opinions and goals of community organisations and community members. at present, few brief quantitative instruments are available to assess higher education cbgl project outcomes from the perspective of community partners. here we detail the initial use of the community benefit survey (cbs), a novel 17-item instrument designed to help fill this gap, within the context of a unique cbgl program in rural sri lanka. the cbs demonstrated value in facilitating equitable community assessment and centring the voices of community members. the cbs possesses significant utility in describing the benefits of student group/community partnerships and can be generalised for use across a wide variety of domestic and international contexts. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8428 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8428 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mgendle@elon.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8428 keywords assessment; community-centred; quantitative; community-based global learning; service learning; undergraduate introduction in the past two decades, colleges and universities in the united states have increasingly emphasised the creation and growth of academic and co-curricular community-based global learning (cbgl) programs within international contexts. the label ‘cbgl’ was coined by hartman et al. (2018) and will be used here in lieu of the more common, but conceptually and linguistically problematic term, ‘service-learning’ (gendle & tapler 2022). all too often, cbgl programs are simply assumed by their sponsoring institutions to have positive outcomes, but typically offer little or no direct assessment of long-term benefits to support these claims (reynolds et al. 2022). although meaningful assessment of program outcomes is increasingly becoming a priority for many institutions, such assessment has often been student-centred, with less attention being paid to the needs, goals, desires and perspectives of community partners (blouin & perry 2009; choudhary & jesiek 2016; cruz & giles 2000; geller et al. 2016; goemans et al. 2018; miron & moely 2006; mogford & lyons 2019; natarajarathinam et al. 2020; reynolds 2019; sweatman & warner 2020). in recent years, the body of academic cbgl research that centres on community voices has grown substantially (goemans et al. 2018). however, as noted by choudhary and jesiek (2016), much of the research that has investigated community viewpoints on academic-community partnerships has been conducted within domestic settings in the united states and may not have translated well to international contexts. thus reynolds (2014; 2019) has called for a focus on the creation and assessment of community outcomes of international cbgl programs that prioritises an intentional community-based participatory orientation in this work. community-centred impact assessments of cbgl programs have typically relied on focus groups, structured or semi-structured interviews, or open-ended response questionnaires to gather community views and opinions (blouin & perry 2009; choudhary & jesiek 2016; goemans et al. 2018; grain et al. 2019; habashy & hunt 2021; haines & lambaria 2018; jordaan & mennega 2021; kindred 2020; miron & moely 2006; reynolds 2014, 2019; sweatman & warner 2020). although these methodologies are completely appropriate for this type of assessment and can provide feedback that is rich in detail, they are not without limitations. interviews and focus groups can be time consuming to conduct, and data from interviews, focus groups and open-ended surveys require significant training to translate and score them properly. inherently, interview methodologies can decrease respondents’ perception of anonymity and may inadvertently encourage favourable (but inaccurate) responses, due to perceived power differentials between the interviewer and the respondent. in addition, the risk of overly positive responses can be magnified in situations where the respondents have received, or hoped to receive, some type of material or non-material benefit from extending their relationship with the group or organisation they are hosting. a mixed-methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative instruments has been recognised as the ‘gold-standard’ for community-centred assessments (geller et al. 2016; hartman et al. 2015; srinivas et al. 2015). however, there are few widely available concise and general quantitative instruments (such as the closed-ended item portion of the community impact scale, or cis; srinivas et al. 2015) for assessing higher education cbgl program outcomes from the perspective of community partners. the further development of such instruments would fill a critical need for assessments that: (1) can be easily scaled to administer to a large numbers of respondents; (2) are sensitive to respondents’ limited temporal resources; (3) can be readily adapted to different languages in both oral and written form; (4) produce data that can be quickly scored and analysed without the need for coder training and extensive gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 response coding; and (5) allow for straightforward comparisons in instrument administration outcomes across both time and location. development and use of one such instrument within the context of an undergraduate cbgl program in sri lanka founded in 1958, sri lanka’s sarvodaya movement is grounded in dr ahangamage tudor ariyaratne’s vision for a society that is free of conflict, poverty and affluence, with welfare for all through local community mobilisation (gendle 2021). sarvodaya is sri lanka’s largest non-governmental organisation and is a central actor in the country’s primary economic, political and social development networks (gendle 2021). sarvodaya promotes local community-initiated self-development and inclusive participatory democracy, with a focus on eliminating poverty and addressing community needs within hyper-local contexts (gendle 2021). one of sarvodaya’s key principles is that of ‘shramadana’, or shared labour (clark 2005). the concept of shramadana is not simply a restatement of the idea that large tasks are best completed through collective effort. rather, it stems from ariyaratne’s connection of buddhist principles to community organising, and his understanding that a collective awakening of mind and compassionate practice can arise from group collaborative labour for the common good (clark 2005). this concept was eloquently summarised by ariyaratne himself, in the phrase ‘we build the road and the road builds us’ (ariyaratne 1999). since 2016, the u.s. university academic program that gendle and tapler co-led has been partnered with sarvodaya in sri lanka to co-create several community-based undergraduate educational experiences. many of these have included shramadanas, who help address the community’s basic needs and local communityinitiated homestays for students and staff. students may also engage in cultural exchange activities with community members, such as village tours, dancing, storytelling and other public performances. these activities differ from those of many international community-based university programs, in that the community and local sarvodaya staff (rather than the faculty and student visitors) choose the location and task(s) of each shramadana. importantly, material outcomes are not a focus of the shramadana activities. rather, these collaborative experiences are fundamentally centred on bringing different peoples together to work towards a common goal in a collective community and, in so doing, create a transitory ‘university of life’ that unites and facilitates personal and community awakening (ariyaratne 1999). as discussed earlier, there is a paucity of brief quantitative instruments that can be broadly utilised to assess community members’ views on the potential community outcomes resulting from engagement with visiting foreign student groups. given our program’s continued involvement with sarvodaya and shramadana activities, along with our commitment to fair trade learning (hartman et al. 2014; hartman 2015), there was substantial interest in developing an instrument that could gather community perspectives. development of this instrument was grounded in the principles of fair trade learning, a powerful framework of practical ethical standards that promotes equity, justice, and an understanding of interconnectedness to international and domestic/local community-based global learning programs (hartman et al. 2014; hartman 2015). one of the goals of the fair trade learning framework is to recentre academic organisation–partner relationships such that positive and definable outcomes for both student learning and the community are of equal importance (hartman et al. 2014; hartman 2015). when developing and maintaining international partnerships, academic units need to be intentional in avoiding engagement approaches that are paternalistic or grounded in colonialism, or other problematic power dynamics (sharpe & dear 2013; tiessen et al. 2018; van leeuwen et al. 2017). in all cases, academic–community partnerships must be constructed in a way that allows for significant benefits for all stakeholders, focuses on reciprocity, and integrates meaningful community voices and agency in every step of program creation, execution and assessment (bringle et al. 2009; hartman et al. 2014). gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 below, we describe the preliminary implementation of the community benefit survey, a brief survey instrument of our own design that was constructed through an elon university/sarvodaya partnership to assess community views on the potential benefits and harms of hosting an international/foreign academic group. although this instrument was initially utilised to gather community voices within the context of a shramadana experience in sri lanka, we believe that it also has substantial utility and value in any domestic or international context where community members or organisations host student groups. method the research protocol was approved by the institutional review board of elon university, and all procedures were in accordance with the helsinki declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. the community benefit survey (cbs – figure 1) consists of 17 closed ended statements (such as ‘the student visit provided a positive economic benefit to your community.’), the responses to which are provided on a 5-point likert-type scale coded as: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree. a summative score of responses (the community perceived benefit score) can be created by reverse-coding items 5 (‘the student visit presented a hardship to the community’) and 15 (‘the student visit harmed your community’), and then calculating the grand mean of the responses to all 17 survey items. higher values of the community perceived benefit score are conceived of as suggesting elevated levels of perceived community benefit. at present, the cbs is available in both english and sinhala (figure 1). figure 1. the community benefit survey (provided in both english and sinhala) in may 2022, students and faculty from elon university completed a homestay and shramadana program with community members in yahalagama, anuradhapura district, sri lanka. this program focused on gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 a collective project chosen by the community members – a physical clean-up and rehabilitation of the building and grounds of a local elementary school. at the conclusion of the shramadana, everyone gathered for a community-wide meeting. following the meeting, adult community members were verbally invited to voluntarily complete the cbs. of the approximately 75–100 persons attending this meeting, 12 adults agreed to complete the cbs. to maximise community trust, the cbs was administered via paper and pen, distributed and collected by a sarvodaya staff member, and to ensure anonymity of participant responses no demographic data was collected. descriptive statistics were generated using microsoft excel 2016 for windows. results descriptive statistics for the 17 items of the community benefit survey are provided in table 1. a significant range of responses were given for most items. particularly high mean scores were given for items 11 (‘it would be good to have student groups visit your community in the future’, mean = 4.92, s.d. = 0.29) and 14 (‘the students served your community in a useful way’, mean = 4.91, s.d. = 0.30), whereas a noticeably lower score was provided for item 9 (‘all community members were offered the opportunity to participate in and host the student visit’, mean = 4.17, s.d. = 1.27). the community perceived benefit score was 4.51. table 1. descriptive statistics for each of the 17 items of the community benefit survey item # mean standard deviation range of responses 1 4.83 0.39 4-5 2 4.25 1.14 1-5 3 4.58 0.67 3-5 4 4.42 0.67 3-5 5 1.83 1.34 1-5 6 4.5 0.71 3-5 7 4.33 1.15 1-5 8 4.36 0.67 3-5 9 4.17 1.27 1-5 10 4.45 0.69 3-5 11 4.92 0.29 4-5 12 4.45 0.52 4-5 13 4.67 0.49 4-5 14 4.91 0.30 4-5 15 1.42 1.17 1-5 16 4.25 0.87 3-5 17 4.83 0.58 3-5 gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 discussion the community benefit survey (cbs) was designed to efficiently capture community members’ views of the potential benefits and harms that result from hosting a visit from a foreign student group. based on the assessment of a small number of respondents from a rural community in sri lanka, this instrument demonstrated value in facilitating equitable community assessment that centred the voices of community members. within this context, community members who completed the survey agreed that the students collaborated with their community in a useful way, and that it would be valuable to host additional student groups in the future. there was disagreement in relation to whether all community members were offered the opportunity to participate in or host the student visit. based on the ratio of foreign visitors to community members, complete community participation was not possible, but we hoped that community members would feel as though they had, or were offered, the opportunity to significantly engage with the student group. we believe that the cbs is a flexible instrument and has significant utility in assessing the perceived benefit of student groups/community partnerships across a wide variety of domestic and international contexts. when administered alone, the cbs provides data that is appropriate for a variety of quantitative assessment strategies. it also affords significant portability across both time and location, as well as scalability, allowing for the simple collection of data from very large sample sizes. when administered in combination with open-ended surveys, structured or semi-structured interviews, focus groups, or other qualitative approaches, the cbs can serve a critical quantitative role in assessment strategies that utilise mixed methodology. in the current study, we observed a wide range of responses for most cbs items, which we inferred suggested that community members were comfortable sharing their views and did not feel compelled to provide universally positive responses to all items. however, we were unsure how to interpret the relatively low proportion of community members that completed the survey (12 of the 75–100 people present agreed to do so). our positionality – authors mhg & at are academics from the us; author bs is a member of the leadership team of a large non-governmental organisation in sri lanka – necessitates that we recognise that community members may have agreed to participate or provided overly positive responses overall in the hope that such responses might lead to ongoing benefits for the community. without question, the authors’ positionality as both participants in community work and researchers of this work limited our ability to function as truly detached ‘third party’ observers, and thus limited our own objectivity. however, this dual existence as participant-observers also provided us with unique insight into the subject of this research (reynolds 2019). two of us (mhg & at) are not sri lankan and do not speak or read sinhala, but have extensive experience working in rural sri lanka and india, and have used these experiences to facilitate effective engagement with the international communities with which we partner. this article’s other author (bs) is a native sri lankan and sinhala speaker, with many years of experience creating fruitful partnerships with rural communities in his home country. although these experiences necessarily limited our ability to be completely objective, collectively they provided us with specific knowledge sets and tools to be effective participant-observers and able to listen to and understand our community partners as a research team (reynolds 2019). future assessments using the cbs should consider administration methodologies that decouple the dual roles the authors had as both researchers of, and participants in, community engagement activities. given the small number of participants in this preliminary study, additional investigations should use larger samples across a variety of community contexts to ensure that the presumed functional robustness of the cbs is indeed present. within our own academic programming, we are planning additional future administrations of the cbs in sri lanka, as well as to organisational partners in india, morocco, costa rica, and the lakota nation of pine ridge reservation (south dakota, usa). gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 at present, only a few brief quantitative instruments for assessing higher education cbgl program outcomes from the perspective of community partners exist in the public domain. the cbs fills a critical need for assessments that are easily scaled, require minimal time commitment 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examination of the kenyan context’, international journal of research on service-learning and community engagement, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 129–43. https://doi.org/10.37333/001c.29769 gendle, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 https://journals.sfu.ca/jgcee/index.php/jgcee/article/view/174 https://doi.org/10.37333/001c.29769 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 december 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: miller, g., ng, m. 2023. a practice-based guide for creating stem service learning courses. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–15. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8697 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article a practice-based guide for creating stem service learning courses genna miller1, minna ng1,* 1 duke university, durham nc, usa corresponding author: minna ng, minna.ng@duke.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8697 article history: received 30/06/2023; revised 24/10/2023; accepted 30/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract this practice-based article describes two undergraduate service learning (sl) courses in stem disciplines: economics and neuroscience. we share our experiences to encourage other instructors to develop their stem sl courses. the top five majors by degree completion in order of popularity are computer science, economics, public policy, biology and engineering at our institution, duke university, durham, nc (spicer 2023); four of these are stem, yet they represent less than 20 percent of our sl courses (whiteman 2023). this under-representation has resulted in fewer resources that are stem slspecific. the resources for sl in the social sciences are well established, but do not necessarily translate well to stem sl courses. there are many reasons to adopt sl for stem courses. it offers students the opportunity to give back to the community and to learn in meaningful ways outside of the classroom. as described by the american association of colleges & universities (aac&u 2022a), ‘working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.’ we describe two basic models, the direct and indirect sl model, and how these were used in our courses. based on our practice-based experiences, we developed four stages for our colleagues to follow when creating their stem sl course: (1) identify course objectives; (2) build mutually beneficial partnerships; (3) design assignments; and (4) integrate reflections. our goal was to share the course structures we developed using these stages so that others could adopt them in their stem disciplines. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8697 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8697 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:minna.ng@duke.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8697 keywords stem; client-based service learning model; direct service learning model; citizenship; community introduction at the end of the spring 2023 semester, we (the authors) were each invited as guest speaker at the service learning faculty showcase at duke university. the purpose of the showcase was for course instructors in the stem fields to describe meaningful connections with community partners and creative projects that would enhance students’ learning experience. we each presented on the development and implementation of sl pedagogy in our own stem courses on neuroscience and economics. after this first meeting, we continued our conversation on the shared challenges encountered while aligning our sl to traditional stem learning objectives, which emphasise quantitative skills and empirical methods for problem solving. we also shared our passion for working with the community and the students. to encourage and support other faculty in building stem sl courses, we co-authored this article as a practice-based guide. what is service learning? service learning, rooted in early 20th-century educational philosophy (dewey 1938), is a pedagogical approach that applies classroom knowledge to real-world situations, fostering reflective discussion (hatcher & bringle 1997). this approach aims to break down subject-specific barriers and promote an educational approach that recognises the interconnectedness of various fields (dewey 1916; giles & eyler 1994). sl courses provide students with the opportunity to apply theoretical concepts to practical situations and to use course content practically to address community needs through structured activities that also contribute to students’ academic development (bringle & hatcher 1995; howard 1998). for example, the ‘introduction to statistical consulting’ sl course immerses students in real-world consulting through a campus-wide program. they work with researchers from diverse disciplines, providing recommendations for statistical methodologies relevant to their research. this course also explores research ethics, covering aspects such as data collection, model assumptions, analysis, reproducibility and results reporting (iverson jr n.d.). it blends practical application of academic knowledge and experiential knowledge, deepening students’ understanding of societal challenges in which community collaboration is an integral component of the course (furco 1996; jacoby 2003). furthermore, partnerships between universities and communities have the potential to go beyond a focus on students to providing services to the community while learning from community members. within the critical service-learning model, identified by mitchell (2008), students and community members engage with one another with a conscious focus on understanding the systemic structures that have resulted in social inequalities in society (2008). that is, students and community members turn a critical lens on the situations and root causes of the current social situations. for example, the students of the sl course, ‘global nutrition’, partner with many local and global emergency food assistance programs to provide meals and snacks to hungry children. together, the partnership examines the social inequalities and infrastructure of food insecurity (benjamin-neelon n.d.). the two main models of service-learning are described below and illustrated in figure 1. the direct sl model in the direct service-learning model, students work directly with community members to address a need. the most common method is through educational services within schools, after-school programs, non-profits miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 and community organisations. for example, students in a spanish course strengthen their language skills by tutoring children for whom spanish is their primary language and who are learning english in an afterschool program. through consistent communication and partnership, both the students and the children improve their language skills as well as learn about one another. the indirect/client-based sl model in the indirect or client-based model, students take on the role of consultant to a client in the community to provide a service or to help solve a problem. rather than working directly with community members, students assist clients who work on behalf of the community members. for this method, students are usually placed in groups and assigned a client who presents a problem that needs solving or a service that needs performing. after conducting research and analyses, the students suggest solutions or present findings to the client. for example, students in a sex & gender course partner with the public library to investigate resources for the lgbtq+ community. to service their clients’ needs, the students study the intersectionality of sex and gender within the context of the local social and cultural community. based on their analysis of the local community, students develop recommendations for the library on additional books, programs and clubs that support the needs and strengths of the lgbtq+ community. students thus deepen their understanding around concepts of sex and gender. this indirect sl experience results in a shared deliverable for the course, the public library and the local community. figure 1. direct and client-based models for service-learning courses. why adopt service learning in a stem course? the ability to intimately engage with the community is not readily available in science-based courses. students struggle to connect the facts and theories from lectures to the real world. applications are limited to lab experiences and recitation, which do not facilitate students’ ability to see how their knowledge fits into the bigger picture. sl facilitates this. according to the national science foundation (nsf 2022), stem education needs to evolve with real-time changes in society where citizenship is an integral component. the sl model supports many areas identified by nsf for exploration, including experiential learning in different environments and the effect miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 of different contexts on learning (nsf 2022). sl also supports effective communication with the general public on science (najmr et al. 2018). using the sl pedagogy facilitates student exposure to a greater diversity of people, cultures, contexts and ideas outside of the classroom (gross & maloney 2012). this exposure to diversity and increased interactions with people from different contexts and backgrounds ‘is [an] essential part of the wonderful [scientific] creativity that can emerge when different people work alongside one another’ (blackie 2021). in this way, service learning can act as a conduit to scientific advancement. these meaningful experiences increase understanding of course concepts (giles & eyler 1994; hayford, blomstorm & deboer 2014) and students become better citizens when they engage in service (daniel & mishra 2017; dewey 1916; mitchell 2008). sl also improves interpersonal skills, communication skills and the capacity to engage in teamwork (chittum, enke & finley 2022). these outcomes are beneficial for all disciplines (cress et al. 2022), and particularly for problem-solving in the sciences (bosman, chelberg & winn 2017). to help incorporate sl components in stem courses, we describe how we applied the sl models to our stem courses in economics and neuroscience. how do i create a stem sl course? in developing our guide for service learning courses, we first reflected on our personal experiences. this introspection, centring on both challenges and successes, served as the foundation for extracting practical insights. by stripping away extraneous elements, we aimed to provide a clear and concise framework for effective course design. the resulting guide is a practical resource grounded in direct engagement and personal experiences with stem, emphasising simplicity and knowledge sharing. it systematically navigates through four stages: (1) identify your course objectives; (2) build a mutually beneficial partnership; (3) design your assignments; and (4) integrate reflections. for a summary, see table 1. stage 1: identify course objectives identify course objectives focused on actualising stem skills in the real world. these can include: develop an understanding of community needs and assets; apply knowledge to real-world issues; strengthen communication and collaboration with the community; promote reflection and self-awareness; cultivate civic responsibility; and evaluate ethical and social implications. refine the objectives to offer immediate, intimate and engaging experiences that are relevant to students’ skills. for example, math students could partner with city planners to collect data and learn about models for planning efficient snow plow routes (ng 2005). stage 2: build mutually beneficial partnerships: a two-way street a successful collaboration must recognise the two-way street that exists in the partnership for paving the way to a mutually beneficial relationship for both the students and the community partner. there are three essential requirements to consider in your search for a community partner, and a reciprocal understanding that the responsibility for a strong collaborative relationship is shared. firstly, it is crucial to select a community partner whose mission aligns with the core goals of your university (furco 2001) and your course learning objectives ( jacoby 2014). this alignment underlies a mutually beneficial relationship, strengthening commitment on both sides and facilitating an authentic partnership ( jacoby 2003). both parties need to clearly articulate their goals and values, and shared understanding of the collaborative mission. being transparent about expectations and deliverables is critical in mitigating the false perception that higher education has greater authority and power over the community (white 2010). miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 secondly, effective communication and the ability to demonstrate flexibility in accommodating one another’s needs are critical for a successful partnership ( jacoby 2014). you and your partner should evaluate the capacity for dedicating time to the partnership, ensuring effective communication through transparent and responsive interactions, and demonstrating reliability in fulfilling mutually agreed-upon commitments (white 2010). to facilitate clear communication channels, protocols need to be established that include meeting logistics as well as social norms. interactions with community members should respect unique cultural, social and historical aspects that shape the community’s identity (compare, pieri & albanesi 2022). it is also important to have a contact person on both sides. ideally, these individuals should possess both authority and interpersonal sensitivity (white 2010). thirdly, select a partner whose organisational and operational structure is already in place. it can be useful to look for potential partners within your network. additionally, you may find meaningful organisations at local events, talks, fundraisers, volunteer opportunities and social gatherings. countless possibilities open up once we recognise the diverse forms of knowledge that exist beyond the academic realm (d’arlach, sánchez & feuer 2009). a course may involve multiple community partners or instructors, and incorporate various models (miller 2023), emphasising the need for flexibility and adaptability. we advise simplicity initially. stage 3: design assignments when designing assignments, there are two main goals: (1) meeting your partner’s needs, and (2) meeting your students’ needs. assignments should address community needs and expand students’ understanding of the broader world (kirkness & barnhardt 1991). the sl partnership is an opportunity to create new assignments with shared goals. keep this question in mind: what level of learning do you want your students to achieve through their service-learning experience? it may be helpful to think about the learning objectives from the point of view of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (bloom 1956). the lower order cognitive skills in bloom’s taxonomy are remembering and comprehension (bloom 1956). an example of this would be assignments being structured to demonstrate a student’s ability to understand the definitions of concepts or recall facts, for example, recalling a mathematical formula or understanding the difference between two mathematical models. the higher order cognitive skills in bloom’s taxonomy are application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (bloom 1956), for example, using a mathematical formula to analyse traffic patterns and propose rerouting plans. when incorporating higher order goals in your assignments, it is important to assure you meet your partner’s needs. as with all courses, it is also important to design assignments with the skill being assessed in mind. since part of sl occurs through students’ connections with, and analysis of, their community, assessments can be more qualitative in nature, allowing for reflection. stage 4: integrate reflections a key assessment in sl are reflections (aac&u 2022b). reflections are an integral way in which students process their experiences and explore relationships between the outer world and their own inner world (kawai 2020). it is an ongoing process of self-assessment and examination of the university-community relationship in the context of their service learning activities ( jacoby 2014). sl reflections are an analysis of students’ experiences in engaging in real-world settings and link to learning objectives (bringle & hatcher 1999). as bringle & hatcher (1999) state in their early work, ‘reflection activities are a critical component of effective service learning because they connect the service activities to the course content, extending the educational agenda beyond rote learning.’ reflections can enhance the quality of students’ critical thinking skills and learning (ash & clayton 2004; hayford, blomstorm & deboer 2014). hatcher, bringle & muthiah (2004) suggest that reflections should (1) include activities that enable students to clarify their personal values; (2) occur as a regular part of the miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 course; and (3) be structured with clear guidelines and direction. furthermore, frederickson, peake & hensler (2023) found evidence that, when service-learning is coupled with reflection, students are able to develop their self-authorship or inner voice, providing them with an opportunity for agency. structured evaluations (e.g. rubric) that align the service experience and learning objectives should be created and integrated throughout the course. a simple approach is to incorporate a reflection at the beginning, middle and end of the semester. for example, at the beginning of the semester, students should reflect on their initial expectations and goals, and what they have learned about the community and the partnership. in the middle of the semester, they may reflect on unanticipated challenges or successes, and how the partnership has evolved. at the end of the semester, students might reflect on the mutual impact of the partnership, their personal growth and future commitment to community engagement. reflections might also be timed to occur after a major project milestone. given their significance, we recommend that reflections be a component of the course work. table 1. summary of stages in our practice-based guide for developing a stem-sl course stage 1: indentify learning objectives identify learning objectives that apply skills to current and local community concerns. stage 2: build a partnership find a partner who is well established and has similar goals, and share a commitment to building a mutually beneficial relationship. stage 3: design assignments design assignments that are aligned with both the need to achieve the course learning objectives and the needs of the community partner. stage 4: integrate reflections integrate reflections throughout your course and count them as a significant part of the course grade. two example stem sl courses below are descriptions of two stem sl courses illustrated according to the four stages of development. each one was developed independently by a co-author. both are undergraduate courses offered at duke university, in durham, north carolina. it is a small private research university, which enrols approximately 6,400 undergraduate students and 10,100 graduate and professional students (duke university 2023). course 1: social inequalities and low-wage work this is an upper-level, undergraduate economics course focusing on building students’ capacities to analyse, evaluate and implement community economic development tools and concepts. although the main focus of the course is employment and labour markets, topics including transportation, housing, health and education are included. the course material is divided into four sections, starting with an introduction to community economic development (ced) concepts. in this section, students review ways that economists measure economic growth and development. they consider different development models, including needs-based, which identifies what a community lacks and attempts to supply it, and asset-based models, which make use of a community’s readily available assets (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). an asset-based model can be applied by defining, identifying and mapping the assets. an asset map shows the location of community assets in real space, often using geographic information systems (gis) data (burns et al. 2012). after mapping, assets are mobilised to be more efficiently used by the community members. allen et al. (2002) explain that to miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 mobilise assets means ‘to accomplish community goals by energising and activating community strengths and assets’, and that this is often accomplished by encouraging communication and partnerships within the community. in the second section of the course, students examine labour markets and employment, review supply and demand graphs and highlight the human capital (hc) model (see becker 1964 for more on this model). the third section of the course involves student groups choosing their own special topics in real-time social inequalities to research and then share their research with the class. therefore, the topics differ each semester, but usually revolve around housing, healthcare, transportation, or education. in the last section of the course, students examine alternative models to the current supply and demand framework used in economics for the community. three case studies of community partnerships and service-learning projects are discussed below. the cases illustrate many of the logistical and pedagogical aspects that the authors encountered along the way, including working with more than one partner and progressing towards more critical analysis. eighteen students were enrolled in the course and two different organisations were partnered with the community, as each partner indicated that they could not work with more than ten students at a time. to respect each community partner’s needs and capacities, it was decided that both organisations would be partnered during the same semester. the students worked with the partners in different capacities, some using a direct method and others using an indirect method. the cases are described below in an order that sees a progression in the critical engagement with the community, as illustrated by the students’ involvement and reflection questions. cases a and b both describe a partnership with a workforce development organisation, durham economic resource center. case a shows a direct method of service-learning with the community partner and case b shows an indirect method of service-learning with the community partner. case c describes an indirect method of service-learning with the community empowerment fund, an organisation that provides financial services and advocacy. case a illustrates a direct method of service-learning. the community partner had previous experience in working with college students in this capacity. case study a: durham economic resource center (derc): applying the human capital model 1. identify course objectives 1. illustrate how the hc model can be applied to real-world situations. 2. evaluate workforce development practices in the community. 3. develop training tools for investing in the human capital of the local community. 2. build a partnership through connections within our university and through networking with a local group, durham congregations, associations, and neighborhoods (durham can), an introduction was made to durham economic resource center (derc). derc worked with individuals who faced barriers to employment, including those who were previously incarcerated, recovering addicts and individuals who did not complete a high school diploma. 3. design assignments derc needed assistance in implementing their job talks program, which involved weekly sessions in which derc’s members were supported in their job search efforts, engaged in career development and learned job skills. students underwent training by a job talks facilitator at the organisation. they then worked in a direct service capacity, facilitating the weekly job talks. additionally, miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 students evaluated derc’s current job talks curriculum and developed teaching modules for them, specifically in the area of technology. 4. integrate reflections throughout the semester, students reflected on their experiences with derc’s members in relation to the hc model. examples of their reflection questions are: • why might some individuals not be able to make investments in their hc? • why might someone even with a significant level of hc still find it difficult to get a job? • what skills do members need? • why does derc need assistance with their job talks? • what resources does derc have for developing workforce development tools? • what should the role of the local government be? reflections accounted for 20 percent of the final grade, and were based on student participation, knowledge of concepts, and relating their experiences to themselves and the community. case study b also describes a service experience with derc, but with indirect service-learning. in this case, the executive director of derc had reached out to request that students research specific issues that their members were experiencing in terms of barriers to employment. these issues included transportation access, illiteracy and professional skills. the students in the course worked with derc regarding transportation access. case study b. derc: analysing transportation barriers 1. identify course objectives. 1. apply the asset mapping technique. 2. identify and evaluate patterns of asset allocation in the community. 3. create suggestions for improved asset allocation. 2. build a partnership derc was the community partner for this service project. derc requested that students analyse the transportation situation for their members. they expressed that public transportation was unavailable near where they lived and/or near where jobs were located, and that this served as a barrier to employment. derc requested that ‘public transportation deserts’ be determined. 3. design assignments students were tasked with conducting an asset mapping project to indicate areas where transportation was needed. this involved locating all bus stops and routes in durham. using asset mapping software, students placed bus stops on a virtual map and determined where there were gaps. they then provided derc with this asset map and indicated where there were ‘public transportation deserts’. lastly, students made a presentation of the material to the transportation department of durham county. 4. integrate reflections throughout the project, students discussed and reflected on different aspects of the project. initially, they questioned why derc was unable to complete the asset mapping on their own and asked: • did they have access to the resources needed to conduct the study? • who uses public transportation and why? • what does it mean for people who do not have easy access to transportation? • who in durham county decides where the bus routes will be located? • how can people access jobs without proper transportation? miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 reflections accounted for 20 percent of the final grade, and were based on student participation, knowledge of concepts, and relating their experiences to themselves and the community. since derc did not have the space to work with all of the students in the course, the course also partnered with another organisation, community empowerment fund. this partnership involved the indirect service-learning model, as requested by the community partner when they were contacted. this service-learning experience also involved a relatively higher degree of critical engagement than the previous two cases, as the community partner put an emphasis on this aspect themselves. case study c. community empowerment fund (cef): creating affordable housing solutions 1. identify course objectives 1. understand and apply federal policy regarding affordable housing. 2. use critical thinking skills to problem-solve and create suggestions regarding affordable housing and landlord behaviour. 2. build a partnership a connection was made with cef after viewing an email the organisation posted regarding their participation in a landlords roundtable, which was intended to discuss issues around affordable housing and serving low-income community members. the email message contained contact information for cef and they were contacted to see if they would like to enter into a community partnership with the course. serving durham and chapel hill, cef works to end the racial wealth gap by assisting members with advocacy and financial services related to employment, housing and finance goals. during the time that the students worked with them, cef partnered with durham’s mayor, bill bell, to host several landlords roundtables to address affordable housing issues. many cef members explained that, although they had section 8 housing choice vouchers, landlords were not willing to rent to them. the section 8 housing choice voucher program is part of the federal housing program. the vouchers enable low-income households to interact directly with housing markets to locate and lease their own housing on the open market. the vouchers also subsidise the low-income households’ rent that they pay to landlords and owners, enabling households to afford to rent in the private market. unfortunately, in durham, many landlords perceive voucher holders as being too risky to lease to. thus, based on the landlords roundtables, durham’s unlocking doors initiative was started. 3. design assignments the students were asked to assist with research for the unlocking doors initiative by examining possible solutions. students used their quantitative, problem-solving and critical thinking skills based on discussions of the supply and demand framework and graphs from class. one group researched solutions that other similarly sized cities had used, and made comparisons which led to suggestions for durham. the other group researched the use of a risk mitigation fund (rmf). they developed a cost-benefit analysis showing different scenarios. ultimately, the unlocking doors initiative adapted the rmf model to develop a landlord’s incentive program. 4. integrate reflections students considered the supply and demand framework for housing assistance, and the way the federal government moved from a supply-side to a demand-based approach. students reflected on how these different policies had impacted low-income members of the community. furthermore, they reflected on why landlords are hesitant to rent to voucher holders despite there being no evidence to support the notion of such renters being high risk. in addition, students reflected on the fact that most voucher holders are black, female headed households with children, and questioned why this demographic is being impacted the most. what is happening in the housing markets and miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 federal housing policy that impacts the local community? how does duke university impact the housing situation in durham? course #2: neuroscience service learning: brain connections this was an upper-level, undergraduate neuroscience course that used both direct and client-based sl models. the direct model component required students to visit our partners off campus, over several weeks of the semester, where they interacted in-person with our partners. each team of three to four students was assigned a location. for the client-based component, students researched and created a product for the corporate office. 1. identify course objectives 1. design, evaluate and deliver educational activities that are accessible, inclusive and considerate of context. develop awareness of the community partner’s organisational structure and missions through reading, research and experiences. apply this collective knowledge to creation and delivery of materials. this develops their active listening and scientific communication skills for a broad audience. 2. draft a grant proposal to support the partner’s stem education initiative. develop collaborative and scientific communication skills in written form for a wide audience across different funding agencies. translate direct service experiences into advocacy work. 2. build a partnership this partnership emerged from leveraging personal connections, engaging with the local ymca, and sharing a common goal of fostering equitable access to education for the well-being of young individuals. while the demand for k-12 education support in nearby communities was a persistent concern, the urgency intensified in the aftermath of the pandemic. the partnership and course plans began in summer 2020 with the hope that ‘life would return to normal’ in spring 2021. we proceeded despite the ongoing pandemic because important goals would still need to be met even though communication with our partners was uncertain and on-site visits were not allowed (ng 2021). the ymca thus turned their gyms into spaces for students to undertake online schooling and receive meals and care as their families had to work. after schools reopened, the ymca established the ‘y’ after school program, which continues to expand. however, they needed educational materials to add to their stem curriculum. students interacted with the ymca students and staff during their on-site visits, using these experiences to design the materials. our contact person was a director of the local ymca youth programs. we also worked with the regional ymca office, which provided us with their annual report of needs and their goals for academic support programs. for this project, our contact was the director of the corporate office. students researched and drafted grant proposals to fund the stem educational materials. 3. design assignments the assignments designed for this course met both the needs of our partner and our learning objectives, and culminated in two projects: (1) interactive educational materials about neuroscience the first project required application of neuroscience concepts, background research and crossreferencing, while on site, students working in teams of three or four collected participant observational data. they observed behavioural interactions between program staff and y students. specifically, they observed levels of engagement and participation, and quality of communication, program structure and resources. this informed how they could design, evaluate miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 and deliver their educational materials more effectively. this iterative process develops research skills, enhances critical thinking, builds teamwork skills, hones communication skills and fosters self-reflection. each neuroscience activity included a worksheet for the students, instruction sheet for staff, and a video that described the instructions and demonstrated the activity. the ultimate products reflected modifications made in response to input from peers, staff and students. students evaluated the accessibility of communication and content accuracy, aspects that are frequently challenging to balance. they also factored in resource availability, including basic materials, staff ratios, room sizes, student ages, and groupings. this helped to optimise engagement, safety and resource efficiency while tailoring activities to different age groups. (2) grant proposals to fund stem educational materials the second project required a literature review, interpretation of scientific outcomes, effective writing, and organisational and collaborative skills. students had to study their target audience, identify appropriate funding opportunities, and write persuasively and efficiently. students completed peer reviews of grants and incorporated feedback. their proposals integrated their direct sl experience. at the end of the semester, teams presented a sample of the finalised educational materials and four grant proposal summaries to our partners. 4. integrate reflections several reflection assignments were integrated throughout the course. each linked to activities aligned with course objectives and involved reflection on their service experiences. • refer to your community assets map.  how would you describe the asset base surrounding the ymca? think about the observations and interactions you’ve experienced while on site and in your development of educational materials thus far.  how does your asset base compare to your assets map? this map is a sketch of the student’s assets at the individual (e.g. income, key individuals), association (e.g. churches, cultural groups) and institutional levels (e.g. hospitals, schools) (kretzman & mcknight 1993). note, at this point, students have had several on-site visits. they have also been developing and evolving their educational materials over several weeks based on their interactions and experiences. • describe how working with your teammates influenced your sl experience.  refer to interactions within the context of your on-site visits or one of your team projects (e.g. designing educational materials, grant writing project). how is independent work similar or different? explain and be specific. • refer to the peer evaluations of your team’s grant proposal.  indicate and explain what sets apart helpful and less helpful feedback. describe how you would incorporate this feedback to strengthen your team’s grant. describe also what feedback on your grant you would like from your partners and why. • assess your performance and engagement while on-site and working with your teammates.  evaluate attendance and punctuality, active participation, ability to ask relevant questions, depth of knowledge and preparation, willingness to fill knowledge gaps, communication clarity, respect for others, and contributions to team activities and discussions. for each reflection, students received individual written feedback from the instructor. additionally, they were graded with a rubric evaluating (1) connections to experience, (2) effective communication, (3) selfassessment, (4) timeliness, and (5) writing mechanics. reflection assignments were worth 20 percent of the course grade. miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 final thoughts developing a stem sl course is challenging, but can be extremely rewarding. as faculty, we experienced great joy and meaning from our courses, as did our students and community partners, who provided us with deeper and broader learning experiences. here are some thoughts from our students: • ‘often not accessible in typical stem majors such as biology or neuroscience, this experience gave us the platform to strengthen our community through thoughtful discussions and collaborations.’ • ‘a key personal takeaway from this experience was the long-lasting impact it had on me as a scientist. the service-learning course extended beyond the classroom, where i learned how to foster a deeper, practical understanding of societal implications in stem.’ • ‘i think it is crucial for all duke students to explore the durham community. learning more about durham and learning from people who live there has been a very rewarding part of my experience.’  the main challenges for us in designing the stem sl courses were aligning learning objectives with service-learning appropriate assignments, and identifying community partners who could likewise benefit from these objectives. at the start of our courses, we struggled with finding resources to help us with this aspect. our main resource at the time was talking to the few colleagues in stem who also used the service-learning pedagogy. several had written or co-authored peer-reviewed articles regarding their service-learning experiences (clark & capps 2020; macdonald et al. 2022; reynolds & ahern-dodson 2010), which led us to search for additional literature on service-learning in stem fields. our list of references below is indicative of the work done on stem sl experiences as the majority of it concentrated on one field or discipline within stem, such as engineering, chemistry or maths. we had hoped to find an overarching guide for sl that applies across stem fields. however, this appeared unavailable. we note that our discussions with colleagues and learning about their personal journeys with stem sl courses was valuable to us, because it illustrated specific ways to proceed, which we could emulate in our own fields. we felt like this was what was missing, a guide and template that also included the personal and specific examples that could be generalised and adapted to other stem fields. as previously mentioned, stem fields have tended to lag behind other disciplines in adopting the sl pedagogy (armstrong, murck & poë 2021). based on a survey of peer institutions conducted by the us news & world report (2023), the sl program at our university was ranked #3 in the us amongst colleges that offer sl courses. however, in duke university’s sl program, approximately 15 percent of the courses fell within stem across the last four years (whiteman 2023). this has resulted in limited resources to use for developing stem sl courses. there are some notable exceptions at other universities, such as purdue university. student enrolment in engineering service-learning courses through their epics (engineering projects in community service) program has steadily increased over the last 15 years (epics annual report 2023). in efforts to expand this community, our university recently created the stem sl faculty ambassador position, which was held by one of the authors previously and is currently held by the other author. the ambassador is tasked with promoting awareness, facilitating engagement, providing information about service learning opportunities, and advocating for recognition within the institution. a primary goal is to recruit and support faculty in the development of their service learning courses. in our discussions, faculty have expressed interest in service learning. a frequently asked question is, ‘where would i start?’ it is our hope that more stem courses adopt the sl pedagogy. it is rewarding and has been shown to improve learning outcomes (daniel & mishra 2017; hayford et al. 2014). we offer this article as a resource for colleagues. overall, our goal is to provide continued support and develop collaborations. towards this end, we are happy to share additional information about our courses if requested. we wish you well in your endeavours to develop your stem sl courses. you can do it! miller & ng gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the anonymous referees and editors who put in time and effort to improve this article and who enabled this guide to be shared with the community. references epics purdue university 2023, epics annual report 2022–2023, viewed 9 october 2023. https://www. canva.com/design/daflxw9ezsg/z1zogyzjy4a4locc8lleuw/view?utm_content=daflxw9ezsg&utm_ campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink american association of colleges & universities 2022a, ‘high-impact practices’, viewed 19 june 2023. https://www.aacu. org/trending-topics/high-impact american association of 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https://www.scholarlyteacher.com/post/service-learning-during-covid-19 https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2023/03/duke-university-majors-humanities-stem-enrollment-majors-data-decline-trinity-college-pratt-engineering https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2023/03/duke-university-majors-humanities-stem-enrollment-majors-data-decline-trinity-college-pratt-engineering https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2019.1607983 https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/service-learning-programs https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/service-learning-programs https://educationprogram.duke.edu/undergraduate/service-learning https://educationprogram.duke.edu/undergraduate/service-learning https://doi.org/10.1002/he.414 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 1 june 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sarilita, e., nugraha, h. g., murniati, n. and soames, r. w. 2022. online capacity building in anatomy knowledge for high school biology teachers: communityuniversity partnerships in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:1, 1–9. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au snapshot article online capacity building in anatomy knowledge for high school biology teachers: community-university partnerships in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic erli sarilita1, harry galuh nugraha2, nani murniati1 and roger william soames3 1 department of oral biology, faculty of dentistry, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 2 department of radiology, faculty of medicine, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 3 centre for anatomy and human identification, school of science and engineering, university of dundee, uk corresponding author: erli sarilita, department of oral biology, faculty of dentistry, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia, erli.sarilita@fkg.unpad.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 article history: received 01/01/2022; revised 25/03/2022; accepted 14/04/2022; published 06/2022 abstract this anatomical program for high-school biology teachers, a university-driven capacity building exercise, achieved its aims of: (1) determining the participants’ profiles; (2) increasing the anatomical knowledge of participants; and (3) evaluating the online program. the webinar program comprised 4 lectures, including discussion, preceded and followed by a test consisting of 19 anatomy questions. of 867 high-school biology teachers who registered an interest, 222 completed the post-program test and feedback questionnaire; however, only 153 (111 females, 42 males) completed both pre-program and post-program tests and the feedback questionnaire. a significant (p<0.001) increase in the overall post-program scores (88.9%: male 89.5±16.52%; female 88.7±17.38%) compared to the pre-program test scores (56.3%: male 56.1±15.66%; female 56.5±16.82%) was observed, the increase being irrespective of age, level of education or teaching experience. the program attracted participants from throughout indonesia rather than just those close to the university. there was an overall improvement in test scores, supporting the effectiveness and efficiency of the online anatomy program. more than 60% of participants stated that the program met their needs in terms of the level of anatomy 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this study was supported by the universitas padjadjaran through their award of a community outreach grant 1397/un6.3.1/pm/2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:erli.sarilita@fkg.unpad.ac.id https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 knowledge, and that the topics were of interest, well presented and relevant to their teaching. this study may provide useful information for future community-university studies in this area. keywords community-university partnerships; online programs; anatomy; high-school biology, indonesia introduction in indonesia, human anatomy is initially taught to science students by high-school biology teachers, with some continuing their anatomy education in health professional undergraduate programs. a knowledge of human anatomy is necessary for students wishing to pursue health science study programs in which they will continue to study human anatomy at a deeper level under the tuition and guidance of university anatomy lecturers (hegarty et al. 2009; schafer et al. 2019; swinnerton et al. 2017). higher education plays a vital role in improving society and academics, as key contributors to higher education, should embrace community engagement (kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt 2013). as a result, there has been a notable increase in the literature discussing community-university partnerships’ research and practices worldwide (baker & meletzke 2021; kearney, wood & zuber-skerritt 2013; northmore & hart 2011. in the republic of indonesia, higher education institutes are obliged to provide three pillars of higher education (tri dharma perguruan tinggi) comprising education, research and community service (law number 12/2012). every institution must have a strategic plan for both research and community service (regulation of the minister of research, technology and higher education number 44/2015) that takes into account the resources available. the universitas padjadjaran publishes a plan every five years, the latest being for 2021–2025, which acts as a guide for the development and implementation of community service activities to be undertaken by academics at the university. the strategic plan is also adapted for national priority programs determined by the directorate of higher education, ministry of education, culture, research and technology, and supported by the ministry of village, development of disadvantaged regions and transmigration for the development of disadvantaged areas and transmigration. the community service carried out by the universitas padjadjaran is a pentahelix collaboration involving the government, society, academics, industry and the media. the universitas padjadjaran employs community-engagement activity as one of the key performance indicators of its academics. anatomy lecturers at universitas padjadjaran come from the faculties of dentistry and medicine. they organise and conduct community-university partnerships, including human anatomy enrichment programs for high-school biology teachers at the university in bandung. previous faceto-face programs consistently received positive feedback. the covid-19 pandemic changed the educational environment around the world, with face-to-face teaching being largely abandoned and replaced by online learning (lei et al. 2020). anatomy teachers world-wide immediately adjusted their teaching in response to the pandemic (cheng et al. 2020; evans et al. 2020; franchi 2020; iwanaga et al. 2021; longhurst et al. 2020; pather et al. 2020; singal, bansal & chaudhary 2020). from march 2020, all education providers in indonesia had to adapt their teaching to online formats following advice from the government. however, in addition to undergraduate health professional programs, there was a growing need for online anatomy courses (kelsey et al. 2020). the pandemic therefore forced us to adapt the outreach anatomy program so as to enable it to be delivered online, and thus continue anatomical training for high-school biology teachers. because the course was now available online, the target audience was increased to include all 34 indonesian provinces. however, a number of challenges had to be overcome. these included the time differences across the three time zones sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20222 in indonesia; marketing the program; maintaining attention during the program; differences in the length of work experience and qualifications of participants; use of online learning (video conferencing) and youtube for synchronous presentation; and differences in internet connection stability in various geographical areas. in this article we present the findings of the first online anatomy community outreach program for highschool biology teachers conducted in indonesia. the aims of the study were to: (1) determine the participant profile; (2) increase the anatomical knowledge of the participants; and (3) evaluate the online program. results of the 867 teachers who initially expressed an interest, 222 completed the post-program test, survey and feedback questionnaires; however, only 153 completed the pre-program test. the 222 participants came from 30 of the 34 provinces within indonesia, with the greatest numbers being from west java, east java, central java, jakarta and banten provinces. distribution of gender, age, education level, teaching experience, and the number of biology teachers at the respective institutions are tabulated in table 1. more detailed information can be found in appendix 1. table 1. characteristics of the participants characteristics percent characteristics percent gender (# participants) teaching experience (# participants) males 73.4 1–5 years 41.9 females 26.6 6–10 years 10.8 total 100 11–15 years 14.4 16–20 years 11.7 age (# participants) > 20 years 21.2 20–30 41.1 total 100 31–40 18.5 41–50 25.2 number of biology teachers at school (# participants) 1 16.051–60 14.9 total 100 2 32.0 3 22.8 education level (# participants) 4 14.2 diploma 2.2 5 9.1 bsc 73.0 6 5.9 msc 24.8 total 100 total 100 the methods used to teach biology at the institutes was a mixture of lectures, discussion, demonstrations, project assignments, experiments and tests/quizzes. the majority (88.7%) of participants stated that this was the first time they had taken part in an anatomy capacity-building program. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20223 the mean test scores, expressed as percentages, of the 153 participants who took both tests are shown in table 2, with the data presented for each age group and gender, as well as the overall preand post-program test scores. independent t-tests showed significant differences (p<0.001) between all preand post-program scores, as well as a significant (p<0.001) difference in the pre-program scores between males and females in the 41–50 year cohort. no other differences were observed. table 2. overall pre-program and post-program mean scores (expressed as percentages) for those who took both tests (n=153), as well as the scores for males and females within each age range. all post-program test scores are significantly greater (p<0.01) than the pre-program scores. pre-program (%) post-program (%) age sample size (m/f) all (±sd) male (±sd) female (±sd) all (±sd) male (±sd) female (±sd) 20–30 62 (22/40) 52.0 (17.27) 52.1 (12.11) 52.0 (19.60) 88.7 (16.72) 88.2 (18.30) 89.0 (16.10) 31–40 32 (8/24) 61.6 (18.19) 65.4 (17.68) 60.5 (18.56) 89.6 (19.43) 92.5 (10.46) 88.8 (21.47) 41–50 41 (9/32) 56.4 (11.64) 44.2* (11.53) 58.4 (10.86) 90.6 (14.41) 86.3 (22.21) 91.3 (14.34) 51–60 18 (3/15) 60.8 (16.58) 66.9 (17.11) 57.9 (15.28) 85.4 (21.30) 92.5 (13.54) 82.1 (23.77) all ages 153 (42/111) 56.3 (16.06) 56.1 (15.66) 56.5 (16.82) 88.9 (17.43) 89.5 (16.52) 88.7 (17.83) *significantly less than corresponding female score analysis of the feedback questionnaire (table 3) showed that more than 60 percent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the online program increased their level of anatomy knowledge, and that the topics were well presented, of interest and relevant to their teaching. however, approximately a quarter of participants strongly disagreed. only 53.6 percent of participants thought that there was sufficient time for discussion. table 3. the percentage (%) of responses, using a 5-point likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree, to questions on the feedback questionnaire following the anatomy online program. scale* questions 1 2 3 4 5 did your knowledge of anatomy increase? 46.8 14.0 4.5 9.5 25.2 were the presentations of good quality? 42.8 18.4 3.2 9.9 25.7 were the topics presented of interest? 47.2 14.4 3.2 9.5 25.7 were the topics relevant to your teaching? 41.0 17.1 6.8 8.6 26.5 was there sufficient time for discussion? 22.5 31.1 12.6 19.8 14.0 *1 strongly agree; 2 agree; 3 neither agree or disagree; 4 disagree; 5 strongly disagree sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20224 a range of topics was suggested for inclusion in future programs, with the three most popular topics being the immune, reproductive and nervous systems, closely followed by the endocrine, intestinal and respiratory systems. discussion recently, the amount of time undergraduate health professionals spend learning anatomy has decreased, as other topics have assumed greater prominence in modern curricula (mitchell & batty 2009). it has therefore become necessary to provide anatomy teaching for future health professional undergraduates as part of their foundation learning, and high-school teachers are key to this provision. there are currently 65 medical schools and 31 dental schools in indonesia, each of which offers anatomy modules as part of their curricula. according to the ministry of education and culture, there were 23,083 high-schools in indonesia in 2020 (ministry of education and culture, republic of indonesia 2020). we believe that anatomy capacity building for biology teachers is performed worldwide. however, there is a lack of publications on this topic. doss and brooks (2016) describe the anatomy workshops established for high-school teachers by the university of alabama, where the program has been well received by participants and been shown to enhance participants’ anatomical knowledge. the current program discussed in this paper has also successfully contributed to professional development in anatomical knowledge for high-school teachers. this is notable when one considers the challenges faced by countries such as indonesia which have a variety of information and technology facilities and a vast geographic area to cover. given the reduction in anatomy content in undergraduate professional healthcare programs, there is a need for anatomy workshops/webinars for high-school biology teachers. in march 2020, the covid-19 pandemic became a major disruptive factor for education provision in indonesia as educators were required to operate via online platforms, irrespective of whether they were prepared for this. by the end of march 2020, however, the existing offline anatomy program for high-school biology teachers in bandung (capital city of west java province) was transformed to an online mode and made available to all high-school biology teachers in indonesia. the current study presents the findings of this online anatomy program. unlike anatomy modules for professionals and undergraduates, anatomy courses for high-school biology teachers are less well investigated and developed, except by the university of alabama (doss & brooks 2016). the interest generated by the online program was high, with just over a quarter (222/867) of those registered showing an interest in participating; however, only 68.9 percent (153/222) took the preand post-program tests. not surprisingly, given that this was the first online anatomy program to be offered and available throughout indonesia rather than just in bandung city, 88.7 percent of participants stated that this was the first time they had taken part in such a program. although participants came from most provinces in indonesia, the largest number (43.7%) came from five provinces (west java, east java, central java, jakarta and banten). the program thus succeeded in delivering the online program to high-school biology teachers from various geographical regions in indonesia. there were more female than male participants; however, whether this reflects the ratio of female to male high-school teachers in indonesia is not known. the majority of participants had a bsc and were less than 30 years of age, which was not surprising given that younger individuals generally wish to improve their knowledge as an aid to gaining future work or promotion. the program, as developed and delivered, achieved its aim of increasing the anatomical knowledge of the participants as exhibited in the preand post-test scores. feedback from the program was positive regarding the topic, its presentation and its relevance to the participants’ teaching; however, it was generally agreed that more time for discussion would have been useful. the latter point will be addressed in future online programs by either extending the time of each sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20225 presentation or devoting more than one presentation to each sub-topic. there was some negative feedback. however, the authors considered that the constructive criticism would positively shape future offerings. it was assessed that the difficulties in time differences, insufficient interaction between participants and the instructors, and being the first online program encountered created the reasons for the negative feedback. the topics suggested for future programs (immune, respiratory and nervous systems) were not surprising given the current pandemic. continuing education is an integral part of life-long learning (wilson et al. 2018). the current study suggests that the online anatomy program should be maintained and possibly expanded, not only to other anatomy topics, but also to other disciplines relevant to the health sciences. in general, the participants agreed that the program enhanced their anatomy knowledge. it is clear that the pandemic has had a major impact on teaching and learning; however, it should not deter universitas padjadjaran and other universities from persevering with or developing online communityuniversity programs and partnerships. online platforms and learning management systems have been shown to be extremely useful in such situations, as demonstrated in the present study. based on the current study, future online learning platforms at universitas padjadjaran will be developed and evaluated with respect to the needs of the biology teacher community in order to enhance their subject-specific knowledge and, possibly, teaching skills. however, further thought needs to be given to providing asynchronous presentations to overcome the time differences between regions, as well as using platforms that would be available to all, irrespective of their digital skills and access to the internet in cities and rural areas. conclusions covid-19 has transformed the way in which capacity building programs are undertaken. online learning is no longer viewed as an alternative method of presentation, but has become an accepted and, in the current times, the only way of delivering institutional knowledge enrichment. the current program reached a wide audience in terms of age, educational level, teaching experience and location within indonesia. the program developed for high-school biology teachers was effective in improving their anatomy knowledge; nevertheless, future programs could be enhanced by increasing the duration of each presentation or by devoting more than one session to each sub-topic to allow more time for discussion. feedback from the program was positive in terms of knowledge improvement, quality of the presentations and relevance to participants’ teaching. to maintain the interest of participants and to encourage them to take part in future programs, the themes to be presented should be informed by the participants, but also tailored to the needs of high-school biology teachers throughout indonesia. this article provides insights into the characteristics of the high-school biology teacher community in indonesia as the target of engagement, which presumably would differ from similar engagement in other countries. 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https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1625 https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1625 https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1726 appendix 1 profile of all teachers (n=222) who participated in the online anatomy program with respect to age, gender, level of education and number of years teaching: the numbers in brackets are those (n=153) who did the pre-program and post-program tests. level of education age range (years) 20–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 total years teaching m f m f m f m f diploma <5 1 (1) 2 (0) 1 (1) 1 (1) 5 (3) <10 <15 <20 20+ subtotal 1 (1) 2 (0) 1 (1) 1 (1) 5 (3) bsc <5 23 (16) 52 (36) 2 (1) 3 (1) 80 (54) <10 3 (3) 4 (3) 4 (3) 8 (6) 2 (2) 21 (17) <15 3 (2) 10 (10) 3 (2) 7 (6) 23 (20) <20 1 (1) 2 (1) 13 (8) 1 (0) 17 (10) 20+ 7 (6) 3 (3) 11 (8) 21 (17) subtotal 26 (19) 56 (39) 9 (6) 22 (18) 5 (3) 29 (22) 3 (3) 12 (8) 162 (118) sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20228 msc <5 2 (2) 5 (1) 1 (1) 8 (4) <10 2 (1) 1 (0) 3 (1) <15 1 (1) 4 (4) 3 (3) 1 (1) 9 (9) <20 5 (2) 4 (3) 9 (5) 20+ 1 (0) 6 (4) 7 (3) 12 (6) 26 (13) subtotal 2 (2) 5 (1) 1 (1) 8 (6) 11 (6) 15 (9) 13 (7) 55 (32) total 29 (22) 63 (40) 11 (8) 30 (24) 16 (9) 45 (32) 3 (3) 25 (15) 222 (153) sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20229 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sarilita, e., putri, a. k., faza, a. g., mulyahati, h. n., anandita, j. p., annina, n. a., hermalina, n. a., sahda, z. p. 2023. oral health education for school children and capacity building of local community health workers in cleft care: an experience of student-led community service in a west java village. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–13. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8594 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article oral health education for school children and capacity building of local community health workers in cleft care: an experience of student-led community service in a west java village erli sarilita1,*, adrina kinindya putri2, arina ghaida faza3, halimah nisrina mulyahati2, jasmine putri anandita2, nadia elizabeth annina3, nur aulya hermalina4, zulharistya prima sahda2 1 department of oral biology, faculty of dentistry, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 2 dental medicine study program, faculty of dentistry, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 3 pharmacy study program, faculty of pharmacy, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 4 psychology study program, faculty of psychology, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia 1 corresponding author: erli sarilita, faculty of dentistry, universitas padjadjaran, west java, indonesia, erli.sarilita@unpad.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8594 article history: received 29/03/2023; revised 15/06/2023; accepted 26/07/2023; published 08/2023 abstract this article presents a program that seeks to establish partnerships between universities and rural villages in west java provinces, with a focus on health-related activities. the program involves undergraduate students participating in field studies in the community through three activities: educating school children about oral health, providing capacity building for community health workers in managing infants with cleft, and assisting community health workers at integrated service post (posyandu). the program was developed by scholars at universitas padjadjaran and west bandung regency of west java province to contribute to the development of neighbouring regions. the program has declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8594 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8594 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:erli.sarilita@unpad.ac.id https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8594 had two significant impacts. first, the undergraduate students are directly involved in the community and can reflect on what they have learned in the context of the community, while also earning credits towards their transcripts. second, the program has had a positive impact on healthcare by educating various community groups on topics ranging from oral health to early management of infants with orofacial clefts. this program serves as an example of how academic study and community service can be successfully combined to produce positive outcomes for both the students and the community. keywords community-university partnerships; indonesia; oral health education; capacity building; cleft lip and palate; community health workers introduction higher education has a crucial role to play in enhancing both society and academia. it is thus important for academics, as significant recipients of higher education, to participate in community involvement (kearney et al. 2013). one of the important ways in which the academics at universitas padjadjaran are evaluated is through their involvement in community-engagement activities (sarilita et al. 2022). the community involvement program at universitas padjadjaran can be implemented in one of two ways: integrated in the curriculum as a learning activity for students, whereby they can earn academic credits under the guidance of faculty members, or as an independent project led by faculty members themselves. the undergraduate degree curriculum at universitas padjadjaran incorporates a community service course, which is mandatory to completing the degree. this course requires students to work in a group of 15 under the guidance of one lecturer, and to stay in a village in a rural area of west java province for two months to try to address community health issues. approximately 7000 undergraduate students in their second to third year are deployed annually in two batches. prior to their deployment, partnerships are established between universitas padjadjaran and the local government. the work that the students do in the village is supervised by the academic staff of universitas padjadjaran, and the scope of the work that the students do varies, depending on the supervisor’s expertise and research interests, which may range from health, science, engineering and humanities to agriculture, in line with the diverse study program at universitas padjadjaran. in addition, the supervisor suggests the preferred location, which is usually based on whether the intended area has been covered with the community service in the topic. according to the world health organization (2023), about 3.5 billion people worldwide suffer from oral diseases, with three out of every four of these individuals residing in middle-income nations. five hundred and fourteen million children worldwide suffer from primary tooth decay, while two billion adults are thought to have permanent tooth decay. most oral health disorders can be treated when they are in their early stages. dental caries (tooth decay), periodontal disorders, tooth loss and oral malignancies account for most occurrences. orofacial clefts, noma (a severe gangrenous disease that begins in the mouth and primarily affects youngsters) and oro-dental trauma are further oral disorders of public health significance (who, 2023). this article reflects our community-university partnerships in student-led activity at universitas padjadjaran in a west java village. the activity was conducted between january and february 2023 and took the form of oral health education for elementary school pupils and cleft care capacity building for community health workers. this article is divided into five sections. the first covers the general description of the location where the program was performed, including the overall geographical and logistical details, followed by the activities covered in this university-community partnership which are divided into two sections that correspond to the different themes. the second section focuses on oral health education for elementary school children, including the background to the activities. the third section concentrates on the sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 building of capacity for community health workers in managing babies born with cleft lip and or palate and the rationale for creating the program. the fourth section describes the students’ program of giving helping hands to community health workers through monthly activities and monitoring mother and child health (posyandu). the last section includes a reflective analysis based on the students’ voice and the challenges met, along with the proposed pathway to address them. general geographical and logistical details jambudipa village is located in cisarua district, west bandung regency west java province in indonesia and covers an area of 1.45 square kilometres. the number of inhabitants in the village is 14,610. the density level at this village is 10.076 residents per square kilometre, which is considered high compared to other areas in the province. the main economic production/revenue of jambudipa village is produced through agriculture and dairy farming. the regular practice of community service by the universitas padjadjaran involves a registration process for the academics, along with the proposed programs and locations, which is listed in the academic system. the students who are planning to take this community service module then have to select the desired supervisor, program and location by inputting four options from among the available programs. the academics then approve the chosen applicants on a first come, first serve basis to fulfil the quota, which usually is 15 students. hence, the interdisciplinary collaboration background in community service at universitas padjadjaran is aimed at, and contingent upon, the composition of the final student group. in this case, the community service team from universitas padjadjaran, which serves jambudipa village, consisted of one academic with a dentistry background as the project supervisor and 15 undergraduate students in their fifth semester: four dental students, three medical students, three pharmacy students, four psychology students and one communication science student. this community service course, which contributes towards the credit earning of the academic transcripts, receives funding from the directorate of research and community service at universitas padjadjaran in each semester. as mentioned above, there are approximately 7000 students involved each year, in two cohorts. the number of students varies, depending on how many students are receiving credits for community service in each semester, but each cohort can involve 200–300 community service programs led by 10 to 17 students per program. each community service program receives funding between idr 5 million (+/usd 334) and idr 10 million (+/usd 668) depending on the distance between the target location and the universitas padjadjaran. the funds are allocated to coordination and implementation of community service initiatives. oral health education for school children oral diseases have emerged as a global public health concern that demands attention (peres et al. 2019). several behavioural and social characteristics, including dietary habits, oral health awareness and practices, and accessibility to oral health services, are significant determinants of oral health. educational and behavioural interventions aimed at promoting good oral hygiene practices and controlling the impact of social and mental factors on dental health behaviour are necessary to mitigate oral health problems and promote oral health (martino 2011). according to the who global oral health status report (2022), approximately 514 million children are affected by primary teeth caries. in this regard, oral health education programs play a pivotal role in preventing oral diseases, mitigating oral health problems and promoting oral health, particularly in rural areas. at the 74th world health assembly, the world health assembly endorsed a resolution on oral health in 2021. the resolution advocates for a transition from a conventional focus on treatment to a preventive approach, which involves promoting oral health in family, school and workplace settings (who 2023). sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 based on the results of indonesia basic health research (riskesdas) in 2018, approximately 57.6 per cent of the indonesian population is experiencing dental and oral health problems. from that research data, only 10.2 per cent of the population has received dental health services. it was also stated that indonesia still has a very high prevalence rate of cavities in early childhood, which is about 93 per cent, which indicates that only about 7 per cent of children are free from cavities. only 2.8 per cent of the indonesian population practises proper tooth brushing (riskesdas, 2018). this fact drove the team to perform oral health education in jambudipa village. collaborative approach to implementing the oral health program the team initially conducted a survey at the local government office to gain information on elementary schools in jambudipa village. four out of fifteen students were dental students and thus were responsible for creating the oral health education content. a total of seven elementary schools, five in the jambudipa village and two from the neighbouring village (tugumukti), were chosen to be covered by the program due to the local government’s request not to leave any school behind as they strongly supported the program (sdn jambudipa 1, sdn jambudipa 2, sdn harapan mekar, sdn gandrung endah, sdn barukai, sdn tugumukti and sdn tugurahayu). due to time constraints, it was necessary to select which level students would be addressed first and the team chose students in grades 3 and 4. however, the target students were then changed to grades 3 and 6 after discussion with the local government so that there would be representation at the lower level (grade 3) and at the higher level (grade 6). the team then met with the principal of each of the seven schools that were targeted after engaging with relevant stakeholders. each school took a day in execution. the 15 students were divided into three classes per school and the oral health education was conducted using flip charts, children’s songs and storytelling. before starting the storytelling session, school children were given a test on the material to be delivered, followed by a posttest using the same questions and an evaluation of their reactions. the storytelling provided material about dental and oral health methods to make it easier to understand and create a more interactive atmosphere, as well as short quizzes, games and assessments (figure 1a). the activity was concluded with step-by-step practice on how to brush teeth properly. each session lasted for two hours. in total, after seven days of training, 867 school children received oral health education. these learning sessions attracted the attention of the dental related corporations, which gave their support by providing the toothpaste and toothbrushes that were given to the students. figure 1. a. oral health education session at jambudipa i elementary school; b. focused group discussion session on dealing with babies born with cleft; c. dental consultation at the posyandu in jambudipa village. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 evaluation of the oral health program achievement of activities was measured at two levels. the first level was carried out through reaction evaluation, an assessment that measures the experience and satisfaction of target participants while participating in educational activities. the second level was carried out through learning evaluation via a pre-test and post-test to determine the increase in students’ understanding before and after dental and oral health education. based on the results of the evaluation of reactions, it can be concluded that all students participating in education generally enjoyed participating in educational activities and found these activities interesting. in addition, participants also felt they could understand the material presented and were motivated to join because they wanted to keep their teeth and mouth healthy. the percentage of reaction evaluation results can be seen in table 1. table 1. summary of reactions of dental and oral health education participants (n=593) aspect respond percentage did you enjoy participating in today’s activities? the percentage of responses answered ‘happy’ 95.23% the percentage of responses answered ‘neutral’ 3.58% the percentage of responses answered ‘unhappy’ 1.19% how interesting is today’s dental care story? the percentage of responses answered ‘happy’ 94.17% the percentage of responses answered ‘neutral’ 4.97% the percentage of responses answered ‘unhappy’ 0.86% do you understand how to brush your teeth properly? the percentage of responses answered ‘yes’ 98.47% the percentage of responses answered ‘no’ 1.53% do you want to keep your teeth and mouth healthy? the percentage of responses answered ‘yes’ 98.14% the percentage of responses answered ‘no’ 1.86% reasons to keep teeth and mouth clean and healthy 89.49% to look cool 6.05% forced/obliged 2.55% so that teeth look healthy, nice and shining 0.16% ashamed with yellow teeth 0.16% other 1.59% the results of the learning evaluation were processed using the wilcoxon signed rank test because each item’s type of data is ordinal. the analysis of statistical tests was carried out in two stages. the first was an analysis of the success of learning objectives determined from five pre-test and post-test questions, with indicators of achievement for each item being 71%, or 5 out of 7 schools attaining significant changes in each learning objective. the results of the analysis of each item are listed in table 2. the second was an analysis of learning success as seen from the overall score for the pre-test and post-test at each school. a wilcoxon signed rank test showed that oral health education intervention elicits statistically significant changes in item 1 and item 4 test scores and total test scores (p<0.001) (table 3). sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 table 2. the per-item analysis of the learning evaluation (lo: learning outcome) item 1 lo: students can name the types of teeth. there was a significant change in the results of the pre-test and post-test in 7 out of 7 schools so that the learning objectives that had been prepared were achieved by 100% and exceeded the achievement indicator, which was 71%. item 2 lo: students can name foods that are harmful and good for teeth. there were significant changes in the results of the pre-test and post-test in 4 out of 7 schools, so the learning objectives that had been prepared were only achieved by 43%, less than the achievement indicator, namely 71%. item 3 lo: students can name an excellent time to brush their teeth. there were changes in the results of the pre-test and post-test in 4 out of 7 schools, so it can be said that the learning objectives that had been prepared were only achieved by 57%, less than the achievement indicator of 71%. item 4 lo: students can name a reasonable amount of time to brush their teeth. there was a significant change in the results of the pre-test and post-test in 6 out of 7 schools, so it can be said that the learning objectives that had been prepared were achieved by 86% and exceeded the achievement indicator, namely 71%. item 5 lo: students can distinguish between good and bad teeth (toothache). the results of the pre-test and post-test remained the same n=7 out of 7 schools because students already understood the learning objective before the material was delivered. this can be seen from the data answers of each student. table 3. comparison of oral health intervention by analysing the preand post-test scores per item item 1 item 2 item 3 item 4 item 5 total z -10.997b -3.976b -4.315b -14.500b -.566b -14.943b asymp. sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.572 0.000 a. wilcoxon signed ranks test b. based on negative ranks the results can be seen in figure 2 and table 4. based on the total scores of each school for the pre-test and post-test, it was found that only one school, namely tugurahayu, had insignificant results (p > .05) with t(49) = 1.420, p = .162. this shows that the material given regarding oral health has yet to significantly impact the understanding of students at sdn tugurahayu. meanwhile, the statistical test results for the other six schools were significant, as shown in table 4, so the material provided increased students’ understanding of dental and oral health. capacity building for community health workers in early management of infants with cleft continuing the work in the field of community service in healthcare, the subsequent section focuses on enhancing the capabilities of local health workers in cleft care through capacity building initiatives. cleft lip and palate (orofacial cleft) are congenital conditions that affect the orofacial area. the types are cleft lip, sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 table 4. wilcoxon signed rank test results based on pre-test and post-test scores in different elementary schools (*p<0.001). wilcoxon signed rank tests paired differences t df sig. (2-tailed) mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper sdn jambudipa 1 1.053 1.022 .083 .888 1.218 12.625 149 .000* sdn barukai .617 .814 .071 .477 .756 8.736 132 .000* sdn tugumukti 1.125 1.123 .162 .799 1.451 6.942 47 .000* sdn gandrung endah .863 1.096 .153 .555 1.171 5.623 50 .000* sdn tugurahayu .180 .896 .127 .075 .435 1.420 49 .162 sdn jambudipa 2 1.039 1.491 .170 .701 1.377 6.116 76 .000* sdn harapan mekar .857 1.066 .116 .626 1.088 7.371 83 .000* figure 2. wilcoxon bar chart comparing total score of pre-test and post-test in different elementary schools. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 cleft palate, or both. a cleft lip occurs when the tissue that forms the lip fails to fuse completely before birth (between the fourth and seventh weeks of pregnancy). cleft lip can be on one or both sides of the lip or in the middle of the lip. cleft palate happens when the tissue that forms the roof of the mouth fails to fuse completely before birth (between the sixth and ninth weeks of pregnancy) (mossey et al. 2009). having a cleft lip and/or palate can affect the quality of life of these people, including their self-esteem and social relationships (gulsen 2020). thus, we chose to make an educational program on cleft lip and palate for community health workers as the main topic of our community service activities to increase their knowledge of the treatment and management of these conditions. we undertook the program in the form of presentations on the topic of ‘introduction to cleft lip and palate’, delivered by students of the faculty of dentistry, and ‘quality of life for families and patients with cleft lip and palate’, delivered by students of the faculty of psychology. this activity began with a meeting with the chief of cisarua health center and the head of jambudipa village to explain the plans regarding the counselling activities that we would undertake and to hold joint discussions to set targets and timelines for the program’s implementation. considering the significant number of community health workers in cisarua sub-district, totalling more than 500, we made the decision to focus our efforts on a target group of 51 individuals. this group would comprise three community health workers from each community unit. we then scheduled the program to commence after completion of our initial activity, which involved providing dental and oral health counselling to elementary school students, concluding at the end of january. after the meeting with the local stakeholders, we held a discussion to determine the best way to carry out the activity. we came up with the idea of providing interactive teaching in the form of two lectures on topics such as cleft lip and palate in general and the quality of life for families and people with cleft lip and palate. in both lectures, there was a focus group discussion (fgd), in which participants were divided into four groups and assisted by two facilitators as they discussed procedures for dealing with babies born with cleft lip and palate. at the end of the activity, participants were asked to fill out a feedback form, which could be exchanged for lunch. the preparation process was followed by a discussion on the technical implementation of the event, specifically about task division, preparation of the materials and equipment, and deciding on the date and location of the activity. this event took place in the jambudipa village office hall on monday, 30 january 2023 at 10 a.m. the event began with the mc’s opening remarks and words from several key participants, such as the leader of the group (akp), the secretary of jambudipa village and the cisarua district midwife. following this was a presentation on cleft lip and palate (cbl) by the dental student team, and then a focus group discussion (fgd) on dealing with babies born with cbl (figure 1b). during the fgd activities, participants were asked to discuss and arrange the order of treatment when a baby was born with cbl on a board. the main facilitator then provided an explanation of how to handle cbl and match it with the participants’ answers. after the fgd was finished, the psychology team presented the most recent material on the topic of quality of life of families and cbl patients. the activity concluded with the completion of the feedback form, the awarding of certificates, and a photo session of all participants and the committee. out of the 51 community health workers that were initially targeted by the group members, 47 attended the program, which consisted of 39 community health workers from several community units, 7 members of the family welfare programs’ working groups, and 1 midwife from the cisarua sub-district. an analysis of the feedback form (table 5), which was completed by 36 participants, showed that all participants agreed or strongly agreed that the material provided was useful and that they understood it. the participants also said that the material presented was interesting. however, around 8.4 percent of the participants thought that the timing and duration of the program inadequate. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 table 5. summary of responses, using a 4-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, to questions in the feedback form following the cleft capacity building program. responses 1 2 3 4 i felt that the material presented was useful 0 0 27.8 72.2 i understood the material that was presented 0 0 72.2 27.8 i found the way the material was presented was interesting 0 0 66.7 33.3 i thought that the timing of the event was good 0 2.8 83.3 13.9 i felt that the duration of the event was sufficient 0 5.6 80.6 13.9 *1 strongly disagree; *2 disagree; 3* agree; 4* strongly agree the method used in this capacity-building program was a series of lectures with an interactive group discussion in between. the first lecture was given by the dental students’ team on the clinical aspects of cleft lip and palate to familiarise the audience with the topic. in this part of the event, the audience mainly learned about the causes of clefts and their prevention. the next segment was an interactive group discussion to inform community health workers how to manage babies born with cleft. the audience was asked to arrange a series of cutout cards in their correct order, which would be checked by the main facilitator at the end of the session. all of the audience members actively participated in the activity and the group discussion. the final segment was a lecture on the quality of life of cleft patients and their surroundings, which was presented by the student psychology team. this segment was included to show the community health workers what things could be an obstacle for cleft patients and their families in their daily lives within the community, in the hope that all of the community health workers would be able to empathise with them. overall, all of the programs that were undertaken by the group members received great responses, both from the local community and other stakeholders. the results from the feedback form also indicated that the majority of participants understood and felt that the activities undertaken were useful. in future, we might need to provide similar or related activities in order to maintain community health workers’ knowledge regarding cleft lip and palate, and its treatment. assisting community health workers at integrated service post the indonesian health system starts at the smallest unit, which is called the integrated service post (posyandu). posyandu is a form of community based health effort (upaya kesehatan bersumberdaya masyarakat, ukbm) carried out by, from and with the community, to empower and provide convenience to the community in obtaining health services for mothers, infants and toddlers. posyandu’s main activities include community monitoring and education on the health of mother and child, family planning, immunization, nutrition, and the prevention and control of diarrhea (centre for health promotion, ministry of health 2012). posyandu is run by local community health workers. community health workers in indonesia, also known as kader kesehatan, play a vital role in providing primary healthcare services and promoting health awareness within their communities. community health workers typically undergo training programs conducted by the ministry of health or local health authorities. these programs equip them with basic healthcare knowledge and skills to deliver essential health services at the community level. the training covers areas such as maternal and child health, family planning, immunisations, basic healthcare practices, health education and disease prevention. community health workers in indonesia are often considered voluntary or semi-voluntary workers who provide their services on a community-based or sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 part-time basis. the compensation received by community health workers can vary, depending on the region and the local healthcare system. the introduction of the community service program resulted from an audience with the head of jambudipa village, where the activity plan was explained, along with a proposal for a checkpoint for measuring blood pressure and a dental consultation service as the integrated services post-activities (figure 3). following the audience, the team was directed to further discuss this with the head of jambudipa village as well as the chief of local health workers. based on the outcomes of the discussion, it was discovered that posyandu activities were carried out in each community unit (rw), with a total of 18 posyandu in jambudipa village, following the number of rws, which run once a month. due to the time constraint, the community service program was scheduled to assist 3 out of 18 posyandu activities. the general health and dental health checkpoints are implemented by adding two check-in desks to the posyandu flow as follows: 1. parents collect data at the administration post. 2. toddlers’ weight and height, as well as head circumference and arm circumference, are measured. 3. at the dental checkpoint, toddlers are instructed to have a dental examination. 4. at the public health post, parents check their blood pressure and provide data on complaints and medical history. each of the sessions lasts for four hours. attendees at posyandu range from 40–44 mothers, 1–5 expectant mothers and 30–36 toddlers. pedagogical aspect and reflective analysis from student perspective the community service module in higher education yields diverse and valuable learning outcomes. it cultivates civic engagement, as students become actively involved in addressing social issues within their communities. in this community service module, various learning methods are employed to enhance student engagement and facilitate active learning. these methods include experiential learning, where students not only directly participate in community activities, but also live in the community, reflecting on their experiences and drawing lessons from them (table 6). collaborative learning is encouraged through working on this community service project, allowing students to work together, share ideas, and learn from one another. service-learning combines academic instruction with community service, providing opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and skills to real-life situations. reflection activities, such as group discussions, are incorporated to encourage critical thinking and deeper understanding. these diverse learning methods create a dynamic and enriching educational experience for students participating in the community service module. the process of appointing the group leader and organising division for this student-led community service project was carried out without any interference from the supervisor. the selection of the group leader was likely based on various factors, such as leadership qualities, relevant knowledge and skills and a demonstrated commitment to the project’s objectives. the students encountered some difficulties when engaging with the communities, the first being their disengagement during oral health education. this could be attributed to a lack of pedagogical skills in engaging elementary school-age children. moreover, some citizens living in these particular rural areas still use dialects rather than the national language, which poses a challenge for communication. the request by the local government that the student working group cover all targeted units in the area also remained unfulfilled due to limited working time and human resources. to further complicate the problem, certain elementary schools were difficult to reach in terms of transportation access and distance. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 table 6. perspective of the students involved in the community service program. 1. i feel that this community service program is very beneficial and a valuable experience, especially as a dental student where the topic revolves around dentistry, such as providing education on cleft lip and palate. i also had the opportunity to conduct my first dental examination directly on infants and children at the health centre. it feels great to be able to directly participate in assisting and providing education to the community. 2. by participating in the community service program, particularly in the cisarua area, i gained a different experience from regular academic activities. through this program, i was able to explore more activities carried out by the community and discover potential areas that can be developed. for example, in the field of education, different elementary schools within one district have varying teaching standards and habits, which can reflect the economic level of the students and the geographic location of a school. 3. in my opinion, through the community service program, students can directly enhance their soft skills through practice by implementing the basic knowledge learned during their studies. for example, communicating with local officials, negotiating with relevant parties on planned activities, and developing empathy skills when engaging with diverse communities in the area. 4. i had an enjoyable and memorable experience during the program. one of the highlights was when i met elementary school students. they were very enthusiastic about listening to us while we were giving presentations in front of the class. they understood the material we presented well. 5. throughout my participation in the community service program, i have gained many valuable lessons, especially in terms of implementing the theories i have learned about into the community. teamwork has also been a crucial aspect that i learned through this opportunity. approaching the community is not an easy task, but it can be achieved together. 6. one of the experiences i gained during the community service program was directly engaging with the community to provide oral health education and examinations. meeting elementary school children, mothers and children at the health centre, as well as the dedicated cadre mothers, gave me precious memories throughout my involvement in the program. 7. in my opinion, this is a highly beneficial program where we can directly apply the knowledge we have acquired during our studies to help others, especially the communities around us. i also realise that assistance is still needed to improve the well-being of society. therefore, educational initiatives like this are very useful in enhancing the community’s knowledge and understanding of the importance of health in improving quality of life. 8. i felt a sense of joy when participating in this program because i had the opportunity to engage with various parties, such as parents, children and cadres. it was a rewarding experience as i could bring benefits to many people. 9. i achieved valuable experiences during the community service program, such as learning to communicate with elementary school students. i also learned to be patient in dealing with their high energy levels. additionally, i gained experience in communicating and working together with other participants to ensure the smooth progress of the program. 10. this community service program provided me with new experiences, such as communicating with various government entities, the community and elementary school children. i realised that there are still many places that need assistance in providing education to improve the overall health of the community. sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202311 program outcomes the current capacity-building program can only reach an audience in one village, namely jambudipa village, where the audience consisted of 39 community health workers from several community units, 7 members of the family welfare programs’ working groups and 1 midwife from the cisarua sub-district. although the current program is able to reach only a small audience, the event can be held effectively, as the audience focuses more on listening to the presenters because they are in the same room, and presenters can monitor and pay attention to the audience. in addition, offline activities allow the audience to socialise more easily with one another. lectures, focus group discussions (fgd) and question and answer sessions can also be more interactive if offline rather than online. this program succeeded in contributing to increased understanding of the incidence of cleft lip and palate and was well received by the participants according to the results of the reaction survey. based on the results of the local community health workers’ feedback, there were several matters from the authors’ perspective that needed to be improved, such as the short duration of the program and the explanation of some of the medical terms that had been difficult for the participants to understand. in addition to cleft lip and palate educational activities, we held dental and oral health education activities for children aged 6–12 years, or elementary school age. this program was conducted using a storytelling method, which helps to develop creativity and imagination, expand ways of thinking, and offer different life experiences to children (cohrssen et al. 2016). at the end of the event, we held a quiz, with prizes for the children. the educational programs discussed in this article have succeeded in contributing to development of knowledge and increasing interest in the oral and dental health of elementary school-age children in jambudipa village. this can be seen in the achievement of the learning objectives and the enthusiasm of the pupils participating in this program. due to limited time and human resources, the program was only conducted in a few schools in the cisarua sub-district and in certain classes in every school. it would have been beneficial if more schools had been involved in the program. our plan is to regularly hold similar oral health activities for elementary school students at least once a year. this needs to be done, so that oral health becomes a habit for participants and is not just attended to during their education. we also consider that future programs should be carried out in different locations in order to spread the message of oral health evenly. an aspect that was overlooked was the inclusion of cleft lip/palate education for school children with those conditions, to mitigate the stigma they face. these children are vulnerable to bullying and other social challenges within the school environment. conducting such an intervention in the future would be highly valuable and impactful in raising awareness, promoting acceptance, and fostering a supportive atmosphere for children with cleft. next steps the sustainability of the community-university partnerships at universitas padjadjaran is ingrained in and integrated with academic key performance indicators. each batch of community service courses for undergraduate students has different themes, depending on the partner that reaches out to us, for example, the ministry, ngo or industry. in conclusion, community-university partnerships are essential to conducting successful community service programs and ensuring their sustainability. these partnerships bring together the resources, expertise and knowledge of both the community and the university to tackle social issues and improve the quality of life for individuals and communities. through collaborative efforts, community-university partnerships create meaningful, long-lasting changes that benefit everyone involved. furthermore, partnerships foster a sarilita, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202312 sense of community ownership and engagement, ensuring the continued success and sustainability of the programs beyond their initial implementation. this practice-based article is intended to serve as a lesson for similar programs in the future, especially in indonesia and/or neighbouring regions, to emphasise the importance of fostering and supporting community-university partnerships, so as to build stronger, more resilient communities that thrive and flourish. references badan pusat statistik kabupaten bandung barat 2021, badan pusat statistik provinsi jawa barat. https:// bandungbaratkab.bps.go.id/indicator/153/88/1/tinggi-wilayah-dan-jarak-ke-ibukota-kabupaten-menurut-kecamatan. html cdc, basics of oral health. https://www.cdc.gov/oralhealth/basics/index.html cdc, cleft 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https://www.kemkes.go.id/article/print/18110200003/potret-sehat-indonesia-dari-riskesdas-2018.html https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8043 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240061484 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/oral-health gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: dombroski, k., shiels, r., watkinson, h. 2025. curating life in vacant spaces: community action research and reversing the process of academic knowledgemaking. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1– 17. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9296 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) curating life in vacant spaces: community action research and reversing the process of academic knowledgemaking kelly dombroski1,*, rachael shiels2, hannah watkinson3 1 school of people, environment and planning, te kunenga ki pūrehuroa | massey university 2 placemaker, former director, life in vacant spaces 3 placemaker and ōtautahi christchurch enthusiast corresponding author: kelly dombroski, k.dombroski@massey.ac.nz doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9296 article history: received 19/08/2024; revised 30/10/2024; accepted 18/11/2024; published 01/2025 abstract for scholars in academic institutions, the process of research usually begins with a question often gleaned from academic literature, progresses through some methods and results, then ends in writing and dissemination of the findings. ‘impact’ is identified by trying to see if anyone takes up the research and uses it to inform policy or action outside of academia – with contemporary impact databases measuring this by whether it has been cited in policy documents. but this way of understanding impact is fundamentally at odds with researching communityled activism, where impact is already happening, and researchers engage with communities to document and evaluate the impact in ways that support the work. for activists out in the community, research and learning are happening all the time and have impact without anyone writing it up at all. this paper reflects on a research project in the city of ōtautahi christchurch in aotearoa new zealand, where researchers and community activists began with ‘impact’ and ‘dissemination’. from there, we developed frameworks and methods, developed evidence, then ended with asking wider theoretical questions relevant to academic literature. effectively, we reversed the order that research projects usually follow. in order to recognise this ‘reversed’ order, our paper utilises a reversed structure, using the concept of thinking infrastructures to understand what academic research adds to the knowledges already produced in community impact. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the authors have all been part of the organisation life in vacant spaces, kd was a board member from 2018 to 2022, including during the period of research. rs and hw were employed by life in vacant spaces for some periods of the research, and were then contracted to work on the project for a period in 2021. funding the authors received funding from the george sevicke jones trust, the university of canterbury, and the building better homes, towns and cities national science challenge (ministry for business innovation and enterprise) for the research informing this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9296 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9296 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:k.dombroski@massey.ac.nz https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9296 keywords impact; transitional placemaking; community action research; christchurch, new zealand beginning with the end for those of us who are scholars in academic institutions, we often frame our work as if the process of research begins with a question gleaned from academic literature, progresses through some methods and results, then ends in writing and dissemination of the findings (bhattacherjee 2012). ‘impact’ is often identified by trying to see if anyone takes up the research and uses it to inform policy or action outside of academia (australian research council 2019) – sometimes measured by whether it has been cited in policy documents. (see, for example, the metrics developed in scopus, https://blog.scopus.com/posts/see howyourresearchimpactspolicyovertonpolicycitationsareliveonscopus.) there is a certain degree of pressure to represent our work in this way, especially in the new zealand funding environment, in turn shaping and resourcing some of the work we have been engaged in – a process known as ‘funding drift’. but this way of representing impact is at odds with researching communityled activism, where it is important to acknowledge that impact is already happening, and that researchers engage with communities to document and evaluate the impact. for activists out in the community, research and learning are happening all the time and have impact without ever being documented, and it would be disingenuous to erase this kind of impact from the research writing process. this paper seeks to write about impact differently by reflecting on a research project in the city of ōtautahi christchurch in aotearoa new zealand. in this project we, as researchers and community activists, began with impact and dissemination. from there, we developed frameworks and methods and then ended with asking wider theoretical questions relevant to academic literature. in some ways, we could playfully suggest that we reversed the order that research projects might normally be expected to follow (see figure 1), joining others in this special issue and elsewhere participating in iterative changes in the relationships between research, communities, writing and institutions. the long tradition of museum and exhibition curation has also influenced the way we have approached telling stories of community action and impact. figure 1. linear representation of the research process rather than beginning with a literature review, this paper commences with the context and impacts of the temporary use organisation, life in vacant spaces (livs). we will then move on to ‘telling stories’, a version of writing and dissemination, then outline our approach to ‘developing the evidence’ in a version of methods and results, finally finishing up with engaging with the literature and highlighting a research question for ongoing contemplation and research. this ‘reversed’ approach to the paper allows us to lay out the context for our decisions in writing research differently, both in this paper and in the order of the outputs we produced during the project. we invite the reader to join with us as we work through context, stories, decisions and questions in this unconventional way. dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 https://blog.scopus.com/posts/see-how-your-research-impacts-policy-overton-policy-citations-are-live-on-scopus https://blog.scopus.com/posts/see-how-your-research-impacts-policy-overton-policy-citations-are-live-on-scopus this paper is led by our work with the charitable trust, livs, a community organisation in the city of christchurch. livs is one of many ‘transitional’ organisations that emerged following the canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. the canterbury earthquake sequence (ces), which began in late 2010, saw destruction on a scale previously unseen in new zealand: 80% of the central city of christchurch collapsed or was later demolished; core infrastructure across the city was damaged beyond repair; homes, livelihoods and communities were destroyed; and 181 people lost their lives (hayward 2013). for over a decade, christchurch has been responding, rebuilding and regenerating. we collaborated on a project at the end of that decade, in 2021 and 2022. we met through our association with livs: rachael was director from 2018– 2021; hannah was a previous community partner with the organisation and worked coordinating a project from 2018– 2023; and kelly wrote about the organisation in another research project (dombroski, diprose & boles 2019) and then was invited to join the board, serving from 2018 to 2022. after the earthquakes, local and central government began planning for the recovery of the city relatively quickly. the draft central city recovery plan was prepared by december 2011 for ministerial approval. the plan outlined the opportunities created by the ces to ‘rebuild a strong, resilient and beautiful city’. but even quicker was the community response. hugh nicholson, previous chair of livs, writes: one of my vivid memories about two months after the first of the devastating canterbury earthquakes in 2010 / 2011 was walking down a deserted colombo street surrounded by broken buildings and empty sites, and seeing a flash of colour and people with music on a vacant section. it was a crazy temporary public garden with live music, poetry readings, a bit of puppetry and circus, and film screenings of old new zealand movies with live musical accompaniment. it was my first realisation that ordinary people doing stuff on an empty section could make a difference – and help to bring a broken city back to life (dombroski et al. 2022, p. 2). following these first quick and creative interventions, the longer postquake transitional movement saw the community coming together and demonstrating a profound commitment to reinvigorating, and occasionally reinventing, the city (bennett et al. 2014; cloke & conradson 2018). a handful of small organisations led the charge, but the movement attracted local creatives, businessowners and residents as well as students and visitors from around the world. the council supported the projects by allocating specific funding and temporarily removing some of the regulatory barriers to activation, thus further growing the movement of transitional activities (carlton & vallance 2017; cloke et al. 2023; dombroski, diprose & boles 2019). the transitional movement helped enable a sense of ownership or belonging in the rebuilding process and supported conversations around what the new city could (or should) include (cloke et al. 2023; cretney 2018). early projects were playful, run on shoestring budgets and rebuilt connections with the city and each other. hundreds of projects were delivered and some were eventually incorporated into the permanent fabric of the new christchurch: the danceomat (figure 2), rollickin’ gelato (figure 3) and the arcades for example. the movement has been recognised globally and, in 2014, the transitional programme won a guangzhou award for urban innovation. livs was one of the key partners in the transitional movement. it was established as a charitable trust in 2012 in response to a report commissioned by christchurch city council looking at mechanisms to better enable the transitional movement in the postquake context. livs has, and continues, to broker spaces for community groups, creative projects, social enterprises and startups; it seeks to connect owners of vacant land and buildings with creative people who have ideas, to fill these spaces. livs also provides support for creatives, right from the development of an idea through to project deinstallation. as one livs partner commented: dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 i think livs is a really great enabler…livs works. so, there is a removing of barriers that happens when you work with life in vacant spaces. they take care of the bureaucracy, the paperwork, the leg work of finding spaces and developing relationships with landlords. they really create potentiality out of spaces which are otherwise just sitting unused. that’s for a city where there is a lot of those spaces still. that’s so invaluable, really. (project participant, in dombroski et al. 2022, p. 7) figure 2. danceomat (location 4). photo credit: gap filler figure 3. rollickin’ gelato – then and now. photo credits: rollickin’, neat places dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 livs has enabled a wide range of projects. since its inception, it has supported the delivery of over 700 projects. in particular, it has: • provided and managed space in an abandoned school for a community of artists, including free theatre; • partnered with gap filler, which uses temporary space to create temporary urban projects to foster community engagement and creativity such as the music and food venue pallet pavilion (figure 4); • brokered use of land for the festival of transitional architecture (festa, figure 5); • provided space for christchurch aunties to store furniture and everyday supplies for women’s refuges and their clients; • brokered land for cultivate christchurch, which integrates youth employment training and organic urban farming to support youth wellbeing; • brokered indoor and outdoor spaces for the green lab, which focuses on urban greening and community connection through temporary landscaping projects; • supported the use of council land for a local food project, which engaged the community in local food production, sustainability and community food consumption initiatives; • supported a young person to start a gelato business in a caravan on temporarylease land, which is now a chain of gelato shops (figure 3); • supported the new brighton community to selfmanage roy stokes hall for a variety of community projects including circus training, playgroups and events; • supported watch this space to get permissions for urban art projects and exhibitions to enhance public spaces; • found temporary accommodation several times for rad bikes, which recycles and repairs bikes to promote sustainable transportation and community engagement; • subsidised spaces at salt lane studios, a workspace for artists and creatives to collaborate; and • managed east x east, transforming vacant earthquake damaged land into community spaces for various projects and activities, including redzone drone racing, art interventions, an allages club for building and racing drones and disc golf at east x east. figure 4. pallet pavilion. photo credit: maja moritz dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 figure 5. festa 2016: we have the means. photo credit: jonny knopp, peanut productions impact while it was obvious to us, the participants, and the livs organisation itself that the work was making a big impact, it was hard to communicate and evaluate the work due to its multifaceted nature. wellbeing benefits were clear to us in several ways. first, from our experiences with livsenabled projects, community involvement in repurposing vacant spaces fostered a sense of belonging and improved social wellbeing. for example, the temple for christchurch project (2013) was a largescale interactive art installation made from wood and other materials, designed to commemorate the 2011 earthquake and provide a space for emotional healing through community participation and the ceremonial burning of the temple. it did this by allowing people to participate in the construction and collective burning of the temple, whilst openly expressing and (however briefly) recording their losses and grief (figure 6). this initiative fostered unity, resilience and psychosocial recovery, contributing to the city’s cultural revival and overall wellbeing. figure 6. temple for christchurch. photo credits: gaby montejo dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 we also saw environmental benefits where unused spaces were transformed into green areas or community gardens, which has a positive impact on human mental health and overall wellbeing as well as benefiting nonhuman life. ‘cultivate christchurch’ is a social enterprise that transformed vacant post quake land into urban farms, promoting social wellbeing and environmental sustainability. it significantly improved environmental health by collecting and converting green waste into rich soil on a previously gravel site, producing highquality fresh produce (figure 7). it also positively impacted individual wellbeing by providing meaningful work, time outdoors and in nature, social worker support and skill development opportunities for young people in christchurch. figure 7. cultivate christchurch. photo credit: alison watkins economic wellbeing outcomes were evident both for those starting out in small business and the overall economic improvement of areas when vacant spaces were filled with interesting activities or enterprises that lent a sense of vibrancy. one example is the public pizza oven created as part of ‘a local food project’. this initiative enabled chef, alex davies, to trial his menu and gather a following for his food in a public space, eventually leading to a partnership in a restaurant space. this project contributed to sustainable economic wellbeing by supporting livelihoods and fostering a circular economy through the redesign, reuse and recycling of materials, as well as davies’ own livelihood. finally, we saw that projects could strengthen social ties and, it seemed, contribute to resilient communities in the postquake environment which were crucial for enhancing the collective wellbeing and sense of ‘rightness’ in the wider city. for example, the roy stokes hall in new brighton was transformed into a community hub, providing a versatile space for various community activities and events. this project strengthened social ties by offering a venue for community groups, workshops, performances and educational activities, fostering a sense of belonging and collaboration among residents in the suburb. dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 for all those involved, these benefits and more were evident, but it was and is difficult to link these benefits directly to livs’ activities, and to measure the ‘value’ of these activities. many transitional organisations and social ngos in christchurch (and elsewhere) have trialled different ways of evaluating and communicating impact, including through storytelling, outcome harvesting, case studies, community return on investment approaches and infographics (figure 8). determining value and communicating it well is often a significant challenge for charities, notforprofits and many in the creative sector; livs is no exception to this. project numbers, area of space filled, and estimated lease or rental savings are easily counted and communicated. the intangible benefits – connection to place, improved wellbeing and increased community participation, for example – defy traditional valuation. this presents challenges when communicating with potential participants, delivery partners, sponsors and funders. being unable to provide empirical evidence of benefit or improvement can create perceived risk to those looking to invest time or resources into the project(s). figure 8. infographics produced by gap filler to communicate their impact the research project came about near the 10year anniversary of livs, with researchers collaborating with livs staff to conduct some research to better consider (and communicate) some of the impacts livs’ projects have had on community wellbeing and how these can be measured. the project action team (the authors) met with the board to set the priorities for the research project. we identified an exhibition and a book as suitable starting points for the collaboration, with the data collected for those outputs to be used for later research on evaluating and communicating livs’ impact. we identified these as appropriate since they were able to give greater visibility of the wellbeing impacts of livs’ work to residents, visitors, funders and city council. the book could be sent to people to read, and the exhibition could communicate to casual city visitors or commuters who might not otherwise read such a book. the first task was to identify the wide range of perceived impacts and projects, and select a sample to feature in the first outputs for the action project. rachael and hannah, working closely at livs for a number of years, were able to select 34 projects from around 700 to feature in a book and exhibition celebrating the 10year anniversary. there were a number of practical considerations in choosing the projects to feature, such as whether they had good records, photos available and some level of existing contact for permissions and possible interviews. however, our decisionmaking also sought to identify the significant stories to be told or revisited; those projects that were memorable, that influenced future decision making, catalysed a career or community group or project or that made a deep emotional connection. it was a strange collection of ‘somethings’, all with markers of what we intrinsically considered to be ‘impact’ but still needed to be ordered and explored to make sense. this was a reflection of a lot of the work we did at livs; seemingly quite bold decisions (which projects to support, which vacant space to activate, which projects to dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 include in the exhibition) were made quickly due to the context but felt deeply and further rationalised once learnings had occurred. we made sure to include examples from the east x east block, a vast block of land that had previously been residential and was now being activated with suburban activities by livs (figure 9), as one of our funding agreements was with specific reference to this area. kelly set out to interview participants and desk research these projects, finishing up with 27 stories (dombroski et al. 2023). these were written up as case study summaries drawing on transcripts. after this, we faced the challenge of deciding how to present these for exhibition and in a book. figure 9. east x east learn to ride track. photo credit: hannah watkinson telling stories: writing and dissemination the stories told in the interviews formed the basis of the material for the exhibition. in this section, we use a storytelling mode to open up the black box of research and writing decisions, acknowledging a range of influences including how we feel, what seemed practical and the different objectives of the community and research partners. the exhibition started with a basic table, ordered simply by whichever interview transcript kelly opened first. because we didn’t really know what the exhibition would quite do, kelly tried to map the work of each project, organisation or initiative against a range of different frameworks already used in wellbeing economies work in aotearoa new zealand. the idea was to present a range of possibilities from frameworks that seemed to broadly communicate alternative forms of ‘value’ in different ways. these were all frameworks kelly had come across in her research and teaching in community, wellbeing and place. this felt fun – dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 learning all the frameworks, reading through the transcripts and thinking about what was being achieved. these were: • the mauri ora compass, developed by colleague amanda yates, is an urban design tool that tries to bring conception of mauri ora, or holistic wellbeing, into urban design (yates et al. 2022). it communicates value from a te ao māori perspective, in terms of what an initiative contributes to the mauri (life force) of a place. • te pae mahutonga, a public health framework developed by tā/sir mason durie that lays out a set of public health conditions, including physical environments, needed for holistic māori health and more broadly for health in aotearoa new zealand (durie 1999). it communicates value in terms of whether and how something contributes to public health, informed by māori cultural values but applicable more widely. • the sustainable development goals (sdgs) are a set of global goals developed to funnel and track progress into a set of 17 holistic goals (sdgs.un.org). they contribute value in terms of whether an initiative helps society progress towards one of the 17 internationally agreed priorities. • the community economy return on investment (ceroi) approach is a set of six areas of investment that bring community economies (organised around six key wellbeing questions) into being (gibsongraham et al. 2013). it communicates value in terms of whether an initiative contributes to economic and social justice as well as environmental care outcomes. • the five ways to wellbeing is a mental health intervention that focuses on the things that individuals can do to benefit their own wellbeing. it communicates value in terms of whether an initiative could benefit individual wellbeing. this one was not used as it did not allow for analysis of the impact of community and environment in wellbeing, which was important for our communications with funders and our analyses with social and environmental change theory. we then met to discuss what the benefits of the frameworks and decided on two: first, the mauri ora compass, which drew attention to the holistic wellbeing outcomes of the projects; and secondly, the ceroi, which drew attention to the investments and intentions. while neither of these are widely used frameworks, the project was seen as an opportunity to draw more public attention to the innovative work of our colleagues, amanda yates, jk gibsongraham, jenny cameron and stephen healy. rachael then took this table and created two documents: one, a layout of the booklet with thought about where quotes and project photos would go; and a second more condensed but visual version, created with hannah to plan the layout for the exhibition panels (see box 1: rachael and hannah’s reflections). the eight doublesided panels were eventually printed in a0 size (841 × 1189 mm) and installed in a public laneway in the centre of christchurch. the process of writing the booklet and preparing the exhibition was one of feeling our way forward. the experimental use of two frameworks (the ‘mauri ora compass tool’ and the ‘community economy return on investment (ceroi) tool’) provided insights into the impacts, writing and dissemination that box 1. rachael and hannah’s reflections trying to shape the interviews and the case studies into an exhibition (figure 10) and booklet was incredibly challenging. turning all that wonderful creative chaos into something linear whilst remaining true to the individual voices, the projects of others and ōtautahi’s everchanging context caused many late nights for us! it really wasn’t until we settled on our frameworks that it even seemed possible; a real ‘aha’ moment! considering the ‘why’ (or many) behind a lot of the projects reinforced their impacts and better helped us to tell that story. dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 then needed some further examination. both frameworks were experimental in nature and had not been developed in robust ways or widely used. thus, the work that we did to use them to frame our exhibition and booklet was both a realisation of the holistic value of the livs’ work and also an experiment in seeing how the frameworks would go with communicating holistic impacts. the process of writing also raised the questions of how to think about the impacts more broadly and how to categorise them in a meaningful way. the process of developing the visual language with the designer (figure 11), choosing images and deciding what to select or leave out, also stimulated our thinking on the meaning of the impacts. as lykke et al. note with reference to writing: ‘this struggle should not be reduced to a wrappingup of research results following the “serious” part of the research… [because] thinking and writing are two sides of the same coin’ (lykke et al. 2014, p. 2). for us, this was also true in terms of design, image selection and the curatorial planning of the exhibition and booklet. developing the evidence: methods and results with the exhibition and booklet complete, we realised we had drawn attention to the wellbeing outcomes of livsenabled projects but for city councillors and other funders to act on that, we needed a formal peerreviewed report. kelly collaborated with other academics working on the national science challenge funded programme ‘building better homes, towns and cities’ to gather the evidence to support the methods and results, and to write a peerreviewed report that would then underpin what the exhibition and booklet had asserted with regard to wellbeing impacts. when spelling out the methods (including selection of projects), we framed these as a community action research project (cameron & gibson 2020) where communities contributed to developing the research question and approach. this provided an explanation and justification for the communityled process undertaken, situating it in wider peerreviewed approaches. figure 10. huritanga: 10 years of transformative place making exhibition. photo credit: life in vacant spaces dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 the report writing involved systematically reanalysing the interviews via a structured nvivo process, writing up the individual case studies and then writing up thematic analyses with reference to literature and evidence (see dombroski et al. 2023). while much of this was done by kelly, the entire report was read and commented on by the coauthors, with significant edits by gradon diprose (see box 2). the report writing process thus built on the big picture thinking and analysing done in the exhibition and booklet, while providing the evidence base for decisionmakers. more than 50 copies of the report were distributed around city councils, consultancies, regional councils and placemaking organisations. the report has an isbn and is archived with the national library of new zealand. the style of the report was formal, developed by a designer with experience in the design of government reports (figure 12). it was then sent to two peer reviewers in the community economies research network (one in nz and one international), and changes made based on their review. figure 11. huritanga: 10 years of transformative place making book. design: jen mcbride dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202512 box 2. kelly’s reflections it felt really boring to do the work of explaining the methods, finding the peerreviewed evidence, then responding to the comments from coauthors. i (kelly) longed for the fun times of doing interviews, and of theorising and writing up academic pieces that would not be so bound to what city councillors might find compelling, and could be more connected to communities of scholars in the social sciences and humanities and even the performing arts. i got through it pretty mechanically, getting up at 5am and writing for an hour before my preschooler woke up. at its heart, this kind of writing is an act of service (for the wider public via the city council) and of reciprocal relations with communities and individuals that took the time to participate in the research. figure 12. enabling life in vacant spaces final report writing differently: literature and research questions there is not necessarily anything radically different about beginning with community impacts and working back to academic theorising via methods and evidence somewhere in the middle. this is the way that many impacted communities become involved in research projects – noticing impacts and wanting to think about why, or how – or to tell others what is happening. kaupapa māori research, for example, is premised on the idea that māori (and indeed, indigenous communities more broadly) know what they need research on, and why it’s important, and that researchers should partner with communities rather than do research ‘on’ them (tuhiwai smith 2012). feminist research has a long history of taking women’s words and interpretations of their own lives seriously, including reframing and inventing new concepts, words and analyses to support it (cameron 1996; kitzinger 2004). communitybased research also has a tradition of beginning with what communities know rather than imposing expert interpretations and knowledges, albeit often involving external experts in participatory research (chambers 1997) and not always returning the findings back to the community (scheyvens, scheyvens & murray 2014). in many ways, this project has been influenced by all those traditions. what else is happening here, though? is it only a ‘taking communities seriously’ approach, or is there something else going on in this project? one way of thinking about what is happening is to think about how research can provide not only ‘evidence’ but also language and ‘thinking infrastructures’ (bowker et al. 2019) to frame what communities are already doing. livs already existed as an ngo and assemblage dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202513 of people, things and processes creating space for temporary use projects. but the process of doing the exhibition and the booklet, the interviews and the report, pulled together a community that did not exactly exist before as a named object, and structured a language and thinking infrastructure around the work of that community. in partnership, the shared research developed and inserted a language of wellbeing and investment into the community it gathered. the research organised and categorised projects and outcomes around ‘mauri ora’ (our state of being, where our life force is in balance; we are alive, well and full of vitality), inviting readers to see the work in the city as something more than economic development or filling gaps while waiting for the ‘real’ rebuild. like other research in the area of temporary use, our work invited those viewing the exhibition, or reading the booklet or the report, to see the work of temporary projects in transitional spaces as something more than gapfilling, as restorative of and attentive to the mauri or vitality in the city (carlton & vallance 2017; chatterton et al. 2019; dombroski, diprose & boles 2019; vallance et al. 2017). it provided this thinking infrastructure while also building the evidence base for decision makers to act further in caring for mauri ora. in the same way that the scientific process is a thinking infrastructure that organises what is happening and translates it into a wider audience for learning, our research project began with skilled observations by placemakers such as rachael and hannah, then utilising kelly’s research skills and funding to investigate and ‘translate’. the thinking infrastructure in this work has been the different wellbeing frameworks that organise and translate the work of livs for wider audience learning. in this way, ‘what and how we write is directly related with who we become’ (gilmore et al. 2019, p. 9). in short, it is not only writing that reconfigures who we are, but also the infrastructures we think with. thinking infrastructures ‘configure the user, cognitively’ (bowker et al. 2019, p. 2). knowledgemaking is never neutral; we therefore need to think carefully about the kinds of academic knowledges we are generating and who we are generating them for. we are not fully separate or even cognisant of the thinking infrastructures we are part of, but when we work with others we can sometimes glimpse the edges as we communicate across difference and lean into moments of awkward engagement (dombroski 2024; tsing 2005). the thinking infrastructures that centre researchers as the ones holding or creating knowledge, and community partners as ‘subjects’ or ‘participants’, have been roundly challenged by scholars of science and technology studies (sts) as well as the aforementioned fields of indigenous research, feminist research and community action research. sts researcher, annemarie mol, for example, highlights how the thinking infrastructure of ‘client choice’ in healthcare produces perverse outcomes, in that ‘clients’ are forced to choose a provider then go with whatever that provider offers in terms of their standard healthcare. but when healthcare workers lean into the also present (but less obvious) thinking infrastructure of ‘patient care’, outcomes can be better and negotiated in partnership as things change in the patient’s circumstances (mol 2008). leaning on mol’s work, we can see it is not necessarily that researchers create thinking infrastructures and then apply them to the impacts that organisations such as livs produce, but that a role of researchers is listening and uncovering the traces of those infrastructures already present in a minor key, or in a less organised way. how then do those of us doing research partnerships such as this one decide which thinking infrastructures to excavate and highlight? writer and activist, adrienne maree brown insists that it has to be about listening to those most affected (brown 2017). michel callon and vololona rabeharisoa proposed that ‘it might be fruitful to consider concerned groups as (potentially) genuine researchers, capable of working cooperatively with professional scientists’ (callon & rabeharisoa 2003, p. 105). for callon and rabeharisoa, this kind of collaborative research with those most affected was theorised using the concept of ‘hybrid collectives’, where the ‘hybrid’ is referring not only to the combination of researchers and concerned groups, but also to the technologies and nonhuman entities that are part of the research (roelvink 2016). such research ‘in the wild’ is guided by the matters of care (to use puig de la bellacasa’s 2017 language) and dombroski et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202514 concern (to use latour’s 2004 language) to those most affected. those coresearchers also participate in co researching and interpreting what thinking infrastructures that emerge to represent and frame the questions, findings and implications. in the community action research that we have discussed here, the knowledge production of science is not necessarily at the centre of the work. rather the coresearching relationship is akin to curating. curating, at its heart, is the piecing together of smaller stories to create a bigger picture; or arguably, knowledge production. curating is how we would describe the work that rachael and hannah did as part of the livs organisation, enabling a range of community projects to be realised in certain spaces. curating is by definition selecting, organising and looking after something (oxford dictionary). it is packaging something to display or share more widely, and in the choosing of the ‘something’ in a placemaking sense, and indeed in the culmination of the book and exhibition, all of these thinking infrastructures need to be known, understood and purposefully progressed. in the livs project outlined here, the curatorial approach that livs takes towards assembling core projects in the city is replicated in the curatorial approach taken towards assembling projects into the exhibition, book, report and the thinking infrastructures that emerged. not everything is represented, but a story with a purpose is told through the curation of stories, images and quotes. in many ways, the curators had the vision and power to select from the research infrastructures offered by the research team, choosing those that best served the project as first envisioned. the research question is thus less one of ‘what is happening here in temporary use projects in ōtautahi and what are the results?’ and more one of ‘how can we share what has happened here with temporary use projects in ōtautahi and, both sustain and share the results with others?’ or perhaps even ‘how can we continue to curate wellbeing through temporary use both here and elsewhere?’. ending with beginnings so, we end with research questions that have emerged through this project. how indeed can we and others continue to curate wellbeing through temporary use both in ōtautahi christchurch and elsewhere? each of us has gone on to answer that question in different contexts in the year since the project was completed with the final report (dombroski et al. 2023), and those continuing on with the work of livs or research into temporary use in christchurch might also answer the same question. livs continues its work with a focus on the incubator project, a shipping container for temporary use popup projects right in the centre of the rebuilt city. hannah has moved into the local government space focussing on community hazard protection, as well as strategy work to enable communities, mana whenua and territorial authorities to imagine and work together toward aspirational environmental visions for place. rachael continues her regeneration efforts with communities, specifically focussing on placeled development and partnerships, through a role with the local economic development agency. kelly is leading a large project looking at how community organisations are leading the transition towards postcapitalist economies centring care. in ending with research questions, we have approached research 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https://www.communityeconomies.org/publications/reports/enabling-life-vacant-spaces-partnership-approach-evaluating-holistic-wellbeing https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816676064.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507618811027 https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2015.1115470 https://doi.org/10.5751/es-05947-180437 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608191.d12 https://doi.org/10.1086/421123 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315818566 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315818566 https://doi.org/10.1017/s2753906700002096 https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816676170.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473921801.n10 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473921801.n10 https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691263526 https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691263526 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.06.023 https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci7010001 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 17, no. 1 august 2024 © 2024 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: nampala, p., kalule., s. w., mshenga, p. m., okello, d. m., egeru, a., ekwamu, a. 2024. linkages with practice for higher-education curriculum innovation. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 18. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8913 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) linkages with practice for higher-education curriculum innovation paul nampala1, stephen w. kalule2, patience m. mshenga3, daniel m. okello3, anthony egeru5, adipala ekwamu6 1 department of agriculture and environmental sciences, school of agriculture and applied sciences, bugema university, p.o. box 6529, kampala, uganda 2 department of rural development and agribusiness, faculty of agriculture and environment, gulu university, p.o. box 166, gulu, uganda 3 department of agribusiness and natural resource economics, faculty of agriculture and environmental sciences, kabale university, p.o. box 317, kabale, uganda 4 department of agricultural economics and agribusiness management, egerton university, p.o. box 536-20115, egerton, kenya 5 regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum), p.o. box 16811, wandegeya, kampala, uganda 6 research and education agency, p.o. box 29152, kampala, uganda corresponding author: paul nampala, nampalap@yahoo.co.uk; pnampala@bugemauniv.ac.ug doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8913 article history: received 20/02/2019; revised 14/11/2023; accepted 23/07/2024; published 08/2024 abstract this article is inspired by the debate on curriculum innovation for graduate training, emerging out of linkages between universities and agribusiness development actors, targeting entrepreneurial action and employability of graduates. experiences from implementation of a three-year joint project are enriched by a desk review, stakeholder feedback and interpretative analysis of process documents during the development of the regional graduate curriculum on agri-enterprise development for egerton and gulu universities in kenya and uganda, respectively. the graduate curriculum at the two universities in east africa integrated the approaches of roundtable engagement and research as well as value chain cluster mapping and development through interactive sharing with agribusiness development facilitators. simultaneously, the two implementing universities showcased the feasibility of integrating community engagement and 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received financial support for research, from the ford foundation through the project titled ‘transforming universities to stimulate pro-poor agri-enterprise development in eastern africa using value chain and the roundtable approaches to postgraduate training’. additional financial support was received from the european union under the edulink ii program project ‘fed 2013/320-100’, and from ruforum under the university outreach activities (grant no. ru 2014 ng 15). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8913 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8913 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:p.nampala@ruforum.org mailto:pnampala@bugemauniv.ac.ug https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8913 entrepreneurial skills into a new curriculum. they achieved this by adopting two training approaches from their previous, more limited curriculum, which lacked student entrepreneurial experiential learning. the outcome from the first cohort of students in the innovative programs demonstrates significant institutional change in teaching and learning approaches. these changes prioritize a blend of action research and theoretical exposure. at the university-wide level, a student-centered teaching and learning approach has been established, facilitated by models like student farm attachment, student enterprise scheme, and student community engagement. additionally, university-based research teams have honed their skills in community action research, leading to the identification of relevant challenges and plausible solutions. furthermore, students’ skills sets have increasingly enhanced employability. strengthening linkages between universities and community development actors can enhance curriculum orientation toward problem-solving and entrepreneurial capacity building for young graduates. purposeful engagement with communities by university faculty and students serves as a complementary extension approach and advisory service. implementing an innovative curriculum has the potential to boost research uptake and foster innovation. this article demonstrates how universityindustrial actors’ collaboration can be exploited for curriculum (re)design, review and up-dating for (a) enhanced relevance of universities to community needs and employability of graduates; and (b) improvements in the research uptake pathways that facilitate research-into-use for desired impacts at community level. keywords community engagement; entrepreneurial action; graduates; employable skills introduction despite much rhetoric on embedding community action research and entrepreneurship in university curricula, there is little research attention paid to systematically showing how the two aspects can be made integral to curricula of higher education. community engagement in university education involves collaboration between higher education institutions and their broader communities (local, regional/state, national, global). it emphasises a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources, fostering partnerships and reciprocity. the goal is to bridge the gap between campus and community by addressing broader needs beyond individual boundaries. activities may include research on community organisations, student service learning, and other initiatives connecting campuses and communities. community engagement provides opportunities for entrepreneurship education, which in the context of higher education involves learners developing the mindset and skills to turn creative ideas into entrepreneurial action. such competence is crucial to personal development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employability (rodrigues 2023). the integration of community engagement and entrepreneurship in curricula has gained interest globally in higher education. this has mostly been occasioned by the need to prepare learners for employability. there is consensus that for university students to fit into the world of work, they require a good blend of both technical (hard skills) and soft skills (commonly referred to as 21st century skills) (trilling & fadel 2009). entrepreneurship is considered a vital 21st century skill because it combines creativity, business acumen and adaptability. given the critical role of preparing fit for purposes graduates, most universities are faced with the challenge of striving to embed 21st century skills such as entrepreneurship in their program offerings. thus, this article focuses on interrogation of connection of curricula to practice, that is, how practice-based approaches become integral to the training and learning of implementation of the practical approaches in the agri-enterprise development (aed) curriculum. the aed is premised on interventions-to-impact of educational programs, as indicated in fig. 1. a focused training program, such as nampala et al. 2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 2024 the aed, secures promise of achieving the intended outputs, outcomes and impacts of profiles itemised in figure 1. figure 1. a generalised impact pathway for post-secondary education interventions. adapted from maredia (2007). the participating universities that engaged in curricula development and implementation of practical training approaches for aed were desirous of achieving the outputs, outcomes and impacts presented in fig. 1. egerton university is the oldest institution of higher learning in kenya. it is also the premier agriculture training institution. founded as a farm school in 1939, it was upgraded in 1950 to an agricultural college offering diploma programs. after close to four decades as such, in 1987, egerton agricultural college was gazetted and established as egerton university through an act of parliament. the university is headquartered at njoro main campus in western kenya and has several other campuses. the njoro main campus houses the faculty of agriculture. under the african centers of excellence initiative, egerton university won a world bank grant to establish a centre of excellence in sustainable agriculture and agribusiness management. as a premier agricultural training institution in kenya, egerton university has maintained practical approaches to learning and teaching in the agricultural fields. unlike egerton university, gulu university was established more recently as one of the public universities in uganda, under statutory instrument number 31 of 2003. at the time of implementation of this project, from which this article stems (2012–2015), the university was undertaking only undergraduate programs. the project effort was thus very timely for gulu university as it could work in partnership with an experienced university in the region, egerton university, as part of a cohort of learning and peer support to strengthening existing programs, as well as study processes towards the establishment of curricula for postgraduate training. in line with its vision for community transformation, gulu university has a strong linkage to rural communities, especially in northern uganda, as exhibited in the implementation of both undergraduate training and outreach engagements. for instance, all programs have a strong component of outreach and internships. since 2016, gulu university has expanded the portfolio of program offerings to include masters and phd, and has championed the integration of community engagement and entrepreneurship in practical training models for rural transformation. the gulu university academic programs have a strong element of interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial skills development. for instance, four programs (phd in agricultural and rural innovation, phd in agricultural and applied bioscience, msc. agri-enterprises development, msc. food security and community nutrition) require students to conduct relevant community-engagement along selected nodes of value chains, and work with multistakeholder platforms and community food systems (kalule et al. 2019; 2023). nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20243 we illustrate here how the partnerships between two east african universities (with varying and unique practical approaches), on one side, and development-oriented actors in agribusiness, on the other, resulted in curriculum innovations linked to practice, with a view to securing the desired outputs, outcomes and impacts in fig. 1 above. although universities strive to undertake community engagement, the practice has been that this is the preserve of faculty members with very limited, involved (if at all) students. it is therefore not part of the training program. this article serves to inform discussion as well as catalyze action towards reorienting training curricula for community engagement at african universities and linking university education with practice targeting employability of graduates. the thesis in this article derives from experiences attained through cohort learning and data mined from documents on the aed curriculum maintained at the two participating universities and accredited by the responsible bodies in uganda and kenya. other resource materials used included reports from various curriculum-development workshops, discussion at convened events between and among agribusiness development attendees, and scoping study reports presented by gu and egu as part of activities in the joint project implementation process. discourse on the relevance of higher education in africa: theoretical underpinnings higher education systems in africa have witnessed an increased number of universities and student enrolment rates (nakayiwa et al. 2016). this followed the structural adjustment programs that introduced private universities co-existing with public universities. statistics show that up to 4.5 million students join either university or technical and vocational education annually (nakayiwa et al. 2016). however, the increase in enrolment rates has not been matched by improved quality of education. instead, higher education institutions (heis) continue to experience enormous challenges, ranging from high student to instructor ratios (british council 2014), inadequate or even dilapidated training facilities, and inadequate funding and curricula deficiencies in practical orientation (hayward & ncayiyana 2014). the growing deficiencies in practical orientation among graduates has put african universities, in particular, under immense pressure to show their relevance to society. considering this, the debate on higher education in africa seems to be centred on three key issues. first, reviewing and orienting training curricula to ensure that graduates have employable competencies. employable competencies are acquired through innovative training and are a critical measure of success in workplaces (chain et al. 2019). however, perspectives on competency for employability vary amongst students, graduates, educators, employers and the policymakers. morrison (2014) stressed that students and graduates assume that key competencies for their employability are leadership and work ethic, while lecturers expect employers to prefer critical thinking, communication skills and self-confidence. the concern of employers regarding graduates is inability to exhibit innovativeness and interpersonal skills. as such, in many non-african education systems, the involvement of non-educator stakeholders (particularly industry, private sector players and government agencies) in curriculum design processes is highly emphasised (eurydice 2015). currently, there are very few african universities that have up-to-date curricula or use training methods promoting innovation ( juma 2016). second, examinations of university research activities against national or regional development priorities reveal a disconnect between the research work done by university staff and students and the policy aspirations (eicher & haggebad 2013). third, engaging universities in community outreach or service learning is understood as a way to contribute to solving community problems (preece 2013). shortfalls inherent in the above three issues have positioned african universities to lag behind their counterparts in europe, asia, latin and north america in the global knowledge economy and innovation indices (larsen 2016). therefore, the position of african higher education systems in the global knowledge economy is of great concern to continental regulatory and policy frameworks. for example, as quoted in nakayiwa et al. nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20244 (2016), the african agenda 2063 articulates a strong knowledge management system, experiential learning, cutting edge research and innovation. to accelerate the attainment of the ‘africa we want’ as envisaged in agenda 2063, the continental education strategy (cesa) emphasises acquisition of requisite knowledge and skills. similarly, the east african community (eac)’s vision 2050 articulates mainstreaming research and innovation in higher education institutions for economic transformation and development. this vision specifically emphasises entrepreneurship and business skills training, professional, technical and vocational training, as well as lifelong learning, all geared towards bridging skills gaps for advancing the regional development agenda (eac 2016). thus, the regional and continental agenda underpin the importance of higher education and research for socio-economic transformation. for such efforts, what matters is not just technologies and innovations generated through research but adapting them appropriately for local application. inevitably, universities have an important role to play in achieving social legitimisation, cohesion and knowledge production, and a transfer agenda (cloete & maassen 2015). pursuing the knowledge economy agenda in africa implies that the policy and hei actors have to reform the higher education systems to target enhanced delivery and efficiency. in order to catalyze development, african universities have to contend with the dual challenges of attending to substantially high numbers of students and producing graduates with significantly improved capabilities and entrepreneurial mind-sets (larsen 2016). as such, improving the curricula of training alone may not be sufficient to solve the problem of inadequacy of employability skills amongst graduates. very importantly, there are considerable limitations in the learning environment for students. yet again, in many african universities, instructors are often not well motivated, lack the necessary facilitation and equipment, and in some instances, do not receive regular refresher training to upgrade their capabilities to match modern approaches to facilitating learning. all this happens amidst expectations of competing in global knowledge while responding to local development needs ( jowi 2012). in effect, what has had to give way is the quality of graduates (british council2014). this is well evidenced in the outcome of a survey conducted in 2014 by the inter-university council for east africa, which revealed that half of the graduates from universities in the east african community lacked employability skills. these graduates are widely criticised for lacking the competences that are sought after in the labour market namely problemsolving, critical thinking, innovativeness, creativity and communication skills (ssebuwufu et al. 2012). while responding to the above concerns, african universities are increasingly repositioning themselves to integrate community engagement in their core business. these universities are also reviewing and/or designing curricula to integrate entrepreneurial training approaches within community-engagement undertakings. this renewed emphasis on community engagement (ce) and the entrepreneurial education in training curricula comes following the realisation that ce facilitates: (1) promoting university visibility in the community; (2) improving the quality of life in communities; and (3) enhancing soft and entrepreneurial skills amongst graduates (sherrad 2016). entrepreneurial capacity building in real life situations does not only contribute to improved employment of graduates, but also the emergence of small businesses, a precursor to economic development ( jacob et al. 2015). however, key questions that keep re-occurring in this debate rotate around the kind of strategies universities should exploit to initiate and promote community-engagement and entrepreneurship in the communities in which they are located and how the curricula can be better placed to realise transformations. universities have students in addition to academic staff to utilise dissemination of researched technologies, triggering entrepreneurial action and innovation. however, juma (2016) argued that many new businesses and technologies generated in universities do not mature into commercial enterprises able to exist beyond academic exercises. this is largely due to research management limitations and absence of supportive policy frameworks. relatedly, some scholars suggest that these student-initiated businesses fail to grow owing to lack of risk capital to nurture them (ben-ari & vonortas 2007; bjørgum & sørheim 2015;). further, in many developing countries, the innovation ecosystems are not well developed to nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20245 support the emergence and development of business incubates and knowledge-based industries (lee & tee 2009). despite the challenges of nurturing business incubators and innovations, practical approaches in entrepreneurship and community engagement are gaining prominence in discussions about african higher education. however, there is a lack of documentation regarding the process and successful institutionalisation of change as part of the desired transformation within and among higher education institutions (heis). the interrogation of these issues extends to how community-engagement and entrepreneurship approaches can practically become integral in the curricula at heis. one such curriculum integrating the two approaches is the masters’ program in agri-enterprise development (aed). this academic program was collaboratively developed by two east african universities, namely gulu university (gu) in uganda and egerton university (egu) in kenya with funding from the ford foundation. the aed program targets to produce graduates who are well-grounded and have the right mix of competencies in entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and mind-sets. these competencies are particularly essential for driving agribusiness development and policy research. philosophically, the aed program integrates three practice-derived approaches: (1) value chain cluster mapping and development; (2) roundtable engagements; and (3) entrepreneurial capacity building (student enterprise projects) in graduate training. indeed, these three practical approaches bring experiential learning to graduate training. the aed curriculum envisions that graduates of entrepreneurial training would be able to identify business opportunities existing at different nodes of the agricultural value chains, namely inputs supply, production, processing, distribution and marketing, as well as support services, before turning them into viable agribusinesses. the orientation of experiential learning with entrepreneurial action is not only helpful to graduates, but also to the economy as a whole, since mind-sets of such graduates can be transformed from job seekers to job providers (ssebuwufu et al. 2012). therefore, the integration of practical entrepreneurship training in the aed curriculum sought to respond to the need for enhanced employability of graduates through business development. embedding practice-based approaches in agri-enterprises development curriculum process analysis process analysis, as articulated in the literature (ceravolo et al. 2023; hall 2006), is a practice of examining processes to identify opportunities for improvement. by analysing how institutions deliver on their mandate and tasks, institutions can uncover inefficiencies, bottlenecks and areas where processes can be streamlined. it’s a way to gain insights into the steps and actions needed for institutions to attain their goals. process analysis challenges the contention that statistical methods applied to large numbers of cases invariably provide better grounds for casual inference (hall 2006). the process analysis in this article adopts the two approaches of routable engagements (mahapatatra & dash 2022) and cluster mapping (ketels 2017) to foster collaborative discussion and attain consensus. the idea of developing a graduate training curriculum in agri-enterprises development was hatched in 2015, refined and launched within the framework of the project titled ‘transforming universities to stimulate pro-poor agri-enterprise development in eastern africa using value chain and the round table approaches to postgraduate training’. this project (fed 2013/320-100) was funded by the ford foundation. the project brought together actors who exhibited synergies of complementarity. the actors included the two east african universities, namely gu and egu, whose expertise was essential for curriculum development as they were the ultimate target stakeholders with regard to implementation of the resultant curricula. other actors were the regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum), a network of 170 universities in 40 african countries with vast experience in supporting graduate training linked to nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20246 smallholder community action-research (nampala et al. 2016). the partnership also had the international institute for rural reconstruction (iirr) operating throughout the east african region and round table africa (rta), an organisation with a base at maastricht university in the netherlands and an outreach mission in tanzania. the iirr brought expertise to the team, providing capacity building and business development services to smallholder farmers, while rta is renowned for developing the competitiveness of enterprises through cooperation and inter-linkages among related enterprise clusters. the idea of the curriculum (re)design of aed was motivated by the fact that, despite the existence of graduate training programs in agribusiness in the eastern and southern african region, there was only a handful of agricultural professionals and practising entrepreneurs engaged in farming as a business. secondly, it was realised that there were only a few collaborative and regional-wide academic programs, a limitation that was derailing harnessing of educational and innovative networks amongst both universities and graduates. such educational networks are relevant in facilitating cross-learning amongst heis, as well as enhancing cross-border technology transfer and employability of graduates (banadda et al. 2016). those involved through a participatory engagement process that entailed convening events with higher education stakeholders worked out frames of reference for guiding the development and rolling out of the agri-enterprises development curriculum, which included ingredients of community-engagement and entrepreneurship. these included: (1) building on experiences existing within the participating universities; (2) consultation with agribusiness sector players; (3) learning from existing models of best practice in graduate training and research; and (4) profiling the desired competencies of the graduate of agri-enterprises development. the process was initiated by convening cohort-learning events that facilitated sharing of experiences between participating universities and drawing lessons from other heis, particularly the ruforum member universities and the earth university. in-depth scoping studies were undertaken at both gu and egu that unearthed diverse training approaches, thus allowing cross-fertilisation in the curriculum under development. the scoping studies in both universities identified existing gaps in both delivery approaches and human resources (faculty staffing). results of the scoping studies were disseminated as working documents, which were presented to an array of higher education stakeholders (academia, government, private sector and industry, and communities) by each of the two universities. the variations and similarities in the training approaches were considered particularly relevant, as they complemented and supported the process of developing a collaborative and regional-level graduate curriculum. while egerton university had postgraduate training programs, gulu university presented a working document showing that at the time there was no masters or phd training program in the faculty of agriculture and environment (fae). the working document further presented two novel practical training approaches, which at the time were well-embedded in the undergraduate training curriculum for the bachelor of agriculture, namely the student farmer attachment (sfa) program and the supervised student enterprise project (ssep). as described in kalule et al. (2016) and odongo et al. (2017), the sfa, also known as the student-centredoutreach (s-c-o), was designed in such a way that students spend a minimum of one year working with small-holder farmers for experiential learning. under this approach, students operate within a radius of 10 kilometres from the university campus and regularly commute to and from farmsteads by riding bicycles or walking. the ssep approach, also commonly referred to as the student enterprise scheme (ses), described in kalule 2017), involves students developing their own business ideas into fundable business plans. the business plans that meet the minimum criteria of technical feasibility, commercial soundness and economic viability are funded within the faculty on credit, with modest interest rates. a prominent difference between gu and egu is that the latter university had running graduate programs in agricultural economics and agribusiness. in addition, egu had participation experience nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20247 in the regional level collaborative masters’ program in agricultural and applied economics (cmaae), offered in universities in eastern, central and southern africa. this difference was attributable to the fact that egu is a more well-established university (established as a technical farm school in 1939 and evolved into a comprehensive university in 1987) than gu (established in 2002); and its experience became valuable in the final stages of curriculum development. further, the egu working document highlighted a number of gaps, experiences and lessons learnt over time while delivering graduate training. the gaps enumerated included: information and communication technologies (ict) and e-learning, management skills, project management, personal skills and networking, conflict/disaster management, monitoring and evaluation, and inadequate integration of innovation concepts and systems thinking. a key lesson shared by egu was the existence of limited attention in cultivating agri-enterprise development-based skills and attitudes within agricultural departments of african universities, especially at masters’ degree level, leading to a significant capacity gap for problem solving and rural development. the working documents presented by gu and egu revealed that the two universities were already inclined to embedding community engagement and student enterprise projects in training curricula. the combination of these two practical approaches was plausible in kick-starting innovation and the commercialisation orientation of universities, as articulated by juma (2016). these practical approaches stood to benefit from lessons and experiences of other universities already practising them. as part of this effort, faculty members from the two universities and staff from the project actors, described above, participated in learning excursions at earth university. the earth university in costa rica is well known for its entrepreneurial capacity building of students linked to community-based projects (sherrad 2016). the two working documents were, however, silent on how the two universities would embed in their curricula contemporary approaches to facilitating learning, namely problem-based learning (pbl) and e-learning platforms. the innovative pbl approach is credited with developing soft and intellectual skills of students, namely critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and communication (mohamedbhai 2013), while the e-platforms are increasingly becoming a necessary component of teaching and learning programs. still on graduate learning models, ruforum shared experiences and models of engaging african agricultural universities in graduate training and research, focusing on solving community-based problems. one model that stakeholders zeroed in on was the community action-research programme (carp) (nampala 2017). notably, the guiding principle of the carp is delivering training and research, with a focus on giving back to the community. senior faculty members, in particular, who have vast research experience, bid for grants from ruforum. the winner is then meant to recruit graduate students at masters or phd level to undertake graduate training and research. the research tends to focus on community-based agri-enterprises, and to inherently solve community problems as identified by the research team (senior faculty member and the graduate students). upon completion of the research, the students return to the community and share their findings on contributing to improvement of community life (egeru et al. 2016). other stakeholders, apart from the academe, but including agribusiness development facilitators, shared their specialized knowledge in engaging the agribusiness actors for improving the competitiveness of the agri-enterprises. for example, iirr shared their experience of capacity building in value chain approaches, mainly in developing countries, using action-research approaches. the iirr also educated stakeholders in scholarly work that this organisation was engaged in and disseminated it globally. the publications included books, journal articles and case studies largely focusing on engendering value chains (mayoux & mackie 2008; kit & iir 2010). the idea of such action research was to enhance the competitiveness of agri-enterprises through functional, process and product upgrading of value chains. it was realised that if iirr approaches were integrated within the graduate curriculum, this would permit positioning of students nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20248 at various nodes of the value chains as practical training. thus, during community attachment, students would interact and work with value chain actors, community influencers and supporters as they learnt and effectively contributed to upgrading of the value chains. the iirr personnel were also identified as good partners in curriculum implementation in terms of facilitating writing of case studies, supplying resource persons for guest lectures, and offering placement opportunities for student community attachment. relatedly, round table africa enriched the process of curriculum discussion with yet another unique approach, that of integrating roundtable engagement and research in graduate training. the rta mission emphasises linking research and education with sustainable business development in the areas of agriculture, mining and tourism through graduate training (at masters and doctoral degree levels), applied research, roundtable engagement and projects. it also articulates that the philosophy of the roundtable approach has three core theoretical frameworks and educational courses, namely, competitiveness, value chain development, and) partnerships. as with the case of iirr, round table africa was identified as a useful partner in facilitating the re-tooling process of faculty staff and also supplying personnel for guest lectures in graduate training. the collection of gaps in university training curricula, experience and lessons learnt, as well as the practices of agribusiness industry actors, culminated in brainstorming, synthesis and identification of competencies that defined the profile of the desired graduate to facilitate agri-enterprises development. the gaps were generally related to content, implementation and achievement, as described in table 1. specifically, these gaps in competency and desired capabilities were considered under knowledge, skills and attitudes. the desired knowledge competences of the graduate were identified as follows: financial management and accounting, team building, systems thinking, marketing, and agri-business information management system. other knowledge competences included: business research methods, agri-business policy analysis and protocols, entrepreneurship and enterprise development, foresight, planning and quantitative analysis techniques. on prerequisite skills, the stakeholders zeroed in on the ability to set-=up agri-enterprises, provide consultancies to the community, business communication, facilitating agri-business planning and value addition processes, people skills/soft skills, analytical skills, leadership and influencing agri-business change processes. the desired attitudes and mind-sets were a positive attitude towards agriculture and demonstrating creativity, dedication, determination, flexibility, leadership and passion. other attitudes included self-confidence, a competitive attitude and high-energy organisation. table 1. identified gaps in the design and delivery of university training and learning curricula gaps description content gaps these occur when specific topics or skills are missing from the course content. implementation gaps weaknesses in curriculum execution, such as limited opportunities for learners to practise and apply coursework. achievement gaps areas where learners may not meet expected standards. an evaluation of the process confirmed that bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (bloom et al. 1994; goulund 1991) was the theoretical underpinning that the team used to re(design) an innovative curriculum. bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives recognises three measurable outcomes that are interconnected and aligned to the impact pathway for post-secondary education (maredia 2007). they are knowledge-based goals, skills-based goals and effective values, attitudes and interests. the aed mainly focuses on the knowledge-based goals, as indicated in table 2. nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20249 table 2. bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives for knowledge-based goals level of expertise description of level 1. knowledge recall or recognition of terms, ideas, procedures, theories, etc. 2. comprehension translate, interpret, extrapolate, but not see full implications, or transfer to other situations closer to literal translation. 3. application apply abstractions, general principles or methods to specific concrete situations. 4. analysis separation of a complex idea into its constituent parts, and an understanding of organisation and relationship between the parts. includes realising the distinction between hypothesis and fact as well as between relevant and extraneous variables. 5. synthesis creative mental construction of ideas and concepts from multiple sources to form complex ideas into a new, integrated and meaningful pattern subject to given constraints. 6. evaluation to make a judgment of ideas or methods using external evidence or self-selected criteria substantiated by observations or informed rationalisations. analysis of the profile of knowledge competencies of the desired graduate yielded program learning outcomes for the proposed curriculum. in summary, the learning outcomes defined a graduate capable of: (1) starting, owning and running an agri-enterprise; (2) managing agri-enterprises and agribusiness projects; and (3) undertaking research and policy analysis for agri-enterprise development. further breakdown of the learning outcomes gave clues to the kinds of courses that would be included in the curriculum. core courses and standards were generated as a way of facilitating credit transfer. the core courses ranged from areas of agribusiness, agricultural economics, finance and accounting, entrepreneurship, quantitative methods, research methods and statistical methods. however, variations in elective courses were allowed, along with course description details, so that individual universities could meet accreditation requirements as established by the countries of origin, and where the proposed masters’ curriculum was to be implemented. optional areas included human resource management, project management, and policy analysis. the learning outcomes also enabled visualisation of the employment sectors that graduates would be oriented to during training. these included owning agri-enterprise businesses, project management, and agribusiness policy analysis and research. curriculum innovations curriculum outlook shows that university actors took lessons from community-based actors in the agribusiness sector and experiences from earlier curricula implementation. key curricula features (see fig. 2) with few variations between the two participating universities include: 1) course content generated in consultation with the agribusiness sector actors; 2) graduate research (including action-research and case studies); 3) value chain cluster mapping and development; 4) roundtable engagement; 5) community and/ or farm attachment; and 6) the student enterprise scheme. for instance, the curriculum document at gu, accredited by the national council for higher education in uganda, shows these features. this document articulates the philosophy underpinning this curriculum as ‘integrating value chain analysis, roundtable engagements and agri-entrepreneurial development approaches in graduate teaching and research’. further still, the curriculum on agri-enterprises development recognises the growing pedagogical shift in higher nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202410 education from the lecture mode of facilitating learning to problem-based learning (pbl) approaches, with a view to empowering and equipping graduates with employable skills, as discussed in mohamedbhai (2013). the integration of pbl as a delivery approach was a consequence of extensive dialogue and conversations at various convened events and was enriched to achieve consensus from the scoping data presented in working documents by gu and egu on the need to develop intellectual skills amongst graduates. many scholars of higher education systems (altbach & knight 2007; margalef & pareja 2008; turcsanyi-szabo 2012) have emphasised that it is these intellectual skills that enhance the employability of the graduate and entrepreneurial action. they include creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, analytical and communication skills (dabalen et al. 2001; pitan & adedeji 2012).                       coursework & tools  value chain cluster mapping & development  student enterprise scheme  community attachment graduate research roundtable engagement right mix of competences, i.e. knowledge, skills and positive mindsets for entrepreneurship & agribusiness development private sector & entrepreneurship managerial career (bureaucrat type) agribusiness research & policy analysis figure 2. schematic representation of the agri-enterprises development curriculum upon enrolment, students begin with training inputs of course work, along with tools/ practicals, namely: value chain analysis, business plan development, and research methods which feed into field-based practicum/modules on ce and ses, undertaken in year two, together with research. these concurrent curricula activities ensure that students cover master’s degree training within two years. though its actionpacked, students can still complete their studies through study extensions. the involvement of industrial actors in the curriculum workshop and sharing of practices influenced considerably the final courses, theories and practical approaches that were incorporated within the curriculum. the actors’ contribution was clearly evident in the type of competences in knowledge, skills and mind-sets profiled for graduates. for example, the curriculum was well integrated with the following knowledge areas: agribusiness information systems management, value chains analysis and development (vca), social organisation for agri-enterprises, and agri-entrepreneurship development. the curriculum also had a practical training orientation towards skills development, which was linked to existing practices within the agribusiness sector. training approaches in higher education institutions (heis) effectively support the entrepreneurial orientation of training. this alignment contributes to improved creativity and enhances the employability of graduates (turcsanyi-szabo 2012). the approaches nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202411 included (1) the practicum on the vca; and (2) roundtable engagement. the integration of vca in the graduate curricula demonstrated learning and customisation of approaches that iirr and rta embrace and practise in development work. the curriculum also placed a significant focus on roundtable research and engagement, following the contribution from rta. roundtable engagements allowed for dissemination with a wide audience, such as value chain actors, financial institutions, farmer organizations, private sector and business development facilitators. information shared included action-oriented research results, business models and unique practices. further still, previous experiences of university actors delivering training in earlier curricula were crucial to informing and refining practical approaches in the aed curriculum. two practical approaches, in particular, that had been previously tested in training undergraduate students were brought forward in the aed curriculum. these approaches were: (1) the student enterprise scheme (ses); and (2) student community engagement. the ses would enable early entry into entrepreneurial action for students of agri-enterprise development while still at the university, so targeting the emergence of small and medium enterprises in agriculture. this line of thought was well aligned with the juma argument of 2016, which suggested that universities, through their innovative action and entrepreneurship, should have an important role to play in the economic development of african countries. in the ses, students prepare business plans and present them to an audience that is comprised largely of peers, instructors and other faculty staff. students also develop and implement fundable business plans. graduate seminars focusing on inculcating consulting skills in business development services are also provided for in the aed curriculum (see the course on graduate seminars). integrating consulting skills and business development services in the curriculum is an indication of learning from the various approaches of iirr. key competencies include: (1) developing technical assistance skills in business development services; (2) evaluation of business plans; and (3) providing feedback to clients. these enable students to practise providing and receiving feedback in a competitive business environment. we consider this an opportunity to attain concrete experience that will take learners through the cycle of kolb’s two continuums, thereby making them active doers who will put knowledge gained into practice (mcleod 2017).          figure 3. kolb’s (1984) learning stages and cycle could be used by teachers to critically evaluate the learning provision typically available to students, and to develop more appropriate learning opportunities with concrete experience that transcends into action. nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202412 similarly, ce in the aed curriculum was informed by experiences of earlier curriculum implementation and the widespread calls for african universities to re-orient their services and activities to be more relevant to community (sherrad, 2016). in responding to this concern, the aed curriculum embedded ce, taking lessons from the sfa at gu (see kalule et al. 2016; odongo et al. 2017) and the farm attachment program at egu (see mungai et al. 2016). a major variance, however, is that, unlike sfa and the farm attachment, which are designed for undergraduate training, the focus is on working with smallholder farmers at farmsteads, the refined ce in the aed curriculum targeted mostly postgraduate students (masters and phd levels) working with farmer organisations (groups and associations), producer cooperative societies, and civil society organisations serving the farming community. as articulated in the report of the independent facilitator of the aed curriculum mid-term review of june 2016, universities have through the new curricula institutionalised sfa, ses and sce (kalule et al. 2016, 2017; mungai et al. 2016) and in the process gained opportunities, including: (1) student experiential learning; (2) linking graduate research to solving community problems; and (3) increased visibility of the faculty and the universities in the community. since then, egu and gu have engaged in jointly pursuing, e.g. strengthening university outreach and the agri-entrepreneurship training grant from ruforum, which has enabled students through ce to impart a business planning mentality amongst farmers’ organisations (see kalule et al. 2017). one key challenge with innovations in curriculum design relates to the costs involved in the implementation of approved curricula. for the aed, the engagement with organisations for a given period of time, as part of the training period to impart skills through pbl, entails realignment outside the lecture room, with the farm/field as the appropriate context for teaching and learning. this attracts upkeep costs as well as other expenses. as observed in ishengoma (2017), most universities in africa depend on donor support for postgraduate training and research, and there is an urgent need for institutional transformation on the part of universities to accommodate financing models that garner resources for implementation of innovative curriculum. as highlighted in kalule et al. (2017), the two universities involved in this undertaking have twined and worked together to mobilise resources and secure continuity of the initiated activities. through this effort, the cohorts of students are beneficiaries of grant funding secured from the european union’s edulink ii (fed/2013/320-100-2016) and ruforum (ru 2014 ng 12; ru 2014 ng 15 and ru 2014 ng 18). nonetheless, as highlighted in ishengoma (2017), the implementation of curricula at heis necessitates sustained financing and this cannot rely entirely on donor support alone. the private scholarships of paying students are overtaking both the grants and government scholarships at most universities in africa. it is hoped that in the long run the different available financing models will sustain students to enrol in innovative programs such as the aed as part of efforts to build the critical human capital needed to shape and implement the socio-economic transformation agenda for africa. as the gaps in university training curricula can vary, this study demonstrates the importance of conducting curriculum gap analysis so that there is alignment with expectations in the world of work, especially industry needs. this facilitates appropriate design of new curricula as well as revision of existing ones. it is only through such processes that universities will (a) ensure comprehensive coverage of relevant subject matter; (b) explore opportunities to incorporate practical application and hands-on experience in teaching and learning; and (c) engage in assessing learning outcomes and addressing any disparities. conclusions and recommendations this study conducted in east africa demonstrates how university-industrial actors’ collaboration can be exploited for curriculum (re)design, review and up-dating for (a) enhanced relevance of universities to community needs and employability of graduates; and (b) improvements in the research uptake pathways that facilitate research-into-use for desired impacts at community level through integration of nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202413 community engagement and entrepreneurship in curricula. our conviction is that the lessons learnt and recommendations arising from this study are applicable not only to higher education institutions and partners in teaching and learning but can be contextualised to apply elsewhere. strengthening linkages between universities and community-development actors can enhance curriculum orientation toward problem-solving and entrepreneurial capacity building for young graduates. purposeful engagement with communities by university faculty and students serves as a complementary extension approach and advisory service. implementing an innovative curriculum has the potential to boost research uptake and foster innovation. this demonstrates how university-industrial actors’ collaboration can be exploited for curriculum (re)design, review and updating for (a) enhanced relevance of universities to community needs and employability of graduates; and (b) improvements in the research uptake pathways that facilitate research-into-use for desired impacts at the community level. reorientating higher education with entrepreneurial and community-engagement approaches features prominently in knowledge economy-based development. in the same spirit, the aed curriculum was developed and launched at gulu university in uganda and egerton university in kenya, targeting community engagement and student enterprise projects (entrepreneurship) as practical approaches that respond to skills development, but also solve community problems. the aed curriculum integrates three practice-derived approaches: (1) value chain cluster mapping and development; (2) round table engagements; and (3) entrepreneurial capacity building (student enterprise projects) in graduate training. the process of curriculum development brought together university actors and agribusiness development facilitators, i.e. iirr and rta. as illustrated in this article, the interaction of these actors enabled crosslearning and cross-fertilisation of training and development-linked approaches in the new graduate curriculum of agri-enterprises development. the engagement with ruforum, a network of 85 member universities in africa, facilitated the two participating universities that are members of the network to learn from other experiences in africa and elsewhere (particularly earth university). through the ruforum convening events, gu and egu have shared widely the implementation of this effort, with a view to scaling out the proven model. important curriculum innovations that emerged from these interactions included: (1) integrating value chain approaches in graduate agri-enterprises development training; (2) roundtable research and engagement; and (3) the student enterprise scheme. it is clear that involving community-based and industrial actors in curriculum development processes is critical in designing curricula that exhibit relevance to society needs. in addition, documented experiences and lessons from previous curriculum implementation are not only important for reviewing and improving existing curricula, but also informing new ones that are under development. all the aed programs seem destined to enhance employable skills amongst agricultural students, as well as achieving more university visibility in the community, and vice versa, i.e, more community visibility in the university. we strongly recommend that universities always consult development-oriented actors and industry stakeholders when designing, reviewing and updating training curricula to achieve increased alignment and relevance to society needs. this is likely to enhance integration of practice-based approaches in the curricula of learning, as well as improving the employability of university graduates. universities should also intensify cooperation during curricula development. this is not only crucial for cross-fertilisation of diverse approaches to training residents in different universities, but also in harnessing networks of industrial actors as long-term partners. graduates also stand to benefit from such networks as they provide opportunities for multinational entry into commercial activities. for further research, we recommend examining the impacts of innovations inherent in the curriculum of agri-enterprises development on the intentions, career choices and employability of graduates. nampala et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202414 acknowledgement we thankfully acknowledge funding from the ford foundation through the project titled ‘transforming universities to stimulate pro-poor agri-enterprise development in eastern africa using value chain and the roundtable approaches to postgraduate training’. we also acknowledge the financial support from the european union 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any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: morales, m. 2023. the essential role of abcd in developing two community engagement frameworks for supporting latinx students. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:2, 1–19. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8679 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) the essential role of abcd in developing two community engagement frameworks for supporting latinx students marisol morales american council on education, united states corresponding author: marisol morales, mmorales@acenet.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8679 article history: received 20/06/2023; revised 29/10/2023; accepted 28/11/2023; published 12/2023 abstract asset based community development (abcd) is an important framework to understand and develop community-engagement experiences for latinx students, especially at hispanic serving institutions that play an important role in educating latinx students. this article presents the conceptual findings of a research project that looked at the community-engagement experiences of latinx students at an hsi. drawing on in-depth interviews and critical frameworks for engagement, two models were developed: prism of liberatory engagement and asset based critical engagement. these frameworks are presented as ways to (1) understand and differentiate the service learning experiences of latinx students and (2) provide a framework for faculty and community engagement professionals (ceps) to situate their courses and community relationships, and work from an asset-based philosophy of engagement. the prism of liberatory engagement gives explicit attention to the themes (awareness, agency and action; positive interaction with faculty; engaging sameness, and engagement for uplift) and the significant factors (personal/familial trauma, constraints and previous experience with service) that shape the community-engagement experiences of latinx students. the asset based critical engagement model presented in this article provides a theoretical asset-based framework for critical pedagogy for service learning and community engagement that can be vital for institutions, in and outside of the united states, which are serving an increasingly diverse student population. declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8679 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8679 mailto:mmorales@acenet.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i2.8679 keywords asset based community development; latinx students; hispanic serving institutions; community engagement; service learning; prism of liberatory engagement; asset based critical engagement introduction this article shares two community-engagement frameworks for supporting latinx students in community engagement. the frameworks are deeply informed by asset based community development (abcd). in this study, i sought to explicitly understand the community engagement experiences of latinx students at a hispanic serving institution (hsi). before presenting this research in detail, it is necessary to define these key terms: latinx, hispanic and hispanic service institutions. i also briefly introduce myself, and the role that abcd has played in my work and life. latinx is a gender neutral term and is specific to the united states. latinx represents individuals who were either born in, or whose parents or ancestors were born in, latin america or the spanish-speaking caribbean, but now reside in the united states, or whose ancestors were impacted by the border change that was a result of the treaty of guadalupe between mexico and the united states. latinx could be synonymous with the term hispanic, but the term hispanic can be a politically charged term since it tends to ignore the african or indigenous influences in latin america. in us demographics hispanic is not a race but an ethnic category. hispanic serving institution (hsi) is a designation granted to higher education institutions in the united states by the us department of education. to receive this designation, institutions must have a full-time undergraduate enrolment that comprises at least 25 percent latinx students. this designation allows eligible institutions to apply for specific federal grants to assist these types of institutions in expanding educational opportunities for latinx and other underrepresented populations. hsis play a significant role in educating latinx students in the united states. excelencia in education, a research and policy organisation that focuses on latinx student success in higher education, identified 571 hsis, 401 emerging hsis and 241 hispanic serving institutions with graduate programs in 2021–22. hsis enrol 62 percent of all latinx students and represent 19 percent of all institutions of higher education in the united states. they are located in 30 states and territories (excelencia in education 2023). given their significant role in educating this demographic of students, hsis should, theoretically, create an educational environment that serves and supports the specific needs of latinx students, despite many of their roots being in predominantly white institutions (pwi) (fosnacht & nailos 2016). asset based community development has been an important part of my understanding and practise of community work even before i had heard of this terminology. it was the way that i, an afro-puerto rican woman born and raised in chicago, understood grassroots activism and solidarity work. the power of a strong cultural identity, knowledgeable and determined activist ancestors, and my study of colonialism’s impact on puerto rico and its diaspora, seeded my resistance to erasure and invisibility. this awareness came about for me through an undergraduate service-learning course titled ‘us colonialism of puerto rico’ in the last quarter of my second year at depaul university in chicago, illinois. this course in an academic setting was the first time i learnt about my own history and culture. it provided me space to understand the sociopolitical and economic reasons my family migrated and to analyse and act upon this newly gained awareness through a community-engagement project. this experience also altered my educational and professional trajectory, leading me along a path to becoming an activist, community organiser and a higher education professional. my own experience as a latina student involved in community engagement also led to my decision to undertake research on community-engagement experiences of latinx students. i wanted to deeply understand the impact, challenges and opportunities that communityengagement might have on latinx morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20232 students at an hsi. as i engaged in my research, i became aware that latinx students were talking about their community-engagement experiences and the critical frameworks and pedagogies that were situated in my work. critical race theory (crt) scholars have demonstrated that united states’ history is embedded in structural racism and manifests in the fight for representation in the academy , 2009; mccoy & rodricks 2015; patton 2016; solorzano & villalpando 1998). according to the us census, latinx people make up 19.1 percent of the overall us population, while the us department of education, national center for education statistics (2021) shows that latinx make up a quarter of the students in k–12 public schools and 17 percent of the undergraduate student population, but they only represent four percent of the total faculty population in the united states. this phenomenological study explores the community-engagement experiences of latinx students at an hsi. as a result, this article presents two conceptual models: (1) prism of liberatory engagement and (2) asset based critical engagement, to better understand latinx student engagement and offer critical pedagogies that are asset based and equity focused. theoretical landscape and critical pedagogies asset-based community development is a community development model that originated in the fields of sociology and social policy (donaldson & daugherty 2011). it focuses on the strengths and capacities of the community and challenges the deficit-based approach often levied against communities. a deficitsbased approach results in the following: (a) disempowerment of the community by relying heavily on outside experts; (b) resources and funding not being entrusted to residents but to services; (c) services being provided by outside entities, which does not provide direct economic benefit to community residents; (d) may promote a client mentality rather than a neighbour mentality; (e) community leaders being put in a position to denigrate the community by highlighting growing needs, gaps and wants, in order to receive funding; and (f ) deepens dependency on outside entities (donaldson & daugherty 2011; kretzmann & mcknight 1993). this deficit-based lens is often prescribed to communities of colour and low-income communities, in order to sustain manifestation of colonial practices in community development. in contrast, an asset-based approach identifies community assets. it looks at the skills, talents and abilities of local residents and amplifies their voices to address community issues. this appreciative method of community development honours community assets and recognises them as powerful tools for community empowerment, especially for communities that have been historically and structurally marginalised in society (kretzmann & mcknight 1993). similarly, in many colleges and universities in the united states, community engagement has been embraced as one of the primary roles of institutions of higher education. over the last thirty years, a growing movement has pushed colleges and universities across the country to re-examine and invest in their civic and community-engagement efforts because they see the important roles that colleges and universities play in educating an engaged and informed citizenry. in 2012, the association of american colleges and universities (aac&u) published the report, a crucible moment: college learning and democracy’s future, which argued that ‘colleges and universities are among the nation’s most valuable laboratories for civic learning and democratic engagement’ (the national taskforce on civic learning and democratic engagement, 2012, p. 2). service learning (sl) is one example of the ways in which this ‘civic learning and democratic engagement’ is taking shape. sl refers to the integration of theory and practice into an academic setting where action is realised through student participation in community service, volunteerism, advocacy, research, and so forth. according to jacoby et al. (1996, p. 5), it is ‘a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs, together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development’. it melds community morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20233 action with classroom learning through reflection. its roots trace back to the 1960s social movements, but some of the earliest conceptions of it come from the 1860s land grant movement, progressive education and extension services (stanton, giles & cruz 1999). service learning, community-based learning, civic engagement and academic service learning are all names used to describe experiential learning courses that seek to link student learning with community-based learning experiences (eyler & giles 1999; stanton & giles 2017). students make the connections between theory and practice through critical reflection (mitchell 2008). this type of pedagogy is identified as a high-impact practice (kuh 2008). while many colleges and universities are developing criteria around civic learning outcomes and competencies to help support these efforts and increase student engagement, service learning is generally framed from the perspective of whiteness (da cruz 2017; hurtado 2006; lee & espino 2010; mitchell, donahue & young-law 2012). pedagogy of whiteness refers to strategies that reinforce norms and privileges that were developed by white people and to benefit people who were perceived or classified as white. whiteness continues to be replicated and it perpetuates a colour-blind and ahistorical view of societal issues and dismisses white privilege and structural racism as a key contributor to the issues faced by communities of colour. the perpetuation of colour-blind and charity dispositions in teaching service learning ignores racial realities and dismisses the experiences of latinx students, and has the potential to reinforce stereotypes (becker & paul 2015; endres & gould 2009; green 2001, 2003; mitchell et al. 2012; novick et al. 2011). in addition, from the early days of service learning, much of the benefits associated with it were seen as a model for teaching white middle-class college students about diversity and multiculturalism, and exposure to those different from themselves. this happened also through exposure or interaction with marginalised and oppressed communities, mainly communities of colour (butin 2006; dunlap 1998; green,2003; philipsen 2003 & sperling 2007). recent research shows that latinx students are participating in service-learning and communityengagement experiences at higher rates than those of white students (nsee 2018), thus the changing demographics of college students in the united states necessitates a different approach to our work. the national survey on student engagement 2018 report on high impact practices shows that senior latinx students have higher service-learning participation rates than their white counterparts. senior latinx students are participating in service learning at a rate of 63 percent and white students at 60 percent (nsee,2018). while participation rates in service learning for latinx students are higher than those of their white counterparts (nsse 2018), many of the community service projects and their framing are around problem-solving or experiencing diversity (green, 2003; jones, 2001; mitchell, donahue & younglaw, 2012; sperling, 2007). there is growing awareness that the field of literature and how we consistently frame community engagement are not aligned with the increasing diversity of our student body in the united states, nor do the current theories capture what service-learning experiences are like for diverse students. my work seeks to contribute to and provide a more nuanced and authentic way to understand the community-engagement experiences of diverse students, especially latinx students. when applied to service learning, asset-based community development becomes an integral component of a social justice oriented course. it addresses issues of power, challenges students to look beyond how they might have been taught to view communities and their residents, and invites recognition of the local knowledge of community residents (hamerlinck & plaut 2014; hastings 2016). abcd in service-learning (bauer, kniffian & priest 2015; garroutte 2018; shabazz & cook 2014) pushes back on focusing on community needs and deficits in order to provide ‘help’, and instead invites students to engage in a process of discovery of community assets, such as the individual talents of community members and the formal and informal associations that exist within the community. it also explores how institutions such as schools, businesses, community organisations, etc. can be mobilised within the community for the community’s own benefit (hamerlinck & plaut 2014; hastings 2016, kretzmann & mcknight 1993). abcd in servicemorales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20234 learning is grounded in communities and their knowledge resources. this approach shifts traditional power dynamics to the university and the community. it can become an effective resource to access students’ cultural wealth by leveraging the knowledge they have of their communities, especially if those are the same communities they are being asked to engage with in their service-learning courses. the research methodology current literature in the field has focused little on the experiences of latinx students (langhout & gordon 2021; langhout, lopezzi & wang 2023; smith-warsaw, crume & pinzon-perez 2020). this phenomenological research addresses that gap by focusing on and highlighting the community-engagement experiences of undergraduate latinx students at a hispanic serving institution. for this study, the stories and lived experiences of six current or recently graduated latinx students, who had participated in servicelearning experiences at a hispanic serving institution, were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews in order to generate the life stories of the participants. utilising phenomenological methodology, the researcher engaged in an interpretive process known as the hermeneutic cycle. this cycle includes reading, reflective writing and interpretation of the data gathered from in-depth interviews with research participants. the depth of knowledge gained and shared through a hermeneutic phenomenological study makes it a more relevant research methodology than a focus group. this hermeneutic phenomenological research study utilised social justice-oriented frameworks, such as community cultural wealth, applied critical leadership, critical service learning and abcd. an important element of hermeneutic phenomenological research is that the process of bracketing, or suspension of researcher’s understanding, is difficult (kafle 2011). thus, the researcher must acknowledge implicit assumptions and bring them forward explicitly. given that the researcher is a practitioner in the field, the researcher can be seen as an insider. in addition, given that the researcher’s introduction to this work was by being a student of colour in an ethnic studies course, this shaped the researcher’s positionality and connection to the field of community engagement and her interest in hsis and latinx students. the researcher’s identity as an afro-puerto rican cis-female, mother, educator and professional in the field was part of her subjectivity in the research. although the researcher did not attend an hsi, she did work at one, and her introduction to community engagement came via a class that provided her with a culturally relevant and safe environment to engage with her own ethnic community, much like hsis can do for latinx students. the researcher was deeply connected to the research. a purposeful sampling technique was used to select individuals to participate in the study. a homogeneous sampling process was applied because the researcher was selecting participants who (a) were over the age of 18, (b) had taken a service-learning course at the hsi, and (c) identified as a latinx student. to find the individuals who possessed those characteristics, an eligibility survey was administered to each potential participant. the eligibility survey collected (a) demographic information, including age, gender, ethnic or racial background, parental status, work; (b) family background, including level of education of parents, language spoken at home, birthplace of parents, and so forth; (c) university experience, including major and minor involvement in clubs and activities, and participation in a community-engagement course. eleven eligibility surveys were begun, nine were completed, eight individuals were invited to an interview, and six confirmed and participated in the interview. for the purposes of this study, the institution was given the pseudonym of north star university. this particular university was selected because it is one of the oldest hsis in the midwest and because it has had programs serving latinx students since the 1970s. north star university is located in a large midwestern city and in one of the most diverse neighbourhoods of that city. the university has a main campus and three satellite campuses. the participants were both traditional and non-traditional students or recent graduates. there were four female-identified and two male-identified participants. the students interviewed were in different morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20235 community-engagement courses, with different faculty, and engaged with different communities. most of the faculty who were teaching the community-engagement courses were faculty of colour, 4 black, 1 latinx and 1 white. students undertook their engagement at an on-campus food pantry, a community-based housing organisation and their high school, with a latina-focused service and advocacy organisation. using pseudonyms, the female participants were janessa, xaviera, dana and dora. the male participants were josue and adam. the service-learning courses were first year experience courses in education, justice studies, psychology and internship s. most participants took more than one service-learning course. acknowledging the limitation of the small sample size, the intent of this research study was to identify the manifestation of these community-engagement experiences to contribute to challenging the dominant narrative of needs, gaps and wants in the field and practice of community engagement. this study applied the frameworks of applied critical leadership, critical service learning and community cultural wealth, which are derived from crt, as well as asset-based community development (abcd) as the theoretical lens by which to analyse the interview data. these frameworks reinforced the interview data and data from the literature review, and provided support to the themes that were developed and addressed the research questions. the evidence that overlapped allowed for coding and theme development related to the community-engagement experience. the data that was repeated across five or more participants was synthesised into themes. the four themes that emerged from the data were: 1. awareness, agency and action 2. positive interaction with faculty 3. engaging sameness: personal connection to the service 4. engagement for upliftment other evidence that emerged from the interviews, but independent of the classroom-based communityengagement experience, we identified as significant factors. these factors were significant to how the students interacted with and connected to the phenomenon. significant factors were identified if they were shared by four or more of the participants. the three significant factors were: 1. personal/familial trauma 2. constraints 3. previous experience with service. the themes and significant factors that emerged using the hermeneutic cycle of analysis of the stories were shared with all of the participants. crt and social justice lenses helped shape a new conceptual framework, the prism of liberatory engagement. the consistent appearance of the significant factor, which was outside the service-learning experience, but had influence on their engagement, led to the researcher to creating a place for them in the background of the themes that arose from the students’ communityengagement experience. aligning it with the analogy of a prism that filters out or separates white light to see the spectrum of colour, the prism of liberatory engagement allowed us to see the spectrum of experiences and factors that impact the community-engagement experiences of latinx students. prism of liberatory engagement the prism of liberatory engagement invites community-engagement practitioners to understand their latinx students’ experiences and create liberatory spaces for self-determination and self-actualisation in their classrooms and programs by inviting and validating different ways of knowing, reducing barriers, and morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20236 kindling compassion and respect for self and others. figuratively, a prism is ‘a way of looking at or thinking about something that causes you to see or understand it in a different way’ (merriam-webster dictionary, n.d.). it allows the field of community-engagement to work against a dominant deficit ideology and to see latinx community-engagement through a lens of community cultural wealth. it honours the knowledge that students bring with them about their community and does not presume the goal or outcome of their engagement. the model of the prism of liberatory engagement is depicted below (figure 1) and then explained section by section. prism of liberatory engagement awareness, agency and action awareness, agency and action is the process that the latinx students in the study experienced in their community-engagement courses. the use of reflection in service-learning courses provides an opportunity for students to become aware of social inequality, and of themselves as community assets and agents of change, and has a long-term impact on students’ civic identity (astin, vogelgesang, misa, anderson, denson, jayakumar, saenz & yamamura 2006; einfeld & collins 2008; sheil & rivera 2016; west & simmons 2012). the focus and framing of the community-engagement courses offers participants the opportunity to connect their learning and their lived experiences. this prior community knowledge enhances latinx students’ community-engagement encounters by acknowledging the assets they bring to the institution and the community (pérez huber 2009; littenberg-tobias & cohen 2016; yosso 2005). they also understand that they, their families and/or their communities have experienced the social issues they were studying. the service-learning course included an opportunity to reflect on their own community’s experience. for example, the following quotation from adam describes how the service-learning class in which he was enrolled increased his awareness: i went into the course with an open mind and just with the procession of like the experiences that i already live. and like i said prior to your previous question, it just helped reinforce that. so, i already knew some of the stuff that was going on, but it helped explain, even gave me a broader sense of, you know, more issues that are actually correlated. so not just poverty and hunger and homelessness, but again social and morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20237 structural barriers. you know, i didn’t know anything about that until that course. and then it helped me broaden on like how everything’s interconnected from politics to policymaking to taxes you know, high income neighborhoods to low income neighborhoods and the discrimination and inequality between them. the service learning course provided the participants with language to understand and articulate the broader social issues at play that impact the everyday lives of the most marginalised. this newfound academic awareness of social issues also led to the development of agency. as castañeda (2008, p. 325) states, ‘there is greater social awareness that emerged as a result of the intersection of the theory and praxis’. communityengaged courses become an important space for deeper understanding to occur because of the ability to see how those broader issues play out in real-world settings and in real people’s lives, and for these participants in their own lives. participants identified seeing themselves as agents of change. for some, it was something they were able to realise through the service-learning experience or their time at the hsi they attended. the courses with engagement experiences were predominantly in the social sciences, from departments like justice studies or psychology. these courses engaged with issues of social justice and communities. as adam pointed out: it helped me open my eyes to everything that really is going on in the world and gave me a sense of it, reinforce my goals, that i want to go to law school and become an immigration and criminal lawyer, and that would be my way of helping back african american and latinx communities. yep and mitchell (2017, p. 295) point out that framing community engagement in social justice and critical pedagogies unmasks ‘hegemonic power structures and foster[s] autonomy and self-determination’. the autonomy and self-determination they reference is agency. agency in this context is imbued with critical analysis of the root cause of social issues. agency is also the motivation that is reinforced by analytical awareness. the agency helped the latinx students in my study understand their own ability to contribute and provided them with opportunities for action. action manifested in the ways the research participants took the class content and engagement and manifested it in action in their own lives. for some, this was teaching family and friends about what they were learning about social structures. for others, it was deciding what kind of career they wanted to pursue or discover their passions. but for all, it was an acknowledgment of themselves as agents of change. critical service learning, a social justice-oriented service-learning pedagogy, is focused on this kind of social change orientation (mitchell 2007). the action portion of this theme is situated in critical service learning’s social change orientation. this quote from dora illustrates the connection between awareness, agency and action, and points towards a social change orientation: and the professor always, i will never forget this because, she said this every single class, she’d always say that “you don’t have to change the world. you just have to change the ground underneath your feet.” and that really stuck with me and it’s something that i’ve continued to engage in and take with me. after being here, i was like, okay, well how can i apply everything that i learned there and change the ground underneath my feet. so, for me, food insecurity . . . was important and i felt like this course was going to teach me more about it. critical service learning is a service-learning pedagogy where students engage in analysis and reflection around power distribution, build meaningful relationships with the community and become more changeoriented. critical service learning serves as one of the theoretical lenses used to interpret data and directly correlates with the theme of awareness, agency and action. students’ awareness, agency and action emerged from a course-based process that links awareness of structural or social issues to the realisation that you have agency and power to create change, and the vehicle by which to enact that change. it creates a space for critical analysis of injustices faced by communities and offers participants an opportunity to see themselves as agents of change, not just in the immediate term, but as actors in long-term social change. morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20238 positive interaction with faculty all participants discussed and identified positive interactions with their faculty members from the community-based learning course. specifically, the results of the study, in relation to positive faculty interaction, included three sentiments: (a) students felt that they were able to relate to the faculty; (b) they sensed that the faculty cared for them, and (c) they perceived that the faculty took time for them. these descriptions led to the second theme of positive interaction with faculty. xaviera shared, ‘i’ve had very understanding professors; they didn’t put too much pressure on us. they were able to just talk to us like regular people.’ she also noted her service-learning professor, whose class she took as a first-year student: she talked to us like normal people, you know, like we’re, we’re college students and she really wants us to learn and to help other students learn. i think that even now i still see her around the hallways and she’s very like, oh my gosh, hi. you know, and very inviting. and i think that’s one thing that i really took away from her is that she sees you. she’s a great person and i want to be that person. you know, because i’ve always been a very kind of, i guess laid back, kind of reserved onto the side type of person. but, you know, i was so happy because she, she saw me and she like knew my name and it’s, i have a very difficult name to pronounce, but she still tried and was just very welcoming. and i think that’s how i want to be with anyone, especially with my young future students. the emphasis on faculty in this study is consistent with what is in the literature regarding hispanic serving institutions. specifically, faculty who teach at hsis are generally cognisant of the unique curricular needs of their latinx students (kiasatpour & lasley 2008; lara & lara 2012; garcia 2019). as the research participants noted in regard to positive faculty interaction, they felt they could relate to the faculty based on shared experiences. they also noted when that was not present. most of the faculty that taught the engagement courses that participants were in were faculty of colour. four of the six faculty were african american and one faculty was latinx. as a student noted in the interview and i observed from the data, this alludes to solidarity in experiences shared by both african american and latinx communities, especially as it relates to inequities that these communities face. a few of the students interviewed spoke to the similar experiences shared by black and latinx communities in the united states. the faculty who taught these courses had a justice orientation in their courses. garcia (2019) recommends that the reframing of the hsi narrative should include hiring faculty, staff and administrators committed to justice and liberation. this means that university leaders need to emphasise more than just demographic representation of faculty, but also invest in bringing on those who understand how larger systemic issues impact students. those faculty committed to justice, love and liberation create opportunities for students to understand their own agency in creating change and do so in an assets-based way. for me, justice is restorative. it is, as desmond tutu stated, ‘concerned not so much with punishment as with correcting imbalances, restoring broken relationships – with healing, harmony and reconciliation’ (tutu, p. 9) and this can only be done with disclosure and truth telling. liberation, as i utilise it in this work and in my own practice, is tied to love. as hooks states ‘the moment we choose love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. the moment we choose love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others’ (1994, p. 297). in addition, hooks identifies that ‘critical pedagogies of liberation … embrace experiences, confessions and testimony as relevant ways of knowing, as vital dimensions of any learning process’ (hooks 1994, p. 88). the faculty, described by the participants in this study, do appear to possess that orientation towards justice, love and liberation. participants also noted that they felt like faculty cared and took time for them. they checked up on them, learned their stories, and gave of their time and made accommodations to help the participants manage the varied commitments and realities in their lives. this points to authentic caring by the faculty towards the participants and is an important aspect of positive interaction with the faculty. as cammarota & romero (2006, p. 16) point out, ‘authentic caring promotes student-teacher relationships characterized by respect, morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 20239 admiration, and love that inspires you latinas/os to better themselves and their communities’. this was apparent in the participants’ experiences. they truly felt like their faculty cared for them. the sense of care and belonging, coupled with a social justice curriculum and community-engagement experiences, reinforced awareness, agency and action. the coupling of both positive interactions with faculty and awareness, agency and action inspired the participants to better themselves and their communities. these positive interactions with faculty and the justice orientation demonstrated by faculty actions and the course content align with applied critical leadership. in applied critical leadership, educational leaders are considerate of the social context and considerate of their own identities, all through a critical race theory lens (santamaria & santamaria 2012). according to the participants’ responses regarding their faculty, it appears that the faculty from the engagement courses were practising applied critical leadership in their community-engagement classes. the faculty engaged critical pedagogy and presented social justice content, utilising service-learning. their classrooms and their interactions with the participants demonstrated both authentic care of the participants and presentation of counter-hegemonic content to challenge racism and oppression and move towards liberation. in addition, faculty of colour utilised their own identities to relate to the participants. as this quote by adam indicates, the lived experience of his african american professor made an impact in the classroom: she’s african american. she lived all her life in the lincoln park area that is very diverse with both black and latino communities. it made me stay the course and not drop it because she told us about her experiences, her struggles as a student. . . she had troubles at home as well. so, she really connected with a lot of the students and then she always created a safe space where she would never judge us and even allowed us to share our own personal experiences and our own struggles. the class, it felt more like family. like you would just go in and it’s like you haven’t seen them in a while, but they just, understood you regardless of their ethnicity, we had a wide variety of [ethnicities]. from asian students to white students to latinx students and even african american students and even some transgender students. but it was just the wide range of everyone like understood each other. and there we validated each other’s struggles, each other’s experiences that we’ve gone through. so, it just felt we were a bit of a family. the vulnerability in this faculty of colour in those who teach at this diverse institution may have been possible because their intersectional identities are seen as an asset in this diverse institution. intersecting identities is a concept connected to intersectional theory, developed by activist and professor of law kimberly crenshaw, which says that an individual’s identity consists of multiple intersecting factors, including, but not limited to, gender identity, gender expression, race, ethnicity, class (past and present), religious beliefs, disability, sexual identity and sexual expression. in this hsi environment, the students felt safe to share their experiences because the faculty were transparent in sharing their own life experiences. engaging sameness: personal connection with the service in the hsi in this study, community engagement has to be framed differently because the student body is extremely diverse. most of the participants were born in the united states to immigrant parents. their engagement activities are influenced by the realities of their social identities and lived experiences. their intersectional identities influence the type of engagement they participate in and how they understand the course content. janessa said that when her group was searching for a community on which to focus their service-learning project, this concept of engaging sameness was present: ‘we initially just wanted to help out a group and since most of the ones in our group are latinx or latinas, we wanted to help the latinx population.’ in her resistance group, which was what the professor called the community-engagement project group, most of them had experience with how the current political climate surrounding immigration was impacting latinx families. this quote demonstrates that personal connection: morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202310 my mother came here undocumented and received amnesty. and then my brother is an undocumented person also, but he has daca [deferred action for childhood arrivals] status, but then everyone else in my family is documented. so, it’s something that for a lot of the students that are in the resistance group we can connect to it. so that’s why we wanted to predominantly work with undocumented families. the participants explained this reality when describing their community-engagement experiences. their engagement occurred mainly with latinx communities. they understood the broader social issues presented in their courses more intimately because they had faced those same issues. the issues of food insecurity, immigration, violence and discrimination were not abstract concepts; they were their own lived realities. according to a study by stepick, stepick & labissere (2008), youth of immigrant origins do tend to engage in services that relate to the communities they are a part of more than the general population. they also bring that knowledge into the classroom and into their engagement experiences. as an example, all the participants spoke spanish and were bicultural, and used those skills during their engagement activities. the participants understood these sensitivities and expressed authentic empathy and compassion for those they served in their engagement projects. the undocumented woman they helped with a resume could have been their sister. the young woman they gave information to about domestic violence could have been their aunt. the inmate who received their letters could have been their cousin. all of the participants possessed a connection to the service in which they were engaged, whether it be because their families were experiencing housing or employment discrimination or the deep fear that resides in mixed status households where the fear of deportation is an everyday reality. the demonstration of the theme of engaging sameness drew on the community cultural wealth they brought to the university. this appeared to be both acknowledged and respected by the faculty who taught their engagement courses. the community cultural wealth theory, developed by yosso (2005), is based on critical race theory (crt). crt takes a critical approach to examining society and culture and their intersection with race, power and privilege. this approach challenges the deficit model that communities of colour are often subjected to and applies a broader appreciative lens to the cultural values, skills, abilities and relationships that exist in marginalised communities (littenberg-tobias & cohen 2016; pérez huber 2009; solorzano & yosso 2002; yosso 2005). yosso’s (2005) theory of community cultural wealth utilises crt to contest traditional interpretations of cultural capital. she sought to bring to the forefront the cultural capital that marginalised communities have, which is rarely acknowledged or recognised by mainstream society. in her work, she identified six types of cultural capital that educators can utilise in their interactions with students. the six forms of cultural capital are aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational and resistance. these forms of cultural capital can be used to help educators understand how latinx students access and experience college, from an asset-based perspective. this strengths-based framework (yosso 2005) acknowledges the cultural and social assets that students bring from their communities as a way of challenging the structures of inequity that exist in academia. aspirational capital is associated with the hopes and dreams of the participants to pursue and complete their higher education. linguistic capital was present when participants used their bilingual and bicultural skills at their community-engagement sites, and were able to connect with members of the community they were serving. navigational capital appeared in the way participants had to navigate college as firstgeneration students, students whose parents did not attend college, and find their way in order to access resources available to them. this was most prevalent for the first-generation transfer students. resistant capital was demonstrated in their persistence and commitment to complete their education despite obstacles and barriers they faced. social capital was how they accessed and connected to networks of people and community resources that helped them navigate mainstream institutions, such as the university, public school system, or community-based organization, to find engagement projects that were meaningful for them. familial capital appeared in the ways they continued to connect to their community or were able to morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202311 develop that sense of belonging and community in the classroom. this came with developing relationships with faculty and staff on campus and a network of friends to access for support. the conceptual framework of community cultural wealth allowed this study to identify the understanding, familiarity and knowledge that participants possessed as the theme of engaging sameness. engagement for upliftment engagement for upliftment signifies the ways in which the participants interpreted or defined communityengagement as a service of bettering, empowering or uplifting the community. also, it includes aspects of reciprocity, as well as how they see themselves as agents of change or how their future careers will be focused on uplifting and helping their community. the notion of self-efficacy is at the heart of upliftment. the civic identities of the participants were bolstered by their ability to make positive change in the community (alcantar 2014) and understand their role in that change. engagement for upliftment became a reciprocal cycle of acknowledgement of what was given by the community to help get the participants to where they are, and what the participants in turn provide the community through their engagement, and then, what the community and participant both received from that engagement for their mutual upliftment. in this quote, josue discusses the reciprocal nature of working with the community and how it felt for him to complete his service project at the high school that he graduated from. i felt great because it is important to give back to the community because who knows, the community could give back to you one day. similarly, adam said: like my mother would say, it doesn’t matter how far in the education system, you may be, a phd professor or doctorate, whatever, but never forget your roots and where you come from. and never forget the people that helped you get to where you are. and if you have a chance to give back, do it because you never know. that chance that you, that fighting chance, that you give a person back might be their chance in order to succeed to where you are now. upliftment refers to the responsibility that participants felt toward the latino community’s betterment, as well as acknowledgement of what they received from the community that assisted them in their own journey. the acknowledgement of privilege is a key aspect of engagement for upliftment. asset based community development (abcd) (kretzmann & mcknight 1993) is centred on identifying assets and mobilising those assets to facilitate change. the model is based on identification and appreciation of the gifts, talents and abilities that individuals, institutions and communities possess and how these are accessed and mobilised to confront challenges. in this study, those features were displayed in the ways that the participants described their community engagement, themselves as agents of change, and where they saw their future involvement and role in uplifting the community. significant factors the three significant factors were underlying realities that did not have to do with the specific course-based community engagement experience, but did influence their experience. thus, the researcher determined that these factors were worthy of mention and identification. the three significant factors were personal/familial trauma, constraints, and previous experience with service. each of the participants shared a personal or familial experience with trauma. for one it was the fear of deportation of her brother because he was undocumented, even though he had daca status. in addition, this same student indicated that her mother had been a battered woman. for others, it was violence – either violence that they had experienced directly or violence in the community that they lived in, such as hearing morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202312 gunshots, and the fear that caused them. for at least two students, they had childhoods that were impacted by their parents’ dysfunctional relationships. this trauma had some impact on what they did as part of their service or what they decided they wanted to study or do for their careers. the prevalence of these stories in the lives of the participants, and the participants connecting them to their class, education and/or community engagement experiences, is what made the researcher identify this as a significant factor. another significant factor was the constraint that participants felt. the most prevalent constraint was time, because of their need to work and financially support themselves and their families. another constraint was economic. most of the participants were paying for their own education. the final constraint for students, which emerged in the significant factors portion of the framework, was having a strict family that did not allow them to be out past a certain hour or limited where they could go or be outside of school. these constraints limited their ability to engage fully in campus life and the kinds of engagement opportunities in which they could participate. the final significant factor for the participants was previous experience with service. four of the six participants identified previous experience with service, either related to their time in high school and/or as part of their religious background and identity. this previous experience with service seemed to predispose them to selecting community engagement when it was an option or seeking that kind of experience from their academic program. these significant factors demonstrate the need to be more expansive and inclusive of the external factors that impact the engagement experiences of latinx students and other students of colour (alcantar 2014). the researcher could not have fully understood the phenomenon of the community-engagement experiences of latinx students at an hsi without having understood or made room for external factors that students brought to their experiences. these significant factors did have an impact on the students’ experience of the phenomenon. while most of the research on community engagement is more classroom-based and focused on learning outcomes, this study sought to be more socio-centric. the inclusion of these significant factors provided a space to discuss the interplay between the students’ life and the classroom. latinx students are at the centre of this experience, but the underlying reality is the basis for the significant factors. the community-engagement experience is demonstrated in the overlaid circle. the four quadrants of the circle identify the essence of the experience and the major themes that the data revealed of the phenomenon. this model is a depiction of the influence of the significant factors on the participants’ community-engagement experience and the students’ overall experience of higher education. together, the themed experiences and the significant factor form the prism for liberatory engagement (figure 2). asset based critical engagement asset based critical engagement morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202313 as has been shown above, the constant back and forth between interview data, critical frameworks, reading and reflective writing led the researcher to propose a second model, asset based critical engagement. asset-based critical engagement is an engagement framework that seeks to intentionally identify and position community-engagement experiences with all people within the context of their location and experiences. the visual depicts the interplay of the themes and critical pedagogies that form the foundation of the model of asset based critical engagement. community cultural wealth within the model of the prism of liberatory engagement, the theme of engaging sameness: personal connection to the service, aligned with community cultural wealth. the data from the interviews supported yosso’s (2005) research on community cultural wealth, which was a theoretical framework employed in this research. this was demonstrated in the ways the participants connected to linguistic capital, familial capital and aspirational capital. applied critical leadership the theoretical framework of applied critical leadership was prevalent in the theme of positive interaction with faculty. the fact that five of the six faculty who taught the communityengagement course, in which students were enrolled, were faculty of colour demonstrates the importance of both representation and authenticity in the faculty. although the difficulty of recruitment made it impossible to only select participants who had participated in ethnic studies courses that included community-engagement, what did become apparent was that the ethnic/racial background of the faculty mattered. participants felt safe enough to share their lived experiences in the classroom because of the type of space that the faculty created through the sharing of themselves. thus participants did connect their course-based community engagement to the local latinx community. critical service learning in this study, critical service learning was apparent in the theme of awareness, agency, and action. through the course content, participants were able to move through this process, whereby faculty employed the markers of critical service learning. this course-focused approach created a classroom space for a social change orientation to develop in the students by activating their agency, increasing their awareness, and offering tangible opportunities for action. asset-based community development this critical concept was connected to the theme of engagement for upliftment. engagement for upliftment became a reciprocal cycle of acknowledgment of what was given by the community to help get the participants to where they were, what the participants in turn provided the community through their engagement, and what both the community and participants received from that engagement for their mutual upliftment. in this sense, the assets, skills and contributions of the students were employed in their communities, whether it be spanish language skills, lived experience, or compassion and empathy at their placement site. those assets were brought forward not for the purpose of their own benefit, but for the benefit and upliftment of their communities. they hold a responsibility to their communities precisely because they see them as contributing to their path toward higher education. they understood what their communities had given them and now had the opportunity to reciprocate. in this way, abcd leads to the empowerment of both the students and the community. morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202314 asset based critical engagement is a framework for practitioner engagement and reflection that seeks to leverage the strengths, talents and skills of students, faculty and the community to create classrooms and community spaces that critically analyse and interrogate systems of inequality. it is inclusive of the community cultural wealth that latinx students bring to their institutions and their communityengagement experiences and take into account the external factors that impact their engagement. asset based critical engagement invites course content that is social justice oriented and encourages critical analysis of social structures and inequities in an environment based on authentic community partnerships that support latinx students in the discovery and execution of their own agency as change makers. this model encourages faculty/practitioners to embrace applied critical leadership as a practice that honours their authentic selves and their own community cultural wealth in supporting diverse students in their persistence and their sense of belonging. it also honours the contribution to and assets of the community through assetbased community development. this is the basis for reciprocity between students and their communities, in the context of the significant factors of trauma, constraints and previous experience with service. this practice then becomes a means to respond and act through these strengths-based approaches that activate one’s own agency in creating change. abcd’s interaction with this research and its influence on both the prism of liberatory engagement and asset based critical engagement lends to seeing latinx students and their communities from a place of inherent value. an asset based critical engagement orientation serves as a benefit to the latinx students and communities whose experiences and interactions are being viewed and understood as a counter-narrative to the current positioning within community engagement that often places marginalised communities as recipient and not co-creator. asset based critical engagement is a model that creates space and leverages the assets of the faculty and practitioners who adopt a liberatory lens through their applied critical leadership in their classrooms and interaction with students, and it understands that community partnerships are the cornerstone of this work. concluding thoughts the participants in this study shared their service learning experiences at an hsi. the data collection and analysis revealed the participants’ lived experiences with community engagement and elevated four main themes: awareness, agency and action; positive interaction with faculty; engaging sameness: personal connection to the service; and engagement for upliftment. the analysis also revealed significant factors that, although not directly emanating from the community-engagement experiences, did impact them. their reflection on their experiences offered a glimpse into the community– engagement experiences of latinx students, both the visible and invisible. all participants valued the community-engagement experience as positive and eye-opening, and saw themselves as agents of change. the themes and the factors were important to both providing evidence to answer the research questions and to informing the practices of the broader field of community engagement. the research findings led to the creation of the prism of liberatory engagement and asset based critical engagement. the findings of this research study are significant for five reasons. first, the focus on latinx students aligns with the future demographics of higher education and the diverse student body we are called to serve regardless of institution type. second, the two models offer a critical tool for practitioners to situate their own engagement practice to better serve their latinx studentsr. third, in the field of community engagement, more attention has to be given to the intersection of diversity/equity and community engagement. this research helps to fill that gap. fourth, the study challenges the dominant narrative of needs, gaps and wants that has dominated the field and practice of community engagement. finally, the findings can stand to inform administrators and practitioners of the vast assets and community cultural morales gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 2 december 202315 wealth that exist in the communities that latinx students are coming from, and going back to, for their community-engagement experiences. abcd, as a foundation for these two models, offers an orientation geared towards challenging historical deficit narratives imposed on latinx students and their communities. the situatedness of an hsi provides an access point for the growing number of pwis that are quickly turning into hsis to begin to imagine how their engagement strategies need to evolve to serve a more diverse student population. hispanic serving institutions will have to grapple with the tension between merely enrolling and properly engaging and serving latinx students. the prism of liberatory engagement and asset based critical engagement, through its abcd orientation, can serve as tools for discernment and practise as institutions of higher education embrace the responsibility and reward 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https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192712437037 https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192712437037 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316650011.028 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316650011.028 https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 editorial editorial: reimagining the global research table margaret malone1 1 managing editor, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, uts centre for social justice and inclusion, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: margaret malone; margaret.malone@uts.edu.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8224 article history: received 01/04/2022; revised 25/04/2022; accepted 14/05/2022; published 06/2022 abstract a recent update of gateways’ website text prompted reflections by the editorial committee on what the journal has and hasn’t achieved and potential next steps. this editorial is offered as a speculative musing on the metaphor of the ‘global research table’, which has helped frame our understanding of the contribution an academic journal may make to the field of community-based research. as with any metaphor, there is more than one interpretation, and the discussion highlights both the risks and imaginative potential of working towards institutional change, together. keywords community-based research; journal editors; global research table introduction the editorial committee of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement recently decided to examine our journal website text, to see what might need updating or revising. what began as a sort of mild ‘refresh’, however, ended up generating more reflection and scrutiny than anticipated. this was partly due to an emerging appreciation that many of our original goals and sense of purpose remained steady – prompting discussion on what the journal has, and hasn’t, achieved in its 14 years of publishing community-based research. a second, related issue centred more broadly on the role and place of an academic gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 1 june 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: malone, m. 2022. editorial: reimagining the global research table. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:1, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i1.8224 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 mailto:margaret.malone@uts.edu.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.7832 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8224 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8224 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au journal within a global diverse movement seeking profound social, intellectual and institutional change (hall & tandon 2021). as we reflected on the journal’s purpose and focus, articulated in a few brief paragraphs in english on our website, it became clear that what we were exploring was an understanding of the journal as community-based methodology. that is, an institutional space that does not just disseminate engaged research but is itself engaged. what does that mean, what could or should that look like? this editorial is offered as a way to continue and deepen those musings with our valued collaborators of authors, readers and reviewers. gateways journal: a brief overview community-university engagement has been described as ‘one of the major innovations’ of higher education over the past few decades (o’meara et al. 2011, p. 84). the establishment of gateways journal is just one example of the enormous burst of activity that has occurred over that time, during which many journals, networks, partnerships and organisations have been created to support and further the field (fitzgerald et al. 2019). gateways’ practices, processes and outcomes can shed light on the wider movement. to do so, this editorial draws on data generated by our publisher, uts epress, and previous editorials written by the editorial committee, as well as the website text. since its founding in 2008, gateways’ editorial committee has contributed two editorials (others have been authored by guest editors); this is our third. not many, perhaps, but this can make it is easier to see changes and consistencies. our inaugural editorial in volume 1 (2008) established the journal’s core purpose: to publish ‘articles based on research that is the result of actively engaged research-practitioner collaborative projects, has the potential for informing community-based activities or developing understanding of community engagement’ (nyden et al. 2008, p. 1). this remains true today, with the website ‘journal summary’ reiterating our commitment to support an ‘emerging global movement of collaborative, critical and change-oriented community-university research initiatives’. necessarily, this first editorial was concerned with establishing the legitimacy of its purpose. it asserted the scholarly credibility and social urgency of substantive community involvement in thoroughgoing, competent evidence-based research and its peerreviewed communication and dissemination. such involvement improved research. the next editorial argued even more strongly for rigorous collaboration, noting the growing presence of ‘insidious forces’ attacking independent thinking and research, ‘particularly the activist, community-engaged, change-oriented science produced by participatory research’ (nyden, ashton & o’loughlin, 2017, p. 5). the authors continued: ‘[c]ommunity-engaged research, which lies at the heart of gateways, is a powerful antidote to the cult of ignorance and anti-science know-nothingism’. at the same time, contemporary universities themselves were beset by so many competing pressures, internal and external, that they risked developing a sort of split personality, ‘a kind of dr jekyll writ large’ (nyden, ashton & o’loughlin 2017, p. 5). following on from the above core purpose, the journal’s stated primary focus was (and is) on ‘breaking down boundaries in producing and sharing knowledge’ (nyden et al. 2008, p. 1). a motivating starting place was to challenge ‘the notion that community-based research is parochial’, arguing instead that it ‘can be a basic building block of regional, national and international research’ (nyden et al. 2008, p. 2). indeed, by 2017, gateways’ second editorial was able to note a growth in the literature, in multiple disciplines, that featured research collaborations bridging community-university divides, spanning international, national and regional borders, and connecting myriad groups at the local level. they wrote that articles in gateways were not ‘just reporting’ on participatory research; they had the potential to ‘produce direct links among members of this growing community … stimulate new ideas and seed new projects’ (nyden, ashton & o’loughlin 2017, p. 2). for these editors, the journal had ‘succeeded in becoming a go-to source of information for grassroots activities across the globe’ (nyden, ashton & o’loughlin 2017, p. 3). malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20222 as a free open access journal, readers do not need to register with gateways, which limits what we can know about them. it is clear, however, from data on the use and reach of articles published by gateways that the community of engaged scholars and practitioners is indeed global, diverse and growing. digital technologies, used purposively, undoubtedly make a difference. our introduction of html accessibility in 2014 resulted in a sharp increase in downloads (prior to that, only pdf was available). by 2021, full text download figures for the year (pdf and html) were 32,196, with readers from nearly every country. articles are not only read but used – 75.14% of all published articles have been cited, with a mean citation figure of 3.46 per article. in addition, 56.07% of articles have received altmetric ‘attention’ (source: uts epress, 24 september 2021. download figures from counter; citations data from dimensions; altmetric attention scores from altmetrics.) the strong and sustained global interest can be seen in the many volumes gateways has published in partnership with universities or networks around the world, including from canada, hong kong, south africa, the tallories network, the uk and the usa. our advisory board and editorial committee are similarly international in scope, as are peer referees. it is important to note, however, that recent analysis by this author (unpublished) has revealed that referees are disproportionally from the usa and canada, when compared with submitting author-by-country profiles. a key future effort for the editorial committee, as well as guest editors, will be to address this imbalance, such as through more deliberate targeting of referees from beyond north america. we know more about submitting authors. gateways’ top ten countries, by submitting author, from 2008–2019, are: usa, canada, australia, uk, south africa, kenya, new zealand, hong kong, india and malaysia (source: uts epress, january 2020). nearly 75% of all articles published by gateways are coauthored. of those, approximately one-third include community-based co-authors. we have only rarely received manuscripts with the community-based partner as the sole or lead author. reflecting on this latter issue, from a primarily north american perspective, lorilee r sandmann (2019, p. xvii) has described contributions to the literature thus far by community partners as being ‘woefully’ rare. in the hope of encouraging a diversity of authors, gateways was established from the outset with three different article sections (research, practice-based, snapshot) of different length and focus. we have seen these sections find their feet over time: students have sometimes utilised the snapshot section, as have scholars from the global south; and the practice-based section is frequently used by academics often well established in their specific disciplines to comprehensively and frankly reflect on the ‘craft’ of community-based research. we have discovered that community-based authors are just as likely to contribute to double-blind peer-reviewed research articles as the shorter, non-reviewed practice-based or snapshot articles. what our 14-year history makes very clear, however, is that the main factor that results in published articles featuring community-based co-authors (and/or postgraduate student co-authors) is collaboration. directly connecting with others makes possible a more collective, shared and supported approach to research writing and dissemination, and that consistently encourages participation. a final observation: while there is an institutional emphasis on the value of peer-reviewed research articles, readers are more welcoming. in our top 20 articles by downloads (including abstract views), two are practice-based, another two are snapshots and one is an editorial (source: gateways ojs data, 14 may 2022). community-based research and the global research table gateways has used the metaphor of the global research table throughout its history. its conceptual and methodological terrain was established thus: ‘in essence, gateways seeks to add chairs at a global research table … we would like this journal to be a vehicle for expanding that research table to include experienced community voices. this can only strengthen the quality of research since it taps into knowledge and experience often not easily accessed by academic-based researchers’ (nyden et al. 2008, p. 4). in 2017, we malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20223 wrote that ‘gateways has become an evidence-based global forum. not only are community members at the “research table”, but the community itself has become large, multi-faceted and international’ (nyden, ashton & o’loughlin 2017, p. 3). today, the website’s ‘focus and scope’ explains that the intention behind the journal’s different article sections is ‘to fulfil two goals: one, to create space for more chairs at the research table; and two, to expand the research table itself. that is, not just more, but different.’ reading them now together, these three statements form a mini history of the journal. drawing from many discussions with my fellow editorial committee members, i want to use this metaphor as a prompt for a brief discussion of our work and evolving understanding of the contribution an academic journal can make to community-based research, as well as potential challenges and barriers. while clearly from our partial perspective, as a microcosm of the wider field, we hope these speculative reflections will be of interest to others. in 2008, our editorial used the idea of adding chairs to firmly counter the prevailing institutional notion that community-based research was not ‘proper’ research, marginal at best. having scholarly, peer-reviewed journals in which university-based researchers could publish their community-based research was essential for the emerging field. as already shown, we took various concrete steps to help ensure that a diverse audience of authors and readers could draw up chairs to the ‘global research table’. most fundamentally, the journal was established as open access: free for readers and authors. this remains in clear contrast to the dominant for-profit publishing model in which, for example, ‘roughly 85% of new research articles published globally’ sit behind subscription-only paywalls (eua 2022, p. 8). the significant commitment of the uts centre for social justice and inclusion (formerly uts shopfront) and uts epress, our publisher, needs to be acknowledged here, as does that of our co-sponsors, the center for urban research and learning (curl), loyola university; the swearer center, brown university; and albion college. looking to the future, i am delighted to announce our new co-sponsor and partner: urbancore, at the university of north carolina – charlotte. more on this in future announcements. by 2017, community members were at a global ‘research table’, forming part of a ‘large, multi-faceted and international’ community of practice. gateways’ publishing history provides ample evidence of the important intellectual work undertaken, involving all sorts of people, in all sorts of places, sitting around research tables located in community halls or kitchens or university seminar rooms. further, it is clear that this work is of significant interest to others working at their own variously located and constructed research tables. as i reflected on the metaphor, however, it struck me that it potentially contained a sleight of hand, hiding in plain sight. my unease had to do with the dangers of conflation and of elision: of community-based research being accommodated at a pre-existing global research table – standardised, competitive, hierarchical. an academic journal, much like research excellence frameworks, funding criteria and promotion prerequisites, is always and already engaged in the world: choices (and avoidances) are not neutral, whether deliberate or not. jeffrey grabill (2012, p. 213), discussing his own deepening appreciation of community-based research, argues that ‘the concept and possibility of community itself must become a primary object of inquiry for any community-based study’. he frames this as an ‘issue of stance’ – both pragmatic and conceptual. he goes on: ‘[c]ommunities don’t exist ready-formed and discoverable. we construct them as we work’ (grabill 2012, p. 213). in a similar way, this journal has come to understand the care, even vigilance, required to ensure that the ‘global research table’ is not imagined as an already-made destination, a place at which communitybased research arrives. instead, it must be co-constructed, constantly built anew by many hands, lest it not be sufficiently of our own making. further, and at the risk of overextending the metaphor, i’d suggest that it is not one, but many research tables of different materials, shapes and sizes that we should be crafting. i won’t go on! but this is not mere word play – it was hard-won effort that resulted in institutional recognition of the legitimacy and value of participatory and action-oriented methodologies ‘in the field’. at the same time, it is word play – of a very consequential kind. who gets to write what, why, how and for whose benefit is at the heart of journal work. let me share a small story to illustrate my point. malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20224 gateways’ volume 10 (2017) contained six articles by previous first and second-placed winners of the macjannet prize for global citizenship. the winning projects came from mexico, argentina, chile, malaysia, pakistan and australia. we launched the volume at the talloires network leaders conference in xalapa, veracruz, mexico, in june 2017, where i hosted a panel with the lead author of each of the articles. when i was preparing my notes for the presentation, it had seemed important to me to offer some sort of editorial overview, some insight born of intimate knowledge of all the individual papers. but i couldn’t think what that might be and felt that i had failed somehow. it was only later, when listening to their separate presentations, that i realised where i had been going wrong. actually, it was the act of sitting alongside them that brought clarity: there was no need (much less request) for some grand, connecting thread, and to look for one was to misunderstand the real value and challenge of our polyphonic collaboration. savransky (2017, p. 19, italics in the original), himself reflecting on the work of boaventura de sousa santos, puts it perfectly when he writes that what is required is a ‘different kind of imagination. [one that] seeks to take the thought of others – which is also to say, the reality of others – seriously … rather than attempting to think about difference, it seeks to think with the difference that thinking from the south itself makes’. for higher education, and academic publishing, this would signify a profound shift indeed, ideologically, culturally, materially and methodologically. gateways believes very strongly that community-based research is an essential part of such a shift. further, that journals and other publications have a vitally important contributing role to play. gateways also contends that community-based research, while still emergent and uneven, is recognisable, in the sense that the core tenets of collaboration, critical questioning and a researchfor-change orientation are widely and well established. the single most common reason for submission decline or request for revisions at our journal is that the research presented is not community engaged. often, a community-based methodological stance is barely demonstrated. but, following savransky, i wonder if there is another, equally important way to think about recognition. journals have an important role to play in building recognition of difference, to establishing an inclusive vocabulary, practices and processes that allow for sitting with and alongside difference in this shared institutional space. in his discussion of ‘the politics of evidence’ for qualitative researchers, denzin (2009, p. 153) argued that there ‘is more than one version of disciplined, rigorous inquiry – counter-science, little science, unruly science, practical science – and such inquiry need not go by the name of science’. janzen and ochocka (2020, p. 5) have recently argued in this journal that community-based research ‘is emerging as a common descriptor of research that seeks both to challenge and provide an alternative to externally led and expertdriven research’. surely this community-based alternative includes counter, little, unruly and practical science. for a journal, this raises many questions – the point of this editorial. how could unruly science be communicated, with what words (or images, videos or sounds), by whom and for whom? what sort of peer review would be needed? such exploratory and innovative efforts are already occurring, as can be seen in many of the articles published by gateways. there is a real need, however, to empirically and critically understand these emergent efforts at communicating a different sort of science, or sciences. this is something to which journals are well placed to contribute. looking forward, as editors, we are challenged to expand our frames of recognition along the lines discussed above – as a different kind of imagination, one that involves thinking with difference rather than about difference. we envisage further efforts to promote the various article sections as well as encourage contributions featuring innovative and participatory use of multimedia. the writers’ workshops in the themed volumes have proven to be extremely well received: editors and guest editors work hard to ensure that, regardless of outcome, the process of writing is a constructive experience for all submitting authors. there is scope to build on these, and to share their learnings. in this journal’s experience, we have seen time and again that the greatest levels of participation by faculty, staff, students, community members and practitioners in article submission, development and malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1 june 20225 publication has occurred because of collaboration. that is unreservedly the path we wish to continue on. this includes going down paths less well trod, less familiar perhaps, together with authors, readers, referees and, indeed, other journals and editors. as an editorial committee, we remain committed to the vital work of recognising research tables, wherever and however 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https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v13i1.7037 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v1i0.889 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v10i1.5533 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-010-9159-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-010-9159-3 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516656983 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 12, no. 2 december 2019 © 2019 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: aldersey, hm, abera, m, mzinganjira, a, abebe, s, demissie, s. 2019. the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disabilityinclusive higher education in ethiopia. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, article id 6856. http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v12i2.6856 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia heather m aldersey1, mikyas abera2, anushka mzinganjira1, solomon abebe2, solomon demissie2 1 queen’s university, school of rehabilitation therapy, louise d. acton building, 31 george street, queen’s university, kingston, ontario, k7l 3n6, canada 2 university of gondar university of gondar, p.o. box 196, gondar, ethiopia corresponding author: heather michelle aldersey; hma@queensu.ca doi: http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6856 article history: received 11/06/2019; revised 04/12/2019; accepted 5/12/2019; published 20/12/2019. abstract this article describes the development and implementation process of an innovative 10-year partnership that draws on the strengths of existing community-based rehabilitation programs to support new education and leadership development activities in ethiopia. current global estimates indicate that over 17 million people may be affected by disability in ethiopia. the national population projection for 2017 indicates that approximately 80 per cent of the population resides in underserved rural areas, with limited to no access to necessary health, rehabilitation, or social services. the university of gondar (uog) in ethiopia has been serving people with disabilities in and around the north gondar zone since its inception in the mid1950s. over the years, its various units have designed and implemented numerous projects, employing alternative institutional and community-based models to promote the wellbeing of people with disabilities. lessons drawn from these initiatives and shifts in health and social work practice informed uog’s decision to establish its community-based rehabilitation (cbr) program in 2005. given a shared commitment to the principles and practice of cbr, the uog is presently collaborating with the international centre for the advancement of community based rehabilitation (icacbr) at queen’s university in canada to create new declaration of conflicting interest all authors comprise the management team of the project discussed in this article. funding at the time of writing, each author had their salary, in part or in whole, paid for by the mastercard foundation. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6856 http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6856 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:hma@queensu.ca http:dx.doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v12i2.6856 disability-related education and mentorship opportunities. these include community-based research and internship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate scholars through a shared mastercard foundation scholars program. the two institutions, in collaboration with the mastercard foundation, have an overall goal of creating a disability-inclusive campus and regional rehabilitation hub at uog. in this article, the authors discuss the unique collaborative structure of project management and implementation, and the embeddedness of university-community engagement to meet project objectives informed by the north–south/ south–north partnership models. they also provide critical insights to, and reflections on, the challenges inherent in international, interdisciplinary university-community collaboration and the benefits from enhancing higher education in both ethiopia and canada. in contrast to shorter term or smaller projects that rely heavily on individual champions, this article focuses on larger scale, process-oriented institutional learning. keywords community-based rehabilitation, disability inclusion, partnership, university-community engagement, interdisciplinary introduction given the increasingly interconnected, global orientation of higher education around the world, international higher education partnerships have become commonly accepted features of many tertiary institutions around the world. these partnerships can be structured in a range of different ways for diverse priorities and are often accompanied with myriad complexities and positive and negative outcomes. in this article, we describe the inception, development and implementation of a 10-year partnership that draws on the strengths of existing community-based rehabilitation programs to support new education and leadership development activities in ethiopia. specifically, we seek to answer the question: what are the strengths and challenges within a community-linked south–north collaborative partnership for disability-inclusive higher education? in particular, we discuss the unique collaborative structure of project leadership and the embeddedness of university-community engagement to meet project objectives. we also provide critical reflection on the challenges inherent in international, interdisciplinary university-community collaboration and the benefits of enhancing higher education in both ethiopia and canada. in so doing, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of how individuals and institutions can form and manage partnerships in mutually advantageous, collaborative ways to set priority agendas in curriculum development, research and service provision. the focus of this article (in contrast to shorter term or smaller projects that rely heavily on individual champions rather than a unified management approach), is primarily on the larger scale, process-oriented learning that we have observed over the last four years. south–north partnerships for capacity strengthening, research and sustainable development academic institutions have long engaged in north–south partnerships. benefits of international partnerships among higher education institutions include positioning at the cutting edge of information, knowledge development, resource opportunities, policy change, and technical and social innovation (koehn, demment & hervy 2008). often, organisations aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 2 form partnerships to ‘build on their comparative advantages and divisions of labour, develop integrated and win-win solutions to problems, and enhance the public good in a sustainable way’ ( johnson & wilson 2006, p. 72). north–south partnerships, in particular, are frequently framed in terms of ‘development’ (international, capacity, community, etc.). historical models of development generally involved a northern donor agency providing funding to southern countries for projects or programs on topics prioritised by the donors (koehn, demment & hervy 2008; olsson 2008). these projects would often be implemented by a northern actor (e.g. an academic institution or an international non-government organisation), which would hold key responsibility for reporting to the donor. this traditional model has been largely critiqued as neo-liberal and neo-colonial, reinforcing the control and power of the north over southern communities (martin & griffiths 2012). over the past three decades, the global discourse has shifted and now largely emphasises participatory, partnership-based approaches that prioritise the values and concerns of southern stakeholders and the sustainability and local ownership of development efforts (koehn 2012). some scholars argue, however, that often this new discourse is not actually implemented in practice and historical, asymmetrical power dynamics continue to permeate many partnerships (angeles & gurstein 2000; landau 2012). many scholars also challenge an ideal notion of equality or mutuality in north–south partnerships, stating that, despite partners’ best efforts, mutuality is not possible because of inequality – in particular, unequal power relationships. as angeles & gurstein 2000 (p. 456) reflect, partnerships are rarely equal, rather ‘our language and use of this seemingly egalitarian word tends to mask inequalities in resources, capabilities and accountability of governments, funding agencies, and ngos between and within the north and south’. this fact makes ‘address[ing] unequal relations between partners … a major challenge in the discourse and practice of partnerships (angeles & gurstein 2000, p. 71). according to johnson & wilson 2006 (p. 71), inequality among partners could emanate from ‘differences in a range of dimensions such as access to resources, power relations, knowledge, capacities and capabilities’ as well as ‘assumptions, perspectives/worldviews, agendas and expectations’. johnson & wilson (2006, p. 73) argue, however, that such differences should not be a challenge to equality or mutuality in partnerships; rather, ‘mutuality … makes a virtue of difference, enabling each partner to offer and gain something’. for northern academic institutions, in particular, such partnerships offer strong opportunities for campus internationalisation and enhanced faculty competence in diversity, and inclusion of multiple perspectives (koehn, deardorff & bolognese 2010). for southern academic institutions, international partnerships offer access to resources, networks and skills not as readily available at home (koehn 2012). the uog, queen’s and mastercard foundation partnership approaches mutuality from the latter perspective, whereby all partners share similar values and complementary strengths while recognising and capitalising on characteristics unique to each organisation. this collaboration reinforces the partners’ mutual commitment to supporting greater student, academic and professional mobility between the two nations to share knowledge, develop relationships and compare their practices in higher education and research. uog, queen’s and the mastercard foundation: an overview of the partnership the uog is one of the oldest public tertiary institutions in ethiopia. with initial roots in gondar public health training institute, established in 1954, uog became a chartered university in 2004 and is currently housed in five campuses across the city of gondar and in the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 3 its satellite town of teda. the uog is well known for its community-based approaches, for example, employing rural community-based team training approaches to medical education and prioritising preventative medicine and public health at a time when most such training institutions in the country focus on diagnosis and management of diseases (yared, amsalu & molla 2005; yoseph et al. 2007). queen’s university was established in kingston, canada, in 1841 and offers a comprehensive array of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. queen’s prides itself on offering a positive student experience in a research-intensive environment, and has a strategic mandate to increase international presence as well as a comprehensive international plan that includes research engagement and international student recruitment and support. in august 2015, in response to an open call for expressions of interest to participate in the mastercard foundation scholars program as an implementing institution, both universities submitted independent proposals to become partners of the mastercard foundation scholars program. at the time of initial submission, each proposal was uniquely grounded in individual institutional priorities and concerns. for example, the uog proposed a scholars program that would focus on disability inclusion and would draw on the uog community based rehabilitation (cbr) centre as a key resource in implementing the program. this would contribute to uog’s ultimate objective of becoming a regional hub for rehabilitation and disability inclusion. the queen’s program proposed international exchanges and the creation of a new curriculum for occupational therapy in a different geographical context (not ethiopia), drawing on local partner priorities and queen’s strengths. the queen’s proposal was led by its international centre for the advancement of community based rehabilitation (icacbr). upon reviewing submissions, the mastercard foundation identified common themes between the uog and queen’s submissions – particularly the shared vision for improved inclusion for persons with disabilities on the continent of africa and the shared strategy for achieving that vision – namely through community-based rehabilitation approaches. as alluded to above, the universities were particularly closely linked from the outset due to similar lead implementing organisations proposed in the mastercard foundation scholars expressions of interest. for the uog, their proposed project lead was its community based rehabilitation program (uog-cbr) office. informed by the experiences and community interactions of the department of physiotherapy and the university teaching hospital as well as a baseline study on the conditions of people with disabilities (pwds), the uog-cbr program was first established in 2005. this establishment was possible through a collaborative community engagement initiative involving a range of partners – local, national and international; governmental and non-governmental; academics, researchers and practitioners. the uog-cbr’s initial efforts were originally funded by international donors – in particular, save the children and light for the world. the objectives of uog-cbr are to translate the uog’s commitment to the betterment of the wellbeing of people with disabilities by providing home-to-home disability/rehabilitation services, creating and promoting access to inclusive education, providing physiotherapy services and referrals for advanced medical treatments, delivering socioeconomic support and advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities. the queen’s university proposed project was to be led by the school of rehabilitation therapy’s international center for the advancement of community based rehabilitation (icacbr). established in 1991, the icacbr has promoted the use of community-based rehabilitation approaches and supported capacity development and educational enhancement related to disability and inclusion in a range of countries in eastern europe, asia, latin america, and africa. until recently, the majority of the icacbr’s projects over the last aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 4 25 years were funded by canadian international development funds. having two academic institutions with centres focusing on implementing cbr projects is, in and of itself, unique, given that community-based rehabilitation is often implemented at a community level by nonacademic organisations (e.g. non-governmental organisations or civil society organisations). having both of these cbr centres submit complementary proposals to the mastercard foundation at the same time was serendipitous. foundation staff connected both institutions and encouraged them to draw on their strengths as centres of excellence in community-based rehabilitation to develop a proposal that would be complementary to and supportive of a standard mastercard foundation scholars program (e.g. scholarships and wraparound support for talented, disadvantaged youth at uog) and would respond to each institution’s and relevant stakeholders’ needs and priorities. what followed was regular telephone calls, skype discussions and email communications, as well as two in-person collaborative project development sessions (in gondar in march 2016 and in kingston in may 2016). throughout the period of project development, mastercard foundation staff provided continual review and feedback to the team, supporting them to ensure that project plans remained in line with the foundation’s charitable objectives. this process was truly a process of co-creation as it involved ‘genuine and meaningful engagement with and participation of key people, perspectives, and ideas’ in crafting the partnership and clear objectives, ‘priorities and solutions’ (bilous et al. 2018, p. 166). the differences across the proposals, rather than being in conflict with each other, integrated well to the benefit of both institutions. for example, although the uog had not originally proposed a new occupational therapy program, learning that queen’s had expertise and interest in the establishment of new programs in rehabilitation around the world prompted uog to pursue this activity in the proposed partnership. uog partners found this activity to be highly conducive to its existing goal of becoming a regional hub for rehabilitation and disability inclusion. it was also complementary to its history as the university that had established the first physical therapy program in the country. although the merging of the two independent proposals meant a shift in geographic focus for the queen’s project, icacbr leadership had previous experience working in ethiopia and was open and eager to work in the country again. these efforts resulted in the approval and funding of a three-agency partnership, the uog/ queen’s mastercard foundation scholars program, in october 2016. this partnership includes what the team has termed part a: scholars program (gondar) and part b: fellowship program (gondar-queen’s) (figure 1). because of the process identified above, the program that was developed was truly a unified endeavour, uniting both institutions within mutually co-created priorities. as such, we use the term ‘we’ throughout this article. we believe the presentation of this project from a unified perspective is an important demonstration of the strong sense of co-ownership and unity held by both the management team and the institutions. the goal of the mastercard foundation scholars program is to develop a network of transformative leaders driving inclusive and equitable socioeconomic transformation in africa. the scholars program targets students for whom barriers to access are particularly prohibitive, recruiting students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. in line with its aim of contributing to social transformation, the program also seeks to recruit scholars who exhibit leadership potential and a commitment to giving back. the program offers these young people comprehensive wraparound supports, leadership development opportunities and intensive professional development support to enable them to successfully transition to dignified and fulfilling work, and to meaningfully impact the world around them. the part a: scholars the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 5 program is a conventional scholars program under the mastercard foundation, except that it defines and uniquely focuses on disability as a disadvantage. the part b: fellowship program is an example of an approach the foundation is increasingly encouraging: deep institutional collaboration. it focuses on supporting the part a: scholars program at gondar with various capacity building activities, such as advanced training in disability, rehabilitation and inclusive education for gondar faculty, collaborative research on disability, rehabilitation and inclusion issues in ethiopia, and co-creation of context-based curricula and new programs at the uog in cbr and occupational therapy. a key strength in this project development process was that it supported and enabled institutional chemistry and compatibility by (a) identifying the individual institutional strengths and originally proposed activities; (b) aligning these with the uog’s ultimate vision of becoming a regional hub for rehabilitation and disability inclusion and the icacbr’s vision of a world where all people with disabilities are included in their communities and experience full human rights and equal opportunities; and (c) drawing on both institutions’ interest in increased internationalisation. this project is truly a reflection of collaboration across three organisations to advance individual and collective strategic priorities. strong institutional compatibility is necessary in a project of this duration (10 years) which could have potentially damaging transitions without a collaborative agenda, as individual members of collaborative teams may change over a project’s lifetime (bradley 2008). in the sections that follow, we describe our intentional actions to structure project leadership, management and implementation in a collaborative way and to embed our values of university-community engagement to meet project objectives. we then provide critical reflection on the intrinsic benefits of enhancing higher education in both ethiopia and canada as well as the inherent challenges for the partnership. uog–queens’s–mastercard foundation partnership structure the project was intentionally structured in a decentralised, symmetrical manner, responding to each partner’s individual strategic interests and incorporating mutuality at all stages of project decision making (brinkerhoff 2002; koehn 2012). to do this, part a is governed by a contractual agreement between the uog and mastercard foundation, whereby uog is responsible for implementing project activities and reporting directly to the foundation on project finances and outcomes. although queen’s is available as a partner to support part a’s implementation when uog deems this appropriate, the sole responsibility for part a’s success rests firmly with the uog. queen’s university implements part b through a contract with the mastercard foundation and a memorandum of understanding with the uog. although queen’s holds ultimate responsibility for reporting part b’s project finances and outcomes to the foundation, part b is structured as a shared process of prioritising project objectives, transparency and mutual accountability for results (koehn 2012). to ensure linkages between part a and part b, the uog hosts one director, responsible for both project components. this directorship is shared with a queen’s-based co-director for part b. uog hosts two full-time managers (one for part a and one for part b) and queen’s hosts a full-time manager for part b. collectively, these individuals constitute the management team for the uog/queen’s mastercard foundation scholars program, making informed decisions that promote open and mutual understanding and learning. staff at each office support management. all queen’s based staff are linked to part b, whereas uog staff aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 6 may be uniquely tied to part a or part b or split between both part a and b, depending on their roles. symmetrical, collaborative managerial structures in partnerships ‘require building trust through face-to-face cooperative experiences that facilitate addressing arising asymmetries and conflicts’ (koehn 2012, p. 348). to do this, part b co-managers meet weekly via skype, part b leadership (managers and directors) meet bi-weekly through skype and quarterly in person (either in ethiopia or canada), with the part a manager included as relevant. each respective co-director has complete autonomy over personnel selection and daily operations of his or her office; however, they regularly communicate about and support one another in day-to-day local decisions. part a management works directly with the foundation to establish annual budgets and work plans, as well as on project analysis and evaluation for part a project components. part b management works collaboratively across ethiopian and canadian offices to establish project policies and communications and to propose annual budgets and work plans to the foundation for part b activities. all written and financial reporting for part b, although ultimately submitted to the foundation by queen’s, is compiled collaboratively, with the uog co-director signing off before final submission. this layer of oversight and collaboration for part b demonstrates commitment of the partners to transparency in issues of both funding and power (samoff & carrol 2004). the strong emphasis placed by the management team on cultivating interpersonal relationships through face-to-face interactions, active communication, mutual influence and joint learning has helped to develop trust between the two organisations – a critical feature often identified as the linchpin of successful partnerships (ashman 2001; turnbull et al. 2014). university-community engagement: building on strengths given that this project is grounded in cbr principles, both organisations place significant value on engagement with the community to meet project aims. we have operationalised this engagement through ‘partnership chains’ (ashman 2001 p. 93) between north–south institutions and the foundation (as described above). presently, this engagement is perhaps most apparent in the curriculum modification and development efforts. historically, it has been challenging for students with disabilities to gain an education through the uog. the major goal of part a of the project is to provide 450 undergraduate and graduate degree scholarships to youth who experience disadvantage – the majority of them with disabilityrelated disadvantage. admitting mastercard foundation scholars with disabilities to existing curricula at gondar has proven to be difficult, with the existing academic structure resistant to accommodating students with disabilities. for example, there are programs that specify, with no empirically sound basis, that applicants with any kind of disability cannot be admitted. the international partnership with queen’s and the mastercard foundation has encouraged uog to reevaluate these processes and standards and bring them in line with international norms on human rights and accessibility by building on institutional and local priorities. at the same time, uog is engaging with other institutional and community partners, such as addis ababa university and the ethiopian ministry of education, to provide institutional and national precedent for promoting curriculum flexibility and accessibility. this push for change towards more internationally accepted norms for disability inclusion highlights an ethical tension inherent in internationalisation, whereby the international partners challenge local practice and require it to bend to foreign partner norms. this tension was also present in discussions around gender and the international partners’ pressure for improved inclusion of both genders within the project. for example, the mastercard the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 7 foundation encouraged the uog to take a gender-sensitive approach in their staffing of part a and in recruitment processes for phd fellows in part b. this required significant effort from the uog to address, particularly for the phd fellow recruitment, given the uog faculty complement is highly skewed towards men. these examples show how this project is not exempt from pressure to align with international partner priorities and agendas. we believe, however, that international pressure – particularly in areas such as disability inclusion and gender sensitivity – can be a useful way to affect positive change for historically disadvantaged community members or those who may typically hold less power or influence at home. it is important to note that, although the international partners helped to provide an impetus for institutional change, the uog was an active agent in wanting this change as well. thus, disability inclusion and gender sensitivity were already important to actors at the uog and the international partners’ priority on these issues simply helped to push uog towards, and hold it accountable for, meaningful action. beyond modifications of existing curricula to become more disability inclusive, as necessitated by part a, part b is supporting the creation of new, disability relevant curricula at the uog. first, the uog is co-creating a curriculum for a cbr management certificate program in collaboration with queen’s and local partners such as cheshire services ethiopia (cse) and the ethiopian center for disability and development (ecdd), among others. this co-creation process has involved three consultative workshops (two with partners at bahir dar and gondar and one with scholars at gondar), frequent face-to-face meetings, email exchanges and skype conversations, getting us closer to co-produce resources – curricula, modules, delivery schedules, etc. – for the uog-cbr certificate program, which will launch in january 2020. it also involved a review of existing queen’s and uog content from other trainings/programs they have hosted over the years and decisions about how and if this content could be included; the commission of uog experts drafting outstanding content; and editorial support from queen’s (e.g. supporting english language editing and overarching pedagogy). the certificate program is mainly designed for mastercard foundation scholars who, upon graduation, are expected to advance, work and advocate for the wellbeing of people with disabilities at policy, program and service levels. the certificate program will also be open to participation by current cbr fieldworkers who would like to develop or upgrade managerial or supervisory skills. as such, it is structured to offer significant theoretical and applied skills for community engagement, and includes embedded practica (‘attachments’) in the local north gondar zone community, working directly with families under the supervision of trained clinical instructors to promote and support disability inclusion at the community level. the co-creation process for this curriculum has been guided by a shared vision of what is needed (based upon assessments with scholars, community members and community partner organisations) and has incorporated the views of a range of stakeholders outside the academic development team (e.g. cbr practitioners, non-governmental organisations, public institutions). although the immediate beneficiaries of the cbr work will be part a mastercard foundation scholars, the institutional priority will be to run the cbr certificate program in perpetuity, long after the mastercard foundation funding is completed. this will offer opportunities for continued professional development, retention and connections to valuable community-based rehabilitation service providers in the community, along with an opportunity for sustainable institutional revenue generation at the uog. as such, we have intentionally embedded reciprocity in our curricula development (e.g. consultation with aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 8 beneficiaries, potential client organisations and other universities that may create similar training programs) to pay attention to the interactions and experiences external to project concerns, with a view to long-range engagement and participation of organisations and individuals outside the scope of the uog/queen’s partnership. this is why ‘the co-creation process occurs within an evolving conceptual framework – guided by a shared vision of what is needed – in which the community is the protagonist’ (bilous et al. 2018, p. 167). to this end, in taking place in a cross-cultural context where international and local realities and priorities vied for clear expression, the curricula co-creation process (1) fostered genuine and meaningful engagement of partners, stakeholders and communities; (2) prioritised end-users’ and communities’ values, priorities and collective conscience; and (3) identified and integrated each partner’s strengths and resources, using integrity and clear lines of communication as a guide. we managed to create a space ‘where differently situated people … work together across their own varying relationships to power and privileges opens possibilities for more critical and creative ways of engaging’ (torre 2009, p. 10). second, queen’s university is also supporting uog to develop and implement the first undergraduate occupational therapy (ot) program in ethiopia. this aspect of the project is at its early stages and, as a priority, the project team has engaged in extensive community consultation and engagement to inform future next steps in curriculum development. for example, we have engaged in workshops, information sessions and consultation with government and rehabilitation stakeholders (future employers of occupational therapists), as well as a formal needs assessment with people with disabilities, their families and relevant community stakeholders to best identify priority needs, supports and services that may be best filled by ethiopian occupational therapists. the forthcoming results from this community consultation, combined with ot curriculum benchmarking against that of other african contexts and curriculum guidelines and minimum standards from the world federation of occupational therapy (wfot), will inform all decisions related to the content, format and delivery of ot education at the uog. the process of co-creation we adopted in designing the cbr certificate program informed the early planning and engagement related to the ot curriculum, thereby actively and effectively involving partners, stakeholders and the ethiopian society so that the undergraduate ot curriculum would not only meet the expected standards of the wfot but also reflect local ethiopian realities. during three face-to-face meetings, both part a and part b staff conversed with ot professionals from queen’s who are actively engaged in supporting the curriculum development process. these face-to-face conversations, as well as the frequent and themed skype meetings, email communications and, more recently and importantly, the national needs assessment will help the partnership to ground the curriculum design process on local realities by furnishing data on, for instance, unique ethiopian occupational distribution, which has different ot needs from those of canada or the west. this was one of the issues raised and discussed by ot professionals at the 2018 world federation of occupational therapy (wfot) congress in cape town, south africa, where the proposal for a wfot accredited ot curriculum for ethiopia was shared with attendants. one of the challenges for the partnership thus becomes balancing the need to meet the wfot standards to ensure global acceptability of the ot curriculum at uog while reflecting the ot needs of ethiopia as a less technologically advanced country with 80 per cent of the working population employed in the primary sector. we are conscious of the possibility that the co-creation process in such ‘cross-cultural contexts may exacerbate power differentials specifically because the prestige or pre-eminence the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 9 of western models and epistemologies may silence alternative ones’ (bilous et al. 2018, p. 168). this could be the case for our project as well, as presently very few indigenous african models exist for occupational therapy and often models from elsewhere are applied in african contexts ( jansen-van vuuren, aldersey & lysaght, under review), likely resulting in northern approaches being factored into the curriculum in some way, making them at risk of silencing alternate local ones that may emerge. this consciousness differs for both partners – for queen’s it means they are constantly questioning our biases and trying to embed opportunities for indigenous approaches to ot come though (e.g. through the needs assessment). for the uog, it means that they are open and receptive to international suggestions for ot, but also insist on alignment with local realities (e.g. to address role conflict with the existing ethiopian physiotherapy profession which has functioned for years in the rehabilitation sector in the absence of the ot profession). both partners, learning from the experiences of north–south partnerships, engage in the co-creation process with clear and open lines of communication, transparency and reciprocity among partners, end-users and the community to foster understanding of differences in the values, traditions and priorities of each. this has promoted, from our experience, mutual learning and growth by expanding the scope of possibilities beyond conventionally accepted standards. as african ots on the continent have reported, it is critical to find a balance between international perspectives on ot, given that it is a global profession that has one international body (wfot), and local, contextually based considerations (author, under review). having described some of the unique features of this program, we turn now to a discussion of the benefits and challenges we have encountered so far. benefits of the partnership there have been many benefits for this partnership, and we anticipate these benefits will continue to grow over time. here, we outline a snapshot of project benefits as they relate to capacity development and networking. this project has continuously strengthened capacity at both institutions. capacity development ‘includes efforts to transform both the macro-level environment where institutions operate, and reform the meso-level of systems and structures of institutions’ (angeles & gurstein 2000, p. 454). as such, it includes strengthening institutional functions (e.g. service delivery, learning); actors or agents (e.g. community leaders, organisations); resources (human, informational, financial); normative context (e.g. values, strategies, policies); and societal context (e.g. ethnicity, sex roles, religion (angeles & gurstein 2000). in particular, our partnership’s capacity development has centred around the concepts of inclusion and accessibility. the correspondence between the goals and values of uog and queen’s in the advancement of rehabilitation education and the partnership’s programmatic focus on capacity development have further enabled its development as an equal partnership (angeles & gurstein 2000). one example of how this was operationalised was related to physical accessibility to the uog campuses. from the early phases of the partnership development and continuing well into project implementation, we have supported institutional visits for management and experiential learning and various networking opportunities across institutions. to inform colleagues from uog about physical accessibility to the queen’s campus, in alignment with national and provincial legislation, queen’s physical plant services (campus planning) designed and delivered an ‘accessibility tour’ with the support of queen’s mastercard foundation project aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 10 staff. this accessibility tour has been delivered a number of times and has now developed into an integrated informational tour that could be offered to a range of interested parties, beyond those involved in the uog-queen’s mastercard foundation project. this sharing of experience from queen’s supported uog’s ‘accessibility audit’ on two of its campuses. based on the results of this audit, uog is now building and modifying infrastructure and putting policies in place to better support the physical accessibility of the uog campus with combined funding support from the mastercard foundation and the uog’s main infrastructure budget. project-specific efforts have focused on the maraki and college of medicine and health sciences campuses in particular. however, as a result of their increased accessibility knowledge and understanding, the uog has also embedded accessibility considerations in the designs for new campus buildings in the atse tewodros (college of applied and computational sciences) and atse fasil (gondar institute of technology and architecture) campuses. these efforts are reflective of the indirect influence of uog/queen’s/mastercard foundation project players. this is just one example of many, whereby intentional institutional capacity development efforts by the project have produced further systemic outcomes beyond direct project activities. this experience aligns with those discussed by koehn (2012), who identifies that there are often unanticipated ‘butterfly effect’ type changes that come about from institutional partnerships, whereby a paradigm shift occurs and becomes a source of renewal and positive change. beyond capacity development, this project has supported and facilitated networking and experiential learning at various levels – management, administration, faculty and students/ scholars/fellows. beyond formal procedures, these activities have created opportunities for partners to find space to develop mutual trust and respect as they have learnt and understood each other’s contexts, values and priorities. there have also been many informal interactions such as visits to the semien mountains (the highest point in ethiopia), cultural events, social gatherings, etc. where partners’ staff were able to learn about each other. such activities, bilous et al. (2018, p. 173) claimed, ‘build trust, confidence and reciprocity within the group enhancing the knowledge flow amongst members of the collaboration (p. 173)’. the partnership has also enabled 20 faculty members from the uog to study at queen’s for advanced degrees and has supported shorter term visits of six faculty members of queen’s to the uog. these connections offer bi-directional exchange of ideas and lived/contextual experiences. at queen’s, the uog faculty fellows have enriched classroom discussions, often bringing new approaches and insights and contributing to queen’s stated goals of increasing equity, diversity and internationalisation on campus. strategies have been developed between the queen’s mastercard foundation scholars program office, queen’s school of graduate studies and queen’s university international centre (quic) to support international students and provide inter-institutional sharing of lessons learned. at uog, visits by queen’s faculty experts in disability inclusion and rehabilitation have provided critical knowledge and support for uog’s goal to become a centre of excellence in rehabilitation and disability-related studies in east africa. as part of supporting and maintaining knowledge mobilisation through the partnership, two faculty from queen’s presented academic papers at an international conference on inclusive education at uog. there, they shared their professional and research experience in a context different from that of ethiopia, which was met with a critical reception among other presenters and the diverse audience. many of the queen’s faculty who have visited uog remain in regular contact and continue the collaborative learning endeavour virtually. a faculty member from uog, in turn, presented his thoughts on the partnership to a european audience at the european conference on african studies, stimulating rich discussion among attendees. the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 11 finally, the uog/queen’s partnership prompted uog to increase its reach in the wider local and national community as regards implementation of cbr-related education and inclusive education. to implement project objectives, uog needed to create and strengthen its network of partners. uog already had existing collaborative systems with cheshire services ethiopia, one of the oldest rehabilitation service providers in the country, and the ethiopian center for disability and development (ecdd). in addition to strengthening these existing networks, the program has engaged with and benefited from the resources and social and political capital of the federation of national associations of people with disabilities, addis ababa university’s special needs support unit and mahibere hiwot for social development, among others. the uog works collaboratively with these institutions on raising awareness of the rights of people with disabilities and the relevance of inclusivity in education for national developmental ventures. it is our hope that collaboration with these networks and other community partners will enable emergent knowledge from practice to influence our project implementation decisions. ultimately, we hope that the uog/queen’s partnership will translate into changing of institutional structures and processes (e.g. through the creation of new programs/curricula). often, with partnerships of this nature, community is engaged as an end point for scaling-up and translation of knowledge. in the instance of our partnership, a key focus to date has been on creating movement of knowledge from the community to a global institutional partnership to effect change at the institutional level. challenges to the partnership just like any other, this partnership has not been without challenges. as bradley (2017, p. 54) writes, ‘even the most innovative partnership strategies cannot resolve all the tensions and inequalities that characterize collaborations’. here, we focus on challenges related to project management logistics, tensions between individual priorities and institutional capacity development, and ethics of internationalisation. we believe that the institutional autonomy afforded in this partnership structure is a strength. the mastercard foundation’s model of partnership promotes reflexive learning, equality and complementarity, which simultaneously responds to the changing realities and requirements of the partnership as well as each partner and their communities. this, and the fact that partners’ autonomy in its collaborative engagement is cherished, set up the partnership to be free from the unequal power dynamics that feature in many neo-liberal north–south partnerships. on the other hand, this much valued institutional autonomy comes with problems related to financial management among international, interconnected and accountable partners. many of our challenges relate to crucial differences in management and administrative structures in our institutions. although the mastercard foundation aligns with its own policies and canadian government regulations related to the disbursement and reporting of funded projects, it does allow for flexibility in project operations to enable each project to align with internal institutional financial and reporting guidelines, whenever possible. this flexibility, although valued, created confusion and frustration at the uog. part a may follow slightly different rules for reporting (given that funds are administered between uog and the mastercard foundation) than for part b (which is administered through an agreement between queen’s and the mastercard foundation). at times, these varying policies and procedures across all three partners created pressure on administrative personnel who must understand and continually negotiate the complex and often bureaucratic institutional systems. the collaborative communication by the financial officers at both sites, with regular support and oversight of the management team to problem solve and meet the varied demands and aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 12 needs of all partners, is an ongoing and incredibly time-consuming, but necessary, task in a partnership of this scope. although we consider having the two linked but autonomous parts a and b of this project critical to mutuality, this also creates operational challenges beyond the financial challenges described above. each part has separate and unique deliverables. for part a it is to support 450 talented but disadvantaged youth to gain an education at the uog and for part b it is to build institutional capacity at the uog by training faculty in advanced levels, collaborative research and curriculum development) as well as different reporting relationships. we therefore find we must make clear, intentional efforts to link the two components and embed touchpoints and opportunities for communication and information sharing across part a and part b. this sharing of information and intentional connection of the day-to-day project activities must happen not just at the project management level but must permeate among all project staff. beyond financial management complexities, this project also experiences typical challenges of connecting across international borders. for example, we have placed great importance on strong communication and regular face-to-face connections with the management of this project. this can lead to frustration when internet connectivity and infrastructure (e.g. power outages) in ethiopia make it challenging to connect at designated times. moreover, given the time difference between ethiopia and canada, gondar staff generally remain in the office after working hours and queen’s staff join work early to connect. given the frequency of our office communications, this requirement on both sides for flexibility and changes to a typical working day length or hours, combined with the necessity to travel for quarterly face-to-face management meetings, can be a burden on staff wellbeing and work–life balance. that said, we believe that the partnership benefits strongly outweigh the work inconveniences in our approach. indeed, the constant communication and interactions will yield long-term benefits and considerable returns as future challenging negotiations will be ‘facilitated by the trust that partners have built up, as well as their ability to draw on past lessons to resolve present difficulties’ (bradley 2008, p. 681). the next major challenge we have encountered so far in this project relates to a tension that has emerged between individual needs and priorities and institutional needs and priorities. this is primarily operationalised in the phd fellows training component of this project, whereby uog faculty complete phd programs at queen’s. this phd program has been structured intentionally as a sandwich program, whereby fellows complete coursework and comprehensive exams in canada, carry out applied research and write up their dissertations in ethiopia, and return to canada for finalisation and defence of their dissertation. this sandwich program structure is recognised as an alternative to the problems inherent in long periods of stay for scientists from abroad. these include long periods of separation from their home environment, differing research infrastructure between north and south, and risk of ‘brain drain’ (nchinda 2002). uog faculty who, currently studying in effectively and efficiently equipped facilities and structures and passing through curricula that emphasise technologyintensive active learning at queen’s, then have to find and face solutions to existing gaps at gondar. this may either increase their commitment to improve the uog rehabilitation education and services or result in disappointment if they are unable to put their training abroad into practical use at home. we have begun to receive critiques from faculty fellows who believe their education is in jeopardy by having to conduct research and write for two years in ethiopia, rather than canada, due to disparities in supportive research environments between the two institutions. the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 13 faculty fellows regularly inform project staff that they are concerned about individual advancement (e.g. grades and progress to degree) and that this can compete with and should take priority over institutional advancement (e.g. participation in mastercard fellow cohort events, mentoring part a scholars, networking). project staff on all sides are working diligently to create supportive environments such that fellows need not choose between individual and institutional advancement. rather, our goal is that these two are seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing, rather than tensions. we are doing this through promotion of a cohort seminar series with topics to support and reinforce learning, effectively improving individual student outcomes while advancing collective learning and community around institutional capacity development at uog. we are also exploring research start-up fund opportunities for those faculty fellows who return to provide service to the uog upon completion of their phds. in addition to incentives to return, the project holds disincentives to stay in canada after the period of study. in particular, faculty fellows sign contracts with the uog to deliver a minimum number of service years to the institution after completion of the phd or repay the scholarship funds. it remains to be seen if this partnership’s outcomes will relate more to ‘individual rather than institutional capacity building’ (onokerhoraye & maticka-tyndale 2012, p. 128). the eventual outcomes of phd training initiatives hold implications for the project’s success. in spite of our efforts, however, we recognise that the ultimate success of the faculty capacity development component of this project may lie outside the bounds of the specific project, requiring institutional and national academic leadership, in terms of ‘good condition of service, suitable career paths, appropriate remuneration and/or allowances for … scientists’ (nchinda 2002 p. 1708). canadian immigration laws are an additional environmental risk to this aspect of the project, over which we have no control, with easy opportunities for international students to apply for permanent residency in canada following completion of a graduate degree. regarding the decision to return home or stay abroad after the completion of study, alberts and hazen (2005) identified three motivating factors: professional, societal and personal. with stark differences in facilities and resources for advancement in learning, research and public service in canadian post-secondary educational institutions, faculty fellows will have professional reasons to stay abroad after receiving their degrees. conversely, societal factors, such as political stability and occupational mobility, are generally expected to encourage their return home, while personal factors tend to have a rather undecided role in the decisionmaking process. for both societal and personal factors, most of the variables lie externally to our project. the significance of one factor relative to the others depends on each fellow. the challenge for us, therefore, is to identify and harness individually relevant ways to motivate all to return home and contribute their share to the attainment of the overall project goal. it would be programmatically and institutionally detrimental to let the logic of exit and the logic of commitment (hirschman 1970, cited in ellerman 2006, p. 21) play themselves out in informing each fellow’s decision. we live in an age where ‘internationalisation’ is top of mind in most higher education contexts around the world. although there are many positive benefits to increased global connectivity, it is not without ethical challenges. in particular, this partnership faces the ethical challenges of making sure that it is not just the actors from higher income countries or with control of the resources who are determining how (and to what degree) to internationalise. it also needs to consider the movement or ‘brain drain’ of top institutional talent and the increasing prevalence of the english language in teaching and research (rumbley, altbach aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 14 & reisberg 2012). we believe that our discussion throughout this article has provided some context for and engagement with the first two ethical issues above, so we conclude by focusing on the last. rumbley, altbach & reisberg (2012) identify english dominance in the academy as a key ethical implication of internationalisation. taking ethiopia, as a case example, they argue that there are serious drawbacks to ethiopia’s policy (and significant foreign aid support) of english as the official language of instruction in universities (although not in primary or secondary education). many ethiopian students and faculty are simply not operating effectively in english, putting them at a disadvantage in both teaching and learning. furthermore, if the aim of the country’s massive push to upgrade its national higher education system is to address key ethiopian challenges – poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, environmental degradation, public health problems, and the like – does the widespread use of a non-native language (often supported by curricula and materials from abroad) contribute effectively to the understanding of local problems or the cultivation of local solutions? (rumbley, altbach & reisberg 2012, p. 17) our project feels the tension of this dilemma in a number of ways. first, queen’s requires a minimum english language proficiency for entry into its degree programs. it has been a significant challenge to identify uog faculty members who meet this minimum proficiency level – particularly for entry into the occupational therapy program. this creates a barrier to access for many ethiopian faculty members who meet or exceed all program requirements except for english and potentially reinforces disparities in who is or who is not afforded access to opportunities for advancement at uog. we are developing and implementing curricula in english for cbr and ot for use by practitioners who will function largely in amharic like the local population. clearly, the critique of rumbley and colleagues of ethiopian institutions in general can also be operationalised using our project as an example. we anticipate that we will continue to grapple with challenges presented by the predominance of english in our activities throughout the implementation of this project. for example, how do we (or can we?) find a locally meaningful term for ‘occupational therapy’? finally, an additional challenge we have encountered relates to our ability to document and report on our rich learning and adaptations in the course of implementing the project. we have identified many points of learning; however, it has been a challenge for project staff to find the necessary dedicated time for deep reflection about and documentation of learning in the process of implementation. this challenge is not unique to our partnership (see angeles & boothroyd 2003) and we will continue to make a conscientious effort to critically reflect on, report and share our experiences amongst the members of the partnership and with the global community. conclusion as we look forward to the upcoming years of this project, we know that process-oriented learning will be necessary to move toward creative problem-solving processes that involve learning from experience (angeles & gurstein 2000). we have structured monitoring and evaluation plans for both parts a and b, as well as staff at both uog and queen’s to implement these plans, and are confident in our processes for capturing and reporting on successes and challenges of project activities. beyond typical monitoring and evaluation strategies of recording tangible activities, outputs and outcomes, we will strive to document and understand more intangible aspects of our partnerships, such as how the joint interactions the university of gondar, queen’s university and mastercard foundation scholars program: a partnership for disability-inclusive higher education in ethiopia gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 15 and inherent differences among partners served as opportunities for enrichment and how learning benefits occurred bi-directionally – both in ethiopia and in canada. indeed, ‘by making learning explicit, such partnerships draw attention to the possibilities for making both the learning and the partnerships more effective’ ( johnson & wilson 2006, p. 79). in involving project management teams and staff from both ends of the process of implementing project components, as well as identifying and resolving emerging issues in open and constructive discussion, we will work to ensure that the partnership grows as an engagement where both institutions and their communities define its nature and share its benefits on equal grounds. we believe that the benefits of this process-oriented partnership approach can extend far beyond disability inclusion and higher education and may be applicable to different sectors (e.g. partnerships between local and international non-governmental organisations for community development activities) and for different thematic priorities (e.g. maternal and child health), or for other equity-seeking groups. 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coupling of community attachment of health science students with relief work for drought victims’, education for health, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 179–93. https://doi. org/10.1080/13576280500154500  yoseph, m, etalem, s, adams, s, gardiner, a & perry, e 2007, ‘a primary health care approach to the management of chronic disease in ethiopia: an example for other countries’, clinical medicine, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 228–31. aldersey, abera, mzinganjira, abebe, demissie gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 12, no. 2, december 2019 18 https://doi.org/10.1080/13576280500154500 https://doi.org/10.1080/13576280500154500 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 17, no. 1 june 2024 © 2024 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: malone, m. 2024. editorial: building a model for dispersed openness. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 7. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9178 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au editorial building a model for dispersed openness margaret malone executive editor, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, uts centre for social justice and inclusion, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: margaret malone, margaret.malone@uts.edu.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9178 article history: received 04/06/2024; revised 10/06/2024; accepted 15/06/2024; published 06/2024 abstract this editorial explores the contribution an academic journal can make to critically engaged scholarship through critical self-reflection and innovation. community-university engaged research and practice, no longer marginalised perhaps, remains nonetheless institutionally precarious and the literature dominated by voices from the global north. for this journal, with its stated aim of increasing the diversity of contributors to the scholarly literature, there is both a responsibility and an opportunity to innovate. this editorial discusses two recent examples: writers’ workshops for manuscript development and the newly introduced ‘proposals’ section, where authors can gain early feedback on manuscript ideas. keywords open access; openness; pre-manuscript proposals; critically engaged scholarship; community-university engagement introduction in their recent review of engaged scholarship, us-based scholars lynn blanchard and andrew furco (2021, p. 34) outline what they see as a gradual emergence of ‘a common set of principles and practices for how engaged scholarship is defined and operationalised’. they argue that core characteristics include participatory practices; reciprocity; co-construction; democratic practices; shared authority; and shared resources (blanchard & furco 2021, p. 35). further, drawing on the work of cynthia gordon de cruz (2018), among others, they note 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9178 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9178 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:margaret.malone@uts.edu.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9178 the increased emphasis on critical community engaged scholarship, with its explicit focus on justice-oriented structural change. they write, ‘a goal of critically-engaged scholarship is to have an impact not only on the societal issue, but also on the scholars’ perspectives and the prevailing systems that perpetuate the issues’ (blanchard & furco 2021, p. 33). as a focal point of scholarly activity and legitimacy, academic journals are widely perceived as being primarily concerned with maintaining rather than dismantling prevailing systems. there is no doubt that much of today’s global commercial publishing landscape is inimical to the inclusive, participatory and knowledge democracy goals of engaged research and practice. within peer-reviewed journals, processes of submission, review, revision and dissemination can further entrench wider knowledge hierarchies. fear and sandman (2019, p. 108, italics in the original) draw attention to this point when they call for a ‘secondwave movement’. they explain: ‘in this second-wave movement, we won’t contend (as we did before) that the academy is underengaged because we will have recognised that the academy has always been engaged – sometimes overengaged and for private gain’. for any journal focused on community-university engagement, as well as books and conferences, there is both a responsibility and an opportunity to critically explore its own prevailing systems to help drive positive social and cognitive change. for me, this issue is what makes journal work relevant and energised, as well as subject to critique. when i first began thinking about the potential contribution journals could make, beyond merely publishing engaged literature, an early conceptualisation that i found useful was that offered by strand et al. (2003). while their discussion focused on community-based research, it also suggested to me a credible expression of the ways in which a journal could contribute as both publisher and example of critically engaged scholarship. they wrote that the ‘distinctive combination of collaborative inquiry, critical analysis, and social action’ make community-based research (cbr) ‘a potentially revolutionary strategy for achieving long-lasting and fundamental institutional change’. in relation to knowledge, strand et al. (2003, p. 7) argued that cbr ‘challenges some basic assumptions about knowledge itself: what constitutes valid knowledge, how it is best produced (and by whom), and who should control it’. this became my rule of thumb for gateways: collaboration, knowledge democracy and institutional action for epistemic change. these have been our touchstones since the journal’s founding in 2008, itself the result of our very first collaboration between loyola university in the usa and the university of technology sydney in australia. these founding principles continue to guide us today and have most clearly taken shape in our focus on diversifying, strengthening and championing north-south-east-west participation in academic publishing. we are deeply committed to this. it is a core stance, which has helped shape our practices, processes and publications across editorial, guest editorship, external peer review, authorship and readership over many years (malone 2022). this editorial is a continuation of that ongoing effort. my key aim here is to renew, if not sharpen, our journal’s understanding and application of these key tenets in relation to our work as it has evolved. to do so, i focus first on a recent initiative the writers’ workshops in the themed volumes and then outline a new offering for our general volumes the option to submit pre-manuscript proposals. for the last four years, the editorial committee, in partnership with guest editors, has facilitated online writers’ workshops as part of our annual themed volume, which is published every december. all authors whose proposals had been accepted were invited to take part in the workshops, offered as a way to support manuscript development. these voluntary writers’ workshops are held online, involve one to three sessions per volume, each session lasting approximately two hours. attendance is not a guarantee of publication or even external peer review. the participants come from many countries and have varying levels of experience with academic writing. we have now offered these writers’ workshops over the last four themed volumes, and it has become apparent that their value is greater than manuscript development alone. authors share relevant literature, learn about each other’s work and context, explore methodological issues, deepen their understanding of the volume’s theme and questions, and reflect more generally on scholarly writing in the context of community-engaged research and practice. in essence, malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20242 participants build a community of practice. anecdotal feedback, such as that in the following quote, suggests that the workshops are useful and valued. thank you so much for the wonderful workshop! i learned a lot from the discussion, which i will share with the co-authors. i was also impressed by your facilitation. you created a safe space for us all, while reminding us [of ] the deadline and other things to care about at the same time. this kind of facilitation [was] not easy because we were meeting for the first time with each other, and it was even virtual! (author workshop participant, in email correspondence with the journal, 2/6/2023). we see further evidence of their positive impact in the willingness of workshop participants to subsequently contribute as referees on a later volume. comprehensive evaluation of the workshops will occur this year, from which we will gather detailed feedback from participating authors and guest editors on what works, what doesn’t, what could be improved, how, why and for what purposes. this feedback will help further embed the workshops as a core feature of our themed volumes. there is also potential for expansion: workshops could be held after external peer review, for example, or at the initial proposal stage. workshops could also be held for external peer reviewers. i see in these workshops strong confirmation of a distinct methodological framework for gateways’ themed volumes that has emerged over the past few years. this represents a deepening of our commitment to collaboration, knowledge democracy and institutional change through bold and relevant experimentation. the themed volumes are emerging as our primary place to challenge ourselves (authors, editors and reviewers), and hopefully the field as a whole. this year’s themed volume, for example, due to be published in december 2024, will focus on multi-modal and multi-perspectival ways of communicating engaged research and practice. the seasons, rivers, insects, emotions, objects, technology and humans all play a part in the co-authored manuscripts: how to write such research and how to assess it? whose voices need to be heard, and in which positions of authority? by building communities of practice through writers’ workshops, we hope to establish a sustainable and sustaining model for communication and dissemination; one that is not predicated on shoehorning engagement into narrowly defined conventions at the point of its institutionalisation in an academic journal. gateways’ general volumes the emerging importance of the writers’ workshops in our themed volumes has also prompted consideration of our general volumes, such as this one here. the clarity of purpose taking shape in the themed volumes has revealed something of its absence in the general volumes. there is a need to renew the general volumes’ sense of purpose, ensuring they are explicitly – not generally – responsive to and shaped by their own priorities. at their core, gateways’ general volumes exist to provide scholars and practitioners with a dedicated space to demonstrate the legitimacy, credibility and rigor of their engaged research and practice. these general volumes are intended to be a place for all within the broad engaged movement. by design, then, the general volumes employ processes and practices meant to be flexible and expansive. there is no set theme or focus. there are no set timetables. there is no initial vetting stage of proposals, as there is in the themed volumes. instead, any author/s can submit a manuscript, indicating only the appropriate section: peer-review research, practice-based or snapshot. manuscripts are accepted on a rolling basis and are published in similar fashion. the volume ‘opens’ in june, with how ever many articles are ready for publication, and more are added on a rolling basis until archiving in early december. the time from submission to publication can be as short or long as authors need. the above measures were put in place with the hope of better enabling participation by diverse authors in scholarly communication and dissemination. our widening lead-author-by-country profile suggests that the above approach is working well. over the last four years gateways received manuscript submissions from 35 different countries (see table 1). this compares with submissions from 14 countries in gateways’ first four malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20243 https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/uts_2023-nov_gateways-call-for-papers_2024_final.pdf years (2008–2012). these geographically diverse submissions offer the journal and the wider field a unique picture of global dispersion. they reveal the enormous variety of theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, place-based matters of concern and modes of participation currently being led by people, groups and myriad organisations all over the world. this is a precious resource. of course, the flipside of submission is publication. and here we can see how much more remains to be done if we are to fully support and grow this resource: over the last four years, published articles came from 15 countries. this is an increase from nine countries in our first four years, but a way off 35. there are many reasons for this gap, some of which are substantially outside of our control. we regularly receive submissions that have nothing to do with engagement and they are declined; but the pressure to publish in english language journals is enormously wasteful and benefits few. those submissions are included in the table below. however, many others are well matched to our journal but need further work, ranging from table 1. submitted manuscripts and published articles by lead-author-by-country, 2018–2022 country submitted manuscripts published articles country submitted manuscripts published articles usa 65 23 colombia 2 2 canada 46 18 germany 2 1 australia 25 5 ghana 2 0 south africa 13 3 malaysia 2 0 great britain 11 4 angola 1 1 indonesia 8 1 brazil 1 0 nigeria 5 0 china 1 0 kenya 5 2 israel 1 0 tanzania 5 0 south korea 1 0 uganda 4 1 lesotho 1 0 ireland 3 1 libya 1 0 india 3 0 pakistan 1 0 italy 3 1 poland 1 0 philippines 2 1 russia 1 0 argentina 2 0 saudia arabia 1 0 austria 2 0 sweden 1 0 bangladesh 2 0 taiwan 1 0 belgium 2 1 total: 227 submitted manuscripts from 35 countries total: 65 published articles from 15 countries decline rate: 71% source: uts epress. malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20244 minor to substantial revisions. these submissions display widely varying levels of the capacity and capability of authors to share their work with external readers via an english language academic journal. it’s this group that concerns our editorial committee the most. working diligently and carefully with these authors on a one-to-one basis is valuable and important, but many manuscripts still don’t make it to publication. this is especially true (though not exclusively) of submissions from the global south. the table below makes this plain. the critical, practical and ethical question for us, then, is how to improve what we do in order to better support this diverse group where they’re at. we have long done the most obvious work of removing technical and financial barriers, among other efforts. adopting an open access model from the outset (all articles are free to read and free for submitting authors) is an essential step for a journal to take but by itself insufficient. even this remains all too rare: a recent report by the european university association (2022, p. 8.) found that among new research published globally, ‘roughly 85%’ sits behind paywalls. more critically, as florence piron warns, open access may inadvertently serve as little more than a ‘neocolonial tool’ if the flow of knowledge remains predominantly one-way. she argues that ‘by making the work produced at the center of the world system more accessible, open access maximizes its impact on the periphery and reinforces its use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies’ (piron 2018). there is indeed a need for a concerted ‘second wave’. the unesco recommendation on open science (2021) offers an excellent grounding for journals. it advocates for open science practices that foster openness as part of a broader, wider and deeper change effort. there is scope here for gateways to move more intentionally towards what i am framing as a model of dispersed openness for our general volumes. i see two interconnected aims: one, to establish earlier and ongoing relationships with authors in order to build capacity; and two, to build this through a flexible, accessible, responsive and sustainable system that is author-led. to this end, gateways has now introduced a voluntary proposal option for authors. this pilot is open to any author who wishes to obtain some feedback on a proposal prior to submitting a full manuscript. we imagine this will be of most use to those new to academic writing and/or those for whom english is not their first language. proposal outlines are welcome at any stage of an engaged research project (as early as is useful for the author/s). once submitted to the journal (under a new ‘proposals’ section), the proposal can be revised as many times as necessary over whatever time frame is needed; the writing can (and should) be simple and clear; the same editor will engage with the author on the proposal, as much as possible; and there is no obligation to submit any subsequent manuscript with the journal; nor is there any obligation on the journal’s behalf to publish the manuscript. when preparing a proposal for submission (via the journal’s online system), we have developed the following prompts for authors to consider, keeping the total word count to around 500 words: • what is the purpose of your proposed manuscript? that is, what do you wish to share with gateways’ readers? try and explain your purpose in 3–5 sentences. • does your purpose align with gateways’ purpose: to share theory, research, pedagogy and practice related to all forms of community-university engagement? • if yes, please tell us a little bit about the community-university collaboration to be featured. • what is the key question or focus you wish to explore? why is it significant, and for whom? • how do you propose to explore this focus in your manuscript? in your answer, you may point to things such as key concepts or literature, methodological approach, use of data, engaged writing strategy (including multi-modal), etc. • is the manuscript to be co-authored? if not, why not? malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20245 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/about/editorialpolicies#sectionpolicies concluding thoughts on january 1, only a couple of weeks after the publication of the above-mentioned article, a great earthquake devastated [town]. being away from the area, i was not directly affected, while many of my co-authors were. i am submitting this proposal only three weeks after the earthquake. i haven’t been able to find any clue yet, but one thing is clear. the types of academic writing that we have been using … is the least sought type of many information sources by local practitioners striving to fight urgent and severe issues in their communities. (submitting author, themed volume proposal, 23/01/2024). the above quote is from the same author who congratulated gateways on the successful facilitation of a writers’ workshop, included earlier in this article. this quote is from a separate proposal submitted in response to a call for papers, which was not accepted by the editorial team. one reason for that decision was a perceived sense of ‘unreadiness’. the author acknowledged as much, noting that they hoped to be able to participate once again in a writers’ workshop. while undoubtedly a modest step, this pilot for a system of one-on-one proposal development hopefully goes some way to assist authors in their diverse and evolving scholarly communication efforts in ways that are not wasteful or misleading. most importantly, we hope this encourages more variety and more experimentation rather than adherence to dominant conventions for scholarly writing. walter lepore and barbara jenni (2024, p. 37) have similarly argued that ‘… the critical task of partnership coordinators and leaders is to build and maintain a sustainable system of shared meanings in the curp [community university research partnership] as a whole, without losing sight of the wide variety of kcs [knowledge cultures] – with their own values, ideologies and cultural forms – that exist within the partnership’. we hope this proposal option contributes in the same vein. gateways journal, like others in the field, was established at a time when many discipline-based journals and institutions were less than convinced of the merits of community-based research and practice. fifteen years later, engagement is increasingly recognised as vital scholarly activity, spanning research, teaching and outreach. yet the strength of this institutional commitment remains uneven and highly contingent (marginson & smolentseva 2014; watermeyer & lewis 2018). the scholarly literature on engagement is but one case in point. english language journal articles (as well as books and conferences) remain marked by the absence of substantive contributions by those with non-discipline-based expertise, by students and those from the global south (koekkoek et al. 2021). we are well past the time when this can be justified. innovative, sustainable, open and democratic systems need to be explored and established if we are to see the social and cognitive changes so urgently needed. as bruno latour (2021, p. 128) so eloquently wrote in after lockdown, ‘if we’ve tipped over into the new world, gone back inside living conditions whose remains we’re obliged to mend, then the most important movement is to be able to scatter in all directions. if only we had the time’. references blanchard, l & furco, a 2021, faculty engaged scholarship: setting standards and building conceptual clarity, the academy of community engagement scholarship, pp. 19–41. https://doi.org/10.17615/0xj1-c495 european university association (eua) 2022, the eua open science agenda 2025. https://eua.eu/resources/ publications/1003:the-eua-open-science-agenda-2025.html fear, f & sandmann, l 2019, ‘it’s time for a second-wave movement’, in l sandmann & d jones (eds), building the field of higher education engagement, stylus, pp. 99–110. gordon da cruz, c 2018, ‘community-engaged scholarship: toward a shared understanding of practice’, the review of higher education, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 147–67. https://westoahu.hawaii.edu/ires/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ community-engaged-scholarship toward-a-shared-understanding-of-practice.pdf malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20246 https://doi.org/10.17615/0xj1-c495 https://eua.eu/resources/publications/1003:the-eua-open-science-agenda-2025.html https://eua.eu/resources/publications/1003:the-eua-open-science-agenda-2025.html https://westoahu.hawaii.edu/ires/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/community-engaged-scholarship https://westoahu.hawaii.edu/ires/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/community-engaged-scholarship koekkoek, a, van ham, m & kleinhans, r 2021, ‘unravelling university-community engagement: a literature review’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 3–24. https://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/jheoe/ article/view/1586 latour, b 2021, after lockdown: a metamorphosis (trans. j rose), polity. lepore, w & jenni, b 2024, ‘a theoretical framework to bridge knowledge cultures’, in w lepore, bl hall and r tandon (eds), bridging knowledge cultures: rebalancing power in the co-construction of knowledge, brill, pp. 18–43. https:// brill.com/display/title/69418?language=en&contents=editorial-content malone, m 2022, ‘editorial: reimagining the global research table’, gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8224 marginson, s & smolentseva, a 2014, ‘higher education in the world: main trends and facts’, in guni (ed.), higher education in the world 5, knowledge, engagement and higher education: contributing to social change, global university network for innovation, palgrave macmillan, pp. 26–31. https://unescochair-cbrsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ guni5_report.pdf piron, f 2018, ‘postcolonial open access’, in j schöpfel & u herb (eds), open divide: critical studies on open access, litwin books. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/16178 strand, k, marullo, s, cutforth, n, stoecker, r & donohue, p 2003, ‘principles for best practice for communitybased research’, michigan journal of community service learning, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 5–15. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ spo.3239521.0009.301 unesco 2021, open science: unesco recommendation on open science. https://oacps-ri.eu/wp-content/uploads/ osreng.pdf watermeyer, r & lewis, j 2018, ‘institutionalizing public engagement through research in uk universities: perceptions, predictions and paradoxes concerning the state of the art’, studies in higher education, vol. 43, no. 9, pp. 1612–1624. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1272566 malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20247 https://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/jheoe/article/view/1586 https://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/jheoe/article/view/1586 https://brill.com/display/title/69418?language=en&contents=editorial-content https://brill.com/display/title/69418?language=en&contents=editorial-content https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i1.8224 https://unescochair-cbrsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/guni5_report.pdf https://unescochair-cbrsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/guni5_report.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/16178 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3239521.0009.301 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3239521.0009.301 https://oacps-ri.eu/wp-content/uploads/osreng.pdf https://oacps-ri.eu/wp-content/uploads/osreng.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1272566 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: brown-luthango, m., van rooyen, r. 2022. ‘do you own your freedom?’ reflecting on cape town youths’ aspirations to be free. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8210 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) ‘do you own your freedom?’ reflecting on cape town youths’ aspirations to be free mercy brown-luthango1,*, rosca van rooyen2 1 african centre for cities, school of architecture, planning and geomatics, university of cape town 2 nodread pty (ltd) and african centre for cities, school of architecture, planning and geomatics, university of cape town corresponding author: mercy brown-luthango, mercy.brown-luthango@uct.ac.za doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 article history: received 01/06/2022; revised 30/09/2022; accepted 08/12/2022; published 12/2022 abstract young people make up half of the world’s population and constitute the majority of the population across the global south (cooper et al. 2019). in south africa, the youth constitute one-third of the country’s population, many of whom belong to the so-called ‘born free’ generation. the ‘born free’ generation typically refers to those who were born after the end of apartheid, or those who were coming of age after 1994. the youth, particularly in cities of the south, represent an excluded majority in terms of access to meaningful employment and quality living environments. this article reflects on a research project which used narrative photovoice as a method to engage a group of 13 young people from mitchell’s plain, philippi and gugulethu; poor marginalised areas in cape town. narrative photovoice combines photography with writing to give participants an opportunity to convey particular stories or issues through their photography. through a process of co-production and collaboration between academic researchers, a community-based organisation (cbo) called ‘youth for change’ and a creative enterprise called ‘nodread’productions, the youth were engaged in a creative process using photographs to tell stories about themselves, their communities and the broader city context in which they live. this article draws on appadurai’s notion of the ‘capacity to aspire’ to make sense of the aspirations and dreams the participants talk about through their photographs; how they navigate structural, psychological and other factors which impede their aspirations 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research was funded through a research grant from the national research foundation (nrf) as part of their support for rated researchers. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mercy.brown-luthango@uct.ac.za https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8210 and their freedom, and how they make sense of their everyday realities. the article advances two interlinked arguments: firstly, it makes visible the ‘navigational capacity’ of youth from marginalised neighbourhoods and their capacity to aspire amidst multiple constraints. it does so by illustrating how the youth grapple with the idea and experience of freedom in their everyday life. secondly, it makes a case for the use of photovoice as a method that is well positioned to (a) capture the visual dimension of youth aspirations and (b) allow for co-production between the different stakeholders. keywords youth; agency; aspirations; freedom; hope; choices introduction youth now make up a vast majority of people living in the global south (cooper et al. 2019). this youthful population find themselves in a context marked by deepening economic inequality, poverty and socio-spatial fragmentation, with cities being the primary sites where these conditions come to the fore. this article reflects on a research project aimed at exploring these issues amongst a group of young people in cape town, south africa. using appadurai’s concept of the capacity to aspire, it reflects on how young people’s navigational capacity and agency are impacted by a severe lack of psycho-social and material resources in their immediate socio-economic environment and how they respond to these multiple challenges in their everyday lived environments. these structural impediments significantly impact the youths’ experience of freedom, and the article shows how they make sense of and navigate the varied dimensions of freedom in their daily lives. it also advances two interlinked arguments: firstly, it makes visible the ‘navigational capacity’ of youth from marginalised neighbourhoods and their capacity to aspire amidst considerable constraints. secondly, it makes a case for the use of photovoice as a method that is well positioned to (a) capture the visual dimension of youth aspirations and (b) allow for co-production between the different stakeholders. the youth, identity and the city project engaged thirteen youth from mitchell’s plain, philippi and gugulethu, poor marginalised areas in cape town, in a process of reflection and exploration using photography as a tool. this project was based on a collaborative partnership between a youth-based ngo called ‘youth for change’, a creative social enterprise ‘nodread’ pty (ltd) and an academic partner. this latest project stems from the continuation of a long-term partnership between ‘youth for change’ and mercy brown-luthango, one of the co-authors of this article. between 2012 and 2015, the researcher established a relationship with a cbo in tafelsig, called the tafelsig people’s association (tpa), as part of an ongoing university-based research project that studies the relationship between upgrading of informal settlements and experiences and perceptions of violence and safety. tafelsig is one of the poorest sections of mitchell’s plain, one of the biggest townships in cape town. during this research project, the issue of youth and their experiences and perceptions emerged strongly as a theme needing further investigation. tpa decided to shift their strategic direction from a sole focus on housing struggles towards youth. they established ‘youth for change’, a cbo focused on youth development and indicated their desire for a research process which would assist them in gaining a greater understanding of some of the perceptions and experiences of youth in the area. through this, the community-based partner directed the researcher towards the nexus of urban youth experiences, a topic which up until this point was not an explicit focus of her research. based on this, youth for change and the researcher co-designed a pilot project that also involved two activist filmmakers as a means to connect with youth and their everyday lived realities. this project engaged ten young people from tafelsig in a range of participatory activities and exercises including excursions to various historical places in the city. they also interacted with local artists and entrepreneurs hailing from the greater mitchell’s plain area who shared their life histories and imparted important lessons to the youth. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 the program prompted the participants to reflect critically on their history, their place in the city and the challenges that they currently face, and to draw connections between these various elements. this culminated in the production of two short films, written and produced by the youth with guidance from the filmmakers (http://www.saferspaces.org.za/blog/entry/media-as-empowerment-for-youth-in-mitchellsplain). each youth participant was given a copy of the films which they produced, and the films were shared with their family, friends and the broader community at a film screening in the local library in their neighbourhood. the research project, on which this article is based, a follow-up to the initial youth-based project, sought to include youth from surrounding areas like gugulethu and philippi. this time around, youth for change and the researcher collaborated with ‘nodread’ pty (ltd), a creative social enterprise owned by the other author of this article. whilst the foundational methodology and objective of the research remained the same, we used photography – rather than film-making – as a tool to encourage the youth to tell their stories. to this end, we decided to use photovoice as a methodology. whilst there is no consensus on what exactly photovoice means, the collective desire expressed by youth for change, nodread and the researcher was to allow the youth as much autonomy in driving the engagement as possible by allowing them to capture the images they wanted to capture, to choose the photographs they wanted to exhibit and tell the stories they wanted to tell about their photographs. the sections below provide a broader framing for the research project and describe in more detail the methodology that underpinned the co-production process and how this facilitated the process of deep reflection, learning and unlearning for us, as researchers, and the youth participants. co-production is a much-debated concept within disciplines such as planning, organisational management and the social sciences more broadly (brown-luthango & arendse 2022). here we think of co-production as a process which involves multiple actors that contribute their unique resources, knowledges and skills to the production of knowledge that is context-specific, context-sensitive and mutually beneficial. whilst we do not believe that a co-production process of this kind, between a university partner and a community-based organisation, can ever be truly equal, given, amongst other factors, the imbalance in access to financial resources, the community-based partner in this instance could influence the direction and focus of the research to meet their needs at a particular time if there was mutual learning and reflection over the course of a collaboration spanning a number of years. the narrative photovoice methodology used for this project allowed the youth participants a great deal of autonomy to steer the creative process and the resultant products of the research. the photographs and the narratives produced by the participants revealed several issues which they were concerned about. one of the main themes that was consistently highlighted, both in the individual and collective narratives, centred around the idea of freedom: what it means and how the idea of freedom, or being free, relates to their everyday lived realities. this article first discusses appadurai’s concept of the capacity to aspire and its relevance to the south african context. it then presents insights on the research process and shows how narrative photovoice can be used to capture youth aspirations in a more holistic manner. finally, it discusses some key findings of the research, showing how youth from marginalised neighbourhoods in cape town navigate and negotiate their aspirations vis-a-vis complex social, spatial, economic and psychological challenges. it illustrates, through the participants’ photos and written work, how the youth wrestle with their perception of freedom, both individually and collectively, and the myriad factors that impact their aspirations for freedom. background and context urbanisation is proceeding at a rapid speed in asia and africa. this is accompanied by growing informality, violence and insecurity as the delivery of basic services does not keep pace with the rate of urbanisation. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 http://www.saferspaces.org.za/blog/entry/media-as-empowerment-for-youth-in-mitchells-plain http://www.saferspaces.org.za/blog/entry/media-as-empowerment-for-youth-in-mitchells-plain the failure of neo-liberal economic policies and stagnant economic growth have seen an increase in poverty, inequality, economic precarity, rising unemployment and a shrinkage of social protection in many countries of the global south. youth live, by and large, in cities and towns, and according to un habitat, by 2030, 60 percent of all urban dwellers will be under the age of 18 (un habitat 2012). it is an unfortunate reality that the youth, particularly in cities of the south, still represent an excluded majority in terms of access to meaningful employment and quality living environments. young people, specifically those between the ages of 15 and 34, bear the brunt of joblessness and insecurity, and in africa constitute the largest share of those employed in the informal economy (un habitat 2013). youth are concentrated in informal settlements or marginalised urban settlements, which means that they are disadvantaged in terms of access to basic services, such as water, sanitation and electricity, as well as public amenities, affordable and quality health care and educational infrastructure (un habitat 2013). like the rest of africa, south africa has a youthful population and its youth are particularly disadvantaged in terms of living conditions and professional opportunities. amongst the 20.4 million young people aged between 15 and 34, 43.2 percent were unemployed during the first quarter of 2020 (statistics south africa quarterly labourforce survey 2020). this was exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in large-scale job losses. this precarity manifests in multiple socio-economic forms, such as violence, crime, lack of safety and poor health outcomes in terms of hiv/aids and tuberculosis, as well as food insecurity, by which young people, particularly black african and coloured youth, are disproportionately impacted. black african and coloured are racial classification categories in south africa, as are indian and white. the so-called ‘born free’ generation, those born after the advent of democracy or have come of age since 1994, represent a significant proportion of south africa’s youth population. this term, coined by the media, imposes much expectation on this group. there is an assumption that, not being burdened by the shackles of apartheid legislation, they would benefit from the many supposed opportunities that a post-apartheid south africa would afford them. this group is subject to stereotypes and is considered by some from the ‘struggle’ generation (those who lived through and experienced the period of apartheid from 1976 onwards) to be ‘apathetic, apolitical, lazy and unaware of the history of struggle that made freedom and desegregation possible’ (mpongo 2016). it has been argued that this term is imposed on young people by the media and certain sectors of society, and is one with which many young people in fact do not identify (maimela 2014; malila 2015; malila & garman 2016; mpongo 2016; vandeyar 2019). furthermore, young people are for the most part voiceless and invisible in mainstream media and many policy processes that report and make decisions about issues which concern them. malila and garman (2016), for example, found that only 8.5 percent of all education-related stories covered in the media included and considered the opinions and perceptions of young people. research undertaken with participants from the so-called ‘born free’ generation find that many of them in fact do not feel free, and whilst they are not living under apartheid, they still experience the psycho-social impact of the legacy of apartheid and persistent spatial fragmentation and segregation, which prevent them accessing the spaces and opportunities which living in a democratic society should afford them (maimela 2014; malila 2015; malila & garman 2016; mattes 2012; mpongo 2016; vandeyar 2019; willmore et al. 2022). it is argued that freedom is multi-dimensional and political freedom experienced by ‘born frees’ is but one dimension of a larger dynamic of freedom and bondage (vandeyar 2019, p. 466). much scholarly work has grappled with understanding the impacts of structural conditions on young people’s life chances, everyday lived experiences, their futures, and attainment of dreams and goals. this article draws on appadurai’s concept of the capacity to aspire. the choice of this theoretical framing was informed by the ways in which the youth reflected on the notion of freedom and their capacity to aspire and make choices in a context marked by poverty, inequality of various kinds, drug abuse and high levels of interpersonal violence. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 youth aspirations – capacities and constraints poverty, intergenerational deprivation, and the capacity to aspire the relationship between poverty and the formation and attainment of aspirations, particularly among youth, has received much attention in scholarly work investigating young people. aspirations are referred to as the ‘hopes, ambitions and drive to achieve certain goals’ (ibrahim 2011). ray (2003) argues that a twoway relationship exists between aspiration and poverty as poverty can inhibit the attainment of aspirations, which in turn can manifest in poverty. this is what is referred to as ‘aspirations failure’. appadurai (2004) and others argue that aspirations are not formed or achieved in a vacuum, but are created, embedded and sustained within the social environment (appadurai 2004; ibrahim 2011; jeffrey 2004; ray 2003). family, peer and other relationships within young people’s social context have considerable bearing on their aspirations. these are used to construct what the literature refers to as the ‘aspirations window’, which is defined as the ‘individual’s cognitive world and what is perceived as attainable’ (ibrahim 2011, p. 5). an ‘aspirations gap’ exists when what is aspired to is not matched with the necessary resources (economic, social and other) available within young people’s social environment. young people’s aspirations and goals are conditioned and shaped by the lifestyles, social and political norms, and economic position of others within their social environment. in a context of severe multi-dimensional, intergenerational poverty and deprivation, which is endemic to certain contexts within cities of the global south, young people’s aspirations window can be narrow, constituting what camfield et al. (2012) refer to as ‘aspirational inequalities’, which are closely connected to and conditioned by material and social inequalities. it is important to note that the aspirations window is not only constrained by external limitations, but also internal psychological resources. drawing on research in northeast and southern thailand, camfield et al. (2012) argue that the aspirations window of young people in the global south is not only impacted by their immediate social environment, but also by the daily bombardment of images of wealth and the consumer culture from other parts of the globe, creating rising and unequally satisfying aspirations, as their own inability to secure meaningful employment make these unattainable. the authors observe that in this context, young people ‘adapt’ their aspirations by lowering their expectations, as a means of preserving psycho-social wellbeing. this requires a careful and complex balancing of aspirations, strategies and action to make sense of and respond to their social environment and the obstacles they face in fulfilling their aspirations (copestake & camfield 2010). appadurai uses the concept of navigational capacity, or an individual’s capacity to aspire, which he argues is not evenly distributed in society, but is very much dependent on the cultural tools, resources and networks, and the access to information which this enables. this has a class dimension as ‘the more privileged in any society simply have used the map of its norms to explore the future more frequently and more realistically, and to share this knowledge with one another more routinely than their poorer and weaker neighbors’ (appadurai 2004, p. 69). poverty, then, constrains the capacity to aspire and limits navigational capacity. another conceptual angle relevant to the research presented below is the nature of agency and how this intersects with the attainment of aspirations. agency, freedom and choice – more than meets the eye aspirations are linked to freedom and agency. ibrahim (2011, p. 9) states that ‘aspirations are based on individuals’ freedoms to achieve the lives that they aspire to and their ability to use their human agency to effectively achieve these aspired lives’. however, human agency is itself socially conditioned by structural and institutional factors which impede freedom and choice, resulting in unfilled aspirations, powerlessness and brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 frustration which, in turn, affects capabilities, resulting in what ibrahim refers to as the intergenerational transmission of aspirations failure (ibid). scholars of social psychology have made a point of stressing the importance of internal belief systems and psychological agency in shaping youth’s perception of their aspirations window and, in turn, propelling them towards taking purposive action towards attaining their aspirations and goals (bandura 2005; banks 2015; narayan-parker 2005). this is what narayan (2005) refers to as ‘the power within’. however, klein (2014), reflecting on work done in bamako, mali, emphasises that psychological agency on its own is not a sufficient condition to move people closer to their desired outcomes. this must be supported by a ‘favourable opportunity structure’ and one’s sense and experience of power within this opportunity structure. there is, in fact, a dynamic interaction between psychological agency and the structural environment, which either constrains or enables action towards the realisation of dreams and aspirations (klein 2004). arguing for a more holistic and multi-dimensional conception of purposeful agency, klein argues that ‘we need to see purposeful agency not just as the expansion of resources, the distribution of power, or the enlargement of decision-making ability, but also as the psychological power within that drives agents above and beyond their own socio-economic characteristics to make positive changes for their own lives and the community around them’ (2004, p. 21). drawing on developmental psychology, banks (2015) alludes to the importance of a range of personal, family and community resources, both material and psycho-social, to the development and fulfilment of aspirations. she argues that ‘the accumulation of these factors – the development of a coherent sense of self, a range of core developmental assets and warm and supportive institutions and relationships – combine to influence young people’s ability or inability to build dreams, developing hopes and aspirations for the future that they then strive to meet” (banks 2015, p. 3). given the lack of voice and invisibility of young people already alluded to by other youth scholars (maimela 2014; malila 2015; malila & garman 2016; mpongo 2016;), this research used narrative photovoice as a method to give youth a voice and to listen and observe how they make sense of and navigate the structural conditions which impact their daily lives. methodology and the research process in 2018 we embarked on a research project entitled ‘youth, identity and the city’. to build a baseline understanding of young people’s perceptions and ideas around the key questions and concerns of the research, in-depth interviews were conducted with young people from tafelsig in mitchell’s plain and young people from philippi and gugulethu at the start of the project. it became clear that many of the young people interviewed either struggled to or were reluctant to answer some of the questions posed during this interview process. the participants’ reluctance prompted exploration of more creative techniques and participatory methods, specifically the use of photography, to engage research participants. the research employed narrative photovoice as a method to understand how young people engage with their everyday social environment and navigate the myriad of challenges that they are exposed to in their everyday lives. photovoice (pv) is a collaborative, qualitative research method often used in community-based participatory research (cbpr) projects. the method was first developed by wang and yurris in the early 1990s and was used to study the reproductive health of chinese women in yunnan, china (nykiforuk et al. 2011; strack et al. 2014; wang 2006). it has its theoretical foundations in the work of paulo freire, with its emphasis on critical dialogue and feminist theory, stressing the need for inclusion and participation of marginal voices in knowledge creation and sharing (harley & hunn 2015; rose et al. 2016; strack et al. 2014; wang 2006; wang et al. 2004). the photovoice method entails several distinct steps or phases, including a preparatory phase where participants are trained in aspects of photography and discuss issues around power and ethics. this is followed by the taking of photographs and a process where participants are brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 encouraged to select the photographs that they want to display. this is accompanied by facilitated discussion about the photographs: why participants took specific photographs and their reasons for selecting these and not others. many scholars cite the benefit of the pv method for working with young people and eliciting their perspectives and experiences around sensitive issues in their everyday living environments that are sometimes difficult to verbalise, thereby amplifying marginalised voices (gant et al. 2009; harley & hunn 2015; nykiforuk et al. 2011; vaughn et al. 2008). here the combining of visual and narrative techniques to engage youth in a process of ‘meaning-making’, critical dialogue and knowledge co-production is of particular importance (chanody et al. 2013; simmonds et al. 2015; zenkov & harman 2009). one of the challenges or tensions in applying this method is around participation and control, and balancing of the interests of all role-players, including the participants, researchers and other community partners involved in the process (chanody et al. 2013; johansen & le 2012; rose et al. 2016). researchers might begin with a set of preconceived research objectives and questions, but the photographs that participants take and select for reflection and the narratives which they construct around these might lead the research down a different path. vaughn et al. (2008, p. 308) argue that photovoice ‘allows for participants’ voices to truly be heard and for a deeper understanding of how people make meaning in their lives rather than imposing a research objective upon a community, often with predetermined assumptions and outcomes’. this requires that the researcher/s be willing to cede a greater level of control of the process and outcome to the participants. this is not always easy but can provide participants with a sense of ownership of the process and can generate new and different insights which might not have been possible to attain through traditional methods. however, this also requires a level of trust between all parties involved, based on long-standing relationships that have been built over time (nykiforuk et al. 2011). the time and resource commitment required by photovoice methodology has been raised as one of the challenges of employing this method. these were tensions and issues that we also confronted in this research project. the process started with a series of seven workshops, which took place between september 2018 and december 2019, to involve the youth and slowly build a relationship and rapport. the first was a two-day workshop, which was aimed at drawing the young people into a process of self-reflection where they had to think about their personal identity and who they are in the spaces they live in, through a process of sharing their life stories with the rest of the group. during the first workshop, they also had to construct their personal asset tree and identify and share with the group their experiences, skills and knowledge (see images 1 and 2). the personal asset tree encourages youth to think about their personal resources, skills and capabilities, and the exercise is aimed at encouraging the participants to understand themselves more deeply and to consider what capabilities they have. images 1 and 2. participants introducing themselves and their asset trees images: mercy brown-luthango, cape town, 18 september 2018 brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 this was followed by an exercise in which they introduced their various communities to one another in an effort to build better understanding and allow the youth to think about and identify points of connection between themselves and across their communities. important to note here is that, although these communities (mitchell’s plain, philippi and gugulethu) are located in physical proximity to one another, they are still socially distant due to the remnants of social engineering and racial segregation policies imposed under apartheid. so, building better understanding and closing some of the social distance between members of the group was a desired outcome of all the processes. the first workshop laid the foundation for the youth engagement process, which culminated in an exhibition, curated by the youth, as well as a photo book which they took the lead in creating. drawing on the photovoice methodology, photography was employed as a research method because of its potential to engage the youth around topics and experiences which they might otherwise not feel free to talk about. at times it is difficult to convey understanding of our world through words or language. however, photography creates a different platform for uncovering the perspectives and truths relevant to the photographer. the images that are produced may allow the researcher to understand each perspective better, whereas language may fail to convey a specific message. the second workshop was the ‘image vs truth’ workshop, where the aim was to teach each participant a basic understanding of photography and the power of the tool in conveying messages through visual representation (see image 3). image 3. first day of ‘image vs truth’ workshop image: rosca van rooyen, cape town, 27 september 2018 during the workshop, participants were provided with a basic understanding of a camera, lighting and visual symbols in photographs. they were also taught to understand visual cultural representation and misrepresentation in marketing techniques, and a basic understanding of posing and directing people to pose. in addition, they were exposed to photography ethics as they pertain to photographing people. this laid the foundation for their own photographic project. the project included both individual activities and moments of collective reflection; both of which were important to the overall process. at the end of this workshop, each participant was provided with two disposable cameras. the brief was for them to use one camera to take photographs of their respective communities, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of their social and built environment. the second camera was to be used to take photographs on their excursions to places of cultural and historical importance in the city (robben island, castle of good hope, the civic centre in the central city), which they visited as part of the project (see images 4 and 5). the castle of good hope is a fort which was built in the 17th century during the dutch occupation and brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 image 5. excursion to robben island image: youth participant, victoria and alfred waterfront, cape town, 13 october 2018 image 4. excursion to the castle of good hope (a participant depicting the position that slaves were kept in during colonial times) image: youth participant, castle of good hope, cape town, 24 october 2018 brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 robben island is an island in table bay, cape town where people of colour were imprisoned at different points during south africa’s history. inmates included those imprisoned for general crimes, as well as political prisoners like nelson mandela who were imprisoned for opposing the apartheid regime. here, the students were encouraged to photograph the similarities/connections between their social and/or built environment and the places they visited on their excursions. these two instructions allowed each participant to engage with their understanding of the built and social environments in the city and their ability to access various spaces in the city. image 6. participants choosing their 10 favourite photos image: kirsten warries, university of cape town, 28 july 2021 image 7. exhibition curated by youth participants image: mercy brown-luthango, university of cape town campus, 5 december 2019 brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 this was followed up six weeks later by a second photography workshop, ‘curating your voice’, where each participant had to look at all their photographs and then choose the 10 photographs that best represented the personal narratives of their communities and any connections to different neighbourhoods visited (see image 6). once participants had chosen their photographs, in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant to gain an understanding of why they had chosen those particular photographs and the messages they wished to convey. the next part of the process was a full-day workshop, exhibit, where the youth started working on the curation of their photographs and the exhibition. this was preceded by training provided by one of the facilitators, with the assistance of a local visual artist, in the technical and entrepreneurial aspects of curation, which included the process of writing an artist statement and exhibition and photograph titles. during this activity, the participants had to narrow their choice of photographs down to five out of the ten photographs from the previous workshop, and begin writing the title of their photo essay, titles of each photograph, artist statements, and symbols that best represented their work. through this process, the youth constructed an individual narrative for each of the five photos they had chosen. the fourth element in the process was a workshop, held at the university of cape town, where participants had to start the process of creating one cohesive curated exhibition out of the individual photo essays. here the focus shifted from the individual to the collective, and drawing connections between personal perceptions of the narrative. during this process, participants looked at and read each participant’s photo essay and then attempted to seek commonalities. the aim was to create cohesion in the exhibition and experience to curate a collective narrative. the workshop was mostly to allow the participants to discuss and negotiate amongst each other how they would bring all participants’ ideas and messages together and find a cohesive curatorial statement and overall title for the exhibition. this provided balance between the individual and the collective voice, which can often be a challenge in photovoice projects (chanody et al. 2013; johansen & le 2012; simmonds et al. 2015; zenkov & harman 2009). the final activity in this process was the set-up and launch of the exhibition, so that the youth could celebrate their work and showcase it to their families, friends and members of the public. the interviews, group discussions, photographs, individual and collective stories about the photographs, curatorial statement, individual participant journals and various engagements with the youth over the course of this journey provided rich material, which formed the basis for this article. the participants were given journals at the start of the process, during the first workshop, and were encouraged to write down their personal reflections and/or capture drawings throughout the process. the theme of freedom and what this looks and feels like emerged as a central concern, amongst several other themes. these themes included the idea of hope and maintaining hope amidst their everyday struggles, the idea of hustling and making do, grappling with substance abuse and gang violence, and how to improve their communities. for the purposes of this article, the focus will be on freedom and how participants maintain hope in the face of limited freedom. these themes are presented and discussed below. freedom – as expressed and experienced by the youth this section provides an overview of the main ideas expressed by the youth in relation to how they understand and experience freedom in their everyday life. here we present four of the youths’ visual essays which speak to the notion of freedom, how they understand and navigate different structural impediments to freedom and their hope for the future. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 visual essay 1 – own your freedom visual essay 1 was created by a twenty-three-year-old young woman from tafelsig, mitchell’s plain, and describes what freedom means to her. the poster presented here combines photographs taken on robben island (three landscape pictures, one group picture and one distant portrait of the author herself ). what emerges strongly from this presentation is that her idea of freedom is centered around her experience of leaving her neighbourhood and visiting robben island which, ironically, was a space where she felt free. the author stresses the importance of this physical displacement in her artist statement: freedom is found the day you find out who you are outside your own world. the title given to the last photograph, a portrait where she poses meditatively against the desert landscape of the island, is even more explicit: thinking about why freedom is found in abundance outside your own zone, space. with this sentence, she directly suggests that she does not feel free in her neighbourhood. what this visual essay shows is that freedom only starts to gain meaning once it is actually experienced and that the meaning of freedom comes from a physical experience of both displacement and reflection. visual essay 2, prepared by a young man who lives in the same neighbourhood as this young woman, also speaks poignantly to the idea of space and how the experience of freedom, both physically and socially, is connected to the spaces we inhabit. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 visual essay 2 – life started with a photo visual essay 2 was created by a young man who lives in tafelsig, mitchell’s plain. he chose to exhibit five photographs from his neighbourhood. these photographs speak powerfully to themes of housing access, gangsterism, substance abuse and crime. the tafelsig community has been involved in a long struggle for access to housing. a photo of a vacant field, which often becomes the site for gang fights, is captioned more houses, less fields. another of a road, alma road in tafelsig, which was the site of an informal settlement community’s struggle for housing, is captioned tafelsig, alma road, where it all begins. the other three photos reflect the participant’s deep concern for the challenges of gangsterism (gangs taking over in the area – in reference to a photograph of graffiti to mark gang territory), substance abuse and child abuse, and how these impact on the future of the children – our kids are the future, create a better future. a photo of three young boys next to a mural created by the community, he captioned how long would it take to stop substance abuse and child abuse in our area? this statement expresses a weariness with the perpetual nature of these intractable challenges. however, at the same time the participant encourages himself and others to be yourself, no one can judge you, beside god, be you. interestingly, he expresses much excitement about the power of a photo or photography to ‘tell stories, capture happy moments, to capture a smile and when someone looks back at that picture, they can smile’. this illustrates the value of pv as a participatory method which stimulates deep reflection and the surfacing of hidden feelings and ideas. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202213 visual essay 3 – no money, no honey visual essay 3 was created by a twenty-five-year-old young man who lives in an informal settlement in philippi, one of cape town’s poorest neighbourhoods. visual essay 3 contains five photos depicting economic precarity and efforts to secure a livelihood in his neighbourhood and the inner city. a photo of a young man washing a car in his neighbourhood is entitled no money, no honey, playing on the notion that without money it is very difficult to attain certain aspirations. the pictures and narratives in visual essay 3 depict the participant wrestling with his daily struggles to access basic services like water and sanitation whilst trying to maintain hope for a better future. when asked about his perceptions of the ‘city’ and the area where he lives during an excursion to the central city, the same participant remarked ‘kosovo is not cape town’. kosovo is the name of the informal settlement where he lives. although kosovo is located in cape town, for this participant it seems far removed from all that the ‘city’ represents. he spoke at length about the dreams he had about cape town when he moved from his rural home. however, now he feels that there is no difference between kosovo and where he comes from, because in both places he does not have access to basic amenities like water, electricity and sanitation, and he struggles to find employment. he relates his daily lived reality to broader struggles brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202214 for economic freedom in his pictures of a service delivery march (entitled ‘hoping for the better’) and an informal trader (entitled ‘survival’) in the central city. this visual essay also reflects a sense of stretching, expressed in the question: ‘how long will it take?’ next to a photo of homelessness and the statement: ‘hoping to fly, the question is, will i be able to do it’ next to a photo of himself. this sense of stretching corresponds to sentiments expressed by the young man from tafelsig in visual essay 2. visual essay 4 – we suppose to be the rainbow nation visual essay 4 is a continuation of the young man’s narrative in visual essay 3, where he relates his personal struggles and those of others to the idea of the rainbow nation and all the promises that were supposed to accompany political freedom, obtained in 1994. this same youth now rationalises his disappointment about the promise of the rainbow nation and its associated freedom(s) by reverting to biblical scriptures, and notes that suffering now does not compare to our future glory and we were given a will and a freedom of choice. the issue of faith also features in the visual essays of other participants as well, for example one participant narrated in great detail his journey of trying to become a religious leader. the idea of choices and the freedom to make the right choices was a theme that the participants chose to carry into their collective curatorial statement and the title of the exhibition. brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202215 participants’ curatorial statement – ‘this is us’ the above photographs are taken from the photobook which reproduced the participants’ original artist statements and the title for the exhibition, which they collectively came up with during the second last workshop. during this workshop participants had in-depth discussion and constructive back and forth brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202216 between their individual narratives and what they wanted to present as a collective statement during the exhibition. the different languages (english, afrikaans and isixhosa) in which the exhibition title was written express the participants’ desire to ensure inclusion and celebrate their different cultural identities. the artist statement and the title of the exhibition provide a window into how our participants understand their own agency as they struggle with notions of freedom, choice, and the idea of control over the kind of choices they can make in the everyday, given structural and other obstacles which constrain their freedom and their ability to make good choices. these statements express a sense of ‘wrestling’ that many of the participants experience with the idea of freedom. participants expressed the belief that they were free, free to make their own decisions, yet at the same time they feel that they are not free to make good choices and attain their goals. this is captured in statements such as: own your freedom, just be yourself, don’t let others define you enjoy life, feel free, because you are free freedom, right to do something, be yourself the idea and perception of freedom was strongly tied to the ability to make good, constructive choices, and participants seemed to feel constrained in their ability to make such choices. there was an appreciation of the importance of making good choices in life; for example, the choice to engage in substance abuse or not, to join a gang or to stay in school. however, there was again, a realisation of how the socio-economic environment made it very hard to make good choices all the time. picture yourself in your future before you do stupid things choices, you make in your life there was the idea of ‘lenses’ (‘lense’, in afrikaans) – that your freedom depends on your view of the world, your view of the situation that you find yourself in, but your vision too is constrained by your social environment: everyone see life through their own eyes (lense) picture yourself successful it’s hard to see the frame, when you are in the picture going forward, blurring of vision – stray, dream is your goal, is your vision what does this mean for the capacity of these young people to aspire and the size of their aspirations window? the work of appadurai and others on the social embeddedness of aspirations and the impact of material conditions and psychological agency on the formation and attainment of aspirations is relevant in this context. the stories told by the youth through their photographs and artists’ statements resonate with ibrahim’s (2011) arguments that aspirations are conditioned by freedom and that agency is shaped by structural and institutional factors which impede freedom and choice. in this context, it can be argued that our participants’ desire for freedom transcends their own immediate personal freedom, also reflecting a deep desire for greater societal transformation which would enable young people to dream and pursue their ambitions and to make good choices. these young people have a deep understanding of how persistent and intractable socio-economic and spatial inequalities constrain their aspirations window. they are aware that their own freedom is closely tied and connected to a broader structural transformation which is yet to be realised, despite the political transition which occurred in south africa in 1994. this is perhaps captured in image 4 above, where one of the participants during a visit to the castle of good hope put himself in the chains which slaves were held in during colonial times. this group of young people in fact possess strong psychological agency. this enables them to face the manifestations of material inequalities and intergenerational deprivation on an everyday basis yet remain brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202217 hopeful and press forward. however, klein’s (2014) observation that psychological agency on its own is not a sufficient condition to move people closer to their desired goals holds true. this psychological agency, despite an acknowledgement of their lack of freedom and limited choices, is rooted in strong social ties and faith (as depicted in visual essay 4). hope is linked to the idea of lenses and ‘agency’ – making good choices – which in turn is connected to power and control. this hope is also linked to a conscious focus on the future and the desire to create a better future for themselves and others in their community. this is what motivates them to keep going, ‘even though, but we go’, despite their awareness of structural conditions which constrain their spatial and socio-economic freedom. conclusion this article reflects on a research study which engaged young people on their perceptions and experiences of living in a city, using narrative photovoice as a method. it was based on a long-standing relationship between the researcher and a community-based organisation. the methodology employed in this study provided the youth with the tools to enable them to step in and outside the frame of their lives and to observe at a critical distance. the act of taking photographs and taking a step back to examine why they took a particular picture and what story they wanted to convey, while moving between their neighborhoods and other areas in the ‘city’, enabled critical reflection and meaning making. this gave us a window into how young people make sense of these different social environments, their everyday struggles, and their own agency and aspirations. this ability to take critical distance, stay at a critical distance, is often reflected in the pv literature as one of the important goals and outcomes of this methodology. however, this mostly applies to participants. the literature hardly speaks about the impact of the pv methodology on the researchers and their own process of reflexivity. the young people’s practice of reflection and moving in and out of the frame also challenged us, as researchers, to embark on a process of self-reflection. they also challenged us to change our lenses, put ourselves in the frame and change our filters, and to rethink and interrogate concepts that we use and take for granted in an uncritical way, because of the perspectives we hold, based on our location, position and the spaces we occupy. how useful are concepts such as aspiration, freedom, choice and agency in the context in which these young people find themselves? to this group of young people, most of whom are not in employment or in education, their most immediate aspiration is not based on idealised western-based notions of success, but their idea of freedom and the ability to make good choices. this is interesting, given that in the south african context, these young people are part of the ‘born free’ generation, born after the end of apartheid. yet, they do not consider themselves to be free as their social, economic and physical mobility is heavily constrained by persistent poverty and economic and spatial inequality. this study contributes to research which engages with young people and allows them to speak in their own voice about their daily lived experiences within a democratic south africa, what freedom means to them, and how they make choices and maintain hope in an environment where there is very little which distinguishes their world from that which previous generations encountered under apartheid. mattes (2012) argues that the picture which ‘born frees’ experience in post-apartheid south africa is one of ‘continuity, even regression, rather than a sharp generational break/change from the past’. our research shows that the youth we worked with are actively trying to make sense of the varied dimensions of freedom and how these manifest in their daily lived experiences. whilst acknowledging the political and legislative freedom obtained post-apartheid, they are under no illusion about how this has not translated into economic freedom or widened their aspirations window. our engagement with the youth, however, reveals strong psychological agency and navigational capacity in the midst of structural barriers. this is fueled by brown-luthango and van rooyen gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202218 faith and spirituality, as well as strong family and community connections, which enable them to remain hopeful. references appadurai, a 2004, ‘the capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition’, in culture and public action, vijayendra rao and michael watson (eds), stanford university press, stanford, california, pp. 59–84. bandura, a 1998, ‘personal and collective efficacy in human 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medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: balyasnikova, n., martin, s. 2024. partnering with older adults for digital research tool development: demystifying an engaged research process. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 11. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9043 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 practice-based article partnering with older adults for digital research tool development: demystifying an engaged research process natalia balyasnikova*, sonia martin york university, canada corresponding author: natalia balyasnikova, york university, canada, natbal@edu.yorku.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9043 article history: received 13/02/2022; revised 15/06/2023; accepted 20/06/2024; published 07/2024 abstract the inadequacy of traditional research methods, underscored by the covid-19 pandemic, highlighted the urgent need for innovative approaches, particularly to research involving older adults. this article reflects on the complexities of establishing and sustaining research partnerships with older adults for digital research tool testing and development. the article offers an explicit report of the outreach process for holding researchers accountable and demystifying the research process. keywords mobile technology; community-university partnership; older adults; digital research; community-based research introduction this article reflects on a research initiative aiming to explore the usability of a digital research tool – phoneme app – with two groups of older adults in toronto, canada. the development of the app was one of the many iterations of a larger phoneme project (www.phonemeproject. com). launched in 2016 as a community literacy research initiative of the university of british columbia (vancouver, canada), its purpose was to construct a poetry-centric, digitally mediated map of diverse neighbourhoods across the globe (balyasnikova & james 2020). the project now has research teams working in several canadian universities to explore the value declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this study was funded by the new frontiers in research fund. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9043 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9043 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:natbal@edu.yorku.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9043 http://www.phonemeproject.com http://www.phonemeproject.com of places and spaces in people’s lives through trans-modal poetry (ahn et al. 2023; horst et al. 2023). in the early days of the project, the community work was conducted in person through poetry writing workshops with amateur and professional poets to collectively explore the physical spaces around them. with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, the in-person aspects of phoneme work were halted, necessitating a shift to online platforms for all community outreach activities. from 2020, we worked to harness the potential of smartphones as a new methodological pathway for qualitative research. the research team from the university of british columbia developed a free phoneme mobile app, as an extension of the original digital map. available on smartphones and tablets, the app has four main functions: explore (the map view), create (add the poem to the map), (user) profile, and search (specific poems). the interactive world map in the app displays pins identifying the location of poems, and clicking on a pin opens the image of the location, the text (and sometimes a voice recording) of the poem, as well as the author details and relevant copyright information. the app also has ‘like’ and ‘save’ features, but no instant messaging between users. smartphones can be used as powerful tools for data generation and analysis (auld et al. 2012; garcía et al. 2016). however, the integration of smartphones within research requires careful consideration of user-friendliness and software compatibility. when working with older adults, the digital divide needs to be considered, as access to technology remains heavily influenced by socio-economic factors (yoon et al. 2020). in response to the disruptive effect of covid-19 on active community-engaged research, we decided to evaluate the usability of phoneme app during this time of social isolation and distancing. to do so, we trained diverse participant groups to generate multimodal data via the phoneme app, and together explored the potential for application of mobile technology to qualitative research. three research teams worked with different research participant pools across canada (indigenous youth, undergraduate students and teacher candidates, and older adults). although work across the three sites shared the same primary research objective, in toronto we also hoped to use this project to establish new research partnerships with service providers who worked with older adults. we were interested in working with older adults because digitally mediated research with them comes with significant challenges (sharma et al. 2022). older adults find themselves on one side or the other side of the digital divide (hall et al. 2015; seifert 2020; wu et al. 2015) and digital ageism (chu et al. 2022). in addition, older adults had not yet participated in phoneme research, and we hypothesised that they would engage with poetry writing and the phoneme app in ways that younger populations may not. the value in establishing strong partnerships with older adults is recognised across disciplines (black et al. 2015; dibartolo & mccrone 2003; doucette et al. 2023; mcneil et al. 2016; moreno-john et al. 2004). in their review, james and buffel (2023) note that involving older adults in research is crucial to addressing complex issues facing this population, as older adults’ direct experiences can help to improve the services available to them (fudge et al. 2007). moreover, as co-researchers, older adults gain new skills, build networks and challenge societal inequalities (fenge 2010). some studies (dong et al. 2011; sabir et al. 2009) highlight the importance of integrating diverse perspectives, including those of practitioners, researchers and community members, in addressing issues such as social isolation of older adults and cultural nuances. for example, sabir et al. (2009) argue that different perspectives need to be integrated within the development of consultations on research priorities regarding social isolation among older adults, underscoring the importance of multi-faceted community-university partnerships. dong et al. (2011) emphasise that academic researchers need to engage through dialogue and learn from community expertise, particularly in understanding cultural and linguistic nuances. these studies highlight the necessity for valuing community input and expertise when shaping research agendas and interventions. however, there are challenges that researchers face in establishing partnerships involving older adults, such as recruitment and retainment of participants (dibartolo & crone 2010; indorewalla et al. 2021), access and mobility (rigatti et al. 2022), life stage (mackin et al. 2009) and mistrust in research (moreno-john et al. 2004), to name a few. these balyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20242 studies collectively illustrate the need for diverse approaches to the development of university-community research partnerships and the benefits of such collaborations in addressing issues faced by older populations, such as social isolation, lack of well-being and empowerment, and the quality of mental health services for older adults. in this article, we aim to demystify the process of forming and maintaining community-university research collaborations that involve older adults and mobile technology. we also aim to contribute to discourse on the importance of flexible practices that consider the diverse needs of all partners, even if they diverge from one another and the original research design. in doing this, we draw on the following sources of data: (1) our observations of the process; (2) field notes from the debriefing sessions that follow each workshop; and (3) recordings of the group interviews that took place after the workshop series was completed. navigating different partnerships finding available community partners was a challenge that took several months. not only was it important to find community groups whose own needs and interests could be addressed within the phoneme project, we were also hoping to work with people over 65, which further limited our pool of potential partners. we thus reached out to community groups that we had worked with in the past and connected with our university’s knowledge mobilisation unit for referrals. we also approached several community service organisations, but like many of these since the covid-19 pandemic (verma 2021), they had little capacity for additional projects. ultimately, after making a list of senior-focused programs in toronto, emailing each organisation and following up with zoom calls if they expressed interest, we found two seniors’ community groups who chose to engage with us. our first community partner was a senior group within a non-denominational church in toronto that serves approximately 200 families and promotes inclusivity, community outreach and social justice. to people who are 55 years old or older, the church offers free virtual and in-person activities, such as chair ballet, egg painting and memoir writing. the church group asked us to work with two different groups: a memoir writing group and the general community. seven members from the memoir writing group registered for the one-off phoneme app workshop and four members from the wider 55+ community registered for the poetry writing workshops. most of the members were white english-speaking women. the second community partner was a non-profit, multicultural community-based organisation that offered educational, employment, social and settlement services for immigrants and newcomers to canada. this immigrant services organisation provided many services and training programs for older adults. the seniors’ group we connected with met regularly for in-person educational events, physical activities and social gatherings. the immigrant services organisation’s seniors group agreed to use the phoneme app to augment an existing in-person digital literacy program with 12 participants. most of the members were italian first-language speakers with varying degrees of proficiency in english. the need for prior consultations on the resources available to the community members became clear from the early stages of the research partnership. we had introductory zoom calls with the program coordinators, who delineated the specific needs and objectives of their constituencies. these preliminary conversations were integral to formulating a cooperative framework, and establishing a research relationship and the requirements for testing and evaluating the phoneme app. we also believe that the foundational rapport we established with the community coordinators set the tone for the development of relationships with the community members themselves, and also because we had an insider member of their community who facilitated our work. we initiated a dialogue so that we could understand the barriers the seniors might face during the research process. we learnt that the potential research groups were quite diverse, ranging in age, sociobalyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20243 economic status, facility in speaking the english language, ethnicity, race, gender and education level. many workshop participants did not have digital devices at home, so they could not practise outside of the weekly sessions when ipads were provided by the community organisation. for those who had access to devices, there were other issues. some did not have anyone at home who could step in when they needed assistance with technical issues, and some senior women complained that their children controlled their accounts and did not share log-in credentials as a form of protection from potential fraud. the original research design included just one introductory workshop, followed by a survey on the functionalities of the app and a focus group on user experience as participants engaged with it on their own for a month. we did not anticipate holding a series of workshops on a range of topics. however, we were continually reminded of the necessity for flexibility, a concept that was emphasised in the literature (israel et al. 1998). we were immediately faced with a need to redesign the research design so that it would respond to the needs of the research participants and the partner organisation (see table 1 for details). table 1 location group engagement formats church memoir writing group (pre-existing group) via zoom. a single introductory workshop followed by individual unguided use of the phoneme app by the participants. survey and focus group to generate data for the research. general membership (registered for the project) via zoom. a series of poetry-focused workshops using the phoneme app at the end of the series. survey and interview to generate data for the research. immigrant services organisation immigrants from (primarily) the italian community (pre existing group) in person. a series of ipad training workshops. one inperson focus group to generate data for the research. we took several proactive steps to ensure a smooth workshop experience for the community partners. first, we recognised the diversity in literacy levels and expectations within our user groups. we understood that a one-size-fits-all approach would not work, so we made sure to customise the content and pace of each workshop to match the participants’ specific requirements. this meant that those who needed more time to grasp certain concepts or features had the flexibility to do so without feeling rushed, while the more experienced users could delve straight into the app. furthermore, we recognised the importance of clear and concise instructions, so we took the time to refine and simplify our instructional materials and prompts to ensure they were easily understandable by everyone, regardless of their prior digital experience. in the first location, we worked on zoom with two separate groups: a memoir group and a poetry writing group. for the memoir group, we delivered an introductory workshop and led participants through a series of interactive activities designed to help them explore the app. our intention was to prepare them to use the app on their own after the workshop and then collect feedback via a survey a few weeks later. of significance was the wide range of technical skills among the group. therefore, as we prepared to meet with the second group at the site – a poetry writing group – we changed the design to create a series of iterative workshops that balanced app training with a guided discussion of poetry. for the second group, each workshop included a creative writing exercise that invited participants to experiment with the discussed poetic genre. while we introduced the idea of the phoneme app at the balyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20244 beginning of the workshop series as a tool for facilitating digital exploration of poetry, poetry writing itself was the central focus of each session. at the end of the workshop series, feedback on the app was solicited, with a focus on whether the app enhanced poetry writing skills, its usability, and its relevance to participants of different literacy levels and socioeconomic backgrounds. this blended approach of workshop facilitation and feedback solicitation underscored our commitment to reciprocity within the community-university partnership framework. additionally, the group interview served as a formal, yet friendly way to conclude the research project. at the second research site, our strategy was to align with a pre-existing digital literacy program centred on ipad use. the incorporation of the phoneme app within this program was presented and received as an opportunity to further older adults’ digital literacy skills while concurrently gathering senior learners’ input on the app’s functionality. we delivered four sessions, each of which included an activity to explore a different aspect of digital literacy and ipad use, and a poetic exercise that culminated in engagement with the phoneme app. participants were encouraged to provide feedback that could inform improvements to the app’s design and application. at the end of the workshop series, we ran a large focus group. to accommodate varying degrees of english proficiency among the immigrant services organisation group, the seniors group program coordinator translated the main interview questions into italian. before the group interview started, we shared printed copies of the questions in both italian and english with all members. we then sat in a circle and placed a recording device in the middle. one researcher asked and elaborated on the questions when necessary. the coordinator interpreted when needed, and everyone had ample time to respond to the questions and discuss their answers with each other. navigating formats of collaboration in accordance with the guidelines set forth by remley (2012), our approach to the workshop design and delivery was predicated on the ethical imperatives of respect and reciprocity. the reciprocal nature of the workshops, offering valuable skills and knowledge to the community while gathering critical user feedback on the app, epitomised our ethos of community-based research. we hoped to ensure that the workshops were not merely extractive, but also served as a mutual exchange, honouring the time spent and contributions of all participants. the nature of our relationship, and the skills and needs of the workshop participants, determined how we together produced knowledge. a significant lesson for us emerged from the nature of our research partnership. as stated, our goal from the start was reciprocal collaboration. by working closely with the coordinators to develop and deliver workshops that met the needs of the group, we believed we could create an atmosphere that levelled power differentials and supported collaborative participation. despite yielding opportunities for sustainable change, such participation was less common because it required that all members be involved from the beginning. some project parameters, such as our goal to learn about the community members’ experience with phoneme, were pre-determined by the researchers (us). for example, we expected that the participants would be able to proceed with the app and assignments without our help. other parameters, however, were determined in collaboration with the program coordinators. these included the mode of delivery (e.g. in person versus by zoom) and the best way to incorporate the phoneme project into the programming (e.g. as a unique set of workshops or incorporation within an existing program). these parameters were determined with the community members in mind rather than with the community members. however, the community members led how we engaged with each other in the process. the participants at both sites referred to our sessions as school, not as a research project. for example, during a group interview with church group participants, in response to a question we asked, ‘would you tell people about the app outside of this little project?’, one participant replied: balyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20245 well, i haven’t really done that unless somebody asked me if they say, you know, if i say i’m going to poetry class, and they say well what’s all that about. and then i would explain. you know what they do, and then i’ll show them the app, and then um but i’m gonna and i don’t really. unless it comes up in a conversation, i’m not gonna bring it up. it’s just it’s like school, a class, a study. although participants maintained the project-as-school metaphor by talking about doing homework after the workshops, many did not actually do any work between sessions. the participants spoke positively about doing work post workshops. for example, in the immigrant services group interview, one participant used the phrase ‘going to school’ to refer to our collaboration and emphasised the choice to attend school over other commitments. she said: my family, too, they say, my grandkids, grandma, you going to school today? i said, yes. and my son, mom, you going today? i said, yes. i’m not doing anything, i’m going to school, don’t tell me nothing. the mode of delivery we agreed to (facilitating workshops) placed us and the workshop participants in the roles of teachers and students and did not result in the equal partnership we had envisioned when we set out to collaborate. however, it was within this dynamic that the community members directed how deeply we were involved with them and kept us in the teacher role. we believe that even if we had had time to invest more into building the relationship with the community partners, and to work with the community members to develop our methods together, the community members might still have chosen to frame the research as purely an educational opportunity. they exercised agency in how they asserted themselves as well as in the formation of our relationship. they wanted us to know them, but they also kept us in an external role. during each session, the community members set the scope of the discussion. deviating from the research questionnaires, they shared about their first years in canada, their grief over lost loved ones, their need to practise their tech skills, and their belief in god. we noted that the community members had close relationships with each other. they were in the deep end together, and they invited us to join them in the middle of the metaphorical pool, in which all our feet could still touch the bottom. in our debrief, we noted: ‘privilege/power is that we are writing about the participants, crafting the research narrative. but in the moment with them, we are in a service position. their lives don’t ride on this. they don’t have to perform ‘vulnerable senior’ to get the service.’ ultimately, participants set their own objectives and expected outcomes regardless of what we were trying to achieve during the workshops. navigating technical issues we faced several unanticipated challenges when using a mobile app with older adults, which prompted us to pivot significantly in how we delivered the workshops. for example, the remote nature of the workshops for the church group had an impact on the process. initially we had planned to ask participants to join individually on zoom from their own spaces; however the members of the poetry writing group found it easier to navigate the phoneme app when they were physically together in the same room joining zoom on one computer. among those participants who were less affected by the digital divide, we still noticed issues of digital illiteracy. the participants described feeling ‘stuck’ and at a ‘standstill’ when encountering a challenge uploading their poems. as we wrote in our debriefing notes, these ‘glitches were not seen as opportunities to explore further’. similarly, in one of our reflections on working with the immigration services group, we wrote: the participants were getting frustrated. b kept thinking he did something wrong. when something glitches, the assumption is they did something wrong, not that there’s a problem with the app. balyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20246 the app design itself assumed a certain level of digital literacy. at both sites, participants, even those with a higher level of digital literacy, found navigating the app difficult. in our debrief notes on march 31, 2023, we observed ‘there are just too many steps for seniors. first name, last name, username, email, password, verify, username. for people with such low digital literacy and literacy levels, we can’t just drop in and use the app as the research method. how much of their experience is about digital literacy at any age vs being older adults. we are at the intersection of the two.’ despite the above-mentioned challenges, the participants – particularly those in the ipad training group at the immigrant services organisation – considered any digital training as an opportunity to improve their digital skills. research participants indicated that their lack of digital skills limited their ability to access information or resources. as a result of the challenges that participants experienced in the introductory workshops, we significantly modified both the format of the following workshops and how we delivered them. we conducted a series of workshops rather than just one introductory session, allowing participants more time to become comfortable with the ipad as a device. we then conducted sessions to provide more focused and intensive support with the app. additionally, we modified the topics covered in the workshops: one session concentrated on improving digital literacy, while another explored poetry as a genre. we hoped that these modifications would lead to a more effective workshop experience. lessons learned in reflecting on our engagement with diverse groups, we identified several key insights for future research partnerships, specifically related to community-based projects involving the use of mobile technology by older adults. mainly we identified a profound need for flexibility in response to technical challenges and the changing nature of relationships with different partners. first, we needed to be prepared for unanticipated technical challenges. advanced consultations on the digital resources available to the community members outside of the community spaces needed to be addressed early on. indeed, recognising and addressing the diversity in literacy levels and expectations was crucial, and as a result we had to customise the workshops’ content and pace by offering explicit digital literacy training beyond the app itself. we also needed to make significant adjustments, especially given the varying digital literacy levels among research participants. ideally, we would have simplified the app design and log-in instructions, and provided foundational digital literacy training. in lieu of this, we focused on gradual skill-building, based on feedback from the participants. we consider the technical barriers presented by digitally mediated research to be one of the biggest obstacles we need to navigate. second, navigating a multi-objective site and delivery presented a set of challenges, especially when working with groups with varying motivations and needs. we thus identified a need for flexibility and adaptability of research protocols. for example, at the second research site, we integrated the phoneme app research within the ipad literacy curriculum. we also found that we needed to let go of the preplanned research protocol that we thought would be an efficient way to work with different groups, and instead flexibility and adaptability became central to our work. thirdly, we identified the importance of reflexive engagement and the need for us, as researchers, to be comfortable with ambiguity and potentially changing priorities when the research partnership did not align with what had been envisioned. while we considered the importance of mutual benefits and transparent informed consent, we did not expect what roles participants would assume in the research, such as leading discussions in workshops and contesting workshop formats or our ideas, such as on the different genres of poetry. the primary necessity for our partnership came from us, the researchers, not the community. we must acknowledge that introducing the predetermined phoneme project contributed to a more superficial setting for participation. however, we also note that the community partners recognised the relationship as primarily transactional, to enhance their programming, and the research participants viewed it as an balyasnikova and martin gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 july 20247 educational opportunity to learn something new. although equal participation was something we strived for, it was not possible. both researchers were much younger than the participants, which was one characteristic that may have prevented us from relating to these seniors as equals. mitigating power differentials is an important aspect of both community-engaged and community-based research (taylor & ochocka 2017), and collaborative research projects can benefit when the distinction between researchers and community members is blurred (e.g. balyasnikova & james 2020). however, it is important to remember that community members sometimes wish to retain their boundaries, and we must respect this. our community members asserted their agency in how they contributed to, and how they participated in, the dynamics of our relationship. however, while unanticipated and at times uncomfortable, these dynamics revealed deeper insights and fostered trust among all members of the research process. conclusion this article joins the global dialogue on the role of community-university partnerships and the intricate dynamics of forming and maintaining research relationships using digital apps, particularly when using tools intended for older adult demographics. university-community collaborations can offer a fertile terrain for mutual learning and a space to address broader societal and structural challenges (suarez-balcazar harper & lewis 2005), as well as support community development (zimmerman et al. 2019). research planning needs to emphasise inclusion of community voices in the research process (compare, albanesi & pieri 2022), position communities as equal partners in this process (bromley et al. 2015) and focus on the development of tailored solutions (winfield et al. 2022). from a community perspective, the success of research partnerships lies in the tangible benefits to the community itself (carrión-mero et al. 2021) and emphasises the value of partnerships in research more broadly. from this research project, we gained insight into the challenges of engaging older adults in the use of mobile app technology as a research tool. drawing on our research experience, we support the proposition that research protocols need to be both flexible and adaptable. prior to beginning such work, researchers and community partners need to hold in-depth consultations on the resources available to community members. it is also vital that researchers maintain a reflective approach to engagement, particularly if the direction of the research partnership deviates from the original vision. to further methodologies of community-university research, our partnership created a liminal space dedicated to research and education. furthermore, while we worked to achieve a pre-established learning objective, our approach diverged from conventional school-based benchmarks. as such, we claim that, despite the challenges, the research partnership created a unique hybrid zone where the process of researching and learning transcended traditional boundaries. this educational research approach was neither exclusively ours nor the participants. rather, it blended various perspectives that embodied a novel form of learning and research that challenged and redefined conventional educational norms. future similar research projects could consider incorporating technical support and co-design for community members to ensure a holistic approach to digital literacy and adaptive research frameworks responsive to the needs of older adult participants. building on these insights, we will continue examining similarities and contrasts in the use of apps by older adults and other age groups. acknowledgements we extend our sincere gratitude to dr kedrick james and his research team, and to dr claire ahn and her team of co-investigators 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journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 july 2025 practice-based article international brain awareness week 2023 in uruguaiana, brazil: promoting neuroscience through community activities ana luiza trombini tadielo1, bruna tarasuk trein crespo1, priscila marques sosa2,*, pâmela billig mello-carpes3 1 doctoral student, federal university of pampa, uruguaiana, brazil 2 franciscan university, santa maria, brazil 3 associate professor, federal university of pampa, uruguaiana, brazil corresponding author: priscila marques sosa, priscilasosa@hotmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9469 article history: received 28/11/2024; revised 11/04/2025; accepted 05/06/2025; published 07/2025 abstract neuroscience, the study of the nervous system, is essential for understanding the human condition and informing societal decisions in healthcare, education and policymaking. the public’s interest in neuroscience highlights the need for effective scientific communication to bridge the gap between scientists and the public. this study describes the organisation, activities and evaluation of international brain awareness week (ibaw) 2023 in uruguaiana, rio grande do sul, brazil. it is a municipality that borders argentina, led by the physiology research group (gpfis) and popneuro program at the federal university of pampa, located in the same state. activities included neuroanatomy exhibitions, a night race for brain health, lectures on ageing and public neuroscience demonstrations. over 700 people participated, and feedback indicated high satisfaction and increased understanding of neuroscience. the study emphasises the importance of public engagement in science to promote critical thinking and informed decision-making. it also highlights how the main activity proposed by our group for ibaw – a neuroanatomy exhibition – received a positive response from the target audience (school students from the municipality of uruguaiana), and how these activities contributed to strengthening university-community integration. additionally, the closing event, a race, was among the most recommended activities for future editions. keywords brain health; neuroscience communication; public engagement introduction neuroscience – the study of the nervous system – has emerged as a field of profound societal importance, reaching well beyond academic boundaries. its insights into the intricate workings of the human brain have illuminated our understanding of behavior, cognition and overall wellbeing (hawrylycz & zeng 2020). over recent decades, neuroscience has experienced exponential growth, mirroring the broader acceleration of scientific advancement (ekuni et al. 2014). one of its most notable contributions lies in its potential to deepen our understanding of the human condition. by investigating the neural basis of cognitive and behavioral processes, neuroscience offers valuable insights into the complexity of the human mind (kragel & voss 2022), with direct implications for public policy, healthcare, education and the development of technologies that can improve quality of life (jia & schumann 2022). the growing public interest in neuroscience reflects a widespread curiosity about how the brain shapes our experiences and perceptions (carboni et al. 2021). this enthusiasm highlights the need for effective science communication to bridge the gap between researchers and the public. scientific dissemination is essential for fostering an informed and engaged society. when complex scientific knowledge is shared in an accessible way, it empowers individuals to make informed decisions and actively engage in public discourse (broder et al. 2019). furthermore, communicating scientific findings – particularly those related to neuroscience – helps cultivate a culture of curiosity, critical thinking and lifelong learning. research has shown that engaging with science enhances cognitive skills such as critical analysis and problem-solving, which are crucial for democratic participation and informed citizenship (carboni et al. 2021). in this context, the integration of neuroscience – especially neuroanatomy, nervous system function and the debunking of neuromyths – into school curricula can significantly enrich what is taught in elementary and secondary education. topics such as body systems, brain development, learning processes and behaviour, already present in science and biology classes, offer a natural context for introducing core neuroscience concepts. exposing students to this knowledge helps them understand how their brains work, promotes healthy learning habits, and corrects common misconceptions about intelligence and brain use. early contact with neuroscience encourages self-awareness, empathy, mental health understanding and critical thinking, which meaningfully contributes to personal growth and broader social development. the societal implications of neuroscience are particularly evident in politics and public policy, where scientific evidence can influence decisions on pressing issues (jia & schumann 2022). however, scientific knowledge holds limited value if it remains confined to academic circles. it is essential that neuroscience be communicated in an accessible and engaging manner, allowing people to better understand their own brains, adopt healthier habits, apply beneficial techniques in daily life and debunk common neuromyths. in this regard, outreach activities play a vital role by linking universities to communities and fulfilling higher education’s core mission of generating social impact through knowledge exchange. scientific outreach is also crucial for sustainable development and social transformation. through community engagement, educational institutions can identify specific needs and co-create effective solutions. the success of this endeavor, however, depends on the public’s ability to understand scientific concepts. therefore, science dissemination must go beyond academic journals and become clear, inclusive and responsible, ensuring accuracy, respecting diverse learning processes and avoiding misinformation (vargas, silveira & lannes 2014). effective engagement strategies are key to fostering a scientifically literate society (swords et al. 2023). within this framework, international brain awareness week (ibaw) stands out as a global initiative aimed at promoting neuroscience and its applications to daily life. held every march by the dana foundation – a philanthropic organisation focused on neuroscience – and the international brain research organization (ibro), the campaign brings together schools, universities and community groups to share brain-related knowledge through educational activities. in uruguaiana, brazil, the popneuro program has hosted ibaw since 2013. now in its seventh edition, the event is organised in collaboration with the physiology research group (gpfis) and aims to democratise access to neuroscience. in 2023, the local edition of ibaw – known in portuguese as ‘semana internacional do cérebro’ (sic) – took place from 13–19 march, aligning with the international effort to promote brain awareness and education. this article has three main objectives: (1) to describe in detail the organisation and activities of the event; (2) to share key findings from a self-evaluation based on participant and team feedback; and (3) to reflect on lessons learned and offer recommendations for future outreach efforts. context uruguaiana is a brazilian municipality located in the westernmost region of the state of rio grande do sul, bordering argentina, with a population of just over 120 000 inhabitants. its geographic distance from major urban centres contributes to limited access to cultural opportunities and specialised healthcare services. over the past 15 years, however, the establishment of a campus of the federal university of pampa (unipampa) in the municipality has marked the beginning of a gradual but growing integration between academic production and the local community. as the only public university in the city, unipampa has become a regional reference, particularly in the health sciences, playing a fundamental role in professional training and the dissemination of scientific knowledge throughout the region. one example of this growing integration is the popneuro program, which was established in 2013 at the unipampa, on the uruguaiana, rs campus, with the aim of promoting and disseminating neuroscience through extension activities. its aim is to communicate neuroscience knowledge in a way that is accessible and understandable to the general public, with a special focus on students and teachers from public schools. schoolchildren (aged 6–17) have been our primary target audience in various initiatives as they often lack access to accurate information about neuroscience, including the neuromyths that frequently influence their education. teachers have also been a key focus of our initiatives as a deeper understanding of neuroanatomical aspects and the mechanisms of learning enables them to positively influence the teaching-learning process. to further advance this mission, popneuro has continued to organise a diverse range of activities each year, engaging both students and the community. materials and methods in 2023, as in previous years, popneuro organised a comprehensive program of activities from 13–19 march in the city of uruguaiana, rs. the popneuro team is composed of eight undergraduates and graduate students (two masters and one phd), one professor and an administrative technician from the university. the undergraduate students come from various university programs, such as physiotherapy, nursing, medicine and pharmacy. the team is led by a professor, who is the founder and creator of the program. see figure 1 for the included activities. figure 1. activities developed during ibaw 2023 included: (a) neuroanatomy exhibition; (b) night race for a healthy brain; and (c) the brain goes to the park. (source: personal archive of the popneuro program. prepared by the authors in 2024.) neuroanatomy exhibition this exhibition was held in the exhibition space of the social service of commerce (serviço social do comércio) (sesc), which is the institution created by businesspeople in the trade of goods, services and tourism, with headquarters in the most diverse municipalities in brazil, uruguaiana, rs. it featured anatomical pieces arranged on totems, making it easier for participants to see them. information cards containing qr codes directed visitors to explanatory posts on popneuro’s instagram. folders on neuroanatomy were distributed and guided tours were organised by the team for groups of students from public schools. these visits were arranged by telephone with the sesc team. during these visits, the students were given a tour of the exhibition and received detailed information about the brain and nervous system. due to the success of the exhibition, characterised by the number of participants and also by the public’s engagement, it was extended for another week at the request of sesc uruguaiana. night race for a healthy brain this activity, in partnership with sesc uruguaiana, rs, aimed to promote the importance and benefits of physical activity for brain health. participants signed up by donating school supplies, which were then distributed to popneuro’s partner public schools. before the race, participants were given information from informative folders about the effects of physical exercise on the brain, including neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, improved blood circulation and oxidative balance. physical and cognitive assessments, including reaction time tests, were also made available to runners. those present at the activity received medals and took part in prize draws. the brain goes to the park during the weekend of integration and ibaw, the popneuro team organised themed stations in the barão do rio branco square in uruguaiana, rs, a place with a high frequency of visitors at weekends. various neuroscience topics were covered, including neurodegenerative diseases, memory, attention, sleep and neuromyths, through practical tests and activities. electronic attention and memory tests allowed the public to train their skills and better understand concepts such as working memory, shortand long-term memory and reaction time. a children’s area was set up with materials such as explanatory banners, anatomical parts, information cards with qr codes, folders on neuroanatomy, sleep and neuromyths, books, games and painting materials. this activity was open to the public. visitor numbers were not recorded. brain health, memory and ageing lecture held for the active maturity (maturidade ativa) group at sesc uruguaiana, rs, the lecture covered the differentiation of common physiological aspects and warning signs related to brain ageing. topics included normal physiological changes in the brain during ageing, strategies to mitigate the impacts of these changes, healthy cognitive ageing, the united nations decade of healthy ageing (2021–2031), neurodegenerative diseases associated with ageing and tips for healthy ageing. in addition, before and during the ibaw, the activities that would take place were publicised. coverage by traditional media such as television and radio, as well as through social networks, plays a crucial role in disseminating popneuro’s activities and reaching a wider audience. to ensure effective coverage, the following strategies were implemented:  1. contacting media outlets: before the start of activities, the popneuro team contacted the local television and radio stations, such as rbs tv, rádio charrua and rádio 96fm, providing detailed information about ibaw’s programming;  2. interviews and reports: popneuro members took part in interviews on television and radio programs, discussing neuroscience, the benefits of physical activity for brain health and the importance of healthy cognitive ageing. these interviews were strategically scheduled before and during the week of the activities to maximise reach;  3. promotion on instagram: instagram was an essential platform for publicising the activities and engaging the public. regular posts were made on the official popneuro profile (@programapopneuro), including information about the planned activities, facts about neuroscience and highlights of the activities (figure 2). the posts were accompanied by attractive images and short videos to increase engagement. during ibaw, stories showed behind-the-scenes activities and highlights of the events. this enabled real-time interaction with followers. the popneuro team maintained constant interaction with followers, answering questions, thanking them for their support and encouraging participation in the activities. this helped to create an engaged community interested in neuroscience topics; and figure 2. examples of information cards posted on the instagram @programapopneuro profile during the ibaw 2023 activities figure 3. evaluations from ibaw 2023  4. evaluation: during the actions described in points 1–3 above, the popneuro team addressed the public at the end of the activities, asking them to evaluate the activities proposed during ibaw 2023. the procedure consisted of filling in an online form via google forms, without the need for identification. below are the questions that made up the form, as well as the objectives and possible answers: table 1. ibaw 2023 evaluation response forms questions objective possibility of response which ibaw activity(s) did you take part in? check which activities students and the general public were involved in. neuroanatomy exhibition; night run for a healthy brain; lecture ‘brain health, memory and ageing’; ‘brain goes to the park’. which activity did you enjoy the most? to check whether, in the participants’ perceptions, the proposed activities aroused their interest in the functioning of the pn and neuroscience in general. neuroanatomy exhibition; night run for a healthy brain; lecture ‘brain health, memory and ageing’; ‘brain goes to the park’. what did you learn at ibaw 2023 that most caught your attention? tell us about it! to provide a space for participants to share their learning, thus creating a space to open up possibilities for improving future editions. descriptive on a scale of 0 (zero) to 10 (ten), with 0 being very bad and 10 being excellent, how would you rate ibaw 2023? check the receptiveness of the proposed activities. 0 to 10 results in 2023, popneuro held the seventh edition of ibaw. during this event, more than 700 people took part in the various activities on offer, including 88 runners and 30 elderly people from the active maturity group. all participants were invited to fill in an online evaluation questionnaire, which was available at the activity venues. a total of 176 people answered the questionnaire. of these, 100 were women, 73 men and three preferred not to declare. all the visitors who answered the questionnaire were from uruguaiana, rs, the city where the event was held. of the respondents, 140 were school students, and the rest were university students and professionals. of these, 86.4 per cent (n=152) highlighted the anatomical parts exhibition as the activity they enjoyed the most, followed by the ‘race for a healthy brain’ with 9.1 per cent (n=16). figure 3 summarises the participants’ responses regarding their favorite activities and topics, expressed in percentages – preferences of activities during ibaw 2023 and frequency of responses mentioning each theme during ibaw 2023. participants evaluated ibaw using a scale from 0 (very bad) to 10 (excellent). a total of 80.1 per cent (n=141) of respondents gave the activities a score of 10, resulting in an average score of 9.6 for ibaw. these data indicate that the participants considered the activities to be of high quality, which was reflected in the involvement and positive attitude shown during the event. discussion science communication plays a fundamental role in the educational and intellectual development of society. when well-structured, it encourages critical thinking, promotes interest in scientific disciplines and broadens students’ understanding of the world around them (faber et al. 2024). neuroscience, in particular, has captured public fascination due to the intriguing complexity of the brain. however, this fascination is often fueled by misconceptions – known as ‘neuromyths’ – that distort scientific facts and can negatively influence educational practices and social beliefs (dekker et al. 2012). in this context, ibaw (semana internacional do cérebro – sic), organised by the popneuro program, has played a crucial role in popularising neuroscience and actively contributing to the dismantling of neuromyths. many participants reported that before attending the event, they believed common misconceptions, such as the idea that we only use 10% of our brain or that learning is only possible up to three years of age. the deconstruction of these myths was one of the most appreciated aspects of the event, emphasising the importance of evidence-based communication and the role of university students as approachable and effective science communicators. scientific outreach initiatives like ibaw not only improve public understanding of the brain but also have important implications for educational practice. as highlighted by howard-jones, when educators adopt neuromyths, they may implement ineffective or even harmful pedagogical strategies (howard-jones n.d.; rousseau 2021). therefore, ibaw promotes accurate and up-to-date neuroscience education, empowering both educators and the general public. this contributes to a culture of critical thinking and scientific literacy, which are essential for educational progress and informed citizenship. in brazil, the natural sciences curriculum in elementary and high school includes topics such as the human body, the nervous system, brain function and the five senses – content that is often addressed in a simplified and fragmented manner. through initiatives like ibaw, students are exposed to neuroscience in a more integrated, dynamic and engaging way. by presenting accurate neuroanatomical models and clarifying common misconceptions – such as neuromyths – these activities reinforce and expand what is taught in the classroom. this exposure helps students build deeper scientific understanding, fosters curiosity and supports the development of critical thinking skills, which are fundamental for their academic progress and broader social development. the impact of ibaw is further reinforced by the diversity and inclusivity of its activities. the 2023 edition, for instance, featured a lecture on active ageing, developed in response to a request from the local sesc unit. this highlights the program’s commitment to listening to the needs of the community and adapting its content accordingly. the participation of older adults from the active maturity group was another positive aspect, promoting intergenerational interaction and extending the benefits of science education to different age groups. research shows that such intergenerational programs enhance social cohesion and generate cognitive and emotional benefits for both younger and older participants (krzeczkowska et al. 2021). hands-on and interactive activities were among the most praised elements by participants. these practical experiences helped simplify complex concepts and improve information retention, aligning with studies that show active learning significantly enhances engagement and comprehension (guy & byrne 2013). ibaw’s approach makes science more tangible and accessible to a broader audience, effectively bridging the gap between academia and society. a qualitative analysis of participant feedback revealed an overwhelmingly positive perception of ibaw’s relevance and organisation. suggestions collected during the event are carefully considered and incorporated into future planning. for example, participant input has led to the expansion of the neuroanatomy exhibition and the inclusion of a histological slide (a thin, carefully prepared tissue sample used for microscopic analysis) of porcine brain tissue for microscopic analysis, thus offering a deeper educational experience. this cycle of reflection and action demonstrates the event’s commitment to continuous improvement and innovation. the ibaw team evaluates each edition thoroughly, using audience feedback to refine and redesign its activities, ensuring they remain engaging and educational. communication strategies are also diversified, including radio, social media and local television, to maximise outreach and accessibility (hoffman et al. 2018). it is also important to highlight the positive impact of this work on the university students involved. the integration of extension activities into the academic curriculum has become a well-established practice, and involvement in initiatives like popneuro significantly contributes to students’ professional and academic development. in addition to deepening their knowledge in neuroscience, students improve their communication skills and their ability to engage with the broader community. finally, ibaw 2023 underscored the importance of partnerships between universities, schools and community organisations. such collaborations expand available resources and strengthen ties between academia and society, promoting a culture of mutual and continuous learning. studies show that inter-institutional partnerships are effective in promoting inclusive and comprehensive science education (sadykova et al. 2025). conclusion the activities and actions promoted by popneuro for the dissemination and popularisation of neuroscience have had a significant impact on local society and inspired other laboratories and research groups in the dissemination and popularisation of neuroscience. this impact is evidenced not only by the quantitative results of the program’s evaluations, but also by the continued interest of individuals and organisations in the community in the group’s initiatives. in this way, the goal of bringing the scientific community and the university closer together, as well as disseminating knowledge on the various topics of neuroscience to the general public, has been achieved with great success. it is therefore essential that universities continue to provide opportunities for students to engage in science outreach and support their efforts to promote science in their communities. this support is essential to train future professionals who are better qualified and committed to disseminating scientific knowledge, thereby contributing to the advancement of science and improving the relationship between science and society. author contribution pbm-c conceived and designed research; btc, altt, pms and pbm-c performed actions; altt analysed data; btc, altt, pms and pbm-c 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journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: enns, j. e., brownell, m., casidsid, h. j. m., hunter, m., durksen, a., turnbull, l. a., nickel, n. c., levasseur, k., tait, m. j., sinclair, s., mahar, a., randall, s., freier, a., scatliff, c., brownell, e., dolin, a., murdock, n., mahar, a., sinclair, s., and the spectrum partnership. 2023. the full spectrum: developing a tripartite partnership between community, government and academia for collaborative social policy research. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8433 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article the full spectrum: developing a tripartite partnership between community, government and academia for collaborative social policy research jennifer e. enns1,*, marni brownell1,2, hera j. m. casidsid1,2, mikayla hunter2, anita durksen1,2, lorna a. turnbull3, nathan c. nickel1,2,4, karine levasseur5, myra j. tait6,7, scott sinclair8, selena randall1, amy freier1,9, colette scatliff3, emily brownell1,2, aine dolin10, nora murdock11, alyson mahar1,12, stephanie sinclair13, spectrum partnership14 1 manitoba centre for health policy, department of community health sciences, rady faculty of health sciences, university of manitoba 2 department of community health sciences, rady faculty of health sciences, university of manitoba 3 faculty of law, university of manitoba 4 faculty of kinesiology and recreation management, university of manitoba 5 faculty of arts, university of manitoba 6 faculty of humanities and social science, athabasca university 7 berens river first nation 8 manitoba government 9 health data research network canada 10 college of arts & science, university of saskatchewan 11 manitoba first nations education resource centre 12 school of nursing, queen’s university 13 first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba 14 the members of the spectrum partnership are listed at www.spectrum-mb.ca corresponding author: jennifer e. enns; jennifer.enns@umanitoba.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8433 article history: received 01/11/2022; revised 25/03/2023; accepted 30/03/2023; published 06/2023 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding funding for spectrum was provided by the social sciences and humanities research council in the form of a partnership development grant (no. 890-2018-29). the results and conclusions are those of the authors and no official endorsement by the funders was intended or should be inferred. the funders had no input into the study design, implementation, or interpretation of the findings. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8433 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://www.spectrum-mb.ca mailto:jennifer.enns@umanitoba.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8433 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8433 abstract problem: in canadian society, public policies guide the development and administration of social services and systems, including the public education system, the justice system, family services, social housing and income support. however, because social services are often planned and implemented in a ‘siloed’ manner, coordination and collaboration across departments, sectors and organisations is sorely lacking. data and resource constraints may prevent services being evaluated to ensure they meet the needs of the people for whom they are intended. when the needs of individuals are not addressed, the result is poor outcomes and wasted resources across multiple areas. our response: in 2018, we formed the spectrum partnership in response to a recognised need for collaborative cross-sector approaches to strengthening the policies that shape social services and systems in our country. the tripartite spectrum partnership comprises representatives from community organisations, government and academia, and is an entity designed to conduct social policy research and evaluation, incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives and expertise from its members. guided by community-driven research questions and building on existing data resources, spectrum seeks to address specific knowledge gaps in social programs, services and systems. new research findings are then translated into viable public policy options, in alignment with government priorities, and presented to policy-makers for consideration. implications: in this practice-based article, we describe the key steps we took to create the spectrum partnership, build our collective capacity for research and evaluation, and transform our research findings into actionable evidence to support sound public policy. we outline four of spectrum’s achievements to date in the hope that the lessons we learned during the development of the partnership may serve as a guide for others aiming to optimise public policy development in a collaborative evidence-based way. keywords partnership; social policy; government; community; research; knowledge translation introduction effective public policy supports a fair and just society, enabling all citizens to realise their full potential. in canada, public policy guides administration of the public education system, the justice system, and services supporting child and family welfare, social housing and income assistance. however, the way these services have been designed and implemented often lacks coordination across departments and sectors, and the services are rarely evaluated to ensure that they meet the goals they were intended to achieve. the often ‘siloed’ nature of policy development, policy implementation and service delivery can result in lost opportunities to optimally serve individuals, families and communities whose needs span multiple sectors. in many cases, those who stand to benefit from social services do not receive them, resulting in poor outcomes for citizens and inefficient use of public resources. recognising the inadequacies in organisation and delivery of social services and systems in canada, the authors of this article developed an idea for addressing these shortcomings. we established a tripartite partnership between community organisations, government and academia to facilitate collaborative research and evaluation of social policies. members of the three parties appreciated the benefits of working across disciplines, departments and sectors, but the infrastructure we needed to communicate optimally, share and discuss ideas, and ensure our work had an impact in the policy realm was not well established. while there are many pertinent examples of collaborative approaches between government and academia that aim to address issues in child welfare (fallon et al. 2017), climate change (australian public service commission 2012) and indigenous health (martin 2012), a tripartite relationship between community organisations, government and academia focused on social policy was a relative rarity for canada. however, each party enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 had significant and complementary expertise to bring to the ‘trialogue’. we would contribute to identifying specific issues, designing research approaches to address them, contextualising and interpreting the findings, and developing policy options that would improve social outcomes. thus, the partnership would allow us to work across sectors to strengthen public policy and government decision-making. the partnership, which we call spectrum (social policy evaluation collaborative team research with universities in manitoba), grew out of the well-established collaborative research model at the manitoba centre for health policy (mchp), university of manitoba (bowen, martens & the need-toknow team 2005; martens & roos 2005). mchp maintains the unique and comprehensive manitoba population research data repository, which contains administrative, registry and survey data from the health system, social services, the education system and the justice system. the data are linkable across these sectors, which makes the repository a powerful platform on which to conduct intersecting and sophisticated analyses (katz et al. 2019; smith et al. 2015). researchers at mchp have a long history of working closely with government staff and health region representatives to identify policy questions and conduct research to address critical policy issues. furthermore, over the last decade, our government and community partners have become increasingly important contributors to the research process because of their first-hand knowledge of the available data, the knowledge gaps and the contexts in which services are delivered (bowen, martens & the need to know team 2005; katz et al. 2021; martens & roos 2005). their lived experience and their frontline work with recipients of services has made them invaluable to our research. thus, mchp’s health policy research model formed the basis for spectrum. starting in 2017, we developed a similar model for research conception and design, analysis and knowledge translation that would leverage untapped databases in the repository and incorporate input from stakeholders and rightsholders to address social policy issues. the spectrum partnership is our response to the need for a collaborative, cross-sector approach to social policy research and evaluation. in this practice-based article, we describe the key steps we took to develop the spectrum partnership, build our collective capacity for research and evaluation, and transform our research findings into actionable evidence to support sound public policy. we then discuss spectrum’s achievements and lessons learned, which hopefully will serve as a guide for others aiming to optimise evidence-based public policy development in their own jurisdictions. developing the spectrum partnership spectrum originated from researchers at mchp reaching out to their long-standing network of colleagues and collaborators and inviting them to a series of brainstorming meetings. at these meetings, the researchers shared their early ideas for shaping spectrum and received feedback from the other participants on the scope of the partnership’s work and membership. a core leadership team with representation from each of the three parties was formed. academic members took the lead initially in securing grant funding for spectrum, but government and community organisation representatives played an important role in establishing the governance structure during the earliest stages of the partnership. in 2018–19, we were awarded a three-year partnership development grant by the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc). spectrum partners: inviting others to the table spectrum was designed as a true collaboration of a diverse range of experience and expertise, not merely a sounding board from which leaders, funders or designers of the programs could solicit feedback on decisions already made. we consider all partners to be co-learners engaged in the ‘what if/what should be’ enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 of policy research, design and implementation. as we work together, we continuously consider whether any stakeholders and rightsholders are missing from our conversations. the groups currently represented in spectrum are: i) representatives of community organisations providing social services and support to manitobans ii) indigenous leaders whose wisdom and knowledge remind us to honour the traditions, goals and knowledge of first nations and métis peoples in manitoba iii) government officials tasked with implementing policies and programs from various provincial departments and organisations; iv) academic researchers engaged in research and teaching at universities and colleges, primarily in manitoba (but now expanding outside the province), dedicated to using their expertise to improve the wellbeing of our society; v) undergraduate and graduate students (whom we call the spectrum fellows) with research interests in removing barriers for historically excluded populations and ensuring justice and equality for all manitobans; and vi) community members with lived/living experience, who are invited to join spectrum as part of advisory circles for our research projects. in total, the membership of spectrum is about 100 individuals, representing 18 community agencies, 9 government departments and 14 university or college departments. a non-exhaustive list of spectrum members is provided in table 1, and additional information on current membership can be found at www. spectrum-mb.ca table 1. members of the spectrum partnership manitoba community organizations manitoba government departments departments & faculties at the university of manitoba, university of winnipeg, red river college and athabasca university • abilities manitoba • aboriginal council of winnipeg • boys & girls clubs of winnipeg • canadian community economic development network • first nations family advocate office • first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba • harvest manitoba • manitoba adolescent treatment centre • manitoba advocate for children and youth • central services • education • families • finance • health and seniors care • indigenous reconciliation and northern relations • justice • mental health and community wellness • status of women • community health sciences • economics • education • environmental studies • governance, law & management • law • nursing • peace and conflict studies • political studies • psychology • social epidemiology • social work • sociology • urban studies enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 http://www.spectrum-mb.ca http://www.spectrum-mb.ca manitoba community organizations manitoba government departments departments & faculties at the university of manitoba, university of winnipeg, red river college and athabasca university • manitoba association of newcomer serving organizations • manitoba first nations education resource centre • manitoba métis federation • métis child and family services authority • neeginan centre • public interest law centre • united way winnipeg • winnipeg police service • youth agencies alliance partnership approach: how we work together a visual representation of our partnership is shown in figure 1. the core leadership team designed the circular structure to emphasise that spectrum is not hierarchical, but instead we are connected to each other through our relationships, not by lines of authority. the open circles along the outer border of the circle represent spaces for new partners. our partners share a commitment to a non-hierarchical, iterative and consensual approach that flows from the design, partnership and participatory action research literature. our statement of commitment and reciprocity builds on the principles of the anti-oppressive and decolonising lens we have adopted, so that all partners know what they may expect and what is expected of them (a copy is available from the corresponding author on request). partnership roles: leveraging our areas of knowledge and experience spectrum’s core leadership team is responsible for the administrative tasks and overall coordination of partnership development. during the partnership development phase, the core team planned and hosted quarterly workshops attended by the entire partnership. the aims of the workshops were to form closer relationships amongst partners, define how we would build the various capacities needed for conducting research and evaluation together, and design our first research (demonstration project). the workshop topics included an overview of the repository at mchp; learning to apply a decolonising and anti-oppression lens to our work; and framing new evidence to influence public policy. the workshops served as our primary mechanism for advancing our capacity in social policy research and evaluation during the development of the partnership. smaller working groups were formed to address specific tasks determined by the partnership as a whole. they have been responsible for workshop design and content; analysing and incorporating partner input and feedback on ideas and priorities after each workshop; creating a governance structure for the partnership; table 1. continued enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 discussing how to apply an anti-oppressive and decolonising approach to the partnership’s work; designing the demonstration project and drafting data analysis plans; writing academic manuscripts; creating a communications strategy; and planning funding applications. spectrum fellows are active contributors to the working groups and bring their own lived experiences, community connections, diverse backgrounds and academic disciplines to the partnership. the fellows are each mentored by members of the core leadership team using an approach grounded in ‘work-integrated learning’ frameworks (cantor et al. 2015; hondzel & hansen 2015; spence & mcdonald 2015), where fellows direct their own learning and reflect on their professional development with their mentor and on their own. mentorship offers fellows deeper subject-specific learning while also promoting a range of training experiences. spectrum provides the fellows with opportunities to connect with key stakeholders, be involved in various working groups, participate in capacity-building workshops, and to experience writing papers and funding submissions. these experiences enrich not only the partners’ work, but also the fellows’ abilities to understand key issues, core competencies in research, evaluation and analytic skills (e.g. data analysis, critical thinking, communication, knowledge mobilisation), and professional skills (e.g. leadership, collaboration, networking and dialogue). governance principles: shaping our partnership activities the working groups have accomplished key partnership development tasks, such as articulating the partnership’s mission and values. in workshops and working groups, we have considered questions such as: what do we want this collaboration to look like and feel like? how do we ensure that everyone in the partnership feels welcome and valued? how do we amplify the voices of those who are typically silenced in conversations about services and policies? what does consensus look like in spectrum? how do we deal with the inevitable disagreements that arise when groups talk about challenging issues? (the resulting mission statement and core values of spectrum are included in the appendix.) figure 1. structure of the spectrum partnership enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 building further on these values, we established a decolonising/anti-oppression working group to guide us in putting our partnership approach into practice. we hosted presentations by the office of equity, diversity and inclusion and the associate vice-president indigenous at the university of manitoba, who emphasised the systemic and ongoing reality of racism, colonialism and oppression based on gender, disability and class (among other markers) in canadian institutions. recognising that marginalised people cannot do the work of decolonisation and anti-oppression alone and that partners with relative privilege bear a particular responsibility, the partnership determined that this working group should build on initiatives already undertaken to support community partners (e.g. speakers corner, a workshop segment that highlights our partners’ work, and supporting partners’ funding applications). the group works to ensure access to opportunities for students and continues to make room for additional spectrum partners by creating a toolkit of resources featuring leaders in our community. this work is an integral part of spectrum and will be the ongoing responsibility of all partners. the manitoba population research data repository: a key data resource manitoba is the ideal setting for spectrum as it is home to the comprehensive, world-class and globally unique data repository at the manitoba centre for health policy (mchp). the repository contains person-level data records for the entire population of manitoba. these data are routinely generated during the administration of social services, family services, income support, the education system, the justice system and the health system, and are provided annually to mchp by the government departments that collect them. other data sets may be transferred to the repository by community agencies for particular research projects. all of the repository records (nearly 100 different datasets) are linkable across different sectors and over time (back to 1976), and all are de-identified (names and addresses removed), ensuring that personal information is protected. some of the recent studies completed at mchp were on the wellbeing of first nations children in manitoba (chartier et al. 2020), immigrants to manitoba (urquia et al. 2020), and exploration of the intersection of child welfare and youth criminal justice system involvement (brownell et al. 2020). over the last 30 years, mchp has built a reputation for applying cutting-edge analytic methods, statistical modelling and data science technologies to integrated knowledge mobilisation strategies, while involving government and community partners to use the data in the repository to address policy priorities. this knowledge exchange has resulted in meaningful insights and recommendations for policy-makers and other knowledge users, and impacts the design and delivery of new and existing policies and programs in manitoba (fortier et al. 2018; katz et al. 2021; lewis 2011; roos et al. 2010). in spectrum, we are building on this approach by more fully integrating our partners into the research process. we speak of cocreating or co-producing research evidence: to us, this means that all parties have the opportunity to have input into the research questions and how they are addressed, resulting in research outputs that benefit all parties. for spectrum, the repository is a key resource that gives partners a reason to join forces and work together. the wealth of information in the repository and the cross-sector expertise in the partnership are helping spectrum produce high-quality evidence to support social policy development. our research and evaluation approach traditionally, research at mchp using the repository has been undertaken using a quantitative data science approach (brownell et al. 2016; enns et al. 2021; falster et al. 2021; nickel et al. 2021). the data in the repository lend themselves to answering questions like ‘how many?’, ‘how often?’ and ‘at what cost?’, but enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 numbers and statistics tell only part of the story. particularly in equity-focused policy research, the data also have a critical limitation: they are generated by systems and services that are steeped in the societal biases that permeate canadian society (felt et al. 2017; jasanoff 2004; krieger 2011, 2013, 2015; oreskes 2019; ziman 2000). the data can thus end up reflecting the values and norms of the dominant culture, while the values of others are oppressed. this means we must ask who produces and controls the data and to what end they are using them (felt et al. 2017; jasanoff 2004; krieger 2011, 2013, 2015; oreskes 2019; ziman 2000;). the societal biases reflected in whole-population administrative data can end up ‘baked into’ the research to deleterious effect. for example, we have seen this occur in research on indigenous child welfare. when the impacts of colonialism on the child welfare system go unexamined, indigenous world views are ignored and deficit-based frameworks are applied (choate et al. 2018; cram et al. 2015; krakouer, wu tan & parolini 2021; sinha 2021). failing to take account of these biases when using administrative data for social policy research at best results in a picture with the same inherent biases that are reflected in the administrative data. at worst, the research may perpetuate and exacerbate the harms of social and structural biases against this group. in spectrum, we address this limitation by incorporating additional research methodologies into our science data approach. guided by a standpoint influenced research framework from indigenous statistics (walter & andersen 2013), we acknowledge our positionality and practice reflexivity when we design our research studies and analysis plans, interpret the results of our data analyses and plan our knowledge mobilisation activities. the critical context provided by the lived and living expertise of our partners and advisory circle members remains centred throughout the research process. although this practice cannot remove the biases present in the data, our awareness of how they permeate canadian society and systems reorient our understanding of the findings and the impacts they may have on historically excluded individuals and populations, and inform the actions we take as a result. we also draw on elements of participatory action research, a collective, self-reflective approach that seeks to empower historically excluded individuals and groups, to actively contribute to all aspects of research (garcia-iriarte et al. 2009). this approach is well-suited to spectrum, which is organised in a non-hierarchical structure to emphasise that the partners are equal contributors to shared goals despite differences in power. above all, we strive to remain aware of how our respective positions and perspectives serve as critical tools to conduct respectful, reciprocal, relevant and responsible research (kirkness & barnhardt 2001). putting our research approach into practice: a demonstration project our first research project demonstrates the feasibility of our partnership approach in addressing common challenges and improving social programs, policies and services. we identified our first research question through focused priority-setting discussions at workshops, reflections on and analysis of workshop feedback, and further refinement by the working groups. the partnership agreed to focus on children whose families were involved with child protection services. despite child protection policies and legislation explicitly designed to keep families intact, the rate of children in out-of-home care in manitoba is unacceptably high and disproportionately impacts indigenous families (brownell et al. 2015; canadian child welfare research portal 2018). while out-of-home care can at times be a necessary and effective intervention (gilbert et al. 2012; o’donnell, scott & stanley 2008), there have been no rigorous evaluations comparing outcomes of children taken into out-of-home care compared with children involved with child protection services but remaining at home (gilbert et al. 2012). our community and government partners indicate such evidence would support advocacy and policy efforts. the research team for this project exemplifies the cross-sector expertise and co-learning emphasis that defines spectrum. the team includes policy-makers from enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 manitoba families and government services, community organisations representing first nations families, academics from social work, psychiatry and community health, and five fellows. using the repository and advanced statistical modelling techniques (stukel et al. 2007; tchetgen, michael & cui 2018; uddin et al. 2015), we identified children involved with child protection services for whom there was some discretion in the decision to place them in out-of-home care or keep them in their family home while providing support. following the trajectories of these two groups of children over time, we are examining their mental and physical health, educational achievement and justice system involvement, while accounting for factors that may have contributed to these outcomes, such as family income and maternal mental health. the research is adhering to rigorous and well-established ethics and privacy approval processes, and the ownership, control, access and possession (ocap®) principles (the first nations information governance centre 2014), and is guided by an advisory circle comprising first nations knowledge keepers and the first nations family advocate. preliminary findings will be shared at an upcoming partnership workshop, where our policy leads will facilitate discussions on framing the evidence for policymakers. the policy options generated by the partnership will be reviewed by our advisory circle and youth with child protection services experience. the manitoba advocate for children and youth’s office will facilitate engagement of their youth advisory squad for contextualising and mobilising our findings. within manitoba, the implications of our research are promising because government officials have been involved in shaping this project from the beginning and are committed to evidence-based policy-making. this is not a situation where academics are telling government how to do their jobs – this is government, community members, organisations and academics working together with the shared goal of better outcomes for children. evaluating spectrum spectrum is using a developmental evaluation framework for design-based research (wang & hannafin 2005) to ascertain whether the partnership is meeting its goals. this process aims to reduce power imbalances between partners and prevent potential harms where differences exist. we are conducting this evaluation under ‘conditions of complexity’ (patton 2010), which involves purposefully collecting information from our partners about spectrum’s processes, workshops and projects as they unfold, and applying what we learn from that feedback to adapt and improve the partnership and the work we do. for example, in a series of dedicated meetings and email surveys, we sought partners’ input on what our first research question should be, and this process will be refined and used again as we identify subsequent research questions. focused surveys are also integral to evaluating the specific research projects conducted through spectrum to determine whether the research evidence we generate is ultimately implemented at program and policy levels. ethics and privacy considerations all research projects at mchp are reviewed and approved by the human research ethics board (hreb) at the university of manitoba, the manitoba government health information privacy committee (hipc) and all other data providers. any research involving indigenous peoples is subject to review and approval by the health information research governance committee of the first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba and the manitoba métis community research ethics protocol at the manitoba métis federation, as appropriate. for the demonstration project, we obtained ethics (hreb no. hs22962 – h2019:254) and hipc (hipc no. 2020/2021– 85) approvals, as well as approval from the health information governance committee at the first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba. there are multiple additional layers of protection in place at mchp to ensure personal privacy and data security for the people represented in the repository (katz et al. 2019). enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 key achievements and lessons learned the iterative, ever-evolving nature of spectrum gives rise to a myriad of learning opportunities, requiring us to listen carefully to our partners and exercise creativity in problem solving. reflecting on our successes and the lessons we have learned en route to those achievements has informed our partnership approach, strengthened spectrum’s capacity to address future challenges and allowed us to envision further growth of the partnership. 1. partner engagement in spectrum the achievement: spectrum has a large membership from diverse fields and sectors and excellent engagement from many individuals. the lesson: maintaining this level of engagement from multiple groups who have many other demands on their attention requires dedicated time and energy, and a purposeful engagement and communications strategy. spectrum has helped keep partners informed, involved and engaged by: a) ensuring a range of representation on the core leadership team and in working groups. this serves two important functions: first, involving all three parties in shaping the partnership and carrying out research and evaluation means we have input from all key stakeholder groups, which helps us balance our different agendas. second, partners have the experience of being involved as equals in the work of spectrum from the very beginning, and seeing how their expertise and perspectives shape the work. this is in contrast with the experience from other contexts of merely being consulted, often late in the research and policy process. spectrum’s approach exemplifies that reciprocity is foundational to how the partnership works. b) setting up a robust communications network within the partnership with specific responsibilities among the fellows and core leadership team members. for example, following each workshop, the fellows solicit and collate feedback from the partnership and these communications are used to improve the quality and relevancy of future workshops. the core leadership team sends out quarterly newsletters with updates of progress from workshops and research. each core team member also maintains ongoing one-on-one contact with a small group of partners to foster close relationships and stay in touch with regard to position changes and new staff members at partner organisations. the covid-19 pandemic presented multiple challenges to engaging with partners, including (but not limited to) additional time and resource constraints among all partners, challenges associated with partner organisations serving some of the most vulnerable and transient populations in manitoba during the pandemic, and the need to pause the in-person workshops that were the main way members of spectrum connected with each other. in response to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on community partners, in particular, spectrum has been investigating how to better support the time commitment necessary for their meaningful engagement, e.g. by building in more funding and honorariums for community partner time. spectrum has also made use of online communication tools such as zoom, mailchimp and survey monkey to keep all parties safe and engaged, with plans to gather in-person again as the pandemic recedes further. 2. spectrum as a learning and capacity-building platform the achievement: we took time to develop the partnership through a three-year sshrc-funded partnership development grant, and this was key to helping us find common ground, form relationships and build capacity to advance the partnership’s goals. the lesson: the partnership’s diverse range of experience, knowledge and skills was one of its greatest strengths, but also represented a significant challenge as we worked to articulate our needs and goals. to overcome this challenge, we used our quarterly workshops as our primary mechanism for learning enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 and capacity building. guided by our value of collaboration, workshop content is co-created with our partners who share their expertise and experiences. we strive to create co-learning opportunities to ensure that it is not just the researchers who are speaking but also the partners. workshops are designed to provide the necessary learning opportunities and to build skills, knowledge and resources that help all partners understand the research and policy-making process and how to engage in meaningful discussions about social policy research and using evidence to inform policy. spectrum workshops have a segment dedicated to providing a space for partners to share their work and discuss their needs with the partnership. the speakers corner serves as a forum for the voices of community organisations and the population they serve to be centred and heard. the working groups are another setting in which partners have a meaningful impact on the partnership. partners provide critical context to research design and output, enriching the partnership’s understanding of the issues under discussion, and helping to formulate practical solutions. 3. building authentic relationships within spectrum the achievement: spectrum partners strive to build authentic relationships with one another. in this context, authenticity can be described as the desire to be true to one’s own purpose, values and beliefs, regardless of pressures to act otherwise, while respecting and making room to discuss others’ ideas and motivations. the lesson: authentic partnerships require integrity, open mindedness, vulnerability, honesty, integrity and willingness to be vulnerable. they rely on the partners’ commitment to creating safe spaces. building authentic relationships takes significant time and cannot be rushed. during the development phase of spectrum, we used our workshop discussions, working group meetings and other open channels of communication to find our footing as a partnership, become comfortable sharing thoughts and ideas, and begin to build authentic relationships in spectrum. throughout this process, we had several occasions to practise our values by responding to situations in which partners with differing views disagreed with one another. for example, in deciding what the research question for demonstration project would be, the team of community organisation representatives, indigenous experts, senior government staff and academics brought a wide range of differing views to the table. it took many discussions to come to a place where all agreed that the research had to be something that was responsive to the concerns community organisations faced in daily program delivery, that government could potentially respond to, and that was within the limits of what could actually be accomplished through data analysis. the deep commitment of all participants to our relationships with each other allowed the team to take the necessary time to work through the differences and arrive at a shared plan. in another example, one partner sent an email days before a partnership workshop, posing some very blunt questions about how well the partnership was including indigenous expertise and perspectives and creating space for indigenous leadership. although the initial response of members of the core leadership team organising the workshop was emotional, defensive and distressed, we quickly realised that they had provided a compelling example of courage in speaking their truth. we revised the workshop agenda to create space at the opening of the gathering to reflect on the invitation to be authentic in our relationships and created breakout rooms for small discussions. we came away from the conversations with a clearer sense that spectrum was not a ‘research project’, but a partnership that was all about our relationships, shared values and working together in new and different ways to better meet the needs of all people. it reminded us that the concerns raised were neither the beginning nor the end of our commitments to decolonising anti-racist and anti-oppressive ways of working because the partnership had been changing and evolving since the beginning. it reaffirmed everyone’s commitment to a decolonising and anti-oppressive approach and helped us appreciate how much the informal connection times during coffee and lunch enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202311 breaks allowed us to listen to and clarify things more easily than in the online work we were doing because of the pandemic. most importantly, all partners had the experience of pushing past feeling uncomfortable to find our shared purpose, which was a necessary part of the hard work we were committed to in spectrum, and our partnership was stronger because of those experiences. 4. translating the work of spectrum into meaningful action the achievement: we designed a purposeful knowledge mobilisation strategy for spectrum that will focus on developing evidence-based policy options for the government of manitoba. we will start with our demonstration project, which follows the trajectories of children whose families are involved with child protection services. the working group leading this project includes government officials, community organisations representing first nations families, and academics from multiple disciplines concerned with child and family welfare. the advisory circle includes the first nations youth advisory squad, who will provide additional context to the interpretation of results. as the project unfolds, preliminary findings will be shared with both the partnership and the advisory circle, who will have an opportunity to provide input. then, the spectrum partnership will transform the evidence into sound public policy options and present them to government for review and deliberation. actions and non-actions taken by the government in response to the public policy options provided will be monitored and inform the development of subsequent research projects conducted by spectrum. the lesson: we know from previous years of experience working with government, community partners and the public that knowledge translation and knowledge exchange are critical for moving evidence to action and achieving research impact. connections formed and expertise shared within spectrum are driving our knowledge translation efforts to bring about sound public policy and social change. conclusion the spectrum partnership can serve as an example for other collaborative research models aiming to influence policy development and evidence-based decision-making. our key recommendations for developing a collaborative partnership for social policy research and evaluation include: taking the time to lay a foundation for the partnership, making space for authentic relationships and remaining open to new members as the work evolves; dedicating significant resources to continuous partner engagement and capacity building; and following through to take action on the research findings that result from the partnership’s work. with spectrum now well established, we turn our attention to ensuring its sustainability. efforts to secure more funding for spectrum are underway, and we are planning new research projects that will support evidence-based decision-making and stronger public policies in manitoba. acknowledgements we thank all members of spectrum for their commitment to the research, evaluation and policy work in which the partnership is engaged. individual members and organisations are listed at www.spectrummb.ca. we acknowledge the manitoba centre of health policy for use of the manitoba population research data repository, and the community and government agencies and departments that provided administrative data to the manitoba centre for health policy for research purposes. approvals for the use of the data were obtained from the human research ethics board (hreb no. hs22962 – h2019:254) and the health information privacy committee (hipc no. 2020/2021–85) of the manitoba government, as well as the health information research governance committee of the first nations health and social secretariat of manitoba. enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202312 http://www.spectrum-mb.ca http://www.spectrum-mb.ca references australian public service commission 2012, tackling wicked problems: a public policy perspective. www.apsc.gov.au/ publications-and-media/archive/publications-archive/tackling-wicked-problems bowen, s, martens, p & the need to know team 2005, ‘demystifying knowledge translation: learning from the community’, journal of health services research & policy, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 203–211. 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maltreatment: variation in trends and policies in six developed countries’, lancet, vol. 379 (1474–547x (electronic), pp. 758–772. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(11)61087-8 hondzel, c & hansen, r 2015, ‘associating creativity, context, and experiential learning’, vol. 6, no. 2. https://doi. org/10.3402/edui.v6.23403 jasanoff, s (ed.) 2004, states of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order, routledge, abingdon. katz, a et al. 2019, ‘population data centre profile: the manitoba centre for health policy’, international journal of population data science, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 10. https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v4i2.1131 katz, a. et al. 2021, ‘closing the loop: from system-based data to evidence-influenced policy and practice’, international journal of population data science, vol. 6, no. 3. https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v7i1.1701 kirkness, v & barnhardt, r 2001, ‘first nations and higher education: the four rs – respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility’, in hayoe, r & pan, j (eds), knowledge across cultures: a contribution to dialogue among civilizations, comparative education research centre, university of hong kong. krakouer, j, wu tan, w & parolini, a 2021, ‘who is analysing what? the opportunities, risks and implications of using predictive risk modelling with indigenous australians in child protection: a scoping review’, australian journal of social issues, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 173–197. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.155 krieger, n 2011, epidemiology and the people’s health: theory and context, oxford university press, new york. krieger, n 2013, ‘researching critical questions on social justice and public health: an ecosocial perspective’, in b levy & v sidel (eds), social injustice and health, 2nd edn, oxford university press, oxford, uk. https://doi.org/10.1093/ med/9780199939220.003.0026 krieger, n 2015, ‘public health, embodied history, and social justice: looking forward’, international journal of health services, no. 45, pp. 587–600. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731415595549 lewis, s 2011, ‘how has health services research made a difference?’, healthcare policy, vol. 6 (special issue), pp. 74–79. https://doi.org/10.12927/hcpol.2011.22121 martens, p & roos, n 2005, ‘when health services researchers and policy makers interact: tales from the tectonic plates’, healthcare policy, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 72. https://pmc/articles/pmc2585237/ (accessed 21 september 2021). https:// doi.org/10.12927/hcpol..17568 martin, d 2012, ‘two-eyed seeing: a framework for understanding indigenous and non-indigenous approaches to indigenous health research’, the canadian journal of nursing research, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 20–42. nickel, n et al. 2021, ‘differential effects of a school‐based obesity prevention program: a cluster randomized trial’, maternal & child nutrition, vol. 17, no. 1, p. e13009. https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.13009 o’donnell, m, scott, d & stanley, f 2008, ‘child abuse and neglect – is it time for a public health approach?’, australian and new zealad journal of public health, vol. 32, pp. 325–330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.17536405.2008.00249.x oreskes, n 2019, why trust science, princeton university press, nj. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691189932 enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202314 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018454 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-3148.2008.00431.x https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(11)61087-8 https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.23403 https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.23403 https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v4i2.1131 https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v7i1.1701 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.155 https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199939220.003.0026 https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199939220.003.0026 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731415595549 https://doi.org/10.12927/hcpol.2011.22121 https://pmc/articles/pmc2585237/ https://doi.org/10.12927/hcpol..17568 https://doi.org/10.12927/hcpol..17568 https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.13009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-6405.2008.00249.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-6405.2008.00249.x https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691189932 patton, m 2010, developmental evaluation: applying complexity concepts to enhance innovation and use, guilford press, new york. roos, n et al. 2010, ‘enhancing policymakers’ understanding of disparities: relevant data from an information-rich environment’, milbank quarterly, vol. 88, no. 3, pp. 382–403. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00604.x sinha, v, caldwell, j, paul, l & fumaneri, r 2021, ‘a review of literature on the involvement of children from indigenous communities in anglo child welfare systems: 1973–2018’, international indigenous policy journal, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–43. https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2021.12.1.10818 smith, m et al. 2015, ‘health services data: managing the data warehouse: 25 years of experience at the manitoba centre for health policy’, in b sobolev, a levy & s goring (eds), data and measures in health services research, springer, boston, ma, pp. 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7673-4_3-1 spence, k & mcdonald, m 2015, ‘assessing vertical development in experiential learning curriculum’, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 296–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825915571749 stukel, t et al. 2007, ‘analysis of observational studies in the presence of treatment selection bias effects of invasive cardiac management on ami survival using propensity score and instrumental variable methods’, jama, vol. 297, no. 3. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.297.3.278 tchetgen, e, michael, h & cui, y 2018, ‘marginal structural models for time-varying endogenous treatments: a timevarying instrumental variable approach’. https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.05422v1 (accessed 23 january 2022). the first nations information governance centre 2014, ownership, control, access and possession (ocap): the path to first nations information governance, the first nations information governance centre, ottawa. http://fnigc.ca/sites/ default/files/docs/ocap_path_to_fn_information_governance_en_final.pdf uddin, m et al. 2015, ‘instrumental variable analysis in epidemiologic studies: an overview of the estimation methods’, pharmaceutica analytica acta, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 1000353. https://doi.org/10.4172/2153-2435.1000353 urquia, m et al. 2020, the diversity of immigrants to manitoba: migration dynamics and basic healthcare service use, manitoba centre for health policy, winnipeg. http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/ircc_report_web. pdf walter, m & andersen, c 2013, indigenous statistics: a quantitative research methodology, taylor & francis group. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docid=1418425 wang, f & hannafin, m 2005, ‘design-based research and technology-enhanced learning environments’, educational technology research and development, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02504682 ziman, j 2000, real science: what it is, and what it means, cambridge university press, cambridge, ma. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511541391 enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202315 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00604.x https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2021.12.1.10818 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7673-4_3-1 https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825915571749 https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.297.3.278 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.05422v1 http://fnigc.ca/sites/default/files/docs/ocap_path_to_fn_information_governance_en_final.pdf http://fnigc.ca/sites/default/files/docs/ocap_path_to_fn_information_governance_en_final.pdf https://doi.org/10.4172/2153-2435.1000353 http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/ircc_report_web.pdf http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/ircc_report_web.pdf https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docid=1418425 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02504682 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511541391 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511541391 appendix appendix figure 1: spectrum’s mission and values enns, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202316 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: mazetti, c., schmidt, s., hardie, m., boulle, j., parnell, s. 2022. south african urban youth responses to living in a world with covid: lessons from #slam4urlife. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8204 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) south african urban youth responses to living in a world with covid: lessons from #slam4urlife cara mazetti1,*, sophie schmidt, mignon hardie3, jacqueline boulle4, susan parnell5 1 research fellow, university of bristol 2 former #slam4urlife campaign manager, fundza literacy trust 3 former executive director, fundza literacy trust 4 head, western cape youth and after school programme office 5 professor, university of bristol and emeritus professor, university of cape town corresponding author: cara mazetti, caramazetticlaassen2@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8204 article history: received 31/05/2022; revised 07/07/2022; accepted 12/10/2022; published 12/2022 abstract using poetry, visual art, songs, raps and sketches submitted to #slam4urlife, a social media competition encouraging young people in south africa to respond creatively to the covid19 pandemic, this article outlines young urban people’s responses to the covid19 pandemic in south africa through four narratives: shock, loss, survival and activism. resting on practices of engaged scholarship, it draws on knowledge bases and collaborations in and beyond the academy to contribute grounded research on arts based social media competitions as an effective method for encouraging and amplifying the youth voice. it does this by creating digital public spaces in which young people can practise civic engagement in contexts where this cannot be done in physical public spaces. in doing so, the article contributes to the literature on communitybased research and youth in african cities from the perspective of south africa. it also argues the importance of artbased social media competitions in creating digital public spaces in which the youth voice can be encouraged, legitimised and amplified in so far as these kinds of digital spaces allow for a kind of civic engagement not always seen by young people in the physical public spaces of african cities. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding thanks to the university of bristol global challenges research fund – ad hoc (rapid response) scheme for funding. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8204 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8204 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:caramazetticlaassen2@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8204 keywords youth; covid19; south africa; social media; competitions; civic engagement introduction this article emerged from #slam4urlife, a social media competition which encouraged young people in south africa to respond creatively to the theme ‘living in a world with covid19’. #slam4urlife was launched by fundza literacy trust in partnership with south africa’s western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport, supported by three local charities (community chest, assitej arts organisation and harambee youth employment accelerator), and funded by the global challenges research fund through the university of bristol. representing a research and writing collaboration between youth development workers from the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport and the fundza literacy trust, as well as academics from the university of bristol, this article provides reflections from our experience in launching, running and funding #slam4urlife and responds to three related questions: ‘how did young people respond to the covid19 pandemic in south african cities?’; ‘to what extent might artsbased social media competitions such as #slam4urlife encourage and amplify youth voice by creating digital public spaces in which young people can practice civic engagement in contexts where this cannot be done in physical public spaces?’; and ‘what can be learnt about the importance of durable institutions and partnerships with community and government organisations for enabling engaged research?’ there are three interconnected layers to the formation of this article, within which these questions are explored. the first and most important lies with the community of young urban people who responded rapidly and creatively to the challenges of covid19 in south african cities through their contributions to #slam4urlife. the bulk of the article is, appropriately, focused on this layer in narrating and locating the story of #slam4urlife as an example of urban youth innovation and community mobilisation in a time of protracted crisis. it would be disingenuous, however, to present #slam4urlife as an isolated case of youth innovation and mobilisation in response to crisis in this country. rather, #slam4urlife should be seen as a collection of youth voices on covid19 connected to a wider urban intellectual tradition in south africa that has long seen strong partnerships between residents, scholars, activists and professionals. the second layer is about a cohort of south african urban interlocutors based in a university, a provincial government department, and a durable nongovernment organisation (ngo) who, having all lived and worked in south africa, are close enough to communities to read opportunities for innovation and to respond to them. engaged research is rarely, if ever, undertaken by a lone researcher and is generally characterised by sustained relationships over time. the social, political and intellectual networks around #slam4urlife reflect new partnerships and also decades of collaboration between international universities (the universities of bristol and cape town), national governments (the united kingdom and south africa, and local ngos (fundza, community chest, assitej, and harambee). the details of this epistemic community need not be set out here other than to note that it was in the multidimensional dynamics of trust that engaged scholarship was able to flourish. #slam4urlife, a project with a budget of less than £10,000 from the global challenges research fund, was within months of lockdown able to appoint staff, devise a project and fund project prizes. both the #slam4urlife project and this episodic research intervention depended on durable institutions that were committed and able to execute coproduction, and to do so quickly. for the project to be run effectively, the university of bristol, the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport, fundza literacy trust, community chest, assitej and harambee had to variously provide fiscal and administrative support to ensure the rapid set up of the project, uphold due process and provide project administration and oversight. the university of bristol offered fiscal support through administering the global challenges mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 research fund, the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport, community chest, assitej and harambee provided administrative support, and the fundza literacy trust managed the campaign – ensuring that it was marketed effectively, that the judging was fair and transparent, and that all youth voices were amplified and shared. in other words, this article reflects on the process of collaboration between the university, government and community partners that enabled the launch of the #slam4urlife project and the research endeavours of those involved. the ‘institutional’ layer highlights that the preconditions needed for collaborative and engaged communitybased research (cbr) to emerge requires an intellectual and moral willingness by scholars to embrace cbr methodologies and practices, but also often on durable academic institutions and ngos, as well as established communitygovernmentuniversity partnerships. this article contributes to cbr in two ways. empirically, it outlines young people’s responses to the covid19 pandemic in south africa through four narratives of shock, loss, survival and activism. methodologically, it draws on knowledge bases and collaborations in and beyond the academy to contribute grounded research on artsbased social media competitions, seen as an effective method for encouraging and amplifying youth voices, and creating digital public spaces in which young people can practise civic engagement in contexts other than physical public spaces. in reflecting on cbr from our experience of launching the #slam4urlife project and coproducing the reflections contained in this article, we position ourselves as the objects of our enquiry. in doing so, we invoke the southern tradition of cbr, which suggests that ‘the distinction between the researcher and the participant is irrelevant’ when the ‘researcher’ and the ‘participant’ research and participate together, as was the case both with #slam4urlife as a project and the research intervention that followed it (tandon 1988, p. 12). it is this positionality which allows us to write not ‘on’ or ‘about’ engaged and collaborative research, but instead to write from our experience in collaborating on the launch of #slam4urlife – a project which addressed real need in south africa during the early stages of the covid19 pandemic. that the project came first, and the research followed as a process of reflection to feed back into community practice is what makes this article an exercise in engaged and responsive scholarship and distinguishes it from exercises in social research that are solely universitydriven and designed to merely include community groups (hacker 2013 et al. 2003). this is a timely article. in africa, threequarters of the population are under the age of 35, making it the world’s youngest continent ( joffe 2021). in many african cities, urban youth live in complex and precarious environments (gittings et al. 2021, p. 958) where public expression of sentiments, such as shock, loss, survival and activism, can be curtailed by the urgency of everyday life in which vulnerability and speaking out are not supported. the covid19 pandemic further constrained young people’s civic engagement by obstructing their access to typical spaces of public gathering and sharing, such as schools, universities, work, mosques, churches and streets. it is from this context that we write this article and consider the ways in which artsbased social media competitions geared towards young people can foster spaces for youth engagement in contexts where social life is curtailed. this article is comprised of five substantive sections. it begins with a review of recent literature on young people’s responses to the covid19 pandemic in 2020 and their use of social media for digital civic engagement in ways that supplant similar practices in physical public spaces. the subsequent section provides a background to the article, which discusses what the arrival of the covid19 pandemic meant for young people in south africa and the impetus for launching the #slam4urlife competition. this section is followed by a methodological discussion of artbased social media competitions as a method for generating innovative and contextspecific evidence of young people’s participation in civic engagement in times of protracted crisis by drawing directly on the youth voice. a substantive part of this article considers mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 a selection of illustrative submissions entered in the #slam4urlife competition to present the empirical findings on young people’s responses to the initial wave of the covid19 pandemic in south africa, and discusses shock, loss, survival and activism as four emerging themes. the article closes with a discussion of the importance of artbased social media competitions in creating digital public spaces in which youth voice can be encouraged, legitimised and amplified, in so far as these kinds of digital spaces allow for a kind of civic engagement not always seen by young people in the physical public spaces of african cities. literature review a number of recent studies have documented young people’s responses to covid19 in south africa and elsewhere (see, for example: álvareziglesias, garman & lund 2021; bhandari 2021; coetzee et al. 2021; gallagher et al. 2020; gittings et al. 2021; govender et al. 2020; haffejee & levine 2020; inyabri, aboh & mensah 2021; kaur et al. 2021; mohamad 2020; padmanabhanunni & pretorius 2021; pinet, sanyu & youn 2021). three common themes cut across this growing body of literature, namely: the psychological burden of the pandemic on the mental health of young people; the intensified material challenges faced by young people as a result of the pandemic (especially in relation to livelihoods and food security); and the coping mechanisms displayed by young people through creative expression both online and offline. drawing on findings from the national income dynamics study: coronavirus rapid mobile survey and projects that elicited children’s perspectives, jamieson & van blerk (2021) caution that, while there might be crosscutting themes in young people’s experiences of the pandemic in south africa, the severe social and economic inequalities that exist in the country meant that, depending on where they live, young people experienced different levels of insulation from the impacts of the pandemic. despite these nuances, the crosscutting trends in young people’s responses to covid19 emerging from south africa chime with research emerging elsewhere, particularly with regard to creativity (and, more specifically, creativity online), as a lens through which to understand young people’s responses to the medical, psychological, social and economic impacts of the pandemic. for example, inyabri, aboh & mensah (2021) use creative digital data sourced from facebook, twitter, youtube and whatsapp to demonstrate how young people in nigeria used humour to come to terms with the novelty of a global pandemic and to communicate their perceptions of covid19 in nigeria. their 2021 article also explores the extent to which social media provides a platform for young people to practise civic engagement, which adler and goggin (2005, p. 236) define as the ‘ways in which citizens participate in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community’s future’. inyabri, aboh & mensah (2021) argue that social media provides a space in which young nigerians can satirically articulate angst about the political system in which they live. in the southeast asian context, mohamad (2020) used social media content created by young people in brunei darussalam to explore how bruneian youth responded to the covid19 pandemic in their country. from this, the author traced five narratives used by bruneian youth to support social distancing online: a narrative of fear, a narrative of responsibility, a narrative of annoyance, a narrative of fun and a narrative of resistance. of particular relevance to our article is how mohamad (2020) explored new youth spatialities, social engagement and participation through young people’s activity online. our article adds to the growing body of literature and evidence of young people’s responses to covid19 and the importance of social media in supplanting young people’s practices of citizenship in the public space in south africa. literature on the use of social media for civic engagement by youth in south africa has tended to focus on protest and politics (see, for example, bosch 2013, 2017; zeilig 2013), while less of the literature examines young people’s use of social media for broader civic practices. our article attempts to fill this gap by looking at curated social media ‘spaces’, such as #slam4urlife, as digital zones in mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 which young people in south africa can practise civic engagement by giving voice to the challenges faced by south africa as a result of covid19 from their perspectives and those of the people around them. in the section that follows, we offer a background to our article by contextualising the arrival of the covid19 pandemic in south africa in terms of what it meant for young people in the country, as well as the origins of the #slam4urlife competition, first and foremost as a communitybased project, and secondly as an exercise in cbr. here we describe the ‘subjecttosubject’ relationship that defined our working partnership as representatives from an ngo, a provincial government department and a university, and offer an alternative to the binary subject– object relationship between academics and community groups sometimes found in orthodox social research (sousa 2021, p. 4). this section is followed by a discussion of our approach to cbr and artbased social media competitions as a method for generating innovative and contextspecific evidence on young people’s participation in civic engagement in times of protracted crisis by drawing directly on the youth voice. background following the world health organisation’s classification of covid19 as a global pandemic, the south african government declared a national state of disaster and introduced a strict lockdown on 26 march 2020 that lasted for 10 weeks. it was within this context that crèches, schools, afterschool programs and universities were closed in south africa. for the 10 weeks of lockdown from the end of march to 8 june, children were not allowed to go to school or see their friends and family outside of their homes. moreover, during the first five weeks of ‘hard’ lockdown, children were not allowed to leave their homes for any reason other than to seek medical attention (spaull & van der berg 2020, p. 2). access to services, including safeguarding and healthcare, was also limited (spaull & van der berg 2020, p. 2). it was within this context that children and young people in south africa experienced the psychological and material challenges documented in the literature described in the previous section. recognising the plight of young people during the national lockdown, the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport (2020) released a press statement publicising the #slam4urlife competition: due to the covid19 pandemic and subsequent national lockdown, millions of young south africans are at home confronting the abrupt changes to their daily routines and wrestling too with the stress of how this crisis impacts their lives, and their future hopes and dreams. in this press release, the department also recognised that by may 2020 many young people were already taking to social media to express their feelings about the pandemic and the lockdown in various forms ‘from short poems on twitter about the uncertain future to tiktoks about life in lockdown’ (western cape cultural affairs and sport 2020). through #slam4urlife, fundza literacy trust aimed to catalyse this creative expression of the youth voice online. as a literacy organisation founded in 2011 to promote a culture of reading and writing amongst youth in south africa, fundza was acutely aware of the impact of covid19 and ensuing lockdowns on young people in south africa and the need for expression, peertopeer connection and engagement in activities arising from the subsequent closure of crèches, schools, afterschool programs and universities. with support from the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport, community chest, assitej arts organisation and harambee youth employment accelerator, and funding from the global challenges research fund through the university of bristol, fundza launched #slam4urlife on 5 may 2020 to ensure that young people within and beyond its network were able to share their experiences of how the pandemic was impacting their lives. mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 the competition ran for six weeks until 8 june 2020 and received over 1000 entries. the competition was launched in less than two months of the pandemic’s arrival in south africa precisely because of the decades of collaboration between universities, governments, ngos and individuals, and the relationships of trust this collaboration had fostered which could quickly be mobilised to appoint staff, devise a project, and fund and deliver prizes. young people in south africa aged 13 to 35 were encouraged to share their experiences of covid19 via their preferred language and creative medium. entries could be submitted through facebook, twitter, instagram or tiktok by tagging @slam4urlife and using the #slam4urlife hashtag. participants were also able to submit entries via the fundza whatsapp account by texting ‘hi’ to the account, typing # and following the prompts. this was the most popular method for submitting entries, which was not surprising considering that whatsapp is the most commonly used social networking platform amongst young people in south africa (burton, leoschut & phyfer 2016, p. 22). the only guidelines for submissions were that they had to ‘focus, in an original and creative way, on some impact of the pandemic on [young people’s] lives, whether on the health aspect or the major societal shifts that the pandemic has sparked’ (team fundza 2020). submissions were judged by a panel of notable influencers, poets, television and radio presenters and artists, in south africa purely on their merit as authentic responses to the impact of the pandemic on young people’s lives. winners were rewarded with air time, data and cash on a weekly basis. grand prizes of cash and laptops were also awarded to finalists during a live facebook prizegiving event on 16 june 2020, which is ‘youth day’ in south africa. the digital format of the #slam4urlife competition meant that followers of the #slam4urlife social media pages could see the artworks and hear stories shared by youth across the country. thus, young people’s creative responses to the pandemic were witnessed by others, including their peers and the public figures responsible for judging the entries. by creating a digital space in which young people’s experiences and insights could be shared with and witnessed by others on social media, #slam4urlife fostered a liminal space that was defined by location, but transcended particular places and traditional neighbourhood convenings. and, although the competition concluded in june 2020, the social media pages on facebook and instagram, where entries were shared, remain live, allowing #slam4urlife to continue to serve as a place of youth voice and civic engagement on covid19. it is this archive that constitutes the data underpinning this article. in the section that follows, we discuss the process of analysis and collective meaningmaking which spanned the life of the project, from a collaborative youth development initiative to a collaborative research intervention. we also expound on our collaborative methodology by explaining how our joint efforts as partners from an ngo, a university and a provincial government department spanned the processes of project planning, implementation and evaluation, ultimately culminating in this research. methodology the internet and social media have long been described as vehicles for social participation, evidenced by research on major political events, such as the arab spring and occupy wall street, which brought attention to the transformative potential of social media in facilitating ‘practical citizenship’ (bosch 2017, p. 224) by increasing opportunities for engagement in collective action (castells 2015; kidd & mcintosh 2016; tufekci & wilson 2012). nevertheless, significantly less attention has been paid to how social media has been used as a vehicle for ordinary civic participation in subsaharan african societies beyond the sphere of protest and student politics. bosch 2017 (p. 221) argues that south african youth are increasingly using social media for civic engagement and social networking to ‘develop a new biography of citizenship which is characterized by more individualized forms of activism’. where bosch’s work looks specifically at twitter as a platform through mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 which the rhodes must fall movement afforded youth the opportunity to participate in social and political discussions, our article considers how other social media platforms (such as whatsapp, facebook, tiktok and instagram) enabled young people to do the same within the context of the covid19 pandemic. through its analysis of over 1000 poetry, rap, song, tiktok, sketch, photographic, visual art and meme submissions entered in the #slam4urlife competition, this article explores young people’s responses to the initial wave of the covid19 pandemic in south africa and considers social media campaigns as a tool for mobilising youth engagement in civic life in african cities. analysis and judging of the entries was undertaken by representatives of our coauthorship team from the fundza literacy trust who were responsible for launching and running the competition and had experience of doing so from past projects, in addition to local influencers, poets, television and radio presenters, and artists in south africa. during this process, each entry was carefully considered and subjected to two degrees of analysis: understanding (what is the entry about? what is it trying to tell its audience?) and evaluation (is this entry worthy of a prize and why?). this round of analysis was performed as a necessary component of the competition and was led by fundza literacy trust, the organisation responsible for administering the project. fundza has many years of experience in conducting similar competitions and so was best placed to fulfil this task. however, as a project initiated by partners from government, the third sector and universities, there was, from the outset, an openness and eagerness to observe the broader lessons on community practice that could be learnt from the project and fed back into community work focusing on youth. this is a central tenet of cbr and participatory research (gaventa 1993; rahman 1991). the process of learning from doing or creating ‘knowledge in action’ (ledwith 2020, p. 136) is central to cbr and participatory research (rahman 1991; tandon 1988) and also to how fundza operates. collaborating with academic partners meant that there was the space, time and resources to turn this emergent institutional knowledge into research. the initial round of meaningmaking produced through exercises in understanding and analysis was supplemented with qualitative content analysis by academic members of the coauthorship team from the university of bristol, who repeated the exercise of reviewing the entries with coauthorship partners from fundza literacy trust. this second round of meaningmaking unfolded over the course of two years, during which there were many conversations between representatives of the various project partners in the coauthorship team and time for ideas to percolate and understanding to slowly emerge. while all partners were involved in the evolution of the project through the planning, implementation and reflection stages, they also contributed in different ways at different times depending on their expertise, position and capacity. for example, collaboration between the university and the provincial government was essential to allow the project funds to flow, while fundza took the lead on delivering the project, and partners from the university of bristol drove the subsequent processes of reflection and writing. this slowbaked process of analysis and collective meaningmaking led us to four themes which spoke to young people’s experience of the early stages of the covid19 pandemic in south africa, namely shock, loss, survival and activism. we selected two visual and two verbal entries which best illustrated each theme. we decided to choose a visual and a verbal entry for each theme in order to showcase the diversity of expression emerging from the entries received. in the transition from the analysis of entries for the purposes of the competition to analysing entries for the purposes of research, consideration regarding ethics and permission became relevant. to honour the agency of the young people represented in this article, we approached those whose entries we hoped to include and asked for permission to showcase their work and to find out how they wanted to be represented in the article – whether they preferred to appear anonymously, or for us to use their name or a pseudonym. the submissions and identities in the following section, where we discuss our findings, were included with the informed consent of the young people they belonged to, or in instances where the young people were under the age of 16 (the legal age for consent in south africa), the consent of their parents or guardians. mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 polkinghorne (2007) suggests that ‘good’ qualitative research should aim ‘to reduce the distance between the meanings as experienced by participants and the meanings as interpreted in the findings’. this is as much about ensuring the validity of the data as it is about practising ethical research (lunn 2014; twyman, morrison & sporton 1999; van nes et al. 2010; wasserfall 1993). to honour this principle, the images and text included in the subsequent section appear as we received them with no alterations made to wording, spelling or punctuation. in the one instance where the entry is in afrikaans, we include the text in its source language and offer a translation in english with the permission of the author. findings using illustrative submissions to the #slam4urlife competition, this section presents empirical evidence of young people’s localised and contextualised creative responses to the initial wave of the covid19 pandemic in south africa, including the material and psychosocial impacts of the lockdown on young people in the country, many of whom were already living in contexts of precarity and constraint. the findings document young people’s experiences of shock, loss, survival and activism during the early stages of the pandemic in south africa. while the narratives of shock and loss speak to the psychological and emotional impacts of the pandemic on young people in south africa, the narrative of survival speaks to the pandemic’s material impact, and the narrative of activism concerns youth agency in response to the mental and material impacts of the pandemic. shock figure 1. ‘when someone sneezes’ by kwandile twala mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 were you prepared? by steven fortuin (translated from the original version in afrikaans below) let’s see where the virus started a small town in china and that’s that where you can cook up and swallow animals a dog or a cat tastes supposedly like a biscuit so wait let me set the pace  the facts are out china was the best ever dammit wait listen i’ll say it straight now everyone is in a mask because of a bat and me? i would have never believed it the epidemic has long been predicted we were too worried about facebook and mxit and now you have to go for test when you’re sick they say you must relax and … while you wait over the next plan the virus mutates like an xman what if ramaphosa extends the lockdown? what then? what? then what will you do? protest with bombs in the street? how many are dead in the cape? how many? my only question is were you prepared? we don’t have enough, if you don’t feel it then were you prepared? we will be in the house, but give us our wages were you prepared? the lockdown is here was jy bereid? by steven fortuin kom ons kyk waar die virus begin het ‘n klein dorpie in china en dis dit  waar jy diere kan op kook en insluk  ‘n hond of ‘n kat proe kamma like a biscuit  so wait let me set the pace  die fekts is uit  china was die beste ooit  dammit wait  luister ek sê dit straight  mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 nou’s almal in ‘n mask deur ‘n vlerremuis  en ek?  ek sal dit nooit gebelieve het  die epidemic was lank al predicted  ons was te worried oor facebook en mxit  en nou moet jy gan vir ‘n toets as jy siek is  hulle se jy moet releks en…  terwyl jy wag oor die next plan  die virus mutate soos ‘n xman  wat as ramaphosa die lockdown extend?  wat dan?  wat?  dan wat gan jy maak?  protest met bombs in die straat?  hoeveel is al dood in die kaap?  hoeveel?  my enigste vraag is...  was jy bereid?  ons het nie genoeg nie as jy dit nie voel nie  was jy bereid?  ons sal innie huis is ma oppel die wages  was jy bereid?  die lockdown is hier  nou soek jy ‘n bier  was jy bereid?  several studies report the psychological impacts of the covid19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions on young people: álvareziglesias, garman & lund 2021; bauer et al. 2021; coetzee et al. 2021; gallagher et al. 2020; gittings et al. 2021; haffejee & levine 2020; mudiriza & de lannoy 2020; padmanabhanunni & pretorius 2021; saud, mashud & ida 2020; spaull & van der berg 2020; weinstock et al. 2021. these studies tend to focus on anxiety and depression as the primary psychological impacts of the covid19 pandemic, paying less attention to shock as a basic response to the pandemic. shock, and what it encapsulates with regard to feelings of surprise and (in some cases) upset and fear, emerged as a salient theme in the creative entries submitted by young people to the #slam4urlife competition. steven fortuin’s song, ‘was jy bereid?’ (were you prepared?), translated above from afrikaans to english speaks to young people’s feelings of shock, disbelief and being caught offguard by the arrival of the pandemic, as well as the changes it wreaked on people’s lives, from maskwearing to testing, lockdowns and alcohol bans. kwandile twala’s drawing (figure 1) invokes the theme of shock by showing how something previously considered relatively benign (a sneeze) suddenly sends people running in the context of covid19. likening a sneeze to the eruption of a volcano, kwandile’s drawing describes the fear people felt in south africa during the early stages of the pandemic, both of the virus itself and of one another as potential carriers of the virus. both steven’s and kwandile’s entries speak to the narrative of shock (including surprise and fear), which was evident not only in their pieces but also many others. for example, the coronavirus was depicted as a villain, monster or grim reaper personifying death (see, for example, figure 3), or bemoaned as an ‘invisible enemy’ or ‘unwelcome visitor’ which arrived suddenly and disrupted people’s lives, as described in a few lines by orphoneal shai in their poem ‘visitor’. boarded a plane and decided to visit our shore.  but your presence brought sickness and death to our door.  mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 face masks, sanitisers, and an occasional soldier.  can’t wait for all this madness to be over. disruption was often framed in a language of loss, when describing what the virus, pandemic and ensuing lockdowns took away from young people and their communities in the form of opportunities, as well as everyday pleasures such as socialising or hugging. the emerging theme of loss is explored below. loss figure 2. ‘untitled’ by lungile manyati what i miss (being in lockdown)  by yavari leonie chirpy voices, loudly music banging  shoulder striking, peaceful hugging  white teeth showing, soft kisses blowing  visits there, having fun here until sun shining  i miss sunday morning praises  club vibing and beach tribing  night sky eyeing and braaistand fryings  going freely for a gossip and sharing a mutual problem not worrying if i might spit  touching, fitting, and testing at the shop  mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 without it even being bought  i want to go where i want, when i want and how i want  travel around, going on rides above the grounds  i want kfc and restaurant glee’s  get chased around trees  and being held for a little short internity i miss game nights with my family  and getting showed off by my partner proudly  i miss these small things:  picking my nose  kicking my partner for snoring  the aunty selling on the side walk, stopping for a side talk  i miss the reality shows  and crave dancing in the snow  weird kisses being blow  by strangers i don’t know  i miss walking barefoot to spar  or can hardly walk leaving the bar  i miss not feeling that everything i touch might die  that i don’t have to be alone with my thoughts  but in the end there are some things happening in isolation that cannot happen in a crowd  in their working paper for the overseas development institute, titled ‘advancing youthcentred digital ecosystems in africa in a postcovid19 world’, pinet, sanyu and youn (2021, p. 10) explain that ‘social distancing measures […] disrupted existing social practices and considerably altered the social fabric of african youths’ communities.’ yavari leonie’s poem above contextualises this disruption to social practices in the language of what is missed, in other words – a language of loss. this loss of social practices is added to the loss of people imposed upon by the pandemic and invoked in lungile manyati’s chilling drawing (figure 2) of two children sitting alongside – and holding – the skulls of unknown people, leaving the viewer to wonder who they belonged to and who was lost. several studies describe the causal relationship between disruptive events such as the covid19 pandemic and high rates of anxiety and depression amongst all groups, including young people (spaull & van der berg 2020; álvareziglesias, garman & lund 2021; pinet, sanyu & youn 2021; brooks, webster, smith, woodland, wessely, greenberg & rubin 2020; mudiriza & de lannoy 2020). for example, spaull & van der berg (2020, p. 9) explain that ‘largescale disasters, such as terrorist attacks, mass shootings or natural disasters are almost always accompanied by increases in depression [and] posttraumatic stress disorder’, predicting that ‘following the pandemic there will be increases in anxiety and depression’, among other mental and behavioural impacts. in a review of 3166 articles, brooks et al. (2020) explain why quarantine measures, in particular, can have negative psychological effects on people’s mental health, including depression, posttraumatic stress, anger and emotional exhaustion. it is perhaps still too early to tell what the psychological impact of the pandemic on young people will be. nevertheless, in highlighting experiences of shock and loss, the creative entries submitted by young people to the #slam4urlife competition provide some early insights into the nature of the psychological burden of covid19 on young people, directly from the perspective of the young people. loss was a theme which emerged in many submissions received by #slam4urlife and it highlights young people’s processes of shared grieving for the people, but also the opportunities taken away by the pandemic. for example, in his poem, ‘dear covid19’ (see excerpt below), freddy jay nyezi describes the loss of lesson time due to the disruption mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 caused by the pandemic, and explains how covid19 robbed them of the ceremony which would have marked their graduation from high school to university: today, i collected my degree like it was a certified copy, you stole my graduation ceremony from me. i’m  in matric and  i’ll  be the  first in  the  family to go to university,  but  i’ve  lost  lesson  time and i don’t even know if i’ll get to write my finals, how will i make it to my dreams? the excerpt from freddy’s poem provides deeper insight into the observation by others, including pinet, sanyu & youn (2021), of constrained access to education as a detrimental impact of the pandemic on young people by detailing just what that loss means to them in terms of opportunities and aspirations, as well as security and sanctuary. what freddy’s expression of loss in relation to education and opportunity shows, along with the other examples of shock and loss described in this article, is that the emotional and psychological impacts of the pandemic are related to its material impacts. in the section that follows we discuss how young people grappled with the material impacts of covid19 in south africa through a narrative of survival. survival figure 3. ‘untitled’ by nketsi phamotse mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202213 we did not choose  by umnikazi wempilo  we did not choose to quarantine in these overpopulated informal settlements after testing positive  for covid 19. we had no business in the first place to be at work without any personal protective  equipment but we had no choice because we couldn’t afford no work no pay.  we did not choose to quarantine in these shacks where social distancing is as impossible like the  city of cape town respecting the right to human dignity of the residents of these overly populated  informal settlements.  we did not choose to quarantine in a community where the water supply is as unpredictable as the  consistent electricity supply prior to the lockdown so our situation renders regularly washing our  hands null and void.  the face of poverty and hunger did not choose to be accused by her community of contracting covid  19 at some funeral she attended in port elizabeth which has led to her being ostracized and her  entire household stigmatized.  gittings et al. (2021, p. 958) point out that, in south africa, as in other african countries, the covid19 pandemic occurred ‘against the backdrop of already full, complex, and often precarious lives’. the majority of people living in cities in south africa are highly vulnerable. they live in overcrowded conditions in informal settlements without adequate access to formal housing, water, sanitation or electricity, surviving from week to week (and in some instances day to day) off the minimum wages for casual unskilled labour and/or government grants (govender et al. 2020, p. 6). unemployment rates in south african cities are high, and many households already making do with low wages had their income disrupted by south africa’s lockdown measures. findings from the national income dynamics study – coronavirus rapid mobile survey june (spaull et al. 2021) found that almost three million people in south africa lost their jobs during the most intensive lockdown period, during which the #slam4urlife competition ran. moreover, during this time the national school nutrition program was halted and one in seven children reported that they had gone hungry in the week before they were interviewed (haffejee & levine 2020). acknowledging these challenges, the south african government introduced a number of temporary social and economic relief measures, including food packages, a covid19 social relief distress grant of r350 (£16/$20) per month and increases to existing social welfare grants, such as the basic child support grant, which was increased by an additional r440 per month (£20/$26) (haffejee & levine 2020). however, these measures were largely insufficient and failed to protect the majority of south africans from worsening social and economic conditions (haffejee & levine 2020). this is the context within which young people were responding to the covid19 pandemic via #slam4urlife’s platforms. for many young people in south africa, where onethird of people aged 15 to 24 (approximately 3.3 million) are not in employment, education or training (statssa 2021), the impact of the covid19 pandemic on everyday life was immense. speaking to the material impact of covid19 on south africa (personified as a grim reaper wielding a scythe in its representation of death), nketsi’s drawing (figure 3) illustrates the coupled consequences of covid19 for people’s survival and wellbeing through the impacts of sickness, retrenchment, unemployment, debt, insecurity, poverty, mental health, stress, anxiety and hopelessness. umnikazi’s poem, ‘we did not choose’, focuses in on the impact of covid19 on specific communities and describes the experience of urban youth living in ‘overpopulated informal settlements’ or ‘shacks where social distancing is impossible’, where ‘the water supply is as unpredictable as the  [in]consistent electricity supply prior to the lockdown’ and where preventative hygiene measures are not easy to implement. mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202214 submissions received by other entrants similarly spoke of food parcels being misdirected due to corruption and nepotism, hunger, unemployment and poverty. nketsi’s and umnikazi’s submissions illustrate how, through the #slam4urlife competition, young people in south africa demonstrated an awareness of the impact of the pandemic not only on themselves, but also on their families and communities, while also giving voice to wider societal challenges facing many people in south africa as a result of the pandemic. activism figure 4. ‘covid19’ by dineo dseko mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202215 we will sing glory by fistos fifi dapoet nation is in agony. with ease ace the query. we will conquer these worry. soon the virus will say sorry. doctors and nurses will sing glory. nation shall celebrate their glory. behind the curtains we hide the hopeless. be careful, the streets are lifeless. isn’t it obvious? the virus is poisonous. booze banned, sober we are. place your bet right. i say police and soldiers defend us right. health workers works over night. wear the mask, support our team right. wash your hands, isn’t that right? stadiums are empty. the grass is greener. isn’t that a victory? virus became the best player but we will get tamed and virus will become lame. learners will polish their shoes and shine the future. markets will reopen and rise the economy. president will smile and enter the parliament. after isolation, we’ll gather. after social distancing, we’ll remain united. with hands sanitized, we’ll see sunny days. lockdown will be a hero for it saved lives, virus will be mad but we will be merry. despite the evident challenges associated with the emotional and material impacts of the covid19 pandemic on young people in south africa, findings also affirm what gittings et al. (2021, p. 958) describe as the ‘creativity, resilience and agency of south african adolescents’. one of the most striking findings that studies into young people’s responses to covid19 report relate to displays of public health activism by young people, especially online (see, for example, mohamad 2020; pinet, sanyu & youn 2021). similarly, activism emerged as a theme in the creative entries submitted by young people in south africa to the #slam4urlife competition. like dineo dseko’s collage (figure 4) of different aspects of covid19 hygiene, including handwashing, masks, hand sanitiser and disinfecting surfaces, many of the submissions received by #slam4urlife evidenced familiarity with the south african government’s public health response to the pandemic. they also evidenced an eagerness to motivate others to do their bit to reduce transmission of the virus by stressing the unselfish acts of medical health professionals in looking after the public (‘health workers works over night’ fistos fifi dapoet explains in their poem ‘we will sing glory’), depicting and describing emergency workers as superheroes, and calling for people to wash their hands and socially mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202216 distance, or as fistos fifi dapoet put it ‘wear the mask, support our team right. wash your hands, isn’t that right? (gittings et al. 2021, p. 958). through the narrative of activism, as well as those of shock, loss and survival, young people’s engagement with the covid19 pandemic in the #slam4urlife competition went beyond content sharing to ‘transmitting and recreating a discourse’ (mohamad 2020, p. 354), which contextualised the psychological and material realities of the pandemic for themselves and their communities. in the final section of this article, we discuss how this practice of civic engagement was enabled by the #slam4urlife competition through the principles of encouragement, legitimacy and amplification, allowing it to constitute a digital public space for youth expression. discussion representing a research and writing collaboration between youth development workers and academics from the western cape provincial department of cultural affairs and sport, fundza literacy trust and the university of bristol, this article provides reflections on our experience of launching, running and funding #slam4urlife across three related questions: ‘how did young people respond to the covid19 pandemic in south african cities?’; ‘to what extent might artsbased social media competitions such as #slam4urlife encourage and amplify youth voice by creating digital public spaces in which young people can practice civic engagement in contexts where this cannot be done in physical public spaces?’; and ‘what can be learnt about the importance of durable institutions and partnerships with community and government organisations in enabling engaged research?’ young people’s interpretations of the theme ‘living in a world with covid19’ communicated through their entries to #slam4urlife evidenced four responses to the pandemic in south africa: shock, loss, survival and activism. these responses spoke to both the material and psychological impacts of the pandemic on young people in the country. that these responses emerged in the digital space created by #slam4urlife when they appeared absent from traditional physical spaces of youth gathering suggested to us that the competition somehow encouraged, legitimised and amplified youth engagement with the pandemic by creating a digital space in which young people could comment on the challenges faced by south africa as a result of covid19 from their perspectives and those of the people around them. for example, after being featured on the #slam4urlife social pages, one participant commented ‘this motivates us as upcoming artist, to keep on doing what we are currently doing and may god bless you guys for recognizing my talent’. we suggest that the nature of the discursive space created by #slam4urlife enabled a degree of vulnerability and outspokenness that we have not witnessed from young people in physical spaces in cities and towns to the same extent. by exchanging knowledge about transmission prevention through a demonstration of public health activism and giving voice to their communities’ experiences of shock, loss and survival, young people displayed not only a willingness to speak about their own experiences, but also to speak on behalf of friends, parents, families and neighbours, and in doing so acted as spokespeople of the everyday realities of the pandemic in south africa. we identified three qualities which enabled #slam4urlife to provide a space for youth civic engagement: encouragement, legitimacy and amplification. #slam4urlife encouraged young people to share their creative responses to the pandemic by coupling a clear directive – ‘focus, in an original and creative way, on some impact of the pandemic on our lives’ (team fundza 2020) – with the possibility of rewards (prizes) and pathways for participation through social media which were easy for young people to access. young people were already engaging with the pandemic online before the launch of the competition, but #slam4urlife offered a degree of legitimacy to the youth voice on the pandemic by creating a platform on which young people’s content could be showcased to an audience comprising other young people, as well as respected public figures who considered each entry. mazetti, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202217 the social network surrounding #slam4urlife, alongside practices of liking, commenting on, tagging and sharing, contributed to the final defining feature of #slam4urlife as a digital public space of engagement – namely amplification, the ability to be seen and heard by a larger audience as a result of the infrastructure of social media which enabled access to large numbers of contacts (bosch 2017, p. 224). for example, the most popular video submission has to date attracted 3086 views on instagram. posts on #slam4urlife’s social media pages garnered likes, views and comments in the form of messages of congratulations, support or empathy like ‘i love it man’ or ‘better days are due soon, you gonna be shining, walking into your sunny days’, as well as in the form of emoticons including hearts, trophies, hands raised in a gesture of praise and flames. finally, in response to the question ‘what can be learnt about the importance of durable institutions and partnerships with community and government organisations in enabling engaged research?’ we illustrated how the durability of three institutions (a university, a government department and an ngo), together with the partnerships and interpersonal relationships which connected these institutions, provided the necessary infrastructure, fiscal and administrative support, and relations of trust that enabled us to collaborate first and foremost on delivering a youthbased community project and later to reflect on the lessons learnt through the experiences, which are documented in this research article. conclusion drawing on knowledge bases and collaborations in and beyond the academy, this article offered preliminary findings on the localised and contextualised responses of young people in south africa to the initial wave of the covid19 pandemic in the country, and discussed shock, loss, survival and activism as four emergent themes cutting across youth responses to the pandemic. the article also argued that expression of these narratives was enabled through the #slam4urlife competition, which encouraged, legitimised and amplified engagement by young people in south africa with the realities of the pandemic, and in doing so constituted a kind of digital public space for civic engagement at a time when physical equivalents were not easily accessible owing to the restrictions placed on physical gathering due to covid19. finally, the article illustrated how reconfiguration of public space in neighbourhoods, towns and cities due to the covid19 pandemic opened up new avenues for research into the urban geographies of young people and the geographies of cities beyond physical spaces. references adler, r & goggin, j 2005, ‘what do we mean by “civic 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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.1999.tb00098.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0168-y https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00990072 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00990072 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.638940 https://www.gov.za/ss/node/797765 ijcre_8606_malone[14].pdf research article !peer"reviewed# re-imagining the research article: social-semiotic signposts and the potential for radical co-presence in the scholarly literature margaret malone uts business school, university of technology sydney, australia corresponding author: margaret malone, margaret.malone@uts.edu.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8606 article history: received 04/03/2023; revised 25/05/2023; accepted 13/06/2023; published$06/2023 abstract as a prestigious form of writing, the empirical research article is vital for communication, assessment and legitimisation of community-based research and practice. yet, the research article is powerful partly because it draws upon social-semiotic conventions for the proper communication of new knowledge and practice, which are deeply and thoroughly embedded within institutions of higher education ‘dominated by technical rationality’, as donald schön (1995, p. 31) stressed nearly 30 years ago. this inherent tension is an important, but under scrutinised and underutilised, site of engagement for community-based research. this article sheds light on what genre conventions are, why they are important, and how they might be used and adapted to better support the collaborative, reciprocal and justice-focused change goals of community-based research and practice. using genre analysis and social semiotics, i undertake empirical analysis of co-authored peer reviewed research articles to reveal authors’ innovative rhetorical strategies. by uncovering the emerging shared patterns – what i call here the symbolic ‘signposts’ for communicating participatory research – i hope to strengthen them collectively. building on these embryonic efforts, and informed by santos’s (2018) concept of an ‘ecology of knowledges’, i propose some alternative signposts for reciprocal and non-hierarchical recognition. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to$copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: malone, m. 2023. re-imagining the research article: social-semiotic signposts and the potential for radical co-presence in the scholarly literature. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8606 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 mailto:margaret.malone@uts.edu.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8606 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8606 http://ijcre these social-semiotic guidelines seek to ensure that diverse ways of knowing and being are not merely accommodated within our texts, but are radically co-present. keywords participation; peer-reviewed empirical research article; genre analysis; ecology of knowledges; social semiotics introduction !e empirical research article is a form of genre writing. indeed, genre analyst john swales (2004, p. 217) has described it as ‘this prestigious genre, with its millions of exemplars a year’. within the englishlanguage academic publication of both natural and social sciences, where much of the dissemination of community-based research occurs, to write a research article is to broadly follow well-established and familiar conventions of form. dominant, top-level conventions in"uence features such as the order, naming and combination of speci#c sections, the use of references to the literature, and the inclusion of tables and graphs in particular sections. !ese genre conventions are consistently present in articles across these disciplines (lin & evans 2012). most journal editors, reviewers and readers will look for and expect to see these ‘conventionalised associations of conventions’, as atkinson (1999, p. 8, italics in the original) describes them. undoubtedly, these semiotic conventions of the research article are profoundly socially signi#cant. yet, therein lies the di$culty. as a prestigious social-semiotic resource, the peer-reviewed empirical research article is vital to the critical and communal documentation, assessment and legitimisation of community-based research and practice. at the same time, this resource is powerful, at least partly because it draws upon social-semiotic conventions for the proper communication of new knowledge and practice which are deeply and thoroughly embedded within institutions of higher education ‘dominated by technical rationality’, as donald schön (1995, p. 31) stressed nearly 30 years ago. !ere is an inherent tension here for community-based research and practice which, conversely, has been described as ‘research that seeks both to challenge and provide an alternative to externally led and expert-driven research’ ( janzen & ochocka 2020, p. 5). !is is an issue of material concern, for it remains the case that too often in journals, but also in scholarly books (and, to a lesser degree, conferences), there is a diminution and erasure of the diverse ways of knowing and being that contribute so substantively and consistently to the research itself. !is marginalisation a%ects community-based partners certainly, but also university-based students and sta% (koekkoek et al. 2021; sandmann 2019; santos 2014). !is article is critically and practically focused on this important, yet under-scrutinised and underutilised, site of engagement. while there is an abundance of knowledge and analysis of genre within its associated #elds of linguistics, rhetoric, critical discourse, etc, to my knowledge discourse analysis has been only infrequently considered by community-based researchers (o’meara & niehaus 2009; o’meara et al. 2011). !is article seeks to shed light on what genre conventions are, why they are important, and how they might be used and adapted to better support the collaborative, reciprocal and justice-focused change goals of community-based research and practice. i argue that without critical awareness of these powerful conventions of form, authors risk undermining their work in the very act of sharing it with external audiences. moreover, there are signi#cant bene#ts to be gained from not only understanding genre theoretically, but also discovering empirically how co-authors in the #eld currently use these semiotic conventions. to do so, i draw on research undertaken for my recently completed phd thesis as well as new analysis i have conducted for this article. i outline some of the major ways in which published co-authors are using, modifying, adapting or rejecting the standard form of the research article in order to respond to their diverse community-based purposes, contexts and methodologies. by uncovering the emerging malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 shared patterns across individual e%orts – what i call here the ‘signposts’ of authentic community-based communication – i hope to strengthen them collectively. !e purpose of this research article is thus twofold: one, to analyse how community-university co-authors of empirical research articles currently use and modify some key genre conventions; and two, building o% those emergent yet institutionally fragile innovations, to propose some alternative social-semiotic signposts for critical, collaborative and change-oriented scholarly communication and dissemination. in fact, this discussion comes with a proposal: that there is ample room – indeed, need – for peer-reviewed, co-authored empirical research articles that are deliberately experimental, innovative and imaginative in their form and intent. !e key question here is: what might a peer-reviewed, co-authored empirical research article look like – what would be its social and semiotic conventions – if we were to seek not just accommodation but radical co-presence? to frame this discussion, both of what is and what could be, i begin by brie"y introducing social semiotics as a theoretical and analytical approach to understanding meaning-making in our texts. next, i outline the exemplary work of boaventura de sousa santos (2018). his proposal of an ‘ecology of knowledges’ imagines diverse ways of knowing and being engaged in dialogue and dissent, while resisting the reimposition of hierarchy or false unanimity. my empirical analysis of current practice follows, #nishing with a more exploratory consideration of the ways in which an ecology of knowledges might be made material on the page, proposed as a wager on a better world for all. a note on the author !is article is o%ered as a contribution to the critical conversations on knowledge democracy and participation in the scholarly literature that are undoubtedly underway globally. technological innovations in online publication have a vitally important role to play in increasing participation, such as with the creation and sharing of open-source software and the development of open access and self-archiving institutional repositories (abbott & ti%en 2019; piwowar et al. 2018). !is potential is clearly greater when harnessed to social purpose. i was interested, for example, in a recent editorial by !e american historical review. in it, the editor argues that if the journal is to ‘rectify decades of exclusionary practice [it] requires more than a well-intentioned commitment to diversity”, which consists primarily of adding extra "avours to the stew’ (future issues 2018, p. xiv). !e journal’s response, as detailed in the editorial of the following year, was to adopt an ‘ecumenical approach to form’ (from the editor’s desk 2019, p. xviii). !e editor was able to point to new sections featuring contributions in a range of formats: essays, interviews and podcasts, as well as reviews of non-traditional historical material such as #lms, graphic histories, public history sites and historical fiction. i am the �2��/.#0� editor of gateways: international journal of community research and engagement65�(�5 �"�5-./��(.5�.5���5�/-#(�--5��"))&85in a recent editorial, i somewhat similarly traced the journal’s evolving use of the metaphor of the ‘global research table’ from its potential to argue for the legitimacy of non-disciplinary-based experts having a seat at that table to an emerging appreciation of the dangers inherent in this same metaphor, of an ‘already-made destination, a place at which community-based research arrives’ (malone 2022, p. 4). i reflected that this rhetorical framework risked perpetuating the very thing the journal sought to challenge: an uncritical acceptance of a hierarchy of what constituted valid knowledge, the criteria by which it is recognised, and the purposes for which it is shared. that is, of an institutionally ordered space at which diverse ‘others’ are accommodated and integrated, but rarely acknowledged as being present (visvanathan 2005). this article is, in part, a response to that reflection: a critical examination of the research article, whose powerful conventions are resources we can use to modify, reject and transform these hegemonic metaphors. this discussion draws primarily on my phd thesis and is intended for a wide audience. but unquestionably, it is reflexive of my editorial work. as an editor of long-standing, steeped in the genre conventions of research writing and the processes of academic publication, i very much include myself in this exhortation to greater critical and action-oriented awareness. malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 multimodal social semiotics and genre: a brief overview in order to make any claim about the social salience of signs – be they speech, text, image, art, dance – there must be some sort of theoretical framework accounting for the relationship between signs and the world. in this, my work is deeply informed by social semiotics and critical discourse analysis. as social semioticians kress & van leeuwen (2021, p. xiii) argue, ‘meanings are made in social action and interaction, using existing, socially made, semiotic resources that change ceaselessly in their use’. further, this motivated sign-making responds to and is shaped by ‘environments of communication’ which are marked by di%erences in power (fairclough 1993; kress 2011, p. 209, italics in the original). for discourse analysts and social semioticians, among others, the semiotic resources authors utilise in texts such as the research article are powerful precisely because they in"uence ‘the distribution of social goods’, such as authority, relevance, credibility, legitimacy (gee 2014, p. 10). !rough systematic analysis we can gain clear insights into how texts do this: how they help shape access to and exclusion from these social goods. genre thus provides an important site for critical analysis of language-use-in-the-world. in her early in"uential article, miller (1984, p. 151) argues for an understanding of ‘genre as social action’; an evolving communal response to the challenge of communicating in recurring social situations. subsequent research further supports an understanding of genre as socially and historically situated; generative and underspeci#ed; and involving both competence and performance (devitt 2015; swales 1990; tardy & swales 2014). atkinson (1999, p. 8) writes that genres ‘provide answers to the fundamental human question, “what is going on here?”’. his observation once again points to the social signi#cance of semiotic conventions. genre is deeply and dynamically interconnected with what is at stake in society at large, and perhaps this is nowhere more so than the research article. when wallerstein and duran (2008) argued that community-based participatory research is an intentionally critical approach that seeks to engage with questions of knowledge, power, relationships and agency in order to e%ect positive social change, they may well have had in mind the empirical research article as a key site for that engagement. in this article, i focus primarily on two key conventions of the research article: the introduction and the organisation. swales (1990) #rst revealed how the introduction in natural and social science articles normally follows a three-step move: establish the research territory; establish the gap; occupy the gap. !e organisation of articles too follows a pattern broadly emerging from western experimental science, typically introduction-method-results-discussion (imrd), often with a literature review before the methods section. social semiotician !eo van leeuwen (2005, p. 126) writes that these overarching genre conventions form the ‘structure of the telling of the story’. for charles bazerman, another, related way to think about these ‘top level’ structures is metaphorically: these conventions are the signposts of our ‘symbolic landscapes’ (bazerman 1997, p. 19). we may not use these dominant conventions of the empirical research article naively or rigidly, but as signposts or structures to frame ‘new knowledge’, their use cannot be considered ‘an apolitical practice of documentation’ (rhodes 2019, p. 26). from commodity-based to community-based research a recent report by unesco (2022, p. 44) argues that, if institutions of higher education are to move on from ‘bulldozer notions of modernity and ideas of saving the world’, it becomes necessary to consider ‘what knowledge and knowing are about in the #rst place’. !e report argues that ‘mainstream’ ideas of knowledge, even when ‘recognised as taking di%erent forms’, can often remain ‘notionally static and measurable – as a “resource”, or “asset”, or form of “capital”’ to be integrated ‘in supposedly additive ways’ (unesco 2022, p. 46). !e work of sociologist boaventura de sousa santos o%ers a rich conceptual and methodological alternative framework. across his comprehensive and decades-long e%orts, santos (2018, p. 276) has argued that there can be ‘no global social justice without global cognitive justice’. malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 central to santos’s thinking is his analysis of the ‘abyssal’ nature of modern western thought, in particular science and law, which has rendered other ways of knowing and being invisible, erased, nonexistent and thus ‘justifying the current state of a%airs as the only possible one’ (santos 2018, p. ix). yet santos’s project is not concerned with establishing ‘one more line of criticism’ and even less with replacing one hegemonic world view with another, even if now ‘subaltern’ (santos 2014, p. viii). instead, he articulates an expansive understanding of the epistemologies of the south, using the metaphor of ecology as the basis for a thoroughgoing rejection of what he calls the ‘#ve monocultures that have characterized modern eurocentric knowledge: valid knowledge, linear time, social classi#cation, the superiority of the universal and the global, and productivity’ (santos 2018, pp. 25–26). instead, he proposes a set of ecologies: ‘of knowledges; of temporalities; of recognition; of trans-scale; and of productivities’ (santos 2014, pp. 179– 180). of these #ve, the ‘ecology of knowledges’ is perhaps most relevant for my focus on the scholarly communication of community-based research. santos de#nes it as an experiential, pluralistic and pragmatic dialogue that involves scienti#c and ‘artisanal’ knowledges. !ese latter are described as ‘practical, empirical, popular knowledges, vernacular knowledges that are very diverse but have one feature in common: they were not produced separately, as knowledge-practices separated from other social practices’ (santos 2018, p. 43). !e ecology of knowledges urges the following: to take seriously other knowledge-practices without forgetting one’s own; to acknowledge that all knowledges are incomplete, all ignorances partial; and to engage with diverse others in reciprocal and non-hierarchical dialogue and dissent. only thus can we proceed together. far from being excluded, modern western science is a crucial presence in this intercultural dialogue, its contributions vital once understood as being neither disinterested nor universal. in essence, what santos is proposing is an engagement, a wager on the possibility of a better world. in relation to the research article, santos’s analysis of the abyssal nature of western thought utterly rejects the metaphor of the research territory as some sort of stable, uncomplicated landscape, able to be called fully into existence through reference to the literature and subjected to ‘incremental gap spotting’ and gap-#lling by new research (alvesson & sandberg 2013, p. 129). as grosfoguel (2013, p. 76) writes, the notion of the research territory, so often the starting point for the research article, is based on the eurocentric ‘myth’ of knowledge production as ‘monological, unsituated and asocial’. equally, the epistemologies of the south call into question the standard imrd (introduction-method-results-discussion) organisation as being fundamentally partial and incomplete. gieryn (1983, p. 781) writes that ‘the special ability of modern science to extend “certi#ed” knowledge [is] a result, in part, of the institutionalisation of distinctive social norms (communalism, universalism, disinterestedness and organised skepticism)’. !e imrd organisation, even if understood as idealised, is nevertheless a powerful semiotic a$rmation of those social norms. here, in countless articles, the production of new knowledge is rendered as ordered, linear, unidirectional, compartmentalised. while not used uniformly or equally across the disciplines, the imrd organisation predominates in the natural and social sciences (lin & evans 2012). in sharp contrast, santos’s proposal for an ecology of knowledges asserts that research occurs in and with sociohistorical terrains that are neither even nor unchanging nor inhabited by those who cannot think credibly and critically for themselves. in essence, this is the principle of non-hierarchical reciprocity, of radical recognition, perhaps the most profound contribution o%ered by the long-standing, diverse and growing movement for change that i understand community-based research to be a part of. extending the metaphor of the wager to the research article, its conventions must (because they already do) involve those with most at stake. !e wager calls for social-semiotic conventions that will a%ord ‘the constitutional right of di%erent systems of knowledge to exist as part of dialogue and debate’ (visvanathan 2005, p. 92). australian ethnographer and linguist stephen muecke (2017, p. 1, italics in the original) puts it perfectly when he writes that the task is to #nd a way to articulate plurality ‘without the one cancelling the other out, malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 without cheap relativism, and without that old-style scienti#c condescension that has “us” acknowledging “their” beliefs, while we really know’. santos (2009, p. 117) writes that the implications, possibilities and challenges of an ecology of knowledges only arise when ‘the ways of knowing are faced with problems which, on their own, they would never pose’. our scholarly writing is only beginning to grapple with this, but other genres may o%er insights. australian cultural and creative researcher ross gibson o%ers a vivid example of this in his discussion of patyegarang, a production by australia’s first nation bangarra dance !eatre company. he calls it a ‘choreographed rendition of colonialism playing out on stage’ (gibson 2016, p. 79). history, danced. re"ecting on its implications for conventional written historical practices, gibson writes: ‘what if you encountered history that spurred you to mutter: i was just about to sense that! i was just about to get that feeling!’ (gibson 2016, p. 76). in addition to the experimental, he suggests that what is needed are ‘experiential modes of history. modes that put you inside and outside the phenomenon that you are seeking to understand’ (gibson 2016, p. 82, italics in the original). !e history he envisages is one that seeks to communicate not just knowing, but understanding, too: is technical and deeply felt, multiperspectival and cohesive. such a history would pose ‘questions concerned not only with detecting how vital a force might be but also with detecting how one might get a sense in the vitals’ (gibson 2016, p. 83, italics in the original). genre analysis of co-authored research articles to empirically explore the above, this discussion draws on the #ndings of the genre analysis of 15 articles i undertook for my thesis, to which i have newly subjected six recently published articles (numbered 16–21). all were published in gateways: international journal of community research and engagement from 2010 to 2022. authors were from the usa, canada, australia, south africa and new zealand. to be included for analysis, articles had to be community-university co-authored, peer-reviewed and share the empirical results of a locally based community-university research partnership. as a result, many articles were excluded, including sole-authored articles; theoretical articles; evaluations of perceptions and experiences; non-peerreviewed articles (practice-based and snapshot); and articles featuring other types of engagement, such as volunteering and service-type outreach, and international and multijurisdictional partnerships. additionally, a number of articles co-authored by university-based partners only were not referenced this discussion, even though they met all the other criteria (and were included in the thesis). !is select group of articles are thus a partial representation only of the full range of partnerships, undertakings, outcomes, author teams, and critical and practical o%erings present in the published literature of even just this one english-language online journal. however, given my focus on examining the ways in which genre conventions can both enable and impede participation, this fairly strict criteria enabled a sharp focus on the rhetorical impact of that under-represented and under-scrutinized cohort of contributors to the research literature: community-based partners. !ere were no peer-reviewed empirical research articles sole-authored by a community-based partner available for analysis in gateways journal (non-peer-reviewed articles, yes). for each, i conducted careful manual (line-by-line) genre analysis of the above mentioned two key conventions: the three-step move in the introduction (establish the research territory, establish the gap, occupy the gap); and the overall article organisation (imrd). for space reasons, i do not provide detail on genre analysis as method, other than to note my reliance on the seminal work of john swales (1990, 2004) and dwight atkinson (1999), in particular. nor do i include all of the #ndings (for a full discussion, see malone 2023). my intention here is to present the major repeated rhetorical strategies which were used across the author teams despite their di%erences in time and place, focus, content, partnership and methodology. a #nal article, a small ‘snapshot’ published in gateways journal in 2019, is used as the basis malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 for the more speculative discussion on how we might build on these rhetorical moves to achieve a more transformative co-presence in our written scholarly texts, as suggested by an ecology of knowledges. the introduction !e standard procedure for research article introductions, as mentioned, consists of a three-step move: step 1, establishing a research territory; step 2, establishing a gap; step 3, occupying the gap. !is widely used strategy was #rst revealed by swales (1990, 2004) and has been con#rmed by many others over subsequent decades. it is used throughout the science-based disciplines. according to swales, among the many minor variations, there are two obligatory features: references to the literature must be included as part of step 1; and the essential act of step 3 is ‘announcing the present research’ (swales 2004, pp. 230-232). !e major implication of these two obligatory features is to make plain that presenting one’s research in the academic literature is to participate in that literature. it is a conversation principally with the scholarly archive. yet community-based researchers are equally talking with and accountable to other audiences, a socio-cognitive principle which needs to #nd semiotic realisation. my analysis reveals that authors’ engagement with these dominant conventions of the introduction is not simplistic or passive. authors modify the three-step moves in three main ways. in the examples given below, step 1 is in blue, step 2 is in red, step 3 is in black. 1. !e research territory is established from the outset as engaged, already a space of communityuniversity collaboration. as a consequence, gaps found related to the challenges and potential of community-based research. !e speci#c research being shared responded to that identi#ed gap in the collaborative research territory. for example: community-university partnerships (cups) often aim to address societal injustices, but in practice are challenged by the same unequal power relations they seek to confront … in this article, we use a relational view of power to examine both institutional and interpersonal levels of power, which are not separate at all, but rather deeply intertwined. (no. 16) 2. !e research territory is established in a traditional top-down manner, often with extensive reference to the literature, revealing a speci#c community marked by signi#cant need. !e next step identi#es a gap, as is expected, but it is not a gap in the research territory but of the research territory. !at is, the conventional research territory, established through reliance on external, documented expertise, is found to be fundamentally incomplete. to address this, the research response, by necessity, must be collaborative. for example: rural coastal communities in newfoundland and labrador (nl), canada, are often cast as victims in the story of the 1992 "sheries collapse that shook the province’s foundations (ref ). in particular, the great northern peninsula (gnp) is often associated with high rates of population ageing and youth outmigration (refs). however, these narratives overlook the gnp’s many assets, such as natural resources, social cohesion and cultural heritage (refs) … in this article, we explore the potential for communities to use storytelling to challenge top-down narratives of rural sustainability. (no. 20) 3. just under half the author teams dispensed entirely with steps 1 and 2 (establishing the research territory and establishing a gap). !ese authors appeared to consider the conventional research territory a place better avoided; perhaps, a badlands. instead, these articles began immediately with step 3 (announcing the present research) and focused on establishing the authenticity of the partnership. in fact, in every article under analysis, authors spent time doing this, but this group did so in the introduction (the rest generally in a dedicated ‘background/context’ section). !is rhetorical strategy featured ‘markers of credibility’, as i’ve called them (underlined in the example below), often written in the #rst person (malone 2023, p. 124). !ey included myriad details, such as the location, malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 project, authors’ credentials, partnership arrangements and history, community role/s, funding, size, scale, growth, longevity and future plans. in a couple of articles, authors introduced themselves with a paragraph each. !eir inclusion in the introduction points very strongly to the perceived importance of partnership authenticity as the starting place for undertaking research together in uneven and complex historical terrains. for example: !e context for this cenr project starts with the work of the community partner. !e guelph-wellington action committee on sexual assault and domestic violence (the action committee) is chaired by a local violence against women agency and represents 29 organisations from various sectors (including law enforcement, victim services, child welfare, social services, religious community, addictions and mental health, health care and education) within the guelph-wellington community, which provides services and support to women and children who have experienced sexual assault and/or domestic violence. !e action committee has been meeting in di#erent forms for approximately 20 years. it is one of about 48 domestic violence community coordinating committees (also known as dv3cs and violence against women coordinating committees) in ontario, canada, and receives annual funding from the ontario ministry of community and social services. some of this funding has been used to create the position of an action committee coordinator, who supports the work of the committee. !e action committee coordinator and a representative from wellington du#erin guelph public health (one of the 26 agencies mentioned above) represent the community partners in this community-engaged evaluation research and are two of the authors of this article. (no. 10). the organisation overwhelmingly, each article under analysis utilised the basic organisation (imrd), although always with some modi#cations. it was possible to see that di%erent rhetorical patterns aligned with di%erent communicative purposes, shared by authors despite the di%erences of time, place and context. !e patterns to the use of conventions related to top-level features such as the order, combination and size of di%erent sections, subheading variation and the inclusion (or not) of tables, graphs, quotes and references to the literature. steven shapin (2018, p. 12) divided his seminal book on the scienti#c revolution into three chapters that ‘deal sequentially with what was known about the natural world, how that knowledge was secured, and what purposes the knowledge served. what, how, and why’. !ese articles do the same: what, how and why. broadly, those articles i’ve grouped as ‘what’ featured case studies; ‘how’ related to articles with a focus on partnerships, processes and projects; and ‘why’ signalled an explicit focus on critical re"exive methodologies. a brief discussion follows. 1. !e case study !is type was the most recognisable of the articles analysed, often self-identi#ed by authors as a case study. !is group adhered most closely to the standard imrd organisation and clearly articulated a shared primary purpose: the communication of situated, empirical new knowledge. notably, the imrd format was consistently amended through the addition of a ‘background/context’ section immediately preceding the methods and results. !is section often included the methodology and the literature review. !e result – semiotically simple, but socially profound – was the clear assertion on the page of the legitimacy of situated, multiperspectival knowledge, deeply interconnected, rather than simply transitional, across background/ context-method-results. as i wrote in my thesis, these three sections marshalled ‘a mass of contextdependent details, covering social, political, economic, geographic, environmental, historical, methodological, evidential, analytical and technical aspects. in every case, two or more di%erent means of gathering data were used, including focus groups, public meetings, interviews, participatory mapping, art-based workshops, questionnaire surveys and kitchen table discussions’ (malone 2023, p. 141). here, empirical evidence was not extracted from, but inextricably connected to all those, people and place, with a stake in it. malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 2. partnerships, processes and projects !e shared focus of these articles was to theorise, analyse and share lessons regarding the processes, principles, characteristics, challenges and bene#ts of community-based research projects. how collaboration secures knowledge is understood as a research question, with signi#cance for others in di%erent locations, contexts and histories. !e conceptual thread running through these articles is the social basis of knowledge production; its semiotic realisation is through communicating the movement of research as exploratory and explanatory, relational and systematic. !is article’s subheadings are illustrative: (no. 5) introduction !e partners !e building castles together project analysis of the partnership mutuality/reciprocity interdisciplinarity/diversity community integration dynamic interaction asset enhancement conclusion acknowledgements 3. critical re"exive methodology only a very small number of the articles under analysis comprised this last group. !eir explicit focus was on a question critical to community-based research as a whole, yet more often left implicit: does collaborative research address issues of social and cognitive injustice, and if so, how? again, the standard imrd organisation was used, but this time the critique of its limitations found primary expression by challenging the assumed su$ciency of the literature review. here are two examples used in its place: a research program on epistemic injustices and participatory research (no. 15) surfacing knowledge (no. 17) !ese articles also brought the voices of participants into the ‘structure of the telling of the story’, as van leeuwen expressed it. here, with traces of imrd still present, community perspective and expertise became part of the signposting. an extended example: (no. 20) introduction conceptual approach rural sustainability narratives on the great northern peninsula (with quote by community co-author, and map of region) community-engaged research methods (with timeline and table of participants) a deep story of sustainability on the great northern peninsula (with quotes and images) honouring the past while looking to the future malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20239 reducing dependence on external heroes rediscovering local conceptions of wellbeing stories of community renewal french shore interpretive centre by joan simmonds !e old cottage hospital by joan cranston our community place by joan cranston food sovereignty initiative by renee pilgrim concluding thoughts telling a new story about rural sustainability stories as tools for identifying undervalued assets storytelling to reimagine academic-community relationships acknowledgements re-imagining the research article: signposting the radical potential of an ecology of knowledges while the bulk of the articles analysed fell into the above three broad groups, shaped by their purpose, a handful did not, or did not completely. !ese scattered, fragmentary examples of alternative semiotic strategies suggested the potential for something else, or something more. !at is, in addition to ‘what, how, why’, the wager. here, following santos, i #nish with some tentative yet serious musings on alternative social-semiotic signposts to support the articulation of knowledge plurality in our texts without false unanimity or a reliance on hierarchy. !ese proposals are o%ered in the #rst instance to authors. however, ultimately, without a transformation in the institutional space, which includes editors and reviewers, radically di%erent research articles will not often be assessed as legitimate or credible. to anchor this discussion, i draw on this editor’s equivalent of the #sh that got away. a few years ago, gateways journal published a co-authored, non-peer-reviewed ‘snapshot’ article, ‘political economics, collective action and wicked socio-ecological problems: a practice story from the #eld’, by adams et al. (2019). !e article discusses the work of the victorian rabbit action network (vran), #rst established in 2014 in victoria, australia, which developed a unique response to the management of destructive feral european rabbits. at the heart of vran’s work is a ‘systems-based, participatory, democratic approach to strengthening the social systems for tackling problems caused by rabbits’ (reid et al. 2021, p. 352). !eir approach has been recognised internationally, winning a 2019 un public service award in the category of ‘delivering inclusive and equitable services to leave no one behind’. i focus here on the research they undertook at that time (their work has continued to develop, see vran 2022), starting with a simple description, based on their article (adams et al. 2019): !e european rabbit was introduced to australia in the 1850s for hunting. within a decade, the rapidly growing wild rabbit population was raising alarm. today, it threatens over 300 vulnerable native species and costs agribusinesses more than aud$200 million per year. in response to this wicked socio-ecological problem, a publicly funded research project was established to support community-led action in rabbit management. !ose most a"ected by rabbits – public and private land managers, scientists, government o#cers, first nations communities and others – engaged in a participatory planning process. a $rstperson narrative of interview extracts informed a subsequent workshop, which identi$ed their common passions and concerns, the sheer complexity of the problem, the location-speci$c nature of solutions and the critical role of coordination to help ensure long-term change. !ese ideas were further developed using rich malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202310 picture maps and complex systems thinking. !is process led to the creation of vran and a skills-based steering group. !is example stands in for the work of so many others. when the manuscript was #rst submitted, i wondered if it could be worked into a research article, but, after discussions with the lead author, it became clear that the authors were making a point by deliberately not submitting it to the research section. !ey were concerned that to do so would have undermined the very thing they had worked so hard to establish: a small ‘p’ political approach grounded in ‘the experience of people at the frontline of rabbit management, with scienti#c and government expertise regarded as “on tap not on top” (boyte 2016)’, (adams et al. 2019, p. 6). perhaps, instead, it is the journal that could be ‘worked into’ an appropriate place for their work. !e following is an e%ort to harness all the evidence from the articles i analysed, the conceptual framework that inspired me and the theoretical insights i gained from the social and political potential of semiotic conventions. i propose six key social-semiotic principles for radical co-presence in co-authored texts. 1. overall purpose of the research article as wager broadly, co-authors of community-based research submissions seek to authentically and authoritatively present in the text the diversity of ways of knowing and being present in their research partnership, and to do so in ways that do not result in the imposition of hierarchy or false unanimity. at heart, authors are seeking to make material on the page their commitment to reciprocal and horizontal dialogue. diversity is understood not as a variation on a (universal) standard, but as its own wager on the possibility of a better world. 2. speci!c purpose and partnership authenticity author teams seek to articulate a very clear central purpose, or thread, in their submissions. !is may take the form of a research question, or it may relate to an aspect of the partnership, processes, pedagogy or methodology, for example. justi#cation for the validity and signi#cance of this focus can draw on a range of sources, which may include references to the relevant literature as well as the lived experiences and knowhow of research participants. overall, substantive theoretical and practical justi#cation will be provided: what in participants’ diverse sociohistorical contexts does this speci#c research respond to? establishment of partnership authenticity is vital. !is can cover reasons for creation, duration, funding, location, focus, agreements, roles and involvement of partners, including community, faculty, sta%, students and other agencies or organisations. it may also include details of the disciplinary, professional and community-based expertise, institutional and lived: open the black box of expertise. !ese various ‘markers of credibility’ are an important part of establishing the authenticity of the partnership and are understood and valued as such by readers. 3. introducing the research terrain !e conventional research article introduction follows three key moves: establishing the research territory; establishing the gap; occupying the gap. !ese semiotic moves are widely used by authors, with modi#cations. however, authors may seek to displace and decentre, if not replace, the metaphor of the ahistorical and neutral research territory. in uncertain, uneven and complex research terrains, the introduction for a dialogue-based, non-hierarchical and multiperspectival research article could involve the following alternative three-step moves: move 1: establishing complexity by presenting context without unity move 2: establishing the wager by introducing those with most at stake move 3: presenting the problem, that which sets thinking, feeling, knowing and action in motion malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202311 for example: lisa adams has written elsewhere that she started by asking, ‘“how does rabbit management in victoria work?” no one could give me an answer’ (howard et al. 2018, p. 47). following this crucial insight, the original research team purposively sought out stakeholders with diverse interests, experiences, expertise and concerns. as a group, they then developed the following wager: ‘the hypothesis that sustainable strategies are those created by the people most a%ected’ (adams et al. 2019, p. 3). 4. "e structure of the telling of the story !e conventional organisation of a research article is introduction, methods, results, discussion, with variations. !is may or may not be appropriate, or it may be useful for just one strand of the manuscript. as with the introduction’s three-step moves, the organisation of a text (through top level ‘infrastructure’ such as subheadings, the order and the mix of sections) is a resource that can be modi#ed, challenged or replaced. !e importance of these semiotic resources comes from what they signal: they are signi#cant metaphors for the larger discourses that the research seeks to be part of and is shaped by. !us, while the organizational infrastructure can foster internal cohesion, balance, direction and pace, it also reaches out externally to larger ongoing discussions and debates. one way authors can consider the organisation of their manuscript’s content is to think of this overall structure as one of movement. !is is always the case, but not always noticed. !e conventional arrangement of introduction-method-research-discussion is linear, segmented and uni-directional. !e research journey is presented as one from a to b to c. but perhaps it could be one of a and b and c, etc. it is the ‘and’ that can mark this organisational arrangement as an experimental and experiential journey of attachments, so that the point of view changes, challenges and evolves. of primary importance is that this top-level organisational decision-making is participatory and not out of bounds for non-academic experts. for example: !e original snapshot article described how, based on #rst-person narratives and complex systems thinking, the research team developed ‘rich picture maps’ which revealed that ‘there were multiple systems depending on whose perspectives, interests, narratives were being shared or considered’ (adams et al. 2019, p. 5). !ese maps revealed an interconnected problem that was experienced di%erently at local, regional and state levels. !e maps also revealed the depth of local and disciplinary-based expert knowledge, know-how and on-the-ground action underway. here, the three geographic scales could form the overall structure of the telling, with di%erent sections the responsibility of di%erent individuals or groups, narrated in the #rst person, if they wished. 5. voice, practice and empirical material following on from the above, a key, ongoing question for authors should be, ‘whose voice needs to be part of this submission?’ second, what kinds of empirical material needs to be included, and how could that be presented? well-established conventions exist for bringing the world to the text, by documenting matters of fact and stabilising and #xing them in place (such as in tables, numbers, quotes). authors may consider turning this activity on its head: to where, in the research terrain (populated, uncertain, complex), does the text need to travel? consider what needs to be attended to – seen, felt, counted, heard, remembered, drawn, sung – in order that the reader may fully know and understand a problem, and who should participate as knowledgeable guides in this communicative journey of attachments. for example: vran’s wager necessitates the active participation of all those with a stake in the wager. !is includes community groups and individuals, private landowners and public land managers, first nations members caring for country and burial sites at risk from the burrowing habits of rabbits, government agencies, industry and scientists. also participating are the rabbits themselves, described as ‘powerful agents’ (adams et al. 2019, p. 4), plus the 300-odd threatened species of "ora and fauna made more vulnerable by the rabbits’ actions (woolnough et al. 2020, p. 211). !is last group of plants and malone gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202312 animals, with the least powerful presence, is arguably the wagerer with most at stake in the research. what semiotic resources might best represent them? 6. authorship authorship is understood to be an acknowledgement of, and responsibility for, two main things: an essential involvement with the text (which doesn’t necessarily mean with the writing); and accountability as to the wager’s integrity. of greatest consideration is to include all those individuals and/or organisations without whom the manuscript could not have been created. research partnerships should make their own decisions: there is greater variety than many journal guidelines would suggest. for example, the record for the most authors on a single article is 5154 (patience et al. 2019). another, considered response can be seen in a series of articles in which bawaka country, in northeast arnhem land, australia, is accredited as the&‘lead author and an active partner of our research collaboration’ (country et al. 2019). a statement of contributor roles by each signatory and acknowledgements of other contributors are other options (see, for example, project credit (brand et al. 2015). for a discussion of its challenges and limitations, see larivière et al. (2021). conclusion !e focus of this article has been on the empirical research article as a form of genre writing, and the signi#cance of those institutionalised conventions for the communication of community-based research and practice. over the past few decades, the english-language scholarly literature on participatory and action-oriented research has grown rapidly, yet there remains a persistent and troubling lack of substantive contributions by non-academic experts in aligned academic journals. one contributing factor, i argue, is the conventionalised form of the research article itself. !ose familiar, well-established rhetorical strategies that mark out a piece of writing as a research article carry signi#cant social, political, intellectual and institutional weight. !e dominant social-semiotic principles shaping the communication of new, empirical knowledge are often in con"ict with the goals and purposes of community-based research. yet they are not inert or unchanging. as this research into a select group of published articles has shown, co-authors of communitybased research are actively aware of their ability to a$rm, modify, challenge and reject these dominant discourses through their creative use of key genre conventions. further research into other types of articles (theoretical or practice-based, for example) would add to our critical and practical understanding of diverse social-semiotic strategies. !ese authors demonstrate an awareness of what rhetorician charles bazerman (1997, p. 1) wonderfully articulated some time ago: ‘genres are not just forms. genres are forms of life, ways of being. !ey are frames for social action … genres are the familiar places we go to create intelligible communicative action with each other and the guideposts we use to explore the unfamiliar’. i have argued that genre is an important social-semiotic resource for community-based research. it o%ers a relatively untapped potential for exploring where we are and where we 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international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 202316 evaluation of a participatory action project to address opioid misuse: breaking down barriers through partnership processesengaging martinsville partner surveyinterview guide for self-­reflection and evaluation of cbpr partnerships: version, 2017 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 17, no. 1 december 2024 research article (peer reviewed) evaluation of a participatory action project to address opioid misuse: breaking down barriers through partnership processes carlin rafie1,*, emily zimmerman2, dawn reed3, angelina hargrove4 1 department of human nutrition, foods and exercise, virginia polytechnic institute and state university 2 department of epidemiology, school of public health, virginia commonwealth university 3 unc health, north carolina 4 center for public health practice and research, virginia polytechnic institute and state university corresponding author: carlin rafie; crafie@vt.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9202 article history: received 25/06/2024; revised 30/10/2024; accepted 12/11/2024; published 12/2024 abstract community based participatory research and participatory action research are increasingly being used to engage communities in addressing social and health disparities. there is a need to develop broadly applicable evaluation methods that can be used across participatory project environments to identify the processes critical for addressing complex public health issues, as well as the productiveness of community research partnerships. we present a case study of a community participatory project conducted over three years and our evaluation approach. we used the community based participatory research conceptual model as the framework for the evaluation surveys (n=9) and interviews (n=7) with project participants, querying perspectives on the four model domains: community context, partnership processes, intervention and research and outcomes. in addition, we conducted a ripple effects mapping (rem) exercise with ten community members to determine the broader impacts of the project on the community. this mixed-­methods approach permitted us to confirm findings from quantitative surveys with qualitative findings from interviews and the rem. key processes identified as facilitators to a productive partnership and positive outcomes include a context of trust, effective implementation of processes that establish equitable partner relationships and partnership synergy, a clearly defined focus for the partnership and a structured participatory research method that helped break down silos and mobilise the community for action. our project evaluation approach, combining the cbpr model and rem, guided measurement of common metrics that are key to effective community engagement as well as exploration of unanticipated outcomes. keywords community engaged research; community based participatory research; partnership synergy; opioid epidemic; community based participatory research model; ripple effects mapping introduction community based participatory research (cbpr) and participatory action research (par) are now widely accepted as legitimate methods for addressing social and health inequalities in marginalised communities (mcelfish et al. 2015; wallerstein & duran 2006). in these approaches, researchers and community representatives work together to build on the strengths of the community, sharing responsibility for the research process. cbpr and par have a different epistemological foundation than other research methods (meyer 2000). they seek to integrate action, theory, practice and critical self-­reflection in the pursuit of pragmatic solutions to community concerns (jagosh et al. 2012; reason & bradbury 2001). as a way to address public health concerns, the collaboration between academics and community members focuses on enhancing understanding of a health concern, as well as implementing tailored interventions and policy changes based on what has been learned (israel et al. 2010). despite the increased use of participatory research, there are fewer available standardised evaluation measures and methods for cbpr and par compared to conventional research approaches. several recent reviews have identified measures to evaluate the quality and outcomes of community engaged research collaborations (luger, hamilton & true 2020; tigges et al. 2019). with the exception of a few cases, such as the work of oetzel et al. (2015), the majority of measures have not been thoroughly examined or tested (israel et al. 2020; sandoval et al. 2012). the challenge in evaluating participatory research stems from identifying which aspects of engagement are critical for achieving the desired outcomes (oetzel et al. 2018). furthermore, it can be difficult to compare participatory research interventions because evaluation approaches tend to be tailored to the specific context (meyer 2000). without validated tools and models, it is difficult to apply evaluation methods across different contexts. evaluating the productiveness and structural arrangements of research partnerships is another challenge (belone et al. 2016). multidisciplinary processes are difficult to manage and their outcomes are often unclear or subject to interpretation. important process indicators, such as relationship quality, trust, participation and relational dynamics, can be hard to measure objectively (höppner 2009; pohl & hadorn 2008), yet they are critical because they drive the productivity of the partnership and are important outcomes in their own right. participatory research practitioners must also reflect on the challenges faced when conducting and evaluating research to improve their understanding of best practices (dedding et al. 2021) and disentangle the multiple ways that engagement contributes to achieving project aims. case studies can enhance the knowledge base for participatory research evaluation approaches by illustrating the use of specific frameworks, methods and constructs (hicks et al. 2012; reese et al. 2019; sandoval et al. 2012). this paper seeks to advance the scientific understanding of participatory research partnerships by highlighting our evaluation results, following a description of the project and its outcomes. we demonstrate the complexities of evaluating participatory research by presenting a case study focusing on the evaluation methods and framework that were employed. background opioid misuse is a significant health issue globally. in response to the dramatic increase in opioid dependence and overdose deaths in the united states, the u.s. department of health and human services (2017) declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency on 26 october 2017. there is substantial variation in community rates of opioid misuse and overdose, and the availability of prevention and treatment services, necessitating community designed solutions in addition to national action. we report on the evaluation of a participatory action project in a rural virginia community that wanted to further its efforts to tackle the opioid crisis. virginia has been greatly impacted by opioid misuse and overdose. the rural community that is the focus of this project, martinsville city/henry county, had one of the highest average per capita opioid prescription rates in the u.s. between 2006 and 2012 (u.s. news & world reports 2017). as reported previously, the community’s opioid overdose death rates were three times higher than the state average in 2016, and the area had the highest rate of opioid overdose emergency room visits statewide in 2018 (virginia department of health n.d.; zimmerman et al. 2020b). much like other rural communities, this county had lower levels of educational attainment, higher levels of disability and lower median household incomes (united states census bureau 2020). once a prosperous farming and manufacturing center, the community experienced economic downturn as factories closed through the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. despite the significant challenges facing this resilient community, it mobilised to form an opioid task force in 2016. the task force was composed of key community organizations including the police department, behavioral health providers, peer and faith-­based recovery programs, the local hospital and representatives from the judicial system. to formalise a process to take action, the task force aligned with an existing community-­academic research partnership, engaging martinsville (em). em decided to use a community-­engaged approach, the stakeholder engagement in research question development and prioritization method (seed method), that they had previously used in the community to address a disparity in lung cancer mortality (rafie et al. 2019). with support from the opioid task force, em implemented a project using the seed method to develop community action plans to address the opioid problem (zimmerman et al. 2020b). involving residents and local stakeholders in action planning is important to ensure that a community’s strategies are based on an understanding of the local situation and reflect the community’s concerns and needs (kapiriri & norheim 2002; lomas et al. 2003). without community buy-­in, many potentially effective strategies, such as harm reduction, may not be achievable (childs et al. 2021). currently, there is a mix of top-­level leadership approaches, coalition approaches and evidence-­based approaches being offered as options for engaging communities. while coalition approaches generally involve a variety of community stakeholders, they may not be founded on participatory values (such as inclusion of people with lived experience) and are not easily transferable to other communities (windsor 2013). the seed method was designed in response to a need for systematic, participatory engagement methods that engage people with lived experience to create research agendas or action plans. the seed method addresses the limitations of effective community stakeholder engagement, including the need for technical training of stakeholders and community capacity building (hoffman et al. 2010; o’haire et al. 2011; oliver et al. 2004), by incorporating research training and providing facilitation tools that lead the teams through the process of stakeholder selection, conceptual modeling and strategy development and prioritization. participants in past seed projects indicated that seed prepared them well for the tasks they were asked to perform and that they had a sense of satisfaction at gaining new skills in the process (rafie et al. 2019; zimmerman et al. 2017). results from previous seed method demonstration projects strengthen the evidence that engaging diverse groups of stakeholders in research results in pinpointing more comprehensive priorities for health research, and that seed has application in identifying and prioritizing actions to address a variety of community health challenges. we anticipated that applying the seed method as a participatory action planning tool within this community would result in collaborative actions on community-­derived strategies and help strengthen partnerships. the seed method combines collaborative, participatory and consultative roles to engage community members in identifying and prioritizing strategies. the method engages stakeholders at three levels: (1) community research team (cbpr team) – a multidisciplinary partnership that collaboratively leads the project; (2) topic groups (tgs) – participatory stakeholders recruited based on their experience and knowledge of the health topic; and (3) scan participants – consulting stakeholders who participate in focus groups and interviews. at each level, stakeholders make unique contributions to the project but work together iteratively (zimmerman et al. 2020a). we modified the seed method, originally developed to focus on research question development, to include facilitated steps for action planning and intervention development. figure 1 outlines steps of the modified seed method. figure 1. steps of the seed method participant involvement the project involved a total of 85 community stakeholders at various levels of engagement. eight community members formed part of the initial participatory community research team, em. over the course of the three-­year project, five em team members left due to other obligations and family health issues. at the same time, three new members joined the team to replace those who had left. em team members included three peer substance misuse counselors, one nurse, two prevention specialists, two medical administrators, two university faculty members and a graduate student. the em team met weekly at the beginning of the project, decreasing to fortnightly at the end of the first year. at the beginning of the project, most meetings were held in person at a local community facility. in response to the covid-­19 pandemic, team meetings shifted to being fully virtual. the shift in meeting format did not negatively impact the team’s work; in fact, it allowed for more consistent attendance. the community members of the research team were paid an hourly minimum wage for all project-­related work. the em team chose three stakeholder groups to form the topic groups. the team recruited 21 community members for tgs composed of: (1) family and friends impacted by opioid use disorder; (2) service providers (e.g., police, emt’s); and (3) healthcare providers. tg members were recruited through newspaper advertisements and fliers posted and distributed through email to key organizations. compared to the community demographics, em and tg members were slightly overrepresented by individuals of white race with a higher level of education. their ages ranged between 21 and 64 years, 65 per cent reported having a college degree and 14 per cent identified their race as black. each tg met seven times and meetings were facilitated by members of the em team. meetings took place at a local healthcare facility. participants received a stipend ($250) for their participation and food was provided during meetings. in addition to research teams and tgs, community members were invited to participate in focus groups. twenty-­four community stakeholders participated in four focus groups and provided additional community perspectives on the opioid issue. the tgs and em team each chose unique stakeholder groups from whom they wanted to obtain information to inform their work. participants were recruited by the em team through multimedia advertising. em conducted the focus groups and summarised the information for presentation to the tgs. focus group participants received a stipend ($25). following the creation and prioritization of strategies by the tgs, they were presented at two community meetings attended by 41 community members. during the meetings, community stakeholders voted on a short list of strategies. the three-­hour meetings took place approximately four weeks apart at a local community facility and dinner was provided. the attendees chose four strategies to work on over the next year and formed a work group for each strategy. a total of 29 stakeholders joined the four working groups that were formed at these community meetings. some of the stakeholders had participated previously (e.g., as tg members) and some were new to the project. the working groups created their own meeting schedules, but generally met monthly. the working groups met for 12 to 24 months and received continuing support from and communication with the em team. initially, most meetings occurred in person, but later transitioned to virtual or other formats in response to the covid-­19 pandemic. despite this change of meeting format, the teams continued to work effectively together and accomplished their objectives. the em team arranged quarterly meetings with the work group coordinators to discuss progress and challenges. bi-­annually, em hosted meetings bringing together all four work groups to update each other on progress and share a meal. work group members were not compensated for their work on the strategies. evaluation approach and methods we used the cbpr conceptual model (unm college of population health n.d.) as the framework to evaluate the effect of the seed method on partnership processes and their impact on partnership synergy and project outcomes. this model was developed by wallerstein and colleagues through a two-­year pilot study that looked at how the cbpr process influences or predicts outcomes (wallerstein et al. 2008; wallerstein & duran 2010). the model addresses four cbpr domains (contexts, partnership processes, intervention and research and outcomes) and outlines the potential relationships between each. the first domain consists of contextual factors that shape the nature of the research and the partnership, such as social, structural and political factors. the second domain, partnership processes, includes the partnership structure, members and member relationships, which interact with contextual factors to shape both the intervention and its research design. if partnering practices are effective, they will result in mutual learning, an ability to work together effectively and partner synergy, which impacts outcomes. the third domain consists of the intervention and research processes aligned with cbpr principles. these factors, taken together, result in intermediate system and capacity changes, and ultimately health outcomes (oetzel et al. 2018). the evaluation tools associated with the cbpr model were validated initially by oetzel et al. (2015). more recently, boursaw et al. (2021) evaluated the psychometric properties of seven revised scales that corresponded to the four cbpr model domains. we modified the survey and interview guides developed for the purpose of evaluating constructs within each of these domains (engage for equity n.d.; unm college of population health n.d.). the project was approved by the virginia tech institutional review board (vt irb 18-­860) and all individuals participating in research procedures provided signed informed consent. evaluation questions and analysis the community research team selected constructs within each of the cpbr model domains that they felt were most relevant to their partnership and selected questions from the survey that focused on these constructs. within the context domain, we evaluated the social and structural context of our community and our partnership capacity. in the process domain, we focused on partnership structure including the ability to bridge differences, the partnership core values and alignment with community engagement principles. we also included constructs related to relationships, including quality of dialogue, participatory decision making, leadership, resource use and trust. we were particularly interested in evaluating community involvement in research in the intervention and research domain, which has been shown to impact outcomes. within the outcome domain, we focused on community organization outcomes and partner challenges, health outcomes and project sustainability. in addition, we included two questions about the overall quality of the partnership work and satisfaction with the partnering experience. the final survey consisted of 64 questions that focused on 15 constructs within the four cbpr domains (see appendix 1). all survey questions were on a likert scale of either six or seven points, which varied depending on the construct. we calculated the mean score for each construct in a domain. mean scores of four were considered indicative of a positive response for six-­point likert scales and a mean score of five for seven-­point likert scale constructs. we used the scores to evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership and to inform conversations with the community research team about partnership sustainability and future activities. the survey was developed for online access using qualtrics. project collaborators (members of the research team, tgs and community work groups) were invited to complete the survey through an email invitation approximately 28 months after the start of the project, which had a duration of 36 months. nine tg members participated in the survey. qualitative interviews and analysis current and former members of the research team were invited to participate in qualitative, one-­on-­one interviews using a modification of the cbpr conceptual model interview guide (engage for equity n.d.; see appendix 2). seven team members participated in the interviews. a research assistant who was not associated with the project conducted the interviews. the semi-­structured interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes and took place on zoom. the interview guide queried constructs within each of the four cbpr domains to mirror those included in the survey, and solicited recommendations for improved partnership management and dissemination of project findings. interviews were recorded and automatically transcribed by otter.ai, a third-­party vendor. transcriptions were checked for accuracy prior to coding. all coding was conducted using taguette (version 0.10.1), a third-­party vendor, and computer-­assisted qualitative data analysis software. we used the framework method for transcript analysis (gale et al. 2013). initial coding was conducted by the research assistant under the supervision of a member of the research team. transcript analysis began with a focus on trust within the partnership, facilitators and barriers to trust, and the impact of trust on the effectiveness of the seed method in community action planning. the research team expanded on the preliminary analysis using the cbpr model domains and constructs as a framework for coding and theme development. an initial code list was created deductively for each domain of the cbpr model, incorporating the codes related to trust developed from the initial analysis. upon review of each transcript, additional codes were added inductively as appropriate. the finalised codes were grouped by domain and constructs within each domain. they were then categorised into broader themes under each construct. the recommendations made in response to the final interview question, ‘if another group were going to start this kind of partnership, what would you tell them in order to help them be successful?’, were grouped and evaluated for common themes. additional evaluation metrics several additional assessment tools were used to evaluate the process and outcomes of the study. demographic information was collected from project collaborators. in addition, em and tg members were asked to complete a group readiness questionnaire used in previous seed projects early in their work together. other data useful for the evaluation included community perspectives on the opioid crisis gathered through focus groups (hargrove et al. 2022), the strategies developed and prioritised by the tgs and selected for action by community stakeholders, and work group accomplishments, the details of which will be reported elsewhere. we also conducted a ripple effects mapping exercise with project partners to capture information about both intended and unintended consequences of the project (chazdon et al. 2017; emery et al. 2015). we followed the process described by chazdon et al. (2017). the rem process visually maps intended and unintended impacts of a project and employs four key elements: (1) appreciative inquiry; (2) a participatory approach; (3) interactive group interviewing and reflection; and (4) mind mapping that is used to chart the chain of effects of the project. appreciative inquiry is a process of asking unconditional, positive questions that strengthen a system’s positive potential. in the context of rem, appreciative inquiry is used to facilitate the discovery of participants’ best experiences with the program or project, and the unanticipated effects of the project in the community (ripple effects). we employed a participatory approach to the conduct of the rem, involving the research team in the choice of questions asked during the rem, the conduct of the exercise and analysis of the outcomes. the rem exercise was conducted over a two-­hour zoom meeting. the exercise was facilitated by a member of the research team, assisted by members of em. we used the online mapping program, mind meister [2023], to illustrate the participants’ best experiences and community impacts as they were discussed. we invited diverse participants, including members of the research team, tgs and work groups, as well as focus group and community meeting participants. ten community members participated in the session. the exercise began with a brief overview of the rem process, followed by a 15-­minute period in which participants interviewed each other. they were provided with specific instructions on how to conduct the interviews. they selected three questions from a longer list of questions developed by the research team. participants were paired up and directed to zoom breakout rooms for this activity. after the interview session, participants shared and discussed the most salient points from their interviews. the facilitator used the mind meister program to lead the attendees in a process of visualizing the project impacts and illustrating cause-­and-­effect relationships between them (mind mapping). using a rippling and theming approach, topics were displayed in the map and similar topics were positioned together under common themes. participants commented on what they thought came about and any attributions to the causes. a final 15-­minute group meeting allowed participants to reflect on how the mapping process made them feel. they also reflected on what was interesting about the map and the story it told. following the rem session, minutes from the meeting were reviewed, and information from the map was downloaded in outline format and edited for clarity. two members of the research team reviewed the notes from the meeting and the map contents and identified themes and rem outcome areas that were informed by the rem guiding questions. themes and information from the rem exercise were then organised according to the level of impact (i.e., individual, interpersonal/community, environmental). results key themes from the survey (tables 1-3) and interviews (figure 2) included the importance of building relationships and trust to the community partnership and partnership synergy, as well as the impact of the structured method of engagement (the seed method). table 1. cbpr survey – relationships relationships average score sd scale mean scores quality of dialogue (7-­point scale)* we show positive attitudes towards one another. 6.25 0.71 5.63 (1.21) everyone in our partnership participates in our meetings. 5.13 1.46 we listen to each other. 6.25 0.89 when conflicts occur, we work together to resolve them. 6.25 0.71 even when we don’t have total agreement, we reach a kind of consensus that we all accept. 6.13 0.99 the dialogue is dominated by the perspectives of the academic partners. 3.25 1.16 participatory decision making (7-­point scale)*       suggestions i make in the partnership are seriously considered. 5.38 1.41 5.07 (0.24) i have influence over decisions. 4.88 1.46 my involvement influences the partnership to be more responsive to community. 5.13 0.83 i am able to influence the work of the project. 4.88 1.36 leadership (6-­point scale)**       encourage active participation of academic and community partners in decision making 5.25 0.71 5.10 (0.37) communicate goals of the project 5.38 0.52 resolve conflict among partners 4.50 1.07 foster respect between partners 5.38 0.74 help partners be creative and look at things differently 5.00 1.07 *1=completely disagree, 2=mostly disagree, 3=slightly disagree, 4=neither agree nor disagree, 5=slightly agree, 6=mostly agree, 7=completely agree **1=not at all well, 2=somewhat well, 3=moderately well, 4=very well, 5=extremely well, 6=completely well building relationships processes for quality and equitable relationships among partners are important for sustainable, productive community partnerships. factors that promote good partner relationships include quality dialogue, participatory decision making and strong leadership. survey results show a strong mean score for quality dialogue (5.54/7, s.d. 1.21) among the project partners, which was composed of questions related to mutual respect, good listening and conflict resolution. the project also had strong, effective leadership as reflected in the mean score for this construct (5.1/6, s.d. 0.37), which is associated with team synergy (table 1). in interview responses, relationship building is seen as an outcome of treating each other with mutual respect and engaging in participatory decision making. for instance, when we began our team, we started out by first of all getting to know each other, trying to create an environment where we got to know each other on an equal basis. but we tried to create an environment where we’re all equal partners in this and that decisions are made equally. we use first names, we share decision making, and we consider everybody around the table to be an expert in whatever it is that they kind of represent. so, if it’s a community member, they may be an expert. and once everybody kind of made their argument, a lot of times at that point we could come to an agreement. so, it’s kind of a combination of getting to know the individuals as persons, but also working together to identify what’s going on in the community, what the needs are and what the interest is in addressing those. strong leadership, community inclusion throughout the project, and community members serving as leaders and decision-­makers strengthened the partnership. i don’t have the degrees that other people have, the educational degrees. i’m still made a part of the group. i think that the partners still trust my suggestions and judgments and have made me a part of the whole process. i think [name 1] and [name 2] have exemplary leadership, when it comes to some of these situations where like say going into a community that may have some resistance. i feel that my voice is heard in the meetings. i’ve even helped bring in some other people that i would think that had a lot to offer to this issue, and they are very much welcomed into the group and their voices being heard. trust trust is integral to collaborative projects and provides a foundation for project sustainability and successful outcomes. the survey findings indicate a significant level of trust between those working on the project (mean = 6.29/7, s.d. 0.19) (table 2). this is significant, as trust and team synergy are associated with project sustainability and outcomes. these positive partnership process scores may be a consequence of the partnership structure that incorporated community engagement principles resulting in strong relationships built on trust. table 2. cbpr survey – trust scale trust (7-­point scale)* average score sd scale mean score i trust the decisions others make about issues important to our project. 6.13 0.83 6.29 (0.19) i can rely on the people that i work with on this project. 6.25 0.71 people in this partnership have a lot of confidence in one another. 6.50 0.53 *1=completely disagree, 2=mostly disagree, 3=slightly disagree, 4=neither agree nor disagree, 5=slightly agree, 6=mostly agree, 7=completely agree the importance of trust to the partnership was a repeated theme in the interviews, as well. this included trust between individuals, academic and community partners, and trust in the process. familiarity, purposeful mutual understanding, being present over time, and ‘doing what you say’ were factors that built trust. other factors considered important were having a consistent presence in the community throughout the project, especially during challenging times, and the commitment of the partners to each other and to the goals of the project. so, they, they had to trust us. and yet, we also had to trust them. because it’s not going to work if it’s just people from the university trying to make something happen. and so, we have to trust them also, that they’re going to put in their part. so, it’s kind of like this mutual trust, kind of expectations of one another. and then we’re going to see whether or not those actually get fulfilled. i think that we built a level of at least trust and support for one another, they can come to us, and we can come to them. and as long as our team continues to be safe, do what we say, right, and be consistent in our presence, we’re going to do what’s on the part of everybody, right? one thing is you have to trust the structure itself. like, if you don’t think it’s a good process, then the structure probably isn’t going to help. conversely, turnover of team members that can occur with lengthy projects was identified as a hindrance to trust. but sometimes people just stop participating. and you don’t know why. and i think that kind of challenges trust, even throughout the team. the history of previous work of the engaging martinsville team, and the reputation of the two universities involved in the project, were credited with the community overcoming a cultural aversion to outsiders and skepticism about their motives. in fact, the community reached out to the em team for assistance in addressing the opioid issue and breaking down existing social barriers to action. the community had a good deal of trust that the em team had their best interests in mind. we had a great community presence there because we had done a community needs assessment already with a local coordinator and she continued working with us as the coordinator with the lung cancer project that had some wonderful outcomes. then the community came back to us and said you know we’ve got this opioid problem, and we’d like to apply seed to that so then we just kept going so it’s been a while. so over time, with being more personable, and understanding each other trust has grown, to the point where i don’t think that anything on the academic side is ill-­willed or malicious, and i don’t think on the community side either. and, because we’ve been doing this for so long, the trust is now based on experience versus based on some assumptions. using a structured method of engagement team members credited the partnership processes that are part of the seed method with helping to develop trust and allowing them to feel safe to express themselves without judgment, put aside their own biases, and work together. they felt the seed process provided the safety and structure to build trust between individuals and institutions. although the partners came from varying backgrounds, responses to the survey showed that the process was able to bridge that gap to unify the partners around a core understanding and vision for the project (core values mean score = 6.35/7, s.d. 0.21 – table 3). this may have been accomplished through the effective implementation of the principles of community engagement that are part of the seed method as indicated by the survey findings of significant alignment with principles of community engagement (4.82/6, s.d. 0.21) (table 3). table 3. cbpr survey – partnership core values and community engagement principles scale partnership core values (7-­point scale)** average score (s.d) sd scale mean score (s.d) members have clear and shared understanding of the problems 6.63 0.52 6.35 (0.21) members can generally state the partnership mission and goals 6.13 0.64 general agreement on priorities of the partnership 6.25 0.71 general agreement on the strategies partnership should use in pursuing priorities 6.38 0.52 alignment with community engagement principles (6-­point scale)* average score (s.d) sd scale mean score (s.d) project builds resources and strengths in the community 4.88 0.64 4.82 (0.21) project facilitates equitable partnerships in all phases 4.63 0.92 project helps all partners to grow and learn from one another 4.88 0.99 project balances research and social action for mutual benefit of all partners 5.13 0.83 project emphasises factors that are important to the community that affect well-­being 4.88 0.99 project communicates knowledge and findings, and involves all partners in the dissemination 5.13 0.64 project views cbpr as a long-­term process and commitment 4.75 1.04 project is responsive to community histories 4.50 0.93 project integrates the words and language of the community 4.63 0.74 project connects with the way things are done in the community 4.75 0.71 *1=not at all, 2=to a small extent, 3=to a moderate extent, 4 = to a great extent, 5 = to a very great extent, 6 = to a complete extent interviewees highlighted the importance of a structured process that moved partners from research to action and credited the process with breaking down barriers to collaboration to accomplish goals. they identified the accomplishments of the four work groups on the prioritised actions as the most important outcomes of the project, and credited the process for getting the community working together. less tangible outcomes included the impact of the project on networking within the community, and the capacity of the community to approach a problem and set achievable goals. reminds me of like a mediator, not that they were mediating. but you know, it was just having that third party with a structure and a framework, and a goal, and very specific tasks to keep us on track, you know, track and focus. they have been trying to get this [community strategy] done. why did it happen? i think it was just a result of going through this process and getting enough people sitting at the table and having the community say we want this and we’re going to support it, that then was able to drive it forward. we still work for the [public agency], but it’s amazing, we have a partnership with a private hospital, and we are a public community service. this has never happened! we are not the silos to the extent that we were, i really don’t think so. i think that’s the greatest success (of the project), that we acknowledge that we need each other. the team also attributed the breakdown of interpersonal barriers between team members and other stakeholders to the cbpr principles of shared power, mutual respect and shared decision making that are foundational to the seed method. i think the seed method is just a great best practice as far as trying to eliminate from one person dominating the outcomes, because the whole process is used to weed that out, because everyone has to participate. i was astounded because [name 2] and [name 3] and the way the seed method is set up, provided this platform that was safe, without interference of personal bias… they did just such a great job keeping things neutral. and when that environment was established, then the partnership of trust could really blossom. figure 2. themes from interviews with the research team (n=7) by cbpr conceptual model domain outcomes from the ripple effects mapping in the ripple effects mapping exercise, participants described project outcomes that increased community awareness, improved collaboration between community organizations, particularly the physical and mental healthcare organizations, and increased the availability of local services (figure 3). they described how these outcomes resulted in reduced stigma, increased community connectedness and understanding, and reduced isolation for those impacted by substance misuse. networking and collaboration improved between community organizations, particularly the physical and mental healthcare organizations, resulting in systems for ensuring a continuum of care for individuals with substance use disorder (sud), expansion of peer recovery programs and access to medically assisted treatment (mat). team members credited the systematic approach of the seed method with fostering this collaboration through open dialogue, coordination of effort and sustained engagement (figure 3). figure 3. ripple effects mapping (rem) results finally, presentations by the team increased awareness of key agencies that could support local responses to socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions. federal and state funds supported the establishment of a new recovery and residential center, a regional recovery court and prevention education that served the region. networking across county lines increased the readiness of adjacent counties to address the opioid and substance misuse issue and afforded the opportunity to bring services to those communities. discussion evaluation of community engagement is a topic of much research, as it is essential to bridge the gap between science and practice. models have been created to define meaningful engagement and assess its impact (khodjakov et al. 2011; organizing committee 2022; wallerstein et al. 2008). these models define the key domains of community engagement principles with indicators of impact when applied effectively (organizing committee 2022). the diversity of context in which community engagement occurs has necessitated that these models be flexible and provide a range of outcome options. specific common metrics that can be used across community-­engaged research projects are still needed. this project serves as a case study for evaluating community engagement practices. using the cbpr model and tools, we were able to evaluate the relative success of our community-­engaged project in relationship building and developing trust within our community-­university partnership, the ability to create significant changes benefitting the community, and the impact of the seed method on these outcomes. by evaluating the various domains within the cbpr model (i.e., context, partnership processes, intervention and research and outcomes) we were able to identify factors that facilitated the project’s perceived personal and community benefits. we identified several factors that helped to facilitate positive outcomes. the partnership benefitted from an existing level of trust based on returning to work with the community following a previous project. another facilitator was having a clearly defined health issue that was important to the community and created a common vision and focus for the project. the effective implementation of processes that established quality and equitable relationships among partnership members was a key factor. trust was a prominent theme in our analysis. trust is known to strengthen partnership synergy and sustainability and is necessary for population-­level outcomes such as systemic transformations, health improvement and spin-­off projects (jagosh et al. 2015; lasker, weiss & miller 2001). development of trust was facilitated by processes that promoted mutual respect, open dialogue and participatory decision making, as well as the long-­term engagement and completion of the project objectives by the academic partners (jagosh et al. 2015; lucero 2013; peralta, smithwick & torres 2020). we used a mixed-­methods approach to assess the outcomes of the project. these included gathering the perspectives of project participants through surveys and qualitative interviews based on the cbpr model, documentation of the outcomes of the work groups formed to implement prioritised strategies recommended by the community, and a ripple effects mapping exercise (rem) that allowed community members to reflect on the positive, negative and unintended impacts of the project. despite the small number of participants, there was concurrence on the characteristics of the partnership as well as the tangible outcomes of the project between project participants that was evident in all three of the evaluation methods. participants were excited about the tangible accomplishments of the work groups, and also enthusiastically described the importance of relationship building, trust and using a structured process. rem allowed for an exploration of unintended project outcomes. in particular, rem identified a reduction in stigma among providers and community residents that resulted in increased openness to others’ perspectives and a decrease in the isolation felt by many individuals and family members dealing with sud. the use of a structured method for engaging and directing community activities was credited with breaking down long-­standing silos between community organizations and mobilizing the community for action. it was also credited with facilitating positive working relationships and building individuals’ skills and self-­confidence. the seed method seeks to address key determinants identified as important to partnership synergy by lasker, weiss and miller (2001) including the equitable use of resources, diverse stakeholder engagement in the partnership, cultivation of trust and mutual respect and a planned process for partnership administration leading to community action. interview respondents indicated that the seed method provided a safe space where participants could get to know each other, overcome biases and learn to work together for the community good. effective leaders were credited with facilitating this safe environment. this study has limitations including the small sample size and the lack of participation in the interviews of community research team members who left before the end of the project. in addition, although the importance of relationship building, trust and a planned and structured method of engagement has broad application, evaluation results are specific to this project’s context which may limit generalizability. partnership structure impacts partner processes and synergy (lasker, weiss & miller 2001; weiss et al. 2002), which in turn impacts community-­level outcomes (khodjakov et al. 2011). our evaluation confirmed satisfaction with partnership function and a high degree of partnership synergy, which undoubtedly contributed to the personal and community level outcomes. more recent research is attempting to determine the partnering practices within specific contexts that effectively contribute to research, community and health equity outcomes (wallerstein at al. 2020). this case study provides a detailed description of the context of a community engaged project that followed a defined method grounded in the core principles of community engagement, as well as the tangible and perceived personal and community level outcomes identified through a mixed-­methods evaluation approach. although not evaluated in this study, we will incorporate measures of health equity outcomes in future projects. our findings may inform the approach to engagement of other community-­based participatory research projects, as well as their evaluation approach. acknowledgements we would like to thank the engaging martinsville research team, topic group and focus group participants and the many community members who participated in this project. we would also like to thank samantha s. lee for her work in collecting and analyzing the qualitative interview data. references belone, l, lucero, je, duran, b, tafoya, g, baker, ea, chan, d, chang, c, greene-moton, e, kelley, ma & 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participatory health research: a test of the community-based participatory research conceptual model’, biomed research international, 7281405. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/7281405 o’haire, c, mcpheeters, m, nakamoto, ek, labrant, l, most, c, lee, k, graham, e, cottrell, e & guise, jm 2011, engaging stakeholders to identify and prioritise future research needs, methods future research needs report number 4, agency for healthcare research and quality. oliver, s, clarke-jones, l, rees, r, milne, r, buchanan, p, gabbay, j, gyte, g, oakley, a & stein, k 2004, ‘involving consumers in research and development agenda setting for the nhs: developing an evidence-based approach’, health technology assessment, vol. 8, no. 15, pp. 1–148. https://doi.org/10.3310/hta8150 organizing committee for assessing meaningful community engagement in health & health care programs & policies 2022, assessing meaningful community engagement: a conceptual model to advance health equity through transformed systems 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thousand oaks. reese, al, hanza, mm, abbenyi, a, formea, c, meiers, sj, nigon, ja, osman, a, goodson, m, njeru, jw, boursaw, b, dickson, e, wieland, ml, sia, ig & wallerstein, n 2019, ‘the development of a collaborative self-evaluation process for community-based participatory research partnerships using the community-based participatory research conceptual model and other adaptable tools’, progress in community health partnerships: research, education, and action, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 225–35. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2019.0050 sandoval, ja, lucero, j, oetzel, j, avila, m, belone, l, mau, m, pearson, c, tafoya, g, duran, b, iglesias rios, l & wallerstein, n 2012, ‘process and outcome constructs for evaluating community-based participatory research projects: a matrix of existing measures’, health education research, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 680–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyr087 tigges, b, miller, d, dudding, km, balls-berry, je, borawski, ea, gaurav, d, hafer, ns, kimminau, ks, kost, rg, littlefield, k, shannon, j & menon, u 2019, ‘measuring quality and outcome of research collaborations: an integrated review’, journal of clinical and translational science, vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 261–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2019.402 united states census bureau n.d., quickfacts, viewed 14 may 2020. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/ university of new mexico (unm) college of population health n.d., cbpr model, viewed 12 february 2024. https://hsc.unm.edu/population-health/research-centers/center-participatory-research/cbpr-community-engagement/cbpr-model.html https://cpr.unm.edu/research-projects/cbpr-project/cbpr-model.html u.s. news & world reports 2017, ‘study: martinsville opioid prescriptions highest in country’, 12 july, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/virginia/articles/2017-07-12/study-martinsville-opioid-prescriptions-highest-in-country virginia department of health n.d., opioid data: data, viewed 25 june 2025. https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/opioid-data/data/ wallerstein, nb & duran, b 2006, ‘using community-based participatory research to address health disparities’, health promotion practice, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 312–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 wallerstein, n & duran, b 2010, ‘community-based participatory research contributions to intervention research: the intersection of science and practice to improve health equity’, american journal of public health, vol. 100, suppl. 1, pp. s40–6. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.184036 wallerstein, n, oetzel, j, duran, b, tafoya, g, belone, l & rae, r 2008, ‘what predicts outcomes in cbpr?’, in m minkler & n wallerstein (eds), community based participatory research for health: process to outcomes, 2nd edn, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca, pp. 371–92. wallerstein, n, oetzel, jg, sanchez-youngman, s, boursaw, b, dickson, e, kastelic, s, koegel, p, lucero, je, magarati, m, ortiz, k, parker, m, peña, j, richmond, a & duran, b 2020, ‘engage for equity: a long-term study of community-based participatory research and community-engaged research practices and outcomes’, health education & behavior, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 380–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198119897075 weiss, es, anderson, rm & lasker, rd, 2002 ‘making the most of collaboration: exploring the relationship between partnership synergy and partnership functioning’, health education & behavior, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 683–698. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019802237938 windsor, lc 2013, ‘using concept mapping in community-based participatory research: a mixed methods approach’, journal of mixed methods research, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 274–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689813479175 wold, b & mittelmark, mb 2018, ‘health-promotion research over three decades: the social-ecological model and challenges in implementation of interventions’, scandinavian journal of public health, vol. 46, suppl. 20, pp. 20–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494817743893 zimmerman, eb, cook, sk, haley, ad, woolf, sh & price, sk 2017, ‘a patient and provider research agenda on diabetes and hypertension management’, american journal preventative medicine, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 123–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2017.01.034 zimmerman, eb, cook, sk, woolf, sh, price, sk, haley, a, rafie, c & moser, d 2020a, ‘developing a method for engaging people in setting research agendas’, patient-centered outcomes research institute (pcori). https://doi.org/10.25302/04.2020.me.131007664 zimmerman, eb, rafie, c, moser, de, hargrove, a, noe, t & adams mills, c 2020b, ‘participatory action planning to address the opioid crisis in a rural virginia community using the seed method’, journal of participatory research methods, vol. 1, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.13182 appendix 1 engaging martinsville partner survey thank you for taking this survey! this survey is part of an ongoing project, engaging martinsville & henry county: community action on the opioid crisis. this project aims to bring residents of martinsville and henry county together to take action to address the opioid issue in the community. the terms project, partnership, and partner are used in this survey. project refers to the research project you have been a part of: engaging martinsville. partnership refers to a collaboration of partners working together for a common goal of which engaging martinsville may be only one part. partners include both community partners and academic partners. community partners represent perspectives and knowledge of communities and can be individuals (such as community members, patients, caregivers, clinical providers, healthcare staff, policy makers, or other individual stakeholders) or organizations (such as community based organizations, advocacy organizations, agencies, tribal programs, clinics, health department, or other groups representing communities). academic partners represent research knowledge and are individuals and organizations associated with universities, or other institutions that house research. thank you for your time and attention! q1 what was your primary role in the engaging martinsville opioid project? please select one response. ◯ academic research team member (1) ◯ topic group member (2) ◯ work group member (3) q2 select the most appropriate response. not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) i don’t know (7) the community participating in this project has a history of organizing services or events. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the community participating in this project has a history of advocating for social or health equity. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ by working together, people in the community participating in this project have previously influenced decisions that affected their communities. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q3 does this partnership (including engaging martinsville, community partner organizations, and work group participants) have any of the following features to achieve the project aims of implementing community identified strategies to address opioid misuse in mhc.  not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) skills and expertise (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ diverse members (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ legitimacy and credibility in the community (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ability to bring people together for meetings/activities (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ connections to relevant stakeholders (5) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q4 please choose the most appropriate response from your perspective. not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) the community partners (such as community members or organizations) have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to interact effectively with the academic partners. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the academic partners have members who are from a similar background as the community partners. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the academic partners have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to interact effectively with the community partners. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q5 please choose the most appropriate response from your perspective. completely disagree (1) mostly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) neither agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) mostly agree (6) completely agree (7) members of our partnership have a clear and shared understanding of the problems we are trying to address. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ members can generally state the mission and goals of our partnership. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ there is general agreement with respect to the priorities of our partnership. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ there is general agreement on the strategies our partnership should use in pursuing its priorities. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q6 how much have community partners been involved in the following activities? not at all involved (1) somewhat involved (2) moderately involved (3) very involved (4) extremely involved (5) completely involved (6) informing the community about research progress and findings. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ informing relevant policy makers about findings. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ sharing findings with other communities. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ producing useful findings for community action and benefit. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q7 thinking about your involvement in the work group and/or larger project, mark the most appropriate response. completely disagree (1) mostly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) neither agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) mostly agree (6) suggestions i make within this partnership are seriously considered. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ i have influence over decisions that this partnership makes. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ my involvement influences the partnership to be more responsive to the community. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ i am able to influence the work on this project. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q8 how much do you agree or disagree that this partnership has conversations where: completely disagree (1) mostly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) neither agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) mostly agree (6) completely agree (7) we show positive attitudes towards one another. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ everyone in our partnership participates in our meetings. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ we listen to each other. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ when conflicts occur, we work together to resolve them. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ even when we don’t have total agreement, we reach a kind of consensus that we all accept. (5) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the dialogue is dominated by the perspectives of the academic partners. (6) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q9 how well does the leadership for the partnership: not at all well (1) somewhat well (2) moderately well (3) very well (4) extremely well (5) completely well (6) encourage active participation of academic and community partners in decision making. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ communicate the goals of the project. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ resolve conflict among partners. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ foster respect between partners. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ help the partners be creative and look at things differently. (5) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q10 how well does your project use: not at all well (1) somewhat well (2) moderately well (3) very well (4) extremely well (5) completely well (6) the partnership’s financial resources. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the partnership’s in-­kind resources. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ the partners’ time. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q11 how much do you agree or disagree with these statements about the level of trust between the partnership members. completely disagree (1) mostly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) neither agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) mostly agree (6) completely agree (7) i trust the decisions others make about issues that are important to our project. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ i can rely on the people that i work with on this project. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ people in this partnership have a lot of confidence in one another. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q12 does this project reflect the following community based participatory research (cbpr) principles? not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a moderate extent (4) to a great extent (5) to a very great extent (6) to a complete extent (7) this project builds on resources and strengths in the community. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project facilitates equitable partnerships in all phases of the research. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project helps all partners involved to grow and learn from research. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project balances research and social action for the mutual benefit of all partners. (4) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project emphasizes the factors that are important to the community (e.g., environmental and social factors) which affect well-­being. (5) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project communicates knowledge and findings to all partners and involves all partners in the dissemination process. (6) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project views cbpr or community engaged research as a long-­term process and a long-­term commitment. (7) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project is responsive to community histories. (8) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project integrates the words and language of the community. (9) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project connects with the ways things are done in the community. (10) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q13 how much do or will the community or clinical organizations in this partnership enjoy the following benefits? not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) enhanced reputation. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ enhanced ability to affect public policy. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ increased use of the agency’s expertise or services by others. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q14 do you experience the following difficulties related to participating in this partnership? not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) negative views from outside of the partnership of your participation in the partnership. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ frustration with the amount of time and resources spent for the outcomes achieved. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ time or resources taken away from other activities you value. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q15 how much do you agree or disagree that: completely disagree (1) mostly disagree (2) slightly disagree (3) neither agree nor disagree (4) slightly agree (5) mostly agree (6) completely agree (7) i am committed to sustaining the community-­academic relationship with no or low funding. (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ this project is likely to continue forward after this funding is over. (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ our partnership carefully evaluates funding opportunities to make sure they meet both community and academic partners’ needs. (3) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q16 provide the response that best represents your opinion. not at all (1) to a small extent (2) to a moderate extent (3) to a great extent (4) to a very great extent (5) to a complete extent (6) how much do you think this project will improve the health of the community? (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ how much do you think this project will improve the health behaviors of community? (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q17 please provide the most appropriate response to the questions about the quality of the work and your satisfaction with it. not at all good (1) somewhat good (2) moderately good (3) very good (4) extremely good (5) completely good (6) what is the quality of the overall work of the partnership toward achieving the goals of the project? (1) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ how satisfied are you with your partnering experience on this project? (2) ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ q18 what has been the most important outcome of this project? ________________________________________________________________________________ q19 can you tell us anything else about positive or negative outcomes not captured in this survey? ________________________________________________________________________________ appendix 2 interview guide for self-­reflection and evaluation of cbpr partnerships: version, 2017 adapted from research for improved health: a study of community-­academic partnerships i. introduction thank you so much for agreeing to help us evaluate your partnership. you are being asked to participate because you are a valued member and partner. the purpose of these interviews is to facilitate a reflection and self-­evaluation of the partnership by its members. we are asking these questions to learn about your experiences, so that we can better understand how the partnership is doing, and how it can be improved to better meet its mission of promoting health and well-­being within the community. this partnership is very invested in learning from the experiences of its members. the quality of an evaluation like this relies on participants’ openness and willingness to share their experiences, both positive and negative. we value your insight and expertise, so we’d like you to share, in your own words, the successes, any challenges, as well as any outcomes that you feel may have come from this partnership. the data from these interviews will be analyzed by the evaluation partners at virginia tech. the partnership will receive the overall results and will not see individual interview responses. ii. individual background (keep this section brief) first, we are going to talk a bit about you and your involvement in the partnership.  1. tell me how you came to be involved in engaging martinsville. what motivated you to start working with the partnership?  2. are you representing an organization in the partnership or are you participating as yourself? if representing an organization, which one?  3. tell me about your role and the work you are doing in the partnership? (keep brief) iii. context for all communities next, we will talk specifically about your community and/or your organization’s partnership with engaging martinsville.  4. (if you are representing an organization): in thinking of your organization and its participation in the partnership, what kinds of strengths, assets, skills and/or resources do you think your organization brings to the partnership? probe: can you provide an example(s)?  5. (if you are representing an organization): what challenges or limitations did your organization have when you first joined the partnership? probe: can you provide an example(s)?  6. what should we know about your community (its strengths or challenges) to help us better understand its involvement with the partnership? probe: can you provide an example(s)?  7. how do you think (academic partner) was perceived in the community when you started with the partnership? how do you think it is perceived now? iv. partnership/group dynamics next, we are going to talk a bit more about how the partnership works together as a group.  8. can you describe how members of the partnership work together? what has gone well in your meetings and in getting your tasks done and what have been the challenges?  9. given the diversity represented within the partnership, how are membership needs and interests met? for example, when a group of people with such diverse backgrounds meets, how are differences managed to enable the partnership to move forward?  10. trust is a necessary part of partnerships. please share an example of a situation that strengthened trust within the partnership?  11. how about an example of a situation that challenged trust within the partnership?  12. think back to when you began your involvement with the partnership. what did trust look like then versus now? has it changed? how?  13. tell me about the leadership within the partnership. who are the leaders?  14. in terms of leadership styles or approaches, what’s worked well? (probes: in terms of how partnership resources have been managed, or guiding the direction, decision-­making, etc.)  15. what has not worked as well?  16. (if this hasn’t come up earlier): how are decisions about partnership issues made within engaging martinsville?  17. what works well in the decision-­making process?  18. what’s not worked as well?  19. (if not already addressed): can you talk a little about how you deal with conflict in the group? what has worked well? what’s not working well?  20. we are interested in how communication works among the membership. tell me how communication works in the group. for example, if you wanted to raise an issue or influence the direction the partnership takes related to a project, how would you go about that?  21. who are the people in the partnership that you have the most contact with?  22. thinking about everything we just talked about, what could be done to improve how the partnership functions and works together?  23. what do you see as your role in these changes? v: intervention & research design since _____ research projects have focused on interventions, next we will talk about the process of developing and implementing these projects or interventions. which projects have you been involved in? let’s talk about your experience with one of the projects, whichever one you choose, or feel you know best. which one would you like to talk about? ________  24. in what ways did knowledge and experience from the community influence the project?  25. in what ways has knowledge from previous research, ‘evidence’ and ‘best practices’ from around the country influenced your project/intervention?  26. think about how community members and/or community-­based organizations have been involved in research processes. tell me about the role they play in each step of the process, i.e., from proposing the research questions to research design and intervention. (for example, recruitment, data collection, analysis and interpretation?)  27. how have project findings been shared with the community? what other ideas do you have for communicating results?  28. how do you think using a cbpr approach has influenced the work of the partnership towards achieving the project’s goals? vi. intervention and policy outcomes next, we will talk about outcomes of the project we have been discussing and of the partnership in general.  29. staying with the project now, what outcomes or benefits have you seen or do you expect to see as a result of the intervention?  30. do you think the community is aware of the benefits or intended benefits of the project? how?  31. do you think this project has contributed to any practice or policy changes at the community level? if so, how? what strategies were used to promote this change? (i.e. presenting data, telling stories) for the rest of the interview, we will switch back to discussing the partnership as whole, rather than the individual project.  32. (if you are an organizational partner): how has participation in the partnership changed your organization? (i.e. new capacities or skills? new practices or policies?)  33. (if you are a university partner): how has the partnership changed the way the university does business? (i.e. any of its policies or practices in doing research with communities?)  34. as an individual, how have you benefitted from being a member of the partnership?  35. how has the partnership impacted the health status of the community? what are some specific examples? vii. partnership outcomes we now want to dig a little deeper into partnership outcomes that you are hoping to achieve through your work with engaging martinsville.  36. what would you say have been the most important successes for the partnership?  37. like many cbpr partnerships, engaging martinsville relies heavily on individuals and organizations volunteering their time and resources. where do you think things stand in terms of sustainability for the partnership?  38. what would make the partnership more sustainable? viii. summary we’re coming to the end now, and i have just two more questions for you.  39. if another group were going to start this kind of partnership, what kinds of things would you tell them in order to help them be successful?  40. is there anything else you’d like to add? we would like to express our sincerest gratitude for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us here today. your time and devotion are truly appreciated, respected and matter. many thanks!! gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 17, no. 1 august 2024 © 2024 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: verma, s., salom, c., miskovic-wheatley, j., aouad, p., sidari, m., caldwell, b., maguire, s. 2024. building research and evaluation within an australian community eating disorder organisation through academic partnership: a pragmatic protocol. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 45. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article building research and evaluation within an australian community eating disorder organisation through academic partnership: a pragmatic protocol sumedha verma phd1,2, caroline salom phd3, jane miskovic-wheatley dpsych(clin)1, phillip aouad phd1, morgan sidari phd1,4, belinda caldwell mph2, sarah maguire phd1 1 insideout institute for eating disorders, central clinical school, faculty of medicine & health, the university of sydney, new south wales, australia 2 eating disorders victoria, victoria, australia 3 institute for social science research, the university of queensland 4 queensland eating disorder service, metro north hospital and health service, queensland health, queensland, australia 1 corresponding author: dr sumedha verma, sumedha.verma@eatingdisorders.org.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 article history: received 16/05/2024; revised 11/07/2023; accepted 16/07/2024; published 08/2024 abstract eating disorders are complex mental health conditions with rising prevalence. despite this, research and evaluation (r&e) remain under-funded, hindering translation, policy, prevention and advances in care; an equitable and responsive ecosystem of research and knowledge-sharing across the sector is needed to enhance outcomes for people and systems affected by eating disorders. community members engage with community eating disorder organisations/services to receive guidance and support, often through innovative co-designed programs and resources. building r&e capacity and capability within community settings is essential in capturing, leveraging and translating local declaration of conflicting interest potential perceived conflicts of interest are disclosed in the explanatory statement in the article (page 3) and in the relevant appendix. there are no other financial or non-financial conflicts of interest to declare. funding national health and medical research council medical research future fund million minds mission grant (app1178922). the official sponsor is the university of sydney. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:sumedha.verma@eatingdisorders.org.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 knowledges, such as evaluation outcomes to research, policy, practice settings and the broader community to improve understandings, actions and outcomes. partnerships between community service providers and academic researchers could be a way of establishing reciprocal knowledgesharing pathways while simultaneously building internal r&e capacity/capability. the current article presents a longitudinal participatory protocol to plan for, co-design and implement r&e practices within an australian community-based eating disorder service via an academic partnership. we present a four-stage methodological outline aiming to (a) identify the needs, experiences and feasibility of engaging in r&e in a community eating disorder context; and (b) collaboratively plan for, develop and integrate r&e practices through partnership. we will collect data through focus groups, meetings, interviews, researcher notes and questionnaires across several months. this pragmatic plan can guide future collaborative r&e building efforts within a community mental health context in ways that inform the development and scalability of sustainable, effective and efficient r&e praxis and partnerships across the eating disorder and broader mental health sector. keywords eating disorders; research and evaluation; capacity and capability building; community-academic partnership; community-based participatory research; co-design introduction eating disorders are complex conditions that have a rising prevalence and systemic impacts (ágh et al. 2016; butterfly foundation 2024; hay et al. 2023; johns et al. 2019). despite this, funding for eating disorders research remains notoriously limited compared to other mental health conditions (all-party parliamentary group 2021; bryant et al. 2023). pervasive and persistent gaps in research and evaluation (r&e) systems within and across the eating disorder sector hinder the creation, collection and translation of important knowledges. strengthening an equitable and responsive ecosystem of knowledge-sharing to enable the multi-directional flow of information between community, research, policy and practice settings would (a) capture and uplift diverse community voices and experiences; (b) narrow the notable research–practice gap (robinson et al. 2020); and (c) inform policy, prevention and treatment frameworks, and ultimately improve outcomes for communities and systems impacted by eating disorders. community members engage with eating disorder organisations/services in the community that provide information, advocacy, guidance and support, serving as the gateway to local knowledges such as consumer demographic data and feedback. rich information (data) that may be created and captured at the community level could be (a) linked with state-level, national and international data to build an evidence base; (b) inform the development and delivery of future innovations; (c) support funding applications; and importantly (d) identify and address areas of community need, such as marginalised/under-serviced communities (clark et al. 2023; national eating disorders collaboration 2023). this holds implications for individual consumers, families and communities, and the broader healthcare system (kaufman et al. 2020). in community eating disorder settings, lived experience and peer work is increasingly becoming a central facet of organisational delivery, in that programs/services are co-designed and delivered by lived experience peers (eating disorders victoria 2023; utpala et al. 2023). this spurs innovation, such as early intervention and peer-based supports outside of clinical and research settings. r&e practices are integral to demonstrate the effectiveness, efficiency, value and merit of such programs/services, and in translating them across settings to support others. yet in the context of under-resourcing, requisite r&e cultures, capacity and capability within eating disorder community services remain limited, as do connections with research settings in leveraging these important data. uplifting r&e in community services has been recommended by two ten-year national eating disorder strategies (insideout institute 2021; national eating disorders collaboration 2023). establishing pathways verma et al. 2 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 2024 between community services and research settings through academic partnership could be a promising way of enabling knowledge-sharing and learning and building organisational r&e capability (farmer & weston 2002; golenko et al. 2012). community-based research is a form of participatory action research (minkler & wallerstein 2008) which involves partnerships between researchers and community stakeholders to collaboratively identify and find ways of addressing issues faced by the community itself (wallerstein and duran 2006). by attempting to de-centre research ownership through democratic processes, community partners take an active role in decision-making and engaging in research practice alongside research partners, with both sides sharing their unique skills, knowledge and expertise to learn and mutually benefit from one another to bring about social change (israel et al. 2018; jull et al. 2017; wilson 2019). community-academic partnerships have been described previously (e.g., april et al. 2023; morton et al. 2014), and guidelines on sharing power, enhancing equity and enabling systemic change are available (sadler et al. 2012). engaging in community-based r&e seems particularly relevant for largely consumer-based or livedexperience-led organisations because service providers often belong to the community they serve. this can facilitate decision-making and promote advocacy efforts (reed 2015), lead to better understandings and recommendations (guijt 2014), and ultimately promote community ownership of research/evaluative processes and outcomes (april et al. 2023; israel et al. 2012). additionally, as financial resources to support external evaluation can often be limited within community services, strengthening the capability and capacity of service providers to systematically collect and monitor consumer information, and to evaluate, learn from and shape their own service delivery,may represent a more sustainable and cost-effective way of engaging in r&e. here, as research and community partners, we specifically aim to place community-engaged r&e in an eating disorder context. to do so, we present a pragmatic methodological plan to collaboratively build and integrate r&e practices through a community-academic partnership into a real-world community eating disorder organisation with limited existing infrastructure. at the same time, we will provide a plan to identify the needs, enablers, challenges and opportunities of engaging in r&e to inform sustainable practices into the future. in documenting the plan, processes, experiences and learnings of the partnership and r&e building, we offer a guide to service providers, researchers, policymakers and other relevant stakeholders. this aims to enhance r&e cultures, capability and capacity at the community level to facilitate greater knowledge sharing, empowerment and innovation within, across, and beyond the eating disorder sector. context overview of eating disorders eating disorders are encompassing in that they impact a person’s emotional, mental, physical and social wellbeing (berkman et al. 2007; miskovic-wheatley et al. 2023). they are systemic in that they impact upon others, such as caregivers and families (fletcher et al. 2021; karlstad et al. 2022). while evidence-based treatments exist, cost, stigma and shame, lack of access to and accessibility of care and limited knowledge may delay people seeking and receiving timely help (hamilton et al. 2022; regan et al. 2017), reflecting key issues in the current healthcare climate for people affected by eating disorders and those who support them. current project this project is part of a larger, multi-year research project to leverage multidisciplinary eating disorder research across australia (‘mainstream’; www.mainstreamresearch.org.au/), which was funded by the national health and medical research council’s medical research future fund million minds mission verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20243 http://www.mainstreamresearch.org.au/ grant (app1178922). this project also funded a full-time post-doctoral researcher, to be based ‘on the ground’ at edv, as a primary research partner, who is also part of a larger academic team at the insideout institute for eating disorders, which is affiliated with the university of sydney and sydney local health district. other researcher partners include the academic co-authors of the current article, and other researchers affiliated with the insideout institute who may provide research-related support and guidance. recruitment of community partners began in august 2023; the project end date is expected to be mid-2024. community service setting community eating disorder organisations provide opportunities for community members to engage in support prior to, in tandem with, and/or beyond tertiary healthcare settings, given that treatment of an eating disorder can be arduous and challenging (conti et al. 2021; mcardle 2019; solhaug storli & alsaker 2021). eating disorders victoria (edv) is an australian community-based not-for-profit organisation that provides advocacy and support for people experiencing or caring for someone with an eating disorder. support is available broadly through telehealth counselling and nursing, various support groups and programs, comprehensive e-learning courses, resources and linkage to external services. peer-based supports, normally developed within community services like edv, represent innovative pathways to enhance people’s wellbeing and recovery (lewis & foye 2021) and have been strongly recommended within general mental health settings and specifically within the eating disorders context (commonwealth of australia 2013; national eating disorders collaboration 2023; state of victoria 2023). in this way, community services present novel and unique opportunities to facilitate connections between community members and lived experience peers, alongside and beyond traditional eating disorder treatment, in efforts to validate people’s experiences and further support their mental health, wellbeing and recovery (national eating disorders collaboration 2019; state of victoria 2023). the carer coaching program the carer coaching program is an eight-week, peer-led early intervention support program offered at edv for caregivers of a young person diagnosed with a restrictive eating disorder (i.e. anorexia nervosa, atypical anorexia, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder) and currently on a waitlist to commence formal treatment. the program was co-designed in early 2020 by a group of lived experience carer consultants and edv service providers in response to long waitlists to access treatment services during the covid-19 pandemic. people with lived experience of caring for a young person with an eating disorder were responsible for developing most of the program content. two of them had expertise in program design and clinical governance. program content then underwent a review process with senior managers within the organisation prior to delivery. the program is facilitated by lived experience peer workers (‘carer coaches’). key components of the carer coaching program include peer-based support, psychoeducation around eating disorders and evidence-based treatments, basic meal support (not dietary advice), emotional regulation strategies, self-care and managing fatigue, and provision of appropriate resources. these components draw on prior interventions by carers of young people with an eating disorder, including peerled (e.g., grennan et al. 2022), clinician-led (e.g., gisladottir et al. 2017; kurnik mesarič et al. 2024) and self-directed (truttmann et al. 2020) interventions. while carer coaches undertake regular professional development training, it is made clear to program participants that they offer peer based guidance and support, not clinical perspectives. content is flexibly delivered in a personalised manner to address unique support needs of program participants. while session-by-session outlines exist, these serve as general practices; in practice, the order of session delivery may change in order to deliver more pertinent information sooner. this type of flexible, tailored delivery verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20244 is common across edv’s programs and services promoting personalised care. all sessions are delivered remotely via zoom software. following sessions, carer coaches send follow-up emails to program participants with a summary of the key points and materials used in the sessions, as well as any relevant additional resources (e.g. handouts, websites). carer coaches engage in monthly supervision with a manager, who is also a mental health clinician, in addition to ad hoc consultation when additional needs emerge. they also attend weekly multidisciplinary team meetings and regular lived experience group supervision. collectively, supervision and consultations provide opportunities to discuss the suitability of participation, risk and ethical practice management, plan sessions and discuss challenging cases, engage in reflective practice and to receive emotional support. methods community-academic partnership a community-academic partnership will be established and maintained across multiple and varied points of engagement over approximately 12 months to jointly co-plan, co-design, implement, monitor and evaluate r&e practices of the carer coaching program. as the primary research partner, co-author verma will contribute her professional expertise by sharing her knowledge of ethical, practical and methodological considerations around r&e. those employed within a directorial, managerial or service provision role within edv and have close involvement with the carer coaching program will be invited to take part, read an explanatory statement and provide informed consent (see appendices 1 and 2). as community partners, service providers will be invited to contribute their expertise and unique local knowledge of community needs, and personal, organisational and contextual factors, which may include prior r&e knowledge. community partners will also be encouraged to take an active role in developing and undertaking research evaluation practices. this may include sharing ideas, engaging in decision-making during meetings with the primary research partner and engaging in the development and review of emerging r&e processes and materials. appendix 3 lists anticipated roles and responsibilities of partners. design this project adopts a longitudinal community-based participatory framework. to assist with engaging in interactive and iterative co-design processes with community partners, we will be guided by existing community-engaged r&e methodologies and guidelines (e.g., april et al. 2023; banks et al. 2013; israel et al. 2012; jull et al. 2017; kaufman et al. 2020; reed 2015; sadler et al. 2012). additionally, we use frameworks from the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc, 1999) and the new south wales treasury (nsw, 2013), which collectively outline the steps, standards and principles of effective evaluation practice. community partners are not reimbursed as engagement occurs during their normal working hours. data collection data is collected via mixed methods, including meetings, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, researcher notes and tracking sheets. researcher notes include information such as points of engagement with community partners, methodological discussion points and outcomes, a reflexive log of personal reflections and insights, and any potentially impactful events (lincoln & guba 1985). reflexive journaling is designed to facilitate greater researcher insights and understandings ( janesick 1999), and will give research partner(s) the ability to document needs, barriers and enablers throughout the project. community partners will also complete questionnaires, which are discussed in detail below. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20245 positionality as co-authors, our ontological (i.e. social constructionist, participatory) and related epistemological orientations will inevitably impact project design and arising interpretations because constructionism is an interpretivist ontological paradigm in which realities are intersubjective and relative, and are co-constructed through dynamic social processes (berger & luckmann 1967; merriam & brockett 2007). as overton (2017; p. 1209) puts it, through a social constructionist lens, ‘we come to know what is real through our shared interaction with the environment and the others who share that environment with us, at different moments in our time’. all co-authors have previously engaged in co-design within community-based settings: six of us hold doctoral-level qualifications, five of us identify as holding lived experience of an eating disorder or caring for someone with one, three of us identify as coming from non-white backgrounds, three of us are early-career researchers, four of us are psychologists, and two of us identify as being queer. community-based participatory research seems imbued with constructivist beliefs in which knowledge and meaning are co-created through collaborative and social processes (peralta & murphy 2016), highlighting the role of power in study design and decision-making (corrigan & oppenheim 2023). to encourage awareness of how unique backgrounds, biases and assumptions may impact project processes and outcomes, we prioritise reflexive practices, such as engaging in reflexive journaling and supervision (banks et al. 2013). procedure our project will unfold over four stages (see figure 1). each stage includes its own meeting guide and questionnaire to assess individual, interpersonal, community, organisational and systemic factors impacting stage 1: exploring & preparing explore the needs and capacity for engaging in research and evaluation within a comunity eating disorders organisation stage 2: co-designing co-design research and evaluation practices and materials through community-academic partnership focusing on an existing peer-led program stage 3: implementing & monitoring implement co-designed practices into service delivery and monitor process stage 4: reflecting & sharing share the process, learnings, and outcomes of engaging in research and evaluation through community-academic partnership figure 1. project stages to build and integrate research and evaluation within a community-based eating disorder setting through academic partnership verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20246 r&e (see appendices). community partners will be invited to attend all meetings throughout the project period, which will be facilitated by the primary research partner. the duration of each meeting will be 90 minutes unless otherwise noted and may be undertaken either in person at the edv office or via videoconferencing. stage 1: exploration of research and evaluation needs and capacity, and preparing for co-design during stage 1, community and research partners will engage in an initial meeting to identify the needs, capacity, capabilities, motivation, expected outcomes and other enablers/challenges of undertaking and implementing r&e within service delivery (see appendix 4). community partners will complete a questionnaire involving quantitative ratings and qualitative questions around r&e capacity, capability and building for example, ‘do you see any benefits or advantages of doing research and program evaluation?’ and ‘what are your thoughts on collaborating with a researcher in designing and undertaking research and program evaluation?’ (see appendix 5). stage 2: collaborative development of research and evaluation practices and materials building on responses gained during stage 1, r&e practices and materials for the carer coaching program will be co-designed in stage 2 via shared decision-making through meetings and iterative reviews by community and research partners (see appendices 6 and 7). the purpose of this stage is two-fold (a) to build knowledge and skills around r&e among community partners through knowledge-sharing (e.g. ethical considerations such as informed consent, steps involved in program evaluation, gathering/analysing data via mixed methods); and (b) to collaboratively develop r&e practices and materials to be integrated into service delivery. we will follow the nsw treasury’s (2013) r&e guidelines, making adaptations to available templates (see appendix 6 for developed templates). this will include developing a program logic, identifying evaluation questions, developing r&e materials and ascertaining staff responsibilities. prior to implementation, community partners will complete a questionnaire assessing their experiences of co-designing r&e practices (e.g. ‘overall, how have you found the co-design process of working with others in your team at edv and a researcher in developing a plan to integrate research and evaluation for the carer coaching program?’ see appendix 8). stage 3: implementation and monitoring of co-designed research and evaluation practices during stage 3, community partners will implement co-designed r&e practices into service delivery. monthly meetings will be held, offering opportunities for community and research partners to share experiences and learnings, reflect on the partnership, and discuss impacts, challenges, and any adaptations made to r&e practices (see appendix 9). community partners will additionally complete questionnaires assessing implementation and feasibility issues. ‘have there been any factors that you think may have influenced (positively or negatively) your or your team’s engagement with research and evaluation of the carer coaching program?’; see appendix 10). stage 4: sharing the learnings of co-designing and engaging in research and evaluation in stage 4, community and research partners will identify and reflect on the learnings arising from the project. an evaluation meeting will be held with service providers to provide the opportunity to discuss experiences, perceptions and feasibility/sustainability of integrating research and evaluation into service delivery (see appendix 11). community partners will also complete an evaluation questionnaire (appendix 12). we aim to share our experiences and learnings through academic publications, presentations, conferences and newsletters. data analysis to describe the process and outcomes of the project, selected feasibility and implementation constructs will be assessed, such as acceptability, demand, implementation, practicality and integration (bowen et al. 2009; verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20247 pearson et al. 2020). data will be analysed using mixed methods, including thematic analysis of meetings/ semi-structured interview transcripts, and triangulated with open-ended questionnaire responses and with quantitative data. meetings/semi-structured interviews will be audio-recorded through the university of sydney’s zoom and will be later deidentified. transcripts will be auto-generated through zoom artificial intelligence software and manually verified for accuracy by co-authors. thematic analysis is a qualitative method for identifying, analysing, organising, describing and reporting themes found within a dataset (braun & clarke 2006). it offers a highly flexible approach, providing a rich, yet complex, account of data. this method is intended to yield themes that will provide a more detailed analysis through a combination of inductive and deductive approaches to coding those themes. analysis will be guided by the six-step thematic analysis framework outlined by braun and clarke (2006) which are: (1) familiarising with the data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes and (6) producing the report. while theme saturation may be used by examining repeating emergent themes (see fusch & ness 2015), we recognise the limitations of this method, particularly when undertaking reflexive thematic analysis (braun & clarke 2021). adverse events community partners will be asked to communicate any adverse events they may experience to the primary research partner. participants of the carer coaching program will be asked to communicate any adverse events to the carer coaches, where they will be managed according to existing organisational protocols. any adverse events will be reported to the university of sydney human research ethics committee. data storage and management all data will be password protected and securely stored by co-author verma and relevant co-investigators on the university of sydney’s onedrive for five years and will thereafter be destroyed. a spreadsheet containing participants’ personal details will be stored separately from questionnaire responses. questionnaires will be linked across time using a personalised alphanumeric code assigned by the primary research partner. interim data will only be accessible by researchers involved in data collection and analysis. the university of sydney has a licence to use qualtrics, a secure online platform, which will provide a basis for release of the explanatory statement, consent form and questionnaires to community partners. discussion this article describes community-based participatory protocol to collaboratively plan for and attempt to build and pilot r&e practices within an australian community-based eating disorder service through a partnership between service providers and academic researchers. this pragmatic approach jointly aims to address the need for greater r&e within the eating disorder sector, particularly at the community level, while simultaneously identifying features which may assist with facilitating a widespread ecosystem of sustainable, reflexive and equitable r&e practices across the sector into the future. community services are a vital source of local knowledge and innovation, yet under-resourcing of r&e activities hinders much needed cross-sectoral translation, policy change and advancement in care. uplifting r&e at the community level holds several important implications for communities, organisations and systems. first, creating feedback opportunities will help to give voice to those who engage with services to shape organisational policies and procedures, and improve service delivery. second, establishing routine data collection practices will help us to identify and better understand more diverse eating disorder experiences and recovery trajectories in the community. third, this process may help inform engagement strategies with marginalised and under-supported groups, particularly first nations peoples and those from diverse verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20248 cultural, sexual and gender non-conforming backgrounds, as well as those who identify as men (national eating disorders collaboration 2023; state of victoria 2023). fourth, evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of programs/services will inform funding, scalability and the translation of offerings across services and beyond them to better support community member needs. importantly, due to limited resources, our project was restricted by minimal involvement of external lived experience advisers who were unaffiliated with edv, as well as a relatively short (12-month) project period. while recent research has outlined adaptations for shorter-term community-academic partnerships (radonic et al. 2023), future projects should prioritise engagement of diverse lived experience perspectives to promote greater equity, community ownership and responsivity. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first article to outline a plan to connect service providers and academic researchers in an attempt to build r&e within a community eating disorder setting. through community-engaged methodology, we aim to uplift community service providers to be able to systematically capture, leverage and share data created on the ground through a bottom-up, community-centric approach, while offering research-specific guidance and capabilities. by longitudinally studying the real-time processes and outcomes of partnering to establish and embed r&e praxis within service delivery, we hope that rising insights and learnings will help guide and shape future efforts to feasibly build equitable, reflexive and responsive r&e practices and systems. this will ultimately have implications for enhancing policy, advocacy, prevention and care frameworks to better support people affected by eating disorders and improve the systems around them. concluding thoughts the preparation and publication of protocols involving pragmatic research methodology like ours presents several benefits. by nature, protocols outline intended processes to achieve certain outcomes based on theoretical underpinnings and decisions made by authoring teams. the early stages of a project’s lifespan offer important knowledge and insights, such as how decisions are made and by whom, and the surrounding contexts which influence how projects are designed, undertaken and arising knowledges ultimately shared. in writing protocols, authors may gain more clarity around project intentions, processes, gaps and limitations to ultimately strengthen research rigour. they may regularly revisit and reflect on their original plan during and following projects to scaffold insights around what worked, what didn’t, what was learned and what could be changed. this can inform recommendations and advance future research efforts. in tandem, readers may benefit by having access to diverse ways of thinking, resources and structured methodological guidance to spur and enhance their own thinking, processes and recommendations. this specifically addresses the need for greater methodological guidance in undertaking co-design processes in the context of academic partnerships (benz et al. 2024). additionally, this could be particularly helpful for early career researchers who may often find themselves within community-based, not-for-profit contexts with limited supports. finally, avenues to share pragmatic protocols of community-based research such through open access journals are essential to allow translation of these important knowledges and improve how research is undertaken in the future. this is central to building an ecosystem of accountable, transparent and equitable research praxis, and is only possible by those within the academic community who value, prioritise and continually advocate for greater access and equity. acknowledgements the authors like to acknowledge the aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land upon which this work is being undertaken and wish to pay their respects to elders verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 20249 past and present. sovereignty was never ceded. the authors wish to extend their thanks to: dr lauren bruce, dr charlotte young, dr gai moore, a/prof yvette miller, ms jess tone, dr sabina vatter, dr shu hwa ong, dr frank muscara, dr melinda mcpherson, ms rachel knight, prof steven allender and prof helen skouteris for their ideas and suggestions in shaping the current project. there is no off-label or investigational use in this study. references ágh, t., kovács, g., supina, d., pawaskar, m., herman, b. k., vokó, z. & sheehan, d. v. 2016. a 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(ed.) handbook of research methods in health social sciences. singapore: springer singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-52514_87 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202413 https://doi.org/10.4995/head17.2017.5557 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-020-00634-w https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-020-00634-w https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2016.2526 https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211029477 https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211029477 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v8i1.4105 https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.22683 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-00621-w https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2012.0053 https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2012.0053 https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2021.1983948 https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9061912 https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9061912 https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_87 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_87 table of contents – appendices appendix name of document appendix 1 explanatory statement – community partners appendix 2 consent form – community partners appendix 3 roles and responsibilities – community and research partners appendix 4 stage 1 meeting guide appendix 5 stage 1 questionnaire appendix 6 stage 2 meeting guide – 1 appendix 7 stage 2 meeting guide – 2 appendix 8 stage 2 questionnaire appendix 9 stage 3 meeting guide appendix 10 stage 3 questionnaires appendix 11 stage 4 meeting guide appendix 12 stage 4 questionnaire verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202414 table of contents – appendices appendix name of document appendix 1 explanatory statement – community partners appendix 2 consent form – community partners appendix 3 roles and responsibilities – community and research partners appendix 4 stage 1 meeting guide appendix 5 stage 1 questionnaire appendix 6 stage 2 meeting guide – 1 appendix 7 stage 2 meeting guide – 2 appendix 8 stage 2 questionnaire appendix 9 stage 3 meeting guide appendix 10 stage 3 questionnaires appendix 11 stage 4 meeting guide appendix 12 stage 4 questionnaire appendix 1 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202415 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202416 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202417 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202418 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202419 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202420 appendix 2 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202421 consent form – service providers version 2, aug 2023 hrec approval no.: 2023/477 page 2 of 2 researchers: dr sumedha verma dr jane miskovic-wheatley ms belinda caldwell a/prof sarah maguire dr phillip aouad dr morgan sidari verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202422 consent form – service providers version 2, aug 2023 hrec approval no.: 2023/477 page 2 of 2 researchers: dr sumedha verma dr jane miskovic-wheatley ms belinda caldwell a/prof sarah maguire dr phillip aouad dr morgan sidari appendix 3 anticipated roles and responsibilities of research and community partners research partner(s)  arrange and facilitate co-design meetings, keep meeting notes  contribute knowledge of research and evaluative practices in efforts to build service providers’ capacity and capability  share decision-making with service providers around research and evaluative practices  transcribe and analyse data arising from meetings, questionnaires, notes, tracking sheet  assist with preparing consent forms for program-participants (of the carer coaching program)  share knowledge around program logic modelling, mixed methods research and evaluation  provide ad hoc support (e.g. documentation, making sense of findings) to service providers during implementation of research and evaluative practices community partners (service providers):  contribute unique knowledge of personal, community-level, organisational and contextual factors impacting research and evaluation  share decision-making with research partner(s) around research and evaluative practices  complete questionnaires of experiences in engaging in research and evaluation  screen program participants for suitability and confirm consent  engage in research and evaluative practices as planned (e.g. provision of questionnaires, and monitoring enrolments)  engage in analysis of consumer data with support from research partner(s) verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202423 appendix 4 stage 1 meeting guide construct thank you everyone for joining today. as you know, we’ll be working together over the next couple of months. the aim of our work together is really to get a sense of what you find important and meaningful in your work, and to draw on your knowledge, experience and strengths to support you in doing what you do so you can do more of it, and so that other people can learn from this. we’ll talk more about this a bit later but this is essentially what evaluation is about. my job is to guide our discussion today, it will be quite interactive and everyone’s perspectives are valued. it’s important to know that today isn’t about judging but learning. we all bring knowledge, skills and experience. you’ll share your learnings of working on the ground from a community perspective, and i’ll bring my background and learnings from a research perspective so we can work together to make change. i’ll keep an eye on time so you don’t have to. we’ll go for about an hour and a half. 1. what are you passionate about in the work you do? what about your work gives you meaning? 2. build from responses to above. how do you know whether you’re doing this well? how do you learn to do it better and how do you share this knowledge?  sumedha to chat about ‘research’ and ‘evaluation’. evaluation is about finding out is what we planned to do working or helping, how well is it going and reflecting on what we could be doing more of to help change what we do to make it better. so, in a nutshell, it’s about capturing, reflecting, learning from and changing how we do things to improve them over time. over time. you might have of heard of it as part of “quality improvement”. when we talk about research, we’re talking about sharing our knowledge and learnings from our evaluation with other people on a larger scale so that they can learn from our experiences to ultimately help more people, like a ripple effect. your contribution is your knowledge, your understanding of the community and the work you do. so as someone with a research background, my job is to learn from you about what you you’re trying to do and help you frame this knowledge so we can share it with others and so it has more impact. acceptability demand practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202424 appendix 4 stage 1 meeting guide construct thank you everyone for joining today. as you know, we’ll be working together over the next couple of months. the aim of our work together is really to get a sense of what you find important and meaningful in your work, and to draw on your knowledge, experience and strengths to support you in doing what you do so you can do more of it, and so that other people can learn from this. we’ll talk more about this a bit later but this is essentially what evaluation is about. my job is to guide our discussion today, it will be quite interactive and everyone’s perspectives are valued. it’s important to know that today isn’t about judging but learning. we all bring knowledge, skills and experience. you’ll share your learnings of working on the ground from a community perspective, and i’ll bring my background and learnings from a research perspective so we can work together to make change. i’ll keep an eye on time so you don’t have to. we’ll go for about an hour and a half. 1. what are you passionate about in the work you do? what about your work gives you meaning? 2. build from responses to above. how do you know whether you’re doing this well? how do you learn to do it better and how do you share this knowledge?  sumedha to chat about ‘research’ and ‘evaluation’. evaluation is about finding out is what we planned to do working or helping, how well is it going and reflecting on what we could be doing more of to help change what we do to make it better. so, in a nutshell, it’s about capturing, reflecting, learning from and changing how we do things to improve them over time. over time. you might have of heard of it as part of “quality improvement”. when we talk about research, we’re talking about sharing our knowledge and learnings from our evaluation with other people on a larger scale so that they can learn from our experiences to ultimately help more people, like a ripple effect. your contribution is your knowledge, your understanding of the community and the work you do. so as someone with a research background, my job is to learn from you about what you you’re trying to do and help you frame this knowledge so we can share it with others and so it has more impact. acceptability demand practicality 3. what might be some motivators for doing research and evaluation? how might it help? thinking about your work, your team, edv, the community you work with, the sector, society more broadly. 4. are there any de-motivators or things that might make research and evaluation challenging? thinking about personal, organisational, policy and social factors both within and outside of edv. 5. how do you see any challenges being addressed? what might need to happen? 6. what do you think you need, or that you might need to learn to be able to evaluate your programs or do more of it? prompt: what might you need to increase skills and knowledge around research and evaluation? supports, training, internal researcher, academic linkage? 7. have you had any past experiences with research and evaluation? how can learn from this to help you feel more engaged in this process? 8. finally, is there anything more you’d like to share? verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202425 appendix 5 stage 1 questionnaire (service providers) [questions 6–16: free-text response; questions 17 & 18 multiple choice.] construct thank you for completing this questionnaire. your responses are deeply valued so please be as open and honest as you can be. please enter your unique id (please contact sumedha if you are unsure): ______ 1. how long (months, years) have you been employed at edv? 2. do you identify as holding lived experience? o yes – as a carer of someone with an eating disorder o yes – as someone with a personal history of an eating disorder o no o i’d prefer not to answer 3. how do you identify your gender? _________ 4. have you had any experience undertaking research? o yes o no o not sure 5. have you had any experience undertaking program evaluation? o yes o no o not sure the following questions are open-ended to give you the chance to respond freely. this is an opportunity for you to share your perspectives, knowledge and experiences. 6. what aspects of your work role do you find meaningful? 7. do you see any ways that evaluation and research may align with or enhance the parts of your work that you are passionate about? feasibility 8. do you see any benefits or advantages of doing research and program evaluation? if so, please describe them. you might like to think about for yourself professionally, your team, edv, the community you work with, the sector and broader society. acceptability expansion practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202426 appendix 5 stage 1 questionnaire (service providers) [questions 6–16: free-text response; questions 17 & 18 multiple choice.] construct thank you for completing this questionnaire. your responses are deeply valued so please be as open and honest as you can be. please enter your unique id (please contact sumedha if you are unsure): ______ 1. how long (months, years) have you been employed at edv? 2. do you identify as holding lived experience? o yes – as a carer of someone with an eating disorder o yes – as someone with a personal history of an eating disorder o no o i’d prefer not to answer 3. how do you identify your gender? _________ 4. have you had any experience undertaking research? o yes o no o not sure 5. have you had any experience undertaking program evaluation? o yes o no o not sure the following questions are open-ended to give you the chance to respond freely. this is an opportunity for you to share your perspectives, knowledge and experiences. 6. what aspects of your work role do you find meaningful? 7. do you see any ways that evaluation and research may align with or enhance the parts of your work that you are passionate about? feasibility 8. do you see any benefits or advantages of doing research and program evaluation? if so, please describe them. you might like to think about for yourself professionally, your team, edv, the community you work with, the sector and broader society. acceptability expansion practicality 9. at the moment, how do you feel about doing research and program evaluation? acceptability self-efficacy 10. how do you see the findings of research and program evaluation (e.g., evaluation findings from the carer coaching program) being used? who might this affect? you might like to think about yourself, your team, edv, the community, the sector or broader society. integration practicality 11. what do you think might help you/your team better integrate research and program evaluation? you might like to think about what might be needed, or what might need to happen to feel more capable and willing to engage. what might this look like practically e.g., time, money, training staff in research and program evaluation, employing an internal researcher, partnerships with external researchers. integration acceptability practicality integration expansion 12. do you see any issues or challenges in integrating research and evaluation at edv? if yes, please describe them. you might like to think about yourself, your team, edv and factors outside of edv. integration acceptability practicality integration expansion 13. could you please describe any past experiences you have had with research and program evaluation? if you haven't had any, please indicate 'none'. if you have had past experiences, have there been any learnings or take-aways? self-efficacy 14. if you identified any issues or challenges, are there any ways (if any) that you think these could be addressed? practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202427 15. please comment on the costs and benefits of engaging in research and evaluation specifically for the carer coaching program. are costs internal or external to edv, or both? practicality expansion 16. what are your thoughts on collaborating with a researcher in designing and undertaking research and program evaluation? what is important to consider to feel more engaged in this process? acceptability practicality 17. for the following questions, please rate either: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree) to 5 (strongly agree): a. i think it is important to evaluate our programs and services at edv b. i think there is a need for our programs and services to be evaluated c. i believe that the culture at edv values research and program evaluation d. i believe that undertaking research and program evaluation would align with edv’s goals and values e. i believe edv has the capacity to integrate research and program evaluation for its programs/services f. i think engaging in research and program evaluation will cost edv money g. i believe the benefits will outweigh the costs of integrating research and program evaluation practices at edv h. i have enough skills to undertake research and program evaluation i. i feel confident in undertaking research and evaluation j. i have good knowledge about what research and program evaluation involves k. i feel motivated to build my knowledge and skills around research and program evaluation l. i think it is important for me/my team to collaborate with a researcher in undertaking research and evaluation m. i believe partnering with a researcher will build my skills and knowledge around research and evaluation n. i feel willing to collaborate with my team and a researcher in codesigning research and evaluation o. i believe collaborating with a researcher will ultimately help me in my work role demand practicality context integration self-efficacy acceptability verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202428 15. please comment on the costs and benefits of engaging in research and evaluation specifically for the carer coaching program. are costs internal or external to edv, or both? practicality expansion 16. what are your thoughts on collaborating with a researcher in designing and undertaking research and program evaluation? what is important to consider to feel more engaged in this process? acceptability practicality 17. for the following questions, please rate either: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree) to 5 (strongly agree): a. i think it is important to evaluate our programs and services at edv b. i think there is a need for our programs and services to be evaluated c. i believe that the culture at edv values research and program evaluation d. i believe that undertaking research and program evaluation would align with edv’s goals and values e. i believe edv has the capacity to integrate research and program evaluation for its programs/services f. i think engaging in research and program evaluation will cost edv money g. i believe the benefits will outweigh the costs of integrating research and program evaluation practices at edv h. i have enough skills to undertake research and program evaluation i. i feel confident in undertaking research and evaluation j. i have good knowledge about what research and program evaluation involves k. i feel motivated to build my knowledge and skills around research and program evaluation l. i think it is important for me/my team to collaborate with a researcher in undertaking research and evaluation m. i believe partnering with a researcher will build my skills and knowledge around research and evaluation n. i feel willing to collaborate with my team and a researcher in codesigning research and evaluation o. i believe collaborating with a researcher will ultimately help me in my work role demand practicality context integration self-efficacy acceptability 18. the following questions relate to the carer coaching program. please rate from: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree) to 5 (strongly agree): a. i think it is important to evaluate the carer coaching program b. evaluating the carer coaching program will be beneficial for the community i work with c. evaluating the carer coaching program will be beneficial for me (e.g., my work role, personally) d. evaluating the carer coaching program will be beneficial for edv generally e. i feel motivated to integrate research and evaluation for the carer coaching program practicality integration acceptability please share any additional comments or points that you might have, including things that might not have been covered in our meeting. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202429 appendix 6 stage 2 meeting 1 guide feasibility construct provide recap of previous meeting and key take-aways. today will be our first of two planning meetings and we will talk about why we’re doing the evaluation, who it’ll be for, what information we’ll need to find out and where we’ll get this from, as well as how we’ll know whether we’re achieving our goals. in developing an evaluation plan, we’ll do something called a “program logic”. program logics are often done in program planning but can be really helpful at any stage and can help in planning an evaluation. i will send you a summary of discussion points via email. [ask people to briefly share their reflections/after thoughts from meeting 1] 1. what would you like the evaluation of the carer coaching program to ultimately do? what is the purpose? 2. who will the evaluation findings be for? who might this impact? thinking about yourself, your team, others at edv, the sector, community members, policy makers, funders. 3. what are the questions you/they would like to have answered? what will you/they want to know? these will represent our evaluation questions. prompt: process, outcome questions. 4. what information/data is needed to answer the evaluation questions? what will be realistic and feasible? we will discuss this further in our next meeting. 5. so now we’ve talked about what questions people will need, let’s now talk about how we’ll organise our thoughts to prepare this case or argument. a program logic model is framework that describes how a program tries to address a problem. it looks at what the issue is, how we try to address it and what we need to support us in doing this. [researcher to provide service providers with program logic handout] a) what problem does the carer coaching program try to address? b) what does the program try to achieve or change (i.e., what are the outcomes)? prompt: for example, increasing knowledge of eating disorders in carers/increasing motivation so they are more inclined to engage in treatment and ultimately enhance care for young people with eating disorders. acceptability practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202430 appendix 6 stage 2 meeting 1 guide feasibility construct provide recap of previous meeting and key take-aways. today will be our first of two planning meetings and we will talk about why we’re doing the evaluation, who it’ll be for, what information we’ll need to find out and where we’ll get this from, as well as how we’ll know whether we’re achieving our goals. in developing an evaluation plan, we’ll do something called a “program logic”. program logics are often done in program planning but can be really helpful at any stage and can help in planning an evaluation. i will send you a summary of discussion points via email. [ask people to briefly share their reflections/after thoughts from meeting 1] 1. what would you like the evaluation of the carer coaching program to ultimately do? what is the purpose? 2. who will the evaluation findings be for? who might this impact? thinking about yourself, your team, others at edv, the sector, community members, policy makers, funders. 3. what are the questions you/they would like to have answered? what will you/they want to know? these will represent our evaluation questions. prompt: process, outcome questions. 4. what information/data is needed to answer the evaluation questions? what will be realistic and feasible? we will discuss this further in our next meeting. 5. so now we’ve talked about what questions people will need, let’s now talk about how we’ll organise our thoughts to prepare this case or argument. a program logic model is framework that describes how a program tries to address a problem. it looks at what the issue is, how we try to address it and what we need to support us in doing this. [researcher to provide service providers with program logic handout] a) what problem does the carer coaching program try to address? b) what does the program try to achieve or change (i.e., what are the outcomes)? prompt: for example, increasing knowledge of eating disorders in carers/increasing motivation so they are more inclined to engage in treatment and ultimately enhance care for young people with eating disorders. acceptability practicality c) how does it try to change this? activities/outputs. d) what is needed to achieve the outcomes (e.g., resources)? inputs. 6. what does program “success” look like? how will you know you have achieved it? what data that can tell you that? 7. what do you want to see at the end of this process and why? prompt: for example, a report, publication? ask about the long-term vision for evaluating the carer coaching program. 8. is there anything you would like to add or share? following the end of the meeting, sumedha to circulate services providers summary of discussion topics. draft evaluation plan – edv carer coaching program why are we evaluating it? who are these findings for? how will they be used? key evaluation questions: what information is important to collect? verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202431 meeting 3: how will we make sense of the findings? meeting 3: how will we share the findings? meeting 3: what are the challenges or risks and how might these be managed: program logic: what is the problem the carer coaching program tries to address? inputs what resources are needed to do the activities? activities what activities need to be undertaken to deliver the outputs? outputs what products and services need to be delivered to achieve the outcomes? outcomes what are the short/medium/long-term outcomes of the program? what are our indicators of program success? how do we know we’re doing this well? verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202432 meeting 3: how will we make sense of the findings? meeting 3: how will we share the findings? meeting 3: what are the challenges or risks and how might these be managed: program logic: what is the problem the carer coaching program tries to address? inputs what resources are needed to do the activities? activities what activities need to be undertaken to deliver the outputs? outputs what products and services need to be delivered to achieve the outcomes? outcomes what are the short/medium/long-term outcomes of the program? what are our indicators of program success? how do we know we’re doing this well? appendix 7 stage 2 meeting 2 guide feasibility construct in our last meeting, we talked about why the carer coaching program is important to evaluate, what it is trying to achieve, and identified key evaluation questions. today, we will talk about how we can go about evaluating it, including the practicalities and who will be involved. 1. firstly, does anyone have any questions or comments from our last meeting? [researcher to show program logic and evaluation questions] 2. in our last meeting, we identified key evaluation questions. we’ll now think about how to answer these, including what information would be needed and from where. a) shared decision-making around information/data type and source b) who will be responsible? what existing processes or resources can be leveraged? c) sense-making: how will you make sense of the findings? d) what resources might be needed? evaluation question information type and source e.g., questionnaires, administrative data, interviews responsibilities e.g., carer coaches, managers, research partner, ceo who will analyse the data? resources e.g., internal or external supports 3. how will you share findings? 4. we will now talk about relevant research processes. note: refer to additional notes below. a. gaining informed consent from participants. because this is part of a research project, it’s important that participants read about the program and provide informed consent to participate in acceptability implementation practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202433 research. show draft explanatory statement and consent form. what would be a good way of gaining informed consent from participants? b. changes to recruitment materials and registration. would the registration form need to be adapted to include details of the project? c. screening process. how could you go about discussing the research and evaluation of the program and what will be involved with participants? d. documenting participant uptake and changes to delivery. where will consumer data/information be stored and who will be responsible for managing this? 5. how might these processes be sustained beyond this project? what might be needed or need to happen? 6. do you see any things getting in the way of this plan? how might these be addressed? 7. is there anything you would like to add on further? following the end of the meeting, research partner to circulate to services providers for feedback/consensus:  purpose of research and evaluation  audience: stakeholders, beneficiaries  who will undertake evaluation  intended outcomes of carer coaching program  key evaluation questions  data/information needed and sources  resources needed to undertake the evaluation  processes in undertaking evaluation – what needs to happen, who will be responsible?  draft research materials – explanatory statement, consent form, any questionnaires additional script for researcher use only: informed consent procedure 1. it’s important people who are interested in the carer coaching program are aware of what the research involves, and willingly give their consent to taking part. in research we use an “explanatory statement” which includes details of why the research is being done, what’s involved in taking part and any risks. then, people complete a written consent form in which they agree to a number of statements. what could be a good way for people to access the explanatory statement and sign the consent form (e.g., online form, verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202434 research. show draft explanatory statement and consent form. what would be a good way of gaining informed consent from participants? b. changes to recruitment materials and registration. would the registration form need to be adapted to include details of the project? c. screening process. how could you go about discussing the research and evaluation of the program and what will be involved with participants? d. documenting participant uptake and changes to delivery. where will consumer data/information be stored and who will be responsible for managing this? 5. how might these processes be sustained beyond this project? what might be needed or need to happen? 6. do you see any things getting in the way of this plan? how might these be addressed? 7. is there anything you would like to add on further? following the end of the meeting, research partner to circulate to services providers for feedback/consensus:  purpose of research and evaluation  audience: stakeholders, beneficiaries  who will undertake evaluation  intended outcomes of carer coaching program  key evaluation questions  data/information needed and sources  resources needed to undertake the evaluation  processes in undertaking evaluation – what needs to happen, who will be responsible?  draft research materials – explanatory statement, consent form, any questionnaires additional script for researcher use only: informed consent procedure 1. it’s important people who are interested in the carer coaching program are aware of what the research involves, and willingly give their consent to taking part. in research we use an “explanatory statement” which includes details of why the research is being done, what’s involved in taking part and any risks. then, people complete a written consent form in which they agree to a number of statements. what could be a good way for people to access the explanatory statement and sign the consent form (e.g., online form, clarified in a phone call)? currently, there is an online sign-up page on the edv website. should we amend this and if so, what would we need to change? screening and documentation 2. how will you screen people who express interest in participating to confirm eligibility? currently, there are brief screening questions on the online sign-up page. who will be responsible for monitoring this? 3. what could be a good way to document outcomes of screening, and enrolments and withdrawals? who could be responsible for this? questionnaires: 4. what do you think would be a suitable duration and timeframe for project participants to complete questionnaires (e.g., 20 minutes within one week of being sent)? 5. what might be a good way of monitoring when to send these out and following up on incomplete responses? who would be best to manage this? documenting changes/adaptions: 6. changes and adaptations may be made throughout the project. a “change log” can be used to document these from both of our ends. how could we collaborate on this? verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202435 appendix 8 stage 2 questionnaire [questions 1-11 & 13: free text response; question 12: multiple choice]. construct 1. overall, how have you found the co-design process of working with others in your team/at edv and a researcher in developing a plan to integrate research and evaluation for the carer coaching program? you might like to think about how you found the planning meetings and iterative reviews of relevant documents. practicality 2. have there been any things that you think have been useful or gained through this co-design process? you might like to think about for yourself, your team, edv, the sector or community. practicality 3. have there been any internal/external factors or events that you believe have influenced the process of developing a research/evaluation plan? context 4. have there been any challenges you/your team have experienced in developing a research and evaluation plan? practicality 5. reflecting on the overall experience of developing a research and evaluation plan for the carer coaching program, what might be helpful to consider in planning to integrate research and program evaluation in the future at edv? are there any additional resources (internal/external) that would be needed? practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202436 appendix 8 stage 2 questionnaire [questions 1-11 & 13: free text response; question 12: multiple choice]. construct 1. overall, how have you found the co-design process of working with others in your team/at edv and a researcher in developing a plan to integrate research and evaluation for the carer coaching program? you might like to think about how you found the planning meetings and iterative reviews of relevant documents. practicality 2. have there been any things that you think have been useful or gained through this co-design process? you might like to think about for yourself, your team, edv, the sector or community. practicality 3. have there been any internal/external factors or events that you believe have influenced the process of developing a research/evaluation plan? context 4. have there been any challenges you/your team have experienced in developing a research and evaluation plan? practicality 5. reflecting on the overall experience of developing a research and evaluation plan for the carer coaching program, what might be helpful to consider in planning to integrate research and program evaluation in the future at edv? are there any additional resources (internal/external) that would be needed? practicality the following questions will ask you about the co-designed research and evaluation plan/processes for the carer coaching program. 6. are there any factors (internal/external) that you think might impact you/your team undertaking research and evaluation as planned? you might want to think about personal factors, organisational factors, contextual factors etc. practicality implementation 7. do you predict any issues or challenges in rolling out research and evaluation as planned for the carer coaching program? please comment. practicality integration 8. how sustainable do you think it’ll be for you/your team/edv to continue the developed plan/processes for the carer coaching program beyond the current project (e.g., after march 2024)? what might impact this? practicality 9. is there anything you would change about the developed research/evaluation plan or processes? if there is, please describe including why you would change this. adaptability 10. please comment on to what extent you believe that you/your team have the capability (e.g., skills, knowledge, experience) and capacity (time, resources) to carry out the research and evaluation practices for the carer coaching program as planned. practicality self-efficacy 11. have there been any costs of developing research and evaluation for the carer coaching program (e.g., financial costs, time)? please describe if so. practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202437 12. for the following questions, please rate either 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree), 6 (not applicable). a. i feel satisfied that the developed research/evaluation plan and processes for the carer coaching program will meet its goals acceptability practicality, self-efficacy context b. i think the developed research and program evaluation is practical and realistic for service providers c. i think it will be manageable to undertake the planned research and evaluation with my existing workload d. i think it will be feasible for consumers who undertake the carer coaching program to engage in the research and program evaluation as planned e. i feel likely to undertake research and evaluation as planned f. i think my team is likely to undertake research and evaluation as planned g. i think my team is motivated to undertake the research and evaluation procedures as planned h. i feel motivated to undertake the research and evaluation steps/procedures as planned i. i have enough skills to undertake research and program evaluation j. i feel confident in undertaking research and program evaluation k. i have good knowledge about what research and program evaluation involves l. i believe edv has the capacity to integrate research and program evaluation for its programs/services m. i believe that the culture at edv values research and program evaluation n. i believe the benefits outweigh the costs of undertaking research and program evaluation practices at edv o. i have felt engaged and involved in the process of co-designing research and evaluation for the carer coaching program p. i think it has been beneficial for me to engage in co-designing a research and evaluation plan and processes q. i think it has been beneficial for my team to engage in co-designing a research and evaluation plan and processes r. partnering with a researcher has built my skills and knowledge in research and program evaluation 13. please provide any further comments or feedback you would like to share. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202438 12. for the following questions, please rate either 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree), 6 (not applicable). a. i feel satisfied that the developed research/evaluation plan and processes for the carer coaching program will meet its goals acceptability practicality, self-efficacy context b. i think the developed research and program evaluation is practical and realistic for service providers c. i think it will be manageable to undertake the planned research and evaluation with my existing workload d. i think it will be feasible for consumers who undertake the carer coaching program to engage in the research and program evaluation as planned e. i feel likely to undertake research and evaluation as planned f. i think my team is likely to undertake research and evaluation as planned g. i think my team is motivated to undertake the research and evaluation procedures as planned h. i feel motivated to undertake the research and evaluation steps/procedures as planned i. i have enough skills to undertake research and program evaluation j. i feel confident in undertaking research and program evaluation k. i have good knowledge about what research and program evaluation involves l. i believe edv has the capacity to integrate research and program evaluation for its programs/services m. i believe that the culture at edv values research and program evaluation n. i believe the benefits outweigh the costs of undertaking research and program evaluation practices at edv o. i have felt engaged and involved in the process of co-designing research and evaluation for the carer coaching program p. i think it has been beneficial for me to engage in co-designing a research and evaluation plan and processes q. i think it has been beneficial for my team to engage in co-designing a research and evaluation plan and processes r. partnering with a researcher has built my skills and knowledge in research and program evaluation 13. please provide any further comments or feedback you would like to share. appendix 9 stage 3 progress meeting guide construct 1. overall, how have you found the experience of research and evaluation for the carer coaching program? 2. have there been any things you believe to be working well? 3. have there been things that have impacted you/your team’s ability to follow the processes that were originally planned? 4. have there been any changes you’ve noticed since engaging in research and evaluation thinking about yourself, your team, program participants etc. 5. how have program participants been responding to research and evaluation? discuss uptake. 6. is there anything you/your team might need to help in engaging with the research and program evaluation as planned? 7. is there anything else you’d like to add or share? practicality implementation verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202439 appendix 10 stage 3 questionnaire [questions 1-8 & 10: free text response; question 9: multiple-choice.] construct 1. how have you found the process of doing research and program evaluation for the carer coaching program so far? implementation 2. please describe any factors that you think may have influenced (positively or negatively) your or your team’s engagement with research and evaluation of the carer coaching program? implementation 3. if there have been any changes to processes as originally planned, please describe them and the reasons for change. implementation 4. if there have been any things that you/your team have learned or gained through this process of research and program evaluation, please describe them. practicality 5. please describe any aspects of the research and program evaluation that have been challenging to undertake and why they have been challenging. implementation practicality 6. please describe any things you would change about the original processes as planned and why you would change these. implementation acceptability practicality 7. please list any things you think you or your team may need to help in undertaking research and program evaluation processes, and describe how these might be helpful. implementation practicality verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202440 appendix 10 stage 3 questionnaire [questions 1-8 & 10: free text response; question 9: multiple-choice.] construct 1. how have you found the process of doing research and program evaluation for the carer coaching program so far? implementation 2. please describe any factors that you think may have influenced (positively or negatively) your or your team’s engagement with research and evaluation of the carer coaching program? implementation 3. if there have been any changes to processes as originally planned, please describe them and the reasons for change. implementation 4. if there have been any things that you/your team have learned or gained through this process of research and program evaluation, please describe them. practicality 5. please describe any aspects of the research and program evaluation that have been challenging to undertake and why they have been challenging. implementation practicality 6. please describe any things you would change about the original processes as planned and why you would change these. implementation acceptability practicality 7. please list any things you think you or your team may need to help in undertaking research and program evaluation processes, and describe how these might be helpful. implementation practicality 8. how have you found the experience of partnering with a research partner throughout this process? implementation 9. for the following questions, please rate either: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree/disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree), 6 (not applicable). a. i have good knowledge of what research and program evaluation involves (e.g. the purpose, the steps involved) practicality acceptability demand implementation b. i have sufficient skills to undertake research and program evaluation (e.g. the ability to undertake what’s involved) c. how confident you feel in undertaking research and evaluation for the carer coaching program. d. i think it is important to research and evaluate the carer coaching program. e. i feel motivated to integrate research and evaluation for the carer coaching program f. i think that research and evaluation for the carer coaching program is going as originally planned. g. i feel satisfied with how research and evaluation of the carer coaching program is going. h. i have felt supported in undertaking research and evaluation practices. i. i think it has been worthwhile engaging in research for the carer coaching program. j. it has been manageable to engage in research and evaluation with my workload k. i believe the benefits have outweighed the costs of engaging in research and evaluation l. i believe collaborating with a researcher has helped in my work role 10. please provide any additional comments in the space below, including points that might not have been raised in the meeting: verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202441 appendix 11 stage 4 meeting guide feasibility construct thank you everyone for joining today. today gives us the chance to talk about how the process of designing and doing research and evaluation for the carer coaching program that we’ve been involved in over the past couple of months. we’ll start by reflecting on the overall experience and any things that have been learned or gained through this process before talking about what could be enhanced for the future. we’ll also get a chance to talk about how it’s been working together. reflecting on experiences 1. overall, how have you found the process of undertaking research and evaluation for the carer coaching program? 2. were there any things that you believed worked well? 3. has there been anything that’s been gained from this process? you might like to think about you, your team, edv, the community, the sector or broader society? prompt: have you/your team used any response or data that’s come from researching and evaluating the carer coaching program? how helpful has this been? 4. what have been some key learning points throughout this process? 5. have the findings or outcomes of the research/program evaluation been used in any way? how helpful has this been? 6. were there any things that were challenging? implementation practicality informing the future we will now shift our gaze to think about how this experience could inform the future. 7. looking back, is there anything you would have changed about the research and program evaluation? why do you say this? 8. what might be needed to sustain these research and evaluation practices? integration expansion verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202442 appendix 11 stage 4 meeting guide feasibility construct thank you everyone for joining today. today gives us the chance to talk about how the process of designing and doing research and evaluation for the carer coaching program that we’ve been involved in over the past couple of months. we’ll start by reflecting on the overall experience and any things that have been learned or gained through this process before talking about what could be enhanced for the future. we’ll also get a chance to talk about how it’s been working together. reflecting on experiences 1. overall, how have you found the process of undertaking research and evaluation for the carer coaching program? 2. were there any things that you believed worked well? 3. has there been anything that’s been gained from this process? you might like to think about you, your team, edv, the community, the sector or broader society? prompt: have you/your team used any response or data that’s come from researching and evaluating the carer coaching program? how helpful has this been? 4. what have been some key learning points throughout this process? 5. have the findings or outcomes of the research/program evaluation been used in any way? how helpful has this been? 6. were there any things that were challenging? implementation practicality informing the future we will now shift our gaze to think about how this experience could inform the future. 7. looking back, is there anything you would have changed about the research and program evaluation? why do you say this? 8. what might be needed to sustain these research and evaluation practices? integration expansion 9. what might influence the likelihood of you/your team engaging in research and evaluation for the carer coaching program beyond the grant deadline? 10. using the experiences of this project, how could research and evaluation become integrated into other programs or services at edv? 11. what is needed and needs to happen to share research and evaluation findings as you were hoping to? 12. what do you see as being the next steps for research and program evaluation at edv? 13. how have you found the process of collaborating with a researcher? prompt: is there anything that’s been gained? would you change anything about the process? final comments 14. is there anything else you’d like to comment or share? verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202443 appendix 12 stage 4 questionnaire questions 1 & 3–10: open-ended text; question 2: multiple choice. construct 1. if there have been any impacts (positive/negative) of engaging in research and evaluation of the carer coaching program, please describe them? practicality 2. thinking back over the process of developing and integrating research and evaluation, please rate them as: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree), 6 (not applicable). a. i believe the developed research and evaluation processes were successful in achieving the goal of evaluating the carer coaching program. implementation practicality demand integration expansion b. i feel satisfied with how the research and evaluation was undertaken. c. i feel capable in engaging in research and evaluation of the program. d. i felt supported in engaging in the research. e. i believe it was manageable balancing research engagement and my other workload. f. i have good knowledge of what research and program evaluation involves (e.g. the purpose and the steps involved). g. i have sufficient skills in undertaking research and program evaluation (i.e. the ability to undertake what is involved). h. i believe research and evaluation of the carer coaching program can be sustained without involvement from a researcher(s). i. i believe research and evaluation of programs and services at edv can be undertaken without involvement from a researcher(s) j. i feel confident in designing and undertaking research and evaluation. k. i believe continuing this research framework beyond the grant will be sustainable? l. i believe it was beneficial for edv to research and evaluate the carer coaching program. m. i believe that research and evaluation of the carer coaching program is needed for the caregiving community. n. i believe that i and my team had the time and resources to integrate this research framework within the carer coaching program. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202444 appendix 12 stage 4 questionnaire questions 1 & 3–10: open-ended text; question 2: multiple choice. construct 1. if there have been any impacts (positive/negative) of engaging in research and evaluation of the carer coaching program, please describe them? practicality 2. thinking back over the process of developing and integrating research and evaluation, please rate them as: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree), 6 (not applicable). a. i believe the developed research and evaluation processes were successful in achieving the goal of evaluating the carer coaching program. implementation practicality demand integration expansion b. i feel satisfied with how the research and evaluation was undertaken. c. i feel capable in engaging in research and evaluation of the program. d. i felt supported in engaging in the research. e. i believe it was manageable balancing research engagement and my other workload. f. i have good knowledge of what research and program evaluation involves (e.g. the purpose and the steps involved). g. i have sufficient skills in undertaking research and program evaluation (i.e. the ability to undertake what is involved). h. i believe research and evaluation of the carer coaching program can be sustained without involvement from a researcher(s). i. i believe research and evaluation of programs and services at edv can be undertaken without involvement from a researcher(s) j. i feel confident in designing and undertaking research and evaluation. k. i believe continuing this research framework beyond the grant will be sustainable? l. i believe it was beneficial for edv to research and evaluate the carer coaching program. m. i believe that research and evaluation of the carer coaching program is needed for the caregiving community. n. i believe that i and my team had the time and resources to integrate this research framework within the carer coaching program. o. i believe that funding is important in undertaking research and evaluation. p. i believe that edv has the capacity to integrate this research framework within its services. q. i believe that research practices like this can be integrated into other areas of edv. r. i believe the benefits outweighed the costs of undertaking this research and evaluation 3. please list the things that were gained (if any) through this process, with reference to yourself, your team, and the organisation, community, sector etc. practicality 4. if there were any costs of engaging in the research and evaluation (e.g. impacts on your workload, financial costs), please describe them. integration expansion 5. please describe any ways that learnings gained throughout the process of building and integrating research and evaluation could be used across edv into the future? 6. what resources might be needed to achieve this? what needs to happen? adaptation expansion integration 7. please describe any advantages of integrating research and evaluation into edv service delivery more broadly? integration expansion 8. what was your experience of working with a research partner? you might like to comment on things that you learned and enjoyed, or did not enjoy. acceptability practicality 9. please detail if there was anything you would change about the process of co-designing and embedding research and evaluation in the carer coaching program, and why you would change this. practicality 10. if you have any further comments or feedback, please provide them here. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 august 202445 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: sitas, n., selomane, o., atkins, f., carecreative, dfeat once, urban khoi soldier, mac1, hlongwane, e., fanana, s., wigley, t., boulle, t. 2022. youth visions in a changing climate: emerging lessons from using immersive and arts-based methods for strengthening communityengaged research with urban youth. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8318 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) youth visions in a changing climate: emerging lessons from using immersive and arts-based methods for strengthening community-engaged research with urban youth nadia sitas1,*, odirilwe selomane1, ffion atkins2,3, carecreative4,5, dfeat once4, urban khoi soldier4, mac14, elona hlongwane5, sandile fanana5, theresa wigley5, teresa boulle5 1 centre for sustainability transitions, stellenbosch university, south africa 2 african climate and development initiative, university of cape town, south africa 3 the beach coop 4 handcantrol360 5 amava oluntu corresponding author: nadia sitas, nadiasitas@sun.ac.za doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8318 article history: received 14/08/2022; revised 19/09/2022; accepted 22/11/2022; published 12/2022 abstract despite increasing efforts, youth perspectives remain largely excluded from decisionmaking processes concerning their future and the social-ecological challenges they are set to inherit. while youth are a critical and powerful force for social change, many youths in underserved communities have limited access to appropriate information on the root causes and consequences of environmental change, in addition to an array of other complex social injustices. to address this, we embarked on a participatory action research process which focused on democratising research, science and the arts by facilitating experiential, immersive learning opportunities with the intention of eventually co-producing artifacts (in the form of participatory murals) in public spaces to facilitate longer term engagement with human nature futures. this article outlines and shares 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors would like to acknowledge the funding received from the cape higher education consortium and city of cape town joint research programme. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8318 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8318 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:nadiasitas@sun.ac.za https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8318 reflections on our process and offers insights for future engagement activities that seek to mobilise youth imaginaries and agency. we found participants were better engaged when conversations were (1) facilitated by other participants; (2) were outdoors and centred on public art; and (3) were happening in parallel with a hands-on activity. this contrasted with asking interview-type questions, or asking participants to write down their answers, which felt more like a test than a conversation, minimising participation. key learnings included: the need to co-develop knowledge around enhancing climate literacy that is based on local realities; that multiple capacities and hives of activity already exist in communities and need to be mobilised and not built; that creative visioning and futuring can help identify options for change; and that many youths are seeking creative, immersive and safe spaces for co-learning and connection. initiatives that aim to engage diverse voices should therefore be wellresourced so as to carefully co-design processes that start by acknowledging contextual differences and capacities within those contexts, and co-create immersive dialogues, in order to move away from test-like engagements which perpetuate power imbalances and discourage participation. keywords urban; knowledge co-production; arts-based practice; nature; plastic pollution; resilience introduction the future is bright, gets brighter every day. i am the future and the future is me (youth participant) healthy, functioning and accessible urban ecosystems have a critical role to play in enhancing the resilience of city landscapes, both now and into the future, and constitute a disproportionately important safety net for many marginalised communities (keeler et al. 2019; sitas et al. 2021). rapid and unplanned urbanisation has eroded the capacity of coupled social-ecological systems to absorb, adapt and transform in response to multiple pressures, including climate change, limiting the contribution of these systems to human wellbeing through the provision of essential ecosystem services (bai et al. 2018; du toit et al. 2018; ipbes 2019; keeler et al. 2019). these changes have the potential to impact almost one billion of the nearly four billion urban residents living in informal settlements in the global south who have limited access to infrastructure, services and healthy green spaces that can buffer the impacts of rapid changes ushered in by the anthropocene (elmqvist et al. 2019; shackleton & gwedla 2021; un habitat 2020; venter et al. 2020). by 2050, cities, especially in the global south, are predicted to account for over half of the world’s population, with youth accounting for most of this statistic (un 2018). ecosystems have a role to play in providing a range of opportunities and benefits for youth. however, the understanding of how ecosystems provide benefits (e.g. regulating temperature, purifying air and water, creating nature-based jobs) to society, and how interconnected humans and nature are across scales is limited, not only by the constraints of current environmental education and science communication (lotz-sisitka et al. 2015), but also radically under-resourced and capacitated teaching and learning environments. the often formal channels for communicating on climate change frequently miss the realities of context, with young people remaining firmly entrenched in ‘cultural memories’, some of which, in south africa, are linked to apartheid era injustices (leck et al. 2011). these memories present a formidable barrier to climate change adaptation as conserving nature is often viewed as ‘for the benefit of the privileged few’, since this was historically the case. thus development of national protected areas is often linked to displacements and restrictions of access, and challenges associated with green gentrification/urban greening (anguelovski 2016; rigolon & németh 2020). the power of cities stems from their density and diversity as they provide space for intersections of cultures, finance, innovation, aspiration and ideas. thus, cities in the global south have a strong imperative, as well as complex historical contexts, unique biocultural diversity and creative capacities, to advance the sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 global sustainability agenda to be spaces for inspiration instead of just intervention (nagendra et al. 2018; nkula-wenz 2019; ziervogel 2019). cities are increasingly hives of opportunities for experimentation, with novel responses for catalysing change (hebinck et al. 2021; sitas 2020). as most of the infrastructure for cities in the global south is yet to be rolled out, there are immense opportunities for (re)imagining what equitable, resilient and multifunctional cityscapes could look like (nagendra et al. 2019; o’farrell et al. 2019). youth voices are critical to shaping these emerging cityscapes, but how their participation is envisioned and enacted will determine how their visions are included in city planning processes. accordingly, this project sought to explore how a participatory action research process that focused on democratising research, science and the arts by facilitating experiential, immersive learning opportunities could create new insights for engaging with youth on issues linked to environmental change and its impacts. we offer our contribution as a practice-based article to ensure it will be accessible to the partners in this research, most of whom are not from academic communities. this article provides an overview and reflection on the various processes, in terms of project planning and practice, that emerged in our iteratively co-designed work, and highlights some emergent learning. while the body of the article focuses more on the reflections and findings from our process, we have also provided rich details in the supplementary information which outline aspects of the project co-design process and methods (supplementary material a – table 1), a description of the workshop series (supplementary material b – table 2) and an overview of a workbook that was co-developed to guide our activities and capture participant reflections, imaginations and ideas (supplementary material c workbook). future communicative efforts will explore findings through film and a more theoretical paper. location and community characteristics the project activities reported on here took place in cape town, south africa, in two of its southern wards: muizenberg and mitchells plain (figure 3). muizenberg is a well-established beachside holiday town with a long history of attracting wealthy beach goers from across the city and beyond. in recent years, muizenberg has seen substantial private and public investment, especially at the beach front, making it an figure 1. location of case study sites in (a) cape town, south africa, and (b) muizenberg and mitchells plain sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 attractive place for tourism, surfing and eating out, as well as being a popular area to live, especially among young middle-class professionals and their families. mitchells plain is 17 kilometres east of muizenberg and was established about 50 years ago during apartheid as an area designated for middle-income coloured communities, with the term coloured in south africa denoting one of four official classifications of people by race, the other three being black, white and indian. many coloured people were forceably removed from district six (a former inner-city residential area in cape town) and rehomed here. today the area houses a diversity of class backgrounds, but is known to be rife with gangsterism and drug abuse, especially among the youth. we focused on the development and maintenance of a detention point which had the potential to be a multi-use space (e.g. recreational area), compared to its currently single use as detention and channelling water out of the area. methodology awakening critical consciousness through arts-based practices has a long history of emancipatory engaged scholarship, developing what freire (1970) referred to as conscientization. art-based and embodied methodologies are therefore an effective way to develop passion for and emotional connection with environmental issues and can help surface future imaginaries of what options exist for change. art-based approaches can also provide spaces where negative dystopian views of the future can be transformed by creating positive visions and emotions linked to hope, solidarity, responsibility and care (pereira et al. 2019). we used a participatory action research approach (ballard & belsky 2013) to understand the ways in which immersive and arts-based methods could strengthen opportunities for engaging urban youth in understanding environmental concerns and impacts. our methodology was underpinned by an ethic of care and co-designed to avoid being extractive (coombes et al. 2014; haverkamp 2021), and immersive workshops and ‘courageous conversations’ were facilitated to minimise didactic learning practices. supplementary material a – table 1 highlights the different elements and rationale for our research design, which includes a description of the project team, the co-design process, the methods used, how participants were recruited, an outline of the workshop series and a description of how data were collected and analysed. there were three workshops, each comprising various methods of engagement (supplementary material b – table 2). during the first workshop, each person was handed a workbook (supplementary material c – workbook) on which to document their reflections as they embarked on a silent beach clean-up, an estuary (vlei) clean-up, and discussions on climate change and the role of public art. we used plastic pollution as a tangible ‘entry point’ to conversations around environmental change and its impacts on social–ecological systems (see supplementary material b – table 2, ‘workshop 2’). results and discussion below we present emerging reflections on our process and an analysis of the outcomes of the workshops, which we combine in this section. engaging with plastic pollution as an entry point for participation we received feedback that the silent beach clean-up was an enjoyable process for many and the participants enjoyed being by the ocean and having time to be in their own thoughts. participants also reflected on sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 how, when you look, it is very clear that pollution is everywhere, something that some admitted they would previously not have noticed. for example, participants mentioned: how we often don’t see it [plastic] until we are looking for it, how we can tune our eyes into see different things that we bring our attention to, what else are we not seeing? that so many of us do not know that we are living amongst our own trash. how we are beautiful, curious fun-loving humans yet often it is our enjoyment of life that is destructive to the planet like a day at the beach & how much plastic this leaves behind. through experiential learning that occurred during the clean-up events, it emerged that we cultivated deeper systemic understanding of the links between personal choice, community and the environment (including rivers, canals, wetlands and oceans), thereby cultivating a stronger sense of community responsibility and agency in the participants involved, with participants reflecting that they would initiate clean-up activities closer to home and/or engage in existing litter clean-up activities as a way to ‘give-back to nature who does so much for us for free’. similarly, jorgensen, krasny and baztan (2021) found that volunteer beach clean-ups fostered environmental stewardship. the process of focusing on an activity with one’s hands, of ‘weaving’ plastic into a rug through the hydro-rug process, allowed for a sense of distraction from our differences and connection with our own and each other’s stories. this process surfaced intergenerational stories and connections with water, combining folklore, superstition and visions of opportunities to connect more in seascapes to conquer fears or learn about new watery worlds. enqvist et al. (2019) suggest that strong place attachment can promote deeper stewardship commitment and thus activities that connect people to natural spaces, both tangibly through immersive activities or through storytelling, and can help foster connections to place. our experience of the process of engaging in an artistic activity, such as that experienced during the hydro-rug process, was that, by providing the space to go inward and to actively focus attention on our own thoughts and creativity, we facilitated an atmosphere where we were more connected as a group. we bonded over an activity, a process of personal expression that was, at the same time, inherently collective, whereas a reflection around the room session often makes people feel that they have to say the correct thing. there was no pressure to actively engage with one another, but connection was inevitable – either through conversation, observing each others’ creative expressions or simply through sharing the space. this contrasted with putting people on the spot to answer questions in a focus-group type session, which often makes them feel like they have to say the ‘correct’ thing. art for democratising science the project team reflected that the facilitated discussions around the estuary mouth felt much more like an outside ‘lecture’ where the distinction between facilitators and participants was very clear. more animated and engaging two-way dialogues and engagement only really gained momentum with the discussion around public art and its role in society. this emphasised the importance of connecting around issues through a common language, as highlighted by a participant who said: we come from very different places with very different mother tongue languages so what i’m interested in when we try and create those spaces of community what languages can we use that make sense for all of us especially science and academia and their big words and i’m english and i don’t understand – i’m excited about the idea of using things like art as a language that we all have in common to express ourselves and make sense of life with it. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 creating novel and imaginative spaces for reflexivity, learning and experimentation with arts can play a critical role in shifting mindsets and providing inclusive and safe spaces for opening up new political horizons and visions of the future (bentz & o’brien 2019; galafassi et al. 2018). the group became even more engaged during the discussion on climate change, which was led by youth facilitators who told their own stories of how they became climate activists. while initial conversations centred on how climate change was not perceived to be an issue for many urban youth, being a thing happening ‘out there’, the youth facilitators used lived experiences of floods, droughts and fires to connect seemingly global issues to local impacts. framing climate change through the lens of impacts on these communities resonated with people, most of whom had first-hand experiences of them in their neighbourhoods. participants reflected that climate change was taught abstractly in school, or they heard about it from researchers or on tv linked to high-level policy discussions, and that none of the people talking about it looked and acted ‘like us’, and as one participant put it: african climate justice activists should be on the international panels in order to make informed decisions. we also need young people taking up space educating and creating awareness.  another participant added that: more localized climate change starts in our thoughts and then moved to the heart & hands. instead of climate change stories, news and headlines just spoke about by experienced advocates, it should start when children are young – this would result in youth and young adults who are more careful towards our planet earth and people care. numerous participants spoke about the justice dimensions of climate impacts and wanted to know what they, as young people, could do to spread information to their neighbours, family members and friends about climate change being a shared risk, but also a shared responsibility to address. what also emerged strongly from our workshops was the need to co-develop more afrocentric climate literacy through inclusive, accessible and creative knowledge co-production processes (macintyre et al. 2018) as this information was perceived to be lacking. for example, chirisa, matamanda and mutambwa (2017) suggest that science tends to ask for collective action based on regional and global trends in climate change, while indigenous technical knowledge (itk) first observes that ‘something is wrong somewhere’. without pinpointing context and the place-based problem, discussing general trends becomes meaningless. sciencefocused and fear-based facts that aren’t contextualised to the lived realities of participants, and especially youth, hold little resonance. research suggests that education surrounding climate and environmental change should become responsive to the existing beliefs, attitudes and situational contexts of specific audiences (brownlee, powell & hallo 2013) and be complimented by participatory and arts-based modes of engagement, especially with youth (rousell & cutter-mackensie-knowles 2020). we found the need to challenge deficit discourses that alledged youth and other marginalised groups need capacities ‘built’ as if they have no capacities. this project reaffirmed that the capacity for change already exists in individuals and their communities in the form of values, knowledge, skills, agency, relationships, imagination and other resources. what is needed is the elevation of youth voices and youth empowerment through mobilisation of existing capacities in communities to communicate the urgency of climate action. bringing people into conversations, assuming they have nothing to add until they are capacitated to do so, does not encourage them to bring what they know, their experiences, and reflects power imbalances that perpetuate feelings of not being heard. thus, huge and currently untapped potential exists to build on existing hives of activity by leveraging on a diverse set of existing creative projects and organisations that focus on climate, biodiversity, energy and social justice, as offered by local organisations. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 learning from the emerging future talking about the future was often difficult, especially for participants who were bringing spoken and unspoken trauma with them into the workshops. here we recognise the importance of trauma-informed work (champine et al 2022; rosenberg, errett & eisenman 2022) and that we have much to learn about creating safer spaces for people to identify and see pockets of potential that can be amplified in different ways to co-create the future we want to see, in the present. committing to furthering decolonial methods, approaches and movements in our work can enable us to avoid ‘colonising our future’ by facilitating visioning exercises that retain features of unjust systems and carry them into our envisioned futures (de la rosa solano, franklin & owen 2022; wilkens & datchoua-tirvaudey 2022). as a collective, we are working on co-designing what these could look and feel like for future engagement. a starting point is that we need to continue to leverage our privilege and mobilise diverse, intersectional and inclusive contributions from many lived experiences and backgrounds, especially from youth in underserved and climate-affected communities. we visited a detention pond in mitchells plain, where several institutions (university of cape town, danish international development agency, city of cape town) are piloting the transformation of its original design to control excess stormwater drainage to a multi-use space. the proposal is for an area that promotes the retention of stormwater for aquifer recharge and the regeneration of endemic biodiversity, and in the process a co-created urban space to support recreational activities for the surrounding community. this was a space that was relatively unknown by many of the facilitators and participants. our presence drew some interest from nearby residents who were curious to learn why we were in their neighbourhood. an immediate question for the project team was ‘who gives us the “right” to be here, bringing new people into this space’. while we connected with researchers working on the detention pond, there was not the same effortlessness we felt when working on our familiar turf of muizenberg, which made us question whether place-making or stewardship could be cultivated in places where people are not rooted? nonetheless, reflections from participants suggested that many of them did not know the purpose of these green spaces that they recognised in their neighbourhoods. everyone was visibly moved and commented with awe when, after we sang and clapped indigenous songs to honour the space and the history that came before us, the frogs in the reeds erupted in a chorus. this moment was described a few times in workshops as meaningful, as it reminded participants that nature can be found in the most surprising spaces and that, if we care for these spaces, important ecosystem functions can return. on our drive back to muizenberg in two cars we used the opportunity to discuss the questions that were posed in the city portrait canvas quadrant (see figure 6 in table 2 of supplementary material). these questions included: (1) what would it mean for people in your community to thrive? (2) what would it mean for people in your community to thrive in relation to the rest of the city? (3) what would it mean for your community to thrive within its natural habitat? and (4) what would it mean for your community to respect the ecological health of the whole city? (adapted from the city portrait canvas from the doughnut economics lab). in both cars, the conversation did not go much further than the first question as it quickly became evident that these questions required much more context and preparation. firstly, what does ‘thrive’ mean in a social context and in an ecological context? secondly, the answers that were given indicated that perhaps these questions do not acknowledge several key features that are often characteristic of the global south. an answer from one of the participants who lived in khayelitsha, one of cape town’s largest township areas with high levels of informality, was ‘we need the government to fix our leaking sewage pipes so we are not walking through sewage to get to our home’ quickly indicated that much more thought was needed in applying these questions in these contexts. how can one begin to re-imagine futures when basic physical needs are not being met? and when much of what is required to have these needs met depends on sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 an actor external to our actionable world (i.e. beyond our perceivable sphere of influence). in the other car a participant mentioned: why would i believe that anything would be different, it has been like this for 20 years, nothing has changed since then and nothing will change for me for the next 20 years. one immediate lesson that emerged for facilitators was that the youth involved in this project came from very different circumstances, making it challenging for them to launch into what their imagined futures might be. without understanding their current situation and the issues that were front of mind for them, it was not possible for them to imagine a different future for themselves through conversations and questions like these. this is critical because a lot of climate and other environmental communication that researchers, activists and the city aim to disseminate will likely not land for young people if the message does not consider where they are ‘at’ and what collective and individual traumas they are often processing. starting with a visioning exercise before first surfacing these lived realities did not encourage a natural flow in conversation – rather it highlighted differences in home environments amongst the group. while the city portrait canvas questions did not stimulate generative conversations, the hydrorug process did offer an informal, positive way of encouraging participants to share stories of their own connection to water, highlighting that these more dialogical/storytelling methods could be used in combination with futuring tools to move beyond sharing of experiences to processes that can analyse and dismantle oppressive structures. reclaiming the commons for community making we found that the research process was much less about imparting, sharing or gathering knowledge and much more about sharing a process together. as freire (1995, p. 31) puts it: through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers. the teacher is no longer merely the-one-whoteaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. they become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. there was a sense that facilitators truly felt like participants, as highlighted by one of the artists: today the vision becomes real, the same way if we keep making our visions clearer and clearer and sharing them with each other they can drop down into reality in a way that we don’t expect. we can create a future that we are inspired to move towards and along the way if we have a clear idea we see clues along the way and that is something reminds you of your future and we can bring energy together more quickly move together to a future we want. one of the new youth members of the project reflected that: it was first time i was in a circle like this and experienced the best things, aweh! and it was just nice to be amongst new people and feel like we are building a sense of community just for that day, we are creating our own space within a new space. many articulated a desire to have more spaces to gather and learn about important issues and how to open up the spaces for more participants. as one youth mentioned: new voices must be heard, there must be much more space to have these conversations. reflections at the last workshop all shared the same sentiment that these spaces are for community making and for activating new and existing spaces to be spaces of healing, co-learning and creativity. even though sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 those who had engaged in the entire workshop series found it very beneficial to be part of the whole process, there was an acknowledgement that there should have been opportunities for people to connect at different times, as highlighted by a participant who said: i’m so excited to be here again, it’s a thing of community, of how we can create spaces of community even though the people in that space can come and go. using many indoor and outdoor spaces across our neighbourhoods for collective learning events as a strategy to reclaim community spaces for transgressive learning sparked a desire for more gatherings in these spaces. this, together with using arts-based practices as platforms for catalysing difficult conversations, co-learning and inspiration deepened the sense that we were in a process of ‘community making’, by having courageous conversations around whose future we were fighting for. processes that were facilitated outdoors, offering opportunities to connect tangibly with nature, made a big difference to communicating and understanding key landscape features, as well as witnessing the human impact or intertwined relationships in these spaces, also found by jose, patrick and moseley (2017). building space for ‘doing nothing’ in nature was also highlighted as being refreshing and offering participants quiet moments of reflection and healing away from the hustle of urban living, which is akin to audre lorde’s (1988) notion of self-care as an act of political warfare and communal effort. conclusion many city-scale policies and engaged scholarship processes highlight a need for new methodologies that can create opportunities for greater understanding of the underlying factors and root causes of systems that are trapped in undesirable situations, but also where ‘seeds’ or pockets of potential future transformation might exist. we hope that our series of workshops will act as a catalyst for public enrolment and have transformative potential for political (re)orientation, fostering new perceptions and dispositions of (future) citizens (sitas & pieterse 2013) for those involved, but also as a guide to how inclusion and participation of marginalised voices can be strengthened. urban youth, in particular, are often overlooked in their role as active citizens, having agency and social cohesion, and also in how this plays out in advancing some of the goals towards building social–ecological resilience. the same goes for the question of what role social cohesion will play in advancing these goals. co-designing engagement processes can assist greatly in informing more inclusive, socially relevant and non-extractive scholarship, but the necessary transformation of how knowledge is produced and mobilised and the deconstruction of knowledge hierarchies remains a never-ending process that necessitates ongoing attention to power dynamics and ‘care-full’ scholarship. for the transgressive engaged research that is needed, deft juggling skills will be required to navigate both academic and political rigour (temper, mcgarry & weber 2019). endnotes at the time of writing this article, despite support from the city, we have only just been given the green light for a permit to paint our participatory mural in a public space in cape town. this has involved drawn-out consultation with a local rate payer association which was not in favour of the mural. the workshop series and engagement sessions have involved many courageous conversations and have catalysed a longing for spaces to share stories and visions of the future in words, songs, paintings and food. these gatherings will be in various formats, some of which will be linked to future transdisciplinary projects that are in the pipeline, some will engage city officials on strategic interventions, while others will co-develop sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 learning materials needed to mobilise climate action, or silent litter clean-ups. in the words of one of our participants: we’re all seeking the community we’ve now sown the seeds for, we just need to show up and do the work, and this work needs to happen in different ways, with different heads and hearts and hands. acknowledgements we would like to thank all of the participants for their passion and enthusiasm, and deep and meaningful insights during this workshop series. we would also like to thank the funders of this research, the cape higher education consortium (chec) and city of cape town, for driving this new community of practice that has energy to co-create further work. we are deeply grateful for all the participants and facilitators who co-funded their time to work on this project and the many hands and hearts behind the scenes that assisted with admin, extra meals, social media posts and project management. references anguelovski, i 2016, ‘from toxic sites to parks as (green) lulus? new challenges of inequity, privilege, gentrification and exclusion for urban environmental justice’, journal of planning literature, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 23–36. 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https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.798183 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67650-6_13 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67650-6_13 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106379 https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2020/10/wcr_2020_report.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103889 https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/98/1/125/6484828?login=false https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/98/1/125/6484828?login=false https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab209 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1141-9 supplementary material a table 1. project elements contributing to the research co-design including a rationale or reflection. project element description rationale / reflection 1. project team the project is a collaboration between researchers from the centre for sustainability transitions (cst) at stellenbosch university (sitas, n and selomane, o), the university of cape town and the beach coop (atkins, f); facilitators from amava oluntu (hlongwane, e, fanana, s, wigley,t and boulle, t) who work with local youth; and locally-based artists carecreative (claire homewood) and mac1 and other members of the hc360crew (dfeat once, urban khoi soldier). figure 2. project team meeting to plan the workshop series the project team sought to build on a portfolio of existing work that had been co-created through a number of research and arts collaborations that the project team has been involved in, instead of creating something completely new. we intentionally worked with youth facilitators from an organisation (amava oluntu) with a track record of projects on the workshop sites. all project team members were involved in the codesign of the project. 2. project co-design our project sought to codesign the project from the outset, first through joint planning of the process, with the authors of this contribution stemming from diverse collaboratives and non-academic institutions. the collaborators brought in questions and methods from the communities they work with, and these were further shaped by participants and the questions and contestations that surfaced through workshops. this iterative process of planning, reflection and adaptation facilitated immense learning for the project team which resulted in some of the lessons we highlight in this article. our approach was transdisciplinary, with each team member being responsible for ‘holding’ different stages/parts of our process based on their expertise and/or knowledge of the workshop sites, e.g. climate researchers, public artists, water researchers and activists. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202213 http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/ http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/ https://www.thebeachcoop.org/ http://amava.org/partners/carecreative/ http://amava.org/partners/carecreative/ https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hc360crew/ project element description rationale / reflection 3. arts-based immersive methods we used outdoor spaces as immersive living labs and combined content discussions with individual and collective reflective opportunities guided by a co-created workbook (see supplementary material a). wherever possible, we provided spaces for creative reflections through artsbased processes, including collaging, drawing, painting and story-telling. details of how each process was run are given in the workshop flow and reflection section and table 2. our project centred on the premise that providing safe playful spaces for transformative learning experiences to occur, and facilitated in ways that unlock future imaginaries, was important for instilling agency and purpose in future generations. immersive learning experiences – both in nature and in creative co-constructed imaginary worlds – can be powerful tools to spark (re)imagination of radically different futures to the realities of the everyday. connecting to radically different ways of seeing the future is a critical tool in the arsenal of science communication for improved sustainable development decisionmaking in a time of unprecedented human-induced social and environmental change. 4. co-creation of workbook we co-created workbooks for participants to use during the workshop series. we adapted information from local organisations working on the thematic issues our project engaged with (e.g. information on plastic pollution and climate change), as well as methods designed to foster imaginative processes (e.g. questions about what types of futures participants envisioned). the workbook (supplementary information a) was developed for a number of purposes: • to provide brief information on the project and the institutions involved; • to synthesise information on thematic issues, e.g. plastic pollution, local social–ecological features and processes, and climate change in user-friendly ways; • to provide a roadmap for the walkshop, highlighting key issues on the landscape; • to offer opportunities for participants to reflect on aspects of the process; • to enable the research team to gather insights and reflections for adapting subsequent workshops, including ideas for the mural design. table 1. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202214 project element description rationale / reflection 5. participant recruitment originally participants were recruited through an online call, which was shared through our networks. requirements for participation initially needed participants to live in mitchell’s plain or muizenberg. these two areas were chosen to reflect inland (michell’s plain) and coastal systems (muizenberg) – see figure 2 below. for this work, we set age-based criteria for recruiting participants (18–30 years) for procedural reasons linked to our university ethics requirements of working with minors, but offer reflections of working with youth in this article. we received a large response from those living in other neighbourhoods, which made us question our selection criteria. in the end, over 50 youth from a variety of neighbourhoods in cape town engaged in the workshop series. transport, airtime (cell phone call credits) and mobile data were provided to facilitate ease of travel and the ability to communicate and share pictures, stories and reflections via a whatsapp group that was created. for participants who did not have access to a mobile phone, we communicated through the institutions they were engaged in or through word of mouth by participants. we foregrounded all workshops with conversations around informed consent and these were revisited to ensure that all participants felt comfortable with how information, pictures, videos and insights would be used. 6. workshops we held three workshops in locations that were familiar or at least accessible to project facilitators. the first two workshops entailed an immersive process of being outside, a plastic clean-up, discussions centred around several location-specific themes, such as plastic, wetlands and estuaries, art in public spaces, climate change and historical injustices. during these workshops and discussions, space was created for reflection and inputting into the workbook. the last workshop was focused around bringing these themes together and creatively bringing them into conversation through discussion, collage, drawing or painting the murals. the purpose of each workshop was to develop a more systems perspective of the site and how people and nature are connected across scales, both temporally and spatially, and how actions at different sites/scales can have cascading impacts on people and nature. each workshop started with an opening blessing, which could be in the form of a poem, a song or a story from a participant. as the workshops were held in cape town, we acknowledged the indigenous khoisan custodians of the spaces where we gathered. all workshops also paid close attention to food as a connector: as both a source of nourishment and to anchor conversations in communities through food made in community kitchens. further details of what each workshop entailed are provided in the workshop flow and reflection section and table 2. table 1. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202215 project element description rationale / reflection 7. data collection and analysis we relied on multiple sources of data, including photographs, videos, voice recordings, observation and notes from the project team. we also collected workbooks at the end of each workshop to capture key insights and reflections from participants. the main source of information came from reflections shared at project team meetings, which were captured through voice recordings and notes. we analysed data using thematic analysis through an iterative process of joint sense-making within the team. emerging themes were then negotiated and discussed, and then written down. the emerging themes were used to inform subsequent workshop planning, e.g. to plan specific questions for participants to discuss, to gather material for creative processes, or to move away from ‘pipe-line’ models of knowledge transfer (i.e. expert ‘lecturing’ of participants on their topic) towards more two-way modes of engagement. we also paid attention to what made participants ‘come alive’ and share more openly, which often involved an activity, e.g. doodling or sketching, painting boards or collecting plastic. table 1. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202216 supplementary material b table 2. summary of the three different workshops, their locations and description. workshop and location description workshop 1: experiential learning and conversations location: muizenberg beach and zandvlei estuary figure 4. walkshop along muizenberg beach and zandvlei estuary, muizenberg. the workshop started with introductions between youth members coming from various neighbourhoods across cape town, facilitators, and the project team. we focused on answering the questions: how are we connected to each other? how are we connected to the sea? what do we love to do? we proceeded on to the immersive component of the workshop through a walk highlighting various social-ecological issues on the landscape. this involved a few steps. first, the participants were introduced to a citizen science initiative, the dirty dozen, which was facilitated by project collaborator, beach co-op (https:// www.thebeachcoop.org/). the process involved a silent walk and beach clean-up along muizenberg beach, through which participants were urged to observe their surroundings and pick up plastic items on the beach. once collected, they identified the dirty dozen items, which are the 12 most common items found on our beaches and rocky shores. this was followed by discussions around plastic pollution, to connect what the participants experienced on the walk with the impacts of this pollution on the ecosystems. second, the walk proceeded to zandvlei estuary nature reserve to discuss the role of wetlands and estuaries, and how pollution from land uses such as agriculture, canalisation to improve boating and other modifications of the landscape affect the functionality of these systems, and as a result affect various fish species which use this as a nursery. third, we proceeded to a work of public art along one of the buildings in the reserve, with the intention to discuss the role of public art in communicating issues such as climate change and to surface narratives emerging from these conversations. these conversations were facilitated by the artist collaborators in the project who highlighted both the impacts and responsibilities around public art. the walk finally sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202217 https://www.thebeachcoop.org/ https://www.thebeachcoop.org/ workshop and location description figure 5. workshop 1 participants discussion the role and value of art in public spaces. ended at a ‘fynbos mandala’, where discussions about climate change, extinction risk and climate justice continued. the last part of (and throughout) this workshop involved creative harvesting, where using the workshop booklet, participants could ‘download’ their experience of the workshop into a visual form or write emerging reflections, followed by a shared lunch at the muizenberg community kitchen. workshop 2: connecting people and places location: mitchells plain – stormwater detention pond figure 6. scenes from workshop 2 and the mitchells plain stormwater detention pond. similar to workshop 1, and also because the participants group had changed somewhat (we lost some participants and gained some new participants), the workshop started with a brief round of introductions, and an introduction to a space, which was one of cape town’s 737 storm water detention ponds, critical for slowing water flows and reducing urban flooding, but often seen as a barren unused greenspace that could be allocated for housing. next, a process of connecting to place was facilitated by a local indigenous chief through song and dance. this was followed by a litter clean-up to honour the space and make a connection to the plastic that was collected on the beach at the previous workshop to facilitate systems thinking of ‘sourceto-sea’ and how waterways are often conduits of plastic in landscapes. a conversation was then facilitated about what the site was originally and what it was used for now, and identifying what other projects were currently underway (such as a project by the university of cape town advocating for multiple uses of the green open spaces). duing this process, we also noted and highlighted links between neighbourhood, rivers and canals, and the ocean and how many of these types of spaces hold legacies of brutal apartheid spatial planning processes. in the effort to solicit human-nature future visions, we adopted a city portrait canvas methodology used by the doughnut economics lab, which asks four questions (figure 6). table 2. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202218 workshop and location description figure 7 adapted city portrait canvas questions from the doughnut economic lab (found online at https://doughnuteconomics.org/ tools/76). conversations covering these four questions were facilitated as part of the drive from mitchells plain to muizenberg, where participants could stick sticky notes containing reflections on the quadrants and share their reflections with other participants. these conversations were recorded with permission. the last leg of the workshop was facilitated at the amava oluntu studio in muizenberg and comprised continued engagement in workshop booklets and facilitated conversations around stories of connection to water through a hydrorug process by aaniyah martin-omardien from the beach co-op, together with a shared lunch from the muizenberg community kitchen. the hydro-rug is a social sculpture method developed by aaniyah omardien-martin from the beach co-op, which involves citizen led public storytelling around the invisible histories of and relationships with the ocean, with the explicit aim to surface new care practices related to the ocean which reveal indigenous and local meaning making, world-views, histories and memory. figure 8 the hydro-rug process, facilitated by aaniyah martinomardien from the beach co-op. table 2. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202219 https://doughnuteconomics.org/tools/76 https://doughnuteconomics.org/tools/76 https://www.thebeachcoop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/tbc_annual-report-2022_144ppi.pdf workshop and location description workshop 3: creative studio and collaborative future visioning location: muizenberg community kitchen figure 9. scenes from workshop 3: participants starting off the participatory mural painting process and some examples of the collage that was created. the original plan was to paint a participatory mural in a public space as the final product of this project. slow city processes and competing multiple jurisdictions (e.g. two city departments owning parts of the same wall we intended to paint) meant that we had not obtained the permit to paint a public wall in time, and so our third workshop involved a creative studio session where we painted on six 2.4m x 1.2m boards. we gathered and reintroduced ourselves, indicating what we enjoyed about the previous workshops and what we were looking forward to in this one. there were a few new participants who hadn’t been present in the previous two workshops, so they were invited to share what drew them to the workshop. following a visioning process which featured prompts from a donella meadows ‘down to earth’ speech delivered in 1994 to help us envision the visions of nature-futures we longed for, we moved the visions we held in our mindseye into a creative space to make them come alive. we provided three separate workplaces through which participants could feel free to roam: a drawing station with a library of books to find inspiration, if needed; a collage station with magazines; and a wall to display the collage. the other was the main mural painting boards with multiple paints and paint brushes. participants were left to their own devices and each either found their station or spent some of their time at each. the day closed with a shared lunch in the muizenberg community kitchen. table 2. continued sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202220 supplementary material c youth visions in a changing climate experiences in nature, conversation, exchange, diversity, creativity, science, culture & public art. workbook 2022 name: space to write/ draw sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202221 youth visions in a changing climate is a project with the higher purpose of ‘building resilience in the city of cape town’. the overall aim of the project is to better understand opportunities for building social-ecological resilience through participatory, arts-based methodologies and engagement with urban youth. the project is a collaboration between researchers from the centre for sustainability transitions (cst) at stellenbosch university (nadia sitas, odirilwe selomane), the university of cape town and the beach coop (ffion atkins), amava oluntu and locallybased artists: carecreative (claire homewood) and members of the hc360crew. the work entails linking two youth communities (mitchells plain and muizenberg) through 3 workshops which involve art-based processes, beach and urban waterway cleanups and a participatory mural development. the project has existing funding from the cape higher education consortium and the city of cape town. further funding is being saught to complete & expand the project. youthnaturefutures@gmail.com www.youthnaturefutures.org/youth-visions-in-a-changing-climate/ www.instagram.com/youth_naturefutures/ sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202222 youthnaturefutures@gmail.com www.youthnaturefutures.org/youth-visions-in-a-changing-climate/ www.instagram.com/youth_naturefutures/ welcome to surfers corner, muizenberg. when you see this note please feel free to share your own thoughts, impressions and observations... how to use this workbook.... have fun & enjoy it ideally answer all the quetions and fill in the spaces... but if you prefer to focus on some rather than others that’s also ok. we each have a book to use as a place for our thoughts, observations, feelings, ideas, inspirations (positive/ negative & everything in between). we will gather up the books at the end of each workshop and return them to start the next. we are in a co-creative process, together developing a collective vision of the future. we are all equally valuable to this process. we are a team with different strengths, perspectives, backgrounds and knowledge to share, creating something beyond what any of us could have done alone. when you see this bubble, write or draw what you have heard coming from others as a different perspective from yours sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202223 the dirty dozen are the 12 most common items found on our beaches and rocky shores. they largely represent our consumer habits, in terms of packaging for on-the-go food and beverages and were chosen as indicators of the most significant sources of plastic litter from ocean vessels, land-based sources and beach users. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202224 plastic production is increasing. going by business-as-usual, the production of plastics is projected to increase annually by roughly 3.8%, with a large portion of that growth in africa and the middle east. plastic production contributes significantly to climate change. over 99% of plastic is derived from fossil fuels. emissions from plastic emerge not only from the production and manufacture of plastic itself, but from every stage in the plastic lifecycle. globally, 6% of all plastics ever produced are recycled. a mere 1% is recycled more than once. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202225 our route 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 surfer’s corner/ start of the muizenberg/ st james walkway river mouth vlei/ otter sculpture the egret fynbos mandala muiz kitchen our walk amava oluntu/ create148 mountain vlei false bay muizenberg station sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202226 beach which dirty dozen item was most common on the beach? .................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................. ................................................................................................................. what surprised you about bringing your focus to plastic? ................................................................................................................................................. ................................................................................................................................................. ................................................................................................................................................ name two things you do to reduce your plastic consumption, if any. ......................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................ please share your experience of walking along the beach? what emerged through your silent walk? ...................................................................................... .................................................................................................. .................................................................................................. .................................................................................................. ............................................................................................. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202227 vlei name 1 thing that zandvlei does to support a healthy natural environment. ...................................................................... .................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................. name 1 benefit it provides us, who live nearby.... ................ .................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................. ................................................................................................................... name 1 threat to zandvlei. ......................................................... ................................................................................................................. ................................................................................................................. ....... sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202228 public art how does public art change the space its in?..................................................................... ................................................................................. ................................................................................. ................................................................................. ................................................................................. ................................................................................. what is important to consider when designing public art? .............................. ................................................................. ................................................................ ................................................................. ................................................................. ................................................................. ................................................................. ................................................................. ................................................................. ................................................................. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202229 fynbos mandala imagine a few hundred years ago with the vlei in it’s natural state: birds & biodiversity befok, hippos and danger of death in the realness of the wild. describe what you see and how it makes you feel ................................................................ ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................................................................................................... imagine 20 years into the future: describe what you see and how it makes you feel............................................................. ......................................................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................... sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202230 climate change climate change is the long term shift in temperature and weather patterns. while these shifts can be natural, the scientific evidence is clear: human activities are causing changes to our climate at a pace that is never seen before. the burning of fossil fuels for transport, for industry and for products like plastic is the major driver of climate change today. what does climate change mean to you?.............................................................................................. ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ the impacts of climate change will be diverse and will affect everyone, but unfortunately some people will be more impacted than others. if we are to reduce the severity of the impacts, drastic changes to how we function as a society are needed. the good news is that are many, many solutions which all boil down to: radically reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels, adapting to climate impacts and financing these changes. this is totally doable, but the technological and social systems (and cultural norms) that keep us in this cycle need to change. we need to transform how we do things as an individual, household, community and global society. a golden window of opportunity exists for us. how can we shape the stories about climate change going forward? ...................................... ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ if you could bring one thing to the conversation around how our society operates in the future, what would it be?............................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202231 lunch the muizenberg community kitchen exists to provide nutritious, affordable, plant-based meals to our community. we nurture our kitchen to be a place of diverse learning, sharing and growth. we collaborate with the muizenberg community garden and local suppliers of ingredients to support our local economy. we build relationships for future resilience by sustaining our community kitchen. a little bit of our history..... in response to covid-19, as part of the muizenberg can (community action network), the muizenberg community came together to make and serve over 60 000 meals, monday to friday for 8 months. this was all made possible by donations, volunteers and with the help of the muizenberg community garden! in 2021, focus on emergency food security shifted, and the muiz kitchen needed to navigate with new visions & entrepreneurial arms to sustain. our dream was to continue: to keep cooking nutritious food, building community, sharing meals together, learning new skills, & coming alongside the most vulnerable in our community. our new approach was to start charging for meals but keeping them low cost. our meals are served at the muiz kitchen for r50 each and served as takeaways for r15 from the community garden. we also introduced the muiz coin: 1 x muiz coin = r15 = 1 x meal served from the muizenberg community garden. people are able to earn coins by working in the garden or helping with street clean ups. also, community members can buy the coins and give them out to those in need. these meals are served on a mon, wed & fri: 12:30 2pm. in august 2021 we officially became a project of amava oluntu. this greatly assists us with our administration & network. we look forward to co-creating our future with the diverse community of muizenberg, valuing the role of health-filled nutritious food & the ability for food to connect us to each other and the land. - www.amava.org/projects/muizenberg-community-kitchen/ @muiz_kitchen sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202232 creative harvest what do you think about the future.? .............................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. what are your positive visions, what would you like to see?............................................................ .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... ....... why can’t we get there? ..................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. can you see any clues towards this future, happening around cape town at the moment? ....... .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202233 reflections sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202234 homework... what are cool projects happening around you that help improve people’s lives and/or the environment?........................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................. have a conversation with someone much older what has changed in nature or the urban areas?. .................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................................... ......... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................... chat to someone much younger, what do they imagine when they think about nature ................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... .............................................................. what did nature do for you today? ......................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................................................................................................. ................................................................................... write/ draw/ film or voice note your responses sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202235 backpage colour more space to write/ draw sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202236 more space to write/ draw what do you think this open space is for? ..... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... open spaces what can it be for? .................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................. in an urban environment, open spaces have the potential to improve human and ecosystem health, social interaction and cohesion and economic opportunities, benefitting indivuals, communities and the city at large. often these spaces are neglected, unsafe or designed for one purpose that may exclude other community needs. these spaces hold immense opportunity to support cities in becoming more sustainable, liveable and resilient. opportunity to support cities in becoming more sustainable, liveable and resilient. sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202237 mural design sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202238 sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202239 imagining the future ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 sitas, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202240 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: genoe, m. r., fortune, d., whyte, c. 2025. reflections on multimodality: making the most of kairotic moments. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1– 15. https://doi. org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9204 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 research article (peer reviewed) reflections on multimodality: making the most of kairotic moments m. rebecca genoe1,*, darla fortune2, colleen whyte3 1 faculty of kinesiology and health studies, university of regina 2 department of applied human sciences, concordia university 3 department of recreation and leisure studies, brock university corresponding author: m. rebecca genoe, rebecca.genoe@uregina.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9204 article history: received 27/06/2024; revised 03/12/2024; accepted 11/12/2024; published 01/2025 abstract it is generally accepted in extant literature that friends drift away after a person receives a diagnosis of dementia. in turn, we set out to explore friendships that continued to flourish following a diagnosis by interviewing people living with dementia, their friends, and family members. along the way, we shaped and adopted a multimodal approach, incorporating artistically rendered, fictionalised vignettes based on our participants’ stories, thus incorporating visual and auditory components that encourage people living with dementia and their friends to reflect on how best to continue to nurture their relationships. in this article, we describe our process of adopting multimodality through an intertwined set of five kairotic moments, whereby we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones to move beyond the format of the conventional peer-reviewed journal article, recognising the need to write differently to reach a broader audience. in another moment, we moved past an academic emphasis on writing to adopt multimodality. subsequently, we connected with artists and knowledge mobilisation specialists to bring our collective vision to life. finally, we aimed to make our study findings more accessible by sharing them through our website and engaging with various types of media. we conclude by offering a methodology for multimodality that includes relationality, axiology, passivity and action and temporality in embracing opportunities to write differently. keywords dementia; friendship; kairotic moments; methodology; multimodality 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the research discussed in this article was funded by the social sciences and humanities council of canada grant no. 430-2016-00516. funding was not received for authorship or publication of the article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9204 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9204 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rebecca.genoe@uregina.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9204 introduction this paper reflects on and proposes a methodology for multimodal action with conceptual, practical and epistemological implications for the research process. we detail our research journey through a specific study, emphasising pivotal moments that inspired us to adopt multiple modes of representing data and actively engage with our findings. in turn, these five interconnected and overlapping ‘kairotic’ moments helped to shine a light on our researcher conversations and deliberations rooted in relationality, axiology, temporality and the active engagement with knowledge. these deliberations prompted the research team to critically examine the purpose of academic writing and question who benefits from its traditional structures and venues for dissemination. moving beyond traditional approaches enabled us to confront uncertainties regarding knowledge mobilisation, researcher control and academic expression. our adoption of multimodality, incorporating artistically rendered, fictionalised vignettes, conversation guides and media engagement, were essential in effectively disseminating our findings to those most likely to benefit from them. as we experienced these ‘kairotic’ moments, we learned a great deal from the challenges and opportunities of embracing multimodality in our research. we now hope to apply these insights and iterative methodological processes to our traditional knowledge mobilisation efforts. we offer our resultant methodological blueprint to encourage others to adopt multimodality in their research process. kairos: the right occasion researchers are often reminded of the importance of translating research findings for practical use (for example, glover 2015). these activities – broadly understood here as knowledge mobilisation, which includes the conventional peer-reviewed research article – are generally envisioned as occurring at the end of a linear research process which places primary importance on the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. the sharing of alternative types and modes of knowledge – communicating stories as stories, for example – comes later. yet the production of knowledge occurs in an iterative manner, influenced by the researchers’ epistemology and axiology, the research question(s) and methodological approach. further, decisions made at each stage influence the types of knowledge that are produced and who gets to be involved in its production. the seemingly neutral linear conception of the research process tends to obscure what is in fact the active, serendipitous nature of research and its dissemination. as we moved through the phases of our qualitative approach to knowledge production, we experienced several moments that we came to call ‘kairotic’, as they effectively interrupted our thinking and anticipated activities. these differentlyfelt moments enabled us to embrace multimodality in sharing the knowledge produced in different ways, including both traditional academic writing and presentations, as well as fictionalised vignettes and conversation guides. the word ‘kairos’ originated in ancient greece and refers to ‘the right moment or occasion’ (baert 2020, para. 1). according to fletcher (2022), there were two ways of conceptualising time in ancient greece: chronos, or quantifiable time and kairos, which is relational in nature. chronos refers to duration and amount of time, whereas kairos refers to the character, quality of, the position or circumstance, significance, and opportunity of time (fletcher 2022). for example, a research study unfolds in chronological time, yet there are many opportunities to make decisions that influence the production of knowledge. thus, there are many ‘right moments’ or occasions that researchers may experience which influence not only what knowledge is produced, but also how it is produced and used. we experienced several of these ‘right’ moments or opportunities in our research process. various definitions of kairos exist. some define it as ‘a rhetorical appeal that uses situational context and precise timing to deliver a message, so it is perceived with the greatest impact and urgency’ (calonia 2024, para. 4). it also refers to a time for accomplishment of crucial action (merriam-webster n.d.). in academia, kairotic spaces are informal sites where knowledge is produced and power is exchanged (price n.d.). genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 about:blank price provides the example of an academic conference as a kairotic space, or many kairotic spaces where conference attendees exchange knowledge and power in informal moments, such as during the question and answer period following a presentation, or during a conversation between delegates at the elevator. price provides five characteristics of the kairotic space including: (1) real time unfolding of events; (2) impromptu communication; (3) presence of participants, either in person or virtually; (4) a strong social element; and (5) having high stakes, where there is potential for meaningful impact. throughout our research project, we experienced kairotic moments that pushed us to think about and act on our research non-traditionally and to share our findings with those for whom they matter the most. these opportunities provided room for us to produce and share knowledge in new ways, to share power and, we hope, deliver an impactful message to our intended audience – people who are living with dementia, their family members and friends, along with service providers who may be supporting them. in the next section, we provide the context of our original study. this is followed by our kairotic moments. then, we describe our multimodal methodology and practical writing strategies. we conclude with thoughts on how we will incorporate these insights into our research moving forward. context in the study that inspired our move towards multimodality, we set out to explore how friendships can be maintained after a diagnosis of dementia. rooted in constructivism, phenomenology and a strengths-based approach, we interviewed people living with dementia, their friends and family members to find out what made their friendships work. forty participants, including individuals with dementia, friends and family shared their insights, tips, joys and challenges of friendship. we analysed our data using thematic analysis (braun & clarke 2006) (for a more detailed description of our findings, please see fortune, whyte & genoe 2021; genoe, whyte & fortune 2022). findings from our research illuminated how relationships were maintained, re-constructed and negotiated after a diagnosis of dementia and highlighted meaningful ways to support sustained friendships. for over a year, each of us sat in the kitchens and living rooms of people who had known each other for years and even decades. our interview transcripts were filled with rich and profound stories that spoke of the bonds of friends who are like family. we heard stories of kindness, compassion and reciprocity amongst friends who looked out for each other and connected over shared interests. we learned how spending time together is important: ‘i just love being in her presence still. it doesn’t really matter. sitting and having a cup of tea with her ...’ (genoe, whyte & fortune 2022, p. 436). friends appreciated each other regardless of their current abilities and level of support that they may have required: ‘... there’s still a sense of humour ... just the fact that he’s right there and enjoying his beer and always mentions, “oh yeah, i remember all the good times we used to have”’ (genoe, whyte & fortune 2022, p. 438). another friend stressed the importance of patience and kindness: ‘i would say that i try not to be different than i’ve always been except i try to, at the same time, be far more patient. i’m quite willing to listen to the same story time and time again as if it’s a new story to me’ (genoe, whyte & fortune 2022, p. 437). our findings emphasised the meaning and importance of sustaining friendship after a diagnosis of dementia. when it came time to share the findings from our study, we presented at academic conferences and published academic manuscripts, with the traditional structure of background, literature review, methods, findings and implications for future research (fortune, whyte & genoe 2021; genoe, whyte & fortune 2022). our knowledge mobilisation (km) plan included creating text-based documents (for example, plain language summaries) for dissemination to agencies such as the alzheimer society of canada and disseminating our findings among practitioners at professional conferences. we also planned to produce written tools to showcase evidence-informed strategies adopted by individuals and friends to sustain their relationships. we committed to publishing our academic papers in journals that provided open genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 access options so that these papers were easily accessible for all readers. we focused first on the traditional conference presentations and peer-reviewed articles, leaving the other types of km to later in our research process. the social sciences and humanities research council (sshrc) defined km as ‘the reciprocal and complementary flow and uptake of research knowledge between researchers, knowledge brokers and knowledge users—both within and beyond academia—in such a way that may benefit users and create positive impacts within canada and/or internationally, and, ultimately, has the potential to enhance the profile, reach and impact of social sciences and humanities research’ (sshrc 2024, para. 33). when it came to the uptake of knowledge within academia, our intention was to engage academics to learn from the rich stories presented in our published articles in order to advance a more balanced representation of dementia that goes beyond tragedy discourse regarding life with dementia. findings from our work resonated with fellow academics who study experiences of dementia from a social well-being lens. manuscript reviewers noted that it was ‘nice to read something that takes us entirely outside of the health and care domain with a focus instead on day-to-day living with dementia’ and ‘i applaud the authors for recognising the dearth of, and value of, research focusing on the topic of friendship for people living with dementia and working to add to this body of research.’ at conferences, we had many great conversations with peers who appreciated hearing about the gifts of friendship with someone who lives with dementia, the meaningful role leisure plays in maintaining joy, fun and engagement in life, and tips shared by friends who simply want to pass on strategies that work for them with the goal of destigmatising dementia. in fact, the invitation to submit an abstract to this special issue arose at one of these academic conferences. while pleased that our research findings were out in the academic world, we were left with the feeling that our study was unfinished. there was a visual aspect to our data that was not captured in text-based journal articles, plain language summaries or other written tools. as a research team, we felt an obligation to share our participants’ stories with people who could learn from them (for example, individuals living with dementia, their families, the public); stories that did not translate well into the formula of short snippet direct quotations around a researcher-generated theme. our participants’ stories were dissected into codes which, when combined with other ‘like’ snippets, became the holy grail of qualitative research – the theme. the story from start to finish no longer held the same meaning. furthermore, the stories we heard did not lend themselves to creating ‘tools’ outlining tips and strategies – these stories needed to be shared in more evocative ways. challenging the way we understand dementia and social well-being was a much bigger issue than could be addressed in academic journals alone. these publications, with their few citations, did not necessarily tip the scales in favour of a more balanced representation of lived experience of dementia and friendships. this is particularly the case when we consider that the very individuals who could benefit most from research findings typically do not engage with such traditional forms of km (for example, academic journal articles) (boydell & croguennec 2022). we started by asking how our stories could be represented in a manner more reflective of their rich and storied nature. we regretted not video recording our kitchen conversations. in its place, could we explore arts-based representations of our texts that incorporate moving visual images and sound? could this exploration lend itself to a more effective dissemination of our stories and their lessons among people for whom this issue resonates? our intention in considering alternative types of km was not only to share our stories, but also to have users consider the stories in relation to their own experiences. appreciating how the use of visual imagery and animation can be effective km strategies due to their evocative and engaging nature and ability to instill an emotional connection with the material (boydell & croguennec 2022), we wondered how an emotional connection with our research findings might prompt people to engage genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 differently in their friendships. for example, by sharing the poignant ways friends were negotiating their relationships, could we invite knowledge users to commit to action in their own friendships? writing differently: embracing multimodality through five kairotic moments while immersed in the data we generated with our research participants, we grappled with the challenge of presenting it in ways that were meaningful to those who would benefit the most. the data were deeply moving, often more so than other studies we had conducted in our respective research programmes. for example, it was touching to hear a participant speak so affectionately about her friend with dementia and share that while she found some of the changes upsetting to see, she still loved being in her presence. as participants told us stories of their years-long friendships and what it meant to sustain them after dementia, we recognised that sharing these stories in traditional academic journal articles was simply not enough. based on these rich stories, we knew that our findings mattered for people living with dementia, their loved ones, the general public, health care providers, policy makers and researchers. in particular, they were vital for counteracting the tragedy discourse of dementia (genoe, whyte & fortune 2022) as they emphasise both gains and losses after a diagnosis of dementia rather than assuming that life is over after diagnosis (see genoe & dupuis 2012; genoe & fortune 2024). these findings were important for shifting the way people perceived themselves and others. these stories provided the situational context for the kairotic moments, or opportunities, that subsequently propelled us towards embracing multimodality. we needed to reach people who were navigating the complexities of living with dementia and needed to hear these stories. in figure 1, we provide a visual depiction of our kairotic moments, with each grouping of flowers representing one of our five kairotic moments. the green hills represent the situational context: our participants’ stories that set the stage for these five moments. the sky above, which is vital for growing plants by providing light, water and oxygen, represents the exchange of knowledge and power, which combined to create the ‘right moment’ to move forward in our journey. with the situational context serving as rich, fertile soil for growing strong roots, the flowers representing our kairotic moments were nurtured through social engagement whereby we shared knowledge and power to best present the findings of our study. it is relevant to note that while we present these as series of moments, they did not occur in isolation. rather, these moments of producing knowledge and exchanging power as we learned to ‘write differently’ overlapped and informed one another. figure 1. kairotic moments genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 recognising the necessity of writing differently in june of 2018, rebecca’s university hosted the annual congress of the social sciences and humanities, a national conference that brings together academic associations from across canada for knowledge translation. our own association, the canadian association for leisure studies, was attending the event for the first time in its history. the conference was the catalyst for our first kairotic moment (represented by the patch of white flowers on the left-hand side of figure 1). all three of us were attending the conference, and we booked extra time at the beginning to connect with each other about the data and to identify our next steps. as a geographically dispersed research team, our meetings were largely virtual, and communication occurred through email. this was a rare instance when all three of us were together in one place. we met in a hotel lobby over breakfast to discuss the data, share our initial thoughts on themes and subthemes, and consider how to divide the data up for the requisite peer-reviewed publications (darla would focus on leisure, rebecca would focus on strategies and colleen would write about the gifts of friendship). once we identified a writing strategy, we turned to the elephant in the room – non-traditional km – the area where we most lacked relevant skills. how could we move beyond our comfort zones to ensure the strategies and approaches for maintaining friendship would not appear only in academic journals, waiting for another researcher or instructor to search for the right key words and land on these articles? darla suggested writing a play. we considered this briefly, but decided this approach was too resource intensive and we lacked the knowledge and skill to write a script. we did not reach a decision that day, but this kairotic opportunity prompted us to leave the meeting with deep awareness that the knowledge we were generating needed to be shared in a creative and meaningful way that was accessible to people living with dementia and their friends. we needed to shift the power to people living with dementia and their friends to have the knowledge they needed to make decisions about their own relationships. we all agreed: traditional academic outputs along with plain language summaries and tools were not ideal for reaching the audience we wanted to reach in a meaningful way. in keeping with price’s (n.d.) characteristics of a kairotic space, this meeting over coffee and pastries (social element) was informal in nature with casual, impromptu conversation as we tossed around ideas and grappled with the challenge ahead of us. we were physically present in the moment (presence of participants) as we contemplated the implications of our study and how to share them with others (high stakes, as moving beyond the conventional journal article to have meaningful impact was a risk we were willing to take). moving past the boundaries of the traditional academic article recognising the need to write differently provided us with the right opportunity to consider our research findings beyond the traditional academic journal article. however, doing so required resources. thus, the next key kairotic moment in our move towards multimodality came during 2020 as we sheltered in place to wait out the pandemic restrictions. data collection and analysis were complete, and two of our manuscripts were in various phases of writing, editing and being submitted to journals. we had prioritised academic writing to satisfy our respective annual review processes, whereby our colleagues and deans expect to see ‘productivity’ in the form of peer-reviewed articles. the period of our grant was almost up, but we still had funds to put towards alternative forms of communication. as principal investigator, colleen worked her magic with her research office to extend the funding and we started more seriously brainstorming ideas for writing differently. this opportunity allowed us to direct resources to multimodality. we now had the flexibility to move forward with sharing these rich stories in new ways. turning away from the traditional approach to writing, this was the opportune time to draw on creative analytic practice, and we wrote fictionalised vignettes based on our participants’ stories (see box 1 for an genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 example). we each wrote a vignette relating to our respective peer-reviewed manuscript, with darla focusing on leisure, rebecca focusing on strategies and colleen focusing on the gifts of friendship. rebecca notes: to write my vignette, i spent time reflecting on the stories of friendship the participants shared with me. i returned to my initial codes and their associated quotes and spent time considering the data. writing for a non-academic audience requires a different headspace than a traditional article. that headspace always feels more relaxed and natural to me, but it is not always easy to transition in and out of it. i considered what strategies i wanted to prioritise and how to share those stories in an engaging manner. in doing so, i created a composite of participants and fictionalised two friends, both women, sharing their stories. my vignette consists of three stories or scenes, and includes a narrator who tells the viewer about her friend, claudia, who was diagnosed with dementia. each story/scene focuses on one major theme from the data analysis that highlights strategies that friends used (see genoe, whyte & fortune 2022). the first, prioritising friendship, explores the history of the friendship and highlights the ways that the two friends stay in touch and support each other. in the second section, the narrator identifies how she has changed her thinking about the friendship. the third scene highlights practical strategies, and the narrator tells the viewer about the importance of direct communication and spending time together. while writing, i envisioned what images i wanted to use to portray the story. i considered these stories as a window into the lives of our fictionalised research participants, and the artists incorporated the symbol of the window into the vignette. box 1. example of one of our vignettes: practical strategies there are several practical strategies that claudia and i have adopted for both of us to live more comfortably with her diagnosis of dementia. when i want to spend time with claudia, i no longer wait for her to call me. last week, i called claudia to make plans to help her with her garden. when i call her now, i am more direct. i don’t say ‘call me if you want to do this’. instead, i say, ‘do you want to do this? put it in your calendar’. we are open and honest with each other about claudia’s memory loss. claudia isn’t afraid to ask for help when she needs it, and she lets me know when she feels uncertain. with openness and honesty, i can step in to provide support for claudia. yesterday, while we were planting in her garden together, claudia told me she didn’t know what to do with the marigolds after removing them from the pot. i showed her how to place the marigold in the soil and cover up the roots. with some reminders, claudia and i were able to finish planting her garden. afterwards, over a glass of lemonade, we talked together about our children and grandchildren and reminisced about the time we spent working together all those years ago. by finding ways to support claudia and honour her strengths, we still have a joyful and fulfilling friendship. in tandem with writing our vignettes we worked closely with artists who made up for the important skills we lacked in making our stories come to life. decisions were made on colour schemes, images to be used and how the videos would be narrated. we met several times with the artists and reviewed many versions of the vignettes before signing off on the final versions. a particular challenge was colouring: we wanted bright, vibrant colours while the artists preferred more muted, subtle colours (see figure 2 for an example of the final artwork). this process involved relying on the artists’ expertise, while sharing our knowledge generated through the study. through this kairotic moment, power shifted back and forth between the artists and us during a reciprocal process. we had a particular vision, but relied on the artists’ skills to execute that vision, and to inform us about the feasibility of the vision. once we agreed upon all three vignettes, we were ready to find ways to share these stories with a broader audience. genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 figure 2. a group of friends shares a meal: still image from ‘leisure and friendship’ recognition of the need to write differently for our intended audience of people living with dementia and their friends signalled the start of a longer kairotic moment in our process. this moment was characterised by creativity, collaboration and learning. the moment, represented by the grouping of orange flowers in figure 1, was vital for embracing multimodality within our process in real time over several months, where we came together virtually as a research team and with the artists. our zoom meetings allowed us to connect with each other and share ideas in a safe, non-judgemental space. conversations with friends we recognised that it was not enough simply to show our vignettes to those who might benefit. we wanted viewers to engage with the material and consider how the vignettes might relate to their own experiences with friendship and dementia. this realisation led to an additional kairotic moment. to help us through it, we reached out to a km expert whose work we already admired. the km expert, lisa, was well versed in non-traditional km for people living with dementia and their family partners in care. furthermore, lisa had connections to people with lived experience of dementia and could include them in the next step of our multimodal journey. lisa connected with brenda, who lives with memory loss. lisa and brenda have a history of working together on research projects, and, importantly, have developed a friendship themselves. lisa and brenda worked together, viewing the vignettes, and chatting about them, and then writing a series of conservation guides to accompany the vignettes. the guides included suggestions for how to have discussions about friendship and dementia, including a list of dos and don’ts, tips for starting conversations, tips for maintaining friendships, and questions that people living with dementia and their friends can ask each other to determine how best to sustain the friendship (for example, how can i support you to make use of your skills and strengths?; where do you feel safe and able to be yourself ?; how do we check in on our friendship? see figure 3). this kairotic moment, represented by the blue forget-me-not flowers in figure 1, gave us space to exchange knowledge and power with brenda and lisa (blue forget-me-nots are used to raise awareness of dementia). once again, we were no longer the experts, and needed brenda’s and lisa’s wisdom and experience to turn our research findings into tangible, bite-sized information that supported people living with dementia to have challenging and potentially uncomfortable conversations with their friends. genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 figure 3. example of our conversation starters. these questions are designed to inspire reflection and discussion between people living with dementia and their friends to explore what their friendship means to them. taking the research online while we worked with brenda and lisa, we also contracted a web developer to build a website suitable for hosting the vignettes, conversation guides and other information about the study (see https://dementiaand friendship.ca/) for access to the vignettes, conversation guides and other information related to the study). now that we had content to share with our intended audience, it was the right time to determine how to make the information accessible. again, we needed to find appropriate partners to assist in the areas where we lacked skills, and website development is certainly not our forte. our goal with this phase of our km process was to provide access to the information that people living with dementia and their friends could find and use with ease. as such, we wanted the website to be user friendly and appealing. we shared a lay summary of the study on the website along with the vignettes and conversation guides. we also included links to our open access peer-reviewed papers, and other media engagements. the website allowed us to make the most of multimodality by providing virtual space to present the data in several ways. it enabled people living with dementia and their friends the opportunity to engage with the data at their own pace, picking and choosing from a variety of options – watching, reading, and listening to the knowledge generated through the study. genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 this moment, represented by the second group of white flowers in figure 1, also unfolded over several months as we engaged together as a research team to identify our needs and wants for the website, and as we engaged with the web developer to work through how best to present the information in an accessible manner. engaging with media completion of the discussion guides provided the catalyst for our next kairotic moment. we needed to take advantage of the opportune time to get our vignettes and discussion guides out into the world. engaging with the media was vital for sharing our findings more broadly. we did so in various ways. first, colleen took the lead on writing an article for the conversation canada, an organisation that helps academics to publish their research in a way that is accessible for non-academic audiences (whyte, fortune & genoe 2022). since publication, the article has been read more than 15 000 times, a marked increase from our peer-reviewed articles, which have accumulated approximately 1700 views and seven citations. we learned quickly from our conversation article that complementing a traditional article with a more accessible one enabled us to connect with a much broader audience. while publication of articles in the conversation is encouraged by our universities as an important means of km, it is not necessarily rewarded in the annual review process and would not be considered as ‘worthy’ as traditional, peer-reviewed articles. the article was subsequently picked up by other media outlets and led to an interview with cbc saskatchewan with rebecca and brenda (the canadian broadcasting company (cbc) is the national public broadcaster in canada. the interview took place during the morning show in rebecca’s province of saskatchewan). as well, colleen worked with brenda and lisa to deliver a podcast on friendship and dementia, which was released around the time of international day of friendship, which is designated by the un to acknowledge the importance of friendship for building community and providing safety (united nations 2024). details of all of these media engagements were posted on the website so that those looking for more information could easily find it. this moment, represented by the sunflower in figure 1, required our virtual presence as we worked together to write the conversation article and share our stories orally through media and social media. these intertwined kairotic moments created opportunities for us as a research team to incorporate multimodality into our traditional qualitative research study. these moments were characterised by engagement of the research team alongside experts who supported us where we lacked skills in largely virtual spaces. each moment helped us to move forward in our journey towards multimodality. a methodology for multimodal action in this section, we elaborate on the lessons learned along the way, proposing a methodology for multimodal action. our methodology consists of four components: relationality, axiology, engagement with knowledge and temporality (see figure 4). relationality: the importance of relationality to complement our skill set over the course of our work, we came to understand the importance of relationships in the process of moving beyond traditional km towards multimodality. kairotic time emphasises the importance of relationality, and likewise, price (n.d.) stresses the social nature of kairotic spaces. thus, connecting and collaborating with each other and experts in areas where we lacked skills was necessary for moving through our kairotic moments. for example, we knew we had the ability to write the vignettes, but not to bring them to life for the intended audience through imagery and sound. as such, we focused on our writing skills and then handed the stories over to artists who could create compelling visual images. knowing we were well genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 versed in qualitative research, but not as strong in creating reflective outputs, we drew on the expertise of our knowledge mobilisation expert and her friend with lived experience of dementia. these pre-existing relationships were vital in providing a safe space to share our work and to make it useful for people who are living with dementia and their friends. we also learned how to work together as a research team. while the three of us had pre-existing friendships as graduate students, this was the first project we had undertaken together. drawing on the strength of our pre-existing relationships and shared history of the challenges and tribulations of pursuing a doctorate enabled us to have difficult conversations and disagreements about the research process and data, and to work through our kairotic moments together as a team. frequent video-conference meetings provided us with the kairotic space to develop our knowledge and consider the exchange of power (price n.d.). these meetings helped us to prepare for collaboration with the km experts and artists who brought our vision to life, which also served as vital kairotic spaces as we developed our km tools. we were able to work out our own differences to reach consensus with each other before connecting with collaborators. creating a safe space to explore differences was important for moving forward with each step of this process. thus, our proposed multimodal methodology emphasises relationality and the importance of nurturing relationships among research team members and experts who support their work. axiology: re-affirming our values over the course of the project, we reflected on the importance of our own values and how they guided the decisions made about the work we were doing. our experiences as leisure practitioners working with older adults combined with our academic training in the field of leisure studies led to a set of shared values that helped to inform the study and subsequent km products. first and foremost, our preference for strengthsbased practice influenced our initial research question and directed us towards focusing on positive experiences of friendship after diagnosis rather than focusing on the tragedy discourse (mitchell, dupuis & kontos 2013) most often associated with dementia. beyond valuing strengths, we also hold inclusivity and adaptability in high regard. thus, we emphasised the need to ensure that the tools created were user-friendly •passive and active engagement •what action can be taken beyond reading about the study? •looking back and looking forward •taking time to experiment, debate, reflect, decide, and change our minds •reflecting on and incorporating values •connection and collaboration with experts relationality axiology engagement with knowledgetemporality figure 4. a methodology for multimodality genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 and relevant to people living with dementia and their friends. reflecting these values, our tools are designed to be adaptable to individual circumstances. they are meant to serve as a guide rather than a list of step-bystep instructions. again, drawing on the expertise of others played an important role in ensuring relevance. lisa and brenda had been friends for 20 years, and still learned new things about each other as they worked through the vignettes to create the discussion guides. reflecting on and incorporating values is vital for ‘writing differently’. keeping our values at the forefront helped us to make decisions about how to present the data in a meaningful way. as such, axiology plays a key role in our proposed methodology, and we encourage researchers to reflect on and integrate their values throughout their own multimodal processes. encouraging both active and passive engagement with knowledge as we experienced these kairotic moments, we came to view peer-reviewed publications in a different light. in the past, we ascribed to the peer-reviewed article as the gold standard and had learned to carefully follow a formulaic approach to writing and publishing. for example, each fall semester, rebecca outlines the components of a manuscript for students in her graduate level research methods course. these components tend to follow a particular formula: the introduction identifies the research problem; the literature review identifies the gap in research and justifies the study; the methods section explains and justifies the approach; the findings focus on snippets of conversations organised into themes and subthemes; and finally the discussion highlights the contribution of the study to the extant literature. our peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from our friendship research follow a similar approach. however, once we began to incorporate multimodality into our work, we recognised the limitations of the traditional approach. upon reflection of the process, we came to see academic writing as a way to justify the need for our study and the decisions we made in order to answer the research questions. in contrast, embracing multimodality allowed us to create ‘active’ outputs, such as watching a vignette and answering reflective questions, downloading a conversation guide, and talking with a friend. while we continue to value the traditional academic article as an important means of sharing research findings, moving forward, our methodology for multimodality calls for researchers to challenge themselves and to consider what other actions can be taken to facilitate engagement with research beyond reading a published manuscript, particularly among non-academic audiences who engage with research in different ways. temporality: planning for ongoing use multimodality gave us pause to consider temporality within our research outputs. our study unfolded in chronological time (chronos), while kairotic time presented us with opportunities to do things differently. additionally, our academic publications are a text-based report of the past (chronological time): what we did; what we found; what our participants said. moving beyond the static, rear-view journal article to incorporate images, motion and audio forced us to recognise that these forms of knowledge mobilisation are about the present and future: why does this matter to you? what can you take away? how can you change your engagement? these questions go beyond a research-centred focus to include a variety of users. for us, multimodality was a way to look to the future with a sense of hope, and to support people living with dementia and their loved ones to do the same, particularly when that future might be very different from what one had imagined or hoped for. it was a way to facilitate kairotic moments beyond our research team as our tools provide people living with dementia and their friends and families with opportunities to discuss their relationships. through this project, we learned a great deal about ‘taking our time’, sitting with the data, allowing the stories to percolate, taking care with identifying next steps rather than pushing ahead quickly. we acknowledge that we were afforded a particular privilege in doing so in that colleen’s university was willing genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202512 to support the transfer of funds when the formal grant period ended, rather than sending them back to the funding organisation. this extra time gave us room to experiment, debate, sit with our decisions and change our minds. taking time with our research allowed us room to engage in deep thinking that led to intentional decision making over time. as a result, our methodological approach to multimodality includes looking back and looking forward, but also slowing down and taking time. practical strategies for writing differently the lessons we learned throughout this process highlight the need for two practical strategies related to writing differently. the first strategy is writing for relevance. writing for relevance involves more than identifying the knowledge gaps or unanswered questions our study attempts to address; it involves deep reflection about the broader implications of our study and its real-world impact. a study’s potential impact increases when researchers focus on the needs of knowledge users rather than solely on the advancement of scholarly knowledge (rutter & fisher 2013). as glover (2015) argued, for research to be relevant and have an impact, findings must be translated for productive use, which happens when research ‘concerns itself with helping individuals, communities, and groups make sense of their position in the world and the nature of the challenges that confront them’ (glover 2015, p. 3). in regard to this project, we would consider our research to be relevant if it is useful for friends to start a conversation about how to navigate a dementia diagnosis or even to prompt a hypothetical conversation between friends prior to a dementia diagnosis. it would also be relevant if people were impacted by the deeply moving stories of friendship we shared and had the value of their own friendships reaffirmed. the second strategy is building a well thought out km plan from the onset (and still be open to change). we now realise that to do this, we need to identify and connect with intended knowledge users up front rather than later in the study. indeed, as other researchers have argued, building strong networks with community organisations, policymakers and other stakeholders can help amplify both the dissemination and use of research findings (cf. grimshaw et al. 2012; gurukkal 2022). when conceptualising a study, it would be helpful to ask intended knowledge users not only how they think they may use the findings, but also how they would like to receive the findings. this strategy also highlights the value of involving knowledge users as partners on the research team from the beginning to enhance relevance and applicability. many km strategies highlight the need for active engagement and relationships forged between researchers, decision-makers and other stakeholders throughout the research process. glover (2015), for example, stressed that influencing meaningful change is dependent upon reaching the right people. connecting with a knowledge mobilisation specialist at the beginning of the project would also help generate ideas regarding different methods of dissemination and incorporate the cost of such methods into the budget. furthermore, incorporating our study participants into the km plan would have provided an additional opportunity to exchange knowledge and power. unfortunately, due to the timing of the pandemic, we were unable to return to the participants to invite them to share their perspectives on the vignettes and conversation guides. as a result, we turned to (knowledge translation expert) and (friend). importantly, though, as we discovered with this study, a km plan should also be fluid and flexible enough to provide space for researchers to change course after reflecting on their findings and determining that evocative and affective dissemination methods are most appropriate for different audiences. conclusion: the next kairotic moment a research study typically follows a chronological order, beginning with the proposal, moving through data collection and analysis, followed by km. this chronological flow contains kairotic opportunities where researchers can slow down, reflect, collaborate and consider what is most appropriate in that moment. taking advantage of these kairotic moments allows space to move toward multimodality. beyond our own genoe et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202513 experiences and lessons as we navigated our own kairotic moments to share our data beyond the traditional academic article, we propose a broader kairotic moment for academics to grapple with as they aim to find relevant ways of sharing their research with a range of audiences. we invite researchers to attend to what is appropriate in the moment in order to have the greatest impact. price (n.d.) noted the lack of attention paid to kairotic moments and spaces within academia. perhaps with greater consideration of the significance and quality of these informal, social, high stakes moments where we give deeper contemplation to the exchange of knowledge and power, researchers can adopt multimodality in both their peer-reviewed work and their non-traditional km. we encourage academics to embrace the situational context of a research study while making the most of critical moments to create and share knowledge and power in ways that are relevant to all potential audiences. in doing so, we may all be better situated to ask, and answer, why does this research matter, and for whom, as posed in the call for papers for this special issue. in our case, this research matters as a means of challenging the tragedy discourse of dementia that our society holds while providing practical, useful tools that are widely available for academics, service providers and the general public. going beyond the bounds of the traditional journal article allowed us the freedom to represent data differently and embrace multimodality within our work. in our study, our participants reminded us of the importance of living in the moment within the context of dementia. friends emphasised taking time, slowing down and being with the person with dementia wherever they were at during that particular moment in time. we, in turn, learned to ‘go with the flow’ in our research journey, consider each moment as it came, and make the most of the opportunities that both presented themselves to us (for example, meeting over breakfast in a hotel restaurant) and those we created (for example, advocating to extend the timeline of the study to enable us the flexibility to incorporate multimodality into our writing). in this project, these kairotic moments led to changes in our non-traditional km. in the future, however, we intend to explore these moments more fully to better understand how they shape our contributions to peer-reviewed work. we will apply our methodology proposed here to our academic writing in the future, and challenge ourselves to incorporate more visual and auditory aspects in peer-reviewed work. references baert, bmt 2020, kairos: the right moment or occasion, institute for advanced study, viewed 9 august 2024, https:// www.ias.edu/ideas/baert-kairos boydell, k & croguennec, j 2022, ‘a creative approach to knowledge translation: the use of short animated film to share stories of refugees and mental health’, international journal of environmental research and public health, vol. 19, no. 18, pp. 1–11. 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https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/definitions-eng.aspx#km-mc https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/definitions-eng.aspx#km-mc https://www.un.org/en/observances/friendship-day https://www.un.org/en/observances/friendship-day https://theconversation.com/maintaining-friendships-after-a-dementia-diagnosis-can-spur-feelings-of-joy-and-self-worth-187038 https://theconversation.com/maintaining-friendships-after-a-dementia-diagnosis-can-spur-feelings-of-joy-and-self-worth-187038 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 16, no. 1 june 2023 © 2023 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: spencer, r., hwang, j., sinclair, r., alramadhan, f., montgomery, s. 2023. ‘i want to be screened just like the pirates!’: the power of community-based participatory research (cbpr) theatre to aid research participation. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 16:1, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v16i1.8397 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article ‘i want to be screened just like the pirates!’: the power of community-based participatory research (cbpr) theatre to aid research participation rhonda spencer1,*, jayden hwang1, ryan sinclair1, fatimah alramadhan1,2, susanne montgomery2 1 school of public health, loma linda university, loma linda, california, usa 2 school of behavioral health, loma linda university, loma linda, california, usa corresponding author: rhonda spencer, rspencer@llu.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8397 article history: received 05/10/2022; revised 22/02/2023; accepted 15/03/2023; published 06/2023 abstract research participation is an important component of advancing whole health and eliminating health disparities, especially in communities facing environmental justice (ej) issues. though federally mandated, recruitment of racial and ethnic minorities can be a daunting task and recruitment of children an even greater challenge. a range of typical recruitment strategies (printed materials, word of mouth, broadcast etc.) for those of ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds have exhibited only limited to modest success, depending on the community being served and the type of engagement. to date, there has been only limited assessment of the use of community-based participatory research (cbpr) theatre as a culturally relevant recruitment strategy. the enrrich railyard study used cbpr theatre to engage an underserved ej community, and to assess the health impact of residential proximity to a major freight railyard. the railyard community is comprised of primarily low-income hispanic families. to promote participation, a cbpr theatre play – a partnership between a communitybased organisation (cbo) and a university institution – was produced, from design to production, at two elementary schools. following the play, parental consents and surveys 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this article was made possible in part from research grant g20-cagp-34 california air resources board (carb) community air grant. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8397 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8397 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:rspencer@llu.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v16i1.8397 were sent home. the response was immediate and one of the largest to date – 74 percent of children participated in the study. the cbpr theatre, university and cbo partnership provided an opportunity to engage underserved minority children and their parents, thus encouraging participation and facilitating education on respiratory health and the environment. this article includes experiences and lessons learned from using cbpr theatre to encourage study participation, critical for promoting sustainable change in an ej community. keywords community partnerships; minority population; theatre; research participation; youth introduction researchers working with disadvantaged populations publish extensively on the difficulty in encouraging community participation, an important component of driving change especially for communities facing environmental justice (ej) issues (cyril et al. 2015). disadvantaged groups residing in ej communities are often racial and ethnic minorities who experience the added burden of adverse environmental exposures, which coincide with limited access to health care, thus synergistically promoting disease and significantly reducing their life expectancy. ej communities are often plagued by poor air quality, which is now one of the leading causes of disease and premature death throughout the world (landrigan et al. 2018). adding fuel to fire was the onset of the covid-19 pandemic which made even more glaringly apparent the health disparities facing racial and ethnic minority communities, especially those living in ej communities. participation in scientific research studies is an important component of driving advancements in health and reducing health disparities. furthermore, a solid body of research has found that community engagement can lead to positive outcomes and improved health across a variety of health conditions (o’mara-eves et al. 2015). despite the federal initiatives led by the national institutes of health (nih), the federal drug administration, and the centers for medicare and medicaid services to encourage the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in health research, they remain under-represented in research studies (george et al. 2014). one might wonder why nothing has significantly changed. barriers to participation in studies are long-standing, deeply rooted, highly prevalent and diverse, and include factors such as language, time, trust, political perspectives, health status, cultural values and beliefs, and literacy levels. unfortunately, low enrolment of racial and ethnic minorities in studies specifically aimed at eliminating health disparities and improving minority health severely hinders and reduces the likelihood of success of such studies and development of future interventions to reduce the impact of conditions that disproportionately impact minorities (george et al. 2014). in working to address the difficulties and challenges of engagement, a wide range of strategies have been developed. these include partnering with community-based organisations (cbos), hiring bilingual staff, and establishing face-to-face long-term relationships with participants (khubchandani et al. 2016). some research has indicated the use of proactive (face-to-face) strategies; reactive recruitment approaches (including collaboration with key leaders, word of mouth, print material and broadcast media); or providing compensation, being flexible, building rapport and trust, and employing ethnically and culturally diverse research staff as effective in recruiting participants. a systematic review of the effectiveness of typical recruitment strategies (printed materials, word of mouth, broadcast media etc.) for those of ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds showed only limited to modest success (33–60%), depending on the community’s make-up and the type of engagement (ibrahim & sidani 2014). spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20232 as the majority of community-engaged research focuses on adults, recruitment and participation of children and their families in research could be a challenge (svensson et al. 2012). inclusion of minors in research comes with a greater level of complexity, both in enrolment and retention, than in adult populations, as parents’ and children’s beliefs and characteristics would influence the decision process around participation, thus calling for innovative strategies in recruiting both children and their families (lewis 2009). understanding the potential adverse impact on children – one of the most vulnerable populations – of living in an ej community would primarily come from research participation of children and their families from these regions. with the increased threat of infectious disease, impacted by climate change and worsening pollution, children residing in ej communities may be at even greater risk of poorer health and reduced educational attainment outcomes, and ultimately lifespan. thus, there is a critical need for innovative and effective research engagement strategies for diverse racial and ethnic communities, especially within ej communities. methods loma linda university (llu) approach researchers at loma linda university (llu) in southern california, while working on an environmental justice research study, identified aspects within cbpr that may prove fruitful in increasing community involvement in research studies. community-based participatory research (cbpr) has emerged as a promising tool for engaging hard-to-reach communities, especially in the fight against health disparities. cbpr is a research approach characterised by a continuous and equal collaborative partnership between researchers and the community affected by the issue that is the focus of this study; that is, seeking to provide solutions to enhance the community’s health and wellbeing within its contextual (social, political, cultural and economic) environment (kamanda et al. 2013). cbpr is founded on a solid environment of meaningful and trust-based relationships between researchers and the community, resulting in high interest and participation from community members in the research process. furthermore, cbpr is an important tool as a driver for change in environmental justice communities and those facing tremendous environmentally related hazards. researchers with the llu enrrich (environmental railyard research impacting community health) study strategically built their foundation on cbpr methods to study the health effects on community members living in close proximity to a major freight railyard. with operations running 24/7, the san bernardino railyard (sbr) is one of the major freight railyards in california and a crucial shipping hub for the nation (bnsf; carb 2008). air pollution emission sources at the sbr facility include diesel locomotives, on-road and off-road loading equipment, and associated machinery and typical roadway vehicles. based on a risk assessment conducted by the california air resources board (carb), the sbr ranks among the top five most polluting railyards in california, and first in terms of community health risk due to the large population living in the immediate vicinity (castaneda et al. 2008). the sbr community is located in the inland region of southern california and primarily comprises low-income hispanic families. here children are at greater risk of various adverse health outcomes due to recurrent elevated exposure concentrations of pollutants from local sources, including the freight railyards, freeways and communities in the vicinity (spencer-hwang et al. 2015; 2016). this routine exposure to poor air quality puts an additional strain on the already pre-existing poverty, inadequate care and other social inequalities experienced by children, jeopardising their future health and development. spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20233 community partnerships in taking a cbpr approach, llu researchers partnered with a local cbo and their community health workers (promotoras), along with two school districts and their school principals, one school near the sbr and a second comparison school eleven kilometres away. aware of the health effects from living in close proximity to a major pollution source, the school administrators understood the importance of screening for respiratory health among their students and facilitated access to a school-wide participation in the study. as researchers considered various approaches to recruiting children for the study, school administrators became engaged. the school principal near the sbr suggested a school-wide assembly with an interactive skit as the recruitment vehicle. in delivering on the promise made to the school principal, the cbo and the llu team worked together and developed a theatrical play script about pirates with asthma, titled ‘captain jack snuffles and the coughing crew’, complete with a musical number. as the idea for the theatre play came after the grant was funded, there weren’t any funds to cover the cost. the university and the cbo thus got in touch with contacts they knew to secure donations of items needed to produce the play. the majority of the materials and props were generously donated by local churches, hardware stores, and families and friends. in building the set, which included a gigantic pirate ship and a wide variety of colourful props, the university and the cbo spent many evenings side by side building it. the principal’s school assembly idea resulted in a community informed interactive/musical theatre production about pirates with asthma, co-created and performed by university researchers and cbo members (figure 1). together we produced an age and humour appropriate 30-minute educational production, which introduced students to health knowledge of asthma symptoms, respiratory screening procedures, air pollution and environmental literacy. figure 1. theatre production ‘captain jack snuffles and the coughing crew’ included in the cbpr theatre production are members from the partnering community agency and the university, including faculty, staff, students and their families. spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20234 results impact and benefits of the cbpr theatre production the play was met with unanticipated excitement from the students. following the production, numerous children lined up with paper and pencil in hand, determined to get an autograph from the performing characters. afterwards, they were sent home with a parental consent form, which included information about participating in a study of non-invasive biological testing for airway inflammation to measure exhaled fractional nitric oxide with a niox device, lung function via peak expiratory flow (pef), and height and weight. additionally, data on self-reported clinical symptoms and adverse health outcomes were collected via send-home parental questionnaires on demographic information, residential history, parental smoking and physician diagnosis history. once the parental consents were collected and approved, the children were screened. we realised an overwhelming response of 74% (n = 1,066 across two schools) of all children who had participated in the respiratory screening (spencer-hwang et al. 2015). with a total of 1,066 children screened (531/680 railyard school and 535/760 comparison school), the railyard school alone exhibited a 78% participation rate. initially, the study aimed to assess a sample of the student body; however, students were greatly motivated by the pirates’ story and a census-type of participation resulted from the cbpr theatrical play. through the entire production, the children’s interest and enthusiasm were evident in their strong engagement, both visually and verbally. the interactive play included opportunities for the children to supply performance suggestions, which resulted in an enormous response. the children’s enthusiasm was matched by the parents’ interest in participation, with an equally high response on the self-reported symptoms survey. the overall participation rate of 74 percent across both elementary schools was one of the largest participation rates reported, when compared with findings from a systematic review of community-engagement studies (30–60% rates) (ibrahim & sidani 2014). cbpr theatre may instil in children the desire to take part in a study, and children’s interest may inspire parents and school staff to participate in the screening activities, potentially making cbpr theatre a highly successful tool for recruitment and retention. the overwhelmingly positive response of the children had a wonderful impact on all who took part in the theatrical production. another unexpected success of the cbpr theatre was the increased interest in cbpr research methods among the llu study team, comprised of epidemiologists, pediatricians and environmental scientists with limited previous exposure to and participation in cbpr studies. after witnessing the children’s, parents’ and school staff successful participation, there was a transformation among the team, which translated into greater interest in cbpr theatre to engage underserved young populations in health research. cbpr theatre became a bridge between health researchers/clinicians, the local cbo and children/school administrators who now had the ability to initiate and create long-term relationships founded on trust and open dialogue during the implementation of the study and in future collaborations. furthermore, the theatre experience of the llu team led to additional larger grant funding both for them and for the cbo. there were many major benefits (both anticipated and unanticipated), as well as lessons learned along the way (table 1). major benefits of incorporating theatre in a cbpr study • increases cbpr study participation. theatre may prove to be a powerful tool in engaging underserved and minority populations and encouraging participation in health studies. we recommend more research assessing cbpr theatre in community engagement. spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20235 • promotes camaraderie. theatre may promote camaraderie and empower those involved in producing theatrical productions. theatre also has a positive impact on those performing in the play. we found that it helped with team-building and encouraging enthusiasm – especially useful tools for breaking down barriers and building partnerships between the cbo and university team members. • theatre may increase visibility and open doors for additional community services or research projects. through our theatrical performance, the enrrich team expanded their scope of work and were awarded a five-year contract with the first 5 commission to produce theatrical productions with a health message throughout the county. the cbo received additional funding as well. cbpr theatre has also been used in other research studies, such as carb. • theatre may encourage other researchers, faculty, and even health professionals not previously drawn to cbpr to engage in cbpr studies. such engagement may increase awareness, education and participation, and encourage other health professionals (e.g. paediatricians) to take part in a cbpr team. • increasing knowledge. theatre may not only be a useful tool for engaging, entertaining and educating children, but also adults, as it is able to reach a wide audience. even though a production may target children, it is useful to include tips for adults who may be watching as well. teach concepts about air quality and promoting environmental health to children, but also include key concepts/tips for adults viewing the production. table 1. top ten lessons learned in designing and producing a theatrical production limited or no budget for producing a show – no problem. if the original cbpr grant application does not include a line item for funds dedicated to producing a theatrical event within your study, one can still be performed. for the enrrich study, which had only a few hundred dollars, donated by the principal investigator, we were able to develop and produce two theatrical productions for each participating elementary school. take a team approach to designing the script and include key ingredients: laughter and music. in designing the script, and even the performance, work with a group, including people from both the cbo and the university. our enrrich team included students, faculty and community members, who worked together to develop a list of objectives for the design and development of the script. even though no-one on the team had professional theatre training, some were able to draw on their experience in raising their own children or taking part in church theatre productions. if possible, include live music and a jingle theme song. help all the kids to remember key thoughts. seek out materials and props from local stores, churches, and even the university. develop a list of necessary materials and check if a local hardware store could donate items. contact them well in advance as they will need time to get approval from upper management. seek out major stores, such as walmart and target, to see if they are willing to donate costumes, especially for the day after halloween. churches may also be able to provide props from previous musicals or activities. also check out second-hand stores for slightly used items that could be made into props and even costumes. students, staff, faculty and members of a cbo partner may also have items that they may be willing to donate. request help from family and friends. family and friends of both the university and the cbo partner are good resources. they may be able to lend a hand and also provide advice on numerous aspects, such as script design, set development, how to transport and set up equipment, and organise music. they may also be able to provide props or assist with building them, or help out by providing live music (e.g. playing a keyboard) during the production. they are also a great source of encouragement. spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20236 no-one with professional theatrical training – no problem! children are an easy audience to perform for. when lines are forgotten, don’t worry, just improvise. make sure that performers agreeing to take on a leading role can attend all events, as it is difficult to have stand-ins for leading roles. most likely, volunteers will come with various skill levels. some will be naturals and some will need support. patience and practice will help them to gain the needed skills. build the theatrical set in such a way that it can be easily transported, set up or stored. building, storing, transporting and setting up were difficult for our team, given the large size of our major prop, a pirate ship. additionally, we had no formal moving van and needed to transport all items in our own vehicles (cars, suvs, trucks, minivans, etc.). plan site visits and dress rehearsals for future performances well in advance. stages in elementary schools are different sizes, so visit sites early to take measurements of the stage to ensure the students and materials will fit. as elementary schools typically don’t have a large enough cafeteria or conference hall to house all the students at the same time, in warm regions you may need to stage the performance outside. provide refreshments for the theatrical crew and volunteers. many long hours are spent by cbo and university team members working on building the set and performing rehearsals, so it is a good idea to provide light refreshments to help sustain them. be engaging and dynamic when interacting with the kids. have the children interact with the audience, descending from the stage down to their level during the show. after the show, the children may want an autograph or even high fives with the crew before they head back to class. take time with them and remain in character as long as possible. we had a play mascot arrive at times during the actual health-screening event, which was a big hit with the children. the mascot also showed up to greet the kids at a party hosted at each school for classrooms with a 100 percent participation rate. record the theatrical production and all the preparations, from building the set to dress rehearsals, using cameras and video devices. it is great to have a photojournalistic view of the development and production of the event. if possible, make a video of the characters in a live performance, and include the photos in posters and articles, and on websites and in other formats to share with the audience. make sure you seek consent from the audience if planning to include them in the pictures, otherwise take photos from the back of the building. discussion rationale for cbpr theatre the success of cbpr theatre rests partly on a solid framework of strategic, interdisciplinary and crossagency partnerships between researchers and community members. researchers provide best evidence for the science and analysis of health issues, and the cbo and school districts have excellent connections with the community and greater understanding of the problems in the context of the targeted audience. altogether, they make an effective team for promoting positive change. given the budget limitations on research studies and recruitment efforts, collaborative work that builds on existing partnerships and knowledge among researchers is critical to implementation of cbpr theatre. the enrrich study drew on a university and a cbo’s pre-existing relationship and expertise to develop a fictional narrative script, a pirate theatre set and scenography, as well as technical sound and music assistance for the play’s production. additional support was provided by neighbouring faith-based organisations and hardware stores that table 1. continued spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20237 donated or lent play props, costumes, scenography materials and pirate ship-building materials, while graduate student volunteers and cbo members created and performed play jingles. further acknowledgement of the success of cbpr theatre the success of cbpr theatre in engaging young minority populations came from substantial evidence pointing to fictional narrative stories as a communication method that produces lasting impressions on beliefs and behaviours (green & clark 2013; murphy et al. 2015). the narrative transportation theory suggest that individuals highly immersed in narrative stories are more likely to be persuaded, change aptitude towards a behavior, and imitate the behavior portrait in the story (green & clark, 2013). when narrative stories are delivered through theatre, young populations have been found particularly influenced or highly immersed, with greater levels of cognitive and affective engagement. these attitudinal and behavioural effects in children suggest that cbpr theatre may instill motivation in study participation. during the fictional narrative story, pirates portrayed asthma-like symptoms and limited knowledge about the condition, and were asked to execute an ‘asthma screening test’ similar to the niox and peak expiratory flow non-invasive screening tests in the study. following the play, children expressed their desire to be screened ‘like the pirates in the play’. the result was a young diverse audience highly motivated to participate in respiratory screening. principles for successful cbpr theatre in health research recruitment the fundamental principles of cbpr theatre for collaboration, research engagement and recruitment are: • create and maintain cross-agency collaborations and partnerships, founded on cbpr principles, between researchers and community members for contributions to knowledge and expertise in the development and implementation of cbpr theatre. • build on existing partnerships within the research team and cbo (e.g. local organisations that service target populations and can provide in-kind donations), or recruit volunteers to maximise resources for development of the cbpr theatre. • include beliefs and practices of the targeted audience on the health issue being investigated in the theatrical narrative. the cbpr theatre should portray the targeted health issue in the context of the community’s understanding of events that could happen in their real world to focus their attention on the research study. • include interactive elements of theatrical productions. interventions aimed at influencing beliefs have shown to be more effective when role-play, musical and audience responses/exchanges are included in the production, especially those targeting children. • ensure participation in the theatrical production by all agencies involved in the research, including the lead university researchers and a willing spirit to be a character and to potentially act and dress silly in front of the children. conclusion at the time we created the theatrical assembly, we did not realise what a critical component it was to become in encouraging children to participate in the research study. indeed, we now strongly believe that we tapped into an unexpected way to effectively reach a hard to engage audience using a multiple intelligence approach that was not only fun, but also resulted in our unusually high participation rate. furthermore, what transpired from this experience was awareness of the power of cbpr theatre, a community informed and co-produced educational theatre method to encourage research study participation in efforts to promote sustainable community change. cbpr theatre promotes principles of cbpr by encouraging participation in the theatre, spencer, et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 16, no. 1 june 20238 cooperative co-learning and capacity building. research has shown that real power sharing with community has found to be effective in disadvantaged community engagement, and cbpr theatre may be an effective tool to promote equal distribution of power (cyril et al. 2015). the enrrich study produced evidence that cbpr theatre – in collaboration with cbo and other key community stakeholders (such as school districts) – provides a feasible innovative approach to engage children and their families from underserved and racial minority backgrounds in health research. public health practitioners, health researchers and clinicians might find cbpr theatre a useful cost-effective, partnership-driven tool for recruitment in health research programs. future research should investigate cbpr theatre’s effectiveness in other underserved young minority racial populations, and tailor it to reach additional communities, e.g. adults from diverse backgrounds, especially those with limited literacy. additional exploration of cbpr theatre as a recruitment tool for other forms of health research, e.g. clinical trials and screening procedures, within different racial and ethnic communities could also be useful. the continuing search for innovative cbpr approaches to engaging children and their families in research, especially racial and ethnic minorities and those living in ej communities, is an important priority for investigators, which could lead to positive and sustainable change and to building more health equitable communities. please note that our database is available for sharing data. references bnsf 2008, health risk assessment for the bnsf san bernardino railyard. 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redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: dziminska, m., krzewinska, a. 2025. the university-community cooperation framework: science hub case study. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1– 17. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9481 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 july 2025 practice-based article the university-community cooperation framework: science hub case study malgorzata dziminska*, aneta krzewinska faculty of economics and sociology, university of łódź, poland corresponding author: malgorzata dziminska, malgorzata.dziminska@uni.lodz.pl doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9481 article history: received 06/12/2024; revised 23/04/2025; accepted 05/05/2025; published 07/2025 abstract this article presents a university-community cooperation framework developed and tested through the science hub uł (sh) pilot project, implemented at the university of łódź in poland between october 2022 and october 2024. funded by the polish ministry of science and higher education, the initiative aimed to strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration by engaging students, academics and external partners such as businesses, public institutions, and ngos in tripartite teams tasked with addressing real-world challenges. a total of 41 collaborative projects were carried out across a range of disciplines including the natural, social, and human sciences, with several interdisciplinary and inter-university projects also undertaken. the article outlines the operational framework, stakeholder engagement strategies, and support mechanisms introduced during the project’s implementation, including call for proposals, tailored training, mentoring and communication efforts. the initiative not only enhanced institutional capacity for cooperation but also fostered the development of enduring partnerships, generated new research and educational outputs and contributed to building the university’s societal impact portfolio. the sh project also addressed the broader national context in which cooperation with the socioeconomic environment is legally mandated and assessed through education and research evaluation systems. by reflecting on the lessons learnt including challenges related to sustainability, recognition of contributors and the need for strategic alignment this article offers practical recommendations for embedding such initiatives within the structures of higher education institutions. it concludes by positioning the sh as a replicable model that can inform similar efforts both in poland and internationally, especially in contexts seeking to operationalise meaningful university-community engagement. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the project was funded by the polish ministry of science and higher education under the science for society program (grant no: nds/543803/2021/2022). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9481 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9481 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:malgorzata.dziminska@uni.lodz.pl https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9481 keywords higher education management; community engagement; cooperation framework; science and society; science hub; poland introduction this article presents the university-community cooperation framework developed through the pilot project titled science hub uł (sh), conducted at the university of łódź (uł) from 3 october 2022 to 3 october 2024. the sh project aimed to strengthen university-community partnerships and develop a framework for their sustainable operation. this was to be achieved by establishing and supporting collaborative projects within tripartite teams consisting of students, academics and community partners which could include businesses, local communities, public institutions, or non-governmental organisations. the project teams were to address problems identified by the external partner that require a scientific approach to solve. a video explaining the sh concept of trilateral cooperation was produced to raise awareness and promote understanding of the sh model of university-community engagement (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zf_8oapgx2w&t=3s) as a result of the sh pilot initiative a total of 41 tripartite collaborative projects were carried out, involving 61 students, 40 academic supervisors, and 38 external partners representing business, public institutions and ngos (appendix 1). the projects spanned the natural, social and human sciences. for example, the teams tackled challenges such as unwanted crystallisation in lipsticks, the level of participation of polish female soldiers in missions abroad, and the creation of a glossary of terms related to neurodiversity. in addition, four projects were classified as interdisciplinary and two as inter-university. for example, one interdisciplinary project focused on intellectual property protection in relation to the production of animal tissue extracts and was carried out jointly by biology and law students and supervisors in collaboration with a private company. the inter-university projects were carried out in cooperation between representatives of the university of łódź and the medical university of łódź. the joint projects were carried out as part of students’ diploma theses, internships, regular university courses or extracurricular activities. they resulted in proposals to address the challenges identified by the external partners as well as in spin-off projects, student placements at partner institutions, conference presentations delivered jointly by partners and academic representatives, press releases, new cooperation agreements or applications for funding, academic articles written by academics (makowska 2024) as well as articles prepared jointly by teachers and students (lessman et al. 2024). three videos have been produced to illustrate the collaborative process and the results achieved in three example projects. (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=sl5g9q4ucus&t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h4k9pqiove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8zax9nsfou). by illustrating in detail the implementation of the sh tripartite cooperation initiatives in a higher education setting, this article aims to enrich the repertoire of proven approaches for embedding crosssectoral cooperation in universities. in this context, the sh project serves as a case study that due to its wide applicability, can inform and inspire other initiatives in national and international contexts. contextual information in the polish academic context, cooperation with the socioeconomic environment is sanctioned by the act of 20 july 2018. this legislation mandates two institutions – the polish accreditation committee (pka) and the committee for the evaluation of research (ken) – to assess the quality of education and research, respectively. cooperation with the socioeconomic environment is a criterion used by both dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20252 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf_8oapgx2w&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf_8oapgx2w&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl5g9q4ucus&t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl5g9q4ucus&t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h4k9pqiove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8zax9nsfou institutions in their evaluation procedures. in addition, chapter 6 of the act, titled commercialisation of the results of research, development work and know-how, defines possible frameworks for cooperation with the socioeconomic environment. the research evaluation is carried out at national level every four years. one of the three criteria applied in the assessment of each scientific discipline is the impact of the research carried out on the functioning of society and the economy (art. 267, pkt 1.3). this evaluation is carried out through expert assessments. in describing the impact of an institution on socioeconomic environment, the aim is to establish a cause-andeffect relationship between the research activity undertaken by the evaluated institution and the claimed social impact. this social impact is assessed in two dimensions: the first is outreach, which is defined geographically, and the second is significance, which refers to the extent of social influence. examples of this influence may include social, economic, environmental or cultural benefits resulting from the scientific activity and experienced by specific social groups (regulation of 22 february 2019, §23 pkt. 1). summarising the definitions of cooperation with the socioeconomic environment, it can be understood as: (1) the impact of research activities on the functioning of society and the economy; (2) cooperation with the socioeconomic environment for educational and research purposes; and (3) commercialisation of the results of research, development work and know-how (piotrowska-piątek 2015). however, despite the existence of national legislation that sanctions and obliges universities to collaborate with societal partners, there remains a scarcity of well-structured and tested solutions that effectively translate the concept of collaboration into operational frameworks, proven approaches as well as scalable and replicable initiatives that promote university-community engagement. as a result, there is a dearth of welldocumented and described examples of such activities. a notable exception is a series of three publications describing the outcomes of the project research for practice. the use of implementation-based master’s theses based on action research for the development of organisations (bogacz-wojtanowska et al. 2019; góral et al. 2019; prawelska-skrzypek et al. 2019). these publications combine theoretical considerations with practical recommendations and provide examples of tripartite research projects involving external partners from public institutions such as a museum, an association and a philharmonic hall. the university of łódź has a long tradition of collaboration with external partners, which can be categorised into areas related to education, research and commercialisation. despite the widely acknowledged challenges of collaboration between academic and non-academic partners – including limited funding, bureaucratic constraints and cultural differences (such as differing approaches to time management, varying motivations, or a lack of motivation altogether) (wycisk et al. 2018) – the university of łódź maintains a dialogue with external partners. this engagement takes the form of a multifaceted set of formal and informal relationships developed by academics, students, university leadership and administrative staff. the sh initiative sought to build on these existing experiences and partnerships. in the context of łódź, the city has developed strategic collaborations with higher education institutions through urban development and innovation policies. still, the sh initiative represents a pioneering effort to embed such cooperation in a systematic and replicable way. to provide a broader context, it is important to note that the goals and scope of the sh project were aligned with the university of łódź’s strategy for the period 2021–2030. in addition to its research and teaching missions, the strategy strongly emphasised the university’s commitment to engaging with the wider socioeconomic environment. its key strategic objectives included the aspirations to be an engaged member of society and to have a tangible, real-world impact. the strategy also underlined the university’s commitment to fostering partnerships with a wide range of social, economic, and cultural actors and to aligning its research with the needs of society. furthermore, it reaffirmed the institution’s commitment to translating scientific discoveries into practical applications, developing innovative solutions to contemporary challenges, disseminating knowledge, and supporting creative students, postgraduates and staff, all while dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20253 adhering to the principles of sustainable development (university of łódź 2021). this alignment between the long-term strategic goals of the university and the objectives of the sh project was instrumental in positioning the sh initiative as a meaningful contribution to the fulfilment of the university’s priorities. science hub uł in a nutshell the sh project team comprised the project leader, the project coordinator, two administrative staff and nine sh ambassadors – researchers from nine of the university’s thirteen faculties. the sh ambassadors were well-connected faculty members with knowledge of their faculty’s academic strengths and infrastructure, as well as familiarity with key players in their sector. each had prior experience working with societal partners. they were tasked with acting as intermediaries and networking facilitators, helping foster cooperation between university representatives (students, academics) and external partners. additionally, a sh advisory board was formed, consisting of the vice-rector for external relations, and the directors of the technology transfer centre and the external relations centre. their role was to provide consulting and promotional support for the sh initiative. to better understand the scope and scale of the sh project, the table below summarises its key parameters and outcomes. table 1. key science hub project parameters and outcomes achieved results number signed tripartite contracts and implemented collaboration projects 41* disciplinary 37 interdisciplinary 4 inter-university 2 natural sciences (biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer and information sciences) 21 medical and health sciences 2 social sciences (education, law, management, sociology, social and economic geography and spatial management) 14 humanistic sciences (philology, history, archaeology) 7 participating students 61 participating academics 40 partners 38** business 22 public institutions 8 ngos 8 *the number refers to unique projects. some projects belonged to more than one category (e.g., natural sciences, interdisciplinary, and inter-university). **the number refers to unique partners. some partners participated in more than one project. each project carried out within sh was promoted on the university website and social media. a dedicated website (www.sciencehub.uni.lodz.pl) was launched, along with a linkedin profile (https://www. dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20254 http://www.sciencehub.uni.lodz.pl https://www.linkedin.com/company/sciencehubul/ linkedin.com/company/sciencehubul/) to support networking, sharing progress on implementing projects and facilitating ongoing engagement with stakeholders. science hub operational framework in the project application submitted to the ministry of science and higher education, the sh initiative was outlined using generic categories of activities for the operational framework, following a typical project implementation logic. the work plan included activities related to establishing the organisational structure of the sh, recruiting teams to implement trilateral projects addressing real-world challenges, training project participants, supporting the projects’ implementation, dissemination and conducting formative and summative evaluation of the whole initiative. setting the sh organisational structure appointing the project leader, project coordinator, sh ambassadors, sh advisory board, sh administrative support staff, sh trainers. recruitment of the teams to tackle realworld challenges announcement of the sh initiative and its promotion internally and externally using the university communication channels. signing the tripartite contracts. training of the teams' members trainings for students, academics, external partners on problem diagnosing, communication, project management and using design thinking method to boost creativity. implementation and project dissemination delivery of the agreed upon project scope. reporting the progress and results of the project work. presenting the outcomes at the project closing event. evaluation evaluation of the project results. evaluation of the collaboration process. recommendations for the future. figure 1. the pre-implementation sh operational framework the generic work packages (wps) designed during the pre-implementation phase required further breakdown into specific tasks, along with the development of measures to support their effective execution. as a result, the implementation phase required a reconsideration of the most productive way to achieve the assumed scope. the wps related to the recruitment of the tripartite teams assumed to be promoting the concept of collaboration both within the academic community and among societal partners, who were encouraged to present real-world challenges for joint, solution-oriented work with university representatives. however, it quickly became clear that simply providing information about collaboration opportunities was not enough to encourage participation. therefore, the sh team focused on disseminating tailored information about the opportunity to get involved in university-community cooperation to key target groups. the sh project team developed a list of stakeholder-specific benefits (appendix 2) and used a variety of channels to communicate them. students were reached through the university website and social media, posters, in-lecture announcements and direct engagement with student societies. academics were informed through departmental meetings, email and informal conversations, in addition to online content. external partners were contacted through mailings and direct outreach, with a particular focus on those who had a previous links with the university, as this was seen as a way of maintaining and developing existing relationships. dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20255 https://www.linkedin.com/company/sciencehubul/ to further support relationship building, networking opportunities such as trade fairs, industry cluster meetings, site visits, conferences and workshops between academia and the community were organised. ultimately, most project teams were formed through pre-existing formal and informal relationships. the sh initiative thus provided an effective means of maintaining and strengthening these links. the call for proposals for tripartite projects was the main trigger for action. it included eligibility criteria, a structured application process and a deadline (see details on the project website www.sciencehub.uni.lodz.pl sh edition i). the main incentives for each stakeholder were clearly articulated: 1. external partners gained a solution to their challenge, access to university resources, expertise and infrastructure and opportunities to build relationships for future collaboration; 2. academic supervisors received remuneration (approx. €740), training, project support, and the opportunity to apply their expertise to real-world problems, gaining new practice-based insights for their further research work; and 3. students gained access to a training package, certification, valuable experience for their cvs and expanded networks of potential employers. according to the final evaluation, key factors in the decision to respond to the call for proposals were the low barrier to entry as well as the application process that was straightforward and provided a fast track into university-community collaboration with minimal bureaucracy but comprehensive support. for all approved projects, a standardised process involved the signing of tripartite agreements between academics, students and community partners. specific training was provided to participants to dialogue with societal partners explaining the formula of sh to societal partners. networking to facilitate listening to the challenges of the societal partners. incentivising the collaboration with a call for proposals. incubation of projects matchmaking of the societal partners with the university experts and students. encouraging transdisciplinary and inter-university collaboration. support in developing the collaboration project goals. providing legal counselling and formalising the collaboration with contracts. implementation and support delivery of the agreed upon project scope. training for teams throughout their projects. providing pm tools to support teams in collaboration. administrative support and mentoring by sh ambassadors. dissemination promotion of each trilateral project throughout its implementation. communication with society about the projects’ outcomes and their value for society. building the university brand as a local partner bridging science and society. evaluation evaluation of the results and collaboration experiences of the stakeholders. impact planning, monitoring, reporting, recognition and rewarding. continuous improvement planning of sh formula. figure 2. the post-implementation sh operational framework dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20256 http://www.sciencehub.uni.lodz.pl support effective collaboration, problem solving, project management and applying the design thinking methodologies. the formation of partnerships was further supported by the mentoring of sh ambassadors assigned to each tripartite team. during the implementation phase, the focus was on carrying out the collaborative work based on the challenges presented by the societal partners. one of the main barriers was the scarcity of funding to cover the costs of the resources needed to implement the projects. projects in the social sciences and humanities tended to require less funding and were often co-funded by faculties, while projects in the natural sciences, often in collaboration with companies, used mechanisms developed in earlier commercial partnerships. in most cases of collaboration with business partners, costs were successfully covered through direct negotiation with the external partner. the final event showcasing the results of the project was used to disseminate the results. formative evaluation was carried out throughout the project and a final summative evaluation assessed both outcomes and processes. the implementation of the sh project ultimately led to the development of a more robust operational framework for the sh initiative. lessons learnt the operational framework tested in the sh project can be implemented across a range of disciplines, including the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. it has also proved effective in interdisciplinary and inter-university projects, demonstrating its wide applicability. the process of implementing the project led to several key findings which form the basis of a list of recommendations. visibility, recognition and strategic positioning the project highlighted the importance of clearly communicating the multiple benefits of trilateral cooperation to all stakeholders. the list of benefits (appendix 2) for students, academic supervisors, partners and the university itself goes far beyond symbolic gestures such as certificates or cv entries. systematic dissemination of this information throughout the university and to potential partners can strengthen the university’s identity as an institution rooted in the city, region and country and committed to applied research. moreover, initiatives such as sh project, which are clearly aligned with the university’s strategic goals and meet national research evaluation criteria, should be granted the status of strategic projects. this would justify additional institutional support in the form of promotion, participation incentives and recognition for involved staff and students, for example, additional academic credits for students or formal recognition in staff performance evaluations. given the limited financial resources available, it is also essential to develop a more robust system for motivating, recognising and rewarding the team members. the sh experience showed that participants were largely driven by intrinsic motivation, entrepreneurial spirit and a strong sense of mission. a tailored system of recognising their commitment would support long-term participation and motivation. a system that taps into the different motivations of students and academics could attract a greater number of participants. processes, institutional learning and breaking silos the sh initiative led to a deeper understanding of how to initiate and manage trilateral cooperation between students, academics and external partners. the project also provided several examples of effective mechanisms for monitoring such collaboration and its effects, thus directly contributing to the evidence base presenting the socioeconomic impact. yet, evaluating the societal impact of the collaborative projects proved challenging for the project teams. describing and documenting impact, particularly its reach and dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20257 significance, requires early planning, familiarity with the research evaluation process and specific skills in communicating it. for future iterations of the sh initiative, it is recommended that a structured impact planning and support program be developed. this should include the use of templates to help project teams plan and document impact in a consistent and effective way. it should also include centralised media monitoring to help identify and capture examples of societal impact as they emerge. in addition, coordinated efforts to promote, archive and disseminate project outcomes will be essential to ensure their visibility and long-term accessibility. the sh initiative also highlighted the varying levels of experience and readiness of academics to engage in external collaboration. the insights gained from the offered support activities shaped a new vision for future training. it was agreed by the sh team that future training should be more aligned with the different stages of team development and project planning. drawing on good practice examples (ankrah & altabbaa 2015) and project management insights (fernandes & o’sullivan 2023), a revised training model was developed. the revised model suggests that the introductory phase of collaboration should focus on integrating the team and fostering mutual trust and understanding between its members. this is followed by a phase of joint work planning, during which the team defines the scope of the project, establishes a schedule, identifies key milestones, and conducts a risk analysis, along with the development of appropriate mitigation strategies. it is also essential at this stage to clearly assign roles and responsibilities, with all parties formally confirming their acceptance of these roles. it is equally important to reach a mutual agreement on copyright ownership and terms of use for any solutions developed through the collaboration. throughout the project, the mentoring provided by the sh ambassadors plays a crucial role, particularly in supporting teams that are new to this form of cross-sectoral engagement. additionally, facilitating internal networking and peer learning among project staff could help to bridge these gaps. the establishment of support groups or communities of practice would also encourage the sharing of experiences, intergenerational learning and the exchange of tacit knowledge. most importantly, the sh initiative has demonstrated that it is possible to overcome the siloed nature of university structures. the project succeeded in initiating inter-faculty and interdisciplinary projects and in creating valuable links between units. these relationships established between staff from different faculties, departments and institutes have already led to follow-up collaborations such as joint interdisciplinary projects and new teaching initiatives (for example, inviting social science lecturers to teach soft skills to natural science students). while many of the sh collaboration projects built upon previously established relationships, the initiative introduced a structured, university-wide approach to cooperation with societal partners. unlike earlier ad hoc engagements, the sh model provided a formal framework, including calls for proposals, clearly defined roles, legal agreements, mentoring, and institutional recognition, which helped to consolidate and scale up cross-sector collaboration across disciplines and faculties. conclusion the sh project was implemented over a two-year period but the knowledge, expertise and experience generated by the sh initiative has provided a valuable foundation for more systemic university-community collaboration efforts. the initiative helped to identify key components of a functional operational framework to support such engagement. these include maintaining a continuous dialogue with societal partners focused on listening to their current needs and pains, effective partner matching and project incubation (for example, through calls for proposals), implementation accompanied by ongoing support (through training and mentoring) as well as continuous dissemination and evaluation. the key challenge for the future is to ensure the sustainability of the sh initiative, in particular to secure the financial and human resources needed to maintain, develop and scale up the operational framework dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20258 across the institution. given the considerable potential of the university, addressing this challenge should be seen as a strategic priority. bibliography ankrah, s, al-tabbaa, o 2015, ‘universities–industry collaboration: a systematic review’, scandinavian journal of management, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 387–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.02.003 bogacz-wojtanowska e, jedynak p, wrona s, pluszyńska a 2019, action research w kształtowaniu współpracy uczelni z interesariuszami, korzyści, szanse i wyzwania, wydawnictwo uniwersytetu jagiellońskiego: kraków. góral a, jałocha b, mazurkiewicz g, zawadzki m 2019, badania w działaniu. książka dla kształcących się w naukach społecznych, wydawnictwo uniwersytetu jagiellońskiego: kraków. fernandes, g & o’sullivan, d 2023, ‘project management practices in major university-industry r&d collaboration programs – a case study’, journal of technology transfer, vol. 48, pp. 361–391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-02109915-9 lessman j, mroczek-żulicka a & stańczak m 2024, ‘atrakcyjność turystyczna łodzi w opinii uczestników obchodów jubileuszu 600-lecia nadania miastu praw miejskich’, studia periegetica, no. 45, pp. 119–142. https://doi.org/10.58683/ sp.1940 makowska ab 2024, ‘linguists in the service of external partners. participatory projects at the faculty of philology conducted as part of science hub uł’, fachsprachen – fachkommunikation – fachdidaktische diskurse, vol. 7, pp. 233–242. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737018043 piotrowska-piatek a, 2015, ‘aktywność szkół wyższych na rzecz społeczności loklanych – dyskusja wokół pojęcia trzeciej misji’, optimum. studia ekonomiczne, vol. 6, pp. 99-109. https://doi.org/10.15290/ose.2015.06.78.08 prawelska-skrzypek g, ćwikła m, barańska k, kołodziejczyk j 2019, badania w działaniu jako podejście w realizacji procesu promotorskiego, wydawnictwo uniwersytetu jagiellońskiego: kraków. university of łódź 2021, strategy of the university of łódź 2021–2030, university of łódź, viewed 14 may 2025, https:// www.uni.lodz.pl/fileadmin/user_upload/strategy_of_the_university_of_lodz_2021_2030.pdf wycisk, a, płaszczyca, m, gajda, m, modrzejewska, k 2018, ‘skuteczna współpraca nauka-biznes w opinii przedsiębiorców’, raport, politechnika warszawska – centrum zarządzania innowacjami i transferem technologii politechniki warszawskiej. dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20259 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.02.003 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-021-09915-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-021-09915-9 https://doi.org/10.58683/sp.1940 https://doi.org/10.58683/sp.1940 https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737018043 https://doi.org/10.15290/ose.2015.06.78.08 https://www.uni.lodz.pl/fileadmin/user_upload/strategy_of_the_university_of_lodz_2021_2030.pdf https://www.uni.lodz.pl/fileadmin/user_upload/strategy_of_the_university_of_lodz_2021_2030.pdf appendix 1. list of projects supported by science hub uł between 2022–2024.   project title type of partnering organisation, sector fields of science 1 assessment of the knowledge and patent landscape, respectively, in the area of biological activity and intellectual property protection related to the production of extracts from animal tissues private company, dietary supplement industry natural and social sciences, biological sciences and law, interdisciplinary project 2 assessment of the antibacterial properties of ecological recreational and sports surfaces private company, a rubber granules manufacturer natural sciences, biological sciences 3 application of hydroidea’s absorption products to increase the efficacy of ecohydrological solutions close to nature private company, construction and water management natural sciences, biological sciences 4 assessment of the antimicrobial activity of ozonated oils produced by ozonea brand private company, a producer and distributor of body care product natural sciences, biological sciences 5 application of vitek 2 automated technology for qualitative identification of mesophilic microorganisms isolated from air and rocks of the bochnia salt mine private company, a salt mine natural sciences, biological sciences 6 colchicine encapsulated in nanoparticles for potential use in inhibiting inflammation associated with diseases of various aetiologies private company, veterinary centre natural sciences, biological sciences 7 optimisation of the method of bioproduction of proteins and peptides with a high content of sulphide bridges private company, laboratory tools and equipment manufacturer natural sciences, biological sciences 8 antifungal properties of ecological recreational and sports surfaces protection against infectious and environmental hazards private company, a rubber granules manufacturer natural sciences, biological sciences 9 influence of yarrowia lipolytica postbiotic material on monocyte secretory activity private company, health and wellness sector natural sciences, biological sciences 10 understanding the cellular and enzymatic mechanisms that determine the effectiveness of androdiet in reducing androgenetic alopecia private company, food and pharmaceuticals natural sciences, biological sciences dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202510   project title type of partnering organisation, sector fields of science 11 antimicrobial activity of fulvic acid against bacterial and fungal pathogens of livestock and plants preliminary and literature studies private company, supplier of raw materials for the cosmetics, supplements, and animal and plant farming industries natural sciences, biological sciences 12 the microbiological safety evaluation of the manufacturing process of 3d prints for biomedical applications by a multifunctional device for rapid prototyping of bone implants private company, industrial engineering sector natural sciences, biological sciences 13 investigating the antimicrobial activity of raw materials and 3d prints of polycaprolactone and zinc-modified hydroxyapatite for applications in bone tissue regenerative medicine private company, industrial engineering sector natural sciences, biological sciences, medical and health sciences, interdisciplinary and interuniversity project 14 undesirable crystallisation in lipsticks private company, cosmetics industry natural sciences, chemical sciences 15 determining the conditions of the technological process of sesame oil extrusion, guaranteeing the optimal correlation between the content of health-promoting sesamol and the organoleptic properties of the oil private company, natural oil market natural sciences, chemical sciences 16 application of agent-based modelling and genetic algorithms to determine the optimal pathway to follow when crossing selected vegetables to produce hybrids with desired phenotypic and biochemical traits private company, food industry natural sciences, chemical sciences, computer and information sciences, interdisciplinary project 17 natural oil-based uv filters protective, nourishing and regenerative properties private company, food industry natural sciences, chemical sciences 18 optimisation of selected areas of internal logistics at dradura polska sp. z o.o. private company, logistics social sciences, management (logistics) appendix 1. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202511   project title type of partnering organisation, sector fields of science 19 analysis and identification of opportunities and threats for the fashion e-commerce magazine potential developments private company, e-commerce social sciences, management (logistics) 20 intergenerational conflicts causes and ways of solving them in the opinion of the inhabitants of the łódzkie voivodeship ngo, a foundation social sciences, sociology 21 survey of łódź residents’ and pinocchio theatre audiences’ opinions on the form and functionality of the new venue public institution, a theatre social sciences, sociology 22 my first steps in poland private company, healthcare sector humanistic sciences, philology 23 glossary of terms related to neurodiversity ngo, a foundation humanistic sciences, philology 24 the archives of the literary institute as a source for research into polish post-war literary culture ngo, a literary association humanistic sciences, philology 25 active heritage through ethnography. the local community and its memory in community action for the cultural landscape ngo, a historical and cultural association humanistic sciences, archaeology 26 research on the participation of polish women in missions abroad status and perspectives ngo, an association of combatants humanistic sciences, history 27 archaeologisation of the contemporary cultural heritage of krapkowice. multidisciplinary analysis of selected objects ngo, a cultural association humanistic sciences, archaeology 28 pre-local lelów. popularising the results of archaeological research ngo, a historical and cultural association humanistic sciences, archaeology 29 acceleration of artificial neural networks in variable selection based on the expression profile of circulating mirnas of pancreatic cancer patients public institution, a higher education institution natural sciences, computer and information sciences, medical and health sciences, interdisciplinary and interuniversity project appendix 1. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202512   project title type of partnering organisation, sector fields of science 30 management and representation system for health clinic resources based on network infrastructure private company, a health clinic natural sciences, computer and information sciences 31 applications of photogrammetry methods in 3d visualisation public institution, a library natural sciences, mathematics 32 photogrammetry methods in the construction of a facial model of school patron emilia sczaniecka and mathematician stefan banach public institution, a high school natural sciences, computer and information sciences 33 tourist attractiveness of łódź and visitors’ level of satisfaction with the service at the tourist information point during the celebrations of the 600th anniversary of granting the city rights to łódź public institution, a tourist organisation centre social sciences, social and economic geography and spatial management 34 small-scale courtyard revitalisation ngo, centre for promotion and development of civic initiatives  social sciences, education 35 parents, you should know your rights public institution, administrative centre for foster care social sciences, education 36 find strength in mediation. a series of workshops on the practical application of mediation approaches public institution, single mother’s home social sciences, education 37 new obligations of an entrepreneur selling through an online shop, introduced through the implementation into the polish legal order of the directive of the european parliament and of the council (eu) 2019/2161 of 27 november 2019 (the socalled omnibus directive) content and method of implementation private company, e-commerce social sciences, law 38 simple joint stock company corporate powers of shareholders private company, regulatory technology sector social sciences, law 39 family foundations constitution and operation private company, logistics social sciences, law appendix 1. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202513   project title type of partnering organisation, sector fields of science 40 the public value of the orientarium in lodz public institution, orientarium of the zoological garden social sciences, management 41 preventing business failure in the education sector private company, education social sciences, management appendix 1. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202514 appendix 2. list of benefits for students, academics, external partners and the university as an institution. benefits students academics external partners university acquiring and/or enhancing knowledge and skills in areas such as problem solving, project management, communication and collaboration x x gaining practical experience and exploring possible career paths, academic or nonacademic x getting involved in solving problems (local, national and international) x x x developing practical and research-based solutions of social relevance to the needs of the economic environment and the local community x x x acquiring skills to solve problems arising from the economic, industrial, business and social environment x x x establishing business contacts and connections with potential employers for university graduates (networking) x x receiving individual tutoring from the supervisor during the project implementation x receiving certified training in design thinking and project management x x gaining proven experience in project implementation and project management x x applying and integrating the knowledge gained during studies to solve specific problems x developing knowledge, skills and processes necessary to undertake student research projects and applied diploma theses in cooperation with external institutions x x x x becoming more aware of one’s responsibility to influence the sustainable development of a region/country x x x developing the ability to diagnose the needs of the community partners x x x dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202515 benefits students academics external partners university improving the perception of the scientific community in society x x taking on challenging new scientific challenges, contributing to solving real and current problems/challenges of external partners and developing them into further projects x x acquiring or developing teaching, tutoring and innovation management competencies as part of the training offered by the sh x x x establishing and/or maintaining contacts with partners from the socioeconomic environment x x serving as mediators to foster synergies between external partners, the university and students x x x x receiving financial allowance for running a project x consulting on the possibilities and scope of cooperation with the research centre x establishing and/or maintaining contacts with academic partners/specialists to enhance prestige, gain access to unique know-how and access research results x benefiting from the university’s unique infrastructure x gaining opportunities for the exchange of knowledge and experience x x x obtaining potential partners for further cooperation and development of the institution as well as for applications for science and business grants x x x finding, meeting and testing young talent and potential employees x x strengthening the position of research and science as well as the role of scientists and the importance of study x x x appendix 2. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202516 benefits students academics external partners university providing evidence for evaluation criterion iii, that is, materials that demonstrate how researchers interact with the environment and how science impacts on it x x creating a bridge for the commercialisation of research x x x establishing intra-university networking to facilitate better interdepartmental integration within the university’s internal communication system, enabling the exchange of experiences among staff themselves x x disseminating the application projects as a valuable and innovative form of didactic work with students x x x promoting and implementing not only engaged science but also open science, where experiments and results are available to interested parties x x x x appendix 2. continued dziminska and krzewinska gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202517 gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 december 2025 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: bauer, b. 2025. creative civics in higher education: evaluating implementation of artistic activism pedagogy through the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1–21. https:// doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) creative civics in higher education: evaluating implementation of artistic activism pedagogy through the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship brandon bauer associate professor of art, st. norbert college, de pere, wi, usa corresponding author: brandon bauer, brandon.bauer@snc.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167 article history: received 25/04/2025; revised 23/10/2025; accepted 18/11/2025; published 12/2025 abstract this study evaluates the pedagogical impact of the center for artistic activism’s (c4aa) creative campaign framework, as implemented through the 2024 unstoppable voters faculty fellowship. the fellowship was a united states-based initiative designed to foster creative, non-partisan civic engagement in higher education using c4aa trainings and materials as outlined in their creative campaign framework. the fellowship supported a cohort of nine faculty members across seven institutions, ranging from research universities to liberal arts colleges and a historically black university, that integrated c4aa materials into courses spanning clinical psychology, political science, theatre, design and the visual arts. using a faculty learning community (flc) model and grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl), the study employed qualitative methods to examine how fellows adapted the creative campaign framework, the strategies they used to engage students and the outcomes of their campus-based civic engagement projects. key findings include the framework’s adaptability across disciplines, student responses to this approach to creative civic learning and the opportunities and challenges of translating activist language to academic settings. this is the first study to assess the application of the c4aa’s artistic activism pedagogy in a coordinated higher education initiative, offering new insights into the potential of creative civics pedagogy using the c4aa creative campaign framework as an impactful and adaptable approach to teaching democratic habits and civic engagement. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167 https://doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:brandon.bauer@snc.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167 keywords center for artistic activism; creative campaign framework; creative civic engagement; arts-based pedagogy; higher education and democracy introduction in the united states, trust in democratic institutions is in decline, civic participation is uneven and disillusionment with electoral systems continues to rise. evidence shows that support for democracy in the united states suffers from a long-term generational decline, particularly among young people (claassen & magalhães 2023), which is exacerbated by political polarisation and misinformation. in this context, higher education faces an urgent responsibility not only to foster critical thinking in students but to help students develop as engaged participants in democratic life. traditional models of civic education, grounded in procedural and content-based instruction, tend to privilege knowledge acquisition over the affective and participatory dimensions essential to democratic life. this is where creative civics pedagogy offers a compelling way forward. one foundational source for this is found in the work of the american educational reformer and philosopher, john dewey. in 1939, witnessing the rise of fascism in europe, dewey wrote an essay titled ‘creative democracy: the task before us’, describing the need for democracy to be an active and engaged creative practice (simpson & stack 2010). in his view, creativity is a fundamental democratic practice that must be cultivated (crick 2019). today, creative approaches to civics education are needed more than ever, as democracy in the united states and around the world is under strain (international idea 2024). given these challenges, a new sense of civic imagination must be nurtured by developing and implementing new creative forms of civic engagement. while the significance of arts-based approaches to civics is well-established, the past 10 years have brought a marked expansion of scholarship highlighting their effectiveness in civic and social justice education (dewhurst 2014; keifer-boyd et al. 2023; sholette & bass 2018). employing the tools and training of the arts in combination with other high-impact practices has the potential to be a powerful approach for teaching democratic habits. as an artist, scholar and educator, much of my work focuses on the intersection of art and democracy. i have been working to bring creativity to civics education through arts-based approaches (bauer 2025). during the 2024 presidential election cycle in the united states, i partnered with the center for artistic activism (c4aa) to co-lead a us-based faculty fellowship in association with their unstoppable voters program. the c4aa is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation based in new york. c4aa has worked in 38 countries, bringing creativity to advocacy work on various issues. through the unstoppable voters program, established in 2020, c4aa has worked with over 115 voting advocacy organisations in the united states and supported pro-voter projects in 29 of the 50 states. the faculty fellowship was part of a range of unstoppable voters program offerings developed by the c4aa to engage in the 2024 election, which also included a fellowship program for pro-voting civic organisations, a partnership program for civic-engagement organisations and other opportunities (c4aa 2023a). the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship is the first program to focus specifically on engaging higher education with the c4aa creative campaign framework and related training materials and methods. this study investigates a novel arts-based civics pedagogy intervention through the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship. the fellowship supported a cohort of nine faculty members from seven institutions, ranging from liberal arts colleges to a historically black university and research universities, who were trained to implement c4aa’s creative campaign framework in their teaching (see table 1). the creative campaign framework offers a valuable lens for understanding the c4aa’s methodology. grounded in the theory and practice of artistic activism, the framework provides a structured yet adaptable process bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20252 for ideating, prototyping and implementing creative advocacy campaigns. the fellowship aimed to foster non-partisan student engagement with the electoral process by embedding creative civic strategies into a range of disciplines. faculty participants were not only introduced to c4aa’s training methods and resources, including the art of activism book (duncombe & lambert 2021) and associated workbook, and the unleashing unstoppable voters toolkit (c4aa 2023b), but also encouraged to adapt these resources to their specific institutional contexts, curricular goals and course-based learning outcomes. to assess the pedagogical impact of this intervention, the study employed a qualitative research design grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl). using a faculty learning community (flc) cohort model, faculty members documented, shared and discussed their planning, implementation and evaluation processes through regular virtual meetings, reports and implementation reflections. table 1. unstoppable voters faculty fellowship cohort (note: participating faculty fellows gave informed consent to be identified by name and institutional affiliation.) fellow institution type location (state) academic discipline course level for intervention fellow 1: beck private research intensive pennsylvania visual art / printmaking & photography undergraduate fellow 2: berman private religious affiliated liberal arts minnesota clinical psychology graduate fellow 3: burns private comprehensive pennsylvania theatre undergraduate fellows 4 & 5 (team): galvin & sale public research intensive arizona visual art / sociallyengaged art undergraduate & graduate fellow 6: harris public research intensive virginia theatre undergraduate fellow 7: hughes private research intensive pennsylvania design undergraduate fellow 8: mascarenhas private religious affiliated historically black university louisiana political science undergraduate fellow 9: smith public research intensive maine visual art / intermedia undergraduate & graduate research question how did faculty fellows implement and/or adapt the c4aa creative campaign framework to promote civic learning in their courses and what pedagogical outcomes resulted? in answering this question, the study offers insights into the strategies faculty fellows used to foster civic imagination and action, the challenges they faced in adapting activist tools for academic settings and the impact these creative approaches had on student learning and engagement. by examining the implementation of the creative bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20253 campaign framework across a diverse yet coordinated higher education context, the study contributes to a growing body of work on innovative, arts-based approaches to civic education. description of the c4aa creative campaign framework echoing dewey’s call to creative democracy, c4aa’s creative campaign framework is both creative and pragmatic. it provides a structure to mobilise creativity to achieve a goal. it creates a clear and flexible pathway through a five-step process that harnesses creativity and developmentally builds it into individual and collective agency for action. artistic activism as a concept was popularised in scholarship by the belgian political theorist, chantal mouffe, and further developed in the field by the c4aa (duncombe & lambert 2021; mouffe 2007), alongside contributions from art education scholars who have foreground the concept of artistic activism and its pedagogical potential in higher education (black et al. 2023; buller 2021). the creative campaign framework creates a clear and accessible process for engaging in artistic activism. while this framework is not a formal pedagogical model, it offers a valuable lens for understanding the c4aa’s methodology as articulated in its creative campaign checklist (see table 2). table 2. center for artistic activism creative campaign checklist creative campaign checklist unleashing unstoppable voters toolkit chapter utopic goal step 1: set goals & objectives (page 16) smartie objective(s) step 1: set goals & objectives (page 22) primary audience step 2: find audiences (page 30) think feel do step 2: find audiences (page 32) audience personas step 2: find audiences (page 34) cost-benefit analysis step 2: find audiences (page 36) cultural terrain analysis step 2: find audiences (page 39) at least 10 tactic ideas step 3: develop terrific tactics (page 44) selected tactic(s) step 3: develop terrific tactics (page 47) enhanced tactic(s) that are more celebratory, hopeful, joyous, mysterious, whimsical, surprising, irresistible, spectacular, personal, risky, innovative, participatory, interactive etc. step 4: level up your civic engagement actions (page 52) prototyped tactic(s) step 5: take action (page 64) evaluation plan step 5: take action (page 66) assessment methods step 5: take action (page 68) iteration & future plans step 5: take action (page 74) celebration & continuation step 5: take action (page 75) bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20254 embedded in the framework is an adapted version of the smart goal criteria, initially developed for project management (doran 1981). ‘smart’ stands for ‘specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound’. c4aa added ‘i’ and ‘e’ for ‘inclusive’ and ‘equitable’, transforming smart goals into smartie goals. this adaptation of smart goals in the framework creates a scaffolded assessment guide. beyond the embedded assessment, the framework guides the user through creative ideation and iteration, as well as addressing practical issues such as audience, cost-benefit analysis and the evaluation of creative projects. the creative campaign checklist serves as a map to the framework and to the various training materials and methods employed in the fellowship. checklist items are tied directly to material in the unleashing unstoppable voters toolkit. the fellows were given access to c4aa materials as they developed lessons to adopt the creative campaign framework. they were provided with a spreadsheet of artistic activism civic engagement lessons that included a description of specific lessons, their learning objectives, a link to a slide deck with specific slides for resources and templates covering the lessons, links to related exercises and resources, as well as related material found in the book, workbook, toolkit and homework prompts (see table 3). table 3. artistic activism civic engagement lessons and resources lesson learning objective slide deck resources? book, workbook & toolkit resources? other resources what is artistic activism understanding artistic activism yes book, workbook and toolkit stepping off the curb exercise & case studies the powers of art: tools of creativity understand the powers of art and how to utilise them yes book, workbook and toolkit n/a affect, effect, æffect key concepts for how artistic activism works yes book, workbook and toolkit n/a the creative process the process by which to develop æffective artistic activism projects yes book, workbook and toolkit self-evaluation exercise beyond raising awareness raising awareness is not enough yes book, workbook and toolkit think, feel, do exercise how to build a creative campaign learn the elements needed to develop an æffective artistic activism campaign yes book, workbook and toolkit draft smartie objectives engaging audiences learn how to define your audience and create a campaign with specificity yes book, workbook and toolkit audience persona, talk to a stranger and cost/ benefit exercises bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20255 lesson learning objective slide deck resources? book, workbook & toolkit resources? other resources brainstorming tactics brainstorm the most imaginative, innovative, impactful tactics possible yes workbook and toolkit impossible/possible exercise choosing tactics learn how to select the most æffective tactic from many choices yes book, workbook and toolkit tactic mapping exercise prototyping iterating ideas into form yes book, workbook and toolkit prototype and get feedback experience design take your prototypes further yes book, workbook and toolkit let’s step it up! (handout) evaluation and assessment how to track the impact of your campaign in traditional and creative ways yes book, workbook and toolkit æffect planning and assessment toolset training goals and methods the creative campaign framework serves as shorthand for a wide range of expandable ideas that c4aa’s training materials and methods encompass. the creative campaign checklist refers to specific chapters in their unleashing unstoppable voters toolkit. this toolkit was an essential resource to which the faculty fellows were exposed during their training. c4aa trainings have assisted many activist and advocacy campaigns around the world on issues as widely varied as scottish independence, faith-based social justice work, sex work decriminalisation, police surveillance, youth incarceration, covid-19 vaccine access and more. organisations and activist groups look to the c4aa and its trainings to bring creativity to their specific campaigns. students, on the other hand, do not necessarily consider themselves to be either artists or activists, and any given course in a college or university is not a topical issue-focused campaign. while this is true, there have been educational resources developed that make the case that every academic discipline has a stake in elections. projects like ask every student — your major on the ballot make it clear that the outcome of elections has implications for every student regardless of their field of study (ask every student 2022). this is where the pragmatism and flexibility of the creative campaign framework can be applied and approached from many angles, depending on the focus and learning outcomes associated with the individual course in which the materials are introduced. the primary goal of the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship was to train a cohort of faculty fellows across various disciplines to foster civic engagement and encourage political participation among their students through creative methods and non-partisan pro-voting initiatives. this included encouraging students to develop a deeper understanding of democratic processes and utilising c4aa materials to help students create actionable pro-voting campaigns that extended beyond awareness-raising. the fellows were asked to evaluate the impact of this educational intervention on student learning, political awareness and voting participation and to provide insights on the adaptability of c4aa materials in their specific disciplines and educational settings. table 3. continued bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20256 literature review: creative civics pedagogy in higher education creative democracy and civic imagination the concept of creative democracy, first articulated by john dewey in the early 20th century, frames democracy not as a fixed system but as a dynamic, participatory process rooted in imagination, ethical inquiry and collaborative action (simpson & stack 2010). for dewey, education plays a foundational role in sustaining democratic life, particularly when it fosters the habits of reflection, engagement and creative problem-solving. in today’s climate of democratic backsliding and civic disillusionment, dewey’s concept remains both visionary and urgent. recent scholars have expanded dewey’s legacy by emphasising civic imagination, the capacity to envision alternative futures and more just forms of public life, as a key civic skill (crick 2019). this notion of cultivating a civic imagination is not abstract; it is cultivated through everyday acts of political engagement. civic imagination offers a conceptual bridge between civic education and arts-based learning, making the case for why creativity is not peripheral to democratic life but essential to its renewal. artistic activism as pedagogy artistic activism, the combination of creative practice and strategic civic action, has emerged as a powerful method for engaging communities through creative advocacy strategies (duncombe & lambert 2021). long practised by artists and organisers, it has also gained traction as a pedagogical strategy, with developments in both k–12 education (anderson et al. 2010; beyerbach & davis 2011; naidus 2009; tavin & ballengee morris 2013) and higher education (black et al. 2023; buller 2021). the creative campaign method developed by c4aa offers a novel and formal approach to artistic activism, combining elements of campaign planning, creative ideation and evaluation through tools such as the smartie goal model and the scaffolding of these methods in the creative campaign checklist. artistic activism has evolved considerably in higher education, especially over the past 20 years, reflecting a growing recognition of its pedagogical and civic potential. sholette and bass (2018) and dewhurst (2014) have emphasised the importance of arts-based approaches in teaching for social justice, noting their capacity to activate students’ critical and emotional faculties while also fostering collaborative and civic learning. buller (2021) demonstrates how art and design curricula can be structured around activism to bring social justice into higher education, while black et al. (2023) highlight the role of critical dialogue and studentcentred practices in cultivating civic agency. together, these pedagogical modes blur the boundaries between learning and action, enabling students to see themselves as agents of change. the creative campaign framework formalises artistic activist methods into a novel, clear, accessible and user-friendly structure that guides participants from imaginative ideation to actionable civic engagement. civic learning and student engagement in higher education higher education has long been recognised as a vital site for cultivating civic engagement. however, evidence indicates that traditional approaches, such as lecture-based instruction on political institutions, often fail to inspire students or deepen their commitment to democratic engagement (colby et al. 2010). civic learning that emphasises experiential and participatory methods has shown more promise, particularly when it involves real-world relevance and opportunities for collective action (saltmarsh & hartley 2011). emerging research highlights the importance of cultivating early voting behaviour, as participation in a first election is strongly correlated with long-term civic engagement (dinas et al. 2024). this makes college campuses not only appropriate but strategically vital spaces for cultivating political participation. programs bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20257 that combine civic action with creativity, especially those rooted in students’ disciplines or local or cultural contexts, can engage students in ways that more conventional models of civic education cannot. despite the proliferation of civic engagement initiatives on campuses, a gap remains in evidence-based models that integrate creativity, discipline-specific inquiry and civic skill-building. this study aims to address this gap by testing a structured yet adaptable model of artistic activism in a range of higher education contexts. faculty development and the sotl approach transforming civic learning in higher education requires not only new pedagogical tools but also faculty support structures that promote experimentation, collaboration and reflection. the flc model has proven to be an effective structure for supporting such innovation (cox 2004). when paired with the principles of the sotl, this type of faculty development becomes a site not just for professional growth but for knowledge creation about teaching itself (felten 2013). faculty fellows that engage in sotl practice develop the capacity to reflect on their teaching critically, collect evidence of student learning and contribute findings to the broader educational community. yet relatively few sotl studies address creative or arts-based civic engagement in interdisciplinary contexts. moreover, most faculty development programs do not prepare educators to teach for civic outcomes using tools drawn from artistic activism or design justice (costanza-chock 2020). this study contributes to filling that gap by analysing how faculty fellows interpreted, adapted and assessed the effectiveness of the c4aa materials in their own courses. synthesis and contribution this literature review is intentionally synthetic rather than exhaustive, offering a summary that foregrounds the novel contribution of applying the c4aa creative campaign framework, rather than providing a comprehensive mapping of every point of overlap or divergence with prior scholarship. this review identifies a convergence of ideas, ranging from creative democracy and civic imagination to artistic activism and civic learning, that collectively frame the field of creative civics pedagogy. by examining the experiences of nine faculty fellows who implemented the creative campaign framework in courses spanning psychology, theatre, political science and visual art, this study provides new evidence on how creative civic strategies can be adapted across disciplines. it further demonstrates how structured faculty development models and sotl methods can support the effective integration of artistic activism into academic teaching, fostering civic learning in innovative ways. methods this study employed a qualitative sotl research design. the aim was to assess the pedagogical effectiveness of the c4aa framework for fostering civic learning and student engagement during the 2024 us election cycle. faculty learning community model the study was structured as a flc, a model commonly used in sotl to foster collaborative pedagogical inquiry and innovation. throughout the fellowship, the cohort met regularly in facilitated virtual sessions to explore the c4aa’s creative campaign approach and to exchange ideas about its classroom implementation. fellows shared educational resources they developed, such as syllabi, assignments and project designs, offering feedback and reflecting collectively on their pedagogical ideation and bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20258 implementation within their specific contexts. the ongoing dialogue between theory and practice mirrored the kind of reflective exchange central to effective teaching and learning models, where iterative cycles of design, action and reflection deepen participants’ understanding. this community-based approach fostered cross-disciplinary dialogue, supported iterative adaptation of creative civic learning strategies across diverse educational contexts and cultivated a shared sense of trust and purpose as participants engaged with this form of artistic activist pedagogy. data sources the study drew from multiple qualitative data sources throughout the fellowship to capture both the faculty experience and the reported impact on student learning (see table 4). the collected data enabled a multiperspectival analysis of how creative civics pedagogy was interpreted, enacted and evaluated in various contexts. the data sources collected included: pre-, midand post-fellowship surveys fellows completed surveys at the beginning, middle and end of the program to assess their familiarity with c4aa materials, teaching goals and reflections on pedagogical outcomes. monthly reflections fellows submitted monthly narrative updates documenting their planning, implementation, classroom activities and reflections on student engagement and learning. these updates were shared in a collaborative online forum that enabled peers to exchange feedback and support one another’s ongoing projects. final reports at the conclusion of the fellowship, participants submitted comprehensive final reflections, which included a qualitative analysis of their teaching, an assessment of student outcomes and insights on adapting c4aa materials for their specific courses and institutional contexts. student artefacts faculty fellows shared representative examples of student work produced during the projects, including campaign prototypes, creative assignments and reflections on civic engagement, as well as photographic documentation of student projects. in some cases, faculty fellows also collected informal student feedback or survey data. cohort session notes and communications recordings and notes from the flc’s virtual meetings were used to contextualise and triangulate findings. ethical considerations and institutional review board the study was reviewed and approved by the institutional review board (irb) at the principal investigator’s institution. the study qualified as a pedagogical research project under sotl and community-engaged scholarship (ces) standards. in accordance with irb approval and ces principles, fellows were aware that their contributions would be used as part of a study. the irb granted a waiver for de-identification of participants, recognising the importance of context and attribution in collaborative, reflective teaching research. all participating faculty fellows gave informed consent to be identified by name and institutional affiliation. for the purposes of this manuscript, fellows have been identified only by their last name, the type of institution they represent and the state in which the institution is located. student data was shared in aggregate or through anonymised artefacts when referenced in reports or reflections. no bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 20259 student names or identifying information were used in the reporting material provided by the fellows, and therefore, have not been included in the analysis for this study. community-engaged and contextual variability while the fellowship used a common training, materials and shared goals, each fellow’s implementation work was highly contextualised, reflecting the diversity of disciplinary learning objectives, student populations, institutional missions and local political climates. some fellows partnered with campus civic engagement offices or community organisations, while others embedded creative civic action within discipline-specific coursework. for example, one fellow collaborated with a local youth voting coalition, while another facilitated in-class campaign design as part of a psychology practicum on voter behaviour. this variability enriched the study, offering insight into how a structured artistic activism framework can be adapted flexibly across disciplines and institutional contexts. table 4. unstoppable voters faculty fellowship timeline and schedule spring 2024 pilot timeline spring fellowship schedule december 2023 initial virtual fellowship cohort meeting and training, c4aa materials distributed to fellows january 2024 informed consent for participation in a sotl research project and pre-fellowship survey sent early january pre-fellowship survey completed and informed consent collected mid january project proposals for the spring semester due, fellows provided with feedback by project leads early february fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads early march fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads mid march virtual fellowship cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback early april fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads may final pilot project reporting with reflection and self-assessment late may final spring virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback fall 2024 project timeline fall fellowship schedule mid august initial fall virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback end of august project proposals for the fall semester due, fellows are provided with feedback by project leads september fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202510 fall 2024 project timeline fall fellowship schedule october fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads early november post-election virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback december final fellowship project reflection, self-assessment and reporting january 2025 submission of final fellowship portfolio (including plans, documentation of projects, reflections, student and partner reflections), fellows submit individual post-fellowship scholarship plans and complete the post-fellowship survey the community-engaged nature of the projects was further reinforced by the expectation that fellows would move beyond voter awareness toward participatory civic action. projects were designed to encourage students not only to learn about democratic systems, but to actively contribute to them, through creative public-facing non-partisan pro-voting campaigns grounded in regional, local or campus specific culture. spring pilot projects the spring was intended as a pilot period in which the fellows experimented with c4aa materials while receiving feedback and support as they developed their projects. the spring projects were being developed in a variety of courses and included: a collaborative art and environmentalism project; teaching policy advocacy for psychologists which included visits to state legislative and congressional offices; creating public performance works to encourage students to register to vote; using artistic activism methods to engage campus voting through community engaged design; an ‘amplify the polls’ public performance project, and more. one fellow’s spring pilot project included the development of a pop-up event with political party games that engaged participants with locating their representatives, polling locations and issues on the ballot. this project was developed as part of a political science student club and events were held both on campus and in the community. another project sought to leverage relational dialogue to engage students in the upcoming election and a ‘dialogue cafe’ was created with interactive art to draw people to the event and into conversation. one fellow used the pilot period to engage in deep community-based research, working with various community-based non-partisan voting organisations to learn more about their work, and how best to utilise design students to assist in community get-out-to-vote efforts. the fellows’ spring projects were reported through a c4aa newsletter on their websites which discussed key takeaways from the spring pilots (c4aa 2024). through the pilot projects, the fellows used various c4aa training materials in their courses. they reflected on which materials were most useful and assessed their effectiveness in achieving the stated learning outcomes of the projects they developed (see table 5). fall general election projects many unprecedented political events happened in the united states between the end of the spring semester and the return to campus in the fall making for a historic election cycle. polls consistently showed the race to be a toss-up between the two major party candidates. this fellowship included five of the nine fellows working in states considered swing states in national elections in the united states. with the polls showing such a close race, the focus on those states was magnified. table 4. continued bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202511 table 5. unstoppable voters faculty fellowship spring pilot projects fellow course(s) & level (ug/g) pilot project intended outcome most useful c4aa material fellow 1: beck wanderlust: art and nature (ug) development of speculative environmental art installations and interventions to have students see themselves as engaged artist-citizens actipedia fellow 2: berman social justice advocacy for psychologists (g) creativity in activism and advocacy to learn advocacy by doing how to build a creative campaign lesson fellow 3: burns playwriting 2, intro to performance studies and devised theatre 2 (ug) public performance interventions election engagement through public performance how to build a creative campaign and engaging audiences lessons fellows 4 & 5 (team): galvin & sale art and community (ug/g) artists who vote introduce c4aa methods to engage in the election art of activism workbook fellow 6: harris communication, performance and activism (ug) amplify the poll implement performative pro-voting campaign on campus and in the community smartie framework fellow 7: hughes count us by connecting us (ug) learning, listening and planning deep listening and learning from campus and community groups to aid in the design of a pro-voting communication design project for the general election powers of art: tools of creativity, beyond raising awareness, how to build a creative campaign lessons and smartie framework fellow 8: mascarenhas introduction to american government (ug) political party pop-up event register students to vote, know their polling location and educate about the general election smartie framework fellow 9: smith social practice and feminist theory (g) suffrage march and dialogue cafe election engagement through public performance and engaged community dialogue about the election the creative process, experience design and engaging audiences lessons, the smartie framework and actipedia bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202512 in this context, the fellows prepared themselves to develop pro-voting projects with their students. taking what they learned about implementing c4aa materials in their classes from the spring pilots, the fellows expressed feeling more prepared to develop pro-voting projects with their classes and on their campuses in the fall. the fellows again employed a variety of c4aa training materials in their courses and at the end of the semester reflected on which materials were of most use, as well as reflecting on and assessing the effectiveness of these materials for the stated learning outcomes of the projects (see table 6). with this deeper understanding gained from their spring pilots, the fellows took on more ambitious projects or further developed projects they had undertaken in the spring with greater focus. the fall projects were developed in a variety of courses including: a printmaking course exploring the history of political printmaking and propaganda; a graduate level social psychology course; an introductory playwriting course; a combined undergraduate and graduate course on art and community; a theatre course in applied collaborative technique; a design course focusing on advocacy and action; an introduction to american government course; and a graduate level social practice art and feminist theory course. table 6. unstoppable voters faculty fellowship fall general election projects fellow course(s) & level (ug/g) fall project intended outcome most useful c4aa material fellow 1: beck print to the people (ug) creating provoting printbased public art to be posted around the city to have students engage deeply with specific issues that resonate with them smartie framework, iterative process, toolkit readings fellow 2: berman social psychology (g) social justice advocacy and civic engagement to work through the creative campaign framework to develop an advocacy project the unstoppable voters toolkit, how to build a creative campaign, prototyping, tactics and the ‘imagine winning’ exercise fellow 3: burns playwriting i (ug) public performance interventions election engagement through public performance stepping off the curb and creating the irresistible image fellows 4 & 5 (team): galvin & sale art and community (ug/g) artists who vote and partnership with national voter education week develop artistic intervention projects both in public and through online spaces of engagement how to build a creative campaign, engaging audiences and brainstorming tactics bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202513 fellow course(s) & level (ug/g) fall project intended outcome most useful c4aa material fellow 6: harris introduction to applied collaborative technique (ug) hear us out and walk in my shoes: polls, public performances implement community performative preand post-election spaces for care and reflection smartie framework fellow 7: hughes communications studio iii: advocacy and action (ug) our vote our future voter education pop-up exhibition creation of a flexible visual system to promote campus voting æffect worksheet, what is creative activism lesson, becoming a superhero, stirring emotions into action, from awareness to action lesson fellow 8: mascarenhas introduction to american government (ug) social media video interviews and sharing voter registration resources using artistic activism to reinforce the political participation unit what is artistic activism & smartie framework fellow 9: smith creative concepts, social practice and feminist theory (g) suffragette march, dialogue cafe, there is no us without u voter registration project, right to read banned book box project election engagement through public performance and engaged community dialogue about the election art as activism book, the smartie framework, and c4aa website findings this study analysed qualitative data collected from faculty fellows at the conclusion of the fellowship, including final reflections, survey responses and student project documentation. seven core themes emerged from the data: 1. student engagement and empowerment through creativity; 2. the adaptability of the creative campaign framework as a pedagogical structure; 3. faculty pedagogical growth; 4. students overcoming political discomfort; 5. contextual adaptability of the framework across disciplines; 6. civic impact beyond the classroom; and 7. the value of the fellowship structure itself. together, these findings offer insight into the pedagogical potential of creative civics approaches in higher education settings. table 6. continued bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202514 1. student engagement and empowerment through creativity fellows consistently reported that integrating c4aa’s creative campaign framework into their teaching significantly increased student engagement and ownership. faculty fellows observed that students responded with heightened motivation and purpose when given the opportunity to express civic concerns through creative, public-facing projects: they created innovative ideas and projects that addressed the environment, immigration, reproductive rights, trans issues and bodily autonomy, voting access and more. they liked both the freedom and the iterative structure as a means to express their ideas (beck). by offering a space that integrates creative expression as a tool for empowerment, students responded positively to activities such as creating embodied works, tableaux and short monologues. these exercises allowed them to explore and express their personal relationship with voting while fostering meaningful collective dialogue (harris). many fellows described students gaining a stronger sense of civic agency, particularly when engaging with unfamiliar or intimidating political content in a supportive and creative environment. 2. the framework provided a clear and adaptable pedagogical structure fellows widely praised the c4aa creative campaign framework, especially the smartie goals and the creative campaign checklist, for helping students break down abstract civic challenges into specific, manageable and imaginative campaign plans. the structure supported scaffolded learning and encouraged rigorous, creative thinking: the smartie objectives really helped students work through prototyping projects. students were able to also use these to assess the projects in our debrief and reflection sessions (smith). the curriculum library significantly enhanced my course learning objectives by bridging conceptual understanding with practical application. for example, the lesson on ‘what is artistic activism’ introduced students to the concept of integrating art into political engagement. this lesson reinforced ideas from our political participation unit, helping students connect institutional and non-institutional forms of civic engagement and see how creative approaches amplify political action (mascarenhas). having ongoing student-led spring projects to use as examples of what was being done was helpful for fall projects, and started to show what creating a culture of ongoing student artistic activism on campus could look like if this were an ongoing aspect of coursework (burns). in disciplines where creativity or public engagement were not commonly foregrounded, the framework served as a flexible entry point to explore civic action. 3. faculty reflected on growth in their own pedagogy several fellows noted a transformation in their teaching approaches. participating in the fellowship encouraged them to shift their roles from instructors to facilitators of student-led civic action and to value the creative process over polished final outcomes: through teaching artistic activism and creative civic engagement, i learned that my students are capable of far more than i initially anticipated. many of them, especially as mostly freshmen, surprised me with their level of motivation and practical skills. i didn’t realise how resourceful they could be when it came bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202515 to applying what they learned to real-world scenarios. i also discovered that the creative process itself is just as valuable as the final performance. when students were given the freedom to express themselves and explore their own ideas, they became far more engaged in the work. overall, i learned that allowing students creative autonomy fosters deeper engagement and results in higher quality work (mascarenhas). students are hungry for opportunities to feel hopeful about their futures, political and otherwise, and they have been systematically disempowered by a variety of features of our present historical moment. i was surprised at how easy it was to rekindle, both in myself and in my students, a sense of hopeful empowerment simply through creating some dedicated space and time to engage with our (flawed) democracy. in practice what that meant was reaching out to legislators at the local and federal levels, setting up meetings, creating briefs, attending hearings and lobby days, doing the work (beyond voting) of civic engagement and finding creative ways to put our voice into these actions. from these experiences, students and i learned that civic engagement means seeing voting as just the beginning, not the end goal (berman). these shifts often included more intentional opportunities for reflection, risk-taking and democratic classroom dynamics. 4. students encountered and overcame political discomfort some faculty fellows reported that students were initially hesitant to engage in politically oriented or public-facing work. concerns included fears of being perceived as ‘too political’, a lack of identification with the label ‘activist’, a lack of prior civic experience or unfamiliarity with the tools of the creative process. the students were intimidated by the thought of doing something ‘political ’. as we approached the election, they became less so. i think the curriculum is great, any obstacles we faced were really a hesitancy to take risks, and to be visible in a public way (smith). many students entered the course feeling apathetic or powerless about the electoral process, often expressing that their voices didn’t matter or that the complexity of societal systems left them overwhelmed. interestingly, many students were more inclined to engage with the material from a reflective space, using the methodologies to process and examine their own experiences and values. this reflective approach was especially apparent in their final project. they collaborated to create a potluck in the park centred on themes of grief and collective care, inviting friends and community members to participate in creating a reflective and welcoming space (galvin & sale). faculty fellows addressed this discomfort by building trust, scaffolding civic concepts and encouraging students to explore personal stakes and local relevance. 5. projects were adapted across diverse contexts and disciplines while all fellows engaged with the same framework and core resources, their courses and student populations varied widely. the adaptability of the c4aa approach enabled its integration across diverse institutional types and disciplines, including psychology, design, political science, performance and socially engaged art. for non-artists it’s a way of thinking about making ideas manifest. for artists it’s a way to make visual ideas more explicit and engaging in a social context (beck). this program empowers faculty and students by providing curricular resources and funding to pursue utopian goals for a better future and to learn how to engage in social justice advocacy, even in disciplines bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202516 where that may be unfamiliar. in a time of unprecedented student debt and other stressors facing our students, learning skills to leverage their social capital and political power in an atmosphere that is hopeful and empowering, is supportive of their survival, not just their educations (berman). this disciplinary flexibility supports the claim that creative civics pedagogy can be integrated across arts, liberal arts and professional disciplines. 6. civic impact extended beyond the classroom fellows reported significant public engagement resulting from student projects. these included voter education events, zine publications, performances, design interventions and online campaigns. collectively, projects reached thousands of peers and community members: • hughes’ design students reached approximately 1500 people through ‘our vote our future’ voter education pop-up event; • berman’s psychology students collected over 300 signed voting commitments for their #genvote2024 campus voter mobilisation drive; • galvin and sale’s #artistswhovote campaign engaged students through public events and digital storytelling, in coordination with the national voter education week initiative with videos reaching approximately 21 000 people through social media channels with large followings; and • burns’ giant pierogi mascot ‘reggie’ (for ‘reggie-ster to vote’) reached hundreds at in-person events and parades, thousands through social media and tens of thousands through features in local print and broadcast media outlets in a major metropolitan area. • these outcomes highlight the potential of creative approaches to assist in the transition from student awareness to civic action and community participation. 7. the fellowship structure supported collaboration and learning finally, faculty fellows affirmed the value of the fellowship’s community structure. the flc model fostered peer exchange, mentorship and accountability, while curriculum resources and modest financial support enabled experimentation and risk-taking. i felt truly supported throughout the process, especially in the feedback and suggestions provided on my reports. even individual communication was quick, thoughtful and encouraging, which made a big difference in keeping me motivated and on track (mascarenhas). the project-based goals are great. focusing on actionable, measurable outcomes was really inspiring. i loved meeting and learning from the other fellows (hughes). the community of fellows and c4aa gathering and sharing was so valuable as we find ourselves teaching and responding to these challenging times. having the resources and the fact that i was not alone in this was so important (smith). faculty fellows reported that the community and tools they gained through the fellowship would continue to inform their teaching beyond the 2024 election cycle. discussion this study explored how faculty fellows from diverse contexts implemented the c4aa’s creative campaign framework in their classrooms during the 2024 us election cycle. the findings offer new insights into how creative civic engagement strategies can empower students, support faculty pedagogical development bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202517 and foster democratic participation in higher education. the results affirm and expand upon emerging scholarship in creative civics pedagogy, artistic activism and community-engaged learning. creative pedagogy as a catalyst for civic agency faculty fellows consistently observed that students responded with increased engagement, ownership and enthusiasm when invited to connect creative practice with civic action. these findings align with dewey’s vision of democracy as a creative habit, one that must be cultivated through meaningful participation and reflection. the projects described by fellows suggest that civic imagination, when supported by structured creative tools like the creative campaign checklist, can be translated into tangible acts of public engagement. students not only developed new civic knowledge but also practised collaboration, problemsolving and expressive agency, skills that scholars such as dewhurst (2014) and keifer-boyd et al. (2023) identify as critical to social justice-oriented education. structure enables creativity one of the most significant contributions of the c4aa creative campaign framework was its ability to scaffold students’ creative civic learning. the smartie goals and creative campaign checklist offered accessible entry points for students to ideate, test and refine campaign concepts with clear objectives and embedded assessment strategies. this mirrors what costanza-chock (2020) describes in design justice work as the power of ‘structured flexibility’, tools that are rooted in values but adaptable to context. importantly, even in courses where artistic creation was not the primary mode of instruction, the framework enabled students to link disciplinary knowledge with public impact, thus activating higher-order learning. faculty development and pedagogical transformation in addition to its impact on students, the fellowship led to reported changes in faculty pedagogy. fellows described rethinking how they scaffold creativity, support student agency and structure civic learning. several described moving away from more instructor-led models toward co-created, iterative learning environments. these reflections align with the goals of sotl, which aim to generate scholarly insights into teaching by positioning educators as reflective practitioners (felten 2013). the flc model served as both a vessel for collaborative experimentation and a peer-support structure that enabled risk-taking. navigating discomfort and risk in civic education the implementation of artistic activism was not without challenges. faculty fellows noted that some students were hesitant to engage in ‘political’ or public-facing work, especially in disciplines or institutions where activism was viewed with scepticism. faculty fellows noted that the language of activism embedded in the creative campaign framework could itself be an initial barrier. they noted that many students do not self-identify as activists. while this language is well-suited to issue-specific campaigns and advocacy organisations, it may limit broader adoption in higher education. a contextual reframing of the c4aa materials to foreground civic engagement and democratic participation, accompanied by case studies and published pedagogical examples, may strengthen accessibility and relevance across educational settings. this tension reflects what mouffe (2007) frames as the ‘agonistic dimension of public life’, where contestation, discomfort and negotiation are inevitable and necessary components of democratic practice. creative civics pedagogy must be prepared to eliminate potential barriers to engaged practices, while also creating space for discomfort, offering students both the tools and the support to navigate ambiguity and complexity. bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202518 adaptability across disciplines and institutions a notable finding was the adaptability of the c4aa materials across a range of institutional types and academic fields. this flexibility suggests that the creative campaign framework functions as a portable pedagogical model, one that can be customised without losing its civic grounding. similarly to pablo helguera’s (2011) concept of ‘transpedagogy’ in socially engaged art, fellows found that civic learning could be integrated into their existing disciplinary frameworks in ways that expanded, rather than detracted from, core course goals and learning outcomes. this signals a developing area of inquiry that would benefit from deeper theoretical articulation and continued scholarly attention. civic impact and student learning beyond the classroom the reach of student projects extended beyond classroom walls. fellows documented hundreds of peer interactions, public performances, campus events, social media campaigns and local media features. these outcomes speak to the growing recognition that civic learning should be experiential, public and actionoriented (saltmarsh & hartley 2011). importantly, students learned that voting is not an end in itself but part of a larger, ongoing process of civic participation, a key marker of what levine (2013) calls ‘civic renewal’. limitations and future directions this study has limitations typical of qualitative sotl research. the sample was small and self-selecting, and most of the data were based on faculty reflections rather than direct student assessments. moreover, outcomes such as student voting behaviour or long-term civic engagement were not measured. future research should include student interviews, focus groups and preand post-civic learning surveys to triangulate faculty insights with student experience. longitudinal studies could also examine whether creative civic learning influences students’ future participation or civic identity development. further research is also needed to deepen the theoretical framework supporting this area of inquiry. in this, the potential exists to develop a formalised portable pedagogical model of the creative campaign framework to build on this study. beyond that, a forthcoming secondary analysis will present in-depth case studies from this fellowship. conclusion this study demonstrates that creative civics pedagogy, when supported by intentional faculty development and adaptable frameworks like those offered by the c4aa, can foster meaningful civic learning in higher education. students became more confident, expressive and politically aware, faculty fellows reimagined their teaching practices and institutions benefited from public, student-led engagement projects that activated campus democratic culture. the unstoppable voters faculty fellowship occurred at a time when american democracy is facing acute challenges. with the election of donald trump to a second nonconsecutive term, and the rash of executive orders issued from the white house in an attempt to circumvent checks and balances and assert executive authority, a recent survey of over 500 political scientists found that the vast majority believe the united states is rapidly shifting away from liberal democracy toward a more authoritarian model (langfitt 2025). in this context, the work of cultivating civic engagement through creative, non-partisan and student-centred approaches is not simply valuable, it is essential. this study demonstrates how integrating the c4aa’s creative campaign framework and materials into higher education not only supported faculty fellows in developing impactful pro-voting projects but also fostered meaningful political engagement among students across disciplines. from experimental public performances to design-based advocacy and dialogue-centred community events, these projects exemplify bauer gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202519 how creativity can reinvigorate democracy and make civic participation feel 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gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 december 202521 https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2023.2 https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.29895216 https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121 https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121 https://doi.org/10.31752/idea.2024.24 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003183716 https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy-authoritarianism-competive-survey-political-scientist https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy-authoritarianism-competive-survey-political-scientist https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt21pxm7p https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt21pxm7p gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 july 2025 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: thompson, j., fraser, s. l., dupéré, v., beauregard, n., archambault, i., lapalme, j., frohlich, k. l. 2025. youth knowledge mobilisation: reflections on theory and practice. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v18i2.9405 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer-reviewed) youth knowledge mobilisation: reflections on theory and practice jennifer thompson1,*, sarah l. fraser2, véronique dupéré2, nancy beauregard3, isabelle archambault2, josée lapalme2, katherine l. frohlich4 1 centre de recherche en santé publique, université de montréal, canada 2 école de psychoéducation, université de montréal, canada 3 école de relations industrielles, université de montréal, canada 4 école de santé publique département de médecine sociale et préventive, université de montréal, canada corresponding author: jennifer thompson, jennifer.thompson@umontreal.ca doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9405 article history: received 18/10/2024; revised 07/04/2025; accepted 23/06/2025; published 07/2025 abstract this article explores knowledge mobilisation in youth research. we take as a starting point that youth knowledge mobilisation (ykmb) requires specific strategies because of the unique power dynamics involved in mobilising knowledge related to young people. however, existing knowledge mobilisation models cannot account for these specificities. ykmb often requires co-creation with partner organisations as well as with youth themselves, leading to diverse and sometimes fragmented approaches to ykmb. an overarching discussion about the theory and practice of ykmb is missing from the literature. to explore the factors that influence the diversity of approaches to ykmb, we take up reflexivity to explore the experiences of a ykmb chair working in intersectoral partnerships as well as with young people in quebec, canada. this article features an emergent ykmb framework that conceptualises a continuum of approaches to mobilising knowledge about, for, with and by youth. across these modes of working, several factors influence ykmb in practice, from research paradigm and context as well as specificities regarding which actors are involved and why these different actors want to mobilise knowledge, as well as what roles different actors play in knowledge production and mobilisation. these factors influence the continuum of roles that academic researchers may play in ykmb, from more traditional roles as knowledge translators to engaged roles 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this work was supported by a grant from the university of montreal for myriagone, the mcconnell-university of montreal chair in youth knowledge mobilization. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9405 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:jennifer.thompson@umontreal.ca https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9405 such as facilitators, advocates and learners. conceptualising ykmb through continuums of practice offers critical insights to support intersectoral and interdisciplinary teams of academic researchers, partners and young people in research co-creation to better bridge the gap between research and practice. keywords knowledge mobilisation; partnership research; youth participation; youth research; continuums of practice introduction this article explores the theory and practice of knowledge mobilisation (kmb) in the context of research about young people. this area of ‘youth research’ is notoriously vast; young people’s lives span many disciplinary areas and spheres, necessitating a plurality of approaches to research, from longitudinal statistical work to in-depth qualitative and narrative studies and conceptual interrogations of childhood. what is more, paradigm shifts in recent decades have changed the landscape for youth participation, leading to increased involvement of young people as active knowers and agents within different stages of the research process. this constellation of research practices raises interesting questions about how to put this knowledge produced by youth research into use so that it might contribute to young people’s lives in a meaningful way. drawing on our experiences doing kmb in different ways as part of a collaborative interdisciplinary chair focused on youth research, we suggest there are opportunities to think across these diverse ways of working to consider the significance of youth knowledge mobilisation (ykmb). given the paucity of literature exploring ykmb as a field, we offer a broad definition of ykmb as ‘the mobilisation of research knowledge that pertains to the experiences, lives and positions of young people in society’. the concept of kmb has gained momentum in recent decades and is now considered an important criterion, if not expectation, for good quality research. through the process of producing and mobilising knowledge generated within research environments, kmb aims to bridge the gap between research and practice. associated with concerns about research impact, kmb involves the exchange and integration of knowledge with the goal of better informing decision-making and practice so that research benefits society (phipps et al. 2016). the term ‘kmb’ was introduced in canada in the early 2000s by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) and is based on the french term ‘mobilisation’, which draws on ideas about ‘making ready for service or action’ (sshrc 2019, cited in barwick, dubrowski & petricca 2019, p. 5). the concept builds on, overlaps with and integrates a range of concepts and terms leading to tensions in the literature about how to define it. for sshrc, kmb is an umbrella terms that includes, for example, the one-way transfer of information associated with knowledge transfer, the adaptation of information for different knowledge users through knowledge translation (emerging from health sciences) and more interactive processes of knowledge exchange that involve knowledge users to a greater extent. others suggest that kmb represents a more involved interactive process with knowledge users that requires building relationships and going beyond, for example, producing reports and articles. while this field continues to evolve heterogeneously in situated ways in different contexts and disciplines (graham et al. 2006), we work with the idea that kmb offers an evolving concept and process for a range of approaches aimed at putting research into use. in canada, the term kmb has particular significance because the federal funding agency in the social sciences and humanities (sshrc) evaluates the merit of kmb plans in funding applications (sshrc 2023), leading to increasingly critical questions from academic researchers (researchers employed by research institutions) about how to do kmb. to facilitate kmb, it is widely encouraged to involve knowledge users within various research stages. intersectoral collaboration or partnership research offers a mechanism whereby academic researchers work thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20252 with non-academic partners to produce and mobilise knowledge together (lavis et al. 2006; phipps et al. 2016). partners might include any range of actors, from private and non-profit organisations, practitioners and community members to governments, policymakers, decision-makers and young people themselves. it is accepted that collaborative approaches such as co-production, co-creation, and participatory research are effective processes for integrating the knowledge produced through research more easily within practice and decision-making. indeed, decades of collaborative research involving knowledge users have perhaps been doing the work of kmb without necessarily using this term or explicitly focusing on the kmb aspect of the partnership process. at the same time, kmb differs from partnership research because kmb is explicitly concerned with putting research into use (whereas partnership research might have different objectives). recent scholarly work comparing kmb models with collaborative approaches such as engaged scholarship, co-production, and community-based participatory research distinguishes, for example, different objectives, historical roots, and researcher roles ( jull et al. 2017; nguyen et al. 2020). however, these theoretical reviews of the literature still leave questions for academic researchers working across the wide variety of research traditions that do not necessarily or traditionally involve non-academic partners. there is a need for more dedicated discussions across diverse research traditions about strategies for mobilising research findings with different groups of knowledge users, and how to navigate the realities and complexities of this work in practice. in this context, kmb scholarship increasingly critiques pragmatic views of ‘common-sense’ methodological approaches to bringing academic researchers and non-academic partners together. alongside a number of scoping reviews taking stock of the field (golhasany & harvey 2023; ziam et al. 2024), more critical accounts of kmb need to address how power relations influence the theory and practice of kmb (crosschild et al. 2021; grenier et al. 2021; kelly et al. 2021). taken-for-granted assumptions about the ease of ‘knowledge exchange’ pay little attention to the politics of knowledge and power, and how intersecting social structures influence kmb processes. as academic researchers increasingly engage in collaborative research with non-academic partners, kmb theory and practice need to account for social inequities and question whose (as well as what) knowledge and experiences are being mobilised and how. these questions are particularly important in relation to youth research given the complex social relations around youth in society and the important potential of kmb in making a difference in youth’s lives and life paths. this article therefore begins with the premise that ykmb presents specific research scenarios for which existing kmb theories (developed in adult research contexts) cannot fully account. we posit ykmb as a unique form of kmb for two reasons. first, ykmb often involves more actors because of the social locations of young people embedded within and supported by structures such as families, schools and communities. these locations make it harder for academic researchers to access youth and youth knowledge independently. youth are either not fully autonomous, or not thought to be autonomous, and are therefore often represented by adults. certainly, many youth are active and mobilised in their communities yet academic researchers located within institutions tend to be removed from youth and their communities. academic researchers thus often seek collaborations with non-academic partner organisations (for example, schools and community organisations) that act as gatekeepers, mediators or intermediaries. second, ykmb involves complex power dynamics because young people are often constructed as less powerful and autonomous in society and therefore not expected or asked to have valuable knowledge. for these reasons, producing and mobilising youth knowledge can take multiple forms, each presenting specific challenges and opportunities. here, one significant distinction pertains to the extent to which young people are involved. academic researchers doing youth research may or may not directly engage young people in knowledge production or mobilisation. many researchers advocate for participatory approaches with, by and for youth to integrate or amplify youth as knowledge producers or youth as researchers. however, adult researchers based in academic institutions (and at times partner organisations thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20253 led by adults) often lead the majority of youth research with limited input from young people. therefore, there is significant diversity in ykmb theory and practice due to the potential involvement of many actors, including academic researchers from different disciplines, multiple partner organisations, various adults in youth’s lives and differently positioned youth. examining the tensions across these working relationships offers opportunities towards developing more critical accounts of kmb in the context of youth research. while many excellent case studies showcase, for example, participatory approaches to involving youth in ykmb, these approaches tend to be fragmented or niche areas within youth research. much ykmb remains limited to what academic researchers do (after knowledge production) and therefore not necessarily explicitly named or theorised as a process with important implications for youth research. an overarching discussion across the diverse approaches to ykmb is missing from the literature. these gaps leave opportunities to unpack the theory and practice of ykmb and questions about how to advance ykmb as a specific form of kmb. in the absence of a paradigm for this work, much can be learned about ykmb by reflecting critically and collectively on how different academic researchers view and practice ykmb in different research contexts. this article explores academic researcher perspectives on the concepts, factors and mechanisms that influence diverse approaches to ykmb to map out an emergent integrative framework for ykmb. to proceed, we first present an overview of the kmb literature to ground our analysis within existing theorical understandings. this review highlights some useful concepts for framing kmb in youth contexts, as well as the limits of existing models for understanding ykmb. we then describe the context for these questions – a collaborative research chair on ykmb – and methodology for reflecting collectively on ykmb through the work of the chair. the findings present an emergent ykmb framework as a work-inprogress to advance discussion about the theory and practice of ykmb. existing knowledge mobilisation frameworks as the field of kmb evolves amidst a range of concepts and terminology, kmb models increasingly attempt to account for complexity within kmb processes. earlier models emerging predominantly from business and management environments conceptualise mechanisms like conduits (boland & tenkasi 1995), stickiness (szulanski 1996), and spirals (nonaka & takeuchi 1995) to describe how knowledge is shared and integrated into practice. these models tend to focus on different mechanisms and outcomes within kmb processes with the aim of improving productivity and innovation ( jull et al. 2017). other collaboration and partnership models of kmb have different historical roots focusing on ethical questions and concerns about power relations within research with the aim of addressing social justice concerns ( jull et al. 2017; nguyen et al. 2020). clearly, different values and objectives inform various approaches to kmb. three features of kmb offer conceptual tools for understanding the diversity of approaches to ykmb. first, knowledge production and mobilisation can be separate processes or they can be intertwined. as crosschild et al. (2021) noted, many traditional scientific research scenarios first produce knowledge and then mobilise it later. for example, academic researchers commonly produce articles, books or other outputs (for example, reports, infographics, videos or podcasts) to mobilise knowledge at the end of funded research projects. in other research scenarios, the production and mobilisation of knowledge may occur simultaneously, after which knowledge may also then continue to be mobilised with different knowledge users. for example, participatory traditions involve community members in data collection and analysis, such that the research knowledge is mobilised through the co-production process. then, communities may also decide to hold a forum with other knowledge users (like local leaders) to share what was learned through the research. second, some types of knowledge may be more readily shared and exchanged compared to others. for example, technical knowledge in the sciences may be easier to share compared to knowledge in sectors such as health, social services and education (graham et al. 2006), and explicit knowledge may thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20254 be more readily shared than implicit forms of knowledge (nonaka & takeuchi 1995). third, different relationships exist between knowledge producers and knowledge users. for example, lavis et al. (2006) identified various models of kmb including: (1) push, where academic researchers or intermediaries reach out to community or institutional partners likely to use scientific knowledge; (2) pull, where partners ask researchers to listen to their needs and produce knowledge adapted to their questions and realities; and (3) exchange, where projects are co-developed and co-produced by both researchers and partners. some kmb models now distinguish academic researcher roles within kmb processes, from producing knowledge to brokering research relationships and fostering networks, to advocating evidence, researching practice and advancing the field of kmb itself (davies, powell & nutley 2015; haynes et al. 2020). the field is becoming increasingly more complex and self-critical in refining the elements, mechanisms and impacts of kmb. however, existing kmb models typically assume that partners are adults with the rights and privileges of adults, certain levels of education and training and experience working within organisational or institutional environments. many questions remain about the theory and practice of ykmb and how the specificities, challenges and opportunities of youth engagement shape ykmb. while kmb may incorporate collaboration with partner organisations, the possible involvement of young people adds layers of complexity. these questions are particularly critical when accounting for the realities of diverse, marginalised or differently positioned youth. social inequities affect which youth are more supported and heard within research. integrating diverse young people across intersecting power structures that include, for example, colonialism, racism, patriarchy and transphobia requires awareness of the specific challenges to meaningful youth engagement. many empirical studies document the facilitators and barriers involving young people in kmb, for example, through youth advisory councils (canas et al. 2019; chan et al. 2021; halsall, mccann & armstrong 2022), popular theatre approaches to working with indigenous youth (plazas et al. 2019) and involving racialised youth in community-university action research project (mosher et al. 2014), although this literature does not use the term ykmb. limited scholarship integrates and advances the theory and practice of ykmb across these diverse approaches and actors. there are meaningful opportunities to explore – within the same frame – how and why researchers engage in ykmb in the ways that they do. to interrogate this gap, we launched myriagone, the mcconnell-university of montreal chair in youth knowledge mobilization. the chair is held by five co-chairs working together across three disciplines and numerous partner organisations. the chair holders each conduct different types of youth research (from quantitative to qualitative and action-oriented) with various groups and communities in quebec, canada (including urban, rural, and indigenous contexts). to understand the realities and circumstance of young people, we work with an interdisciplinary approach at the intersections of health, education and work. we are particularly concerned with reaching, understanding and addressing the realities of youth in situations of social inequity. as part of the intellectual work of the chair, we bring our diverse field experiences alongside theories of kmb to think through the specificities and complexities of ykmb in theory and in practice. methods to explore the diversity of ykmb practices within our chair, we developed an iterative inquiry process involving qualitative, reflexive and conceptual approaches over several years and phases. early in this process, it became apparent that many ykmb practices were implicit in our work. reflexivity offers an approach for researchers to acknowledge their role in the research and to reflect critically on how their subjectivity influences the research process, in particular, for attending to issues related to power relations (sultana 2007). therefore, our methodology aimed to first identify and explicitly name how the five researchers in the chair work differently to produce and mobilise youth knowledge and then, second, develop an integrative framework for thinking across our diverse approaches. the work proceeded in three phases, as outlined below. thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20255 phase i: identifying different approaches to youth research first, individual semi-structured interviews conducted by the first author (who was at the time, a postdoctoral researcher with the chair) explored each co-chair’s disciplinary background, conceptual and theoretical interests and methodological approaches to youth research. in this phase, each of the co-chairs reviewed the transcript from their own interview and identified important insights, which were shared and discussed in a focus group session. phase ii: identifying different approaches to ykmb this phase allowed us to identify some key actors within ykmb processes, and the range of contextual factors that influence ykmb. for this phase, we adapted lavis et al.’s (2003) questions to identify: what knowledge should be mobilised? to whom should knowledge be mobilised? by whom should knowledge be mobilised? how should knowledge be mobilised? with what effect should knowledge be mobilised? we also added the question: who should produce the knowledge to be mobilised? we explored ykmb as a group in a facilitated workshop as well as through a second individual semi-structured interview with each co-chair. phase iii: integrating a diversity of practices this phase aimed to account for the diversity of practices, approaches and concerns described across the work of the chair. inspired by continuum models of diversity, for example, careau et al.’s (2015) framework for interprofessional collaboration, we developed a series of working continuums that consider the range of diverse approaches to ykmb within the chair. workshopping these continuums provided an inclusive co-analytical process that allowed for flexibility and fluidity so that researchers could identify their practices along multiple continuums, while also recognising that practices are not static and shift along continuums. these continuums – and the emergent framework below – remain purposefully tentative. this process allowed us to identify and structure the key themes and questions that we see shaping ykmb theory and practice. while we draw on our field experiences to theorise ykmb practice, we do not elaborate on individual projects in this article. we invite readers to visit our website to learn more about our work (www. myriagone.ca). results ykmb is as multifaceted as youth research itself; it takes many forms that necessitate different strategies. to account for the different approaches to ykmb, it might be initially tempting to attribute this diversity to disciplinary differences. while disciplinary traditions certainly play a role, our findings suggest that discipline alone cannot account for the different ways that academic researchers think about and practise ykmb. ykmb can also vary quite considerably among academic researchers located in the same discipline because of how ykmb changes from project to project as well as from context to context. many researchers use different approaches to ykmb, depending on the project. as we elaborate below, several other factors also come into play, which we organise in two major sections. we first present an overview of the factors influencing ykmb within an emergent framework and how these factors interact. we then zoom in on one aspect of ykmb highlighted through our focus on academic researcher perspectives: the circumstances that influence the roles that academic researchers might want or need to play in ykmb. part i: mobilising knowledge about, for, with and by youth figure 1 presents an emergent framework that integrates some key factors influencing ykmb in theory and in practice. to a certain extent, the spiral (nonaka & takeuchi 1995) or stickiness (szulanski 1996) thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20256 http://www.myriagone.ca http://www.myriagone.ca models of kmb form the basis of this framework. these mechanisms portray iterative and non-linear processes that encourage different actors (for example, researchers, partner organisations or young people) to spend time together and exchange explicit and tacit knowledge in different ways and spaces. this is far more complicated than it seems. we identify several inter-related factors that differentiate why academic researchers might employ different ykmb strategies in different research scenarios. figure 1. an emergent ykmb framework in the centre, anchoring the framework, a continuum of ykmb practices includes ykmb about youth, for youth, with youth and by youth. each of these working relationships offers a different mode of youth involvement within ykmb, and each with different epistemological and methodological implications. while we focus on ykmb, these modes of working may also refer to youth involvement in research (as noted earlier, knowledge production and knowledge mobilisation may occur separately or be intertwined). each mode considers youth differently. ykmb about youth considers young people as the object or context of the research, accounting for most youth research that tends to be conducted and mobilised by adult researchers. this mode could include, for example, theoretical work advancing academic conversations about conceptions of youth or longitudinal statistical analysis to study the transitions in young people’s lives across generations. moving along the continuum, ykmb for youth positions young people as beneficiaries, users or receivers of knowledge. for example, ykmb for youth could include research about teaching and learning that informs school curricula and teaching practice or psycho-social research that informs social programs for youth. ykmb with youth involves young people as consultants informing or guiding the research process, or as co-researchers, co-producers or co-mobilisers of knowledge alongside academic researchers. for example, participatory visual research inviting youth to produce images to identify, represent and coanalyse issues in their lives helps to shift the narrative towards youth-centred ways of seeing. in ykmb by youth, youth lead the research process as researchers, knowledge producers and mobilisers. for example, youth-led organisations may plan, execute and mobilise research that invites academic researcher input, but youth lead the research decisions and process. these four modes of ykmb are neither static bounded thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20257 categories nor are they mutually exclusive. many projects employ different approaches across different stages of implementation. around this central continuum, several inter-related factors in turn shape ykmb. these factors include research paradigm and context (two spheres at the top of figure 1) as well as which actors participate, the roles different actors play and the reasons driving different actors to participate in ykmb (three spheres at the bottom of figure 1). each of these factors includes a range of possibilities. given the interdependence of these factors and the spiral dynamic that animates the framework, it is difficult to describe each factor individually or sequentially. to describe this interplay, we first introduce how research paradigm influences ykmb. we then demonstrate how other factors related to the research context intersect with paradigm to influence and complicate the who, what and why of ykmb. in broad strokes, the more researchers seek the input and involvement of different types of actors, the more complex scenarios are encountered, and the more researchers need to consider what is needed for ykmb to be meaningful and relevant for those involved. how research paradigm influences ykmb paradigm refers to ‘the basic set of beliefs that guides action’ (guba 1990, p. 17). research paradigm plays a significant role underpinning the construction of youth within research from a range of, for example, developmental, socially constructed, historically situated and structural perspectives. paradigmatic differences in epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies influence how youth knowledge is produced and mobilised including disciplinary traditions as well as the assumptions, values and beliefs that shape research decisions and the criteria for good quality research. guba and lincoln (2005) distinguish five key research paradigms – positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, constructivism and participatory – and additional bodies of scholarship also include, for example, pragmatic and transformative paradigms (creswell & poth 2016) as well as indigenous paradigms (held 2019). we do not attempt to prescriptively map out the specificities of these and various other paradigms. we simply highlight how differences related to paradigmatic expectations affect what strategies researchers use for ykmb as well as the place of youth agency and voice in these processes. for example, in theory, paradigms that require an objective distance between researcher and youth knowledge (such as positivism and post-positivism) may align with ykmb about youth. here, traditional scientific methods aim to describe a generalisable reality, where youth knowledge is seen as external from the researcher and validated through procedures that protect objectivity. researchers’ values, subjectivity and positionality – as well as those of partner organisations and young people – may constitute forms of bias that need to be excluded from knowledge to anchor research validity. on the other hand, paradigms that seek the co-production and mobilisation of knowledge (such as participatory or transformative paradigms) may align more fundamentally with ykmb with and by youth. these paradigms produce situated, shared and more diffuse forms of lived, embodied and sensory knowledges, and aim to address more explicitly the power dynamics between academic researchers and young people. the credibility of these knowledges depends on the quality of youth engagement. in practice, paradigms are far from discrete or essentialised systems and often co-exist in complex, overlapping and contested ways (guba & lincoln 2005). it may be unconstructive and even problematic to attempt to ascribe individual researchers or projects to certain paradigms. on the contrary, different paradigms often co-exist and serve different purposes at different stages of the research process. many researchers combine multiple paradigms and modes of working. here it might be helpful to envision paradigm diversity as a set of nested continuums that depict some of the key tensions across paradigms, for example, on the role of objectivity or subjectivity, or on the inclusion or exclusion of personal values in research (see guba & lincoln 2005; held 2019). essentially, paradigm influences the types of relationships that researchers have with knowledge production and therefore how ykmb is conceptualised and thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20258 negotiated. research paradigm offers an integrative frame for dialogue across the diversity of approaches that researchers employ to produce and mobilise youth knowledge. how research context influences ykmb alongside paradigm, we also found that ykmb practices vary from project to project and from context to context. the factors impacting this variability include social, economic, political, cultural, linguistic and geographic specificities of different research contexts. the scope of research questions also influences the scale or unit of analysis, and the methodologies needed to meet the specific needs of particular projects and youth contexts. for example, youth research in collaboration with more formal organisational partners like schools or national statistical agencies often requires more institutionalised approaches to ykmb, such as producing accessible reports and sharing them on websites, organising meetings with school boards or communicating findings through professional channels. youth research drawing on more informal or community-based spaces like homes, streets or parks often requires for informal or community-based ykmb strategies that include, for example, visual products like pamphlets or posters, or through publicly accessible channels like radio or social media. each research project arguably has a unique set of contextual factors. conceivably, innumerable contextual factors influence the landscape of what ykmb looks like in practice. together, research paradigm and context influence how researchers imagine, create and negotiate ykmb in practice. this leads to the third major factor regarding the who, what and how engaging different types of actors in ykmb. how the involvement of diverse actors influences ykmb which actors participate in ykmb, the roles they play, and why they want to participate (their expected outcomes) also interact to create a range of research scenarios that require different ykmb strategies. as noted, these actors may include academics from different fields and disciplines, as well as partner organisations with different types of mandates, and young people with various backgrounds and lived experiences. identifying who has power to take up the knowledge produced and make change helps to develop ykmb plans that include specific actors that need to be reached for the desired outcome of the kmb process. these actors also become key knowledge producers within the ykmb process and not just recipients or users of the knowledge. research for, with and by youth requires the involvement of more actors, each with different interests and realities. different actors often have different mandates that influence their relationships with young people, who needs to participate in ykmb and how researchers need to plan to facilitate these exchanges. youth from different backgrounds or environments may have different interests in topics or motivations for being involved and have varying access to opportunities and mobilisation processes. for example, an interactive exhibition inviting adolescent participants and their family members to a university campus to mobilise youth-produced artwork requires a very different set of ykmb strategies compared to a media campaign mobilising research findings about the health and safety of young farmers from rural communities. partners may have different organisational objectives, structures and capacities as well as priorities related to stakeholders and beneficiaries, internal needs or expectations. for example, organisations that want to improve service provision by supporting practitioners requires different ykmb strategies compared to organisations working to address power imbalances in their governance structures by engaging youth in decision-making. certainly, diverse organisations have different starting points, which can create gaps in terms of language, benchmarks and resources required to participate in the ykmb. negotiating these collaborations may be one of the ways that ykmb can effectively address the power dynamics inherent within youth research. indeed, finding effective ways to engage diverse actors makes ykmb unique and challenging. thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20259 part 2: a spotlight on researcher roles in ykmb given academic researcher responsibilities and mandates for mobilising research knowledge, it is not surprising that how researchers see and negotiate their role in ykmb influences their ykmb practices. these roles reflect academic researcher motivations to do ykmb. the reasons why researchers may engage in ykmb – the types of outcomes they want to achieve – affects how they approach ykmb and involve other actors, and who is involved or excluded from the process. academic researchers engaging in ykmb to meet funder requirements or research-focused impacts may prioritise academic publications and academic conferences (ykmb about youth). academic researchers and partners who want to change policy need to engage with leaders and policymakers, perhaps through more formal, public-facing strategies like public round-table discussion events (ykmb for youth). other academic researchers interested in how ykmb may improve social support for youth through, for example, improved outreach or services may need to mobilise practitioners (for example, teachers, youth workers, healthcare providers) through engaged ykmb strategies such as infographics or video capsules easily shared on social media to provide accessible ways to engage busy practitioners. to improve youth access to structures, services and institutions, academic researchers may need to dedicate time participating and advocating in organisational committees or boards where decision-making takes place (also ykmb for youth). researchers who want to empower or support youth leadership need to involve youth directly in the research and mobilisation processes and create dedicated space to amplify youth voices (ykmb with and by youth). academic researchers may also value reciprocity and want to give back to partner organisations or change how they work to disrupt dominant norms within the academy. most researchers are likely motivated by several goals including broader societal-level ones such as addressing social inequities, creating a more inclusive society and decolonising research. academic researchers mobilise knowledge for many reasons that each necessitate different strategies for involving nonacademic actors. we suggest that academic researcher roles are also influenced – at least in part – by research paradigm, which ascribes specific roles that underpin criteria for what counts as good quality research (guba & lincoln 2005). within some paradigms, academic researchers may view the responsibility to mobilise knowledge predominantly in their professional roles. other paradigms may position researchers as advocates who mobilise knowledge all the time within their communities and personal lives. these roles are also shaped by how academic researchers adapt and adopt new roles to respond to partner needs or interests. for example, inviting adolescents with little exposure to academic milieus to participate in an academic panel requires more active researcher engagement so that youth feel comfortable and prepared in a new setting. in comparison, more traditional academic researcher roles involve preparing academic publications for scholarly journals. the continuum of researcher roles (figure 2) begins to map out the diversity of roles that academic researchers may seek or expect to play in ykmb and approaches where young people are also involved as researchers. in general, these roles align with the about, for, with and by youth modes of working, as well as with paradigmatic expectations for change in the research process (bottom bar of figure 2). the two modes on the left of this continuum (about youth and for youth) may not directly involve young people. these modes probably account for large bodies of literature pertaining to young people over time. on the extreme left (ykmb about youth), academic researchers produce and disseminate research to make knowledge available through, for example, traditional academic outputs such as publications and conferences that tend to assume other researchers as the primary knowledge users. academic researchers play a primary role in decision-making in these processes with little to no youth involvement or anticipated change in how researchers produce and mobilise knowledge. moving toward the right, research becomes more like an intervention with anticipated action or change. ykmb for youth expects that the research may benefit youth directly or indirectly through partner organisation activities. for example, research may respond to partner concerns and be translated into a format accessible to diverse knowledge users (for example, reports, thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202510 infographics, podcasts). academic researchers may also accompany partners (including youth) to actively facilitate discussions about how to integrate or use knowledge to influence or adapt practice, with some expectation that change may occur. the two modes to the right of the continuum (with youth and by youth) must directly involve young people. these modes probably account for smaller bodies of scholarship overall but are becoming increasingly common with paradigm shifts around youth participation. moving towards the right (ykmb with youth), academic researchers advocate and create opportunities and support for youth or partner initiatives. this includes including young people at various stages of the research processes, from research design and identifying research questions, to data collection and analysis, and dissemination or mobilisation. in ykmb led by youth, researchers listen and witness, and adapt their research practice through reflexivity and learning, often seeking to change themselves and how they do research. moving towards the right along this continuum, personal relationships become more important; academic researchers, partners and youth must invest more time building and maintaining these relationships. the higher the level of involvement and longer duration of the relationship with youth and partners, the more time and effort are required and the more ykmb practice requires personal investment from everyone involved. this continuum of researcher roles is not linear or exhaustive. in practice, researcher roles and interests change depending on the project and situation. returning to the ykmb framework presented in figure 1, ykmb involves several differently positioned actors (for example, researchers, partners organisations, young people themselves) working together over time in different modes: about youth, for youth, with youth and by youth. these modes are influenced by research paradigm and context as well as by who, how and why of how non-academic actors are involved. each mode requires different strategies and approaches to communicate across differences by finding ways to build common languages. these multiple layers interact such that ykmb practices are dynamic, cumulative, responsive and transformative. when researchers work together in interdisciplinary and intersectoral contexts, they learn from each other and from other actors therefore can be inspired to work differently. ykmb occurs across multiple projects over time and across researchers’ careers. what happens in one project – the people involved, the processes developed, the knowledge produced, how knowledge users integrate this knowledge – become building blocks and pathways for future ykmb. figure 2. continuum of academic researcher roles in ykmb thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202511 discussion ykmb offers a critical avenue for building more inclusive and equitable societies. global changes regarding the rights of young people have radically changed the landscape of youth participation in research (graham, powell & taylor 2015; united nations 1989). the increasing involvement of young people and youth-focused organisations in research, alongside the increasing expectation or requirement for academic researchers to both do interdisciplinary research and find ways to put the research into use, raises many questions and sometimes tensions about strategies for ykmb. our findings build on some core components of existing kmb theories (from knowledge translation to co-production) and contribute new insights to the specificities of ykmb by identifying several layers of complexity and the concept of continuums as a strategy for working across diverse approaches. many factors influence researcher decisions about how to develop ykmb activities: the research focus, the perception of the roles that academic researchers should (or should not) play in the public sphere, the ability to share decision-making power, the perceived responsibility for carrying out changes in practice settings and which youth ultimately participate and are heard within research. these complexities help to name what makes ykmb so challenging. we now discuss four challenges to ykmb. first, existing kmb models imply that mobilising knowledge requires space and time to share experiential and tacit knowledge (nonaka & takeuchi 1995). these models assume that people come together over time and build common language and understandings through rational ‘common sense’ processes (crosschild et al. 2021). our work suggests that the who and how of bringing diverse actors together is much more complex and power-laden, especially in youth contexts which involve many more structures and possible actors, each with different powers and expectations. the challenge is that there are zones of ‘no meet’ with impossibilities of actors spending time together. many academic researchers have little to no contact with youth, whereas youth may be in contact with an organisation or other researchers. these relations make it essential for academic researchers to collaborate across disciplines, as well as with partners and with youth, to share knowledge. ykmb therefore involves not one knowledge spiral but several spirals that do not necessarily overlap or have the same powers. by doing intersectoral and interdisciplinary work, actors can more effectively mobilise knowledge across spirals. second, the institutional environments where academic researchers work shape what roles they are encouraged and supported to play in ykmb. it is well documented that universities prioritise peer-review publications in high-impact journals, which may inadvertently prioritise less time to intensive ykmb approaches. for example, ykmb about youth does not require as much of a time commitment as ykmb for and with youth where academic researchers facilitate and support relationships with partner organisations and young people. working with youth involves building relationships and trust. researchers need to spend dedicated time with young people to understand what interests and motivates youth to participate. furthermore, academic researchers’ institutionalised locations – in quite different spaces from where youth spend their time – affect researcher capacities to reach marginalised youth, further shaping which youth tend to participate in research. academic institutions also mandate their researchers with multiple competing responsibilities such as teaching and service. the resources and infrastructures needed to support direct youth engagement work are often not recognised within university structures or funding agency criteria. third, our findings highlight tensions in whether academic researchers can or want to work directly with youth. the time commitments and trust-building involved in working with youth complicates ykmb because academic researchers and youth may not always be available at the same times; youth have school and other responsibilities when academic researchers are available during a typical work week, and academic researchers’ personal and family responsibilities often conflict with youth’s availabilities on nights and weekends. it can be challenging to maintain ongoing contact as youth transition from secondary school to thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202512 the workforce and across different levels of tertiary education or starting of families. for many reasons, not all academic researchers are available, interested or well-suited to youth engagement. partner organisations often have existing networks and relationships with youth and their communities as well as existing inhouse skills, resources and experience that are better equipped and positioned for direct youth engagement. academic researchers may opt to collaborate with partner organisations as a more sustainable and effective approach to ykmb. fourth, the diversity of approaches to ykmb certainly does not occur in isolation but alongside and informed by kmb in other research contexts. while funders and institutions now often mandate kmb (for example, in the canadian context), academic researchers often lack the practical and conceptual tools for developing kmb strategies and plans in general (phipps et al. 2016). existing models do not provide many concrete or reflexive tools for how to do kmb in different contexts. as a result, kmb involves individualised and sometimes ad hoc approaches (ward et al. 2010). these personalised elements rely on taken-forgranted assumptions, which tend to render underlying structural realities and inequalities invisible. making researcher beliefs and expectations more explicit is helpful for unpacking the theory and practice of ykmb and for developing more intentional and transparent approaches to ykmb. coming back to critical questions about power in ykmb, fostering conversations that explicitly name expectations and objectives around ykmb can help research teams and partnerships think through who ends up being included and excluded from research processes, whose knowledge is being mobilised and why. supporting this strategic thinking can support the design of appropriate steps to reach particular audiences, within the realities of research timelines and budgets in ways that acknowledge the power dynamics and social inequalities at play. this emergent framework suggests that ykmb needs to remain both strategic and responsive, including planned elements as well as space for spontaneous and informed interventions that work with the momentum of evolving research scenarios. conclusion amidst global concerns about research impact are questions about how research can better contribute to policy, practice and social change. while this work is always situated – often called different things in different places and disciplines – the concept of kmb offers an umbrella term that can unite core concerns about what is needed to put research into use. while the term itself has particular significance in the canadian context, we believe the underlying ideas presented in this article offer relevant insights for researchers working with other frameworks such as knowledge transfer, knowledge democracy, engaged scholarship, participatory research and others. in the absence of a unifying body of ykmb literature, this article draws on our research experiences as an interdisciplinary chair to offer an emergent integrative ykmb framework based on academic researcher perspectives. we suggest that ykmb is distinct from other forms of kmb because of the realities and power dynamics of young people’s lives and positions in society. given the need for the involvement of more actors, ykmb is a complex multifaceted process that can take many different shapes, influenced in part by academic researcher assumptions and social positions, as well as by the context and needs of partner organisations and youth. many of these factors remain implicit in practice. our findings demonstrate practical and theoretical implications for community-engaged scholarship about, with, for and by youth, as well as for researchers working with more traditional approaches who also want to mobilise their findings. our findings offer conceptual tools and language for naming some of the realities and factors that influence ykmb to spur more explicit and critical interrogations within this field. in particular, when we have presented these findings with our research partners (including government, funding and non-profit organisations), the idea that there are continuums of practice has resonated the most thompson et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202513 clearly for acknowledging and articulating tensions in their work and in recognising the importance and value of different approaches to ykmb. we conclude by emphasising the possibilities of continuums of practice in ykmb and suggest the possibilities of more community-engaged work to co-develop continuums with diverse groups of knowledge producers and users. to advance the theory and practice of ykmb, further research is needed to incorporate the perspectives of different communities of knowledge users and producers, including partner organisations, policy actors and young people themselves. we hope that inviting more critical discussions around the diversity of approaches to ykmb in theory and practice, and how continuums can support interdisciplinary and intersectoral teams, will help to make a difference in the lives of the young people who inspire this work. acknowledgements many collaborative projects have helped shape our work as the myriagone chair. to begin, we would like to extend an important thank you to the many young people who have participated in our various research projects over the years for guiding us in this work and for letting us know what has worked and what has not worked. we thank our partner organisations for their generosity and interest in engaging in collaborative research, and for committing to processes that constantly evolve and often take longer than planned. we would also like to thank mathieu-joël gervais for theoretical insights about the field of knowledge mobilisation and for accompanying us in reflecting collaboratively on our youth knowledge mobilisation practices, a process which has been far from straightforward. his suggestion to develop continuums was foundational in enabling us to think across our diverse practices in an inclusive way. authors’ contributions jennifer thompson played a lead role in facilitating the collaborative research process and article development. sarah fraser and véronique dupéré played lead roles in conceptualising the research design and findings, and article development. sarah fraser, véronique dupéré, nancy beauregard, isabelle archambault and katherine frohlich participated in the collaborative analysis process and in article development and revisions. josée lapalme participated in conceptual development of the findings and article revisions. references barwick, m, dubrowski, r & petricca, k 2020, knowledge translation: the rise of implementation, american institutes for research. 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purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: verma, s., caldwell., b, hansen, s., pollitt, s., hams, v., bruce, l., miskovicwheatley, j., maguire, s. 2025. strengthening research and evaluation at the community level: a case for consideration, collaboration and care within mental health. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v18i2.9272 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peer reviewed) strengthening research and evaluation at the community level: a case for consideration, collaboration and care within mental health sumedha verma1, 2, belinda caldwell1, susie hansen1, sarah pollitt1, vicki hams1, lauren bruce1, jane miskovic-wheatley2,*, sarah maguire2 1 eating disorders victoria, victoria, australia 2 insideout institute for eating disorders, faculty of medicine & health, the university of sydney, and sydney local health district, new south wales, australia corresponding author: jane miskovic-wheatley, jane.miskovic-wheatley@sydney.edu.au doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9272 article history: received 02/08/2024; revised 11/12/2024; accepted 23/05/2025; published 07/2025 abstract much innovation happens at the community level. community-based services, by virtue of their setting, have proximity to consumer experiences, perspectives and needs, and often spearhead advances in community care and advocacy. thus, leveraging local knowledges and supporting their translation across research, clinical practice and policy is integral in enabling an equitable ecosystem to enhance community wellbeing. however, research and evaluation (r&e) capacity and capability within community settings remains limited, hindering such knowledge-sharing and change. this article details a community-based participatory research (cbpr) project involving an 18-monthlong partnership between academic researchers and service providers at an australian not-for-profit eating disorders organisation to build r&e. collaboratively, we planned, co-designed and implemented monitoring, evaluation and learning practices into service delivery. this article shares: (1) the process of academic partnership within a community mental health context; (2) critical reflections on the complexities, strengths, challenges, and opportunities of engaging in cbpr in building capability/capacity; and (3) actionable recommendations to guide future efforts. we explain the need for a systemic approach to building r&e within the community sector and provide rich examples of cbpr in practice. our learnings hold implications for how local knowledges are created, utilised and translated, and what will help moving forward to enhance community care. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research is funded by the national health and medical research council medical research future fund million minds mission grant (app1178922) as part of mainstream: the australian centre for health system research and translation in eating disorders (www.mainstreamresearch.org.au). data availability statement authors may be contacted for queries around access to research materials. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9272 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9272 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:jane.miskovic-wheatley@sydney.edu.au https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9272 http://www.mainstreamresearch.org.au keywords community-based participatory research; community-academic partnership; mental health; eating disorders; co-design; capacity building; monitoring evaluation and learning introduction community is a central source of knowledge. much, if not most, innovation in how we conceptualise social issues, such as mental health, and how best to address them, comes from voices of those they directly affect – the community. across the mental health sector, lived experience and peer work is being increasingly embedded into research and service delivery in attempts to empower community voices (musić et al. 2021; utpala et al. 2023) and enhance health outcomes (nedc 2019; engage victoria 2023). communitybased organisations increasingly co-design and offer peer-led services (farrar-rabbidge & squire 2022), which leads to the ground-up creation of local knowledges from the community, often by the community. working at the granular, grassroots level community services serve as the gateway to important information (for example, consumer demographics, engagement, program/service evaluation outcomes) in naturalistic environments, which can be leveraged to advance mental health conceptualisation and care. this uniquely positions community-based services as powerful advocates and agents of change. it is therefore essential that such knowledges be appropriately captured at the community level. to enable the reciprocal flow of information across community-based services, research, policy, and clinical practice, a multi-level ecosystem of robust research and evaluation (r&e) is required (see figure 1; ayton et al. 2024; lloyd et al. 2021). specifically, this would enable: (1) lived/living experience voices to be supported (for example, through advocacy/funding efforts, guiding organisational values, processes and directions); (2) gaps and areas of need to be identified and addressed to better meet diverse community needs (for example, identification of under-serviced and marginalised populations); (3) existing community programs and innovations to be evaluated (for example, for safety, effectiveness and efficiency) and translated, contributing to the development of future innovations; and (4) the notable gap between research and clinical practice to be reduced (robinson et al. 2020). figure 1. ecosystem of equitable and responsive knowledge-sharing within healthcare, centring lived experience community voices at the core for systems in which lived and living experience is a central facet of service delivery, the importance of r&e becomes even more pronounced. supporting services to identify and address issues that directly affect community members is needed to aid advocacy and decision-making (reed 2015), lead to better understandings (guijt 2014) and enable community knowledge ownership (april et al. 2023; israel et al. 2012). additionally, if services are to be for the community and by the community, they then must be verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20252 resourced to account and advocate for diverse community perspectives ( jones et al. 2021) to reduce further marginalisation and epistemic injustices (mooney et al. 2023) that see important knowledges neglected. however, within a context of chronic under-investment, r&e practices within community-based organisations remain under-prioritised, which limits pathways of knowledge-sharing that remain either fragmented or entirely absent. for example, the costs required to support effective r&e often exceed allocated funding, resulting in a lack of organisational capability and r&e infrastructure. this creates a vicious cycle: under-resourcing prevents the ability of community services to secure funding to establish r&e systems and demonstrate their impact, which in turn stalls knowledge generation and translation across the sector. as a result, service improvements are delayed, and overall community outcomes remain constrained. supporting community organisations to undertake robust r&e is therefore essential – not only to ensure the safety of community members (stewart 2014) but to amplify diverse lived experience perspectives, enhance knowledge translation, and effect meaningful social change (guijt 2014; reed 2015). this issue is particularly critical for under-prioritised and highly stigmatised conditions such as eating disorders. these complex conditions have rising prevalence (hay et al. 2023) and far-reaching impacts, not only on individuals (miskovic-wheatley et al. 2023) but their families and kin (fletcher et al. 2021), as well as broader systems and structures (ágh et al. 2016). despite the increasing social and financial costs (butterfly foundation 2024), funding for eating disorders research remains disproportionately limited compared to other mental health conditions (appg 2021; bryant et al. 2023). additionally, dominant conceptualisations and treatment frameworks often lack diversity and cultural responsiveness (clark et al. 2023). the persistent under-prioritisation and ‘structural exclusion’ of eating disorders at large (bryant et al. 2023), coupled with the marginalisation of diverse perspectives (asaria 2025; verma 2024) underscore the urgent need to strengthen eating disorder research, policy and care (ayton et al. 2024; insideout institute 2021; nedc 2023). community-based participatory research (cbpr) is a broad framework in which researchers and community stakeholders collaborate to identify and address issues faced by the community (wallerstein & duran 2006). cbpr attempts to redress power imbalances by actively involving community partners in shared decision-making and research practices alongside academic partners. in this way, both community and academic partners contribute to the research process, sharing their unique expertise to learn from one another, create new knowledge and effect social change (israel et al. 2018; wilson 2019). sanchez et al. (2023, p. 989) explain this further and call for systemic investment in ground-up, community-based initiatives: community-engaged work requires authentic relationship building, takes time, and does not fit the traditional research infrastructure that prioritizes proliferation of products (e.g. publications and grants) over transformation of mental health systems and clinical practices. the benefits of cbpr are in its democratic approach, which not only captures community perspectives that may have previously been excluded from traditional research practices but centres them at the core of decision-making to better address community needs, simultaneously building knowledge and skills of all involved partners (case et al. 2014; guijt 2014). one way of engaging in cbpr is through partnership between academics and community stakeholders (april et al. 2023; morton et al. 2014), which has been utilised to enhance r&e within community services (golenko et al. 2012). the expected benefits of community-academic partnerships specifically within the mental health sector are manifold; they may: (1) support community services to develop, maintain and own r&e systems of their own; (2) provide reprieve to capacity demands by offering academic assistance; and importantly, (3) enable knowledge-sharing between community services and research settings to promote advocacy and change. the collaborative nature of this approach appears appropriate within the eating disorder sector in which lived experience is becoming increasingly commonplace within service delivery verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20253 (utpala et al. 2023), and considering the need for greater research and diversity in conceptualisations and care (bryant et al. 2023). in the current article, we share the experiences, reflections and recommendations as a group of community service providers and academic partners in co-designing and undertaking r&e practices within an australian community mental health organisation through a partnership spanning 18 months. by sharing the enablers, strengths, challenges, and opportunities of undertaking this work, we present widespread considerations that impact r&e more broadly within the mental health sector to guide future advances. our work extends previous community-engaged research methodologies (april et al. 2023; reed 2015) and guidelines (sadler et al. 2012), simultaneously addressing the need for greater descriptions of community-academic co-design processes (benz et al. 2024). academic-community partnership context and backstory the current cbpr project stemmed from a larger, four-year government-funded project led by author maguire to enhance multilevel eating disorder research and translation across australia. this was called the mainstream project (www.mainstreamresearch.org.au) and began in 2020 at the insideout institute for eating disorders (ioi), which is a collaboration between the university of sydney and sydney local health district. we have previously published a comprehensive project protocol (verma et al. 2024). this project funded a full-time postdoctoral researcher (author verma) to be embedded and work ‘on the ground’ for 18 months at eating disorders victoria (edv), a community eating disorders organisation based in melbourne, australia (www.eatingdisorders.org.au). alongside advocacy, edv offers support for community members through clinical services (that is, telehealth counselling and nursing consultations), psychoeducational resources (for example, online courses and information), various psychosocial support groups and programs (raspovic et al. 2024), and linkage to external services. many staff bring some form of connection to the cause, either direct caregiving lived experience, and many programs are co-designed with or led by lived experience peers (edv 2023). as a not-for-profit service that is almost entirely funded (approximately 90 per cent) by the victorian state government, historically no funding has been specifically allocated to r&e, resulting in limited r&e practices. as detailed in the protocol, originally our project planned to co-design and implement r&e practices at edv through academic partnership to enable the evaluation of an existing early intervention program for carers of a young person with an eating disorder. this program (carer coaching program) was developed, and is facilitated by, trained lived experience peer workers (carer coaches) in response to long wait times consumers and families often experience in accessing eating disorder care within healthcare settings. co-design working group the core working group consisted of author verma as the primary research partner embedded at edv, and several edv staff members (community partners) involved in design and/or delivery of the carer coaching program (that is, two lived experience program providers, two managers, the ceo, one program director), who all provided informed consent. one member in the working group had a personal history of an eating disorder, and three members had lived experience of caring for a person with an eating disorder. author verma received high-level research guidance from authors miskovic-wheatley and maguire (ioi, university of sydney), who also contributed to project decision-making. additionally, she received internal verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20254 http://www.mainstreamresearch.org.au http://www.eatingdisorders.org.au supervisory support from author bruce (edv), given the novelty and embedded nature of their role. table 1 outlines the roles of all partners. table 1. community and research partner roles partner (author) role and organisation core working group based at edv 1 embedded postdoctoral researcher 2 ceo, edv 3 director clinical and telehealth services, edv 4 manager of telehealth programs, edv 5 manager education and research, edv 8 lived experience (peer) facilitator of carer coaching program, edv research partners at insideout 6 research stream lead, ioi 7 chief investigator (mainstream), director of ioi note: green shading indicates research partners, orange indicates community partners. ioi = insideout institute for eating disorders. edv = eating disorders victoria. personal accounts in appendix 1, we have included several reflexive accounts from community and research partners to provide rich, multi-level perspectives and experiences of our project. these are referred to in the following sections but we strongly encourage readers to read our personal reflections for richer and deeper insights. co-design process as detailed in the protocol (verma et al. 2024) and author verma’s account, we took a bottom-up, empowered approach to building r&e through academic partnership (betterevaluation 2021). author verma facilitated all meetings, which were designed to be collaborative in nature; community partners were encouraged to lead decision-making in line with best-practice community-engaged ways of working (reed 2015). to track project process and the outcomes of building r&e practices, author verma collected data longitudinally from the whole authoring team through meetings (audio recordings), semi-structured interviews, two formal questionnaires (baseline and mid-way), written correspondence (via emails, online chats) and comprehensive field notes that included key events and decisions, observations and personal reflections. over the course of 12 months, we held 75 meetings (a mix of one-on-one and group meetings, approximately 54.5 hours). to develop her capabilities in cbpr and program evaluation, and for background, author verma sought ad hoc external consultation throughout the course of the project (27 sessions, approximately 30 hours) with a diverse range of professionals working within various fields such as eating disorders, program/service evaluation, cultural diversity, implementation science, editing and publishing, data management and ethics. reflections were documented in her field notes. author verma engaged in 47 supervision sessions (approximately 42 hours), the majority with author bruce (based at edv). verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20255 initially, the working group held three 90-minute in-person meetings (august to september 2023) at edv to: (1) identify prior staff experiences, attitudes, needs, and anticipated challenges of integrating r&e within service delivery; and (2) begin co-designing r&e processes, practices, and materials for the carer coaching program (for example. evaluation questions, needs statement, program logic). we established an online group chat channel to regularly communicate, stay updated, and share ideas and documents. sample research materials are provided in appendices 2 to 4 (for example, meeting notes, draft evaluation plan, program logic). early pressures, pushes and pivots as we aimed to build and embed research practices at edv, we sought ethics approval through the university of sydney’s ethics committee, leveraging ioi’s affiliation to avoid application costs. early on, we faced a key challenge: how to sustain an academic partnership once project funding had lapsed. since research required ethics approval, which in our case depended on academic affiliation, we had two options – either proceed with the university of sydney’s ethics process without a guaranteed long-term academic partner or seek approval through an independent ethics committee, which would cost several thousand australian dollars. we ultimately chose the former, allowing us to pilot an evaluation of the carer coaching program within the current project. however, this decision required us to work within a tight timeframe, making rapid decisions and developing research materials to meet ethics deadlines. to navigate these early challenges, we were required to think strategically and act fast. this, however, seemed to pressurise and strain working relationships. as author hansen reflects, ‘if there is one take away from this, it’s spending more time planning and establishing the group norms rather than launching into the depths of doing.’ following initial planning meetings, author verma prepared drafts of explanatory statements, consent forms and questionnaires for the ethics application, which she circulated to the working group. however, it soon became clear that ‘clearer consideration and planning’ (author pollitt) was needed to define roles, clarify expectations and lay the groundwork for decision-making and effective collaboration (also see author hansen reflection). more structured planning could have prevented community partners from feeling pressured to make decisions and, importantly, could have mitigated author verma’s feelings of isolation and frustration (see reflection). a proactive approach could be to formulate group guidelines from the outset, outlining collaborative goals, responsibilities and a clear strategy for addressing how to ‘respond when is something is not going to plan’ (author hansen). during the ethics application process, we realised that adapting the carer coaching program’s inherently flexible and personalised delivery to meet requirements set by the ethics committee would take greater time than anticipated, a challenge noted by other groups (benz et al. 2024). key decisions around the language and length of explanatory statements and consent form (‘i was very conscious of protecting carers from additional burden’: author hams account), questionnaire content and use of technology for data collection required further time. while ethics approval was likely achievable, the extended process would have significantly reduced the time available to evaluate the carer coaching program, which we had set out to do. through a joint decision by the authoring team, we collectively decided not to continue in pursuing ethics approval given our limited timeframe and objectives. instead, we pivoted toward monitoring, evaluation and learning (mel) practices. we believed this approach would fast-track data collection for evaluating the carer coaching program within the project’s timeframe, as it did not require formal ethics approval (this would be classed as ‘quality improvement’). an alternative would have been to make edv partners affiliates of the university of sydney, but this process would have been time-intensive and required capability-building for edv staff to navigate new systems. not pursuing ethics approval had the drawback verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20256 of limiting the use of collected data for research purposes. however, it also alleviated pressure on community partners to meet tight deadlines and helped reduce tensions in the working relationship, as discussed later. to build mel practices, community partners proposed holding regular 30-minute meetings each fortnight, which we did across several months (mostly attended by authors verma, hansen, pollitt, and bruce). this afforded us greater time to co-design and review mel processes and practices (for example, mel plan, automated consent and screening procedures within existing pathways of help seeking, questionnaires for carer coaching program participants) and attempt to integrate these into service delivery (for example, implementation into software systems). importantly, during this co-design process, community partners in senior leadership roles opted to build a holistic mel framework to be implemented across the entire organisation for long-term impact and sustainability. a key motivation behind this was to minimise any unnecessary burden placed on consumers to complete multiple forms and documents along their help-seeking journey (see author hams account). this inevitably expanded the scope of the project as originally outlined in the protocol, which we reflect upon later. ultimately, we co-designed, reviewed, and adapted processes and materials that have been implemented into edv’s service delivery including: 1. an organisation-wide ‘engagement agreement’ outlining edv’s responsibilities and details of mel practices for community members to consent to prior to engaging; 2. a standardised registration form for all consumers to capture essential demographic data; 3. specific mel practices for the carer coaching program, including baseline and evaluation questionnaires for participants; and 4. a comprehensive r&e training resource to upskill staff within the organisation including specific guidance (for example, evaluative thinking, logic modelling, data collection, meaning-making, navigating ethics). this includes direction to further resources such as evaluation guides (milstein & wetterhall 1999; nsw treasury 2023) and additional training. methodology in synthesising learnings and outcomes of the current project, we were guided by past literature on longitudinal qualitative design (see calman, brunton & molassiotis 2013). first, author verma began by examining the chronology of the project, documenting key events and their outcomes, moments of tension, and influential contextual factors (for example, staffing changes, conferences, concomitant projects). she then engaged in narrative analysis (parcell & baker 2017) and reflexive methodologies (olmos-vega et al. 2023) in reviewing meeting and interview transcripts and notes, personal accounts, field notes and responses to questionnaires completed by community partners at the beginning (august 2023) and midpoint of the project (march 2024). using a mix of inductive and deductive approaches, author verma identified and categorised common themes (for example, ‘feasibility’, ‘capacity/capability’, ‘sustainability’), before interpreting their meaning. additionally, she consulted with five external advisors – four program evaluation and implementation researchers and one cultural diversity and service development consultant (approximately four and a half hours) – who supported the interpretation process. she compiled a document that outlining key events, strengths, barriers, learnings and recommendations, which was circulated to the team for iterative review. to achieve our collective standpoints and recommendations, the authoring team engaged in 11 reflective meetings (approximately nine hours, variety of group and one-to-one), including a 90-minute workshop to intensively edit the current article. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20257 reflections and recommendations below, we share our reflections and recommendations around co-designing and undertaking r&e within a community eating disorder context through academic partnership. figure 3 provides a summary with actionable recommendations. need for change and growth is restricted: systemic factors that stifle change throughout our project, there was a strong expressed need and motivation to strengthen r&e at edv to improve community, organisational and broader systemic outcomes (see author hansen and hams accounts). several ideas of implementing r&e were suggested by the working group, echoing what has been extensively outlined in previous work (stewart 2014). these included the development of a holistic r&e framework within edv, including policies and procedures, and actionable plans for implementation (for example, embedding into position descriptions and allocating time for capability building). we additionally identified specific ways that research partners could assist uplifting r&e within community services, including providing research-related guidance, assisting in advocacy and funding efforts, and facilitating internships of research students at edv. the following factors were identified: 1. capacity constraints: despite a strong endorsement for build r&e culture and praxis, our project revealed significant capacity constraints. most edv partners were employed on a part-time basis due to funding limitations, and contextual factors such as concurrent work commitments, pre-existing projects and organisational/staffing changes (including resignation of one carer coach) ultimately hindered capacity for community partners to engage fully in the current project (see author pollitt account). at the same time, the availability of senior supervisory and managerial academic oversight was limited as senior research partners were consistently required to attend to multiple projects at ioi, which had been under increased pressure due to the covid-19 pandemic. additionally, there was no funding to support consumer involvement during establishment of these new processes, which would have been beneficial (case et al. 2014). 2. ‘catch-22’ situation: limited funding, particularly for eating disorders, alongside pressures to produce outcomes seems to create a catch-22 situation. the scarcity of both funding and time perpetuates cultures of rapidity and urgency. this in turn affects the capacity to collaborate in building r&e cultures, which subsequently reduces the ability to secure future funding, translate outcomes and address community needs. author miskovic-wheatley writes, ‘when research or evaluation funding is available, it is usually minimal, perhaps covering only a part-time position. this scenario creates a paradox: early-career researchers may be hired for these roles but often lack the experience, support, and resources to effectively lead and facilitate projects independently.’ this, alongside the persistent underfunding of research, seems emblematic of a broader systemic inequity in how eating disorders are conceptualised, prioritised and invested in within a dominant western socio-political climate (bryant et al. 2023). 3. systemic investment: collaboration and transformative efforts require careful consideration, nuance and time, and are dependent upon sufficient resourcing (sanchez et al. 2023). the chronic restriction of available resources reflects a significant systemic barrier to this much-needed work. author maguire writes community-based programs: ‘are often at the forefront of thinking and advancement. yet, because there is a lack of funding for their evaluation and publication, they do not have the impact on patient care that would benefit all’. author miskovic-wheatley also comments on the notable cultural mismatch between academic institutions and community services. therefore, adequate systemic investment and time are essential to properly prioritise and undertake verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20258 collaborative efforts in building r&e infrastructure – a challenge in the current under-resourced climate. in our project, a longer overall duration of at least two, ideally three years, would have afforded greater opportunities for us to strategically plan and implement r&e processes without forgoing trust and relationship building that is integral to this type of community-engaged work. we recommend future projects strive for these durations. as author maguire writes: ‘the work is worth doing certainly but it is worth ensuring that it has a life ongoing’. capability within the research workforce besides capacity, capability also presented an issue. our academic team, while extensively experienced in participatory methodologies such as co-design, held limited expertise in community-engaged evaluation and implementation science. looking back, formal assessments of readiness, culture, capacity, capability and evaluability (golenko et al. 2012; holden et al. 2012; stewart 2014) prior to project commencement would have been integral in providing a comprehensive snapshot of existing resources, capabilities, and demands to determine feasible and realistic steps to uplift r&e considering current circumstances. in the early stages of the project, author verma rapidly undertook self-directed professional development and sought consultation with external evaluation advisors around community-engaged program evaluation and implementation to plan and undertake this project. author verma writes: ‘collectively, this selfeducation and constellation of new connections provided me with great support and ultimately sharpened my thinking and doing. however, this at times was a confusing and lonesome experience ...’. while rapid self-directed learning created immersive, learning-on-the-go opportunities and professional networks for author verma to gain and share knowledges, important aspects of project planning and processes were inevitably overlooked due to limited prior targeted knowledges within the available academic team, which contributed to author verma’s feelings of being under-supported. this speaks to the great need to ‘invest in systems and structures that support community-driven work’ (sanchez et al. 2023, p. 989) and reduce the structural perpetuation and proliferation of exclusionary and problematic research practices (emmons et al. 2022; sanchez et al. 2023). embedding pragmatic and participatory methodologies into university curriculum, making available community-engaged research funding and greater establishment and exposure of professional researcher networks may be ways to build academic workforce capability for more equitable r&e. author miskovic-wheatley expresses the benefits of this: ‘establishing and maintaining networks beyond individual projects could reduce resource wastage, enhance expertise, and increase the potential for collaborative grant applications, long-term research outcomes, and cross-organisational connections’. community-academic partnership: working with and through differences as author verma reflects: ‘attention, consideration, and connection is necessary to manage the complicated and challenging nature of this transformative, systems-level work’. while readiness and resources are necessary to make space for collaboration and change, a mutual understanding or ‘bridging’ (powell & menendian 2024) is important for partners to move and learn together. as author miskovic-wheatley expresses: ‘effective stakeholder management requires open communication, positive debate, and clear decision-making to ensure project delivery and researcher support’. establishing and maintaining our community-academic partnership of diverse stakeholders within the context of limited time and resources required us to have constant and open communication in navigating changes along the way. looking back, we needed to ensure sufficient time at the beginning of the partnership to: (1) reach a ‘shared vision’ of project goals and timelines (author hansen account); (2) elucidate the role and responsibilities of partners/ working group; and (3) establish respectful ways of working together as a collective (as described by sadler et al. 2012). our limited project timeframe plunged us into action to quickly produce outcomes, forgoing verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20259 vital opportunities for us to undertake this foundational relationship-building work. ‘slowing down’, as author pollitt reflects, was a key learning, particularly when attempting to effect change within an alreadystretched environment. decision-making power and intersectionality israel et al. (2018, p. 36) explain that one of the most crucial principles in community-based research is ‘shared control in decision making’. we faced significant challenges in this, specifically elucidating who makes decisions, and when they are made. author caldwell reflects on this in her account: ‘a critical issue that emerged was the distribution of power. ambiguity in this area at the project’s outset created ongoing challenges’. our partnership comprised people from diverse personal (that is, ages, races, cultures) and professional backgrounds (that is, peer workers, clinicians, managers, senior academics, an early career researcher) which inevitably impacted the location of power, what and how decisions were made, and the practical and emotional impacts of decision-making processes (see authors verma, caldwell and hams accounts). author verma reflects: ‘this requires listening, learning and committed action’. sanchez et al. (2023) provide a seminal analysis and recommendations on dismantling power within community mental health research towards greater equity and responsiveness. prioritising ‘courageous conversations’ (singleton 2013) to critically discuss power and how to share it, along with positionality, for example, our ontological and epistemological orientations (holmes 2020) and intersectionality would have been instrumental for us to better understand how ‘racism, classism, sexism, and other ‘isms’ operate to delegitimise community knowledge’ (israel et al. 2018, p. 35). prioritising these foundational conversations in future work would provide reflective spaces to identify emerging power dynamics and share personal/ collective experiences, while problem-solving how to better work together considering diverse, and at times conflictual, viewpoints and (lived) experiences. munshi et al. (2020) extend this, writing that in the context of health policy and systems research: ‘we need to understand the parameters in which we operate and think and recognise how they are informed by our lived experiences and positionality’. author hams reflects on feeling uncomfortable in voicing her opinion at points. this could have been ameliorated by the entire working group reflexively identifying their own positionality and making space for those who ‘hold their own lived experiences and who strongly advocate for the needs of lived experience communities’ (author hams). importantly, lived experience is neither static nor unifying and does not make one immune to issues of privilege and power. developing a shared understanding of how lived experience is regarded, weighted or utilised, within service delivery and collaborative partnership, and how this may intersect with power is therefore integral alongside careful de-construction of structural inequities in research and the healthcare sector (sanchez et al. 2023). this is particularly important when partners bring their own lived experience to their work, and/or work within a predominantly lived experience setting such as edv. to ensure a sustainable and well workforce, safety and trust are integral to maintain (author verma’s reflection). this is of particular importance within the context of eating disorders work given how discursive these conditions seem to be (lamarre et al. 2022). making critical dialogue commonplace is essential in partnership and in building r&e cultures/praxis. specifically, we encourage future community and research partners consider the following questions during planning and engagement, which build on existing literature (april et al. 2023; israel et al. 2018; sadler et al. 2012). compassion and commitment showing compassion and understanding about each other’s perspectives, roles and experiences were crucial in ameliorating some of the challenges of working together (‘connection was, and is, the key to everything’: author verma account). in future collaborative projects reinforcing past efforts (reed 2015), verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202510 it is imperative that partners take a curious, reflexive, and respectful stance by actively listening to one another and seeking to learn from each other’s perspectives, given the diverse lived/living experiences and expertise of all involved. in our project, courageous conversations were fundamental in bridging understandings and rupturing repairs while experientially modelling reflexivity, and evaluation and learning practices. an example of this was when author verma communicated her discomfort, frustration and sense of misjudgement to edv partners. this created an opportunity for understanding, leading to improvements in role clarity, consensus on deadlines, and enhanced communication moving forward. through advocacy, author verma positioned herself as an active part of the research process, and unimmune to disempowerment. this in turn sharpened her insights into how community-engaged processes impact the researcher as well as her recommendations for keeping all parties safe during cbpr, which she later reflected on (publication under review) and presented at an international conference. ensuring structured opportunities for such collaborative problem-solving can foster a reflexive and responsive culture. despite the challenges encountered during our partnership, there were significant strengths in our shared commitment, persistence and adaptability (‘[w]e are deeply committed to continuing to embed what we have learnt over the last year’: author caldwell, ‘i don’t see this as a negative but a sign of progress and maturity of edv’: author hansen). we maintained a commitment to attend meetings, share decisionmaking, navigate challenges, model continuous selfand collective reflection, and negotiate tensions and conflicts as they arose in the context of contextual changes. we endeavoured to be flexible, dynamic and move together; this required and demonstrated individual and collective resilience. despite the challenges, author verma ends on an honest yet hopeful note: ‘we, of course have a long way to go, and we can only get there if we move together’. the decision to format the current article as a collaborative piece with personal and collective, reflexive accounts, for example, highlights the commitment of our team to walking and working side-by-side, creating and sharing knowledge collaboratively rather than a top-down manner. this represents a notable benefit of cbpr in that learning is reciprocal, and we grow together (guijt 2014; reed 2015). identifying and celebrating the successes and growth as a working group were essential in enhancing motivation, meaning and mutual care within our partnership, which may be facilitated in future work by formal ‘group reflection’ opportunities during projects. continually reviewing the process and quality of working together gave us a greater sense of trust and containment and connection. making open, courageous conversations where is power located? how might our backgrounds (race, gender, sexuality, age, class, employment, disability etc.) impact our collaboration? how can we build a sense of safety and security for us all? who are the agents of change? who gets to make decisions – why and how? who is not included, and why? how do voices of people with lived/living experience impact our decision-making? who sets agendas and timelines? how active or involved should research and community partners be – what might this look like? how can we manage tensions that arise? figure 2. critical and courageous conversation prompts for community-academic partnership  verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202511 the norm would provide inclusive space for working group members to voice their experiences and feel validated by one another, which enhanced partnership outcomes (see author hansen account). structures and supports it is important for all partners to have structures and support during their engagement in novel projects or initiatives like ours (‘scaffolding and supports are crucial’: author verma). this may include formal supervisory or managerial support, and the option to provide feedback and raise any concerns around project processes and practices. structurally, there was confusion in reporting lines for the embedded research partner role, most probably due to the novelty of this collaborative work for both ioi and edv. as the embedded research partner, author verma received managerial and supervisory support from authors miskovic-wheatley and maguire (ioi), and author bruce (edv). author pollitt observed that these multiple reporting lines ‘led to challenges in connection and relationship of the researcher to parts of the project team and confusion in project direction, role responsibilities, and decision making’. in her account, author miskovic-wheatley notes community-based r&e roles often involve early career researchers due to funding constraints, providing several suggestions for ensuring holistic researcher support including: access to university resources, mentoring and supervision, professional development, expert consultation, financial support, and guidance around statistical analysis. she adds: ‘early career researchers, with their enthusiasm and creativity, are vital to these projects. however, their work must be meaningfully and reliably supported by broader research and translation networks’. we collectively believe that clear position descriptions, terms of reference and codes of conduct could provide better structure in work roles in this type of collaborative work. this is particularly important for emerging researchers who have great potential to championing innovation and systemic change yet remain consistently under-supported (kent et al. 2022). in our project, professional supervision and external consultations provided valuable opportunities for author verma to express experiences of working pragmatically and on the ground, critically reflect, build capability, and develop her academic acumen (see account). importantly, peer supports at edv and ioi provided a sense of connection, kinship, inclusivity and support, providing some buffer against the isolation due to the embedded and autonomous nature of her role, which boosted empowerment, innovation and advocacy: ‘the community of colleagues/friends i have found in my experience catapulted me into taking up space, using my voice, respecting my power and advocating for change that is needed in the world’. to further support embedded researchers, author miskovic-wheatley suggests: ‘regular, informal check-ins could also help researchers who might feel isolated in their role within an organisation where research is not core business’. this again calls for systemic prioritisation to support research partners in their collaborative, community-based work roles in making greater change and staying well in doing so. concluding remarks our article offers actions, insights, learnings and recommendations from community and research partners in undertaking an 18-month collaborative project to uplift research, evaluation and learning within an australian community-based mental health service. we describe the processes and the surrounding internal and external landscapes of our collaborative efforts, offering critical reflections on the logistical, organisational and systemic issues that impact the development of an equitable knowledge-sharing ecosystem within the mental health sector. ultimately, our project represents a plea for greater consideration, collaboration and care in building equitable r&e practices to strengthen the health and wellbeing of our community. as sanchez et al. (2023, p. 988) put it, change requires ‘both interpersonal awareness and institutional transformation’. building research, evaluation and learning praxis is predicated upon reflexivity, transparency verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202512 and accountability (stewart 2014). our project demonstrates the experiences faced by services and academics within the mental health sector attempting to effect change, which necessitate recognition and action. while needs and motivations were strong, community services require practical support to build, embed, and sustain effective r&e cultures and practices to better capture, learn from, share and advocate for diverse community voices. this demonstrates the fundamental requirement for a systemic approach towards resources to build r&e capacity, capability in community eating disorder services 1. provision of sufficient and sustained multi-year government/research funding to support r&e building such as: a. development of holistic organisation-wide r&e framework (i.e. relevant policies & procedures, implementation action plans) b. employment of dedicated r&e staff c. engagement of diverse, external lived/living experience perspectives in co-designing r&e frameworks d. organisational capability building (i.e. professional development, consultation) e. establishment/continuation of academic partnerships, including support from higher degree research students f. development and implementation of software infrastructure g. enable linkages between academic settings 2. the allocation of sufficient time by senior leaders for staff to engage in r&e practices & capability building alongside concurrent work commitments/projects 3. allocating budget for r&e activities university actions to build communityengaged competencies 1. prioritise and support researchers in pragmatic, community-engaged r&e praxis, program evaluation and implementation science (e.g. mandated university curriculum, specialised training and professional networks for researchers, targeted community-based research funding) deepening cultures of responsive r&e 1. community services to nurture a culture of r&e through: a. embedding r&e responsibilities into staff position descriptions b. offering training to build skills/knowledge among relevant staff during induction c. creating opportunities for internal feedback and critical reflection (e.g. during team meetings & supervision, via anonymous routine surveys) d. prioritising engagement/advocacy of diverse community voices community-academic partnerships in the context of community eating disorder services 1. community and research partners to undertake foundational project and partnership planning: a. assess readiness for change prior to commencement and re-assess throughout (i.e. capacity, capability, culture, evaluability, see research capacity and culture tool (holden et al., 2012)). b. bridge understandings from outset by elucidating goals, timelines, roles & responsibilities c. openly discuss decision-making power, intersectionality, and how lived experience may be regarded or utilised, to ensure safety and trust within the working group 2. take a curious, reflexive, respectful stance in working together, seeking to learn from differing/diverse viewpoints within the working group 3. regularly review the working relationship: reflect on strengths, challenges, learnings, and growth to enhance quality, process, outcomes of working collaboratively 4. ensure structures and supports are available for all partners, particularly embedded, early career, research partners, during collaboration 5. research partners to initiate opportunities to jointly uplift r&e within community services for example: a. offering guidance and support around research processes (e.g. obtaining/sustaining ethics approval), evaluation methods, data management/analysis, advocacy, translation b. establishing communication pathways with services to enable regular, reciprocal flow of knowledges and learning figure 3. recommendations for uplifting research and evaluation within community eating disorder services verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202513 supporting r&e at the community level and nurture ‘a dynamic and passionate research workforce’ (author miskovic-wheatley) to bring about meaningful change. two things are therefore crucial: (1) an ecosystem of r&e within the eating disorders sector is prioritised and invested in, locating diverse community voices at the core; and (2) the responsibility to build equitable and responsive r&e cultures is shared between community members, academics, community services, policy makers and funders. as author hansen reflects: ‘a key reflection is the need to dedicate resources that can support and commit to embedding sustainable practices rather than relying on roles that are already stretched’. greater funding (for example, from research agencies and governments) is needed to support the costs of capacity and capability building within community services and the academic workforce, and large-scale, responsive r&e implementation efforts to enhance innovation and translation of meaningful local knowledges and reduce structural inequities (bryant et al. 2023; sanchez et al. 2023). simultaneously, journals that welcome community-engaged ways of working are required to share these important knowledges. besides sharing the complex experiences of undertaking r&e at the community level, we explore the nuances of lived experience and benefits of working collaboratively through cbpr within a chronically under-resourced environment to incite cultural change. these reflections hold implications for how local knowledges are created, utilised and shared across the sector, and inform future capacity and capability building efforts within the community context. arising recommendations add to existing communityacademic engagement literature, offering actionable steps to building r&e capacity, capability, and cultures within and across community settings to enhance health research, translation and innovation. finally, we hope that what has emerged from our work lays out important, multi-level considerations to guide future r&e efforts towards greater responsivity, advocacy, and transformation within the eating disorder, broader community and mental health sectors. the strengths of our partnership in commitment, adaptability, resilience and joint learning represent positive markers of growth. with further consideration, resourcing and reflexivity, we hope that community members, service providers, peer workers, researchers, funders and policymakers can come closer together in their transformative efforts. we see connection as the only way to incite systemic transformation towards greater equity and responsiveness for our diverse and ever-changing communities – to hold, respond to and heal – together. acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge the aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land upon which this research was undertaken, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. sovereignty was never ceded. we respect the valour, grit and endurance of lived and living experience communities; the ongoing work of all involved in this project is with the aim of improving the lives of people, carers, families and communities impacted by eating disorders, and the systems that implicate them. we would like to express our gratitude to the following people for their engagement and support throughout this project: caroline salom, rachel withers, charlotte young, breanna guterres, sarah squire, morgan sidari, phillip aouad, shehani de silva, rowland mosbergen, stephanie shavin, froukje jongsma, kirsty jones and the broader teams at eating disorders victoria and insideout institute. this work was conducted as part of the mainstream project. we acknowledge all investigators/partners from the mainstream consortium in this work. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202514 author contributions sumedha verma: conceptualisation, methodology, project administration, investigation, resources, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, visualisation belinda caldwell: conceptualisation, writing – review and editing susie hansen: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing sarah pollitt: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing vicki hams: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing lauren bruce: supervision, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing jane miskovic-wheatley: supervision, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing sarah maguire: conceptualisation, supervision, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing references ágh, t et al 2016, ‘a systematic 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https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.9145 https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_87 appendix 1 personal reflections (listed in authoring order) sumedha verma: postdoctoral research fellow, eating disorders victoria & insideout institute in leading this work, i was afforded great space and autonomy. initially, i was tasked with evaluating the carer coaching program yet learned quickly from conversations on the ground that a top-down approach would be ultimately problematic; the organisation’s prior experiences with research and evaluation had left somewhat of a disempowering legacy, which i was determined to correct. as a strong proponent of community-driven research and evaluation, i believe that community services should be equipped to take the lead on things that directly affect them, including how grassroots knowledges are captured, utilised and shared. my own positionality in decolonial praxis inevitably shaped the look, feel and direction of this project as one that is community-centric and participatory at its core – something that brings me deep pride. this was possible with the encouragement from senior partners who similarly believed in community-driven ways of working and held great trust in my vision. this freedom and trust created an environment of unrestrained exploration and learning; my mind was allowed to roam deep and wide. i read up extensively on various literature and reached out to other scholars and professionals doing aligned work in search of guidance, mentorship and kinship. collectively, this selfeducation and constellation of new connections provided me with great support and ultimately sharpened my thinking and doing. however, this at times was a confusing and lonesome experience in the face of structures and systems that do not move at the rate they need to. the frustrations of working within a resource-limited and structurally isolated role are real and felt by the researcher, which is why scaffolding and supports are crucial. otherwise, we risk losing people who tenaciously inspire change within difficult landscapes to marginalisation and neglect, particularly those of us at various intersections. attention, consideration and connection is necessary to manage the complicated and challenging nature of this transformative, systems-level work. this work was tough, and i learned that connection was, and is, the key to everything. being embedded within a community mental health not-for-profit setting exposed me to people of tremendous resolve – both those who draw upon their lived experiences and steadfast allies. the community of colleagues/friends i have found in my experience catapulted me into taking up space, using my voice, respecting my power and advocating change that is needed in the world. being suspended in a web of new friends, collaborators and mentors has supported me in taking various intellectual and emotional strides. i have learned much about power and progress over the past 18 months – what stalls change and what inspires it, and how we know when to step away to maintain our own wellbeing. there are deep learnings that happen on the ground through applied research. what ought to lie at the core of any and all change efforts are the voices of those in our diverse communities. ultimately, we need systems and people that comprise them that are aware of their own power, privilege and capability to maintain archaic, othering, at times hurtful, ways of being and doing. this requires listening, learning and committed action. ultimately, i see this project as being one small, yet fundamentally important, step towards more equitable, reflexive and responsive community care. we, of course, have a long way to go, and we can only get there if we move together. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202519 belinda caldwell: ceo, eating disorders victoria as ceo, my main goals in integrating more evaluation into our programs and services are threefold: using data to better tailor our services for our community, ensuring our team feels rewarded in their work, and effectively communicating the value of our work to the broader community and funders to ensure sustainable funding. taking on the task of embedding a co-designed evaluation into our organisation’s core operations has been a learning experience, presenting both anticipated and unexpected challenges, as well as occasional tensions. one significant challenge stemmed from differing perspectives among team members regarding priorities, sometimes causing obstacles, lack of cooperation, or anxiety about the processes involved. responsibility for designing and implementing this project largely rested with our embedded researcher, a setup i would reconsider in the future by integrating research and evaluation responsibilities into the leadership team’s performance expectations at eating disorders victoria (edv). while having dedicated personnel with research and evaluation expertise can drive structured and time-bound efforts forward effectively, a more sustainable approach would involve holding leadership accountable with dedicated support staff to execute these initiatives. while edv has employed co-design principles in developing programs and services in the past, codesigning research and evaluation was a new endeavour. one observed challenge was the initial divergence in understanding the evaluation’s purpose. my dual perspective as both a carer with lived experience and someone with extensive experience in carer support led me to have clear initial ideas about what aspects we should evaluate and some preferred tools. conversely, our carer coaches focused heavily on service delivery, finding it challenging to adopt an evaluative lens on effectiveness. other team members approached the process from organisational or clinical perspectives, aiming to align any new processes with existing quality improvement initiatives. managing these diverse viewpoints proved challenging for our embedded researcher in reaching a cohesive outcome. a critical issue that emerged was the distribution of decision-making power. ambiguity in this area at the project’s outset created ongoing challenges. while oversight for the specific evaluation of caregiver coaching had a designated decision-maker, my involvement was more from a procedural interest, ensuring the evaluation aligned with organisational goals of demonstrating outcomes. however, clarity on who had final decision-making authority over various project elements was lacking, causing confusion and frustration. in future evaluations, i aim to establish clear parameters upfront to assign decision-making responsibilities, thus preventing ambiguity and enhancing efficiency. the reflections we have undertaken as part of this process have enabled us to reframe what evaluation and research will look like at edv into the future and, despite the challenges that have been key learnings, we are deeply committed to continuing to embed what we have learnt over the last 18 months. susie hansen: director of clinical and telehealth services, eating disorders victoria this project within eating disorders victoria (edv) has been pivotal in the way that we consider and build a whole-of-service system of care within edv, which has embedded monitoring and evaluation. my involvement, as the director, meant holding this vision and stepping out from the original intention of review one component of the service, the eight-week carer coaching program. for edv, underpinning all decision making is the objective to ensure the pathway to appropriate care is seamless for those experiencing an eating disorder in victoria. key to this objective is ensuring that the practical entry points to edv services are straightforward and limit further burden. edv’s evolution, driven by incremental funding, has resulted in systems tailored to individual program needs. post-covid stability provided an opportunity to consider the entire system of care, including embedding monitoring and verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202520 evaluation within whole-of-service systems of care. in recent years, there has been a commitment to review a variety of practices across edv to eliminate hurdles for those accessing care, with the aim to give positive experiences of help seeking. an issue for edv and similar community organisations is the burden of monitoring and evaluation on service users. simplifying the support journey for those impacted by eating disorders is central to edv’s philosophy. given the complexity and intensity of eating disorder treatment, adding barriers like additional forms or lengthy questionnaires informed our project decisions. in the early days of the project, the focus shifted from the carer coaching program to those whole-ofedv practices that were required to make this sustainable. reviewing and embedding key tools such as the common edv engagement agreement and automated data collection became a priority. this effort coincided with a significant it project aimed at simplifying and consolidating automated information gathering and eliminating standalone consent and data collection processes. this alignment, however, impacted the rollout of the carer coaching program evaluation project causing delay and reasonable tension within the project team. the resources to undertake two major projects within edv was limited, resulting in myself and others intensely involved with both, on top of other role expectations. a key reflection is the need to dedicate resources that can support and commit to embedding sustainable practices rather than relying on roles that are already stretched. another key reflection from a leadership perspective was the importance of committing the time at the commencement of research/evaluation projects to ensure there is a shared vision and understanding. a major roadblock and learning was maintaining a common understanding of the long-term objective. shifting focus from one service to elements impacting all-of-edv caused delays and strain, particularly in achievement of expectation from the research partnership. realigning the vision was crucial however given we had not established ‘how’ we could have these conversations constructively, misunderstanding and frustration developed. project groups are not dissimilar to therapeutic groups with the need to establish expectations, decision making, engagement and communication styles, along with the ‘how do we respond when is something is not going to plan’ discussion prior to commencement. if there is one takeaway from this, it is spending more time planning and establishing the group norms rather than launching into the depths of doing. over time, the project’s starting and ending points changed. i do not see this as a negative but a sign of progress and maturity of edv. embedding monitoring, evaluation and learning within the systems of accessing care has been more complex; however, ensures the result is sustainable and accessible for the community throughout their help-seeking journey. sarah pollitt: manager telehealth support programs and practice development lead, eating disorders victoria this project has highlighted and reiterated the importance of slowing down, allowing adequate space within projects and practising known and evidence-based implementation science. within small non-government organisations (ngo) such as eating disorders victoria (edv), this step may be understandably lost due to competing priorities, limited time and stretched capacities. in this project, the passion and commitment for the project team was palpable and due to timeframes the project started with a rapid pace. this however missed key considerations in the what, the who and the how like those described by the center for implementation (2021). on reflection, areas of importance included taking time to consider the working group; who should be involved, clearly defining roles, expectations and responsibilities, reflecting on strengths in individual working styles and prior experience/knowledge. in the wider context, consideration for current capacities verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202521 both individually and organisationally and planning the how; what meetings would occur, how documents would be shared, and where the researcher and project was positioned within the organisation and priorities. at the time of our project, edv was completing other intersecting projects such as the review of software systems, which was both enabling for this project yet at times required a slower pace as they intersected. this project involved two research projects co-occurring: evaluation of embedding research in a small ngo with insideout institute (ioi) and outcome research of the carer coaching program. the projects’ co-occurrence required clearer consideration and planning. for example, the researcher reported to two organisations: ioi and edv. at edv, the project directly related to the carer coaching team, yet they were positioned in the education and research team. this effectively led up to four reporting lines, which led to challenges in connection and relationship of the researcher to parts of the project team and confusion in project direction, role responsibilities, and decision making at times. through the challenges the project adapted, enabling embedded and wider reaching outcomes for edv than purely the carer coaching program. a refined whole-of-service approach for data collection and future research has been developed. the carer coaching program evaluation is now in use. there are also key reflections learnings for the organisation moving forward on how we think, plan and evaluate projects. vicki hams: lived experience program facilitator, eating disorders victoria as the lived experience carer representative in the project, i sometimes felt like the ‘disruptor’ in the process of embedding the research and evaluation project! whilst understanding the importance of data and evaluation, i held the voice of carers at the very heart of this process. i wanted the impact to the carer to be of absolute minimum and to be able to collect meaningful data so the carer coaching program could be successfully evaluated and/or learnings be implemented. sometimes, it felt like the two things were not aligning. i was very conscious of protecting carers from additional burden when they were help seeking from our organisation at a time of high distress and fear. i felt anxious that the organisation’s need for too much carer information may reduce our carer clients to numbers, and could risk being insensitive to the very real-world experiences of what carers go through. during meetings, i felt slightly uncomfortable to voice my opinion in relation to this because i had been one of the creators of the program undertaking the research project as well as the person delivering the content on a daily basis. i was aware that anything i had to say might seem as if i was being defensive of the program. in reality, i was looking forward to seeing any improvements that could be made through feedback from embedding research and evaluation. during the co-design process, due to time constraints on both the project and the normal workday, some of the communication became ad hoc. reviewing documents became complicated – both through it being unclear which was the latest version and what involvement i was expected to have. this made it tricky to know whether my comments or thoughts had been received or dismissed. being the client-facing worker, it would be me who would be asking carers to undertake questionnaires before i could assist them in the carer coaching program, so i had to be comfortable doing so for the new research/evaluation processes to be feasible. i knew that ultimately if the process was difficult or too intrusive, we may not get the take up due to adding to carer burden. this highlighted the importance of involving program facilitators in research and evaluation design processes, especially those of us like me who hold their own lived experiences and who strongly advocate for the needs of lived experience communities. lauren bruce: reflection not provided verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202522 jane miskovic-wheatley: research stream lead, insideout institute the challenge of bridging the research-translation gap necessitates integrating clinical and community environments with research laboratories. one promising strategy is embedding research in natural translation hubs, such as consumer organisations. these organisations, with their focus on lived experience and co-design, offer unique advantages for implementing evidence-based care, evaluating consumer-led initiatives, and linking empirical research with real-world experience. this integration can facilitate genuine co-production of knowledge, promoting meaningful translation and change. however, consumer organisations typically rely on grants and donations to deliver services, often leaving little room for embedded research. when research or evaluation funding is available, it is usually minimal, perhaps covering only a part-time position. this scenario creates a paradox: early-career researchers (ecrs) may be hired for these roles but often lack the experience, support, and resources to effectively lead and facilitate projects independently. to address this, research and clinical institutes could create ongoing support structures for ecrs within universities, hospitals, and community care networks. when these networks are project-specific, they often face feasibility issues due to limited funding, complex administrative processes, governance concerns, and potential conflicts of interest. establishing and maintaining networks beyond individual projects could reduce resource wastage, enhance expertise, and increase the potential for collaborative grant applications, long-term research outcomes, and cross-organisational connections. for embedded researchers to succeed, substantial support is crucial. such supports could include: • university affiliation: providing access to university resources; • mentoring and supervision: offering guidance and oversight; • ecr programs: facilitating professional development; • expert consultation: providing expertise in research methods and processes; • support at various research stages: assisting with ethics applications, statistical analysis, and other critical phases; and • financial support: funding for workshops, conferences, manuscript editing, and publishing. these supports are often not covered by grant funding but are essential for the development and success of ecrs. another critical aspect is managing stakeholder relationships. this involves balancing the needs and perspectives of consumer organisations, chief investigators, research partners, funded activities, and the researchers themselves. effective stakeholder management requires open communication, positive debate, and clear decision making to ensure project delivery and researcher support. regular, informal check-ins could also help researchers who might feel isolated in their role within an organisation where research is not the core business. despite a genuine commitment in the literature and calls from health systems for translational research, consistent support and infrastructure are needed to actualise these goals. ecrs, with their enthusiasm and creativity, are vital to these projects. however, their work must be meaningfully and reliably supported by broader research and translation networks. this support improves the feasibility and implementation of research translation and nurtures a dynamic and passionate research workforce. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202523 sarah maguire: director, insideout institute; chief investigator of the mainstream project as a clinical psychologist and researcher working in the field of eating disorders over the last 20 years, i have always been struck by the level of activity and innovation coming from community-led organisations in our field, almost always with relatively small and uncertain funding support. later, working in a purely academic environment, i came to understand the vital role of these types of organisations in contributing to quality care with driving improved outcomes. by virtue of being within and from communities, the work is often far more responsive to lived experience priorities and knowledge, which when utilised, in my experience, usually improves both standards and outcomes. agility and creative thinking are usually demanded by the community setting, in a way that is almost at odds with the functioning of large academic structures, meaning that programs and initiatives developed within community-led organisations are often at the forefront of thinking and advancement. however, because there is a lack of funding for their evaluation and publication, they do not have the impact on patient care that would benefit all. it was my ambition to address this. we were grateful to secure community partners in writing the grant, and very lucky to have been in the small percentage of research teams funded in mental health to do work like this. although very hard to get, our academic unit is well placed to apply for well-funded research grants. by partnering with leading community organisations in our field, we can collaborate to develop research and translation hubs to support the evaluation of programs developed in community settings, and over time develop better mechanisms for translation of promising funding more quickly into practice. we have learnt much in this work with eating disorders victoria, not the least of which has been that with a limited timeframe on funding the work and transformation required to build supportive structures for research and evaluation in settings that are designed primarily for other purposes, we short-change ourselves, the system, and the people being treated within it. the work is worth doing certainly but it is worth ensuring that it has a life ongoing. verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202524 appendix 2 stage 1 notes aim of session: dura on: date th passionate meaning • • • • • • • • • “evalua on quality improvement research meeting ti ti mo vators help • • • • • • • • • • de-mo vators challenging • • • • ti ti example of meeting notes: developed by primary research partner (author verma), circulated to working group following meeting 1 verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202525 challenges • • need, need to learn • • • • • • past experiences more engaged • • • • • • continued verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202526 appendix 3 example of draft evaluation plan collectively discussed and comprised by staff and researcher (meeting 2) verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202527 continued verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202528 appendix 4 draft program logic of the carer coaching program developed by the primary research partner (author verma) with edits from community service provider partners (meeting 3) verma et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202529 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: mugnaini, s., ståhl, å., ireland, l. 2025. experimenting with twilight learnings and twilight writings for community engagement. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9209 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 research article (peer reviewed) experimenting with twilight learnings and twilight writings for community engagement silvia mugnaini1, åsa ståhl2 and leah ireland3 1 education and psychology department, university of florence, italy 2 design department, linnaeus university, sweden 3 independent author, feminist farmers/vxo farm lab, sweden corresponding author: silvia mugnaini, silvia.mugnaini@unifi.it doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9209 article history: received 30/06/2024; revised 30/10/2024; accepted 05/11/2024; published 01/2025 abstract this contribution explores community engagement through the collaborative practice ‘twilight learnings – seasonal experiments in the tiny house on wheels (thow)’. in this article, we show that a reflective community can start to emerge through sharing experiences and knowledges in a confined space that is simultaneously connected to society in a fractal scaling (o’brien et al. 2023) way. some of the participants grew so fond of reflecting together on hope, allies, uncertainties, pain and frustrations, that they continued to build the community by articulating themselves through follow-up interviews and through writing together in different ways. we document hidden and ‘marginal’ stages of a research process allowing longer timeframes so that practitioners and scholars can write together in a slow science (stengers 2018) approach. this article mainly explores three aspects of community engagement: 1) reporting on community-based research and practice and reflective experiences in a workshop in the thow; 2) reflecting on collective writing processes through performative writing; 3) meta-reflecting on scaling and performativity. in other words, this article contributes to how knowledge production and world-making can go together through community engagement that extends into writing. keywords social economy; participatory design; collaborative knowledge production; world-making; emerging communities; co-writing 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this article has partly been made possible thanks to the research project holding surplus house, funded by formas, project number 2020-02450. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9209 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9209 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:silvia.mugnaini@unifi.it https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9209 introduction let us invite you directly into the structure of this article. after stepping into a particular tiny house on wheels (thow) (section 1), we examine our position on knowing and making worlds (section 2) to contextualise the reporting of our joint experience in the thow (section 3), before joining our main concepts of community engagement and knowledge co-production and our empirical material on social economy and change work (section 4). finally, we conclude the article with a reflection on community writing (section 5). the purpose of this writing and collaborative knowledge production is to investigate, report and elaborate on capacities needed to enable sustainability transformations within and beyond the article format. an invitation to a tiny house on wheels you are welcome to peek into the thow through the windows. there are two on one side and three on the other. however, it is easier to connect with it if you walk up the three steps (figure 1). what makes you curious to walk through the door frame? what do you smell? what do you hear? what do you see? what do you feel when you get closer to the stove where water is boiling for tea? what openings for communitybuilding can be created here? when we step into the thow, we walk into a mobile house built by stephan hruza as part of the formas-funded research project holding surplus house. the thow is a mobile house that constitutes the research setting for exploring transformative practices and imaginaries of eco-socially just householding with resources. with this experimental platform we are inviting participants, sometimes broadly and sometimes exclusively, to create relationships in a household that we conceptualise as a social dynamic entity that finds the differences between all involved actors as generative (raven et al. 2021). we acknowledge not only humans as householders but also more-than-human actors. we use it as a site for the experimentation of householding with resources. this includes asking the following questions. what is a resource? how is it valued? how can it be distributed fairly? we take a holistic approach by integrating the ecological, economic, social and cultural aspects of householding, drawing on the roots of oikos where economy and ecology come together in the home (gibson, bird rose & fincher 2015). in the building process of the thow, we decided to emphasise processes of becoming in relationships, collaborations, vulnerability, and incompleteness rather than striving for or enacting the house as a finished piece for self-sufficient living that would invite humans to imagine living off-grid. for example, the seasonal clothing experiments (figure 2) show how the thow can be understood as being relative, as an entity that is not discrete but rather changes with seasons, sites, contexts and actors over time. twilight learnings in this article, we focus on ‘twilight learnings – seasonal experiments in the tiny house on wheels’. the gathering focuses on the idea of not trying to escape the dark season, but rather living with and embracing the strengths of the swedish winter season, emphasising rest and reflection. the case builds on a collaborative practice between silvia mugnaini, a doctoral student in education sciences and psychology at florence university (italy), who was visiting the design department of linnaeus university (sweden) during the autumn and winter of 2023, and åsa ståhl, a senior lecturer in design at linnaeus university. at the time of the winter solstice, we invited colleagues and local people on and beyond campus to a curated workshop aimed at building inner capacities for transformation within social economy organisations. social economy organisations represent the seeds of a radically different economy as they put people over profit and reinvest surplus into economic and social objectives (untfsse 2022). inner capacities and associated internal dimensions (values, beliefs, worldviews/ paradigms) are seen as a deep leverage point for mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 https://lnu.se/en/research/research-projects/project-holding-surplus-house/ change, as they tackle the internal mental states (e.g. consumerism, racism, elitism, injustice) which are the root causes of climate change and interlinked crises (e.g. health, poverty) (wamsler, hertog & di paola 2021). in other words, it is essential to develop a quality of agency which entails an approach to scaling sustainability transformations. o’brien at al. (2023) describe such an approach as that which can generate fractal-like patterns of sustainability which recursively repeat at all scales, enacting universal values, to create a world where people and the planet can thrive. figure 1. stepping into the thow. photo: åsa ståhl mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 from a methodological point of view, the workshop was designed as a learning arena to enable reflexivity (augenstein et al. 2020) allowing for reflection on ways of organising for sustainability transformations. first, participants presented their organisations (the feminist farmers/ vxo farmlab, smålands trädgård and macken) and the sustainability initiatives they carry out (collective farming, co-working, repurposing and social integration). the discussion was then structured into different rounds based on areas of sustainability that included questions such as what values, governance models, inner capacities, collaborations, narratives and economic and environmental dimensions enable or inhibit the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives. we attempted to enhance the embeddedness of personal experience in an exploration that connects the individual and the local context to global sustainability issues, and back, to strengthen participants’ agency. although we had a framework for our invitation, we allowed the situation not to be fully controlled. the twilight learnings was also an occasion to draw on elders’ practices of taking a momentary pause in the working day at the time of dusk to kura skymning, which can be explained as a way of marking the difference between more outward actions during the daylight and the evening chores as the day turns to figure 2. holding surplus house designing for seasonal clothing in 2024. photo: åsa ståhl mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 https://www.instagram.com/thefeministfarmers/ https://www.instagram.com/vxofarmlab/ https://smalandstradgard.com https://smalandstradgard.com https://www.mackensvanner.se/#:~:text=mackens%20v%c3%a4nner%20%c3%a4r%20en%20ideell,tillsammans%20kan%20vi%20g%c3%b6ra%20skillnad! night. as a practice, our kura skymning involves sitting together, dreaming, integrating and sharing insights on the challenges and joys of change work (figure 3). figure 3. twilight learnings – seasonal experiments in the thow. photo: åsa ståhl furthermore, the workshop was a way to discuss and reflect on community engagement and an experiment in common knowledge production. as a way of working in continuous reflection, we invited our participants to take part in the process of writing this article. as a result, leah ireland, who attended the workshop, with her experience from the feminist farmers/ vxo farmlab, has become the third author of this article. in terms of the method for generating material for this article, mugnaini and ståhl made direct and open invitations, structured the workshop with five participants, and noted the need for agile adjustments as hosts throughout the session. in a later stage, the two invited the participants to co-write the article via an open document accessible to all participants. the article has thus been available since january 2024 and has been growing in size with the input of participants. we also followed up with discussions over zoom with three participants based on questions we had prepared in advance. oral and email contributions in the form of ideas, comments and reflections appear here in both named and anonymous forms according to the preferences of the participants. just as the thow acts as an experimental space, becoming with and through participation, this article reflects these values through this collective writing process and communal production of knowledge. mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 knowing and making worlds: different kinds of research make different kinds of worlds how one does research makes different worlds (watts 2021). this means that we are not only noticing and trying to know the world, we also recognise that we are part of making the world. since we work from an ontology of being in relationships and from a situated knowledge approach (haraway 1988), we, the main authors, will examine our position on knowing and making worlds. mugnaini and ståhl have long experience working in participatory processes where many epistemic communities come together with their different languages, preconceptions, expectations and more. mugnaini has a background in economic development; ståhl as a journalist, an artist and a design researcher; and leah ireland as a designer and practitioner in socially engaged organisations. we have all, in other contexts, created formal and informal learning experiences and share a commitment to inquiring into and suggesting transitions that combine social and ecological justice, including economic relationships. given these diverse backgrounds, we come together for an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work bridging different research areas, predominantly sustainability transitions research (hölscher, wittmayer & loorbach 2018), adult and transformative educational research (federighi 2018) and participatory design with a focus on caring design experiments (lindström & ståhl 2019). when actors from different epistemic and practice communities come together, it is unlikely that there will be a full concurrence of ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies or ethics. in that sense, this article also functions as a boundary object (star & griesemer 1989) bridging scientific disciplines with practice by highlighting place-based societal changes driven by local actors (lam et al. 2020) and considering how these contribute to transformative change. understanding that there are many ways of knowing the world and that everyone involved has a contribution to make, the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives by local actors provides new indispensable ways of thinking, doing and organising (lam et al. 2020). with this in mind, local sustainability initiatives are potential solutions to sustainability problems with global relevance (lam et al. 2020). it is imperative to be aware of the dominant scientific paradigm that embraces the nearly universally accepted ideologies of empiricism, reductionism, positivism and progress within modern science (ives et al. 2023), particularly since it has influenced sustainability transformation research, predominantly led by researchers in the global north, who often adopt technocratic paradigms with western perspectives, mindsets and values. research methods also carry contingent and historically specific euro-american assumptions about what we must do when we investigate (law 2004). however, the unprecedented challenges posed by socio-ecological crises call for the integration of diverse forms of knowledge and perspectives – including those held by many wisdom communities (ives et al. 2023). furthermore, there is a need to expand the systems and processes that determine how knowledge is produced, revealed, negotiated, transmitted and incorporated into sustainability practice (ives et al. 2023). the same authors stress that knowledge co-creation necessitates the development of cultures of care and compassion among researchers and practitioners. they also list what knowledge production requires including: 1. fostering collaboration, based on close and respectful interactions, aimed at co-producing knowledge that includes the perspectives of local and marginalised groups; 2. representing an experiential process in which change is interpreted from an embodied and relational perspective, rather than from detached, observational approaches that are characteristic of western science. this also entails an openness to not knowing. in this sense, inner–outer transformation is also about decolonising current methods and approaches; 3. reflexivity, as a way of acknowledging one’s positionality as a researcher or practitioner; mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 4. empowering individuals involved in knowledge production to develop inner capacities to drive change at individual, collective and systemic levels. in our joint experiment with twilight learnings in the thow, we took these four points into practice, as shown in the following examples. firstly, we established a collective research practice (gibson-graham 2008) working across differences with non-academic as well as academic subjects and contexts, which leads to what tsing (2015) would describe as contamination or ‘transformation through encounter’ (tsing 2015, p. 28). working co-creatively with other stakeholders is an important methodological aspect of this article in which we collected stories of change working with people who were already making new worlds: the feminist farmers/vxo farmlab, macken, and smålands trädgård. secondly, we experientially coproduced knowledge through the means of a situated activity (semeraro 2014). as researchers, we are building knowledge together with others, and the interpretation of data by participants is essential and influential, never accidental. in other words, knowledge becomes and emerges together with specific actors sometimes expressed as embodied knowledge in the form of capacities, skills and narratives. the knowledge is thus situated, connected and thereby robust while at the same time able to travel and become meaningful elsewhere. it is this vulnerability, strangeness, imperfection and awkwardness of the hybrid that makes the research strategy resilient, opening up the researcher to many ways of relating, participating, and contributing (tham, ståhl & hyltén-cavallius 2019). thirdly, as academics we recognise ourselves as engaged scholars (disalvo 2022) and scholar activists (gibson-graham 2008) informed by the community economies research programme. in a nutshell, community economies research how academic practices can contribute to the exciting proliferation of economic experiments occurring worldwide at the current moment (gibson-graham 2008). accordingly, we have embraced an experimental attitude towards the objects of our research (gibson-graham 2008) by designing the twilight learnings as a space to understand the participants’ strategies to promote change, support their efforts to learn from their experience and help them find ways of changing what they wished to change. this experimental approach to research is characterised by an interest in learning rather than critically assessing the ways in which the object of the research is good or bad (gibson-graham 2008). thus, in this science-practice collaboration, we have reflected on how we can use our position as academics to make space for the research process itself to be a learning experience that enlarges the inner capacities of the persons involved, making it durable over time while uncovering already existing processes of transformative change. consequently, we have followed augenstein et al.’s (2020) suggestion that researchers engaged in interand transdisciplinary research collaborations should be sensitive to epistemic plurality, work explicitly with boundary objects and adopt novel forms of facilitating knowledge integration as a fundamental element of research projects. to reiterate, this means that the approaches we draw on emphasise the role of experimentation, acknowledging the value of learning rather than adhering to shortsighted solutionism. the emphasis on learning resonates with the notion of ‘scaling deep’ (moore, riddell & vocisano 2015); that is, a process of impacting cultural roots to build durable change. scaling deep is based on reframing stories to change beliefs and norms and intensively share knowledge and new practices via learning communities. scaling deep also resonates with the concept of ‘fractal scaling’ (o’brien et al. 2023). social fractals are self-similar patterns produced by individuals through conscious agency. these human and social fractals embody values that manifest consistently across various scales. when our actions align with values that pertain to the whole, they generate new patterns that are replicated through language, narratives and meaning-making at all levels, with each part and whole reflecting those qualities. consequently, every mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 action has the potential to create an interconnected quantum fractal, a pattern that recurs non-locally across all scales (o’brien et al. 2023). fractal scaling can thus be understood to always be local, but also able to expand beyond the local. we find it generative to have several ways of understanding scale, particularly against the dominant discourse of bigger, linear, growth-based examples of scales, since hyperlocal experimentation is often put to the test and measured against these. finally, in this article we attempt to ‘describe things that are complex, diffuse and messy’ (law 2004, p. 2) as one can see in section 3. examples of this ‘mess’ are, for instance, emotions such as pain, hope, intuition, losses, mundanities and visions, unpredictabilities, vulnerabilities, fears and betrayals; that is, forms of knowing through one’s senses and emotions that are rarely caught by social science methods. for this reason, the results section is not ‘the kind of summing up that has become the hallmark of modern knowledge’ (tsing 2015). rather, it is a ‘rush of troubled stories’ (tsing 2015) that pays respect to the diversity emerging from our encounter-based collaboration. in reporting data, we reflect on the words of lenz taguchi (2018) on the inter-connectedness and companionship with various bodies (fellow researchers, data, places and spaces) within a collective researcher assemblage. lenz taguchi (2018) highlights the dynamic tension between the enjoyment derived from deeply engaging with data and the sense of violation encountered in its analysis. therefore, we give space to community-based expertise and voices along with our disciplinarybased expertise, including transcribed quotes from the twilight learnings and follow-up conversations as a way to share the participants’ own experiences. we have organised the troubled stories thematically. reporting troubled stories of community engagement in the thow posters of twilight learnings and the kura skymning, as a joint reflection and a resting opportunity, were spread on notice boards on campus, and digitally, through social media and a staff mailing list to mugnaini’s and ståhl’s colleagues. we also reached out to some people and their organisations directly as we were specifically curious to learn with them. the starting time had been scheduled in the afternoon when it was still rather light. leah ireland says that her first memory in hindsight is that of trying to intercept people moving around the house, to direct them to the right place. we were scattered and trying to assemble in the thow. a couple of participants expressed nervous anticipation of the unknown before entering the thow, regarding who they would meet, what would the place be like and how it would all pan out, as highlighted in online follow-up meetings six months later. seven people eventually entered. a fire in the woodstove filled the place with warmth and steam contrasting with the temperature and cold wind outdoors. the participants arrived with different experiences as well as knowledges. most participants were acquainted with at least two others; some knew each other through linnaeus university as former students, administrative staff or in teaching and research positions. one participant reported afterwards that it felt empowering that it was mostly women and a mix of ages. everyone was invited to partake in fika – a mundane swedish cultural ritual of gathering around sweets or savouries – this time with homemade chocolate balls and italian apple pie, mass-produced seasonal gingerbread, tea and coffee (figure 4). no one seemed to dare to start eating. fika was set on the centrally located table and there were tiny covers and pillows to allow people to sit comfortably. in the words of one participant, it was ritually both simple and generous. in contrast to the hesitation, everyone was paradoxically rather relaxed and informal in attitude and the way they approached each other. there was closeness since the size of the thow made the space intimate as pointed out in one of the follow-up meetings. one of the participants said that there was something delicate and childish in the space, and that it was an experience of care. mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 participants were guided by questions in a conversation on harnessing, what one participant called, ‘a momentum for change’. this could be understood as a time and a place where we had the individual and collective ability to practice change work, communicate stories of change and activate people to collectively transform our current sociocultural economic system, building one that is collaboratively imagined with deliberation. in the twilight learnings session, through our communal presence in the thow, the experience was that the aggregated embodied knowledges that had accumulated in particular situations in other times and spaces made it possible to cross boundaries while sitting together. in entering a confined space, we created room for reflection that connected with the broader society and related it to our work, sharing and gaining knowledge. this double-movement was emphasised by several participants: the thow was embracing and intimate, while at the same time opening up for an expanded presence. culture, norms, and values, that enable or inhibit sustainability initiatives value frictions emerged, not so much between the participants themselves but in relation to institutionalised norms that they had encountered as they were pursuing their visions and trying to make the world in accordance with their ideas. an enabling factor identified by participants was knowing how to use communication strategies such as marketing and branding. this is one of the themes that emerged as divisive in participants’ perceptions: (mariana gómez johannesson): i think it is interesting to understand how we sell these tiny ideas. it is an issue of marketing at the end of the day. (leah ireland): i thought it was so funny that you mentioned this marketing thing [...] because this is something we found so frustrating [...] we were trying to get business advice [from a consultancy service on cooperatives and the] reflection on our idea was that it was so cool, so great that we have branded ourselves with the feminist farmers because it was such a hot topic right now and we were so pissed off that he would say it is so fashionable to think and work with feminism. so, it was really good for us and our brand because we could sell whatever we were doing. but we had no real understanding of what we were doing. but when you are thinking of this idea of marketing and working also with these kinds of values and so on and then you enter in some sticky world where i have people saying, ‘oh you are very good with branding’ and i was ‘ohwn… (makes a sound of throwing up)’ that’s so not where i stand. figure 4. swedish ritual fika with homemade and bought pastries. photo: åsa ståhl mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 (stephan hruza): most of the social companies are driven by many idealists having good ideas and they do not want to, it is not about selling but at the same time to survive you need to sell, at the end you are so dependent on this system. in hearing how the participants cued each other in sharing, we observed that connections were made in many ways. one participant said that despite differences such as age, working experience and type of responsibilities, they interpreted the discussion and body postures as signs that participants were feeling that they were listened to without judgment of each others’ struggles. when digesting the conversation, it is noticeable that it led to reconnecting with the past, tracing stories and connecting with people’s thoughts, experiences and feelings. the present was performed as an exploration of what had been and what if – a kind of daydreaming while listening carefully. while change practices were different, common frustrations were shared. sharing these frustrations felt almost like a cathartic experience, one participant said, because one could understand and gain perspective on the experiences and transformations of the other participants as well as on how funding or other structures affect projects. governance models that enable or inhibit sustainability initiatives there were stories shared about how systems can be challenged but projects can also lose momentum, fall apart or need to transform. through the sharing, the participants could also notice repetitive patterns: entrepreneurial effort starting with an energetic person trying to apply their ideas in a specific context. then it becomes tricky – entangled – and the energy may go out, momentums falter, funding gets lost, or other greater structures block the work. different statements capture this: [unpredictabilities] (leah ireland): it was a passion project, [...] but then they needed a sort of authority of the land so they pushed us to find a way of organising ourselves and facilitating the area but we were all full-time students from different parts of the world so we decided to form a new ekonomisk förening (economic association) called vxo farm lab and that is still running so the feminist farmers has slowly ended and vxo farm lab has taken over facilitation of this area. [pains] (stephan hruza): the thing is that i remember this frustration that you really feel that it is such a good idea and thing and something that should continue exists and at the same time you are feeling that this is not doable, [...] we questioned ‘how can we survive?’ or not survive? [...]but at the same time there are so many nice people you meet and you really make a difference for them and there are so many good things happening but at the same time you can’t do it. you can do it for some years and then either you go to the wall or you have to quit before doing that. at least it wasn’t for me. [betrayals](mariana gómez johannesson): so of course you are happy, or i felt happy to see people feeling good and this woman reporting on people of feeling of use (you can call it like that) and at the same time they broke my heart to see they basically took everything we said, we worked on, we were doing, and it cost a lot of suffering for many people, and then again the suffering is also different, so it is tough in that way, but amazing people keep happening so in that way you put it in the balance, which you have to and then someone else is good because of this people, it’s great. the dominant value frictions and greater challenges that emerged in the conversation apparently come from working with these transformative projects within certain societal structures. across the twilight learnings and follow-up meetings with participants, it has been articulated that it is not always easy to work in rigid systems, following rules and laws that are at times contradictory, when one works with placebased societal initiatives that cater to the basic needs of citizens. this can be seen by noticing how there is competition from publicly funded initiatives and laws that are holding back innovation while at the same time seeing that you are prohibited from doing things by law that are allowed in other european countries. mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 (mariana gómez johannesson): the things that they are doing are so basic and simple, they are so beneficial, but still, we have to follow laws and rules and systems and it is such a contradictory sort of feeling that ‘how can things not be easier?’ the twilight learnings built a feeling of belonging, one participant said. as authors, we also saw that the participants gifted each other with experiences in the form of stories. the contributions of experiences through stories demonstrated that one is not alone – more people could do these things together. our situated definition of co-presence, in this article, thus builds on how there was a bridging of the physical co-presence created by the setting, atmosphere and proximity of participants in the thow. furthermore, co-presence was manifested by participants keenly listening and connecting with each other’s practices, wins and struggles. in addition, the participants expressed that co-presence is desirable and a key ingredient to harness this larger momentum for change. from the scale of the thow to the scale of the larger organisations we brought with us into the thow, the discussion touched upon the challenges of keeping up momentum and of negotiating co-presence between larger groups of people working towards a goal. therefore, we extended our definition to recognise the necessity of negotiating expanded co-presence with larger, shifting groups and managing momentums that are mutable. personal capacities that enable or inhibit sustainability initiatives the social economy is also full of diverse interests and it demands an entrepreneurial and economic mindset as suggested by an attendee. the work of convincing people and sharing inspiring examples and stories that resonate, are also ways of acknowledging that you are part of something greater within society and can function as a cross-learning opportunity. (mariana gómez johannesson): i know a lot of people felt that we failed – but i’m like: without this, this other thing wouldn’t have happened so you have contributed and that gives you hope because from there someone else built, learnt something. and people who work in the social economy should remind themselves of these small steps and how they have contributed. (anonymous): from a personal perspective, you have to experience some wins when trying to practice and reaching out and you also have to be able to handle losing to be able to pick up the courage to try again. (leah ireland): i learnt a lot of how to come to terms with certain outcomes and to let go of not control but... the outcome – when i heard how things ended with macken, how they moved on, it helped me get a bit of distance from my self and from my work – i think i needed that quite a lot actually. despite the value frictions identified in the system and the frustrations one had to endure, several participants articulated that the setting in the thow generated hope, since it showed that there are, in one of the participants’ words, ‘beautiful minds out there and they are doing things’. the same participant continued: ‘we got to share and to understand that people are so active and are so revolutionary and are ready to really dig in.’ collaborations that enable or inhibit sustainability initiatives but how do we, then, further support this important work? based on lived experiences and references for making change, such as collective work in cooperatives and activism, an answer turns out to be: making allies, and in the long run, getting organised. a participant told the others about actively seeking a place for change. [hope] (anonymous): i moved there to find momentum for the change we need to make. i didn’t really find that feeling of ‘oh it’s on, it’s going somewhere, people are talking about it, they are looking forward to mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 something new’ so i was like ‘okay. i have to start creating it if i can’t find it, try to find people to possibly do things with’. [inclination] (anonymous): we need to create this wave of people willing to work with us and understand how important this is. we had this idea of workation but i can’t do this alone. i need people who believe in it enough, and enough people or organisations that want to create a meeting space in the countryside. through these exchanges and additions to everyone’s repertoire of experiences, it is evident that things can be done differently. social economy and various entrepreneurial organisations can be part of building resilient societies through community engagements that invite negotiations of power and distribution of resources, such as material waste and marginalisation, without asking for distanced solutions. organisation is pointed out as connected to involvement: (stephan hruza): this way of working together, being part of decision making, having these common goals that everybody thinks are good creates this engagement. or, as another participant explained it: ‘we have a goal and the goal is not earning money, the goal is helping as many as possible and i think this is what creates engagement.’ pulling people in requires the mobilisation of a specific mindset and individual and collective capacities. (mariana gómez johannesson): you are whole yourself. so, when we start talking to people now i am talking to you as a parent, as a politician, as a society member, as a decision maker, as a man…so you need to call to these (identities) as close as possible. (anonymous): when you are meeting people you can just try to see their core values and see where to meet each other, and actually learn about each other, you need to learn about those core values if you want to innovate something together. (anonymous): make people identify with the need to see how it should be done. approach the other people from their perspective. (mariana gómez johannesson): you have to adapt the storytelling. it is a dance. in each of these scopes you need ambassadors. and this is why this narrative is so important. but i don’t go and talk to a company and tell things in the way i would sell it to the municipality. i would need to talk their talk. and then make sure that at least one person would be so in love with what i’m representing and with the idea. so, ambassadorship is crucial. the twilight learnings had a couple of different endings. one of them occurred when silvia mugnaini summed up the discussion (figure 5). the summary was a way to signal an ending and offer a sense of conclusion, to have something to take away and treasure, even if one participant proposed that the twilight learnings could have lasted longer because of a growing potential to learn from each other. another ending was when we shared a few minutes of silence and returned to reflect on our experiences of the time together in the thow – in some ways an actual kura skymning. gratitude was manifested from one participant to the next through our reflections, words offered like candles lit from one to the next, a communal feeling of having shared something important. sitting together in silent darkness, dreaming, sharing takeaways on the challenges and joys of change-work and expressing gratitude led to making plans to sustain newly formed relationships. for example, one participant found that ending in silence was a really important step after all of the space for sharing and connecting with words. the silence was grounding and allowed us to explore on our own how we had connected with each other and the place. one participant mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202512 said six months later, about the break-up in the thow: ‘no one wanted to go home, didn’t want to light up reality again.’ stepping out of the thow, however, involved not fuelling the fire in the stove anymore but rather letting that light and heat fade out as well. walking through the door frame, down the steps and putting on clothes was thus one way of stepping out. another way of stepping out of the thow is to allow for staying in that twilight – one that intermingles temporalities, actors and spaces – by lighting up the fire of collaborative learnings in the writing of this article. meta-reflection on turning away from prescriptive writing and into community-based research and practice this article has explored the co-presence and reflective experiences of community engagement in the thow (section 3). whereas no prior community existed, old business partners from macken met up again, as well as alumni and university employees of linnaeus university, and new relationships were established between holding surplus house and smålands trädgård. this diversity of participants’ identities brought a plurality of experiences and different situated knowledges. there was growth and change present in the thow by consciously letting go of attempts to fully control situations: overcoming past frustration, figure 5. conversation notes, and candles in darkness. photo: åsa ståhl mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202513 developing hope, cathartically making closure and moving forward through sharing and understanding. thereby, storytelling contributed to thick temporalities ( jönsson, lindström & ståhl 2021) and became a factor in our co-presence.  learnings on change work we acknowledge that research is performative, and that it makes worlds (watts 2021). in both the references on different ways of knowing and making worlds that we build on (section 2) and in the material that has been generated through the twilight learnings, we draw the following conclusion: to make change one needs to move between practical, political and personal work to build collective change (leichenko & o’brien 2020). in other words, harnessing the current momentum for change is a dance between individual work and entrepreneurial company work; there is work that needs to be done in the structures around us; and then there is the institutional work, political and legislative. in addition, and as suggested by gibsongraham (2008), conversations need to be practiced and people need to be pulled in, starting from the ones around us. in reference to the twilight learnings, collective change is built at the practical level through the daily work of social economy organisations addressing societal needs. western cultural tradition has tended to attribute, to individuals, or individual associations or economic enterprises, the responsibility for solving social problems, instead of expecting that the task belongs to communities and governments (houtbeckers 2018). thus, it is important to understand the practice of individual third sector organisations not as an individual heroic activity but to keep in mind that transformative capacity lies in highlighting such practices to expand imaginaries and empower communities of practice to emerge that address common goals. at the same time, it has been expressed by participants involved in this type of change work that capacities are needed to recognise which laws and regulations inhibit or facilitate the practical work and how to lobby the system at different levels to make a shift that is beneficial to change work. nevertheless, a cultural transformation can be achieved only if social economy organisations develop the capacity to communicate and make visible the practical work and therefore expand the imaginaries of non-capitalistic ways of organising the economy and society. more specifically, to make allies, one needs to develop or harness advocacy skills with which to approach structures. structures can be challenged by engaging one’s core values and crafting a narrative that resonates with the perspectives of those involved in dialogue. people have different roles and identities within society that can be used to approach different supporting structures. when possible, it is crucial to turn to the structures with counter-narratives to pave the way for others, saying it with confidence and leveraging research. this includes lobbying the system – and recognising that the system is us. change through community-building is not a straight, smooth line, but rather a bumpy road. change work is made of momentums, both successes and failures – being able to transform, handle losing and letting go when necessary are therefore key. this is shown in our own material and in the references. one of the participants commented on scaling change-work when we met up again six months after the twilight learnings. the participant connected values to scaling. we translate what they said: ‘the values are so strong in many that they act based on the values and want to shape the world based on what one believes in, using one’s force and strength for the good’. value frictions also seem to be important in taking action: ‘one works on changing that which one finds to be frictions in society based on what one can. this gives hope – this is where societal change happens’. and then the participant continued by connecting to the emerging community: ‘that these people exist – when one doesn’t see it, it is hard to believe that it exists, but this set of humans exist in many places. and this meeting – then it can happen in more places.’ the emerging hope is connected to knowing that there are others who work with a strong driving force towards change, to an emerging community and its temporality: being able to share and recognising that mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202514 nothing stays forever. this recognition of temporality, of what can happen over time, plays a major role in community building. on answering the explicit question, has anything moved from the twilight learnings session in the thow, one participant answered: ‘not content-wise, but in terms of hope’. similarly, leah ireland reflects that the agency developed and lessons learned in our sharing live on in the participants. with the help of o’brien et al. (2023), we can call this way of understanding change ‘fractal scaling’. rather than scaling by maintaining or building upon the group structure as it was, the participant-turned-author recognised how the stories shared offered a sense of empowerment and reinforcement of values that could then be brought with her into other contexts. when the participants speculate on the creation of a learning community in which values, experiences, struggles and strategies have been shared impacting the cultural roots of those involved, they are thus imagining what could be called both deep scaling and fractal scaling. the takeaway from the twilight learnings is then not a list of facts or skills, but an emerging scalable community of practice. learnings on community writing this article is our attempt at inquiring into and showing what difference radical co-presence can make in temporary communities and how it can be illustrated in a journal article. along this line, we also want to reflect on turning away from prescriptive writing technologies that define credible witness to experiments (haraway 1997; stengers 2018). we have aimed at making this article innovative in the way that it describes a collaborative study in which researchers and practitioners write together in a participatory and collective way. the article documents hidden and marginal stages of a research process, allowing longer timeframes for collaborative writing in line with the principles of slow science (stengers 2018). to sum up, we have: 1. invited co-writers; 2. invited guardians and authorities of the article; and 3. moved from individual voices to a somewhat collective voice. through exchanging emails and organising zoom meetings, we elevated the article from a partnership between two academics into a co-authorship with a practitioner and workshop participant. we also let go of systematic research control by opening up different ways of involving participants with the article. we developed guardians of the article, that is people who do not manually type in words but contribute to meta-reflecting in physical and online spaces adding richness to the reflections in the article format. being involved in the making of this article has been described by one participant as a fantastic alternative to come to the core (kärnfullhet in swedish) of things; to access deep understanding, reflection, knowledge sharing, community engagement, as well as knowledge production and community building. the process of making this article has allowed us to reflect over time and to slowly build an emerging community as we turn to each other as participants and co-authors to discuss, iterate and develop the structure of our writing. we have thus become an emergent community in a slow process of knowledge and world-making. final remarks the confined presence in the thow generated a stillness that allowed us to travel through experiences of friction as well as hope. the thow not only provided a space for doing research differently due to the mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202515 social material circumstances it enabled, but it also acted performatively in bringing things about. we also suggest, although this might seem like a long stretch, that the thow is a voice of both similarities and differences. the thow has allowed these experiences and words to be articulated, as emphasised by several of the participants. the thow thus appears here as a subject that, in line with processual ontology and epistemologies that recognise that making and knowing worlds go together, can hold frictions and hope of differences and commonalities over time and place. importantly, when subjectifying the thow, we must listen to the many voices it hosts and lodges. therefore, our method and our matter-of-concern are connected in the sense that they both try to challenge dominant paradigms – traditional science methods and economic growth – by opening up different ways of conducting research and organising the economy. however, although this is particular and unique, we claim that the thow, together with the methodology used to guide participants, generated a fractal-like pattern that enacted situated knowledges and experiences that connect to global sustainability challenges. these learnings can be precious at different scales and the socio-material circumstances in which they were created can be of inspiration to scale this practice. this is how we think scaling can be understood in this context. we claim that the twilight learnings that took place in the thow itself and the writing process of this article led to an emerging community of actors – that already had common interests and experiences of change through entrepreneurial and academic efforts – and represented a continued reflective space. the hours in the thow, hosted by silvia mugnaini and åsa ståhl, resulted in relationships that have proved to be meaningful and that have taken on a life beyond the initial meeting. writing this article means that we are part of ‘making the world’, a world where the participants know of each other’s work and have articulated the hope that is generated by knowing that one is part of a movement. during this process, differences have also been centre-stage and have led to learnings; for example, macken acted as an elder, a wise example with many joyous and troublesome nuances to learn from. in particular, our material recognises that change work can be sustained by the hope generated through knowing that other change-making practitioners and practices exist. this is the important emerging community. and although it might seem contradictory when a participant said they had learnt from the twilight learnings that nothing needs to be permanent, it is simply a paradox to live with; that imagining change through brief entrepreneurial efforts involves recognising that it is a way of building up potentials or momentums of something that might look different but that was seeded in earlier attempts. our material shows that change work requires mobilising different capacities. cultivating sustainability initiatives requires nurturing complex relationships. to secure allies, one can advocate one’s values, goals and interests, or take on an ambassadorship role, as one of the participants said. at the same time, those engaged in the social economy world must be able to let go, allowing new people with new skills to take the lead if necessary. we have further understood that the relevance of this article lies in its utility for individuals aspiring to start a social enterprise, as it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of such businesses. similarly, it is valuable for those already involved in the field, offering opportunities to connect with others and learn new strategies to enhance their organisations. additionally, the article provides guidance for politicians that can offer financial and structural support to those organisations as they contribute to addressing societal issues for which the government is also responsible. finally, the article gives insights into networks of social economy organisations and representative associations on how to better drive their advocacy and lobbying efforts to pave the way for social economy’s change work. finally, the collective research and writing processes also enabled a reflection regarding the agency of different actors involved and the struggles and dilemmas that collaboration entails; the feeling of organising collaborative encounters, participants being given space to imagine the future and for whom, in giving learnings back, have the feeling of playing the expert while learning as well. not all tensions may be resolved mugnaini et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202516 but they can drive further research and reflection. for example, developing 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redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: bird, á., fahy, f., reilly, k. 2025. place-based learning and community stewardship: a framework for facilitating community engagement. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1– 17. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9192 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 july 2025 research article (peer-reviewed) place-based learning and community stewardship: a framework for facilitating community engagement áine bird*, frances fahy, kathy reilly university of galway, ireland corresponding author: áine bird, a.bird4@universityofgalway.ie doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9192 article history: received 19/06/2024; revised 03/02/2025; accepted 04/03/2025; published 07/2025 abstract community stewardship involves active participation and responsibility from local residents in collectively caring for and managing their shared environment and its resources. the essential role of community stewardship lies in its capacity to foster sustainable behaviours, empowering communities to make informed decisions, and driving positive, lasting impacts towards a more environmentally conscious future. a key challenge presented in much of the related literature is how to engage citizens in community stewardship initiatives. this article aims to address this challenge by exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of community stewardship, using the heritage keepers national initiative in ireland as a case study. the article navigates the complexities of community stewardship, acknowledging diverse perspectives within communities and the importance of scale in stewardship activities. it explores the intersection of place-based learning and stewardship, emphasising the need for a holistic approach. the article is based on a five-year practitioner-led doctoral project undertaken while the primary author was embedded in a community stewardship initiative in the west of ireland. various methodologies are employed that reflect both practitioner and community-based research principles. the methodology and findings presented were guided by the central research question: how can place-based learning enhance community stewardship? emerging from the empirical research conducted as part of a change-oriented community-university research initiative, this article presents a practical framework to support the process of community stewardship. specifically, the 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the research conducted in this publication was funded by the irish research council under grant number ebppg/2018/243. the funders had no role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit this article for publication. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9192 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9192 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:a.bird4@universityofgalway.ie https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9192 article identifies five key elements central to the community stewardship process; these include: care, knowledge, facilitation, agency, and action. enhancing and under-pinning each of these is collective action. by synthesising these elements, the framework offers valuable insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement similar community stewardship initiatives, moving community stewardship beyond a conceptualisation to a series of sequential and operational steps that can be implemented across a variety of contexts. keywords community stewardship; place-based learning; scale; community-university partnership; ireland introduction i found it a wonderful programme for people like me who didn’t think their voice could be heard, but now i feel that there are people who help and encourage everyone to protect nature, the environment, and the heritage of an area. (heritage keepers community participant, 2023) there is an ever-increasing need for greater attention and action from society to address climate change and biodiversity loss. to meet the urgency of such challenges there is a role for small scale, grassroot, ground-up initiatives (with the potential to develop into something more significant) ( jans 2021). central to this is a marked shift away from more traditional, hierarchical approaches where the state bears sole responsibility for society, moving instead towards partnerships that acknowledge the interdependencies between state bodies, ngos and the economy in addressing sustainability and environmental issues (hajer et al. 2015). communities taking action to explore local issues to enhance their local places results in immediate impact but can also be a catalyst for future action (foster-fishman et al. 2006). studies have demonstrated that involving various interest groups in decision-making can contribute to a process that garners broader interest, acceptance and sustained engagement among community members (for example, dawson et al. 2021). findings presented in this article point towards the role which community stewardship (discussed in greater detail later in this article) can play in harnessing the power of communities to address local challenges, while simultaneously empowering and enhancing the capacities of communities. this article presents a case study based on a five-year practitioner-led doctoral project, where the primary researcher was embedded in a community stewardship initiative in the west of ireland. while conceptual framings of community stewardship exist, there is a lack of literature relating the theory to practice (couceiro et al. 2023). addressing this, the aims of this article are two-fold. firstly, we identify and discuss the elements that play a significant role within successful community stewardship initiatives. secondly, we propose a practical framework that supports the process of ‘doing’ community stewardship, moving beyond a conceptualisation of community stewardship to consider how the concept might be operationalised through communities and programs in a range of contexts. the article embeds practitioner experience and empirical data in a theoretical discourse, providing a framework that informs future research considering the community stewardship paradigm. it also most usefully outlines the necessary elements for others looking to facilitate community stewardship in their setting. we examine the underlying processes and their interrelationships in the act of facilitating and promoting community stewardship. the next section of the article reviews existing literature in the fields of community stewardship and place-based learning, before outlining the research context and methodology. the results and emergent framework are presented, followed by a detailed exploration of the framework elements. the article concludes by considering the future implications for both community stewardship practice and research. bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20252 conceptualising community stewardship and place-based learning through existing literature community stewardship has become an increasingly popular approach for managing natural resources and promoting sustainable development in many parts of the world (couceiro et al. 2023; peçanha enqvist et al. 2018), and this also is reflected in recent calls for more research in this area (dawson et al. 2021). depending on the context, there are multiple meanings, definitions and understandings of the term stewardship and by extension, community stewardship (bennett et al. 2018). the stewardship approach emphasises local participation, collaboration, and empowerment in the management of natural resources and the promotion of social and economic development (berkes 2009). in the context of this article, stewardship is defined as place-specific actions to which individuals and communities directly contribute their time (carnell & mounsey 2022). an adapted version, community stewardship refers to the actions of groups of people. these groups can be gatherings of people who share a place, common interest, goal, or cause (for example, development associations, schools, environmental advocacy groups, or sports clubs). in a review of conservation efforts, which also considered local community well-being, dawson et al. (2021) indicates that the majority of studies showcasing positive impacts on both well-being and conservation predominantly emerge from situations where indigenous peoples and local communities hold a pivotal position. conversely, interventions overseen by external organisations, which aim to alter local practices and replace customary institutions, tend to yield less effective conservation outcomes while concurrently leading to adverse social consequences. while community stewardship has been recognised for its potential to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of conservation and development initiatives, there is still much to be learned about how to effectively engage communities in stewardship activities (moser & bader 2023). addressing these questions is central to the work informing this article. place-based learning takes a holistic view of place, involving the acquisition of knowledge about a specific place while being physically immersed in that place and with the central purpose of enhancing that place. commentary around the growing disconnect between people and places more broadly has been present for a long time (relph 2008). according to relph (2008), establishing a connection to specific places serves as a practical basis for confronting significant challenges, both local and global, such as climate change and economic inequality. however, as suggested by massey (2004), the significance of place and locality should be tempered by an understanding of, and connections to, broader geographical contexts and global requirements for example globalisation, economics and movement of people. massey (2004) suggests that we now see ‘the global construction of local place’ where the essence of a place does not solely stem from its internal activities; rather, it also arises from the blending and interaction of external influences, connections, and relationships. the way individuals connect with and strive to safeguard a place has been recognised to be influenced by scale (lopez & weaver 2023). connection to place and scale are central to this article and the heritage keepers program. scale, as it relates to the potential for interdisciplinary academic study, is discussed in detail by friis et al. (2023). they unpack the potential confusion around terminology and metaphors related to scale, encompassing concepts like local, regional, national, and global by acknowledging that these phrases can be used with specific analytical or political objectives in mind. in the context of heritage keepers and community stewardship, several dimensions of scale are considered including the participants themselves (individual, group or community), the geographic area of focus (local, national or global) and the topic of focus (relating to a specific place or a broader issue such as climate change or biodiversity loss). these issues were considered by lopez and weaver (2023), where they looked at those that engage with stewardship initiatives and considered the impact of scale, finding that micro-motivations play a crucial role in steering stewardship within smaller community-based organisations, while macro-motivations are instrumental in influencing engagement in larger, multi-jurisdictional organisations. they also (importantly in the context bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20253 of heritage keepers) emphasise that the proposed binary is oversimplified, and it is more appropriate to perceive this distinction as a flexible continuum rather than a rigid dichotomy. this also echoes the findings of ardoin (2014), who identified a noteworthy correlation between the scale of actions and the level of place connection held by a volunteer. individuals with stronger local-scale place connections were notably more inclined to take action on a smaller scale, whereas those with larger-scale place connections were significantly more prone to engage in actions on a larger scale. understanding why people do or do not protect their environment is a central consideration when proposing a community stewardship approach. while this article provides insight into the elements that play a role in successful stewardship initiatives, it is important to note that determining why people undertake environmental actions is a vast area of study in its own right and detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this article (for examples, see huoponen 2023; kollmuss & agyeman 2002). numerous factors drive individuals to form deep connections with nature, and these factors can serve as motivation for endorsing conservation initiatives (pascual et al. 2022). a multi-faceted combination of factors, encompassing social integration, the exploration of shared values, the reinforcement of environmental identity, self-efficacy, and agency is required to cultivate stewardship (nelson et al. 2022). however, there is a significant body of evidence suggesting that an individual’s values and world view play an important determining role in their pro-environmental behaviour (kollmuss & agyeman 2002; sockhill et al. 2022). gallay et al. (2016) contribute to this discourse by examining place-based stewardship education, arguing that such education nurtures a sense of responsibility and commitment to safeguarding rural communal spaces. this approach not only promotes aspirations for environmental protection but also encourages community engagement, emphasising the vital role of education in fostering a sense of environmental stewardship. furthermore, enabling a holistic comprehensive viewpoint of the factors that influence community stewardship plays a significant role in fostering sustainable environmental behaviours (ojala 2017). across the various approaches, what emerged as crucial was the need to select an approach based on particular objectives and the intended audience (grilli & curtis 2021). grilli & curtis (2021) also consider the lack of knowledge around the degree to which behaviours are sustained beyond programs or research studies. the study this article is based on explores the intersection of place-based learning and community stewardship. the methodology and findings presented were guided by the central research question: how can place-based learning enhance community stewardship? the following section first outlines the research context before discussing the research methodology. case study context community stewardship as an approach is not widely employed in ireland but is growing in recognition and application, particularly in small locally specific contexts (for example, where the community engages and takes responsibility for the care and management of a landscape feature such as a bog or beach) (flood et al. 2022). ireland has a very rich natural, cultural and built heritage, and is also characterised by diverse communities (urban and rural; newcomers and long-term residents). this article explores community stewardship and place-based learning through the lens of the heritage keepers program in ireland. launched in 2022, this initiative assists schools and communities in exploring and improving their local environments through workshops and the development of local action plans (discussed later in this article). the heritage keepers program was developed as part of a practitioner-led doctoral research project, marking it as the first of its kind in ireland. this collaborative effort involved the burrenbeo trust (hereafter burrenbeo), a community-based organisation, and the university of galway, focusing on researching evaluation, best practices, and scaling-up of place-based learning and community stewardship initiatives. the lead author, embedded in burrenbeo through an employment-based phd funding scheme by the irish bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20254 research council, was both an employee and researcher bridging theory and practice by assuming dual roles in both the organisation and academic community. this strategic framework promotes collaborative inquiry and knowledge co-creation, offering nuanced insights into real-world challenges and fostering contextually relevant solutions (brannick & coghlan, 2007). the strong university-community partnership fosters mutual learning and capacity building, enriching understanding of key issues. campbell et al. (2016) highlight the benefits of embedded researchers in building trust and sustaining engagement beyond research projects, though challenges like conflicting priorities and potential conflicts of interest must be managed (vinke-de kruijf et al. 2022). haverkamp (2021) stresses ethical considerations in community research, advocating for a transformative approach that prioritises care, cooperation, and marginalised empowerment. lopez (2020) frames community geography as an interdisciplinary model aligning academic research with community needs. this article reinforces these themes, emphasising local knowledge, co-ownership, and sustainable, community-driven solutions that amplify marginalised voices, enhance environmental monitoring, and cultivate long-term academiccommunity collaboration. engaging local communities with heritage and environmental themes through place-based learning initiatives is at the core of burrenbeo’s mission. as previously mentioned, the primary author was embedded in burrenbeo during this practitioner-led research project. burrenbeo, an independent membership charity headquartered in kinvara, county galway, primarily serves the burren region in the west of ireland. since 2008, they have been actively coordinating and executing various programs that aim to connect individuals with their surroundings, highlighting the community’s role in protecting these places. these initiatives encompass community and school-based activities such as walks, talks, community festivals, training events, and conservation volunteering. burrenbeo’s work is grounded in the principles of place-based learning and community stewardship, reflecting the work of smith and sobel (2010) who focused on the power of local learning to encourage community action. the heritage keepers program, launched in 2022, supports schools and communities in taking local actions for heritage conservation. it involves a series of place-based learning workshops that culminate in the development of a local action plan. participants can seek funding of up to €1000 to implement their plans and receive ongoing guidance from burrenbeo. the program’s design, delivery, and outcomes were shaped through consultation with an advisory committee and by adapting existing burrenbeo programs. the experience of program facilitation amongst burrenbeo’s staff informed the program development and four of the team were involved in program delivery. the team has expertise in biodiversity, archaeology, education, community engagement and communications. program delivery has included groups ranging from two-teacher rural schools to community groups in large urban areas, highlighting the adaptability of the approach and the potential for delivery across a broad scale (for further detail on the heritage keepers program see bird & reilly 2023). heritage keepers workshops, lasting 10 hours in total over a five-week period, were delivered by the burrenbeo team to a diverse range of participants, including primary and post-primary school groups, adult community groups, teachers, and community facilitators (who were tasked with delivering the program in their own setting). these workshops, offered both online and in person, encouraged participants to explore their local environments, discover resources related to their heritage, envision the future of their places, and plan actions to realise their vision. the workshops fostered interactive and engaging discussions, focusing on the concept of community stewardship and collaborative heritage engagement. importantly, the action plans developed through the workshops were crafted by the participants themselves, ensuring that they reflected the specific place-based concerns and aspirations of each community. since the program was initiated, almost 1000 participants from 177 different schools and communities have completed the 10 workshop hours resulting in almost 50 local action projects, 18 local heritage fieldtrips and micro-financing of over €40 000 to groups and schools. the initial funding for the program was provided through a three-year bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20255 partnership with the irish heritage council from 2021–2023. subsequently, the program has been funded through a combination of grants and philanthropic sponsorship. average school group sizes are 18 children or young people, and average community group sizes are five people. methodology this article incorporates a range of methodologies reflecting both a practitioner and community-based research ethos. the primary author is a practitioner-researcher who led the development, coordination and facilitation of the heritage keepers program. frances fahy and kathy reilly, geography lecturers at the university of galway, supervised the research project, providing guidance and expertise throughout the study. this article provides analysis of data relating to the initiative, followed by reflection and interrogation of the literature resulting in the development of a proposed framework. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected over a 12-month period (may 2022 to may 2023) across the country. specifically, surveys and focus groups were employed in this study to explore the lived experiences and perceptions of community members and facilitators, and provide context-specific insights into the dynamics of the community stewardship process. limited demographic information was collected relating to the location of participants (rural or urban) and gender. the questions relating to demographics were not compulsory. table 1. participant composition and demographic data 2. available demographic data location gender rural urban female male other pre-program survey response (n=252) 93 86 122 107 6 post-program survey response (n=138) 31 46 57 60 4 1. participant composition participant composition (n=290) primary school participants (9–13 year olds) post-primary school participants (14–16 year olds) community group participants (over 18 year olds) facilitators and educators (over 18 year olds) 119 73 64 34 participants were recruited for the heritage keepers program via an open call seeking expressions of interest, advertised through national media, existing networks and contacts. some community groups were from pre-existing organisations (for example, a local development group). however, participants were encouraged to create new groups, amalgamating existing local groups where possible, for instance, one from a local sports club, one from a tidy towns group, one a local business owner, and one a newcomer to the area. the titles of the five two-hour workshop sessions were: introduction and my place; culture and the past; biodiversity and land use; the future; and planning for action. the study received ethical approval from university of galway and anonymity was maintained during data collection, analysis and reporting, bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20256 using pseudonyms for participant identities. the analysis of participant data in this study was conducted by comparing pre-program (n=252) and post-program (n=138) completed surveys. the total participant number was 290 meaning there was an 87 per cent response rate to the pre-program survey and a 48 per cent response rate to the post-program survey. survey responses provided insight into the impact of the program on the participants’ community stewardship perceptions and behaviours. questions asked participants to evaluate the extent to which they feel connected to their local community, take pride in their area, are driven to address local challenges, feel overwhelmed by issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss, and assess their understanding of local heritage. for information on the survey questions used in this study, please contact the corresponding author. there was also an opportunity to provide open-ended responses, including a question detailing any positive actions participants had taken that were inspired by the heritage keepers program. it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss every question asked on the survey and as a result we include only that data stemming from the survey questions that concern this article’s aims and objectives (for further detail on the heritage keepers program see bird & reilly 2023). as well as the survey data, evaluation data was also obtained through focus groups where the four burrenbeo staff facilitators participated in a semi-structured focus group to provide qualitative feedback on the program’s effectiveness, successes and challenges. pre-circulated discussion topics included workshop content, delivery methods (for example, facilitator training, online or in-person), administration, and next steps. this format ensured key themes were covered while allowing space for new ideas to emerge. insights highlighted strengths like participant engagement and learning outcomes, as well as challenges such as logistical issues and resource gaps. this multi-faceted approach to data collection ensured a comprehensive understanding of the program’s outcomes and effectiveness. as the phd researcher was simultaneously the practitioner implementing the program, the feedback coupled with the survey results, could inform the program evolution in real time. thematic analysis was employed to identify and interpret patterns, themes, and meanings within the collected data, following the methodologies of braun, clarke and weate (2016) and fram (2013). this involved an iterative coding process, beginning with the importation of qualitative survey data into excel, where each question was assigned an individual sheet. data items were thoroughly reviewed and initial codes were applied to capture the essence of each response. for instance, the response, ‘yes ... by encouraging participants to try something similar in their own communities ... e.g., a heritage walk,’ was coded as ‘encouraging replication in own community’. these initial codes were then refined and grouped into broader categories through constant comparison, enabling consistent and relevant categorisation. for example, codes such as ‘learning about monuments’ and ‘discovering information on ringforts’ were combined under the theme ‘learning about built heritage’. once coding was complete, a holistic analysis was conducted, examining the dataset as a whole to identify overarching patterns and connections. this rigorous and iterative approach ensured that the final themes accurately represented the data and provided meaningful insights. findings and discussion the following section outlines the key elements of the community stewardship process as engaged by this study and situated within existing literature. this is followed by a discussion outlining an emergent framework supporting community stewardship processes from the perspective of the heritage keepers program. the points outlined are not mutually exclusive and the inherent interconnections are discussed later in the article. in the community stewardship literature, the work of peçanha enqvist et al. (2018) resonated particularly strongly. these authors examined various stewardship contexts and identified three critical elements for effective initiatives (care, knowledge, and agency), all underpinned by the concept of bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20257 collective action. the framework proposed in this article extends peçanha enqvist et al.’s work by adding two additional elements: facilitation and action, while also expanding on care, knowledge, and agency. although peçanha enqvist et al.’s framework offers a valuable theoretical foundation for exploring community stewardship, it lacks detailed guidance on the practical steps needed to implement each of its core components. the findings outlined in this article and the developed framework result from an applied approach that moves beyond theory and into practice. care the first element we consider is care. at its most basic, care in the context of community stewardship is concerned with the participant’s emotions and feelings about their local place. care addresses the sense of connectedness participants feel toward their place helping to identify what people value about their local place and how they would like their place to be in the future. the heritage keepers surveys revealed that participants already felt a significant sense of belonging in their communities before participating. participants were asked preand post-workshop to indicate their degree of agreement with the statement ‘in the last month, i have felt part of my local community’. preworkshops, 49 per cent responded ‘a lot’, 42 per cent responded ‘a little’ and 10 per cent responded ‘not at all’. post-workshop, the respective responses were 55 per cent, 35 per cent and 10 per cent. this was not anticipated but upon reflection indicates that those who already feel a sense of belonging may be more invested in their place and more likely to engage in a process such as that offered by heritage keepers. the possibility of their prior involvement with, and knowledge of, other participants and the place is also significant here. expanding on this, the insights suggest that without a sense of connection, people are unlikely to engage in stewardship behaviours. west et al. (2018) explore care as foundational to stewardship, emphasising its practical expression. this viewpoint highlights the need for fostering relationships and ethical values in stewardship initiatives, guiding communities toward sustainability. a challenge emerges regarding the language used in discussing environmental, heritage, climate, and biodiversity issues. the scientific and academic community often prioritises precise language, which may not resonate with local communities seeking more emotive and story-based communication approaches (tait 2021). to cultivate affection and commitment toward local places, an assets-based approach is beneficial, focusing on strengths, resources, and community capacities rather than solely addressing needs (mathie & cunningham 2005). similarly, toomey (2023) argues that facts alone do not sway public opinion on conservation; acknowledging the role of experiences, values, and emotions in communication is crucial. heritage keepers workshops allow participants to explore and express their feelings about their local environments. of note also when considering the degree to which people care about their environments is the methods that have been used historically to engage people in conservation and environmental issues. the approach proposed through heritage keepers while acknowledging the issues that exist, maintains a focus on first identifying the existing positive elements and then subsequently on the actions which can be taken, shifting from a fear-based lens to one which empowers. this emphasis on what can be achieved was reflected in feedback from one of the participants who noted ‘[t]he positivity of the participants about their own place and what they can do to improve it’. historically there has been an over reliance on ‘fear appeal’ where the worst case scenarios are described in an attempt to scare people into caring and action – this approach is often counter-productive (stoknes 2014). it has since been suggested that people may experience ‘apocalypse fatigue’ and choose (knowingly or unknowingly) to disengage from the issue (nordhaus & shellenberger 2009). several inconclusive studies have tried to measure the impact of fear-based approaches to encouraging action around climate change and the environment (kothe et al. 2019). bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20258 the focus on care contends that for community stewardship initiatives to be successful, participants must care about the topics, place or community in question. the sense of belonging and connection to a place and community can be a key factor in this, as are the methods employed to encourage caring. knowledge it could be argued that the knowledge element of building community stewardship is the simplest – premised on the idea that if people have information and skills, they can take the required action. however, knowledge as an element of a community stewardship process is often reductively oversimplified and does not receive adequate consideration. returning to peçanha enqvist et al. (2018), they include the importance for community stewardship initiatives to engage basic information about the place, acknowledging that various knowledge sources are required and relevant for the community to engage with stewardship. however, findings from the heritage keepers initiative point specifically to the exact knowledge required, and consideration for how such knowledge is delivered becomes apparent. post-workshops all participants were asked, ‘what was your favourite part of the program?’ in response, a theme emerged around the discovery of resources facilitating participants learning more about their local place. another theme related to how much participants had learned, for example, from free online websites and demonstrations on how to use the resources. practical information is crucial for community projects. precise details and procedural steps are necessary for communities to successfully execute projects. this need for clarity was evident in post-workshop support and focus group discussions with staff facilitators. communities required targeted knowledge to avoid mistakes, such as correctly placing a wildlife pond to preserve biodiversity or using safe techniques for historic graveyard surveys. additionally, information must be condensed to avoid overwhelming the participants. while abundant resources exist, like those from the all-ireland pollinator plan and heritage council, targeted and simplified content proved effective in the heritage keepers initiative. although customising information for each community is labour intensive, key guides (for example, ‘top ten tips for pond building’) and facilitator support mitigated this. despite the national scale of the program, information provided was specific to local contexts and needs. not all knowledge is equal. as bonnett (2023) outlines, while factual knowledge and skills remain important, there is other knowledge, such as embodied knowledge one has through experience of a place or community. in the context of community stewardship, embodied knowledge may be even more important than other knowledge. bonnett argues that this established knowledge serves as a foundation for more conceptual understanding, helping to counterbalance excessive human-centred utilitarian approaches, speaking again to the notion of care and how we view our environments. the heritage keepers initiative encourages engagement with knowledge from within the local community whether it be from farmers, storytellers, musicians, local historians or a local business owner. arguments have been made for a more critical pedagogy of place to replace scientific dominance prevalent in western culture and education (tsevreni 2011). pretty (2011) examines the significance of local knowledge of nature as a guiding force for actions and decision-making in a place-based approach, thus fostering a deeper connection between individuals and their natural surroundings. the final element to consider around the knowledge required for successful community stewardship initiatives is capacity building. capacity building, in the context of empowering communities and facilitating community stewardship, refers to the process of equipping individuals and groups with the knowledge, skills, resources, and confidence they need to effectively take control of their own development, make informed decisions, and manage their local resources and affairs. regardless of the project undertaken, building the capacity to identify local actions, plan and complete them has a value for communities. as one bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20259 participant noted, ‘the online sessions were inviting, and so empowering, by sharing resources that can guide myself and our group to seek out places to care for’. facilitation in considering community stewardship in the context of the heritage keepers program, it is important to consider the role and importance of facilitation. for heritage keepers, the program is facilitated by a member of staff who directs the activities, moderates discussions and supports action plan delivery. in general, a facilitator empowers each individual to engage and learn with the group, both collaboratively and experientially (creswell 2003). one of the findings identified from the post-program surveys was that groups reported that the process of engaging with facilitated activities and workshops can shed new light on local issues and assets, propose new ways of thinking about their place and community, in addition to shifting dynamics in existing groups. the facilitation experience can also be fundamental for groups who have come together specifically for the program in question. the presence of an external facilitator leading the group through exploration of their place can provide an objective view on the local place, which can be useful in determining where the group’s action would be best focused (nelson & mcfadzean 1998). this does require the facilitator to have a certain skillset and competencies, some of which include creating empathy, being specific, being genuine, engendering respect, listening effectively and, very importantly, gaining trust (hughes 1999). the model employed in the heritage keepers program follows the wellrecognised approach where instruction is not imposed, rather a space is created for participants to explore for themselves the elements of their place and community and their desires for its future, facilitated by conversation (sharples et al. 2006). while facilitation is central to the success of the program and proposed framework, further research on more emergent community stewardship (where an action is undertaken without external support or facilitation) would also be useful. this was not the focus of this study. agency arguably the most critical element in achieving positive outcomes from community stewardship processes is agency. considering the potential for communities to respond to environmental problems, adams et al. (2019) emphasise the importance of understanding the political economy, arguing that power imbalances and unequal distribution of resources can hinder collective action and perpetuate socio-ecological problems. they also discuss the role of social capital, trust and collaboration in fostering effective collective action. peçanha enqvist et al. (2018) include agency in their framework as the abilities and capacities of communities or individuals to carry out actions. essentially, do the structures and supports needed to carry out stewardship actions exist? are the planned actions feasible, given the specific conditions for the group in question? there were some specific findings that emerged following the analysis of the data from the heritage keepers program, which spoke directly to the importance of agency. over the years, various programs with a similar focus, delivered by burrenbeo, have encouraged action, and while participants on these previous programs indicated in post-program surveys that they felt encouraged to take action, it very rarely actually resulted in action – could this have been because the agency element had not been adequately considered in these earlier programs? when developing heritage keepers, financial support via micro-financing for the initiatives was added. we now argue that this innovation, alongside the provision of ongoing support and mentoring for participants while they complete actions has resulted in the program’s positive outcomes. these elements ensure that local schools and communities were supported to complete the actions they had identified. equally, the process of engaging with the heritage keepers workshops as outlined, assisted the participants in identifying areas where they could have an impact in their area. drawing on experience of delivering previous programs to a wide range of groups and individuals lead to the specification of the heritage keepers program being exclusively developed for groups (rather bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202510 than individuals). while acknowledging that this may exclude those that do not already have connections within their community, or feel safe or welcomed in community spaces, practitioner experience suggested that it was often too much for one person to be tasked with taking on a community stewardship action. in addition, group participation makes space for collective participatory decision-making and the emergence of a community mandate. the groups that participated could be pre-existing, and groups were encouraged to connect (for example, a representative from existing local groups or societies came together to form a local heritage keepers group). action it may seem unnecessary to include action as a separate element when the assumption is that if the goal is community stewardship that an action will result, however it is useful to add some specifics here from the heritage keepers perspective. in deliberately focusing the program around the identification of, planning for, and completion of local heritage actions, the program provides a clear and achievable goal for participants. this echoes the earlier suggestion from grilli and curtis (2021) that in encouraging proenvironmental behaviours identifying a very specific objective was a good approach. equally, oinonen et al. (2023) highlight the importance of strengthening young people’s beliefs in their ability to make a difference and produce desired sustainability outcomes. for each participating heritage keepers group, deciding on the particular action and refining the plan if required is supported by the facilitator (who as previously mentioned can provide a useful outside perspective). examples of actions which have been completed by participants include: development of heritage trails; publication of oral history records; creation of biodiversity areas; celebration of notable figures; community networking events; art installations; digging of wildlife ponds and many more. while the scale and legacy impact of work involved is different in each setting, actions look for ‘small wins’ (fosterfishman et al. 2006), showing that a community can achieve something if they set out to (providing the necessary elements are present). this also builds on the earlier discussion of ‘apocalypse fatigue’ (nordhaus & shellenberger 2009). peters et al. (2013), in a discussion of fear-based approaches to encouraging action, found that prioritising efficacy was most effective – in this case, the power of the group to complete their desired action. however, it could be argued that this focus on an often discrete action is one of the weaknesses in this type of work as it does not allow for a longer-term consideration of stewardship behaviours of participants. it would be desirable to build in a mechanism to continue to engage with and monitor the actions of participants beyond the timeframe of the program to establish whether the actions that were initiated were continued, developed, expanded or simply finished once the program ended. collective action the final point to address is collective action, where individuals are motivated by seeing their efforts contribute to a larger cause, knowing their ‘small wins’ are bolstered by similar successes across the country. collective action is increasingly recognised as crucial for advancing global environmental initiatives (gulliver et al. 2022). while some may equate collective action solely with activism (gulliver et al. 2022), heritage keepers participants have found that connecting with other communities, both online and through culminating showcase events, enriches their experience by sharing challenges and learning from others’ achievements. one participant remarked, ‘the accomplishments of other heritage keepers … was amazing to hear and see. it certainly has encouraged our group to complete our projects and take on other aspects within our community’. this underscores the earlier discussion on the need for multi-level action to tackle challenges collectively, where shared initiatives alleviate the workload. the role of networks and social movements, extensively discussed in literature (saunders 2013), resonates with participants who value connecting with bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202511 like-minded individuals passionate about their environments and evidenced by the participant who said, ‘great to connect with people who feel the same passion about their own place/environment as i do’. nelson et al. (2022) in their climate stewards program in america highlight the importance of early connections in fostering shared beliefs and values among participants. groups involved in heritage keepers bring diverse backgrounds and experiences, collaborating to build local knowledge and engage with other community groups, enhancing peer learning and knowledge exchange. the nature of the groups and the interactions between the groups is something that will be discussed at a later stage. in summary, collective action is pivotal in community stewardship, amplifying individual efforts into a unified movement towards environmental sustainability. the next section will delve into practical applications of the community stewardship process, drawing on insights from the heritage keepers program and existing literature to provide a framework for researchers and practitioners. reflections on an emergent framework before discussing the elements of the community stewardship process and the suggested framework, we start with a broader look at scale and the scaling-up of environmental and sustainability actions. participants from the heritage keepers program engage immediate local actions while also representing integral parts of larger social and spatial assemblages. the works of lopez and weaver (2023), ardoin (2014) and massey (2004) all point towards the role of scale in community stewardship initiatives. essentially, recognising one’s place on a scale beyond the local enhances understanding of how individual actions can collaborate with others, contributing to broader transformative change (ardoin 2014). equally important in this context is the move from a focus on actions taken by an individual, to collectively supported actions within a group, building on social capital bonds to positively facilitate meaningful action (see figure 1). figure 1. framework for the process of community stewardship the elements comprising the community stewardship process interact in intricate and dynamic ways. the framework identifies five distinct elements integral to the overall process. however, the nuanced relationship between knowledge and caring (kollmuss & agyeman 2002), underscores a reciprocal connection. bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202512 individuals may find themselves in a symbiotic relationship where caring is propelled by knowledge acquisition, or conversely, the pursuit of knowledge is fuelled by pre-existing care. this interplay resonates with discussions on ‘information deficit’ models and the ‘value-action gap’ within environmental action (blake 1999). these discussions suggest that individuals’ engagement in environmental initiatives hinge on their awareness and understanding, emphasising the interconnectedness of knowledge acquisition and the manifestation of caring attitudes. relatedly, the proposed framework elements are part of an iterative process and at times participants may return to earlier steps in the process, particularly if their engagement with community stewardship is ongoing (as would be desired) rather than a single occurrence. for example, participants may first focus on a local archaeological feature, learn about it, feel a connection and engage in an action associated with it. over the course of the engagement, they may discover a specific ecological feature connected to the site leading to further ideas for research and emerging actions. critically reflecting on the research conducted and emergent framework, it is clear that the process of facilitating community stewardship is a complex yet crucial endeavour. to support and encourage communities in becoming stewards of their local places, facilitation is key. a skilled facilitator can create a supportive and inclusive atmosphere, encouraging active participation and empowering participants. in recognising and valuing the diverse perspectives and experiences within communities, the facilitator fosters a sense of belonging and shared responsibility, essential for successful community stewardship initiatives. in the process of facilitating community stewardship, the knowledge shared must be easily digestible and relevant to the community’s needs and interests. complicated jargon and technical information can be overwhelming and disempowering. instead, the process should employ clear, concise, and accessible language, making complex concepts relatable and digestible for all participants. sharing resources and building capacity among participants supports informed decision-making, ensuring that stewardship efforts are well-informed and sustainable. emotional connection proves pivotal in community stewardship, motivating individuals to protect and conserve their environment. utilising storytelling, personal experiences, and cultural ties may evoke emotions that resonate. while this article explores community stewardship through participant perspectives, a key question arises: how can we increase involvement from non-participants? further investigation into fostering emotional connections could drive future research on enhancing community stewardship. the heritage keepers program exemplifies how engaging in this process promotes stewardship behaviours, including sustainability, conservation, and responsible management of local environments. additionally, collective action among participants nationwide reinforces these behaviours, uniting toward shared environmental goals and catalysing impactful change. this study faced several limitations that merit consideration. although the research spanned a longitudinal period (2018–2023) and benefited from the researchers’ prior familiarity with and knowledge of the organisation, more comprehensive follow-up could provide deeper insights. for instance, conducting in-depth interviews with participants might offer a richer understanding of their experiences, and longterm follow-up could determine whether participants continued their civic engagement after completing the heritage keepers program. however, maintaining participant interest and involvement over such an extended timeframe presents its own challenges. additionally, the open call for participation may have resulted in a less representative sample, potentially limiting the broader applicability of the findings. future research could address this by actively targeting underrepresented groups within the organisation’s audience. finally, while embedding the research within burrenbeo contributed to its success, reliance on a single organisation may have introduced biases linked to its specific aims and resources. subsequent studies could benefit from examining a broader range of organisations and contexts to enhance the robustness and generalisability of the findings. building on the experience described in this article, the heritage keepers program in 2023 and 2024 focused its delivery on primary schools, youth organisations and community groups, with a further bird et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202513 140 participant groups completing the program in this time. the program is funded for 2025 and ongoing grant applications will hopefully ensure it continues successfully for years to come. conclusion as outlined above, there are multiple factors determining whether community stewardship initiatives are successful. for the purposes of this study, successful initiatives are those which achieve the aim of facilitating local community action. the first element, care, highlights the significance of cultivating an emotional connection and sense of responsibility towards local community and place. in fostering a deep sense of care and attachment, community members are motivated to protect and preserve their surroundings, thereby providing a strong foundation for stewardship behaviours. future research on how care is initiated (and the influencing factors) would be useful to explore through the community stewardship lens. the second element, knowledge, emphasises the significance of the accessibility and relevance of the information shared during the process as well as the significance of diverse knowledge, such as experiential and embodied knowledge. by presenting information in a digestible and meaningful manner, participants are empowered to make informed decisions, contributing to informed and effective stewardship practices. the third element, facilitation, plays a pivotal role in the community stewardship process, creating an inclusive and supportive environment that encourages active participation and ownership. effective facilitation ensures that diverse perspectives are valued and integrated within decision-making processes, driving collaborative and community-driven initiatives. the fourth element, agency, acknowledges the importance of supports and external drivers in empowering participants in their stewardship efforts. this element is fundamental for any successful community stewardship, providing an opportunity for initiatives (across a variety of scales) to be implemented. there is also a need for further research around community stewardship legacy (that is, once the specific supports provided by programs are no longer available). the fifth and final element, action, relates to the tangible, measurable and achievable goal(s) attained through the process. we have presented these findings as a practical framework that is readily adaptable by similar initiatives. as outlined previously, this work has been developed via an embedded practitioner-researcher in partnership with a university. the applied nature of the work as well as the fact that the project is ongoing could be viewed as testament to the value of an embedded practitioner research design. when communities are provided with the necessary tools and support, they may emerge as powerful agents of positive change for their environment. by fostering 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the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: cole, s., goodenough, j., haniff, m., hussain, n., ibrahim, s., jani, a., jiggens, e., khan, a., langford, p., montgomery, l., moore, l., rowe, r., skinner, s. 2024. greenspace & us: exploring codesign approaches to increase engagement with nature by girls and young women. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 17:1, 1– 17. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v17i1.8881 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au 1 practicebased article greenspace & us: exploring codesign approaches to increase engagement with nature by girls and young women stuart cole1, jessica goodenough2, melissa haniff3, nafeesa hussain4, sahar ibrahim3, anant jani5*, emily jiggens6, ansa khan4, pippa langford7, louise montgomery7, lizzie moore6, rosie rowe6, sam skinner8 1 oxfordshire county council innovation service 2 oxford city council greenspace development team 3 resolve collective 4 name it youth project/oxford youth enterprise 5 university of oxford 6 oxfordshire county council public health 7 natural england 8 fig studio corresponding author: anant jani, anant.r.jani@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8881 article history: received 27/10/2023; revised 30/01/2024; accepted 05/04/2024; published 06/2024 abstract nature connection through engagement with greenspaces plays an important role in promoting wellbeing. in england, certain groups, such as girls and young women from disadvantaged backgrounds, have limited access to highquality greenspaces and face other barriers to engaging with nature. in oxfordshire, the county council has committed to improving access to greenspace and nature for all. in 2022, a group consisting of twenty girls and young women (aged 10– 16) from east oxford notfor profit organisations, academic institutions and public bodies came together to start an initiative called ‘greenspace & us’. the girls and young women participated in six three hour workshops in february to march 2022. using the comb (capability, opportunity, motivation, behaviour) approach, we explored the enablers and barriers to girls and young women in oxford engaging more with nature, which included: increasing equity of access; introducing meaningful coproduction; taking safety concerns seriously; making declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received financial support from natural england for the greenspace & us project; the authors received no financial support for the authorship and/or publication of this article. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8881 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8881 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:anant.r.jani@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v17i1.8881 nature normal; promoting the right to play; and increasing the ability to connect with greenspaces. the outputs of this process were synthesised into the ‘greenspace & us manifesto’, which was crafted collectively. furthermore, these insights were used to design inclusive park furniture, which was later installed in a local park in east oxford. in this practicebased article, we outline the methods, outcomes as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the engagement, codesign and coproduction approaches we used in greenspace & us. we hope the insights from our project will support more inclusive and equitable design of greenspaces for all. keywords young women; greenspaces; inequalities; nature connection; codesign; wellbeing introduction nature accessibility, engagement and connectivity play crucial roles in promoting physical and mental wellbeing (fields in trust 2022). however, certain groups encounter significant obstacles when attempting to access and engage with green and natural spaces. natural england’s people and nature survey reveals a substantial decline in nature connection between the ages of 9 and 15, with no recovery to childhood levels (richardson 2019). additionally, sport england’s active lives survey identifies a decline in physical activity among teenagers, particularly impacting girls and young women, who struggle to regain a healthy level of physical activity (world health organization 2022). these challenges are particularly pronounced for girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, who not only have limited access to highquality greenspaces, but also face other barriers hindering their engagement and connection with nature, many of which remain poorly understood and go unrecognised in traditional narratives on greenspace use. a recent mental health and wellbeing needs assessment for oxfordshire county in england highlights a sharp decline in selfreported wellbeing among young people aged 1316, with teenage girls being especially vulnerable to depression and anxiety, and generally poor mental health (arbuthnott 2021). although disengagement from broader wellbeing enablers is believed to be a central factor contributing to this trend, local insights explaining this phenomenon are scarce. to advance the county’s goal of creating a greener, healthier and more equitable environment, at the time of this project, oxfordshire county council’s fair deal alliance had identified ‘improving access to greenspace and nature’, ‘prioritizing the health and wellbeing of residents’ and ‘addressing inequalities in oxfordshire’ as key priorities in nine focus areas. a consultation conducted in autumn 2021 revealed that young people had increasingly prioritised spending time in greenspaces during lockdown (arbuthnott 2021). they also expressed concerns about the potential impact of new housing developments on access to greenspaces and that they felt a lack of socialising opportunities. in order to enhance knowledge and understanding of the barriers to and facilitators of girls and young women engaging with and using greenspaces, as well as codesigning approaches to increase their engagement with and use of greenspaces, a group consisting of girls and young women from oxford not forprofit organisations, academic institutions and public bodies came together to introduce an initiative called ‘greenspace & us’. greenspace & us is a coproduction communitybased partnership project that aims to address three questions: (1) what is the current utilisation of greenspaces by young women and to what degree does it fulfil their requirements? (2) what factors act as obstacles or facilitators in influencing the access, engagement and connection of young women with greenspaces and nature? cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20242 (3) what codesign and coproduction approaches can be used to create solutions to increase greenspace and nature engagement and use by girls and women in oxfordshire? the answers to question 1 are documented in a publication produced for natural england (cole et al. 2023). in this practicebased article we present the results linked to questions 2 and 3; we outline the engagement as well as the codesign and coproduction approaches we used, the outcomes of these approaches, and reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. our hope is that these insights may help other groups engaging in similar work in the future to reimagine the narrative around natural spaces. greenspace & us methods: participatory and creative greenspace & us aimed to first understand the perceptions and needs of girls and young women, and through this process, to then use these insights to contribute to the codesign and coproduction of effective approaches to engaging young people in matters related to the built and natural environment. the methods employed were participatory, creative and empowering, ensuring equitable knowledge sharing with participants and fostering sustainable relationships with the young people and communitybased organisations working to represent and help realise their interests. the methods were devised by a collaborative working group comprising representatives from oxfordshire county council, the university of oxford, name it youth project (oxford youth enterprise) and fig. studio, overseen by natural england steering group members. for this study, barton & sandhills in the ox3 ward and rose hill & iffley, littlemore, northfield brook and blackbird leys in the ox4 ward of east oxford were selected as the geographical context due to the higher levels of deprivation in these areas, (insight.oxfordshire.gov.uk, 2023) which are also recognised for their inadequate provision of publicly accessible greenspaces. it is important to note that the intention of the project was not to critically evaluate specific sites within east oxford, but rather to establish a comprehensive understanding of the underlying issues related to nature engagement by girls and young women. the project development and methodology underwent assessment and approval in accordance with natural england’s internal ethics review checklist (available upon request). the collection of data as part of the project strictly adhered to the regulations outlined by the uk general data protection regulation (gdpr) and the data processing policy of oxfordshire county council. all quotations were anonymised and the photographs were used with the written consent of the individuals involved. the methodology employed in this study encompassed two main components: participatory workshops and coproduction of creative outputs. we discuss each one in turn. (1) participatory workshops a total of twenty young women, aged 10– 16, with a median age of 12 years, were recruited by oxford youth enterprise through various youth organisations operating in the area. the young women had engaged with oxford youth enterprise and a previous project organised by name it youth and, as such, there was a strong element of trust between the young women and the enterprise’s youth workers. these participants engaged in a series of six threehour workshops, conducted in february and march 2022. the decision to set the lower age limit at 10 was made to ensure inclusivity of 10yearold girls who were already involved in youth work and expressed significant interest in the project. among the 20 workshop participants, approximately twothirds were already engaged with the name it youth project, and each member of the group was acquainted with at least one other participant at the outset of the project. the majority (16 out of 20) of the group resided in the ox4 area, with three living in cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20243 the neighbouring ox3 area, which hosts some of oxfordshire’s most deprived wards. one participant, who maintained a strong connection with east oxford, resided just outside the city in ox13. while the group represented various ethnic backgrounds, approximately onethird identified as ‘asian or asian british’ (indian, pakistani, bangladeshi), or other asian backgrounds. none of the participants reported having any physical or mental health conditions that might limit their ability to carry out dayto day activities. the workshops were facilitated by six female members of the working group, comprising individuals from oxfordshire county council public health, name it youth project, and resolve collective. the decision to maintain a femaleonly space and foster a safe environment for open discussion was made during the early planning stages. the design and overall approach of the workshops was guided by the comb model (capability, opportunity, motivation, behaviour) of behaviour change; for this project the aimed behaviour change was to support the young women participants to engage more with greenspaces. the comb model posits that for any behaviour to occur, individuals must have the capability and opportunity to engage in that behaviour, coupled with a higher level of motivation relative to other behaviours. in addition to informing the methods of data collection, this framework was utilised to structure and summarise the findings of the project (michie, atkins & west 2014). the content and specific questions addressed in the workshops were informed by survey data, established models of best practice in engaging young people in matters related to their built and green environments, as well as contributions from youth workers and creative professionals. table 1 outlines the workshop program. content was adapted on a weekly basis, informed by ongoing feedback from participants (‘checkin’ and ‘checkout’ sessions) and weekly facilitator debrief sessions. except for a local greenspace walkabout, all workshops were held at an east oxford community garden. table 1. workshop program overview workshop title and date goals main activities data collection methods introduction 5 march introduce the project: relationship and confidence building registration paperwork icebreakers introduction to the project agree on group rules group exercise to define greenspace and explore initial feelings introduction to evaluation flip charts facilitator notes greenspace mapping 12 march map local greenspace assets start to think about the characteristics of the physical or social infrastructure that influence access review previous week’s workshop individual and group mapping exercise group analysis and presentation of themes annotated maps (individual and group) flip charts facilitator notes cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20244 workshop title and date goals main activities data collection methods greenspace walkabout 19 march gather visual, audio and written data to illustrate thoughts and feelings about greenspace and access walk to local recreation ground and nature park collect photos, written notes and audio data to reflect on the experience of being in a local greenspace group feedback and reflection on the experience annotated photos, written notes, audio data recorded by young women bringing it all together 26 march group analysis of themes and begin the process of translating this into a manifesto identify specific barriers and enablers to access, and consider which are changeable/ unchangeable – building a ‘tree of change’ in the process start to discuss ideas to build a manifesto flipcharts tree of change leaves facilitator notes building the manifesto creative planning (1) 2 april discuss and decide on the desired creative outcome discuss relevant precedents discuss the agreed potential creative outputs that could best accompany the manifesto identify constraints and opportunities that may shape the outcome group notes building the manifesto creative planning (2) 3 april decide on all the aspects of the creative output to be presented to the project team and external partners recap on written manifesto and design; plan the creative output accompanying the manifesto group notes group artwork data collection methods comprised a range of techniques, encompassing flip chart notes/presentations, annotated maps, annotated photos, audio clips, and group discussion notes and thoughts from participants (figs 1a and 1b). the activities were agreed jointly with the girls/young women and were designed to provide a space for them to share their experiences, perceptions and needs from greenspaces. sessions 1– 3 focused on understanding their experiences and perceptions. through approaches like the ‘tree of change’ (fig. 1c), coined by the young women, the participants were able to identify the barriers and enablers related to greenspace access that they felt could be realistically changed. these changes were recorded on coloured leaves and, through group consensus, determinations were made regarding their changeability and table 1. continued. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20245 subsequent incorporation on the tree. the purpose of this method was to stimulate discussion among the young women concerning their perceived ‘reasonable asks’ directed towards decision-makers responsible for their environment. figure 1. data collection methods: (a) an example of group mapping work; (b) an example of small group discussion notes and thoughts from participants; (c) examples of exploratory workshop outputs – the tree of change. (2) creative outputs the design and creation of the creative outputs was supported by the resolve collective. resolve is a design collective that aims to address social challenges through interdisciplinary approaches combining architecture, engineering, technology and art. they conceptualise ‘design’ as including both physical and systemic interventions that can drive political and socio-economic changes. furthermore, one of their guiding principles is to design with and for under-represented groups, especially young people. from the outset of greenspace & us, resolve collective introduced the concept of utilising a creative output to articulate the group’s ideas, but they did not impose specific parameters on the format of the output. sessions 1–3 focused on need finding, followed by sessions 4–6, which involved activities aimed at shaping the narrative surrounding the needs of the young women participants and their role within greenspaces. participants were supported in drafting a manifesto to publicly declare their perspectives and intentions, while also exploring their concepts through physical artwork. the group consistently displayed an interest in constructing a tangible structure. while the creative outputs were regularly discussed throughout the project, substantial progress in their development occurred predominantly during sessions 5 and 6. decisions were made collaboratively or, when necessary, by vote. following the conclusion of the sessions, a celebration day was organised. this event provided an opportunity for the young women to commemorate their participation and showcase their ideas to family, friends and local stakeholders involved in greenspace initiatives. results the first three workshops aimed to understand the capability, opportunity and motivation (com) of the young women participants engaging with greenspaces. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20246 capability in the first two workshops it became evident that many participants were unfamiliar with the term ‘greenspace’. consequently, a considerable amount of time was dedicated to establishing a collective understanding of the diverse range of environments that could fall under the umbrella of ‘greenspace’. the participants eloquently mentioned various natural settings, such as forests/woods, nature reserves, fields/ farmland, gardens, lakes/rivers/sea, hills and plains, as well as associated features like trees, plants, flowers, insects, animals, wildlife, fresh air and sunlight. however, despite their comprehensive conceptualisation of greenspace, their lived experiences revealed a more limited picture. during a local greenspace mapping exercise, participants consistently identified, on average, two greenspaces that they frequented regularly – predominantly parks or recreation grounds situated in proximity to their homes or schools. nature reserves or woodlands, despite their abundant presence in the area, were seldom acknowledged as viable destinations for visits. further to this, throughout the project, participants gradually expressed their concerns regarding the equitable distribution of greenspaces, which they perceived as being predominantly dominated by other demographics. this perception was partly influenced by the design of spaces and facilities, which the young women believed catered more to younger children and favoured traditional ‘male’ physical and social activities. additionally, there was a lack of confidence among these young women to assert their ownership of these spaces. opportunities one finding that was particularly interesting was that, despite holding positive ideals, it became evident that the young women’s lived experiences of greenspaces varied within the group, there being both positive and negative experiences. alongside the positive aspects, they associated negative features with local greenspaces, which elicited feelings ranging from disinterest and distaste to a sense of discomfort or insecurity (see figure 2). figure 2. outputs highlighting the young women’s perceptions of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of greenspaces. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20247 the maintenance of public greenspaces emerged as an essential area of concern during several workshops. inadequate upkeep led to unattractive spaces, where dirty environments and equipment, vandalism, mud, litter and dog waste were more likely to be present. participants consistently advocated for more waste bins to address the issue of litter and dog waste. furthermore, the participants highlighted that most of the greenspaces lacked facilities that catered to young women’s basic needs, such as access to food and water, clean toilets, seating and shelter. the lack of sufficiently quiet and safe spaces, in which young women could socialise without being ‘bothered’ by boys or young children, also contributed to rendering greenspaces initially as undesirable and inconvenient, ultimately limiting the amount of time young women could comfortably spend in these areas. these results challenged the traditional narrative and absolute statements that greenspace was good for health and wellbeing. there was, instead, a set of qualifiers linked to the quality, safety and design of greenspaces that had a great impact on the health and wellbeing benefits that could be expected of such spaces, and the opportunities for different demographics to experience the benefits of greenspaces. if, for example, a young woman were to go to a greenspace and experience bullying or be exposed to unsettling incivilities like drug use, it could harm her mental health and wellbeing. the participants also highlighted that the competing priorities of school, their social life and other activities, as well as the limited availability and high cost of outdoor sports clubs for girls, had a negative impact on opportunities to engage with greenspaces. motivation during the workshops, a widespread sentiment among many participants was a positive recollection of time spent outdoors. they shared anecdotes of beautiful walks with family members and the joy experienced at organised events. in describing greenspace, words such as ‘fun’ ‘free’ and ‘fresh’ were commonly used, reflecting their positive association with the natural environment. moreover, workshop participants frequently and articulately acknowledged the positive effects of greenspace on mental health. their fluency in using language related to wellbeing was particularly evident, signifying their awareness of the significant impact that greenspaces and nature could have on promoting mental health and wellbeing. through an exploration of the use of greenspaces, we found that participants predominantly portrayed them as social environments and saw them as tranquil places that fostered feelings of calmness, relaxation, and opportunities for socialising and ‘hanging out’ with friends. the young women also emphasised a desire for more social opportunities within greenspaces, especially those specifically tailored to girls and young women. such opportunities encompassed a range of organised physical and creative activities, social gatherings, such as outdoor cinema nights and festivals, as well as naturebased experiences. the promotion of genderspecific events and activities emerged as a key aspiration towards fostering a more inclusive and engaging greenspace environment for young women. it also underscored recognition of the positive wellbeing impact associated with play and the call for more ageappropriate equipment to foster adventurous, physical and natureoriented play. during the initial workshop discussions, the young women demonstrated a clear understanding of the link between greenspaces and environmental conservation, which was distinct from concerns regarding access. they acknowledged the significance of spaces dedicated to wildlife and nature while also recognising their role in protecting the environment. furthermore, they displayed awareness of broader environmental issues, such as the use of fossil fuels, plastic pollution, and other forms of environmental degradation. their perspectives extended beyond personal access to greenspaces, reflecting a broader understanding of the importance of preserving urban greenspaces that serve as habitats for wildlife and contribute to the overall health of nature. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20248 the participants also mentioned several factors that negatively impacted their motivation to engage with greenspaces, some of which were captured in ‘opportunities’. some young women associated greenspaces with antisocial behaviour, such as drug taking or gang presence, and expressed apprehension that the lack of activities for teenagers could expose them to such risks. the issue of safety in greenspaces was also framed in terms of broader societal problems surrounding misogyny and genderbased violence, which they perceived as more prevalent in a typically ‘maledominated’ space. other young women had direct experiences of genderbased harassment, bullying, or intimidation in greenspaces. finally, and importantly, there was a sense of disempowerment among the participants that appeared to be linked to a lack of ownership and, consequently, a reduced inclination to engage actively with local greenspaces. table 2 summarises the barriers and enablers identified under the headings of capability, opportunity and motivation in workshops 1– 3. table 2. understanding access to green space for young women using the comb model of behaviour change. barriers and enablers are identified in workshops 1– 3. comb element behavioural influences (barriers and enablers) to codesign and coproduction capability psychological (knowledge, cognition, interpersonal skills, selfregulation) lack of knowledge of local green spaces or available activities lack of confidence to claim a maledominated space opportunities social (peer pressure, social norms, culture, credible role models) competing priorities – school, social life and other activities physical (triggers/ prompts, space/time, location/services) unable/unsafe to get to green spaces lack of attractive and wellmaintained green spaces nearby lack of facilities in green spaces to meet basic needs of young women lack of quiet and protected green space in which young women can socialise lack of play equipment aimed at older kids and teenagers not enough/high cost of outdoor sports clubs for girls motivation automatic (emotions, desires, impulses, habits) desire to participate in a wide range of activities in green spaces desire to visit a wider range of green spaces green spaces are/can feel unsafe for young women lack of sense of ownership over local green spaces and exclusion from democratic processes mixed feelings about ‘nature’ spaces reflective (plans, intentions, beliefs, identity) awareness of the wellbeing benefits of green space and nature perception that there is ‘nothing to do’ in green space cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 20249 the greenspace & us manifesto using the outputs from the com-b analysis (table 2), workshop participants collaborated closely with artistic partners, fig.studio and resolve collective, to synthesise their ideas and aspirations (figure 3). figure 3. participants working on the greenspace & us manifesto. accounting for the participants’ experiences, perceptions and needs from the previous sessions, it was clear that a reimagining of greenspaces needed to start with an acknowledgement of the roles that greenspaces fulfilled for girls and young women. for the participants, greenspaces served as a place for social activities and play, as opposed to providing a place for formal/informal sport and physical activity. translation of these insights yielded a set of concrete ideas on the changes required of greenspaces to meet their specific needs so that they can equitably benefit from the health and well-being benefits that greenspaces can offer. specific highlighted needs and preferences included social seating and shelter, amenities (including toilet facilities and bins), security features (such as lighting and cameras), signage, greater consideration of the potential negative impact of designated sports areas on non-core-user demographics, more organised active opportunities for girls, and facilitation of the right to play for older girls, not just boys. these insights and ideas were synthesised into a comprehensive ‘greenspace & us manifesto’ to support decision makers to understand girls/young women’s needs. the manifesto’s content and design elements were crafted collectively and later compiled into a final document in the form of a zine with the assistance of a local artist. figure 4 addressing the recurring discussions on fundamental necessities, such as seating and shelter, participants collaborated with resolve to create a table and shelter combination, representing a prototype of more inclusive greenspace furniture. the young women took an active role in developing and constructing prototype elements, and professional designers refined the concepts with continuous input from the participants (figure 5). the furniture piece was crafted by a local carpenter and installed in an east oxford park, complemented by informative printed boards detailing the project’s objectives and completed with hand-drawn illustrations by the group of young women. as part of the creative workshops, participants deliberated on a ‘strategy’ for presenting the manifesto and initial design concepts to chosen stakeholders during a celebratory event – the project’s ‘celebration day’. invitations were extended to friends, family, and county and city councillors, as well as to members of the public health team, oxford city greenspace development team and natural england. this strategic outreach ensured that the voices of the young women advocating for more inclusive and fulfilling cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202410 figure 4. the greenspace & us manifesto. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202411 greenspaces would resonate with influential decisionmakers, fostering a culture of active community engagement and empowerment. discussion: recommendations, lessons learned and next steps principles and recommendations the aim of greenspace & us was to explore how codesign approaches could be used to better understand the barriers and enablers influencing engagement with and use of greenspaces by girls and young women. we also wanted to use these insights to codesign and implement solutions to overcome any barriers and to leverage the facilitators we identified. using the comb model as our underlying approach, we assembled a collaborative group of girls and young women from east oxford to identify some of the factors affecting their capability, opportunity and figure 5. professional workup of the table and shelter designed by resolve collective in collaboration with participants who worked on the prototype. the final structure was built by toffee hammer carpentry and painted using designs and motifs from and by the young women. final structure photographed by reuben worlledge. © greenspace & us 2023 and reuben worlledge. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202412 motivation to utilise greenspaces (table 2). the comb model proved useful in capturing and analysing how an apparently simple specific outcome (lack of use of greenspaces) could result from a complex interplay of factors relating to capacity, opportunity and motivation. a limitation to the approach was that there was no prioritisation element in the model that could reveal if certain factors were more important than others in influencing behaviour. insights on the priorities could have been helpful in directing the use of scarce resources to providing interventions that had the potential to be effective and have the greatest impact. despite this, we were still able to gain insights from the participants and better able to define the challenges, so as to refine our model and cocreate an intervention that aimed to augment enablers and overcome some of the barriers to access identified in the workshops. one of the most important, but unexpected findings, was a challenge to the traditional narrative regarding greenspace benefit, which was not experienced by girls/young women in this area because it did not equitably meet their needs. in addition to the factors directly linked with the comb approach, we identified some principles and recommendations, as highlighted below: • equity of access: understanding of differential access should underpin all decisionmaking around the design and management of community greenspaces. this includes honest acceptance of how facilities and the distribution of space meet the needs of different demographic groups. • meaningful coproduction: we can, and must, get better at listening to young people and other marginalised groups, and involve them in decisionmaking about community outdoor spaces in an age and genderappropriate way. • taking safety concerns seriously: we must listen to young women’s safety concerns about greenspaces and treat them with the same importance and urgency as any other setting. • making nature normal: we must build access to greenspace and conversations about nature into the daily lives of young people. we cannot rely on childhood exposure to maintain connection with nature, which is essential for wellbeing. • the right to play: we have a responsibility to facilitate age and gender appropriate outdoor play for adolescents as well as younger children. • connected greenspaces: physical accessibility to greenspace for young women is as important as the characteristics of the space itself in influencing usage. further to this, it is important to note that these principles and recommendations are not directed towards any one organisation or sector (e.g. public, notforprofit, academic), but highlight general approaches that are likely to assist partnerships in working successfully together. how these principles and recommendations should be implemented will vary based on the target beneficiary’s local needs, local assets, local resource constraints (time, expertise, space, money) and relevant local political priorities. in east oxford, our consultation with multiple stakeholders, including the oxford city council, pointed to the youth shelter and benches (fig. 5) as being practical and useful solutions to meeting some of the key needs of the girls/young women, as expressed in their greenspace & us manifesto, for which we were able to obtain permission to construct and resource. the model generated by the young women in east oxford may need to be further refined if it is to be applied to other target populations to allow for variability in response, preference and local resource constraints. lessons learned the greenspace & us project revealed some very interesting, and unexpected, insights into the complexity of collaboration and approaches that can be taken to improve it. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202413 one of the most important factors in our ability to successfully engage with our young collaborators was our partnership with the name it youth project. having worked with local girls and young women in the past, they tend to play a crucial role in project development, recruitment and fostering meaningful relationships. otherwise, building the level of trust and engagement we achieved would likely not have been possible in the short timeframes we had for this project. as we began the process of running our workshops, one of the lessons we learned was the importance of being in agreement on the scope of the project and the definitions of the key terms we would use. in the early stages, we took for granted that everyone would have the same understanding of terms like ‘greenspace’. this led to some confusion, but we addressed this by taking a step back and, with our stakeholders, agreed a definition of greenspace, which was important because this process also revealed further insights that informed our understanding of the capability, opportunity and motivation of the participants to engage with greenspaces. in the future, we will take time to create a glossary of key terms with indicative definitions that we will open up to participants to modify as they feel appropriate. we may also experiment with doing this as a preworkshop exercise that could be done virtually, or the glossary could be given as a preread that is then discussed and agreed at the beginning of the workshops. our experience in running the workshops also highlighted the benefits of utilising creativity to engage with young people and with public authorities. these creative approaches provided a neutral platform that allowed for the articulation of ideas through different means (e.g. written word, drawing, use of colours) that may not have been possible if there had been a basic focus group approach with just questions and answers that required information to be conveyed only through verbal/written means. our creative partners skilfully provided a vital medium to enthuse and energise discussions, injecting an element of excitement and joy into the project. by utilising different means of engagement with the girls, young women and other stakeholders over the course of six sessions, we were able to build trust and rapport that allowed for more open and honest discussion, which enabled further collaboration and engagement opportunities. while navigating the complexity of collaboration, we learned valuable lessons about being led by young people. this process necessitated investing time and resources to align with their pace and terms, which fostered a sense of ownership and empowerment among the youth. at the end of the project, after we had completed the workshops and collected feedback from the girls and young women, they highlighted that they did not always feel like they were being listened to, and although their feedback indicated that they had enjoyed the creative activities, they also mentioned feeling that some of the activities and processes were imposed upon them. this reflects the tension between delivering a research project linked to funding requirements within a relatively short time, and the need to allow time for full coproduction. in retrospect, we recognise the potential benefits of fully coproducing methods and outputs, a crucial change that could address the challenge of empowering girls and young women without fostering unrealistic expectations of the project’s scope and influence. although too late to inform the methodology for this project, it is an important learning that we have been able to build into the design of subsequent projects. empowering young women and involving them in democratic decisionmaking processes are crucial steps towards fostering greater community engagement and inclusivity. by encouraging active participation and acknowledging their valuable insights, local authorities can strengthen the bonds between young women and their communities, thus promoting a collaborative approach to creating vibrant and responsive public environments for people and nature. using the com b model allowed the specific insights of the young women to refine and shape our understanding of the various factors influencing their behaviour, resulting in more targeted and effective suggestions for interventions. this approach proved highly flexible as it could be adapted and refined through the workshop process as further insights were identified. it also enabled collaboration between the disciplines, i.e. the arts and public health, and enabled us to bring together diverse expertise and the cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202414 lived experiences of the young women to better understand and address the barriers and enablers that were identified through the comb model. finally, when it came time to implement the solutions, we found that we lacked resources, especially money and time. one of the challenges of codesign is that one cannot a priori determine what the solution will be. for us, we lacked sufficient funds to design and build the shelter from the original funding we had for the project; however, we were thankfully able to raise the needed funds through financial support from the county council and donations from local organisations. we also did not account for the time needed to get permission from the city council to instal a physical structure in a park. we were able to eventually get permission through the city council, but there was a delay of several months from the conceptualisation of the idea to raising the additional funding, building the shelter and having it installed in the local park in east oxford. in the future, we would aim to be much more transparent about resource limitations to avoid creating unrealistic expectations that, if not met, could be very demotivating for the collaborators, especially the girls and young women, who invested so much time and energy in these processes. next steps despite the constraints of a tight funding schedule, our commitment to seeing girls and young women in east oxford increase their engagement with and use of greenspaces continues. the ‘greenspace & us’ group, with support from the name it youth project, continues to meet and maintain active conversations with the oxford city council’s greenspace development team. this sustained dialogue not only empowers girls and young women to offer their views on greenspace developments in the city, but also ensures that their voices resonate in shaping the future of greenspaces and improving equitable access to the benefits that can be derived from connection to nature. additionally, we would like to formally evaluate the impact of the shelter. we are interested, in particular, to determine whether girls from east oxford, those involved in greenspace & us and those from the wider east oxford community: are using the shelter what they are using it for if they are using it for purposes that they did not articulate during our workshops how frequently they are using it, and getting a breakdown of the uses based on different demographics. we would also be interested to know if other groups, apart from girls and young women, have begun to use the shelter. in addition to observing the purposes the shelter fulfils for these groups, we would like to understand the perceptions and attitudes of these users of the shelter, as well as their thoughts on the approach of greenspace & us to empowering girls and young women in east oxford. for example, could other groups feel like they were being excluded because the codesign and coproduction group consisted only of selected girls/young women, and could the unintended consequences of our approach lead to greater polarisation within the local community? acquiring answers to these types of questions could help us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our collaborative and codesign approaches. furthermore, these answers could provide critical insights into the barriers and facilitators of the use of codesigned and coproduced solutions. we are also interested in exploring other codesigned solutions, such as forest schools or organising group trips to local greenspaces, that adhere to the principles and recommendations above, but may require fewer resources to implement in practice. cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202415 conclusions the greenspace & us project offered a valuable platform for girls and young women to share and contemplate their experiences in accessing greenspaces, while providing public health and other stakeholders with profound insights into the lived reality of this often underserved group. although centred in east oxford, many of our findings transcend specific locations and possess broader applicability, especially of the important qualifiers of whether and how greenspaces can deliver health and wellbeing benefits equitably across a population. throughout the journey, as participants, facilitators and stakeholders, we collectively identified an array of factors influencing not only behaviour, but also the very essence of young women’s relationship with greenspaces. while some challenges, such as the provision of age and genderappropriate play equipment, call for straightforward solutions, others, such as addressing genuine safety concerns and fostering a sense of ownership over public spaces, demand a more nuanced, collaborative and coproduction approach. resolving these complex issues requires unwavering dedication, bold investment decisions, and a united effort alongside young people to achieve equitable access to greenspaces and public areas. while this initiative was born from public health endeavours, its implications extend beyond the confines of a single sector. action to dismantle barriers and enhance greenspace accessibility necessitates a shared vision and partnership among planning authorities, greenspace management teams, educational institutions, social work agencies, youth organisations, environmental sector entities, public health, and the broader society. rather than providing definitive answers, the insights garnered from greenspace & us have lain the groundwork for deeper conversations tailored to specific subgroups of the population, locations and spaces. they also serve as a powerful advocacy tool, advocating for an approach that fosters equity and inclusivity, one that is directly shaped by the voices of those who are often the most underrepresented and who have the most to gain. our collaborative journey reflects the intricacies of meaningful engagement and the impact of our collective endeavours extends beyond the project’s scope, leaving an enduring legacy of empowered youth shaping the built and green environments of their community, and continuing to produce further projects. acknowledgements we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our participants and partners for their invaluable contributions and unwavering support. without them, the realisation of this project would have remained beyond reach. their commitment has invigorated our pursuit of a greener, more inclusive community for all. we would particularly like to thank: • all the survey respondents and workshop participants, without whom the project would not have been possible • art and design collaborators, commonbooks, lisa curtis and toffee hammer carpentry • oxfordshire county council’s engagement team • oxford city council’s green space development team • active oxfordshire. references arbuthnott, k 2021, ‘mental wellbeing needs assessment’, mental wellbeing in children & young people. https://insight. oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/system/files/documents/mwbna_oxon_dec21_forweb.pdf cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202416 https://insight.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/system/files/documents/mwbna_oxon_dec21_forweb.pdf https://insight.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/system/files/documents/mwbna_oxon_dec21_forweb.pdf cole, s, goodenough, j, haniff, m, hussain, n, ibrahim, s, jani, a, jiggens, e, khan, a, langford, p, moore, l, montgomery, l, rowe, r & skinner, s 2023, greenspace & us: a community insights project to understand barriers and enablers around access to greenspace for teenage girls in east oxford. fields in trust 2022, green space index: latest analysis of great britain’s publicly accessible park and green space provision. https://www.fieldsintrust.org/greenspaceindex michie, s, atkins, l & west, r 2014, the behaviour change wheel: a guide to designing interventions, silverback publishing. richardson, m 2019. https://findingnature.org.uk/2019/06/12/teenagedip world health organisation 2022, ‘85% of adolescent girls don’t do enough physical activity: new who study calls for action’. https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/0403202285ofadolescentgirlsdontdoenoughphysicalctivitynewwhostudycallsforaction cole et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 17, no. 1 june 202417 https://www.fieldsintrust.org/green-space-index https://findingnature.org.uk/2019/06/12/teenage-dip https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-03-2022-85-of-adolescent-girls-don-t-do-enough-physical-ctivity-new-who-study-calls-for-action https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-03-2022-85-of-adolescent-girls-don-t-do-enough-physical-ctivity-new-who-study-calls-for-action gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 2 july 2025 © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: harriger, r., hough, t., maxwell, k., mccunney, d., trager, b. 2025, building bridges: a collective case study of an experiential education boundary spanning framework in action. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:2, 1–15. https:// doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9357 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au practice-based article building bridges: a collective case study of an experiential education boundary spanning framework in action rebekah harriger1, tyler hough2, katia maxwell3, dennis mccunney4,*, ben trager5 1 office of career services and experiential learning, harrisburg university of science and technology, pennsylvania, usa 2 career development office, rice university, texas, usa 3 quality enhancement plan, athens state university, alabama, usa 4 center for student success & dept. of political science, east carolina university, north carolina, usa 5 center for student experience and talent, university of wisconsin-milwaukee, wisconsin, usa corresponding author: dennis mccunney, mccunneyw@ecu.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9357 article history: received 24/09/2024; revised 21/05/2025; accepted 26/05/2025; published 07/2025 abstract in higher education, boundary spanners play a crucial role in translating information, knowledge and culture across diverse stakeholder groups. this reflective essay shares insights from experiential education (ee) leaders who, through the society for experiential education (see) fellowship program, examined the complexities of boundary spanning in experiential learning. our collective inquiry highlighted the pressing need for adaptable frameworks to help professionals navigate the dynamic challenges of their roles. drawing upon our lived experiences, we developed the experiential education boundary spanner framework, which includes four main pillars: (1) translating principles of practice; (2) unlocking points of access; (3) balancing stakeholder needs; and (4) envisioning and invigorating experiential education. this framework aims to assist educators and practitioners in fostering meaningful partnerships and enhancing the integration of experiential learning into curricula. the essay will outline our literature review on boundary spanning, introduce the authors and their diverse experiences, and declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9357 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9357 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:mccunneyw@ecu.edu https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i2.9357 articulate the methodology employed in our collective inquiry. ultimately, we aim to shed light on how boundary spanners can effectively respond to the evolving demands of education while enriching student learning experiences and community engagement. keywords experiential education; boundary spanning; case study; higher education; high impact practices introduction in today’s rapidly evolving educational landscape, effective experiential education (ee) is more essential than ever. as higher education professionals, our diverse institutional roles – from directing community engagement to teaching and leading career services – shape how we understand and implement ee. we recognise that strategies effective in urban universities may not translate seamlessly to smaller liberal arts colleges. this collective case study explores our roles as boundary spanners – individuals bridging students, faculty, industry partners and communities. each of us brings distinct insights on integrating ee into our work while addressing workforce needs and community demands. our collaboration surfaces the nuances of practice and invites broader dialogue. by embedding real-world projects, community engagement, and hands-on learning into programs, we aim to cultivate both technical expertise and professional readiness. this dual focus equips students to navigate careers while fostering social responsibility. boundary spanners often share key traits: a focus on systems thinking; prioritising connection over constraint; awareness of bias and perspective; empathetic listening to build trust; and a commitment to interdisciplinary, mission-aligned leadership. these attributes are vital in higher education where disciplinary silos can hinder student learning. this article highlights the lived experiences of society for experiential education (see) fellows who serve as boundary spanners. through collaborative reflection and qualitative analysis, we present the experiential education boundary spanner framework (figure 1, below) – a guide for practitioners and scholar-practitioners in higher education. our narrative journey explores the challenges and successes of navigating stakeholder networks in ee. while existing literature defines boundary spanning in theory, our work responds to the need for applied frameworks that guide individual professionals. drawing from diverse experiences, this framework offers a foundation for reflective practice across institutional contexts. the following sections review relevant literature, introduce the authors, and describe the origins of our inquiry. we outline our methodology and present the framework’s four pillars: (1) translating principles of practice; (2) unlocking points of access; (3) balancing stakeholder needs; and (4) envisioning and invigorating experiential education. through the lens of lived experience, we offer a grounded, practical perspective on boundary spanning. as we share our individual stories and collective insights, we underscore the essential role of boundary spanners in shaping ee practices that benefit both students and the communities they serve. boundary spanning in higher education a robust body of literature addresses boundary spanning within higher education, offering a well-developed conceptual foundation. however, there remains a lack of specificity regarding its application across varied institutional contexts. while boundary spanning is relevant in many areas – including ee – few guiding frameworks exist to support these practices. this section synthesises key literature on boundary spanning in higher education as it informs the development of an ee boundary spanning framework. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20252 the concept of boundary spanning in higher education is rooted in leadership theory. in response to increasing complexity and interconnection, scholars argue that executives must evolve from boundaryprotecting managers to boundary-spanning leaders (lee et al. 2014). while this transformation applies broadly, in higher education, faculty and staff often see themselves – by virtue of their roles – as the leaders charged with initiating this shift. a 2009 white paper by yip, ernst and campbell defines boundary spanning leadership, highlights a gap in capabilities, and issues a call to action. the authors identify five common types of boundaries relevant to higher education: (1) horizontal; (2) vertical; (3) stakeholder; (4) demographic; and (5) geographic. horizontal boundaries exist across institutional functions; vertical boundaries reflect organisational hierarchies; and stakeholder boundaries arise between the university and its external community. this framework is particularly relevant for ee practitioners, who regularly collaborate across these dimensions with administrators, faculty, students, and community partners. some scholarly inquiries examine boundary spanning in higher education through the lens of collaboration and its outcomes. andreasen (2023), for example, studied a school-university partnership in which school-based mentor teachers were co-employed on short-term contracts as faculty members. this model exemplifies boundary spanning in practice and demonstrates how collaboration between teacher practitioners and faculty can improve educational quality for early career teachers. publicly engaged scholars: next generation engagement and the future of higher education (2023) similarly highlights a new generation of civically engaged scholars, introducing the concept of a boundary-spanning researcher identity. the book offers a paradigm for public engagement, shares personal narratives from individual scholars, and concludes by challenging readers to consider how public scholarship is reshaping higher education. sandmann et al. (2014, p. 84) examined how boundary-spanning community engagement practitioners ‘engage in unique behaviors that occur at the periphery of groups, organizations, and institutions’. in this same line of inquiry, williams (2011) used a survey to identify, describe, and categorise boundary-spanning competencies and effective collaborative behaviour. viewing boundary spanning through collaboration is both logical and necessary, as the practice is inherently partnership-based and designed to enhance educational outcomes through cross-boundary connection. another approach to boundary spanning in higher education occurs through the lens of learning. roberts, havemann and dewaard (2023, p. 2) describe ‘learning designers’ who work ‘with educators to develop technologically supported and enhanced learning opportunities’. the authors discuss the role that learning designers have within third spaces, where ‘learning designers can therefore be a bridge between different domains of knowledge and ways of working, and can encourage design that respects the voices, ideas and perspectives of multiple learners in collaborative and interactive knowledge-building experiences’ (roberts, havemann & dewaard 2023, p. 6). while the authors introduce a view of boundary spanning through the lens of a particular type of professional, they still do not document a model or framework that others may be able to follow. much of the existing literature on boundary spanning – both theoretical and applied – focuses on specific areas such as professional development, collaboration and learning enhancement. building on this scholarship, an applied framework rooted in ee and informed by lived experience can meaningfully expand the field. in this reflective article, the authors propose a generalisable framework to help higher education practitioners understand the nuances of boundary spanning across diverse functional contexts within ee. about the authors in 2023, the see’s fellows program convened a dozen ee scholars and practitioners, forming a community of higher education leaders committed to bridging practice and scholarship. through strengthened connections, we discovered a shared link across our diverse campus contexts. despite varying roles, we all harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20253 embodied practitioner-scholar identities (green 2023) and acted as boundary spanners (hora & millar 2011). this realisation opened the door to developing a broadly applicable framework to guide ee practice in higher education. in what follows, we share the experiences and pedagogies that shape our boundaryspanning perspectives. these brief author narratives demonstrate the range of contexts and roles in which boundary spanners inhabit. ben trager: leveraging community partnerships to chart a collaborative future in higher education at the university of wisconsin-milwaukee, i lead community engagement and career services initiatives that equip students to graduate prepared for both professional success and civic responsibility. situated within a new centre under enrollment management and student success, our work emphasises access, experiential learning and meaningful contribution. my background in urban education policy and workforce training informs a learner-centred approach that connects individual development with systemic change. through partnerships with community organisations and industry, i ensure students gain real-world skills while advancing institutional goals. this dual focus transforms education into a collaborative force for social progress. katia maxwell: cultivating experiential impact from coding classrooms to campus-wide success as a computer science professor at athens state university, i’ve always championed learning by doing. in my courses, students engage in sponsored projects, hands-on experiments and career-simulating case studies to build real-world technical and professional skills. this work led to my appointment as director of the experience | success quality enhancement plan, and most recently, assistant dean for the college of arts and sciences, where i now lead efforts to embed experiential learning across the curriculum and cocurricular programs. whether students are building software, conducting research or analysing case studies, the goal is the same: preparing them for meaningful roles in the workforce. rebekah harriger: fueling workforce readiness by bridging stem careers and experiential learning at harrisburg university of science and technology, i lead efforts to integrate career-oriented experiential learning into our stem-focused curriculum. using workforce data and industry collaboration, we align academic programs with evolving career demands. my background in career services and operations informs a strategy that connects student development with labor market needs. by embedding real-world experience throughout students’ education, we position them for career success while contributing to institutional and community impact. our recent conference presentation introduced a boundary-spanning framework that invites collaboration and shared vision across sectors. tyler hough: using experiential learning to power partnerships for good throughout my career leading urban ee centres and now in my role at rice business, i’ve focused on building partnerships that advance both student success and social good. experiential learning – rooted in freire, kolb and dewey – has been central to this mission. at the chicago center and the philadelphia center, students engaged in immersive, place-based programs that developed leadership and critical consciousness. now in houston, i connect mba students with industry partners to tackle societal challenges like climate change and equity. by translating knowledge into action, i help shape business as a tool for collective progress. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20254 dennis mccunney: advancing holistic student development with global and civic values inspired by jesuit values of cura personalis and learning through contact, my work at east carolina university centres on developing students as ethical, engaged leaders. as director of intercultural affairs and assistant professor of leadership studies, i focus on democratic engagement, inclusive dialogue and community-based learning. with a background in urban education and civic engagement, i integrate service-learning, reflective practice and global perspectives into academic and co-curricular spaces. my goal is to equip students not only with knowledge but with the empathy and agency to create meaningful change in an interconnected world. methods our inquiry employed a qualitative interpretive lens and explored varying cases of similar phenomena – boundary spanning in the context of ee in higher education – to construct meaning. we drew on action research (stringer 2007) and practitioner inquiry (ravitch 2014) frameworks to support the goal of producing practical, actionable steps that could improve professional practice for those engaged in ee in higher education. the iterative, flexible process of action research (merriam & tisdell 2016) and drawing on experience as data through practitioner inquiry (green 2023) lend themselves to integrating practice and knowledge generation, uniquely applicable to this line of boundary spanner inquiry. to build a foundation of knowledge, we began by compiling ee support materials from our institutions, including mission statements, process documents, faculty course development templates and partnership guides. each member reviewed these resources and engaged in open coding (benaquisto 2008), identifying key concepts through line-by-line reading. we then shared observations, identified common themes, and discussed differences – conversations that generated further insight into boundary-spanning roles. we grouped insights into categories, which one member distilled into overarching themes. the group reviewed and finalised these, resulting in four pillars described in the next section. we presented the framework at the 2023 see conference, using attendee feedback to refine pillar characteristics and consider broader applications. during the review and writing process, we further clarified the subpoints within each pillar. findings figure 1 presents a flexible framework for practitioners and scholar-practitioners who serve as boundary spanners in higher education. comprising four non-sequential, adaptable pillars, the framework allows users to engage with or move between pillars based on the demands of their specific context. the four pillars – (1) translating principles of practice; (2) unlocking points of access; (3) balancing stakeholder needs; and (4) envisioning and invigorating experiential education – offer guiding tenets grounded in the authors’ commitment to the transformative potential of ee. rooted in lived experience, the framework provides a pragmatic, authentic lens for navigating the complexities of boundary spanning. in the following sections, we detail each pillar, share examples of applied practice from our experiences, and describe moments when we’ve navigated the often messy, sometimes deeply fulfilling, and consistently complex realities of boundary-spanning work. 1. translating principles of practice in the framework, an individual boundary spanner operates from a deep understanding of how to translate ee principles of practice, as defined by see’s eight principles, into diverse contexts and with different stakeholders. because ee varies across different types, disciplines and local environments, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20255 https://www.societyforee.org/8-principles figure 1. experiential education boundary spanner framework approach does not work. instead, boundary spanners must continually adapt and apply these principles to the unique challenges of each setting, frequently crossing the stakeholder, horizontal, vertical, geographic and demographic boundaries described by yip, ernst and campbell (2009). for example, a boundary-spanning faculty member and student affairs educator might partner with a community organisation to design a service project grounded in ‘preparedness and training’. from a student affairs perspective, this involves aligning goals and outcomes by connecting the organisation with faculty and students. preparedness includes setting clear expectations for supervision, student roles and tracking hours – not only for students and faculty but also for the community partner. an orientation session helps establish communication and clarify responsibilities with follow-up meetings as needed. in the absence of a boundary-spanning student affairs educator, the faculty member must ensure that both students and the partner organisation are adequately prepared and informed. the boundary spanner’s collaborative behaviour (williams 2011) is essential because it serves as a catalyst for ee activities and balances the needs of multiple stakeholders. the following sections illustrate this principle in practice. practice in action example one: bridging theory and practice by activating service-learning for sustainable educational change by ben trager in the spring of 2023, i developed a service-learning project with a faculty member in the architecture department and two partners from a stem-focused k–12 organisation. the project engaged over 150 architecture students, working in groups of three at metropolitan schools. each group spent 20 hours supporting classroom activities defined by teachers. as the semester progressed, students designed harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20256 architectural plans to improve learning environments and presented them to teachers and schools at the term’s end. i served as the liaison between faculty and community partners – sharing experiential and servicelearning best practices, and tailoring strategies to the local school context. these examples helped build mutual understanding and translated ee principles into practice. i guided both the professor and partner through key service-learning concepts and facilitated goal setting to align expectations and ensure both student learning and community relevance. ee efforts often risk being fragmented. i worked intentionally to expand the project’s impact and sustainability. one approach was inviting additional community partners, students and campus leaders to the final public poster session, thereby increasing visibility and institutional awareness. early on, i recognised i would need to act as both activator and coordinator – managing deadlines, organising a mid-semester roundtable and overseeing the final event. i also led much of the foundational work to keep the project moving. beyond logistics, i facilitated visioning with partners to embed long-term goals and community impact into the project. unlike recurring ee programs, this new initiative required intensive presence, responsiveness and ongoing engagement. this experience reinforced the demanding nature of launching ee projects – especially those with multiple external stakeholders. my role extended beyond coordination to relationship-building, contextual translation, and attentiveness to evolving needs. the emotional and logistical labor involved should be acknowledged in how institutions structure and support ee roles. reflecting on this project, i now recognise the importance of accounting for the time, capacity and relational effort required to develop meaningful ee initiatives. these factors must inform practitioner role design – especially for institutions aiming to scale experiential learning in community-driven, sustainable ways. practice in action example two: creating a shared framework for experiential learning to improve student success by rebekah harriger during my first few months in the role, i recognised the need for consistency, standards and a shared understanding of ee among faculty. using see’s best practices, i reviewed and refined our experiential learning processes to emphasise intentionality, preparation and reflection. for instance, i worked with program leads to ensure learning objectives were clearly defined and aligned with both academic and career readiness goals, as well as our eight university core competencies. i also integrated structured reflection activities for faculty to embed in their courses to deepen student learning outcomes. to create a collaborative model of ee, i organised regular university-wide training sessions for new and current faculty, providing a foundation in see’s best practices. these workshops focused on practical application and covered topics such as defining experiential learning, leveraging assessment tools, and developing meaningful experiences. implementing this training was challenging because the newly created content was unfamiliar to faculty participants. i also discovered tension between the former ee staff member and faculty. navigating this as a new staff member required patience and relationship-building as i worked to establish credibility and gain trust. i leaned heavily on my supervisor – also a faculty member – to serve as a liaison while i immersed myself in hu’s experiential learning framework to align my approach with institutional priorities. to support consistency, i created templates and resources such as reflection prompts, rubrics and a faculty guide to experiential learning. recognising the need for a broad but adaptable approach, i designed these tools to align with high-level standards while allowing faculty to tailor content to their program or accrediting body. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20257 to provide ongoing support, i reinstated our experiential learning committee to foster collaboration, troubleshoot challenges and share best practices. this helped ensure faculty felt supported and confident in delivering quality experiential learning. through this initiative, i enhanced the consistency and quality of experiential learning across the university and strengthened partnerships between experiential learning staff and academic programs. faculty gained a deeper understanding of how to design impactful experiences that prepare students for success, while students benefited from more intentional learning aligned with industry expectations. 2. unlocking access points early research on boundary spanners illustrates a multifaceted role involving both resource management and the creation of pathways that enable others to access those resources. this process – ‘unlocking access points’ – is closely tied to the work of roberts, havemann and dewaard (2023, p. 6), who describe boundary spanning as bridging ‘different domains of knowledge and ways of working’. first, boundary spanners must identify where institutional knowledge resides and learn to navigate complex systems to retrieve it. second, they play a crucial role in disseminating resources – expertise, networks, or materials – that are often inaccessible to outsiders but critical to ee initiatives. they must also create new avenues for access, which can involve launching innovative collaborations, using technology or developing partnerships to fill existing gaps. institutions without centralised ee infrastructure face particular challenges: without supportive communities or established partnerships, boundary spanners may work in isolation, leading to redundancy or missed opportunities. access points also function as hubs for mutual learning, enabling boundary spanners to share insights, best practices and support. by fostering these exchanges, boundary spanners are better equipped to navigate challenges and seize emerging opportunities. regardless of title, ee boundary spanners must prioritise information sharing to unlock access points. this means not only distributing resources but also building connections, dismantling silos, and working across institutional and external boundaries (yip, ernst & campbell 2009). sandmann et al. (2014) describe boundary spanners’ position at the periphery of organisations – a vantage point that requires them to reach inward to establish communication channels and partnerships. this strategic positioning enhances collaboration and access, amplifying the impact of ee. the following stories from rebekah harriger and katia maxwell demonstrate how unlocking access points plays out in practice, showcasing their boundary-spanning strategies to advance ee on their campuses. practice in action example one: empowering students through adaptable, workforce-aligned experiential learning by rebekah harriger at harrisburg university of science and technology, experiential learning is a keystone of the student experience. students are required to complete 13 credits of experiential learning. however, as our programs have evolved, both students and faculty expressed a desire for additional opportunities to engage in experiential learning while earning academic credit. our students found the 13 credits so valuable, and i started hearing that they wanted more options, more flexibility, and options that were better aligned with their career goals. fortunately, faculty interests and support served as a tailwind force in our desire to expand opportunities for hands-on learning. recognising this need, my team and i implemented two new credit-bearing experiential learning courses that were flexible, allowing a specific experience to be awarded up to four units. our team first identified the gap in available experiential learning options for students and the registrar’s office and the management of the course. established relationships with students and faculty allowed us to quickly understand what harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20258 was working and where the key opportunities were. i leveraged my relationships and understanding of campus technology, increasing our likelihood for scaling these courses. we have empowered students across programs to pursue additional career aligned experiential learning opportunities, providing them with an additional pathway in their career readiness. this initiative has not only met the demand for the expanded experiential learning opportunities but also strengthened our institutions experiential learning programs to prepare students for their future careers. these courses have also aligned academic offerings with workforce needs and institutional goals. practice in action example two: expanding experiential pathways through emerging faculty mentorship program by katia maxwell athens state university is a distinctive institution with an upper-division model, meaning every student who enrolls is a transfer student from a two-year college or another four-year institution. in my dual role as both a faculty member and the quality enhancement plan (qep) director, i quickly discovered that unlocking access points was key to supporting this diverse, largely non-traditional student population, as well as the faculty and staff who serve them. one of my early observations was that many colleagues were already incorporating elements of ee into their teaching but without labeling it as such or having a clear way to share their work. to address this, i launched a monthly newsletter during the first year of the qep, highlighting faculty leading innovative ee projects. the goal was to celebrate strong campus el practices and spotlight adaptable models. i partnered with the provost to include announcements in campus-wide communications and used a blog platform to extend outreach and create a culture where faculty felt recognised and empowered to explore ee. to foster more personalised support, we launched the ee mentor program. faculty and staff – either volunteering or recruited for their expertise – serve as resources for anyone developing or refining an ee project. their profiles appear on the qep website, offering an accessible peer network for guidance on curriculum, assessment and community partnerships. with ee happening across campus but lacking centralised coordination, the qep provides a unifying umbrella. as a signature initiative of the qep, the ee mentor program now serves as a professional development hub connecting faculty to workshops, collaborators and community partners. by breaking down institutional barriers, encouraging cross-departmental dialogue, and providing a clear mentor network, we’ve significantly expanded pathways to experiential learning. these efforts not only make ee more visible and attainable for faculty, staff and students but also set the stage for future growth – ideally culminating in the establishment of a dedicated ee office in the years to come. 3. balancing stakeholder needs in higher education, the role of a boundary spanner in ee requires careful consideration of multiple stakeholders to create meaningful opportunities. a primary responsibility of boundary spanners is to ensure that the diverse needs of all participants are effectively addressed, balancing the interests of each group involved. it’s a tough job. hora and millar (2011) offer effective communication and cultural brokering as key boundary spanner skills, which facilitate the inclusion of diverse perspectives and, in turn, may support balancing the needs of the various stakeholders. educating and communicating the concept of mutuality – and its practical application in collaborative activities – to stakeholders is essential. while faculty and students often share overarching objectives related to learning outcomes and skill development, the perspectives and needs of external stakeholders can be marginalised, creating unforeseen challenges. for instance, one author’s firsthand experience showed that faculty frequently outline goals for their students without fully considering the explicit needs of partnering harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 20259 organisations. as a result, a gap may arise between the outcomes envisioned for students and the additional requirements or constraints of these external partners. moreover, while a particular student group might excel at meeting one stakeholder’s needs, a boundary spanner can employ their skills as cultural brokers to identify ‘different models as contributors to the overarching goals and objectives of the partnership’ and to invite ‘dialogue about how to deal with those differences’ (hora & millar 2011, p. 87). this approach, in turn, can help identify other student groups to fulfill additional needs – maximising mutually beneficial partnerships. ultimately, the success of ee initiatives depends on forming partnerships and building relationships that serve the interests of all parties. boundary spanners play an indispensable role navigating stakeholder dynamics and cultivating collaborative engagement. the following example from practice illustrates how a boundary spanner can balance these diverse needs in practice that may resonate if you support faculty, navigate institutional demands or advance student learning. practice in action example one: realigning program outcomes to measure relevant real-world learning by tyler hough at the chicago center, i led an internal academic self-study to document our student learning impact, highlight outcomes not easily captured in coursework, and align our programs with frameworks used by partner universities. we drew on established tools, including the aac&u value rubrics and nace career readiness competencies, to assess how we delivered transformative experiences and how our efforts measured against widely accepted standards (see: https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics; https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined). while these frameworks offered a strong starting point, i adapted them to reflect the immersive, justiceoriented nature of our urban courses. early on, some faculty questioned our focus – such as prioritising intercultural competence over global learning – and debated which definitions would guide our goals. even after reaching consensus, steps like introducing teaching observations or formal assessments raised concerns. one long-time faculty member remarked, ‘i’ve taught this course for a decade and worked in the field for 30 years. i know what works. what do you want to assess?’ to address scepticism, i illustrated how frameworks could support – not replace – expertise, using examples like neighborhood site visits, community interviews and reflective journaling. by connecting assessment to everyday student experiences, i reframed it as a tool to illuminate and celebrate strong teaching. in workshops and individual meetings, open-minded faculty embraced the question, ‘how does my teaching align with our intended learning outcomes?’ more hesitant colleagues began to see that our goal was to enhance – not challenge – their professional judgement. internally, i grounded this work in our values, showing how thoughtful assessment could strengthen our credibility and uphold our place-based mission. externally, i translated these efforts for board members, advisory groups, and academic leaders – each with their own language and priorities. demonstrating the value and rigour of our approach helped affirm that aligning with recognised competencies benefited students and met our affiliates’ expectations. by bridging faculty perspectives, institutional demands and student needs, i honoured diverse interests while staying true to the center’s vision. mapping established frameworks to our mission allowed us to uphold faculty autonomy, support accountability, and affirm the transformative power of experiential learning. this balance enabled us to highlight curricular impact while speaking to broader academic standards. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202510 https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined practice in action example two: reimagining global learning through collaborative community engagement by dennis mccunney our institution has a strong tradition of community engagement and a commitment to regional social and economic mobility. community-engaged learning is central to many of our ee programs, which are interdisciplinary and involve multiple stakeholders. offices like the center for leadership and civic engagement and the office for global affairs often serve as coordinating hubs but do not always oversee specific programming, budgets or outcomes. while serving on east carolina university’s alternative break planning team and the global affairs advisory committee, i recognised a gap: students needed short-term global learning opportunities that were flexible, affordable, community-engaged, and grounded in high-quality learning. meeting this need with existing resources presented several challenges. first, program overlap was common. most students earned study abroad credit through individual departments, with faculty independently proposing programs – sometimes leading to multiple, simultaneous proposals for trips to the same location, like switzerland. second, integrating community engagement was difficult. while some faculty included service-learning, it was often dependent on personal initiative or third-party providers. encouraging faculty to embed community partnerships required demonstrating how these collaborations could enrich student learning. third, sustainability was an issue. many programs ran only once, and cancellations due to low enrollment left faculty solely responsible, with little systemic support or reflection. in response, i proposed an alternative model that prioritised equity and addressed student, faculty and community partner needs. we began by identifying community organisations aligned with our values – such as critical reflection, experiential learning and honouring local leaders as co-educators. we tackled recurring barriers like financial constraints, major restrictions, low enrollment and weak community ties. the resulting short-term global programs offered maximum flexibility, and students could earn independent study credit, even though the programs were housed in student affairs. initially, our push for flexibility and innovation was met with scepticism. a rigid divide between curricular and co-curricular programming had taken root. however, as the first programs launched, we identified improvements that benefited all stakeholders. a key breakthrough came from bringing together decision-makers from financial aid, study abroad, student affairs, community engagement and academic units – including the honours college. their collaboration made the model viable. a college dean even joined one of our programs in puerto rico, gaining direct insight and building further support. this collaborative strategy created campus-wide investment and helped establish a sustainable, inclusive model for global experiential learning. today, these programs represent three things: true collaborative ee efforts, symbols of our institution’s service-minded ethos, and a deep commitment to student success. 4. visioning and invigorating experiential education boundary spanners play a pivotal role in advocating for ee and ensuring its long-term sustainability. one of the most important tasks is to establish and regularly communicate a clear vision. they drive ee initiatives forward by fulfilling multiple responsibilities, such as educating collaborators and partners on best practices and aligning them with the overarching organisational vision for ee. additionally, boundary spanners articulate and communicate shared goals for specific ee programs, helping stakeholders stay focused on intended outcomes. central to this process is maintaining alignment with the mission and vision of ee, guiding partners to stay on track, and advancing targeted objectives within various contexts. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202511 in higher education, boundary spanners serve as educators by translating ee principles to address the diverse needs of stakeholders, all while upholding universal best practices. they also foster collaboration among stakeholders who may have interconnected yet distinct goals, expertly navigating tensions and conflicts to keep everyone moving toward shared objectives. acting as the functional centre of ee initiatives, boundary spanners spur action and progression in both programming and practice. recognising the competing priorities of partners, they launch and sustain ee activities, providing essential support to community partners and faculty who are integrating ee into their specific roles. they also spearhead continuous improvement by reviewing current practices, engaging with stakeholders, and making recommendations for enhancement. in essence, boundary spanners serve as catalysts for advancing ee, ensuring it continues to evolve and flourish in varied institutional settings. the following first-person accounts illustrate how boundary spanners bring ee visions to life, showing how strategic planning, stakeholder collaboration, and thoughtful program design can transform existing structures into robust, outcome-driven initiatives. practice in action example one: transforming mba career treks into experiential pathways by tyler hough upon joining the jones graduate school of business at rice university, i recognised an opportunity to refresh our existing career trek program. although the treks received consistently positive feedback from students, it was not entirely clear how they supported deeper learning or linked directly to our broader institutional or departmental objectives. i began by convening a group of internal stakeholders to clarify the primary objectives of our career treks and agree on a set of student learning outcomes. together, we determined that students participating in each trek should increase their industry knowledge, develop more confidence in networking, and gain a clearer sense of how their skills align with employer needs. we then crafted an assessment strategy, including targeted survey questions that we administered at a specific point in the trek experience, to get near realtime insights into students’ learning. by gathering data in person, while students just wrapped up their company visits, we not only achieved higher response rates but also collected richer feedback. from there, we used the survey results to refine future treks, ensuring that visits to innovative technology companies, for example, would deliver the learning outcomes we identified. this process provided tangible connections between our career treks and our school’s overarching mission of preparing students for impactful careers. this newly designed program empowers students to: – understand how their current skills and interests align with – or need development to meet – industry demands –deepen their knowledge of specific industries and career pathways –identify actionable steps to secure employment in their chosen fields –build confidence in networking and professional interactions. by grounding career treks in clear learning objectives and refining them through real-time student feedback, we transformed the program from a series of site visits into a strategic experiential learning experience – one that better supports students’ professional development and advances our institutional goals. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202512 practice in action example two: laying the foundation for a crosscampus ee collaborative by katia maxwell while my initial efforts as qep director focused on raising awareness of ee and providing immediate resources, it quickly became clear that long-term success required a broader vision – one that fully embedded ee into the fabric of athens state university. as an upper-division institution serving exclusively transfer students, we needed a cohesive plan that leveraged our strengths and aligned with the varied goals of students, faculty and external partners. from the beginning, i identified the absence of a centralised ee office as a critical gap. strong initiatives – ranging from sponsored student projects to community-engaged research – existed across departments but remained siloed. i began advocating for a dedicated ee office, staffed by professionals who could coordinate and elevate experiential opportunities. consolidating efforts would streamline access for internal stakeholders and external collaborators alike. simultaneously, i worked to build the infrastructure to support such an office. a key move was launching professional development for faculty and staff. using qep funds, we sponsored participation in national workshops and conferences, exposing our team to leading-edge practices. we also created the experiential learning faculty fellowship program, offering internal grants to support curricular and co-curricular innovation. this encouraged experimentation and generated data on what works in our upper-division context. equally important was consistent campus communication. through newsletters, blog posts and provostled announcements, we shared success stories to foster a sense of shared ownership. the goal was to lay a strong foundation so that when an ee office is formally established, faculty are ready to lead, and students clearly see its relevance to their personal and professional growth. we have also ensured ee remains responsive to workforce trends and the evolving needs of our transfer student population. ultimately, our vision is for experiential learning to be a fully integrated part of our institutional identity – preparing students with the skills, insights and experience they need to thrive. as both faculty and qep director, i approach the framework’s pillars from different angles. in teaching, i lean on pillars 1 and 3 to directly impact students and curriculum. in my leadership role, i focus on pillars 2 and 4, recognising the need to equip faculty and staff with the tools and structures that make ee effective for both students and community partners. through this work, we have taken key steps toward building a sustainable, inclusive ecosystem for ee – aligned with our mission and built to adapt to future needs. implications and further lines of inquiry how, then, can these evolving takeaways from the lived experiences of a collection of boundary spanners both contribute to the field and be applied in other contexts? we offer a few suggestions that can serve as a heuristic for others hoping to enhance their professional practice. in one sense, these four pillars remind us of the need for a certain amount of executive maturity and political wherewithal to help boundary spanners be successful. the ‘push and pull’ of cultural rules within organisations – and specifically within higher education institutions – can slow the work of effective partnerships and progress. as noted above, boundary spanners cannot simply check off items on a ‘to-do’ list to accomplish their work. rather, they must carefully cultivate relationships and navigate culture over time. the ability to see the ‘big picture’, demonstrate sound judgement and resist siloed behaviour can allow boundary spanners to navigate different cultural spaces and achieve common goals. this leadership quality can be honed over time and serves as a particularly useful skill in most contexts. so, the proposed framework should also be viewed as an approach to professional development for experiential educators. further harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202513 inquiries could examine the extent to which boundary spanners demonstrate executive maturity skills and how that competency contributes to their own success. building on the notion of competency development, as a group of co-authors, we often discussed the important role of self-care within this framework. as originators, builders and sustainers, where do boundary spanners get their ignition? a certain amount of intrinsic motivation and institutional thinking helps to make effective boundary spanning work happen in ee contexts. when this is the case, what is both the cost and the benefit to the individual professional? how can a supportive community – much like our community of see fellows – provide guidance and serve as a sounding board when the boundary spanning role is less understood and underappreciated? and how can these types of support networks prevent burnout? these are other lines of inquiry that could contribute to improved morale among professionals and, ultimately, employee retention. conclusion our process of articulating these guiding tenets – translating principles of practice, unlocking points of access, balancing stakeholder needs and envisioning and invigorating ee – helped to give meaning to some of our lived professional experiences. while this is a working model that should be critiqued and molded to fit one’s needs, it can serve as a guide for others who occupy these unique spaces within higher education settings. to reiterate, this model is meant to serve as a guide for practice and should be adapted to particular contexts, rather than strictly followed. through our collective case study process, other questions – like self-care for boundary spanners, resources for professional development, needed competencies like executive maturity – emerged as future areas of exploration. in the end, effective – and well-supported – boundary spanners can provide high-quality, transformative learning experiences for our students and community partners. this serves as the ultimate measure of our success as educators. references andreasen, jk 2023, ‘school-based mentor teachers as boundary-crossers in an initial teacher education partnership’, teaching and teacher education, vol. 122, no. 2, pp. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103960 benaquisto, l 2008, ‘codes and coding’ in lm given (ed), the sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods, sage publications inc, thousand oaks, ca, pp. 86–89. green, pm 2023, ‘the scholar-administrator imperative: developing scholarship and research through practice to build the community engagement field’, metropolitan universities, vol. 34, no. 3. https://doi.org/10.18060/26863 hora, mt & millar, sb 2011, a guide to building education partnerships: navigating diverse cultural contexts to turn challenge into promise, routledge, new york. lee, l, horth, dm & ernst, c 2014, boundary spanning in action: tactics for transforming today’s borders into tomorrow’s frontiers (white paper), center for creative leadership, https://doi.org/10.35613/ccl.2014.2044 merriam, sb & tisdell, ej 2016, qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation, 4th edn, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. ravitch, sm 2014, ‘the transformative power of taking an inquiry stance on practice: practitioner research as narrative and counter-narrative’, perspectives on urban education, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 5–10. roberts, v, havemann, l & dewaard, h 2023, ‘open learning designers on the margins’ in t jaffer, s govender & l czerniewicz (eds), learning design voices, edtech books, pp. 41–56. https://doi.org/10.59668/279.12262 sandmann, lr, jordan, jw, mull, cd & valentine, t 2014, ‘measuring boundary-spanning behaviors in community engagement’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 83–96. harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202514 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103960 https://doi.org/10.18060/26863 https://doi.org/10.35613/ccl.2014.2044 https://doi.org/10.59668/279.12262 stringer, et 2007, action research, 3rd edn, sage publications inc, thousand oaks, ca. williams, p 2011, ‘the life and times of the boundary spanner’, journal of integrated care, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 26–33. https://doi.org/10.1108/14769011111148140 yip, j & ernst, c & campbell, m 2009, boundary spanning leadership: mission critical perspectives from the executive suite (white paper), center for creative leadership, viewed 28 may 2025, https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/ uploads/2020/02/boundaryspanningleadership.pdf harriger et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 2 july 202515 https://doi.org/10.1108/14769011111148140 https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/boundaryspanningleadership.pdf https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/boundaryspanningleadership.pdf © 2025 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: rink, b., porter, g., maskiti, b., clark, s., barber, c., with peer researchers ashitey, j., evans, a., jucwa, s., malangabi, b., mpiliso, s., ntozini, s., pulickal abdul azeez, a., siyatha, t., sosanti, b., uddin, r., watson, d. 2025. a curated walk with peer researchers and their communities: engaging a research journey toward meaningful impact. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 18:1, 1– 15. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v18i1.9217 issn 18363393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 18, no. 1 january 2025 research article (peer reviewed) a curated walk with peer researchers and their communities: engaging a research journey toward meaningful impact bradley rink1, gina porter2, bulelani maskiti3, sam clark4, caroline barber4 with peer researchers jeffery ashitey, archie evans, siyamkela jucwa, baphelele malangabi, sisonke mpiliso, siyabonga ntozini, ansari pulickal abdul azeez, thobinceba siyatha, bonginkosi sosanti, raqib uddin and dillon watson* 1 department of geography, environmental studies & tourism, university of the western cape 2 department of anthropology, durham university 3 independent researcher 4 transaid * additional peer researchers remain anonymous for ethical reasons corresponding author: bradley rink, brink@uwc.ac.za doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9217 article history: received 01/07/2024; revised 30/11/2024; accepted 05/12/2024; published 01/2025 abstract as a collective of peer researchers, scholars and members of a nonprofit organisation, we have come together to share a curated walk through lowincome communities in cape town and london. we do so with the intent of exploring the embodied and social experiences of walking and writing research differently through a collaborative process of listening, cocreating and sharing knowledge about the pedestrian mobilities of young men as mediated by the precarities of urban life. our walkingwriting practices are a hybrid of the actual practices of walking and potential for enacting change by valuing the everyday experiences and knowledge of peer researchers. the curated walk that we share guides readers on the research journey that we have taken together from the homes of those involved to the metaphorical centre of power in the cities/regions where our work takes place, with the intention of longterm, meaningful impact. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding this research was funded by volvo research and educational foundations (vref) under project reg ep2022wk01. the authors wish to thank vref for its support. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9217 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9217 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:brink@uwc.ac.za https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9217 keywords peer research; walking; gender; young men; south africa; united kingdom take your research for a walk. how will you respond by walkingwith? (springgay & truman 2018, p. 142) a curated walk in cape town and london the journey described below is a comparative walkingwriting practice through cape town, south africa and london, united kingdom. it is the result of collaborations between 12 peer researchers who live in the communities about which we write, scholars whose work entails research and teaching, and members of a nonprofit organisation based in london whose work focuses on mobility outreach and training in cities across the global south. our walk is a propositional activity, inspired by springgay and truman (2018), who define such activities as ‘hybrids between potentiality and actuality’ (springgay & truman 2018, p. 130). what follows is a walkingwriting practice that traces actual walking journeys, while at the same time exploring their potential for meaningful change. in our case the proposition lies not only in our shared concern in exploring the experiences of walking from home to transit hubs in the neighbourhoods where our peer researchers live, but also in creating impact beyond academia. through our curated walk, we share a ‘temporal and spatial copresence’ (vergunst 2010, p. 386) on the city streets of cape town and london. walking is both an embodied practice of mobility and social phenomenon that has gained interest from scholars over recent decades despite being taken and understood as a mundane practice (lorimer 2016). it is a practice that helps to make sense of the city while engaging a range of senses themselves (middleton 2010; springgay & truman 2018; vergunst 2010). through the act of being in the city, we can sense slices of urban life from the perspective of the street (belkouri, lanng & laing 2022). however, walking is often invisible even in the scholarly literature of transport and mobilities (sagaris et al. 2022). notwithstanding its importance in african cities, walking is absent from policy and infrastructure investment (benton et al. 2023). our collective walk thus helps to illustrate its importance in everyday urban life while also undermining conventional thinking about how young men practise and experience walking. we acknowledge the lack of evidence that articulates how the walking journeys of young men in their communities are experienced, the power differences amongst members of our collective and the impact that those historically embedded inequalities have on those whose voices are heard in research findings. we are interested in and have insights to share about many aspects of walking: (1) how walking is done as an embodied practice; (2) how it is experienced as a social practice; (3) the enablers and limitations of walking; and (4) the pleasures and perils that come with walking on a daily basis, even if one is a captive pedestrian due to financial constraints, scheduling constraints, or a lack of other modes of transport. as we have learned through our collaborations, however, being labelled as a ‘captive pedestrian’ can obscure the desire that some may have to walk, and their agency in deciding to do so. it may also overlook and undervalue the pleasures of walking. ‘walkingwith’ peer researchers over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the potential for change when peer researchers are involved in the research process. there is a simple reason for this – peer researchers are experts in their own lives. from the perspective of scholars who engage in research and teaching, peer research may help to facilitate access to groups who can be reluctant to engage with professional researchers, and enable higher quality, more nuanced data, built through insider understanding, empathy and sensitivity (porter 2016; rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20252 yang & dibb 2020). communitybased peer research is a participatory research method in which research subjects from the same social or generational group are active partners in the research process – they are sometimes called ‘community researchers’ or ‘peer interviewers’ (burke et al. 2019; devotta et al. 2016; mosavel et al. 2011; porter et al. 2023b). peer researchers were identified through communitybased organisations, nongovernmental organisations and leaders within the communities in question. they helped to frame the research instruments and provided data in the form of mobility diaries and interview transcripts with community members. scholars performed the work of sourcing funding, establishing ethical clearance, organising peer researcher training workshops, curating vignettes and writing up this journey in its present form. curation was necessary on account of our ethics of care in that only project leads and research assistants had access to all research data. although peer researchers did not have access to others’ data, stakeholder workshops and peer researcher reflection sessions provided opportunities to discuss findings with everyone at the conclusion of the project. both individual and collective voices (using pseudonyms) marked our journey. vignettes from peer researchers’ mobility diaries and their interviews with community members were spanned by reflective bridges from other team members. together, our curated walk illustrates the varied experiences of walking in our study sites. the choice of our two study sites was not by accident. the collaborators have noted the steady development of knowledge over the past decade regarding challenges faced by women as they travel around urban areas of the global south and north, yet young men’s experiences have been largely ignored. with evidence from team members’ research on young women’s mobility in low income neighbourhoods of cape town, the present collaboration also sought to test the applicability of a participatory methodology developed in african urban mobility contexts in cities in the global north; hence our comparative study across geographies of north and south. the choice of study sites was also based on the differences in perceived walkability and prevalence of walking for residents of lowincome communities in each. despite the legacy of apartheid spatial planning on walkability, residents of cape town’s lowincome ‘township’ communities rely on walking (benton et al. 2023). at the same time, the dense network of public transportation in london might skew perceptions of the need to walk, and feeling safe doing so. each city brings to the study a unique environment for walking and for exploring young men’s experiences of the same. while we give some general clues as to where our walkingwriting practices take place, our ethics procedures require us to keep the study sites anonymous. but our ethics of care extends beyond the rules imposed by our institutional committees. by keeping the specific sites anonymous we also seek to avoid further stigmatising the lowincome areas where we walk and write. our walk traces a journey from home to the centre; from the periphery to the core, where our research collaboration may have impacts beyond academia. we journey to the metaphorical ‘centre’ of the city by way of speaking and writing back to relevant stakeholders and policymakers in our respective cities, and in doing so help to effect change in policy with respect to walking. our curated walkingwriting practice is prefaced by an exercise in mapping our journey together, and constructed by vignettes of everyday walks from home to transit points in our communities of concern. the use of the term ‘curated’ describes both our ethics of care (fraser & jim 2018) and the solidarity (reilly 2010) that we wish to achieve through the walk. it also demonstrates our shared accountability to the walkingwriting process. we are inspired by fraser and jim who highlight the latin origin of the word ‘curate’, whose meaning suggests taking ‘care of objects, communities, or the living, with all the aesthetic, social, political, and environmental difficulties and differences that this might involve’ (reilly 2010, p. 7). our curation lies in a combination of reflections from our research materials alongside more conventional theoretical commentary. like most journeys, the curated walk that we guide you along is not linear. it weaves through the relational geographies of the peer researchers’ communities, employing a peer research methodology that is meant to elevate the voices of individuals who may only be acknowledged as ‘subjects’ in traditional research design. the peer research rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20253 methodology therefore helps to transform scholarship and knowledge production by valuing insights from peer researchers starting with research design and implementation. our peer researchers were unemployed or casuallyemployed young men between the ages of 18 and 35 years. although unemployed or casuallyemployed, they agreed to devote time to our project, and were paid a stipend for the time they devoted to it. other members of our team were being paid for their research time, whether directly through project funds or indirectly through a monthly salary from their institution. therefore, an important step in equalising the relationship was to ensure that peer researchers were also compensated for their time. with formal ethics approval achieved (durham ref: anth202301 10t15_46_55dan1rep / uwc ref: hs23_1_6) and our teams assembled in both study sites, we embarked on the first steps of our walk, guided by setting expectations and framing the geographical context of our explorations through a mapping exercise. mapping the way forward journeys often begin with a map, and ours was no different. the group of collaborators in both cape town and london came together for the first time during fiveday peer research training workshops in each city that enabled the team to plan and visualise the journey ahead as one does with a map. implicit in the design of the workshops were opportunities to listen, equalise power in the research process, collaborate in the design of the research instruments, cocreate knowledge through mapping and discussion, and celebrate achievements. as we set out on our walk together we found that we had different but compatible goals and expectations. these goals and expectations may be likened to mental maps of what we might expect or hope for in the journey ahead, and how we envision the path that we want to take. we started on day one of the workshops by asking each member of the team what they wanted to achieve from the walkingwriting practice. goals expressed included: (1) learning about/from the communities involved in our study; (2) relationship building amongst each other and the communities in question; (3) effecting change and building trust in researchers; and (4) skills development such as communication and critical thinking that could be transferrable beyond the time and scope of the project. the goals expressed align with the views of porter et al. (2023b), who highlight the potential attributes of peer research as including: (1) peer researchers’ personal empowerment (as training, work experience and social interaction with researchers build selfesteem); (2) mitigation of the usual power imbalances between researcher and research subject; and (3) wider community empowerment, encouraging action. goalsetting and expectations were followed by establishing the ground rules that would guide the workshops in the days ahead. peer researchers and the rest of the project team worked together to establish shared rules of conduct with respect to: (1) starting and finishing times for the daily sessions; (2) listening carefully to one another; (3) addressing each other with respect; (4) allowing others to speak without interruption; (5) whether or not to allow photography during the sessions; (6) confidentiality of personal information; and (7) use of mobile phones during workshop sessions, etc. the rules that we established collaboratively had to be agreed by all participants before we moved on. these preliminary steps in establishing respect, equality and openness also included some points of housekeeping such as discussing and signing of peer researcher informed consent forms. from the start we established a partnership of equality and valuing of knowledge from the peer/ community context. our first exercise in creating cognitive maps from individual and shared experiences of study areas allowed peer researchers to share and value their own knowledge while imparting it to the entire team. appreciating knowledge from peer researchers is not simply about respect for each member of the team, but is also important for gaining critical insights from everyday mobility practices (rink 2020). after getting to know each other, setting expectations of what each member would like to achieve by participating in the project and establishing ground rules for conduct, we initiated a mapping exercise whose inputs rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20254 were laid down on paper by the peer researchers through vigorous discussion, debate and consultation (see figure 1). these maps became an important starting point for discussing the matters at hand in each of the lowincome study sites, and formed a critical understanding of the geographic contexts of the communities about which we would write. this included the geographical extent of the communities, their urban form and infrastructure(s), the places to which people travel (and how), as well as qualitative indicators such as places of importance and meaning, and places of safety or danger. as the maps came together, peer researchers from different neighbourhoods in each city were invited to present the maps to their entire group. discussions followed, particularly to understand elements included during the process of drawing the maps. we asked questions of each other as the richness of the maps emerged: (1) what are the good/bad things about the area in which you live? (2) what are the reasons that people travel, and how? (3) where does walking fit into the mobility practices of the neighbourhood? figure 1. community mapping at peer researcher workshops in cape town and london (authors) this mapping exercise emerged out of the desire to establish the context of the study sites, understand key issues in the everyday experience of walking, develop new knowledge, and hone research skills together (see figures 2a and 2b). aside from training our collective eyes and ears in understanding the social and physical landscapes of the study areas, the workshops also allowed us to develop our research instruments. this included discussing how to engage in reflective writing of daily ethnographic mobility diaries, development of interview questions, and how to conduct interviews and record responses from community members. related to this were discussions on establishing procedures for the ethical application of our research methodology inline with ethics approval from the respective academic institutions that were part of the project. this included procedures for informed consent, safety and respect with participants during fieldwork. the workshops also provided an opportunity for peer researchers to practise interviewing techniques by walking together in small groups of two or three in the vicinity of the training venue. while one peer researcher asked a set of research questions and noted responses from the second peer researcher (respondent), the third observed and intervened if any issues arose. with an opportunity for each to practise the roles, and a group debrief thereafter with all workshop participants, we turned our senses to the process of collecting walking stories and understanding the urban landscape. between the two study sites, language challenges also emerged. workshops in cape town and london were conducted in english; however, english was not the first language for our peer researchers in rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20255 figure 2a. community map from cape town workshop (authors) figure 2b. community map from london workshop (authors) rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20256 cape town, and despite being the lingua franca in london, it was not the primary language for all peer researchers there. peer researchers were assisted with translation of texts where needed. although the multilingual environment created some inconsistencies in the fluency of vignettes, they nonetheless provided detailed evidence of walking experiences. we took the time to celebrate milestones along our journey by recognising the achievements of peer researchers in ways that extend the impacts of their participation beyond the publication of research outputs. we did this by providing peer researchers with certificates to mark significant stages of our journey – one upon the completion of the peer researcher training workshop (see figure 3 below), and another after the completion of data collection and engagement during stakeholder meetings and reflection sessions. peer researchers use these certificates to demonstrate their skills in job applications. figure 3. ready to walk – celebrating the completion of peer researcher workshops in cape town and london (authors) the mobile ethnographic methods that we have discussed and practised help to explore the embodied and social act of walking, as we ‘[travel] with people and things, participating in their continual shift through time, place and relations with others’ (watts & urry 2008, p. 867). by collectively seeing, hearing and broadly sensing (middleton 2010) different aspects of the city around us – and sharing those reflections – we engaged in a walkingwriting practice with each other (springgay & truman 2018, p. 142). these formative steps not only prepared us all with skills and knowledge related to walking in the city, but also provided the impetus for our walk to get underway. setting off on a monday morning our walk begins in cape town early on a monday morning when residents set off to work, school, visits to social service organisations or local clinics. the lowincome communities that we explore (both in cape town and london) are situated on the socioeconomic and geographical periphery of the metropoles they are part of and very few of the young men interviewed or part of our team of peer researchers have access to a private car; thus walking is a key mobility practice. unlike in london, residents in the communities we engaged with in south africa have to grapple with the enduring legacy of racist spatial planning that predates apartheid (mabin & smit 1997) and continues to shape poverty and precarity in cape town’s townships and informal settlements (huchzermeyer & karam 2006). as we set out, the walk within the community is a ‘first mile/last mile’ strategy for connecting to public transport, or is part of a journey that is entirely on foot. time is of the essence, as distances to be covered are often great. thus for many residents of these communities the day begins early, when it is still dark outside. despite the early hour, the streets rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20257 of the townships in cape town are buzzing with activity. along our walk we encounter others, engaging sometimes in acts of care and at other times seeking to avoid them. as we walk, choices have to be made; a negotiation of the potential risks that lie in the darkness, as sipho from cape town notes: today was kind of different because it was darker, and i usually walk to the taxi rank but today i decided to catch one of those morning neighbourhood taxis that take me straight to the taxi rank because i had to think about my safety and i was kind of intimidated by the challenges i might come across when walking in the dark. while waiting for the taxi to arrive there were familiar faces from within my neighbourhood who were also waiting for the taxi so i was comfortable since i wasn’t alone in the dark. on days like this, the darkness is complicated by periods of scheduled electricity outages due to undercapacity, euphemistically called ‘loadshedding’ in south africa. under these circumstances, the neighbourhood streets are in complete darkness, with only the possibility of a faint glare from a mobile phone of a hurried pedestrian, or the dazzling headlights from a passing minibus taxi. sometimes, the temporalities of darkness combined with poor weather and the threat of violence eliminate sir j’s desire to walk at all: this day i decided i am not gonna go anywhere because the weather is not as good it is raining at it rains early in the morning and the weather news did say last night that the rain is going to be 100% today. i didn’t even jog because it’s cold and rainy at the same time it’s windy and if i can do the outside activities i can probably catch flu. while i was at home laying on my bed the time it was past 9am in the morning … i heard gun shots at the back of my house … i was still in bed the shots when coming from different direction and you could hear that these people that were shooting are fighting. it may not be external forces that keep us from walking, but our own fears and anxieties from past experiences, as nitin, aged 34 from london, notes: … i was on my way to work when i was mugged. i was walking home from the train station when a man came up behind me and grabbed my bag. i tried to fight back, but he was too strong. he took my bag and ran away. i was left standing there, shaken and scared. after that experience, i was really shaken up. i was afraid to go out alone, and i was worried about being mugged again. i eventually started to go out again, but i was always very careful. i made sure to walk in welllit areas, and i always kept my phone with me in case i needed to call for help. facing vulnerabilities posed externally by incidents of crime and internally by one’s own insecurities can have a chilling effect on access opportunities for work, education and social contact. before we started our journey together, we sought to question some commonlyheld assumptions regarding the gendered nature of walking that often suggests that young men are invulnerable. as we walk the journey with our peer researchers and their communities we provide clear evidence of some of the challenges that young men face, most of which are largely ignored by scholarly research in favour of studies focusing on road safety, traffic injury and men’s health. travel perils: exposing vulnerabilities we have sensed danger along the path of our walk. conventional thinking about young men and their walking journeys suggests that these individuals are invulnerable and walk without concern. this sentiment is underscored by our group discussions with peer researchers, especially those in cape town who cite cultural expectations of men being strong, brave and fearless. our collaborative walk helps to dispel such notions and expose the vulnerabilities of young men as they go about their daily lives by walking through rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20258 their neighbourhoods. both peer researchers and their community interlocuters provide evidence of the perils presented during the walk to the transit hub. such perils include: (1) theft, with the strong possibility of being accompanied by violence; (2) long distances; (3) long waits to connect with public transportation; (4) temporalities of poor weather and darkness; and (5) dangers associated with poor driving and motor vehicle accidents that may involve pedestrians. concerns over theft while walking, possibly accompanied by violence, is the dominant theme along the journey in cape town at any time of day, though in london it is more of a late night concern. nearly all of the peer researchers and their interviewees in cape town have been witness to street robberies, some taking place at gunpoint. the fear of crime is complicated by the dualimpact of feeling ‘useless, weak and vulnerable’ as a result of being victimised. the threat of crime and violence is especially felt while walking alone or waiting at a transport hub and is heightened during periods of darkness in the early morning hours or late at night, or in the case of south africa, during nighttime loadshedding where one noted how he fears for his life. mark, a 20yearold immigrant from mauritius who lives in one of the london study locations, tells us how he compensates for such perils, even putting on a friendly smile to avoid conflict: i plan my journey during daylight hours to ensure better visibility and a safer environment. i avoid late evenings when the streets might be less crowded. while walking, i remain observant of my surroundings, noticing any changes in the environment or potential obstacles ahead. i greet passersby with a friendly smile or a nod, maintaining a positive and friendly demeanour. risk and vulnerabilities are both temporally determined, as mark notes, but also spatially dependent. while mark avoids late evenings and empty streets, peer researchers in cape town experience the highest risk when walking in high density informal settlements with narrow alleys. as one recalls: once i get out of [specific highdensity area] unharmed in the morning then i know i’m safe afterwards. mark’s walking experience cannot be separated from the larger journey that he and others in london have taken over the course of their lives. as an immigrant, his experience of walking is often mediated by the sense of being different, a point that several of our london peer researchers highlighted in our conversations and in their walking diaries. one had moved to london from accra at the age of nine, while another had only arrived in the united kingdom weeks earlier from his former home in lagos. the traces of their journeys were thus understood as part of larger scale mobilities. pretend to tie your shoelace: tactics for safe walking an untied shoelace slows us down. we must stop and make it right. however, tying a shoelace can also be a tactic that serves as a means of scanning the environment while preserving one’s dignity, as we learned from mabhuti, a cape town resident in his early 30s who was born in a small town in the eastern cape: i walk in the afternoon to the bus [to get to a job in a distant neighbourhood]. it takes 10 minutes. it’s not safe. i’ve not experienced it, but i’ve seen others robbed at gunpoint. you can get robbed waiting at the bus. i don’t interfere if others get robbed … if i see criminals, i pretend i’m tying my shoelace. this unique tactic not only helps mabhuti to avoid danger, but also to preserve an expectation of strength and invulnerability that pervades the gendered mobilities of young men. the young men amongst us make careful choices of dress and the goods they carry. sandals are to be avoided according to our peer researchers in cape town, because they make it difficult to run if you must escape a dangerous situation in a hurry. headwear also carries significance. as one peer researcher who identifies as a rastafarian and wraps his hair in a rastacap affirms, ‘you can’t rob a rasta [in the study neighbourhood].’ religious identity in this case means a great deal. attention to dress is also important as rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 20259 we walk through london. mohammad, a young man in his late 20s suggests that dress sense can help to ensure a safe walk. as he noted, ‘i don’t wear my long chain when i’m walking at night as that can attract some unwanted attention.’ although walking with jewellery can be avoided, walking with a phone may be inevitable, but it is important to carry it in a secure place. some question whether or not to carry a knife for protection, and all are cognisant of their choice of travel time and route, preferably along the shortest and most travelled route. walking safely is also helped by paying attention to the streetscape ahead (and sometimes behind you), and always keeping an eye out for trouble, as dwight reminds us along the way: i’m looking forward when i’m walking … your eyes must be there before you! while we may think of walking as a practice that primarily concerns the movements of our legs, our walks also call attention to the importance of verbal and nonverbal aspects of walking. gangsterism is rife in some of the communities where our peer researchers reside. some peer researchers found it useful to practise walking and talking like a gangster. a cape town peer researcher shows that he is ‘walking confidently so the skollies [thieves] won’t notice me’ while in london his counterpart points out that ‘i don’t face any challenges … since i was also a gangster’. bodily comportment thus becomes one way to express confidence and masculinity, despite the fears and vulnerabilities that may be sensed. many also suggest that walking with trusted others is both a tactic to ensure a safe walk, but also one that is enjoyable. walking with others in the communities we explore, we often walk with others, in some cases out of concern for safety, but other times because the streets of these communities are vibrant spaces that exemplify the sociality of the city. in cape town, swazi hints at the tensions as he escorts potentially vulnerable women home: today i am walking my daughter and her mother home as they had visited me the previous day. it is afternoon at around 1 o’clock and usually during this time of the day there would be a lot of people and kids playing around my street, but there is just two little girls playing with sand on the side of the road. i can see that they didn’t go to school today because the school is normally out at 2 o’clock. i can also tell by how dirty their legs are that they haven’t been to school … i don’t really know people from this section, just people i went to school with a long time ago. as i am walking in the open field that is between the houses, where most people that are going to a church nearby always walk, there are three young girls approaching us. they are probably at their early 20’s. i can see by the way they are dressing that they are going to church because they have their doek (head wrap) and skirts on. they stop and greet as they reach us, probably because they know my girlfriend. i then continue walking, leaving her behind because the bag i am carrying is a bit heavy. i am also rushing to get back home. after a few minutes, they catch up with me as i am getting close to where they live. after a 20 minutes walking, i then say my goodbyes with them and then turn back using the same direction i came in. i am walking a bit fast, faster than then pace i was walking in when i came this side because the road was clear and quiet with only one lady walking in front of. i can she is coming from shoprite because of the plastic she is carrying. i quickly go pass her without even greeting. i hear a sound of dogs barking from a nearby house as i enter a street that leads to the passage that takes me to the main road. i am crossing the road to where i stay, and the scene is a bit different to what it is like one the side. here the house are shacks and there is no proper infrastructure but on the other side houses are properly built and there are proper streets. i make a 5minute walk from the road to my house without really seeing anyone, just avoiding flooding water on the street as it is wet. walking the streets of our study communities in cape town requires attention to unpredictable changes in the infrastructure and materiality of the city as swazi’s reflection suggests. blocked drains cause flooding on some streets while drain covers may be absent in others. this requires a careful eye to the ground while rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202510 still scanning the streetscape ahead. this experience contrasts with that of our walks in london. one young man in his 20s reflects on how he navigates the streets of london: i maintain awareness of my surroundings and follow pedestrian safety guidelines to ensure a smooth and safe walk. if i encounter any potential dangers, i adjust my route or seek assistance from nearby authorities or pedestrians. senses and sensemaking (middleton 2010) play an important role in daily walks. attention to the environment, the infrastructure and others who are walking are all part of the routine. while senses are often attuned to danger, there are also moments of joy. finding joy in walking our walk is not only filled with fear and trepidation. we also find joy as we amble through the city. in recognising this we help to undermine conventional notions about walking for young men in lowincome communities, especially for those captive to walking as a mobility practice. while walking may be physically taxing, and pedestrians may often endure long distances in poor weather and under threats of danger, there are often pleasures to be found. our walk reveals the joys to be found in everyday encounters. in london there are children playing in the park, people walking dogs, other people laughing and having a good time. one peer researcher stumbles upon a lively fun fair. they note the enticing scent of a cooked breakfast wafting through a nearby window as they set off on their journey or pass through a street market that exudes the lively energy of the city. even in the more uncertain context of cape town, another appreciates acknowledging and being acknowledged with a smile or greeting by others. during our walk, peer researchers have highlighted social encounters of many kinds – all which point to the joys of encounter. several reflections even mention how strangers sometimes go out of their way to help others, extending the notion of ‘care’ to our human geographies (middleton & samanani 2021) and an ethics of care within the neighbourhoods where our peer researchers reside (porter et al. 2023a). this ethics of care aligns with our careful curatorial method (fraser & jim 2018) of writing differently as it enables findings that illustrate care in the experience of walking the city. the joys we experience from walking are often unexpected but memorable as we recall previous journeys. riyaaz remembers a particular journey from his home in london to a relative’s house. he recalls that: … [t]he journey started on a pleasant note given that the sun was blazing but it was the cool breeze that accompanied the atmosphere. walking along, i was captivated by the vibrant blooms of flowers adorning the front yards. as i walked along, enjoying the pleasant morning, i came across a talented street performer playing his violin. the street performer was playing a piece called campanella on his violin, and it had been quite some time since i last heard it. i was completely captivated by the melody, lost in its enchanting notes. unfortunately, my mesmerisation caused me to miss my bus. however, the music made my journey far more enjoyable. the experiences of young men in our collective have helped us to recognise not only the financial advantage of walking, but also the benefits of walking for both physical and mental health. peer researchers and members of their communities tell us that they appreciate how walking helps the respiratory system, even that it is a ‘sort of meditation to get peace of mind’. josh in london comments how he ‘love[s] walking, it keeps me fit and i enjoy the outdoors, it clears my mind i often walk to nearby stores, parks …’. his counterpart in cape town reflects that by walking: i get to breathe fresh air, instead of just sitting in the house and be thinking about being unemployed and stuff. i get to see people and be healed. rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202511 tago, a 28yearold man in cape town, appreciates how walking can help him and his pregnant partner to find relief: i love walking and my girlfriend also love walking. she says that her doctor told her to take some walks when she can because it will make her feel much better. walking also help me to cool down because i am very stressing now because i don’t have a job and my girlfriend is pregnant. but i know my god will provide. the pleasures of walking extend to the encounters that young men may have at the travel hubs to which they travel. by walking they are able to experience familiar faces, as amos in london relates: today the walk felt different but in a surprising way, it was more relaxing than normal … the walk was about 10 minutes and i didn’t have my airpods in ever so i was listening to the sounds of the wind, cars and people talking throughout my journey. … i then carried on my walk after waiting for the traffic light to turn green and walked about another 5 minutes to work, i saw a couple people i knew along the way so that was quite nice being able to have some morning social interaction with familiar faces even just by me waving or smiling. the joys of walking remind us that encountering the city on foot, even if it may be the only option, holds the potential for positive benefits, in terms of physical and mental health, social cohesion and environmental impact. walking also provides a unique way of knowing the city one inhabits, and importantly where power rests. walking helps to unlock the ‘relationship between mind, body and [place]’ (muecke & eadie 2020, p. 1205), and ultimately allows us all to walk out of our disciplinary framework which both guides and limits us. as we near the end of our walk, we take the last steps to help effect meaningful and longlasting change by ‘talking’ our walk to those in powerful positions. walking for impact our walk ends metaphorically at the heart of the city. our walk has traced a journey from the homes of our peer researchers and their fellow community members to the centre; from lowincome communities on the periphery to the seat of power. we have done this based on a methodology that was first developed and tested in the context of the global south – testing it in this case within the context of the global north. when we set out on our collaborative journey we sought to ensure to the best of our abilities that our research might have impacts beyond academia. traditionally, the research work that we do speaks back to other scholarly outputs, by framing the research in a literature review and contributing back to the debates therein. the scholars amongst us, whose work is focused on research and teaching, still endeavour to do this. however, we intend to offer something different. our walk is a propositional hybrid (springgay & truman 2018) comprised of the actuality of walking journeys and their potential for meaningful change. our proposition lies not only in our shared concern to explore the experiences of walking from home to transit hubs in the neighbourhoods where our peer researchers live, but also in creating impact beyond academia. our ‘walkingwith’ not only refers to the sociability of walking with others; it also highlights our accountability to indigenous/local knowledge and ways of being in the world (sundberg 2014). inspired by the zapatista movements in the early 2000s, walkingwith demonstrates ‘respect for the multiplicity of life worlds’ (sundberg 2014, p. 40) as we have attempted through our curated walk. the last ‘steps’ of our walk entail sharing the life worlds of our peer researchers directly with stakeholders within the local governance structures of our respective sites of enquiry. beyond the traditional academic rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202512 journal article, our project has been designed to ‘write’ research into the discourse of public policy through stakeholder engagement workshops. these workshops were held both in cape town and london – the former with members of the city’s urban mobility directorate, community activists and researchers; and the latter with representatives from local councils within which peer researchers reside, community safety and transport for london officials, and local public transportation providers. these stakeholder workshops formed an important element in our project design. the workshops in each city provided peer researchers and other members of the project team the opportunity to meet with relevant local stakeholders including community youth organisations, informal transport associations, transport companies, ngos, local government, unions, law enforcement organisations, amongst others to discuss the potential implications of project findings for further action, policy, and practice. the potential impacts on policy or practice are not prescribed by us, but are intended to emerge through the process of engagement. potential actions in response might include increased safety measures, attention to walking infrastructure, or policies directed toward enabling more safe and enjoyable walking journeys, amongst others. looking back there were times during our walk where we took an opportunity to look back upon the steps that we had made. these reflections helped us to assess the aim of our walkingwriting practice – in terms of testing the applicability of the peer research method across global north/south contexts, as well as on effecting meaningful change. while we have found valuable insights across the two cities, a key challenge in london was in the recruitment of peer researchers. although community institutions in cape town yielded a large number of potential peer researchers, recruitment in london proved challenging. whether due to broad scepticism of the project, fear of scams, or the availability of other opportunities, recruitment in london required considerably more effort. high unemployment rates and dense networks of community organisations with ties to cape town’s communities in question meant that young men were eager for the opportunity to take part, learn new skills, provide their knowledge and help to effect change. in our post stakeholder interviews with peer researchers, many noted a feeling of empowerment in telling their stories directly to those in positions of power and influence. reading excerpts from their mobility diaries validated the experience of walking in their communities. in the postwalk discussion in london, one peer researcher mentioned community members enjoying being interviewed. their satisfaction came from sharing stories of their daily lives – something they do not normally have an opportunity to do, and a sign of respect for their knowledge and insights from daily experiences. this is ‘walkingwith’ in its true sense. the same can be said for discussions with peer researchers in cape town, as they valued the opportunity to share their life worlds directly to city officials, literally speaking truth to power. by foregrounding peer researchers’ voices in stakeholder workshops, we helped to turn the tables on knowledge production and dissemination, giving space for peer researchers to lead the research in an important way, and to help enact meaningful change through presenting findings directly to those charged with policy making. our curated walk helped to trace the research journey that we have taken together from the homes of those involved to the metaphorical centre of power in the cities/regions where our work takes place. our aim was to ‘walkwith’ our peer researchers through a propositional activity, inspired by springgay and truman (2018, p. 130), highlighting the actuality of our embodied, sensory walks with their potentiality to effect change. through our collaborations we underscore both the sociability of walkingwith peer researchers and their communities, but also our accountability to each other. while achievement of long term, meaningful impacts from our project are still forthcoming, our contribution to writing research differently can be seen in the walk we have taken together. enacting policy change takes time. what we have achieved is a journey toward change, mapping a collaborative process of listening, cocreating and sharing knowledge from the starting point of the homes of our peer researchers and fellow members of rink et al. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 18, no. 1 january 202513 their communities to the metaphorical ‘centre’ of the city. in our efforts to take this walk together, we have demonstrated how longterm, meaningful impacts might take shape. acknowledgement we wish to acknowledge peer researchers and fellow community members for their contributions to this work. while some remain 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